No More Learning

Eonsard and "the pleiads" make their attempt at a literary renovation. At the same time the air was thick with pamphlets and satires, of which the most important was the Satire mdnippée; a political pamphlet, a comedy, and a piece of great policy all in one. Of memoirs there was a long train; after those of the Chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, written by his Loyal serviteur, came the Commentaires of that violent Catholic, Blaise de Montluc, the book which Henry IV called " The Soldier's Bible " ; the memoirs of La Noue, of Coligny, of Brantome, of Marguerite de Valois, the first wife of Henry IV. , the Mat de la France sous Francois II, by Begnier de la Planche, the Histoire universelle and the Mémoires of d'Aubigny, the Journal of Pierre de l'Estoile, the Histoire of Jacques Auguste de Thou, and many more.
The French language had at this time already attained such definiteness of form and such richness of expression that foreigners recognised its beauty. Charles-Quint declared that it was the State language of Europe, and later, at the conference of Nimegue, all the powers drew up their international treaties in French.
Malherbe, with whom the seventeenth century commences, played an important part in the reformation of the language Diction was, to him, almost a religion, and the severity of his precepts earned for him the title of the Tyrant of Words and Syllables. His great merit is that he both regulated and enforced upon his contemporaries the principles of French poetry. Mathurin Kegnier, in his satires, excelled in the description of the men and the customs of his day. The picture he draws of
FRENCH LITERATURE
Macette, the aged hypocrite, is a masterpiece. Racan celebrated the charms of rural life. Voiture shines in his fugitive verses, and among the wits of the ruelles, Balzac and Benserade appear in the first rank by Voiture's side. The Hotel de Rambouillet was the first literary institution regularly organised in France, and Cardinal Eichelieu procured the issue of the letters patent which created the French Academy. Pierre Corneille revolutionised the French drama. With the Cid he established French tragic style, with the Menteur, the French of comedy. His Horace is full of vigour and originality, and Cinna is an accepted masterpiece. Descartes's Discours sur la Méthode and his Méditations are marvels of style. Menage, and Vaugelas in his Pemarques sur la Langue francaise, helped to perfect the language. La Rochefoucauld, for his part, did much to form the national taste, and give to it the necessary accuracy and perception and soundness of judgment, by the influence of his Maximes and inflexions Morales. La Bruyere enunciated no new truths in his Caracteres, but he draws his portraits with such vigour, concision, and originality of style,
that it is impossible to forget anything of his that one has read. Pascal published his Provinciales, models of eloquence, and his Pensées, of incomparable philosophic power. Cyrano de Bergerac showed a brilliant wit, a wealth of comedy ; and Scarron, the most malicious of critics, originated the burlesque. Boileau's writings are marked by good sense, taste, and evenness ; and in his Satires we perceive his critical power; while his Art Poétique, which earned for him the title of the " Lawgiver of Parnassus," contains a whole code of literature. In his Lutrin he attains perfection in the poetic art. Moliere is inimitable : a profound observer, a great moralist, an incomparable writer. He is the most exact of all painters of human life; he depicts the human character and human passions in comedies of the most vivid, forcible, nervous
and richly coloured style. The Misanthrope, Tartufe, Les Femmes savantes, L'Avare, Les Precieuses ridicules are among the gems of his brilliant and varied product. Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Ketz, was the historian of the Fronde, and St. Simon wrote his Mémoires, which were not printed until 1820. Jean de la Fontaine
FRENCH LITERATURE
" the flower of French wit, endowed with the perfume of antiquity," as GWruzez called him, is the simplest and the least pretentious of our poets. Free as are his Contes et nouvelles, they never offend the taste, for the author's finesse and delicacy never deserted him. His Fables are life itself, they are original and imperishable. Madame de la Fayette in the Princesse de Cleves, gave a new form to fiction, while her friend, Madame de Sévigné, was writing her Lettres, that magnificent model of the epistolary art in which the customs and the personages of the seventeenth century are mirrored. Jean Racine held undisputed sway over the stage, and his trage dies: Andromaque, Britannicus^ Bérénice, Mithridate, Esther, Phedre, Athalie, as well as his comedy, the Plaideurs, reached a standard which it will not be easy for human genius to surpass. The Gallic church is not without its literary glories. Bossuet left his masterpieces of style and of eloquence, such as his Discours sur l'Hisloire universelle and his Oraisons funebres. Bourdaloue raises himself to the first rank by his Sermons. Father Male- branche, at once a metaphysician and a moralist, published his Recherche de la Verite". Fleshier delivered his Oraison funebre de
Turenne. Fenelon coupled his name with the TraiU de Educa tion des files, the Dialogues des Marts, T&emaque, and finally, Massillon had no rival to fear when he wrote his Petit Caréme.
The eighteenth century was dominated, one might almost say that it is represented, by one towering genius. To Voltaire every form of literary activity seemed easy — history, criticism, drama, philosophy; and he shone in every one of them. His Sistoire de Charles XII is a model, his light verses are vastly superior to those of his contemporaries, and his plays, CEdipe, Brutus, Zaire, Alzire, M&rope, Mahomet, Sémiramis and Tancrede are powerful, animated, affecting, and overflowing with eloquence. Marmontel and La Harpe, disciples of Voltaire, are little reflections of their master's power. Jean Baptiste Rousseau is noteworthy for the melody and the rhythm of his verse. Gresset wrote the Méchant ; Piron, the Métromanie. Le Sage, who portrays human weaknesses in the Diable boiteux, gives us the type of the character study in Gil Bias. Louis Racine wrote the Mémoires in which he
xxxii
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retraces his father's life. Rollin published his Histoire ancienne. Bernardin de St- Pierre produced a masterpiece in his simple and poetic romance, Paul et Virginie. Montesquieu signed his immortal pages of elevated philosophy, the Lettres persanes, L'Esprit des Lois, and the Considérations sur les Causes de la Grandeur et de la Decadence des Romains. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, by his theory of philosophy, indicates to us the approach of the French Revolu tion. His Emile is a declaration of the rights of childhood, and an incitement to the domestic virtues ; while the Contrat social takes its departure from the principle that "all men are born equal. " The most vivid passion glows in the pages of the Nouvelle Hdoise and the Confessions yield a true impression of the writer's genius. Caron de Beaumarchais gave the Barbier de Seville to the French stage, and after the famous trial he printed his Mémoires judiciaires, a work characterised by eloquence, wit, spirit, and sound sense. Buffon devoted his imaginative pen to the analysis of nature. The description of which his Histoire naturelle is composed, are not only vivid pictures, but noble and pure in style as well, worthy of the writer who said, when he was received into the Academy, that " the style is the very essence of the man. " Diderot, one of the most powerful intellects of his age, conceived, and successfully executed, the immense task of the Encyclopédie, with the collabora tion of the philosophers Condillac, Helvétius, and d'Hollach. D'Alembert wrote for the same work his beautiful Diseours pré- liminaire which serves as its preface and its outline. The Abbe" Prevost, a true historian of passion, left us Manon Lescaut. And now the century was nearly at an end. It seemed as if the storm of the Bevolution must silence all literary effort. Yet this was not the case. At the moment when war was declared against Austria, Rouget de Lisle asserted himself, improvised his magnifi cent Chant de Guerre de l'Armée du Rhin, which, better known under the title of the Marseillaise, was to make the tour of Europe and at last become the national hymn of France.
