Pilgrimages were made to the poet's tomb. And later on he
was raised to the rank of a saint by Dante.
LEONTOPOLIS
A caravan was encamped on a height eastward of the ancient Egyptian
town Heliopolis. There were many people in it, but all were Hebrews.
They had come on camels and asses from Palestine through the desert
--the same desert which the Israelites had passed through thousands
of years before.
In the evening twilight, by the faint light of the half-moon,
hundreds of camp-fires were to be seen, and by them sat the women
with their little children while the men carried water.
Never yet had the desert beheld so many little children, and, as
they were now being put to bed for the night, the camp echoed with
their cries. It was like an enormous nursery. But when the washing
was over, and the little ones were laid to their mothers' breasts,
the cries one after the other ceased, and there was complete
silence. Under a sycamore tree sat a woman, and suckled her child;
close by stood a Hebrew, feeding his ass with branches of the
broom plant; when he had done that, he went higher up the hill, and
looked towards the north. A foreigner--a Roman, to judge by his dress
--passed, and regarded the woman with the child closely, as though
he were counting them.
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