The Portable Roman Reader (Portable Library) (59 page)

Lest newer glories triumphs past obscure,
Late conquered Gaul the bays from pirates won,
This, Magnus, was thy fear; thy roll of fame,
Of glorious deeds accomplished for the state
Allows no equal; nor will Cæsar’s pride
A prior rival in his triumphs brook;
Which had the right ‘twere impious to enquire;
Each for his cause can vouch a judge supreme;
The victor, heaven: the vanquished, Cato, thee.
Nor were they like to like: the one in years
Now verging towards decay, in times of peace
Had unlearned war; but thirsting for applause
Had given the people much, and proud of fame
His former glory cared not to renew,
But joyed in plaudits of the theatre,
His gift to Rome: his triumphs in the past,
Himself the shadow of a mighty name.
As when some oak, in fruitful field sublime,
Adorned with venerable spoils, and gifts
Of bygone leaders, by its weight to earth
With feeble roots still clings; its naked arms
And hollow trunk, though leafless, give a shade;
And though condemned beneath the tempest’s shock
To speedy fall, amid the sturdier trees
In sacred grandeur rules the forest still.
No such repute had Caesar won, nor fame;
But energy was his that could not rest—
The only shame he knew was not to win.
Keen and unvanquished, where revenge or hope
Might call, resistless would he strike the blow
With sword unpitying: every victory won
Reaped to the full; the favour of the gods
Pressed to the utmost; all that stayed his course
Aimed at the summit of power, was thrust aside:
Triumph his joy, though ruin marked his track.
As parts the clouds a bolt by winds compelled,
With crack of riven air and crash of worlds,
And veils the light of day, and on mankind,
Blasting their vision with its flames oblique,
Sheds deadly fright; then turning to its home,
Nought but the air opposing, through its path
Spreads havoc, and collects its scattered fires.

Such were the hidden motives of the chiefs;
But in the public life the seeds of war
Their hold had taken, such as are the doom
Of potent nations: and when fortune poured
Through Roman gates the booty of a world,
The curse of luxury, chief bane of states,
Fell on her sons. Farewell the ancient ways!
Behold the pomp profuse, the houses decked
With ornament; their hunger loathed the food
Of former days; men wore attire for dames
Scarce fitly fashioned; poverty was scorned,
Fruitful of warriors; and from all the world
Came that which ruins nations; while the fields
Furrowed of yore by great Camillus’ plough,
Or by the mattock which a Curius held,
Lost their once narrow bounds, and widening tracts
By hinds unknown were tilled. No nation this
To sheathe the sword, with tranquil peace content
And with her liberties; but prone to ire;
Crime holding light as though by want compelled:
And great the glory in the minds of men,
Ambition lawful even at point of sword,
To rise above their country: might their law:
Decrees are forced from Senate and from Plebs:
Consul and Tribune break the laws alike:
Bought are the fasces, and the people sell
For gain their favour: bribery’s fatal curse
Corrupts the annual contests of the Field.
Then covetous usury rose, and interest
Was greedier ever as the seasons came;
Faith tottered; thousands saw their gain in war.

Caesar has crossed the Alps, his mighty soul
Great tumults pondering and the coming shock.
Now on the marge of Rubicon, he saw,
In face most sorrowful and ghostly guise,
His trembling country’s image; huge it seemed
Through mists of night obscure; and hoary hair
Streamed from the lofty front with turrets crowned:
Torn were her locks and naked were her arms.
Then thus, with broken sighs the Vision spake:
“What seek ye, men of Rome? and whither hence
Bear ye my standards? If by right ye come,
My citizens, stay here; these are the bounds;
No further dare.” But Cæsar’s hair was stiff
With horror as he gazed, and ghastly dread
Restrained his footsteps on the further bank.
Then spake he, “Thunderer, who from the rock
Tarpeian seest the wall of mighty Rome;
Gods of my race who watched o‘er Troy of old;
Thou Jove of Alba’s height, and Vestal fires,
And rites of Romulus erst rapt to heaven,
And God-like Rome; be friendly to my quest.
Not with offence or hostile arms I come,
Thy Cæsar, conqueror by land and sea,
Thy soldier here and wheresoe’er thou wilt:
No other’s; his, his only be the guilt
Whose acts make me thy foe.” He gives the word
And bids his standards cross the swollen stream.
So in the wastes of Afric’s burning clime
The lion crouches as his foes draw near,
Feeding his wrath the while, his lashing tail
Provokes his fury; stiff upon his neck
Bristles his mane: deep from his gaping jaws
Resounds a muttered growl, and should a lance
Or javelin reach him from the hunter’s ring,
Scorning the puny scratch he bounds afield.

