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 BOSTON COLLEGE 
 
THE COMMENTARIES 
 
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 BY 
 
 ANTHONY xROLLOPE. 
 
 jtfEW YORK 
 
 JOHN B. ALDEN, PUBLISHER 
 
 1883 
 

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CHAP. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 I. Introduction. 1 
 
 II. First Book of the War in Gaul.—Caesar Drives 
 First the Swiss and then the Germans out 
 of Gaul.—B. C. 58. 26 
 
 III. Second Book of the War in Gaul.—Caesar Sub¬ 
 
 dues the Belgian Tribes.—B. C. 57. 42 
 
 IV. Third Book of the War in Gaul.—Caesar Sub¬ 
 
 dues the Western Tribes of Gaul.—B. C. 56... 50 
 
 V. Fourth Book of the War in Gaul.—Caesar 
 Crosses the Rhine, Slaughters the Germans, 
 and Goes Into Britain.—B. C. 55. 58 
 
 VI. Fifth Book of the War in Gaul.—Caesar’s Second 
 Invasion of Britain.—The Gauls Rise Against 
 Him.—B. C. 54. 68 
 
 VII. Sixth Book of the War in Gaul.—Caesar Pursues 
 Ambiorix.—The Manners of the Gauls and of 
 the Germans are Contrasted.—B. C. 53. 81 
 
 VIII. Seventh Book of the War in Gaul.—The Revolt 
 
 of Verciugetorix.—B. C. 52. 92 
 
 IX. First Book of the Civil War.—Caesar Crosses the 
 Rubicon.—Follows Pompey to Brundusium. 
 
 —And Conquers Afranius in Spain.—B. C. 49. 107 
 
 X. Second Book of the Civil War.—The Taking of 
 Marseilles.—Yarro in the South of Spain.— 
 
 The Fate of Curio Before Utica.—B. C. 49. 122 
 
 XI. Third Book of the Civil War.—Caesar Follows 
 Pompey into Illyria.—The Lines of Petra and 
 
 the Battle of Pharsalia.—B. C. 48. 136 
 
 XII. Conclusion.... 162 
 
CAESAR. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 It may perhaps be fairly said that the Commentaries 
 of Caesar are the beginning of modern history. He 
 wrote, indeed, nearly two thousand years ago; but he 
 wrote, not of times then long past, but of things which 
 were done under his own eyes, and of his own deeds. 
 And he wrote of countries with which we are familiar, 
 —of our Britain, for instance, which he twice invaded, 
 of peoples not so far remote but that we can identify 
 them with our neighbors and ourselves; and he so 
 wrote as to make us feel that we are reading actual 
 history, and not romance. The simplicity of the nar¬ 
 ratives which he has left is their chief characteristic, 
 if not their greatest charm. We feel sure that the cir¬ 
 cumstances which he tells did occur, and that they 
 occurred very nearly as he tells them. He deals with 
 those great movements in Europe from which have 
 sprung, and to which we can trace, the present politi¬ 
 cal condition of the nations. Interested as the scholar, • 
 or the reader of general literature, may be in the great 
 deeds of the heroes of Greece, and in the burning words 
 of Greek orators, it is almost impossible for him to 
 connect by any intimate and thoroughly-trusted link 
 
2 
 
 CAESAR. 
 
 the fortunes of Athens, or Sparta, or Macedonia, witl\ 
 our own times and our own position. It is almost 
 equally difficult to do so in regard to the events of 
 Rome and the Roman power before the time of Caesar. 
 We cannot realize and bring home to ourselves the 
 Punic Wars or the Social War, the Scipios and the 
 Gracchi, or even the contest for power between Marius 
 and Sulla, as we do the Gallic Wars and the invasion 
 of Britain, by which the civilization of Rome was first 
 carried westwards, or the great civil wars,—the “ Bel- 
 lum Civile,”—by which was commenced a line of em¬ 
 perors continued almost down to our own days, and to 
 which in some degree may be traced the origin and 
 formation of almost every existing European nation. 
 It is no doubt true that if we did but know the facts 
 correctly, we could refer back every political and social 
 condition of the present day to the remotest period of 
 man’s existence; but the interest fails us when the 
 facts become doubtful, and when the mind begins to fear 
 that history is mixed with romance. Herodotus is so 
 mythic that what delight we have in his writings conus 
 in a very slight degree from any desire on our part to 
 form a continuous chain from the days of which he 
 wrote down to our own. Between the marvels of He¬ 
 rodotus and the facts of Caesar there is a great interval, 
 from which have come down to us the works of various 
 noble historians; but with Caesar it seems that that 
 certainty commences which we would wish to regard as 
 the distinguishing characteristic of modern history. 
 
 It must be remembered from the beginning that 
 Caesar wrote only of what he did or of what he caused 
 to be done himself. At least he only so wrote in the 
 two works of his which remain to us. We are told 
 that he produced much besides his Commentaries,—■ 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 3 
 
 among other works, a poem,—but the two Commen. 
 taries are all of his that we have The former, in seven 
 books, relates the facts of his seven first campaigns in 
 Gaul for seven consecntive years; those campaigns in 
 which he reduced the nations living between the Rhine, 
 the Rhone, the Mediterranean, the Pyrenees, and the 
 sea which we now call the British Channel.* The 
 latter Commentary relates the circumstances of the 
 civil warm which he contended for power against Pom- 
 pey, his former colleague, with Crassus, in the first 
 triumvirate, and established that empire to which 
 Augustus succeeded after a second short-lived trium¬ 
 virate between himself and Lepidus and Antony. 
 
 It is the object of this little volume to describe 
 Caesar’s Commentaries for the aid of those who do 
 not read Latin, and not to write Roman history; 
 but it may be well to say something, in a few intro¬ 
 ductory lines, of the life and character of our authors 
 We are all more or less familiar with the name of 
 Julius Csesar. In our early days we learned that he 
 was the first of those twelve Roman emperors with 
 whose names it was thought right to burden our 
 young memories; and we were taught to understand 
 that when he began to reign there ceased to exist that 
 form of republican government in which two consuls 
 elected annually did in truth preside over the fortunes 
 of the empire. There had first been seven kings,— 
 whose names have also been made familiar to us,—then 
 the consuls, and after them the twelve Caesars, of 
 whom the great Julius was the first. So much we 
 all know of him; and we know, too, that he was killed 
 
 * There is an eighth book, referring to an eighth and ninth 
 campaign, but it is not the work of Csesar. 
 
4 
 
 CJESAR. 
 
 in tlie Capitol by conspirators just as be was going to 
 become emperor, although this latter scrap of knowl¬ 
 edge seems to bexparadoxically at variance with the 
 former. In addition to this we know that he was a 
 great commander and conqueror and writer, who did 
 things and wrote of them in the “ veni, vidi, vici ” 
 style—saying of himself, “I came, I saw, I con¬ 
 quered.” We know that a great Roman army was 
 intrusted to him, and that he used this army for the 
 purpose of establishing his own power in Rome by 
 taking a portion of it over the Rubicon, which little 
 river separated the province which he had been ap¬ 
 pointed to govern from the actual Roman territory 
 within ’which, as a military servant of the magistrates 
 of the republic, lie had no business to appear as a 
 general at the head of his army. So much we know; 
 and in the following very short memoir of the great 
 commander and historian, no effort shall be made,—as 
 has been so frequently and so painfully done for us in 
 late years,—to upset the teachings of our youth, and to 
 prove that the old lessons were wrong. They were 
 all fairly accurate, and shall now only be supplemented 
 by a few further circumstances which were doubtless 
 once learned by all school-boys and school girls, but 
 which some may perhaps have forgotten since those 
 happy days. 
 
 Dean Merivale, in one of the early chapters of his 
 admirable history of the Romans under the Empire, 
 declares that Caius Julius Caesar is the greatest name 
 in history. He makes the claim without reserve, and 
 attaches to it no restriction, or suggestion that such is 
 simply his own opinion. Claims of this nature, made 
 by writers on behalf of their pet-lieroes, we are, all of 
 us, generally inclined to dispute, but this claim, great 
 
INTRODUCTION . 
 
 5 
 
 as it is, can hardly be disputed. Dr. Merivale does not 
 say that Caesar was the greatest man that ever lived. 
 In measuring such supremacy, men take for themselves 
 various standards. To satisfy the judgment of one, it 
 is necessary that a poet should he selected; for another, 
 a teacher of religion; for a third, some intellectual hero 
 who has assisted in discovering the secrets of nature 
 by the operations of his own brain; for a fourth, a 
 ruler,—and so on. But the names of some of these 
 cannot be said to be great in history. Homer, Luther, 
 Galileo, and Charles Y., are great names,—as are also 
 Shakespeare, Knox, Queen Elizabeth, and Newton. 
 Among these, the two rulers would probably be the 
 least in general admiration. But no one can assert that 
 the names of the poets, divines, and philosophers, are 
 greater than theirs in history. The Dean means that 
 of all men who have lived, and whose deeds are known 
 to us, Julius Caesar did most to move the world; and 
 we think that the Dean is right. Those whom we 
 might, perhaps, compare with Caesar, are Alexander, 
 Charlemagne, Cromwell, Napoleon, and Washington. 
 In regard to the first two, we feel, when claims are 
 made for them, that they are grounded on the perform¬ 
 ance of deeds only partially known to us. In the days 
 of Alexander, history was still dark,—and it had be¬ 
 come dark again in those of Charlemagne. What Crom¬ 
 well did was confined to our own islands, and, though 
 lie was great for us, he does not loom as large before 
 the eyes of mankind in general as does one who moved 
 ail Europe, present and future. If there be any fair 
 antagonist to Caesar in this claim, it is Napoleon. As 
 a soldier he was equally great, and the area of his 
 operations was as extended. But there is an old say¬ 
 ing which tells us that no one can be sure of his 
 
6 
 
 GAEJSAB. 
 
 fortune till tlie end shall have come; and Caesar’s 
 death on the steps of the Capitol was more in accord¬ 
 ance with our ideas of greatness than that of Napo¬ 
 leon at St. Helena. We cannot, moreover, hut feel 
 there were fewer drawbacks from greatness in the 
 personal demeanor of the Roman “Imperator” and 
 Dictator than in that of the French Emperor. For 
 Julius Caesar was never really emperor, in that sense in 
 which we use the word, and in accordance with which 
 his successor Augustus really became an emperor. As 
 to Washington, we may perhaps allow that in moral 
 attributes lie was the greatest of all. To aid his 
 country he dared all,—even a rebel’s disgraceful death, 
 had he not succeeded where success was most improba¬ 
 ble; and in all that he attempted he succeeded. His 
 is the name that culminates among those of the men 
 who made the United States a nation, and does so by 
 the eager consent of all its people. And his work 
 came altogether from patriotism,—with no alloy of 
 personal ambition. But it cannot be said that the 
 things he did were as great as those which were done 
 by Caesar, or that he himself was as potent in the 
 doing of them. He ventured everything with as grand 
 a purpose as ever warmed the heart of man, and he 
 was successful; but the things which he did were in 
 themselves small in comparison with those effected by 
 his less noble rival for fame. Mommsen, the German 
 historian, describes Caesar as a man too great for the 
 scope of his intelligence and power of delineation. 
 “The historian,” he says, speaking of Caesar, “when 
 once in a thousand years he encounters the perfect, 
 can only be silent regarding it.” Napoleon also, in his 
 life of Caesar, paints his hero as perfect; but Napoleon 
 when doing so is, in fact, claiming godlike perfection 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 7 
 
 for that second Caesar, liis uncle. And the perfection 
 which he claims is not that of which Mommsen 
 Speaks. The German intends to convey to us his 
 conviction that Caesar was perfect in human capacity 
 and intelligence. Napoleon claims for him moral per¬ 
 fection. “We may be convinced,” says the Emperor, 
 “by the above facts, that during his first consulate, 
 one only motive animated Caesar,—namely, the public 
 interest.” We cannot, however, quite take the facts 
 as the Emperor of the French gives them to us, nor 
 can we share his conviction; but the common consent 
 of reading men will probably acknowledge that there is 
 in history no name so great as that of Julius Caesar,— 
 of whose written works some account is intended to be 
 given in the following chapters. 
 
 He was born just one hundred years before Christ, 
 and came of an old noble Roman family, of which Ju¬ 
 lius and not Caesar was the distinctive name. Whence 
 came the name of Caesar has been a matter of doubt 
 and of legend. Some say that it arose from the thick 
 hair of one of the Julian tribe; others that a certain 
 scion of the family, like Macduff, ‘ ‘ was from his moth¬ 
 er’s womb untimely ripped,” for which derivations 
 Latin words are found to be opportune. Again we are 
 told that one of the family once kept an elephant,—and 
 we are referred to some eastern language in which the 
 word for elephant has a sound like Caesar. Another 
 legend also rose from Caesar’s name, which, in the Gal¬ 
 lic language of those days,—very luckily for Caesar,— 
 sounded as though one should say, “ Send him back.” 
 Caesar’s horse once ran away with him, and carried him 
 over to the enemy. An insolent Gaul, who knew him, 
 called out, “Caesar, Caesarl”and so the other Gauls, 
 obeying the order supposed to be given, allowed the 
 
8 
 
 (3JE8AU. 
 
 illustrious one to escape. It must be acknowledged, 
 however, that the learned German who tells us this 
 story expresses a contemptuous conviction that it can¬ 
 not be true. Whatever may have produced the word, 
 its significance, derived from the doings and writings 
 of Cains Julius, has been very great. It has come to 
 mean in various languages the holder of despotic power; 
 and though it is said that, as a fact, the Russian title 
 Czar has no connection,with the Roman word, so great 
 is the prestige of the name, that in the minds of men 
 the popular appelation of the Russian Emperor will 
 always be connected with that of the line of the Roman 
 Emperor. 
 
 Caesar was the nephew by marriage of that Marius 
 who, with alternations of bloody successes and seem¬ 
 ingly irreparable ruin, had carried on a contest with 
 Sulla for supreme power in the republic. Sulla in 
 these struggles had represented the aristocrats and pat¬ 
 ricians,—what we perhaps may call the Conservative 
 interest; while Marius, whose origin was low, who had 
 been a common soldier, and, rising from the ranks, had 
 become the darling of the army and of the people, may 
 perhaps be regarded as one who would have called him¬ 
 self a Liberal, had any such term been known in those 
 days. His liberality,—as has been the case with other 
 political leaders since his time,—led him to personal 
 power. He was seven times Consul, having secured his 
 seventh election by atrocious barbarities and butcher- 
 ings of his enemies in the city; and during this last con¬ 
 sulship he died. The young Ceesar, though a patrician 
 by birth, succeeded his uncle in the popular party, and 
 seems from a very early age,—from his very boyhood,— 
 to have looked forward to the power which he might 
 win by playing his cards with discretion. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 9 
 
 And very discreet lie was,—self-confident to a won¬ 
 derful degree, and patient also. It is to be presumed 
 that most of our readers know liow the Roman Repub¬ 
 lic fell, and the Roman Empire became established as 
 the result of the civil wars which began with Marius 
 and ended with that “ young Octavius ” whom we better 
 recognize as Augustus Caesar. Julius Caesar was the 
 nephew by marriage of Marius, and Augustus was the 
 great-nephew and heir of Julius. By means of con¬ 
 scriptions and murders, worse in their nature, though 
 less probably in number, than those which disgraced 
 the French Revolution, the power which Marius 
 achieved almost without foresight, for which the great 
 Caesar strove from his youth upwards with constant 
 f oresight, was confirmed in the hands of Augustus, and 
 bequeathed by him to the emperors. In looking back 
 at the annals of the world, we shall generally find that 
 despotic power has first grown out of popular move¬ 
 ment against authority. It was so with our own 
 Cromwell, has twice been so in the history of modern 
 France, and certainly was so in the formation of the 
 Roman Empire. In the great work of establishing 
 that empire, it was the mind and hand and courage of 
 Caesar that brought about the result, whether it was for 
 good or evil. And in looking at the lives of the three 
 men—Marius, Ca3sar, and Augustus, who followed each 
 other, and all worked to the same end, the destruction 
 of that oligarchy which was called a Republic in Rome— 
 we find that the one was a man, while the others were 
 beasts of prey. The cruelties of Marius as an old man, 
 and of Augustus as a young one, were so astounding, as, 
 even at thi3 distance, to horrify the reader, though he 
 remembers that Christianity had not yet softened men’s 
 hearts. Marius, the old man, almost swam in the 
 
10 
 
 CJEJSAR. 
 
 blood of bis enemies, as also did liis rival Sulla; but 
 the young Octavius, he whom the gods favored so 
 long as the almost divine* Augustus, cemented his 
 throne with the blood of his friends. To complete the 
 satisfaction of Lepidus and Antony, his comrades in 
 the second triumvirate, he did not scruple to add to 
 the list of those who were to die, the names of the 
 nearest and dearest to him. Between these monsters 
 of cruelty—between Marius and Sulla, who went before 
 him, and Octavius and Antony who followed him— 
 Caesar has become famous for clemency. And yet the 
 hair of the reader almost stands on end with horror as 
 Caesar recounts in page after page the stories of cities 
 burned to the ground, and whole communities slaugh¬ 
 tered in cold blood. Of the destruction of the women 
 and children of an entire tribe, Caesar will leaye the 
 unimpassioned record in one line. But this at least 
 may be said of Caesar, that he took no delight in 
 slaughter. When it became in his sight expedient that 
 a people should suffer, so that others might learn to 
 yield and to obey, he could give the order apparently 
 without an effort. And we hear of no regrets, or of any 
 remorse which folio wed the execution of it. But blood¬ 
 shed in itself was not sweet to him. He was a discreet, 
 far-seeing man, and could do without a scruple what 
 discretion and caution demanded of him. 
 
 And it may be said of Caesar that he was in some 
 sort guided in his life by sense of duty and love of 
 country; as it may also be said of his great contem¬ 
 poraries, Pompey and Cicero. With those who went 
 
 * Ccelo tonantem credidimus Jovem 
 Regnare; prsesens Divus liabebitur 
 Augustus. 
 
INTROD VCTION. 
 
 11 
 
 before him, Marius and Sulla, as also with those who 
 followed him, Antony and Augustus, it does not seem 
 that any such motives actuated them. Love of power 
 and greed, hatred of their enemies and personal ambi¬ 
 tion, a feeling that they were urged on by their fates 
 to seek for high place, and a resolve that it was better 
 to kill than be killed, impelled them to their courses. 
 These feelings were strong, too, with Cmsar, as they are 
 strong to this day with statesmen and with generals; 
 but mingled with them in Caesar’s breast there was a 
 noble idea, that he would be true to the greatness of 
 Home, and that he would grasp at power in order that 
 the Roman Empire might be well governed. Augustus, 
 doubtless, ruled well; and to Julius Caesar very little 
 scope for ruling was allowed after his battling was 
 done; but to Augustus no higher praise can be 
 assigned than that he had the intelligence to see that 
 the temporary wellbeing of the citizens of Rome was 
 the best guarantee for his own security. 
 
 Early in life Caesar lifted himself to high position, 
 though he did so in the midst of dangers. It was the 
 wonder of those around him that Sulla did not mur¬ 
 der him when he was young,—crush him while he 
 was yet, as it were, in his shell; but Sulla spared 
 him, and he rose apace. We are told that he became 
 priest of Jupiter at seventeen, and he was then already 
 a married man. He early trained himself as a public 
 orator, and amidst every danger espoused the popular 
 cause in Rome. He served his country in the East,—in 
 Bithynia, probably,—escaping, by doing so, the perils of 
 a residence in the city. He became Quaestor and then 
 HSdile, assisted by all the Marian party, as that party 
 would assist fthe rising man whom they regarded as 
 their future leader. He attacked and was attacked, 
 
12 
 
 GJESAll 
 
 and was “ indefatigable in harassing, the aristoc¬ 
 racy,” * who strove, but strove in vain, to crush 
 him. Though young, and addicted to all the 
 pleasures of youth,—a trifler, as Sulla once called 
 him,—he omitted to learn nothing that was neces¬ 
 sary for him to know as a chief of a great party 
 and a leader of great armies. When he was thirty- 
 seven he w r as made Pontifiex Maximus, the official 
 chief of the priesthood of Rome, the office greatest 
 in honor of any in the city, although opposed by 
 the whole weight of the aristocracy, and although 
 Catulus was a candidate, who, of all that party, was 
 the highest not only in renown but in virtue. He 
 became Praetor the next year, though again he was 
 opposed by all the influence of those who feared him. 
 And, after his twelve months of office, he assumed 
 the government of Spain,—the province alloted to 
 him as Propraetor, in accordance with the usage of the 
 Republic,—in the teeth of a decree of ihe Senate order¬ 
 ing him to remain in Rome. Here he gained his first 
 great military success, first made himself known to 
 J his soldiery, and came back to Rome entitled to the 
 honor of a triumph. 
 
 But there was still another step on the ladder of the 
 State before he could assume the position which no 
 doubt he already saw before him. He must be Consul 
 before he could be master the of many legions, and in 
 order that he might sue in proper form for the consul¬ 
 ship, it was necessary that he should abandon his 
 Triumph. He could only triumph as holding the office 
 of General of the Republic’s forces, and as General or 
 Imperator he could not enter the city. He abandoned 
 
 * The words are taken from Dean Merivale’s history. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 13 
 
 the Triumph, sued for his office in the common fashion, 
 and enabled the citizens to sny that he preferred their 
 service to his personal honors. At the age of forty-one 
 he became Consul. It was during the struggle for the 
 consulship that the triumvirate was formed, of which 
 subsequent ages have heard so much, and of which 
 Romans at the time heard probably so little. Pompey, 
 who had been the political child of Sulla, and had 
 been the hope of the patricians to whom he belonged, 
 had returned to Rome after various victories which he 
 had achieved as Proconsul in the East, had triumphed, 
 —and had ventured to recline on his honors, dis¬ 
 banding his army and taking to himself the credit of 
 subsiding into privacy. The times were too rough for 
 such honest duly, and Pompey found himself for a 
 while slighted by his party. Though he had thought 
 himself able to abandon power, he could not bear the 
 loss of it. It may be that he had conceived himself 
 able to rule the city by his influence without the aid 
 of his legions. Caesar tempted him, and they two with 
 Crassus, who was wanted for his wealth, formed the 
 first triumvirate. By such pact ameng themselves 
 they were to rule all Rome and all Rome’s provinces; 
 but doubtless, by resolves within himself of which no 
 one knew, Caesar intended even then to grasp the do¬ 
 minion of the whole in his own hands. During the 
 years that followed,—the years in which Caesar was en¬ 
 gaged in his Gallic wars,—Pompey remained at Rome, 
 not indeed as Caesar's friend—for that hollow friend¬ 
 ship was brought to an end by the death cf Julia, 
 Caesar’s daughter, whom Pompey, though five years 
 Caesar’s elder, had married—but in undecided rivalship 
 to the active man who in foreign wars was preparing 
 legions by which to win the Empire. Afterwards, 
 
14 
 
 CJEJSAR. 
 
 when Caesar, as we shall hear, had crossed the Rubicon, 
 their enmity was declared. It was natural that they 
 should be enemies. In middle life, Pompey, as we 
 have seen, had married Caesar’s daughter, and Caesar’s 
 second wife had been a Pompeia.* But when they 
 were young, and each was anxious to attach himself to 
 the politics of his own party, Pompey had married the 
 daughter-in-law of Sulla, and Caesar had married the 
 daughter of Cinna, who had almost been joined with 
 Marius in leading the popular party. Such having 
 been the connection they had made in their early lives, it 
 was natural that Pompey and Caesar should be enemies, 
 and that the union of those two with auy other third 
 in a triumvirate should be but a hollow compromise, 
 plauned and carried out only that time might be gained. 
 
 Caesar was now Consul, and from his consular chair 
 laughed to scorn the Senate and the aristocratic col¬ 
 league with whom he was joined,—Bibulus, of whom 
 we shall again hear in the Commentary on the civil 
 
 * She was that wife who was false with Clodius, and whom 
 Caesar divorced, declaring that Caesar’s wife must not even be 
 suspected. He would not keep the false wife; neither would 
 he at that moment take part in the accusation against Clodius, 
 who was of his party, and against whom such accusation backed 
 by Caesar would have been fatal. The intrusion of the dema¬ 
 gogue into Caesar’s house in the pursuit of Caesar’s wife dur¬ 
 ing the mysteries of the Bona Dea became the subject of a trial 
 in Rome. The offence was terrible and was notorious. Clodius, 
 who was hated and feared by the patricians, was a favorite 
 with the popular party. The offender was at last brought to 
 trial, and was acquitted by venal judges. A word spoken by 
 the injured husband would have insured his condemnation, 
 but that word Caesar would not speak. His wife he could 
 divorce, but he would not jeopardize his power with his own 
 party by demanding the punishment of him who had debauched 
 her. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 15 
 
 War. During liis year of office he seems to have 
 ruled almost supreme and almost alone. The Senate 
 was forced to do his bidding, and Pompey, at any rate 
 for this year, was his ally. We already know that to 
 praetors and to consuls, after their year of office in the 
 city, were confided the government of the great prov¬ 
 inces of the Republic, and that these officers while so 
 governing were called propraetors and proconsuls. 
 After his praetorship Caesar had gone for a year to 
 southern Spain, the province which had been assigned 
 to him, whence he came back triumphant,—but not to 
 enjoy his Triumph. At the expiration of his consul¬ 
 ship the joint provinces of Cisalpine Gaul and Illy- 
 ricum were assigned to him, not for one year, but for 
 five years; and to these was added Transalpine Gaul, 
 by which grant dominion was given to him over all 
 that country which we now know as Northern Italy, 
 over Illyria to the east, and to the west across the 
 Alps, over the Roman province already established in 
 the south of France. This province, bounded on the 
 north by Lake Leman and the Swiss mountains, ran 
 south to the Mediterranean, and to the west half across 
 the great neck of land which joins Spain to the conti¬ 
 nent of Europe, This province of Transalpine Gaul 
 was already Roman, and to Caesar was intrusted the 
 task of defending this, and of defending Rome itself, 
 from the terrible valor of the Gauls. That he 
 might do this it was necessary that he should collect 
 his legions in that other Gaul which we now know as 
 the north of Italy. 
 
 It does not seem that there was any preconceived 
 idea that Caesar should reduce all Gallia beneath the 
 Roman yoke. Hitherto Rome had feared the Gauls, 
 and had been subject to their inroads. The Gauls in 
 
CJSSAR 
 
 * 16 
 
 former years liad even made their way as invaders into 
 the very city, and had been bought out with a ransom. 
 They had spread themselves over Northern Italy, and 
 hence, when Northern Italy was conquered by Roman 
 arms, it became a province under the name of Cisalpine 
 G-aul. Then, during the hundred years which preced¬ 
 ed Caesar’s wars, a province was gradually founded 
 and extended in the south of France, of which Marseil¬ 
 les was the kernel. Massilia had been a colony of 
 Greek merchants, and was supported by the alliance of 
 Rome. Whither such alliance leads is known to all 
 readers of history. The Greek colony became a Roman 
 town, and the Roman province stretched itself around 
 the town. It was Caesar’s duty, as governor of Trans¬ 
 alpine Gaul, to see that the poor province was not hurt 
 by those ravaging Gauls. How he performed that duty 
 he tells us in his first Commentary. 
 
 During the fourth year of his office, while Pompey 
 and Crassus, his colleagues in the then existing trium¬ 
 virate, were consuls, his term of dominion over the 
 three provinces was prolonged by the addition of five 
 other years. But he did not see the end of the ten 
 years in that scene of action. Julia, his daughter, had 
 died, aud his great rival was estranged from him. The 
 Senate had clamored for his recall, and Pompey, with 
 doubtful words, had assented. A portion of his army 
 was demanded from him, was sent by him into Italy 
 in obedience to the Senate, and shortly afterwards was 
 placed under the command of Pompey. Then Ca3sar 
 found that the Italian side of the Alps was the more 
 convenient for his purposes, that the Hither or Cis¬ 
 alpine Gaul demanded his services, and that it would 
 be w r ell for him to be near the Rubicon. The second 
 Commentary, in three books, ‘ De Bello Civili,’ giving 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 1 ? 
 
 us big record of the civil war, tells us of liis deeds and 
 fortunes for the next two years,—the years n. c. 49 
 and 48. The continuation of his career as a general is 
 related in three other Commentaries, not by his own 
 hand, to which, as being beyond the scope of this vol¬ 
 ume, only short allusion will be made. Then came 
 one year of power, full of glory, and, upon the whole, 
 well used; and after that there came the end, of which 
 the tale has been so often told, when he fell, stabbed 
 by friend and foe, at the foot of Pompey’s pillar in the 
 Capitol. 
 
 It is only further necessary that a few words should 
 be added as to the character of Caesar’s writings,—for 
 it is of his writings rather than of his career that it is 
 intended here to give some idea to those who have not 
 an opportunity of reading them. Caesar’s story can 
 hardly be told in this little volume, for it is the his¬ 
 tory of the world as the world then was. The word 
 which our author has chosen as a name for his work,— 
 and which now has become so well known as connected 
 with Caesar, that he who uses it seems to speak of Caesar, 
 —means, in Caesar’s sense, a Memoir. Were it not for 
 Caesar, a “Commentary” would be taken to signify that 
 which the critic had added, rather than the work which 
 the author had first produced. Caesar’s ‘ ‘Commentaries” 
 are memoirs written by himself, descriptive of his differ¬ 
 ent campaigns, in which he treats of himself in the third 
 person, and tells his story as it might have been told 
 by some accompanying scribe or secretary. This being 
 so, we are of course driven to inquire whether some 
 accompanying scribe or secretary may not in truth have 
 done the work. And there is doubtless one great, argu¬ 
 ment which must be powerful with us all towards the 
 adoption of such a surmise. The amount of work which 
 
18 
 
 Caesar liad on hand, not only in regard to his campaigns, 
 but in the conduct of his political career, was so great 
 as to have overtasked any brain without the addition of 
 literary labor. Surely no man was ever so worked; 
 for the doctrine of the division of labor did not pre 
 vail then in great affairs as it does now. Caesar was not 
 only a general; he was also an engineer, an astrono¬ 
 mer, an orator, a poet, a high priest—to whom, as such, 
 though himself, as we are told, a disbeliever in the gods 
 of Olympus, the intricate and complicated system of 
 Roman worship was a necessary knowledge. And he 
 was a politician, of whom it may be said that, though 
 he was intimately acquainted with the ferocity of op¬ 
 position, he knew nothing of its comparative leisure. 
 We have had busy statesmen writing books, two prime 
 ministers translating Homer, another writing novels, a 
 fourth known as a historian, a dramatist, and a biog¬ 
 rapher. But they did not lead armies as well as the 
 Houses of Parliament, and they w~ere occasionally blessed 
 by the opportunities of comparative political retirement 
 which opposition affords. From the beginning of the 
 Gallic war, Caesar was fighting in person every year but 
 one till he died. It was only by personal fighting that 
 he could obtain success. The reader of the following 
 pages will find that, with the solitary exception of the 
 siege of Marseilles, nothing great was done for him in 
 his absence. And he had to make his army as well as 
 to lead it. Legion by legion, he had to collect it as he 
 needed it, and to collect it by the force of his own char¬ 
 acter and of his own name. The abnormal plunder 
 with which it was necessary that his soldiers should be 
 allured to abnormal valor and toil had to be given as 
 though from his own hand. For every detail of the sol¬ 
 diers’ work he was responsible; and at the same time 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 19 
 
 it was incumbent on him so to manipulate his Roman 
 enemies at Rome,—and harder still than that, his Ro¬ 
 man friends,—that confusion and destruction should 
 not fall upon him as a politician. Thus weighted, could 
 he write his own Commentaries? There is reason to 
 believe that there was collected by him, no doubt with 
 the aid of his secretaries, a large body of notes which 
 were known as the Ephemerides of Caesar,—jottings 
 down, as we may say, taken from day to day. Were 
 not the Commentaries which bear Caesar’s name com¬ 
 posed from these notes by some learned and cunning 
 secretary? 
 
 These notes have been the cause of much scholastic 
 wrath to some, of the editors and critics. One learned 
 German, hotly arguing that Caesar wrote no Ephem¬ 
 erides, does allow that somebody must have written 
 down the measurements of the journeys, of the moun¬ 
 tains, and of the rivers, the number also of the cap¬ 
 tives and of the slaves.* “ Not even I,” says he,— 
 “not even do I believe that Caesar was able to keep 
 all these things simply in his memory.” Then he goes 
 on to assert that to the keeping of such notes any 
 scribe was equal; and that it was improbable that 
 Caesar could have found time for the keeping of notes 
 when absolutely in his tent. The indignation and 
 enthusiasm are comic, but the reasoning seems to 
 be good. The notes were probably collected under 
 Caesar’s immediate eyes by his secretaries; but there 
 is ample evidence that the Commentaries themselves 
 are Caesar’s own work. They seem to have become 
 known at once to the learned Romans of the day; and 
 Cicero, who was probably the most learned, and cer- 
 
 * Nipperdeius. 
 
20 
 
 C./E8AR. 
 
 tainly the best critic of the time, speaks of them with¬ 
 out any doubt as to their authorship. It was at once 
 known that the first seven books of the Gallic War 
 were written by Caesar, and that the eighth was not. 
 This seems to be conclusive. But in addition to this, 
 there is internal evidence. Caesar writes in the third 
 person, and is very careful to maintain that mode of 
 expression. But he is not so careful but that on three 
 or four occasions he forgets himself, and speaks in the 
 first person. No other writer, writing for Caesar, would 
 have done so. And there are certain trifles in the 
 mode of telling the story, which must have been per¬ 
 sonal to the man. He writes of “ young ” Crassus, and 
 “young” Brutus, as no scribe would have written; 
 and he shows, first his own pride in obtaining a legion 
 from Pompey’s friendship, aud then his unmeasured 
 disgust when the Senate demand and obtain from him 
 that legion and another one, and when Pompey uses 
 them against himself, in a fashion which would go far 
 to prove the authenticity of each Commentary, were 
 any proof needed. But the assent of Caesar’s contem¬ 
 poraries suffices for this without other evidence. 
 
 And it seems that they were written as the wars 
 were carried on, and that each was published at once. 
 Had it not been so, we could not understand that 
 Caesar should have begun the second Commentary 
 before he had finished the first. It seems that he 
 was hindered by the urgency of the Civil War from 
 writing what with him would have been the two 
 last books of the Gallic War, and therefore put the 
 completion of that work into the hands of his friend 
 Ilirtius, who wrote the memoir of the two years in 
 one book. And Caesar’s mode of speaking of men who 
 were at one time his friends and then his enemies, 
 
ItfTROD VCTION. 
 
 21 
 
 shows that his first Commentary was completed and 
 out of hand before the other was written. Labienus, 
 who in the Gallic War was Caesar’s most trusted lieu¬ 
 tenant, went over to the other side and served under 
 Pompey in the Civil War. He could not have failed 
 to allude in some way to the desertion of Labienus, 
 in the first Commentary, had Labienus left him and 
 joined Pompey while the first Commentary was still 
 in his hands. 
 
 His style was at once recognized by the great literary 
 critic of the day as being excellent for its intended 
 purpose. Caesar is manifestly not ambitious of liter¬ 
 ary distinction, but is very anxious to convey to his 
 readers a narrative of his own doings, which shall be 
 graphic, succinct, intelligible, and sufficiently well ex¬ 
 pressed to insure the attention of readers. Cicero, the 
 great critic, thus speaks of the Commentaries: “ Yalde 
 quidam, inquam, probandos; nudi enim sunt, recti, et 
 venusti, omni ornatu orationis, tanquam, veste, de- 
 tracto,” The passage is easily understood, but not 
 perhaps very easily translated into English. “I pro¬ 
 nounce them, indeed, to be very commendable, for 
 they are simple, straightforward, agreeable, with all 
 rhetorical ornament stripped from them, as a garment 
 is stripped.” This was written by Cicero while Caesar 
 was yet living, as the context shows. And Cicero 
 does not mean to imply that Caesar’s writings are bald 
 or uncouth: the word “venusti” is evidence of 
 this. And again, speaking of Caesar’s language, 
 Cicero says that Caesar spoke with more finished 
 choice of words than almost any other orator of the 
 day. And if he so spoke, he certainly so wrote, for 
 the great speeches of the Romans were all written 
 compositions. Montaigne says of Caesar: “ I read this 
 
22 
 
 0JB8A& 
 
 author with somewhat more reverence and respect than 
 is usually allowed to human writings, one while con¬ 
 sidering him in his person, by his actions and miracu¬ 
 lous greatness, and another in the purity and inimitable 
 polish of his language and style, wherein he not only 
 excels all other historians, as Cicero confesses, but per- 
 adventure even Cicero himself.” Cicero, however, 
 confesses nothing of the kind, and Montaigne is so far 
 wrong. Caesar was a great favorite with Montaigne, 
 who always speaks of his hero with glowing enthu¬ 
 siasm. . 
 
 To us who love to make our language clear by the 
 number of words used, and who in writing rarely give 
 ourselves time for condensation, the closely-packed 
 style of Caesar is at first somewhat difficult of compre¬ 
 hension. It cannot be read otherwise than slowly 
 till the reader’s mind is trained by practice to Caesarean 
 expressions, and then not with rapidity. Three or 
 four adjectives, or more probably participles, joined to 
 substantives in a sentence, are continually intended 
 to convey an amount of information for which, with 
 us, three or four other distinct sentences would be 
 used. It is almost impossible to give the meaning of 
 Caesar in English without using thrice as many words 
 as he uses. The same may be said of many Latin 
 writers,—perhaps of all; so great was the Roman 
 tendency to condensation, and so great is ours to 
 dilution. But with Caesar, though every word means 
 much, there are often many words in the same sen¬ 
 tence, and the reader is soon compelled to acknowledge 
 that skipping is out of the question, and that quick 
 reading is undesirable. 
 
 That which will most strike the ordinary English 
 reader in the narrative of Caesar is the cruelty of the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 23 
 
 Romans,—cruelty of which Caesar himself is guilty to 
 a frightful extent, and of which he never expresses 
 horror. And yet among his contemporaries he achiev¬ 
 ed a character for clemency which he has retained to 
 the present day. In describing the character of Caesar, 
 without reference to that of his contemporaries, it is 
 impossible not to declare him to have been terribly 
 cruel. From bloodthirstiness he slaughtered none; 
 but neither from tenderness did he spare any. All 
 was done form policy; and when policy seemed to him 
 to demand blood, he could, without a scruple,—as far 
 as we can judge, without a pang,—order the destruc¬ 
 tion of human beings, having no regard to number, 
 sex, age, innocence, or helplessness. Our only excuse 
 for him is that he was a Roman, and that Romans were 
 indifferent to blood. Suicide was with them the com¬ 
 mon mode of avoiding otherwise inevitable misfortune, 
 and it was natural that men who made light of their 
 own lives should also make light of the lives of others. 
 Of all those with whose names the reader will become 
 acquainted in the following pages, hardly one or two 
 died in their beds. Caesar and Pompey, the two great 
 ones, were murdered. Dumnorix, the iEduan, was 
 killed by Caesar’s orders. Yercmgetorix, the gallant- 
 est of the Gauls, was kept alive for years that his death 
 might grace Caesar’s Triumph, xiriovistus, the Ger¬ 
 man, escaped from Caesar, but we hear soon after of 
 his death, and that the Germans resented it. He 
 doubtless was killed by a Roman weapon. What 
 became of the hunted Ambiorix we do not know, but 
 his brother king Cativolcus poisoned himself with the 
 juice of yew-tree. Crassus, the partner of Caesar and 
 Pompey in the first triumvirate, was killed by the 
 Parthiaps. Young Crassus, the son, Caesar’s, officer ip 
 
24 
 
 CAESAR 
 
 Gaul, had himself killed by his own men that he 
 might not fall into the hands of the Parthians, and his 
 head was cut off and sent to his father. Labienus fell 
 at Munda, in the last civil war with Spain. Quintus 
 Cicero, Caesar’s lieutenant, and his greater brother, the 
 orator, and his son, perished in the proscriptions of 
 the second triumvirate. Titurius and Cotta were 
 slaughtered with all their army by Ambiorix. Afra- 
 nius was killed by Caesar’s soldiers after the last battle 
 in Africa. Petreius was hacked to pieces in amicable 
 contest by King Juba. Yarro indeed lived to be an 
 old man, and to write many books. Domitius, who 
 defended Marseilles for Pompey, was killed in the 
 flight after Pharsalia. Trebonius, who attacked Mar¬ 
 seilles by land, was killed by a son-in-law of Cicero at 
 Smyrna. Of Decimus Brutus, who attacked Marseilles 
 by sea, one Camillus cut off the head and sent it as a 
 present to Antony. Curio, who attempted to master the 
 province of Africa on behalf of Caesar, rushed amidst 
 his enemies swords and were slaughtered. King Juba, 
 who conquered him, failing to kill himself, had him¬ 
 self killed by a slave. Attius Yarus, who had held 
 the province for Pompey, fell afterwards at Munda. 
 Marc Antony, Caesar’s great lieutenant in the Pharsa- 
 lian wars, stabbed himself. Cassius Longinus, another 
 lieutenant under Caesar, was drowned. Scipio, Pom- 
 pey's partner in greatness at Pharsalia, destroyed him¬ 
 self in Africa. Bibulus, his chief admiral, pined to 
 death. Young Ptolemy, to whom Pompey fled, was 
 drowned in the Nile. The fate of his sister Cleopatra 
 is known to all the world. Pharnaces, Caesar’s enemy 
 in Asia, fell in battle. Cato destroyed himself at Utica. 
 Pompey’s eldest son, Cnaeus, was caught wounded in 
 Spain and slaughtered. Sextus the ypunger was killed 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 25 
 
 some years afterward by one of Antony’s soldiers. 
 Brutus and Cassius, tbe two great conspirators, both 
 committed suicide. But of these two we hear little or 
 nothing in the Commentaries; nor of Augustus Caesar, 
 who did contrive to live in spite of all the bloodshed 
 through which he had waded to the throne. Among 
 the whole number there are not above three, if so 
 many, who died fairly fighting in battle. 
 
 The above is a list of the names of men of mark,— 
 of warrior’s chiefly, of men who, with their eyes open, 
 knowing what was before them, went out to encounter 
 danger for certain purposes. The bloody catalogue is 
 so complete, so nearly comprises all whose names are 
 mentioned, that it strikes the reader with almost a 
 comic horror. But when we come to the slaughter of 
 whole towns, the devastation of country effected pur¬ 
 posely that men and women might starve, to the 
 abandonment of the old, the young, and the tender, 
 that they might perish on the hillsides, to the mutila¬ 
 tion of crowds of men, to the burning of cities told us 
 in a passing word, to the drowning of many thousands, 
 —mentioned as we should mention the destruction of 
 a brood of rats,—the comedy is all over, and the heart 
 becomes sick. Then it is that we remember that the 
 coming of Christ has changed all things, and that men 
 now,—though terrible things have been done since 
 Christ came to us,—are not as men were in the days of 
 Csesar. 
 
I. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 FIRST BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL.—CAESAR DRIVES 
 FIRST THE SWISS AND THEN THE GERMANS OUT OF 
 GAUL.—B. C. 58. 
 
 It has been remarked in the preceding chapter that 
 Caesar does not appear to have received any commission 
 for the subjugation of Gaul when he took military 
 charge of his three provinces. The Gauls were still 
 feared in Rome, and it was his duty to see that they did 
 not make their way over the Alps into the Roman terri¬ 
 tory. It was also his duty to protect from invasion, 
 and also from rebellion, that portion of Gaul which had 
 already been constituted a Roman province, but in 
 which the sympathies of the people were still rather 
 with their old brethren than with their new masters. 
 The experience, however, which we have of great and 
 encroaching empires tells us how probable it is that the 
 protection of that which the strong already holds should 
 lead to the grasping of more, till at last all has been 
 grasped. It is thus that our own empire in India has 
 grown. It was thus that the Spanish empire grew in 
 America. It is thus that the empire of the United States 
 is now growing. It was thus that Prussia, driven, as 
 we all remember, by the necessity of self-preservation, 
 
CJV8ARS PROBABLE INTENTIONS. 27 
 
 took Nassau the other day, and Hanover and Holstein 
 and Hesse. It was thus that the wolf claimed all the river, 
 not being able to endure the encroaching lamb. The 
 humane reader of history execrates, as he reads, the 
 cruel, all-absorbing, ravenous wolf. But the philo¬ 
 sophical reader perceives that in this way, and in no 
 other, is civilization carried into distant lands. The 
 wolf, though he be a ravenous wolf, brings with him 
 energy and knowledge. 
 
 What may have been Caesar’s own aspirations in 
 regard to Gaul, when the government of the provinces 
 was confided to him, we have no means of knowing. 
 We may surmise,—indeed we feel that we know,—that 
 he had a project in hand much greater to him, in his 
 view of its result, than could be the adding of any 
 new province to the Republic, let the territory added 
 be as wild as all Gaul. He had seen enough of 
 Roman politics to know that real power in Rome could 
 only belong to a master of legions. Both Marius and 
 Sulla had prevailed in the city by means of the armies 
 which they had levied as the trusted generals of the 
 Republic. Pompey had had his army trained to 
 conquest in the East, and it had been expected that 
 he also would use it to the same end. He had been 
 magnanimous, or half-hearted, or imprudent as critics 
 of his conduct might choose to judge him then and 
 may choose to judge him now, and on reaching Italy 
 from the East had disbanded his legions. As' a con¬ 
 sequence, he was at that moment, when Caesar was 
 looking out into the future and preparing his own 
 career, fain to seek some influence in the city by join¬ 
 ing himself in a secret compact with Caesar, his natural 
 enemy, and with Crassus. Caesar, seeing all this, 
 knowing how Marius and Sulla had succeeded and had 
 
28 THE T VAR IN GA EL.—FIRST BOOK. 
 
 failed, seeing what had come of the magnanimity of 
 Pompey—resolved no doubt that, whatever miget be 
 the wars in which they should be trained, he would 
 have trained legions at his command. When, there¬ 
 fore, he first found a cause for war, he was ready for 
 war. He had not been long proconsul before there 
 came a wicked lamb and drank at his stream. 
 
 In describing to us the way in which he conquered 
 lamb after lamb throughout the whole country which 
 he calls Gallia, he tells us almost nothing of himself. 
 Ofhis own political ideas, of his own ambition, even 
 of his doings in Italy through those winter months 
 which he generally passed on the Roman side of the 
 Alps, having left his army in winter quarters nnder 
 his lieutenants, he says but a very few words. His 
 record is simply the record of the campaigns; and 
 although he now and then speaks of the dignity of 
 the Republic, he hardly ever so far digresses from the 
 narrative as to give to the reader any idea of the 
 motives by which he is actuated. Once in these seven 
 memoirs of seven years’ battling in Gaul, and once 
 only, does he refer to a motive absolutely personal to 
 himself. When he succeeded in slaughtering a fourth 
 of the emigrating Swiss, which was his first military 
 success in Gaul, he tells us that he had then revenged 
 an injury to himself as well as an injury to the Re 
 public, because the grandfather of his father-in-law 
 had in former wars been killed by the very tribe which 
 he had just destroyed! 
 
 It is to be observed, also, that he does not intention¬ 
 ally speak in the first person, and that when he does so 
 it is in some passage of. no moment, in which the per¬ 
 sonality is accidental and altogether trivial. He does 
 not speak of “I ” and “ me,” but of Caesar, as though 
 
THE MANNER OF CAESAR’S NARRATIVE . 29 
 
 he, Caesar, who wrote the Commentary, were not the 
 Caesar of whom he is writing. Not unfreqently he 
 speaks strongly in praise of himself; but as there is no 
 humility in his tone, so also is there no pride, even 
 when he praises himself. He never seems to boast, 
 though he tells us of his own exploits as he does of 
 those of his generals and centurions. Without any 
 diffidence he informs us now and again how, at the end 
 of this or that campaign, a “supplication,” or public 
 festival and thanksgiving for his victories, was decreed 
 in Rome, on the hearing of the news,—to last for 
 fifteen or twenty days, as the case might be. 
 
 Of his difficulties at home,—the political difficulties 
 with which he had to contend,—he says never a word. 
 And yet at times they must have been very harassing. 
 We hear from other sources that during these wars in 
 Gaul his conduct was violently reprobated in Rome, 
 in that he had, with the utmost cruelty, attacked and 
 crushed states supposed to be in amity with Rome, 
 and that it was once even proposed to give him up to 
 the enemy as a punishment for grievous treachery to 
 the enemy. Had it been so resolved by the Roman 
 Senate,—had such a law been enacted,—the power to 
 carry out the law would have been wanted. It was 
 easier to grant a “supplication ” for twenty days than 
 to stop his career after his legions had come to know 
 him. 
 
 No? is there very much said by Caesar of his strategic 
 difficulties; though now and then, especially when his 
 ships are being knocked about on the British coast, and 
 again when the iron of his heel has so bruised the Gauls 
 that they all turn against him in one body under Ver- 
 cingetorix, the reader is allowed to see that he is 
 pressed hard enough. But it is his rule to tell the 
 
30 TEE WAR IK GA UL.—FIRST BOOK. 
 
 thing he means to do, the way he does it, and the com¬ 
 pleteness of the result, in the fewest possible words. 
 If any student of the literature of battles would read 
 first Caesar’s seven books of the Gallic War, and then 
 Mr. Kinglake’s first four volumes of the ‘ Invasion of the 
 Crimea,’he would be able to compare two most won¬ 
 derful examples of the dexterous use of words, in the 
 former of which the narrative is told with the utmost 
 possible brevity, and in the latter with almost the 
 utmost possible prolixity. And yet each narrative 
 is equally clear, and each equally distinguished by so 
 excellent an arrangement of words, that the reader 
 is forced to acknowledge that the storv is told to him by 
 a great master. 
 
 In praising others,—his lieutenants, his soldiers, and 
 occasionally his enemies,—Csesar is often enthusiastic, 
 though the praise is conferred by a word or two,—is 
 given, perhaps, simply in an epithet added on for that 
 purpose to a sentence planned with a wholly different 
 purpose. Of blame he is very sparing; so much so, 
 that it almost seems that he looked upon certain 
 imperfections, in regard even to faith as well as valor 
 or prudence, as necessary to humanity, and pardonable 
 because of their necessity. He can tell of the absolute 
 destruction of a legion through the folly and perhaps 
 cowardice of one of his lieutenants, without heaping a 
 word of reproach on the name of the unfortunate. He 
 can relate how a mucli-favored tribe fell off from their 
 faith again and again without expressing anger at their 
 faithlessness, and can explain how they were,—hardly 
 forgiven, but received again as friends,—because it 
 suited him so to treat them. But again he can tell us, 
 without apparently a quiver of the pen, how he could 
 devote to destruction a city with all its women and all 
 
THE MANNER OF (JMbSARS NARRATIVE. 31 
 
 its children, so that other cities might know what 
 would come to them if they did not yield and obey, 
 and become vassals to the godlike hero in whose 
 hands Providence had placed their lives and their 
 possessions. 
 
 It appears that Caesar never failed to believe in 
 himself. He is far too simple in his language, and too 
 conscious of his own personal dignity, to assert that 
 he has never been worsted. But his very simplicity 
 seems to convey the assurance that such cannot ulti¬ 
 mately be the result of any campaign in which he is 
 engaged. He seems to imply that victory attends him 
 so certainly that it would be futile in any case to dis¬ 
 cuss its probability. He feared no one, and was there¬ 
 fore the cause of awe to others. He could face his 
 own legions when they would not obey his call to 
 arms, and reduce them to obedience by a word. 
 Lucan, understanding his character well, says of him 
 that “he deserved to be feared, for he feared nothing;” 
 ‘ ‘ meruitque timeri Nil metuens. ” He writes of himself 
 as we might imagine some god would write who kuew 
 that his divine purpose must of course prevail, and 
 who would therefore never be in the way of entertain¬ 
 ing a doubt. With Caesar there is always this godlike 
 simplicity, which makes his “Veni, vidi, vici,” the 
 natural expression of his mind as to his own mode of 
 action. The same thing is felt in the very numerous 
 but very brief records of the punishments which he in¬ 
 flicted. Cities are left desolate, as it were with a wave 
 of his hand, but he hardly deigns to say that his own 
 hand has even been waved. He tells us of one Acco 
 who had opposed him, that, ‘ ‘ Graviore sententia pro- 
 nunciata,”—as though there had been some jury to 
 pronounce this severe sentence, which was in fact pro- 
 
32 THE WAR IN GA UL.—FIRST BOOK. 
 
 nounced only by himself, Caesar,—he inflicted punish¬ 
 ment on him “ more majorum.” We learn from other 
 sources that this punishment consisted in being strip¬ 
 ped naked, confined by the neck in a cleft stick, and 
 then being flogged to death. In the next words, hav¬ 
 ing told us in half a sentence that he had made the 
 country too hot to hold the fugitive accomplices of the 
 tortured chief, he passes on into Italy with the majes¬ 
 tic step of one much too great to dwell long on these 
 small but disagreeable details. And we feel that he is 
 too great. 
 
 It has been already said that the great proconsular 
 wolf was not long in hearing that a lamb had come 
 down to drink of his stream. The Helvetii, or Swiss, 
 as we call them,—those tribes which lived on the Lake 
 Leman, and among the hills and valleys to the north 
 of the lake,—had made up their minds that they were 
 inhabiting but a poor sort of country, and that they 
 might considerably better themselves by leaving their 
 mountains and going into some part of G-aul, in which 
 they might find themselves stronger than the existing 
 tribes, and might take possession of the fat of the land. 
 In doing so, their easiest way out of their own country 
 would lie by the Rhone, where it now runs through 
 Geneva into France. But in taking this route the 
 Swiss would be obliged to pass over a corner of the 
 Roman province. Here was a case of the lamb troub¬ 
 ling the waters with a vengeance. When this was told 
 Caesar,—that these Swiss intended, “facere iter per 
 Provinciam nostram”—“to do their traveling through 
 our province,”—he hurried over the Alps into Gaul, and 
 came to Geneva as fast as he could travel. 
 
 He begins his fiirst book by a geographical definition 
 of Gaul, which no doubt was hardly accurate, but which 
 
THE EMIGRATION OF THE HELVETIL 33- 
 
 gives us a singularly clear idea of that which Caesar de¬ 
 sired to convey. In speaking of Gallia he intends to signify 
 the whole country from the outflow of the Rhine into 
 the ocean down to the Pyrenees, and then eastward to 
 the Rhone, to the Swiss mountains, and the borders of 
 the Roman province. This he divides into three parts, 
 telling us that the Belgians inhabited the part north of 
 the Seine and Marne, the people of Aquitania the south 
 part of the Garonne, and the Gauls or Celts the inter¬ 
 mediate territory. Having so far described the scene 
 of his action, he rushes off at once to the dreadful sin 
 of the Swiss emigrants in desiring to pass through 
 “ our province.” 
 
 He has but one legion in Further Gaul, —that is, 
 in the Roman province on the further side of the Alps 
 from Rome; and therefore, when ambassadors come to 
 him from the Swiss, asking permission to go through 
 the corner of land, and promising that they will do no 
 harm in their passage, he temporizes with them. He 
 can’t give them an answer just then, but must think of 
 it. They must come back to him by a certain day,— 
 when he will have more soldiers ready. Of course he 
 refuses. The Swiss make some slight attempt, but 
 soon give that matter up in despair. There is another way 
 by which they can get out of their mountains,—through 
 the territory of a people called Sequani; and for doing 
 this they obtain leave. But Caesar knows how injurious 
 the Swiss lambs will be to him and his wolves, should 
 they succeed in getting round to the back of his prov¬ 
 ince,—that Roman province which left the name of 
 Provence in modern France till France refused to be 
 divided any longer into provinces. And he is, more¬ 
 over, invited by certain friends of the Roman Republic, 
 called the iEdui, to come and stop these rough Swiss 
 
34 THE WAR IN GAUL—FIRST BOOK. 
 
 / 
 
 travelers. He is always willing to lielp the HSdui, 
 although these JEdui are a fickle, inconstant people,— 
 and he is, above all things, willing to get to war. So 
 he comes upon the rear of the Swiss when three 
 portions of the people have passed the river Arar 
 (Saone), and one portion is still behind. This hinder- 
 most tribe,—for the wretches were all of one tribe or 
 mountain canton,—he sets upon and utterly destroys; 
 and on this occasion congratulates himself on having 
 avenged himself upon the slayers of the grandfather 
 of his father-in-law. 
 
 There can be nothing more remarkable in history 
 than this story of the attempted emigration of the 
 Helvetii, which Caesar tells us without the expression 
 of any wonder. The whole people made up their 
 minds that, as their borders were narrow, their num¬ 
 bers increasing, and their courage good, thsy would go 
 forth,—men, women, and children,—and seek other 
 homes. We read constantly of the emigrations of 
 people,—of the Northmen from the north covering the 
 Southern plains, of Danes and Jutes entering Britain, 
 of men from Scandinavia coming down across the 
 Rhine, and the like. We know that after this fashion 
 the world has become peopled. But we picture to 
 ourselves generally a concourse of warriors going forth 
 and leaving behind them homes and friends, to whom 
 they may or may not return. With these Swiss 
 wanderers there was to be no return. All that they 
 could not take with them they destroyed, burning 
 their houses, and burning even their corn, so 'that 
 there should be no means of turning their steps back¬ 
 ward. They do make considerable progress, getting 
 as far into France as Autun,—three-fourths of them 
 at least getting so far; but near this they are brought 
 
THE EMIGRATION OFTIIE HELVE TIL 35 
 
 to an engagement by Caesar, who outgenerals them 
 on a hill. The prestige of the Romans had not as yet 
 established itself in these parts, and the Swiss nearly 
 have the best of it. Csesar owns, as he does not own 
 again above once or twice, that the battle between 
 them was very long, and for long very doubtful. But 
 at last the poor Helvetii are driven in slaughter. 
 Csesar, however, is not content that they should 
 simply fly. He forces them back upon their old 
 territory,—upon their burnt houses and devastated 
 fields,—lest certain Germans should come and live 
 there, and make themselves disagreeable. And they 
 go back;—so many, at least, go back as are not slain in 
 the adventure. With great attempt at accuracy, Csesar 
 tells us that 368,000 human beings went out on the 
 expedition, and that 110,000, or less than a third, 
 found their way back. Of those that perished, many 
 hecatombs had been offered up to the shade of his 
 father-in-law’s grandfather. 
 
 Hereupon the Gauls begin to see how great a man 
 is Caesar. He tells us that no sooner was that war 
 with the Swiss finished than nearly all the tribes of 
 Gallia send to congratulate him. And one special 
 tribe, those AEdui,—of whom we hear a great deal, 
 and whom we never like because they are thoroughly 
 anti-Gallican in all their doings till they think that 
 Caesar is really in trouble, and then they turn upon 
 him,—have to beg of him a great favor. Two tribes, 
 —the iEdui, whose name seems to have left no trace 
 in France, and the Arverni, whom we still know in 
 Auvergne,—have been long contending for the upper 
 hand; whereupon the Arverni and their friends the 
 Sequani have called in the assistance of certain Ger¬ 
 mans from across the Rhine. It went badly then 
 
36 THE WAR IN GA UL.—FIRST BOOK 
 
 with the iEdui. And now one of their kings, named 
 Divitiacus, implores the help of Caesar. Would Caesar 
 he kind enough to expel these horrid Germans, and 
 get back the hostages, and free them from a burden¬ 
 some dominion, and put things a little to rights? 
 And, indeed, not only were the iEdui suffering from 
 these Germans, and their king, Ariovistus; it is going 
 still worse with the Sequani, who had called them in. 
 In fact, Ariovistus was an intolerable nuisance to that 
 eastern portion of Gaul. Would Caesar be kind 
 enough to drive him out? Caesar consents, and then 
 we are made to think of another little fable,—of the 
 prayer which the horse made to the man for assistance 
 in his contest with the stag, and of the manner in 
 which the man got upon the horse, and never got 
 down again. Caesar was not slow to mount, and when 
 once in the saddle, certainly did not mean to leave it. 
 
 Caesar tells us his reasons for undertaking this com¬ 
 mission. The iEdui had often been called “brothers” 
 and “cousins” by the Roman Senate; and it was not 
 fitting that men who had been so honored should be 
 domineered over by Germans. And then, unless these 
 marauding Germans could be stopped, they would fall 
 into the habit of coming across the Rhine, and at 
 last might get into the Province, and by that route 
 into Italy itself. And Ariovistus himself was per¬ 
 sonally so arrogant a man that the thing must be made 
 to cease. So Caesar sends ambassadors to Ariovistus, 
 and invites the barbarian to a meeting. The barbarian 
 will not come to the meeting. If he wanted to see 
 the Roman, he would go to the Roman: if the Roman 
 wants to see him, the Roman may come to him. Such 
 is the reply of Ariovistus. Ambassadors pass between 
 them, and there is a good deal of argument, in which 
 
, _ ij 
 
 ARIOVISTUS AND HIS GERMANS. 37 
 
 the barbarian has the best of it. Csesar, with his god¬ 
 like simplicity, scorns not to give the barbarian the 
 benefit of his logic. Ariovistus reminds Csesar that 
 the Romans have been in the habit of governing the 
 tribes conquered by them after their fashion, without 
 interference from him, Ariovistus; and that the Ger¬ 
 mans claim and mean to exercise the same right. He 
 goes on to say that he is willing enough to live in 
 amity with the Romans; but will Csesar be kind 
 enough to remember that the Germans are a people 
 unconquered in war, trained to the use of arms, 
 and how hardy he might judge when he was told 
 that for fourteen years they had not slept under a roof? 
 In the meantime other Gauls were complaining, and 
 begging for assistance. The Treviri, people of the 
 country where Treves now stands, are being harassed 
 by the terrible yellow-haired Suevi, who at this time 
 seem to have possessed nearly the whole of Prussia as 
 it now exists on the further side of the Rhine, and 
 who had the same desire to come westward that the 
 Prussians have evinced since. And a people called 
 the Harudes, from the Danube, are also harassing 
 the poor iEdui. Caesar, looking at these things, sees 
 that unless he is quick, the northern and southern 
 Germans may join their forces. He gets together his 
 commissariat, and flies at Ariovistus very quickly. 
 
 Throughout all his campaigns, Caesar, as did Napo¬ 
 leon afterwards, effected everything by celerity. He 
 preaches to us no sermon on the subject, favors us 
 with no disquisition as to the value of despatch in war, 
 but constantly tells us that he moved all his army 
 “ magnis itineribus ”—by very rapid marches; that he 
 went on with his work night and day, and took pre¬ 
 cautions “ magno opere,”—with much labor and all 
 
38 THE WAR IN GA UL.—FIRST BOOK. 
 
 his care,—to be beforehand with the enemy. In this 
 instance Ariovistus tries to reach a certain town of the 
 poor Sequani, then called Vesontio, now known to us 
 as Besancon,—the same name, but very much altered. 
 It consisted of a hill, or natural fortress, almost sur¬ 
 rounded by a river, or natural fosse. There is nothing, 
 says Caesar, so useful in a war as the possession of a 
 place thus naturally strong. Therefore he hurries on 
 and gets before Ariovistus, and occupies the town. 
 The reader already begins to feel that Caesar is des¬ 
 tined to divine success. The reader indeed knows 
 that beforehand, and expects nothing worse for Caesar 
 than hairbreadth escapes. But the Romans them¬ 
 selves had not as yet the same confidence in him. 
 Tidings are brought to him at Yesontio that his men 
 are terribly afraid of the Germans. And so, no doubt, 
 they were. These Romans, though by the art of war 
 they had been made fine soldiers,—though they had 
 been trained in the Eastern conquests and the Punic 
 wars, and invasions of all nations around them,—were 
 nevertheless, up to this day, greatly afraid even of the 
 Gauls. The coming of the Gauls into Italy had been 
 a source of terror to them ever since the days of 
 Brennus. And the Germans were worse than the 
 Gauls. The boast made by Ariovistus that his men 
 never slept beneath a roof was not vain or useless. 
 They were a horrid, hirsute, yellow-haired people, the 
 flashing aspect of whose eyes could hardly be endured 
 by an Italian. The fear is so great that the soldiers 
 “ sometimes could not refrain even from tears;”— 
 “ neque interdum lacrimas tenere poterant.” When 
 we remember what these men became after they had 
 been a while with Caesar, their bluddering awe of the 
 Germans strikes us as almost comic. And we are re- 
 
A RIO VIST US AND HIS GERMANS. 39 
 
 minded that the Italians of those days were, as they are 
 now, more prone to show the outward signs of emotion 
 than is thought to he decorous with men in more northern 
 climes. We can hardly realize the idea of soldiers cry 
 ing from fear. Caesar is told by his centurions that so 
 great is this feeling, that the men will probably refuse 
 to take up their arms when called upon to go out and 
 fight; whereupon he makes a speech to all his cap¬ 
 tains and lieutenants, full of boasting, full of scorn, full, 
 no doubt, of falsehood, but using a bit of truth when¬ 
 ever the truth could aid him. We know that among 
 other great gifts Caesar had the gift of persuasion. 
 From his tongue, also, as from Nestor’s, could flow 
 “ words sweeter than honey,”—or sharper than steel. At 
 any rate, if others will not follow him, his tenth legion, 
 he knows, will be true to him. He will go forth with 
 that one legion,—if necessary, with that legion of true 
 soldiers, and with no others. Though he had been at 
 his work but a short time, he already had his picked 
 men, his guards, his favorite regiments, his tenth 
 legion; and he knew well how to use their superiority 
 and valor for the creation of those virtues in others. 
 
 Then Ariovistus sends ambassadors, and declares 
 that he now is willing to meet Caesar! Let them meet 
 on a certain plain, each bringing only his cavalry 
 guard. Ariovistus suggests that foot-soldiers might 
 be dangerous, knowing that Caesar’s foot-soldiers would 
 be Romans, and that his cavalry are Gauls. Caesar 
 agrees, but takes men out of his own tenth legion, 
 mounted on the horses of the less-trusted allies. The 
 accounts of these meetings, and the arguments which 
 we are told are used on this and that side, are very 
 interesting. We are bound to remember that Caesar 
 is telling the story for both sides, but we feel that he 
 
40 tee WAR m GA UL.—FIRST BOOK. 
 
 tries to tell it fairly. Ariovistus had very little to say 
 to Caesar’s demands, but a great deal to say about bis 
 own exploits. The meeting, however, was broken up 
 by an attack made by the Germans on Caesar’s mounted 
 guard, and Caesar retires,—not, however, before be 
 has explained to Ariovistus bis grand idea of the pro¬ 
 tection due by Rome to her allies. Then Ariovistus 
 proposes another meeting, which Caesar declines to 
 attend, sending, however, certain ambassadors. Ario* 
 vistus at once throws the ambassadors into chains, and 
 then there is nothing for it but a fight. 
 
 The details of all these battles cannot be given 
 within our short limits, and there is nothing special 
 in this battle to tempt us to dwell upon it. Caesar 
 describes to us the way in which the German cavalry 
 and infantry fought together, the footmen advancing 
 from amidst the horsemen, and then returning for 
 protection. His own men fight well, and the Ger¬ 
 mans, in spite of their flashing eyes, are driven head¬ 
 long in a rout back to the Rhine. Ariovistus succeeds 
 in getting over the river and saving himself, but he 
 has to leave his two daughters behind, and his two 
 wives. The two .wives and one of the daughters are 
 killed; the other daughter is taken prisoner. Caesar had 
 sent as one of his ambassadors to the German, a certain 
 dear friend of his, who, as we heard before, was, with 
 his comrade, at once subjected to chains. In the flight 
 this ambassador is recovered. “ Which thing, indeed, 
 gave Caesar not less satisfaction than the victory itself, 
 —in that he saw one of the lionestest men of the Pro¬ 
 vince of Gaul, his own familiar friend and guest, 
 rescued from the hands of his enemies and restored to 
 him. Nor did Fortune diminish this gratification by 
 any calamity inflicted on the man. Thrice, as he him- 
 
ARIOVISTUS AND HIS GERMANS. 
 
 41 
 
 self told tlie tale, had it been decided by lot in his 
 own presence whether he should then be burned alive 
 or reserved for another time. ” So Caesar tells the story, 
 and we like him for his enthusiasm, and are glad to hear 
 that the comrade ambassador also is brought back. 
 
 The yellow-haired Suevi, when they hear of all 
 this, desist from their invasion on the lower Rhine, 
 and hurry back into their own country, not without 
 misfortunes on the road. So great already is Caesar’s 
 name, that tribes, acting as it were on his side, dare to 
 attack even the Suevi. Then, in his “ Yeni, vidi, 
 vici ” style, he tells us that, having in one summer 
 finished off two wars, he is able to put his army into 
 winter quarters even before the necessary time, so that 
 he himself may go into his other Gaul across the Alps, 
 —“ad conventus agendos,”—to hold some kind of 
 session or assizes for the Government of his province, 
 and especially to collect more soldiers. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 SECOND BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL.—CAESAR SUBDUES 
 THE BELGIAN TRIBES.—B.C. 57. 
 
 The man bad got on tbe horse’s back, but the horse 
 had various disagreeable enemies in attacking whom the 
 man might be ve y useful, and the horse was therefore 
 not as yet anxious to unseat his rider. Would Caesar 
 be so good as to go and conquer the Belgian tribes? 
 Caesar is not slow in finding reasons for so doing. 
 The Belgians are conspiring together against him. 
 Thev think that as all Haul has been reduced,—or 
 “ pacified,” as Caesar calls it,—the Roman conqueror will 
 certainly bring his valor to bear upon them, and that 
 they had better be ready. Caesar suggests that it 
 would no doubt be felt by them as a great grievance 
 that a Roman army should remain all the winter so 
 near to them. In this way, and governed by these 
 considerations, the Belgian lambs disturb the stream 
 very sadly, and tbe wolf has to look to it. He collects 
 two more legions, and, as soon as the earth brings 
 forth the food necessary for his increased number of 
 / men and horses, he hurries off against these Belgian 
 tribes of Northern Gallia. Of these, one tribe, the 
 Remi, immediately send word to him that they are 
 not wicked lambs like the others; they have not 
 
CAESAR REDUCES THE BELGIAN TRIBES. 43 
 
 touched the waters. All the other Belgians, say the 
 Remi, and with them a parcel of Germans, are in a con¬ 
 spiracy together. Even their very next-door neighbors, 
 their brothers and cousins, the Suessiones, are wicked; 
 but they, the Remi, have steadily refused even to sniff 
 at the stream, which they acknowledge to be the 
 exclusive property of the good wolf. Would the wolf 
 be kind enough to come and take possession of them 
 and all their belongings, and allow them to be the 
 humblest of his friends? We come to hate these Remi, 
 as we do the kEdui; but they are wise in their genera¬ 
 tion, and escape much of the starvation and massa¬ 
 cring and utter ruin to which the other tribes are sub¬ 
 jected. Among almost all these so-called Belgian tribes 
 we find the modern names which are familiar to us. 
 Rheims is in the old country of the Remi, Soissons in 
 that of the Suessiones. Beauvais represents the Bel- 
 lovaci, Amiens the Ambiani, Arras the Atrebates, 
 Treves the Treviri,—as has been pointed out before. 
 Silva Arduenna is, of course, the Forest of Ardennes. 
 
 The campaign is commenced by an attack made by the 
 other Belgians on those unnatural Remi who have gone 
 over to the Romans. There is a town of theirs, Bibrax, 
 now known, or rather not known, as Bievre, and here 
 the Remi are besieged by their brethren. When 
 Bibrax is on the point of falling,—and we can imagine 
 what would then have been the condition of the towns¬ 
 men,—they send to Caesar, who is only eight miles 
 distant. Unless Caesar will help, they cannot endure 
 any longer such onslaught as is made on them. Caesar, 
 having bided his tirng, of course sends help, and the 
 poor besieging Belgians fall into inextricable confusion. 
 They agree to go home, each to his own country, and 
 from thence to proceed to the defence of any tribe 
 
44 THE WAR IN GA UL.—SECOND BOOK. 
 
 which Caesar might attack. “So,” says Caesar, as he 
 ends the story of this little affair, ‘ ‘ without any danger 
 on our part, our men killed as great a number of theirs 
 as the space of the day would admit.” When the sun 
 set, and not till then, came an end to the killing,—such 
 having been the order of Caesar. 
 
 That these Belgians had really formed any intention 
 of attacking the Roman province, or even any Roman 
 ally, there is no other proof than that Caesar tells us 
 that they had all conspired. But whatever might be 
 their sin, or what the lack of sin on their part, he is 
 determined to go on with the war till he has subjugated 
 them altogether. On the very next day he attacks the 
 Suessiones, and gets as far as Noviodunum,—Noyons. 
 The people there, when they see how terrible are his 
 engines of war, give up all idea of defending them¬ 
 selves, and ask for terms. The Bellovaci do the same. 
 At the instigation of his friends the Remi, he spares the 
 one city, and, to please the iEdui, the other. But he 
 takes away all their arms, and exacts hostages. From 
 the Bellovaci, because they have a name as a powerful 
 people, he takes 609 hostages. Throughout all these 
 wars it becomes a matter of wonder to us what Caesar 
 did with all these hostages, and how he maintained 
 them. It was, however, no doubt clearly understood 
 that they would be killed if the town, or state, or tribe 
 by which they were given should misbehave, or in any 
 way thwart the great conqueror. 
 
 The Ambiani come next, and the ancestors of our 
 intimate friends at Amiens soon give themselves up. 
 The next to them are the Nervii, a people far away to 
 the north, where Lille now is and a considerable portion 
 of Flanders. Of these Caesar had heard wonderful 
 travelers’ tales. They were a people who admitted no 
 
GMSAB REDUCES THE BELGIAN TRIBES. 45 
 
 dealers among them, being in this respect very unlike 
 their descendants, the Belgians of to-day; they drank 
 no wine, and indulged in no luxuries, lest their martial 
 valor should be diminished. They send no ambassadors 
 to Caesar, and resolve to hold their own if they can. 
 They trust solely to infantry in battle, and know noth¬ 
 ing of horses. Against the cavalry of other nations, 
 however, they are wont to protect themselves by arti¬ 
 ficial hedges, which they make almost as strong as walls. 
 
 Caesar in attacking the Nervii had eight legions, and 
 he tells us how he advanced against them “ consuetu- 
 dine su&,”—after his usual fashion. For some false in¬ 
 form ition had been given to the Nervii on this subject, 
 which brought them into considerable trouble. He 
 sent on first his cavalry, then six legions, the legions 
 consisting solely of foot-soldiers; after these all the 
 baggage, commissariat, and burden of the army, com¬ 
 prising the materials necessary for sieges; and lastly, 
 the two other legions, which had been latest enrolled. 
 It may be as well to explain here that the legion in the 
 time of Caesar consisted on paper of six thousand heavy¬ 
 armed foot-soldiers. There were ten cohorts in a legion, 
 and six centuries, or six hundred men, in each cohort. 
 It may possibly be that, as with our regiments, the 
 numbers were frequently not full. Eight full legions 
 would thus have formed an army consisting of 48,000 
 infantry. The exact number of men under his orders 
 Caesar does not mention here or elsewhere. 
 
 According to his own showing, Caesar is hurried into 
 a battle before he knows where he is. Caesar, he says, 
 had everything to do himself, all at the same time,— 
 to unfurl the standard of battle, to give the signal with 
 the trumpet, to get back the soldiers from their work, 
 to call back some who had gone to a distance for stuff 
 
46 the war in a a ul—second book. 
 
 to make a rampart, to draw up the army, to address the 
 men, and then to give the word. In that matter of 
 oratory, he only tells them to remember their old 
 valor. The enemy was so close upon them, and so 
 ready for fighting, that they could scarcely put on their 
 helmets and take their shields out of their cases. So 
 great was the confusion that the soldiers could not get 
 to their own ranks, but had to fight as they stood, 
 under any flag that was nearest to them. There were 
 so many things against them, and especially those thick 
 artificial hedges, which prevented them even from see¬ 
 ing, that it was impossible for them to fight according 
 to any method, and in consequence there ere vicissi¬ 
 tudes of fortune. One is driven to feel that on this 
 occasion Caesar was caught napping. The Nervii did 
 at times and places seem to be getting the best of it. 
 The ninth and tenth legions pursue one tribe into a river, 
 and then they have to fight them again, and drive them 
 out of the river. The eleventh and eighth, having put to 
 flight another tribe, are attacked on the very river-banks. 
 The twelfth and the seventh have their hands equally 
 full, when Boduognatus, the Nervian chief, makes his 
 way into the very middle of the Roman camp. So 
 great is the confusion that the Treviri, who had joined 
 Caesar on this occasion as allies, although reputed the 
 bravest of the cavalry of Gaul, run away home, and 
 declare that the Romans are conquered. Caesar, how¬ 
 ever, comes to the rescue, and saves his army on this 
 occasion by personal prowess. When he saw how it 
 was going,—“rem esse in angusto,”—how the thing 
 had got itself into the very narrowest neck of a diffi¬ 
 culty, he seizes a shield from a common soldier,—having 
 come there himself with no shield,—and rushes into the 
 fight. When the soldiers saw him, and saw, too, that 
 
CHJSAR REDUCES THE BELGIAN TRIBES. 47 
 
 what they did was done in his sight, they fought anew, 
 and the onslaught of the enemy was checked. 
 
 Perhaps readers will wish that they could know how 
 much of all this is exactly true. It reads as though it 
 were true. We cannot in these days understand how 
 one brave man at such a moment should be so much 
 more effective than another, how he should be known 
 personally to the soldiers of an army so large, how Caesar 
 should have known the names of the centurions,—for he 
 tells us that he addresses them by name;—and yet it 
 reads like truth; and the reader feels that as Caesar 
 would hardly condescend to boast, so neither would he 
 be constrained by any modern feeling of humility from 
 telling any truth of himself. It is as though Minerva 
 were to tell us of some descent which she made 
 among the Trojans. The Nervii fight on, but of course 
 they are driven in flight. The nation is all but de¬ 
 stroyed, so that the very name can but hardly remain; 
 —so at least we are told here, though we hear of them 
 again as a tribe by no means destroyed or powerless. 
 When out of six hundred senators there are but three 
 senators left, when from sixty thousand fighting men 
 the army has been reduced to scarcely five hundred, 
 Caesar throws the mantle of his mercy over the sur¬ 
 vivors. He allows them even to go and live in their 
 own homes, and forbids their neighbors to harass 
 them. There can be no doubt that Caesar nearly got 
 the worst of it in this struggle, and we may surmise 
 that he learned a lesson which was of service to him 
 in subsequent campaigns. 
 
 But there are still certain Aduatici to be disposed 
 of before the summer is over,—people who had helped 
 the Nervii,—who have a city of their own, and who 
 
48 THE WAR IN’ a A TIL.—SECOND. BOOK. 
 
 live somewhere in the present Namur district.* At 
 first they fight a little round the walls of their town; 
 hut when they see what terrible instruments Caesar 
 has, by means of which to get at them over their very 
 walls,—how he can build up a great turret at a distance, 
 which, at that distance, is ludicrous to them, but which 
 he brings near to them, so that it overhangs them, from 
 which to harass them with arrows and stones, and 
 against which, so high is it, they have no defence— 
 then they send out and beg for mercy. Surely, they 
 say, Caesar and the Romans must have more than 
 human power. They will give up everything, if only 
 Caesar out of his mercy will leave to them their arms. 
 They are always at war with all their neighbors; and 
 where would they be without arms ? 
 
 Caesar replies. Merits of their own they have none. 
 How could a tribe have merits against which Caesar 
 was at war? Nevertheless, such being his custom, he 
 will admit them to some terms of grace if they sur¬ 
 render before his battering-ram has touched their 
 walls. But as for their arms, surely they must be 
 joking with him. Of course their arm3 must be sur¬ 
 rendered. What he had done for the Nervii he would 
 do for them. He would tell their neighbors not to 
 
 * These people were the descendants of those Cimbri who, half 
 a century before, had caused such woe to Rome! The Cimbri, we 
 are told, had gone forth from their lands, and had been six times 
 victorious over Roman armies, taking possession of “ our Prov¬ 
 ince,” and threatening Italy and Rome. The whole empire of 
 the Republic had been in dangsr, but was at last saved by the 
 courage, skill, and rapidity of Marius. In going forth from 
 their country they had left a remnant behind with such of their 
 possessions as they could not carry with them; and these 
 Aduatici were the children and grandchildren of that remnant. 
 Caesar doubtless remembered it all. 
 
CAESAR REDUCES THE BELGIAN TRIBES. 49 
 
 hurt them. They agree, and throw their arms into the 
 outside ditch of the town, but not quite all their arms, 
 A part,—a third,—are cunningly kept back; and when 
 Caesar enters the town, they who have kept their arms, 
 and others unarmed, try to escape from the town. They 
 fight, and some thousands are slain. Others are driven 
 back, and these are sold for slaves. Who, we wonder, 
 could have been the purchasers, and at what price on 
 that day was a man to be bought in the city of the 
 Aduatici ? 
 
 Then Caesar learns through his lieutenant, young 
 Crassus, the son of his colleague in the triumvirate,that 
 all the Belgian states, from the Scheldt to the Bay of 
 Biscay, have been reduced beneath the yoke of the 
 Roman people. The Germans, too, send ambassadors 
 to him, so convinced are they that to fight against him 
 is of no avail,—so wonderful an idea of this last war 
 has pervaded all the tribes of barbarians. But Caesar is 
 in a hurry, and can hear no ambassadors now. He 
 wants to get into Italy, and they must come again to 
 him next summer. 
 
 Fftr all which glorious doings a public thanksgiving 
 of fifteen days is decreed, as soon as the news is heard 
 in Rome. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THIRD BOOK OF THE WAR IN HAUL.—CAESAR SUBDUES 
 
 ✓ 
 
 THE WESTERN TRIBES OF GAUL.—B. C. 56. 
 
 In the first few lines of the third book we learn that 
 Caesar had an eye not only for conquest, hut for the 
 advantages of conquest also. When he went into 
 Italy at the end of the last campaign, he sent one 
 Galba, whose descendant became emperor after Hero, 
 with the twelfth legion, to take up his winter quarters 
 in the upper valley of the Rhone, in order that an 
 easier traffic might be opened to traders passing over 
 the Alps in and out of Northern Italy. In seems that 
 the passage used was that of the Great St. Bernard,and 
 Galba placed himself with his legion at that junction 
 of the valley which we all know so well as Martigny. 
 Here, however, he was attacked furiously in his camp 
 by the inhabitants of the valley, who probably objected 
 to being dictated to as to the amount of toll to be 
 charged upon the traveling traders, and was very nearly 
 destroyed. The Romans, however, at last, when they 
 had neither weapons nor food left for maintaining their 
 camp, resolved to cut their way through their enemies. 
 This they did so effectually that they slaughtered more 
 than ten thousand men, and the other twenty thou¬ 
 sand of Swiss warriors all took to flight! Nevertheless 
 
CTESAR MAKES LITTLE OF DIFFICULTIES. 51 
 
 Galba thought it as well to leave that inhospitable 
 region, in which it was almost impossible to find food 
 for the winter, and took himself down the valley and 
 along the lake to the Roman province. He made his 
 winter-quarters among the Allobroges, who belonged to 
 the province,—a people, living just south of the present 
 Lyons. How the Allobroges liked it we are not told, 
 but we know that they were then very faithful, al¬ 
 though in former days they had given great trouble. 
 Their position made faith to Rome almost a necessity. 
 Whether, in such a position, Caesar’s lieutenants paid 
 their way, and bought their corn at market price, we 
 do not know. It was Caesar's rule, no doubt, to make 
 the country on which his army stood support his army. 
 
 When the number of men whom Caesar took with 
 him into countries hitherto unknown to him or his 
 army is considered, and the apparently reckless au¬ 
 dacity with which he did so, it must be acknowledged 
 that he himself says very little about his difficulties. 
 He must constantly have had armies for which to 
 provide twice as large as our Crimean army,—probably 
 as large as the united force of the English and French 
 in the Crimea; and he certainly could not bring with 
 him what he wanted in ships. The road from Bala¬ 
 clava up to the heights over Sebastopol, we know, was 
 very bad; but it was short. The road from the foot of 
 the Alps in the Roman province to the countries with 
 which we were dealing in the last chapter could not, 
 we should say, have been very good two thousand 
 years ago, and it certainly was very long;—nearly a 
 hundred miles for Caesar to every single one of those 
 that were so terrible to us in the Crimea. Caesar, 
 however, carried but little with him beyond his arms 
 and implements of war, and of those the heaviest he 
 
52 THE WAR IN GA UL.—THIRD BOOK .. 
 
 no doubt made as be went. The men had an allow¬ 
 ance of corn per day, besides so much-pay. We are 
 told that the pay before Caesar’s time was 100 asses 
 a month for the legionaries,—the as being less than a 
 penny,—and that this was doubled by Caesar. We 
 can conceive that the money troubled him compara¬ 
 tively slightly, but that the finding of the daily corn and 
 forage for so large a host of men and horses must have 
 been very difficult. He speaks of the difficulty often, 
 but never with that despair which was felt as to the 
 roasting of our coffee in the Crimea. We hear of his 
 waiting till forage should have grown, and sometimes 
 there are necessary considerations “ de re f rumen tari&,” 
 —about that great general question of provisions; but 
 of crushing difficulties very little is said, and of bad 
 roads not a word. One great advantage Caesar certainly 
 had over Lord Raglan;—he was his own special cor¬ 
 respondent. Coffee his men certainly did not get; but 
 if their corn were not properly roasted for them, and if, 
 as would be natural, the men grumbled, he had with 
 him no licensed collector of grumbles to make public 
 the sufferings of his men. 
 
 And now, when this affair of Galba’s had been 
 finished,—when Caesar, as he tells us, really did think 
 that all Gaul was “pacatam,” tranquilized, or at least 
 subdued,—the Belgians conquered, the Germans driven 
 off, those Swiss fellows cut to pieces in the valley of the 
 Rhone; when he thought that he might make a short 
 visit into that other province of his, Illyricum, so that 
 he might see what that was like,—he is told that another 
 war has sprung up in Gaul! Young Crassus, with that 
 pecessity which of course was on him of providing 
 winter food for the seventh legion which he had been 
 ordered to take into Aquitania, has been obliged to send 
 
CAESAR SUBDUES THE WESTERN TRIBES. 53 
 
 out for corn into the neighboring countries. Of course 
 a well-instructed young general, such as was Crassus, 
 had taken hostages before he sent his men out among 
 strange and wild barbarians. But in spite of that, the 
 Yeneti, a maritime people of ancient Brittany, just in 
 that country of the Morbihan whither we now go to 
 visit the works of the Druids at Carnac and Locmariaker, 
 absolutely detained his two ambassadors;—so called 
 afterwards, though in his first mention of them Caesar 
 names them as praefects and tribunes of the soldiers. 
 Yannes, the capitol of the department of the Morbihan, 
 gives us a trace of the name of this tribe. The Yeneti, 
 who were powerful in ships, did not see why they 
 should give their corn to Crassus. Caesar, when he 
 hears that ambassadors,—sacred ambassadors,—have 
 been stopped, is filled with shame and indignation, and 
 hurries off himself to look after the affair, having, as 
 we may imagine,been able to see very little of Illyricum. 
 
 This horror of Caesar in regard to his ambassadors,— 
 in speaking of which he alludes to what the Gauls 
 themselves felt when they came to understand what a 
 thing they had done in making ambassadors prisoners, 
 —“ legatos,”—a name that has always been held sacred 
 and inviolate among all nations,—is very great, and 
 makes him feel that he must really be in earnest. We 
 are reminded of the injunctions, printed in Spanish, 
 which the Spaniards distributed among the Indians of 
 the continent, in the countries now called Yenezuela 
 and New Granada, explaining to the people, who knew 
 nothing of Spanish or of printing, how they were 
 bound to obey the orders of a distant king, who had 
 the authority of a more distant Pope, who again,—so 
 they claimed,—was delegated by a more distant God. 
 The pain of history consists in the injustice of the wolf 
 
54 THE WAR IN GAUL.—THIRD BOOR. 
 
 towards the lamb, joined to the conviction that thus, 
 and no otherwise, could the lamb be brought to better 
 than a sheepish mode of existence! But Caesar was in 
 earnest.* The following is a translation of the tenth 
 section of this book; “ There were these difficulties in 
 carrying on the war which we have above shown.”— 
 He alludes to the maritime capacities of the people 
 whom he desires to conquer.—“Many things, never¬ 
 theless, urged Caesar on to this war;—the wrongs of 
 those Roman knights who had been detained, rebel¬ 
 lion set on foot after an agreed surrender,”—that any 
 such surrender had been made we do not hear, though 
 we do hear, incidentally, that Crassus had taken hos¬ 
 tages;—“a falling off from alliance after hostages had 
 been given; conspiracy among so many tribes; and 
 then this first consideration, that if this side of the 
 country were disregarded, the other tribes might learn 
 to think that they might take the same liberty. Then, 
 when he bethought himself that, as the Gauls were 
 prone to rebellion, and were quickly and easily excited 
 to war, and that all men, moreover, are fond of liberty 
 and hate a condition of subjection, he resolved that it 
 would be well, rather than that other states should 
 conspire,”—and to avoid the outbreak on behalf of free¬ 
 dom which might thus probably be made,—“that his 
 army should be divided, and scattered about more 
 
 * And Caesar was no doubt indignant as well as earnest, 
 though, perhaps, irrational in his indignation. We know how 
 sacred was held to be the person of the Roman citizen, and 
 remember Cicero’s patriotic declaration, “Facinus est vinciri 
 civem Romanum,—scelus verberari;” and again, the words 
 which Horace puts into the mouth of Regulus when he asserts 
 that the Roman soldier must be lost for ever in his shame, and 
 useless, “ Qui lora restrictis lacertis Sensit iners timuitque 
 mortem.” 
 
CAESAR SUBDUES THE WESTERN TRIBES, 55 
 
 widely.” Treating all Gaul as a chess-board, he sends 
 round to provide that the Treviri should be kept quiet. 
 Readers will remember how far Treves is distant from 
 the extremities of Brittany. The Belgians are to be 
 looked to, lest they should rise and come and help. 
 The Germans are to be prevented from crossing the 
 Rhine. Labienus, who, during the Gallic wars, was 
 Caesar’s general highest in trust, is to see to all this. 
 Crassus is to go back into Aquitania and keep the south 
 quiet. Titurius Sabinus, destined afterwards to a sad 
 end, is sent with three legions,—eighteen thousand men, 
 
 -—among the neighboring tribes of Northern Brittany 
 and Normandy. “Young” Decimus Brutus,—Caesar 
 speaks of him with that kind affection which the epithet 
 conveys, and we remember, as we read, that this Brutus 
 appears afterwards in history as one of Caesar’s slayers, 
 in conjunction with his greater namesake,—young Dec¬ 
 imus Brutus, the future conspirator in Rome, has con¬ 
 fided to him the fleet which is to destroy these much 
 less guilty distant conspirators, and Caesar himself takes 
 the command of his own legions on the spot. All this 
 is told in fewer words than are here used in describing 
 the telling, and the reader feels that he has to do with a 
 mighty man, whose eyes are everywhere, and of whom 
 an ordinary enemy would certainly say, Surely this is 
 no man, but a god. 
 
 He tells us how great was the effect of his own 
 presence on the shore, though the battle was carried 
 on under young Brutus at sea. ‘‘What remained of 
 the conflict,” he says, after describing their manoeuvres, 
 “depended on valor, in which our men were far away 
 the superior; and this was more especially true be¬ 
 cause the affair was carried on so plainly in the sight 
 of Caesar and the whole army that no brave deed could 
 
56 THE WAR IN GAUL.—THIRD BOOK. 
 
 pass unobserved. For all the hills and upper lands, 
 from whence the view down upon the sea was close, 
 were covered by the army.” 
 
 Of course he conquers the Yeneti and other sea-going 
 tribes, even on their own element. Whereupon they 
 give themselves and all their belongings up to Caesar. 
 Caesar, desirous that the rights of ambassadors shall 
 hereafter be better respected among barbarians, deter¬ 
 mines that he must use a little severity. “Gravius 
 vindicandum statuit;”—“he resolved that the otfence 
 should be expiated with more than ordinary punish¬ 
 ment.” Consequently, he kills all the senate, and sells 
 all the other men as slaves! The pithy brevity, the 
 unapolegetic dignity of the sentence, as he pronounced 
 it and tells it to us, is heartrending, but, at this dis¬ 
 tance of time, delightful also. ‘ ‘ Itaque, omni senatu 
 necato, reliquos sub corona vendidit.”—“therefore, 
 all the senate having been slaughtered, he sold the 
 other citizens with chaplets on their heads;”—it being 
 the Roman custom so to mark captives in war intended 
 for sale. We can see him as he waves his hand and 
 passes on. Surely he must be a god! 
 
 His generals in this campaign are equally success¬ 
 ful. One Viridovix, a Gaul up in the Normandy 
 country,—somewhere about Avranches or St. Lo, we 
 may imagine,—is entrapped into a fight, and destroyed 
 with his army. Aquitania surrenders herself to Cras- 
 sus, after much fighting, and gives up her arms. 
 
 Then Caesar reflects that the Morini and the Menapii 
 had as yet never bowed their heads to him. Boulogne 
 and Calais stand in the now well-known territory of 
 the Morina, but the Menapii lie a long way off, up 
 among the mouths of the Scheldt and the Rhine,—the 
 Low Countries of modern history,—an uncomfortable 
 
CAESAR SUBDUES THE WESTERN TRIBES. 57 
 
 people then, who would rush into their woods and 
 marshes after a spell of fighting, and who seemed to 
 have no particular homes or cities that could he attacked 
 or destroyed. It was nearly the end of summer just 
 now, and the distance between, let us say, Yannes in 
 Brittany, and Breda, or even Antwerp, seems to us to 
 be considerable, when we remember the condition of 
 the country, and the size of Caesar’s army. But he had 
 a few weeks to fill up, and then he might feel that all 
 Gaul had been “pacified.” At present there was this 
 haughty little northern corner. “ Omni Gallia pacata, 
 Morini Menapiique superent;”—“ all Gaul having been 
 pacified, the Morini and Menapii remained.” He was, 
 morever, no doubt beginning to reflect that from the 
 Morini could be made the shortest journey into that 
 wild Ultima Thule of an island in which lived the 
 Britanni. Caesar takes advantage of the few weeks, 
 and attacks these uncomfortable people. When they 
 retreat into the woods, he cuts the woods down. He 
 does cut down an immense quantity of wood, but the 
 enemy only recede into thicker and bigger woods. 
 Bad weather comes on, and the soldiers can no longer 
 endure life in their skin tents. Let us fancy these 
 Italians encountering winter in undrained Flanders, 
 with no walls or roofs to protect them, and ordered to 
 cut down interminable woods! Had a “Times’’been 
 written and filed, instead of a “ Commentary ” from 
 the hands of the General-in-chief, we should probably 
 have heard of a good deal of suffering. As it is, we are 
 only told that Caesar had to give up his enterprise for 
 that year. He therefore burnt all their villages, laid 
 waste all their fields, and then took his army down into 
 a more comfortable region south of the Seine, and 
 there put them into winter quarters,—not much to the 
 comfort of the people there residing. 
 
CHAPTER Y 
 
 FOURTH BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL.—CL3ESAR CROSSES 
 THE RHINE, SLAUGHTERS THE GERMANS, AND GOES 
 INTO BRITAIN.—B.C. 55. 
 
 In the next year certain Germans, Usipetes and others, 
 crossed the Rhine into Gaul, not far from the sea, as 
 Csesar tells us. He tells us again, that when he drove 
 the Germans hack over the river, it was near the 
 confluence of the Meuse and the Rhine. When we 
 remember how difficult it was for Csesar to obtain 
 information, we must acknowledge that his geography 
 as to the passage of the Rhine out to the sea, and of 
 the junction of the Rhine and the Meuse by the Waal, 
 is wonderfully correct. The spot indicated as that at 
 which the Germans were driven into the river would 
 seem to be near Bommel in Holland, where the Waal 
 and the Meuse join their waters, at the head of the 
 island of Bommel, where Fort St. Andre stands, or stood.* 
 
 * Caesar speaks of the confluence of the Rhine and the 
 “ Mosa ” as the spot at which he drove the Germans into the 
 river,—and in various passages, speaking of the Mosa, clearly 
 means the Meuse. It appears, however, to be the opinion of 
 English scholars who have studied the topography of Caesar’s 
 campaigns with much labor, that the confluence of the Moselle 
 and Rhine, from which Coblentz derives its name, is the spot 
 intended. Napoleon, who has hardly made himself an author- 
 
DRIVES TEE GERMANS OUT OF GAUL. 59 
 
 Those wonderful Suevi, among- whom the men 
 alternately fight and plough, year and year about, 
 caring more, however, for cattle than they do for corn, 
 who are socialists in regard to land, having no private 
 property in their fields,—who, all of them, from their 
 youth upwards, do just what they please,—large, bony 
 men, who wear, even in these cold regions, each simply 
 some scanty morsel of skin covering,—who bathe in rivers 
 all the year through, who deal with traders only to sell 
 the spoils of war, who care but little for their horses, 
 and ride, when they do ride, without saddles,—think¬ 
 ing nothing of men to whom such delicate appendages 
 are necessary,—who drink no wine, and will have no 
 neighbors near them,—these ferocious Suevi have driven 
 other German tribes over the Rhine into Gaul. Caesar, 
 hearing this, is filled with apprehension. He knows 
 the weakness of his poor friends the Gauls,—how prone 
 they are to gossiping, of what a restless temper. It is 
 in the country of the Menapii, the tribe with which he 
 did not quite finish his little affair in the last chapter, 
 that these Germans are settling; and there is no know¬ 
 ing what trouble the intruders may give him if he 
 allows them to make themselves at home on that side 
 of the river. So he hurries off to give help to the poor 
 Menapii. 
 
 Of course there is a sending of ambassadors. The 
 Germans acknowledge that they have been turned out 
 of their own lands by their brethren, the Suevi, who 
 are better men than they are. But they profess that, 
 
 ity on the affairs of Caesar generally, but who is thought to be 
 an authority in regard to topography, holds to the opinion that 
 the site in Holland is intended to be described. Readers who 
 are anxious on the subject can choose between the two; but 
 readers who are not anxious will probably be more numerous. 
 
60 the war in ga ul.—fo urtii book. 
 
 in fighting, the Suevi, and the Suevi only, are their 
 masters. Not even the immortal gods can stand 
 against the Suevi. But they also are Germans, and 
 are not at all afraid of the Romans. But in the prop 
 osition which they make they show some little,awe. 
 Will Caesar allow them to remain where they are, or allot 
 to them some other region on that side of the Rhine? 
 Caesar tells them that they may go and live, if they 
 please, with the Ubii,—another tribe of Germans who 
 occupy the Rhine country, probably where Cologne now 
 stands, or perhaps a little north of it, and who seem 
 already to have been forced over the Rhine,—they, or 
 some of them,—and to have made good their footing 
 somewhere in the region in which Charlemagne built 
 his church, now called Aix-la-Chapelle. There they 
 are, Germans still, and probably are so because these 
 Ubii made good their footing. The Ubii also are in 
 trouble with the Suevi; and if these intruders will go 
 and join the Ubii, Caesar will make it all straight for 
 them. The intruders hesitate, but do not go, and at 
 last attack Caesar’s cavalry, not without some success. 
 During this fight there is double treachery,—first on the 
 part of the Germans, and then on Caesar’s part—which 
 
 is chieflv memorable for the attack made on Caesar in 
 
 •/ 
 
 Rome. It was in consequence of the deceit here 
 practised that it was proposed by his enemies in the 
 city that he should be given up by the Republic to 
 the foe. Had any such decree been passed, it would 
 not have been easy to give up Caesar. 
 
 The Germans are, of course, beaten, and they are 
 driven into the river on those low and then undrained 
 regions in which the Rhine and the Meuse and the 
 Waal confuse themselves and confuse travelers;— 
 either here, or much higher up the river at Coblentz; 
 
DRIVES THE GERMANS 0 UT OF GA TIL . 61 
 
 but the reader will already have settled that question 
 for himself at the beginning of the chapter. Caesar 
 speaks of these Germans as though they were all 
 drowned,—men, women, and children. They had 
 brought their entire families with them, and, when 
 the fighting went against them, with their entire 
 families they fled into the river. Caesar was pursuing 
 them after the battle, and they precipitated themselves 
 over the banks. There, overcome by fear, fatigue, and 
 the waters, they perished. There was computed to 
 be a hundred and eighty thousand of them who were 
 destroyed; but the Roman army was safe to a man.* 
 Then Caesar made up his mind to cross the river. 
 It seems that he had no intention of extending the 
 empire of the Republic into what he called Germany, 
 but that he thought it necessary to frighten the Ger¬ 
 mans. The cavalry of those intruding Usipetes had, 
 luckily for them, been absent, foraging over the river; 
 and he now sent to the Sigambri, among whom they 
 had taken refuge, desiring that these horsemen should 
 be given up to him. But the Sigambri will not obey. 
 The Germans seem to have understood that Caesar had 
 Gaul in his hands, to do as he liked with it; but they 
 grudged his interference beyond the Rhine. Caesar, 
 however, always managed to have a set of friends 
 among his enemies, to help him in adjusting his 
 enmities. We have heard of the iEdui in Central 
 Gaul, and of the Remi in the north. The Ubii were 
 his German friends, who were probably at this time 
 occupying both banks of the river; and the Ubii ask 
 
 * “Hostium numerus capitum CDXXX millium fuisset,” from 
 which words we are led to suppose that there were 180,000 fight¬ 
 ing men, besides the women and children. 
 
G2 TEE WAR IE GA UL.—FO URTE BOOK. 
 
 him just to come over and frighten their neighbors. 
 Caesar resolves upon gratifiying them. And as it is not 
 consistent either with his safety or with his dignity to 
 cross the river in boats, he determines to build a bridge. 
 
 Is there a schoolboy in England, or one who has 
 been a schoolboy, at any Caesar-reading school, who 
 does not remember those memorable words, “ Tigna 
 bina sesquipedalia,” with which Caesar begins his 
 graphic account of the building of the bridge? When 
 the breadth of the river is considered, its rapidity, and 
 the difficulty which there must have been in finding 
 tools and materials for such a construction, in a country 
 so wild and so remote from Roman civilization, the 
 creation of this bridge fills us with admiration for 
 Caesar’s spirit and capacity. He drove down piles 
 into the bed of the river, two and two, prone against 
 the stream. We could do that now, though hardly as 
 quick as Caesar did it; but we should want coffer-dams 
 and steam-pumps, patent rammers, and a clerk of the 
 works. He explains to us that he so built the foun¬ 
 dations that the very strength of the stream added to 
 their strength and consistency. In ten days the whole 
 thing was done, and the army carried over. Caesar 
 does not tell us at what suffering, or with the loss of 
 how many men. It is the simplicity of everything 
 which is so wonderful in these Commentaries. We 
 have read of works constructed by modern armies, and 
 of works which modern armies could not construct. 
 We remember the road up from Balaclava, and the 
 railway which was sent out from England. We know 
 too, what are the aids and appliances with which science 
 has furnished us. But yet in no modern warfare do 
 the difficulties seem to have been so light, so little 
 worthy of mention, as they were to Caesar. He made 
 
CJESAR INVADES BRITAIN 
 
 63 
 
 his bridge and took over his army, cavalry and all, in 
 ten days. There must have been difficulty and hard¬ 
 ship, and the drowning, we should fear, of many men; 
 but Caesar says nothing of all this. 
 
 Ambassadors immediately are sent. From the mo¬ 
 ment in which the bridge was begun, the Sigambri ran 
 away and hid themselves in the woods. Caesar burns 
 all their villages, cuts down all their corn, and travels 
 down into the country of the Ubii. He comforts them; 
 and tidings of his approach then reach those terrible 
 Suevi. They make ready for war on a grand scale; 
 but Caesar, reflecting that he had not brought his army 
 over the river for the sake of fighting the Suevi, and 
 telling us that he had already done enough for honor 
 and for the good of the cause, took his army back 
 after eighteen days spent in the journey, and destroyed 
 his bridge. 
 
 Then comes a passage which makes a Briton vacil¬ 
 late between shame at its own ancient insignificance, 
 and anger at Caesar’s misapprehension of his ancient 
 character. There were left of the fighting season after 
 Caesar came back across the Rhine just a few weeks; 
 and what can he do better with them than go over and 
 conquer Britannia? This first record of an invasion 
 upon us comes in at the fag-end of a chapter, and the 
 invasion was made simply to fill up the summer! No¬ 
 body, Caesar tells us, seemed to know anything about 
 the island; and yet it was the fact that in all his wars 
 with the Gauls, the Gauls were helped by men out of 
 Britain. Before he will face the danger with his army 
 he sends over a trusty messenger, to look about and 
 find out something as to the coasts and harbors. The 
 trusty messenger does not dare to disembark, but comes 
 back and tells Caesar what he has seen from his ship. 
 
64 THE WAR IN GAUL.—FOURTH BOOK. 
 
 Caesar, in the mean time, has got together a great fleet 
 somewhere in the Boulogne and Calais country; and, 
 —so he says,—messengers have come to him from 
 Britain, whither rumors of his purpose have already 
 flown, saying that they will submit themselves to the 
 Roman Republic. We may believe just as much of 
 that as we please. But he clearly thinks less of the 
 Boulogne and Calais people than he does even of the 
 Britons, which is a comfort to us. When these people, 
 —then called Morini,—came to him, asking pardon for 
 having dared to oppose him once before, and offering 
 any number of hostages, and saying that they had 
 been led on by bad advice, Caesar admitted them into 
 some degree of grace; not wishing, as he tells us, to be 
 kept out of Britain by the consideration of such very 
 small affairs. “ Neque has tantularum rerum occupa- 
 tiones sibi Britanniae anteponendas judicabat.” We 
 hope that the Boulogne and Calais people understand 
 and appreciate the phrase. Having taken plenty of 
 hostages, he determines to trust the Boulogne and 
 Calais people, and prepares his ships for passing the 
 Channel. He starts nearly at the third watch,—about 
 midnight, we may presume. A portion of his army,— 
 the cavalry,—encounter some little delay, such as has 
 often occurred on the same spot since, even to travel¬ 
 ers without horses. He himself got over to the 
 British coast at about the fourth hour. This, at mid¬ 
 summer, would have been about quarter past eight. 
 As it was now late in the summer, it may have been 
 nine o’clock in the morning when Csesar found him¬ 
 self under the cliffs of Kent, and saw our armed ances¬ 
 tors standing along all the hills ready to meet him. 
 He stayed at anchor, waiting for his ships, till about 
 two p. m. His cavalry did not get across till four days 
 
CAESAR INVADES BRITAIN. 
 
