No More Learning

Now Martius following this custome, shewed many wounds and cuts upon his body, which he had received in seventeene years ser vice at the Warres, and in many sundry Battels, being ever the foremost man that did set out feete to fight. So that there was not a man among the People, but was ashamed of himselfe, to refuse so valiant a man ; and one of them said to another, we must needs choose him Consul, there is no remedy. But when the day of election was come, and that Martius came to the Market-place with great pompe, accompanied with all the Senate and the whole Nobility of the City about him, who sought to make him Consull, with the greatest instance and intreaty they could, or ever attempted for any man or matter : then the love and good will of the common People turned straight to an hate and envie toward him, fearing to put this Office of Soveraigne Authority into his hands, being a man somewhat partiall towards the Nobility, and of great credit and Authority among the Patricians, and as one they might doubt would take away altogether the liberty from the People. Whereupon for these considerations, they refused Martius in the end, and made two other that were Suters, Consuls.
The Senate being marvellously offended with the People, did account the shame of this refusall, rather to redound to them selves then to Martius : but Martius tooke it in far worse part then the Senate, and was out of all patience. For he was a man too full of passion and choler, and too much given over to selfe-will and opinion, as one of a high minde and great courage, that lacked the gravity and affability that is gotten with judge ment of Learning and reason, which onely is to be looked for in a Governor of State : and that remembered not how wilf ul- nesse is the thing of the World, which a Governor of a Com mon-Wealth for pleasing should shunne, being that which Plato called solitarinesse. As in the end, all men that are wilfully given to a selfe-opinion and obstinate minde, and who will never yeeld to others reason, but to their owne, remaine with out company and forsaken of all men. For a man that will live in the world, must needs have patience, which lusty blouds make but a mocke at. So Martius being a stout man of nature, that never yeelded in any respect, as one thinking that to over
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come alwaies, and to have the upper hand in all matters, was a token of magnanimity, and of no base and faint courage, which spitteth out anger from the most weake and passioned part of the heart, much like the matter of an imposthume : went home to his house, full fraighted with spite and malice against the People, being accompanied with all the lustieth young Gentle men, whose mindes were nobly bent, as those that came of noble race, and commonly used for to follow and honor him. But then specially they flockt about him, and kept him company to his much harme, for they did but kindle and inflame his choler more and more, being sorry with him for the injury the People offered him, because he was their Captaine and Leader to the
Warres, that taught them all Martial Discipline, and stirred up in them a noble emulation of honor and valiantnesse, and yet without envie, praising them that deserved best.
In the meane season, there came great plenty of Corne to Rome, that had beene bought, part in Italy, and part was sent out of Sicile, as given by Gelon the Tyrant of Syracusa : so that many stoode in great hope, that the dearth of Victuals being holpen, the civill dissention would also cease. The Sen ate sate in Councell upon it immediately, the common People stoode also about the Palace where the Councell was kept, gap ing what resolution would fall out : perswading themselves that the Corne they had bought should be sold good cheape, and that which was given should be divided by the poll, with out paying any penny, and the rather, because certaine of the Senators amongst them did so wish and perswade the same. " But Martius standing upon his feete, did somewhat sharply take up those who went about to gratifie the People therein : and called them People-pleasers, and Traytors to the Nobility. Moreover he said, they nourished against themselves, the naughty feede and cockle of insolvency and sedition, which had been sowed and scattered abroad amongst the People, which they should have cut off, if they had beene wise in their growth : and not (to their owne destruction) have suffered the People, to establish a Magistrate for themselves of so great Power and Authority, as that man had, to whom they had granted it. Who was also to be feared, because he obtained what he would, and did nothing but what he listed, neither passed for any obedience to the Consuls, but lived in all liberty, acknowledging no superior to command him, saving the onely heads and authors of their faction, whom he called his
54 CORIOLANUS.
Magistrates. Therefore, said he, they that gave counsell, and perswaded that the Come should be given out to the common People gratis, as they used to do in the Cities of Greece, where the People had more absolute Power, did but only nourish their disobedience, which would breake out in the end, to the utter ruine and overthrow of the whole State. For they will not think it is done in recompense of their service past, sithence they know well enough they have so oft refused to go to the Warres, when they were commanded : neither for their muti nies when they went with us, whereby they have rebelled and forsaken their countrey : neither for their accusations which their flatterers have preferred unto them, and they have received, and made good against the Senate : but they will rather judge, we give and grant them this, as abasing ourselves and standing in feare of them, and glad to flatter them every way. By this meanes their disobedience will still grow worse and worse : and they will never leave to practice new seditions and uprores. Therefore it was a great folly for us, methinks, to do it : yea, shall I say more ? we should if we were wise, take from them their Tribuneship, which most manifestly is the embasing of the Consulship, and the cause of the division of the City. The state whereof as it standeth, is not now as it was wont to be, but becometh dismembered in two factions, which maintaines alwaies civill dissention and discord betweene us, and will never suffer us againe to be united into one body. "
Martius dilating the matter with many such reasons, wonne all the young men, and almost all the rich men to his opinion : in somuch, as they rang it out, that he was the onely man, and alone in the City, who stood out against the People, and never flat tered them. There were onely a few old men that spake against him, fearing lest some mischiefe might fall out upon it, as indeed there followed no great good afterward. For the Tribunes of the People being present at this consultation of the Senate, when they saw that the opinion of Martius was confirmed with the more voyces, they left the Senate, and went downe to the People, crying out for helpe, and that they would assemble to save their Tribunes. Hereupon the People ranne on head in tumult together, before whom the words that Martius spake in the Senate were openly reported : which the People so stom- acked, that even in that fury they were ready to flie upon the whole Senate. But the Tribunes laid all the fault and the burthen wholly upon Martius, and sent their Serjeants forth
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with to arrest him, presently to appeare in person before the People, to answer the words he had spoken in the Senate. Martius stoutly withstood these Officers that came to arrest him. Then the Tribunes in their owne persons, accompanied with the Aediles, went to fetch him by force, and so laid vio lent hands upon him. Howbeit the noble Patricians gathering together about him, made the Tribunes give back, and laid sore upon the Aediles : so for that time, the night parted them, and the tumult appeased. . . .
Martius came and presented himselfe to answer the Accusa tions against him, and the People held their peace, and gave attentive eare, to heare what he would say. But where they thought to have heard very humble and lowly words come from him, he began not onely to use his wonted boldness of speaking
(which of itselfe was very rough and unpleasant, and did more aggravate his accusation, then purge his innocency) but also gave himselfe in these words to thunder, and looke therewithall so grimly, as though he made no reckoning of the matter. This stirred coalls among the People, who were in wonderfull fury at it, and their hate and malice grew so toward him, that they could hold no longer, beare, nor indure his bravery and care- lesse boldnesse. Whereupon Sicinius, the cruellest and stout est of the Tribunes, after he had whispered a little with his companions, did openly pronounce in the face of all the People, Martius as condemned by the Tribunes to die. Then presently he commanded the Aediles to apprehend him, and carry him straight to the Rock Tarpeian, and to cast him headlong downe the same. When the Aediles came to lay hands on Martius to do that they were commanded, divers of the People themselves thought it too cruell and violent a deede. The Noblemen being much troubled to see so much force and rigour used, began to crie aloud : Helpe Martius : so those that laid hands on him being rapulsed, they compassed him in round among themselves, and some of them holding up their hands to the People, besought them not to handle him thus cruelly.
