The Galileans: A Novel of Mary Magdalene (24 page)

Then the god spoke the line, “Ye mocked me, being God; this is your wage.” And she answered, “Should God be like a proud man in his rage?” before beginning the tragic dance that ended the play, culminating in death by her own hand in expiation for her sin. As the applause of the crowd thundered through the great theater, Joseph realized that he had just witnessed what might well be the last performance of a superb actress in a real play, and perhaps, he thought with a shiver of dread, a preview of what would happen on the morrow.

Although Mary had consistently refused to tell him the means by which she planned to bring about Gaius Flaccus’s death, Joseph was quite sure now that he knew. All Alexandria knew that the new
praefectus vigilum,
whose rank among the equestrian order placed him next to the imperial family itself in nobility, would be the god Dionysos. And that the most beautiful and beloved woman in all of Alexandria, the dancer Flamen, would naturally portray Aphrodite, the goddess of love.

By what diabolic genius Mary had been able to arrange her triumph of revenge during the culminating drama of the great festival, only she knew. Watching her these past few months, Joseph had seen how great a strain it was to pit two jealous and powerful suitors against each other in order to attain her own ambition. Now, like surging waters sweeping with inexorable force through a tidal rip, the currents were in motion. There could be no stopping now. And thinking of the morrow, Joseph felt a cold fear for the woman he loved grip his heart.

Joseph had no chance to talk to Mary the next morning before she left for the landing place on the shores of Lake Mareotis where the god Dionysos would arrive to claim his bride, the divine Aphrodite. Because of the size of the crowd, the festival was to be held in the great stadium instead of the theater. At one end of the amphitheater, a stage had been built with dressing rooms beneath. Upon it were erected the throne of the god and the marriage bed, through whose thin transparent curtains the audience could share vicariously the ritual union of the wedded deities. There Dionysos would be symbolically killed to represent the seed as it died in the ground. And from the nuptial couch the dead god would then arise, symbolic of the seedling bursting from the fertile soil. Afterward would come the greatest and wildest celebration of all, climaxing the three-day festival of the Great Dionysia.

Joseph, Matthat, and Bana Jivaka attended the festival together. A great crowd of people was gathered on the shore near the stadium, where a landing had been built for private galleys and barges of the royal court when they visited the gladiatorial games. Here the god Dionysos would land and be met by his bride-to-be, the goddess Aphrodite. Following a triumphal procession through the streets of the city, they would repair to the stadium itself, where a great entertainment had been prepared in their honor preceding the divine marriage. And after that would occur the ritual death of the god, a make-believe tragedy that Joseph fully expected to be real.

The crowd was packed so tightly that Joseph and his friends were not able to force their way through it, but from the steps leading up to the stadium they were able to watch the events from a distance. The people were in a festive mood, as befitted the occasion, and shouts of “Flamen!” and “Aphrodite!” rose as an elaborate chair with closed curtains was carried down to the pier upon which the god would land.

From behind one of the eight islands in the lake a huge barge now appeared, rowed by a hundred slaves. Upon the great golden throne that had been built on the barge a man sat, while rows of beautiful dancing girls whirled and postured before him. Behind the chair a tall black slave held the traditional bull’s-head mask of the god Apis when Dionysos appeared in that form.

At the sight of the barge the crowd set up a great shout, “Hail, Dionysos! Hail to the god of the vine!” And upon the floating dais the dancing girls whirled in a mad rhythm of adoration before the throne, until the barge itself was a mass of rippling color from their diaphanous garments. When the barge touched the pier and was secured against it, two tonsured priests of Serapis approached and knelt before it. One tinkled the sistrum, a rattle traditional in this service, while the other waved a palm frond of peace and welcome in his hands.

Next came two beautiful priestesses of Isis, the gold bands about their foreheads wrought into a likeness of the sacred cobra of the goddess. Behind them was the high priestess, with the sacred fringed mantle about her shoulders and the golden cobra upon her forehead. She carried before her a bowl containing waters from the great Mother Nile, so sacred that her hands could not even touch the container, it being protected from contact with her flesh by the fringes of a white drapery covering her head and hanging down over her shoulders and arms. As the priestesses of Isis knelt to welcome the god Dionysos in the name of their own deity, still another priest, waving wands, led a great chorus in chanting a hymn of welcome and praise to the divine visitor.