 65 
 
 afterwards. Having given his orders, and found a 
 fitting moment and a fitting spot, Caesar runs his ships 
 up upon the beach. 
 
 Caesar confesses to a good deal of difficulty in getting 
 ashore. When we know how very hard it is to ac¬ 
 complish the same feat, on the same coast, in these 
 days, with all the appliances of modern science to aid 
 us, and, as we must presume, with no real intention 
 on the part of the Cantii, or men of Kent, to oppose 
 our landing, we can quite sympathise with Caesar. 
 The ships were so big that they could not be brought 
 into very shallow water. The Roman soldiers were 
 compelled to jump into the sea, heavily armed, and 
 there to fight with the waves and with the enemy. 
 But the Britons having the use of all their limbs, 
 knowing the ground, standing either on the shore or 
 just running into the shallows, made the landing un¬ 
 easy enough. “ Nostriour men,—says Caesar, with 
 all these things agaiast them, were not all of them so 
 alert at fighting as was usual with them on dry ground; 
 —at which no one can be surprised. 
 
 Caesar had two kinds of ships,—“naves longae,” 
 long ships for carrying soldiers; and “naves oner- 
 ariae,” ships for carrying burdens. The long ships 
 do not seem to have been such ships of war as the 
 Romans generally used in their sea-fights, but were 
 handier, and more easily worked, than the trans¬ 
 ports. These he laid broadside to the shore, and 
 harassed the poor natives with stones and arrows. 
 Then the eagle-bearer of the tenth legion jumped 
 into the sea, proclaiming that he at any rate, 
 would do his duty. Unless they wished to see their 
 eagle fall into the hands of the ememy, they musi 
 follow him. “Jump down, he said, my fellow-sol- 
 
66 THE WAR IN GAUL.—FOURTH BOOK. 
 
 diers, unless you wisli to betray your eagle to the 
 enemy. I at least will do my duty to the Republic 
 and to our General. When he had said this with a 
 loud voice, he threw himself out of the ship and 
 advanced the eagle against the enemy.” Seeing and 
 hearing this, the men leaped forth freely, from that 
 ship and from others. As usual, there was some sharp 
 fighting. Pugnatum est ab utrisque acriter.” It is 
 nearly always the same thing. Csesar throws away 
 none of his glory by underrating his enemy. But 
 at length the Britons fly. ‘ ‘ This thing only was 
 wanting to.Caesar’s usual good fortune,”—that he was 
 deficient in cavalry wherewith to ride on in pursuit, 
 and “ take the island! ” Considering how very short 
 a time he remains in the island, we feel that his com¬ 
 plaint against fortune is hardly well founded. But 
 there is a general surrender, and a claiming of hos¬ 
 tages, and after a few days a sparkle of new hope in 
 the breasts of the Britons. A storm arises and Caesar’s 
 ships are so knocked about that he does not know how 
 he will get back to Gaul. He is troubled by a very 
 high tide, not understanding the nature of these tides. 
 As he had only intended this for a little tentative 
 trip,—a mere taste of a future war with Britain,—he 
 had brought no large supply of corn with him. He 
 must get back, by hook or by crook. The Britons, see¬ 
 ing how it is with him, think that they can destroy him, 
 and make an attempt to do so. The seventh legion is 
 in great peril, having been sent out to find corn, but 
 is rescued. Certain of his ships,—those which had been 
 most greviously handled by the storm,—he breaks up, 
 in order that he may mend the others with their mate¬ 
 rials. When we think how long it takes us to mend 
 ships having dockyards, and patent slips, and all 
 
CJESAR INVADES.BRI1AIN. 
 
 67 
 
 things ready, this is most marvelous to us. But he 
 does mend his ships, and while so • doing he has a 
 second fight with the Britons, and again repulses them. 
 There is a burning and destroying of everything far 
 and wide, a gathering of ambassadors to Caesar asking 
 for terms, a demand for hostages,—a double number of 
 hostages now, whom Caesar desired to have sent over 
 to him to Gaul, because at this time of the year he did 
 not choose to trust them to ships that were unsea¬ 
 worthy; and he himself, with all his army, gets back 
 into the Boulogne and Calais country. Two trans¬ 
 ports only are missing, which are carried somewhat 
 lower down the coast. There are but three hundred 
 men in these transports, and these the Morini of those 
 parts threaten to kill unless they will give up their 
 arms. But Caesar sends help, and even these three 
 hundred are saved from disgrace. There is, of course, 
 more burning of houses and laying waste of fields be¬ 
 cause of this little attempt, and then Caesar puts his 
 army into winter quarters. 
 
 What would have been the difference to the world 
 if the Britons, as they surely might have done, had 
 destroyed Caesar and every Roman, and not left even a 
 ship to get back to Gaul? In lieu of this Caesar would 
 send news to Rome of these various victories, and have 
 a public thanksgiving decreed,—on this occasion for 
 twenty days. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 FIFTH BOOK OF THE WAR IK GAUL.—CESAR’S SECOND 
 INVASION OF BRITAIN.—THE GAULS RISE 
 AGAINST HIM.—B.C. 54 . 
 
 On Ms return out of Britain, Caesar, as usual, went 
 over the Alps to look after his other provinces, and to 
 attend to his business in Italy; but he was determined 
 to make another raid upon the island. He could not 
 yet assume that he had “taken it,” and therefore he 
 left minute instructions with his generals as to the 
 building of more ships, and the repair of those which 
 had been so nearly destroyed. He sends to Spain, he 
 tells us, for the things necessary to equip his ships. 
 We never hear of any difficulty about money. We 
 know that he did obtain large grants from Rome for 
 the support of his legions; but no scruple was made 
 in making war maintain war, as far as such mainte¬ 
 nance could be obtained. Caesar personally was in an 
 extremity of debt when he commenced his campaigns. 
 He had borrowed an enormous sum, eight hundred 
 and thirty talents, or something over £200,000, from 
 Crassus,—who was specially the rich Roman of those 
 days,—before he could take charge of his Spanish prov¬ 
 ince. When his wars were over, he returned to Rome 
 with a great treasure; and indeed during these wars in 
 
OJESARS SECOND INVASION OF BRITAIN 69 
 
 Gaul he expended large sums in bribing Romans. We 
 may suppose that he found hoards among the barbarians, 
 as Lord Clive did in the East Indies. Clive contented 
 himself with taking some: Caesar probably took all. 
 
 Having given the order about his ships, he settled a 
 little matter in Illyricum, taking care to raise some 
 tribute there also. He allows but a dozen lines for 
 recording this winter work, and then tells us that he 
 hurried back to his army and his ships. His command 
 had been so well obeyed in regard to vessels, that he 
 finds ready, of that special sort which he had ordered 
 with one bank of oars only on each side, as many as 
 six hundred, and twenty-eight of the larger sort. He 
 gives his soldiers very great credit for their exertions, 
 and sends his fleet to the Portus Itius. The exact spot 
 which Caesar called by this name the geographers have 
 not identified, but it is supposed to be between Bou¬ 
 logne and Calais. It may probably have been at Wis- 
 sant. Having seen that things Were thus ready for a 
 second trip into Britain, he turns round and hurries off 
 with four legions and eight hundred cavalry.—an army 
 of 25,000 men,—into the Treves country. There is a 
 quarrel going on there between two chieftains which it 
 is well that he should settle,—somewhat as the monkey 
 settled the contest about the oyster. This, however, 
 is a mere nothing of an affair, and he is back again 
 among his ships at the Portus Itius in a page and a 
 half. 
 
 He resolves upon taking five legions of his own 
 soldiers into Britain, and two thousand mounted Gauls. 
 He had brought together four thousand of these horse¬ 
 men, collected from all Gaul, thier chiefs and nobles, 
 not only as fighting allies, but as hostages that the 
 tribes should not rise in rebellion while his back was 
 
70 THE WAR IN GA VL.—FIFTH BOOK 
 
 turned. These he divides, taking half with him, and 
 leaving half with three legions of his own men, under 
 Labienus, in the Boulogne country, as a base to his 
 army, to look after the provisions, and to see that he 
 be not harassed on his return. There is a little 
 affair, however, with one of the Gaulish chieftains, 
 Dumnorix the iEduan, who ought to have been his 
 fastest friend. Dumnorix runs away with all the 
 JEduan horsemen. Caesar, however, sends after him 
 and has him killed, and then all things are ready. 
 He starts with altogether more than 800 ships at sun¬ 
 set, and comes over with a gentle south-west .wind. 
 He arrives off the coast of Britain at about noon, but 
 can see none of the inhabitants on the cliff. He im¬ 
 agines that they have all fled, frightened by the number 
 of his ships. Caesar establishes his camp, and proceeds 
 that same night about twelve miles into the country, 
 —eleven miles, we may say, as our mile is longer than 
 the Roman,—and there he finds the Britons. There is 
 some fighting, after which Caesar returns and fortifies 
 his camp. Then there comes a storm and knocks his 
 ships about terribly,—although he had found, as he 
 thought, a nice soft place for them. But the tempest 
 is very violent, and they are torn away from their 
 anchors, and thrust upon the shore, and dashed against 
 each other till there is infinite trouble. He is obliged 
 to send over to Labienus, telling him to build more 
 ships; and those which are left he drags up over the 
 shore to his camp, in spite of the enormous labor re¬ 
 quired in doing it. He is ten days at this work, night 
 and day, and we may imagine that his soldiers had not 
 an easy time of it. When this has been done, he 
 advances again into the country after the enemy, and 
 finds tfi&t Cassivellaunus is in command of the united 
 
CESAR'S SECOND INVASION 0FBRITAIN 71 
 
 forces of the different tribes. Cassivellaunus comes 
 from the other side of the Thames, over in Middlesex or 
 Hertfordshire. The Britons had not hitherto lived very 
 peaceably together, but now they agree that against the 
 Romans they will act in union under Cassivellaunus. 
 
 Caesar’s description of the island is very interesting. 
 The interior is inhabited by natives,—or rather by - 
 “aborigines.” Caesar states this at least as the tra¬ 
 dition of the country. But the maritime parts are 
 held by Belgian immigrants, who, for the most part 
 have brought with them from the Continent the names 
 of their tribes. The population is great, and the houses, 
 built very like the houses in Gaul, are numerous and 
 very thick together. The Britons have a great deal of 
 cattle. They use money, having either copper coin or 
 iron rings of a great weight. Tin is found in the 
 middle of the island, and, about the coast, iron. 
 But the quantity of iron found is small. Brass they 
 import. They have the same timber as in Gaul,—only 
 they have neither beech nor fir. Hares and chickens 
 and geese they think it wrong to eat; but they keep 
 these animals as pets. The climate, on the whole, is 
 milder than in Gaul. The island is triangular. One 
 corner, that of Kent, has an eastern and a southern 
 aspect. This southern side of the island he makes 
 500 miles, exceeding the truth by about 150 miles. 
 Then Caesar becomes a little hazy in his geography,— 
 telling us that the other side, meaning the western 
 line of the triangle, where Ireland lies, verges towards 
 Spain. Ireland, he says, is half the size of Britain, and 
 about the same distance from it that Britain is from 
 Gaul. In the middle of the channel dividing Ireland 
 from Britain there is an island called Mona,—the Isle 
 of Man. There are also some other islands which at 
 
72 THE WAR ffl OA UL.—FIFTH BOOK x 
 
 midwinter have thirty continuous days of night. Here 
 Caesar becomes not only hazy but mythic. But he 
 explains that he has seen nothing of this himself, 
 although he has ascertained, by scientific measurement, 
 that the nights in Britain are shorter than on the Con¬ 
 tinent. Of course the nights are shorter with us in 
 summer than they are in Italy, and longer in winter. 
 The western coast he makes out to be 700 miles long; 
 in saying which he is nearly 100 miles over the mark. 
 The third side he describes as looking towards the 
 north. He means the eastern coast. This he calls 
 800 miles long, and exaggerates our territories by more 
 than 200 miles. The marvel, however, is that he should 
 be so near the truth. The men of Kent are the most 
 civilized: indeed they are almost as good as Gauls in 
 this respect! What changes does not time make in 
 the comparative merits of countries! The men in the 
 interior live on flesh and milk, and do not care for corn. 
 They wear skin clothing. They make themselves hor¬ 
 rible with woad, and go about with very long hair. 
 They shave close, except the head and upper lip. 
 Then comes the worst habit of all;—ten or a dozen 
 men have their wives in common between them. 
 
 We have a very vivid and by no means unflattering 
 account of the singular agility of our ancestors in their 
 mode of fighting from their chariots. “This,” says 
 Csesar, ‘ ‘ is the nature of their chariot-fighting. They 
 first drive rapidly about the battle-field,—“per omnes 
 partes,”—and throw their darts, and frequently dis¬ 
 order the ranks by the very terror occasioned by the 
 horses and by the noise of the wheels; and when they 
 have made their way through the bodies of the cavalry, 
 they jump down and fight on foot. Then the charioteers 
 go a little out of the battle, and so place their chariots 
 
CJEBAR'S SECOND INVASION OF BRITAIN. 73 
 
 that they may have a ready mode of returning should 
 their friends he pressed by the number of their enemies. 
 Thus they unite the rapidity of cavalry and the stabil¬ 
 ity of infantry, and so effective do they become by daily 
 use and practice, that they are accustomed to keep their 
 horses, excited as they are, on their legs on steep and 
 precipitous ground, and to manage and turn them very 
 quickly, and to run along the pole and stand upon the 
 yoke,”—by which the horses were held together at the 
 collars,—“ and again with the greatest rapidity to re¬ 
 turn to the chariot.”* All which is very wonderful. 
 
 Of course there is a great deal of fighting, and the 
 Britons soon learn by experience to avoid general 
 engagements and maintain guerrilla actions. Caesar by 
 degrees makes his way to the Thames, and with great 
 difficulty gets'his army over it. He can only do this 
 at one place and that badly. The site of this ford he 
 does not describe to us. It is supposed to have been 
 near the place which we now know as Sunbury. He 
 does tell us that his men were so deep in the water 
 that their heads only were above the stream. But 
 even thus they were so impetuous in their onslaught, 
 that the Britons would not wait for them on the 
 
 * All well-instructed modern Britons have learned from the 
 old authorities that the Briton war-chariots were furnished with 
 scythes attached to the axles,—-from Pomponius Mela, the Roman 
 geographer, and from Mrs. Markham, among others. And 
 Eugene Sue, in his novel translated into English under the name 
 of the 4 Rival Races,’ explains how the Bretons on the other side 
 of the water, in the Morbihan, used these scythes: and how, 
 before a battle with Caesar’s legions, the wives of the warriors 
 arranged the straps so that the scythes might be worked from 
 the chariot like oars from a boat. But Caesar says nothing of 
 such scythes, and surely he would have done so had he seen them. 
 The reader must choose between Caesar’s silence and the author¬ 
 ity of Pomponius Mela, Mrs. Markham, and Eugene Sue. 
 
74 TEE WAR IE GA UL—FIFTH ROOK. 
 
 opposite bank, but ran away. Soon there come 
 unconditional surrender, and hostages, and promises 
 of tribute. Cassivellaunus, who is himself but a 
 usurper, and therefore has many enemies at home, 
 endeavors to make himself secure in a strong place or 
 town, which is supposed to have been on or near the site 
 of our St. Albans. Caesar, however, explains that the 
 poor Britons give the name of a town,—“oppidum,” 
 —to a spot in which they have merely surrounded 
 some thick woods with a ditch and rampart. Caesar, 
 of course, drives them out of their woodland fortress, 
 and then there quickly follows another surrender, more 
 hostages, and the demand for tribute. Caesar leaves 
 his orders behind him, as though to speak were to be 
 obeyed. One Mandubratius, and not Cassivellaunus 
 is to be the future king in Middlesex and Hertford¬ 
 shire,—that is, over the Trinobantes who live there. 
 He fixes the amount of tribute to be sent annually by 
 the Britons to Rome; and he especially leaves orders 
 that Cassivellaunus shall do no mischief to the young 
 Mandubratius. Then he crosses back into Gaul at two 
 trips,—his ships taking half the army first and coming 
 back for the other half; and he piously observes that 
 though he had lost many ships when they were com¬ 
 paratively empty, hardly one had been destroyed while 
 his soldiers were in them. 
 
 So was ended Caesar’s second and last invasion of 
 Britain. That he had reduced Britain as he had re¬ 
 duced Gaul he certainly could not boast;—though 
 Quintus Cicero had written to his brother to say that 
 Britannia was,—“confecta,”—finished. Though he 
 had twice landed his army under the white cliffs, and 
 twice taken it away with comparative security, he had 
 on both occasions been made to feel how terribly strong 
 
CAESAR'S SECOND INVASION OF BRITAIN 75 
 
 an ally to the Britons was that channel which divided 
 them from the Continent. The reader is made to feel 
 that on both occasions the existence of his army and of 
 himself is in the greatest peril. Csesar’s idea in attack¬ 
 ing Britain was probably rather that of making the 
 Gauls believe that his power could reach even beyond 
 them,—could extend itself all round them, even into 
 distant islands,—than of absolutely establishing the 
 Roman dominion beyond that distant sea. The Bri¬ 
 tons had helped the Gauls in their wars with him, and 
 it was necessary that he should punish any who pre¬ 
 sumed to give such help. Whether the orders which 
 he left behind him were obeyed we do not know; 
 but we may imagine that the tribute exacted was not 
 sent to Rome with great punctuality. In fact, Caesar 
 invaded the island twice, but did not reduce it. 
 
 On his return to Gaul, nearly at the close of the 
 summer, he found himself obliged to distribute his 
 army about the country because of a great scarcity of 
 provisions. There had been a drought, and the crops 
 had failed. Hitherto he had kept his army together 
 during the winter; now he was obliged to divide his 
 legions, placing one with one tribe, and another, with 
 another. A legion and a half he stations under two of 
 his generals, L. Titurius Sabinus, and L. Aurunculeius 
 Cotta, among the Eburones, who live on the banks of the 
 Meuse in the Liege and Namur country,—a very stout 
 people, who are still much averse to the dominion of 
 Rome. In this way he thought he might best get over 
 that difficulty as to the scarcity of provisions; but yet 
 he so well understood the danger of separating his 
 army, that he is careful to tell us that, with the excep¬ 
 tion of one legion which he had stationed in a very 
 quiet country,—among the Essui, where Alengon now 
 
76 THE WAR IN GA UL.—FIFTH BOOK 
 
 stands,—they were all within a hundred miles of each 
 other. Nevertheless, in spite of this precaution, there 
 now fell upon Caesar the greatest calamity which he 
 had ever yet suffered in war. 
 
 During all these campaigns, the desire of the Gauls 
 to free themselves from the power and the tyranny of 
 Rome never ceased; nor did their intention to do so 
 ever fade away. Caesar must have been to them as a 
 venomous blight, or some evil divinity sent to afflict 
 them for causes which they could not understand. 
 There were tribes who truckled to him, but he had no 
 real friends among them. If any Gauls could have 
 loved him, the iEdui should have done so; but that 
 Dumnorix, the aEduan, who ran away with the horse¬ 
 men of his tribe when he was wanted to help in the 
 invasion of Britain, had, before he was killed, tried to 
 defend himself, asserting vociferously that he was a 
 free man and belonging to a free state. He had failed 
 to understand that, in being admitted to the alliance 
 of Caesar, he was bound to obey Caesar. Caesar speaks 
 of it all with his godlike simplicity, as though he saw 
 nothing ungodlike in the work he was doing. There 
 was no touch of remorse in him, as he ordered men to 
 be slaughtered and villages to be burned. He was 
 able to look at those things as trifles,—as parts of a great 
 whole. He felt no more than does the gentleman who 
 sends the sheep out of his park to be slaughtered at 
 the appointed time. When he seems to be most cruel, 
 it is for the sake of example,—that some politic result 
 may follow,—that Gauls may know, and Italians know 
 also, that they must bow the knee to Caesar. But the 
 heart of the reader is made to bleed as he sees the 
 unavailing struggles of the tribes. One does not spe¬ 
 cially love the iEdui; but Dumnorix protesting that 
 
HATRED OF THE OA ULS TOWARDS CAESAR. 77 
 
 he will not return, that he is a free man, of a free 
 state, and then being killed, is a man to be loved. 
 Among the Carnutes, where Chartres now stands, 
 Caesar has set up a pet king, one Tasgetius; but when 
 Caesar is away in Britain, the Carnutes kill Tasgetius. 
 They will have no pet of Caesar’s. And now the stont 
 Eburones, who have two kings of their own over them, 
 Ambiorix and Cati volcus,understanding thatCaesar’s dif¬ 
 ficulty is their opportunity, attack the Roman camp, with 
 its legion and a half of men under Titurius and Cotta. 
 
 Ambiorix, the chieftain, is very crafty. He persuades 
 the Roman generals to send ambassadors to him, and 
 to these he tells his story. He himself, Ambiorix, loves 
 Caesar beyond all things. Has not Caesar done him 
 great kindnesses? He would not willingly lift a hand 
 against Caesar, but he cannot control his state. The 
 facts, however, are thus; an enormous body of Ger¬ 
 mans has crossed the Rhine, and is hurrying on to 
 destroy that Roman camp; and it certainly will be de¬ 
 stroyed, so great is the number of the Germans. Thus 
 says Ambiorix; and then suggests whether it would 
 not be well that Titurius and Cotta with their nine or 
 ten thousand men,—a mere handful of men against all 
 these Germans who are already over the Rhine;—would 
 it not be well that the Romans should go and join 
 some of their brethren, either the legion that is among 
 the Nervii to the east, under Quintus Cicero, the 
 brother of the great orator—or that other legion which 
 Labienus has, a little to the south, on the borders of 
 the Remi and Treviri? And in regard to a good turn 
 on his own part, so great is the love and veneration 
 which he, Ambiorix, feels for Caesar, that he is quite 
 ready to see the Romans safe through the territories of 
 the Eburones. He begs Titurius and Cotta to think 
 
78 THE WAR IN GAUL.—FIFTH BOOK. 
 
 of this, and to allow him to aid them in their escape 
 while escape is possible. The two Roman generals do 
 think of it. Titurius thinks that it will be well to take 
 the advice of Ambiorix. Cotta, and with him many 
 of the tribunes and centurions of the soldiers, think 
 that they should not stir without Caesar’s orders;— 
 think also that there is nothing ba«er or more foolish 
 in warfare than to act on advice given by an enemy. 
 Titurius, however, is clear for going, and Cotta, after 
 much argument and some invective, gives way. Early 
 on the next morning they all leave their camp, taking 
 with them their baggage, and marching forth as though 
 through a friendly country,—apparently with belief in 
 the profferd friendship of Ambiorix. The Eburones 
 had of course prepared an ambush, and the Roman 
 army is attacked both behind and before, and is thrown 
 into utter confusion. 
 
 The legion, or legion and a half, with its two com¬ 
 manders, is altogether destroyed. Titurius goes out 
 from his ranks to me3t Ambiorix, and pray for peace. 
 He is told to throw away his arms, and submitting to 
 the disgrace, casts them down. Then, while Ambiorix 
 is making a long speech, the Roman general is sur¬ 
 rounded and slaughtered. Cotta is killed fighting; 
 as also are more than half the soldiers. The rest get 
 back into the camp at night, and then, desparing of 
 any safety, overwhelmed with disgrace, conscious that 
 there is no place for hope, they destroy themselves. 
 Only a few have escaped during the fighting to tell the 
 tale in the camp of Labienus. 
 
 As a rule the reader’s sympathies are with the Gauls; 
 but we cannot help feeling a certain regret that a 
 Roman legion should have thus been wiled on to de¬ 
 struction through the weakness of its general. If 
 
THE SUCCESS OF AMBIORIX. 
 
 79 
 
 Titurius could have been made to suffer alone we should 
 bear it better. When we are told how the gallant 
 eagle-bearer, Petrosidius, throws his eagle into the ram¬ 
 part, and then dies fighting before the camp, we wish 
 that Ambiorix had been less successful. Of this, how¬ 
 ever, we feel quite certain, that there will come a day, 
 and that soon, in which Caesar will exact punishment. 
 
 Having done so much, Ambiorix and the Eburones 
 do not desist. Now, if ever, after so great a disgrace, 
 and with legions still scattered, may Caesar be worsted. 
 Q. Cicero is with his legion among the Nervii, and 
 thither Ambiorix goes. The Nervii are quite ready, 
 and Cicero is attacked in his camp. And here, too, 
 for a long while it goes very badly with the Romans;— 
 so badly that Cicero is hardly able to hold his ramparts 
 against the attacks made upon them by the barbarians. 
 Red-hot balls of clay and hot arrows are thrown into 
 the camp, and there is a fire. The messengers sent to 
 Caesar for help are slain on the road, and the Romans 
 begin to think that there is hardly a chance for them 
 of escape. Unless Caesar be with them they are not safe. 
 All their power, their prestige, their certainty of con¬ 
 quest lies in Caesar. Cicero behaves like a prudent 
 and valiant man; but unless he had at last succeeded 
 in getting a Gaulish slave to take a letter concealed in 
 u dart to Caesar, the enemy would have destroyed him. 
 
 There is a little episode of two Roman centurions, 
 Pulfius and Yarenus, who were always quarreling as to 
 which was the better man of the two. Pulfius with 
 much bravado rushes out among the enemy, and 
 Yarenus follows him. Pulfius gets into trouble, and 
 Yarenus rescues him. Then Yarenus is in a difficulty, 
 and Pulfius comes to his assistance. According to all 
 chances of war, both should have been killed; but 
 
80 tee war IN GAUL.—fifth book ; 
 
 both get back safe into the camp;—and nobody knows 
 from that day to this which was the better man. 
 Caesar, of course, hastens to the assistance of his lieu¬ 
 tenant, having sent word of his coming by a letter fas¬ 
 tened to another dart, which, however, hardly reaches 
 Cicoro in time to comfort him before he sees the fires 
 by which the coming legion wasted the country along 
 their line of march. Then there is more fighting 
 Caesar conquers and Q. Cicero is rescued from his very 
 disagreeable position. Labienus has also been in diffi¬ 
 culty, stationed, as we remember, on the borders of the 
 Treviri. The Treviri were quite as eager to attack him 
 sa the Eburones and Nervii to destroy the legions left 
 in their territories. But before the attack is made, the 
 news of Caesar’s victory, traveling with wonderful 
 speed, is heard of in those parts, and the Treviri think 
 it best to leave Labienus alone. 
 
 But Caesar has perceived that, although he has so 
 often boasted that all Gaul was at last at peace, all 
 Gaul is prepared to carry on the war against him. It 
 is during this winter that he seems to realize a convic¬ 
 tion that his presence in the country is not popular with 
 the Gauls in general, and that he has still much to do 
 before he can make them understand that they are not 
 free men, belonging to free states. The opposition to 
 him has become so general that he himself determines 
 to remain in Gaul all the winter; and even after telling 
 us of the destruction of Indutiomarus, the chief of the 
 Treviri, by Labienus, he can only boast that—“ Caesar 
 had, after that was done, Gaul a little quieter ”—a little 
 more like a subject country bound hand and foot—than 
 it was before. During this year Caesar’s proconsular 
 power over his provinces was extended for a second 
 period of five years. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 SIXTH BOOK OF THE WAR IN GAUL.—CAESAR PURSUES 
 AMBIORIX.—TIIE MANNERS OF THE GAULS AND OF 
 THE GERMANS ARE CONTRASTED. — B. C. 53. 
 
 CiESAR begins the next campaign before the winter is 
 over, having, as we have seen, been forced to continue 
 the last long after the winter had commenced. The 
 Gauls were learning to unite themselves, and things 
 were becoming very serious with him. One Roman 
 army, with probably ten thousand men, had been abso¬ 
 lutely destroyed, with its generals Titurius, Sabinus and 
 Aurunculeius Cotta. Another under Quintus Cicero 
 would have suffered the same fate, but for Caesar’s happy 
 intervention. A third under Labienus had been attacked. 
 All Gaul had been under arms, or thinking of arms, in the 
 autumn; and though Caesar had been able to report at the 
 end of the campaign that Gaul,—his Gaul, as he intended 
 that it should be,—was a little quieter, nevertheless he 
 understood well that he still had his work to do before he 
 could enter upon possession. He had already been the 
 master of eight legions in Gaul, containing 48,000 foot- 
 soldiers, levied on the Italian side of the Alps. He 
 had added to this a large body of Gaulish cavalry and 
 light infantry, over and above his eight legions. He 
 had now lost an entire legion and a half, besides 
 
82 THE WAR IN GA UL.—.SIXTH BOOK. 
 
 the gaps which mast haye been made in Britain, 
 and 'by the loss of those who had fallen when attacked 
 under Cicero by the Nervii. But he would show the 
 Gauls that when so treated he could begin again, not 
 only with renewed but with increased force. He would 
 astound them by his display of Roman power, “think¬ 
 ing that, for the future, it would greatly affect the opin¬ 
 ion of Gaul that the power of Italy should be seen to be 
 so great that, if any reverse in war were suffered, not 
 only could the injury be cured in a short time, but 
 that the loss could be repaired even by increased 
 forces.” He not only levies fresh troops, but borrows 
 a legion which Pompey commands outside the walls 
 of Rome. He tells us that Pompey yields his legion 
 to the “ Republic and to Friendship.” The Triumvi¬ 
 rate w T as still existing, and Caesar’s great colleague 
 probably felt that he had no alternative. In this way 
 Caesar not only re-established the legion which had 
 been annihilated, but completes the others, and takes 
 the field with two new legions added to his army. He 
 probably now had as many as eighty thousand men 
 under his command. 
 
 He first makes a raid against our old friends the 
 Nervii, who had nearly conquered Cicero before 
 Christmas, and who were already conspiring again 
 with certain German and neighboring Belgian tribes. 
 The reader will perhaps remember that in the second 
 book this tribe was said to have been so utterly de¬ 
 stroyed that hardly their name remained. That, no 
 doubt, was Caesar’s belief after the great slaughter. 
 There had been, however, enough of them left nearly 
 to destroy Q. Cicero and his legion. Then Caesar goes 
 to Paris,—Lutetia Parisiorum, of which we now hear 
 for the first time,—and, with the help of his friends 
 
CAESAR RECRUITS IIIS ARMY. 
 
 83 
 
 the iEdui and the Rerni, makes a peace with the 
 centre tribes of Gaul, the Senones and Carnutes. 
 Then he resolves upon attacking Ambiorix with all 
 his heart and soul. Ambiorix had destroyed his 
 legion aud killed his two generals, and against 
 Ambiorix he must put forth all his force. It is 
 said that when Caesar first heard of that misfortune 
 he swore that he would not cut his hair or shave 
 himself till he was avenged. But he feels that he 
 must first dispose of those who would naturally be 
 the allies of this much-to-be-persecuted enemy. The 
 Menapii, with whom we may remember that he had 
 never quite settled 'matters in his former war, and 
 who live on the southern banks of the Meuse not far 
 from the sea, have not even yet sent to him messen¬ 
 gers to ask for peace. He burns their villages, takes 
 their cattle, makes slaves of the men, and then binds 
 them by hostages to have no friendship with Am¬ 
 biorix. In the mean time Labienus utterly defeats the 
 great north-eastern tribe, the Treviri, whom he cun¬ 
 ningly allures into fighting just before they are joined 
 by certain Germans who are coming to aid them. 
 “Quern Deus vult perdere prius dementat.” These 
 unfortunate Gauls and Germans fall into every trap 
 that is laid for them. The speech which Caesar quotes 
 as having been made by Labienus to his troops on 
 this occasion is memorable. “Now,” says Labienus, 
 “you have your opportunity. You have got your 
 enemy thoroughly at advantage. That valor which 
 you have so often displayed before the ‘Imperator,’ 
 Caesar, display now under my command. Think that 
 Caesar is present, and that be beholds you.” To have 
 written thus of himself Caesar must have thought of 
 himself as of a god. He tells the story as though 
 
84 THE WAR IN GAUL.—SIXTH BOOK. 
 
 it were quite natural that Labienus and the soldiers 
 should so regard him. 
 
 After this battle, in which the Treviri are of course 
 slaughtered, Caesar makes a second bridge over the 
 Rhine, somewhat above the spot at which he had 
 crossed before. He does this, he says, for two reasons, 
 —first, because the Germans had sent assistance to 
 the Nervii; and secondly, lest his great enemy Am- 
 biorix should find shelter among the Suevi. Then he 
 suggests that the opportunity is a good one for saying 
 something to his readers of the different manners of 
 Gaul and of Germany. Among the Gauls, in their 
 tribes, their villages, and even in their families, there 
 are ever two factions, so that one should always 
 balance the other, and neither become superior. Caesar 
 so tells us at this particular point of his narrative, 
 because he is anxious to go back and explain how it 
 was that he had taken the part of the AEdui, and had 
 first come into conflict with the Germans, driving 
 Ariovistus back across the Rhine for their sake. In 
 eastern Gaul two tribes had long balanced each other, 
 each, of course, striving for mastery,—the iEdui and 
 the Sequani. The Sequani had called in the aid of 
 the Germans, and the AEdui had been very hardly 
 treated. In their sufferings they had appealed to 
 Rome, having had former relations of close amity with 
 the Republic. Divitiacus, their chief magistrate, —the 
 brother of Dumnorix who was afterwards killed by 
 Caesar’s order for running away with the HMuan 
 cavalry before the second invasion of Britain,—had 
 lived for a while in Rome, and had enjoyed Roman 
 friendships, that of Cicero among others. There was 
 a good deal of doubt in Rome as to what should be 
 done with these iEdui; but at last, as we know, Caesar 
 
CAESAR BUILDS A SECOND BRIDGE. 85 
 
 decided on taking their part; and we know also how he 
 drove Ariovistus hack into Germany, with the loss of 
 his wives and daughters. Thus it came to pass, Caesar 
 tells us, that the JEdui were accounted first of all the 
 Gauls in regard to friendship with Rome; while the 
 Remi, who came to his assistance so readily when the 
 Belgians were in arms against him, were allowed the 
 second place. 
 
 Among the Gauls, there are, he says, two classes of 
 men held in honor,—the Druids and the knights; by 
 which we understand that two professions or modes of 
 life, and two only, were open to the nobility,—the priest¬ 
 hood and the army. All the common people, C*esar 
 says, are serfs, or little better. They do not hesitate, 
 when oppressed by debt or taxation, or the fear of 
 some powerful enemy, to give themselves into slavery, 
 loving the protection so obtained. The Druids have 
 the chief political authority, and can maintain it by 
 the dreadful power of excommunication. The excom¬ 
 municated wretch is an outlaw, beyond the pale of 
 civil rights. Over the Druids is one great Druid, at 
 whose death the place is filled by election among all 
 the Druids, unless they be one so conspicuously first 
 that no ceremony of election is needed. Their most 
 sacred spot for worship is among the Carnutes, in the 
 middle of the country. Their discipline and mys¬ 
 teries came to them from Britain, and when any very 
 knotty point arises they go to Britain to make inquiry. 
 The Druids don’t fight, and pay no taxes. The ambi¬ 
 tion to be a Druid is very great; but then so is the 
 difficulty. Twenty years of tuition is not uncommonly 
 needed; for everything has to be learned by heart. Of 
 their religious secrets nothing may be written. Their 
 great doctrine is the transmigration of souls; so that 
 
86 THE WAR IN OA UL.—SIXTH BOOK. 
 
 men should believe that the soul never dies, and that 
 death, therefore, or that partial death which we see, 
 need not be feared. They are great also in astronomy, 
 geography, natural history,—and general theology, of 
 course. 
 
 The knights, or nobles, have no resource but to 
 tight. Caesar suggests that before the blessing of his 
 advent they were driven to the disagreeable necessity 
 of fighting yearly with each other. Of all people the 
 Gauls, he says, are the most given to superstition; in 
 so much so, that in all dangers and difficulties they 
 have recourse to human sacrifices, in which the Druids 
 are their ministers. They burn their victims to 
 appease their deities, and, by preference, will burn 
 thieves and murderers,—the gods loving best such 
 polluted victims,—but, in default of such, will have 
 recourse to an immolation of innocents. Then Caesar 
 tells us that among the gods they chiefly worship 
 Mercury, whom they seem to have regarded as the 
 cleverest of the gods; but they also worship Apollo, 
 Mars, Jove, and Minerva, ascribing to them the attri¬ 
 butes which are allowed them by other nations. How 
 the worship of the Greek and Roman gods became 
 mingled with the religion of the Druids we are not 
 told, nor does Caesar express surprise that it should 
 have been so. Caesar gives the Roman names of 
 these gods, but he does not intend us to understand 
 that they were so called by the Gauls, who had their • 
 own names for their deities. The trophies of war 
 they devote to Mars, and in many states keep large 
 stores of such consecrated spoils. It is not often 
 that a Gaul will commit the sacrilege of appropri¬ 
 ating to his own use anything thus made sacred; 
 but the punishment of such offence, when it is com- 
 
MANNERS OF THE GAULS. 
 
 87 
 
 mitted, is death by torture. There is the greatest 
 veneration from sons to their fathers. Until the 
 son can hear arms he does not approach his father, 
 or even stand in public in his presence. The hus¬ 
 band’s fortune is made to equal the wife’s dowry, and 
 then the property is common between them. This 
 seems well enough, and the law would suit the views 
 of British wives of the present day. But the next 
 Gaulish custom is not so well worthy of example. 
 Husbands have the power of life and death over their 
 wives and children; and when any man of mark dies, if 
 there be cause for suspicion, his wives are examined 
 under torture, and if any evil practice be confessed, they 
 are there tortured to death. We learn from this passage 
 that polygamy was allowed among the Gauls. The 
 Gauls have grand funerals. Things which have been 
 dear to the departed are burned at these ceremonies. 
 Animals were thus burned in Caesar’s time, but in 
 former days slaves also, and dependents who had been 
 specially loved. The best-governed states are very 
 particular in not allowing rumors as to state affairs 1o 
 be made matter of public discussion. Anything heard 
 is to be told to the magistrate; but there is to be no 
 discussion on public affairs except in the public coun¬ 
 cil. So much we hear of the customs of the Gauls. 
 
 The Germans differ from the Gauls in many things, 
 They know nothing of Druids, nor do they care for 
 sacrifices. They worship only what they see aDd 
 enjoy,—the sun, and fire, and the moon. They spend 
 their time in hunting and war, and care little for 
 agriculture. They live on milk, cheese, and flesh. 
 They are communists as to the soil, and stay no 
 longer than a year on the same land. These customs 
 they follow lest they should learn to prefer agriculture 
 
88 THE WAR IN GA UL.—SIXTH BOOK. 
 
 to war; lest they should grow fond of broad posses¬ 
 sions, so that the rich should oppress the poor; lest 
 they should by too much comfort become afraid of 
 cold and heat; lest the love of money should grow 
 among them, and one man should seek to be higher 
 than another. From all of which it seems that the 
 Germans were not without advanced ideas in political 
 economy. 
 
 It is a great point with the Germans to have no 
 near neighbors. For the sake of safety and inde¬ 
 pendence, each tribe loves to have a wide margin. In 
 war the chieftains have power of life and death. In 
 time of peace there are no appointed magistrates, but 
 the chiefs in the cantons declare justice and quell 
 litigation as well as they can. Thieving in a neigh¬ 
 boring state,—not in his own,—is honorable to a 
 German. Expeditions for thieving are formed, which 
 men may join or not as they please; but woe betide 
 him who, having promised, fails. They are good to 
 traveling strangers. There was a time when the 
 Gauls were better men than the Germans, and could 
 come into Germany and take German land. Even 
 now, says Caesar, there are Gaulish tribes living in 
 Germany after German fashion. But the nearness of 
 the Province to Gaul has taught the Gauls luxury, and 
 so it has come to pass that the Gauls are not as good 
 in battle as they used to be. It is interesting to 
 gather from all these notices the progress of civiliza¬ 
 tion through the peoples of Europe, and some hint 
 as to what has been thought to be good and bad 
 for humanity by various races before the time of 
 Christ. 
 
 Caesar then tells us of a great Hercynian forest, 
 beginning from the north of Switzerlan d and stretch- 
 
GJSSAR PURSUES AMBIORIX. 
 
 89 
 
 ing away to the Danube. A man in nine days would 
 traverse its breadth; but even in sixty days a man 
 could not get to the end of it lengthwise. We may 
 presume that the Black Forest was a portion of it. It 
 contains many singular beasts,—bisons with one horn; 
 elks, which are like great stags, but which have no 
 joints in their legs, and cannot lie down,—nor, if 
 knocked down, can they get up,—which sleep leaning 
 against trees; but the trees sometimes break, and then 
 the elk falls and has a bad time of it. Then there is 
 the urus, almost as big as an elephant, which spares 
 neither man nor beast. It is a grsat thing to kill a 
 urus, but no one can tame them, even when young. 
 The Germans are fond of mounting the horns of this 
 animal with silver, and using them for drinking-cups. 
 
 Caesar does very little over among the Germans. He 
 comes back, partly destroys . his bridge, and starts 
 again in search of Ambiorix. His lieutenant Basilus 
 nearly takes the poor hunted chieftain, but Ambiorix 
 escapes, and Caesar moralizes about fortune. Ambi¬ 
 orix, the reader will remember, was joint king over the 
 Eburones with one Cativolcus. Cativolcus, who is old, 
 finding how his people are harassed, curses his 
 brother king who has brought these sorrows on the 
 nation, and poisons himself with the juice of yew-tree. 
 
 All the tribes in the Belgic country, Gauls as well as 
 Germans, were now very much harassed. They all 
 had helped, or might have helped, or, if left to them 
 selves, might at some future time give help to Ambi¬ 
 orix and the Eburones. Caesar divides his army, 
 but still goes himself in quest of his victim into 
 the damp uncomfortable countries near the mouths 
 of the Scheldt and Meuse. Here he is much dis- 
 tracted between his burning desire to extirpate 
 
90 
 
 THE WAR IN GA UL— SIXTH BOOK 
 
 that race of wicked men over whom Ambiorix had 
 been king, and his anxiety lest he should lose more 
 of his own men in the work than the wicked race 
 is worth. He invites the neighboring Gauls to help 
 him in the work, so that Gauls should perish in 
 those inhospitable regions rather than his own legion, 
 aries. This, however, is fixed in his mind, that a tribe 
 which has been guilty of so terrible an offence,—which 
 has destroyed in war an army of his, just as he would 
 have delighted to destroy a Gaulish army, — must 
 be extirpated, so that its very name may cease to 
 exist! “Pro tali facinore, stirps ac nomen civitatis 
 tollatur.” 
 
 Caesar, in dividing his army, had stationed Q. Cicero 
 with one legion and the heavy baggage and spoils of 
 the army, in a fortress exactly at that spot from which 
 Titurius Sabinus had been lured bv the craft of Ambi- 
 
 V 
 
 orix. Certain Germans, the Sigambri, having learned 
 that all the property of the Eburones had been given up 
 by' Caesar as a prey to any who would take it, had 
 crossed the Rhine that they might thus fill their hands. 
 But it is suggested to them that they may fill their 
 hands much fuller by attacking Q. Cicero in his camp; 
 and they do attack him, when the best part of his army 
 is away looking for provisions. That special spot in the 
 territory of the Eburones is again nearly fatal to a Ro¬ 
 man legion. But the Germans, not knowing how to 
 press the advantage they gain, return with their spoil 
 across the Rhine, and Caesar again comes up like a god. 
 But he has not yet destroyed Ambiorix,—who indeed is 
 not taken at last,—and expresses his great disgust and 
 amazement that the coming of these Germans, which 
 was planned with the view of injuring Ambiorix, 
 
AMBIORIX ESCAPES. 
 
 91 
 
 should have done instead so great a service to that 
 monstrously wicked chieftain. 
 
 He does his very best to catch Ambiorix in person, 
 offering great rewards and inducing his men to undergo 
 all manner of hardships in the pursuit. Ambiorix, 
 however, with three or four chosen followers, escapes 
 him. But Caesar is not without revenge. He burns 
 all the villages of the Eburones, and all their houses. 
 He so lays waste the country that even when his army 
 is gone not a soul should be able to live there. After 
 that he probably allowed himself to be shaved. Am¬ 
 biorix is seen here and is seen there, but with hair¬ 
 breadth chances eludes his pursuer. Caesar, having 
 thus failed, returns south, as winter approaches, to 
 Rheims,—Durocortorum; and just telling us in four 
 words how he had one Acco tortured to death because 
 Acco had headed a conspiracy in the middle of Gaul 
 among the Carnutes and Senones, and how he out¬ 
 lawed and banished others whom he could not catch, 
 he puts his legions into winter quarters, and again 
 goes back to Italy to hold assizes and look after his 
 interests amid the great affairs of the Republic 
 
CHAPTER YIH. 
 
 SEVENTH BOOK OP THE WAR IN GAUL.—THE REVOLT 
 OF VERCINGETORIX—B. C. 52 . 
 
 In opening his account of his seventh campaign Caesar 
 makes almost the only reference to the affairs of Rome 
 which we find in these memoirs. Clodius has been 
 murdered. We know too, that Crassus had been killed 
 at the head of his army in the east, and that, at the death 
 of Clodius, Pompey had been created Dictator in the 
 city with the name of sole Consul. Caesar, however, 
 only mentions the murder of Clodius, and then goes on 
 to say that the Gauls, knowing how important to him 
 must be the affairs of Rome at this moment, think that 
 he cannot now attend to them, and that, in his absence, 
 they may shake off the Roman yoke. The affairs of 
 Rome must indeed have been important to Caesar, if, 
 as no doubt is true, he had already before his eyes a 
 settled course of action by which to make himself su¬ 
 preme in the Republic. Clodius, the demagogue, was 
 dead, whom he never could have loved, but whom it 
 had not suited him to treat as an enemy. Crassus, too, 
 was dead, whom, on account of his wealth, Caesar had 
 admitted as a colleague. Pompey, the third triumvir, 
 remained at Rome, and was now sole Consul; Pom¬ 
 pey who, only twelve months since, had so fondly 
 
THE REVOLT OF YERCINGETORIX. 93 
 
 given up his legion for the sake of the Republic,—and 
 for friendship. Caesar, no doubt, foresaw by this time 
 that the struggle must be at last between himself and 
 Pompey. The very forms of the old republican rule 
 were being turned adrift, and Caesar must have known, 
 as Pompey also knew, and Clodius had known, and 
 even Crassus, that a new power would become para¬ 
 mount in the city. But the hands to rest such power 
 must be very strong. And the day had not yet quite 
 come. Having spent six summers in subduing Gaul, 
 Caesar would not lose the prestige, the power, the sup¬ 
 port, which such a territory, really subdued, would give 
 him. Things, doubtless, were important at Rome, but 
 it was still his most politic course to return over the 
 Alps and complete his work. Before the winter was 
 over he heard that the tribes were conspiring, because 
 it was thought that at such an emergency Caesar could 
 not leave Italy. 
 
 This last book of the Commentary, as written by 
 Caesar, tells the story of the gallant Vercingetorix, one 
 of theArverni,—the modern Auvergne,—whose father, 
 Celtillus, is said to have sought the chieftainship of all 
 Gaul, and to have been killed on that account by his 
 own state. Yercingetorix is certainly the hero of these 
 wars on the Gaulish side, though we hear nothing of 
 him till this seventh campaign. The conspiracy against 
 Rome is afloat, the Carnutes, whose chief town is Gena- 
 bum,—Orleans,—having commenced it. Yercingetorix 
 excites his own countrymen to join, but is expelled from 
 their town, Gergovia, for the attempt. The Arverni, or 
 at least their chief men, fear to oppose the Romans; 
 but Yercingetorix obtains a crowd of followers out in 
 the country, and perseveres. Men of other tribes come 
 to him, from as far north as Paris, and west from the 
 
94 THE WAR IN GA UL.—SEVENTH BOOK. 
 
 Ocean. He assumes supreme power, and enacts and 
 carries out most severe laws for his guidance during the 
 war For any greater offence he burns the offender 
 alive and subjects him to all kinds of torments. For 
 any small fault he cuts off a man’s ears, pokes out one 
 of his eyes, and sends him home, that he may be an 
 example visible to all men. By threats of such pun¬ 
 ishment to those who do not join him, and by inflict¬ 
 ing such on those who do and are then untrue to him 
 or lukewarm, he gets together a great army. Caesar, 
 who is still in Italy, hears of all this, and having made 
 things comfortable with Pompey, hurries into the prov¬ 
 ince. He tells us of his great difficulty in joining 
 his army,—of the necessity which is incumbent on him 
 of securing even the Roman Province from invasion, 
 and of the manner in which he breaks through snow- 
 clad mountains, the Cevennes, at a time of the year in 
 which such mountains were supposed to be impassable. 
 He is forced into fighting before the winter is over, be¬ 
 cause, unless he does so, the few friends he has in Gaul, 
 —the iEdui, for instance,—will have been gained over 
 by the enemy. This made it very difficult, Caesar tells 
 us, for him to know what to do; but he decides that 
 he must begin hji campaign, though it be winter still. 
 
 Caesar, moving his army about with wonderful quick¬ 
 ness, takes three towns in the centre of Gaul, of which 
 Genabum, Orleans, is the first, and thus provides him¬ 
 self with food. Yercingetorix, when he hears of these 
 losses, greatly troubled in his mind that Caesar should 
 thus be enabled to exist on the provisions gathered by 
 the Gauls, determines to burn all the Gaulish towns in 
 those parts. He tells his people that there is nothing 
 else for them in their present emergency, and that they 
 must remember when they see their hearths smoking 
 
THE FATE OF A VARICUM. 
 
 95 
 
 and their property destroyed, that it would he, or ought 
 to be, much more grievous for them to know that their 
 wives and children would become slaves, as undoubt¬ 
 edly would be their fate, if Csesar were allowed to pre¬ 
 vail. The order is given. Twenty cities belonging to 
 one tribe are burned to the ground. The same thing 
 is done in other States. But there is one very beauti¬ 
 ful city, the glory of the country round, which can, they 
 say, be so easily defended that it will be a comfort 
 rather than a peril to them. Avaricum, the present 
 Bourges,—must that also be burned? May not Ava¬ 
 ricum be spared? Yercingetorix is all for burning 
 Avaricum as he has burned the others; but he allows 
 himself to be persuaded, and the city is spared—for the 
 time, 
 
 Csesar, of course, determines to take Avaricum; but 
 he encounters great difficulties. The cattle have been 
 driven away. There is no corn. Those wretched 
 iEdui do almost nothing for him; and the Boii, who 
 are their neighbors, and who, at the best, are but a 
 poor scanty people, are equally unserviceable. Some 
 days his army is absolutely without food; but yet no 
 word of complaint is heard “ unworthy of the majesty 
 and former victories of the Roman people.” The sol¬ 
 diers even beg him to continue the siege when he oilers 
 to raise it because of the hardships they are enduring. 
 Let them endure anything, they say, but failure! 
 “Moreover Csesar, when he would accost ftis legions 
 one by one at their work, and would tell them that he 
 would raise the siege if they could but ill bear their 
 privations, was implored by all of them not to do that. 
 They said that for many years under his command they 
 had so well done their duty that they had undergone no 
 disgrace, had never quitted their ground leaving aught 
 
96 THE WAR IN GA EL.—SEVENTH BOOK. 
 
 unfinished,”—except the subjugation of Britain they 
 might perhaps have said,—“that they would be now 
 disgraced if they should raise a siege which had been 
 commenced; that they would rather bear all hardships 
 than not avenge the Roman citizens who had perished 
 at Genabum by the perfidy of the Gauls.” Ca3sar puts 
 these words into the mouths of his legionaries, and 
 as we read them we believe that such was the existing 
 spirit of the men. Caesar’s soldiers now had learned 
 better than to cry because they were afraid of their 
 enemies. 
 
 Then we hear that Vercingetorix is in trouble with 
 the Gauls. The Gauls, when they see the Romans so 
 near them, think that they are to be betrayed into 
 Caesar's hands, and they accuse their leader. But 
 Vercingetorix makes them a speech, and brings up cer¬ 
 tain Roman prisoners to give evidence as to the evil 
 condition of the Roman army. Vercingetorix swears 
 that these prisoners are soldiers from the Roman 
 legions, and so settles that little trouble; but Caesar, 
 defending his legionaries, asserts that the men so 
 used were simply slaves. 
 
 Vercingetorix is in his camp at some little distance 
 from Avaricum, while Caesar is determined to take the 
 city. We have the description of the siege, concise, 
 graphic, and clear. We are told of the nature of the 
 walls; how the Gauls were good at mining and 
 countermining; how they flung hot pitch and boiling 
 grease on the invaders; how this was kept up, one 
 Gaul after another stepping on to the body of his 
 dying comrade; how at last they resolved to quit the 
 town and make their way by night to the camp of 
 Vercingetorix, but were stopped by the prayers of their 
 own women, who feared Caesar’s mercies;—and how at 
 
THE FATE OF A VABIGUM. 
 
 97 
 
 last the city was taken. We cannot hut execrate 
 Caesar when he tells us coolly of the result. They 
 were all killed. The old, the women, and the chil¬ 
 dren, perished together, slaughtered by the Romans. 
 Out of forty thousand inhabitants, Caesar says that 
 about eight hundred got safely to Yercingetorix. Of 
 course we doubt the accuracy of Caesar’s figures when 
 he tells us of the numbers of the Gauls; but we do not 
 doubt that but a few escaped, and that all but a few 
 were slaughtered. When, during the last campaign, 
 the Gauls at Genabum (Orleans) had determined on 
 revolt against Caesar, certain Roman traders—usurers 
 for the most part, who had there established them¬ 
 selves—were killed. Caesar gives this as the cause, and 
 sufficient cause, for the wholesale slaughter of women 
 and children! One reflects that not otherwise, per¬ 
 haps, could he have conquered Gaul, and that Gaul 
 had to be conquered; but we cannot for the moment 
 but abhor the man capable of such work. Yercinget¬ 
 orix bears his loss bravely. He reminds the Gauls 
 that had they taken his advice the city would have 
 been destroyed by themselves and not defended ; he 
 tells them that all the states of Gaul are now ready 
 to join him; and he prepares to fortify a camp after 
 the Roman fashion. Hitherto the Gauls have fought 
 either from behind the walls of towns, or out in the 
 open country without other protection than that of 
 the woods and hills. 
 
 Then there is another episode with those unsatisfac¬ 
 tory iEdui. There is a quarrel among them who shall 
 be their chief magistrate,—a certain old man or a cer¬ 
 tain young man,—and they send to Caesar to settle the 
 question. Caesar’s hands are very full; but, as he 
 explains, it is essential to him that his allies shall be 
 
98 THE WAR IN GAUL.—SEVENTH BOOK. 
 
 kept in due subordinate order. He therefore absolutely 
 goes in person to one of their cities, and decides that 
 the young man shall be the chief magistrate. But, 
 as he seldom does anything for nothing, he begs that 
 ten thousand iEduan infantry and all the HMuan cav¬ 
 alry may be sent to help him against Vercingetorix. 
 The HSdui have no alternative but to comply. Their 
 compliance, however, is not altogether of a friendly 
 nature. The old man who has been put out of the 
 magistracy gets hold of the ^Eduan general of the 
 forces; and the iEduan army takes the field,—to help, 
 not Caesar, but Vercingetorix! There is a large amount 
 of lying and teachery among the iEdui, and of course 
 tidings of what is going on are carried to Caesar. Over 
 and over again these people deceive him, betray him, 
 and endeavor to injure his cause; but he always for¬ 
 gives them, or pretends to forgive them. It is* his 
 policy to show to the G-auls how great can be the 
 friendship and clemency of Caesar. If he would have 
 burned the iEdui and spared Bourges we should have 
 liked him better; but then, had he done so, he would 
 not have been Caesar. 
 
 While Caesar is thus troubled with his allies, he has 
 trouble enough also with his enemies. Vercingetorix, 
 with his followers, after that terrible reverse at Avari- 
 cum,—Bourges,—goes into his own country which we 
 know as Auvergne, and there encamps his army on a 
 high hill with a flat top, called Gergovia. All of us 
 who have visited Clermont have probably seen the 
 hill. Vercingetorix makes three camps for his army 
 on the hill, and the Arverni have a town there. The 
 Gaul has so placed himself thet there shall be a river 
 not capable of being forded between himself and Caesar. 
 But the Roman general makes a bridge and sets him- 
 
THE SIEGE OF GERGOVIA. 
 
 99 
 
 self down with his legions before Gergovia. The limits 
 of this little work do not admit of any detailed descrip¬ 
 tion of Caesar’s battles; but perhaps there is none more 
 interesting than this siege. The three Gaulish camps 
 are taken. The women of Gergovia, thinking that 
 their town is taken also, leaning over the walls, implore 
 mercy from the Romans, and beg that they may not 
 be treated as have the women of Avaricum. Certain 
 leading Roman soldiers absolutely climb up into the 
 town. The reader also thinks that Caesar is to prevail 
 as he always does prevail. But he is beaten back, and 
 has to give it up. On this occasion the gallant 
 Vercingetorix is the master of the day, and Caesar, 
 excuses himself by explaining how it was that his 
 legions were defeated through the rash courage of his 
 own men, and not by bad generalship of his own. 
 And it probably was so. The reader always feels in¬ 
 clined to believe the Commentary, even when he may 
 most dislike Caesar. Caesar again makes his bridge 
 over the river, the Allier, and retires into the territory 
 of his doubtful friends the iEdui. He tells us himself 
 that in that affair he lost 700 men and 46 officers. 
 
 It seems that at this time Caesar with his whole army 
 must have been in great danger of being destroyed by 
 the Gauls. Why Yercingetorix did not follow up his 
 victory and prevent Caesar from escaping over the Allier 
 is not explained. Ho doubt the requirements of war- 
 far were not known to the Gaul as they were to the 
 Roman. As it was, Caesar had enough to do to save 
 his army. The iEdui, of course, turned against him 
 again. All his stores and treasure and baggage were 
 at Noviodunum,—Nevers,—a town belonging to the 
 Aldui. These are seized by his allies, who destroy all 
 that they cannot carry away, and Caesar’s army is in 
 
loo the war in a a ul.—seventh book. 
 
 danger of being starved. Everything has been eaten 
 up where he is, and the Loire, without bridges or fords, 
 was between him and a country where food was to be 
 found. He does cross the river, the HSdui having sup¬ 
 posed that it would be impossible. He finds a spot in 
 which his men can wade across with their shoulders 
 just above the waters. And as the spot is for fording, 
 in his great difficulty he makes the attempt and accom¬ 
 plishes it. 
 
 Then there is an account of a battle which Labienus 
 is obliged to fight up near Paris. He has four legions 
 away with him there, and having heard of Caesar’s mis¬ 
 fortune at Gergovia, knows how imperative it is that 
 he should join his chief. He fights his battle and 
 wins it, and Caesar tells the story quite as enthusias¬ 
 tically as though he himself had been the conqueror. 
 When this difficulty is overcome, Labienus comes 
 south and joins his Imperator. 
 
 The Gauls are still determined to drive Caesar out 
 of their country, and with this object call together a 
 great council at Bibracte, which was the chief town 
 of the JEdui. It was afterwards called Augustodu- 
 num, which has passed into the modern name Autun. 
 At this meeting, the HMui, who, having been for some 
 years past bolstered up by Rome, think themselves 
 the first of all the Gauls, demand that the chief 
 authority in the revolt against Rome,—now that they 
 have revolted,—shall be intrusted to them. An 
 HUduan chief, they think, should be the commander- 
 in-chief in this war against Rome. Who has done so 
 much for the revolt as the Hildui, who have thrown 
 over their friends the Romans,—now for about the 
 tenth time? But Yercingetorix is unanimously elected, 
 and the ^Eduan chiefs are disgusted. Then there is an- 
 
THE REVOLT OF THE HJDUL 
 
 101 - 
 
 other battle. Yercingetorix thinks that he is strong 
 enough to attack the enemy as Caesar is going down 
 south towards the Province. Caesar, so says Yercinget- 
 orix, is in fact retreating. And, indeed, it seems that 
 Caesar was retreating. But the Gauls are beaten and 
 fly, losing some three thousand of their men who are 
 slaughtered in the fight. Yercingetorix shuts him¬ 
 self \ L ) in a town called Alesia, and Caesar prepares for 
 another siege. 
 
 The taking of Alesia is the last event told in Caesar’s 
 Commentary on the Gallic War, and of all the stories 
 told, it is perhaps the most heartrending. Civilization 
 was never forwarded in a fashion more terrible than that 
 which prevailed at this siege. Yercingetorix with his 
 whole army is forced into the town, and Caesar sur¬ 
 rounds it with ditches, works, lines, and ramparts, so 
 that no one shall be able to escape from it. Before this 
 is completed, and while there is yet a way open of leav¬ 
 ing the town, the Gaulish chief sends out horsemen, 
 who are to go to all the tribes of Gaul, and convene the 
 fighting men to that place, so that by their numbers 
 they may raise the siege and expel the Romans. We 
 find that these horsemen do as they are bidden, and 
 that a great Gaulish conference is held, at which it is 
 decided how many men shall be sent by each tribe. 
 Yercingetorix has been very touching in his demand 
 that all this shall be done quickly. He has food for 
 the town for thirty days. Probably it may be stretched 
 to last a little longer. Then, if the tribes are not true 
 to him, he and the eighty thousand souls he has with 
 him must perish. The horsemen make good their 
 escape from the town, and Yercingetorix, with his eighty 
 thousand hungry souls around him, prepares to wait. 
 It seems to us, when we think what must have been 
 
102 THE WAR IN GA UL.—SEVENTH BOOK. 
 
 the Gallia of those days, and when we remember how 
 far thirty days would now be for sufficing for such 
 a purpose, that the difficulties to be overcome were 
 insuperable. But Caesar says that the tribes did send 
 their men, each tribe sending the number demanded, 
 except the Bellovaci,—the men of Beauvais,—who 
 declared that they chose to wage war on their own 
 account; but even they, out of kindness, lent two 
 thousand men. Caesar explains that even his own 
 best friends among the Gauls,—among whom was 
 one Commius, who had been very useful to him in 
 Britain, and whom he had made king over his own 
 tribe, the Atrebates,—at this conjuncture of affairs 
 felt themselves bound to join the national move¬ 
 ment. This Commius had even begged for the two 
 thousand men of Beauvais. So great, says Caesar, 
 was the united desire of Gaul to recover Gallic liberty, 
 that they were deterred from coming by no memory of 
 benefits or of friendship. Eight thousand horsemen 
 and two hundred and forty thousand footmen assembled 
 themselves in the territories of the iEdui. Alesia was 
 north of the iEdui, amidst the Lingones. This enor¬ 
 mous army chose its generals, and marched off to 
 Alesia to relieve Yercingetorix. 
 
 But the thirty days were passed, and more than past, 
 and the men and women in Alesia were starving. No 
 tidings ever had reached Alesia of the progress which 
 was being made in the gathering of their friends. It 
 had come to be very bad with them there. Some were 
 talking of unconditional surrender. Others proposed 
 to cut their way through the Roman lines. Then one 
 Critognatus had a suggestion to make, and Caesar 
 gives us the words of his speech. It has been com¬ 
 mon with the Greek and Latin historians to put 
 
TEE SIEGE OF ALES1A. 
 
 103 
 
 speeches into the mouths of certain orators, adding 
 the words when the matter has come within either 
 their knowledge or belief. Caesar does not often 
 thus risk his credibility; but on this occasion he does 
 so. We have the speech of Critognatus, word for 
 word. Of those who speak of surrender he thinks so 
 meanly that he will not notice them. As to that cut¬ 
 ting a way through the Roman lines, which means 
 death, he is of opinion that to endure misfortune is 
 greater than to die. Many a man can die who cannot 
 bravely live and suffer. Let them endure a little 
 longer. Why doubt the truth and constancy of the 
 tribes? Then he makes his suggestion. Let those 
 who can fight, and are thus useful,—eat those who are 
 useless and cannot fight; and thus live till the levies 
 of all Gaul shall have come to their succor! Those 
 who have authority in Alesia cannot quite bring them¬ 
 selves to this, but they do that which is horrible in 
 the next degree. They will turn out of the town all 
 the old, all the weak, and all the women. After that, 
 —if that will not suffice,—then they will begin to eat 
 each other. The town belongs, or did belong, to a 
 people called the Mandubii,—not to Vercingetorix or 
 his tribe; and the Mandubii, with their children and 
 women, are compelled to go out. 
 
 But whither shall they go? Caesar has told us that 
 there was a margin of ground between his lines and 
 the city wall,—an enclosed space from which there 
 was no egress except into Caesar’s camp or into the 
 besieged town. Here stands these weak ones,—aged 
 men, women, and children,—and implore Caesar to 
 receive them into his camp, so that they may pass out 
 into the open country. There they stood as suppli¬ 
 cants, on that narrow margin of ground between two 
 
104 THE WAR IN GAEL—SEVENTH BOOK. 
 
 armies. Their own friends, having no food for them, 
 had expelled them from their own homes. Would 
 Caesar have mercy? Caesar, with a wave of his hand, 
 declines to have mercy. He tells us what he himself 
 decides to do in eight words. “At Caesar, depositis 
 in vallo custodiis, recipi prohibebat.” “But Caesar, 
 having placed guards along the rampart, forbade that 
 they should be received.” We hear no more of them, 
 hut we know that they perished! 
 
 The collected forces of G-aul do at last come up 
 to attempt the rescue of Vercingetorix,—and indeed 
 they come in time; were they able by coming to do 
 anything? They attack Caesar in his camp, and a great 
 battle is fought beneath the eyes of the men in Alesia. 
 But Caesar is very careful that those who now are 
 hemmed up in the town shall not join themselves to 
 the Gauls who have spread over the country all around 
 him. We hear how during the battle Caesar comes up 
 himself, and is known by the color of his cloak. We 
 again feel, as we read his account of the fighting, that 
 the Gauls nearly win, and that they ought to win. 
 But at last they are driven headlong in flight,—all the 
 levies of all the tribes. The Romans kill very many, 
 were not the labor of killing too much for them, they 
 might kill all. A huge crowd, however, escapes, and 
 the men scatter themselves back into their tribes. 
 
 On the next day Yercingetorix yields himself and 
 the city to Caesar. During the late battle he and his 
 men shut up within the walls have been simply spec¬ 
 tators of the fighting. Caesar is sitting In his lines 
 before his camp; and there the chieftains, with Ver¬ 
 cingetorix at their head, are brought up to him. Plu¬ 
 tarch tells us a story of the chieftain riding up before 
 Caesar to deliver himself, with gilt armor, on a grand 
 
THE SIEGE OF ALES1A. 
 
 105 
 
 horse, caracolling and prancing. We cannot fancy that 
 any horse out of Alesia, could, after the siege, have 
 been fit for such holiday occasion. The horses out of 
 Yercingetorix's stables had probably been eaten man} r 
 days since. Then Caesar again forgives the AMui; but 
 Yercingetorix is taken as a prisoner to Rome, is kept a 
 prisoner for six years, is then led in Caesar’s Triumph, 
 and, after these six years, is destroyed, as a victim 
 needed for Caesar’s glory,—that so honor may be 
 done to Caesar! Caesar puts his army into winter quar¬ 
 ters, and determines to remain himself in Gaul during 
 the winter. When his account of these things reaches 
 Rome, a “supplication” of twenty days is decreed in 
 his honor. 
 
 This is the end of Caesar’s Commentary “ De Bello 
 Gallico.” The war was carried on for two years more; 
 and a memoir of Caesar’s doings during those two years, 
 —b.c. 51 and 50,—was written, after Caesar’s manner, 
 by one Aulus Hirtius. There is no pretence on the 
 writer’s part that this was the work of Caesar’s hands, 
 as in a short preface he makes an author’s apology for 
 venturing to continue what Caesar had begun. The 
 most memorable circumstance of Caesar’s warfares told 
 in this record of two campaigns is the taking of Uxel- 
 lodunum, a town in the south-west of France, the site 
 of which is not now known. Caesar took the town by 
 cutting off the water, and then horribly mutilated the 
 inhabitants who had dared to defend their own hearths. 
 “Caesar,” says this historian, “knowing well that 
 his clemency was acknowledged by all men, and that he 
 need not fear that any punishment inflicted by him 
 would be attributed to the cruelty of his nature, per¬ 
 ceiving also that he could never know what might be 
 
106 tee WAR IN GAUL.—fifth book. 
 
 the end of his policy if such rebellions should continue 
 to break out, thought that other Gauls should be deter¬ 
 red by the fear of punishment.” So he cut off the 
 hands of all those who had borne arms at Uxellodu- 
 num, and turned the maimed wretches adrift upon the 
 world! And his apologist adds, that he gave them life 
 so that the punishment of these wicked ones,—who 
 had fought for their liberty,—might be the more mani¬ 
 fest to the world at large! This was perhaps the 
 crowning act of Caesar’s cruelty,—defended, as we see, 
 by the character he had achieved for clemency! 
 
 Soon after this Gaul was really subdued, and then 
 we hear the first preparatory notes of the coming civil 
 war. An attempt was made at Rome to ruin Caesar in 
 his absence. One of the consuls of the year.— b. c. 51, 
 —endeavored to deprive him of the remainder of the 
 term of his proconsulship, and to debar him from seek¬ 
 ing the suffrages of the people for the consulship in his 
 absence. Two of his legions are also demanded from 
 him, and are surrendered by him. The order, indeed, 
 is for one legion from him and one from Pompeius; 
 but he has had with him, as the reader will remember, 
 a legion borrowed from Pompeius;—and thus in fact 
 Caesar is called upon to give up two legions. And he 
 gives them up,—not being as yet quite ready to pass 
 the Rubicon. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 FIRST BOOK OF THE CIVIL WAR.—CiESAR CROSSES THE 
 RUBICON.—FOLLOWS POMPEY TO BRUNDUSIUM.— 
 AND CONQUERS AFRANIUS IN SPAIN.—B. C. 49 . 
 
 Ch:sar now gives us his history of that civil war in 
 which he and Pompey contended for the mastery over 
 Rome and the Republic. In his first Commentary he 
 had recorded his campaigns in Caul,—campaigns in 
 which he reduced tribes which were, if not hostile, at any 
 rate foreign, and by his success in which he carried on 
 and maintained the potency, traditions and purport of 
 the Roman Republic. It was the ambition of the 
 Roman to be master of the known world. In his ideas 
 no more of the world was really known than had 
 become Roman, and any extension to the'limits of this 
 world could only be made by the addition of so-called 
 barbarous tribes to the number of Roman subjects. In 
 reducing Caul, therefore, and in fighting with the Ger¬ 
 mans, and going over to Britain, Caesar was doing that 
 which all good Romans wished to see done, and was 
 rivaling in the West the great deeds whi’ch Pompey 
 had accomplished for the Republic in the East. In this 
 second Commentary he is forced to deal with, a subject 
 which must have been less gratifying to Roman readers. 
 He relates to us the victories which he won with Roman 
 
108 THE civil war—first book. 
 
 legions over other legions equally Roman, and by which 
 he succeeded in destroying the liberty of the Republic. 
 
 It must be acknowledged on Caesar’s behalf that 
 in truth liberty had fallen in Rome before Caesar’s 
 time. Power had produced wealth, and wealth had 
 produced corruption. The tribes of Rome were 
 bought and sold at the various elections, and a few 
 great oligarchs, either of this faction or of that, divided 
 among themselves the places of trust and honor and 
 power, and did so with hands ever open for the grasp¬ 
 ing of public wealth. An honest man with clean 
 hands and a conscience, with scruples and a love of 
 country, became unfitted for public employment. Cato 
 in these days was simply ridiculous; and even 
 Cicero, though he was a trimmer, was too honest for 
 the times. Laws were wrested from their purposes, and 
 the very Tribunes* of the people had become the worst 
 of tyrants. It was necessary, perhaps, that there 
 should be a master;—so at least Caesar thought. He 
 had, no doubt, seen this necessity during all these 
 years of fightiug in Gaul, and had resolved that he 
 would not be less than First in the new order of things. 
 So he crossed the Rubicon. 
 
 The reader of this second Commentary will find it 
 less alluring than the first. There is less in it of ad¬ 
 venture, less of new strange life, and less of that sound, 
 healthy, joyous feeling which sprang from a thorough 
 conviction on Caesar’s part that in crushing the Gauls 
 
 * The Tribunes of the people were officers elected annually to 
 act on behalf of the people as checks on the magistracy of the 
 Republic, and were endowed with vast powers, which they were 
 presumed to use for the protection of liberty. But the office of 
 Tribune had become degraded to party purposes, as had every 
 other office of the state. 
 
CJESAR GROSSES THE RUBICON. 109 
 
 he was doing a thoroughly good thing. To us, and 
 our way of thinking, his doings in Gaul were stained 
 with terrible cruelty. To him and to his Romans they 
 were foul with no such stain. How other Roman con¬ 
 querors acted to other conquered peoples we may learn 
 from the fact, that Caesar obtained a character for great 
 mercy by his forebearance in Gaul. He always writes 
 as though he were free from any sting of conscience, 
 as he tells us of the punishments which policy called 
 upon him to inflict. But as he writes of these civil 
 wars, there is an absence of this feeling of perfect self- 
 satisfaction, and at the same time he is much less cruel. 
 Hecatombs of Gauls, whether men or women or chil¬ 
 dren, he could see burned or drowned or starved, mu¬ 
 tilated or tortured, without a shudder. He could give 
 the command for such operations with less remorse 
 than we feel when we order the destruction of a litter 
 of undesirable puppies. But he could not bring him¬ 
 self to slay Roman legionaries, even in fair fighting, 
 with anything like self-satisfaction. In this he was 
 either soft-hearted or had a more thorough feeling of 
 country than generals or soldiers who have fought in 
 civil contests since his time have shown. In the Wars 
 of the Roses and in those of Cromwell we recognize no 
 such feeling. The American generals were not so 
 restrained. But Caesar seems to have valued a Roman 
 legionary more than a tribe of Gauls. 
 
 Nevertheless he crossed the Rubicon. We have 
 all heard of his crossing of the Rubicon, but Caesar 
 says nothing about it. The Rubicon was a little 
 river now almost if not altogether unknown, running 
 into the Adriatic between Ravenna and Ariminum,— 
 Rimini,—and dividing the provinces of so-called Cis¬ 
 alpine Gaul from the territory under the immediate 
 
110 THE CIVIL WAR—FIRST. BOOK 
 
 rule of the magistracy of Rome. Caesar was, so to 
 say, at home north of the Rubicon. He was in his 
 own province, and had all things under his command. 
 But he was forbidden by the laws even to enter the 
 territory of Rome proper while in the command of a 
 Roman province; and therefore, in crossing the Rubi¬ 
 con, he disobeyed the laws, and put himself in opposition 
 to the constituted authorities of the city. It does not 
 appear, however, that very much was thought of this, 
 or that the passage of the river was in truth taken as 
 the special.sign of Caesar’s purpose, or as a deed that 
 was irrevocable in its consequences. There are vari¬ 
 ous pretty stories of Caesar’s hesitation as he stood on 
 the brink of the river, doubting whether he would 
 plunge the world into civil war We are told how a 
 spirit appeared to him and led him across the water 
 with martial music, and how Caesar, declaring that the 
 die was cast, went on and crossed the fatal stream. 
 But all this was fable, invented on Caesar’s behalf by 
 Romans who came after Caesar. Caesar’s purpose was, 
 no doubt, well understood when he brought one of 
 his legions down into that corner of his province, but 
 offers to treat with him on friendly terms were made 
 by Pompey and his party after he had established 
 himself on the Roman side of the river. 
 
 When the civil war began, Caesar had still, accord- 
 ihg to the assignment made to him, two years and a 
 half left of his alloted period of government in the 
 three provinces; but his victories and his power had 
 been watched with anxious eyes from Rome, and the 
 Senate had attempted to decree that he should be 
 recalled. Pompey was no longer Caesar’s friend, nor 
 did Caesar expect his friendship. Pompey, who had 
 lately played his cards but badly, and must have felt 
 
POMPEY'S CHARACTER. 
 
 Ill 
 
 •that he had played them badly, had been freed from 
 his bondage to Caesar by the death of Crassus, the 
 third triumvir, by the death of Julia, Caesar’s daugh¬ 
 ter, and by the course of things in Rome. It had 
 been an unnatural alliance arranged by Caesar with 
 the view of clipping his rival’s wings. The fortunes 
 of Pompey had hitherto been so bright, that he also 
 had seemed to be divine. While still a boy, he had 
 commanded and conquered, women had adored him, 
 the soldiers had worshipped him. Sulla had called 
 him the Great; and, as we are told, had raised his 
 hat to him in token of honor. He had been allowed 
 the glory of a Triumph while yet a youth, and had tri¬ 
 umphed a second time before he had reached middle 
 life. He had triumphed again a third time, and the 
 three Triumphs had been won in the three quarters of 
 the globe. In all things he had been successful, and in 
 all things happy. He had driven the swarming pirates 
 from every harbor in the Mediterranean, and had 
 filled Rome with corn. He had returned a conqueror 
 with his legions from the East, and had dared to dis¬ 
 band them, that he might live again as a private citi¬ 
 zen. And after that, when it was thought necessary that 
 the city should be saved, in her need, from the factions 
 of her own citizens, he had been made sole consul. 
 It is easier now to understand the character of Pom¬ 
 pey than* the position which, by his unvaried suc¬ 
 cesses, he had made for himself in the minds both of 
 the nobles and of the people. Even up to this time, 
 even after Caesar’s wars in Gaul, there was something 
 of divinity hanging about Pompey, in which the 
 Romans of the city trusted. He had been imperious, 
 but calm in manner and self-possessed,—allowing no 
 one to be his equal, but not impatient in making 
 
112 
 
 THE CIVIL WAR—FIRST BOOK 
 
 good his claims; grand, handsome, lavish when policy 
 required it, rapacious when much needed, never 
 self-indulgent, heartless, false, cruel, politic, ambitious, 
 very brave, and a Roman to the backbone. But he 
 had this failing, this weakness;—when the time for 
 the last struggle came, he did not quite know what 
 it was that he desired to do; he did not clearly see 
 his future. The things to be done were so great, that 
 he had not ceased to doubt concerning them when the 
 moment came in which doubt was fatal. Caesar saw 
 it all, and never doubted. That little tale of Caesar 
 standing on the bridge over the Rubican pondering as 
 to his future course,—divided between obedience and 
 rebellion,—it is very pretty. But there was no such 
 pondering, and no such division. Caesar knew very 
 well what he meant and what he wanted. 
 
 Caesar is full of his wrongs as he begins his second 
 narrative. He tells us how his own friends are 
 silenced in the Senate and in the city; how his ene¬ 
 mies, Scipio, Cato, and Lentulus the consul, prevail; 
 how no one is allowed to say a word for him. “ Pom- 
 pey himself,” he says, “urged on by the enemies of 
 Caesar, and because he was unwilling that any one 
 should equal himself in honor, had turned himself 
 altogether from Caesar’s friendship, and had gone back 
 to the fellowship of their common enemies,—enemies 
 whom he himself had created for Caesar during the 
 time of their alliance. At the same time, conscious of 
 the scandal of those two legions which he had stopped 
 on their destined road to Asia and Syria and taken into 
 his own hand, he was anxious that the question should 
 be referred to arms. ” Those two legions are very greiv- 
 ous to Caesar. One was the legion which, as we re¬ 
 member, Pompey had given up to friendship,—and the 
 
TEE RUBICON IS PASSED. 
 
 113 
 
 Republic. When, in the beginning of these contests 
 between the two rivals, the Senate had decided on 
 weakening each by demanding from each a legion, 
 Pompey had asked Caesar for the restitution of that 
 which he had so kindly lent. Caesar, too proud to 
 refuse payment of the debt, had sent that to his 
 former friend, and had also sent another legion, as de¬ 
 manded to the Senate. They were required nominally 
 for service in the East, and now were in the hands 
 of him who had been Caesar’s friend but had become 
 his enemy. It is no wonder that Caesar talks of the 
 infamy or scandal of the two legions! He repeats 
 his complaint as to the two legions again and again. 
 
 In the month of January Caesar was at Ravenna, 
 just north of the Rubicon, and in his own province. 
 Messages pass between liim and the Senate, and he 
 proposes his terms. The Senate also proposes its terms. 
 He must lay down his arms, or he will be esteemed an 
 enemy by the Republic. All Rome is disturbed. The 
 account is Caesar’s account but we imagine that Rome 
 was disturbed. “ Soldiers are recruited over all Italy; 
 arms are demanded, taxes are levied on the municipal¬ 
 ities, and money is taken from the sacred shrines; all 
 laws divine and human are disregarded. ” Then Caesar 
 explains to his soldiers his wrongs, and the crimes of 
 Pompey. He tells them how they, under his guid¬ 
 ance, have been victorious, how under him they have 
 “ pacified ” all Gaul and Germany, and he calls npon 
 them to defend him who has enabled them to do such 
 great things. He has but one legion with him, but 
 that legion declares that it will obey him,—him and 
 the tribunes of the people, some of whom, acting on 
 Caesar’s side, have come over from Rome to Ravenna. 
 We can appreciate the spirit of this allusion to the 
 
114 
 
 TEE CIVIL WAR.—FIRST BOOK. 
 
 tribunes, so that there may seem to be still some link 
 between Csesar and the civic authorities. When the 
 soldiers have expressed their goodwill, he goes to 
 Ariminum, and so the Rubicon is passed. 
 
 There are still more messages. Csesar expresses 
 himself as greatly grieved that he should be subjected 
 to so much suspense,'nevertheless he is 'willing to suffer 
 anything for the Republic;—“omnia pati reipublicse 
 causA” Only let Pompey go to his province, let the 
 legions in and about Rome be disbanded, let all the 
 old forms of free government be restored, and panic 
 be abolished, and then,—when that is done,—all diffi¬ 
 culties may be settled in a few minutes’ talking. The 
 consuls and Pompey send back word that if Caesar 
 will go back into Gaul and dismiss his army, Pompey 
 shall go at once to Spain. But Pompey and the 
 consuls with their troops will not stir till Caesar shall 
 have given security for his departure. Each demands 
 that the other shall first abandon his position. Of 
 course all these messages mean nothing. 
 
 Caesar, complaining bitterly of injustice, sends a por¬ 
 tion of his small army still farther into the Roman 
 territory. Marc Antony goes to Arezzo with five 
 cohorts, and Caesar occupies three other cities with a 
 cohort each. The marvel is that he was not attacked 
 and driven back by Pompey. We may probably con¬ 
 clude that the soldiers, though under the command 
 of Pompey, were not trustworthy as against Caesar. 
 As Caesar regrets his two legions, so no doubt do the 
 two legions regret their commander. At any rate, the 
 consular forces with Pompey and the consuls and a 
 host of senators retreat southwards to Brundusium,— 
 Brindisi,—intended to leave Italy by the port which 
 we shall all use before long when we go eastwards. 
 
POMPEY RETREATS . 
 
 115 
 
 During this retreat, the first blood in the civil war is 
 spilt at Corfinium, a town which, if it now stood at all, 
 would stand in the Abruzzi. Csesar there is victor 
 in a small engagement, and obtains possession of the 
 town. The Pompeian officers whom he finds there he 
 sends away, and allows them even to carry with them 
 money which he believes to have been taken from the 
 public treasury. Throughout his route southward the 
 soldiers of Pompey, who had heretofore been his 
 soldiers,—return to him. Pompey and the consuls 
 still retreat, and still Csesar follows them, though 
 Pompey had boasted, when first warned to beware of 
 Csesar, that he had only to stamp upon Italian soil and 
 legions would arise from the earth ready to obey him. 
 He knows, however, that away from Rome, in her 
 provinces, in Macedonia and Achaia, in Asia and Cilicia, 
 in Sicily, Sardinia, and Africa, in Mauritania and the 
 two Spains, there are Roman legions which as yet 
 know no Csesar. It may be better for Pompey that 
 he should stamp his foot somewhere out of Italy. At 
 any rate he sends the obedient consuls and his attend¬ 
 ant senators over to Dyrrachium in Illyria with a part 
 of his army, and follows with the remainder as soon as 
 Csesar is at his heels. Csesan makes an effort to inter¬ 
 cept him and his fleet, but in that he fails. Thus 
 Pompey deserts Rome and Italy,—and never again 
 sees the imperial city or the fair land. 
 
 Csesar explains to us why he does not follow his 
 enemy and endeavor at once to put an end to the 
 struggle. Pompey is provided with shipping and he 
 is not; and he is aware that the force of Rome lies in 
 her provinces. Moreover, Rome may be starved by 
 Pompey, unless he, Csesar, can take care that the corn¬ 
 growing countries, which are the granaries of Rome, 
 
116 THE CIVIL WAB.—FIES1 BOOK 
 
 are left free for the use of the city. He must make 
 sure of the two Gauls, and of Sardinia, and of Sicily, 
 of Africa too, if it may be possible. He must win to 
 his cause the two Spains, of which at least the north¬ 
 ern province was at present devoted to Pompey. He 
 sends one lieutenant to Sardinia with a legion, another 
 to Sicily with three legions,—and from Sicily over 
 into Africa. These provinces have been allotted to 
 partisans of Pompey; but Caesar is successful with 
 them all. To Cato, the virtuous man, had been as¬ 
 signed the government of Sicily; but Cato finds no 
 Pompeian army ready for his use, and, complaining 
 bitterly that he has been deceived and betrayed by the 
 head of his faction, runs away, and leaves his province 
 to Caesar’s officers. Caesar determines that he himself 
 will carry the war into Spain. 
 
 But he found it necessary first to go to Rome, and 
 Caesar, in his account of what he did there, hardly tells 
 us the whole truth. We quite go along with him 
 when he explains to us that, having collected what 
 sort of a Senate he could,—for Pompey had taken away 
 with him such senators as he could induce to follow 
 him,—and having proposed to this meagre Senate that 
 ambassadors should be sent to Pompey, the Senate 
 accepted his suggestion; but that nobody could be in¬ 
 duced to go on such an errand. Pompey had already 
 declared that all who remained in Rome were his ene¬ 
 mies. And it may probably be true that Caesar, as he 
 says, found a certain tribune of the people at Rome 
 who opposed him in all that he was doing, though we 
 should imagine that the opposition was not violent. 
 But his real object in going to Rome was to lay hand 
 on the treasure of the Republic,—the sanctius aerari- 
 um,—which was kept in the temple of Saturn for special 
 
CJESAR TOUCHES AT MARSEILLES . 117 
 
 emergencies of State. That he should have taken this 
 we do not wonder;—but we do wonder that he should 
 have taken the trouble to say that he did not do so. 
 He professes that he was so hindered by that vexatious 
 tribune, that he could not accomplish the purposes for 
 which he had come. But he certainly did take the 
 money, and we cannot doubt but that he went to Rome 
 especially to get it. 
 
 Caesar, on his way to Spain, goes to Marseilles 
 which, under the name of Massilia, was at this time, 
 as it is now, the most thriving mercantile port on the 
 Mediterranean. It belonged to the province of Further 
 Gaul, but it was in fact a colony of Greek traders. Its 
 possession was now necessary to Caesar. The magis¬ 
 trates of the town, when called upon for their adhesion, 
 gave a most sensible answer. They protest that they 
 are very fond of Caesar, and very fond of Pompey. 
 They don’t understand all these affars of Rome, and 
 regret that two such excellent men should quarrel. In the 
 mean time they prefer to hold their own town. Caesar 
 speaks of this decision as an injury to himself, and is 
 instigated by such wrongs against him to besiege the 
 city, which he .does both by land and sea, leaving 
 officers there for the purpose, and going on himself to 
 Spain. 
 
 At this time all Spain was held by three officers, de¬ 
 voted to the cause of Pompey, though, from what has 
 gone before, it is clear that Caesar fears nothing from 
 the south. Afranius commanded in the north and 
 east, holding the southern spurs of the Pyrenees. 
 Petreius, who was stationed in Lusitania, in the south¬ 
 west, according to the agreement, hurries up to the 
 assistance of Afranius as soon as Caesar approaches. 
 The Pompeian and Caesarian armies are brought into 
 
118 TEE CIVIL WAR.—FIRST BOOK. 
 
 close quarters in the neighborhood of Ilerda (Lerida), 
 on the little river Sicoris, or Segre, which runs into 
 the Ebro. They are near the mountains here, and the 
 nature of the fighting is controlled by the rapidity and 
 size of the rivers, and the inequality of the ground. 
 Caesar describes the campaign with great minuteness, 
 imparting to it a wonderful interest by the clearness of 
 his narrative. Afranius and Petreius hold the town of 
 Ilerda, which is full of provisions. Caesar is very 
 much pressed by want, as the corn and grass have not 
 yet grown, and the country supplies of the former 
 year are almost exhausted. So great are his difficul¬ 
 ties, that tidings reach Rome that Afranius has con¬ 
 quered him. Hearing this, many who were still cling¬ 
 ing to the city, doubtful as to the side they would take, 
 go away to Pompey. But Caesar at lasts manages to 
 make Ilerda too hot for the Pompeian generals. Ho 
 takes his army over one river in coracles, such as he 
 had seen in Britain; he turns the course of another ; 
 fords a third, breaking the course of the stream by the 
 bulk of his horses; and bridges a fourth. Afranius and 
 Petreius find that they must leave Ilerda, and escape 
 over the Ebro among the half-barbarous tribe further 
 south, and make their way, if possible, among the 
 Celtibri,—getting out of Aragon into Castile, as the 
 division was made in after-ages. Caesar gives us as 
 one reason for this intended march on the part of his 
 enemies, that Pompey was well known by those tribes, 
 but that the name of Caesar was a name as yet obscure to 
 the barbarians. It was not however, easy for Afran¬ 
 ius to pass over the Ebro without Caesar’s leave, and 
 Caesar will by no means give him leave. He intercepts 
 the Pompeians, and now turns upon them that terrible 
 engine of want from which he had suffered so much. 
 
CAESAR IN TEE NORTH OF SPAIN 119 
 
 He continues so to drive them about, still north of the 
 Ebro, that they can get at no water; and at last they 
 are compelled to surrender. 
 
 During the latter days of this contest the Afranians, 
 as they are called—Roman legionaries, as are the sol¬ 
 diers of Caesar—fraternize with their brethren in Caesar’s 
 camp, and there is something of free intercourse be¬ 
 tween the two Roman armies. The upshot is that the 
 soldiers of Afranius resolve to give themselves up to 
 Caesar, bargaining, however, that their own generals 
 shall be secure. Afranius is willing enough; but his 
 brother-general, Petreius, with more of the Roman at 
 heart, will not hear of it. We shall hear hereafter the 
 strange fate of this Petreius. He stops the conspiracy 
 with energy, and forces from his own men, and even from 
 Afranius, an oath against surrender. He orders that all 
 Caesar’s soldiers found in their camp shall be killed, and, 
 as Caesar tells us, brings back the atfair to the old form 
 of war. But it is all of no avail. The Afranians are so 
 driven by the want of water, that the two generals are at 
 last compelled to capitulate and lay down their arms. 
 
 Five words which are used by Caesar in the descrip¬ 
 tion of this affair give us a strong instance of his con¬ 
 ciseness in the use of words, and of the capability for 
 conciseness which the Latin language affords. “Pre- 
 mebantur Afraniani pabulatione, aquabantur aegre.” 
 “The soldiers of Afranius were much distressed in the 
 matter of forage, and could obtain water only with great 
 difficulty.” These twenty words translate those five 
 which Caesar uses, perhaps with fair accuracy; but many 
 more than twenty would probably have been used by 
 any English historian in dealing with the same facts. 
 
 Caesar treats his compatriots with the utmost gen¬ 
 erosity. So many conquered Gauls he would have sold 
 
120 THE CIVIL WAR—FIRST BOOK. 
 
 as slaves, slaughtering their leaders, or he would have 
 cut off their hands, or have driven them down upon 
 the river and have allowed them to perish in the 
 waters. But his conquered foes are Roman soldiers, 
 and he simply demands that the army of Afranius 
 shall be disbanded, and that the leaders of it shall go, 
 —whither they please. He makes them a speech in 
 which he explains how badly they have treated him. 
 Nevertheless he will hurt no one. He has borne it 
 all, and will bear it, patiently. Let the generals only 
 leave the Province, and let the army which they have 
 led be disbanded. He will not keep a soldier who 
 does not wish to stay with him, and will even pay 
 those whom Afranius has been unable to pay out of 
 his own funds. Those who have houses and land in 
 Spain may remain there. Those who have none he 
 will first feed and afterwards take back, if not to Italy, 
 at any rate to the borders of Italy. The property 
 which his own soldiers have taken from them in the 
 chances of war shall be restored, and he out of his own 
 pocket will compensate his own men. He performs 
 his promise, and takes all those who do not choose to 
 remain, to the banks of the Var, which divides the Prov¬ 
 ince from Italy, and there sets them down, full, no 
 doubt, of gratitude to their conqueror. Never was 
 there such clemency,—or, we may say, better policy! 
 Caesar’s whole campaign in Spain had occupied him 
 only forty days. 
 
 In the meantime Decimus Brutus, to whom we 
 remember that Caesar had given the command of the 
 ships which he prepared against the Veneti in the west 
 of Gaul, and who was hereafter to be one of those who 
 slew him in the Capitol, obtains a naval victory over 
 the much more numerous fleet of the Massilians. 
 
CAESAR IN THE NORTH OF SPAIN 121 
 
 They had prepared seventeen big ships,—“naves 
 longae” they are called by Caesar,—and of these 
 Brutus either destroys or takes nine. In his next 
 book Caesar proceeds to tell us how things went on at 
 Marseilles both by sea and land after this affair. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 SECOND BOOK OP THE CIVIL WAR.—THE TAKING OF MAR¬ 
 SEILLES.—VARRO IN THE SOUTH OF SPAIN.—THE 
 FATE OF CURIO BEFORE UTICA.—B.C. 49 . 
 
 In bis chronicle of the Gallic war, Caesar in each book 
 completed the narrative of a year’s campaign. In 
 treating of the civil war he devotes the first and 
 second books to the doings of one year. There are 
 three distinct episodes of the year’s campaign narrated 
 in the second;—the taking of Marseilles, the subju¬ 
 gation of the southern province of Spain,—if that can 
 be said to be subjugated which gave itself up very 
 readily,—and the destruction of a Roman army in 
 Africa under the hands of a barbarian king. But of 
 all Csesar’s writings it is perhaps the least interesting, 
 as it tells us but little of what Caesar did himself,— 
 and in fact contains chiefly Caesar records of the 
 doings of his lieutenants by sea and land. 
 
 He begins by telling us of the enormous exertions 
 made both by the besiegers and by the besieged at Mas- 
 silia, which town was now held by Domitius on the 
 part of Pompey,—to supplement whom at sea cer¬ 
 tain Nasidius was sent with a large fleet. Young 
 Brutus, as will be remembered, was attacking the har¬ 
 bor on behalf of Csesar, and had already obtained a 
 
THE SIEGE OF MARSEILLES. 
 
 123 
 
 victory over the Massilians before Nasidius came up; 
 and Trebonius, also on the part of Caesar, was besieg¬ 
 ing the town from the land. This Decimus Brutus 
 was one of those conspirators who afterwards conspired 
 against Caesar and slew him, — and Trebonius was 
 another of the number. The wise Greeks of the 
 city,—more wise than fortunate, however,—had ex¬ 
 plained to Caesar when he first expressed his wish to 
 have the town on his side, that really to them there 
 was no difference between Pompey and Caesar, both of 
 whom they loved with all their hearts,—but they had 
 been compelled to become partisans of Pompey, the 
 Pompeian general Domitius being the first to enter 
 their town; and now they find themselves obliged to 
 fight as Pompeians in defence of their wealth and their 
 homes. Thus driven by necessity, they fight well and do 
 their very best to favor the side which we must hence¬ 
 forward call that of the Republic as against an autocrat; 
 —for, during this siege of Marseilles, Caesar had been 
 appointed Dictator, and a law to that effect had been 
 passed at Rome, where the passing of such a law was no 
 doubt easy enough in the absence of Pompey, of the con 
 suls, and of all the senators who werePompey’s friends. 
 
 The Massilians had now chosen their side, and they 
 do their very best. We are told that the Cessarean 
 troops, from the high ground on which Trebonius had 
 placed his camp, could look down into the town, and 
 could see “how all the youth who had been left in the 
 city, and all the elders with their children and wives, 
 and the sentinels of the city, either stretched their 
 hands to heaven from the walls, or, entering the 
 temples of the immortal gods, and throwing themselves 
 before their sacred images, prayed that the heavenly 
 powers would give them victory. Nor was there one 
 
124 THE CIVIL WAR.—SECOND BOOK 
 
 among them who did not believe that on the result 
 of that day depended all that they had,”—namely, 
 liberty, property and life; for the Massilians, doubt¬ 
 less, had heard of Avaricum, of Alesia, and of Uxello- 
 dunum. ‘‘When the battle was begun,” says Caesar, 
 “the Massilians failed not at all in valor; but,' 
 mindful of the lessons they had just received from their 
 townsmen, fought with the belief that the present was 
 their only opportunity of doing aught for their own pres¬ 
 ervation; and that to those who should fall in battle, 
 loss of life would only come a little sooner than to the 
 others, who would have to undergo the same fate, 
 should the city be taken.” Caesar, as he wrote this, 
 doubtless thought of what he had done in Gaul when 
 policy demanded from him an extremity of cruelty; and, 
 so writing, he enhanced the clemency with which, as he 
 is about to tell us, he afterwards treated the Massilians. 
 When the time came it did not suit him to depopulate 
 a rich town, the trade of whose merchants was benefi¬ 
 cial both to Borne and to the Province. He is about 
 to tell us of his mercy, and therefore explains to us 
 beforehand how little was mercy expected from him. 
 We feel that every line he writes is weighed, though 
 the time for such weighing must have been very short 
 with one whose hands were so full as were always the 
 hands of Caesar. 
 
 Nasidius, whom we may call Pompey’s admiral, 
 was of no use at all. The Massilians, tempted by his 
 coming, attack bravely the ship which bears the flag 
 of young Brutus; but young Brutus is too quick for 
 them, and the unhappy Massilians run two of their 
 biggest vessels against each other in their endeavor 
 to pin that of the Caesarean admiral between them. 
 The Massilian fleet is utterly dispersed. Five are 
 
TEE SIEGE OF MARSEILLES. 
 
 125 
 
 sunk, four are taken: one gets off with Nasidius, who 
 runs away, making no effort to fight; who has keen 
 sent there,—so Caesar hints,—by Pompey, not to give 
 assistance, but only to pretend to give assistance. 
 One ship gets back into the harbor with the sad 
 tidings; and the Massilians—despairing only for a 
 moment at the first blush of the bad news—determine 
 that their walls may still be defended. 
 
 The town was very well supplied with such things 
 as were needed for defence, the people being a provi¬ 
 dent people, well instructed and civilized, with means 
 at their command. We are told of great poles twelve 
 feet long, with sharp iron heads to them, which the 
 besiegers could throw with such force from the engines 
 on their walls as to drive them through four tiers of 
 the wicked crates or stationary shields which the Caesa¬ 
 reans built up for their protection,—believiog that no 
 force could drive a weapon through them. As we 
 read of this we cannot but think of Armstrong and 
 Whitfield guns, and iron plates, and granite batteries, 
 and earthworks. These terrible darts, thrown from 
 “balistae,” are very sore upon the Caesareans; they 
 therefore contrive an immense tower, so high that it 
 cannot be reached by any weapon, so built that no 
 wood or material subject to fire shall be on the out¬ 
 side,—which they erect story by story, of very great 
 strength. And as they raise this step by step, each 
 story is secured against fire and against the enemy. 
 The reader,—probably not an engineer himself,—is 
 disposed to think as he struggles through this minute 
 description of the erection which Caesar gives, and 
 endeavors to realize the way in w’hich it is done, that 
 Caesar must himself have served specially as an engineer. 
 But in truth he was not at this siege himself, and had 
 
126 TEE CIVIL WAR.—SECOND BOOK. 
 
 nothing to do with the planning of the tower, and 
 must in this instance at least have got a written de¬ 
 scription from his officer,—as he probably did before 
 when he built the memorable bridge over the Rhine. 
 And when the tower is finished, they make a long 
 covered way or shed,—musculum or muscle Caesar calls 
 it; and with this they form for themselves a passage 
 from the big tower to a special point in the walls of 
 the town. This muscle is so strong with its sloping 
 roof that nothing throwm upon it will break or burn it. 
 The Massilians try tubs of flaming pitch, and great frag¬ 
 ments of rock; but these simply slip to the ground, and 
 are pulled away with long poles and forks. And the 
 Caesareans, from the height of their great tower, have 
 so terrible an advantage! The Massilians cannot de¬ 
 fend their wall, and a breach is made, or almost made. 
 
 The Massilians can do no more. The very gods are 
 against them. So they put on the habit of supplicants, 
 and go forth to the conquerors, They will give their 
 city to Caesar. Caesar is expected. Will Trebonius 
 be so good as to wait till Caesar comes? If Trebonius 
 should proceed with his work so that the soldiers 
 should absolutely get into the town, then;—Trebonius 
 knows very well what would happen then. A little 
 delay cannot hurt. Nothing shall be done till Caesar 
 comes. As it happens, Caesar has already especially 
 ordered that the city shall be spared; aucl a kind of 
 truce is made, to endure till Caesar shall come and 
 take possession. Trebonius has a difficulty in keeping 
 his soldiers from the plunder; but he does restrain 
 them, and besiegers and besieged are at rest, and wait 
 for Caesar. 
 
 But these Massilians are a crafty people. The 
 Caesarean soldiers, having agreed to wait, take it 
 
THE SIEGE OF MARSEILLES. 
 
 127 
 
 easily, and simply amuse themselves in these days of 
 waiting. When they are quite off their guard, and a 
 high wind favors the scheme, the Massilians rush out 
 and succeed in burning the tower, and the muscle, and 
 the rampart, and the sheds, and all the implements. 
 Even though the tower was built with brick, it burns 
 freely,—so great is the wind. Then Trebonius goes to 
 work, and does it all again. Because there is no more 
 wood left round about the camp, he makes a rampart 
 of a new kind,—hitherto unheard of,—with bricks. 
 Doubtless the Caesarean soldiers had first to make the 
 bricks, and we can imagine what were their feelings 
 in reference to the Massilians. But however that may 
 be, they worked so well and so hard that the Massilians 
 soon see that their late success is of no avail. Nothing 
 is left to them. Neither perfidy nor valor can avail 
 them, and now again they give themselves up. They 
 are starved and suffering from pestilence, their fortifi¬ 
 cations are destroyed, they have no hope of aid from 
 without,—and now they give themselves up,—intend¬ 
 ing no fraud. “ Sese dedere sine fraude constituunt.” 
 Domitius, the Pompeian general, manages to escape in 
 a ship. He starts with three ships, but the one in 
 which he himself sails alone escapes the hands of 
 “young” Brutus. Surely now will Marseilles be 
 treated with worse treatment than that which fell on 
 the Gaulish cities. But such is by no means Caesar’s 
 will. Caesar takes their public treasure and their 
 ships, and reminding them that he spares them rather 
 for their name and old character than for any merits 
 of theirs shown towards him, leaves two legions among 
 them, and goes to Home. At Avaricum, when the 
 Gauls had fought to defend their own liberties, he had 
 destroyed everybody;—at Alesia he had decreed the 
 
128 THE CIVIL WAR—SECOND BOOK\ 
 
 death of every inhabitant when they had simply asked 
 him leave to pass through his camp; —at Uxellodunum 
 he had cut off the hands and poked out the eyes of 
 Gauls who had dared to fight for their country. But 
 the Gauls were barbarians whom it was necessary that 
 Csesar should pacify. The Massilians were Greeks, 
 and a civilized people,—and might be useful. 
 
 Before coming on to Marseilles there had been a 
 little more for Csesar to do in Spain, where, as was 
 told in the last chapter, he had just compelled Afranius 
 and Petreius to lay down their arms and disband their 
 legions. Joined with them had been a third Pompeian 
 general, one Varro,—a distinguished man, though not, 
 perhaps, a great general,—of whom Caesar tells us that 
 with his Roman policy he veered between Pompeian 
 and Caesarean tactics till, unfortunately for himself, 
 he declared for Pompey and the wrong side, when 
 he heard that Afranius was having his own way in 
 the -neighborhood of Lerida. But Varro is in the 
 south of Spain, in Andalusia,—or Bsetica, as it was 
 then called,—and in this southern province of Spain 
 it seems that Caesar’s cause was more popular than that 
 of Pompey. Caesar, at any rate, has but little difficulty 
 with Varro. The Pompeian officer is deserted by his 
 legions, and gives himself up very quickly. Caesar 
 does not care to tell us what he did with Varro, but we 
 know that he treated his brother Roman with the utmost 
 courtesy. Varro was a very learned man, and a friend 
 of Cicero’s, and one who wrote books, and was a credit 
 to Rome as a man of letters if not as a general. We are 
 told that he wrote 490 volumes, and that he lived to be 
 eighty-eight,—a fate very uncommon with Romans who 
 meddled with public affairs in these days. Csesar made 
 everything smooth in the south of Spain, restoring the 
 
CJEJSAR IN THE 80 VTH OF SPAIN 129 
 
 money and treasures which Varro had taken from the 
 towns, and giving thanks to everybody. Then he went on 
 over the Pyrenees to Marseilles, and made things smooth 
 there. 
 
