The Chaldean Magician

A cloudless October day, A. D. 299, was drawing to a close; the western sky behind the crest of Mt. Janiculum still glowed with crimson light, but the population in the streets and squares of the world’s capital were already moving in a bluish twilight and yellow-red lamps shone, veiled by smoke, from the taverns of the many-gabled Subura.

A youth with a white toga thrown over his shoulders, coming from the Querquetulanian Gate, turned into the Cyprian Way. His manner of walking was somewhat peculiar. Sometimes he rushed hastily forward,

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 like a man impatiently striving to reach his destination; at others he glanced hesitatingly around or stopped a few seconds as though repenting his design. Passing the Baths of Titus he perceived, only a few yards distant, another youth who had entered the Cyprian Way from a side street on the left and with bowed head was pursuing the same direction over the lava stones of the pavement. Looking more closely, he recognized a friend’s countenance in the new-comer’s pallid features.

It was nearly six weeks since he had seen pleasant Lucius Rutilius; for the two young men’s paths in life were entirely different. While Rutilius, the son of a wealthy senator, was fond of moving in the most select circles of the capital, visiting the theatres, the races and combats in the arena, and during the summer spending his time alternately at his country estate in Etruria, the waterfalls of Tibur, the shore of the

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 gulf of Baiae, or the strand of Antium, Caius Bononius, the son of a knight, led a somewhat secluded existence in the solitude of his study, allowing himself at the utmost a short trip during the hottest months to the world-renowned Diana’s Mirror, the lovely secluded lake in the neighboring Alban Hills, where he owned a modest little garden. Spite of this diversity in external circumstances, the two young men cherished a deeply-rooted friendship for each other. Lucius Rutilius valued the comprehensive knowledge, insatiable thirst for information, and proud independence possessed by Caius Bononius; while the latter knew that Rutilius beheld the splendor of life in the great capital, not with the eyes of the coarse man of pleasure, but with those of the poet; that he revelled in the pomp of color, the luxury of eternal Rome, as the creative artist rejoiced in the effects of light and shade in a landscape; that amid this seething whirlpool

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 he had preserved a warm heart, a noble unselfishness of nature.

At Caius’ call Lucius Rutilius raised his head, covered with black, curling locks, as though startled from a deep reverie. A crimson flush, visible even in the gathering twilight, mounted to his brow, as if the other had caught him in forbidden paths.

“Is it you, Bononius?” he stammered. “Are you, too, to be met in the crowd of pedestrians? True, it’s lonely enough here in the aristocratic Cyprian Way to allow you to indulge your taste for seclusion even while walking.”

“I have really avoided all society during the last few weeks,” replied Caius Bononius, “strange problems have engrossed my attention. But you—what brings you, without any companion, to this quarter of silence at this hour of the day? You used at this time to be reclining at table—with roses from Paestum in your hair and your glowing

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 lips pressed to an exquisitely-polished murrhine cup, if not on the neck of some radiant young beauty.”

Lucius blushed again.

“Things are different now,” he replied with his eyes bent on the ground.

“How?” asked Caius Bononius in surprise. “Has my Lucius renounced the delights of the revel and the lustre of flower-wreathed triclinia?”

“Not entirely—but your remark about a young beauty—you needn’t smile, Caius! In perfect truth: during the last month a change has taken place in this respect, which—how am I to say...?”

“How are you to speak? As you think! The confusion in your words distinctly shows how hard you are trying to conceal rather than disclose your thoughts. Come, Lucius! Have you so completely forgotten that we did not vow faith and

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 friendship to each other only over the golden Falernian, that our relations have a deeper root? If things have occurred that influence your character, your views of the world, let me know what has affected you; for as a sincere, though half-superfluous friend, I have a right to your implicit confidence. As I live, you give me the impression that some important matter is in question. Speak, my Lucius! Have you, in contradiction to your whole past, thrown yourself into the study of philosophy? Have you come in contact with some saint of the sect of the Nazarenes and thus acquired a taste for the beautiful legends of the East?”

“Nothing of the sort,” sighed Lucius, taking his friend by the arm and drawing him slowly along with him in the direction of the Subura. “You will laugh at me when you learn how your invincible Epicurean has fared at last.... Yes, you are right,

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 Caius; it would be foolish if I wished to conceal from you, my faithful friend, what your penetration would nevertheless discover.... So know—but don’t accuse me of weakness—I am desperately in love, not only with my eyes, as before, but body and soul, a second Troilus, a Leander who would breast the surges of every sea to at last clasp his Hero in his arms.”

“You have often talked so,” said Caius smiling.

“Talked, but never felt. The best proof of the genuineness of my emotions—to myself—is the ardor with which I long to lead the beloved maiden across my threshold as my wife. You know ‘marriage’ used to be a terrible word to me, Caius: now, since I have seen Hero—her name is really Hero, and she is the daughter of an aristocratic Sicilian—since that time I have known nothing sweeter than Hymen’s torch, and longingly await the moment which,

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 spite of all difficulties and disasters, must at last unite us.”

“Difficulties?” repeated Bononius, pausing. “Does Hero deny her Leander the ardently-desired love? Has the handsome Rutilius for the first time wooed in vain?”

Lucius Rutilius gazed at the western sky as if he were examining the position of the stars.

“There is still time,” he murmured, then turning to Bononius, added:

“Wooed in vain? No—yet it is almost the same thing. Does this contradiction seem to you an enigma? If you wish, you shall learn all—only not here, where the passers-by are growing more numerous and a listener might misuse my words. I have business on the northern slope of the Quirinal in about an hour—until then let us stay in my uncle Publius Calpurnius’ house, here on the right of the Patrician Way. He is Caius Decius’ guest to-day:

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 we can walk up and down the portico undisturbed—and to be frank, I long to pour out my heart to you, receive your counsel.”

Bononius hesitated. He seemed to be secretly making a hasty calculation.

“Well,” he said at last, “if it won’t occupy too much time.... You won’t take it amiss, if I tell you that I, too, in an hour at latest....”

“Oh—I can explain everything in ten minutes.”

Turning to the right, he drew his friend along with him, and a short time after they knocked at the door of a spacious mansion. The porter drew back the bolt, bowed, and ushered the two youths through the passage into the atrium.

The residence of Publius Calpurnius was one of the huge, luxurious edifices, which seemed to vie in extent with the immense palaces erected by the emperor Diocletian

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 in Salona and Nicomedia. Of no unusual external magnificence and with a moderate façade, it developed directly behind the atrium the most surprising size, stretching on the right and left over the ground naturally belonging to the neighboring houses and spreading towards the slope of the hill. Caius Bononius, who almost intentionally avoided the homes of Roman grandees, often as Lucius—at least in former days—had endeavored to draw his friend into the life and bustle of the capital, scanned with surprise and curiosity the magnificently-decorated structure, the halls of the two court-yards where a dozen gaily-clad slaves were just lighting the candelabra, the brilliant-hued paintings on the walls, the portrait-statues—men in somewhat un-Roman sleeved garments, and women with extremely realistic styles of hair-dressing which looked as if the latest coiffure of a

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 fashionable visitor to the circus had served the sculptor for a model.

In fact, Lucius asserted that these styles of arranging the hair were removable, and could be taken from the statues’ heads and exchanged for modern ones as fashion required—a triumph of the plastic art, as he ironically added.

So they walked through the second pillared court-yard to the garden. The dusky avenues of trees, whose spreading boughs still permitted enough of the fading daylight to enter to reveal the box-bordered gravelled paths, invited thoughtful, pleasant strolls, and the watchman at the back of the house afforded a sufficient guarantee that no intruder would steal after the youths.