Perceiving
the man who.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v16 - Lev to Mai
In the following
year Rudbeck, who was growing old, appointed Linnæus his assistant;
and the latter was now openly started on his flowery way, lecturing,
traveling, and reveling in the wilderness of plants like a bee in a
clover-field.
―
He now wrote his celebrated epoch-making 'Systema Naturæ. '
At Amsterdam in Holland he dwelt a year with the famous Professor
Boerhaave, and there published his 'Fundamenta Botanica. ' A rich
banker by the name of Cliffort wiled him to his magnificent garden
at Hartecamp, where he worked and lived like a prince; and there he
published his 'Flora Lapponica,' containing the new genus Linnæa.
In 1736 he visited England, and was warmly welcomed by the
plants and plant-lovers there. On his return to the Netherlands he
completed his 'Genera Plantarum,' which may be regarded as the
beginning of the natural systematic botany. This great work was
followed in this hot, fertile, high-pressure period by his 'Classes
Plantarum. ' His industry and fertility were truly wonderful. Books
came from his brain as from an inexhaustible fountain; and neither
pleasure nor pain, praise nor blame, nor the weariness and exhaus-
tion that stop common mortals, could abate one jot his overmastering
enthusiasm, or divert him in the least from his glorious course.
In 1738 Linnæus established himself as a physician in Stockholm,
and was married there the following year. In 1740 Rudbeck died,
and Linnæus gained his place as professor of natural history at the
University of Upsala, where he had so long and so bravely studied.
and starved. Thenceforth his life was all congenial work, flowers
and sunshine, praise and fame. In 1750, after many other less nota-
ble works, he published 'Philosophia Botanica,' and three years later
'Species Plantarum. > He shone now like a sun; honors of all kinds
poured in on him, kings wanted him at their courts, every university
wanted him; but he remained true to his own country and his own
work. Students from near and far gathered about him. The five
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LINNEUS
hundred at Upsala increased to fifteen hundred, attracted and in-
spired by his bright-burning love. He lived till 1778.
In person he is described as of medium height, with large limbs
and wonderful eyes. If one may judge from the portrait statue
erected to his memory in Upsala, his features were beautiful and
serene beyond those of most men, and surely beyond those of most
statues.
Of course plants were studied long before Linnæus, but mostly as
food or medicine; and the collections of living plants were called
"physic gardens. " Solomon "spake of trees, from the cedar of Leb-
anon to the hyssop on the wall. " The Chaldeans, Egyptians, and
Greeks studied botany in some form or other; for the showy multi-
tudes of plant-people could not fail to attract the attention of scholars
in every age. About three hundred years before Christ, Theophrastus
wrote a 'History of Plants,' in which he described about five hundred
species supposed to be useful in medicine. The elder Pliny described
about a thousand. But it was not until the sixteenth century that
anything noteworthy was done in botany as a science. In 1583
Andreas Cæsalpinus, professor of botany at Padua, published a work
called 'De Plantis,' in which he distributed some one thousand five
hundred and twenty plants in fifteen classes, according to the differ-
ences of their fruits and flowers, and their being herbaceous or
woody.
Then came John Ray, an Englishman, who died two years before
Linnæus was born; and who published in 1682 Methodus Plantarum,'
in which he separated flowering from flowerless plants, and divided
the former into Dicotyledons and Monocotyledons, a marked advance
in natural classification. Tournefort, a contemporary of Ray, was
professor of botany in Paris in 1683; and published a systematic
arrangement in 1694-1700, in which he described about eight thousand
species of plants, divided into twenty-two classes.
Then came Linnæus, whose published works are said to number
over one hundred and eighty, while many remain in manuscript.
Much has been written by naturalists on the Linnæan system; and
while recognizing its usefulness as a convenient index to nature's
floral book, they seem puzzled to account for the revolution he effected
in natural history, and his unparalleled influence. Even his most
enthusiastic admirers seem at a loss to know the secret of his unri-
valed power. The so-called Sexual system of Linnæus, they anxiously
point out, was needful in bringing order out of chaos, and making a
foundation for the "natural system" now universally adopted, and in
preparing the way for the work of De Jussieu and De Candolle. Strong,
they say, in body and mind, with marvelous industry and insight,
Linnæus worked with the strength of ten. He improved the existing
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9081
distinctions of genera and species, introduced a better nomenclature
on the binomial method, and invented the system founded on the
stamens and pistils. In half praise, half apology, they claim that
"his verbal accuracy and the terseness of his technical language»
reduced the crude accumulations of his predecessors into available
form, arranged their endless synonyms, cast out the confusing varie-
ties of gardeners' terms, like a Moses led botanical science out of
Egyptian darkness; and in fine, that he found biology a chaos and
left it a cosmos.
But it is not in methods of classification, technical skill, tireless
energy in making books and gathering plants, that we are to look
for the secret of the marvelous influence he exerted, and which made
him the king of naturalists. No. Dry words and dry facts, however
clear-cut and polished, will not fire hearts. A botanist may be a
giant in intellect, gather plants from the four quarters of the globe
and pile them in labeled heaps as high as haystacks, without kindling
a single spark of the love that fired the followers of Linnæus. In
drying plants, botanists too often dry themselves. But Linnæus loved
every living thing as his friend and brother, and his eyes never
closed on the divine beauty and harmony and oneness they dis-
played. All the dry word-work he did, however technical and severe,
was done to bring the plants and animals as living children of
Nature forward into light to be loved. In the midst of his immense
classifying labors, he seemed always to be saying in a low glowing
undertone, «< Come, darlings: I love you, and want everybody to love
you! Come, stand in rows and let me see you and count you and
call you by name. " And they came-from his own Scandinavia,
from the tundras of Lapland, from icy Siberia, from sunny India and
Africa, from both the Americas, and from the isles of the seas. They
came to his love, led by devoted disciples. For as a sun, he warmed
others and inspired them; and thus warmed and inspired, they radi-
ated like light over all the world and did the master's bidding. The
beasts of the field came also to this solar man to be seen and
warmed and loved; and the birds from every grove, and insects and
creeping things, and fishes from the seas and streams, and crystals
from the mountain caves,- all for love. And so his radiant influence
works on, cheering and enlightening the world, and will go on while
flowers bloom and birds sing.
A hundred years after Linnæus died, our own Asa Gray, Sir Joseph
Hooker, and I were botanizing together on Mount Shasta, the north-
ernmost of the great mountains of California; and when night came
we camped in a flowery opening in a grand forest of silver firs. After
supper I built a big fire, and the flowers and the trees, wondrously
illumined, seemed to come forward and look on and listen as we
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LINNÆUS
talked. Gray told many a story of his life and work on the Atlantic
Alleghanies and in Harvard University; and Hooker told of his trav-
els in the Himalayas, and of his work with Tyndall and Huxley and
grand old Darwin. And of course we talked of trees, argued the
relationship of varying species, etc. ; and I remember that Sir Joseph,
who in his long active life had traveled through all the great forests
of the world, admitted, in reply to a question of mine, that in grand-
eur, variety, and beauty, no forest on the globe rivaled the great
coniferous forests of my much-loved Sierra. But it was not what
was said in praise of our majestic sequoias and cedars, firs and pines,
that was most memorable that night. No: it was what was said of
the lowly fragrant namesake of Linnæus,-Linnæa borealis. After
a pause in the flow of our botanic conversation that great night, the
like of which was never to be enjoyed by us again (for we soon sep-
arated and Gray died), as if speaking suddenly out of another coun-
try Gray said, "Muir, why have you not found Linnæa in California?
It must be here or hereabouts on the northern boundary of the
Sierra. I have heard of it, and have specimens from Washington
and Oregon all through these northern woods, and you should have
found it here. " In reply, I said I had not forgotten Linnæa. "That
fragrant little plant, making carpets beneath the cool woods of Can-
ada and around the great lakes, has been a favorite of mine ever
since I began to wander. I have found many of its relations and
neighbors, high up in the mountain woods and around the glacier
meadows; but Linnæa itself I have not yet found. " "Well, neverthe-
less," said Gray, "the blessed fellow must be living hereabouts no
great distance off. " Then we let the camp fire die down to a heap
of ruby coals, wrapped our blankets about us, and with Linnæa in
our minds, fell asleep. Next morning Gray continued his work on
the Shasta flanks, while Hooker and I made an excursion to the west-
ward over one of the upper valleys of the Sacramento. About noon
we came to one of the icy-cold branches of the river, paved with
cobblestones; and after we forded it we noticed a green carpet on
the bank, made of something we did not at first recognize, for it was
not in bloom. Hooker, bestowing a keen botanic look on it, said
"What is that? " then stooped and plucked a specimen and said,
"Isn't that Linnæa? It's awfully like it. " Then finding some of the
withered flowers, he exclaimed, "It is Linnæa. " This was the first
time the blessed plant was recognized within the bounds of Califor-
nia; and it would seem that Gray had felt its presence the night
before, on the mountain ten miles away.
It is a little slender, creeping, trailing evergreen, with oval crenate
leaves, tiny thread-like peduncles standing straight up and dividing
into two pedicels at the top, on each of which is hung a delicate,
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9083
fragrant white and purple flower. It was at the age of twenty-five
that Linnæus made the most notable of his many long, lonely botan-
ical excursions. He set out from Upsala and wandered afoot or on
horseback northward through endless pine and birch woods, tundras,
and meadows, and along the shores of countless lakes into Lapland,
beyond the Arctic Circle; now wading in spongy bogs, now crossing
broad glacier pavements and moraines and smooth ice-burnished
bosses of rock, fringed with heathworts and birch: a wonderful jour-
ney of forty-six hundred miles, full of exciting experiences and charm-
ing plants. He brought back hundreds of specimens new to science,
among which was a little fragrant evergreen that he liked the best
of all. Soon after his return he handed a specimen of it to his friend
Gronovius, pointed out its characters, and requested him to describe
it and name it for him; saying that somehow he felt that this lit-
tle plant was related to him and like him. So it was called Linnæa
borealis, and keeps his memory green and flowery and fragrant all
round the cool woods of the world.
Only last summer, when I was in the wildest part of the Rocky
Mountains, where glaciers still linger and waterfalls like ribbons hang
down the unscalable cliffs, I found Linnæa spreading and blooming
in glorious exuberance far and wide over mossy ground, beneath
spruce and pine, - the wildest and the gentlest, the most beautiful
and most loveful of all the inhabitants of the wilderness.
