Cast a cold eye on life, on death. Horseman, pass by!
  
  There was never a Roman born who would not have agreed with that.
  That was my stance - sole survivor of a great house, commanded by her Father to "live." 
I didn't dare to dwell on the fate of my brothers, their lovely wives, their little 
children. I couldn't envision the slaughter of the children - little boys being run 
through by broadswords, or babies bashed against the wall. Oh, Rome, you and your bloody 
old wisdom. Be sure to kill the offspring. Kill the whole family!
  Lying alone at night, I found myself amid more horrid blood dreams. They seemed 
fragments of a lost life, a lost land. Deep echoing vibrant tones of music dominated the 
dreams, as though someone were striking a gong, and others beside him beat solemnly on 
deep drums with soft coverings. I saw in a haze a world of stiff and flat alien paintings 
on the walls. Painted eyes around me. I drank blood! I drank it from a small shuddering 
human being, who knelt before me as if I were Mother Isis.
  I woke to take the big jug of water by my bed and drink all of it down. I drank water 
to defy and satisfy this dream thirst. I was almost sick from drinking water.
  I racked my mind. Had I ever had such dreams as a child?
  No. And now these dreams had the heat of recollection! Of initiation into the doomed 
Temple of Isis, when it had been still the fashion. I had been intoxicated, and drenched 
in the blood of a bull, and dancing wildly in circles. My head was filled with the 
litanies of Isis. We were promised rebirth! "Never tell, never tell, never tell..." How 
could an initiate tell anything of the rites, when you were so drunk you could hardly 
remember them?
  Isis brought me memories now of lovely music of lyres, flutes, timbrels, of the high 
magical sound of the metal strings of the sistrum, which the Mother Herself held in her 
hand. There were only fleeting recollections of that naked blood dance, that night of 
rising into the stars, of seeing the scope of life in its cycles, of accepting perfectly 
just for a little while that the moon would always be changing, and the sun would set as 
it always rose. Embraces of other women. Soft cheeks and kissing and bodies rocking in 
unison. "Life, death, rebirth, it's no series of miracles," said the Priestess. "To 
understand it and accept it, that is the miracle. Make the miracle within your own 
breast."
  Surely we had not drunk blood! And the bull - it was a sacrifice only for the 
initiation. We did not bring helpless animals to her flower-laden altars, no, our Blessed 
Mother did not ask that of us.
  Now, at sea, alone, I lay awake to avoid these blood dreams.
  When exhaustion won out, a dream came with sleep as if it had been waiting for my eyes 
to close.
  I lay in a gold chamber. I was drinking blood, blood from the throat of a god, or so it 
seemed, and choruses were singing or chanting - it was a dull, repetitive sound not quite 
worthy of being called music, and when I had had my fill of blood, this god or whoever 
this was, this silken-skinned proud thing, lifted me and placed me on an altar.
  Vividly, I could feel the cold marble beneath me. I realized I wore no clothes. I felt 
no modesty.
  Somewhere far off echoing through these great halls, came the weeping of a woman. I was 
full of blood. Those who chanted approached with little clay oil lamps. Faces around me 
were dark, dark enough to be from far faraway Ethiopia or India. Or Egypt. Look. Painted 
eyes! I looked at my hands and arms. They were dark. But I was this person who lay on the 
altar, and I say person now because it had come clear to me with no disturbance during 
the dream itself that I was a man lying there. Pain tore at me. The god said, "This is 
merely the passage. You will now drink from each of us, only a little blood."
  Only when I woke did the brief transition in the masculine gender leave me as puzzled 
as everything else. I was drenched with a sense of Egyptian art, Egyptian mystery - as 
I'd seen it in golden statues for sale in the marketplace, or when the Egyptian dancers 
performed at a banquet, like walking sculptures with their black-lined eyes, and black 
plaited wigs, whispering in that mysterious tongue. What had they thought of our Isis in 
Roman dress?
  A mystery taunted me; something attacked my reason. The very thing the Roman Emperors 
had so feared in Egyptian cults and Oriental cults swept over me: mystery and emotion 
which claim a superiority to reason and law.
  My Isis had been a Roman goddess, really, a universal goddess, the Mother of us all, 
her worship spreading out in a Greek and Roman world long before it had come into Rome 
itself. Our Priests were Greeks and Roman, poor men. We the congregation were all Greeks 
and Romans.
  Something scratched at the back of my mind. It said, "Remember." It was a tiny 
desperate voice within my own brain that urged me to "remember" for my own sake.
  But remembering only led to confused and jumbled thoughts. Suddenly a veil would fall 
between the reality of my cabin on the ship, and the tumbling of the sea - between that 
and some dim and frightening world, of Temples covered in words that made magic! Long 
narrow beautifully bronzed faces. A voice whispered, "Beware the Priests of Ra; they lie!"
  I shivered. I closed my eyes. The Queen Mother was bound and chained to her throne! She 
wept! It had been her crying. Unspeakable. "But you see, she has forgotten how to rule. 
Do as we say."
  I shook myself awake. I wanted to know and I did not want to know. The Queen wept 
beneath her monstrous fetters. I couldn't see her clearly. It was all in progress. It was 
busy. "The King is with Osiris, you see. You see how he stares; each one whose blood you 
drink, you give to Osiris; each one becomes Osiris."
  "But why did the Queen scream?" '
  No, this was madness. I couldn't let this confusion overcome me. I couldn't 
deliberately slip from reason into these fantasies or recollections supposing they had a 
true root.
  They had to be nonsense, twisted images of grief and guilt, guilt that I had not rushed 
to the hearth and driven the dagger into my breast.
  I tried to remember the calming voice of my Father, explaining once how the blood of 
the gladiators satisfied the thirst of the dead, the Manes,
  "Now, some say that the Dead drink blood," spoke my Father from some long ago dinner 
talk. "That's why we are so fearful on all these unlucky days, when the Dead are supposed 
to be able to walk the Earth. I personally think this is nonsense. We should revere our 
ancestors..."
  "Where are the Dead, Father?" my brother Lucius asked.
  Who had piped up from the other side of the table, to quote Lucretius in a sad little 
female voice that nevertheless commanded silence of all these men'? Lydia:
  
  Of earth return to earth, but any part
  Sent down from heaven, must ascend again
  Recalled to the high temples of the sky
  And death does not destroy the elements
  Of matter, only breaks the combinations.