XXIX
THE PRIEST OF NEMI
Here it is cool under thick alders, close to the water's edge, where frogs are doing their very best to sing. Hidden in some depth of the sky, the Dog Star rages, and overhead the mid-day sun marches across his blazing barrack-square. Far away the heathen violently rage; the world is full of rumours of war, and the kings of the earth take counsel together against liberty and peace. But here under thick alders it is cool, and the deep water of the lake that lies brooding within the silent crater of these Alban hills, stretches before us an unruffled surface of green and indigo profoundly mingled. Wandering about among overgrown and indistinguishable gardens under the woods, women and girls are gathering strawberries and loading them up in great wicker baskets for the market of Rome. The sound of sawing comes from a few old houses by the lake-side, that once were mills turned by the nymph Egeria's stream, where Ovid drank. Opposite, across the lake, on the top of the old crater's edge, stands a brown village—the church tower, unoccupied "palace," huddled walls and roofs piled up the steep, as Italian villages are made. That is Genzano. On the precipitous crag high above our heads stands a more ancient village, with fortress tower, unoccupied castle, crumbling gates, and the walls and roofs of dwellings huddled around them. That is Nemi, the village of the sacred wood.
Except where the rock is too steep for growth, the slopes of the deep hollow are covered with trees and bushes on every side. But the trees are thickest where the slope falls most gently—so gently that from the foot of the crater to the water's edge the ground for a few hundred yards might almost be called a bit of plain. Under the trees there the best strawberries grow, and there stood the temple of mysterious and blood-stained rites. Prowling continually round and round one of the trees, the ghastly priest was for centuries there to be seen:
"The priest who slew the slayer,
And shall himself be slain."
No one can tell in what prehistoric age the succession of murdering and murdered priests first began that vigil for their lives. It continued with recurrent slaughter through Rome's greatest years. About the time when Virgil was still alive, or perhaps just after Christ himself was born, the geographer Strabo appears actually to have seen that living assassin and victim lurking in the wood; for he vividly describes him "with sword always drawn, turning his eyes on every side, ready to defend himself against an onslaught." Possibly the priest suspected Strabo himself for his outlandish look and tongue, for only a runaway slave might murder and succeed him. Possibly it was that self-same priest whom Caligula, a few years after Christ's death, hired a stalwart ruffian to finish off, because he was growing old and decrepit, having defended himself from onslaughts too long. Upon the lake the Emperor constructed two fine house-boats, devoted to the habits that house-boats generally induce (you may still fish up bits of their splendour from the bottom, if you have luck), and very likely it was annoying to watch the old man still doddering round his tree with drawn sword. One would like to ask whether the crazy tyrant was aware how well he was fulfilling the ancient rite by ordaining the slaughter of decrepitude. And one would like to ask also whether the stalwart ruffian himself took up the line of consecrated and ghastly succession. Someone, at all events, took it up; for in the bland age of the Antonines the priest was still there, pacing with drawn sword, turning his eyes in every direction, lest his successor should spring upon him unawares.
In the opening chapter, which states the central problem, still slowly being worked out in the great series of The Golden Bough, Dr. Frazer has drawn the well-known picture of that haunted man. "The dreamy blue," he writes:
"The dreamy blue of Italian skies, the dappled shade of
summer woods, and the sparkle of waves in the sun, can have
accorded but ill with that stern and sinister figure. Rather
we picture to ourselves the scene as it may have been witnessed
by a belated wayfarer on one of those wild autumn nights
when the dead leaves are falling thick, and the winds seem to
sing the dirge of the dying year. It is a sombre picture, set to
melancholy music—the background of forest showing black and
jagged against a lowering and stormy sky, the sighing of the
wind in the branches, the rustle of the withered leaves under
foot, the lapping of the cold water on the shore, and, in the
foreground, pacing to and fro, now in twilight and now in
gloom, a dark figure with a glitter of steel at the shoulder
whenever the pale moon, riding clear of the cloud-rack, peers
down at him through the matted boughs."