Wherever Linnæa dwells, you will find enchanting woods and
the dearest of the small plant-people, chiogenes, Clintonia, orchids,
heathworts, and hosts of bright mosses wearing golden crowns. No
breath of malaria comes near Linnæa. The air and the scenery are
always good enough for gods or men, and a divine charm pervades it
that no mortal can escape. In Linnæan woods I always feel willing
to encamp forever and forego even heaven. Never was man's mem-
ory more blessedly embalmed than is the memory of immortal Lin-
næus in this little flower. All around the cool ends of the world,
while wild beauty endures, the devout pilgrim will see-
"-beneath dim aisles in odorous beds,
The slight Linnæa hang its twin-born heads,
And bless the monument of the man of flowers,
Which breathes his sweet fame through the northern bowers. "
John Mins
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LINNEUS
LAPLAND OBSERVATIONS
From the Lachesis Lapponica '
JUN
UNE 11. -Being Sunday, and a day of continued rain, I re-
mained at Umœa.
June 12. I took my departure very early in the morn-
ing. The weather was so hazy I could not see the distance of
half a gunshot before me. I wandered along in a perpetual
mist, which made the grass as wet as if it had rained. The sun
appeared quite dim, wading as it were through the clouds. By
nine o'clock the mists began to disperse, and the sun shone forth.
The spruce fir (Pinus Abies), hitherto of a uniform dark green,
now began to put forth its lighter-colored buds, a welcome sign
of advancing summer.
---
Chamoedaphne of Buxbaum (Andromeda polifolia) was at this
time in its highest beauty, decorating the marshy grounds in a
most agreeable manner. The flowers are quite blood-red before
they expand, but when full-grown the corolla is of a flesh color.
Scarcely any painter's art can so happily imitate the beauty of a
fine female complexion; still less could any artificial color upon
the face itself bear a comparison with this lovely blossom. As
I contemplated it, I could not help thinking of Andromeda as
described by the poets; and the more I meditated upon their
descriptions, the more applicable they seemed to the little plant
before me,- so that if these writers had it in view, they could
scarcely have contrived a more apposite fable. Andromeda is
represented by them as a virgin of most exquisite and unrivaled
charms, but these charms remain in perfection only so long as
she retains her virgin purity; which is also applicable to the
plant, now preparing to celebrate its nuptials. This plant is
always fixed on some little turfy hillock in the midst of the
swamps, as Andromeda herself was chained to a rock in the sea,
which bathed her feet as the fresh water does the roots of the
plant. Dragons and venomous serpents surrounded her, as toads
and other reptiles frequent the abode of her vegetable prototype,
and when they pair in the spring, throw mud and water over
its leaves and branches. As the distressed virgin cast down her
blushing face through excessive affliction, so does the rosy-colored
flower hang its head, growing paler and paler till it withers away.
Hence, as this plant forms a new genus, I have chosen for it
the name of Andromeda.
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9085
Everywhere near the road grew the Mesomara or herbaceous
cornel (Cornus suecica, very minutely described in Fl. Lapp. , ed.
2, 39; see also English Botany, v. 5, t. 310).
All the little woods and copses by the roadside abounded with
butterflies of the Fritillary tribe, without silver spots. The great
dragon-fly with two flat lobes at its tail (Libellula forcipata), and
another species with blue wings (L. Virgo), were also common.
Various modes of rocking children in cradles are adopted in
different places. In Småland the cradle is suspended by an elas-
tic pole, on which it swings up and down perpendicularly. The
poorer Laplanders rock their infants on branches of trees, but
those of superior rank have cradles that commonly roll from side
to side. In the part of the country where I was now traveling,
the cradles rock vertically, or from head to foot.
Close to the road hung the under jaw of a horse, having six
fore teeth, much worn and blunted, two canine teeth, and at a
distance from the latter twelve grinders, six on each side. If I
knew how many teeth and of what peculiar form, as well as how
many udders, and where situated, each animal has, I should per-
haps be able to contrive a most natural methodical arrangement
of quadrupeds.
June 15-This day afforded me nothing much worthy of
notice. The sea in many places came very near the road, lash-
ing the stony crags with its formidable waves. In some parts it
gradually separated small islands here and there from the main-
land, and in others manured the sandy beach with mud. The
weather was fine.
In one marshy spot grew what is probably a variety of the
cranberry (Vaccinium Oxycoccus), differing only in having ex-
tremely narrow leaves, with smaller flowers and fruit than usual.
The common kind was intermixed with it, but the difference of
size was constant. The Pinguicula grew among them, sometimes
with round, sometimes with more oblong leaves.
The bilberry (Vaccinium Myrtillus) presented itself most com-
monly with red flowers, more rarely with flesh-colored ones.
Myrica Gale, which I had not before met with in West Bothnia,
grew sparingly in the marshes.
In the evening, a little before the sun went down, I was
assailed by such multitudes of gnats as surpass all imagination.
They seemed to occupy the whole atmosphere, especially when I
traveled through low or damp meadows. They filled my mouth,
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9086
LINNEUS
nose, and eyes, for they took no pains to get out of my way.
Luckily they did not attack me with their bites or stings, though
they almost choked me. When I grasped at the cloud before me,
my hands were filled with myriads of these insects, all crushed
to pieces with a touch, and by far too minute for description.
The inhabitants call them Knort, or Knott (Culex reptans), by
mistake called C. pulicaris in Fl. Lapp. , ed. 2, 382.
Just at sunset I reached the town of Old Pitheå, having pre-
viously crossed a broad river in a ferry-boat. Near this spot
stood a gibbet, with a couple of wheels, on which lay the bodies
of two Finlanders without heads. These men had been executed
for highway robbery and murder. They were accompanied by
the quartered body of a Laplander who had murdered one of his
relations.
Immediately on entering the town I procured a lodging, but
had not been long in bed before I perceived a glare of light on
the wall of my chamber. I was alarmed with the idea of fire;
but on looking out of the window, saw the sun rising, perfectly
red, which I did not expect would take place so soon. The cock
crowed, the birds began to sing, and sleep was banished from my
eyelids.
Translation of James Edward Smith.
THE AUTHOR VISITS THE LAPLAND ALPS
From Lachesis Lapponica': Date July 6
M
Y COMPANION Was a Laplander, who served me both as serv-
ant and interpreter. In the latter capacity his assistance
was highly requisite, few persons being to be met with
on these alps who are acquainted with the Swedish language; nor
was I willing to trust myself alone among these wild people, who
were ignorant for what purpose I came. I had already suffered
much in the Lapland part of Umeå for want of knowing the
language. Nor was my companion wanted less to assist me in
carrying what was necessary; for I had sufficient incumbrances.
of my own, without being the bearer of our provisions into the
bargain.
On my first ascending these wild alps, I felt as if in a new
world. Here were no forests to be seen; nothing but mountains
upon mountains, larger and larger as I advance, all covered with
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9087
snow. No road, no tracks, nor any signs of inhabitants were vis-
ible. The verdure of summer seemed to shun this frozen region,
retiring into the deep valleys between the mountains. I saw
very few birds, except some ptarmigans, which the Laplanders call
Cheruna (Tetrao Lagopus), running with their young along the
vales. The delightful season of spring, whose cheering influence
on man and all living nature I had so lately experienced in the
beginning of my journey, seemed an alien here. The declining
sun never disappeared sufficiently to allow any cooling shade; and
by climbing to the more elevated parts of these lofty mountains
I could see it at midnight above the horizon. When I cast my
eyes over the grass and herbage, there were few objects I had
seen before, so that all nature was alike strange to me. I sat
down to collect and describe these vegetable rarities, while the
time passed unperceived away; and my interpreter was obliged to
remind me that we had still five or six miles to go to the nearest
Laplander, and that if we had a mind for any reindeer meat, we
ought to bestir ourselves quickly. We therefore proceeded up and
down the snowy hills; sometimes passing along their precipitous
sides, which was the most difficult traveling of all, and for many
a long way we walked over heaps of stones. About the evening
of the following day we reached the nearest spot where any Lap-
lander we met at that time settled. The man we met with gave
me a very good reception, and furnished me with a couple of
reindeer skins to sleep between. Immediately after my arrival,
the herd, consisting of seven or eight hundred head of reindeer,
came home. These were milked, and some of the milk was
boiled for my entertainment; but it proved rather too rich for
my stomach.
My host furnished me with his own spoon, which
he carried in his tobacco-bag. On my expressing a wish, through
my interpreter, to have the spoon washed, my Lapland friend
immediately complied, taking a mouthful of water and spitting it.
over the spoon.
After having satisfied my hunger and refreshed myself with
sleep, I steered my course directly southwest, towards the alps
of Pitheå, proceeding from thence to the lofty icy mountains or
main ridge of the country. A walk of scarcely above four or
five miles further brought me to the western edge of this ridge;
for I was desirous of examining that side of the mountains to see
how it agreed with the eastern part. I had no sooner arrived
at the icy mountains than a storm overtook me, accompanied by
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9088
LINNÆUS
a shower of thin pieces of ice, which soon formed an icy crust
over my own clothes and those of my conductor. The severity
of the cold obliged me to borrow the gloves and lappmudd (coat
of reindeer skin) from the man who accompanied me. But the
weather proved more favorable as soon as we had crossed the
summit of the ridge. From hence the verdant appearance of
Norway, lying far beneath us, was very delightful. The whole
country was perfectly green, and notwithstanding its vast extent,
looked like a garden in miniature, for the tallest trees appeared
not above a span high. As we began to descend the alps, it
seemed as if we should soon arrive at the lower country; but our
calculations were very inadequate to what we found its actual
distance. At length, however, we reached the plains of which we
had enjoyed so stupendous a prospect. Nothing could be more
delightful to my feelings than this transition from all the severity.
of winter to the warmth and beauty of summer. The verdant
herbage, the sweet-scented clover, the tall grass reaching up to
my arms, the grateful flavor of the wild fruits, and the fine
weather which welcomed me to the foot of the alps, seemed to
refresh me both in mind and body.
Here I found myself close to the sea-coast.
I took up my
abode at the house of a shipmaster, with whom I made an agree-
ment to be taken in a boat, the following day, along the coast.
I much wished to approach the celebrated whirlpool called the
Maelstrom, but I could find nobody willing to venture near it.
We set sail the next morning according to appointment; but
the wind proved contrary, and the boatmen were after a while
exhausted with rowing. Meantime I amused myself in examining
various petrifactions, zoöphytes, and submarine plants of the
Fucus tribe, which occupied every part of the coast. In the
evening I arrived at the house of Mr. Rask, the pastor of Torf-
jorden, who gave me a kind reception.