The nineteenth century possessed, at its very dawn, two great writers. The Baroness Stael-Holstein, the daughter of Necker, and yet the type of French wit, displayed all her sensibility in
FRENCH LITERATURE xxxiii
Delphine, and glorified both Italy and the modern world of femininity in Corinne. Chateaubriand manifested every possible grace of style in the Génie du Christianisme, and excited the admiration of his contemporaries in Atala, R&né, the Martyrs and
the Dernier des Abencerages. Under the Empire, Jacques Delille, the elegant translator of the Georgics, was the master of the descriptive school of poetry. Then came Brillat-Savarin to show, in his Physiologie du Gout, that literary art may render attractive even a treatise on gastronomy. Henri Beyle, under the pseudonym of Stendhal, gave play to all his originality in Rouge et Noir. Publicists and statesmen were nobly represented in the person of Alexis de Tocqueville, whose learning and talent one cannot but admire in the Systtme pénitentiaire aux Etats-Unis, and in the Démocratie en Amérique. Paul Louis Courier made the pamphlet his speciality, and his Pamphlet des Pamphlets is regarded as the model of this form of literature. Barthdldmy, at once a poet and a politician, in his famous rimed newspaper, Ntmesis, held up the government of Louis Philippe. Beranger, whose ambition it was " to be nobody," selected for his vehicle the chanson to which he gave a new form. He sang of the Fatherland, of the people, of liberty, and he covered the old regime with ridicule. Honore" de Balzac, " the Colossus of Literature," as his enthusiasts called him, showed his qualities as a great writer of fiction in the Peau de Chagrin. A materialist, imbued with ideas which absolutely mastered him, a story-teller full of spirit and imagination, he constitutes himself the historian of the customs of the society he so brilliantly depicts in Eugénie Grandet, Une femme de 30 ans, Physiologie du Mariage, the Recherche de I'Absolu, the Mtdecin de Campagne and other works. Another towering figure is that of Lamartine, one of the most illustrious of French poets, who first moved us with Graziella and Raphael, narratives of his youthful
Then came poems of penetrating sadness, the Méditations, and to them in turn succeeded the Harmonies pottiques et religieuses, in which the author reaches the loftiest regions of the ideal. His Voyage en Orient abounds in rich
descriptions, and the Histoire des Girondins, which had a re- vol. v. —3
intrigues.
xxxiv FRENCH LITERATURE
Bounding success, was a true historic poem. Aurore Dupin, Baroness Du Devant, hid her name under the pseudonym of " George Sand," while she displayed all the splendour and precision of style in the Mare au Diable, Francois Champi, and the Petite Fadette, rural romances which have been called the Georgics of French literature. In the course of an Italian voyage she quarrelled with Alfred de Musset, a sentimental poet who displayed the enthusiasms and the defects of youth. Vigour, passion, grace, melody —Musset had all these gifts ; and gave profusely of his wealth in such works as Contes d'Espagne, the Coupe et les Ltores; A quoi rSvent lesjeunes Filles ; Rolla ; and the Nuits. His emotion seizes all hearts, penetrates all souls. Eugene Sue " gave French fiction to the hazard of the open sea," as Sainte-Beuve said, but he soon abandoned the nautical novel, and tried to portray society in its true colours. The interpreter of the aspirations which moved his generation, he threw himself into the search for political, philosophical, and social truths, in his Mysteres de Paris, and his Juif errant, romances which won for him a wide popularity and a great influence over the opinions and the literature of his time. Another novelist was Frederic Soulié, the author of the Mémoires du Diable, and of the Closerie des Genets. A past master in the study of character, and in the art of gaining broad effects, he was a truly creative writer, and never releases his reader until the emotions have been played upon to the point of saturation. The romances of E. Souvestre were, on the other hand, distinguished by close adherence to nature, kindly wit, and genial philosophy. Prosper Mérimée showed himself an incomparable story-teller in his Chronique du Temps de Charles IX, where he brings upon the scene the customs and the passions of his day, and in his Colomba that striking picture of a Corsican vendetta. Sainte-Beuve takes his place in the first rank of contemporary critics by his Causeries, his Lundis, and his Nouveaux Lundis, in which he lavishes his subtle analysis, his wit, and his good taste. Laboulaye was not content to show himself an erudite publicist and jurisconsult in his Histoire du droit de PropriéU fonciere en Occident, in the Pecherches sur la Condition civile et politique des Femmes depuis les
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Bomains jusqu'a nos jours, or in the Histoire des State-Unit d'Ame'rique, he showed also that he could wield the satirist's pen in such romances as Paris en Amérique, and the Prince Caniche. Flaubert in Salammbd restored to life the civilisation of ancient Carthage, and his minute observation of life in Madame Bovary opened new horizons to French fiction. Taine shines as a philosopher and as a writer in the Histoire de la Littlrature anglaise, while Eenan, in the Vie de Jésus, the Origines du Christianisme, and similar studies, gives us a prose endowed with a poetic wealth altogether his own. Political economy was not neglected ; since it was honoured by the works of Lanfrey, the earnest defender of reason and of freedom, in the Eglise et la Philosophie du 18* siècle, the sturdy opponent of Catholicism in the Histoire politique des Papes, of Socialism in the Lettres cFEverard, and of Caesarism in the Histoire de Napoléon I, his greatest work. The Fleurs du Mai of Baudelaire are poems of love, at once mystical and licentious. Theodore de Banville gave us exquisitely chiselled verses, full of elaboration, imagery, and colour, in his Odes, his Nouvelles Odes funambulesques, and his Trente- six Ballades joyeuses ; and formulated a new code of poetic laws in his Petit Traits' de la poesie francaise. As for Th^ophile Gautier, at once a critic and a creator, who adds to his rich vocabulary the special study of style and form, his work is of immense importance. The Manages de Paris, De Pontoise a Stamboul, the Roman d'un brave Homme, are all beautiful specimens of the clear and witty style which earned for Edmond About the nickname of " Voltaire's grandson. " Alexandre Dumas, the elder, possessed at once a vivid imagination and an incredible facility of production; gifts abundantly displayed in both his novels and his plays. Who has not read the Collier de la Reine, the Trois Mousquetaires, and the Comte de Monte-Cristo ? Dumas, the younger, follows in his father's footsteps. He, too, wrote both plays and novels. L'affaire Clémenceau, the Dame aux Gamélias, the Demi-monde, the Fils naturel, reveal him as a writer, a thinker, and a moralist. Grace is the marked characteristic of both the plays and the novels of Octave Feuillet. The Comte de Gobineau, who left one
xxx vi FRENCH LITERATURE
great poem unfinished, Amadis, is a scholar as well as a poet. He undertook, in his Religions et les Philosophies dans VAsie centrale, to make known the history and the doctrines of Persian cults ; he displays his profound erudition in his Histoire des Perses d'après les Auteurs orientaux, grecs et latins, and his Essai sur I'Inégalité des Paces humaines was the starting-point of a new school of chronology. Victor Hugo reformed French poetry, found new virility hy saturating his vocabulary with the wealth of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He is the great master of the Komantic School, which he substituted for the Classic School. Whether he dealt with political, religious, social, or artistic matters, whether he wrote fiction, drama, or verse, he is at home in every department of literary activity, everywhere a master. Exiled by the events of the 2nd December 1851, he took refuge first in Jersey and later in Guernsey. There, face to face with the waves, he seems to have found inspiration in the storms, in the grandeur of the sea. In that environment he wrote two pamphlets, Napoléon le Petit and the Chdtiments, which are at once histories and poems of the highest rank. Later, he wrote the Légende des Siecles, a series of epopees and marvellous fancies in which he brings back to life the extinct civilisations of twenty centuries. Notre-Dame
