THE DIVINITY THAT DOTH HEDGE A KING
But ah! Maecenas is yclad in claye,
And great Augustus long ygoe is dead,
And all the worthies liggen wrapt in lead,
That matter made for poets on to playe.+
Marcus Aurelius who, though he had little relish for them himself, had
ever been willing to humour the taste of his people for magnificent
spectacles, was received back to Rome with the lesser honours of the
Ovation, conceded by the Senate (so great was the public sense of
deliverance) with even more than the laxity which had become its habit
under imperial rule, for there had been no actual bloodshed in the late
achievement. Clad in the civic dress of the chief Roman magistrate, and
with a crown of myrtle upon his head, his colleague similarly attired
walking beside him, he passed up to the Capitol on foot, though in
solemn procession along the Sacred Way, to offer sacrifice to the
national gods. The victim, a goodly sheep, whose image we may still see
between the pig and the ox of the Suovetaurilia, filleted and stoled
almost like some ancient canon of the church, on a sculptured fragment
in the Forum, was conducted by the priests, clad in rich white
vestments, and bearing their sacred utensils of massive gold,
immediately behind a company of flute-players, led by the great
choir-master, or conductor, of the day, visibly tetchy or delighted,
according as the instruments he ruled with his tuning-rod, rose, more
or less adequately amid the difficulties of the way, to the dream of
perfect music in the soul within him. The vast crowd, including the
soldiers of the triumphant army, now restored to wives and children,
all alike in holiday whiteness, had left their houses early in the
fine, dry morning, in a real affection for “the father of his country,”
to await the procession, the two princes having spent the preceding
night outside the walls, at the old Villa of the Republic. Marius, full
of curiosity, had taken his position with much care; and stood to see
the world’s masters pass by, at an angle from which he could command
the view of a great part of the processional route, sprinkled with fine
yellow sand, and punctiliously guarded from profane footsteps.
The coming of the pageant was announced by the clear sound of the
flutes, heard at length above the acclamations of the people—Salve
Imperator!—Dii te servent!—shouted in regular time, over the hills. It
was on the central figure, of course, that the whole attention of
Marius was fixed from the moment when the procession came in sight,
preceded by the lictors with gilded fasces, the imperial image-bearers,
and the pages carrying lighted torches; a band of knights, among whom
was Cornelius in complete military, array, following. Amply swathed
about in the folds of a richly worked toga, after a manner now long
since become obsolete with meaner persons, Marius beheld a man of about
five-and-forty years of age, with prominent eyes—eyes, which although
demurely downcast during this essentially religious ceremony, were by
nature broadly and benignantly observant. He was still, in the main, as
we see him in the busts which represent his gracious and courtly youth,
when Hadrian had playfully called him, not Verus, after the name of his
father, but Verissimus, for his candour of gaze, and the bland capacity
of the brow, which, below the brown hair, clustering thickly as of old,
shone out low, broad, and clear, and still without a trace of the
trouble of his lips. You saw the brow of one who, amid the blindness or
perplexity of the people about him, understood all things clearly; the
dilemma, to which his experience so far had brought him, between Chance
with meek resignation, and a Providence with boundless possibilities
and hope, being for him at least distinctly defined.
That outward serenity, which he valued so highly as a point of manner
or expression not unworthy the care of a public minister—outward
symbol, it might be thought, of the inward religious serenity it had
been his constant purpose to maintain—was increased to-day by his sense
of the gratitude of his people; that his life had been one of such
gifts and blessings as made his person seem in very deed divine to
them. Yet the cloud of some reserved internal sorrow, passing from time
to time into an expression of fatigue and effort, of loneliness amid
the shouting multitude, might have been detected there by the more
observant—as if the sagacious hint of one of his officers, “The
soldiers can’t understand you, they don’t know Greek,” were applicable
always to his relationships with other people. The nostrils and mouth
seemed capable almost of peevishness; and Marius noted in them, as in
the hands, and in the spare body generally, what was new to his
experience—something of asceticism, as we say, of a bodily gymnastic,
by which, although it told pleasantly in the clear blue humours of the
eye, the flesh had scarcely been an equal gainer with the spirit. It
was hardly the expression of “the healthy mind in the healthy body,”
but rather of a sacrifice of the body to the soul, its needs and
aspirations, that Marius seemed to divine in this assiduous student of
the Greek sages—a sacrifice, in truth, far beyond the demands of their
very saddest philosophy of life.