Next day we proceeded further on our voyage; but the con-
trary wind exhausted our patience, and we veered about, soon
reaching the place from whence we had first set out, the wind
being directly in our favor for that purpose.
On the following morning I climbed one of the neighboring
mountains, with the intention of measuring its height. While I
was reposing in perfect tranquillity on the side of the hill, busied
only in loosening a stone which I wanted to examine, I heard
the report of a gun at a small distance below. I was too far off
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9089
to receive any hurt, however, so thanks to Providence I escaped;
but my alarm may be easily imagined.
Perceiving the man who.
had fired the gun, I pursued him to a considerable distance to
prevent his charging his piece a second time; and I determined
never to go there again without some protection. I inquired who
it could be that had made this unprovoked attack, but found it
impossible to gain any information on the subject.
On the 15th of July we set out on our return; and that whole
day was employed in climbing the mountains again, to our no
small fatigue and exhaustion, the ground we had to pass over
being so extremely steep as well as lofty. When we reached the
cold snowy mountains, indeed, we had sufficient opportunity to
cool ourselves.
From hence we turned our course towards the alps of Tor-
neå, which were described to me as about forty miles distant.
What I endured in the course of this journey is hardly to be
described. How many weary steps was I obliged to take in order
to climb the precipices that came in my way, and how excessive
were my perspiration and fatigue! Nor were these the worst.
evils we had to encounter before we reached Caituma. Some-
times we were enveloped with clouds, so that we could not see
before us; sometimes rivers impeded our progress, and obliged
us either to choose a very circuitous path, or to wade naked
through the cold snow-water. This fresh snow-water, however,
proved a most welcome and salutary refreshment; for without it
we should never have been able to encounter the excessive heat
of the weather. Water was our only drink during this journey,
but it never proved so refreshing as when we sucked it out of
the melting snow.
Having nearly reached the Lapland village of Caituma,-
the inhabitants of which seemed perfectly wild, running away
from their huts as soon as they perceived us approaching from
a considerable distance,-I began to be tired of advancing fur-
ther up into this inhospitable country. We had not at this time
tasted bread for several days, the stock we had brought with
us being entirely exhausted. The rich milk of the reindeer was
too heavy to be eaten without bread.
I determined
therefore to return towards Quick jock, which was forty miles
from this spot. In the course of my journey thither, walking
rather carelessly over the snow, without noticing a hole which
the water had made, I fell through the icy crust into the deep.
XVI-569
―――――――――
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LINNEUS
9090
snow. The interpreter and guide were totally unable to assist
me, the cavity in which I lay being very steep, and so hollowed
out by the water that it surrounded me like a wall. It was not
in their power to reach me without a rope, which they luckily
were able to procure to drag me out of the hole. I received
a blow on my thigh in the fall, the effects of which I felt for
a month afterwards. One of my guides had met with a similar
accident but a week before.
At length we arrived at Quickjock, after having been four.
weeks without tasting bread. Those who have not experienced
the want of this essential support of life can scarcely imagine
how hard it is to be deprived of it so long, even with a super-
fluity of all other kinds of food. I remained four days at Quick-
jock to recruit my strength, and afterwards descended the river
again to Luleå. There being no boat to be had north of Pur-
kijaur, we were obliged to construct a raft for ourselves. Our
voyage was very perilous, for the wind and current both com-
bined to overset us; so that it was not without the greatest
exertion we saved ourselves: and it being night, nobody heard
our cries for assistance.
The next day I was conducted to the river of Calatz, to see
the manner of fishing for pearls, and on the 30th of July arrived
at Luleå.
Translation of James Edward Smith.
## p. 9090 (#91) ############################################
## p. 9090 (#92) ############################################
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## p. 9090 (#93) ############################################
0591
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## p. 9090 (#94) ############################################
LIVY
8000030
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OUR ARTICLE
## p. 9091 (#95) ############################################
9091
LIVY (TITUS LIVIUS)
(59 B. C. -17 A. D. )
BY WILLIAM CRANSTON LAWTON
"HISTORY" is to be held firmly to its original meaning,
investigation, Livy hardly deserves to be classed among his-
torians at all. Certainly we shall not wonder that Macaulay
condemns him, with his usual unsparing vigor; and we can but smile
at Dante's no less sweeping indorsement of "Livy, who erreth not! "
Nevertheless, fiction widely accepted is often infinitely more power-
ful in molding the minds of later men, than forgotten reality. The
obscure beginnings of Roman political life will never be adequately
illuminated; but the Æneid, and the romantic inventions of the an-
nalists, will probably never wholly fade from the imagination of
mankind so long as any record of earlier civilizations is preserved
and conned.
In this, and in many other respects, Livy is not un
unworthy of a
place beside Herodotus. Like his Greek predecessor and master,
the Roman author also may more fairly be described as an essay-
ist. Each treated a single theme of immense importance, with con-
summate charm in narration and description. Each was so successful
as to overshadow and outlive all rivals. Neither had any glimmer
of "modern methods of research. " Indeed, it is difficult to realize
that Herodotus was a contemporary of Thucydides; while Livy, it is
very probable, actually had Polybius's conscientious work among the
scanty volumes upon which he drew for his materials. Yet these
easy-going lovers of the picturesque have a truthfulness of their own.
Through their books, as by no others, we come to realize how the
terrific pageant of Xerxes, the heroic march of the legions toward
world-wide dominion, impressed the imagination of contemporaries.
So it has come to pass, not unnaturally, that the favorite dream for
centuries of those who love best the antique life and literature has
been the recovery of Livy's lost volumes, the complete possession of
his hundred and forty-two books on the story of Rome.
Livy was born just before Cæsar's great campaigns in Gaul be-
gan; and was just too young to bear arms when Brutus, Cassius, and
Cicero flung their lives away in the last struggle for "freedom,».
or rather for the dying rule of the old senatorial aristocracy. The
-
## p. 9092 (#96) ############################################
9092
LIVY (TITUS LIVIUS)
comparatively peaceful and settled conditions under Augustus's sway,
Livy accepted at best with the resignation of Horace, certainly not
with the enthusiastic subservience of Virgil. Like Catullus, Nepos,
and other gallant spirits of the age, Livy came from beyond the Po.
His native city Padua was famed, says Pliny, for purity of morals.
He evidently enjoyed all the advantages of wealth and good social
position. He early acquired some repute as a writer on philosophic
themes, and composed a manual of rhetoric, dedicated to his son, in
which the study of Demosthenes and Cicero was especially urged.
These are just the studies from which we would wish to know that
Livy approached his life task. A passage in the first book (§19, 3)
reveals that he is writing in 27 or 26 B. C. The account stopped at
the death of Drusus in 9 B. C. , as we learn from the scanty abstract
of the lost books. We are told-by the epitomator - that the last
two decades were composed after Augustus's death (14 A. D. ) This
is hardly credible, as Livy's own life closed at Padua only three
years later. Still, he may have been surprised by death in the midst
of a final rapid effort to complete the record for that most memora-
ble of reigns.
We have preserved for us the first, third, and fourth decades
entire, half the fifth in a rather tattered condition, the epitome just
mentioned, and meagre bits cited by later authors,-notably the
famous passage on Cicero's lack of stoicism in disaster. There is
extant, then, about a fourth of the whole work; for which, entire,
Martial declares his own library had not room! The scale was not
colossal, however, considering the magnitude of the theme. Livy's
achievement coincided most exactly in length with Charles Knight's
"History of England,' which in general purpose and scope also, as in
the genial, truth-loving, yet warmly patriotic spirit of the author,
may perhaps deserve mention in the same breath.
The subdivision, already alluded to, into groups of five and ten
books each, was made by Livy himself, and helps to render the parts
still extant far less tantalizing and fragmentary than might be sup-
posed. Thus Books i. -v. carry the story down to the sack of Rome
by the Gauls, in 390 B. C. Book vi. opens with a fresh preface, con-
fessing that the scanty memorials which had ever existed from the
earlier time had nearly all perished at that crisis in the burning city.
We are now promised a clearer and more trustworthy account for
the later periods. This throws an amusing light backward upon the
graphic details, the copious speeches reported verbatim, etc. , already
provided for the regal and early republican times! We give below,
for instance, the passage upon which Macaulay's ballad of 'Horatius
at the Bridge' leans so heavily. The very existence of Tarquin, Lars
Porsena, and the rest, is debatable; and certainly Livy's account,
## p. 9093 (#97) ############################################
LIVY (TITUS LIVIUS)
9093
beginning like Virgil's with the destruction of Troy and Æneas's
flight to Italy, must be read in quite the same spirit as the great
patriotic epic itself. Both contain something far mightier than pain-
fully sought historic truth; namely, what the Romans taught their
children to believe concerning the remote past.
Books xxi. -xxx. , again, contain a complete account of the Hanni-
balic war. Here the historic element is altogether larger, and the
struggle between patriotic detestation of the Carthaginian, and chiv-
alric admiration for valor and good generalship, reveals Livy's own
pleasing nature with great clearness. All this may be supported
even by so brief a passage as the opening characterization of Hanni-
bal, here cited.
Livy is at his best in the speeches with which all his books were
thickly studded. These have usually little or no historical foundation,
but are revelations of the purpose and character of the chief actors,
as Livy saw them. His broad descriptions of battles, marches, etc. ,
are probably drawn with almost as free a hand. Certainly he did
not as a rule embarrass or limit himself by any accurate study of the
topography on the spot. These strictures apply less than usual to
his picture of the fight by Lake Trasimenus, where he was upon
ground familiar to him, as it is to many of his modern readers.
We get a little out of patience at times with Livy's assurances of
Roman magnanimity and Punic treachery. Curiously enough, how-
ever, after these have occurred in speeches, or even in Livy's own
introductory remarks, the clear stream of the narrative proper often
runs in quite another direction. Occasionally, again, we get a purely
humorous variation on the hackneyed theme; as when the school-
master of Falerii leads his princely boys into the besiegers' camp, and
the Romans equip the youths with long sticks, to flog the treacherous
pedagogue back into the beleaguered town! Again, Livy is too good
a rhetorician to make the alien speeches notably weaker than the
Roman pleas. When Rome repudiated the disgraceful peace which
released her army from the Caudine Forks, and offered up to Samnite
vengeance the consuls who had exceeded their powers, but refused
to send the army back into the trap, the gallant Samnite Pontius
cried out:-
-
"Will you always find a pretext for repudiating the pledges made
in defeat? You gave hostages to Porsena-and by stealth withdrew
them. With gold you redeemed your city from the Gauls: they were
cut down in the act of receiving it. You pledged us peace, to regain
your legions: that peace you now cancel. Always you cover deception
with some fair mask of justice. "
Our heaviest loss is doubtless in the later books. Livy seems to
have written with dignified frankness on the period of the civil wars.
