(8C-* 
 
 EURIPIDES 
 
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 BY 
 
 WILLIAM BODHAM DONNE 
 
 * \ \ 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 JOHN B. ALDEN, PUBLISHER 
 
 ' 1S83 ^ 
 
 BOSTON COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 
 : CHESTNUT HILL. Mass 
 
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 133805 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 The writer desires to express liis acknowledgments 
 to Mr. Robert Browning, for his kind permission to 
 make use of his “ Balaustion” in the account given of 
 “Alcestis;” to Mrs. Augusta Webster, for a similar 
 favor in the case of the “Medea;” and to Mr. Maurice 
 Purcell Fitzgerald, in that of the “ HippoJytus.” The 
 translations which they have respectively allowed him 
 to use are recorded in footnotes, as well as those which 
 are taken from the versions of Greek tragic poets by the 
 late Deans Milman and Alford. Where the translated 
 passages are not attributed to an author, they are taken 
 from Potter, in the absence of better renderings. He 
 wishes also to commemorate his obligations to Mr. F. 
 A. Paley for the frequent and valuable assistance af¬ 
 forded by his Prefaces and Notes to the Plays of Euri¬ 
 pides. It may be hoped that, with his edition of the 
 Athenian poet, a new epoch begins for the estimation of 
 him by classical as well as English readers. Mr. Paley 
 evidently regards Euripides in a very similar light to 
 that taken of him by Ben Jonson—that “he is some¬ 
 times peccant, as he is most times perfect,” 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER. PACE. 
 
 I. Athens in the Days of Euripides... 7 
 
 II. Life of Euripides. 28 
 
 III. The Scenic Philosopher. 51 
 
 IV. Alcestis.—Medea. 73 
 
 V. The Two Iphigenias. 94 
 
 VI. The Bacchanals. 113 
 
 VII. Ion.—Hippolytus. 127 
 
 VIII. The Phoenician Woman.—The Suppliants.—The Chil¬ 
 dren of Hercules.—The Phrenzy of Hercules. 144 
 
 IX. The Tale of Troy: Hecuba.—The Trojan Women. 156 
 
 IX. The Cyclops... 170 
 
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I 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ATHENS IN THE DAYS OP EURIPIDES. 
 
 “ Behold 
 
 Where on the iEgean shore a city stands, 
 
 Built nobly, pure the air and light the soil, 
 
 Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts 
 And eloquence, native to famous wits 
 Or hospitable.”—Par. Regained. 
 
 The greater poets of all times and countries, no less 
 than historians and philosophers, admit of being con¬ 
 templated under a twofold aspect—literary and histori¬ 
 cal. Under the former, we may mark how they acted 
 upon their age; under the latter, how far they reflected 
 it. Of the form and spirit of their generation, they are 
 the representatives to later ages—throwing light on its 
 history, on the state of its language and cultivation, and 
 in return receiving light from those sources. Euripides 
 was no exception to this general law: he materially af¬ 
 fected the time he lived in; he derived from the circum¬ 
 stances in which his lot was cast many of the features 
 that distinguish him from iEscfiylus and Sophocles. As 
 a citizen, he differed from them almost as widely as if 
 he had not been born in their days; and still more 
 widely did he stand apart from them in the practice 
 
8 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 and theory of dramatic composition. Accordingly, a 
 few remarks on Athens in the time of Euripides may 
 not be an inappropriate prelude to an account of his life 
 and writings. 
 
 The Athens in which the boyhood of Euripides was 
 spent was little more than an ordinary town, the capital 
 of a district about the size of an average English county. 
 Pisistratus and his sons had begun to adorn the city 
 with some temples, and at least erected a portion of the 
 Dionysiac theatre; but it is doubtful whether this com¬ 
 mencement, or anticipation of the structures of Pericles, 
 was not either destroyed or seriously injured by the 
 Persian invader. Before that calamity had aroused the 
 spirit of her citizens, Athens was indeed little more than 
 a cluster of villages surrounded by a common wall. A 
 wooden rampart was the only defence of the citadel. 
 No fortifications connected the city with its harbors, 
 two of which were still open roads. Even the Pisistra- 
 tids appear not to have ventured on building for them¬ 
 selves stately mansions, or to have called in the art of 
 painters or sculptors to adorn Athens itself. They did 
 not possess the funds that Cimon and Pericles com¬ 
 manded for great public works. They presided over a 
 jealous people by force of arms, and dreaded provoking 
 it by offensive displays either of wealth or power. Not 
 ♦until the democracy was satisfied with its representatives, 
 and proud of its land and its capital, was it possible to 
 indulge in lavish expenditure, or to win for Athens the 
 titles of “ the eye of Greece’’ and “the violet Queen.” 
 
 The period that elapsed between the first and second 
 invasion by the Persians was fraught with too much 
 anxiety to admit of beautifying the city: all that could 
 be done was to supply at least one tenable outwork, and 
 that some miles distant from Athens itself. It was the 
 
ATHENS IN THE DA YS OF EURIPIDES. 9 
 
 wisdom of Tliemistocles to discern that the very exist¬ 
 ence of his country, if it were not to become a Persian 
 satrapy, depended on ships and not on walls. To insure 
 the security and efficiency of the fleet, a fortified harbor 
 was indispensable. The mud-built or wooden cottages, 
 the narrow and crooked streets of the capital, must be 
 abandoned to the Mede; and such treasure as was then 
 available be employed on the port and docks of Peirseus. 
 
 The victories that finally expelled the Persian from 
 Hellenic ground were consummated in b.c. 466 by 
 the battles at the Eurymedon, “when Cimon tri¬ 
 umphed both by laud and sea.” Athens, after the 
 retreat of Mardonius, was little better than a ruinous 
 heap. The fire worshippers had done their worst on 
 her temples; had levelled her streets, torn down her 
 feeble walls, and trampled under foot with their horse¬ 
 men and archers the gardens and olive-yards that 
 environed her. The first care of the Athenians was to 
 restore the city, after a desolation more complete than 
 even that with which Brennus visited Rome; for 
 the banner of the Gauls never waved over the Capitol, 
 whereas the wrath of Xerxes was poured especially on 
 the Athenian Acropolis. Nor was it enough to rebuild 
 the walls: it was necessary to protect the city in future 
 from enemies near at hand; from the never-friendly 
 Thebans; from the Dorians of Peloponnesus, whose 
 fears and jealousy had been awakened by the prowess, 
 so unlooked for by them, of their Ionian ally. The 
 long walls had to be constructed—the harbors of 
 Munychium and Phalerus connected with Peirseus, 
 and riveted by strong links to Athens itself. Before 
 such works could be finished, there can have been 
 neither means, motives, nor leisure for embellishing 
 the capital of Attica. Earlier than 472 b.c., in which 
 
10 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 year the comm on treasury of the Allies was trans¬ 
 ferred from Delos to Athens, Polycletus, Phidias, 
 Zeuxis, and their compeers can hardly have been em¬ 
 ployed on their immortal labors. The new Athens 
 accordingly grew up under his eyes, and that at a 
 period of life when curiosity is most alert, and memory 
 most tenacious. It was his privilege to watch the 
 growth of temple and hall, colonnade and theatre, 
 gymnasium and court of law, which the people, now a 
 sovereign one, demanded, and their leaders willingly 
 supplied. The poet, most susceptible, as his *plays 
 often show him to have been, of the arts allied to 
 his own, beheld in all the freshness of their youth the 
 Painted Porch, adorned by Micon, Polygnetus, and 
 Pantaenus, with cartoons of Athenian triumphs and 
 heroes—the ivory and gold statue of Pallas Athene, the 
 tutelary goddess—the Virgin’s House, the Parthenon 
 —the Portico, a work of Mnesides—the Propylaea, 
 leading up to “the roof and crown” of Athens—the 
 Acropolis—and other sacred and secular monuments for 
 which the spoils of the Persian or the tribute of the 
 Allies furnished means. Nor were these unrivalled 
 works, some of which he may have seen on the easel of 
 Zeuxis or in the studio of Phidias, the only features of 
 the time likely to nurture his imagination, or give it the 
 bias towards an expanding future so apparent in his 
 writings. For him the narrow and often gloomy re¬ 
 gion of legends, national or Achaean, faded before the 
 bright and picturesque glories of the hour. In his time 
 the boundaries of the Grecian world were enlarged. 
 Strangers, attracted to the new centre of Hellas* by 
 
 * “Hellas,”although a word unknown in the time of Euripi¬ 
 des, and indeed of much later date, is used, here and elsewhere. 
 
ATHENS IN The DATs ON EuniPIDES. 11 
 
 business or pleasure, now flocked to Athens from 
 iEgean islands, from the coasts and cities of Western 
 Asia and the Euxine, from the Greek colonies of Sicily, 
 Cyrene, and Southern Italy, from Massilia on the Celtic 
 border, from Tartessus near the bourne of the habitable 
 world, from the semi-barbarous Cyprus, and from the 
 cradles of civilization, Egypt and Phoenicia. For now 
 was there room in Athens for all cunning workers in 
 marble or metal, for those who dealt in Tyrian purple 
 or unguents of Smyrna, or brought bars of silver and 
 golden ingots from Iberian mines; room also for ar¬ 
 morers and dockyard men in Athenian ports, where— 
 
 “ Boiled 
 
 Through wintry months tenacious pitch to smear 
 Their unsound vessels; when the inclement time 
 Seafaring men restrains, and in that while 
 His bark one builds anew, another stops 
 The ribs of his that hath made many a voyage. 
 
 One hammers at the prow, one at the poop; 
 
 This shapeth oars, that other cables twirls, 
 
 The mizzen one repairs and mainsail rent.” * * 
 
 Artists, too, who wrought neither with brush nor 
 chisel, were drawn to Athens by the magnet of public 
 or private demand—poets eager to celebrate her glories, 
 and contend for lyric or dramatic prizes; philosophers 
 no less eager to broach new theories in morals, or to 
 teach new devices in rhetoric and logic. It was a new 
 world in comparison with the severe and simple Mara- 
 tlionian time in which JEschylus was trained; and, 
 
 in these pages, as a convenient and comprehensive term for 
 Greece and its numerous offsets from the Euxine Sea to the Gulf 
 of Marseilles. CC l 
 
 • Dante, “Divine Comedy,” Cant, xxi., Cary’s translation. 
 The poet is speakihg of Venice, but his verses are applicable to 
 the earlier Queen of the Seas. 
 
EURIPIDES. 
 
 12 
 
 like most new worlds, it was worse in some things, 
 better in others—removed further from gods and god* 
 like heroes, approaching nearer to man, his sorrows and 
 joys; less awful and august, more humane and civilized. 
 And the change is visible in the worst no less than in 
 the best plays of Euripides, and one to be borne in 
 mind by all who would judge of them fairly. 
 
 Pass over a few years of the poet’s life, and we come 
 to a period when this .scene of political, artistic, and 
 social activity is at first clouded over, and in the end 
 rent and dislimned. Among other effects of the Pelo¬ 
 ponnesian war, one was, that a. stop was put to public 
 buildings and the costly arts by which they are adorned: 
 while those that, like the Erectheium, were unfinished 
 at the outbreak of that war, were* left incomplete. But 
 the drama did not suffer with other branches of art. 
 Sophocles, Euripides, and a numerous band of competi¬ 
 tors, yearly strove for the crown, and the decorations ot 
 the stage were even costlier than ever. The suspension 
 of public works, however, was a trifle in comparison 
 with the corruption of morals at Athens—an effect of 
 the war, and of the great plague especially, which there 
 is the authority of Thucydides for stating. But our 
 business now is not with the Athenian people so much 
 as with the stage in the time of Euripides, particularly 
 with a view to the character of the audience. 
 
 Attica was a lana favorable to varieties of labor and 
 cultivation. At the present moment its light and dry 
 soil produces little corn; but want of capital and indus¬ 
 try, not the soil, is to blame. Cereals, indeed, were 
 never its principal produce, though small and well-tilled 
 farms, such as are seen in Belgium and Lombardy, 
 abounded. Bather was it a land of olives and figs, of 
 vines and honey. Sheep and goats, particularly the 
 
ATHENS ffi THE EATS OE EtjMPlDES. IB 
 
 latter, were kept in large flocks on the mountain slopes: 
 even sucli delicacies as bams of bear and wild boar 
 were not inaccessible to the hunter on Mount Parnes. 
 The sea swarmed with fish, and inexhaustible Were the 
 marble quarries of Mount Pentelicus, while the silver 
 mines of Laurium supplied the public treasury With the 
 purest coinage in Greece. These various products of 
 the soil furnished its occupiers with as varied occupa* 
 tion. r v; and again we have the testimony of Thucydides, 
 that Athenians in general were fond of country pursuits, 
 and before the Peloponnesian war preferred their fields, 
 villages, and small towns to the attractions of the city. 
 The statement of the historian is confirmed by the great 
 comic poet of the time. Aristophanes, with a whole* 
 some hatred of unjust and unnecessary wars, frequently 
 sets before the spectators how much the worse they 
 were for dwelling within walls, and for leaving their 
 oliveyards and vineyards, their meadows and cornland, 
 where informers ceased from troubling, and booted and 
 bearded soldiers were at rest. 
 
 The enforced removal of the country population into 
 the capital can hardly have failed to produce a change, 
 and that not a salutary one, in the character of the 
 Athenians, even if the pestilence had not sapped the 
 foundations of morals by loosening domestic ties, by 
 rendering the sick and even the strong reckless of the 
 morrow, and thousands at once irreligious and super¬ 
 stitious. Such levity and despair as were exhibited by 
 the Parisians under the Reign of Terror, prevailed in 
 Athens during the worst days of the plague. Even 
 the general breaking up of homes, and the want of 
 customary occupations, had evil results for the peasant 
 turned townsman. For some hundreds of farmers and 
 laborers the small towns and hill-forts of the country 
 
14 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 may have afforded shelter during the almost yearly 
 inroads of the Peloponnesian host; yet the bulk of 
 the rural population was compelled to move, with such 
 goods and chattels as were portable, into the narrow 
 space of the city—the Long Walls or the harbors; 
 where, if they did not suffer from want of food, they 
 were indifferently lodged. War is ever “work of waste 
 and ruin.” If the land were tilled at all, the green 
 corn was taken by the enemy for horse-fodder; fruit- 
 trees were cut down for fuel or fencing of camps; 
 villages and homesteads, when no longer wanted by 
 the Dorian invader, were wantonly destroyed. In 
 place of the rich tillage, woodland, or pasturage which 
 greeted the eyes of spectators from the walls or the 
 citadel, there presented itself a wide and various scene 
 of desolation. All that an Athenian, during many 
 weeks in the year, could call his own was the sea. He 
 yearned for his bee-hives, his garden, his oil-vats and 
 wine-press, his fig-trees, his sheep and kine. A sorry 
 exchange was it for him, his wife and children! Even 
 his recreations were lost to him. He missed the chat 
 of the market-place and the rural holiday. The city 
 fountains did not compensate to him for the clear stream 
 he had left behind; and his imprisonment was the 
 more irksome because the hated Dorian was trampling 
 on the graves of his kindred. Small comfort to him 
 w 7 as such employment as the city supplied or demanded 
 of him. Hard-handed ploughmen or vine-dressers were 
 made to stand sentinels on the walls, or clapped on board 
 a ship of war; or they sweltered in the law courts as 
 jurymen, or listened ignorantly or apathetically to 
 brawling orators in the assembly. He who, until that 
 annual flight of locusts came to plague the land, had 
 been a busy man w r as mnv often an idle one; and 
 
ATHENS IN TEE DAYS OF EURIPIDES. 15 
 
 •weary is a life of enforced leisure. Possibly also be 
 and the town-bred Athenians may not always have been 
 on the best terms. Great mockers, unless they are much 
 belied, were those town-folks. His clouted shoon and 
 ill-fitting tunic may have cost the peasant, or even the 
 country gentleman, uncomfortable hours, and perhaps 
 led him to break the heads of city wits, or to get his 
 own head broken by them. Town amusements were 
 never much to his liking. The music, vocal and instru¬ 
 mental, which he would hear at the Odeum—the 
 Athenian opera-house—might be all very fine; but, for 
 his part, give him the pipe and tabor, the ballads and 
 miustrels, of his deserted village. Then as to the play¬ 
 house: the performances there were not to his taste. 
 A farce at a wake, acted on boards and trestles, a well- 
 known hymn sung to the rural deities, pleased him far 
 more than comedies of which he did not catch the drift, 
 or tragedies that scared him by their furies and ghosts, 
 and perhaps gave him bad dreams. The sudden in¬ 
 fusion of a new element into the mass of a people can¬ 
 not fail to affect it materially, whether for good or ill; 
 and such a wholesale migration as this reacted on the 
 townsmen themselves. Some civic virtues they might 
 easily exchange for some rural vices. Cooped as the 
 Athenians, urban and rustic, were within the walls, 
 ill-housed, and often idle, with few, if any, sanitary or 
 police regulations, we need not history to inform us 
 that Athens came forth from the pestilence the worse 
 in some respects for its visitation. 
 
 And besides these changes from without, others of a 
 less palpable but more subtle kind were, in the age of 
 Euripides, affecting the national character, and with it 
 also the spirit, and in a measure -the. _f orm r - of the 
 national drama. “It was a period of great intellectual 
 
16 
 
 EURIPIDES . 
 
 activity; and the simple course of education under 
 which the conquerors of Salamis and Marathon had 
 been reared no longer satisfied the wants of the noble, 
 wealthy, and aspiring part of the Athenian youth. 
 Their learning had not gone beyond the rudiments of 
 music, and such a knowledge of their own language as 
 enabled them to enjoy the works of their writers, and 
 to express their own thoughts with ease and propriety; 
 and they bestowed at least as much care on the train¬ 
 ing of the body as on the cultivation of the mind. 
 But in the next generation the speculations of the 
 Ionian and Eleatic schools began to attract attention 
 at Athens: the presence of several celebrated philoso¬ 
 phers, and the example of Pericles, made them familiar 
 to a gradually widening circle; and they furnished 
 occasion for the discussion of a variety of questions 
 intimately connected with subjects of the highest 
 practical moment.’' * The latter half of Euripides’s life 
 was passed, as we may judge even from the sober 
 Xenophon, as well as from the witty Aristophanes, 
 among a generation of remarkable loquacity, in which 
 the young aspired to know a little of every subject, 
 thought themselves fit to hold the state-rudder, and 
 justified in looking down upon their less learned or 
 more modest elders. Every young man, indeed, who 
 aspired to become a statesman must be an adept in 
 rhetorical arts, since no one could pretend to pilot the 
 ship who could not persuade, or at least cajole, his 
 fellow-citizens. If, on the other hand, he wished to be 
 a public lecturer—that is to say, a philosopher—plain 
 Pythagorean rules for the conduct of life, or Solon’s 
 elegiac maxims, no longer sufficed. Such old truisms 
 
 * Bishop Thirlwall’s Hist, of Greece, iv. 268. 
 
ATHENS IN THE DAYS OF EURIPIDES. 17 
 
 would not bring him a single pupil or hearer. He 
 must be able, and was always ready, to probe the very 
 foundations of truth and law; to argue on any subject; 
 to change his opinions as often as it suited himself—in 
 short, to be supreme in talk, however shallow he might 
 be in knowledge. To what extent Euripides fell in 
 with the new philosophy will be considered in another 
 chapter. 
 
 Let, not, however, the English reader suppose that 
 young Athens had it all its*own way; that the ancient 
 spirit was quite dead; or that philosophy was merely 
 a game of riddles, and ethics little better than the 
 discovery that there is “ neither transgression nor sin.’’ 
 Had it been so, Plato, in the next generation, would 
 have addressed empty benches in his Academy, and, 
 at a still later period, Demosthenes have failed to 
 inspire his hearers with either that deliberate valor or 
 that spirit of self-sacrifice which they displayed in 
 their struggles with “the man of Macedon.” In spite 
 of some grave defects or some superficial blemishes, 
 the Athens that crowned or refused to crown Euri¬ 
 pides was the home of a noble and generous people, 
 easily led astray, but still willing to return to the 
 right path; not impatient of reproof, and sincere, if 
 somewhat sudden, in its repentance. Her citizens 
 were a strange mixture of refinement and coarseness, 
 of intelligence and ignorance. For intellect and taste, 
 no city, ancient or modern, has ever made for its 
 members so varied and sumptuous a provision as 
 she afforded to her children, her friends, and the 
 stranger within Her gates. In the days of Euripides, a 
 resident in Athens might in one week assist at a solemn 
 religious festival; at the performance of plays that for 
 more than two thousand years were unsurpassed; might 
 
18 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 listen in the Odeum to music worthy of the verse to 
 which it was wedded; might watch in the Great Harbor 
 the war-galleys making ready for the next foray on the 
 Lacedaemonian coast, or the heavy-armed infantry train¬ 
 ing for their next encounter with. Spartan or Theban 
 phalanx. In the intervals of these mimic or serious 
 spectacles, he could study the works of the most con¬ 
 summate artists the earth has ever produced; gaze in 
 the gymnasium on living beauty, grace, and strength; 
 or, if meditatively given, could hear Prodicus and Pro¬ 
 tagoras in their lecture-rooms, or Socrates in the market¬ 
 place, discoursing upon “divine philosophy.” If he 
 were in any way remarkable for worth or ability, the 
 saloons of Pericles, Nicias, or Glaucon were not closed 
 against him by any idle ceremonies of good introduc¬ 
 tions, fine clothes, or long pedigrees. Athens, it is well 
 said by Milton, was “native or hospitable to famous 
 wits.” Aud though he had not “three white luces on 
 his coat,” nor any coat of arms at all, lie was “a gentle¬ 
 man born.” His heraldry was the belief that before a 
 Dorian set foot in Peloponnesus, or a tribe of Persian 
 mountaineers had vanquished the Assyrian or the Mede, 
 his forefathers had established themselves in Attica, and 
 taken part in the Trojan war. All other Greek com¬ 
 munities, with the single exception of the Arcadians 
 and Achaeans—poor bucolical folks then, but destined 
 a century later to hold a prominent place in Greece— 
 were in comparison with the Athenian the creatures of 
 yesterday. One Attic king had been the friend of Her¬ 
 cules, and so was coeval with the Argonauts: and even 
 Theseus had his royal predecessors. And if the Athe¬ 
 nian studied the national chronicles, or listened by the 
 winter fireside to the stories of old times, he did not 
 blush for his progenitors. They had ever been redress- 
 
ATHENS IN THE DATS OE EURIPIDES. 1 $ 
 
 ers of wrongs, harborers of the exile, hospitable to the 
 stranger; and their virtues supplied Euripides with 
 themes for several of his plays. 
 
 The poet, who had watched the growth of his native 
 city, witnessed also the rapid extension of its empire. 
 When Euripides was in his boyhood, Athens was but 
 a secondary power in Hellas: inferior to Corinth in 
 wealth aud commercial enterprise; to Sparta in war and 
 the number of its allies. In his twenty-sixth year—the 
 year in which lie exhibited his first play—Athens had 
 become the head of a league far more powerful than the 
 confederacy which the ‘‘king of men” led to the siege 
 of Troy. She stepped into the place which the proud, 
 selfish, and custom-bound Spartan had abandoned. An 
 active democracy eclipsed a sullen and ceremonious 
 oligarchy; and although the Dorian in the end pre¬ 
 vailed, it was partly owing to Persian gold that he did 
 so, and partly because the Ionian city had squandered 
 her strength, as France so often has done, in unjustifia¬ 
 ble and prodigal wars. At all times, and especially 
 while the “breed of noble blood’’flowed in her veins— 
 while to be just as Aristides, chivalrous as Cimon, tem¬ 
 perate in the execution of high office as Pericles, con¬ 
 tinued to be accounted virtues—Athens held, and de¬ 
 served to hold, her supremacy. Proud, and justly so, 
 were her sons of their beautiful city. The tribute paid 
 to her by the allies for protecting them from the Persian 
 was fairly expended upon the maintenance of the fleet 
 and the encouragement of art. Her citizens were, and 
 felt themselves to be, in the van of Greek cultivation. 
 They hailed with applause the praises addressed to them 
 by the dramatic poets—and the praises were no idle 
 flattery. Was it not a truth that, had it not been for 
 the Athenians, northern Greece would have given earth 
 
16 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 and water to the Persian envoys, and Peioponhestts 
 have selfishly abandoned the sea to the Phoenician gal¬ 
 leys? True, also, that, but for the Athenians, “dusk 
 faces with white silken turbans wreathed " might have 
 been seen in the citadels of Corinth and Thebes? Of a 
 city that had so well deserved of every state, insular or 
 on the mainland, where Greek was spoken, the most 
 appropriate ornaments were the triumphs of the artist. 
 Rightfully proud were the Athenians of their beautiful 
 city; as rightfully employed were the pens of poets in 
 giving these monuments perpetual fame. 
 
 With history, direct or indirect, before us, it may 
 be possible to describe, or at least divine, the spectacle 
 presented at the Dionysiac theatre when Sophocles 
 or Euripides brought out a new play. The audience 
 consisted of nearly as many elements as, centuries 
 later, were to crowd and elbow one another in the vast 
 space of the Roman Colpsseum. The lowest and best 
 seats, those nearest the orchestra, were reserved for 
 men of mark and dignity, for the judges who would 
 award the prizes, for sage, grave members of the Areo¬ 
 pagus, for archons in office, or for those who had 
 already held office, for soldiers “ famoused in fight/’ for 
 ambassadors from Greek or foreign lands, for all who 
 had some claim to precedence from their rank or their 
 services to the commonwealth. Women were admitted 
 to the tragedies at least, boys as well as men to all per¬ 
 formances; even slaves were permitted to be present. 
 The women, by Greek usage secluded at home, were 
 probably assigned a particular apartment in the play¬ 
 house; the boys were perhaps of use, as often an 
 unpopular competitor for the crown tried his fortune 
 once more; and possibly Euripides may have occa* 
 sionally regretted the presence of these youthful censors, 
 
Athens in The hays of euhipibes. §1 
 
 No registered citizen could plead poverty as a reason 
 for not witnessing these theatrical contests; if he had 
 not money in his purse, the state paid for his ticket 
 of admission. To foreigners Were commonly allotted 
 the back seats; but so many ■mechanical devices were 
 employed for the conveyance of sound, that unless a 
 sitter in the gallery were hard of hearing, he could 
 probably catch every line of the choral chant or the 
 recitative of the dialogue. Nor might short-sighted 
 people be quite forlorn; he was pitiable indeed who 
 could not discern, vast as was the space between him¬ 
 self and the stage, the colossal actors mounted on their 
 high boots, and raised by their tall head dress above 
 ordinary mortal stature. A purblind stranger might 
 perchance regret that he could not distinguish in the 
 stalls bald-headed Nicias from the long-haired Alci- 
 biades ; and that although Socrates was certainly in 
 the house he could not identify him among a batch 
 of ugly fellows, with whom, he was told, the celebrated 
 street-preacher was sitting. 
 
 The gallery in which foreigners sat is perhaps the 
 most interesting feature of the audience to Engb rT t 
 readers—interesting, because it represented the various 
 members of the Athenian empire, as well as of the 
 Hellenic race. A merchant whose warehouse was 
 near the Pillars of Hercules would And himself seated 
 beside one who had brought a cargo of wheat from 
 Sinope, on the Euxine Sea. A hybrid—half-Greek, - 
 half-Egyptian—of Canopus would have on his right 
 hand a tent-maker from Tarsus, on his left a Thessalian 
 bullock-drover. The “broad Scotch” of the Greeks— 
 the Dorian patois —would be spoken by a group of 
 spectators in front of him; while a softer dialect than 
 even the Attic, pure Ionic, was used by a party of 
 
22 EURIPIDES. 
 
 islanders behind him. “What gorgeously - attired 
 personage is (hat on your left?” “ A Tyrian merchant, 
 rich enough to buy up any street in Athens—a prince 
 iu his own city, a suitor here. He has come on law 
 business ; and although at home he struts like any 
 peacock, here he is obliged to salute any ragged rascal 
 in the streets who may be a juror when his cause is heard. 
 To my certain knowledge, the great emerald column in 
 the temple of Melcarth, at Tyre, is mortgaged to him.” 
 And who is that queerly-dressed man a little beyond 
 the Tyrian? By his garb and short petticoat I should 
 take him for a Scythian policeman,* but he has not the 
 yellow hair and blue eyes of those gentry.” “That, 
 sir, is a Gaul from Massilia ; he is on his road to 
 Bithynia, where the satrap Pharnabazus, I think his 
 name is, is offering good pay to western soldiers—and 
 where there is gold there also is sure to be a Gaul. 
 The fellow speaks Greek fairly well, for he was for 
 some time in a Massilian counting-house, his mother 
 being a Greek woman.” We should tire our readers’ 
 patience long before we exhausted the portraits of 
 sitters in the strangers’ gallery in the Dionysiac theatre; 
 and it is only due to the Athenian portion of the 
 audionce to turn for a few moments to them. 
 
 Samuel Johnson could not conceive there could be 
 “livers out of ” London; or that a people ignorant of 
 printing could be other than barbarous. Had he 
 been as well acquainted with Greek as he was with 
 some portions of Latin literature, he might have found 
 cause for altering his opinion. The Athenians were 
 not in general book-learned, but such knowledge as 
 can be obtained by the eye and the ear they possessed 
 
 * Scythian bowmen were the gendarmes of Athens. 
 
ATHENS IN THE DAYS OF EURIPIDES. 23 
 
 abundantly; and the thirty thousand registered citizens, 
 to say nothing of resident aliens, were better informed 
 than an equal number of average Londoners are at 
 the present time. In the rows of the theatre, as on 
 the benches of the Pnyx,* might be seen men who, 
 if judged by their apparel, would have been set 
 down for paupers, if not street Arabs; and yet these 
 shabby folk were able to correct orators who mis¬ 
 pronounced a word, singers when out of tune, and 
 actors who tripped in their delivery of dialogue. 
 Their moral sense, indeed, was not on a level with 
 their taste and shrewd understanding; yet we shall 
 have to record more than one instance of their calling 
 Euripides to account for opinions which they deemed 
 unwholesome, or for innovations which they regarded 
 as needless departures from established custom. It 
 may be doubted whether they were a very patient 
 audience. They seem to have had little scruple in 
 expressing their approbation or disapprobation, as 
 ■well of the poet as the actor; and their mode of doing 
 so was sometimes very rough, inasmuch as, besides 
 hissing and hooting at them strenuously, they pelted 
 bad or unpopular actors with stones. 
 
 The varied appearance of the spectators on the 
 higher benches did not extend to the lower ones, 
 which the citizens proper occupied. Fops and dandies 
 there were in the wealthy classes, and especially among 
 the immediate followers of Alcibiades, or those who 
 aped their extravagances. But generally no democrat 
 brooked in a brother democrat display or singularity. 
 
 * The Pnyx was the place where the people of Athene 
 assembled to hear political debates—in fact, their House of 
 Parliament. 
 
24 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 A house better than ordinary, or fine raiment, were 
 considered marks of an oligarchic disposition; and 
 the owner of such gauds, if he aspired to public 
 office, was pretty sure to have them cast in his teeth 
 at the hustings. But sobriety in raiment, in dwell¬ 
 ing, or equipage did not abate the vivacious spirit of 
 the Ionians of the west. When offended or wearied 
 by a play, they employed all the artillery of dis¬ 
 pleasure against the spectators as well as the per¬ 
 formers. Sometimes an unpopular citizen attracted 
 notice; and then the wit at his expense flowed fast 
 and furious, as it occasionally does now from a Dublin 
 gallery. Were there a hole in his coat, it was likely 
 to be mentioned with “additional particulars:” if he 
 had ever gone through the bankruptcy court, it was 
 not forgotten: swindling or perjury were joyfully 
 commemorated: still more so any current rumors 
 about poisoning a wife, a rich uncle, troublesome step¬ 
 sons, wards, motliers-in-law, and other family incon¬ 
 veniences. 
 
 Such were the audiences who sat in judgment on 
 the great drama of the ancient world. It may be 
 probably conjectured that Euripides found more favor 
 with the resident aliens and the visitors from foreign 
 parts than with the born citizens. To these, his some¬ 
 what arbitrary treatment of old legends—his familiar 
 dealing with, or perhaps humanizing of, the Hellenic 
 deities, his softening of the terrors of destiny, his 
 modification of the songs and functions of the Chorus, 
 and other deviations from the ancient severity of 
 dramatic art—would give little, if any, offence. For 
 such spectators the dooms hanging over Argvie or 
 Theban royal houses would have but little interest. 
 Their forefathers had taken no part in the quarrel 
 
ATHENS IN THE HATS OF EUHIPIDES. 25 
 
 between Eteocles and Polynices, cared little for the 
 authority of the Areopagus, had local deities and 
 myths of their own, among whom were not reckoned 
 Pallas Athene, Apollo, or the Virgin Huntress. To 
 the foreigner, that triumphal song, the “Persians” 
 of uEscliylus, and his “Prometheus,” were perhaps 
 more welcome than his Orestean trilogy. The fables of 
 these plays were common and catholic to the whole 
 Hellenic world. The friend and protector of mankind, 
 the long-suffering Titan, touched chords in the heart of 
 a Greek spectator, whether he drank the water of the 
 Meander or that of the fountain of Arethusa. The 
 flight of Xerxes and the humiliation of the Mede were 
 the story of his own deliverance from the dread or op¬ 
 pression of the great king. Even the tragi comedy of - 
 Euripides might be more agreeable to him than the 
 sombre grandeur of jEschylus, or the serene and perfect 
 art of Sophocles. 
 
 But to the purely Athenian portion the innovations 
 of Euripides were less acceptable. If we are to judge 
 by the number of prizes he gained, at no period of his 
 career was he so popular as Sophocles. He was rather 
 a favorite with a party than with the Athenian public. 
 
 In some respects the restless democracy was very con¬ 
 servative in its taste. The deeds of its forefathers it as¬ 
 sociated with Achaean legends: the gods of the common¬ 
 wealth, although it laughed heartily at them when 
 travestied by the comic poets, still were held to be the 
 rightful tenants of Olympus; whereas the Euripidean 
 deities were either ordinary men and women, or “airy 
 nothings,” without any “ local habitation.” Marriage- 
 vows, again, were not very strictly kept by Athenian 
 husbands, yet they did not approve of questionable 
 connections, and thought that Euripides abused poetic 
 
26 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 license when he made use of them in his dramas. 
 Moreover, there may have been something in his habits 
 unpalatable to them: he lived apart; conversed with few; 
 cared not for news; held strange opinions, as will be 
 seen presently, about women and slaves, wits and poli¬ 
 ticians; was no “masker or reveller;” and, in short, 
 took no pains to make himself publicly or privately 
 agreeable. Englishmen are devout worshippers of pub¬ 
 lic opinion, as it is conveyed through the press. Athe¬ 
 nians, without a press, were quite as subservient to their 
 leaders in opinion. They liked not eccentricity, or even 
 the show of pride. In a few cases, indeed, they con¬ 
 doned apparent neglect: Pericles, who rarely went 
 among them unless weighty matters were in hand, they 
 * pardoned for his good services to democracy; the grave 
 and tristful visage of Demosthenes, who was rarely seen 
 to smile, they overlooked in consideration of liis stir¬ 
 ring appeals to their patriotic feelings; but they could 
 not pardon a man who sought fame, if not money, by 
 his plays, for being uncivil to play-goers. And little 
 civility they got from him, beyond a few compliments 
 to their sires or their city. 
 
 A very heterogeneous mass were these unofficial 
 judges of dramatic poets. Between twenty and thirty 
 thousand spectators could be assembled in the theatre of 
 Bacchus. Beyond the seats occupied by privileged 
 persons, and below those allotted to strangers, sat the 
 sovereign people, The war party and the peace party 
 were not separated by barriers. Aristophanes might 
 be next to Lamachus, and the tanner Anytus next to 
 barefooted Socrates. Government contractors, enriched 
 by the war, were mixed up with farmers who were 
 ruined by it. The man who could calculate an eclipse 
 was wedged in with people who thought that the sun or 
 
ATHENS IN THE DATS OF EURIPIDES. 27 
 
 moon when obscured was bewitched; Strepsiades’s 
 pleasure might be spoiled by the near neighborhood of 
 his creditors; and Euelpides, who dropped on his knees 
 on seeing a kite, be close to Diagoras the Melian, who 
 knelt not even to Jupiter. 
 
 The social, intellectual, and perhaps also the moral 
 changes, which affected Athenians during the long life 
 of Euripides, may be partly gathered from the Greek 
 orators, as well as from the satirical comedians. Isoc¬ 
 rates, referring to “the good old times”—often, as re. 
 spects superior virtue or wisdom, a counterpart of the 
 “oldest inhabitant”—and comparing his own genera¬ 
 tion with that of Marathon and Salamis, points out the 
 causes of backsliding. “Then,” says the orator, “our 
 young men did not waste their days in the gambling- 
 house, nor with music girls, nor in the assemblies, in 
 which whole days are now consumed. Then did they 
 shun the Agora, or if they passed through its haunts, 
 it was with modest and timorous forbearance; then to 
 contradict an elder was a greater offence than nowadays 
 to offend a parent; then not even a servant would have 
 been seen to eat or drink within a tavern.” It was this 
 golden or this dreamland age for which Aristophanes 
 sighs in his comedy of “ The Clouds,” deploring the de¬ 
 generacy of the young men in his time, when sophists 
 were in the room of statesmen, and the gymnasium was 
 empty, and the law courts were filled. Into the mouth 
 of old Athens, addressing the young one, are put the 
 following verses: 
 
 “ Oh listen to me, and so shall you be stout-hearted and fresh as 
 a daisy; 
 
 Not ready to chatter on every matter, nor bent over books till 
 you’re hazy: 
 
 No splitter of straws, no dab at the laws, making black seeip 
 White so cunning; 
 
28 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 But wandering down outside the town, and over the green 
 meadow running, 
 
 Ride, wrestle, and play with your fellows so gay, like so many 
 birds of a feather. 
 
 All breathing of youth, good-humor, and truth, in the time of 
 the jolly spring-weather. 
 
 In the jolly spring-time, when the poplar and lime dishevel their 
 tresses together.” * 
 
 Such were Athens, its people, and its theatre, when 
 Euripides was boy and man: we now proceed to in¬ 
 quire what manner of person he was himself. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 LIFE OF EURIPIDES. 
 
 “ How about Euripides? 
 
 He that was born upon the battle-day: 
 
 Might you know any of his verses too?” 
 
 —Browning: “Balaustion’s Adventure.” 
 
 The received date of the birth of Euripides is the 
 year 480 b.c. He was accordingly forty-five years ju¬ 
 nior to JSschylus, and fifteen years younger than Sopho¬ 
 cles. This difference in their respective ages is not un¬ 
 important as regards their very different views of 
 dramatic art. His birthplace was the island of Salamis, 
 where his mother, with other Athenian women, and 
 with men too old, or children too young, for the defence 
 of their native city, was taking refuge, and he came 
 into the world on the day of the great sea-fight that ha s 
 
 * The extract from the Areopagitic oration of Isocrates is taken 
 from Bulwer’s “ Athens—its Rise and Fall,” vol. ii. ch. 5, p. 577; 
 the translation of Aristophanes from a most wise and beautiful 
 little book, entitled “ Euphranor, a Dialogue on Youth” (1851), 
 
LIFE OF EURIPIDES, 
 
 29 
 
 immortalized its-name. Of his father Mnesarchus little 
 is known; but it may be supposed he was a person of 
 good station and property, since he could afford his son 
 a liberal and expensive education, such as at that time 
 was within reach of only wealthy families. His mother 
 Clito, thanks to the poet’s enemies, is better known to 
 us. Probably she was not of the same social grade as 
 her husband; a “metic” perhaps, or half-caste, with 
 pure Athenian blood on one side only. But that Clito 
 was ever a herb-woman, kept a greengrocer’s stall, or 
 hawked fruit and flowers about the streets, is doubtless 
 a tale devised by her son’s ill-wishers. Demosthenes, 
 the orator’s father, was a master-cutler, and, as his son’s 
 suit against his knavish guardians shows, drove a brisk 
 trade in swords, spearheads, knives, and shears; but it 
 does not therefore follow that either the orator or his 
 sire hammered on the anvil or blew the bellows them¬ 
 selves.* In democratic Athens there was at all times a 
 prejudice in favor of high birth, and one of the most 
 effective arrows in Demosthenes’s quiver against H3s- 
 chines was, that his rival had once been a player, that 
 his father was a low fellow, and his mother a dancer, a 
 fortune-teller, and an altogether disreputable person. 
 Clito and her husband very possibly owned some gar¬ 
 den-ground near Athens, and its produce may have for 
 a time supplied a convenient addition to their income. 
 The Persians can hardly have been twice quartered on 
 Attic soil without affecting seriously the rents or divi¬ 
 dends of its owners, and thus the parents of Euripides 
 
 * “ Bleared with the glowing mass, the luckless sire 
 From anvils, sledges, bellows, tongs, and fire, 
 
 From tempering swords, his own more safe employ, 
 
 Tq study rhetoric sent his hopeful boy.” 
 
 —Juvenal, Sat. x,, GifforA 
 
80 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 may have been glad to sell their vegetables.* To repre¬ 
 sent Clito as vending her own wares was an irresistible 
 temptation to comic dramatists, indifferent whom they 
 used for mirth and laughter, whether it were a Pericles 
 or a Cleon. 
 
 Like many fathers before him and since, Mnesarchus 
 was puzzled about his son’s proper calling in life; and 
 so, as modern parents often consult some sound divine 
 about the choice of a school for their lads, he took coun¬ 
 sel of those who understood what the stars or birds of 
 the air forebode as to the destiny of mortals. But either 
 there was a mistake in casting the boy’s nativity, or 
 else the birds lied; for both they and the stars advised 
 Mnesarchus to train up his child in the way of boxing 
 and wrestling. So far this muscular education was suc¬ 
 cessful; it enabled the young Euripides to gain a prize 
 or two in the ring, but at local matches only, for though 
 entered for the Olympian games, he was not allowed to 
 put on either the gloves or the belt. There was some 
 informality—he was too young or too old—and he was 
 struck from the lists. It is remarkable, in connection 
 with this period of his life—at the time of his rejection 
 by the Olympic managers he is said to have been about 
 seventeen years of age—that, in his plays, Euripides 
 has never a good word for prophets and soothsayers; 
 while, as for athletes, he denounces them as the most 
 useless and brutal of men. His aversion to them may 
 have arisen from these youthful misadventures. His 
 proper vocation was yet to seek; and until he found it, 
 he seems to have been rather devious in his pursuits, 
 since, among other arts, he studied that of painting, and 
 
 * One account reverses the story: according to it, Clito was “ a 
 person of quality,” and Mnesarchus not a gentleman but a shop¬ 
 keeper, or at lea$t “in business.” 
 
LIFE OF EURIPIDES. 
 
 Si 
 
 practised it with some success, a picture by him being, 
 long after his decease, exhibited at Megara, either as a 
 creditable performance or a curiosity. The painter may 
 have been of service to the poet; his dramas, especially 
 the lyrical portions of them, display much fondness for 
 words expressing color. Painting was perhaps as use¬ 
 ful an ally to the Greek poet as skill in music was to 
 Milton in the construction of his verse. The real busi¬ 
 ness of Euripides turned out to be the cultivation of his 
 mind, and not of his muscles. His lines were set in the 
 (to him) always pleasant places of poetry and philosophy; 
 his wrestling powers were to be exercised in combats 
 with dramatic rivals and still more hostile critics. And 
 this was perhaps what the stars really said, only the 
 stupid soothsayers did not read them aright. Such peo¬ 
 ple have more than once brought those who consult 
 them into trouble, as poor king Croesus, long before Eu¬ 
 ripides was born, found to his cost. The instructors of 
 Euripides in philosophy were Anaxagoras for physical 
 and Protagoras for moral science. Prodicus gave him 
 lectures in rhetoric, and the studies of his youth were 
 confirmed, expanded, or corrected in his manhood by the 
 good sense of Socrates, who, besides being a guide and 
 philosopher, was also his friend. An education of this 
 kind implies that either Mnesarclius was a man of fortune 
 or that his son early came into one, inasmuch as the Greek 
 sophistical lecturers were quite as costly as many English 
 private tutors are now. We do not know their actual 
 terms, but we do know that they were beyond the reach 
 of ordinary incomes. “Think,” says Hippias to Soc¬ 
 rates, “of the sums of money which Protagoras and 
 Prodicus collected from Greece. If you knew how 
 much I had made myself, you would be surprised. 
 From one town, and that a very small one, I carried off 
 
82 
 
 EURIPIDES . 
 
 i 
 
 more than 150 minse (£609), which I took home and 
 gave to my father, to the extreme astonishment of him¬ 
 self and his fellow-townsmen.” It is also a token of 
 Euripides being well provided with money, that he 
 collected a library—large enough to excite observation 
 at the time, and to be recorded afterwards. Forming a 
 library in any age, heathen or Christian, is an expen¬ 
 sive taste; and, on the whole, printed books are cheaper 
 than those transcribed by the hand. Grecian sheep¬ 
 skin or good Egyptian paper (papyrus) was a costly 
 luxury. n 
 
 In his twenty-sixth year Euripides presented himself 
 for the first time among the candidates for the dramatic 
 crown. In that year (455 B.c.) death removed one for¬ 
 midable rival from his path, since in it iEschylus ex¬ 
 pired. Of the three tragedies produced by him on this 
 his first trial, one was entitled “The Daughters of 
 Pelias,”*and a few lines of it which have been pre¬ 
 served show that it turned upon some adventures of 
 Medea—a theme that a few years after he was to handle 
 with signal success. The third prize was awarded to 
 him—no mean distinction for a novice. But not until 
 Euripides was just forty years old did he obtain the 
 first prize; and the name of this successful trilogy is 
 not preserved. Prominent as the “Medea” now stands 
 
 * Among the few fragments preserved of this play are four 
 lines, apparently indicating that Medea was devising mischief to 
 somebody—perhaps putting on the copper or sharpening a knife 
 for the behoof of Pelias. Whatever it was, she is asking advice, 
 and her monitor gives it like a person of good sense: 
 
 “ A good device; yet to my counsel list: 
 
 Whilst thou art young, think as becomes thy years; 
 Maidenly manners maidens best become. 
 
 But when some worthy man has thee espoused, 
 
 Leave plots to him; they suit not with thy sex.” 
 
LIFE OF EURIPIDES. 
 
 33 
 
 among his works, the trilogy of which it formed a 
 part gained only the third prize. Six years after the 
 production of the “ Medea/’ Aristophanes opened upon 
 its author his double battery of sarcasm and parody, 
 not indeed against the “Medea,” but against a com¬ 
 panion-drama, now lost, the “Philoctetes.”* It is 
 difficult to perceive any possible link between the 
 Colchian princess and the possessor of the bow and 
 arrows of Hercules; we may therefore infer that the 
 group to which these two plays belonged was made up 
 of fables unconnected with each other—a departure 
 from earlier practice that did not originate with Euri¬ 
 pides, though he is sometimes taxed with it. 
 
 He was twice married; his first wife was Clicerilla, a 
 daughter of the Mnesilochus who appears in Aristo¬ 
 phanes’s comedy of the “ Thesmophoriazusaeby her 
 he had three sons: his second was Melitto. According 
 to some accounts he was a bigamist; in Athens, how¬ 
 ever, bigamy, though uncommon, was not a punishable 
 offence, f There was some scandal about one or other 
 
 * Of this “ Philoctetes” there is a very fair account—by no 
 means a common piece of luck with Euripides—by Dion Chry¬ 
 sostom, Oration lii. Dion compares the “Philoctetes” of A3s- 
 chylus (lost) and that of Sophocles (extant) with the Euripidean 
 drama; and he shows that each of these pieces has its several 
 merits. 
 
 t Hume, in his 19th Essay, writes: “ I have somewhere read 
 that the republic of Athens, having lost many of its citizens by 
 war and pestilence, allowed every man to marry two wives, in 
 order the sooner to repair the waste which had been made by 
 these calamities. The poet Euripides happened to be coupled 
 to two noisy vixens, who so plagued him with their jealousies 
 and quarrels that he became ever after a professed woman- 
 hater; and is the only theatrical writer, perhaps the only poet, 
 that ever entertained an aversion to the sex.” The “good 
 David,” though sceptical enough on some subjects, was rathef 
 credulous on the score of anecdotes of this sort. 
 
mmpiDEs. 
 
 34 
 
 or both of these ladies; probably,if there were any ground 
 for it, it applied to Melitto, since Euripides lived for 
 many years with Choerilla, upon, so far as is known, 
 ordinary connubial terms. Athens, however, it must 
 be recollected, in justice to both ladies, was a very 
 gossiping city; nothing (we have it on the authority of 
 St. Paul, seconded by that of Demosthenes) pleased 
 them so much as to tell and ^o hear news, and any news 
 about Euripides was certain of welcome to those who 
 had laughed at the representation of him in the “ Achar- 
 nians.” If it be fair to draw inferences from the wed¬ 
 ded happiness of “the laureate fraternity of poets,” it 
 might appear that Euripides would have fared better 
 had he remained a bachelor. Dante complains that 
 Gemma, his wife, held him in subjection; Shakespeare 
 was not quite comfortable, it would seem, at home; Mil¬ 
 ton’s start in married life was unlucky; Wycherley and 
 Addison were fearfully henpecked. If Christian hus¬ 
 bands fared so ill, it may have been worse with a 
 heathen poet, at a time and in a country where a man’s 
 lawful wife was scarcely more than his cook and house¬ 
 keeper. 
 
 There is no trace of Euripides having, at any period 
 of his life, taken part in public affairs. He seems 
 never to have been archon, or general, as Sophocles was, 
 or priest, or ambassador, or foreman of a jury. Doubt¬ 
 less he paid some rates or taxes in his parish ( deme ), 
 Phylse of the Cecropid tribe. He was commonly 
 accounted a morose and sulky fellow; and since he 
 shunned general society, he was naturally charged 
 with keeping low company.* He was indeed—far more 
 
 ♦The spirits in Hades, that in “The Frogs” rejoice in the 
 rhetorical tricks ascribed to Euripides, are supposed, while on 
 earth, to have inhabited the bodies of cutpurses, highwaymen, 
 
LIFE OF EUBIPIDES. 
 
 35 
 
 than was usual in his time, and among a people passing 
 most of their days in public—“a literary man,” pre¬ 
 ferring solitude and his library to the hubbub of the 
 market-place, or the crowding and noise of popular 
 assemblies. According to a story preserved by a Roman 
 anecdotist, Euripides pursued his studies in a grim 
 and gloomy fashion. One Philochorus professed to 
 have seen a “ grottos hagged with horrid thorn,”* * in 
 which he composed his tragedies. He is said never to 
 have laughed, rarely to have even smiled, and to have 
 worn habitually a sorrowful visage. If it were so, 
 Euripides was such a man as the vivacious Gratiano 
 disliked, and even suspected: 
 
 “ Why should a man whose blood is "warm within 
 Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster? 
 
 Sleep when he wakes, and creep into the jaundice 
 By being peevish?” 
 
 And Csesar perhaps might have thought him dangerous, 
 though we have no reason for supposing Euripides 
 “lean and hungry,” as Cassius was, but, on the con¬ 
 trary, as will appear, a well-favored, though a grave 
 
 burglars, and parricides—such “minions of the moon” being, 
 in Aristophanes's opinion, the pupils of sophistical tutors; or, 
 at least, their notions of property and filial piety, he thinks, 
 were probable results of their education. There w r as a time 
 •when to be a Hobbist or a Benthamite was thought to tend to 
 similar aberrations from virtue, 
 
 * Ben Jonson, certainly not an unsocial man (witness thy 
 things said at the Mermaid, his butt of sack, his “ Tribe of Ben”), 
 describes himself in these lines: 
 
 “ I, that spend half my nights and all my days 
 Here in a cell to get a dark pale face, 
 
 To come forth worth the ivy and the bays,” etc. 
 
 Did we know as little of the English as we do of the Greek poet, 
 here would be ground enough for a legend of a “grotto,” 
 
36 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 and silent, man. Perhaps Euripides’s horoscope may 
 have resembled that of the good knight of Norwich: 
 “I was born,” says Sir Thomas Browne, “in the plan¬ 
 etary hour of Saturn, and I think I have a piece of that 
 leaden planet in me. I am no way facetious, nor dis¬ 
 posed for the mirth and galliardise of company.” 
 
 The “Spectator” remarks that “a reader seldom pe¬ 
 ruses a book with pleasure till he knows whether the 
 writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or choleric 
 disposition, married or a bachelor, with other particu¬ 
 lars of the like nature that conduce very much to the 
 right understanding of an author.” There are means 
 for “gratifying this curiosity, which is so natural to a 
 reader:” for, thanks to some scholiast or painstaking 
 collector of the curiosities of literature, there exists a 
 brief life of Euripides containing some account of his 
 personal appearance. He is said to have worn a bushy 
 beard, and to have had freckles on his face. This, in¬ 
 deed, is not much; yet it is somewhat for us to learn— 
 a scrap redeemed from the wallet that Time bears on 
 his back. On the same authority we may fairly as¬ 
 sume, that when a beardless youth, and perhaps un¬ 
 freckled, he was noted for fair visage, and that he was 
 “a gentleman born.” He was a torcli-bearer at the 
 festival of Apollo of Zoster, a village on the coast of 
 Attica.* Now none but handsome and well-born youth 
 
 * The festival was held at Delphi, and probably, therefore, 
 Euripides was conveyed thither in the galley (paralus) which 
 annually carried offerings to Apollo’s shrine. The young men, 
 clad in Theraic garments, danced round the altar. May not 
 this visit to Delphi have been the germ of the poet’s beautiful 
 drama, : *Ion”? In any case the report of it shows that no 
 ignobility of birth was attached to the name of Euripides by 
 those who circulated it; and among them was Theophrastus, 
 who indeed wrote long afterwards, but yet weighed his facts. 
 
LIFE OF EURIPIDES . 
 
 37 
 
 were chosen for that office. It is to he hoped that many 
 of our readers are acquainted with Charles Lamb’s 
 righteous indignation at the conduct of the “wretched 
 Malone,” the Shakespearian editor and commentator, 
 in covering with white paint the portrait-bust of Shake¬ 
 speare at Stratford-upon-Avon, “which, in rude but 
 lively fashion, depicted him to the very color of the 
 cheek, the eye, the eyebrow, hair, the very dress he 
 used to wear—the only authentic testimony we have, 
 however imperfect, of these curious parts and parcels 
 of him.” If we balance in each case probable facts 
 against equally probable traditions, we may conclude 
 Euripides to be known to us almost as well as Shake¬ 
 speare, owing to this good Dryasdust, the Greek bio¬ 
 grapher, who disdains not to chronicle even “ freckles.” 
 
 But it is impossible to believe Euripides to have been 
 a mere recluse. His vocation as a writer for the stage 
 must have brought him into contact with many persons 
 connected with the theatre—with the archon who as¬ 
 signed him a chorus, with the actors, singers, and 
 musicians who performed in his plays, and with the 
 judges who awarded the prizes. Yet if we ask what 
 company he kept, we pause for a reply, and do not get 
 one. We know that he was a friend of Socrates, who 
 never missed attending on the “first night” of a play by 
 Euripides. We know also that, every man’s house and 
 many men’s tables were open to the Silenus-like son of 
 Sophroniscus. We can tell the names of the guests at 
 Plato’s and at Xenophon’s banquets. Socrates of 
 course is at both, and that of Plato is held at the house 
 of Agathon, Euripides’s intimate friend. Some kind 
 of acquaintance, perhaps not exactly friendship, existed 
 between Alcibiades and Euripides, who once celebrated 
 ia verse a chariot-victory of that brilliant but dangerous 
 
38 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 citizen’s at the Olympic games. Neither at Plato’s nor 
 Xenophon’s feast, however, is Euripides present. Nor 
 is it likely that travelling into foreign parts was among 
 the causes for his absence on such festive occasions, 
 since, until in his later years he quitted Athens, there. 
 is no trace of his leaving Attica, except the single fact 
 of an inscription in the island of Icarus ascribed to him. 
 This, however, is no evidence at all of his being fron\ 
 home, since a waxen tablet or a snip of papyrus could 
 have ..conveyed the inscription, while Euripides re¬ 
 mained in his grotto or his library, wrapt in contempla¬ 
 tion on his next new play, or striving to solve hard 
 sayings of Prodicus or Protagoras. 
 
 Once, indeed, we find him at home. It was in his 
 house that Protagoras is said to have read one of the 
 works by which that philosopher incurred a charge 
 of atheism; and this worshipful society, once bruited 
 abroad, was not likely to be overlooked by the pious 
 writers of comedy. Often, indeed, does Athens, at the 
 period of the Peloponnesian vrar, present an image of 
 Paris in the last century. There the Church was 
 despised, and yet stanchly supported by men of 
 notoriously evil life; in Athens, divinities, whom the 
 people worshipped superstitiously, if not devoutly, 
 when the theatre was closed, were butts for the peo¬ 
 ple’s mirth and laughter when it was open. We 
 have a record of only the two banquets of this time 
 already mentioned. Could we have a report of a 
 “petit souper d' Alcibiades,” it might very likely re¬ 
 mind us of those symposiums where the head of the 
 Church, Leo the Tenth, encouraged his parasites and 
 buffoons to debate on the greatest mysteries of religion; 
 or the still better known conversations that took place 
 the supper-tatye of BarQn Holbach, Had we 
 
LIFE OF EURIPIDES. 
 
 39 
 
 such report of the petite soupers at Athens, possibly 
 some resemblance might be found between Protagoras 
 and D’Alembert, or between the brilliant, versatile, 
 and unprincipled Philip of Orleans and Alcibiades. 
 With Alcibiades there was certainly some party or 
 friendly relation with Euripides; but it is vain to specu¬ 
 late on its nature. Whatever it was, it would do the 
 tragic poet no good with Aristophanes; and if the story 
 be true that Alcibiades and his associates marred the 
 first and hindered the second representation of “ The 
 Clouds,” the baffled and irritated satirist may have sus¬ 
 pected Euripides of having a hand in his failure, and 
 for that, and perhaps other weightier reasons, have put 
 him down in his black book. 
 
 Certain is it that Aristophanes regarded Euripides 
 with a feeling seemingly compounded of fear and con¬ 
 tempt—of contempt for him as a scenic artist, and fear 
 of him as a corrupter of youth. Yet it is difficult to 
 detect the cause for such hostility; political motives 
 can hardly have been at the root of it. Did Aristo¬ 
 phanes detest the war with Peloponnesus, and yearn for 
 the return of peace? so did Euripides. Did he regard 
 the middle class of citizens as the pith and marrow of 
 the commonwealth? Euripides thought so too. The 
 husbandman who tilled his little plot of ground they 
 both set above the shopkeeper, who applauded the 
 demagogue of the hour, and spent, or more properly 
 idled away, half his time on the stone benches of the 
 Pnyx. Did the comic writer love Athens in his heart 
 of hearts though he often told her from the stage that 
 she was a dolt and a dupe? the tragic writer loved her 
 no less, and paid her compliments sometimes not to the 
 advantage of a play or a trilogy. Did the one look upon 
 orators with an unfavorable eye? so did the other; while 
 
40 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 both agreed that nobility of birth and depth of purse 
 did not necessarily constitute the best citizen. Yet, in 
 spite of so much harmony in their opinions, there were 
 differences that could not be bridged over; there was 
 repugnance that defied reconciliation, and views of 
 Athens as it had been, and Athens as it was then, which 
 kept them in the compass of one town as far apart as 
 if rivers and mountains, clime or race, had sundered 
 them. 
 
 The enmity of Aristophanes increased with the years, 
 and did not relax with the death, of Euripides. The 
 first known attack upon him was made in his comedy 
 of “The Acharnians” or “The Charcoal-Burners.” 
 The last was made two years after “sad Electra’s poet” 
 had been struck down by a yet more “insatiate archer” 
 than Aristophanes himself. The spirit that breathes in 
 “ The Acharnians” reappears, but with increased bitter¬ 
 ness, in “ The Frogs,” and to sharp censure on Euripi- 
 dean art is added still sharper on Euripidean theology. 
 Some modern writers on the subject of the Greek drama 
 have contemplated Euripides through the eyes of his 
 great satirist. They might, perhaps, have done better 
 to consider, before following their witty leader, whether 
 he was guiding them in the right road; whether the 
 comic writer’s objections rested on patriotic or moral, 
 or on party or personal grounds. Aristophanes was a 
 stubborn reactionist: the men of Marathon and Plat£Ea, 
 of Salamis and Mycale, he held to be the type of good 
 Athenians. The new schools appeared to him in the 
 same light as Greek philosophy in general appeared to 
 the sturdy old Sabine Cato—schools of impudence and 
 lying. Pericles himself he seems never to have really 
 liked, but set him below Myronides and Thucydides, 
 men of the good old time, for the return of which, as all 
 
LIFE OF EURIPIDES. 
 
 41 
 
 reactionists must ever do, he yearned in vain. Euripi¬ 
 des, on the other hand, was a man of the new time, 
 perhaps a little beyond as well as of it. More cheerful 
 views of humanity, ampler range of inquiry, greater 
 freedom of thought, supplanted in his mind the gloomy 
 superstition or the slavish faith of a past generation, 
 with whom an eclipse was a token of the wrath of the 
 gods, and by whom the sun was thought to be no bigger 
 than a heavy-armed soldier’s buckler. “Between the 
 pass and fell incensed points” of two such opposites 
 there could be nothing but collision; and the tragic poet 
 labored under this serious disadvantage, that he could 
 not bring his antagonist on the stage. 
 
 Yet the most ardent admirer of Euripides is compelled 
 to allow that this indefatigable writer of plays and 
 laborious student can hardly be ranked among success¬ 
 ful poets. “It lias been observed,” says an eminent 
 judge of Greek literature, “ that the success of Euripi¬ 
 des, if it is measured by the prizes which he is said to 
 have gained, would not seem to have been very great; 
 and perhaps there may be reason to suspect that he 
 owed much of the applause which he obtained in his 
 lifetime to the favor of a party, which was strong rather 
 in rank and fortune than in numbers,—the same which 
 is said to have been headed by Alcibiades.” “ It is not 
 quite certain that, even in the latter part of his career, 
 Euripides was so popular as Sophocles. In answer to a 
 question of Socrates, in a conversation with Xenophon, 
 probably heard during the latter part of the Peloponne¬ 
 sian war, Sophocles is mentioned as indisputably the 
 most admirable in his art.” * If, according to this very 
 probable suggestion, Euripides were the poet of the few 
 
 * Thirlwall’s Hist, of Greece, iv. 273. 
 
42 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 and not of the Athenians in general, his frequent failure 
 to win the ivy wreath may easily be explained. De¬ 
 mocracy, though in all times it delights in clubs, is very 
 jealous of coteries, especially if composed of men well- 
 to-do in the world, or of men noted for their learning or 
 refinement, and particularly jealous would all old- 
 fashioned Cecropids be of a club in which Alcibiades 
 was chairman. If, however, the wayward Plieidippides * 
 of the comedy may sometimes have hindered the poet’s 
 success in a theatrical contest, he may as probably have 
 atoned for this grievance at home by obtaining for him 
 a better reception abroad. “ There are dwellers out of ” 
 Attica, without going to the realm of the Birds to find 
 them. And among the dependencies of Athens, in the 
 tributary islands and among the Greeks of the Lesser 
 Asia, where Alcibiades had much influence, he may 
 have been an efficient patron of the often, at home, 
 mortified dramatist. 
 
 An historian, who wrote centuries after Euripides 
 had passed beyond these and other vexations, cannot 
 conceal his surprise that one Xenocles should have been 
 the successful competitor in a contest with the son of 
 Mnesarchus. He fairly calls the judges and spectators 
 on the occasion a parcel of fools—dunderheads un¬ 
 worthy to bear the name of Athenian. But in missing 
 the first or even the second crown, Euripides only fared 
 alike with iEscliylus and Sophocles; and that, with 
 such samples of the two latter as have come to our 
 hands, is a much more remarkable circumstance than 
 the one it puzzled Arrian to account for.f What 
 
 * Pheidippides, in “ The Clouds” of Aristophanes, is reputed to 
 be a caricature of Alcibiades. 
 
 + Various Histories, v. 
 
life of ztmtpmm 
 
 43 
 
 dramatic giants must they have been who strove for 
 the mastery with the old Marathonian soldier, and with 
 the Shakespeare of the Grecian world I Perhaps an¬ 
 other cause occasionally cost Euripides the crown. He, 
 like Ben Jonson, was at times perverse in the choice 
 or in the treatment of his subjects. Even from the 
 satire of Aristophanes it is plain that he had an unlucky 
 propensity to tread on debatable, and even dangerous, 
 ground. By his innovations in legendary stories, by 
 occasionally tampering with criminal passion, by per¬ 
 haps carrying to excess his fondness for mere stage 
 effect, he perplexed or offended his audience, not in¬ 
 clined to accept as an apology for the exhibition of 
 wicked characters his plea that in the end they were all 
 well punished for their sins.* Even his constant ap- 
 plauder from the benches, Socrates, had, it is said, once 
 to implore him to cut out from a play certain offensive 
 lines; and a story preserved by a Roman anecdotist 
 shows that occasionally he was obliged to come on the 
 stage himself, and crave the spectators to keep their 
 seats until the end of the performance.! It seems that 
 Euripides could give a tart reply to his audience when 
 their opinions happened to differ from his own; for 
 when the whole house demanded that an offensive pas¬ 
 sage or sentiment in a tragedy should be struck out, he 
 said, “ Good people, it is my business to teach you, and 
 not to be taught by you.” How the ‘‘good people” 
 took this curt rebuff is not recorded; but if they damned 
 his play, he at least did not, as Ben Jonson did, sulk for 
 a few years and leave the “ loathed stage” in dudgeon, 
 after venting his wrath on the public by an abusive ode 
 and some stinging epigrams. On the contrary, Euri- 
 
 * Valerius Maximus. 
 
 t Valerius Maximus. 
 
44 
 
 mniPiDm 
 
 pides went on preparing plays for the greater and lesser 
 seasons of the theatrical period, until he left Athens and 
 his enemies therein—for ever. 
 
 Amid frequent disappointments, and smarting under 
 the lash of the comic poets—for we may be sure that 
 where an Aristophanes led the way, others, however 
 inferior to him, would follow eagerly—Euripides at a 
 moment of universal dismay perhaps enjoyed some per¬ 
 sonal consolation. The mighty host which Athens had 
 sent to Syracuse had been nearly annihilated. Of forty 
 thousand citizens or allies that had gone forth, ten 
 thousand only survived. Of her vast armament —vast 
 if we bear in mind that her free population fell below 
 that of many English fourth-rate cities—not a war- 
 galley, not a transport-ship, returned to Peirseus: of her 
 soldiers, a handful only found refuge in a friendly 
 Sicilian town. The last months of autumn in 413 b.c. 
 were months of national consternation and household 
 grief. Not long since we were reading of the general 
 aspect of mourning for the slain at Berlin and other 
 German cities. The mourning in Athens was of a 
 deeper dye, since it was accompanied by dismay, if not 
 despair, for the immediate future. Syracuse had been 
 to Athens what Moscow was for Napoleon. Yet early 
 perhaps in the next year there reached the “violet 
 Queen” at first rumors, then credible reports, and at 
 last the glad assurance, that any Athenian prisoner who 
 could recite scenes or passages from the dramas of 
 Euripides was taken out of the dreary stone-quarries of 
 Syracuse, was kindly entreated in Sicilian homes, was 
 nursed if sick or wounded, and if not presently restored 
 to freedom (for such self-denial the captors prized their 
 captives too highly), yet treated not as a slave, but as a 
 welcome and honored guest. Some indeed—how few 
 
 i 
 
LIFE OF EURIPIDES. 
 
 45 
 
 or how many cannot be told—were suffered to return to 
 Attica; and of these—poor gleanings after a bloody 
 reaping—some can hardly have failed to go to the house 
 of their deliverer, and with faltering voice and tearful 
 eyes implored the gods, since they could not, to reward 
 him. “Little thought we,” they may be imagined to 
 have said to him, “when we saw represented in your 
 ‘ Trojan Women’ the desolation of a hostile city, troops 
 of warriors dragged in chains to the black ships of the 
 Achseans, tender and delicate princesses told off to their 
 allotted owners; or again, in your ‘Suppliants,’ the 
 wives of the slain weeping for their husbands denied 
 burial; or that bloody meadow before the seven-gated 
 Thebes strewn with the dead in your ‘ Phoenicians’— 
 little then thought we that these mimic shows were but 
 shadows of what we beheld on the banks of the Asina- 
 rus on that dreary October morning, when, faint and 
 worn by our night-march, and maddened by thirst, cap¬ 
 tain and soldier, hoplite and peltast, we rushed into its 
 stream, careless of the archers that lined its banks, and 
 hardly recking of the iron sleet that struck down our 
 best and bravest. By the magic of your song, though 
 ‘sung in a strange land,’ we poor survivors were res¬ 
 cued and redeemed from graves and the prison-house, 
 from hunger and nakedness, from the burning sun and 
 the sharp night-frosts of autumn, and from what was as 
 hard to bear, the scoffs of the insolent foe gazing down 
 upon us from morn to eve, and aggravating by brutal 
 taunts and ribald jests the pains of the living and the 
 terrors of the dying.” If the character of Euripides 
 may be inferred from his writings, the most pathetic of 
 Greek tragic poets—he who sympathized with the slave, 
 he who so tenderly depicted women—wept at such mo¬ 
 ments with those who were weeping before him, and 
 
46 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 was cheered by these proofs that he had not written or 
 lived in vain. 
 
 The “Orestes” was the last play exhibited at Athens 
 by Euripides; and he must have quitted that city 
 shortly afterwards, if he was in exile for two years. 
 He was a self-banished man; at least no cause is as¬ 
 signed for his departure. Of the three great dramatic 
 poets whose works have in part been preserved, one 
 only died in his birthplace. iEschylus quitted Athens 
 in dudgeon at a charge of sacrilege, and Euripides ended 
 his days at a foreign court. After a short sojourn in 
 Magnesia, he went to Pella, the capital of the then small, 
 and in the eyes of republican Greeks unimportant, 
 kingdom of Macedonia. He was invited to it by the 
 reigning sovereign, Archelaus, who in his way was a 
 sort of Lorenzo de’ Medici, attracting to his court 
 artists, poets, and philosophers, and corresponding with 
 them when at a distance. Among those whom he in¬ 
 vited was Socrates; but lie, who cared for neither 
 money nor goods, and who spoke his mind pretty freely 
 at all times and to all people, declined going to Pella, 
 thinking perhaps that he would make an indifferent 
 courtier, and knowing that despots have (as well as 
 long hands) their caprices. Archelaus—the Macedonian 
 kings always affected to be zealously Hellenic—estab¬ 
 lished a periodical Olympic festival in honor of Jupiter 
 and the Muses, and perhaps spoke Greek as his native 
 tongue, and with as good accent as Frederick the Great 
 is said to have spoken French. At Pella Euripides met 
 with a reception that may have led him to regret his 
 not sooner quitting litigious and scurrilous Athens, 
 where housewives abominated his name and doubtless 
 pitied Chcerilla and Melitto, and where orthodox temple- 
 goers were scandalized by his theological opinions. 
 
LIFE OF EURIPIDES. 
 
 47 
 
 Lucian mentions a report that the poet held some public 
 office in Macedonia, which, seeing that he never meddled 
 with even parish business at home, is scarcely probable. 
 As little likely is it that he turned flatterer of kings in 
 his later days. We can as soon believe that the grim 
 Dante became a parasite at the court of Can Grande 
 della Scala. Aristotle, indeed, a more trustworthy 
 authority than Lucian, tells the following story:—De- 
 camnichus, a young Macedonian, and a favorite of the 
 king, gave deep offence to Euripides by remarks on his 
 bad breath. Complaint being made, the indiscreet youth 
 was handed over to the incensed poet, with the royal 
 permission to flog him; and soundly flogged he seems 
 to have been, since Decamnichus bore his chastisement 
 in mind for six years, and then relieved his feelings by 
 encouraging some friends or acquaintances, Euripides 
 being out of reach, to murder Archelaus.* 
 
 At the Macedonian court Euripides was not the only 
 Athenian guest. His friend Agathon, flying perhaps 
 from duns, critics, or public informers, found a royal 
 city a pleasanter residence than a democratic one. 
 There, was the celebrated musical composer, Timotheus, 
 whom, when he was hissed at the Odeum some years 
 before, Euripides is said to have consoled by predicting 
 that “ he would soon have the audience at his feet,” a 
 prophecy that was fully realized. His presence at Pella 
 may have been convenient to Euripides, who was then 
 employed in putting the last touches to, if not actually 
 composing, two of his finest plays—“ The Bacchanals” 
 and the “Iphigenia at Aulis.” There, too, was Choeri- 
 lus, an epic poet, who celebrated in Homeric verse the 
 wars of the Greeks with Darius and Xerxes. The 
 
 * Aristotle, Politics, v. 10, sec. 20. 
 
48 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 society at King Archelaus’s table, so richly furnished 
 with celebrities, very probably resembled the better- 
 known assemblages at Sans Souci; but we do not read 
 that the Macedonian prince put on liis crown, as Freder¬ 
 ick the Great did his cocked-hat, when his guests, 
 Bacclu plem, were becoming personal, or trespassing on 
 the royal preserve of politics. 
 
 Euripides did not long enjoy “ retired leisure.” He 
 died at Pella in the 76th year of his age, in the year 
 406 b.c., having, as is supposed, quitted Athens in 408. 
 But his enemies, so far as it lay with them, did not 
 permit him to depart in peace, or even in reputable 
 fashion. One report, current indeed long after his 
 decease, makes him to have been torn to pieces by mas¬ 
 tiffs set upon him by two rival poets, Arrhidseus and 
 Cratenas; another, that he was killed by women when 
 on his way to keep an assignation. This bit of scandal 
 is probably an echo of his ill-repute at home as a woman- 
 hater; and the story of the mastiffs may be a disguise 
 of the fact that he was “cut up” by Macedonian 
 theatrical critics. Yet one who had been handled as he 
 was by Aristophanes and survived, might well have set 
 at nought all dogs, biped or quadruped: and as to noc¬ 
 turnal trysts, they are seldom proposed, or at least 
 kept, by gentlemen over threescore and ten.* Far more 
 pleasant is it to know that Sophocles was deeply affected 
 
 * This story of dogs and angry women is indeed noticed in 
 some verses ascribed to Sophocles, who, as Schlegel says, uttered 
 “some cutting sayings against Euripides.” To readers inter¬ 
 ested in the matter, it may be convenient to be told that it is 
 mentioned by Athenaeus, book xiii. p. 557. Against Sophocles, 
 if the gossip collected by Plutarch is accepted, there were also 
 some “sayings” of a similar kind, and far ress creditable to 
 him. 
 
LIFE OF EURIPIDES. 
 
 49 
 
 by his death, and in the next play he produced forbade 
 the actors to wear crowns or their usual gorgeous 
 dresses. The Athenians were prone to unavailing re¬ 
 gret. Often they would say in their haste, “We are 
 betrayed,” and banish or put to death men who had 
 served them well. Socrates had not been dead many 
 years, before, with “woe that too late repented,” they 
 acknowledged having condemned a just man, and 
 turned rabidly on his accusers for misleading them. 
 And so, when Euripides was no more, they sent envoys 
 to Pella to bring home his remains. But his host 
 Arclielaus would not part with them, and buried them 
 with much pomp and circumstance; and his countrymen 
 were fain to content themselves with a cenotaph on the 
 road from Peiraeus to the city, and with a bust or 
 statue of the poet, which they placed in the Dionysiac 
 theatre. They, 
 
 “ Slowly wise and meanly just, 
 
 To buried merit raised the tardy bust;” 
 
 and they were not the first, nor will they be the last, 
 of nations, to imagine posthumous homage compen¬ 
 sation for years of detraction. Books or furniture 
 that had belonged to Euripides were much sought for 
 and highly prized by their possessors; and Dionysius 
 of Syracuse, himself a dramatic poet, and not an un¬ 
 successful one, purchased at a high price his tablets 
 and pen, and dedicated them to the Temple of the 
 Muses in his own capital. “They keep his bones in 
 Arqua;” and there was seemingly, for centuries after 
 he was quietly inurned, a deep interest, and even a 
 tender sentiment, attached to his tomb. It was situated 
 near the confluence of two rivers, where there appears 
 to have been a house or caravansary, at which travelers 
 
50 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 refreshed themselves, attracted by the purity of the 
 air. Of the rivers, one was noted for the unwholesome 
 character of its water.* * * § From another account it may 
 he inferred that the tomb was much visited, even if 
 pilgrimages were not made to it.f 
 
 On his cenotaph was graven the following inscrip¬ 
 tion : 
 
 “ To Hellas’ bard all Hellas gives a tomb: 
 
 On Macedon’s far shores his relics sleep: 
 
 Athens, the pride of Greece, was erst his home, 
 
 Whom now all praise and all in common weep.”t 
 
 These lines, attributed to Thucydides the historian, 
 or to Timotheus the musician, are difficult to reconcile 
 with the caricature-portraits of him by Aristophanes; 
 yet are consistent with the opinion that it was the con¬ 
 servative party in Athens, and not Athenians generally, 
 that were hostile to him in life, or to the memory of— 
 
 “ Our Euripides, the human, 
 
 With his droppings of warm tears, 
 
 And his touches of things common. 
 
 Till they rose to touch the spheres.” § 
 
 In one thing he was happier than Sophocles—“op- 
 portunitate mortis”—in the priority of his death; since 
 he lived not, as his great rival did, long enough to hear 
 of the sentence passed on the victorious generals at 
 Arginusae, of the capture of the Athenian fleet at the 
 Goat River, and of the utter, hopeless, irretrievable 
 ruin of the city he had celebrated so often in immortal 
 verse, admonished so wisely, and loved so well. 
 
 * Vitruvius, viii. c. 3, “ Mortifera.” 
 
 + Ammianus, xxvii. c. 4. 
 
 X Translated by Mr. Paley. 
 
 § Browning, “ Balaustion,” 
 
THE SCENIC PHILOSOPHER 
 
 51 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE SCENIC PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 “ In all his pieces there is the sweet human voice, the fluttering 
 human heart.”— Kenelm Digby. 
 
 Whether it were devised by friend or foe, the title 
 of “Scenic Philosopher” for Euripides was given by 
 one who had read his writings attentively.* His early 
 studies, his intercourse with Socrates and other philoso¬ 
 phers of the time, encouraged in so contemplative a 
 mind as his habits of speculation on human and divine 
 nature, and on such physical science as then existed. 
 And as regarded dramatic composition, he was the first 
 to bring philosophy on the stage. The sublime and 
 gloomy genius of iEschylus was far more active than 
 contemplative. His sentences are masses of concrete 
 thought, when he descends from mere passion or ima¬ 
 gination. Such inquiries as occupied Euripides ap¬ 
 peared to him, as they did to Aristophanes, profane, or 
 at the best idle, curiosity. To JSschylus, the new 
 rulers of Olympus, and the Titans they supplanted, 
 were persons as real as Miltiades or Tliemistocles. To 
 him, Olympus was but a yet more august court of 
 Areopagus, and Fates and Furies were dread realities, 
 not metaphysical abstractions. Sophocles lived for art: 
 in his devotion to it, and in the unruffled calmness of 
 his temper, he was an Hellenic Goethe; one, the central 
 fire of whose genius, while it glowed under all he wrote, 
 
 * It appears as an accepted title in Vitruvius’s work on Archi¬ 
 tecture, book viii. 
 
52 
 
 mmpiDEB. 
 
 rarely disturbed the equanimity of his spirit. Moral or 
 theological problems vexed him not. He cared not for 
 the physics of Anaxagoras. Protagoras’s sceptical dis¬ 
 quisitions touched him no nearer than Galileo’s dis¬ 
 coveries touched Shakespeare, or Hume’s Essays Samuel 
 Johnson. The Jupiter of Sophocles was the Jupiter of 
 Phidias; his Pallas Athene, the living counterpart of 
 her image on the Acropolis. In abstaining from such 
 questions, he and HSschylus were perhaps wiser than 
 Euripides—considered as an artist—was in his fondness 
 for them. Had Shakespeare been deeply versed in 
 Roger Bacon’s works, or in those of Aquinas, his plays 
 would not have been better, and might have been worse, 
 for such physical or metaphysical studies. Entertain¬ 
 ments of the stage are meant for the many rather than 
 for the few; and subjects that the many, if they listen 
 to them at all, can scarcely fail to misinterpret, it is 
 safer, as well as more artistic, to avoid. 
 
 'There were, however, at the time when Euripides 
 was writing for the theatre, especially after he had 
 passed middle age, changes silently at work in Athens 
 that rendered contact between poets and philosophers 
 almost unavoidable. The rapid growth of speculative 
 and rhetorical studies in the age, and perhaps with the 
 sanction, of Pericles, has already been noticed. The 
 understanding, hardly affected by the simple training 
 of the young in the iEschylean period, had become, 
 fifty years later, the primary aim of liberale ducation. 
 Pie who could recite the whole Iliad or Odyssey was 
 now looked upon, when compared with an acute 
 rhetorician, as little better than a busy idler—all very 
 well, perhaps, for enlivening the guests at a formal 
 supper, or entertaining a loitering group in the streets. 
 Even fodls have sometimes portentous memories, but 
 
THE SCENIC PHILOSOPHER, 
 
 S3 
 
 no fool could handle adroitly the weapons of a sound 
 logician. Man was born to be something better than a 
 parrot ; he was meant to cultivate and to use “ discourse of 
 reason.” To argue logically upon almost any premises,— 
 to have words at command, to be ready in reply, fertile 
 in objection, averse from granting propositions, to pos¬ 
 sess much general knowledge, were accomplishments 
 which no well-educated young Athenian, aspiring to 
 make a figure in public, could do without. The imagi¬ 
 native epoch of ^Eschylus was departing, the scientific 
 epoch of Aristotle was approaching, and the analytical 
 stamp of Euripides’s mind, great as its poetical force 
 was, complied with those tendencies of the time. 
 
 In thus reflecting the spirit of the age, Euripides only 
 did what others before him had done, and what great 
 poets will ever continue to do: 
 
 “ In ancient days the name 
 Of poet and of prophet was the same.’ 
 
 the genuine poet being always in advance of his fellow- 
 men, and therefore frequently misunderstood or under¬ 
 valued by them. The era of Dante is as deeply stamped, 
 both on his prose and verse, as if he had designed 
 to portray it. He belonged partly to a period 
 that was passing away, and partly to one that was 
 near at hand. Trained in the lore of the schoolmen, 
 he has something in common with Duns Scotus and 
 the Master of Sentences; while by his homage to 
 Virgil and Statius, he anticipated in his tastes the 
 revival of classical literature. Milton, affected by the 
 influence of Jonson and Fletcher, composed in his 
 youth a masque and songs of Arcady; in his mature 
 manhood, the serious and severe Independent is mani¬ 
 fest in all he wrote. Schiller is the herald of a revolt!- 
 
54 
 
 mnmnm 
 
 tionary period, impatient of and discontented with the 
 present. Pope, in his moral essays and satires, repre¬ 
 sents a time when sense and decorum ranked among 
 the cardinal virtues, and when loftier and more robust 
 forms of imagination or faith were accounted extrava¬ 
 gances. To this general law Euripides was no excep¬ 
 tion. He went before them, and so was misinterpreted 
 by mSny among whom he lived. Within half a cen¬ 
 tury after his death, his name stood foremost on the roll 
 of Greek dramatic poets. If not a deeper, a more genial 
 spirit—a spirit we constantly meet with in Euripidean 
 plays—had superseded the grim theology of the Mara- 
 tlionian period; stage-poetry was indeed shorn of some 
 of its grandeur, but it gained, in recompense for what 
 it lost, profounder human feelings. 
 
 That the Athenian theatre was not only a national 
 but a religious institution, and to what extent and in 
 what particulars it was so, has already been told in the 
 volume of this series assigned to AEschylus. There 
 had been, however, after the Persian had been hum¬ 
 bled and Hellas secured and exalted, a silent change in 
 the faith of the Athenian people, as well as in their 
 mental training. As years rolled on over their reno¬ 
 vated city, though the forms of their myths and 
 legends were retained, living belief in them was on 
 the wane. They were accepted as respectable tradi¬ 
 tions, and when they recorded the brave deeds of their 
 forefathers, were jealously cherished, but no longer 
 regarded with awe or exempted from innovation. In 
 the time of Euripides there had appeared an historian, 
 or perhaps more properly a chronicler—a man of much 
 faith and honest piety, and yet one who scrupled not 
 to canvass the credibility of tale and tradition, and 
 sometimes even to find a secular explanation fdr 
 
THE SCENIC PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 55 
 
 spiritual doctrines. Herodotus, as well as Euripides, 
 was under the influence of the age, though lie* usually 
 apologizes for his doubts. Yet doubt he did. The 
 Father of History, no less than the pupil of Anaxa¬ 
 goras, disbelieved in the baneful effects of an eclipse, 
 and had, for his time, very fair notions of geography; 
 and if he thought that the gods envy human greatness, 
 and sooner or later punish the pride of man, his faith, 
 as contrasted with that of Phrynicus and iEscliylus, 
 was feeble, and his view of Destiny and the Benign 
 Deities savored more of habit than earnest conviction. 
 In such matters the beginning of distrust is the dawn 
 of a rationalistic epoch. The ancient faith of the 
 Athenians in the names and acts of their founders is on 
 a par with that in the once accredited tale of Brutus 
 and other Trojans settling in Britain; or of Joseph of 
 Arimathea planting the first shoot of the holy thorn 
 at Glastonbury. Joseph and Brutus, like Cecrops 
 and Erectheus, have vanished from history, and nothing 
 except the genius of a poet could recall from the 
 shades and clothe with living interest King Arthur and 
 the Knights of the Round Table. Readers will perhaps 
 pardon a short digression, if it tend to throw light on 
 the dramatic art of Euripides, when contrasted with 
 that of iEschylus; or rather, on a change that took 
 place in the taste of their respective audiences. 
 
 The story of Orestes, in the handling of which 
 ^Escliylus and Sophocles stand farthest apart from 
 Euripides, is chosen as perhaps the most striking 
 instance of the struggle between old faith and new 
 rationalism, as exhibited in the Athenian drama. To 
 the elder of these poets the symbolisms of the legend 
 were perfectly clear. Apollo, a purifying and avenging 
 
56 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 god, prescribes the duty and the mode of retribution, 
 and protects the avengers of blood. After the com¬ 
 mand has been issued to visit the death of Agamem¬ 
 non on his murderers, Pylades, in the legend, though 
 almost a mute person in the drama, is Apollo’s prin¬ 
 cipal agent in nerving Orestes to the execution of 
 his dreadful task. Pylades was a Crisean by descent. 
 Now, from the Homeric hymn to Apollo, it appears 
 that the original Pythian temple was in the domain of 
 the town of Crisa. At Crisa Orestes dwelt as an exile; 
 and it is from that town that, accompanied by his 
 monitor, the destined avenger set forth on his errand 
 to Mycenee. The near connection between Pylades and 
 Apollo is implied also in the belief that he was the 
 founder of the Amphictyonic Council which was held 
 at Delphi. In the “ Eumenides” he does not appear; 
 his function ceased when, in the “ Libation Bearers, ” 
 Clytemnestra and her paramour had paid the penalty of 
 their crime: but in the latter play, it is the reproach 
 of Pylades which screws to the sticking-point the failing 
 courage of Orestes. 
 
 Sophocles had studied the same old legend. In his 
 “Electra,” the bearer of the false intelligence that 
 Orestes has been killed in the chariot-race at the 
 Pythian games reports himself as sent by Phanoteus, 
 the Phocian, a friend of Clytemnestra, and so a likely 
 person to apprise her that she need no longer live in 
 dread of her son. Now this Phanoteus is no other 
 than a foe, though a brother, of Crisus, the father of 
 Strophius, and grandfather of Pylades. Like Oros- 
 manes and Ahriman, the brothers—Strophius and 
 Phanoteus—dwelt in hostile regions: the former in the 
 bright and cheerful city of Crisa, where the sun-god 
 had his first temple; the latter in another Crisa, a 
 
THE SCENIC PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 57 
 
 dark and dreary spot, where Apollo's enemies, giants 
 or gigantic warriors—Tityus, Autolvcus, Phorbas, 
 and the Phlegyans—had their abode. Agamemnon’s 
 children accordingly look to Strophius for the coming 
 avenger; iEgistlius and Clytemnestra to Phanoteus for 
 timely warning of his approach.* 
 
 It is not necessary to probe further the original 
 legend. Enough has been shown to prove that 
 iEschylus and Sophocles wove into their Orestean 
 story portions of it, and therefore thought it suitable 
 for their tragedies. Euripides, on the contrary, seems 
 to have quite neglected it. He makes, indeed, Pylades 
 a Delphian, but by banishing him from his country, 
 after the work of retribution is complete, he severs the 
 links of the symbolic story. 
 
 Is there any improbability in supposing Euripides, a 
 man of the new era, to have viewed the grim though 
 picturesque stories of the old and waning times as 
 inconsistent with the bright, free, and intelligent 
 Athens in which he dwelt? The pupil of Anaxagoras 
 and Prodicus might well regard a people as little 
 beyond the verge of barbarism for whom the priest was 
 the philosopher, whose neroes yet strove with wild 
 beasts, who trembled at the phenomena of nature, 
 and among whom ignorance generally prevailed. And 
 among such a people it was that the legends were 
 created and cherished. Imagination was strong, 
 while reason was weak; but did it therefore follow 
 that men capable of reason should always remain 
 children? Perhaps some insight into the feelings of 
 
 * These remarks on the symbolism in the Oresetan legend are 
 taken, greatly abridged, from K. O. Muller’s “ Essay on the 
 ‘Eumenides ’ of Alschylus,” p. 131, English translation. 
 
58 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 Euripides on theological questions may be gleaned 
 from the story of Socrates, who, while scrupulously 
 worshipping the gods of the state, made no secret that 
 he regarded them as little more than masks—nay, often 
 as unworthy disguises—of the divine nature. For the 
 opinions of the philosopher, the reader is referred to 
 the volume of this series in which the writings of 
 Xenophon are treated of. There is, however, a remark¬ 
 able passage in Plato’s dialogue entitled “Phaedo,”in 
 which Socrates enumerates as one among the boons 
 death will confer on him, the privilege he will have, 
 when he has shaken off this mortal coil, of knowing 
 better the great gods, and of seeing them with a clear¬ 
 ness of vision unattainable by mortals on earth. Euri¬ 
 pides, on his side, may have held it to be part of a 
 poet’s high position to hint, if not to expound formally 
 to his hearers, that the deities whom the tragedians 
 represented as severe, revengeful, and relentless beings, 
 were merciful as well as just,—that the humanity of 
 Prometheus was at least as divine as the tyranny of 
 Jupiter, or the feuds and caprices of Apollo and 
 Artemis. It was, perchance, among the offences given 
 by Euripides to the comic poets, that his spiritual and 
 intangible god could not, like Neptune, Iris, Hercules, 
 or Bacchus, be parodied by them on the stage. The 
 idols of the temple were by the vulgar esteemed true 
 portraits of the beings whom they affected to revere, 
 but at whom they were always ready to laugh. Nep¬ 
 tune and Hercules, in the comedy of the “ Birds” of 
 Aristophanes, .might be bribed by savory meats, 
 or hide themselves under an umbrella ; but the ‘‘great 
 gods” whom the pious Socrates yearned to behold were 
 beyond the reach, and perhaps the comprehension, of the 
 satirist. 
 
THE SCENIC PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 59 
 
 We can afford only to hint that the poet’s religious 
 opinions, so far as they can be gathered from his 
 writings, may easily have been misconstrued by men 
 of the time, who appear to have had other motives 
 also for disliking him. The singularity of his habits 
 may have been one reason for their distaste of his 
 opinions. If, as is possible, he belonged to none of 
 the political factions of his time—neither a Cleonite, 
 nor a partisan of Nicks, nor a hanger-on of the 
 gracious-mannered and giddy Alcibiades—here may 
 have been a rock of offence. “Depend upon it, my 
 Plieidippides, no man of such odd ways as the son 
 of Mnesarchus can be sound in morals or politics. 
 Folks that shut themselves up have something in 
 them wrong requiring seclusion.” Perhaps a brief 
 inquiry into his views on some matters may help to 
 a better understanding of his opinions generally. 
 Was he a bad citizen, as many reputed him to be? 
 Was he a woman-hater to the extent he is accused 
 of being, and beyond the provocation given by his 
 wives? What were his notions about the condition 
 and treatment of slaves? Can we discover from his 
 writings how he thought or voted in politics? Was 
 he an idle dreamer? Was he a home-bred Diagoras 
 of Melos, only less respectable, because less courageous, 
 than that open scoffer? Bad taste he may have had, 
 but it does not follow that he was therefore a bad 
 man. 
 
 The charge of being a bad citizen scarcely accords 
 with the political opinions of Euripides, so far as they 
 can be inferred from his plays. A similar accusation has 
 been brought against Plato; and both the one and the 
 other may have proceeded from similar causes. Neither 
 the poet nor the philosopher took part in public affairs, 
 
60 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 or held, so far as we know, office under the state. By 
 the speech-loving Athenians, for whom the law courts 
 and the assembly of the people were theatres open all 
 the year round, this was regarded as an odious singu¬ 
 larity, if not a grave neglect of civic duty. Socrates, 
 meditative as he was, could strike a good blow in the 
 field when required, and filled an office under the 
 thirty tyrants with credit to himself. Euripides and 
 Plato may fairly have thought the public had advisers 
 enough and to spare—that a good citizen could serve 
 his country with his pen or his lectures.as effectively 
 as by becoming one of the clamorous demagogues who 
 grew under every hedge. It will hardly be denied that 
 the patriarch of the Academy strengthened the founda¬ 
 tions or enlarged the boundaries of moral science. Is 
 the poet quite disentitled to a similar concession? Has 
 any stage-poet, if we except Shakespeare, supplied mor¬ 
 alists and philosophers with more grave or shrewd 
 maxims than he has done? Has any ancient poet taken 
 wider or more liberal views of humanity? 
 
 Again, the scenic philosopher was reputed unsound 
 in his theology; and this, no doubt, is an offence in 
 every well-regulated community. Without going beyond 
 the bounds of England, we find that it was no want of 
 will on the part of their opponents that saved Chilling- 
 worth, Hobbes, or even John Locke, from something 
 akin to the cup of hemlock tendered to Socrates. Many 
 thousands of honest English householders accounted 
 Milton a heretic, a traitor, and a man of evil life and 
 conversation. To allow our view of his character to be 
 biassed by a person’s opinions is not a discovery of mod¬ 
 ern times. It was by no means prudent for any one 
 residing in Athens to be wiser than his neighbors in 
 physical science, or to speak or write of the gods other* 
 
THE SCENIC PHILOSOPHEB. 
 
 61 
 
 wise than custom sanctioned. The most orthodox of 
 spectators at the theatre was justly shocked by being 
 told that the gods he had no scruples about laughing at 
 in the “Frogs” or “Birds” of Aristophanes, were really 
 little more than men’s inventions—caricatures rather 
 than portraits of the Deity as contemplated by the 
 philosopher. Why could not these dreamers be content 
 with the gods that satisfied Solon the wise, or Aristides 
 the just? And under every class of these offences 
 Euripides seems to have come. He was neither a useful 
 citizen nor a sound believer; he meddled with matters 
 too high for him; the heresies he had imbibed in youth 
 from Anaxagoras clung to him in riper years; and, like 
 his tutor, he deserved a decree of exile at least. He was 
 a proud fellow, and thought himself too clever or too 
 good for mixed society. He read much—he talked 
 little; and was that proper conduct in an Athenian? In 
 an evil hour came the Sophists to Athens, and it was 
 with Sophists alone that Euripides delighted to consort. 
 So reasoned the vulgar, after the wisdom that was in 
 them, and so they will reason unto the end of time. 
 There can, however, be no doubt that Euripides in his 
 heart despised the popular religion. He could not 
 accept traditional belief: his masters in philosophy had 
 trained him to think for himself; and with his strong 
 sympathy for his fellow-men, he strove, ineffectually 
 indeed, to deliver them, as he had been delivered himself, 
 from the bondage of custom, from apathy or ignorance. 
 Compelled, by the laws that regulated scenic exhibi¬ 
 tions, to deal with the gods as the state prescribed, or 
 the multitude required, he could only insinuate, not 
 openly proclaim, his opinions, either on politics or reli¬ 
 gion. Yet if unsocial, he was not timid, and it is really 
 with extraordinary boldness that he attacks soothsayers 
 
62 
 
 EURIPIDES 
 
 in bis plays. He puts into the mouth of the ingenuous 
 Achilles—then a youth whose heart had not been 
 hardened by war—the following attack on Calchas the 
 seer: 
 
 “ His lustral lavers and his salted cakes 
 With sorrow shall the prophet Calchas bear: 
 
 Away! The prophet!—what is he ? a man 
 
 Who speaks ’mongst many falsehoods but few truths, 
 
 Whene er chance leads him to speak true; when false, 
 
 The prophet is no more.” 
 
 In the “Electra” Orestes says that he believes Apollo 
 will justify his oracle, but that he deems lightly of hu¬ 
 man—that is, of professional—prophecies. Perhaps his 
 disiike of prophets may have received new edge and 
 impulse from the mischief done by them in encouraging 
 by their idle predictions the Athenians to undertake the 
 expedition to Sicily. And a time was at hand when the 
 dupes of the soothsayers viewed their pretensions with 
 as small favor as Euripides himself did. Deep was the 
 wrath in the woe-stricken city, when the worst reports 
 of the destruction of their fleet and army at Syracuse 
 were confirmed by eye-witnesses, against the orators 
 who had advised ; and the oracle-mongers and prophets 
 who had guaranteed, the success of that disastrous ex¬ 
 pedition. * 
 
 There was, indeed, much in the Homeric theology 
 that, however well suited to the artist, was intolera¬ 
 ble to the philosopher. The gods themselves were 
 criminals, and Euripides made no secret that he 
 thought them so. ''He could not,” says K. O. M tiller, 
 
 ‘ bring his philosophical convictions into harmony 
 with the contents of the old legends, nor could he 
 
 ♦ Thucydides, j. 
 
THE SCENIC PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 63 
 
 pass over their incongruities.” Yet far advanced as 
 he was beyond his time, the time itself was not quite 
 unprogressive. iEschylus, who belonged to an earlier 
 generation, and Sophocles, who avoided every disturb¬ 
 ing force as perilous to the composure of art, accepted 
 the Homeric deities as they found them. Nevertheless 
 faith in them was in the sear and yellow leaf, and the 
 reverence that should accompany old age was nearly 
 worn out. The court of Areopagus in Athens was, 
 without any similar external violence, sharing the fate 
 of our High Commission Court in the seventeenth cen¬ 
 tury. It no longer took cognizance of every slight 
 offence against religion; it consulted its own safety by 
 letting the gods, in many instances, look after their own 
 affairs. Euripides was at the most a pantheist. He 
 believed in the unity of God, in His providence, His 
 omnipotence, His justice, His care for human beings. 
 Supreme mind or intelligence was his Jupiter—the 
 destroyer of the Typhon, unreasoning faith, hi3 
 Apollo. Aristophanes, who professed to believe, and 
 not Euripides, who professed to doubt, was the real 
 scoffer. 
 
 There is space for only a few samples of the moral 
 opinions of Euripides. Shakespeare’s reputation with 
 posterity might have fared very scurvily had there 
 been a great comic poet among his detractors, opposed 
 to him in theology or politics, or jealous of the company 
 kept by him at the Mermaid. Only impute to the 
 author personally the sentiments he ascribes to Iago, 
 Iachimo, Kicliard of Gloucester, Edmund in “Lear,” or 
 Lady Macbeth,—refer to .certain things connected with 
 his marriage or his poaching,—and the purest in morals 
 as well as the loftiest in thought of our own scenic poets 
 would have made as poor a figure as Euripides did in 
 
64 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 his time, whether it were on the grounds of his creed, 
 liis civic character, or his private life and conversa¬ 
 tion. “Envied says Chaucer, in his “Legende of 
 Good Women,” 
 
 / 
 
 “Is lavender to the court alway, 
 
 For she ne parteth neither night ne day 
 Out of the .house of Caesar 
 
 $nd the envy of one generation becomes with the 
 credulous the fact of another. “In the first place,” as 
 Mr. Paley most justly observes, “many of his senti¬ 
 ments which may be said to wear an equivocal com¬ 
 plexion, as the famous one,— 
 
 “If the tongue swore, the heart abides unsworn,”— 
 
 have been misconstrued as undermining the very foun¬ 
 dations of honor and virtue. They are assumed to be 
 general statements, whereas they really have only a- 
 special reference to existing circumstances, or are at 
 least susceptible of important modifications. ” The same 
 may be said of a verse of Euripides that Julius Csesar 
 was fond of quoting;— 
 
 • 
 
 “ If ever to do ill be good, ’tis for a crown; 
 
 For that ’tis lawful to push right aside: 
 
 In other things let virtue be the guide.” 
 
