Marius the Epicurean — Volume 1

  CHAPTER IV: THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE

  O mare! O littus! verum secretumque Mouseion,+ quam multa invenitis, quam multa dictatis! Pliny's Letters.

  [43] IT would hardly have been possible to feel more seriously than didMarius in those grave years of his early life. But the death of hismother turned seriousness of feeling into a matter of the intelligence:it made him a questioner; and, by bringing into full evidence to himthe force of his affections and the probable importance of their placein his future, developed in him generally the more human and earthlyelements of character. A singularly virile consciousness of therealities of life pronounced itself in him; still however as in themain a poetic apprehension, though united already with something ofpersonal ambition and the instinct of self-assertion. There were dayswhen he could suspect, though it was a suspicion he was careful atfirst to put from him, that that early, much [44] cherished religion ofthe villa might come to count with him as but one form of poeticbeauty, or of the ideal, in things; as but one voice, in a world wherethere were many voices it would be a moral weakness not to listen to.And yet this voice, through its forcible pre-occupation of his childishconscience, still seemed to make a claim of a quite exclusivecharacter, defining itself as essentially one of but two possibleleaders of his spirit, the other proposing to him unlimitedself-expansion in a world of various sunshine. The contrast was sopronounced as to make the easy, light-hearted, unsuspecting exercise ofhimself, among the temptations of the new phase of life which had nowbegun, seem nothing less than a rival religion, a rival religiousservice. The temptations, the various sunshine, were those of the oldtown of Pisa, where Marius was now a tall schoolboy. Pisa was a placelying just far enough from home to make his rare visits to it inchildhood seem like adventures, such as had never failed to supply newand refreshing impulses to the imagination. The partly decayed pensivetown, which still had its commerce by sea, and its fashion at thebathing-season, had lent, at one time the vivid memory of its fairstreets of marble, at another the solemn outline of the dark hills ofLuna on its background, at another the living glances of its men andwomen, to the thickly gathering crowd [45] of impressions, out of whichhis notion of the world was then forming. And while he learned thatthe object, the experience, as it will be known to memory, is reallyfrom first to last the chief point for consideration in the conduct oflife, these things were feeding also the idealism constitutional withhim--his innate and habitual longing for a world altogether fairer thanthat he saw. The child could find his way in thought along thosestreets of the old town, expecting duly the shrines at their corners,and their recurrent intervals of garden-courts, or side-views ofdistant sea. The great temple of the place, as he could remember it,on turning back once for a last look from an angle of his homewardroad, counting its tall gray columns between the blue of the bay andthe blue fields of blossoming flax beyond; the harbour and its lights;the foreign ships lying there; the sailors' chapel of Venus, and hergilded image, hung with votive gifts; the seamen themselves, theirwomen and children, who had a whole peculiar colour-world of theirown--the boy's superficial delight in the broad light and shadow of allthat was mingled with the sense of power, of unknown distance, of thedanger of storm and possible death.

  To this place, then, Marius came down now from White-nights, to live inthe house of his guardian or tutor, that he might attend the school ofa famous rhetorician, and learn, among [46] other things, Greek. Theschool, one of many imitations of Plato's Academy in the old Atheniangarden, lay in a quiet suburb of Pisa, and had its grove of cypresses,its porticoes, a house for the master, its chapel and images. For thememory of Marius in after-days, a clear morning sunlight seemed to lieperpetually on that severe picture in old gray and green. The lad wentto this school daily betimes, in state at first, with a young slave tocarry the books, and certainly with no reluctance, for the sight of hisfellow-scholars, and their petulant activity, coming upon the saddersentimental moods of his childhood, awoke at once that instinct ofemulation which is but the other side of sympathy; and he was notaware, of course, how completely the difference of his previoustraining had made him, even in his most enthusiastic participation inthe ways of that little world, still essentially but a spectator. Whileall their heart was in their limited boyish race, and its transitoryprizes, he was already entertaining himself, very pleasurablymeditative, with the tiny drama in action before him, as but the mimic,preliminary exercise for a larger contest, and already with an implicitepicureanism. Watching all the gallant effects of their smallrivalries--a scene in the main of fresh delightful sunshine--he enteredat once into the sensations of a rivalry beyond them, into the passionof men, and had already recognised a certain [47] appetite for fame,for distinction among his fellows, as his dominant motive to be.

