No More Learning

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.
it
a
a
;
it ;
it
it
it
if,
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 ? Flying, and from me ! By the tears I shed, and by your plighted hand, since my own act, alas! has left me naught else to plead — by our union — by the nuptial rites thus prefaced — if I have ever deserved well of you, or aught of mine ever gave you pleasure — have pity on a falling house, and strip off, I conjure you, if prayer be not too late, the mind that clothes you. It is owing to you that the Libyan tribes and the Nomad chiefs hate me, that my own Tyrians are estranged; owing to you, yes, you, that my woman's honor has been put out, and that which was my one passport to immortality, my former fame. To whom are you abandoning a dying woman, my guest? — since the name of husband has dwindled to that. Why do I live any longer? — to give my brother Pygmalion time to batter down my walls, or Iarbas the Moor to carry me away captive ? Had I but borne any offspring of you before your flight, were there some tiny iEneas to play in my hall, and remind me of you, though"but in look, I should not then feel utterly captive and forlorn.
She ceased. He all the while, at Jove's command, was keep
ing his eyes unmoved, and shutting up in his heart his great Tot. in. — 9
82 QUEEN DIDO'S LOVE AND FATE.
love. At length he answers in brief: "Fair queen, name all the claims to gratitude you can. I shall never gainsay one, nor will the thought of Elissa ever be unwelcome while memory lasts, while breath animates this frame. A few words I will say, as the case admits. I never counted — do not dream it — on stealthily concealing my flight. I never came with a bride groom's torch in my hand, nor was this the alliance to which I agreed. For me, were the Fates to suffer me to live under a star of my own choosing, and to make with care the terms I would, the city of Troy, first of all the dear remains of what was mine, would claim my tendance. Priam's tall rooftree would still be standing, and my hand would have built a restored Pergamus, to solace the vanquished. But now to princely Italy Grynean Apollo, to Italy his Lycian oracles, bid me repair. There is my heart, there my fatherland. If you are riveted here by the sight of your stately Carthage, a daughter of Phoenicia by a Libyan town, why, I would ask, should jealousy forbid Teucrians to settle in Ausonian land? We, like you, have the right of looking for a foreign realm. There is my father Anchises, oft as night's dewy shades invest the earth, oft as the fiery stars arise, warning me in dreams and appalling me by his troubled presence. There is my son Ascanius, and the wrongs heaped on his dear head every day that I rob him of the crown of Hesperia, and of the land that fate makes his. Now, too, the messenger of the gods, sent down from Jove himself (I swear by both our lives) has brought me orders through the flying air. With my own eyes I saw the god in clear daylight entering the walls, and took in his words with the ears that hear you now. Cease then to harrow up both our souls by your reproaches : my quest of Italy is not of my own motion. "
Long ere he had done this speech she was glaring at him askance, rolling her eyes this way and that, and scanning the whole man with her silent glances, and thus she bursts forth all ablaze: "No goddess was mother of yours, no Dardanus the head of your line, perfidious wretch! — no, your parent was Caucasus, rugged and craggy, and Hyrcanian tigresses put their breasts to your lips. For why should I suppress aught? or for what worse evil hold myself in reserve ? Did he groan when I wept? did he move those hard eyes? did he yield and shed tears, or pity her that loved him? What first? what last? Now, neither Juno, queen of all, nor Jove, the almighty Father,
QUEEN DIDO'S LOVE AND FATE. 83
eyes us with impartial regard. Nowhere is there aught to trust — nowhere. A shipwrecked beggar, I welcomed him, and madly gave him a share of my realm ; his lost fleet, his crews, I brought back from death's door. Ah ! Fury sets me on fire, and whirls me round ! Now, prophet Apollo, now the Lycian oracles. Now the messenger of the gods, sent down by Jove himself, bears his grim bidding through the air! Aye, of course, that is the employment of the powers above, those the cares that break their repose! I retain not your person, nor refute your talk. Go, chase Italy with the winds at your back ; look for realms with the whole sea between you. I have hope that on the rocks midway, if the gods are as powerful as they are good, you will drain the cup of punishment, with Dido's name ever on your lips. I will follow you with murky fires when I am far away ; and when cold death shall have parted soul and body, my shade shall haunt you everywhere. Yes, wretch, you shall suffer. I shall hear it — the news will reach me down among the dead. " So saying, she snaps short her speech, and flies with loathing from the daylight, and breaks and rushes from his sight, leaving him hesitating, and fearing, and thinking of a thousand things to say. Her maidens sup port her, and carry her sinking frame into her marble chamber, and lay her on her bed.