 But the Roman perverted to his own ends a sentiment 
 well suited to the character—a false and violent one— 
 of the speaker, Eteocles.* 
 
 Some injury has been done to Euripides by the 
 abundance of fragments from his plays that are pre- 
 
 * Phoenician Women, v. 573. 
 
THE SCENIC PHILOSOPHER 
 
 65 
 
 Served. Undoubtedly many of these “ wear an equivo¬ 
 cal complexion,”—as, for example— 
 
 “What must be done by mortals may be done;” 
 
 or— 
 
 “ Nor shameful aught unless one deem it so;” 
 
 but we know not the speakers of the words, nor the 
 circumstances under which they were spoken. 
 
 What are the proofs of an often-repeated assertion 
 that Euripides was a sensual poet? On the score of 
 indecency the comic poets are rather damaging wit¬ 
 nesses—to themselves. Have the Germans, have we 
 ourselves, no poets infinitely more culpable in this 
 respect than Euripides? A very third-rate contributor 
 to the English drama of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries would the Greek poet have been, had he writ¬ 
 ten. nothing worse than we find in his extant plays or 
 the fragments of his lost ones. And on this delicate 
 question we have a most unexceptionable witness in his 
 favor—no less a person than the decent and pious Aris¬ 
 tophanes himself! The “Phsedras” and “ Sthenebosas” 
 of Euripides, we are told by him, were dangerous to 
 morals.* Yet in another of his comedies he says that 
 in consequence of Euripides’s plays women mended 
 their manners.f Here, with a vengeance, has “aDaniel 
 come to judgment!”—the woman-hater, it seems, had 
 been preaching with some success to a female congrega¬ 
 tion. The purity of the poet’s morals, so far as they 
 can be inferred from his writings, is displayed in his 
 Hippolytus, in the chaste Parthenopseus in the “Sup¬ 
 pliant Women,” in the Achilles of his “Iphigenia,” and 
 above all, in the character of the boy Ion. “Conse- 
 
 *“ Frogs,” 1049. 
 
 t “ Thesmoph.” 398. 
 
66 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 crated to Apollo, and devoting himself wholly to the 
 service of the altar, he speaks of his patron god in lan¬ 
 guage that would not dishonor a better cause. One 
 cannot help feeling that the poet must have been at 
 heart a good man who could make a virtuous asceticism 
 appear in so amiable a light.” * 
 
 “Let me tell you,” says Councillor Pleydell, “that 
 Glossin would have made a very pretty lawyer, had he 
 not been so inclined to the knavish side of his profes¬ 
 sion.” It cannot be denied that Euripides has some 
 tendency of the sort. He employs frequently, and 
 seemingly without much compunction, the arts of 
 falsehood and deceit. The tricksters in his tragedy 
 are the forerunners of the tricksters of the New Comedy 
 —the “fallax servus” of the Menandrian drama. But 
 as respects truth, in the modern import of the word, the 
 morality of the ancients was not that of the moderns. 
 The latter profess to abhor a lie; the former—more 
 prudently and consistently perhaps—made no profes¬ 
 sions at all on the subject. The crafty Ulysses, rather 
 than the bold Achilles, is the type of an Achsean; 
 Themistocles, far more than Aristides, that of an 
 Athenian Greek. Euripides, who represents men as 
 they are, and not as they ought to be, did not disdain to 
 employ in his plays this common feature of his age and 
 nation, but in none of them has he depicted such a 
 thorough-going scoundrel as the Sophoclean Ulysses in 
 the “ Philoctetes.” 
 
 In what sense of the word was Euripides a hater of 
 women—for that he occasionally spoke ill of them is 
 beyond doubt? His character is indeed a difficult one 
 to interpret—on the surface full of inconsistencies; and 
 
 * Paley, Preface to Euripides. 
 
THE SCENIC PHILOSOPHER, 
 
 67 
 
 seeing these only, it is easy to understand why he was 
 less revered than HSschylus, less esteemed or beloved 
 than Sophocles. Below the surface, however, it is 
 possible to discover a certain unity of purpose in him, 
 and it is traceable in his sentiments on the female sex. 
 First, let the position of women among the Greeks in 
 general be remembered. They lived in almost Oriental 
 seclusion. What was expected from a good wife is 
 shown in a very instructive passage of Xenophon’s 
 treatise, “ The Economist or Householder.” 
 
 Ischomachus, the principal speaker in the dialogue, 
 describes how he had “ trained his wife, at the time he 
 espoused her, an inexperienced girl of fourteen, to the 
 duties of her position. The account that ensues of the 
 functions of an Athenian married lady would be appli¬ 
 cable, if we except the greater restriction on her per¬ 
 sonal liberty, to a hired housekeeper of the present day. 
 Her business is to nurse her children, to maintain disci¬ 
 pline among her slaves; to be diligent herself at her 
 web, in the management of her kitchen, larder, and 
 bakehouse, and in her care of the furniture, wardrobe, 
 and household property of all kinds; to select a well- 
 qualified stewardess to act under herself, but to allow 
 no undue confidence in her to interfere with her own 
 habits of personal superintendence; to remain continu¬ 
 ally within doorS; she will find abundance of exercise 
 in her walks to and from different parts of the premises, 
 in dusting clothes and carpets, and baking bread or 
 pastry.” “From all this it appears, that what are now 
 considered essential qualifications in a married lady of 
 the upper class—presiding at her husband’s table, re¬ 
 ceiving his guests, or enlivening by her conversation his 
 hours of domestic retirement—entered as little into the 
 philosopher’s estimate of a model wife as into that of 
 
68 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 his countrymen at large. Like Pericles, Socrates”— 
 and, we may add, Euripides—“could appreciate female 
 accomplishments in an Aspasia or a Theodota,”* but 
 hardly looked for them in wives so trained and employed 
 as was that of Ischomaclius. 
 
 If Euripides were generally a woman-hater, he was at 
 least not always consistent in his aversion. No one of 
 the Athenian stage-poets has written more to the credit 
 of good women, or more delicately or tenderly delineated 
 female characters. For this assertion it is sufficient to 
 cite Polyxena in his “ Hecuba,” Macaria in “ The Chil¬ 
 dren of Hercules,” Evadne in “ The Suppliant Women,” 
 the sisterly devotion of Electra in his “Orestes,” Iplii- 
 genia in both of the plays bearing her name, and the 
 sublime self-sacrifice of the noble and loving Alcestis. 
 Even Hecuba and Jocasta are braver and wiser than the 
 men about them, and these old, afflicted, and discrowned 
 queens have neither youth nor personal charms to rec¬ 
 ommend them. Phsedra he represents not as a vicious 
 woman, but as the helpless victim of an irate deity; 
 while in the “Medea” the fierce and revengeful heroine 
 has all our sympathy, while Jasoa has all our con¬ 
 tempt. \ 
 
 And if Euripides were reprehensible for his opinions 
 on women, what shall we say of his antagonist Aristo- 
 
 * Colonel Mure’s Hist, of Greek Literature, v. 463. 
 t Adolph Scholl, the author of an excellent Life of Sophocles, 
 reminds his readers that the very female characters which Eu¬ 
 ripides is sometimes taxed with selecting, because they were par¬ 
 ticularly wicked, for his themes, were brought on the stage by 
 Sophocles in dramas now lost—e. <7., Phsedra, Sthenebcea, Ino, 
 Medea often, iErope, Althaea, Eriphyle, etc.; and he notices also 
 that Euripides, in many of his dramas, atoned, if there was any 
 occasion to do so, for his portraits of the bad, by his numerous 
 delineations of good women, 
 
THE SCENIC PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 69 
 
 phanes? Had the wives and daughters of Athens no 
 cause of complaint against their caricaturist? If the 
 pictures drawn of them in his “ Lysistrata” and “ Tkes- 
 mophoriazusae” he not wholly fanciful, what woman 
 sketched by Euripides would not be too good for such 
 profligate companions? - The female characters of So¬ 
 phocles are perhaps worthier of admiration than those 
 of his rival; but the pencil that traced Antigone, Deia- 
 nara, and Tecmessa, drew ideal heroines: that of Eurip¬ 
 ides painted human beings, creatures with strong pas¬ 
 sions, yet stronger affections, with a deep sense of duty, 
 of religion, as in the instances of Theonoe in his “Helen,” 
 of Andromache and Antigone — women who may be 
 esteemed or loved, women who walk the earth, sharing 
 heroically, sympathizing tenderly with, the sorrows and 
 sufferings of their partners in affliction. The zealous 
 champion of the gods of the state was, we have seen, an 
 arch-scoffer at all loftier forms of belief; the satiric pen 
 that wrote down Euripides as a hater of women was 
 held by the arch-libeller of their sex.* 
 
 Nor was the humanity of the poet less conspicuous in 
 
 * Might not our Fletcher be fairly taxed with woman-hating by 
 readers who pick out such passages only as suit their own views, 
 or ascribe to the author himself the opinions he puts into the 
 mouths of his dramatis personal? The Greek poet has not writ¬ 
 ten anything half so injurious to women as the following lines 
 from the “Night-Walker,” act ii. sc. 4: 
 
 “Oh! I hate 
 
 Their noise, and do abhor the whole sex heartily. 
 
 They are all walking devils, harpies. I will study 
 A week together how to rail sufficiently 
 Upon ’em all; and that I may be furnish’t, 
 
 Thou shalt buy all the railing books and ballads 
 That malice has invented against women. 
 
 I will study nothing else, and practise ’em, 
 
 Till J grow fat with curses.” 
 
70 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 his feelings towards slaves. And again we have to notice 
 something inconsistent with his supposed austere dispo¬ 
 sition. We have no reason for thinking that the lot of 
 home-bred or purchased slaves was particularly hard in 
 Athens; certainly they had there less rigorous masters 
 than the Spartans or Romans were. But there can be 
 little doubt of the contempt with which non-Hellenic 
 races were viewed by Greeks in general, or of the broad 
 line they drew between themselves and barbarians. Even 
 in Attica, the happiness or misery of a bondman must 
 have depended in great measure upon the disposition of 
 his owner. He might be half-starved or cruelly flogged 
 —but no law protected him; overworked, without com¬ 
 ment from the neighbors; tortured, if his evidence were 
 required in a court of justice; cashiered, when his ser¬ 
 vices were rendered useless by age or infirmity. Eurip¬ 
 ides, if his writings be in accordance with his practice, 
 anticipated the humane sentiments of Seneca and the 
 younger Pliny in his consideration for this, at the best, 
 unhappy order of men. He did not regard it as the 
 mark of an unsound mind to look on a slave as a 
 human being. He introduces him in his plays as a 
 faithful nurse, or an honest and attached herdsman, 
 shepherd, or household servant. He endows him with 
 good abilities, and at times shrewd and ready wit, with 
 kindly affection to his fellows, and love and loyalty to 
 his masters. He even goes almost to an extreme in 
 putting into his mouth saws, maxims, and opinions 
 meet for a philosopher. He perceived, and he strove 
 to make others perceive, that servitude does not neces¬ 
 sarily extinguish virtue or good sense. He left it to 
 the comic poets to exhibit the slave as necessarily 
 a cheating, lying, and sensual varlet. He may have 
 imbibed from hi§ friend $ocw$es gome of bis bqmaiie 
 
THE SCENIC PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 71 
 
 notions on women or slaves, or be may have forestalled 
 them; or, which is quite as possible, have reflected in 
 his dramas a liberal feature of the time fostered alike 
 by the poet and the philosopher. 
 
 The feelings of slaves towards a kind and gracious 
 mistress are thus described in the “Alcestis.” She, 
 immediately after bidding the last farewell to her 
 children, takes leave of her servants: 
 
 “ All of the household servants wept as well, 
 
 Moved to compassion for their mistress: she 
 Extended her right hand to all and each, 
 
 And there was no one of such low degree 
 
 She spoke not to, nor had an answer from.”—(B.) 
 
 And again, in the same play, the slave appointed to 
 wait on Hercules thus expresses himself: 
 
 “ Neither was it mine 
 To follow in procession, nor stretch forth 
 Hand, wave my lady deal a last farewell, 
 
 Lamenting who to me and all of us 
 Domestics was a mother: myriad harms 
 She used to ward away from every one, 
 
 And mollify her husband’s ireful mood.”—(B.) 
 
 The messenger, a slave, in the “Orestes,” thus recounts 
 to Electra his loyalty to her family: 
 
 “ Hither I from the country came, and entered 
 The gates, solicitous to hear the doom 
 Of thee and of Orestes; for thy sire 
 I ever loved, and in thy house was nurtured. 
 
 True, I am poor, yet not the less am loyal 
 To those who have been kind to me of yore.” 
 
 —(Alford.) 
 
 Connected perhaps with his sympathy with women and 
 an oppressed class of men is his practice of bringing on 
 the scene young children. He puts them in situations 
 that cannot fail to have touched the hearts of a sus 
 
TO 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 ceptible people. In the “Iphigenia in Aulis,” the in¬ 
 fant Orestes is employed to work on Agamemnon’s 
 parental love. The little sons of Alcestis add to the 
 pathos of her parting words. In the “ Trojan Women,'* 
 a drama of weeping and lamentation nearly “ail com¬ 
 pact,” the fate of Astyanax is the most touching incident. 
 In the “Andromache,” the little Molossus is held up 
 by his great-grandsire Peleus in order that he may 
 loosen the cords by which his mother’s hands are bound. 
 Maternal love adds a human element to the wild and 
 whirling passion of Medea. Racine, who profoundly 
 studied Euripides, did not neglect this device for pro¬ 
 ducing emotion. In his “ Audromaque,” Astyanax is 
 made to contribute to the pity of the scene, although 
 the etiquette of the French stage did not permit of his 
 appearing on it. Did this innovation—if it were one— 
 take its rise from a practice not uncommon in the law 
 courts, for defendants to appeal to the mercy of the 
 jurors by exhibiting their wives and children ? Whether 
 the courts borrowed it from the theatre, or the theatre 
 from the courts, such a display, however foreign to our 
 notions of the sobriety of justice, indicates a kind, if 
 not an equitable, feeling in the audience, and one 
 which the advocate of the slave would share with 
 them. 
 
 We must now dismiss the scenic philosopher, trust¬ 
 ing that some of the facts, if not the arguments, ad¬ 
 duced on his behalf, may prevail with English readers 
 so far as to lead them to take a more favorable view of 
 his character than has been given in some ancient or 
 modern accounts of it. Had he been less philosophic, 
 he would probably have been more successful at the 
 time, and less obvious to critical shafts then and after¬ 
 wards. Yet that so many of his works should have 
 
ALCESTIS. 
 
 >73 
 
 been preserved, can scarcely have been a mere accident. 
 Some attraction or charm there was in them that 
 touched the heart of Hellas from its eastern to its wes¬ 
 tern border, and so held above water a fourth at least 
 of his writings, when the deluge of barbarism or bigo¬ 
 try swept away so many thousands of Greek dramas, 
 and among them some that had borne off the crown 
 from iEschylus or Sophocles. “ Sunt lacriraee rerum, 
 et mentem mortalia tangunt.” The very tenderness of 
 Euripides, though taxed with effeminacy or degrada¬ 
 tion of art by critics of the Aristophanic school, may 
 have had its influence in the salvage of seventeen plays 
 and fragments of others, exceeding in number the sum 
 of those of both his extant compeers. 
 
 Having passed in review the times, the life, and other 
 circumstances relating to Euripides, we may now pass 
 on to a survey of his dramas. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ALCESTIS.—MEDEA. 
 
 “ She came forth in her bridal robes arrayed, 
 
 And ’midst the graceful statues, round the hall 
 Shedding the calm of their celestial mien, 
 
 Stood, pale, yet proudly beautiful, as they: 
 
 Flowers in her bosom, and the star-like gleam 
 Of jewels trembling from her braided hair, 
 
 And death upon her brow.” — (Felicia Hemans.) 
 
 Partly on account of its being the fourth play in the 
 order of representation, as well as from a supposed 
 comic vein in the character of Hercules, the “ Alcestis” 
 has been considered as a satiric after-piece, or at least a 
 substitute for that appendage to the tragic trilogy. 
 
34 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 But no reader of this domestic play, whether in the 
 original or translation, will find mirth or satirical 
 banter in it. The happy ending may entitle it to be 
 regarded as a comedy in the modern sense of the term, 
 although until the very last scene it draws so deeply 
 on one main element of tragedy, pity. At most, the 
 “Alcestis” is what the French term comedie larmoy- 
 ante. No one of the extant dramas of Euripides, as 
 a whole, is so pathetic. The reader feels now, as the 
 spectators doubtless felt at its representation, that it is 
 not because of the rank of the sufferers we sympathize 
 with them. It is not Admetus the king, but Admetus 
 the husband, whom we commiserate: that she is a queen 
 adds nothing to our admiration of the tender and self¬ 
 devoting Alcestis. Among the faults found with this 
 drama is one that sounds strangely to modern ears. 
 It wrought, say the objectors, upon the feelings of 
 spectators by an exhibition of woe beneath the dignity 
 of the sufferers, who are therefore degraded by the pity 
 excited on their behalf. This seems “ hedging kings” 
 with a most preposterous “divinity,”—setting them 
 apart from common humanity by making them void of 
 human affections. If to touch an audience through 
 the medium of household sorrows were a blot in Greek 
 tragedy, it will scarcely be accounted a blemish by 
 modern readers. 
 
 The story of the “Alcestis” is founded upon some 
 legend or tradition of northern Greece, probably 
 brought thither from the East. The Fates have marked 
 Admetus, king of Pherae, in Thessaly, for death. 
 Apollo has prevailed upoh the grim sisters to grant 
 him a reprieve on one condition—that he finds a sub¬ 
 stitute. In the first instance he applies to his father 
 and mother, aged people, but they decline being vicari- 
 
ALcmm. 
 
 75 
 
 6usly sacrificed. His wife Alcestis alone will give her 
 life for his ransom. Apollo does Admetus this good 
 turn because he has himself, when condemned by 
 Jupiter to serve in a mortal’s house, been kindly treated 
 by the Pliersean king. When the play opens, tlie doom 
 of Alcestis is at hand. She is sick unto death; and 
 Death himself, an impersonation similar to that of Mad¬ 
 ness in the “Mad Hercules,” is at the palace gate 
 awaiting his prey. The grizzly fiend, suspecting that 
 Apollo intends a second time to defraud him of his 
 dues by interposing for Alcestis as he had done for 
 Admetus, is in no gracious mood; but the god assures 
 him that his interest with the Fates is exhausted. The 
 following scenes are occupied with the parting of the 
 victim from her husband, her children, and her house¬ 
 hold, and a faithful servant describes the profound grief 
 of them all. In the midst of tears and wailings, and 
 just after death has claimed his own, an unlooked-for 
 guest arrives. Hercules, most stalwart of mortals, but 
 not yet a demigod, enters. He is on his road to 
 Thessaly, sent on one more perilous errand by his 
 enemy Eurystlieus. He is struck by the signs of general 
 woe in the household. He proposes to pass on to another 
 friend of his in Pherae, but Admetus will not hear of 
 what he regards a breach of hospitable duties, and gives 
 orders to a servant to take Hercules to a distant chamber, 
 and there set meat and drink before him. The guest, 
 much perplexed by all he sees, but foiled in his inquiries, 
 and led to suppose that some female relative of Admetus 
 is dead, goes to his dinner, prepared to enjoy it, al¬ 
 though, under the circumstances, it must be a solitary 
 meal. Unaware of the real state of things, he greatly 
 scandalizes his attendant by his appetite, and still more 
 by breaking out into snatches of convivial songs. “ Of 
 
73 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 all the gormandising and unfeeling ruffians I ever met 
 with/' says the slave in waiting, “this fellow is the 
 worst. He eats dke a half-famished wolf, drinks in 
 proportion, calls for more than is set before him, and 
 sings, or rather howls, his ribald songs out of all tune,— 
 
 “ 4 While we o’ the household mourned our mistress—mourned, 
 That is to say, in silence -never showed 
 The eyes, which we kept wetting, to the guest— 
 
 For there Admetus was imperative. 
 
 And so, here am I helping to make at home 
 A guest, some fellow ripe for wickedness, 
 
 Robber or pirate, while she goes her way 
 Out of her house. 
 
 • • • # • • • 
 
 Never yet 
 
 Received I worse guest than this present one.’ (B.) 
 
 “Nor content with being voracious and dainty, he drinks 
 till the wine fires his brain.” 
 
 Hercules marks the rueful visage of his attendant, 
 and thinking that Admetus has bidden him be as cheer¬ 
 ful as usual, the family affliction being only a slight 
 one, rates him roundly for his woe-begone looks: 
 
 “ Hercules. Why loolc’st so solemn and so thought-absorbed? 
 To guests, a servant should not sour-faced be, 
 
 But do the honors with a mind urbane. 
 
 Whilst thou, contrariwise, beholding here 
 Arrive thy master’s comrade, hast for him 
 A churlish visage, all one beetle-brow— 
 
 Having regard to grief that’s out of door! 
 
 Come hither, and so get to grow more wise. 
 
 ' Things mortal—know’st the nature that they have? 
 
 No, I imagine! whence could knowledge spring? 
 
 Give ear to me then! For all flesh to die 
 Is nature’s due; nor is there any one 
 Of mortals with assurance he shall last 
 The coming morrow.”—(B.) 
 
 And So on the old but ever-appropriate text, “ Thou 
 
ALCESTlS. 
 
 77 
 
 knowest that to die is common;" and the oft-renewed 
 question, “ Why seems it then particular to thee?" 
 Hercules proceeds moralizing—“ philosophizing even in 
 his drink,” as an old scholiast remarks. The pith, in¬ 
 deed, of Hercules’s counsel is “Drink, man, and put a 
 garland on thy head.” 
 
 When, however, the attendant says— 
 
 “ Ah! thou know’st naught o’ the woe within these walls:” 
 
 the guest’s curiosity is aroused. Can Admetus have 
 deceived me ? is it, then, not a distant kinswoman 
 whom they are burying? have I been turning a house 
 of mourning into a house of feasting? Tell me, good 
 fellow, what has really chanced. The servant replies: 
 
 “ Thou cam’st not at a fit receptiomtime: 
 
 With sorrow here beforehand; and thou geest 
 Shorn hair, black robes. 
 
 Hercules. But who is it that’s dead? 
 
 Some child gone? or the ag&d sire, perhaps? 
 
 Servant. Admetus’ wife, then, she has perished, guest. 
 
 Hercules. How say’st? and did ye house me all the same? 
 
 Servant. Ay: for he had thee in that reverence, 
 
 He dared not turn thee from the door away. 
 
 Hercules. O hapless, and bereft of what a mate l 
 All of us now are dead, not she alone; 
 
 Where is he gone to bury her? where am I 
 To go and find her? 
 
 Servant. By the road that leads 
 
 Straight to Larissa, thou wilt see the tomb 
 Out of the suburb, a carved sepulchre.”—(B.) 
 
 But as soon as Hercules extracts from the servant the 
 real cause of the family grief, all levity departs from 
 him. He is almost wroth with his friend for such over¬ 
 strained delicacy, and hurries out to render him such 
 “yeoman’s service" as no one except the strongest of 
 mankind can perform. Alcestis has been laid in her 
 
Mmipinm 
 
 W 
 
 grave; the mourners have all come back to the palace; 
 and Death, easy in his mind as to Apollo, and secure, 
 as he deems himself, from interruption, is making 
 ready for a ghoulish feast on her corpse. But he has 
 reckoned without the guest. He finds himself in the 
 dilemma of foregoing his prey or being strangled, and 
 he permits his irresistible antagonist to restore the self- 
 devoted wife to the arms of her disconsolate and even 
 more astonished husband.* 
 
 With the instinct of a great artist, Euripides cen¬ 
 tralizes the interest of the action in Alcestis alone; and 
 in order to show how perfect the sacrifice is, he endows 
 the victim with every noble, tender, and loving quality 
 of woman. She stands as far apart from and above the 
 other characters in the play as Una does in the first book 
 of the “Faery Queen.” For the Greek stage she is 
 what Portia and Cordelia are for the English. If less 
 heroic than Antigone or Electra, she is more human; 
 the strength which opposition to harsh laws or thirst 
 for “great revenge” lent to them, to her is supplied by 
 the might of wifely love. Possibly it was this sublime 
 tenderness that kept the memory of Alcestis green 
 through ages in which the manuscripts of Euripidean 
 dramas were lying among the rolls of Byzantine 
 libraries, or the dust and worms of the monasteries of 
 the West. Chaucer, in his “ Court of Love,” calls her 
 
 * Never has rationalizing of old-world stories made a bolder 
 stride than in the case of this play. Late Greek writers ascribe 
 the decease of Alcestis to her having nursed her husband through 
 a fever. She takes it herself, and is laid out for dead, when a 
 physician, sharper-sighted than the rest of the faculty at the 
 time, discovers that the vital spark is not extinct, and cheats 
 death of his foe by remedies unluckily not mentioned for the 
 benefit of posterity. 
 
ALCESTIS. 
 
 79 
 
 the “Quen&’s floure;” and in his “ Legende of Good 
 Women” she is “ under Yenus lady and quene:” 
 
 “ And from afer came walking in the Mede 
 The God of Love, and in his hand a quene, 
 
 And she was clad in real * habit grene: 
 
 A fret of golde she haddS next her heer, 
 
 And upon that a white corowne she bere 
 With flour&s smale.” 
 
 With equally happy art—indeed, after Shakespeare’s 
 manner with his female personages—we are not for¬ 
 mally told of her goodness; but we know from those 
 around her that the loving wife is also a loving mother, 
 a kind and liberal mistress. Even the sorrow of the 
 Chorus is significant: it is composed not of susceptible 
 women, but of ancient men—past the age in whick the 
 affections are active, and when the lengthening shadows 
 on the dial often render the old less sensible of others’ 
 woe. And this tribute from the elders of the neighbor¬ 
 hood completes the circle of grief on the removal of 
 Alcestis from all she had loved—from the cheering 
 sunlight, the lucid streams, the green pastures, which 
 from the palace windows had so often gladdened her 
 eyes. 
 
 Next to Alcestis in interest is her deliverer. Without 
 Hercules the play would, like “The Trojan Women,” 
 have been too “ infected with grief.” Almost from the 
 moment of liis entrance a ray of hope begins to streak 
 the gloom, and this an Athenian spectator would feel 
 more immediately than an English reader. The theatri¬ 
 cal as well as the legendary Hercules, if not a comic, 
 was at least a cheery, personage. On his right arm 
 victory rested. He was no stranger to the Pherasans. 
 
 * Royal. 
 
80 
 
 EURIPIDES: 
 
 His deeds were sung at festivals, and told by the hearth 
 in winter. The very armor he wore was a trophy: the 
 lion’s skin he had won in fight with a king of beasts: with 
 his club he had slain the wild boa r who had gored other 
 mighty hunters: he had wrestled with and prevailed 
 over the giants of the earth: he was as generous and 
 genial as he was valiant and strong: none but the proud 
 and cruel fear him: he has ever kind words for women 
 and children: his presence, when he is off duty, is a 
 holiday: he may sing out of tune, yet his laugh is music 
 to the ear. 
 
 The oilier dramatis personae are kept, perhaps pur¬ 
 posely, in the background. Admetus makes almos; 
 as poor a figure in this play as Jason does^ in the 
 “Medea.” Self-preservation is the leading feature in 
 his character. He loves Alcestis much, but he loves 
 himself more. He cannot look his situation in the 
 face. For some time he has known his wife’s promise 
 to die for him, but, until the hour of its fulfilment is 
 striking, he is too weak to realize the import of her 
 pledge. He lays flattering unction on his soul—per¬ 
 haps somewhat in this wise: “My wife, as well as 
 myself, must one day die: perchance the Fates may 
 not be in haste for either of us — may even, with 
 Apollo to friend us, renew the bond.” When the 
 inexorable missive comes for her, he is indeed deeply 
 cast down: yet even then there is not a spark of man¬ 
 liness in him. Provided the Fates got one victim, 
 they might not have been particular as to which of the 
 twain was “nominated in the bond.” But no—for him 
 there is a saving clause in it, and he will not forego 
 the benefit of it. He will do everything but the one 
 thing it is in his power to do, to prove his conjugal 
 affection. There shall be no more mirth or feasting 
 
ALCESTIS. 
 
 81 
 
 in his dominions; the sound of tabret and harp shall 
 never more be heard in his dwelling; black shall be his 
 only wear; no second wiife shall occupy the room of his 
 first; had he the lute of Orpheus, he would go down to 
 Pluto’s gloomy realm, and bring her to upper air. Ha 
 “doth profess too much:” he lacks the heroic spirit 
 that dwelt in Polyxena, Macaria, and Iphigenia. Some 
 excuse for one so weak as Admetus may perhaps be 
 found in the view of death, or life after death, taken 
 by the Greeks generally. Even their Elysian fields 
 were inhabited by melancholy spectres. For with 
 them, to die either was to be annihilated or to pass a 
 monotonous existence without fear, but also without 
 hope. In the one case Wordsworth’s lines are appli¬ 
 cable to them as well as to “ Lucy:” 
 
 “ No motion has she now, no force: 
 
 She neither hears nor sees; 
 
 Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course 
 With rocks and stones and trees.” 
 
 They held with Claudio that 
 
 “The weariest and most loathed worldly life 
 That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment 
 Can lay on nature, is a paradise 
 To what we fear of death.” * 
 
 Or they would say with the great Achilles in the Shades, 
 when Ulysses congratulated him on being so honored 
 among dead heroes: 
 
 “ Renowned Ulysses, thiuk not death a theme 
 Of consolation: I had rather live, 
 
 The servile hind for hire, and eat the bread 
 Of some man scantily himself sustained, 
 
 Than sovereign empire hold o’er all the Shades*”+ 
 
 * “ Measure for Measure.” 
 
 t Odyssey, xi. (Cowper.) 
 
82 
 
 EURIPIDES . 
 
 There may be an approach to comedy in the scene 
 between Admetus and his father Plieres. The son asks 
 his gray-haired sire, who brings gifts to the funeral, “ if 
 he is not ashamed of himself for cumbering the ground 
 so long? Why did he not, an old fellow and a useless, 
 take the place of poor Alcestis?” Pheres replies, and 
 with some show of reason, “If you were so fond of 
 your late wife as you pretend to be, why did you not go 
 when you were summoned? for remember it was not 
 I but you on whom the citation of the Fates was origi¬ 
 nally served. For my part, I had a great regard for 
 my daughter-in-law—she was a most exemplary young 
 woman; but as for taking her place, I crave to be ex¬ 
 cused. I am an old man, it is true; still I am remarka¬ 
 bly well for my years: and as for cumbering the ground, 
 I hope to do so a little while longer. You may have 
 been a tender husband and a faithful, and I dare say will 
 be a good father, and not vex the two poor orphans with 
 a stepmother—at least, just at present: but I must say 
 your language to myself is very uncivil, not to say un- 
 filial.” The timid or selfish nature of Admetus is re¬ 
 flected in that of his sire: it is easy to conceive the son an¬ 
 other Pheres, when years shall have grizzled his beard. 
 
 The reluctance of Admetus, in the final scene, to take 
 Alcestis back again, when “ brought to him from the 
 grave,” has been regarded as a comic situation; but it is 
 by no means certain either that Euripides intended it for 
 one, or that the spectators so interpreted it. The re¬ 
 vived wife is a mute person, and her still disconsolate 
 husband, who has so lately sworn never again to marry, 
 believes for a few minutes that Hercules has indelicate¬ 
 ly, though with the best intentions, brought him a new 
 partner. The real drift of this incident depends very 
 much on the view of the deliverer, taken commonly by 
 
ALCEST1S. 
 
 83 
 
 an Athenian audience. Setting aside the use made of 
 Hercules by the comic poets, we may inquire how paint¬ 
 ers represented him. He is delineated on vases either as 
 doing valiant deeds with liis club or by his fatal arrows, 
 or as indulging himself with the wine-cup. In one in¬ 
 stance his weapons have been stolen from him by the 
 God of Love, and he himself is running after a girl who 
 has carried off his pitcher. The tragedians also do not 
 treat him with much ceremony in their dramas: he was 
 only a Boeotian hero, and so they took liberties with him. 
 
 This choral song, the last in the play, comes immedi¬ 
 ately before the reappearance of Hercules, with the res¬ 
 cued Alcestis: 
 
 “ I too have been borne along 
 Through the airy realms of song. 
 
 Searched I have historic page, 
 
 Yet ne’er found in any age 
 Power that with thine can vie, 
 
 Masterless Necessity. 
 
 Thee nor Orpheus’ mystic scrolls 
 Graved by him on Thracian pine, 
 
 Thee nor Phoebus’ art controls, 
 iEsculapian art divine. 
 
 Of the Powers thou alone 
 Altar hast not, image, throne: 
 
 Sacrifices wilt thou none.— 
 
 Pains too sharp for mortal state 
 Lay not on me, mighty Fate. 
 
 Jove doth aye thy hests fulfil, 
 
 His to work and thine to will. 
 
 Hardest iron delved from mine 
 Thou canst break and bend and twine; 
 
 Harsh in purpose, heart of stone, 
 
 Mercy is to thee unknown. 
 
 Thee, Admetus, in the bands 
 Of her stern unyielding hands 
 Hath she taken; but resign 
 Thy life to her—it is not thine 
 
84 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 By thy weeping to restore 
 Those who Jook on light no more. 
 
 Even the bright sons of heaven 
 To dimness and to death are given. 
 
 She was loved when she was here; 
 
 And in death we hold her dear: 
 
 Let not her hallowed tomb be past 
 As where the common dead are cast; 
 
 Let her have honor with the blest 
 Who dwell above; her place of rest 
 When the traveller passeth by, 
 
 Let him say, ‘ Within doth lie 
 She who dared for love to die. 
 
 Thou who now in bliss dost dwell. 
 
 Hail, blest soul, and speed us welll ’ ” * 
 
 MEDEA. 
 
 To combine in the same chapter Alcestis with 
 Medea, may appear like yoking the lamb with the 
 lion; and so it would be were the Colchian princess 
 the mere fury for which she is often taken. But 
 Euripides had too deeply studied human character not 
 to be aware that in nature there are no monsters— 
 none at least fit for the ends of dramatic poetry; and 
 accordingly his Medea, though deeply wronged, is yet 
 a woman who loved not wisely but too well. Even 
 Lady Macbeth, though far more criminal than the 
 heroine of this tragedy, since she had no wrongs to 
 avenge, but sins for ambition’s sake alone, is not en¬ 
 tirely devoid of human feeling. With similar truth, 
 both of art and observation, the Greek poet gives Medea 
 a woman’s heart even in the moments when she is 
 meditating on her fell purpose. 
 
 * Partly translated by the late Dean Alford. Gray, in his fine 
 ode, “ Daughter of Jove, relentless power,” had this choral song 
 before him, as well as the verge's of Horace which he proposed to 
 imitate. 
 
MEDEA. 
 
 S5 
 
 Aristotle’s judgment that Euripides, although he does 
 not manage everything for the best in his plots or his 
 representations of life, is the most pathetic of dramatic 
 poets, is especially true of this tragedy. The hold that 
 it has in every age retained upon spectators as well as 
 readers, is a proof of the subject being chosen well. It 
 was translated or adapted by Roman dramatists; it was 
 revived in the early days of the modern theatre in 
 Europe; it is still, wedded to immortal music, attrac¬ 
 tive; and no one who has seen the part of Medea per¬ 
 formed by Pasta or Grisi will question its effect on an 
 audience. 
 
 On the stage Medea appears under some disadvan¬ 
 tage. The worse elements of her nature are there 
 active; the better appear only now and then. She is 
 placed in the situation described by Shakespeare: 
 
 “ Between the acting of a dreadful thing 
 And the first motion, all the interim is 
 Like a phantasma or a hideous dream: 
 
 The genius, and the mortal instruments 
 Are then in council; and the state of man, 
 
 Like to a little kingdom, suffers then 
 
 The nature of an insurrection.” — (“ Julius Caesar.”) 
 
 This is the condition of Medea from her first appear¬ 
 ance on the scene to the last; the “ little kingdom” of 
 her being is rent in twain by her injuries, her threat¬ 
 ened banishment, her helplessness among strangers and 
 foes, her jealousy, her contempt for the mean-spirited 
 Jason, her contempt even for herself. That she, the 
 wise, the potent enchantress, should have been caught 
 by his superficial beauty, and not read from the first 
 his real character—are all elements of the insurrection 
 in her nature. We behold only the deeply-wronged 
 wife and mother—we do not realize her as she was a 
 
mnipiDm 
 
 $6 
 
 few years earlier, before the spoiler came to Colchis, a 
 timid, trusting, and loving maiden, who set her life on 
 one cast. Her picture, as drawn by an epic poet from 
 whom Virgil found much to borrow, may put before us 
 Medea as she was before the ship Argo—“ built in the 
 eclipse and rigged with curses dark”—passed between 
 the blue Symplegades, and first broke the silence of the 
 llellespontic sea. She is thus described after her first 
 interview with Jason: 
 
 “ And thus Medea slowly seemed to part, 
 
 Love’s cares still brooding in her troubled heart; 
 
 And imaged still before her wondering eyes, 
 
 His living, breathing self appears to rise— 
 
 His very garb: and thus he spake, thus sate, 
 
 Thus, ah, too soon ■ he glided from the gate. 
 
 Sure ne’er her loving eyes beheld his peer, 
 
 And still his honeyed words are melting on her ear.’ 1 
 
 A little further on we have this description of her 
 
 “She said, she rose; 
 
 Her maiden chamber’s solitary floor 
 
 With trembling steps she trod: she reached the door, 
 
 Fain to her sister's neighboring bower to haste; 
 
 And yet the threshold hardly had she passed, 
 
 Sudden her failing feet are checked by shame, 
 
 Ana long she lingered there, then back she came. 
 
 Oft as desire would drive her forth again, 
 
 So of* - does maiden bashfulness restrain. 
 
 Thrice she essayed to go, thrice stopped, then prone 
 In anguish on her couch behold her thrown.” * 
 
 Such was Medea a few years only—if there be such a 
 thing as dramatic time—before the tragedy begins. 
 Her children are very young. Jason and herself appear 
 to have not been long at Corinth, and so she must be 
 regarded as still in the bloom of her youth and beauty, 
 
 * Dean Milman’s “ Translations from Valerius Flaccus.” 
 
MEDEA . 
 
 87 
 
 and not a hot-tempered lady of uncertain age. The 
 desertion of her by her husband has accordingly the 
 less excuse. 
 
 There is no prologue to this play, for the opening 
 speech of the nurse—nurses on the Greek stage per¬ 
 form very similar functions to those of the indispens¬ 
 able confidantes of the classic drama of France—cannot 
 be considered as such. This old servant does not go 
 much into family history; indeed, a barbaric woman— 
 for such Medea is—was supposed by the pedigree-loving 
 Greeks to have no ancestors worth mentioning. She 
 merely lets the audience know the very critical posi¬ 
 tion of affairs between Jason and his wife. The nurse 
 perceives that nothing but evil can come out of this 
 second marriage—is sure that Medea is plotting some 
 terrible revenge—and tells an old servant of Jason’s her 
 own terrors and her mistress's sad condition. He, on 
 his part, brings her Dews. Medea must quit Corinth 
 on that very day, and take her two sons with her; their 
 father has consented to their banishment, and Creon, 
 king of Corinth, cannot rest until the Colcliian witch is 
 over the border. The fears of the nurse harp on the 
 children. She bids them go into the house, and begs 
 Jason’s servant,— 
 
 “To the utmost, keep them by themselves, 
 
 Nor bring them near their sorrow-frenzied mother. 
 
 For late I saw her with the roused bull’s glare 
 View them as though she’d at them, and I trow 
 That she’ll not bate her wrath till it have swooped 
 Upon some prey.” * 
 
 Her just fears are confirmed by the exclamations of 
 her mistress, speaking from within: 
 
 * All the translations are taken from Mrs. Augusta Webster's 
 version ,poetical as well as “literal,” of the “Medea.” 
 
88 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 “Ah me! ah me! 
 
 I have endured, sad woman, endured 
 A burden for great laments. Cursed sons 
 Ot a loathed mother, die, ye and your sire, 
 
 And let ah our house wane away.” 
 
 The nurse remains on the stage when the Chorus of 
 Corinthian women enter and comment on the “wild 
 and whirling words” they have overheard: 
 
 “ I heard the voice, nay, heard the shriek 
 Of the hapless Colchian dame. 
 
 Is she not calmed? Old matron, speak; 
 
 For through the double portals came 
 A voice of wail and woe.” 
 
 The nurse tells them that Medea “in no way is 
 calmed,” and again from within is heard the plaint of 
 the unhappy and indignant princess: 
 
 “ Woe! woe! 
 
 Oh lightning from heaven, dart through my headl 
 For what is my gain to live any more?” 
 
 The Chorus express their sympathy, hut the assur¬ 
 ance they give that *■ Zeus will judge on her side” is 
 not satisfactory to her perturbed spirit. Yielding to 
 the wish of these sympathizing friends, Medea at 
 length comes forth from the inner chamber, and, con¬ 
 sidering her circumstances, makes a more temperate 
 address to the Chorus than, after hearing her exclama¬ 
 tions behind the scenes, they might have expected. 
 She expatiates on the hardship of being a woman, and, 
 after some remarks on the few prizes and many blanks 
 in the lottery of marriage, she begs them to befriend 
 her so far at least as to keep her counsel if she commu¬ 
 nicates het purpose at any time to them. This they 
 promise to do, and tell her that, so far as regards her 
 husband, she has good right to avenge herself on him— 
 a sentiment that, if the Athenian ladies were permitted 
 
MEDEA. 
 
 89 
 
 to applaud in the theatre, was probably greeted with 
 much clapping of hands. 
 
 King Creon now comes on to tell Medea officially 
 what the old servant has already intimated to the nurse. 
 “ Thou sullen-browed woman,” he says, 
 
 “ Medea, I command that from this realm 
 Thou go an exile, taking thy two sons; 
 
 And linger not, for mine is the decree, 
 
 Nor will I enter in my house again 
 
 Till I have driven thee past the land’s last bounds.” 
 
 This decision of Creon cuts up, root and branch, all 
 Medea’s projects for revenging herself on Jason, his 
 father-in-law, and his new wife. “Now,” she says, 
 
 “ My enemies crowd on all sail, 
 
 And there is now no haven from despair.” 
 
 She speaks softly to the king, even kneels to him, 
 to turn away his wrath. But Creon is too much in 
 dread of her devices to revoke his sentence of banish¬ 
 ment. All he will concede is for her and her sons to 
 depart to-morrow instead of to-day. That morrow, 
 Medea may have said to herself, you shall never see. 
 She has gained time for compassing her revenge. 
 
 In her next speech she lets the Chorus into her secret 
 
 so far as to make them sure there will be bloody work 
 
 in the palace before the sun sets. “Fool that he is!” 
 
 she says; “ he has left me now only one thing to find— 
 
 a city of refuge, a host who will shelter me after I have 
 
 done the deed, since in this day three of my foes shall 
 
 perish by dagger or by drug,— 
 
 “ The father and the girl and he my husband. 
 
 • •«•••• 
 
 For never, by my Queen, whom I revere 
 Beyond all else, and chose unto my aid, 
 
 By Hecate, who dwells on my hearth’s shrine, 
 
 Shall any wring my heart and still be glad.” 
 
90 
 
 EURIPIDES . 
 
 A noble and appropriate chorus follows this magnifi¬ 
 cent speech of Medea’s. There is room only for the 
 first strophe, in which the women hail the good time 
 coming: 
 
 “ The hallowed rivers backward stream 
 Against their founts: right crooks awry 
 With all things else: man’s every scheme 
 Is treachery. 
 
 Even with gods faith finds no place. 
 
 But fame turns too: our life shall have renown: 
 
 Honor shall come to woman’s race, 
 
 And envious fame no more weigh women down.” 
 
 Jason now enters: he comes with the intention of re¬ 
 monstrating with Medea about her indiscreet demeanor 
 towards Creon and the royal house; tells her that, but 
 for her abominable temper and rash tongue, she might 
 have remained on good terms with himself and all in 
 Corinth: she has to thank herself alone for the decree 
 of banishment. For his part, he has done all in his 
 power to avert her doom; and even now, though she is 
 forever calling him “the worst of men,” he will not 
 let her go forth penniless; she shall have a handsome 
 provision for herself and children, for, he adds,— 
 
 “ Many hardships 
 
 Do wait on exile, and, though thou dost hate me, 
 
 I am not able to desire thy harm.” 
 
 Unless Euripides meant to represent Jason as a fool, 
 as well as base and ungrateful, he could hardly have 
 devised for him a less discreet or a more irritating 
 speech than this. Medea now turns from red heat to 
 white; recapitulates Jason’s obligations to herself, the 
 services she has done him, the crimes she has com¬ 
 mitted for him, and casts to the winds all his shallow, 
 hypocritical pretences of having done his best for her 
 
MEDEA. 
 
 91 
 
 and their sons. We imagine that no one will feel any 
 pity for Jason, or deny that he richly deserved the 
 words that, like “ iron sleet of arrowy shower,” fall, in 
 this scene, upon his head,—terrible, yet just, as the 
 fulminations hurled against Austria’s Duke by Lady 
 Constance in “ King John:” 
 
 “Thou slave, thou wretch, thou coward. 
 
 Thou little valiant, great in villany! 
 
 Thou ever strong upon the stronger side! 
 
 Thou fortune’s champion—thou art perjured too, 
 
 And sooth’st up greatness. Thou cold-blooded slave!” 
 
 Jason keeps up, like Joseph Surface, his fair speeches 
 to the last, and this connubial dialogue closes charac¬ 
 teristically on either side: 
 
 “ Jason. Then do I call the gods to witness this, 
 
 How I desire to serve thee and thy sons; 
 
 Yet thou’lt not like good gifts, but wantonly 
 
 Dost spurn thy friends, therefore shalt mourn the more. 
 
 Medea. Begone, for longing after thy new bride 
 Seizes thee, so much tarrying from her home: 
 
 Take her, for it is like—yea, and possessed 
 By a god I will declare it—thou dost wed 
 With such a wedding as thou’lt wish undone.” 
 
 After a brief but very beautiful song, in which the 
 Chorus celebrates the power and deprecates the wrath 
 of Venus, and deplores the exile’s lot, the real Deus ex 
 machina of this tragedy presents himself—not hovering 
 in the air, nor gorgeous in apparel, nor a god or the son 
 of a god, but a rather commonplace, prosy gentleman, 
 JEgeus, king of Athens, on his way home from Delphi. 
 Of him no more need be said than that, by promising 
 by his gods to shelter Medea, and yield her up to none, 
 he removes the one difficulty in her way which still 
 perplexed her. Now at last she is armed at all points 
 —§bp bag assured home and protector, tim§ tp 
 
92 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 down every foe, weapons they cannot guard against, 
 and means to escape if pursued. 
 
 Her wronged children shall be the instrument of her 
 vengeance. As to Jason himself, she has changed her 
 purpose; he shall not have the privilege of dying, for 
 she can make life to him more wretched than many 
 deaths. She summons him again to her presence; pre¬ 
 tends to regret her late hot words; will even conciliate 
 his new wife with such gifts as none but kings’ daugh¬ 
 ters can bestow. Her conditions are, that if the robe 
 and crown be accepted by Glauc&, the children shall 
 not quit the realm. Jason, thinking that Medea is now 
 in her right mind, assents to both proposals, and goes 
 out to prepare his new wife for the presents. The 
 Chorus, who are in the secret, apprise the audience 
 that these gauds are far deadlier than were Bellero- 
 phon’s letters: 
 
 “ By the grace and the perfect gleaming wcm, 
 
 She will place the gold-wrought crown on her head; 
 
 She will robe herself in the robe: and anon 
 She will deck her a bride among the dead.” 
 
 The gifts are envenomed. GlaucS and Creon, wrapt 
 in a sheet of phosphoric flame, expire in torments. 
 Jason is a widowed bridegroom; all Corinth is aroused 
 to take vengeance on the barbaric sorceress. Surely 
 this must be the end of the tragedy. No; “ bad begins, 
 but worse remains behind.” One more blow remains 
 to be dealt. Jason is wifeless, he shall be childless 
 too, before Medea speeds in her dragon-borne car— 
 the Chariot of the Sun, her grandsire—to hospitable 
 Athens. 
 
 Never, perhaps, has a more terrible scene been ex¬ 
 hibited on any stage than this final one of Metjea, To 
 
MEDEA. 
 
 93 
 
 it may be applied the words spoken of another spec¬ 
 tacle of “woe and wonder:” 
 
 “ This quarry cries on havock! O, proud death l 
 What feast is toward in thine eternal cell, 
 
 That thou so many princes, at a shot. 
 
 So bloodily hast struck.”—(“ Hamlet.”) 
 
 Jason, who has been witnessing the charred remains 
 of GlaucS and Creon, rushes on the stage to arrest their 
 murderess. He cries frantically: 
 
 “ Hath she gone away in flight? 
 
 For now must she or hide beneath the earth, 
 
 Or lift herself with wings into wide air, 
 
 Not to pay forfeit to the royal house.” 
 
 But “one woe doth tread upon another’s heels.” 
 “ Seeks she to kill me too?” he demands of the Chorus. 
 “Nay,” they reply, “you know not the worst:” 
 
 “ The boys have perished by their mother’s hand: 
 
 Open these gates thou’lt see thy muud.ered sons. 
 
 Jason. Undo the bolt on the instant, servants there; 
 
 Loose the clamps, that I may see my grief and bane. 
 
 May see them dead, and guerdon her with death.” 
 
 He sees them dead, indeed, but may “not kiss the 
 dear lips of his boys;” “may not touch his children’s 
 soft flesh.” Medea hovers over the palace, taunts him 
 with her wrongs, mocks at his new-born love for the 
 children he had consented to banish, and triumphs 
 alike over her living and her dead foes: 
 
 “ ’Twas not for thee, having spurned my love. 
 
 To lead a merry life, flouting at me, 
 
 Nor for the princess; neither was it his 
 Who gave her thee to wed Creon, unscathed 
 To cast me out of his realm. And now, * . 
 
 If it so like thee, call me lioness, 
 
 And Scylla, dweller on Tursenian plains; 
 
 For as right bade me, have I clutched thy heart,” 
 
94 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 The story of Medea, unconnected as it is with any 
 workings of destiny or fatal necessity—such as humbled 
 the pride of Theban and Argive Houses—has been 
 taxed with a want of proper tragical grandeur, as if a 
 picture of human passion were less fit for the drama 
 than one of the strife between Fate and Freewill. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE TWO IPHIGENIAS. 
 
 “ I was cut off from hope in that sad place, 
 
 Which yet to name my spirit loathes and fears: 
 
 My father held his hand upon his face; 
 
 I, blinded with my tears, 
 
 Still strove to speak: my voice was thick with sighs, 
 
 As in a dream. Dimly I could descry 
 
 The stern black-bearded kings with wolfish eyes 
 Waiting to see me die.” 
 
 —Tennyson: “ A Dream of Fair Women.” 
 
 About the fate of Iphigenia many stories were cur¬ 
 rent in Greece, and the version of it adopted by Eurip¬ 
 ides is one among several instances of the freedom 
 which he permitted himself in dealing with old legends. 
 iEschylus in his “Agamemnon” and Sophocles in his 
 “ Electra” make her to have been really sacrificed at 
 Aulis. Euripides chose a milder and perhaps later 
 form of the story; and if we have the conclusion of the 
 drama, as he wrote it, Diana, at the last moment, res¬ 
 cues the maiden, and substitutes in her place on the 
 altar—a fawn. To this change his own humane dis¬ 
 position may have led him, although he had in earlier 
 plays not scrupled to immolate Polyxena and Macaria. 
 Perhaps in the case of Iphigenia consistency required 
 of him to save her, siuce in the play, of which the 
 
THE TWO iPHlGENIAS. 
 
 S5 
 
 scene is laid at Tauri, the princess is alive twenty 
 years after her appearance at Aulis. Pausanias, as 
 diligent a collector of legendary lore as Sir Walter 
 Scott himself, says that a virgin was offered up at 
 Aulis to appease the wrath of the divine huntress, and 
 that her name was Ipliigenia. This victim, however, 
 was not a daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, 
 but of Theseus and Helen, whom her mother, through 
 fear of Menelaus, did not dare to own. In the Iliad, 
 that common source of the stage poets when they dealt 
 with the tale of Troy, nothing is said about substitute 
 or sacrifice, nor about Ipliigenia’s ministering to Diana 
 at Tauri. On the contrary,* the Homeric Iphianassa 
 —for that is her epic name—is safe and well with her 
 mother and sisters at Argos, and ten years after her 
 supposed death or escape is offered by Agamemnon as 
 a bride to Achilles. 
 
 The “Ipliigenia in Aulis,” in its relation to the 
 Grecian world, possessed, we may fairly surmise, 
 universal interest. For an audience composed, as that 
 in the Dion}^siac theatre was, of Athenians, allies, 
 and strangers, there were associations with the first 
 general armament of the Greeks against foreigners, 
 with which a modern reader can but imperfectly sym¬ 
 pathize. Priam, Paris, Hector, Agamemnon, Achilles, 
 Helen, and Iphigenia had indeed, centuries before, 
 vanished into the shadow-land of Hades, and the quiet 
 sheep fed or the tortoise crawled over the mounds 
 
 * “ In his house 
 
 He hath three daughters: thou may’st home conduct 
 To Pthia her whom thou shalt most approve. 
 Chrysothemis shall be thy bride, or else 
 Laodice, or, if she please thee more, 
 
 Iphianassa."— Iliad, ix. (Cowper.) 
 
95 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 where Troy once stood. Yet if the city built by Gods 
 now excited neither wrath nor dread in Greece, Persia 
 and the great King, though no longer objects of alarm, 
 were not beyond the limits of Hellenic anxiety or 
 vigilance, and were still able to vex Athens by their 
 “mines of Ophir,” as once they had made her desolate 
 by their Median archers and the swarthy chivalry of 
 Susa. To Greece and the islands, the dwellers beyond 
 Mount Taurus represented the ancient foe whom it had 
 taken their ancestors ten years to vanquish; and scenic 
 reminiscences of their first conflict with an eastern ad¬ 
 versary were still welcome to the third and fourth gen¬ 
 eration of spectators, whose sires had fought beside 
 Miltiades and Cimon.* 
 
 The opening scene of the “Iphigenia in Aulis” has, 
 for picturesqueness, rarely if ever been surpassed. The 
 centre of the stage is occupied by the tent of Agamem¬ 
 non: supposing ourselves among the audience, we see 
 on the left hand of it the white tents and beyond 
 them the black ships of the Achseans; on the right, the 
 road to the open country by which Iphigenia and her 
 mother Clytemnestra will soon arrive. The time is 
 night, the “brave o’erhanging firmament” is studded 
 with stars. The only sounds audible are the tramp of 
 sentinels, and the challenge of the watch: the camp is 
 wrapt in deep slumber: 
 
 “ Not the sound 
 
 Of birds is heard, nor of the sea; the winds 
 
 Are hushed in silence.” 
 
 “ The king of men” is much agitated by some secret 
 
 * When Agesilaus, king of Sparta, was about to pass into Asia, 
 as commander of the Greek army, he offered sacrifice to Diana 
 at Aulis, so lively an impression still remained of the rash vow of 
 “the king of men.” 
 
THE TWO IPHIGENIAS. 
 
 93 
 
 grief. By the light of a “ blazing lamp” he is writing a, 
 letter 
 
 “The writing he does blot; then seal, 
 
 And open it again; then on the floor 
 Casts it in grief: the warm tear from his eyes 
 Fast flowing, in his thoughts distracted near, 
 
 Even, it may seem, to madness.” 
 
 The cause for the perturbation of his spirit is this: the 
 Grecian fleet has been detained at Aulis by thwarting 
 winds, and Calchas, the seer, has declared that Aga¬ 
 memnon’s daughter must be sacrificed to Diana, irate 
 with him because he has shot, while hunting, one of 
 her sacred deer. Unwittingly the Grecian commander 
 has, in order to conciliate her, vowed that he will offer 
 to her the most beautiful creature that the year of his 
 child’s birth has produced. He has been persuaded by 
 his brother Menelaus to summon Iphigenia to Aulis, on 
 the pretext of giving her in marriage to Achilles. He 
 has sent a letter to Argos, directing Clytemnestra to 
 bring the maiden to the camp without delay. Soon, 
 however, the father recoils from this deceit, and he 
 prepares a second letter, annulling the former one, and 
 enjoining his wife to remain at home. This he com¬ 
 mits to the hands of an old servant of Clytemnestra’s, 
 with injunctions to make all speed with it to Argos; 
 but just as the messenger is passing the borders of the 
 camp, he is seized by Menelaus, who breaks the seal, 
 reads the missive, and hurries to upbraid his brother 
 with treachery to himself and the general cause of 
 Hellas. A sharp debate ensues between the brothers— 
 one twitting the other with bad faith; the other taxing 
 the husband of Helen with want of proper feeling for 
 his niece and himself, and chiding him for taking such 
 
88 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 pains to get back that worthless runaway, liis wife. 
 “ If I,” lie says, 
 
 “ Before ill judging, have with sobered thought 
 My purpose changed, must I be therefore judged 
 Heft of my sense? Thou rather, who hast lost 
 A wife that brings thee shame, yet dost with warmth 
 "Wish to regain her, may the favoring Gods 
 Grant thee such luck. But I will not slay 
 My children. 
 
 My nights, my days, would pass away in tears, 
 
 Did I with outrage and injustice wrong 
 Those who derive their life from me.” 
 
 The brothers part in high dudgeon, Agamemnon 
 remaining on the stage; and to him a messenger enters, 
 bearing the unwelcome tidings that Clytcmnestra, 
 Iphigenia, and the infant Orestes, will soon make 
 glad his eyes, after their long separation. They are 
 close to the camp, though they have not yet entered it, 
 for; 
 
 “Wearied with this length of way, beside 
 A beauteous-flowing fountain they repose, 
 
 Themselves refreshing, and their steeds unyoked 
 Crop the fresh herbage of the verdant mead.” 
 
 “ Thou Hast my thanks—go in," says the now utterly 
 wretched father to the messenger, and then tells in 
 soliloquy his woes to the audience. He is caught in 
 inextricable toils. Shall he cause the assembled host to 
 rise and mutiny, or shall lie keep his rash vow, and sac¬ 
 rifice his darling to the irate goddess—“what ruin hath 
 the son of Priam brought on me and my house!” 
 
 It is now early morning, and the camp is astir, and a 
 murmur, gradually getting louder, is heard. The chief¬ 
 tains and the soldiers are greeting the queen of Argos 
 and Mycenae, her fair daughter, and her infant son. 
 But before they enter, Menelaus has hurried back, aud 
 
THE TWO IP III G ENIA 8. 
 
 09 
 
 is reconciled to his royal brother. The younger king 
 tells his liege lord that speedy repentance has followed 
 on the heels of his late hasty passion. He has been 
 moved by the tears of the distracted father, he yields to 
 the arguments used by him: 
 
 - “ When from thine eye I saw thee drop the tear, 
 
 I pitied thee and wept myself: what I said then 
 I now unsay, no more unkind to thee. 
 
 Now feel I as thou feelest—nay, exhort thee 
 To spare thy child; for what hath she to do, 
 
 Thy virgin daughter, with my erring wife? 
 
 Break up the army, let the troops depart. 
 
 Within this breast there beats a loving heart. 
 
 Love or ambition shall not us divide. 
 
 Though they part brethren oft.” 
 
 A second choral song follows this reconciliation 
 scene; and then the chariot that has brought Clvtem- 
 nostra and her young children appears on the right baud 
 of the royal tent. She is welcomed by the Chorus, and 
 assisted by them to alight. In Clytemnestra, Euripides 
 shows how delicately he can delineate female charac¬ 
 ters, and how happily he has seized the opportunity for 
 exhibiting the Lady Macbeth or Lucrezia Borgia of 
 the Greek stage as a loving wife and mother. The seeds 
 of evil passions were dormant in her nature, but until 
 she was deeply wronged they bore not fruit. Clytem¬ 
 nestra in this play is a fond mother, a trusting wife, a 
 very woman, even shy, unpretending, unversed in 
 courts or camps. To the Chorus, after acknowledging 
 their “courtesy and gentleness of speech,” she says: 
 
 “ I hope that I am come 
 To happy nuptials, leading her a bride. 
 
 But from the chariot take ttie dowry-gifts, 
 
 Brought with me for the virgin: to the house 
 Bear them with careful hands My daughter, leave 
 The chariot novy, and place upon the ground 
 
too 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 Thy delicate foot. Kind women, in your arms 
 Receive her—she is tender: pidthee too, 
 
 Lend me a hand, that I may leave this seat 
 In seemly fashion. Some stand by the yoke, 
 
 Fronting the horses; they are quick of eye, 
 
 And hard to rule when startled. Now receive 
 This child, an infant still. Dost sleep, my boy? 
 
 The rolling of the car hath wearied thee: 
 
 Yet wake to see thy sister made a bride; 
 
 A noble youth, the bridegroom, Thetis’ son, 
 
 And he will wed into a noble house.” 
 
 She enters without pomp or circumstance, with only an 
 attendant or two. Knowing his name, she displays no 
 further curiosity about the supposed bridegroom: what¬ 
 ever her husband has designed must, she thinks, be 
 good. She, a half-divine princess of the race of Tan¬ 
 talus, the sister of Helen and of the great Twin-Breth¬ 
 ren, the consort of “the king of men,” is nevertheless 
 an uninstructed Grecian housewife. She knows noth¬ 
 ing of the genealogy of Achilles, at least on the father’s 
 side. She has never heard of the Myrmidons: she 
 knows not where Pthia may be: she asks what mortal 
 or what goddess became the wife of Peleus; and when 
 told that she is the sea-nymph Thetis, who but for a 
 warning oracle would have been the spouse of Jupiter, 
 she wonders where the rites of Hymen -were celebrated, 
 on firm land or in some ocean cave. The childlike 
 amazement and delight of Iphigenia also are drawn 
 by a master’s hand. Not Thecla, when first entering 
 Wallenstein’s palace and seeing the royal state by 
 which her father was surrounded; not Miranda, gazing 
 for the first time upon “ the brave new world,” * are 
 
 * “ Oh wonder! 
 
 How many goodly creatures are there here! 
 
 How beauteous mankind is! Oh, brave new world 
 That has such people in it!” 
 
 Tempest,” act v, sc, J, 
 
THE TWO imWENIAS, 
 
 101 
 
 more delicate creations of poetic fancy than Iphi- 
 genia. 
 
 Bearing in mind what the representation of strong 
 emotions can be on the modern stage, where the face 
 and Hiiibs of the actors are free to exhibit the varying 
 moods of a tragic character, it is most difficult, or 
 rather impossible, to understand how passion or pathos 
 could be interpreted by men so encumbered as the 
 actors were on the ancient stage by their masks, their 
 high boots, and their cumbersome robes. And as the 
 scene in which Agamemnon receives the newly-arrived 
 Clytemnestra and his daughter is a mixed one,—joy 
 simulated, fear and grief suppressed, on his part—hap¬ 
 piness in the unlooked-for meeting with a husband and 
 father, and hope for the approaching nuptials, on 
 theirs ,—it is impossible to conceive how it can have 
 been adequately represented. The painter who drew 
 Agamemnon at Diana’s altar veiling his face that he 
 might not look on his victim, had at least an opportun¬ 
 ity for conveying the presence of grief “too deep for 
 tears.” But how could the father’s emotions in this 
 scene have been imparted to an audience? The Greek 
 actor differed little from a statue except in the posses¬ 
 sion of voice, and in a certain, though a limited, range 
 of expressive gesture. That these imperfect means, as 
 they appear to us, sufficed for an intelligent and suscep¬ 
 tible audience, there is no reason to doubt; and we 
 must content ourselves with the assurance that the per¬ 
 former and the mechanist supplied all that was then 
 needed for the full expression of terror and pity. 
 
 The character of Achilles is delineated with great 
 skill and felicity. The hero of the Iliad is a most dra¬ 
 matic portraiture of one who has, in spite of his pride 
 and wbfulness, many compensating virtues, If his 
 
102 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 passions are strong, so are his affections: if he is im¬ 
 placable to mailed foes, he is generous and even tender 
 to weeping Priam: he knows that he bears a doomed 
 life if he tarries on Trojan ground, yet though highly 
 provoked by Agamemnon, he abides constant to^he 
 oath he had taken as one of the suitors of Helen. But 
 the Achilles of the “Iphigenia,” although a peerless 
 soldier, the Paladin of the Achtean host—a Greek 
 Bayard, “ sans peur et sans reproclie”—is a modest, 
 nay, even a shy stripling, blushing like a girl when he 
 comes suddenly into the presence of his destined bride 
 and her mother: not easily moved, yet perplexed and 
 indignant in the extreme when he discovers that his 
 name has been used as a lure, and full of pity for, and 
 prompt to aid, the unhappy victims of a cruel and un¬ 
 natural plot. Achilles, indeed, in the hands of Euripides, 
 is an anticipation of the Knight in the Canterbury 
 Tales: 
 
 “ And though that he was worthy, he was wys: 
 
 And of his port as meke as is a mayde: 
 
 He never yit no vilonye ne sayde. 
 
 In al his lyf unto no manner wight: 
 
 He was a verry perfit gentii knight.” 
 
 No chance of extricating himself from the dreadful 
 consequences of his summons to Clytemnestra remains 
 for Agamemnon, except the very slender one of per¬ 
 suading her to return alone to Argos. This she stoutly, 
 and, in her ignorance of his secret motive, reasonably 
 refuses to do. A sharp connubial encounter ensues, in 
 which Agamemnon does not get the best of it. A 
 very short extract only can be afforded to their con¬ 
 troversy. After asking sundry pertinent questions 
 about the young bridegroom and the marriage cere¬ 
 mony— it* wbjch the speak are cross-purposes, 
 
THE TWO IPH1GEN1AS. 
 
 103 
 
 Clytemnestra meaning the wedding, while Agamem. 
 non’s replies covertly allude to the sacrifice—he aston¬ 
 ishes her by a most unexpected demand upon her obe¬ 
 dience! “ Obey you!” she exclaims; “you have long 
 trained me to do so, but in what am I now to show my 
 obedience?” 
 
 *• Agam. To Argos go, thy charge the virgins there. 
 
 Clyt. And leave my daughter? Who shall raise the torch? 
 
 Agam. The light to deck the nuptials I will hold. 
 
 Clyt. Custom forbids; nor wouldst thou deem it seemly. 
 
 Agam. Nor decent that thou mix with banded troops. 
 
 Clyt. But decent that the mother give the daughter. 
 
 Agam. Let me persuade thee. 
 
 Clyt. By the potent Queen, 
 
 Goddess of Argos, no. Of things abroad 
 Take thou the charge: within the house my care 
 8hall deck the virgin’s nuptials, as is meet.” 
 
 Agamemnon, now at his wits’ end, says he will go 
 and consult Calchas, and hear from him whether any¬ 
 thing can be done to set him right with Diana. 
 
 Matters are hurrying to a crisis. Achilles enters, after 
 the choral song has ceased, thinking to find Agamemnon, 
 and then to inform him that the Myrmidons are on the 
 very edge of mutiny, and that he cannot hold them in 
 much longer. He says: 
 
 “ With impatient instance oft 
 They urge me: * Why, Achilles, stay we here? 
 
 What tedious length of time is yet to pass, 
 
 To Ilium ere we sail? Wouldst thou do aught, 
 
 Do it, or lead us home: nor here await 
 The sons of Atreus and their long delays.’*” 
 
 Instead of his commander in-chief he finds Clytem¬ 
 nestra, who greatly scandalizes him by offering her 
 hand to her destined son in-law. She, on her part, is 
 surprised at a modesty so uncommon in young men. 
 
104 
 
 EURIPIDES . 
 
 The old slave, the same whom Menelaus so roughly 
 handles at the opening of the drama, now conies for¬ 
 ward and unfolds the mytsery. Clytemnestra sues to 
 the captain of the Myrmidons for protection against 
 the cruel “black-bearded kings:” he is highly incensed 
 at having been made a cat’s-paw of by Agamemnon, 
 Calchas the seer, and the crafty Ulysses, and promises 
 to do all in his power to rescue Iphigenia from her 
 fearful doom, even at any risk to himself from his im¬ 
 patient soldiers. 
 
 Agamemnon now reappears. Ignorant that his wife 
 is now furnished with all the facts he had withheld, he 
 is greatly discomfited by her upbraiding him with his 
 weak and wicked consent to the sacrifice of Iphigenia. 
 After threatening him with her vengeance—a threat she 
 some years later fulfilled—she descends to entreaties, 
 and prays him to spare their child. And now comes 
 the most affecting scene of the tragedy. Iphigenia, 
 aware that she is not the destined bride but the chosen 
 victim, implores her father to change his purpose; and 
 the more to prevail with him, brings in her arms her 
 infant brother, Orestes, to move him to spare her. Aga ¬ 
 memnon, however, declares he is so compromised with 
 the Greeks that he cannot recede. His own life will 
 be in danger from the infuriated host, if lie any longer 
 withholds the appointed victim. Again Achilles rushes 
 on with the news that his soldiers have sworn to kill 
 him, if for the sake of a young maiden he any longer 
 detains them at Aulis. And now the daughter of a 
 line of heroes shows herself heroic. She will be the 
 victim whom the goddess demands. Troy shall fall; 
 Greece shall triumph; in place of marriage and happy 
 years, she will die for the common weal. Her father 
 shall be glorious to all ages: she will be content with 
 
THE TWO IPHI GEN IAS, 
 
 105 
 
 the renown of saving Hellas. With much compunc* 
 tion, and with some hesitation on the part of the chiv¬ 
 alrous Achilles, all now accept the stern necessity. In 
 solemn procession, and with funeral chant sung by 
 the victim and the Chorus, she goes to the altar of 
 Diana. The end of the tragedy, as we have it, is prob¬ 
 ably spurious, so far as the substitution of the fawn 
 is concerned. The real conclusion seems to have been 
 the appearance of the goddess over the tent of Aga¬ 
 memnon, to inform the weeping mother that her 
 daughter is not dead, but borne away to a remote land, 
 the Tauric Chersonese. They are parted forever, yet 
 there may be consolation in knowing Iphigenia has 
 not descended to the gloomy Hades, “ the bourne from 
 which no traveller returns.” 
 
 Mr. Palev remarks, with his unfailing insight into 
 the pith and marrow of the Grecian drama, that “Aris¬ 
 totle cites the character of Iphigenia at Aulis as an 
 example of want of consistency or uniformity; since 
 she first supplicates for life, and afterwards consents to 
 die. It is difficult to attribute much weight to the 
 criticism, though it comes with the sanction of a great 
 name. The part of Iphigenia throughout appears sin¬ 
 gularly natural. Her first impulse is to live; but when 
 she clearly perceives how much depends on her volun¬ 
 tary death, and how Achilles, her champion, is com¬ 
 promised by his dangerous resolve to save her—lastly, 
 how the Greeks are bent on the expedition, from 
 motives of national honor—she yields herself up a will¬ 
 ing victim. It would be quite as reasonable to object 
 to Menelaus’s sudden change of purpose, from demand- 
 in g t h e death of the maid, to the refusing to consent 
 to it. 
 
10(5 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 IPHIGENIA AT TAURI. 
 
 Twenty years have passed since the concluding scene 
 of “Iphigenia in Aulis” before the opening of this 
 drama. Ten years were spent in the siege of Troy, 
 another ten in the return of the surviving heroes to 
 their homes. From the moment when the young 
 daughter of Agamemnon is borne away from the altar 
 at Aulis, she has been devoted to the service of Diana 
 at Tauri—a goddess who, like the ferocious deities of 
 the Mexicans, delighted in the savor of human blood. 
 From that moment, also, Iphigenia has remained 
 ignorant of the great events that have taken place since 
 her rescue. She knows not that Troy has fallen; that 
 her father has been murdered and avenged; that her 
 brother Orestes and her sister Electra yet live, but 
 under the ban of gods and men; or that Helen, the 
 “direful spring” of so many woes to Greece, is once 
 more queen at Sparta. Little chance, indeed, was there 
 of her getting news of her couutry or kindred in the in¬ 
 hospitable country to which she had been brought. 
 The land where Tauri* stood was shunned by all 
 Greeks, for the welcome awaiting them there was death 
 on the altar of the goddess, to whom men of their race 
 were the most acceptable of victims. 
 
 But the end of her long exile and the hour assigned 
 for her restoration to home and kindred were at hand. 
 A Greek vessel arrives at this remote and barbarous 
 region; and two strangers, immediately after the 
 priestess of Diana lias spoken a kind of prologue, come 
 upon the stage, and cautiously, as persons afraid of 
 
 * The action of the play Is fixed at the now historic Balaclava, 
 In the Crimea. 
 
IPMGENtA AT TAVfit. 
 
 107 
 
 being seen, survey tlie temple, j. Though they have had 
 foul weather and rough seas, they are not shipwrecked, 
 but have come with a special object to this perilous 
 land. * That object is apparently of the most desperate 
 kind, for the strangers are not only Greeks, but have 
 come, in obedience to an oracle, to carry off and transport 
 to Attica the tutelary goddess of Tauri. In the prologue 
 the audience is prepared to recognize in the two persons 
 on the stage Orestes and his friend Pylades; for Iphi- 
 genia relates a dream she has had on the previous night, 
 but which she misinterprets. She believes it to mean 
 that Orestes, whom she had left an infant at Aulis, is 
 dead, and proposes to offer libations to his shade. 
 Orestes and his friend, having satisfied themselves that 
 this is the temple whence the image, by force or fraud, 
 must be taken away, retire and give place to the Chorus, 
 not indeed without some misgivings on the part of 
 Orestes as to the possibility of executing their enjoined 
 task. “ The walls are high,” he says—‘‘the doors are 
 barred with brass;” even if we can climb the one and 
 force the other, how shall we escape the watchful eyes 
 of those who guard the shrine or dwell in the city? If 
 detected, we shall be put to death: 
 
 ** Shall we, then, ere we die, by flight regain 
 The ship, in which we hither ploughed the sea?” 
 
 “ Of flight we must not think,** rejoins Pylndes; il the 
 god’s command must be obeyed. But we have seen 
 enough of the temple for the present; and now let us 
 retire to some cave where 
 
 “ We may lie concealed 
 
 At distance from our ship, lest some, whose eiywi 
 
 May note It, bear the tiding^ fd the king! 
 
 And we he seiaed by force.” 
 
108 
 
 mmpiMs. 
 
 What Pylades had dreaded happens. The Chorus, 
 as soon as their song, in which Iphigenia takes a part, 
 is ended, say to her,— 
 
 “ Leaving the sea-washed shore an herdsman comes, 
 Speeding with some fresh tidings.” 
 
 The herdsman’s report of what he has Seen is most 
 strange and exciting to the hearers of it. He opens it 
 with apprising the priestess that she must get all things 
 ready for a sacrifice, for 
 
 “Two youths, swift rowing ’twixt the dashing rocks 
 Of our wild sea. are landed on the beach, 
 
 A grateful offering at Diana’s shrine. 
 
 At first one of my comrades took them, as they sat 
 in the cavern, for two deities; but another said, they are 
 wrecked mariners: and he was in the right, as soon it 
 proved; for one of the twain was suddenly seized with 
 madness, while the other soothed him in his frenzy,— 
 
 “ Wiped off the foam, took of his person care, 
 
 And spread his fine robe over him. 
 
 “The mad one had assailed our herds, mistaking them, 
 it seems, for certain Furies that hunt him; whereupon 
 we, seeing the havoc he was making, blew our horns, 
 called the neighbors to our aid, and at last, after a 
 desperate resistance from these strange visitors! we 
 captured them both,— 
 
 “ And bore them to the monarch of this landi 
 He viewed them, and without delay to thee 
 Sent them, devoted to the cleansing vase 
 And to the altar.” 
 
 Hitherto the hand of Iphigenia is unspotted by the 
 blood Of human victims The prisoners are the first 
 
imiQMlA AT TAURl. 
 
 109 
 
 Greeks who have landed on this fatal coast. She is 
 still under the influence of her dream. Her convic¬ 
 tion that Orestes is dead, her remembrance of the 
 wrong done to her at Aulis, combine to harden her 
 against the prisoners before they are presented to her. 
 When, however, she has seen and interrogated them 
 as to their nation and whence they come, her mood 
 changes. Her ignorance of what has taken place since 
 she left Argos is now dispersed. Not only does she 
 learn that the Greeks have taken Troy and returned to 
 their homes, but also that Orestes is living. He evades, 
 indeed, her questions as to himself; he will not dis¬ 
 close bis name and parentage, and is unaware that his 
 sister stands before him. “ Argives both are ye?” she 
 says, “then one of you shall be spared, and he shall 
 take a letter from me to my brother.” Then follows 
 the celebrated contest between the pair of friends as to 
 which of them shall do her commission. The deeply 
 affecting character of this scene was felt in all lands 
 where the tragedy was represented. “What shouts, 
 what excitement,” says Lselius, “pervaded the theatre 
 at the representation of my friend Pacuvius’s new play, 
 when the contest took place between Orestes and Pyla- 
 des, each claiming the privilege of dying for the other.” * 
 Theu comes the recognition between the long-parted 
 brother and sister. Iphigenia will not trust to mere 
 oral communication. She will write as well as give a 
 verbal message. She reads the letter to the captives. 
 She takes this precaution for two reasons; 
 
 “If thou preserve 
 
 This letter, that, though silent, will declare 
 
 My purport; if it perish in the sea, 
 
 Saving thyself my words too shalt thou save.” 
 
 * Utoertf b« ffktachfcipi ts t. 
 
110 
 
 mmpiMB. 
 
 Brother and sister are now made manifest to each 
 other. The priestess is the long-lost Ipliigeuia: the 
 stranger is the brother whom she had held an infant 
 in her arms, and whom she was mourning as dead. The 
 method by which iEsehylus and Sophocles bring about 
 the discovery is consistent with their sublimer genius; 
 that which Euripides adopts is equally consonant with 
 his more human temperament, no less than with his 
 views of dramatic art. 
 
 The deliverance of the friends and the priestess is still 
 hard to accomplish; they are begirt with peril. Iphi* 
 genia knows too well the religious rigor of the Taurian 
 king. Thoas is a devout worshipper of Diana; is an 
 inexorable foe to Greeks. His subjects and his guards 
 are equally hostile towards strangers and loyal to their 
 goddess. If they caunot escape, the intruders will be 
 immolated, and the priestess be a third victim on the 
 blood-stained altar. And now Iphigenia proves that she 
 is Greek to the core. She can plot craftily: she will even 
 hazard the wrath of a deity by a timely fraud. | King 
 Thoas, little more than a simple country gentleman, 
 dividing his time between field sports and ceremonies 
 sacred or civil, is no match for three wily Greeks. 
 “The statue of Diana,” she tells him, “must be taken 
 down to the beach and purified by the sen; the two 
 strangers, before they are sacrificed, must undergo lus¬ 
 tration , 0 “Take the caitiffs by all means.” he says, 
 4 *to the shore. A guard must attend you. for they are 
 stalwart knaves; one of them has murdered his mother, 
 and tile other prompted and abetted him in that foul 
 crime.” For a while the soldiers are persuaded to ieave 
 Iphigenia alone with the strangers, while she performs 
 tile necessary rites. At length her delay rouses their 
 Buspiciuii) and they discover that* so far from render- 
 
IPIIIGENIA AT TAUBZ 
 
 111 
 
 ing the statue and the prisoners meet for the sacrifice, 
 they are plotting not only flight, but theft. One of 
 them brings the intelligence to Thoas: 
 
 “At length we all resolved 
 To go, though not permitted, where they were. 
 
 There we beheld the Grecian bark with oars 
 Well furnished, winged for flight; and at their seats 
 Grasping their oars were fifty rowers: free 
 From chains beside the stern the two youths stood. 
 
 . . . . . Debate 
 
 Now rose: What mean you, sailing o'er the seas,’ 
 
 The statue, and the priestess from the land 
 By stealth conveying? Whence art thou, and who, 
 
 That bear’st her, like a purchased slave, away ? 
 
 He said, I am her brother, be of this 
 Informed, Orestes, son of Agamemnon; 
 
 My sister, so long lost, I bear away, 
 
 Recovered here.” 
 
 * 
 
 Orestes and his crew release Iphigenia from the 
 guards, and drive them up the rocks,— 
 
 “ With dreadful marks 
 
 Disfigured and bloody bruises: from the heights 
 We hurled at them fragments of rock: but vainly. 
 
 The bowmen with their arrows drove us thence.” 
 
 The sea, however, swept back the galley to the 
 beach, and not even the fifty rowers can propel it out 
 of harbor. 
 
 “ Haste then, O king, 
 
 Take chains and gyves with thee; for if the flood 
 Subside not to a calm, there is no hope 
 Of safety for the strangers.” 
 
 Thoas needs no prompter. He calls to the people of 
 Tauri to avenge this insult to their goddess; 
 
 “ Harness your steeds at once: will you not fly 
 Along the shore, to seize whate'er this ship 
 Of Greece casts forth, and, for your goddess roused, 
 
113 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 Hunt down these impious men? Will you not launch 
 Instant your swift-oared barks by seas, on land 
 To catch them, from the rugged rock to hurl 
 Their bodies, or impale them on the stake.” 
 
 To the Chorus he hints that, inasmuch as they have 
 known all along and concealed the dark designs of the 
 recreant priestess and her two confederates in this sac¬ 
 rilegious crime, he will, at more leisure, “ devise brave 
 punishments” for them. 
 
 The capture of the fugitives is unavoidable; and if 
 they are once more in his grasp, the pious and wrath¬ 
 ful king will leave no member of Agamemnon’s family 
 alive except the sad and solitary Electra. Euripides 
 now settles the matter by his usual device, an inter¬ 
 vening deity. Pallas Athene appears above the temple 
 of Diana, and apprises Thoas that it is her pleasure 
 that both the priestess and the image shall be carried 
 to Greece by Orestes, where the worship of the Taurian 
 Artemis, purged of its sanguinary rites, shall be estab¬ 
 lished at Halse and Brauron in Attica. Thoas is satis¬ 
 fied. . Agamemnon’s children are free to depart; and 
 Pylades, as a reward for his long-enduring friendship, 
 is to marry Electra. 
 
 Should this drama, in virtue of its happy conclu¬ 
 sion, be accounted, along with the “ Alcestis” and the 
 “ Helen” of Euripides, a tragi comedy? In one respect 
 the “Iphigenia at Tauri” stands apart from these 
 plays. In the former, there is something approaching 
 to the comic in the person of Hercules; in the latter, 
 something even risible in the garb of Meuelaus, and in 
 his conversation with the old woman who is hall-porter 
 in the palace of Theoclymenus. The drama, however, 
 that has now been examined, is from its beginning to 
 
THE BACCHANALS. 
 
 113 
 
 its end full of action, excitement, suspense, dread, and 
 uncertainty. The doom of a race, as well as individuals, 
 is at stake; and the prospect of the principal characters 
 is gloomy in the extreme, until their rescue by a deity 
 delivers them from further suffering. Both “Iphi- 
 genias” derive much of their attractions for all times 
 and ages from the deeply domestic tenor of the story. 
 “How many ‘Iphigenias’ have been written 1” said 
 Goethe. “Yet they are all different, for each writer 
 manages the subject after his own fashion.” 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE BACCHANALS. 
 
 “Over wide streams and mountains great we went, 
 
 And, save when Bacchus kept his ivy-tent, 
 
 Onward the tiger and the leopard pants 
 With Asian elephants: 
 
 We follow Bacchus! Bacchus on the wing, 
 A-conquering! 
 
 Bacchus, young Bacchus ! good or ill betide 
 We dance before him thorough kingdoms wide: 
 
 Come hither, lady fair, and joined be 
 To our wild minstrelsy.” 
 
 —Keats: “Endymion.” 
 
 This is the only extant Greek tragedy connected with 
 the wanderings and worship of the wine-god, at whose 
 festivals the Greek tlireatres were open, and from song 
 and dance in whose honor the drama of Greece derived 
 its origin. The subject, when Euripides took it up, 
 was not new to the stage. Among the dramas ascribed 
 to Thespis, one was entitled “Peutheus;” and another 
 by him, “The Bachelors,” may have treated of Lycurgus, 
 also a vehement opposer of Bacchic rites. .<Eschylus 
 
114 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 exhibited two trilogies, in which Pentheus and Lycurgus 
 were the principal characters. The serene nnise of 
 Sophocles appears to have avoided such exciting 
 themes. 
 
 “The Bacchanals” was not brought out in the life¬ 
 time of Euripides. It was exhibited by a younger man 
 of the same name, his son or his nephew. If it were, 
 as it is supposed to have been, the work of one far 
 advanced in years, it displays no trace of declining 
 powers, and, in that respect, is on a par with the 
 Sophoclean “ CEdipus at Colonos.” From its scenes and 
 subject it was probably composed after Euripides had 
 quitted Athens; and there may have been reasons for 
 his writing this tragedy at Pella, as a compliment to 
 his host and patron Archelaus. The play, indeed, was 
 well suited to the genius of the laud, and the people 
 before whom it was represented. Northern Greece, 
 Macedonia, and the adjoining districts, were devout 
 worshippers of Bacchus, both in faith and prac ice. 
 Alexander's “captains and colonels and knights at 
 arms” astonished the more sober Asiatics by their 
 capacity for deep potations. The women of Thrace, 
 Thessaly, and Macedonia, when the purple vintage 
 was garnered, and the vats overflowed with red juice, 
 celebrated harvest-home by putting on ivy-chaplets 
 and tunics made of lion or deer skins, by brandishing 
 the thyrsus, and by wild and violent dauces. Olym¬ 
 pias, the mother of Alexander, was a Bacchant and 
 at certain seasons of the year whirled around the altars 
 of the god, with snakes depending from her girdle and 
 her hair. In this picturesque, if rather ravage dress, 
 she is said to have won the heart of King Philip, him¬ 
 self a most loyal subject of the jovial deity. 
 
 The poet of “ The Bacchanals,” now a voluntary exile 
 
THE BAQOHAEALS. 
 
 115 
 
 at Pella, seems to have reinvigorated himself under a 
 new sky, and to exult in his freedom. He had gone 
 from a land tamed and domesticated by the hand of 
 man, to a land in which nature was still imperfectly 
 subdued. In the place of vineyards, oliveyards, and 
 gardens, forests and mountains greeted his eyes. 
 Broad rivers were in the room of the narrow and 
 uncertain streams that watered Attica. The snows 
 on Mount Parnes disappeared when the sun rode in 
 Cancer; but they never departed from the sides and 
 summits of Ossa and Olympus. There is a Salvator- 
 like grandeur in the scenery described in “The Bac¬ 
 chanals.” The action of the play lies indeed in Bceotia; 
 but, instead of loamy fields and sluggish rivers, we are 
 placed among rocks where the eagle builds her eyry, or 
 among forests tenanted by the wolf and bear. 
 
 The religious elements in “The Bacchanals” are 
 worth noticing, since they differ widely from those 
 commonly found in other plays of its author. The 
 presiding god is a terrible as well as a powerful being. 
 He admits of no half-service; he cannot abide skeptics; 
 he makes short work with opponents. All such free 
 and easy dealing with the gods as are met with in 
 “ The Phrenzy of Hercules” or the “ Electra” disappears. 
 Perhaps the Macedonians were not sufficiently civilized 
 to relish tampering with old beliefs; There may also 
 have been a change in the feelings of the aged poet 
 himself. He may have said to himself, “What has it 
 profited me to have so long striven to make others see 
 more clearly? Would it not have been wiser to do as 
 my friend Sophocles has ever done, and view both 
 gods and social relations with the eyes of the vulgar?” 
 Uuimpalred as his mental force must have been for him 
 Vo write such a tragedy as *' The Bacchanals,’* his bodily 
 
lie 
 
 mmPiDES. 
 
 strength may have been touched by years. We are not 
 told whether either of his wives accompanied him to 
 Pella; if neither of them were with him, there was the 
 less occasion for philosophy. Whatever the cause may 
 have been, there is more faith than doubt or speculation 
 to be found in this tragedy. 
 
 The action of “ The Bacchanals” is laid in a remote 
 age, and there is an Oriental quite as much as a Greek 
 savor in the poetry. Cadmus, who has ceded the 
 Theban sceptre to his grandson Pentheus, was by birth 
 a Phoenician, not a Boeotian. He lived before the 
 Greek Argo had rushed through the blue Symplegades 
 to the Colchian strand. He is beyond recorded 
 time; he “antiquates” common “antiquity.” His in¬ 
 tercourse with the gods has been intimate, but not 
 happy. Jupiter had taken a fancy to his sister Europa, 
 and to one of his daughters—and by her, Semele, he is, 
 though long unaware of it, grandfather to Bacchus. 
 
 When the play opens, all Thebes—its male popula¬ 
 tion, at least—is perplexed in the extreme. The women 
 are all gone mad: they are off to the mountains, and 
 many of them have taken their children w'ith them; 
 for their customary suits they have donned fawn-skins; 
 they brandish poles wreathed with ivy; shouting and 
 siuging, dancing and leaping, they scour the plains, 
 climb the hills, and scare the fox and the wild cat from 
 their holes. From this sudden mania neither age nor 
 rank is free: sober housewives are themselves doing 
 what a few days before they would have blushed to see 
 done by others. Even the Queen Agav& and her attend¬ 
 ant ladies are swept into the vortex, and prance like so 
 many peasant girls at a wake. 
 
 The cause of this strange and unseemly revel is the 
 appearance in Bneotia of a young man of handsome 
 
Tim BACCHANALS. 
 
 11? 
 
 presence, with flowing locks like grape-bunches. find a 
 delicate, yet somewhat ruddy visage. His errand to 
 Thebes is a strange one. He pretends to be a native 
 of that city; he points to a charred mound of earth as 
 his mother’s grave, and, wondrous to relate, since he 
 first visited it, the blackened turf is covered and 
 canopied over with a luxuriant vine! He began by 
 claiming near kinship with the royal house of Cadmus; 
 and because the female members scoffed at his pre* 
 tensions, he drives them insane. His retinue are as 
 strange as his errand. It is composed of dark-eyed 
 swarthy women, such as might be seen in the streets 
 of Tyre and Sidon celebrating the feast of AstartS 
 with dance and song. The dull, yet by no means 
 sober, Boeotians cannot tell what to make of these 
 eccentric visitors. Some think that the magistrates— 
 the Bceotarchs—should clap them into the town jail; 
 but how to catch, and, when caught, how to keep, these 
 wild damsels is the difficulty; for they are as slippery 
 to handle as the eels in Lake Copal's, and as fierce as 
 the lynxes that swarm on Mount Cithteron. Never 
 had Thebes, since Amphion had drawn the stones of 
 its walls together by his minstrelsy, been in such per¬ 
 turbation. 
 
 Who the young stranger with grape-bunch locks is, 
 the audience are told by himself in the prologue. He 
 is what he pretends to be, the son of Jupiter and 
 Semele. He has travelled far before he came to Thebes 
 to establish his rites and claim his kindred. “ I have 
 left,” he says, 
 
 “The golden Lydian shores, 
 
 The Phrygian and the Persian sun-seared plains, 
 
 And Bactria’s walls; the Medes’ wild, wintry land 
 Have passed, and Araby the blest; and all 
 
 6< A«a that along tile salfr-sea coast 
 
118 
 
 BVB1P10MS. 
 
 Lifts up her high-towered cities, where the Greeks, 
 
 With the Barbarians mingled, dwell in peace.”* 
 
 Hitherto, wherever I have come, mankind has ac¬ 
 knowledged me a god: the first opposition I have 
 met with is in this the first Hellenic town I have 
 entered: 
 
 * But here, where least beseemed, my mother’s sisters 
 Vowed Dionysus was no son of Jove; 
 
 That Seinele, by mortal paramour won, 
 
 Belied great Jove as author of her sin; 
 
 ’Twas but old Cadmus' craft: hence Jove in wrath 
 Struck dead the bold usurper of his bed.” 
 
 In requital for such usage, he has goaded all the 
 women of Thebes into frenzy: 
 
 There's not a woman of old Cadmus’ race 
 But I have maddened from her quiet house; 
 
 Unseemly mingled with the sons of Thebes, 
 
 On the roofless rocks ’neath the pale pines they sit.” 
 
 Cadmus the king, and Tireoias the seer, well know¬ 
 ing that Bacchus is really what he assumes to be— 
 after a little hesitation about their uovel attire in fawn- 
 skins, their ivy-crown, and thyrsu^, determine to join 
 the Bacchanal rout; and Tiresias, as the king’s ghostly 
 confessor, preaches to him the following doctrine, 
 Sound indeed in itself, but uncommon in Euripidean 
 drama: 
 
 “ No wile, no paltering with the deities. 
 
 The ancestral faith, coeval with our race; 
 
 No subtle reasoning, If it soar aloft, 
 
 Even to the height of wisdom, can o’erthrow,’* 
 
 Their purpose, however, to speed at once to the 
 
 , * The translated passages are aU takes front Peas Miltftaii’6 
 
 Version of thW a flams. 
 
THE BACCHANALS. 
 
 119 
 
 mountains, is stayed by the entrance of Pentbeus, who 
 has been absent from home, but has come back, in hot 
 haste, on hearing of these si range and evil doings in his 
 city. He will crush, lie will stamp out, this pestilent 
 new religiou—a religion having in it quite as much of 
 Venus as of Bacchus. Gyves and the prison-house 
 shall be the portion of these wild women; and as for 
 that wizard from the land of Lydia— 
 
 “ If I catch him ’neath this roof, I’ll silence 
 The beatings of his thyrsus, stay his locks’ 
 
 Wild tossing, from his body severing his head.” 
 
 As for his grandsire, and the “blind prophet” his 
 companion, he cannot marvel enough at their folly: nay, 
 wroth as he is, he can scarcely help laughing at their 
 fawn skin robes. “However,” he proceeds, “I know 
 which of you two fatuous old men is most in fault, and 
 I will take such order with him as shall spoil his pro¬ 
 phecies for some time to come: 
 
 “ Some one go; 
 
 The seats from which he spies the flight of birds, 
 
 False augur, with the iron forks o’erthrow, 
 
 Scattering in wild confusion all abroad. 
 
 And cast his chaplets to the winds and storms.” 
 
 The elders implore him to cease from his blasphemies: 
 and Cadmus, rather prudently than honestly, counsels 
 him to profess faith in the new deity, if for no other 
 reason, yet for the credit of the family: 
 
 “ Even if, as thou declar'st, he were no God, 
 
 Call thou him God. It were a splendid falsehood 
 If Semele be thought t’ have borne a God.” 
 
 But Pentbeus spurns this accommodating advice, and 
 Cadmus and Tiresias wend their way to the Bacchanal 
 camp on the mountains. The Chorus takes up the 
 
120 
 
 EURIPIDES, 
 
 charge of blasphemy, and hints at the end awaiting the 
 impious king: 
 
 “ Of tongue unbridled, without awe. 
 
 Of madness spurning holy law, 
 
 Sorrow is the heaven-doomed close: 
 
 But the life of calm repose, 
 
 And modest reverence, holds her state, 
 
 Unbroken by disturbing fate; 
 
 And knits whole houses in the tie 
 Of sweet domestic harmony. 
 
 Beyond the range of mortal eyes 
 ’Tis not wisdom to be wise.” 
 
 The wish of Pentheus to have in his power the deluder 
 of the Theban women is soon gratified. Bacchus, in a 
 comely human form, is brought manacled before him. 
 The king, thinking that now he cannot escape, leisurely 
 contemplates the prisoner, and is greatly struck by his 
 appearance: 
 
 “ There’s beauty, stranger! woman-witching beauty 
 (Therefore thou art in Thebes) in thy soft form; 
 
 Thy fine bright hair, not coarse like the hard athletes. 
 
 Is mantling o’er thy cheek warm with desire; 
 
 And carefully thou hast cherished thy white skin; 
 
 Not in the sun’s soft beams, but in cool shade, 
 
 Wfloing soft Aphrodite with thy loveliness.” 
 
 Then follows a close examination of the fair-visaged 
 sorcerer about his race, his orgies, and his purpose in 
 coming to Thebes, and at the end of it he is sent off to 
 the “royal stable,”— 
 
 “ That he may sit in midnight gloom profound: 
 
 There lead thy dance! But those thou hast hither led, 
 
 Thy guilt’s accomplices, we’ll sell for slaves; 
 
 Or, silencing their noise and beating drums, 
 
 As handmaids to the distaff set them down.” 
 
 Bacchus does not long remain in the dark stable. He 
 
THE BACCHANALS. 
 
 121 
 
 appears, ** a god-confest” to his worshippers, who are 
 prostrate on the ground, alarmed by the destruction of 
 the palace of Pentheus. They ask how he obtained his 
 freedom; he replies: 
 
 “Myself, myself delivered—with ease and effort slight. 
 
 Cho. Thy hands, had he not bound them, in halters strong and 
 tight? 
 
 Bac. ’Twas even then I mocked him,he thought me in his chain; 
 He touched me not, nor reached me, his idle thoughts were vain.” 
 
 Unharmed, unshackled, he again stands before the in¬ 
 censed king. A messenger now arrives—a herdsman 
 from the mountains—who reports that the Bacchanals 
 have broken prison, have defied all attempts to recapture 
 them, are again engaged in their revelries, and have 
 ravaged all the villages and herds that came in their way 
 from the plain to the hill-country. The drama now 
 takes a new turn. Pentheus, his madness fast coming on, 
 admits his late prisoner into his counsels. He will go 
 and witness with his own eyes these hateful orgies: he 
 cannot trust his officers to deal with them. “These 
 women,” he says, “without force of arms, I’ll bring 
 them in. Give me mine armor.” Bacchus offers to be 
 his guide, but tells him that his armor will betray him 
 to the women. He must attire himself in Bacchanalian 
 costume: 
 
 “ Pen. Lead on and swiftly. Let no time be lost. 
 
 Bac. But first enwrap thee in these linen robes. 
 
 Ben. What, will he of a man make me a woman? 
 
 Bac. Lest they should kill thee, seeing thee as a man.” 
 
 Here is the true irony of tragedy. Pentheus, who has 
 derided his grandsire and the holy prophet for their 
 unseemly attire and senile folly,—Pentheus, who has 
 threatened to behead the Lydian wizard, and had im- 
 
123 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 prisoned bis attendants, is himself persuaded by the god 
 he so abhors to put on the garb of a Bacchanal, and in 
 that guise to pass through the streets of Thebes. His 
 eagerness to behold the Bacchantes makes him insensible 
 to the indignity of the situation. He asks— 
 
 “ What is the second portion of my dress? 
 
 Bac. Robes to thy feet, a bonnet on thy head; 
 
 A fawn-skin and a thyrsus in thy hand.” 
 
 He takes for his guide to the mountains the handsome 
 stranger whom he had so recently ordered to sit in dark¬ 
 ness and prepare for death: he is even obsequious to 
 him: 
 
 “ So let us on: I must go forth in arms, 
 
 Or follow the advice thou givest me.” 
 
 Bacchus calls to his train, and gives his instructions to 
 them how to deal with their prey when they have him 
 in the toils: 
 
 Women! this man is in our net; he goes 
 To find his just doom 'mid the Bacchanals. 
 
 Vengeance is ours. Bereave him first of sense; 
 
 Yet be his phrenzy slight. In his right mind 
 He never had put on a woman’s dress; 
 
 But now,"thus shaken in his mind, he’ll wear it. 
 
 A laughing-stock I’ll make him for all Thebes, 
 
 Led in a woman’s dress through the wide city.” 
 
 The Chorus respond to the summons of their divine 
 leader in passionate and jubilant strains, and anticipate 
 the doom of their persecuting foe: 
 
 “ Slow come, but come at length, 
 
 In their majestic strength. 
 
 Faithful and true, the avenging deities: 
 
 And chastening human folly 
 And the mad pride unholy, 
 
 Of those who to the gods bow not their knees. 
 
THE BACCHANALS. 
 
 123 
 
 For hidden still and mute, 
 
 As glides their printless foot, 
 
 Th’ impious on their winding path they hound, 
 
 For it is ill to know. 
 
 Beyond the law’s inexorable bound.” 
 
 Mania now seizes on Pentheus; two suns lie seem to 
 see: a double Thebes: his guide appears to him a horned 
 bull: lie recognizes among the Bacchic revellers Inohis 
 kinswoman, and Agav£ his mother. 
 
 The decorum of the Greek stage, or perhaps its im¬ 
 perfect means for representing groups and rapid action, 
 precluded poets generally from bringing before an audi¬ 
 ence the catastrophe of tragic dramas. Accordingly, we 
 do not see, but are told, by the usual messenger on 
 such occasions, of the miserable end of the proud and 
 impious Theban king. When Bacchus and his victim 
 have climbed one of the spurs of Mount Cithaeron, they 
 come 
 
 “To a rock-walled glen, watered by a streamlet. 
 
 And shadowed o’er with pines: theMoenads there 
 Sat, all their hands busy with pleasant toil. 
 
 And some the leafy thyrsus, that its ivy 
 Had dropped away, were garlanding anew: 
 
 Like fillies some, unharnessed from the yoke, 
 
 Chanted alternate all the Bacchic hymn.” 
 