But neither their words nor crying out could ought prevaile, the tumult and hurly burly was so great, untill such time as the Tribunes owne friends and kinsmen weighing with themselves the impossibility to convey Martius to execution, without great slaughter and murder of the Nobility : did perswade and advise not to proceede in so violent and extraordinary a sort, a to put such a man to death, without lawfull processe in Law, but
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that they should referre the sentence of his death, to the free voyce of the People. Then Sicinius bethinking himselfe a little, did aske the Patricians for what cause they tooke Martius out of the Officers hands that went to do execution ? The Patri cians asked him againe, why they would of themselves so cruelly and wickedly put to death, so noble and valiant a Roman as Martius was, and that without Law and Justice ? Well, then, said Sicinius, if that be the matter, let there be no quarrell or dissention against the People : for they do grant your demand, that his Cause should be heard according to the Law. Therefore, said he to Martius, we do will and charge you to appeare before the People, the third day of our next sitting and assembly here, to make your purgation for such
Articles as shall be objected against you, that by free voyce the People may give sentence upon you as shall please them. The Noblemen were glad then of the adjournment, and were much pleased they had gotten Martius out of this danger.
After declaration of the Sentence, the People made such joy, as they never rejoiced more for any Battel they had wonne upon their Enemies, they were so brave and lively, and went home so jocondly from the Assembly, for triumph of this sentence. The Senate againe in contrary manner were as sadde and heavie, repenting themselves beyond measure, that they had not rather determined to have done and suffered any thing whatsoever, before the common People should so arro gantly and outragiously have abused their Authority. There needed no difference of Garments I warrant you, nor outward shewes to know a Plebeian from a Patrician, for they were easily discerned by their lookes. For he that was on the Peo ples side, looked cheerfully on the matter : but he that was sadde, and hung downe his head, he was sure of the Noblemens side. Saving Martius alone, who neither in his countenance nor in his gate, did ever shew himselfe abashed, or once let fall his great courage : but he onely of all other Gentlemen that were angry at his fortune, did outwardly shew no manner of passion, nor care at all of himselfe. Not that he did patiently beare and temper his evill happe, in respect of any reason he had, or by his quiet condition : but because he was so carried away with the vehemency of anger, and desire of revenge, that he had no sense nor feeling of the hard state he was in, which the common People judge not to be sorrow, although indeede it be the very same. For when sorrow (as you would say) is set on
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fire, then it is converted into spite and malice, and driveth away from that time all faintnesse of heart and naturall feare. . . . Now that Marthas was even in that taking, it appeared true soone after by his doings. For when he was come home to his house againe, and had taken his leave of his Mother and Wife, finding them weeping and shriking out for sorrow, and had also comforted and perswaded them to be content with his chance :
he went immediately to the Gate of the City, accompanied with a great number of Patricians, that brought him thither, from whence he went on his way with three or foure of his friends onely, taking nothing with him, nor requesting any thing of any man. So he remained a few daies in the Countrey at his houses, turmoyled with sundry sorts and kinds of thoughts, such as the fire of his choler did stir up. In the end seeing he could resolve no way, to take a profitable or honourable course, but onely was pricked forward still to be revenged of the Romans : he thought to raise up some great Warres against them, by their neerest neighbours. Whereupon he thought it his best way, first to stir up the Volsces against them. . . .
In this while, all went still to wracke at Rome. For to come into the field to fight with the Enemy, they could not abide to heare of it, they were one so much against another, and full of seditious words, the Nobility against the People, and the People against the Nobility. Untill they had intelli gence at the length, that the Enemies had laid siege to the City of Lavinium, in the which were all the Temples and Images of their gods their Protectors, and from whence came first their ancient Originall, for that Aeneas at his first arivall into Italy did build that City. Then fell there out a marvellous sudden change of minde among the People, and farre more strange and contrary in the Nobility. For the People thought it good to repeale the condemnation and exile of Martius. The Senate assembled upon it, would in no case yeeld to that : who either did it of a selfe-will to be contrary to the Peoples desire, or because Martius should not returne thorow the grace and favour of the People. Or else, because they were throughly
angry and offended with him, that he would set upon the whole, being offended but by a few, and in his doings would shew himselfe an open Enemy besides unto his Countrey : not withstanding the most part of them tooke the wrong they had done him, in marvellous ill part, and as if the injury had beene done unto themselves.
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Report being made of the Senates resolution, the People found themselves in a straight : for they could authorize and confirme nothing by their voyces, unlesse it had beene first propounded and ordained by the Senate. But Martius hearing this stirre about him, was in a greater rage with them then before : insomuch as he raised his Siege incontinently befor the City of Lavinium, and going towards Rome, lodged his Campe within forty Furlong of the City, at the Ditches called Cluiliea. His incamping so neere Rome, did put all the whole City in a wonderfull feare ; howbeit for the present time it appeased the sedition and dissention betwixt the Nobility and the People. For there was no Consull, Senator, nor Magistrate, that durst once contrary the opinion of the People, for the calling home againe of Martius. When they saw the Women in a marvellous feare, running up and downe the City : the Temples of the gods full of old People, weeping bitterly in their Prayers to the gods : and finally, not a man either wise or hardy to provide for their safety : then they were all of opinion, that the People had reason to call home Martius againe, to reconcile themselves to him, and that the Senate on the con trary part, were in marvellous great fault, to be angry and in choler with him, when it stoode them upon, rather to have gone out and intreated him. So they all agreed together to send Ambassadours unto him, to let him understand how his coun- treymen did call him home againe, and restored him to all his Goods, and besought him to deliver them from this Warre.
The Ambassadours that were sent, were Martius familiar friends and acquaintance, who looked at the least for a cour teous welcome of him, as of their familiar friend and kinsman. Howbeit they found nothing lesse ; for at their coming they were brought through the Campe, to the place where he was set in his Chaire of State, with a marvellous and unspeakable Majesty, having the chiefest men of the Volsces about him : so he commanded them to declare openly the cause of their com ing. Which they delivered in the most humble and lowly words they possibly devis«, and with all modest countenance and behaviour agreeable to the same. When they had done their Message : for the injury they had done him, he answered them very hotly and in great choler : but as Generall of the Volsces, he willed them to restore unto the Volsces, all their Lands and Cities they had taken from them in former Warres :
and moreover, that they should give them the like honour and
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freedom of Rome, as they had before given to the Latines. For otherwise they had no other meane to end this Warre, if they did not grant these honest and just Conditions of Peace. Thereupon he gave them thirty dayes respite to make him answer. So the Ambassadours returned straight to Rome, and Martius forthwith departed with his army out of the Territo ries of the Romanes.
Wherefore, the time of Peace expired, Martius being re turned into the Dominions of the Romanes againe with all his Army, they sent another Ambassade unto him, to pray Peace, and the remove of the Volsces out of their Countrey: that afterwards they might with better leisure fall to such Agree ments together, as should be thought most meete and necessary. For the Romanes were no men that would ever yeelde for feare. But if he thought the Volsces had any ground to demand rea sonable Articles and Conditions, all that they would reasonably aske should be granted unto by the Romanes, who of themselves would willingly yeeld to reason, conditionally, that they should lay downe Armes. Martius to that answered : that as Generall of the Volsces he would reply nothing unto it : but yet as a Romane Citizen, he counsell them to let fall their pride, and to be conformable to reason, if they were wise : and that they should returne againe within three dayes, delivering up the Articles agreed upon, which he had first delivered them. Otherwise, that he would no more give them assurance or safe conduct to returne againe into his Campe, with such vaine and frivolous messages.
