And, having been found guilty, he was ceremonially beaten and dragged through the streets to the place of execution. His face very still. The crowds followed him and called to him mockingly but fell silent before his eyes, lynx eyes in a face unmoving. That youthful unbearded face potent still beneath the blood that mazed it. They hung him, snapped his neck, crowd silent, then cheering. Having done this they cut him down and pierced his heart, slit his thighs and drained the blood for the pigs to eat. Quite dead.

Still. Two weeks later he revived in a pauper’s tomb and took to the streets again, attended by cats and wild boars, still in cerecloth, forehead and cheeks still daubed with paste of ashes and wine. Death’s head, v. unsettling. They called him hoax, and he bared his breast; liar, and the gaps in his thighs, his unmanning. Something of the Attic mystery came upon him due to this wounding.

What did they do, his executioners? Oh — prosaic. Neither left him in peace nor troubled him — what can trouble the dead? what give peace to the quick? — but took him as he sat unsleeping in the marketplace and burned him; powdered his bones; leaded his casket; sent him to sea like Danae and her famous son. Permanent exile, godhead redistributed. But–