Now the slaves bearing the chair upon which Mary sat enthroned as Aphrodite lifted the carrying handles to their shoulders and moved to the pier, setting it down just behind the priests of Serapis and the priestesses of Isis. Beside the goddess of love marched the
gymnasiarch
Plotinus, who was to direct the festival, garbed in spotless white. “Welcome to Alexandria, O divine Dionysos!” he shouted. “Descend from thy craft, we pray, and join us for a celebration in thy honor.”

A shout of approval rose from the crowd as Plotinus lifted aside the curtain of the chair and held out his hand to the lovely woman who stepped from it. “Flamen! Flamen! Aphrodite!” they roared again and again, and long minutes elapsed before Plotinus could be heard again.

“We have brought you this day a divine bride,” he continued then, “with beauty and grace worthy of the gods. Hail, Aphrodite! Goddess of Love and Beauty! Hail, Divine One!”

Mary stood erect. She seemed in truth a goddess of love and beauty with her coppery hair, bound only by a white circlet, shining in the morning sunlight, the regal lines of the white gown she wore emphasizing the loveliness of her divine body.

“By the prophets of Israel,” Matthat breathed. “There has never been so beautiful a woman. She is a bride fit indeed for a god.”

In the morning sunlight Gaius Flaccus did resemble a god, with his handsome body and features, a gold chaplet upon his curls, and gold-laced sandals upon his feet. He wore no armor, and his short tunic, leaving his handsome muscular legs bare, was of a snow-white material, as was Mary’s robe. The transparently costumed dancers advanced from the barge to the pier, escorting the god as he descended from his throne and marched with stately tread to meet the goddess. Before her he stopped, while Plotinus knelt to welcome him and the crowd shouted, “Dionysos! Aphrodite! Dionysos! Aphrodite!”

“Welcome to Alexandria, O Divine One,” Mary said clearly. “I bow in homage before my husband-to-be.” She dropped gracefully to one knee, but Gaius Flaccus, in the capacity of the vine god, reached out and took her hands, lifting her to her feet. When he drew her to him and kissed her upon the lips, the crowd shouted its approval again and again. Then, holding Mary’s hand, he stepped with her into the waiting chair, whose curtains were now raised so that the whole city might see the divine visitor and his bride-to-be.

Slaves ran forward now with another ornately decorated chair for Plotinus, who would lead the procession. And at a word of command the great parade began. In the next few hours it would pass through all parts of the city before returning to the stadium for the celebration in honor of the divine visitor. The ritual marriage, consummation, death, and resurrection of the god would mark the beginning of another growing season in the earth’s cycle of fertility, growth, harvest, death, and renewal of life from the seed.

First was the chair of Plotinus, and behind it the mummers—men and women in all sorts of fantastic costumes, representing the many gods worshiped in Alexandria, each in the form in which they were said to appear. Next a group of small girls in white strewed flowers along the way, followed by the dancing girls from the barge, their bright costumes of transparent bombyx a riot of color.

Now came the priests of Serapis, tonsured and bare to the waist, carrying the ritual palms and shaking sistrum rattles. The sacred mark of the god who took his name from both Osiris and the sacred bull Apis was on their foreheads. In their hands they carried golden tokens of the god, lamps shaped like Nile boats, tiny altars upon which the sacred bull was sacrificed, and even a veiled image of the god Serapis himself.

Behind the priests of Serapis marched the devotees of Isis, never very widely separated, for Osiris had been the dead and risen lord of Isis and father of her infant son, Horus, as well as father of the man-made god of the Ptolemies, Serapis. The priestesses of Isis were chosen for their beauty. They, too, shook sacred rattles while they chanted a song of adoration to the goddess, and the crowd roared its approval as they passed in the bright morning sunlight.