Now the Romane Ladies and Gentlewomen did visit all the Temples and gods of the same, to make their Prayers unto them : but the greatest Ladies (and more part of them) were continually about the Altar of Jupiter Capitolin, among which Troupe by name, was Valeria, Publicolaes owne Sister. The selfe-same Publicola, who did such notable service to the Romanes, both in Peace and Warres, and was dead also cer- taine yeares before, as we have declared in his Life. His Sister Valeria was greatly honoured and reverenced among all the Romanes: and did so modestly and wisely behave herselfe, that she did not shame nor dishonour the House she came of. So she suddenly fell into such a fancy, as we have rehearsed
before, and had (by some gods as I thinke) taken hold of a noble device. Whereupon she rose, and the other Ladies with her, and they all together went straight to the House of Vo
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lumnia, Martius mother : and coming in to her, found her, and Martius Wife her Daughter in Law, set together, and having her Husband Martius young Children in her lappe.
[They pray her to intercede with Martius, and she consents, though with scant hopes. ]
She tooke her Daughter in Law and Martius Children with her, and being accompanied with all the other Romane Ladies, they went in troope together unto the Volsces Campe : whom when they saw, they of themselves did both pity and reverence her, and there was not a man among them that once durst say a word unto her. Now was Martius set then in his Chaire of State, with all the Honours of a Generall, and when he had spied the Women coming afar off, he marvelled what the mat ter meant : but afterwards knowing his Wife which came fore most, he determined at first to persist in his obstinate and inflexible rankor. But overcome in the end with naturall affec tion, and being altogether altered to see them, his heart would not serve him to tarry their coming to his Chaire, but coming downe in haste, he went to meete them, and first he kissed his Mother, and imbraced her a pretty while, then his Wife and little Children. And Nature so wrought with him, that the teares fell from his eyes, and he could not keepe himself from making much of them, but yeelded to the affection of his blood, as if he had beene violently carried with the fury of a most swift running streame. After he had thus lovingly received them, and perceiving that his Mother Volumnia would begin to speake to him, he called the chiefest of the Councell of the Volsces to heare what she would say. Then she spake in this
sort":Ifweheldourpeace(mySon)anddeterminednotto speake, the state of our poore Bodies, and present sight of our Rayment, would easily bewray to thee what life we have led at home, since thy exile and abode abroad, but thinke now with thy selfe, how much more unfortunate then all the Women living, we are come hither, considering that the fight which should be most pleasant to all other to behold, spightfull Fortune had made most fearfull to us, making my selfe to see my Sonne, and my Daughter here her Husband, besieging the Walls of his native Countrey : so as that which is the onely comfort to all other in their adversity and misery, to pray unto the gods, and to call to them for aide, is the onely thing which plungeth us into most deepe perplexity. For we cannot (alas) together
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pray both for victory to our Countrey, and for safety of thy life also : but a world of grievous curses, yea more then any mortall Enemy can heape upon us, are forcibly wrapt up in our Prayers. For the bitter sop of most hard choice is offered thy Wife and Children, to forgo one of the two : either to lose the Person of thy selfe, or the Nurse of their native Countrey. For my selfe (my Sonne) I am determined not to tarry till For tune in my life time do make an end of this Warre. For if I cannot perswade thee, rather to do good unto both Parties, then to overthrow and destroy the one, preferring Love and Nature before the Malice and Calamity of Warres, thou shalt see, my Sonne, and trust unto it, thou shalt no sooner march forward to assault thy Countrey, but thy foote shall treade upon thy Mothers Wombe, that brought thee first into this World. And I may not defer to see the day, either that my Sonne be led Prisoner in triumph by his naturall Countreymen, or that he himselfe do triumph of them, and of his naturall Countrey. For if it were so, that my request tended to save thy Countrey, in destroying the Volsces, I must confess, thou wouldest hardly and doubtfully resolve on that. For as to destroy thy naturall Countrey, it is altogether unmeet and unlawfull, so were it not just, and lesse honourable, to betray those that put their trust in thee. But my onely demand consisteth, to make a Gaole-de- livery of all evils, which delivereth equall benefit and safety, both to the one and the other, but most honourable for the Volsces. For it shall appeare, that having victory in their hands, they have of speciall favour granted us singular graces, Peace and Amity, albeit themselves have no lesse part of both than we. Of which good, if so it came to passe, thy selfe is the onely Authour, and so hast thou the onely honour. But if it faile, and fall out contrary, thy selfe alone deservedly shall carry the shamefull reproach and burthen of either party. So, though the end of Warre be uncertaine, yet this notwithstand ing is most certaine, that if it be thy chance to conquer, this benefit shall thou reape of thy goodly Conquest, to be chronicled the plague and destroyer of thy Countrey. And if Fortune overthrow thee, then the World will say, that through desire to revenge thy private injuries, thou hast for ever undone thy good friends, who did most lovingly and courteously receive thee. "
Martius gave good eare unto his Mothers words, without interrupting her Speech at all, and after she had said what she
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would, he held his peace a pretty while, and answered not a word. " Hereupon she began againe to speake unto him, and said : My Sonne, why doest thou not answer me ? doest thou think it good altogether to give place unto thy choler and desire for revenge, and thinkest thou it not honesty for thee to grant thy Mothers request, in so weighty a cause? dost thou take it honourable for a Nobleman, to remember the wrongs and injuries done him, and dost not in like case thinke it an honest Noblemans part, to be thankfull for the goodnesse that Parents do shew to their Children, acknowledging the duty and reverence they ought to beare unto them ? No man living is more bound to shew himselfe thankfull in all parts and respects then thyselfe : who so universally shewest all in gratitude. Moreover (my Sonne) thou hast sorely taken of thy Countrey, exacting grievous payments upon them, in revenge of the injuries offered thee ; besides, thou hast not hitherto shewed thy poore Mother any courtesie. And therefore it is not onely honest, but due unto me, that without compulsion I
should obtaine my so just and reasonable request of thee. But since by reason I can not perswade thee to it, to what purpose do I defer my last hope ? " And with these words, her selfe, his Wife and Children fell downe upon their knees before him : Martius seeing that, could refraine no longer, but went straight and lift her up, crying out, Oh Mother, what have you done to me? And holding her hard by the right hand, Oh Mother, said he, you have wonne a happy victory for your countrey, but mortall and unhappy for your Sonne : for I see my selfe vanquished by you alone.
These words being spoken openly, he spake a little apart with his Mother and Wife, and then let them returne againe to Rome, for so they did request him ; and so remaining in Campe that night, the next morning he dislodged, and marched homeward into the Volsces Countrey againe, who were not all of one minde, nor all alike contented. For some misliked him and that he had done : other being well pleased that Peace should be made, said : that neither the one nor the other, deserved blame nor reproach. Other though they misliked that was done, did not thinke him an ill man for that he did, but said, he was not to be blamed, though he yeelded to such a forcible extremity. Howbeit no man contraried his de parture, but all obeyed his commandment, more for respect for his worthinesse and valiancy than for feare of his Authority.
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CARTHAGE AND THE PHOENICIANS. By E. BOSWOBTH SMITH.
It was well for the development and civilization of the ancient world that the Hebrew fugitives from Egypt were not able to drive at once from the whole coast of Syria its old in habitants ; for the accursed race of the Canaanites, whom, for their licentious worship and cruel rites, they were bidden to extirpate from Palestine itself, were no other than those enter prising mariners and those dauntless colonists who, sallying from their narrow roadsteads, committed their fragile barks to the mercy of unknown seas, and, under their Greek name of Phoenicians, explored island and promontory, creek and bay, from the coast of Malabar even to the lagunes of the Baltic. From Tyre and Sidon issued those busy merchants who carried, with their wares, to distant shores the rudiments of science and of many practical arts which they had obtained from the far East, and which, probably, they but half understood themselves. It was they who, at a period antecedent to all contemporary historical records, introduced written characters, the foundation of all high intellectual development, into that country which was destined to carry intellectual and artistic culture to the highest point which humanity has yet reached. It was they who learned to steer their ships by the sure help of the Polar Star, while the Greeks still depended on the Great Bear ; it was they who rounded the Cape of Storms, and earned the best right to call it the Cape of Good Hope, 2000 years before Vasco da Gama. Their ships returned to their native shores bringing with them sandalwood from Malabar, spices from Arabia, fine linen from Egypt, ostrich plumes from the Sahara. Cyprus gave them its copper, Elba its iron, the coast of the Black Sea its manufactured steel. Silver they brought from Spain, gold from the Niger, tin from the Scilly Isles, and amber from the Baltic.