Dignify thyself with modesty and simplicity for thine ornaments!—had
been ever a maxim with this dainty and high-bred Stoic, who still
thought manners a true part of morals, according to the old sense of
the term, and who regrets now and again that he cannot control his
thoughts equally well with his countenance. That outward composure was
deepened during the solemnities of this day by an air of pontifical
abstraction; which, though very far from being pride—nay, a sort of
humility rather—yet gave, to himself, an air of unapproachableness, and
to his whole proceeding, in which every minutest act was considered,
the character of a ritual. Certainly, there was no haughtiness, social,
moral, or even philosophic, in Aurelius, who had realised, under more
trying conditions perhaps than any one before, that no element of
humanity could be alien from him. Yet, as he walked to-day, the centre
of ten thousand observers, with eyes discreetly fixed on the ground,
veiling his head at times and muttering very rapidly the words of the
“supplications,” there was something many spectators may have noted as
a thing new in their experience, for Aurelius, unlike his predecessors,
took all this with absolute seriousness. The doctrine of the sanctity
of kings, that, in the words of Tacitus, Princes are as Gods—Principes
instar deorum esse—seemed to have taken a novel, because a literal,
sense. For Aurelius, indeed, the old legend of his descent from Numa,
from Numa who had talked with the gods, meant much. Attached in very
early years to the service of the altars, like many another noble
youth, he was “observed to perform all his sacerdotal functions with a
constancy and exactness unusual at that age; was soon a master of the
sacred music; and had all the forms and ceremonies by heart.” And now,
as the emperor, who had not only a vague divinity about his person, but
was actually the chief religious functionary of the state, recited from
time to time the forms of invocation, he needed not the help of the
prompter, or ceremoniarius, who then approached, to assist him by
whispering the appointed words in his ear. It was that pontifical
abstraction which then impressed itself on Marius as the leading
outward characteristic of Aurelius; though to him alone, perhaps, in
that vast crowd of observers, it was no strange thing, but a matter he
had understood from of old.
Some fanciful writers have assigned the origin of these triumphal
processions to the mythic pomps of Dionysus, after his conquests in the
East; the very word Triumph being, according to this supposition, only
Thriambos-the Dionysiac Hymn. And certainly the younger of the two
imperial “brothers,” who, with the effect of a strong contrast, walked
beside Aurelius, and shared the honours of the day, might well have
reminded people of the delicate Greek god of flowers and wine. This new
conqueror of the East was now about thirty-six years old, but with his
scrupulous care for all the advantages of his person, and a soft
curling beard powdered with gold, looked many years younger. One result
of the more genial element in the wisdom of Aurelius had been that,
amid most difficult circumstances, he had known throughout life how to
act in union with persons of character very alien from his own; to be
more than loyal to the colleague, the younger brother in empire, he had
too lightly taken to himself, five years before, then an uncorrupt
youth, “skilled in manly exercises and fitted for war.” When Aurelius
thanks the gods that a brother had fallen to his lot, whose character
was a stimulus to the proper care of his own, one sees that this could
only have happened in the way of an example, putting him on his guard
against insidious faults. But it is with sincere amiability that the
imperial writer, who was indeed little used to be ironical, adds that
the lively respect and affection of the junior had often “gladdened”
him. To be able to make his use of the flower, when the fruit perhaps
was useless or poisonous:—that was one of the practical successes of
his philosophy; and his people noted, with a blessing, “the concord of
the two Augusti.”