 . 
 
 But Pentheus cannot, from the level on which he has 
 hulled, see the whole Bacchante troop: he desires to 
 mount on a bank or a tall tree, in order that 
 
 “ Clearly he may behold their deeds of shame.” 
 
 Then says the messenger,— 
 
 “ A wonder then I saw that stranger do.” 
 
 “He bent the stem of a tall ash-tree, and dragged it to 
 SftrUl till it wa? bept Uk<? a bpw. He seated Penthevw 
 
124 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 on a bough, and then let it rise up again steadily and 
 gently, so that my master should not fall as it mounted. 
 Raised to this giddy height, ’tis true, he saw the women, 
 but they too saw him, and speedily brought him down 
 to the ground on which they were standing. But be¬ 
 fore they did so, the stranger had vanished, and a voice 
 was heard from the heavens proclaiming in clear ringing 
 tones: 
 
 “Behold! I bring, 
 
 O maidens, him that you and me, our rites, 
 
 Our orgies, laughed to scorn. Deal now with him 
 E’en as you list, and take a fuU revenge.” 
 
 The presence of the god, though unseen, was an¬ 
 nounced by a column of bright flame reddening the sky, 
 and an awful silence fell on Cithseron and its dark pine- 
 groves. A second shout proclaimed the deity, and the 
 daughters of Cadmus sprang to their feet and rushed 
 forth with the speed of doves on the wing. Down the 
 torrent’s bed, down from crag to crag they leaped— 
 “mad with the god.” Agav& led on her kin, and at 
 first assailed the seat of Pentheus with idle weapons: 
 
 * First heavy stones they hurled at him, 
 
 Climbing a rock in front: the branches of the ash 
 Darted at some: and some, like javelins, 
 
 Bent their sharp thyrsi shrilling through the air, 
 
 Pentheus their mark; but yet they struck him not, 
 
 . His height still baffling all their eager wrath.” 
 
 At length Agav£ cried to her train, “Tear down the 
 tree, and then we’ll grasp the least ”—for her too had the 
 god made blind—“that rides thereon.” A thousand 
 hands uprooted the tree, and Pentheus fell to the 
 ground, well knowing that his end was near. It was 
 his mother’s hand that seized him first. In vain, dash- 
 jpg off his bonnet, he cried, 
 
 “; am thy chiia, tbtee own, m mother,” 
 
THE BACCHANALS . 
 
 125 
 
 She knew him not, and 
 
 “ Caught him in her arms, seized his right hand, 
 
 And, with her feet set on his shrinking side, 
 
 Tore out the shoulder.” 
 
 “Ino, Autonoe, and all the rest dismembered him; one 
 bore away an arm, one a still sandalled foot: others rent 
 open his sides: none went without some spoil of him 
 whom, possessed by Bacchus, they deemed a lion’s cub. 
 With these bloody trophies of their prey they are now 
 marching to Thebes: for my part, I fled at the sight of 
 this dark tragedy.” 
 
 The procession of the Bacchantes to the “ seven-gated 
 city” is ushered in by a choral song: 
 
 “ Dance and sing 
 In Bacchic ring; 
 
 Shout, shout the fate, the fate of gloom 
 Of Pentheus, from the dragon born; 
 
 He the woman’s garb hath worn, 
 
 Following the bull, the harbinger that led him to his doom. 
 O ye Theban Bacchanals! 
 
 Attune ye now the hymn victorious, 
 
 The hymn all-glorious, 
 
 To the tear, and to the groan: 
 
 O game of glory! 
 
 To bathe the hands besprent and gory 
 In the blood of her own son.” 
 
 Believing that she is bringing a lion’s head to affix to 
 he walls of the temple, she bears in her arms that of 
 Pentheus, and in concert with the Chorus celebrates in 
 song her ghastly triumph: 
 
 “ Agavb. O ye Asian Bacchanals! 
 
 Chorus. Who is she on us who calls? 
 
 Agavd. From the mountains lo! we bear 
 To the palace gate 
 Qur new-slain quarry fair, 
 
128 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 Chorus. I see, I see, and on thy joy I wait. 
 
 Agavb. Without a net, without a snare, 
 
 The lion’s cub, I took him there.” 
 
 But Cadmus soon undeceives her. He has been to Ci- 
 thaeron to collect the remains of his grandson which the 
 Bacchanals had left behind; and AgavS, restored to her 
 senses, discerns in her gory burden the head of Pen* 
 theusherson. At the close of this fearful story Bac¬ 
 chus appears and informs Cadmus of his doom: 
 
 ‘‘Thou, father of this earth-born race, 
 
 A dragon shalt become; thy wife shall take 
 A brutish form at last.” 
 
 However, after cycles of time have gone by, Cadmus 
 and his wife Harmonia shall resume their human 
 forms, and be borne by Mars to the Isles of the Blest. 
 
 That a tragedy in some respects so un-Hellenic and so 
 Oriental in its character should have been well known 
 and highly estimated in the East, is not to be wondered 
 at. Perhaps not the least memorable application of 
 “The Bacchanals” to new circumstances is that men¬ 
 tioned by Plutarch in his “Life of Crass us.” Great 
 joy was there in the camp of Sureuas, the Parthian 
 general, one summer evening, for Crassus the Roman 
 proconsul and the greater part of his army had been 
 slain or taken prisoners, and the residue of the broken 
 legions was hurrying back to the western bank of the 
 Euphrates. Crassus himself lay a headless corpse. To 
 gratify his victorious soldiers, Sureuas exhibited a bur¬ 
 lesque of a Roman triumph. Himself and his staff 
 feasted in the commander’s tent. To the door of the 
 banqueting-hall the head of the Roman general was 
 borne by a Greek actor from Tralles, who introduced it 
 with some appropriate verses from “The Bacchanals” 
 Of Euripides. The bloody trophy was thrown at the 
 
ION. 127 
 
 feet of Surenas and his guests, and the player, seizing 
 it in his hands, enacted the last scene—the frenzy of 
 Agavd and the mutilation of Pentheus. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ION. —HIPPOLYTUS. 
 
 ** * Sweet is the holiness of youth ’—so felt 
 Time-honored Chaucer, when he framed that lay 
 By which the Prioress beguiled the way, 
 
 And many a Pilgrim’s rugged heart did melt.” 
 
 —Wordsworth. 
 
 So long as the Athenians were a second-rate power in 
 Greece they were content with a military adventurer for 
 the founder of the Ionian race. In a war between 
 Athens and Euboea, one Xuthus had done them good 
 service; his recompense for it was the hand of the 
 Erectheid princess Creusa, and the issue of the marriage 
 was Ion, from whom the Athenians claimed, remotely, 
 to descend. But when, after the decline of Argos, they 
 had risen to a level with Corinth and Sparta, they 
 aspired to the honor of a divine ancestry on the spear- 
 side, as well as that of a royal one on the spindle. A 
 wandering soldier no longer sufficed: the son of Creusa 
 must not be born in mortal wedlock, but derive his 
 origin from a god. And what deit} r —in this matter the 
 virgin Pallas Athene was out of the question—was so 
 fitted by liis various gifts to be the forefather of so 
 accomplished a people as the patron of music, poetry, 
 medicine, and prophecy? To set before his fellow- 
 citizens, as well as the strangers and allies who sat in 
 the Dionysiac theatre, the pedigree of tl.e Ionians, and 
 consequently of the Athenians also, Euripides probably 
 composed his “ Ion.” 
 
128 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 Creusa is the daughter of Erectheus, an old autoch- 
 thonic king of Athens. She has borne a son to Apollo, 
 but through fear of her parents was compelled to leave 
 him, immediately after his birth, in a cave under the 
 Acropolis. The divine father, however, does not aban¬ 
 don the infant, but employs Mercury to transport him 
 to Delphi, and to deposit him on the steps of the temple, 
 where he knows the babe will be cared for. One of the 
 vestals—apparently even then middle-aged, since she is 
 old in the play—finds Ion, and fulfils his sire’s expecta¬ 
 tions. She has, indeed, her own thoughts on the matter, 
 but keeps them to herself until a convenient season 
 comes for disclosing them. In the Delphian temple the 
 foundling receives an education resembling that of the 
 infant Samuel. He thus describes his functions: 
 
 “ My task, which from my early infancy 
 Hath been my charge, is with these laurel boughs 
 And sacred wreaths to cleanse the vestibule 
 Of Phoebus, on the pavements moistening dews 
 To rain, and with my bow to chase the birds 
 Which would defile the hallowed ornaments. 
 
 A mother’s fondness and a father’s care 
 I never knew; the temple of the god 
 Claims then my service, for it nurtured me.” 
 
 He receives the strangers who come to consult the 
 oracle or to see the wonders of the shrine, and shows 
 himself, by turns, an expert ritualist or a polite cicerone. 
 Centuries later, Ion would have had his place among 
 the youthful ascetics who, by the beauty of their lives, 
 and sometimes of their persons also, adorned the church’ 
 and edified or rebuked the world. But this early Basil 
 or Gregory of Delphi had other work destined for him 
 than serving at the altar or waiting on pilgrims. He 
 will have to go out of “religion” into the haunts of 
 
ION. 
 
 129 
 
 men: the privilege of celibacy is denied him; his ephod 
 he must exchange for a breastplate, his laurel wreath 
 for a plumed helmet. The name of Ion is due to an 
 illustrious race. 
 
 Of all extant Greek dramas, this beautiful one, though 
 easy for readers to understand, is the most complex in 
 its action, and possibly may have kept the original spec¬ 
 tators of it, in spite of the information given by Mercury 
 in the prologue, in suspense up to its very last scene. 
 In fact, the principal characters are all at cross-purposes. 
 Creusa has come to Delphi on the pretext that a friend 
 of hers is anxious to learn what has become of a son 
 whom she has borne to Apollo—her own story trans¬ 
 ferred to another. Her husband Xuthus is there to ask 
 advice from the neighboring oracle of Trophonius by 
 what means Creusa and himself may cease to be child¬ 
 less. While he goes on his errand, his wife encounters 
 Ion in the fore-court of the temple, and their conversa¬ 
 tion begins with the following words: 
 
 “ Ion. Lady, whoe’er thou art, that liberal air 
 Speaks an exalted mind: there is a grace, 
 
 A dignity in those of noble birth, 
 
 That marks their high rank. Yet I marvel much 
 That from thy closed lids the trickling tear 
 Watered thy beauteous cheeks, soon as thine eye 
 Beheld this chaste oracular seat of Phoebus. 
 
 What brings this sorrow, lady? All besides, 
 
 Viewing the temple of the god, are struck 
 With joy; thy melting eye o’erflows with tears. 
 
 Creusa. Not without reason, stranger, art thou seized 
 With wonder at my tears; this sacred dome 
 Wakens the sad remembrance of things past.” 
 
 In a long dialogue she communicates to her unknown 
 son part of her own story, and by casting some reflec¬ 
 tions on the god for his conduct to her supposed friend, 
 
lao 
 
 EURIPIDES . 
 
 incurs a rebuke from the fair young acolyte. The 
 Chorus remarks that mankind are very unlucky—they 
 rarely get what they wish for: 
 
 “ One single blessing 
 
 By any one through life is scarcely found.” 
 
 And Creusa, not at all abashed by Ion’s remonstrance, 
 proceeds to complain of Apollo’s conduct towards her¬ 
 self and their son. 
 
 Xutlius now returns from the Trophonian crypt with 
 good news for his wife and himself. Trophouius, in¬ 
 deed, being a very subordinate deity, “held it unmeet to 
 forestall the answer of a superior one;” “ but,” says 
 Xuthus,— 
 
 “ One thing he told me, 
 
 That childless I should not return, nor thou, 
 
 Home from the oracle;” 
 
 and then goes into the adytum to learn his fortune. 
 
 Ion again expresses his surprise at the strange lady’s 
 shrewish, and indeed as he thinks it, rather impious, 
 language; but says, “ What is the daughter of Erec- 
 tlieus to me? let me to my task.” He admits, however 
 (infected apparently by Creusa’s boldness), that his 
 patron has acted unhandsomely to some virgin or 
 other: 
 
 “ Becoming thus 
 
 By stealth a father, leaving then his children 
 To die, regardless of them.” 
 
 Xuthus reappears, with this command from the 
 Pythoness: “The first male stranger whom you meet, 
 address as your son.” Of course the stranger is Ion; 
 but being greeted with the words, “Health to my son!” 
 by one whom he has never before set eyes on. he is far 
 more offended than pleased by this unlooked-for salu- 
 
ioy. 
 
 131 
 
 tation; and, not at'all unreasonably, all tilings con¬ 
 sidered, be recoils, when Xuthus proceeds to embrace 
 him, and asks— 
 
 “ Art thou, stranger, 
 
 Well in thy wits; or hath the god s displeasure 
 
 Bereft thee of thy reason?” 
 
 He, a minister of the temple, objects to being thus 
 claimed as so near of kin by a man whose business 
 there be has yet to learn: he says, “Hands off, friend— 
 they’ll mar the garlands of the god;” and adds, “If 
 you keep not your distance, you shall have my arrow 
 iu your heart:” 
 
 “ I am not fond of curing wayward strangers 
 And mad men,” 
 
 “If you kill me,” replies Xuthus, “you will kill your 
 father.” “You my father!” cries Ion; “how so? It 
 makes me laugh to hear you.” A strict examination of 
 the father by the son ensues; and at last, neither of the 
 disputants being very critical, and both very devout, 
 the sudden relationship is accepted with full faith by 
 both, and they tenderly embrace each other. Xuthus 
 then imparts to Ion his purpose of taking him to Athens, 
 but of concealing their position for a while. His wife, 
 he argues, may not be greatly pleased at being so sud¬ 
 denly provided with a ready-made son and heir. She 
 comes of a royal house, and so is particular on the 
 score of “blue blood.” The youngster, if adopted, will 
 inherit her property. The discovery of him may be all 
 very well for her husband, who, having once been a 
 wanderer, may, for all she knows, have a son in many 
 towns, Greek or barbaric. But bow will this treasure- 
 trove remove from herself the reproach of barrenness? 
 There is, too, such a thing as ^re-nuptial as well as pout- 
 
138 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 nuptial jealousy; and though so comely, gracious, and 
 religious a youth cannot fail, after a time, to ingratiate 
 himself even with a step-mother, there may be much 
 domestic controversy before so desirable a consumma¬ 
 tion is possible. Xuthus then informs Ion that he in¬ 
 tends to celebrate this joyful event by a sacrifice to 
 Apollo, and by a general feast to the Delphians: 
 
 “ At my table 
 
 Will I receive thee as a welcome guest, 
 
 And cheer thee with the banquet, then conduct thee 
 To Athens with me as a visitant.” 
 
 On leaving the stage he tells the Chorus, who, of 
 course, have heard the real story, to keep what they 
 know to themselves. If they let his wife into the secret 
 they shall surely die; and, inasmuch as they are Athe¬ 
 nian women, Xuthus has the right to threaten, as w^ell 
 as the means to keep his promise. For one who has 
 seen so much of the world, it argues much simplicity 
 in Xuthus to have imagined that even the fear of 
 death will insure silence in some people. Creusa is 
 very soon made aware by her female attendants of her 
 husband’s scheme for deceiving her, and she behaves 
 exactly as he had foreseen she would. She re-enters, ac¬ 
 companied by an aged servant of her house: when the 
 Chorus enlighten her on every point except one—the 
 name of Ion’s mother; and “the venerable man” is ex¬ 
 actly the instrument needed by an indignant woman, for 
 
 “ It is the curse of kings to be attended 
 By slaves that take their humors for a warrant 
 To break within the bloody house of life.” * 
 
 “We,” says the prompter of evil, “by thy husband are 
 
 * “ ging John,” act iv, sc, 2, 
 
133 
 
 ION. 
 
 betrayed.” This comes of unequal marriages. Of him 
 •we know as little as of his new-found bantling: 
 
 “ Xuthus 
 
 Came to the city and thy royal house, 
 
 And wedded thee, all thy inheritance 
 Receiving. By some other woman now 
 Discovered to have children privately— 
 
 How privately I’ll tell thee—when he saw 
 Thou hadst no child, it pleased him not to bear 
 A fate like thine; but by some favorite slave, 
 
 His paramour by stealth, he hath a son. 
 
 Him to some Delphian gave he, distant far, 
 
 To educate, who, to this sacred house 
 Consigned, as secret here, received his nurture. 
 
 He, knowing this, and that his son advanced 
 To manhood was, urged thee to come hither, 
 
 Pleading thy barrenness. ’Twas not the god, 
 
 But Xuthus, who deceived thee, and long since 
 Devised this wily plan to rear his son. 
 
 Failing, he could on Phoebus fix the blame, 
 
 Succeeding, would adroitly choose the time 
 To make him ruler of thy rightful land.” 
 
 The servant—loyal to his mistress as Evan dhu 
 Maccombich was to Fergus Maclvor, equally ready 
 to die for her, or to do murder to avenge her imagined 
 wrongs—devises a plot that would have been quite 
 successful had not Apollo been on the watch. Creusa 
 is in possession of a deadly poison—“ two drops of 
 blood that from the Gorgon fell ”—given to her father 
 Erectheus by Pallas. One heals disease, the other 
 works certain and swift death. The princess proposes 
 to poison her stepson when he is beneath her roof. 
 “ I like not that,” says the servant. “ There you will 
 be the first to be suspected; a stepdame’s hate is pro¬ 
 verbial.” To this Creusa agrees,.and, anticipating the 
 old vassal’s thought, she herself describes the mode of 
 destroying the sop of Xuthus: 
 
134 
 
 EURIPIDES, 
 
 “ This shalt thou do: this little golden casket 
 TaKe from my hand. Bear it beneath thy vest. 
 
 Then, supper ended, when they ’gin to pour 
 Libations to the gods, do thou infuse 
 The drop in the youth’s goblet. Take good heed 
 That none observe thee. Drug his cup alone 
 Who thinks to lord it o’er my house. If once 
 It pass his lips, his foot shall never reach 
 Athens’ fair city; death awaits him here.” 
 
 After a choral ode has been sung, a breathless 
 attendant rushes in and demands where Creusa is. 
 The plot has failed; the old man has been arrested; 
 he has confessed the deed; and the rulers of Delphi 
 are in hot pursuit of his accomplice that she may die 
 overwhelmed with stones. “How were our dark 
 devices brought to light?” the Chorus inquires. Then, 
 as usual on the Greek stage, and also in the French 
 classical drama, a long narrative instructs the spectators 
 of what has taken place. Up to a certain point all went 
 well. Ion’s chalice was drugged furtively. The 
 destined victim poured his libation, and was just about 
 to drink, when some one chanced to utter a word of ill 
 omen, and so Ion poured his wine on the floor, and 
 bade the other guests do the like. The cups are now 
 replenished; but in the pause that ensued between the 
 first and second filling of them, a troop of doves, such 
 as haunt the dome of the temple, came fluttering in, 
 and drank from the wine-pools on the ground. The 
 spilt wine was harmless to all save one. That one 
 drank of the deadly draught poured out by Ion: 
 
 “ Straight, convulsive shiverings seized 
 Her beauteous plumes, around in giddy rings 
 She whirled, and in a strange and mournful note 
 Seemed to lament: amazement seized the guests, 
 
 Seeing the poor bird’s pangs: her breast heaved thick, 
 And, stretching out her scarlet legs, she died," 
 
ION 
 
 135 
 
 Creusa now hurries in: she has been doomed to death 
 by the Pythian Council, and her executioner is to be 
 Ion himself; she clasps the altar of Apollo, but that 
 sanctuary will not avail her, for has she not attempted 
 the life of one of the god’s ministers? In reply to her 
 appeals for life, Ion says: 
 
 “ The good, 
 
 Oppressed by wrongs, should at those hallowed seats 
 
 Find refuge: ill becomes it that th’ unjust 
 
 And just alike should seek protection there.” 
 
 But now the old prophetess, who had years before 
 preserved the infant Ion, having learnt that he is soon 
 to leave the Delphian shrine, produces the swaddling- 
 clothes, the ornaments, and the basket, in which his 
 mother had clad and laid him in the cave under the 
 Acropolis. They may help him, she thinks, some day, 
 to discover the secret of his birth. While her son is 
 examining these tokens, Creusa sees them too, and 
 claims them as the work of her own hands. As Ion 
 unfolds, one by one, the tiny robes, she names, without 
 first seeing them, the subjects which were embroidered 
 on each of them. The recognition is complete. Creusa 
 embraces her long-lost son, and now hesitates not to ack¬ 
 nowledge that Apollo is his father. If any doubt re¬ 
 mained even onthe part of Xuthus, who indeed is not an 
 eyewitness of the discovery, it is dispersed by the speech 
 of Minerva. She explains the reasons for concealment 
 hitherto, and the cause for disclosure now: bids Creusa 
 take her son to the land of Cecrops, and there seat him 
 on the throne of his grandsire Erectlieus. She con¬ 
 cludes with a prediction of the fortunes of the Ionian 
 race, and of the Dorians, who are to descend from 
 Dorus, a sou she is to bear to Xuthus. And thus Apollo 
 is absolved from wrong, and Creusa rejoices in the 
 
136 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 prospect of becoming tlie mother of two Greek nations, 
 and these the rival leaders of the Hellenic world. 
 
 Should this exquisitely beautiful play be ranked 
 among tragedies or comedies? Neither title exactly 
 suits it. Rather is it a melodrama. And but for a 
 few ceremonies inherent in or necessary to the Greek 
 stage, might it not be almost accounted the work of a 
 modern poet? The complexity of the fable, the rapid 
 transitions in the action, the picturesque beauty of the 
 scenes, and the domestic nature of the emotions it excites, 
 have a far less classic than romantic stamp. For the 
 loug speech of the attendant who describes the manner 
 in which the plot against the life of the hero is baffled, 
 substitute a representation on the stage of the banquet- 
 cancel the prologue spoken by Mercury, and the wind¬ 
 ing-up scene in which Minerva appears—and then, even 
 without omitting the Chorus, there will remain a mixed 
 drama which neither Calderon nor Shakespeare might 
 have disdained to own. Perhaps the modern air that 
 we attribute to it may have been among the reasons for 
 the comparative neglect of the “ Ion” by the ancient 
 critics—nay even, it might seem, by those who wit¬ 
 nessed the performance of it. But neither the date of 
 its production nor the trilogy of which it formed a part 
 is known. It may be, as regards “its general composi¬ 
 tion, more pleasing than powerful.” We agree, how¬ 
 ever, entirely with Mr. Paley, when he says: “none of 
 his plays so clearly show the fine mind of Euripides, or 
 impress us with a more favorable idea of his virtuous 
 and human character.” 
 
 HIPPOLYTUS. 
 
 The play which has just been surveyed is of a reli¬ 
 gious character, and the “Hippolytus” is coupled with 
 
HIPPOLYTUS. 
 
 137 
 
 it, because, although dealing with human passion far 
 more than the “Ion,” the principal character in it is 
 also that of a devotee. However philosophical or skep¬ 
 tical Euripides may have been in his theological 
 opinions, no one of the Greek dramatic poets surpassed 
 him in the delineation of piety and reverence for the 
 gods; and he seems to have delighted especially in por¬ 
 traying the effect of such feelings upon pure and youth¬ 
 ful minds. If, indeed, fear rather than love of the 
 gods be essential to devotion, then iEschylus must be 
 accounted a far more pious writer than Euripides. The 
 Calvinists of criticism will naturally prefer gloom and 
 terror, inexorable Fates and all-powerful Furies, to the 
 humane, benign, and rational sentiments which consist 
 with the attributes of mercy and justice. We neither 
 expect nor desire to reconcile these opposite factions 
 further than may be necessary for a statement of the 
 claims of the younger poet to a fair hearing. 
 
 “Ion” and “Ilippolytus” are each of them examples 
 of youthful virtue: the latter has, or at least displays, 
 the more enthusiastic temperament, which, however, is 
 drawn out from him by the greater severity of his lot. 
 Yet we can easily conceive the votary of the chaste 
 Diana passing through life quite as contentedly in her 
 service as Ion would have passed his days as a minister 
 of Apollo. It was the hard destiny of the son of The¬ 
 seus to have incurred the heavy displeasure of one god¬ 
 dess through his earnest devotion to another. The life- 
 battle he has to fight is indeed really a contest between 
 two rival divinities; and were second titles possible in 
 Greek plays, this affecting and noble tragedy might be 
 entitled “Hippolytus, or the Contest between Venus 
 and Diana.” 
 
 t * i * 
 
 As the plot of the “Hippolytus” is, through the \ 
 
138 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 “Phedre” of Racine, probably better known to English 
 readers than the more complicated fable of the “Ion," 
 it may be sufficient to state it briefly, and to direct at¬ 
 tention rather to the characters than the story. The 
 hero is the son of Theseus, king of Athens, by the 
 Amazonian Hippolyta, whom Shakespeare has sketched 
 in his “ Midsummer Night’s Dream.” His boyish years 
 have been passed at Troezen with his grandfather, the 
 pure-minded Pittlieus. While under his roof, Hippoly- 
 tus devotes himself to the worship of Diana: like her 
 he delights in the chase; like her also he shuns the 
 snares of love or the chains of wedlock. Excelling in 
 all manly exercises, and adorned with every virtue, he 
 unhappily not merely neglects Venus, but irritates her 
 by open expressions of contempt for herself and her 
 rites: and he owes to this pride or exclusive zeal the 
 hideous ruin which engulfs him. The offended god¬ 
 dess sets forth in the prologue her determination to de¬ 
 stroy Diana’s favorite, and gives her reasons for it. She 
 says: 
 
 “ Those that reverence my powers I favor, 
 
 But I confound all who think scorn of me. 
 
 For even divinity is fashioned thus— 
 
 It joys in mortal honors.” 
 
 “He may consort with the huntress, he may follow his 
 swift dogs, he may shun fellowship with men, as much 
 as he likes—of his tastes I reck not: what I cannot 
 overlook is his personally offensive conduct to myself, 
 ‘a goddess not inglorious,’ and accounted by mortals 
 generally as not the least potent of Olympians.” The 
 means of revenge are not far to seek. Phaedra, his 
 young and beauteous stepmother, is pining for love of 
 him, and through her unhappy passion he shall be 
 
siPPoifTirs. 
 
 189 
 
 Struck: “with lier I have no quarrel,” says the god¬ 
 dess— 
 
 “Yet let her perish: 
 
 I have not for her life that tenderness 
 As hot to wreak just vengeance on my foes.” 
 
 The prologue ended, Venus disappears, and Hippoly- 
 tus and his retinue of huntsmen enter, singing a hymn 
 to Diana. When it is finished, he thus addresses the 
 goddess—an invocation which lias been thus beautifully 
 paraphrased: 
 
 “ Thou maid of maids, Diana, the goddess whom he fears, 
 
 Unto thee Hippolytus this flowery chaplet bears; 
 
 From meadows where no shepherd his flock a-field e’er drove, 
 From where no woodman’s hatchet hath woke the echoing grove, 
 Where o’er the unshorn meadow the wild bee passes free, 
 
 Where by her river-haunts dwells virgin Modesty; 
 
 Where he who knoweth nothing of the wisdom of the schools 
 Beareth in a virgin heart the fairest of all rules; 
 
 To him ’tis given all freely to cull those self-sown flowers, 
 
 But evil men must touch not pure Nature’s sacred bowers. 
 
 This to his virgin mistress a virgin hand doth bear— 
 
 A wreath of unsoiled flowers to deck her golden hair. 
 
 For such alone of mortals can unto her draw nigh, 
 
 And with that guardian Goddess hold solemn converse high. 
 
 He ever hears the voice of his own virgin Queen, 
 
 He hears what others hear not, and sees her though unseen; 
 
 He holds his virgin purpose in freedom unbeguiled, 
 
 To age and death advancing in innocence a child.” * 
 
 —(Isaac Williams.) 
 
 Hippolytus is warned by bis henchman that he is in¬ 
 curring danger by his total neglect of Venus; but he 
 replies only by a rather contumelious remark that “I 
 salute her from afar;” “some with this god and some 
 with that have dealings;” and then the master and 
 
 * With this exception, all the translated passages in this chap¬ 
 ter are taken from Mr. Maurice Purcell Fitzgerald’s admirable 
 version of i4 Thd Crowned Hippolytus.” 
 
146 
 
 EtfnlPlMS. 
 
 liis men depart to a banquet. We pass onward to 
 Pheedra’s entrance, which is announced by her ancient 
 nurse, much such an accommodating personage as the 
 nurse in “Romeo and Juliet,” although far more mis¬ 
 chievous. She describes the strange malady of her 
 mistress, and her own weary watching by the sufferer’s 
 couch. Plisedra breaks out into frenzied song*. 
 
 “ Lift up my body, 
 
 Straighten my head, 
 
 Hold up the hands 
 And arms of the dead; 
 
 The joints of my limbs are loosened, 
 
 The veil on my brow is like lead. 
 
 Take it off, take it off, let the clustering curls 
 On my shoulders be spread.” 
 
 She pants for cooling streams and the whispering sound 
 of shadowing poplars, and longs to stretch her limbs 
 in repose on the verdurous meadow. Next comes an 
 access of fever, and she breaks forth into wilder strains: 
 
 “ Send me, send me to the mountain: I will wander to the wood, 
 Where the dogs amid the pine-copse track and tear the wild 
 beast's brood; 
 
 I will hang upon his traces where the dappled roebuck bounds: 
 
 I yearn, by all the gods, I yearn to halloo to the hounds, 
 
 To poise the lance of Thessaly above my yellow hair, 
 
 And to loose my hand and lightly launch the barbed point through 
 ain” 
 
 After more wild song and as wild speeches to the 
 nurse, her secret is at length drawn from her; and that 
 faithful but unscrupulous attendant reveals it, under an 
 oath of secrecy, to Hippolytus. Diana’s worshipper, 
 shocked at the disclosure, discourses on the profligacy 
 of women in general, and determines to absent himself 
 for a while until Theseus returns to Troezen, with the 
 intention; as Phlgdra and her nurse believe> of disclosing 
 
HIPPOLYTUS. 
 
 141 
 
 to his father his wife’s infidelity. Overwhelmed by 
 shame and despair, Phaedra hangs herself, but suspends 
 from her neck a letter in which she accuses Hippolytus 
 of making dishonorable proposals to her. Theseus, on 
 his return from an oracle he had been consulting, finds 
 liis wife a lifeless corpse, and believes in liis son’s guilt. 
 Him he curses as a base hypocrite, who, affecting to 
 worship the chaste goddess, has attempted to commit a 
 crime that even Venus would scarcely sanction. His 
 supposed father, Neptune, in an evil moment, had once 
 given Theseus three fatal curses, one of which he now 
 hurls at his innocent son. Hippolytus now turns his 
 back forever on his father’s house: weeping, and attended 
 by his weeping friends, he drives slowly and sadly along 
 the sea-beach. The curse comes upon him in the form 
 of a monster sent by Neptune. A messenger brings the 
 tidings to Theseus. “There came,” he says, “when we 
 had passed the frontier of this realm of Troezen, 
 
 A sound, as if some bolt from Zeus 
 Made thunder from the bowels of the earth— 
 
 A heavy, hollow boom, hideous to hear. 
 
 A sudden fear fell on our youthful hearts 
 Whence came this awful voice: till with fixed gaze 
 Watching the sea-beat ridges, we beheld 
 A mighty billow lifted to the skies; 
 
 And with the billow, at the third great sweep 
 Of mountain surge, the sea gave up a bull, 
 
 Monster of aspect fierce, whose bellowings 
 Filled all the earth, that echoed back the roar 
 In tones that made us shudder. 
 
 The terrified horses become unmanageable; and though 
 
 ** Qur lord, in all their ways long conversant, 
 
 Grasped at their reins, and, throwing back his weight, 
 Pulled hard, as pulls a sailor at the oar; 
 
 They, with set jaws gripping the tempered bits, 
 
 Whirl alonjj, heedless bf the master’s hand,”— 
 
142 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 until Hippolytus is dragged and dashed against the 
 rocks, and lies a broken and bleeding body, from which 
 the spirit is rapidly fleeting. He is borne into his father’s 
 presence, torn, mangled, and bleeding, to die. But The¬ 
 seus, still crediting Phaedra’s false letter, rejoices in his 
 son’s fate, although he alone believes him guilty. The 
 messenger, indeed, bluntly tells the king that he is 
 deceived: 
 
 “ Yet to one thing I never will give credence, 
 
 That this thy son has done a deed of baseness— 
 
 Not should the whole of womankind go hang. 
 
 And score the pines of Ida with their letters, 
 
 Because I know—I know that he is noble.” 
 
 Diana, it may seem to the reader, is far from being a 
 help to her devoted friend and worshipper in his time 
 of trouble. The cause she assigns for her inability to 
 save him gives a curious insight into the comity of the 
 ancient gods. She tells Theseus that his sin is rank, yet 
 not quite unpardonable: 
 
 “ For Cypris willed that these things should be SO 
 To glut her rage; and this with gods is law. 
 
 That none against another’s will resists 
 Qr offers hindrance, but we stand aloof. 
 
 Else be assured, had not the fear of Zeus 
 Deterred me, I had not so sunk in shame 
 As to let die the dearest unto me 
 Of mortal men.” 
 
 She then shows to The»eus how widely he has erred. 
 Next follows a most affecting scene of reconciliation 
 between the distracted father and his dying son. Diana 
 soothes the last moments of Hippolytus by a promise 
 that he shall be worshipped with highest honors at 
 Troezen: 
 
HIPPOL YTUS. 
 
 143 
 
 “ For girls unwed, before their marriage-day, 
 
 Shall offer their shorn tresses at thy shrine, 
 
 And dower thee through long ages with rich tears; 
 
 And many a maid shall raise the tuneful hymn 
 In praise of thee, and ne’er shall Phaedra’s love 
 Perish in silence and be left unsung.” 
 
 The “ Hippolytus” was produced in b.c. 428. In the 
 previous year Pericles died of the plague, which for 
 some months longer continued to rage in Athens. To 
 the pestilence and the death of the greatest of Attic 
 statesmen there are palpable allusions in this tragedy, 
 which to contemporary spectators cannot fail to have 
 been deeply affecting. The nurse of Phaedra bewails 
 her lot as an attendant on a suffering mistress: 
 
 “ Alas for mortal woes! 
 
 Alas for fell disease 1 
 
 Better be sick than be the sick one’s nurse 
 Sickness is sickness, nothing worse; 
 
 Nursing is sorrow in double kind, 
 
 Sorrow of toiling hands, sorrow of troubled mind. 
 
 Our sorrows know no healing.” 
 
 And the final stave of the choral song unmistakably 
 refers to Pericles: 
 
 “ Upon all in the city alike 
 This sudden sorrow will strike. 
 
 There will be much shedding of tears. 
 
 When evil assails the great 
 Many bewail his fate; 
 
 Grief for him grows with the years.” 
 
144 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 CHAPTER yin. 
 
 THE PHOENICIAN WOMEN.—THE SUPPLIANTS.—THE CHIL¬ 
 DREN OF HERCULES.—THE PHRENZY OF HERCULES. 
 
 “ Both tugging to be victors, breast to breast, 
 
 Yet neither conqueror nor conquered; 
 
 So is the equal poise of this fell war.” 
 
 —“ Henry VI., »3d Part. 
 
 Even did space permit, it is unnecessary to dwell 
 minutely upon several of the plays of Euripides. The 
 seven extant dramas of iEschylus and the same num¬ 
 ber of those of Sophocles deserved and admitted of 
 analysis, and already seven pieces of their rival s have 
 passed under review. Of the ten which remain, some 
 were occasional plays; others have apparently no con¬ 
 nection with one another, even did we happeuto know 
 the trilogy to which they belonged. Of these, some 
 would seem to have been composed for a special pur¬ 
 pose— either local, as complimentary to Athens, or 
 political, with a view to the affairs of Greece when they 
 were produced. For English readers they retain little 
 interest; yet although their merits as dramas are slight, 
 they, like all the author’s writings, contain some ad¬ 
 mirable poetry, or some effective scenes and situations. 
 
 In the “Phoenician Women,” Euripides displays 
 some of his greatest defects in the construction of a 
 tragedy, and some of his most conspicuous beauties as 
 a pathetic and picturesque writer. As to its plot, it is 
 cumbrous; and, what is still worse, he competes in it 
 with the “Antigone” of Sophocles and the “Seven 
 against Thebes” of iEscliylus. Jocasta, who in “ (Edi- 
 
THE PHOENICIAN WOMEN 
 
 145 
 
 pus the King” destroys herself, is alive again in this 
 drama. The brothers, whose rivalry and death by each 
 other’s hand were familiar to all, repeat their duel, and 
 the devotion of Antigone to her blind father and her 
 younger brother is brought or rather crammed into it at 
 the end. We have, in fact, almost a trilogy pressed into 
 a single member of it, and in consequence the “ Phoeni¬ 
 cian Women” is, with the exception of the “ (Edipus at 
 Colonus,” the longest of extant Greek tragedies. Eu¬ 
 ripides forgot the sound advice given by the poetess 
 Corinna to her youthful rival, Pindar. He had been, 
 she thought, too profuse in his mythological stories, and 
 therefore advised him for the future “to sow with the 
 hand and not with the sack.” 
 
 As the story of the “ Phoenician Women” has in the 
 main been already told in the volume of this series 
 devoted to iEschylus, and also as many English readers 
 are acquainted with the “ Fibres Etinemis” of Racine, 
 it is not perhaps necessary to detail again the tale of 
 Eteocles and Polynices. It will suffice to present a por¬ 
 tion of one or two scenes, so as to give some idea of the 
 pure ore that lies imbedded in this tragical conglomerate. 
 The scene in which the old servant of the royal house 
 leads Antigone to a tower whence she gazes upon the 
 Argive host encamped around Thebes, even though it 
 is borrowed from that book of the Iliad in which Helen 
 surveys from the walls of Troy the Achaean chieftains, 
 exhibits a master’s hand. The servant can point out 
 to his young mistress the leaders of the Argives, and 
 describe the blazonry of their shields, because he has 
 been in their camp, when he took to Polynices the offer 
 of a truce. After carefully exploring the ground to 
 make sure that no Theban is- in sight, whose gaze tnight 
 light on the maiden, he says to her: 
 
146 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 “ Come then, ascend this height, let thy foot tread 
 These stairs of ancient cedar, thence survey 
 The plains beneath: see what an host of foes 
 At Dirce's fount encamp, and stretch along 
 The valley where Ismenus rolls his stream.” 
 
 Antigone, at her first view from the palace-roof, ex¬ 
 claims* 
 
 “ Awful Diana virgin goddess, see 
 The field all brass glares like the lightning’s blaze.” 
 
 The old man then points out to her the captains of the 
 numerous host which Polynices has led thither to assert 
 his rights. Among other heroes, he singles out one as 
 likely to interest his young mistress "Seest thou,” he 
 says, 
 
 “ That chief now passing o’er the stream 
 Of Dircd? 
 
 Antig. Different he, of different guise 
 
 His arms. Who is the warrior? 
 
 Phor. Tydeus he. 
 
 The son of CEneus. 
 
 Antig. What! the prince who made 
 
 The sister of my brother’s bride his choice?” 
 
 The young ana graceful Parthenopseus, the proud 
 boaster Capaneus, and Hippomedon, that “ haughty 
 king,” are pointed out; but Antigone casts only a pass¬ 
 ing glance on these, and 3 r earns to behold her brother. 
 ‘‘ Where is my Polynices, tell me?” '* He is standing 
 there near the tomb of Niobe,” is the reply. “ I see 
 him, but indist : nctly,” says the princess; “I see the 
 semblance of his form :** 
 
 “ O could I like a nimble-moving cloud. 
 
 Fly through the air, borne on the winged winds, 
 
 Fly to my brother: I would throw my arms 
 Hound his dear neck, unhappy youth, so long 
 An exile. Mark him, good old man^ O mark 
 
Tim pnmNiciAN woMm. 
 
 w 
 
 How graceful in his golden arm she stands, 
 
 And glitters like the bright sun’s orient rays. 
 
 Serv. The truce will bring him hither, in this house 
 His presence soon will fill thy soul with joy ” 
 
 Although not among the leading characters, Menceceus, 
 the son of Creon, Jocasta s brother, is a most interest¬ 
 ing one. The prophet Tiresias has declared that 
 Thebes must be taken by the Seven, unless this youth 
 will die for the people. In deep distress Creon im¬ 
 plores his son to quit this fatal land. Menceceus, 
 “with an honest fraud,” deceiving his father, freely 
 gives his life. He says: 
 
 “ Were it not base 
 
 While those, whom no compulsion of the gods, 
 
 No oracle demands, fight for their country, 
 
 Should I betray my father, brother, city, 
 
 And like a craven yield to abject fear? 
 
 No—byiJove’s throne among the golden stars— 
 
 No, by the blood-stained Mars, I’ll take my stand 
 Upon the highest battlement of Thebes, 
 
 And from it, as the prophet’s voice gave warning, 
 
 I'll plunge into the dragon’s gloomy cave, 
 
 And free this suffering land.” 
 
 The interview between the brothers is too long for 
 extract, and would be marred by compression. One 
 of the sentiments, however, expressed bylhe fierce and 
 unjust Eteocles, is so truly in Shakespeare’s vein, that 
 we cannot pass it over. The usurping Theban king 
 says: 
 
 “ For honor I would mount above the stars, 
 
 Above the sun’s high course, or sink beneath 
 Earth’s deepest centre, might I so obtain 
 This idol of my soul, this worshipt power 
 Of regal state; and to another never 
 Would I resign her; hut myself engross 
 The splendid honor: it were base indeed 
 To barter for low rank a kingly crown. 
 
148 
 
 MUMPIMS. 
 
 And shame it were that he who comes in arms, 
 
 Spreading o’er this brave realm the waste of war, 
 
 Should his rude will enjoy: all Thebes would blush 
 At my dishonor, did I, craven-like, 
 
 Shrink from the Argive spear, and to his hand 
 Resign my rightful sceptre.” 
 
 Hotspur speaks muck in the same strain of “ honor 
 
 “ By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap 
 To pluck bright honor from the pale-faced moon; 
 
 Or dive into the bottom of the deep, 
 
 Where fathom-line could never touch the ground, 
 
 And pluck up drowned honor by the locks; 
 
 So he that doth redeem her thence, might wear 
 Without co-rival all her dignities.” 
 
 By the voluntary death of Menceceus victory is on 
 the Theban side. The description of the battle is 
 among the most striking of dramatic war-scenes. A 
 messenger then enters with further tidings. He tells 
 Jocasta that her sons have agreed to spare further shed¬ 
 ding of blood, and to decide their quarrel by single 
 combat. Here is a new woe added to the many calami¬ 
 ties of the house of Laius. Jocasta hurries to pre¬ 
 vent this unnatural duel, but arrives too late. A 
 second messenger then describes the deadly strife in 
 which the brothers have fallen, and also Jocasta’s death 
 by her own hands. The bodies of the two fratricides 
 are brought on the stage, and a funeral wail is sung by 
 Antigone and the Chorus. For her a new tragedy is 
 commencing. Reft of her mother, her betrothed 
 Menceceus, and her brothers, she is forbidden by 
 Creon, now become regent of Thebes, to perform the 
 last functions for her dear Polynices. The tragedy 
 concludes with her declaration that man may make cruel 
 laws, and forbid the rites of sepulture, but she will 
 obey a higher law* that of nature> and do meet honor 
 
TUP SUPPLIANTS. 
 
 14 § 
 
 to the dead. That no circumstance of sorrow may be 
 wanting to Autigone’s lot, blind, old, discrowned 
 (Edipus is sentenced to banisbment forever from bis 
 late kingdom. His sons unrighteously deposed him; 
 he rashly cursed them in his ire: the curse has been 
 fatal to his whole house, and now falls on his own 
 head. He who, by baffling the Sphinx, won a king¬ 
 dom, goes forth from it a beggar to eat the bitter bread 
 of exile. With him goes his daughter, the one stead¬ 
 fast star left to guide him on his dark way. The shade 
 of Laius is at length appeased: the sceptre has forever 
 departed from the house of Labdacus. 
 
 “ The Suppliants” is, as regards the time of action, 
 a sequel to “The Phoenicians” and “The Seven against 
 Thebes” of iEscliylus. Creon persists in denying the 
 rites of sepulture to the fallen Argive chieftains. 
 The commander of that disastrous expedition, Adras- 
 tus, now the sole survivor of the seven, hurries to 
 Eleusis on the Athenian border, accompanied by the 
 widows and sons of the slain, and takes refuge at the 
 altar of Demeter. A passage from “ The Two Noble 
 Kinsmen” of Fletcher explains far better than the pro¬ 
 logue of the Greek tragedy does the errand of the Sup¬ 
 pliants : 
 
 “ We are six queens, whose sovereigns fell before 
 The wrath of cruel Creon: who endure 
 The beaks of ravens, talons of the kites, 
 
 And pecks of crows, in the foul fields of Thebes: 
 
 He will not suffer us to burn their bones, 
 
 To urn their ashes, nor to take th’ offence 
 Of mortal loathsomeness from the blest eye 
 Of holy Phoebus, but infects the winds 
 With stench of our slain lords. Oh, pity, Duke! 
 
 Thou purger of the earth, draw thy feared sword 
 That does good turns to the world: give us the bones 
 Of our dead kings*, that We may Chapel them* 
 
m 
 
 fttrniriMs. 
 
 And of thy boundless goodness take some note 
 That for our crowned heads we have no roof 
 Save this, which is the lion's and the bear’s, 
 
 And vault for everything.” 
 
 Through the mediation of JSthra, mother of Theseus, 
 king of Athens, the Suppliants are enabled to bring 
 their wrongs before him. Theseus at first is unwilling 
 to espouse their cause: to do so will embroil Athens 
 m a war with Thebes. He is by no means a cheerful 
 giver of aid: revolving in his soul “the various turns 
 of chance below,” he expatiates on the uncertainty of 
 human greatness, and hints that Adrastus himself is an 
 instance of the folly of interfering with other people’s 
 business. But iEthra, whose woman’s nature is deeply 
 moved by the tears of the widowed queens, will hear of 
 nodenial; an d Theseus a tlast, though reluctantly, pro¬ 
 mises to take up their cause. Just as he is dispatching 
 a herald to Creon to demand the bodies of the slain, a 
 Theban messenger comes with a peremptory mandate 
 from Creon that Adrastus and his companions be de¬ 
 livered up. It must be owned that, at this juncture, 
 Theseus is rather a proser. Forgetting the urgency of 
 the case—that dogs and vultures may already be prey¬ 
 ing on the dead—he discourses on the comparative 
 merits of aristocratic and popular government, and on 
 the sin of refusing burial even to enemies. Theseus 
 in the end consents to do what, to be done well, ought 
 to be done quickly. He sends back the Theban herald, 
 after rating him soundly, with a stern response to his 
 master. He follows at the herald’s heels, defeats Creon, 
 and brings back to Eleusis the bodies of the Argive 
 princes. The Chorus enters in procession, chanting a 
 dirge, Adrastus speaks the funeral oration. The dead 
 are then placed on a pyre) and when it is kindled, 
 
THE CHILDREN OF HERCULES. 151 
 
 Evadne, wife of the boaster Capaneus, leaps on his pile. 
 Finally, a deity appears as mediator. Minerva ratifies 
 a treaty between Argos and Athens, and predicts that, 
 at no distant day, the now worsted Argos will, in its 
 turn, humble the pride of Thebes. 
 
 In this tragedy there is a monotony of woe, not re¬ 
 lieved, as in the case of “The Trojan Women” of 
 Euripides, by a series of beautiful choral odes and 
 picturesque situations. The red flames of the six 
 funeral pyres, indeed, must have been effective; and a 
 second Chorus of youths, the orphaned sons of the 
 chieftains, have deepened the pathos excited by the 
 suppliant queens. By it the dramatist employed two 
 of his favorite modes of touching the spectators—the 
 aid of women and the introduction of children. Per¬ 
 haps he had witnessed that sad and solemn spectacle 
 at which Pericles pronounced the encomium over the 
 firstlings of the slain in the Peloponnesian war, and 
 so transferred to a mimic scene the reality of a people’s 
 mourning. 
 
 “The Children of Hercules” need not detain us long, 
 its drift being very similar to that of the tragedy of 
 “The Suppliants.” Apparently it was written at a 
 time when Argos was recovering some of her earlier 
 importance among the Dorian states, owing to the strain 
 put upon the resources of Sparta by the length of her 
 war with Athens. The Argives, it might be feared, 
 were inclined to throw their weight into the scale of 
 Thebes and Lacedaemon, and stood in need of some 
 timeiy advice. The children of Hercules, hunted by 
 their enemies, and driven to take sanctuary at Marathon, 
 where the scene of action is laid, were sheltered by 
 Athens, and from these fugitives the Argives of the 
 time of Euripides were supposed to descend. Let Argos 
 
152 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 now bear in mind this good service: let her remember 
 also the many and grievous wrongs done to her by the 
 cruel and faithless Spartans. If Thebes and the Argive 
 government enabled Sparta to enfeeble Athens, and so 
 disturb the balance of power in Greece, who would be 
 the gainer by such league? Who the loser would be it 
 was not difficult to foresee. When was Sparta, in her 
 prosperity, ever faithful to her allies, or even com¬ 
 monly just? What had Thebes ever done for Argos to 
 make alliance with her desirable? Who had been the 
 real benefactors of the Argive people, their kinsfolk 
 in blood, or the Ionians of Attica? With Athens to 
 aid her, she might regain the position she once held 
 among the Dorian race: but if Athens fell she would 
 be as the Messenians were now, little more than an 
 appanage of the kings or ephors of her powerful neigh¬ 
 bor. 
 
 Passing over this play as historically rather than 
 dramatically interesting to modern readers, we come 
 now to “The Phrenzy of Hercules,” which for some 
 fine scenes in it, and some very curious Euripidean 
 theology, deserves attention. It presents no tokens of 
 having been a hurried or occasional composition. Am¬ 
 phitryon, who delivers the prologue, is, with Megara, 
 the wife of Hercules, and her sons, cruelly treated by 
 Lycus, king, or more properly the usurping tyrant, of 
 Thebes. He, an adventurer from Eubcea, had slain 
 Creon, lord of that city; and to insure himself on his 
 throne, has ordered Megara, Creon’s daughter, and her 
 children by Hercules, for execution. Her husband is 
 at the time detained in Hades, whither he has gone on 
 a very hazardous expedition, and his family despair of 
 his return. Lycus, his “wish being father to the 
 
THE PH HENZE OF HERQULES. 153 
 
 thought,” is of the same opinion; hut fearing that the 
 young Heracleids may some day requite him for the 
 murder of their grandfather Creon, he resolves, like 
 Macbeth, to put his mind at ease by despatching all 
 “Bauquo’s issue.” But on this point both the tyrant 
 and his victims are mistaken, for just as Amphitryon, 
 Megara, and the children, are being led forth to death, 
 Hercules returns, rescues his family, and delivers Thebes 
 from its Eubcean intruder. 
 
 The taint of blood, however, is on the redresser of 
 wrongs, and from it he must be purified by sacrifice to 
 the gods. And now a worse foe to Hercules than Lycus 
 had been assails him. Juno, whose ire against Jupiter's 
 and Alcmena’s son is as unappeasable as her hatred 
 towards Paris and Troy, is not pleased with the turn 
 matters are taking. It has been of no avail to send 
 the object of her spleen to bring up Cerberus from 
 below. Pluto has not, as she hoped her grimy brother- 
 in-law would have done, clapped him into prison, nor 
 Charon refused him homeward passage over the Styx. 
 In the “Alcestis” we have had an impersonation of 
 Death; in the drama now before us there is one of Mad¬ 
 ness (Lyssa), a daughter of Night, who bears the god¬ 
 dess’s instructions to render Hercules a maniac. For 
 this errand Madness has no relish: she is more scrupulous 
 than the Queen of Gods. “It is shameful,” she says- 
 “ to persecute one who has served mankind so well—de¬ 
 stroying beasts of prey, and executing justice on many 
 notorious thieves and cut-throats.” But Iris, one of the 
 Olympian couriers, tells Lyssa, whom she accompanies, 
 that “ Juno is not a person to be trifled with; that unless 
 mortals in future be permitted to beard divinities, Her¬ 
 cules must be made to feel the full weight of celestial 
 wrath. If a god or a goddess be out of temper, even the 
 
154 
 
 mmpiDm. 
 
 best and most valiant of men must smart/’ Reluctantly 
 Lyssa complies with the divine best. Hercules, while 
 engaged in the expiatory sacrifice, goes suddenly dis¬ 
 traught: conceiving them to be foes, he murders his 
 wife and their three sons, narrowly misses sending his 
 earthly father, Amphitryon, to the Shades, and is ex¬ 
 hibited, after an interval filled up with a Choric song, 
 bound, as a dangerous lunatic, with cords to a pillar. 
 The bleeding corpses of his household lie before him. 
 Restored to his right mind, he is appalled by his own 
 deed. Theseus, whom Hercules has just before released 
 from durance in Pluto’s realm, comes on and offers to 
 his deliverer ghostly consolation. The pair of friends 
 depart for Alliens, where the maniac shall be purged of 
 his offence to heaven. Only in the city of the Virgin- 
 goddess can rest and absolution be accorded to him. 
 
 In “The Suppliants” we have some insight into the 
 political opinions of its author. In “The Plirenzy of 
 Hercules” there is a glimpse of his theology. Very 
 early in this drama are religious sentiments, not, indeed, 
 of a very consistent nature, introduced. Amphitryon, 
 for example, when his prospects are most gloomy, taxes 
 Jupiter with unfair dealing towards his copartner in 
 marriage, to his daughter-in-law Megara, and to his 
 grandsons. But when Lycus has been slain, then the 
 Chorus proclaims that a signal instance of divine justice 
 has been shown. When Hercules regains his senses, 
 Theseus labors to putjiis soul at ease by the following 
 arguments: 
 
 “ This ruin from none other god proceeds 
 Than from the wife of Jove. Well thou dost know 
 To counsel others is an easier task 
 Than to bear ills: yet none of mortal men 
 Escape unhurt by fortune; not the gods, 
 
 Unless the stories of the bards be false. 
 
TEE PHRENZY OF HERCULES. 155 
 
 Have they not formed connubial ties, to which 
 No law assents? Have they not galled with chains 
 Their fathers through ambition? Yet they hold 
 Their mansions on Olympus, and their wrongs 
 With patience bear. What wilt thou say, if thou, 
 
 A mortal born, too proudly shouldst contend 
 'Gainst adverse fortune?” 
 
 To which Hercules replies: 
 
 “ Ah me! all this is foreign to my ills. 
 
 I deem not of the gods, as having formed 
 Connubial ties to which no law assents, 
 
 Nor as opprest with chains: disgraceful this 
 I hold, nor ever will believe that one 
 Lords it o’er others: of no foreign aid 
 The God, who is indeed a God, hath need: 
 
 These are the idle fables of your bards.” 
 
 However, ne consents to go with Theseus to Athens, 
 and will not add the guilt of suicide to that of homi¬ 
 cide. 
 
 This play seems at no time to have been a favorite 
 with either spectators or readers. For the former, this 
 dose of Anaxagorean philosophy may have been too 
 strong: for the latter, the piece may have seemed to fol¬ 
 low “a course too bloody*” Yet among the tragic 
 spectacles on the Athenian stage, that of Hercules 
 bound to a column, with the remains of his wife and 
 children before him, and the terror-stricken looks of 
 Amphitryon and his attendants, was surely one of the 
 most affecting. 
 
156 
 
 EURIPIDES, 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE TALE OF TROY: HECUBA—THE TROJAN WOMEN. 
 
 “ High barrows, without marble, or a name, 
 
 A vast untilled and mountain-skirted plain, 
 
 And Ida in the distance, still the same, 
 
 And old Scamander (if ’tis he) remain; 
 
 The situation seems still formed for fame— 
 
 A hundred thousand men might fight again 
 With ease; but where I sought for Ilion’s walls, 
 
 The quiet sheep feeds, and the tortoise crawls.” 
 
 —“ Don Juan,” Cant. iv. 
 
 On subjects connected with the Tale of Troy, ten 
 dramas by Euripides, if the “ Rhesus” be counted among 
 them, are extant, and these represent a small portion 
 only of the themes he drew from the perennial suppty of 
 the Homeric poems. The ancient epic, like the modern 
 novel, although widely differing from tragedy in its 
 form and substance, abounds in dramatic material. 
 Mauy plays, indeed, by Euripides and other dramatic 
 poets of the time, were derived from the Cyclic poets, 
 who either continued the Iliad, and brought the story 
 down to the fall of Troy, or took episodes in it as the 
 groundwork of their dramas. Whether coming from 
 the mainstream or from its branches, the result was the 
 same; and the heroes who espoused the cause of Mene- 
 laus were most of them suited for transplantation to the 
 theatre. 
 
 Two of the ten plays which have Troy for their 
 subject, directly or indirectly, have been noticed in a 
 previous chapter; another, the “ Cyclops,” will be ex¬ 
 amined presently. The “Rhesus,” being of uncertain 
 authorship, will be passed over. Of the seven that 
 
THE TALE OF TROY: HECUBA. 157 
 
 remain only a brief sketch can be given. The Two 
 Iphigenias, indeed, might alone suffice to show how 
 well fitted for the genius of their poet was the Lay 
 of Achilles or the Wanderings of Ulysses. 
 
 The fire that consumed Priam’s capital is still smoul¬ 
 dering when the action of the “Hecuba” and the “Tro¬ 
 jan Women” begins. The scene of the former of these 
 two tragedies is placed in the Thracian Chersonesus— 
 now the Crimea. The Chorus is composed of Trojan 
 captive women, a few days before the subjects, now the 
 fellow-prisoners, of their queen. In the centre of the 
 stage stands Agamemnon’s tent, in a compartment of 
 which Hecuba and her attendants are lodged. The 
 prologue is spoken by her youngest son Polydorus, 
 whom she supposes to be living, but who has been foully 
 murdered by his guardian Polymnestor, the Thracian 
 king. His ghost hovers over the tent, and after inform¬ 
 ing the audience of the manner of his death, he van¬ 
 ishes just as liis aged mother enters on the stage. One 
 more woe is soon imparted to Hecuba by the Chorus. 
 The shade of Achilles has appeared in glittering armor 
 on his tomb, and demanded a victim. Again the Greek 
 ships are delayed; again a virgin must be sacrified be¬ 
 fore their anchors can be weighed. The young life of 
 Ipliigenia was required before the host could leave 
 Aulis; and now the blood of Polyxena, Priam’s young¬ 
 est daughter, must be shed before the Grecian prows 
 can be turned homewards. 
 
 The sacrifice of the daughter is over, when the fate 
 of her son is reported to the miserable mother. An old 
 attendant has been sent to fetch water from the sea, 
 with which Hecuba will bathe—“ not for the bridal bed, 
 but for the tomb”—the dead body of Polyxena. The 
 corpse of Polydorus is found by the attendant cnsf pft 
 
158 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 the sea-beach by the wave. The sum of her woes is 
 now complete. Her other sons lmve fallen in the war; 
 no daughter remains to her except the prophetess Cas¬ 
 sandra, who is herself the bondwomau of Agamemnon; 
 and now her last stay is rudely torn from her—her 
 youngest born, her Benjamin, lies dead on the sands. 
 One hope alone remains for her to cherish—the hope of 
 revenge on the murderer of her boy; and it is speedily 
 gratified. The treacherous guardian comes to the Gre¬ 
 cian camp, is inveigled by Hecuba into the tent, and 
 thence thrust forth eyeless and with bleeding visage, by 
 the infuriated mother and her attendants. This, “ if 
 not victory, is at least revenge.” 
 
 The merits of this tragedy have been much canvassed. 
 The plot has been pronounced monstrous, overcharged 
 with woe, and, besides, unskilfully split into two uncon¬ 
 nected portions. The immolation of Polyxena and the 
 murder of Polydorus have, it is alleged, no necessary 
 connection with each other. There might have been 
 two plays made out of this single one—the first con¬ 
 cluding with the death of the daughter, the second with 
 the vengeance taken for the son. It may be so; but 
 was that the view of the story taken by Euripides? 
 May he not have said to objectors, the continuity of my 
 play lies not where you look for it, but in the character 
 of the person from whom it is named? The double 
 murder of her children is a mere incident in the action; 
 the unity is to be found in her strong will. Old, feeble, 
 and helpless as she is, the mind of the ex-queen of Troy 
 is never clouded. Suffering even lends her new force 
 to act; the deeper her woe the more clearly she perceives 
 that all help is vain if it come not from her own daunt¬ 
 less spirit. It is the tragedy of Hecuba, not of Polyxena 
 or Polydorus 
 
THE TALE OP TROT: EEC VBA. 159 
 
 English readers may find an excuse, if one be needed, 
 of which ancient objectors could not avail themselves. 
 For is not the Hecuba of Euripides near of kin, as a 
 dramatic character, to the Queen Margaret of Shake¬ 
 speare? Her also accumulated woes strengthen even 
 when they seem to crush. She also is made childless; 
 she, like her Greek prototype, is a widow and dis¬ 
 crowned. Yet with what v4gor and what disdain 
 does she to the last look down upon her Ulysses, the 
 crafty Duke of Gloucester, and her Agamemnon, the 
 voluptuous Edward! The description of Polyxena’s 
 sacrifice is among the most beautiful and pathetic pic¬ 
 tures in the Athenian drama. The herald reports to 
 Hecuba how bravely her daughter has met her doom: 
 
 “ The assembled host of Greece before the tomb 
 Stood in full ranks at this sad sacrifice— 
 
 Achilles’ son, holding the virgin’s hand 
 On the mound’s summit:.near to him I stood; 
 
 Of chosen youths an honorable train 
 Were ready there her struggling to restrain.” 
 
 When silence has been proclaimed through the host, 
 and libations poured to the shade of Achilles, Pyrrhus 
 spoke these words: 
 
 “ O son of Peleus. O my father 
 Accept my offering, soothing to the dead; 
 
 I>rink this pure crimson stream of virgin-blood, 
 
 Loose all our cables, fill our sails, and grant 
 Swift passage homeward to the Grecian host.” 
 
 The people joined in the prayer: Pyrrhus drew from its 
 scabbard his golden sword, and 
 
 “ At his nod 
 
 The noble youths stept forth to hold the maiden, 
 
 Which she perceiving, with these words addressed them: 
 
 * Willing I die; let no hand touch me; boldly 
 To the uplifted sword I hold my neck. 
 
160 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 you give me to the gocls, then give me fre >.« 
 
 Loud the applause, then Agamemnon cried: 
 
 ‘ Let no man touch her: ’ and the youths drew back. 
 
 Soon as she heard the royal words, she clasped 
 Her robe, and from her shoulder rent it down, 
 
 And bared her snow-white bosom, beauteous 
 Beyond the deftest sculptor’s nicest art. 
 
 Then bending to the earth her knee, she said— 
 
 Ear never yet has heard more mournful words— 
 
 ‘ If ’tis thy will, young man, to strike this breast, 
 
 Strike; or my throat dost thou prefer, behold 
 It stretched to meet thy sw r ord.’ ” 
 
 Even the “rugged Pyrrhus” is touched with pity, 
 pauses, and at last reluctantly, 
 
 “ Deep in her bosom plunged the shining steel. 
 
 Her life-blood gushed in streams: yet e’en in death, 
 Studious of modesty, her beauteous limbs 
 She covered with her robe.” 
 
 THE TROJAN WOMEN. 
 
 The action of this play takes place a few days before 
 that of the “Hecuba.” It is not, properly speaking, a 
 drama, for it has scarcely any fable. “It is,” says 
 Dean Milman, “a series of pathetic speeches and ex¬ 
 quisite odes on the fall of Troy. What can be more 
 admirable, in the midst of all these speeches of woe 
 and sorrow, than the wild outburst of Cassandra into a 
 bridal song, instead of, as Shakespeare describes her, 
 ‘shrilling her dolours forth*1” 
 
 “ A light! a light! rise up, be swift: 
 
 I seize, I worship, and I lift 
 The bridal torches’ festal rays, 
 
 Till all the burning fane’s ablaze 1 
 Hymen, Hymenoean king! 
 
 Look there! look there! what blessings wait 
 Upon the bridegroom’s nuptial state! 
 
 And I, how blest, who proudly ride 
 Through Argos’ streets, a queenly bride \ 
 
THE TROJAN WOMEN. 
 
 161 
 
 Go thou, my mother! gol 
 With many a gushing tear 
 And frantic shriek of woe. 
 
 Wail for thy sire, thy country dearl 
 I the while, in bridal glee 
 Lift the glowing, glittering fire. 
 
 Hymen! Hymen! all to thee 
 Flames the torch and rings the lyre. 
 
 Bless, O Hecate, the rite; 
 
 Send thy soft and holy light 
 To the virgin’s nuptial bed, 
 
 Lightly lift the airy tread! 
 
 Evan! Evan! dance along. 
 
 Holy are the dance and song; 
 
 Meetest they to celebrate 
 My father Priam’s blissful fate. 
 Beauteous-vested maids of Troy, 
 
 Sing my song of nuptial joy! 
 
 Sing the fated husband led 
 To my virgin bridal bed.” * 
 
 In another choral song, the rejoicing of Troy, at the 
 very moment when the Greeks, coming out from their 
 ambush in the wooden horse, were stealthily creeping 
 to unbar the gates and admit the host from without, is 
 described: 
 
 “ Shouted all the people loud 
 On the rock-built height that stood— 
 
 ‘ Come,’ they sang, as on they prest, 
 
 ‘Come,’ from all our toil released, 
 
 Lead the blest image to the shrine 
 Of her the Jove-born Trojan maid-divine. 
 
 • • • * • ♦ • 
 
 O’er the toil, the triumph, spread 
 Silent night her curtained shade, 
 
 But Lybian fifes still sweetly rang,' 
 
 And many a Phrygian air they sang, 
 
 * Dean Milman—“ Fragments from the Greek Tragedians,” 
 from which volume the following translations are taken. 
 
162 
 
 EURIPIDES . 
 
 And maidens danced with lightsome feet 
 To the jocund measures sweet, 
 
 And every home was blazing bright, 
 
 As the glowing festal light 
 
 Its rich and ruddy splendor streamed, 
 
 Where high and full the mantling wine-cup beamed. 
 
 • •••• • • • 
 
 All at once the cry of slaughter, 
 
 Through the startled city ran; 
 
 The cowering infants on their mother’s breasts 
 Folded their trembling hands within her vests; 
 
 Forth stalked the ambushed Mars, and his fell work began.” 
 
 “Sad,” said the aged Manoali in ‘ Samson Agon- 
 istes/— 
 
 *‘ Sad, but thou knowest to Israelites not saddest, 
 
 The desolation of a hostile city,’ ” 
 
 and probably Athenians, who had laid waste many 
 cities, were not displeased by a representation of the 
 destruction of Troy. With great skill, indeed, Euripi¬ 
 des has shown that the victors are scarcely less de¬ 
 serving of pity than the vanquished. In every Grecian 
 state during the ten years’ siege—and what was true of 
 the Trojan was true also of the Peloponnesian war— 
 many had been made widows and orphans. While the 
 Achaean kings and heroes were encamped on the Trojan 
 strand, their wives have been false to them, usurpers 
 have occupied their thrones, or suitors to their queens 
 have been faring sumptuously at their cost. The pro¬ 
 phecies of Cassandra point to further calamities. A 
 bloody bath awaits Agamemnon; some, like Idomeneus 
 and Diomedes, must take refuge on alien shores; 
 thwarting winds and storm} 1- seas will keep for many 
 years from their kingdoms Ulysses and Menelaus; the 
 greater Ajax has been struck by mania, and falls by liis 
 own hand; and Ajax Teucer will soon be transfixed by 
 
TUB TROJAN WOMEN. 
 
 163 
 
 a thunderbolt launched by the outraged Minerva. A a 
 in several Euripidean tragedies, women play an impor¬ 
 tant part in this one. The daughters of Priam and their 
 attendants are distributed- among the black-bearded 
 Achaean captains—Cassandra is allotted to the “king 
 of men;” Andromache to Pyrrhus, the son of him who 
 slew her husband; her son Astyanax, lest he prove a 
 second Hector, and avenge his father’s death on Argos 
 or Sparta, is hurled from a tower; and Hecuba is as¬ 
 signed to Ulysses, whose wiles, quite as much as his 
 compeers’ weapons, have caused the taking of Troy. 
 As in the “ Suppliant Women,” fire is employed to 
 render the final scene effective. All of Troy that 
 escaped on the night when it was stormed is now given 
 over to the flames. The tragedy closes with the fall 
 of column and roof, of temple and palace, into a fiery 
 abyss, and by the red light of the conflagration the 
 Trojan women are led off to the Grecian galleys. 
 
 Passing over the “ Electra, ” that the Tale of Troy 
 may not weary English readers, and also because what 
 is good and wliat is bad in it * would require comment 
 for which there is not room, the “ Orestes” comes next 
 in order in this batch of Euripidean tragedies. “ The 
 scenes of this drama,” says one who had good right to 
 speak on the subject of Greek Plays,f “afford one of 
 the most beautiful exhibitions of the domestic affections 
 which even the dramas of Euripides can furnish. To 
 the English reader it may be necessary to say, that the 
 situation at the opening of the drama is that of a brother 
 attended only by his sister during the demoniacal posses- 
 
 * “ Magnse virtutes nec minora vitia” would be an appropri¬ 
 ate motto for the “ Electra” of Euripides, 
 t J)e Quincey, 
 
164 
 
 EURIPIDES , 
 
 sion of a suffering conscience (or, in the mythology of 
 the play, haunted by Furies), and in circumstances of 
 immediate danger from enemies, and of desertion or 
 cold regard from nominal friends.” As to the Furies, 
 Longinus says that “ the poet himself sees them, and 
 what his imagination conceives, he almost compels his 
 audience to see also.” We do not know how the spec¬ 
 tators welcomed this tragedy when it was performed; 
 but in later times no one of all the Attic tragedies was 
 so much approved as this one. It is more frequently 
 cited than all the plays of iEschylus and Sophocles put 
 together. The depth of its domestic pathos touched 
 the Grecian world, however it may have affected a 
 Dionysiac audience. 
 
 As in the “Libation Bearers” of HSschylus, Orestes 
 has no sooner avenged the most foul and unnatural 
 murder of his father than mania seizes him. When the 
 first scene opens, he i3 lying haggard, blood-besprent, 
 unshorn, unkempt, and in sordid garments, on a couch, 
 beside which, for six days and six nights, his sister 
 Electra has kept watch. During all that time he has 
 not tasted food: in his lucid intervals he is feeble and 
 fever-stricken; at others he sees in pursuit of him his 
 mother’s vengeful Furies. Menelaus, his uncle, has 
 recently returned from Troy, accompanied by his wife, 
 Helen, and their daughter, Hermione. Here for the 
 w r retched maniac appears to be a gleam of hope: for 
 surely one so near of kin cannot fail to aid him against 
 the citizens of Argos who are calling for his death, or 
 at least perpetual banishment as a matricide, taken 
 red-handed. Helen and Electra, after some difference 
 on the subject, agree that Hermione shall go with offer¬ 
 ings to Clytemnestra’s grave. The Chorus composed of 
 Argive women, sing round the sick man’s bed, Their 
 
THE TROJAN WOMEN. 
 
 165 
 
 theme is the alternate ravings and rational moods of 
 Orestes, nor do they omit to celebrate the awful power 
 of the Furies. And now Menelaus enters, but it soon 
 appears that his nephew will have little help from him. 
 He discovers that Orestes and Electra are to be tried on 
 the capital charge of murder on that very day, by the 
 assembled Argive people. The unhappy culprit pleads 
 strongly for his sister and himself, and their just claim 
 for the aid and protection of the Spartan king. 
 A new enemy now appears. Old Tyndareus, the father 
 of Helen and Clytemnestra, arrives, and by his argu¬ 
 ments against Orestes, decides his wavering son-in-law 
 to remain neuter in the controversy. By craft and 
 shifts alone will Menelaus take the part of the brother 
 and sister. On his part the enraged Tyndareus will do 
 all he can to procure their condemnation. Pylades, 
 their only friend, urges Orestes to present himself to the 
 assembly, plead his own cause, and if possible, by his 
 eloquence, work on the feelings of his judges. He 
 attends, but fails in obtaining a milder sentence than 
 death—the only concession is, that Electra and her 
 brother may put themselves to death, and so avoid the 
 indignity, prince and princess as they are, of dying by 
 the hands of a public executioner or an infuriated mob. 
 The condemned pair take a final farewell, when Pylades 
 suggests a mode of revenge on Menelaus. “ Helen,” he 
 says, “ is now within the palace: slay her, and revenge 
 yourselves on your cold-hearted and selfish kinsman. 
 Fear not her guards; they are only a few cowardly and 
 feeble eunuchs.” To this proposal Electra adds a most 
 practical amendment. “ Killing Helen will avail little; 
 seize Hermione—she is now returning from Clytemnes- 
 tra’s tomb—and hold her as a hostage. Sooner than 
 bis daughter and only child perish, Menelaus yril] 
 
168 
 
 EURIPIDES . 
 
 befriend you.” They combine both plans: Helen shall 
 be slain; Hermione shall be seized upon. The former 
 escapes their hands: just as the sword is at her throat 
 she vanishes into thin air, and, being of divine origin, 
 henceforth will share the immortality of her brothers, 
 Castor and Pollux. The palace doors are barred against 
 Menelaus, now returned from the assembly; but he be¬ 
 holds Orestes and Pylades, with Hermione between 
 them, on the roof. Her they will slay, and make the 
 palace itself her and their funeral pyre. This is indeed 
 a dead lock. But Apollo appears with Helen floating 
 in the air. By his mandate the crime of blood is can¬ 
 celled: all shall live; and the remaining years of Orestes, 
 Electra, and Pylades, pass unclouded by woe. 
 
 In the “Andromache” Orestes appears once more, 
 but not as a leading character. He might, indeed, were 
 it not for his relatives Menelaus and Hermione, have 
 been another person so named, since of the hero of so 
 many Greek dramas there is scarcely a trace left, except 
 a disposition to do murder. Most people, after shed¬ 
 ding so much human blood as he has done, would be 
 contented with living thenceforward at peace with all 
 men,—even his rivals in love. But, on the contrary 
 this Argive prince contrives in the “Andromache” to 
 put out of his way Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, 
 for no better reason than that of coveting Hermione, the 
 Phthian king’s wife, and his own first cousin. We 
 know not whether Apollo grew weary of cleansing of 
 crime; yet to plot and execute a capital offence in the 
 god’s own temple at Delphi can hardly have been other 
 than a severe trial of even divine patience. 
 
 As this play appears to have obtained the second 
 prij$e at the time 9f its representation, besides furnish* 
 
THE TROJAN WOMEN. 
 
 167 
 
 ing the modern stage with more than one tragedy on 
 the subject, it must be credited with a fair amount of 
 interest for spectators. Yet it may be doubted whether 
 it be equally attractive to readers. All that is material 
 to be known of the plot may be gathered from its 
 representatives—the “ Andromaque” of Racine, and the 
 “Distrest Mother” of Ambrose Philips. The following 
 scene, the most effective as well as touching in this 
 somewhat complicated drama, may afford a sample— 
 and it is a favorable one—of the original. 
 
 The heroine from whom the play takes its title is in 
 the power of her enemies, Hermione, wife of Neop- 
 tolemus, and her father Menelaus. Bound with cords, 
 she is being led off to execution, wiien the aged Peleus, 
 the father of Achilles, and great-grandsire of Androm¬ 
 ache’s son, the little Molossus, enters and releases her. 
 In the part of Molossus, as in that of the infant Orestes 
 in the “Iphigenia at Aulis,” we have a specimen of the 
 manner in which Euripides availed himself of children 
 in his scenes. Peleus says to the guards who are in 
 charge of their prisoner: 
 
 “ Stand from her, slaves, that I may know who dares 
 Oppose me, while I free her hands from chains. 
 
 . . . . Come hither, child; 
 
 Beneath my arms unbind thy mother^ chains; 
 
 In Phthia will I nurture thee. 
 
 • • • • • i • 
 
 Go forward, child, beneath my sheltering arms, 
 
 And thou, unhappy dame: the raging storm 
 Escaped, in harbor thou art now secure.” 
 
 The “ Helen” can scarcely be said to form part of the 
 dramatic Tale of Troy, even although Menelaus and his 
 wife are among its dramatis persona. It is a kind of 
 offshoot from that world-wide legend. Perhaps Euripi¬ 
 des, like the lyric poet Stesichorus, thought that some 
 
168 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 apology was due from him to “the fairest and most 
 loving wife in Greece.” In his ‘ Hecuba” and “ Trojan 
 Women” Helen comes in for her full share of hard 
 words. In the “ Orestes” she is represented as greedy 
 of gain, and making an inventory of the goods and 
 chatties of Electra and her brother even before they were 
 condemned to death. In the play last surveyed, Mene- 
 laus is rated for taking her again to hi3 bosom, instead 
 of cutting her throat. The lovely and liberal matron 
 of the Odyssey, the mistress of all hearts of the Iliad, 
 had hitherto been scurvily treated by our poet. His 
 apology to her memory in the play bearing her name is 
 curious. The purport of it is to show that there had 
 been a fearful mistake made all along by the Greeks. 
 The good-for-nothing Helen, for whom they shed so 
 much blood, was a phantasm, a double, a prank of mis¬ 
 chievous deities. The real Helen never went near Ilion, 
 —never injured any one, not even her husband,—but 
 passed the score of years between the visit of Paris to 
 Sparta and the fall of that city in a respectable grass- 
 widowliood under the roof of a pious king and a holy 
 prophetess in Egypt. Here was a delightful discovery I 
 A great capital had been sacked and burnt to the ground, 
 a whole nation removed from its place; Greece nearly 
 ruined; thousands of valiant knights hurried to Hades; 
 hundreds of dainty and delicate women told off, like so 
 many sheep, to new owners; the very gods themselves 
 set together by the ears;—and all for nothing—for a 
 shadow that dislimned into thin air the instant it was 
 no longer wanted for troubling and bewildering man¬ 
 kind 1 
 
 It has been doubted whether there be a comic element 
 in the “Alcestis;” it is far easier to detect one in the 
 “ Helen.” Menelaus has lost his ship, and gets to land 
 
THE TROJAN WOMEN. 
 
 169 
 
 by clinging to its keel. He knows not on what coast he 
 has been wrecked; but wherever it may be, he is not fit 
 to present himself to any respectable person. He says: 
 
 “ I have nor food nor raiment, proof of this 
 Are these poor coverings; ail my former robes 
 The sea has swallowed.” 
 
 He is scolded by an old woman, the portress of King 
 Theoclymenus’s palace, who, seeing his tattered gar¬ 
 ments, takes him for a rogue and vagabond, and when 
 told by him that he is a Greek, says, “ The worse wel¬ 
 come; I am charged by my master to let none of that 
 race approach his door.” The trick by which Helen 
 and himself try to make their escape from the island of 
 Pharos nearly resembles the one we have already met 
 with in the “Iphigenia at Tauri,”—better executed, in¬ 
 deed, and more favored by wind and wave, for in this 
 play the flight is effected. The Chorus, however, who 
 have been aiding the fugitives in the plot by secrecy, 
 like the Chorus in the “Iphigenia,” incur the wrath of 
 the king; and as for his sister, the pious and prophetic 
 Theono£, she has been the chief abettor, and shall pay 
 for her deceit with her life. Theoclymenus, indeed, is 
 even more wroth than the Iphigenian Thoas on a similar 
 occasion, and perhaps justly; for whereas the Tauric 
 king was only incensed because the image of his god¬ 
 dess was stolen, Theoclymenus is a lover of Helen, whom 
 for years he had been eager to make his wife. This 
 makes a material difference between the tvro cases. It 
 might have been possible to obtain a new image of 
 Diana, and induce the goddess to consecrate it properly; 
 but in all the world there was only cine Helen. 
 
 The character of the priestess Theono£ bears some 
 resemblance to that of Ion. Like him, she is truly pure- 
 
170 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 minded and devout: like him, also, her ministration at 
 the altar is a labor of love. Deeply religious, she is also 
 tender and sympathizing with another’s woe; and so 
 soon as she is convinced that the beautiful Greek who 
 has so long taken sanctuary at the tomb of Proteus is 
 the lawful wife of the shipwrecked stranger, she favors 
 their escape. She says,— 
 
 “ To piety my nature and my will 
 Incline: myself I reverence, nor will stain 
 My father’s glory; neither will I grant 
 That to my brother which will mark my name 
 With infamy: for Justice in my heart 
 Has raised her ample shrine; for Nereus 
 This I hold, and Menelaus will strive to save.” 
 
 It has already been observed that the “ Ion” displays 
 the sympathy of the poet with virtue and piety in man: 
 the character of TheonoS shows that the supposed mi¬ 
 sogynist was equally impressed with, as well as able to 
 delineate, purity and piety in woman. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE CYCLOPS. 
 
 “ This is as strange a thing as e’er I looked on. 
 
 He is as disproportioned in his manners 
 As in his shape.”—“ Tempest.” 
 
 - We can hardly be grateful enough for the care or ca¬ 
 price of the grammarian or the collector of old plays who 
 has preserved for us one sample of the Greek satyric 
 drama. Some uncertainty still exists about the precise 
 nature of this curious appendage to the tragic Trilogy; 
 but without such aid as we get from the “ Cyclops” of 
 
TBE Of GLOPS. 
 
 m 
 
 Euripides, we should depend on fragments or guess¬ 
 work, if not be quite in the dark, Even with this single 
 plank from the general wreck of these after-pieces be¬ 
 fore us, we look at the species through a veil. The 
 severe and solemn iEschylus is recorded to have been 
 a successful composer of such light and cheerful pieces; 
 but this bit of information by no means helps to clear 
 up doubts. Sweetness may have come out of the strong, 
 but of what kind was iEschylean mirth, or even relax¬ 
 ation from gravity ? The decorous Sophocles is re¬ 
 ported to have enacted the part of Nausicaa, and played 
 at ball with the handmaidens of the princess in a satyric 
 story evidently taken from one of tne most beautiful 
 scenes in the Odyssey. But how the serene and majes¬ 
 tic artist managed to comport himself under such cir¬ 
 cumstances we have still to wonder. All we know for 
 certain about the Greek fourth play is, that it was in¬ 
 tended to soothe and calm down the feelings of the spec¬ 
 tators after they had been strained and agitated by the 
 prophetic swan-song of Cassandra, by the wail of Jason 
 for his murdered children, by the scene in which Ores¬ 
 tes flies from the Furies, or that where in the noble An¬ 
 tigone and the loving Hsemon are clasped together in 
 their death-embrace. 
 
 Such relaxation of excited feeling was in the true 
 spirit of Greek art in its best days, which required even 
 in the hurricane of tragic passion a moderating element, 
 and the means of returning to composure. Let not, 
 however, the English reader imagine that, although the 
 satyric drama was designed to send home the audience 
 in a tranquil and even cheerful mood, it bore any re¬ 
 semblance to farce, much less to burlesque. Welcome 
 as parodies of scenes or verses from “the lofty grave 
 tragedians” were to Athenian ears, skilful as the comio 
 
EtIRlPiDM 
 
 its 
 
 writers were in such travesties, a Greek audience in thd 
 time of Euripides would have hurled sticks, stones, and 
 hard-shelled fruit at the buffoons who committed such 
 profanation. “ Hamlet,” if performed at Athens, Would 
 not have been followed by “ a popular farce”! Perhaps 
 there is no better definition of the satyric drama than 
 this—and it is one of ancient date—it was “a sportive 
 tragedy.” It was not written by comic, but always by 
 tragic poets: it was in some measure a performance of 
 “state and ancientry.” Seldom, if ever, was it acted 
 apart from tragedy. It may have been a shadow or 
 reminiscence of the primeval age of stage-plays, when 
 the actors were all strollers and the theatre was a cart. 
 Prone to change in their favor or affection to their rulers 
 —ostracizing or crowning them as the whim of the mo¬ 
 ment suggested—the Athenians were very conservative 
 in their opinions on art, and so may have chosen to re¬ 
 tain a sample of the rude entertainments of Thespis, 
 even in the “most high and palmy state” of the tragic 
 drama. The satyric dramatis persona were grave and 
 dignified personages,—demigods and heroes, kings and 
 prophets, councillors and warriors,—who spoke a dia¬ 
 logue, as Ulysses does in the “Cyclops,” only a little 
 less grave than that of the preceding tragedies, per¬ 
 chance a little more ironical than the buskin would have 
 allowed. To make wild laughter was the function of 
 the comedian; to excite cheerfulness rather than mirth 
 was probably the function of these appendages. 
 
 In a city where the Homeric poems were sung or said 
 in the streets, the story of Ulysses and the Cyclops was 
 as familiar to the ears of gentle and simple as “house¬ 
 hold words.” The plot of it and some of the humor 
 are Homer’s. But the one eyed giant of the Odyssey 
 is a solitary bachelor, and the Chorus of Satyrs, indis- 
 
THE CYCLOPS. 
 
 173 
 
 jiensable for the piece, was a later invention. In Ho¬ 
 meric days, Sicily and southern Italy were the wonder¬ 
 land of th« eastern Greeks. Like Prospero’s island, 
 they were thought to harbor very strange beasts. In 
 Sicily dwelt a band of gigantic brethren, who lived, 
 while they had nothing better to eat, on the milk, 
 cheese, and mutton supplied by their flocks, but who 
 were always glad to mend their fare by devouring 
 strangers unlucky enough to come into their neighbor¬ 
 hood. This ill luck befell Ulysses and his ship’s crew 
 —sole survivors of the Ithacan flotilla—on their return 
 from Troy. Contrary winds had driven them far from 
 their course: want of water compelled them to land on 
 the Sicilian shore. In quest of spring or brook, they go 
 to the cavern of the Cyclops. He, fortunately for them, 
 is not just then at home; but his servants, Silenus and 
 the Satyrs, are within, and after a short parley with 
 their unexpected visitors, they consent to supply their 
 need, and even to sell the Greek captain some of 
 their master’s goods, tempted by the quite irresistible 
 bribe of a flask of excellent wine. It may be as well 
 to say at once what had brought such strange domes¬ 
 tics into the Cyclops’ country, and thus the reader will 
 see why they were so glad to taste wine again, and 
 why they acted dishonestly in selling the lambs and 
 kids. The Satyrs had lost their lord and master Bac¬ 
 chus, who had been carried off by Tyrrhenian pirates. 
 So they left their homes in Arcadian highland or Thes¬ 
 salian woods, and went to sea in quest of him, lovers 
 of the wine-cask as they were. Probably these hairy 
 and unkempt folks were imperfectly versed in naviga¬ 
 tion, or they may have had a drunken steersman, or 
 the winds may have been as perverse as they were to 
 Ulysses. In one respect, either their hideousness or 
 
174 
 
 mRIPlDM 
 
 their years—Silenus, at least, was advanced in life- 
 may have befriended them, for Polyphemus does not 
 eat them raw or broiled on the embers, but keeps them 
 in his cave for the service of his dairy and his kine. At 
 last Polyphemus enters; and now we can imagine some 
 excitement on the part of the junior Athenians, sedate 
 smiles on that of their elders, and even a scream or two 
 from the place where the women were packed together. 
 No known art or device, we maybe sure, was neglected 
 by the managers in making up the giant for his part. If 
 Ulysses were of the usual stature of Greek performers, 
 Polyphemus must have worn far higher soles and loftier 
 head-gear than the Ithacan king. The monster must 
 been at least by “the altitude of a cliopine” taller than 
 his guest. A yawning mask doubtless aggravated the 
 terror of his visage; his voice must have been like that 
 of an irate bull; and his single eye as big as an ordi¬ 
 nary-sized plate, and as red as a live coal. The Satyrs 
 may have reminded their beholders of the well-known 
 features of Socrates; nor could the philosopher have 
 been justly angry at a resemblance that he himself had 
 pointed out. Polyphemus is too stupid to be either 
 “witty in himself or a cause of wit in others;” accord¬ 
 ingly, such comic business as there is in the piece 
 devolves on Sileuus and his companions, who relieve 
 gigantic dulness by quips and cranks, much as the cele¬ 
 brated Jack relieves the stolidity of Blunderbore by 
 some friendly conversation before he rips him up. 
 
 The Cyclops had been absent on ./Etna, hunting with 
 his dogs. Like King Lear on his return from the chase, 
 he calls out lustily for his dinner, after a previous in¬ 
 quiry about his lambs, ewes, and cheese-baskets. He 
 discerns that something unusual has taken place during 
 his absence, and threatens to beat Silenus until he rains 
 
THE CYCLOPS . 
 
 175 
 
 tears unless he answers promptly. Next his eye lights 
 on the strangers, and also on something still more irri¬ 
 tating to him as a grazier: 
 
 u What is this crowd I see beside the stalls? 
 
 Outlaws or thieves? for near my cavern-home 
 I see my young lambs coupled two by two 
 With willow-bands: mixed with my cheeses lie 
 Their implements: and this old fellow here 
 Has his bald head broken with 3tripes.” * 
 
 The shrewd but perfidious Silenus has inflicted these 
 stripes on himself in order to make his story of being 
 robbed credible to his master—a device of a similar kind 
 to that which Bardolph says caused him to blush. 
 
 “ Sil. Ahmel 
 
 I have been beaten till I burn with fever. 
 
 Cyc. By whom? who laid his fist upon your head. 
 
 Sil. Those men, because I would not suffer them 
 To steal your goods. 
 
 Cyc. Did not the rascals know 
 
 I am a god, sprung from the race of heaven? 
 
 Sil. I told them so, but they bore off your things. 
 
 And ate the cheese in spite of all I said, 
 
 And carried out the lambs.” 
 
 And inasmuch as this capital felony was, he alleged, 
 accompanied by threats of personal violence to Poly¬ 
 phemus himself, he not unreasonably flies into a terrible 
 passion, and hastens to enforce Cyclopian law on the 
 spoilers of his goods: 
 
 “ Cycl. In truth? nay, haste, and place in order quickly 
 The cooking-knives, and heap upon the hearth. 
 
 And kindle it, a great fagot of wood; 
 
 As soon as they are slaughtered they shall fill 
 My belly, broiling warm from the live coals, 
 
 ■ -■yw . ■ ... ■ ■ ' ' ■ • — ; 1 
 
 * Shelley’s translation of the “ Cyclops” has been followed In 
 each extract from the piece. 
 
176 
 
 EURIPIDES . 
 
 Or boiled and seethed within the bubbling caldron. 
 
 I am quite sick of the wild mountain-game, 
 
 Of stags and lions I have gorged enough, 
 
 And I grow hungry for the flesh of men.” 
 
 In vain Ulysses assures Polyphemus that he has never 
 laid hands on Silenus; that he purchased the lambs for 
 wine, honestly as he thought, and that the lying old 
 Satyr’s nose will vouch for the exchange and barter. All 
 was done 
 
 “ By mutual compact, without force; 
 
 There is no word of truth in all he says, 
 
 For slyly he was selling all your store.’ 
 
 But as well might a poacher accused of snaring hares or 
 trapping foxes have pleaded innocence before that wor¬ 
 shipful justice, Squire Western, as Ulysses expect his 
 plain tale to put down the evidence, confirmed by the 
 very hard swearing, of Silenus. The Chorus, indeed, 
 following its proper function of mediator between “con¬ 
 tending opposites,” assures the Cyclops that the stranger 
 tells the simple truth, and that they saw Silenus giving 
 the lambs to him. “ You lie!” exclaims the giant; “this 
 old fellow is juster than Rhadamantlius: I believe his 
 story.” Now, for a few minutes, curiosity prevails over 
 hunger for the flesh of men, and Polyphemus inquires 
 about the race, adventures, life, and conversation of the 
 intruders on his cavern. Ulysses, carefully concealing 
 his real name, gives the required information. He is 
 one of the chiefs who have taken Troy: he is on his 
 return home to Ithaca: not choice, but tempests, have 
 brought him to this land. “Moreover,” he adds, “if 
 you kill and eat me or my comrades, you will be very 
 ungrateful. We are all pious worshippers of your * great 
 father’ Neptune. We have built him many temples in 
 Greece. Much have we endured by war and land and 
 
THE CYCLOPS . 
 
 177 
 
 sea, and it will be very hard on us, after escaping so 
 many perils, to be now roasted or boiled for a supper to 
 Neptune’s son.” 
 
 The reply of Polyphemus is just what might have 
 been looked for from such a sensual barbarian. It is 
 unfilial, and even blasphemous. “A fig,”he cries, “for 
 your temples and their gods. The wise man knows of 
 nothing worth worshipping except wealth.” 
 
 “ AH other things are a pretence and boast. 
 
 What are my father’s ocean promontories, 
 
 The sacred rocks whereon he dwells, to me? 
 
 Strangers, I laugh to scorn Jove’s thunderbolt: 
 
 I know not that his strength is more than mine; 
 
 As to the rest I care not.” 
 
 “ Jupiter may send snow or rain or wind as he list. I 
 have a weather-proof cave, plenty of fuel and milk; 
 my larder is ever provided with a haunch of lion or a 
 fat calf; and so that I have a good crop of grass in yon¬ 
 der meadows, I and my cattle care alike for your Jupi¬ 
 ter.” And then he winds up with a declaration of his 
 purpose to have a good dinner: 
 
 “ I well know 
 
 The wise man’s only Jupiter is this, 
 
 To eat and drink during his little day, 
 
 And give himself no care. And as for those 
 Who complicate with laws the life of man, 
 
 I freely give them tears for their reward. 
 
 I will not cheat my soul of its delight, 
 
 Or hesitate in dining upon you - ” 
 
 Clearly, after hearing these hospitable intentions, 
 Ulysses will need all the cunning for which he was 
 famed. “ This,” he thinks, “ is by far the worst scrape 
 I ever was in. Very near was I to death when I en¬ 
 tered Troy town as a spy, and when I cajoled Queen 
 Hecuba to let me out of it. I just missed being trans- 
 
178 
 
 EUBIPIDES. 
 
 fixed by Philoctetes in Lemnos by one of bis poisoned 
 arrows, when Machaon, that skilful surgeon, was many 
 leagues away from me, and when, even if he had been 
 at hand, he could not perhaps have counteracted the old 
 centaur’s venom. ‘ About my brain,’ I must not 
 faint, but contrive to foil this brute’s designs. If I can 
 not, better had it been for me to have died by the hand 
 of the mad Ajax, for then I should have been decently 
 buried by the Greeks, and Penelope have known what 
 became of me; whereas, if I am to go down this mon¬ 
 ster’s ‘insatiate maw,’ she may go on for ten years 
 more weeping and weaving, and after all be forced to 
 marry one of her suitors. Now, if ever, Pallas Athend 
 befriend me.” 
 
 The stage is cleared, and the Chorus sing appropriate 
 but not cheerful stanzas, with reference to present cir¬ 
 cumstances : 
 
 “ The Cyclops iEtnean is cruel and bold, 
 
 He murders the strangers 
 That sit on his hearth, 
 
 And dreads no avengers 
 To rise from the earth. 
 
 He roasts the men before they are cold, 
 
 He snatches them broiling from the coal. 
 
 And from the caldron pulls them whole, 
 
 And minces their flesh and gnaws their bone 
 With his cursed teeth till all be gone.” 
 
 Ulysses re-enters • he has been surveying the Cyclo- 
 pian larder and kitchen, and is as terrified by the sight 
 of their contents as Fatima was when she rushed out of 
 Bluebeard’s chamber of horrors. He has seen Polyphe¬ 
 mus providing for his own comforts. He kindles a 
 !&ge fire,— 
 
 Casting on the broad hearth 
 The knotty limbs of an enormous oak, 
 
 Three wagon-loads at least.” 
 
TM8 CYCLOPS. 
 
 m 
 
 fie spreads upon the ground a couch of pine-leaves: he 
 milks his cows,— 
 
 “ And fills a bowl 
 
 Three cubits wide and four in depth, as much 
 As would contain three amphorae, and bound it 
 With ivy.” 
 
 He puts on the fire a pot to boil, and makes red-hot the 
 points of sundry spits, and, when all is ready, he seizes 
 two of the Ithacans,— 
 
 “And killed them In a measured kind of manner; 
 
 For he flung one against the brazen rivets 
 Of the huge caldron, and caught the other 
 By the foot’s tendon, and knocked out his brains 
 Upon the sharp edge of the craggy stone.” 
 
 One he boiled, the other he roasted, while Ulysses, 
 
 “With the tears raining from his eyes, 
 
 Stood near the Cyclops, ministering to him.” 
 
 But while waiting at table, a happy thought presents 
 itself to Ulysses. “If I can but make him drunk 
 enough, then I can deal with him.” He plies him well 
 with Maronian wine at dinner; but Polyphemus is as 
 yet “ na that fou” to fall into the trap, He is still 
 sober enough to remember that his brother-giants may 
 relish a cheerful glass no less than himself. They in¬ 
 habit a village on iEtna not far off, and he will go and 
 invite them to share his Bacchic drink. The Chorus 
 advise Ulysses to walk with him, and pitch him over a 
 precipice, as he is somewhat unsteady on his legs. 
 “ That will never do,” responds the sagacious Ithacan. 
 “ I have a far more subtle device. I will appeal to his 
 appetite: tell him how unwise it were to summon part¬ 
 ners for his revelry. Why not prolong his pleasure by 
 
muiMDMS. 
 
 keeping this particular Maronian for his own sole use?” 
 The Cyclops presently returns, singing— 
 
 *' Ha! ha! I am full of wine, 
 
 Heavy with the joy divine, 
 
 With the young feast oversated; 
 
 Like a merchant’s vessel freighted 
 To the water’s edge, my crop 
 Is laden to the gullet’s top. 
 
 The fresh meadow-grass of spring 
 Tempts me forth thus wandering 
 To my brothers on the mountains, 
 
 Who shall share the wine’s sweet fountains. 
 
 Bring the cask, O stranger, bring!” 
 
 He is diverted from his purpose by Ulysses; and for 
 once Silenus acts a friendly part to him by asking his 
 master, “What need have you of pot-companions? 
 stay at home.” Indeed the advice proceeds from a de¬ 
 sign to filch some of the wine himself—an impossibility 
 if the cask is borne off to the village, where there will 
 be so many eyes—single ones indeed—upon him. So 
 it is agreed that the giant-brothers be kept in the dark, 
 and quaff their bowls of milk, while Polyphemus drinks 
 deep potations of Maron alone. The Greek stranger 
 has now so ingratiated himself with his savage host 
 that the latter condescends to ask his name, and to 
 promise to eat him last, in token of his gratitude for his 
 drink and good counsel. “ My name,” says Ulysses, 
 “ is Nobody.” With this information the Sicilian Cali¬ 
 ban is content; and with the exception that Silenus 
 teases him by putting the flagon out of his reach, with 
 the above-mentioned felonious intent, all goes merry as 
 a marriage-bell. Ulysses, now again cup-bearer, plies 
 him so well, that the “ poor monster” sees visions*— 
 
 “ The throne of Jove, 
 
 And the clear congregation of the Gods”— 
 
Tm OT6LOP3. 
 
 m 
 
 and in the end drops off into slumber profound as 
 Christopher Sly’s. 
 
 Now comes the dramatic retribution. The trunk of 
 an olive-tree has been sharpened to a point, is heated 
 in the fire, and thrust by Ulysses and his surviving 
 companions into the eye of the insensible giant. The 
 Chorus, indeed, had promised to lend a hand in this 
 operation, for they are anxious to be off in quest of 
 their liege-lord Bacchus. But their courage fails them 
 at the proper moment—some have sprained ankles, 
 others have dust in their eyes, others weakness of 
 spine. All they can or will do—and this service is 
 truly operatic in its kind—is to sing a cheerful and 
 encouraging accompaniment to the boring-out of the 
 eye:, 
 
 “ Hasten and thrust, 
 
 And parch up to dust, 
 
 The eye of the beast 
 Who feeds on his guest; 
 
 Burn and blind 
 The M tnean hind; 
 
 Scoop and draw, 
 
 But beware lest he claw 
 Your limbs near his maw.” 
 
 The last scene of the “ Cyclops” has to the reader an 
 appearance of being either imperfectly preserved or 
 originally hurried over. It may be that, not having 
 the action before us, we miss some connecting dumb- 
 show. In the Odyssey the escape of Utysses and his 
 crew is effected with much difficulty, and great risk to 
 their chief: in this satyric play they get out of the 
 cave quickly as well as safely, though its owner says 
 that— 
 
 “ Standing at the outlet, 
 
 He’ll bar the way and catch them as they pass;’* 
 
m 
 
 titTMPtMs. 
 
 but either they creep under his huge legs, like so Many 
 Gullivers in Brobdingnag, or he is a very inefficient 
 doorkeeper-drink and pain seemingly having ren¬ 
 dered him as incapable of hearing as of sight. Indeed 
 Polyphemus, blind and despairing, is the only sufferer 
 in this flight of the Ithacans. In striking at them he 
 beats the air, or cracks his skull against the rocky wall. 
 The Chorus taunt and misguide him. “Are these 
 villains on my right hand?” “No, on your left,”— 
 whereupon he dashes at vacancy, and cries, “ O woe on 
 woe, I have broken my head!” “ Did you fall into the 
 fire when drunk?” ask the mocking Chorus, who had 
 been witnesses of the whole transaction. “’Twas 
 Nobody destroyed me.” “Then no one is to blame.’* 
 “ I tell you, varlets as you are, Nobody blinded me.” 
 “ Then you are not blind.” “ Where is that accursed 
 Nobody?” “Nowhere, Cyclops.” But at last the secret 
 comes out. “Detested wretch, where are you?” roars 
 the baffled monster. The wretch replies; 
 
 “ Far from you, 
 
 1 keep with care this body of Ulysses. 
 