Where they sailed, there they planted factories which opened a caravan trade with the interior of vast continents hitherto regarded as inaccessible, and which became inaccessible for cen turies again when the Phoenicians disappeared from history. They were as famous for their artistic skill as for their enter prise and energy. Did the greatest of the Jewish kings desire to adorn the Temple which he had erected to the Most High in
64 CARTHAGE AND THE rH(EMCIANS.
the manner least unworthy of Him ? A Phoenician king must supply him with the well-hewn cedars of his stately Lebanon, and the cunning hand of a Phoenician artisan must shape the pillars and the lavers, the oxen and the lions of brass, which decorated the shrine. Did the King of Persia himself, in the intoxication of his pride, command miracles to be performed, boisterous straits to be bridged, or a peninsula to become an island ? It was Phoenician architects who lashed together the boats that were to connect Asia with Europe, and it was Phoe nician workmen who knew best how to economize their toil in digging the canal that was to transport the fleet of Xerxes through dry land, and save it from the winds and waves of Mount Athos. The merchants of Tyre were, in truth, the princes, and her traffickers the honorable men of the earth. Wherever a ship could penetrate, a factory be planted, a trade developed or created, there we find these ubiquitous, these irrepressible Phoenicians.
We know well what the tiny territory of Palestine has done for the religion of the world, and what the tiny Greece has done for its intellect and its art ; but we are apt to forget that what the Phoenicians did for the development and inter communication of the world was achieved by a state confined within narrower boundaries still. In the days of their greatest prosperity, when their ships were to be found on every known and on many unknown seas, the Phoenicians proper of the Syrian coast remained content with a narrow strip of fertile territory, squeezed in between the mountains and the sea, of the length of some thirty and of the average breadth of only a single mile ! And if the existence of a few settlements beyond these limits entitles us to extend the name of Phoenicia to some 120 miles of coast, with a plain behind it which some times broadened out into a sweep of a dozen miles, was it not sound policy, even in a community so enlarged, to keep for themselves the gold they had so hardly won, rather than lavish it on foreign mercenaries in the hope of extending their sway inland, or in the vain attempt to resist by force of arms the mighty monarchs of Egypt, of Assyria, or of Babylon ? Their strength was to sit still, to acknowledge the titular supremacy of any one who chose to claim it, and then, when the time came, to buy the intruder off.
The land-locked sea, the eastern extremity of which washes the shores of Phoenicia proper, connecting as it does three
CARTHAGE AND THE PH(ENICIANS. 65
continents, and abounding in deep gulfs, in fine harbors, and in fertile islands, seems to have been intended by Nature for the early development of commerce and colonization. By robbing the ocean of half its mystery and of more than half its terrors, it allured the timid mariner, even as the eagle does its young, from headland on to headland, or from islet to islet, till it be came the highway of the nations of the ancient world ; and the products of each of the countries whose shores it laves became the common property of all.
But in this general race of enterprise and commerce among the nations which bordered on the Mediterranean, it is to the Phoenicians that unquestionably belongs the foremost place. In the dimmest dawn of history, many centuries before the Greeks had set foot in Asia Minor or in Italy, before even they had settled down in secure possession of their own territories, we hear of Phoenician settlements in Asia Minor and in Greece itself, in Africa, in Macedon, and in Spain. There is hardly an island in the Mediterranean which has not preserved some traces of these early visitors : Cyprus, Rhodes, and Crete in the Levant ; Malta, Sicily, and the Balearic Isles in the middle passage ; Sardinia and Corsica in the Tyrrhenian Sea ; the Cyclades, as Thucydides tells us, in the mid-. 5£gean ; and even Samothrace and Thasos at its northern extremity, where He rodotus, to use his own forcible expression, himself saw a whole mountain " turned upside down " by their mining energy ; all have either yielded Phoenician coins and inscriptions, have re tained Phoenician proper names and legends, or possess mines, long perhaps disused, but which were worked as none but Phoe nicians ever worked them.
And among the Phoenician factories which dotted the whole southern shore of the Mediterranean, from the east end of the greater Syrtis even to the Pillars of Hercules, there was one which, from a concurrence of circumstances, was destined rapidly to outstrip all the others, to make herself their acknowledged head, to become the Queen of the Mediterranean, and, in some sense, of the Ocean beyond, and, for a space of over a hundred years, to maintain a deadly and not unequal contest with the future mistress of the world.
The rising African factory was known to its inhabitants by the name of Kirjath-Hadeschath, or New Town, to distinguish it from the much older settlement of Utica, of which it may
have been to some extent an offshoot. The Greeks, when they VOL. III. —5
66 CARTHAGE AND THE PH(ENICIANS.
came to know of its existence, called it Karchedon, and the Romans, Carthago. The date of its foundation is uncertain; but the current tradition refers it to a period about a hundred years before the founding of Rome. The fortress that was to protect the young settlement was built upon a peninsula pro jecting eastwards from the inner corner of what is now called the Gulf of Tunis, the largest and most beautiful roadstead of the North African coast. The suburbs and gardens of Car thage, with the city proper, covered an area twenty-three miles in circumference. Its population must have been fully pro portionate to its size. Just before the third Punic war, when its strength had been drained by the two long wars with Rome and by the incessant depredations of that chartered brigand Massinissa, it contained 700,000 inhabitants ; and towards the close of the final siege, the Byrsa [citadel] alone was able to give shelter to a motley multitude of 50,000 men, women, and children.
Facing the Hermaean promontory (Cape Bon), the north eastern horn of the Gulf of Tunis, at a distance of only ninety miles, was the Island of Sicily, which, as a glance at the map, and as the sunken ridge extending from one to the other, still clearly show, must have once actually united Europe to Africa. This fair island it was which, crowded even in those early days with Phoenician factories, seemed to beckon the chief of Phoeni cian cities onwards towards an easy and a natural field of for eign conquest. This it was which proved to be the apple of fierce discord for centuries between Carthage and the Greek colonies, which soon disputed its possession with her. This, in an ever checkered warfare, and at the cost of torrents of the blood of her mercenaries, and of untold treasures of her citizens, enriched Carthage with the most splendid trophies — stolen trophies though they were — of Greek art. This, finally, was the chief battlefield of the contending forces during the whole of the first Punic war — in the beginning, that is, of her fierce struggle for existence with all the power of Rome.
