adapted to its inhabitants. Our progenitor, Mars, hath Venus recumbent
on his breast and looking up to him, teaching us that pleasure is to
be sought in the bosom of valour and by the means of war. No great
alteration, I think, will ever be made in our rites and
ceremonies--the best and most imposing that could be collected from
all nations, and uniting them to us by our complacence in adopting
them. The gods themselves may change names, to flatter new power: and,
indeed, as we degenerate, Religion will accommodate herself to our
propensities and desires. Our heaven is now popular: it will become
monarchal; not without a crowded court, as befits it, of apparitors
and satellites and minions of both sexes, paid and caressed for
carrying to their stern, dark-bearded master prayers and
supplications. Altars must be strown with broken minds, and incense
rise amid abject aspirations. Gods will be found unfit for their
places; and it is not impossible that, in the ruin imminent from our
contentions for power, and in the necessary extinction both of ancient
families and of generous sentiments, our consular fasces may become
the water-sprinklers of some upstart priesthood, and that my son may
apply for lustration to the son of my groom. The interest of such men
requires that the spirit of arms and of arts be extinguished. They
will predicate peace, that the people may be tractable to them; but a
religion altogether pacific is the fomenter of wars and the nurse of
crimes, alluring Sloth from within and Violence from afar. If ever it
should prevail among the Romans, it must prevail alone: for nations
more vigorous and energetic will invade them, close upon them, trample
them under foot; and the name of Roman, which is now the most
glorious, will become the most opprobrious upon earth.
_Caesar._ The time, I hope, may be distant; for next to my own name I
hold my country's.
_Lucullus._ Mine, not coming from Troy or Ida, is lower in my
estimation: I place my country's first.
You are surveying the little lake beside us. It contains no fish,
birds never alight on it, the water is extremely pure and cold; the
walk round is pleasant, not only because there is always a gentle
breeze from it, but because the turf is fine and the surface of the
mountain on this summit is perfectly on a level to a great extent in
length--not a trifling advantage to me, who walk often and am weak. I
have no alley, no garden, no enclosure; the park is in the vale below,
where a brook supplies the ponds, and where my servants are lodged;
for here I have only twelve in attendance.
_Caesar._ What is that so white, towards the Adriatic?
_Lucullus._ The Adriatic itself. Turn round and you may descry the
Tuscan Sea. Our situation is reported to be among the highest of the
Apennines. Marcipor has made the sign to me that dinner is ready. Pass
this way.
_Caesar._ What a library is here! Ah, Marcus Tullius! I salute thy
image. Why frownest thou upon me--collecting the consular robe and
uplifting the right arm, as when Rome stood firm again, and Catiline
fled before thee?
_Lucullus._ Just so; such was the action the statuary chose, as adding
a new endearment to the memory of my absent friend.
_Caesar._ Sylla, who honoured you above all men, is not here.
_Lucullus._ I have his _Commentaries_: he inscribed them, as you know,
to me. Something even of our benefactors may be forgotten, and
gratitude be unreproved.
_Caesar._ The impression on that couch, and the two fresh honeysuckles
in the leaves of those two books, would show, even to a stranger, that
this room is peculiarly the master's. Are they sacred?
_Lucullus._ To me and Caesar.
_Caesar._ I would have asked permission----
_Lucullus._ Caius Julius, you have nothing to ask of Polybius and
Thucydides; nor of Xenophon, the next to them on the table.
_Caesar._ Thucydides! the most generous, the most unprejudiced, the
most sagacious, of historians. Now, Lucullus, you whose judgment in
style is more accurate than any other Roman's, do tell me whether a
commander, desirous of writing his _Commentaries_, could take to
himself a more perfect model than Thucydides?
_Lucullus._ Nothing is more perfect, nor ever will be: the scholar of
Pericles, the master of Demosthenes, the equal of the one in military
science, and of the other not the inferior in civil and forensic; the
calm dispassionate judge of the general by whom he was defeated, his
defender, his encomiast. To talk of such men is conducive not only to
virtue but to health.
