No one had
abandoned to the army such booty as he.
Meanwhile, in a chapel at Emissa, a boy was dancing indolently to
the kiss of flutes. A handful of Caracalla's soldiers passed that
way, and thought him Bacchus. In his face was the enigmatic beauty
of gods and girls--the charm of the dissolute and the wayward
heightened by the divine. On his head was a diadem; his frail
tunic was of purple and gold, but the sleeves, after the
Phoenician fashion, were wide, and he was shod with a thin white
leather that reached to the thighs. He was fourteen, and priest of
the Sun. The chapel was roomy and rich. There was no statue--a
black phallus merely, which had fallen from above, and on which,
if you looked closely, you could see the image of Elagabal, the
Sun.
The rumor of his beauty brought other soldiers that way, and the
lad, feeling that Rome was there, ceased to dance, strolling
through pauses of the worship, a troop of galli at his heels,
surveying the intruders with querulous, feminine eyes.
Presently a whisper filtered that the lad was Caracalla's son.
There were centurions there that remembered Semiamire, the lad's
mother, very well; they had often seen her, a superb creature with
scorching eyes, before whom fire had been carried as though she
were empress. It was she who had put it beyond Caracalla's power
to violate that vestal when he tried. She was his cousin; her life
had been passed at court; it was Macrin who had exiled her.
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