The younger, certainly, possessed in full measure that charm of a
constitutional freshness of aspect which may defy for a long time
extravagant or erring habits of life; a physiognomy, healthy-looking,
cleanly, and firm, which seemed unassociable with any form of
self-torment, and made one think of the muzzle of some young hound or
roe, such as human beings invariably like to stroke—a physiognomy, in
effect, with all the goodliness of animalism of the finer sort, though
still wholly animal. The charm was that of the blond head, the
unshrinking gaze, the warm tints: neither more nor less than one may
see every English summer, in youth, manly enough, and with the stuff
which makes brave soldiers, in spite of the natural kinship it seems to
have with playthings and gay flowers. But innate in Lucius Verus there
was that more than womanly fondness for fond things, which had made the
atmosphere of the old city of Antioch, heavy with centuries of
voluptuousness, a poison to him: he had come to love his delicacies
best out of season, and would have gilded the very flowers. But with a
wonderful power of self-obliteration, the elder brother at the capital
had directed his procedure successfully, and allowed him, become now
also the husband of his daughter Lucilla, the credit of a “Conquest,”
though Verus had certainly not returned a conqueror over himself. He
had returned, as we know, with the plague in his company, along with
many another strange creature of his folly; and when the people saw him
publicly feeding his favourite horse Fleet with almonds and sweet
grapes, wearing the animal’s image in gold, and finally building it a
tomb, they felt, with some un-sentimental misgiving, that he might
revive the manners of Nero.—What if, in the chances of war, he should
survive the protecting genius of that elder brother?
He was all himself to-day: and it was with much wistful curiosity that
Marius regarded him. For Lucius Verus was, indeed, but the highly
expressive type of a class,—the true son of his father, adopted by
Hadrian. Lucius Verus the elder, also, had had the like strange
capacity for misusing the adornments of life, with a masterly grace; as
if such misusing were, in truth, the quite adequate occupation of an
intelligence, powerful, but distorted by cynical philosophy or some
disappointment of the heart. It was almost a sort of genius, of which
there had been instances in the imperial purple: it was to ascend the
throne, a few years later, in the person of one, now a hopeful little
lad at home in the palace; and it had its following, of course, among
the wealthy youth at Rome, who concentrated no inconsiderable force of
shrewdness and tact upon minute details of attire and manner, as upon
the one thing needful. Certainly, flowers were pleasant to the eye.
Such things had even their sober use, as making the outside of human
life superficially attractive, and thereby promoting the first steps
towards friendship and social amity. But what precise place could there
be for Verus and his peculiar charm, in that Wisdom, that Order of
divine Reason “reaching from end to end, strongly and sweetly disposing
all things,” from the vision of which Aurelius came down, so tolerant
of persons like him? Into such vision Marius too was certainly
well-fitted to enter, yet, noting the actual perfection of Lucius Verus
after his kind, his undeniable achievement of the select, in all minor
things, felt, though with some suspicion of himself, that he entered
into, and could understand, this other so dubious sort of character
also. There was a voice in the theory he had brought to Rome with him
which whispered “nothing is either great nor small;” as there were
times when he could have thought that, as the “grammarian’s” or the
artist’s ardour of soul may be satisfied by the perfecting of the
theory of a sentence, or the adjustment of two colours, so his own life
also might have been fulfilled by an enthusiastic quest after
perfection—say, in the flowering and folding of a toga.
The emperors had burned incense before the image of Jupiter, arrayed in
its most gorgeous apparel, amid sudden shouts from the people of Salve
Imperator! turned now from the living princes to the deity, as they
discerned his countenance through the great open doors. The imperial
brothers had deposited their crowns of myrtle on the richly embroidered
lapcloth of the god; and, with their chosen guests, sat down to a
public feast in the temple itself. There followed what was, after all,
the great event of the day:—an appropriate discourse, a discourse
almost wholly de contemptu mundi, delivered in the presence of the
assembled Senate, by the emperor Aurelius, who had thus, on certain
rare occasions, condescended to instruct his people, with the double
authority of a chief pontiff and a laborious student of philosophy. In
those lesser honours of the ovation, there had been no attendant slave
behind the emperors, to make mock of their effulgence as they went; and
it was as if with the discretion proper to a philosopher, and in fear
of a jealous Nemesis, he had determined himself to protest in time
against the vanity of all outward success.