 Cych What do you say? You proffer a new name 1 
 Ulys. My father named me so: and I have taken 
 A full revenge for your unnatural feast: 
 
 I should have done ill to burn down Troy, 
 
 And not revenged the murder of my comrades. 
 
 Cycl. Ai, Ai! the ancient oracle is accomplished; 
 
 It said that I should have my eyesight blinded 
 By you coming from Troy, yet it foretold 
 That you should pay the penalty for this, 
 
 By wandering long over the homeless sea.” 
 
 The humor of thi3 after-piece may not seem to 
 English readers of the first quality, and the quibble 
 on Nobody and Nowhere to be far beneath the level of 
 the jeu dt mots in modern burlesque. But let them 
 
TEE CYCLOPS. 
 
 188 
 
 not therefore look down on Ancient Classics. Rome 
 was not built in a day. Life is short, but the art of 
 Punning is long. Even Aristophanes came not up to 
 the mark of Thomas Hood. The world, it must be re¬ 
 membered, was comparatively young when Euripides 
 wrote his “ Cyclops”—much younger when Homer told 
 the tale of Polyphemus and Ulysses. Moreover, a 
 bucolical monster was not a person to throw away the 
 cream of jests upon. Probably he never quite com¬ 
 prehended the point of Nobody , though in after-hours, 
 and in the tedium of blindness, disabled from hunting 
 the lion and the bear of Mount iEtna, he must have 
 often pondered on his unlucky encounter with a crafty 
 Greek. Also it should be borne in mind that the real 
 fun and frolic of the Athenians was reserved for the 
 comic drama. There, indeed, it was as extravagant, 
 satyrical, and even boisterous as we can imagine, or 
 spectators could desire. Possibly Euripides, grave, 
 taciturn, and tender in his disposition, was not the best 
 representative of this species of drama. That there was 
 in him some latent humor, some disposition to slide 
 out of the tragic into the comic vein, has already been 
 observed in the sketch of his “ Alcestis.” With all its 
 shortcomings, the “ Cyclops” is the sole contemporary 
 clue wo have to the nature of the fourth member of the 
 usual batch of plays, and so, with Sanclio, we must 
 “ be thankful for it, and not look the gift horse too 
 closely in the mouth.” 
 
 THE END. 
 
BATTLE ECHOES. 
 
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THE PIONEER BOY 
 
 YOUNG- PEOPLE’S LIFE OP ABRAHAM LINCOLN: OR 
 
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L I Y T 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Key. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A. 
 
 AUTHOR OP 
 
 ‘ETONIANA,’ ‘THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS,’ ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 JOHN B. ALDEN, PUBLISHER 
 
 1883 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER. PAGE. 
 
 I. Introductory . 5 
 
 II. Rome under its Seven Kings. 17 
 
 III. Growth of the Republic. 29 
 
 IY. From the Decemvirate to the Sack of Rome by the 
 
 Gauls. 53 
 
 V. Conquest of Latium. 67 
 
 VI. The Romans become Masters of Italy. 83 
 
 VII. The Lost Decade. 94 
 
 VIII. Second Punic War: Thrasymenus and Cannae. 98 
 
 IX. Second Punic War: Cannae to Zama.. 112 
 
 X. The Romans in Greece. 134 
 
 XI. The Romans in Asia . 139 
 
 XII. The Fall of Macedon. 149 
 
 XIII. Concluding Remarks.. 159 
 
 ! 
 
LIVY. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 Titus Lrvius Patavinus —owing this last name to his 
 having been born at Patavium (Padua)—was one of 
 that brilliant circle of authors who lighted the court 
 of Augustus. His birth may be fixed with most prob¬ 
 ability in 59 b.c. , the year in which Julius Caesar and 
 Bibulus were consuls. Horace would thus be his 
 senior by about five years, and Virgil ten; and although 
 liis name is not mentioned by either poet, he was prob¬ 
 ably well acquainted with both. Though of provincial 
 origin, as were nearly all the great Roman writers, he 
 came of a family which had in its day given con¬ 
 suls to Rome; and his native city, in which his own 
 particular branch of it had settled, was one of the most 
 important in Italy. His original profession was most 
 probably that of a professor of rhetoric: a vocation not 
 only popular and respectable, but often highly lucrative, 
 if the professor could get his lectures well attended. 
 We know nothing of his first introduction to the 
 capital; but, if we may trust his contemporary, Horace, 
 literary ability of any kind was a ready passport to the 
 acquaintance of some of the great men about Augustus’ 
 
6 
 
 LIVY ,; 
 
 court, and through them to the emperor himself. Some 
 such introduction was at least effected; for he mentions 
 in the early part of his history, very simply and as 
 though it were quite an ordinary event, his having ac¬ 
 companied Augustus into the temple of Jupiter Fere- 
 trius, and heard him read the old inscriptions there.* 
 Some degree of intimacy seems also to be implied by 
 the anecdote recorded by the historian Tacitus,! that 
 Livy had expressed such a warm admiration of the 
 character of' Pompey, the unsuccessful opponent of 
 the first Csesar, that Augustus used good-humoredly to 
 call him a “ Pompeyite,” without allowing the fact of 
 his predilection for his uncle’s great rival to interfere in 
 any way with their friendship. It is said that he even 
 had apartments assigned him in the imperial palace. 
 
 It may very probably have been in accordance with 
 some suggestion from Augustus himself, or some of the 
 able ministers who were in his confidence, that he first 
 turned his attention from rhetoric to history. A crowd 
 of small authors, eager to meet the tastes of a patron 
 who was himself an author—though he had the good 
 sense to burn his tragedies instead of publishing them 
 —were busy writing on the recent civil wars. The 
 great emperor—let his undefined position be so termed, 
 in default of any other word to express it—was always 
 anxious to magnify the historic glories of Rome. As 
 in that interest he had made Virgil an epic poet almost 
 against his will, so we may conceive he recognized in 
 the eloquent rhetorician all the capacities of a court 
 historian. There can be no doubt, at least, that the 
 author of the “Annals of Rome ” had the hearty con¬ 
 currence of Augustus in the great work which he under- 
 
 * Book iv. chap. 20. 
 
 t Tac. Annals, iv. 34. 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 7 
 
 took. That he must have had free access to public 
 documents and records is evident from the references 
 and quotations in the body of his history. Without 
 such facilities it could never nave been written, and to 
 have obtained them implies much more intimate rela¬ 
 tions with the existing authorities than would be neces¬ 
 sarily the case in our more liberal days. Another 
 proof that he enjoyed some degree of intimacy with 
 the family of the Caesars may be found in the statement 
 of Suetonius, that it was at his suggestion that young 
 Claudius Nero, the step-son of Augustus and future 
 emperor, began the study of history. On this slight 
 ground some of his biographers have built a theory that 
 the education of the young prince had been intrusted to 
 him. 
 
 Such biographies of him as are extant—notably that by 
 his own townsman, Giacomo Tomasini, bishop of Citta 
 Nuova—are utterly untrustworthy in their details. All 
 - that we know of his private life is that he was certainly 
 married, and had at least one son and one daughter. 
 The latter became the wife of Magius or Magirus, 
 who is said by the elder Seneca to have owed his fame 
 as a rhetorician rather to the merits of his father-in 
 law than to his own. So widespread, indeed, was the 
 reputation of the great historian even during his life, 
 that Pliny relates, in one of his letters, the fact of a 
 man having once made a journey all the way from 
 Cadiz merely to gratify himself with a sight of him. 
 If we want to see how biographies grow, we have only 
 to read the amplification of this fact, if fact it be, by 
 such a respectable writer as St. Jerome: “We read,” 
 says he (and he must mean in Pliny), “that to drink 
 of the rich stream of eloquence which flowed from 
 Jfivy there came sundry men of npble birth from the 
 
8 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 most distant parts of Spain—from Cadiz—and from 
 Gaul: and men whom the sight of Rome itself had 
 failed to attract were drawn thither by the fame of a 
 single individual. That generation saw a wonder, un¬ 
 heard of in any age, and ever to be remembered, that 
 visitors entered such a city, and yet were seeking some¬ 
 thing beside and beyond it.** Livy returned to- end 
 his days in his native town, where he died at the age 
 of seventy-one. 
 
 Some thirteen centuries after his death, the good 
 citizens of Padua thought they had discovered his 
 bones. First of all, in 1860, a tablet was dug up 
 within the monastery of St. Justina, bearing an inscrip¬ 
 tion in which certainly occurred the name of T. Lrvius, 
 and which was at once associated with the great his¬ 
 torian. Then, about fifty years afterwards, in digging 
 the foundations of some new buildings, the workmen 
 came upon an ancient pavement, and below it a leaden 
 cist enclosing human bones. The older monks pro¬ 
 nounced this to be the very place where the monumen¬ 
 tal tablet had previously been found; and, there could 
 be no doubt, these were the bones of Livy. Great 
 honor was paid to them, and a costly monument 
 erected at the public expense. But in one respect the 
 citizens were ungrateful: they made a present of the 
 bone of the right arm—the arm which had written the 
 immortal “Annals”—to Alphonso “theMagnanimous,” 
 King of Arragon and the two Sicilies; whose succes¬ 
 sors (for he died before it reached him) had it enclosed 
 in a rich shrine. The whole romance, however, which 
 had gathered round the great author’s bones was dissi¬ 
 pated by the same relentless modern criticism which 
 
 * S. Hieron. Epist. 5H, 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 9 
 
 lias since dealt so hardly with the earlier portions of his 
 “ Annals.” Under competent examination, the abbre¬ 
 viations on the monumental tablet—and therefore prob¬ 
 ably the bones—were found to belong to a slave who 
 had received his freedom, had in consequence taken 
 the name of his master, which happened to be 
 “Livius,” and had subsequently risen to some distinc¬ 
 tion in the city. 
 
 Besides his great historical work, Livy wrote (prob¬ 
 ably at an earlier period) certain Dialogues and treatises 
 on philosophy, of which we know nothing beyond their 
 mention by Seneca. The “ Annals,” which alone have 
 reached us, and these in a sadly mutilated shape, con¬ 
 tained in their entirety the history of Rome from its 
 foundation down to within a few years of the Christian 
 era. Of the hundred and forty-two “ books” to which 
 the work extended, we have now but thirty-five, and 
 of these some were recovered only in the sixteenth 
 century. Pope Gregory I. is said to have ordered all 
 the copies of the “ Annals” on which he could lay 
 hands to be burnt, because of the many superstitious 
 stories they contained; and the same is said to have 
 been done by Gregory VII. Considering the character 
 of the legends which the Roman Church of those days 
 adopted for its own, these zealous precautions may seem 
 somewhat inconsistent. There is a fanciful kind of di¬ 
 vision of the books into “decades,” or sets of ten each, 
 —an arrangement due probably to the early editors 
 rather than to the author. We have the first, third, 
 and fourth of these decades entire, with half of the 
 fifth, and a few fragments of the others. Unhappily, 
 the lost portion, as containing the later and more au¬ 
 thentic history of the Roman people, and more espe¬ 
 cially of the period with which the writer was contem- 
 
10 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 porary, is that we should have most wished to see. 
 Lord Bolingbroke said that he would willingly give up 
 all we have for what we have not; but this is not, after 
 all, a very remarkable concession, since the missing 
 books are more than thrice as many as their survivors. 
 Dr. Arnold’s valuation is more just: he says that we 
 might afford to give up ‘ ‘ every line of Livy’s history 
 that we at present possess, if we could so purchase the 
 recovery of the eighth and ninth decades only, which 
 contained the history of the Italian War, and the Civil 
 War of Marius and Sylla.” Gibbon goes so far as to 
 say that he would readily sacrifice the works of a good 
 many ancient authors which we possess for Livy’s 
 history of the sixty years between a.u.c. 663 and 
 723. From time to time scholars have been tan¬ 
 talized with hopes of recovering the lost manuscripts, 
 and reports of their existence—often in the most un¬ 
 likely quarters. Buried in dust in the library of the 
 ignorant and jealous monks of Mount Athos, whence 
 the great Colbert had an idea of sending “ two frigates 
 under Maltese colors to fetch them”—hidden in the 
 seraglio of the Grand Turk—in the island of Chios— 
 in St. Columba’s monastery at Iona,—the lost treasure 
 was heard of, but never found. At one time a com¬ 
 plete manuscript was “daily expected from the Es- 
 curial;” at another, it was said to have actually 
 “arrived in Dublin.” Once, it is said, “a page of 
 the second decade was found by a man of letters in 
 the parchment of his battledore, while he was amusing 
 himself in the country. He hastened to the maker of 
 the battledore, but arrived too late; the man had fin¬ 
 ished the last page of Livy—about a week before!” * 
 
 * Disraeli, Cur. of Lit. 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 11 
 
 So voluminous a work was not given to the public 
 all at once by its author. The Roman annalist, like so 
 many of his modem successors, seems to have pub¬ 
 lished a volume at a time. The first decade was 
 written and issued at Rome probably between b.c. 27 
 and 20, at the same time that Virgil was writing his 
 iEneid. But the later books, as is clear from the 
 last events they record, could not have been finished 
 until some twenty years afterwards. Their contents 
 are fortunately known to us by means of epitomes, the 
 work of some unknown compiler of early date—pos- 
 
 4 
 
 eibly not much later than the original historian—which 
 have survived, though the books of which they form 
 the summary have perished. There are some intervals 
 of Roman history for which these dry skeletons remain 
 as our sole authorities. 
 
 It has been remarked as unfortunate that such 
 fragments as we have of Livy’s great work form by no 
 means the most valuable portion. The first decade 
 contains the history of 460 years—from the foundation 
 of Rome to her subjugation of her warlike neigh¬ 
 bors the Samnites. How far myth supplies the place 
 of history throughout the wholq of this period is a 
 question still under debate by scholars. But the old 
 faith which believed in Romulus and Remus as un¬ 
 doubtedly as in Antony and Augustus has at least 
 departed long ago. Critical students have recognized 
 the fact that for all this long period we have absolutely 
 nothing like contemporary authority. Livy made 
 full use, as might be expected, and as he distinctly 
 asserts of the works of previous annalists and histo¬ 
 rians, but all these were of comparatively recent 
 date. Quintus Fabius Piqtor, the earliest Roman his¬ 
 torian of w)W we h$ye any mention, and Cipcjqg 
 
12 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 Alimentus, wer.e both alive during the Second Punic 
 War, and these are the most ancient authorities to 
 whom Livy refers. There is therefore no trace of con¬ 
 temporary history for the first five centuries of Rome. 
 The “ Origines” of Cato the Elder, the History of M. 
 Acilius Glabrio, and the “Annals” of Calpurnius Piso 
 —to all of which Livy makes reference—were still 
 more modern compilations. So that in the early his¬ 
 tory of Rome, we have not only to take into account . 
 the tendency to the marvellous and the mythical which 
 is the characteristic of all chroniclers in the infancy of 
 a national literature, but also the still more embarrass¬ 
 ing fact that Rome seems to have had, for those five 
 hundred years, no written history at all, in our modern 
 sense of the word. 
 
 There were, however, certain public records from 
 which Fabius and Cincius, and other writers, may be 
 supposed to have drawn their information. There were 
 the “ Annals,” as they were called, in which the Ponti- 
 fex Maximus set down the chief events of each year. 
 There were the “ Commentaria,” or notes of events, 
 kept in the sacred colleges of pontiffs and augurs, and 
 those of the censors, which appear to have been care¬ 
 fully preserved in their respective families. There were, 
 again, certain registers written on linen (libri lintei), pre¬ 
 served in the temple of Juno Moneta on the Capitol, 
 which gave at least the names of the consuls and other 
 public officers for the year, and which Livy himself 
 quotes more than once, though at second-hand. But 
 such records, even allowing them to have been correctly 
 kept as to the succession of magistrates and the leading 
 events of each year—laws passed, treaties made, and 
 even victories won—could not, from their very nature, 
 §nter ir}|Q those details of person, an$ c|rcumstanc^ 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 n 
 
 and motive which the historian requires in order to 
 make his narrative readable. The “ Annales Maximi” 
 of the pontiffs which Aulus Gellius had seen were, he 
 assures us, very jejune and dry, and far from pleasant 
 reading.* There comes in again another difficulty as to 
 the authenticity of even these dry bones of history them¬ 
 selves,—that both Livy and other writers distinctly state 
 that when Rome was burnt by the Gauls, most of these 
 public records perished in the conflagration; so that Fa- 
 bius Pictor and his successors would not have had even 
 these authorities to work from—authorities which, how¬ 
 ever meagre, would be trustworthy so far as they went. 
 Probably the Romans would not be slow to repair such 
 destruction in the only way they could, by substituting 
 new records more or less imaginary. As our own mo¬ 
 nastic bodies in England could always produce charters 
 of the earliest date, though admitting in their own 
 chronicles that the whole contents of their monastery 
 had been burnt by the Danes; so an unbroken list of 
 consuls, dictators, and censors' was drawn up, from 
 whatever sources, in the reign of Augustus or Tiberius, 
 and is still extant, in a somewhat mutilated condition, 
 as the “ Fasti Capitolini.” 
 
 Besides these official records, materials for history 
 would be at hand in the copies of treaties made with 
 neighboring states, which were in most cases engraved 
 on brazen plates or pillars, and kept for safe custody in 
 the temples; as well as in the laws passed from time to 
 time, which were engraved and preserved in the same 
 way. But of these, again, Livy says that many were 
 destroyed in the burning of the city. Even in cases 
 where they still existed, there are, unfortunately, many 
 
 * Aul. Gell. ii. 28, v. 377. 
 
14 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 indications that he was too little sensible of their value, 
 and too negligent in consulting them. Other sources 
 from which the early historian of Rome might draw 
 very tempting but not very trustworthy information, 
 for the biographical part of his work, would be the 
 funeral orations pronounced over distinguished men, re¬ 
 counting their deeds and those of their ancestors, copies 
 of which were religiously preserved in their families, 
 and in the commemorative inscriptions on the statues 
 of deceased heroes. But the latter, as Livy himself ad¬ 
 mits,* were often notoriously false. Dr. Arnold pro¬ 
 nounces them “the most unscrupulous in falsehood of 
 any pretended records of facts that the world has yet 
 seen.” f Indeed, if we bear in mind the character of 
 our old-fashioned funeral sermons and epitaphs, or a 
 more modern French funeral “oration,” we may judge 
 how far this kind of biographical record is likely to con¬ 
 tribute to the strict facts of history. More to be de¬ 
 pended upon, in their spirit if not in their details, would 
 be the ancient chants and lays, preserved from age to 
 age in the national memory, even if not committed in 
 every case to writing, and recited or sung at religious 
 festivals and at private banquets. That such was the 
 Roman custom may be gathered from many allusions 
 in Roman writers; but how early the production of such 
 historical lays may have been is quite uncertain. Nie¬ 
 buhr considers that they form a large portion of the 
 substructure of such early Roman history as we have. 
 He thinks that he can trace distinct poems on the ad¬ 
 ventures of Romulus, the rule of Tullus Hostilius, the 
 combat of the Horatii with the Curiatii, the destruc¬ 
 tion of Alba, the story of the Tarquins, the battle of the 
 
 * Book viii. chap. 34, 40, 
 
 t Hist, of Rome, iii. 373, 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 15 
 
 Lake Regillus, the exploits of CbrioldhUS, and other 
 romantic episodes of Roman history; and he even claims 
 to have detected in the pages of Livy fragments of the 
 old metrical diction.* Such investigations must always 
 be more or less fanciful; yet there can be no reasonable 
 doubt but that the exploits of national heroes were 
 w T orked into song at a very early period by the Romans 
 as well as by other nations; and they must have had 
 some share, and perhaps a large share, in the making 
 of national history. Although this early poetry has 
 wholly perished (as has been the fate, no doubt, of much 
 traditional literature of this kind in all nations), there 
 are fragments still preserved of metrical annals of a 
 later date. Ennius, who lived nearly two centuries be¬ 
 fore Livy, wrote eighteen books of “ Annals” in verse; 
 and it is not likely that his was the first attempt at a 
 metrical chronicle. Nothing remains of his work but a 
 few lines preserved here and there in the pages of other 
 writers; but Livy must have seen it, and Niebuhr thinks 
 he was indebted to it for his “ History of the Kings.” 
 
 It has been urged, on the other hand, that it is all 
 but incredible that a people like the Romans, extend¬ 
 ing as they did so widely, even in those earlier times, 
 their rule and their commerce, should for so many 
 years have possessed no contemporary and authentic 
 history. It is possible, of course, that Fatius and 
 Piso may have had access to chronicles which were 
 afterwards lost; and as their own works liave perisned, 
 we have no means of ascertaining wha; opportunities 
 they enjoyed, or to what authorities the} may have re- 
 
 * It is scarcely necessary to remind the English reader that 
 Lord Macaulay strongly supports Niebuhr's view, and has made 
 it the foundation of his “ Lays of Ancient Rome.’’ 
 
16 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 ferred. There may have been an earlier historical lit¬ 
 erature known to them, though not to Livy. But it 
 must be confessed that the whole of his account of the' 
 Seven Kings of Rome reads rather like a series of ro¬ 
 mantic legends than a record of actual events; and only 
 as such can it reasonably be accepted. We may fairly 
 say of this portion of his “Annals” what, he says him¬ 
 self of the times before the foundation of Rome—that 
 “ they had more of the embellishments of fable than of 
 the simplicity of fact.” And it maybe strongly sus¬ 
 pected that what he here asserts of antecedent traditions 
 he would have admitted to be true of such traditions 
 as he has embodied in his work. It is not likely that 
 the age of legend came to a close, and the age of history 
 began, at a date exactly coinciding with the building 
 of Rome. What amount of fact is embalmed in the 
 pleasant fable—for that some substratum of fact there 
 is cannot reasonably be doubted—is a question which 
 has furnished, and will probably continue to furnish, 
 discussion for more learned and ambitious volumes than 
 ours. 
 
 The form into which Livy has thrown his work— 
 that of Annals, naming the public officers and record¬ 
 ing the events of each succeeding year—was probably 
 adopted from his predecessors, but is very inconvenient. 
 It interrupts awkwardly the continuous story of a cam¬ 
 paign or of a great political revolution, and is a source 
 to the reader of bewilderment rather than of assistance. 
 Especially does it seem unsuited to the author’s pictur¬ 
 esque and somewhat diffuse style, which suffers much 
 in its general effect from these constant formal interrup¬ 
 tions. The annalistic method will not be followed 
 In these pages; and only such dates are inserted as 
 seemed of special importance. 
 
ROME UNDER ITS SEVEN KINGS. 17 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ROME UNDER ITS SEVEN KINGS. 
 
 (book I. B.c. 753-509.) 
 
 It has been already said that these “Annals” begin 
 with the foundation of the city of Rome. The author 
 adopts—he could scarcely do otherwise—the current 
 legend of iEneas having led a colony of Trojans into 
 Latium, the fated end of his wanderings after his escape 
 from Troy. The belief in this old heroic descent, true 
 or false, was too strong in the Roman mind for any 
 writer of national history to venture uoon questioning 
 it, even had historical criticism been understood in 
 those times. It was seriously referred to, from time to 
 timo, in public acts and documents. Augustus himself 
 encouraged it as a point of national pride; acute and 
 philosophical historians like Sallust—to use Sallust’s 
 own words—“accepted” it. It is not necessary to ex¬ 
 amine too closely into the private and personal belief 
 of either historian in this national pedigree, any more 
 than into his personal faith in the national theology. 
 Livy’s own expression when he introduces the story— 
 “satis constat ”—does not necessarily mean more than 
 ‘it is universally admitted.” He took the tale as he 
 found it. He was by no means prepared, as all our 
 modern historians are, with a plausible theory of his 
 own which should sift, or interpret, or altogether ex¬ 
 plode, the popular story; and the public for whom he 
 was writing would have been very far from appreci¬ 
 ating his work if \xq l^d propounded any theories of 
 149 . - 
 
18 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 The beginning of this history, then, is, in fact, a con¬ 
 tinuation of the iEneid, and scarcely professes to be 
 more historical. We have the landing in Italy of 
 iEneas and his Trojans; his marriage with Lavinia, 
 daughter of Latinus the king; and his foundation of a 
 city called Lavinium, after her name. Here, indeed, 
 Livy gives his readers the choice between two of the 
 current legends: either this marriage was the result of 
 an amicable arrangement between the intruder and the 
 natives, or the hand of the princess and the partition of 
 the kingdom were the prizes of a victorious battle 
 fought by iEneas against the king. We have also, as 
 Virgil gives us, the attempt of Turnus, the young king 
 of the Rutulians, to exact vengeance for the loss of 
 Lavinia, who had already been affianced to him, his ap¬ 
 peal for aid to the powerful Etruscans, and his defeat 
 and death in battle. And here the historian gives us 
 the fulfilment of those foreboding words which the 
 poet has put into the mouth of his hero when he is 
 bidding farewell to his young son before he goes to 
 this his last victory,— 
 
 “ Learn of thy father to be great— 
 
 Of others to be fortunate.” * * 
 
 In that battle on the banks of the Numicius the great 
 iEneas died, says our historian, and was buried there; 
 disappeared in some mysterious fashion, said another 
 and more popular legend, adapting itself to that pas¬ 
 sionate hero-worship which, as in the case of the Britons 
 and Arthur, would not admit any such common circum¬ 
 stance as death 
 
 The widowed Lavinia is said to have ruled the new 
 
 — ■ 1 ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■- . j ■ - ■ . ..'wr 
 
 * Virgil, M n. xii, 436, 
 
 
i 
 
 ROME UNDER ITS SEVEN KINGS. 19 
 
 kingdom during the infancy of her son Ascanius; for, 
 in these pages, it is she who is the mother of the young 
 chief, and not the unhappy Creusa. All goes on hap¬ 
 pily under her government; the warlike Etruscans have 
 been reduced to quiet, and consent to let the Tiber be 
 the boundary between them and the new Latin king¬ 
 dom, whose prosperity is so great that Ascanius, when 
 he grows to manhood, leads part of its increasing popu¬ 
 lation to found a new settlement under the Alban Hills, 
 which he calls Alba Longa (“the Long White Town”). 
 There reigned, according to the story, a succession of 
 kings called Silvii, from Silvius the son of Ascanius, 
 from whom in course of time spring Romulus and 
 Remus, the founders of Rome. 
 
 For as the historian did not dream of questioning the 
 traditional descent from Troy, still less would he have 
 run counter to the national boast that the Romans were 
 the sons of the war-god and the nurslings of the slie-wolf. 
 So we have given us in full detail the legend of the 
 Twins, sons of the god Mars by the mortal princess, 
 Rhea Silvia, who had been condemned by an usurping 
 uncle to perpetual virginity; the Twins who escape the 
 doom pronounced by the usurper when he hears of their 
 birth— 
 
 “ The children to the Tiber, 
 
 The mother to the tomb”— 
 
 who are suckled by the wolf and found by the shep¬ 
 herd, who live by robbing the robbers, whom their old 
 grandfather Numitor recognizes by their noble bearing, 
 and who slay the usurper Amulius, and restore the 
 kingdom to its rightful heir. Did any one doubt the 
 story? Was there not, as our author points out, the fig- 
 tree called Ruminalis yet standing under which the 
 Twins were suekied? Anci was there not, he might 
 
20 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 have added, the famous statue of the wolf and her 
 nurslings, set up under that fig-tree, still to be seen?* 
 Such memorials were far more to the Roman taste than 
 any amount of historical criticism. 
 
 So Romulus and Remus, continues the legend, pro¬ 
 ceeded to build their new city; but the brothers quar¬ 
 relled, and the younger fell by the elder’s hand. And 
 Romulus went on with his work alone, and called it, from 
 his own name, Rome. But the circuit which in his 
 ambition he had enclosed within his new walls proved 
 too large for his present colony, and he opened an “ asy¬ 
 lum,” to which he invited all the reckless and discon¬ 
 tented spirits in the neighboring tribes. So the town 
 was at last filled with citizens; and Romulus chose a 
 senate of a hundred elders, and for his own greater 
 dignity assumed (from the Etruscans, as our author 
 thinks) the ivory “ curule chair,” and the white robe 
 with the purple border, and the twelve “lictors” to at¬ 
 tend him in state, bearing the rods and axes in token of 
 executive power—the well-known emblems which ever 
 after accompanied the sovereignty of Rome, 
 
 But the new population, as might be expected from 
 the manner in which it had been got together, was defi¬ 
 cient in the matter of wives; and this deficiency the 
 neighboring tribes were by no means willing to supply. 
 Upon which the Romans had recourse to a stratagem 
 which reads very much like a piece of the actual his¬ 
 tory of a rude age. It is an almost exact repetition of 
 the raid of the men of Benjamin at Shiloh. Romulus 
 proclaimed a festival; and when the daughters of the 
 
 * Erected out of the fines levied on usurers (Liv. x. 69). It is 
 pot certain whether the figure of the wolf now shown in th§ 
 fffifmo de’ Conservator! at Rome is the game or not, 
 
ROME UNDER ITS SEVEN KINGS. 21 
 
 Sabines came to see, at a given signal they were seized 
 and carried off to become the wives of the Romans. 
 The outrage is said to have aroused, as it well might, the 
 wrath not only of the Sabines, but of other neighboring 
 tribes, against this lawless young community. But when 
 these latter marched their forces against him, Romulus 
 defeated them all in succession, slaying and stripping 
 with his own hand the chief of the Cseninans (Aero, 
 Plutarch tells us, was his name), and solemnly offering 
 the spoils in the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol—the 
 first of those spolta optima, as they were afterwards called, 
 won by one general from the person of another. The 
 Sabines proved a more formidable enemy. They had 
 actually forced their way into Rome, and a fierce con¬ 
 flict within the walls was being waged with doubtful 
 success, when the captured women—already reconciled 
 to their compulsory bridegrooms—rushed between the 
 lines, and entreated their fathers and husbands not to 
 shed each other’s blood. The result was not only peace, 
 but a fusion of the two peoples; and in compliment to 
 their new friends, the Romans took the additional mime 
 of Quirites, from the Sabine town of Cures #r Quiris; 
 and it was agreed that the nation should form three 
 tribes,—the Ramnenses, taking its name from Romu¬ 
 lus; the Titienses, from Tatius, king of the Sabines; 
 while for the third, the Luce res, Livy can find no deri¬ 
 vation. 
 
 The rest of this first Book contains the history, or 
 rather the series of legends which passed for history, of 
 Rome under its seven kings. Romulus, after reducing 
 to subjection the neighboring towns of Fidenseand Yeii, 
 disappeared in a violent storm, said the popular fable, 
 and was seen no more upon earth. Some would have 
 it, says the historian, that he was made away with— 
 
22 
 
 livt. 
 
 “torn limb from limb”—by the senate, with whom 
 he was never popular, although the darling of the 
 army. He was succeeded by Numa Pompilius, a 
 Sabine from Cures, the law-maker of the new common¬ 
 wealth, as Romulus had been its conquering hero. 
 He was the Alfred of Roman history, civilizing liis 
 rude subjects, reforming their calendar, and dividing 
 the country into cantons. His reign of forty-three 
 years was purely peaceful—a new age of gold. To 
 him succeeded Tullus Hostilius, who reduced Alba, 
 the mother-city of Rome, into subjection to the younger 
 but stronger power. To this war belongs the pictur¬ 
 esque legend of the combat between the three brothers 
 on each side—the Horatii for the Romans, and Curiatii 
 on the Alban side—with the fatal blow given by the one 
 surviving Horatius to his sister, when, instead of wel¬ 
 coming him after his victory, she meets him with tears 
 of regret for her lover whom he has slain. 
 
 The razing to the ground of the walls of Alba, when 
 its whole population has been transplanted to the 
 younger city after the victory, is told in Livy’s best 
 style, though we must suppose that he is indebted, at 
 least for the details, to his own imagination. 
 
 “Then the legions were marched up to raze the city. When 
 they entered the gates, there was none of the tumult or panic 
 which is wont to be seen in captured towns, where the gates have 
 been forced, or the walls breached by battering-rams, or the cita¬ 
 del taken by storm; when the shouts of the enemy are loud, and 
 the rush of armed troops through the city lays everything waste 
 with fire and sword. But a gloomy silence, and a sorrow that 
 found no voice, so overwhelmed the hearts of all, that for very 
 terror they forgot what they meant to carry away and what to 
 leave behind; losing all presence of mind, they kept questioning 
 each other, now standing idly in their doorways, now wandering 
 helplessly through their houses, which they knew they should 
 never see again. But when the shouts of the mounted guard, 
 
ROME UNDER ITS SEVEN KINGS. 23 
 
 who were ordering them to quit, came nearer, and they heard 
 the crash of the buildings which were already being pulled down 
 in the outer quarters of the town, and saw the dust rising from 
 distant points, and filling the whole place as it were with an over¬ 
 shadowing cloud—then, snatching up and carrying off each what 
 came first to hand, they made their way out, leaving their hearths 
 and household altars, and the roof under which they had been 
 born and brought up, and filled the roads with a continuous 
 stream of emigrants. The sight of each other’s misery renewed 
 their tears; and piteous were the wailings heard, especially from 
 the women, as they passed the temples they so venerated, now 
 surrounded with guards of soldiers, and left, as it seemed, their 
 very gods in captivity. When all the Alban population had quit¬ 
 ted the place, the Romans levelled to the ground every building, 
 public and private, and gave to utter destruction in a single hour 
 the work of four hundred years, the time during which Alba had 
 stood. Only the temples of the gods were left untouched, for 
 such had been the king’s command.”—(i. 29.) 
 
 The fourth king was Ancus Martius—less warlike 
 than Romulus, less peaceful than Numa. Under him 
 the Aventine hill was included within the walls, and the 
 Janiculum thrown out on the northern bank of the 
 Tiber, and successful wars with the neighboring tribes 
 marked the still growing power of Rome. 
 
 And now there comes in, according to the legends 
 which the historian followed, a new dynasty of kings, 
 and for the first time the annals of Greece and Rome 
 are brought for a moment into connection. The story 
 of the Tarquins, as Livy tells it, is briefly this: One 
 Demaratus, a Corinthian, had emigrated during a po¬ 
 litical revolution and settled at Tarquinii. His son 
 Lucumo had married an Etruscan wife of high family 
 and imperious spirit; and she could not bear to see her 
 husband looked down upon as a foreigner and an alien. 
 She persuaded him to remove to Rome—‘ ‘ amongst a 
 new people energy and merit must make their way:” 
 and an omen—an eagle which took off her husband’s 
 
24 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 cap and replaced it, as they entered the city gates—con¬ 
 firmed her advice. In the course of time King Ancus 
 died; and though he left two sons, Lucumo (or Lucius 
 Tarquinius, as the new Roman citizen now called him¬ 
 self), already popular owing to his wealth and his gra¬ 
 cious manners, was elected king. The new reign was 
 prosperous; the old enemies of Rome, the Latins and 
 Sabines, were successfully held in check; the cavalry 
 force of the state was strengthened, the city w&lls com¬ 
 pleted, and those great public sewers which are even 
 now the wonder of all beholders were begun. But the 
 disappointed sons of Ancus had bided their time, and 
 they slew the foreigner. Their father’s sceptre, how¬ 
 ever, passed into other hands. A boy had been brought 
 up in the house of Tarquinius, the son of a slave mother, 
 on whose head while sleeping lambent flames had been 
 seen to play. Tanaquil’s divining eyes saw in the pro. 
 digy an intimation of his future eminence: his abilities 
 as he grew up confirmed it, and he had become their son- 
 in-law. To him Tanaquil appealed after her husband’s 
 assassination; and they concealed his actual death from 
 the people until the son-in-law, Servius Tullius, who at 
 once assumed the royal functions, was securely estab¬ 
 lished in power, and the sons of Ancus had to take 
 refuge in exile. 
 
 To the reign of Servius—the “ King of the Commons” 
 —the historian attributes certain changes in the consti¬ 
 tution of a more or less popular character. He is said 
 to have instituted the “census” of property, and to 
 have divided the people into “classes” and “centuries,” 
 in such a way as to give the plebeians what they had 
 not before, a distinct organization as a component part 
 of the state, and make the burden of military service 
 press more equally upon rich and poor. He also allotted 
 
ROME UNDER ITS SEVEN KINGS. 25 
 
 to the poorer citizens some of the land taken from their 
 neighboring enemies in war. In his reign, it was said, 
 the city was extended to three new hills—the Quirinal, 
 the Yiminal, and the Esquiline—and the whole sur¬ 
 rounded by walls which continued to bear his name, and 
 to form the boundaries of the city for some eight hun¬ 
 dred years, down to the time of the Emperor Aurelian. 
 But the new king’s daughters had married the two sons 
 of his predecessor Tarquinius; and the younger, Tullia, 
 after murdering her own husband, had married his elder 
 brother Lucius, who had made room for her by the 
 murder of his wife. With her full consent, her new 
 husband plotted with other young nobles, who hated 
 the Commons’ King, to murder him and take his place. 
 The plot was successful; Servius was flung down the 
 steps of the senate-house by his son-indaw’s hand, and 
 despatched by his retainers. 
 
 " It was believed that this was done at the instigation of Tullia, 
 inasmuch as she did not shrink from the wickedness that followed. 
 At least, it is an admitted fact that she drove in her chariot to the 
 Forum, unabashed by the crowd of men, and summoning her 
 husband from the senate-house was the first to hail him “ king/’ 
 When he bade her begone from such a scene of tumult, and she 
 was making her way home, she ordered her chariot to turn to the 
 right down the Orbian Hill, so as to drive out through the Esqui¬ 
 line; when’the man who drove her horses suddenly stopped in 
 horror, checked the reins, and pointed out to his mistress the 
 body of the murdered Servius lying in the road. Whereupon a 
 foul and inhuman deed is said to have been done, and the place 
 s ;rves yet as a memorial of it (men call it the Accursed Quarter, 
 Vicus Scelercitios), along which in her madness, urged by the 
 avenging shades of her murdered sister and husband, Tullia is 
 said to have driven her chariot over the corpse of her father, 
 and to have carried home on the blood-stained vehicle—nay, on 
 her very dress and person—the traces of his slaughter, to defile 
 the household gods of herself and her new consort; and that 
 from the wrath. of those offended powers, the reign which 
 
26 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 been so ill begun was speedily brought to a like violent termina¬ 
 tion.”—(i. 48.) 
 
 For it was this Lucius Tarquinius—who thus seized 
 the crown, as Livy says, “ with no other right than 
 force, unauthorized either by senate or commons”—who 
 made the very name of “king” ever after hateful to a 
 Roman ear. He was known as Superbus—the Insolent. 
 He assumed absolute power; surrounded himself with 
 an armed guard; forbade all new elections to the senate; 
 and, in short, played the tyrant at all points. But, 
 tyrant though he was, he maintained the power of Rome 
 stoutly and successfully against the neighboring tribes. 
 He reduced the Volscians by force and the town of Gabii 
 by stratagem, and made an advantageous treaty with 
 the still powerful confederation of the Latins. He is 
 said also to have founded the Temple of Jupiter on the 
 Capitoline Hill (a work which had been contemplated 
 by the first Tarquinius), and in order to gain room for 
 the new buildings, to have removed, with their own 
 consent, the temples and altars of all the other deities 
 who had been hitherto established there. Two only, 
 when consulted by the augurs, refused to abandon their 
 ancient seat—Terminus and Juventas; a refusal which 
 was naturally taken as a most happy omen, that the 
 boundaries of Rome should never grow narrower, and 
 that her youth and vigor should be perpetual. It is 
 plain that under the guise of this new foundation and 
 removal we have a notice, however vague, of some 
 radical change in the national religion, and probably of 
 • the introduction, under the house of the Tarquinii, of 
 the Etruscan divinities and their sacred rites. 
 
 The reign of the second Tarquinius ended, as it began, 
 in violence. The outrage committed by his son Sextus 
 on Tdicretia, wif§ qf gellatinus, an^ the wbole tragical 
 
ROME UNDER ITS SEVEN KINGS. 27 
 
 story of her suicide and the revenge taken by her hus¬ 
 band and father, is an episode of Roman history known 
 to most readers. It is told briefly enough, but not the 
 less graphically, in the conclusion of Livy’s first Book. 
 But it is neither the father nor the husband to whom the 
 annalist ascribes the leading part in the great revolution 
 which followed. It is Lucius Junius, a nephew of the 
 royal house, called “ Brutus” from his singular stolidity 
 and apathy—assumed, we are told, to make his position 
 all the safer under a tyrant’s reign—to whom an oracle 
 has, according to his own interpretation, foretold suc¬ 
 cession to the chief power at Rome. 
 
 “ While they stood wrapped in grief, he drew the knife from 
 the body of Lucretia, and holding it up before him dripping with 
 her blood, said— 1 * By this blood, most chaste and undefiled before 
 this outrage of a tyrant, I swear—and I call you, ye gods, to wit¬ 
 ness—that I will follow up with fire and sword, and all such 
 means as in us lie, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus and his accursed 
 wife, with all their seed and breed; and never suffer either them 
 or any other hereafter to reign as king at Rome. ’ ’ Then he hands 
 the knife to Collatinus, and then to Lucretius and Valerius, who 
 marvelled at the strangeness of the thing, whence this new spirit 
 had come into the breast of Brutus. As they were bidden, so 
 they swore: and at once from that moment, when Brutus calls 
 on them to drive out the tyrants, they follow him as their leader.” 
 -(i. 59.) 
 
 This story of the Tarquins presents all the charac¬ 
 teristics of legend, even without taking into account the 
 many practical contradictions involved in it by the 
 dates of their respective reigns. Yet it is quite as 
 impossible to doubt that under this legend, however 
 disguised, we have the record of some very important 
 changes in the fortunes of Rome. There is almost 
 certainly a change in the dynasty, and probably a tem¬ 
 porary subjugation of Rome to the Etruscans. The 
 massive character of the masonry in the substructure of 
 
28 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 the temple on the Capitoline, and that of the Cloaca 
 Maxima, both said to have been built under the rule of 
 the Tarquins, and which are evidently of very early 
 date, marks it as almost certainly Etruscan. Nor is 
 there any reason to doubt that the name of the Tarquinii 
 is historical, however much the history of their rule at 
 Rome may be overlaid with fable. A tomb was dis¬ 
 covered in the year 1849 at Caere, in Etruria (to which 
 town the banished family are said by Livy to have 
 retired after their expulsion from Rome), containing 
 thirty-five names, among which both the Etruscan 
 form, Tarchnas, and the Latin Tarquinius, repeatedly 
 occur.* 
 
 This story of the Tarquins, in whatever condition he 
 found it, must have had a great attraction for a writer 
 like Livy. The functions of an historical novelist were 
 exactly to his mind; and we may be sure that he has 
 made \he most of all the picturesque points in the 
 legend. That some of it was originally borrowed from 
 Greek sources is plain from two instances which we 
 happen to be able to trace. The stratagem by which 
 young Sextus Tarquinius gets admission into the town 
 of Gabii, in order to betray it to his father—by repre¬ 
 senting himself as a fugitive from nis father’s cruelty— 
 is evidently founded upon the story which Herodotus 
 tells, in its more romantic Eastern shape, of the strange 
 devotion shown to King Darius by one of his generals, 
 Zopyrus, who “ cut off his ears and his nose,” and pre¬ 
 sented himself in that condition at the gates of Babylon 
 as a refugee from the cruelty of his master; to whom he 
 opens the gates as soon as he has obtained the command 
 of the garrison, f So again, with the subtle parable by 
 
 * See Dennis, Cities of Etruria, ii. 44. 
 
 t Herod, iii. 154, 
 
GROWTH OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 29 
 
 which Tarquinius Superbus conveys his advice to his 
 son as to his policy at* Gabii. He dares not trust a verbal 
 reply to the messenger whom Sextus has sent to ask 
 counsel: 
 
 “ The king, as in the process of deliberation, walked out Into 
 the gardens of his palace, followed by his son’s messenger. 
 There, as he paced along in silence, he is said to have knocked off 
 the heads of the tallest poppies with his staff. The messenger, 
 tired at last of asking for a reply and waiting in vain, went back 
 to Gabii with his errand, as he considered, unsped, and related 
 what he had said, and what the king had done. ‘ Whether it was 
 anger, or personal dislike, or the innate haughtiness of his dis¬ 
 position, he had answered never a word.’ ”—(i. 54.) 
 
 The son, however, understood his father’s meaning at 
 once, and acted upon it: he was to take off the heads 
 of all such citizens as, from their eminence, might be¬ 
 come dangerous rivals. It is the very same story as 
 that which Herodotus tells of the silent hint given by 
 Thrasybulus, tyrant of Miletus, to the messenger of 
 Periander, except that, in the Greek version, the sym¬ 
 bolic operation takes place in a field of ripe corn.* 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 GROWTH OP THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 (BOOKS ii.-III. B.c. 509-449.) 
 
 We are yet on no safe historic ground. The early 
 annals of the Republic, from whatever sources our 
 author derived them—oral tradition, poetical romance, 
 or prose chronicle—are manifestly as full of legends as 
 those of the Kings. We have to receive with much 
 
 * Herod, v. 92, 
 
30 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 caution the remarks with which Livy introduces this 
 new period—that the birth of Roman liberty (for such 
 he considers it) came at exactly the right moment; 
 that the kings had done their work in the foundation 
 and enlargement of the city; and that for the people of 
 Rome in their ruder state such liberty would have been 
 premature. Livy is at no time a philosophical historian, 
 and his grounds for the conclusion in this case are so 
 uncertain, that its value is not great. We have still to 
 follow his narrative—with what faith we may. 
 
 The house of the Tarquins were banished from the 
 Roman territory; there property was confiscated; their 
 land, which lay between the city and the Tiber, was 
 consecrated to Mars, and became the Campus Martius; 
 and from that time forth the bitterest accusation that 
 could be brought against a Roman citizen was that he 
 sought to make himself a “king.” Lucius Junius 
 Brutus and Tarquinius Collatinus were at once elected 
 chief magistrates by the assembled people; and the 
 annalist gives them the style and title of “Consuls”— 
 an office which survived in name at Rome even under 
 its emperors, long after its real authority had ceased.* 
 But so strong was the public feeling against the whole 
 name and race of the tyrants—“who had made of Roman 
 citizens,” men said, “ laborers and stone-cutters instead 
 of warriors,” and had slain their good king Servius— 
 that Collatinus found his own near relationship to the 
 house fatal to his popularity. He soon resigned his 
 office, and withdrew into voluntary exile at Lavinium. 
 His successor Valerius, a few years later, fell under 
 popular suspicion on similar grounds. He was building 
 
 * But the name is an anticipation; they were really called 
 “ Praetors”—Headmen—then and for many years after. 
 
GROWTH OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 81 
 
 a house, men said, too grand for a private citizen: he was 
 aiming at regal state. He had to pull down his new 
 mansion, and even then found some difficulty in clear¬ 
 ing himself in the eyes of the public. 
 
 The banished family, however, was not without its 
 friends in the city. Certain of the young patricians, we 
 are told, regretted the licence which they had enjoyed 
 under a despotic and profligate government; and they 
 conspired to bring the king back. The conspiracy was 
 discovered; and amongst the guilty were two sons of the 
 new magistrate, Brutus. All were led out to execution, 
 the sons receiving their sentence from the lips of their 
 father. For some reason—possibly that he doubted the 
 story—Livy does not dwell upon a scene which offered 
 a grand opportunity for his powers of description. He 
 says little more than that, when the young men were 
 bound to the stake to be “beaten with rods,” as was 
 the cruel Roman custom, previous to execution, “all 
 eyes were watching the expression of the father’s face, 
 whose natural feelings still broke out in the midst of 
 this discharge of his public duty.” 
 
 Tarquinius now sought aid from his countrymen 
 the Etruscans—from Yeii, the old enemy of Rome, 
 and from Tarquinii. The battle which ensued brought 
 no decided success to either side. His son Aruns 
 spurred his horse in front of the lines against Brutus, 
 with a taunting challenge, which the consul did not 
 decline; and both fell by each other’s hand—the first 
 slain in the battle. The cause of the exiles was then 
 taken up by a chief whose name has become familiar 
 to us in Macaulay’s spirited lay, “Lars Porsena of 
 Clusium.” “Never yet had such a panic seized the 
 senate,” says the annalist; “so great was then the 
 power of Clusium, so renowned the name of Porsena,” 
 
32 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 With levies raised from all the Etruscan towns, over 
 which he appears to have exercised a sort of suzer¬ 
 ainty, he appeared before Rome, and made himself 
 master of the Janiculum—the suburb outside the 
 Tiber—at the first rush. Unless the bridge which 
 connected it with the city proper could be at once 
 destroyed, Porsena would be across. Then it was 
 that Horatius Codes, with two comrades, volunteered 
 to keep the enemy at bay until the bridge could be cut 
 down. How he stood there facing the host of Etruscans 
 —alone at last, for his two comrades had crossed, in 
 obedience to loud warnings from their friends on the 
 other side, as the last plank was falling—how he leapt 
 into the Tiber, all armed as he was, and swam safe 
 across amidst a shower of missiles—Livy has told well, 
 and Macaulay, to our English ears, perhaps even better. 
 
 Porsena turned the siege into a blockade, and pro¬ 
 visions grew scarce in the city. This gives occasion 
 again for one of those anecdotes of self-devotion of 
 which the Roman annals are full, and which Livy 
 delights to tell. A youth of noble birth, named 
 Mucius, obtained leave from the senate to enter the 
 enemy’s lines in disguise—“not for plunder,” he said, 
 “but for a deed of higher mark, with the help of the 
 gods.” His object was the assassination of Porsena; 
 but, not knowing his person, and afraid to ask, he 
 killed his secretary by mistake. 
 
 “ He was moving off, making a way for himself through the 
 crowd with his bloody weapon, when the clamor made the king’s 
 guards run up, who seized him and dragged him back. Set be¬ 
 fore the king where he sat in state, even in that imminent peril 
 he spoke as if the king, and not he, had need to tremble. ‘I 
 am a citizen of Rome; men call me Caius Mucius. I sought to 
 slay mine enemy. And I have as good heart to suffer death as 
 I had to inflict it: our Roman fashion is to do and suffer stoutly. 
 
GROWTH OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 38 
 
 Nor is it I alone who bear in my mind this intent toward thee: 
 there follows after me a long succession of claimants for this 
 glory. Wherefore prepare thyself at once for this conflict: to be 
 in jeopardy of life from hour to hour—to find an enemy at the 
 very threshold of thy chamber. Such is the war we Roman 
 youth declare against thee. Thou hast not to dread the battle 
 or the open field; the struggle for thee will be in person against 
 each single antagonist.’ When the king, alike furious with 
 anger and alarmed at the peril, threatened him with torture by 
 fire unless he forthwith revealed the plot at which he thus 
 darkly hinted—‘Lo here,’ said he, ‘that you may understand 
 how cheap they hold all pains of the body, who see a grand 
 renown in prospect ’—and he thrust his hand into the fire on the 
 altar just kindled for sacrifice. When he held it there to be 
 consumed, as quite unconscious of any sense of pain, the king, 
 wellnigh astounded at the marvel, leapt from his seat and bade 
 him be moved away from the altar.”—(ii. 12). 
 
 Struck by such heroism, the Etruscan bade him go free; 
 and Mucius—“by way of thanks,” as Livy somewhat 
 quaintly puts it—warned him that he was only one of 
 three hundred Roman youths who had sworn to attempt 
 the same deed. He was known afterwards by the sur¬ 
 name of Scaevola—Mucius “of the Left Hand.” 
 
 Cold and dispassionate criticism assures us that such 
 tales as these—the heroism of Horatius, the unflinching; 
 justice of Brutus, the devotion of Scsevola—are but the 
 romance of some forgotten poet, worked up artistically 
 for effect, and borrowed by the annalist to color his 
 pages. Probably the critics are right. But these 
 legends become history at least so far as this—they 
 make the greatness of Rome intelligible to us; wq 
 understand how a people amongst whom such tradi¬ 
 tions of national character were current, and probably 
 believed, should have made themselves masters of the 
 world. 
 
 Porsena soon raised the blockade of Rome—startled 
 by the revelations of Mucius, as the annalist would 
 
84 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 have us believebut lie confesses that the Homans had 
 to make terms with him, in which the advantage was 
 not wholly on their side. They refused to receive back 
 the Tarquins; but they had to covenant to restore to 
 Veii some of its lands of which they had taken posses¬ 
 sion after its conquest by Romulus, and to give hostages 
 for the fulfilment of this engagement, before Porsena 
 would withdraw his troops from the Janiculum.* 
 
 But Rome had not yet heard the last of the Tarquins. 
 The old king had taken refuge at Tusculum, with his 
 son-in-law Mamilius. A war which had long been 
 brooding with the great Latin confederacy at last broke 
 out—“thirty nations,” according to the “Annals,” hav¬ 
 ing leagued under Mamilius against Rome. It was in 
 this emergency that the Romans first had recourse to 
 the appointment of a Dictator; in whose hands was 
 vested an absolute authority, civil and military, the 
 powers of the consuls passing into abeyance for the 
 time. Young Lucius Tarquin, at the head of a body of 
 cavalry formed of Roman exiles, fought in the ranks of 
 the enemy; and in a great battle at the Lake Regillus, 
 the aged king himself rode among them, and was 
 wounded. The battle was long and desperate. HSbu- 
 tius, “Master of the Horse,” f singled out Mamilius, 
 who was conspicuous by his brilliant armor, and 
 engaged him in single combat, and wounded him, but 
 
 * There can be little doubt but that Rome was in fact surren¬ 
 dered to Porsena, and had to cede to the Etruscans all her terri¬ 
 tory on the right bank of the Tiber. Tacitus distinctly says so 
 (Hist. iii. c. 72); and Pliny mentions that the same hard con¬ 
 ditions were laid upon the Romans as upon the Israelites by the 
 Philistines—that they should use no iron except for implements 
 of agriculture. 
 
 t Second only in rank to the Dictator, who was “ Master of the 
 Pppple." 
 
GROWTH OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 35 
 
 was liimself disabled, and obliged to retire. So doubt¬ 
 ful was the struggle, that Aulus Posthumius (who was 
 then Dictator) and his staff had to dismount and tight 
 on foot, in order to restore the steadiness of the Roman 
 line, and to give orders to cut down every man who 
 turned his back. At last Herminius, one of the Dic¬ 
 tator’s lieutenants, charged in person upon Mamilius, 
 who in spite of his wound had returned into the battle, 
 and ran him through with his spear—falling himself 
 mortally wounded immediately after, as he was trying 
 to strip the bod}^. The Latins gave way, and the 
 victory was complete, their whole camp and equipage 
 falling into the hands of the Romans. The elder Tar- 
 quin retired to end his stormy life at Cumae; and Rome 
 heard no more of her “tyrants.” The Dictator and his 
 Master of the Horse returned to the city to enjoy the 
 honors of a well-earned triumph.* A sort of negative 
 peace with the Latins followed this defeat; and a few 
 years afterwards, when the Volscians were forming a 
 combination against Rome, the Latins not only refused 
 to join them, but sent the Yolscian delegates as 
 prisoners to the Romans. The latter in their grati¬ 
 tude, released 600 Latins who were in their hands as 
 prisoners of war. An amount of mutual good feeling 
 was the result, such as never, says the historian, had 
 existed between the Romans and the Latins before; 
 and in the year of Rome 261 (b.c. 498), a treaty was 
 concluded between the two nations on terms of perfect 
 
 * The reader will miss, in Livy’s narrative, the appearance of 
 the “Great Twin Brethren” (Castor and Pollux), who, in 
 Macaulay’s “Lay,” are seen by the Dictator charging on white 
 horses in front of the Romans, and who appear the same even¬ 
 ing in the city, and tell that the battle has been won. The 
 legend is in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, vL 13. 
 
36 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 equality. This lands us upon the first safe historical 
 ground; for the brazen pillar upon which were recorded 
 the lerms of the treaty, the names of the thirty Latin 
 cities who were parties to it, and of the Roman consul 
 Spurius Cassius who concluded it, was still to be seen 
 in the time of Cicero. 
 
 But in the internal history of Rome there were now 
 taking place events which the annalist, busy with his 
 heroic legends, seems only to touch by the way, though 
 they are of the greatest political importance. The 
 “ plebs ,” as they were called—the commons, as dis¬ 
 tinguished from the populus, the burgher-citizens— 
 must have gradually sunk lower and lower in the social 
 scale, until their degradation and misery became past 
 endurance. Some inkling of the growing discontent 
 is given us in the account of the preparations made to 
 resist the attack of Porsena. The senate, we are told, 
 found it necessary to secure the fidelity of the lower 
 orders by certain concessions — particularly in the 
 matter of the market-price of corn and the monopoly 
 of salt. But at the date we have just reached, a new 
 war with the Volscians was imminent; and since the 
 burden of it would, as the commons well knew, press 
 with most hardship upon them, they took the oppor¬ 
 tunity to put forward their grievances somewhat boldly. 
 The chief grievance was this,—their utter poverty com¬ 
 pelled them from time to time to borrow money at high 
 interest from the richer citizens, and the law of debtor 
 and creditor at Rome was so monstrously harsh, that 
 the debtor was liable not only to be sold into perpetual 
 bondage, but to be starved to death in prison if his 
 creditor chose to withhold the means of support; or 
 even, in case of manifest insolvency, to have his body 
 cut in pieces and divided, if there were several claim- 
 
GROWTH OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 37 
 
 ants. One sketch that is given us—though probably 
 but a fancy picture—sets forth the condition of things, 
 as the writer intended it should, far more graphically 
 than any political essay: 
 
 “ A man of reverend years rushed out into the Forum bearing 
 all the tokens of utter wretchedness. His garments were miser¬ 
 ably squalid, his person more miserable still; his countenance 
 was pallid, and he seemed to be wasting away with hunger. 
 But, through all this disfigurement, he was recognized as having 
 once held the rank of a centurion; and the spectators, while 
 they pitied him, recounted other military distinctions which he 
 had won. Baring his breast, he showed scars which bore wit¬ 
 ness to many a hard-fought field. When he was asked how he 
 came to be in this miserable dress and condition, while a crowd 
 gathered round him and formed, as it were, a regular audience, 
 he said that while serving in the Sabine wars, not only had his 
 fields lost their crops in the raids made by the enemy, but his 
 homestead had been burnt, his goods and chattels plundered, 
 and his cattle driven off; and the war-tax coming upon him at 
 this unlucky time, he had contracted debts. These had been 
 swelled by exorbitant interest: first he had been stripped of the 
 farm which his father and grandfather had held before him, then 
 of all his other property; at last the ruin, like a plague, had 
 reached his person. He had been thrown by his creditor, not 
 into ordinary bondage, but into the liard-labor house and the 
 dungeon. And he showed his back, scored with the marks of 
 ! recent scourging.”—(ii. 23). 
 
 ' 
 
 The scene and the speech may be alike imaginary, 
 but there is no reason to question its truth as an illus¬ 
 tration. The excitement, long pent up, was terrible. 
 The Yolscians were said to be on their march to Rome; 
 and the commons—“so entirely,” says the historian, 
 “was the state now severed into two”—saw in them 
 only deliverers. “The gods were coming to take 
 1 vengeance on their oppressors the patricians.” They 
 • refused to give in their names for enrolment in the 
 legions. The magistrates were obliged to temporize 
 
38 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 and make promises: the commons at last fell into 
 their ranks, marched out with the consul, and “ never 
 fought better,” we are told, as the Yolscians found to 
 their cost. 
 
 But the law of debt had been relaxed only to be re¬ 
 enacted more strictly. The indignant commons held 
 nightly meetings, and again refused to enlist. The 
 leading men in the senate were divided as to the policy 
 to be pursued. A Dictator was appointed, who ap¬ 
 peased the malcontents for a time by some remedial 
 measures. But the distress and the consequent dis¬ 
 content still went on, until in the fifteenth year of the 
 Republic it ended in open insurrection. The national 
 force had been ordered to march out against the iEqui- 
 ians—a mere pretext, the commons thought, to get 
 them out of the city, and so bring them under military 
 law. They mutinied at once, and at first clamored for 
 the blood of the consuls. One of the more temperate 
 leaders, Sicinius, induced them to take a milder course. 
 Under his orders, they intrenched themselves in a posi¬ 
 tion across the Anio, known as the Sacred Hill, three 
 miles from the city, and outside the territory of the 
 burghers. There they remained some days, and were 
 contemplating an entire secession from Rome, and the 
 founding of a city of their own. They were aiming, as 
 yet, only at release from oppression, not at political 
 power. The patricians were alarmed, and sent to treat 
 with them, choosing, as an envoy likely to be accept¬ 
 able, one Menenius Agrippa, himself of plebeian origin. 
 His harangue to the insurgents was couched, says our 
 author, in “the rough and primitive style of those 
 days ”—not in the polished sentences which (in the 
 interests of good taste, as he would probably have 
 pleaded) lie usually puts into the mouths of all big 
 
GROWTH OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 39 
 
 speakers, plebeian and patrician alike, in the primitive 
 days of Rome as in the days of its highest civilization. 
 It is possible that, in this exceptional case, we have 
 Agrippa’s speech nearly as it was spoken. He told his 
 hearers, without any kind of preface or exposition, the 
 now well-known fable of “The Belly and its Members.” 
 The moral was obvious—that neither section of the 
 body politic could subsist without the other; and the 
 warning is said to have been effectual. 
 
 The commons consented to return, on condition that 
 hereafter their interests should be guarded by officers 
 of their own, chosen by themselves and from among 
 themselves, to whom there should be an appeal from 
 any sentence of the consul, who should have free lib¬ 
 erty of speech in defence of their order, and whose per¬ 
 sons should be held sacred and inviolable. These new 
 officers were called “Tribunes of the people.” There 
 was also conceded, though strangely enough Livy does 
 not mention it, a general remission for insolvent debtors, 
 and the release of all who were held in bondage. 
 
 Such was the first step of that gradual progress of the 
 middle class to political power, which marks from this 
 time the internal history of Rome. It was grudgingly 
 recognized by the patricians, and attempts were soon 
 made on their part to win back the ground that had 
 been lost. A season of scarcity had followed, and a 
 large importation of wheat from Sicily had been made 
 by great exertions of the public officers. Caius Marcius, 
 a successful general who had just 
 
 “Fluttered the Volscians in Corioli,” 
 
 and thus received the surname of “ Coriolanus,” pro¬ 
 posed to sell this corn at a reduction to the poorer citi¬ 
 zens, on the condition that they would renounce their 
 
40 
 
 LIVT. 
 
 newly-gained privileges. He narrowly escaped the 
 popular fury; and the tribunes, in the exercise of their 
 prerogative, impeached him of treason against the lib¬ 
 erties of the people. He preferred to trust the generosity 
 of liis enemies rather than the verdict of his country¬ 
 men; and before the day of trial came, he had taken 
 refuge with Attius, chief of the Voiscians. He en¬ 
 couraged that tri*be to take up arms against Rome 
 afresh; and under his able leadership they soon recov¬ 
 ered many of their lost towns, and at last pitched their 
 camp within five miles of Rome. The commons, still 
 dissatisfied, showed once more an unwillingness to 
 fight, and the senate in vain sent envoy after envoy to 
 try to detach Coriolanus from his unnatural alliance. 
 At last, says the legend, his wife and mother went out 
 to entreat him: to their prayers he yielded, and drew 
 off his legions. His new allies soon quarrelled among 
 themselves, and Rome was saved. 
 
 Next year Spurius Cassius, who had concluded the 
 league with the Latins, was for the third time elected 
 consul. We are told that he now effected a peace with 
 the Hernicans, another powerful and numerous Sabine 
 people, who had been always more or less at war with 
 Rome; and that, in accordance with its terms, they gave 
 up to the Romans two thirds of their territory. On 
 this occasion he made a bold attempt to apply a remedy 
 to the distress of the poorer citizens. He proposed what 
 was then first known as an “Agrarian Law”—not a 
 redistribution of landed property, as the term by abuse 
 is sometimes taken to mean, but an allotment in shares 
 to the plebeians of such unenclosed lands belonging to 
 the state as were at present occupied by the burghers 
 as tenants, paying a low rental to the state as landlord. 
 Against the opposition of his fellow-consul, he carried 
 
GROWTH OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 41 
 
 his measure; but with a fatal result to himself. Under 
 the consuls of the next year he was impeached. The 
 terms m?de by him with the Latins and the Hernicans, 
 it was said, Had placed them a\most on an equality with 
 Rome Cassius was making friends of them for his own 
 ambitious objects. He had proposed, too, that the 
 money lately paid for the corn from Sicily should be 
 returned to the poorer citizens; it was a direct bidding 
 for kingly power. The very populace were led away 
 by this specious accusation. “ So deep-rooted in their 
 hearts was their horror of monarchy,” says the autlidr, 
 “that they spurned the offered gift as indignantly as 
 though they were rolling in plenty.” The popular re¬ 
 former, too much in advance of his age, was at once 
 condemned and executed, and his house razed to the 
 ground. “He shared the fate,” says Arnold, “of Agis 
 and of Marino Falieri.” There was a version of the 
 story current which sounds strange to our ears, indi¬ 
 cating the unlimited extent of the patria potestas at 
 Rome, exercised by a father even over ills grown-up 
 children; that this Roman citizen, who had thrice held 
 the highest office in the state, was tried, scourged, and 
 put to death by his own father sitting in domestic judg¬ 
 ment, in accordance with his undoubted right. 
 
 Still discontent prevailed among the commons, and 
 thefe was often difficulty in filling up the ranks of the 
 legions. In one battle against their old enemies the 
 JEquians, it was said that the infantry actually refused 
 to fight under Kseso, an unpopular consul of the great 
 Fabian house, and even cursed him when he had charged 
 and routed the enemy with his cavalry alone. 
 
 It is the Fabii who at this period become the saviours 
 of Rome "VVe may feel sure that the annalist has here 
 supplemented his scanty materials from the family 
 
42 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 chronicles of that house, in which the deeds of their 
 ancestors would not be sparingly set forth. It will be 
 remembered that Fabius Pictor, who was Livy’s great 
 authority, was of that line and name. Two of the 
 name, in a battle with the men of Yeii, charge alone in 
 the front of the wavering legion, which then follows 
 them tor very shame. Another force is only saved 
 from utter disaster by the coming up of Kaeso Fabius, 
 when the rashness of his colleague has all but lost the 
 day. We find seven consulships in succession filled 
 by members of the family. At last there comes the 
 singular story which most of all, perhaps, made their 
 name famous in Roman history. Wltetlier it was that 
 Kaeso Fabius had made himself and his house unpopular 
 with their own order, because he tried to carry into effect 
 the agrarian law of Cassius by the division among the 
 plebeians of the newly-conquered land, or whether the 
 Fabii wished to establish an independent military col¬ 
 ony, or whatever their real motive was, they quitted 
 Rome in a body. Livy’s own account scarcely explains 
 the migration satisfactorily. The hostility of Yeii, he 
 says, was not so much a serious danger as a perpetual 
 harass to Rome. Seeing this, Kseso Fabius (now for the 
 third time consul) made a proposal in the senate as 
 spokesman for his clan. The state had many small and 
 troublesome wars on hand, he said: the Fabii would 
 take that against Ycii entirely on themselves, at no 
 cost to their fellow-citizens either of blood or money. 
 It had become almost a family business with them; 
 and they would undertake to make Rome safe from 
 that quarter. So, amid the thanks of all, the consul 
 quitted the senate-house, and summoned all of his 
 clan to assemble under arms before his own house next 
 day. 
 
GROWTH OF THE REPUBLIC . 
 
 48 
 
 “ Through all the city the rumor spreads: all extol the house 
 of Fabius to the skies. ‘ A single family had undertaken the 
 burden of the state; the war with Veii was turned over to the 
 private hands, as a private adventure of arms. Were there but 
 two more houses in the city of the like strength,—let one claim 
 the Volscians, and the other the ACquians, for their portion,—the 
 Roman people might then enjoy peace and quiet, and all the 
 neighboring tribes be brought under their rule.’ Next day the 
 Fabii arm themselves, and muster at the place appointed. The 
 consul coming forth with his war-cloak on, sees his whole clan 
 drawn up under arms in his outer court. They open their ranks 
 to receive him in their centre, and he gives the word to march. 
 Never did military force march through the city streets so small 
 in number, so great in renown and in the admiration of all be¬ 
 holders. Six hundred and six men-at-arms—all of gentle birth, 
 all of one house, under the command of no one of whom need the 
 best army of any time disdain to serve—went forth, to attempt 
 the crushing of the people of Veii by the strength of their single 
 clan. They were escorted not only by a body of their own kins¬ 
 men and friends, prognosticating for them nothing short of some 
 mighty result—with intense hopes, and as intense misgivings; 
 but also by another crowd, collected by the strong public anxiety 
 and deeply affected with interest and admiration. ‘ Go forth,’ 
 they cried, ‘gallant heroes! Blessings go with you! Bring us 
 back the success your noble enterprise deserves, then claim 
 from us consulships and triumphs—all the rewards, all the honors 
 we can bestow 1’ As they passed the Capitol, and the citadel, 
 and the temples, the crowd invoked every deity whose image 
 met their eyes, or whose name occurred to their thoughts, ‘ to 
 send forth that array with their blessing and favor—to restore 
 them soon in safety to their country and their friends.’ But the 
 prayers were uttered in vain.”—(ii. 49.) 
 
 They took up a position on the frontier, on the little 
 river Cremera, some three miles from Rome, and there 
 for two years kept garrison against Veii. Then they 
 were surprised, and cut to pieces to a man; one young 
 lad only escaping, to become the new founder of the 
 house of Fabius. 
 
 The agrarian laws long continued to provoke contests 
 
44 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 between the two orders in the state—the tribunes de¬ 
 manding their enforcement, and the consuls resisting it. 
 In some instances the former appear to have failed in 
 their duty, influenced or overawed by the powerful 
 patrician houses. In one case, a tribune who had made 
 himself too active was found dead in his bed—murder¬ 
 ed, it was said, by the unscrupulous opponents. At 
 last, after many struggles, a law was carried which has 
 been called “ the second great charter of Roman liber¬ 
 ties.”* It transferred the election of the tribunes from 
 the centuries, in which all citizens voted, to the assem¬ 
 bly of the tribes, in which the plebeians alone had 
 votes. It was known as the Publilian Law, from the 
 tribune Yolero Publilius, who proposed and at last 
 carried it. 
 
 The iEquians from their strongholds in the Apen¬ 
 nines, the Yolscians from the plain and from the Alban 
 Hills, were still pressing from time to time on the 
 Roman territory, and finding constant occupation for 
 its armies. The account which Livy gives of these 
 campaigns is not only broken and confused, but cannot 
 be reconciled either with historical probability or geo¬ 
 graphical facts. But it is plain that the close of the 
 third century from the foundation of the city was a 
 period of more or less disaster for Rome. Losses in 
 war were accompanied by severe visitations of pesti 
 lence. Three times it broke out at intervals in the 
 space of ten years, carrying off on the last occasion both 
 the consuls of the year, two out of the four augurs, and 
 an immense number of persons of all ranks. As in the 
 case of the great plague at Athens, the crowding within 
 the walls of the city of thousands of the country people, 
 in order to escape the unchecked incursion of the 
 enemy, made the place unhealthy, and served rapidly 
 
GROWTH OF THE REPUBLIC . 
 
 45 
 
 to spread the disease. Dr. Arnold is certainly right in 
 detecting the fact which the Roman annalist implies- 
 rather than states—that the violent dissensions between 
 the two orders in the commonwealth led in many cases, 
 as in that of Coriolanus (possibly also of the Fabii, as 
 just mentioned), to political exile, either forced or 
 voluntary. We are told that, in the year of the city 
 294, the Capitol was actually surprised by a night at¬ 
 tack, and held for some days, by a large body of “ exiles 
 and slaves” headed by a Sabine named Appius Herdoni- 
 us, who not only offered liberty to all slaves who would 
 join him, but proclaimed himself generally as having 
 come “ to assert the cause of the oppressed.” The con¬ 
 suls feared to arm the commons against them; the 
 commons, on their part, declared that it was a false 
 alarm—a mere trick of their opponents to divert atten¬ 
 tion from a new law just proposed in the people’s 
 interest; and it was only when a strong force from 
 Tusculum, which city had heard of the danger of 
 Rome, marched in to the aid of the government, that 
 the national troops were persuaded to make an attempt 
 to recover the citadel. They succeeded after hard fight¬ 
 ing, and not until the consul who led them had been 
 killed. 
 
 The war with theiEquians at this time is made mem 
 orable by the story of Cincinnatus. A Roman army 
 under one of the consuls was blockaded in its camp; 
 and when the senate met in hurried council, one man’s 
 name was on the lips of all, as “the sole hope of 
 Rome;” it was Lucius Quintius, known as “ Cincinna¬ 
 tus,” from his “crisped” hair. Of his previous history 
 the annalist tells us not enough to explain what it yras 
 which made the eyes of all his countrymen turn to him 
 in the hour of danger. He and his son Kseso had been 
 
46 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 amongst the bitterest opponents of the claims of the 
 plebeians, who had succeeded in getting the latter ban¬ 
 ished on a charge of murder. The father is now found 
 ploughing on his little farm of some three acres, stripped 
 to his work; and the state messenger bids him clothe 
 himself, that he may listen to the senate’s commands in 
 decent guise. He is saluted on the spot as Dictator— 
 sole and absolute governor of Rome and her armies; and 
 is conducted to the city, where he is received with 
 shouts of acclamation,—the plebeians, however, still 
 looking on him with some forebodings, as a man who 
 had irresponsible authority, and looked likely to use it 
 to the full. He takes the field at once, blockades the 
 blockading enemy, reduces them to surrender, makes 
 them all pass under the yoke, and la} r s down his dicta¬ 
 torship, after a rule of sixteen days. It is a marvellous 
 story, and must be left as the annalist tells it. One 
 point in it, even if literally true, may not be nearly so 
 extraordinary as it seems. That the man who was 
 chosen to take the supreme power at Rome should have 
 been cultivating a small farm may probably be a more 
 accurate picture of Roman life, in those early times, 
 than the grander figures of Roman magistrates and 
 commanders which Livy transferred from his own days 
 to those of the infant republic. 
 
 The commons had by this time gained an important 
 step towards independence by the passing of the Icilian 
 Law, by which so much of the Aventine Hill as re¬ 
 mained unenclosed was lotted out to them in freehold: 
 and the burgher-citizens, who had hitherto enjoyed the 
 occupation of it under the state, had to give up their 
 holdings,—for which, however, they were to receive 
 compensation. But a larger and more important meas¬ 
 ure of reform, which had been brought forward by the 
 
GROWTH OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 47 
 
 tribunes (whose number had been now increased to ten) 
 from year to year, and as often postponed owing to the 
 determined opposition of the burghers, was now about 
 to be carried. A “bill”—as we should term it—had 
 been introduced by Terentilius, which was in effect to 
 give Rome a new constitution. It was proposed to 
 choose ten commissioners—five from the burgher-citi¬ 
 zens and five from the commons—who should draw up 
 a code of constitutional, civil, and criminal law; and so 
 set at rest for ever all questions in dispute between the 
 two parties in the state. At last, after a contest of ten 
 years, the bill was carried—but with a very important 
 modification; all ten of the commissioners were to be 
 chosen from the burgher class. Another fatal outbreak 
 of pestilence, which carried off one of the consuls, four 
 of the tribunes, and “threw very many noble families 
 into mourning”—to say nothing of its ravages in hum¬ 
 bler quarters, of which the annalist does not take much 
 account—had perhaps softened political asperities. But 
 it was a fatal concession on the part of the plebeian 
 order, so far as the result was concerned. 
 
 Three senators had been sent into Greece, to ex¬ 
 amine the celebrated laws of Solon, and also the 
 legislative systems of other states, with a view to the 
 drawing up of a Roman code. The Commission of 
 Ten was elected; and all other public magistracies, 
 consuls and tribunes included, seem for the time to 
 have been placed in abeyance. The Ten began their 
 work, and in a few months presented the result in 
 ten tables of statutes, on which they invited public 
 criticism and corrections. They were adopted, and 
 “remain to this day,” say Livy, “the main founda¬ 
 tion of all public and private law.” We should have ^ 
 been thankful to him had he given us some notion of 
 
48 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 their contents; but this kind of constitutional history 
 was not to his mind, and only some four or five enact¬ 
 ments in the code are known to us from references in 
 the works of Cicero. But it was reported—or the Ten 
 allowed it to be understood—that two more tables were 
 yet needed to complete their work; and for this pur¬ 
 pose it was proposed to continue the Commission, 
 subject to a new election of its component members, for 
 a second year. To this the plebeians willingly assented; 
 for by this time f, ‘ they hated the name of consul almost 
 as much as that of king/ 
 
 Tne leading spirit both in the old and new Commission 
 was Appiuc Claudius. He is probably the same man 
 (though the annalist puts him a generation lower) who, 
 twenty years before, as consul, had been so hated by 
 the army whom he led against the Yolscians that whole 
 companies threw away their arms and refused to fight; 
 in punishment for which* with the support of the Latin 
 smd Hernican troops, and the stancher burgher-com¬ 
 panies, he had inflicted death on every officer whose 
 company had fled, and decimated tho ranks of the de¬ 
 faulters. Not for this ostensibly—for the severity was 
 warranted by Boman discipline—but on other charges, 
 he had been brought to trial when his year of office had 
 expired* but had in some'way escaped. He now took 
 every means to ingratiate himself with the commons, 
 in order to secure his re-election amongst the Ten. In 
 (this he succeeded, as well as in procuring that most of 
 his new colleagues should be ofthe ultra-aristocratic 
 party. 
 
 Them says Livy, Appius threw off the mask, and 
 showed himself what he was, and taught his colleagues 
 ail the insolence of power. They appeared in public all 
 at once with twelve lictors each, whereas in their first 
 
GROWTH OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 49 
 
 year of office they had been content with one. “A 
 hundred and twenty lietors filled the forum; they 
 looked like ten king's”—says the annalyst, to mark as 
 strongly as possible the effect upon the public. Their 
 whole behavior was one course of insult and oppres¬ 
 sion. They brought out the two additional tables of 
 statutes—but it would appear that these contained en¬ 
 actments wholly unlike in spirit to those which had 
 been issued first.* 
 
 When this second year of office was drawing to its 
 close, nothing was heard of any coming election of 
 consuls or tribunes, and it appeared that the Decemvirs 
 had no thought of resigning their power. They sur¬ 
 rounded themselves with bands of young patricians, 
 and treated the commons with more insolence than ever. 
 Meanwhile the Roman territory was being laid waste 
 by incursions of the Sabines and the iEquians. A 
 meeting of the senate was held, in which some plain 
 speaking was used towards the new masters of Rome. 
 Valerius demanded permission to speak “ on the ques¬ 
 tion of the Republic;” and when this was refused, pro¬ 
 tested amidst great confusion that he would - “go to the 
 commons.” Horatius Barbatus denounced the Decem¬ 
 virs as the “Ten Tarquins,” and reminded them that a 
 Valerius and an Horatius had once already taken their 
 part in ridding Rome of tyrants. Valerius declared that 
 he was not to be cowed by the terrors of “imaginary 
 rods and axes,”—implying that the assumption by the 
 Ten of these emblems of power was illegal. Appius 
 ordered his instant arrest; Valerius rushed to the steps 
 
 * Cicero (De Rep. ii. 37) says that these supplementary tables 
 contained laws that were highly invidious; for instance, declar¬ 
 ing marriages between patricians and plebeians illegal. 
 
50 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 of the senate-house, anddoudly claimed the protection 
 of the people, and the quarrel was with difficulty ap¬ 
 peased by some of the other senators, who dreaded noth 
 ing so much as a popular revolution. Generals were 
 nominated for the campaign against the ^Equians and 
 Sabines; but the troops were sullen and disaffected. 
 The result was a defeat in both quarters; and watch and 
 ward had to be kept in the city by day and night, in 
 expectation of an attack from the victorious enemy. 
 
 The measure of the insolence of the Ten is said to 
 have been filled up at last, as in the case of the Tar- 
 quins, by an outrage upon a woman’s honor. Appius 
 had cast his wicked eyes upon the young daughter of a 
 centurion named Virginius, now serving with the army. 
 He suborned a creature of his own to claim her as his 
 escaped bond-slave; she was only the supposititious 
 child, he affirmed, of Virginius. Her friends protested, 
 and appealed to the law. The case was heard—before 
 Appius as magistrate. He made of show of justice: the 
 matter should stand over until Virginius returned from 
 service. Then, if he could prove she was his legitimate 
 daughter, well: meanwhile she must remain in the safe 
 custody of the master who had sworn to her as his 
 property. The meaning of this was only too plain. 
 Her friends and the whole of the crowded court loudly 
 expressed their indignation. Her betrothed bridegroom, 
 no less a person than Icilius, who when tribune had 
 carried the law for the allotment of the Aventine to the 
 commons—a man of quiet temper, says Livy, but now 
 stung into fury—broke through the crowd, and defied 
 Appius on the judgment-seat. After a few bitter words 
 the Decemvir thought it prudent so far to give way, as 
 to promise to await the arrival of the father on the 
 morrow—which he had taken steps, as he hoped, to 
 
uiiOWTU OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 51 
 
 prevent. But Virginius got the news, and, traveling all 
 the night, reached Rome next morning. Putting on a 
 mourning dress, he went down with his daughter to the 
 court in the Forum, solemnly warning his fellow-citizens 
 that his cause was that of the republic. Surrounded by 
 a strong guard of retainers, Appius did not fear to give 
 his iniquitous judgment in brief terms—he was satisfied 
 that the girl was a slave; her master must take her. 
 The Roman women crowded round to protect her: the 
 father raised his voice in loud and bitter protest against 
 this crowning outrage on the liberty of Roman citizens. 
 Appius charged him and Icilius with meditating revolu¬ 
 tion, and bade his lictors clear a way through the crowd 
 for the master to take away his slave. But nothing can 
 give the rest of the story so well as Livy’s own words. 
 
 “When Appius had thundered forth these words in his over¬ 
 flowing passion, the crowd gave way without resistance, and the 
 maiden stood deserted by all, a nelpless prey to injustice. Then 
 Virginius, when he saw no aid was to be looked for, said: ‘I 
 pray thee, Appius first, to make allowance for a father’s feel¬ 
 ings if I have said aught too bitter against thee; then, suffer 
 me to question this nurse, in the maiden's presence, as to the 
 facts of this matter; so, if 1 have been wrongly called her father, 
 1 can part from her with a lighter heart.’ Leave was given: he 
 led the girl and her nurse aside, near what are now called the 
 New Booths, and there, seizing a knife from a butcher, he cried, 
 Thus, my daughter, to the only way I can, I make thee free!' 
 Then he stabbed her in the heart, and lifting his eyes to the tri¬ 
 bunal said—‘Thee and thy life, Appius, I consecrate to destruc¬ 
 tion in this blood! * Roused by the cries which followed on this 
 deed of horror, Appius bade his men seize Virginius. But he 
 cleared a way for himself with the knife as he went: and so. 
 protected also by a body of young men who escorted him, 
 reached the city gate. Then Icilius and Numitorius lifted up the 
 lifeless corpse, and showed it to the people They spoke of the 
 wickedness of Appius, the beauty of the maiden which had been 
 so fatal to her, the hard necessity of the father. The matrons 
 
LIVY. 
 
 
 followed the body, crying repeatedly, * Was it for this they bore 
 children? Was such the reward of maiden chastity? ’ (iii. 48.) 
 
 The men calle'd loudly for the restoration of the 
 tribunate, the safeguard of their liberties. In vain did 
 Appius order the arrest of Icilius. The indignant 
 people found new and powerful leaders in the senators 
 Valerius and Horatius; and Appius had to fly for his 
 life from the Forum.* The legions took up the popu¬ 
 lar cause, and refused any longer to obey the Decem¬ 
 virs’ orders. Both armies marched to Rome, and seized 
 the Aventine Hill, the home of the commons; and each 
 elected ten “Tribunes of the Soldiers” to protect their 
 rights. There was some delay in negotiations with the 
 jealous patricians; whereupon the commons left the 
 city in a body, and remembering what their forefathers 
 had done forty-five years before, established themselves 
 once more on the “ Sacred Hill.” f They demanded 
 not only the restoration of the tribunate, and indemnity 
 for all the leaders of the revolution—they clamored to 
 have the Ten given up to them, “ that they might burn 
 them with fire.” % They were at last satisfied with the 
 permission to impeach them, which was done under the 
 new administration. Appius and another of his col¬ 
 leagues committed suicide rather than abide their trial; 
 
 * Nothing can more admirably represent the whole spirit of 
 this pathetic episode than Macaulay’s lay of “Virginia.” The 
 subject was naturally a tempting one to the dramatists; and 
 it has been worthily treated both by Alfieri and Sheridan 
 Knowles, 
 t See p. 38. 
 
 X Machiavelli’s remark on this is amusing in its cool cyni¬ 
 cism. The people made a mistake, he says, on this occasion. 
 They were quite right in their demand that the Decemvirs 
 should be given up to them; but they were wrong in explaining 
 u pourquoi." 
 
THE DECEMVIR A TE—THE SACK OF ROME. 53 
 
 the rest were exiled; and “the shade of Virginia, 
 happier in her death than in her life,” says the annalist, 
 who was more than half a poet, “was at length ap¬ 
 peased.” 
 
 It is but a legend, the critics tell us, touching and 
 pathetic, but far too artistically proportioned to be 
 true Their judgment may be right; but history, like 
 life, is all the more beautiful for its illusions. The 
 story of Virginia may be only the composition of a 
 professional reciter, its details selected and harmonized 
 from a dozen current stories of the tyranny of the De- 
 cemvirate; the revolution may have had far deeper and 
 wider roots than a father’s or a lover’s vengeance; but 
 again it is true at least so far as this—it was men like 
 Virginius that made the liberties of Rome. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 FROM THE DECEMVIRATE TO THE SACK OF ROME BY 
 
 THE GAULS. 
 
 (books m.-v. b.c. 449-390.) 
 
 The revolution ended in the restoration of the old 
 magistracies. Ten tribunes were elected, Virginius, 
 Icilius, and Numitorius standing first. The choice for 
 the consulship fell by acclamation upon the two senators 
 who had stood forth as champions of the national liber¬ 
 ties—Valerius and Horatius. They were in fact the 
 first who properly bore the name of “consul,” for the 
 term can only have been applied by anticipation to the 
 earlier chief magistrates, whose real designation was 
 “praetor.” The election w T as not regarded altogether 
 with favor by the aristocratic party, since it was con- 
 
54 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 sidered that both the new consuls, in their dealings with 
 the commons, had somewhat betrayed the interests of 
 their own order; and the senate showed its jealousy in 
 refusing them the usual honor of a triumph, when they 
 soon after defeated the Sabines and iEquians in the 
 campaign of the year. The triumph was held notwith¬ 
 standing, on the demand of the tribunes, which the 
 senate were unable to resist; though one of the speakers 
 was bold enough to protest that it was “a triumph 
 gained over the senate, not over the enemy.” But the 
 defeat of the Sabines at least must have been complete, 
 since we hear of no movements on their part for a hun¬ 
 dred and fifty years. 
 
 The military events of this period are of no great im¬ 
 portance otherwise, though we find the usual border 
 hostilities going on from time to time. The political 
 changes are of much higher interest; and of these the 
 annalist’s account is, as usual, confused and unsatisfac¬ 
 tory. What may be clearly traced through it all is the 
 progress of the commons to political power. The con¬ 
 sul Valerius succeeded in passing two laws; one to the 
 effect that it should be treason to propose the election 
 of any magistrate from whose sentence there should not 
 be right of appeal; and the other to place a plcbiscitum 
 —a decree of the commons—on the same footing as one 
 passed by the burghers in their centuries. It would 
 appear also from other authorities—and there are indi¬ 
 cations of it in these “Annals”—that it was arranged 
 that in future one consul should be chosen from the 
 plebeians, but that as yet this was seldom carried out. 
 There now appear also from time to time, instead of 
 the two consuls, new magistrates called “Tribunes of 
 the Soldiers,” uncertain in number, who were to be 
 elected from both orders alike. Probably it was in- 
 
THE DECEMVIR A TE—THE SACK OF ROME. 55 
 
 tended that these should exercise the military functions 
 of the consuls, whose civil powers were transferred to 
 two other new magistrates called Censors, who were to 
 settle the roll of the senate, to fix the rank of every in¬ 
 dividual in the state according to his property, and to 
 manage the state revenues. This office was reserved 
 for patricians alone; and it gave its holders so much in¬ 
 fluence, and conferred upon them so much of almost 
 regal state, that the patrician Mamercus iEmilius won 
 himself a great name for patriotism, when he proposed 
 and carried the limitation of the appointment to eighteen 
 months instead of the original term of five years. An¬ 
 other important social step towards the placing the two 
 orders of citizens on something like equality was the 
 legalizing for the future (by the law of Canuleius) of 
 marriages contracted between a patrician and a ple¬ 
 beian. 
 
 An event occurred a few years afterwards which 
 caused great public excitement, and threatened to 
 break the comparatively peaceful relations which were 
 now existing. During a year of great scarcity, a rich 
 plebeian named Spurius Maelius, whose wealth gave 
 him a place among the knights—he was a contractor, 
 or something of the kind—began either to give away, 
 or sell at a very low price to the poorer citizens, a 
 quantity of corn which he had got in from Etruria. 
 Whether the burghers were jealous of his consequent 
 popularity, or whether they really believed it, they 
 raised against him the fatal cry that he was seeking to 
 make himself a king.* The consuls of the year seem 
 
 * Arnold keenly observes that “charity was so little familiar to 
 the Greeks and Romans that the splendid magnificence of Meelius 
 is in itself suspicious.” 
 
56 
 
 LIVT. 
 
 to have been either timid or incapable. They sent 
 again for the one man wh@m apparently all Rome held 
 to be infallible—Quinctius Cincinuatus, now some eighty 
 years old. He was made Dictator, and named Servius 
 Ahala, a man apparently of his own mould, his “Mas¬ 
 ter of the Horse.” Mselius was summoned to appear 
 before the Dictator; he refused to come; and when the 
 officer tried to arrest him, he rushed into the midst of 
 the crowd and appealed to them for protection. A 
 riot seemed imminent; and the Master of the Horse, 
 who was supported by a strong force (“of young 
 patricians,” according to Livy), cut him down on the 
 spot. The stern old Dictator formally pronounced it 
 “justifiable homicide.” The tribunes persisted in 
 representing it as nothing more or less than a political 
 murder. His house was ordered to be razed to the 
 ground as the property of a traitor, and its site was 
 known ever after as the “Mselian Level;” but how far 
 he was or was not the traitor which the annalist makes 
 him out to be, we shall never know. 
 
 The strong town of Fidense, some five or six miles 
 from Rome, had put itself under the protection of 
 Yeii, and its final subjection (for it had been taken and 
 retaken more than once) was the first addition of real 
 importance made to the Roman dominion, which from 
 this time forth began its course of rapid extension. 
 Yeii itself, which had withstood its powerful neighbor 
 so long, was soon to fall. Hitherto the wars between 
 Rome and her neighbors had been little more than 
 border raids, her force a mere field militia, the cam¬ 
 paign lasting, at the most, a few months; but in b.c. 
 406, Yeii, a strong town with walls of the solid Etrus¬ 
 can masonry, was regularly blockaded, by a double line 
 of circumvallation, as Livy’s words would seem to im- 
 
THE DECEMVIR ATE—THE SACK OF ROME. 57 
 
 ply, but more probably by something like a chain of 
 detached forts, with the view of cutting off from it all 
 succor and supplies,—which, however, was only par¬ 
 tially successful. Then for the first time, apparently, 
 a Roman force was expected to keep the field during 
 the winter; and it was not without strong remonstrance 
 on the part of the tribunes that so unpopular a requisi¬ 
 tion was submitted to. The siege is said*to have lasted 
 ten years, like the siege of Troy; but the details of it 
 given by the annalist can hardly be considered histori¬ 
 cal. A great defeat of the blockading force is recorded 
 in the last year of the siege, by the men of Capense and 
 Falerii, who came to help their neighbors; the report of 
 it was exaggerated by panic, and there was terrible 
 consternation at Rome. Then, we are told, “ the 
 leader predestined by the Fates to destroy the hostile 
 city and to save his country, Marcus Furius Oamillus,” 
 was named Dictator; and we may suspect at once, with 
 Niebuhr and other keen historical inquirers, that we 
 are indebted for much that follows to the family chroni¬ 
 cles of the house of the Furii. Camillus at once attacks 
 and defeats the allies of Yeii, takes both their camps, 
 restores discipline amongst the Roman troops, draws 
 his lines closer, drives a mine under the walls right into 
 the heart of the city, and sends to Rome to announce 
 that Yeii is ready to fall, and to ask what he shall do 
 with the expected spoil. The Roman populace are in¬ 
 vited to set out in a body to share it; a tenth only being 
 reserved by the conqueror as an offering to Apollo. 
 And here follows a circumstantial story which Livy 
 himself considers as “ fabulousthat the mine was 
 ready to be sprung, right under the temple of Juno; 
 that the king of Yeii was there offering sacrifice, when 
 the soothsayer exclaimed that the man who presented 
 
58 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 % 
 
 on the altar the entrails of that victim should win the 
 victory. The words were heard by the Romans in the 
 mine; they broke through, seized the victim, and handed 
 the entrails to their general: and so the words came 
 true. 
 
 Veii was taken and given up to plunder, and its in¬ 
 habitants sold for slaves. Great was the joy of the Ro¬ 
 mans, and no Jionors were thought too great for the 
 conqueror. Never had such a triumph been seen at 
 Rome. Camillus had his chariot drawn by four white 
 horses; but there were not wanting curious tongues 
 which said such display was neither good precedent in 
 a Roman citizen, nor becoming in a mortal man; it was 
 usurping to himself the privileges of Jove and of the 
 Sun. If Camillus did take to himself any unbecoming 
 honor, it is not in harmony with the prettier story 
 which Livy gives briefly, and Dionysius at more length 
 —that when he recognized the greatness of his victory, 
 so far beyond all hope and expectation, he lifted his 
 hands to heaven and prayed, “that if in the sight of 
 gods or men his own and the Roman people’s good for¬ 
 tune seemed too great, the compensating evil might fall 
 upon him in his own person, and not on his fellow- 
 citizens and his country.” As he turned round (so ran 
 the story) he stumbled and fell; and some men “ judg¬ 
 ing by the event”—as such things commonly are judged 
 —interpreted the omen of the downfall of Camillus 
 himself, and some of the disaster which was in a few 
 years to come upon Rome. 
 
 The campaign against Veii is marked by two distinct 
 steps in the internal history of Rome, which the anna¬ 
 list passes over somewhat lightly, but which are of more 
 importance than many of the petty wars which he is 
 careful to record, and probably much more authentic 
 
THE EEC EM VIE A TE— THE SACK OF ROME. 59 
 
 than the story of Yeii. Then, for the first time, was 
 the question of war, “ by the perseverance of the tri¬ 
 bunes,” referred to the people in their centuries; where¬ 
 as hitherto a decree of the senate had been held suffi¬ 
 cient. And in this war, for the first time, was regular 
 pay given to the troops on service. 
 
 Falerii fell soon after, before the same conqueror; 
 who, when he had laid down his dictatorship, was 
 chosen one of the Tribunes of the Soldiers. We are 
 still perhaps in the domain of fable, when we are asked 
 to believe the story of the schoolmaster who, taking out 
 his pupils—sons of the chief men of Falerii—for exer¬ 
 cise outside the walls, offered to betray them into the 
 hands of the Roman general, and was sent back by him 
 into the town with his hands tied behind him, and in¬ 
 junctions to his scholars to flog him all the way; at 
 Which act of generosity the men of Falerii were so 
 charmed that they voluntarily gave up the city to so 
 magnanimous a captain. Whether any such episode 
 did or did not take place, it is tolerably certain that 
 Camillus did not address the w r retched schoolmaster in 
 the neat and appropriate rhetorical speech which our 
 author has composed for him.* But Falerii fell, and 
 other towns soon after; and the Romans reached the 
 Ciminian Hills—“the extreme natural boundary of the 
 basin of the Tiber on the side of Etruria.” But we 
 must not overrate the extent of their early conquests; 
 as yet no Roman army had marched more than fifty 
 miles from Rome. 
 
 Camillus had meanwhile fallen into disgrace. The 
 
 * The reader will appreciate M. Taine’s playful criticism: 
 “ Le pauvre pedagogue a trouve son maitre: il ecoute une le- 
 Son de rhetorique, avant d’etrere conduit a la ville de la mani- 
 6r« que chacun sait.” 
 
60 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 plunder of Yeii had been distributed before the tithe 
 which he had vowed to Apollo had been set apart; and 
 there was a great amount of discontent when this was 
 demanded from the holders afterwards. He became 
 the project of popular jealousy and dislike. He was ac¬ 
 cused of having secreted for himself part of the plun¬ 
 der. There can, however, be little doubt but that his 
 strong opposition to the popular party, and especially 
 to their project of colonizing Yeii, as recorded by Livy, 
 was the chief reason for their enmity. The discon¬ 
 tented commons proposed to form at Yeii as it were 
 a second Rome; and in its lands, which they declared 
 were more fertile than those round the older city, they 
 saw a new state demesne which could be allotted to 
 themselves. The conservative senators resisted it as 
 almost an impiety to their ancestral gods. The quarrel 
 grew so bitter, that Camillus was impeached by one of 
 the tribunes; and rather than stand a trial in which he 
 may have felt that judgment had been passed before¬ 
 hand, he went into voluntary exile; praying, says the 
 annalist, as he left the city, that “if he were innocent, 
 and wrong was being done him in that matter, his un¬ 
 grateful countrymen might soon be made to feel his loss.” 
 
 If we are still reading the chronicles of the Furii, the 
 historiographer of that illustrious house must have had 
 many of the qualifications of an excellent dramatist. 
 The Romans were soon to pay the penalty of their in¬ 
 gratitude, and Furius Camillus was to take an heroic re¬ 
 venge. Tidings came from Clusium that a new enemy 
 was threatening not Rome only, but all civilized Italy. 
 A voice had been heard in the night, near the temple of 
 Yesta, warning the guardians of the city that “the 
 Gauls were at hand ”—those truculent barbarians, naked 
 to the waist, whose tall persons, cold steel-blue eyes, 
 
THE DECEMVIRATE— THE SACK OF ROME. 61 
 
 and long yellow hair and mustache, so utterly different 
 from the Italian type, the Romans to the last could never 
 look upon without dread and dislike. The Gauls, who 
 had long since driven out the Etruscans from the rich 
 plains of the Po, had now crossed the Apennines, and 
 had appeared in force before Clusimn. The Romans 
 sent three commissioners to watch their movements; but 
 it was scarcely the custom of the times or of the Ro¬ 
 mans—and still less the temper of the house of Fabius, 
 to which these officers belonged—to watch a fight with¬ 
 out taking part in it. Quintus Fabius killed with his 
 own hand a Gaulish captain, and was recognized for a 
 Roman while he was stripping the body. Indignant at 
 this breach of the law of nations, the Gauls sent to 
 Rome to demand the surrender of the three Fabii. 
 The Romans refused; “ they knew the demand of the 
 barbarians was fair,” we are told, “ but the influence of 
 a noble house was too powerful;” and the invading 
 horde broke up from Clusium, and marched upon Rome. 
 No preparations had been made; and while the country 
 people fled before the rapid sweep of this new enemy, 
 and filled the city with terror and confusion, some 
 hastily-gathered levies marched out to check their ad¬ 
 vance, and met them on the little stream called Allia, 
 about eleven miles from Rome. “ Without sacrifices, 
 without auspices,” says the Roman historian, anxious 
 to account for the unfortunate issue, they drew up their 
 line and engaged—only to meet what he confesses was 
 a complete and shameful defeat. Some were drowned 
 in the Tiber, some fled to Rome, and more to Yeii, to 
 avoid crossing the river. We are told that in the gen¬ 
 eral confusion the fugitives who reached Rome did not 
 even stop to shut the city gates, but at once took shelter 
 in the citadel, 
 
62 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 The whole story of the sacking of Rome by the Gauls 
 is little better than a romance; yet Livy’s version of it, 
 founded probably on the family annals of the Furii and 
 Manlii, cannot be omitted. Like some similar stories 
 in English history, it is likely to retain its place in the 
 memory when drier facts are forgotten. 
 
