Robert Graves - Count Belisarius

Simeon considers that the half-clothed women of the frieze, in attendance on Bacchus, are not proper ornaments for a Christian dining-room. Looking up at them, one might imagine oneself inside a brothel at Tyre or Sidon or one of those heathen places, he complains,

'I was never a customer at any such haunt,'. says Modestus sharply, 'but perhaps you know best. At the same time let me tell you that I regard the attitude to nudity as one of the tests of civilization. The barbarians hate the sight of their own unclothed bodies: just as the singing, illiterate, savage fraternities of monks do.'

Nobody takes up the challenge on behalf of the monks, not even Simeon, but Bessas answers stiffly: 'We Goths regard the sight of a person unclothed as ridiculous — just as you, Modestus, laugh at a person who cannot sign his own name — as many a noble Goth cannot do, I among them.'

Modestus, in spite of his crotchets, is a good-humoured man and does not want to pick a quarrel with a guest. He assures Bessas that he is surprised that a man with so noble a name cannot record it on paper or parchment.

'For what were Greek secretaries created?' laughs Bessas, ready to be appeased.

Next, Modestus tells his Thracian guests how proud he is, though a Roman of exalted rank, to be resident in Thrace, once the home of great Orpheus, the musician, and the cradle of the noble cult of Bacchus. 'Those naked women, Simeon, are your own ancestresses, the Thracian women who piously tore King Penthcus in pieces because he spurned the God's gift of wine.'

'My ancestresses all wore long, thick, decent gowns!' Simeon exclaims; and his indignation raises a general laugh.

While the appetizers are being cleared away, the dancing-girl gives a clever performance of acrobatic dancing. As a climax to her hops and skips, she walks about on her hands and then, curving her body into a bow and arching her legs right over her head, picks up an apple from the floor with her feet. Continuing to walk on her hands, and even slapping the floor with them in time to the apple-song she is singing, she pretends to debate with herself as to who shall be awarded the fruit. But her mind has long been made up: she lays the apple on the table beside young Belisarius, who blushes and hides it away in the bosom of his tunic.

Simeon quotes a text from Genesis, how Adam says: 'The woman gave me the apple and I did cat'; and Modestus a text from the poet Horace: 'Galatea, wanton girl, Aim an apple at me,' and everyone is surprised at the unanimity of sacred and profane literature. But the dancing-girl (who was my mistress Autonina) surprises herself by the sudden liking she feels for this tall, handsome youth, who looks at her with such fresh admiration as Adam is credited with having felt at the first sight of Eve.

Now, this liking came, I think, very close to love, an emotion of wlu'ch my mistress's mother had always warned her to beware, as a hindrance to her profession. Antonina was nearly fifteen years old then, a year older than Belisarius, and had already lived a promiscuous life for three years, as public entertainers cannot avoid doing. Being a healthy, vivacious girl, she had thoroughly enjoyed herself and suffered no ill-effects. But amusement with men is an altogether different tiring from love for a man, and the result of the look that Belisarius gave her was to make her feel not exactly penitent for the life she had been living- penitence is a declaration of having been in the wrong, and that was never Antonina's way — but suddenly modest, as if to match Belisarius's modesty, and at the same time proud of herself.

I was squatting on the floor in the background all this time, in attendance on my mistress; providing her, when she clapped her hands, with garments or objects from her property-bag.

Modestus resumed his painfully fanciful description of the meaning of the frieze… 'There, you will observe, captive to the jolly Deity of Wine, goes the river-god Ganges with green watery looks and checks bedewed with tears that mightily swell his heat-shrunk stream, and behind him a company of inky prisoners carrying trays loaded with varied treasure of ivory and ebony and gold and glittering gems (sapphire, beryl, sardonyx) snatched from jet-black bosoms…' So my mistress Antonina earned the gratitude of all present by calling for her lute.

She sang a love-song, the work of the Syrian poet Meleagcr, to a slow, solemn-ringing accompaniment. At the dose, not having turned once in Dclisarius's direction, she looked sharply towards him and quickly away; and he blushed again, face and neck, and when the blush had gone he turned pale. Never in her life did she ever sing better, I believe, and there was a great rattling of cups in her praise — even Simeon contributed a 'bravo', though he did not greatly care for pagan music and had tried to look indifferent while she was dancing. Symmachus the philosopher congratulated Modestus, exclaiming: ' Now really you have provided us with a rare phenomenon: a singing girl who keeps both her instrument and her voice in key, accentuates her words correctly, prefers Meleager to the nonsensical ballads of the streets, is beautiful. I have not heard or seen better at Athens itself. Here, girl, let a grateful old man embrace you!'

If the invitation had come from Belisarius, my mistress would have been on his lap with a single bound, twining her arms about his neck. But on lean, snuffling, pedantic old Symmachus she had no favours to bestow: she cast her eyes down. For the rest of the meal, though she sang and danced and joked beyond her usual best, she allowed nobody to take any liberties with her — not even Bessas, though he was a man of the world and good-looking and strong, in fact just the sort whom she would otherwise have marked down as a worthy lover to spend the night with. She behaved modestly; and this was not altogether an affectation, for she did not feel her usual bold self.

When the principal meats are brought in, served on dishes of massive ancient silver — a roast lamb, a goose, a ham, fishcakes — Modestus glows with satisfaction. He begins a long, involved speech, recommending his nephew Belisarius to Bessas as a young man who intends to take up the profession of arms, and who will, he hopes, restore the old lustre to the Roman military name. 'It is long years since a soldier with true Roman blood in his veins led any of the armies of the Emperor. Nowadays all the higher commands have somehow fallen into the hands of hired barbarians — Goths, Vandals, Gepids, Huns, Arabians — and the result is that the old Roman military system, which once built up the greatest empire that the world has ever known, has lately degenerated beyond all recognition.'

Palaeologus, who is reclining next to Bessas, feels obliged to pluck at the striped tunic and whisper: 'Most generous of men, please take no notice whatsoever of what our host is saying. He is drunk and confused and so old-fashioned in his ways of thinking as to be almost demented. He is not purposely insulting you.'

Bessas chuckles: 'Have no fear, old beard. He is my host, and the wine is good, and this is excellent lamb. We barbarians can afford to let the Romans complain a little of our successes. I do not understand one-quarter of his jargon; but that he is complaining, that much at least I understand.'

Modestus goes on, inconscqucntly, to point the close resemblance — has Malthus noted it? — between this villa and the favourite villa of the celebrated author, Pliny.' The entrance hall, plain but not mean, leading to a D-shaped portico with the same glazed windows and overhanging caves as Pliny's, thence to the inner hall and the dining-room with windows and folding doors on three sides. The same view of wooded hills to the south-cast; but south-west, instead of the view to the sea which Pliny had — in rough weather the breakers used to drive up to the very dining-room, which must have been both alarming and inconvenient — the river valley of Hebrus, and the fertile Thracian plain beloved of the drunken devotees of the Wine-God, who ran with their breasts uncovered, their loose hair speed-tossed, and carrying in their passionate hands wands ivy-wrcathcd and tipped with pine-cones — why, observe, there they are so in the frieze just above the window; beloved also of Orpheus, pictured with his lute, who made rocks dance that should have stood still, and waters stand still that should have danced — the waters of the very River Hebrus that rolls yonder. Such stilling of waters was a feat that no other man has ever performed before or since…'