Thorny Path, a Volume 12
Ebers, Georg, 1837-1898
English
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A THORNY PATH
By Georg Ebers
Volume 12.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Caracalla's evening meal was ended, and for years past his friends had
never seen the gloomy monarch in so mad a mood. The high-priest of
Serapis, with Dio Cassius the senator, and a few others of his suite, had
not indeed appeared at table; but the priest of Alexander, the prefect
Macrinus, his favorites Theocritus, Pandion, Antigonus, and others of
their kidney, had crowded round him, had drunk to his health, and wished
him joy of his glorious revenge.
Everything which legend or history had recorded of similar deeds was
compared with this day's work, and it was agreed that it transcended them
all. This delighted the half-drunken monarch. To-day, he declared with
flashing eyes, and not till to-day, he had dared to be entirely what Fate
had called him to be--at once the judge and the executioner of an
accursed and degenerate race. As Titus had been named "the Good," so he
would be called "the Terrible." And this day had secured him that grand
name, so pleasing to his inmost heart.
"Hail to the benevolent sovereign who would fain be terrible!" cried
Theocritus, raising his cup; and the rest of the guests echoed him.
Then the number of the slain was discussed. No one could estimate it
exactly. Zminis, the only man who could have seen everything, had not
appeared: Fifty, sixty, seventy thousand Alexandrians were supposed to
have suffered death; Macrinus, however, asserted that there must have
been more than a hundred thousand, and Caracalla rewarded him for his
statement by exclaiming loudly "Splendid! grand! Hardly comprehensible
by the vulgar mind! But, even so, it is not the end of what I mean to
give them. To-day I have racked their limbs; but I have yet to strike
them to the heart, as they have stricken me!"
He ceased, and after a short pause repeated unhesitatingly, and as though
by a sudden impulse, the lines with which Euripides ends several of his
tragedies:
"Jove in high heaven dispenses various fates;
And now the gods shower blessings which our hope
Dared not aspire to, now control the ills
We deemed inevitable. Thus the god
To these hath given an end we never thought."
--Potter's translation.
And this was the end of the revolting scene, for, as he spoke, Caesar
pushed away his cup and sat staring into vacancy, so pale that his
physician, foreseeing a fresh attack, brought out his medicine vial.
The praetorian prefect gave a signal to the rest that they should not
notice the change in their imperial host, and he did his best to keep the
conversation going, till Caracalla, after a long pause, wiped his brow
and exclaimed hoarsely: "What has become of the Egyptian? He was to
bring in the living prisoners--the living, I say! Let him bring me
them."
He struck the table by his couch violently with his fist; and then, as if
the clatter of the metal vessels on it had brought him to himself, he
added, meditatively: "A hundred thousand! If they burned their dead
here, it would take a forest to reduce them to ashes."
"This day will cost him dear enough as it is," the high-priest of
Alexander whispered; he, as idiologos, having to deposit the tribute from
the temples and their estates in the imperial treasury. He addressed his
neighbor, old Julius Paulinus, who replied:
"Charon is doing the best business to-day. A hundred thousand obolus in
a few hours. If Tarautas reigns over us much longer, I will farm his
ferry!"
During this whispered dialogue Theocritus the favorite was assuring
Caesar in a loud voice that the possessions of the victims would suffice
for any form of interment, and an ample number of thank-offerings into
the bargain.
"An offering!" echoed Caracalla, and he pointed to a short sword which
lay beside him on the couch. "That helped in the work. My father
wielded it in many a fight, and I have not let it rust. Still, I doubt
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