 The Gauls, say these Annals, reached the walls of 
 Rome on the evening of the battle. But the open gates, 
 and the unnatural quiet, awed them; they feared a 
 stratagem, and put off their entrance till the morning. 
 They met with no resistance; all who could bear arms 
 had shut themselves in the Capitol, with their wives 
 and children; the priest of Quirinus (the deified Romu¬ 
 lus), and the Vestal Virgins, who had charge of the 
 Eternal Fire, had buried some of the sacred images, 
 and carried the rest for safety to the little town of Caere. 
 Such of the lower orders as were not trained to arms 
 were bid to shift for themselves, and most of them at 
 once dispersed into the country. The older senators 
 and patricians announced their intention of meeting 
 death where they were—they would not burden the 
 defenders of the Capitol, they said, with the mainten¬ 
 ance oftheir useless bodies. Some say that by a sol¬ 
 emn formula they devoted their lives for Rome. So, 
 when the Gauls entered the Forum by the Colline 
 Gate, and spread themselves to plunder, they saw a 
 strange sight. 
 
 “ The houses of the lower orders were shut up, but the halls of 
 the chief men stood open; and they hesitated more at entering 
 these than at breaking open such as were closed against them. 
 Thus it was not without a certain awe and reverence that they be¬ 
 held sitting in the vestibules of their houses, figures which not 
 only in their costume and decorations, whose magnificence 
 seemed to their eyes more than mortal, but in the majesty of 
 their looks and bearing, were like unto gods. While they stood 
 
THE DEGEMVIRATE—THE SACK OF ROME. 63 
 
 fixedly regarding them as though they were statues, a Gaul is 
 said to have stroked the beard, worn long as it was in those 
 days of one of them, Marcus Papirius, who smote him on the 
 head with his ivory staff, and woke his wrath; with that began a 
 general massacre and the rest were killed where they sat.”—(v. 
 41 .) 
 
 The city was sacked and burnt; but the citadel held 
 out. Part of the host stayed to blockade it, while the 
 the rest spread themselves over the country to plunder. 
 One division attacked the town of Ardea. There Cam- 
 illus was “growing grey in exile—inveighing against 
 gods and men, and asking where were the men who had 
 fought with him at Yeii and Falerii, who were always 
 brave at least, if not always successful?” He roused 
 the men of Ardea to a night attack upon the barbarians, 
 and cut them to pieces. “Friends and enemies de¬ 
 clared alike that there was nowhere to be fouud a war¬ 
 rior like Camillus.” The Roman fugitives collected at 
 Yeii, and took heart, and named the hero of the times 
 once more Dictator. 
 
 But before he could reach Rome, says the story, 
 weaker counsels had prevailed. The Gauls had discov¬ 
 ered a way to climb the steep of the Capitol; and but 
 for those wakeful geese who have passed into a proverb, 
 and the heroism of Manlius, who dashed his shield in 
 the face of the leader of the escalade, and hurled him 
 down upon his ascending comrades, the last stronghold 
 of the Romans would have been taken. Still the block 
 ade went on; but the famine was sore among the de¬ 
 fenders, and at last they were fain to bribe their in¬ 
 vaders, who were themselves dying in heaps from pesti¬ 
 lence, to take a ransom in gold and depart. Then the 
 barbarians brought false weights; and when the Roman 
 officer protested, their chief, or “ Brennus,” as they 
 
64 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 called him,* insultingly threw his sword into the scale, 
 and gave no explanation beyond the words, “ Woe to the 
 conquered!” But, said the legends in conclusion, be¬ 
 fore the disgraceful bargain had been concluded, the 
 great Dictator marched in from Veii, bade the gold be 
 taken back, and told his countrymen to remember that 
 Rome must be ransomed not with gold but steel. He 
 drove the Gauls out of the city, defeated them in two 
 great battles, destroyed their camp, and “not a man 
 was left to carry home the news of their disaster.” 
 
 Such is the story told by Livy; evidently so colored 
 and exaggerated, to enhance the glory of Camillus and 
 to save the wounded honor of Rome, that all attempts 
 to rectify the 'history, and sift the truth out of the 
 fiction, are more ingenious than satisfactory. Through 
 it all there stands out the great fact that Rome was 
 taken and burnt, and the Capitol held to ransom; and 
 there is jverv reason to suppose that the Gauls got clear 
 off with most of their plunder. How great must have 
 been the devastation made by such an inroad we might 
 readily imagine, even if we did not collect sufficient 
 intimation of it from the pages of Livy. He tells us 
 how the buildings in the city were so utterly ruined, 
 that the mass of the people would have deserted them 
 forever, had not every patriotic argument and every re¬ 
 ligious sentiment been appealed to. Once more—and 
 this time perhaps with better reason—the cry was raised 
 for a general migration to Veii; and Camillus, still the 
 controlling spirit in all emergencies of war and state, 
 had to implore his fellow-citizens not to desert the gods 
 and altars of their native city. Rome had prospered, 
 
 * The name is plainly not an appellative; it is the Celtic Bran 
 pr Cymric firenhin, a chief or king. 
 
THE DECEMVIR A TE—THE SACK OF ROME. 65 
 
 he reminded them, only so long as she had been mind¬ 
 ful of her sacred trust. The words which Livy has put 
 into his mouth are surely the expression of the writer’s 
 own intense love for Rome and Italy. 
 
 “ We hold a city founded under auspices and with solemn in¬ 
 auguration ; there is no spot within its walls that is not full of a 
 divine presence and hallowed associations. The days on which 
 our great sacrifices recur are not more strictly fixed than the 
 places where they are to be offered. Will you desert all these 
 objects of adoration, public and private, my fellow-citizens? . . . 
 Some will say, perhaps, that we can fulfil these sacred du¬ 
 ties at Veii, or send our own priests from thence to perform 
 them here. Neither can be done without breaking our religious 
 obligations. What shall I say of the Eternal Fire of Vesta, and 
 of that Image* preserved in the guardianship of her temple as 
 the pledge of our empire? What of your sacred shields, O great 
 Mars and Father Quirinus? Is it your will to forsake and leave 
 to desecration all these hallowed symbols, old as the city her¬ 
 self, some even older than her foundation? ... I speak of 
 ceremonies, and of temples—what shall I say of those who guard 
 them? Your Vestals have one only seat, whence nothing but the 
 capture of th9 city ever yet moved them. The Priest of Jupiter 
 may not lawfully pass a single night outside the city walls. Will 
 you make these ministers of Veii instead of Rome? 
 
 “ If in this whole city no better or more commodious dwelling 
 could be erected than that hut in which our Founder lived,— 
 were it not better to live in huts like shepherds and peasants, 
 amidst your own shrines and household gods, then go into this na 
 tiona) exile? . . . Does our affection for our native place de 
 pend on walls and beams? For mine own part, when I was late 
 in exile, I confess that as often as my native city came into my 
 thoughts, there rose before my eyes all this,—these hills, these 
 plains., yon Tiber, and the scene so familiar to my sight, and the 
 oright sky under which I was born and brought up. O Roman 
 countrymen! rather let these things move you now, by the love 
 you bear them, to stay where you are, than wring your hearts 
 with regret for them hereafter! Not without cause did gods and 
 
 * The Palladium—the wooden image of Pallas, asserted to have 
 been brought by iEneas from Troy. 
 
66 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 men fix on tliis spot to found a city: health-giving hills, a river 
 nigh at hand, to bring in food from all inland places, to receive 
 supplies by sea; the sea itself handy for commerce, yet not so 
 near as to expose the city to hostile fleets; a spot central to all 
 Italy, adapted beyond all others for the growth of a great state. ” 
 —(v. 54.) 
 
 The appeal was successful, and the citizens began to 
 rebuild. We are told (though here we have probably 
 some exaggeration) that every public monument was 
 destroyed, and every record burnt; that the very sites 
 of the temples were in many cases hard to trace; 
 and that the streets were choked with the charred and 
 blackened heaps of what had once been houses, so 
 that a man could hardly recognize where his own 
 dwelling had stood, while ruin and desolation were 
 spread for miles beyond the city walls. Even when 
 the people had with difficulty been persuaded to 
 undertake the task of rebuilding their dwellings, the 
 borrowing of money at high interest brought about the 
 old difficulty of hopeless debt. The war-tax was 
 doubled, which pressed with additional severity on a 
 decreasing population. Rome was thrown back almost 
 to its condition a century before. And, to crown the 
 public embarrassment, the subject-allies who had re¬ 
 mained staunch to Rome ever since the treaty of Spurius 
 Cassius, the Latins and Hernicans, took advantage of 
 her lowering fortunes to assert again their independ¬ 
 ence. 
 
CONQUEST OF LATIUM. 
 
 67 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 "v 
 
 CONQUEST OF LATIUM. 
 
 (books vi.-viii. b.c. 390-388.) 
 
 Whatever gloss tlie Roman annalists may have pnt 
 upon the actual facts of the terrible struggle with the 
 Gauls, the coldest historical judgment must confess that 
 Rome is never grander than in her misfortunes. The 
 city was rebuilt; new immigrants—from Yeii, from 
 Capenae, from Falerii—were admitted to the rights of 
 citizenship, to supply the gaps made in their ranks by 
 the last fatal war; the numbers must have been even 
 augmented by this process, for we are told that four new 
 tribes were added to the twenty-one. 
 
 Camillus fills the stage still. He gains fresh victories 
 over the Yolscians, and over a new Etruscan federation 
 —for the adversity of Rome was the opportunity for all 
 her hostile neighbors; even the Latins and Hernicans, 
 as has been said, hastened to renounce her alliance, not 
 only refusing the usual contingent of men, but even 
 supplying aid to the enemy. The details of the various 
 minor wars, as given by Livy, cannot be trusted; but it 
 is plain from subsequent events that Rome was able to 
 hold her own. The Latins and Hernicans, seeing things 
 going against them, sent to repudiate the act of their 
 citizens who had been found fighting in the ranks of 
 the Yolscians, and to claim that such of them as had 
 been taken prisoners (many were of high rank) should 
 be handed over to their own government for punish¬ 
 ment. The senate sternly bid the envoys betake them¬ 
 selves at once “out of the sight of the Roman people:” 
 
68 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 they would not guarantee to rebels, they said, the im¬ 
 munity of ambassadors. 
 
 But while Rome thus bravely maintained her honor 
 against external enemies, though not without some nar¬ 
 rowing of her borders for the time, her internal condi¬ 
 tion was one of great suffering for the larger class of 
 her citizens, on whom the pressure of debt and taxation 
 was weighing more heavily from day to day. Again, 
 whether from generous impulse or selfish ambition, one 
 of her distinguished citizens put himself forward as the 
 champion of the oppressed; and again, rightfully or 
 wrongfully, he was charged with seeking to make him¬ 
 self a king. Manlius, known as “Capitolinus,” from 
 his late heroic defense of the Capitol, was jealous—so 
 said his enemies—of the honors of Camillus: was indig¬ 
 nant, he said himself, at the sufferings of the honest 
 commons. One day he saw—what was no uncommon 
 sight at Rome—an unfortunate debtor being hurried 
 off by his creditor to end his days in the “hard-labor- 
 house,” or possibly by starvation. In this case the man 
 was an old officer, whose services were known. Man¬ 
 lius stopped him, and paid the debt on the spot, not 
 without some rhetorical declamation (in which we hear 
 Livy’s voice, and not Manlius’s) against the oppression 
 of the poor by the rich, and his own great deeds, and 
 his sympathy with an old fellow-soldier. He followed 
 up this popular act by others even more liberal; he sold 
 his lands, and advanced the money without interest to 
 those who were in debt, until it was said that more than 
 four hundred owed their liberty to him. Men hailed 
 him as the “Father of the Commons.” Crowds fol¬ 
 lowed his steps in public, and waited at his doors. He 
 excited their feelings yet more by openly asserting 
 that these patricians, not content with enjoying the use 
 
CONQUEST OF LATTUM. 
 
 69 
 
 of all the public lands, and living on the hard labor of 
 their poor debtors, had secreted the gold which had been 
 recovered from the Gauls; “he knew where the money 
 was, and would tell them some day.” 
 
 Cossus had already been appointed Dictator—partly 
 in view of this perilous state of things—and he was now 
 hurriedly recalled from the army to Rome. He sum¬ 
 moned Manlius before him, and called upon him for 
 proof of his slanderous charges. The speech which the 
 annalist assigns to Manlius by way of defense was cer¬ 
 tainly, if it was spoken, as revolutionary as a speech 
 could be. “ He was well aware that the nomination of 
 a Dictator was meant as a weapon against himself and 
 the commons, not against a foreign enemy. Did they 
 ask why he put himself forward alone as the champion 
 of the people? They might as well ask why he alone 
 had saved the Capitol. They required him to tell them 
 where the gold was that had been taken from the Gauls; 
 —why ask what they all so very well knew? He, at all 
 events, would give no information of the kind at the 
 bidding of his enemies.” He was arrested and thrown 
 into prison, appealing loudly to all the gods against this 
 ingratitude and injustice. Popular as he was, there 
 was no attempt at riot. The annalist, in spite of his 
 evident sympathy with this patrician party, pays a re¬ 
 markable tribute to the Roman populace: one might 
 almost think he was speaking of an English mob. 
 “They had an invincible respect,” he says, “for legiti¬ 
 mate authority.” No man questioned the order of the 
 Dictator. But numbers of the people went into mourn¬ 
 ing, and crowds gathered round the gates of the prison 
 where the popular hero was confined. The senate tried 
 to appease the public excitement by an expedient which 
 they hoped would win for them a counter-popularity--; 
 
70 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 a distribution of the lands of the town of Satrium, re¬ 
 cently-recovered; and two thousand settlers were sent 
 out to occupy them: but this only drew forth the taunt, 
 that it was meant to bribe them into the desertion of 
 their favorite. So threatening was the appearance of 
 things that Manlius was released. 
 
 This concession did but encourage the malcontents. 
 Manlius held meetings—some at night—in which his 
 language is reported as seditious in the highest degree. 
 He reminded his partisans of the fate of those patriotic 
 martyrs, Spurius Cassius and Mselius: he called upon 
 them to rid themselves, once for all, of consuls and dic¬ 
 tators; it was the commons who ought to rule. He 
 was the champion of the commons: if there were any 
 higher style and title with which they chose to invest 
 their leader, let them employ it, if so they could better 
 gain their ends ! Such an expression was certainly 
 plain enough. Manlius was at once impeached. So 
 terrible was this charge of “making himself a king,” 
 that for that reason, probably, it was remarked how he 
 was attended at his trial by no crowd of friends in 
 mourning, as was the usual custom; not even did his 
 two brothers take their places by his side. For the 
 same reason, even the commons were now ready to con¬ 
 demn him. 
 
 “ When the day of trial came, I cannot ascertain from any au 
 thority what was brought against him by his accusers that had 
 to do with his aiming at royal power, beyond the crowds he col¬ 
 lected round him, his seditious language, his largesses, and the 
 false charge he had made. But I cannot doubt that the evidence 
 on that point was strong, because the hesitation of the people to 
 condemn him lay not in the case itself, but in the place of trial. 
 That fact seems worthy of remark, that men may understand 
 how the greatest and most brilliant public services may become 
 not only thankless but even hateful, when joined -with that ac¬ 
 cursed lust for power. He is said to have brought forward nearly 
 
CONQUEST OF LATIUM. 
 
 71 
 
 four hundred men whom he had supplied with money free of in¬ 
 terest, whose goods he had saved from public sale, and whose 
 persons from imprisonment. Added to this, he is said not only 
 to have recited the honors he had gained in the field, but to have 
 displayed them to public view;—spoils stripped from slain ene¬ 
 mies to the number of thirty, as many as forty personal rewards 
 from his commanders, among which were conspicuous two 
 ‘ mural ’ and eight ‘ civic ’ crowns.* More than this, he brought 
 forward the fellow-citizens whose lives he had saved from the 
 enemy, naming among them, though not present, C. Servilius, 
 Master of the Horse. And when he had recounted all his services 
 in war. in glowing language corresponding to the brilliancy of his 
 exploits, he bared his breast, scarred all over with wounds re¬ 
 ceived in battle. Turning his eyes from time to time to the 
 Capitol, he called on Jove and the other powers there to aid him at 
 his need, and prayed them to inspire the people of Rome with the 
 same spirit, in this his day of peril, which they had given him to 
 protect that Capitol for the Roman people’s deliverance; and im¬ 
 plored those who heard him, one and all, to look on the Capitol 
 and its fortress, to bethink them of the immortal gods, and so 
 give their judgment.”—(vi. 20). 
 
 They could not condemn him, says the story, where he 
 stood in the Campus Martius, still stretching out his 
 hands towards the rock which towered above them; 
 the court broke up, and met next day outside the city 
 gates, in a spot whence the Capitol could not be seen, 
 and there adjudged him to death. He was thrown from 
 the Tarpeian rock, the place he had defended. “Such 
 was the end,” says the annalist, “of a man who had 
 been worthy of all remembrance, had he not been born 
 a citizen of a free city ”—that is, a city which would 
 not hear the name of “king.” All parties seem to have 
 thought him guilty of this treason to the common¬ 
 wealth, at the time: even his own family made a vow 
 that none of them henceforth should bear the name of 
 
 * The ‘‘mural ” for being the first to enter the enemy’s works; 
 the “ civic” for saving the life of a comrade. 
 
72 
 
 LIVY ,; 
 
 Marcus; but when a pestilence followed next year, no 
 wonder that the repentant commons said it came as the 
 avenger of Marcus Manlius. 
 
 The pressure of debt and consequent poverty still 
 continued, and it became plain, even to the moderate 
 men of the patrician party, that some remedial measures 
 were absolutely necessary. According to Livy, an ex¬ 
 hibition of female jealousy gave the first impulse to the 
 struggle which ended in the most substantial victory 
 yet won by the commons. Two sisters of the great 
 house of the Fabii had married—one a patrician, who 
 was a military tribune; the other a plebeian, Licinius 
 Stolo, rich and distinguished, but still of the unprivi¬ 
 leged order. The younger Fabia was startled by the 
 lictor’s appearance at her elder sister’s door, announcing 
 the return of her husband from the Forum—much to 
 . the amusement of the minister’s lady; and in her mor¬ 
 tification she complained to her father of her loss of 
 position. The father promised her that her own hus¬ 
 band should soon enjoy similar public rank; and from 
 that time he and his son-in-law, Licinius, began to agi¬ 
 tate for what were afterwards known as the great Licinian 
 Bills. These propositions, when they took shape, were 
 three in number. The first provided that it should be 
 lawful, from that date, to deduct from the capital sum 
 of all standing debts the amount already paid in interest. 
 The second made it illegal for any citizen to occupy, as 
 tenant of the state, more than five hundred(about 
 280 acres) of the public laud; which would leave a large 
 portion to be allotted to new claimants, and was practi¬ 
 cally an agarian law. The third enancted that in future 
 one of the two consuls must be chosen from the plebeian 
 order. The first would appear an arbitrary and stringent 
 measure, only to be explained by the fact of so many being 
 
CONQUEST OF LATIUM. 
 
 i O 
 
 daily reduced by hopeless debt into a condition of the 
 most miserable serfdom, and by remembering that in most 
 ancient commonwealths, as with the Jews, usury taken 
 from a fellow-citizen was held discreditable; the second 
 was, of course, highly unpopular with the privileged 
 class, who looked upon their large and profitable hold¬ 
 ings as their own by use and wont; but the last was 
 perhaps the bitterest of all to the patricians, as throwing 
 down the great barrier between class and class. After 
 a struggle which, according to Livy, lasted ten years, 
 during some of which the city was almost in a state of 
 anarchy,—a struggle maintained with great energy 
 on both sides, yet with considerable patience and for¬ 
 bearance, for though another “ secession” on the part 
 of the commons was threatened, no blood was shed in 
 the contest,—the three “Licinian Rogations” passed 
 into law, and a share in the highest magistracy of the 
 State was permanently secured for the commons. A 
 temple was erected to “Concord,” to mark the happy 
 termination of the long struggle; and a fourth day was 
 added to the Great Games at Rome. The annalist re¬ 
 cords it subsequently as a curious fact, that Licinius 
 Stolo was the first notable victim of his own law, being 
 convicted of holding more than the legal quantity of 
 public land. 
 
 The border warfare with Yolscians and Latins was 
 still going on; and we find inserted in the Annals, 
 though somewhat indistinctly, a second inroad of the 
 Gauls, and a complete defeat of them near Alba by 
 Camillus, now in his old age for the fifth time named 
 Dictator.* A year afterwards he died of one of the 
 
 * This story is related by other writers also; but Arnold con 
 aiders it to be “ merely a fabrication of the memorials of the 
 
74 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 constantly-recurring pestilences. “He had lived five- 
 and-twenty years after his return from exile, justly 
 styled the second founder, after Romulus, of the city of 
 Rome.” 
 
 Two stories are told by our author of this period, 
 which, whether true or fictitious, are interesting as illus¬ 
 trations of the old Roman spirit. One of the house of 
 the Manlii had been named Dictator for a religious pur¬ 
 pose, and had made use of his power to raise a levy of 
 troops to indulge his military vanity. His cruel dis¬ 
 position had shown itself especially in his treatment 
 of his son Titus, a slow-witted youth, who had a hesi¬ 
 tation in his speech, whom he had banished from his 
 home, and treated as a slave. He was brought to 
 trial for it by one of the tribunes. The son heard of 
 it on the farm where he was working, obtained admit¬ 
 tance to the tribune’s house, and suddenly presenting 
 himself before the magistrate as he lay in bed, with a 
 large knife in his hand, threatened him with instant 
 death unless he promised to drop the prosecution 
 against his father; which the tribune, seeing him in 
 terrible earnest, did. Livy admits that it was “not 
 a good constitutional precedent, though praiseworthy 
 for its filial duty;” but it was so strongly in accordance 
 with the Roman feeling that, in spite of his infirmity 
 and utter inexperience, he was elected by popular accla¬ 
 mation to a high command in the legions next year. 
 
 In that same year is placed the well-known legend, 
 so often a subject for poet and painter, of the devotion 
 of Marcus Curtius. How a great chasm yawned— 
 none knew from what cause—in the middle of the 
 
 house of the Furii—the last which occurs in the story of Camil- 
 lus, and not the least scrupulous.”—Hist, of Rome, ii. 49. 
 
CONQUEST OF LATIUM. 
 
 75 
 
 Forum; how the oracles said it could only be closed 
 by casting into it “ the best thing that Rome possessed,” 
 most readers know; but Livy tells the sequel in his 
 most picturesque manner. 
 
 “ Then young Marcus Curtius, a gallant soldier, chid them all 
 for doubting that there could be any better thing in Rome than 
 good weapons and a stout heart. He called for silence; and 
 looking towards the temples of the immortal gods that crowned 
 the Forum, and towards the Capitol, he lifted his hands first to 
 heaven, and then stretching them downwards, where the gulf 
 yawned before him, in supplication to the Powers below, he 
 solemnly devoted himself to death. Mounted on his horse, 
 which he had clothed in the most splendid trappings that could 
 be found, he leaped all armed into the chasm, while crowds of 
 men and women showered in after him precious gifts and 
 fruits.”—(vii. 6.) 
 
 Thirty years after their first appearance, the Gauls 
 made a second inroad into Latium (b.c. 361), and a 
 third some few years later. They are illustrated by 
 two popular stories of personal combat; the first 
 between a gigantic Gaul and young Titus Manlius, who 
 had his surname of “ Torquatus” from the golden cir¬ 
 clet, the well-known Celtic ornament, which he took 
 from the neck of his antagonist; and the second 
 between Valerius and another gigantic champion, who 
 like Goliath stalked in front challenging the Roman 
 ranks. Valerius was said to have been assisted by 
 a crow which beat its wings about the face of his 
 enemy, and thenceforth to have borne the name of 
 “Corvus.” Both heroes were soon to be better known, 
 and for exploits more important, and probably more 
 authentic, if less picturesque. With the help of the 
 Latins, who had renewed the old alliance with Rome, 
 the invading Gauls were beaten, if these Annals are to 
 be trusted, in several great battles—the last linear 
 
76 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 a second Furius Camillus, son of the great Dictator. 
 From this time forth we hear of them no more in 
 Latium. 
 
 The Etruscans of Tarquinii were at the same time 
 carrying on with their Roman neighbors a war which 
 is marked by somewhat more than ordinary ferocity. 
 They had defeated a Roman consul and taken numerous 
 prisoners, and, in accordance with that horrible super¬ 
 stition which, as we may see hereafter, found its way 
 into the religion of Rome, they had sacrificed above 
 three hundred Roman soldiers to their national deities. 
 That it was a solemn “act of faith,” and not a mere 
 outburst of savage cruelty, is clear from Livy’s descrip¬ 
 tion of a subsequent battle, in which the Etruscan 
 priests—who were in fact the Lucumones or chiefs of 
 the nation—marched in the front with wild gesticula¬ 
 tions, “ brandishing live snakes and burning torches in 
 their hands.” In that war the first plebeian rose to the 
 dictatorship—Marcus Rutilus; and his victories over 
 the Etruscans of Tarquinii were rewarded by a tri¬ 
 umph, in spite of all the jealous efforts of the senate to 
 resist it. Two years afterwards, a still more signal vic¬ 
 tory is recorded, and a terrible act of reprisal followed. 
 Three hundred and fifty-eight of the best-born citizens 
 of Tarquinii were saved from the general massacre 
 which ensued on the taking of the town, and were sent 
 prisoners to Rome, there to be “scourged with rods 
 and then beheaded in the Forum”—in retaliation for 
 the deed of the Etruscan priesthood four years before, 
 The people of Caere had found the bond of their com¬ 
 mon Etruscan blood too strong not to join Tarquinii in 
 levying war against Rome; but when they humbly dep 
 recated punishment, tho Romans were magnanimous 
 gpough |q remember only the shelter they hed givep, 
 
CONQUEST OF LAT1UM. 
 
 77 
 
 in the terrible days of the Gauls, to the Vestal Virgins 
 and the Sacred Fire. In the midst of all these difficul¬ 
 ties, two more new tribes were added to the population 
 of Rome—probably from the conquered or submitted 
 Volscians. 
 
 We are now to enter upon a period which the histo¬ 
 rian is careful to inform us he considers the most 
 momentous in the history of Rome. 
 
 “The watv we have to relate from this point onwards are 
 greater, whether as regards the strength of the enemy, the dis¬ 
 tance of the scene of action, or the length of the war. For 
 in this year hostilities began with the Samnites, a people power¬ 
 ful alike in wealth and in arms. This war with the Samnites, in 
 which the struggle was long and doubtful, was followed by the 
 attack of Pyrrhus, and Pyrrhus by the Carthaginians.”—(vii. 29.) 
 
 These Samnites, with whom Rome now began a 
 struggle which was to last, with little intermission, for 
 more than fifty years, were of Sabine extraction, occu¬ 
 pying that district of the Apennines now known as the 
 Matese, and thence extending their conquests into the 
 plains of Campania. Here they came into collision 
 with the Romans. In the course of one of their inroads 
 they threatened Capua; and the men of that city, after 
 ineffectual attempts to drive them off, sought aid from 
 Rome. With some reluctance, the annalist says—for 
 there was an old convention existing with the Sam¬ 
 nites—the aid was given, so far that envoys were sent 
 to request them not to meddle with the friends of 
 Rome. The Samnites treated the message with con¬ 
 tempt, and the Roman Consuls took the field at once. 
 One of them was Valerius, “the Crow,” the darling of 
 the soldiers, not only from his recent exploit, but from 
 his genial manners, his hearty good comradeship, and 
 his excellence in all athletic games. Their victory 
 
78 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 was complete, 30,000 of the enemy being cut to pieces 
 in the first battle, won by the gallantry of one of the con¬ 
 sul’s lieutenants, Decius Mus, and their came taken, 
 and 40,000 shields left on the field of battle in a second 
 engagement.* Capua was garrisoned by the Ro¬ 
 mans ; but the luxury and idleness of a winter 
 spent in that city, we are told, corrupted the sol¬ 
 diers. A serious mutiny was the consequence, 
 which threatened the safety of Rome, until Valerius 
 (appointed Dictator in the emergency) quieted it by his 
 wise mediation; a general amnesty was granted, and 
 the troops returned to their duty. 
 
 But the demands which the soldiers are said to have 
 made, that no man who had served during one cam¬ 
 paign in a higher rank should in the next be called upon 
 to accept a lower—that no man’s name should be struck 
 off the roll without his own consent—and that the dis¬ 
 proportionate pay of the cavalry should be reduced— 
 point to other elements of discontent than the dissipa¬ 
 tions of Capua. The movement amongst the troops 
 was probably connected with a new agitation amongst 
 the commons in their civil capacity; for coincident in 
 time we find two measures proposed and apparently 
 carried by one of the tribunes, which Livy dismisses in 
 a very few lines, but which must have been of great 
 political significance: first, that it should be absolutely 
 illegal to lend money at interest; secondly, that no man 
 should be re-elected to the same magistracy within ten 
 years (a check upon the monopoly of public office by 
 
 * “ We have no real history of the Samnite war in this first 
 campaign, but accounts of the worthy deeds of two famous 
 Romans, M. Valerius Corvus and P. Decius Mus. They are the 
 heroes of the two stories, and there is evidently no other 
 object in either of them but to set off their glory.”—Arnold. 
 
CONQUEST OF LATTUM. 
 
 79 * 
 
 the great houses); and lastly, that as one consul now 
 must be, so in future both consuls might be, plebeians. 
 
 The next year saw a change in the relations of Rome 
 and her neighbors which is not very easy to comprehend. 
 The Samnites had made a truce with Rome; but the war 
 in Campania still went on, and the towns which werei^ 
 hard pressed by the Samnites turned to the Latin league 
 for the protection which was refused them from Rome. 
 The Roman annalist assures us that the Latins eagerly 
 seized on the opportunity to engage the Campanians in 
 a conspiracy against the supremacy of Rome; but it is 
 more than possible that they were indignant at the 
 separate peace which Rome, for her own ends, had made 
 with the common enemy. Be this as it may, the Latins 
 were summoned to send envoys to Rome to explain 
 their intentions. When they arrived, they made a pro¬ 
 posal as to the terms of alliance for the future which 
 was probably not so unreasonable in itself as it would 
 appear to a Roman. It was, that on condition of Rome 
 being still acknowledged as head of the confederacy, 
 one of her two consuls, and half of the senate, should 
 henceforth be chosen from the Latins. 
 
 Then Titus Manlius “ of the Torque,” newly elected 
 consul, rose in his place, and loudly declared that 
 should the Roman senate be cowardly enough to sub¬ 
 mit to such dictation from “provincials,” he would 
 slay with his own hand the first Latin who dared to take 
 his seat there. Amidst general indignation, he vehe¬ 
 mently invoked the gods of Rome against such a prof ana 
 tion. The Latin envoy, quitting the senate-house in 
 haste, fell headlong down the steps and w r as taken up 
 senseless. Manlius pronounced it a judgment from the 
 insulted deities, and a happy omen for the Roman 
 cause. War was declared at once against the Latins; 
 
80 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 both consuls set Oiit for Capua, and by a curious shift¬ 
 ing of relations, the Samnites now found themselves, in 
 virtue of the late truce, the allies of Rome. 
 
 The foe with whom Rome was now engaged was more 
 formidable than the Samnites. The struggle against 
 the Latins, says the annalist, had many of the features 
 of a civil war. Romans and Latins spoke the same 
 language, worshipped the same gods, had married into 
 each other’s families, and fought side by side against 
 the same enemies. “There was nothing,” says Livy, 
 “in which the Latins differed from the Romans, ex¬ 
 cept in courage,”—but here we must remember it is a 
 Roman who speaks. The struggle was sharp and 
 bloody; but, perhaps for the same reasons, it was com¬ 
 paratively short. 
 
 Possibly it was the feeling that they were now in face 
 ot an enemy to whom Roman tactics and modes of 
 warfare were thoroughly familiar, which led to the 
 stern instance of military discipline recorded of the 
 consul Manlius. He had given strict orders that there 
 was to be no independent personal fighting in front of 
 the lines. His own son was in command of a troop of 
 light cavalry, employed to reconnoitre. He was chal¬ 
 lenged by a captain of Tusculan horse, and, ‘provoked 
 by his taunts, fought and killed him. It was in vain 
 that he pleaded his father’s own precedent in the case of 
 the Gaul; the consul—as stern a parent as he had been 
 a dutiful son—would see nothing in the case but a wilful 
 breach of discipline—a double act of disobedience to 
 his chief and to his father. The only compliment he 
 paid his son was to say he knew that, like a true Man¬ 
 lius, he would bear his doom bravely. He was be¬ 
 headed in the presence of the army, amid the lamenta¬ 
 tions of his comrades, and their bitter execrations on 
 
CONQUEST OF LATIUM. 81 
 
 the father; but the consul’s orders were obeyed thence¬ 
 forth.* 
 
 When the engagement took place—somewhere in the 
 neighborhood of Mount Vesuvius—an act of heroism of 
 another character, yet still thoroughly Roman, gave to 
 the name of its hero a lasting place in Roman memory. 
 The second Roman consul was Decius Mus, one of the 
 heroes of the late Samnite war. Both consuls had seen 
 a vision in the night, warning them that the gods 
 required as the victims “ an army on the one side, and 
 a general on the other.” They at once made a joint 
 resolve that if either of the Roman wings gave way, the 
 commander of that wing should devote himself to death. 
 When the usual sacrifices were offered before the battle, 
 it was announced that the omens were fatal for Decius. 
 He simply answered that “ it was well, if those of his 
 colleague were favorable.” In the battle, his wing 
 began to give ground. He at once summoned the 
 Pontifex—the official who must give directions. 
 
 “The Pontifex hade him put on his official civic robe, veil his 
 head, and place his hand beneath his toga upon his chin; then 
 standing on a spear placed under his feet, to say these words: 
 ‘ O Janus, Jupiter, our Father Mars, Quirinus, Bellona, ye Lares, 
 ye Nine-Fold deities,t gods of our nation, gods in whose hands 
 are we and our enemies, I pray you, I adore you, I ask and win 
 your pardon,—that to the Roman people of the Quirites ye may 
 vouchsafe strength and victory, and strike the enemies of the 
 Roman people of the Quirites with terror, panic, and death. 
 And as I pronounce these words, so for the republic of the Quiri¬ 
 tes, for the army, legions, and allies of the Roman people, I de- 
 
 * This severity of discipline was a national tradition with the 
 Romans. A Posthumius is said to have done the same thing 
 previously in a war with the Volscians. Livy does not credit the 
 story; but an allusion in Aulus Gellius shows that it was current-? 
 ly believed. See Book iv. e4h Mb Gefi. i, 18. 
 t Tbes^ are uncertain 
 
LIVY. 
 
 83 
 
 vote the legions and allies of the enemy, together with mine own 
 body, to the Manes and the Earth.’ When he had thus prayed, 
 he bade his lictors go to Manlius, and straightway tell him he 
 had devoted himself for the army. Girding his robe round him, 
 he leapt on his horse, fully armed, and charged into the centre 
 of the enemy. Both hosts saw in him a more than mortal pres¬ 
 ence, as though he were sent from heaven as a vessel charged 
 with the whole wrath of the gods, to turn destruction from his 
 own host and hurl it on the enemy. So the panic and terror he 
 bore with him first shook the enemy’s front, then spread through 
 all their ranks. Certain it is, that wherever he rode, there men 
 trembled as though struck by pestilence.”—(viii. 9.) 
 
 A stratagem of the other consul’s—bringing up his 
 veterans only at the last—completed the victory which 
 this panic had begun. “We find in some writers,” says 
 Livy, “ that the Samnites, who had waited to see what 
 turn the fighting w T ould take, came up to help the 
 Romans after the day was won.”* Scarcely a fourth 
 part of the enemy’s force, we are told, escaped the 
 slaughter; their camp was taken, and the Latin power 
 utterly broken. They succeeded in raising a fresh army, 
 only to be beaten again by the same consul. Many of 
 their towns surrendered at once; and after a few in¬ 
 effectual struggles, the conquest was complete. Within 
 three years of its beginning, the greatest war in which 
 Rome had yet been engaged was finished: the great Latin 
 confederacy was broken up for ever; terms granted to 
 each separate city were such as to isolate them as far as 
 possible, and prevent any such union for the future; 
 and the Romans and Latins became practically one com¬ 
 monwealth. 
 
 * “There was no Samnite historian to tell, and no Roman 
 annalist would tell truly. Nor need w r e wonder at this; for if we 
 had only certain English accounts of the battle of Waterloo, 
 who would know that the Prussians had any effectual share in 
 that day’s victory?’ ’—Arnold. 
 
ROMANS BECOME MASTERS OF ITALY. 83 
 
 Manlius was honored, at the expiration of his consul¬ 
 ship, with a well-earned triumph. But it had its draw¬ 
 backs. “ Only the older men went forth to meet him; 
 the younger, both then and all his life after, abhorred 
 and execrated him.” Such is the historian’s brief but 
 emphatic remark. They remembered only the unre¬ 
 lenting sentence which had taken the life of his son. 
 
 V 
 
 CHAPTER YI. 
 
 THE ROMANS BECOME MASTERS OF ITALY. 
 
 (books viii.-x. b.c. 327-290.) 
 
 Rome and Samnium were both too warlike, and per¬ 
 haps both too ambitious, long to remain peaceful neigh- 
 bors. When the war with the Latins was over, and 
 neither required each other’s support against a common 
 enemy, they watched each other’s movements with jeal¬ 
 ous eyes. The Samnites took Fregellse from the Vol- 
 scians, and destroyed it; the Romans afterwards sent a 
 colony to occupy it, as its position was important in 
 maintaining their line of communication with Samnium; 
 though this was, in fact, taking possession of a Samnite 
 conquest. The Samnites, on the other hand, were ac¬ 
 cused of exciting to disaffection, secretly or openly, 
 some of the smaller states within the Roman dominion. 
 War was inevitable, and both were prepared for it. 
 
 The first action of any importance resulted in a vic¬ 
 tory gained by the Romans under somewhat remarkable 
 circumstances. Papirius Cursor had been named Dic¬ 
 tator for the war, and had strictly charged his Master 
 of the Horse—a Fabius—not to engage the enemy in 
 his absence. But Fabius found the temptation of com¬ 
 mand too strong, and fought and defeated the Samnites 
 
84 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 —Livy assures us, with immense loss. The Dictator, 
 on his return, sentenced him to death for breach of 
 orders. The troops broke out into almost open mutiny; 
 the Dictator was obstinate; and the terrible precedent 
 set by Manlius seemed likely to be repeated with highly 
 dangerous results. Fabius escaped to Rome: there his 
 aged father appealed on his behalf to the tribunes, but 
 even they were loath to question a Dictator’s sentence; 
 and it was not until the senate and people united to ask 
 the life of the culprit as a boon to themselves, that Pa- 
 pirius at last gave way. Fabius was chosen one of the 
 consuls next year; and after a truce which the Roman 
 annalist accuses the Samnites of having broken, he de¬ 
 feated them in a decisive battle, and reduced them to 
 offer terms which are represented as humiliating in the 
 extreme. They even proposed to give up to the Romans 
 one of their chiefs, whom they declared to have been 
 the instigator of what they now confessed to have been 
 “a treacherous breach of faith.” He saved himself from 
 Roman vengeance by suicide. 
 
 But in the next year arose the man who has been 
 called the Samnite Hannibal — Pontius of Telesia. 
 Under his able leadership took place what Livy calls 
 “ the Convention of Caudium, so memorable for the 
 blow that fell on Rome.” The annalist, never happy 
 in his military geography, is content here to make no 
 attempt to explain the movements of the campaign. 
 We learn little more than that the Romans were led by 
 false information into a difficult defile of the Apennines, 
 known as the “ Caudine Forks,” where the enemy had 
 already posted themselves in force, and from which 
 pejther advance nor retreat was possible.* After one 
 
 $ The place caunot be fagged wjtfi Cfftftlijty, Niebuhr an<f 
 
HOMANS BECOME MASTERS OF ITALY. 85 
 
 or two desperate attempts to break through, seeing star¬ 
 vation imminent, they surrendered at discretion. The 
 Samnites could not resolve how best to use their vic¬ 
 tory. They sent to consult Herennius, father of their 
 general, who passed for the wisest man amongst his peo¬ 
 ple. The old man’s first advice was to let their prisoners 
 all go unharmed; and when this was rejected as pre¬ 
 posterous, he then recommended that they should all be 
 put to death. He defended this truly Machiavellian 
 alternative by the argument that an enemy so powerful 
 could only be safely dealt with either by the most mag¬ 
 nanimous kindness, or by a blow which would cripple 
 them for many generations. Neither counsel was 
 adopted. Their lives were offered them on condiiton 
 of giving up their arms, passing under the yoke, and 
 quitting the country; hostages were also to be given for 
 the withdrawal of the Roman military colonies, and for 
 their keeping the peace for the future. The troops are 
 said to have exclaimed loudly against such humiliating 
 terms, and against the consuls.for submitting to them. 
 Lentulus, one of the lieutenant-generals, reminded them, 
 in language which has a certain nobility of its own, that 
 their lives were needful to Rome, and that even igno¬ 
 miny must be submitted to in the cause of one’s country. 
 
 “While the troops were thus chafing at their destiny the fatal 
 hour of their disgrace drew on, which was to make their experi¬ 
 ence even more bitter than all their anticipations. First they were 
 ordered to come outside their lines without arms and stripped 
 to a single garment; and the hostages were first given up, and 
 led off in custody. Then the lictors were ordered to quit the con¬ 
 suls, whose military cloaks were stripped off; which bred such 
 commiseration among the very men who had just been execrat- 
 
 Amold are of opinion that it was the valley between Arienzo and 
 Archaia, on the road from Naples to Benevento. 
 
86 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 ing them, and saying they ought to be given up to their fury and 
 torn to pieces, that now the soldiers forgot their own misery, 
 and turned away their eyes from this outrage to their command¬ 
 ers as from a spectacle too painful to look upon. The consuls 
 first, stripped almost naked, were forced under the yoke; then 
 each officer in succession, according to his rank, was subjected 
 to the like ignominy; then the legions, one after the other. The 
 enemy stood round under arms, reviling and mocking them. 
 Swords were even brandished in their faces; some were wounded, 
 nay, even killed, if their countenance expressed too fierce a sense 
 of the indignity, and so offended their conquerors.—(ix. 6, 7.) 
 
 They made their way to Capua, where they were re¬ 
 ceived with kindness and commiseration. Thence they 
 returned in disorganized parties to Rome, “slinking 
 into the city late in the evening like delinquents,” and 
 hiding themselves at home for many days from the 
 eyes of their indignant fellow-citizens. The consuls 
 silently abdicated their functions, and a Dictator was 
 again named. 
 
 The terms of the convention were shamefully broken 
 by the Romans; the annalist himself utterly fails to 
 make out a case of anything better than the grossest 
 and most unworthy quibbling. The treaty—made, as 
 Livy admits, by Roman consuls and tribunes—was held 
 not to have been made with the consent of the Roman 
 people. Even if the consul Posthumius did, as we are 
 told, go back and place himself and his brother officers 
 in the hands of the Samnites, as guilty of having made 
 terms which could not be kept, such individual self de¬ 
 votion could not heal the public breach of faith. The 
 only course which might have had any show of fair 
 dealing was, as two of the tribunes suggested, to restore 
 in all points the status quo at the Caudine Forks before 
 the surrender; but this suggestion did not gain a mo¬ 
 ment’s hearing. 
 
 The Samnite general acted with a noble scorn. He 
 
ROMANS BECOME MASTERS OF ITALY. 87 
 
 refused to accept the victims whom Rome offered him in¬ 
 stead of justice; and wdien the consul Posthumius, with 
 a mean ingenuity, declaring himself to have changed 
 his nationality by this extradition of himself, struck the 
 Roman herald, and declared that such an act of vio¬ 
 lence, thus committed by “a Samnite,” would justify 
 the Romans in at once beginning w 7 ar, Pontius merely 
 expressed his contempt of such a subterfuge as “a 
 mockery of conscience unworthy of children, still more 
 of elders and consulars of a great state,” and appealed 
 to the gods of battle against the treachery of Rome. 
 
 But the gods were not propitious. Though the Sam- 
 nites renewed the struggle, and maintained it for three- 
 and-twenty years, and though the Hernicans took the 
 opportunity to revolt, and almost all Etruria rose in 
 arms against the Romans, the result, in spite of occa¬ 
 sional reverses, was still in favor of Rome. Livy him¬ 
 self admits that the annals of this period are hopelessly 
 confused, and it would be out of place here to examine 
 them. One story which bears the stamp of invention on 
 the face of it, asserts that in the very first year of the 
 renewed war, the Samnite general, Pontius Telesinus, 
 and his own whole army, had in their turn to pass under 
 the yoke, and that all the arms and standards lost by the 
 Romans at the Caudine Forks were in the same battle 
 recovered. This victory is ascribed to Papirius Cursor, 
 as then consul: a hero who, celebrated alike for his fleet¬ 
 ness of foot (whence his surname of Cursor), his bodily 
 strength, and his great capacity for eating and drinking, 
 reminds us of some of the knights of the Round Table. 
 Livy considers that Alexander the Great, if after con¬ 
 quering Asia he had turned his arms on Europe, might 
 have met with his match in the great Roman Dictator. 
 To Papirius is at least due the honor of turning the tide 
 
88 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 decisively in this second Saranite war by a great victory 
 in the Samnite territory, though the scene of it is uncer¬ 
 tain. The triumph which was accorded to him was long 
 remembered for its magnificence; the splendid armor, 
 inlaid with gold and silver, the gilded shields and 
 brilliant costumes stripped from the Samnite warriors, 
 especially from their “Sacred Band,” made a display 
 never before seen at Rome. The shields were lono* 
 
 O 
 
 after used on public occasions to decorate the Forum, 
 The war lingered on for some four years more, until it 
 was closed by another great defeat of the enemy at Bo- 
 vianum, where their general, Statius Gellius, and a 
 large body of troops, were made prisoners, and the 
 Samnites were reduced to sue for peace. 
 
 During the years occupied by this second Samnite 
 war, the annalist has noted some points of internal his¬ 
 tory which deserve attention. One specially he terms, 
 not without reason, “a second starting-point of lib¬ 
 erty.” It was the abolition of the power of imprison¬ 
 ment for debt. He refers the passing of this law to the 
 popular indignation excited by the outrageous cruelty 
 practiced on an unhappy debtor by one of the Papirii, 
 a house whose members appear to have been men of 
 violent passions: but it was probably a result which had 
 been only waiting for its accomplishment. A member 
 of another illustrious house—Appius Claudius “ the 
 Blind,” great-grandson of the Decemvir—had made him¬ 
 self famous during the same period in more ways than 
 one. He will best be remembered by the great public 
 works carried out during his tenure of the censorship 
 and subsequent consulate: the earliest of those gigantic 
 aqueducts which, even in their ruins, strike us to this 
 day with admiration; and more famous still, the great 
 road connecting Rome with Capua, known as the Appi- 
 
ROMANS BECOME MASTERS OF ITALY. 89 
 
 an Way. Nothing so great had been attempted since 
 those Etruscan works which are ascribed to the Tar- 
 quins. Diodorus tells us that they exhausted the whole 
 revenue of Rome: Niebuhr considers that some of the 
 state domain must have been alienated to provide for 
 their cost. But they were not the result of the forced 
 labor of the Roman commons, which made the build¬ 
 ings under the “ Tyrants” such a hateful memory: they 
 probably furnished employment for the large bodies of 
 Samnite or other prisoners, and so may have been com¬ 
 pleted at comparatively little cost to the state. Appius, 
 when in power, showed the lofty and arrogant spirit of 
 his family. He held his office of censor—in direct defi¬ 
 ance, it would appear, of the law to the contrary—for 
 the full period of five years, which was the nominal du¬ 
 ration of the appointment, and gave offence not only to 
 the old patrician houses, but even to the moderate 
 party, by placing on the roll of senators men who had 
 no title to the honor except their wealth. His object 
 may fairly be suspected to have been to attach such 
 men to his own private interests by this obligation. He 
 was the author of some other popular measures which 
 may have had the same bearing; amongst them, the 
 causing to be published a kind of calendar containing 
 the rubrics, as they might be called, of the pontifical 
 law, which made days lawful or unlawful for the trans¬ 
 action of business—a technical knowledge for which, 
 hitherto, people had to depend upon the “colleges” of 
 pontifices and augurs, whose members were always of 
 the patrician order. A few years afterwards followed 
 an Act (the Ogulnian Law) which opened these colleges 
 to the plebeians, and removed another of the few remain, 
 ing disabilities, now chiefly religious, of that order. 
 The Valerian kaw-rpermitting appeal ivm W magis, 
 
90 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 i 
 
 trate to the people—which seems to have been virtually 
 in abeyance, was in the same year formally re-enacted. 
 
 The iEquians, who had given the Romans no trouble 
 since the days of the Gaulish invasion, had joined the 
 Samnites in the last war, and the first step now taken 
 was their chastisement. Standing alone, as they did, 
 since the submission of the Samnites, they were no 
 match for the Romans. In fifty days, says the annalist, 
 the consuls took forty-one of their towns and “all but 
 blotted out their very name from under heaven.” They 
 were yet strong enough, however, to make show of re¬ 
 volt from time to time. What he calls a “ trifling ex¬ 
 pedition” was also undertaken against some Umbrian 
 banditti (so they are termed) who had been troublesome; 
 and by one of those merciless proceedings not uncom¬ 
 mon with the Romans, two thousand of them were de¬ 
 liberately smoked to death in a cave. 
 
 Some little difficulties occurred with the Marsians and 
 Etruscans; and the hostilities with these latter people 
 led to a third and last Samnite war. The hopes of 
 Samnium were raised by a new inroad of the Gauls into 
 Etruria. The Etruscans—following in this the Roman 
 precedent—are said to have paid them a large sum as 
 blackmail to induce them to withdraw, and further, to 
 purchase their aid against Rome.* It seems certain, at 
 all events, that the Gauls threatened Rome, aud that 
 the Samnites took advantage of the opportunity to 
 make every effort to form a grand coalition against her. 
 They were already extending their own conquests in 
 Lucania, from which district envoys were sent to en¬ 
 treat aid from Rome. The Samnites haughtily refused 
 
 * The version which Livy gives of this transaction is contra¬ 
 dicted by Polybius, 
 
ROMANS BROOME MASTERS OF ITALY. 01 
 
 to listen to any remonstrance, or to withdraw their 
 troops, and war was at once declared by the Romans. 
 
 The account given 'of the ensuing campaign, in 
 which the first Scipio that we meet in history com¬ 
 manded as consul, is far from clear or satisfactory: 
 but it seems plain that, in spite of victories claimed 
 and recorded, the Romans were in some straits, since 
 they called on Quintus Fabius in his old age, and in 
 spite of his reluctance, to accept the consulship. But 
 Etruria began to waver and talk of peace; and both 
 consuls marched victoriously through Samnium, laying 
 all waste with fire and sword where they went. But 
 the Gauls appear again in Etruria—hired by Etruscan 
 gold, as Livy tells us—and the Samuite general (another 
 of the family of Gellius) took the bold step, which Livy’s 
 want of military knowledge prevents him from ap¬ 
 preciating, of leaving his own country in the desperate 
 state it was, and making a countermarch into Etruria, 
 to fix its wavering allegiance by the presence of himself 
 and a Samnite army. Whilst the consuls, with all the 
 available force of Rome, marched into Etruria to meet 
 him, another Samnite army threw itself into Campania, 
 and laid waste the actual territory of the city of Rome. 
 The alarm within the city itself was greater than it had 
 been since the approach of the Gauls; and the danger 
 of the situation was increased by personal disputes be¬ 
 tween the consuls. However, the Samnites were 
 checked; and if we cannot trust the accounts which 
 these Annals give us of two great victories, at least the 
 success was sufficient to place Rome in safety.* The 
 
 * Livy says that in the second of these victories, besides killing 
 6000 of the enemy, and taking 2500 prisoners, the Romans “ re¬ 
 covered 7400” who had been made prisoners. This is proving 
 somewhat too much. 
 
LIVY. 
 
 confederate forces, bound together by no common inte¬ 
 rest except enmity to Rome, did not long continue to 
 act in concert; the Etruscans and Umbrians preferred 
 to defend their own country, and the Samnites and 
 Gauls had to give up their march upon the city, and 
 draw back upon the Apennines, followed by both Ro¬ 
 man consuls and their armies. 
 
 They were brought to battle at Sentinum. Fabius 
 commanded on the right against the Samnites; his col¬ 
 league Decius on the left fronted the Gauls. He found 
 these dreaded antagonists as hard to deal with as their 
 ancestors. Twice, when his infantry seemed to make 
 no impression, he charged in person at the head of his 
 cavalry, and with success. But as they rode forward 
 they came upon a new and bewildering enemy—-the 
 war-chariots of the Gauls; at sight of which, and the 
 rattle of their wheels, the Roman horses took fright and 
 the panic spreading to the riders, they wheeled and 
 took to flight, communicating their ow T n terror and con¬ 
 fusion to the ranks of the legionaries. The battle on 
 the left seemed hopelessly lost; when Decius, after try¬ 
 ing in vain to rally his men by desperate personal exer¬ 
 tions, bethought himself of the heroism of his father. 
 “It is the privilege of our house/’ he said with a stern 
 pride, ‘ ‘ to sacrifice ourselves as the ransom of our coun¬ 
 try.” Like his father, he called upon the Pontifex to 
 recite the formula of self-devotion, and added words of 
 terrible imprecation of his own. 
 
 “ I send before me where I go Panic and Rout, Blood and 
 Slaughter, the curse of the gods above and of the gods below; I 
 involve with myself in destruction the standards, the weapons, 
 the armor of the enemy; be the fate of the Gauls and the Sam¬ 
 nites even the same as mine!” 
 
 So, like his father, wrapping his cloak round him, he 
 
ROMANS BECOME MASTERS OF ITALY. 93 
 
 charged where the enemy were thickest, and fell cov¬ 
 ered with wounds. But not even all the faith of the 
 Roman legionaries in this heroic act of self-sacrifice as 
 “ the price of victory” could break the steady masses of 
 the Gauls; and had not Fabius been in a position by 
 this time to reinforce his left wing, the Romans would 
 have been beaten. But he had broken the Samnites af¬ 
 ter an obstinate fight; and while he drove them to their 
 camp, he now detached a force of cavalry and infantry 
 to take the Gauls in rear. The victory was soon com¬ 
 plete: the Samnite general fell defending his camp, and 
 his troops, retaining their ranks and formation, re¬ 
 treated sullenly from the hard-fought field. The an¬ 
 nalist gives the loss of the enemy at 25,000 killed, and 
 8000 prisoners; possibly not much exaggerated, since 
 he admits a loss on the Roman side, in killed alone, of 
 8200—7000 of them in the wing commanded by Decius: 
 
 It was a great victory, won at a heavy cost; and 
 though the Samnites maintained a gallant struggle for 
 nearly two years more, their efforts must have seemed 
 even to themselves almost desperate. The solemn cere¬ 
 monies with which they prepared for their last campaign 
 seem to show that they were consciously playing their 
 last stake. A levy en masse was raised throughout 
 Samnium of all who were able to bear arms, who had to 
 serve on pain of death; and an ancient and mysterious 
 ceremony was revived by an aged priest—“out of an 
 ancient linen roll,”—by which each individual soldier 
 was brought up to the altar—“ more like a victim than 
 a worshipper”—and compelled to swear fidelity to his 
 leaders to the death, and vengeance on any comrade 
 who should desert his ranks. Some who refused the 
 oath were slain, we are assured, on the spot, and the 
 swearing-in of the rest went on over their dead bodies? 
 
94 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 A picked body of 16,000, splendidly armed and 
 equipped, was thus formed by co-optation—each man, 
 after the first ten, choosing for himself a comrade till 
 the number was complete, avIio from their white dress 
 were known as the “Linen Legion.” 
 
 But the historian thinks that these stern vows of obli¬ 
 gation rather awed the soldiers into obedience than gave 
 them spirit to fight. They fought, he says, chiefly be¬ 
 cause they dared not fly, and “feared their comrades 
 more than their enemy.” He has another victory of the 
 Romans to record, before he closes this last book of his 
 First Decade. He closes it before the “ Samnite Han¬ 
 nibal” reappears once more upon the field (we cannot 
 but wonder why he has been absent so long); before 
 Pontius of Telesina, the hero of theClaudine Pass, turns 
 the tide of battle for a season, and defeats a Roman 
 consul; and before he is himself in turn defeated by the 
 Fabii, father and son, with the loss of 20,000 men, and 
 taken prisoner to Rome, and so the great Samnite wars 
 were ended. And we are spared from reading in his 
 page show, to the eternal disgrace of Rome, after having 
 been led in chains to grace the triumph of the conque¬ 
 rors, the gallant Samnite general was beheaded that 
 same day in the dungeons of the Capitol. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE LOST DECADE. 
 
 (b.c. 294-219.) 
 
 The Second Decade of these Annals, from the 
 eleventh to the twentieth book, is lost, and leaves a gap 
 of seventy-five years. In that interval Rome had 
 
THE LOST DECADE. 
 
 95 
 
 crushed the last opponents of her rule in Italy, had tried 
 her strength against foreign enemies, and begun to em 
 tertain the lust of foreign conquest. The city of Taren- 
 tum had sought to escape the fate of its neighbors by 
 calling in the aid of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus; and Pyr¬ 
 rhus, who had an ambition to become a second Alexan 
 der, gladly embraced the opportunity of gaining a 
 footing in Italy. So, for the first time, Rome and 
 Greece met each other in arms. The ability of Pyrrhus 
 as a general, the tactics of the Macedonian phalanx, with 
 which the Romans were as yet unacquainted, and the 
 terror and confusion created by his elephants, won him 
 two great battles, and Rome had never been in more 
 imminent danger. But Pyrrhus was compelled to quit 
 Italy by the complete victory won by the Romans at 
 Beneventum, b.c. 275; and the Tarentines had to pay 
 the penalty of having called him in. Other small states 
 made their final submission, and in b.c. 266 the Romans 
 became the acknowledged masters of Italy. 
 
 Rome then entered upon a new and extended career. 
 She was tempted to interfere in Sicily, where the 
 Carthaginians were becoming a formidable power, in 
 too close neighborhood not to be regarded with some 
 jealousy. Carthage was the most flourishing of the 
 many Phoenician colonies, and had become the capital 
 of Libya. Her merchant seamen, with the enterprise 
 of their race, had spread themselves along the coasts of 
 the Mediterranean, voyaging as far as Cornwall, if not 
 to the Baltic, in one direction, to Sierra Leone in the 
 other, and planting settlements wherever openings 
 showed themselves for extending her commerce. She 
 had flourishing factories and silver-mines in Spain,— 
 was in possession of nearly all what is now Andalusia 
 and Granada,—had gained possession of the whole of 
 
96 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 Sardinia and Corsica and the Balearic Isles, was spread¬ 
 ing her colonies along the coast of Sicily, and contem¬ 
 plating the occupation of the whole island. A horde of 
 piratical adventurers called Mamertines (children of 
 Mamers, or Mars), settled in Messana, were threatened 
 with expulsion by Hiero, who from having been a sol¬ 
 dier of fortune under Pyrrhus had risen to be king of 
 Syracuse. They appealed for aid to Rome: the choice 
 for them, they said, lay between Rome and Carthage; 
 they represented how dangerous it would be for the 
 Romans to have a Carthaginian fleet stationed within 
 sight of Italy. The Romans did not require much per¬ 
 suasion; and meanwhile Carthage had already inter¬ 
 vened, had arranged a peace between the Mamertines 
 and Hiero, and occupied the harbor of Messana. A col¬ 
 lision was inevitable: and although Hiero at first joined . 
 the Carthaginians, the early successes of the Romans 
 soon led him to change his policy, and he became and 
 continued the steadfast ally of Rome. 
 
 The two nations who now for the first time met in 
 arms presented some strong national contrasts. The 
 Romans, soldiers from habit, as yet knew little of the 
 sea. The Carthaginians, on the other hand, were born 
 and bred sailors, but military service on land suited 
 neither their habits nor their tastes. They preferred en¬ 
 gaging for this service mercenaries from Spain and 
 from Africa. It was not till after six years of hard 
 training that their great general Hamilcar Barcas could 
 bring into the field any infantry that could hold their 
 ground against a Roman legion. On the other hand, 
 the Romans had to take a Carthaginian war-galley as 
 their model before they had any ships afloat that could 
 meet those of their enemy with any hope of success. 
 
 It is said that within two months they built an$ 
 
THE LOST DECADE. 
 
 97 
 
 launched a hundred ships on the new pattern. Thus 
 they became at length a match for the Carthaginians by 
 sea, carried the war even into Africa, and after a strug¬ 
 gle of twenty-three years, by the great naval victory off 
 the iEgates Islands, had made themselves masters of all 
 Sicily. This is known as the First Punic War.* An 
 insurrection in Sardinia, breaking out while Carthage 
 was occupied in suppressing a mutiny of her mercenary 
 troops at home, gave the Romans an opportunity of 
 taking that island under their “protection;” and Corsica 
 soon followed—“ one of the most detestable acts of in¬ 
 justice,” remarks Niebuhr, “in the history of Rome.” 
 It was not probable that Carthage should tamely submit 
 to be deprived under such circumstances of her most 
 valuable provinces. She had been too weak to resist at 
 the time: but she only waited the hour and the man, 
 and when they came, began the Second Punic War. 
 
 Our annalist is now treading on safer ground, and has 
 the opportunity of following more trustworthy authori¬ 
 ties. In this war was taken prisoner Cincius Alimentus, 
 a Roman senator, who afterwards wrote a history of 
 Rome (in Greek), and whom Livy more than once quotes 
 with approbation. Cincius even made some personal 
 acquaintance with the great Carthaginian into whose 
 power he had fallen. Fabius Pictor, too, now becomes 
 a contemporary authority; for he also served in these 
 campaigns. But Livy has chiefly, though not always, 
 followed the later history of Polybius, who was born 
 about thirty years after the conclusion of the war, and 
 therefore might have had access to the best sources of 
 information. Polybius is generally fair and impartial; 
 
 * The Romans called the Phoenicians Pceni ; hence the adjec¬ 
 tive “ Punic.” 
 
08 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 and Livy, who had the whole of his history to guide 
 him, though five books of it only have reached us, is 
 more indebted to him than he seems willing to allow,— 
 speaking of him somewhat grudgingly as “an authority 
 by no means to be despised.” 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE SECOND PUNIC WAR: THRASYMENUS AND CANNA3. 
 (books xxi.-xxii. b.c. 218-216.) 
 
 “ The war maintained against the Roman people by 
 the Carthaginians under Hannibal, of which I am 
 about to write, is the most memorable,” says the his¬ 
 torian, “ of all that were ever waged. ” Modern author¬ 
 ities have confirmed his judgment, so far at least as all 
 ancient history is concerned. “ It was no mere strug¬ 
 gle,” says Michelet, “ to determine the lot of two cities 
 or two empires; but it was a strife on which depended 
 the fate of two races of mankind, whether the dominion 
 of the world should belong to the Indo-Germanic or 
 the Semitic family of nations.” “Never,” says Livy, 
 “were two combatant states more powerful in all re¬ 
 sources; both were in their full strength; they knew 
 each other’s tactics from former experience; and they 
 were so evenly matched, that the side which was finally 
 victorious was at onetime in the more imminent peril.” 
 And he adds that, strong as the opposing forces were, 
 their mutual hatred was even stronger. 
 
 The future hero of the war had indeed been sworn 
 from his boyhood to be the enemy of Rome. His 
 father, Hamilcar Barcas, had brought up his three 
 sons, Hannibal, Hasdrubal, and Mago, to be, as he 
 
THE SECOND PUNIC WAR. 
 
 99 
 
 said, “three lion’s whelps,” to glut themselves on the 
 blood of Rome. After he had been killed in Spain, 
 the young Hannibal had continued to serve there 
 under his brother-in-law Hasdrubal, who had succeeded 
 to the command. Hasdrubal was assassinated; the 
 voice of the army, and of the Carthaginian commons, 
 was loud in favor of Hannibal as his successor; and 
 the graver leaders of the opposite party in vain pro¬ 
 tested against handing on the command to another of 
 the powerful clan of Barcas, who seemed to threaten 
 Carthage with a military despotism. The character of 
 the young commander, and his first reception by the 
 troops in Spain, is one of the most characteristic pas¬ 
 sages in Livy’s work. 
 
 “The veterans thought it was Hamilcar restored to them in 
 living person: they saw the same decision in his face, the same 
 fire in his eyes, the very same features and expression. But he 
 so behaved himself, that in a short time the memory of his fath¬ 
 er became one of his least claims to the popular favor. Never 
 was a nature more fitted for two most different duties—to com¬ 
 mand and to obey. So that it would not be easy to decide 
 whether he was a greater favorite with the general or with the 
 troops. There was no officer whom Hasdrubal preferred to put 
 in command when anything bold and energetic had to be done, 
 and none in whom the men had more confidence, or under whom 
 they would dare more. He had the greatest boldness in en¬ 
 countering langer, and the coolest judgment in the midst of it. 
 No toil could either fatigue him bodily, or depress his spirits. 
 Heat and cold he could bear alike: his rule as to food and drink 
 was set by natural appetite, not pleasure. His times of waking 
 and sleeping did not depend on its being day or night; such 
 hours as remained after his work was finished he gave to repose: 
 and even that was not courted on a luxurious couch, or by en¬ 
 joining silence. Many have seen him, wrapped in his military 
 cloak, stretched on the ground amongst the pickets and senti¬ 
 nels. In his dress there was no difference between him and 
 other young men: his horse and his arms only were noticeable. 
 He was by far the best soldier in the army, whether on foot or 
 
100 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 horseback; the first to go into action, and the last to retire. 
 These admirable qualities were matched by as remarkable faults: 
 an inhuman cruelty, a more than Punic perfidy; no truth, no 
 everence, no fear of the gods, no respect for an oath, no scruple 
 of religion.”—(xxi. 4.) 
 
 Such was the young general (he was just twenty-six 
 years old), the great son of a great father, who was 
 now to be matched against consuls and dictators of 
 Rome, and after baffling and defeating them for a 
 period of seventeen years, was himself finally over¬ 
 come by circumstances rather than by superiority in 
 arms. The quarrel between Rome and Carthage began 
 in the debatable territory in Spain. The ostensible 
 cause was the siege of Saguntum (now Murviedro) by 
 Hannibal, the question being whether that town did or 
 did not lie within the line of demarcation agreed upon 
 by treaty between the Romans and Carthaginians in 
 Spain. Ambassadors were sent from Rome to warn 
 Hannibal to hold his hand from “ allies of Rome;” and 
 upon his refusing them an audience, they at once pro¬ 
 ceeded, in accordance with their instructions, to Car¬ 
 thage. Still they got no satisfactory answer; and Han¬ 
 nibal meanwhile pressed on the siege of Saguntum vig¬ 
 orously. In spite of a gallant resistance of eight 
 months, during which he was himself severely wound¬ 
 ed, it was taken by storm, and every man in it put to 
 the sword. The leading citizens had preferred a volun¬ 
 tary death: they had heaped all their valuables in the 
 market-place, made a funeral pile of them, and thrown 
 themselves upon it. 
 
 The indignation of the Romans was extreme, not un- 
 mixed with remorse for having delayed their own inter¬ 
 ference too long. They sent a second embassy to Car¬ 
 thage, demanding peremptorily that the act of Hanni- 
 
THE SECOND PUNIC WAR. 
 
 101 
 
 bal should either be avowed or disavowed. The dis¬ 
 cussion in the Carthaginian senate was short and fierce. 
 Their chief speaker concluded by saying: 
 
 “ ‘ Leave off talking about Saguntum and the Ebro; and as we 
 know what you have long been nursing in your hearts, let us 
 have it out at last.’ Then the Roman gathered his robe in a 
 fold in front of him, and said, ‘ Here we carry for you peace or 
 war; choose which you will.’ At these words they shouted with 
 equal fierceness in reply, 4 Give us which you please! ’ And when 
 the other shook out the fold, and said he gave them ‘war,’ all 
 answered that they accepted it, and that in the same spirit with 
 which they accepted it they would carry it out.” 
 
 The Roman envoys crossed into Spain at once, to 
 strengthen their own interests there, and to detach any 
 tribes whom they could from the Carthaginian alliance. 
 In Spain they met with little encouragement; one tribe 
 bade them seek for new allies in some quarter where 
 their base desertion of the Saguntines in their need was 
 not known. They then passed on into Gaul. The ob¬ 
 ject was to prevent, if possible, the advance which 
 they already anticipated of Hannibal through Gaul into 
 Italy. But the Gauls told them plainly that they .saw 
 no reason why they should thus force the Carthaginian 
 to turn his arms against themselves in order to save the 
 Romans. 
 
 Hannibal made his preparations carefully for the 
 great expedition which he contemplated. He threw 
 strong garrisons into Sicily, and appointed his brother 
 Hasdrubal to command in Spain during his absence. 
 He began his march towards the Pyrenees with 90,000 
 foot and 12,000 horse, African and Spanish, and 37 
 elephants. Before he crossed the Ebro, he had a 
 dream or vision. 
 
 “ He saw in his sleep a warrior of godlike aspect, who said he 
 bad been sent from Jove to be the guide of Hannibal into Italy; 
 
102 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 only let him follow, and never turn his eyes away from him. 
 At first, he thought, he followed the figure in awe, without 
 glancing round him or behind him; then, wondering in himself, 
 with the curiosity of human nature, what it could be that he 
 was thus forbidden to look back at, he could no longer refrain 
 his eyes; when he saw behind him a serpent of enormous size 
 rolling along and sweeping down trees and underwood, and fol¬ 
 lowed by a storm and the crashing of thunder. Then, when he 
 asked what the monster was or what it portended, he heard a 
 voice say that it was ‘ the desolation of Italy—only let him still 
 press forwards, and ask no questions, but suffer thefuture to re¬ 
 main hidden from his view.’ ”—(xxi. 22 ) 
 
 He had taken measures, by envoys and presents, to 
 secure a passage for his troops through the country of 
 the Gauls, and had made inquiries as to the most prac¬ 
 ticable passes of the Alps. He reduced such tribes as 
 lay on that side the Pyrenees and still adhered to the 
 Roman alliance; and leaving Hanno with a strong force 
 to occupy the district, made his way over the Pyrenees, 
 and effected the passage of the Rhone In spite of some 
 opposition from the Gauls on the opposite bank. 
 Fertile in resources, he collected boats from all quar¬ 
 ters, and even set his men to manufacture rough punts 
 for the purpose; while the elephants are said to have 
 been got across on rafts, upon which they were tempted 
 to trust themselves by very much the same stratagem 
 as is used in India to this day,—by covering the rafts 
 with earth, and driving the females in front. The 
 Romans had two armies in the field, each under a con¬ 
 sul; Publius Scipio was to command in Spain, while 
 his colleague Sempronius was sent into Sicily with 
 orders to make a descent on Africa if he saw oppor¬ 
 tunity. Scipio reached Marseilles too late to oppose 
 Hannibal’s passage of the Rhone, and he had but vague 
 information as to his movements. While the heavier 
 portion of the Carthaginian army was crossing the 
 
TEE SEC ONE PUNIC WAR. 
 
 103 
 
 river, an indecisive skirmish took place between some 
 of their Numidian irregular horse and a troop of Roman 
 cavalry. Hannibal was hesitating whether to engage 
 the consul’s army, which he learnt was not far oft, or 
 continue his march for Italy, when the arrival of some 
 chiefs of the Boii, a tribe of Cisalpine Gauls, who 
 offered to be his guides and escort over the Alps, de¬ 
 cided him not to waste his forces in a battle on that 
 side, but to make by rapid marches for the foot of the 
 mountains. He harangued his troops—if not in the 
 words which the Roman annalist gives us, yet, we may 
 well conceive, in the like strain. The Alps, he told 
 them, were the portals of Rome. Rome had been 
 taken once already by the Gauls—those very Gauls 
 whom they had so easily beaten ; would they allow 
 them to be better men than themselves? 
 
 He was misled, early in the march, by the treachery 
 of guides volunteered to him by one of the mountain- 
 tribes, and for some time his army was in imminent 
 danger. They were surrounded on all sides in a nar¬ 
 row defile, attacked in front and rear, and masses of 
 rock were hurled down upon them by the hostile na¬ 
 tives; but Hannibal was able to maintain the steadiness of 
 his infantry, and they forced their way through. Nine 
 days after they left the plains, Hannibal looked down 
 from the central ridge of the Alps on the plains of 
 Italy. But his troops were fatigued, half frozen, and 
 disheartened; a heavy fall of snow during their two 
 days’ rest increased their misery; and they found the 
 descent still more difficult. In one place, a large por¬ 
 tion of the mountain-road had been broken away (prob¬ 
 ably by an avalanche), and they had to stop and re¬ 
 pair it; and here we have the well-known story of the 
 cutting through the rocks, after heating them with large 
 
304 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 fires and then pouring on vinegar. The beasts, and 
 especially the elephants, were half starved before they 
 reached the nearest pasture-ground. When he mus¬ 
 tered his troops he found that he had scarcely left him 
 half the number with which he had crossed the Ebro. 
 
 The story of this passage of the Alps, as the annal¬ 
 ist tells it, is picturesque in the highest degree* but the 
 geography is of the vaguest, and it is impossible not to 
 suspect that many of the details of the march are little 
 better than a clever fancy picture. The writer confesses 
 that he does not know for certain by which pass they 
 crossed—whether it was by what he calls the “ Pen¬ 
 nine” or the pass of “Cremo.” Wherever these were, 
 it is most probable that the passage was made by way of 
 the Little St. Bernard, though some arguments have 
 been advanced in favor of Mont Cenis. 
 
 Scipio, meanwhile, having failed to check the advance 
 of Hannibal through Gaul, had re-embarked his troops 
 for Italy, and prepared to meet his enemy on his de¬ 
 scent into the plains of Piedmont. Putting himself at 
 the head of the army which he found there under the 
 command of the prastors, he crossed the Po at Placentia, 
 and threw himself in Hannibal’s way, who was quite as 
 anxious to meet him. Both generals, says the annalist, 
 had the highest opinion of each other’s ability. He 
 gives us at some length the speeches which he supposes 
 each might have addressed to their troops—taking this 
 mode, as he so often does, of putting his readers in pos¬ 
 session of the feelings with which each of the contend¬ 
 ing parties began the campaign. The Roman pointed 
 out to his men that the enemy they were going to fight 
 they had already beaten; Carthage had surely not bred 
 a new race of men since the last war; moreover, this 
 particular army was already travel-worn and half 
 
THE SECOND PUNIC WAR. 
 
 105 
 
 furnished by their journey over the Alps. They must 
 remember, too, that they were fighting for Rome; there 
 was no second mountain-barrier like the Alps to pro¬ 
 tect the city—its sole defence and safety lay in their 
 hands. 
 
 The Carthaginian used a characteristic means of rous¬ 
 ing the courage of his men. He offered the chance of 
 liberty and life to any of their lately made Gaulish 
 prisoners who would act the part of gladiator, and en¬ 
 gage in personal combat in sight of his army; trusting 
 that the fierce excitement of the spectacle would make 
 them eager to fight for themselves. Then he made his 
 harangue—reminding them of the perfidy and restless 
 ambition of Rome, which left them no choice but war 
 in self-defence; and drawing a confident comparison be¬ 
 tween his own tried experience in war, and the mutual 
 good understanding between himself and his troops, as 
 opposed to this “six months’ general ” whom Rome had 
 sent out, and the raw levies to whom he was almost a 
 stranger. 
 
 Their first encounter was a cavalry action on the 
 banks of the river Ticino, in which the Romans were 
 worsted. The consul was wounded, and owed his life 
 to the gallantry, some said, of a slave; but Livy, al¬ 
 ways leaning to the poetical side, prefers the story 
 which ascribed the rescue to his son, afterwards to be 
 known as Scipio “ Africanus.” The Roman force had 
 to recross the Po at night, break up their bridge,—so 
 hastily that they left six hundred prisoners in the 
 enemy’s hands,—and take refuge under the walls of 
 Placentia. Hannibal crossed the river by a bridge of 
 boats, followed up his enemy, and offered them battle 
 where they lay. But the consul was still disabled by 
 his late wound, and had no confidence in his troops. 
 
106 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 A large body of auxiliary Gauls had already broken 
 out of camp, murdering the sentries, and gone over to 
 Hannibal. Scipio again moved his quarters under 
 cover of night, and fell back behind the little river 
 Treba. There he was joined by the other consul, 
 Sempronius, who had been summoned in haste from 
 Sicily, had thrown his army across the Straits of Mes¬ 
 sina, and marched in forty days through the whole 
 length of Italy. His colleague being disabled, Sem- 
 pronius had virtually the sole command; and he was 
 eager to match himself with this young Carthaginian 
 general before his own year of office should expire. 
 Some inconsiderable successes in cavalry skirmishes 
 encouraged him, spite of Scipio’s warnings, to risk a 
 general engagement. He had to cross the river to get 
 at his enemy; and, in defiance of all military prudence, 
 took his men into action wet, chilled with the cold, 
 and without their morning meal. Yet, though the 
 cavalry on the wings was soon driven in by the enemy, 
 and thrown into confusion by his elephants, the ad¬ 
 mirable steadiness of the Roman legionaries might have 
 saved the day, had not the Carthaginian made use of 
 stratagem. A strong force of cavalry, planted judi¬ 
 ciously in ambuscade, suddenly took them in the rear. 
 The battle was now hopelessly lost; yet a large body 
 cut their way through the enemy, and got to Placentia, 
 where at nightfall they were joined by Scipio with 
 such remains of the broken army as had found their 
 way into camp. The Roman forces at once retreated 
 —Sempronius into Etruria. Hannibal, after an at¬ 
 tempt to cross the Apennines in terrible weather, in 
 which his troops suffered severely, wintered in Cisal¬ 
 pine Gaul—so far master of the country. 
 
 In accordance with the regular military policy of 
 
THE SECOND PUNIC WAR 
 
 107 
 
 Rome, which on this point seems to us so inconvenient, 
 the command for the next year passed into the hands of 
 new consuls. Rome had been thrown into consternation 
 by the late disaster, and great exertions were made to 
 raise new levies for the spring. Hannibal had now 
 crossed the Appennines, and made his way through the 
 marshes below Florence, at the expense of considerable 
 suffering to his men and himself. He rode, we are told, 
 the only elephant that had survived the disasters of the 
 Alps and the Apennines, and lost an eye from the inflam¬ 
 mation caused by the exposure to weather which must 
 have chilled his southern blood. Still he pressed on into 
 Etruria, burning and plundering as he went. 
 
 One of the new consuls was Flaminius, who in a pre¬ 
 vious year of office had reduced the Cisalpine Gauls. He 
 was not more successful than his predecessors. He 
 allowed himself to be attacked by Hannibal in a defile 
 near the lake Thrasymenus,* and suffered an over¬ 
 whelming defeat. A thick mist, which concealed the 
 enemy during their first attack, added to the confusion 
 of the Romans. Their advance cut their way through, 
 only to surrender next day to Maharbal’s cavalry. The 
 consul himself fell; and 15,000 of his men were either 
 killed in the fight, or cut to pieces afterwards by the 
 enemy’s horse. 
 
 Livy appears to have taken his account of the battle 
 and its results mainly from the history of Fabius Pictor, 
 who himself served in the war—possibly was engaged 
 cn this occasion. But the story of the reception of the 
 terrible news at Rome is a far more finished picture 
 
 * Near the modern village of Passignano. The little stream 
 jailed “ Sanguinetto,” which falls into the lake, bears its record 
 >f the bloodshed, 
 
108 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 than any likely to have been found in the earlier his¬ 
 torian. 
 
 “When the first tidings of this disaster reached Rome, great 
 was the panic and confusion, and there was a general rush of the 
 people into the Forum. Wives and mothers wandered about the 
 streets, asking all they met what this sudden calamity was that 
 men reported, and what had happened to the army. And when 
 the crowd, like a great public meeting, made its way to the elec¬ 
 tion courts and the senate-house, and appealed to the magistrates 
 for information, at length, a little before sunset, Marcus Pompo- 
 nius the praetor announced—‘ We have been beaten in a great 
 battle.’ And though no further particulars could be learnt from 
 him, yet men caught vague rumors one from the other, and went 
 home saying ‘ that the consul with the greater part of his force 
 were cut to pieces; that the few who survived had either been 
 made to pass under the yoke, or were scattered in flight through¬ 
 out Etruria.’ Various as the fate of the beaten army were the 
 different forms of anxiety felt by those who had relatives serving 
 under the consul: none knowing what their fate had been, and 
 all uncertain what they had to hope or what to fear. Next day, 
 and for some days afterwards, crowds thronged the gates, women 
 in almost as great numbers as men,* waiting for some member 
 of their family, or for news of him. They threw themselves upon 
 all whom they met, with anxious inquiries, and could not be 
 shaken off (especially from any whom they knew) until they had 
 asked every particular from first to last. Then you might have 
 marked the different countenances, as they parted from their in¬ 
 formants, according as each had heard cheering or mournful 
 news; while, on their way home, friends crowded round them to 
 congx-atulate or condole. The women showed their joy or grief 
 most conspicuously. One mother who met her son suddenly at 
 the gate returning safe, is said to have expired on beholding him: 
 another, who had heard a false report of her son’s death, and 
 was sitting weeping in her house, saw him returning, and died of 
 over-joy. The praetors kept the senate sitting for several days 
 from sunrise to sunset, consulting what commanders and what 
 forces could be found, to resist the victorious Carthagenians.”— 
 (xxii. 7.) 
 
 * Nothing but such a crisis could excuse this breach of Roman 
 propriety. 
 
THE SECOND PUNIC WAR. 
 
 109 
 
 But the rulers of the city showed no weakness. Fabius 
 Maximus was named Dictator in the emergency, and 
 Mmucius Rufus his “Master of the Horse.” 
 
 Though Hannibal was continuing his victorious march 
 through Picenum and Apulia, Fabius, though superior 
 in numbers, showed no disposition to engage him in the 
 field. He was content to follow and watch his move¬ 
 ments, to keep him from the important towns, and, 
 above all, from a march on Rome. Once, when he 
 thought he had cut oil his communications, the Cartha 
 ginian escaped him by stratagem; two thousand oxen 
 were driven into the bills at night, with lighted pine- 
 torches tied to their horns, to give the appearance of a 
 moving army, while Hannibal drew off his troops in an¬ 
 other direction. But Hannibal felt that in the Roman 
 Dictator he had to deal with an able and wary opponent. 
 The Master of the Horse, however, was a man of differ 
 ent temper, and chafed openly at the tactics of his chief, 
 aimost driving the troops into mutiny. During the 
 absence of Fabius at Rome on public business, he gained 
 some slight successes; and this encouraged the party at 
 home, who were already discontented at their general’s 
 inaction, to demand the passing of a bill to put the 
 authority of the Master of the Horse on a level with that 
 of the Dictator. The result was that, having agreed to 
 divide the troops between them, Minucius was tempted 
 by Hannibal into an engagement, and would have been 
 utterly routed but for the support of Fabius and his 
 division. With that generous public spirit which so 
 often redeemed the gravest faults in Roman officers, 
 Mmucius acknowledged his mistake, and put himself 
 for the future under the orders of the Dictator as before. 
 Fabius suddenly rose high in popular estimation both in 
 the army and at Rome; and Hannibal, says Livy, “be 
 
110 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 t 
 
 gan at last to feel that he was fighting against Romans, 
 and on Italian soil.” 
 
 But the tenure of the Dictator’s office, always brief 
 and exceptional, ceased with the end of the year. The 
 consuls who succeeded, however, carried on the cam¬ 
 paign very much in the fashion which they had learnt 
 from Fabius. Then came another change; and one of 
 the new consuls, Terrentius Yarro—“a butcher’s son,” 
 as his aristocratic opponents said, but at any rate a man 
 of the people, and elected by plebeian votes—had all the 
 impatience and more than the imprudence of the late 
 Master of the Horse. His colleague, Paulus HSmilius, 
 who had been earnestly counselled by Fabius, was more 
 cautious. There was again in the Roman camp the fatal 
 evil of a divided authority, each consul commander-in¬ 
 chief on alternate days. The condition of the Cartha¬ 
 ginian army was now critical in the extreme, for pro¬ 
 visions were fast failing them; the Roman allies in Italy 
 were growing impatient at seeing their lands ravaged 
 with impunity by the invaders; so that both sides were 
 eager for action. The rashness of Yarro precipitated 
 the event on unfavorable ground; and the result was the 
 almost total destruction of the Roman army on the dis¬ 
 astrous field of Cannae. For a clear and distinct account 
 of the battle, the student of military history must read 
 Polybius, and not Livy, whose description, though 
 highly picturesque, is sadly confused. As usual, the 
 Roman cavalry was no match for that of the enemy; 
 and Hasdrubal, with his Gallic and Spanish horse, after 
 driving in those opposed to them, charged the Roman 
 infantry in the rear. iEmilius had been wounded early 
 in the day, and could no longer sit his horse; his officers 
 and men dismounted and fought desperately round him, 
 as the Scottish knights did round King James at Flod- 
 
THE SECOND PUNIC WAP. 
 
 Ill 
 
 den, and with the same result. “ They died where they 
 stood.” The consul was last seen sitting down covered 
 with blood; an officer begged him to take his horse and 
 save himself. He refused. “ Tell them at Rome,” said 
 he, “to look to their watch and ward: and tell Fabius 
 1 remember his counsel dying, as I did while I lived.” 
 Varro, with a few horsemen, escaped from the field to 
 Yenusia. Forty thousand foot and 2,700 cavalry were 
 said to have been left dead on the field of battle, include 
 mg nearly all the officers of highest rank, the gallant 
 Minucius among the number; 3,000 infantry and 300 
 horse were made prisoners. When Mago bore the news 
 of his brother’s great victory to Carthage, he poured out 
 before the council there a bushel (some said three) of 
 gold rings, each one taken from the finger of a Roman 
 knight who had died at Cannae * Those who escaped 
 to their own camp surrendered next day to Hannibal, 
 except a small body who fought their way out and 
 reached Canusium. 
 
 “ Such,” says Livy, “was the fight at Cannae, not less 
 memorable than the disaster at the Allia; if less grave in 
 its consequences, inasmuch as the enemy did not follow 
 up his success, yet more fatal in the utter destruction of 
 the army. For the flight at the Allia, though it lost the 
 city, saved the army ” Hannibal missed the tide of oppor¬ 
 tunity. In vain did Maharbal—“ the best cavalry officer 
 of the finest cavalry service in the world ”f—propose to 
 ride forward at once, and urge his chief to follow him 
 with the main body, straight for Rome, promising him 
 
 * Tim reader will be reminded of the four thousand gilt spurs 
 said to have been gathered from the bodies of the French knights 
 slain by the Flemings on the field of Courtrai, a.d. 1302—hence 
 known as the Battle of the Spurs. ” 
 t Arnold. * 
 
112 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 that “in five days he should sup in the Capitol.” Han¬ 
 nibal preferred to wait; and the Roman annalist admits 
 that, in his opinion, this delay was the salvation of the 
 city. As to the panic and distress there, he despairs of 
 giving his readers any adequate idea of it. “I fail 
 under the burden of the task, and will not attempt to 
 narrate it, since any description would only make it ap¬ 
 pear less than the reality.” Two significant facts he 
 mentions, which show the all but despairing efforts 
 made Dy the authorities. Eight thousand slaves were 
 armed and enrolled, and six thousand released criminals; 
 and recourse was had to the horrible expedient of human 
 sacrifices,—to propitiate, if it might be, the unknown 
 deities who fought against Rome. Two Gauls and two 
 Greek prisoners—male and female—were buried alive; 
 ‘ ‘ a horrible rite, by no means in accordance with Roman 
 usage.” 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 SECOND PUNIC WAR: CANN^ TO ZAMA. - 
 
 ( 
 
 (books xxii. -xxx. b.c. 216-202.) 
 
 Once more the spirit of Rome rose superior to her 
 misfortunes. News came in of the revolt of allies, of 
 descents made by the Carthaginians on the coast of 
 Sicily; yet “no word was spoken of peace;” and when 
 Yarro, whose rashness had caused the disaster, brought 
 the shattered remains of his army to the gates of Rome, 
 he received the public thanks of the senate,—“because 
 he had not despaired of the commonwealth.” In the 
 general demoralization which followed the defeat, some 
 of the younger officers had formed the idea of giving 
 up the cause of Italy as lost, and seeking refuge and 
 
THE SECOND PUNIC WAR. 
 
 113 
 
 service under Hiero or some other friendly potentate; 
 but Varro had scorned such counsel, and young Scipio 
 had burst in with his sword drawn upon a party who 
 were met to discuss it, and threatened to cut down the 
 first man who refused then and there to swear fidelity 
 Jo the Republic. 
 
 Very different, and as it might seem to us moderns 
 very harsh, was the view taken at Rome of the con¬ 
 duct of those troops who had allowed themselves to 
 be made prisoners at Cannae. By Hannibal’s permis¬ 
 sion, they had sent delegates to Rome to treat for their 
 ransom; but the senate, unmoved by the piteous en¬ 
 treaties of their relatives, sternly decided that the services 
 of men who had preferred life to honor were not worth 
 the purchase. Even those troops who had escaped by 
 flight were sentenced, by way of punishment, to serve 
 in Sicily until the war should be concluded. Five years 
 afterwards, when- the authorities in their emergency 
 were arming even slaves to serve in the legions, these 
 men prayed leave to wipe out their disgrace in any 
 hardest service that could be found in their native 
 country; and the senate coldly rejected their prayer. 
 
 Hannibal moved into Samnium, and thence into the 
 plains of Campania, receiving the submission of several 
 towns, the most Important of which was the rich town 
 of Capua. This loss was felt by the Romans as only 
 second to that of Rome itself. But the Carthaginian 
 commander, whose strongest arm was his cavalry, did 
 not attempt any great operations, and the winter spent 
 by his army amidst the luxury of Capua "is said to have 
 demoralized it more'than all the sufferings of the Alps 
 or the campaign. Marcellus, now in command in that 
 district, did little more than watch the enemy’s move¬ 
 ments. 
 
114 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 In Gaul the Romans had been more unfortunate': a 
 consul, Posthmuius, was attacked in making his way 
 through a forest (ForSt de Lago), and cut to pieces with 
 great part of his army; and their progress there was 
 checked for the present. The Roman fleet had enough 
 to do to watch the coasts of Italy, and to form a coali¬ 
 tion of the iEtolians and other tribes on the Macedonian 
 frontier against King Philip, with whom Hannibal had 
 just concluded an alliance. 
 
 But in other quarters the tide was already turning 
 for the Romans. In Sardinia, a great battle had been 
 won by Manlius, who was in command there as praetor, 
 against the combined forces of the Sardinians and Car¬ 
 thaginians, the latter having three of their generals 
 taken prisoners. In Spain, a year before, the brothers 
 Publius and Cnaeus Scipio had driventhe great Cartha¬ 
 ginians over the Ebro, and when they heard that Has- 
 drubal was marching-strong reinforcements through the 
 country to the aid of his brother Hannibal in Italy, they 
 had united their forces, met him on the Ebro, and totally 
 defeated him; thus materially crippling the great Car- 
 thaginan’s operations against Rome. They now again 
 gained a decisive victory, inflicting on the Carthaginians 
 a loss of 13,000 killed, and making a considerable num¬ 
 ber of prisoners, besides what the Roman annalist 
 evidently considers an important capture of “ nine ele¬ 
 phants.’' This success was at once followed by the defec¬ 
 tion of nearly all the Spanish tribes from the Carthagin¬ 
 ian alliance; and both Sardinia and Spain were for the 
 present secured to the Romans. 
 
 The next year (b.c. 214) saw the joint consulship of 
 Quintas Fabius and Marcus Marcellus, “ the Shield and 
 Sword of Rome.” The people were on the point of elect¬ 
 ing two other candidates, when Fabius, who as the out- 
 
THE SECOND PUNIC WAB. 
 
 115 
 
 going consul was returning officer, bade them reconsider 
 their vote—“ they had to elect a match for Hannibal.” 
 Nothing perhaps shows the true greatness of Fabius 
 more than his thus boldly risking the charge of forcing 
 himself upon the people; for there is no doubt that he 
 had his own election in view, and there was no prece¬ 
 dent for thus holding a consulship two years in succes¬ 
 sion. 
 
 Extraordinary exertions had been made to raise both 
 men and money for the ensuing campaign; and two 
 consular armies of unusual strength, under able com¬ 
 manders, now pressed Hannibal close in Campania. He 
 sailed in au attempt on Tarentum; his lieutenant Hanno 
 was defeated by Gracchus at Beneventum; Samnium 
 was ravaged by Fabius, in punishment of its revolt from 
 Rome; and vigorous preparations were made for the 
 siege of Capua. 
 
 Marcellus, however, was called off before the end of 
 t lie year to the scene of his future glory in Sicily. 
 King Hiero of Syracuse—for forty-seven years the 
 steady ally of Rome—was dead, and had left the govern¬ 
 ment to his grandson, a mere boy, caring only for his 
 pleasures. His two uncles, his guardians and ministers, 
 were inclined to the Carthaginian interest; and Hanni¬ 
 bal had amongst other agents at his court a man of 
 enterprise and ability in the person of Hippocrates. 
 The young prince was assured that the Roman power was 
 irretrievably broken; and, tempted by the offer Of being 
 made king of all Sicily, in spite of the advice of some 
 older and wiser counsellors, he made an alliance with 
 Carthage. He was assassinated very soon afterwards on 
 an expedition against Leontini; and the cry was raised 
 m Syracuse for “a free Republic,” and a re-alliance 
 with Rome. Andranodorus, one of the young king’s 
 
116 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 uncles, seized and held the citadel in the interests of the 
 royalist party; but he and his friends surrendered it to 
 the republicans when they found that the popular feel¬ 
 ing was too strong. Accusations of plotting against 
 the liberties of Syracuse, and of seeking to re-establish 
 the “ tyranny,” were soon brought against him; and the 
 result was an outbreak of popular fury, and an indis¬ 
 criminate massacre of the whole party, and of all the 
 descendants of Hiero. The Romans, as soon as they 
 learnt the state of affairs, sent their fleet at once to 
 Syracuse to support their own interests against those of 
 Carthage; and this formidable demonstration encour¬ 
 aged their adherents in the city to renew the old alliance 
 with Rome. 
 
 But Hippocrates, the zealous and energetic agent of 
 Hannibal and Carthage, was by no means content with 
 such an arrangement; and he found a centre of opera¬ 
 tions in the Sicilian town of Leontini, which was not 
 inclined to submit itself either to Syracuse or to Rome. 
 Marcellus now arrived to take the command in Sicily 
 in person. He took Leontini by storm; and finding 
 there a large body of deserters from the Roman fleet 
 and army, he had two thousand of them first scourged 
 and then beheaded. This terrible vengeance struck 
 the Syracusan soldiers with a not unreasonable horror 
 of Roman cruelty; Hippocrates and his brother, who 
 had escaped from the slaughter at Leontini, were 
 acknowledged as leaders by the arm 3 r , and a counter¬ 
 revolution in favor of Carthage took place in the city 
 of Syracuse, and the gates were closed against the 
 Romans. 
 
 Marcellus at once invested the place by sea and 
 land. The siege has an especial interest as the first 
 instance on record of a scientific defence. A studious 
 
THE SECOND PUNIC WAR. 
 
 117 
 
 recluse of seventy-four, a mathematician and astron¬ 
 omer, for a long time baffled tlie unscientific efforts 
 of the whole Roman force. This was Archimedes, 
 who for many years had employed his skill in the ser¬ 
 vice of King Hiero. It would appear that he first in¬ 
 troduced the plan of looplioling the walls at different 
 heights; his catapults and similar machines—the artil¬ 
 lery of those times—were of all varieties of range and 
 calibre; and there was one tremendous engine, like an 
 enormous crane projected from the walls, and heavily 
 weighted at the nearer end, while the other was fur¬ 
 nished with a huge grapplingclaw; this, when suddenly 
 depressed, would catch hold of one of the enemy’s ships 
 (which were brought up to attack the sea-wall), lift it 
 bodily out of the water, and then let it drop suddenly 
 back so as to sink it with its whole crew. The defence 
 was so successful, and the natural position of the city 
 so strong that the siege was speedily reduced to a close 
 blockade. It was not until this had lasted a year that 
 Marcellus at last gained possession of the city by a sur¬ 
 prise. A weak place in the fortifications had been dis¬ 
 covered in the quarter called Epipolse; and while the 
 citizens were engaged in deep carousals at the festival 
 of Diana two picked cohorts scaled the walls at night¬ 
 fall, and without much difficulty made themselves 
 masters both of that quarter and of the strong-work 
 called Hexapylon. What remained was an easy con¬ 
 quest. 
 
 “ When Marcellus entered the fortifications, and from the high 
 ground looked down, and saw lying at his feet the city, well- 
 nigh the fairest in these times, he is said to have shed tears, 
 partly of joy at the great deed he had accomplished, partly of 
 regret for the ancient glories of the place. The sinking of the 
 Athenian fleet there, the destruction of two great armies and 
 
118 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 two renowned commanders,* came into his mind; the many 
 wars waged against Carthage with varied success; its many 
 powerful despots and kings—Hiero especially, not only as the 
 most recent of its rulers, but memorable above and beyond all 
 that merit and fortune had given him, for his good services to 
 the Roman people. When all this crowded on his memory, and 
 the thought occurred that now in one moment all its magnifi¬ 
 cence would be given to the flames and reduced to ashes, he sent 
 some Syracusans who had been serving in his camp, to speak the 
 enemy fair, and induce them to surrender.”—(xxv. 24.) 
 
 A portion of the city was surrendered, but only to 
 be given up to indiscriminate plunder—in spite of Mar- 
 cellus’s tears. The rest, with the citadel, still held out; 
 and vigorous attempts were made by the Carthagin¬ 
 ians to relieve it. But the force which was sent from 
 Carthage perished almost to a man from malaria in the 
 marshy ground where they lay—Hippocrates (who had 
 broken out of Syracuse) among them. Their fleet also, 
 partly from unfavorable winds, and partly, it would 
 seem, from lack of spirit in its commander, did not 
 venture to encounter that of the Romans: and the dis¬ 
 content and mutiny of the foreign mercenaries 
 within the city itself led at length to its betrayal to 
 Marcellus. There was not much fighting at the capture; 
 but in the scene of violence, plunder, and wanton 
 bloodshed that followed, one notable life was lost. 
 Archimedes was found, unconscious of all the noise 
 and tumult round him, absorbed in working out a 
 mathematical problem on a smooth bed of sand. To 
 the great regret, it is said, of Marcellus, he was killed 
 by a Roman soldier, who knew nothing of science or 
 its professors. The city was completely sacked by the 
 soldiery; and the plunder, Livy tells us, was more 
 
 * Nicias and Demosthenes. 
 
THE SECOND PUNIC WAR. 
 
 119 
 
 valuable than would have been even that of Carthage 
 itself. 
 
 Other towns in Sicily, which had revolted from Rome 
 to Carthage when they saw, as they thought, their 
 opportunity, now hastened to offer their submission; 
 but Marcell us dealt with them all with the utmost 
 severity, even putting to death the chief citizens of the 
 anti Roman party. His conduct left such a terrible im¬ 
 pression on the memories of the Sicilians, that when, in 
 a subsequent consulship, he was appointed to the com¬ 
 mand in the island, they sent to implore the Roman 
 senate not to send him there. A half caste officer of 
 Hannibal's, Mutines, gave still some trouble in Sicily, 
 and even repulsed Marcell us in a pitched battle. Mar- 
 cellus’s term of command had now expired, and he hur¬ 
 ried to Rome to enjoy his triumph, leaving to one of 
 the new consuls, Laevinus, the difficulty and the honor 
 of completing the subjugation of Sicily. He was able 
 to inform the senate, at the expiration of his year of 
 office, with a great amount of self-complacency, that the 
 island was thoroughly got into order, and that not a 
 Carthaginian was left there. 
 
 Our author’s annalistic method has recorded these 
 events in Sicily under the three successive years in 
 which they took place. It is more convenient here to 
 return for a while to the contemporary events in other 
 fields where Rome was carrying on the war.* In Italy, 
 Hannibal had surprised and taken Tarentum; Gracchus, 
 one of the consuls who succeeded Fabius and Marcellus, 
 was killed in an ambuscade; and an old centurion, of 
 more courage than generalship, who succeeded to his 
 
 * The chronology of these operations, as given by Livy, bears 
 traces of confusion. 
 
120 
 
 LIVT. 
 
 command, was defeated and glain by Hannibal, with 
 15,000 of his men; but all these disasters were compen¬ 
 sated to the Romans by the fall of Capua in the follow¬ 
 ing year. 
 
 The Romans were determined on the reduction of 
 their rebel dependency. They drew round it all their 
 available force in Italy; and after giving notice to all 
 who would make their peace with Rome to evacuate 
 it before a certain day, they encircled it with a triple 
 line of works. Hannibal hastened to its relief; but his 
 terrible cavalry could make no impression on the 
 Roman lines; and, with a sudden bold change of plan, 
 by a rapid niglit-marcli he struck for Rome. He took 
 nearly the same route that the Gauls had taken long 
 ago; and the terror and confusion in the city at the 
 news of his approach was scarcely less than had fol¬ 
 lowed the disaster of the Allia. Though he encamped 
 within three miles of the gates, his real object was but 
 to draw off the investing army from Capua; and he had 
 no means, and probably no thought of attempting an 
 assault on Rome. He plundered the rich lands round 
 the city unchecked, spite of the rage and grief of the 
 citizens, who had seen no enemy so close to their gates 
 for nearly a hundred and fifty years. He rode up to 
 reconnoitre in person, with his staff, Livy tells us, to 
 the Colline Gate; but that was all he saw of Rome. 
 He gained no respite for Capua; only a very small 
 portion of the besieging army was recalled for the de¬ 
 fence of the capital, and, baffled and disappointed, lie 
 retired upon Bruttium, and left the Capuans to their 
 fate. 
 
