Gospel by Wilton Barnhardt

Author:Wilton Barnhardt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Picador

5

O Ephesus, Mother of architecture, of mathematics and the sciences, greatest city of all that is Greek, why must you be so given to what is carnal and undisciplined in the human condition? In Asia [Western Turkey] any idea formerly noble and good finds some ardent attachment to wickedness—indeed, so much wickedness that it would take the strength of ten prophets to begin to discuss all the sins.

Praised be the Lord that He has made me up to the task!

2. In my youthful travels in the Aegean, I had seen everywhere the rites of Artemis, goddess of the hunt, not too different from our own former Temple sacrifices, really, if we are to be worldly about such things; a blood offering to the Divinity to show we appreciate the bounty of the land each spring. Ah, but here in Ephesus, the goddess and her Artemision [her temple] cater only to fornication and whoredom. Once-proud Artemis herself is transformed into a monstrosity weighed down by hundreds of breasts. (One sees little clay figurines for sale in the streets of Ephesus, this perversion visible to the saintly and children alike!)

3. Attis, Astarte, Cybele, all pagan gods that prey upon the desire for blood spectacle and porneia, every one of them beginning in some froth of blood and castration, ending in general lewdness, copulation, orgies of the nonpriestly celebrants. For this, throughout Asia and Phrygia, virgin girls are set aside to serve in the temples as whores, recepticals for every lust and disease known to the polities of the Great Sea. And yet, these festivals are holy and clean when one compares them to the secular Ephesus, which excels all other cities—except Tyre, the lowest pit within the many pits of Hell!—in entertainments for the most degraded of natures.

Carved into the stones of the streets themselves, advertisements give directions to the nearest brothel, shamelessly directing one to the “Pugixeinon,” a disreputable orgy-chamber known as Cras vives? and a lovely bower known as Quo Irrumbis?1 For less money than it would take to feed a mule in Judea, one can have three identical sisters of barbaric Moesia service one’s every portal, or perhaps a parade of girl-children upon which one may obliterate the hymens until sated for a small price. One can take a mother and her infant into an alley where, for the price of a jar of olives, she has trained her infant to suck upon the members of men. This is not to mention the stench of the perpetual Dionysian festival upon the seafront in which entertainments of unthinkable lewdness transpire, no deformity of genital, no inconceivable size of organ or breast, no act so terrible, no pairing of races, children, numerous partners with animals cannot be observed for a simple remittance of spare coins.

And I merely relate what one can see from the street!

4. For myself, it was a strained parting from Xenon. I was sorry to be leaving him, while he remained stoic and controlled, though I reckoned him much moved within.

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