Ivan Yefremov - Thais of Athens

The philosopher guessed what she was thinking about. “And you yourself couldn’t overcome that disdain,” he said. “And for that you ended up with the crocodiles.”

“I could not and will not accept the ridiculous worship of gods in animal shape: the hideous hippopotami, the disgusting zukhoses, the stupid cows and senseless birds. How can wise people and good people with common sense…”

“You have forgotten, or rather may not know, that the Egyptian religion is several millennia older than the Hellenic one. The deeper you go into the ages, the darker things were around man and his soul. This darkness was reflected in all of his feelings and thoughts. Countless beasts threatened him. He didn’t even understand destiny the way we Helenians do. He believed his every moment could be his last. The animal gods, trees, rocks, creeks and rivers passed before him in an endless parade. Some of them vanished, but others survived to our days. Has it been long since we, Helenians, worshiped rivers, so important in our water-poor country?”

“But not animals.”

“Trees and animals, too.”

Much to Thais’ surprise, the philosopher-priest told her about the cult of sacred cypresses on Crete, related to Aphrodite. She was struck most by the ancient worship of the goddesses in the shape of horses. Demeter herself, or Cretan Rhea, was portrayed with a horse’s head in the temple of Figaly near the river Neda in Arcadia. The sacred mare possessed particular powers at night and was considered an omen of death.

Neither the philosopher nor Thais could suspect that more than two thousand years after their meeting, a scary dream would still be referred to as a “night mare” in one of the most widely spread languages in the world.

The mare goddess morphed into a three-faced goddess-muse. Her three guises corresponded to Thought, Memory and Song. Only later, when female deities retreated before the male ones, that the three-faced Muse became Hecate. When that happened, the maiden muses increased in number to nine and became a retinue of Apollo, lord over the muses.

Thais stared at her teacher, mesmerized. “Now I understand why the ancient names of nymphs and Amazons were Leukippa the white mare, Melanippa the black mare, Nikippa the victorious mare and Ainiippa the mercifully killing mare.”

The philosopher nodded. “And later, when the animal deities lost their meaning, the names changed. There was Hippolita during the time of Theseus, and Hippodamia, the mistress and tamer of horses. They were heroic women, not nymphs in animal guise. So the evolution of religion took place here as well, as you rightly noticed.”

“But then …” Thais hesitated.

“Go ahead. You can say anything to me.”

“Then why is the image of Mother Goddess, the Great Goddess, tender and gentle, even though it is much older than that of the murderous male gods?”

“You are mistaken again, thinking of her as only the goddess of love and fertility. Have you not heard of the bassarids, the half-mad women of Thessaly and Frakia? They were intoxicated by sacred leaves, and in their ferocity they ripped apart lambs, goats, children and even men. The women ran wild and carried branches of fir trees, wrapped with ivy, symbols of Artemis and Hecate. The same took place in Athens during Leneas, the celebrations of ‘wild women’ in the days of winter solstice of the month of Posideon. The face of the goddess-destroyer, goddess of death, was a counterbalance to that of the mother. The image of love was the only link between them, and that is the only one you know.”

Thais touched her temples with her fingertips. “It is all too wise for me. Could it be that in the dark ancient times even the female deities were as ferocious as the male ones were later on?”

“Ferocious? No. Ruthless? Yes, like life itself. For what else could they be but the reflection of life, the higher powers of fate, ruling over gods and people alike? They were ruthless and merciful at the same time.”

Thais sat there, quiet and confused. The philosopher rose and placed his big warm hand over the stray curls of hair dangling over her forehead. Incredible calm poured through the hetaera’s body, as well as a sense of complete safety. She found she understood better.

“Listen carefully, Thais of Athens. If you understand what I tell you, you’ll become my spiritual daughter. One can believe in anything, but faith only becomes religion when it is interwoven with the rules of life, the evaluation of deeds, the wisdom of behavior and the consideration of the future. We, Helenians, are still immature. We do not possess the morality and understanding of human feelings as they do in the far East. The Egyptian faith will never evolve into religion, but we too have a few philosophers, of whom you named two, forgetting Plato and a few other wise men.”

“I haven’t forgotten Plato. But the great scholar forgot about women and their love when creating his plan for an ideal state. I think he only recognized love between men, which was why I do not consider him a normal person, even though he was a famous philosopher, an Olympian wrestler and a man of state. But you are right, I did leave out Aristotle, even though I have met him personally.” Thais smiled mysteriously.

The Delos philosopher winced. “No. This scholar of natural phenomena is as barbaric in the moral questions as the Egyptians. You may exclude him. What is important is that any religion lives and has true power over people only at the beginning of its existence, and that includes the smartest and strongest ones. Then faith becomes replaced by interpretation, and righteous living is replaced by ritual, and everything ends in the hypocrisy of priests as they struggle for a well-fed and honored life.”

“What are you saying, Father?”

“What you are hearing, Thais? Does it matter whether it is a female deity or Apollo, Artemis or Aesculapius? Life on earth without fear, life that is beautiful, spreading far and wide, like a bright marble road, that is what has become my dream and care.”

“So you came from Delos to Egypt …”

“ …In order to discover the roots of our faith, the origins of our gods. To understand why Helenians are still living without understanding the duties and purposes of men among other people and in the surrounding Ecumene. You already understand that there is no sense in looking for the moral laws in Egypt. There are none in the religion of the ancient hunters, still maintained by the farmers of the

Nile. But there are other people …” The philosopher paused, then wiped his forehead with his hand.

“You are tired, Father,” Thais said softly. She rose, then touched his knees as she bowed.

“You understand. My strength is waning. I sense that shall not see my Delos again and shall not write everything I saw in Egypt.”

“Do not trouble yourself. Rest, eat the local pink grapes and the tasty fruit of the prickly palm trees,” the hetaera said sweetly, making the old man smile. “Yes, yes, I shall bring you some next time. When can I visit you again?”

When she didn’t receive an answer, she looked at the slack lines of his face and realized the old man had fallen asleep. She left him and navigated the dark passageways alone, recalling with a shudder what she had gone through at the Labyrinth.

Light and the heat of noon struck her with a hot wave. The dull hum of the fifty day wind seemed almost pleasant after the cool tunnel. But in the evening, while she sat in her drafty house, surrounded by the troubled rush of shadows from the wind-swayed lanterns, Thais felt drawn into the darkness of the temple again, to the strange old Helenian. He had given her the serenity of detachment for the first time in her life.

As a young girl, Thais had dreamed of Aphrodite Urania. The dream had come back several times over the last few years. In it, Thais, barefoot and nude, ascended an incredibly wide ladder, climbing toward a green wall of thick myrtle trees. She slipped between their tangled branches then stepped out into the light. It was bright but not harsh, warm but not scorching. Once there, she approached the statue of Aphrodite Urania. The goddess, made of translucent pink Rhodes marble, was saturated by heavenly light. She descended from the pedestal and put her unimaginably beautiful arm around Thais’ shoulders, then gazed into Thais’ face. A feeling of amazing delight and serenity filled the young hetaera’s heart.