The Senate was assembled to hear the emperor’s discourse in the vast
hall of the Curia Julia. A crowd of high-bred youths idled around, or
on the steps before the doors, with the marvellous toilets Marius had
noticed in the Via Nova; in attendance, as usual, to learn by
observation the minute points of senatorial procedure. Marius had
already some acquaintance with them, and passing on found himself
suddenly in the presence of what was still the most august assembly the
world had seen. Under Aurelius, ever full of veneration for this
ancient traditional guardian of public religion, the Senate had
recovered all its old dignity and independence. Among its members many
hundreds in number, visibly the most distinguished of them all, Marius
noted the great sophists or rhetoricians of the day, in all their
magnificence. The antique character of their attire, and the ancient
mode of wearing it, still surviving with them, added to the imposing
character of their persons, while they sat, with their staves of ivory
in their hands, on their curule chairs—almost the exact pattern of the
chair still in use in the Roman church when a Bishop pontificates at
the divine offices—“tranquil and unmoved, with a majesty that seemed
divine,” as Marius thought, like the old Gaul of the Invasion. The rays
of the early November sunset slanted full upon the audience, and made
it necessary for the officers of the Court to draw the purple curtains
over the windows, adding to the solemnity of the scene. In the depth of
those warm shadows, surrounded by her ladies, the empress Faustina was
seated to listen. The beautiful Greek statue of Victory, which since
the days of Augustus had presided over the assemblies of the Senate,
had been brought into the hall, and placed near the chair of the
emperor; who, after rising to perform a brief sacrificial service in
its honour, bowing reverently to the assembled fathers left and right,
took his seat and began to speak.
There was a certain melancholy grandeur in the very simplicity or
triteness of the theme: as it were the very quintessence of all the old
Roman epitaphs, of all that was monumental in that city of tombs, layer
upon layer of dead things and people. As if in the very fervour of
disillusion, he seemed to be composing—Hôsper epigraphas chronôn kai
holôn ethnôn+—the sepulchral titles of ages and whole peoples; nay! the
very epitaph of the living Rome itself. The grandeur of the ruins of
Rome,—heroism in ruin: it was under the influence of an imaginative
anticipation of this, that he appeared to be speaking. And though the
impression of the actual greatness of Rome on that day was but enhanced
by the strain of contempt, falling with an accent of pathetic
conviction from the emperor himself, and gaining from his pontifical
pretensions the authority of a religious intimation, yet the curious
interest of the discourse lay in this, that Marius, for one, as he
listened, seemed to forsee a grass-grown Forum, the broken ways of the
Capitol, and the Palatine hill itself in humble occupation. That
impression connected itself with what he had already noted of an actual
change even then coming over Italian scenery. Throughout, he could
trace something of a humour into which Stoicism at all times tends to
fall, the tendency to cry, Abase yourselves! There was here the almost
inhuman impassibility of one who had thought too closely on the
paradoxical aspect of the love of posthumous fame. With the ascetic
pride which lurks under all Platonism, resultant from its opposition of
the seen to the unseen, as falsehood to truth—the imperial Stoic, like
his true descendant, the hermit of the middle age, was ready, in no
friendly humour, to mock, there in its narrow bed, the corpse which had
made so much of itself in life. Marius could but contrast all that with
his own Cyrenaic eagerness, just then, to taste and see and touch;
reflecting on the opposite issues deducible from the same text. “The
world, within me and without, flows away like a river,” he had said;
“therefore let me make the most of what is here and now.”—“The world
and the thinker upon it, are consumed like a flame,” said Aurelius,
“therefore will I turn away my eyes from vanity: renounce: withdraw
myself alike from all affections.” He seemed tacitly to claim as a sort
of personal dignity, that he was very familiarly versed in this view of
things, and could discern a death’s-head everywhere. Now and again
Marius was reminded of the saying that “with the Stoics all people are
the vulgar save themselves;” and at times the orator seemed to have
forgotten his audience, and to be speaking only to himself.