de Paris, gives us again the Paris of the Middle Ages, while the Misérables is a moving tale based upon an erudite historical conception. Hugo sought for the most striking antitheses, evoking the paroxysms of love and of fear. Nothing is too lofty for his imagination, characterised as it is by the most sublime grandeur. Benan well said that Hugo, " like a Cyclops still half buried in the earth, possesses the secrets of a lost world. His tremendous writings reflect, as in a mirage, a universe which no other eye but his can still see. " Yet he could leave these regions of the super natural and the fantastic, and the Art d'Stre Grand-pere shows that he can commune, as no one else could, with the pure soul of a child. The fanciful verses, entitled the Prunes, which Alphonse Daudet included in his volume of Amoureuses, first drew attention to the author whom the Ndbad, Kuma Roumestan, and other successful works soon placed among the list of contemporary
FRENCH LITERATURE xxxvii
novelists. The Vers of Guy de Maupassant are the work of a writer of humorous tales, and the poet-musician Verlaine finds new rhythms in Sagesse and the Romans sans paroles, while the fertile pen of Claretie produces novels, plays, and columns of
journalism. Erckmann-Chatrian are two authors whose unbroken association has merged into a single personality, and who achieved great popularity by their Romans nationaux. Another novelist, Jules Verne, gifted with a vivid imagination and a ready wit, breaks away from the old traditions of the fairy-tale, and finds a new world of marvels, based upon the latest scientific and geo graphical researches. Cinq Semaines en Ballon, the first story of this sort, was soon followed by the Désert de Glace, Vingt mille Lieues sous les Mers, the Voyage autour du Monde en 80 jours, all of which won unbounded popularity. Louis Viaud, a writer of great talent, signs the pseudonym of Pierre Loti to Madame Chrysanthlme, Mon frere Yves, and the Pécheur d'Islande, all charming books. Theuriet is at once a novelist and a poet. Exquisite in Raymonde, touching in the Filleul d'un Marquis, psychological in Sauvageonne, he shows his love for nature in the Journal de Tristan, and his keen analysis in Michel Verneuil. Thibault, who writes under the name of " Anatole France," has published some fine verses, the Poèmes dorés, and he takes his place among the delicate writers of short stories in his Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard. Catulle Mendes has written some beautiful verse ; his Soleil de Minuit, the Soirs moroses; and some brilliant fiction, too. At the head of the Realistic School stands Emile Zola, who, in Thérlse Raquin, Rougon Macquart, La Terre, and other novels depicts everything he sees, without recoiling from the least important detail, however brutal it may be. These powerful studies are written in a rich and vigorous style, and they exercise a considerable influence upon contemporary fiction. Paul Bourget shows originality and psycho logical insight in Cruelle Enigme, l'Irreparable, and Un Crime a"Amour, while Sully-Prudhomme gives his thoughts masterly expression in Justice, Vaines Tendresses, and Le Bonheur. The poetic idiom of Southern France was restored to life by the Provencal poet, Mistral, whose grand rustic epopee Mireille, and
xxxviii FRENCH LITERATURE
whose Calendan, too, enjoyed an immediate success ; while Fran- qois Coppee, an observer of nature and of the life about him, gives us a picture of delightful and familiar scenes in the Intimités, Les Humbles, and La Grcve des Forgerons. Criticism has its shining lights in the person of J. Lemaitre with his Contemporains, and Brunetiere, who displays his learning in Racine, Diderot, Le Roman Naturaliste, Histoire et Litte'rature. Nor must we forget that history has recently been enriched by such important works as Guizot's L'Histoire raconUe d mes petits Enfants ; Le Consulat et l' Empire by Thiers; Louis Blanc's L' Histoire de la Révolution francaise ; and Michelet's L'Histoire de France, as well as a mass of
monographs, memoirs, and volumes of letters and of recollections. On the whole, the nineteenth century haj produced a great variety of important works. It is not possible to sum up in one word their general character, but some general observations suggest themselves. The first is that romance and the naturalistic school
occupy an important place in the literature of our time ; and the second is, that as we approach the close of the century, indivi duality of product tends more and more to replace the system by which the writers of an earlier day grouped themselves in schools. It becomes evident, too, that the seeking for the exact word, and for the " document " is accompanied on all sides by a scrupulous study of form, which has never been more sedulously cultivated. Erudition appears hand in hand with fancy, and criticism exercises more and more its sapient influence.
Paris, March 1899.
SalammbO
From the Statue in the Louvre
salammbo and her lover. By GUSTAVE FLAUBERT.
[Gustave Flaubebt, leading French novelist, noted for minute "real- tern" and highly elaborated style, was born at Rouen, December 12, 1821 ; died May 8, 1880. His first two novels, " Madame Bovary " and "The Temptation of St. Anthony," were published serially in 1857 ; he was prosecuted for immor ality on account of the former, but acquitted. " SalammbO " (scene laid about b. c. 240) appeared in 1862, after a visit to the site of ancient Carthage ; " Senti mental Education, a Young Man's Romance," In 1869 ; " Three Tales " in 1877. He wrote also unsuccessful plays. Posthumously were published "Bouvard and Pecuchet," "Letters to George Sand," and others. ]
MXTHO was bound on the elephant's back, his four limbs crosswise, and all the unwounded escorted him, hurrying with a great commotion back to Carthage.
The water-clock of Khamoun marked the fifth hour of the night when they reached Malqua. Here Matho reopened his eyes. There were such vast numbers of lights on the houses that the city seemed to be all in flames.
A mighty clamor came confusedly to him, and lying on his back he gazed at the stars. Then a door closed upon him, and darkness enveloped him. . . . —
There were rejoicings at Carthage rejoicings deep, uni versal, extravagant, frantic ; the holes of the ruins had been stopped up, the statues of the Gods had been repainted, the streets were strewn with myrtle branches, incense smoked at the corners of the crossways, and the throng on the terraces looked, in their variagated garments, like heaps of flowers blooming in the air.
The people accosted one another, and embraced one an other with tears ; — the Tyrian towns were taken, the Nomads dispersed, and all the Barbarians annihilated. The Acropolis
89
40 salammbO and her lover.
was hidden beneath colored velaria; the beaks of the triremes, drawn up in line outside the mole, shone like a dike of dia monds; everywhere there was a sense of the restoration of order, the beginning of a new existence, and the diffusion of vast happiness: it was the day of Salammbd's marriage with the king of the Numidians.
On the terrace of the temple of Khamon there were three long tables laden with gigantic plates, at which the Priests, Ancients, and Rich were going to sit, and there was a fourth and higher one for Hamilcar, Narr' Havas, and Salammbo" ; for as she had saved her country by the restoration of the zaimph, the people turned her wedding into a national rejoicing, and were waiting in the square below till she should appear.
But their impatience was excited by another and more acrid longing: Matho's death had been promised for the ceremony.