* * * * *
This other is my dining-room. You expect the dishes.
_Caesar._ I misunderstood--I fancied----
_Lucullus._ Repose yourself, and touch with the ebony wand, beside
you, the sphinx on either of those obelisks, right or left.
_Caesar._ Let me look at them first.
_Lucullus._ The contrivance was intended for one person, or two at
most, desirous of privacy and quiet. The blocks of jasper in my pair,
and of porphyry in yours, easily yield in their grooves, each forming
one partition. There are four, containing four platforms. The lower
holds four dishes, such as sucking forest-boars, venison, hares,
tunnies, sturgeons, which you will find within; the upper three, eight
each, but diminutive. The confectionery is brought separately, for the
steam would spoil it, if any should escape. The melons are in the
snow, thirty feet under us: they came early this morning from a place
in the vicinity of Luni, travelling by night.
_Caesar._ I wonder not at anything of refined elegance in Lucullus;
but really here Antiochia and Alexandria seem to have cooked for us,
and magicians to be our attendants.
_Lucullus._ The absence of slaves from our repast is the luxury, for
Marcipor alone enters, and he only when I press a spring with my foot
or wand. When you desire his appearance, touch that chalcedony just
before you.
_Caesar._ I eat quick and rather plentifully; yet the valetudinarian
(excuse my rusticity, for I rejoice at seeing it) appears to equal the
traveller in appetite, and to be contented with one dish.
_Lucullus._ It is milk: such, with strawberries, which ripen on the
Apennines many months in continuance, and some other berries of sharp
and grateful flavour, has been my only diet since my first residence
here. The state of my health requires it; and the habitude of nearly
three months renders this food not only more commodious to my studies
and more conducive to my sleep, but also more agreeable to my palate
than any other.
_Caesar._ Returning to Rome or Baiae, you must domesticate and tame
them. The cherries you introduced from Pontus are now growing in
Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul; and the largest and best in the
world, perhaps, are upon the more sterile side of Lake Larius.
_Lucullus._ There are some fruits, and some virtues, which require a
harsh soil and bleak exposure for their perfection.
_Caesar._ In such a profusion of viands, and so savoury, I perceive no
odour.
_Lucullus._ A flue conducts heat through the compartments of the
obelisks; and, if you look up, you may observe that those gilt roses,
between the astragals in the cornice, are prominent from it half a
span. Here is an aperture in the wall, between which and the outer is
a perpetual current of air. We are now in the dog-days; and I have
never felt in the whole summer more heat than at Rome in many days of
March.
_Caesar._ Usually you are attended by troops of domestics and of
dinner-friends, not to mention the learned and scientific, nor your
own family, your attachment to which, from youth upward, is one of the
higher graces in your character. Your brother was seldom absent from
you.
_Lucullus._ Marcus was coming; but the vehement heats along the Arno,
in which valley he has a property he never saw before, inflamed his
blood, and he now is resting for a few days at Faesulae, a little town
destroyed by Sylla within our memory, who left it only air and water,
the best in Tuscany. The health of Marcus, like mine, has been
declining for several months: we are running our last race against
each other, and never was I, in youth along the Tiber, so anxious of
first reaching the goal. I would not outlive him: I should reflect too
painfully on earlier days, and look forward too despondently on
future. As for friends, lampreys and turbots beget them, and they
spawn not amid the solitude of the Apennines. To dine in company with
more than two is a Gaulish and German thing. I can hardly bring myself
to believe that I have eaten in concert with twenty; so barbarous and
herdlike a practice does not now appeal to me--such an incentive to
drink much and talk loosely; not to add, such a necessity to speak
loud, which is clownish and odious in the extreme. On this mountain
summit I hear no noises, no voices, not even of salutation; we have no
flies about us, and scarcely an insect or reptile.
_Caesar._ Your amiable son is probably with his uncle: is he well?