 But in the mean time things were not at all smooth 
 in Africa. The name of Africa was at this time given 
 to a small province belonging to the Republic, lying to 
 the east of Numidia, in which Carthage had stood 
 when Carthage was a city, containing that 'promontory 
 which juts out towards Sicily, and having Utica as 
 its Roman capitol. It has been already said that 
 when Caesar determined to gain possession of certain 
 provinces of the Republic before he followed Pompey 
 across the Adriatic, he sent a lieutenant with three 
 legions into Sicily, desiring him to go on to Africa as 
 soon as things should have been arranged in the island 
 after the Caesarean fashion. The Sicilian matter is 
 not very troublesome, as Cato, the virtuous man, in 
 w r hose hands the government of the island had been 
 intrusted on behalf of the Republic, leaves it on the 
 arrival of the Caesarean legions, complaining bitterly of 
 Pompey’s conduct. Then Caesar’s lieutenant goes over 
 to Africa with two legions, as commanded, proposing 
 to his army the expulsion of one Attius Yarus, who 
 had, according to Caesar’s story, taken irregular pos¬ 
 session of the province, keeping it on behalf of Pom¬ 
 pey, but not allowing the governor appointed by the 
 Republic so much as to put his foot on the shore. 
 This lieutenant was a great favorite of Caesar, by 
 name Curio, who had been elected tribune of the 
 people just when the Senate was making its attempt to 
 recall Caesar from his command in Gaul. In that 
 emergency, Curio as tribune had been of service to 
 Caesar, and Caesar loved the young man. He was one 
 
130 THE CIVIL WAR—SECOND BOOK. 
 
 of those who, though noble by birth, had flung them¬ 
 selves among the people, as Catiline had done and 
 Clodius,—unsteady, turbulent, unscrupulous, vicious, 
 needy, fond of pleasure, rapacious, but well educated, 
 brave, and clever. Caesar himself had been such a 
 man in his youth, and could easily forgive such faults 
 in the character of one who, in addition to such virtues 
 as have been named, possessed that farther and greater 
 virtue of loving Caesar. Caesar expected great things 
 from Curio, and trusted him thoroughly. Curio, with 
 many ships and his two legions, lands in Africa, and 
 prepares to win the province for his great friend. He 
 does obtain some little advantage, so that he is called 
 “Imperator” by his soldiers,—a name not given to a 
 general till he has been victorious in the field; but it 
 seems clear, from Caesar’s telling of the story, that 
 Curio’s own officers and own soldiers distrusted him, 
 and were doubtful whether they would follow him, or 
 would take possession of the ships and return to Sicily; 
 —or would go over to Attius Yarus, who had been their 
 commander in Italy before they had deserted from 
 Pompey to Caesar. A council of war is held, and there 
 is much doubt. It is not only or chiefly of Attius 
 Yarus, their Roman enemy, that they are afraid; but 
 there is Juba in their neighborhood, the king of 
 Numidia, who will certainly fight for Yarus and 
 against Curio. He is Pompey’s declared friend, and 
 equally declared as Caesar’s foe. He has, too, special 
 grounds of quarrel against Curio himself; and if he 
 comes in person with his army,—bringing such an 
 army as he can bring if he pleases,—it will certainly 
 go badly with Curio, should Curio be distant from his 
 camp. Then Curio, not content with his council of 
 war, and anxious that his soldiers should support him 
 
IRE STORY OF CURIO. 
 
 131 
 
 in his desire to fight, makes a speech to the legion¬ 
 aries. We must remember, of course, that Caesar gives 
 us the words of this speech, and that Caesar must 
 himself have put the words together. 
 
 It is begun in the third person. He,—that is Curio, 
 —tells the men how useful they were to Caesar at Cor- 
 finium, the town at which they went over from Pom- 
 pey to Caesar. But in the second sentence he breaks 
 into the first person and puts the very words into 
 Curio’s mouth. “ For you and your services,” he says 
 “were copied by all the towns; nor is it without cause 
 that Caesar thinks kindly of you, and the Pompeians 
 unkindly. For Pompey, having lost no battle, but 
 driven by the result of your deed, fled from Italy. Me» 
 whom Caesar holds most dear, and Sicily and Africa 
 without which he cannot hold Rome and Italy, Caesar 
 hats intrusted to your honor. There are some who 
 advise you to desert me,—for what can be more desir¬ 
 able to such men than they at the same time should 
 circumvent me, and fasten upon you a foul crime? 
 
 . . . . But you,—have you not heard of the 
 
 things done by Caesar in Spain,—two armies beaten, two 
 generals conquered, two provinces gained, and all this 
 done in forty days from that on which Caesar first saw 
 his enemy? can those who, uninjured, were unable to 
 stand against him, resist him now that they are con¬ 
 quered? And you, who followed Caesar when victory 
 on his side was uncertain, now that fortune has 
 declared herself, will you go over to the conquered 
 side when you are about to realize the reward of your 
 zeal? .... But perhaps, though you love Caesar, 
 you distrust me. I wilt not say much of my own 
 deserts towards you,—which are indeed less as yet 
 than I had wished or you had expected. ” Then, having 
 
132 THE CIVIL WAR—SECOND BOOK. 
 
 thus declared that he will not speak of himself, he 
 does venture to say a few words on the subject. “But 
 why should I pass over my own work, and the result 
 that has been as yet achieved, and my own fortune in 
 . war? Is it displeasing to you that I brought over the 
 whole army, safe, without losing a ship? That, as I 
 came, at my first onslaught, I should have dispersed 
 the fleet of the enemy? That, in two days, I should 
 have been twice victorious with my cavalry; that I 
 should have cut out two hundred transports from the 
 enemy’s harbor; that I should have so harassed the 
 enemy that neither by land nor sea could they get food 
 to supply their wants? Will it please .you to repudiate 
 such fortune and such guidance, and to connect your¬ 
 self with the disgrace at Corfinium, the flight from 
 Italy,”—namely, Pompey’s flight to Dyrrachium,— 
 “the surrender of Spain, and the evils of this African 
 war? I indeed have wished to be called Csesar’s sol¬ 
 dier, and you have called me your Imperator. If it 
 repents you of having done so, I give you back the 
 compliment. Give me back my own name, lest it seem 
 that in scorn you have called me by that title of 
 honor.” 
 
 This is very spirited; and the merely rhetorical 
 assertion by Caesar that Curio thus spoke to his soldiers 
 is in itself interesting, as showing us the way in 
 which the legionaries were treated by their command¬ 
 ers, and in which the greatest general, of that or 
 of any age, thought it natural that a leader should 
 address his troops. It is of value, also, as showing 
 the difficulty of keeping any legion true to either side 
 in a civil war, in which, on either side, the men must 
 fight for a commander they had learned to respect, 
 and against a commander they respected,—the com- 
 
THE STORY OF CURIO. 
 
 133 
 
 mander in each case being a Roman Imperator. 
 Curio, too, as we know, was a man who on such an 
 occasion could use words. But that he used the words 
 here put into his mouth, or any words like them, is 
 very improbable. Csesar was anxious to make the best 
 apology he could for the gallant young friend who 
 had perished in his cause, and has shown his love 
 by making the man he‘loved memorable to all pos¬ 
 terity. 
 
 But before the dark hour comes upon him the young 
 man has a gleam of success, which, had he really 
 spoken the words put into his mouth by Csesar, would 
 have seemed to justify them. He attacks the army of 
 his fellow-Roman, Yarus, and beats it, driving it back 
 into Utica. He then resolves to besiege the town, 
 and Caesar implies that he would have been successful 
 through the Caesarean sympathies of the townsmen,— 
 had it not been for the approach of the terrible Juba. 
 Then comes a rumor which reaches Curio,—and 
 which reaches Yarus too inside the town,—that the 
 Numidian king is hurrying to the scene with all his 
 forces. He has finished another affair that he had on 
 hand, and can now look to his Roman friends,—and 
 to his Roman enemies. Juba craftily sends forward 
 his prsefect, or lieutenant, Sabura, with a small force 
 of cavalry, and Curio is led to imagine that Juba has 
 not come, and that Sabura has been sent with scanty 
 aid to the relief of Yarus. Surely he can give a good 
 account of Sabura and that small body of Numidian 
 horsemen. We see from the very first that Curio is 
 doomed. Csesar, in a few touching words, makes his 
 apology. ‘ ‘ The young man’s youth had much to do 
 with it, and his high spirit; his former success, too, 
 and his own faith in his own good fortune.” There is 
 
134 THE CIVIL WAIL—SECOND BOOK. 
 
 no “word of reproach. Curio makes another speech to 
 his soldiers. “Hasten to your prey,” he says, “hasten 
 to your glory! ” They do hasten,—after such a fashion 
 that when the foremost of them reach Sabura’s troops, 
 the hindermost of them are scattered far back on the 
 road. They are cut to pieces by Juba. Curio is in¬ 
 vited by one of his officers to escape back to his tent. 
 But Caesar tells us that Curio in that last moment 
 replied that having lost the army with which Caesar 
 had trusted him, he would never again look Caesar in 
 the face. That he did say some such words as these, 
 and that they were repeated by that officer to Caesar, 
 is probable enough. “ So fighting he is slain;”— 
 and there is an end of the man whom Caesar loved. 
 
 What then happened was very sad for a Roman army. 
 Many hurry down to the ships at the sea; but there is 
 so much terror, so much confusion, and things are so 
 badly done, that but very few get over to Sicily. The 
 remainder endeavor to give themselves up to Yarns; 
 after doing which, could they have done it, their posi¬ 
 tion would not have been very bad. A Roman surren¬ 
 dering to a Roman would, at the worst, but find that 
 he was compelled to change his party. But Juba comes 
 up and claims them as his prey, and Yarus does not 
 dare to oppose the barbarian king, Juba kills the most 
 of them, but sends a few, whom he thinks may serve 
 his purpose and add to his glory, back to his own king¬ 
 dom. In doing which Juba behaved no worse than 
 Csesar habitually behaved in Gaul; but Caesar always 
 writes as though not only a Roman must regard a Ro¬ 
 man as more than a man, but as though also all others 
 must so regard Romans. And by making such assertions 
 in their own behalf, Romans were so regarded. We 
 are then told that the barbarian king of Numidia rode 
 
KING JUBA. 
 
 135 
 
 into lltica triumphant, with Roman senators in his 
 train; and the names of two special Roman Senators 
 Caesar sends down to prosterity as having been among 
 that base numbei. As far as we can spare them, they 
 shall be spared. 
 
 Of Juba the king, and of his fate, we shall hear 
 again. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THIRD BOOK OF THE CIVIL WAR.—CAESAR FOLLOWS POM* 
 PEY INTO ILLYRIA.—THE LINES OF PETRA AND THE 
 BATTLE*OF PHARSALIA.—B.C. 48. 
 
 Caesar begins the last book of bis last Commentary 
 by telling us that this was the year in which he Caesar, 
 was by the law permitted to name a consul. He names 
 Publius Servilius to act in conjunction with himself. 
 The meaning of this is, that, as Caesar had been created 
 Dictator, Pompey having taken with him into Illyria 
 the consuls of the previous year, Caesar was now the 
 only magistrate under whose authority a consul could 
 be elected. No doubt he did choose tli*e man, but the 
 election was supposed to have been made in accordance 
 with the form of the Republic. He remained at Rome 
 as Dictator for eleven-days, during which he made vari¬ 
 ous laws, of which the chief object was to lessen the 
 insecurity caused by the disruption of the ordinary 
 course of things; and then he went down to Brindisi on 
 the track of Pompey. He had twelve legions with him, 
 but he was badly off for ships in which to transport 
 them; and he owns that the health of the men is bad, 
 an autumn in the south of Italy having been very severe 
 on men accustomed to the healthy climate of Gaul and 
 the north of Spain. Pompey, he tells us, had had a 
 
POMPETS ARMY. 
 
 137 
 
 whole year to prepare his army,—a whole year, without 
 warfare, and had collected men and ships and money, 
 and all that support which assent gives, from Asia and 
 the Cyclades, from Corcyra, Athens, Bithynia, Cilicia, 
 Phoenicia, Egypt, and the free states of Achaia. He 
 had with him nine Roman legions, and is expecting two 
 more with his father-in-law Scipio out of Syria. He has 
 three thousand archers from Crete, from Sparta, and 
 from Pontus; he has twelve hundred slingers, and he 
 has seven thousand cavalry from Galatia, Cappadocia, 
 and Thrace. A valorous prince from Macedonia had 
 brought him two hundred men, all mounted. Five hun¬ 
 dred of Galatian and German cavalry, who had been left 
 to overawe Ptolemy in Egypt, are brought to Pompey 
 by the filial care of young Cnasus. He too had armed 
 eight hundred of their own family retainers, and had 
 brought them armed. Antiochus of Commagena sends 
 him two hundred mounted archers,—mercenaries, how¬ 
 ever, not sent without promise of high payment. Dar- 
 dani,—men from the land of old Troy, Bessi, from the 
 banks of the Hebrus, Thessalians and Macedonians, 
 have all been crowded together under Pompey’s stand¬ 
 ard. We feel that Caesar’s mouth waters as he re¬ 
 counts them. But we feel also that he is preparing for 
 the triumphant record in which he is about to tell us 
 that all these swarms did he scatter to the winds 
 of heaven with the handful of Roman legionaries 
 which he at last succeeded in landing on the shores 
 of Illyria. 
 
 Pompey has also collected from all parts “ frumenti 
 vim maximam”—‘‘a great power of corn indeed,” as 
 an Irishman would say, translating the words literally. 
 And he has covered the seas with his ships, so as to 
 hinder Caesar from coming out of Italy. He has eight 
 
138 THE CIVIL WAR—THIRD BOOK 
 
 vice-admirals to command his various fleets,—all of 
 whom Caesar names; and over them all, as admiral-in- 
 chief, is Bibulus, who was joint-consul with Caesar be¬ 
 fore Caesar went to Caul, and who was so harassed 
 during his consulship by the Caesareans that he shut 
 himself up in his house, and allowed Caesar to rule as 
 sole consul. Now he is about to take his revenge; 
 but the vengeance of such a one as Bibulus cannot 
 reach Caesar. 
 
 Caesar having led his legions to Brindisi, makes them 
 a speech which almost beats in impudence anything 
 that he ever said or did. He tells them that as they 
 have now nearly finished all his work for him,—they 
 have only got to lay low the Republic with Pompey 
 the Great, and all the forces of the Republic—to which, 
 however, have to be added King Ptolemy in Egypt, 
 King Pharnaces in Asia, and King Juba in Numidia;— 
 they had better leave behind them at Brindisi all their 
 little property, the spoils of former wars, so that they 
 may pack the tighter in the boats in which he means 
 to send them across to Illyria,—if only they can escape 
 the mercies of ex-Consul Admiral Bibulus. There is 
 no suggestion that at any future time they will recover 
 their property. For their future hopes they are to trust 
 entirely to Csesar’s generosity. With one shout they 
 declare their readiness to obey him. He takes over 
 seven legions, escaping the dangers of those “ rocks of 
 evil fame,” the Acroceraunia of which Horace tells us, 
 —and escaping Bibulus also, who seems to have shut 
 himself up in his ship as he did before in his house dur¬ 
 ing the consulship. Csesar seems to have made the pas¬ 
 sage with the conviction that had he fallen into the 
 hands of Bibulus everything would have been lost. And 
 with ordinary precaution and diligence on the part of 
 
CJESAR CROSSES INTO EPIRUS. 
 
 139 
 
 Bibulus such would have been the result. Yet he makes 
 the attempt,—trusting to the Fortune of Caesar,—and 
 he succeeds. He lands at a place which he calls Pal- 
 aeste on the coast of Epirus, considerably to the south 
 of Dyrrachium, in Illyria. At Dyrrachium Pompey had 
 landed the year before, and there is now stored that 
 wealth of provision of which Caesar has spoken. But 
 Bibulus at last determines to be active, and he does 
 manage to fall upon the empty vessels which Caesar 
 sends back to fetch the remainder of his army. “Hav¬ 
 ing come upon thirty of them, he falls upon them with 
 all the wrath occasioned by his own want of circum¬ 
 spection and grief, and burns them. And in the same 
 fire he kills the sailors and the masters of the vessels, 
 —hoping to deter others,” Caesar tells us, “ by the se¬ 
 verity of the punishment.” After that we are not sorry 
 to hear that he potters about on the seas very busy, 
 but still incapable, and that he dies, as it seems, of a 
 broken heart. He does indeed catch one ship after¬ 
 wards,—not laden with soldiers, but coming on a pri¬ 
 vate venture, with children, servants, and suchlike, de¬ 
 pendants and followers of Caesar’s camp. All these, 
 including the children, Bibulus slaughters, down to 
 the smallest child. We have, however, to remember 
 that the story is told by Caesar, and that Caesar did not 
 love Bibulus. 
 
 Marc Antony has been left at Brindisi in command 
 of the legions which Caesar could not bring across at his 
 first trip for want of sufficient ship-room, and is pressed 
 very much by Caesar to make the passage. There are 
 attempts at treaties made, but as we read the account 
 we feel that Caesar is only obtaining the delay which 
 is necessary to him till he shall have been joined by 
 Antony. We are told how by this time the camps of 
 
140 the civil war.—third book . 
 
 Caesar and Pompey have been brought so near to¬ 
 gether that they are separated only by the river Apsus,— 
 for Caesar had moved northwards towards Pompey’s 
 stronghold. And the soldiers talked together across the 
 stream; “nor, the while, was any weapon thrown,—by 
 compact betw r een those who talked.” Then Caesar 
 sends Yatinius, as his ambassador, down to the river to 
 talk of peace; and Yatinius demands with a loud voice 
 “whetherit should not be allowed to citizens to send 
 legates to citizens, to treat of peace;—a thing that has 
 been allowed even to deserters from the wilds of the Py¬ 
 renees and to robbers,—especially with so excellent an 
 object as that of hindering citizens from fighting with 
 citizens.” This seems so reasonable, that a day is 
 named, and Labienus,—who has deserted from Caesar 
 and become Pompeian,—comes to treat on one side of 
 the river, and Yatinius on the other. But,—so Caesar 
 tells the story himself,—the Caesarean soldiers throw 
 their weapons at their old general. They probably 
 cannot endure the voice or sight of one w T hom they re¬ 
 gard as a renegade. Labienus escapes under the pro¬ 
 tection of those who are with him,—but he is full of 
 wrath against Caesar. “After this,” says he, “let us 
 cease to speak of treaties, for there can be no peace for 
 us till Caesar's head has been brought to us.” But the 
 colloquies over the little stream -no doubt answered 
 Caesar’s purpose. 
 
 Caesar is very anxious to get his legions over from 
 Italy, and even scolds Antony for not bringing them. 
 There is a story,—which he does not tell himself,—that 
 he put himself into a small boat, intending to cross 
 over to Brindisi in a storm, to hurry matters, and that 
 he encouraged the awe-struck master of the boat by re¬ 
 minding him that he would carry “ Caesar and his 
 
CAESAR'S ARMY IN ILLYRIA. 
 
 141 
 
 fortunes.” The story goes on to say that t^esailors at¬ 
 tempted the trip, but were driven back by the tempest. 
 
 At last there springs up a smth-wcst wind, and An¬ 
 tony ventures with his flotilla,—although the war-ships 
 of Pompey still hold th 3 sea, and guard the Illyrian 
 coast. But Caesar’s general is successful, and the 
 second half of the Caesarean army is carried northward 
 by favoring breezes towards the shore in the very sight 
 of Pompey and his soldiers at Dyrrachium. Two 
 ships, however, lag behind and fall into the hands of 
 one Otacilius, an officer belonging to Pompey. The 
 two ships, one full of recruits and the other of veterans, 
 agree to surrender, Otacilius having sworn that he will 
 not hurt the men. “ Here you may see,” says Caesar, 
 “ how much safety to men there is in presence of mind.” 
 The recruits do as they have undertaken, and give 
 themselves up;—whereupon Otacilius, altogether disre¬ 
 garding his oath, like a true Roman, kills every man of 
 them. But the veterans, disregarding their word also, 
 and knowing no doubt to a fraction the worth of the 
 word of Otacilius, run their ship ashore in the night, 
 and, with much fighting get safe to Antony. Caesar 
 implies that the recruits even would have known better 
 had they not been sea-sick; but that even bilge-water 
 and bad weather combined had failed to touch the 
 ancient courage of the veteran legionaries. They were 
 still good men—“item conflictati et tempestatis et 
 sentinae vitiis.” 
 
 We are then told how Metellus Scipio, coming out of 
 Syria with his legions into Macedonia, almost succeeds 
 in robbing the temple of Diana of Ephesus on his way. 
 He gets together a body of senators, who are to give 
 evidence that he counts the money fairly as he takes it 
 put of the temple. But letters come from Pompey 
 
142 THE CIVIL WAIL—third book. 
 
 just as lie is in the act, and he does not dare to de¬ 
 lay his journey even do complete so pleasant a trans¬ 
 action. He comes to meet Pompey and to share his 
 command at the great battle that must soon be fought. 
 We hear, too, how Caesar sends his lieutenants into 
 Thessaly and iEtolia and Macedonia, to try what 
 friends he has there, to take cities, and to get food, 
 He is now in a land which has seemed specially to be¬ 
 long to Pompey; but even here they have heard of 
 Caesar, and the Greeks are simply anxious to be friends 
 with the strongest Roman of the day. They have to 
 judge which will win, and to adhere to him. For the 
 poor Greeks there is much difficulty in forming a judg¬ 
 ment. Presently we shall see the way in which Caesar 
 gives a lesson on that subject to the citizens of Gomphi. 
 In the mean time he joins his own forces to those lately 
 brought by Antony out of Italy, and resolves that he 
 will force Pompey to a tight. 
 
 We may divide the remainder of this last book of 
 the second Commentary into two episodes,—the first 
 being the story of what occurred within the lines at 
 Petra, and the second the account of the crowning 
 battle of Pharsalia. In the first Pompey was the 
 victor,—but the victory, great as it was, has won from 
 the world very little notice. In the second, as all the 
 world knows, Caesar w T as triumphant and henceforward 
 dominant. And yet the affair at Petra should have 
 made a Pharsalia unnecessary, and indeed impossible. 
 Two reasons have conspired to make Pompey's com¬ 
 plete success at Petra unimportant in the world’s esteem. 
 This Commentary was written not by Pompey but by 
 Caesar; and then, unfortunately for Pompey, Pharsalia 
 was allowed to follow Petra. 
 
Cj&JSAU IN ILLYRIA. 
 
 \ 
 
 143 
 
 It is not very easy to unravel Caesar’s story of the 
 doings of the two armies at Petra. Nor, were this 
 ever so easy, w T ould our limits or the purport of this 
 little volume allow us to attempt to give that narrative 
 in full to our readers. Caesar had managed to join the 
 legions which he had himself brought from Italy with 
 those which had crossed afterwards with Antony, and 
 was now anxious for a battle. His men, though fewer 
 in number than they who followed Pompey, were fit for 
 fighting, and knew all the work of soldiering. Pom- 
 pey’s men were for the most part beginners;—but 
 they were learning, and every week added to their ex¬ 
 perience w r as a week in Pompey’s favor. With hope of 
 forcing a battle, Caesar managed to get his army between 
 Dyrrachium, in which were kept all Pompey’s stores 
 and wealth of war, and the army of his opponent, so 
 that Pompey, as regarded any approach by land, was shut 
 off from Dyrrachium. But the sea was open to him. 
 His fleet was everywhere on the coast, while Caesar 
 had not a ship that could dare to show its bow upon 
 the waters. 
 
 There was a steep rocky promontory some few miles 
 north of Dyrrachium, from whence there was easy access 
 to the sea, called Petra, or the rock. At this point 
 Pompey could touch the sea, but between Petra and 
 Dyrrachium Caesar held the country. Here, on this 
 rock, taking in for the use of his army a certain some¬ 
 what wide amount of pasturage at the foot of the rock, 
 Pompey placed his army, and made intrenchments all 
 round from sea to sea, fortifying himself, as all Roman 
 generals knew how to do, with a bank and ditch and 
 twenty-four turrets and earthworks that would make 
 the place absolutely impregnable. The length of his 
 lines was fifteen Roman miles..— more than thirteen 
 
144 tee civil war—third book. 
 
 English miles,—so that within his works he might 
 have as much space as possible to give him grass for 
 his horses. So placed, he had all the world at his 
 back to feed him. Not only could he get at that 
 wealth of stores w 7 hich he had amassed at Dyrrachium, 
 and which were safe from Caesar, but the coasts of 
 Greece, and Asia, and Egypt were open to his ships. 
 Two things only were w r anting to him,—sufficient grass 
 for his horses, and water. But all things were want¬ 
 ing to Caesar,—except grass and water. The Illyrian 
 country at his back was one so unproductive, being 
 rough and mountainous, that the inhabitants them¬ 
 selves were in ordinary times fed upon imported corn. 
 And Pompey, foreseeing something of what might hap¬ 
 pen, had taken care to empty the store-houses and to 
 leave the towns behind him destitute and impoverished. 
 
 Nevertheless Caesar, having got the body of his 
 enemy, as it were, imprisoned at Petra, was determined 
 to keep his prisoner fast. So round and in front of 
 Pompey’s lines he also made other lines, from sea to 
 sea. He began by erecting turrents and placing small 
 detachments on the little hills outside Pompey’s lines, 
 so as to prevent his enemy from getting the grass. 
 Then he joined these towers by lines, and in this way 
 surrounded the other lines,—thinking that so Pom¬ 
 pey would not be able to send out his horsemen for 
 forage; and again, that the horses inside at Petra 
 might gradually be starved; and again ; ‘ that the repu¬ 
 tation,”—“auctoritatem,”—“ which in the estimation of 
 foreign nations belonged chiefly to Pompey in this war, 
 would be lessened when the story should have been 
 told over the world that Pompey had been besieged by 
 Caesar, and did not dare to fight. ” 
 
TEE LINES OF PETRA. 
 
 145 
 
 We are, perhaps, too much disposed to think,—read¬ 
 ing our history somewhat cursorily,—that Caesar at this 
 time was everybody, and that Pompey was hardly 
 worthy to he his foe. Such passages in the Commen¬ 
 tary as that above translated,—they are not many, but 
 a few suffice,—show that this idea is erroneous. Up 
 to this period in their joint courses Pompey had been 
 the greater man; Caesar had done very much, but 
 Pompey had done more—and now he had on his side 
 almost all that was wealthy and respectable in Rome. 
 He led the Conservative party, and was still confident 
 that he had only to bide his time, and that Caesar 
 must fall before him. Caesar and the Caesareans were 
 to him as the spirits of the Revolution were in France 
 to Louis XVI., to Charles X., and to Louis-Philippe, 
 before they had made their powers credible and for¬ 
 midable; as the Reform Bill and Catholic Emancipa¬ 
 tion were to such men as George IV. and Lord Eldon, 
 while yet they could be opposed and postponed. It 
 was impossible to Pompey that the sweepings of Rome, 
 even with Caesar and Caesar’s army to help them, 
 should at least prevail over himself and over the 
 Roman Senate. “He was said at that time,” we are 
 again translating Caesar’s words, “ to have declared with 
 boasts among his own people, that he would not him¬ 
 self deny that as a general he should be considered to 
 be worthless if Caesar’s legions should now extricate 
 themselves from the position in which they had rashly 
 entangled themselves without very great loss ”— 
 “maximo detrimento”—loss that should amount 
 wellnigh to destruction. And he was all but right in 
 what he said. 
 
 There was a great deal of fighting for the plots of 
 grass and different bits of vantage-ground,—fighting 
 
146 the CIVIL WAR—mini) BOOK. 
 
 
 which must have taken place almost entirely between 
 the two lines. But Caesar suffered under this disad¬ 
 vantage, that his works, being much the longest, 
 required tlie greatest number of men to erect them and 
 prolong them and keep them in order; whereas Pom- 
 pey, who in this respect had the least to do, having the 
 inner line, was provided with much the greater num¬ 
 ber of men to do it. Caesar’s men, being veterans, had 
 always the advantage in the actual fighting; but in the 
 mean time Pompey’s untried soldiers were obtaining 
 that experience which was so much needed by them. 
 Nevertheless Pompey suffered very much. They 
 could not get water on the rock, and when he attempted 
 to sink wells, Caesar so perverted the water-courses 
 that the wells gave no water. Caesar tells us that he 
 even dammed up the streams, making little lakes to 
 hold it, so that it should not trickle down in its under¬ 
 ground courses to the comfort of his enemies; but we 
 should have thought that any reservoirs so made must 
 soon have overflown themselves, and have been useless 
 for the intended purpose. In the mean time Caesar’s 
 men had no bread but what was made of a certain wild 
 cabbage,—“chara,”—which grew there, which they 
 kneaded up with milk, and lived upon it cheerfully, 
 though it was not very palatable. To show the Pom¬ 
 peians the sort of fare with which real veterans could be 
 content to break their fasts, they threw loaves of this 
 composition across the lines, for they were close together 
 and could talk to each other, and the Pompeians did 
 not hesitate to twit their enemies with their want of 
 provisions. But the Caesareans had plenty of water, 
 —and plenty of meat; and they assure Caesar that they 
 would rather eat the bark off the trees than allow the 
 Pompeians to escape them. 
 
THE LINES OF PETRA. 147 
 
 But there was always this for Csesar to fear,—that 
 Pornpey should land a detachment behind his lines 
 and attack him at the hack. To hinder this Caesar 
 made another intrenchment, with ditch and hank, run¬ 
 ning at right angles from the shore, and was intending 
 to join this to his main work hy a transverse line of 
 fortifications running along that short portion of the 
 coast which lay between his first lines and the second, 
 when there came upon him the disaster which nearly 
 destroyed him. While he was digging his trenches 
 and building his turrets the fighting was so frequent 
 that, as Caesar tells us, on one day there were six bat¬ 
 tles. Pornpey lost two thousand legionaries, while 
 Caesar lost no more than twenty; but every Caesarean 
 engaged in a certain turret was wounded; and four 
 officers lost their eyes. Caesar estimates that thirty 
 thousand arrows were thrown upon the men defending 
 this tower, and tells us of one Scaeva, an officer, who 
 had two hundred and thirty holes made by these 
 arrows in his own shield.* We can only sur- 
 
 * Dean Merivale in his account of this affair reduces the num¬ 
 ber of holes in Scaeva's shield to one hundred and twenty,—on 
 the joint authority, no doubt, of Florus and Valerius Maximus; 
 but Florus lived 200 and Val. Max. 300 years after Caesar. 
 Suetonius allows the full number of holes, but implies that 120 
 were received while the warrior was fighting in one place, and 
 110 while fighting in another. Lucan sings the story of Scaeva 
 
 at great length, but does not give the number of wounds 
 in the shield. He seems to say that Scaeva was killed on this 
 occasion, but is not quite clear on the point. That Scaeva had 
 one eye knocked out is certain. Lucan does indeed tell us, m 
 the very last lines of his poem, that in Egypt Caesar once 
 again saw his beloved centurionbut at the moment described 
 even Caesar was dismayed, and the commentators doubt whether 
 it was not Scaeva’s ghost that Caesar then saw. Valerius Maxi¬ 
 mus is sure that Scaeva was killed when he got the wounds; gut, 
 if so, how could he have been rewarded and promoted? I he 
 matter has been very much disputed; but here it has been 
 thought best to adhere to Caesar. 
 
148 the civil war.—third boor. 
 
 mise that it must have been a very big shield, and that 
 there must have been much trouble in counting the 
 holes. Caesar, however, was so much pleased that he 
 gave Scaeva a large sum of money,—something over 
 £500, and, allowing him to skip over six intermediate 
 ranks, made him at once first centurion—or Primipilus 
 of the legion. We remember no other record of such 
 quick promotion—in prose. There is, indeed, the well- 
 known case of a common sailor who did a gallant ac¬ 
 tion and was made first-lieutenant on the spot; but 
 that is told in verse, and the common sailor was a lady. 
 
 Two perfidious Gauls to whom Caesar had been very 
 kind, but whom he had been obliged to check on ac¬ 
 count of certain gross peculations of which they had 
 been guilty, though, as he tells us, he had not time to 
 punish them, went over to Pompey, and told Pompey 
 all the secrets of Caesar’s ditches, and forts, and mounds, 
 —finished and unfinished. Before that, Caesar assures 
 us, not a single man of his had gone over to the ene¬ 
 my, though many of the enemy had come to him. But 
 those perfidious Gauls did a world of mischief. Pompey, 
 hearing how far Caesar was from having his works along 
 the sea-shore finished, got together a huge fleet of boats, 
 and succeeded at night in throwing a large body of his 
 men ashore between Caesar’s two lines, thus dividing 
 Caesar’s forces, and coming upon them in their weakest 
 point. Caesar admits that there was a panic in his 
 lines, and that the slaughter of his men was very great. 
 It seems that the very size of his own works produced 
 the ruin which befel them, for the different parts of 
 them were divided one from another, s j that the men 
 in one position could not succor those in another. The 
 affair ended in the total rout of the Caesarean army, 
 paesar actually fled, and had Pompey followed him we 
 
TEE LINES OF PETRA. 
 
 149 
 
 must suppose that then there would have been an 
 end of Caesar. He acknowledges that in the two 
 battles fought on that day he lost 960 legionaries, 32 
 officers, and 32 standards. 
 
 And then Caesar tells us a story of Labienus, who had 
 been his most trusted lieutenant in the Gallic wars, but 
 who had now gone over to Pompey, not choosing to 
 fight against the Republic. Labienus demanded of 
 Pompey the Caesarean captives, and caused them all to 
 be slaughtered, asking them with scorn whether veter¬ 
 ans such as they were accustomed to run away. Caesar 
 is very angry with Labienus; but Labienus might have 
 defended himself by saying that the slaughter of pris¬ 
 oners of war was a custom he had learned in Gaul. 
 As for those words of scorn, Caesar could hardly have 
 heard them with his own ears, and we can understand 
 that he should take delight in saying a hard thing of 
 Labienus. 
 
 Pompey was at once proclaimed Imperator. And 
 Pompey used the name, though the victory had, 
 alas! been gained over his fellow-countrymen. “ So 
 great was the effect of all this on the spirits and confi¬ 
 dence of the Pompeians, that they thought no more of 
 the carrying on of the war, but only of the victory 
 they had gained.” And then Caesar throws scorn 
 upon the Pompeians, making his own apology in the 
 same words. “ They did not care to remember that 
 the small number of our soldiers was the cause of their 
 triumph, or that the unevenness of the ground and nar¬ 
 rowness of the defiles had aught to do with it; or 
 the occupation of our lines, and the panic of our men 
 between their double fortifications; or our army cut 
 into twb parts, so that one part could not help the 
 other. Nor did they add to this the fact that our men, 
 
150 
 
 THE CIVIL WAR.—THIRD BOOK. 
 
 pressed as they were, could not engage themselves in 
 a fair conflict, and that they indeed suffered more from 
 their own numbers, and from the narrowness of the 
 ravines, than from tbe enemy. Nor were the ordinary 
 chances of war brought to mind,—how small matters, 
 such as some unfounded suspicion, a sudden panic, a 
 remembered superstition, may create great misfortune; 
 nor how often the fault of a general, or the mistake of j 
 an officer, may bring injury upon an army. But they 
 spread abroad the report of the victory of that day 
 throughout all the world, sending forth letters and 
 tales as though they had conquered solely by their own 
 valor, nor was it possible that there should after this 
 be a reverse of their circumstances.” Such was the 
 affair of Petra, by which the relative position in the 
 world-history of Caesar and Pompey was very nearly 
 made the reverse of what it is. 
 
 Caesar now acknowledges that he is driven to change 
 the whole plan of his campaign. He addresses a 
 speech to his men, and explaius to them that this 
 defeat, like that at Gergovia, may lead to their future 
 success. The victory at Alesia had sprung from the 
 defeat of Gergovia, because the Gauls had been in¬ 
 duced to fight; and from the reverses endured within 
 the lines of Petra might come the same fortune;—for 
 surely now the army of Pompey would not fear a 
 battle. Some few officers he punishes and degrades. 
 His own words respecting his army after their defeat 
 are very touching. “ So great a grief had come from 
 this disaster upon the whole army, and so strong a 
 desire of repairing its disgrace, that no one now desired 
 the place of tribune or centurion in his legion; and 
 all, by way of self-imposed punishment, subjected 
 themselves to increased toil; and every man burned 
 
PIIAES ALIA. 
 
 151 
 
 \ 
 
 with a desire to fight. Some from the higher ranks 
 were so stirred by Caesar’s speech, that they thought 
 that they should stand their ground where they were 
 and fight where they stood.” But Caesar was too 
 good a general for that. He moves on towards the 
 south-east, and in retreating gets the better of Pompey, 
 who follows him with only half a heart. After a 
 short while Pompey gives up the pursuit. His father- 
 in-law, Scipio, has brought a great army from the 
 east, and is in Thessaly. As we read this we cannot 
 fail to remember how short a time since it was that 
 Caesar himself was Pompey’s father-in-law, and that 
 Pompey was Caesar’s friend because, with too uxorious 
 a love, he clung to Julia, his young wife. Pompey 
 now goes eastward to unite his army to that of Scipio, 
 and Caesar, making his way also into Thessaly by a 
 more southern route, joins certain forces under his 
 lieutenant Calvinus, who had been watching Scipio, 
 and who barely escaped falling into Pompey’s hands 
 before he could reach Caesar. But wherever Fortune 
 or Chance could interfere, the Gods were always kind 
 to Caesar. 
 
 Then Caesar tells us of his treatment of two towns 
 in Thessaly, Gomphi and Metropolis. Unluckily for 
 the poor Gomphians, Caesar reaches Gomphi first. 
 Now the fame of Pompey’s victory at Petra had been 
 spread abroad; and the Gomphians, who, to give them 
 their due,—would have been just as willing to favor 
 Caesar as Pompey, and who only wanted to be on the 
 winning side that they might hold their little own in 
 safety, believed that things were going badly with 
 Caesar. They therefore shut their gates against Caesar, 
 and sent off messengers to pompey. They can hold 
 their town against Caesar for a little while, but Pompey 
 
152 THE CIVIL WAR—THIRD BOOK. 
 
 must come quickly to their aid. Pompey comes by 
 no means quick enough, and the Gomphians’ capacity 
 to hold their own is very short-lived. At about three 
 o’clock in the afternoon Caesar begins to besiege the 
 town, and before sunset he has taken it, and given it 
 to be sacked by his soldiers. The men of Metropolis 
 were also going to shut their gates, but luckily they 
 hear just in time what had happened at Gomphi,—and 
 open them instead. Whereupon Caesar showers pro¬ 
 tection upon Metropolis; and all the other towns of 
 Thessaly, hearing what had been done, learn what 
 Caesar’s favor means. 
 
 Pompey, having joined his army to that of Scipio, 
 shares all his honors with his father-in-law. When 
 we hear this we know that Pompey’s position was not 
 comfortable, and that he was under constraint. He 
 was a man who would share his honor with no one 
 unless driven to do so. And indeed his command 
 at present was not a pleasant one. It was much for 
 a Roman commander to have ,with him the Roman 
 Senate,—but the senators so placed would be apt to be 
 less obedient than trained soldiers. They even accuse 
 him of keeping them in Thessaly because he likes to 
 lord it over such followers. But they were, neverthe¬ 
 less, all certain that Caesar was about to be destroyed; 
 and, even in Pompey’s camp, they quarrel over the 
 rewards of victory which they think that they will 
 enjoy at Rome when their oligarchy shall have been 
 re-established by Pompey’s arms. 
 
 Before the great day arrives Labienus again ap¬ 
 pears on the scene; and Caesar puts into his mouth a 
 speech which he of course intends us to compare with 
 the result of the coming battle. “ Do not think, O 
 Pompey, that this is the army which conquers Gaul 
 
PflARSALIA. 
 
 153 
 
 and Germany,”—where Labienus himself was second 
 in command under Caesar. “I was present at all 
 those battles, and speak of a thing which I know. A 
 very small party of that army remains. Many have 
 perished,—as a matter of course in so many battles. 
 The autumn pestileuce killed many in Italy. Many 
 have gone home. Many have been left on the other 
 shore. Have you not heard from our own friends who 
 remained behind sick, that these cohorts of Caesar’s 
 were made up at Brindisi?”—made up but the other 
 day, Labienus implies. “ This army, indeed, has been 
 renewed from levies in the two Gauls; but all that it 
 had of strength perished in those two battles at Dyr- 
 rachium; ”—in the contests, that is, within the lines of 
 Petra. Upon this Labienus swears that he will not 
 sleep under canvas again until he sleeps as victor over 
 Caesar; and Pompey swears the same, and everybody 
 swears. Then they all go away full of the coming 
 victory. We daresay there was a great deal of false 
 confidence; but as for the words which Caesar puts 
 into the mouth of Labienus, we know well how much 
 cause Caesar had to dislike Labienus, and we doubt 
 whether they were ever spoken. 
 
 At length the battle-field is chosen,—near the town 
 of Pharsalus, on the banks of the river Enipeus in 
 Thessaly. The battle has acquired world-wide fame as 
 that of Pharsalia, which we have been taught to regard as 
 the name of the plain on which it was fought. Neither 
 of these names occur in the Commentary, nor does 
 that of the river; and the actual spot on which the 
 great contest took place seems to be a matter of doubt 
 even now. The ground is Turkish soil,—near to the 
 mountains which separate modern Greece from Turkey 
 and is not well adapted for the researches of historical 
 
154 THE CIVIL WAR.-THIRD BOOK. 
 
 travelers. Caesar had been keeping his men on the ' 
 march close to Pompey, till Pompey found that he 
 could no longer abstain from fighting. Then came 
 Labienus with his vaunts, and his oath,—and at length 
 the day and the field were chosen. Caesar at any rate 
 was ready. At this time Caesar was fifty-two years 
 old, and Pompey was five years his elder. 
 
 Caesar tells us that Pompey had 110 cohorts, or eleven 
 legions. Had the legions been full, Pompey’s army 
 would have contained 66,000 legionaries; but Caesar 
 states their number at 45,000, or something over two- 
 thirds of the full number. He does not forget to tell 
 us once again that among these eleven were the two 
 legions which he had given up in obedience to the de¬ 
 mand of the Senate. Pompey himself, with these two 
 very legions, placed himself on the left away from the 
 river; and there also were all his auxiliaries,—not 
 counted with the legionaries,—slingers, archers, and 
 cavalry. Scipio commanded in the centre "with the 
 legions he had brought out of Syria. So Caesar tells 
 us. We learn from other sources that Lentulus com¬ 
 manded Pompey’s right wing, lying on the river—and 
 Domitius, whom we remember as trying to hold Mar¬ 
 seilles against young Brutus and Trebonius, the left. 
 Caesar had 80 cohorts, or eight legions, which should 
 have numbered 48,000 men had his legions been full 
 —but, as he tells us, he led but 22,000 legionaries, so 
 that his ranks were deficient by more than a half. 
 
 As was his custom, he had his tenth legion to the 
 right, away from the river. The ninth, terribly 
 thinned by what had befallen it within the lines at 
 Petra, joined to the eleventh, lay next the river, form¬ 
 ing part of Caesar’s left wing. Antony commanded 
 the left wing, Domitius Calvinus, whom Caesar some- 
 
PEARS ALIA. 
 
 155 
 
 times calls by one name and sometimes by the other, 
 the centre,—and Sulla the right. Caesar placed himself 
 to the right, with his tenth legion, opposite to Pompey. 
 As far as we can learn, there was but little in the 
 nature of the ground to aid either of them;—and so 
 the fight began. 
 
 There is not much complication, and perhaps no 
 great interest, in the account of the actual battle as it 
 is given by Caesar. Caesar makes a speech to his army, 
 which was, as we have already learned, and as he tells 
 us now, the accustomed thing to do. No falser speech 
 was ever made by man, if he spoke the words which 
 he himself reports. He first of all reminds them how 
 they themselves are witnesses that he has done his 
 best to insure peace;—and then he calls to their memory 
 certain mock treaties as to peace; in which, when seek¬ 
 ing delay, he had pretended to engage himself and 
 his enemy. He had never wasted, he told them, the 
 blood of his soldiers, nor did he desire to deprive 
 the Republic of either army—“alterutro exercitu”—of 
 Pompey’s army or of his own. They were both 
 Roman, and far be it from him to destroy aught 
 belonging to the Republic. We must acknowledge 
 that Caesar was always chary of Roman life and Roman 
 blood. He would spare it when it could be spared; 
 but he could spill it like water when the spilling of 
 it was necessary to his end. He was very politic; but 
 as for tenderness,—neither he nor any Roman knew 
 what it was. 
 
 Then there is a story of one Crastinus, who declares 
 that whether dead or alive he will please Caesar. He 
 throws the first weapon against the enemy and does 
 please Caesar. But he has to please by his death, for 
 he is killed in his effort. 
 
156 THE CIVIL WAR.—THIRD BOOK. 
 
 Pompey orders that his first rank shall not leave its 
 order to advance, but shall receive the shock of Caesar’s 
 attack. Caesar points out to us that he is wrong in 
 this, because the very excitement of a first attack gives 
 increased energy and strength to the men. Caesar’s 
 legionaries are told to attack, and they rush over the v 
 space mterveneiDg between the first ranks to do so. 
 But they are so well trained that they pause and 
 catch their breath before they throw their weapons. 
 Then they throw their piles and draw their swords, 
 and the ranks of the two armies are close pitted against 
 each other. 
 
 But Pompey had thought that he could win the 
 battle, almost without calling on his legionaries for 
 any exertion, by the simple strategic movement of his 
 numerous cavalry and auxiliaries. He outnumbered 
 Caesar altogether, but in these arms he could overwhelm 
 him with a cloud of horsemen and of archers. But 
 Caesar also had known of these clouds. He fought 
 now as always with a triple rank of legionaries,—but 
 behind his third rank,—or rather somewhat to their 
 right shoulder,—he had drawn up a choice body of men 
 picked from his third line,—a fourth line as it were, 
 —whose business it was to stand against Pompey’s 
 clouds when the attempt should be made by these 
 clouds upon their right flank. Caesar’s small body of 
 cavalry did give way before the Pompeian clouds, and 
 the horsemen and the archers and the slingers swept 
 round upon Caesar’s flank. But they swept round 
 upon destruction. Caesar gave the word to that fourth 
 line of picked men. “ Illi—they,” says Caesar, “ran 
 forward with the greatest rapidity, and with their 
 standards in advance attacked the cavalry of Pompey 
 with such violence that none of them could stand their 
 
PHARSALIA. 
 
 157 
 
 ground;—so that all not only were forced from the 
 ground, but being at once driven in panic, they sought 
 the shelter of the highest mountains near them. And 
 when they were thus removed, all the archers and the 
 slingers, desolate and unarmed, without any one to take 
 care of them, were killed in heaps.” Such is Caesar’s 
 account of Pompey’s great attack of cavalry which 
 was to win the battle without giving trouble to the 
 legions. 
 
 Caesar acknowledges that Pompey’s legionaries drew 
 their swords bravely and began their share of the fight¬ 
 ing well. Then at once he tells us of the failure on 
 the part of the cavalry and of the slaughter of the 
 poor auxiliary slingers, and in the very next sentence 
 gives us to understand that the- battle was won. 
 Though Pompey’s legions were so much more numer¬ 
 ous than those of Caesar, we are told that Caesar’s third 
 line attacked the Pompeian legionaries when they were 
 “defessi”—worn out. The few cohorts of picked 
 men who in such marvelous manner had dispersed 
 Pompey’s clouds, following on their success, turned the 
 flank of Pompey’s legions and carried the day. That 
 it was all as Caesar says there can bq little doubt. 
 That he won the battle there can, we presume, be 
 no doubt. Pompey at once flew to his camp and 
 endeavored to defend it. But such defence was 
 impossible, and Pompey w r as driven to seek succor 
 in flight. He found a horse and a few companions, 
 and did not stop till he was on the sea-shore. Then 
 he got on board a provision-vessel, and was heard to 
 complain that he had been betrayed by those very men 
 from whose hands he had expected victory. 
 
 We are told with much picturesque effect how 
 Caesar’s men, hungry, accustomed to endurance, patient 
 
158 TEE CIVIL WAR.—THIRD BOOK. 
 
 in all their want, found Pompey’s camp prepared for 
 victory, and decked in luxurious preparation for the 
 senatorial victors. Couches were strewn, and plate 
 was put out, and tables prepared, and the tents of these 
 happy ones were adorned with fresh ivy. The sena¬ 
 torial happy ones have but a bad time of it, either 
 perishing in their flight, or escaping into the desert 
 solitudes of the mountains. Caesar follows up his con¬ 
 quest, aud on the day after the battle compels the great 
 body of the fugitives to surrender at discretion. He 
 surrounds them on the top of a hill and shuts them 
 out from water, and they do surrender at discretion. 
 With stretched-out hands, prone upon the earth, these 
 late conquerors, the cream of the Roman power, who 
 had so lately sworn to conquer ere they slept, weeping, 
 beg for mercy. Caesar, having said a few words to 
 them of his clemency, gave them their lives. He rec¬ 
 ommends them to the care of his own men, and desires 
 that they may neither be slaughtered nor robbed. 
 
 Caesar says he lost only 200 soldiers in that battle 
 —and among them 30 officers, all brave men. That 
 gallant Crastinus was among the 30. Of Pompey’s 
 army 15,000 had been killed, and 24,000 had surren¬ 
 dered! . 180 standards and 9 eagles were taken and 
 brought to Caesar. The numbers seem to us to be 
 almost incredible, whether we look at those given to 
 us in regard to the conqueror or the conquered. Caesar’s 
 account, however, of that day’s work has hitherto been 
 taken as anthoritative, and it is too late now to ques¬ 
 tion it. After this fashion was the battle of Pharsalia 
 won, and the so-called Roman Republic brought to an 
 end. 
 
 But Caesar by no means thought that his work was 
 done;—nor indeed was it nearly done. It was now 
 
THE FLIGHT OF POMPEY. 
 
 159 
 
 clearly his first duty to pursue Pompey,—whom, 
 should he escape, the outside provinces and distant 
 allies of the Republic would soon supply with another 
 army. “ Caesar thought that Pompey was to be pur¬ 
 sued to the neglecting of all other things.” In the 
 mean time Pompey, who seems to have been panic- 
 struck by his misfortune, fled with a few friends down 
 the iEgean Sea, picked his young wife up at an island 
 as he went, and made his way to Egypt. The story of 
 his murder by those who had the young King of Egypt 
 in their keeping is well-known and need not detain us. 
 Caesar tells it very shortly. Pompey sends to young 
 Ptolemy for succor and assistance, trusting to past 
 friendship between himself and the young king’s father. 
 Ptolemy is in the hands of eunuchs, adventurers, and 
 cut-throat soldiers, and has no voice of his own in the 
 matter. But these ruffians think it well to have Pom¬ 
 pey out of the way, and therefore they murder him. 
 Achillas, a royal satrap, and Septimius, a Roman sol¬ 
 dier, go out to Pompey’s vessel, as messengers from the 
 king, and induce them to come down into their boat. 
 Then, in the very sight of his wife, he is slaughtered, 
 and his head is carried away as proof of the deed. 
 Such was the end of Pompey, for whom no fortune 
 had seemed to be too great, till Caesar came upon the 
 scene. We are told by the Roman poet, Lucan, who 
 took the battle of Pharsalia as his difficult theme, that 
 Caesar could bear no superior, and Pompey no equal. 
 The poet probably wished to make the latter the more 
 magnanimous by the comparison. To us, as we ex¬ 
 amine the character of the two general, Caesar seems 
 at least as jealous of power as his son-in-law, and cer¬ 
 tainly was the more successful of the two in extruding 
 all others from a share in the power which he coveted. 
 
160 the civil war,—third book . 
 
 Poihpey in the triumvirate admitted his junior to 
 more, as he must have felt it, than equal power: 
 Caesar in the triumvirate simply made a stepping-stone 
 of the great man who was his elder. Pompey at 
 Thessaly was forced to divide at least the name of his 
 power with Scipio, his last father-in-law: but Caesar 
 never gave a shred of his mantle to be worn by another 
 soldier. 
 
 In speaking, however, of the character of Pompey, 
 and in comparing it] with that of his greater rival, it 
 may probably be said of him that in all his contests, 
 both military and political, he was governed by a love 
 of old Rome, and of the Republic as the greatest 
 national institution which the world had ever known, 
 and by a feeling which we call patriotism, and of 
 which Caesar was,—perhaps, we may say, too great to 
 be capable. Pompey desired to lead, hut to lead the 
 beloved Republic. Caesar, caring, nothing for the 
 things of old, with no reverence for the past, utterly 
 destitute of that tenderness for our former footsteps 
 which makes so many of us cling with passionate 
 fondness to convicted errors, desired to create out of 
 the dust of the Republic,—which fate and his genius 
 allowed him to recast as he would,—something which 
 should be better and truer than the Republic. 
 
 The last seven chapters of the third book of this 
 Commentary form a commencement of the record of 
 the Alexandrine war,—w 7 hich, beyond those seven 
 chapters, Caesar himself did not write. That he 
 should have written any Commentary amidst the 
 necessary toils of war, and the perhaps more pressing 
 emergencies of his political condition, is one of the 
 greatest marvels of human power. He tells us now, 
 that having delayed but a few days in Asia, he followed 
 
CAESAR FOLLOWS POMPET TO EGYPT. 161 
 
 Pompey first to Cyprus and then to Egypt, taking with 
 him as his entire army three thousand two hundred 
 men. “The rest, worn out with wounds, and battles, 
 and toil, and the greatness of the journey, could not 
 follow him.” But he directed that legions should be 
 made up for him from the remnants of Pompey’s broken 
 army, and, with a godlike trust in the obedience of ab¬ 
 sent vassals, he went on to Egypt. *He tells us that 
 he was kept in Alexandria by Etesian winds. But we 
 know also that Cleopatra came to him at Alexandria, 
 requiring his services in her contest for the crown of 
 Egypt; and knowing at what price she bought them, 
 we doubt the persistent malignity of the Etesian winds. 
 Had Cleopatra been a swarthy Nubian, as some have 
 portrayed her, Caesar, we think, would have left Alex¬ 
 andria though the Etesian winds had blown in his very 
 teeth. All winds filled Caesar’s sails. Caesar gets pos¬ 
 session of Cleopatra’s brother Ptolemy, who, in accord¬ 
 ance with their father’s will, was to have reigned in 
 conjunction with his sister, and the Alexandrians 
 rise against him in great force. He slays Photinus, 
 the servant of King Ptolemy, has his own ambassador 
 slain, and burns the royal fleet of Egypt,—burning 
 with it, unfortunately, the greater part of the royal 
 library. “These things were the beginning of the 
 Alexandrine war.” These are the last words of Caesar’s 
 last Commentary. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Haying concluded his ten short chapters descriptive 
 of the ten hooks of the Commentaries written by Cae¬ 
 sar himself, the author of this little volume has finished 
 his intended task,—and as he is specially anxious not 
 to he thought to have made an attempt at writing his¬ 
 tory, he would not add any concluding words, were it 
 not that three other Commentaries of Caesar’s three 
 other wars were added to Caesar’s Commentaries by 
 other writers. There is the Commentary on the Alex¬ 
 andrine war,—written probably by Hirtius, the author 
 of the last book of the Gallic war; and two Commen¬ 
 taries on the African war and the Spanish war,—writ¬ 
 ten, as the critics seem to think, by one Oppius, a 
 friend whom Caesar loved and trusted. The Alexan¬ 
 drine war was a war of itself, in which Caesar was in 
 volved by his matchless audacity in following Pompey 
 into Egypt, and perhaps by the sweetness of Cleopa¬ 
 tra’s charms. And this led also to a war in Asia Minor, 
 the account of which is included with that of his Egyp¬ 
 tian campaign. The African war, and that afterwards 
 carried on in Spain with the object of crushing out the 
 sparks of Pompeian revolt against his power, are sim¬ 
 ply the latter portions of the civil war, and their re- 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 163 
 
 cords might have been written as chapters added to the 
 Commentary “ De Bello Civili.” 
 
 Alexandria, when Caesar landed there in pursuit of 
 Pompey and had offered to him as a graceful tribute 
 on his first arrival the head of his murdered rival, was 
 a city almost as populous and quite as rich as Rome; 
 and in the city, and throughout the more fertile parts 
 of Egypt, there was a crowd of Roman soldiers left 
 there to support and to overawe the throne of the 
 Ptolemies. Caesar, with hardly more than half a full 
 legion to support him, enters Alexandria as though 
 obedience were due to him by all in Egypt as Roman 
 consul. He at once demands an enormous sum of 
 money, which he claims as due to himself personally 
 for services rendered to a former Ptolemy; he takes 
 possession of the person of Ptolemy the young king,— 
 and is taken possession of by Cleopatra, the young 
 king’s sister, who was joint heir with her brother to the 
 throne. In all his career there was perhaps nothing 
 more audacious than his conduct in Egypt. The Alex¬ 
 andrians, or rather perhaps the Roman army in Egypt 
 under the leading of the young king’s satraps, rise 
 against Caesar, and he is compelled to fortify himself in 
 the town. He contrives, however, to burn all the 
 Egyptian fleet, and with it unfortunately the royal 
 library, as we were told by himself at the end of the 
 last Commentary. He at length allows Ptolemy to go, 
 giving him back to the Egyptians, and thinking that 
 the young king’s presence may serve to allay the enmity 
 of the Alexandrians. The young king wept at leaving 
 Caesar, and declared that even his own kingdom 
 was not so dear to him as the companionship of 
 Caesar. But the crafty false-faced boy turns against 
 Caesar as soon as he is free to do so. Caesar never was 
 
164 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 in greater danger; and as one reads one feels one's self 
 to be deprived of the right to say that no more insane 
 thing was ever done than Csesar did when he swag¬ 
 gered into Alexandria without an army at his back,— 
 only by the remembrance that Csesar was Caesar. 
 First; because he wanted some ready money, and 
 secondly, because Cleopatra was pretty, Caesar nearly 
 lost the world in Egypt. 
 
 But there comes to his help a barbarian ally,—a 
 certain Mithridates of Pergamus, a putative son of the 
 great Mithridates of Pontus. Mithridates brings an 
 army to Caesar’s rescue, and does rescue him. A great 
 battle is fought on the Kile,—a battle which would have 
 been impossible to Caesar had not Mithridates come to 
 his aid,—and the Egyptians are utterly dispersed. 
 Young^Ptolemy is drowned; Cleopatra is settled on her 
 throne; and Egypt becomes subject to Caesar. Then 
 Caesar hurries into Asia, finding it necessary to quell 
 the arrogance of a barbarian who had dared to defeat a 
 Koman General. The unfortunate conqurer Pharnaces, 
 the undoubted son of Mithridates of Pontus. But Caesar 
 comes, and sees, and conquers. He engages Pharnaces 
 at Zela, and destroys his army, and then, we are told, 
 inscribed upon his banners those insolent words— 
 “ Yeni, vidi, vici.” He had already been made Dic¬ 
 tator of the Roman Empire for an entire year, and had 
 reveled with Cleopatra at Alexandria, and was becom¬ 
 ing a monarch. 
 
 These were the campaigns of the year 47 b. c. , and 
 the record of them is made in the Commentary ‘ ‘ De 
 Bello Alexandrino.” 
 
 In the mean time things have not been going altogether 
 smoothly for Csesar in Italy, although his friends at 
 Rome have made him Dictator. His soldiers have mu- 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 165 
 
 timed against their officers, and against his authority; 
 and a great company of Pompeians is collected in that 
 province of Africa in which poor Curio was conquered 
 by Juba,—when Juba had Roman senators walking 
 in his train, and Caesar’s army was destroyed. The 
 province called by the name of Africa lay just opposite 
 to Sicily, and was blessed with that Roman civilization 
 which belonged to the possessions of the Republic 
 which were nearest to Rome, tlie great centre of 
 all things. It is now the stronghold of the Republi¬ 
 can faction,—as being the one spot of Roman ground in 
 which Caesar had failed of success. Pompey, indeed, is 
 no more, but Pompey’s two sons are here,—and Scipio, 
 Pompey’s father-in-law, whom Pompey had joined with 
 himself in the command at Pharsalus. Labienus is 
 here, who, since he turned from Caesar, has been more 
 Pompeian than Pompey himself; and Afranius, to 
 whom Caesar was so kind in Spain; and Petreius and 
 King Juba,—of whom a joint story has yet to be told; 
 and Yarns, who held the province against Curio;—and 
 last of all there is that tower of strength, the great Cato, 
 the most virtuous and impracticable of men, who, 
 in spite of his virtue, is always in the wrong, and of 
 whom the world at large only remembers that he was 
 fond of wine, and that he destroyed himself at Utica. 
 
 They are all at Utica,—and to them for the present 
 Utica is Rome. They establish a Senate; and Scipio, 
 who is unworthy of the great name he bears, and is in¬ 
 competent as a general, is made commander-in-chief, 
 because Cato decides that law and routine so require. 
 Scipio had been consul,—had been joint commander 
 with Pompey,—and his rank is the highest. The same 
 argument had been used when he was joined in that 
 command,—that it was fitting that such power should 
 
166 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 be given to him because be was of consular rank. The 
 command of the Republican fleet had been intrusted 
 to Bibulus on the same ground. We never bear of 
 Caesar so bestowing promotion. He indeed is now and 
 again led away by another fault, trusting men simply 
 because he loves them,—by what we may call favorit¬ 
 ism,—as he did when he allowed Curio to lose his army 
 in Africa, and thus occasioned all this subsequent 
 trouble. As we read of Scipio’s rank we remember that 
 we have heard of similar cause for ill-judged promo¬ 
 tion in later times. The Pompeians, however, collect 
 an enormous army. They have ten Roman legions, 
 and are supported, moreover, by the whole force of 
 King Juba. This army, we are told, is as numerous as 
 that which Pompey commanded at Pharsalus. There 
 is quarreling among them for authority; quarreling as 
 to strategy; jealousy as to the barbarian, with acknowl¬ 
 edged inability to act without him;—and the reader 
 feels that it is all in vain. Caesar comes, having quelled 
 the mutiny of his own old veterans in Italy by a few 
 words. He has gone among them fearing nothing; 
 they demand their discharge—he grants it. They 
 require the rewards which they think to be their due, 
 and he tells them that they shall have their money,— 
 when he has won it with other legions. Then he ad¬ 
 dresses them not as soldiers, but as “ citizens ”—“ Qui- 
 rites;” and that they cannot stand; it implies that 
 they are no longer the invincible soldiers of Caesar. 
 They rally round him; the legions are re-formed, and 
 he lands in Africa with a small army indeed,—at first 
 with little more than three thousand men,—and is again 
 nearly destroyed in the very first battle. But after a few 
 months campaigning the old story has to be told again. 
 A great battle is fought at Thapsus, a year and five 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 167 
 
 months after that of Pharsalia, and the Republic is 
 routed again and forever. The commentator tells us 
 that on this accasion the verocity of Caesar’s veterans 
 was so great, that by no entreaties, by no commands, 
 could they be induced to cease from the spilling of blood. 
 
 But of the destruction of the leaders separate stories 
 are told us. Of Cato is the first story, and that best 
 known to history. He finds himself obliged to sur¬ 
 render the town of Utica to Caesar; and then, “hehim¬ 
 self having carefully settled his own affairs, and having 
 commended his children to Lucius Caesar, who was 
 then acting with him as his quaestor, with his usual 
 gait and countenance, so as to cause no suspicion, he 
 took his sword with him into his bedroom when it was 
 his time to retire to rest,—and so killed himself.” 
 Scipio also killed himself. Afranius was killed by 
 Caesar’s soldiers. Labienus, and the two sons of Pom- 
 pey, and Yarus, escaped into Spain. Then comes the 
 story of King Juba and Petreius. Juba had collected 
 his wives and children, and all his wealth of gold and 
 jewels and rich apparel, into a town of his called Zama; 
 and there he had built a vast funeral-pile, on which, 
 in the event of his being conquered by Caeser, he in¬ 
 tended to perish,—meaning that his wives and children 
 and dependants and rich treasure should all be burned 
 with him. So, when he was defeated, he returned to 
 Zama; but his wives and children and dependants, 
 being less magnificently minded than their king, and 
 knowing his royal purpose, and being unwilling to 
 become ornaments to his euthanasia, would not let 
 him enter the place. Then he went to his old Ro¬ 
 man friend Peterius, and they two sat down together 
 to supper. Petreius was he who would not allow 
 Afranius to surrender to Caesar at Lerida. When they 
 
168 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 have supped, Juba proposes that they shall fight each 
 other, so that one at least may die gloriously. They 
 do fight, and Petreius is quickly killed. “Juba being 
 the stronger, easily destined the weaker Petreius with 
 his sword.” Then the barbarian tried to kill himself; 
 but, failing, got a slave to finish the work. The battle 
 of Thapsus was fought, b.c. 47. Numidia is made a 
 province by Caesar, and so Africa is won. We may 
 say that the Roman Republic died with Cato at Utica. 
 
 The Spanish war, which afforded matter for the last 
 Commentary, is a mere stamping out of the embers. 
 Caesar, after the affair in Africa, goes to Rome; and the 
 historian begins his chronicle by telling us that he is 
 detained there “ muneribus dandis,”—by the distribu¬ 
 tion of rewards,—keeping his promise, no doubt, to those 
 veterans whom he won back to their military obedience 
 by calling them “Quirites,” or Roman citizens.* The 
 sons of Pompey, Cnaeus and Sextus, have collected to¬ 
 gether a great number of men to support their worn-out 
 cause, and we are told that in the battle of Munda 
 more than 30,000 men perished. But that was the 
 end of it. Labienus and Yarus are killed; and the 
 historian tells us that a funeral was made for them. 
 One Scapula, of whom it is said that he was the pro¬ 
 moter of all this Spanish rebellion, eats his supper, has 
 
 * Not in the Commentary, but elsewhere, we learn that he 
 now triumphed four times, for four different victories, taking 
 care to claim none for any victory won over Roman soldiers. 
 On four different days he was carried through the city with his 
 legions and his spoils and his captives. His first triumph was 
 for the Gallic wars; and on that day Vercingetorix, the gallant 
 Gaul whom we remember, and who had now been six years in 
 prison, was strangled to do Csesar honor. I think we hate 
 Csesar the more for his cruelty to those who were not Romans, 
 because policy induced him to spare his countrymen. 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 169 
 
 himself anointed, and is killed on his funeral-pile. 
 Cnaeus, the elder son of Pompey, escapes wounded, 
 but at last is caught in a cave, and is killed. Sextus, 
 the younger, escapes, and becomes a leading rebel for 
 some years longer, till at last he also is killed by one 
 of Antony’s officers. 
 
 This Commentary is ended, or rather is brought to 
 an untimely close, in the middle of a speech which 
 Csesar makes to the inhabitants of Hipsala,—Seville,— 
 in which he tells them in strong language how well he 
 behaves to them, and how very badly they have be¬ 
 haved to him. But we reach an abrupt termination in 
 the middle of a sentence. 
 
 After the battle of Munda Caesar returned to Borne, 
 and enjoyed one year of magnificent splendor and 
 regal power in Rome. He is made Consul for ten years, 
 and Dictator for life. He is still high priest, and at 
 last is called King. He makes many laws, and perhaps 
 adds the crowning jewel to his imperishable diadem of 
 glory by reforming the calendar, and establishing a 
 proper rotation of months and days, so as to comprise 
 a properly-divided year. But as there is no Commen¬ 
 tary of this year of Caesar’s life, our readers will not 
 expect that we should treat of it here. How he was 
 struck to death by Brutus, Cassius, and the other con¬ 
 spirators, and fell at the foot of Pompey’s statue, gather¬ 
 ing his garments around him gracefully, with a policy 
 that was glorious and persistent to the last, is known 
 to all men and women. 
 
 “Then burst his mighty heart; 
 
 And in his mantle muffling up his face, 
 
 Even at the base of Pompey’s statue, 
 
 Which all the while ran blood, Great Caesar fell.” 
 
170 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 That lie had done his work, and that he died in 
 time to save his name and fame from the evil deeds 
 of which unlimited power in the State would too 
 probably have caused the tyrant to be guilty, was 
 perhaps not the least fortunate circumstance in a career 
 which for good fortune has been unequaled in history. 
 
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 He deals with them tenderly, reverently, but 
 learnedly withal, informing the collector not only 
 what to read, but how to use and preserve his 
 precious volumes. The style is refined, but bright 
 and chatty.”— Daily Times , Brooklyn. 
 
 ‘ ‘ One of the most sensible and really practical 
 works on the subject of which it treats. The 
 scope of the work is much broader than its title 
 would lead one to expect. The young student 
 who desires clear, calm, and judicious counsel in 
 regard to books and reading, and the more ma¬ 
 ture layman who would use his leisure hours in 
 supplementing the deficiencies of early life, can 
 hardly fail to derive great advantage from the 
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 ton, Mass, < 2) 
 
CICERO 
 
 * * 
 
 BY THE 
 
 BEY. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A., 
 
 AUTHOR OB' 
 
 “ETONIANA,” “THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS,” ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 JOHN B. ALDEN, Published 
 
 1883. 
 
I have to acknowledge my obligations to Mr. 
 Forsyth’s well-known “ Life of Cicero,” especially as a 
 guide to the biographical materials which abound in 
 his Orations and Letters. Mr. Long’s scholarly volumes 
 have also been found useful. For the translations, 
 such as they are, I am responsible. If I could have 
 met with any which seemed to me more satisfactory, I 
 would gladly have adopted them. W. L. C. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Chapter I. Biographical—Early Life and Education. 1 
 
 a II. “ Public Career—Impeach¬ 
 ment of Verres. 11 
 
 i( III. “ The Consulship and Cati¬ 
 line. 27 
 
 “ IV. %“ Exile and Return. 45 
 
 ** V. “ Cicero and Caesar. 61 
 
 ** VI. “ Cicero and Antony . 66 
 
 “ VII. Character as Politician and Orator. 78 
 
 “ VIII. Minor Characteristics. 94 
 
 “ IX. Cicero’s Correspondence. 102 
 
 “ X. Essays on “ Old Age ” and “ Friendship ” 122 
 
 “ XI. Cicero’s Philosophy. 134 
 
 4t XIL Cicero’s Religion. 165 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 * 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 . 
 
 ; . \ - 
 
 
 
 rs 
 
 
 . w 
 
 
 
 
 
CICERO. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION. 
 
 When we speak, in the language of our title-page, of 
 the “Ancient Classics,” we must remember that the 
 word “ancient” is to be taken with a considerable dif¬ 
 ference, in one sense. Ancient all the Greek and 
 Roman authors are, as dated comparatively with our 
 modern era. But as to the antique character of their 
 writings, there is often a difference which is not merely 
 one of date. The poetry of Homer and Hesiod is 
 ancient, as having been sung and written when the 
 society in which the authors lived, and to which they 
 addressed themselves, was in its comparative infancy. 
 The chronicles of Herodotus are ancient, partly from 
 their subject-matter and partly from their primitive 
 style. But in this sense there are ancient authors 
 belonging to every nation which has a literature of its 
 own. Viewed in this light, the history of Thucydides, 
 the letters and orations of Cicero, are not ancient at all. 
 Bede, and Chaucer, and Matthew of Paris, and Frois¬ 
 sart, are far more redolent of antiquity. The several 
 books which make up what we call the Bible are all 
 ancient, no doubt; but even between the Chronicles of 
 the Kings of Israel and the Epistles of St. Paul there is a 
 far wider real interval than the mere lapse of centuries. 
 
THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 2 
 
 la 011 c respect the times of Cicero, in spite of their 
 complicated politics, should have more interest for a 
 modern reader than most of what is called Ancient 
 History. *Forget the date but for a moment, and there 
 is scarcely anything ancient about them. The scenes 
 and actors are modern—terribly modern; far more so 
 than the middle ages of Christendom. Between the 
 times of our own Plantagenets and Georges, for in¬ 
 stance, there is a far wider gap, in all but years, than 
 between the consulships of Caesar and Napoleon. The 
 habits of life, the ways of thinking, the family affec¬ 
 tions, the tastes of the Romans of Cicero’s day, were in 
 many respects wonderfully like our own; the political 
 jealousies and rivalries have repeated themselves again 
 and again in the last two or three centuries of Europe; 
 their code of political honor and morality, debased as 
 it was, was not much lower than that which was held by 
 some great statesmen a generation or two before us. 
 Let us be thankful if the most frightful of their vices 
 were the exclusive shame of paganism. 
 
 It was in an old but humble country house, near the 
 town of Arpinum, under the Yolscian hills, that Mar- 
 cus Tullius Cicero was born, one hundred and six years 
 before the Christian era. The family was of ancient 
 “ equestrian” * dignity, but as none of its members had 
 hitherto borne any office of state, it did not rank as 
 “ noble.” His grandfather and his father had borne the 
 same three names—the last an inheritance from some 
 forgotten ancestor, who had either been successful in 
 the cultivation of^vetches ( cicer ), or, as less compliment- 
 
 * The Equites were originally those who served in the Roman 
 cavalry; but latterly all citizens came to be reckoned in the class 
 who had a certain property qualification, and who could prove 
 free descent up to their grandfather. 
 
CICERO . 
 
 3 
 
 ary traditions said, liad a wart of that shape upon his 
 nose. The grandfather was still living when the little 
 Cicero was born; a stout old conservative, who had suc¬ 
 cessfully resisted the attempt to introduce vote by bal¬ 
 lot into his native town, and hated the Greeks (who 
 were just then coming into fashion) as heartily as his 
 English representative, fifty years ago, might have 
 hated a Frenchman. “ The more Greek a man knew,” 
 he protested, “ the greater rascal he turned out.” The 
 father w r as a man of quiet habits, taking no part even in 
 local politics, given to books, and to the enlargement 
 and improvement of the old family house, which, up to 
 his time, seems not to have been more than a modest 
 grange. The situation (on a small island formed by 
 the little river Fibrenus*) was beautiful and romantic; 
 and the love for it, which grew up with the young 
 Cicero as a child, he never lost in the busy days of his 
 manhood. It was in his eyes, he said, what Ithaca was 
 to Ulysses, 
 
 “ A rough, wild nurse-land, but whose crops are men.” 
 
 There was an aptness in the quotation; for at Arpinum, 
 a few years before, was born that Caius. Marius, seven 
 times consul of Rome, who had at least the virtue of 
 manhood in him, if he had few besides. 
 
 But the quiet country gentleman was ambitious for 
 his son. Cicero’s father, like Horace’s, determined to 
 give him the best education in his power; and of cours# 
 the best education was to be found in Rome, and the best 
 teachers there were Greeks. So to Rome young Marcus 
 
 * Now r known as II Fiume della Posta. Fragments of Cicero’s 
 villa are thought to have been discovered built into the walls of 
 the deserted convent of San Dominico. The ruin known as 
 “ Cicero’s Tower” has probably no connection with him. 
 
4 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 was taken in due time, with his younger brother 
 Quintus. They lodged with their uncle-in-law, Aculeo, 
 a lawyer of some distinction, who had a house in rather 
 a fashionable quarter of the city, and moved in good 
 society; and the two boys attended the Greek lectures 
 with their town cousins. Greek was as necessary a part 
 of a Roman gentleman’s education in those days as 
 Latin and French are with us now; like Latin, it was 
 the key to literature (for the Romans had as yet, it must 
 be remembered, nothing worth calling literature of their 
 own); and like French, it was the language of refinement 
 and the play of polished society. Let us hope that by this 
 time the good old grandfather was gathered peacefully 
 into his urn; it might have broken his heart to have seen 
 how enthusiastically his grandson Marcus threw him¬ 
 self into this new-fangled study; and one of those letters 
 of his riper years, stuffed full of Greek terms and phrases 
 even to affectation, would have drawn anything but 
 blessings from the old gentleman if he had lived to hear 
 them read. 
 
 Young Cicero w r ent through the regular curriculum 
 —grammar, rhetoric, and the Greek poets and histori¬ 
 ans. Like many other youthful geniuses he wrote a 
 good deal of poetry of his own, which his friends, as 
 was natural, thought very highly of at the time, and of 
 which lie himself retained the same good opinion to the 
 ^nd of his life, as would have been natural to few men 
 except Cicero. But his more important studies began 
 after lie had assumed the “white gown” which marked 
 the emergence of the young Roman from boyhood into 
 more responsible life—at sixteen years of age. He then 
 entered on a special education for the bar. It could 
 scarcely be called a profession, for an advocate’s prac¬ 
 tice at Rome was gratuitous; but it was the best train- 
 
CICERO. 
 
 5 
 
 ing for public life; it was the ready means, to an able 
 and eloquent man, of gaining that popular influence 
 which would secure his election in due course to the 
 great magistracies which formed the successive steps to 
 political power. The mode of studying law at Rome 
 bore a very considerable resemblance to the prepara¬ 
 tion for the English bar. Our modern law-student pur¬ 
 chases his admission to the chambers of some special 
 pleader or conveyancer, where he is supposed to learn 
 his future business by copying precedents and answer¬ 
 ing cases, and he also attends the public lectures at the 
 Inns of Court. So at Rome the young aspirant was to 
 be found (but at a much earlier hour than would suit 
 the Temple or Lincoln’s Inn) in the open hall of some 
 great jurist’s house, listening to his opinions given to 
 the throng of clients who crowded there every morn¬ 
 ing; while his more zealous pupils would accompany 
 him in his stroll in the Forum, and attend his pleadings 
 in the courts, or his speeches on the Rostra, either tak¬ 
 ing down upon their tablets, or storing in their memo¬ 
 ries, his dicta upon legal questions.* In such wise Cic¬ 
 ero became the pupil of Mucius Scaevola, whose house 
 was called “the oracle of Rome”—scarcely ever leaving 
 his side, as he himself expresses it; and after that great 
 lawyer’s death attaching himself in much the same way 
 to a younger cousin of the same name and scarcely less 
 reputation. Besides this, to arm himself at all points 
 for his proposed career, he read logic with Diodotus the 
 Stoic, studied the action of vEsop and Roscius—then 
 the stars of the Roman stage—declaimed aloud like 
 
 * These dicta, or “opinions,” of the great jurists acquired a 
 sort of legal validity in the Roman law courts, like “ cases” with 
 
 us. , 
 
6 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 Demosthenes in private, made copious notes, practiced 
 translation in order to form a written style, and read 
 hard day and night. He trained severely as an intel¬ 
 lectual athlete; and if none of his contemporaries at¬ 
 tained such splendid success, perhaps none worked so 
 hard for it. He made use, too, of certain special ad¬ 
 vantages which were open to him—little appreciated or 
 at least seldom acknowledged by the men of his day— 
 the society and conversation of elegant and accom¬ 
 plished women. In Scsevola’s domestic circle, where 
 the mother, the daughters, and the granddaughters 
 successively seem to have been such charming talkers 
 that language found new graces from their lips, the 
 young advocate learned some of his not least valuable 
 lessons. “ It makes no little difference,” said he in his 
 riper years, “ what style of expression one becomes fa¬ 
 miliar with in the associations of daily life.” It was 
 another point of resemblance between the age of Cicero 
 and the times in which we live—the influence of the 
 “ queens of society,” whether for good or evil. 
 
 But no man could be completely educated for a pub¬ 
 lic career at Rome until he had been a soldier. By 
 what must seem to us a mistake in the republican sys¬ 
 tem—a mistake which we have seen made more than 
 once in the late American war—high political offices 
 were necessarily combined with military command. 
 The highest minister of state, consul or praetor, however 
 hopelessly civilian in tastes and antecedents, might be 
 sent to conduct a campaign in Italy or abroad at a few 
 hours’ notice. If a man was a heaven-born general, all 
 went well; if not, he had usually a chance of learning 
 in the school of defeat. It was desirable, at all events, 
 that he should have seen what war was in his youth. 
 Young Cicero served his first campaign, at the age of 
 
CICERO. 
 
 7 
 
 eighteen, under the father of a man whom he was to 
 know only too well in after life—Pompey the Great— 
 and in the division of the army which was commanded 
 by Sylla as lieutenant-general. He bore arms only for 
 a year or two, and probably saw no very arduous ser¬ 
 vice, or we should certainly have heard of it from him¬ 
 self; and he never was in camp again until he took the 
 chief command, thirty-seven years afterwards, as pro- 
 consul in Cilicia. He was at Rome, leading a quiet 
 student-life—happily for himself too young to be forced 
 or tempted into an active part—during the bloody feuds 
 between Sylla and the younger Marius. 
 
 He seems to have made his first appearance as an ad¬ 
 vocate when he was about twenty-five, in some suit of 
 which we know nothing. Two years afterwards he un¬ 
 dertook his first defense of a prisoner on a capital 
 charge, and secured by his eloquence the acquittal of 
 Sextus Roscius on an accusation of having murdered 
 his father. The charge appears to have been a mere 
 conspiracy, wholly unsupported by evidence; but the 
 accuser was a favorite with Sylla, whose power was all 
 but absolute; and the innocence of the accused was a 
 very insufficient protection before a Roman jury of 
 those days. What kind of considerations, besides the 
 merits of the case and the rhetoric of counsel, did usually 
 sway these tribunals, we shall see hereafter. In conse¬ 
 quence of this decided success, briefs came in upon the 
 young pleader almost too quickly. Like many other 
 successful orators he had to combat some natural defi¬ 
 ciencies; he had inherited from his father a somewhat 
 delicate constitution; his lungs were not powerful, and 
 his voice required careful management; and the loud 
 declamation and vehement action which he had adopted 
 from his models—and which were necessary conditions 
 
8 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 of success in tlie large arena in which a Roman advocate 
 had to plead—he found very hard work. He left Rome 
 for a while, and retired for rest and change to Athens. 
 
 The six months which he spent there, though busy 
 and studious, must have been very pleasant ones. To 
 one like Cicero Athens was at once classic and holy 
 ground. It combined all those associations and attrac¬ 
 tions which we might now expect to find in a visit to 
 - the capitals of Greece and of Italy, and a pilgrimage to 
 Jerusalem. Poetry, rhetoric, philosophy, religion—all, 
 to his eyes, had their cradle there. It was the home 
 of all that was literature to him; and there, too, were 
 the great Eleusinian mysteries—which are mysteries 
 still, but which contained under their veil whatever faith 
 in the Invisible and Eternal rested in the mind of an 
 enlightened pagan. There can be little doubt but 
 that Cicero took this opportunity of initiation. His 
 brother Quintus and one of his cousins were with him 
 at Athens; and in that city he also renewed his 
 acquaintance with an old schoolfellow, Titus Pornpo- 
 nius, who lived so long in the city, and became so 
 thoroughly Athenian in his tastes and habits, that he 
 ✓ is better known to us, as he was to his contemporaries, 
 by the surname of Atticus, which was given him half 
 in jest, than by his more sonorous Roman name. It 
 is to the accidental circumstance of Atticus remaining 
 so long a voluntary exile from Rome, and to the cor¬ 
 respondence which was maintained between the two 
 friends, with occasional intervals, for something like 
 four-and-twenty years, that we are indebted for a more 
 thorough insight into the character of Cicero than we 
 have as to any other of the great minds of antiquity; 
 nearly four hundred of his letters to Atticus, written 
 in all the familiar confidence of private friendship by 
 
CICERO. 
 
 9 
 
 a man by no means reticent as to Lis personal feel¬ 
 ings, having been preserved to us. Atticus’s replies are 
 lost; it is said that he was prudent enough, after his 
 friend’s unhappy death, to reclaim and destroy them. 
 They would perhaps have told us, in his case, not very 
 much that we care to know beyond what we know 
 already. Rich, luxurious, with elegant tastes and easy 
 morality—a true Epicurean, as he boasted himself to 
 be—Atticus had nevertheless a kind heart and an 
 open hand. He has generally been called selfish, 
 somewhat unfairly; at least his selfishness never took 
 the form of indifference or unkindness to others. In 
 one sense he was a truer philosopher than Cicero: for 
 he seems to have acted through life on that maxim of 
 Socrates which his friend professed to approve, but 
 certainly never followed,—that “a wise man kept out 
 of public business.” His vocation was certainly not 
 patriotism; but the worldly wisdom which kept well 
 with men of all political colors, and eschewed tlie 
 wretched intrigues and bloody feuds of Rome, stands 
 out in no unfavorable contrast with the conduct of 
 many of her soidisant patriots. If he declined to 
 take a side himself, men of all parties resorted to him 
 in their adversity; and the man who befriended the 
 younger Marius in his exile, protected the widow of 
 Antony, gave shelter on his estates to the victims of 
 the triumvirate’s proscription, and was always ready to 
 offer his friend Cicero both his house and his purse 
 whenever the political horizon clouded round him,— 
 this man was surely as good a citizen as the noisiest 
 elamorer for “ liberty” in the Forum, or the readiest 
 hand with the dagger. He kept his life and his prop¬ 
 erty safe through all those years of peril and proscrip¬ 
 tion, with less sacrifice of principle than many who 
 
10 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 had made louder professions, and died—by a singula! 
 act of voluntary starvation, to make short work with an 
 incurable disease—at a ripe old age; a godless Epicu¬ 
 rean, no doubt, but not the worst of them. 
 
 We must return to Cicero, and deal somewhat brief! v 
 with the next few years of his life, hie extended his 
 foreign tour for two years, visiting the chief cities of 
 Asia Minor, remaining for a short time at Rhodes to 
 take lessons once more from his old tutor Molo the 
 rhetorician, and- everywhere availing himself of the 
 lectures of the most renowned Greek professors to 
 correct and improve his own style of composition and 
 delivery. Soon after his return to Rome he married. 
 Of the character of his wife Terentia very different 
 views have been taken. She appears to have written 
 to him very kindly during his long forced absences. 
 Her letters have not reached us; but in all her hus¬ 
 band’s replies she is mentioned in terms of apparently 
 the most sincere affection. He calls her repeatedly his 
 “darling”—“the delight of his eyes”—“the best of 
 mothersyet he procured a divorce from her, for no 
 distinctly assigned reason, after a married life of thirty 
 years, during which we find no trace of any serious 
 domestic unhappiness. The imputations on her honor 
 made by Plutarch, and repeated by others, seem 
 utterly without foundation; and Cicero’s own share 
 in the transaction is not improved by the fact of his 
 taking another wife as soon as possible—a ward of his 
 own, an almost girl, with whom he did not live a year 
 before a second divorce released him. Terentia is said 
 also to have had an imperious temper; but the only 
 ground for this assertion seems to have been that she 
 quarreled occasionally with her sister-in-law Pom- 
 ponia, sister of Atticus and wife of Quintus Cicero; 
 
CICERO. 
 
 11 
 
 and since Pomponia, by her own brother’s account, 
 showed her temper very disagreeably to her hus¬ 
 band, the feud between the ladies was more likely to 
 have been her fault than Terentia’s. But the very 
 low notion of the married ^relations entertained by 
 both the later Greeks and Romans helps to throw some 
 light upon a proceeding which would otherwise seem 
 very mysterious. Terentia, as is pretty plain from the 
 hints in her husband’s letters, was not a good manager 
 in money matters; there is room for suspicion that 
 she was not even an honest one in his absehce, and 
 was “ making a purse” for herself; she had thus failed 
 in one of the only two qualifications which, according 
 to Demosthenes—an authority who ranked very high 
 in Cicero’s eyes—were essential in a wife, to be “a 
 faithful house-guardian” and “ a fruitful mother.” She 
 did not die of a broken heart; she lived to be 104, 
 and, according to Dio Cassius, to have three more 
 husbands. Divorces were easy enough at and 
 
 had the lady been a rich widow there might be 
 nothing so improbable in this latter part of the story, 
 though she was fifty years old at the date of this first 
 divorce.* 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 PUBLIC CAREER.—IMPEACHMENT OF VERRES. 
 
 Increasing reputation as a brilliant and successful 
 pleader, and the social influence which this brought 
 with it, secured the rapid succession of Cicero to the 
 
 * Cato, who is the favorite impersonation of all the mo"al 
 virtues of his age, divorced his wife—to oblige a friend 1 
 
12 
 
 TIIE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 highest public offices. Soon after his marriage he was 
 elected Quaestor—the first step on the official ladder— 
 which, as he already possessed the necessary property 
 qualification, gave him a seat in the Senate for life. 
 The iEdileship and Praet^rsliip followed subsequently, 
 each as early, in point of age, as it could legally be 
 held.* * His practice as an advocate suffered no in¬ 
 terruption except that his Quaestorship involved his 
 spending a year in Sicily. The Praetor who was ap¬ 
 pointed to the government of that province* f had under 
 
 . * 
 
 * The Quaestors (of whom there were at this time twenty) 
 acted under the Senate as State treasurers. The Consul or 
 other officer who commanded in chief during a campaign would 
 be accompanied by one of them as paymaster-general. 
 
 The iEdiles, who were four in number, had the care of all pub¬ 
 lic buildings, markets, roads, and the State property generally. 
 They had also the superintendence of the national festivals and 
 public games. 
 
 The duties of the Praetors, of whom there were eight, were 
 principally judicial. The two seniors, called the “City” and 
 “ Foreign” respectively, corresponded roughly to our Home and 
 Foreign* Secretaries. These were all gradual steps to the office 
 of Consul. 
 
 + The provinces of Rome, in their relation to the mother-state 
 of Italy, may be best compared with our own government of 
 India, or such of our crown colonies as have no representative 
 assembly. They had each their governor or lieutenant-gov¬ 
 ernor, who must have been an ex-minister of Rome: a man who 
 had been Consul went out with the rank of “pro-consul,” 
 —one who had been Praetor, with the rank of “ pro-prsetor.” 
 These held office for one or two years, and had the power of 
 life and death within their respective jurisdictions. They had 
 under them one or more officers who bore the title of Quaestor, 
 who collected the taxes and had the general management of 
 the revenues of the province. The provinces at this time were 
 Sicily, Sardinia with Corsica, Spain and Gaul (each in two divi¬ 
 sions); Greece, divided into Macedonia and Achaia (the Morea); 
 Asia, Syria, Cilicia, Bithynia, Cyprus, and Africa in four divi¬ 
 sions, Others were added afterwards, under the Empire, 
 
 t 
 
CICERO. 
 
 13 
 
 him two qusestors, who were a kind of comptrollers 
 of the exchequer; and Cicero was appointed to the 
 western district, having his headquarters at Lilybseum. 
 In the administration of his office there he showed him¬ 
 self a thorough man of business. There was a dearth 
 of corn at Rome that year, and Sicily was the great 
 granary of the empire. The energetic measures which 
 the new Quaestor took fully met the emergency. He 
 was liberal to the tenants of the State, courteous and 
 accessible to all, upright in his administration, and, 
 above all, he kept his hands clean from bribes and pecu¬ 
 lation. The provincials were as much astonished as 
 delighted: for Rome was not in the habit of sending 
 them such officers. They invented honors for him 
 such as had never been bestowed on any minister be¬ 
 fore. No wonder the } r oung official’s head (he was 
 not much over thirty) was somewhat turned. “ I 
 thought,” he said, in one of his speeches afterwards— 
 introducing with a quiet humor, and with all a practiced 
 orator’s skill, one of those personal anecdotes which re¬ 
 lieve a long speech—“I thought in my heart, at the 
 time, that the people at Rome must be talking of noth¬ 
 ing but my quaestorship.” And he goes on to tell his 
 audience how he was undeceived. 
 
 “The people of Sicily had devised for me unpre¬ 
 cedented honors. So I left the island in a state of great 
 elation, thinking that the Roman people would at once 
 offer me everything without my seeking. But when I 
 was leaving my province, and on my road home, I 
 happened to land at Puteoli just at the timewhema 
 good many of our most fashionable people are ac¬ 
 customed to resort to that neighborhood. I very nearly 
 collapsed, gentlemen, when a man asked me what day 
 I had left Rome, and whether there was any news stir- 
 
14 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 ring? When I made answer that I was returning from 
 my province—‘Oh! yes, to be sure,’said he; ‘Africa, 
 I believe?’ ‘No,’ said I to him, considerably annoyed 
 and disgusted; ‘from Sicily.’ Then somebody else, 
 with the air of a man who knew all about it, said to 
 him—‘What! don’t you know that he was Quaestor at 
 Syracuse? ’ [It was at Lilybseum—quite a different dis¬ 
 trict.] No need to make a long story of it; I swallowed 
 my indignation, and made as though I, like the rest, 
 had come there for the waters. But I am not sure, 
 gentlemen, whether that scene did not do me more good 
 than if everybody then and there had publicly con¬ 
 gratulated me. For after I had thus found out that the 
 people of Rome have somewhat deaf ears, but very keen 
 and sharp eyes, I left off cogitating what people would 
 hear about me; I took care that thenceforth they should 
 see me before them every day: I lived in their sight, I 
 stuck close to the Forum; the porter at my gate refused 
 no man admittance—my very sleep was never allowed 
 to be a plea against an audience.” * 
 
 Did we not say that Cicero was modern, not ancient? 
 Have we not here the original of that Cambridge senior 
 wrangler who, happening to enter a London theatre at 
 the same moment with the king, bowed all round with 
 a gratified embarrassment, thinking that the audience 
 rose and cheered at Mm ? 
 
 It was while he held the office of iEdile that he made 
 his first appearance as public prosecutor, and brought 
 to justice the most important criminal of the day. 
 Yerres, late Praetor in Sicily, w r as charged with high 
 crimes and misdemeanors in his government. The 
 grand scale of his offenses, and the absorbing interest 
 
 * Defence of Plancius, c. 26, 27. 
 
CICERO. 
 
 15 
 
 of the trial, have led to his ease being quoted as an 
 obvious parallel to that of Warren Hastings, though 
 with much injustice to the latter, so far as it may seem 
 to imply any comparison of moral character. This 
 Verres, the corrupt son of a corrupt father, had during 
 his three years’ rule heaped on the unhappy province 
 every evil which tyranny and rapacity could inflict. 
 He had found it prosperous and contented: he left 
 it exhausted and smarting under its wrongs. He met 
 his impeachment now 7 with considerable confidence-. 
 The gains of his first year of office w T ere sufficient, he 
 said, for liimself; the second had been for his friends; 
 the third produced more than enough to bribe a jury. 
 
 The trials at Rome took place in the Forum—I he 
 open space, of nearly five acres, lying between the 
 Capitoline and Palatine hills. It wns the city mar¬ 
 ket-place, but it was also the place where the popula¬ 
 tion assembled for an } 7 public meeting, political 
 or other—where the idle citizen strolled to meet 
 his friends and hear the gossip of the day, and 
 where the man of business made his appointments. 
 Courts for the administration of justice—magnificent 
 halls, called basilica —had by this time been erected 
 on the north and south sides, and in these the ordinary 
 trials took place; but for state trials the open Forum 
 was itself the court. One end of the wide area was 
 raised on a somewhat higher level—a kind of dais 
 on a large scale—and was separated from the rest by 
 the Rostra, a sort of stage from which the orators 
 spoke. It was here that the trials were held. A 
 temporary tribunal for the presiding officer, with ac¬ 
 commodation for counsel, witnesses, and jury, was 
 erected in the open air; and the scene may perhaps 
 best be pictured by imagining the principal square 
 
16 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 in some large town fitted up with open hustings on a 
 large scale for an old-fashioned county election, by no 
 means omitting the intense popular excitement and 
 mob violence appropriate to such occasions. Temples 
 of the gods and other public buildings overlooked the 
 area, and the steps of these, on any occasion of great 
 excitement, would be crowded by those who were 
 anxious to see, at least, if they could not hear. 
 
 Verres, as a state criminal, would be tried before a 
 special commission, and by a jury composed at this 
 time entirely from the senatorial order, chosen by lot 
 (with a limited right of challenge reserved to both 
 parties) from a panel made out eveiy year by the praetor. 
 This magistrate, who was a kind of minister of justice, 
 usually presided on such occasions, occupying the curule 
 chair, which was one of the well-known privileges of 
 high office at Rome. But his office was rather that of 
 the modern chairman who keeps order at a public 
 meeting than that of a judge. Judge, in our sense of 
 the word, there was none; the jury were the judges 
 both of law and fact. They were, in short, the recog- 
 ized assessors of the praetor, in whose hands the 
 administration of justice was supposed to lie. The 
 law, too, was of a highly flexible character, and the 
 appeals of the advocates were rather to the passions 
 aud feelings of the jurors than to the legal points of 
 the case. Cicero himself attached comparatively little 
 weight to this branch of his profession—“Busy as 
 I am,” he says in one of his speeches, “I could make 
 myself lawyer enough in three days.” The jurors gave 
 each their vote by ballot,—“guilty,” “not guilty,” or (as 
 in the Scotch courts) “not proven,”—and the majority 
 carried the verdict. 
 
 But such trials as that of Verres were much more 
 * # 
 
CICERO. 
 
 • 17 
 
 like an impeachment before the House of Commons 
 than a calm judicial inquiry. The men who would 
 have to try a defendant of his class would be, in very 
 few cases, honest and impartial weighers of the evi¬ 
 dence. Their large number (varying from fifty to 
 seventy) weakened the sense of individual responsibi¬ 
 lity, and laid them more open to the appeal of the 
 advocates to their political passions. Most of them 
 would come into court prejudiced in some degree by 
 the interests of party; many would be hot partisans. 
 Cicero, in his treatise on “Oratory,” explains clearly 
 for the pleader’s guidance the nature of the tribunals 
 to which he had to appeal. “Men are influenced in 
 their verdicts much more by prejudice or favor, or 
 greed of gain, or anger, or indignation, or pleasure, or 
 hope or fear, or by misapprehension, or by some excite¬ 
 ment of [their feelings, than either by the facts of the 
 case, or by established precedents, or by any rules or 
 principles whatever either of law or equity.” 
 
 Verres was supported by some of the most powerful 
 families at Rome. Peculation on the part of governors 
 of provinces had become almost a recognized principle: 
 many of those who held offices of state either had done, 
 or were waiting their turn to do, much the same as the 
 present defendant ; and every effort had been made by 
 his friends either to put off the trial indefinitely, or to 
 turn it into a_sham by procuring the appointment of a 
 private friend and creature of his own as public prosecu¬ 
 tor. On the other hand, the Sicilian families whom he 
 had wronged and outraged, had their share of influence 
 also at Rome, and there was a growing impatience of the 
 insolence and rapacity of the old governing houses, 
 of whose worst qualities the ex governor of Sicily was 
 a fair type. There were many reasons which would 
 
18 ' THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 lead Cicero to take up such a cause energetically. Tt 
 was a great opening for him in what we may call his 
 profession: his former connection with the government 
 of Sicily gave him a personal interest in the cause of 
 the province; and, above all, the prosecution of a state 
 offender of such importance was a lift at once into the 
 foremost ranks of political life. He spared no pains to 
 get up his case thoroughly He went all over the 
 island collecting evidence; and his old popularity there 
 did him good service in the work. 
 
 There was, indeed, evidence enough against the late 
 governor. The reckless gratification of his avarice and 
 his passions had seldom satisfied him, without the addi¬ 
 tion of some bitter insult to the sufferers. But there 
 was even a more atrocious feature in the case, of which 
 Cicero did not fail to make good use in his appeal to 
 a Roman jury. Many of the unhappy victims had 
 the Roman franchise. The torture of an unfortunate 
 Sicilian might be turned into a jest by a clever advo^ 
 cate for the defence, and regarded by a philosophic 
 jury with less than the cold compassion with which we 
 regard the sufferings of the lower animals; hut “to 
 scourge a man that was a Roman and uncondemned,” 
 even in the far off province of Judea, was a thought 
 which, a century later, made the officers of the great 
 Empire, at its pitch of power, tremble before a wan¬ 
 dering teacher who bore the despised name of Chris, 
 tian. No one can possibly tell the tale so well as 
 Cicero himself; and the passage from his speech for 
 the prosecution is an admirable specimen both of his 
 power of pathetic narrative and scathing denunciation. 
 
 “How shall I speak of Publius Gavius, a citizen of 
 Consa? With what powers of voice, with what force of 
 language, with what sufficient indignation of soul, can 
 
CICERO. 
 
 19 
 
 I tell the tale? Indignation, at least, will not fail me: 
 the more must I strive that in this my pleading the 
 other requisites may be made to meet the gravity of the 
 subject, the intensity of my feeling. For the accusa¬ 
 tion is such that, when it was first laid before me, I did 
 not think to make use of it; though I knew it to be per¬ 
 fectly true, I did not think it would be credible.—How 
 Shall I now proceed?—when I have already been speak¬ 
 ing for so many hours on one subject—his atrocious 
 cruelty; when I have exhausted upon other points well- 
 nigh all the powers of language such as alone is suited 
 to that man’s crimes;—when I have taken no precaution 
 to secure your attention by any variety in my charges 
 against him,—in what fashion can I now speak on a 
 Charge of this importance? I think there is one way— 
 one course, and only one, left for me to take. I will 
 place the facts before you; and they have in themselves 
 such weight, that no eloquence—I will not say of mine, 
 for I have none—but of any man’s, is needed to excite 
 your feelings. 
 
 * ‘ This Gavius of Consa, of whom I speak, had been 
 among the crowds of Roman citizens who had been 
 thrown into prison under that man. Somehow he had 
 made his escape out of the Quarries,* and had got to 
 Messana; and when lie saw Italy and the towers of 
 
 * This was one of the state prisons at Syracuse, so called, said 
 to have been constructed by the tyrant Dionysius. They were 
 the quarries from which the stone was dug for building the city, 
 and had been converted to their present purpose. Cicero, who 
 no doubt had seen the one in question, describes it as sunk to an 
 immense depth in the solid rock. There was no roof; and the 
 unhappy prisoners were exposed there “ to the sun by day, and 
 to the rain and frosts by night.” In these places the survivors 
 of the unfortunate Athenian expedition against Syracuse were 
 confined, and died in great numbers. 
 
20 
 
 TEE ELZEVIR LIBRARY . 
 
 Rhegium now so close to him, and out of the horror 
 and shadow of death felt himself breathe with a new 
 life as he scented once more the fresh air of liberty and 
 the laws, he began to talk at Messana, and to complain 
 that be, a Roman citizen, had been put in irons—that 
 he was going straight to Rome—that he would be ready 
 there for Verres on his arrival. 
 
 “ The wretched man little knew that he might as well 
 have talked in this fashion in the governor’s palace before 
 his very face, as at Messana. For, as I told you before, 
 this city he had selected for himself as the accomplice 
 in his crimes, the receiver of his stolen goods, the con¬ 
 fidant of all his wickedness. So Gavius is brought at 
 once before the city magistrates; and, as it so chanced, 
 on that very day Verres himself came to Messana. The 
 case is reported to him; that, there is a certain Roman 
 citizen who complained of having been put into the 
 Quarries at Syracuse; that as he was just going on board 
 ship, and was uttering threats—really too atrocious— 
 against Verres, they had detained him, and kept him in 
 custody, that the governor himself might decide about 
 him as should seem to Hiim good. Verres thanks the 
 gentlemen, and extols their goodwill and zeal for his 
 interests. He himself, burning with rage and malice, 
 comes down to the court. His eyes flashed fire; cruelty 
 was written on every line of his face. All present 
 watched anxiously to see to what lengths he meant to go, 
 or what steps he would take; when suddenly he ordered 
 the prisoner to be dragged forth, and to be stripped and 
 bound in the open forum, and the rods to be got ready 
 at once. The unhappy man cried out that he was a 
 Roman citizen—that lie.had the municipal franchise of 
 Consa—that he had served in a campaign with Lucius 
 Pretius, a distinguished Roman knight, now engaged in 
 
CICERO . 
 
 21 
 
 business at Panormus, from whom Verres might ascer¬ 
 tain the truth of his statement. Then that man replies 
 that he has discovered that he, Gavius, has been sent 
 into Sicily as a spy by the ringleaders of the runaway 
 slaves; of which charge there was neither witness nor 
 trace of any kind, or even suspicion in any man’s mind. 
 Then he ordered the man to be scourged severely all 
 over his body. Yes—a Roman citizen was cut to pieces 
 with rods in the open forum at Messana, gentlemen; 
 and as the punishment went on, no word, no groan of 
 the wretched man, in all his anguish, was heard amid 
 the sound of the lashes, but this cry,—‘ I am a Roman 
 citizen!’ By such protest of citizenship he thought he 
 could at least save himself from anytliiug like blows— 
 could escape the indignity of personal torture. But not 
 only did he fail in thus deprecating the insult of the 
 lash, but when he redoubled his entreaties and his 
 appeal to the name of Rome, a cross—yes, I say, a cross 
 —was ordered for that most unfortunate and ill-fated 
 man, w 7 ho had never yet beheld such an abuse of a gover¬ 
 nor’s power. 
 
 “O name of liberty, sweet to our ears! O rights of 
 citizenship, in which we glory! O law r s of Porcius and 
 Sempronius! O privilege of the tribune, long and sorely 
 regretted, and at last restored to the people of Rome! 
 Has it all come to this, that a Roman citizen in a province 
 of the Roman people—in a federal town—is to be bound 
 and beaten with rods in the forum by a man who only 
 holds those rods and axes—those awful emblems—by 
 grace of that same people of Rome? What shall I say 
 of the fact that fire, and red-hot plates, and other tor¬ 
 tures were applied? Even if his agonized entreaties and 
 pitiable cries did not check you, were you not moved by 
 the tears and groans which burst from the Roman 
 
22 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 citizens who were present at the scene? Did you dare 
 to drag to the cross any man who claimed to be a citizen 
 of Rome?—I did not intend, gentlemen, in my former 
 pleading, to press this case so strongly—I did not in¬ 
 deed; for you saw yourselves how the public feeling 
 was already imbittered against the defendant by indig¬ 
 nation, and hate, and dread of a common peril. 
 
 He then proceeds to prove by witnesses the facts of 
 the case and the falsehood of the charge against Gavius 
 of having been a spy. “ However,” he goes on to say, 
 addressing himself now to Verres, “we will grant, if 
 you please, that your suspicions on this point, if false, 
 were honestly entertained. 
 
 “You did not know who the man was; you sus¬ 
 pected him of being a spy. I do not ask the 
 grounds of your suspicion. I impeach you on your 
 own evidence. He said he was a Roman citizen. 
 Had you yourself, Verres, been seized and led out to 
 execution, in Persia, say, or in the farthest Indies, 
 what other cry or protest could you raise but that you 
 were a Roman citizen? And if you, a stranger there 
 among strangers, in the hands of barbarians, among 
 men who dwell in the farthest and remotest regions of 
 the earth, would have found protection in the name of 
 your city, known and renowned in every nation under 
 heaven, could the victim whom you were dragging to 
 the cross, be he who he might—and you did not know 
 who he was—when he declared he was a citizen of 
 Rome, could he obtain from yon, a Roman magistrate, 
 by the mere mention and claim of citizenship, not only 
 no reprieve, but not even a brief respite from death? 
 
 “Men of neither rank nor wealth, of humble birth 
 and station, sail the seas; they touch at some spot they 
 never saw before, where they are neither personally 
 
CICERO. 
 
 known to those whom they visit, nor can always find 
 any to vouch for their nationality. But in this single 
 fact of their citizenship they feel they shall be safe, not 
 only with our own governors, who are held in check by 
 the terror of the laws and of public opinion—not only 
 among those who share that citizenship of Rome, and 
 who are united with them by community of lan¬ 
 guage, of laws, and of many things besides—but go 
 where they may, this, they think, will be their safe¬ 
 guard. Take away this confidence, destroy this safe¬ 
 guard for our Roman citizens—once establish the prin¬ 
 ciple that there is no protection in the words, “I am a 
 citizen of Rome”—that praetor or other magistrate may 
 with impunity sentence to what punishment he will a 
 man who says he is a Roman citizen, merely because 
 somebody does not know it fora fact; and at once, by 
 admitting such a defense, you are shutting up against 
 our Roman citizens all our provinces, all foreign states, 
 despotic or independent—all the whole world, in short, 
 which has ever lain open to our national enterprise 
 beyond all.” 
 