It had been proposed at first to flay him alive, to pour lead into his entrails, to kill him with hunger; he should be tied to a tree, and an ape behind him should strike him on the head with a stone; he had offended Tanith, and the cynocephaluses of Tanith should avenge her. Others were of opinion that he should be led about on a dromedary after linen wicks, dipped in oil, had been inserted in his body in several places — and they took pleasure in the thought of the large animal wander ing through the streets with this man writhing beneath the fires like a candelabrum blown about by the wind.
But what citizens should be charged with his torture, and why disappoint the rest? They would have liked a kind of death in which the whole town might take part, in which every hand, every weapon, everything Carthaginian, to the very paving stones in the streets and the waves in the gulf, could rend him, and crush him, and annihilate him. Accord ingly the Ancients decided that he should go from his prison to the square of Khamon without any escort, and with his arms fastened to his back ; it was forbidden to strike him to the heart, in order that he might live the longer ; to put out his eyes, so that he might see his torture through ; to hurl anything against his person, or to lay more than three fingers upon him at a time.
Although he was not to appear until the end of the day, the people sometimes fancied that he could be seen, and the crowd would rush toward the Acropolis, and empty the streets, to return with lengthened murmurings. Some people had re mained standing in the same place since the day before, and
SALAMMBO AND HER LOVER
41
they would call on one another from a distance and show their nails, which they had allowed to grow, the better to bury them in his flesh. Others walked restlessly up and down; some were as pale as though they were awaiting their own execution.
Suddenly lofty feather fans rose above the heads, behind the Mappalian district. It was Salammbo" leaving her palace; a sigh of relief found vent.
But the procession was long in coming; it marched with deliberation.
First there filed past the priests of the Pataec Gods, then those of Eschmoun, of Melkarth, and all the other colleges in succession, with the same insignia, and in the same order as had been observed at the time of the sacrifice. The pontiffs of Moloch passed with heads bent, and the multitude stood aside from them in a kind of remorse. But the priests of Rabbetna advanced with a proud step, and with lyres in their hands ; the
followed them in transparent robes of yellow or black, uttering cries like birds and writhing like vipers, or else whirling round to the sound of flutes to imitate the dance of the stars, while their light garments wafted puffs of delicate scents through the streets.
The Kedeschim, with painted eyelids, who symbolized the hermaphroditism of the Divinity, received applause among these women, and, being perfumed and dressed like them, they re sembled them in spite of their flat breasts and narrower hips. Moreover, on this day the female principle dominated and con fused all things ; a mystic lasciviousness moved in the heavy air; the torches were already lighted in the depths of the sacred woods; there was to be a great prostitution there during the night; three vessels had brought courtesans from Sicily, and others had come from the desert.
As the colleges arrived they ranged themselves in the courts of the temples, on the outer galleries, and along double stair cases which rose against the walls, and drew together at the top. Files of white robes appeared between the colonnades, and the architecture was peopled with human statues, motion less as statues of stone.
Then came the masters of the exchequer, the governors of the provinces, and all the Rich. A great tumult prevailed below. Adjacent streets were discharging the crowd, hier- odules were driving it back with blows of sticks; and then SalammbQ appeared in a litter surmounted by a purple canopy,
priestesses
43 SALAMMB6 and her lover.
and surrounded by the Ancients crowned with their golden tiaras.
Thereupon an immense shout arose ; the cymbals and crotala sounded more loudly, the tambourines thundered, and the great purple canopy sank between the two pylons.
It appeared again on the first landing. Salammbfi was walking slowly beneath it ; then she crossed the terrace to take her seat behind on a kind of throne cut out of the carapace of a tortoise. An ivory stool with three steps was pushed beneath her feet ; two negro children knelt on the edge of the first step, and sometimes she would rest both arms, which were laden with rings of excessive weight, upon their heads.
From ankle to hip she was covered with a network of narrow meshes which were in imitation of fish scales, and shone like mother-of-pearl ; her waist was clasped by a blue zone, which allowed her breasts to be seen through two crescent-shaped slashings; the nipples were hidden by carbuncle pendants. She had a headdress made of peacock's feathers studded with gems ; an ample cloak, as white as snow, fell behind her — and with her elbows at her sides, her knees pressed together, and circles of diamonds on the upper part of her arms, she remained perfectly upright in a hieratic attitude.
Her father and her husband were on two lower seats, Narr' Havas dressed in a light simar and wearing his crown of rock salt, from which there strayed two tresses of hair as twisted as the horns of Ammon ; and Hamilcar in a violet tunic figured with gold vine branches, and with a battle sword at his side.
The python of the temple of Eschmoun lay on the ground amid pools of pink oil in the space inclosed by the tables, and, biting its tail, described a large, black circle. In the middle of the circle there was a copper pillar bearing a crystal egg; and, as the sun shone upon it, rays were emitted on every side.
Behind SalammbS, stretched the priests of Tanith in linen robes ; on her right the Ancients, in their tiaras, formed a great gold line, and on the other side the Rich, with their emerald scepters, a great green line — while quite in the background, where the priests of Moloch were ranged, the cloaks looked like a wall of purple. The other colleges occupied the lower ter races. The multitude obstructed the streets. It reached to the house tops, and extended in long files to the summit of the Acropolis. Having thus the people at her feet, the firmament above her head, and around her the immensity of the sea, the
SALAMMB6 AND HER LOVER. 43
gulf, the mountains, and the distant provinces, SalammbS in her splendor was blended with Tanith, and seemed the very Genius of Carthage, and its embodied soul.
The feast was to last all night, and lamps with several branches were planted like trees on the painted woolen cloths which covered the low tables. Large electrum flagons, blue glass amphoras, tortoise-shell spoons, and small round loaves were crowded between the double row of pearl-bordered plates ; bunches of grapes with their leaves had been rolled round ivory vine stocks after the fashion of the thyrsus ; blocks of snow were melting on ebony trays, and lemons, pomegranates, gourds, and watermelons formed hillocks beneath the lofty silver plate; boars with open jaws were wallowing in the dust of spices; hares, covered with their fur, appeared to be bounding amid the flowers; there were shells filled with forcemeat ; the pastry had symbolic shapes ; when the covers of the dishes were re moved doves flew out.
The slaves, meanwhile, with tunics tucked up, were going about on tiptoe; from time to time a hymn sounded on the lyres, or a choir of voices rose. The clamor of the people, con tinuous as the noise of the sea, floated vaguely around the feast, and seemed to lull it in a broader harmony; some recalled the banquet of the Mercenaries ; they gave themselves up to dreams of happiness; the sun was beginning to go down, and the crescent of the moon was already rising in another part of the sky.
But SalammbS turned her head as though some one had called her; the people, who were watching her, followed the direction of her eyes.
The door of the dungeon, hewn in the rock at the foot of the temple, on the summit of the Acropolis, had just opened ; and a man was standing on the threshold of this black hole.
He came forth bent double, with the scared look of fallow deer when suddenly enlarged.
The light dazzled him, he stood motionless awhile. All had recognized him and they held their breath.
In their eyes the body of this victim was something pecul iarly theirs, and was adorned with almost religious splendor. They bent forward to see him, especially the women. They burned to gaze upon him who had caused the deaths of their children and husbands; and from the bottom of their souls there sprang up in spite of themselves an infamous curiosity,
44 salammbO and her lover.
a desire to know him completely, a wish mingled with remorse which turned to increased execration.