 That fate was not long delayed, and it was terrible. 
 They entertained no hopes of mercy from the Romans. 
 Some of the chief citizens took poison before the sur- 
 
THE SECOND PUNIC WAR. 
 
 121 
 
 render. Such senators as were found alive were 
 scourged and then beheaded. It is said that, while 
 they were bound for execution, an order from Rome 
 reached the consul Fulvius for their reprieve; that he 
 placed it in his bosom unread, and bade the execution 
 proceed. Most of the inhabitants were sold for slaves, 
 and all their lands and other property were confiscated. 
 Capua had been Hannibal’s one great conquest in Italy, 
 and the blow to his cause there was proportionate. 
 
 In Spain matters had gone worse for the Romans. It 
 is more than probable that in the account which Livy 
 has borrowed from earlier writers of the exploits of 
 the two Scipios, we have only the boastful exaggera¬ 
 tion of their family annals; it is only certain that they 
 were both in succession defeated and slain by Hasdru- 
 bal, a short time before the fall of Capua, and that the 
 Romans were driven back beyond the Ebro. It was 
 reserved for a younger member of the house to avenge 
 the deaths of his relatives and retrieve the honor of 
 Rome. But it is by no means certain that the acts of 
 young Publius Scipio have not received the same kind 
 of decoration in the family chronicle as those of his 
 father and uncle. His extraordinary promise had led, 
 we are told, to his election to public office before he 
 was of legal age; and now, when a proconsul was to be 
 chosen to succeed to the command in Spain, and men 
 hung back from an honor which involved so much re- 
 sponsibility under such discouraging prospects, young 
 Scipio came forward as a candidate, and was elected by 
 acclamation. 
 
 He is so evidently a favorite, both with the 
 Roman annalist aud with Polybius, whom he has 
 followed, that we have his character drawn by partial 
 hands. But there can be no question of his having 
 
122 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 been an extraordinary man, and of his exercising a 
 kind of fascination over those who were brought in 
 contact with him. Strange tales were told of his 
 birth, and of a mysterious inspiration which he re¬ 
 ceived, or thought he received, from heaven; of his 
 spending hours alone in the temple of Jupiter on the 
 Capitol before he engaged in any important business. 
 All such tales he was at least at no pains to contra¬ 
 dict, and men regarded him with a certain awe as well 
 as admiration. 
 
 He took out with him to Spain large reinforcements, 
 and after wintering at Tarraco (Tarragona), crossed the 
 Ebro in the spring, and marched straight upon New 
 Carthage (Cartagena)—the most important of the Car¬ 
 thaginian towns, the base of their military operations, 
 and the depot of their stores and treasure. He stormed 
 it by crossing the wide lagoon which then lay at its 
 back; and for some time the place was given up to 
 general massacre and pillage. An immense booty was 
 found there, besides naval stores and war material of 
 all kinds. The artificers were forced into the Roman 
 service, and the able-bodied citizens and their slaves 
 were compelled to serve as rowers in the fleet. But 
 there were other prisoners taken in the place to whom 
 Scipio gave very different treatment. These were the 
 hostages from the several towns of Spain, whom the 
 Carthaginians had sent there for safe custody. The 
 Roman commander, by a studied moderation and 
 courtesy, sought to impress on them how much it 
 would be to the advantage of themselves and their 
 countrymen to be on the side of Rome rather than of 
 Carthage. One anecdote will serve at once as an ex¬ 
 ample of Scipio’s policy, and of Livy’s facility as a 
 writer of romapce. 
 
THE SECOND PUNIC WAR 
 
 123 
 
 “ A captive was brought before him by his soldiers—a grown¬ 
 up maiden of such remarkable beauty, that wherever she moved 
 she attracted the eyes of all. Scipio inquired her country and 
 her parentage, and ascertained amongst other things that she 
 was affianced to a young chief of the Celtiberi, whose name was 
 Allucius. He at once sent for her lover and her parents from 
 their homes, and heard in the meanwhile that the youth was 
 passionately attached to her. As soon as they arrived, he ad¬ 
 dressed himself to the lover more particularly than to the par¬ 
 ents. 1 1 address myself,’ said he, ‘ as one young man to another, 
 that there may be less embarrassment between us in this inter¬ 
 view. When your betrothed bride was brought to me by our 
 soldiers, I heard that you were very much in love with her—a 
 fact which indeed her beauty makes me readily believe, inas¬ 
 much as, were I at liberty to indulge the passions natural to my 
 age, especially in an honorable and lawful way, and if public 
 duty did not engross all my thoughts, I might have claimed in¬ 
 dulgence, had I become desperately enamoured of some lady 
 myself. Your passion, at least, I can favor, and I do. Youi 
 betrothed has been treated with the same respect while in my 
 charge as she would have been under the roof of her own par¬ 
 ents and your future connections. She has been kept safe for 
 you, that I might present her to you untarnished, a gift worthy 
 alike of myself and you. This one return I bargain for in re¬ 
 payment for this gift of mine—become the friend of the Roman 
 people. And if you believe me to be a man of honor, as these 
 tribes know my father and my uncle to have been, I would have 
 you learn that there are many like us in the state of Rome; and 
 that no nation can be named at this day upon earth whom you 
 ought less to wish to have for enemies to you and yours, or 
 should prefer as friends.’ The young chief, overwhelmed with 
 embarrassment and joy, grasped Scipio’s hand, and called upon 
 all the gods to repay his benefactor an obligation which it 
 would never be in his own power to discharge in any way cor¬ 
 respondent to his own feelings and Scipio’s claims upon his 
 gratitude. Then the maiden’s parents and relatives were sum¬ 
 moned. Finding that she was to be restored to them gratuit¬ 
 ously, whereas they had come prepared with a considerable 
 weight of gold for her ransom, they began to entreat Scipio to 
 receive it from them as a present, protesting that in so doing 
 he would confer upon them an obligation not less than this free 
 and honorable restoration of their daughter. Seeing them so 
 
124 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 earnest in their request, Scipio promised that he would accept 
 the gold, and bade it to be laid at his feet. Then, calling Allu- 
 cius to him, he said, ‘ As an addition to the dowry which you 
 will receive from your father-in-law, take this as my wedding 
 present;’ and he desired him to take the gold and keep it for 
 himself. The bridegroom took his leave, delighted alike at the 
 gift and the compliment, and went home to fill the ears of his 
 countrymen with the praises of Scipio. ‘ There had come upon 
 earth a hero like unto the gods, conquering all men not only by 
 his valor, but by his kindness and munificence.’ And he straight¬ 
 way made a levy of his retainers, and, with fifteen hundred 
 picked horsemen, returned in a few days to Scipio.”—(xxvi. 50.) 
 
 But neither the popularity of the new Roman general 
 with all the Spanish tribes, nor a subsequent victory 
 over Hasdrubai which is ascribed to him, enabled him 
 to prevent the latter from marching to the support of 
 his brother Hannibal in Italy. 
 
 Meanwhile the state of things in Italy itself looked 
 gloomy in the extreme. In spite of Marcellus’s con¬ 
 quest of Syracuse, in spite of the recovery of Capua, 
 the distress in Rome was severe, and there was disaffec¬ 
 tion among her allies. Twelve of the thirty colonial 
 towns distinctly refused the usual contributions of men 
 and money—“they had neither men nor money to 
 give.” The resources of Rome would have failed ut¬ 
 terly and at once, had the remaining eighteen followed 
 the example. But instead of this, they not only fur- 
 nished the quota demanded, but said that “more was 
 ready if required.” The ravages of Hannibal made 
 corn scarce and dear; and a new tax, absolutely neces¬ 
 sary to maintain the navy, led to such imminent 
 danger of insurrection, that the commons were only 
 pacified by the gallant self-devotion and liberality of 
 the senators and knights, who placed at the disposal of 
 the treasury commissioners all their gold and silver 
 plate and coined money, with only some small personal 
 
THE SECOND PUNIC WAP. 
 
 125 
 
 reservations. The sacred treasure, reserved for any 
 great emergency, was also brought out and employed— 
 “four thousand pounds’ weight of gold.” 
 
 The next campaigns were unfortunate. Of the com¬ 
 manders against Hannibal, Fulvius was killed, and his 
 army destroyed; and Marcellus, consul for the sixlh 
 time in the following year, while reconnoitring with 
 his cavalry, met his death in an ambuscade, in which 
 also his colleague Crispinus was mortally wounded. 
 Thus Rome lost both her consuls on one fatal day. 
 The two armies threw themselves into Venusia and 
 Capua. And now came news that Hasdrubal had 
 slipped by Scipio in Spain, had turned the Pyrenees, 
 crossed Gaul, and was on his way to join his brother 
 Hannibal. He crossed the Alps by the same route 
 which the latter had taken, but more rapidly, and with 
 much less difficulty, than his brother had done. He 
 seems to have marched through Lombardy without 
 opposition; and Livius, the consul sent to oppose him 
 on the frontier, was obliged to fall back before him.* 
 But the despatches which were to announce to his 
 brother his arrival and his plans fell into the hands of 
 the other consul, Claudius Nero, who lay at Venusia, 
 watching Hannibal; and he at once determined on a 
 course which has always been admired for its boldness, 
 and perhaps also for its success. He made a rapid 
 night-march with a picked body of 7000 men, and be¬ 
 fore Hannibal missed him, was far on his road to join 
 his colleague, and so crush Hasdrubal, if possible, by 
 their united weight, before he could join his brother. 
 The manoeuvre was thoroughly successful. Unwilling- 
 
 * As to the details of this campaign, Arnold remarks that 
 “ what we have in Livy is absolutely worthless,” 
 
126 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 ly the Carthaginian, after an attempt at retreat, gave 
 battle on the Metaurus river, and was there utterly de¬ 
 feated, with a loss which was no doubt heavy, however 
 Roman boasts may have exaggerated it. Livy pays 
 an honest tribute to the gallantry of Hasdrubal: great 
 in many battles, he says, he was never so great as in 
 this. 
 
 “ He it was who kept his men up, while they fought, by cheer¬ 
 ing them, and facing every personal danger like themselves; he 
 it was who, when they were tired out, and gave way from very 
 weariness and fatigue, reawoke their spirit now by entreaties 
 and now by reproaches; he rallied them when they fled, and re¬ 
 stored the battle at many points where the struggle had ceased. 
 At last, when it was clear that the day was the enemy’s, refusing 
 to survive the fate of the army which had followed him as 
 leader, he spurred his horse right into one of the Roman cohorts. 
 There he fell, fighting to the last, as became a son of Hamilcar 
 and a brother of Hannibal.”—(xxvii. 49.) 
 
 Nero hurried*back as rapidly as he came; found 
 Hannibal still waiting news of his brother; sent two 
 Carthaginian prisoners into his camp to bear the tid¬ 
 ings of their defeat; and bade the severed head of Has¬ 
 drubal be thrown down in front of the Carthaginian 
 outposts, that Hannibal might recognize the dead face 
 (he had not looked on it for eleven years), and know 
 by this sad token the fate of his brother’s army. So 
 much more of the barbarian spirit had a Roman con¬ 
 sul, on the Roman annalist’s own showing, than the 
 great Carthaginian whom it was the fashion at Rome 
 to call perfidious and cruel; for Hannibal had, not long 
 ago, given honorable burial to the body of Marcellus, as 
 he had to Gracchus in Lucania, to Paulus ^Emilius, 
 after Cannae, and as he sought to do in the case of 
 Flaminius, the consul who fell at Lake Thrasymenus. 
 
 Always melodramatic, Livy tells us that when Han- 
 
THE SECOND PUNIC WAR. 
 
 127 
 
 nibal looked on the severed head of his brother, he 
 said that “he recognized there the fate of Carthage.” 
 Whatever be the truth of the story, there is no doubt 
 that the great victory on the Metaurus was the turning- 
 point in the fortunes of the contending powers. Hal- 
 lam classes it amongst the few great battles “ of which 
 a contrary event would have essentially varied the 
 drama of the world.” Rome dre# breath after it, as 
 freed, almost beyond hope or expectation, from a ter¬ 
 rible peril. It is hardly possible to do justice by any 
 translation to the fine chapter in which the annalist 
 describes the reception in the city of the good news. 
 It is the counter-picture to the scene after Tlirasy- 
 menu$ 
 
 “ While the city was in this state of anxious suspense, there 
 came a rumor, vague at first, that two Narnian horsemen had 
 ridden from the battle to the Roman force, which lay watching 
 the passes of Umbria, with the news that the enemy had received 
 a heavy blow. Men took it in with their ears rather than their 
 minds, as too great and too joyful to be entertained in thought, 
 or really believed. The very rapidity of the communication was 
 an objection, for the battle was said to have taken place only 
 two days before. Soon a letter was brought in from Manlius, 
 from the camp announcing the arrival of the horsemen. When 
 this letter was carried through the Forum to the court of the city 
 preetor, the senate rose in a body fi’om their hall; and such a 
 rush and struggle was made by the people towards the doors of 
 the senate-house, that the courier could not make his way 
 through, but was dragged to and fro by eager inquirers demand¬ 
 ing loudly that he should read it on the public rostra before he 
 carried it in to the senate. At last the crowd was forced back, 
 and kept under restraint by the authorities, and the joyful news 
 was circulated by degrees, though men’s minds were as yet un¬ 
 able to realize it. The letter was read in the senate first, then in 
 public to the people; and, according to their various dispositions 
 some felt an assured joy, others would give no credit to the tale 
 
 
 * See p. 108. 
 
128 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 until they had either heard or seen despatches from the consuls 
 themselves. 
 
 Presently word was brought that official messengers were 
 coming. Then young and old went forth to meet them, each long' 
 ing to be the first to drink in such joyful tidings with eyes and 
 ears. There was one continuous stream of people out as far as 
 the Milvian bridge. The officers entered the Forum, the oentre 
 of a crowd of all ranks. Some questioned them, and some those 
 who escorted them, as to what had happened; and as each heard 
 the news, that theenefny’s forces and their commander were cut 
 to pieces—that the Roman legions were safe—that the consuls 
 were unharmed,—they at once imparted their joy to others. . . . 
 The temples during the next three days were crowded; wives 
 and mothers in holiday attire, leading their children with them, 
 were giving thanks to heaven, and casting off all fear, as though 
 the war were already ended.”—(xxvii. 50, 51.) 
 
 Meanwhile the conquest of Spain was rapidly being 
 accomplished under Scipio. He won a great victory 
 over Hasdrubal, known as “ the son of Gisgo,” to dis 
 tiqguish him from the brother of Hannibal. Such 
 towns as still held out against the Romans hastened to 
 make their submission; and the defeated general em¬ 
 barked what remained of his army for Africa, leaving 
 Spain for the present so far clear of Carthaginians, that 
 Scipio’s lieutenant, Silanus, was able to announce to 
 him that “the war was over.” But the boast came 
 somewhat too soon. 
 
 The Roman commander was now eager to carry the 
 war into the enemy’s country. He was not content to 
 be the conqueror of Spain: he longed to add to his 
 glories the reduction of Carthage itself. He crossed at 
 once into Africa, with some hope of securing to the 
 Roman interests one of the most powerful of the native 
 princes, Syphax, king of the Masaesjdians, who had in¬ 
 vited him to a conference. At his table Scipio found 
 himself seated next to his latt opponent, Hasdrubal 
 
THE SECOND PUNIC WAR. 
 
 129 
 
 Gisgo, ■ and, if we may trust tlie partial historian, 
 charmed him, as he did all who came into personal 
 relations with him, by the grace of his bearing and con¬ 
 versation. Thinking that he had secured Syphax— 
 who appears to have been only playing with him—he 
 returned to Spain, to find some new troubles there. 
 He had to “ punish” certain towns which had probably 
 taken occasion of his absence to revolt; and he did so 
 effectually. Then there arose a far more serious diffi¬ 
 culty, in the mutiny of a portion of his own troops, on 
 the ground of the hopeless arrears of pay, and their 
 long absence from home; and in the midst of it he was 
 seized with a dangerous illness. The report that he 
 was dying roused some Spanish tribes once more to 
 take up arms; and, as a proof of his great personal in¬ 
 fluence, and the widespread awe and admiration which 
 he inspired, no sooner did tlieir leaders hear he was 
 recovering than they were struck with complete panic. 
 The mutiny among his own men he put down with a 
 * strong hand, and with no little diplomacy; the ring¬ 
 leaders were cleverly secured, and straightway exe¬ 
 cuted. With the revolted Spaniards, who now fought 
 in sheer despair of pardon, he had a desperate battle; 
 but he was completely victorious, and Mago. the last 
 of the Carthaginian generals who clung to Spain, was 
 summoned away to head a descent upon Liguria, and, 
 if possible, to rally Northern Italy against the Romans. 
 
 Scipio himself hurried to Rome, to stand for the 
 consulship. He was elected; but, to his great disap^ 
 pointment, he could not get a commission to take the 
 command in Africa. Old Fabius Maximus—not too 
 old to make a very long speech, in our annalist’s pages 
 —protested against it as a patent imprudence, so long 
 as Hannibal maintained his ground in Italy. 
 
130 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 He did maintain bis ground there four years longer, 
 though he did scarcely more. He confined himself 
 chiefly to Bruttium, and the Romans seem never to 
 have ventured to attack him in the field; but the want 
 of support from Carthage, the difficulty of maintaining 
 his troops, and the Italian malaria, were far more har¬ 
 assing enemies. His brother Mago made his descent 
 upon Genoa from the Balearic Isles, where he had col¬ 
 lected a strong naval and land force; but though his 
 capture of the town drew’ numbers of the Ligurians and 
 Gauls to his standard, he was unable to carry out his 
 instructions to effect a junction with Hannibal. He 
 was defeated, after an obstinate battle, by the Roman 
 force sent to oppose him, and was mortally wounded. 
 It was at this juncture that both he and his brother 
 were recalled to Africa, which he reached only to die. 
 
 Scipio had been prevented from making Africa the 
 ostensible scene of his operations; but he had the per¬ 
 mission of his government to cross over there, “ if he 
 held it to be for the interest of the state.” He did hold 
 it so to be; and amidst the general enthusiasm of his 
 troops, picked for the service, and the admiration of 
 -the crowds of provincials who thronged the shore, with 
 all solemn pomp and magnificence, and the prayers to 
 heaven which he knew’ so well how to use with effect, 
 he set sail from Lilybaeum. 
 
 “ After this prayer, a sacrifice was offered, and he casttthe raw 
 entrails of the victim, according to custom, into the sea, and 
 bade the trumpet sound for weighing anchor. They set sail 
 with a stiff breeze in their favor, and were soon carried out of 
 sight of land. At mid-day a fog came on, so that the ships with 
 difficulty escaped running foul of one another. When they were 
 well out at sea the wind slackened. During the following night 
 the haze continued, but when the sun rose it dispersed, and the 
 Wind got up again. They now sighted land; and the pilot soon 
 
THE SECOND PUNIC WAR 
 
 131 
 
 afterwards said to Scipio that they were not above five miles 
 from the coast of Africa; that he could see Mercury’s Point;* 
 and that if he pleased to give orders to make for it, the whole 
 fleet would be presently in harbor. When Scipio got sight of 
 land, he prayed the gods that this his first view of Africa might 
 be for his country’s honor and his own: then bade the fleet 
 spread sail and make for another landing-place lower down the 
 coast. The wind was fair in that direction. But the fog, coming 
 on about the same time as the day before, soon shut the land 
 from sight, and as the fog grew thicker the wind dropped. Night¬ 
 fall made their position difficult to ascertain; they therefore cast 
 anchor, for fear the vessels might foul each other or run ashore. 
 When day broke, the breeze sprang up again, the fog dispersed, 
 and discovered the whole coast of Africa. Scipio asked what the 
 name of the nearest headland was: and when he learnt that it 
 was called ‘ Fair Point,’ t—‘ I accept the omen,’ said he; ‘ steer 
 right for it.’ For that point the fleet stood in, and there the 
 whole force was landed.”—(xxix. 27.) 
 
 His success was rapid. He had been disappointed in 
 Syphax as an ally; but Massinissa, king of a Numidian 
 tribe—a wily and treacherous barbarian, but an able 
 leader of irregular cavalry—had just been driven from 
 his dominions by this very Syphax, and took advantage 
 of it to transfer his services from Carthage to the 
 Romans, a step which he had long been meditating. 
 Scipio had once laid him under obligation in Spain, and 
 they had already been in correspondence. His cavalry 
 was of the greatest use to the Romans in their new 
 campaign. The camps of the Numidians and Carthagin¬ 
 ians—mere wattled huts cove-red with thatch and dried 
 leaves—were ^surprised and burnt; and in the massacre 
 —for it could hardly be called a fight—which followed, 
 30,000 Carthaginians are said to have been killed, and 
 the Numidian force of 60,000 men was either cut to 
 
 * Now Cape Bon. 
 
 t Pulchrum Promontorium; now Cape Farina. 
 
132 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 pieces or dispersed.* Sypliax was followed iuto Numi- 
 dia, defeated, and sent prisoner to Rome, and Massin- 
 issa regained liis kingdom. 
 
 It was not therefore before Hannibal’s presence was 
 needed at home that he, like his brother Mago, was 
 summoned home from Italy. But Hannibal himself, 
 thus torn from the field of his conquests and his hopes 
 --though it was only what he had for some time ex¬ 
 pected—-was not likely to take this view. 
 
 “ He is said to have groaned aloud and ground his teeth, and 
 Scarcely to have refrained from tears, as he listened to the 
 message of the envoys. When they had delivered themselves of 
 their instructions, ‘Ay,’ said he, ‘now they recall me in plain 
 terms instead of by implication,—they who have so long been 
 trying to drag me back by refusing me men or money. Hanni¬ 
 bal is defeated—not by the Roman people, whom he has so often 
 beaten and put to flight, but by the Carthaginian government, 
 their jealousy and envy. Not Scipio himself will boast and exult 
 so much in this ignominious return of mine, as will Hanno, who 
 seeks to effect the destruction of our house by the ruin of Car¬ 
 thage, since he can do it in no other way.’ . . . Seldom was any 
 man, leaving his native land for foreign exile, known to have 
 parted from it with more evident sorrow than Hannibal showed 
 in quitting the soil of an enemy. Often, as he looked back on 
 the shores of Italy, he accused gods and men, and cursed himself 
 and his folly, ‘ that he had not led his troops straight to Rome 
 while their swords were yet red from the victory of Cannae.’ ”— 
 (xxx. 20.) 
 
 Scipio was closely blockading Utica, when envoys 
 were sent to him from Carthage to sue for peace. The 
 terms which he is said to have offered them, and they 
 to have accepted, amounted almost to submission. The 
 Carthaginians were to evacuate Italy, Gaul, and Spain; 
 to cede to Rome all the islands which lay between Italy 
 and Africa; to give up all their ships of war but twenty; 
 
 * “The annals of war contain no bloodier tragedy.”—Arnold, 
 
THE SECOND PUNIC WAR. 
 
 133 
 
 and to pay the Romans a large indemnity in corn and 
 money. Hard as the terms were, they had to be referred 
 to Rome for approval; and a truce was agreed upon for 
 this purpose. If we are to trust the Roman annalist, 
 the truce was broken by the Carthaginians, elated at the 
 prospect of Hannibal’s return. The whole story is 
 apocryphal, as are the details of the meeting which 
 Livy records as having taken place between Hannibal 
 and the Roman consul soon after his landing,—in which 
 “ both stood for a while silent, as though struck dumb 
 by mutual admiration,”*—and the story of the Car¬ 
 thaginian spies whom Scipio detected, and ordered to 
 be led round his camp to see for themselves and report 
 what they would to their chief. Whatever may have 
 been the true history of the negotiations for peace, they 
 ended in nothing; and the two commanders and their 
 forces met on the field of Zama.f 
 The fight was long and obstinate. The eighty ele¬ 
 phants which were ranged in the front of the Carthagin¬ 
 ians, and on which they still placed great dependence, 
 were left a free course to the Roman rear, through 
 openings in the line, by Scipio’s skilful arrangement, 
 and so did little execution, and even broke to the wings 
 against their own cavalry. Massinissa’s horse did good 
 service. But the deciding contest lay between the 
 Roman legionaries, picked men as they all were, and 
 Hannibal’s veterans, soldiers by profession and training, 
 who had followed him over the Alps and through Italy. 
 Neither would give way, until Lselius and Massinissa 
 with the Roman and Numidian horse, returning from the 
 brief pursuit of the enemy’s cavalry, charged their infan- 
 
 * Book xxx., ch. 30. 
 
 t The real site of the battle is uncertain. 
 
134 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 try in the rear. Then the day was over: 20,000 of the 
 Carthaginians are said to have been killed, and as many 
 taken prsioners. Scipio was advancing upon Carthage 
 by sea, when a ship met him with a flag of truce. The 
 terms he insisted on were even harder than before; Car¬ 
 thage was now to retain only ten ships; to pledge itself 
 to engage in no war out of Africa itself, or even there 
 without consent of the Romans; to maintain the Roman 
 army in pay and rations for three months; and to give 
 a hundred hostages of the conqueror’s selection. There 
 was some hesitation in the Carthaginian senate as to 
 their acceptance ; when Hannibal, wno had escaped 
 from the battle with a few horsemen, rose and spoke 
 in favor of peace at any price. Peace was signed; the 
 great Punic War—or, as the Romans justly called it, 
 the war with Hannibal—was over ; and the career of 
 one of the greatest generals—if not the very greatest 
 —of any time or country, was ended at the early age 
 of forty-five. He lived nearly twenty years after¬ 
 wards; but we shall find him soon banished from 
 Carthage (where he had always jealous enemies), at 
 the demand of the Romans, and he never afterwards 
 held any except a subordinate naval command undei 
 Antiochus of Syria. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE ROMANS IN GREECE. 
 
 BOOKS XXX-XXXIV. B.C. 200-194.) 
 
 We have now arrived at the period in history when 
 Rome comes into distinct contact with Greece. Philip 
 Y, of Ma^pdon had made an alliance with Carthage, as 
 
THE ROMANS IN GREECE. 
 
 135 
 
 we have seen, after Hannibal’s great victory at Cannae; 
 but the hostilities between him and the Romans had not 
 been carried on very actively; and the latter, fully oc¬ 
 cupied with Spain and Africa, had not been sorry to 
 make a truce with Philip, which had now lasted some 
 years. 
 
 But after the battle of Zama, appeals came in from 
 more quarters than one for aid against the growing en¬ 
 croachments of Philip’s ambition. One of his generals 
 was investing Athens; his admirals at sea were en¬ 
 deavoring to make themselves masters of the HEgean, 
 by humbling the naval power of Rhodes and of Attalus 
 king of Pergamus, the old and faithful ally of Rome; 
 and all, in their difficulty, turned their eyes to Rome. 
 The reply which the Roman senate gave to the envoys 
 from Rhodes and Pergamus was in a truly imperial 
 tone: “The senate would see to the affairs of Asia.” 
 Whether Philip heard of the answer or no, he was a 
 match for them in lofty words. He had made himself 
 master of all the important coast towns of Thrace, and 
 was investing Abydos. The Roman commissioner who 
 was sent to remonstrate with him was an JEmilius, 
 somewhat young for his office. He spoke as Philip had 
 not been accustomed to hear. The Macedonian answered 
 with some dignity: 
 
 “ ‘Your youth, sir,* said he, ‘and your personal advantages, 
 and more than all, your Roman name, makes you use somewhat 
 bold language. My desire is, in the first place, that you would 
 remember your treaty with me, and maintain the peace. If you 
 trouble me with war, I am prepared to make you feel that the 
 Macedonian rule and the Macedonian name can win as great re¬ 
 nown in war as the Roman.’ (xxxi. 18.) 
 
 With the exception of the Acarnanians and Boeotians, 
 all the Greek states either joined the Romans in the war 
 
136 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 against Philip or stood neutral. In n.c. 200, a Roman 
 consular army crossed from Brundusium to Apollonia 
 in Epirus. It was unlike, in many respects, the armies 
 of the Punic wars. The men were all nominally volun¬ 
 teers for the service (for a levy had been found too un¬ 
 popular); and there were in the force a thousand Numi- 
 dian cavalry, and elephants brought from Carthage. 
 
 The war lingered on without any great result for two 
 years, until it was terminated by a great victory won 
 over Philip at Cynocephalae by Titus Flamininus, a 
 young Roman general of the new school, himself half a 
 Greek in tastes and habits, but an energetic and capable 
 commander. The defeat was complete, and the Mace¬ 
 donian power was crushed. The phalanx once broken 
 became a h lples mass of confusion; aud the elephants, 
 which had already done the Romans good service in these 
 campaigns, contributed much to the victory. While 
 the enemy lost 13,000 men in killed and prisoners, the 
 Roman loss, according to Livy was not more than 700. 
 Philip was compelled to accept the terms which had 
 been already offered by the Romans. He had to sur¬ 
 render all his conquests in Asia, in Greece, and on the 
 coasts of the -Egean, retaining only his ancestral king¬ 
 dom of Macedonia; to give up nearly all his fleet, to 
 pay a large indemnity, and to become in matters of war 
 and peace almost the vassal of Rome. 
 
 Flamininus made what was almost a triumphal prog¬ 
 ress through Greece to Corinth, to be present there at 
 the great Isthmian games. His fancy was to produce 
 an effect which we should now call sensational. Ten 
 commissioners had arrived from Rome with the ratifica¬ 
 tion of the conditions of peace. 
 
 “The Romans took their seats at the spectacle. Then the 
 herald, with his trumpeter, according to custom, advanced into 
 
THE HOMANS IN GREECE. 
 
 137 
 
 the centre of the arena, where proclamation of the games is wont 
 to be made in solemn form; and when the trumpet had sounded 
 for silence, spoke aloud as follows: ‘ The senate and people of 
 Rome, and Titus Quinctius beir general, having conquered King 
 Philip and the Macedonians, hereby pronounce free and inde¬ 
 pendent, and subject only to their own laws, the Corinthians, 
 Phocians, and all the Locrians; the island of Euboea, the Magne- 
 sians, the Thessalians, the Perrhaebians, and the Achseans of 
 Phthiotis.’ He had recited all the states hitherto subject to King 
 Philip. When the herald’s words were heard, the joy was too 
 great for the hearers to take it in all at once. Each could scarce 
 believe he had heard aright; men looked at each other in amaze¬ 
 ment, as though it were all an empty dream. They questioned 
 their neighbors as to the points in the proclamation which con¬ 
 cerned themselves, mistrusting their own ears. The herald was 
 recalled; every one wants not only to hear but see this messenger 
 of liberty: he repeated the words again. Then, when the joyful 
 tidings were confirmed, there rose such clamor of cheers, and 
 clapping of hands, and so often repeated, as to show that of all 
 blessings none is so dear to the masses as liberty. The games 
 were then hurried through, for none had either thought or eyes 
 for the show; so entirely did that one great joy preoccupy their 
 minds, that they had no sense of other pleasures. When the games 
 were over, all pressed hurriedly to where the Roman general sat; 
 insomuch that, owing to the rush of the crowd to get near his 
 person, eager to grasp his hand, and throwing wreaths and rib¬ 
 bon-knots upon him, he was almost in personal danger. How¬ 
 ever, he was a young man of three-and-thirty; and the vigor of 
 youth, as well as his gratification in this realization of his glories, 
 gave him strength. Nor did this effusion of universal joy last 
 only for the moment: it was revived for many days in men’s 
 thoughts and conversation. ‘ There was then one nation on earth 
 which, at its own cost, its own toil and peril, would wage war for 
 the liberties of others; and this it did not merely for contiguous 
 or near neighbors, or peoples inhabiting the same continent; it 
 would cross the seas, in order that there should be no unjust do¬ 
 minion throughout all the world, but that everywhere justice, 
 law, and right should bear rule. By a single herald's voice, all 
 the cities of Greece and Asia had been made free. To have con. 
 ceived the hope of this, betokened a daring spirit; to have carried 
 it into effect, showed equal valor and good fortune.” — 
 (xxxiii. 32, 33.) 
 
188 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 One is tempted to ask, did Flamininus write his owii 
 bulletins of the war? But that he was a great favorite 
 with the Greeks, and that he had a great admiration for 
 many of their habits and tastes, seems certain. He 
 would have conferred a more real freedom on Sparta if 
 he had effectually delivered it from the domination of 
 . its tyrant Nabis, who had originally espoused the cause 
 of Philip, but of whom the Romans had unscrupulously 
 made a friend for their own purposes, until the con¬ 
 tinual complaints of his neighbors induced them to di¬ 
 rect Flamininus to deal with him as he thought fit. He 
 reduced him to something like quiet; and at the great 
 Nemean games held at Argos under the presidency of 
 the Roman general, a very similar scene took place to 
 that at the Isthmus a year before. The “freedom” of 
 Argos from the oppression of Nabis, into whose hands 
 Philip had for his own purposes surrendered it, was sol¬ 
 emnly announced, and again the Roman was hailed as 
 the great liberator. When at the expiration of his pro¬ 
 longed command he took his leave of Greece at Corinth, 
 be gave them the excellent advice which Greeks, then 
 or since, have never been inclined to take. He ended 
 his speech in these words: 
 
 “ Let their leaders, and the different ranks in each state, and 
 the states amongst one another, strive for union and concord. 
 So long as they were at one. neither king nor tyrant could be 
 strong enough to harm them. Disunion and distrust gave every 
 opportunity to watchful enemies. For the party which is worsted 
 in an intestine quarrel will rather apply for help to foreign 
 powers than yield to their own countrymen. He exhorted them 
 to guard and maintain by their own exertions the liberty pur¬ 
 chased by the arms of others, and restored to them by the good 
 faith of strangers; that so the Roman people might feel that 
 they had given freedom to men who were worthy of it, and that 
 their service had been well bestowed.”—(xxxiv. 49.) 
 
THE ROMANS IN ASIA. 
 
 1B9 
 
 They parted from him, says the chronicler, with 
 tears, as children from a parent; and he was himself 
 so affected as to be scarcely able to conclude his speech. 
 Before he left, he procured from their gratitude the 
 redemption from their present masters of a number of 
 those unfortunate Romans who had been sold as slaves 
 Into Greece during the Punic wars, when the stern sen¬ 
 tence of their countrymen had refused to pay their 
 ransom.* Twelve hundred of them were found in 
 Achaia alone. “Judge, then,” says the historian, 
 “how many, in that proportion, there were likely to 
 have been in all Greece.” His triumph at Rome lasted 
 three days. It was magnificent with the works of 
 Greek art which had been captured ? chiefly from 
 Philip; the golden crowns presented to the liberator 
 by the several states—one hundred and fourteen; the 
 captive princes and noble hostages, among them Deme¬ 
 trius, the young son of Philip, and Armenes, son of 
 the tyrant Nabis ; but the grandest feature in the show 
 (Livy evidently has the good taste to think so) was the 
 band of liberated Romans, who, with their heads 
 shaven, in token of recovered freedom, followed the 
 triumphant procession of their deliverer up the hill of 
 the Capitol. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE ROMANS IN ASIA. 
 
 (books xxxv.—xxxix. b.c. 193-183.) 
 
 Macedon had been humbled, and Rome was at 
 liberty to turn her arms elsewhere. Antiochus of Syria, 
 
 * See p. 113. 
 
140 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 known as the Great, had for some time been extending 
 his conquests on the coasts of Asia Minor, chiefly at 
 the expense of the recognized dominions of the kings 
 of Egypt. There was, in fact, an understanding be¬ 
 tween him and Philip that they were to divide Egypt 
 between them. The present Ptolemy was a mere child; 
 and the Romans, no doubt with their own obiects in 
 view, had lately taken him under their “ protection.” 
 If Antiochus had anticipated their action by joining 
 Philip before the fortunes of Macedon were ruined, 
 events might very possibly have taken a different turn 
 in the future; as it was, he had spirit enough to re¬ 
 fuse the demand of Rome that he should restore his 
 conquest from Ptolemy, but not enough strength to 
 maintain his resistance. When he crossed into Greece on 
 the invitation of the iEtolians, who had never acquiesced 
 in the Roman policy, he found Philip of Macedon deaf 
 to all proposals of an alliance against Rome as a com¬ 
 mon enemy—an alliance which was offered too late— 
 and dutifully siding with his new allies and masters 
 against him. In vain Antiochus tried to make a stand 
 at the old historic pass of Thermopylae : he had to 
 retire defeated from Greece, only to be followed into 
 Asia, as Hannibal had warned him, by the unrelaxing 
 grasp of Rome, “already affecting the empire of the 
 world;” to be finally conquered at Magnesia in the passes 
 of Mount Sipylus, and reduced to accept humiliating 
 terms, by another of the great family of the Scipios, 
 Lucius Cornelius, known from these compaigns as 
 “ Asiaticus”—the first Roman commander who landed 
 a hostile force in Asia. The battle which sealed the 
 fate of Syria was fought, however, by his lieutenants, 
 while Scipio lay ill in his tent. Again, as with the Car* 
 tiiae'ini^ns §t Zama, the elephants brought into action 
 
THE ROMANS IN ASIA . 
 
 141 
 
 by the Syrians turned on their own ranks and broke 
 their formation, and their loss at Magnesia is estima¬ 
 ted at 50,000 men. 
 
 This war with Antiochus introduces us once more 
 to the hero of the Punic wars. The faction at Car¬ 
 thage which had always been opposed to Hannibal and 
 his policy now denounced him to the Romans as en¬ 
 gaged in negotiations with Antiochus. They at once 
 sent to Carthage to complain, no doubt intending to 
 demand his extradition. One man at Rome, to his 
 great honor, protested against the course taken: it was 
 Scipio, Hannibal’s old antagonist, who best knew his 
 worth. He said it was “unworthy of the dignity of the 
 Roman people to listen to party accusations against 
 such a man.” Hannibal did not wait the result: he 
 fled at once to the court of Antiochus, which seems to 
 imply that the report of his intentions was not without 
 foundation. He was warmly received; but he could 
 not persuade the Syrian to adopt his own vigorous 
 policy, and carry the war at once into Italy rather than 
 await the Romans in Greece. Antiochus gave him a 
 naval command, for which he was probably unsuited, 
 and in which he was unsuccessful. 
 
 A passage which our annalist quotes from an earlier 
 Roman historian, Claudius Quadrigarius * (to whom, 
 however, he never seems to give much credit as an au¬ 
 thority), describes a singular interview as having taken 
 place about this time between Hannibal and Scipio 
 Africanus. The latter was, according to Claudius, one 
 of the envoys sent from Roma to Antiochus. He and 
 Hannibal met at Ephesus, where they had a conversa¬ 
 tion which Claudius thus recorded : 
 
 * He wrote about b.c. 100. We have only some scattered 
 fragments of his history. 
 
143 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 “ Scipio asked Hannibal, whom he held to be the greatest gen¬ 
 eral ? He replied, * Alexander, king of Macedon ; because he 
 defeated enormous armies with a small force, and had traversed 
 the remotest regions, which few men could hope even to get a 
 sight of.’ When he was asked whom he would place second, 
 he said, ‘Pyrrhus ; he had first taught the laying out a camp: 
 and besides this, no man ever showed better judgment in 
 choosing his ground and placing his outposts. He had also such 
 tact in winning men to himself, that the nations of Italy preferred 
 to be governed by a foreign ruler, rather than by the Roman 
 people who had stood at their head so long.’ When he was 
 pressed further as to whom he considered to be third, he replied, 
 
 * Himself, unquestionably.’ Then Scipio laughed, and said, 
 
 • What would you have said if you had conquered me? ’ ‘ In that 
 case,’ he replied, ‘1 should have stood before Alexander, 
 and before Pyrrhus, and all other commanders.’ The Punic 
 astuteness displayed in the answer, and the unexpected turn 
 of the compliment, gratified Scipio highly, as though Hannibal 
 had purposely omitted him from the list of generals, as not ad¬ 
 mitting of comparison with them.”—(xxxv* 14.) 
 
 One article in the peace made with Antiochus was a 
 disgrace to the Roman name. It was stipulated (though 
 Livy does not mention the fact) that he should surren¬ 
 der Hannibal to his implacable enemies Their victim 
 escaped, and took refuge with Prusias, king of Bithy- 
 nia. Thither also Roman vengeance followed him in 
 the person of Flamininus, who was determined to rid 
 Rome of him by any means. Hannibal anticipated the 
 treachery of his host, who had stationed soldiers at the 
 doors of his lodging. 
 
 ‘ He had always anticipated some such end to his life; both 
 because he knew the unrelenting hatred the Romans bore him, 
 
 and because he had little faith in the honor of princes. 
 
 He asked a slave for the poison which he had for some time 
 kept ready for such an emergency. ‘ Let us free Rome from 
 this anxiety, ’ said he, ‘ since they think it long to wait for an 
 old man’s death. The triumph which Flamininus will win over 
 an unarmed and aged man is neither great nor glorious. Verily, 
 
THE ROMANS IN ASIA. 
 
 148 
 
 this moment bears witness that the character of the Romaii 
 people has somwhat changed. Their fathers, when King Pyr¬ 
 rhus, an armed enemy, lay camped in Italy, forewarned him to 
 beware of poison. These present men have sent one of their 
 consular^ on such an errand as this,—to ux*ge Prusias to the base 
 murder o f his guest. Then, launching execrations against Pru¬ 
 sias and his kingdom, and calling on the gods to witness his 
 breach <.f faith and hospitality, he swallowed the draught. Such 
 was the end of Hannibal.”—-(xxxix. 52.) 
 
 The Roman historian, writing what was deliberately 
 intended as a chronicle of Romo's greatness, could not 
 well speak more plainly of her behavior to her great 
 antagonist. The man who, spite of all his intensely 
 Roman feeling, is catholic in his admiration of all that 
 is noble, and scorn of what is mean ana oase—and this 
 is Livy’s great praise—could find it in his conscience 
 to say no less. Without excusing it, without openly 
 reproving it, except through the mouth of the Cartha¬ 
 ginian, he drops the veil over this blotted page in the 
 history of his country. 
 
 In the very same year, b.c. 183, there died at Rome 
 Hannibal’s great antagonist—it is hard to say his con¬ 
 queror—Scipio “ of Africa.” There was a set made 
 against the house of the Scipios, the motives of which, 
 and its justice or injustice, would require a history of 
 Roman political factions to explain. The hero of Zama 
 was accused, wrongfully or otherwise, of peculation 
 and embezzlement during his years of command. He 
 met the charge with scorn; called for his account-books, 
 it was said, and indignantly tore them up in the face of 
 his accusers. 
 
 % 
 
 ** When called upon for his defence, he strode through the 
 crowd up to the Rostra, escorted by a large body of per¬ 
 sonal friends and dependants; and when he had obtained 
 silence, he said— ‘ This is the day, tribunes and people of 
 
144 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 Rome, on which t fought 9&hnibal and the Carthaginians in a 
 great battle with happy iah'd successful results. Wherefore, 
 since to-day it is but right to pause from strife and quarrel, I 
 Bhall go hence straight td the Capitol, to do reverence to Jupiter, 
 best and greatest, to juhd and Minerva, and all the other powers 
 who guard oiir citadel! and t shall give them thanks that on this 
 day, and on many a day besides, they bestowed on me the spirit 
 and the power to serve the State. Do you, Romans, all who con¬ 
 veniently may. go with me, and pray the gods that you may 
 ever have leaders like unto hie 5 Since, as from my seventeenth 
 year to my old age your award Of honors was ever in advance of 
 my years, so no honor was ever paid me by you that I had not 
 first earned by good service.’ From the Rostra he moved on to 
 the Capitol. At once the whole assemblage turned and followed 
 him, until at last even the clerks and bailiffs deserted the magis¬ 
 trates. and not a man was left with them but a mob of slaves, 
 and tho crier of the court who summoned defendants. Accom¬ 
 panied by the people, he visited all the temples not only in the 
 Capitol, but throughout the city. That day the popularity of 
 Scipio rose almost higher, and his real greatness was more 
 strongly felt, than when he rode through the city at his triumpn 
 over Syphax and the Carthaginians. (xxxviii. 52.) 
 
 But, as Livy puts it, “that day was the last bright 
 one that dawned for Publius Scipio.” His enemies still 
 insisted on his being brought to trial, and he as steadily 
 refused to meet them. One of the tribunes, Tiberius 
 Gracchus, though a personal enemy, would not join his 
 colleagues in the act of impeachment. 
 
 “ Shall the man who tamed Africa be trampled on by you ? 
 Was it for this he routed and overthrew four of the best generals 
 of Carthage and four of her armies in Spain? for this that 
 he took Syphax prisoner, conquered Hannibal, made Carthage 
 our vassal, drove Antiochus beyond the Taurus (for his brother 
 Lucius admitted him to a share in this glory)—to fall a victim 
 here to you two Petillii—that you should win renown for your¬ 
 selves on Scipio? Shall no services of his own, no honors be¬ 
 stowed by you, ever make the retirement of a hero safe—nay, 
 sacred—in your eyes? The old age of such men, if it cannot 
 command your veneration, should surely claim your forbear¬ 
 ance.”—(xxxviii. 53.) 
 
TEE ROMANS IN ASIA. 
 
 145 
 
 Even the accusers, we are told, were moved by these 
 noble words, and the senate thanked the speaker “that 
 he had sacrificed his private enmity to his public duty.” 
 The prosecution was dropped. 
 
 “ From that time men spoke no more of Afrioanus. He spent 
 the rest of his life at Liternum,* without a regret for Rome. 
 They say that when dying he gave instructions that he should 
 be buried there, and a monument there raised to him, that his 
 last obsequies should not take place amongst his ungrateful fel¬ 
 low-citizens. A man worthy of all memory, yet rather from his 
 conduct in war than in peace.”—(xxxviii. 53.) 
 
 The enemies of the house were not satisfied without 
 the impeachment of his brother, Lucius “of Asia.” 
 The charge brought against him was that of receiving 
 bribes from Antiochus to grant him too favorable con¬ 
 ditions of peace. He also is represented as meeting the 
 accusation with a lofty contempt. But he was con¬ 
 demned, and his property confiscated to pay the claims 
 made upon him. He was even imprisoned for a while, 
 but soon set at liberty. 
 
 The case of the Scipios is only one of many indica¬ 
 tions in the author’s pages that there was springing up 
 at Rome an oligarchy of wealth, of a character very 
 different from that of the old patrician nobility of 
 earlier and simpler times. Rome had not only enlarged 
 her boundaries by her conquests; she had opened a field 
 in which her successful generals could enrich them¬ 
 selves and their families. The “grave and severe” life 
 which had been the pride of the Roman was fast decay¬ 
 ing: he was beginning to learn, from Greece and from 
 the East, the lessons of self-indulgence and luxury. A 
 
 * Now Torre di Patria, The word “ Patria" seems to cor¬ 
 roborate the story of ggipiq having made it his “ country’’ 
 instead of ftome, 
 
i46 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 pernicious effect is said to liave been produced by the 
 triumph of Manlius Vulso, in honor of his defeat of the 
 Asiatic Gauls (the Gallo-Graeci, or Galatians) in the year 
 following the defeat of Antioclius. The display of 
 wealth in his procession was such as had never yet been 
 seen at Rome. “Two hundred golden crowns,” and 
 silver and gold in every form, coined and uncoined, 
 made part of his show, and he distributed ostentatious 
 largesses on the occasion to his soldiery. He was ac¬ 
 cused of having tolerated brigandage and licentiousness 
 of every kind amongst them while in the East: and, in 
 fact, he had delayed for some time his demand for a 
 triumph, in fear of public impeachment. 
 
 “ The taint of foreign luxury was imported into the city by the 
 return of the army from Asia. They first introduced into Rome 
 couches of gilded bronze, costly tapestry, hangings, and other 
 textile fabrics; and, what was then considered extravagant in 
 furniture, claw-tables and brackets. Then first female harpists 
 and tambourine-players, and the jests of professional buffoons, 
 came into fashion at entertainments: the entertainments them¬ 
 selves were given with more care and cost. The cook—who in 
 old times was one of the lowest of the slaves in value and in im¬ 
 portance—began to rise in price; and what had been a mere 
 servile office came to be considered a profession. Yet what was 
 seen then were only the germs of that luxury which was soon to 
 spring up.”—(xxxix. 6.) 
 
 One powerful voice was heard declaiming from time to 
 time against this growing corruption of morals. Mar¬ 
 cus Portius Cato, whether as praetor, consul, or censor, 
 never ceased to urge a return to the old simpler life of 
 Rome—with little effect. It is Livy’s voice, too, as well 
 as Cato’s, which we hear in that long and vigorous 
 declamation against the repeal of the Oppian sumptuary 
 law, meant to repress the extravagances of women.* 
 
 * Book xxxiv. ch. 2. 
 
THE ROMANS IN ASIA. 
 
 147 
 
 But while he rebukes the one sex for their display in 
 dress and equipages, he does not spare the other: while 
 he tells the women that “she who begins to be ashamed 
 of what she ought not to be ashamed of, will soon begin 
 not to be ashamed of what she ought;”—he warns the 
 men against “ the two great and opposite vices under 
 which Rome was suffering—avarice and luxury, which 
 are the ruin of all great commonwealths;” he tells them 
 that “of all kinds of shame, the worst is the being 
 ashamed of frugality and poverty;” and he deplores the 
 day when works of art came in from Syracuse to out¬ 
 shine “the earthen images of their Roman gods,” and 
 royal treasures found their way to Rome from Greece 
 and Asia, which made his countrymen ‘ * rather captives 
 than captors.” 
 
 Cato did not speak without reason of the influence of 
 “foreign superstitions” on the female mind at Rome. 
 Addiction to sorcery, to incantations, to unhallowed 
 orgies, and even to secret poisoning, was a charge 
 brought from time to time against Roman matrons; and 
 thougli in all probability exaggerated by panic, as all 
 such charges commonly are, it must have rested on some 
 ground of truth. There had been one of these panics 
 at the termination of the Latin War (b.c. 335), which 
 was, according to Livy, the first time such practices 
 were discovered at Rome.* The account reads very 
 much like one of the modern epidemics of witchcraft 
 in our own country or in New England. Twenty 
 matrons are first accused and apprehended on the evi¬ 
 dence of a maid-servant; they in turn give information 
 against others; and a hundred and twenty are at last 
 convicted and put to death. But in the years which 
 
 * Book viii. ch. 18. 
 
148 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 followed the Roman victories in Greece and Asia, the 
 panic and the consequent proceedings were of a far 
 more terrible nature. The worship of Cybele, with all 
 its abominable rites, had been introduced from Asia, 
 in compliance with popular demand, in the last years 
 of the war with Hannibal, because an old prophecy had 
 been found—or was said to have been found—in the 
 Sibylline books, that “when a foreign enemy should 
 carry war into Italy, he should be conquered and ex¬ 
 pelled, if the Mother of the Gods were carried to 
 Rome.” She had been brought accordingly, in -solemn 
 state, from Pessinus in Phrygia—a rough stone, which 
 the native priests warranted to be the veritable Mother 
 —which young Publius Scipio, the popular favorite, 
 as “the most blameless man in the state,” was com¬ 
 missioned to escort. It had been received by a depu¬ 
 tation of matrons of noble birth, and set up in the 
 temple of Victory. Chaldaean astrologers were natural¬ 
 ized in the city, and largely consulted. Certain rites 
 connected with the worship of Bacchus had also been 
 introduced by an Etrurian priest, which led to the 
 vilest excesses. The measures taken by the authorities 
 to cut out the cancer from the national life of Rome 
 certainly did not err on the side of leniency. Two 
 hundred women were convicted of poisoning their 
 husbands: “seven thousand of both sexes” were con¬ 
 demned, most of them probably to death, as members 
 of a secret association of the worst description;* and 
 a few years afterwards, three thousand more were con¬ 
 demned for similar practices, and the wife of the con¬ 
 sul Piso was executed for poisoning her husband. 
 Rqt when we read that the public authorities “offered 
 
 * p,c f J8@, Book xxxix, sh- 17i 
 
THE FALL OF MACEDON. 
 
 14 $ 
 
 a reward to any informer who should bring any of the 
 guilty parties before them, or denounce any one in his 
 absence,”—that “a panic seized the whole senate”— 
 that so many (led in terror from the city as almost to 
 put a stop to public business—that many of those who 
 were accused committed suicide at once—and that the 
 prisoners, “ when brought before the consuls, all con¬ 
 fessed their guilt, and did not give them the trouble 
 of a trial,”—no one who has read the history of such 
 scenes even in times which are considered more en¬ 
 lightened, can doubt but that here also the innocent 
 suffered in greater numbers than the guilty. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE FALL OF MACEDON. 
 
 (books xxxix.—xlv. b.c. 190-167.) 
 
 Philip of Macedon had succumbed to the Roman 
 arms; but he was neither humbled by his defeat nor 
 satisfied with the terms of peace. Though the Romans 
 had taken nothing for themselves, they had taken nearly 
 everything from him. They had “freed” all the 
 smaller states and towns which had so long looked to 
 Philip as their lord and master, and had materially 
 increased the domains of the kings of Pergamus, and 
 thus raised to. importance by the side of Macedon a 
 rival of whom he had always been jealous. Besides 
 this, Philip found himself now somewhat in the case of 
 the wounded lion with whom all the meaner beasts take 
 liberties in his distress. Towns over which he under¬ 
 stood his rights to have been reserved repudiated his 
 allegiance; disputes arose between him and his neigh- 
 
150 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 bors, and in every case the appeal was to Rome as the 
 general referee and public “ liberator.” Livy puts the 
 state of the case shrewdly enough: 
 
 “ The moment the idea spread among the different states 
 which bordered on Macedonia that accusations and complaints 
 against Philip were listened to by the Romans with attention, a 
 great many found it worth their while to complain. Each town 
 and tribe on their own particular account, and even individuals 
 in their own private interest (for all found the Macedonian a dan¬ 
 gerous neighbor), came to Rome either in the hope of getting their 
 grievances redressed, or at least to draw some solace from com¬ 
 plaining of them.”—(xxxix. 46.) 
 
 It is easy to imagine how intolerable such a state of 
 things must have become to a prince of Philip’s tem¬ 
 perament, and who had recently held such a different 
 position. Roman commissions went here and there 
 about Greece, hearing complaints and making inquiries, 
 which, however honestly meant, must have chafed 
 and humiliated the Macedonian beyond endurance. 
 One of these commissions was held at Tempe in Thes¬ 
 saly, where the deputies of various aggrieved commu¬ 
 nities appeared, says the annalist, “ in the unmistakable 
 guise of accusers,” while Philip sat there “like a pris¬ 
 oner on trial,” before the high and mighty representa¬ 
 tives of Rome. The dispute between him and the 
 Thessalians, however important to them, has little in¬ 
 terest now for us; the Roman commissioners postponed 
 their decision; but Philip saw, or thought he saw, that 
 he should get scant justice from such a court, and that 
 the Romans were determined to crush him entirely. 
 Their policy and his were in fact incompatible. He 
 took his resolution, and made his preparations in quiet; 
 but in order to gain time, he sent his younger son 
 Demetrius to Rome, to try to make his peace there for 
 
THE FALL OF MACE DON. 
 
 151 
 
 the present. Demetrius, it will be remembered, had 
 been given up by his father as a hostage to the Romans, 
 and after figuring in the train of Flamininus at his 
 triumph, had spent some time in the city in a sort of 
 honorable safe custody. He seems to have won the 
 esteem of his hosts—possibly had adopted some Roman 
 tastes and habits; at any rate, the Roman senate 
 treated him with the greatest courtesy, assured him 
 of their desire to do justice to all, and begged him to 
 let his father understand “that all questions between 
 him and the Roman people might be considered settled, 
 owing to the good offices of his son.” 
 
 The message was fatal to the young prince. His elder 
 brother Perseus, jealous at finding the popularity of 
 Demetrius greater than his own, slandered him to his 
 father as being a Roman at heart, and a traitor to the 
 interests of Philip and Macedon. “The Romans, no 
 doubt, intended to raise their protege to the throne; 
 would Macedonia accept a king from the hands of 
 Rome? ” He even accused Demetrius of designing his 
 father’s murder. Philip listened too easily, and con¬ 
 sented to his being put to death. From that moment 
 he never knew a happy hour. He died two years after¬ 
 wards,—chiefly, as the annalist thinks, “of regret for 
 his lost son, and remorse for his own cruelty; ” for the 
 innocence of Demetrius was established when too late. 
 
 “ The seeds of the new war with Rome were sown,” 
 says Livy, “by Philip. They bore their fruit under 
 his successor Perseus,—a prince with many vigorous 
 qualities, but lacking the genius of his father. The 
 Roman senate, at his request, acknowledged him as 
 king and “their good friend,” with diplomatic polite¬ 
 ness; but they mistrusted him from the first. He 
 took an early opportunity of opening negotiations with 
 
152 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 their old enemies of Carthage. A mysterious embassy 
 from him (of which it may be presumed very little was 
 known, since Livy dismisses it in two lines) was said to 
 have been admitted to an audience by the Carthaginian 
 senate “at night, in the temple of iEsculapius:” but 
 it does not appear to have had any result. He took 
 pains to win the affections of the various Creek states, 
 and held a kind of review of the Macedonian army in 
 the sacred neighborhood of Delphi—the point where 
 Creek religious tradition and national reverence cen¬ 
 tered. Rome, on her part, was renewing her alliance 
 with young Ptolemy of Egypt, and receiving graciously 
 assurances of goodwill, and apologies for being some¬ 
 what dilatory in paying his tribute, from Antiochus of 
 Syria, surnamed Epiphanes—“the Brilliant”—son of 
 their late antagonist. He too had been a hostage at 
 Rome, and had conceived a respect for Roman charac¬ 
 ter, or at least for Roman power, and was glad to be on 
 the side of the strongest in the coming issue. Eumenes 
 of Pergamus came in person to Rome, and warned the 
 senate there of the preparations—corn, money, foreign 
 mercenaries in addition to the national force of Mace¬ 
 donia—which Perseus was getting together in prospect 
 of the coming struggle. Eumenes even hinted, accord¬ 
 ing to Livy’s version of his oration, at a possible inva¬ 
 sion of Italy. Perseus also had his envoys at Rome; 
 and the annalist, intentionally or otherwise, puts into 
 the mouth of their spokesman a reply which would 
 show that there was a true imperial spirit in these Mace¬ 
 donian kings. 
 
 “ His sovereign, he said, was desirous—nay, most anxious— 
 that they should give credit to his assertion, in answer to such 
 charges, that he had shown no hostility to Rome in word or deed; 
 but, if he saw them determinedly bent on finding some pretext 
 
TEE FALL OF MACED OK 
 
 153 
 
 for war, he could take his own part with firmness and spirit. 
 War was a game open to all, and the result of an appeal to arms 
 was what no man could foretell.”—(xlii. 14.) 
 
 There was a barbaric grandeur in the answer, given 
 in such a presence; but if the account before us be 
 true, the king was equally barbaric in his readiness to 
 commit any kind of political murder. He tried to have 
 Eumenes assassinated while sacrificing at Delphi, and 
 very nearly succeeded. He next made an attempt to 
 get the Roman ambassador in Greece poisoned in his 
 apartments; and the discovery, real or pretended, of 
 this attempt, seems to have filled up the cup of his 
 iniquities in the eyes of Rome. Envoys were sent to 
 demand satisfaction, and Perseus received and dis¬ 
 missed them, it was alleged, with a studied contempt, 
 and even violent language, not according them even 
 the ordinary hospitalities due to their office. War 
 was resolved upon, and the preparations for it were on 
 a scale commensurate with its importance; for the 
 resources of Macedonia under Perseus were probably 
 double what they had been under his father Philip. 
 The Third Macedonian War, as it is commonly called, 
 has scarcely been allowed its due weight in history. 
 Had Macedonia been supported, as Perseus hoped to 
 have been, by the Asiatic princes, or by the states of 
 Greece, the Romans might have been driven back upon 
 Italy. But even the “royal marriages” on which Per¬ 
 seus had built his hopes—giving his sister to Prusias of 
 Bithynia, and himself taking to wife a daughter of Se- 
 leucus (Philopator) of Syria—failed to afford him the 
 support on which he calculated. Prusias—that wretched 
 time-server who had lent himself to the assassination of 
 Hannibal—looked on and waited the event; Seleucus 
 was dead; aod brother successor, Afitioc!in§- 
 
154 
 
 LIVY ; 
 
 “the Brilliant,” cared for his own interests, and not 
 those of Macedonia, and was ready to take advantage 
 of the Homans being occupied elsewhere to lay his hands 
 on Egypt. 
 
 Perseus stood almost alone against Rome; Cotys, chief 
 of the Odrysians, and ruler of all Eastern Thrace, fur¬ 
 nished him with some of the best cavalry of the age, 
 who did him good and gallant service; but, with this 
 exception and a small Illyrian contingent, Macedonia 
 had to fight single-handed. 
 
 Livy notes some significant incidents in the enrol¬ 
 ment at Rome of soldiers for the campaign. Much is 
 implied in the apparently casual statement that “ many 
 veteran centurions and soldiers volunteered for the ser¬ 
 vice, because they saw that men who had served in the 
 former Macedonian war, or against Antiochus in Syria, 
 had come home rich”* The Roman legionary was no 
 longer serving only for patriotism or for glory. Others 
 protested against being called upon to serve again when 
 past the usual age, and asserted the right which was 
 claimed, and appears to have been conceded, during the 
 Samnite wars,f but which, like other popular rights, 
 seems to have fallen into practical abeyance, of not 
 being required to serve in an inferior rank to that which 
 they held in their last campaign. The hard service 
 which a Roman soldier sometimes went through is 
 strikingly set forth in the protest of an old officer, one 
 Spurius Ligustinus. It gives us also a little glimpse 
 into the domestic life, of which the pages of the an¬ 
 nalist, to our great loss, supply so little illustration. 
 The simple gossip of the veteran’s story has more in- 
 
 * Book xlii. cli. 52. 
 t See p. 78. 
 
THE FALL OF MACEDOF 
 
 166 
 
 terest Tor us moderns than the intrigues of Greeks and 
 Asiatics, and the “little wars” of Rome with the vari¬ 
 ous tribes of Spain and Gaul, which take up so much 
 of these later Annals. He was of the old Sabine stock 
 —the muscle and sinews of the Roman commonwealth. 
 
 “I am a Sabine, from Crustumina. My father left me some 
 acres of land, and a little cottage, in which I was born and 
 brought up, and there I live to this day. As soon as I was old 
 enough, my father gave me for a wife his brother’s daughter, 
 who brought with her no dowry beyond her free birth and her 
 modesty, and the fruitfulness which might have contented a far 
 richer establishment. Six sons we have, and two daughters— 
 botk married. Four of my sons are grown to manhood, two 
 are still youths. I first entered the service twenty-nine years 
 ago. I served as a private soldier for two years against King 
 Philip, in the army which first landed in Macedonia; in the third 
 year Quinctius Flaminius gave me the command of the tenth 
 company of Hastati, as a reward for good service. When we had 
 beaten Philip and the Macedonians, and were brought home and 
 disbanded, I volunteered again at once, and went with Marcus 
 Porcius (Cato) into Spain. That no commander living was a 
 keener observer and judge of a soldier’s merit, is what all know 
 who have served for any time under him and other generals.^ 
 He selected me to command the first company of Hastati. A 
 third time I volunteered into the army that was sent against the 
 iEtolians and Antiochus; I was given by Acilius the first com¬ 
 pany of Principes.* When Antiochus was repulsed, and the 
 iEtolians reduced, we were brought back to Italy. Then I served 
 two years in the annual levies. Then I made two campaigns in 
 Spain. I was brought home by Flaccus amongst others whom 
 he selected for distinguished services to attend his triumph: at 
 the request of the praetor Gracchus, I went with him into his 
 province. Four times within a few years I was made senior regi¬ 
 mental officer; four-and-thirty times I have received good-service 
 rewards from my commanding officers; I have won six civic 
 crowns for saving comrades’ lives; I have served twenty-two years 
 in the army, and I am above fifty years old. Even if I had not 
 
 * These were gradual steps in rank: the last was the chief cen 
 turion. 
 
i56 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 yet served my full time, and if my age did not entitle me to ex¬ 
 emption, still, seeing that I can give you four soldiers in place of 
 one, consul and fellow-citizens, I might fairly ask for my dis¬ 
 charge. But I wish you to understand that what I have said is 
 simply to do myself justice: for my part, as long as any one who 
 has the levying of troops thinks me fit to fight I am never going 
 to excuse myself. The chiefs may give me what rank they think 
 I deserve,—they have the ordering of that. I shall do my best 
 that no one in the army ranks before me in doing his duty—as 
 I always have done; and that my commanding officers and all 
 who have served with me can witness.”—(xlii. 34.) 
 
 He ended by begging bis fellow-soldiers not to stand 
 upon their strict privileges, but take service at once. 
 He was introduced into the senate, and received a vote 
 of thanks; and was at once appointed to one of the high¬ 
 est regimental commands. 
 
 Perseus, we are told, was surprised, or affected so to 
 be, at the prompt measures taken by the Romans. He 
 sent to offer satisfaction for any complaints which could 
 be shown to be well grounded. The haughty reply of 
 the senate was that Licinius the consul would shortly 
 be in Macedonia with his army, and the king could 
 explain himself to him. He tried further negotiations; 
 but the final result was that his envoys were ordered 
 “ to quit Rome at once, and Italy within thirty days.” 
 
 The war lasted four years. In the first campaign the 
 Romans had an incompetent commander in the consul 
 Licinius, and the splendid Thracian cavalry were irre¬ 
 sistible in their sweeping charges. The Romans were 
 defeated in a great battle, and Perseus gladly took the 
 opportunity of offering to make peace on the terms that 
 had been conceded to his father Philip. But the 
 Romans had the merit (or, as Dr. Arnold seems to 
 think it, the fault *) of never confessing a defeat. They 
 
 * Hist, of Rom. Comm. i. 15. 
 
THE FALL OF MAGEDON. 
 
 157 
 
 \ 
 
 refused to listen to the advances of Perseus, and the 
 war went on; still, on the side of Rome, under generals 
 more or less unequal to their work, until Paulus iEmi- 
 lius, son of the consul who had died so gallantly at 
 Cannafe, was elected the second time to the consulship, 
 b.c. 168. Above sixty years old, but hale and vigorous, 
 he was a strict disciplinarian, and as judicious as he 
 was brave. He concluded the war in a few months, by 
 the great victory of Pydna. The description given of 
 the veteran general in the battle is, unfortunately, one 
 of the many mutilated passages in this imperfect De¬ 
 cade, and has been filled in by a later and inferior hand. 
 When he saw his vanguard giving way, as they did be¬ 
 fore the first onset of the Macedonian phalanx, “he 
 tore his cloak in sheer indignation.” The sight of the 
 old man rushing into the fight and exposing himself 
 like the youngest officer, recalled the men to their duty. 
 It was a desperate and doubtful fight, though of short 
 duration; but, the phalanx once broken, the Roman 
 victory was complete. An hour was enough to decide 
 the fate of Macedonia. 20,000 of the Macedonians 
 were left dead on the field: Livy would have us believe 
 that the Romans only lost 100 men. They made 11,000 
 prisoners. The Macedonian and Thracian cavalry left 
 the field almost without striking a blow. They escorted 
 the king, who is said to have been the first to fly, to 
 Amphipolis; and in two days all Macedonia was at the 
 feet of the Romans. Perseus was pursued to Samoth- 
 race, and there taken prisoner, and led captive, with 
 his two young sons, before the consul’s chariot in his 
 triumph at Rome. 
 
 “It was not only Perseus who just then presented an instance 
 of the mutability of human fortunes, led in chains before the 
 chariot of his conqueror through the capital of his enemies; but 
 
158 
 
 LIVY. 
 
 even the conqueror Paulus, in all the glory of his purple and gold. 
 Of the two sons whom he had kept at home (he had parted with 
 the others, to be adopted), the sole remaining heirs of his name, 
 his fortunes, and his house, the younger, twelve years old, died 
 five days before the triumph; the elder, of fourteen, four days 
 afterwards: boys who might have hoped to have ridden ?n their 
 father’s chariot in their robes of honor, anticipating similar tri¬ 
 umphs for themselves.”—(xlv. 40.) 
 
 Paulus himself is made to refer touchingly to this 
 bereavement in his public speech a few days afterwards, 
 alluding to that jealousy of the Higher Powers which 
 was held, in the Roman creed almost as much as in that 
 of Greece, to follow all too great exaltation of mortal 
 prosperity. 
 
 “I trust the public fortunes may be ransomed from reverse by 
 my own bitter personal sorrow, inasmuch as my triumph has 
 been preceded and followed by the deaths of my two sons. Per¬ 
 seus, though in his own captivity he saw his children led captive, 
 still has them safe: I, who have triumphed in his defeat, came 
 from the funeral of one son, in my chariot from the Capitol, to 
 the deathbed of another; and of my many children, there is none 
 surviving to bear the name of iEmilius Paulus.”—(xlv. 41.) 
 
 The unfortunate successor of Alexander the Great 
 died in exile at Alba, and Macedonia finally became a 
 Roman province. But at this point the Annals of Livy 
 fail us—his remaining books have disappeared. Yet 
 this accidental termination can scarcely be called abrupt; 
 for Polybius dates from this battle of Pydna the full 
 establishment of the universal empire of Rome. 
 
CONCLUDING REMARKS. 
 
 159 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 CONCLUDING REMARKS. 
 
 * N 
 
 It has been impossible, in the limits of this volume, 
 to examine critically into the historical truth of the 
 statements contained in these voluminous Annals. The 
 keenest and most learned inquirers are by no means 
 agreed in their estimate of Livy as a historical author¬ 
 ity. Between the sweeping statement of Macaulay, 
 that “no historian with whom we are acquainted has 
 shown so complete an indifference to truth,” and the 
 chivalrous “Plea” put forth in his defence by Dr. 
 Dyer,* there is room for various degrees of faith or 
 scepticism. His leading purpose was undoubtedly first 
 to celebrate the growth of his country’s glory, and 
 secondly to charm by his narrative and dramatic powers 
 the educated readers of the court of Augustus. If he 
 sometimes disguised the truth for his purposes, it was 
 rather an artistic than a moral dishonesty; it was the same 
 kind of delinquency as that of the painter who plants 
 or cuts down his tree in the foreground, in order to im- 
 prove the composition of his picture; or who translates 
 liberally on his canvas the homely features of his sitter. 
 Livy wanted many qualifications which we should con- 4 
 sider indispensable for a national historian. He wrote 
 of war as a civilian, of constitutional history as a lay¬ 
 man, of antiquities as a gossip; and of many things 
 which we look for in a comprehensive history—of art, 
 of literature, of domestic manners—he does not write 
 at all. Of geography he seems to have known nothing, 
 
 * A Plea for Livy. 
 
160 
 
 LIV7. 
 
 and his best defence is that he professes nothing. He 
 ought to have had some acquaintance with the Alps, 
 and might have at least settled for us the question 
 of Hannibal’s route; but he does not, and e^iently 
 does not care to do so. It is impossible to 1 follow 
 him in any account of a campaign. His only attempt 
 at a geographical description, so far as we know, was 
 curiously enough, that of our own island: it was con¬ 
 tained in a portion of his history now lost to us, and if 
 we may judge from the vagueness of his other notices, 
 the loss is no great matter. Gibbon half apologizes for 
 this defect in him as a military historian, by saying that 
 he wrote as “a man of letters, covered with the dust 
 of his library;” but to imagine Livy as pouring over 
 old manuscripts and charters, and ransacking a hun¬ 
 dred volumes (if he had them) to verify a date or an 
 incident would be a great mistake. He seems to have 
 balanced, in some off-hand way, the varying statements 
 of the half-dozen authors whom he consulted (possibly 
 he had no more to consult), to have adopted, as he 
 more than once almost confesses, that which seemed 
 to him the most picturesque and best adapted for his 
 purpose, and to have built up on it his own rich and 
 fluent narrative. 
 
 Yet it is true that with all this utter want of the 
 critical and judicial faculties which go so far to make 
 a great historian—and though he dealt with facts very 
 much on the principle that, when they did not favor 
 his purpose as the chronicler of the national glory, it 
 was “so much the worse for the facts”—he has, to 
 use M. Taine’s words,* done more for Roman history 
 than all who have striven to reconstruct him. The 
 
 * Ussai sur Tite Live, p. 179, 
 
CONCLUDING REMARKS. 
 
 161 
 
 impression he has left on us of the grandeur of Rome, 
 and the steps by which she reached it, is the true one. 
 The charm of his narrative is not spoilt — it even 
 sometimes gains in interest—by his intensely Roman 
 feeling. Our own national spirit goes a long way to 
 excuse him when he ascribes to Carthaginians, to 
 Greeks, to Asiatics, “perfidy,” and boastfulness, and 
 falsehood, as though they were vices abhorrent to 
 Roman nature: if they were not unknown in Romans 
 as they were, at least he repudiates them for Romans 
 as they should be. Much has been said as to his in¬ 
 justice to the character of Hannibal. But, in the first 
 place, he is not nearly so unjust to him as were the 
 national poets of Rome; and in their case and in his, 
 wide allowance must be made for the light in which 
 the patriot poet or chronicler looks upon the invader 
 of his country. Not to introduce any modern in¬ 
 stances,—are we much surprised that the Jesuits in 
 Spain should have painted Sir Francis Drake as half 
 man and half devil, and the rest of the English nation 
 as little better than fiends? And do we remember 
 how our own writers of the day slandered and cari¬ 
 catured the great Napoleon? But, after all, the im- 
 p °3sion which we gain of Hannibal from the pages of 
 Livy is that he was beyond comparison the greatest 
 general of his age; counterpoising in his own person, 
 if not outweighing, the various abilities of the succes¬ 
 sive commanders — some of them remarkable men— 
 whom Rome sent into the field against him. Con¬ 
 sciously or unconsciously,—whether his admiration 
 for the man overcame his national prejudice, or the 
 instinct of the artist selected that grand figure for his 
 model,—he has made the mighty Carthaginian the hero 
 of his tale. 
 
m 
 
 LIVY, 
 
 For an artist Livy is, when all has been said, far 
 more than a historian. The word historian means, in 
 its very derivation, a patient inquirer into facts and 
 circumstances; and that Livy was not. It was the 
 powers of the poet, the novelist, the dramatist, which 
 he possessed in such large measure, and these have given 
 to his pages a lasting interest, undiminished even when 
 his story is no longer accepted in all cases as trust¬ 
 worthy. Above all he carries his readers with him by 
 his great gift of oratory—the gift which perhaps the 
 Romans, like the Athenians, in their pride of civilizai 
 tion, valued beyond all others, and which has by no 
 means lost its position amongst ourselves. 
 
 THE END. 
 
OYID 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Bey. ALFRED CHURCH, M.A. 
 
 HEAD-MASTER OF KING EDWARD VI.’s SCHOOL, 
 EAST RETFORD 
 
 l 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 JOHN B. ALDEN, PUBLISHER 
 
 1883 
 

 
 
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The extracts from the "Metamorphoses” are, with 
 one exception (marked "C.”), taken from Mr. Henry 
 King’s admirable version of that poem (Blackwood & 
 Sons, 1871). The translations in Chapter II. marked 
 "D.,” are from a volume to which Dryden and others 
 contributed. A passage from the Epistle of Laodamia 
 to Protesilaus, and also the Elegy on the death of Tibul¬ 
 lus, both in the same chapter, are taken—the former, 
 from a little collection of Translations and Poems by 
 Miss E. Garland (Liverpool, 1842); the latter (a transla¬ 
 tion by Professor Nichol) from Mr. James Cranstoun’s 
 "Elegies of Tibullus.” For the other translations, ex¬ 
 cept where an obligation is specially acknowledged, I 
 am myself responsible. 
 
 As regards the banishment of the Poet, I have to ex¬ 
 press my obligations to au article by Dr. Dyer, published 
 in the " Classical Museum.” 
 
 A. C. 
 

 
 
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 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Early Life —The Augustan Age of Roman Love- 
 
 Poetry. 7 
 
 II. The Love-Poems. 23 
 
 in. Domestic Life—Banishment. 41 
 
 IV. The Metamorphoses, or Transformations. 51 
 
 V. *The Fasti, or Roman Calendar. 76 
 
 VT. Departure from Rome—The Place of Exile. 93 
 
 VII. The Poems of Exile: The Tristia, or the “Sorrows”.. 102 
 
 VIII. The Poems of Exile: The Letters from the Pontus— 
 Death of Ovid 
 
 IX. Fragments—Lost Poems—General Observations 
 
 116 
 
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 CHAPTER I. 
 
 EARLY LIFE—THE AUGUSTAN AGE OF ROMAN LOVE- 
 
 POETRY. 
 
 / 
 
 Ovid, like Horace, is his own biographer. In some 
 respects he is even more communicative than his fel¬ 
 low-poet. Horace, for instance, is reticent, as a rule, 
 about his own compositions. The writer of the Odes 
 might, for all we know, be a different man from the 
 author of the Satires or the author of the Epistles. 
 Ovid, on the contrary, takes good care that his readers 
 should be well acquainted with the list of his works. 
 Then, again, there is something very shadowy and un¬ 
 real about the beauties to whom Horace pours forth his 
 passion or his reproaches. Lydia, Cliloe, Barine, Lalage, 
 Glycera—there is scarcely one of them all whom we 
 may venture to pronounce anything more than a crea¬ 
 tion of the poet’s fancy. But Ovid’s Corinna, the one 
 mistress to whom he dedicates his song, is only too 
 real. Who she was, of what rank and character, the 
 learned have disputed; but that she was a real person¬ 
 age no one doubts. And then he gives us the most 
 copious and exact information about his birthplace, his 
 family, his education, his marriage, his fortunes in gen¬ 
 eral. Yet, for all this, the personality of the man him¬ 
 self seems to elude us. Some one has said that we 
 should recognize Horace were we to meet him in the 
 
8 
 
 OVID. 
 
 street. Short and corpulent, the sunny and cheerful 
 youthfulness of his face belying his white hair, his gay 
 figure seems familiar to us. We are acquainted with 
 all his tastes and habits; he confesses his faults; his 
 virtues show themselves. Ovid does not give us such 
 confidences. The most exact statement that he ever 
 makes about his own character—that though his verse 
 was loose his life was pure—we must be permitted to 
 disbelieve. The real Ovid is almost as unknown to us 
 as is the real Virgil. Nevertheless, there is more to be 
 said of him than can be contained within the limits of 
 this volume. And here it may be said, once for all, that 
 much will have to be omitted, not only for want of 
 space, but for yet more imperative reasons of morality 
 and good taste. 
 
 Publius Ovidius Naso was born at Sulmo, a town 
 in Peligni, a district of Northern Italy which took its 
 name from one of the Samnite tribes. The Samnites, 
 Rome’s stoutest antagonist in her early struggles for the 
 supremacy of Italy, nearly overthrew her empire when 
 it had been extended over all the shores of the Mediter¬ 
 ranean. It was with the Marsi, the neighbors of the 
 Peligni on the west, that the war of the Italian allies 
 against Rome, commonly called by historians the Social 
 War, began. Ovid recounts, with a pride which may 
 seem strange in a loyal Roman, the part which his own 
 countrymen had taken in the struggle— 
 
 “ Whom freedom’s voice to noble warfare led, 
 
 When their own allies were the Romans’ dread.’ 
 
 But in truth the poet was not venturing on any danger¬ 
 ous ground in thus writing. The cause of the allies 
 had been closely connected with the cause of the de¬ 
 mocracy. And the Roman empire, like another empire 
 
EARLY LIFE. 
 
 9 
 
 of our own times, had inherited the democratic tradi¬ 
 tions. “Their cause,” says Velleius Paterculus, a 
 younger contemporary of Ovid, and conspicuous for 
 his flattery of Augustus and Tiberius, “was as righteous 
 as their fate was terrible, for they sought to be citizens 
 of the state whose sway they defended with their 
 swords.” The emperors would find no offence in sym¬ 
 pathy with the opponents of that aristocracy on the 
 ruins of whose power their own throne was founded. 
 The poet speaks more than once of the fertility and 
 healthfulness of his native district. These blessings itr 
 cliiefly owed to its copious and unfailing streams. Its 
 pastures never dried up, even under the scorching suns 
 of an Italian summer. Its water-meadows are specially 
 mentioned. It produced wheat in abundance; audits 
 light fine soil was even better adapted for the vine and 
 the olive. The town of Sulmo boasted a high antiquity. 
 A fanciful etymology found in the word the name of a 
 companion of iEneas, sprung from the Phrygian So- 
 lymi,* to whom that chieftain had given one of his 
 daughters in marriage. It took the side of the van¬ 
 quished party in the struggle between Marius and Sulla, 
 and suffered cruelly in consequence. More fortunate 
 in the next civil war, it opened its gates to Julius Caesar. 
 Ovid (he always called himself Nasof) belonged to one 
 of the oldest families in this town. It was of eques¬ 
 trian or knightly rank, and had possessed this distinc¬ 
 tion for many generations. “In my family,” he says, 
 
 * The same origin was assigned, on equally good grounds, to 
 Jerusalem. “Hierosolyma” was, of course, the sacred ( hieros ) 
 city of the Solymi! 
 
 t Most of the writers who mention him follow the same prac¬ 
 tice, but Tacitus and the Younger Seneca speak of him as 
 Ovidius, 
 
OVID . 
 
 10 
 
 “you will find knights up through an endless line of 
 ancestry;” and he looks down, just as among ourselves 
 a baronet looks down on a knight, on men who had 
 won that honor for themselves. 
 
 “I never climbed, not I, from step to step.” 
 
 And he complains loudly to the faithless Corinna— 
 
 “ Some knight, with wealth by wounds but newly earned, 
 Full-fed on slaughter, is preferred to me!" 
 
 The poet was born on March the 20th, 43 b.c. He 
 marks the year by speaking of it as that 
 
 “ In which both consuls met an equal fate.” 
 
 These consuls were Hirtius and Pansa, both of whom 
 perished at the siege of Mutina, fighting against Mark 
 Antony. The Roman Republic virtually perished with 
 them, though we may be sure that had they lived they 
 could not have prolonged its existence. Ovid’s birth 
 coincides appropriately enough with the beginning of 
 the imperial system. The day is noted as being the sec¬ 
 ond of the five days’ festival to Minerva (March 19-23). 
 Minerva was the patroness of learning; and Juvenal 
 tells us that ambitious young scholars were wont at this 
 time to address to images of the goddess which cost them 
 a penny of their pocket-money their prayers for success 
 and fame. He had a brother who was his elder by ex¬ 
 actly a year— 
 
 “ A double birthday-offering kept the day.” 
 
 The brothers were carefully educated, and were sent at 
 an early age to the best teachers in Rome. Their father 
 intended that both should follow the profession of an 
 advocate. The intention suited the inclinations of the 
 elder; the heart of the youngest was otherwise inclined. 
 
EARLY LIFE. 
 
 11 
 
 He wrote verses “ by stealth” just as Frank Osbaldistone 
 wrote them in the counting-house at Bordeaux. And 
 Ovid’s father was as just contemptuous as the elder 
 Osbaldistone of the unprofitable pursuit. The poet says 
 that he was moved by the paternal admonitions,—ad¬ 
 monitions which indeed there were obvious ways of en¬ 
 forcing. He applied himself seriously to the business 
 of learning his profession. The best known of those 
 who have been mentioned as his teachers were Porcius 
 Latro, by birth a Spaniard, who had migrated to Rome 
 under the patronage of Augustus, and Arellius Fuscus, 
 a rival professor of the rhetorical art. It was Latro’s 
 practice to teach his pupils by declaiming before them; 
 Fuscus, with what we may conjecture to have been a 
 more effective method, made the youths themselves de¬ 
 claim. The Elder Seneca * speaks of having heard Ovid 
 perform such an exercise before Fuscus. ‘ ‘ His speech, ” 
 he says, “ could not then be called anything else than 
 poetry out of metre. ” But he adds that the poet had while 
 a student a high reputation as a declaimer; and he speaks 
 strongly in praise of the particular discourse which he 
 had himself happened to hear, describing it as one of 
 marked ability, though somewhat wanting in order. 
 The poetical character of the young student’s oratory— 
 a charaoter quite out of keeping, it should be remarked, 
 with the genius of Latin eloquence—exactly suits what 
 Ovid says of himself— 
 
 “ Whate’er I sought to say was still in verse;” 
 
 which may be paraphrased by Pope’s famous line— 
 
 ‘‘I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.” 
 
 * He was the father of the Younger Seneca, Nero’s tutor, and 
 of Gallio, the proconsul of Achaia (Acts xviii.), and grandfather 
 of the poet Lucan. 
 
OVID. 
 
 is 
 
 Seneca further tells ns that he had a special fondness 
 for dealing with moral themes, and he gives some inter¬ 
 esting instances of expressions in the poems which were 
 borrowed from the declamations of his master, Latro. 
 The brothers assumed, in due time, the toga, or distin¬ 
 guishing dress of manhood.* This robe, as sons of a 
 knight of ancient family, and aspirants, it was pre¬ 
 sumed, to public life, they were permitted to wear with 
 the broad edge of purple which distinguished the sena¬ 
 tor. The elder brother died immediately after com¬ 
 pleting his twentieth year, and this event removed the 
 objection.which the father had made to the indulgence 
 of Ovid’s poetical tastes. The family property, which 
 was not of more than moderate extent, would not have 
 to be divided, and there was no longer any necessity 
 why the only son should follow a lucrative profession. 
 
 About this time we may place Ovid’s visit to Athens. 
 A single line contains all the mention that he makes of 
 it, but this informs us that he went there for purposes 
 of study. What particular study he followed we do not 
 know. It could scarcely have been moral philosophy, 
 which Horace tells us had been his own favorite subject 
 there; rhetoric he had probably by this time resolved 
 to abandon. But Athens, which may be described as 
 the university of the Roman world, doubtless contained 
 professors of the belles lettres, as well as of severer 
 studies; and v. e may feel sure that the poet took this 
 opportunity of perfecting his knowledge of the Greek 
 literature and language Possibly his stay at Athens 
 was followed or interrupted by a tour which he made 
 in company with the poet Macer, the younger of that 
 name, whose friendship he retained until the end of his 
 
 ♦ This was commonly done on completing the sixteentl year. 
 
early life. 
 
 13 
 
 life. This tour included the famous Greek cities of 
 western Asia Minor. As Macer found the subject of his 
 verse in the Trojan war, the friends probably visited the 
 site of the famous city. Ovid, we know, was once 
 there; and, in these days of Trojan discoveries, it may 
 be interesting to remember that he speaks of himself as 
 having seen the temple of Pallas. From Asia Minor 
 they passed to Sicily, where they spent the greater part 
 of a year;—a happy time, to which Ovid, addressing his 
 old companions in one of the letters of his exile, turns 
 with pathetic regret. 
 
 Returning to the capital, he did not at once give up 
 the prospect of a public career. On the contrary, he 
 sought some of the minor offices in which the aspirant 
 for promotion commonly began his course. We find 
 him filling a post which seems singularly incongruous 
 with his tastes and pursuits. He w r as made one of the 
 Triumviri Capitales, officials who combined, to a certain 
 degree, the duties of our police magistrates and under¬ 
 sheriffs. They took the preliminary examination in 
 cases of serious crimes, exercised a summary jurisdic¬ 
 tion, both civil and criminal, in causes where slaves, or 
 other persons not citizens, were concerned, inspected 
 prisons, and superintended the execution of criminals. 
 There were other Triumviri, however, who had duties 
 connected with the coining of money, and Ovid’s words 
 are so vague as to leave it uncertain which of the two 
 offices he filled. He also afterwards became a mem¬ 
 ber of the “ Court of the Hundred,” which had an ex¬ 
 tensive and important jurisdiction in both civil and 
 criminal matters. In this he was promoted to be one 
 of the ten superintendents (i decemviri ) who formed the 
 council of the presiding judge. He seems also to have 
 occasionally acted as an arbitrator or referee. The pro- 
 
14 
 
 fession of an advocate he never followed. An expreS- - 
 sion that has been sometimes taken to mean that he did 
 so, really refers to his position in the Court of the Hun¬ 
 dred. “ The fate of men accused,” he says, seeking to 
 prove to Augustus that he had been a man of integrity, 
 
 “ was intrusted to me without damage.” He was now 
 one of the “ Twenty” who were regarded as candidates 
 for the higher offices in the state, and for seats in the 
 senate,* and who enjoyed the distinction of sitting 
 among senators in the orchestra seats of the circus and 
 the amphitheatre. The time soon came when he had 
 definitely to choose whether he would follow public life, 
 or rather that shadow of it which was left to Roman 
 citizens under the Empire. Members of the ‘ ‘ Twenty, ” 
 on attaining their twenty-fourth year, became eligible 
 for the qusestorship, an office connected with the reve¬ 
 nue—-the lowest grade of the magistracies, properly so 
 called, but giving a seat in the senate. Ovid declined 
 to become a candidate for the office. He exchanged the 
 broad purple stripe which he had worn, as a possible 
 senator, for the narrower stripe which belonged to his 
 hereditary rank as a knight. We must now regard him 
 as a private gentleman of Rome, well-born, and of re¬ 
 spectable but not ample means. His parents were still 
 living, and he hints in one place that he had to content 
 himself with a moderate allowance. 
 
 Yery early in life, when, as he says himself, he was 
 ‘'almost a boy,” Ovid was married to a wife probably 
 chosen for him by his father. The match he gives us 
 to understand, brought him neither honor nor profit. 
 
 * The “ Twenty” were made up in this way: three Commission¬ 
 ers of Police (the Triumviri Capitales , mentioned before), three 
 Commissioners of the Mint, four Commissioners of Roads, and 
 ten Superintendents of the Court of the Hundred. 
 
EARLY LIFE. 
 
 15 
 
 Probably her conduct was not without reproach, and 
 her fortune did not answer his expectations. She was 
 speedily divorced. Another wife was soon found by 
 him or for him. All that we know of her is, that she 
 was a native of the Etrurian town of Falisci. He con¬ 
 fesses that he had no fault to find with her; but the 
 second marriage was, nevertheless, of as short duration 
 as the first. It is easy to gather the cause from the poet's 
 own confessions about himself. 
 
 The literary society of which the young poet now 
 found himself a recognized member, was perhaps the 
 most brilliant which has ever been collected in one 
 place. The Athens of Pericles in one point surpassed 
 it in the magnitude of individual genius. But in extent, 
 in variety of literary power, the Rome of Augustus 
 stands pre eminent in the history of letters. That pre 
 eminence, indeed, has been recorded in the name which 
 it has bequeathed to following times. 
 
 “ Augustan" is the epithet that has been applied m 
 more than one instance to the age in which a national 
 literature has attained its greatest development. In our 
 own history it signifies the period of which Pope was 
 in poetry the most brilliant representative. Used of 
 Roman literature, it may be taken to denote, speaking 
 somewhat loosely, the former half of the reign of Au¬ 
 gustus. Virgil, Livy, Horace, Sallust, the greatest of 
 the names which adorned it, had grown to manhood 
 while the Republic still stood; Ovid, who may be said 
 to close the period, was, as we have seen, born on the 
 last day of Roman freedom. But. indeed, the best 
 days of the Augustan age had almost passed when 
 Ovid became a member of the literary society of the 
 capital. The man who was, in one sense, its ruling 
 spirit, no longer possessed the power which he had 
 
16 
 
 OVID . 
 
 used so generously and wisely for the encouragement 
 of genius. For in this case, as in so many others, the 
 ruler has usurped the honor which belongs to the 
 minister. It was Maecenas, not Augustus, who made 
 the imperial court the abode of letters. The emperor 
 deserves only the credit of possessing culture sufficient 
 to appreciate the genius which his minister had discov¬ 
 ered. But the power of Maecenas did not last beyond 
 the first ten years of Augustus’s reign. Though not 
 ostensibly disgraced, he no longer shared, or indeed 
 could have desired to share—so bitter was the wrong 
 which he had suffered from his master—the emperor’s 
 friendship. Though still nominally a Councillor of 
 State, he had actually retired into private life. Re¬ 
 taining, if we may judge from what we know of 
 Horace, the private friendship of those whom he had 
 assisted, he no longer bestowed his patronage on rising 
 genius. We find, accordingly, that Ovid never men¬ 
 tions his name. Nor was the young poet ever admit¬ 
 ted to the intimacy of Augustus, whose court probably 
 somewhat changed its tone after the retirement of the 
 great literary minister. 
 
 For the older poets, whom he was privileged to see 
 or know, Ovid describes himself as having felt an un¬ 
 bounded veneration: 
 
 “In every bard I saw a form divine.” 
 
 “Virgil I did but see” (a phrase which has become 
 almost proverbial*), he says, in his interesting account 
 of his poetical acquaintances and friends. Virgil cer¬ 
 tainly visited Rome some time between the years b.c. 
 23, when Marcellus died,f and b.c. 20, the date of his 
 
 * “ Virgilium tantum vidi.” 
 
 t Marcellus was the nephew of Augustus. 
 
EARLY LIFE. 
 
 17 
 
 own death, for lie recited before the imperial family 
 the magnificent eulogy on the young prince which 
 adorns the sixth book of the iEneid. Very likely it 
 was on this occasion that Ovid saw ‘him. His habits 
 —for he loved the country as truly as did Horace— 
 and the feebleness of his health, seem to have made 
 him a stranger at Rome during the latter years of his 
 life. 
 
 Another great contemporary Ovid mentions in these 
 words— i ' 
 
 “ The tuneful Horace held our ears enchained.” 
 
 “Tuneful,” indeed, is a word which but feebly ex¬ 
 presses the original epithet ( numerosus ). “That mas¬ 
 ter of melod” is a more adequate rendering, and it is 
 fit praise for one who had no predecessor or successor 
 among his countrymen in his power of versification. 
 There is nothing to indicate the existence of any friend¬ 
 ship between the two poets. Horace was by more than 
 twenty years the elder, and was beginning to weary of 
 the life of pleasure upon which the younger man was 
 just entering. 
 
 Not a single line has been preserved of three other 
 of the poets whom Ovid regarded with such reverence. 
 Ponticus— 
 
 “ For epic song renowned”— 
 
 wrote a poem in heroic— i.e., hexameter—verse on the 
 war of the “Seven against Thebes.” Time has been 
 peculiarly cruel to the world in not suffering it to sur¬ 
 vive, if we are to trust Propertius, who affirms, “as he 
 hopes to be happy,” that Ponticus was a match for 
 Homer himself. Of Bassus we absolutely know nothing 
 but what Ovid tells us, that he was famous for his 
 dramatic verse. HSmilius Macer, of Verona, a fellow- 
 
18 
 
 OVID . 
 
 countryman, and, as Ovid expressly mentions that he 
 was much his own junior, probably a contemporary of 
 Catullus, wrote poems, doubtless modelled after Greek 
 originals, on birds, and noxious serpents, and the heal¬ 
 ing qualities of herbs, Another Macek, who has been 
 mentioned already as Ovid’s companion in travel, wrote 
 about the Trojan war. Of Domitius Mahsus, an ele¬ 
 giac poet, time has spared a beautiful epigram com¬ 
 memorating the death of Tibullus. It would be easy to 
 prolong the list. In the last of his “Letters from the 
 Pontus,” Ovid names, each with a phrase descriptive of 
 his genius or his work, the poets contemporary with 
 himself. There are about thirty of them. Of some we 
 do not know even the names, the poet having thought 
 it sufficient to mention or allude to their principal works. 
 Many of these who are named we do not find mentioned 
 elsewhere, and Ovid’s brief phrase is all that is left of 
 them. The works of all have either perished altogether 
 or survive in insignificant fragments.* Burmann, the 
 most learned of Ovid’s editors, says of Maximus Cotta, 
 the last on the list:—“Him and Capella and others 
 oblivion has overwhelmed with inexorable night. Would 
 that these poets, or, at least, the best part of them, had 
 come down to us, and other foolish and useless books 
 had remained sunk in eternal darkness !” 
 
 Happily for us, a kinder fate has spared the works of 
 two out of the three poets whom Ovid has named as 
 his predecessors and teachers in his own peculiar art of 
 amatory verse. “ He,” says the poet, speaking of the 
 untimely death of Tibullus, “ was thy successor, Gallus; 
 
 * The reader will be glad to see a noble utterance that has been 
 preserved of one of their number: “ All that I once have given 
 Still is mine” {Hoc habeo quodcunque dedi). 
 
NEARLY LIFE. 
 
 1 § 
 
 Propertius was his; I was myself the fourth in the 
 order of time.” The same callocation of names is re¬ 
 peated more than once, and never without expressions 
 that indicate the pride which Ovid felt in being asso¬ 
 ciated with men of such genius. This judgment has 
 been ratified by modern taste. Some critics have not 
 hesitated to prefer the happiest efforts of Tibullus and 
 Propertius (the poems of Gallus have been entirely lost) 
 to anything of the same kind that came from the pen of 
 Ovid. The plan of this series includes, for obvious 
 reasons of convenience, the works of Tibullus and Pro¬ 
 pertius in the volume which will give an account of 
 Catullus. They may be dismissed, for the present, 
 with the briefest notice. Fate, says Ovid of Tibullus, 
 refused the time which might have made us friends. 
 The very elegant memorial which he dedicated to his 
 memory* is scarcely expressive of a personal sorow. 
 With Propertius he was on terms of intimacy: 
 
 “ To me by terms of closest friendship bound.” 
 
 “ Friendship” indeed hardly expresses the term 
 ( sodalitium ) which the poet uses, and which implies 
 a certain formal tie. Readers will remember that in 
 the ancient world, where there was seldom anything 
 ennobling in the relation of the sexes, friendship as¬ 
 sumed a dignity and importance which it scarcely pos¬ 
 sesses in the social or moral systems of modern life. 
 Of Gallus, the founder of the school, a longer account 
 may be given. 
 
 * Graceful and elegant as it is, it cannot be classed with the 
 finest works of its kind. The ”Lycidas”of Milton, the ‘‘Ad- 
 onais” of Shelley, and Mr. Matthew Arnold’s “ Thyrsis,” are all 
 incomparably superior to it. It is entirely a work of art. There 
 is little or nothing of pei'sonal feeling in it. 
 
so 
 
 OVID. 
 
 Caius Cornelius Gallus, born at Forum Iulii (now 
 Frejus, in the Riviera), was, like Horace, of low birth, 
 but received, like him, an education superior to his 
 station. He studied under one of the best teachers of 
 the age, and had Virgil for one of his schoolfellows. 
 After the murder of Julius Ctesar, he joined the party 
 of Octavianus (better known by his latter title of 
 Augustus), and was appointed by him one of the three 
 commissioners charged with the distribution of the 
 confiscated lands of the North Italian colonies among 
 the discharged veterans. In this capacity he had the 
 opportunity of serving his old friend. Mantua, though 
 guiltless of any olfence against the victorious party, 
 was included in the confiscation; and the estate of 
 Virgil, which was situated in one of the neighboring 
 villages, was seized. Gallus exerted himself to get it 
 restored to its owner. The poet repaid him by most 
 graceful praise of the political powers which Gallus 
 probably valued more than his reputation as a soldier. 
 In one of his pastorals he makes the god Silenus sing— 
 
 “ How Gallus, wandering by Permessian streams, 
 
 Some Muse conducted to th’ Aonian hills, 
 
 And how the tuneful choir of Phoebus rose 
 To greet their mortal guest, while Linus spake, 
 
 Old Linus, shepherd of the deathless song, 
 
 His hair with flowers and bitter parsley crowned— 
 
 ‘ Take thou these pipes, the Muses’ gift to thee, 
 
 As erst their gift to Ascra’s aged bard ; 
 
 With them he knew to draw from down the cliff 
 The sturdy mountain-ash trees. Sing on these 
 How Grynia’s grove was planted, till there stand 
 No forest dearer to Apollo’s heart.’ ” 
 
 Another of the pastorals, the tenth and last, has the 
 name of “Gallus” for its title, and celebrates in ex¬ 
 quisite verse the unhappy passion of the soldier-poet for 
 
EARLY life. 
 
 21 
 
 the faithless Lycoris. It has been thought, on the 
 strength of a somewhat obscure passage in Ovid’s elegy 
 on the death of Tibullus, that Gallus behaved in a less 
 friendly manner to that poet. The departed bard, we 
 are told, would meet his fellow-singers Catullus and 
 Calvus in the Elysian fields— 
 
 “ And thou too, Gallus, if they did thee wrong, 
 
 Who spake of friendship shamed, wilt join the throng.” 
 