But good . <Eneas, though yearning to solace and soothe her agonized spirit, and by his words to check the onset of sorrow, with many a groan, his whole soul upheaved by the force of love, goes nevertheless about the commands of Heaven, and repairs to his fleet. The Teucrians redouble their efforts, and along the whole range of the shore drag their tall ships down. The keels are careened and floated. They carry oars with their leaves still on, and timber unfashioned as it stood in the woods, so strong their eagerness to fly. You may see them all in motion, streaming from every part of the city. Even as ants when they are sacking a huge heap of wheat, provident of winter days, and laying up the plunder in their stores ; a black column is seen moving through the plain, and they convey their booty along the grass in a narrow path : some are putting their shoulders to the big grains, and pushing them along; others are rallying the force and punishing the stragglers ; the whole track is in a glow of work.
84 QUEEN DIDO'S LOVE AND FATE.
Death of Dido.
What were your feelings then, poor Dido, at a sight like this! How deep the groans you heaved, when you looked out from your lofty tower on a beach all seething and swarming, and saw the whole sea before you deafened with that hubbub of voices ! Tyrant love ! what force dost thou not put on human hearts? Again she has to condescend to tears, again to use the weapons of entreaty, and bow her spirit in suppliance under love's yoke, lest she should have left aught untried, and be rushing on a needless death.
" Anna, you see there is hurrying all over the shore — they are met from every side ; the canvas is already wooing the gale, and the joyful sailors have wreathed the sterns. If I have had the foresight to anticipate so heavy a blow, I shall have the power to bear it too, my sister. Yet, Anna, in my misery, perform me this one service. . You, and you only, the per fidious man was wont to make his friend — aye, even to trust you with his secret thoughts. You, and you only, know the subtle approaches to his heart, and the times of essaying them. Go, then, my sister, and supplicate our haughty foe. Tell him I was no party to the Danaan league at Aulis to destroy the Trojan nation; I sent no ships to Pergamus; I never disin terred his father Anchises, his dust or his spirit. Why will he not let my words sink down into his obdurate ears ? Whither is he hurrying? Let him grant this last boon to her who loves him so wildly ; let him wait till the way is smoothed for his flight, and there are winds to waft him. I am not asking him now to renew our old vows which he has forsworn. I am not asking him to forego his fair Latium, and resign his crown. I entreat but a few vacant hours, a respite and breathing space for my passion, till my fortune shall have taught baffled love how to grieve. This is my last request of you. Oh, pity your poor sister ! — a request which when granted shall be returned with interest in death. "
Such was her appeal — such the wailing which her afflicted sister bears to him, and bears again; but no wailing moves him, no words find him a gentle listener. Fate bars the way, and Heaven closes the hero's relenting ears. Even as an aged oak, still hale and strong, which Alpine winds, blowing now here, now there, strive emulously to uproot — a loud noise is heard, and, as the stem rocks, heaps of leaves pile the ground; but
QUEEN DIDO'S LOVE AND FATE. 86
the tree cleaves firmly to the cliff; high as its head strikes into the air, so deep its root strikes down to the abyss — even thus the hero is assailed on all sides by a storm of words : his mighty breast thrills through and through with agony; but his mind is unshaken, and tears are showered in vain.
Then at last, maddened by her destiny, poor Dido prays for death: heaven's vault is a weariness to look on. To confirm her in pursuing her intent, and closing her eyes on the sun, she saw, as she was laying her offerings on the incense-steaming altars — horrible to tell — the sacred liquor turn black, and the streams of wine curdle into loathly gore. This appearance she told to none, not even to her sister. Moreover, there was in her palace a marble chapel to her former husband, to which she used to pay singular honors, wreathing it with snowy fillets and festal boughs ; from it she thought she heard a voice, the accents of the dead man calling her, when the darkness of night was shrouding the earth ; and on the roof a lonely owl in funereal tones kept complaining again and again, and drawing out wail- ingly its protracted notes ; and a thousand predictions of seers of other days come back on her, terrifying her with their awful warnings. When she dreams, there is -(Eneas himself driving her in furious chase : she seems always being left alone to her self, always pacing companionless on a never-ending road, and looking for her Tyrians in a realm without inhabitants — like Pentheus, when in frenzy he sees troops of Furies, and two sons, and a double Thebes rising round him ; or Agamemnon's Orestes rushing over the stage, as he flies from his mother, who is armed with torches and deadly snakes, while the aveng ing fiends sit couched on the threshold. . . .