At last he advanced ; then the stupefaction of surprise dis appeared. Numbers of arms were raised, and he was lost to sight.
The staircase of the Acropolis had sixty steps. He de scended them as though he were rolled down in a torrent from the top of a mountain; three times he was seen to leap, and then he alighted below on his feet.
His shoulders were bleeding, his breast was panting with great shocks ; and he made such efforts to burst his bonds that his arms, which were crossed on his naked loins, swelled like pieces of a serpent.
Several streets began in front of him, leading from the spot at which he found himself. In each of them a triple row of bronze chains fastened to the navels of the Pataec Gods ex tended in parallel lines from one end to the other ; the crowd was massed against the houses, and servants, belonging to the Ancients, walked in the middle brandishing thongs.
One of them drove him forward with a great blow ; Matho began to move.
They thrust their arms over the chains, shouting out that the road had been left too wide for him ; and he passed along, felt, pricked, and slashed by all those fingers ; when he reached the end of one street another appeared ; several times he flung himself to one side to bite them; they speedily dispersed, the chains held him back, and the crowd burst out laughing.
A child rent his ear; a young girl, hiding the point of a spindle in her sleeve, split his cheek; they tore handfuls of hair from him and strips of flesh; others smeared his face with sponges steeped in filth and fastened upon sticks. A stream of blood started from the right side of his neck; frenzy imme diately set in. This last Barbarian was to them a representa tive of all the Barbarians, and all the army ; they were taking vengeance on him for their disasters, their terrors, and their shame. The rage of the mob developed with its gratification ; the curving chains were overstrained, and were on the point of breaking ; the people did not feel the blows of the slaves who struck at them to drive them back ; some clung to the projec tions of the houses ; all the openings in the walls were stopped up with heads ; and they howled at him the mischief that they could not inflict upon him.
SALAMMBO" and her lover. 46
It was atrocious, filthy abuse, mingled with ironical encour agements and with imprecations ; and, his present tortures not being enough for them, they foretold to him others that should be still more terrible in eternity.
This vast baying filled Carthage with stupid continuity. Frequently a single syllable — a hoarse, deep, and frantic in tonation — would be repeated for several minutes by the entire people. The walls would vibrate with it from top to bottom, and both sides of the street would seem to Matho to be coming against him, and carrying him off the ground, like two immense arms stifling him in the air.
Nevertheless he remembered that he had experienced some thing like it before. The same crowd was on the terraces, there were the same looks and the same wrath; but then he had walked free, all had then dispersed, for a God covered him — and the recollection of this, gaining precision by degrees, brought a crushing sadness upon him. Shadows passed before his eyes ; the town whirled round in his head, his blood streamed from a wound in his hip, he felt that he was dying; his hams bent, and he sank quite gently upon the pavement.
Some one went to the peristyle of the temple of Melkarth, took thence the bar of a tripod, heated red hot in the coals, and, slipping it beneath the first chain, pressed it against his wound. The flesh was seen to smoke; the hootings of the people drowned his voice; he was standing again.
Six paces further on, and he fell a third and again a fourth time ; but some new torture always made him rise. They dis charged little drops of boiling oil through tubes at him ; they strewed pieces of broken glass beneath his feet; still he walked on. At the corner of the street of Satheb he leaned his back against the wall beneath the penthouse of a shop, and advanced no further.
The slaves of the Council struck him with their whips of hippopotamus leather, so furiously and long that the fringes of their tunics were drenched with sweat. Matho appeared in sensible ; suddenly he started off and began to run at random, making noise with his lips like one shivering with severe cold. He threaded the streets of Boudes, and the street of Sœpo, crossed the Green Market, and reached the square of Khamon.
He now belonged to the priests ; the slaves had just dis persed the crowd, and there was more room. Matho gazed round him and his eyes encountered SalammbO.
46 salammbG and her lover.
At the first step that he had taken she had risen ; then, as he approached, she had involuntarily advanced by degrees to the edge of the terrace; and soon all external things were blotted out, and she saw only Matho. Silence fell in her soul — one of those abysses wherein the whole world disap pears beneath the pressure of a single thought, a memory, a look. This man who was walking toward her attracted her.
Excepting his eyes he had no appearance of humanity left ; he was a long, perfectly red shape; his broken bonds hung down his thighs, but they could not be distinguished from the tendons of his wrists, which were laid quite bare ; his mouth remained wide open ; from his eye sockets there darted flames which seemed to rise up to his hair — and the wretch still walked on I
He reached the foot of the terrace. SalammbS was leaning over the balustrade ; those frightful eyeballs were scanning her, and there rose within her a consciousness of all that he had suffered for her. Although he was in his death agony, she could see him once more kneeling in his tent, encircling her waist with his arms, and stammering out gentle words; she thirsted to feel them and hear them again ; she did not want him to die! At this moment Matho gave a great start; she was on the point of shrieking aloud. He fell backward and did not stir again.
SalammbQ was borne back, nearly swooning, to her throne by the priests who flocked about her. They congratulated her ; it was her work. All clapped their hands and stamped their feet, howling her name.
A man darted upon the corpse. Although he had no beard he had the cloak of a priest of Moloch on his shoulder, and in his belt that species of knife which they employed for cutting up the sacred meat, and which terminated, at the end of the handle, in a golden spatula. He cleft Matho's breast with a single blow, then snatched out the heart and laid it upon the spoon; and Schahabarim, uplifting his arm, offered it to the sun.
The sun sank behind the waves; his rays fell like long arrows upon the red heart. As the beatings diminished the planet sank into the sea; and at the last palpitation it disap peared.
Then from the gulf to the lagoon, and from the isthmus to the pharos, in all the streets, on all the houses, and on all the
HANNIBAL AS STRATEGIST AND SOLDIER. 47
temples, there was a single shout ; sometimes it paused, to be again renewed ; the building shook with it ; Carthage was con vulsed, as it were, in the spasm of Titanic joy and boundless hope.
Narr' Havas, drunk with pride, passed his left arm beneath Salammbo's waist in token of possession ; and taking a gold patera in his right hand, he drank to the Genius of Carthage.
Salammbo rose like her husband, with a cup in her hand, to drink also. She fell down again with her head lying over the back of the throne, — pale, stiff, with parted lips, — and her loosened hair hung to the ground.
HANNIBAL AS STRATEGIST AND SOLDIER. By LIVY.
[Titus Livius, Roman historian, was born near what is now Padua, b. o. 69. He lived at Rome under Augustus, making so splendid a literary reputation that one man went from Spain to Rome and back merely to look at him ; but he re tired to his native town, and died there b. c. 17. His enduring repute rests on his History of Rome from its foundation to the death of Drusus, in one hundred and forty-two books, of which only thirty-five are extant. ]
The Crossing of the Alps, b. c. 218-217.
After composing the dissensions of the Allobroges, being on his way to the Alps, he proceeded to the Tricorii ; his way being nowhere obstructed till he came to the river Druentia. This stream, rising amid the Alps, is by far the most difficult to pass of all the rivers in Gaul : for though it rolls down an immense body of water, yet it does not admit of ships ; because, being restrained by no banks, and flowing in several and not always the same channels, and continually forming new shallows and new whirlpools (on which account
the passage is also uncertain to a person on foot), and rolling down besides gravelly stones, it affords no firm or safe passage to those who enter it ; and having been at that time swollen by showers, it created great disorder among the soldiers as they crossed, when, in addition to other difficulties, they were of themselves confused by their own hurry and uncertain shouts.