_Lucullus._ Perfectly. He was indeed with my brother in his intended
visit to me; but Marcus, unable to accompany him hither, or
superintend his studies in the present state of his health, sent him
directly to his Uncle Cato at Tusculum--a man fitter than either of us
to direct his education, and preferable to any, excepting yourself and
Marcus Tullius, in eloquence and urbanity.
_Caesar._ Cato is so great, that whoever is greater must be the
happiest and first of men.
_Lucullus._ That any such be still existing, O Julius, ought to excite
no groan from the breast of a Roman citizen. But perhaps I wrong you;
perhaps your mind was forced reluctantly back again, on your past
animosities and contests in the Senate.
_Caesar._ I revere him, but cannot love him.
_Lucullus._ Then, Caius Julius, you groaned with reason; and I would
pity rather than reprove you.
On the ceiling at which you are looking, there is no gilding, and
little painting--a mere trellis of vines bearing grapes, and the
heads, shoulders, and arms rising from the cornice only, of boys and
girls climbing up to steal them, and scrambling for them: nothing
overhead; no giants tumbling down, no Jupiter thundering, no Mars and
Venus caught at mid-day, no river-gods pouring out their urns upon us;
for, as I think nothing so insipid as a flat ceiling, I think nothing
so absurd as a storied one. Before I was aware, and without my
participation, the painter had adorned that of my bedchamber with a
golden shower, bursting from varied and irradiated clouds. On my
expostulation, his excuse was that he knew the Danaë of Scopas, in a
recumbent posture, was to occupy the centre of the room. The walls,
behind the tapestry and pictures, are quite rough. In forty-three days
the whole fabric was put together and habitable.
The wine has probably lost its freshness: will you try some other?
_Caesar._ Its temperature is exact; its flavour exquisite. Latterly I
have never sat long after dinner, and am curious to pass through the
other apartments, if you will trust me.
_Lucullus._ I attend you.
_Caesar._ Lucullus, who is here? What figure is that on the poop of
the vessel? Can it be----
_Lucullus._ The subject was dictated by myself; you gave it.
_Caesar._ Oh, how beautifully is the water painted! How vividly the
sun strikes against the snows on Taurus! The grey temples and pierhead
of Tarsus catch it differently, and the monumental mound on the left
is half in shade. In the countenance of those pirates I did not
observe such diversity, nor that any boy pulled his father back: I did
not indeed mark them or notice them at all.
_Lucullus._ The painter in this fresco, the last work finished, had
dissatisfied me in one particular. 'That beautiful young face,' said
I, 'appears not to threaten death.'
'Lucius,' he replied, 'if one muscle were moved it were not Caesar's:
beside, he said it jokingly, though resolved.'
'I am contented with your apology, Antipho; but what are you doing
now? for you never lay down or suspend your pencil, let who will talk
and argue. The lines of that smaller face in the distance are the
same.'
'Not the same,' replied he, 'nor very different: it smiles, as surely
the goddess must have done at the first heroic act of her descendant.'
_Caesar._ In her exultation and impatience to press forward she seems
to forget that she is standing at the extremity of the shell, which
rises up behind out of the water; and she takes no notice of the
terror on the countenance of this Cupid who would detain her, nor of
this who is flying off and looking back. The reflection of the shell
has given a warmer hue below the knee; a long streak of yellow light
in the horizon is on the level of her bosom, some of her hair is
almost lost in it; above her head on every side is the pure azure of
the heavens.
Oh! and you would not have shown me this? You, among whose primary
studies is the most perfect satisfaction of your guests!
_Lucullus._ In the next apartment are seven or eight other pictures
from our history.
There are no more: what do you look for?
_Caesar._ I find not among the rest any descriptive of your own
exploits. Ah, Lucullus! there is no surer way of making them
remembered.
This, I presume by the harps in the two corners, is the music-room.
_Lucullus._ No, indeed; nor can I be said to have one here; for I love
best the music of a single instrument, and listen to it willingly at
all times, but most willingly while I am reading. At such seasons a
voice or even a whisper disturbs me; but music refreshes my brain when
I have read long, and strengthen it from the beginning. I find also
that if I write anything in poetry (a youthful propensity still
remaining), it gives rapidity and variety and brightness to my ideas.