The great chair in which the visiting god and his bride sat was borne next. Gaius Flaccus, quite evidently flattered at being the center of attraction, bowed and smiled at the plaudits of the crowd, but Mary sat erect, smiling mechanically, her cheeks as pale as her white robe. Watching from the crowd, Joseph wondered if she would be able to go through with what she had planned, and found himself praying that she would come to her senses and give it up at the last moment. Yet, remembering how the past five years had been a preparation for this moment of triumph over the man who had treated her so cruelly, he hardly dared hope that reason would prevail over the almost insane obsession that guided Mary now.

Behind the gods came hundreds of masquers, marching, dancing, cavorting in the streets. Satyrs and sileni, bacchantes, maenads, Bacchae, nymphs, victories, all the traditional celebrants of the Dionysian festivals held throughout the empire thronged the street in the wake of the divine pair. And after them moved a procession of great floats drawn by sweating slaves pulling ropes covered with golden cloth, while overseers marched beside them cracking long whips.

On one of the floats a statue of Nysa, twice a man’s height and marvelously lifelike, rose automatically to pour milk from a golden bowl. And upon another, satyrs cavorted amidst a great load of grapes, pressing out wine that streamed from spouts attached to the float, so that any who seized a cup from the girls distributing them could drink. Another showed the horned infant Zagreus being torn to pieces by the Titans at the front, while in the center Zeus, his father, held a glass jar in which the infant’s heart continued to beat rhythmically, bringing cries of wonder from the crowd. The end of the float represented the bridal chamber of Semele, where she was impregnated by the living heart of Zagreus and gave birth to Dionysos himself.

On still another float the youth Dionysos played with a bevy of nymphs in a cave, from which doves, pigeons, and swallows were let out to be caught by the onlookers. The last and greatest of the floats depicted the vine god. Upon it a great figure of Dionysos himself rode an elephant whose mahout was a satyr.

After the great floats came smaller ones bearing living tableaux depicting the other gods favored by the Alexandrians. Here was Alexander the Great, deified and attended by his patrons, Victory and Athena. Next in the procession was the deified Ptolemy I and his queen Berenice, then the Emperor Augustus and the living Roman god, Tiberius. Regiments of soldiers followed on horse and on foot, so that, all in all, it was more than three hours from the time the procession left the pier where the barge of Dionysos had come ashore until it circled the city and returned to the great stadium where the festival in honor of the visiting god would be held.

Enthroned upon the stage built at one end of the stadium, Dionysos and Aphrodite were now honored with a vast program of entertainment. Before them in the arena gladiators fought with sword and with net and trident, and charioteers battled from swiftly moving vehicles with naked swords. The grassy floor of the great amphitheater was soon slippery with their blood, but the crowd only shouted for even more spectacles and more carnage.

As the afternoon waned, skilled acrobats performed marvelous feats of strength and skill, interspersed between the acts of mimes depicting events in the life of both Dionysos and Aphrodite. And troop after troop of dancers of various nationalities performed the traditional dances of their people in honor of the divine betrothed pair.

In his seat near one of the
vomitoria,
the passages leading to the dressing rooms under the stands from which the actors emerged into the stadium itself, Joseph watched the performances, sick with horror at this travesty of divine worship and tense with anxiety for Mary. And as the celebration wore its way toward the crowning event of the day, where the god and his divine bride would retire into the transparently curtained room at the very top of the stage, the tension of anticipation became almost beyond bearing.

Now the last mime was finished and the actors scampered off the stage. Somewhere offstage great drums rolled out a sonorous beat like the crash of summer thunder, and before the ornately decorated nuptial chamber a towering figure appeared, taller than any human Joseph had ever seen, wearing silver armor and bearing on his head the crown of the gods.

“It is Jupiter,” Matthat said, “come to wed Dionysos and Aphrodite. I have seen that fellow play the part before.”

At a command from the Father of the Gods, Dionysos and his bride-to-be knelt before him and joined hands. Over their heads the actor intoned the solemn words joining them in wedlock, and when he finished, Gaius Flaccus lifted Mary to her feet. Momentarily she swayed, and Joseph thought she was going to fall in one of the fainting spells that had troubled her as a young girl. She seemed to have become freed of them since coming to Alexandria, however, a not unusual occurrence, for girls often outgrew such conditions as they reached womanhood.