 He turns again to Verres. 
 
 “But why talk of Gavius? as. though it were 
 Gavius on whom you were wreaking a private ven¬ 
 geance instead of rather raging war against the very 
 name and rights of Roman citizenship. You showed 
 yourself an enemy, I say, not to the individual man, 
 but to the common cause of liberty. For what meant 
 it that, when the authorities of Messana, according to 
 their usual custom, would have erected the cross behind 
 their city on the Pompeian road, you ordered it to be 
 set up on the side that looked toward the Strait? Nay, 
 and added this—which you cannot deny, which you 
 said openly in the hearing of all—that you chose that 
 
M 
 
 TEE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 spot for this reason, that as he had called himself a 
 Roman citizen, he might be able, from his cross of pun¬ 
 ishment, to see in the distance his country and his 
 home! And so, gentlemen, that cross was the only one, 
 since Messana was a city, that was ever erected on that 
 spot; A point which commanded a view of Italy was 
 chosen by the defendant for the express reason that the 
 dying sufferer, in his last agony and torment, might see 
 how the rights of the slave and the freeman were separ¬ 
 ated by that narrow streak of sea; that Italy might look 
 upon a son of hers suffering the capital penalty reserved 
 for slaves alone. 
 
 “It is a crime to put a citizen of Rome in bonds; 
 it is an atrocity to scourge him; to put him to death 
 is well-nigh parricide; what shall I say it is to crucify 
 him?—Language has no word by which I may designate 
 such an enormity. Yet with all this yon man was not 
 content. ‘Let him look,’ said he, ‘towards his 
 country; let him die in full sight of freedom and the 
 laws.’ It was not Gavius; it was not a single victim 
 unknown to fame, a mere individual Roman citizen; it 
 was the common cause of liberty, the common rights of 
 citizenship, which you there outraged and put to a 
 shameful death.” 
 
 But in order to judge of the thrilling effect of such 
 passages upon a Roman jury, they must be read in the 
 grand periods of the oration itself; to which no trans¬ 
 lation into a language so different in idiom and rhythm 
 as English is from Latin can possibly do justice. The 
 fruitless appeal made by the unhapp} r citizen to the out¬ 
 raged majesty of Rome, and the indignant demand for 
 vengeance, which the great orator founds upon it—pro¬ 
 claiming the recognized principle that, in every quarter 
 of the world, the humblest wanderer who could say he 
 
CICERO. 
 
 25 
 
 was a Roman citizen should find protection in the name 
 —will be- always remembered as having supplied Lord 
 Palmerston with one of his most telling illustrations. 
 But this great speech of Cicero’s—perhaps the most 
 magnificent piece of declamation in any language— 
 though written and preserved to us, was never spoken. 
 The whole of the pleadings in the case, which extend to 
 some length, were composed for the occasion, no doubt, 
 in substance, and we have to thank Cicero for publish¬ 
 ing them afterwards in full. But Verres only waited to 
 hear the brief opening speech of his prosecutor; he did 
 not dare to challenge a verdict, but allowing judgment 
 to go by default, withdrew to Marseilles soon after the 
 trial opened. He lived there, undisturbed in the enjoy¬ 
 ment of his plunder, long enough to see the fall and 
 assassination of his great accuser, but only (as it is said) 
 to share his fate soon afterwards as one of the victims 
 of Antony’s proscription. Of his guilt there can be no 
 question; his fear to face a court in which he had many 
 friends is sufficient presumptive evidence of it; but we 
 must hesitate in assuming the deepness of its dye from 
 the terrible invectives of Cicero. No sensible person 
 will form an opinion upon the real merits of a case, 
 even in an English court of justice now, entirely from 
 the speech of the counsel for the prosecution. And if we 
 were to go back a century or two, to the state trials of 
 those days, we know that to form our estimate of a 
 prisoner’s guilt from such data only would be doing him 
 a gross injustice. We have only to remember the excla¬ 
 mation of Warren Hastings himself, whose trial, as has 
 been said, has so many points of resemblance with that 
 of Verres, when Burke sat down after the torrent of 
 eloquence which he had hurled against the accused in 
 his opening speech for the prosecution: “I thought 
 
26 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIREARY. 
 
 myself for the moment,” said Hastings, “ the guiltiest 
 man in England.” 
 
 The result of this trial was to raise Cicero at once to 
 the leadership—if so modem an expression may be used 
 —of the Roman bar. Up to this time the position had 
 been held by Hortensius, the counsel for Verres, whom 
 Cicero himself calls “ the king of the courts.” He was 
 eight years the senior of Cicero in age, and many more 
 professionally, for lie is said to have made his first pub¬ 
 lic speech at nineteen. He had the advantage of the 
 most extraordinary memory, a musical voice, and a rich 
 flow of language: but Cicero more than implies that he 
 was not above bribing a jury. It was not more dis¬ 
 graceful in those days than bribing a voter in our own. 
 The two men were very unlike in one respect; Horten¬ 
 sius was a fop and an exquisite (he is said to have 
 brought an action against a colleague for disarranging 
 the folds of his gown), while Cicero’s vanity was quite 
 of another kind. After Verres’s trial, the two advo¬ 
 cates were frequently engaged together in the same 
 cause and on the same side: but Hortensius seems 
 quietly to have abdicated his forensic sovereignty before 
 the rising fame of his younger rival. They became, 
 ostensibly at least, personal friends. What jealousy 
 there was between them, strange to say, seems always 
 to have been on the side of Cicero, who could not be 
 convinced of the friendly feeling which, on Hortensius’s 
 part, there seems no reason to doubt. After his rival's 
 death, however, Cicero did full justice to his merits and 
 his eloquence, and even inscribed to his memory a 
 treatise on “Glory” which has been lost. 
 
CICERO. 
 
 27 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE CONSULSHIP AND CATILINE. 
 
 There was ho check as yet in Cicero’s career. It 
 had been a steady course of fame and success, honestly 
 earned and well deserved; and it was soon to culmin¬ 
 ate in that great civil triumph which earned for him the 
 proud title of Pater Patrice —the Father of his Country. 
 
 It was a phrase which the orator himself had invented; 
 and it is possible that, with all his natural self-compla- * 
 cency, he might have felt a little uncomfortable under 
 the compliment, when he remembered on whom he had 
 originally bestowed it—upon that Caius Marius, whose 
 death in his bed at a good old age, after being seven 
 times consul, he afterwards uses as an argument, in 
 the mouth of one of his imaginary disputants, against 
 the existence of an overruling Providence. In the prime 
 of his manhood he reached the great object of a Roman’s 
 ambition—he became virtually Prime Minister of the 
 republic: for he was elected, by acclamation rather than 
 by vote, the first of the two consuls for the year, and 
 his colleague, Caius Antonius (who had beaten the third 
 candidate, the notorious Catiline, by a few votes only) 
 was a man who valued his office chiefly for its oppor¬ 
 tunities of peculation, and whom Cicero knew how to 
 manage. It is true that this high dignity—so jealous 
 were the old republican principles of individual power 
 —would last only for a year; but that year was to be a 
 most eventful one, both for Cicero and for Rome. The 
 terrible days of Marius and Sylla had passed, only to 
 leave behind a taste for blood and licence among the 
 corrupt aristocracy and turbulent commons. There 
 were men among the younger nobles quite rea^y to risk 
 
28 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 their lives in the struggle for absolute power; and the 
 mob was ready to follow whatever leader was bold 
 enough to bid highest for their support. 
 
 It is impossible here to do much more than glance at 
 the well-known story of Catiline’s conspiracy. It was 
 the attempt of an able and desperate man to make him¬ 
 self and his partisans masters of Rome by a bloody re¬ 
 volution. Catiline was a member of a noble but im¬ 
 poverished family, who had borne arms under Sylla, 
 and had served an early apprenticeship in bloodshed 
 under that unscrupulous leader. Cicero has described 
 his character in terms which probably are not unfair, 
 because the portrait was drawn by him, in the course of 
 his defence of a young friend who had been too much 
 connected with Catiline, for the distinct purpose of 
 showing the popular qualities which had dazzled and 
 attracted so many of the youth of Rome. 
 
 “He had about him very many of, I can hardly say 
 the visible tokens, but the adumbrations of the highest 
 qualities. There was in. his character that which 
 tempted him to indulge the worst passions, but also that 
 which spurred him to energy and hard work. Licen¬ 
 tious appetites burnt fiercely within him, but there was 
 also a strong love of active military service. I believe 
 that there never lived on earth such a monster of 
 inconsistency—such a compound of opposite tastes and 
 passions brought into conflict with each other. Who 
 at one time was a greater favorite with our most illus¬ 
 trious men? Who was a closer intimate with our very 
 basest? Who could be more greedy of money than he 
 was? Who could lavish it more profusely? There 
 were these marvellous qualities in the man—he made 
 friends so universally, he retained them by his obliging 
 ways, he was ready to share what he had with them all, 
 
CICERO . 
 
 29 
 
 to lielp them at their need with his money, his influence, 
 his personal exertions—not stopping short of the most 
 audacious crime, if there was need of it. He could 
 change his very nature, and rule himself by circum¬ 
 stances, and turn and bend in any direction. He lived 
 soberly with the serious, he was a boon companion 
 with the gay; grave with the elders, merry with the 
 young; reckless among the desperate, profligate with 
 the depraved. With a nature so complex and many- 
 sided, he not only collected round him wicked and 
 desperate characters from all quarters of the world, but 
 he also attracted many brave and good men by his sim¬ 
 ulation of virtue. It would have been impossible for 
 him to have organized that atrocious attack upon the 
 Commonwealth, unless that fierce outgrowth of de¬ 
 praved passions had rested on some under-stratum of 
 agreeable qualities and powers of endurance.” 
 
 Born in the same year with Cicero, his unsuccessful 
 rival for the consulship, and hating him with the im¬ 
 placable hatred with which a bad, ambitious, and able 
 man hates an opponent who is his superior in ability 
 and popularity as well as character, Catiline seems to 
 have felt, as his revolutionary plot ripened, that be¬ 
 tween the new consul and himself the fates of Rome 
 must choose. He had gathered round him a band of 
 profligate young nobles, deep in debt like himself, and 
 of needy and unscrupulous adventurers of all classes. 
 He had partisans who were collecting and drilling- 
 troops for him in several parts of Italy. The pro¬ 
 gramme w T as assassination, abolition of debts, confisca¬ 
 tion of property: so little of novelty is there in rev¬ 
 olutionary principles. The first plan had been to 
 murder the consuls of the year before, and seize the gov¬ 
 ernment. It had failed through his own impatience. 
 
30 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 He now hired assassins against Cicero, choosing the 
 opportunity of the election of the incoming consuls, 
 which always took place some time before their en¬ 
 trance on office. But the plot was discovered, and the 
 election was put off. When it did take place, Cicero 
 appeared in the meeting, wearing somewhat ostenta¬ 
 tiously a corslet of bright steel, to show that he knew 
 liis danger; and Catiline’s partisans found the place of 
 meeting already occupied by a strong force of the 
 younger citizens of the middle class, who had armed 
 themselves for the consul’s protection. The election 
 passed off quietly, and Catiline was again rejected. A 
 second time he tried assassination, and it failed—so 
 watchful and well informed was the intended victim. 
 And now Cicero, perhaps, was roused to a conscious¬ 
 ness that one or other must fall; for in the unusually 
 determined measures which he took in the suppression 
 of the conspiracy, the mixture of personal alarm with 
 patriotic indignation is very perceptible. By a for¬ 
 tunate chance, the whole plan of the conspirators was 
 betrayed. Rebel camps had been formed not only in 
 Italy, but in Spain and Mauritania: Rome was to be 
 set on fire, the slaves to be armed, criminals let loose, 
 the friends of order to be put out of the way. The 
 consul called a meeting of the Senate in the temple of 
 Jupiter Stator, a strong position on the Palatine Hill, 
 and denounced the plot in all its details, naming even 
 the very day fixed for the outbreak. The arch-conspir¬ 
 ator had the audacity to be present, and Cicero addressed 
 him personally in the eloquent invective which has 
 come to us as his “First Oration against Catiline.” 
 His object was to drive his enemy from the city to the 
 camp of his partisans, and thus to bring matters at 
 onee to a crisis for which he now felt himself prepared. 
 
CICERO. 
 
 31 
 
 This daily state of public insecurity and personal dan¬ 
 ger had lasted too long, he said: 
 
 “ Therefore, let these conspirators at once take their 
 side; let them separate themselves from honest citizens, 
 and gather themselves together somewhere else; let 
 them put a wall between us, as I have often said. Let 
 us have them no longer thus plotting the assassination 
 of a consul in his own house, overawing our courts of 
 •justice with armed bands, besieging the Senate-house 
 with drawn swords, collecting their incendiary stores to 
 burn our city. Let us at last be able to read plainly 
 in every Roman’s face whether he be loyal to his 
 country or no. I may promise you this, gentlemen of 
 the Senate—there shall be no lack of diligence on the 
 part of your consuls; there will be, I trust, no lack of 
 dignity and firmness on your own, of spirit among 
 the Roman knights, of unanimity among all honest 
 men, but that when Catiline has once gone from us, 
 everything will be not only discovered and brought into 
 the light of day, but also crushed—ay, and punished. 
 Under such auspices, I bid you, Catiline, go forth to 
 wage your impious and unhallowed war—go, to the sal¬ 
 vation of the state, to your own overthrow and destruc¬ 
 tion, to the ruin of all who have joined you in your 
 great wickedness and treason. And thou, great Jupi¬ 
 ter, whose worship Romulus founded here coeval with 
 our city—whom we call truly the ‘ Stay’* of our capi¬ 
 tal and our empire—thou wilt protect thine own altars 
 and the temples of thy kindred gods, the walls and 
 roof-trees of our homes, the lives and fortunes of our 
 citizens, from yon man and his accomplices. These 
 enemies of all good men, invaders of their country, 
 
 * “Stator.” 
 
THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 qo 
 
 plunderers of Itaty, linked together in a mutual bond of 
 crime and an alliance of villany, thou wilt surely visit 
 with an everlasting punishment, living and dead!” 
 
 Catiline’s courage did not fail him. He had been 
 sitting alone—for all the other senators had shrunk 
 away from the bench of wdiich he had taken possession. 
 He rose, and in reply to Cicero, in a forced tone of hu¬ 
 mility protested his innocence. He tried also another 
 point. Was he—a man of ancient and noble family—• 
 to be hastily condemned by his fellow-nobles on the 
 word of this “foreigner,” as he contemptuously called 
 Cicero—this 'parvenu from Arpinum? But the appeal 
 failed; his voice was drowned in the cries of “traitor” 
 which arose on all sides, and with threats and curses, 
 vowing that since he was driven to desperation he would 
 involve all Rome in his ruin, he rushed out of the Sen¬ 
 ate-house. At dead of night he left the city, and joined 
 the insurgent camp at Fsesul£e. 
 
 - When the thunders of Cicero’s eloquence had driven 
 Catiline from the Senate-house, and forced him to join 
 his fellow-traitors, and so put himself in the position 
 of levying open war against the state, it remained to 
 deal with those influential conspirators who had been 
 detected and seized within the city walls. In three sub¬ 
 sequent speeches in the Senate he justified the course 
 he had taken in allowing Catiline to escape, exposed 
 further particulars of the conspiracy, and urged the 
 adoption of strong measures to crush it out within the 
 city. Even now, not all Cicero’s eloquence, nor all the 
 efforts of our imagination to realize, as men realized it 
 then, the imminence of the public danger, can reconcile 
 the summary process adopted by the consul with our 
 English notions of calm and deliberate justice. Of the 
 guilt of the men there was no doubt; most of them even 
 
CICERO. 
 
 admitted it. But there was no formal trial; and a few 
 hours after a vote of death had been passed upon them 
 in a hesitating Senate, Lentulus and Cethegus, two 
 members of that august body, with three of their com¬ 
 panions in guilt, were brought from their separate 
 places of confinement, with some degree of secrecy (as 
 appears from different writers), carried down into the 
 gloomy prison-vaults of the Tullianum,* and there 
 quietly strangled, by the sole authority of the consul. 
 Unquestionably they deserved death, if ever political 
 criminals deserved it: the lives and liberties of good 
 citizens were in danger; it was necessary to strike deep 
 and strike swiftly* at a conspiracy which extended no 
 man knew how widely, and in which men like Julius 
 Caesar and Crassus were strongly suspected of being 
 engaged. The consuls had been armed with extra-con¬ 
 stitutional powers, conveyed by special resolution of 
 the Senate in the comprehensive formula that they 
 “were to look to it that the state suffered no damage.” 
 Still, without going so far as to call this unexampled 
 proceeding, as the German critic Mommsen does, “an 
 act of the most brutal tyranny,” it is easy to under¬ 
 stand how Mr. Forsyth, bringing a calm and dispas¬ 
 sionate legal judgment to bear upon the case, finds it 
 impossible 1o reconcile it with our ideas of dignified and 
 even-handed justice.f It was the hasty instinct of self- 
 preservation, the act of a weak government uncertain 
 of its very friends, under the influence of terror—a 
 
 * A state dungeon, said to have been built in the reign of Ser- 
 vius Tullius. It was twelve feet under ground. Executions 
 often took place there, and the bodies of the criminals were 
 afterwards thrown down the Gemoniam steps (which were close 
 at hand) into the Forum, for the people to see. 
 
 + Life of Cicero, » 119 
 
34 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY 
 
 terror for which, no doubt, there were abundant 
 grounds. When Cicero stood on the prison steps, 
 where he had waited to receive the report of those who 
 were making sure work with the prisoners within, and 
 announced their fate to the assembled crowd below in 
 the single word “Vixerunt” (a euphemism which we 
 can only weakly translate into “They have lived their 
 life”), no doubt he felt that he and the republic held 
 theirs from that moment by a firmer tenure; no doubt 
 very many of those who heard him felt that they could 
 breathe again, now that the grasp of Catiline’s assassins 
 was, for the moment at all events, off their throats; and 
 the crowd who followed the consul home were siucere 
 enough when they hailed such a vigorous avenger as 
 the “Father of his Country.” But none the less it was 
 that which politicians have called worse than a crime— 
 it was a political blunder; and Cicero came to find it so 
 in after years; though—partly from his immense self¬ 
 appreciation, and partly from an honest determination 
 to stand by his act and deed in all its consequences—he 
 never suffered the shadow of such a confession to ap¬ 
 pear in his most intimate correspondence. He claimed 
 for himself ever afterwards the sole glory of having 
 saved the state by such prompt and decided action; and 
 in this he was fully borne out by the facts: justifiable 
 or unjustifiable, the act w T as his; and there were burn¬ 
 ing hearts at Rome which dared not speak out against 
 the popular consul, but set it down to his sole account 
 against the day of retribution. 
 
 For the present, however, all went successfully. The 
 boldness of the consul’s measures cowed the disaffected, 
 and confirmed the timid and wavering. His colleague 
 Antonius—himself by no means to be depended on at 
 this crisis, having but lately formed a coalition with 
 
CICERO. 
 
 35 
 
 Catiline as against Cicero in the election for consuls— 
 had, by judicious management, been got away from 
 Rome to take the command against the rebel army in 
 Etruria. He did not, indeed, engage in the campaign 
 actively in person, having just now a fit of the gout, 
 either real or pretended; but his lieutenant-general was 
 an old soldier who cared chiefly for his duty, and 
 Catiline’s band—reckless and desperate men who had 
 gathered to his camp from all motives and from all 
 quarters—were a length brought to bay, and died fight¬ 
 ing hard to the last. Scarcely a man of them, except 
 the slaves and robbers who had swelled their ranks, 
 either escaped or was made prisoner. Catiline’s body 
 —easily recognized by his remarkable height—was 
 found, still breathing, lying far in advance of his fol¬ 
 lowers, surrounded by the dead bodies of the Roman 
 legionaries—for the loss on the side of the Republic had 
 been very severe. The last that remained to him of 
 the many noble qualities which had marked his earlier 
 years was a desperate personal courage. 
 
 For the month that yet remained of his consulship, 
 Cicero was the foremost man in Rome—and, as a con¬ 
 sequence, in the whole world. Nobles and commons 
 vied in doing honor to the saviour of the state. Catu- 
 lus and Cato—men from whose lips words of honor 
 came with a double weight—saluted him publicly by 
 that memorable title of Pater Patrice ; and not only the 
 capital, but most of the provincial towns of Italy, voted 
 him some public testimony of his unrivaled services. 
 No man had a more profound appreciation of those 
 services than the great orator himself. It is possible 
 that other men have felt quite as vain of their own ex¬ 
 ploits, and on far less grounds; but surely no man ever 
 paraded his self-complacency like Cicero. His vanity 
 
86 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 was indeed a thing to marvel at rather than to smile at, 
 because it was the vanity of so able a man. Other great 
 men have been either too reallv great to entertain the 
 feeling, or have been wise enough to keep it to them¬ 
 selves. But to Cicero it must have been one of the en¬ 
 joyments of his life. He harped upon his consulship 
 in season and out of season, in his letters, in his judicial 
 pleadings, in his public speeches (and, we may be sure, 
 in his conversation), until one would think his friends 
 must have hated the subject even more than his enemies. 
 He wrote accounts of it in prose and verse, in Latin 
 and Greek—and, no doubt, only limited them to those 
 languages because they were the only ones he knew. 
 The well-known line which provoked the ridicule of 
 critics like Juvenal and Quintilian, because of the un¬ 
 lucky jingle peculiarly unpleasant to a Roman car— 
 
 “ O fortunatam natam me consule Romam!” 
 
 expresses the sentiment which—rhyme or no rhyme, 
 reason or no reason—he was continually repeating in 
 some form or other to himself and to every one who 
 would listen. 
 
 His consulship closed in glory; but on his very last 
 day of office there was a warning voice raised amid 
 the triumph, which might have opened his eyes— 
 perhaps it did—to the troubles which were to come. 
 He stood up in the Rostra to make the usual address to 
 the people on laying down his authority. Metellus 
 Nepos had been newly elected one of the tribunes: it 
 was his office to guard jealously all the rights and privi¬ 
 leges of the Roman commons Influenced, it is said, 
 by Ca3sar—possibly himself an undiscovered partisan of 
 Catiline—he dealt a blow tit the retiring consul under 
 cover of a discharge of duty. As Cicero was about to 
 
CICERO. 
 
 37 
 
 speak, be interposed a tribune’s “veto”; no naan should 
 be beard, be said, wlio had put Roman citizens to death 
 without a trial. There was consternation, in the Forum. 
 Cicero could not dispute what was a perfectly legal ex¬ 
 ercise of the tribune’s power; only, in a few emphatic 
 words which he seized the opportunity of adding to the 
 usual formal oath on quitting office, he protested that 
 his act had saved Rome. The people shouted in an¬ 
 swer, “Thou hast said true!” and Cicero went home a 
 private citizen, but with that hearty tribute from his 
 grateful countrymen ringing pleasantly in his ears. 
 But the bitter words of Metellus were yet to be echoed 
 by his enemies again and again, until that fickle popu¬ 
 lar voice took them up, and howled them after the once 
 popular consul. 
 
 Let us follow him for a while into private life; a 
 pleasanter companionship for us, we confess, than the 
 unstable glories of the political arena at Rome. In his 
 family and social relations the great orator wins from 
 us an amount of personal interest and sympathy which 
 he fails sometimes to command in his career as a states¬ 
 man. At forty-five years of age he has become a very 
 wealthy man—has bought for something like £30,000 a 
 noble mansion on the Palatine Hill; and besides the 
 old-fashioned family seat near Arpinum—now become 
 his own by his father’s death—he has built, or enlarged, 
 or bought as they stood, villas at Antium, at Formise, 
 at Pompeii, at Cumae, at Puteoli, and at half-a-dozen 
 other places, besides the one favorite spot of all, which 
 was to him almost what Abbotsford was to Scott, the 
 home which it was the delight of his life to embellish— 
 his country-house among the pleasant hills of Tusculum.* 
 
 * Near the modern town of Frascati. But there is no certainty 
 as to the site of Cicero’s villa. 
 
38 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 It had once belonged to Sulla, and was about twelve 
 miles from Rome. In that beloved building and its 
 arrangements he indulged, as an ample purse allowed 
 him, not only a highly-cultivated taste, but in some re¬ 
 spects almost a whimsical fancy. “A mere cottage,” 
 he himself terms it in one place; but this was when he 
 was deprecating accusations of extravagance which 
 were brought against him, and we all understand some¬ 
 thing of the pride which in such matters “ apes humil¬ 
 ity.” He would have it on the plan of the Academia at 
 Athens, with its palaestra and open colonnade, where, 
 as he tells us, he could walk and discuss politics or phi¬ 
 losophy with his friends. Greek taste and design were 
 as fashionable among the Romans of that day as the 
 Louis Quatorze style was with our grandfathers. But 
 its grand feature was a library, and its most valued fur¬ 
 niture was books. Without books, he said, a house 
 was but a body without a soul. He entertained for 
 these treasures not only the calm love of a reader, but 
 the passion of a bibliophile; he was particular about his 
 bindings, and admired the gay colors of the covers in 
 which the precious manuscripts were kept as well as 
 the more intellectual beauties within. He had clever 
 Greek slaves employed from time to time in making 
 copies of all such works as were not to be readily pur-, 
 chased. He could walk across, too, as he tells us, to 
 his neighbor’s, the young Lucullus, a kind of ward of 
 his, and borrow from the library of that splendid man¬ 
 sion any book he wanted. His friend Atticus collected 
 for him everywhere—manuscripts, paintings, statuary; 
 though for sculpture he professes not to care much, ex¬ 
 cept for such subjects as might form appropriate deco¬ 
 rations for his palaestra and his library. Very pleasant 
 must have been the days spent together by the two 
 
CICERO. 
 
 39 
 
 friends—so alike in their private tastes and habits, so 
 far apart in their chosen course of life—when they met 
 there in the brief holidays which Cicero stole from the 
 law-courts and the Forum, and sauntered in the shady 
 walks, or lounged in the cool library, in that home of 
 lettered ease, where the busy lawyer and politician de¬ 
 clared that he forgot for a while all the toils and vexa¬ 
 tions of public life. 
 
 He had his little annoyances, however, even in these 
 happy hours of retirement. Morning aalls were an in¬ 
 fliction to which a country gentleman was liable in an¬ 
 cient Italy as in modern England. A man like Cicero 
 was very good company, and somewhat of a lion be¬ 
 sides; and country neighbors, wherever he set up his 
 rest, insisted on bestowing their tediousness on him. 
 His villa at Formise, his favorite residence next to Tus- 
 culum, was, he protested, more like a public hall. 
 Most of his visitors, indeed, had the consideration not to 
 trouble him after ten or eleven in the forenoon (fashion¬ 
 able calls in those days began uncomfortably early); 
 but there were one or two, especially his next-door 
 neighbor, Arrius, and a friend’s friend, named Sebosus, 
 who were in and out at all hours: the former had an 
 unfortunate taste for philosophical discussion, and was 
 postponing his return to Rome (he was good enough to 
 say) from day to day in order to enjoy these long morn¬ 
 ings in Cicero’s conversation. Such are the doleful 
 complaints in two or three of the letters to Atticus; 
 but, like all such complaints, they were probably only 
 half in earnest: popularity, even at a watering-place^ 
 was not very unpleasant, and the WTiter doubtless knew 
 how to practice the social philosophy which he recom¬ 
 mends to others, and took his place cheerfully and 
 pleasantly in the society which he found about him— 
 
40 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY, 
 
 not despising his honest neighbors because they had 
 not all adorned a consulship or saved a state. 
 
 There were times when Cicero 'fancied that this 
 rural life, with all its refinements of wealth and taste 
 and literary leisure, was better worth living than the 
 public life of the capital. His friends and his books, 
 he said, were the company most congenial to him; 
 “politics might go to the dogs;” to count the waves 
 as they rolled on the beach was happiness; he “had 
 rather be mayor of Antium than consul at Rome;” 
 “rather sit in his own library with Atticus in their 
 favorite seat under the bust of Aristotle than in the 
 curule chair.” It is true that these longings for retire¬ 
 ment usually followed some political defeat or mortifi¬ 
 cation; that his natural sphere, the only life in which 
 he could be really happy, was in the keen excitement 
 of party warfare—the glorious battle-field of the Senate 
 and the Forum. The true key-note of his mind is to be 
 found in these words to his friend Coelius: “Cling to 
 the city, my friend, and live in her light: all employ¬ 
 ment abroad, as I have felt from my earliest manhood, 
 is obscure and petty for those who have abilities to 
 make them famous at Rome.” Yet the other strain had 
 nothing in it of affectation or hypocrisy: it was the 
 schoolboy escaped from work, thoroughly enjoying his 
 holiday, and fancying that nothing would be so delight¬ 
 ful as to have holidays always. In this, again, there 
 was a similarity between Cicero’s taste and that of 
 Horace. The poet loved his Sabine farm and all its 
 rural delights—after his fashion; and perhaps thought 
 honestly that he loved it more than he really did. 
 Above all, he loved to write about it. With that fancy, 
 half-real, perhaps, and half-affected, for pastoral sim¬ 
 plicity, which has always marked a state of over-luxuri- 
 
CICERO. 
 
 41 
 
 ous civilizatiou, he protests to himself that there is 
 nothing like the country. But perhaps Horace dis¬ 
 charges a sly jest at himself, in a sort of aside to his 
 readers, 4n the person of Alphius, the rich city money¬ 
 lender, v Who is made to utter that pretty apostrophe to 
 .rural happiness:— 
 
 ‘“ Happy the man, in busy schemes unskilled, 
 
 Who, living simply, like our sires of old, 
 
 Tills the few acres which his father tilled, 
 
 Vexed by no thoughts of usury or gold.” 
 
 Martin’s “Horace.” 
 
 And who, after thus expatiating for some stanzas on 
 the charms of the country, calls in all his money one 
 week in order to settle there, and puts it all out again 
 (no doubt at higher interest) the week after. “ Orus, 
 
 ■ quando te apiciam!” has been the cry of public men 
 before and since Cicero’s day, to whom, as to the great 
 Roman, banishment from political life, and condemna¬ 
 tion to perpetual leisure, would have been a sentence 
 that would have crushed their very souls. 
 
 He was very happy at this time in his family. His 
 wife and he loved one another with an honest affection; 
 anything more would have been out of the natural course 
 of things in Roman society at any date, and even so 
 much as this was become a notable exception in these 
 later days. It is paying a high honor to the character 
 of Cicero and his household—and from all evidence that 
 has come down to us it may be paid with truth—that 
 even in those evil times it might have presented the 
 original of what Virgil drew as almost a fancy picture, 
 or one to be realized only in some happy retirement into 
 which the civilized vices of the capital had never peue* 
 trated—- 
 
42 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 “ Where loving children-climb to reach a kiss— 
 
 A home of chaste delights and wedded bliss.” * 
 
 His little daughter, Tullia, or Tulliola, which was her 
 pet name (the Roman diminutives being formed some¬ 
 what more elegantly than ours, by adding a syllable 
 instead of cutting short), was the delight of his heart; 
 in his earlier letters to Atticus he is constantly making 
 some affectionate mention of her—sending her love, or 
 some playful message which his friend would under¬ 
 stand. She had been happily married (though she was 
 then but thirteen at the most) the year before his con¬ 
 sulship; but the affectionate intercourse between father 
 and daughter was never interrupted until her early 
 death. His only son, Marcus, born after a considerable 
 interval, who succeeded to Tullia’s place as a household 
 pet, is made also occasionally to send some childish 
 word of remembrance to his father’s old friend: “Cicero 
 the Little sends his compliments to Titus the Athenian” 
 —“Cicero the Philosopher salutes Titus the Politi¬ 
 cian. ”f These messages are written in Greek at the 
 end of the letters. Abeken thinks that in the originals 
 they might have been added in the little Cicero’s own 
 hand, “ to show that he had begun Greek;” “ a conjec¬ 
 ture,” says Mr. Merivale, “ too pleasant not to be readily 
 admitted.” The boy gave his father some trouble in 
 dfter life. He served with some credit as an officer of 
 cavalry under Pompey in Greece, or at least got into no 
 trouble there. Some years after, he wished to take ser- 
 
 * “Interia dulces pendent circum oscula nati; 
 
 Casta pudicitiam servat domus.” 
 
 —Georg, ii. 224. 
 
 t See “ Letters to Atticus,” ii. 9, 12; Merivale’s translation of 
 Abekep’s “Cicero in Seinen Briefen,” p. 114. 
 
CICERO. 
 
 43 
 
 vice in Spain, under Caesar, against the sons of Pompey; 
 but the father did not approve of this change of side, 
 He persuaded him to go to Athens to study instead, 
 allowing him what both Atticus and himself thought a 
 very liberal income—not sufficient, however, for him to 
 keep a horse, which Cicero held to be an unnecessary 
 luxury. Probably the young cavalry officer might not 
 have been of the same opinion; at any rate, he got into 
 more trouble among the philosophers than he did in the 
 army. He spent a great deal more than his allowance, 
 and one of the professors, whose lectures he attended, 
 had the credit of helping him to spend it. The young 
 man must have shared the kindly disposition of his 
 father. He wrote a confidential letter'to Tiro; the old 
 family servant, showing very good feeling, and promis¬ 
 ing reformation. It is doubtful how far the promise 
 was kept. He rose, however, subsequently to place and 
 power under Augustus, but died without issue; and, so 
 far at least as history knows them, the line of the 
 Ciceros was extinct. It had flashed into fame with the 
 great orator, and died out with him. 
 
 All Cicero’s biographers have found considerable 
 difficulty in tracing, at all satisfactorily, the sources of 
 the magnificent fortune which must have been required 
 to keep up, and to embellish in accordance with so 
 luxurious a taste, so many residences in all parts of 
 the country. True, these expenses often led Cicero 
 into debt and difficulties; but what he borrowed from 
 his friends he seems always to have repaid, so that the 
 money must have come in from some quarter or other. 
 His patrimony at Arpinum would not appear to have 
 been large; he got only some £3000 or £4000 dowry 
 with Terentia; and we find no hint of his making 
 money by any commercial speculations, as some Roman 
 
44 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 gentlemen did. On the other hand, it is the barest 
 justice to him to say that his hands were clean from 
 those ill-gotten gains which made the fortunes of many 
 of the wealthiest public men at Rome, who were crimi¬ 
 nals in only a less degree than Yerres—peculation, ex¬ 
 tortion, and downright robbery in the unfortunate 
 provinces which the} 7 ' were sent out to govern. Such 
 opportunities lay as ready to his grasp as to other 
 men’s, but he steadily eschewed them. His declining 
 the tempting prize of a provincial government, which 
 was his right on the expiration of his prsetorship, may 
 fairly be attributed to his having in view the higher 
 object of the consulship, to secure which, by an early 
 and persistent canvass, he felt it necessary to remain 
 in Rome. But he again waived the right when his 
 consulship was over; and when, some years afterwards, 
 he went unwillingly as proconsul to Cilicia, his admin¬ 
 istration there, as before in his lower office, in Sicily, 
 was marked by a probity and honesty quite excep¬ 
 tional in a Roman governor. His emoluments, con¬ 
 fined strictly -within the legal bounds, would be only 
 moderate, and, whatever they were, came too late in 
 his life to be any explanation of his earlier expenditure. 
 He received many valuable legacies at different times, 
 from personal friends or grateful clients who died 
 childless (be it remembered how the barrenness of the 
 marriage union had become then, at Rome, as it is said 
 to be in some countries now, the reproach of a sensual 
 and effete aristocracy); he boasts himself, in one of his 
 “Philippics,” that he had received from this source 
 above £170,000. Mr. Forsyth also notices the large 
 presents that were made by foreign kings and states to 
 conciliate the support and advocacy of the leading men 
 at Rome — “we can hardly call them bribes, for in 
 
CICERO. 
 
 45 
 
 many cases the relation of patron and client was avow¬ 
 edly established between a foreign state and some 
 influential Roman: and it became his duty, as of course 
 it was his interest, to defend it in the Senate and before 
 the people.” In this way, he thinks, Cicero held “re¬ 
 tainers ” from Dyrracliium; and, he might have added, 
 from Sicily. The great orator’s own boast was that 
 he never took anything for his services as an advocate; 
 and, indeed, such payments were forbidden by law.* 
 But with all respect for Cicero’s material honesty, one 
 learns from his letters unfortunately, not to put implicit 
 confidence in him when he is in a boasting vein; and 
 he might not look upon voluntary gifts, after a cause 
 was decided, in the light of payment. Psetus, one of 
 his clients, gave him a valuable library of books; and 
 one cannot believe that this was a solitary instance of 
 the quiet evasion of the Cincian law, or that there were 
 not other transactions of the same nature which never 
 found their way into any letter of Cicero’s that was 
 likely to come down to us. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 HIS EXILE AND BETUIIN. 
 
 We must return to Rome. Cicero had never left it 
 but for his short occasional holiday. Though no longer 
 in office, the ex-consul was still one of the foremost 
 
 * The principle passed, like so many others, from the old 
 Roman law into our own, so that to this very day, a barrister’s 
 fees being considered in the nature of an honorarium, or volun¬ 
 tary present made to him for his services, are not recoverable by 
 
 law. 
 
46 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 public men, and liis late dignity gave him important 
 precedence in the Senate. He was soon to be brought 
 into contact, and more or less into opposition, with the 
 two great chiefs of parties in whose feuds he became at 
 length so fatally involved. Pompey and Csesar were 
 both gradually becoming formidable, and both had 
 ambitious plans of their own, totally inconsistent with 
 any remnant of republican liberty—plans which Cicero 
 more or less suspected, and of that suspicion they were 
 probably both aware. Both, by their successful cam¬ 
 paigns, had not only acquired fame and honors, but a 
 far more dangerous influence—an influence which was 
 to overwhelm all others hereafter—in the affection of 
 their legions. Pompey was still absent in Spain, but 
 soon to return from his long war against Mithridates, to 
 enjoy the most splendid triumph ever seen at Rome, 
 and to take the lead of the oligarchical party just so 
 long and so far as they would help him to the power he 
 coveted. The enemies whom Cicero had made by his 
 strong measures in the matter of the Catilinarian con¬ 
 spiracy now took advantage of Pompey’s name and 
 popularity to make an attack upon him. The tribune 
 Metellus, constant to his old party watchword, moved 
 in the Senate that the successful general, upon whom all 
 expectations were centred, should be recalled to Rome 
 with his army “to restore the violated constitution.” 
 All knew against whom the motion was aimed, and 
 what the violation of the constitution meant; it was the 
 putting citizens to death without a trial. The measure 
 was not passed, though Csesar, jealous of Cicero even 
 more than of Pompey, lent himself to the attempt. 
 
 But the blow fell on Cicero at last from a very dif¬ 
 ferent quarter, and from the mere private grudge of a 
 determined and unprincipled man. Publius Clodius, 
 
CICERO. 
 
 47 
 
 a young man of noble family, once a friend and sup¬ 
 porter of Cicero against Catiline, but who had already 
 made himself notorious for the most abandoned profli¬ 
 gacy, was detected, in a woman’s dress, at the celebra¬ 
 tion of the rites of the Bona Dea—a kind of religious 
 freemasonry amongst the Roman ladies, the mysteries 
 of which are very little known, and probably would in 
 any case be best left without explanation. But for a 
 man to have been present at them was a sacrilege 
 hitherto unheard of, and which was held to lay the 
 whole city under the just wrath of the offended god¬ 
 dess. The celebration had been held in the house of 
 Caesar, as praetor, under the presidency of his wife, 
 Pompeia; and it was said that the object of the young 
 profligate was an intrigue with that lady. The circum 
 stances arc not favorable to the suspicion; but Caesar 
 divorced her forthwith, with the often-quoted remark 
 that ** Caesar’s wife must not be even suspected.” For 
 this crime—unpardonable even in that corrupt society, 
 when crimes of far deeper dye passed almost unre¬ 
 proved—Clodius was, after some delay, brought to 
 public trial. The defence set up was an alibi, and 
 Cicero came forward as a witness to disprove it: he 
 had met and spoken with Clodius in Rome that very 
 evening. The evidence was clear enough, but the 
 jury had been tampered with by Clodius and his friends; 
 liberal bribery, and other corrupting influences of even 
 a more disgraceful kind, had been successfully brought 
 to bear upon the majority of them, and he escaped con¬ 
 viction by a few votes. But he never forgave the part 
 which Cicero had taken against him; and from that 
 time forth the latter found a new, unscrupulous, inde¬ 
 fatigable enemy, of whose services his old opponents 
 gladly availed themselves. Cicero himself for some 
 
48 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 time underrated this new danger. He lost no oppor¬ 
 tunity of taunting the unconvicted criminal in the bit¬ 
 terest terms in the Senate, and of exchanging with him 
 —very much to the detriment of his own character 
 and dignity, in our modern eyes—the coarsest jests 
 when they met in the street. But the temptation to 
 a jest, of whatever kind, was always irresistible to 
 Cicero: it was a weakness for which he more than 
 once paid dearly, for they were remembered against 
 him when he had forgotten them. Meanwhile Clodius 
 —a sort of milder Catiline, not without many popular 
 qualities—had got himself elected tribune; degrading 
 himself formally from his own order of nobles for 
 that purpose, since the tribune must be a man of the 
 commons. The powers of the office were formidable 
 for all purposes of obstruction and attack; Clodius had 
 taken pains to ingratiate himself with all classes; and, 
 the consuls of the year were men of infamous character, 
 for whom he had found a successful means of bribery 
 by the promise of getting a special law passed to secure 
 them the choice of the richest provincial governments 
 —those coveted fields of plunder—o*f which they would 
 otherwise have had to take their chance by lot. When 
 all was ripe for his revenge, he brought before the 
 people in full assembly the following bill of pains and 
 penalties: “Be it enacted, that whoever has put to 
 death a Roman citizen uncondemned in due form of 
 trial, shall be interdicted from fire and water.” Such 
 was the legal form of words which implied banishment 
 from Rome, outlawry, and social excommunication. 
 Every man knew against whom the motion was level¬ 
 ed. It was carried—carried in spite of the indigna¬ 
 tion of all honest men in Rome, in spite of all Cicero’s 
 humiliating efforts to obtain its rejection, 
 
CICERO. 
 
 49 
 
 It was in vain that he pu*t on mowning, as was the 
 custom with those who were impeached of public 
 crimes, and went about the streets thus silently im¬ 
 ploring the pity of his fellow-citizens. In vain the 
 whole of his own equestrian order, and in fact, as he 
 declares, “all honest men” (it was his favorite term 
 for men of his own party), adopted the same dress to 
 show their sympathy, and twenty thousand youths 
 of good family—all in mourning—accompanied him 
 through the city. The Senate even met and passed 
 a resolution that their whole house should put on 
 mourning too. But Gabinius, one of the consuls, at 
 once called a public meeting, and warned the people 
 not to make the mistake of thinking that the Senate 
 was Rome. 
 
 In vain, also, was-any personal appeal which Cicero 
 could make to the only two men who might have had 
 influence enough to sway the popular vote. He was 
 ostensibly on good terms both with Ponrpey and Csesar; 
 in fact, he made it his policy so to be. He foresaw 
 that on their future course would probably depend 
 the fate of Rome, and he persuaded himself, perhaps 
 honestly, that he could make them “ better citizens.” 
 But he trusted neither; and both saw in him an oh 
 stacle to their own ambition. Caesar now looked on 
 coldly, not altogether sorry at the turn which affairs 
 had taken, and faintly suggested that perhaps some 
 “milder measure” might serve to meet the case. From 
 Pompey Cicero had a right to look for some active 
 * support; indeed, such had been promised in case of 
 need. He threw himself at his feet with prayers and 
 tears, but even this last humiliation was in vain; and 
 he anticipated the execution of that disgraceful edict 
 by a voluntary withdrawal into exile. Piso, one of 
 
50 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 the consuls, had satirically suggested that thus he 
 might “ save Rome” a second time. His property was 
 at once confiscated; his villas at Tusculum and at For- 
 miae were plundered and laid waste, the consuls claim¬ 
 ing the lion’s share of the spoil; and Clodius, with his 
 armed mob, set fire to the noble house on the Palatine, 
 razed it to the ground, and erected on the site a temple 
 to —Liberty ! 
 
 Cicero had friends who strongly urged him to defy 
 the edict; to remain at Rome, and call on all good 
 citizens to arm in his defense. Modern historians very 
 generally have assumed that, if he could have made up 
 his mind to such a course it would probably have been 
 successful. He was to rely, we suppose, upon those 
 “twenty thousand Roman youths”—rather a broken 
 reed to trust to (remembering what those young gal¬ 
 lants were), with Caesar against him, now at the head 
 of his legions just outside the gates of Rome. He him¬ 
 self seriously contemplated suicide, and consulted his 
 friends as to the propriety of such a step in the gravest 
 and most business-like manner, though, with our 
 modern notions on the subject, such a consultation has 
 more of the ludicrous than the sublime. The sensible 
 and practical Atticus convinced him that such a solu¬ 
 tion of his difficulties would be the greatest possible 
 mistake—a mistake, moreover, which could never be 
 rectified. 
 
 But almost any course would have become him better 
 than that which he chose. Had he remained and faced 
 Clodius and his bravos manfully—or had he turned his 
 back upon Rome forever, and shaken the dust off his 
 feet against the ungrateful city, and become a noble 
 pensioner upon Atticus at Buthrotum—he would have 
 died a greater man. He wandered from place to place, 
 
CICERO. 
 
 51 
 
 sheltered by friends whose unselfish loyally marks their 
 names with honor in that false and evil generation— 
 Sica, and Flacc.us, and Plancius—bemoaning himself 
 like a woman,—“too blinded with tears to write,” 
 “loathing the light of day.” Atticus thought he was 
 going mad. It is not pleasant to dwell upon this miser- 
 able weakness of a great, mind, which Cicero’s most 
 eager eulogists admit, and which liis detractors have 
 not failed to make the most of. Nor is it easy to find 
 excuse for him, but we will give him all the benefit of 
 Mr. Forsyth’s defence:— 
 
 “ Seldom has misfortune so crushed a noble spirit, and never, 
 perhaps, has the ‘ bitter bread of banishment ’ seemed more bit¬ 
 ter to any one than to him. We must remember that the love 
 of country was a passion with the ancients to a degree which it 
 is now difficult to realize, and exile from it, even for a time waS 
 felt to be an intolerable evil. The nearest approach to such a 
 feeling was perhaps that of some favorite under an European 
 monarchy, when, frowned upon by his sovereign, he was hurled 
 from place and power, and banished from the court. The change 
 to Cicero was indeed tremendous. Not only was he an exile from 
 Rome, the scene of all his hopes, his glories, his triumphs, but 
 he was under the ban of an outlaw. If found within a certain 
 distance from the capital, he must die, and it was death to any 
 one to give him food or shelter. His property was destroyed 
 his family was penniless, and the people whom he had so faith 
 fully served were the authors of his ruin. All this may be urged 
 in his behalf, but still it would have been only consistent with 
 Roman fortitude to have shown that he possessed something of 
 the spirit of the fallen archangel.” * 
 
 His exile lasted nearly a year and a half. Long be¬ 
 fore that time there had come a reaction in his favor. 
 The new consuls were well disposed towards him; 
 Clodius’s insolence had already disgusted Pompey; 
 Caesar was absent with his legions in Gaul; his own 
 
 * Forsyth’s Life of Cicero, p. 190. 
 
52 
 
 TILE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 friends, who had all along been active in his favor 
 (though in his querulous mood he accused them of 
 apathy) took advantage of the change, his generous 
 rival Hortensius being amongst the most active; and 
 all the frantic violence of Clodius and his party served 
 only to delay for a while the return which they could 
 not prevent. A motion for his recall was carried at 
 last by an immense majority. 
 
 Cicero had one remarkable ally on that occasion. On 
 one of the days when the Senate was known to be dis¬ 
 cussing his recall, the ‘Andromache’ of Ennius was 
 being played in the theatre. The popular actor iEsop, 
 whose name has come down to us in conjunction with 
 that of Roscius, was playing the principal character. 
 The great orator had been his pupil, and was evidently 
 regarded by him as a personal friend. With all the 
 force of his consummate art, he threw into Andro¬ 
 mache’s lament for her absent father his own feelings 
 for Cicero. The words in the part were strikingly ap¬ 
 propriate, and he did not hesitate to insert a phrase or 
 two of his own when he came to speak of the man 
 
 “ Who with a constant mind upheld the state, 
 
 Stood on the people’s side in perilotis times, 
 
 Ne’er recked of his own life, nor spared himself.” 
 
 So significant and emphatic were his tone and gesture 
 as he addressed himself pointedly to his Roman audi¬ 
 ence, that they recalled him, and, amid a storm of 
 plaudits, made him repeat the passage. He added to 
 it the words—which were not set down for him— 
 
 “ Best of all friends in direst strait of war!” 
 
 and the applause was redoubled. The actor drew 
 courage from his success. When, as the play went on, 
 he came to speak the words— 
 
CICERO. 
 
 53 
 
 “ And you—you let him live a banished man— 
 
 See him driven forth and hunted from your gates!” 
 
 he pointed to the nobles, knights, and commons, as 
 they sat in their respective seats in the crowded rows 
 before him, his own voice broke with grief, and the 
 tears even more than the applause of the whole audi¬ 
 ence bore witness alike to their feelings towards the 
 exile, and the dramatic power of the actor. “ He 
 pleaded my cause before the Roman people,” says 
 Cicero (for it is he that tells the story), “ with far more 
 • weight of eloquence than I could have pleaded for my¬ 
 self.”*. 
 
 He had been visited with a remarkable dream, while 
 staying with one of his friends in Italy, during the 
 earlier days of his exile, which he now recalled with 
 some interest. He tells us this story also himself, 
 though he puts it into the mouth of another speaker, 
 in liis dialogue on “Divination.” If few were so fond 
 of introducing personal anecdotes into every place 
 where he could find room for them, fewer still could 
 tell them so well. 
 
 “I had lain awake a great part of the night, and at 
 last towards dawn had begun to sleep soundly and 
 heavily. I had given orders to my attendant that, in 
 this case, though we had to start that very morning, 
 strict silence should be kept, and that I was on no ac¬ 
 count to be disturbed; when about seven o’clock I 
 awoke, and told him my dream. I thought I was wan¬ 
 dering alone in some solitary place, when Caius Marius 
 appeared to me, with his fasces bound with laurel, and 
 asked why I was so sad? And when I answered that 
 I had been driven from my country, he caught my 
 
 * Defence of Sestius, c. 56, etc. 
 
54 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY,\ 
 
 hand, bade me be of good cheer, and put me under the 
 guidance of his own lictor to lead me to his monument; 
 there, he said, I should find my deliverance.” 
 
 So indeed it had turned out. The temple dedicated 
 to Honor and Virtue, in which the Senate sat when 
 they passed the first resolution of Cicero’s recall, was 
 known as the “Monument of Marius.” There is no 
 need to doubt the perfect good faith of the story 
 which he tells, and it may be set down as one of the 
 earliest authenticated instances of a dream coming true. 
 But if dreams are fashioned out of our waking imagi¬ 
 nations, it is easy to believe that the fortunes of his 
 great townsman Marius, and the scenes in the Senate 
 at Rome, were continually present to the exile’s 
 thoughts. 
 
 His return was a triumphal progress. He landed at 
 Brundusium on his daughter’s birthday. She had only 
 just lost her husband Piso, who had gallantly maintained 
 her father’s cause throughout, but she was the first to 
 welcome him with tears of joy which overmastered her 
 sorrow. He was careful to lose no chance of making 
 his return impressive. He took his way to Rome with 
 the slow march of a conqueror. The journey which 
 Horace made easily in twelve days, occupied Cicero 
 twenty-four. But he chose not the shortest but the 
 most public route, through Naples, Capua, Minturnae, 
 Terracina, and Aricia. 
 
 Let him tell the story of his own reception. If he 
 tells it (as he does more than once) with an undis¬ 
 guised pride, it is a pride with which it is impossible 
 not to sympathize. He boasted afterwards that he had 
 been “ carried back to Rome on the shoulders of Italy;” 
 and Plutarch says it was a boast he had good right to 
 make. 
 
CICERO. 
 
 55 
 
 “ Who does not know what my return home was 
 like? How the people of Brundusium held out to me, 
 as I might say, the right hand of welcome on behalf of 
 all my native land ? From thence to Rome my progress 
 was like a march of all Italy. There was no district, no 
 town, corporation, or colony, from which a public dep¬ 
 utation was not sent to congratulate me. Why need 
 I speak of .my arrival at each place? how the people 
 crowded the streets in the towns; how they flocked 
 in from the country—fathers of families with wives 
 and children? How can I describe those days, when 
 all kept holiday, as though it were some high festival 
 of the immortal gods, in joy for my safe return? That 
 single day was to me like immortality; when I re¬ 
 turned to my own city, when I saw the Senate and 
 the population of all ranks come forth to greet me, 
 when Rome herself looked as though she had wrenched 
 herself from her foundations to rush to embrace her 
 preserver. For she received me in such sort, that not 
 onty all sexes, ages, and callings, men and women, of 
 every rank and degree, but even the very walls, the 
 houses, the temples, seemed to share the universal joy.” 
 
 The Senate in a body came out to receive him on 
 the ’Appian road; a gilded chariot waited for him at 
 the city gates; the lower class of citizens crowded the 
 steps of the temples to see him as he passed; and so he 
 rode, escorted by troops of friends, more than a con¬ 
 queror, to the Capitol. 
 
 His exultation was naturally as intense as his de¬ 
 spair had been. He made two of his most florid 
 speeches (if indeed they be his, which is doubtful), 
 one in the Senate and another to the people assembled 
 in the Forum, in which he congratulated himself on 
 his return, and Rome on having regained her most 
 
56 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 illustrious citizen. It is a curious note of the temper 
 and logical capacities of the mob, in all ages of the 
 world alike, that within a few hours of their applaud 
 ing to the echo this speech of Cicero’s, Clodius suc¬ 
 ceeded in exciting them to a serious riot by appealing to 
 the ruinous price of corn as one of the results of the ex¬ 
 ile’s return. 
 
 For nearly four years more, though unable to shake 
 Cicero’s recovered position in the state—for he was now 
 supported by Pompey—Clodius and his partisans, 
 backed by a strong force of trained gladiators in their 
 pay, kept Rome in a state of anarchy which is almost 
 inexplicable. It was more than suspected that Crassus, 
 now utterly estranged from Pompey, supplied out of 
 his enormous wealth the means of keeping on foot this 
 lawless agitation. Elections were overawed, meetings 
 of the Senate interrupted,' assassinations threatened 
 and attempted. Already men began to look to mili¬ 
 tary rule, and to think a good cause none the worse 
 for being backed by “ strong battalions.” Things were 
 fast tending to the point where Pompey and Caesar, 
 trusty allies as yet in profession and appearance, deadly 
 rivals at heart, hoped to step in with their veteran le¬ 
 gions. Even.Cicero, the man of peace and constitution¬ 
 al statesman, felt comfort in the thought that this final 
 argument could be resorted to by his own party. But 
 Clodius’s mob-government, at any rare, was to be put 
 an end to somewhat suddenly. Milo, now one of the 
 candidates for the consulship, a man of determined and 
 unscrupulous character, had turned his own weapons 
 against him, and maintained an opposition patrol of 
 hired gladiators and wild-beast fighters. The Senate 
 quite approved, if they did not openly sanction, this 
 irregular championship of their order, The two pap 
 
CICERO ; 
 
 ties walked the streets of Rome like the Capulets and 
 Montagues at Verona; and it was said that Milo had 
 been heard to swear that he would rid the city of 
 Clodius if he ever got the chance. It came at last, in a 
 casual meeting on the Appian road, near Bovillse. A 
 scuffle began between their retainers, and Clodius was 
 killed—his friends said, murdered. The excitement at 
 Rome was intense; the dead body was carried and laid 
 publicly on the Rostra. Riots ensued; Milo was obliged 
 to fly, and renounce his hopes of power; and the Senate, 
 intimidated, named Pompey—not indeed “Dictator,” 
 for the name had become almost as hateful as that of 
 King—but sole consul, for the safety of the state. • 
 
 Cicero had resumed his practice as an advocate, and 
 was now called upon to defend Milo. But Pompey, 
 either from some private grudge, or in order to win 
 favor with the populace, determined that Milo should 
 be convicted. The jury were overawed by his presence 
 in person at the trial, and by the occupation by armed 
 soldiers of all the avenues of the court under color of 
 keeping order. It was really as great an outrage upon 
 the free administration of justice as the presence of a 
 regiment of soldiers at the entrance to Westminster 
 Hall would be at a modern trial for high treason or 
 sedition. Cicero affected to see in Pompey’s legionaries 
 nothing more than the maintainers of the peace of the 
 city. But he knew better; and the fine passage in the 
 opening of his speech for the defense, as it has come 
 down to us, is at once a magnificent piece of irony 
 and a vindication of the rights of counsel. 
 
 “Although I am conscious, gentlemen, that it is a 
 disgrace to me to show fear when I stand here to plead 
 in behalf of one of the bravest of men;—and espe¬ 
 cially does such weakness ill become me, that when 
 
58 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 Milo himself is far more anxious about the safety of 
 the state than about his own, I should be unable to 
 bring to his defence the like magnanimous spirit;— 
 yet this strange scene and strangely constituted court 
 does terrify my eyes, for, turn them where I will, I 
 look in vain for the ancient customs of the Forum, 
 and the old style of public trials. For your tribunal 
 to-day is girt with no such audience as was wont; this 
 is no ordinary crowd that hems us in. Yon guards 
 whom you see on duty in front of all the temples, 
 though set to prevent violence, yet still do a sort of vio¬ 
 lence to the pleader: since in the Forum and the court 
 of justice, though the military force which surrounds 
 us be wholesome and needful, yet we cannot even be 
 thus freed from apprehension without looking with 
 some apprehension on the means. And if I thought 
 they were set there in hostile array against Milo, I 
 would yield to circumstances, gentlemen, and feel there 
 was no room for the pleader amid such a display of 
 weapons. But I am encouraged by the advice of a man 
 of great wisdom and justice—of Pompey, who surely 
 would not think it compatible with that justice, after 
 committing a prisoner to the verdict of a jury, then to 
 hand him over to the swords of his soldiers; nor con¬ 
 sonant with his wisdom to arm the violent passions of a 
 mob with the authority of the state. Therefore those 
 weapons, those officers and men, proclaim to us not 
 peril but protection; they encourage us to be not only 
 undisturbed but confident; the}’ promise me not only 
 support in pleading for the defence, but silence for it to 
 be listened to. As to the rest of the audience, so far as 
 it is composed of peaceful citizens, all, I know, are on 
 our side; nor is there any single man among all those 
 crowds whom you see occupying ever}' point from 
 
CICERO. 
 
 59 
 
 which a glimpse of this court can be gained, looking on 
 in anxious expectation of the result of this trial, who, 
 while he approves the boldness of the defendant, does 
 not also feel that the fate of himself, his children, and 
 his country, hangs upon the issue of to-day.” 
 
 After an elaborate argument to prove that the slaying 
 of Clodius by Milo was in self-defense, or, at the worst, 
 that it w r as a fate which he well deserved as a public 
 enemy, he closes his speech with a peroration, the pa¬ 
 thos of which has always been admired: 
 
 “ I would it had been the will of heaven—if I may 
 say so with all reverence for my country, for I fear lest 
 my duty to my client may make me say what is disloyal 
 towards her—I would that Publius Clodius were not 
 only alive, but that he were praetor, consul, dictator 
 even, before my eyes had seen this sight! But what 
 says Milo? He speaks like a brave man, and a man 
 whom it is your duty to protect—‘Not so—by no 
 means,’ says he. ‘ Clodius has met the doom he well 
 deserved: I am ready, if it must be so, to meet that 
 which I do not deserve.’ . . . But I must stop; I can 
 no longer speak for tears; and tears are an argument 
 which he would scorn for his defence. I entreat you, I 
 adjure you, ye who sit here in judgment, that in your 
 verdict you dare to give utterance to what I know you 
 feel.” 
 
 But the appeal was in vain, or rather, as far as we 
 can ascertain, was never made,—at least in such power¬ 
 ful terms as those in which we read it. The great 
 advocate was wholly unmanned by the scene before 
 him, grew nervous, and broke down utterly in his 
 speech for the defence. This presence of a military 
 force under the orders of Pompey—the man in whom 
 he saw, as he hoped, the good genius of Rome—over* 
 
60 
 
 TEE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 awed and disturbed him. The speech which we read is 
 almost certainly not that which lie delivered, hut as in 
 the previous case of Veries, the finished and elaborate 
 composition of his calmer hours. Milo was convicted 
 by a large majority; in fact, there can be little doubt 
 but that he was legally guilty, however political expedi¬ 
 ency might in the eyes of Cicero and his party, have 
 justified his deed. Cato sat on the jury, and did all he 
 could to insure an acquittal, showing openly his voting- 
 paper to his fellow-jurors, with that scorn of the 
 “ liberty of silence” which he shared with Cicero. 
 
 Milo escaped any worse penalty by at once going into 
 voluntary banishment at Marseilles. But he showed 
 more practical philosophy than his advocate; for when 
 he read the speech in his exile, he is said to have de¬ 
 clared that “it was fortunate for him it was not spoken, 
 or he should never have known the flavor of the red 
 mullet of Marseilles.” 
 
 The removal of Clodius was a deliverance upon 
 which Cicero never ceased to congratulate himself. 
 That “battle of Bovillse,” as he terms it, became an 
 era in his mental records of only less significance than 
 his consulship. His own public life continued to be 
 honorable and successful. He w^as elected into the 
 College of Augurs, an honor which he had long coveted; 
 and he was appointed to the government of Cilicia. 
 This latter was a greatness literally “thrust upon him,” 
 and which he would gladly have declined, for it took 
 him away in these eventful days from his beloved 
 Rome; and to these grand opportunities for enriching 
 himself he was, as has been said, honorably indifferent. 
 The appointment to a distant province was, in fact, to 
 man like Cicero, little better than an honorable form of 
 exile j it was like conferring on a man who had been. 
 
CICERO. 
 
 61 
 
 and might hope one day to be again, Prime Minister of 
 England, the governor-generalship of Bombay. 
 
 One consolation he found on reaching his new gov¬ 
 ernment—that even in the farthest wilds of Cilicia 
 there were people who had heard of “the consul who 
 saved Rome.” And again the astonished provincials 
 marveled at a governor who looked upon them as 
 having rights of their own, and neither robbed nor ill- 
 used them. He made a little war, too, upon some 
 troublesome liill-tribes (intrusting the command chiefly 
 to his brother Quintus, who had served with distinction 
 under Caesar in Gaul), and gained a victory which his 
 legions thought of sufficient importance to salute him 
 with the honored title of “ imperator.” Such military 
 honors are especially flattering to men who, like Cicero, 
 are naturally and essentially civilians; and to Cicero’s 
 vanity they were doubly delightful. Unluckily they 
 led him to entertain hopes of the further glory of a 
 triumph; and this, but for the revolution which fol¬ 
 lowed, he might possibly have obtained. As it was, 
 the only result was his parading about with him every¬ 
 where, from town to town, for months after his return, 
 the lictors with laureled fasces, which betokened that a 
 triumph was claimed—a pompous incumbrance, which 
 became, as he confessed, a grand subject for evil-dis¬ 
 posed jesters, and a considerable inconvenionce to him¬ 
 self. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 CICERO AND CAESAR. 
 
 Tiie future master of Rome was now coming home, 
 after nearly ten years’ absence, at the head of the victQ- 
 
62 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 rious legions with which he had struck terror into the 
 Germans, overrun all Spain, left his mark upon Britain, 
 and “pacified” Gaul. But Cicero, in common with 
 most of the senatorial party, failed to see in Julius Cae¬ 
 sar the great man that he was. He hesitated a little— 
 Caesar would gladly have had his support, and made 
 him fair offers; but when the Rubicon was crossed, he 
 threw in his lot with Pompey. He was certainly influ¬ 
 enced in part by personal attachment: Pompey seems 
 to have exercised a degree of fascination over his weak¬ 
 ness. He knew Pompey’s indecision of character, and 
 confessed that Caesar was “ a prodigy of energy;” but 
 though the former showed little liking for him, he clung 
 to him nevertheless. He foreboded that, let the contest 
 end which way it would, “the result would certainly 
 be a despotism.” He foresaw that Pompey’s real de¬ 
 signs were as dangerous to the liberties of Rome as any 
 of which Caesar could be suspected. “Sullaiurit ani¬ 
 mus ,” he says of him in one of his letters, coining a 
 verb to put his idea strongly—“he wants to be like 
 Sulla.” And it was no more than the truth. He found 
 out afterwards, as he tells Atticus, that proscription- 
 lists of all Caesar’s adherents had been prepared by Pom 
 pey and his partisans, and that his old friend’s name 
 figured as one of the victims. Only this makes it possi¬ 
 ble to forgive him for the little feeling that he showed 
 when he heard of Pompey’s own miserable end. 
 
 Cicero’s conduct and motives at this eventful crisis 
 have been discussed over and over again. It may be 
 questioned whether at this date we are in any position 
 to pass more than a very cautious and general judgment 
 upon them. We want all the “ state papers” and polit¬ 
 ical correspondence of the day—not Cicero’s letters only, 
 but those of Caesar and Pompey and Bentulus, and 
 
CICERO. 
 
 much information besides that was never trusted to pen 
 or paper—in order to lay down with any accuracy the 
 course which a really unselfish patriot could have taken. 
 But there seems little reason to accuse Cicero of double¬ 
 dealing or trimming in the worst sense. His policy was 
 unquestionably, from first to last, a policy of expedients. 
 But expediency is, and must be more or less, the watch¬ 
 word of a statesman. If he would practically serve his 
 country, he must do to some extent what Cicero pro¬ 
 fessed to do—make friends with those in power. “Sic 
 vivitur ”—“So goes the world;” “Tempori serviendum 
 esC —“We must bend to circumstances”—these are not 
 the noblest mottoes, but they are acted upon continually 
 by the most respectable men in public and private life, 
 who do not open their hearts to their friends so unre¬ 
 servedly as Cicero does to his friend Atticus. It seemed 
 to him a choice between Pompey and Csesar; and he 
 probably hoped to be able so far to influence the former 
 as to preserve some shadow of a constitution for Borne. 
 What he saw in those “dregs of a Republic,”* as he 
 himself calls it, that was worth preserving;—how any 
 honest despotism could seem to him more to be dreaded 
 than that prostituted liberty,—this is harder to compre¬ 
 hend. The remark of Abeken seems to go very near the 
 truth—“ His devotion to the Commonwealth was 
 grounded not so much upon his conviction of its actual 
 merits, as of its fitness for the display of his own 
 abilities.” 
 
 But that commonwealth was past saving even in 
 name. Within two months of his having been de¬ 
 clared a public enemy, all Italy was at Csesar’s feet. 
 Before another year was past, the battle of Pliarsalia 
 
 * “ Faex Romuli.” 
 
64 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 liad been fought, and the great Pompey lay a headless 
 corpse on the sea-shore in Egypt. It was suggested to 
 Cicero, who had hitherto remained constant to the for¬ 
 tunes of his party, and was then in their camp at Dyr- 
 rachium, that he should take the chief command, but he 
 had the sense to decline; and though men called him 
 “ traitor,” and drew their swords upon him, he with¬ 
 drew from a cause which he saw was lost, and returned 
 to Italy, though not to Rome. 
 
 The meeting between him and Cmsar, which came at 
 last, set at rest any personal apprehensions from that 
 quarter. Cicero does not appear to have made any dis¬ 
 honorable submission, and the conqueror’s behavior 
 was nobly forgetful of the past. They gradually be¬ 
 came on almost friendly terms. The orator paid the 
 dictator compliments in the Senate, and found that, in 
 private society, his favorite jokes were repeated to the 
 great man, and were highly appreciated. With such 
 little successes he was obliged now to be content. He 
 had again taken up his residence in Rome; but his poli¬ 
 tical occupation was gone, and his active mind had 
 leisure to employ itself in some of his literary works. 
 
 It was at this time that the blow fell upon him which 
 prostrated him for the time, as his exile had done, and 
 under which he claims our far more natural sj^mpatliy. 
 His dear daughter Tullia—again married, but unhappily, 
 and just divorced—died at his Tusculan villa. Their 
 loving intercourse had undergone no change from her 
 childhood, and his grief was for a while inconsolable. 
 He shut himself up for thirty days. The letters of con¬ 
 dolence from well-meaning friends were to him—as they 
 so often are—as the speeches of the three comforters to 
 Job. He turned in vain, as he pathetically says, to 
 philosophy for consolation. 
 
CICERO. 
 
 65 
 
 It was at this time that lie wrote two of his philo¬ 
 sophical treatises, known to us as “ The True Ends of 
 Life,”* and the “ Tusculan Disputations,” of which 
 more will be said hereafter. In this latter, wliioh he 
 named from his favorite country house, he addressed 
 himself to the subjects which suited best with his own 
 sorrowful mood under his recent bereavement. How 
 men might learn to shake off the terrors of death—nay, 
 to look upon it rather as a release from pain and evil; 
 how pain, mental and bodily, may best be borne; how 
 we may moderate our passions; and, lastly, whether the 
 practice of virtue be not all-sufficient for our happiness. 
 
 A philosopher does not always find in himself a ready 
 pupil. It was hardly so in Cicero’s case. His argu¬ 
 ments were incontrovertible ; but he found them fail 
 him sadly in their practical application to life. He 
 never could shake off from himself that dread of death 
 which he felt in a degree unusually vivid for a Roman. 
 He sought his own happiness afterwards, as he had done 
 before, rather in the exciting struggle of public life than 
 in the special cultivation of any form of virtue; and he 
 did not even find the remedy for his present domestic 
 sorrow in any of those general moral reflections which 
 % philosophy, Christian as well as pagan, is so ready to 
 produce upon such occasions; which are all so undeni¬ 
 able, and all so utterly unendurable to the mourner. 
 
 Cicero found his consolation, or that diversion of 
 thought which so mercifully serves the purpose of con¬ 
 solation, where most men of active minds like his seek 
 for it and find it—in hard work. The literary effort of 
 writing and completing the works which have been just 
 mentioned probably did more to soothe his mind than 
 
 * “ De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum”—a title hard to translate. 
 
66 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 all the arguments which they contained. He resumed 
 his practice as an advocate so far as to plead a cause be¬ 
 fore Csesar, now ruling as Dictator at Rome—the last 
 cause, as events happened, that he was ever to plead. 
 It was a cause of no great importance—a defence of 
 Deiotarus, titulary king of Armenia, who was accused 
 of having entertained designs against the life of Csesar 
 while entertaining him as a guest in his palace. The 
 Dictator reserved his judgment until he should have 
 made his campaign against the Parthians. That more 
 convenient season never came: for before the spring 
 campaign could open, the fatal “Ides of March” cut 
 short Caesar’s triumphs and his life. 
 
 CHAPTER YI. 
 
 CICERO AND ANTONY. 
 
 It remained for Cicero yet to take a part in one more 
 great national struggle—the last for Rome and for him¬ 
 self. No doubt there was some grandeur in the cause 
 which he once more so vigorously espoused—the re¬ 
 covery of the liberties of Rome. But all the thunders 
 of Cicero’s eloquence, and all the admiration of modern 
 historians and poets, fail to enlist our hearty sympathies 
 with the assassins of Csesar. That “consecration of the 
 dagger” to the cause of liberty has been the fruitful 
 parent of too much evil ever since to make its use any¬ 
 thing but hateful. That Cicero was among the actual 
 conspirators is probably not true, though his enemies 
 strongly asserted it. But at least he gloried in the deed 
 when done, and was eager to claim all the honors of a 
 tyrannicide. Nay, he went farther than the actual con- 
 
CICERO. 
 
 67 
 
 spirators, in words at least; it is curious to find him so 
 careful to disclaim complicity in the act. “Would that 
 you had invited me to that banquet on the Ides of 
 March! there would then have been no leavings from 
 the feast,”—he writes to Cassius. He would have had 
 their daggers turned on Antony, at all events, as well as 
 on Caesar. He wishes that ‘ ‘ the gods may damn Caesar 
 after he is dead;” professing on this occasion a belief in 
 a future retribution, on which at other times he was 
 sceptical. It is but right to remember all this, when 
 the popular tide turned, and he himself came to be 
 denounced to political vengeance. The levity with 
 which he continually speaks of the assassination of 
 Caesar—a man who had never treated him , at any rate, 
 with anything but a noble forbearance—is a blot on 
 Cicero’s character which his warmest apologists ad¬ 
 mit. 
 
 The bloody deed in the Capitol was done—a deed 
 which was to turn out almost what Goethe called it— 
 “the most absurd that ever was committed.” The 
 great Dictator who lay there alone, a “ bleeding piece 
 of earth,” deserted by the very men who had sought of 
 late to crown him, was perhaps Rome’s fittest master; 
 certainly not the worst of the many with whom a per¬ 
 sonal ambition took the place of principle. Three 
 slaves took up the dead body of their master, and carried 
 it home to his house. Poor wretches! they knew noth¬ 
 ing about liberty or the constitution; they had little to 
 hope, and probably little to fear; they had only a hum¬ 
 ble duty to do, and did it. But when we read of them, 
 and of that freedman who, not long before, sat by the 
 dead body of Pompey till he could scrape together 
 wreck from the shore to light some sort of poor funeral- 
 pile, we return with a shudder of disgust to those ‘ ‘ noble 
 
68 
 
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 Romans” who occupy at this time the foreground of 
 history. 
 
 Caesar had been removed, hut it is plain that Brutus 
 and Cassius and their party had neither the ability 
 nor the energy to make any real use of their bloody 
 triumph. Cicero soon lost all hope of seeing in them 
 the liberators of his country, or of being able to guide 
 himself the revolution which he hoped he had seen 
 begun. “We have been freed,” he writes to Atticus, 
 “ but we are not free.” “ We have struck down the 
 tyrant, but the tyranny survives.” Antony, in fact, had 
 taken the place of Caesar as master of Rome—a change 
 in all respects for the worse. He had surrounded 
 himself with guards; had obtained authority from the 
 Senate to carry out all decrees and orders left by the 
 late Dictator; and when he could not find, among 
 Caesar’s memoranda, materials to serve his purpose, he 
 did not hesitate to forge them. Cicero had no power, 
 and might be in personal danger, for Antony knew his 
 sentiments as to state matters generally, and more par¬ 
 ticularly towards himself. Rome was no longer any 
 place for him, and he soon left it—this time a volun¬ 
 tary exile. He wandered from place to place, and tried 
 as before to find interest and consolation in philosophy. 
 It was now that he wrote his charming essays on 
 “Friendship” and on “Old Age,” and completed his 
 work “ On the Nature of the Gods,” and that on “ Di¬ 
 vination.” His treatise “De Officiis” (a kind of pagan 
 “ Whole Duty of Man”) is also of this date, as well as 
 some smaller philosophical works which have been lost. 
 He professed himself hopeless of his country’s future, 
 and disgusted with political life, and spoke of going to 
 end his days at Athens. 
 
 But, as before and always, his heart was in the FQrum 
 
CICERO . 
 
 69 
 
 at Rome. Political life was really the only atmosphere 
 in which he felt himself breathe vigorously. Unques¬ 
 tionably he had also an earnest patriotism, which 
 would have drawn him back to his country’s side at 
 any time when he believed she had need of his help. 
 He was told that he was needed there now; that there 
 was a prospect of matters going better for the cause of 
 liberty; that Antony was coming to terms of some kind 
 with the party of Brutus—and he returned. 
 
 For a short while these latter days brought with them 
 a gleam of triumph almost as bright as that which had 
 
 marked the overthrow of Catiline’s conspiracy. Again, 
 
 ■ 
 
 on his arrival at Rome, crowds rushed to meet him 
 with compliments and congratulations, as they had 
 done some thirteen years before. And in so far as his 
 last days were spent in resisting to the utmost the 
 basest of all Rome’s bad men, they were to him greater 
 than any triumph. Thenceforth it was a fight to the 
 death between him and Antony; so long as Antony 
 lived there could be no liberty for Rome. Cicero left it 
 to his enemy to make the first attack. It soon came. 
 Two days after his return, Antony spoke vehemently in 
 the Senate against him, on the occasion of moving a 
 resolution to the effect that divine honors should be paid 
 to Caesar. Cicero had purposely stayed away, pleading 
 fatigue after his journey; really, because such a propo¬ 
 sition was odious to him. Antony denounced him as a 
 coward and a traitor, and threatened to send men to 
 pull down his house about his head—that house which 
 had once before been pulled down, and rebuilt for him 
 by his remorseful fellow-citizens. Cicero went down to 
 the Senate the following day, and there delivered a 
 well-prepared speech, the first of those fourteen which 
 are known to us as his “ Philippics”—a name which he 
 
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 THE ELZEVIR LIBRART 
 
 seems first to have given to them in jest, in remembrance 
 of those which his favorite model, Demosthenes, had de¬ 
 livered at Athens against Philip of Macedon. He de¬ 
 fended his own conduct, reviewed in strong but moder¬ 
 ate terms the whole policy of Antony, and warned 
 him—still ostensibly as a friend—against the fate of 
 Caesar. The speaker was notunconscious what his own 
 might possibly be. 
 
 “I have already, senators, reaped fruit enough from 
 my return home, in that I have had the opportunity to 
 speak words which, whatever may betide, will remain 
 in evidence of my constancy in my duty, and you have 
 listened to me with much kindness and attention. And 
 this privilege I will use so often as I may without peril 
 to you and to myself; when I cannot I will be careful 
 of myself, not so much for my own sake as for the sake 
 of my country. For me, the life that I have lived 
 seems already wellnigh long enough, whether I look at 
 my years or my honors; what little span may yet be 
 added to it should be your gain and the state’s far mor& 
 than my own.” 
 
 Aiftony was not in the house when Cicero spoke; he 
 had gone down to his villa at Tibur. There he re¬ 
 mained for a fortnight, brooding over his reply—taking 
 lessons, it was said, from professors in the art of rhet¬ 
 orical self-defence. At last he came to Rome and an¬ 
 swered his opponent. His speech has not reached us; 
 but we know that it contained the old charges of having 
 put Roman citizens to death without trial, in the case of 
 the abettors of Catiline, and of having instigated Milo 
 to the assassination of Clodius. Antony added a new 
 charge—that of complicity with the murderers of 
 Csesar. Above all, he laughed at Cicero’s old attempts 
 as a poet; a mode of attack which, if not so alarming, 
 
CICERO. 
 
 71 
 
 was at least as irritating as the rest. Cicero was not 
 present—he dreaded personal violence; for Antony, 
 like Pompey at the trial of Milo, had planted an armed 
 guard of his own men outside and inside the Senate- 
 house. Before Cicero had nerved himself to reply, 
 Antony had left Rome to put himself at the head of his 
 legions, and the two never met again. 
 
 The reply, when it came, was the terrible second 
 Philippic; never spoken, however, but only handed 
 about in manuscript to admiring friends. There is little 
 doubt, as Mr. Long observes, that Antony had also 
 some friend kind enough to send him a copy; and if 
 we may trust the Roman poet Juvenal, who is at 
 least as likely to have been well-informed upon the 
 subject as any modern historian, this composition 
 •eventually cost the orator his life. It is not difficult 
 to understand the bitter vindictiveness of Antony. 
 Cicero had been not merely a political opponent; he 
 had attacked his private character (which presented 
 abundant grounds for such attack) with all the venom 
 of his eloquence. He had said, indeed, in the first of 
 these powerful orations, that he had never taken this 
 line. 
 
 “If I have abused his private life and character, I 
 have no right to complain if he is my enemy; but if I 
 have only followed my usual custom, which I have ever 
 maintained in public life—I mean, if I have only spoken 
 my opinion on public questions freely—then, in the 
 first place, I protest against his being angry with me at 
 all: or, if this be too much to expect, I demand that 
 he should be angry with me only as with a fellow-citi¬ 
 zen.” 
 
 If there had been any sort of reticence on this point 
 hitherto on the part of Cicero, he made up for it in this 
 
THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 72 
 
 second speech. Nothing can equal its bitter personal¬ 
 ity, except perhaps its rhetorical power. He begins the 
 
 attack by declaring that he will not tell all he knows- 
 
 “in order that, if we have to do battle again hereafter, 
 I may come always fresh-armed to the attack; an 
 advantage which the multiplicity of that man’s crimes 
 and vices gives me in large measure.” Then he pro¬ 
 ceeds :— 
 
 “Would you like us, then, to examine into your 
 course of life from boyhood? I conclude you would. 
 Do you remember that before you put on the robe of 
 manhood, you were a bankrupt? That was my father’s 
 fault, you will say. I grant it—it is a defence that 
 speaks volumes for your feelings as a son. It was your 
 own shamelessness, however, that made you take your 
 seat in the stalls of honorable knights, whereas by law 
 there is a fixed place for bankrupts, even when they 
 have become so by fortune’s fault, and not their own. 
 You put on the robe which was to mark your manhood 
 —on your person it became the flaunting gear of a har¬ 
 lot.” 
 
 It is not desirable to follow the orator through some 
 of his accusations; when he had to lash a man whom 
 he held to be a criminal, he did not much care where or 
 how he struck. He even breaks off himself—after say¬ 
 ing a good deal. 
 
 “ There are some things, which even a decent enemy 
 hesitates to speak of. . . . Mark, then, his subsequent 
 course of life, which I will trace as rapidly as I can. 
 For though these things are better known to you than 
 even to me,-yet I ask you to hear me with attention—as 
 indeed you do; for it is right that in such cases men’s 
 feelings should be roused not merely by the knowledge 
 of the facts, but by calling them back to their remem- 
 
CICERO. 
 
 73 
 
 brance; though we must dash at once, I believe, into 
 the middle of his history, lest we should be too long in 
 getting to the end.” 
 
 The peroration is noble and dignified, in the orator’s 
 best style. He still supposes himself addressing his en¬ 
 emy. He has warned Antony that Caesar’s fate may be 
 his: and he is not unconscious of the peril in which his 
 own life may stand. 
 
 “ But do you look to yourself—I will tell you how it 
 stands with me. I defended the Commonwealth when 
 I was young—I will not desert it now I am old. I de¬ 
 spised the swords of Catiline—I am not likely to trem¬ 
 ble before yours. Nay. I shall lay my life down gladly 
 if the liberty of Rome can be secured by my death, so 
 that this suffering nation may at last bring to the birth 
 that which it has long been breeding.* If, twenty 
 years ago, I declared in this house that death could 
 never be said to have come before its time to a man who 
 had been consul of Rome, with how much more truth, 
 at my age, may I say it now! To me, indeed, gentle¬ 
 men of the Senate, death may well be a thing to be even 
 desired, when I have done what I have done and reaped 
 the honors I have reaped. Only two wishes I have— 
 the one, that at my death I may leave the Roman peo¬ 
 ple free—the immortal gods can give me no greater boon 
 than this; the other, that every citizen may meet with 
 such reward as his conduct towards the state may have 
 deserved.” 
 
 The publication of this unspoken speech raised for 
 the time an enthusiasm against Antony, whom Cicero 
 now openly declared to be an enemy to the state. He 
 hurled against him Philippic after Philippic. The ap- 
 
 * I. e.. the making away with Antony. 
 
74 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 peal at tlie end of that which comes the sixth in order is 
 eloquent enough. 
 
 “The time is come at last, fellow-citizens; somewhat 
 too late, indeed, for the dignity of the people of Rome, 
 but at least the crisis is so ripe, that it cannot now be 
 deferred an instant longer. We have had one calamity 
 sent upon us, as I may say, by fate, which we bore with 
 —in such sort as it might be borne. If another befalls 
 us now, it will be one of our own choosing. That this 
 Roman people should serve any master, when the gods 
 above have willed us to be the masters of the world, is 
 a crime in the sight of heaven. The question hangs 
 now on its last issue. The struggle is for our liberties. 
 You must either conquer, Romans—and this, assuredly, 
 with such patriotism and such unanimity as I see here, 
 you must do—or you must endure anything and every¬ 
 thing rather than be slaves. Other nations may endure 
 the yoke of slavery, but the birthright of the people of 
 Rome is liberty.” 
 
 Antony had left Rome, and thrown himself, like 
 Catiline, into the arms of his soldiers, in his province 
 of Cisalpine Gaul. There he maintained himself in 
 defiance of the Senate, who at last, urged by Cicero, de¬ 
 clared him a public enemy. Csesar Octavianus (great- 
 nephew of Julius) offered his services to the state, and 
 with some hesitation they were accepted. The last 
 struggle was begun. Intelligence soon arrived that An¬ 
 tony had been defeated at Mutina by the two last con¬ 
 suls of the Republic, Hirtiusand Pansa. The news was 
 dashed, indeed, afterwards by the further announce¬ 
 ment that both consuls had died of their wounds. 
 But it was in the height of the first exultation that 
 Cicero addressed to the Senate his fourteenth Philippic 
 '—the last oration which he was ever to make. Fo? 
 
CICERO. 
 
 75 
 
 the moment, he found himself once more the fore¬ 
 most man at Rome. Crowds of roaring patriots had 
 surrounded his house that morning, escorted him in 
 triumph up to the Capitol, and back to his own house, 
 as they had done in the days of his early glory. 
 Young Caesar, who had paid him much personal defer¬ 
 ence, was professing himself a patriot; the Common¬ 
 wealth was safe again—and Cicero almost thought that 
 he again himself had saved it. 
 
 But Rome now belonged to those who had the legions. 
 It had come to that; and when Antony succeeded in 
 joining interests with Octavianus (afterwards miscalled 
 Augustus)—“the boy,” as both Cicero and Antony 
 called him—a boy in years as yet, but premature in craft 
 and falsehood—who had come “to claim his inheri¬ 
 tance,” and succeeded in rousing in the old veterans of 
 his uncle the desire to take vengeance on his murder¬ 
 ers, the fate of the Republic and of Cicero was sealed. 
 
 It was on a little eyot formed by the river Reno, near 
 Bologna, that Antony, young Caesar, and Lepidus (the 
 nominal third in what is known as the Second Trium¬ 
 virate) met to arrange among themselves the division of 
 power, and what they held to be necessary to the secur¬ 
 ing it for the future—the proscription of their several 
 enemies. No private affections or interests were to be 
 allowed to interfere with this merciless arrangemant. If 
 Lepidus would give up his brother, Antony would sur¬ 
 render an obnoxious uncle. Octavianus made a cheaper 
 sacrifice in Cicero, whom Antony, we may be sure, with 
 those terrible Philippics ringing in his ears, demanded 
 with an eager vengeance. All was soon amicably set¬ 
 tled; the proscription-lists were made out, and the Tri¬ 
 umvirate occupied Rome. 
 
 Cicero and his brother—whose name was known to 
 
76 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 be also on tlie fatal roll—heard of it while they were 
 together at the Tusculan villa. Both took immediate 
 measures to escape. But Quintus had to return to 
 Rome to get money for their flight, and, as it would 
 appear, to fetch his son. The emissaries of the Trium¬ 
 virate were sent to search the house: the father had 
 hid himself, but the son was seized, and refusing to 
 give any information, was put to the torture. His father 
 heard his cries of agony, came forth from his hiding- 
 place, and asked only to be put to death first. The son 
 in his turn made the same request, and the assassins 
 were so far merciful that they killed both at once. 
 
 Cicero himself might yet have escaped, but for some¬ 
 thing of his old indecision. He had gone on board a 
 small vessel with the intention of joining Brutus in 
 Macedonia, when he suddenly changed his mind, and 
 insisted on being put on shore again. He wandered 
 about, half-resolving (for the third time) On suicide. 
 He would go to Rome, stab himself on the altar-hearth 
 in young Caesar’s house, and call down the vengeance 
 of heaven upon the traitor. The accounts of these last 
 hours of his life are, unfortunately, somewhat con¬ 
 tradictory, and none of the authorities to be entirely 
 depended on; Abeken has made a careful attempt to 
 harmonize them, which it will be best here to follow. 
 
 Urged by the prayers of his slaves, the faithful 
 adherents of a kind master, he once more embarked, 
 and once more (Appian says, from sea-sickness, which 
 he never could endure) landed near Caieta, where he 
 had a seaside villa. Either there, or, as other accounts 
 say, at his house at Formige, he laid himself down to 
 pass the night, and wait for death. “ Let me die,” said 
 he, “ in my own country, which I have so often saved.” 
 But again the faithful slaves aroused him, forced him 
 
CICERO. 
 
 77 
 
 into a litter, and hurried him down through the woods 
 to the sea-shore—for the assassins were in hot pursuit 
 of him. They found his house shut up; but some 
 traitor showed them a short cut by which to overtake 
 the fugitive. As he lay reading (it is said), even dur-^ 
 ing these anxious moments, a play of his favorite ^ 
 Euripides, every line of whom he used to declare con¬ 
 tained some maxim worth remembering, he heard their 
 steps approaching, and ordered the litter to be set 
 down. He looked out, and recognized at the head of 
 the party an officer named Laenas, whom he had once 
 successfully defended on a capital charge; but he saw 
 no gratitude or mercy in the face, though there were 
 others of the band who covered their eyes for pity, 
 when they saw the disheveled gray hair and pale worn 
 features of the great Roman (he was within a month 
 of sixty-four). He turned from Laenas to the cen¬ 
 turion, one Henrennius, and said, “ Strike, old soldier, 
 if you understand your trade!” At the third blow—by 
 one or other of those officers, for both claimed the evil 
 honor—his head was severed. They carried it straight 
 to Antony, where he sat on the seat of justice in the 
 Forum, and demanded the offered reward. The trium¬ 
 vir, in his joy, paid it some ten times over. He sent 
 the bloody trophy to his wife; and the Roman Jezebel 
 spat in the dead face, and ran her bodkin through the 
 tongue which had spoken those bold and bitter truths 
 against her false husband. The great orator fulfilled, 
 almost in the very letter, the words which, treating of 
 the liberty of the pleader, he had put into the mouth of 
 Crassus—“You must cut out this tongue, if you would 
 check my free speech: nay, even then, my very breath¬ 
 ing should protest against your lust for power.” The 
 head, by Antony’s order, was then nailed upon the 
 
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 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 Rostra, to speak there, more eloquently than ever the 
 living lips had spoken, of the dead liberty of Rome. 
 
 CHAPTER Yli. 
 
 CHARACTER, AS A POLITICIAN AND AN ORATOR. 
 
 Cicero shared very largely in the feeling, which is 
 common to all men, of ambition and energy—a desire to 
 stand well not only with their own generation, but with 
 posterity. It is a feeling natural to every man who 
 knows that his name and acts must necessarily become 
 historical. If it is more than usually patent in Cicero’s 
 case, it is only because in his letter to Atticus we have 
 more than usual access to the inmost heart of the 
 writer; for surely such a thoroughly confidential corre¬ 
 spondence has never been published before or since. 
 “What will history say of me six hundred years 
 hence?” he asks, unbosoming himself in this sort to his 
 friend. More than thrice the six hundred years have 
 passed, and, in Cicero’s case, history has hardly yet 
 made up its mind. He has been lauded and abused, 
 from his own times down to the present, in terms as 
 extravagant as are to be found in the most passionate 
 of his own orations; both his accusers and his champions 
 have caught the trick of his rhetorical exaggeration 
 more easily than his eloquence. Modern German critics 
 like Drumann and Mommsen have attacked him with 
 hardly less bitterness, though with more decency, than 
 the historian Dio Cassius, who lived so near his own 
 times. Bishop Middleton, on the other hand, in those 
 pleasant and comprehensive volumes which are still to 
 this day the great storehouse of materials for Cicero’s 
 
CICERO. 
 
 79 
 
 biography, is as blind to bis faults as though he were 
 himself delivering a panegyric in the Rostra at Rome. 
 Perhaps it is the partiality of the learned bishop’s view 
 which has produced a reaction in the minds of sceptical 
 German scholars, and of some modern writers of our 
 own. It is impossible not to sympathize in some de¬ 
 gree with that Athenian who was tired of always hearing 
 Aristides extolled as “the Just;” and there was certainly 
 a strong temptation to critics to pick holes in a man’s 
 character who was perpetually, during his lifetime and 
 for eighteen centuries after his death, having a trumpet 
 sounded before him to announce him as the prince of 
 patriots as well as philosophers; worthy indeed, as 
 Erasmus thought, to be canonized as a saint of the 
 Catholic Church, but for the single drawback of his not 
 having been a Christian. 
 
 On one point some of his eulogists seem manifestly 
 unfair. They say that the circumstances under which 
 we form our judgment of the man are exceptional in 
 this—that we happen to possess in his case all this mass 
 of private and confidential letters (there are nearly eight 
 hundred of his own which have come down to us), 
 giving us an insight into his private motives, his secret 
 jealousies, and hopes, and fears, and ambitions, of 
 which in the case of other men we have no such reve¬ 
 lation. It Is quite true; but his advocates forget that 
 it is from the very same pages which reveal his weak¬ 
 nesses that they draw their real knowledge of many of 
 those characteristics which they most admire—his sin¬ 
 cere love for his country, his kindness of heart, his 
 amiability in all his domestic relations. It is true that 
 we cannot look into the private letters of Csesar, or 
 Pompey, or Brutus, as we can into Cicero’s; but it is 
 not so certain that if we could our estimate of their 
 
80 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 characters would be lowered. We might discover, in 
 their cases as in his, many traces of what seems insin¬ 
 cerity, timidity, a desire to sail with the stream; we 
 might find that the views which they expressed in pub¬ 
 lic were not always those which they entertained in 
 private; but we might also find an inner current of 
 kindness, and benevolence, and tenderness of heart, for 
 which the world gives them little credit. One enthu¬ 
 siastic advocate, Wieland, goes so far as to wish that 
 this kind of evidence could, in the case of such a man 
 as Cicero, have been “ cooked,” to use a modern phrase: 
 that we could have had only a judicious selection from 
 this-too truthful mass of correspondence; that his sec¬ 
 retary, Tiro, or some judicious friend, had destroyed the 
 whole packet of letters in which the great Roman be¬ 
 moaned himself, during his exile from Rome, to his 
 wife, to his brother, and to Atticus. The partisan 
 method of writing history, though often practised, has 
 seldom been so boldly professed. 
 
 But it cannot be denied, that if we know too much 
 of Cicero to judge him merely by his public life, as we 
 are obliged to do with so many heroes of history, we 
 also know far too little of those stormy times in which 
 he lived to pronounce too strongly upon his behaviour 
 in such difficult circumstances. The true relations be¬ 
 tween the various parties at Rome, as we have tried to 
 sketch them, are confessedly puzzling even to the care¬ 
 ful student. And without a thorough understanding 
 of these, it is impossible to decide, with any hope of 
 fairness, upon Cicero’s conduct as a patriot and a poli¬ 
 tician. His character was full of conflicting elements, 
 like the times in which he lived, and was necessarily in 
 a great degree molded by them. The egotism which 
 shows itself so plainly alike in his public speeches and 
 
CICERO. 
 
 81 
 
 in his private writings, more Ilian once made 1dm per¬ 
 sonal enemies, and brought him into trouble, though it 
 was combined with great kindness of heart and con¬ 
 sideration for others. He saw the right clearly, and 
 desired to follow it, but his good intentions were too 
 often frustrated by a want of firmness and decision. 
 His desire to keep well with men of all parties, so long 
 as it seemed possible (and this not so much from the 
 desire of self-aggrandizement, as from a hope through 
 their aid to serve the commonwealth) laid him open on 
 more than one occasion to the charge of insincerity. 
 
 There is one comprehensive quality which may be 
 said to have been wanting in his nature, which clouded 
 his many excellences, led him continually into false 
 positions, and even in his delightful letters excites in 
 the reader, from time to time, an impatient feeling of 
 contempt. He wanted manliness. It was a quality 
 which was fast dying out, in his day, among even the 
 best of the luxurious and corrupt aristocracy of Rome. 
 It was perhaps but little missed in his character by 
 those of his contemporaries who knew and loved him 
 best. But without that quality, to an English mind, 
 it is hard to recognize in any man, however brilliant 
 and amiable, the true philosopher or hero. 
 
 The views which this great Roman politician held 
 upon the vexed question of the ballot did not differ 
 materially from those of his worthy grandfather before- 
 mentioned.* The ballot was popular at Rome,—for 
 many reasons, some of them not the most creditable 
 to the characters of the voters; and because it was 
 popular, Cicero speaks of it occasionally, in his forensic 
 speeches, with a cautious praise; but of his real esti- 
 
 * See p. 3. 
 
82 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 mate of it there can be no kind of doubt. “I am 
 of the same opinion now,” he writes to bis brother, 
 “that ever I was; there is nothing like the open 
 suffrage of the lips.” So in one of his speeches, he 
 uses even stronger language: “The ballot,” he says, 
 “enables men to open their faces, and to cover up 
 their thoughts; it gives them licence to promise what¬ 
 ever they are asked, and at the same time to do what¬ 
 ever they please.” Mr. Grote once quoted a phrase of 
 Cicero’s, applied to the voting-papers of his day, as a 
 testimony in favor of this mode of secret suffrage— 
 grand words, and wholly untranslatable into anything 
 like corresponding English—“ Tabella vindex tacitaz 
 libertatis ”—“the tablet which secures the liberty of 
 silence.” But knowing so well as Cicero did what was 
 the ordinary 'character of Roman jurors and Roman 
 voters, and how often this “liberty of silence” was a 
 liberty to take a bribe and to vote the other way, one 
 can almost fancy that we see upon his lips, as he utters 
 the sounding phrase, that playful curve of irony which 
 is said to have been their characteristic expression.* 
 Mr. Grote forgot, too, as was well pointed out by a 
 writer in the “Quarterly Review,”f that in the very 
 next sentence the orator is proud to boast that he 
 himself was not so elected to office, but “by the living 
 voices” of his fellow-citizens. 
 
 The character of his eloquence may be understood 
 in some degree by the few extracts which have been 
 given from his public speeches; always remembering 
 how many of its charms are necessarily lost by losing 
 
 * No bust, coin, or gem is known which bears any genuine 
 likeness of Cicero. There are several existing which purport to 
 be such, but all are more or less apocryphal, 
 t Quarterly Review, lxi. 522. 
 
CICERO . 
 
 8B 
 
 the actual language in which his thoughts were clothed. 
 We have lost perhaps nearly as much in another way, 
 in that we can only read the great orator instead of 
 listening to him. Yet it is possible, after all, that 
 this loss to us is not so great as it might seem. Some 
 of his best speeches, as we know—those, for instance, 
 against Yerres and in defence of Milo—were written 
 in the closet, and never spoken at all; and most of the 
 others were reshaped and published for publication. 
 Nor is it certain that his declamation, which some of 
 his Roman rivals found fault with as savoring too 
 much of the florid Oriental type, would have been agree¬ 
 able to our colder English taste. He looked upon gesture 
 and action as essential elements of the orator’s power, 
 and had studied them carefully from the artists of the 
 theatre. There can be no doubt that we have his own 
 views on this point in the words which he has put 
 into the mouth of his “Brutus,” in the treatise on 
 oratory which bears that name. He protests against the 
 “Attic coldness” of style which, he says, would soon 
 empty the benches of their occupants. He would 
 have the action and bearing of the speaker to be such 
 that even the distant spectator, too far off to hear, 
 should “ know that there was a Roscius on the stage.” 
 He would have found a French audience in this re¬ 
 spect more sympathetic than an English one.* His 
 
 * Our speakers certainly fall into the other extreme. The 
 British orator’s style of gesticulation may still be recognized, 
 mutatis mutandis , in Addison’s ljumorous sketch of a century 
 ago: “ You may see many a smart rhetorician turning his hat 
 in his hands, molding it into several different cocks, examin¬ 
 ing sometimes the lining and sometimes the button, during the 
 whole course of his harangue. A deaf man would think that he 
 was cheapening a beaver, when he is talking perhaps of the fate 
 of the British nation.” 
 
84 
 
 TIIE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 own highly nervous temperament would certainly tend 
 to excited action. The speaker, who, as we are told, 
 “shuddered visibly over his whole body when he first 
 began to speak,” was almost sure, as he warmed to his 
 work, to throw himself into it with a passionate energy. 
 
 He has put on record his own ideas of the qualifica¬ 
 tions and the duties of the public speaker, whether in 
 the Senate or at the bar, in three continuous treatises 
 on the subject, entitled respectively, “On Oratory,” 
 “Brutus,” and “ The Orator,” as well as in some other 
 works of which we have only fragments remaining. 
 With the first of these works, which he inscribed to 
 his brother, he was himself exceedingly well satisfied, 
 and it perhaps remains still the ablest, as it was the 
 first, attempt to reduce eloquence to a science. The 
 second is a critical sketch of the great orators of Rome: 
 and in the third we have Cicero’s view of what the 
 perfect orator should be. His ideal is a high one, and 
 a true one; that he should not be the mere rhetorician, 
 any more than the mere technical lawyer or keen 
 partisan, but the man of perfect education and perfect 
 taste, who can speak on all subjects, out of the fulness 
 of his mind, “with variety and copiousness.” 
 
 Although, as has been already said, he appears to 
 have attached but little value to a knowledge of the 
 technicalities of law, in other respects his preparation 
 for his work was of the most careful kind; if we 
 may assume, as we probably may, that it is his own 
 experience which, in his treatise on Oratory, he puts 
 into the mouth of Marcus Antonius, one of his greatest 
 predecessors at the Roman bar. 
 
 “It is my habit to have every client explain to me 
 personally his own case; to allow no one else to be 
 present, that so he may speak more freely. Then I 
 
CICERO . 
 
 85 
 
 take the opponent’s side, while I make him plead his 
 own cause, and bring forward whatever arguments he 
 can think of. Then, when he is gone, I take upon 
 myself, with as much impartiality as I can, three dif¬ 
 ferent characters—my own, my opponent’s, and that of 
 the jury. Whatever point seems likely to help the 
 case rather than injure it, this I decide must be brought 
 forward; when I see that anything is likely to do 
 more harm than good, I reject and throw it aside alto¬ 
 gether. So I gain this,—that I think over first what 
 I mean to say, and speak afterwards; while a good 
 many pleaders, relying on their abilities, try to do 
 both at once.”* 
 
 He reads a useful lesson to young and zealous advo¬ 
 cates in the same treatise—that sometimes it may be 
 wise not to touch at all in reply upon a point which 
 makes against your client, and to which you have no 
 real answer; and that it is even more important to 
 say nothing which may injure your case than to omit 
 something which might possibly serve it. A maxim 
 which some modern barristers (and some preachers 
 also) might do well to bear in mind. 
 
 Yet he did not scorn to use what may almost be called 
 the tricks of his art, if he thought they would help to 
 secure him a verdict. The outward and visible appeal 
 to the feelings seems to have been as effective in the 
 Roman forum as with a British jury. Cicero would 
 have his client stand by his side dressed in mourn¬ 
 ing, with hair disheveled, and in tears, when he 
 meant to make a pathetic appeal to the compassion of 
 the jurors; or a family group would be arranged, as 
 circumstances allowed,—the* wife and children, the 
 
 * De Oratore II., 24, 72. 
 
86 
 
 TEE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 mother and sisters, or the aged father, if present¬ 
 able, would be introduced iu open court to create 
 a sensation at the right moment. He had tears ap¬ 
 parently as ready at his command as an eloquent 
 3nd well-known English Attorney-General. Nay, the 
 tears seem to have been marked down, as it were, upon 
 his brief. “ My feelings prevent my saying more,” he 
 declares in his defense of Publius Sylla. “I weep 
 while I make the appeal”—“I cannot go on for tears” 
 —he repeats towards the close of that fine oration in 
 behalf of Milo—the speech that never was spoken. 
 Such phrases remind us of the story told of a French 
 preacher, whose manuscripts were found to have mar¬ 
 ginal stage directions: “Here take out your handker¬ 
 chief;’—“here cry—if possible.” But such were held 
 to be the legitimate adjuncts of Roman oratory, and it 
 is quite possible to conceive that the advocate, like 
 more than one modern tragedian who could be named, 
 entered so thoroughly into the spirit of the part that 
 the tears flowed quite naturally. 
 
 A far less legitimate weapon of oratory—offensive 
 and not defensive—was the bitter and coarse person¬ 
 ality in which he so frequently indulged. Its use was 
 held perfectly lawful in the Roman forum, whether in 
 political debate or in judicial pleadings, and it was 
 sure to be highly relished by a mixed audience. There 
 is no reason to suppose that Cicero had recourse to it 
 in any unusual degree; but employ it he did, and 
 most unscrupulously. It was not only private charac¬ 
 ter that he attacked, as in the case of Antony and 
 Clodius, but even personal defects or peculiarities were 
 made the subject of bitter ridicule. He did not hesi¬ 
 tate to season his harangue by a sarcasm on the cast 
 in the prosecutor’s eye, or the wen on the defendant’s 
 
CICERO . 
 
 87 
 
 neck, and to direct the attention of the court to these 
 points, as though they were corroborative evidence of 
 a moral deformity. The most conspicuous instance 
 of this practice of his is in the invective which he 
 launched in the Senate against Piso, who had made a 
 speech reflecting upon him. Referring to Cicero’s exile, 
 he had made that sore subject doubly sore by declaring 
 that it was not Cicero’s unpopularity, so much as his 
 unfortunate propensity to bad verse, which had been the 
 cause of it. A jingling line of his to the effect that 
 
 “The gown wins grander triumphs than the sword.” * 
 
 had been thought to be pointed against the recent 
 victories of Pompey, and to have provoked him to use 
 his influence to get rid of the author. But this an¬ 
 notation of Cicero’s poetry had not been Piso’s only 
 offence. He had been consul at the time of the exile, 
 and had given vent, it may be remembered, to the 
 witticism that the “saviour of Rome” might save the 
 city a second time by his absence. Cicero was not 
 the man to forget it. The beginning of his attack 
 on Piso is lost, but there is quite enough remaining. 
 Piso was of a swarthy complexion, approaching prob¬ 
 ably to the negro type. “Beast”—is the term by 
 which Cicero addresses him. “Beast! there is no 
 mistaking the evidence of that slave-like hue, those 
 bristly cheeks, those discolored fangs. Your eyes, 
 your brows, your face, your whole aspect, are the tacit 
 index to your soul.”f 
 
 * “ Cedant arma togae, concedat laurea linguae.” 
 t Such flowers of eloquence are not encouraged at the modern 
 bar. But they were common enough, even in the English law- 
 courts, in former times Mr. Attorney-General Coke's language 
 to Raleigh at his trial— “ Thou viper!” comes quite up t<? 
 