 Tibullus certainly lost, and apparently failed to recover, 
 a great part of his property; and it has been conjec¬ 
 tured that the influence of Gallus, was used to obstruct 
 restitution. Perhaps a more plausible explanation 
 may be found in the circumstances that brought his 
 career to an end. He had rendered great services in 
 that final struggle with Mark Anthony which put the 
 undivided empire into the hands of Augustus, and was 
 appointed in reward to the government of Egypt, then 
 for the first time a Roman province. This elevation 
 turned, or was said to have turned, his head. Accused 
 of having used insulting words about Augustus, he was 
 recalled. Other charges were brought against him, 
 and were investigated by the senate, with the result 
 that his property was confiscated, and that he was sent 
 into exile. Unable to bear the disgrace, he fell upon 
 his sword. He was in his fortieth year. We can judge 
 of his poetical merit only by the statements of his con¬ 
 temporaries; but if these are to be trusted, they w T ere of 
 the very highest order.* His amatory poems consisted 
 of four books of elegies addressed to Lycoris. 
 
 “ Gallus to east and west is known, and fame 
 With Gallus joins his own Lycoris’ name.” 
 
 * Quintilian, however, says of his poetry that it was ‘‘some¬ 
 what harsh.” 
 
One reflection strikes us forcibly as we compare Ovid 
 •with liis predecessors and contemporaries—a reflection 
 which, whatever the qualities in which they may be 
 allowed to have excelled him, explains and justifies the 
 higher rank which he has received in the judgment of 
 posterity. He w T as cast, so to speak, in a larger mould, 
 and made of stronger stuff. Nothing is more significant 
 of this than the very superiority of his physical consti¬ 
 tution. They almost without exception (we are not 
 speaking now of Horace and Virgil) passed away in the 
 very prime of their youth. Catullus died, when we do 
 not know, but certainly before the age which opened to 
 a Roman citizen the highest offices of state. He comes 
 to meet Tibullus in the Elysian fields, “his youthful 
 brows with ivy crowned.” Calvus, his closest friend, 
 died at thirty-six; Gallus, Tibullus, Propertius, were 
 not older when they passed away. The fiery passion 
 which shines through their verse, and which often gives 
 it a more genuine ring than we find in Ovid’s smoother 
 song, consumed them. Ovid was more master of him¬ 
 self. Nor was his intellectual life limited to the expres¬ 
 sion of passion. His mind was braced by the severe 
 studies that produced the “Transmutations” and the 
 “Roman Calendar.” With this stronger, more practical, 
 more varied intellict, went along the more enduring 
 physical frame. He had nearly reached his sixtieth 
 year before he succumbed to the miseries and privations 
 of a protracted exile. And sixty years of Roman life 
 correspond, it must be remembered, to at least seventy 
 among those who, like ourselves, date the beginning of 
 manhood not from sixteen, but only nominally even from 
 twenty-one. We may perhaps find a parallel, at least 
 partially appropriate, in the contrast between Shakes¬ 
 peare and his more sturdy and healthful soul and 
 
TEE LOVE-POEMS. 
 
 23 
 
 frame, and his short-lived predecessors in the dramatic 
 art, Marlowe and Greene, men of genius both, but con¬ 
 sumed, as it were, by the fire with which he was in¬ 
 spired. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE LOYE-POEMS. 
 
 Under this title are included four productions which 
 —to speak of those works alone which have come down 
 to us—formed the literary occupation of Ovid from 
 his twentieth to his forty-second year. These four are 
 “The Epistles of the Heroines,” “ The Loves,” “The 
 Art of Love,” and “Remedies for Love.” It is in the 
 second of these, doubtless, that we have the earliest of 
 the poet’s productions that survive. He tells us that he 
 recited his juvenile poems to a public audience, for 
 the first time, when his beard had been twice or thrice 
 shaved. Shaving the beard seems to have been a fixed 
 epoch in a young Roman’s life, occurring somewhere 
 about his twenty-first or twenty-second year. He also 
 tells us that of these poems Corinna had been the in¬ 
 spiring subject, and Corinna, we know, is celebrated in 
 “The Loves.” As this book, however, in the form in 
 which we now have it, is a second edition, and as it 
 makes express mention of ‘‘ The Epistles of the Heroines” 
 as a work already published, it will be convenient to 
 speak first of the latter poem. It consists of twenty- 
 one * letters, supposed to have been written by women 
 famous in legend, to absent husbands or lovers. Ovid 
 
 * The authenticity of some of .this number is doubted, or, we 
 might say, more than doubted. But the question is beside our 
 present purpose. 
 
24 
 
 OVID, 
 
 claims the idea as original, and we must therefore sup¬ 
 pose that the one example of the kind which we find 
 in Propertius was imitated from him—a supposition 
 which gives as a probable date for the publication of the 
 Letters, the poet’s twenty-fifth year (b.c. 18). Pene¬ 
 lope, the faithful wife, whom the twenty years’ absence 
 of her lord has not been able to estrange, writes to the 
 wandering Ulysses; Phyllis, daughter of the Thracian 
 king Sithon, complains of the long delay of her Athe¬ 
 nian lover, Demophoon, in the land whither he had 
 gone to prepare, as he said, for their marriage; the de¬ 
 serted Ariadne sends her reproaches after Theseus; 
 Medea, with mingled threats and entreaties, seeks to 
 turn Jason from the new marriage which he is contem¬ 
 plating; and Dido,* a figure which Ovid has borrowed 
 from the beautiful episode of the “ iEneid,” alternately 
 appeals to the pity and denounces the perfidy of her 
 Trojan lover. These are some of the subjects which the 
 poet has chosen. The idea of the book, it must be con¬ 
 fessed, is not a peculiarly happy one. Sometimes it 
 has an almost ludicrous air. There is an absurdity, as 
 Bayle suggests, in the notion of the post reaching to 
 Naxos, the desolate island from whose shore Ariadne 
 has seen the departing sails of the treacherous Theseus. 
 Nor is there even an attempt at giving any coloring 
 appropriate to the time and place to which the several 
 letters are supposed to belong. Penelope, Dido, Ari¬ 
 adne are all alike refined and well-educated persons, 
 just like the great Roman ladies whom the poet used 
 
 * It may be as well to remind the reader that though the le¬ 
 gend of Dido is much older than the “ JEneid,” the introduction 
 of iEneas into it is Virgil’s own idea—a gross anachronism, by 
 the way, with which, however, no reader of the fourth book of 
 the “ ACneid ” will reproach him. 
 
THE LOVE-POEMS. 
 
 35 
 
 to meet in daily life. This artificial writing, abso¬ 
 lutely without all that is called realism, was character¬ 
 istic of Ovid’s age, and we cannot make it a special 
 charge against him. But it has certainly a wearying 
 effect, which is increased by the sameness and mono¬ 
 tony of the subject-matter of the Epistles. The names 
 are different, the circumstances are changed according 
 as the several stories demand, but the theme is ever the 
 same—love, now angry and full of reproaches, now ten¬ 
 der and condescending to entreaty. Nor is that love 
 the “maiden passion” which has supplied in mod¬ 
 em times the theme of poems and romances without 
 number. It is the fierce emotion, guilty or wrathful, 
 though sometimes, it must be allowed, melting into 
 genuine pathos and tenderness, of betrayed maidens 
 and outraged wives. But, on the other hand, though 
 the theme is the same, the variety of expression is end¬ 
 less. The skill with which Ovid continues, again and 
 again, to say the same thing without repeating him¬ 
 self, is astonishing. In this respect no poet has ever 
 shown himself more thoroughly a master of his art. 
 Feeling, too, real though not elevated, often makes it¬ 
 self felt in the midst of the artificial sentiment; if the 
 style is disfigured with conceits, it is always exquisitely 
 polished; the language is universally easy and trans¬ 
 parent, and the verse an unbroken flow of exquisite 
 melody. 
 
 Of all the Epistles, the one which for purity and ten¬ 
 derness most commends itself to our taste, is that ad¬ 
 dressed by the Thessalian princess Laodamia to her 
 husband Protesilaus. He had joined the expedition of 
 the Greeks against Troy, and was the destined victim 
 ot the prophecy which foretold the death of the Greek 
 chieftain who should be the first to leap from the ships 
 
OVID> 
 
 26 
 
 on to the Trojan shore. Readers of Wordsworth will 
 remember the beautiful poem in which he has treated 
 that part of the legend which relates how Jove granted 
 to the prayers of the widowed queen that her hero 
 should for a brief space of time revisit the earth. 
 Laodamia had heard that her husband and his com¬ 
 panions were detained at Aulis by contrary winds. 
 “ Why had not the winds been contrary when he left 
 his home? They had been too favorable for the sailor, 
 not for the lover. As long as she could see, she had 
 watched the departing sails. When they vanished, she 
 had seemed to pass from life, and could wish that she 
 never had been recalled—for her, life was sorrow. How 
 could she wear her royal robes while her husband was 
 enduring the toil and wretchedness of war? Accursed 
 beauty of Paris that had wrought such woe! Accursed 
 vengence of Menelaus that would be fatal to so many 1 
 How foolish the enterprise of the Greeks! Surely the 
 man who had dared to carry off the daughter of Tyn- 
 darus would be able to keep her. And there was some 
 dreadful Hector of whom she had heard; let Protesilaus 
 beware of him. Let him always fight as one who re¬ 
 membered that there was a wife waiting for him at 
 home. It was Menelaus who had been wronged; let it 
 be Menelaus who should exact vengeance. A rumor 
 had reached her that the first chief to touch Trojan so-il 
 must fall. Let Protesilaus be careful not to be he. 
 Rather let his be the last of the thousand ships—the last 
 in going, but the first to return. Now she mourned for 
 him night and day. The dreams in which she hoped to 
 meet her husband did but bring back his pale image. 
 This made her pray to the gods and burn incense on 
 every altar in Thessaly. When would he return and 
 tell the tale of his deeds? But the hope suggested the 
 
THE LOVE-POEMS. 
 
 27 
 
 dreadful thought of Troy and the dangers of the sea. 
 The sea, indeed, seemed to forbid their journey. If it 
 was so, what madness to go! The delay was not an 
 accident; it was an intimation from heaven. Let them 
 return while they could. But no! She will recall the 
 wish. She will pray for favorable winds. If only it 
 was not so far away!” And then she contrasts the sor¬ 
 rows of her own loneliness with what she cannot but 
 think the happier lot of those who were shut up in the 
 walls of Troy: 
 
 “ Ah! Trojan women (happier far than we), 
 
 Fain in your lot would I partaker be! 
 
 If ye must mourn o’er some dead hero’s bier, 
 
 And all the dangers of the war are near, 
 
 With you at least the fair and youthful bride 
 May arm her husband, in becoming pride; 
 
 Lift the fierce helmet to his gallant brow, 
 
 And, with a trembling hand, his sword bestow; 
 
 With fingers all unused the weapon brace, 
 
 _ And gaze with fondest love upon his face! 
 
 How sweet to both this office she will make— 
 
 How many a kiss receive—how many take! 
 
 WTien all equipped she leads him from the door, 
 
 Her fond commands how oft repeating o’er: 
 
 ‘ Return victorious, and thine arms enshrine— 
 
 Return, beloved, to these arms of mine!’ 
 
 Nor shall these fond commands be all in vain, 
 
 Her hero-husband will return again. 
 
 Amid the battle’s din and clashing swords 
 He still will listen to her parting words; 
 
 And, if more prudent, still, ah! not less brave, 
 
 One thought for her and for his home will save.” 
 
 The letter of Sappho, the famous poetess of Lesbos, 
 to Phaon, a beautiful youth who had betrayed her love, 
 is founded on a less pleasing story—a story, too, which 
 has no foundation either in the remains—miserably 
 gcanty, alas’ but full of beauty—of the great singer, or 
 
28 
 
 OVID, 
 
 
 in any authentic records of her life. It might well have 
 been passed over had it not been illustrated by the genius 
 of Pope. Pope never attempted the part of a faith¬ 
 ful translator; but his verse has a freedom and a glow 
 which leave the faithful translator in despair. And his 
 polished antithetical style is as suitable, it should be 
 said, to the artificial and rhetorical verse of Ovid, as it 
 is incongruous with the simple grandeur of Homer. It 
 is thus that he renders the passage in which Sappho 
 announces her intention to try the famous remedy for 
 hopeless love, the leap from the Leucadian rock; 
 
 “ A spring there is, where silver waters show, 
 
 Clear as a glass, the shining sands below; 
 
 A flowery lotus spreads its arms above, 
 
 Shades all the banks, and seems itself a grove: 
 
 Eternal greens the mossy margin grace, 
 
 Watched by the sylvan genius of the place. 
 
 Here as I lay, and swelled with tears the flood, 
 
 Before my sight a watery virgin stood: 
 
 She stood and cried, ‘ Oh, you that love in vain, 
 
 Fly hence, and seek the fair Leucadian main 1 
 There stands a rock, from whose impending steep 
 Apollo’s fame surveys the rolling deep; 
 
 There injured lovers, leaping from above, 
 
 Their flames extinguished and forgot to love. 
 
 Deucalion once with hopeless fury burned, 
 
 In vain he loved, relentless Pyrrha scorned: 
 
 But when from hence he plunged into the main, 
 
 Deucalion scorned and Pyrrha loved in vain. 
 
 Hence, Sappho, haste! from high Leucadia throw 
 Thy wretched weight, nor dread the deeps below.’ 
 
 She spoke, and vanished with the voice—I rise, 
 
 And silent tears fall trickling from my eyes. 
 
 I go, ye nymphs, those rocks and seas to prove: 
 
 And much I fear; but ah! how much I love! 
 
 I go, ye nymphs, where furious love inspires; 
 
 Let female fears, submit to female fires. 
 
 To rocks and seas I fly from Phaon’s hate, 
 
 And hope from seas and rocks a milder fate, 
 
THE LOVE-POEMS. 
 
 29 
 
 Ye gentle gales, below my body blow. 
 
 And softly lay me on the waves below! 
 
 And then, kind Love, my sinking limbs sustain, 
 
 Spread thy soft wings, and waft me o’er the main, 
 
 Nor let a lover’s death the guiltless flood profane! 
 
 On Phoebus’ shrine my harp I’ll then bestow. 
 
 And this inscription shall be placed below— 
 
 ‘ Here she who sung to him that did inspire, 
 
 Sappho to Phoebus consecrates her lyre; 
 
 What suits with Sappho, Phoebus, suits with thee— 
 
 The gift, the giver, and the god agree.’ ” 
 
 We have “The Loves,” as has been said, in a second 
 edition. “Five books,” says the poet in his prefatory 
 quatrain, “have been reduced to three.” “Though 
 you find no pleasure in reading us, ” the volumes are 
 made to say to the reader, “we shall at least, when 
 thus diminished by two, vex you less.” A question im¬ 
 mediately presents itself, Who was the Corinna whom 
 he celebrates in these poems? It has often been argued, 
 and that by critics of no small authority, that she was 
 no less famous a personage than Julia, daughter of the 
 Emperor Augustus by his first wife Scribonia. This 
 indeed is expressly stated as a fact by Sidonius Apol- 
 linaris, a poet of the fifth century, and a somewhat dis¬ 
 tinguished personage, first as a politician, and afterwards 
 as the bishop of Clermont in Auvergne. Of Julia the 
 briefest account will be the best. She was wife suc¬ 
 cessively of Marcus Marcellus, nephew to Augustus; of 
 Marcus Yipsanius Agrippa; and of Tiberius, afterwards 
 emperor. This last union was most unhappy. Tiberius 
 had been compelled to divorce a wife whom he dearly 
 loved, and he found himself bound to a woman whose 
 profligacy was conspicuous even in a profligate age. 
 After a short union he retired into a voluntary exile; 
 and Augustus then became aware of what all Rome 
 had long known, that his daughter was an abandoned 
 
30 
 
 OVID. 
 
 woman. He banished her from Italy, and kept her in 
 a rigorous imprisonment, which was never relaxed till 
 her death. There is nothing, therefore, in the character 
 of Julia that is inconsistent with her being the Corinna 
 of Ovid’s poems. We can even find some confirmation 
 of the theory. Corinna, it is evident, did not belong to 
 that class of freed-women which included the Delia of 
 Tibullus and the Cynthia of Propertius. Sometimes 
 we are led to believe that she was a lady of high social 
 position. Her apartments were guarded by a eunuch— 
 not a common circumstance in Rome, and obviously 
 the mark of a wealthy household. That she was mar¬ 
 ried the poet expressly states. And a curious coinci¬ 
 dence has been pointed out which, though it does not 
 go very far, may be allowed to make for the identifica¬ 
 tion with Julia. This princess had lost much of her 
 hair through the unsparing use of dyes.* And we find 
 Ovid remonstrating with Corinna on her folly in pro¬ 
 ducing in the same way the same disfigurement: 
 
 “ No weeds destroyed them with their fatal juice, 
 
 Nor canst thou witches’ magic charms accuse, 
 
 Nor rival’s love, nor dire enchantments blame, 
 
 Nor envy’s blasting tongue, nor fever’s flame; 
 
 The mischief by thy own fair hands was wrought, 
 
 Nor dost thou suffer for another’s fault. 
 
 How oft I bade thee, but in vain, beware 
 The venomed essence that destroyed thy hair! 
 
 Now with new arts thou shalt thy friends amuse, 
 
 And curls, of German captives borrowed, use. 
 
 Drusus to Rome their vanquised nation sends, 
 
 And the fair slave to thee her tresses lends.”—D. 
 
 * She sought, it would seem, to change the dark tresses which 
 nature had given her into the blond locks which southern nations 
 so admire, injured them in the effort, and had to replace them 
 by purchase. The vagaries of fashion continually repeat them 
 selves, 
 
THE LOVE-POEMS. 
 
 81 
 
 But there is a good deal to be said on the other side. " 
 The testimony of Sidonius Apollinaris, after an interval 
 of nearly five centuries, is worth very little. We have 
 no hint of any contemporary authorities on which he 
 founded it; and tradition, when it has to pass through 
 so many generations—generations, too, that suffered so 
 much disturbance and change—stands for next to no¬ 
 thing. If some passages, again, favor the notion that 
 Corinna was Julia, there are others which tell against 
 it. Ovid could never have ventured to use—would not 
 even have dreamt of expressing in words—to Agrippa 
 or Tiberius, the insolent threats which he vents against 
 the husband of Corinna. Nor is it possible to imagine 
 that Julia, however profligate, could ever have been 
 even tempted to the avarice with which Ovid reproaches 
 his mistress, when he remonstrates against the prefer¬ 
 ence that she has shown for some wealthy soldier just 
 returned from the wars. Then, again, the poems were 
 read in public—an absolutely impossible audacitjr, if 
 there had been the faintest suspicion that they referred 
 to so exalted a personage as the emperor’s daughter. 
 The writer of the verse himself tells us that it was not 
 known who was the theme of his song, and he speaks 
 of some woman who was going about boasting that she 
 was Ovid’s Corinna. 
 
 Of the subject-matter of “The Loves” there is little 
 to be said. The passion which inspires the verse is 
 coarser and more brutal than that of his rival poets, 
 even when this shows itself in its worst phases. It has 
 nothing of the fervor of Propertius, the tenderness of 
 Tibullus. It does not spring from any depth of feeling. 
 
 It is real, but its reality is of the basest, most literal sort. 
 That he describes an actual amour is only too manifest, 
 but that this was in any true sense of the words “an 
 
82 
 
 onn. 
 
 affair of the heart ” may well be doubted. But then, 
 again, he shows an imcomparable skill in expression; 
 he invests even the lowest things with a certain grace. 
 His wit and fancy “sparkle on the stye.” If he lets us 
 get away for a moment from the mire—if, with the deli¬ 
 cate fancy that never fails him, he tells us some legend 
 that “boys and virgins” need not blush to read—he is 
 charming. There never was a more subtle and inge¬ 
 nious master of language, and it is a grievous pity that 
 he should so often have used it so ill. Our specimen 
 of his “Loves” must be taken from the episodes rather 
 than from the ordinary course of the poems. The fol¬ 
 lowing, however, will not offend. The poet renounces 
 the vain struggle which he has been waging against 
 love: 
 
 I yield, great Love! my former crimes forgive, 
 
 Forget my rebel thoughts, and let me live: 
 
 No need of force: I Avillingly obey, 
 
 And now, unharmed, shall prove no glorious prey. 
 
 So take thy mother's doves, thy myrtle crown, 
 
 And for thy chariot Mars will lend his own; 
 
 There shalt thou sit in thy triumphal pride, 
 
 And whilst glad shouts resound on every side. 
 
 Thy gentle hands thy mother’s doves shall guide. 
 
 And then, to make thy glorious pomp and state, 
 
 A train of sighing youths and maids shall wait, 
 
 Yet none complain of an unhappy fate. 
 
 Then Modesty, with veils thrown o’er her face, 
 
 Now doubly blushing at her own disgrace; 
 
 Then sober thoughts, and whatsoe’er disdains 
 Love’s power, shall feel his power, and wear his chain 
 Then all shall fear, all bow, yet all rejoice— 
 
 ‘Io triumphel’ is the public voice. 
 
 Thy constant guards, soft fancy, hope, and fear, 
 Anger, and soft caresses shall be there: 
 
 By these strong guards are gods and men o’erthrown, 
 These conquer for thee, Love, and these alone: 
 
THE LOVE* POE MS. 
 
 83 
 
 Thy mother, from the sky, thy pomp shall grace, 
 
 And scatter sweetest roses in thy face. 
 
 Then glorious Love shall ride, profusely dressed 
 With all the richest jewels of the East, 
 
 Rich gems thy quiver, and thy wheels infold, 
 
 And hide the poorness of the baser gold.”—D. 
 
 In tlie following the poet claims a purity and fidelity 
 for his affection with which it is impossible to credit 
 him: 
 
 "Take, dear, a servant bound for ever; take 
 A heart whose troth no falsehood e’er shall break. 
 
 ’Tis true but simple knightly birth is mine; 
 
 I claim no splendid names to grace my line; 
 
 My lields no countless tribe of oxen ploughs, 
 
 And scant the means a frugal home allows. 
 
 Now Phoebus aid me, and the Muses nine— 
 
 Bacchus, and Love, sweet Lord, who makes me thine, 
 Faith unsurpassed, and life exempt from blame, 
 
 And simple Modesty, and blushing Shame; 
 
 No trifler I; my heart no rivals share: 
 
 Thee will I make, be sure, my lifelong care; 
 
 With thee will spend what years the Fates shall give, 
 
 And when thou first shalt suffer, cease to live.” 
 
 Another little poem has been elegantly paraphrased 
 and adapted to modern manners by Mr. A. A. Brod- 
 ribb.* It will remind the reader of a pretty passage in 
 Mr. Tennyson’s “Miller’s Daughter 
 
 The Ring. 
 
 ** Sign of my too presumptuous flame, 
 
 To fairest Celia haste, nor linger, 
 
 And may she gladly breathe my name, 
 
 And gaily put thee on her finger 1 
 
 * Lays from Latin Lyrics. By F. W. Hummel and A. A. Brod- 
 ribb. Longmans: 1376. 
 
arm 
 
 84 
 
 Suit her as I myself, that she 
 May fondle thee with murmured blessing; 
 
 Caressed by Celia! Who could be 
 Unenvious of such sweet caressing? 
 
 Had I Medea’s magic art, 
 
 Or Proteus’ power of transformation, 
 
 Then would I blithely play thy part, 
 
 The happiest trinket in creation 1 
 
 Oh! on her bosom I would fall, 
 
 Her finger guiding all too lightly; 
 
 Or else be magically small, 
 
 Fearing to be discarded nightly. 
 
 And I her ruby lips would kiss 
 (What mortal’s fortune could be better?) 
 
 As oft allowed to seal my bliss 
 As she desires to seal a letter. 
 
 Now go, these are delusions bright 
 Of idle Fancy’s idlest scheming; 
 
 Tell her to read the token right— 
 
 Tell her how sweet is true love’s dreaming.” 
 
 But the chief ornaments of the book are two elegies, 
 properly so called,—one of a sportive, the other of a 
 serious character. Catullus, a predecessor in the poetic 
 art, of whom Ovid speaks with respect, had lamented, 
 in an exquisite little poem which must always remain a 
 model for such compositions, the death of the sparrow 
 which Lesbia, his lady-love, “loved more than her own 
 eyes.” In a poem which, though not so graceful as 
 that of the older writer, and scarcely even pretending 
 to pajthos, has many merits, Ovid commemorates the 
 death of his own Corinna’s parrot: 
 
 “ Our parrot, sent from India’s farthest shore, 
 
 Our parrot, prince of mimics, is no more. 
 
 Throng to his burial, pious tribes of air, 
 
 With rigid claw your tender faces tear! 
 
THE LOVE-POEMS. 
 
 35 
 
 Your ruffled plumes, like mourners’ tresses, rend, 
 
 And all your notes, like funeral trumpets, blend! 
 
 Mourn all that cleave the liquid skies, but chief 
 Beloved turtle, lead the general grief, 
 
 Through long harmonious days the parrot’s friend, 
 
 In mutual faith still loyal to the end! 
 
 What boots that faith? those splendid hues and strange? 
 That voice so skilled its various notes to change? 
 
 What to have won my gentle lady’s grace? 
 
 Thou diest, hapless glory of thy race. 
 
 Red joined with saffron in thy beak was seen, 
 
 And green thy wings beyond the emerald’s sheen; 
 
 Nor ever lived on earth a wiser bird, 
 
 With lisping voice to answer all he heard. 
 
 ’Twas envy slew thee; all averse to strife. 
 
 One love of chatter filled thy peaceful life: 
 
 For ever satisfied with scantiest fare, 
 
 Small time for food that busy tongue could spare. 
 Walnuts and sleep-producing poppies gave 
 Thy simple diet, and thy drink the wave. 
 
 Long lives the hovering vulture, long the kite 
 Pursues through air the circles of his flight; 
 
 Many the years the noisy jackdaws know. 
 
 Prophets of rainfall; and the boding crow 
 Waits, still unscathed by armed Minerva’s hate, 
 
 Three ages three times told, a tardy fate. 
 
 But he, our prattler from earth’s farthest shore, 
 
 Our human tongue’s sweet image, is no more. 
 
 Thus still the ravening fates our best devour, 
 
 And spare the mean till life’s extremest hour. 
 
 Why tell the prayers my lady prayed in vain, 
 
 Borne by the stormy south wind o’er the main? 
 
 The seventh dawn had come, the last for thee, 
 
 With empty distaff stood the fatal Three. 
 
 Yet still from failing throat thy accents rung, 
 
 Fax-ewell, Corinna! cried thy dying tongue. 
 
 There stands a grove with dark-green ilex crowned 
 Beneath the Elysian hill, and all around 
 With turf undying shines the verdant ground. 
 
 There dwells, if true the tale, the pious race— 
 
 Ail evil birds are banished from the place; 
 
36 
 
 OVID. 
 
 There harmless swans unbounded pasture find; 
 
 There dwells the phoenix, single of his kind; 
 
 The peacock spreads his splendid plumes in air, 
 
 The kissing doves sit close, an amorous pair; 
 
 There in their woodland home a guest allowed, 
 
 Our parrot charms the pious listening crowd. 
 
 Beneath a mound, of justly measured size, 
 
 Small tombstone, briefest epitaph, he lies, 
 
 ‘ His mistress' darling ’—that this stone may show— 
 
 The prince of feathered speakers lies below.” 
 
 The other elegy has for its subject the death of the 
 poet Tibullus; 
 
 “If bright Aurora mourned for Memnon’s fate, 
 
 Or the fair Thetis wept Achilles slain, 
 
 And the sad sorrows that on mortals wait 
 Can ever move celestial hearts with pain— 
 
 Come, doleful Elegy! too just a name! 
 
 Unbind thy tresses fair, in loose attire, 
 
 For he, thy bard, the herald of thy fame, 
 
 Tibullus, burns on the funereal pyre. 
 
 Ah, lifeless corse! Lo! Venus’boy draws near 
 With upturned quiver and with shattered bow, 
 
 His torch extinguished, see him toward the bier 
 With drooping wings disconsolately go. 
 
 He smites his heaving breast with cruel blow, 
 
 Those straggling locks, his neck all streaming round, 
 Receive the tears that fastly trickling flow, 
 
 While sobs convulsive from his lips resound. 
 
 In guise like this, lulus, when of yore 
 His dear iEneas died, he sorrowing went; 
 
 Now Venus wails as when the raging boar 
 The tender thigh of her Adonis rent. 
 
 We bards are named the gods’ peculiar care; 
 
 Nay, some declare that poets are divine; 
 
 Yet forward death no holy thing can spare, 
 
 ’Round all his dismal arms he dares entwine. 
 
THE LOVE-POEMS. 
 
 
 Did Orpheus’ mother aid, or Linus’ sire? 
 
 That one subdued fierce lions by his song 
 Availed not; and, they say, with plaintive lyre 
 The god mourned Linus, woods and glades among. 
 
 Meeonides, from whose perennial lay 
 Flow the rich fonts of the Pierian wave 
 To wet the lips of bards, one dismal day 
 Sent down to Orcus and the gloomy grave— 
 
 Him, too, Avernus holds in drear employ; 
 
 Only his songs escape the greedy pile; 
 
 His work remains—the mighty wars of Troy, 
 
 And the slow web, unwove by nightly guile. 
 
 Live a pure life;—yet death remains thy doom: 
 
 Be pious;—ere from sacred shrines you rise, 
 
 Death drags you heedless to the hollow tomb I 
 . Confide in song—lo! there Tibullus lies. 
 
 Scarce of so great a soul, thus lowly laid, 
 
 Enough remains to fill this little urn; 
 
 O holy bard I were not the flames afraid 
 That hallowed corse thus ruthlessly to bum? 
 
 These might devour the heavenly halls that shine 
 With gold—they dare a villany so deep: 
 
 She turned who holds the Erycinian shrine, 
 
 And there are some who say she turned to weep. 
 
 Yet did the base soil of a stranger land 
 Not hold him nameless; as the spirit fled 
 His mother closed his eyes with gentle hand, 
 
 And paid the last sad tribute to the dead. 
 
 Here, with thy wretched mother’s woe to wait. 
 
 Thy sister came with loose dishevelled hair; 
 Nemesis kisses thee, and thy earlier mate— 
 
 They watched the pyre when all had left it bare. 
 
 Departing, Delia faltered, ‘ Thou wert true’ 
 
 The Fates were cheerful then, when I was thine:’ 
 e other, ‘ Say, what hast thou here to do?’ 
 
 Dying, he clasped his failing han4 in mine. 
 
$8 
 
 OVID. 
 
 Ah, yet if any part of us remains 
 But name and shadow, Albius is not dead; 
 
 And thou, Catullus, in Elysian plains, 
 
 With Calvus see the ivy crown his head. 
 
 Thou, Gallus, prodigal of life and blood, 
 
 If false the charge of amity betrayed, 
 
 And aught remains across the Stygian flood, 
 
 Shalt meet him yonder with thy happy shade. 
 
 Refined Tibullus! thou art joined to those 
 Living in calm communion with the blest; 
 
 In peaceful urn thy quiet bones repose— 
 
 May earth lie lightly where thy ashes rest.” 
 
 Of the “Art of Love” the less, perhaps, that is said 
 the better. The poet himself warns respectable per¬ 
 sons to have nothing to do with his pages, and the 
 warning is amply justified by their contents. It has, 
 however, some of the brilliant episodes which Ovid 
 introduces with such effect. His own taste, and the 
 taste, we may hope, of his readers, demanded that the 
 base level of sensuality should sometimes be left for a 
 higher flight of fancy. The description of Ariadne in 
 Naxos is as brilliant as Titian’s picture; equally vivid 
 J is the story of the flight of Daedalus and his son Icarus 
 on the wings which the matchless craftsman had made, 
 and of the fate which followed the over-daring flight of 
 the youth through regions too near to the sun. Then, 
 again, we find ever and anon pictures of Roman man¬ 
 ners which may amuse without offence. Among such 
 are Ovid’s instructions to his fair readers how they 
 may most becomingly take their part in the games of 
 chance and skill which were popular in the polite 
 circles of Rome. Among these games he mentions 
 the cubical dice, called tesserce, resembling our own 
 Ip shape, and similarly marked. of the§0 ^ere 
 
THE LOVE-POEMS. 
 
 39 
 
 Used together; and it was customary to throw them 
 from cups of a conical shape. The luckiest throw was 
 “treble sixes,” and was honored by the name of 
 Aphrodite or Venus. The worst was “treble aces:” 
 this was stigmatized as “the dog.” There were other 
 dice made out of the knuckle-bones of animals. They 
 were called tali. (Our own popular name for them is 
 “dibs.”) These were used either in the same way as 
 the cubical dice, though they were not numbered in 
 the same way, or in a game of manual skill which still 
 survives among us, where the player throws them 
 and catches them again, or performs other feats of 
 dexterity with them. Besides these there was the 
 game of the “Robbers” (Ludus Latrunculorum), 
 played with pieces made of glass or ivory, which has 
 been compared with chess, but was probably not so 
 complicated, and more nearly resembling our games 
 of “Fox and Geese” and “Military Tactics.” The 
 game of the “Fifteen Lines” must have been very like 
 our “Backgammon,” as the moves of the men were 
 determined by previous throws of dice. Ovid, after 
 recommending his readers to practice a graceful play¬ 
 ing at the games, wisely warns them that it is still 
 more important that they should learn to keep their 
 temper. The suitor he advises to allow his fair an¬ 
 tagonist to win, a counsel doubtless often followed by 
 those who have never had the advantage—or, we should 
 rather say, the disadvantage—of studying Ovid’s pre¬ 
 cepts. Equally familiar will be the device of a present 
 of fruit brought by a slave-boy in a rustic basket, 
 which the lover will declare has been conveyed from 
 a country garden, though he will probably have bought 
 it in the neighboring street. A certain sagacity must 
 be allowed to the counsel that the lover, when his lady 
 
40 
 
 (>VU). 
 
 
 is Kick, mmt not take upon him? ' If the odious office of 
 forbidding her a favorite dish; and will, if poeeiblc, 
 Jjand over to a rival the office, equally odious, of ad 
 m blistering a nauseous medicine. The rceommenda 
 tion not to be too particular in inquiring about age 1m 
 equally sagacious. It is curious to observe that Lord 
 Ryron’s expressed aversion to seeing women eat wan 
 not unknown to tile Roman youth. Ovid, wlio, to do 
 him justice, never praises wine, hints that drinking 
 was not equally distasteful. 
 
 The “ itemedies of Love" may be dismissed will) 
 a still briefer notice. Like the “Art of Love,” it in 
 relieved by Home beautiful digressions, When it keep# 
 clone to itH subject, it in, to say the least, not edifying. 
 The “ Remedies,” indeed, are for the moat part a a bad 
 as the disease, tliougii we mustexc pit hat moat ) expect¬ 
 able maxim that “idleness is the parent of love," witli 
 the poet's practical application of it. One specimen of 
 these two books shall aulflce. It is of the episodical 
 kind,—a brilliant panegyric on the young Occur, Cuius, 
 son of Augustus's daughter Julia, wlio wiim then pre¬ 
 paring to take the command of an expedition against 
 theParthians. Gross as is tlie flattery, it is perhaps Jess 
 offensive than usual. The young Cains died before his 
 abilities could be proved; but the precocious genius of 
 the family was a fact. Caius was then of the very 
 same age at which his grandfather had first commanded 
 an army. 
 
 “ Once more our Prince prepares to make us glad, 
 
 And the remaining East to Homo will add. 
 
 Rejoice, ye Roman soldiers, In your urn; 
 
 Your ensigns from the Parthlans shall return; 
 
 And the slain Crass! shah no longer mourn I 
 A youth Is sent those trophies to demand, 
 
 And bears his father’s thunder In his hand: 
 
DOMESTIC LIFE—BANISHMENT. 41 
 
 • 
 
 Doubt not th’ imperial boy in wars unseen; 
 
 In childhood all of Cseser’s race are men. 
 
 Celestial seeds shoot out before their day, 
 
 Prevent their years, and brook: no dull delay. 
 
 Thus infant Hercules the snakes did press. 
 
 And in his cradle did his sire confess. 
 
 Bacchus, a boy, yet like a hero fought, 
 
 And early spoils from conquered India brought. 
 
 Thus you your father’s troops shall lead to fight, 
 
 And thus shall vanquish in your father's sight. 
 
 These rudiments you to your lineage owe; 
 
 Born to increase your titles as you grow. 
 
 Brethren you lead, avenge your brethren slain; 
 
 You have a father, and his right maintain. 
 
 Armed by country’s parent and your own. 
 
 Redeem your country and restore his throne.”—D. 
 
 The date of the poem is fixed by this passage for the 
 year b.c. 1, as that of the “ Remedies of Love” is 
 settled for a.d. 1 by an allusion to the actual war in 
 P&rtbia, which was at its height in that year, and was 
 finished by a peace in the year following. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE—BANISHMENT. 
 
 About Ovid’s private life between his twentieth and 
 fiftieth years there is little to be recorded Two mar¬ 
 riages have already been spoken of. Be had prob¬ 
 ably reached middle life when he married for the 
 third time. The probability, indeed, consists in the 
 difficulty we have in believing that the husband of a 
 wife whom he really respected and loved should have 
 published so disreputable a book as the “Art of Love,” 
 for even to the lax judgment of Roman society it 
 seemed disreputable. A feeling, perhaps a hint from 
 
orm 
 
 42 
 
 high quarters, that he had gone too far — a con¬ 
 sciousness, we may hope, that he was capable of better 
 things—had made him turn to work of a more elevated 
 kind. A good marriage may have been part of his 
 plan for restoring hirpself to a reputable place in 
 society. It is even possible to imagine that a genuine 
 and worthy affection may have been one of the causes 
 that operated in bringing about a change. A much 
 earlier date, indeed, must be fixed, if we suppose that 
 the daughter of whom Ovid speaks in the brief sketch 
 of his life was a child of this marriage. This daughter 
 had been twice married at the time of his banishment, 
 when he was in his fifty-second year, and had borne a 
 child to each husband. Roman women married early, 
 and changed their husbands quickly: but, in any case, 
 it is not likely that the young lady could have been 
 less than twenty. It seems, however, more probable 
 that she was the offspring of a second marriage. In 
 the many affectionate letters which Ovid addressed to 
 his wife after his banishment no mention is made of 
 a child and grandchildren in whom both had a com¬ 
 mon interest. It is impossible to suppose that a 
 husband who anxiously appeals to every motive in a 
 wife which could help to keep their mutual affection 
 unimpaired by absence, should have neglected to make 
 use of what was obviously the most powerful of all. 
 There is, it is true, a letter addressed to one Perilla, 
 written by Ovid in exile. Dr. Dyer, the learned 
 author of the article “ O vidius” in the “ Dictionary of 
 Biography and Mythology,” takes it for granted that 
 this Perilla was Ovid’s daughter by his third wife. 
 The letter does not bear out the supposition. It will 
 be found described in its place. Meanwhile, it is 
 sufficient to say, that while the writer enlarges on the 
 
DOMESTIC LIFE—BAMSUMEtfT. 
 
 48 
 
 fact that lie had instructed Perilla in the art of poetry, 
 he does not say a word which indicates a closer rela¬ 
 tionship than that of master and pupih Had the 
 poetess been his daughter, we may say with confidence 
 that Ovid would have expressed in at least a dozen 
 ways that he was the source at once of her life and of 
 her song. The poet’s wife was a lady of good position 
 at Rome. In early years she had been what may be 
 called a lady-in-waitiug to the aunt of Augustus, and 
 at the same time an intimate friend of Marcia, a lady 
 belonging to that branch of the Marcian house which 
 bore the surname of Pliilippus. On Marcia’s marriage 
 with Fabius Maximus, representative of the great 
 patrician family of the Fabii, one of the few ancient 
 houses which had survived to the daj^s of the empire, 
 this friend accompanied her to her new home. From 
 there Ovid married her. The union lasted till his death, 
 with much mutual affection. When it has been added 
 that Ovid’s town mansion was close to the Capitol, and 
 that he had a suburban residence, where he amused 
 himself with the pleasures of gardening. Nothing re¬ 
 mains to be told about this portion of his life. 
 
 Some time after his third marriage, and not long 
 before the great catastrophe which we are about to 
 relate, Ovid’s father died. He had completed his 
 ninetieth year. His mother died shortly afterwards. 
 
 “ Ah! happy they and timely passed away 
 Ere on their offspring came that fatal day! 
 
 Ah! happy I amidst my grief to know 
 That they are all unconscious of my woe!” 
 
 It is the catastrophe which he here mentions that has 
 now to be discussed. The cause of the banishment of 
 Ovid, like the personality of the Man in the Iron Mask 
 and the authorship of “Junius,” is one of the unsolved 
 
44 
 
 6 VII). 
 
 problems of history. The facts absolutely known are 
 very soon related. Ovid was in his fifty-second year. 
 His fame as a poet was at its height. Any scandal that 
 may have arisen from some of his publications had 
 gradually passed away. Suddenly there fell on him “ a 
 bolt from the blue.” A rescript in the emperor’s hand 
 was delivered to him, ordering him to leave Rome 
 within a certain time, and to repair to Tomi, a desolate 
 settlement on the western shore of the Black Sea, near 
 the very outskirts of the empire. No decree of the sen¬ 
 ate had been passed to authorize the infliction of the 
 banishment. It was simply an act of arbitrary power 
 on the part of the emperor. The cause alleged was the 
 publication of works corrupting to public morals, and 
 the “Art of Love” was specified. The punishment was 
 not of the severest kind. The place of exile, hateful 
 as it was to the banished man, was at least preferable to 
 that which many offenders had to endure—some deso¬ 
 late rock in the iEgean, where the victim was kept from 
 starvation only by the charity of his friends. Ovid 
 was also permitted to retain and enjoy his property. 
 
 That the cause alleged w T as not the actual cause of the 
 banishment may be considered certain. It is sufficient 
 to say that the guilty work had been published at least 
 ten years before. The offence was such as to afford a 
 pretext of the barest kind to an absolute ruler who felt 
 the force of public opinion just enough to make him 
 shrink from a wholly arbitrary act, but was not careful 
 to make any complete justification. But it did not, we 
 may be sure, wholly sway his mind. We know, indeed, 
 that there was another cause. To such a cause Ovid 
 frequently alludes. And it is in this lies the mystery of 
 the event. 
 
 ■I At the same time, we must not suppose that the 
 
Domestic life—banishment. 
 
 45 
 
 alleged motive had not some real influence on the em¬ 
 peror’s action. His own life had not been by any means 
 free from reproach. Even if we discredit much of what 
 that great scandalmonger, Suetonius, tells us about him, 
 there remains enough to convict him of shameful dis¬ 
 regard of morality. But he was now an old man. And 
 he had some of those tremendous lessons which teach 
 even the most profligate, if the light of intelligence be 
 not wholly quenched in them, that moral laws cannot 
 be disregarded with impunity. Men in their own lives 
 quite regardless of purity feel a genuine shock of dis¬ 
 gust and horror when they find unchastitv in the women 
 of their own family. And Augustus had felt the un¬ 
 utterable shame of discovering that his own daughter 
 was the most profligate woman in Rome. Nor was he, 
 we may believe, without some genuine feeling of con¬ 
 cern for the future of his country. The establishment 
 of absolute power may have been a necessity for the 
 State—all writers seem to agree in saying so. It had 
 certainly aggrandized himself. But he could not fail to 
 perceive, and to perceive more and more clearly as he 
 came nearer to the end of his long reign, that it was 
 ruining the old Roman character, the traditionary vir¬ 
 tues of his country. An aristocracy, whose vast wealth 
 furnished them with all the means of procuring enjoy¬ 
 ment, but who were shut out from anything like the 
 career of public life, would inevitably become corrupt. 
 Augustus was not a man who would deny himself in 
 order to set a practical example to others; but he was a 
 man capable of doing everything, short of such self- 
 denial, to stop the evil of which, both from public and 
 private causes, he was so acutely conscious. He had 
 recourse to severe legislation against immorality. The 
 more he saw, as he must have seen, how ineffectual was 
 
46 
 
 OVID. 
 
 this method of reforming society, the greater must have 
 been his disgust with other agencies which he supposed 
 to be at work. Ovid’s poems may well have been a 
 symptom rather than a cause of general immorality; 
 but it was quite possible that Augustus, his own habits 
 and tastes changed by advancing years, may have sin¬ 
 cerely regarded them as the author of mischief, and 
 deserving, accordingly, of the severest punishment. 
 
 To arrive, however, at the truth, we must examine 
 closely another side of the emperor’s life. His home 
 was divided between two conflicting interests—the in¬ 
 terest of his own descendants and the interest of the 
 step-children whom his wife Li via had brought into his 
 family. Livia, one of the ablest women of whom his¬ 
 tory speaks, had steadfastly set her heart on securing 
 for her son Tiberius the succession to the throne. To 
 gain this end she had to clear away from his path the 
 rivals who might be found among the blood-relations of 
 her husband. How far the course of events helped her 
 in her undertaking, how far she assisted the course of 
 events by her own arts, will never be known. The fate 
 of Julia, the daughter of Augustus, has been already 
 related. She had borne to her second husband Agrippa 
 five children, three of them sons. The eldest son, Caius, 
 has been mentioned before.* He was wounded, it was 
 said by treachery, before the town of Artagera, in Arme¬ 
 nia, and died, some months afterwards, at Limyra, on 
 the southwestern coast of Asia Minor, whither he had 
 gone to recruit his health in a climate less inclement 
 than that of Armenia. The second son, Lucius, had died 
 eighteen months before at Marseilles. The third, 
 Agrippa Postumus, was a youth whose irreciaimably 
 
 * Page 39. 
 
DOMESTIC LIFE—BANISHMENT 
 
 47 
 
 savage temper bordered on insanity. He had been 
 adopted by Augustus at the same time with Tiberius, 
 but as his character revealed itself, the hopes that the 
 emperor might once have entertained of finding a suc¬ 
 cessor in a descendant of his own died away. Livia 
 had no difficulty in persuading him that if Agrippa was 
 not to sit on the throne, it would be better that he should 
 be removed from its neighborhood. Though guiltless 
 of any crime, he was banished to Planasia, on the coast 
 of Corsica, and the emperor obtained a decree from the 
 senate which made this banishment life-long. But the 
 contest was not yet decided. The family of Julia, whose 
 beauty, wit, and varied accomplishments were not for¬ 
 gotten, was greatly popular at Rome; whilst the ambi¬ 
 tion of Livia, who w T as strongly suspected of having 
 hastened the death of the young Caesars, and the craft 
 and dissimulation of Tiberius, were objects of dread. 
 It was under these circumstances that she discovered 
 the younger Julia to be in her power. This unhappy 
 woman had inherited the vicious propensities of her 
 mother. One of many lovers was Decius Julius Silanus, 
 member of a family which had been distinguished in 
 Rome since the second Punic war. The intrigue was 
 too notorious to escape observation, and Livia had the 
 opportunity which she desired. Julia was banished; her 
 paramour went into voluntary exile. 
 
 So far we are on firm historical ground. It may be 
 added also, that the same year which saw the disgrace 
 of Julia, witnessed also the banishment of Ovid. Were 
 the two events in any way connected? We must get 
 our answer from considering the circumstances of the 
 political situation which has been described, from the 
 coincidence, and from the hints, which are indeed suffi¬ 
 ciently numerous, which Ovid himself gives us. The 
 
48 
 
 OVID . 
 
 fact that these hints do occur negative one supposition 
 which has found some favor—namely, that Ovid.had be* 
 come involuntarily acquainted with some dark secret 
 disgraceful to the character of Augustus himself. Ead 
 there been such a secret, we can hardly suppose that the 
 poet would have alluded to it. Again and again he makes 
 his piteous supplications for the termination, or at least 
 the mitigation, of his banishment. But every mention 
 of such a fact would have been an additional offence. 
 Indeed it is difficult to imagine that the possessor of such 
 dangerous knowledge should have been suffered to live. 
 Not a prolonged banishment with unlimited opportuni¬ 
 ties for communication with his friends, but the sword 
 of the centurion, would have been his doom. We may be 
 nearly sure that the secret, as far at least as it concered 
 Augustus, must have been known already. Ovid was not 
 banished for the purpose of keeping something concealed. 
 That purpose could have been far more easily and effec¬ 
 tually secured, and Roman emperors were not accus¬ 
 tomed to be scrupulous about means. Let us see, then, 
 what Ovid actually says on the subject: 
 
 “Why did I see something ? why did I make my eyes guilty? 
 why did I become, all unknowingly, acquainted with guilt?” 
 
 “ Two faults overthrew me—my verses and my wrongdoing; 
 but about the guilt of one of them I must keep silence.” * 
 
 “ I am not worth so much as to renew thy wound, O Caesar; it 
 is far too much that you should once have felt the pang.” 
 
 “You [Augustus] avenged on me, as is right, a quarrel of 
 you own.” 
 
 “ Because my eyes unknowingly beheld a crime, I am pun¬ 
 ished. To have had the power of sight—this is my sin.” 
 
 * Masson appropriately quotes the words used by Tiberius in 
 allowing Silanus to return from exile: “ I myself still feel against 
 him as strongly as ever the quarrel of my father Augustus.” 
 
DOMESTIC LIFE—BANISHMENT. 
 
 49 
 
 He protests that his fault had been an error rather 
 than a crime: ' 
 
 “If mortal deeds never escape the knowledge of gods, you 
 know that there was no guilt in my fault. So it is—you know it; 
 it was my mistake that led me astray; my purpose was foolish, 
 but not wicked.” 
 
 “ You would say that this fault which ruined me was not a 
 crime, did you know how things followed one another in this 
 great trouble. It was either cowardice or fault of judgment, but 
 fault of judgment first of all, that damaged me.” 
 
 “ Had not my part of the guilt admitted excuse, banishment 
 •would have been a trifling punishment.” 
 
 That he became acquainted with some crime which 
 touched nearly the honor of Augustus; that he con¬ 
 cealed it; that in some sense he made himself an accom¬ 
 plice in it; that this crime was not an isolated act, but 
 a line of conduct pursued for some time; that Ovid was 
 afraid or thought it better not to reveal his knowledge 
 of it,—are, it seems, inferences that may fairly be 
 drawn from the language which he uses. They har¬ 
 monize with the supposition that Ovid became invol¬ 
 untarily acquainted with the intrigue of the younger 
 Julia with Silanus,—that he helped to conceal it, pos¬ 
 sibly assisted in its being carried on. It is probable, at 
 the same time, that he was one of the party which sup¬ 
 ported that side of the imperial house. It is not diffi¬ 
 cult to imagine that the result should have been such 
 as we know to have happened. The emperor, for a sec¬ 
 ond time, is struck to the heart by the discovery of the 
 darkest profligacy in one very near to himself. In his 
 capacity as ruler he is terrified by the corruption which 
 his laws are powerless to stay. The poems which the 
 severer moralists of his court had possibly criticised— 
 and Livia really felt, while Tiberius at least affected, 
 such severity—comes to his recollection, ^nd he finds 
 
50 
 
 OVID, 
 
 that, the author has actually abetted the guilty intrigues 
 of his granddaughter. Livia and Tiberius, anxious to 
 get out of the way a partisan of opposite interests who 
 might possibly be dangerous, encourage the impulse, 
 and the poet is banished. 
 
 Another part of the story remains to be related. If 
 the tale which Tacitus tells be true, all the art and 
 persistency of Livia had not succeeded in wholly alien¬ 
 ating the affections of Augustus from his own descend¬ 
 ants. Even up to the last months of the old man’s life 
 the interests of her son had to be jealously defended. 
 Tacitus gives (Annals, i. 5), without saying whether he 
 himself believed or disbelieved it, a report which was 
 current shortly after the death of Augustus. “A ru¬ 
 mor had gone abroad that a few months before, he 
 [Augustus] had sailed to Planasia on a visit to Agrippa, 
 with the knowledge of some chosen friends, and with 
 one companion, Fabius Maximus; that many tearsw T ere 
 shed on both sides, with expressions of affection, and 
 that thus there was a hope of the young man being re¬ 
 stored to the home of his grandfather. This, it was said, 
 Maximus had divulged to his wife Marcia, she again to 
 Livia. All was known to Caesar; and when Maximus 
 soon afterwards died, by a death some thought to be 
 self-inflicted, there were heard at his funeral wailings 
 from Marcia, in which she reproached herself for 
 having been the cause of her husband’s destruction.” * 
 
 * Plutarch has added to this narrative an interesting anecdote 
 to the effect that Fabius (he calls him Fulvius by mistake), 
 when paying his respects as usual to the emperor in the morn¬ 
 ing, had his salutation returned with the ominous “ Farewell, 
 Fulvius.” “But he, comprehending the matter, forthwith re¬ 
 tired to his house, and, summoning his wife, said, ‘ Caesar has 
 learnt that I have not been silent about his secrets: I have there¬ 
 fore resolved to die.’ 
 
METAMORPHOSES OR TRANSFORMATIONS. 51 
 
 To this Maximus Ovid addresses six of his “ Letters 
 from the Pontus.” He evidently looked to him as one 
 ■who might exercise a powerful influence on his behalf. 
 He appeals to him again and again to exercise it. And 
 at one time he seems to have hoped that it would not be 
 exercised in vain. “Augustus had begun,” he writes in 
 the sixth year of his exile, “to grow more lenient to 
 my fault of ignorance, and lo! he leaves my hopes and 
 all the world desolate at once.” It is in the same letter 
 that he significantly deplores the death of Maximus. 
 “ I think, Maximus, that I must have been the cause of 
 your death.” This may have been a commonplace,— 
 the fear lest the cause of so unlucky a man might be 
 fatal to any who undertook it. Viewed in connection 
 with the whole story, it assumes a different aspect. 
 That Maximus had perished in an attempt to befriend 
 Ovid may have been so far true that his death followed 
 an unsuccessful effort to restore to the favor of Augus¬ 
 tus and to the succession the family in whose fall the 
 poet himself had fallen. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE METAMORPHOSES OR TRANSFORMATIONS. 
 
 Ovid tells us that before he was banished he had 
 written, but not corrected, the fifteen books of the 
 “Metamorphoses,” and had also composed twelve books 
 (only six have been preserved) of the “Fasti” or Roman 
 Calendar. These are his chief surviving poems, and 
 it will be convenient to describe them in this and the 
 following chapter. 
 
 In the “Metamorphoses” we have the largest and 
 most important of Ovid’s works; and, if we view it as 
 
52 
 
 ovm 
 
 a whole, the greatest monument of his poetical genius. 
 The plan of the book is to collect together, out of the 
 vast mass of Greek mythology and legend, the various 
 stories which turn on the change of men and women 
 from the human form into animals, plants, or inanimate 
 objects. Nor are the tales merely collected. Such a 
 collection would have been inevitably monotonous and 
 tiresome. With consummate skill the poet arranges and 
 connects them together. The thread of connection is 
 often indeed slight; sometimes it is broken altogether. 
 But it is sufficiently continuous to keep alive the reader’s 
 interest; which is, indeed, often excited by the remark¬ 
 able ingenuity of the transition from one tale to 
 another. But it did not escape the author’s perception 
 that to repeat over and over again the story of a marvel, 
 which must have been as incredible to his own con¬ 
 temporaries as it is to us, would have been to insure 
 failure. Hence the metamorphoses themselves occupy 
 but a small part of the book, which finds its real charm 
 and beauty in the brilliant episodes, for the introduction 
 of which they supply the occasion. 
 
 How far the idea was Ovid’s own it is impossible to 
 say. Two Greek poets are known to have written on 
 the same subject. One of them was Nicander, of Colo¬ 
 phon, in Asia Minor, an author of the second century 
 B.c., attached, it would seem, to the court of Per- 
 gamus, which, under the dynasty of the Attali, was a 
 famous centre of literary activity. Of his work the 
 “Changes” (for so we may translate its Greek title), 
 only a few fragments are preserved, quite insufficient 
 to give us any idea of its merits or methods. Parthe* 
 nius, a native of the Bithynian Nicaea, so famous in 
 ecclesiastical history, may be credited with having 
 given some hints to the Roman poet,—to whom, itq 
 
METAMORPHOSES Oti TRANSFORM A T10MS. 60 
 
 deed, a3 a contemporary,* and connected with the 
 great literary circle of Rome, he was probably known. 
 Parthenius, we know on good authority, taught the 
 Greek language to Virgil, who condescended to borrow 
 at least one line from his preceptor. His “Metamor¬ 
 phoses” have entirely perished. We have only the 
 probability of the case to warrant us in supposing that 
 Ovid Wfls under obligations to him. Of these obliga¬ 
 tions, indeed, no ancient authority speaks; and it is 
 safe, probably, to conjecture that they were inconsider¬ 
 able—nothing, certainly, like what Virgil owed to 
 Homer, Hesiod, and Theocritus. 
 
 It would weary the reader, not to mention the space 
 which the execution of such a task would require, to 
 conduct him along the whole course of the metamor¬ 
 phoses—from the description of Chaos, with which the 
 poet begins, to the transformation of the murdered 
 Caesar into a comet, with which, not following the 
 customary adulation to the successor of the great Dic¬ 
 tator, he concludes. Specimens must suffice; and the 
 book is one which, better than any other great poem 
 that can be mentioned, specimens may adequately re¬ 
 present. 
 
 The first book begins, as has been said, with a de¬ 
 scription of Chaos. “ Nothing,” says Bayle, in his 
 satirical fashton, “ could be clearer and more intelligible 
 than this description, if we consider only the poetical 
 phrases; but if we examine its philosophy, we find it 
 confused and contradictory—a chaos, in fact, more 
 hiedous than that which he has described.” Bayle, 
 however, looked for what the poet never pretended to 
 
 * Parthenius died at an advanced age, about the beginning of 
 the reign of Tiberius, 
 
u 
 
 OVID . 
 
 give. His cosmogony, is, at least, as intelligible as any 
 other; and it is expressed with marvellous force of 
 language, culminating in one of the noblest of the 
 poet’s efforts, the description of the creation of man, 
 the crown and masterpiece of the newly-made world. 
 
 “ Something yet lacked—some holier being—do wei’ed 
 With lofty soul, and capable of rule 
 And governance o’er all besides,—and Man 
 At last had birth:—whether from seed divine 
 Of Him, the artificer of things, and cause 
 Of the amended world, — or whether Earth 
 Yet new, and late from iEther separate, still 
 Retained some lingering germs of kindred Heaven, 
 
 Which wise Prometheus, with the plastic aid 
 Of water borrowed from the neighboring stream, 
 
 Formed in the likeness of the all-ordering Gods ; 
 
 And while all other creatures sought th^ ground 
 With downward aspect grovelling, gave to man 
 His port sublime, and bade him scan, erect, 
 
 The heavens, and front with upward gaze the stars. 
 
 And thus earth’s substance, rude and shapeless erst, 
 Transmuted took the novel form of Man.” * * 
 
 The four ages of the world thus created are described; 
 and to the horrors of the last of these, the Age of Iron, 
 succeeds the tale of its crowning wickedness—the at¬ 
 tempt of the giants to scale the heights of heaven. 
 Jupiter smites down the assailants, and the earth brings 
 forth from their blood 
 
 “ A race of Gods 
 
 Contemptous, prone to violence and lust 
 Of strife, and bloody-minded, born from blood.” 
 
 Jupiter calls his fellow-gods to conncil, and they pass 
 to his hall along the way— 
 
 “ Sublime of milky whiteness, whence its name.” 
 
 ——-----*--— .. r 
 
 * Two lines of Dryden’s version are here worth quoting? 
 
 “ Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes 
 Behold his own hereditary skies.” 
 
METAMORPHOSES OR TRANSFORMATIONS. 55 
 
 He inveighs against the enormities of man,, recounting 
 what he had himself witnessed when he had— 
 
 “ Putting off the God, 
 
 Disguised in human semblance walked the world. 
 
 Many shameful sights he had witnessed, hut the worst 
 horror had met him in the hall of Lycaon, the Arcadian 
 king, who, after attempting to murder his guest, had 
 served up to him a feast of human flesh. Lycaon, in¬ 
 deed, had paid the penalty of his crime: 
 
 “ Terror-struck he fled, 
 
 And through the silence of the distant plains 
 Wild howling, vainly strove for human voice. 
 
 His maddened soul his form infects:—his arms 
 To legs are changed, his robes to shaggy hide ;— 
 Glutting on helpless flocks his ancient lust 
 Of blood, a wolf he prowls,—retaining still 
 Some traces of his earlier self,—the same 
 Gray fell of hair—the red fierce glare of eye 
 And savage mouth—alike in beast and man! ” 
 
 % 
 
 But a wider vengeance was needed. The whole race of 
 man must be swept away. Thus we come to a descrip¬ 
 tion of the deluge. Of all mankind, two only are left,— 
 Deucalion, son of Prometheus, and Pyrrha, daughter 
 of the brother Titan Epimetheus— 
 
 “ Than he no better, juster man had lived ; 
 
 Than she no woman holier.” 
 
 Seeking to know how the earth may be replenished 
 with the race of man, they receive the mysterious com¬ 
 mand— 
 
 “ Behind you fling your mighty -Mother’s bones! ” 
 
 Deucalion, as becomes the son of so sagacious a father, 
 discovers its meaning. The “ mighty mother” is earth, 
 the stones are her bones. 
 
56 
 
 OVID. 
 
 “ They descena 
 
 The mount, and, with veiled head and vest ungirt, 
 
 Behind them, as commanded, fling the stones. 
 
 And lo!—a tale past credence, did not all 
 Antiquity attest it true,—the stones 
 Their natural rigor lose, by slow degrees 
 Softening and softening in to form ; and grow, 
 
 And swell with milder nature, and assume 
 Rude semblance of a human shape, not yet 
 Distinct, but like some statue new-conceived 
 And half expressed in marble. What they had 
 Of moist or earthy in their substance, turns 
 To flesh:—what solid and inflexible 
 Forms into bones:—their veins as veins remain:— 
 
 Till, in brief time, and by the Immortals’ grace, 
 
 The man-tossed pebbles live and stand up men, 
 
 And women from the woman’s cast revive. 
 
 So sprang our hard enduring race, which speaks 
 Its origin—fit fruit of such a stock.” 
 
 But while man was thus created— 
 
 “ All Other life in various shapes the Earth 
 Spontaneous bare, soon as the Sun had kissed 
 Her bosom yet undried, and mud and marsh 
 Stirred with ferment.” 
 
 Among these creatures, equivalents of the monstrous 
 saurians of modern geological science, springs 
 
 “ Huge Python, serpent-prodigy, the dread 
 Of the new world, o’er half the mountain’s side 
 Enormous coiled. But him the Archer-God, 
 
 With all his quiver’s store of shafts, untried 
 Till now on aught save deer or nimble goat, 
 
 Smote to the death, and from a thousand wounds 
 Drained the black torrent of his poisonous gore:— 
 
 And, that the memory of the deed might live 
 Through after-time, his famous festival 
 And Pythian contest, from the monster’s name 
 So called, ordained.” 
 
 Flushed with his victory over the monster, Apollo meets 
 Cupid, and asks him what right he has to such a manly 
 
METAMORPHOSES or TRAHSFORMA TIONS. 57 
 
 weapon as the bow. Cupid retaliates by a shaft which 
 sets the Sun-God’s heart on fire with a passion for 
 Daphne, daughter of Peneus, fairest and cliastesff* of 
 nymphs. She flies from his pursuit, and, when flight 
 is ineffectual, is changed at her own prayer into a laurel. 
 The god makes the best of his defeat: 
 
 “ ‘And if,’ he cries, 
 
 * Thou canst not now my consort be, at least 
 My tree thou shalt be! Still thy leaves shall crown 
 My locks, my lyre, my quiver. Thine the brows 
 Of Latium’s lords to wreathe, what time the voice 
 Of Rome salutes the triumph, and the pomp 
 Of long procession scales the Capitol. 
 
 Before the gates Augustan shalt thou stand 
 Their hallowed guardian, high amid thy boughs 
 Bearing the crown to civic merit due:— 
 
 And, as my front with locks that know no steel 
 
 Is ever youthful, ever be thine own 
 
 Thus verdant, with the changing year unchanged!’ ” 
 
 The news of the strange event spreads far and wide, 
 and to Peneus 
 
 “Throng 
 
 The brother-Powers of all the neighbor-floods, 
 Doubtful or to congratulate or condole 
 The parent’s hap.” 
 
 One only was absent, Inachus, 
 
 “ Whom grief 
 
 Held absent, in his cave’s recess, with tears 
 His flood augmenting.” 
 
 (One of the frigid conceits with which Ovid often be¬ 
 trays a faulty taste.) His grief was for his daughter 
 Io, whom he has lost, changed by Juno into a heifer. 
 The feelings of the transformed maiden are told with 
 some pathos. 
 
 “ By the loved banks she strays 
 Of Inachus, her childhood’s happy haunt, 
 
 And in the stream strange horns reflected views, 
 
58 
 
 OVID. 
 
 Back-shuddering at the sight. The Naiads see 
 And know her not:—nor Inachus himself 
 Can recognize his child,—though close her sire 
 She follows—close her sister-band,—and courts 
 Their praise, and joys to feel their fondling hands. 
 
 Some gathered herbs her father proffers—mute. 
 
 She licks and wets with tears his honored palm, 
 
 And longs for words to ask his aid, and tell 
 Her name, her sorrows.” 
 
 She contrives to tell her tale in letters scraped by her 
 hoof. Then Argus, the hundred-eyed herdsman, to 
 whom Juno has committed her, drives her to other 
 pastures. Then Mercury finds him, charms him to 
 slumber with the song of Syrinx, transformed into a 
 reed to escape the love of Pan, and then slays him. 
 
 “ So waned at once 
 
 The light which filled so many eyes; one night 
 Closed all the hundred. But Saturnia’s care 
 Later renewed their fires, and bade them shine, 
 Gem-like, amid the peacock’s radiant plumes.” 
 
 In Egypt, Io gives birth to her son Epaphus, and 
 Epaplius, growing up, has among his companions one 
 Phaeton— 
 
 “ Apollo’s child, whom once, with boastful tongue, 
 Vaunting his birth divine, and claiming rank 
 Superior, the Inachian checked ” 
 
 with the taunt that his divine parentage was all a fable. 
 The furious youth seeks his mother, and demands 
 whether the story is true. It is, she says; and she bids 
 him seek the Sun-God himself, and hear the truth from 
 his lips. The famous description of the Sun-God’s pal¬ 
 ace follows: 
 
 44 Sublime on lofty columns, bright with gold 
 And fiery carbuncle, its roof inlaid 
 With ivory, rose the Palace of the Sun, 
 
 Approached by folding gates with silver sheen 
 
METAMORPHOSES OR TRANSFORMATIONS. 59 
 
 Radiant; material priceless,—yet less prized 
 For its own worth than what the cunning head 
 Of Mulciber thereon had wrought,—the globe 
 Of Earth,—the Seas that wash it round,—the Skies 
 That overhang it, ’Mid the waters played 
 Their Gods cserulean. Triton with his horn 
 Was there, and Proteus of the shifting shape, 
 
 And old iEgeon, curbing with firm hand 
 The monsters of the deep. Her Nereids there 
 Round Doris sported, seeming, some to swim 
 Some on the rocks their tresses green to dry. 
 
 Some dolphin-borne to ride; nor all in face 
 The same, nor different;—so should sisters be. 
 
 Earth showed her men, and towns, and woods, and beasts, 
 And streams, and nymphs, and rural deities: 
 
 And over all the mimic Heaven was bright 
 With the twelve Zodiac signs, on either valve 
 Of the great portal figured, six on each.” 
 
 Phaeton begs his father to confirm his word by grant¬ 
 ing any boon that he may ask; and, the god consenting, 
 asks that he may drive his chariot for a day. Phaeton 
 is the stock example of “ fiery ambition o’ervaulting it¬ 
 self and the story of his fall may be passed over, 
 though it abounds with passages of splendid description. 
 Eridanus or Po receives the fallen charioteer. His 
 weeping sisters are transformed into poplars on its 
 banks. 
 
 “ But yet they weep:—and, in the Sun, their tears 
 To amber harden, by the clear stream caught 
 And borne, the gaud and grace of Latian maids.” 
 
 We have reached the middle of the second out of 
 fifteen books. We will try their quality at another 
 place. 
 
 Perseus, son of Jupiter, is on his travels, mounted on 
 the winged steed Pegasus, and armed with the head of 
 the Gorgon Medusa. He comes to the house of Atlas, 
 “hugest of th$ human rac§ 
 
60 
 
 OVID . 
 
 “ To whom the bounds 
 
 Of Earth and Sea were subject, where the Sun 
 Downward to Ocean guides his panting steeds 
 And in the waves his glowing axle cools.” 
 
 He asks shelter and hospitality; but the Titan, mind¬ 
 ful of how Theseus had told him how a son of Jupiter 
 should one day rob him of his orchard’s golden fruit, re¬ 
 fuses the boon. The indignant hero cries— 
 
 “ ‘Then take 
 
 From me this gift at parting!’ and his look 
 Askance he turned, and from his left arm flashed 
 Full upon Atlas’ face the Gorgon-Head, 
 
 With all its horrors:—and the Giant-King 
 A Giant mountain stood! His beard, his hair 
 Were forests:—into crags his shoulders spread 
 And arms:—his head the crowning summit towered:— 
 
 His bones were granite. So the Fates fulfilled 
 Their hest;—and all his huge proportions swelled 
 To vaster bulk, and ample to support 
 The incumbent weight of Heaven and all its Stars.” 
 
 Perseus pursues his journey, and reaches the Lybiau 
 shore, where the beautiful Andromeda is chained to a 
 rock, to expiate, by becoming the sea-monster’s prey, her 
 mother’s foolish boast of beauty. 
 
 “ Bound by her white arms to the rugged rocks 
 The Maid he saw:—and were’t not for the breeze 
 That gave her tresses motion, and the tears 
 That trickled down her pallid cheeks,—had sure 
 Some marble statue deemed.” 
 
 The reader may like to see how a modern poet has 
 treated the subject. It is Perseus who speaks: 
 
 “ From afar, unknowing, I marked thee, 
 Shining a snow-white cross on the dark-green walls of the sea- 
 cliff; 
 
 Carven in marble I deemed thee, a perfect work of the crafts¬ 
 man, 
 
 yk<?nes? of Amphitrite, or far-fained Queen Cytherea, 
 
METAMORPHOSES OR TRANSFORMATIONS. 61 
 
 Curious I came, till I saw how thy tresses streamed In the sea* 
 wind, 
 
 Glistening, black as the night, and thy lips moved slow in thy 
 wailing.” 
 
 Mr. Kingsley’s hero delivers the maiden, trusting to her 
 for his reward. Ovid’s Perseus, less chivalrous, per¬ 
 haps, hut more in accordance with ancient modes of 
 thought, bargains with her father and mother that he 
 shall have her for his wife, before he begins the conflict 
 with the destroyer. On the other hand, it may be placed 
 to his credit that he slays the beast with his falchion, 
 without recourse to the terrible power of the Gorgon- 
 head. Ovid’s taste seems a little in fault in the next 
 passage. Perseus wraps up his dangerous weapon in 
 sea-weed, which freezes, and stiffens at its touch into 
 stony leaf and stalk. The sea-nymphs, in delight, re¬ 
 peat the experiment, sow “the novel seeds” about their 
 realm, and so produce the coral. To us it seems a pue¬ 
 rile conceit, diminishing the beauty of a noble legend. 
 Ovid, probably, thought only of completing his work, 
 by introducing every fable of transformation he could 
 find. 
 
 After victory comes due sacrifice to the gods, and 
 then Ceplieus makes the marriage-feast for his daughter. 
 To the assembled guests Perseus tells the story of how 
 he had won the Gorgon’s head. In the midst of their 
 talk comes a sudden interruption of no friendly kind. 
 Phineus, brother of Ceplieus, bursts with an armed 
 throng into the hall, and demands Andromeda, who 
 had been promised to him in marriage. A fierce bat¬ 
 tle ensues; and Ovid, in describing it, seems to chal¬ 
 lenge comparison with the great masters of epic. The 
 young hero, true to his principles, defends himself with 
 mortal weapons, and works prodigies of valor, It is 
 
62 
 
 OVID, 
 
 only when he finds his friends crushed by overpowering 
 numbers that he bares the dreadful Head, and turns 
 it on the assailants;—first as they press forward one by 
 one, then on the crowd, and last on the leader himself. 
 
 “ He flashed 
 
 Full on the cowering wretch the Gorgon-Head. 
 
 Vainly he strove to shun it! Into stone 
 
 The writhing neck was stiffened:—white the eyes 
 
 Froze in their sockets:—and the statue still, 
 
 With hands beseeching spread, and guilty fear 
 Writ in its face, for mercy seemed to pray.” 
 
 Perseus then bore his bride to Argos, where the Head 
 recovers from the usurping Proetus his grandfather’s 
 kingdom, and turns to stone the incredulous Poly- 
 dectus, tyrant of Seriphus. 
 
 Here we leave Perseus; and Pallas, who has been 
 his helper throughout his toils, goes to Helicon, there 
 to inquire of the Muses about the strange fountain 
 which she hears has sprung from the lioof-dint of the 
 winged Pegasus. Urania, speaking for the sisterhood, 
 tells her that the tale is true; and when the goddess 
 speaks of the beauty and peace of their retreat, nar¬ 
 rates the story of how they had escaped from the 
 tyrant Pyreneus by help of their wings, and how he, 
 seeking to follow them, had heen dashed in pieces. 
 As she speaks, a 
 
 “ Whirr of wings 
 
 Came rustling overhead, and from the boughs 
 Voices that bade them ‘ Hail!’—so human-clear 
 That upward Pallas turned her wondering gaze 
 To see who spoke. She saw but Birds:—a row 
 Thrice three, of Pies, at imitative sounds 
 Deftest of winged things, that, on a branch 
 Perched clamorous, seemed as though some "woeful tale 
 They wailed and strove to tell,” 
 
METAMORPHOSES OR TRANSFORMATIONS. 68 
 
 Urania explains the marvel. They had been nine 
 sisters, daughters of Pierus, “Lord of Pella’s field,” 
 and proud of their skill in music and song; and, deem¬ 
 ing that there lay some magic in their mystic number, 
 had challenged the sister Muses to contend. The 
 challenge had been accepted, and the Nymphs swore 
 by all their river-gods to judge fairly between the 
 two. One of the daughters of Pierus had sung, and 
 her song had been treason to the gods, for it told 
 how, in fear of the Titan onset of the sons of earth, 
 the lords of heaven had fled, disguised in all strange 
 shapes. Then the Muses had replied; but Pallas 
 thinks Urania will not care to hear their song. Not 
 so, replies the goddess; so the tale is told. Calliope 
 had been their chosen champion, and her theme had 
 been how Pluto had carried off Proserpina, daughter of 
 Ceres, to share his gloomy throne in Hades, and how 
 the mourning mother sought her child in every region 
 of the earth. A touch of the ludicrous comes in, the 
 fate of the mocking Stellio: 
 
 “Weary and travel-worn,—her lips unwet 
 With water,—at a straw-thatched cottage door 
 The Wanderer knocked. An ancient crone came forth 
 And saw her need, and hospitable brought 
 Her bowl of barley-broth, and bade her drink. 
 
 Thankful she raised it:—but a graceless boy 
 
 And impudent stood by, and, ere the half 
 
 Was drained, * Ha! Ha! see how the glutton swills!’ 
 
 With insolent jeer he cried. The Goddess’ ire 
 Was roused, and, as he spoke, what liquor yet 
 The bowl retained full in his face she dashed. 
 
 His cheeks broke out in blotches:—what were arms 
 Turned legs, and from the shortened trunk a tail 
 Tapered behind. Small mischief evermore 
 Might that small body workthe lizard's self 
 Was larger now than he. With terror shrieked 
 The crone, and weeping stooped her altered child 
 
64 
 
 OVli). 
 
 To raisethe little monster fled her grasp 
 And wriggled into hiding. Still his name 
 His nature tells, and, from the star-like spots 
 That mark him, known as Stellio crawls the Newt.” 
 
 At last, after a fruitless quest, she wanders back to 
 Sicily, the land where the lost one had last been seen. 
 And then the secret is half revealed. Cyane, chief of 
 Sicilian nymphs, had tried to bar the passage of Pluto 
 as he was descending with his captive, and had been 
 dissolved into water by the wrath of the god. But 
 she tells what she can, and shows, floating on her 
 waves, the zone which Proserpina had dropped. 
 Then the mother knew her loss, and in her wrath 
 banned with barrenness the ungrateful earth. But 
 who was the robber? That she finds another nymph 
 to tell her. Arethusa had seen her: 
 
 “ All the depths 
 
 Of earth 1 traverse:—where her caverns lie 
 Darkest and nethermost I pass, and here 
 Uprising, look once more upon the Stars. 
 
 And in my course I saw her! yea, these eyes, 
 
 As past the Stygian realm my waters rolled, 
 Proserpina beheld! Still sad she seemed, 
 
 And still her cheek some trace of terror wore. 
 
 But all a Queen, and, in that dismal world, 
 
 Greatest in place and majesty,-~the wife 
 Of that tremendous God who rules in Hell.’ 1 
 
 The wretched mother flies to the throne of Jupiter. 
 She must have back her child. She does not take 
 account of the great throne which she shares. And 
 Jove grants the request, but only—for so the Fates 
 have willed it—on this condition, that no food should 
 have passed her lips in the realms below. Alas! the 
 condition cannot be fulfilled. She had plucked a 
 pomegranate in the garden of the Shades, and had 
 eaten seven of its grains. Ascalaphus, son of the 
 
METAMORPHOSES OR TRANSFORMATIONS. 65 
 
 gloomy deities Woe and Darkness, had seen her, and 
 he told the tale. The mother takes her revenge: 
 
 44 With water snatched from Phlegethon 
 His brow she sprinkled. Instant, beak and plumes 
 And larger eyes were his, and tawny wings 
 His altered form uplifted, and his head 
 Swelled disproportioned to his size: his nails 
 Curved crooked into claws,—and heavily 
 His pinions beat the air. A bird accursed, 
 
 Augur of coming sorrow, still to Man 
 Ill-ominous and hateful flits the Owl.” 
 
 But Jove reconciles her to her grim son-in-law. 
 Proserpina was to spend six months in hell and six 
 on earth, and the satisfied mother has leisure to seek 
 Arethusa, and find how she had learned the secret. 
 She hears in reply how she had fled from the pursuit 
 of Alplieus from her native home in Acliaia, and had 
 passed through all the depths of earth till she rose 
 again to the light in Sicily. The story told, Ceres 
 hastens to Athens, and there teaches the youth Tripto- 
 lemus the secrets of husbandry, and bids him journey 
 in her dragon-car over the world to spread the new 
 knowledge. At the court of the Scythian Lyncus he 
 is treacherously assailed by his host, but Ceres stays the 
 murderer’s hand, and changes him into a lynx. Here, 
 after digressions which strongly remind us of the 
 “Arabian Nights,” we come to the end of Calliope’s 
 song. Then Urania tells how the Nymphs, with one 
 voice, accorded victory to the Muses; and how the 
 Pierian sisters—whose name, by the way, their suc¬ 
 cessful rivals seem to have appropriated—rebelled 
 against the judgment, and found the penality in trans¬ 
 formation into Pies. The story then passes on to the 
 revenge which Pallas herself has had on a mortal 
 
66 
 
 orm 
 
 rival. The poet—with true tact,—does not matte ner 
 tell the tale herself, for she seems to have conquered 
 by power, not by skill. Arachne, a Lydian maid, 
 brought all the world to look at her wondrous spin¬ 
 ning. They swear that Pallas herself had taught her, 
 but she disdains such praise;—her art was all her 
 own. Let Pallas come to compare her skill. And 
 Pallas came, but at first in shape of an ancient dame, 
 who counsels the bold maiden to be content with 
 victory over mortal competitors, but to avoid dan¬ 
 gerous challenge to the gods. The advice is given 
 in vain. Arachne rushes upon her fate. The goddess 
 reveals herself, and the contest is begun. An admir¬ 
 able piece of word-painting follows: 
 
 “ The looms were set,—the webs 
 Were hung: beneath their fingers nimbly plied 
 The subtle fabrics grew, and warp and woof, 
 
 Transverse, with shuttle and with slay compact 
 Were pressed in order fair. And either girt 
 Her mantle close, and eager wrought; the toil 
 Itself was pleasure to the skilful hands 
 That knew so well their task. With Tyrian hue 
 Of purple blushed the texture, and all shades 
 Of color, blending imperceptibly 
 Each into each. So, when the wondrous bow— 
 
 What time some passing shower hath dashed the sun— 
 
 Spans with its mighty arch the vault of Heaven, 
 
 A thousand colors deck it, different all, 
 
 Yet all so subtly interfused that each 
 Seems one with that which joins it, and the eye 
 But by the contrast of the extremes perceives 
 The intermediate change.—And last, with thread 
 Of gold embroidery pictured, on the web 
 Lifelike expressed, some antique fable glowed.” 
 
 Pallas pictures the Hill of Mars at Athens, where 
 the gods had sat in judgment in the strife between 
 
METAMORPHOSES OR TRANSFORMATIONS, 67 
 
 herself and Neptune as to who should be the patron 
 deity of that fair city. 
 
 “ There stood the God 
 Of Seas, and with his trident seemed to smite 
 The rugged rock, and from the cleft out-sprang 
 The Steed that for its author claimed the town. 
 
 Herself, with shield and spear of keenest barb 
 And helm, she paintedon her bosom gleamed 
 The iEgis:—with her lance’s point she struck 
 The earth, and from its breast the Olive bloomed, 
 
 Pale, with its berried fruit:—and all the gods 
 Admiring gazed, adjudging in that strife 
 The victory hers.” 
 
 Arackne, disloyal, as the daughters of Pierus had 
 been, to the Lords of Heaven, pictures them in the 
 base disguises to which love for mortal women had 
 driven them. But her work is so perfect that— 
 
 “ Not Pallas, nay, not Envy’s self, could fault 
 In all the ^ork detect.” 
 
 The furious goddess smites her rival twelve times on 
 the forehead: 
 
 “The high-souled Maid 
 Such insult not endured, and round her neck 
 Indignant twined the suicidal noose, 
 
 And so had died. But, as she hung, some ruth 
 Stirred in Minerva’s breast:—the pendent form 
 She raised, and ‘ Live! ’ she said—‘ but hang thou still 
 For ever, wretch! and through all future time 
 Even to thy latest race bequeath thy doom I’ 
 
 And, as she parted, sprinkled her with juice 
 Of aconite. With venom of that drug 
 Infected dropped her tresses,—nose and ear 
 Were lost; her form to smallest bulk compressed 
 A head minutest crownedto slenderest legs 
 Jointed on either side her fingers changed: 
 
 Her body but a bag, whence still she draws 
 Her filmy threads, and, with her ancient art, 
 
 Weaves the fine meshes of her Spider’s web,” 
 
OVID. 
 
 08 
 
 \ 
 
 Leaving the goddess in the enjoyment of this doubt*, 
 ful victory, the story passes on to the tale of Niobe, 
 What has been given occupies in the original a space 
 about equivalent to a book and a half. 
 
 • Sometimes Ovid gives us an opportunity of com¬ 
 paring him with a great master of his own art. A 
 notable instance of the kind is the story of how Orpheus 
 went down to the lower world in search of his lost 
 Eurydice; how he won her by the charms of his song 
 from the unpitying Gods of Death, and lost her again 
 on the very borders of life. 
 
 ‘ So sang he. and accordant to his plaint, 
 
 As wailed the strings, the bloodless Ghosts were moved 
 To weeping. By the lips of Tantalus __ 
 
 Unheeded slipped the wave;—Ixion’s wheel 
 Forgot to whirl;—the Vulture’s bloody feast 
 Was stayed;—awhile the Belides forbore 
 Their leaky urns to dip;—and Sisyphus 
 Sate listening on his stone. Then first, they say, 
 
 The iron cheeks of the Eumenides 
 • Were wet with pity. Of the nether realm 
 Nor King nor Queen had heart to say him nay. 
 
 Forth from a host of new-descended Shades 
 Eurydice was called; and, halting yet 
 Slow with her recent wound she came—alive, 
 
 On one condition to her spouse restored, 
 
 That, till Avernus’ vale is passed and earth 
 Kegained, he look not backward, or the boon 
 Is null and forfeit. Through the silent realm 
 Upward against the steep and fronting hill 
 Dark with obscurest gloom, the way he led; 
 
 And now the upper air was all but won, 
 
 When, fearful lest the toil o’er-task her strength. 
 
 And yearning to behold the form he loved, 
 
 An instant back he looked,—and back the Shade 
 That instant fled! The arms that wildly strove 
 To clasp and stay her clasped but yielding air! 
 
 No word of plaint even in that second Death 
 Against her Lord she uttered,—how could Love 
 
METAMORPHOSES OR TRANSFORMATIONS. 69 
 
 Too anxious be upbraided?—but one last 
 And sad ‘ Farewell!’ scarce audible, she sighed, 
 
 And vanished to the Ghosts that late she left,” 
 
 Here is Virgil, though he has not the advantage 
 of being presented by so skilful a translator as Mr. 
 King: 
 
 “ Stirred by his song, from lowest depths of hell 
 Came the thin spectres of the sightless dead, 
 
 Crowding as crowd the birds among the leaves 
 Whom darkness or a storm of wintry rain 
 Drives from the mountains. Mothers came, and sires> 
 Great-hearted heroes, who had lived their lives; 
 
 And boys, and maidens never wed, and men 
 Whom in their prime, before their parents' eyes, 
 
 The funeral flames had eaten. All around 
 With border of black mud and hideous reed, 
 
 Cocytus, pool unlovely, hems them in, 
 
 And Styx imprisons with his nine-fold stream. 
 
 Nay, and his song the very home of death 
 Entranced and nethermost abyss of hell, 
 
 And those Dread Three whose tresses are entwined 
 With livid snakes; while Cerberus stood agape, 
 
 Nor moved the triple horror of his jaw; 
 
 And in charmed air Ixion’s wheel was stayed. 
 
 And now with step retreating he had shunned 
 All peril; and the lost one, given back, 
 
 Was nearing the sweet breath of upper air. 
 
 Following behind—such terms the gods imposed— 
 
 When some wild frenzy seized the lover’s heart 
 . Unheeding, well, were pardon known in hell, 
 
 Well to be pardoned. Still he stood, and saw, 
 
 Ah me! forgetful, mastered all by love, 
 
 Saw, at the very border of the day, 
 
 His own Eurydice. Oh wasted toil! 
 
 O broken compact of the ruthless god! 
 
 Then through Avernus rolled the crash of doom, 
 
 And she—‘ What miserable madness this, 
 
 Ah! wretched that I am 1 which ruins me 
 And thee, my Orpheus? Lo! the cruel Fates 
 Call me again; sleep seals my swimming eyes; 
 
70 
 
 OVID. 
 
 Farewell! for boundless darkness wraps me round 
 And carries me away, still stretching forth 
 Dark hands to thee, who am no longer thine.’ * 
 
 No reader will doubt with which poet the general 
 superiority lies; yet it must be allowed that Ovid is 
 strong in what may be called his own peculiar line. 
 There is a noble tenderness and a genuine pathos in 
 the parting of the two lovers, which is characteristic of 
 the poet’s genius. 
 
 One of the longest as well as the most striking 
 episodes in the whole book is the contest between Ajax 
 and Ulysses for the arms of the dead Achilles; and it 
 has the additional interest of recalling the declamatory 
 studies of the poet’s youth. It is throughout a magnifi¬ 
 cent piece of rhetoric. The blunt energy of Ajax, and 
 the craft and persuasiveness of Ulysses, are admirably 
 given. The elder Seneca, in the passage already quoted, 
 mentions that the poet was indebted for some of his 
 materials and language to his teacher, Porcius Latro, 
 one of whose declamations on “ The Contest for the 
 Arms” Seneca had either heard or read. One phrase is 
 specified as having been borrowed from this source. It 
 is the fiery challenge with which Ajax clenches his 
 argument: 
 
 n Enough of idle words! let hands, not tongues, 
 
 Show what we are! Fling 'mid yon hostile ranks 
 Our hero's armor:—bid us fetch it thence :— 
 
 And be it his who first shall bring it back /” 
 
 The piece is too long to be given (it fills more than half 
 of the thirteenth book), and its effect would be lost in 
 extracts. A few lines, however, from the beginning 
 may be quoted; and indeed nothing throughout is more 
 finely put. It may be as well to mention that the ships 
 spoken of htid been in imminent- danger of tlestmotioa 
 
METAMORPHOSES OR TRANSFORMA TlONS. 71 
 
 at the hand of Hector, and that Ajax had at least some 
 claim to be called their preserver: 
 
 “ On high the chieftains sat: the common throng 
 Stood in a dense ring around; then Ajax rose, 
 
 Lord of the seven-fold shield; and backward glanced, 
 Scowling, for anger mastered all his soul, 
 
 Where on Sigaeum’s shore the fleet was ranged, 
 
 And with stretched hand: ‘ Before the ships we plead 
 Our cause, great heaven! and Ulysses dares 
 Before the ships to match himself with me l’ ”—0. 
 
 It may be noticed, as a proof that Ovid went out of his 
 way, in introducing this episode, to make use of material 
 to which he attached a special value, that the narrative 
 is not really connected with any transformation. Ajax, 
 defeated by the act which gives the arms to his rival, 
 falls upon his sword; and the turf, wet with his blood, 
 
 “ Blossomed with the self-same flower 
 That erst had birth from Hyacinthus’ wound, 
 
 And in its graven cup memorial bears 
 Of either fate,—the characters that shape 
 Apollo’s wailing cry, and Ajax’ name.” 
 
 What these characters were we learn from the end of 
 the story here alluded to, of how the beautiful Hyacin¬ 
 thus was killed by a quoit from the hand of Apollo, and 
 how 
 
 “The blood 
 
 That with its dripping crimson dyed the turf 
 Was blood no more: and sudden sprang to life 
 A flower that wore the lily’s shape, but not 
 The lily’s silver livery, purple-hued 
 And brighter than all tinct of Tyrian shells: 
 Nor with that boon of beauty satisfied, 
 
 Upon the petals of its cup the God 
 Stamped legible his sorrow’s wailing cry, 
 And‘Ai! Ai I’ ever seems the flower to say.” 
 
 Two more specimens must conclude this chapter. 
 Pygmalion’s statue changing into flesh and blood at the 
 
72 
 
 OVID. 
 
 sculptor’s passionate prayer is a subject after Ovid’s 
 own heart, and he treats it with consummate delicacy 
 and skill: 
 
 “ The Sculptor sought 
 
 His home, and bending o’er the couch that bore 
 
 His Maiden’s lifelike image, to her lips 
 
 Fond pressed his own,—and lo! her lips seemed warm, 
 
 And warmer, kissed again:—and now his hand 
 Her bosom seeks, and dimpling to his touch 
 The ivory seems to yield,—as in the Sun 
 The waxen labor of Hymettus’ bees, 
 
 By plastic fingers wrought, to various shape 
 And use by use is fashioned. Wonder-spelled, 
 
 Scarce daring to believe his bliss, in dread 
 Lest sense deluded mock him, on the form 
 He loves again and yet again his hand 
 Lays trembling touch, and to his touch a pulse 
 Within throbs answering palpable:—’twas flesh! 
 
 ’Twas very Life!—Then forth in eloquent flood 
 His grateful heart in thanks to Venus poured! 
 
 The lips he kissed were living lips that felt 
 His passionate pressure;—o’er the virgin cheeks 
 Stole deepening crimsonand the unclosing eyes 
 At once on Heaven and on their Lover looked!” 
 
 The fifteenth or last book of the “Metamorphoses” 
 contains an eloquent exposition of the Pythagorean 
 philosophy. Pythagoras, a Greek by birth, had made 
 Italy, the southern coasts of which were indeed thickly 
 studded with the colonies of his nation, the land of his 
 adoption, and the traditions of his teaching and of his 
 life had a special interest for the people to which had 
 descended the greatness of all the races—Oscan, Etrus¬ 
 can, Greek—which had inhabited the beautiful penin¬ 
 sula. A legend, careless, as such legends commonly 
 are, of chronology, made him the preceptor of Numa, 
 the wise king to whom Rome owed so much of its wor¬ 
 ship and its law. The doctrine most commonly con- 
 
METAMORPHOSES OR TRANSFORMATIONS. 73 
 
 nected with his name was that of the metempsychosis, 
 or transmigration of souls from one body to another, 
 ■whether of man or of the lower animals, though it 
 probably did not occupy a very prominent part in his 
 philosophy. It was an old belief of the Aryan race, 
 and it had a practical aspect which commended it to 
 the Roman mind, always more inclined to ethical than 
 to metaphysical speculations. Virgil, in that vision of 
 the lower world which occupies the sixth book of his 
 great epic, employs it—partly, indeed, as a poetical 
 artifice for introducing his magnificent roll of Roman 
 worthies, but also in a more serious aspect, as suggest¬ 
 ing the method of those purifying influences which 
 were to educate the human soul for higher destinies. 
 Ovid sees in it the philosophical explanation of the 
 marvels which he has been relating, and, as it were, 
 their vindication from the possible charge of being 
 childish fables, vacant of any real meaning, and un¬ 
 worthy of a serious pen. The passage which follows 
 refers to a practical rule in which we may see a natural 
 inference from the philosophical dogma. If man is so 
 closely allied to the lower animals—if their forms are 
 made, equally with his, the receptacles of the one di¬ 
 vine animating spirit—then there is a certain impiety 
 in his slaughtering them to satisfy his wants. Strangely 
 enough, the progress or revolution of human thought 
 has brought science again to the doctrine of man’s 
 kindred with the animals, though it seems altogether 
 averse to the merciful conclusion which Pythagoras 
 drew from it. 
 
 “ What had ye done, ye flocks, ye peaceful race 
 Created for Man’s blessing, that provide 
 To slake his thirst your udder’s nectarous draught. 
 
 That with your fleece wrap warm his shivering limbs, 
 
74 
 
 OVID. 
 
 And serve him better with your life than death?— 
 What fault was in the Ox, a creature mild 
 And harmless, docile, born with patient toil 
 To lighten half the labor of the fields?— 
 
 Ungrateful he, and little worth to reap 
 The crop he sowed, that, from the crooked share 
 Untraced, his ploughman slew, and to the axe 
 Condemned the neck that, worn beneath his yoke, 
 For many a spring his furrows traced, and home 
 With many a harvest dragged his Autumn-wain! 
 Nor this is all:—but Man must of his guilt 
 Make Heaven itself accomplice, and believe 
 The Gods with slaughter of their creatures pleased, 
 Lo! at the altar, fairest of his kind,— 
 
 And by that very fairness marked for doom,— 
 
 The guiltless victim stands,—bedecked for death 
 With wreath and garland!—Ignorant he hears 
 The muttering Priest,—feels ignorant his brows 
 White with the sprinkling of the salted meal 
 To his own labor owed,—and ignorant 
 Wonders, perchance, to see the lustral urn 
 Flash back the glimmer of the lifted knife 
 Too soon to dim its brightness with his blood 1 
 And Priests are found to teach, and men to deem 
 That in the entrails, from the tortured frame 
 Yet reeking torn, they read the hest of Heaven!— 
 
 O race of mortal men! what lust, what vice 
 Of appetite unhallowed, makes ye bold 
 To gorge your greed on Being like your own? 
 
 Be wiselier warned:—forbear the barbarous feast, 
 Nor in each bloody morsel that ye chew 
 The willing laborer of your fields devour I 
 • • • 
 
 All changes:—nothing perishes!—Now here. 
 
 Now there, the vagrant spirit roves at will, 
 
 The shifting tenant of a thousand homes:— 
 
 Now, elevate, ascends from beast to man,— 
 
 Now, retrograde, descends from nian.to beast;— 
 But never dies /—Upon the tablet’s page 
 Erased, and written fresh, the characters 
 Take various shape,—the wax remains the same:— 
 So is it with the Soul that, migrating 
 
MBTAM0&PE08BS OR TRANSFORMATIONS. 75 
 
 Through all the forms of breathing life, retains 
 Unchanged its essence. Oh, be wise, and hear 
 Heaven’s warning from my prophet-lips, not dare 
 With impious slaughter, for your glutton-greed, 
 
 The kindly bond of Nature violate, 
 
 Nor from it home expel the Soul, perchance 
 Akin to yours, to nourish blood with blood!” 
 
 It has been handed down to us on good authority that 
 Virgil, in his last illness, desired his friends to commit 
 his “iEneid” to the flames. It had not received his 
 final corrections, and lie was unwilling that it should 
 go down to posterity less perfect than he could have 
 made it. Evidences of this incompleteness are to be 
 found, especially in the occasional inconsistencies of 
 the narrative. Critics have busied themselves in dis¬ 
 covering or imagining other faults which might have 
 been corrected in revision. The desire, though it doubt¬ 
 less came from a mind enfeebled by morbid conditions 
 of the body, was probably sincere. We can hardly 
 believe as much of what Ovid tells us of his own in¬ 
 tentions about the “Metamorphoses:” “ As for the 
 verses which told of the changed forms—an unlucky 
 work, which its author’s banishment interrupted—these 
 in the hour of my departure I put, sorrowing, as I put 
 many other of my good things, into the flames with my 
 own hands.” Doubtless he did so: nothing could have 
 more naturally displayed his vexation. But he could 
 hardly have been ignorant that in destroying his manu¬ 
 script he was not destroying his work. “As they did 
 not perish altogether,” he adds, “but still exist, I sup¬ 
 pose that there were several copies of them.” But it 
 is scarcely conceivable that a poem containing as nearly 
 as possible twelve thousand lines should have existed 
 in several copies by chance, or without the knowledge 
 of the author. When he says that the work never re* 
 
% 
 
 OVID. 
 
 ceived his final corrections, we may believe him, though 
 we do not perceive any signs of imperfection. It is 
 even possible that he employed some of his time dur¬ 
 ing his banishment in giving some last touches to his 
 verse. 
 
 However this may be, the work has been accepted by 
 posterity as second in rank—second only to Virgil’s 
 epic—among the great monuments of Roman genius. 
 It has been translated into every language of modem 
 Europe that possesses a literature. Its astonishing in¬ 
 genuity, the unfailing variety of its colors, the flexi¬ 
 bility with which its style deals alike with the sublime 
 and the familiar, and with equal facility is gay and 
 pathetic, tender and terrible, have well entitled it to 
 the honor, and justify the boast with which the poet 
 concludes: 
 
 “ So crown I here a work that dares defy 
 The wrath of Jove, the fire, the sword, the tooth 
 Of all-devouring Time!—Come when it will 
 The day that ends my life’s uncertain term,— 
 
 That on this corporal frame alone hath power 
 To work extinction,—high above the Stars 
 My nobler part shall soar,—my Name remain 
 Immortal,—wheresoe’er the might of Rome 
 O’erawes the subject Earth my Verse survive 
 Familiar in the mouths of men!—and, if 
 A Bard may prophesy, while Time shall last 
 Endure, and die but with the dying World!” 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE FASTI, OR ROMAN CALENDAR. 
 
 In a rich and leisurely society the antiquarian has 
 usually little difficulty in gaining a hearing. So it 
 was at Rome, in the Augustan age. The study of the 
 
TEE EAST.X on ROMAN CALENDAR. 11 
 
 f 
 
 national antiquities seems to have been a particularly 
 fashionable pursuit. Augustus, indeed, himself did 
 his best to encourage it. It was the dream of his life 
 to reawaken the old Roman patriotism, and to kindle 
 in the men of his own day something like the senti¬ 
 ments of the past. The age might be frivolous and 
 luxurious; but he knew well that the Roman mind 
 was profoundly religious. There was all the machin¬ 
 ery of an elaborate ecclesiastical ritual, and it still 
 commanded respect. Augustus not only swayed the 
 armies of Rome—he was also supreme pontiff; and 
 no doubt any arrangement in which such a title had 
 been omitted, would have been felt to be imperfect. 
 In this capacity he could satisfy the vague and widely- 
 diffused popular notion which connected Rome’s great¬ 
 ness with her religion. The gods had been neglected, 
 and their temples had fallen into decay during the 
 civil wars; and we may well believe that Horace ex¬ 
 pressed what was in the minds of many when he pro¬ 
 phesied dire judgments on the State unless the sacred 
 buildings were restored.* To this work the emperor 
 assiduously applied himself. He built temple after 
 temple, established priesthoods, and revived old reli¬ 
 gious ceremonials. Everywhere in the capital were 
 now to be seen the outward signs of piety and devo¬ 
 tion. Religion, in fact—its history, its ritual, all its 
 ancient associations—became subjects of popular inter¬ 
 est; and, as might be expected, a fashionable poet 
 could not do otherwise than recognize in his verses the 
 growth of this new taste among his countrymen. Kor 
 would he find any difficulty in doing so. A Roman 
 could seldom be original; but, on the other hand, there 
 
 * Odes, iii. 6, 
 
78 
 
 OVID. 
 
 was scarcely anything for which a model could not be 
 found in Greek literature. Alexandria had long been 
 a famous literary centre, and its scholars and authors 
 had handled every conceivable subject, human and 
 divine. There, in the third century b.c., in the reigns 
 of Ptolemy Pkiladelphus and Ptolemy Euergetes, had 
 flourished Callimachus, specially distinguished by his 
 attainments as a grammarian and critic. He was at 
 the head, as he no doubt well deserved to be, of the 
 great library of Alexandria. Unfortunately, of his 
 more learned works, which were on a vast scale, noth¬ 
 ing but the titles and a few meagre fragments have 
 come down to us. He was, however, a poet as well as 
 a scholar, and some of his poems, hymns, and epigrams 
 have survived. It appears that they were singularly 
 popular, though, it must be admitted, they remind us 
 of the familiar proverb, “A poet is born, not made.” 
 However, it is certain that the Roman poets of the Au¬ 
 gustan age liked them, and thought it worth their while 
 to imitate them. Catullus has done this in his famous 
 poem on the “Hair of Berenice.” Propertius even 
 made it his aim to be a Roman Callimachus, and some¬ 
 times became intolerably obscure and affected in the 
 attempt. It need not surprise us that Ovid followed in 
 the wake of two such eminent men. He knew the pub¬ 
 lic for whom he was writing; he knew, too, what sort 
 of poems would be approved by the emperor and the 
 court. A learned poem, dwelling on the old worship of 
 his country, and commemorating the glories of its great 
 families, would appeal successfully to a wide circle of 
 readers. For such a work he had a model ready to his 
 hand in an epic of Callimachus, which appears to have 
 given in detail a multitude of myths and legends, with 
 some account of old customs and religious rites. This 
 
THE FASTI ; OR ROMAN CALENDAR. 79 
 
 poem, which has not come down to us, was entitled 
 “ Causes,” and was, it may be supposed, a learned poet, 
 ical dissertation on the cause or origin of the various 
 beliefs current among mankind, and of the outward 
 forms in which they had embodied themselves. It was 
 this elaborate work which Ovid undertook to imitate, 
 and perhaps to popularize. The result is the poem 
 commonly known as the “Fasti.” 
 