From the Druentia, by a road that lay principally through plains, Hannibal arrived at the Alps without molestation from
48 HANNIBAL AS STRATEGIST AND SOLDIER.
the Gauls that inhabit those regions. Then, though the scene had been previously anticipated from report (by which uncer tainties are wont to be exaggerated), yet the height of the mountains when viewed so near, and the snows almost mingling with the sky, the shapeless huts situated on the cliffs, the cattle and beasts of burden withered by the cold, the men unshorn and wildly dressed, all things, animate and inanimate, stiffened with frost, and other objects more terrible to be seen than de scribed, renewed their alarm. To them, marching up the first acclivities, the mountaineers appeared occupying the heights overhead ; who, if they had occupied the more concealed valleys, might, by rushing out suddenly to the attack, have occasioned great flight and havoc. Hannibal orders them to halt, and having sent forward Gauls to view the ground, when he found there was no passage that way, he pitches his camp in the widest valley he could find, among places all rugged and precipitous. Then, having learned from the same Gauls, when they had mixed in conversation with the mountaineers, from whom they differed little in language and manners, that the pass was only beset during the day, and that at night each withdrew to his own dwelling, he advanced at the dawn to the heights, as if designing openly and by day to force his way through the defile. The day then being passed in feigning a different attempt from that which was in preparation, when they had fortified the camp in the same place where they had halted, as soon as he perceived that the mountaineers had descended from the heights, and that the guards were withdrawn, having lighted for show a greater number of fires than was proportioned to the number that remained, and having left the baggage in the camp, with the cavalry and the principal part of the infantry, he himself with a party of light-armed, consisting of all the most courageous of his troops, rapidly cleared the defile, and took post on those very heights which the enemy had occupied.
At dawn of light the next day the camp broke up, and the rest of the army began to move forward. The mountaineers, on a signal being given, were now assembling from their forts to their usual station, when they suddenly behold part of the enemy overhanging them from above, in possession of their former position, and the others passing along the road. Both these objects, presented at the same time to the eye and the mind, made them stand motionless for a little while ; but when they afterwards saw the confusion in the pass, and that the
HANNIBAL AS STRATEGIST AND SOLDIER. 49
marching body was thrown into disorder by the tumult which itself created, principally from the horses being terrified, think ing that whatever terror they added would suffice for the destruction of the enemy, they scramble along the dangerous rocks, as being accustomed alike to pathless and circuitous ways. Then indeed the Carthaginians were opposed at once by the enemy and by the difficulties of the ground ; and each striving to escape first from the danger, there was more fight ing among themselves than with their opponents. The horses, in particular, created danger in the lines, which, being terrified by the discordant clamors which the groves and reechoing val leys augmented, fell into confusion ; and if by chance struck or wounded, they were so dismayed that they occasioned a great loss both of men and baggage of every description : and as the pass on both sides was broken and precipitous, this tumult threw many down to an immense depth, some even of the armed men ; but the beasts of burden, with their loads, were rolled down like the fall of some vast fabric. Though
these disasters were shocking to view, Hannibal, however, kept his place for a little, and kept his men together, lest he might augment the tumult and disorder ; but afterwards, when he saw the line broken, and that there was danger that he should bring over his army preserved to no purpose if deprived of their baggage, he hastened down from the higher ground; and though he had routed the enemy by the first onset alone, he at the same time increased the disorder in his own army : but that tumult was composed in a moment, after the roads were cleared by the flight of the mountaineers ; and presently the whole army was conducted through, not only without being disturbed, but almost in silence. He then took a fortified place, which was the capital of that district, and the little vil lages that lay around it, and fed his army for three days with the corn and cattle he had taken ; and during these three days, as the soldiers were neither obstructed by the mountaineers, who had been daunted by the first engagement, nor yet much by the ground, he made considerable way.
He then came to another state, abounding, for a mountain ous country, with inhabitants ; where he was nearly overcome, not by open war, but by his own arts of treachery and ambus cade. Some old men, governors of forts, came as deputies to the Carthaginian, professing, " that having been warned by the useful example of the calamities of others, they wished
vOl. v. —
i
50 HANNIBAL AS STRATEGIST AND SOLDIER.
rather to experience the friendship than the hostilities of the Carthaginians : they would, therefore, obediently execute his commands, and begged that he would accept of a supply of provisions, guides of his march, and hostages for the sincerity of their promises. " Hannibal, when he had answered them in a friendly manner, thinking that they should neither be rashly trusted nor yet rejected, lest if repulsed they might openly become enemies, having received the hostages whom they prof fered, and made use of the provisions which they of their own accord brought down to the road, follows their guides, by no means as among a people with whom he was at peace, but with his line of march in close order. The elephants and cavalry formed the van of the marching body ; he himself, examining everything around, and intent on every circumstance, followed with the choicest of the infantry. When they came into a narrower pass, lying on one side beneath an overhanging emi nence, the barbarians, rising at once on all sides from their ambush, assail them in front and rear, both at close quarters and from a distance, and roll down huge stones on the army. The most numerous body of men pressed on the rear ; against whom the infantry facing about and directing their attack made it very obvious that, had not the rear of the army been well supported, a great loss must have been sustained in that pass. Even as it was, they came to the extremity of danger, and almost to destruction ; for while Hannibal hesitates to lead down his division into the defile, because, though he him self was a protection to the cavalry, he had not in the same way left any aid to the infantry in the rear, the mountaineers, charging obliquely, and on having broken through the middle of the army, took possession of the road ; and one night was spent by Hannibal without his cavalry and baggage.
Next day, the barbarians running in to the attack between (the two divisions) less vigorously, the forces were reunited, and the defile passed, not without loss, but yet with a greater destruction of beasts of burden than of men. From that time the mountaineers fell upon them in smaller parties, more like an attack of robbers than war, sometimes on the van, some times on the rear, according as the ground afforded them advantage, or stragglers advancing or loitering gave them an opportunity. Though the elephants were driven through steep and narrow roads with great loss of time, yet wherever they went they rendered the army safe from the enemy, because
HANNIBAL AS STRATEGIST AND SOLDIER. 51
men unacquainted with such animals were afraid of approach ing too nearly. On the ninth day they came to a summit of the Alps, chiefly through places trackless ; and after many mis takes of their way, which were caused either by the treachery of the guides, or, when they were not trusted, by entering val leys at random on their own conjectures of the route. For two days they remained encamped on the summit; and rest was given to the soldiers, exhausted with toil and fighting ; and several beasts of burden, which had fallen down among the rocks, by following the track of the army arrived at the camp. A fall of snow, it being now the season of the setting of the constellation of the Pleiades, caused great fear to the soldiers, already worn out with weariness of so many hard ships. On the standards being moved forward at daybreak, when the army proceeded slowly over all places entirely blocked up with snow, and languor and despair strongly appeared in the countenances of all, Hannibal, having advanced before the standards, and ordered the soldiers to halt on a certain emi nence, whence there was a prospect far and wide, points out to them Italy and the plains of the Po, extending themselves beneath the Alpine mountains, and said, " that they were now surmounting not only the ramparts of Italy, but also of the city of Rome ; that the rest of the journey would be smooth and downhill ; that after one, or, at most, a second battle, they would have the citadel and capital of Italy in their power and possession. " The army then began to advance, the enemy now making no attempts beyond petty thefts, as opportunity offered. But the journey proved much more difficult than it had been in the ascent, as the declivity of the Alps, being gen erally shorter on the side of Italy, is consequently steeper ; for nearly all the road was precipitous, narrow, and slippery, so that neither those who made the least stumble could prevent them selves from falling, nor, when fallen, remain in the same place, but rolled, both men and beasts of burden, one upon another.
