The processions streamed into the dromos at pilgrims’ pace. Through the dromos they reached the first propylæum, then the second, the third, the fourth. These consisted of a gigantic series of heavy pylons, painted with hieroglyphics: a veritable forest of pylon-trunks rising in serried ranks of frowning columns and crowned with heavy architraves which seemed to support the starry realm of the summer night itself. Through these endless rows of pillars the dense multitude of pilgrims in search of their dreams marched to the music of hymns. It marched with its steady, slow, regular, religious tread. And monotonous as the rhythm of its march was the melody of its hymn, borne upon ever the same harp-chords.
Lucius’ procession marched with the others. He walked gravely, with Catullus by his side; Thrasyllus followed; the slaves, male and female, followed. In front of him strode his musicians, singers and dancers. And Cora’s voice rose only a little higher in the ever-repeated hymn to the god Serapis.
The temple itself produced a sense of infinity. An immense fore-court, or pronaos, soared on high with its pillars, a forest of pylons crowned by the roof, with its painted hieroglyphics. The pronaos gave admittance to the sanctuary, the holy of holies, an immeasurable empty space, without image, without altar, without anything. Nevertheless as it were a mysterious sanctity descended here, because of the height, the impressive, colossal dimensions. The “wings,” or pteres, the two side-walls, sculptured with symbolic bas-reliefs, painted gold, azure and scarlet, approached each other with slanting lines in a mystic perspective, where a cloud of fragrance hovered like a conflagration. Behind this the holy of holies lost itself, the abode of the god, of Serapis; invisible the statue. A swarm of acolytes, zacori and neocori, were officiating on ascending stairs, in worship before close-drawn hyacinth curtains.
The processions divided themselves along the wings, the side-walls, as directed by the temple-keepers’ wands. It was as though a broad stream were dividing into two rivers. At the end of the wings, behind the holy of holies, flights of stairs widened in the open night, leading to terraces, the one ever higher than the other, so that they could not be overlooked. The golden gong-strokes solemnly rolled and thundered, echoing heavily and loudly.
Over the terraces, in a constant round, up and down, marched the chief priests, the hieropsalts, the hieroscopes, the hierogrammats, the pastophors, the sphagists and the stolists. The hieropsalts sang the hymns to the sacred harps; the hieroscopes prophesied from the entrails of victims; the hierogrammats guarded the secrets of the Hermetic wisdom; the pastophors carried the images of Anubis, with the dog’s head, in silver boats; the sphagists were the sacrificial priests; the stolists served the sacred images, adorned them, tended them with ever clean and perfumed hands. But among the hierogrammats strode the prophets. They had beheld the godhead face to face; they knew the past and the future, they knew the meaning of the sacred dreams. They were very holy; and the oldest of them were most holy. Whenever they approached, the people sank to the ground and kissed the pavement, with hands uplifted.
The sacred hour approached, the hour when Serapis would send the sacred dreams from heaven, out of the sun itself, when all the procession would have streamed in, when the gates of the dromos would have slammed with their ponderous monolithic doors, when the last gong-stroke would clatter away in the sacred night.
From the terraces the town, the canal, and the lake lay visible as in one golden shimmer of lights. But on the terraces themselves suddenly an incredible stillness reigned. Not a voice, not a rustle sounded from out of that multitude of thousands. And on the granite pavement the pilgrims were stretched one beside the other.
In between the rows the temple-keepers moved, the neocori. And they bent incessantly over the pilgrims and covered them with the dreaming-nets and -veils, while zacori slung the censers. A heavy, intoxicating perfume of almost stifling aromatic vapour was wafted through the air.
Suddenly, through the silence, the harps of the hieropsalts struck the sacred chord.
There was a short hymn, one single phrase, which melted away.