 We may describe this work as a sort of handbook of 
 the Roman Calendar, or as a poetical almanac, or as a 
 ritual in verse. It gives, as Dean Merivale says, “the 
 seasons and reasons” of every special religious worship 
 and ceremonial. The mythology of old Rome and the 
 legends of her heroes are worked, and worked with 
 wonderful success, into the texture of the poem. What 
 in the hands of a mere Dryasdust would have been in¬ 
 tolerably w T earisome and dull, becomes under Ovid’s 
 treatment the lightest and pleasantest of reading. The 
 marvellous ease and dexterity with which he turns his 
 not always very plastic materials into the smoothest and 
 most graceful verse, perpetually strikes a scholar with 
 amazement. He takes a story or a legend from some 
 old annalist, and tells it with a neatness and a finish 
 which, in its own way, has never been rivalled. This 
 was a charm which a Roman must have appreciated 
 better than we can, but there were many other things 
 which tended to make the “Fasti” a thoroughly popular 
 poem. It must have been pleasant to an ordinary reader 
 to have picked up a good deal of antiquarian lore in a 
 few hours of easy and delightful reading. The book 
 would continually have been in the hands of the fash¬ 
 ionable lady, who would think that it became her posi¬ 
 tion to know something about the meaning and rationale 
 of her religious observances. And we may take for 
 
80 
 
 OVID 
 
 granted it would please Augustus. Anything which 
 familiarized the people with old beliefs and traditions 
 would be certain to have his hearty sympathies.. The 
 poet, too, of course, took care to extol and magnify the 
 great family of the Julii, and to hint every now and 
 then that Roman grandeur was providentially connected 
 with their supremacy. 
 
 Such is the general idea and purpose of the poem. 
 That it was begun, and in a great measure completed, 
 while the poet was still living at Rome, is beyond a 
 doubt. His misfortune (he is speaking of his banish¬ 
 ment) had, he says, interrupted his work. Like the 
 “Metamorphoses," it was in an unfinished condition 
 when he was driven into exile, and it is probable that 
 he found employment and consolation in giving the 
 finishing touches to both works. Some portions were 
 certainly added during the last year of his life. In one 
 passage he deplores the remoteness of his Scythian 
 abode from his native Sulmo. In another, he speaks of 
 the triumph which had been granted to Caesar German- 
 icus for his victories over the Clierusei, Chatti, and 
 Angrivarii—a triumph voted in a.d. 15, but not actually 
 celebrated till two years afterwards. And a third pass¬ 
 age seems to allude to a great work of temple restoration 
 which the Emperor Tiberius brought to an end in the 
 latter year. 
 
 The poem, as we have it, is in six books; originally 
 (of this there can hardly be a doubt) it consisted of 
 twelve, each-month of the Roman calendar having a 
 book devoted to it. The calendar, like our own week, 
 had a religious basis. Some of the months took their 
 names from Roman divinities. March had been the first 
 month in the old calendar, according to which the year 
 was diyided into ten months. The first Csesar, who 
 
THE FASTI OR ROMAN CALENDAR, 81 
 
 laid Ms reforming hand on everything, brought his 
 universal knowledge to bear on this intricate subject, 
 and introduced a new arrangement by which the year 
 was henceforth to be made up of twelve months, Janu¬ 
 ary being the first. Ovid represents the god Janus as 
 visibly appearing to him, and explaining his origin and 
 attributes. A key is in his left hand, as a symbol of his 
 august office as the Beginner and Opener of all things. 
 He addresses Ovid as the “laborious poet of the Days,” 
 and then unfolds his various mysterious functions, and 
 the meaning of the two faces which were regarded as 
 his appropriate representation. 
 
 The poet describes himself as encouraged to continue 
 the dialogue. He wants to know why the year should 
 begin with cold, rather than what might seem a more 
 appropriate commencement, the warmth of spring. He 
 is told that it follows the sun, which now, gathering 
 strength and lengthening its course, begins a new exist¬ 
 ence. “ Why should not New-Year’s day be a holiday?” 
 “ We must not begin by setting an example of idleness.” 
 Then, after other questions, “What is the meaning of 
 the customary gift of palm, and dried figs, and honey 
 in the white comb?” “It is well that the year, if it is 
 to be sweet, should begin with sweets.” “ But why 
 presents of money ?” 
 
 “ He smiled. 1 Strange fancies of your time you hold, 
 
 To think that honey is as sweet as gold! 
 
 Scarce one I knew in Saturn’s golden reign, 
 
 Whose master-passion was not love of gain. 
 
 And still with time it grew and rules to-day 
 So widely, nothing can extend its sway. 
 
 Not thus were riches prized in days of yore, 
 
 When Rome was new, and scant its people’s store. 
 
 Then Mars’ great son, a cottage o’er his head, 
 
 Of river-sedges made his narrow bed. 
 
82 
 
 OVID. 
 
 So small his temple, Jove could scarcely stand 
 Upright, his earthen thunder in his hand 
 Undecked the shrines which now with jewels blaze; 
 
 Each lord of council led his sheep to graze: 
 
 And felt no shame that sleep should lap his head 
 With hay for pillow and with straw for bed. 
 
 Fresh from the plough the consul ruled the state. 
 
 And fined the owner of a pound* of plate.’ ” 
 
 And so the god goes on inveighing against the univer¬ 
 sal greed of gain, though he owns himself in the end 
 not averse to the more sumptuous manners of modern 
 days: 
 
 Bronze once they gave; now bronze gives place to gold, 
 And the new money supersedes the old. 
 
 We too—we praise the past, yet love a shrine 
 Of gold;—gold suits the majesty divine.” 
 
 Janus then explains the significance of the emblems 
 on the coins that were given on his festival. The double 
 head on one side was his own likeness; the ship on 
 the reverse was the memorial of that which in old 
 time had borne Saturn, expelled from the throne of 
 heaven, to his kingdom in Italy. A description of his 
 happy reign follows, and then an antiquarian explana¬ 
 tion of the situation of his temple, opening, as it did, 
 on the two market-places of Rome—the cattle-market 
 and the Forum properly so called. The last question 
 which the curiosity of the poet suggests refers to the 
 well-known custom which kept the temple open when 
 the State was at war, and shut it on the rare occa¬ 
 sions (three only are recorded as having occurred dur¬ 
 ing the time of the Commonwealth) when it was at 
 peace: 
 
 ♦The real quantity allowed was five -pounds; but the transla¬ 
 tion fairly represents the exaggeration of the original. 
 
TEE FASTI, OR ROMAN CALENDAR 88 
 
 “ ‘ In war, all bolts drawn back, my portals stand, 
 
 Open for hosts that seek their native land; 
 
 In peace, fast closed, they bar the outward way, 
 
 And still shall bar it under Caesar’s sway.’ 
 
 He spake: before, behind, his double gaze 
 All that the world contained at once surveys; 
 
 And all was peace; for now with conquered wave, 
 
 The Rhine, Germanicus, thy triumph gave. 
 
 Peace and the friends of peace immortal make, 
 
 Nor let the lord of earth his work forsake 1” 
 
 Under the same day, the first of January, is recorded 
 the dedication of the temples of Jupiter and iEscula- 
 pius. Under the fifth is noted the setting of the con¬ 
 stellation of Cancer—information which the poet tells 
 us he means to give whenever occasion demands. Five 
 other days of the month are similiarly distinguished. 
 On the eleventh of January occurs the festival of the 
 Agonalia, and Ovid takes the opportunity to display 
 his etymological learning in accounting for the name. 
 Was it given bacause the priest, as he stood ready to 
 Bmite the victim, said, “Shall I strike?” (Agone?) or 
 because the beasts do not come of their own accord, 
 but are driven ( aguntur) to the sacrifice? Or is the 
 word Agnalia (the sacrifice of lambs) with the “ 0 ” in¬ 
 serted? or does it come from the agony with which the 
 victim sees the shadow of the sacrificial knife in the 
 water? or is it derived from the Greek word for the 
 games {agones) which formed part of the festival in old 
 times? Ovid’s own view is that agonia was an old 
 word for the animals which it was customary to sacri¬ 
 fice. With characteristic ingenuity, he digresses into 
 an elegant history of the growth of sacrifice. Meal 
 and salt sufficed for the simple offerings of early days. 
 No spices then had come from across the sea. Savin 
 and the crackling bay-leaf gave perfume enough; and 
 
84 
 
 OVID . 
 
 it was only the Wealthy who could add violets to the 
 garlands of wild flowers. The earliest victim was the 
 pig, which was sacrificed to Ceres, in punishment for 
 the injury that he did to the crops under her protection. 
 Warned by his fate, the goat should have spared the vine- 
 shoots; but he offended, and fell a victim to the wrath 
 of Bacchus. The pig and the goat were guilty. But how 
 had the ox and sheep offended? The ox first suffered 
 at the bidding of Proteus, from whom the shepherd 
 Aristseus, disconsolate at the loss of his bees, learnt 
 that a carcass buried in the ground would furnish him 
 with a new supply.* The sheep was guilty, it would 
 seem, of eating the sacred herb vervian. What animal 
 could hope to escape, when the ox and the sheep per¬ 
 ished? The Sun-god demanded the horse, swiftest of 
 animals; Diana, the hind, which once had been made 
 the substitute for the maiden Iphigenia.f “ I myself," 
 says Ovid, “have seen the wild tribes who dwell near 
 the snow of Heemus sacrifice the dog to Hecate." 
 Even the ass falls a victim to Silenus, who could never 
 forgive him for an untimely bray. Birds suffer because 
 they reveal the counsels of the gods by the indications 
 of the future which soothsayers detect in their move¬ 
 ments and their cries. The goose is not protected by 
 
 * This notion that the corruption of animal matter would pro¬ 
 duce bees seems to have been a serious belief among the 
 ancients. Virgil, who writes about bees as if he really knew 
 something of the subject, recommends the process with apparent 
 Seriousness, though it is possible that he used it as a convenient 
 introduction for the legend of Aristae us, with its beautiful episode 
 of Orpheus and Eurydice. 
 
 t The feeling of later times revolted against the legend which 
 represented Iphigenia as really sacrificed to appease the powers 
 which hindered her father’s enterprise. Just so we find the story 
 of Jephthah’s vow softened down to something less barbarous. 
 
TM FASTI, on ROMAN CALENDAR. 85 
 
 the service which he did to Rome in wakening the 
 defenders of the Capitol. And the cock, who summons 
 the day, is made an offering to the Goddess of Night. 
 
 The thirteenth of the month introduces the story of 
 Evander, one of the graceful narrations with which 
 Ovid relieves the antiquarian details of the “Fasti.” 
 Evander is indeed a conspicuous personage in Italian 
 legend. An Arcadian prince, banished in early youth 
 from his native land, but not for any fault of his own, 
 he had settled in Italy many years before the Trojan 
 war. He was in extreme old age when iEneas, carry¬ 
 ing with him the fortunes of the future Rome, landed 
 on the Latin shore; and he gave to the struggle the 
 support of his first alliance. Yirgil in his great epic 
 has made a copious use of the story. The voyage of 
 the Trojan chief up the unknown stream of Tiber to 
 the homely court of the Arcadian king, his hospitable 
 reception, the valor and untimely death of the young 
 Pallas, who leads his father’s troops to fight by the side 
 of the destined heirs of Italy, furnish some of the most 
 striking scenes in the “iEneid.” Ovid, in describing 
 Evander’s arrival in Italy, puts into his mouth a 
 prophecy of the future greatness of Rome, which with 
 characteristic dexterity he turns into elaborate flattery 
 of Tiberius and Livia,' the emperor’s mother. This 
 passage, which, it is evident, was written after the 
 death of Augustus, is one of the many proofs that the 
 Fasti were kept under revision until close upon the 
 end of the poet’s life. To the legend of Evander is 
 attached the story of Hercules and Cacus. Roman 
 writers were anxious to make their own country the 
 scene of some of the wondrous exploits of the great 
 “knight-errant” of antiquity. The tale ran as fol- 
 lows* 
 
m 
 
 ovm 
 
 Somewhere near the strait which joins the Atlantic to 
 the Inner Sea dwelt Geryones, a hideous monster with 
 triple body, master of a head of oxen of fabulous 
 beauty. Him the wandering Hercules slew, and driv- 
 ing the cattle homewards to Argos, found himself—• 
 having, it would seem, somewhat lost his way—near 
 Evander’s city, on the banks of Tiber. He was hos¬ 
 pitably entertained by the Arcadian; and his cattle 
 meanwhile wandered at their will over the fields. 
 Next morning he missed two of the bulls. It seemed in 
 vain to search for them. They had been stolen, indeed, 
 but the robber had dragged them tail-foremost into his 
 cave, and the device was sufficient to puzzle the simple- 
 minded hero. The robber was Cacus, the terror of the 
 Aventine forest, a son of Yulcan, huge of frame, and 
 strong as he was huge, whose dwelling was in a cave, 
 
 t 
 
 which even the wild beasts could hardly find, its en¬ 
 trance hideous with limbs and heads of men, and its 
 floor white with human bones. Hercules was about to 
 depart, when the bellowing of the imprisoned oxen 
 reached him. Guided by the sound, he found the cave. 
 Cacus had blocked the entrance with a large mass of 
 rock, which even five yoke of oxen could scarcely have 
 stirred. But the shoulders that had supported the 
 heavens were equal to the task. The rock gave way, 
 and the robber had to fight for his prey and his life. 
 First with fists, then with stones and sticks he fought, 
 and finding himself worsted, had recourse to his father’s 
 aid, and vomited forth fire in the face of his foe. All 
 was in vain; the knotted club descended, and the 
 monster fell dying on the ground. The victor sacri¬ 
 ficed one of the cattle to Jupiter, and left a memorial of 
 himself in the ox-market, the name of which was traced, 
 not to the commonplace explanation of its use, but to 
 
THE FASTI, OR ROMAN CALENDAR. 87 
 
 the animal which the victorious son of Jupiter had 
 there sacrificed to his sire. 
 
 What remains in the book may be passed over with 
 brief notice. The thirteenth of the month was dis¬ 
 tinguished as the day on which Augustus had amused 
 the Roman people, and gratified his own passion for 
 veiling despotism under republican forms, by restoring 
 to the senate the control of the provinces in which 
 peace had been restored. On the eighteenth was com¬ 
 memorated the dedication of the Temple of Concord, 
 first made when Camillus had reconciled contending 
 orders in the State, and renewed by Tiberius after com¬ 
 pleting his German conquests. A memorable holiday, 
 that of the “sowing day," was fixed at the discretion 
 of the pontiff, near the end of the month. The thir¬ 
 tieth commemorated the dedicatiion of the altar to 
 Peace, and afforded the poet yet another opportunity 
 of offering his homage to the house of Augustus: 
 
 “ Her tresses bound with Actium’s* crown of bay, 
 
 Peace comes; in all the world, sweet goddess stay I 
 Her altar flames, ye priests, with incense feed, 
 
 Bid ’neath the axe the snow-white victim bleed I 
 Pray willing heaven, that Caesar’s house may stand, 
 
 Long as the peace it gives a wearied landl” 
 
 It would weary the reader, even did space permit, 
 to go into like detail through the poet’s account of 
 each month. He begins each with an attempt to 
 determine the etymology of its name. That of Feb¬ 
 ruary, he tells us, was to be found in the word februa , 
 a name given by the Romans of old to certain offerings 
 
 * At the battle of Actium (fought b.c. 31) the civil wars which 
 had raged at intervals for more than sixty years were brought 
 to a final close by the victors of Octavious Caesar over his rival 
 Antony. 
 
88 
 
 OVID. 
 
 of a purifying and expiatory nature used at this 
 time. The purification of the flocks and herds, as 
 well as of human beings, was a very important ele¬ 
 ment in the religious life of Rome; and the words lus¬ 
 trum and lustratio, which denote certain forms of puri¬ 
 fication, are well known to every student of Roman 
 history. February is therefore the “purifying” 
 month; and its name thus testifies to a widespread be¬ 
 lief in the need of cleansing and expiation. March, of 
 course, takes its name from the god Mars, the father of 
 Rome’s legendary founder. For April the poet gives 
 a fanciful etymology. “Spring,” he says, “opens” 
 ( aperit ) “all things;” and so, he adds, “April, accord¬ 
 ing to tradition, means the ' open ’ time” (aperlum tern- 
 pus). It is the time of love; and Venus during this 
 month is in the ascendant, “the goddess who is all- 
 powerful in earth, in heaven, in sea.” For the next 
 month, May, Ovid confesses that he has no satisfactory 
 theory to offer as to its name. He suggests that it is 
 formed from the root of major and majestas. “May,” he 
 says, “is the month for old men; and its special 
 function is to teach the young reverence for age. 
 “Majestas/ - indeed, was regarded, after Roman fash¬ 
 ion—which delighted in real personifications—as a 
 divinity, whom Romulus and Numa worshipped as the 
 upholder of filial reverence and obedience, and also as 
 the rightful disposer of offices and honors of State in 
 their due order. With this divinity the month of May 
 was associated. June is Juno’s month, though Ovid 
 admits that the explanation is doubtful. He repre¬ 
 sents the goddess as appearing to him in a secluded 
 grove when he was pondering within himself on the 
 origin of the name. She tells him that, as he has un¬ 
 dertaken to celebrate in his verse the religious festivals 
 
The fasti, or roman calendar. 89 
 
 of Rome, be has thereby won for himself the privilege 
 of beholding the divine essence. As she was both the 
 wife and sister of Jupiter, her month would speak to 
 the public of Rome of the marriage-tie and of family 
 bonds. With the sixth book the Fasti, as we have 
 them, come to an end. 
 
 The name having been thus accounted for, astro¬ 
 nomical occurrences, religious ceremonies, matters of 
 ritual, the anniversaries of dedications of temples and 
 altars, and the like, are duly recorded, the poet avail¬ 
 ing himself of every opportunity to introduce some his¬ 
 torical or mythological legend. They are the most 
 attractive part of the work, for Ovid is always happy in 
 narrative. Among the most noticeable of the historical 
 class is the tale of the three hundred and six Fabii who 
 fell on the plains of Yeii, in the battle of the Cremera, 
 fighting with an heroic courage, in which Roman 
 patriotism found a match for the great deed of Leoni¬ 
 das and his three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae. 
 Indeed, though it would be rash to deny altogether the 
 genuineness of the narrative, there is something suspi¬ 
 cious about the Roman legend. The historians of Rome 
 had indeed a singular power of embellishment and in¬ 
 vention, and it is not doing them any injustice to sup¬ 
 pose that the original story, whatever it may have been, 
 grew somewhat beneath their hands. The legend, to 
 which the reader may give such credence as he pleases, 
 runs thus: 
 
 In the early days of the Commonwealth, Rome was 
 troubled much by dissension at home, and by the at¬ 
 tacks of her Etruscan neighbors on the north. The 
 great house of the Fabii had fallen into disfavor with 
 their countrymen. What could they do better than at 
 once rid the city of a presence which was no longer 
 
so 
 
 OVID. 
 
 welcome, while they served their country by attacking 
 its enemies abroad? So they go forth, a little band, 
 wholly composed of men of the Fabian race. “ One 
 house,” says the poet, “had taken on itself the whole 
 might and burden of Rome: any one of them was 
 worthy to be a commander.” They cross the Cremera, 
 one of the tributaries of the Tiber, a little stream then 
 swollen by the melting of the snows of winter. The 
 enemy fly before them; they penetrate into a Wooded 
 plain well fitted for the treacherous ambuscade. 
 “Whither do ye rush, O noble house? to your peril 
 do you trust the foe. Simple-hearted nobility, beware 
 of the weapons of treachery!” All in a moment the 
 enemy issue from the woods, and escape is utterly cut 
 off. “What can a few brave heroes do against so many 
 thousands? What resource is left them in so dire a 
 crisis?” But the Fabii did not die unavenged: “as the 
 boar in the forests of Laurentum, when at last brought 
 to bay, deals havoc among the hounds,” so these 
 intrepid warriors fall amid a multitude of jBlain foes. 
 “Thus,” as the poet says, “a single day sent forth 
 all the Fabii to the war; a single day destroyed them 
 all.” But one of the family was left, a stripling, who 
 could not as yet bear arms. This was a special provi¬ 
 dence. The gods took care that the house descended 
 from Hercules should not be utterly extinguished. It 
 had a great destiny before it. “ The stripling was pre¬ 
 served,” the poet says, “that he who was surnamed 
 Maximus, as Hannibal’s formidable antagonist, might 
 hereafter be born,” the man who, by his policy of delay 
 ( cunctando , whence his surname of Cunctator), was to 
 restore the fortunes of Rome. 
 
 Another well-told legend is that of the translation * 
 
 * Book ii. 481. 
 
TEE FASTI, OR ROMAN CALENDAR. 91 
 
 and deification of Romulus: “When his father, mighty 
 in arms, saw the new walls of the city completed, and 
 many a war ended by his son’s prowess, he uttered this 
 prayer to Jupiter: ‘ Rome’s power now is firmly planted; 
 she needs not my child’s help. Restore the son to 
 the father; though one has perished, I shall still have 
 one left me in his own stead and in the stead of Remus. 
 There will be one for thee to raise to the azure vault of 
 heaven: thou hast spoken the word; Jove’s word must 
 be fulfilled.’” The prayer was at once granted, and, 
 amid parting clouds, the king, while he was in the act 
 of administering justice to his people, was carried up 
 with peals of thunder and lightning-flashes into the 
 heavens, on his father’s steeds. The grief of Rome was 
 solaced by a vision of the departed hero, who appeared 
 to one of the Julii as he was on his way from Alba 
 Longa. “Suddenly, with a crash, the clouds on his 
 left hand parted asunder; he drew back, and his hair 
 stood on end. Romulus seemed to stand before him— 
 a grand and more than human figure, adorned with the 
 robe of state. He seemed to say, Forbid Rome’s citi¬ 
 zens to mourn; their tears must not insult my divinity. 
 Let them offer incense and worship a new god, Quiri- 
 nus, and pursue their country’s arts and the soldier’s 
 work.” 
 
 Sometimes the poet takes his readers into the obscurer 
 bypaths of the old Italian mythology. These portions 
 of the “ Fasti” have an interest for scholars, though it 
 would appear that Ovid had by no means a profound or 
 philosophical acquaintance with the religion of his an¬ 
 cestors. We meet with the names of divinities which, 
 to the ordinary reader, are altogether unfamiliar. Sucb 
 a name is that of Anna Perenna, a deified sister of the 
 Pii^uiciap Pido ? according to tlie accouptg Ipotb Ql 
 
D2 
 
 OVID . 
 
 Virgil and Ovid. She was a river-nymph, and ‘to this 
 her name Perenna (everlasting) was meant to point, 
 Her story* is related at great length by Ovid. Her 
 yearly festival, it appears, was celebrated on the Ides of 
 March, and was a somewhat grotesque ceremony. The 
 populace had a sort of picnic on the grassy banks of the 
 Tiber, and indulged themselves very freely. Indeed 
 there was a distinct motive to drink without stint, as it 
 was the custom to pray for as many years of life as they 
 had drunk cups of wine. The connection between the 
 two is not to us very obvious; but, if we may trust Ovid, 
 there were those who would drink out the years of the 
 long-lived Nestor in the hope of attaining that worthy’s 
 age. Some, too, to judge from the number of tlieir 
 cups, deserved to rival the Sibyl in longevity. There 
 they sang all the songs they had heard at the theatre, 
 and having drunk and sung to their heart’s content, 
 they had a merry dance. One is not surprised to hear 
 that many of them cut sorry figures on their return 
 home. “ I lately met them,” says our poet; “a drunken 
 old woman was dragging along a drunken old man.” 
 Let us hope their prayer for a long life was answered. 
 He ends his account of this Anna Perenna with an amus¬ 
 ing little story about her. When she had been made 
 a goddess, Mars paid her a visit, and had some private 
 conversation with her. “ You are worshipped,” he said, 
 “ in my month; I have great hopes from your kind as¬ 
 sistance. 1 am on fire with love of Minerva; we both of 
 us bear arms, and long have I been cherishing my pas¬ 
 sion. Contrive that, as we follow the same pursuit, we 
 may be united. The part well becomes you, O good- 
 natured old woman!” Anna professed her willingness to 
 
 * Bo<?k iii, 
 
THE FASTI i OR ROMAN CALENDER. 93 
 
 help the god of war, and undertook the delicate business 
 of arranging a meeting. However, for a time she put 
 him off with promises; but at last the ardent lover 
 was, as he thought, to be gratified. So the god hur¬ 
 ried off to meet the object of his affections; but when 
 in his impatience he raised her veil, and was about to 
 snatch a kiss, he found that Anna had played him a 
 trick, and had dressed herself up as Minerva. He was 
 naturally angry and ashamed of himself, all the more so 
 as the new goddess laughed him to scorn, and as his 
 old flame Venus thoroughly enjoyed the joke. It ap¬ 
 pears that this legendary hoax, which Ovid tells in 
 his best way, gave occasion to a number of sly and 
 humorous sayings among the merry people on the 
 banks of the Tiber. It was, no doubt, great fun for 
 them to think of the august deity to whom their city 
 wed its founder and first king, having been “sold” in 
 such a fashion. 
 
 It will be seen from this instance that Ovid knew how 
 to relieve what might seem a dry subject with a few 
 light touches. His “Fasti” have many amusing as 
 well as beautiful passages, and strikingly illustrate his 
 consummate skill in versified narrative. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 DEPARTURE FROM ROME—THE PLACE OF EXILE. 
 
 A well-known paragraph of Gibbon’s great work 
 describes the hopeless condition of anyone who sought 
 to fly from the anger of the man who ruled the Roman 
 world, and to whom, in right of that rule, all human civ¬ 
 ilization belonged. The fugitive could not hide himself 
 within its limits; and to seek escape among the savage 
 
94 
 
 OVID. 
 
 and hostile tribes which lay beyond them was an idea 
 too horrible, if it had not been too preposterous, to 
 entertain. The historian illustrates his remarks by the 
 example of Ovid. “He received an order to leave 
 Rome in so many days, and to transport himself to 
 Tomi. Guards and jailers were unnecessary." But a 
 culprit visited with the severer forms of the punish¬ 
 ment of exile would have been more carefully watched. 
 Such persons were commonly escorted to the selected 
 spot by a centurion whom, in more than one instance, 
 we find privately instructed to inflict the capital pen¬ 
 alty which the name of exile had only veiled. But the 
 concession which, in the case of the milder sentence, 
 mitigated the harshness of the punishment, rendered 
 such custody needless. The banished person was then 
 permitted to retain the income of his property, and the 
 permission was an effectual tie to the place in which 
 alone that income would be paid to him. 
 
 Another proof of what has been urged in a previous 
 chapter, that Ovid had no dangerous secrets in his keep¬ 
 ing, may be found in the prolonged period which was 
 allowed him to prepare for his banishment. So pro¬ 
 longed was it, he tells us in his own account of his final 
 departure from his home, that he had suffered himself 
 to forget the inevitable end, and was at last taken by 
 surprise. The whole account is eminently graphic and 
 not a little pathetic, and it shall be given as nearly as 
 possible in the poet’s own words: 
 
 “ When there starts up before me the sad, sad picture of that 
 night wh' was the last of my life in Rome, when I remember 
 the night on which I left so many of my treasures, even now the 
 tear falls from my eyes. The day had almost come on which 
 Caesar had bid me pass beyond the farthest limits of Italy. But 
 1 had not had the thought of preparation. Nay, the very time 
 had h§en against mo; so long the delay, that my heart had 
 
THE EXILE EUOM LOME. 
 
 05 
 
 grown slothful at the thought of it. I had taken no pains to 
 select my slaves, or to choose a companion, or to procure the 
 clothing or the money that a banished man required. I was as 
 dazed as one who, struck by the bolts of Jupiter, lives, but is all 
 unconscious of his life. But when my very grief had cleared 
 away the mist from my soul, and I was at last myself again, I 
 addressed for the last time ere my departure my sorrowing 
 friends,—there were but one or two out of all the crowd. My 
 loving wife clasped me close; bitter my tears, still bitterer hers, 
 as they ever poured dow’n her innocent cheeks. My daughter 
 was far away on African shores, and could not have heard of her 
 father’s fate. Look where you w r ould, there was wailing and 
 groaning, and all the semblance of a funeral, clamorous in its 
 grief. My funeral it was; husband and wife and the very slaves 
 were mourners; every corner of my house was full of tears. 
 Such—if one may use a great example for a little matter—such 
 was the aspect of Troy in its hour of capture. And now the 
 voices of men and dogs were growing still, and the moon w r as 
 guiding high in heaven the steeds of night. As I regarded it, 
 and saw in its light the two summits of the Capitol,—the Capitol 
 that adjoined but did not protect my home,— 1 Powers,’ I cried, 
 ‘ who dwell in these neighboring shrines, and temples that my 
 eyes may never look upon again, and ye gods, dwelling in the 
 lofty city of Romulus, gods whom now I must leave, take my 
 farew r ell for ever! Too late, indeed, and already wounded, I 
 snatch up the shield; yet acquit, I pray, my banishment of an 
 odious crime; and tell the human denizen of heaven * what w r as 
 the error that deceived me, lest he think it a crime I'ather than a 
 mistake; tell it that the author of my punishment may see the 
 truth which you know. My god once propitiated, I shall be 
 wretched no longer. These were the prayers that I addressed 
 to heaven; my w r ife, with sobs that stopped her words half w T ay, 
 spoke many more. She, too, before our home-gods threw her¬ 
 self with dishevelled hair, and touched with trembling lips our 
 extinguished hearth. Many a prayer she poured out in vain to 
 their hostile deity, words that might avail naught for the hus» 
 band whom she mourned. And now night, hurrying down the 
 steep, forbade further delay, and the Bear of Arcady had 
 traversed half the sky. What could I do? Tender love for my 
 country held me fast; but that night was the last before my 
 
 * Augustus. 
 
§6 
 
 ovii). 
 
 doom of banishment. Ah! how often would I say, when some 
 one would bid me haste, ‘Why hurry me? think whither you 
 would hasten my steps, and whither I must go!’ Ah! how often 
 did I pretend to have settled on some certain hour which would 
 suit my purposed voyage! Thrice I touched the threshold,* 
 thrice I was called back; my very feet, as if to indulge my heart, 
 lingered on their way. Often, farewell once spoken, I said many 
 a word; often, as if I was really departing, I bestowed my last 
 kisses. Often I gave the same commands; I cheated my own 
 self, as I looked on the pledges so dear to my eyes. And then, 
 ‘ Why do I hasten? It is Scythia to which I am being sent; it is 
 Rome which I have to leave; both justify delay. My wife is 
 refused to me for ever, and yet we both live; my family and the 
 dear member of that faithful family; yes, and you, my compan¬ 
 ions, whom I loved with a brother’s love, hearts joined to mine 
 with the loyalty of a Theseus! while I may, I embrace you; 
 perchance I may never do so again; the hour that is allowed me 
 is so much gain.’ It is the end: I leave my words unfinished, 
 while I embrace in heart all that is dearest to me. While I speak, 
 and we all weep, bright shining in the height of heaven, Lucifer, 
 fatal star to us, had risen; I am rent in twain, as much as if I 
 were leaving my limbs behind; one part of my very frame 
 seemed to be torn from the other. Such was the agony of 
 Mettus when he found the avengers of his treachery in the steeds 
 driven opposite ways. Then rose on high the cries and the 
 groanings of my household, then the hands of mourners beat 
 uncovered breasts, and then my wife, clinging to my shoulder 
 as I turned away, mingled with her tears these mournful words: 
 ‘You cannot be torn from me; together, ah! together will we 
 go. I will follow you; an exile myself, I will be an exile’s wife. 
 For me too is the journey settled; me too that distant land shall 
 receive; ’tis but a small burden that will be added to the exile’s 
 bark. ’Tis the wrath of Caasar that bids thee leave thy country 
 —’tis love that bids me; love shall be in Caesar’s place.’ Such 
 was her endeavor,—such had been her endeavor before; scarcely 
 would she surrender, overpowered by expediency. I go forth; 
 it was rather being carried forth without the funeral pomp; I go 
 all haggard, with hair drooping over unshaven face; and she, 
 
 * To touch the threshold with the foot in crossing it was con¬ 
 sidered unlucky. 
 
THE EXILE FROM ROME. 
 
 97 
 
 they tell me, as in her grief for me the mist rose all before her, 
 fell fainting in the midst of the dwelling; and when, her hair all 
 smirched with the unseemly dust, she rose again, lifting her 
 limbs from the cold ground, she bewailed now herself, now her 
 deserted hearth, and called again and again the name of her lost 
 husband, and groaned, not less than had she seen the high-built 
 funeral pile claim her daughter’s body or mine. Gladly would 
 she have died, and lost all feeling in death; and yet she lost it 
 not, out of thought for me. Long may she live; live, and ever 
 help with her aid her absent—so the Fates will have it—her ab¬ 
 sent husband.”—The “Sorrows,” i. 3. 
 
 It was in the month of December that the poet left 
 Rome. One faithful friend, the Fabius Maximus of 
 whom we have heard before, accompanied him. Fol¬ 
 lowing the Appian road to Brundusium, then, as after 
 many centuries it has become again, the usual route of 
 western travellers bound eastward, he crossed the 
 Adriatic. A fearful storm, not unusual at this season, 
 encountered him on his way; and the indefatigable 
 poet describes it in his most elegant verse—too elegant, 
 indeed, to allow us to suppose that it was written, as 
 it claims to be, in the very midst of the peril. One 
 god was hostile to him. He does not forget his flat¬ 
 tery, and asks might not another (he means Augustus) 
 help him? So Minerva had helped Ulysses, while 
 Neptune sought to destroy him. But it seems vain 
 to pray; the winds will not allow the prayers to reach 
 the gods to whom they are sent. How dreadful is the 
 sight 1—these waves that now reach the heavens, now 
 seem about to sink to hell. He can only be thankful 
 that his wife is not with him, and does not know of his 
 peril: 
 
 “ An exile’s fate her pious tears deplore, 
 
 This is the woe she mourns, and knows no more; 
 
 Knows not her spouse the angry waters’ prey, 
 
 Tossed by wild winds, and near his latest day. 
 
OVID. 
 
 $8 
 
 Kind Heaven, I thank thee, that she is not here, 
 
 Else death had chilled me with a double fear. 
 
 Now though I perish, this the Fates will give— 
 
 Still in my spirit’s better half to live.” 
 
 His terror did not prevent him from observing or ima¬ 
 gining that each tenth wave was especially formidable 
 —a fact which he states in an ingenious phrase that, if 
 it was really invented in the midst of the storm, does 
 special credit to its author: 
 
 “ The ninth it follows, the eleventh precedes.” 
 
 The tempest abated, and the poet reached his destina¬ 
 tion, Lechseum, the eastern harbor of “ Corinth on the 
 two seas.” Traversing the isthmus to the western port, 
 Cenchrea, he embarked again. This time he tells us 
 the name of his ship. The passage is notable as one of 
 the many instances in which our poet’s felicitous mi¬ 
 nuteness of description increases our knowledge of 
 antiquity. Nowhere else is the distinction drawn so 
 clearly between the union of the tutelary deity under 
 whose protection the ship was supposed to be, and the 
 representation of the object from which it got its 
 name. In this instance the vessel was called The 
 Helmet, and bore on its deck an image of “Minerva 
 of the Yellow Locks.” It took him, he tells us, 
 straight to the Troad, or north-western corner of Asia 
 Minor. Thence it sailed to Imbros, and from this 
 island again to Samothrace. It seems to have con¬ 
 tinued its voyage to the place of the poet’s destination, 
 and to have conveyed thither his effects. Ovid him¬ 
 self took passage in a coasting vessel to the neighbor¬ 
 ing shore of Thrace, and made the rest of his journey 
 overland. 
 
 Tomi, or, as Ovid himself calls it, Tomis, was a 
 city of Greek origin (it was a colony of Miletus), situ- 
 
TEE EXILE FROM ROME. 
 
 99 
 
 ated on the western coast of the Black Sea, about two 
 hundred miles to the north of Byzantium. The name 
 may be rendered in English by The Guts. Possibly it 
 was derived from a canal or fosse cut to the nearest point 
 of the Danube, which here approaches, just before 
 making its last bend to the north, within the distance 
 of fifty miles. The so-called Trajan Wall may be the 
 remains of such a work, which probably was intended 
 for purposes of defence rather than of commerce, 
 •though the project of a ship canal between the two 
 points has been mooted more than once. The lively 
 fancy of the poet found in the legend of Medea a more 
 romantic origin. The wicked princess, who embodied 
 the poet’s conception of the wild unscrupulous passion 
 of the oriental character, had resorted, when closely 
 pursued in her flight, to a terrible expedient. She 
 slew her young brother Absyrtus, the darling of the 
 angry father who was following her. His head she 
 fixed on a prominent rock where it could not escape 
 the notice of the pursuers. His limbs she scattered 
 about the fields. She hoped, and not in vain, that the 
 parent’s heart would bid him delay his voyage till he 
 had collected the human remains. It was said that 
 Tomi was the place where the deed was done, and that 
 its name preserved the tradition of its horrible details. 
 
 The town is now called Kostendje, a corruption of 
 Constantina, a name which it received for the same 
 reason which changed Byzantium into Constantinople. 
 It was situated in the province of Lower Moesia. 
 Though not exactly on the frontier, which was here, 
 nominally at least, the Danube, it was practically an 
 outpost of the empire. The plain between it and that 
 river, a district now known by the name of Dobruds- 
 was open to the incursions of the unsubdued 
 
100 
 
 OVID. 
 
 tribes from the further side of the Danube, who, when 
 they had contrived to effect the passage of the river, 
 found nothing to hinder them till they came to the 
 walls of Tomi. 
 
 Ovid describes the place of his exile in the gloomiest 
 language. Such language, indeed, was natural in the 
 mouth of a Roman. To him no charm of climate, no 
 beauty of scenery, no interest of historical association, 
 could make a place endurable, while Rome, the one 
 place in the world which was worth dwelling in, was 
 forbidden to him. It might have been supposed that 
 travel in Greece would have been attractive to Cicero, 
 profoundly versed as he was in its philosophy and 
 literature; but he found it no consolation for his 
 banishment from Italy. And the younger Seneca, 
 whom we may almost call a professional philosopher, 
 found nothing to compensate him for his enforced 
 absence from the capital in the exquisite scenery and 
 climate of Corsica. But Tomi, if its unfortunate in¬ 
 habitant is to be believed, combined in itself every 
 horror. It was in the near neighborhood of savage 
 and barbarous tribes, and was safe from attack only 
 while the broad stream of the Danube flowed between 
 it and the enemy. The climate was terrible; the snow 
 lay often unmelted for two years together. The north 
 wind blew with such fury that it levelled buildings 
 with the ground, or carried away their roofs. The 
 natives went about clad in garments of skin, with their 
 faces only exposed to the air. Their hair, their beards, 
 were covered with icicles. The very wine froze; break 
 the jar and it stood a solid lump; men took not 
 draughts but bites of it. The rivers were covered with 
 ice; the Danube itself, though it was as broad as the 
 Nile, was frozen from shore to shore, and became a, 
 
THE EXILE FllOM ROME. 
 
 101 
 
 highway for horses and men. The sea itself, incredible 
 as it may seem, is frozen. “I,” says the poet, “have 
 myself'walked on it.” 
 
 “ Had such, Leander, been the sea 
 That flowed betwixt thy love and thee, 
 
 Never on Helles’ narrow strait 
 Had come the scandal of thy fate.” 
 
 “ The dolphins cannot leap after their wont: let the 
 north wind rage as it will, it raises no waves. The 
 ships stand firmly fixed as in stone, and the oar cannot 
 cleave the waters. You may see the very fish bound 
 fast in the ice, imprisoned but still alive. But the 
 worst of all the horrors of winter is the easy access 
 which it gives to the barbarian foe. Their vast troops 
 of cavalry, armed with the far-reaching bow, scour the 
 whole country. The rustics fly for their lives, and 
 leave their scanty provisions to be plundered. Some, 
 more unlucky, are carried off into captivity; some per¬ 
 ish by the arrows which this cruel enemy dips in 
 poison. And all that the enemy cannot carry or drive 
 off, he burns.” 
 
 It is difficult to suppose that some of these state¬ 
 ments are not exaggerated. The climate of Bulgaria 
 (the name which Lower Moesia has had since its inva¬ 
 sion by the Bulgarians in the seventh century) bears 
 little resemblance to that which Ovid describes. Ac¬ 
 cording to Humboldt’s maps of the isothermal lines of 
 the world, it should have a temperature not unlike that 
 of northern Spain. Its soil is described as fertile, and 
 the vine is mentioned as one of its chief products. 
 The Danube is not frozen over in the lower as it is in 
 the upper parts of its course ; and though the harbors 
 of some of the Black Sea ports—as, for instance, of 
 Odessa—are soinetirpes blocked for a part of the winter. 
 
102 
 
 ovm 
 
 the phenomenon is not known in the neighborhood of 
 Kostendje. On the other hand, Ovid’s statements are 
 remarkably precise. He anticipates that they will be 
 disbelieved, and he solemnly avers their truth.* And 
 he gives among his descriptions one curious fact which 
 he is not likely to have known except from personal 
 observation, that fish retain their vitality even when 
 firmly embedded in ice. It is quite possible that the 
 climate may have materially changed since Ovid’s 
 time. On more than one occasion the classical poets 
 speak of severities of cold such as are not now experi¬ 
 enced in Italy and Greece. If we allow something for 
 such change, and something also for the exaggeration 
 which not only expressed a genuine feeling of disgust, 
 but might possibly have the effect of moving compas¬ 
 sion, we shall probably be right. 
 
 Ovid’s life in exile, the details of which are brought 
 out in the poems which belong to this period, lasted 
 about eight years. He left Rome in the month of De¬ 
 cember following his fifty-first birthday; he died some 
 time before the beginning of the September after hi 3 
 fifty-ninth. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE POEMS OF EXILE: THE TRISTIA, OR THE 
 “ SORROWS.” 
 
 Ovid’s pen was not idle during the melancholy years 
 of exile which closed his life. He probably, as has 
 been said before, revised the “Metamorphoses.” It is 
 certain that he added largely to the “Fasti.” But the 
 special poems of exile are the “ Sorrows,” the “Letters 
 from tire Pontus.” and the “IMs.” In ibe “borrows” 
 
 v. 
 
THE TRISTIA, on THE “SORROWS” 103 - 
 
 and the “ Letters from the Pontus” Ovid "Pours forth in 
 an unceasing stream his complaints against the cruelty 
 of fate and the miseries of his exile; liis supplications 
 for the removal, or at least the mitigation, of his sen¬ 
 tence; and his entreaties to those who had knowm him 
 in his prosperity, that they would help, or, if help was 
 impossible, would at least remember their fallen friend. 
 It must be confessed that they lack the brilliancy of the 
 earlier poems. The genius of the poet stagnated, as he 
 says himself, in the inclement climate, and amidst the 
 barbarous associations of his place of exile. And the 
 reader is wearied by the garrulous monotony of nearly 
 six thousand verses, in which the absorbing subject of 
 the poet’s own sorrows is only exchanged for flattery— 
 all the more repulsive, because we know it to have been 
 unavailing—of the ruler from whose auger or policy he 
 was suffering. Yet there are not wanting points of in¬ 
 terest. There are graphic sketches of scenery and char¬ 
 acter, touches of pathos, here and there even a gleam of 
 humor, and sometimes, when the occasion brings him 
 to speak of his ow T n genius, and of the fame to which he 
 looked forward, an assertion of independence and dig¬ 
 nity, which is infinitely refreshing amidst his unmanly 
 repining against his fate, and the yet more unmanly 
 adulations by which he hoped to escape it. 
 
 The first book of the “Sorrows” was written and 
 despatched to Rome before Ovid had reached his allot¬ 
 ted place of banishment. A preface commends to all 
 who still remember him at Rome the little volume, 
 which would remind them of the banished Ovid. It 
 was to go in the guise that became an exile’s book. It 
 was to be without the ornaments which distinguished 
 more fortunate volumes. A characteristic passage tells 
 us what these ornaments were, and gives us as good an 
 
104 
 
 OVID. 
 
 idea as we can anywhere get of the appearance of a 
 Roman book. The parchment or paper, on the inner 
 side of which was the writing, was tinted on the outer 
 of a warm and pleasing color, by means of saffron or 
 cedar-oil. The title of the book was written in ver¬ 
 milion letters. The stick round which the roll was 
 made had bosses of ivory, or some other ornamental 
 material, and the ends of the roll w r ere polished and 
 colored black. Any erasure was considered to be a great 
 disfigurement: of such disfigurement the poet’s book 
 was not to be ashamed. Every reader would under¬ 
 stand that sufficient cause was found in the author’s 
 tears. From the same preface we may conjecture that 
 the volume was not actually published, but was, as we 
 should say, printed for private circulation. It was to 
 go to the poet’s home, and find its resting-place, not in 
 the book-stalls round the columns of the temple of 
 Apollo, but on the shelves of the writer’s own mansion. 
 Nowhere, indeed, throughout the “ Sorrows” does Ovid 
 venture to name any one of his friends to whom he ad¬ 
 dresses the various poems of which the several books 
 are composed. His wife only is excepted. If any peril 
 had ever threatened her, it had now passed. Indeed, 
 if the poet is to be believed, she desired nothing more 
 than that she should be allowed to share her husband’s 
 exile. But it was evidently a perilous thing for friends 
 of the banished man to be supposed to keep up any in¬ 
 tercourse with him. Time, though it brought no re¬ 
 laxation to the severity of the punishment, seemed to 
 have removed something of the bitterness with which 
 the poet’s name was regarded at Rome. The ‘ ‘ Letters 
 from the Pontus” are addressed by name to various 
 friends, and we find from them that, instead of the two 
 or three faithful hearts who alone were left to the fallen 
 
TEE TBISTIA, OE TEE “ SORROWS” 105 
 
 man in the early days of his ruin, he had during the 
 latter years of his exile a goodly number of correspond¬ 
 ents. 
 
 Of the second poem in the book, describing the im¬ 
 minent peril of shipwreck in which he 'found himself 
 on his voyage from Italy, mention has already been 
 made. He returns to the same subject in the fourth 
 elegy, mentioning, not without a certain pathos, that 
 the adverse winds had driven him back within sight of 
 that Italy on which it was forbidden him again to set 
 foot. 
 
 The fourth poem, describing his departure from his 
 home, has been already given at length. The fifth 
 makes one of the many fruitless appeals for help which 
 Ovid continued throughout the weary years of his ban¬ 
 ishment to address to any friend whom he thought suf¬ 
 ficiently bold to intercede on his behalf with the of¬ 
 fended Caesar. An elegy addressed to his wife—the 
 first of many poems in which he warmly expresses his 
 gratitude for the devotion with which she was defending 
 his interests against enemies and faithless friends; an¬ 
 other, addressed to a friend, commending to his notice 
 the book of the Metamorphoses, and excusing, on the 
 ground of the sudden interruption caused by the author’s 
 banishment, its many imperfections; and a pathetic 
 remonstrance with one who had once professed a great 
 friendship for him, but had deserted him in his hour of 
 need—these, with two other poems, complete the first 
 book of the “ Sorrows.” It may be noticed, as a proof 
 of the popularity which the poet had attained, that the 
 friend whom Ovid addresses was accustomed to wear 
 in a ring a gem engraved with Ovid’s portrait. Gems 
 were in one sense what miniatures were to the last gen¬ 
 eration, and what photographs are to ourselves; but both 
 
106 
 
 OVID . 
 
 the material and the process of engraving were costly, 
 and it is probable that it was only persons of some note 
 who enjoyed the distinction of having their features 
 thus perpetuated. There is a traditionary likeness of 
 Ovid, which may possibly have come down to us in 
 this way. It is a curious fact that, thanks to this art 
 of gem-engraving, we are well acquainted with the 
 faces of men separated from us by twenty centuries 
 and more, while the outward semblance of those who 
 are within three or four hundred years of our own time 
 has been irrecoverably lost. 
 
 The second book of the “Sorrows” is an elaborate 
 Apologia pro vita sua, addressed to Augustus. He 
 hopes that, as verse had been his ruin, so verse might 
 help to ameliorate his condition. “The emperor him¬ 
 self had acknowledged its power. At his bidding the 
 Roman matrons had chanted the song of praise to 
 Cybele; and he had ordered the hymns which at the 
 Secular Games had been raised to Phoebus.* Might he 
 not hope that the wrath of the terrestrial god might be 
 propitiated in the same way? To pardon was the pre¬ 
 rogative of deity. Jupiter himself, when he had hurled 
 his thunders, allowed the clear sky again to be seen. 
 And who had been more merciful than Augustus? Ovid 
 had seen many promoted to wealth and power, who had 
 born arms against him. No such guilt had been the 
 poet’s. He had never forgotten to offer his prayers for 
 the ruler of Rome, had never failed to sing his praises. 
 And had he not received the emperor’s approval? When 
 
 * The Secular Games were celebrated once in a century. This, 
 at least, was the theory; but more than one emperor found it 
 convenient to shorten the period. The hymn to Phoebus of 
 which Ovid speaks has been preserved in the well-known Secular 
 Hymn (Carman Seeculare) of Horace. 
 
THE TRISTlA, OR THE “SORROWS." 10 * 
 
 the knights had passed in review before him, the poet’s 
 horse had been duly restored to him.* Nay, he had 
 filled high stations of responsibility, had been a member 
 of the Court of the Hundred, and even of the Council 
 of Ten, which presided over it. And all had been 
 ruined by an unhappy mistake 1 Yet the emperor had 
 been merciful. Life had been spared to him, and his 
 paternal property. No decree of the senate or of any 
 judge had condemned him to banishment. The em¬ 
 peror had avenged his own wrongs by an exercise of 
 his own power, but avenged them with a punishment 
 so much milder than it might have been, as to leave 
 him hopes for the future.” These hopes he proceeds 
 to commend to the emperor by elaborate flattery. He 
 appeals successively to the gods, who, if they loved 
 Rome, would prolong the days of its lord; to the 
 country, which would always be grateful for the 
 blessings of his rule; to Livia, the one wife who was 
 worthy of him, and for whom he was the one worthy 
 husband; to the triumphs which his grandsonsf were 
 winning in his name and under his auspices; and 
 implores that if return may not be granted to him, at 
 least some milder exile may be conceded. Here he 
 was on the very verge of the empire, and within reach 
 of its enemies. Was it well that a Roman citizen 
 should be in peril of captivity among barbarous tribes? 
 Ovid then proceeds to set forth an apology for his of¬ 
 fending poems. To the real cause of his banishment 
 he makes one brief allusion. More he dared not say. 
 “I am not worth so much as that I should renew your 
 
 * A knight disgraced by the censor (the emperor was perpet¬ 
 ual censor) had his horse taken from him. 
 
 t Drusus, the son, and Germanicus, the nephew and adopted 
 son, of Tiberius, Augustus’s stepson. 
 
108 
 
 ovtn. 
 
 wounds, O Caesar: it is far too much that you should 
 once have felt the pang.” That in this error, notin 
 any offending poem, lay the real cause of his fall, Ovid 
 was doubtless well aware. Hence it is not too much to 
 suppose that the apology which follows was intended 
 rather for posterity than for the person to whom it is 
 addressed. It is needless to examine it in detail. The 
 sum and substance of it is, that the poems were written 
 for those to whom they could not possibly do any harm; 
 that readers to whose modesty they might be likely to 
 do an injury had been expressly warned off from them; 
 that a mind perversely disposed would find evil any¬ 
 where, even in the most sacred legends; that, if every¬ 
 thing whence the opportunity for wrong might arise 
 was to be condemned, the theatre, the circus, the tern-’ 
 pies with their porticoes so convenient for forbidden 
 meetings, and their associations so strangely tinged 
 with license, would share the same fate. As for him¬ 
 self, his life had been pure but for this one fault; and 
 this fault how many had committed before him! Then 
 follows a long list of poets, who, if to sing of love was 
 an offence, had been grievous offenders. Then there 
 had been poems on dice-playing, and dice had been a 
 grievous offence in the old days. All verses that taught 
 men how to waste that precious thing time,—verses 
 about swimming, about ball-playing, about the truud- 
 ling of hoops (a favorite amusement, it would seem, 
 even with middle-aged Romans), about the furnishings 
 of the table and its etiquette, about the different kinds 
 of earthenware (the fancy for curious pots and pans 
 was, it will be seen, in full force among the wealthy 
 Romans of Ovid’s time),—might be condemned. Plays, 
 too, and pictures, were grievous offenders in the same 
 way. Why should Ovid be the only one to suffer?— 
 
THE TRISTIA, OR THE “SORROWS." 109 
 
 Ovid, too, who had written grave and serious works 
 which no one could censure, and who had never 
 wronged any man by slanderous verses, over whose fail 
 no one rejoiced, but many had mourned. 
 
 “ Permit these pleas thy mighty will to sway, 
 
 Great Lord, thy country’s Father, Hope, and Stay! 
 Return I ask not; though at last thy heart, 
 
 Touched by long suffering, may the boon impart; 
 
 Let not the penalty the fault exceed: 
 
 Exile I bear; for peace, for life I plead.” 
 
 * 
 
 It is probable that the poem was despatched to Rome 
 immediately after its author had reached Tomi. He 
 would not have ventured to put in a plea for the miti¬ 
 gation of punishment before he had at least begun to 
 suffer it; but it is equally certain that the plea would 
 not be long delayed. The third book of the “ Sorrows” 
 was likewise composed and sent off during the first 
 year of his banishment. The twelfth out of its fourteen 
 elegies speaks of the return of spring. The winter of 
 the Pontus, longer than any that he had known before, 
 had passed away; lads and lasses in happier lands were 
 gathering violets; the swallow was building under the 
 eaves; vineyard and forest—strangers* alas! both of 
 them, to the land of the^Ietae—were bursting into leaf. 
 And in Rome’s happier place, which he might never see 
 again, all the athletic sports of the Campus, all the gay 
 spectacles of the theatre, were being enjoyed. The 
 poet’s only solace was that, as even in these dismal re¬ 
 gions spring brought some relief, and opened the sea to 
 navigation, some ship might reach the shore and bring 
 news of Italy and of Caesar’s triumphs. The next elegy 
 must have been written about the same time. Ovid’s 
 birthday (we know it to have been the 20th of March) 
 came, the first that had visited him in his exile. 
 
iio 
 
 OVlB. 
 
 “Would that thou hadst brought/’ he says, “not an 
 additional but an end to my painl ” 
 
 “ What dost thou here? Has angry Caesar sent 
 Thee too to share my hopeless banishment? 
 
 Think’st thou to find the customary rite— 
 
 To see, the while I stand in festive white, 
 
 With flowery wreaths the smoking altars crowned, 
 
 And hear in spicy flames the salt meal’s crackling sound? 
 Shall honeyed cakes do honor to the day, 
 
 While I in words of happy omen pray? 
 
 Not such my lot. A cruel fate and stern 
 Forbids me thus to welcome thy return; 
 
 With gloomy cypress be my altars dight, 
 
 And flames prepared the funeral flames to light! 
 
 I burn no incense to unheeding skies,— 
 
 From heart so sad no words of blessing rise; 
 
 If yet for me one fitting prayer remain, 
 
 ’Tis this: Return not to these shores again!” 
 
 Tlie gloom of his lot was aggravated by causes of 
 which he bitterly complains in more than one of his 
 poems. In the third elegy, which he addressed to his 
 wife, she must not wonder that the letter was written 
 in a strange hand. He had been grievously, even dan¬ 
 gerously, ill. The climate did not suit him; nor the 
 water (Ovid seems to have been a water-drinker), nor 
 the soil. He had not a decent house to cover his head; 
 there was no food that could sui£ a sick man’s appetite. 
 No physician could be found to prescribe for his 
 malady. There was not even a friend who could while 
 away the time by conversation or reading. He felt, he 
 complains in another letter, a constant lassitude, which 
 •extended from his body to his mind. Perpetual sleep¬ 
 lessness troubled him; his food gave him no nourish¬ 
 ment; he was wasted away almost to a skeleton. Writ¬ 
 ing about two years after this time, he assumes a more 
 cheerful tone. His health was restored. He had be- 
 
/' THE TBISTIA, OB THE " SOBBOWS” 111 
 
 f 
 
 come hardened to the climate. If it were not for his 
 mental trouble, all would be well. Another pressing 
 matter was anxiety about his literary reputation, which 
 the offended authorities at home were doing their best 
 to extinguish. He imagines his little book making its 
 way with trembling steps through the well-known 
 scenes of the capital. It goes to the temple of Apollo, 
 where the works of authors old and new were open 
 for the inspection of readers. There it looks for its 
 brothers,—not the luckless poem which had excited the 
 wrath of Caesar, and which their father wished he had 
 never begotten, but the unoffending others. Alas! they 
 were all absent; and even while it looked, the guardian 
 of the place bade it begone. Nor was it more success¬ 
 ful in the neighboring library of the temple of Liberty. 
 Banished from public, its only resource was to find 
 shelter from private friendship. To such shelter, ac¬ 
 cordingly, the volume is commended in the last elegy 
 of the book. This friend was, it seems, a patron of 
 literature,—“a lover of new poems,” Ovid calls him. 
 And the author begs his favor and care for his latest 
 work. Only he must not look for too much. Every¬ 
 thing was against him in that barbarous land. The 
 wonder was that he could write at all. “ There is no 
 supply of books here to rouse and nurture my mind; 
 instead of hooks, there is the clash of swords and 
 the bow. There is no one in the country to give me, 
 should I read to him my verses, an intelligent hearing. 
 There is no place to which I can retire. The closely- 
 guarded falls and fast-shut gate keep out the hostile 
 Getae. Often I look for a word, for a name, for a place, 
 and there is no one to help me to it; often (I am 
 ashamed to confess it) when I try to say something, 
 words fail me ; I find that I have forgotten how to 
 
112 
 
 OVID, 
 
 speak. On every side of me I hear the sound of Thra¬ 
 cian and Scythian tongues. I almost believe that I 
 could write in Getic measures. Nay, believe me, I 
 sometimes fear lest Pontic words should be found 
 mixed with my Latin.” We have the same complaints 
 and fears repeated in the fifth book. After some un¬ 
 complimentary expressions about the savage manners 
 of the people, and their equally savage dress and ap¬ 
 pearance,—the furs and loose trousers by which they 
 sought, but with ill success, to keep out the cold, and 
 their long and shaggy beards,—he goes on to speak 
 about the language: 
 
 “Among a few remain traces of the Greek tongue, but even 
 these corrupted with Getic accent. There is scarcely a man 
 among the people who by any chance can give you an answer on 
 any matter in Latin. I, the Roman bard, am compelled—pardon 
 me, O Muses!—to speak for the most part after Sarmatian 
 fashion. I am ashamed of it, and I own it; by this time, from 
 long disuse, I myself can scarcely recall Latin words. And I do 
 not doubt but that there are not a few barbarisms in this little 
 book. It is not the fault of the writer, but of the place.” 
 
 No one has ever discovered any “ Ponticisms” in 
 Ovid. They are probably as imaginary as is the “Pad- 
 uanism” which some superfine critics of antiquity dis¬ 
 covered in Livy.* One of the poet’s apprehensions 
 was, however, we shall find, actually fulfilled. He did 
 “learn to write in Getic measure,” for he composed a 
 poem in the language. 
 
 One of the elegies in the third book has been already 
 noticed. It is addressed to Perilla, and the question 
 whether this lady was, as some commentators suppcfee, 
 the daughter of the poet, has been briefly discussed. 
 The name is certainly not real. It is of Greek origin, 
 
 * Livy was a native of Padua (Patavium). 
 
THE TBISTIA, OB THE “SORROWS." 113 
 
 and it has been already seen that none of the letters 
 in the “Sorrows” are addressed by name to the per¬ 
 sons for whom they are intended. Besides this, we 
 are elsewhere informed that Ovid’s daughter was 
 married, and was the mother of two children, and 
 that, at the time of her father’s banishment, she was 
 absent in Africa, having probably accompanied her hus¬ 
 band to some post in that province. These circum¬ 
 stances do not suit the poem-addressed to Perilla: “ Go,, 
 letter, hastily penned, to salute Perilla, the faithful 
 messenger of my words; you will find her either sitting 
 with her dear mother, or among her books and Muses.” 
 He reminds her of how he had been her teacher in the art 
 of verse, and tells her that if her genius remained still 
 as vivid as of old, only Sappho would excel her. Let 
 her not be terrified by his own sad fate; only she must 
 beware of perilous subjects. Then follows a noble vin¬ 
 dication of his art, and of the dignity which it gave to 
 him, its humble follower: 
 
 “ Long years will mar those locks so comely now, 
 
 And age will write its winkles on thy brow. 
 
 Mark how it comes with fatal, noiseless pace, 
 
 To spoil the blooming honors of thy face! 
 
 Soon men will say, and thou wilt hear with pain, 
 
 * Surely she once was lovely;’ and in vain, 
 
 That thy too faithful glass is false, complain. 
 
 Small are thy riches, though the loftiest state 
 Would suit thee well; but be they small or great, 
 Chance takes and brings them still with fickle wing— 
 To-day a beggar, yesterday a king. 
 
 Why name each good? Each has its little day; 
 
 Gifts of the soul alone defy decay. 
 
 I live of friends, of country, home, bereft— 
 
 All I could lose, but genius still is left; 
 
 This is my solace, this my constant friend; 
 
 Ere this be reached e’en Caesar’s power must end.” 
 
114 
 
 OVID. 
 
 It is needless to go on in detail through what remains 
 of the “ Sorrows.” The tenth poem of the fourth book 
 should be mentioned as being a brief autobiography of 
 the poet. Its substance has already been given. Else¬ 
 where he pursues, with an iteration which would be 
 wearying in the extreme but for his marvellous power 
 of saying the same thing in many ways, the old sub¬ 
 jects. The hardships of his lot, the fidelity^ or faith¬ 
 lessness of his friends, the solace which his art supplied 
 him, and the effort to discover someway of propitiating 
 those who held his fate in their hands—these topics 
 occupy in turn his pen. The following elegant trans¬ 
 lation by the late Mr. Philip Stanhope Worsley, of one 
 of the latest poems of the book, may serve as a good 
 specimen of his verse: 
 
 “ ‘ Study the mournful hours away, 
 
 Lest in dull sloth thy spirit pine 
 
 Hard words thou writest: verse is gay, 
 
 And asks a lighter heart than mine. 
 
 No calms my stormy life beguile, 
 
 Than mine can be no sadder chance; 
 
 You bid bereaved Priam smile, 
 
 And Niobe, the childless, dance. 
 
 Is grief or study more my part, 
 
 Whose life is doomed to wilds like these? 
 
 Though you should make my feeble heart 
 Strong with the strength of Socrates, 
 
 Such ruin would crush wisdom down; 
 
 Stronger than man is wrath divine. 
 
 That sage, whom Phoebus gave the crown, 
 
 Never could write in grief like mine. 
 
 Can I my land and thee forget. 
 
 Nor the felt sorrow wound my breast? 
 
 Say that I can—but foes beset 
 This place, and rob me of all rest. 
 
Tlifi TiiisTiA, or rnti “sorrows.* 1 ns 
 
 Add that my mind hath rusted now, 
 
 And fallen far from what it was. 
 
 The land, though rich, that lacks the plough 
 Is barren, save of thorns and grass. 
 
 The horse, that long hath idle stood, 
 
 Is soon o’ertaken in the race; 
 
 And torn from its familiar flood, 
 
 The chinky pinnace rots apace. 
 
 Nor hope that I, before but mean, 
 
 Can to my former self return; * 
 
 Long sense of ills hath bruised my brain, 
 
 Half the old fires no longer burn. 
 
 Yet oft I take the pen and try, 
 
 As now, to build the measured rhyme. 
 
 Words come not, or, as meet thine eye, 
 
 Words worthy of their place and time. 
 
 Last, glory cheers the heart that fails, 
 
 And love of praise inspires the mind— 
 
 I followed once Fame’s star, my sails 
 Filled with a favorable wind: 
 
 But now ’tis not so well with me, 
 
 To care if fame be lost or won: 
 
 Nay, but I would, if that might be, 
 
 Live all unknown beneath the sun.” 
 
 It remains only to fix tlie date of the “ Sorrows.” Its 
 earliest poems were penned during the voyage from 
 Borne. The latest belongs to the earlier part of the third 
 year of his exile. “ Thrice, since I came to Pontus, has 
 the Danube been stopped by frost, thrice the wave of 
 the sea been hardened within.” It is probable that Ovid 
 reached Tomi somewhere about the month of Septem¬ 
 ber, a.d. 9. The “ third winter” of his banishment, 
 therefore, would be drawing to a close in March, a.d. 
 12, when he was about to complete his fifty-fourth year. 
 
ovm 
 
 116 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE POEMS OF EXILE: THE LETTERS FROM THE PONTtJS 
 
 —DEATH OF OVID. 
 
 The “Letters” number forty-four in all, and are con¬ 
 tained in four books. They are arranged in chronolog¬ 
 ical order—an order, however, which is not absolutely 
 exact. The earliest of them dates from the same year 
 to which the fifth book of the “Sorrows” is to be at¬ 
 tributed. In the prefatory epistle, addressed to Brutus 
 —a relative, it is probable, of the famous tyrannicide— 
 the poet tells his friend that he will find the new book 
 as full of sorrows as its predecessor. It contains, how¬ 
 ever, not a few indications that his position had been 
 somewhat changed—and changed for the better. He 
 had not ventured to prefix to the various poems of which 
 the “ Sorrows” were made up the names of those to 
 whom they were addressed. This he does not now 
 scruple to do; and we find accordingly that, instead of 
 the two or three who, he complains in the earlier book, 
 had alone been left to him out of the crowd of com¬ 
 panions, there was no inconsiderable number of friends 
 who were willing to remember, and even, if it might 
 be, to help him. We may count as many as twenty 
 names; not reckoning Germanicus Csesar, to whom Ovid 
 addresses a complimentary letter, and Cotys, a tributary 
 kiug, the boundaries of whose dominions were not far 
 from Tomi. While the revival of these old friendships 
 consoled the poet, and even buoyed him up with hopes 
 that his banishment might be terminated, or at least 
 mitigated, by a change of scene, the place itself was be¬ 
 coming (though, indeed, he is scarcely willing to allow 
 
Letters from the poxtus. 
 
 lit 
 
 it) less odious to him: its semi-barbarous inhabitants 
 were not insensible to the honor of having so distin¬ 
 guished a resident among them; and his own behavior, 
 as he tells one of his correspondents, had made a favor¬ 
 able impression on them. “ They would rather that I 
 left them,” he says, “ because they see that I wish to do 
 so; but as far as regards themselves, they like me to be 
 here. Do not take all this on my word; you may see 
 the decrees of the town, which speak in my praise, and 
 make me free of all taxes. Such honors are scarcely 
 suitable to a miserable fugitive like myself; but the 
 neighboring towns have bestowed on me the same priv¬ 
 ilege.” The sympathizing people might well complain 
 that their kindness was repaid with ingratitude, when 
 their fellow-townsman continued to speak with unmiti¬ 
 gated abhorrence of the place to which he had been con¬ 
 demned. “ I care for nothing,” he says, still harping on 
 the constant theme of his verse, to one of his distant 
 friends, ‘ * but to get out of this place. Even the Styx—if 
 there is a Styx—would be a good exchange for the Dan¬ 
 ube; yes, and anything, if such the world contain, that is 
 below the Styx itself. The plough-land less hates the 
 weed, the swallow less hates the frost, than Naso hates 
 the regions wiiich border on the war-loving Getae. Such 
 words as these make the people of Tomi wroth with 
 me. The public anger is stirred up by my verse. Shall 
 I never cease to be injured by my song? Shall I 
 always suffer from my imprudent genius. Why do 
 I hesitate to lop off my fingers, and so make writing 
 impossible? why do I take again, in my folly, to the 
 warfare which has damaged me before? Yet I have 
 done no wrong. It is no fault of mine, men of Tomi; 
 you I love, though I cordially hate your country. Let 
 any one search the record of my toils—there is no 
 
 r 
 
m 
 
 OVID. 
 
 letter in complaint of you. It is the cold—it is the 
 attack that we have to dread on all sides—it is the 
 assaults that the enemy make on our walls, that I com¬ 
 plain of. It was against the place, not against the people, 
 that I made the charge. You yourselves often blame 
 your own country. ... It is a malicious interpreter 
 that stirs up the anger of the people against me, and 
 brings a new charge against my verse. I wish that I 
 was as fortunate as I am honest in heart. There does 
 not live a man whom my words have wronged. Nay, 
 were I blacker than Illyrian pitch, I could not wrong so 
 loyal a people as you. The kindness with which you 
 have received me in my troubles shows, men of Tomi, 
 that a people so gentle must be genuine Greeks.* My 
 own people, the Peligni, and Sulmo, the land of my 
 home, could not have behaved more kindly in my 
 troubles. Honors which you would scarcely give to the 
 prosperous and unharmed, you have lately bestowed 
 upon me. I am the only inhabitant—one only expected, 
 who held the privilege of legal right—that has been 
 exempted from public burdens. My temples have been 
 crowned with the sacred chaplet, lately voted to me, 
 against my will, by the favor of the people. Dear, then, 
 as to Latona was that Delian land, the only spot which 
 gave a safe refuge to the wanderer, so dear is Tomi to 
 me—Tomi which down to this day remains a faithful 
 host to one who has been banished from his native land! 
 If only the gods had granted that it might have some 
 hope of peace and quiet, and that it were a little further 
 removed from the frosts of the pole!” 
 
 The poet, though he could not restrain or moderate 
 
 * This was a compliment which would be certain to please a 
 half-bred population like that of the old colony. 
 
LETTERS FROM TEE FOETUS. 
 
 110 ' 
 
 his complaints about the miseries of ms exile, did his 
 best to make a return for these honors and hospitalities. 
 “I am ashamed to say it,” he writes to Cams, a scholar 
 of distinction, who had been appointed tutor to the 
 children of Germanicus, “but I have written a book in 
 the language of the Getse; I have arranged their barbar¬ 
 ous words in Roman measures. I was happy enough 
 to please (congratulate me on the success); nay, I begin 
 to have the reputation of a poet among these uncivilized 
 Getse. Do you ask me my subject? I sang the praises 
 of Caesar. I was assisted in my novel attempt by the 
 power of the god. I told them how that the body of 
 Father Augustus was mortal, while his divinity had de¬ 
 parted to the dwellings of heaven. I told them how 
 there was one equal in virtue to his father, who under 
 compulsion, had assumed the reigns of an empire which 
 he had often refused.* I told them that thou, Livia, 
 art the Vesta of modest matrons, of whom it cannot be 
 determined whether thou art more worthy of thy hus¬ 
 band or thy son. I told them that there were two 
 
 * Tacitus describes with scorn the assumed reluctance of 
 Tiberius openly to accept the power which he really possessed, 
 and which he had no intention of abandoning, or even in the 
 least degree diminishing. Any attempt to take him at his word 
 was at once fiercely resented. He had said, for instance, that 
 though not equal to the whole burden of the state, he would 
 undertake the charge of whatever part might be intrusted to 
 him; and one of the senators committed the indiscretion of say¬ 
 ing, “ I ask you, Caesar, what part of the state you wish intrusted 
 to you?” This embarrassing question was never forgotten or 
 forgiven, and was ultimately, if we may believe the historian, 
 punished with death. Tiberius’s final acquiescence Is thus des¬ 
 cribed : “ Wearied at last by the assembly’s clamorous impor¬ 
 tunity and the urgent demands of individual senators, he gave 
 way by degrees, not admitting that he undertook empire, but yet 
 ceasing to refuse it and to be entreated.” 
 
120 
 
 OVID. 
 
 youths, firm supporters of their father, who have given 
 some pledges of their spirit. When I had read this to 
 the end, written as it was in the verse of another tongue, 
 and the last page had been turned by my fingers, all 
 nodded their heads, all shook their full quivers, and a 
 prolonged murmur of applause came from the Getic 
 crowd; and some cried, ‘Since you write such things 
 about Caesar, you should have been restored to Caesar’s 
 empire.’ So he spake; but, alas, my Cams! the sixth 
 winter sees me still an exile beneath the snowy sky.” 
 It is to this subject of his exile that in the “ Letters,” 
 as in the “Sorrows,” he returns with a mournful and 
 wearisome iteration. The greater number of them 
 belonged to the fifty-fifth and fifty-sixth years of the 
 poet’s life. The fifth of the last book, for instance, is 
 addressed to “Sextus Pompeius, now Consul.” Pom- 
 peius, who was collaterally related to the great rival of 
 Caesar, entered on his consulship on January 1st, a.d. 
 14. “Go, trivial elegy, to our consul’s learned ears! 
 take words for that honored man to read. The way 
 is long, and you go with halting feet.* * And the earth 
 lies hidden, covered with snows of winter. When ydu 
 shall have crossed frosty Thrace, and Hsemus covered 
 with clouds, and the waters of the Ionian Sea, you will 
 come to the imperial city in less than ten days, even 
 though you do not hasten your journey.” f The letter 
 
 *■ ' 
 
 * This is a favorite witticism with Ovid. The elegiac couplet 
 was made up of two feet of unequal length—the hexameter or 
 six-foot, and the pentameter or five-foot verse. Hence it was 
 said to halt. 
 
 t This means that the letter would be somewhat less than ten 
 days in travelling fi’om Brundusium (the port of departure and 
 arrival for travellers to or from the East) to Rome. The distance 
 may be roughly stated at about 300 miles. Cicero gives us to 
 understand on one occasion that a letter addressed to him had 
 
LETTERS FROM THE PONTES. i2i 
 
 marks the time at which Ovid’s hopes of pardon had 
 risen to their highest. Powerful friends had interceded 
 for him; with one of them advanced to the consulship— 
 a token of high favor, though nothing but a shadow of 
 power—he might hope for the best. And it is probable, 
 as has been before explained, that Augustus was at this 
 very time meditating nothing less than another dispo¬ 
 sition of the imperial power,—a disposition which would 
 have reinstated in their position his own direct descend¬ 
 ants, and with them have restored the fortunes of Ovid. 
 These hopes were to be disappointed. On the 29th of 
 August in the same year, Augustus died at Nola, in 
 Campania. There were some who declared that his end 
 was at least hastened by Li via, deterter mined to secure 
 at any price the prospects of her son Tiberius. As the 
 emperor had completed liis seventy-sixth year, it is un¬ 
 necessary thus to account for a death which, though it 
 may have been opportune, was certainly to be expected. 
 On Ovid’s fortunes the effect was disastrous. The very 
 next letter is that which has been already quoted as 
 deploring the death of Augustus at the very time when 
 he was beginning to entertain milder thoughts, and the 
 ruin which had overtaken his old friend and patron, 
 Fabius Maximus. Ovid, however, did not yet abandon 
 all hope. To address directly Tiberius or Livia seemed 
 useless. His thoughts turned to the young Germanicus, 
 Tiberius’s nephew, whose wife was Agrippina, daughter 
 of the elder and sister of the younger Julia. Among 
 the friends of this prince, who was then in command 
 of the armies of the Rhine—and, though an object of 
 
 travelled the same distance in seven days. Horace occupied 
 about double the time in the leisurely journey which he describes 
 himself as making (Sat. i. 5) in company with Maecenas, Virgil, 
 and other friends. 
 
122 
 
 OVID. 
 
 Suspicion to liis uncle and adopting father, high in 
 popular favor—was P. Suillius Rufus. Suillius was 
 closely connected with Ovid, whose step-daughter (the 
 daughter of his third wife) he had married. He must 
 then have been a young man, as it is more that forty 
 years afterwards that we hear of his being banished by 
 Nero; and he filled the part of quaestor (an office of a 
 financial kind) on the staff of Germanicus. “If you 
 shall feel a hope,” he writes, “that anything can be 
 done by prayer, entreat with suppliant voice the gods 
 whom you worship. Thy gods are the youthful Caesar; 
 make propitious these thy deities. Surely no altar is 
 more familiar to you than this. That does not allow 
 the prayers of any of its ministers to be in vain; from 
 hence seek thou help for my fortunes. If it should 
 help, with however small a breeze, my sinking boat 
 will rise again from the midst of the waters. Thou 
 wilt bring due increase to the devouring flames, and 
 testify how strong the gods can be.” The writer then 
 addresses, and continues to address throughout the rest 
 of the letter, Germanicus himself, for whose eye it 
 was of course intended, and before whom Suillius is 
 entreated in the concluding couplet by his almost 
 father-in-law,” as Ovid quaintly calls himself, to bring 
 it. Another friend, whose intercession in the same 
 quarter the poet entreats, is Carus—tutor, as has been 
 said before, to the sons of Germanicus. This letter 
 was written in “the sixth winter of exile”— i.e., about 
 the end of a.d. 14 or the beginning of 15—the time 
 to which we are to ascribe the poem in the Getic 
 language, on the death and deification of Augustus 
 Shortly afterwards must have been written a letter 
 addressed to Graecinus, who filled the office of consul 
 during the second half of the latter year. Here yfa 
 
LETTERS FROM TEE PONTUS. 
 
 123 
 
 see the most humiliating phase of Ovid’s servility. It 
 is difficult to understand how little more than fifty 
 years after the republic had ceased to exist, an Italian 
 of the Italians, one of that hardy Samnite race which 
 had so long contended on equal terms with Rome itself, 
 could be found descending to such depths ef degrada- 
 dation. The servile multitudes of Egypt and Assyria 
 had never prostrated themselves more ignobly before 
 Sesostris or Nimrod than did this free-born citizen be¬ 
 fore the men who were so relentlessly persecuting him. 
 He tells his powerful friend that his piety was known 
 to the whole country. “This stranger land sees that 
 there is in my dwelling a chapel to Csesar. There 
 stand along with him, his pious son and his priestess 
 spouse, powers not inferior to the already perfected deity. 
 And that no part of the family should be wanting, there 
 stand both his grandsons, the one close to his grand¬ 
 mother’s, and the other to his father’s side. To these I 
 address words of prayer with an offering of incense as 
 often as the day arises from the eastern sky.”* Two 
 years before, we find him thanking his friend Maximus 
 Cotta for a present of the statues which this chapel en¬ 
 shrined. He mentions three as the number which had 
 been sent. (The images of the two young princes had 
 since been added.) In this letter he seems to lose him¬ 
 self in transports of gratitude. “He is no longer an 
 exile at the ends of the earth. He is a prosperous 
 dweller in the midst of the capital. He sees the faces 
 
 * It may be as well to explain that by Csesar is meant Augustus 
 (who was now dead), and by the “ pious son” Tiberius. Livia, as 
 the widow of the deified prince, was the priestess of his worship; 
 the two grandsons are Drusus, son of Tiberius, who stands by 
 his grandmother Livia—and Germanicus, who stands by fii§ 
 ^opting father Tiberius-. 
 
124 
 
 OVID, 
 
 of tlie Caesars. Such happiness he had never ventured 
 to hope for.” And so he treads the well-worn round of 
 customary adulation. A short specimen will be enough 
 to show to what depths he could descend. “ Happy 
 they who look not on the likenesses but on the reality; 
 who see before their eyes the very bodies of the god! 
 Since a hard fate has denied me this privilege, I wor¬ 
 ship those whom art has granted to my prayer—the like¬ 
 ness of the true. ‘ Tis thus men know the gods, whom 
 the heights of heaven conceal; ’ tis thus that the shape 
 of Jupiter is worshipped for Jupiter himself.” And then, 
 anxious not to ‘forget the practical object to which all 
 these elaborate flatteries were, directed, he goes on: 
 “ Take care that this semblance of yours which is with 
 me, and shall ever be with me, be not found in a hostile 
 spot. My head shall sooner part from the neck, the eye 
 shall sooner leave the mangled cheeks, than I should 
 bear your loss, O Deities of the Commonwealth! you 
 shall be the harbor and the sanctuary of my banishment. 
 You I will embrace, if I be surrounded by Getic arms. 
 You, as my eagles and my standards, I will follow. If 
 I am not deceived and cheated by too powerful a desire, 
 the hope of a happier place of exile is at hand. The 
 look upon your likeness is less and less gloomy; the 
 face seems to give assent to my prayer. I pray that the 
 presages of my anxious heart may be true, and that the 
 anger of my god,, however just it is, may yet be miti¬ 
 gated.” It is difficult to conceive a more pitiable sight 
 than that of the wretched exile day after day going 
 through, with sinking hopes and failing spirits, this 
 miserable pretence of worship; prostrating himself be¬ 
 fore men whose baseness and profligacy no one knew 
 better than himself, and, while he crushed down the 
 gvirses that rpse naturally to his }ips ? reiterating the 
 
LETTERS FROM THE PONTUS. 
 
 125 
 
 lying prayer, for which he must have now despaired of 
 an answer. That he should have performed this elab¬ 
 orate hypocrisy, not in public but in the privacy of his 
 own home, merely for the sake of being able to say that 
 he had done it, and with but the very dimmest hope of 
 getting any good from it, is inexpressibly pitiable; and 
 that it should be possible for a man of genius to stoop 
 to such degradation, and for great princes, as Augustus 
 and Tiberius certainly were to be swayed in their pur¬ 
 poses by such an exhibition—and that they might be 
 swayed by it Ovid certainly believed—is a warning 
 against the evils of despotic power such as it would not 
 be easy to match. 
 
 One or two letters may be briefly noticed. One ad¬ 
 dressed to Tuticanus, a brother poet, who had been dis¬ 
 tinguished by a translation of the Odyssey, relieves the 
 gloomy monotony of complaint and entreaty by a faint 
 spark of humor. Whether Tuticanus had hinted an¬ 
 noyance at not having received any of the poetical epis¬ 
 tles with which other friends had been honored, or 
 whether, as is more probable, there was a hope that 
 some help might be got from him, Ovid apologizes for 
 not having written before. The humor of his excuse is 
 not very brilliant; and it is not easy to explain it with¬ 
 out a reference to the principles of Latin versification, 
 which would be here out of place. Tuticanus, in fact, 
 was a name which “might be said, but never could be 
 sung.” “There is no one,” says the poet, “whom I 
 should have more delighted to honor—if, indeed, there 
 is any honor to be found in my poetry. But your name 
 will not come into my verse. I am ashamed to split it 
 into two, and put “Tuti” in one line and “canus” in 
 the next. Nor while it is properly pronounced Ttitfca- 
 nps, can I prevail upon myself to shorten the third syh 
 
126 
 
 OVID. 
 
 lable and call you Tatfc&nus, or to shorten the first and 
 call you TutfcSnus, or make all three long and change 
 it into Tutlcanus.” It has been said that the ancients, 
 and especially the Romans, were easily amused, and 
 Ovid’s friend was apparently no exception to the rule. 
 
 Another letter introduces us to a personage of whom 
 we would gladly know more, Cotys, one of the tribu¬ 
 tary kings of Thrace. Cotys was a name of considera¬ 
 ble antiquity in this region. Among those who had 
 borne it was a prince who had played a part in the 
 struggle between Philip of Macedon and Athens. Atli- 
 enaeus tells a strange story of his insane extravagance 
 and cruelty, indicating the barbarian nature thinly 
 veneered with Greek civilization, or rather luxury. The 
 Cotys to whom Ovid writes was, if the poet is to be be¬ 
 lieved, of a different temper. Claiming descent from 
 Eumolpus, a Thracian bard, who figures in the early 
 legends of Attica, his tastes were such as became his 
 genealogy. He wrote verse, probably in the Greek lan¬ 
 guage; and Ovid declares that, had they not had the 
 name of their author prefixed to them, he could not 
 have supposed them to have been written by a native of 
 Thrace. Orpheus, adds the practiced flatterer, was not 
 the only poet whom that region had produced. It had 
 now good reason to be proud of the genius of its king. 
 It is a curious circumstance that a semi-barbarous 
 prince—for such Cotys must have seemed to any Roman 
 who had no special reason for complimenting him— 
 should have been the occasion of the famous lines which 
 have become the standing apology for a liberal educa¬ 
 tion: “ Diligently to acquire a liberal education, softens 
 men’s manners, and forbids them to grow rude.”* 
 
 * “Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes 
 gnjojlit mores nec sinit esse ferps,” 
 
LETTERS FROM TEE PONTES. 127 
 
 From -what we hear of Cotys elsewhere, we find that 
 his culture was not exactly in the right place among the 
 savage tribes of Thrace. Augustus divided between 
 him and his brother Rhescuporis the kingdom which 
 had belonged to his father Rhoemetalces. “ In this di¬ 
 vision,” continues Tacitus, to whom we are indebted 
 for the facts, “the cultivated lands, the towns, and 
 what bordered on Greek territory, fell to Cotys; the 
 wild and barbarous portion, with enemies on its fron¬ 
 tier, to Rhescuporis. The kings, too, themselves dif¬ 
 fered—Cotys having a gentle and kindly temper, the 
 other a fierce and ambitious spirit, which could not 
 brook a partner.” Open hostilities, provoked by Rhes¬ 
 cuporis, broke out. The temporizing policy of Tibe¬ 
 rius, who had by that time succeeded to the throne, pre¬ 
 vented him from rendering due assistance to Cotys, who 
 in the end, was treacherously seized by his brother, and 
 put to death. 
 
 Of the literary merits of the “Letters from the 
 Pontus” there is little to be said. The monotony of 
 its subject was fatal to excellence. Ovid knew, at 
 least as well as any man who ever wrote, how to say 
 the same thing over and over again in different ways; 
 but even his genius could not indefinitely vary his 
 constant complaint that he was living among savages, 
 and under an inhospitable sky; his constant prayer 
 that he might be released from his gloomy prison, or, 
 at least, transferred to a more genial spot. Isor does 
 he vary his subject with the episodical narratives in 
 the telling of which he so much excelled. The story 
 of Orestes and Pylades is the only specimen of the 
 kind that occurs in the four books. Ovid puts it 
 into the mouth of an old native of the country, who 
 speaks of having himself seen the temple where the 
 
148 
 
 o via. 
 
 incident happened, towering high with its vast 
 columns, and approached by an ascent of twelve 
 steps.* The versification is somewhat languid, and 
 occasionally careless. The poems are not exactly un¬ 
 worthy of their author, for they are probably as good 
 as the subject admitted. To a Latin scholar, Ovid’s 
 verse, even when his subject is uninteresting, is al¬ 
 ways pleasing; an English reader would certainly find 
 them exceedingly tedious. 
 
 The “ Ibis” is a poem of between six and seven hun¬ 
 dred lines in length, containing almost as many impre¬ 
 cations, displaying in their variety an amazing fertility 
 of imagination, which are directed against a personal 
 enemy who had spoken ill of the poet in his banish¬ 
 ment, had persecuted his wife with his attentions, and 
 had endeavored to snatch some plunder from his prop¬ 
 erty. It is modelled, as Ovid himself states, on a poem 
 of the same name which Callimachus wrote against a 
 poet who had been his pupil, and afterwards became a 
 rival—Apollonius Rhodius. Callimachus’s quarrel with 
 his brother poet seems to have been a purely literary 
 one. Apollonius preferred the simplicity of the epic 
 
 •writers to the artificial stvle of his master. The cen- 
 
 %> 
 
 sure was bitterly felt, and resented with a vehemence 
 which transcends anything that has been recorded in 
 the history of letters. The person whom Ovid attacked 
 
 * The story is so well known that a very few words may suffice 
 for it. Orestes and Pylades land at Tauri, and, according to the 
 custom of the place, are seized and taken to the temple of Diana, 
 There one of them must be offered to the goddess. Each is anx¬ 
 ious to be the object of the fatal choice. While they are contend¬ 
 ing, they find that the priestess is the sister of Orestes, Iphige- 
 nia, who had been transported hither from the altar at Aulis, 
 where she had been about to suffer a similar fate. By her help 
 they escape. 
 
LETTERS FROM THE PONTUS . 
 
 129 
 
 under the name of Ibis is said to have been one Hyginus, 
 a freedman of the Emperor Augustus, and chief of the 
 Palatine Library. The principal ground for this idea 
 is that Hyginus was certainly at one time on terms of 
 intimate friendship with Ovid, and that none of the 
 letters written in exile are addressed to him. Either he 
 or some one else among the numerous acquaintances 
 who courted the poet in the days of his popularity, and 
 who deserted him in his exile, may have been in the 
 author’s thoughts; but the poem is scarcely serious. It 
 has the look of being a literary tour de force. Callima¬ 
 chus was a favorite model with Roman authors, and 
 Ovid probably amused some of the vacant hours of his 
 exile with translating his poem.* Every story of Greek 
 mythology, legend, and history is ransacked to furnish 
 the curses which are heaped on the head of the luckless 
 man. “May he failover a staircase, as did Elpenor, 
 the companion of Ulysses! May he be torn to pieces by 
 a lioness, as was Phayllus, tyrant of Ambracia! May 
 he be killed by a bee-sting in the eye, as was the poet 
 AchaeusJ May he be devoured, as Glaucus was de¬ 
 voured, by his horses; or leap, as did another Glaucus, 
 into the sea! May he drink, with trembling mouth, the 
 same draught that Socrates drank, all undisturbed! 
 May he perish caught by the hands, as was Milo in the 
 oak which he tried to rend!” These are a few, but, 
 it will probably be thought, sufficient, examples of 
 the “Ibis.” 
 
 * Allusions to Virgil’s ^Eneid show that it was not wholly a 
 translation. 
 
380 
 
 OVID . 
 
 The last lines written by Ovid are probably some 
 which we find in the “Fasti” under the first of'June, 
 praising Tiberius for the pious work which he had ac¬ 
 complished in rebuilding and dedicating various tem¬ 
 ples at Rome. These temples were dedicated, as w T e 
 learn from Tacitus, in a.d. 17. The poet died, St. 
 Jerome tells us, in the same year, some time before 
 September, from which month, in Jerome’s chronicle, 
 the years are reckoned. It had been his earnest wish 
 that the sentence which had been so rigorously executed 
 against him during his life might at least be relaxed 
 after his death, and that his bones might be permitted 
 to rest in his native Italy. The desire was not granted: 
 he was buried at Tomi. A pretended discovery of his 
 tomb was made early in the sixteenth century at Stainz, 
 in Austria—a place far too remote from Tomi to make 
 the story at all probable. If his body could have been 
 transported so far, why not to Italy? The story ap¬ 
 peared in another edition; the tomb and its epitaph 
 were the same, as was also the year of the discovery, 
 but the place was now Sawar, in Lower Hungary. It 
 may probably be put down as one of the impostures, 
 more or less ingenious, with which scholars have often 
 amused themselves, and of which the period following 
 the revival of learning—a period during which genuine 
 discoveries of classical remains were frequentl 3 r made— 
 was particularly fertile. As recently as the beginning 
 of this century, it was announced in some of the Pa¬ 
 risian papers that the Russian troops, wdiile-engaged in 
 building a fortress on the banks of the Danube, had 
 opened the poet’s sepulchre, and had named the place 
 Ovidopol, in his honor. Unfortunately it turned out that 
 the fortress had never been built, or even commenced; 
 and that the local name of Lagone Ovidouloni (which, to 
 
FRAGMENTS AND LOST POEMS. 181 
 
 give a color to the story, had been changed into Lacus 
 Ovidoli) owed its origin, not to any remembrance of 
 Ovid, but to the practice of washing there the sheep 
 (Lat. oms) which were exported in large numbers from 
 Moldavia for the consumption of Constantinople. We 
 may dismiss as equally apocryphal the story of the sil¬ 
 ver writing-style of the poet, which was shown in 1540 
 to Isabella, Queen of Hungary, as having been recently 
 discovered at Belgrade, the ancient Taurunum. 
 
 CHPATER IX. 
 
 FRAGMENTS—LOST POEMS—GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 In his “Art of Love,” Ovid tells his readers that he 
 had written a book on “ Cosmetics,” which was small 
 in size, but had cost him much pains. Of this book we 
 have remaining a fragment of about a hundred lines. 
 The poet begins by saying that everything is the better 
 for cultivation—the human face of course included. 
 The simple Sabine matrons of old may have been con¬ 
 tent to spend all their labor on their fields, but the fair 
 ones of modern Rome had different tastes. Dresses 
 embroidered with gold, hair richly scented and arranged 
 in various ways, fingers adorned with rings, and ear¬ 
 rings of pearls, so heavy that two pearls were weight 
 enough for an ear—such were now their tastes. How 
 could they be blamed, for the tastes of men were just 
 the same? They were quite right in trying to please; 
 only let them please in lawful ways. Drugs and love- 
 potions must be eschewed. Goodness should be their 
 chief charm. The days would come when it would be 
 a pain to look into the mirror; but virtue lasts through 
 life, and the love which attaches itself to it is not lightly 
 
132 
 
 OVID. 
 
 lost. After this edifying preface, the poet proceeds to 
 his subject. His instructions are eminently practical in 
 character—giving the ingredients, the proper weight, 
 and the right manner of mixing them. His first recipe 
 is for brightening the complexion. Take two pounds of 
 barley, as much of bitter lupine, and ten eggs; dry and 
 then grind the substance. Add a sixth of a pound of 
 stag’s-horns; they must be those shed by the animal for 
 the first time. The mixture is to be passed through a 
 sieve. Twelve narcissus-roots with the rind stripped off 
 are to be pounded in a marble mortar; add the sixth of 
 a pound of gum, and as much spelt, with a pound and 
 a half of honey. “Dress your face,” says the poet, 
 “with this, and you will have a complexion brighter 
 than your mirror itself.” The prescription is some¬ 
 what complicated; but then, it must be allowed, the ob¬ 
 ject is difficult of attainment. Color, as might be ex¬ 
 pected, is more easily secured. To five scruples of 
 fennel add nine of myrrh, a handful of dry rose-leaves, 
 and a quantity equal in weight to the rose-leaves of 
 gum-ammoniacum and frankincense, and pour over it 
 the liquor of barley. What other secrets of beauty Ovid 
 may have unfolded cannot be known, for here the frag¬ 
 ment breaks off. 
 
 About a hundred and thirty lines of a poem on 
 “Fishing” have also survived; but they are in a very 
 broken condition, and a passage descriptive of land 
 animals has somehow found its way into the midst of 
 them. They contain nothing practical, except it is 
 the advice which those acquainted with the art of 
 sea-fisliing will recognize as sound, that the fisherman 
 must not try his fortune in very deep water. A poem 
 called the “Walnut,” in which the tree complains, 
 among other things, of its hard lot in being pelted 
 
FRAGMENTS AND LOST POEMS. 183 
 
 with stones by passers-by, has been attributed to 
 Ovid. Some critics have supposed it to be a juvenile 
 production, but the weight of authority is against its 
 authenticity. 
 
 In the tragedy of “Medea” the world has suffered a 
 serious loss. Quintilian, a severe critic, says of it that 
 it seemed to him to prove how much its author could 
 have achieved, if he had chosen to moderate rather 
 than to indulge his cleverness. He mentions in the 
 same context the “ Thyestes” of Varius, which might 
 challenge comparison, he says, with any of the Greek 
 tragedies. The two dramas are also coupled together 
 by Tacitus in his “Dialogue about Famous Orators,” 
 where he compares the popularity of dramatic and 
 oratorical works, just as we might couple together 
 “Hamlet” and “King Lear.” The “Medea” has been 
 altogether lost, but we may gather some idea of the 
 manner in which the poet treated his subject from the 
 seventh book of the “Metamorphoses,” the first half of 
 which is devoted to the legend of the great Colchian 
 sorceress. What portion of it w r as chosen for the sub¬ 
 ject of the drama we do not know; but it may be con¬ 
 jectured that while the “Medea” of Euripides depicted 
 the last scenes of her career, when she avenged the 
 infidelity of Jason by the murder of her children, Ovid 
 represented her at an earlier time, when, as the daugh- 
 tet of King iEetes, she loved and helped the gallant 
 leader of the Argonauts. Anyhow, we find in the 
 “Metamorphoses” a very fine soliloquy, in which the 
 love-stricken princess holds debate between Love and 
 Duty: 
 
 “Up! gird thee! for delay 
 Is death 1 For aye thy debtor for his life 
 Preserved must Jason be! And torch and rite 
 His honored wife will make thee, and through all 
 
134 
 
 OVID. 
 
 Pelasgian cities shall their matrons hail 
 
 The Saviour of their Prince!—Ah 1 thus then, thus 
 
 My Sister, Brother, Sire, my natal soil, 
 
 My country’s Gods, do 1 desert, and fly 
 To exile with the winds?—my Sire is stern, 
 
 Our land is barbarousmy Brother yet 
 An infant:—for my Sister, with my own 
 Her vows are one:—and, for the gods,—within 
 This bosom beats the Greatest! Little ’tis 
 To lose, and much to win! Fame to have saved 
 This flower of all Achaian youth, and sight 
 And knowledge of a nobler land, where tower 
 The cities of whose glory Fame even here 
 Loud rumors, and the culture and the arts 
 That grace the life of Heroes! More than all 
 I'win me iEson’s son, for whom the world 
 With all its treasures were but cheap exchange! 
 
 Oh bliss! to be his wife, his envied wife, 
 
 Dear to his kindred-Gods! My head will touch 
 The very stars with rapture! What if rocks, 
 
 As Rumor speaks, clash jostling in our track 
 Athwart the Seas, and fell Charybdis, foe 
 To ships, with flux and reflux terrible 
 Swallows and spouts the foam-flood?—what if, girt 
 With serpents, in Sicilian ocean-caves 
 Devouring Scylla barks?—The seas for me, 
 
 Clasped to the bosom of the man I love, 
 
 Will wear ho terrors:—or, within his arms, 
 
 If fear should rise,’twill be, not for myself. 
 
 But only for my Husband. Husband?—Ah! 
 
 With what fair name, Medea, dost thou cloak 
 Thy purposed crime? Ah! think how great the guilt 
 Thou darest, and, while yet thou canst, escape!” 
 
 The value of Ovid’s poetry has been estimated from 
 time to time in the course of these pages. Quintilian 
 says that he was too much in love with his own clever¬ 
 ness, bht that he was in some respects worthy of com¬ 
 mendation. Lord Macaulay confirms, or perhaps am*. 
 
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 135 
 
 plifies, this judgment, when he says that Ovid “had 
 two insupportable faults: the one is, that he will 
 always be clever; the other, that he never knows when 
 to have done.” Of the “Metamorphoses” the same 
 great critic wrote: “There are some very fine things 
 in this poem; and in ingenuity, and the art of doing 
 difficult things in expression and versification as if 
 they were the easiest in the world, Ovid is quite in¬ 
 comparable.” He thought that the best parts of the 
 work were the second book (specimens of which have 
 been given in Chapter IV.), and the first half of the 
 thirteenth book, where, in the oratorical contest be¬ 
 tween Ajax and Ulysses for the arms of Achilles, his 
 own tastes were doubtless satisfied. The severest criti¬ 
 cism which he passes upon the poet is when he pro¬ 
 nounces the “Art of Love” to be his best poem. 
 
 If popularity is a test of merit, Ovid must be placed 
 very high among the writers of antiquity. No classical 
 poet has been so widely and so continuously read. He 
 seems not to have been forgotten even when learning 
 and the taste for literature were at their lowest ebb. 
 Among the stories which attest the favor in which he 
 was held may be quoted the words which are reported 
 to have been used by Alplionso, surnamed the Mag¬ 
 nanimous. That eccentric prince, who may be called 
 the Pyrrhus of modern history, while prosecuting his 
 conquests in Italy, came to the town of Sulmo, which 
 has been mentioned as Ovid’s birthplace. “Willingly „ 
 would I yield this region, which is no small or con¬ 
 temptible part of the kingdom of Naples, could it have 
 been granted to my times to possess this poet. Even 
 dead I hold him to be of more account than the pos¬ 
 session of the whole of Apulia.” The bibliography of 
 Ovid, as a writer in the “ Nouvelle Biographie Univcr- 
 
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