“Art thou in love with men’s praises, get thee into the very soul of
them, and see!—see what judges they be, even in those matters which
concern themselves. Wouldst thou have their praise after death, bethink
thee, that they who shall come hereafter, and with whom thou wouldst
survive by thy great name, will be but as these, whom here thou hast
found so hard to live with. For of a truth, the soul of him who is
aflutter upon renown after death, presents not this aright to itself,
that of all whose memory he would have each one will likewise very
quickly depart, until memory herself be put out, as she journeys on by
means of such as are themselves on the wing but for a while, and are
extinguished in their turn.—Making so much of those thou wilt never
see! It is as if thou wouldst have had those who were before thee
discourse fair things concerning thee.
“To him, indeed, whose wit hath been whetted by true doctrine, that
well-worn sentence of Homer sufficeth, to guard him against regret and
fear.—
Like the race of leaves
The race of man is:—
The wind in autumn strows
The earth with old leaves: then the spring
the woods with new endows.+
Leaves! little leaves!—thy children, thy flatterers, thine enemies!
Leaves in the wind, those who would devote thee to darkness, who scorn
or miscall thee here, even as they also whose great fame shall outlast
them. For all these, and the like of them, are born indeed in the
spring season—Earos epigignetai hôrê+: and soon a wind hath scattered
them, and thereafter the wood peopleth itself again with another
generation of leaves. And what is common to all of them is but the
littleness of their lives: and yet wouldst thou love and hate, as if
these things should continue for ever. In a little while thine eyes
also will be closed, and he on whom thou perchance hast leaned thyself
be himself a burden upon another.
“Bethink thee often of the swiftness with which the things that are, or
are even now coming to be, are swept past thee: that the very substance
of them is but the perpetual motion of water: that there is almost
nothing which continueth: of that bottomless depth of time, so close at
thy side. Folly! to be lifted up, or sorrowful, or anxious, by reason
of things like these! Think of infinite matter, and thy portion—how
tiny a particle, of it! of infinite time, and thine own brief point
there; of destiny, and the jot thou art in it; and yield thyself
readily to the wheel of Clotho, to spin of thee what web she will.
“As one casting a ball from his hand, the nature of things hath had its
aim with every man, not as to the ending only, but the first beginning
of his course, and passage thither. And hath the ball any profit of its
rising, or loss as it descendeth again, or in its fall? or the bubble,
as it groweth or breaketh on the air? or the flame of the lamp, from
the beginning to the end of its brief story?
“All but at this present that future is, in which nature, who disposeth
all things in order, will transform whatsoever thou now seest,
fashioning from its substance somewhat else, and therefrom somewhat
else in its turn, lest the world grow old. We are such stuff as dreams
are made of—disturbing dreams. Awake, then! and see thy dream as it is,
in comparison with that erewhile it seemed to thee.
“And for me, especially, it were well to mind those many mutations of
empire in time past; therein peeping also upon the future, which must
needs be of like species with what hath been, continuing ever within
the rhythm and number of things which really are; so that in forty
years one may note of man and of his ways little less than in a
thousand. Ah! from this higher place, look we down upon the ship-wrecks
and the calm! Consider, for example, how the world went, under the
emperor Vespasian. They are married and given in marriage, they breed
children; love hath its way with them; they heap up riches for others
or for themselves; they are murmuring at things as then they are; they
are seeking for great place; crafty, flattering, suspicious, waiting
upon the death of others:—festivals, business, war, sickness,
dissolution: and now their whole life is no longer anywhere at all.
Pass on to the reign of Trajan: all things continue the same: and that
life also is no longer anywhere at all. Ah! but look again, and
consider, one after another, as it were the sepulchral inscriptions of
all peoples and times, according to one pattern.—What multitudes, after
their utmost striving—a little afterwards! were dissolved again into
their dust.
“Think again of life as it was far off in the ancient world; as it must
be when we shall be gone; as it is now among the wild heathen. How many
have never heard your names and mine, or will soon forget them! How
soon may those who shout my name to-day begin to revile it, because
glory, and the memory of men, and all things beside, are but vanity—a
sand-heap under the senseless wind, the barking of dogs, the
quarrelling of children, weeping incontinently upon their laughter.