## p. 9094 (#98) ############################################
9094
LIVY (TITUS LIVIUS)
For instance, he expressed a doubt whether the life of the great
Julius had been on the whole a curse or a blessing; and his admira-
tion for the dictator's military rival caused Augustus to stigmatize
the historian good-humoredly as a "Pompeian. " Such a man must
have left a record, based largely upon his own memories, far more
connected and impartial than Cicero's letters, more trustworthy than
the late and inferior historians yet extant. Livy detested both ex-
tremes, tyranny and democracy. He took a pessimistic view of the
present and future of Rome; and indeed he counts it a sufficient
reward for his labor that "while reviewing in thought those earlier
days," he may "escape, at least for the time, from the many evils
which this generation has seen. "
Upon the whole, then, Livy can hardly be assigned a place at all
among scientific investigators of historical fact; since the chief mon-
uments and other data, even in Rome itself, rarely attracted his crit-
ical attention. He was a fair-minded, patriotic man, of wide culture
and exquisite taste, a master of rhetoric, a delightful story-teller,
with a fair respect for truth, but-endowed with a dangerously vivid
imagination. Many, perhaps most, of his best passages, are true only
as Landor's Imaginary Conversations' are: true to artistic taste,
and usually also to the larger historical outlines of the character
described.
The text of Livy is in very bad condition, and numberless heroic
emendations have been necessary. Here the bold methods of the
great Danish critic Madvig have found their most fitting field: a large
proportion of Livy's sentences have first become intelligible under
this surgeon's healing hand. Even of the extant books there is no
adequate annotated edition in English. That of Weissenborn, with
German notes, is indispensable to Latinists. The best recent piece
of translation is Books xxi. -xxv. , by Church and Brodribb (to whom
are especially indebted also for a complete English Tacitus. )
This volume, attractively printed by Macmillans in their Classical
Series, is the best introduction to Livy for the English student.
The Bohn, though oppressively literal, is not remarkably inaccurate.
we
The lost books of Livy are not likely to reappear. Indeed, abridg-
ments and epitomes displaced them largely even under the early
empire; and the very epigram of Martial, cited above, evidently
accompanied such a condensation :-
―
"Here into scanty parchment is monstrous Livy rolled;
He whom by no means when entire my library could hold! »
William Cranston Lawton.
## p. 9095 (#99) ############################################
LIVY (TITUS LIVIUS)
9095
HORATIUS COCLES AT THE SUBLICIAN BRIDGE
From the Second Book of the History of Rome'
THE
HE Sublician bridge well-nigh afforded a passage to the enemy,
had there not been one man, Horatius Cocles (that defense
the fortune of Rome had on that day), who, happening to
be posted on guard at the bridge, when he saw the Janiculum
taken by a sudden assault, and that the enemy were pouring
down from thence in full speed, and that his own party in terror
and nfusion were abandoning their arms and ranks,-laying
hold of them one by one, standing in their way, and appealing to
the faith of gods and men, he declared "That their flight would
avail them nothing if they deserted their post; if they passed the
bridge and left it behind them, there would soon be more of the
enemy in the Palatium and Capitol than in the Janiculum: for
that reason he advised and charged them to demolish the bridge,
by their sword, by fire, or by any means whatever; that he would
stand the shock of the enemy as far as could be done by one
man. "
He then advanced to the first entrance of the bridge, and
being easily distinguished among those who showed their backs
in retreating from the fight, facing about to engage the foe hand
to hand, by his surprising bravery he terrified the enemy. Two
indeed a sense of shame kept with him,-Spurius Lartius and
Titus Herminius; men eminent for their birth, and renowned for
their gallant exploits. With them he for a short time stood the
first storm of the danger, and the severest brunt of the battle.
But as they who demolished the bridge called upon them to
retire, he obliged them also to withdraw to a place of safety on a
small portion of the bridge still left. Then casting his stern eyes
round all the officers of the Etrurians in a threatening manner,
he sometimes challenged them singly, sometimes reproached them
all: "the slaves of haughty tyrants, who, regardless of their own
freedom, came to oppress the liberty of others. " They hesitated
for a considerable time, looking round one at the other, to com-
mence the fight: shame then put the army in motion, and a
shout being raised, they hurl their weapons from all sides on their
single adversary; and when they all stuck in the shield held.
before him, and he with no less obstinacy kept possession of the
bridge with firm step, they now endeavored to thrust him down
from it by one push, when at once the crash of the falling bridge,
## p. 9096 (#100) ###########################################
9096
LIVY (TITUS LIVIUS)
at the same time a shout of the Romans raised for joy at having
completed their purpose, checked their ardor with sudden panic.
Then Cocles says, "Holy father Tiberinus, I pray that thou
wouldst receive these arms and this thy soldier in thy propitious
stream. " Armed as he was, he leaped into the Tiber, and amid
showers of darts hurled on him, swam across safe to his party,
having dared an act which is likely to obtain more fame than
belief with posterity. The State was grateful towards such valor:
a statue was erected to him in the Comitium, and as much land
was given to him as he plowed around in one day. The zeal of
private individuals also was conspicuous among the public honors.
For amid the great scarcity, each person contributed something
to him according to his supply at home, depriving himself of his
own support.
Porsena being repulsed in his first attempt, having changed
his plans from a siege to a blockade, after he had placed a gar-
rison in Janiculum, pitched his camp in the plain and on the
banks of the Tiber. Then sending for boats from all parts, both
to guard the river so as not to suffer any provision to be con-
veyed to Rome, and also to transport his soldiers across the river
to plunder different places as occasion required,-in a short time
he so harassed the entire country round Rome, that not only
everything else from the country, but even their cattle, was
driven into the city, and nobody durst venture thence without the
gates. This liberty of action was granted to the Etrurians, not
more through fear than from policy; for Valerius, intent on an
opportunity of falling unawares upon a number of them, and
when straggling, a remiss avenger in trifling matters, reserved the
weight of his vengeance for more important occasions. Where-
fore, to decoy the pillagers, he ordered his men to drive their
cattle the next day out at the Esquiline gate, which was farthest
from the enemy; presuming that they would get intelligence of
it, because during the blockade and famine some slaves would
turn traitors and desert. Accordingly they were informed of it
by a deserter; and parties more numerous than usual, in hopes
of seizing the entire body, crossed the river. Then Publius Va-
lerius commanded Titus Herminius with a small body of men to
lie concealed two miles from the city, on the Gabian road, and
Spurius Lartius with a party of light-armed troops to post himself
at the Colline gate, till the enemy should pass by, and then to
throw himself in their way so that there might be no return to
## p. 9097 (#101) ###########################################
LIVY (TITUS LIVIUS)
9097
the river. The other consul, Titus Lucretius, marched out of the
Nævian gate with some companies of soldiers; Valerius himself
led some chosen cohorts down from the Cœlian Mount, and they
were first descried by the enemy. Herminius, when he perceived
the alarm, rose out of ambush and fell upon the rear of the
Tuscans, who had charged Valerius. The shout was returned on
the right and left, from the Colline gate on the one hand and the
Nævian on the other. By this stratagem the plunderers were put
to the sword between both, they not being a match in strength.
for fighting, and all the ways being blocked up to prevent
escape: this put an end to the Etrurians strolling about in so
disorderly a manner.
Nevertheless the blockade continued, and there was a scarcity.
of corn, with a very high price. Porsena entertained a hope that
by continuing the siege he should take the city; when Caius
Mucius, a young nobleman, to whom it seemed a disgrace that the
Roman people, who when enslaved under kings had never been
confined within their walls, in any war nor by any enemy, should
now, when a free people, be blocked up by these very Etrurians
whose armies they had often routed,-thinking that such indig-
nity should be avenged by some great and daring effort, at first
designed of his own accord to penetrate into the enemy's camp.
Then, being afraid if he went without the permission of the
consuls, or the knowledge of any one, he might be seized by the
Roman guards and brought back as a deserter, the circumstances.
of the city at the time justifying the charge, he went to the
Senate: "Fathers," says he, "I intend to cross the Tiber, and
enter the enemy's camp, if I can; not as a plunderer, or as an
avenger in our turn of their devastations. A greater deed is in
my mind, if the gods assist. " The Senate approved his design.
He set out with a sword concealed under his garment. When
he came thither, he stationed himself among the thickest of the
crowd, near the King's tribunal. There, where the soldiers were
receiving their pay, the King's secretary, sitting beside him
dressed nearly in the same style, was busily engaged (and to
him they commonly addressed themselves); being afraid to ask
which of them was Porsena, lest by not knowing the King he
should discover himself, as fortune blindly directed the blow he
killed the secretary instead of the King. Then as he was going
off thence, where with his bloody dagger he had made his way
through the dismayed multitude, a concourse being attracted at
## p. 9098 (#102) ###########################################
9098
LIVY (TITUS LIVIUS)
the noise, the King's guards immediately seized and brought him
back, standing alone before the King's tribunal; even then, amid
such menaces of fortune, more capable of inspiring dread than of
feeling it, "I am," says he, "a Roman citizen; my name is
Caius Mucius: an enemy, I wished to slay an enemy; nor have
I less of resolution to suffer death than I had to inflict it. Both
to act and to suffer with fortitude is a Roman's part. Nor have
I alone harbored such feelings towards you; there is after me a
long train of persons aspiring to the same honor. Therefore, if
you choose it, prepare yourself for this peril, to contend for your
life every hour; to have the sword and the enemy in the very
entrance of your pavilion: this is the war which we, the Roman
youth, declare against you; dread not an army in array, nor a
battle, the affair will be to yourself alone and with each of
us singly. "
When the King, highly incensed, and at the same time terri-
fied at the danger, in a menacing manner commanded fires to
be kindled about him, if he did not speedily explain the plots
which by his threats he had darkly insinuated against him, then
Mucius said, "Behold me, that you may be sensible of how little
account the body is to those who have great glory in view;"
and immediately he thrusts his right hand into the fire that was
lighted for the sacrifice.
year Rudbeck, who was growing old, appointed Linnæus his assistant;
and the latter was now openly started on his flowery way, lecturing,
traveling, and reveling in the wilderness of plants like a bee in a
clover-field.