  The fame he conceived for himself at this time was, as the reader willhave anticipated, of the intellectual order, that of a poet perhaps.And as, in that gray monastic tranquillity of the villa, inward voicesfrom the reality of unseen things had come abundantly; so here, withthe sounds and aspects of the shore, and amid the urbanities, thegraceful follies, of a bathing-place, it was the reality, the tyrannousreality, of things visible that was borne in upon him. The real worldaround--a present humanity not less comely, it might seem, than that ofthe old heroic days--endowing everything it touched upon, howeverremotely, down to its little passing tricks of fashion even, with akind of fleeting beauty, exercised over him just then a greatfascination.

  That sense had come upon him in all its power one exceptionally finesummer, the summer when, at a somewhat earlier age than was usual, hehad formally assumed the dress of manhood, going into the Forum forthat purpose, accompanied by his friends in festal array. At night,after the full measure of those cloudless days, he would feel well-nighwearied out, as if with a long succession of pictures and music. As hewandered through the gay streets or on the sea-shore, the real worldseemed indeed boundless, and himself almost absolutely free in it, witha boundless [48] appetite for experience, for adventure, whetherphysical or of the spirit. His entire rearing hitherto had lent itselfto an imaginative exaltation of the past; but now the spectacleactually afforded to his untired and freely open senses, suggested thereflection that the present had, it might be, really advanced beyondthe past, and he was ready to boast in the very fact that it wasmodern. If, in a voluntary archaism, the polite world of that day wentback to a choicer generation, as it fancied, for the purpose of afastidious self-correction, in matters of art, of literature, and even,as we have seen, of religion, at least it improved, by a shade or twoof more scrupulous finish, on the old pattern; and the new era, likethe Neu-zeit of the German enthusiasts at the beginning of our owncentury, might perhaps be discerned, awaiting one just a single steponward--the perfected new manner, in the consummation of time, alike asregards the things of the imagination and the actual conduct of life.Only, while the pursuit of an ideal like this demanded entire libertyof heart and brain, that old, staid, conservative religion of hischildhood certainly had its being in a world of somewhat narrowrestrictions. But then, the one was absolutely real, with nothing lessthan the reality of seeing and hearing--the other, how vague, shadowy,problematical! Could its so limited probabilities be worth taking intoaccount in any practical question as to the rejecting or receiving [49]of what was indeed so real, and, on the face of it, so desirable?

  And, dating from the time of his first coming to school, a greatfriendship had grown up for him, in that life of so fewattachments--the pure and disinterested friendship of schoolmates. Hehad seen Flavian for the first time the day on which he had come toPisa, at the moment when his mind was full of wistful thoughtsregarding the new life to begin for him to-morrow, and he gazedcuriously at the crowd of bustling scholars as they came from theirclasses. There was something in Flavian a shade disdainful, as hestood isolated from the others for a moment, explained in part by hisstature and the distinction of the low, broad forehead; though therewas pleasantness also
for the newcomer in the roving blue eyes whichseemed somehow to take a fuller hold upon things around than is usualwith boys. Marius knew that those proud glances made kindly note ofhim for a moment, and felt something like friendship at first sight.There was a tone of reserve or gravity there, amid perfectlydisciplined health, which, to his fancy, seemed to carry forward theexpression of the austere sky and the clear song of the blackbird onthat gray March evening. Flavian indeed was a creature who changedmuch with the changes of the passing light and shade about him, and wasbrilliant enough under the early sunshine in [50] school next morning.Of all that little world of more or less gifted youth, surely thecentre was this lad of servile birth. Prince of the school, he hadgained an easy dominion over the old Greek master by the fascination ofhis parts, and over his fellow-scholars by the figure he bore. He worealready the manly dress; and standing there in class, as he displayedhis wonderful quickness in reckoning, or his taste in declaiming Homer,he was like a carved figure in motion, thought Marius, but with thatindescribable gleam upon it which the words of Homer actuallysuggested, as perceptible on the visible forms of the gods--hoia theousepenenothen aien eontas.+

  A story hung by him, a story which his comrades acutely connected withhis habitual air of somewhat peevish pride. Two points were held to beclear amid its general vagueness--a rich stranger paid his schooling,and he was himself very poor, though there was an attractive piquancyin the poverty of Flavian which in a scholar of another figure mighthave been despised. Over Marius too his dominion was entire. Threeyears older than he, Flavian was appointed to help the younger boy inhis studies, and Marius thus became virtually his servant in manythings, taking his humours with a sort of grateful pride in beingnoticed at all, and, thinking over all this afterwards, found that the[51] fascination experienced by him had been a sentimental one,dependent on the concession to himself of an intimacy, a certaintolerance of his company, granted to none beside.

