Wrath of the Furies by Saylor Steven

Author:Saylor, Steven [Saylor, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781250026071
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

XVIII

First, a great deal of incense was burned.

Incense is said to be pleasing to the gods. It summons their attention, just as a whiff of a perfume piques the attention of mortals.

Incense can also mask other smells, and for my mortal nostrils it gave much-needed distraction from the powerful odors that inevitably follow on the gathering of a large number of people, especially if they vastly outstrip the facilities for washing themselves or disposing of their bodily wastes. While we were still a considerable distance from the temple, I got my first whiff of the smell emanating from the restless, wretched crowd surrounding the Temple of Artemis—a combination of urine, excrement, and unwashed humanity. The closer we came to the temple, the more powerful the smell grew, until I thought it might gag me.

But, once immersed in such a smell, little by little one becomes used to it. I remembered something my father had said: “However horrible, no odor ever killed a man.” It also helped that I found myself standing before a broad stone altar, with massive braziers to either side of me belching clouds of smoking incense. The altar was on a raised platform, several steps above the crowd.

When I had last attended a sacrifice in this spot, it had been a day of celebration, and a huge crowd of visitors from all over the world had paraded out of the city to the sound of music and laughter. Cattle, sheep, goats, and oxen too numerous to count had been consecrated to the goddess and slaughtered, after which the entire crowd was treated to the roasted remains, along with a great deal of wine.

What a starkly different experience this was. Our procession consisted only of myself and the two holy men and a troop of spear-bearers to protect us. (And Bethesda, of course, trailing behind. What did she make of this peculiar experience? This was her introduction to one of the world’s greatest marvels, the Temple of Artemis, and I feared any wonderment she felt would be forever tainted by the circumstances.)

The shallow valley surrounding the temple is a large open space with scattered trees for shade, grassy in places and trampled to bare dirt in others, suitable for accommodating the huge crowds that attend the festivals at Ephesus. On this occasion the crowd consisted of sullen-looking Roman refugees. They kept their distance as we paraded before them and congregated at the altar. They stared at us with blank expressions. I found it unnerving to look at them. I averted my eyes.

At the great altar a group of Megabyzoi awaited us. They had already washed the altar and were busy stoking the incense braziers and the roasting pyre. The lamb was in a small enclosure nearby, out of sight, but occasionally it bleated, sending a murmur of excitement through the crowd of hungry refugees.

Standing on the raised platform before the altar, I looked over the heads of the crowd to the steps that led up to the colonnaded porch of the temple.

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