―
He now wrote his celebrated epoch-making 'Systema Naturæ. '
At Amsterdam in Holland he dwelt a year with the famous Professor
Boerhaave, and there published his 'Fundamenta Botanica. ' A rich
banker by the name of Cliffort wiled him to his magnificent garden
at Hartecamp, where he worked and lived like a prince; and there he
published his 'Flora Lapponica,' containing the new genus Linnæa.
In 1736 he visited England, and was warmly welcomed by the
plants and plant-lovers there. On his return to the Netherlands he
completed his 'Genera Plantarum,' which may be regarded as the
beginning of the natural systematic botany. This great work was
followed in this hot, fertile, high-pressure period by his 'Classes
Plantarum. ' His industry and fertility were truly wonderful. Books
came from his brain as from an inexhaustible fountain; and neither
pleasure nor pain, praise nor blame, nor the weariness and exhaus-
tion that stop common mortals, could abate one jot his overmastering
enthusiasm, or divert him in the least from his glorious course.
In 1738 Linnæus established himself as a physician in Stockholm,
and was married there the following year. In 1740 Rudbeck died,
and Linnæus gained his place as professor of natural history at the
University of Upsala, where he had so long and so bravely studied.
and starved. Thenceforth his life was all congenial work, flowers
and sunshine, praise and fame. In 1750, after many other less nota-
ble works, he published 'Philosophia Botanica,' and three years later
'Species Plantarum. > He shone now like a sun; honors of all kinds
poured in on him, kings wanted him at their courts, every university
wanted him; but he remained true to his own country and his own
work. Students from near and far gathered about him. The five
## p. 9080 (#80) ############################################
9080
LINNEUS
hundred at Upsala increased to fifteen hundred, attracted and in-
spired by his bright-burning love. He lived till 1778.
In person he is described as of medium height, with large limbs
and wonderful eyes. If one may judge from the portrait statue
erected to his memory in Upsala, his features were beautiful and
serene beyond those of most men, and surely beyond those of most
statues.
Of course plants were studied long before Linnæus, but mostly as
food or medicine; and the collections of living plants were called
"physic gardens. " Solomon "spake of trees, from the cedar of Leb-
anon to the hyssop on the wall. " The Chaldeans, Egyptians, and
Greeks studied botany in some form or other; for the showy multi-
tudes of plant-people could not fail to attract the attention of scholars
in every age. About three hundred years before Christ, Theophrastus
wrote a 'History of Plants,' in which he described about five hundred
species supposed to be useful in medicine. The elder Pliny described
about a thousand. But it was not until the sixteenth century that
anything noteworthy was done in botany as a science. In 1583
Andreas Cæsalpinus, professor of botany at Padua, published a work
called 'De Plantis,' in which he distributed some one thousand five
hundred and twenty plants in fifteen classes, according to the differ-
ences of their fruits and flowers, and their being herbaceous or
woody.
Then came John Ray, an Englishman, who died two years before
Linnæus was born; and who published in 1682 Methodus Plantarum,'
in which he separated flowering from flowerless plants, and divided
the former into Dicotyledons and Monocotyledons, a marked advance
in natural classification. Tournefort, a contemporary of Ray, was
professor of botany in Paris in 1683; and published a systematic
arrangement in 1694-1700, in which he described about eight thousand
species of plants, divided into twenty-two classes.
Then came Linnæus, whose published works are said to number
over one hundred and eighty, while many remain in manuscript.
Much has been written by naturalists on the Linnæan system; and
while recognizing its usefulness as a convenient index to nature's
floral book, they seem puzzled to account for the revolution he effected
in natural history, and his unparalleled influence. Even his most
enthusiastic admirers seem at a loss to know the secret of his unri-
valed power. The so-called Sexual system of Linnæus, they anxiously
point out, was needful in bringing order out of chaos, and making a
foundation for the "natural system" now universally adopted, and in
preparing the way for the work of De Jussieu and De Candolle. Strong,
they say, in body and mind, with marvelous industry and insight,
Linnæus worked with the strength of ten. He improved the existing
## p. 9081 (#81) ############################################
LINNEUS
9081
distinctions of genera and species, introduced a better nomenclature
on the binomial method, and invented the system founded on the
stamens and pistils. In half praise, half apology, they claim that
"his verbal accuracy and the terseness of his technical language»
reduced the crude accumulations of his predecessors into available
form, arranged their endless synonyms, cast out the confusing varie-
ties of gardeners' terms, like a Moses led botanical science out of
Egyptian darkness; and in fine, that he found biology a chaos and
left it a cosmos.
But it is not in methods of classification, technical skill, tireless
energy in making books and gathering plants, that we are to look
for the secret of the marvelous influence he exerted, and which made
him the king of naturalists. No. Dry words and dry facts, however
clear-cut and polished, will not fire hearts. A botanist may be a
giant in intellect, gather plants from the four quarters of the globe
and pile them in labeled heaps as high as haystacks, without kindling
a single spark of the love that fired the followers of Linnæus. In
drying plants, botanists too often dry themselves. But Linnæus loved
every living thing as his friend and brother, and his eyes never
closed on the divine beauty and harmony and oneness they dis-
played. All the dry word-work he did, however technical and severe,
was done to bring the plants and animals as living children of
Nature forward into light to be loved. In the midst of his immense
classifying labors, he seemed always to be saying in a low glowing
undertone, «< Come, darlings: I love you, and want everybody to love
you! Come, stand in rows and let me see you and count you and
call you by name. " And they came-from his own Scandinavia,
from the tundras of Lapland, from icy Siberia, from sunny India and
Africa, from both the Americas, and from the isles of the seas. They
came to his love, led by devoted disciples. For as a sun, he warmed
others and inspired them; and thus warmed and inspired, they radi-
ated like light over all the world and did the master's bidding. The
beasts of the field came also to this solar man to be seen and
warmed and loved; and the birds from every grove, and insects and
creeping things, and fishes from the seas and streams, and crystals
from the mountain caves,- all for love. And so his radiant influence
works on, cheering and enlightening the world, and will go on while
flowers bloom and birds sing.
A hundred years after Linnæus died, our own Asa Gray, Sir Joseph
Hooker, and I were botanizing together on Mount Shasta, the north-
ernmost of the great mountains of California; and when night came
we camped in a flowery opening in a grand forest of silver firs. After
supper I built a big fire, and the flowers and the trees, wondrously
illumined, seemed to come forward and look on and listen as we
## p. 9082 (#82) ############################################
9082
LINNÆUS
talked. Gray told many a story of his life and work on the Atlantic
Alleghanies and in Harvard University; and Hooker told of his trav-
els in the Himalayas, and of his work with Tyndall and Huxley and
grand old Darwin. And of course we talked of trees, argued the
relationship of varying species, etc. ; and I remember that Sir Joseph,
who in his long active life had traveled through all the great forests
of the world, admitted, in reply to a question of mine, that in grand-
eur, variety, and beauty, no forest on the globe rivaled the great
coniferous forests of my much-loved Sierra. But it was not what
was said in praise of our majestic sequoias and cedars, firs and pines,
that was most memorable that night. No: it was what was said of
the lowly fragrant namesake of Linnæus,-Linnæa borealis. After
a pause in the flow of our botanic conversation that great night, the
like of which was never to be enjoyed by us again (for we soon sep-
arated and Gray died), as if speaking suddenly out of another coun-
try Gray said, "Muir, why have you not found Linnæa in California?
It must be here or hereabouts on the northern boundary of the
Sierra. I have heard of it, and have specimens from Washington
and Oregon all through these northern woods, and you should have
found it here. " In reply, I said I had not forgotten Linnæa. "That
fragrant little plant, making carpets beneath the cool woods of Can-
ada and around the great lakes, has been a favorite of mine ever
since I began to wander. I have found many of its relations and
neighbors, high up in the mountain woods and around the glacier
meadows; but Linnæa itself I have not yet found. " "Well, neverthe-
less," said Gray, "the blessed fellow must be living hereabouts no
great distance off. " Then we let the camp fire die down to a heap
of ruby coals, wrapped our blankets about us, and with Linnæa in
our minds, fell asleep. Next morning Gray continued his work on
the Shasta flanks, while Hooker and I made an excursion to the west-
ward over one of the upper valleys of the Sacramento. About noon
we came to one of the icy-cold branches of the river, paved with
cobblestones; and after we forded it we noticed a green carpet on
the bank, made of something we did not at first recognize, for it was
not in bloom. Hooker, bestowing a keen botanic look on it, said
"What is that? " then stooped and plucked a specimen and said,
"Isn't that Linnæa? It's awfully like it. " Then finding some of the
withered flowers, he exclaimed, "It is Linnæa. " This was the first
time the blessed plant was recognized within the bounds of Califor-
nia; and it would seem that Gray had felt its presence the night
before, on the mountain ten miles away.
It is a little slender, creeping, trailing evergreen, with oval crenate
leaves, tiny thread-like peduncles standing straight up and dividing
into two pedicels at the top, on each of which is hung a delicate,
## p. 9083 (#83) ############################################
LINNEUS
9083
fragrant white and purple flower. It was at the age of twenty-five
that Linnæus made the most notable of his many long, lonely botan-
ical excursions. He set out from Upsala and wandered afoot or on
horseback northward through endless pine and birch woods, tundras,
and meadows, and along the shores of countless lakes into Lapland,
beyond the Arctic Circle; now wading in spongy bogs, now crossing
broad glacier pavements and moraines and smooth ice-burnished
bosses of rock, fringed with heathworts and birch: a wonderful jour-
ney of forty-six hundred miles, full of exciting experiences and charm-
ing plants. He brought back hundreds of specimens new to science,
among which was a little fragrant evergreen that he liked the best
of all. Soon after his return he handed a specimen of it to his friend
Gronovius, pointed out its characters, and requested him to describe
it and name it for him; saying that somehow he felt that this lit-
tle plant was related to him and like him. So it was called Linnæa
borealis, and keeps his memory green and flowery and fragrant all
round the cool woods of the world.
Only last summer, when I was in the wildest part of the Rocky
Mountains, where glaciers still linger and waterfalls like ribbons hang
down the unscalable cliffs, I found Linnæa spreading and blooming
in glorious exuberance far and wide over mossy ground, beneath
spruce and pine, - the wildest and the gentlest, the most beautiful
and most loveful of all the inhabitants of the wilderness.