88 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 It is not possible, within the compass of these pages, 
 to give even the briefest account of more than a few of 
 the many causes (they are twenty-four in number) in 
 which the speeches made by Cicero, either for the 
 prosecution or the defence, have been preserved to us. 
 Some of them have more attraction for the English 
 reader than others, either from the facts of the case 
 being more interesting or more easily understood, or 
 from their affording more opportunity for the display 
 of the speaker’s powers. 
 
 Mr. Fox had an intense admiration for the speech 
 in defense of Cselius. The opinion of one who was 
 no mean orator himself, on his great Roman predeces¬ 
 sor, may be worth quoting:— 
 
 “ Argumentative contention is not what he excels in; and he 
 is never, I think, so happy as when he has an opportunity of ex¬ 
 hibiting a mixture of philosophy and pleasantry, and especially 
 when he can interpose anecdotes and references to the authority 
 of the eminent characters in the history of his own country. 
 No man appears, indeed, to have had such a real respect for au¬ 
 thority as he; and therefore when he speaks on that subject he 
 is always natural and earnest.” * 
 
 There is anecdote and pleasantry enough in this par¬ 
 ticular oration; but the scandals of Roman society of 
 that day, into which the defence of Cselius was obliged 
 to enter, are not the most edifying subject for any read- 
 
 Cicero’s. Perhaps the Irish House of Parliament, while it ex¬ 
 isted, furnished the choicest modern specimens of this style of 
 oratory. Mr. O’Flanagan, in his “ Lives of the Lord Chancellors 
 of Ireland,” tells us that a member for Galway, attacking an 
 opponent when he knew that his sister was present during the 
 debate, denounced the whole family—“ from the toothless old 
 hag that is now grinning in the gallery, to the white-livered 
 scoundrel that is shivering on the floor.” 
 
 * Letter to G. Wakefield—Correspondence, p. 35. 
 
CICERO. 
 
 89 
 
 ers. Cselius was a young man of “equestrian” rank, 
 who bad been a kind of ward of Cicero’s, and must have 
 given him a good deal of trouble by his profligate habits, 
 if the guardianship was anything more than nominal. 
 But in this particular case the accusation brought against 
 him—of trying to murder an ambassador from Egypt by 
 means of hired assassins, and then to poison the lady 
 who had lent him the money to bribe them with—was 
 probably untrue. Clodia, the lady in question, was 
 the worthy sister of the notorious Clodius, and bore as 
 evil a reputation as it was possible for a woman to bear 
 in the corrupt society of Rome—which is saying a great 
 deal. She is the real mover in the case, though another 
 enemy of Cselius, the son of a man whom he had himself 
 brought to trial for bribery, was the ostensible prosecu¬ 
 tor. Cicero, therefore, throughout the whole of his 
 speech, aims the bitter shafts of his wit and eloquence 
 at Clodia. His brilliant invectives against this lady, 
 who was, as he pointedly said, “ not only noble but no¬ 
 torious,” are not desirable to quote. But the opening 
 of the speech is in the advocate’s best style. The trial, 
 it seems, took place on a public holiday, when it was 
 net usual to take any cause unless it were of pressing 
 importance. 
 
 “If any spectator be here present, gentlemen, who 
 knows nothing of our laws, our courts of justice, or our 
 national customs, he will not fail to wonder what can 
 be the atrocious nature of this case, that on a day of 
 national festival and public holiday like this, when all 
 other business in the Forum is suspended, this single 
 trial should be going on; and he will entertain no doubt 
 but that the accused is charged with a crime of such 
 enormity, that if it were not at once taken cognizance 
 of, the constitution itself would be in peril. And if he 
 
90 
 
 TEE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 heard there was a law which enjoined that in the case of 
 seditions and disloyal citizens who should take up arms 
 to attack the Senate-house, or use violence against the 
 magistrates, or levy war against the commonwealth, in¬ 
 quisition into the matter should be made at once, on the 
 very day;—he would not find fault with such a law: he 
 would only ask the nature of the charge. But when he 
 heard that it was no such atrocious crime, no treason¬ 
 able attempt, no violent outrage, which formed the 
 subject of this trial, but that a young man of brilliant 
 abilities, hard-working in public life, and of popular 
 character, was here accused by the son of a man whom 
 he had himself once prosecuted, and was still prosecut¬ 
 ing, and that all a bad woman’s wealth and influence 
 were being used against him,—he might take no excep¬ 
 tion to the filial zeal of Atratinus; but he would surely 
 say that woman’s infamous revenge should be baffled and 
 punished. ... I can excuse Atratinus; as to the other 
 parties, they deserve neither excuse nor forbearance.” 
 
 It was a stronge story, the case for the prosecution, 
 especially as regarded the alleged attempt to poison 
 Clodia. The poison was given to a friend of Caelius, 
 he was to give it to some slaves of Clodia whom he was 
 to meet at certain baths frequented by her, and they 
 were in some way to administer it. But the slaves be¬ 
 trayed the secret; and the lady employed certain gay 
 and profligate young men, who were hangers-on of her 
 own, to conceal themselves somewhere in the baths, and 
 pounce upon Caelius’s emissary with the poison in his 
 possession. But this scheme was said to have failed. 
 Clodia’s detectives had rushed from their place of con¬ 
 cealment too soon, and the bearer of the poison escaped. 
 The counsel for the prisoner makes a great point of this. 
 
 “Why, ’tis the catastrophy of a stage-play—nay, of a 
 
CICERO . 
 
 91 
 
 burlesque; when no more artistic solution of the plot 
 can be invented, the hero escapes, the bell rings, and— 
 the curtain falls! For I ask why, when Licinius was 
 there trembling, hesitating, retreating, trying to escape 
 —why that lady’s body-guard let him go out of their 
 hands? Were they afraid lest, so many against one, 
 such stout champions against a single helpless man, 
 frightened as he was and fierce as they were, they could 
 not master him? I should like exceedingly to see them, 
 those curled and scented youths, the bosom-friends of 
 this rich and noble lady; those stout men-at-arms who 
 were posted by their she-captain in this ambuscade in 
 the baths. And I should like to ask them how they hid 
 themselves, and where? A bath?—why, it must either 
 have been a Trojan horse, which bore within its womb 
 this band of invincible heroes who went to war for a 
 woman! I would make them answer this question,— 
 why they, being so many and so brave, did not either 
 seize this slight strippling, whom you see before you, 
 where he stood, or overtake him when he fled? They 
 will hardly be able to explain themselves, I fancy, if 
 they get into that witness-box, however clever and witty 
 they may be at the banquet,—nay, even eloquent occa¬ 
 sionally, no doubt, over their wine. But the air of a 
 court of justice is somewhat different from that of the 
 banquet-hall; the benches of this court are not like 
 the couches of a supper-table; the array of this jury 
 presents a different spectacle from a company of rev¬ 
 elers; nay, the broad glare of sunshine is harder to face 
 than the glitter of the lamps. If they venture into it, I 
 shall have to strip them of their pretty conceits and 
 fools’ gear. But, if they will be ruled by me, they will 
 betake themselves to another trade, win favor in another 
 quarter, flaunt themselves elsewhere than in this court. 
 
92 
 
 TEE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 Let them carry their brave looks to their lady there; let 
 them lord it at her expense, cling to her, lie at her feet, 
 be her slaves; only let them make no attempt upon the 
 life and honor of an innocent man.” 
 
 The satellites of Clodia could scarcely have felt com¬ 
 fortable under this withering fire of sarcasm. The 
 speaker concluded with an apology—much required— 
 for his client’s faults, as those of a young man, and a 
 promise on his behalf—on the faith of an advocate— 
 that he would behave better for the future. He 
 wound up the whole with a point of sensational 
 rhetoric which was common, as has been said, to 
 the Roman bar as to our own—an appeal to the 
 jurymen as fathers. He pointed to the aged father of 
 the defendant, leaning in the most approved attitude 
 upon the shoulder of his son. Either this, or the want 
 of evidence, or the eloquence of the pleader, had its due 
 effect. Cselius was triumphantly acquitted; and it is a 
 proof that the young man was not wholly graceless, that 
 he rose afterwards to high public office, and never for¬ 
 got his obligations to his eloquent counsel, to whom he 
 continued a stanch friend. He must have had good 
 abilities, for he was honored with frequent letters from 
 Cicero when the latter was governor of Cilicia. He 
 kept up some of his extravagant tastes; for when he 
 was iEdile (which involved the taking upon him the ex¬ 
 pense of certain gladiatorial and wild-beast exhibitions), 
 he wrote to beg his friend to send him out of his pro¬ 
 vince some panthers for his show. Cicero complied 
 with the request, and took the opportunity, so character¬ 
 istic of him, of lauding his own administration of Cilicia, 
 and making a kind of pun at the same time. “ I have 
 given orders to the hunters to see about the panthers; 
 but panthers are very scarce, and the few there are 
 
CICERO . 
 
 93 
 
 complain, people say, that in the whole province there 
 are no traps laid for anybody but for them.” Catching 
 and skinning the unfortunate provincials, which had 
 been a favorite sport with governors like Yerres, had 
 been quite done away with in Cilicia, we are to under¬ 
 stand, under Cicero’s rule. 
 
 His defence of Ligarius, who was impeached of trea¬ 
 son against the state in the person of Caesar, as having 
 borne arms against him in his African campaign, has 
 also been deservedly admired. There was some courage 
 in Cicero’s undertaking his defence; as a known parti¬ 
 san of Pompey, he was treading on dangerous and 
 delicate ground. Caesar was dictator at the time; and 
 the case seems to have been tried before him as the sole 
 judicial authority, without pretence of the intervention 
 of anything like a jury. The defence—if defence it 
 may be called—is a remarkable instance of the common 
 appeal, not to the merits of the case, but to the feelings 
 of the court. After making out what case he could for 
 his client, the advocate as it were throws up his brief, 
 and rests upon the clemency of the judge. Caesar him¬ 
 self, it must be remembered, had begun public life, like 
 Cicero, as a pleader: and, in the opinion of some com¬ 
 petent judges, such as Tacitus and Quintilian, had bid 
 fair to be a close rival. 
 
 “ I have pleaded many causes, Caesar—some, indeed, 
 in association with yourself, while your public career 
 spared you to the courts; but surely I never yet used 
 language of this sort,—‘ Pardon him, sirs, he has of¬ 
 fended : he has made a false step: he did not think to 
 do it; he never will again.’ This is language we use to 
 a father. To the court it must be,—‘ He did not do it: 
 he never contemplated it: the evidence is false; the 
 charge is fabricated.’ If you tell me you sit but as the 
 
94 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 judge of the fact in this case, Caesar,—if you ask me 
 where and when he served against you,—I am silent; I 
 will not now dwell on the extenuating circumstances, 
 which even before a judicial tribunal might have their 
 weight. We take this course before a judge, but I am 
 here pleading to a father. ‘ I have erred—I have done 
 wrong, I am sorry: I take refuge in your clemency; I 
 ask forgiveness for my fault; I pray you, pardon me.’ 
 . . . There is nothing so popular, believe me, sir, as 
 
 kindness; of all your many virtues none wins men’s 
 admiration and their love like mercy. In nothing do 
 men reach so near the gods, as when they can give life 
 and safely to mankind. Fortune has given you nothing 
 more glorious than the power, your own nature can 
 supply nothing more noble than the will, to spare and 
 pardon wherever you can. The case perhaps demands 
 a longer advocacy—your gracious disposition feels it 
 too long already. So I make an end, preferring for my 
 cause that you should argue with your own heart, than 
 that I or any other should argue with you. I will urge 
 nothing more than this,—the grace which you shall 
 extend to my client in his absence, will be felt as a 
 boon by all here present.” 
 
 The great conqueror was, it is said, visibly affected 
 by the appeal, and Ligarius was pardoned. 
 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 
 MINOR CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 Hot content with his triumphs in prose, Cicero had 
 always anJ ambition to be a poet. Of his attempts in 
 this way we have only some imperfect fragments, 
 scattered here and there through his other works, 
 
CICERO. 
 
 95 
 
 too scanty to form any judgment upon. His poetical 
 ability is apt to be unfairly measured by two lines 
 which his opponents were very fond of quoting and 
 laughing at, and which for that reason have become 
 the best known. But it is obvious that if Wordsworth 
 or Tennyson were to be judged solely by a line or two 
 picked out by an unfavorable reviewer—say from 
 “Peter Bell” or from the early version of the “ Miller’s 
 Daughter”—posterity would have a very mistaken 
 appreciation of their merits. Plutarch and the younger 
 Pliny, who had seen more of Cicero’s poetry than we 
 have, thought highly of it. So he did himself; but 
 so it was his nature to think of most of his own per¬ 
 formances; and such an estimate is common to other 
 authors besides Cicero, though few announce it so 
 openly. Montaigne takes him to task for this, with 
 more wit, perhaps, than fairness. “It is no great fault 
 to write poor verses; but it is a fault not to be able to 
 see how unworthy such poor verses were of his reputa¬ 
 tion.” Voltaire, on the other hand, who was perhaps 
 as good a judge, thought there was “nothing more 
 beautiful” than some of the fragments of his poem on 
 “Marius,” who was the ideal hero of his youth. Per¬ 
 haps the very fact, however, of none of his poems hav¬ 
 ing been preserved, is some argument that such poetic 
 gift as he had was rather facility than genius. He 
 wrote, besides this poem on “Marius,” a “History of 
 my Consulship,” and a “History of my Own Times,” 
 in verse, and some translations from Homer. 
 
 He had no notion of what other men called relaxation: 
 he found his own relaxation in a change of work. He 
 excuses himself in one of his orations for this strange 
 taste, as it would seem to the indolent and luxurious 
 Roman nobles with whom he was so unequally yoked. 
 
96 
 
 TEE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 “ Who after all shall blame me, or who has any right 
 to be angry with me, if the time which is not grudged 
 to others for managing their private business, for at¬ 
 tending public games and festivals, for pleasures of any 
 other kind—nay, even for very rest of mind and body 
 —the time which others give to convivial meetings, to 
 the gaming-table, to the tennis-court—this much I take 
 for myself, for the resumption of my favorite studies?” 
 
 In this defatigable appetite for work of all kinds, he 
 reminds us of no modern politician so much as of Sir 
 George Cornewall Lewis; yet he would not have alto¬ 
 gether agreed with him in thinking that life would be 
 very tolerable if it were not for its amusements. He 
 was, as we have seen, of a naturally social disposition. 
 “ I like a dinner-party,” he says in a letter to one of his 
 friends “where I can say just what comes uppermost, 
 and turn my sighs and sorrows into a hearty laugh. I 
 doubt whether you are much better yourself when you 
 can laugh as you did even at a philosopher. When the 
 man asked—‘ Whether anybody wanted to know any¬ 
 thing?’ you said you had been wanting to know all day 
 when it would be dinner-time. The fellow expected 
 you to say you wanted to know how many worlds there 
 were, or something of that kind.” * 
 
 He is said to have been a great laugher. Indeed, he 
 confesses honestly that the sense of humor was very 
 powerful with him—“ I am wonderfully taken by any¬ 
 thing comic,” he writes to one of his friends. He reck¬ 
 ons humor also as a useful ally to the orator. “ A hap¬ 
 py jest or facetious turn is not only pleasant, but also 
 
 * These professional philosophers, at literary dinner parties, 
 offered to discuss and answer any question propounded by the 
 company. 
 
CICERO. 
 
 97 
 
 highly Useful occasionallybut he adds that this is an 
 accomplishment which must come naturally, and can¬ 
 not be taught under any possible system.* There is at 
 least sufficient evidence that he was much given to mak¬ 
 ing jokes, and some of them which have come down*to 
 us would imply that a Roman audience was not very 
 critical on this point. There is an air of gravity about 
 all courts of justice which probably makes a very faint 
 amount of jocularity hailed as a relief. Even in an 
 English law court, a joke from the bar, much more 
 from the bench, does not need to be of any remarkable 
 brilliancy in order to be secure of raising a laugh: and 
 we may fairly suppose that the same was the case at 
 Rome. Cicero’s jokes were frequently nothing more 
 than puns, which it would be impossible, even if it 
 were worth while, to reproduce to an English ear. 
 Perhaps the best, or at all events the most intelligible, 
 is his retort to Hortensius during the trial of Yerres. 
 The latter was said to have feed his counsel out of his 
 Sicilian spoils—especially there was a figure of a sphinx 
 of some artistic value, which had found its way from 
 the house of the ex-governor into that of Hortensius. 
 Cicero was putting a witness through a cross-examina- 
 of which his opponent could not see the bearing. “I 
 do not understand all this,” said Hortensius; “ I am no 
 hand at solving riddles.” “ That is strange, too,” re¬ 
 joined Cicero, “ when you have a sphinx at home.” In 
 the same trial he condescended, in the midst of that 
 burning eloquence of which we have spoken, to make 
 two puns on the defendant’s name. The word “ Verves” 
 had two meanings in the old Latin tongue: it signified 
 a “boar-pig,” and also a “broom” or “ sweeping- 
 
 * De Orat, II. 54. 
 
98 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY . 
 
 brush.” One of Verres’s friends, who either w T as, or had 
 the reputation of being, a Jew, had tried to get the man¬ 
 agement of the prosecution out of Cicero’s hands. 
 “ What has a Jew to do with porkV’ asked the orator. 
 Speaking, in the course of the same trial, of the way in 
 which the governor had made “requisitions” of all the 
 most valuable works of art throughout the island, “ the 
 broom A said he, “swept clean.” He did not disdain 
 the comic element in poetry, more than in prose; for 
 we find in Quintilian* a quotation from a punning epi¬ 
 gram in some collection of such trifles which in his time 
 bore Cicero’s name. Tiro is said to have collected and 
 published three volumes of his master’s good things af¬ 
 ter his death; but if they were not better than those 
 which have come down to us, as contained in his other 
 writings, there has been no great loss to literature in 
 Tiro’s “ Ciceroniana.” He knew one secret at least of a 
 successful humorist in society; for it is to him that we 
 owe the first authoritative enunciation of a rule which 
 is universally admitted—“that a jest never has so good 
 an effect as when it is uttered with a serious counte¬ 
 nance.” 
 
 Cicero had a wonderful admiration for the Greeks. 
 “I am not ashamed to confess,” he writes to his 
 brother, “ especially since my life and career have been 
 such that no suspicion of indolence or want of energy 
 can rest upon me, that all my own attainments are due 
 to those studies and those accomplishments which have 
 been handed down to us in the literary treasures and the 
 philosophical systems of the Greeks.” It was no mere 
 rhetorical outburst, when in his defence of Valerius 
 Flaccus, accused like Verres, whether truly or falsely, 
 
 * “ Libellus Jocularis,” Quint, viii. 6. 
 
CICERO. 
 
 99 
 
 of corrupt administration in his province, he thus 
 introduced the deputation- from Athens and Lacedae¬ 
 mon who appeared as witnesses to the character of his 
 client. 
 
 “ Athenians are here to-day among whom civilization, 
 learning, religion, agriculture, public law and justice, 
 had their birth, and whence they have been disseminat¬ 
 ed over all the world; for the possession of whose city, 
 on account of its exceeding beauty, even gods are said 
 to have contended: which is of such antiquity, that she 
 is said to have bred her citizens within herself, and the 
 same soil is termed at once their mother, their nurse, 
 and their country; whose importance and influence is 
 such that the name of Greece, though it has lost much 
 of its weight and power, still holds its place by virtue 
 of the renown of this single city.” 
 
 He had forgotten, perhaps, as an orator is allowed to 
 forget, that in the very same speech, when his object was 
 to discredit the accusers of his client, he had said, what 
 was very commonly said of the Greeks at Rome, that 
 they were a nation of liars. There were excellent men. 
 among them, he allowed—thinking at the moment of the 
 counter-evidence which he had ready for the defendant— 
 but he goes on to make this sweeping declaration:— 
 
 “I will say this of the whole race of the Greeks: I 
 grant them literary genius, I grant them skill in vari¬ 
 ous accomplishments, I do not deny them elegance in 
 conversation, acuteness of intellect, fluent oratory; 
 to any other high qualities they may claim I make no 
 objection; but the sacred obligation that lies upon a 
 witness to speak the truth is wliat that nation has 
 never regarded.” * 
 
 r r - ■ — . . .. . - ■■■ ■■ 
 
 * Defense of Val. Flaccus, c. 4. 
 
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 TIIE ELZEVIR LIBRARY 
 
 There was a certain proverb, he went on to say, 
 “Lend me your evidence,” implying—“and you shall 
 have mine when you want it;’ a Greek proverb, of 
 course, and men knew these three words of Greek who 
 knew no Greek besides. What he loved in the Greeks, 
 then, was rather the grandeur of their literature and 
 the charm of their social qualities (a strict regard for 
 truth is, unhappily, no indispensable ingredient in this 
 last); he had no respect whatever for their national 
 character. The orator was influenced, perhaps, most 
 of all by his intense reverence for the Athenian De¬ 
 mosthenes, whom, as a master in his art, he imitated 
 and well nigh worshiped. The appreciation of liis 
 own powers which every able man has, and of which 
 Cicero had at least his share, fades into humility when 
 he comes to speak of his great model. “Absolutely 
 perfect,” he calls him in one place; and again in an¬ 
 other, “ What I have attempted, Demosthenes has 
 achieved.” Yet he felt also at times, when the fervor 
 of genius was strong within him, that there was an 
 ideal of eloquence enshrined in his own inmost mind, 
 “ which I can feel,” he says, “but which I never knew 
 to exist in any man.” 
 
 He could not only write Greek as a scholar, but seems 
 to have spoken it with considerable ease and fluency; 
 for on one occasion he made a speech in that language, 
 a condescension which some of his friends thought 
 derogatory to the dignity of a Roman. 
 
 From the Greeks he learnt to appreciate art. How 
 far his taste was really cultivated in this respect is Qiffh 
 cult for us to judge. Some passages in his letters to 
 Atticus might lead us to suspect that, as Disraeli con¬ 
 cludes, he was rather a collector than a real lover of art. 
 His appeals to his friend to buy up for him everything 
 
CICERO. 
 
 101 
 
 and anything, and his surrender of himself entirely to 
 Atticus’s judgment in such purchases, do not bespeak a 
 highly critical taste. In a letter to another friend, he 
 seems to say that he only bought statuary as “furniture” 
 for the gymnasium at his country seat; and he com¬ 
 plains that four figures of Bacchanals, -which this friend 
 had just bought for him, had cost more than he would 
 care to give for all the statues that ever were made. 
 On the other hand, when he comes to deal with Verres’s 
 wholesale plunder of paintings and statues in Sicily he 
 talks abofit the several works with considerable enthusi¬ 
 asm. Either he really understood his subject, or, like 
 an able advocate, he had thoroughly got up his brief. 
 But the art-notices which are scattered through his 
 works show a considerable aquaintance with the artist- 
 world of his day. He tells us, in his own admirable 
 style, the story of Zeuxis, and the selection which he 
 made from all the beauties of Crotona, in order to com¬ 
 bine their several points of perfection in his portrait of 
 Helen; he refers more than once, and always in language 
 which implies an appreciation of the artist, to the works 
 of Phidias, especially that which is said to have cost 
 him his life—the shield of Minerva; and he discusses, 
 though it is but by way of illustration, the comparative 
 points of merit in the statues of Calamis, and Myron, 
 and Polycletus, and in the paintings of the earlier 
 schools of Zeuxis, Polygnotus, and Timanthes, with 
 their four primitive colors, as compared with the more 
 finished schools of Protogenes and Apelles. 
 
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 TEE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CICERO’S CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 I. Atticus. 
 
 It seems wonderful how, in the midst of all his work, 
 Cicero found time to keep up such a voluminous corres¬ 
 pondence. Something like eight hundred of his letters 
 still remain to us, and there were whole volumes of 
 them long preserved which are now lost,* * to say nothing 
 of the very many which may never have been thought 
 worth preserving. The secret lay in his wonderful 
 energy and activity. We find him writing letters be¬ 
 fore day-break, during the service of his meals, on his 
 journeys, and dictating them to an amanuensis as he 
 walked up and down to take needful exercise. 
 
 His correspondents were of almost all varieties of 
 position and character, from Caesar and Pompey, the 
 great men of the day, down to his domestic servant 
 and secretary, Tiro. Among them were rich and ease- 
 loving Epicureans like Atticus and Psetus, and even 
 men of pleasure like Caelius: grave Stoics like Cato, 
 eager patriots like Brutus and Cassius, authors such as 
 Cornelius Hepos and Lucceius the historians, Yarro the 
 grammarian, and Metius the poet; men who dabbled 
 with literature in a gentleman-like way, like Hirtius and 
 Appius, and the accomplished literary critic and patron 
 of the day—himself of no mean reputation as poet, 
 orator, and historian—Caius Asinius Pollio. Cicero’s 
 versatile powers found no difficulty in suiting the con- 
 
 ^ 
 
 * Collections of his letters to Caesar, Brutus, Cornelius Nepos, 
 the historian, Hirtius, Pansa, and to his son, are known to have 
 . existed, 
 
CICERO. 
 
 103 
 
 tents of his own letters to the various tastes and interests 
 of his friends. Sometimes he sends to his correspondent 
 what was in fact a political journal of the day—rather 
 one-sided, it must be confessed, as all political journals 
 are, but furnishing us with items of intelligence which 
 throw light, as nothing else can, on the history of those 
 latter days of the Republic. Sometimes he jots down 
 the mere gossip of his last dinner party; sometimes he 
 notices the speculations of the last new theorist in phi¬ 
 losophy, or discusses with a literary friend some philo¬ 
 logical question—the latter being a study in which he 
 was very fond of dabbling, though with little success, 
 for the science of language was as yet unknown. 
 
 His chief correspondent, as has been said, was his old 
 schoolfellow and constant friend through life, Pom 
 ponius Atticus. The letters addressed to him which 
 still remain to us cover a period of twenty-four years, 
 with a few occasional interruptions, and the correspon¬ 
 dence only ceased with Cicero’s death. The Athenian- 
 ized Roman, though he had deliberately withdrawn him¬ 
 self from the distracting factions of' his native city, 
 which he seldom revisited, kept on the best terms with 
 the leaders of all parties, and seems to have taken a 
 very lively interest, though merely in the character of a 
 looker-on, in the political events which crowded so fast 
 upon each other during the fifty years of his voluntary 
 expatriation. Cicero’s letters were to him what an Eng¬ 
 lish newspaper would be now to an English gentleman 
 who for liis own reasons preferred to reside in Paris, 
 without forswearing his national interests and sympa¬ 
 thies. At times, when Cicero was more at leisure, and 
 when messengers were handy (for we have to remember 
 that there was nothing like our modern post), Cicero 
 would despatch one of these letters to Atticus daily. 
 
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 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 We have nearly four hundred of them in all. They are 
 continually garnished, even to the point of affectation, 
 with Greek quotations and phrases, partly perhaps in 
 compliment to his friend’s Athenian tastes, and partly 
 from the writer’s own passion for the language. 
 
 So much reference has been made to them throughout 
 the previous biographical sketch,—for they supply us 
 with some of the most important materials for Cicero’s 
 life and times,—that it may be sufficient to give in this 
 place two or three of the shorter as specimens of the 
 collection. One which describes a visit which he re¬ 
 ceived from Julius Csesar, already Dictator, in his 
 country-house near Puteoli, is interesting, as affording 
 a glimpse behind the scenes in those momentous days 
 when no one knew exactly whether the great captain 
 was to turn out a patriot or a conspirator against the 
 liberties of Rome. 
 
 ‘ ‘ To think that I should have had such a tremendous 
 visitor! But never mind; for all went off very pleasantly. 
 But when he arrived at Philippus’s house* on the even¬ 
 ing of the second day of the Saturnalia, the place was so 
 full of soldiers that they could hardly find a spare table 
 for Caesar himself to dine at. There were two thousand 
 men. Really I was in a state of perplexity as to what 
 was to be done next day: but Barba Cassius came to my 
 aid,—he supplied me with a guard. They pitched their 
 tents in the grounds, and the house was protected. He 
 stayed with Pliilippus until one o’clock on the third day 
 of the Saturnalia, and would see no one. Going over 
 accounts, I suppose, with Balbus. Then he walked on 
 the sea-shore. After two he had a bath: then he listened 
 to some verses on Mamurra, without moving a muscle 
 
 * This was close to Cicero’s villa, on the coast. 
 
CICERO. 
 
 105 
 
 of his countenance: then dressed,* and sat down to 
 dinner. He had taken a precautionary emetic, and 
 therefore ate and drank heartily and unrestrainedly. 
 We had, I assure you, a very good dinner, and well 
 served; and not only that, but 
 
 ‘ The feast of reason and the flow of soul’t 
 
 besides. His suite were abundantly supplied at three 
 other tables: the freedmen of the lower rank, and even 
 the slaves, were well taken care of. The higher class 
 had really an elegant entertainment. Well, no need to 
 make a long story; we found we were both ‘flesh and 
 blood.’ Still he is not the kind of guest to whom you 
 would say—‘ Now do, pray, take us in your way on 
 your return.’ Once is enough. We had no conversa¬ 
 tion on business, but a good deal of literary talk. In 
 short, he seemed to be much pleased, and to enjoy him¬ 
 self. He said he should stay one day at Puteoli, and 
 another at Baiae. So here you have an account of this 
 visit, or rather quartering of troops upon me, which 
 I disliked the thoughts of, but which really, as I have 
 said, gave me no annoyance. I shall stay here a little 
 longer, then go to my house at Tusculum. When Caesar 
 passed Dolabella’s villa, all the troops formed up on the 
 right and left of his horse, which they did nowhere else.:}: 
 I heard that from Nicias.” 
 
 In the following, he is anticipating a visit from his 
 friend, and from the lady to whom he is betrothed. 
 
 * Literally, “he got himself oiled.” The emetic was a disgust¬ 
 ing practice of Roman bon vivants who were afraid of indiges¬ 
 tion. » 
 
 t The verse which Cicero quotes from Lucilius is fairly equiva¬ 
 lent to this. ^ 
 
 X Probably by the way of salute; or possibly as a precaution. 
 
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 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 “ I liad a delightful visit from Ciucius on the 30th 
 of January, before daylight. For he told me that you 
 were in Italy, and that he was going to send off some 
 messengers to you, and would not let them go without 
 a letter from me. Not that I have much to write 
 about (especially when you are all but here), except 
 to assure you that I am anticipating your arrival with 
 the greatest delight. Therefore fly to me, to show your 
 own affection, and to see what affection I bear you. 
 Other matters when we meet. I have written this in 
 a hurry. As soon as ever you arrive, bring all your 
 people to my house. You will gratify me very much 
 by coming. You will see how wonderfully well Tyr- 
 rannio has arranged my books, the remains of which 
 are much better than I had thought. And I should be 
 very glad if you could send me a couple of your library 
 clerks, whom Tyrranio could make use of as binders, 
 and to help him in other ways; and tell them to bring 
 some parchment to make indices—syllabuses, I believe 
 you Greeks call them. But this only if quite conve¬ 
 nient to you. But, at any rate, be sure you come your¬ 
 self if you can make any stay in our parts, and bring 
 Pilia with you, for that is but fair, and Tullia wishes it 
 much. Upon my word, you have bought a very fine 
 place. I hear that your gladiators fight capitally. If 
 you had cared to hire them out, you might have cleared 
 your expenses at these two last public shows. But we 
 can talk about this hereafter. Be sure to come; and do 
 your best about the clerks, if you love me.” 
 
 The Roman gentleman of elegant and accomplished 
 tastes, keeping a troop of private gladiators, and think¬ 
 ing of hiring them out, to our notions, is a curious com. 
 bination of character; but the taste was not essentially 
 more brutal than the pri^e-ring and the cock-fights Qt 
 the last o§fituiy ? 
 
CICERO . 
 
 107 
 
 11. P^ETUS. 
 
 Another of Cicero’s favorite correspondents was Pa- 
 pirius Psetus, who seems to have lived at home at ease, 
 and taken little part in the political tumults of his day. 
 Like Atticus, he was an Epicurean, and thought more 
 of the pleasures of life than of its cares and duties. 
 Yet Cicero evidently took great pleasure in his society, 
 and his letters to him are written in the same familiar 
 and genial tone as those to his old school-fellow. Some 
 of them throw a pleasant light upon the social habits of 
 the day. Cicero had had some friends staying with him 
 at liis country seat at Tusculum, to whom, he says, he 
 had been giving lessons in oratory. Dolabella, his son- 
 in-law, and Hirtius, the future consul, were among 
 them. “They are my scholars in declamation, and I 
 am theirs in dinner-eating; for I conclude you have 
 heard (you seem to hear everything) that they come to 
 me to declaim, and I go to them for dinners. ’Tis all 
 very well for you to swear that you cannot entertain 
 me in such grand fashion as I am used to, but it is of 
 use. . . . Better be victimized by your friend than by 
 your debtors, as you have been. After all, I don’t re¬ 
 quire such a banquet as leaves a great waste behind it; 
 a little will do, only handsomely served and well 
 cooked, I remember your telling me about a dinner of 
 Pliamea’s—well, it need not be such a late affair as that, 
 nor so grand in other respects; nay, if you persist in 
 giving me one of your mother’s old family dinners, I 
 can stand even that. My new reputation for good liv¬ 
 ing has reached you, I find, before my arrival, and you 
 are alarmed at it; but, pray, put no trust in your ante- 
 courses—I have given up that altogether. I used to 
 
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 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 spoil my appetite, I remember, upon your oil and sliced 
 sausages. . . . One expense I realty shall put you to; I 
 must have my warm bath. My other habits, I assure 
 you, are quite unaltered; all the rest is joke.” 
 
 Psetus seems to answer him with the same good-hu¬ 
 mored badinage. Balbus, the governor of Africa, had 
 been to see him, he says, and he had been content with 
 such humble fare as he feared Cicero might despise. 
 So much, at least, we may gather from Cicero’s an¬ 
 swer. 
 
 “ Satirical as ever, I see. You say Balbus was con¬ 
 tent with very modest fare. You seem to insinuate that 
 when grandees are so moderate, much more ought a 
 poor ex-consul like myself so to be. You don’t know 
 that I fished it all out of your visitor himself, for he 
 came straight to my house on his landing. The very 
 first words I said to him were, ‘How did you get on 
 with our friend Paetus? ’ He swore he had never been 
 better entertained. If this referred to the charms of 
 your conversation, remember, I shall be quite as appre¬ 
 ciative a listener as Balbus; but if it meant the good 
 things on the table, I must beg you will not treat us 
 men of eloquence worse than you do a ‘ Lisper.’ ” * 
 
 They carry on this banter through several letters. Cic¬ 
 ero regrets that he has been unable as yet to pay his 
 threatened visit, when his friend would have seen what 
 advances he had made in gastronomic science. He was 
 able now to eat through the whole bill of fare—“ from 
 the eggs to the roti.” 
 
 “ I [Stoic that used to be] have gone over with my 
 whole forces into the camp of Epicurus. You will have 
 to do with a man who can eat, and who knows what’s 
 
 * One of Cicero’s puns. Balbus means “ Lisper,” 
 
CICERO. 
 
 109 
 
 wliat. You know how conceited we late learners are, 
 as the proverb says. You will have to unlearn those 
 little ‘plain dinners’ and makeshifts of yours. We 
 have made such advances in the art, that we have been 
 venturing to invite, more than once, your friends Ver 
 rius and Camillus (what elegant and fastidious gentlemen 
 they are!). But see how audacious we are getting! I 
 have even given Hirtius a dinner—but without a pea¬ 
 cock. My cook could imitate nothing in his entertain¬ 
 ments except the hot soup. ” 
 
 Then he hears that his friend is in bed with the 
 gout. 
 
 “I am extremely sorry to hear it, as in duty bound; 
 still, I am quite determined to come, that I may see you, 
 and pay my visit—yes, and have my dinner; for I sup¬ 
 pose your cook has not got the gout as well.” 
 
 Such were the playful epistles of a busy man. But 
 even in some of these lightest effusions we see the cares 
 of the statesman showing through. Here is a portion 
 of a later letter to the same friend. 
 
 “ I am very much concerned to hear you have given 
 up going out to dinner; for it is depriving yourself of 
 a great source of enjoyment and gratification. Then, 
 again, I am afraid—for it is as well to speak honestly 
 —lest you should unlearn certain old habits of yours, 
 and forget to give your own little dinners. For if for¬ 
 merly, when you had good examples to imitate, you 
 were still not much of a proficient in that way, how 
 can I suppose you will get on now? Spurina, indeed, 
 when I mentioned the thing to him, and explained your 
 previous habits, proved to demonstration that there 
 would be danger to the highest interests of the state if 
 you did not return to your old ways in the spring. Eut 
 indeed, my good -Psetus, I advise you, joking apart, to 
 
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 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 associate with good fellows, and pleasant fellows, and 
 men who are fond of you. There is nothing better 
 worth having in life, nothing that makes life more 
 happy. . . . See how I employ philosophy to recon¬ 
 
 cile you to dinner-parties. Take care of your health; 
 and that you will best do by going out to dinner. . . 
 
 » . But don’t imagine, as you love me, that because I 
 
 write jestingly I have thrown off all anxiety about public 
 affairs. Be assured, my dear Psetus, that I seek nothing 
 and care for nothing, night or day, but how my country 
 may be kept safe and free. I omit no opportunity of 
 advising, planning, or acting. I feel in my heart that 
 if, in securing this, I have to lay down my life, I shall 
 have ended it well and honorably.” 
 
 III. His Brother Quintus. 
 
 Between Marcus Cicero and his younger brother 
 Quintus there existed a very sincere and cordial affec¬ 
 tion—somewhat warmer, perhaps, on the side of the 
 elder, inasmuch as his wealth and position enabled him 
 rather to confer that to receive kindnesses; the rule in 
 such cases being (so cynical philosophers tell us) that the 
 affection is lessened rather than increased by the feeling 
 of obligation. He almost adopted the younger Quintus, 
 his nephew, and had him educated with his own son; 
 and the two cousins received their earlier training to¬ 
 gether in one or other of Marcus Cicero’s country houses 
 under a clever Greek freedman of his, who was an ex¬ 
 cellent scholar, and—what was less usual amongst his 
 countrymen, unless Cicero’s estimate of them does them 
 great injustice—a very honest man, but, as the two boys 
 complained, terribly passionate. Cicero himself, how¬ 
 ever, was the head tutor—an office for which, as he 
 
CICERO. 
 
 Ill 
 
 modestly writes, liis Greek studies fully qualified him. 
 Quiutus Cicero behaved ill to his brother after the battle 
 of Pharsalia, making what seemed to have been very 
 unjust accusations against him in order to pay court to 
 Caesar; but they soon became friends again. 
 
 Twenty-nine of the elder Cicero’s letters to his brother 
 remain, written in terms of remarkable kindness and 
 affection, which go far to vindicate the Roman character 
 from a charge which has sometimes been brought against 
 it of coldness in these family relationships. Few modern 
 brothers, probably, would write to each other in such 
 terms as these:— 
 
 “Afraid lest your letters bother me? I wish you 
 would bother me, and re-bother me, and talk to me and 
 at me; for what can give me more pleasure? I swear 
 that no muse-stricken rhymester ever reads his own last 
 poem with more delight than I do what you write to me 
 about matters public or private, town or country. Here 
 now is a letter from you full of pleasant matter, but 
 with this dash of the disagreeable in it, that you have 
 been afraid—nay, are even now afraid—of being trouble¬ 
 some to me. I could quarrel with you about it, if that 
 were not a sin. But if I have reason to suspect any¬ 
 thing of that sort again, I can only say that I shall 
 always be afraid lest, when we are together, I may 
 be troublesome to you.” 
 
 Or take, again, the pathetic apology which he makes 
 for having avoided an interview with Quintus in those 
 first days of his exile when he was so thoroughly un¬ 
 manned :— 
 
 “My brother,‘my brother, my brother! Did you 
 really fear that I was angry, because I sent off the slaves 
 without any letter to you? And did you even think 
 that X was unwilling to see you? I angry with you? 
 
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 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 Could I possibly be angry with you? . . . When 1 
 
 miss you, it is not a brother only that I miss. To me 
 you have always been the pleasantest of companions, a 
 son in dutiful affection, a father in counsel. What 
 pleasure ever had I without you, or you without me?” 
 
 Quintus had accompanied Caesar on his expedition 
 into Britain as one of his lieutenants, and seems to have 
 written home to his brother some notices of the country; 
 to which the latter, towards the end of his reply, makes 
 this allusion:— 
 
 “How delighted I was to get your letter from Britain! 
 I had been afraid of the voyage across, afraid of the 
 rock-bound coast of the island. The other dangers of 
 such a campaign I do not mean to despise, but in these 
 there is more to hope than to fear, and I have been rather 
 anxiously expecting the result than in any real alarm 
 about it. I see you have a capital subject to write 
 about. What novel scenery, what natural curiosities 
 and remarkable places, what strange tribes and strange 
 customs, what a campaign, and what a commander you 
 have to describe! I will willingly help you in the points 
 you request; and I will send you the verses you ask for 
 —though it is sending ‘an owl to Athens,’* I know.” 
 
 In another letter he says, “ Only give me Britain to 
 paint with your colors and my own pencil.” But either 
 the Britons of those days did not, after all, seem to afford 
 sufficient interest for poem or history, or for some other 
 reason this joint literary undertaking, which seems once 
 to have been contemplated, was never carried out, and 
 we have missed what would beyond doubt have been a 
 highly interesting volume of sketches in Britain by the 
 brothers Cicero. 
 
 * A Greek proverb, equivalent to our “ coals to Newcastle,” 
 
CICERO. 
 
 113 
 
 Quintus was a poet as well as Ills brother—nay, a 
 better poet, in the latter’s estimation, or at least be was 
 polite enough to say so more than once. In quantity, 
 at least, if not in quality, fhe younger must have been a 
 formidable rival, for he wrote, as appears from one of 
 these letters, four tragedies in fifteen days—possibly 
 translations only from the Greek. 
 
 One of the most remarkable of all Cicero’s letters, 
 and perhaps that which does him most credit both as 
 a man and a statesman, is one which he wrote to his 
 brother, who was at the time governor of Asia. In¬ 
 deed, it is much more than a letter; it is rather a grave 
 and carefully weighed paper of instructions on the 
 duties of such a position. It is full of sound practical 
 sense, and lofty principles of statesmanship—very dif¬ 
 ferent from the principles which too commonly ruled 
 the conduct of Roman governors abroad. The province 
 which had fallen to the lot of Quintus Cicero was one 
 of the richest belonging to the Empire, and which pre¬ 
 sented the greatest temptations and the greatest facil¬ 
 ities for the abuse of power to selfish purposes. Though 
 called Asia, it consisted only of the late kingdom of 
 Pergamus, and had come under the dominion of Rome, 
 not by conquest, as was the case with most of the 
 provinces, but by way of legacy from Attalus, the last 
 of its kings; who, after murdering most of his own 
 relations,* had named the Roman people as his heirs. 
 The seat of government was at Ephesus. The popu¬ 
 lation was of a very mixed character, consisting partly 
 of true Asiatics, and partly of Asiatic Greeks, the 
 descendants of the old colonists, and containing also 
 a large Roman element—merchants who were there for 
 purposes of trade, many of them bankers and money¬ 
 lenders, and speculators who farmed the imperial taxes* 
 
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 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 and were by no means scrupulous in the matter of fleec¬ 
 ing tlic provincials. These latter—the “Publicani,” as 
 they were termed—might prove very dangerous enemies 
 to any too zealous reformer. If the Roman governor 
 there really wished to do his duty, wliat with the com¬ 
 bined servility and double dealing of the Orientals, the 
 proverbial lying of the Greeks, and the grasping injus¬ 
 tice of the Roman officials, he had a very difficult part 
 to play. How Quintus had been playing it is not quite 
 clear. His brother, in this admirable letter, assumes 
 that he had done all that was right, and urges him to 
 maintain the same course. But the advice would hardly 
 have been needed if all had gone well hitherto. 
 
 “You will find little trouble in holding your subor¬ 
 dinates in check, if you can but keep a check upon 
 yourself. So long as you resist gain, and pleasure, and 
 all other temptations, as I am sure you do, I cannot 
 fancy there will be any danger of your not being able 
 to check a dishonest merchant or an extortionate col¬ 
 lector. For even the Greeks, when they see you living 
 thus, will look upon you as some hero from their old 
 annals, or some supernatural being from heaven, come 
 down into their province. 
 
 “ I write thus, not to urge you so to act, but that you 
 may congratulate yourself upon having so acted, now 
 and heretofore. For it is a glorious thing for a man to 
 have held a government for three years in Asia, in such 
 sort that neither statue, nor painting, nor work of art 
 of any kind, nor any temptations of wealth or beauty 
 (in all which temptations your province abounds) could 
 draw you from the strictest integrity and self-control: 
 that your official progresses should have been no cause 
 of dread to the inhabitants, that none should be im¬ 
 poverished by your requisitions, none terrified at tfie 
 
CICERO. 
 
 115 
 
 news of your approach;—hut that you should have 
 brought with you, wherever you came, the most hearty 
 rejoicings, public and private, inasmuch as every town 
 saw in you a protector and not a tyrant—every family 
 received you as a guest, not as a plunderer. 
 
 “But in these points, as experience has by this time 
 taught you, it is not enough for you to have these 
 virtues yourself, but you must look to it carefully, that 
 in this guardianship of the province not you alone, but 
 every officer under you, discharges his duty to our sub¬ 
 jects, to our fellow-citizens, and to the state. ... If 
 any of your subordinates seem grasping for his own 
 interest, you may venture to bear with him so long as 
 he merely neglects the rules by which he ought to be 
 personally bound; never so far as to allow him to abuse 
 for his own gain the power with which you have in¬ 
 trusted him to maintain the dignity of his office. For I 
 do not think it well, especially since the customs of 
 official life incline so much of late to laxity and corrupt 
 influence, that you should scrutinize too closely every 
 abuse, or criticise too strictly every one of your officers, 
 but rather place trust in each in proportion as you feel 
 confidence in his integrity. 
 
 “For those whom the state has assigned you as com¬ 
 panions and assistants in public business, you are answer- 
 able only within the limits I have just laid down; but 
 for those whom you have chosen to associate with your¬ 
 self as members of your private establishment and per¬ 
 sonal suite, you will be held responsible not only for all 
 they do, but for all they say. .... 
 
 “Your ears should be supposed to hear only what 
 you publicly listen to, not to be open to every secret and 
 false whisper for the sake of private gain. Your official 
 seal should be not as a mere common tool, but as though 
 
116 
 
 TI1E ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 it were yourself; not the instrument of other men’s wills, 
 but the evidence of your own. Your officers should be 
 the agents of your clemency, not of their own caprice; 
 and the rods and axes which they bear should be the 
 emblems of your dignity, not merely of your power. In 
 short, the whole province should feel that the persons, 
 the families, the reputation, and the fortunes of all over 
 whom you rule, are held by you very precious. Let it 
 be well understood that you will hold that man as much 
 your enemy who gives a bribe, if it comes to your knowl¬ 
 edge, as the man who receives it. But no one will offer 
 bribes, if this be once made clear, that those who pre¬ 
 tend to have influence of this kind with you have no 
 power, after all, to gain any favor for others at your 
 hands. 
 
 “Let such, then, be the foundations of your dignity; 
 —first, integrity and self-control on your own part; a 
 becoming behavior on the part of all about you; a very 
 careful and circumspect selection of your intimates, 
 whether Greeks or provincials; a grave and firm disci¬ 
 pline maintained throughout your household. For if 
 such conduct befits us in our private and everyday 
 relations, it becomes wellnigh godlike in a government 
 of such extent, in a state of morals so depraved, and 
 in a province which presents so many temptations. 
 Such a line of conduct and such rules will alone enable 
 you to uphold that severity in your decisions and de¬ 
 crees which you have employed in some cases, and by 
 which we have incurred (and I cannot regret it) the 
 jealousy of certain interested parties. . . . You may 
 safely use the utmost strictness in the administration 
 of justice, so long as it is not capricious or partial, but 
 maintained at the same level for all. Yet it will be of 
 
CICERO. 
 
 117 
 
 little use that your own decisions be just and carefully 
 weighed, unless the same course be pursued by all to 
 whom you delegate any portion of your judicial autho¬ 
 rity. Such firmness and dignity must be employed as 
 may not only be above partiality, but above the suspi¬ 
 cion of it. To this must be added readiness to give 
 audience, calmness in deciding, care in weighing the 
 merits of the case and in satisfying the claims of the 
 parties.” 
 
 Yet he advises that justice should be tempered with 
 leniency. 
 
 “ If such moderation be popular at Rome, where 
 there is so much self-assertion, such unbridled freedom, 
 so much license allowed to all men;—where there are 
 so many courts of appeal open, so many means of help, 
 where the people have so much power and the Senate 
 so much authority; how grateful beyond measure will 
 moderation be in the governor of Asia, a province where 
 all that vast number of our fellow-citizens and sub¬ 
 jects, all those numerous states and cities, hang upon 
 one man’s nod! where there is no appeal to the tribune, 
 no remedy at law, no Senate, no popular assembly! 
 Wherefore it should be the aim of a great man, and 
 one noble by nature and trained by education and lib¬ 
 eral studies, so to behave himself in the exercise of that 
 absolute power, as that they over w r hom he presides 
 should never have cause to wish for any authority other 
 than his.” 
 
 IY. Tiro. 
 
 Of all Cicero’s correspondence, his letters to Tiro 
 supply the most convincing evidence of his natural 
 kindness of heart. Tiro was a slave; but this must be 
 taken with some explanation. The slaves in a house- 
 
118 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 # 
 
 hold like Cicero’s would vary in position from the low¬ 
 est menial to the important major-domo and the 
 confidential secretary. Tiro was of this higher class. 
 He had probably been born and brought up in the 
 service, like Eliezer in the household of Abraham, and 
 had become, like him, the trusted agent of his master 
 and the friend of the whole family. He was evidently 
 a person of considerable ability and accomplishments, 
 acting as literary amanuensis, and indeed, in some sort 
 as a domestic critic, to his busy, master. He had ac¬ 
 companied him to his government in Cilicia, and on 
 the return home had been taken ill, and obliged to be 
 left behind at Patrse. And this is Cicero’s affectionate 
 letter to him, written from Leucas (Santa Maura) the 
 day afterwards:— 
 
 “I thought I could have borne the separation from 
 you better, but it is plainly impossible; and although 
 it is of great importance to the honors which I am ex¬ 
 pecting* that I should get to Rome as soon as possible, 
 yet I feel I made a great mistake in leaving you behind. 
 But as it seemed to be your wish not to make the voy¬ 
 age until your health was restored, I approved your 
 decision. Nor do I think otherwise now, if you are 
 still of the same opinion. But if hereafter, when you 
 are able to eat as usual, you think you can follow me 
 here, it is for you to decide. I sent Mario to you, tell¬ 
 ing him either to join me with you as soon as possible, 
 or, if you are delayed, to come back here at once. But 
 be assured of this, that if it can be so without risk to 
 your health, there is nothing I wish so much as to have 
 
 * The triumph for the victory gained under his nominal com¬ 
 mand over the hill-tribes in Cilicia, during his governorship of 
 that province (p. 61 ). 
 
CICERO. 
 
 119 
 
 you with me. Only, if you feel it necessary for your 
 recovery to stay a little longer atPatrae, there is nothing 
 I wish so much as for you to get well. If you sail at 
 once, you will catch us at Leucas. But if you want to 
 get well first take care to secure pleasant companions, 
 fine weather, and a good ship. Mind this, my good 
 Tiro, if you love me—let neither Mario’s visit nor this 
 letter hurry you. By doing what is best for your own 
 health, you will be best obeying my directions. Con¬ 
 sider these points with your usual good sense. I miss 
 you very much; but then I love you, and my affection 
 makes me wish to see you well, just as my want of you 
 makes me long to see you as soon as possible. But the 
 first point is the most important. Above all, therefore, 
 take care to get well: of all your innumerable services 
 to me, this will be the most acceptable.” 
 
 Cicero writes to him continually during his own 
 journey homewards with the most thoughtful kindness, 
 begs that he will be cautious as to what vessel he sails 
 in, and recommends specially one very careful captain. 
 He has left a horse and a mule ready for him when he 
 lands at Brundusium. Then he hears that Tiro had 
 been foolish enough to go to a concert, or something of 
 the kind, before he was strong, for which he mildly re¬ 
 proves him. He has written to the physician to spare 
 no care or pains, and. to charge, apparently, what he 
 pleases. Several of his letters to his friend Atticus, 
 at this date, speak in the most anxious and affectionate 
 terms of the serious illness of this faithful servant. Just 
 as he and his party are starting from Leucas, they send 
 a note “ from Cicero and his son, and Quintus the elder 
 and younger, to their best and kindest Tiro.” Then 
 from Rome comes a letter in the name of the whole 
 family, wife and daughter included* 
 
120 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 “ Marcus Tullius Cicero, aud Cicero tlie younger, and 
 Terentia, and Tullia, and Brother Quintus, and 
 Quintus’s Son, to Tiro send greeting. 
 
 “Although I miss your able and willing service 
 every moment, still it is not on my own account so much 
 as yours that I am sorry you are not well. But 
 as your illness has now taken the form of a quartan 
 fever (for so Curius writes), I hope, if you take care of 
 yourself, you will soon he stronger. Only be sure, if 
 you have any kindness for me, not to trouble yourself 
 about anything else just now, except how to get well 
 as soon as may be. I am quite aware how much you 
 regret not being with me; but everything will go 
 right if you get well. I would not have you hurry, or 
 undergo the annoyance of sea-sickness while you 
 are weak, or risk a sea voyage in winter.” Then he 
 tells him all the news from Rome; how there had 
 been quite an ovation on his arrival there; how Caesar 
 was (he thought) growing dangerous to the state; and 
 how his own coveted “triumph’’was still postponed. 
 “All this,” he says, “I thought }mu would like to 
 know.” Then he concludes: “ Over and over again, I 
 beg you to take care to get well, and to send me a letter 
 whenever you have an opportunity. Farewell, again 
 and again.” 
 
 Tiro got well, and outlived his kind master, who very 
 soon after this, presented him with his freedom. It is 
 to him that we are said to be indebted for the preserva¬ 
 tion and publication of Cicero’s correspondence. He 
 wrote, also, a biography of him, which Plutarch had 
 seen, and of which he probably made use in his own 
 “Life of Cicero,” but which has not come down to us. 
 
 There was another of his household for whom Cicero 
 had the same affection. This was Sositheus, also a 
 
CICERO. 
 
 121 
 
 slave, but a man, like Tiro, of some considerable educa¬ 
 tion, whom he employed as his reader. His death 
 affected Cicero quite as the loss of a friend. Indeed, 
 his anxiety is such, that his Roman dignity is almost 
 ashamed of it. “I grieve,” he says, “more than I 
 ought for a mere slave.” Just as one might now 
 apologize for making too much fuss about a favorite 
 dog; for the slave was looked upon in scarcely a higher 
 light in civilized Rome. They spoke of him in the 
 neuter gender, as a chattel; and it was gravely discussed, 
 in case of danger in a storm at sea, which it would be 
 right first to cast overboard to lighten the ship, a valu¬ 
 able horse or an indifferent slave. Hortensius, the 
 rival advocate who has been mentioned, a man of more 
 luxurious habits and less kindly spirit than Cicero, who 
 was said to feed the pet lampreys in his stews much bet 
 ter than he did his slaves, and to have shed tears at the 
 death of one of these ugly favorites, would have pro¬ 
 bably laughed at Cicero’s concern for Sositheus and 
 Tiro. 
 
 But indeed every glimpse of this kind which Cicero’s 
 correspondence affords us gives token of a kindly heart, 
 and makes us long to know something more. Some 
 Lave suspected him of a want of filial affection, owing 
 to a somewhat abrupt and curt announcement in a 
 letter to Atticus of his father’s death; and his stanch 
 defenders propose to adopt, with Madvig, the reading 
 discessit —“left us,” intead of decessit —“died.” There 
 really seems no occasion. Unless Atticus knew the 
 father intimately, there was no need to dilate upon the 
 old man’s death; and Cicero mentions subsequently, 
 in terms quite as brief, the marriage of his daughter 
 and the birth of his son—events in which we are 
 assured he felt deeply interested. If any further ex 
 
122 
 
 TEE ELZEVIU LIBRARY. 
 
 planation of this seeming coldness be required, the fol¬ 
 lowing remarks of Mr. Forsyth are apposite and true 
 
 “ The truth is, that what we call sentiment was almost un‘ 
 known to the ancient Romans, in whose writings it would be as 
 vain to look for it as to look for traces of Gothic architecture 
 among classic ruins. And this is something more than a mere 
 illustrations. It suggests a reason for the absence. Romance 
 and sentiment came from the dark forests of the North, when 
 Scandinavia and Germany poured forth their hordes to subdue 
 and people the Roman Empire. The life of a citizen of the Re¬ 
 public of Rome was essentially a public life. The love of coun¬ 
 try was there carried to an extravagant length, and was para¬ 
 mount to, and almost swallowed up, the private and social 
 affections. The state was everything, the individual com¬ 
 paratively nothing. In one of the letters of the Emperor 
 Marcus Aurelius to Fronto, there is a passage in which he says 
 that the Roman language had no word corresponding with the 
 Greek </uAoo-Topyia,—the affectionate love for parents and chil¬ 
 dren. Upon this Niebuhr remarks that the feeling was ‘ not a 
 Roman one; but Cicero possessed it in a degree which few 
 Romans could comprehend, and hence he was laughed at for the 
 grief which he felt at the death of his daughter Tullia.’ ” 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 ESSAYS ON “OLD AGE” AND “FRIENDSHIP- 
 
 The treatise on “ Old Age,” which is thrown into the 
 form of a dialogue, is said to have been suggested by 
 the opening of Plato’s “Republic,” in which Ceplialus 
 touches so pleasantly on the enjoyments peculiar to 
 that time of life. So far as light and graceful treat¬ 
 ment of this subject goes, the Roman essayist at least 
 does not fall short of his model. Montaigne said of 
 
CICERO. 
 
 123 
 
 it, that “it made one long to grow old;”* but Mon¬ 
 taigne was a Frenchman, and such sentiment was 
 quite in his way. The dialogue, whether it produce this 
 effect on many readers or not, is very pleasant read¬ 
 ing: and when we remember that the author wrote 
 it when he was exactly in his grand climacteric, and 
 addressed it to his friend Atticus, who was within a 
 year of the same age, we get that element of personal 
 interest which make all writings of the kind more 
 attractive. The argument in defence of the paradox 
 that it is a good thing to grow old, proceeds upon the 
 only possible ground, the theory of compensations. It 
 is put into the mouth of Cato the Censor, who had 
 died about a century before, and who is introduced as 
 giving a kind of lecture on the subject to his young 
 friends Scipio and Lselius, in his eighty-fourth year. 
 He was certainly a remarkable example in his own 
 case of its being possible to grow old gracefully and 
 usefully, if, as he tells us, he was at that age still able 
 to take part in the debates in the Senate, was busy 
 collecting materials for the early history of Rome, had 
 quite lately begun the study of Greek, could enjoy 
 a country dinner-party, and had been thinking of 
 taking lessons in playing on the lyre. 
 
 He states four reasons why old age is so commonly 
 considered miserable. First, it unfits us for active enu 
 ployment; secondly, it weakens the bodily strength; 
 thirdly, it deprives us of nearly all pleasures; fourthly 
 and lastly, it is drawing near death. As to the first, the 
 old senator argues very fairly that very much of the 
 more important business of life is not only transacted 
 by old men, but in point of fact, as is confessed by the 
 
 * “ II donne l’appetit de vieiller,” 
 
124 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 very name aDd composition of the Roman Senate, it is 
 thought safest to intrust it to the elders in the state. 
 The pilot at the helm may not be able to climb the 
 mast and run up and down the deck like the younger 
 sailor, but he steers none the worse for being old. He 
 quotes some well-known examples of this from Roman 
 annals; examples which might be matched by obvious 
 instances in modern English history. The defense 
 which he makes of old age against the second charge 
 —loss of muscular vigor—is rather more of the 
 nature of special pleading. He says little more than 
 that mere muscular strength, after all, is not much 
 wanted for our happiness: that there are always com¬ 
 parative degrees of strength; and that an old man 
 need no more make himself unhappy because he has 
 not the strength of a 3 r oung man, than the latter does 
 because he has not the strength of a bull or an ele¬ 
 phant. It was very well for the great wrestler Milo 
 to be able to carry an ox round the arena on his 
 shoulders; but, on the whole, a man does not often 
 want to walk about with a bullock on his back. 
 The old are said, too, to lose their memory. Cato 
 thinks they can remember pretty well all that they 
 care to remember. They are not apt to forget who 
 owes them money; and, “I never knew an old man 
 forget,” he says, “where he had buried his gold.” 
 Then as to the pleasures of the senses, which age un¬ 
 doubtedly diminishes our power of enjoying. “ This,” 
 says Cato, “is really a privilege, not a deprivation; 
 to be delivered from the yoke of such tyrants as our 
 passions—to feel that we have ‘ got our discharge ’ 
 from such a warfare—is a blessing for which men ought 
 rather to be grateful to their advancing years.” And 
 the respect and authority which is by general consent 
 
CICERO. 
 
 125 
 
 conceded to old age, is a pleasure more than equivalent 
 to the vanished pleasures of youth. 
 
 There is one consideration which the author has not 
 placed among his four chief disadvantages of growing 
 old,—which, however, he did not forget, for he notices 
 it incidentally in the dialogue,—the feeling that we 
 are growing less agreeable to our friends, that our com¬ 
 pany is less sought after, and that we are, in short, 
 becoming tatlier ciphers in society. This, in a con¬ 
 dition of high civilization, is really perhaps felt by 
 most of us as the hardest to bear of all the ills to 
 which old age is liable. We should not care so much 
 about the younger generation rising up and making us 
 look old, if we did not feel that they are “pushing us 
 from our stools.” Cato admits that he had heard some 
 old men complain that “they were now neglected by 
 those 'who had once courted their society,” and he 
 quotes a passage from the comic poet Csecilius: 
 
 “ This is the bitterest pang in growing old,— 
 
 To feel that we grow hateful to our fellows.” 
 
 But lie dismisses the question briefly in his own case 
 by observing with some complacency that he does not 
 think his young friends find Ms company disagreeable 
 —an assertion which Scipio and Laelius, who occa¬ 
 sionally take part in the dialogue, are far too well 
 bred to contradict. He remarks also, sensibly enough, 
 that though some old persons are no doubt considered 
 disagreeable company, this is in great measure their 
 own fault: that testiness and ill-nature (qualities 
 which, as he observes, do not usually improve with 
 age) are always disagreeable, and that such persons 
 attributed to their advancing years what was in truth 
 the consequence of their unamiable tempers. It is pot 
 
126 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY 
 
 all wine which turns sour with age, nor yet all tem¬ 
 pers; much depends on the original quality. The old 
 Censor lays down some maxims which, like the pre¬ 
 ceding, have served as texts for a good many modern 
 writers, and may be found expanded, diluted, or 
 strengthened, in the essays of Addison and Johnson, 
 and in many of their followers of less repute. “I 
 never could assent,” says Cato, “to that ancient and 
 much-bepraised proverb—that ‘you must become an 
 old man early, if you wish to be an old man long.’” 
 Yet it was a maxim which was very much acted upon 
 by modern Englishmen a generation or two back. 
 It was then thought almost a moral duty to retire 
 into old age, and to assume all its disabilities as well as 
 its privileges, after sixty years or even earlier. At 
 present the world sides with Cato, and rushes perhaps 
 into the other extreme; for any line at which old age 
 now begins would be hard to trace either in dress or 
 deportment. “We must resist old age, and fight 
 against it as a disease.” Strong words from the old 
 Roman; but, undoubtedly, so long as we stop short 
 of the attempt to affect juvenility, Cato is right. We 
 should keep ourselves as young as possible. He speaks 
 shrewd sense, again, when he says—“As I like to see 
 a young man who has something old about him, so I 
 like to see an old man in whom there remains some¬ 
 thing of the youth: and he who follows this maxim 
 may become an old man in body, but never in heart.” 
 “What a blessing it is,” says Southey, “to have a 
 boy’s heart!” Do we not all know these charming 
 old people, to whom the young take almost as heartily 
 as to their own equals in age, who are the favorite 
 consultees in all amusements, the confidants in ah 
 troubles? 
 
CICERO. 
 
 127 
 
 Cato is made to place a great part of his own enjoy¬ 
 ment, in these latter years of his, in the cultivation of 
 his farm and garden (he had written, we must remem¬ 
 ber, a treatise “ De Re Rustica,”—a kind of Roman 
 “ Book of the Farm,” which we have still remaining). 
 He is enthusiastic in his description of the pleasures of 
 a country gentleman’s life, and, like a good farmer, as 
 no doubt he was, becomes eloquent upon the grand 
 subject of manures. Gardening is a pursuit which he 
 holds in equal honor—that “purest of human pleas¬ 
 ures,” as Bacon calls it. On the subject of the coun¬ 
 try life generally he confesses an inclination to become 
 garrulous—the one failing which he admits may be fairly 
 laid to the charge of old age. The picture of the way 
 of living of a Roman gentleman-farmer, as he draws it, 
 must have presented a strong contrast with the artificial 
 city-life of Rome. 
 
 “ Where the master of the house is a good and care¬ 
 ful manager, his wine-cellar, his oil-stores, his larder, 
 are always well stocked; there is a fullness throughout 
 the whole establishment; pigs, kids, lambs, poultry, 
 milk, cheese, honey,—all are in abundance. The pro¬ 
 duce of the garden is always equal, as our country-folk 
 say, to a double course. And all these good things 
 acquire a second relish from the voluntary labors of 
 fowling and the chase. What need to dwell upon the 
 charm of the green fields, the well-ordered plantations, 
 the beauty of the vineyards and olive-groves? In short, 
 nothing can be more luxuriant in produce, or more de¬ 
 lightful to the eye, than a well-cultivated estate; and, 
 to the enjoyment of this, old age is so far from being 
 any liinderance, that it rather invites and allures us to 
 such pursuits.” 
 
 He has no patience with what has been called the 
 
128 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIB HART. 
 
 despondency of old age—the feeling, natural enough at 
 that time of life, but not desirable to be encouraged, 
 that there is no longer any room for hope or promise in 
 the future which gives §o much of its interest to the 
 present. He will not listen to the poet when he says 
 again— 
 
 “ He plants the tree that shall not see the fruit.” 
 
 The answer which he would make has been often put 
 into other and more elaborate language, but has a simple 
 grandeur of its own. “If any should ask the aged 
 cultivator for whom he plants, let him not hesitate to 
 make this reply,—‘ For the immortal gods, who, as they 
 willed me to inherit these possessions from my fore¬ 
 fathers, so would have me hand them on to those that 
 shall come after.’” 
 
 The old Roman had not the horror of country society 
 which so many civilized Englishmen either have or 
 affect. “I like a talk,” he says, “ over a cup of wine.” 
 “Even when I am down at my Sabine estate, I daily 
 make one at a party of my country neighbors, and we 
 prolong our conversation very frequently far into the 
 night.” The words are put into Cato’s mouth, but the 
 voice is the well-known voice of Cicero. We find him 
 here, as in his letters, persuading himself into the be¬ 
 lief that the secret of happiness is to be found in the 
 retirement of the country. And his genial and social 
 nature beams through it all. We are reminded of his 
 half-serious complaints to Atticus.* of his importunate 
 visitors at Formise, the dinner-parties which he was, as 
 we say now, “obliged to go to,” and which he so evi¬ 
 dently enjoyed, f 
 
 * See p. 39 
 
 + “ A clergyman was complaining of the want of society in the 
 
CICERO. 
 
 129 
 
 He is careful, however, to remind his reader that old 
 age, to be feally either happy or venerable, must not be 
 the old age of the mere voluptuary or the debauchee; 
 that the gray head, in order to be, even in his pagan 
 sense, “a crown of glory,” must have been “found in 
 the way of righteousness.” Shakespeare might have 
 learned from Cicero in these points the moral which he 
 puts into the mouth of his Adam— 
 
 “ Therefore mine age is as a lusty winter, 
 
 Frosty but kindly.” 
 
 It is a miserable old age, says the Roman, which is 
 obliged to appeal to its gray hairs as its only claim to 
 the respect of its juniors. “Neither hoar hairs nor 
 wrinkles can arrogate reverence as their right. It is the 
 life whose opening years have been honorably spent 
 which reaps the reward of reverence at its close.” 
 
 In discussing the last of the evils which accompany 
 old age, the near approach of death, Cicero rises to 
 something higher than his usual level. His Cato will 
 not have death to be an evil at all; it is to him the 
 escaping from “the prison of the body,”—the “getting 
 the sight of land at last after a long voyage, and coming 
 into port.” Nay, he does not admit that death is death. 
 “ I have never been able to persuade myself,” he says, 
 quoting the words of Cyrus in Xenophon, “that our 
 spirits were alive while they were in these mortal 
 bodies, and died only when they departed out of them; 
 or that the spirit then only becomes void of sense when 
 
 country where he lived, and said,‘They talk of runts' (i.e., 
 young cows). ‘Sir, 1 said Mr. Salusbury, ‘Mr. Johnson would 
 learn to talk of runts; 1 meaning that 1 was a man who would 
 make the most of my situation, whatever it was. 11 —Boswell’s 
 Life. Cicero was like Dr. Johnson. 
 
130 
 
 TIIE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 it escapes from a senseless body; but that rather when 
 freed from all admixture of corporality, it i§ pure and 
 uncontamiuated, then it most truly has sense.” “ I am 
 fully persuaded,” he says to his young listeners, “that • 
 your two fathers, my old and dearly-loved friends, are 
 living now, and living that life which only is worthy to 
 be so called.” And he winds up the dialogue with the 
 very beautiful apostrophe, one of the last utterances of 
 the philosopher’s heart, well known, yet not too well 
 known to be here quoted— 
 
 “It likes me not to mourn over departing life, as 
 many men, and men of learning, have done. Nor can 
 I regret that I have lived, since I have so lived that 
 I may trust I was not born in vain; and I depart out 
 of life as out of a temporary' lodging, not as out of 
 my home. For nature has given it to us as an inn to 
 tarry at by the way, not as a place to abide in. O 
 glorious day! when I shall set out to join that blessed 
 company and assembly of disembodied spirits and 
 quit this crowd and rabble of life! For I shall go my 
 way, not only to those great men of whom I spoke, 
 but to my own son Cato, than whom was never better 
 man born, nor more full of dutiful affection; whose 
 body I laid on the funeral pile—an office he should 
 rather have done for me.* But his spirit has never left 
 me; it still looks fondly back upon me, though it has 
 gone assuredly into those abodes where he knew that I 
 myself should follow. And this my great loss I seemed 
 to bear with calmness; not that I bore it undisturbed, 
 but that I still consoled myself with the thought that 
 
 * Burke touches the same key in speaking of his son: “ I live 
 in an inverted order. They who ought to have succeeded me 
 have gone before me: they who should have been to me as pos¬ 
 terity are in the place of ancestors.” 
 
CICERO. 
 
 131 
 
 the separation between us could not be for long. And 
 if I err in this—in that I believe the spirits of men to be 
 immortal—I err willingly; nor would I have this mis* 
 taken belief of mine uprooted so long as I shall live. 
 But if after I am dead, I shall have no consciousness, as 
 some curious philosophers assert, then I am not afraid 
 of dead philosophers laughing at my mistake. ” 
 
 The essay on “Friendship” is dedicated by the 
 author to Atticus—an appropriate recognition, as he 
 says, of the long and intimate friendship which had 
 existed between themselves. It is thrown, like the 
 other, into the form of a dialogue. The principal 
 speaker here is one of the listeners in the former one— 
 Laelius, surnamed the Wise—who is introduced as re¬ 
 ceiving a visit from his two sons-in-law, Fannius and 
 Scaevola (the great lawyer before mentioned), soon 
 after the sudden death of his great friend, the younger 
 Scipio Africanus. Laelius takes the occasion, at the 
 request of the young men, to give them his views and 
 opinions on the subject of Friendship generally. This 
 essay is perhaps more original than that upon “ Old 
 Age,” but certainly is not so attractive to a modern 
 reader. Its great merit is the grace and polish of the 
 language; but the arguments brought forward to prove 
 what an excellent thing it is for a man to have good 
 friends, and plenty of them, in this world, and the 
 rules for his behavior towards them, seem to us some¬ 
 what trite and commonplace, whatever might have 
 been their effect upon a Roman reader. 
 
 Cicero is indebted to the Greek philosophers for the 
 main outlines of his theory of friendship, though his 
 acquaintance with the works of Plato and Aristotle was 
 
132 
 
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 probably exceedingly superficial. He holds, with them, 
 that man is a social animal; that “ we are so constituted 
 by nature that there must be some degree of association 
 between us all, growing closer in proportion as we are 
 brought into more intimate relations one with another.” 
 So that the social bond is a matter of instinct, not of 
 calculation; not a cold commercial contract of profit and 
 loss, of giving and receiving, but the fulfillment of 
 one of the yearnings of our nature. Here he is in full 
 accordance with the teaching of Aristotle, who, of all 
 the various kinds of friendship to which he allows the 
 common name, pronounces that which is founded 
 merely upon interest—upon mutual interchange, by 
 tacit agreement, of certain benefits—to be the least 
 worth}" of such a designation. Friendship is defined by 
 Cicero to be “the perfect accord upon all questions, 
 religious and social, together with mutual goodwill and 
 affection.” This “perfect accord,” it must be con¬ 
 fessed, is a very large requirement. He follows his 
 Greek masters again in holding that true friendship can 
 exist only among the good; that, in fact, all friendship 
 must assume that there is something good and lovable 
 in the person towards whom the feeling is entertained: 
 it may occasionally be a mistaken assumption; the good 
 quality we think we see in our friend may have no ex¬ 
 istence save in our own partial imagination; but the 
 existence of the counterfeit is an incontestable evidence 
 of the true original. And the greatest attraction, and 
 therefore the truest friendships, will always be of the 
 good towards the good. 
 
 He admits, however, the notorious fact, that good 
 persons are sometimes disagreeable; and he confesses 
 that we have a right to seek in our friends amiability 
 as well as moral excellence. “Sweetness,” he says—* 
 
CICERO. 
 
 338 
 
 anticipating, as all these ancients so provokingly do, 
 some of our most modern popular philosophers— 
 “sweetness, both in language and in manner, is a very 
 powerful attraction in the formation of friendships.” 
 He is by no means of the same opinion as Sisyphus in 
 Lord Lytton’s “ Tale of Miletus”— 
 
 “ Now, then, I know thou really art my friend,— 
 
 None but true friends choose such unpleasant words.” 
 
 He admits that it is the office of a friend to tell un¬ 
 pleasant truths sometimes; but there should be a cer¬ 
 tain amount of this indispensable “sweetness” to 
 temper the bitterness of the advice. There are some 
 friends who are continually reminding you of what 
 they have done for you—“a disgusting set of people 
 verily they are,” says our author. And there are others 
 who are always thinking themselves slighted; “in 
 which case there is generally something of which they 
 are conscious in themselves, as laying them open to 
 contemptuous treatment.” 
 
 Cicero’s own character displays itself in this short 
 treatise. Here, as everywhere, he is the politician. 
 He shows a true appreciation of the duties and the 
 qualifications of a true friend; but his own thoughts 
 are running upon political friendships. Just as when, 
 in many of his letters, he talks about “ all honest 
 men,” he means “our party;” so here, when he talks 
 of friends, he cannot help showing that it was of the 
 essence of friendship, in his viewg to hold the same 
 political opinions, and that one great use of friends was 
 that a man should not be isolated, as he had sometimes 
 feared he was, in his political course. When he puts 
 forward the old instances of Coriolanus and Gracchus, 
 and discusses the question whether their “ friends” were 
 
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 or were not bound to aid them in their treasonable 
 designs against the state, he was surely thinking of the 
 factions of his own times, and the troublesome brother¬ 
 hoods which had gathered round Catiline and Clodius. 
 Be this as it may, the advice which he makes Lselius 
 give to his younger relatives is good for all ages, modern 
 or ancient: “ There is nothing in this world more valu¬ 
 able than friendship.” “ Next to the immediate blessing 
 and providence of Almighty God,” Lord Clarendon was 
 often heard to say, “I owe all the little I know, and 
 the little good that is in me, to the friendships and 
 conversation I have still been used to, of the most excel¬ 
 lent men in their several kinds that lived in that age. ” 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 CICEKO’S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 “ THE TRUE ENDS OP LIFE.” * 
 
 Philosophy was to the Roman what religion is to us. 
 It professed to answer, so far as it might be answered, 
 Pilate’s question, “What is truth?”( or to teach men, 
 as Cicero described it, “the knowledge of things 
 human and divine.” Hence the philosopher invests 
 his subject with all attributes of dignity. To him 
 Philosophy brings all blessings in her train. She is 
 the guide of life, the medicine for his sorrows, “the 
 fountain-head of all perfect eloquence—the mother of 
 all good deeds and good words.” He invokes with 
 
 X 
 
 * “ De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum,” 
 
CICERO. 
 
 185 
 
 affectionate reverence the great name of Socrates—the 
 sage who had “first drawn wisdom down from heaven.” 
 
 No man even approached his subject more richly laden 
 with philosophic lore than Cicero. Snatching every 
 leisure moment that he could from a busy life, he de¬ 
 votes it to the study of the great minds of former ages. 
 Indeed, he held this study to be the duty of the perfect 
 orator; a knowledge of the human mind was one of his 
 essential qualifications. Nor could he conceive of real 
 eloquence without it; for his definition of eloquence is, 
 “ wisdom speaking fluently.” * But such studies were 
 also suited to his own natural tastes. And as years 
 passed on, and he grew weary of civil discords and was 
 harassed by domestic troubles, the great orator turns 
 his back upon the noisy city, and takes his parchments 
 of Plato and Aristotle to be the friends of his councils and 
 the companions of his solitude, seeking by their light to 
 discover Truth, which Democritus had declared to be 
 buried in the depths of the sea. 
 
 Yet, after all, he professes to do little more than 
 translate. So conscious is he that it is to Greece that 
 Rome is indebted for all her literature, and so con¬ 
 scious, also, on the part of his countrymen, of what he 
 terms “ an arrogant disdain for everything national,” 
 that he apologizes to his readers for writing for the 
 million in their mother-tongue. Yet he is not content, 
 as he says, to be “a mere interpreter.” He thought 
 that by an eclectic process—adopting and rearranging 
 such of the doctrines of his Greek masters as approved 
 themselves to his own judgment—he might make his 
 own work a substitute for theirs. His ambition is to 
 achieve what he might well regard as the hardest of 
 
 * “ Copiose loquens sapientia.” 
 
136 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 tasks—a popular treatise on philosophy; and he has 
 certainly succeeded. He makes no pretense to origi¬ 
 nality; all he can do is, as he expresses it, "to array 
 Plato in a Latin dress,” and " present this stranger 
 from beyond the seas with the freedom of his native 
 city.” And so this treatise on the Ends of Life—a 
 grave question even to the most careless thinker—is, 
 from the nature of the case, both dramatic and rhetor¬ 
 ical. Representatives of the two great schools of philos 
 ophy—the Stoics and Epicureans—plead and counter¬ 
 plead in his pages, each in their turn; and their 
 arguments are based on principles broad and universal 
 enough to be valid even now. For now, as then, men 
 are inevitably separated into two classes—amiable men 
 of ease, who guide their conduct by the rudder-strings of 
 pleasure—who for the most part "leave the world” 
 (as has been finely said) "in the world’s debt, having 
 consumed much and produced nothing;”* or, on the 
 other hand, zealous men of duty,— 
 
 “ Who scorn delights and live laborious days,” 
 
 and act according to the dictates of their honor or their 
 conscience. In practice, if not in theory, a man must 
 be either Stoic or Epicurean. 
 
 Each school, in this dialogue, is allowed to plead its 
 own cause. "Listen” (says the Epicurean) "to the 
 voice of nature that bids you pursue pleasure, and do 
 not be misled by that vulgar conception of pleasure as 
 mere sensual enjoyment; our opponents misrepresent us 
 .when they say that we advocate this as the highest 
 good; we hold, on the contrary, that men often obtain 
 the greatest pleasure by neglecting this baser kind. 
 
 * Lord Derby. 
 
CICERO. 
 
 137 
 
 Your highest instances of martyrdom — of Decii de¬ 
 voting themselves for their country, of consuls putting 
 their sons to death to preserve discipline—are not disin¬ 
 terested acts of sacrifice, but the choice of a present pain 
 in order to procure a future pleasure. Vice is but ig¬ 
 norance of real enjoyment. Temperance alone can 
 bring peace of mind; and the wicked, even if they es¬ 
 cape public censure, ‘ are racked night and day by the 
 anxieties sent upon them by the immortal gods.’ We 
 donot, in this, contradict your Stoic; we, too, affirm that 
 only the wise man is really happy. Happiness is as im¬ 
 possible for a mind distracted by passions, as for a city 
 divided by contending factions. The terrors of death 
 haunt the guilty wretch, ‘ who finds out too late that 
 he has devoted himself to money or power or glory to 
 no purpose.’ But the wise man’s life is unalloyed hap¬ 
 piness. Rejoicing in a clear conscience, ‘ he remembers 
 the past with gratitude, enjoys the blessings of the 
 present, and disregards the future.’ Thus the moral 
 to be drawn is that which Horace (himself, as he ex¬ 
 presses it, ‘ one of the litter of Epicurus’) impresses on 
 his fair friend Leuconoe: 
 
 ‘ Strain your wine, and prove your wisdom; life is short; should 
 hope be more? 
 
 In the moment of our talking envious time has slipped away. 
 Seize the present, trust to-morrow e’en as little as you may.’ ” 
 
 Passing on to the second book of the treatise, we 
 hear the advocate of the counter-doctrine. Why, ex¬ 
 claims the Stoic, introduce Pleasure to the councils of 
 Virtue? Why uphold a theory so dangerous in prac¬ 
 tice? Your Epicurean soon turns Epicure, and a class 
 of men start up who have never seen the sun rise or set, 
 who squander fortunes on cooks and perfumers, on 
 costly plate and gorgeous rooms, and ransack sea and 
 
338 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 land for delicacies to supply their feasts. Epicurus 
 gives his disciples a dangerous discretion in their choice. 
 There is no harm in luxury (he tells us) provided it be 
 free from inordinate desires. But who is to fix the limit 
 to such vague concessions? 
 
 Nay, more, he degrades men to the level of the brute 
 creation. In his view, there is nothing admirable be¬ 
 yond this pleasure—no sensation or emotion of the 
 mind, no soundness or health of body. And what is 
 this pleasure which he makes of such high account? 
 How short-lived while it lasts! how ignoble when we 
 recall it afterwards! But even the common feeling and 
 sentiments of men condemn so selfish a doctrine. We 
 are naturally led to uphold truth and abhor deceit, to 
 admire Regulus in his tortures, and to despise a lifetime 
 of inglorious ease. And then follows a passage which 
 echoes the stirring lines of Scott— 
 
 “Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife! 
 
 To all the sensual world proclaim, 
 
 One crowded hour of glorious life 
 Is worth an age without a name.” 
 
 Do not then (concludes the Stoic) take good words in 
 your mouth, and prate before applauding citizens of 
 honor, duty, and so forth, while you make your private 
 lives a mere selfish calculation of expediency. We were 
 surely born for nobler ends than this, and none who is 
 worthy the name of a man would subscribe to doctrines 
 which destroy all honor and all chivalry. The heroes 
 of old time won their immortality not by weighing 
 pleasures and pains in the balance, but by being prodi¬ 
 gal of their lives, doing and enduring all things for the 
 sake of their fellow-men. 
 
 The opening scene in the third book is as lively and 
 dramatic as (wbat was no doubt the writer’s model) the 
 
CICERO. 
 
 139 
 
 introduction of a Platonic dialogue. Cicero has walked 
 across from liis Tusculan villa to borrow some manu¬ 
 scripts from the well-stocked library of his young friend 
 Lucullus *—a youth whose high promise was sadly cut 
 short, for he was killed at Philippi, when lie was not 
 more than twenty-three. There, “ gorging himself with 
 books,” Cicero finds Marcus Cato—a Stoic of the Stoics 
 —who expounds in a high tone the principles of his 
 sect. 
 
 Honor he declares to be the rule, and “life according 
 to nature” the end of man’s existence. And wrong and 
 injustice are more really contrary to this nature than 
 either death, or poverty, or bodily suffering, or any 
 other outward evil.”f Stoics and Peripatetics are 
 agreed at least on one point—that bodily pleasures fade 
 into nothing before the splendors of virtue, and that to 
 compare the two is like holding a candle against the 
 sunlight, or setting a drop of brine against the waves of 
 the ocean. Your Epicurean would have each man live 
 in selfish isolation, engrossed in his private pleasures 
 and pursuits. We, on the other hand, maintain that 
 “Divine Providence has appointed the world to be a 
 common city for men and gods,” and each one of us to 
 be a part of this vast social system. And thus every 
 man has his lot and place in life, and should take for 
 his guidance those golden rules of ancient times—“Obey 
 God; know thyself; shun excess.” Then, rising to en¬ 
 thusiasm, the philosopher concludes: “ Who cannot but 
 admire the incredible beauty of such a system of moral- 
 
 * See p. 38. 
 
 t So Bishop Butler, in the preface to his Sermons upon “ Hu¬ 
 man Nature,” says they were “intended to explain what is 
 meant by the nature of man, when it is said that virtue consists 
 in following, and vice in deviating from it.” 
 
140 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 ity? What character in history or in fiction can he 
 grander or more consistent than the ‘ wise man ’ of the 
 Stoics? All the riches and glory of the world are his, 
 for he alone can make a right use of all things. He is 
 ‘free,’though he be bound by chains; ‘rich,’ though 
 in the midst of poverty; ‘beautiful,’ for the mind is 
 fairer than the body; ‘a king,’for, unlike the tyrants 
 of the world, he is lord of himself; ‘happy.’ for he has 
 no need of Solon’s warning to ‘wait till the end,’ since 
 a life virtuously spent is a perpetual happiness.” 
 
 In the fourth book, Cicero himself proceeds to vindi¬ 
 cate the wisdom of the ancients—the old Academic 
 school of Socrates and liis pupils—against what he con¬ 
 siders the novelties of Stoicism. All that the Stoics 
 have said has been said a hundred times before by Plato 
 and Aristotle, but in nobler language. They merely 
 “pick out the thorns” and “lay bare the bones” of pre¬ 
 vious systems, using newfangled terms and misty argu¬ 
 ments with a “vainglorious parade.” Their fine talk 
 about citizens of the world and the ideal wise man is 
 rather poetry than philosophy. They rightly connect 
 happiness with virtue, and virtue with wisdom; but so 
 did Aristotle some centuries before them. 
 
 But their great fault (says Cicero) is, that they ignore 
 the practical side of life. So broad is the line which 
 they draw between the “wise” and “ foolish,” that they 
 would deny to Plato himself the possession of wisdom. 
 They take no account of the thousand circumstances 
 which go to form our happiness. To a spiritual being, 
 virtue might be the chief good; but in actual life our 
 physical is closely bound up with our mental enjoy¬ 
 ment, and pain is one of those stern facts before which 
 all theories are powerless. Again, by their fondness for 
 paradox, they reduce all offenses to the same dead level. 
 
CICERO. 
 
 141 
 
 It is, in their eyes, as impious to beat a slave as to beat 
 a parent: because, as they say, “nothing can be more 
 virtuous than virtue,—nothing more vicious than vice.” 
 And lastly, this stubbornness of opinion affects their 
 personal character. They too often degenerate into 
 austere critics and bitter partisans, and go far to banish ' 
 from among us love, friendship, gratitude, and all the 
 fair humanities of life. 
 
 The fifth book carries us back some twenty years, 
 when we find Cicero once more at Athens, taking his 
 afternoon walk among the deserted groves of the 
 Academy. With him are his brother Quintus, his 
 cousin Lucius, and his friends Piso and Atticus. The 
 scene, with its historic associations, irresistibly carries 
 their minds back to those illustrious spirits who had 
 once made the place their own. Among these trees 
 Plato himself had walked; under the shadow of that 
 Porch Zeno had lectured to his disciples; * yonder 
 Quintus points out the “white peak of Colonus,” de¬ 
 scribed by Sophocles in “those sweetest lines;” while 
 glistening on the horizon were the waves of the Phaleric 
 harbor, which Demosthenes, Cicero’s own great proto¬ 
 type, had outvoiced with the thunder of his declama¬ 
 tion. So countless, indeed, are the memories of the 
 past called up by the genius of the place, that (as one 
 of the friends remarks) “wherever we plant our feet, 
 
 * The Stoics took their name from the “ stoa,” or portico in 
 the Academy, where they sat at lecture, as the Peripatetics (the 
 school of Aristotle) from the little knot of listeners who followed 
 their master as he walked. Epicurus’s school were known as 
 the philosophers of “ the Garden,” from the place where he 
 taught. The “ Old Academy” were the disciples of Plato; the 
 “ New Academy” (to whose tenets Cicero inclined) revived the 
 great principle of Socrates) of affirming nothing. 
 
142 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 we tread upon some history.” Then Piso, speaking at 
 Cicero’s request, begs his friends to turn from the de¬ 
 generate thinkers of their own day to those giants of 
 philosophy, from whose Writings all liberal learning, all 
 history, and all elegance of language may be derived. 
 More than all, they should turn to the leader of the Per¬ 
 ipatetics, Aristotle, who seemed (like Lord Bacon after 
 him) to have taken all knowledge as his portion. Prom 
 these, if from no other source, we may learn the secret 
 of a happy life. But first we must settle what this 
 “ chief good ”is—this end and object of our efforts—and 
 not be carried to and fro, like ships without a steers¬ 
 man, by every blast of doctrine. 
 
 If Epicurus was wrong in placing Happiness 
 
 “ In corporal pleasure and in careless ease,” 
 
 no less wrong are they who say that “honor” requires 
 pleasure to be added to it, since they thus make honor 
 itself dishonorable. And again, to say with others 
 that happiness is tranquillity of mind, is simply to beg 
 the question. 
 
 Putting, then, all such theories aside, we bring the 
 argument to a practical issue. Self-preservation is the 
 first great principle of nature; and so strong is this in¬ 
 stinctive love of life, both among men and animals, that 
 we see even the iron-hearted Stoic shrink from the ac¬ 
 tual pangs of a voluntary death. Then comes the ques¬ 
 tion, What is this nature that is so precious to each of 
 us? Clearly it is compounded of body and mind, each 
 with many virtues of its own; but as the mind should 
 rule the body, so reason, as the dominant faculty, should 
 rule the mind. Virtue itself is only “ the perfection of 
 this reason,” and, call it what you will, genius or intel¬ 
 lect is something divine. 
 
CICERO. 
 
 143 
 
 Furthermore, there is in man a gradual progress of 
 reason, growing with liis growth until it has reached 
 perfection. Even in the infant there are “as it were 
 sparks of virtue”—half-unconscious principles of love 
 and gratitude; and these germs bear fruit, as the child 
 develops into the man. We have also an instinct which 
 attracts us towards the pursuit of wisdom; such is the 
 true meaning of the Sirens’ voices in the Odyssey, says 
 the philosopher, quoting from the poet of all time: 
 
 “ Turn thy swift keel and listen to our lay; 
 
 Since never pilgrim to these regions came, 
 
 But heard our sweet voice ere he sailed away, 
 
 And in his joy passed on, with ampler mind.” * 
 
 It is wisdom, not pleasure, which they offer. Hence 
 it is that men devote their days and nights to literature, 
 without a thought of any gain that may accrue from it; 
 and philosophers paint the serene delights of a life of 
 contemplation in the islands of the blest. 
 
 Again, our minds can never rest. “Desirefor action 
 grows with us;” and in action of some sort, be it poli¬ 
 tics or science, life (if it is to be life at all) must be 
 passed by each of us. Even the gambler must ply the 
 dice-box, and the man of pleasure seek excitement in 
 society. But in the true life of action, still the ruling 
 principle should be honor. 
 
 Such, in brief, is Piso’s (or rather Cicero’s) vindica¬ 
 tion of the old masters of philosophy. Before they 
 leave the place Cicero fires a parting shot at the Stoic 
 paradox that the “ wise man ” is always happy. How, 
 he pertinently asks, can one in sickness and poverty, 
 blind, or childless, in exile or in torture, be possibly 
 
 * Odyss. xii. 185 (Worsley). 
 
144 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 called happy, except by a monstrous perversion of lan¬ 
 guage?* 
 
 Here, somewhat abruptly, the dialogue closes; and 
 Cicero pronounces no judgment of his own, but leaves 
 the great question almost as perplexed as when he 
 started the discussion. But, of the two antagonistic 
 theories he leans rather to the Stoic than to the Epi¬ 
 curean. Self-sacrifice and honor seem, to his view, to 
 present a higher ideal than pleasure or expediency. 
 
 II. “ Academic Questions. ” 
 
 Fragments of two editions of this work have come 
 down to us; for almost before the first copy had reached 
 the hands of his friend Atticus, to whom it was sent, 
 Cicero had rewritten the whole on an enlarged scale. 
 The first book (as we have it now) is dedicated to Varro, 
 a noble patron of art and literature. . In his villa at 
 Cumte were spacious porticoes and gardens, and a library 
 with galleries and cabinets open to all comers. Here, 
 on a terrace looking seawards, Cicero, Atticus, and 
 Varro himself pass a long afternoon in discussing the 
 relative merits of the old and new Academies; and 
 hence we get the title of the work. Varro takes the 
 lion’s share of the first dialogue, and shows how from 
 the “vast and varied genius of Plato” both Academics 
 and Peripatetics drew all their philosophy, whether it 
 related to morals, to nature, or to logic. Stoicism re¬ 
 ceives a passing notice, as also does what Varro con¬ 
 siders the heresy of Theophrastus, who strips virtue of 
 all its beauty, by denying that happiness depends upon 
 it. 
 
 * In a little treatise called “ Paradoxes,” Cicero discusses sb? 
 of these scholastic quibbles of the Stoics. 
 
CICERO. 
 
 145 
 
 The second book is dedicated to another illustrious 
 name, the elder Lucullus, not long deceased—half¬ 
 statesman, half-dilettante, “with almost as divine a 
 memory for facts,” says Cicero, with something of envy, 
 “as Hortensius had for words.” This time it is at his 
 villa, near Tusculum, amidst scenery, perhaps even 
 now the loveliest of all Italian landscapes, that the 
 philosophic dialogue takes place. Lucullus condemns 
 the skepticism of the New Academy—those reaction¬ 
 ists against the dogmatism of past times, who disbe¬ 
 lieve their very eyesight. If (he says) we reject the 
 testimony of the senses, there is neither body, nor 
 truth, not' -argument, nor anything certain left us. 
 These perpetual doubters destroy every ground of our 
 belief. 
 
 Cicero ingeniously defends this skepticism, which 
 was, in fact, the bent of his own mind. After all, 
 what is our eyesight worth? The ship sailing across 
 the bay yonder seems to move, but to the sailors it is 
 the shore that recedes from their view. Even the sun, 
 “which mathematicians affirm to be eighteen times 
 larger than the earth, looks but a foot in diameter.” 
 And as it is with these things, so it is with all knowl¬ 
 edge. Bold indeed must be the man who can define 
 the point at which belief passes into certainty. Even 
 the “fine frenzy” of the poet, his pictures of gods and 
 heroes, are as lifelike to himself and to his hearers as 
 though he actually saw them. 
 
 “ See how Apollo, fair-haired god, 
 
 Draws in and bends his golden bow, 
 
 While on the left fair Dian waves her torch.” 
 
 * > 
 
 No—we are sure of nothing; and we are happy if, like 
 §ogrates, we only know this—that we know nothing, 
 
146 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 Then, as if in irony, or partly influenced perhaps by 
 the advocate’s love of arguing the case both ways, 
 Cicero demolishes that grand argument of design which 
 elsewhere he so carefully constructs,* and reasons in 
 the very language of materialism: “ You assert that all 
 the universe could not have been so ingeniously made 
 without some godlike wisdom, the majesty of which 
 you trace down even to the perfection of bees and ants. 
 Why then did the Deity, when he made everything 
 for the sake of man, make such a variety (for instance) 
 of venomous reptiles? Your divine soul is a fiction; 
 it is better to imagine that creation is the result of the 
 laws of nature, and so release the Deity from a great 
 deal of hard work, and me from fear; for which of us, 
 when he thinks that he is an object of divine care, 
 can help feeling an awe of the divine power day and 
 night? But we do not understand even our own 
 bodies; how, then, can we have an eyesight so 
 piercing as to penetrate the mysteries of heaven and 
 earth?” 
 
 The treatise, however, is but a disappointing frag¬ 
 ment, and the argument is incomplete. 
 
 III. The “ Tusculan Disputations.” 
 
 The scene of this dialogue is Cicero’s villa at Tuscu- 
 lum. There, in his long gallery, he walks and dis¬ 
 cusses with his friends the vexed questions of mortality. 
 Was death an evil? Was the soul immortal? How 
 could a man best bear pain and the other miseries of 
 life? Was virtue any guaranty for happiness? 
 
 Then, as now, death was the great problem of hu¬ 
 manity—“to die and go we know not where.” The 
 
 * See p. 148, 
 
CICERO. 
 
 147 
 
 old belief in Elysium and Tartarus had died away; as 
 Cicero himself boldly puts it in another place, such 
 things were no longer even old wives’ fables. Either 
 death brought an absolute unconsciousness, or the soul 
 soared into space. “ Lex non pana mors "—'‘Death is 
 a law, not a penalty”—was the ancient saying. It was, 
 as it were, the close of a banquet or the fall of the cur¬ 
 tain. “While we are, death is not; when death has 
 come, we are not.” 
 
 Cicero brings forward the testimony of past ages to 
 prove that death is not a mere annihilation. Man can¬ 
 not perish utterly. Heroes are deified; and the spirits 
 of the dead return to us in visions of the night. Some¬ 
 how or other (he says) there clings to our minds a certain 
 presage of future ages; and so we plant that our chil¬ 
 dren may reap; we toil that others may enter into 
 our labors; and it is this life after death, the desire to 
 live in men’s mouths forever, which inspires the pa¬ 
 triot and the martyr. Fame to the Roman, even more 
 than to us, was “ the last infirmity of noble minds.” It 
 was so in a special degree to Cicero. The instinctive 
 sense of immortality, he argues, is strong within us, 
 and as, in the words of the English poet, 
 
 “ Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,” 
 
 so also in death, the Roman said, though in other 
 words— 
 
 “ Our souls have sight of that immortal sea 
 Which brought us hither.” 
 
 Believe not then, says Cicero, those old wives’ tales, 
 those poetic legends, the terrors of a material hell, or 
 the joys of a sensual paradise. Rather hold with Plato 
 that the soul is an eternal principle of life, which has 
 
148 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 neither beginning nor end of existence; for if it were 
 not so, heaven and earth would be overset, and all na¬ 
 ture would stand at gaze. “ Men say they cannot con¬ 
 ceive or comprehend what the soul can be distinct 
 from the body. As if, forsooth, they could compre¬ 
 hend what it is, when it is in the bod} r ,—its conforma¬ 
 tion, its magnitude, or its position there. . . . To me, 
 when I consider the nature of the soul, there is far 
 more difficulty and obscurity in forming a conception of 
 what the soul is while in the body,—in a dwelling where 
 it seems so little at home,—than of what it will be when 
 it has escaped into the free atmosphere of heaven, 
 which seems its natural abode.”* And as the poet 
 seems to us inspired, as the gifts of memory and elo¬ 
 quence seem divine, so is the soul itself, in its simple 
 essence, a god dwelling in the breast of each of us. 
 What else can be this power which enables us to recol¬ 
 lect the past, to foresee the future, to understand the 
 present? 
 
 There follows a passage on the argument from design 
 which anticipates that fine saying of Voltaire: “Si 
 Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer; mais toute 
 la nature crie qu’il existe.” “ The heavens,” says even 
 the heathen philosopher, “declare the glory of God.” 
 Look on the sun and the stars; look on the alternation 
 of the seasons and the changes of day and night; look 
 again at the earth, bringing forth her fruits for the use 
 of men; the multitude of cattle; and man himself, 
 made as it were to contemplate and adore the heavens 
 and the gods. Look on all these things, and doubt not 
 that there is some Being, though you see him not, who 
 has created and presides over the world. 
 
 *'I. c. 22. 
 
CICERO . 
 
 149 
 
 “Imitate, therefore, the end of Socrates; who, with 
 the fatal cup in his hands, spoke with the serenity of 
 one not forced to die, but, as it were, ascending into 
 heaven; for he thought that the souls of men, when 
 they left the body went by different roads; those pol¬ 
 luted by vice and unclean living took a road wide 
 of that which led to the assembly of the gods; while 
 those who had kept themselves pure, and on earth had 
 taken a divine life as their model, found it easy to 
 return to those beings from whence they came.” Or 
 learn a lesson from the swans, who, with a prophetic 
 instinct, leave this world with joy and singing. Yet 
 do not anticipate the time of death, “for the Deity 
 forbids us to depart hence without his summons; but, 
 on just cause given (as to Socrates and Cato), gladly 
 should we exchange our darkness for that light, and, 
 like men not breaking prison but released by the law, 
 leave our chains with joy, as having been discharged 
 by God.” 
 
 The feeling of these ancients with regard to suicide, 
 we must here remember, was very different from our 
 own. There was no distinct idea of the sanctity of life; 
 no social stigma and consequent suffering were brought 
 on the family of the suicide. Stoic and Epicurean phil¬ 
 osophers alike upheld it as a lawful remedy against the 
 pangs of disease, the dotage of old age, or the caprices 
 of a tyrant. Every man might, they contended, choose 
 his own route on the last great journey, and sleep well, 
 when he grew wearied out with life’s fitful fever. The 
 door was always open (said Epictetus) when the play 
 palled on the senses. You should quit the stage with 
 dignity, nor drain the flask to the dregs. Some phil¬ 
 osophers, it is true, protested against it as mere de¬ 
 vice of cowardice to avoid pain, and as a failure in our 
 
150 
 
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 duties as good citizens. Cicero, in one of his latest 
 works, again quotes with approval the opinion of Py¬ 
 thagoras, that “no man should abandon his post in 
 life without the orders of the Great Commander.” But 
 at Rome suicide had been glorified by a long roll of 
 illustrious names, and the protest was made in vain. 
 
 But why, continues Cicero, why add to the miseries 
 of life by brooding over death? Is life to any of us 
 such unmixed pleasure even while it lasts? Which of 
 us can tell whether he be taken away from good or 
 from evil? As our birth is but “ a sleep and a forget¬ 
 ting,” so our death may be but a second sleep, as last¬ 
 ing as Endymion’s. Why,'then, call it wretched, even 
 if we die before our natural time? Nature has lent us 
 life, without fixing the day of payment; and uncer¬ 
 tainty is one of the conditions of its tenure. Compare 
 our longest life with eternity, and it is as short-lived as 
 that of those ephemeral insects whose life is measured 
 by a summer day; and “ who, when the sun sets, have 
 reached old age. ” 
 
 Let us, then, base our happiness on strength of 
 mind, on a contempt of earthly pleasures, and on the 
 strict observance of virtue. Let us recall the last noble 
 words of Socrate to his judges. “The death,” said 
 he, “to which you condemn me, I count a gain rather 
 than a loss. Either it is a dreamless sleep that knows 
 no waking, or it carries me where I may converse with 
 the spirits of the illustrious dead. 1 go to death, you 
 to life; but which of us is going the better way, God 
 only knows.” 
 
 No man, then, dies too soon who has run a course 
 of perfect virtue; for glory follows like a shadow in 
 the wake of such a life. Welcome death, therefore, 
 as a blessed deliverance from evil, sent by the special 
 
CICERO. 
 
 151 
 
 favor of the gods, who thus bring us safely across a sea 
 of troubles to an eternal haven. 
 
 The second topic which Cicero and his friends dis¬ 
 cuss is, the endurance of pain. Is it an unmixed evil? 
 Can anything console the sufferer? Cicero at once con¬ 
 demns the sophistry of Epicurus. The wise man can¬ 
 not pretend indifference to pain; it is enough that he 
 endure it with courage, since, beyond all question, it is 
 sharp, bitter, and hard to bear. And what is this cour¬ 
 age? Partly excitement, partly the impulse of honor 
 or of shame, partly the habituation which steels the en¬ 
 durance of the gladiator. Keep, therefore—this is the 
 conclusion—stern restraint over the feminine elements 
 of your soul, and learn not only to despise the attacks 
 of pain, but also 
 
 “ The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” 
 
 From physical, the discussion naturally passes to 
 mental, suffering. For grief, as well as for pain, he 
 prescribes the remedy of the Stoics— azquanimitas — 
 “a calm serenity of mind.” The wise man, ever serene 
 and composed, is moved neither by pain or sorrow, by 
 fear or desire. He is equally undisturbed by the malice 
 of enemies or the inconstancy of fortune. But what 
 consolation can we bring to ease the pain of the 
 Epicurean? “ Put a nosegay to his nostrils—burn per¬ 
 fumes before him—crown him with roses and wood¬ 
 bine!” But parfumes and garlands can do little in 
 such case; pleasures may divert, but they can scarcely 
 console. 
 
 Again, the Cyrenaics bring at the best but Job’s 
 comfort. No man will bear his misfortunes the more 
 lightly by bethinking himself that they are unavoid¬ 
 able—that others have suffered before him—that pain 
 
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 is part and parcel of the ills which flesh is heir to. 
 Why grieve at all? Why feed your misfortune by 
 dwelling on it? Plunge rather into active life and 
 forget it, remembering that excessive lamentation over 
 the trivial accidents of humanity is alike unmanly and 
 unnecessary. And as it is with grief, so it is with 
 envy, lust, anger, and those other “ perturbations of 
 the mind ” which the Stoic Zeno rightly declares to be 
 “repugnant to reason and nature.” From such dis¬ 
 quietude it is the wise man who is free. 
 
