CHAPTER I
In the green gardens of white Ephesus we were two young learners, or apprentices, with the aged Bryaxis, the sculptor. He was sitting upon a seat made of stone as pallid as his face. He did not speak, but lightly struck the earth with the end of his staff. Out of respect for his great age and his greater glory we stood patiently before him. Our backs leaned against two dark cypress trees. We did not talk, but eagerly listened for him to speak. Motionless we studied him with homage of which he appeared to be conscious. We knew that he had survived all those whom we had longed to know. We loved him to reveal his spirit to us, for we were simple-hearted children, born too late to have heard the voices of heroes. We sought to trace the almost invisible bonds that united him to his striking, astonishing lifework. That brow had conceived, that hand had helped to model a frieze and twelve figures for the tomb of Mausolus, the King of Caria, whose tomb was a wonder of the world: the five Colossi erected in front of the town of Rhodes, the Bull of Pasiphæ, that made women dream strange dreams, the formidable Apollo of bronze, and the Seleucus Triumphant. The more I contemplated their author, the more it seemed to me that the Gods must have fashioned with their own hands this sculptor, in order that he might be the means of revealing them to men!
All at once a rush of feet, a whistle, and a cry of a gay heart; the young Ophelion bounded among us.
“Bryaxis,” cried he, “hear what all the city knows already. If I am the first to tell thee I will make an offering to Artemis. But first let us make our salute: I had forgot.” He now looked towards us, as if to say, “Prepare yourselves well for what I am about to tell you.” Then he began thus: “You know, revered one, that Clesides painted the portrait of the Queen?”
“People have spoken about it to me.”
“But the end of the story ... has that also been told to you?”
“Is there indeed a story then to tell?”
“Is there a story?... You are ignorant of it all! Listen. Clesides came expressly from Athens. They took him to the Palace. The Queen was not yet ready; she permitted herself to be late. Finally she presented herself, scarcely saluting her artist, and then posed—if one could call it posing. It now seems that she continually moved, under the pretext that Love had given her a cramp. Clesides drew in a very bad humour, as you may imagine. His rough sketch was not even finished, and lo! the Queen wishes to pose for her back....”
“Without a reason?”
“For the reason that—so she said—her back was as perfect as the rest of her body, and must appear in the picture. Clesides might well protest that he was a painter and not a sculptor, that one does not turn a picture to see its back; that one cannot draw a woman seen from every side upon the one flat plane of a picture.... The Queen merely responded that it was her will; that the laws of art were not her laws; that she had seen the portrait of her sister as Persephone, of her mother as Demeter; and that she, Queen Stratonice, by her sole self, wished to pose for the ’Three Graces.’”
“That was not such a stupid idea of hers.”
Our comrade appeared to take umbrage at this remark.
“Supposing that Clesides had replied, ’No’? He was free to do so, one would think. It is not the custom to give orders to the artist. Such a thing as that we could not support. Never would her father Demetrius have done such a thing. Why, when he laid siege to Rhodes, where at the time Protogenes was at work, Demetrius refused to fire that part of the city where the sculptor worked.”
“I know that story. Continue,” said Bryaxis.
“Very well; I will be short with it. Clesides was very angry, but did not show it. He finished his study of the back, and the Queen rose, asking him to return on the morrow; he accepted, and left. Very good. On the morrow what awaited him? A servant, saying that the Queen Stratonice was fatigued, and would not pose any more. The servant was to pose for her until the portrait was finished. That was what the Queen had desired!”
We shook with mirth, and Bryaxis joined us therein.
Ophelion then continued gaily—
“The slave was not badly made. Clesides gave her the same reason to be cramped that her mistress had, and then said in a dry way that he did not want her any more, and took himself and his drawings home.”
“He certainly did right that time,” I said. “The Queen was merely mocking him all the while.”
“Well, on the way home, as he passed near the port, he saw a mariner whom some one had told him the Queen had given herself to—though there was no proof of it. The man was Glaucon—you know him well by sight. Clesides got the fellow to come home with him, and pose for four days. At the end of that time he had finished painting two scandalous little pictures, representing the Queen in the arms of the sailor, firstly facing the beholder, and then with the back showing. These pictures he fastened at night to the wall of the Palace of Seleucus. He then doubtless fled, after this public vengeance, on some vessel, for there is said to be no trace of him. The Queen knows of it already, and if she is furious at heart she hides it marvellously.
“During the whole of the morning an enormous crowd defiled before these scandalous paintings. Stratonice was told of it, and desired to see them herself. Accompanied by twenty-five people of her court, she stopped before the two subjects, approaching and then retreating as though the better to judge of their artistic or truthful aspect in detail and in general. I was there, and as I followed her glances with a feeling of horror, wondering whom she was going to slay when her anger reached its highest point, she said: “I do not know which is the best; both are excellent!”
Bryaxis, in the midst of our exultation, lifted merely his eyebrows, and so gave to his face the fine old lines that denoted surprise.
“She proved that she is not less witty than impudent,” said he. “The whole story is very curious; but why do you seem to be so proud of or pleased with its hero? It seems to me that the part played by the model is a very important one.”
“If the Queen had dared,” said Ophelion, “she would have pursued Clesides even to the far-off seas, and there have had him killed as one might kill a dog. But then, through all the violet land of Greece she would have been considered none other than a barbarian woman—she who wishes to be thought a thorough Athenian. Stratonice holds Asia in her hand as though it were a fly, and she has drawn back before a man who has for weapon only a tablet and stylus.... Hereafter the Artist is the king of kings, the sole inviolable being living under the sun. Now you see why it is that we are so proud!”
The elder man made a very disdainful movement of the mouth.
“Thou art young,” he replied. “In my time we said the same thing, and perhaps with greater reason. When Alexander timidly tried to explain why such and such a picture seemed to be fine, my friend Apelles caused him to be silent by saying that he was making the boys laugh who ground up the colours; and Alexander made his excuses! Ah, well! I do not believe that such tales really repay one for telling them. Whatever may be the attitude—the respect or arrogance—of the King towards contemporary painters, the pictures are not any the better, or any the worse, for it all. It is a matter of indifference. On the other hand, it may be good, and even noble, for an artist to dare and to be able to put himself not above the King marching with an army near the walls of his home, but above all human laws, or even divine laws, when the Muses, his inspiring spirits, sway him.”
Bryaxis was now standing. We murmured in wonder—
“But who has done that? Of whom do you speak?”
“None, perhaps,” came the answer of the older man, and there was in his eyes the hazy look of the dreamer, “unless the great Parrhasius.... Did he do wisely, I wonder? I used to believe so, but to-day I doubt and know not what to think about it.”
Ophelion flung me an astonished look, but I could not enlighten him in any way as to the meaning behind the words of the aged artist.
“We do not understand you, Bryaxis,” he said.
He hinted, to put us upon the right way, “The Prometheus of Parrhasius.”
“Yes; what can you tell us of that?”
“Do you not know how Parrhasius painted the Prometheus of the Acropolis?”
“No. We have not been told how it was done.”
“You do not know of that amazing scene—the deathly tragedy and alarums from whence that picture emerged, bloodstained?”
“Speak. Tell us all the scene; we know nought of it.”
For an instant Bryaxis let his regards rest upon our young faces, as if he hesitated to burden our spirits with such a memory. Then he said with decision—
“Very good. I will tell you all.”