What were the causes of the rapid rise of Carthage; what was the extent of her African and her foreign dominions, and the nature of her hold upon them; what were the peculiar ex cellences and defects of her internal constitution and what the principles on which she traded and colonized, conquered and ruled; —to these and other questions some answer must be given: but how are we to give it? No native poet, whose
CARTHAGE AND THE PH(ENICIANS. 67
writings have come down to us, has sung of the origin of Carthage, or of her romantic voyages; no native orator has described, in glowing periods which we can still read, the splendor of her buildings and the opulence of her merchant princes; no native annalist has preserved the story of her long rivalry with Greeks and Etruscans, and no African philosopher has moralized upon the stability of her institutions or the causes of her fall. All have perished. The text of three treaties with Rome, made in the days of her prosperity; the log-book of an adventurous Carthaginian admiral, dedicated on his return from the Senegal or the Niger as a votive offering in the temple of Baal; some fragments of the practical precepts of a Cartha ginian agriculturist, translated by the order of the utilitarian Roman Senate; a speech or two of a vagabond Carthaginian in the Paenulus of Plautus, which has been grievously mutilated in the process of transcribing it into Roman letters; a few Punic inscriptions buried twenty feet below the surface of the ground, entombed and preserved by successive Roman, and Vandal, and Arab devastations, and now at length revealed and deciphered by the efforts of French and English archaeolo gists; the massive substructions of ancient temples; the enor mous reservoirs of water; and the majestic procession of stately aqueducts which no barbarism has been able to destroy — these are the only native or semi-native sources from which we can draw the outlines of our picture: and we must eke out our narrative of Carthage in the days of her prosperity, as best we may, from a few chapters of reflections by the greatest of the Greek philosophers, from the late Roman annalists who saw everything with Roman eyes, and from a few but precious anti quarian remarks in the narrative of the great Greek historian, Polybius, who, with all his love of truth and love of justice, saw Carthage only at the moment of her fall, and was the bosom friend of her destroyer.
In her origin, at least, Carthage seems to have been like other Phoenician settlements — a mere commercial factory. Her inhabitants cultivated friendly relations with the natives, looked upon themselves as tenants at will rather than as owners of the soil, and as such, cheerfully paid a rent to the African Berbers for the ground covered by their dwellings. It was the instinct of self-preservation alone which dictated a change of policy, and transformed this peace-loving mercantile community into the warlike and conquering state, of which the whole of the West
68 CARTHAGE AND THE PHOENICIANS.
ern Mediterranean was so soon to feel the power. The result of this change of policy was that the western half of the Medi terranean became — what at one time the whole of it had bidden fair to be — a Phoenician lake, in which no foreign merchant men dared to show themselves. It was a vast preserve, to be caught trespassing upon which, so Strabo tells us, on the author ity of Eratosthenes, insured the punishment of instant death by drowning. No promontory was so barren, no islet so insignifi cant, as to escape the jealous and ever-watchful eye of the Car thaginians. In Corsica, if they could not get any firm or extensive foothold themselves, they at least prevented any other state from doing the like. Into their hands fell, in spite of the ambitious dreams of Persian kings and the aspirations of patriot Greeks, that " greatest of all islands," the island of Sardinia ; theirs were the iEgatian and the Liparaean, the Bale aric and the Pityusian Isles; theirs the tiny Elba, with its inexhaustible supply of metals ; theirs, too, Malta still remained, an outpost pushed far into the domain of their advancing ene mies, a memorial of what once had been, and, perhaps, to the sanguine Carthaginian temperament, an earnest of what might be again hereafter. Above all, the Phoenician settlements in Spain, at the innermost corner of the great preserve, with the adjacent silver mines which gave to these settlements their peculiar value, were now trebly safe from all intruders.
Elated, as it would seem, by their naval successes, which were hardly of their own seeking, the Carthaginians thought that they might now at last become the owners of the small strip of African territory which they had hitherto seemed to occupy on sufferance only ; and they refused the ground rent which, up till now, they had paid to the adjoining tribes.
Step by step they enlarged their territories at the expense of the natives, till the whole of the rich territory watered by the Bagradas became theirs. The nomadic tribes were beaten back beyond the river Triton into the country named, from the roving habits of its inhabitants, Numidia, or into the desert of Tripolis. The ag ricultural tribes were forced to pay tribute to the conquerors for the right of cultivating their own soil, or to shed their blood on the field of battle in the prosecution of further conquests from the tribes beyond. Nor did the kindred Phoenician set tlements in the adjoining parts of Africa escape unscathed. Utica alone, owing probably to her antiquity and to the semi- parental relation in which she stood to Carthage, was allowed
CARTHAGE AND THE PH(ENICIANS. 69
to retain her walls and full equality of rights with the rising power ; but Hippo Zarytus, and Adrumetum, the greater and the lesser Leptis, were compelled to pull down their walls and acknowledge the supremacy of the Carthaginian city.
All along the northern coast of Africa the original Phoeni cian settlers, and probably to some extent the Carthaginians themselves, had intermarried with the natives. The product of these marriages was that numerous class of Liby-Phoenicians which proved to be so important in the history of Carthaginian colonization and conquest ; a class which, equidistant from the Berbers on the one hand and from the Carthaginians proper on the other, and composed of those who were neither wholly cit izens nor yet wholly aliens, experienced the lot of most half castes, and were alternately trusted and feared, pampered and oppressed, loved and hated, by the ruling state.
One enterprise which was undertaken by the Carthaginians, in obedience to the fiat of the king of Persia, to the lasting good of humanity failed of its object. Xerxes (B. C. 480), ad vancing with his millions of barbarians upon Athens from the east, bade, so it is said, Hamilcar advance with his 300,000 mercenaries upon Syracuse from the west. The torch of Greek learning and civilization was to be extinguished at the most opposite ends of the Greek world at one and the same moment; but happily for mankind at large, both attempts were foiled. The efforts of Xerxes ended in the destruction of the Persian fleet at Salamis, and the disgraceful flight of the king to Asia ; the efforts of Hamilcar ended in his defeat and death at Himera, and in the destruction of 150,000 of his army ; and by a dramatic propriety which is not common in history, what ever it may be in fiction, this double victory of Greek civiliza tion is said to have taken place in the same year and on the very same day.
The constitution of Carthage was not the work of a single legislator, as that of Sparta is said to have been, nor of a series of legislators like that of Athens ; it was rather, like that of England, the growth of circumstances and of centuries. It obtained the praise of Aristotle for its judicious admixture of the monarchical, the oligarchical, and the democratical elements. The original monarchical constitution — doubtless inherited from Tyre — was represented by two supreme magistrates called by the Romans Suffetes. Their name is the same as the Hebrew Shofetim, mistranslated in our Bible, Judges. The
70 CARTHAGE AND THE PH(ENICIANS.
Hamilcars and Hannos of Carthage were, like their prototypes, the Gideons and the Samsons of the Book of Judges, not so much the judges as the protectors and the rulers of their re spective states. They are compared by Greek writers to the two kings of Sparta, and by the Romans to their own consuls. Beneath these kings came, in the older constitution, a council, called by the Greeks the Gerusia, or Council of Ancients, con sisting of twenty-eight members, over which the Suffetes pre sided. This council declared war, ordered levies of troops, appointed generals, sent out colonies. If the council and Suf fetes agreed, their decision was final ; if they disagreed, the matter was referred to the people at large. In this and in other ways each element of the body politic had its share in the administration of the State.
But the Carthaginian constitution described and praised by Aristotle is not the same as that of the Punic wars. In the interval which separates the two epochs, short as it is, a great change which must have been long preparing, had been com pleted. The Suffetes had gradually become little more than an honorary magistracy. The Senate over which they pre sided had allowed the main part of their power to slip out of their hands into those of another body, called the Judges, or " The Hundred," which, if it seemed to be more liberal in point of numbers and in conformation, was much more exclusive in policy and in spirit. The appeal to the people was only now resorted to in times of public excitement, when the rulers, by appearing to share power, tried to lesson envy, and allowed the citizens to go through the form of registering what, practically, they had already decreed. The result was an oligarchy, like
that of Venice: clear-sighted and consistent, moderate, nay, often wise in its policy, but narrow in its views, and often sus picious alike of its opponents and of its friends.
