Explore "The Death of the Gods" by Dmitri Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was on board a great merchant galley with three banks of oars, laden with soft Asian carpets and amphorae of olive-oil, on the voyage between Seleucia, the port of Antioch, and Italy.
Sailing and rowing amongst the islands of the Archipelago, the vessel was now making for Crete, where she was to take on board a cargo of wool, and disembark some ecclesiastics, bound for a Cretan monastery. Old men, seated on the fore-deck, were passing the days in pious gossip, prayer, or in their monkish avocation of weaving baskets from slips of palm-leaf. In the stern, under a light violet awning, other passengers were installed, with whom the monks, considering them Pagans, were anxious to have nothing to do. These were Anatolius, Ammianus Marcellinus, and Arsinoe.