Meanwhile iEneas, resolved on his journey, was slumbering in his vessel's tall stern, all being now in readiness. To him a vision of the god appearing again with the same countenance, presented itself as he slept, and seemed to give this second warning — the perfect picture of Mercury, his voice, his bloom ing hue, his yellow locks, and the youthful grace of his frame : "Goddess-born, at a crisis like this can you slumber on? Do you not see the wall of danger which is fast rising round you, infatuate that you are, nor hear the favoring whisper of the western gale ? She is revolving in her bosom thoughts of craft and cruelty, resolved on death, and surging with a change ful tempest of passion. Will you not haste away while haste is in your power? You will look on a sea convulsed with
86 QUEEN DIDO'S LOVE AND FATE.
ships, an array of fierce torch fires, a coast glowing with flame, if the dawn goddess shall have found you loitering here on land. Quick! — burst through delay. A thing of moods and changes is woman ever. " He said, and was lost in the dark ness of night.
At once JSneas, scared by the sudden apparition, springs up from sleep, and rouses his comrades. "Wake in a moment, my friends, and seat you on the benches. Unfurl the sails with all speed. See ! here is a god sent down from heaven on high, urging us again to hasten our flight, and cut the twisted cables. Yes ! sacred power, we follow thee, whoever thou art, and a second time with joy obey thy behest. Be thou with us, and graciously aid us, and let propitious stars be ascendant in the sky. " So saying, he snatches from the scabbard his flash ing sword, and with the drawn blade cuts the hawsers. The spark flies from man to man; they scour, they scud, they have left the shore behind; you cannot see the water for ships. With strong strokes they dash the foam, and sweep the blue.
And now Aurora was beginning to sprinkle the earth with fresh light, rising from Tithonus' saffron couch. Soon as the queen from her watchtower saw the gray dawn brighten, and the fleet moving on with even canvas, and coast and haven for saken, with never an oar left, thrice and again smiting her beauteous breast with her hands, and rending her golden locks, "Great Jupiter! " cries she, "shall he go? Shall a chance comer boast of having flouted our realm ? Will they not get their arms at once, and give chase from all the town, and pull, some of them, the ships from the docks? Away! bring fire;
quick ! get darts, ply oars ! What am I saying ? Where am I
? What madness turns my brain? Wretched Dido! do your sins sting you now? They should have done so then, when you were giving your crown away. What truth ! what fealty ! — the man who, they say, carries about with him the gods of his country, and took up on his shoulders his old worn-out father !
Might I not have caught and torn him piecemeal, and scattered him to the waves? — destroyed his friends, aye, and his own Ascanius, and served up the boy for his father's meal ? But the chance of a battle would have been doubtful. Let it have been. I was to die, and whom had I to fear? I would have flung torches into his camp, filled his decks with flame, con sumed son and sire and the whole line, and leapt myself upon the pile. Sun, whose torch shows thee all that is done on earth,
QUEEN DIDO'S LOVE AND FATE. 87
and thou, Juno, revealer and witness of these stirrings of the heart, and Hecate, whose name is yelled in civic crossways by night, avenging fiends, and gods of dying Elissa, listen to this! Let your power stoop to ills that call for it, and hear what I
If it must needs be that the accursed wretch gain
now pray ! —
the haven and float to shore
destiny, such the fixed goal — yet grant that, harassed by the sword and battle of a warlike nation, a wanderer from his own confines, torn from his lulus' arms, he may pray for succor, and see his friends dying miserably round him ! Nor when he has yielded to the terms of an unjust peace, may he enjoy his crown, or the life he loves ; but may he fall before his time, and lie unburied in the midst of the plain ! This is my prayer — these the last accents that flow from me with my lifeblood. And you, my Tyrians, let your hatred persecute the race and people for all time to come. Be this the offering you send down to my ashes : never be there love or league between nation and nation. Arise from my bones, my unknown avenger, destined with fire and sword to pursue the Dardanian settlers, now or in after days, whenever strength shall be given ! Let coast be at war with coast, water with wave, army with army; fight they, and their sons, and their sons' sons ! "
Thus she said, as she whirled her thought to this side and that, seeking at once to cut short the life she now abhorred. Then briefly she spoke to Barce, Sychaeus' nurse, for her own was left in her old country, in the black ashes of the grave: "Fetch me here, dear nurse, my sister Anna. Bid her hasten to sprinkle herself with water from the stream, and bring with her the cattle and the atoning offerings prescribed. Let her come with these ; and do you cover your brow with the holy fillet.