 The fifth and last book discusses the great question, 
 Is virtue of itself sufficient to make life happy? The 
 bold conclusion is, that it is sufficient. Cicero is not 
 content with the timid qualifications adopted by the 
 school of the Peripatetics, who say one moment that 
 external advantages and worldly prosperity are nothing, 
 and then again admit that, though man may be happy 
 without them, he is happier with them,—which is 
 making the real liappinness imperfect after all. Men 
 differ in their views of life. As in the great Olympic 
 games, the throng are attracted, some by desire of gain, 
 some by the crown of wild olive, some merely by the 
 spectacle; so, in the race of life, we are all slaves to 
 some ruling idea, it may be glory, or money, or wis¬ 
 dom. But they alone can be pronounced happy whose 
 minds are like some tranquil sea—“alarmed by no 
 fears, wasted by no griefs, inflamed by no lusts, ener¬ 
 vated by no relaxing pleasures,—and such serenity 
 virtue alone can produce.” 
 
 These “Disputations” have always been highly ad¬ 
 mired. But their popularity was greater in times when 
 Cicero’s Greek originals were less read or understood. 
 Erasmus carried his admiration of this treatise to en¬ 
 thusiasm. “I cannot doubt,” he says, “but that the 
 
CICERO. 
 
 153 
 
 blind from which such teaching flowed was inspired in 
 some sort by divinity.” 
 
 IY. The Treatise “ On Moral Duties.” 
 
 The treatise “De Officiis,” known as Cicero’s “ Offi¬ 
 ces, ” to which we pass next, is addressed b} r the author to 
 his son, w 7 hile studying at Athens under Cratippus; 
 possibly in imitation of Aristotle, who inscribed his 
 Ethics to his son Nicomachus. It is a treatise on the 
 duties of a gentleman—“the noblest present,” says a 
 modern writer, “ever made by parent to a child.”* 
 Written in a far higher tone than Lord Chesterfield’s 
 letters, though treating of the same subject, it proposes 
 and answers multifarious questions which must occur 
 continually to the modern Christian as well as to the ~ 
 ancient philosopher. “ What makes an action right or 
 wrong? What is a duty? What is expediency? How 
 shall I learn to choose between my principles and my 
 interests? And lastly (a point of casuistry which must 
 sometimes perplex the strictest conscience), of two 
 ‘ things honest,’f which is most so?” 
 
 The key-note of his discourse throughout is Honor; 
 and the word seems to carry with it that magic force 
 which Burke attributed to chivalry—“the unbouglit 
 grace of life—the nurse of heroic sentiment and manly 
 enterprise.” Noblesse oblige ,—and there is no state of 
 life, says Cicero, without its obligations. In their due 
 discharge consists all the nobility, and in their neglect 
 
 * Kelsall. 
 
 + The English “Honesty” and “Honor” alike fail to convey 
 the full force of the Latin honestus. The word expresses a pro¬ 
 gress of thought from comeliness and grace of person to a noble 
 and graceful character—all whose works are done in honesty 
 
 and honor. 
 
154 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 all the disgrace, of character. There should be no 
 selfish devotion to private interests. We are born not 
 for ourselves only, but for our kindred and fatherland. 
 We owe duties not only to those who have benefited 
 but to those who have wronged us. We should render 
 to all their due; and justice is due even to the lowest of 
 mankind: what, for instance (he says with a hardness 
 which jars upon our better feelings), can be lower than 
 a slave? Honor is that “unbought grace’' which adds a 
 lustre to every action. In society it produces courtesy 
 of manners; in business, under the form of truth, it es¬ 
 tablishes public credit. Again, as equity, it smooths 
 the harsh features of the law. In war it produces that 
 moderation and good faith between contending armies 
 which are the surest basis of a lasting peace. And so 
 in honor are centred the elements of all the virtues— 
 wisdom and justice, fortitude and temperance; and 
 “if,” he says, reproducing the noble words of Plato, as 
 applied by him to Wisdom, “ this ‘ Honor’ could but be 
 seen in her full beauty by mortal eyes, the whole world 
 would fall in love with her.” 
 
 Such is the general spirit of this treatise, of which 
 only the briefest sketch can be given in these pages. 
 
 Cicero bases honor on our inherent excellence of 
 nature, paying the same noble tribute to humanity as 
 Kant some centuries after: “On earth there is nothing 
 great but man; in man there is nothing great but 
 mind.” Truth is a law of our nature. Man is only 
 “lower than the angels;” and to him belong prero¬ 
 gatives which mark him off from the brute creation— 
 the faculties of reason and discernment, the sense of 
 beauty, and the love of law and order. And from this 
 arises that fellow-feeling which, in one sense, “makes 
 the whole world kin”—the spirit of Terence’s famous 
 
CICERO. 
 
 155 
 
 line, which Cicero notices (applauded on its recitation, 
 as Augustin tells us, by the cheers of the entire audi¬ 
 ence in the theatre)— 
 
 “ Homo sum—humani nihil a me alienum puto; ” * 
 
 for (he continues) “all men by nature love one another, 
 and desire an intercourse of words and action. ” Hence 
 spring the family affections, friendship, and social ties; 
 hence also that general love of combination, which 
 forms a striking feature of the present age, resulting 
 in clubs, trades-unions, companies, and generally in 
 what Mr. Carlyle terms “swarmery.” 
 
 Next to truth, justice is the great duty of mankind. 
 Cicero at once condemns “communism” in matters of 
 property. Ancient immemorial seizure, conquest, or 
 compact, may give a title; but “no man can say that 
 he has anything his own by a right of nature.” In¬ 
 justice springs from avarice or ambition, the thirst of 
 riches or of empire, and is the more dangerous as it 
 appears in the more exalted spirits, causing a dissolu¬ 
 tion of all ties and obligations. And here he takes oc¬ 
 casion to instance “ that late most shameless attempt 
 of Caesar’s to make himself master of Rome.” 
 
 There is, besides, an injustice of omission. You 
 may wrong your neighbor by seeing him wronged 
 without interfering. Cicero takes the opportunity of 
 protesting strongly against the selfish policy of those 
 lovers of ease and peace, who, “from a desire of 
 furthering their own interests, or else from a churlish 
 temper, profess that they mind nobody’s business but 
 their own, in order that they may seem to be men of 
 strict integrity and to injure none,” and thus shrink 
 
 * “I am a man—I hold that nothing which concerns mankind 
 can be matter of unconcern to me.” 
 
156 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 from taking their part in “the fellowship of life.” He 
 would have had small patience with our modern doc¬ 
 trine of non-intervention and neutrality in nations any 
 more than in men. Suck conduct arises (he says) 
 from the false logic with which men cheat their con 
 science; arguing reversely, that whatever is the best 
 policy is—honesty. 
 
 There are two ways, it must be remembered, in 
 which one man may injure another—force and fraud; 
 but as the lion is a nobler creature than the fox, so 
 open violence seems less odious than secret villany. 
 No character is so justly hateful as 
 
 “ A rogue in grain, 
 
 Veneered with sanctimonious theory.” 
 
 Nations have their obligations as well as individuals, 
 and war has its laws as well as peace. The struggle 
 should be carried on in a generous temper, and not in 
 the spirit of extermination, when “it has sometimes 
 seemed a question between two hostile nations, not 
 which should remain a conqueror, but which should 
 remain a nation at all. ” 
 
 No mean part of justice consists in liberality, and 
 this, too, has its duties. It is an important question, 
 how, and when, and to whom, we should give? It is 
 possible to be generous at another person’s expense: 
 it is possible to injure the recipient by mistimed 
 liberality; or to ruin one’s fortune by open house and 
 prodigal hospitality. A great man’s bounty (as he 
 says in another place) should be a common sanctuary 
 for the needy. “To ransom captives and enrich the 
 meaner folk is a nobler form of generosity than pro¬ 
 viding wild beasts or shows of gladiators to amuse the 
 mob.” Charity should begin at home; for relations 
 
CICERO. 
 
 157 
 
 and friends bold tlie first place in our affections; but 
 tbe circle of our good deeds is not to be narrowed 
 by tbe ties of blood, or sect, or party, and “our 
 country comprehends tbe endearments of all.” We 
 should act in tbe spirit of the ancient law—“Thou 
 sbalt keep no man from !he running stream, or from 
 lighting bis torch at thy hearth,” Our liberality 
 should be really liberal,—like that charity which Jer¬ 
 emy Taylor describes as “ friendship to all the world.” 
 
 Another component principle of this honor is cour¬ 
 age, or “greatness of soul,” which (continues Cicero) 
 has been well defined by the Stoics as “ a virtue con¬ 
 tending for justice and honesty;” and its noblest form 
 is a generous contempt for ordinary objects of ambi¬ 
 tion, not “from a vain or fantastic humor, but from 
 solid principles of reason.” The lowest and commoner 
 form of courage is the mere animal virtue of the 
 fighting-cock. 
 
 But a character should not only be excellent,—it 
 should be graceful. In gesture and deportment men 
 should strive to acquire that dignified grace of manners 
 “which adds as it were a lustre to our lives.” They 
 should avoid affectation and eccentricity; “not to care 
 a farthing what people think of us is a sign not so 
 much of pride as of immodesty.” The want of tact — 
 the saying and doing things at the wrong time and 
 place—produces the same discord in society as a false 
 note in music; and harmony of character is of more 
 consequence than harmony of sounds. There is a 
 grace in words as well as in conduct; we should avoid 
 unseasonable jests, “and not lard our talk with Greek 
 quotations.”* 
 
 * This last precept Ceicero must have considered did not apply 
 
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 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY 
 
 In the path of life, each should follow the bent of 
 his own genius, so far as it is innocent— 
 
 “Honor and shame from no condition rise; 
 
 Act well your part—there all the honor lies.” 
 
 Nothing is so difficult (says Cicero) as the choice of 
 a profession, inasmuch as ‘ ‘ the choice has commonly 
 to be made when the judgment is weakest.” Some 
 tread in their father’s steps, others beat out a fresh 
 line of their own; and (he adds, perhaps not without 
 a personal reference) this is generally the case with 
 those born of mean parents, who propose to carve 
 their own way in the world. But the parvenu of 
 Arpinum—the “new man,” as aristocratic jealousy 
 always loved to call him—is by no means insensible 
 to the true honors of ancestry. “The noblest inher¬ 
 itance,” he says, “that can ever be left by a father to 
 his son, far excelling that of lands and houses, is the 
 fame of his virtues and glorious actions;” and saddest 
 of all sights is that of a noble house dragged through 
 the mire by some degenerate descendant, so as to be a 
 by-word among the populace,—“which may” (he con¬ 
 cludes) “ be justly said of but too many in out times.” 
 
 The Roman’s view of the comparative dignity of 
 professions and occupations is interesting, because his 
 prejudices (if they be prejudices) have so long main¬ 
 tained their ground amongst us moderns. Tax-gather¬ 
 ers and usurers are as unpopular now as ever—the 
 latter very deservedly so. Retail trade is despicable, 
 we are told, and “all mechanics are by their profes¬ 
 sion mean.” Especially such trades as minister to 
 mere appetite or luxury—butchers, fishmongers, and 
 
 to letter-writing, otherwise he was a notorious offender against 
 his own rule, 
 
CICERO. 
 
 159 
 
 cooks; perfumers, dancers, and suchlike. But medi¬ 
 cine, architecture, education, farming, and even whole¬ 
 sale business, especially importation and exportation, 
 are the professions of a gentleman. “But if the mer¬ 
 chant, satisfied with his profits, shall leave the seas and 
 from the harbor step into a landed estate, such a man 
 seems justly deserving of praise.” We seem to be 
 reading the verdict of modern English society delivered 
 by anticipation two thousand years ago. 
 
 The section ends with earnest advice to all, that they 
 should put their principles into practice. “The deepest 
 knowledge of nature is but a poor and imperfect busi¬ 
 ness, unless it proceeds into action. As justice con¬ 
 sists in no abstract theory, but in upholding society 
 among men,—as “greatness of soul itself, if it be iso¬ 
 lated from the duties of social life, is but a kind of un¬ 
 couth churlishness,”—so it is each citizen’s duty to leave 
 his philosophic seclusion of a cloister, and take his place 
 in public life, if the times demand it, “though he be 
 able to number the stars and measure out the world.” 
 
 The same practical vein is continued in the next 
 book. What, after all, are a man’s real interests? what 
 line of conduct will best advance the main end of his 
 life? Generally, men make the fatal mistake of assum¬ 
 ing that honor must always clash with their interests; 
 while in reality, says Cicero, “ they would obtain their 
 ends best, not by knavery and underhand dealing, but 
 by justice and integrity.” The right is identical with 
 the expedient. “ The way to secure the favor of the 
 gods is by upright dealing; and next to the gods, noth¬ 
 ing contributes so much to men’s happiness as men 
 themselves.” It is labor and co operation which have 
 given us all the goods which we possess. 
 
 Since, then, man is the best friend to man, and also 
 
160 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 Ms most formidable enemy, an important question to 
 be discussed is the secret of influence and popularity— 
 “the art of winning men’s affections.” For to govern 
 by bribes or by force is not really to govern at all; and 
 no obedience based on fear can be lasting—“ no force 
 of power can bear up long against a current of public 
 hate.” Adventurers who ride rough-shod over law (he 
 is thinking again of Caesar)have but a short-lived reign; 
 and “liberty, when she has been chained up awhile, 
 bites harder when let loose than if she had never been 
 chained at all.”* Most happy was that just and moder¬ 
 ate government of Rome in earlier times, when she was 
 “the port and refuge for princes and nations in their 
 hour of need.” Three requisites go to form that popu¬ 
 lar character which has a just influence over others: 
 we must win men’s love, we must deserve their confi¬ 
 dence, and we must inspire them with an admiration 
 for our abilities. The shortest and most direct road to 
 real influence is that which Socrates recommends—“ for 
 a man to be that which he wishes men to take him 
 for.” f 
 
 Then follow some maxims which show how thor¬ 
 oughly conservative was the policy of our philosopher. 
 The security of property he holds to be the security 
 of the state. There must be no playing with vested 
 
 * It is curious to note how, throughout the whole of this argu¬ 
 ment, Cicero, whether consciously or unconsciously, works upon 
 the princi pie that the highest life is the political life, and that 
 the highest object a man can set before him is the obtain¬ 
 ing, by legitimate means, influence and authority among his 
 fellow-citizens. 
 
 t “ Not being less but more than all 
 The gentleness he seemed to be.” 
 
 —Tennyson: “ In Memoriam.” 
 
CICERO. 
 
 161 
 
 rights, no unequal taxation, no attempt to bring all 
 things to a level, no canceling of debts and redistribu¬ 
 tion of land (lie is thinking of the baits held out by 
 Catiline), none of those traditional devices for winning 
 favor with the people which tend to destroy that 
 social copeord and unity which make a common¬ 
 wealth. ‘‘What reason is there,” he asks, “why, 
 when I have bought, built, repaired, and laid out much 
 money, another shall come and enjoy the fruits of it?” 
 
 And as a man should be careful of the interests of the 
 social body, so he should be of his own. But Cicero 
 feels that in descending to such questions he is 
 somewhat losing sight of his dignity as a moralist. 
 “ You will find all this thoroughly discussed,” he says 
 to his son, “in Xenophon’s (Economics — a book 
 which, when I was just your age, I translated from the 
 Greek into Latin.” [One wonders whether young 
 Marcus took the hint.] “And if you want instruction 
 in money matters there are gentlemen sitting on the 
 Exchange who will teach you much ^better than the 
 philosophers.” 
 
 The last book opens with a saying of the elder 
 Cato’s, which Cicero much admires, though he says 
 modestly that he was never able in his own case quite 
 to realize it—“I am never less idle than when I am 
 idle, and never less alone than when alone.” Retire¬ 
 ment and solitude are excellent things, Cicero always 
 declares; generally contriving at the same time to make 
 it plain, as he does here, that his own heart is in the 
 world of public life. But at least it gives him time for 
 writing. He “ has written more in this short time, since 
 the fall of the Commonwealth, than in all the years 
 during which it stood.” 
 
 He here resolves the question, If honor and interest 
 
162 
 
 TEE ELZEVIR LIBRART. 
 
 seem to clash, which is to give w T ay? Or rather, it has 
 been resolved already; if the right he always the ex¬ 
 pedient, the opposition is seeming, not real. He puts 
 a great many questions of casuistry, but it all amounts 
 to this: the good man keeps his oath, “though it were 
 to his own hinderance.” But it is never to his hin- 
 derance; for a violation of his conscience would be the 
 greatest hinderance of all. 
 
 In this treatise, more than in any of his other phil¬ 
 osophical works, Cicero inclines to the teaching of the 
 Stoics. In the others, he is rather the seeker after 
 truth than the maintainer of a system. His is the 
 critical eclecticism of the “Hew Academy”—the spirit 
 so prevalent in our own day, which fights against the 
 shackles of dogmatism. And with all his respect for 
 the nobler side of Stoicism, he is fully alive to its de¬ 
 fects ; though it was not given to him to see, as Milton 
 saw after him, the point wherein that great system really 
 failed—the “philosophic pride” which was the be¬ 
 setting sin of all disciples in the school, from Cato to 
 Seneca: 
 
 “ Ignorant of themselves; of God much more, 
 
 * * * * * * 
 
 Much of the soul they talk, hut all awry; 
 
 And in themselves seek virtue, and to themselves 
 All glory arrogate,—to God give none; 
 
 Rather accuse Him under usual names. 
 
 Fortune, or Fate, as one regardless quite 
 Of mortal things.” * 
 
 Yet, in spite of this, such men were as the salt of the 
 earth in a corrupt age; and as we find, throughout the 
 more modern pages of history, great preachers de¬ 
 nouncing wickedness in high places,—Bourdaloue and 
 
 * Paradise Regained. 
 
CICERO . 
 
 168 
 
 Massillon pouring their eloquence into the heedless ears 
 of Louis XIY. and his courtiers—Sherlock and Tillotson 
 declaiming from the pulpit in such stirring accents that 
 ‘‘even the indolent Charles roused himself to listen, and 
 the fastidious Buckingham forgot to sneer” *—so too, do 
 we find these “monks of heathendom,” as the Stoics 
 have been not unfairly called, protesting in their day 
 against that selfish profligacy which was fast sapping all 
 morality in the Roman empire. No doubt (as Mr. 
 Lecky takes care to tell us), their high principles were 
 not always consistent with their practice (alas! whose 
 are?); Cato may have ill-used his slaves, Sallust may have 
 been rapacious, and Seneca wanting in personal courage. 
 Yet it was surely something to have set up a noble ideal, 
 though they might not attain to it themselves, and in 
 “ that hideous carnival of vice” to have kept themselves, 
 so far as they might, unspotted from the world. Certain 
 it is that no other ancient sect ever came so near the 
 light of revelation. Passages from Seneca, from 
 Epictetus, from Marcus Aurelius, sound even now like 
 fragments of the inspired writings. The Unknown 
 God, whom they ignorantly worshiped as the Soul or 
 Reason of the World, is—in spite of Milton’s strictures 
 the beginning and the end of their philosophy. Let us 
 listen for a moment to their language. “ Prayer should 
 be only for the good.” “ Men should act according to 
 the spirit, and not according to the letter of their faith.” 
 “ Wouldst thou propitiate the gods? Be good: he has 
 worshiped them sufficiently who has imitated them.” 
 It was from a Stoic poet, Aratus, that St. Paul quoted 
 the great truth which was the rational argument against 
 idolatry—“For we are also His offspring, and * (so the 
 
 * Macaulay. 
 
164 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 original passage concludes) “we alone possess a voice, 
 which is the image of reason.” It is in another poet of 
 the same school that we find what are perhaps the 
 noblest lines in all Latin poetry. Persius concludes his 
 Satire on the common hypocrisy of those prayers and 
 offerings to the gods which were but a service of the lips 
 and hands, in words of which an English rendering may 
 give the sense but not the beauty:—“ Nay, then, let us 
 offer to the gods that which the debauched sons of great 
 Messala can never bring on their broad chargers,—a 
 soul wherein the laws of God and man are blended,—a 
 heart pure to its inmost depths,—a breast ingrained 
 with a noble sense of honor. Let me but bring these 
 with me to the altar, and I care not though my offering 
 be a handful of corn.” With these grand words, fit 
 precursors of a purer creed to come, we may take our 
 leave of the Stoics, remarking how thoroughly, even in 
 their majestic egotism, they represented the moral force 
 of the nation among whom they flourished; a nation, 
 says a modern preacher, “ whose legendary and historic 
 heroes could thrust their hand into the flame, and see it 
 consumed without a nerve shrinking; or come from 
 captivity on parole, advise their countrymen against a 
 peace, and then go back to torture and certain death; or 
 devote themselves by solemn self-sacrifice like the Decii. 
 The world must bow before such men; for, uncon¬ 
 sciously, here was a form of the spirit of the Crosse- 
 self-surrender, unconquerable fidelity to duty, sacrifice 
 for others.” * 
 
 Portions of three treatises by Cicero upon Political Philos¬ 
 ophy have come down to us: 1. “ De Republica a dialogue on 
 Government, founded chiefly on the “Republic” of Plato; 
 
 * F. W. Robertson, Sermons, i. 218. 
 
(jivjbuo. 
 
 165 
 
 2. “De Legibus”; a discussion on Law in the abstract, and on 
 national systems of legislation; 3. “ De Jure Civili”; of which last 
 only a few fragments exist. His historical works have all 
 perished. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 CICERO’S RELIGION. 
 
 It is difficult to separate Cicero’s religion from his 
 philosophy. In both he was a skeptic, but in the better 
 sense of the word. His search after truth was in no 
 sneering or incredulous spirit, but in that of a reverent 
 inquirer. We must remember, in justice to him, that 
 an earnest-minded man in his day could hardly take 
 higher ground than that of the sceptic. The old polythe¬ 
 ism was dying out in everything but in name, and there 
 was nothing to take its place. 
 
 His religious belief, so far as we can gather it, was 
 rather negative than positive. In the speculative trea¬ 
 tise which he has left us, “ On the Nature of the Gods,” 
 he examines all the current creeds of the day, but leaves 
 his own quite undefined. 
 
 The treatise takes the form, like the rest, of an imagi¬ 
 nary conversation. This is supposed to have taken 
 place at the house of Aurelius Cotta, then Pontifex 
 Maximus—an office which answered nearly to that of 
 Minister of religion. The other speakers are Balbus, 
 Velleius, and Cicero himself,—who acts, however, 
 rather in the character of moderator than of disputant. 
 The debate is still, as in the more strictly philosophical 
 dialogues, between the different schools. Velleius first 
 sets forth the doctrine of his master Epicurus; speaking 
 
166 
 
 TEE ELZEVIR LIBRARY . 
 
 about the gods, says one of his opponents, with as much 
 apparent intimate knowledge “as if he had just come 
 straight down from heaven.” All the speculations of pre¬ 
 vious philosophers—which he reviews one after the other 
 —are, he assures the company, palpable errors. The 
 popular mythology is a mere collection of fables. Plato 
 and the Stoics, with their Soul of the world aod their 
 pervading Providence, are entirely wrong; the disciples 
 of Epicurus alone are right. There are gods; that much, 
 the universal belief of mankind in all ages sufficiently 
 establishes. But that they should be the laborious beings 
 which the common systems of theology would make 
 them,—that they should employ themselves in the man¬ 
 ufacture of worlds,—is manifestly absurd. Some of 
 this argument is ingenious. ‘ ‘ What should induce the 
 Deity to perform the functions of an iEdile, to light 
 up and decorate the world? If it was to supply better 
 accommodation for himself, then he must have dwelt of 
 choice, up to that time, in the darkness of a dungeon. 
 If such improvements gave him pleasure, why should 
 he have chosen to be without them so long?” 
 
 No—the gods are immortal and happy beings; and 
 these very attributes imply that they should be wholly 
 free from the cares of business—exempt from labor, 
 as from pain and death. They are in human form, but 
 of an ethereal and subtile essence, incapable of our 
 passions or desires. Happy in their own perfect wis¬ 
 dom and virtue, they 
 
 “ Sit beside their nectar, careless of mankind.” 
 
 Cotta—speaking in behalf of the New Academy— 
 controverts these views. Be these your gods, Epicurus? 
 as well say there are no gods at all. What reverence, 
 what love, or what fear can men have of beings who 
 
CICERO. 
 
 167 
 
 neither wish them, nor can work them, good or ill? Is 
 idleness the divinest life ? “ Why, ’tis the very heaven 
 
 of schoolboys; yet the schoolboys, on their holiday, em¬ 
 ploy themselves in games.” Nay, he concludes, what 
 the Stoic Posidonius said of your master Epicurus is 
 true—“He believed there were no gods, and what he 
 said about their nature he said only to avoid popu¬ 
 lar odium.” He could not believe that the Deity has 
 the outward shape of a man, without any solid essence ; 
 that he has all the members of a man, without the 
 power to use them; that he is a shadowy transparent be¬ 
 ing, who shows no favor and confers no benefits on 
 any, cares for nothing and does nothing; this is to allow 
 his existence of the gods in word, but to deny it in fact. 
 
 Velleius compliments his opponent on his clever 
 argument, but desires that Balbus would state his views 
 upon the question. The Stoic consents; and, at some 
 length, proceeds to prove (what neither disputant has at 
 all denied) the existence of Divine beings of some kind. 
 Universal belief, well-authenticated instances of their 
 appearance to men, and of the fulfillment of prophecies 
 and omens, are all evidences of their existence. He 
 dwells much, too, on the argument from design, of 
 which so much use has been made by modern theolo¬ 
 gians. He furnishes Paley with the idea for his well- 
 known illustration of the man who finds a watch ; 
 “when we see a dial or a water-clock, we believe that 
 the hour is shown thereon by art, and not by chance.”* 
 He gives also an illustration from the poet Attius, which 
 from a poetical imagination has since become an histor¬ 
 ical incident; the shepherds who see the ship Argo ap¬ 
 proaching take the new monster for a thing of life, as 
 
 * De Nat. Deor. ii. 34. Paley’s Nat. Theol. ch. i. 
 
168 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 the Mexicans regarded the ships of Cortes. Much more, 
 he argues, does the harmonious order of the world be¬ 
 speak an intelligence within. But his conclusion is • 
 that the Universe itself is the Deity; or that the Deity 
 is the animating Spirit of the Universe; and that the 
 popular mythology, which gives one god to the Earth, 
 one to the Sea, one to Fire, and so on, is in fact a dis¬ 
 torted version of this truth. The very form of the uni¬ 
 verse—the sphere—is the most perfect of all forms, and 
 therefore suited to embody the Divine. 
 
 Then Cotta—who though, as Pontifex, he is a nation¬ 
 al priest by vocation, is of that sect in philosophy which 
 makes doubt its creed—resumes his objections. He is 
 no better satisfied with the tenets of the Stoics than with 
 those of the Epicureans. He believes that there are gods; 
 but, coming to the discussion as a dispassionate and philo¬ 
 sophical observer, he finds such proofs as are offered of 
 their existence insufficient. But this third book is frag¬ 
 mentary, and the continuity of Cotta’s argument is brok. 
 en by considerable gaps in all the manuscripts. There 
 is a curious tradition, that these portions were carefully 
 torn out by the early Christians, because they might 
 prove too formidable weapons in the hands of unbe¬ 
 lievers. Cotta professes throughout only to raise his ob¬ 
 jections in the hope that they may be refuted; but his 
 whole reasoning is destructive of any belief in an over¬ 
 ruling Providence. He confesses himself puzzled by 
 that insoluble mystery—the existence of Evil in a world 
 created and ruled by a beneficent Power. The gods 
 have given man reason, it is said; but man abuses the 
 gift to evil ends. “This is the fault,” you say, “of 
 men, not of the gods. As though the physician should 
 complain of the virulence of the disease, or 'the pilot 
 of the fury of the tempesC Though these are but mortal 
 
CICERO. 
 
 169 
 
 men, even in them it would seem ridiculous. Who 
 would have asked your help, we should answer, if these 
 difficulties had not arisen? May we not argue still 
 more strongly in the case of the gods? The fault, you 
 say, lies in the vices of men. But you should have giv¬ 
 en men such a rational faculty as would exclude the 
 possibility of such crimes.” He sees, as David did, “the 
 tingodly in prosperity.” The laws of Heaven are 
 mocked, crimes are committed, and “the thunders of 
 Olympian Jove are silent.” He quotes, as it would al¬ 
 ways be easy to quote, examples of this from all history: 
 the most telling and original, perhaps, is the retort of 
 Diagoras; who was called the Atheist, when they 
 showed him in the temple at Samothrace the votive tab¬ 
 lets (as they may be seen in some foreign churches now) 
 offered by those shipwrecked seamen who had been 
 saved from drowning. “ Lo, thou that deniest a Provi¬ 
 dence, behold here how many have been saved by prayer 
 to the gods!” “Yea,” was his reply; “but where are 
 those commemorated who were drowned ?’’ 
 
 The Dialogue ends with no resolution of the difficul¬ 
 ties, and no conclusion as to the points in question. 
 Cicero, who is the narrator of the imaginary conference, 
 gives it as his opinion that the arguments of the Stoic 
 seemed to him to have “ the greater probability.” It 
 was the great tenet of the school which he most af¬ 
 fected, that probability was the nearest approach that 
 man could make to speculative truth. “We are not 
 among those,” he says, “to whom there seems to be no 
 such thing as truth; but we say that all truths have 
 some falsehoods attached to them which have so strong 
 a resemblance to truth, that in such cases there is no 
 
 certain note of distinction which can determine our 
 
 - 
 
 judgment and assent. The consequence of which is 
 
170 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 that there are many things probable ; and although they 
 are not subjects of actual perception to our senses, yet 
 they have so grand and glorious an aspect that a wise 
 man governs his life thereby.”* It remained for one 
 of our ablest and most^ philosophical Christian writers 
 to prove that in such matters probability was practically 
 equivalent to demonstration.! Cicero’s own form of 
 skepticism in religious matters is perhaps very nearly 
 expressed in the striking anecdote which lie puts, in 
 this dialogue, into the mouth of the Epicurean. 
 
 “If you ask me what the Deity is, or what his nature 
 and attributes are, I should follow the example of 
 Simonides, who, when the tyrant Hiero proposed to 
 him the same question, asked a day to consider of it. 
 When the king, on the next day, required from him the 
 answer, Simonides requested two days more; and when 
 he went on continually asking double the time, instead 
 of giving any answer, Hiero in amazement demanded 
 * of him the reason. ‘ Because,’replied he, ‘the longer 
 I meditate on the question, the more obscure does it 
 appear.’ ” \ 
 
 The position of Cicero as a statesman, and also as a 
 member of the College of Augurs, no doubt checked 
 any strong expression of opinion on his part as to the 
 forms of popular worship and many particulars of 
 popular belief. In the treatise which he intended as in 
 some sort a sequel to this Dialogue on the “ Nature of 
 the Gods”—that upon “ Divination”—he states the argu¬ 
 ments for and against the national belief in omens, 
 auguries, dreams, and such intimations of the Divine 
 
 * De Nat. Deor. i. 5, 
 
 t “ To us, probability is the very guide of life.”—Introd. to 
 Butler’s Analogy. 
 
 % De Nat. Deor. i., 22 . 
 
CICERO. 
 
 171 
 
 will.* He puts the defence of the system in the mouth 
 of his brother Quintus, and takes himself the destruc¬ 
 tive side of the argument: but whether this was meant 
 to give his own real views on the subject, we cannot be 
 so certain. The course of argument employed on both 
 sides would rather lead to the conclusion that the writ¬ 
 ers’s opinion was very much that which Johnson de¬ 
 livered as to the reality of ghosts—“All argument is 
 against it, but all belief is for it.” 
 
 With regard to the great questions of the soul’s im¬ 
 mortality, and a state of future rewards and punish¬ 
 ments, it would be quite possible to gather from Cicero’s 
 writings passages expressive of entirely contradictory 
 views. The bent of his mind, as has been sufficiently 
 shown, was towards doubt, and still more towards dis¬ 
 cussion ; and possibly his opinions were not so entirely 
 in a state of flux as the remains of his writings seem to 
 show. In a future state of some kind he must certainly 
 have believed—that is, with such belief as he would 
 have considered the subject-matter to admit of—as a 
 strong probability. In a speculative fragment which 
 has come down to us, known as “Scipio’s Dream,” we 
 seem to have the creed of the man rather than the 
 speculations of the philosopher. Scipio Africanus the 
 elder appears in a dream to the younger who bore his 
 name (his grandson by adoption). He shows him a 
 vision of heaven; bids him listen to the music of the 
 spheres, which, as they move in their order, “ by a 
 modulation of high and low sounds,” give forth that 
 harmony which men have in some poor sort reduced to 
 notation. He bids him look down upon the earth, 
 
 * There is a third treatise, “ De Fato,” apparently a continua¬ 
 tion of the series, of which only a portion has reached us. Tt is 
 a discussion of the difficult questions of Fate and Free-will. 
 
172 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 contracted to a mere speck in the distance, and draws a 
 lesson of the poverty of all mere earthly fame and glory. 
 
 “ For all those who have preserved, or aided, or bene¬ 
 fited their country, there is a fixed and definite place in 
 heaven, where they shall be happy in the enjoyment of 
 everlasting life.” But “the souls of those who have 
 given themselves up to the pleasures of sense, and made 
 themselves, as it were, the servants of these,—who at 
 the bidding of the lust which wait upon pleasure have 
 violated the laws of gods and men,—they, when they 
 escape from the body, flit still around the earth, and 
 never attain to these abodes but after many ages of 
 wandering.” We may gather that his creed admitted 
 a Valhalla for the hero and the patriot, and a long pro¬ 
 cess of expiation for the wicked. 
 
 There is a curious passage preserved by St. Augustin 
 from that one of Cicero’s works which he most admired 
 —the lost treatise on “ Glory” *—which seems to show 
 that so far from being a materialist, he held the body to 
 be a sort of purgatory for the soul. 
 
 ‘ ‘ The mistakes and the sufferings of human life make 
 me think sometimes that those ancient seers, or inter¬ 
 preters of the secrets of heaven and the counsels of the 
 Divine mind, had some glimpse of the truth, when they 
 said that men are born in order to suffer the penalty for 
 some sins committed in a former life; and that the idea 
 is true which we find in Aristotle, that we are suffering 
 some such punishment as theirs of old, who fell into the 
 hands of those Etruscan bandits, and were put to death 
 with a studied cruelty; their living bodies being tied to 
 dead bodies, face to face, in closest possible conjunc¬ 
 tion; that so our souls are coupled to our bodies, united 
 like the living with the dead.” 
 
 * See p. 26. 
 
CICERO. 
 
 173 
 
 But whatever might have been the theological side, if 
 one may so express it, of Cicero’s religion, the moral 
 aphorisms which meet us here and there in his works 
 have often in them a teaching which comes near the 
 tone of Christian ethics. The words of Petrarch are 
 hardly too strong—“ You would fancy sometimes it was 
 not a Pagan philosopher but a Christian apostle who was 
 speaking.”* These are but a few out of many which 
 might be quoted: ‘ ‘ Strive ever for the truth, and so 
 reckon as that not thou art mortal, but only this thy 
 body, for thou art not that which this outward form of 
 thine shows forth, but each man’s mind, that is the real 
 man—not the shape which can be traced with the 
 finger.”f “Yea, rather, they live who have escaped 
 from the bonds of their flesh as from a prison-house.” 
 
 “Follow after justice and duty; such a life is the 
 path to heaven, and into yon assembly of those who 
 have once lived, and now, released from the body, 
 dwell in that place.” Where, in any other heathen 
 writer, shall we find such noble words as those which 
 close the apostrophe in the Tusculans?—“ One single 
 day well spent, and in accordance with thy precepts, 
 were better to be chosen than an immortality of sin !”j; 
 He is addressing himself, it is true, to Philosophy; but 
 his Philosophy is here little less than the Wisdom of 
 Scripture: and the spiritual aspiration is the same— 
 only uttered under greater difficuities—as that of the 
 Psalmist when he exclaims, “ One day in thy courts is 
 better than a thousand!” We may or may adopt 
 Erasmus’s view of his inspiration—or rather, inspiration 
 
 * “ Interdunwnon Paganum philosophum, sed ,apostolum loqui 
 putes.” 
 
 t 41 The Dream of Scipio.” 
 
 X Tusc., v. 2.' 
 
174 
 
 TEE ELZEVIR LIBRART. 
 
 is a word which has more than one definition, and this 
 would depend upon which definition we take; but we 
 may well sympathize with the old scholar when he says 
 —“I feel a better man for reading Cicero.” 
 
 THE ENDw* 
 
Ancient Classics for 
 
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HERODOTUS 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE C. SWAYNE, M.A. 
 
 LATE FELLOW OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 JOHN B. ALDEN, PUBLISHER 
 
 1883 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Introduction. .. 1 
 
 Chapter I. Croesus.... 9 
 
 “ IT. Cyrus. 22 
 
 “ III. Egypt. .36 
 
 44 IY. Cambyses... 60 
 
 1 ‘ Y. Darius. 70 
 
 u YI. Scythia.„. 80 
 
 “ YII. The Tyrants of Greece.. 93 
 
 f - VIII. Ionia . 106 
 
 4 ‘ IX. Marathon. 122 
 
 44 X. Thermopylae. . ... 132 
 
 t( XI. Saiamis. 145 
 
 ' 44 XII. Plataea and Mycale. 154 
 
 44 XIII. Concluding E-emarics. 165 
 
THE HISTORY OF HERODOTUS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 So little is known for certain regarding the life of 
 Herodotus, “the father of history,” that it may well 
 be a subject of congratulation that he has not shared 
 the fate of Homer, the father of poetry, in having 
 doubt thrown on his individual existence. 
 
 He appears to have been born about the year 484 
 before Christ, between the two great Persian invasions 
 of Greece, at Halicarnassus, a colony of Dorian Greeks 
 on the coast of Asia Minor. His family was one of 
 some distinction. From his writings alone we should 
 know that he received a liberal education, and became 
 familiarly acquainted with the current literature of his 
 day; and the epic form of his great prose work, besides 
 numberless expressions and allusions, bears witness to 
 the fact that the Homeric poems were his constant 
 study and model. 
 
 His early manhood was spent in extensive travels, 
 in which he accumulated the miscellaneous materials 
 of his narrative. He visited, in the course of them, a 
 great part of the then known world; from Babylon 
 and Susa in the east, to the coast of Italy in the 
 west; and from the mouths of the Dnieper and the 
 Danube in the north, to the cataracts of Upper Egypt 
 southwards. Thus his travels covered a distance of 
 
2 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 thirty-one degrees of longitude from east to west, and 
 twenty-four of latitude from north to south—an area of 
 something like 1700 miles square. It was an immense 
 range in days when there were few facilities for locomo- 
 tion, and when every country was supposed to be at war 
 with its neighbors, unless hound by express treaties 
 of peace and alliance. He travelled, too, it must be 
 remembered, in an age when robbers by land and sea 
 were members of a recognized profession,—very lucra¬ 
 tive and not entirely disreputable: when (as we shall 
 see hereafter) disappointed political or military adven¬ 
 turers took to piracy as a last resort, without any sort 
 of compunction. “Pray, friends, are you pirates,—or 
 what?” is the question which old Nestor pu-ts to his 
 visitors, in the “Odyssey,” without the least intention 
 either of jesting or of giving offence A voyage itself 
 was such a perilous matter, that a Greek seaman never, 
 if he could help it, lost sight of land in the daytime, or 
 remained on board his ship during the night; and at 
 a late date the philosopher Aristotle distinctly admits 
 that even his ideal “brave” man may, without prejudice 
 to his character, fear the being drowned at sea. The 
 range of our author’s travels is, however, less wonderful 
 than their busy minuteness. He is traveller, archae¬ 
 ologist. natural philosopher, and historian combined in 
 one. He appears scarcely ever to have concluded his 
 visit to a country without exhausting every available 
 source of information. Personal inquiry alone seems to 
 have satisfied him, wherever it could be made; though 
 lie consulted carefully all written materials within his 
 reach, records public and private, sacred and secular, 
 lie. rightly calls his work a “history,” for the Greek 
 word “history’’ means really “investigation,” though 
 i. has passed into a different use with us. In Egypt 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 3 
 
 alone lie seems to have spent many years, visiting and 
 exploring its most remarkable cities—Memphis, Hiero- 
 polis, and the “hundred-gated” Thebes. In Greece 
 proper, as well as its colonies on the Asiatic seaboard 
 and in South Italy, and in all the islands of the Archi¬ 
 pelago, he is everywhere at home, as well as in the re. 
 moter regions of Asia Minor. 
 
 Such details of his life as have come down to us 
 rest on somewhat doubtful authority. It is said that 
 he was driven from Halicarnassus to Samos by the 
 tyranny of Lygdamis, grandson of that Queen Arte¬ 
 misia whose conduct he nevertheless, with some gener¬ 
 osity, immortalizes in his account of the battle of 
 Salamis; that in Samos he learned the Ionic dialect 
 in which his history is written; that in time he re¬ 
 turned to head a successful insurrection against Lyg¬ 
 damis, but then, finding himself unpopular, joined in 
 the Athenian colonization of Thurium, in Italy, where 
 he died and was buried, and wdiere his tomb in the 
 market-place was long shown. His residence at Samos 
 may have been a fiction invented to explain the dialect 
 in which he wrote, which was more probably that con¬ 
 secrated by usage to historical composition. At one 
 time he appears to have removed to Athens, where he 
 received great honors, partly in the substantial shape 
 of ten talents (more than £2400), after a public recita¬ 
 tion of his history. According to one story, he was 
 commissioned to read it before the assembly of all the 
 Greek States on the occasion of the great national games 
 held every fourth year at Olympia in Elis. 
 
 Amongst the audience on some such occasion, most 
 probably at Athens, a young Athenian, Thucydides, 
 is said to have been present; and the introduction 
 Which then took place may haye given the first stim^ 
 
4 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 ulus to the future liistoriau of the Peloponnesian war, 
 who, despairing of surpassing his predecessor as a 
 charming story-teller, boldly struck out for himself a 
 new path, as the founder of the critical method. It 
 seems also that at Athens Herodotus enjoyed the friend¬ 
 ship of the great tragic poet Sophocles. Plutarch has 
 preserved the opening words of a poem in which the 
 tragedian compliments the historian, after he had quitted 
 Athens for Thurium. In two of the tragedies of Soph¬ 
 ocles, the “ GEdipus at Colonos” and the “Antigone,” 
 are passages plainly adapted from this history. The 
 society of Athens under Pericles, comprising all that 
 was most select and brilliant in art and intellect, must 
 have had great attractions for Herodotus; and it im¬ 
 plies some self-denial on his part to have torn himself 
 away from it. Probably he longed to exercise, as most 
 Greeks did, full political rights, which, as an alien, he 
 could not enjoy at Athens, though he was evidently an 
 enthusiastic admirer of her institutions. 
 
 After his emigration to Thurium, he seems to have 
 devoted his life to the elaboration and amplification of 
 his great work. Several passages in his history prove 
 that he was, at all events, acquainted with the earlier 
 events of the great Peloponnesian war. The balance 
 of evidence seems to point to his death having occurred 
 when he was about sixty. If so, he at least escaped 
 witnessing, as the result of that war, the fall of his be¬ 
 loved Athens from her well-won supremacy over 
 Greece. 
 
 The history of Herodotus is a great prose epic, sug¬ 
 gested doubtless to the author in early life by the fame 
 of those events which were still fresh in the minds of 
 all men—the repulse of the Persian invasion, and the 
 liberation of Greece. The Greeks had thrown off col- 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 5 
 
 onies, from time to time, into the islands of the Levant 
 and the west coast of Asia.* These Asiatic Greeks had 
 actually been enslaved by Persia; and European 
 Greece, though free from the first, could only wake to 
 the full consciousness of that freedom when the over¬ 
 shadowing dread of the monster Asiatic power had been 
 dissipated. Independence could be but a name for 
 either Athenian or Spartan so long as the very sight of 
 the Persian dress (as Herodotus tells us) inspired terror. 
 Until Miltiades won Marathon, by a rush as apparently 
 desperate as our Balaklava charge, the Persians had 
 been reputed invincible. Their second expedition 
 against Greece was intended to repair the damaged pres¬ 
 tige of Persian valor, by setting in motion overwhelm¬ 
 ing numbers. It seemed as if the dead weight alone of 
 Asiatic fleets and armies must carry all before it. It 
 did indeed carry Athens, but not the Athenians. The 
 sea-fight of Salamis was won by citizens who had lost 
 their city. The two great victories which followed 
 within a year—Platsea and Mycale, gained on the same 
 day—indicated for ever the superiority of Europeans 
 over Asiatics. The latter was fought out on Asiatic 
 ground—the beginning of the great retribution -which 
 has continued even to the present time, represented by 
 uncertain tides of Western conquest gradually gaining 
 ground on the East. 
 
 Never before or since has an author employed him¬ 
 self with grander subject matter than Herodotus. The 
 victories of Freedom in all ages, more than any other 
 conquests, have stirred the human heart to its depths. 
 
 * Of these colonies, some were Ionian, some Dorian, and some 
 iEolian, having been originally founded by each of these cld 
 Greek races. But Herodotus usually speaks of them all as 
 “ Ionians,” as these took the most active share in the war. 
 
6 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 It is the cause that alone humanizes war, and makes it 
 other than brutal butchery. Many such victories there 
 have been in the course of time, but all of local and lim¬ 
 ited importance in comparison. And, indeed, perhaps 
 Marathon made Morgarten possible. By Salamis and 
 Platsea the world may have escaped being orientalized 
 for ever, and bound in the immobility of China, These 
 battles, by saving freedom and securing progress,antici¬ 
 pated the overthrow of the Saracens before Tours, and 
 of the Turks before Vienna. Herodotus, indeed, could 
 not see all this, when the plan of his great history 
 dawned on his mind, but the salvation of his beloved 
 Greece was to him a sufficient inspiration. 
 
 We find the same unity of design in the history of 
 Herodotus as In Homer’s great epic. As in the “Iliad,” 
 not the siege of Troy but the wrath of Achilles is the 
 continual burden, so, in our author’s work, not the his¬ 
 tory of Greece but the destruction of the great Persian 
 armada is its one great subject. All the other local his¬ 
 tories, though introduced with much fullness of detail, 
 are subordinate to this consummation. They flow to it 
 like the tributaries of a river, whose might and grandeur 
 make men love to explore its sources. He gives us in 
 succession the early history of Lydia, of Babylon, and 
 of Assyria, in order to trace the rise and fall of those 
 several Asiatic powers which merged at last in the great 
 empire of the Medes and Persians, who are the actors 
 in his true drama, to which these preliminary histories 
 are a discursive prologue. His work is not a romance 
 founded on fact, like Xenophon’s “ Education of Cy¬ 
 rus,” or Shakspeare’s historical plays, or Scott’s “ Quen¬ 
 tin Durward.” It is serious history, as history was un¬ 
 derstood in bis time. But the historian’s appetite was 
 omnivorous in the collection of materials, and robustly 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 7 
 
 digested fable and fact alike. His mind was like that 
 of Froissart and Philip de Comines, who lived in am 
 other age, when miracles were thought matters of 
 course. Yet in Herodotus we perceive the dawning of 
 that criticism which finds its full expression in Thucy¬ 
 dides, who was in mind a modern historian, though less 
 fastidious as to the evidence of facts thau a man of our 
 century would be. The incredulity of Herodotus, when 
 it shows itself, seems rather evoked by the suspected 
 veracity of his informant, or some contradiction in phe¬ 
 nomena, than by the incredible nature of the facts 
 themselves. 
 
 He has been most found fault with for ascribing ef- 
 fects*to inadequate causes; but we ought rather to feel 
 grateful to him, considering the mould in which the 
 mind of his time w T as cast, for endeavoring to trace the 
 connection between cause and effect at all. In Homer 
 the gods are always in requisition, and always at hand 
 to manage matters, even in minutest details. That 
 Herodotus had a religious mind there can be no doubt, 
 for he speaks even of foreign and barbaric rites and be¬ 
 liefs with intense respect. And the great Liberation 
 War of Greece was, in its circumstances, calculated to 
 illustrate one great pervading principle of his religion— 
 that heaven will not allow an excess of mortal prosper¬ 
 ity. The rock wdiich overhung the bay of Salamis, 
 whence Xerxes looked down on his host, might well 
 bear the statue of Nemesis. Nemesis, in the religious 
 system of the ancient Greeks, is the great divine stew¬ 
 ardess, who assigns to man his quota of good or of evil. 
 If man takes to himself more good than his share, she 
 adjusts the balance by giving him evil; for the gods are 
 jealous of those who try to vie with them. Did not 
 Apollo flay Marsyas for daring to contend with him on 
 
8 
 
 TEE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 the lyre? Did not Minerva change Arachne into a spi¬ 
 der for boasting to be a better spinster than herself? 
 So the Sovereign of the gods cannot endure the luxury 
 and pride of the earthly despot. It becomes the busi¬ 
 ness of Nemesis to compass his destruction. She* in¬ 
 vokes against him Ate, or Infatuation. Ate blindfolds 
 his mind, and forces him to enter of his own will on 
 the path whose end is destruction. To ward oif this, 
 men resort to sacrifice; but any sacrifice short of what 
 is most precious is useless. Polycrates, the despot of 
 Samos, almost insults the gods in supposing that throw¬ 
 ing a jewel into the sea will atone for the crime of pros¬ 
 perous sovereignty; the ring comes back to him in a 
 fish brought to his table. Was not Agamemnon com¬ 
 pelled to sacrifice his daughter, the pride of his house, 
 before he could obtain a fair wind to sail to Troy? It 
 seems to have been an article of the Athenian’s creed, 
 which Herodotus shared, that there was a sort of wick¬ 
 edness in one free man attempting to rise above the 
 level of his fellow-citizens; and perhaps they thought 
 that their honorable punishment of ostracism was de¬ 
 vised as much for a great man’s good as for theirs.* It 
 was a kind of inverted doctrine of the divine right of 
 kings, traces of which we find throughout the Attic lit¬ 
 erature. Had Herodotus lived in our day, we may im- 
 
 * Ostracism was so called from the oyster-shells on which 
 Athenian citizens wrote their names in voting. Any man of 
 more than average greatness or goodness was liable to incur this 
 left-handed compliment, which consisted in his being requested 
 to go abroad for a term of years, in case a sufficient number of 
 votes was given. It was instituted as a security -to democracy, 
 and as preventive of coups d'etat . It was discredited at last by 
 its application to the case of a vulgar demagogue. The Syra¬ 
 cusans had a similar institution called “ Petallism,” from the 
 leaves of olive on which the names were written. 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 9 
 
 agine that his attention would have been powerfully ar¬ 
 rested by the fate of Napoleon the First, or the Czar 
 Nicholas of Russia, as illustrating this sentiment. 
 
 Frequent references will be found in these pages to 
 Mr. Rawlinson’s “History of Herodotus;” but it is de¬ 
 sired here to acknowledge more distinctly the use which 
 has been made of his exhaustive volumes. 
 
 The history of Herodotus was divided by the ancients 
 into nine books, each bearing the name of one of the 
 Muses. His own order of narration is very discursive, 
 for he digresses into local history and anecdote continu¬ 
 ally. In these pages a rearrangement into chapters will 
 perhaps be more welcome to the general reader. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CRCESUS. 
 
 “ And ever, against eating cares, 
 
 Lap me in soft Lydian airs.” 
 
 —Milton, “L’Allegro.” 
 
 In the great quarrel between Europe and Asia, which 
 is the end and scope of our author’s work, it is of the 
 utmost consequence to the satisfaction of his religious 
 principles that the balance of blame should incline to 
 the side of the true offenders. According to the show¬ 
 ing of the Persians themselves, who had their story¬ 
 tellers, if not historians, the Asiatics were the first of¬ 
 fenders. A Phoenician skipper went to Argos, and car¬ 
 ried off Io, the king’s daughter, to Egypt, whither he 
 ?vas bound. By way of reprisals, the Greeks theq 
 
10 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 carried off two women for one—Europa from Tyre, and 
 Meda from Colchis. This may have partly excused 
 Alexander or Paris, son of Priam king of Troy, for 
 carrying off Helen, the wife of Menelaus, from Sparta, 
 in the second generation afterwards. But then, said 
 the Persians, the Greeks put themselves clearly in the 
 wrong—for instead of carrying off another lady, they 
 made* the abduction of Helen a case of war. “ To 
 carry off women was manifestly the deed of unjust 
 men. but to make so serious matter of their abduction 
 was the part of simpletons, since they hardly could 
 have been carried off without their own consent.” In¬ 
 deed, according to one account, Io at least eloped of 
 her own free will. But in fact, our historian thinks, 
 from the time of the Trojan war the Asiatics looked 
 upon the Greeks as their natural enemies. 
 
 Without discussing too curiously all these tales, 
 Herodotus has no doubt in his own mind that the 
 blame ought to lie with the Asiatics, since Croesus, 
 king of Lydia, was the first historical aggressor. Be¬ 
 fore his time all the Greeks were free, and he was the 
 first Asiatic potentate who, by fair means or foul, re¬ 
 duced Grecian states to various kinds of dependency. 
 The towns on the coast he subdued by force, easily 
 enough. He had proposed to try the same means with 
 the islanders of the Archipelago, when he was dis¬ 
 suaded from his purpose by a shrewd jest. Among 
 other travelers who visited his court was one of the 
 Seven Wise Men of Greece—Bias of Priene. The 
 king asked him, as he did all his visitors, what was the 
 last news? “The islanders,” said Bias, “are busy 
 raising a force of cavalry with which they mean to in¬ 
 vade Lydia.” Croesus declared it was the very thing he 
 CQifld wish,—bu,t> he hardly believed they could, he so 
 
HERODOTUS . 
 
 11 
 
 utterly foolish. Bias ventured to think that the Greek 
 islanders would be equally amused to hear that the 
 Lydians intended to attack them on their own ele¬ 
 ment. The king took the hint; and it is the earliest 
 specimen we have of the wisdom which afterwards 
 so often clothed itself in the language of the “Court 
 Fool.” 
 
 The Lydians appear to have been a people, like the 
 Egyptians, of nearly immemorial civilization, and, like 
 the Asiatic tribes who fought for the Trojans, to have 
 had a common origin with the Greeks themselves, and 
 to have differed little from them in manners and cus¬ 
 toms. There is manifest truth in the tradition which 
 connected them with the Etruscans and the Pelasgians ; 
 and their three dynasties, of the second of which Her¬ 
 cules was said to be founder, may have represented 
 three cognate races of conquerors, like the Saxons, 
 Danes, and Normans with us. They appear to have 
 been at first a warlike people, but to have been ener¬ 
 vated by conquest, and then, like the descendants of 
 the ancient Italians, to have become chiefly famous as 
 artists, especially as musicians. 
 
 This Croesus, the son of Alyattes, in time extended 
 his empire over most of the countries westward of the 
 river Halys. He was in some sort, the Solomon of his 
 age ; fabulously rich, magnificent in his expenditure, 
 and of unbounded hospitality; so that great men came 
 to visit him from all parts, and to gaze on the splen¬ 
 dors of his court. Amongst them was Solon the Athe¬ 
 nian. Solon had remodeled the laws of Athens, with 
 the concurrence of the Athenian people ; but knowing 
 the fickleness of his countrymen, had gone into volun¬ 
 tary exile for ten years, having bound them by oath 
 that they would make no change in their institutions in 
 
12 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 his absence. Croesus, in the course of his conversations 
 with Solon, wished to extract from him the confession 
 that he considered him the happiest of mankind. Solon 
 refused to account any man happy till death had set 
 its seal on his felicity, and took occasion to warn 
 Croesus of the instability of all human affairs, dilating 
 especially on the jealous nature of the gods. The 
 king could not brook the plain-speaking of his guest, 
 and dismissed him in disfavor. He was soon to 
 prove the truth of his warning : the terrible Nemesis, 
 says our author, was awakened—probably, he thinks, 
 by this very boast of thinking himself the happiest of 
 mortals. Then he goes on to tell in his own delightful 
 fashion— 
 
 The Story of Adrastus. 
 
 Croesus had two sons—the one grievously afflicted, for 
 he was deaf and dumb, but the other by far the first 
 of the youths of his age, by name Atys. Now Croesus 
 dreamed that he should lose this Atys by the stroke of 
 an iron weapon. Through fear of this dream he took 
 him no longer with him to the wars; but sought out 
 for him a wife who might keep him at home. Nay, 
 he even had all the weapons that hung in the men’s 
 rooms stacked away in the inner chambers, lest any of 
 them might fall on him by accident. While the mar¬ 
 riage was preparing, there came to seek refuge at Sardis 
 a Phrygian of royal birith who had committed homi¬ 
 cide. Croesus purified him with the due rites, and 
 then inquired his name. He said, “ I am Adrastus, 
 son of Gordias; I slew my brother by misadventure, 
 and my father has turned me out of doors, and I have 
 lost all.” And Croesus answered, “Thou art the son 
 Of a friend, and art come to friends; with me thou 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 13 
 
 shalt lack nothing. Thou wilt do best to hear thj r 
 mishap as lightly as thou mayest.” About this time 
 it came to pass that a huge wild boar came out of 
 Mount Olympus in Mysia and laid waste the fields; and 
 the people came to Croesus and besought him to send to 
 them his son to help them with the hunting-train. And 
 Croesus, mindful of the dream, refused to send his son, 
 but promised to send the train and picked sportsmen of 
 the Lydians. But his son Atys coming in, was much 
 vexed, and said, “Tliou bringest me to shame, my 
 father, in the eyes of the citizens and of my bride, in 
 that thou dost forbid me to go to the wars and the chase, 
 as though I were a coward.’' But Croesus said, “ I hold 
 thee no coward, yet I do wisely, for I was warned by a 
 dream that an iron weapon should slay thee; therefore 
 did I give thee a wife to keep thee at home. For thou 
 art in truth my only son, for the other I count as though 
 he were not, being deaf and dumb.” Then answered 
 the son, “It is natural, my father, to take good heed on 
 my behalf, after such a dream. But what iron weapon 
 hath a boar, or what hands to hurl it? If indeed thou 
 hadst dreamed that I should die by a tusk, thou wouldst 
 be wise in doing what thou doest, but not now, for this 
 war is not with men.” Croesus confessed himself per¬ 
 suaded by these words, and allowed his son to join the 
 chase; but he begged Adrastus to go with him and guard 
 him, lest any evil should happen by the way; and Ad¬ 
 rastus, though heavy of heart, deemed that he could deny 
 Croesus nothing in return for his kindness, and went 
 accordingly. So the hunters made a great hunt, and 
 having brought the boar to bay, stood round and threw 
 javelins at him. And it came to pass that Adrastus 
 threw his javelin, and missed the boar, and killed the 
 son of Croesus. So the dream was fulfilled. Now 
 
14 
 
 The Elzevir library. 
 
 Croesus, when he heard the news, was sorely troubled, 
 and in his anguish called on Jupiter as lord of purifi¬ 
 cation, as lord of the hearth, as lord of companionship, 
 to witness what he suffered at the hands of his suppliant, 
 his guest, and the man whom he had sent to guard his 
 son. And now came the Lydians bearing the corpse, 
 and behind them followed the slayer, Adrastus. And 
 he, standing before the bier and stretching forth his 
 hands, besought Croesus to take his life as he was no 
 longer worthy to live. Then Croesus, though in great 
 grief, pitied him and said, “ Thou hast made full atone¬ 
 ment, in that thou hast judged thyself worthy of death. 
 Thou art not to blame, but as a tool in the hands of 
 some god, who long since did signify to me what should 
 come to pass.” So Croesus buried his son, and spared 
 Adrastus. But when he was departed, Adrastus, as 
 thinking himself of all men the most wretched, slew 
 himself upon the tomb. And Croesus mourned for his 
 son for the space of two years. But at the end of that 
 time he was fain to bestir himself, for there came to him 
 a rumor that Cyrus the Persian had conquered the 
 Medes, and was exalting himself above all the kings of 
 the earth; and he hasted, if it were possible, to crush 
 the Persian power before it became too strong. 
 
 Croesus, in Herodotus’s story, appears in close relations 
 with the god Apollo. The world-famous shrine of this 
 god was at Delphi on Mount Parnassus, currently be¬ 
 lieved to be the exact centre of the earth—the earth it¬ 
 self being looked upon as a round disc. In the temple 
 there, the site of which was supposed to be the spot 
 where the serpent Python was slain by the arrows of the 
 Sun-god, there was an oracle, the most renowned in the 
 world. Its answers, in spite of their ambiguity, guided 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 15 
 
 the public and private affairs of the Greeks to an extent 
 which appears to us now almost ludicrous. Though 
 generally vague and perplexing, yet they were often so 
 much to the point, that some of the old Fathers of the 
 Church attributed them to Satanic influence, as they 
 doubtless would table-turning and spirit-rapping, if they 
 lived now. It was also believed that their efficacy ceased 
 exactly with the coming of our Lord, by which time, at 
 all events, faith in them had worn out. Milton alludes 
 to this tradition in his “ Hymn on the Nativity”:— 
 
 “ The oracles are dumb; 
 
 No voice or hideous hum 
 
 Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. 
 
 Apollo from his shrine 
 Can no more divine. 
 
 With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. 
 
 No nightly trance, or breathed spell, 
 
 Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.” 
 
 Before he determined on his expedition against Cyrus, 
 Croesus sent to test the most famous oracles in Greece 
 and that of Jupiter Ammon in Libya, in order that he 
 might know which was most to be trusted. And he 
 made the trial thus: Ire told his messengers to ask each 
 oracle, on the hundredth da} r after their departure, what 
 Croesus was doing at that particular hour. The other 
 answers are unrecorded, but the answer of the priestess 
 of Apollo at Delphi ran thus:— 
 
 “ Truly the tale of the sand I know, and the measures of ocean— 
 Deftly the dumb I read, I list to the voice of the silent. 
 
 Savor has reached my sense from afar of a strong-skinned tor¬ 
 toise 
 
 Simmering, mixed together with flesh of lamb, in a caldron; 
 Brazen the bed is beneath, and brazen the coverlet over,” 
 
16 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 Croesus, when he received this answer, judged the god 
 of Delphi to be the wisest, since he alone could tell ex¬ 
 actly what he was doing—for he had been cooking the 
 flesh of a tortoise, mixed with lamb’s flesh, in a brass 
 caldron with a brass lid. Accordingly he sent rich 
 presents to the shrine of Apollo, and ordered all his 
 subjects to pay him especial honors. Thus having satis¬ 
 fied himself that this oracle at least was true, he next 
 sent to inquire if he should go to war with the Persians. 
 The answer was, that if he did so “he would ruin a 
 great empire;” at which answer Croesus rejoiced greatly, 
 for he expected to destroy the empire of the Persians. 
 He sent a third time and inquired of the oracle if his 
 reign would be long? And the oracle answered:— 
 
 “When it shall come to pass that the Medes have a mule for 
 monarch, 
 
 Lydian, tender of foot, then along by the pebbles of Hermus 
 Flee, and delay not then, nor shame thee to quail as a coward.’' 
 
 Croesus rejoiced still more when he heard this, for he 
 thought that, as a mule could never reign over men, the 
 rule of himself and his descendants would never come 
 to an end. 
 
 His next step, still under the advice of the oracle, was 
 to make friends of the most powerful Greek states. At 
 this point Herodotus, having wound his readers up to 
 the expectation of a catastrophe, like some modern novel¬ 
 ists, diverges into one of his favorite episodes, and takes 
 advantage of the fact that Croesus found the leading 
 Greek states to be the Lacedaemonians and Athenians, 
 to relate a part of their history. 
 
 At Athens, Pisistratus, the son of Hippocrates, had 
 now raised himself to absolute power, Athens being 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 17 
 
 divided between the parties of the Plain and the Coast, 
 he had headed the third, called the party of the Mount¬ 
 ain, and by pretending that his enemies had wounded 
 him, managed to be allowed a body-guard, and then 
 seized on the citadel. He had some vicissitudes of for¬ 
 tune before he was firm in the saddle, and on one occa¬ 
 sion he returned to Athens in a chariot accompanied by 
 a woman of great beauty and stature, who personated 
 the goddess'Athene (Minerva).* The success of the im¬ 
 position is possible, if we remember that the early 
 Greeks believed that the gods sometimes came down 
 visibly among mortals. By whatever devices, however, 
 he gained or secured the sovereignty, he appears to have 
 ruled well and righteously, and to have done much for 
 the civilization and glory of Athens. 
 
 The Spartans or Lacedaemonians were now beginning 
 to assert the leadership which they afterwards obtained 
 in the Peloponnese, as a consequence of those laws of 
 Lycurgus, wdiose sole end and object was to make 
 Sparta a model barrack for a state of soldiers. 
 
 Willi the Spartans Croesus had no difficulty in con¬ 
 cluding an alliance, as the path of friendship had been 
 paved by a previous interchange of gifts and civilities; 
 they had also heard of the Delphic prophecies. He im¬ 
 mediately proceeded to commence a campaign against 
 the Persians by marching into Cappadocia. A sensible 
 Lydian made one last effort to dissuade him. “ O 
 king,” said he, “thou art about to march against men 
 who have trousers of leather, and all the rest of their 
 
 * If he had also been accompanied by the owl of that goddess, 
 the case would have been very like one which occurred in the 
 remembrance of this generation, when a fugitive prince landed 
 in France with a tame eagle on his shoulder. 
 
18 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 dress of leather, and the}' - feed not on what they would 
 like hut on what they have; for their land is rough. 
 Nay more, they are unacquainted with wine, being 
 water-drinkers, and they have no figs to eat, nor any¬ 
 thing else that is good. If thou conquerest them thou 
 canst get nothing from them, for they have nothing to 
 lose; if thou dost not, thou wilt lose all thine own good 
 things. There will he no thrusting them back when 
 once they have had a taste of what we enjoy; nay, I 
 thank the gods that they do not put it into the mind of 
 the Persians to march against the Lydians.” 
 
 In undertaking this war, Croesus was prompted part¬ 
 ly by ambition, partly by his desire to punish Cyrus for 
 dethroning Astyages, the king of Media, who was his 
 brother-in-law. Crossing the river Halys,* the northern 
 boundary, he advanced to the country near Sinope, on 
 the Black Sea—in modern times notorious as the scene 
 of the destruction of the Turkish fleet by the Russians. 
 Here Cyrus marched out to meet him. A battle took 
 place in which both sides claimed the victory. Croesus, 
 however, thinking his numbers too small for ultimate 
 success, determined to fall back on Sardis, and begin 
 the w T ar again after the winter with larger forces. He 
 sent round to his allies to tell them to join him in four 
 months’ time. But his long course of prosperity was 
 drawing to its close. Cyrus had not been so crippled 
 by the battle but that he could march straight to Sardis 
 and so ‘1 bring the news of his own arrival.” Croesus, 
 though surprised, led out the Lydians to meet him. 
 They were at this time as good men of war as any in 
 Asia. They fought, like the knights of chivalry, on 
 horseback, with long lances; and the plain before Sar- 
 
 * Now the KiyJl Irmak. 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 19 
 
 dis was the battle-field of tlieir predilection. But Cyrus 
 invented a device to paralyze this cavalry. Taking ad¬ 
 vantage of a house’s natural fear of camels, he organized 
 a camel brigade and placed it in his front, with in¬ 
 fantry behind it, and his own cavalry in the rear. 
 Though the Lydian knights, like the Austrians at Sem- 
 pach, dismounted and fought on foot, the battle went 
 against them, and Croesus soon found himself besieged 
 in his capital. Then he sent messengers to his allies 
 urging them to help him with all speed. 
 
 The Spartans, even had they been able to reach Sar¬ 
 dis in time, could not set out at once, as they happened 
 just then to have their hands full. They were fighting 
 with the men of Argos about a tract of borderland 
 called Thyrea. Argos had been in the old Homeric 
 times the head of the Peloponnesus, and was always 
 very.jealous of Spartan supremacy. The plausible plan 
 had been adopted of fighting out this particular quarrel 
 by three hundred chosen men on each side; though 
 three on each side, as in the affair of the Horatii and 
 Curatii between Rome and Alba, might have answered 
 the purpose quite as well. The combat proved as 
 deadly as that between the rival Highland clans re¬ 
 corded by Scott in his “Fair Maid of Perth.” Two 
 only of the Argives were left, who ran home with the 
 news of the victory; while a single Spartan, raising him¬ 
 self up from amongst a heap of dead, remained in pos¬ 
 session of the field and set up a trophy. So the result 
 was considered indecisive, and the main armies fell to 
 fighting, and the Spartans conquered. Then the Ar¬ 
 gives shore their hair, which they formerly wore long, 
 and bound themselves under a curse not to let it grow 
 again till they had recovered Thyrea, and forbade their 
 women to wear gold ornaments—a prohibition probably 
 
so 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 more difficult to euforce. Tlie Spartans, in retaliation, 
 made a contrary vow, to let their hair grow, having 
 worn it cropped before. The survivor of their three 
 hundred was said to have slain himself for shame. 
 
 In the mean time Croesus was a lost man, The cita¬ 
 del of Sardis had been scaled by the Persians at a point 
 where a king of old had omitted to carry round a lion, 
 which was to operate as a charm to prevent its being 
 taken. It has been mentioned that Croesus had a son 
 who was deaf and dumb. His father had tried in vain 
 all means to cure him of his affliction, and given up the 
 attempt in despair. But now, when Sardis was taken, 
 a soldier approached Croesus, not knowing who he was, 
 to slay him; and Croesus, in his deep grief, did not care 
 to hinder him, which he might have done by giving his 
 name, since Cyrus had issued express orders to his army 
 that the king of Lydia was to be taken alive. Then 
 suddenly the tongue of the youth was loosed, and when 
 he saw the Persian approaching, he cried out—“Fellow, 
 do not kill Croesus!” and having made this beginning, 
 he continued able to speak for the rest of his life. Thus 
 Croesus was taken prisoner, after a reign of fourteen 
 years, and Cyrus, in the cruel spirit of the age, placed 
 him on a pile of wood, with the intention of burning 
 him alive. Then Croesus bethought him of the wise 
 words of Solon, how no man should be accounted hap¬ 
 py until the end, and in his anguish called aloud thrice 
 upon Solon’s name. Cyrus asked the meaning of the 
 cry, and when he heard the story was so touched that 
 he ordered the pile, which was already lighted, to be 
 put out. But this could not be done by all their exer¬ 
 tions until Croesus prayed to Apollo for aid, when sud¬ 
 denly a great storm of rain came on and extinguished 
 the Are. 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 21 
 
 Cyrus treated his royal prisoner with all honor. 
 “When the Persian soldiers began to plunder Sardis, 
 Croesus inquired of his conqueror what they were doing, 
 “Spoiling thy goods, O Croesus.” “Nay, not mine,” 
 replied the fallen monarch, “but thine, O Cyrus.” 
 Then Cyrus stopped the sack of the city, and in grati¬ 
 tude for the suggestion of Croesus, begged him to name 
 any favor he could do him. “ My lord,” said he, “ suf¬ 
 fer me to send these chains to the god at Delphi, and to 
 ask if this is how he requites his benefactors, and 
 whether ingratitude is an attribute of Greek gods in 
 general?” For Croesus had loaded the shrine of Apollo 
 with costly presents. The message was sent, and the 
 priestess of the oracle made this reply: “Croesus atones 
 for his forefather Gyges, who slew Candaules his mas¬ 
 ter. Apollo desired that the judgment should fall on 
 the son of Croesus and not on himself, but the gods 
 themselves cannot avert fate. The god did what he 
 could, for he deferred the fall of Sardis three years be¬ 
 yond the destined time : secondly, he put out the fire, 
 and prevented Croesus being burnt alive: thirdly, he did 
 not give a lying oracle, for he only said that Croesus 
 should destroy a great empire, without saying what 
 empire it should be. Croesus has no right to interpret 
 his words according to his own wish. As to the oracle 
 about the mule, he might have known that Cyrus was a 
 Persian by his father’s side, and a Mede by his mother’s, 
 and so a hybrid king.” Croesus was obliged to acquiesce 
 in the explanation, and to take his fate patiently. His 
 ruin was indeed no common bankruptcy. “As rich as 
 Croesus,” soon grew into a vernacular proverb. Yet he 
 was by no means a bad specimen of the millionaire. 
 His gentleness and good-nature were as proverbial as 
 his wealth, and Pindar, the Theban poet, testifies to 
 
22 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 to this point—doubtless for substantial reasons of his 
 own:— 
 
 “ Of kindly Croesus and his worth 
 The name doth never fade.” 
 
 The strange vicissitudes of his life became a fertile 
 subject for Greek romancers and moralists. His riches 
 seemed to have been derived partly from the grains of 
 gold brought down in the sand of the river Pactolus, 
 which made Asia Minor the California of antiquity. 
 This was doubtless the origin of the fable of the Phyr- 
 gian king Midas turning all that he touched to gold. 
 It seems that Sardis in early times was an important 
 place of trade, as Herodotus says that the Lydians were 
 the first coiners of money and the first storekeepers, so 
 far as was known. It was at the same time notorious 
 as the great slave-market of the world. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CYRUS. 
 
 “ Not vainly did the early Persian make 
 His altar the high places, and the peak 
 Of earth-o’ergazing mountains, and thus take 
 A fit and unwalled temple, there to seek 
 The Spirit, in whose honor shrines are weak 
 Upreared of human hands.” 
 
 —Byron, “ Childe Harold.” 
 
 Before the Medes and Persians made their appearance 
 in history, the Assyrians, according to Herodotus, had 
 ruled over upper Asia for five hundred and twenty 
 years. Asshur appears in Scripture* as a son of Shem, 
 
 * Gen. x. 11, 22 . 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 23 
 
 who went out from the land of Shinar and'founded 
 Nineveh. Herodotus is supposed to have written a 
 separate history of Assyria, which has been lost; but 
 Layard and others have deciphered for us a new history 
 from the monuments of that wonderful empire. The 
 bearded kings and warriors, with their wars and lion 
 hunts graven on sandstone slabs, which are to be seen in 
 the British Museum and in the Louvre in Paris, look as 
 fresh as if they had been sculptured yesterday instead of 
 nearly three thousand years ago. The Assyrians were 
 of the Semitic race, of the same family as the Jews and 
 Arabs ; while the Modes and Persians were, in Scriptural 
 phrase, of the sons of Japheth—that is, they belonged 
 to the same Aryan, Iranian, or Indo-Germanic family as 
 the Greeks and Romans, and ourselves. The home of 
 the Assj'rians and their cognate Babylonians was in the 
 great plain of Mesopotamia, while the Medes lived in 
 the mountains to the east, and the Persians to the 
 south-east. The Median highlanders, being of more 
 hardy habits, first conquered the Assyrian lowlanders, 
 and then, descending to their softer country and habits, 
 were conquered in their turn by the hardier Persians. 
 The decline of Assyria was consummated by the fall of 
 Nineveh, which was taken, about b. c. 625 by Cyaxares, 
 third king of the Medes, in conjunction with the Bab¬ 
 ylonians. The first king of the'Medes is said to have 
 been Deioces, who built the wonderful city called by 
 Herodotus Agbatana,* and less correctly by later writers 
 Ecbatana, with its seven circular walls, one within the 
 other, with the palace and treasuries in the centre. The 
 first wall had white battlements, the second black, the 
 third scarlet, the fourth blue, the fifth orange. The last 
 
 * In the Behistun inscription it is Hagmat&na, 
 
24 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 two walls liad their battlements silvered and gilt. They 
 rose one above another on a conical hill, and were sup¬ 
 posed to have had a symbolic meaning, as referring to 
 the sun, moon, and five planets, or the deities presid¬ 
 ing over the days of the week. The last king of the Medes 
 was Astyages, the son of Cyaxares. He had given liis 
 daughter Mandane in marriage to Cambyses, who was, 
 according to our author’s account a poor Persian 
 gentleman, but according to later authorities, a. 
 descendant of the first Persian king Achaemenes. 
 Astyages dreamed that he saw a vine spring from 
 the body of his daughter Mandane, which overshad¬ 
 owed the whole of Asia. We know from Scripture 
 how much stress the Chaldeans and the Medes laid 
 on dreams. Fearing that an offspring of Mandane 
 would deprive him of his sovereignty, Astyages or¬ 
 dered the son that was born of her to be destroyed. 
 The courtier Harpagus, who was commissioned to do 
 tins, passed on the child to one of the royal herdsmen, 
 that he might expose it to die upon the mountains. 
 But the herdsman’s wife, when she saw that it was “a 
 proper child,” and plainly of noble birth, adorned for 
 death with gorgeous apparel, took pity on the infant, 
 and as she had just lost one of her own, persuaded her 
 husband to expose the dead child, and save the living 
 one, that she might nurse it. So the future Cyrus 
 lived, while the herdsman’s child received a royal 
 funeral. When the boy was ten years old he was play¬ 
 ing one day with the children of his village. The 
 game was King and Courtiers. Cyrus was chosen king, 
 and assumed the dignity as if he had been born it, ap¬ 
 pointing officers, architects, guards, couriers, and an 
 official called the King’s Eye,* (possibly the head of the 
 
 *Tntiis officer is introduced in Aristophanes’ comedy of “The 
 
IIE ROD o rtis. 
 
 25 
 
 detective police). In carrying out his character, Cyrus 
 ordered one of the children, the son of a Median of 
 high rank, to be flogged for disobedience. The angry 
 child went to the city and complained to his father, 
 who in turn complained to the real king. Astyages 
 ordered the despotic urchin to be brought into his pres¬ 
 ence. Unabashed, however, the boy justified himself; 
 and this circumstance together with a strong family 
 resemblance, led to his recognition by the grandfather, 
 who came at the truth by examining the herdsman and 
 Harpagus. He now dissembled his wrath, pretended 
 that he was glad the child had been saved, and invited 
 Harpagus to send his son to be the companion of the 
 young prince, and to come himself to dinner. After 
 Harpagus had well feasted, Astyages asked him how 
 he liked his entertainment; he said it was excellent. 
 Upon this, a basket was shown to him containing the 
 head, hands, and feet of his own son, on whose flesh 
 he had been feasting. The father, with the dissimula¬ 
 tion natural to the subjects of an Oriental despotism, 
 observed that whatsoever the king did was right in his 
 eyes. It is the very answer which the son of Ethewold 
 is said by William of Malmesbury to have made when 
 King Edgar showed him his father’s corpse, slain by 
 him in the royal forest; the English chronicler having 
 evidently borrowed from Herodotus. 
 
 Acharnians.” He appears in a mask (as in a modern burlesque) 
 with a single huge eye in the centre. He is brought to Athens 
 by some envoys who have been at the court of Persia. Dicseo- 
 polis (an honest farmer, who is present at the reception) is in¬ 
 dignant at their waste of time and the public money. 
 
 “ Envoy .—We’ve brought you here a nobleman—Sham-artabas 
 
 By name, by rank and office the King’s Eye. 
 
 Dicceop .—God send a crow to peck it out, say I! 
 
 And yours th’ ambassadors’ into the bargain.” 
 
 —Frere’s Transl. 
 
26 
 
 TIIE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 Astyages now consulted the Magi (a caste of priests 
 of whom we shall hear more hereafter) as to what was 
 to be done. They said that they considered that Cyrus 
 had ceased to be dangerous, since he had been king 
 already in the children’s play. So Astyages sent him 
 away into Persia, to his real parents. Meanwhile 
 Harpagus nursed his revenge, till Cyrus was grown to 
 man’s estate, and then he felt his time was come. He 
 sent a letter to the noble youth sewn up in the belly 
 of a hare, bidding him put himself at once at the head 
 of the Persians, and revolt from Astyages. This king 
 —surely under some infatuation from heaven, says the 
 historian—forgetting the deadly wrong which he had 
 done Harpagus, sent him to suppress the revolt. He 
 deserted to Cyrus, and the Medes were easily defeated. 
 Thus Cyrus destroyed the great Median empire, and 
 substituted that of the Persians—becoming, after the 
 downfall of Croesus, master of all Asia. He treated 
 his grandfather Astyages with all honor to the day of 
 his death. 
 
 There was a religious as well as a political dissidence 
 between the two nations. They both worshiped the 
 elements and “all the host of heaven,” and planetary 
 deities; but the Persian national creed recognized both 
 a good and an evil principle in nature, constantly at 
 war, whom they called Ormuzd and Aliriman. The 
 Persians, according to Herodotus, eschewed images, 
 temples, and altars, and sacrificed to the elemental deity 
 on the tops of mountains. But he has evidently con¬ 
 fused the Median worship with theirs. Their habits 
 much resembled those of the old Germans, as described 
 by Tacitus. They were originally a simple people, and 
 compulsory education with them was limited to teach¬ 
 ing their sons “ to ride, to draw the bow, and speak the 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 27 
 
 ♦ 
 
 truth.” Next after lying, they counted running in debt 
 most disgraceful, since “he who is in debt must needs 
 lie.” Lepers were banished from society, as they were 
 supposed to have sinned against the sun; even white 
 pigeons being put under “ taboo” for a similar reason.* 
 They were very much given to wine ;f and discussed 
 every subject of importance twice—first when they 
 were drunk, and again when they were sober. As 
 water was a sacred element, none might defile a river— 
 a sanitary regulation in which we moderns would do 
 well to ‘follow them. The bodies of the dead presented 
 a difficulty. They might not be buried, for the earth 
 was sacred; or thrown into rivers, for water was 
 sacred; or burnt, for fire was sacred. They were there¬ 
 fore exposed to be torn by birds and beasts—a fate of 
 which the Greeks had- the greatest horror. The Par- 
 sees of India, and the native Australians, dispose of 
 their dead in much the same way. As a compromise, 
 adopted from the Magi, a body might be buried when 
 covered with wax to prevent its contact with the earth. 
 
 The Persians, when they had conquered the Medes, 
 soon degenerated from their earlier simplicity, which 
 is celebrated by Xenophon in his romance of the “Ed¬ 
 ucation of Cyrus.” 
 
 When Cyrus, by the defeat of Croesus, had made 
 himself master of Lydia, the Greek colonists on the 
 
 * So to this day, in India, all white animals are looked upon 
 much in the way in which we ourselves regard albinoes—a kind 
 of unhealthy lusus naturae. 
 
 t Their successors retain the taste. “ It is quite appalling,” 
 says Sir H. Rawlinson, “to see the quantity of liquor which 
 some of these topers habitually consume, and they usually pre¬ 
 fer spirits to wine,” 
 
28 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 Asiatic seaboard sent to him in alarm, and begged to 
 be allowed to be his vassals on the same terms as they 
 had been to Croesus. He answered them by a scornful 
 parable: “There was a eertaiu piper who piped on the 
 sea-shore for the fish to come out, but they came not. 
 Then he took a net and hauled out a great draught 
 of them. The fish, in their agonies, began to caper. 
 But he said, ‘ Cease to dance now, since ye would not 
 dance when I piped to you.’ ”* This answer drove the 
 Ionian Greeks to fortify their towns and send ambas¬ 
 sadors to Sparta for assistance. Their envoy, however, 
 disgusted the Spartans by wearing a purple robe and 
 making a long speech—two things which they detested; 
 and they voted not to send the succors, but despatched 
 a fifty-oared ship to watch the proceedings of Cyrus. 
 When this vessel reached the port of Phoctea, a herald 
 was sent on to Sardis to warn Cyrus from the Spartans 
 not to hurt any Greek city on pain of their displeasure, 
 This caused Cyrus to inquire who these Spartans were, 
 and how many in numbers, that they dared to send 
 him such a message. When he was informed he said, 
 “ I am not afraid of people who have a place in their 
 city where they meet to cheat each other and forswear 
 themselves” (meaning the agora or market-place); “and 
 if I live, the Spartans shall have troubles enough of 
 their own, without troubling themselves about the 
 Ionians.” 
 
 Cyrus had other business on his hands at present than 
 to punish the Greeks; he therefore went back to Ecba- 
 tana, leaving a strong garrison in Sardis. But while he 
 was on his way he heard that one Pactyas had induced 
 
 * This Eastern apologue to ay serve as an illustration of the 
 parable in Matt. xi. 16. 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 29 
 
 the Sardians to revolt, and was besieging the garrison 
 in the citadel. Troops were sent to put down the re¬ 
 volt; Pactyas, however, did not wait for their arrival, 
 but fled to Cyme, on which the Persian general de¬ 
 manded his extradition. The men of Cyme sent to ask 
 advice at a neighboring oracle of Apollo, and the an¬ 
 swer came that Pactyas was to be given up. Some of the 
 citizens, not satisfied with this answer, thought the en¬ 
 voys must have made a mistake, and sent again to rem¬ 
 onstrate with the god, but the answer was repeated; 
 whereupon Aristodicus, t.lie principal envoy, went 
 round the'temple and cleared away all the nests of spar¬ 
 rows and other birds that he found there. While he 
 was thus engaged, a voice came from the sanctuary,— 
 “Unholy man, darest thou to tear my suppliants from 
 my temple?” on which Aristodicus, by no means 
 abashed, replied, “ O king, thou canst protect thine 
 own suppliants, and yet thou orderest the Cymseans to 
 surrender theirs.” “I do,” answered the god, “that 
 you may the sooner perish; for it was in the naughti¬ 
 ness of your hearts that you came to consult me on such 
 a matter.”* Eventually they sent Pactyas to Chios for 
 safety; but the Chians gave him up to the Persians, 
 even tearing him from the temple of Minerva; and Atar- 
 neus, a district opposite Lesbos, was paid them as the 
 price of blood. But there was a curse on the produce 
 of Atarneus for ever. 
 
 The Persians now proceeded to punish the revolted 
 
 * The remarkable answer attributed here to the oracle may 
 serve to illustrate the permission given to Balaam to go with the 
 messengers of Balak. Even to the heathen mind, there were 
 questions of conscience so clear, that to consult heaven specially 
 in the matter was a mockery. [See the almost parallel case of 
 Glaucus, ch. viii.] 
 
30 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 Lydians and Ionians, and Harpagus, the king-maker, 
 who had deposed Astyages, forthwith beleaguered Pho- 
 caea. The inhabitants of this city, however, preferred 
 exile to slavery; taking an oath never to return until a 
 bar of iron, which they sank in the sea, should rise and 
 float, they set sail, and, after a multitude of adventures, 
 found a resting-place on the coast of Italy. 
 
 Most of the other towns on the coast were subdued 
 after a gallant resistance, and the islanders gave them¬ 
 selves up. Then Harpagus turned inland against the 
 Carians and Lycians. The Lycians deserve notice as 
 the reputed inventors of crests to helmets, and of her¬ 
 aldic devices. The Carians were early advocates of 
 the rights of women; naming men not after their fa¬ 
 thers, as was usual, but after their mothers. The Ly¬ 
 cians of Xantlius* made a desperate resistance. Find¬ 
 ing they could not beat the Persians in the field, they 
 made a great pile, on which they burnt their wives and 
 children, and all their valuables, and then sallied out 
 and perished in battle to a man. Their example was 
 imitated by Saguntum in Spain in the second Punic 
 war. 
 
 While Harpagus was thus subduing the coast, Cyrus 
 was pursuing his conquests in Upper Asia. He turned 
 his arms against Labynetus, king of Babylon. This 
 renowned city, says our historian, formed a vast square 
 fifty-five miles in circuit. Its double walls were 340 
 feet high (nearly as high as St. Vincent’s rock at Bris¬ 
 tol) and 85 feet thick. The measurements seem enor¬ 
 mous, yet the great wall of China shows such works to 
 
 * About thirty years ago the British Museum was enriched by 
 some beautiful marbles brought from'Xanthus by an expedition 
 which explored Lycia under the conduct of Sir Charles Fel- 
 lowes. 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 31 
 
 be possible, when absolute power commands unlimited 
 labor. The city itself was cut in two by the river Eu¬ 
 phrates, the quays being fenced by walls with water- 
 gates for communication. One half contained the 
 king’s palace, the other the great sacred tower of Belus 
 (Bel or Baal) with its external winding ascent. Baby¬ 
 lon was in fact a fortified province rather than a city; 
 it resembled Jeddo in Japan, in being a collection of 
 country houses with small farms and gardens attached. 
 It seems to have been the ideal of what a great city 
 ought to be, especially in days of internal railroads. 
 London, containing its millions, wdth its thin houses 
 laterally squeezed together, or Paris, with its horizontal 
 piles of flats, and no corresponding spaces, would have 
 excited the horror of the ancients, who in some respects 
 w r ere more civilized than ourselvss. Herodotus attrib¬ 
 utes the great engineering works about Babylon, to pre¬ 
 vent the Euphrates from overflowing the country, 
 chiefly to two queens, Semiramis* and Nitocris, be¬ 
 tween whom he places an interval of five generations. 
 Of this latter he relates a striking anecdote. 
 
 “ She built for herself a tomb above the most fre¬ 
 quented gateway of the city, exactly over the gates, and 
 engraved on it the following inscription: “If any of 
 the kings of Babylon who come after me shall be in 
 need of money, let him open my tomb and take there¬ 
 from as much as he will; but unless he is in need, let 
 him not open it, else will it be worse for him.” Now 
 this tomb remained undisturbed until the kingdom fell 
 to Darius. But he thought it absurd that this gateway 
 
 * This queen appears to have really reigned in conjunction 
 with her husband. She is probably not the great queen known 
 T>y the same name. 
 
32 
 
 TEE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 should be made no use of—for it was not used, because 
 one would have had to pass under the dead body as 
 one went out—and that when money was lying there 
 idle, and calling out for some one to take it, he should 
 not lay his hand on it. So he opened the tomb and 
 found no money at all, but only the dead body, and 
 these words written:—“Ifthouwert not the greediest 
 of men, and shameless in thy greed, thou wouldst not 
 have disturbed the resting-place of the dead.” 
 
 Although the author notices most of the wonders of 
 Babylon, he makes no mention of the hanging-gardens, 
 which excited the astonishment of later writers. Nebu¬ 
 chadnezzar is said to have constructed them out of affec¬ 
 tion for a Median wife, that she might not be afflicted 
 with a Swiss longing for her native mountain scenery.* 
 
 Having defeated the Babylonians in battle, Cyrus 
 drove them inside their huge walls. There they 
 laughed at his efforts, having good store of provisions 
 for many years. But their enemy proved himself as 
 good an engineer as any of their queens, historical or 
 fabulous. Taking advantage of reservoirs previously 
 existing, he turned off by a canal the waters of the 
 Euphrates, and the Persians walked into the city dry- 
 shod by the bed of the river, even the water-gates hav¬ 
 ing been left open by incomprehensible carelessness. 
 Those who were in the centre of the city, says Herodo¬ 
 tus, were still feasting, dancing, and revelling, after the 
 Persians had entered. It is the night described in the 
 Book of Daniel, when the terrible “ handwriting” was 
 seen upon the wall.f 
 
 * So a great fox-hunter, who could not find it in his heart to 
 leave England, is said to have turned his conservatory into a lit¬ 
 tle Italy for his delicate wife. 
 
 t The names of the Eastern kings are so variously given, that 
 
HERODOTUS .; 
 
 33 
 
 I 
 
 The Babylonians were a luxurious people. Their 
 full dress was a long linen tunic, with a woollen robe 
 over it, and a short white cloak or cape over the 
 shoulder. Though they wore their hair long, they 
 swathed their heads iu turbans, and perfumed them¬ 
 selves all over. Each citizen carried liis walking-staff, 
 carved at the top with the likeness of some natural 
 object—such as an apple, a rose, a lily, or an eagle— 
 and had also his private signet. Of these seals (which 
 are hollow cylinders) great numbers have been found 
 during the late explorations, and brought to Europe.* * 
 
 Herodotus records one of their customs, which, 
 whether in jest or earnest, he declares to be the 
 wisest he ever heard of. This was their wife-auction, 
 by which they managed to find husbands for all their 
 young womem. The greatest beauty was put up first, 
 and knocked down to the highest bidder, then the next 
 in the order of comeliness—and so on to the damsel 
 who was equidistant between beauty and plainness, who 
 was given away gratis. Then the least plain was put 
 up, and knocked down to the gallant who would marry 
 her for the smallest consideration,—and so till even the 
 plainest was got rid of to some cynical worthy who de- 
 cidedly preferred lucre to looks. By transferring to 
 
 it is almost impossible to identify them either in sacred or pro¬ 
 fane history. The Labynetus of Herodotus is Nabonidus, or Na- 
 bonadius, in other writers. The “Belshazzar” whom Daniel 
 calls “king” was probably his son, associated with him in the 
 government. His name appears in inscriptions as Bilshar-uzur. 
 We know from other authorities that Labynetus himself was 
 not in the city at its capture.—See Rawlinson’s Herodotus, i. 
 524, etc. 
 
 * They are commonly of some composition, but occasionally 
 have been found in amethyst, cornelian, agate, etc.—Layard’s 
 Nineveh and Babylon, 602, etc. 
 
34 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 the scale of the ill-favored the prices paid for the fair, 
 beauty was made to endow ugliness, and the rich man's 
 taste was the poor man’s gain. The Babylonian mar¬ 
 riage-market might perhaps be advantageously adopted 
 in some modern countries where marriage is still made 
 a commercial matter. It at least possesses the merit of 
 honesty and openness, and tends to a fair distribution of 
 the gifts of fortune. 
 
 Another Babylonian custom, of which Herodotus 
 strongly approves, was that of employing no profes¬ 
 sional physicians, but placing the sick in the gate of the 
 city, that they might get advice respecting the treat¬ 
 ment of their diseases from every passer-by, and thus 
 profit by the experience of those who had been afflicted 
 in the same way as themselves. Whatever may be 
 thought of the absence of regular practitioners, the 
 alternative would certainly seem one of the exceptional 
 cases where wisdom is not found in a multitude of 
 counsellors. 
 
 Having annexed this great and rich province to his 
 dominions, Cyrus seems to have been intoxicated with 
 success, or, in our author’s view, to have tilled up the 
 measure of his prosperity, which now began to run over 
 in insolent self-confidence. He made an expedition 
 against the Massagetse or Greater Goths who lived in 
 the steppes near the Caspian Sea, and were ruled by 
 an Amazonian widow named Tomjwis. While encamp¬ 
 ing against her, Cyrus dreamed that Darius, the son 
 of Hystaspes, a young noble of the royal house of 
 Persia, appeared to him with wings on his shoulders 
 (like some of the Assyrian gods whose figures he must 
 have seen), with one of which he overshadowed Asia 
 and the other Europe. This portended his fall, and the 
 ultimate accession of Darius. At first he gained a par- 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 35 
 
 tial advantage by the stratagem of leaving a camp 
 stored with wine to be plundered by the water-drinking 
 Massagetre, and then returning and massacring them in 
 their sleep. This was the shrewd advice of Croesus the 
 Lydian, whom Cyrus had taken with him on the expe¬ 
 dition. Among the prisoners taken was the son of the 
 Massagetan queen. Cyrus released him from his bonds 
 at his own request; but the youth, unable to bear 
 his disgrace, only took advantage of his liberty to kill 
 himself. At length the invaders were forced to a gen¬ 
 eral action—the fiercest, sa} r s Herodotus, ever fought 
 between barbarian armies. The Persians were com¬ 
 pletely defeated, and Cyrus himself was slain, after a 
 reign of twenty-nine years. Queen Tomyris, exas¬ 
 perated by the treacherous slaughter of her army and 
 the death of her son, had threatened to give the blood¬ 
 thirsty invader his fill of blood; she kept her word by 
 filling a skin with it, and plunging into it his severed . 
 head. 
 
 Such is the account which Herodotus gives of the 
 death of the great Eastern conquerer, so famous both 
 in sacred and profane history. He confesses that he 
 has only chosen one legend out of many. There is 
 little doubt, however, that he died in battle. But the 
 Persian poets assigned a very different fate to their 
 national hero, Kai Khusru, as his name stands in their 
 language. They will not allow that he died at all. 
 When he grew old, they say, he one day took leave of 
 his attendants on the banks of a pleasant stream, and 
 was seen no more. But, as in the case of Arthur and 
 Barbarossa, and all the great favorites of a nation, they 
 looked forward to his coming again, more powerful and 
 glorious than ever. 
 
 These Massagetfie, says our author, resembled the 
 
THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 
 Scythians, but could fight on foot as well as on horse¬ 
 back, their favorite weapon being, as with the Anglo- 
 Saxons, a battle-axe or bill. They had the peculiar 
 custom of sacrificing their old people, and then feasting 
 on them, and natural death was considered a misfor¬ 
 tune. This curious people, whose descendants maybe 
 now in northern or western Europe, knew nothing of 
 tillage, and lived on fiesh, fish, and milk. Their only 
 deity, known to Herodotus, was the Sun. To him they 
 sacrificed the horse, with the notion that it was right to 
 bestow the swiftest of creatures on the swiftest of gods. 
 The Persians also attached a certain sanctity to some 
 breeds of horses, and the Teutonic conquerors of Britain 
 bore a horse as their cognizance. Some say that Hen- 
 gliist and Horsa were not names of men, but only rep¬ 
 resented a people using this national symbol. This 
 rude heraldry of our northern ancestors—or conquerors 
 —may still be traced in the “ White Horse ” cut out on 
 the chalk-liills in more than one place on our Berkshire 
 and Wiltshire downs. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 “ In the afternoon they came unto a land 
 In which it seemed always afternoon.” 
 
 —Tennyson, “ Lotos-Eaters.” 
 
 Of all the nine books of Herodotus, the second, 
 which bears the name of the Muse “ Euterpe,” is incom¬ 
 parably the one of deepest interest to the modern reader, 
 as giving glimpses, such as are found nowhere else but 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 87 
 
 in Scripture, of the infancy of the human race, and as 
 propounding important scientific problems, which can, 
 if ever, only find their solution in remote futurity. It 
 is, moreover, the portion of his work which is most 
 strongly stamped with the characteristics of the author’s 
 personality. It must ever be borne in mind that He¬ 
 rodotus is not a historian in the modern sense of the 
 term. He is the representative writer of a class who 
 stand midway between poetical annalists like Homer 
 and critical historians like Thucydides. They wrote 
 their Iliads in prose, making no sharp distinction be¬ 
 tween truth and fiction. They did not yet look upon 
 the verification of their facts as a duty, but jotted down 
 all that they heard and saw, an instinctive love of truth 
 alone suggesting occasional scepticism as to. very ex¬ 
 traordinary marvels, so that the modern reader may just 
 observe the dawning of the critical spirit. Predomi¬ 
 nantly in his Egypt, Herodotus appears as the traveler 
 and archaeologist; nor is he fairly afloat on the current 
 of history until he launches himself into the narrative 
 of the Persian invasions of Greece, of the circumstances 
 of which he had more immediate knowledge—if not as 
 an eye-witness, yet from those who had themselves been 
 eye-witnesses. 
 
 Egypt has been in all ages the land of wonders, from 
 the time when its “magicians” found their enchant¬ 
 ments fail before the mightier Power which was with 
 Moses, to that when Napoleon told his soldiers that 
 from the top of the Pyramids four thousand years looked 
 down on their struggle with the Mamelukes,—and to 
 our own day, when a French engineer repeats the feat 
 of the old native kings and the Greek Ptolemies, in 
 marrying by a canal the Red Sea to the Mediterranean; 
 an achievement which will make the name of Lesseps 
 
88 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 immortal, if the canal can only be kept clear of sand. 
 The civilization of Egypt is older than time—or at least, 
 than its records. Her kings were counted wholesale— 
 not by individuals, but by dynasties, of which there 
 were said to have been thirty-one, exclusive of gods and 
 heroes. She was the mother of the arts to Greece, as 
 Greece has been to us. Her monuments are nearly as 
 vast and as seemingly indestructible as the everlasting 
 hills themselves, and the study of her mere remnants 
 seems to present a held as inexhaustible as that of na¬ 
 ture. No wonder that Herodotus willingly lingered in 
 this interesting country. He was no holiday traveler, 
 but one all ears and eyes, not likely to let any fact or 
 object escape him through carelessness or want of curi¬ 
 osity. 
 
 The Egyptians were wont to boast that they were the 
 oldest people in the world; but our author says that 
 their king Psammetichus once put this to the proof, and 
 decided against them. Two infants were kept carefully 
 apart from human society, their attendants being for¬ 
 bidden to utter a word before them. Under these cir¬ 
 cumstances women as nurses were out of the question, 
 and they were suckled by goats. [There was indeed a 
 Greek version of the legend, which said that the chil¬ 
 dren were nursed by women—with their tongues cut 
 out.] One day, when about two years old, they came 
 to their keeper, stretching out their hands, and calling 
 “Bekkosl bekkos!” This being Phrygian for “ bread,” 
 the palm of antiquity was adjudged to the Phrygians. 
 The test was scarcely trustworthy, for probably enough 
 the cry was only an imitation of the bleat of the goats. 
 It has indeed been claimed by etymologists as the San¬ 
 scrit root il pac,” whence our word “cook” is said to 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 39 
 
 be derived. The Germans, again, recognize in it their 
 own “ bakken” = bake.* 
 
 According to the priests, who were Herodotus’s chief 
 informants, the whole country except the district of 
 Thebes, seven days’ sail up the Nile from the sea, was 
 originally a swamp. To the truth of this our author 
 was ready to testify, as the whole Delta (called so from 
 the shape of the Greek letter z/, our D) appeared to him 
 to be “ the gift of the river.” This formation certainly 
 required time, but he considered that the Nile was so 
 energetic, that in ten thousand years (which is, after all, 
 a very moderate geological period) it might even deposit 
 alluvial soil enough to fill up the Arabian gulf of the 
 Red Sea. The priests appear to have given him very 
 good data for supplementing his own observations on 
 the physical phenomena of the country; and in these 
 details he evinces a patient investigation of facts which 
 would do credit to any age, however scientific. He only 
 becomes fanciful when he begins to speculate on the 
 unknown. With respect to the causes of the annual in¬ 
 undations of the Nile, he could, naturally enough, get 
 no trustworthy information. It struck him as par¬ 
 ticularly strange that the Nile, unlike other rivers, should 
 begin to rise with the summer solstice, and be in a state 
 of flood for a hundred days afterwards. Certain Greeks 
 who affected a reputation for science endeavored to ac¬ 
 count for the phenomenon in three ways. The third, 
 which appeared to Herodotus the least plausible expla¬ 
 nation, was, that the Nile was swollen by melting snows, 
 though it flows through the torrid land of the Ethiopians 
 into Egypt—which seemed to him a contradiction. Yet 
 
 * Englishmen have suggested that it may have been a feeble 
 attempt to call for “ breakfast.” 
 
40 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 this theory was so near the actual truth, that the inun- 
 nations are caused by the summer rains in the highlands 
 of Abyssinia and on the equatorial table-land of Africa. 
 That Herodotus had seen an inundation of the river is 
 tolerably certain, from his description of the appearance 
 of the country ai such times. He speaks of the towns 
 and villages standing out of the water “like the islands 
 in the iEgean Sea;” a graphic picture, of which modern 
 travelers have recognized the truth. Adopting neither 
 of the theories which had been advanced, Herodotus 
 modestly propounds one of his own, which is curious, 
 but of no scientific value, as resting on false cosmo- 
 grapliical data. 
 
 As to the sources of the Nile, he says that he never 
 met with but one person who professed to know any¬ 
 thing about them. This was the registrar of the treasury 
 of Minerva at Sais; but when he began to talk about 
 two conical hills— “ called Kroplii and Moplii”—be¬ 
 tween Syene and Elephantine (below the cataracts), 
 Herodotus thought he could hardty be quite serious. 
 Between those hills, said his informant, lay the foun¬ 
 tains of the Nile, of unfathomable depth. Half the 
 water ran to Egypt, the other half to Ethiopia. Psam- 
 metichus had tried to sound them with a rope many 
 thousand fathoms in length, but there were such strong 
 eddies in the water that the bottom of the spring could 
 never be reached. Herodotus himself w T ent up the Nile 
 as far as Elephantine—that is, did not get beyond the 
 first cataract; and though he learnt much by inquiry as 
 to the country generally, he could throw no additional 
 light on the great question. But a story reached him 
 originally derived from certain Nasamonians—a people 
 inhabiting the edge of the desert—that once on a time 
 certain “wild young men,” sons of their chiefs, took it 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 41 
 
 into their heads to draw lots which of them should go 
 and explore the desert of Libya, and try to get farther 
 than any one had gone before. Five of their number set 
 out, well supplied with food and water, and passed first 
 through the inhabited region, then through a country 
 tenanted only by wild beasts, and then entered the 
 desert, taking a direction from east to west. After pro¬ 
 ceeding for many days over a sandy waste, they came 
 at last to a plain where they found fruit-trees, and began 
 to pluck the fruit. While they were doing so, certain 
 very small men came upon them and took them prisoners. 
 The Nasamonians could not understand them, nor make 
 themselves understood. They were led by them across 
 vast marshes, and at last came to a town where all the 
 inhabitants were black dwarfs like their captors. A 
 great river flowed by the town from west to east, abound¬ 
 ing in crocodiles. And all the people in the town were 
 wizards. It was added that the explorers returned in 
 safety from their perilous journey. If the Bushmen 
 now surviving at the Cape, and formerly more exten¬ 
 sively spread over Africa, were a black race, which they 
 are not, we might suppose them to be the descendants 
 of the little men spoken of by Herodotus. Their color 
 may, however, have been modified by the temperate 
 climate of South Africa in the course of long ages. The 
 tribe of Dokos, in the south-west of Abyssinia, are 
 dwarfish, and answer very nearly to Herodotus’s des¬ 
 cription. Herodotus was inclined to identify the Nile 
 with the river flowing by the mysterious city.* 
 
 It is strange that the oldest geographical problem in 
 the world should be a problem still, though now prob- 
 
 * It was more probably, as Mr. Ratvlinson and Mr. Blakesley 
 both think, the Niger, and the city may have been Timbuctoo, 
 
43 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 ably in the course of solution. The nearest approach to 
 the truth appears to have been made by the Alexandrian 
 geographer, Ptolemy, who had heard of certain lakes 
 as the sources of the Nile, and placed them some ten 
 degrees south of the equator. The question slumbered 
 through the middle ages, and one affluent after another 
 was looked upon as the true Nile, till Bruce was for 
 some time supposed to have set the question at rest in 
 the eighteenth century by the discovery of the source 
 of the Blue River. Quite of late years it was agreed 
 again that the White River was the main branch; and 
 in 1857 Captain Speke, setting out from Zanzibar, dis¬ 
 covered the Victoria Lake, which is now the farthest 
 authenticated source in an easterly direction, while Sir 
 Samuel Baker’s Albert Lake is the farthest authenti¬ 
 cated source in a Westerly. Up to this time Speke and 
 his companion Major Grant are the only men who have 
 actually crossed Africa from south-east to north, and as 
 yet the honors of discovery must be supposed to rest 
 with them. 
 