By the old constitution the Senate had the right to control the magistrates; but this new body of Judges controlled the Senate, and therefore, in reality, the magistrates also. Nor was it content to control the Senate ; it practically superseded it. Its members did not, as a rule, appropriate the offices of State to themselves ; but they could summon their holders before them, and so draw their teeth. No Shofete, no senator, no general, was exempt from their irresponsible despotism. The Shofetes presided, the senators deliberated, the generals fought, as it were, with a halter round their necks. The sen
CARTHAGE AND THE PH(ENICIANS. 71
tences passed by the Hundred, if they were often deserved, were often also, like those of the dreaded " Ten " at Venice, to whom they bore a striking resemblance, arbitrary and cruel. The unsuccessful general, whether his ill success was the re sult of uncontrollable circumstances or of culpable neglect, might be condemned to crucifixion ; indeed, he often wisely anticipated his sentence by committing suicide.
Within the ranks of this close oligarchy, first-rate ability would seem to have been at a discount. Indeed, the exact equality of all within the privileged ranks is as much a prin ciple of oligarchy as is the equal suppression of all that is outside of it. Language bears testimony to this, in the name given alike to the Homoioi of Sparta and the " Peers " of Eng land. It was jealousy, for instance, of the superior abilities of the family of Mago, and their prolonged preeminence in the Carthaginian state, which had in the fifth century B. C. cemented
the alliance between other and less able families of the aris tocracy, and so had first given rise to this very institution of the Hundred Judges ; and it was the same mean jealousy of all that is above itself which afterwards, in the time of the Punio wars, united as one man a large part of the ruling oligarchs in the vain effort to control and to thwart, and to annoy with a thousand petty annoyances, the one family of consummate ability which Carthage then possessed —that noble-minded Barcine gens, that " lion's brood," who were brought to the front in those troublous times by the sheer force of their genius, and who for three generations ruled by the best of all rights, the right divine, that of unswerving devotion to their country, of the ability to rule, and the will to use that ability well.
Carthage was beyond doubt the richest city of antiquity. Her ships were to be found on all known seas, and there was probably no important product, animal, vegetable, or mineral, of the ancient world, which did not find its way into her har bors and pass through the hands of her citizens. But it is remarkable, that while in no city then known did commerce rank so high, the noblest citizens even of Carthage seem to have left commercial enterprise to those who came next below them in the social scale. They preferred to live on their estates as agriculturists or country gentlemen, and derived their
princely revenues from their farms or their mines, which were worked by prodigious gangs of slaves. The cultivation of the
72 CARTHAGE AND THE PH(ENICIANS.
soil was probably nowhere carried on with such astonishing results as in the smiling country which surrounded Carthage.
Those members of the Carthaginian aristocracy who did not find a sufficient field for their ability in agriculture or in poli tics, in literature or in commerce, took refuge in the profession of arms, and formed always the chief ornament, and often the chief strength, of the Punic armies. At one period, at least, of the history of the state, they formed a so-called " Sacred Band," consisting of 2500 citizens, who, clad in resplendent armor, fought around the person of their general in chief, and, feasting from dishes of the costliest gold and silver plate, commemorated in their pride the number of their campaigns by the number of rings on their fingers. —
But the most important factor in the history of a people especially if it be a Semitic people — is its religion. The reli gion of the Carthaginians was what their race, their language, and their history would lead us to expect. It was, with slight modifications, the religion of the Canaanites, the religion, that is, which, in spite of the purer monotheism of the Hebrews and the higher teachings of their prophets, so long exercised a fatal fascination over the great bulk of the Hebrew race. Baal- Moloch was a malignant deity ; he was the fire god, rejoicing in " human sacrifices and in parents' tears. " His worshipers gashed and mutilated themselves in their religious frenzy. Like Kronos or Saturn — to whom the Greeks and Romans aptly enough compared him — he was the devourer of his own children. In times of unbroken security the Carthaginians neglected or forgot him ; but when they were elated by an unlooked-for victory, or depressed by a sudden reverse, that fanaticism which is often dormant but never altogether absent from the Semitic breast, burst forth into a devouring flame, which gratified to the full his thirst for human blood. Tanith or Astarte, in the nobler aspects which she sometimes pre sented, as the goddess of wedded love or war, of the chase or of peaceful husbandry, was identified by the Romans, now with Juno, now with Diana, and now again with Ceres ; but, un fortunately, it was when they identified her with their Venus Coelestis that they came nearest to the truth. Her worship, like that of the Babylonian Mylitta, required immorality, nay, consecrated it. The " abomination of the Sidonians " was also the abomination of the Carthaginians.
But there was one god who stood in such a peculiar relation
CARTHAGE AND THE PH(ENICIANS. 73
to Carthage, and whose worship seems to have been so much more genial and so much more spiritual than the rest, that we are fain to dwell upon it as a foil to what has preceded. This god was Melcarth, — that is, Melech-Kirjath, or the king of the city ; he is called by the Greeks " the Phoenician Hercules," and his name itself has passed, with a slight alteration, into Greek mythology as Melicertes. The city of which he was preeminently the god was Tyre. There he had a magnificent temple which was visited for antiquarian purposes by Herodo tus. It contained two splendid pillars, one of pure gold, the other, as Herodotus believed, of emerald, which shone brilliantly at night, but there was no image of the god to be seen. The Bame was the case in his famous temple at Thasos, and the still more famous one at Gades, which contained an oracle, a hier archy of priests, and a mysterious spring which rose and fell inversely with tide, but still no image. At Carthage, Melcarth had not even a temple. The whole of the city was his temple, and he refused to be localized in any particular part of it. He received, there is reason to believe, no sacrifices of blood ; and it was his comparatively pure and spiritual worship which, as we see repeatedly in Carthaginian history, formed a chief link in the chain that bound the parent to the various daughter cities scattered over the coasts and islands of the Mediterranean.
The Carthaginian proper names which have come down to us form one among many proofs of the depth of their religious feelings ; for they are all, or nearly all, compounded with the name of one or other of their chief gods. Hamilcar is he whom Melcarth protects ; Hasdrubal is he whose help is in Baal ; Hannibal, the Hanniel of the Bible, is the grace of Baal ; and so on with Bomilcar, Himilco, Ethbaal, Maherbal, Adherbal, and Mastanabal.
A considerable native literature there must have been at Carthage, for Mago, a Carthaginian Shofete, did not disdain to write a treatise of twenty-eight books upon the agricultural pursuits which formed the mainstay of his order ; and when the Roman Senate, in their fatuous disregard for intellect, gave over with careless profusion to their friends, the Berber chiefs, the contents of all the libraries they had found in Carthage, they reserved for this work the especial honor of an authorized translation into Latin, and of a formal recommendation of its practical maxims to the thrifty husbandmen of Rome.
74 CARTHAGE AND THE PH(ENICIANS.
It was the one fatal weakness of the Carthaginian State foi military purposes that the bulk of their vast armies consisted not of their own citizens, nor even of attached and obedient subjects, but of foreign mercenaries. There were few countries and few tribes in the western world which were not represented in a Carthaginian army. Money or superior force brought to Carthage samples of every nation which her fleets could reach. Native Libyan and Liby-Phoenicians, Gauls and Spaniards, slingers from the far-famed Balearic Isles, Greeks and Ligu- rians, Volscians and Campanians, were all to be found within its ranks.
