I am greatly indebted to my friend John Sargeaunt for a number of extremely useful comments and suggestions and to my friend Stephen McKenna for his version of the “Hymn to Aphrodite” in Chapter VII a...

The night that hung over the sea was windless and blissfully silver-pure after the glowing splendour of the day; and the great quadrireme glided evenly and softly, as though upon a lake, under a wide ...

Lucius lay on his cushions sobbing like a child. Beside him sat old Thrasyllus, with his hand on his master’s heaving shoulder: “Lucius, pray control yourself,” he said. “Master yourself and yield pio...

Next morning, the soft, even light of a tea-rose dawn spread over a magic spectacle, beautiful as a marvellous dream, flimsy as a vision, compelling as an enchantment. The ship had glided past the mon...

But Lucius did not sleep. Now that he was alone, he felt the agony of his suffering and affliction. He drew a sandal from a little casket, a woman’s blue-leather sandal adorned with gold relief and sm...

Night had fallen over the city, a dark, starless night. To escape attention, Lucius and Caleb mounted a small, inconspicuous litter at the back of the diversorium. Caleb sat at Lucius’ feet with his l...

Those were sad days. Lucius would lie on his bed, sobbing like a child, then rise suddenly, in transports of rage, tear his clothes or take up a stool and hurl it at a marble statue, which fell down i...

“Mother of Eros, hear thy slave! “Child of the foam, great goddess of love, Aphrodite, look down from above! Thou, who dost madden the gods with desire, Thou, who fulfillest men’s hearts with thy fire...

During those evenings of the summer festival, Alexandria was lighted more brilliantly than Rome itself. The town glittered with hundreds of lights, lamps, lanterns, torches and links; it glittered in ...

In the strange bright summer night of light, lit by the sheen of the stars and the glow of the lamps, Canopus rose amid its slender obelisks and its spreading palm-trees. The barges lay moored to the ...

Had Lucius slept? Had he dreamed? Had the fragrant cloud drugged his senses? Had a strange mystic power spread over him? Had Serapis descended upon him? Had the dreams surrounded him? It seemed to him...

Serapis had opened the floodgates of the sky. The first spring rains had already descended in heavy torrents; the water-gods had already poured the kindly streams from their urns into the swelling Nil...

But Libyan bearers carried a litter into the garden. The litter was close-curtained with blue canvas, against the rain. And a veiled woman peeped through a slit in the curtains and beckoned to Caleb: ...

“My son,” said old Thrasyllus, sitting beside his couch, “do you intend always to cherish your illness and longing, like a serpent that devours you, bone and flesh? The sibyl of Rhacotis merely guesse...

In the still and silent night, the Delta lay flooded by the kindly waters of the sacred river. From the Canopic to the Sebennytic mouth, from the Phatmetic along the Mendesian to the Pelusiac mouth, t...

The travellers had left Sais, after visiting the temple of Athene and the tomb of Psammetichus, son of Necho, founder of the twenty-sixth dynasty, one of the twelve kings of the Dodecarchy, who divide...

They took the repast provided by Caleb outside the town, in a farmstead beside a canal, under a cluster of palm-trees. There were no dainty dishes, there were no purple-coloured wines thick as ink; bu...

The golden noonday sky paled; the blinding topaz of the heavens melted away into amber honey; and the sands of the desert stretched out wide, far and endless to the last glittering streak of the horiz...

The short twilight had deepened to purple over the desert; night came gliding along the firmament; the stars began to peep. And Caleb, who suspected Lucius’ emotion at each fresh divination, considere...

It was very early one morning and Lucius was walking alone on the opposite bank of the river. In the tender dawn the vast grey lines of Memphis became visible in rose-red silhouette. Lucius was wander...

Uncle Catullus lay under the awning of the thalamegus and asked Cora to come and sit by him: “Sing and play me some cheerful songs, Cora,” he said. “Be kind to me even though I be not your master. For...

There was a dense wood of palm-trees through which the travellers made their way to the temple of Ammon-Râ, whose walls lay spread like a town. “See, my lord,” said Caleb, walking ahead and pointing, ...

After five days and nights, Lucius knew. Pale, tired and enlightened, he sought out his followers, Thrasyllus, Caleb and Tarrar, who were staying in the great, cavernous rooms of the temple. And he wa...

The travellers had returned to Memphis and Caleb displayed the skin of a lion which had been shot in the desert and told the people in the thalamegus terrible tales of desert ghosts and dread visions....

After the abundant dews of the night came the delight of the cool-warm summer day. The clustering trees now pressed their way forward more richly and luxuriously along the banks of the Nile. Here, on ...

And so it happened. Uncle Catullus thought that Caleb’s suggestion was really not bad; and so he remained on board the thalamegus with Rufus the under-steward and a number of male and female slaves an...

After the fierce hunting by day, the nights were twinkling mysteries of great shining, diamond stars; and Sirius shone like a white sun. The rustling silence, the audible stillness of the vast forests...

Cape Dire! The sea was reached; and there rose the obelisks, the shafts, the pillars of Sesostris, whose sacred writings immortalized the remembrance of the passage of the Egyptian world-ruler who for...

Caleb was pale when he appeared before Lucius, who had sent for him. “Caleb,” said Lucius, “perhaps you already know⁠ ⁠…” “I know nothing, my lord,” said Caleb. “I am penniless, Caleb. The Emperor Tib...

Near the pillars of Sesostris, near the little diversorium, there lay moored, beside the quadrireme, a merchant trireme, which was sailing past Ophir to the Persian Gulf and which was to go up the Eup...

My ever noble Lord, greeting! “It is a pleasure to me, Caleb of Mariaba, to inform you by this letter, entrusted to Alexandros of Alexandria, master of the merchant trireme Berenice, that by chance an...

These cyamos-leaves were actually used for kitchen-utensils by the people of Alexandria; and their sale provided a regular livelihood. ↩ Stone wells on the banks of the Nile, in which the water rose a...