 In treating of the wonders of Egypt, Herodotus cer¬ 
 tainly exaggerates on some points from love of paradox, 
 as when he says that as the Nile differs from all other 
 rivers in its nature, so the Egyptians differ from all 
 other men in their habits, the men doing what is usually 
 considered as women’s work, and the women men’s 
 work; for in this he is refuted by the Egyptian paint¬ 
 ings, which represent each sex as usually engaged in its 
 proper occupation. But a Greek must have been much 
 struck with the comparative freedom of the Egyptian 
 women, so unlike the life of the Hellenic “ lady’s bower,” 
 or the Asiatic harem. Sophocles, in his “CEdipus at 
 Colonus,” has made a beautiful application of this re¬ 
 corded contrast to the helpful piety of the daughters 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 48 
 
 and the selfish luxury of the sons of the blind hero, 
 which would seem to show that lie wrote the play fresh 
 from the perusal of his friend’s Egypt. 
 
 Our author makes the observation that the Egyptians 
 were the first nation who, holding the soul to be immor¬ 
 tal, asserted its migration after death through the whole 
 round of created beings, till it lived again in another 
 man, which occupied a cycle of three thousand years. 
 This doctrine of a “ circle of necessity” was held alike 
 by Buddhists, Druids, and—if Josephus may be trusted 
 —by the sect of the Pharisees among the Jews. But 
 this Egyptian doctrine, which is profusely illustrated 
 on the tombs, suffered the wicked only to descend into 
 animals, while the good passed at once into a state of 
 happiness. A striking custom which Herodotus de¬ 
 scribes would seem to show that to them, as to the 
 Greeks, the future existence was not a cheering pros¬ 
 pect. 
 
 Iu the social banquets of the rich, as soon as the 
 feast is ended, a man carries round a wooden figure of 
 a corpse iu its coffin, graven and painted so as to re¬ 
 semble the reality as nearly as possible, from one to 
 two cubits long. And as he shows it to each of the 
 guests, he says, “Look on this, and drink, and be 
 merry; for when thou art dead, such shalt thou be.” 
 
 The “ skeleton at the banquet” has pointed many a 
 moral for ancient and modern writers. St. Paul may 
 have had it iu mind when he quoted as the motto of 
 the Sadducee, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow 
 we die,” as well as Sliakspeare, when he makes his 
 Hamlet moralize over Yorick’s skull—“Now get you 
 to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch 
 thick, to this favor she must come.” 
 
 Herodotus considers that the names of the gods came 
 
44 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY ,. 
 
 to Greece from Egypt, with the exception of Poseidon 
 (Neptune), Castor and Pollux, Here (Juno), Hestia, 
 Themis, the Graces and the Nereids. All these the 
 Greeks were said to have inherited from the Pelasgians, 
 with the exception of the sea-god Poseidon, with whom 
 they became acquainted through the Libyans. The 
 Egyptians, unlike the Greeks, paid no honor to heroes 
 or demigods; for their god Osiris (who corresponded to 
 Bacchus) appeared on earth only as a manifestation or 
 Avatar of Deity. Among the mythological marvels 
 of the Egyptians Herodotus relates that they accounted 
 cows as sacred to Isis, the moon-goddess, represented 
 with horns, and objected to kill them as food—a prac¬ 
 tice which finds it parallel in India at the present day. 
 The sacredness of animals generally, in Egypt, struck 
 our traveller forcibly. For each species there were cer¬ 
 tain appointed guardians, who tended and fed them, 
 and the office was hereditary. To kill one of these 
 sacred animals was a capital offence, unless done acci¬ 
 dentally, in which case a fine w T as inflicted; but to kill 
 an ibis or a hawk was death without reprieve. Cats 
 were so much respected that, in case of a fire occurring, 
 the Egyptians would let the house be burnt before their 
 eyes, all their attention being given to saving the cats; 
 which, however, they usually found impossible, as the 
 animals (no doubt in terror at the well-meant efforts of 
 their friends) had a trick of jumping into the flames. 
 If they died, nevertheless, it was thought to be a ter¬ 
 rible misfortune. When a cat died a natural death, all 
 the inmates of a house went into mourning by shaving 
 their eyebrows, and they shaved their heads and their 
 whole bodies when a dog died. The dead cats were 
 embalmed, and their mummies stored in the sacred city 
 of Bubastis; but the dogs were buried in their own cit- 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 45 
 
 ies, as were also the ichneumons. The hawks and 
 shrew-mice were conveyed to Buto, and the ibises to 
 Hermopolis. It would seem by this that the animals 
 about whose funerals so much trouble was taken were 
 more sacred than the rest.* The crocodile, of which 
 Herodotus gives a description, perhaps as fairly accu¬ 
 rate as could be expected from an ordinary observer, 
 was accounted sacred by some of the Egyptians; for in¬ 
 stance, by the people about Thebes, and those about 
 Lake Mceris. In each of these places a tame crocodile 
 was kept, who wore ear-rings (or rather rings in the 
 corresponding holes) of glass or gold, and bracelets on 
 his fore-paws. Every day he had his ration of bread 
 and meat, and when he died he was buried in a conse¬ 
 crated vault. But the people of Elephantine, so far 
 from canonizing these animals, thought them tolerable 
 eating. 
 
 Herodotus gives a native receipt for catching croco¬ 
 diles. Bait a hook with a chine of pork, and let it float 
 to about the middle of the stream. Let a confederate 
 hold a living pig on the bank, and belabor him lustily. 
 The crocodile hears the pig squeak, and, making for 
 him, encounters the pork, which he swallows. When 
 the men on shore have drawn him to land, plug his eyes 
 with mud; after that, it is very easy to kill him. T'his 
 hitter item of the receipt has a strong affinity to an old 
 precept about “ putting salt on a bird’s tail.” A very 
 similar mode of capture (with tnis exception) is prac¬ 
 ticed by the natives now. The name “ crocodiles,” as 
 the author observes, is Ionic Greek for “lizard;” the 
 
 * Lane says that the modern Egyptians are remarkably kind 
 to animals. On one occasion a lady buried a favorite dog with 
 all the honors due to a good Mussulman, and houseless cats are 
 fed at the expense of the Cadi of the district. 
 
46 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 Egyptians themselves calling the animal “champsa.” * 
 He is somewhat mistaken in his account of the hippo¬ 
 potamus, no specimen of which he appears to have 
 seen. lie gives it the hoof of an ox, and the mane and 
 neigh of a horse. 
 
 The sacred bird called the pheenix Herodotus con¬ 
 fesses he never saw except in pictures. Indeed it was 
 rare in Egypt, for it came but once in five hundred 
 years, when the old pheenix died. According to the 
 pictures, it w T as like an eagle, with plumage partly red 
 and partly golden. The bird was said to come from 
 Arabia, bringing the body of his father enclosed in a 
 bail of myrrh, that he might bury it in the temple of 
 the Sun. Our author did not seem to be acquainted 
 with that other version of the pheenix fable, according 
 to which it returned from the east after a stated period 
 to burn itself in frankincense, and was again resusci¬ 
 tated. The pheenix w T as an emblem of the soul and its 
 supposed migrations, and its journey to the east typified 
 the constant aspiration of the soul towards the sun. Its 
 period of migration referred to a solar cycle in the 
 Egyptian calendar. Pliny says that the name was de¬ 
 rived from a species of palm in Lower Egypt, which 
 dies down to the root and then is renovated. Ovid 
 mal^s the bird build its nest on a palm. In hierogly¬ 
 phic language the palm-bough is the sign of the year. 
 
 Amongst other wonders, our author had heard of 
 winged serpents, which flew across from Arabia, and 
 was induced to undertake a journey to the country 
 whence they came, where he says he saw some of their 
 bones. The ibises were said to destroy them as they 
 
 * Apparently an attempt to write the name msah, still to be 
 traced in the Arabic temsah.—See Sir G. "Wilkinson's note, Raw- 
 linson, ii. 11G. .— 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 47 
 
 flew, which caused this bird to be held in great honor 
 by the Egyptians. We are now in possession of the' 
 probable key to this enigmatical story, which illustrates 
 both the simple faith and painstaking of our author, 
 and also the manner in which myths grow out of the 
 use of words. When scorpions or snakes appear in 
 large numbers in the houses in Upper Egypt, they are 
 supposed to be brought by the wind, and to all such 
 objects an Arabic word is applied which signifies to fly. 
 Herodotus doubtless saw pictures of a winged serpent 
 attacked by the ibis, but this bird typified the god 
 Osiris in the white robes of his purity and the winged 
 serpent probably the Evil principle. The ibis, how¬ 
 ever, is said to destroy snakes. His mention of the 
 harmless horned snakes at Thebes, which were consid¬ 
 ered sacred, and buried in the temple, may suggest the 
 prolific subject of primeval serpent-worship. 
 
 The description which Herodotus gives of the man¬ 
 ners and customs of the Egyptians stamps them as a 
 highly civilized people. In the reverence paid by 
 young men to their elders, he considered that they set 
 a good example to the Greeks. In the medical profes¬ 
 sion they recognized a minute division of labor, some 
 being oculists, others dentists, and so forth.* Those 
 who embalmed the dead (the “physicians” of till? 
 book of Genesis) formed a profession of themselves. 
 He describes at length three methods of embalming 
 (they had really many more), which were adopted in 
 order to suit the means of their customers, as modern 
 undertakers provide for funerals at different tariffs. 
 Amongst other local peculiarities, Herodotus notices 
 
 *“ O virgin, daughter of Egypt, in vain shalt thou use many 
 medicines.”—Jer. xlvi. 11. 
 
48 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 the lotus-eaters of the marsh-lands, who remind us of 
 those described by Homer in the voyage of Ulysses. 
 But these latter—if they are to be identified at all—are 
 to be recognized rather in the lotus-eating tribe whom 
 our author mentions in a subsequent book as existing 
 on the coast of Africa. Their lotus v T as probably a 
 kind of jujabe (Zizyphus napeca). The Egyptian lotus 
 wasakind of water-lily, the centre of whose blossom was 
 dried, crushed, and eaten, as also its round root. The 
 seeds of another water-lily, wfiiose blossoms were like a 
 rose, were also eaten, as well as the lower steins of the 
 byblus or papyrus, whose leaves were used for paper 
 and other purposes. The mosquitoes were as great a 
 nuisance in Egypt formerly as now. Herodotus says 
 that some of the natives, to avoid them, slept on towers 
 exposed to the wind; but in the marshes each mail 
 had a net, which served the double purpose of catching 
 fish by day and acting as a mosquito-curtain at night. 
 
 For the early history of the country Herodotus had 
 to depend upon his informants, who were usually the 
 priests, especially those of Heliopolis—the Greek name 
 by which he knew the oldest capital of Egypt, Ei n-re, 
 the On or Aon of the Hebrew Scriptures—the “ City of 
 the Sun.”* Their colleges of priests there was in fact 
 the university of Egypt; and whatever faith we may 
 place in their historical records, their proficiency in 
 mathematics and astronomy was very considerable in¬ 
 deed. They asserted that the first kings of Egypt were 
 
 * The “Aven”of Ezek. xxx. 17; translated into, the HebreAV 
 Beth-shemesli—“ House of the Sun” —Jer. xliii. 13. The silt of 
 the Nile has now covered most of its monuments and buildings 
 but its massive walls may still be traced, and a solitary granite 
 obelisk, said to be near 4000 years old, marks what was the en¬ 
 trance to the temple of the Sun. 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 49 
 
 gods, “ who dwelt upon earth with men.” The last of 
 tills divine dynasty was Horus, son of Osiris—whom 
 the Greeks identified with Apollo. The sufferings and 
 death of Osiris were the great mystery of the Egyptian 
 creed. Herodotus had seen his burial-place at Sal's, and 
 knew the mysterious rites with which, under cover of 
 night, these sufferings were commemorated. But he 
 “ will by no means speak of them,” or even mention 
 the god by name. Either the priests had enjoined 
 secrecy upon him as the price of their information; or 
 perhaps, being himself initiated in the Greek Mysteries, 
 he had a scrupulous reverence for those of Egypt. 
 Osiris was the great principle of Good, who slew his 
 brother Typhon, the representative of Evil; and is pict¬ 
 ured in the hieroglyphic paintings as the great judge 
 of the dead. The first king of the human race was M§n, 
 or Menes, the founder of Memphis, who began a line of 
 three hundred and thirty monarchs (including one 
 queen), whose names were read off to Herodotus from a 
 roll of papyrus. Eighteen were said to be Ethiopians. 
 Of most of these kings the priests professed to know 
 little more than the names; but Mceris, the last of 
 them, left his name to a large artificial lake, or reser¬ 
 voir, near the “ City of Crocodiles,” from which water 
 was conveyed to all parts of the neighborhood. His 
 successor, Sesostris, is said to have conquered all Asia, 
 and eren to have subdued Scythia and Thrace, in 
 Europe, marking the limits of his conquests by pillars— 
 two of which, in Palestine, Herodotus declares that he 
 himself saw.* Sesostris, after his return from his 
 conquests, met with somewhat too warm a welcome 
 
 * There is little doubt that these are the tablets still to be seen 
 near Beyrout. 
 
50 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 from his brother, whom he had left viceroy of Egypt. 
 He invited the hero and his family to a banquet, 
 heaped wood all round the building, and set fire to it. 
 Sesostris only escaped by sacrificing (by the mother’s 
 advice) two of his six sons, whose bodies he used to 
 bridge the circle of flame. Having inflicted condign 
 punishment on liis brother, he then proceeded to utilize 
 the vast multitudes of captives whom he had brought 
 with him. By the employment of this forced labor 
 he changed the face of Egypt, completely intersecting it 
 with canals, and filling it with public buildings of un¬ 
 paralleled magnificence. The second king after Sesos¬ 
 tris bore a Greek name, but must be regarded as a 
 very apocryphal personage—Proteus, who was said to 
 have entertained at his court no less famous a visitor 
 than Helen, the heroine of the Trojan war. For the 
 Egyptian priests had their version, too, of that wondrous 
 Tale. According to them, the Spartan princess was 
 driven by stress of weather to Egypt on her forced 
 elopement with Paris, while Troy was besieged by the 
 Greeks, in the belief that she was there. King Proteus, 
 when he heard the story, gave Helen refuge, but dis¬ 
 missed Paris at once with disgrace. Herodotus accuses 
 Homer of knowing this legend, which was a more 
 probable version of the story than his own, and sup¬ 
 pressing it for poetical purposes, since he speaks of the 
 long wanderings of Helen, and of Menelaus’s vis*it to 
 Egypt. The priests told him that their predecessors 
 had the story from Menelaus himself, who went to 
 Egypt to fetch Helen, when he found, after the capture 
 of Troy, that she Avas not there. Herodotus himself 
 saw in the sacred precincts at Memphis a temple to 
 “ Venus the Foreigner,” whom his Greek patriotism at 
 once identified with Helen. 
 
HERODOTUS . 
 
 61 
 
 A story told at considerable length by Herodotus of 
 the next king, Ehampsinitus, is highly characteristic, 
 showing that sympathy of the Greek mind for clever 
 rascality which recalls Homer’s manifest enjoyment of 
 the wily tricks of Ulysses in the “ Odyssey.” The story 
 of “ The Treasury of Ehampsinitus,” which lias been 
 borrowed also by the Italian novelists, reads as if it 
 were taken from tlie “Arabian Nights.” 
 
 King Ehampsinitus, having vast treasure of silver, 
 built for its safe keeping a chamber of hewn stone one 
 of whose walls formed also the outer wall of his palace. 
 His architect, however, having designs on the treasure, 
 built a stone into the wall, which even one man who knew 
 the secret could easily displace. He did not live long 
 enough to carry out his views, but on his deathbed ex¬ 
 plained the contrivance to his two sons, for whose sake he 
 said he had devised it, that the;) might live as rich men, 
 since the secret would make them virtual chancellors 
 of the royal exchequer through their lives. After his 
 death, the sons profited by his instructions to remove a 
 considerable sum. The king, when next lie came to 
 visit the room, missed his money, finding it standing 
 at a lower level in the vessels. This happened again and 
 again, though the seals and fastenings of the room were 
 as secure as ever. At last he set a man-trap inside. 
 When the thieves next made their usual visit, one of 
 them found himself suddenly caught. Seeing no hope 
 of escape, he called to his brother to come and cut off 
 his head, to prevent his being recognized. The brother 
 obeyed; and, after replacing the stone, made his way 
 home with the head. When the king entered at day¬ 
 break, he greatly marveled to see a headless trunk in 
 the gin, while the building seemed still to be fast 
 closed all round. To find out to whom the body bo- 
 
TIIE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 52 
 
 longed, lie ordered it to be lmng outside the palace-wall, 
 and set a guard to watch, and bring before him any 
 persons they might observe lamenting over it. The 
 mother of the dead man, hearing of this desecration of 
 a corpse that should have been a mummy, told her sur¬ 
 viving son that unless he contrived to rescue it, she 
 would go and tell the king that he was the robber. 
 Wearied with her continual reproaches, at last the 
 brother filled some skins with wine, loaded them on 
 asses, and drove them by the place where the guards were 
 watching the dead body. Then he slily untied the necks 
 of some of the skins. The wine of course began to run 
 out, upon which he fell to wailing and beating his head, 
 as if distracted, and not knowing to which donkey he 
 should run first to staunch the wine. This highly 
 amused the guards, w r ho ran eagerly to catch the wine 
 in all the vessels they could lay hands on. Then the 
 driver pretended to get into a passion, and abused them, 
 upon which they did their best to quiet him. At last, ap¬ 
 pearing to be put in good-lmmor again by their raillery, 
 he gave them one of the skins to drink. They invited 
 him to help them with the drinking, as they had helped 
 him in putting the skins in order. As the wine went 
 round all got more and more friendly, till they broached 
 another skin, and at last the guards all got so drunk that 
 they went to sleep on the spot. In the dead of the night 
 the thief took down the body of his brother, laid it upon 
 the asses, and made off, having first remained long 
 enough to shave off the right whiskers of each of the 
 men,—which was considered a deadly insult. When 
 the king heard of this he was more vexed than ever, 
 and determined to find out the thief at any cost. He 
 bade his daughter keep open house for all comers, and 
 promise to marry the man who would tell her most to 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 53 
 
 her satisfaction the cleverest and wickedest thing he had 
 ever done. If any one told her the story of the robbery, 
 she was to lay hold of him. But the thief was not to be 
 thus outwitted. He procured a dead man’s arm, put it 
 under his dress, and went to call on the princess. When 
 she put the question, he answered at once that the 
 wickedest thing he had ever done was cutting off his 
 brother’s head in the king’s treasury, and the cleverest 
 was making the guards drunk, and carrying off his 
 body. The princess made a grasp at him, but in the 
 darkness lie left the arm of the corpse in her hand and 
 fled. But now the king was overwhelmed with astonish¬ 
 ment and admiration for the man’s cleverness, and made 
 a proclamation of free pardon and a rich reward, if the 
 thief would declare himself. lie boldly came forward, 
 and Rhampsinitus gave him his daughter in marriage. 
 “ The Egyptians,” he said, “ are the wisest of men, and 
 thou art the wisest of the Egyptians.” 
 
 Till the death of Rhampsinitus Egypt enjoyed pros¬ 
 perity. Cheops, who succeeded him, and who built 
 the Great Pyramid, is said to have shut up all the tem¬ 
 ples, that his people might do nothingbut work for him; 
 and he kept a hundred thousand laboring at a time, 
 wdio w T ere relieved every three months. It took ten 
 years to make the causeway (of which traces still re¬ 
 main) for the conveyance of stones, and another twenty 
 to build the Pyramid itself. The next kings, Chephren 
 and Mycerinus (Mencheres) likewise built pyramids, but 
 on a smaller scale. The memory of Cheops and Che¬ 
 phren, in consequence of their oppressions, became so 
 odious to the Egyptians that they would not even men¬ 
 tion their names; but upon Mycerinus, though he was 
 just and merciful, there fell the punishment due for 
 their sins. First he lost his only daughter, and then an 
 
54 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 oracle told him that he had but six years to live. He 
 expostulated with the oracle, saying it was hard that he 
 who was a good aud righteous king should die early, 
 while his father aud uncle, who were so impious, lived 
 long. The oracle answered—“ For that very reason 
 thou must die, for Egypt was destined to suffer ill for 
 one hundred and fifty years, and thou liinderest the 
 doom from being fulfilled.” On this Myceriuus, find¬ 
 ing it useless to be virtuous, determined to outwit the 
 gods; so he lighted lamps at nightfall, and turned all 
 the nights into days, aud enjoyed them as well as the 
 days, in feasting in all pleasant places. Thus he lived 
 twelve years in the space of six, making his six years 
 one long day of continuous revel. The story of Myceri- 
 nus has been very happily treated in one of Matthew 
 Arnold’s earliest poems.* 
 
 After him came a blind king named Anysis, during 
 whose reign Egypt, was invaded by the Ethiopians, who 
 lorded it over tiie country for fifty years. He was suc- 
 
 * Its moral—if it has any—may be found in Moore's song— 
 
 “ And the best of all ways 
 To lengthen our daj’s 
 
 Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear.” 
 
 “ I will unfold my sentence and my crime ; 
 
 My crime, that, rapt in reverential awe, 
 
 I sate obedient, in the fiery prime 
 Of youth, self-governed, at the feet of Law, 
 Ennobling this dull pomp, the life of kings, 
 
 With contemplation of diviner things. 
 
 “ My father loved injustice, and lived long; 
 
 Crowned with gray hairs, he died, and full of sway. 
 
 I loved the good he scorned, and hated wrong; 
 
 The gods declare my recompense to-day. 
 
 I looked for life more lasting, rule more high— 
 
 And when six years are measured, io, I die!” 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 55 
 
 ceeded bySethos, a priest of Vulcan, who oppressed the 
 warrior caste, so lliat they refused to serve him when 
 Sennacherib, king of the Assyrians, invaded the coun¬ 
 try. But a vision in the sanctuary bade him be of good 
 cheer; and when he went out to the frontier with an 
 army of citizens, trusting in divine aid, a number of 
 field-mice came in the night and gnawed the bow¬ 
 strings, quivers, and shield straps of the enemy, so that 
 the Egyptians easily defeated them. Such is the dim 
 tradition which reached the historian of the mysteri¬ 
 ous destruction of the Assyrian host recorded in the 
 Scriptures. The mouse, according to some interpreters 
 of hieroglyphic language, was the symbol of destruc¬ 
 tion. Thus far Herodotus had derived his information 
 as to early Egyptian history entirely from the priests. 
 He computed that the reigns of these kings, as given 
 him, would require eleven thousand three hundred and 
 forty years. 
 
 A revolution seemed to have occurred after the death 
 of Setlios, by which twelve provincial kings, like those 
 of the Saxon Heptarchy, reigned at once. Their great 
 work was a labyrinth near Lake Moeris, which struck 
 Herodotus as one of the wonders of the world—more 
 wonderful even than the Pyramids themselves. One 
 of the twelve, Psammeticlius, at length managed to 
 depose the rest by the aid of Greek mercenaries. IIis 
 son, Nechos (Pharaoh Necho), is credited by iferodotus 
 with the first attempt to construct the canal to the Red 
 Sea, which was afterwards finished by Darius Hystaspcs. 
 The canal, however, was more probably begun by Se- 
 sostris (Rameses II.), and there appears to be evidence 
 that it was choked by sand (which is still the difficulty 
 with modern engineers), and reopened many times—by 
 the Ptolemies, for instance, and the Arabs, - Neche is 
 
56 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 mentioned in Scripture as having defeated and slain 
 King Josiali at Megiddo on his way to attack the 
 Assyrians. Herodotus briefly notices the victory, but 
 calls the place Magdolus, after which he says that 
 Neclio took the city of Cadytis, supposed to be either 
 Jerusalem or Gaza. In a subsequent expedition, which 
 Herodotus does not mention, he himself was defeated 
 by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and lost all his 
 conquests. He was succeeded by his son Psammis, 
 and his grandson Apries (the Pharaoh-Hoplira of Jere¬ 
 miah). The latter had a long and prosperous reign; 
 but failing in an attack on the Greek city of Cyrene, 
 his army revolted from him, and chose Amasis, an 
 oflicer who had been sent to reason with them, for 
 their king. Apries on this armed his Greek merce¬ 
 naries, amounting to thirty thousand men, and went to 
 meet the revolted Egyptians. In the battle which en¬ 
 sued he was defeated and taken prisoner by Amasis, 
 who finally gave him up to his former subjects, with 
 whom he was unpopular, and they strangled him. 
 Amasis was a coarse but humorous character, rather 
 proud than otherwise of his low origin. Finding that 
 his subjects despised him for it, he broke up a golden 
 foot-path, and made of it an image of one of the gods, 
 which the Egyptians proceeded to worship. He then 
 told them what it was made of, adding that “his own 
 fortune had*been that of the foot-pan;” thus anticipat¬ 
 ing the adage of Burns— 
 
 “ The rank is but the guinea-stamp, 
 
 The man’s the gowd for a’ that.” 
 
 When his courtiers reproved his undignified revels in 
 his hours of relaxation, whereas none could complain 
 of his inattention to business, he met them with tho 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 57 
 
 proverb, now common to most languages, that a bow 
 becomes useless if not sometimes unstrung. His habits 
 were certainly open to remark. To find money for his 
 pleasures before he came to the throne, he occasionally 
 took to highway robbery. The macular shrines were 
 the police offices of those times, and Amasis, like other 
 thieves, was cited in such cases before the nearest 
 oracle. Some of them would acquit, others find him 
 guilt} r . When he became king, he honored the oracles 
 which had detected him very highly, but the others he 
 despised. But he was a great king, in spite of his fail¬ 
 ings; and Egypt is said to have prospered more under 
 him than under any of his predecessors. One of 
 his laws was, that every man should appear once a 
 year before the governor of his department, and prove, 
 on pain of death, Unit he was getting an honest liveli¬ 
 hood. Herodotus says that Solon borrowed this law 
 from the Egyptians, and that it was in force at Athens 
 up to his own days. If this be true, it fell into disuse 
 soon after his time, as the Athenians enjoyed a reputa¬ 
 tion above all nations in the world for “gracefully 
 going idle.” We may at least join in his remark, that 
 this ordinance of Amasis was “a most excellent cus¬ 
 tom,” towards which our modern civilization is making 
 timid approaches. We shall hear of this king again in 
 connection with Polycrates, the despot of Samos. 
 
 The account which Herodotus here gives of the kings 
 of Egypt, however interesting and entertaining, must 
 be read with the full understanding that its value in 
 a historical point of view is about the same as that of 
 Livy’s popular account of the early kings of Rome. 
 He was unacquainted with the Egyptian language, and 
 though the priests may not have purposely imposed 
 upon him, he had to depend on the anecdotes which 
 
58 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 came to him through the medium of the caste of drago¬ 
 mans who were settled at Memphis. In consequence 
 of this, the consecutiveuess and general symmetry of 
 his account only serve to conceal some palpable mis¬ 
 statements. Perhaps the greatest is that which makes 
 the builders of the Pyramids later in time than the 
 builders of the temples and other monuments. Modern 
 investigations have tended to give great weight to the 
 authority of a native chronicler, spoken of with much 
 respect by early Christian writers, but who afterwards 
 fell into disrepute—Manetlio, the high-priest in the 
 days of Ptolemy Philadelplius. Ilis record is utterly 
 fatal to the main facts of the account given by He¬ 
 rodotus. After dynasties of gods and heroes which 
 reigned more than sixteen thousand years, lie brings 
 us to the builders of the Pyramids, whom Herodotus 
 places at a late period of his history, perhaps because 
 his Greek informants first became acquainted with the 
 monuments at Memphis itself. He was probably fur¬ 
 nished with two distinct lists of kings, both to a great 
 extent mythical, which he took to be separate and 
 successive dynasties. Cheops is almost certainly iden¬ 
 tical with Menes, the first human king of Herodotus, in 
 whose time was effected the canalization of the Delta. 
 He is the traditional builder of the Great Pyramid, and 
 Chemmis (the Sun) appears as one of his titles, at once 
 connecting him with the sun-worship. The Pyramids 
 are supposed to have been built before the time of 
 Abraham, with the Pharaoh of whose times Achtlioes 
 of the lltli dynasty has been identified. The name 
 Pharaoh itself continues the title assumed by Cheops, 
 in its meaning of “ children of the sun.” 
 
 The Mycerinus of Herodotus is found to resolve him¬ 
 self into two kings, the Menckeres who built the Pyra- 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 69 
 
 mids, and another much later king, of whom the story 
 of turning night into day is told; a legend which may 
 have originated in the torcli-light festival of Osiris and 
 Isis. Sesostris also resolves himself into two kings— 
 Sethos, the great engineer and builder, and Rameses II., 
 the great conqueror whose victories are recorded in the 
 temples at Karnak and Luxor, and whose falle-fi statue at 
 Luxor is the largest in the world. After him came Me- 
 nephthes or Amenonoph, who has been identified with the 
 Pharaoh of Exodus. The Shishak of Scripture has been 
 confounded with Sesostris, but he came far too late, and 
 is now r identified with one Sesorchis. But the identi- 
 fication of any of these kings is as yet very uncertain. 
 
 Among other -stories in the second book of Herod¬ 
 otus is one not quite presentable to the general reader, 
 about a Greek beauty of doubtful repute, named Rliodb- 
 pis (“ Rosy-cheek”), who had been brought as a slave 
 to Eg} r pt, and who was said to have built one of the 
 Pyramids. Strabo embellishes her history by telling 
 how, when this lady was bathing, an eagle carried oil 
 one of her sandals, and deposited it before the king of 
 Egypt’s throne, who was so struck by the suggested 
 beauty of the foot which it fitted that he sent for her 
 and made her his queen. Such is the venerable antiq¬ 
 uity of the story of Cinderella. 
 
 It is remarkable that Herodotus says nothing about 
 the Great Sphinx, which strikes all modern travelers so 
 forcibly, and which plays so prominent a part in the le¬ 
 gends of the Greek Thebes. He must have seen it, but 
 may have thought it (as he did other things in this mys¬ 
 terious country) “ too sacred to mention.” Its composite 
 form is supposed to be emblematic of Nature, and con¬ 
 nected in some way with the inundations of the Nile. 
 
 This second book of Herodotus brings the history of 
 
60 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 Egypt as an independent power to a close. It is an in¬ 
 exhaustibly rich mine of historical, archaeological, and 
 mythological wealth, on whose endless shafts and gal¬ 
 leries modern discovery is ever throwing some new light. 
 Formerly the deciphering of the hieroglyphic writing, in 
 which all Egyptian sacred records were kept, was looked 
 upon as all but hopeless, but since the key was supplied 
 by the discovery of the famous Rosetta stone, which bore 
 a Greek translation of its hieroglyphic inscription, scien¬ 
 tific patience has been abundantly rewarded. Religion 
 is essentially conservative, and older dialects and char¬ 
 acters are continued in her service long after they have 
 been superseded in secular use. We may cite as an 
 example the Church Slavotiic dialect- of the north, so 
 valuable to philologists; the Sanskrit of India; the Latin 
 still in use in the Roman Catholic ritual. Even in Eng¬ 
 land we still use archaic characters for the inscriptions 
 in our churches, but this is no doubt partly because of 
 their greater picturesqueness. 
 
 CHAPTER 1Y. 
 camtTysf.s. 
 
 “ The race of mortal Man is far too weak 
 To grow not dizzy on unwonted heights.” 
 
 —Goethe, “ Iphigenia.” 
 
 As soon after the death of Cyrus as the Persian arms 
 were at liberty, we find them directed against Egypt. 
 The former alliance of that country with Lydia might 
 seem an adequate cause for the invasion, but it is too 
 prosaic for the taste of Herodotus. He makes Cam- 
 byses, the son of Cyrus, march against Amasis because 
 
HERODOTUS . 
 
 61 
 
 lie had practiced on him a deceit something like that of 
 Laban towards Jacob, by sending him as a wife the 
 daughter of the late king, Apries, instead of his own. 
 Cambyses was, at all events, no safe subject for a prac¬ 
 tical joke, and Amasis might have found to his cost that 
 he had jested once too often. 
 
 Having purchased a safe-conduct through the desert 
 by swearings brotherhood with the chief of the Arabs,* 
 —by a process much the same as that described by 
 modern African travelers, which consisted in the con¬ 
 tracting parties mixing a little of their blood,f—Cam¬ 
 byses set out for Egypt. But death had put Amasis 
 beyond the reach of all enemies, and his son Psammen- 
 itus now reigned in his stead. Dire misfortunes had 
 been portended to the country by the unusual phenom¬ 
 enon of a shower of rain at Thebes. After an obsti¬ 
 nate battle, Psammenitus was utterly routed. Herodo¬ 
 tus went afterwards over the field, and saw there the 
 bones of the Persians lying in one heap, and those of 
 the Egyptians in another. He remarked that the skulls 
 
 *“The safe-conduct granted by the chief of the Bedouins,” 
 says Kinglake, “ is never, I believe, violated.” 
 
 t “ Several of our men made brotherhood with the Wezees, and 
 the process between Bombay and the sultan’s son Keerenga, 
 may be mentioned. My consent having been given, a mat is 
 spread, and a confidential party or surgeon attends on each. All 
 four squat, as if to have a game at whist; before them are two 
 clean leaves, a little grease, and a spear-head; a cut is made 
 under the ribs of the left side of each party, a drop of . blood put 
 on a leaf and exchanged by the surgeons, who rub it with butter 
 twice into the wound with the leaf, which is now torn in pieces 
 and strewn over the “ brothers’ ” heads. A solemn address is 
 made by the older of the attendants, and they conclude the cere¬ 
 mony by rubbing their own sides with butter, shaking hands, and 
 wishing each other success.”—Grant’s “ Walk through Africa,” 
 
 p. 108 . 
 
62 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 of the former might be broken by a pebble, while those 
 of the latter resisted even a large stone. This observa¬ 
 tion he afterwards verified by personal inspection of 
 another battle-field, where a Persian force was subse- 
 quently defeated by the revolted Egyptians under 
 Inaros. He attributes the difference 1o the Egyptians 
 going bareheaded in the sun, while the Persians wore 
 turbans. The Persians followed up thei^ victory by 
 the capture of the city of Memphis and of Psammen- 
 itus himself, on which occasion our author introduces 
 one of his characteristic pathetic stories. Cambyses 
 •wishing, says Herodotus, “ to try the spirit” of his royal 
 prisoner, ordered Psammenitus and some of the captive 
 nobles to be brought out to the gates of the city. Then 
 he caused the deposed king’s daughter, and those of the 
 nobles, to be led past in the dress of slaves, carrying 
 pitchers on their heads. The nobles wept at the sight, 
 but Psammenitus only bowed his head. Next fob 
 lowed his son and two thousand other young Egyp¬ 
 tians, going to execution with ropes round their necks. 
 The people of Memphis had torn limb from limb the 
 crew of a ship which Cambyses had sent -with a 
 summons to surrender, and this was his reprisal—ten 
 for every man murdered. The nobles again wept and 
 wailed loudly, but Psammenitus comported himself as 
 before. But when he saw one of his former boon com¬ 
 panions, an old man now reduced to beggary, asking 
 alms from the soldiers, then his grief broke forth in 
 tear^j, and he beat himself on the head. Cambyses was 
 amazed that he should weep at the fate of his friend, 
 and not at that of his daughter or son, and sent to ask 
 him the reason of his strange conduct. Psammenitus 
 answered, “O son of Cyrus, mine own misfortunes 
 were too great for tears.” Cambyses was sufficiently 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 68 
 
 touched to order the life of the young prince to he 
 spared, but the reprieve came too late. But from that 
 time Psammenitus was treated better, and might, as 
 Herodotus thinks, had he shown more tact, have been, 
 appointed governor of Egypt, since it was the Persian 
 custom thus to honor fallen princes, even giving the 
 kingdoms of rebel vassals to their sons.* But he was 
 unwise enough to plot rebellion, and Cambyses, discov¬ 
 ering this, put him to death. 
 
 And now the son of Cyrus entered on that career of 
 impiety which was certain to have an evil end. He 
 had the body of his enemy Amasis, who had escaped 
 his vengeance while living, torn from its tomb, scourged, 
 and committed to the flames—an act horrible to the 
 P^-sians, who worshiped fire; horrible to the Egyp¬ 
 tians, who looked upon that element as a devouring 
 monster to whom it was impious to give tlieir dead. 
 Then, according to Greek poetical justice, he was 
 seized by infatuation. He planned wild expeditions— 
 one against “the Long-lived” Ethiopians, who dwelt 
 far away to the south, and who might perhaps be iden¬ 
 tified with the modern Abyssinians (Heeren thinks, with 
 the Somalis) by certain characteristics, such as tall 
 stature, regular though black features, and a great love 
 of animal food. Whoever they were, they are the sub¬ 
 ject of one of our author’s most characteristic narra¬ 
 tives. Cambyses sent envoys to them—men of the 
 tribe of “ Fish-eaters,” who knew their language—with 
 presents for their king: a purple robe, a collar and arm- 
 
 * We have notable instances of this habit in Eastern monarchs 
 recorded in Scripture. Jehoiakim is made, king instead of his 
 brother Jehoaliaz, by Pharaoh-Nechoh (2 Kings xxiii. 34 ; Mat- 
 taniah instead of his nephew Jehoiachin, by Nebuchadnezzar 
 (2 Kings xxiv. IV). 
 
64 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 lots of gold, and a cask of palm wine, tokens of his 
 goodwill, as “the things in which he himself most de¬ 
 lighted.” The Ethiopian king—who was elected for 
 his stature and beauty—made answer almost in the 
 words of Joseph to liis brethren: “Surely to search out 
 the land are ye come hither.” He asked how the pur¬ 
 ple robe was made; and when they explained the mys¬ 
 tery of the dye, he said that the Persians’ garments, 
 like themselves, were deceitful. When told the pur¬ 
 pose of the golden collar and armlets, he chose to con¬ 
 sider them as fetters, and remarked that “the Ethio¬ 
 pians made them stronger.” In fact, as Herodotus 
 declares, the envoys saw men afterwards in prison 
 actually wearing fetters of a metal which Avas there so 
 plentiful. Only the wine he highly approved off and 
 asked what the king of Persia ate, and how long men 
 lived in that country. When he heard that corn was 
 the staple food, and that it grew out of the earth, and 
 that eighty years was considered a long life, he replied 
 that he did not wonder at the king’s dying so young if 
 he “ate dirt,” and that nothing, he was persuaded, 
 could keep him alive even so long, except that excellent 
 liquor. He sent back in return an unstrung bow, with 
 advice that, when the Persians could find a man to 
 bend it, they should then think of attacking the “Long- 
 livers. ” 
 
 Against this distant tribe, however, the Persian king 
 set out with a vast army, without bestowing a thought 
 on his commissariat. Before he had accomplished a 
 fifth of the distance the provisions failed, but he still 
 pushed on. The army fed on the sumpter-beasts till 
 they were exhausted; then on herbs and grass, till they 
 came to the sandy desert, where vegetation ended. At 
 last, when he heard of cannibalism in the ranks Cam- 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 65 
 
 byses thought it was time to return; but he succeeded 
 in bringing back only a small remnant of his host. 
 Another expedition, sent against the temple of Ammon, 
 in the Great Oasis, fared even worse, for no news came 
 of it more. It perished, our author thinks, in a sand¬ 
 storm—more probably from want of water. But Cam- 
 byses’ heart was hardened. When he returned from 
 his ill-starred march, he found the Egyptians holding- 
 high festival. This greatly incensed him, for he 
 thought they were rejoicing at his defeat. But they 
 were innocently celebrating the incarnation of their 
 national god Apis or Epaphus, who was said to appear 
 from time to time in the similitude “of a calf that 
 eateth hay,” and whose “avatar” in that form was 
 denoted by certain sacred marks known to his priests. 
 Cam byses was still more angry when he heard the real 
 cause of this national jubilee: he had the priests 
 scourged all round, forbade the people to rejoice on 
 pain of death, and, to crown all, fell on the sacred 
 beast and wounded him with his dagger, so that he 
 pined away and died. From this precise date, as the 
 Egyptians averred, the madness of Cambyses took a* 
 more decided character. But his acts, however unac¬ 
 countable to a Greek mind, seem to have been little 
 more than those of an Eastern despot of fierce passions 
 and naturally cruel disposition. First he had his 
 brother Smerdis put to death, and then he killed his 
 sister because she mourned for Smerdis. He had sent 
 this brother back to Persia because he excited his jeal¬ 
 ousy by being the only Persian who could just move the 
 Ethiopian’s bow; and then, having dreamed that he saw 
 Smerdis sitting on his throne and touching heaven with 
 Ids head, he sent a nobleman named Prexaspes to Susa, 
 who slew him according to his instructions. The 
 story of the murder of the sister was differently told 
 
66 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY,\ 
 
 by the Persians and Egyptians. The former said 
 that Cambyses, in the presence of liis sister, had set a 
 puppy to tight a lion-cub. The dog was getting the 
 worst of it, when another of the same litter broke the 
 cord that tied him, and came “ to help his brother,” 
 and both of them together mastered the young lion. 
 Cambyses was amused, but his sister wept, and said that 
 she could not but think of Smerdis, who had no brother 
 to help him. For this speech he killed her. The Egyp¬ 
 tians said that the pair were seated at table, when the 
 sister took a lettuce, and, stripping its leaves off, asked 
 Cambyses whether it looked better with its leaves off or 
 on? He answered, “ With its leaves on.” “Then why,” 
 said she, “ didst thou strip of its leaves the stem of 
 Cyrus?” A furious kick which followed this remark 
 was the cause of her death. In fact, Cambyses had 
 row become dangerous to all about him. Croesus, whom 
 he had brought with him to Egypt, had more than one 
 narrow escape. On one occasion officers were sent 
 to put him to death, but they, knowing their master’s 
 moods, only pretended to have done it, and produced 
 *Croesus alive'as soon as Cambyses was heard to regret 
 the order. He was well pleased that his friend had not 
 been killed, but the disobedience cost the guards their 
 lives. Another time he shot the son of Prexaspes 
 through the heart to prove the steadiness of his hand, 
 merely because the father had told him in answer to a 
 question, that the Persians said he was rather too fond 
 of wine. Probably for some similar offensive remark he 
 buried up to their necks twelve of his nobles—a cruel 
 process still practiced in the East under the name of 
 4 4 tree-planting.”* And he grew more and more profane. 
 
 * 44 Feti-Ali-Shah once sent for Astra-chan, one of liis cour¬ 
 tiers, and with an appearance of great friendship took him round 
 his garden, showing him all its beauties. When he had finished 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 67 
 
 He opened tombs and unrolled mummies like a modern 
 virtuoso. He made sport of tlie pigmy images of Pthah, 
 or Vulcan, whose ludicrous ugliness must have presented 
 the grim humorist with an irresistible temptation,* and 
 other sacred idols he burnt. Herodotus expresses him¬ 
 self much shocked at all this; but he might have 
 known that the Persians were in general iconoclasts. 
 It is possible that Cambyses was inspired with the 
 same destructive zeal which induced the more modern 
 Puritans to clear away the saints from the niches of 
 our cathedrals. But as a Greek our author would 
 sympathize with the Egyptians. It is hard for us to 
 judge how far some of the cruelties reported of Cam¬ 
 byses may have been the invention of the outraged 
 priests. He has recorded, in another part of his work, 
 an anecdote which illustrates at once the character of 
 Cambyses and the general incorruptibility of the royal 
 judges of Persia. One of these, named Sisamnes, was 
 found to have accepted bribes. Cambyses, with the 
 facetious cruelty so common to tyrants of his type, 
 had him flayed, and his skin stretched over the seat 
 which he had occupied while administering the law. 
 He then appointed his son to the vacant post, charging 
 him at the same time never to forget “ on what kind 
 of cushion he was sitting.” 
 
 The modern reader will agree with Herodotus that 
 it is at least right to treat with delicacy the peculiar 
 
 the circuit, lie appealed to Astra-chan to know ‘ what his garden 
 still lacked?’ ‘Nothing,’ said the courtier; ‘it is quite 
 perfect.’ ‘I think differently,’ replied the king; ‘I must 
 decidedly plant a tree in it.’ Astra-chan, who knew the king’s 
 meaning only too well, fell at his feet and begged his life, which 
 he obtained only at the price of surrendering to the king the 
 lady to whom he was betrothed.”—Rawlinson, ii. 331, note. 
 
 * See the woodcuts and note, Rawlinson, ii 434. 
 
68 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 usages of others. Aristotle quotes one of his anecdotes 
 to illustrate the opinion of those who held that all 
 right and wrong were conventional. King Darius 
 Hystaspes called certain Greeks into his presence, 
 and asked them what they would take to eat their 
 dead fathers? They said that they would do it for 
 no consideration whatever. Then he asked a certain 
 tribe of Indians what they would take not to eat the 
 bodies of their fathers, but to burn them like the 
 Greeks? They cried aloud, and begged him not to 
 blaspheme. So Sir John Lubbock, in his “Prehistoric 
 Times,” relates that the Tahitians think it indecent 
 to dine in company; and that as soon as a child is 
 born he is accounted the head of his family, and takes 
 precedence of his father. And the tyranny of public 
 opinion in matters indifferent, of which we complain 
 so often, finds its strongest exemplification among the 
 semi-brutal savages of Australia. 
 
 The death of Smerdis had come to the knowledge of 
 but few persons in Persia, and while Camhyses was 
 absent in Egypt, the priest-caste of the Magi made a 
 bold attempt at a revolution. It is probable that 
 under Cyrus and Cambyses this caste, with their 
 peculiar tenets, had been discouraged. A certain 
 Magian, who was a kind of groom of the palace, 
 had a brother who resembled greatly the dead Smer- 
 dis, and who (according to Herodotus) bore the same 
 name.* Patizethes seated his brother on the throne, 
 and sent out a proclamation that henceforth all men 
 were to do homage to Smerdis the son of Cyrus, and 
 
 * The Behistun inscription gives the name as Gomates, and 
 does not speak of two brothers. Mr. Rawlinson seems to prove 
 clearly that the revolution was a religious one, tho ugh nothing 
 to that effect appears in Herodotus.—See his Essay, iii. 548. 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 & 
 
 m 
 
 no longer to Cambyses. When Cambyses heard of 
 this, he thought that Prexaspes had not done his 
 errand, and that it was really his brother Smerdis who 
 had revolted against him; but Prexaspes satisfied him 
 that his orders hacj been duly executed, and that this 
 was a usurper personating the dead prince. I*Ie was 
 at once struck by remorse, seeing that his fratricide 
 had been useless, for his dream was so far fulfilled 
 
 that a man called Smerdis sat on his throne; and lie 
 
 ., ' - *• . m * 
 
 prepared to march at once iu person to Susa to cjuell 
 the rebellion. As he was mounting his horse, the 
 knob of his sword-sheath fell off, and the bare point 
 of the weapon pierced his thigh, exactly as he had 
 pierced with his dagger the god Apis. His wound 
 brought him to his senses, and he solemnly conjured 
 the Persian nobles to prevent the empire from pass- ' 
 ing to the Medes, confessing that he had killed his 
 brother Smerdis, and that therefore the present occu¬ 
 pant of the throne must be an impostor. The wound¬ 
 ed limb soon mortified, and Cambyses died in Egypt, 
 leaving no issue. Before his death he asked the name 
 of the village where he lay. He was answered that 
 it was called “Ecbatana.” Then he knew that he 
 should die; for an oracle had long ago predicted that 
 he should die at Ecbatana—which he naturally took 
 to be his own town in Media. The coincidence with 
 the death of our own Henry IV. in the “Jerusalem 
 chamber” is very curious. 
 
 “ It hath been prophesied to me many years 
 I should not die but in Jerusalem, 
 
 Which vainly I supposed the Holy Land; 
 
 But bear me to that chamber; there I’ll lie,— 
 
 In that Jerusalem shall Harry die.” * 
 
 * “ Henry IV.,” Part 2, Act iv. sc. 4. 
 
* 
 
 TI1E ELZEVIR LIBRARY, 
 
 70 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 DARIUS. 
 
 “ In the theater of the World 
 The people are actors all. 
 
 One doth the sovereign monarch play, 
 
 And him the rest obey.”—C alderon. 
 
 The jealous hatred which Cambyses bore to his 
 brother Smerdis was so well known, that the Persians 
 did not believe his dying declaration that the person 
 who had seized his throne was an impostor. They ac¬ 
 cepted him as the true Smerdis, son of Cyrus. Such 
 impostures are possible enough in a credulous age. A 
 false Demetrius plays an important part in the history 
 of Russia. There were many who disbelieved the fact 
 of the two English princes having been smothered in 
 the Tower; and many more, at quite a recent date, have 
 believed that Louis XVII. escaped his jailers, and grew 
 up to manhood. The secluded life of an Eastern mon¬ 
 arch would give such an imposture additional chances 
 of success. 
 
 The Magian usurper reigned for eight months under 
 the name of Smerdis, giving great satisfaction to most 
 of his subjects, for under him “ the empire was peace.’’ 
 He remitted the heaviest taxes, and enforced no mili¬ 
 tary conscription. At last his imposture came to light. 
 Otanes, a Persian nobleman, whose daughter was one 
 of his wives, was informed by her that her husband 
 had no ears. Now the Magian was known to have lost 
 his for some offence in the time of Cyrus* The result 
 
 * This is the mildest form of mutilation, as the feature seems 
 more ornamental than useful, except to those savage tribes iu 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 71 
 
 of this revelation was, that Otanes headed the famous 
 conspiracy of the seven nobles, of whom Darius, the 
 son of Hystaspes, sprung from a collateral branch of 
 the royal family, and probably the next legal heir, was 
 one. While they were concocting their plan of attack, 
 a tragical event, happened which made immediate action 
 necessary. The Magians, knowing how cruelly Prex- 
 aspes had been treated by Cambyses,* thought it their 
 interest to conciliate him, and prevailed upon him to 
 mount on a tower of the palace-wall, and make a speech 
 to the people below, who had grown suspicious, to the 
 effect that their present king was the true Smerdis, the 
 son of Cyrus. But in this they made as fatal a mistake 
 as Shakespeare’s Brutus and Cassius did when they al- 
 lowed Mark Antony to speak at Caesar’s funeral. Prex- 
 aspes, instead of lying to please the Magians, proclaimed 
 aloud the real state of the case, and then threw himself 
 from the tower, and was killed on the spot. 
 
 The seven conspirators gained the presence of the 
 false king and his brother with no great difficulty, but 
 within they met with such resistance that two were 
 badly wounded before they succeeded in dispatching 
 them. The others cut off the Magians’ heads, carried 
 them forth, and showed them to the populace. A gen¬ 
 eral massacre of the Magian caste followed, which 
 lasted till the night. Few of them survived this St. 
 
 whom the muscle that moves the ear is developed. It was prac¬ 
 ticed in England as late as the seventeenth century, for such of¬ 
 fences as Nonconformity, Petty Treason, Libel, and the like. 
 Prynne is a Avell-known instance. It is common now in Africa, 
 and is said to give the head the look of a barber’s block, but to 
 be attended with no great inconvenience. The false Smerdis, 
 as has been said, never went abroad, and probably wore his tur¬ 
 ban low on his head. 
 
 * See p. 66. 
 
THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 7S 
 
 Bartholomew of Susa. During the annual festival held 
 henceforth under the name of Magoplionia, which we 
 might call the “Median Vespers,” none of the hated 
 class dared be seen abroad, though tolerated at other 
 times. 
 
 The seven noblemen, according to Herodotus, now 
 resolved themselves into a debating society, for the 
 purpose of discussing different forms of government. 
 That is to say, he here avails himself of an author’s fa¬ 
 vorite license to*propouud theories of his own. His 
 sympathies are plainly with democracy, but historical 
 exigencies obliged him to admit that monarchy was 
 adopted. They agreed that one of the seven should be 
 king, and the rest his peers, having free access to the 
 royal presence on all but certain stated occasions. It 
 was then arranged that all should ride their horses to 
 an open place at sunrise, and choose as king the man 
 whose horse was the first to neigh. This was really an 
 appeal to ilie sun, to whom the horse was sacred. The 
 omen fell to Darius, by the cunning management of his 
 equerry, and he was at once hailed as king. When he 
 was established in the kingdom he is said to have set 
 up the figure of a man on horseback, with a commem¬ 
 orative inscription. The story may have been in¬ 
 vented subsequently, to account for this work of art, as 
 often happens. 
 
 Most valuable light has been thrown on the history 
 of Darius by the discovery of the great Behistun in¬ 
 scription. On the "western frontier of. the ancient 
 Media there is a precipitous rock 1700 feet high, 
 which forms a portion of the Zagros chain, sepa¬ 
 rating the table-land of Iran from the valley of the 
 Tigris and Euphrates. The inscription can only be 
 reached with difficulty, as it is 300 feet from the 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 73 
 
 base of tk-e rock. It is in three languages, old 
 Persian, Babylonian, and Scythian, executed, accord¬ 
 ing to Sir H. Rawlinson, in the fifth year of Darius, 
 b.c. 516. The wedge-shaped letters of the Persian 
 copy were deciphered with infinite pains by this great 
 archaeologist. Darius mentions in it, under the name 
 of Gaumata, a Magian who personated Bardes * (as he 
 calls him), the son of Cyrus, and says that he slew him 
 by the help of Ormuzd, the Good Spirit, and thus 
 recovered an empire that belonged to his own family, 
 restoring to the Persians the religion which they had 
 lost by the Magian intrusion. He also records that 
 after this lie was engaged in quelling a general revolt 
 of the provinces. The main facts accord with those 
 of Herodotus, though there is some difference in the no¬ 
 menclature. The end of the inscription invokes a curse 
 on any one who might injure it, and this has probably 
 tended to preserve it ; just as the curse on Shakespeare’s 
 monument, at Stratford-on-Avon, may have conduced 
 to prevent officious veneration from “moving his 
 bones.” 
 
 Darius was the first monarch of Persia who regulated 
 the revenues, and assigned the sum that each satrapy 
 ought to pay to the royal treasury. This caused the 
 haughty Persian aristocracy to say of him, in their con¬ 
 tempt for red tape, that Cyrus had been a father to the 
 state, Cambyses a master, but Darius was “a huckster, 
 who would make a gain of everythin 
 
 o ,j o 
 
 There can be no question that Herodotus had access, 
 
 * The s, whether at the beginning or end of Persian names, 
 is commonly only a Greek addition. So Bardy (a)—the vowel 
 being pronounced though not written—is Smerdis, Gaumat (a) 
 becomes Gomates, Vashtasp (a) Hystaspes, etc.—See Rawlinpon, 
 I. 27-29, note. 
 
74 
 
 TITE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 either personally or through friends, to the royal records 
 of Persia, or copies of them. He gives a complete list 
 of the various satrapies into which the empire was 
 divided, of the several subject nations which it com¬ 
 prised, and the form and amount of their tribute. The 
 Persians themselves, it must be remarked, like the 
 Magyar grandees in Hungary formerly, were exempt 
 from taxation, and only bound to military service. He 
 says that the Indians, the most numerous race of all, 
 paid into the royal treasury three hundred and sixty 
 talents in gold dust, and that the whole annual revenue 
 was computed at fourteen thousand five hundred and 
 sixty talents, besides a fraction—more than three mil¬ 
 lions and a half of our money. But it must be con¬ 
 sidered that this corresponds to the modern Civil List, 
 serving only to defray the expenses of the Court 
 These Indians must not be supposed to be those of the 
 Peninsula, but rather those of Scinde and the Punjab. 
 The gold which they brought into the royal treasury 
 was said to come from a great desert to the eastward. 
 In this desert there were ants—“ bigger than foxes’'— 
 and in their hills the gold was found. To procure it 
 the gold-hunters took camels, chiefly females with 
 young ones, with which they proceeded to the place at 
 the hottest time of day, when the ants were in their 
 holes, filled their bags with the auriferous sand, and 
 then hurried back to escape the pursuit of the ants; the 
 female camels leading the way, as anxious to get back 
 to their young ones. The existence of these gigantic 
 ants has been asserted by comparatively modern travel¬ 
 ers, but it seems probable that they must have been 
 really ant-eaters, which burrowed in the hills, and 
 which some informants of Herodotus may have seen. 
 
 Among the barbarian tribes in dependence on Per 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 75 
 
 sia, he mentions one called the Padseans, who, like the 
 Massagetae before mentioned, allowed none of their sick 
 to die a natural death. The horrible story is quaintly 
 told. “ If a man is taken ill, the men put him to death 
 to prevent his flesh being spoiled by his malady. - He 
 protests loudly that he never felt better in his life; but 
 they kill and eat him notwithstanding. So if a wo¬ 
 man is ill, the women who are her friends do to her in 
 like manner. (The decent division of the sexes is worth 
 remarking.) If any one reaches old age—a very un¬ 
 common occurrence, for he can only do so on condition 
 of never having been ill—they sacrifice him to the gods, 
 and afterwards eat him.” Marco Polo, the Venetian 
 traveler, writing about 1500, found the practice exist¬ 
 ing in Sumatra, where the relations assembled in the 
 sick man’s house, suffocated him, and then ate him, as 
 lie describes it, “in a convivial manner.” Among 
 other w T onders he mentions Arabian sheep (the fore¬ 
 fathers, no doubt, of our “Cape” breed) which had 
 tails three cubits long, for which the shepherds made 
 little trucks to keep them off the ground—“ each sheep 
 having a truck of his own.” The mention of remark¬ 
 able countries and productions leads Herodotus to ob¬ 
 serve that, while the Greeks have the finest climate, as 
 inhabiting the middle of the earth, yet the farthest in¬ 
 habited regions have the finest productions—tin, amber, 
 and gold coming, for instance, from the ends of the 
 earth; but in respect of horses he gives the palm to the 
 Nisrean breed of Media. Palgrave, in his “Travels in 
 Arabia,” speaks of the horses of Nedjid as the “ cream 
 of the cream” of equine aristocracy. 
 
 Soon after the accession of Darius, one of his seven 
 fellow-conspirators, Intapliernes, got into trouble. He 
 insisted on seeing the king during his hours of privacy, 
 
70 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 and being denied, cut off the noses and ears of two of 
 the palace officials, and hung them round their necks. 
 This displeased the king so much that he condemned 
 Intaphernes and all the males of his family to death. 
 Cut Darius was touched with pity bj 7- the lamentations 
 of the wife of Intaphernes, and allowed her to choose 
 which of her family she would save. She chose her 
 brother—explaining, when the king showed some as¬ 
 tonishment at her selection, that such a loss could not 
 possibly be replaced, her father and mother being dead. 
 Pleased with her wit, Darius gave her the life of her 
 eldest son into the bargain. Sophocles adopts the same 
 curious sentiment in his tragedy of Antigone. The 
 general justice of Darius would lead to the suspicion 
 that the crime of Intaphernes was of the nature of high 
 treason, otherwise his family would hardly have been 
 involved in his punishment. 
 
 The story of Democedes, a famous surgeon of Cro- 
 tona, who was brought to Persia as a slave, is intro¬ 
 duced by Herodotus to find a motive for the attention 
 of the king being called to Greece. He had abundant 
 reasons besides, as the history shows; but our author 
 will not desert the theory of his choice, that Woman is 
 the mainspring in all human affairs. Democedes had 
 got into favor at court by successful treatment first of 
 Darius himself, then of Atossa the favorite sultana. 
 For this latter service he obtained leave to name his 
 own reward—it was, to be allowed to visit his home; 
 and, as Darius wished also to conquer Greece, in order 
 that Atossa’s desire of having some of “those Lacedae¬ 
 monian handmaidens of whom she had heard so much” 
 might be gratified, Democedes was sent to make the 
 tour of Greece and its colonies on the Italian coast with 
 a party of spies. When he reached his native Crotona, 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 77 
 
 he chose to remain there, and was assisted by his fellow- 
 townsmen against the Persians, who tried to take him 
 back with them. He bade the latter tell Darius that he 
 was about to be married to the daughter, of Milo the 
 wrestler; wishing the king to know that he was a man 
 of some mark in his own country, where—as in some 
 cases among us moderns—athletics ranked even higher 
 than science. These spies were said to have been the 
 first Persians who visited Greece. 
 
 But Darius had no time to think of Greece just then, 
 as his hands were full with a revolt in Babylonia and 
 other provinces, which appears to have assumed larger 
 proportions than those known to Herodotus. Samos 
 was the first state which was unfortunate enough to 
 draw upon itself the might of the Persian arms. The 
 cause of this war was a cloak. When Cambyses was in 
 Egypt with his army, one Syloson, brother of Poly¬ 
 crates of Samos, was also there in exile. He appeared 
 one day at Memphis in a scarlet cloak, to which Darius, 
 who was then a plain officer of the royal guards, took a 
 fancy, and asked the wearer to name his price. Sj r - 
 loson, in a fit of generosity, begged him to accept it as 
 a present; and it had no sooner been accepted than he 
 repented of his good-nature. As matters turned out, 
 the cloak of Syloson became as famous as that of Sir 
 Walter Raleigh. Raleigh “ spoiled a cloak and made a 
 fortune,” by spreading out his for Queen Elizabeth to 
 walk on; Syloson, by giving his away, led the way to 
 the ruin of his country. For when Darius came to the 
 throne, Syloson introduced himself at court as the hero 
 of the cloak, and Darius asked him what he could do 
 for him in return. He requested to be put in posses¬ 
 sion of his late brother's dominion in Samos. Maeau- 
 drius, the secretary of Poly crates, who was at present in 
 
78 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 possession, was a man who had had greatness thrust. 
 upon him. When Polycrates was murdered, the secre¬ 
 tary found himself in possession of Samos; and wishing 
 to be “ the justest of men,” set up an altar to the 
 god of Freedom, stipulating only that he should be ap¬ 
 pointed its liigli-priest as a condition of his establishing 
 democracy. Finding, however, that the “Irreconcil- 
 ables” of the period intended to prosecute him for 
 embezzlement, he had repented of his republican gen¬ 
 erosity, and made himself master of the citadel and 
 city. Darius now sent out an expedition which put his 
 friend Syloson in possession of the island, but not with¬ 
 out an insurrection, which led to a terrible massacre of 
 the people. 
 
 Babylon, according to the Behistun inscription, re¬ 
 volted from Darius twice—once in the first and again 
 in the fourth year of his reign. It is difficult to iden¬ 
 tify with either of these occasions the revolt now men¬ 
 tioned by Herodotus. According to his account— 
 which in this instance must be regarded rather as 
 romance than history—so determined was the attempt, 
 that the Babylonians strangled most of their women, in 
 order to reduce their population, in preparation for the 
 expected siege. Darius soon sat down before the city, 
 but the walls defied his utmost power; and the besieged 
 began to jeer the Persians, telling them that “they 
 would never take the city until mules foaled.” How¬ 
 ever, in the twentieth month of the siege, a mule 
 belonging to Zopyrus, a Persian of rank, did foal 
 —an event perhaps not physically impossible; and 
 Zopyrus thought that there must have been some¬ 
 thing providential in the taunt of the Babylonians, . 
 and that now the city might be taken. The sequel, 
 whether true or not in an historical sense, is singu- 
 
HEROD or US. 
 
 79 
 
 larly illustrative of the chivalrous self-devotion of 
 the Persian nobility in the interests of their mon¬ 
 arch. Zopyrus proceeded to cut off his own nose and 
 ears, clipped his hair close, got himself scourged, and 
 in that state presented himself to Darius, and laid his 
 plan before him.* Darius was greatly shocked at his 
 retainer’s maltreatment of himself, but as it was too 
 late to mend the matter, made the proposed arrange¬ 
 ment. Zopyrus was to pretend to desert to the Baby¬ 
 lonians, telling them that Darius had so ill used him, 
 because he had advised him to raise the siege. The 
 Babylonians would probably believe him, and intrust 
 him with the’ command of a division. Darius must 
 then be willing to sacrifice a few thousands of his 
 worst soldiers to give the Babylonians confidence in 
 Zopyrus, who, when he had the game safe in his hands, 
 would open the gates to the Persian army. All turned 
 out according to the programme. Zopyrus admitted 
 the Persians, who took the city. Darius did his best 
 to destroy the formidable walls, and had three thousand 
 of the leading rebels impaled; but, not wishing to 
 depopulate the city, procured from the neighboring- 
 nations fifty thousand women to make up for those 
 whom the Babylonians had sacrificed. As for Zopyrus, 
 the king loaded him with honors and made him gov¬ 
 ernor of Babylon; but he was wont to say—more 
 scrupulous than Henry IV. of France, who changed 
 his religion to procure the surrender of the capital, 
 thinking Paris “well worth a mass,”—that he would 
 rather have Zopyrus unmutilated than be master of 
 twenty Babylons. 
 
 * The town of Gabii, according to Livy, was taken by the 
 Romans by a very similar stratagem. 
 
80 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 CHAPTER VL> 
 
 SCYTHIA. 
 
 “ They dwell 
 In wattled sheds on rolling cars aloft, 
 
 Accoutered with far-striking archery.” 
 
 —TBschvi.tjs, “Prometheus.” 
 
 Haying disposed of Babylon, Darius next bethought 
 himself of the Scythians. He had an old national 
 grudge against this restless race, for having overrun 
 Asia.in the days of Cyaxares the Mede. 'The Behistun 
 inscription only mentions the quelling of a revolt of 
 the Sacse, or Scythian subjects of Persia; but Herod¬ 
 otus speaks of an expedition on a vast scale against 
 the independent nation. 
 
 The Scythians were, according to Herodotus, a peo¬ 
 ple whose scat was in the steppes of northern Russia, 
 more widely spread than the present Cossacks of the 
 Don, but without any definite boundaries, sometimes 
 encroaching on their neighbors and sometimes en¬ 
 croached upon by them, like the Tartar hordes at 
 tnis day. Their name has been supposed by some 
 to be a synonym for “archers.” Their habits were 
 very like those of the terrible Huns and Magyars 
 who overran part of Europe in the last agonies of 
 Rome and afterwards; but the difficulty of identifying 
 a modern and civilized race with an ancient and bar¬ 
 barous one, is shown by the dissimilarity of the hand¬ 
 some and chivalrous Hungarians with their hideous 
 and unkempt progenitors. They seem to have inherited 
 from them little besides their love of horseflesh—in the 
 civilized sense. 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 81 
 
 That tlic Scythians disappeared fiom history, 'when 
 history itself was at its lowest ebb, is no proof that 
 they exist nowdiere now. Their language, specimens 
 of which are given by Herodotus, undoubted^' belongs 
 to that of the Indo Germanic family. Their connection 
 with the Sacse is established. Some connect the Sacee 
 with the Saxons, others also with the Sikhs of northern 
 India. It would indeed be strange if it were discovered 
 from critical philology and archaeology that the English 
 were pitted against their cousins at Sobraon, Chilian- 
 wallah, and Gujerat, and recovered India through their 
 aid afterwards; and that some of our Saxon ancestors 
 wmre'those who fought best on the losing side at Mara- 
 thon and Platsea. Certain it is that nearly all the now 
 dominant races of mankind seem to have swarmed, at 
 longer orshorter intervals, from some mysterious hive 
 about or beyond the Caucasus, Histoiy records some 
 of the waves of their western or eastern progress. Be¬ 
 fore the Scvthians came a swarm of Cimmerians, 
 sweeping over Asia Minor in the lime of the predeces¬ 
 sors of Croesus. Their name is still retained in the 
 Crimea and Krim Tartary. They reappear as Cimbri 
 in the latter days of the Roman republic, to which they 
 were very near giving the finishing stroke. Then they 
 gre heard of in Schleswick, and Jutland, and in 
 Wales it is just possible that at the present day they 
 call themselves Cymry. Before their coming a horde of 
 Celts or Gauls had fallen on Rome, and another invaded 
 Greece later on, leaving permanent settlements in Lom¬ 
 bardy and Asia Minor. 
 
 In earlier history these tidal waves of population 
 came at long intervals, so that the damage they did v T a3 
 reparable, and the silt they left behind them only 
 strengthened the ground; but in the latter days of the 
 
82 • 
 
 TIIE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 Roman Cmsars, they succeeded one another so quickly 
 that the Empire was swamped, and when the disturb¬ 
 ance had subsided, the earth wore a face that was 
 strange and new. The repentant sons of those savage 
 children of the night, calling themselves English, 
 French, Germans, and so forth, are now endeavoring 
 to atone for their fathers’ delinquencies by painfully 
 diving after the relics of lost civilizations, and preserv¬ 
 ing whatever they can find with religious veneration 
 for the use and delight of ages to come. By degrees 
 we are opening up Greece, Italy, Assyria, Persia, India, 
 Egypt, and discovering to our dismay that much of our 
 boasted civilization is but a parody on what prevailed 
 centuries or millenniums ago; and that, with all our 
 culture, we have still much barbarism to unlearn. 
 
 The Scythians described by Herodotus, like the 
 Parthians who defeated the Roman legions, are a race 
 of archers on horseback. From them the Greeks may 
 have derived their fables of the Centaurs. As a pas¬ 
 toral people, they were generally averse to the tillage 
 of land, and moved about with their herds from one 
 feeding-ground to another, carrying their skin-covered 
 huts on carts. That the Sarmatians were allied with 
 them appears from the fable which traces their descent 
 to the union of Scythians with Amazons, those wonder¬ 
 ful viragoes whose manlike habits are still kept up by 
 the women of some Tartar tribes. 
 
 To account for the origin of the Scythians, Herodo¬ 
 tus gives two fables. According to one, a certain Tar. 
 gitaus, a son of Jupiter, and grandson by his mother’s 
 side, of the river Borysthenes or Dnieper, was the first 
 man in Scythia. He had three sons. At first they were 
 all equal, when there fell from heaven four implements 
 of gold—a plow, a yoke, a battle-axe, and a goblet. 
 
HERODOTUS . 
 
 83 
 
 The eldest approached to take them, when they broke 
 out into41ames, and he durst not touch them. The second 
 was rejected in like manner. The youngest fared bet¬ 
 ter; he was able to handle the gold and to* carry it 
 off. This was a sign that he should be the king.* From 
 the three brothers sprang the three Scythian tribes—the 
 “ Royal” Scythians from the youngest. According to 
 the other legend, which emanated from a Greek source, 
 
 * A somewhat similar story was told to Speke by Rumanika, 
 king of Karague. 
 
 “ Before their old father Dagara died, he had unwittingly said 
 to the mother of Rogero, although he was the youngest born, 
 ‘what a fine king he would make;’ and the mother in conse¬ 
 quence tutored him to expect to succeed, although primogeniture 
 is the law of the land, subject to the proviso, Avhich was also th8 
 rule with the ancient Persians, that the heir must have been born 
 after his father’s accession, which condition was here fulfilled in 
 the case of all three brothers. . . . Rumanika maintained 
 that Rogero w’as entirely in the wrong, not only because the law 
 was against him, but the judgment of heaven also. On the death 
 of the father, the three sons, who only could pretend to the 
 crown, had a small mystic drum placed before them by the 
 officers of state. It was only feather-weight in reality, but being 
 loaded with charms, became too heavy for those not entitled to 
 the crown to move. Neither of the other brothers could move it 
 an inch, while Rumanika easily lifted it with his little finger. 
 . . . He (Rumanika) moreover said that a new test had been 
 
 invented in his case besides the ordeal of lifting the drum. The 
 supposed rightful heir had to plant himself on a certain spot, 
 when the land on which he stood would rise up like a telescope 
 drawn out till it reached the skies. If he was entitled to the 
 throne, it would then let him down again without harm; but if 
 otherwise, collapse and dash him to pieces. Of course as he sur¬ 
 vived the trial, it was successful. On another occasion a piece 
 of iron was found in the ground, about the shape and size of a 
 carrot. This iron could not be extracted by any one but Ruma¬ 
 nika himself, who pulled it up with the greatest ease.”—“Lake 
 Victoria;” acompilation from the Memoirs of Captains Speke and 
 Grant, v 
 
84 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 Hercules, when he was carrying off the cattle of Geryon 
 (who lived on an island near Cadiz in Spairf), came 
 to Scythia, and being overcome by frost and fatigue, 
 wrappedliimself in his lion’s skin, and fell asleep. When 
 he awoke his team of mares had disappeared. He wan¬ 
 dered in quest of them till he came to a country called 
 the Bush. Here he found in a cave a strange being, 
 half woman, half serpent, who detained him with her 
 by holding out hopes of his recovering his mares, which 
 she had caught and hidden.* Three sons were the re* 
 
 * These legends of serpent-women are not uncommon in Ger¬ 
 man mythology. The following adventure is related by the 
 brothers Grimm; “ One Leonhard, who was a stammerer, but a 
 good fellow, and of irreproachable morals, lost his way one day 
 as he was visiting some underground vaults of the nature of 
 catacombs. All at once he found himself in a delicious meadow, 
 ju the midst of which was playing a young girl, half concealed 
 by the herbage. She invited him to come and rest by her side. 
 Leonhard, out of pure politeness, obeyed her eagerly, and then 
 became aware of a fact which the long grass had at first pre¬ 
 vented his observing,—that the damsel, the upper part of whose 
 body was white and beautiful, terminated below in a scaly and 
 serpent-like tail. He wished to fly, but his legs were immediately 
 caught and embraced by her tail. Thus forced to listen, he now 
 heal'd the poor creature’s history, She was born a princess, and 
 was enjoying court society, when a malicious enchanter charmed 
 her into her present state, from which she could only be re¬ 
 leased on one condition, and that was, that she could prevail on 
 some fair young man, who must be perfectly innocent, to give 
 her three kisses. The youth must not be older than twenty-two. 
 There was time for Leonhard to have fulfilled the conditions, for 
 he would be twenty-three on that very day—-in two hours more. 
 But, unfortunately, he stammered, and the two hours were almost 
 gone before he had made the necessary preliminary statement as 
 to his birth. Then he gave her the first kiss. Upon that she was 
 seized with violent convulsions, and rolled so wildly on the grass 
 that he fled in alarm. He was, however, recalled by her suppli¬ 
 cations and promises, and gave her the second kiss. The effect 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 85 
 
 suit of tliis strange intimacy—one called Agatliyrsus, 
 the other Gelonus, the other Scythes. Hercules, on his 
 departure, left with the mother a bow, and a belt with 
 a goblet attached to it. The son who could bend the 
 bow was to inherit the land, the others to emigrate. 
 Scythes, the youngest, bent the bow, and remained to 
 be the father of the kings of Scythia, which accounted 
 for the Scythian custom of wearing a goblet attached to 
 the girdle. 
 
 In describing the geography of Scythia, of which 
 Herodotus probably knew no more than he may have 
 heard at the Greek factory at Olbia (near the site of the 
 modern Kinburn), he is carried away by the interest of 
 his subject, and launches out into a geographical digres¬ 
 sion, chiefly entertaining as a record of ancient notions, 
 and as showing how facts become altered in passing 
 from mouth to mouth. The “ Scythia” of Herodotus 
 seems to embrace “the basins of the Don, Dnieper, 
 D niester, and Boug, and the northern half of that of the 
 Lower Danube” *•— i.e., a great portion of Russia, Bes¬ 
 sarabia, Wallachia, and Moldavia. He tells strange stories 
 of the tribes who dwelt around Scythia, as far as the 
 uttermost parts of Europe. The Issedomans and the 
 
 of this was still more electric than that of the first. Her eyes 
 burned like fire, she sprang up, her face glowed and her cheeks 
 seemed bursting; she whirled about like a demoniac, and hissed, 
 shrieked, and yelled like a very Melusina. Frightened out of his 
 wits, the youth rushed away through the meadow and catacombs 
 till the hideous object was out of sight; but after a time, reflect¬ 
 ing that he might have made his fortune and married a princess, 
 he turned to go back once more. It was too late; for, to his un¬ 
 speakable chagrin, he just then heard a village clock strike 
 twelve, which made him twenty-three years of age.—X. R. Sain- 
 tine, “ La Mytliologie du Rhiiv’ (free tx-anslation). 
 
 . * Heeren. 
 
86 
 
 TIIE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 Andropliagi were given to cannibalism; the former, like 
 the Callatian Indians, feasting on tlieir fathers, and keep¬ 
 ing their skulls set in. gold as heirlooms. This custom 
 was, however, balanced with another, which would 
 place them, as some might think now, in the van of prog¬ 
 ress—they gave women equal rights with men. The 
 Neuri were said to change into wolves periodically; a 
 tradition which still survives in the “ wehr-wolf ” of the 
 Germans, and the “ loup-garou” of the French. Liv¬ 
 ingstone relates that there were men in the country 
 above the Zambesi who were supposed to become lions 
 for a term, and that the souls of great captains were 
 thought to pass into the king of beasts. But perhaps 
 the story rose out of the fact that the Neuri wore wolf¬ 
 skins in winter. There were people in the extreme 
 north who slept six months in the year (Herodotus’s 
 informant may have said that there was night for six 
 months), and who had goat’s feet—that is, they may 
 have worn moccasins. These may have suggested the 
 Batyrs of the Greeks. A common superstition also 
 placed a wonderfully good and happy people belnud 
 the region of the north wind, called Hyperboreans. 
 So the ‘‘blameless” Ethiopians were supposed to 
 inhabit the extreme south. The Greeks believed in 
 goodness when a very long way from home. 
 
 Our author mentions slightly, and with some dis¬ 
 dain, the legend (known also to other writers) of one of 
 these Hyperboreans, Abaris, who was said to have been 
 even a greater traveler than himself—who “walked 
 round the world with an arrow, without once eating.” 
 But whatever may be thought of the latter part of 
 the story, it seems highly probable that in Abaris’s 
 “arrow” we have a dim tradition of the magnetic 
 needle. Its properties were certainly known to the 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 87 
 
 Chinese long before Herodotus’s d^e, and some 
 rumor of the marvel might have reached Europe. 
 The story tempts Herodotus into speculative cosmog¬ 
 raphy. He is dissatisfied wid* the map of Hecatasus, 
 who divided the habitable world into two equal por¬ 
 tions, Europe and A^a, making, it like a medal, with 
 the great river o£.£Tccan for a rim; not that he himself 
 at all suspect** the world of being a sphere, like some 
 of the lat £f ancients, but that he thought the distribu¬ 
 tion oi the continents manifestly unsound. 
 
 If Herodotus had been in the habit of rejecting 
 every tale that he did not believe, like some later 
 writers, we should have lost the valuable passage 
 which seems to prove that Africa was circumnavigated 
 twenty-one centuries before the time of Diaz and Vasco 
 de Gama. Pharaoh Neclio, after giving up the Suez 
 Canal as hopeless, sent a fleet of Phoenician ships down 
 the Red Sea, ordering them to return to Egypt by the 
 pillars of Hercules—that is, by the Strait of Gibraltar. 
 As these were their orders, it is to be presumed that 
 the route was already known. They spent three years 
 in accomplishing their task, as they had to sow grain 
 on the way, and wait for the harvest. Herodotus pro¬ 
 nounces their voyage apocryphal, because they reported 
 they had the sunrise on their right hand as the}' sailed 
 round Libya, but which proves indeed that they had 
 doubled the Cape of Good Hope. Sataspes, a Persian, 
 tried to sail round Africa in the other direction, but 
 failed. He had got beyond Cape Soloeis (Spartel) to 
 a country inhabited by a dwarfish people, who dressed 
 in palm-leaves; and there, as he declared, the ship 
 stopped, and 'would go no further. He had evidently 
 fallen in with the southerly trade-wind, and was not 
 aware that, in order to proceed, he ought to have 
 
88 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 pushed across towards the South American continent. 
 He met with a fate worse even than that of some later 
 discoverers: lie was not only disbelieved, but put to 
 death on his return. Davius appears to have taken a 
 great interest in such discoveries, and it was he who 
 sent Scylax the Carian down the Indus to explore the 
 Indian Ocean.* • 
 
 Among the strange customs which iWodotus re¬ 
 cords of the Scythians was their manner ot keeping 
 the anniversary of the burial of their kings. They 
 slew fifty young men and fifty choice horses, stuffed 
 the bodies of both, and set them up round the tomb 
 in a circle, the men mounted on the horses, a ghastly 
 body-guard for the royal ghost* Their great deity was 
 the god of war, whom they worshiped under the shape 
 of a scimitar. The Russiau or Turkish vapor-bath 
 would appear to have been another of their institu¬ 
 tions; but Herodotus seems to confuse it with the 
 process of intoxication by hemp-seed, which was 
 known in early times. They w T ere also distinguished 
 by drunkenness and dislike of foreigners, like some of 
 their supposed descendants, w T ho are not yet cured of 
 these weaknesses. 
 
 Against this nation Darius is said by Herodotus to 
 have moved a vast army, bridging over the Thracian 
 Bosphorus and the Danube with boats, and taking with 
 him the Ionian fleet, to the custody of whose com¬ 
 manders he committed the bridge over the river, while 
 he passed on into the northern wildernesses. The 
 
 * This Scylax, or more probably a later writer who traded on 
 his name, brought home some remarkable travelers’ stories. 
 He described an Indian tribe whose feet were so large that they 
 used them as parasols, and another whose eax’s were so capacious 
 that they slept in them.—See Rawlinson, I. p. 50, note. 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 89 
 
 Scythians retreated before him towards the Tanais or 
 Don. Then they led him such a long chase that at 
 last his palience was worn out. and he sent to their 
 king to demand that, as a man of honor, he should 
 either stand and fight, or deliver earth and water in 
 token of submission. The Scythian replied that lie 
 would soon send him some presents more to the 
 purpose. These arrived in due course of time—a 
 bird, a mouse, a frog, and five arrows. Darius at 
 first thought that this signified a tender of homage; 
 hut Gobryas, one of the Seven, who had an older 
 head, read the hieroglyphic letter as follows: “Un¬ 
 less you can fly like a bird, or burrow like a mouse, 
 or swim like a frog, you will not escape the Scyth¬ 
 ian arrows.” Darius took the hint and retreated. 
 But Scythian horsemen had reached his bridge before 
 him, and tried 1o prevail on the Ionians to destroy it. 
 Miltiades the Athenian, now tyrant of the Chersonese 
 (of whom we shall hear again), called upon his fellow- 
 Greeks to strike, once for all, a blow for freedom; to 
 cut the bridge, and leave their Persian masters to 
 perish. But he was overruled in the interest of 
 Darius by Iiistiseus of Miletus, and the Persian army 
 returned without irretrievable loss from its military 
 promenade in pursuit of the impalpable Scythians. 
 Megabazus remained behind to reduce the Thracian 
 tribes in the neighborhood of the Hellespont. 
 
 This leads our author to discuss the ethnology of 
 T1 irace. It appeared to him that if its numerous 
 tribes had been onl}' united, they would have been a 
 match for any existing nation. His Thrace must nearly 
 have comprehended the present limits of Roumelia, Bul¬ 
 garia, Servia, Moldavia, and Wallaehia. The Getae or 
 Goths, who were subdued by Darius on his way to 
 
90 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 Scythia, believed that when they died they went tn a 
 good spirit named Zalmoxis, to whom they sent a mes¬ 
 senger every five years; that is, they sacrificed a man 
 by tossing him in the air and catching him on points 
 of lances. Another tribe, when a child was born, sat 
 round him, bewailing the miseries he would have to 
 undergo; while in a case of death thej^ made a jubilee 
 of the funeral, believing the departed to have attained 
 everlasting happiness. The same belief was connected 
 with a custom in another tribe corresponding to the 
 “Suttee” of the Hindoos. When a man died there 
 was a sharp contention among his widows which was 
 the worthiest to be slain over his grave, and the sur¬ 
 viving wives considered themselves as in disgrace. 
 They marked high birth by tattooing, like the South 
 Sea Islanders; and thought idleness, war, and plunder 
 honorable, but agriculture mean. The nation in gen¬ 
 eral worshiped only the gods of battle, of wine, and 
 of the chase. But the kings paid especial honor to a 
 god corresponding to Hermes or Mercury, or the Ger¬ 
 man Woden. Less was known of the tribes north of 
 the Danube. The Sigynnae wore a dress like that of 
 the Medes, and possessed a breed of active, hardy, 
 shaggy ponies, the description of which answers to those 
 of the Shetland Islands. Or possibly some vague rumor 
 of the harnessed dogs of Kamtchatka may have reached 
 the ears of our author. He does not think that the 
 Thracians could have been correct in saying that a 
 tract of country beyond the Danube was so infested 
 with bees as to be uninhabitable, as bees cannot bear 
 much cold. They may. have meant mosquitoes. 
 
 Megabazus was now commissioned to transport bodily 
 to Persia the whole tribe of the Pasonians, who lived 
 to the north of Macedonia, of whose industry Darius 
 
HERODOTUS . 
 
 91 
 
 had conceived an exaggerated notion, by seeing one of 
 tlieir women at Sardis bearing a pitcher on her head, 
 leading a horse, and spinning flax all at the same time. 
 He effected this task with no great difficulty; but other 
 tribes resisted his arms with success, and especially 
 those who inhabited the Lake Prasias. These must 
 have been a relic of the most ancient population of 
 Europe. Their habits were precisely the same as those 
 of the singular people whose whole manner of life 
 has been brought to light by the discovery of ancient 
 piles iu the lakes of Zurich in Switzerland, and who 
 appear to have inhabited nearly all the comparatively 
 shallow lakes that have hitherto been examined. This 
 pile-city of Prasias is thus described: 
 
 “ Platforms supported on tall piles were fixed in the 
 midst of the lake, approached from the land by a single 
 narrow bridge. Originally all the citizens in common 
 drove the piles for the platform, but afterwards every 
 man drove three piles for every wife he married, and 
 they had each several wives. Each man had his own 
 hut on the platform, and his trap-door opening through 
 the scaffolding on the lake below. They tied the little 
 children by the leg to prevent their rolling into the 
 water.” (The proportionate number of children’s bones 
 found in the Swiss lakes would argue that this custom 
 was but negligently observed in those regions.) “ They 
 fed their horses and other cattle upon fish, of which 
 there was such an abundance that they had only to let 
 down a basket through the trap-door into the water, 
 and draw it up full,” 
 
 What was the ultimate fate of this amphibious col¬ 
 ony we do not learn; but very many of the corre¬ 
 sponding settlements iu central Europe bear traces of 
 having been destroyed by fire. For the present these 
 
92 
 
 T1IE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 lake-people were impregnable, and Megabazus turned 
 bis attention to Macedonia, sending first to the court 
 of King Amyntas an embassy of seven noble Persians 
 to demand earth and water. Amyntas entertained 
 them at a feast; but when tlieir attentions to the ladies 
 of the court began to be offensive, his son Alexander, 
 indignant at the insult, dressed up some Macedonian 
 youths to personate the ladies, whom he had managed 
 to withdraw under promise of their return, and assassi¬ 
 nated the Persian envoys when heavy with wine. An 
 expedition was afterwards sent to inquire after their 
 fate, but Alexander conciliated the commander with 
 hush money and the hand of his sister in marriage. 
 The royal family of Macedonia were of Argive origin, 
 according to Herodotus; otherwise, he says they would 
 not have been allowed to contend at the Olympic 
 games. This Greek descent was used subsequently by 
 Philip of Macedon as a plea for his intervention in the 
 affairs of Greece. 
 
 A casual notice of the founding of Cyrene leads 
 Herodotus into Libya, whither we have no space to 
 follow him. He touches on the known north African 
 tribes, and glances at the unknown, relating many mar¬ 
 velous stories; in fact, his love for anthropology and 
 geography makes him seize any excuse for imparting 
 information. He well-nigli exhausts the world as 
 known to the ancients, and might have wept, as Alex¬ 
 ander did that he had no more worlds to conquer, that 
 he had no more to describe. Of one remote and apocry¬ 
 phal region he confesses he knew nothing. He was not 
 sure that the islands called the Cassiteridcs (“ Tin- 
 Islands”) had any real existence; but he had been told 
 that tin came “ from the ends of the earth.” Such is 
 the sole notice which the great traveler has left of us 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 93 
 
 or our ancestors; for it is probable that the Cassitcrides 
 were the coast of Cornwall. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE TYRANTS OF GREECE. 
 
 “ If gods will not misfortune send, 
 
 List to the counsel of a friend: 
 
 Call on thyself calamity; 
 
 And that, from all thy treasures bright, 
 
 In which thy heart takes most delight. 
 
 Commit forthwith to deepest sea.” 
 
 —Schiller, “ Ring of Polycrates. ” 
 
 The original constitution of most of the Greek States 
 was a limited monarchy, though the king was emphati¬ 
 cally “hedged by divinity,” since the founder of his 
 family was generally supposed to be a god. In time, as 
 the royal prestige wore out, this constitution was gen¬ 
 erally superseded by an oligarchy, which lasted until 
 some ambitious individual, by courting the unprivi¬ 
 leged classes, managed to raise himself to the suprem¬ 
 acy. 
 
 In the fifth century before Christ there were so 
 many of these usurpers at the same time in Greece, 
 that it has been called the Age of Tyrants. Mr. Grote 
 prefers to call them “despots;” but the name matters 
 little if no sinister meaning is necessarily attached to 
 the word Tyrant. Their number at one time was a 
 fact in support of those who believe in social and 
 political epidemics. One of the most famous of them 
 was Polycrates of Samos. He was great in arms and 
 arts, and the poet Anacreon was the companion, of his 
 
94 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 revels, just as Goethe enjoyed his Rhenish with Charles 
 Augustus, the jolly Grand-Duke of Weimar. His pros¬ 
 perity was so perfect, that his friend King Amasis of 
 Egypt, as a prudent man, thought.it his duty to give 
 him a solemn warning, and advised him to avert the 
 anger of the gods by sacrificing some object which he 
 held very precious. Polycrates chose out of his abun¬ 
 dant treasures a favorite emerald ring, which he at once 
 threw into the sea. Five or six days afterwards, a poor 
 fisherman caught so magnificent a fish that it struck 
 him that it was only fit to set before a king. To Polyc¬ 
 rates, therefore, he presented it, with many compli¬ 
 ments. The tyrant, with his usual geniality, made it a 
 condition that the fisherman would come and help him 
 to eat it. He bashfully accepted the honor. When the 
 fish was served, behold! the emerald ring was there in 
 its inside. The servants were exceedingly glad that the 
 king’s lost ring was found—possibly they had been 
 charging each other with stealing it; but Polycrates 
 looked serious, for he felt that the gods had rejected 
 his offering. He thought it right to inform his friend 
 Amasis of the result. Amasis, with less generosity than 
 foresight, at once sent a herald to Samos to renounce 
 the alliance of Polycrates, as he felt sure chat the god 
 had decreed his ruin, and did not wish to be himself 
 involved in it. The tale of the -fisherman and the ring 
 has been transferred to Arabian fable. 
 
 Fortune still continued to smile on Polycrates, and 
 he overcame all his enemies by force or fraud. Some 
 Samians, whom he had driven out, managed to set on 
 foot against him an expedition from Lacedaemon. The 
 visit of these people to Sparta is characteristically told. 
 They made a long speech there in the assembly, which 
 they would have hardly done if they had known the 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 Spartan temper better. The authorities made reply 
 that they had forgotten the first half of their discourse, 
 and could not understand the second. The Samians 
 then held up an empty bag r merely remarking, “The 
 bag wants flour.” The Spartans said that the word 
 “ bag” was quite unnecessary—the gesture was enough- 
 However, they sent a force to Samos to support the ex¬ 
 iles; and Polycrates is said to have bribed them to re¬ 
 turn with leaden money gilt over. The existence of 
 the story is singularly illustrative of the avarice as well 
 as the gullibility of this people. 
 
 But the doom of Polycrates could only be deferred. 
 Towards the end of the reign of Cambyses he was un¬ 
 fortunate enough to excite the cupidity of Orcetes, the 
 Persian satrap of Sardis, who proceeded to set a trap 
 for him. Orcetes said that he feared the covetousness 
 of Cambyses, and offered to deposit all his treasure with 
 Polycrates. The latter sent his secretary to inspect it, 
 who was shown some large chests full of stones, just 
 covered with gold. Satisfied with this report, in spite 
 of all the warnings of his daughter, Polycrates started 
 for the court of Orcetes to fetch the treasure. The sa¬ 
 trap at once arrested him, put him to a cruel death, and 
 then impaled his dead body. But the murderer after¬ 
 wards came to a violent end himself in the reign of 
 Darius. 
 
 Another specimen of a tyrant, and this, too, in our 
 common acceptation of the word, was Periander of 
 Corinth, the son of Cypselus. By his origin he was 
 partly patrician and partly plebeian. At one time the 
 government of Corinth was in the hands of a single 
 family called the Bacchiadse, who only intermarried 
 with one another. But one of them happened to have 
 a daughter called, from her lameness, Labda (from the 
 
THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 V(d 
 
 Greek letter A (L), "which originally had one leg shorter 
 than the other), whom her parents were, on this ac¬ 
 count, obliged to marry out of the family to one Aetion, 
 a man of the people. In consequence of oracles which 
 boded ill to Corinth from a son of Action, the rulers 
 sent ten of their number to dispatch the infant as soon 
 as he was born. When they came and asked to see the 
 child, Labda showed it them, thinking their visit was 
 only complimentary. They had agreed that whoever 
 took the child first in his arms should dash it on the 
 ground. Providentially, however, the babe smiled in 
 the man’s face who had taken him, so that he had no 
 heart to kill it, but passed it on to his neighbor, and he 
 to another, and so it went through all the ten. When 
 the mother had carried the child indoors again, she 
 overheard the party outside loudly reproaching one an¬ 
 other with their faint-heartedness in not making away 
 with it. Fearing from this that they would return, she 
 hid the child away in a chest or corn-bin, so that when 
 they re-entered they could not find him. From this es¬ 
 cape he was called Cypselus or “ Bin.” When he grew 
 up he made himself despot of Corinth, and ruled 
 harshly, visiting the citizens with confiscations, banish¬ 
 ment, and death. He resigned thirty years, and then his 
 son Periander succeeded him, who, at first, was a mild 
 ruler, until he sent to Thrasybulus, despot of Miletus, 
 to ask him the best way of governing his people. 
 Thrasybulus took the ‘Corinthian herald forth into the 
 fields, and as he passed through the corn, still question¬ 
 ing him about Corinthian affairs, he snapped off and 
 threw away all the ears that overtopped the rest. He 
 walked through the whole field doing this, till the dam¬ 
 age was considerable. After this he dismissed his vis- 
 itor without a word of advice. When the messenger 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 97 
 
 returned, to Periander, lie said that he had been sent oil 
 a fool’s errand to a madman, who gave him no answer, 
 but only walked through a field ‘spoiling his wheat by 
 plucking off all the longest ears.* Periander said noth¬ 
 ing; but he understood the meaning of Thrasybulus, 
 which was, that he was to govern by cutting off all the 
 foremost citizens. After this he became a much worse 
 tyrant than his father, and finished the work which he 
 had begun. On one occasion he stripped all the women 
 of Corinth of their clothes. Having sent to consult an 
 oracle of the dead f about some lost property, the shade 
 of his wife Melissa (whom he had put to death) appeared 
 to him, and said that she w r as cold, and had literally 
 nothing to put on; for the robes buried with her were 
 of no use, since they had not been burnt. So he made 
 proclamation that all the matrons should go to the tem¬ 
 ple of Juno in full dress, and there having surrounded 
 them with his guards, took all their clothes from them, 
 and burnt them as an offering to his dead queen. 
 
 The relations of Periander with his younger son 
 Lycophrou form one of the most touching episodes in 
 Herodotus. The lad had learnt the fact of his mother’s 
 murder, and from that time would neither speak to his 
 father nor answer him. The father at last banished 
 him from his house. He even sent 'warning to the 
 friends with whom his son took refuge that all who 
 
 * The English reader will remember the words of the gardener 
 in Shakespeare: 
 
 “ Go thou, and like an executioner, 
 
 Cut off the heads of too fast-growing sprays, 
 
 That look too lofty in our commonwealth.” 
 
 —“ RichardII.,” Act. iii. sc. 4. 
 
 tHence the word “necromancy.” The parallel of Saul, the 
 witch of Endor, and the ghost of Samuel, is at once suggested. 
 
98 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 harbored him did so at their peri]—nay, that any who 
 even spoke to him should pay a fine to Apollo. The 
 lad wandered miserably from one to the other, and at 
 jast was found lying in the public porticoes. Then 
 Periander himself went to him, and upbraided him with 
 his folly in depriving himself by his obstinacy of a 
 princely home. Lycophron only answered by remind¬ 
 ing his father that he had now himself incurred the for¬ 
 feit to the god. Periander saw that the case was hope¬ 
 less, and sent him to Coreyra for safe keeping. But 
 when he found himself growing old, and unequal to 
 the cares of government, and saw that his elder son was 
 quite incompetent, he sent to offer to resign in Lyco- 
 phron’s favor. No reply came. Then the father sent 
 his favorite sister to treat with him, and try to soften 
 his heart. Lycopliron’s answer was that he would 
 never set foot again in Samos while his father lived. 
 Periander humbled himself so far as to offer to retire 
 himself to Corey ra, and allowed the son to take his 
 place. To this Lycophron agreed; on hearing which 
 the people of Corcyra murdered him, in dread of re¬ 
 ceiving as their master the terrible Periander. 
 
 A pleasanter story in connection with him will be 
 best told, as nearly as may be, in the old historian’s 
 own words, with a little retrenchment of his diffuseness. 
 
 Arion and the Dolphin. 
 
 In Periander’s days there lived a minstrel of Lesbos, 
 Arion by name, who w r as second to none as a player on 
 the lute. This Arion, who spent most of his time with 
 Periander, sailed to Italy and Sicily, and having earned 
 by his minstrelsy great store of treasure, hired a Corin- 
 1 liian ship to go back to Corinth—for whom should he 
 trust rather than the Corinthians, whom he knew so 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 99 
 
 well. When the crew were out at sea, they took coun¬ 
 sel together to throw Arion overboard, and keep his 
 treasure. But he divined their intent, and besought 
 them to take his money, but spare his life. But the 
 sliipmen refused, and bade him either straightway kill 
 himself on board, so that he might be buried on shore, 
 or leap into the sea of his own free will. Then Arion, 
 being in a sore strait, begged, since it must be so, that 
 he might don his vestments, and sing one strain stand¬ 
 ing on the quarterdeck; and when he had ended his 
 song he promised to dispatch himself. [He asked to 
 put on his sacred garb, knowing that thereby he should 
 gain the protection of Apollo.] The seamen consented, 
 as well pleased once more to hear the master of all 
 singers, and made space to hear him, withdrawing into 
 the midship; and he chanted a lively air, and then 
 plunged overboard, all as he was. So tliey'sailed away 
 to Corinth, and thought no more of Arion. But, lo! a 
 dolphin took the minstrel up on his back, and landed 
 him safely at the promontory of Toeuarus in Laconia, 
 whence he made his way to Corinth, all in his sacred 
 robes, and told there all that had befallen him. But 
 Periander did not believe him, and kept him under 
 guard. At last the shipmen came, and when Periander 
 asked them what had become of Arion, they saicl 
 they had left him safe and sound at Tarentum, in 
 Italy-. Then Periander produced Arion in his vest¬ 
 ments, just as he was when he leaped overboard, and 
 they w T ere struck dumb, and could deny their guilt no 
 more. And Arion set up as a thank-offering to the god, 
 an effigy of a man riding on a dolphin. 
 
 Such is the legend given by Herodotus. Another 
 version makes Apollo appear to Arion in a dream, 
 
100 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 assuring him of succor before he leaped overboard, and 
 adds that, after landing, the bard neglected to put back 
 again into the sea his preserver, who consequently per¬ 
 ished, and was buried by the king of the country. 
 When the sailors came, they were made to swear to the 
 truth of their story on the dolphin’s tomb, where Arion 
 had been previously hid. When he suddenly appeared 
 they confessed their guilt, and were punished by cruci¬ 
 fixion, for the double crime of robbery with intent to 
 murder, and perjury. Arion and his bearer afterwards 
 became a constellation, by the will of Apollo, according 
 to a later addition to the legend. 
 
 It is not impossible that the legend of Arion grew out 
 of the group of the man on the dolphin, which may have 
 been set up to commemorate the expedition which 
 sailed from Laconia to found Tarentum, comprised of 
 Dorian and Achrean Greeks; the dolphin, sacred to 
 Neptune, symbolizing the Achaean element, and the 
 minstrel loved of Apollo, the Dorian. The legend of 
 Colston, the munificent Bristol merchant, whose anni¬ 
 versary is still celebrated at Bristol, is well known in the 
 wrnst of England. A ship in which he sailed was said 
 to have sprung a leak, which was miraculously plugged 
 by a self-sacrificing dolphin, and so the ship came home 
 safe. Some rationalists have volunteered the prosaic 
 explanation that Colston wns saved and brought home 
 in another vessel called the Dolphin. One of the char¬ 
 itable societies formed in his honor bears the name of 
 the “Dolphin.” The sacred character of this fish (or 
 rather cetacean) is doubtless of remote antiquity. He 
 is the subject of a little poem (exquisite in the original) 
 by Philip of Thessalonica, 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 101 
 
 The Dolphin and the Nightingale. 
 
 “ Blaming Boreas, o’er the sea I was flying slowly, 
 
 For the wind of Trace to me is a thing unholy, 
 
 When his back a dolphin showed, bending with devotion, 
 
 And the child of ether rode on the chilcl of ocean. 
 
 I am that sweet-chanting bird w T hom the night doth smile at; 
 And like one that kept his word proved my dolphin pilot. 
 
 As he glided onward still with his oarless rowing, 
 
 With the lute within my bill I did cheer his going. 
 
 Dolphins never ply for hire, but for love and glory, 
 
 When the sons of song require ; trust Arion’s story.” 
 
 There is also a beautiful version of the legend by the 
 Roman poet Ovid. 
 
 Cleisthenes of Sicyon was another eminent tyrant; 
 and a magnificent man in every way. He had one 
 beautiful daughter named Agariste, through whom des¬ 
 potism was fated to receive its death-blow in Athens. 
 Like the Orsinis and Colonnas of medieval Rome, 
 whose feuds gave Rienzi his opportunity to establish 
 democracy, the patrician families of the Isagorids and 
 Alcmaeonids strove for supremacy at Athens, and their 
 strife gave birth to freedom. Herodotus gives a quaint 
 account of the foundation of the great wealth of the 
 latter family. 
 
 Alcmseon, the son of Megacles, had assisted Croesus 
 in his negotiations with the Delphic oracle, and was in¬ 
 vited in consequence to the court of Sardis. When he 
 had arrived, Croesus gave him leave to go into the treas¬ 
 ury and take as much gold as he could carry away on 
 his person at one time. So he put on the largest tunic 
 he could find, so as to make a capacioys fold, and the 
 roomiest buskins. First he stowed his boots with gold 
 dust, then he packed his clothes with it, then he pow¬ 
 dered his hair with it, and lastly he took a mouthful of 
 
102 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 it, and so came out of the treasury “dragging his legs 
 with difficulty, and looking like anything rather than a 
 human being, as his mouth was choked up, and every¬ 
 thing about him wa$ in a plethoric state.” When Croe¬ 
 sus saw him he was highly amused, and gave him what 
 he had taken and as much again. When Alcmaeon 
 came home to Athens he found himself rich enough to 
 enter as a competitor at the great Olympic games, and 
 win the blue ribbon of that national festival—the four- 
 horse cliariot-race, which made the winner a hero in the 
 eyes of his countrymen forever. 
 
 Two generations afterwards this family made a splen¬ 
 did marriage. Cleisthenes of Sicyon had added this to 
 his renown, that he too had been a victor at Olympia. 
 Under these circumstances he was not inclined to throw 
 away a beauty and heiress like his daughter Agariste on 
 the first comer, but, like the father in Goldoni’s “Matri- 
 monio per Concorso,” he proclaimed that she should be 
 wooed and won by pubfic competition. He invited all 
 the most eligible youths in Greece to come and spend a 
 year at his court, promising to give his decision when it 
 had elapsed; and he prepared an arena expressly for 
 the purpose of testing their athletic proficiency. Among 
 the suitors was the exquisite Smyndyrides of Sybaris, 
 the most luxurious man of the most luxurious Hellenic 
 city. It was he who was said to have complained of 
 the crumpled rose-leaf on his couch, and to have fainted 
 when he once saw a man hard at work in the fields. He 
 would certainly have broken down in the athletic or¬ 
 deal. Not so Males, the brother of Titormus, a kind of 
 human gorilla of enormous strength who lived in the 
 wilds of AEtolia; but he would scarcely have been pol¬ 
 ished enough as a son-in-law for Cleisthenes. And the 
 father might be loath to intrust his daughter to the son 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 103 
 
 of Pheidon, the despot of Argos, a man notorious for 
 rapacity and violence. The two Athenian candidates, 
 Megacles son of Alcmaeon,* and Hippocleides, a mem¬ 
 ber of the great rival family, were probably the favor¬ 
 ites from the first; for it is hard to imagine that there 
 was no betting on an occasion so tempting to the sport¬ 
 ing characters of antiquity. Cleisthenes having first as¬ 
 certained that his guests could give satisfactory refer¬ 
 ences, made proof of their manhood, their tempers, their 
 accomplishments, and their tastes,—sometimes bringing 
 them together, sometimes holding private conversations 
 with each. Although gymnastics were very important, 
 he seemed to have laid most stress on their qualities as 
 diners out. The man who at the end of the year seemed, 
 in the opinion of all, to have the best chance, was Hip¬ 
 pocleides, who indeed was connected with the royal 
 Cypselids of Corinth, as well as an Athenian of the 
 highest fashion. When the great day arrived for the 
 suitors to know their fate, Cleisthenes sacrificed a hun¬ 
 dred oxen, and gave a public feast, to which he invited 
 not only the foreign suitors, but all his own people. 
 After the feast there was one more trial in music and in 
 rhetoric,—probably to see how the suitors could carry 
 their wine. As the cup went round, Hippocleides, 
 abashing the rest of the party by his assurance, called 
 to the flute-player to strike up a dance. Then he 
 danced, in a manner which gave perfect satisfaction 
 to himself, though Cleisthenes began to look grave. 
 Next he ordered a table to be brought in, mounted on 
 it, and rehearsed certain Laconian and Attic figures. 
 
 * The son in this family took the grandfather’s name; Mega¬ 
 cles, Alcmaeon, Megacles, Alcmaeon, and so on. This was Ale- 
 mffion II. 
 