But it was the squadrons of light horsemen drawn from all the nomad tribes lying between the Altars of the Phileni on the east and the Pillars of Hercules on the west, which formed its heart. Mounted on their famous barbs, with a shield of elephant's hide on their arm and a lion's skin thrown over their shoulders, the only raiment they ever wore by day and the only couch they ever cared to sleep on at night ; without a saddle and without a bridle, or with a bridle only of twisted reeds which they rarely needed to touch ; equally remarkable for their fearlessness, their agility, and their cunning ; equally formidable, whether they charged or made believe to fly ; they were, at once, the strength and the weakness, the delight and the despair of the Carthaginian state. Under the mighty mili tary genius of Hannibal —with the ardor which he breathed into the feeblest and the discipline which he enforced on the most undisciplined of his army — they faced without shrinking the terrors of the Alps and the malaria of the marshes, and they proved invincible against all the power of Rome, at the Ticinus and the Trebia, at Thrasimene and at Cannae ; but, as more often happened, led by an incompetent general, treated by him, as not even Napoleon treated his troops, like so many beasts for the slaughter, and sometimes even basely deserted or betrayed into the enemies' hand, they naturally proved a two- edged weapon, piercing the hand that leaned upon it, faithless and revengeful, learning nothing and forgetting nothing, find ing once and again in the direst extremity of Carthage their own deadliest opportunity.
But if the life of the great capitalists of Carthage was as brilliant as we have described how did fare with the poorer citizens, with those whom we call the masses, till we sometimes forget that they are made up of individual units
?
it,
it
CARTHAGE AND THE PH(ENICIANS.
75
If we know little of the rich, how much less do we know of the poor of Carthage and her dependencies. The city popula tion, with the exception — a large exception doubtless — of those engaged in commerce, well contented, as it would seem, like the Romans under the Empire, if nothing deprived them of their bread and of their amusements, went on eating and marrying and multiplying till their numbers became excessive, and then they were shipped off by the prudence of their rulers to found colonies in other parts of Africa or in Spain. Their natural leaders —or, as probably more often happened, the bankrupt members of the aristocracy — would take the com mand of the colony, and obtain free leave, in return for their services, to enrich themselves by the plunder of the adjoining tribes. To so vast an extent did Carthage carry out the modern principle of relieving herself of a superfluous popula tion, and at the same time of extending her empire, by coloni zation, that, on one occasion, the admiral, Hanno, whose " Peri- plus " still remains, was dispatched with sixty ships of war of fifty oars each, and with a total of not less than 30,000 half-caste emigrants on board, for the purpose of founding colonies on the shores of the ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
To defray the expenses of this vast system of exploration and colonization, as well as of their enormous armies, the most ruinous tribute was imposed and exacted with unsparing rigor from the subject native states, and no slight one from the cog nate Phoenician cities. The taxes paid by the natives some times amounted to a half of their whole produce, and among the Phoenician dependent cities themselves we know that the lesser Leptis alone paid into the Carthaginian treasury the sum of a talent daily. The tribute levied on the conquered Africans was paid in kind, as is the case with the Rayahs of Turkey to the present day, and its apportionment and collection were doubtless liable to the same abuses and gave rise to the same enormities as those of which Europe has lately heard so much. Hence arose that universal disaffection, or rather that deadly
hatred, on the part of her foreign subjects, and even of the Phoenician dependencies, towards Carthage, on which every invader of Africa could safely count as his surest support. Hence the ease with which Agathocles, with his small army of 15,000 men, could overrun the open country, and the monoto nous uniformity with which he entered, one after another, two hundred towns, which Carthaginian jealousy had deprived of
76
CARTHAGE AND THE PH(ENICIANS.
their walls, hardly needing to strike a blow. Hence too the horrors of the revolt of the outraged Libyan mercenaries, sup ported as it was by the free-will contributions of their golden ornaments by the Libyan women, who hated their oppressors as perhaps women only can, and which is known in history by the name of the " War without Truce," or the " Inexpiable War. "
It must, however, be borne in mind that the inherent dif ferences of manners, language, and race between the native of Africa and the Phoenician incomer were so great ; the African was so unimpressible, and the Phoenician was so little disposed to understand or to assimilate himself to his surroundings, — that even if the Carthaginian government had been conducted with an equity, and the taxes levied with a moderation, which we know was far from being the gulf profound and im passable must probably have always separated the two peoples. This was the fundamental, the ineradicable weakness of the Carthaginian Empire, and in the long run outbalances all the advantages obtained for her by her navies, her ports, and her well-stocked treasury ; by the energies and the valor of her citizens ; and by the consummate genius of three, at least, of her generals. It is this, and this alone, which in some measure reconciles us to the melancholy, nay, the hateful, termination of the struggle. But under the conditions of ancient society, and the savagery of the warfare which tolerated, there was an unavoidable necessity for either Rome or Carthage to perish utterly, we must admit, in spite of the sympathy which the brilliancy of the Carthaginian civilization, the heroism of Hamil- car and Hannibal, and the tragic catastrophe itself, call forth, that was well for the human race that the blow fell on Carthage rather than on Rome. A universal Carthaginian Empire could have done for the world, as far as we can see, nothing compar able to that which the Roman universal Empire did for it. It would not have melted down national antipathies would not have given common literature or language would not have prepared the way for higher civilization and an infinitely purer religion. Still less would have built up that majestic fabric of law which forms the basis of the legislation of all the states of modern Europe and America.
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QUEEN DIDO'S LOVE AND FATE. 77
QUEEN DIDO'S LOVE AND FATE. (By Virgil : translated by John Conington. )
[Publics Virqilius Maro, the great Roman epic poet, was bom near Mantua, b. c. 70, and finely educated. Stripped of his estate in Augustus' con fiscations, he regained it, like Horace, through Maecenas' influence ; became the friend of both, and also of Augustus, with whom he was traveling when he died, b. o. 19. His works are the "Eclogues" or "Bucolics" (only part of them pastorals, however), modeled on Theocritus' idyls; the "Georgics," a poetical treatise on practical agriculture which made farming the fashionable "fad" for a time; and the *'. 35neid," an epic on the adventures of . /Eneas, the mythical founder of Borne, — imitative of Homer's form and style. ]
But the queen, pierced long since by love's cruel shaft, is feeding the wound with her lifeblood, and wasting under a hidden fire. Many times the hero's own worth comes back to her mind, many times the glory of his race; his every look remains imprinted on her breast, and his every word, nor will trouble let soothing sleep have access to her frame.
The dawn goddess of the morrow was surveying the earth with Phoebus' torch in her hand, and had already withdrawn the dewy shadow from the sky, when she, sick of soul, thus bespoke the sister whose heart was one with hers: — "Anna, my sister, what dreams are these that confound and appall me? Who is this new guest that has entered our door? What a face and carriage! What strength of breast and shoulders! I do believe — it is no mere fancy — that he has the blood of gods in his veins. An ignoble soul is known by the coward's brand. Ah! by what fates he has been tossed! What wars he was recounting, every pang of them borne by himself ! Were it not the fixed, immovable purpose of my mind never to con sent to join myself with any in wedlock's bands, since my first love played me false and made me the dupe of death — had I not been weary of bridal bed and nuptial torch, perchance I might have stooped to this one reproach. Anna, for I will own the truth, — since the fate of Sychaeus, my poor husband, — since the sprinkling of the gods of my home with the blood my brother shed, he and he only has touched my heart and shaken my resolution till it totters. I recognize the traces of the old flame. But first I would pray that earth may yawn for me from her foundations, or the all-powerful sire hurl me thunder-stricken to the shades, to the wan shades of Erebus and abysmal night, ere I violate thee, my woman's honor, or unknit the bonds thou tiest. He who first wedded me, he has
78 QUEEN DIDO'S LOVE AND FATE.
carried off my heart — let him keep it all his own, and retain it in his grave. " Thus having said, she deluged her bosom with a burst of tears.
