Marius the Epicurean, vol 1 | Page 3

itself, a piece of everyday butcher's work, such as
we decorously hide out of sight; though some then present certainly
displayed a frank curiosity in the spectacle thus permitted them on a
religious pretext. The old sculptors of the great procession on the frieze
of the Parthenon at Athens, have delineated the placid heads of the
victims led in it to sacrifice, with a perfect feeling for animals in
forcible contrast with any indifference as to their sufferings. It was this
contrast that distracted Marius now in the blessing of his fields, and
qualified his devout absorption upon the scrupulous fulfilment of all the
details of the ceremonial, as the procession approached the altars.
[10] The names of that great populace of "little gods," dear to the
Roman home, which the pontiffs had placed on the sacred list of the
Indigitamenta, to be invoked, because they can help, on special
occasions, were not forgotten in the long litany--Vatican who causes

the infant to utter his first cry, Fabulinus who prompts his first word,
Cuba who keeps him quiet in his cot, Domiduca especially, for whom
Marius had through life a particular memory and devotion, the goddess
who watches over one's safe coming home. The urns of the dead in the
family chapel received their due service. They also were now become
something divine, a goodly company of friendly and protecting spirits,
encamped about the place of their former abode-- above all others, the
father, dead ten years before, of whom, remembering but a tall, grave
figure above him in early childhood, Marius habitually thought as a
genius a little cold and severe.
Candidus insuetum miratur limen Olympi, Sub pedibusque videt nubes
et sidera.--
Perhaps!--but certainly needs his altar here below, and garlands to- day
upon his urn. But the dead genii were satisfied with little--a few violets,
a cake dipped in wine, or a morsel of honeycomb. Daily, from the time
when his childish footsteps were still uncertain, had Marius taken them
their portion of the family meal, at the second course, amidst the
silence [11] of the company. They loved those who brought them their
sustenance; but, deprived of these services, would be heard wandering
through the house, crying sorrowfully in the stillness of the night.
And those simple gifts, like other objects as trivial--bread, oil, wine,
milk--had regained for him, by their use in such religious service, that
poetic and as it were moral significance, which surely belongs to all the
means of daily life, could we but break through the veil of our
familiarity with things by no means vulgar in themselves. A hymn
followed, while the whole assembly stood with veiled faces. The fire
rose up readily from the altars, in clean, bright flame--a favourable
omen, making it a duty to render the mirth of the evening complete.
Old wine was poured out freely for the servants at supper in the great
kitchen, where they had worked in the imperfect light through the long
evenings of winter. The young Marius himself took but a very sober
part in the noisy feasting. A devout, regretful after-taste of what had
been really beautiful in the ritual he had accomplished took him early
away, that he might the better recall in reverie all the circumstances of

the celebration of the day. As he sank into a sleep, pleasant with all the
influences of long hours in the open air, he seemed still to be moving in
procession through the fields, with a kind of pleasurable awe. That
feeling was still upon him as he [12] awoke amid the beating of violent
rain on the shutters, in the first storm of the season. The thunder which
startled him from sleep seemed to make the solitude of his chamber
almost painfully complete, as if the nearness of those angry clouds shut
him up in a close place alone in the world. Then he thought of the sort
of protection which that day's ceremonies assured. To procure an
agreement with the gods--Pacem deorum exposcere: that was the
meaning of what they had all day been busy upon. In a faith, sincere
but half-suspicious, he would fain have those Powers at least not
against him. His own nearer household gods were all around his bed.
The spell of his religion as a part of the very essence of home, its
intimacy, its dignity and security, was forcible at that moment; only, it
seemed to involve certain heavy demands upon him.
CHAPTER II
: WHITE-NIGHTS
[13] To an instinctive seriousness, the material abode in which the
childhood of Marius was passed had largely added. Nothing, you felt,
as you first caught sight of that coy, retired place,--surely nothing could
happen there, without its full accompaniment of thought or reverie.
White-nights! so you might interpret its old