I am sure that you will agree that in all this extravagancy, ludicrous as it may appear to civilized men, there is nothing really very harmful; for in these public demonstrations, the Greeks were witty enough to have modified these odd ceremonies so that they might offend no one, and so that they might appear almost Romanized.
But in the midst of all this, something rather extraordinary has begun to happen to the person of Julia, of whom I have been (as you know) rather fond. It is almost as if she has begun to take on some of the attributes of that personage to whom she has been ritually likened; she has become imperious and indifferently arrogant, as if she indeed were not truly mortal.
This has for some time been my impression of her character; but I have just received news from Asia which sadly confirms what had been uncertain.
The report is that Julia, having spent the day in Ilium wandering among the ruins of the ancient site of Troy, attempted to cross the Scamander River by night. By some circumstance that is not clear, the raft bearing Julia and her attendants was overturned, and all were swept downstream. It was, no doubt, a near thing for all of them. In any event, she was finally rescued (by whom, it is not clear); but in her anger at the villagers who, she charges, did not attempt to rescue her, and in the name of her husband, Marcus Agrippa, she imposed upon the village a fine of one hundred thousand drachmas, which would amount to nearly a thousand drachmas for each of them. It is a heavy fine, indeed, for poor people, many of whom would not see a thousand drachmas in a lifetime of labor.
It is said that these villagers, though they heard the cries for help, came to the bank of the river, and watched, and would not attempt the rescue. I believe that this is probably a true account of the incident. Nevertheless, despite what might seem the obvious guilt of the villagers, I shall intercede. I shall ask a favor of Herod (who owes me several), and request that he persuade Marcus Agrippa to remit the fine. I shall do so, not out of pity for the villagers, but out of apprehension for the safety of the house of Octavius Caesar.
For Julia had not spent the day as an innocent tourist at Ilium; and her crossing the Scamander was not an innocent return to her quarters.
I spoke earlier of those public ceremonies-part religious, part political, and part social-in which Julia was elevated upon the throne of Aphrodite. By dwelling upon them, I suppose I have been putting off speaking of another kind of ceremony that is not public, but which is secret and unknown and somewhat frightening to this age of enlightenment.
There is a secret cult among these island and Eastern Greeks which worships a goddess whose name (at least to all those who are not initiates) is unknown. She is said to be the goddess of all gods and goddesses; her power is beyond the power of all the other gods conceived by mankind. Upon certain occasions, the power of this goddess is celebrated by rituals-though what they are no one knows, since the cult is shrouded in the secrecy of its fervor or its shame. But no secret is absolute; and in my travels I have heard enough of this cult to fill me with a revulsion at its nature and an apprehension of its consequences.
It is a female cult; and though there are priests, they are castrates who at one time allowed themselves to be used as sacrificial victims to the goddess. These victims are chosen by the priestesses-it is said that sometimes the priestesses choose their own sons as victims, since within their peculiar doctrine such a victim is the most honored and fortunate of men. He must be under the age of twenty; he must be virginal; and he must be a willing victim.
I do not know the precise nature of the rite; but I have heard, myself, from afar, the flute music and the chants in the sacred groves where the rites are performed. It is said that for three days the initiates and the members of the cult "purify" themselves by abstinence from all fleshly things; it is said, further, that when the rites begin the celebrants intoxicate themselves by dancing, by singing, and the drinking of certain libations- whether of wine or some more mysterious substance, no one knows. Then, when the celebrants are in a frenzy induced by their music and dancing and strange drink, the ceremony begins. One of several sacrificial victims is brought before the woman who has been chosen as the ritual incarnation of the Great Goddess. Save for the fur of some wild animal tied loosely about his waist, he is naked; he is bound to a cross made of some sacred wood from the trees by the grove, by wrist and foot, with lengths of laurel wreath. After he has been placed before the goddess, the celebrants dance about him; it is said that they fling their own clothing from their bodies in their frenzy as they dance. Then the goddess approaches the boy and with the sacred knife loosens the fur that hides his nakedness; and when she finds a victim that pleases her, she cuts the laurel that constrains him, and leads him to a cave in the sacred grove, which has been prepared for the "marriage" of the goddess and the mortal.
The marriage is supposed to be a ritual marriage; but it is a female cult, and secret, and sanctioned neither by law nor public custom. The goddess and her victim remain unseen in the cave for three days; it is said that the goddess uses her victim in whatever way pleases her; food and drink are put at the entrance of the cave, and those celebrants on the outside indulge in whatever lust or perversity that their frenzy leads them to.
After three days, the goddess and her mortal lover emerge from the cave, and cross a body of water to another sacred grove, which becomes the Island of the Blessed; and there the mortal lover becomes immortal, at least in the barbaric minds of the celebrants.
It is known to all that from Ilium to Lesbos this cult prevails, and that it numbers among its members those who belong to the richest and most cultivated families in that part of the world. When Julia's raft was upset, she was returning from such a rite as I have described, completing the prescribed ritual, crossing to the Island of the Blessed. She had been the incarnation of the goddess. And the villagers, in their abhorrence of such dark practices, could not overcome their fear of these strange beings, who (they thought) lived in a world beyond their comprehension and experience. I cannot allow the fine levied upon them to stand; for if I do, the secrecy (which now protects Julia, the unknowing Marcus Agrippa, Octavius Caesar, and even Rome itself) may be broken.
And beyond the vile practices which are rumored, there is another that is even more serious; the members of the cult are required to abjure all authority beyond the dictates of their own desires, and have no allegiance to any man, or law, or mortal custom. Thus, not only is the license of immorality encouraged-but murder, treason, and all other conceivable unlawful acts.
My dear Maecenas, I trust that now you understand why I could not write the Emperor; why I cannot speak to Marcus Agrippa; why I must burden you with this problem, even in your retirement from public affairs. You must find a way to persuade your friend and master to force Julia to return to Rome. If she is not now corrupted beyond retrieval, she will be soon, if she remains in this strange land that she has discovered.
II. The Journal of Julici, Pandateria (A.D. 4)
I have never known why my father ordered me, in terms that I could not disobey, to return to Rome. He never gave me a reason sufficient to justify the strength of his command; he merely said that it was unseemly that the wife of the Second Citizen be so long absent from the people who loved her, and that there were certain social and religious duties that only I and Livia could perform. I did not believe that that was the true reason for my recall, but he did not allow me to question him further. But he could not fail to know that I had resented my return; it seemed to me then that I was being exiled from the only life in which I had ever been myself, and that I was to spend my days performing a kind of duty in which I no longer could see any meaning.