From modest fountain blood-red Rubicon
In summer’s heat flows on; his pigmy tide
Creeps through the valleys and with slender marge
Divides the Italian peasant from the Gaul.
Then winter gave him strength, and fraught with rain
The third day’s crescent moon; while Eastern winds
Thawed from the Alpine slopes the yielding snow.
The cavalry first form across the stream
To break the torrent’s force; the rest with ease
Beneath their shelter gain the further bank.
When Cæsar crossed and trod beneath his feet
The soil of Italy’s forbidden fields,
“Here,” spake he, “peace, here broken laws be left;
Farewell to treaties. Fortune, lead me on;
War is our judge, and in the fates our trust ”
Then in the shades of night he leads the troops
Swifter than Balearic sling or shaft
Winged by retreating Parthian, to the walls
Of threatened Rimini, while fled the stars,
Save Lucifer, before the coming sun,
Whose fires were veiled in clouds, by south wind driven,
Or else at heaven’s command: and thus drew on
The first dark morning of the civil war.

Book I, Lines 136-266

(Gaius Petronius Arbiter, died 66 A.D.)

 

 

A
FTER dressing, we took a preliminary stroll, and presently espied a bald-headed old man, in reddish clothes, playing tennis in the midst of a number of long-haired slaves. It was not the slaves, however, that attracted us so much as the old gentleman himself who, with slippers on his feet, was serving a green ball. As soon as a ball fell to the ground he refused to touch it again, but took a fresh one from a bag which a slave by his side held out to the players. While I was watching his luxurious manner of playing, up comes Menelaus and says he:

“This is the gentleman at whose house you are going to dine; and, in fact, this game is really a preliminary to the dinner.”

Before long, we entered the public bath and, after remaining a while in the hot water, we changed to cold. Trimalchio, after being carefully perfumed, was rubbed down, though not with towels, but with mantles made of the very softest wool; while three attendants who stood there drank Falernian wine, of which they spilled a good deal in their wrangling; whereupon Trimalchio remarked that this was all his treat. Afterwards, wrapped up in a scarlet dressing-gown, he took his seat on a litter preceded by four gorgeously decorated footmen, and by a wheeled chair in which was his favourite slave, a blear-eyed old fellow, homelier even than his master. Then Trimalchio was carried off home, a musician marching beside him with a pair of shrill pipes and playing all the way as though he were saying something privately in his master’s ear. We followed along, filled with admiration, and in Agamemnon’s company we reached Trimalchio’s front door, on one of whose posts was fastened a notice with this inscription:

At the entrance to the house was the doorkeeper, dressed in green with a cherry-coloured belt around his waist, and engaged in shelling peas into a silver dish. Above the threshold hung a golden cage in which a magpie kept saying, “How do you do?” to us as we entered. I fell to staring at all these things until I bent over backwards so far that I nearly broke my legs; for on the left as we entered, and not far from the janitor’s room, was a great dog fastened by a chain and painted on the wall, while overhead in capital letters was the inscription:

My friends laughed at me; but I soon recovered my presence of mind and let my eyes rove over the entire wall; for on it was painted, first a slave auction, and then Trimalchio himself, with long hair and holding a wand in his hand, entering Rome guided by Minerva. Another painting represented him learning arithmetic, and another showed him as promoted to a stewardship. The meaning of all these things the thoughtful artist had carefully explained by legends painted under each. At the other end of the entrance, Mercury was represented as raising Trimalchio aloft by the chin, and there was also Fortune with her horn of plenty, and the three Fates twisting their golden threads. I observed in the portico a number of running footmen who were practising with their trainer, and in one comer I saw a large closet in a recess of which were household gods made of silver, a marble statuette of Venus, and a large gold box in which they said the master of the house kept his beard after it had been shaved off.

I fell to questioning the janitor as to what were the pictures in the middle, and he told me that they represented scenes from the
Iliad
and the
Odyssey,
and also the gladiatorial contests of a certain Lænas. I had very little time to gaze on them, however, for presently we entered the dining-room, near the door of which a bailiff was making up the accounts. What I most wondered at was that on the door-posts was a bundle of rods with axes, one end of which tapered off into the semblance of the beak of a ship with the legend:

Beneath the inscription a double lamp was suspended, and tablets were affixed to each door-post, one, if I remember rightly, bearing this announcement:

On the other were painted the moon and the seven stars, and on a calendar a little knob served to indicate which days were lucky and which were unlucky.

Imbued with all these delightful facts, just as we were entering the dining-room a slave who had been assigned to this office called out, “Right foot first!” It quite upset us for a moment for fear lest any one of us should cross the threshold in an ill-omened way contrary to orders; but we managed to get our right feet in first, and just at this moment a slave, stripped of his outer clothing, threw himself at our feet and begged us to save him from punishment. He explained that the offence for which he was in peril was no great one; that he had simply allowed the steward’s clothes to be stolen from the bath-house; and that these were worth only ten thousand sesterces. So we went back, right foot first, and begged the steward, who was counting his money in the outer hall, to let the slave off from punishment. The steward looked up disdainfully and replied: