I sat still, frozen in astonishment, as mother came forward and led the weeping Cartimandua out of the room. At the doorway she paused to look back at me and hiss, "You unthinking brute!"
"What did you do that for?" my father asked in his mild voice that meant I had better be careful about my answer.
"I - er - I saw Gaius Fabricius do it at a city feast," I stammered. "He did exactly the same thing."
"Well, he's a Roman," my father said. "We Greeks treat our slaves with more consideration. I suggest you do the same: you get much better service out of them. They are human beings, just like us. The only difference is that Fortune has frowned on them because they have offended her somehow36. Beware that Hubris37 doesn't send you similar ill-luck."
"I - I'm sorry," I muttered.
"So you should be," my mother snapped, coming back to her couch. "That poor girl spent a long time brushing her hair and making herself nice for you while you were out at the baths, and then you go and do that to her!"
"It's all right, Demaris," my father said. "It won't happen again."
He finished the food in his bowl and then stood up, slipping his feet into his house sandals.
"Come on, Arxes. Run and put your best chiton on and let's go."
"Be careful with him, Lycurgus," Mother pleaded. "Don't get him too drunk."
I didn't hear my father's reply. I hurried into my room where a clean chiton was lying neatly on the bed. I pulled my old one off over my head and dragged the clean one on, ran my fingers through my hair and left the room. My father was waiting for me by the door with a torch-bearer38 and Antiochus was holding my outdoor shoes in his hands.
"Here you are, little lord."
I gritted my teeth. "Thanks, Antiochus."
"Out a boy and in a man, eh, lord?"
"Something like that, Antiochus," my father answered.
We hurried through the dark streets following the flickering light of our torch-bearer until we reached the agora. There were seven or eight other boys of my own age there, each one attended by his father and a torch-bearer and we stood around anxiously, waiting for the officers of the Society to arrive. To relieve our worries we laughed and joked nervously - and our fathers were almost as noisy39.
Dusk had given way to complete darkness when a blare of trumpets and the sound of raucous shouting told us that the officers were coming. Long minutes later we saw the flicker of their torches40 reflected in the marble of the buildings and then the procession came round the corner into the agora and stopped in front of us.
"Are these the candidates?" asked a deep voice that came from what appeared to be a vestal virgin with heavy jowls.
My father hurried forward and put his arm on my shoulder.
"Ah, there you are, Lycurgus," said the vestal virgin.
A torchbearer moved past and in the brighter light of his passing I recognised the features of Councillor Mnesilochus. Other men in the crowd were dressed as Bacchantes, satyrs, hunters or gladiators and everyone was laughing, cracking jokes and pushing each other around in high good humour. Many of the men were tipsy and one or two were quite drunk.
"Dress the candidates in the sacred robes," commanded the vestal virgin.
At once a group of Bacchantes surrounded us and draped old cloaks over our shoulders and pulled the hoods over our heads so that we couldn't see. Someone raised the cry of "Io! Io!"41 and with our arms firmly held by laughing men on either side, we were marched through the streets to the hall where the Corinth Mystery of Bacchus42 met.
Inside the room I managed to tip my head back far enough to catch a glimpse of the crowd that filled the room to capacity - there must have been at least two hundred men there reclining on the couches - and the vegetation that filled every corner43, but one of the attendants saw what I was doing. He tapped me with his wand44 and pulled the hood down lower, at the same time rebuking me for my impious daring. After a good deal of shouting and noise someone blew a trumpet and at once the room fell silent. Amid that silence the priests entered. One by one, I and my fellow initiates were led forward and admitted to the Mystery.
Piety forbids me to describe the sacred ceremonies that followed. Those who are already initiated will understand when I say that I received instructions too holy to be spoken above a whisper, that I passed through a sanctified doorway and saw the god himself, walking in the light45.
At length my hood was removed and I was allowed to rejoin my father. He greeted me with the sacred sign that is only known to those initiated into the Mystery of Bacchus.
"Congratulations! Well done, Arxes. Here, have a cup of spiced wine for strength46 and then I have a surprise for you: the last step in your initiation."
I drank down the large cup of warm, spiced wine that my father offered to me and then followed him out of the room and down a corridor to a curtained doorway.
"Don't be afraid," my father said, pulling aside the curtain and gesturing to me to enter. "Just do what you're told. Come back to the main hall when you are ready."
I stepped through the doorway and stopped in astonished confusion. There was a large couch in the room and on it reclined a beautiful woman. I recognised her instantly as Habrotonen, the best known of the priestesses of Artemis, famous not only for her beauty but also for her skill in the arts of love47. She raised herself on her elbow and smiled at me.
"Come on in, big boy. You've worshipped the god, now come and pay homage to the goddess."
Much later, disgusted and yet strangely thrilled by what I had been taught and done, I returned to the main hall. An Egyptian acrobat, clothed only in a nearly transparent girdle about her loins, was performing in the centre of the room, loudly cheered by the men. Slaves hurried to and fro with wine-jars on their shoulders and vine-leaves in their hair. I searched the room with my eyes until I located my father. He lowered his cup as I approached.
"Well, my boy? How does it feel to be a man?"
I went to sit on the end of the couch48, but my father motioned me to lie down in front of him like a man. A slave hurried up and handed me a silver drinking horn of antique design and filled it for me.
"Just a word of caution," my father continued. "Don't go chasing married women, it only leads to trouble, as well as being against the law49. Avoid the common stews about the port, you can pick up all sorts of diseases from the women there. If that Gaulish girl I bought you today isn't enough for you - and I know what it's like to be young! - go up to the Artemision. There's enough girls up there to satisfy any man's fancy and there's the added benefit that it is an act of religion at the same time."
I nodded. I felt exhausted. It had been a long day and all the excitement of the initiation and everything had tired me out. All I wanted to do was lie down somewhere and go to sleep, but I knew that that was impossible. Already men were queuing up to congratulate my father and me. I stood up respectfully as the first of them approached, but I didn't really hear the words he spoke. Ringing in my ears was something Habrotonen had said to me.
"I'm the most expensive woman in Corinth and your father got me for your initiation. He must really love you, young man, and don't you forget it."
I turned to my father and interrupted the old man who was talking to him.
"Thanks, Dad. You're the greatest!"
And we two men embraced and exchanged kisses.
36 More or less quoted from a speech by Trimalchio in the Satyricon by Petronius. (p. 81) In his Natural History IX.xxxix Pliny tells of "Vedius Pollio, Knight of Rome, a member of the Privy Council under the late lamented Augustus, found in this animal [the moray eel] a means of displaying his cruelty when he threw slaves sentenced to death into ponds of morays - not that the wild animals on land were not sufficient for this purpose, but because with any other kind of creature he was not able to have the spectacle of a man being torn entirely to pieces at one moment." Greeks seem to have been slightly more civilised in their treatment of slaves. Ischomachus, the agricultural expert in Xenophon's The Estate Manager, remarks to Socrates: "It is often just as important for a farmer to encourage his labourers as it is for a general to encourage his troops. Slaves need good prospects for the future just as much as free men - or even more - to make them prepared to stay put." (p. 307) In the same work Socrates himself comments on the fact that "in some cases all the slaves are kept in chains, as it were - and these are the ones who constantly run away, whereas in others they are free and happy both to work and to stay." (p. 297) Return
37 Hubris, sometimes personified as a goddess, was overweening pride which led the gods to send disaster on an individual. The old proverb, 'Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad', refers to the foolish actions precipitated by pride that lead to an individual's downfall. Return
38 Wealthy people sometimes had torchbearers during the daytime as a sign of ostentation. Plutarch, in The Fall of the Roman Republic, tells of a disturbance in Rome when Pompey and Crassus tried to prevent Cato, their rival, from standing for office. "Pompey's party, . . . prevented Domitius from going down into the forum. They organised a band of armed men who killed his torchbearer as he was leading the way and put all the rest to flight. Cato was the last to retire." (p. 212) Return
39 In his essay On Being Aware of Moral Progress, Plutarch writes, "At the start of the initiation ceremony, as the candidates assemble, they are noisy, call out and jostle one another, but when the rituals are being performed and revealed, then they pay attention in awestruck silence." (p. 136) Return
40 Torches had a cultic significance. In The Age of Alexander Plutarch tells of a portent that showed the gods' favour to a man called Timoleon: "That night when he had reached the open sea and was sailing with a fair wind, . . . a torch, like one of those which are carried in the procession of the Mysteries, rose up before them and, moving in the same direction as his vessel, descended upon exactly that part of Italy towards which the pilots were shaping their course." (p. 158) Some people even held the office of hereditary torch bearers in the Eleusinian Mysteries.
In his Natural History XVI.xix, Pliny discusses the various kinds of pine tree. "The sixth kind is the torch-pine specially so called, which gives out more resin than the rest, but less and of a more liquid kind than the pitch-pine; and it is agreeable for kindling fires and also for torchlight at religious ceremonies." Somewhat obscurely he then remarks, "It is a disease of the larch to turn into a torch-pine." Return
41 This meant "Joy! Joy!" and was the traditional cry of the crowd at such festivities. In The Fall of the Roman Republic, Plutarch tells us of another traditional cry. As a young man Pompey was involved in a law suit and the judge, impressed by his intelligence, offered him his daughter. Pompey accepted and a secret engagement ensued. "However, from the partiality shown by Antistius to Pompey in the case, people were able to guess what was going on and in the end, when Antistius announced that the verdict of the jury was 'Not guilty', the people, as though they had been waiting for the signal, all shouted out; 'Talasio!' - which is the ancient and traditional greeting used at weddings." (p. 161) Return
42 Bacchus was known to the Romans as Father Liber. According to Pliny's Natural History VII.lvi "Father Liber instituted buying and selling and also invented the emblem of royalty, the crown and the triumphal procession." This would explain his popularity with a prosperous trading city such as Corinth. (There is also the possibility that something is missing from Pliny's text, as Mercury is also credited with inventing commerce, but gods frequently overlapped.) Return
43 Speaking of the joys of the afterlife, Plutarch, in his essay On God's Slowness to Punish, says: "The inside looked like a Bacchic cave, in that it held a rich variety of plants and greenery and flowers of every colour; and it exuded a mild, gentle, scented breeze which induced exquisite rapture. The effect on the state of mind was like the effect of wine on people who are getting drunk:as the souls revelled in the delightful scents they began to expand and to become affable with one another, and all around the place was filled with merrymaking, laughter and every kind of song sung by people having fun and enjoying themselves." Return
44 The attendants at the mysteries of Bacchus or Dionysius carried wands of reed or bulrush with which they tapped those who became drunk and rowdy. The offender then had to leave the room immediately. Return
45 Lucius, the hero of Apuleius' The Golden Ass, preserves a similar discretion when recounting his initiation into the Mystery of Isus. (p. 285-7) No doubt the ceremonies in all the mystery religions had similarities between them. Return
46 Wine was commonly believed to be an aphrodisiac (see The Golden Ass and other tales) whereas in fact it more often results in temporary impotence. As today, the effect was probably confused with alcohol's ability to remove inhibitions. Return
47 Prostitutes were highly regarded members of Corinthian society. Pausanias, in his Guide to Greece II.iv, describes "the grave of Lais, whose monument is a lioness holding a ram in its front paws. Another so-called monument of Lais is in Thessaly; she was in love with Hippostratos in Thessaly. They say she was originally a girl from Hykara in Sicily, captured by the Athenians under Nikias and sold to Corinth, where she was much more beautiful than any other prostitute of her generation. The Corinthians were so wonderstruck by her that they still dispute about her now," which means that she was set as a subject for formal debates. The monument described by Pausanias is depicted on numerous coins from Corinth. Return
48 In his The Twelve Caesars Suetonius tells us about Augustus and his grandsons: "Whenever they dined in his company he had them sit at his feet on the so-called lowest couch." (p. 89) He also mentions Claudius: "His sons and daughters, like those of other distinguished figures, were always expected to dine with him, sitting in old-fashioned style at the ends of the couches on which their parents reclined." (p. 205) The Greeks had the same custom, for in Xenophon's Symposium he remarks: "Autolycus sat down beside his father and the others, as you would expect, reclined." (p. 228) Women also usually sat at the end of their husband's couch. Return
49 Curiously, under the old Athenian laws, adultery was more severely punished than rape. The rationale was that a man who raped a woman merely defiled her body but one who seduced a married woman corrupted her mind and morals as well. Speaking of homosexual lovers, Socrates declares in Xenophon's Symposium, "Then again, the very fact that he uses not force but persuasion makes him more detestable, because a lover who uses force proves himself a villain, but one who uses persuasion ruins the character of the one who consents." (p. 260) Return