104 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 To crown all, lie stood on his head and kicked his legs 
 in the air. This last performance, which Hippocleides 
 might perhaps have learned in his youth from the street- 
 boys of the Piraeus, was too much for Cleistlienes, who 
 had long contained himself with difficulty. “Son of 
 Tisander, tliou hast danced away thy marriage,” he ex¬ 
 claimed, in tierce disgust. The other quietly answered, 
 
 “ Hippocleides does not care!” from which “ Hippoclei¬ 
 des don’t care” became a proverbial expression. Then, 
 as Herodotus tells us, Cleistlienes rose and spoke to this 
 effect: 
 
 “ Gentlemen, suitors of my daughter,—I am well 
 pleased with you all—so well pleased that, if it were 
 possible, I would make you all my sons-in-law. But, as 
 I have but one daughter, that is unfortunately impossi¬ 
 ble. You have all done me much honor in desiring the 
 alliance of my house. In consideration of this, and of 
 the inconvenience to which you have been put in wast¬ 
 ing your valuable time at my court, I beg to present 
 you with a talent of silver each. But to Megacles, the 
 son of xilcmseon, I betroth my daughter Agariste to be 
 his wife according to the usage of Athens.” 
 
 The issue of this marriage was Cleisthenes, the great 
 Athenian reformer, who was named after his maternal 
 grandfather. • - 
 
 Pisistratus, the despot of Athens, has been already 
 mentioned as contemporary with Croesus. He won im¬ 
 mortality by digesting the poems of Homer into a con¬ 
 secutive whole,—settling, as it were, the canon of the 
 Greek Scriptures. His rule was just and mild, until his . 
 enemies forced greater severity upon him in his latter 
 days. He was succeeded by his son Hippias. An abor¬ 
 tive attempt to assassinate this prince was made by two 
 men bound together by the tie of romantic friendship 
 peculiar to the Greeks, Harmodius and Aristogeiton. 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 105 
 
 Tliis pair have always been celebrated as model patriots 
 by the admirers of tyrannicide, but they bungled in 
 their business by slaying the wrong brother, Hipparchus 
 instead of Hippias, and only provoked Hippias to stern¬ 
 er measures of repression. At last the Alcmseonids, 
 growing weary of exile, made such strong interest with 
 the god of Delphi that his oracle continually urged the 
 Spartans to expel the Pisistratids. The clan, after a 
 long struggle, were compelled to quit Athens, and re¬ 
 tired to Sigeium, on the Hellespont, having selected this 
 asylum as most convenient for intriguing with the Court 
 of Persia for their restoration. They had ruled in Ath¬ 
 ens from b.c. 560 to b.c. 510, which w T as about the date 
 of the expulsion of the kings from Rome. They traced 
 their origin to Codrus and Melantlms, semi-mythical 
 kings of Attica, and remotely to the Homeric Nestor of 
 Pylos, after whose son Pisistratus the great ruler of 
 Athens was named. 
 
 A festival song in honor of the famous tyrannicides 
 was long the “Marseillaise” of republican Athens: 
 
 The Sword and the Myrtle. 
 
 I’ll wreath with myrtle-bough my sword, 
 
 Like those who struck down Athens’ lord, 
 
 Our laws engrafting equal right on— 
 
 Harmodius and Aristogeiton. 
 
 Harmodius dear, thou art not dead, 
 
 But in the happy isles, they say, 
 
 Where fleet Achilles lives for aye, 
 
 And good Tydeides Diomed. 
 
 .I’ll wreath my sword with myrtle-bough. 
 
 Like those who laid Hipparchus Ioav, 
 
 When'on Athene’s holiday 
 
 The tyrant wight they dared to slay. 
 
 Because they slew him, and because ► • 
 
 They gave to Athens equal laws, . 
 
 Eternal fame shall shed a light on 
 Harmodius and Aristogeiton. 
 
106 
 
 THE ELZEVIR JJBRART. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 IOKI A. 
 
 “ O for a tongue to curse the slave. 
 
 Whose treason, like a deadly blight, 
 
 Comes o’er the counsels of the brave, 
 
 And blasts them in their hour of might!” 
 
 —Moore, “ Fire-Worshippers.” 
 
 Darius had not forgotten the good service done him by 
 Histiseus of Miletus, in preserving the Danube bridge 
 for him on his hurried retreat from the Scythian expe¬ 
 dition. He had given him a grant of land in Thrace, 
 in a most desirable position for a new settlement. But 
 he was afterwards persuaded that he had done wrong. 
 A shrewd Greek would be tempted to form there the 
 nucleus of an independent power. He therefore sent 
 for Histiseus, and detained him in an honorable captiv¬ 
 ity in his own court at Susa. And this detention led to 
 the great Persian war. 
 
 There was a revolution in the little island of Naxos. 
 “ The men of substance,” as they were literally called, 
 were expelled, and came to Miletus begging Aristag- 
 oras, now deputy-governor in the absence of his father- 
 in-law Histiseus, to restore them. Thinking to get 
 Naxos for himself, Aristagoras procured the aid of 
 a Persian flotilla. On the way, a quarrel arose about a 
 Greek captain whom Megabates, the Persian admiral, 
 had punished, because he found no watch set on board 
 his ship. The punishment consisted in binding him 
 down so that his head protruded from one of the ports 
 or rowlocks, and Aristagoras had taken upon himself 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 107 
 
 to release him. Megabates, in dudgeon, sent to warn 
 the Naxians, who were to have been surprised, and the 
 expedition failed. Then Aristagoras, finding himself 
 unable to pay the expenses of the armament, as had 
 been stipulated, thought of securing his position by the 
 desperate expedient of stirring up a revolt at Miletus 
 against Persia. He was confirmed in this resolution by 
 the arrival of a singular courier from Histiseus, who 
 was determined at any cost to escape from the forced 
 hospitalities of Susa. Histiaeus had taken a slave, 
 shaved his head, punctured certain letters on the bare 
 crown, then kept him till the hair was grown, and sent 
 him to Aristagoras with merely the verbal message that 
 he was to shave his head. When Aristagoras had 
 played the barber, he found that the living dispatch 
 bore the word “revolt.” 
 
 His first step was to proclaim democracy throughout 
 the Greek confederacy. The different despots were 
 given up to their fellow-citizens, to be dealt with ac¬ 
 cording to their deserts. It speaks strongly in favor of 
 the character of their “ tyranny ” that nearly all were 
 dismissed uninjured. One only—Coes of Mytilene— 
 was stoned to death. Aristagoras then set sail for 
 Sparta to seek for aid. That state at this time enjoyed 
 the singular constitution of a double monarchy. This 
 may have had some mythological*connection with the 
 legend of the twin sons of Leda, Castor and Pollux, 
 who became sea-gods, from whom the constellation of 
 the Gemini was named; but Herodotus assigns to it a 
 different origin. 
 
 His tradition is that when the sons of Hercules, recon¬ 
 quered their heritage of the Peloponnese, one of their 
 three chiefs, Aristodcmus, had the kingdom of Sparta 
 
108 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 for his share. His wife gave birth to twins just before 
 his death. The boys were much alike; and the mother, 
 hoping that they might both be kings, protested that 
 she did not know them apart. The Spartans were puz¬ 
 zled; and the Delphic oracle gave an answer which 
 hardly mended the matter, except so far that it satisfied 
 the mother. 
 
 “Let both be kings, but let the elder have more honor.” 
 
 But which was the elder? that was the question. At 
 last it was suggested that a watch should be set to see 
 which the mother washed and fed first. If she acted 
 on system, the case was clear. The espionage suc¬ 
 ceeded; the elder was discovered, and named Eurys- 
 thenes, and the other Procles. The two brothers, when 
 they grew up, were said to have been always at vari¬ 
 ance, and their separate lines continued so ever after. 
 The two kings had peculiar duties, rights, and privi¬ 
 leges, but lived .in the same plain way as other citizens. 
 
 When Aristagoras arrived at Sparta, he w T as admitted 
 to an audience with the senior king, Cleomenes. He 
 showed him a bronze tablet engraved with a chart—the 
 earliest know-n map of the world—pointed out where 
 all the different nations lay, and conjured him to assist 
 his kinsmen the Ioiflans; observing, that it was foolish 
 for the Spartans to fritter away their force in local 
 feuds, when they might be lords of Asia. As for the 
 Persians, they were an easy prey—men who actually 
 “went into battle with trowsers on.” Cleomenes 
 promised to give him an answer in three days. At the 
 second interview he asked “how far it was to Susa?” 
 Aristagoras was unguarded enough to say, “a three 
 months’ journey;” on which Cleomenes ordered him to 
 
HERODOTUS . 
 
 109 
 
 quit Sparta before sunset. Then he returned and sat 
 before the king in the sacred guise of a suppliant, with 
 an olive-bough in his hand. A little daughter of Cle- 
 oraenes, named Gorgo, aged eight or nine, was standing 
 at her father’s side. The Milesian wished her to be sent 
 away, but Cleomenes told him to say on, and not to 
 heed the child. Then Aristagoras began by offering 
 tgn talents, and as the king shook his head, increased 
 them by degrees to fifty. When this sum was men¬ 
 tioned, the child cried out: “Go away, father, or the 
 strange man will be sure to bribe thee.”* The “con¬ 
 science of the king” was moved. He withdrew to escape 
 the temptation, and the mission of Aristagoras failed at 
 Sparta. 
 
 At Athens he had better chances of success. Athens 
 was in the heyday of her first freedom. She had rid 
 herself of her tyrants, the Pisistratids, who were at 
 this moment intriguing with Persia, not without suc¬ 
 cess, for their restoration. The feelings of the citizens 
 towards these powerful absentees and their Asiatic 
 friends 'were much the same as those of the French of 
 1792 towards the Emigration and its abettors. The 
 two great ruling families were now the rival houses of 
 Alcmgeon and Isagoras. Cleisthenes the Alcmaeonid, 
 grandson of the tyrant of Sicyon, might not have 
 thought it worth his while to court the people, had he 
 
 * Gorgo was well worthy to become, as she afterwards did, 
 the wife of Leonidas. An incident in her married life, subse¬ 
 quently related by Herodotus, seems to militate against the 
 dictum of Aristotle that the Spartan women were inferior to the 
 men. All the authorities of Sparta were puzzled by the arrival 
 of a waxen tablet (the usual form of a dispatch) with nothing 
 written on it. When Gorgo heard of it, she at once suggested 
 that the wax should be scraped off, and the dispatch was found 
 engraved on the wood. 
 
110 
 
 THE ELZEVIR-LIBRARY. 
 
 not been determined to put down the rival faction 
 which was led by Isagoras, brother of his father’s rival 
 Hippocleides, of dancing notoriety. As it was, he 
 brought about a complete democratic revolution. He 
 broke up the four old tribes, which were bound by 
 family ties and sacred rites, and made ten new geo¬ 
 graphical divisions. This was as radical a change as 
 the substitution of departments for provinces in France; 
 and the introduction of the decimal system, in nearly 
 every department of state at Athens, anticipated by 
 more than two thousand years the work of the French 
 Revolution. The Isagorids for a time turned the 
 tables on the Alcmseonids, by calling in the assistance 
 of the Spartans, and Cleistlienes had only just defeated 
 a dangerous confederacy against Athens. The Spartans 
 had invaded Attica from Megara, when the Boeotians 
 and Chalcidians broke in upon their northern frontier. 
 But the usual jealousy between the two Spartan kings, 
 and the defection of their Corinthian allies, dissolved 
 the Spartan army, and left the Athenians at leisure 
 to deal with their other enemies. They defeated 
 the Boeotians with great slaughter, taking seven hun¬ 
 dred prisoners; and crossing on the same day to Euboea, 
 there obtained a second victory over the Chalcidians, in 
 whose lands they afterwards planted a military colony. 
 The prisoners were ransomed, but their chains still 
 hung in the citadel at Athens in the time of Herodotus 
 on the walls blackened with Persian fire, and a hand¬ 
 some bronze quadriga stood by the gateway, which had 
 been offered to Minerva from the tithe of the ransom. 
 Its inscription was to this effect: 
 
 “Armies of nations twain, Bceotia banded with Cbalcis, 
 
 Sons of Athenian sires quelled in the labor of war, 
 
 Slaking their ardent pride in a dismal fetter of iron— 
 
 Then to the Maid for tithe gayewe the chariot and-four.” 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The energy of Athens at this time struck Herodotus 
 forcibly. It was like that of the French Jacobins when 
 they had enemies on every frontier, and the Vendee 
 and the Federals of the South on their hands besides. 
 Great political changes give a nation a present sense of 
 life and happiness, which is too often ultimately wreck¬ 
 ed by selfishness, but which seems for a time to inspire 
 superhuman strength. The worsted Thebans stirred up 
 the little island of iEgina, which was always a thorn in 
 the side of Athens till she had become mistress of the 
 sea. There was a very old-sianding feud about some 
 sacred images or fetishes of olive-wood, representing 
 the goddess Ceres and her daughter Persephone. No 
 doubt their holiness was enhanced by their age and 
 ugliness. Artistic beauty seems to have little to do 
 with the sacredness of images, and in modern times in 
 Italy an old black Madonna has been an object of pecu¬ 
 liar veneration. The Zeus of Phidias and the Aphro¬ 
 dite of Praxiteles were not molded by the hands of 
 Faith. 
 
 The Athenians had just refused a demand of the 
 Persian satrap of Sardis for the restoration of their ty¬ 
 rant Hippias, when Aristagoras arrived. They received 
 him with open arms, not only on account of this, but 
 also because Miletus was their own colony; and dis¬ 
 patched twenty slwps—probably all they could spare 
 from the iEginetan war—to aid the Milesians in their 
 struggle against the yoke of Persia. These w 7 ere joined 
 by five galleys from Eretria in Euboea, that city being 
 under an obligation to the Milesians. The crews left 
 their ships on the shore near Ephesus, and marched on 
 and surprised Sardis, shutting up the Persians in the cita¬ 
 del. But Sardis proved to them a miniature Moscow. 
 The town, mainly built of wood and reeds, caught fire. 
 
112 
 
 THE ELZEVIR IA HILARY. 
 
 and the buccaneers, thought it best to retreat as soon as 
 a sack became out of the question. But the Persian 
 forces caught them up near Ephesus, and inflicted se¬ 
 vere punishment before they could reach their ships. 
 The Ionian Greeks were now left to themselves by the 
 Athenians, but the insurrection assumed large propor¬ 
 tions, involving the whole Greek seaboard of Asia, 
 many inland tribes, and lastly spreading to the island of 
 Cyprus. 
 
 When Darius heard of the great revolt, and especially 
 of the burning of Sardis, his wrath was greatly kindled 
 against the Athenians. , He took a bow and shot 
 towards heaven, saying, “ O Zeus! grant that I may be 
 avenged on the Athenians!” He also appointed a slave 
 to say to him thrice every day during dinner, “ O king! 
 remember the Athenians. ” * Then he sent for Histiaeus, 
 telling him that he suspected he knew something about 
 the business. But the Greek’s innocent look and plausi¬ 
 ble words deceived the king, who was induced to send 
 him to the coast—the very thing he had desired—to help 
 to quell the insurrection. At Sardis' Histiaeus found an 
 astuter head to deal with. The satrap there was Arta- 
 phernes the king’s brother. He said, “I see how it is, 
 Histiaeus—thou hast stitched the shoe, and Aristagoras 
 has put it on.” But the adroit Ionian managed for the 
 time to escape out of all his difficulties. He even out¬ 
 witted Artaphernes so far, that, as Mr. Grote supposes, 
 he got him to execute a number of innocent Persians at 
 Sardis, by opening a treasonable correspondence with 
 them. The Milesians, -however, would not receive him 
 
 * There is a parallel symbolism in the case of Elisha and Joash 
 (2 Kings xiii. 17): “Then Elisha said, Shoot; and he shot. And 
 he said, The arrow of the Lord's deliverance, and the arrow of 
 deliverance from Syria.” 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 118 
 
 back as governor: lie therefore persuaded the Lesbians 
 to give him eight triremes, with which he took to piracy 
 on his own account in the parts about the Hellespont. 
 While marauding on the coast near Lesbos he was de-, 
 feated by a Persian force which happened to be there, 
 and his captors, fearing lest the good-natured Darius 
 might pardon him, put him to death at Sardis. Their' 
 fears were well-founded; for when they sent his head to 
 the king, Darius expressed much regret, and ordered it 
 to be buried with all honor. This is quite consistent 
 with the character of the Persian king as drawn by the 
 prophet Daniel. It seems as if no one who had once 
 done him a service could ever afterwards forfeit his good 
 graces. 
 
 After reducing Cyprus, the Persians fell with their 
 combined force on the Ionians and their allies. A vic¬ 
 tory won by the Greek fleet over the Phoenician sailors 
 of Darius had no result of importance. The Carians 
 fought most valiantly, and cut off. a whole Persian 
 division by an ambuscade. Though they lost in one 
 battle ten thousand men, yet their spirit was unbroken. 
 Miletus, too. still held out gallantly. If any man under 
 these circumstances ought to have shown an example of 
 self-devotion, that man was Aristagoras. But nerve is 
 inconsistent with levity of character. It often happens 
 that the coward runs into the jaws of his fate, and so it 
 happened to him. lie abandoned the Ionian cause, and 
 with some of his partisans sailed away for his father- 
 in-law’s new settlement in Thrace, where he was killed 
 while besieging some petty town. He had been just in 
 time to make his fruitless escape, for the Persians now 
 proceeded to invest Miletus by land andsea. The allied. 
 Greeks decided on leaving it to defend itself by land, 
 and concentrating their fleet at a small island off the 
 
114 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 coast. The allies counted in all three hundred and 
 
 fifty triremes, which were confronted by six hundred 
 
 in the service of Persia. The Persian commanders 
 
 / 
 
 first tried to dissolve the hostile confederation by 
 sending the deposed despots each to their own country¬ 
 men with promises of pardon on submission, and 
 threats of extermination in case of prolonged resistance. 
 The plan so far failed that it did not supersede the ne¬ 
 cessity of an action, for each separate state imagined it¬ 
 self the only one to which overtures were made. The 
 Ionian captains, in their council of war, now agreed to 
 put themselves all under the command of Dionysius 
 of Phocsea, He set to work to put the ships in con¬ 
 stant training, especially practicing a maneuver some¬ 
 thing like that of Nelson,—attacking the enemy’s 
 line in columns, and cutting through it. The inven¬ 
 tion of steam-rams seems likely to make the sea-fights 
 of the future more like those of the remote past than 
 ever. The incidents of the Merrimac’s battle and of 
 Lissa recall the collisions of ancient navies, only that 
 the oars of the galleys are superseded by steam-engines. 
 Their sails were not used in action, as they would* have 
 only embarrassed the rowers. To sweep away a whole 
 broadside of oars b} r cleverly shaving the enemy, and 
 then turn sharply and ram him home on the quarter, 
 was doubtless a favorite evolution of the best sailors. 
 Dionysius was too much of a martinet for the self-in¬ 
 dulgent Ionians. He kept them at sea all night—an 
 unheard-of innovation—and at drill all day, and the 
 days were terribly hot. They had not bargained for 
 this when they chose him admiral. They began to 
 murmur. “ What god have we offended that we should 
 be thus victimized? What fools we were to give our¬ 
 selves up body and Soul to this Phocsean bully, who 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 115 
 
 commands but three ships of his own! We shall fall 
 sick with the work and heat. The Persians can but 
 make us slaves, and no slavery can well be worse than 
 this. Let us mutiny.” So they landed and encamped 
 on the island, lolled in the shade all day, and refused 
 to go on board any more. Then the Persian poison 
 began to work. iEaces, the son of Syloson, lately 
 tyrant of Samos, succeeded in persuading his country¬ 
 men to promise to desert, and they alone had sixty 
 ships. Little could be hoped now from a general bat¬ 
 tle, but the battle took place. The Samians went off, 
 all but eleven ships, whose staunch captains, like Nel¬ 
 son at Copenhagen with his blind eye to the telescope, 
 would not see the signal of retreat. Most of the other 
 allied squadrons, when they saw what the Samians 
 were doing, imitated their bad example. The Chian 
 contingent, with the Samian eleven and a few others, 
 maintained a desperate struggle. The hundred Chian 
 ships, each with forty picked marines on board, charged 
 repeatedly through the enemy’s line. When they had 
 taken many of his galleys, and lost half their own, such 
 as were able made their way to their own island. Their 
 damaged ships made for MycalS, where the crews ran 
 them ashore and marched to Ephesus. But ill-fortune 
 followed them. It was night, and the Ephesians were 
 celebrating a feast, whose chief ceremony was a torch¬ 
 light procession of women. Thinking them a party 
 of freebooters come to carry off their wives and 
 daughters, the citizens sallied out and cut them all to 
 pieces. Dionysius the Phocsean had taken three ships, 
 thus exactly doubling his own number. When he saw 
 that the fight was lost, he made straight for the coast 
 of Phoenicia, left undefended by the absence of their 
 war-galleys, sank a number of merchantmen in the 
 
116 
 
 TIIE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 harbors, and gained by this booty the means of setting 
 up handsomely as a corsair in Sicily, where he plun¬ 
 dered Carthaginians and Tyrrhenians, but—with “are¬ 
 finement of delicacy very unusual,” as Mr. Rawliuson- 
 observes—let all Greek vessels go free. 
 
 The fall of Miletus soon followed the sea-fight. Most 
 of the men were killed, and the women and children 
 enslaved. The Athenians were deeply affected by the 
 news, and when their.poet Phryniclius brought on the 
 stage his tragedy of the “Capture of Miletus,” the 
 audience burst into tears, and he was fined a thousand 
 drachmas (francs), and forbidden ever to exhibit it 
 again. The revolt, which had now been desperately 
 maintained for six years, was terribly expiated. The 
 towns on the coast were as far as possible depopulated 
 (the people being sent to the interior); and the islands 
 were traversed by lines of soldiers, who “netted” the 
 inhabitants from one side to the other. Cities and 
 temples were burnt to the ground. The Chians had 
 been warned of coming evil by terrible portents. Of a 
 hundred youths sent to Delphi, all but two had died of 
 a pestilence; and just before the great sea-fight off 
 Miletus, the roof of a public school had fallen on the 
 heads of the children of the principal citizens, and only 
 one had escaped out of a hundred and twenty. In 1821 
 Europe was roused to sympathy for Greece by the hor¬ 
 rors which this very island (Scio) suffered from the 
 troops of the Capudan Pasha. 
 
 After a time the policy of the Persians changed to¬ 
 wards Ionia, probably because Darius disapproved of 
 the excessive severity which had been exercised; and 
 Mardonius, his son-in-law, a young noble of great 
 promise, was sent to depose once more the “tyrants,” 
 and establish democracies. These rulers had proved 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 117 
 
 that they were not to be trusted. Having settled this 
 business to the king’s satisfaction, he was appointed to 
 the command of a fleet and army whose destination was 
 Athens and Eretria—for Darius had never forgotten 
 their offense in the burning of Sardis. But the ulterior 
 object of the expedition was the subjugation of all 
 Greece. 
 
 As the Persian fleet w 7 as doubling Mount Atlios, 
 a north wind sprang up which terribly shattered it. 
 Little short of three hundred wrecks and tw 7 enty thou¬ 
 sand corpses were cast away on the rocky promontory. 
 Many fell victims, says Herodotus, to sea-monsters— 
 one of the additional perils of the deep in the imagina¬ 
 tion of ancient mariners; those w 7 ho could not swim 
 were drowned—and those who could, died of cold. 
 Mardonius himself received a wound in an action on 
 the mainland of Thrace, and the expedition returned 
 home with its commander invalided. Darius immedi¬ 
 ately made fresh preparations, and sent heralds to all 
 the Greek states to demand earth and water, in order 
 that he might know what support to expect. It is to 
 be hoped that the Athenians and Spartans did not dis¬ 
 grace themselves by throwing one of the heralds into a 
 well and the other into a pit, and telling them to fetch 
 earth and water thence; but such is the story. Darius 
 himself would under no provocation have so forgotten 
 his knighthood. Some years afterwards, the Spartans 
 were said to have sent two of their citizens, who 
 voluntarily offered themselves, to Susa, as an atone¬ 
 ment for this outrage, for which they believed that 
 the wrath of the hero Talthybius, the patron of 
 heralds, lay heavy on them; but Xerxes, wdio was then 
 king, would not accept the sacrifice, and dismissed 
 them unhurt. 
 
118 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 The iEginetans gave the earth and water to Darius, 
 probably to spite the Athenians, who at once denounced 
 them to the Spartans (who were as yet considered 
 the leaders of Greece) as traitors to the national cause. 
 The Spartan king Cleomenes went to iEgina to arrest 
 the most guilty parties; but his mission there was foiled 
 by his brother-king Demaratus, who was accusing him 
 at home. In retaliation, Cleomenes attempted to 
 prove that Demaratus was illegitimate. His mother 
 was the loveliest woman in Sparta. She had been 
 ugly in her childhood, but was changed into a beauty 
 by her nurse taking her daily to the temple of Helen. 
 There a mysterious lady—“tall as the gods, and most 
 divinely fair”—one day laid her hand on the child, 
 whose looks from that time forth began to amend. In 
 due time she had been married to a noble Spartan; but 
 Ariston the king fell in love with her, and got her from 
 her husband, who was his greatest friend, by a ruse. 
 He proposed to exchange their most precious posses¬ 
 sions, and they ratified the compact by an oath. Aris¬ 
 ton straightway demanded his friend’s wife. Thus 
 taken off his guard, and bound by his oath, the hus¬ 
 band unwillingly resigned her. But from circumstances 
 connected with the birth of the child Demaratus, he 
 was supposed by some to be not the son of Ariston, but 
 of her former husband, Cleomenes found a powerful 
 ally in Leotychides, the next heir, who was a deadly 
 enemy of Demaratus, and the suit was carried on in 
 his name. The inevitable oracle of Delphi was the last 
 court of appeal; and the priestess, being bribed by 
 Cleomenes, pronounced against Demaratus, who was 
 then deposed, and ultimately driven from Sparta by 
 the taunts of Leotychides. He made his way to that 
 paradise of refugees, the hospitable court of Darius, 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 119 
 
 who gave him lands and cities. He had Itood very 
 high in the estimation of his countrymen, as having 
 been the only Spartan who had won the four-horse 
 chariot-race at Olympia. 
 
 When Cleomenes had thus worked his will on Dem- 
 aratus, he took Leotychides, his new associate on the 
 throne, with him to JSgina, where he arrested two of 
 the principal citizens, as guilty of treason against the 
 liberty of Greece, and deposited them as hostages with 
 their bitter enemies the Athenians. But his own end 
 was near. Rumor accused him of underhand practices 
 against Demaratus, and he fled into Arcadia, where he 
 began to hatch a conspiracy against Sparta. The Spar¬ 
 tans in alarm called him home to his former honors. 
 He had always been eccentric; he now became a maniac. 
 He would dash his staff in the face of every citizen he 
 met. At last his friends put him in the stocks—a 
 wholesome instrument of restraint, as common there as 
 in our own country within the last century. Finding 
 himself alone one day with his keeper, he asked for a 
 knife. The Helot did not dare to refuse the king, 
 though a prisoner. Then he committed suicide in a 
 manner which, though effected more clumsily, resem¬ 
 bled the * Happy Dispatch,” of the Japanese. 
 
 The madness of Cleomenes, like that of Cambyses, 
 was generally supposed to have been a judgment on 
 his impiety. Herodotus thought his treatment of 
 Demaratus enough to account for it; but other charges 
 equally grave ware brought against him. He had 
 bribed the Pythian priestess. He had roasted alive 
 some fifty Argives who had taken refuge in a sacred 
 grove during his invasion of Argolis, by burning the 
 grove itself. He had scourged Argive priests for not 
 allowing him, a foreigner, to sacrifice in the temple of 
 
120 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 Juno. H#had been in the liabit of entering forbidden 
 temples, and generally of making a parade of reckless 
 irreligion. The Spartans themselves, however, gave a 
 more naturalistic account of the cause of his madness. 
 Certain Scythian ambassadors, who were staying at 
 Sparta to negotiate a league against Darius, had in¬ 
 duced the king to adopt the habit of taking his wine 
 without water like themselves. “To drink like a 
 Scythian” was a proverb. The case of Cambyses, as 
 we have seen, admitted of the like explanation. 
 
 When Cleomenes was dead, the AEginetans sent to 
 Sparta to complain of Leotycliides about their hostages, 
 who were still in custody with the Athenians. Leoty- 
 chides, who was not popular, narrowly escaped being 
 given up as a hostage in their stead; but, in the end, 
 he was duly sent to Athens to demand their release. 
 The Athenians refused fo give them up, saying that as 
 two kings had placed them there, they could not give 
 them up to one. They certainly would have had the 
 English law of trusteeship on their side. Leotycliides, 
 however, read them a striking lesson on the sacred ness 
 of trusts. He told them how one Glaucus, a Spartan, 
 had once consulted the oracle at Delphi as to restoring 
 a deposit of money to its rightful owner. He had the 
 audacity to ask whether he might venture to purge 
 himself by an oath, according to the Greek law, and so 
 keep the money. The Pythoness gave answer in these 
 warning words: 
 
 ; 
 
 “ O Glaucus, gold is good to win, 
 
 And a false oath is easy sin; 
 
 Swear—an thou wilt: death follows both 
 The righteous and unrighteous oath: 
 
 But Perjury breeds an awful Birth, 
 
 That hath no name in heaven or earth; 
 
HEllODOTUS. 
 
 121 
 
 Strong without hands, swift without feet, 
 
 It tracks the pathway of deceit— 
 
 Sweeps its whole household from the land; 
 
 Only the just man’s house shall stand.” 
 
 When Grlaucus heard these words, he at once restored 
 the money, and sent to beg of the god that the thought 
 of his: heart might be forgiven him. The oracle replied 
 that -;to tempt heaven with such a question was as bad 
 as to^’,commit the sin. “And now,” said the Spartan 
 king, “mark my words, men of Athens; at this day 
 there is none of G-laucus’ race left in Sparta; they have 
 perished, root and branch.” 
 
 The Athenians, however, turned a deaf ear to the 
 solemn monition. In return for their stubbornness, 
 the iEginetans laid wait for and captured the sacred 
 galley which carried the Athenian embassy to Delos 
 periodically, and threw the envoys (men of the highest 
 rank) into prison. A fierce war of reprisals was entered 
 upon, of which perhaps the most remarkable character¬ 
 istic is the poverty of the Athenians of the period in 
 ships. They were obliged to beg twenty galleys of 
 their friends the Corinthians, who, as it was against 
 the law to give them, generously sold the whole for a 
 hundred drachmae—about five francs apiece. 
 
 Leotycliides might have served to point the moral of 
 his own remarkable anecdote. He reaped little happi¬ 
 ness from the successful plot by which he had. sup¬ 
 planted Demaratus. After seeing his only son die be¬ 
 fore him,' he ended his own days in exile, having been 
 banished from Sparta for the disgraceful crime of taking- 
 bribes from the enemy during a war with the Thessa¬ 
 lians. The evident satisfaction with which Herodotus, 
 here as elsewhere, traces the course of retributive jus¬ 
 tice, is highly characteristic of the historian. 
 
122 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 MARATHON. 
 
 “The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bowl 
 The fiery Greek, his red pursuing spear! 
 
 Mountains above, Earth’s, Ocean’s plain below 1 
 Such was the scene.” 
 
 —Byron, “ Childe Harold.” 
 
 As the first expedition against Greece under Mardonius 
 had ended in disaster, Darius thought it best to let the 
 young commander gain experience before he was in¬ 
 trusted with the conduct of another; possibly, also, his 
 wound was long in healing. The second armada was 
 put under the command of Datis, a Mede of mature 
 years, and Artaphernes, nephew of the king. They 
 had express orders to bring the Athenians and Eretrians 
 into the royal presence in chains. The whole flotilla 
 —six hundred war-ships, besides transports—struck 
 straight across sea, through the Archipelago, not caring 
 again to tempt the dangers of Atlios. After sack¬ 
 ing Naxos, they came to the sacred island of Delos, 
 the birthplace of the twin deities Apollo and Diana. 
 Fortunately for the inhabitants, the senior commander 
 was a Median ritualist, not an iconoclast like Cam- 
 byses, and the sacred island was more than spared. 
 Herodotus mentions an earthquake as occurring soon 
 after this visit, and Thucydides another; and the story 
 of the island having once floated about at large, before 
 it became fixed, is doubtless connected with its volcanic 
 origin. The Persian armament swept like a blight 
 through the other islands, and soon appeared off the 
 
HERODOTUS . 
 
 123 
 
 coast of Euboea. Meeting with no resistance on laud¬ 
 ing, they disembarked their cavalry, and laid siege to 
 Eretria, which was betrayed to them after six days of 
 severe fighting. The town was burnt and sacked, and 
 the inhabitants carried away captive. They expected 
 from the threats of Darius the worst of fates; but when 
 they reached Susa, that forgiving monarch settled them 
 peaceabty at a place called Ardericca, where there was 
 a famous well which produced salt, bitumen, and petro¬ 
 leum. Herodotus saw them there, and mentions par¬ 
 ticularly that they had not forgotten their Greek. 
 
 The Athenians, after the fall of Eretria, must have 
 felt much as the Jews did when Sennacherib appeared 
 before their walls, and Rabshakeh boasted that all the 
 kings and gods on his march had fallen before him. 
 But when they heard that the Persians had actually 
 disembarked at Marathon, they must have felt as Eng¬ 
 land would have felt had the news come that Bona¬ 
 parte had landed in Pevensey Bay, close to the ominous 
 field of Hastings. For Marathon had not as yet become 
 a synonym for Victory; on the contrary, Pisistratus had 
 beaten the Athenian commons on that plain, and his 
 son Hippias was now T with the Persian host in a temper 
 which, they might be sure, had not improved with old 
 age, exile, and disappointment. 
 
 It was Hippias, wdio, from old association, and think¬ 
 ing the plain well suited for cavalry maneuvers, had 
 guided the Persians to the strand of Marathon (now 
 Vrana). The plain itself is shaped somewhat like a 
 thin crescent, the sea washing its concavity, and mount¬ 
 ains rising behind its convex rim, which opens out at 
 the back into tw 7 o valleys. Between both a spur runs 
 out, commanding the two gaps. The slope of this spur 
 was the key of the Athenian position. The extent of 
 
124 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 level ground is about six miles long, as measured by the 
 curve of the bay, and about a mile and a half broad. 
 But although along the whole of the six miles there is a 
 fine sandy beach for landing, behind it, a considerable 
 part—more than a third—of the crescent-plain is occu¬ 
 pied by two swamps, one of which is of considerable 
 extent. Here the Persian army awaited the mustering 
 of the Athenians. Why they did not push on at once 
 into the country is a mystery. 
 
 It so chanced that, just before the Persians came, a 
 heaven-sent commander dropped, as it were, from the 
 clouds into the fortunate city of Athens. The spirits of 
 men rose when it was rumored that Miltiades, the son 
 of Cimon, had come home. Herodotus gives us his 
 family history, which was curious enough. 
 
 The Chersonese is a tongue of land jutting into the 
 sea from the Thracian mainland. Its people being an¬ 
 noyed by the incursions of some savages to the north, 
 ■as the Britons were by the Piets and Scots, sent a depu¬ 
 tation to the oracle at Delphi to ask for advice. The 
 god told them to choose as king the first man who should 
 welcome them to his house. For some time they tra¬ 
 versed almost hopelessly various parts of Greece; but 
 Greek respectability was not likely to invite into its 
 sanctuary a party of strangers “dressed in outlandish 
 garments, and carrying long spears in their hands.” At 
 last in Attica they passed by the country-house of one 
 Miltiades, son. of Cypselus (a descendant of the hero of 
 the ‘ ‘ meal-bin”).* The democratic Tyranny had deprived 
 him of occupation, for he was a nobleman of the old 
 school, who came of “a four-liorse family,” says our 
 historian—had won, indeed, the great Olympic race 
 
 * See p. 103. 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 125 
 
 himself—who traced iiis pedigree back to Ajax, and was 
 connected with the proud Isagorids. So he sat idle in 
 his porch, heartily sick of Pisistratus and democratic 
 respectability. Seeing the foreign wayfarers pass, out 
 of mere curiosity, as it would seem, he invited them 
 into his house and entertained them. The interview 
 was satisfactory; Miltiades consented to take out a few 
 colonists with them to their wilds, and be their king. 
 The first thing he did v 7 as to build them a kind of Ha¬ 
 drian’s wall to keep back their Piets and Scots. His nep¬ 
 hew, Stesagoras, the son of Cimon, succeeded him, and 
 was succeeded, on his violent death, by his brother, this 
 second Miltiades, who came out from Athens, and made 
 himself by a coup d'etat despot of the whole Chersonese 
 —a great sin in the ej^es of his democratic countrymen, 
 who brought him to trial for it when he came to Athens, 
 but condoned it on account of his services to the state. 
 When the Persians in their march of vengeance, after 
 the Ionian revolt, came to the Hellespont, he ran the 
 gauntlet of their fleet successfully with five galleys; but 
 he left in their hands one ship, on board of which was 
 his son. As Miltiades had advised the king’s bridge 
 over the Danube to be destroyed, his captors thought, 
 when they sent the youth to Darius, that he would 
 punish the father in his person; but, with his usual 
 magnanimity, the king gave him a house and estate, 
 and a Persian wife, by whom he became the founder of 
 a Persian family. 
 
 Miltiades, immediately on his return to Athens, was 
 impeached by his democratic enemies for “tyranny” in 
 his colony; but, having cleared his character, he w r as at 
 once appointed one of the ten Athenian generals, of 
 whom Callimachus, the polemarcli, or minister of war, 
 was another. They could not have been much more 
 
126 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 than colonels, except on the clays when they held the 
 command in rotation; an arrangement which, to our 
 English notions, would be fatal to the success of any 
 great enterprise. The Athenians were as fond of deci¬ 
 mals as the Persians of the number seven. A tradi¬ 
 tional 10,000 Athenians were engaged on the Greek side 
 at Marathon. But the Greeks were apt to underesti¬ 
 mate their own numbers and exaggerate those of the 
 enemy. Supposing the Persian force to amount in all 
 to 200,000 men, making deductions for the guard of the 
 ships and the absent cavalry, they probably brought not 
 many more than 110,000 into the held, of whom 30,000 
 were heavy-armed. The Athenian light-armed must 
 also be reckoned, and if their whole force is put at 
 18,000, with 2000 Platseans, the odds still leave abundant 
 room for Hellenic self-gioritication. Before the Athe¬ 
 nians left their city, they had sent to Sparta for succor. 
 Their courier is said to have reached Sparta on foot—a 
 distance of 140 English miles—on the second day. But 
 the Spartans had an inveterate superstition against 
 marching until the moon was full. They were possibly in 
 no great hurry to help Athens, as when they did come, it 
 was too late, and only with two thousand men. The 
 Athenians had already drawn up their line of battle in 
 the sacred close of Hercules, at Marathon, when they 
 were joined by the Platseans. The Platteans had suffered 
 much in time past from their neighbors the Thebans, 
 and in return for substantial protection had bound 
 themselves to Athens; in fact the little State became a 
 satellite of the greater. 
 
 The Greek forces seem to have occupied the space 
 between Mount Kotroni and Argaliki, resting their 
 wings against the heights, which prevented their being 
 outflanked. There was hesitation as to beginning 
 
 o o 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 127 
 
 the attack. On the one hand, the Athenians rested 
 on their own supplies, and could take their time; and 
 the Spartan contingent, though tardy, might be ex¬ 
 pected to march in six days, when the moon would be 
 at the full. On the other hand, treachery was feared 
 from the party of Hippias in Athens, if there was any 
 delay. The generals were equally divided, but Mil- 
 tiades was for immediate action, and persuaded Cal¬ 
 limachus to give his casting-vote with him. By what 
 arrangement it happened is not clear, but it is certain 
 that when the day for action came, the command was 
 in the hands of Miltiades. Why the attack was made 
 on the particular day it is difficult to determine. Some 
 suppose that Miltiades, with an inspiration like that of 
 Wellington at Salamanca, saw his advantage in a tem¬ 
 porary absence of the Persian cavalry. Certain it is 
 that no cavalry are heard of in the action, which seems 
 singular, as Hippias is said to have chosen the spot for 
 their benefit.* The armies stood fronting each other. 
 Callimachus was on the right wing, and the Platseans on 
 the left. The right was always the post of honor and 
 of danger, because the last man had his side unprotected 
 by a shield. When the Greek line was formed, it ap¬ 
 peared too short as compared with that of the Persians; 
 so Miltiades, no doubt with some misgivings, drew 
 troops from his center and massed them on the wings, 
 in order that they might deploy when they came into 
 the open. There was nearly a mile of ground to be 
 cleared before arriving at the enemy’s line; and it was 
 
 * Mr. Blakesley thinks that they had not yet been disembarked, 
 but were Still at Eretria ; and perhaps it was for this reason 
 that the Persians kept their position close to the shore for so 
 long a time, and did not attempt to outflank by the hills an 
 enemy numerically so inferior. 
 
128 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 advisable to lose as few men as possible from arrows 
 before coming- to the thrust of spears. Miltiades there¬ 
 fore gave the signal to charge at quick step, which was 
 increased to a run when within range. The Persians, 
 on their side, prepared to give them a warm reception, 
 though they thought the Greeks mad for charging so 
 wildly, unsupported by archers or cavalry. But they 
 had scarcely time for admiration of their enemies before 
 they were in upon them. The two armies wrestled long 
 and desperately before advantage declared itself for 
 either. At last the swaying line of combat parted into 
 three fragments, which moved in different directions. 
 In the center, where the Persians and Sacae were posted, 
 the Athenians were rolled back, probably no farther 
 than the slope of Kotroni, where they could stand at 
 bay, though Herodotus says-they were pursued up the 
 valley. On the wings they were victorious; and the 
 allies of the Persians who were there, retiring creditably 
 enough, with their faces to the enemy, did not see the 
 marshes behind them, but floundered into them back¬ 
 wards. There was struggling to regain a footing, and 
 general confusion, of which the Greeks took advantage, 
 and pressed them harder till they were hopelessly 
 broken and discomfited. But the victorious wings now 
 perceived that their own center was dislocated from 
 them, and had lost ground before the elite of the Per¬ 
 sian army; they therefore faced about and fell on their 
 flanks. The Persian center, now engaged on three 
 sides, at last gave way likewise, and fell back in the 
 direction of their galleys. Covered probably by the 
 archers from the decks most of the troops got safe on 
 board. Then the Greeks raised a yell of disappointment, 
 called for fire to burn the ships, and many rushed into 
 the water to try to board them. One of the foremost 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 129 
 
 of these was Cynegeirus, brother to the poet HSschylus; 
 but, as he grasped the stern-ornament of a trireme, he 
 dropped hack with both his hands chopped off. Some 
 say that he maintained his hold until he lost first one 
 hand, then the other, and lastly his head, as he caught 
 the gunwale witli his teeth. 
 
 So ended the immortal battle of Marathon, which 
 stands almost alone by the side of Morgarten among 
 the miracles achieved by the inspiration of Freedom. 
 The Persians were sufficiently beaten, but tlieir rout 
 could hardly have been so complete as Herodotus de¬ 
 scribes, since they had not far to run. They lost six 
 thousand four hundred men, mostly in the swamps, and 
 seven galleys, held back by main force or carried by 
 boarding. It was in the fight at the ships that, besides 
 Cynegeirus, many Athenians of note fell, among them 
 two of the generals, one of whom was Callimachus. The 
 Athenians lost one hundred and ninety-two men in the 
 action. As the greater number are said to have fallen 
 in the attack on the ships, either those who gave 
 way before the Persians and Sacce were few, or they 
 only suffered a partial repulse. Greek armies, from 
 their formation in compact phalanx, seldom lost many 
 men until they were broken, when their long spears 
 and heavy armament rendered them more defenseless 
 than lighter troops. Marathon afterwards became a 
 household word at Athens, as Waterloo with us. A 
 “man who had fought at Marathon” had a patent of 
 popular nobility. Athenian orators made it a favorite 
 commonplace; and Athenian satirists found it an in¬ 
 exhaustible fund of jest upon the national vanity. Won¬ 
 derful stories were related in connection with the battle. 
 On the return of Pheidippides, the courier from S*parta, 
 he said that as he was crossing a mountain in Arcadia 
 
130 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 lie was accosted by tlie wood-god Pan, who called to 
 him by name, and complained of liis worship being 
 neglected by the Athenians, while he was always well 
 disposed towards them. In consequence, a temple was 
 dedicated to Pan under the Acropolis, and he was 
 honored with annual sacrifices and a torch-race. 
 National heroes were supposed to have been present, 
 and to have assisted in the fight; and one Athenian 
 was suddenly struck blind in the thick of the fray by 
 (as he declared) the passing before his eyes of a super¬ 
 natural giant, who slew the man at his side. 
 
 When the Persians had re-embarked, their fleet 
 doubled Cape Sunium, and made a demonstration in 
 the direction of the harbor of Athens, with the hope 
 of surprising the citj^; but the Athenians returned in 
 time to cover it. There was an ugly rumor, which 
 Herodotus entirely disbelieves, that a shield was hoisted 
 on the walls as a telegraphic signal by the Alcmseonids. 
 This, doubtless, emanated from the opposite faction; 
 for the Isagorids and Alcmgeonids of Athens hated 
 each other as cordially, and slandered each other as 
 unscrupulously, as the English Tories and Whigs of 
 the time of Queen Anne. 
 
 The tale of the subsequent fate of Miltiades is one 
 of the most painful passages in history. In the first 
 flush of his popularity he asked the Athenians to give 
 him seventy ships fully equipped, only deigning to 
 tell them that he would get them gold in abundance. 
 They asked no questions, but gave him the fleet. He 
 had a private grudge against the people of Paros, and 
 he now sailed to the island of marble, and laid siege to 
 its town. His patience began to be at an end, when 
 a certain priestess offered to forward his views. In 
 leaping the wall of the sacred precincts after an in- 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 131 
 
 terview with her he dislocated his thigh. He then 
 returned to Athens disabled, and as soon as he arrived 
 was put upon his trial on the capital charge of having 
 deceived the state, his accuser being Xanthippus, 
 father of the great Pericles. The crippled hero lay 
 on a couch in court while his friends defended him. 
 They could not say a w T ord in extenuation of the 
 Parian escapade, but rested his defense on the fact 
 that he had saved Athens at Marathon, and regained 
 Lemnos. But, unfortunately for Miltiades, this was 
 not the first time that he had had to appear on a charge 
 of like nature. It seemed as if he wished to make 
 himself despot of Paros—perhaps even despot of 
 Athens—as he had made himself despot of the Cher¬ 
 sonese. It was not for this that they had got rid of 
 Hippias. If he commanded well at Marathon, so did 
 the other generals, two of them now no more; nay, 
 every man who fought in those ranks seemed as good a 
 hero as he, for Marathon, like Inkermann, was a “sol¬ 
 dier’s battle.” If betook Lemnos, he had missed taking 
 Paros, and wasted the public money at a time w T hen the 
 treasury was low. They had not the heart to condemn 
 him to death, for as he lay before them he seemed to 
 bear death’s mark already—and, indeed, it must have 
 appeared to them as impossible as for the king of Italy 
 to punish Garibaldi for treason after his wound at 
 Aspromonte; but they condemned him in the expenses 
 of the abortive expedition, amounting to fifty talents 
 (above £12,000). As his son Cimon was able to pay 
 these heavy damages, his judges seem to have had no 
 intention of absolutely ruining him. Soon afterwards 
 physical mortification in the injured limb, assisted no 
 doubt by mental, put an untimely end to the days of 
 the Man of Marathon. 
 
182 
 
 T1IE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 TIIERMOPY L M 
 
 “ Singing of men that in battle array, 
 
 Ready in heart and ready in hand. 
 
 March with banner, and bugle, and fife, 
 
 To the death, for their native land.” 
 
 0 —Tennyson, “ Maud.” 
 
 After tlie terrible defeat of his best generals at Mara¬ 
 thon, Darius thought the Athenians worth his personal 
 attention. That battle took place in the autumn of 
 33. c. 490; and the king occupied the next three years 
 in preparations for a new expedition, which he in¬ 
 tended to lead in person. But a revolt in Egypt divided 
 his attention; and he was considering in which direc¬ 
 tion he was most wanted, when he was summoned 
 from the scene by a mightier monarch than himself, 
 after a reign of six and-thirty years. His fourth son, 
 Xerxes, succeeded him—not his first-born, Arlabazanes; 
 because Xerxes had been born in the purple, and of a 
 daughter of Cyrus; whereas the elder sons had been 
 born when Darius was a subject, and of the daughter 
 of a subject. Xerxes soon disposed of the Egyptian 
 revolt, and left his brother Achsemenes satrap of the 
 country. Then he took up the great quarrel bequeathed 
 him by his father, but, after many hesitations and 
 vacillations, signified in the narrative of Herodotus by 
 dreams and their interpretations, and opposite opinions 
 said to have been given by Artabanus, who dissuaded, 
 and Mardonius, who was in favor of an invasion. The 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 133 
 
 young king was evidently afraid of compromising Lis 
 newly-inlierited prosperity. He was of a luxurious 
 character, not craving, like Darius, for barren honor; 
 and if he left the Greeks alone, it would be a long time 
 before they found their way to Susa. When the bolder 
 counsels at last prevailed, he resolved to make matters 
 as safe as possible. Grecian liberty was not to be 
 stabbed, but stifled, to death. He would pour out all 
 Asia upon it. So he took four good years in prepara¬ 
 tion, gathering a host of armed, half-armed, and al¬ 
 most unarmed men, such as has hardly been seen be¬ 
 fore or since. The soldiers, with the exception of the 
 select few, carried the rudest national weapons—bows 
 and arrows, poleaxes, “morning-stars,” even staves 
 and lassos. Some rate the host as high as five millions; 
 others give less than half that number. The men were 
 measured, like drygoods—not counted; that is, a pen 
 was made which could hold ten thousand, through 
 which the whole army passed in successive batches. It 
 is time, perhaps, that a common error should be ex¬ 
 ploded, into which, however, it would be impossible 
 for any attentive reader of Herodotus to fall. No 
 schoolboy believes now, as elderly men did when they 
 were boys, that the French are a nation of cowards. 
 But it is possible for careless readers of Greek history 
 to believe that the Persians were cowards; else, the} r 
 might sa}*-, how should they have been beaten by so. 
 small a number of Greeks? And were they not obliged 
 to flog their soldiers into action? Perhaps this was 
 only a Greek version of the fact that corporeal punish¬ 
 ment was an institution in their army. Among the 
 Greeks it was confined to slaves. The lash has not 
 prevented Russians and Austrians—not to mention 
 others—from fighting well. Perhaps the native Per- 
 
134 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 sians, especially those of noble birth, were personally 
 braver than the Greeks. But the Greeks had the im 
 mease advantage of discipline. In a disciplined army 
 every man has the eyes of his comrades on him, and if 
 fear is felt, it cannot act for very shame, and because 
 it is counteracted by mechanical obedience. Aristotle 
 assigns a special kind of courage to national militias, 
 which all Greek armies were, which he calls the politi¬ 
 cal courage, springing from the feeling of what is due 
 from the individual to the community. This may not 
 be courage of the most romantic kind, but it appears to 
 answer its end perfectly;.and Nelson thought it good 
 enough to appeal to in his famous watchword, still 
 written round the wheel of our war-ships—“England 
 expects every man to do his duty.” This kind of cour¬ 
 age culminated in Leonidas. The Persian officers were 
 even desperately brave, and always led the charges in 
 person, which accounts for their great relative loss in 
 battles. The Greek officers took their chance with the 
 rest, being indistinguishable from the privates in the 
 phalanx. Again, the number of their armies were a 
 positive disadvantage to the Persians; for most of their 
 auxiliary troops, when brought into contact with real 
 soldiers, were as sheep brought to the shambles. The 
 Greeks were also more efficiently armed. The Persian 
 infantry were archers, carrying also pikes and daggers, 
 who (like the English crossbow-man with his pavoise- 
 bearer in the fifteenth century) made a bulwark of their 
 great oblong wicker shields, as may be seen now in the 
 Nimrud sculptures, and shot from behind them. But 
 when this bulwark was once forced the Persians had no 
 protection but their light armor against the strong pikes 
 of the Greeks. Our archers turned the scale of battle 
 against superior forces at Cressy and Poitiers, because 
 
HERODOTUS . 
 
 135 
 
 they were Hie only body which had at all the character 
 of regular troops. 
 
 The Persian officers had in some respects become 
 luxurious and effeminate even in the time of Darius, 
 riding in palanquins, keeping sumpter-camels, and so 
 forth; but they do not appear to have been worse than 
 our Anglo-Indians, who have never been reckoned defi¬ 
 cient in valor. The French mousquetaires, who fought 
 under Marshal Saxe, were as celebrated for their fop¬ 
 pery as their gallantry in the field. “Hold hard—the 
 dandies are coming!” was the word passed from one 
 British soldier to another when their laced coats and 
 three-cornered hats came in sight. 
 
 There is no need to follow in detail all the pomp and 
 circumstance of the slow march of Xerxes into Greece. 
 The vast army crossed from Abydos to Sestos by a 
 double pontoon bridge; and Xerxes, like the spoiled 
 child of the harem, is said to have ordered the Helles¬ 
 pont to be scourged, and chains to be thrown into it, 
 and branding-irons to be plunged into the hissing water, 
 because a storm had destroyed the work when first at¬ 
 tempted. He is also said to have cut in halves the 
 eldest son of a wealthy Lydian, who had made him an 
 offer of all his property, but requested that one of his 
 sons might be left behind; making his troops defile 
 between the severed portions, by way of raising their 
 enthusiasm. A similar story is told of Darius, which 
 appears, in his case, incredible. The great interest of 
 the expedition begins when it arrived where resistance 
 might be expected from the Greeks. The land-force 
 which marched round the coast was accompanied by 
 more than twelve hundred war-galleys, besides a multi¬ 
 tude of other craft. The navy passed through a new- 
 made ship canal, by which the voyage round the for- 
 
THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 186 
 
 inidable headland of Atlios was avoided. Our author 
 says the work was done in mere bravado, since the 
 ships might have been drawn across the. narrow neck 
 of land with less labor and cost. It is remarkable, in 
 the cutting of this canal (a work of three years, the 
 traces of which arc still distinctly visible), that all 
 the other nations were senseless enough to make its 
 sides perpendicular, which, from the continual land¬ 
 slips, gave them double trouble; while the Phoenicians 
 alone proved themselves as good “navvies” as naviga¬ 
 tors, by making their cutting twice as broad at top as 
 at bottom. 
 
 The news of the approach of this overwhelming 
 host struck the Greeks with consternation, and all the 
 northern tribes, including the Thebans, submitted to 
 the invader. The Athenians were alarmed by dark 
 oracles pointing apparently to their extermination, but 
 containing one saving clause, that they might find safe¬ 
 ty in their “ wooden walls.” They wisely interpreted 
 this to mean their ships. Their troublesome war with 
 the ASginetans proved now an advantage, as it had 
 forced them to make large additions to their navy, the 
 former poverty of which has been mentioned. Envoys 
 were sent for aid to Argos, Sicily, Corcyra, and Crete. 
 The Argives might be well excused for declining, as Cle- 
 omenes had just massacred six thousand out of their not 
 probably more than ten thousand citizens. Gelon, the 
 king of Syracuse, would have assisted, had not Sicily 
 been just then invaded by a miscellaneous army of 
 three hundred thousand men under the command of the 
 Carthaginian Hamilcar, possibly induced, through the 
 Phoenicians, to make this diversion in favor of Xerxes. 
 Gelon had the good fortune to destroy this host in the 
 decisive battle of Himera, on the same day as the Greek 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 137 
 
 victory at Salamis. The Corcyrseans temporized, with 
 their historical selfishness; the Cretans excused them¬ 
 selves on the faith of an oracle; so the Greeks proper 
 were left to face their terrible enemy alone, and even 
 among them there were many craven spirits who took 
 the side of the Persians. 
 
 Thessaly, through wliioh the course of the invaders 
 lay, is a basin of mountains, like Bohemia, cracked by 
 the gorge of the Peneus, as Bohemia is b} T that of the 
 Elbe. This basin was doubtless, as Herodotus says, 
 once a lake, until it was tapped b} r some convulsion of 
 nature. Xerxes thought flooding the country quite 
 feasible, by damming up the outlet of the river : no such 
 measure, however, was necessary. At first the Greeks 
 had intended to make their stand there, in the Yale of 
 Tempe, celebrated for its beauty. Overhung by plane- 
 woods, the high cliffs are festooned with creepers, and 
 diversified with underwood, approaching here and there 
 so closely as to leave barely room for the road and 
 river. But they gave up this position when they found 
 that Thessaly could easily be entered by another road 
 over the mountains. The} r drew back towards the 
 isthmus; and Thessaly at once made terms with the 
 Persian king. 
 
 It was now decided to make the first stand at the 
 narrow pass of Thermopylae (IIotwells-Gate), the key 
 of Greece itself. The river Spercheius has since estab¬ 
 lished a tract of alluvial deposit between the mountain 
 and the sea, but the hot springs are still there, in pools 
 of clear water, and the other features of the scene re¬ 
 main much as they were in the time of Herodotus. 
 The pass leads along the shore from Thessaly to Locris. 
 The Grecian fleet were to support the army in the nar¬ 
 row strait by Artemisium, on the head of Euboea (Neg- 
 
138 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 ropont). As the Persian host rolled on, it had increased 
 like a snowball, imbibing the contingents of all the 
 districts that submitted. But the elements were still 
 against the invaders. A storm arose when their fleet 
 was off Magnesia, attributed by the Athenians to the 
 intervention of Boreas (the North Wind), who had mar¬ 
 ried a daughter of their mythical king Ereclitlieus. At 
 least four hundred galleys perished', and so much wealth 
 was cast ashore that the wreckers on the coast became 
 rich men; and the Persians soon after lost fifteen ships 
 more, which mistook the enemy’s fleet for their own. 
 Xerxes was himself with the land-force which had now 
 occupied the territory of Tracliis, north of the pass of 
 Thermopylae. The little Greek army had posted itself 
 behind an ancient wall, which barred the pass, and 
 which they had repaired, at a spot where there was only 
 room for a single cliariot-road. The nucleus of the 
 force (in all under 8000 of all arms) was three hundred 
 thorough-bred Spartans, each attended by his seven 
 Helots. They were all fathers of families, who had left 
 sons at home to succeed them. At their head was 
 Leonidas, now senior king of Sparta. This small force 
 was expected to be able to hold the pass until the rest 
 were disengaged; for the Spartans were keeping a local 
 feast, and the other Greeks were engaged at the great 
 Olympian festival. Perhaps the very extremity of the 
 danger made the Greeks put their religious duties in the 
 foreground; and, indeed, Leonidas and his men went 
 out as to an expected sacrifice. A Persian scout re¬ 
 ported to Xerxes that he found the Spartans busy dress¬ 
 ing their hair. In surprise the king appealed for expla¬ 
 nation to his refugee guest Demaratus, the banished 
 king of Sparta, whom he had brought to Greece in his 
 train. The Spartan warned him that it betokened, on 
 
HERODOTUS ; 
 
 139 
 
 the part of his countrymen, a resistance to the death. 
 Usually careless of their dress, there was one occasion 
 when they polished their arms, combed their long liair 
 and wreathed it with flowers, and put on scarlet vests: 
 it was when they expected a battle which they might 
 not survive. Xerxes waited four days to see if they 
 would retire, and then ordered his Medes and Cissians 
 to bring them to him in chains. For a whole day these 
 made repeated attacks, and were as often repulsed with 
 heavy loss. The Persian “Immortals” were then 
 launched at them, and fared no better. These troops 
 were so called because they were always kept up to the 
 exact number of ten thousand, * and represented the 
 Imperial Guard. Often pretending flight, so as to draw 
 them on in loose pursuit, the Greeks turned on their 
 enemies and butchered them. One would have thought 
 that this affair in the front w r ould have made little im¬ 
 pression on that dense host; but Xerxes is said to have 
 leaped thrice from his throne as the wave of disturbance 
 reached him, fearing for his whole army. On the third 
 day a native guide came and told the king of a pass over 
 the mountains, by which the Greeks might be taken in 
 rear, and he selected Hydarnes, the commander of the 
 Immortals, for this important service. The crest of 
 this pass (the existence of which the Greeks had learned 
 too late) w T as watched on their behalf by a thousand 
 Phociaus, who were warned by hearing the rustling of 
 the dry leaves of the oak-wood, but thinking an attack 
 on their own post was intended, retired to a more de¬ 
 fensible position, and let Hydarnes pass on. The way 
 in which the little band of heroes received the an- 
 
 * The forty members of the French Academy are so nick¬ 
 named for the same reason. 
 
140 
 
 TIIE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 nouncement that their position had been turned should 
 be told in Herodotus’s own words: 
 
 •‘First, the soothsayer, Megistias, as he inspected the 
 sacrifices, warned them of the death which awaited 
 them with the morrow’s dawn. Then came some de¬ 
 serters, who told them of the march of the Persians 
 round the hill. All this was while it was still night. 
 Then, when the day had broken, their scouts came run¬ 
 ning down from the heights with the same news. There¬ 
 upon the Greeks took counsel, and their opinions were 
 divided; for some would not hear of quitting their post, 
 while others advised to do so. Then they parted asun¬ 
 der, aud some went off and dispersed each to their own 
 cities, and some prepared to remain there with Leoni¬ 
 das. It is even said that Leonidas himself sent them 
 away, anxious that they should not be slain; but for 
 himself and the Spartans who were there, it was not 
 seemly, he said, for them to leave a post which they had 
 once undertaken to keep.” 
 
 Those who chose the nobler alternative, besides the 
 Spartans and their Laconian subjects and Helot slaves, 
 who could not help themselves, were seven hundred 
 Thespians and four hundred Thebans—the latter, our 
 author says, detained as hostages, but probably pro¬ 
 scribed at home for refusing to submit, like the rest, to 
 Xerxes. The struggle now could have but one issue. 
 Xerxes ordered a general attack at daybreak, and Leon¬ 
 idas, in order to sell the lives of his men as dearly as 
 possible, ordered them to advance from the defile itself, 
 and attack in the open. The Persians perished in 
 crowds—some driven into the sea, some trampled to 
 death by their comrades, others urged forward by stripes 
 only to fall on the deadly lances of the Greeks. 
 
 Dead weight, however, began to tell against the latter, 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 141 
 
 when they had broken their spears in barbarian bodies, 
 and had used their swords till they were weary. At 
 last Leonidas fell, and over his body the struggle was 
 renewed more furiously than ever. 
 
 “ The dead around him on that day 
 In a semicircle lay.” 
 
 In that swathe of corpses were found two brothers of 
 Xerxes. Four times the Greeks repulsed the enemt*, 
 and at last bore off the bod}r of their king. They had 
 but short breathing-space. Their hour was come when 
 the fatal troops of Hydarnes came down the hills in 
 their rear. The survivors drew back into the narrowest 
 part of the pass, within the wall, and posted themselves 
 on a hillock, where a stone lion afterwards marked the 
 resting-place of Leonidas. So did the survivors of the 
 Khyber Pass massacre in 1841 draw together for a last 
 stand on the hillock at Gundamuck, whence a single 
 officer escaped to Pesliawur to tell that the British army 
 was exterminated. 
 
 Tiie four hundred Thebans saved themselves by a 
 timely surrender; the remaining four thousand Greeks 
 were buried in a liail-shower of missiles. Herodotus 
 awards the palm of valor to a Spartan wit, who, when 
 he was told that the Persian arrows would darken the 
 air, said: “ Then we shall have but a sliadowdight” (or 
 sham-fight). Such a man would have appreciated the 
 ghastly witticisms of the guillotine in the French Revo¬ 
 lution. Xerxes, with an indecency towards the dead 
 quite opposed to all Persian usage, had the head of 
 Leonidas cut off and fixed upon a pole. 
 
 The Greek combined fleet was commanded by the 
 Spartan Eurybiades. The Spartans would only co- 
 
142 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 operate on condition that the command should be 
 theirs, though they only furnished ten ships, while the 
 Athenians mustered one hundred and twenty-seven. 
 Spartan provincialism forms a strong contrast to the 
 national patriotism of the little state of Platsea, which 
 threw itself heart and soul into the cause of Greek in¬ 
 dependence. Though landsmen, the Platseans helped 
 to man the Athenian fleet. They were afterwards re¬ 
 warded by vile ingratitude from Sparta, and lukewarm 
 friendship from Athens. 
 
 The whole naval strength counted two hundred and 
 seventy-one tliree-banked galleys. The Persian disaster 
 in the storm had now been balanced by a Greek dis¬ 
 aster in the field; and the barometer of Hellenic confi¬ 
 dence fell again. There was even talk of leaving Euboea 
 to its fate, and retreating southwards. Tliemistocles, 
 the Athenian commander, w r as a man who had raised 
 himself to a foremost position from small beginnings, 
 which may account for his understanding so well the 
 use and power of money. If Mammon was one of his 
 gods, he could make him his servant for good as well as 
 for evil. The Euboeans, alarmed for their families and 
 goods, besought the Spartan admiral not to desert them; 
 and finding him impracticable, applied to Tliemistocles 
 —this time backing their prayers with a present of 
 |thirty talents. Tliemistocles knew Eurybiades better 
 than they, and gave him five talents out of the thirty, 
 as if they had come from himself, or from the treasury 
 of the Athenians, and three more to Adeimantus the 
 Corinthian, whose valor, among all the national com¬ 
 manders, seemed most strongly tempered with discre¬ 
 tion. The rest of this secret-service money he kept for 
 himself. 
 
 The Persians, in great fear lest the Greek fleet should 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 143 
 
 escape them under cover of night, detached two hun¬ 
 dred ships, with orders to sail round outside Euboea, 
 and back up the strait between the island and the main¬ 
 land, and so block in the enemy. 
 
 The battle—or rather battles, for there were three— 
 of Artemisium began by desultory and provocative at¬ 
 tacks on the part # of the Greeks, who, when they had 
 brought the whole Persian fleet upon them, rolled theirs 
 up like a hedgehog or porcupine, with the spines out¬ 
 side. They drew their sterns all together, and formed 
 a circle with their sharp beaks turned every way. In 
 the first vielee thirty ships were taken from the Persians. 
 The battle lasted through the midsummer evening, and 
 then each fleet withdrew to its moorings. The sea was 
 like oil, and that ominous calm reigned from which 
 better sailors than the Greeks would have foretold 
 storm. At midnight it thundered and lightened on 
 Mount Pelion, the wind rose, and the wrecks and bodies 
 ■were drifted to the station of the Persian fleet, and 
 struck the crews with dismay. But it fared worse with 
 their detached division, which was utterly destroyed on 
 the rocks on the outer coast of Euboea. Thus did the 
 good wind Boreas still seem to help his friends. A re¬ 
 inforcement of fifty-three fresh Athenian galleys came 
 up at daybreak, having escaped the storm inside the 
 island. The ancient war-ships, even the great “five- 
 bankers” of the Romans and Carthaginians, could stand 
 no more weather than a river-steamer; while their great 
 rounded Dutch-built merchant ships would ride out a 
 moderate gale fairly. On the afternoon of the second 
 day the Greeks attacked again, and sank some Ciliciau 
 vessels. On the third day about noon the Persians be¬ 
 gan the attack, while the Greeks kept their station at 
 Artemisium. There was much fouling among the Per- 
 
144 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 y 
 
 sin ns from their closely-packed vessels, but they fought 
 well, and neither side could claim much advantage. 
 The Athenians gained most distinction among the al¬ 
 lies; and of the Athenians Cle-inias, son of Alcibiades, 
 and father of him of that name who afterwards was the 
 representative Athenian of the new school. He had 
 manned and equipped his trireme Tit his own expense. 
 The Greeks remained masters of the field—that is, 
 of the scene of action, with the bodies and wrecks: 
 
 I 
 
 but as half the Athenian fleet had been more or 
 less damaged, they decided on withdrawing south¬ 
 ward, especially as they now heard of the loss of 
 Thermopylae. Before he went, Themistocles had in¬ 
 scriptions graven on the rocks by all the watering, 
 places, exhorting the Ionian Greeks now in the 
 service of Persia to desert. If this had no effect on 
 those to whom they vrnre addressed, it would at any 
 rate make them objects of suspicion to the Persians. 
 Then the Greeks sailed away—the Corinthians first, the 
 Athenians, as became them, last. 
 
 While the Persian sailors and marines were wasting 
 the north of Euboea, a herald came from Xerxes order¬ 
 ing a day’s leave ashore to be given, that the crews 
 might view the field of Thermopylae. On the Greek 
 side were four thousand bodies in a heap, which the 
 king pretended were all Spartans or Thespians ; on his 
 side lay about a thousand, scattered all over the field. 
 The rest of the Persians had been carefully buried 
 beforehand; but the trick deceived nobod} r . 
 
 The Persian army now' advanced and ravaged Phocis, 
 and on the farther frontier parted into two divisions, 
 the larger entering the friendly territory of Boeotia, and 
 making for Athens—the smaller proceeding towards 
 Delphi. Xerxes was well instructed as to the Avealth 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 145 
 
 •of Apollo's temple, and must have known by heart all 
 the costly offering’s that Croesus had made. The 
 Delphians in dismay consulted their oracle : the god 
 replied that “he could protect his own.” Just when 
 the enemy reached the ascent to the temple a thunder¬ 
 storm burst forth, and great rocks came rolling down 
 the steep of Parnassus. The Persians fled and the 
 Delphians, assisted apparently by two supernatural 
 warriors, emerged from their hiding-places and slew 
 the hinderrnost. The priests of Apollo were doubtless 
 adepts in the machinery of the stage. * 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 6ALAMIS. 
 
 “ The man of firm and righteous will, 
 
 No rabble, clamorous for the wrong. 
 
 No tyrant’s brow, whose frown may kill, 
 
 Can shake the strength that makes him strong: 
 
 Not winds, that chafe the sea they sway, 
 
 Nor Jove’s right hand, with lightning red: 
 
 Should Nature’s pillared frame give way, 
 
 That wreck would strike one fearless head.” 
 
 —Conington’s “Horace.” 
 
 Such is the portrait of Themistocles, as drawm by 
 Kaulbach of Munich, in his great cartoon of the battle 
 of Salamis. He stands at ease on the deck of his galley, 
 sacrificing to the gods while the battle is ending. We 
 feel that he would be as composed and dignified, only 
 somewhat sadder, if the ruin were coming on him 
 instead of on the enemy. The very self-seeking of 
 
146 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 this remarkable man in the midst of the most exciting 
 circumstances bears testimony to the admirable balance 
 of his nature. He somewhat resembles Marlborough, 
 of whom, for all his romantic courage, Macaulay too 
 severely says, that in his youth he loved lucre more 
 than wine or women, and in his middle age he loved 
 lucre more than power or glory. But it must be 
 remembered that Themistocles was a Greek, and the 
 versatile Ulysses is the very type of a Greek hero. 
 
 It was not in the Greek character to vie with Darius 
 in his right nfyal disdain of petty advantage and 
 private revenge. The Greeks would have made far 
 better “hucksters” than that king who was so called 
 by his nobles because he was a good financier. And 
 Themistocles was a first-rate example of the middle- 
 class burgher, as “the curled Alcibiades” was of the 
 “gilded youth” of a cultivated Greek republic. He 
 was Presence-of-mind incarnate. But he was honest 
 withal—with the honesty of a good Jew with whom 
 one might safely deposit millions, but who would not 
 fail to make every shilling breed. And he was a 
 patriot—one who would die for his country at any 
 moment, but was far too sensible to believe in her or 
 to trust her. The sequel of his life showed that he 
 was right. Themistocles, though not the highest type 
 of man, is perhaps the most perfect specimen of the 
 Greek on record. 
 
 The Athenians had hoped that the combined Greek 
 forces would make a stand in Boeotia, but in this they 
 were disappointed. The primary object of the Spartans v 
 was to take care of themselves; their secondary object, 
 to save Greece that they might rule it. They wished 
 the Athenians out of their way, but they felt that if 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 147 
 
 the fire spread to them it would be coming somewhat 
 close to their own home. Could they not sacrifice 
 Athens, and save the Athenians, who would then be 
 their obedient servants ? So they withdrew their land- 
 forces behind the Isthmus of Corinth, which they pro¬ 
 ceeded to fortify; while the combined fleet was induced, 
 by the entreaties of the Athenians, to anchor off the 
 island of Salamis, to which most of the latter proceeded 
 to transfer for safety their families and goods. 
 
 The Greeks had received reinforcements which made 
 their fleet larger now than when it had fought at 
 Artemisium. The Athenians now furnished one hun¬ 
 dred and eighty of the three hundred and seventy- 
 eight galleys. The Persian army entered Athens only 
 to find an empty city r —none had remained in it but 
 some of the very poorest, or a few obstinate heads who 
 saw in the palisade of the citadel the “wooden walls” of 
 the oracle, and strengthened it with planks accordingly. 
 The Persians encamped on the Areopagus (the Mars’ 
 Hill of St. Paul), and shot lighted arrows at the barri¬ 
 cade, which was soon in flames. But their storming- 
 parties were foiled by a gallant defense, until a few 
 soldiers scaled a place where no watch was kept, and 
 were followed by others, who put the weak garrison to 
 the sword. The temple of the goddess was plundered 
 and burnt, and Xerxes sent a messenger home to Susa 
 to announce that his vengeance w 7 as complete. 
 
 The sacrifice of Athens was unavoidable, yet it 
 greatly affected the allies, who thought of withdrawing 
 their fleet to the isthmus. But the Athenians felt that 
 this step would almost certainly lead to its breaking up. 
 There was a long war of words between Themistocles, 
 Eurybiades, and Adcimantus. This last was insolent 
 to the Athenian. “You have no country now,” said 
 
148 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 he, “and therefore no vote.” Themistocles replied, 
 that with two hundred well-manned ships the Athenians 
 would find a country wherever they chose to land. 
 At last the threat that the Athenians would all emigrate 
 to Italy, and give up the war, prevailed. And prepara¬ 
 tions were made for battle. 
 
 The time was naturally one which abounded with 
 portents and prodigies, which were generally interpreted 
 to the disadvantage of the enemy. It was the time of 
 the year of the great procession in honor of Ceres and 
 Bacchus from Eleusis to Athens. It could not be held 
 now in the presence of the enemy, but a chant was 
 heard in the air, as from no mortal choir, and a column 
 of dust was seen to rise and spread into a heavy cloud 
 which overshadowed the Persian armament. Some en¬ 
 thusiasts averred that they saw the heroes Ajax, Teucer, 
 and Achilles, battling for their homesteads in Salamis 
 and iEgina. Their images, at all events, were brought 
 out to battle for good luck. The Spanish Carlists, 
 when they appointed the image of Nostra Senora dc 
 los Dolores generalissimo of their forces, went a step 
 further; and this was in our remembrance. 
 
 The Persian fleet had already lost six hundred and 
 fifty ships, but Herodotus says that it had been rein¬ 
 forced to the original number by the contingents from 
 the islands and some maritime states—an assertion which 
 seems hardly probable. At Plialerum, the harbor of 
 Athens, a council of war was held. The best head in 
 the fleet of Xerxes was a woman’s—Artemisia, queen of 
 Halicarnassus. This Amazon of the sea seemed almost 
 a match for that goddess of war and wisdom whom 
 the Athenians worshiped. She always appears a spe¬ 
 cial favorite with her townsman Herodotus, who never¬ 
 theless is said to have found the tyranny of her family 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 149 
 
 unendurable. She advised Xerxes to bide his time, and 
 let the Greek confederacy fall to pieces from internal 
 dissensions. But the party of action prevailed; the 
 land-forces marched on the isthmus, where Cleombro- 
 tus, brother of Leonidas, now commanded, and the fleet 
 weighed anchor. 
 
 The Spartans and other Greeks within the Peninsula 
 had meanwhile been working night and day, throwing 
 up a wall of defense across the isthmus. Their panic 
 communicated itself to the fleet, so that Themistocles 
 was obliged at last to resort to a desperate stratagem. 
 He sent to the Persian commanders secretly, to tell 
 them that he was a well-wisher of the king’s, and that 
 the Greeks meditated flight. The Persians believed it, 
 and made such arrangements of their forces, undercover 
 of the night, as would effectually prevent the escape of 
 their enemies. The Greek council of captains was still 
 in tierce debate when the Athenian Aristides arrived 
 from iEgina, where he was undergoing ostracism (he 
 was said to have been banished because the people were 
 tired of hearing him called “ the Just”), and said that he 
 had just succeeded in getting through the enemy, who 
 had completely surrounded the Greeks. All now made 
 up their minds for the inevitable fight, and the com¬ 
 manders addressed the crews—Themistocles, with the 
 most powerful eloquence. But the enemy attacked so 
 fiercely that the Greeks backed water, till Ameinias the 
 Athenian, whose blood was hotter than that of the rest, 1 
 darted forward and engaged an enemy’s ship. The two 
 became entangled, and others coming up to their aid, 
 the conflict became general. The Persians themselves 
 fought better than at Artemisium, although they be¬ 
 came involved in the same inextricable confusion, while 
 the Greeks never allowed their line to be broken. The 
 
150 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 very circumstance that the Persians were under the eye 
 of their king, who overlooked the battle from a neigh¬ 
 boring promontory, told in one respect against them, 
 since it caused those in the rear to press to the front, and 
 thus get involved with their own retreating ships-; so 
 that a tangled ball of hulls, oars, and rigging was 
 formed, which the freely-moving Greeks could strike 
 at and tear to pieces at their leisure. 
 
 The vanquished showed in some instances great gal¬ 
 lantry. The liege lady of Herodotus, Queen Arte-, 
 misia, distinguished herself as much in the fight as in the 
 council, but in a way of questionable morality. Being 
 hard pressed by. an Athenian galley, she turned on one 
 belonging to her own allies, and sank it. The Athenian 
 thought he must have made a mistake, and sheered off, 
 while the unsuspecting Xerxes admired the good ser¬ 
 vice his fair ally seemed to be doing, “My men,” said 
 he, “fight like women, and my Avomen like men.” 
 Such cool effrontery would have been unintelligible to 
 a Persian. There was a petty king on board the gal¬ 
 ley which she had sunk; but drowned men tell no tales. 
 
 A brother of the king, Ariabignes, the admiral, per¬ 
 ished, and a vast number of noble Persians. The Greeks 
 whose ships were sunk mostly saved themselves by 
 swimming, while the Persians lost more drowned than 
 killed in action. The fugitives tried to reach Plialerum, 
 but there were HUginetans outside who swooped on 
 them like falcons. The stage-coward of the battles of 
 Artemisium and Salamis is the unfortunate Adeimantus, 
 who is accused of attempted flight. Why was Herodo¬ 
 tus, usually so impartial, so spiteful against him and 
 the Corinthians? He may have relied on Athenian in¬ 
 formation, or perhaps some general impression of Greek 
 half-heartedness must have come from Halicarnassian 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 151 
 
 or Ionian sources. iEschylus, in bis magnificent trag¬ 
 edy of “The Persians,” beside which the prose of He¬ 
 rodotus is tame, speaks of nothing but patriotic zeal, sing¬ 
 ing of pseans, and joyous alacrity. The hero of Water¬ 
 loo is said to have modestly observed to some ladies who 
 complimented him on a description of the battle. “I 
 ought to know all about it, for I w T as there myself.” 
 So zEschylus ought to be our best authority for the bat¬ 
 tle of Salamis, as he was present himself, probably in 
 the ship of his brother Ameinias. According to him, 
 it was the Persians who were caught in a trap by The- 
 mistocles: thinking the Greeks were in retreat tlie}^ had 
 made their arrangements for chase and not for action, 
 which rendered their discomfiture more easy; since 
 not only did those who came up break their fighting- 
 order, but, as at Artemisium, they had detached a con¬ 
 siderable squadron to block the entrance to the strait. 
 The poet describes the chase as lasting till midnight, in 
 the open sea, the Greeks destroying the helpless enemy 
 “like fishermen harpooning in a shoal of tunny-fish.” 
 All the shore of Attica was strewn with wrecks. 
 
 “ Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be run, 
 
 Behind Morea’s hills the setting sun; 
 
 Not as in northern climes, obscurely bright, 
 
 But one unclouded blaze of living light! 
 
 O’er the hushed deep the yellow beam he throws, 
 
 Gilds the green wave, that trembles as it glows. 
 
 On old iEgina’s rock, and Hydra’s isle, 
 
 The god of gladness sheds his parting smile; 
 
 O’er his own regions lingering, loves to shine, 
 
 Though there his altars are no more divine. 
 
 Descending fast, the mountain-shadows kiss 
 Thy glorious gulf, unconquered Salamis!” * 
 
 * Byron—“ The Corsair.” 
 
152 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 But never did the sun of Greece set on a scene so 
 memorable, and so beautiful in one sense, in the midst 
 of its terror, as on that autumn evening in the year 4S0 
 B.c. There was yet more to be done, but Greece and 
 civilization were safe. 
 
 The destruction of the grand fleet necessitated the re¬ 
 treat of the heterogeneous multitude which called itself 
 the grand army, for it depended on the fleet for most of 
 its supplies. But it was hoped that a picked .force 
 might still succeed, and Xerxes left behind 300,000 
 troops under the command of Mardonius, who went 
 into winter quarters in Thessaly, when he started home¬ 
 wards with all possible speed. This flight may have 
 had state reasons for it, like that of Napoleon from 
 Russia, for the outlying provinces were always ready 
 for insurrection ; but, considering his character, the 
 simple interpretation of his conduct appears the most 
 probable that he was thoroughly cowed. Themistocles 
 wished to follow up the victory by hunting the fugitives 
 from island to island, and then destroying the bridge of 
 boats over the Hellespont. When he was overruled by 
 Eurybiades he gave out that he had changed his mind, 
 and sent a faithful slave to find Xerxes, and tell him 
 that, out of personal good will to his majesty, Themis¬ 
 tocles had prevented the Greeks from destroying the 
 bridge. 
 
 i An unusually early winter, as in the Russian cam¬ 
 paign of 1812, added to the sufferings of the retreat. 
 According to the tragedian iEscliylus great numbers 
 perished in attempting to cross the frozen Strymon, 
 thus forestalling the Beresiua disaster. The Hellespont 
 bridge had been broken up, not by the Greeks but by a 
 storm; but there was no difficulty in ferrying across 
 the miserable remnant in boats. At Abydos they came 
 
0 
 
 HERODOTUS. 
 
 153 
 
 on supplies, and many who had survived starvation on 
 grass and tree-bark died of surfeit. One version of the 
 account makes Xerxes leave his army on the Strymon, 
 and take ship hi nisei t for Asia. A storm coming on, 
 the ship was in such danger that the pilot declared that 
 there was no chance of safety unless some of those on 
 board would sacrifice themselves to lighten it, and ap¬ 
 pealed to the loyalty of the Persians, who accordingly 
 leaped overboard. It is added that, on coming safely to 
 land, the king presented the pilot with a golden crown 
 for saving his owu life, and then had him beheaded for 
 causing the death of so many of his gallant servants. 
 The latter part looks like the repetition of an anecdote 
 of Cambyses; and, indeed, Herodotus scarcely believes 
 the story, as he observes that the Persians might have 
 been sent below, and the Phoenician crew sacrificed. It 
 did not seem to strike him that sailors are of more use 
 in a storm than the best soldiers, and the self-devoting 
 loyalty of the Persians to their monarch’s person is well 
 known. 
 
 The Greeks passed an anxious winter, for Mardonius 
 remained in Thessaly, making his preparations for ac¬ 
 tion in the spring. Their allied fleet, a hundred and 
 ten strong, was persuaded to come as far as Delos by 
 an embassy from Asia (one of whom was an Herodotus, 
 possibly a relative of our author), who represented that 
 the Greek colonies there were ripe for revolt. They 
 were, however, deterred for the present from proceed¬ 
 ing farther; possibly because a Lacedaemonian, natu¬ 
 rally a landsman, was first in command. Mardonius in 
 the mean time spent the winter in consulting oracles, 
 the answers of which do not seem to have been partic¬ 
 ularly encouraging, as he afterwards resorted to the 
 more statesmanlike measure of endeavoring to detach 
 
154 
 
 TIIE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 % 
 
 tlic Athenians from the Greek alliance. For this mis¬ 
 sion he selected Alexander, the son of Amyntas, prince 
 of Macedon. The Spartans, hearing of it, sent ambas¬ 
 sadors on tlicir part to beseech them not to desert the 
 Cause of Greece. The Athenians, with something of a 
 lofty contempt, bade them have no fear, and told Alex¬ 
 ander that they would carry on the war with the de¬ 
 stroyers of their city and temples “so long as the sun 
 held its course in heaven,” and warned him as he 
 valued his safety never again to bring them a like pro¬ 
 posal. They were terribly in earnest; for when one 
 Lycidas, a fellow-townsman, counseled submission on 
 another occasion, they stoned him to death. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 PLAT^EA AND MYCALE. 
 
 “ A day of onsets of despair! 
 
 Dashed on every rocky square, 
 
 Their surging charges foamed themselves away. 
 
 Last the Prussian trumpet blew; 
 
 Through the long-tormented air 
 Heaven flashed a sudden jubilant ray, 
 
 And down we swept, and charged, and overthrew.” 
 
 —Tennyson: “ Ode on the Death of the 
 Duke of Wellington.” 
 
 The concluding act of the great historical drama 
 opens with the spring of b.c. 479. Mardonius has 
 come south from Thessaly, and is gleaning in Athens 
 whatever the spoiler, Xerxes, had left. The Athenians 
 are again in their island-asylum of Salamis. The Spar- 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 155 
 
 tans are marching on the Isthmus of Corinth, under 
 the command of Pausanias, who had succeeded his. 
 father Cleombrotus in the regency and the guardianship 
 of the young son of Leonidas, who did not live to 
 reign. After a demonstration towards Megara, where 
 he hoped to cut off the advanced guard of the allies, 
 Mardonius proceeded into the Theban territory, where 
 he constructed a vast fortified camp on the bank of the 
 river Asopus. A general advance was now made by 
 the Peloponnesians from the isthmus to Eleusis, where 
 they were joined by the Athenian contingent from Sal- 
 amis. When they had ascertained where the Persians 
 were they set themselves in array along the highlands 
 of Citlimron. As they seemed indisposed to come down 
 into the plain, Mardonius sent his cavalry to feel their 
 position, under the command of Masistius. 
 
 This Murat of the Persian army was a handsome 
 giant, who rode a white Nisaean charger, whose accouter¬ 
 ments, as well as those of his rider, glittered with gold. 
 So rode Charles of Burgundy at Granson or at Morat. 
 In the present day such costume is scarcely to be seen 
 further west than India, and some tall Rajah, full 
 dressed for the Governor-General’s durbar, would give 
 a good idea of how Masistius looked at the head of his 
 cuirassiers. These galloped up to the Greek infantry 
 in troops, hurling their javelins, and calling them “wo¬ 
 men” because they did not come on. The Megarians 
 were in the most exposed place. Being hard pressed 
 they sent to Pausanias for succor. When he called 
 for volunteers the Athenians promptly offered, and 
 three hundred picked men, supported by archers, moved 
 up. The charges continued without cessation, Masis¬ 
 tius leading with the utmost gallantry, and presenting 
 a conspicuous mark to the bowmen. At last an arrow 
 
15G 
 
 TEE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 pierced the side of liis charger. He reared back from th e 
 agony of the wound, and threw his rider, who now lay 
 at the mercy of his enemies, stunned by his fall, and, 
 like the knights of the middle ages, helpless from the 
 weight of his panoply. His vest of Tju'ian crimson 
 was pierced witli spear-points, but still he lived, 
 for under it he wore a shirt of golden mail. At 
 last a hand more dexterous than the rest pierced his 
 brain through one of the eye holes of his visor, for he 
 was too proud to ask for quarter. Among his own 
 followers, as they charged and wheeled about, no one 
 knew that he was dead, and they might even have rid¬ 
 den over the body of their unconscious commander, as 
 the Prussian cavalry did over Blucher when he lay 
 under his dead horse at Ligny. But when they retired 
 he was immediately missed, for there was no one to give 
 the word of command. All that they could now do for 
 him was to recover his body, and with this object the 
 squadrons united and made a combined onset. To meet 
 this the Athenians called up other Greek troops to their 
 assistance. While- they were coming, a tierce struggle 
 took place for the body, which the Athenians were 
 obliged to leave till their reinforcements joined them. 
 But, as it could not be easily removed by cavalry, it 
 ultimately remained in possession of the Greeks. Many 
 Persian knights shared the fate of their commander, so 
 that the rest of the troopers were obliged to ride back 
 to Mardonius with the news of their misfortune. The 
 death of Masistius was considered such a blow that it 
 was bewailed by the whole army, corps after corps 
 taking up the dole of their Adonis, till it resounded 
 through all Boeotia, and horses and men were ordered 
 to be shorn and shaken as a sign of public mourning; 
 for Masistius, next to Mardonius, was considered the 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 157 
 
 greatest man in the army. To the Greeks his fall was 
 a matter of equal rejoicing, and the handsome corpse 
 was carried along the lines to raise the spirits of the 
 soldiers. Their fear of cavalry was now wearing off, 
 and a general forward movement was made towards the 
 plain of Platsea, where water was more abundant. They 
 took up a new position near the Gargaphian Fountain 
 (the modern Yergantiani). Here a hot debate arose be¬ 
 tween the Tegeans and Athenians, each demajiding the 
 honor of occupying the left wing (the Spartans always 
 claimed the right), which was decided, chiefly on mytho¬ 
 logical grounds, in favor of the Athenians. The army 
 was thus marshaled: on the right were five thousand 
 heavy-armed Spartans, with thirty-five thousand light¬ 
 armed Helots, and of other Laconians five thousand; 
 then the Tegeans. then the other Greek contingents, till 
 on the extreme left six hundred Platseaus stood by the 
 side of eight thousand Athenians under Aristides. The 
 decision of Greek battles mainly rested on the heavy¬ 
 armed infantry. Each man of these was generally 
 attended by his military servant, and looked upon him¬ 
 self as an officer and a gentleman. The Athenian con¬ 
 tingent probably represented all who were not engaged 
 on board the fleet. The remnant of the Thespians 
 —whose city as well as Platsea had been sacked— 
 eighteen hundred in number, were also there, but now 
 too much impoverished to serve as heavy-armed. The 
 sum total of the army was one hundred and ten thou¬ 
 sand men, being less than one to three to the army of 
 the king. 
 
 Mardonius honored the Spartans by confronting them 
 with his best troops, the Persians; he posted his Modes, 
 Bactriaus, Indians, and Sacse opposite the other Greeks, 
 and threatened the Athenians with his Greek and Mace- 
 
158 
 
 TIIE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 donian allies. Besides his three hundred thousand, he 
 had a number of small contingents, such as marines 
 from the fleet, and perhaps fifty thousand Greek aux¬ 
 iliaries. It was not the custom for any army to ^engage 
 until the omens had been pronounced favorable; and 
 the soothsayers on both sides constantly reported that 
 they were favorable for defense, but not for attack. 
 After the two armies had thus watched each other for 
 eight days, Mardonius was advised to occupy the passes 
 of Cithmron, as the Greeks were constantly being re¬ 
 inforced from that quarter, and accordingly dispatched 
 cavalry to a pass leading to Platasa, called “Three 
 Heads” by the Boeotians, and “ Oakheads” by the Athe¬ 
 nians (the Greek words sounding much the same). This 
 . foray resulted in destroying a military train of five 
 hundred sumpter animals, which was making its way 
 to the Greek army. The next two days were passed in 
 demonstrations of cavalry up to the Asopus, which ran 
 between the armies, the Theban horse showing great 
 alacrity in annoying their Hellenic brethren, but leav¬ 
 ing the serious fighting to the Persians. On the eleventh 
 day Mardonius, tired of inaction, held a council of war, 
 the result of which was that he ordered an attack on 
 the next day, in spite of the still unfavorable auspices. 
 
 In the dead of night, as the armies lay in position, 
 the Athenian sentries were accosted by a solitary horse¬ 
 man who asked to speak to their commanders. When 
 they came to the front, he told them that the omens 
 had till now restrained Mardonius, but that yesterday 
 he had “bid the omens farewell,” and intended to 
 fight on the morrow. He added, that he hoped that 
 his present service would not be forgotten; he was of 
 Greek origin, and a secret friend of the Greeks: 
 his name was Alexander, the son of Amyntas of 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 159 
 
 Macedonia. As soon as the message had been reported 
 to Pausanias, he, with a scarcely Spartan spirit, 
 wished the Athenians to change places with him, as, 
 from their experience at Marathon, they knew the 
 Persian manner of lighting better. And this maneu¬ 
 ver, dangerous as it was to attempt in the face of the 
 enemy, would have been executed, had not Mardonius 
 discovered it, and made a corresponding disposition 
 of his own army. He then sent a herald to reproach 
 the Spartans, and challenge them to light man for 
 man, with or without the rest of the combatants, as 
 they pleased. As no answer was given his cavalry 
 were launched en masse against the Greek army. The 
 mounted archers caused them great annoyance, and 
 destroyed the Gargapliian well, from which their water 
 supply was drawn. The supplies from the rear having 
 been cut off, the Greeks determined on a westward 
 movement towards the city of Plata3a, where they would 
 be within reach of water. Half the army were to 
 carry ‘out this movement in the night, while the other 
 half were to fall back on Cithseron, to protect their 
 line of communication with their base behind the 
 isthmus. The first division had suffered so much dur¬ 
 ing the day that in their joy at the respite the}" retired 
 too far, and never halted till they reached the pre¬ 
 cincts of a temple of Juno, close to Platasa itself. 
 Pausanias himself was following, but he was kept 
 back by the insubordination of a sturdy colonel named 
 Amompharetus, who objected to any strategic move¬ 
 ments which looked like running away. At length 
 he was left to follow" or not as he pleased, while the 
 rest of the Spartans defiled along the safe and hilly 
 ground, the Athenians striking across the exposed 
 • plain. Mardonius had now some reason to despise 
 
160 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY 
 
 his enemy, and he ordered all his cavalry to charge, 
 and the infantry to advance at quick march, crossing 
 the Asopus. The Athenians were hidden from him by 
 a series of knolls, but lie pressed hard on the steps of 
 the Lacedaemonians and Tegeans. Fortune sometimes 
 favor's the timid as well as the brave. Seeing Mar¬ 
 donius apparently pursuing the enemy, the rest of his 
 army at once broke their ranks and followed in dis¬ 
 order, each man eager to be in at the death of the 
 quarry which his commander was hunting down. 
 Pausanius had already sent a mounted orderly to 
 the Athenians to beg that they would come to his 
 assistance, or at least send their archers, as he was 
 sorely vexed by the cavalry. They could not comply, 
 as they wanted all their strength to repulse a general 
 attack which was just then being made on them by the 
 king’s Greeks. Pausanias halted his line ; but still the 
 sacrifices were unpropitious. From behind the Persian 
 breastwork of shields came a rain of arrows, and the 
 breastwork itself seemed impregnable. The Lacedae-. 
 monians and Tegeans were falling fast. At last 
 Pausanias espied at no great distance the temple of 
 Juno, and offered up a prayer to the goddess. The 
 omens at once changed as by magic. The Tegeans 
 dashed at the enemy’s fence of shields. The Spartans 
 followed, and the battle was won. The Persians fought 
 like bull-dogs, singly or in knots, though their long 
 dress, says the chronicler, was terribly in the way. 
 They wrenched away or snapped asunder the long Greek 
 lances, and made play with their hangers. Mardonius, 
 conspicuous on a white horse, like Ney at Waterloo, 
 was the “ bravest of the brave.” But at last a cry rose 
 that Mardonius was down, and at that cry the Persians 
 wavered, and fled in wild disorder to the great stockade * 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 161 
 
 which had been built to protect their camp. But 
 Artabazus, who had now come up, had kept his forty 
 thousand men iu hand when he saw the scramble of the 
 attack; and when he saw the repulse, he made no 
 attempt to save the day, but faced about and at once 
 began an orderly retreat on the Hellespont, Some of 
 the Greeks who had joined the Persian king fought 
 desperately in their miserable cause. Three hundred 
 noble Thebans are said to have fallen in the front of 
 the battle. This may have been the “Sacred Band” 
 which fought under Epaminondas in later history, and 
 which consisted of friends sworn to live and die to¬ 
 gether. These Thebans fought indeed “with halters 
 round their necks for after the victory Pausanias in¬ 
 sisted on the surrender of the chiefs of the late move¬ 
 ment, and executed them all. When the Greeks who 
 had made the mistake of retreating too far turned back 
 in disorder to get their share of the glory poetical 
 justice overtook them in the shape of a charge of the 
 Persian and Theban cavalry, which stung them with 
 the energy of a doomed swarm of wasps. They lost 
 six hundred men, and were scattered to the heights of 
 Cithseron. All was not yet over. A new battle began 
 at the Persian camp, which vigorously repelled the on¬ 
 slaughts of the Spartans and their allies. It was not 
 till the Athenians came up (who understood" wall¬ 
 fighting,” says Herodotus) that the day could be spoken 
 of as finally decided. They managed to break or upset 
 the “abattis,” and the Tegeans again led the forlorn 
 hope through it or over it. Then began the slaughter. 
 Only three thousand were left alive of the whole Persian 
 army. This seems incredible, especially in connection 
 with the small number of the allies who fell in the 
 action, as given by Herodotus. But the vanquished 
 
162 
 
 TIIE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 were possibly impounded in tlieir fortified camp, like 
 the wretched Mamelukes whom Mehemet Ali destroyed 
 in the court of a fortress. 
 
 The plunder was immense. The tent of Mardonius, 
 wuth all the royal plate which the king had left him, 
 his manger of bronze, gold and silver in all shapes, 
 splendidly inlaid arms, vestments, horses, camels, beau¬ 
 tiful women, became the dangerous prize of the needy 
 Peloponnesians, who, to avert Nemesis, offered a tithe 
 of all to the gods. Pausanias buried with due honors 
 the body of the brave Mardonius, though he was 
 strongly urged by an iEginetan of high rank to remem¬ 
 ber how that of Leonidas had been treated by Xerxes.. 
 “Would you have me humble my country in the dust, 
 now that I have just raised her ?” was the Spartan’s 
 answer. And he bid the proposer be thankful that he 
 answered him only in words. 
 
 It seems to have been the invidious custom in all 
 Greek battles to assign to one or two men the prize 
 of valor, and our author always gives their names. 
 The bravest of all was adjudged to be the Spartan 
 Aristodemus, sole survivor of the glorious three hun¬ 
 dred of Thermopylae. He could not bear his life, 
 and now lost it purposel} 7 ; therefore he was refused 
 the usual honors. Sophanes was proclaimed the 
 bravest of the Athenians : he was in fact so brave 
 that (perhaps adopting an idea from his experience 
 afloat) he wore an anchor and chain, by which he 
 moored himself to his post in action.* It is a pity 
 to lose our faith in so quaint an expedient; but there 
 was another version of the story, says our honest chron- 
 
 * So the wounded at the battle of Clontarf, in Ireland, are said 
 to have got themselves tied to stakes. 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 163 
 
 icier, that lie bore an anchor as the device on his 
 shield. Tiie prudent Artabazus reached Byzantium 
 safely, though lie was roughly handled on the road by 
 the Thracians and Macedonians, the latter of whom had 
 been from the first favorable to the Greeks. 
 
 This “ crowning mercy” of Platsea, as Cromwell would 
 have called it, was supplemented by a brilliant action 
 which took place on the same day at Mycale, on the 
 coast of Ionia. 
 
 When the season for navigation had come the Greek 
 fleet under Leotychides, which had remained at Delos, 
 pushed across to Samos, but the prey they had expected 
 to find there had flown. The Persian fleet had placed 
 itself under the protection of a land force of sixty thou¬ 
 sand men under Tigranes, appointed by Xerxes gov¬ 
 ernor of Ionia, and was drawn up on shore at Mycale, 
 protected by a rampart and palisade. The Greeks came 
 provided with gangway boards, and all other appliances 
 for naval action. But the Persians were morally sea¬ 
 sick, therefore Leotychides disembarked his troops at 
 his leisure. A mysterious rumor of a great victory in 
 Bceotia, ascribed to some divine messenger, but possibly 
 brought as a telegram by fire-signals, put the Greeks in 
 heart. It was afternoon, and the field of Platsea had 
 been fought in the morning. The Athenians were al¬ 
 ready engaged, when the Lacedaemonians came up, 
 having to make a circuit by a rugged way intersected 
 with ravines. As at Platsea, the Persians fought well 
 as long as their rampart of bucklers stood upright; even 
 when it gave way they broke up into clusters, which 
 fought like wild'boars at bay. The onset of the Athe¬ 
 nians was the more furious that they feared to ha^e their 
 laurels snatched from them by their friends. They 
 drove the Persians into their camp, and, more fortunate 
 
164 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 than tlieir brethren at Plat sea, entered it pell-mell With 
 the flying enemy. The barbarian auxiliaries fled where 
 they could, but the Persians themselves still held out 
 desperately, until the Lacedaemonians came up and 
 completed the defeat. Tigranes and Mardontes died 
 as became Persian officers, fighting gallantly to the last. 
 The Milesians in the Persian service, who had been 
 posted to guard the passes of the mountain, turned on 
 the fugitives and cut them up; for revolt became gen¬ 
 eral among the Ionian Greeks as soon as the battle was 
 over, and Samos, Chios, Lesbos, and other islands 
 joined the confederacy for reprisals against Persia. 
 
 The Greek fleet now sailed to the Hellespont, where 
 they found the bridge of boats destroyed. ThenLeoty- 
 chides went home with his Spartans, but the Athenians 
 stayed and besieged Sestos, which held out till the 
 autumn, when it was taken by famine. There had been 
 a serious debate whether it would not be better to re¬ 
 move the Ionian colonists altogether, and settle them 
 in Greece, than leave them to the future tender mercies 
 of Persia. But the question was settled by the Athe¬ 
 nians taking their Asiatic colonies into close league and 
 alliance. 
 
 In those two memorable years, which end the narra¬ 
 tive of Herodotus, Europe had established its prepon¬ 
 derance over Asia forever. The last tableau of his 
 great epic drama is almost lost in its blaze of glory, 
 and it is time that the curtain should fall. It is true 
 that Herodotus hardly recognizes this, and tries to 
 amuse his readers for some time longer with the not 
 very edifying court-scandal of Susa. Xerxes had in¬ 
 finite trouble with the ladies of his court. The fierce 
 and jealous sultana Amestris, who treated her rival 
 with such fiendish cruelty, may be the Vasliti of the 
 
iimoDorm 
 
 163 
 
 Book of Esther* as Ahasuerus is supposed to be the 
 Scriptural form of her husband’s name. Nemesis was 
 fully satisfied when Xerxes himself fell a viclim to a 
 palace intrigue; but this is not mentioned by Herodo¬ 
 tus, nor that a statue of that dread Power was placed 
 on the spot where he had been a spectator of the de¬ 
 struction of his fleet. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 CONCLUDING REMARKS. 
 
 It has thus been attempted to give, in a succinct 
 form, the general drift and character of the great work 
 of Herodotus. In the original, his liquid and pellucid 
 Ionian dialect constitutes one of the greatest charms of 
 his style. In simple perspicuity he forms a remarkable 
 contrast to the terse and gnarled Thucydides, who pro¬ 
 pounds so many puzzles to the classical scholar. But 
 no ancient author is so profitable to read in a good 
 translation. A good translation is like a good photo¬ 
 graph, giving distinctive traits, and light and shade, 
 but no life or color. Our attempt is a colored sketch _ 
 on a small scale, and not a photograph, of a great book. 
 
 Herodotus may be considered, according to the stan¬ 
 dard of his time, as a decidedly veracious historian. 
 And his veracity is of a kind that wears well. It is 
 impossible to refuse to credit him with general impar¬ 
 tiality; and if he erred at all, the modern reader will 
 readily pardon his excessive sympathy with the Athe- 
 
166 
 
 THE ELZEVIR LIBRARY. 
 
 nians. Yet lie does full justice to the gallantry, generos¬ 
 ity, and other high qualities of the Persians. He was 
 born, we must remember, a Persian subject—for Hali¬ 
 carnassus did not recover its independence until he had 
 grown up to manhood—and he could speak from expe¬ 
 rience of the masters of Ionia, that their rule was, oil 
 the whole, just and equal. His own town, indeed, had 
 met with exceptional kindness from her liege lords. 
 Hence he has none of the usual Greek contempt of and 
 antipathy to “barbarians,” or people speaking an un¬ 
 known tongue, which is a prima facie reason for dislike 
 with the vulgar of all nations. His great merit is that 
 of Homer and Shakespeare, a broad catholicity of sen¬ 
 timent in observing and estimating character. He has 
 the strongest sympathy with heroism whenever dis 
 played, an exquisite feeling for humorous situations, 
 and, as naturally connected with humor, intense pathos 
 when the subject admits of it. He has the head of a 
 sage, the heart of a mother, and the simple apprehen¬ 
 sion of a child. And if his style is redundant with a 
 sort of Biblical reiteration, it is always clear and lumin¬ 
 ous. There can never be any mistake about his mean¬ 
 ing, as long as no corruption has crept into his text, 
 which, when it happens, is the fault of his transcribers, 
 and not his own. His ethical portraits are above all in¬ 
 valuable, and, however fabulous the circumstances with 
 which they are connected, must have been true to the 
 life, from their evidently undesigned consistency. The 
 benignant and vain Croesus, the ambitious Cyrus, the 
 truculent Cambyses, the chivalrous yet calculating 
 Darius, the wild Cleomenes, the wise and wary The- 
 mistocles, the frantic Xerxes—the very type of the in¬ 
 fatuation by which the divine vengeance wrought—• 
 these, and a host of other portraits of living men, can 
 
HERODOTUS. 
 
 Wl 
 
 only be compared in tlieir verisimilitude with the im¬ 
 mortal creations of Shakespeare. 
 
 Not a few pleasant anecdotes—mythical, ethical, so¬ 
 cial. and historical—as well as nearly all the minor 
 affluents of the main stream of narrative, have been 
 passed over or barely glanced at, for want of space. 
 Some indelicacies have been softened in stories too good 
 to omit, but this process leaves their spirit unchanged. 
 For our author is always antique and always natural. 
 When he errs against refinement, it is in a sort of in¬ 
 fantine naughtiness—not with the perverse intention of 
 a modern writer. Indeed, his high moral principle 
 cannot fail to strike even a careless reader. His blood 
 plainly boils at injustice or cruelty; and whatever 
 superstition he may have inherited with his religious 
 creed, he has an intense faith in an overruling Provi¬ 
 dence, which, spite of some anomalies which puzzle 
 him, as they have done the wisest in all ages, does on 
 the whole ordain that “the righteous shall be recom¬ 
 pensed in the earth—much more the wicked and the 
 sinner.’ 
 
 END. 
 

 
 
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