“This hasteth to be; that other to have been: of that which now cometh
to be, even now somewhat hath been extinguished. And wilt thou make thy
treasure of any one of these things? It were as if one set his love
upon the swallow, as it passeth out of sight through the air!
“Bethink thee often, in all contentions public and private, of those
whom men have remembered by reason of their anger and vehement
spirit—those famous rages, and the occasions of them—the great
fortunes, and misfortunes, of men’s strife of old. What are they all
now, and the dust of their battles? Dust and ashes indeed; a fable, a
mythus, or not so much as that. Yes! keep those before thine eyes who
took this or that, the like of which happeneth to thee, so hardly; were
so querulous, so agitated. And where again are they? Wouldst thou have
it not otherwise with thee?
Consider how quickly all things vanish away—their bodily structure into
the general substance; the very memory of them into that great gulf and
abysm of past thoughts. Ah! ’tis on a tiny space of earth thou art
creeping through life—a pigmy soul carrying a dead body to its grave.
“Let death put thee upon the consideration both of thy body and thy
soul: what an atom of all matter hath been distributed to thee; what a
little particle of the universal mind. Turn thy body about, and
consider what thing it is, and that which old age, and lust, and the
languor of disease can make of it. Or come to its substantial and
causal qualities, its very type: contemplate that in itself, apart from
the accidents of matter, and then measure also the span of time for
which the nature of things, at the longest, will maintain that special
type. Nay! in the very principles and first constituents of things
corruption hath its part—so much dust, humour, stench, and scraps of
bone! Consider that thy marbles are but the earth’s callosities, thy
gold and silver its faeces; this silken robe but a worm’s bedding, and
thy purple an unclean fish. Ah! and thy life’s breath is not otherwise,
as it passeth out of matters like these, into the like of them again.
“For the one soul in things, taking matter like wax in the hands,
moulds and remoulds—how hastily!—beast, and plant, and the babe, in
turn: and that which dieth hath not slipped out of the order of nature,
but, remaining therein, hath also its changes there, disparting into
those elements of which nature herself, and thou too, art compacted.
She changes without murmuring. The oaken chest falls to pieces with no
more complaining than when the carpenter fitted it together. If one
told thee certainly that on the morrow thou shouldst die, or at the
furthest on the day after, it would be no great matter to thee to die
on the day after to-morrow, rather than to-morrow. Strive to think it a
thing no greater that thou wilt die—not to-morrow, but a year, or two
years, or ten years from to-day.
“I find that all things are now as they were in the days of our buried
ancestors—all things sordid in their elements, trite by long usage, and
yet ephemeral. How ridiculous, then, how like a countryman in town, is
he, who wonders at aught. Doth the sameness, the repetition of the
public shows, weary thee? Even so doth that likeness of events in the
spectacle of the world. And so must it be with thee to the end. For the
wheel of the world hath ever the same motion, upward and downward, from
generation to generation. When, when, shall time give place to
eternity?
“If there be things which trouble thee thou canst put them away,
inasmuch as they have their being but in thine own notion concerning
them. Consider what death is, and how, if one does but detach from it
the appearances, the notions, that hang about it, resting the eye upon
it as in itself it really is, it must be thought of but as an effect of
nature, and that man but a child whom an effect of nature shall
affright. Nay! not function and effect of nature, only; but a thing
profitable also to herself.
“To cease from action—the ending of thine effort to think and do: there
is no evil in that. Turn thy thought to the ages of man’s life,
boyhood, youth, maturity, old age: the change in every one of these
also is a dying, but evil nowhere. Thou climbedst into the ship, thou
hast made thy voyage and touched the shore. Go forth now! Be it into
some other life: the divine breath is everywhere, even there. Be it
into forgetfulness for ever; at least thou wilt rest from the beating
of sensible images upon thee, from the passions which pluck thee this
way and that like an unfeeling toy, from those long marches of the
intellect, from thy toilsome ministry to the flesh.
“Art thou yet more than dust and ashes and bare bone—a name only, or
not so much as that, which, also, is but whispering and a resonance,
kept alive from mouth to mouth of dying abjects who have hardly known
themselves; how much less thee, dead so long ago!