They then came to a rock much more narrow, and formed of such perpendicular ledges that a light-armed soldier, care fully making the attempt, and clinging with his hands to the bushes and roots around, could with difficulty lower himself down. The ground, even before very steep by nature, had been broken by a recent falling away of the earth into a preci pice of nearly a thousand feet in depth. Here, when the cavalry had halted, as if at the end of their journey, it is
52 HANNIBAL AS STRATEGIST AND SOLDIER.
announced to Hannibal, wondering what obstructed the march, that the rock was impassable. Having then gone himself to view the place, it seemed clear to him that he must lead his army round it, by however great a circuit, through the pathless and untrodden regions around. But this route also proved impracticable; for while the new snow of a moderate depth remained on the old, which had not been removed, their foot steps were planted with ease as they walked upon the new snow, which was soft and not too deep ; but when it was dis solved by the trampling of so many men and beasts of burden, they then walked on the bare ice below, and through the dirty fluid formed by the melting snow. Here there was a wretched struggle, both on account of the slippery ice not affording any hold to the step, and giving way beneath the foot more readily by reason of the slope ; and whether they assisted themselves in rising by their hands or their knees, their supports themselves giving way, they would tumble again; nor were there any stumps or roots near by pressing against which one might with hand or foot support himself ; so that they only floundered on the smooth ice and amidst the melted snow. The beasts of burden sometimes also cut into this lower ice by merely tread ing upon it, at others they broke it completely through by the violence with which they struck in their hoofs in their strug gling, so that most of them, as if taken in a trap, stuck in the hardened and deeply frozen ice.
At length, after the men and beasts of burden had been fatigued to no purpose, the camp was pitched on the summit, the ground being cleared for that purpose with great difficulty, so much snow was there to be dug out and carried away. The soldiers being then set to make a way down the cliff, by which alone a passage could be effected, and it being necessary that they should cut through the rocks, having felled and lopped a number of large trees which grew around, they make a huge pile of timber ; and as soon as a strong wind fit for exciting the flames arose, they set fire to it, and, pouring vinegar on the heated stones, they render them soft and crumbling. They then open a road through the incandescent rock with iron tools, and reduce the grades by moderate windings, so that not only the draft animals but the elephants also can be brought down. Four days being spent around the cliff, the draft animals had nearly perished with hunger; for the peaks were almost bare, and what little forage there was, the snows buried up. The
HANNIBAL AS STRATEGIST AND SOLDIER. 53
lower levels have valleys and sunny knolls, and brooks near woods, and still more suitable spots under human cultivation. There the draft animals are turned out to pasture, and rest is given to the men tired out with fatigue duty.
The Escape by the Stratagem of the Oxen.
It happened that on that day Minucius had formed a junction with Fabius, having been sent to secure with a guard the pass above Tarracina, which, contracted into a narrow gorge, over hangs the sea, in order that Hannibal might not be able to get into the Roman territory by the Appian Way's being unguarded. The dictator and master of the horse, uniting their forces, lead them down into the road through which Hannibal was about to march his troops. The enemy was two miles from that place.
The following day the Carthaginian filled the whole road between the two camps with his troops in marching order ; and though the Romans had taken their stand immediately under their rampart, having a decidedly superior position, yet the Carthaginian came up with his light horse, and, with a view to provoke the enemy, carried on a kind of desultory attack, first charging and then retreating. The Roman line remained in its position. The battle was slow, and more conformable to the wish of the dictator than of Hannibal. On the part of the Romans there fell two hundred, on the part of the enemy eight hundred. It now began to appear that Hannibal was hemmed in, the road to Casilinum being blockaded ; and that while Capua, and Samnium, and so many wealthy allies in the rear of the Romans might supply them with provisions, the Cartha ginian, on the other hand, must winter amidst the rocks of Formue and the sands and hideous swamps of Liternum. Nor did it escape Hannibal that he was assailed by his own arts ; wherefore, since he could not escape by way of Casilinum, and since it was necessary to make for the mountains and pass the summit of Callicula, lest in any place the Romans should at tack his troops while inclosed in valleys ; having hit upon a stratagem calculated to deceive the sight, and excite terror from its appearance, by means of which he might baffle the enemy, he resolved to come up by stealth to the mountains at the commencement of night. The preparation of his wily stratagem was of this description. Torches, collected from every part of the country, and bundles of rods and dry cut tings, are fastened before the horns of oxen, of which, wild and
54 HANNIBAL AS STRATEGIST AND SOLDIER.
tame, he had driven away a great number among other plunder of the country : the number of oxen was made up to nearly two thousand. To Hasdrubal was assigned the task of driving to the mountains that herd, after having set fire to their horns as soon as ever it was dark ; particularly, if he could, over the passes beset by the enemy.
As soon as it was dark the camp was moved in silence ; the oxen were driven a little in advance of the standards. When they arrived at the foot of the mountains and the narrow passes, the signal is immediately given for setting fire to their horns and driving them violently up the mountains before them. The mere terror excited by the flame, which cast a glare from their heads, and the heat now approaching the quick and the roots of their horns, drove on the oxen as if goaded by madness. By which dispersion, on a sudden all the surrounding shrubs were in a blaze, as if the mountains and woods had been on fire ; and the unavailing tossing of their heads quickening the flame, exhibited an appearance as of men running to and fro on every side. Those who had been placed to guard the passage of the wood, when they saw fires on the tops of the mountains, and some over their own heads, con cluding that they were surrounded, abandoned their post ; making for the tops of the mountains in the direction in which the fewest fires blazed, as being the safest course ; however, they fell in with some oxen which had strayed from their herds. At first, when they beheld them at a distance, they stood fixed in amazement at the miracle, as it appeared to them, of creatures breathing fire ; afterwards, when it showed itself to be a human stratagem, then, forsooth, concluding that there was an ambuscade, as they are hurrying away in flight with increased alarm, they fall in also with the light-armed troops of the enemy. But the night, when the fear was equally shared, kept them from commencing the battle till morning. Meanwhile Hannibal, having marched his whole army through the pass, and having cut off some of the enemy in the very defile, pitches his camp in the country of Allifae.
Fabius perceived this tumult, but concluding that it was a snare, and being disinclined for a battle, particularly by night, kept his troops within the works. At break of day a battle took place under the summit of the mountain, in which the Romans, who were considerably superior in numbers, would have easily overpowered the light-armed of the enemy, cut off
HANNIBAL AS STRATEGIST AND SOLDIER.