  That was in the earliest days; and then, as their intimacy grew, thegenius, the intellectual power of Flavian began its sway over him. Thebrilliant youth who loved dress, and dainty food, and flowers, andseemed to have a natural alliance with, and claim upon, everything elsewhich was physically select and bright, cultivated also that foppery ofwords, of choice diction which was common among the elite spirits ofthat day; and Marius, early an expert and elegant penman, transcribedhis verses (the euphuism of which, amid a genuine original power, wasthen so delightful to him) in beautiful ink, receiving in return theprofit of Flavian's really great intellectual capacities, developed andaccomplished under the ambitious desire to make his way effectively inlife. Among other things he introduced him to the writings of asprightly wit, then very busy with the pen, one Lucian--writingsseeming to overflow with that intellectual light turned upon dimplaces, which, at least in seasons of mental fair weather, can makepeople laugh where they have been wont, perhaps, to pray. And, surely,the sunlight which filled those well-remembered early mornings inschool, had had more than the usual measure of gold in it! [52] Marius,at least, would lie awake before the time, thinking with delight of thelong coming hours of hard work in the presence of Flavian, as otherboys dream of a holiday.

  It was almost by accident at last, so wayward and capricious was he,that reserve gave way, and Flavian told the story of his father--afreedman, presented late in life, and almost against his will, with theliberty so fondly desired in youth, but on condition of the sacrificeof part of his peculium--the slave's diminutive hoard--amassed by manya self-denial, in an existence necessarily hard. The rich man,interested in the promise of the fair child born on his estate, hadsent him to school. The meanness and dejection, nevertheless, of thatunoccupied old age defined the leading memory of Flavian, revivedsometimes, after this first confidence, with a burst of angry tearsamid the sunshine. But nature had had her economy in nursing thestrength of that one natural affection; for, save his half-selfish carefor Marius, it was the single, really generous part, the one piety, inthe lad's character. In him Marius saw the spirit of unbelief,achieved as if at one step. The much-admired freedman's son, as withthe privilege of a natural aristocracy, believed only in himself, inthe brilliant, and mainly sensuous gifts, he had, or meant to acquire.

  And then, he had certainly yielded himself, [53] though still withuntouched health, in a world where manhood comes early, to theseductions of that luxurious town, and Marius wondered sometimes, inthe freer revelation of himself by conversation, at the extent of hisearly corruption. How often, afterwards, did evil things presentthemselves in malign association with the memory of that beautifulhead, and with a kind of borrowed sanction and charm in its naturalgrace! To Marius, at a later time, he counted for as it were anepitome of the whole pagan world, the depth of its corruption, and itsperfection of form. And still, in his mobility, his animation, in hiseager capacity for various life, he was so real an object, after thatvisionary idealism of the villa. His voice, his glance, were like thebreaking in of the solid world upon one, amid the flimsy fictions of adream. A shadow, handling all things as shadows, had felt a suddenreal and poignant heat in them.

  Meantime, under his guidance, Marius was learning quickly andabundantly, because with a good will. There was that in the actualeffectiveness of his figure which stimulated the younger lad to makethe most of opportunity; and he had experience already that educationlargely increased one's capacity for enjoyment. He was acquiring whatit is the chief function of all higher education to impart, the art,namely, of so relieving the ideal or poetic traits, [54] the elementsof distinction, in our everyday life--of so exclusively living inthem--that the unadorned remainder of it, the mere drift or debris ofour days, comes to be as though it were not. And the consciousness ofthis aim came with the reading of one particular book, then fresh inthe world, with which he fell in about this time--a book which awakenedthe poetic or romantic capacity as perhaps some other book might havedone, but was peculiar in giving it a direction emphatically sensuous.It made him, in that visionary reception of every-day life, the seer,more especially, of a revelation in colour and form. If our moderneducation, in its better efforts, really conveys to any of us that kindof idealising power, it does so (though dealing mainly, as itsprofessed instruments, with the most select and ideal remains ofancient literature) oftenest by truant reading; and thus it happenedalso, long ago, with Marius and his friend.

  NOTES

  43. +Transliteration: Mouseion. The word means "seat of the muses."Translation: "O sea! O shore! my own Helicon, / How many things haveyou uncovered to me, how many things suggested!" Pliny, Letters, BookI, ix, to Minicius Fundanus.

  50. +Transliteration: hoia theous epenenothen aien eontas. Translation:"such as the gods are endowed with." Homer, Odyssey, 8.365.