“When thou lookest upon a wise man, a lawyer, a captain of war, think
upon another gone. When thou seest thine own face in the glass, call up
there before thee one of thine ancestors—one of those old Caesars. Lo!
everywhere, thy double before thee! Thereon, let the thought occur to
thee: And where are they? anywhere at all, for ever? And thou,
thyself—how long? Art thou blind to that thou art—thy matter, how
temporal; and thy function, the nature of thy business? Yet tarry, at
least, till thou hast assimilated even these things to thine own proper
essence, as a quick fire turneth into heat and light whatsoever be cast
upon it.
“As words once in use are antiquated to us, so is it with the names
that were once on all men’s lips: Camillus, Volesus, Leonnatus: then,
in a little while, Scipio and Cato, and then Augustus, and then
Hadrian, and then Antoninus Pius. How many great physicians who lifted
wise brows at other men’s sick-beds, have sickened and died! Those wise
Chaldeans, who foretold, as a great matter, another man’s last hour,
have themselves been taken by surprise. Ay! and all those others, in
their pleasant places: those who doated on a Capreae like Tiberius, on
their gardens, on the baths: Pythagoras and Socrates, who reasoned so
closely upon immortality: Alexander, who used the lives of others as
though his own should last for ever—he and his mule-driver alike
now!—one upon another. Well-nigh the whole court of Antoninus is
extinct. Panthea and Pergamus sit no longer beside the sepulchre of
their lord. The watchers over Hadrian’s dust have slipped from his
sepulchre.—It were jesting to stay longer. Did they sit there still,
would the dead feel it? or feeling it, be glad? or glad, hold those
watchers for ever? The time must come when they too shall be aged men
and aged women, and decease, and fail from their places; and what shift
were there then for imperial service? This too is but the breath of the
tomb, and a skinful of dead men’s blood.
“Think again of those inscriptions, which belong not to one soul only,
but to whole families: Eschatos tou idiou genous:+ He was the last of
his race. Nay! of the burial of whole cities: Helice, Pompeii: of
others, whose very burial place is unknown.
“Thou hast been a citizen in this wide city. Count not for how long,
nor repine; since that which sends thee hence is no unrighteous judge,
no tyrant, but Nature, who brought thee hither; as when a player leaves
the stage at the bidding of the conductor who hired him. Sayest thou,
‘I have not played five acts’? True! but in human life, three acts only
make sometimes an entire play. That is the composer’s business, not
thine. Withdraw thyself with a good will; for that too hath, perchance,
a good will which dismisseth thee from thy part.”
The discourse ended almost in darkness, the evening having set in
somewhat suddenly, with a heavy fall of snow. The torches, made ready
to do him a useless honour, were of real service now, as the emperor
was solemnly conducted home; one man rapidly catching light from
another—a long stream of moving lights across the white Forum, up the
great stairs, to the palace. And, in effect, that night winter began,
the hardest that had been known for a lifetime. The wolves came from
the mountains; and, led by the carrion scent, devoured the dead bodies
which had been hastily buried during the plague, and, emboldened by
their meal, crept, before the short day was well past, over the walls
of the farmyards of the Campagna. The eagles were seen driving the
flocks of smaller birds across the dusky sky. Only, in the city itself
the winter was all the brighter for the contrast, among those who could
pay for light and warmth. The habit-makers made a great sale of the
spoil of all such furry creatures as had escaped wolves and eagles, for
presents at the Saturnalia; and at no time had the winter roses from
Carthage seemed more lustrously yellow and red.
NOTES
188. +Spenser, Shepheardes Calendar, October, 61-66.
200. +Transliteration: Hôsper epigraphas chronôn kai holôn ethnôn.
Pater’s Translation: “the sepulchral titles of ages and whole peoples.”
202. +Homer, Iliad VI.146-48.
202. +Transliteration: Earos epigignetai hôrê. Translation: “born in
springtime.” Homer, Iliad VI.147.
210. +Transliteration: Eschatos tou idiou genous. Translation: “He was
the last of his race.”