55
as they were from their party, had not a cohort of Spaniards, sent back by Hannibal for that very purpose, reached the spot. That body being more accustomed to mountains, and being more adapted, both from the agility of their limbs and also from the character of their arms, to skirmishing amidst rocks and crags, easily foiled, by their manner of fighting, an enemy loaded with arms, accustomed to level ground and the steady kind of fighting. Separating from a contest thus by no means equal, they proceeded to their camps, — the Spaniards almost all untouched, the Romans having lost a few. Fabius also moved his camp, and passing the defile, took up a position above Allifae, in a strong and elevated place. Then Hannibal, pretending to march to Rome through Samnium, came back as far as the Peligni, spreading devastation. Fabius led his troops along the heights midway between the army of the enemy and the city of Rome, neither avoiding him altogether, nor coming to an engagement. From the Peligni the Carthaginian turned his course, and going back again to Apulia, reached Geronium, a city deserted by its inhabitants from fear, as a part of its walls had fallen down together in ruins. The dictator formed a completely fortified camp in the territory of Larinum, and being recalled thence to Rome on account of some sacred rites, he not only urged the master of the horse, in virtue of his authority, but with advice and almost with prayers, that he would trust rather to prudence than fortune, and imitate him as a general rather than Sempronius and Flaminius ; that he would not suppose that nothing had been achieved by having worn out nearly the whole summer in baffling the enemy ; that physicians, too, sometimes gained more by rest than by motion and action. That it was no small thing to have ceased to be conquered by an enemy so often victorious, and to have taken breath after successive disasters. Having thus unavailingly admonished the master of the horse, he set out for Rome.
The Battle of Lake Trastmenus, b. c. 217.
Hannibal lays waste the country between the city Cortona and the lake Trasimenus with all the devastation of war, the more to exasperate the enemy to revenge the injuries inflicted on his allies. They had now reached a place formed by nature for an ambuscade, where the Trasimenus comes nearest to the mountains of Cortona. A very narrow passage only intervenes,
56 HANNIBAL AS STRATEGIST AND SOLDIER.
as though room enough just for that purpose had been left designedly ; after that a somewhat wider plain opens itself, and then some hills rise up. On these he pitches his camp, in full view, where he himself, with his Spaniards and Africans, only might be posted. The Baliares and his other light troops he leads round the mountains ; his cavalry he posts at the very entrance of the defile, some eminences conveniently concealing them ; in order that when the Romans had entered, the cavalry advancing, every place might be inclosed by the lake and the mountains. Flaminius, passing the defiles before it was quite daylight, without reconnoitering, though he had arrived at the lake the preceding day at sunset, when the troops began to be spread into the wider plain, saw that part only of the enemy which was opposite to him ; the ambuscade in his rear and over head escaped his notice. And when the Carthaginian had his enemy inclosed by the lake and mountains, and surrounded by his troops, he gives the signal to all to make a simultaneous
charge ; and each running down the nearest way, the sudden ness and unexpectedness of the event was increased to the Romans by a mist rising from the lake, which had settled thicker on the plain than on the mountains ; and thus the troops of the enemy ran down from the various eminences, sufficiently well discerning each other, and therefore with the greater regularity. A shout being raised on all sides, the Roman found himself surrounded before he could well see the enemy; and the attack on the front and flank had com menced ere his line could be well formed, his arms prepared for action, or his swords unsheathed.
The consul, while all were panic-struck, himself suffi ciently undaunted, though in so perilous a case, marshals, as well as the time and place permitted, the lines which were thrown into confusion by each man's turning himself towards the various shouts ; and wherever he could approach or be heard, exhorts them, and bids them stand and fight : for that they could not escape thence by vows and prayers to the gods, but by exertion and valor; that a way was sometimes opened by the sword through the midst of marshaled armies, and that generally the less the fear the less the danger. However, from the noise and tumult, neither his advice nor command could be caught ; and so far were the soldiers from knowing their own standards, and ranks, and position, that they had scarce sufficient courage to take up arms and make them ready for battle ; and
HANNIBAL AS STRATEGIST AND SOLDIER. 67
certain of them were surprised before they could prepare them, being burdened rather than protected by them; while in so great darkness there was more use of ears than of eyes. They turned their faces and eyes in every direction towards the groans of the wounded, the sounds of blows upon the body or arms, and the mingled clamors of the menacing and the affrighted. Some, as they were making their escape, were stopped, having encountered a body of men engaged in fight ; and bands of fugitives returning to the battle, diverted others. After charges had been attempted unsuccessfully in every direction, and on their flanks the mountains and the lake, on the front and rear the lines of the enemy inclosed them, when it was evident that there was no hope of safety but in the right hand and the sword ; then each man became to himself a leader and encourager to action ; and an entirely new contest arose, not a regular line, with principes, hastati, and triarii ; nor of such a sort as that the vanguard should fight before the stand ards, and the rest of the troops behind them ; nor such that each soldier should be in his own legion, cohort, or company : chance collects them into bands; and each man's own will assigned to him his post, whether to fight in front or rear ; and so great was the ardor of the conflict, so intent were their minds upon the battle, that not one of the combatants felt an earthquake which threw down large portions of many of the cities of Italy, turned rivers from their rapid courses, carried the sea up into rivers, and leveled mountains with a tremen dous crash.
The battle was continued near three hours, and in every quarter with fierceness ; around the consul, however, it was still hotter and more determined. Both the strongest of the troops, and himself too, promptly brought assistance wherever he per ceived his men hard pressed and distressed. But, distinguished by his armor, the enemy attacked him with the utmost vigor, while his countrymen defended him ; until an Insubrian horse man, named Ducarius, knowing him also by his face, says to his countrymen, " Lo, this is the consul who slew our legions and laid waste our fields and city. Now will I offer this victim to the shades of my countrymen, miserably slain ; " and putting spurs to his horse, he rushes through a very dense body of the enemy ; and first slaying his armor bearer, who had opposed himself to his attack as he approached, ran the consul through with his lance ; the triarii, opposing their shields, kept him off when
58 HANNIBAL AS STRATEGIST AND SOLDIER.
seeking to despoil him. Then first the flight of a great num ber began ; and now neither the lake nor the mountains obstructed their hurried retreat ; they run through all places, confined and precipitous, as though they were blind ; and arms and men are tumbled one upon another. A great many, when there remained no more space to run, advancing into the water through the first shallows of the lake, plunge in, as far as they could stand above it with their heads and shoulders. Some there were whom inconsiderate fear induced to try to escape even by swimming ; but as that attempt was inordinate and hopeless, they were either overwhelmed in the deep water, their courage failing, or, wearied to no purpose, made their way back, with extreme difficulty, to the shallows, and there were cut up on all hands by the cavalry of the enemy, which had entered the water. Near upon six thousand of the foremost body, hav ing gallantly forced their way through the opposing enemy, entirely unacquainted with what was occurring in their rear, escaped from the defile ; and having halted on a certain rising ground, and hearing only the shouting and clashing of arms, they could not know nor discern, by reason of the mist, what was the fortune of the battle. At length, the affair being decided, when the mist, dispelled by the increasing heat of the sun, had cleared the atmosphere, then, in the clear light, the mountains and plains showed their ruin, and the Roman army miserably destroyed; and thus, lest, being descried at a dis tance, the cavalry should be sent against them, hastily snatch ing up their standards, they hurried away with all possible expedition. On the following day, when in addition to their extreme sufferings in other respects, famine also was at hand, Maharbal, who had followed them during the night with the whole body of cavalry, pledging his honor that he would let them depart with single garments if they would deliver up their arms, they surrendered themselves ; which promise was kept by Hannibal with Punic fidelity, and he threw them all into chains.