Wherever Linnæa dwells, you will find enchanting woods and
the dearest of the small plant-people, chiogenes, Clintonia, orchids,
heathworts, and hosts of bright mosses wearing golden crowns. No
breath of malaria comes near Linnæa. The air and the scenery are
always good enough for gods or men, and a divine charm pervades it
that no mortal can escape. In Linnæan woods I always feel willing
to encamp forever and forego even heaven. Never was man's mem-
ory more blessedly embalmed than is the memory of immortal Lin-
næus in this little flower. All around the cool ends of the world,
while wild beauty endures, the devout pilgrim will see-
"-beneath dim aisles in odorous beds,
The slight Linnæa hang its twin-born heads,
And bless the monument of the man of flowers,
Which breathes his sweet fame through the northern bowers. "
John Mins
## p. 9084 (#84) ############################################
9084
LINNEUS
LAPLAND OBSERVATIONS
From the Lachesis Lapponica '
JUN
UNE 11. -Being Sunday, and a day of continued rain, I re-
mained at Umœa.
June 12. I took my departure very early in the morn-
ing. The weather was so hazy I could not see the distance of
half a gunshot before me. I wandered along in a perpetual
mist, which made the grass as wet as if it had rained. The sun
appeared quite dim, wading as it were through the clouds. By
nine o'clock the mists began to disperse, and the sun shone forth.
The spruce fir (Pinus Abies), hitherto of a uniform dark green,
now began to put forth its lighter-colored buds, a welcome sign
of advancing summer.
---
Chamoedaphne of Buxbaum (Andromeda polifolia) was at this
time in its highest beauty, decorating the marshy grounds in a
most agreeable manner. The flowers are quite blood-red before
they expand, but when full-grown the corolla is of a flesh color.
Scarcely any painter's art can so happily imitate the beauty of a
fine female complexion; still less could any artificial color upon
the face itself bear a comparison with this lovely blossom. As
I contemplated it, I could not help thinking of Andromeda as
described by the poets; and the more I meditated upon their
descriptions, the more applicable they seemed to the little plant
before me,- so that if these writers had it in view, they could
scarcely have contrived a more apposite fable. Andromeda is
represented by them as a virgin of most exquisite and unrivaled
charms, but these charms remain in perfection only so long as
she retains her virgin purity; which is also applicable to the
plant, now preparing to celebrate its nuptials. This plant is
always fixed on some little turfy hillock in the midst of the
swamps, as Andromeda herself was chained to a rock in the sea,
which bathed her feet as the fresh water does the roots of the
plant. Dragons and venomous serpents surrounded her, as toads
and other reptiles frequent the abode of her vegetable prototype,
and when they pair in the spring, throw mud and water over
its leaves and branches. As the distressed virgin cast down her
blushing face through excessive affliction, so does the rosy-colored
flower hang its head, growing paler and paler till it withers away.
Hence, as this plant forms a new genus, I have chosen for it
the name of Andromeda.
## p. 9085 (#85) ############################################
LINNEUS
9085
Everywhere near the road grew the Mesomara or herbaceous
cornel (Cornus suecica, very minutely described in Fl. Lapp. , ed.
2, 39; see also English Botany, v. 5, t. 310).
All the little woods and copses by the roadside abounded with
butterflies of the Fritillary tribe, without silver spots. The great
dragon-fly with two flat lobes at its tail (Libellula forcipata), and
another species with blue wings (L. Virgo), were also common.
Various modes of rocking children in cradles are adopted in
different places. In Småland the cradle is suspended by an elas-
tic pole, on which it swings up and down perpendicularly. The
poorer Laplanders rock their infants on branches of trees, but
those of superior rank have cradles that commonly roll from side
to side. In the part of the country where I was now traveling,
the cradles rock vertically, or from head to foot.
Close to the road hung the under jaw of a horse, having six
fore teeth, much worn and blunted, two canine teeth, and at a
distance from the latter twelve grinders, six on each side. If I
knew how many teeth and of what peculiar form, as well as how
many udders, and where situated, each animal has, I should per-
haps be able to contrive a most natural methodical arrangement
of quadrupeds.
June 15-This day afforded me nothing much worthy of
notice. The sea in many places came very near the road, lash-
ing the stony crags with its formidable waves. In some parts it
gradually separated small islands here and there from the main-
land, and in others manured the sandy beach with mud. The
weather was fine.
In one marshy spot grew what is probably a variety of the
cranberry (Vaccinium Oxycoccus), differing only in having ex-
tremely narrow leaves, with smaller flowers and fruit than usual.
The common kind was intermixed with it, but the difference of
size was constant. The Pinguicula grew among them, sometimes
with round, sometimes with more oblong leaves.
The bilberry (Vaccinium Myrtillus) presented itself most com-
monly with red flowers, more rarely with flesh-colored ones.
Myrica Gale, which I had not before met with in West Bothnia,
grew sparingly in the marshes.
In the evening, a little before the sun went down, I was
assailed by such multitudes of gnats as surpass all imagination.
They seemed to occupy the whole atmosphere, especially when I
traveled through low or damp meadows. They filled my mouth,
## p. 9086 (#86) ############################################
9086
LINNEUS
nose, and eyes, for they took no pains to get out of my way.
Luckily they did not attack me with their bites or stings, though
they almost choked me. When I grasped at the cloud before me,
my hands were filled with myriads of these insects, all crushed
to pieces with a touch, and by far too minute for description.
The inhabitants call them Knort, or Knott (Culex reptans), by
mistake called C. pulicaris in Fl. Lapp. , ed. 2, 382.
Just at sunset I reached the town of Old Pitheå, having pre-
viously crossed a broad river in a ferry-boat. Near this spot
stood a gibbet, with a couple of wheels, on which lay the bodies
of two Finlanders without heads. These men had been executed
for highway robbery and murder. They were accompanied by
the quartered body of a Laplander who had murdered one of his
relations.
Immediately on entering the town I procured a lodging, but
had not been long in bed before I perceived a glare of light on
the wall of my chamber. I was alarmed with the idea of fire;
but on looking out of the window, saw the sun rising, perfectly
red, which I did not expect would take place so soon. The cock
crowed, the birds began to sing, and sleep was banished from my
eyelids.
Translation of James Edward Smith.
THE AUTHOR VISITS THE LAPLAND ALPS
From Lachesis Lapponica': Date July 6
M
Y COMPANION Was a Laplander, who served me both as serv-
ant and interpreter. In the latter capacity his assistance
was highly requisite, few persons being to be met with
on these alps who are acquainted with the Swedish language; nor
was I willing to trust myself alone among these wild people, who
were ignorant for what purpose I came. I had already suffered
much in the Lapland part of Umeå for want of knowing the
language. Nor was my companion wanted less to assist me in
carrying what was necessary; for I had sufficient incumbrances.
of my own, without being the bearer of our provisions into the
bargain.
On my first ascending these wild alps, I felt as if in a new
world. Here were no forests to be seen; nothing but mountains
upon mountains, larger and larger as I advance, all covered with
## p. 9087 (#87) ############################################
LINNEUS
9087
snow. No road, no tracks, nor any signs of inhabitants were vis-
ible. The verdure of summer seemed to shun this frozen region,
retiring into the deep valleys between the mountains. I saw
very few birds, except some ptarmigans, which the Laplanders call
Cheruna (Tetrao Lagopus), running with their young along the
vales. The delightful season of spring, whose cheering influence
on man and all living nature I had so lately experienced in the
beginning of my journey, seemed an alien here. The declining
sun never disappeared sufficiently to allow any cooling shade; and
by climbing to the more elevated parts of these lofty mountains
I could see it at midnight above the horizon. When I cast my
eyes over the grass and herbage, there were few objects I had
seen before, so that all nature was alike strange to me. I sat
down to collect and describe these vegetable rarities, while the
time passed unperceived away; and my interpreter was obliged to
remind me that we had still five or six miles to go to the nearest
Laplander, and that if we had a mind for any reindeer meat, we
ought to bestir ourselves quickly. We therefore proceeded up and
down the snowy hills; sometimes passing along their precipitous
sides, which was the most difficult traveling of all, and for many
a long way we walked over heaps of stones. About the evening
of the following day we reached the nearest spot where any Lap-
lander we met at that time settled. The man we met with gave
me a very good reception, and furnished me with a couple of
reindeer skins to sleep between. Immediately after my arrival,
the herd, consisting of seven or eight hundred head of reindeer,
came home. These were milked, and some of the milk was
boiled for my entertainment; but it proved rather too rich for
my stomach.
My host furnished me with his own spoon, which
he carried in his tobacco-bag. On my expressing a wish, through
my interpreter, to have the spoon washed, my Lapland friend
immediately complied, taking a mouthful of water and spitting it.
over the spoon.
After having satisfied my hunger and refreshed myself with
sleep, I steered my course directly southwest, towards the alps
of Pitheå, proceeding from thence to the lofty icy mountains or
main ridge of the country. A walk of scarcely above four or
five miles further brought me to the western edge of this ridge;
for I was desirous of examining that side of the mountains to see
how it agreed with the eastern part. I had no sooner arrived
at the icy mountains than a storm overtook me, accompanied by
## p. 9088 (#88) ############################################
9088
LINNÆUS
a shower of thin pieces of ice, which soon formed an icy crust
over my own clothes and those of my conductor. The severity
of the cold obliged me to borrow the gloves and lappmudd (coat
of reindeer skin) from the man who accompanied me. But the
weather proved more favorable as soon as we had crossed the
summit of the ridge. From hence the verdant appearance of
Norway, lying far beneath us, was very delightful. The whole
country was perfectly green, and notwithstanding its vast extent,
looked like a garden in miniature, for the tallest trees appeared
not above a span high. As we began to descend the alps, it
seemed as if we should soon arrive at the lower country; but our
calculations were very inadequate to what we found its actual
distance. At length, however, we reached the plains of which we
had enjoyed so stupendous a prospect. Nothing could be more
delightful to my feelings than this transition from all the severity.
of winter to the warmth and beauty of summer. The verdant
herbage, the sweet-scented clover, the tall grass reaching up to
my arms, the grateful flavor of the wild fruits, and the fine
weather which welcomed me to the foot of the alps, seemed to
refresh me both in mind and body.
Here I found myself close to the sea-coast.
I took up my
abode at the house of a shipmaster, with whom I made an agree-
ment to be taken in a boat, the following day, along the coast.
I much wished to approach the celebrated whirlpool called the
Maelstrom, but I could find nobody willing to venture near it.