Anna replies : " Sweet love, dearer than the light to your sister's eye, are you to pine and grieve in loneliness through life's long spring, nor know aught of a mother's joy in her children, nor of the prizes Venus gives ? Think you that dead ashes and ghosts low in the grave take this to heart? Grant that no husbands have touched your bleeding heart in times gone by, none now in Libya, none before in Tyre; yes, Iarbas has been slighted, and the other chieftains whom Afric, rich in triumphs, rears as its own — will you fight against a wel come, no less than an unwelcome, passion ? Nor does it cross your mind in whose territories you are settled ? On one side the cities of the Gaetulians, a race invincible in war, and the Numidians environ you, unbridled as their steeds, and the inhospitable Syrtis ; on another, a region unpeopled by drought, and the widespread barbarism of the nation of Barce. What need to talk of the war cloud threatening from Tyre, and the menaces of our brother? It is under Heaven's auspices, I deem, and by Juno's blessing, that the vessels of Ilion have made this voyage hither. What a city, my sister, will ours become before your eyes ! what an empire will grow out of a marriage like this! With the arms of the Teucrians at its back, to what a height will the glory of Carthage soar ! Only be it yours to implore the favor of Heaven, and having won its acceptance, give free course to hospitality and weave a chain of pleas for delay, while the tempest is raging its full on the sea, and Orion, the star of rain, while his ships are still bat tered, and the rigor of the sky still unyielding. " By these words she added fresh fuel to the fire of love, gave confidence to her wavering mind, and loosed the ties of woman's honor.
First they approach the temples and inquire for pardon from altar to altar; duly they slaughter chosen sheep to Ceres the lawgiver, to Phoebus, and to father Lyaeus — above all to Juno, who makes marriage bonds her care. Dido herself, in all her beauty, takes a goblet in her hand, and pours it out full between the horns of a heifer of gleaming white, or moves majestic in the presence of the gods towards the richly laden altars, and solemnizes the day with offerings, and gazing greedily on the victims' opened breasts, consults the entrails yet quivering with life. Alas ! how blind are the eyes of seers ! What can
QUEEN DIDO'S LOVE AND FATE. 79
vows, what can temples do for the madness of love ? All the while a flame is preying on the very marrow of her bones, and deep in her breast a wound keeps noiselessly alive. She is on fire, the ill-fated Dido, and in her madness ranges the whole city through, like a doe from an arrow shot, whom, unguarded in the thick of the Cretan woods, a shepherd, chasing her with his darts, has pierced from a distance, and left the flying steel in the wound, unknowing of his prize ; she at full speed scours the forests and lawns of Dicte ; the deadly reed still sticks in her side. Now she leads JSneas with her through the heart of the town, and displays the wealth of Sidon, and the city built to dwell in. She begins to speak, and stops midway in the utterance. Now, as the day fades, she seeks again the banquet of yesterday, and once more in frenzy asks to hear of the agonies of Troy, and hangs once more on his lips as he tells the tale. Afterwards, when the guests are gone, and the dim moon in turn is hiding her light, and the setting stars invite to slumber, alone she mourns in the empty hall, and presses the couch he has just left ; him far away she sees and hears, herself far away ; or holds Ascanius long in her lap, spellbound by his father's image, to cheat, if she can, her ungovernable passion. The towers that were rising rise no longer ; the youth cease to prac tice arms, or to make ready havens and bulwarks for safety in war ; the works are broken and suspended, the giant frowning of the walls, and the engine level with the sky.
******
Meantime the sky begins to be convulsed with a mighty
turmoil ; a stormcloud follows of mingled rain and hail. Tyrian train, all in confusion, and the chivalry of Troy, and the hope of Dardania, Venus' grandson, have sought shelter in their terror up and down the country, some here, some there. The streams run in torrents down the hills. Dido and the Trojan chief find themselves in the same cave. Earth, the mother of all, and Juno give the sign.
Lightnings blaze, and heaven flashes in sympathy with the bridal ; and from mountain tops the nymphs give the nuptial shout. That day was the birthday of death, the birthday of woe. Henceforth she has no thought for the common eye, or the common tongue ; it is not a stolen passion that Dido has now in her mind — no, she calls it marriage ; that name is the screen of her sin.
The
80 QUEEN DIDO'S LOVE AND FATE.
[Jove commands Mercury to visit iEneas and bear him the divine injunction, according to the decree of the Fates, to leave Carthage and fulfill his destiny — of founding through his descendants the great city in Latium. ]
tEneas deserts his Queen.
Soon as his winged feet alit among the huts of Carthage, he sees -5£neas founding towers and making houses new. A sword was at his side, starred with yellow jaspers, and a mantle drooped from his shoulders, ablaze with Tyrian purple — a costly gift which Dido had made, varying the web with threads of gold. Instantly he assails him: "And are you at a time like this laying the foundations of stately Carthage, and build ing, like a fond husband, your wife's goodly city, forgetting, alas ! your own kingdom and the cares that should be yours? It is no less than the ruler of the gods who sends me down to you from his bright Olympus — he whose nod sways heaven and earth; it is he that bids me carry his commands through the flying air. What are you building ? what do you look to in squandering your leisure in Libyan land ? If you are fired by no spark of ambition for the greatness in your view, and will not rear a toilsome fabric for your own praise, think of Ascanius rising into youth, think of lulus, your heir and your hope, to whom you owe the crown of Italy and the realm of Rome. " With these words Cyllene's god quitted mortal sight ere he had well ceased to speak, and vanished away from the eye into unsubstantial air.
The sight left . <Eneas dumb and aghast indeed ; his hair stood shudderingly erect; his speech clave to his throat. He burns to take flight and leave the land of pleasure, as his ears ring with the thunder of Heaven's imperious warning. What — ah ! what is he to do? with what address can he now dare to ap proach the impassioned queen? what first advances can he employ ? And thus he dispatches his rapid thought hither and thither, hurrying it east and west, and sweeping every corner of the field. So balancing, at last he thought this judgment the best. He calls Mnestheus and Sergestus and brave Seres- tus ; bids them quietly get ready the fleet, muster the crews on the shore, with their arms in their hands, hiding the reason for so sudden a change. Meantime he, while Dido, kindest of friends, is in ignorance, deeming love's chain too strong to be snapped, will feel his way, and find what are the happiest
QUEEN DIDO'S LOVE AND FATE. 81
moments for speech, what the right hold to take of circum stance. At once all gladly obey his command, and are busy on the tasks enjoined.
But the queen (who can cheat a lover's senses ? ) scented the plot, and caught the first sound of the coming stir, alive to fear in the midst of safety. Fame, as before, the same baleful fiend, whispered in her frenzied ear that the fleet was being equipped and the voyage got ready. She storms in impotence of soul, and, all on fire, goes raving through the city, like a Maenad starting up at the rattle of the sacred emblems, when the tri ennial orgies lash her with the cry of Bacchus, and Cithaeron's yell calls her into the night. At length she thus bespeaks j3£neas, unaddressed by him : —
" To hide, yes, hide your enormous crime, perfidious wretch, did you hope that might be done — to steal away in silence from my realm? Has our love no power to keep you ? has our troth, once plighted, none, nor she whom you doom to a cruel death, your Dido ? Nay, are you fitting out your fleet with winter's sky overhead, and hastening to cross the deep in the face of all the northern winds, hard-hearted as you are? Why, suppose you were not seeking a strange clime and a home you know not — suppose old Troy were still standing — would even Troy draw you to seek her across a billowy sea ?