We set sail the next morning according to appointment; but
the wind proved contrary, and the boatmen were after a while
exhausted with rowing. Meantime I amused myself in examining
various petrifactions, zoöphytes, and submarine plants of the
Fucus tribe, which occupied every part of the coast. In the
evening I arrived at the house of Mr. Rask, the pastor of Torf-
jorden, who gave me a kind reception.
Next day we proceeded further on our voyage; but the con-
trary wind exhausted our patience, and we veered about, soon
reaching the place from whence we had first set out, the wind
being directly in our favor for that purpose.
On the following morning I climbed one of the neighboring
mountains, with the intention of measuring its height. While I
was reposing in perfect tranquillity on the side of the hill, busied
only in loosening a stone which I wanted to examine, I heard
the report of a gun at a small distance below. I was too far off
## p. 9089 (#89) ############################################
LINNEUS
9089
to receive any hurt, however, so thanks to Providence I escaped;
but my alarm may be easily imagined.
Perceiving the man who.
had fired the gun, I pursued him to a considerable distance to
prevent his charging his piece a second time; and I determined
never to go there again without some protection. I inquired who
it could be that had made this unprovoked attack, but found it
impossible to gain any information on the subject.
On the 15th of July we set out on our return; and that whole
day was employed in climbing the mountains again, to our no
small fatigue and exhaustion, the ground we had to pass over
being so extremely steep as well as lofty. When we reached the
cold snowy mountains, indeed, we had sufficient opportunity to
cool ourselves.
From hence we turned our course towards the alps of Tor-
neå, which were described to me as about forty miles distant.
What I endured in the course of this journey is hardly to be
described. How many weary steps was I obliged to take in order
to climb the precipices that came in my way, and how excessive
were my perspiration and fatigue! Nor were these the worst.
evils we had to encounter before we reached Caituma. Some-
times we were enveloped with clouds, so that we could not see
before us; sometimes rivers impeded our progress, and obliged
us either to choose a very circuitous path, or to wade naked
through the cold snow-water. This fresh snow-water, however,
proved a most welcome and salutary refreshment; for without it
we should never have been able to encounter the excessive heat
of the weather. Water was our only drink during this journey,
but it never proved so refreshing as when we sucked it out of
the melting snow.
Having nearly reached the Lapland village of Caituma,-
the inhabitants of which seemed perfectly wild, running away
from their huts as soon as they perceived us approaching from
a considerable distance,-I began to be tired of advancing fur-
ther up into this inhospitable country. We had not at this time
tasted bread for several days, the stock we had brought with
us being entirely exhausted. The rich milk of the reindeer was
too heavy to be eaten without bread.
I determined
therefore to return towards Quick jock, which was forty miles
from this spot. In the course of my journey thither, walking
rather carelessly over the snow, without noticing a hole which
the water had made, I fell through the icy crust into the deep.
XVI-569
―――――――――
## p. 9090 (#90) ############################################
LINNEUS
9090
snow. The interpreter and guide were totally unable to assist
me, the cavity in which I lay being very steep, and so hollowed
out by the water that it surrounded me like a wall. It was not
in their power to reach me without a rope, which they luckily
were able to procure to drag me out of the hole. I received
a blow on my thigh in the fall, the effects of which I felt for
a month afterwards. One of my guides had met with a similar
accident but a week before.
At length we arrived at Quickjock, after having been four.
weeks without tasting bread. Those who have not experienced
the want of this essential support of life can scarcely imagine
how hard it is to be deprived of it so long, even with a super-
fluity of all other kinds of food. I remained four days at Quick-
jock to recruit my strength, and afterwards descended the river
again to Luleå. There being no boat to be had north of Pur-
kijaur, we were obliged to construct a raft for ourselves. Our
voyage was very perilous, for the wind and current both com-
bined to overset us; so that it was not without the greatest
exertion we saved ourselves: and it being night, nobody heard
our cries for assistance.
The next day I was conducted to the river of Calatz, to see
the manner of fishing for pearls, and on the 30th of July arrived
at Luleå.
Translation of James Edward Smith.
## p. 9090 (#91) ############################################
## p. 9090 (#92) ############################################
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LIVY
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## p. 9090 (#93) ############################################
0591
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## p. 9090 (#94) ############################################
LIVY
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## p. 9091 (#95) ############################################
9091
LIVY (TITUS LIVIUS)
(59 B. C. -17 A. D. )
BY WILLIAM CRANSTON LAWTON
"HISTORY" is to be held firmly to its original meaning,
investigation, Livy hardly deserves to be classed among his-
torians at all. Certainly we shall not wonder that Macaulay
condemns him, with his usual unsparing vigor; and we can but smile
at Dante's no less sweeping indorsement of "Livy, who erreth not! "
Nevertheless, fiction widely accepted is often infinitely more power-
ful in molding the minds of later men, than forgotten reality. The
obscure beginnings of Roman political life will never be adequately
illuminated; but the Æneid, and the romantic inventions of the an-
nalists, will probably never wholly fade from the imagination of
mankind so long as any record of earlier civilizations is preserved
and conned.
In this, and in many other respects, Livy is not un
unworthy of a
place beside Herodotus. Like his Greek predecessor and master,
the Roman author also may more fairly be described as an essay-
ist. Each treated a single theme of immense importance, with con-
summate charm in narration and description. Each was so successful
as to overshadow and outlive all rivals. Neither had any glimmer
of "modern methods of research. " Indeed, it is difficult to realize
that Herodotus was a contemporary of Thucydides; while Livy, it is
very probable, actually had Polybius's conscientious work among the
scanty volumes upon which he drew for his materials. Yet these
easy-going lovers of the picturesque have a truthfulness of their own.
Through their books, as by no others, we come to realize how the
terrific pageant of Xerxes, the heroic march of the legions toward
world-wide dominion, impressed the imagination of contemporaries.
So it has come to pass, not unnaturally, that the favorite dream for
centuries of those who love best the antique life and literature has
been the recovery of Livy's lost volumes, the complete possession of
his hundred and forty-two books on the story of Rome.
Livy was born just before Cæsar's great campaigns in Gaul be-
gan; and was just too young to bear arms when Brutus, Cassius, and
Cicero flung their lives away in the last struggle for "freedom,».
or rather for the dying rule of the old senatorial aristocracy. The
-
## p. 9092 (#96) ############################################
9092
LIVY (TITUS LIVIUS)
comparatively peaceful and settled conditions under Augustus's sway,
Livy accepted at best with the resignation of Horace, certainly not
with the enthusiastic subservience of Virgil. Like Catullus, Nepos,
and other gallant spirits of the age, Livy came from beyond the Po.
His native city Padua was famed, says Pliny, for purity of morals.
He evidently enjoyed all the advantages of wealth and good social
position. He early acquired some repute as a writer on philosophic
themes, and composed a manual of rhetoric, dedicated to his son, in
which the study of Demosthenes and Cicero was especially urged.
These are just the studies from which we would wish to know that
Livy approached his life task. A passage in the first book (§19, 3)
reveals that he is writing in 27 or 26 B. C. The account stopped at
the death of Drusus in 9 B. C. , as we learn from the scanty abstract
of the lost books. We are told-by the epitomator - that the last
two decades were composed after Augustus's death (14 A. D. ) This
is hardly credible, as Livy's own life closed at Padua only three
years later. Still, he may have been surprised by death in the midst
of a final rapid effort to complete the record for that most memora-
ble of reigns.
We have preserved for us the first, third, and fourth decades
entire, half the fifth in a rather tattered condition, the epitome just
mentioned, and meagre bits cited by later authors,-notably the
famous passage on Cicero's lack of stoicism in disaster. There is
extant, then, about a fourth of the whole work; for which, entire,
Martial declares his own library had not room! The scale was not
colossal, however, considering the magnitude of the theme. Livy's
achievement coincided most exactly in length with Charles Knight's
"History of England,' which in general purpose and scope also, as in
the genial, truth-loving, yet warmly patriotic spirit of the author,
may perhaps deserve mention in the same breath.
The subdivision, already alluded to, into groups of five and ten
books each, was made by Livy himself, and helps to render the parts
still extant far less tantalizing and fragmentary than might be sup-
posed. Thus Books i. -v. carry the story down to the sack of Rome
by the Gauls, in 390 B. C. Book vi. opens with a fresh preface, con-
fessing that the scanty memorials which had ever existed from the
earlier time had nearly all perished at that crisis in the burning city.
We are now promised a clearer and more trustworthy account for
the later periods. This throws an amusing light backward upon the
graphic details, the copious speeches reported verbatim, etc. , already
provided for the regal and early republican times! We give below,
for instance, the passage upon which Macaulay's ballad of 'Horatius
at the Bridge' leans so heavily. The very existence of Tarquin, Lars
Porsena, and the rest, is debatable; and certainly Livy's account,
## p. 9093 (#97) ############################################
LIVY (TITUS LIVIUS)
9093
beginning like Virgil's with the destruction of Troy and Æneas's
flight to Italy, must be read in quite the same spirit as the great
patriotic epic itself. Both contain something far mightier than pain-
fully sought historic truth; namely, what the Romans taught their
children to believe concerning the remote past.
Books xxi. -xxx. , again, contain a complete account of the Hanni-
balic war. Here the historic element is altogether larger, and the
struggle between patriotic detestation of the Carthaginian, and chiv-
alric admiration for valor and good generalship, reveals Livy's own
pleasing nature with great clearness. All this may be supported
even by so brief a passage as the opening characterization of Hanni-
bal, here cited.
Livy is at his best in the speeches with which all his books were
thickly studded. These have usually little or no historical foundation,
but are revelations of the purpose and character of the chief actors,
as Livy saw them. His broad descriptions of battles, marches, etc. ,
are probably drawn with almost as free a hand. Certainly he did
not as a rule embarrass or limit himself by any accurate study of the
topography on the spot. These strictures apply less than usual to
his picture of the fight by Lake Trasimenus, where he was upon
ground familiar to him, as it is to many of his modern readers.
We get a little out of patience at times with Livy's assurances of
Roman magnanimity and Punic treachery. Curiously enough, how-
ever, after these have occurred in speeches, or even in Livy's own
introductory remarks, the clear stream of the narrative proper often
runs in quite another direction. Occasionally, again, we get a purely
humorous variation on the hackneyed theme; as when the school-
master of Falerii leads his princely boys into the besiegers' camp, and
the Romans equip the youths with long sticks, to flog the treacherous
pedagogue back into the beleaguered town! Again, Livy is too good
a rhetorician to make the alien speeches notably weaker than the
Roman pleas. When Rome repudiated the disgraceful peace which
released her army from the Caudine Forks, and offered up to Samnite
vengeance the consuls who had exceeded their powers, but refused
to send the army back into the trap, the gallant Samnite Pontius
cried out:-
-
"Will you always find a pretext for repudiating the pledges made
in defeat? You gave hostages to Porsena-and by stealth withdrew
them. With gold you redeemed your city from the Gauls: they were
cut down in the act of receiving it. You pledged us peace, to regain
your legions: that peace you now cancel. Always you cover deception
with some fair mask of justice. "
Our heaviest loss is doubtless in the later books. Livy seems to
have written with dignified frankness on the period of the civil wars.
## p. 9094 (#98) ############################################
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LIVY (TITUS LIVIUS)
For instance, he expressed a doubt whether the life of the great
Julius had been on the whole a curse or a blessing; and his admira-
tion for the dictator's military rival caused Augustus to stigmatize
the historian good-humoredly as a "Pompeian. " Such a man must
have left a record, based largely upon his own memories, far more
connected and impartial than Cicero's letters, more trustworthy than
the late and inferior historians yet extant. Livy detested both ex-
tremes, tyranny and democracy. He took a pessimistic view of the
present and future of Rome; and indeed he counts it a sufficient
reward for his labor that "while reviewing in thought those earlier
days," he may "escape, at least for the time, from the many evils
which this generation has seen. "
Upon the whole, then, Livy can hardly be assigned a place at all
among scientific investigators of historical fact; since the chief mon-
uments and other data, even in Rome itself, rarely attracted his crit-
ical attention. He was a fair-minded, patriotic man, of wide culture
and exquisite taste, a master of rhetoric, a delightful story-teller,
with a fair respect for truth, but-endowed with a dangerously vivid
imagination. Many, perhaps most, of his best passages, are true only
as Landor's Imaginary Conversations' are: true to artistic taste,
and usually also to the larger historical outlines of the character
described.
The text of Livy is in very bad condition, and numberless heroic
emendations have been necessary. Here the bold methods of the
great Danish critic Madvig have found their most fitting field: a large
proportion of Livy's sentences have first become intelligible under
this surgeon's healing hand. Even of the extant books there is no
adequate annotated edition in English. That of Weissenborn, with
German notes, is indispensable to Latinists. The best recent piece
of translation is Books xxi. -xxv. , by Church and Brodribb (to whom
are especially indebted also for a complete English Tacitus. )
This volume, attractively printed by Macmillans in their Classical
Series, is the best introduction to Livy for the English student.
The Bohn, though oppressively literal, is not remarkably inaccurate.
we
The lost books of Livy are not likely to reappear. Indeed, abridg-
ments and epitomes displaced them largely even under the early
empire; and the very epigram of Martial, cited above, evidently
accompanied such a condensation :-
―
"Here into scanty parchment is monstrous Livy rolled;
He whom by no means when entire my library could hold! »
William Cranston Lawton.
## p. 9095 (#99) ############################################
LIVY (TITUS LIVIUS)
9095
HORATIUS COCLES AT THE SUBLICIAN BRIDGE
From the Second Book of the History of Rome'
THE
HE Sublician bridge well-nigh afforded a passage to the enemy,
had there not been one man, Horatius Cocles (that defense
the fortune of Rome had on that day), who, happening to
be posted on guard at the bridge, when he saw the Janiculum
taken by a sudden assault, and that the enemy were pouring
down from thence in full speed, and that his own party in terror
and nfusion were abandoning their arms and ranks,-laying
hold of them one by one, standing in their way, and appealing to
the faith of gods and men, he declared "That their flight would
avail them nothing if they deserted their post; if they passed the
bridge and left it behind them, there would soon be more of the
enemy in the Palatium and Capitol than in the Janiculum: for
that reason he advised and charged them to demolish the bridge,
by their sword, by fire, or by any means whatever; that he would
stand the shock of the enemy as far as could be done by one
man. "
He then advanced to the first entrance of the bridge, and
being easily distinguished among those who showed their backs
in retreating from the fight, facing about to engage the foe hand
to hand, by his surprising bravery he terrified the enemy. Two
indeed a sense of shame kept with him,-Spurius Lartius and
Titus Herminius; men eminent for their birth, and renowned for
their gallant exploits. With them he for a short time stood the
first storm of the danger, and the severest brunt of the battle.
But as they who demolished the bridge called upon them to
retire, he obliged them also to withdraw to a place of safety on a
small portion of the bridge still left. Then casting his stern eyes
round all the officers of the Etrurians in a threatening manner,
he sometimes challenged them singly, sometimes reproached them
all: "the slaves of haughty tyrants, who, regardless of their own
freedom, came to oppress the liberty of others. " They hesitated
for a considerable time, looking round one at the other, to com-
mence the fight: shame then put the army in motion, and a
shout being raised, they hurl their weapons from all sides on their
single adversary; and when they all stuck in the shield held.
before him, and he with no less obstinacy kept possession of the
bridge with firm step, they now endeavored to thrust him down
from it by one push, when at once the crash of the falling bridge,
## p. 9096 (#100) ###########################################
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LIVY (TITUS LIVIUS)
at the same time a shout of the Romans raised for joy at having
completed their purpose, checked their ardor with sudden panic.
Then Cocles says, "Holy father Tiberinus, I pray that thou
wouldst receive these arms and this thy soldier in thy propitious
stream. " Armed as he was, he leaped into the Tiber, and amid
showers of darts hurled on him, swam across safe to his party,
having dared an act which is likely to obtain more fame than
belief with posterity. The State was grateful towards such valor:
a statue was erected to him in the Comitium, and as much land
was given to him as he plowed around in one day. The zeal of
private individuals also was conspicuous among the public honors.
For amid the great scarcity, each person contributed something
to him according to his supply at home, depriving himself of his
own support.
Porsena being repulsed in his first attempt, having changed
his plans from a siege to a blockade, after he had placed a gar-
rison in Janiculum, pitched his camp in the plain and on the
banks of the Tiber. Then sending for boats from all parts, both
to guard the river so as not to suffer any provision to be con-
veyed to Rome, and also to transport his soldiers across the river
to plunder different places as occasion required,-in a short time
he so harassed the entire country round Rome, that not only
everything else from the country, but even their cattle, was
driven into the city, and nobody durst venture thence without the
gates. This liberty of action was granted to the Etrurians, not
more through fear than from policy; for Valerius, intent on an
opportunity of falling unawares upon a number of them, and
when straggling, a remiss avenger in trifling matters, reserved the
weight of his vengeance for more important occasions. Where-
fore, to decoy the pillagers, he ordered his men to drive their
cattle the next day out at the Esquiline gate, which was farthest
from the enemy; presuming that they would get intelligence of
it, because during the blockade and famine some slaves would
turn traitors and desert. Accordingly they were informed of it
by a deserter; and parties more numerous than usual, in hopes
of seizing the entire body, crossed the river. Then Publius Va-
lerius commanded Titus Herminius with a small body of men to
lie concealed two miles from the city, on the Gabian road, and
Spurius Lartius with a party of light-armed troops to post himself
at the Colline gate, till the enemy should pass by, and then to
throw himself in their way so that there might be no return to
## p. 9097 (#101) ###########################################
LIVY (TITUS LIVIUS)
9097
the river. The other consul, Titus Lucretius, marched out of the
Nævian gate with some companies of soldiers; Valerius himself
led some chosen cohorts down from the Cœlian Mount, and they
were first descried by the enemy. Herminius, when he perceived
the alarm, rose out of ambush and fell upon the rear of the
Tuscans, who had charged Valerius. The shout was returned on
the right and left, from the Colline gate on the one hand and the
Nævian on the other. By this stratagem the plunderers were put
to the sword between both, they not being a match in strength.
for fighting, and all the ways being blocked up to prevent
escape: this put an end to the Etrurians strolling about in so
disorderly a manner.
Nevertheless the blockade continued, and there was a scarcity.
of corn, with a very high price. Porsena entertained a hope that
by continuing the siege he should take the city; when Caius
Mucius, a young nobleman, to whom it seemed a disgrace that the
Roman people, who when enslaved under kings had never been
confined within their walls, in any war nor by any enemy, should
now, when a free people, be blocked up by these very Etrurians
whose armies they had often routed,-thinking that such indig-
nity should be avenged by some great and daring effort, at first
designed of his own accord to penetrate into the enemy's camp.
Then, being afraid if he went without the permission of the
consuls, or the knowledge of any one, he might be seized by the
Roman guards and brought back as a deserter, the circumstances.
of the city at the time justifying the charge, he went to the
Senate: "Fathers," says he, "I intend to cross the Tiber, and
enter the enemy's camp, if I can; not as a plunderer, or as an
avenger in our turn of their devastations. A greater deed is in
my mind, if the gods assist. " The Senate approved his design.
He set out with a sword concealed under his garment. When
he came thither, he stationed himself among the thickest of the
crowd, near the King's tribunal. There, where the soldiers were
receiving their pay, the King's secretary, sitting beside him
dressed nearly in the same style, was busily engaged (and to
him they commonly addressed themselves); being afraid to ask
which of them was Porsena, lest by not knowing the King he
should discover himself, as fortune blindly directed the blow he
killed the secretary instead of the King. Then as he was going
off thence, where with his bloody dagger he had made his way
through the dismayed multitude, a concourse being attracted at
## p. 9098 (#102) ###########################################
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LIVY (TITUS LIVIUS)
the noise, the King's guards immediately seized and brought him
back, standing alone before the King's tribunal; even then, amid
such menaces of fortune, more capable of inspiring dread than of
feeling it, "I am," says he, "a Roman citizen; my name is
Caius Mucius: an enemy, I wished to slay an enemy; nor have
I less of resolution to suffer death than I had to inflict it. Both
to act and to suffer with fortitude is a Roman's part. Nor have
I alone harbored such feelings towards you; there is after me a
long train of persons aspiring to the same honor. Therefore, if
you choose it, prepare yourself for this peril, to contend for your
life every hour; to have the sword and the enemy in the very
entrance of your pavilion: this is the war which we, the Roman
youth, declare against you; dread not an army in array, nor a
battle, the affair will be to yourself alone and with each of
us singly. "
When the King, highly incensed, and at the same time terri-
fied at the danger, in a menacing manner commanded fires to
be kindled about him, if he did not speedily explain the plots
which by his threats he had darkly insinuated against him, then
Mucius said, "Behold me, that you may be sensible of how little
account the body is to those who have great glory in view;"
and immediately he thrusts his right hand into the fire that was
lighted for the sacrifice.