On ceasing, I command a fresh measure and instrument, or another
voice; which is to the mind like a change of posture, or of air to the
body. My heal this benefited by the gentle play thus opened to the
most delicate of the fibres.
_Caesar._ Let me augur that a disorder so tractable may be soon
removed. What is it thought to be?
_Lucullus._ I am inclined to think, and my physician did not long
attempt to persuade me of the contrary, that the ancient realms of
Aeaetes have supplied me with some other plants than the cherry, and
such as I should be sorry to see domesticated here in Italy.
_Caesar._ The gods forbid! Anticipate better things! The reason of
Lucullus is stronger than the medicaments of Mithridates; but why not
use them too? Let nothing be neglected. You may reasonably hope for
many years of life: your mother still enjoys it.
_Lucullus._ To stand upon one's guard against Death exasperates her
malice and protracts our sufferings.
_Caesar._ Rightly and gravely said: but your country at this time
cannot do well without you.
_Lucullus._ The bowl of milk, which to-day is presented to me, will
shortly be presented to my Manes.
_Caesar._ Do you suspect the hand?
_Lucullus._ I will not suspect a Roman: let us converse no more about
it.
_Caesar._ It is the only subject on which I am resolved never to
think, as relates to myself. Life may concern us, death not; for in
death we neither can act nor reason, we neither can persuade nor
command; and our statues are worth more than we are, let them be but
wax.
* * * * *
_Lucullus._ From being for ever in action, for ever in contention, and
from excelling in them all other mortals, what advantage derive we? I
would not ask what satisfaction, what glory? The insects have more
activity than ourselves, the beasts more strength, even inert matter
more firmness and stability; the gods alone more goodness. To the
exercise of this every country lies open; and neither I eastward nor
you westward have found any exhausted by contests for it.
Must we give men blows because they will not look at us? or chain them
to make them hold the balance evener?
Do not expect to be acknowledged for what you are, much less for what
you would be; since no one can well measure a great man but upon the
bier. There was a time when the most ardent friend to Alexander of
Macedon would have embraced the partisan for his enthusiasm, who
should have compared him with Alexander of Pherae. It must have been
at a splendid feast, and late at it, when Scipio should have been
raised to an equality with Romulus, or Cato with Curius. It has been
whispered in my ear, after a speech of Cicero, 'If he goes on so, he
will tread down the sandal of Marcus Antonius in the long run, and
perhaps leave Hortensius behind.' Officers of mine, speaking about
you, have exclaimed with admiration: 'He fights like Cinna.' Think,
Caius Julius (for you have been instructed to think both as a poet and
as a philosopher), that among the hundred hands of Ambition, to whom
we may attribute them more properly than to Briareus, there is not one
which holds anything firmly. In the precipitancy of her course, what
appears great is small, and what appears small is great. Our estimate
of men is apt to be as inaccurate and inexact as that of things, or
more. Wishing to have all on our side, we often leave those we should
keep by us, run after those we should avoid, and call importunately on
others who sit quiet and will not come. We cannot at once catch the
applause of the vulgar and expect the approbation of the wise. What
are parties? Do men really great ever enter into them? Are they not
ball-courts, where ragged adventurers strip and strive, and where
dissolute youths abuse one another, and challenge and game and wager?
If you and I cannot quite divest ourselves of infirmities and
passions, let us think, however, that there is enough in us to be
divided into two portions, and let us keep the upper undisturbed and
pure. A part of Olympus itself lies in dreariness and in clouds,
variable and stormy; but it is not the highest: there the gods govern.
Your soul is large enough to embrace your country: all other affection
is for less objects, and less men are capable of it. Abandon, O
Caesar! such thoughts and wishes as now agitate and propel you: leave
them to mere men of the marsh, to fat hearts and miry intellects.
Fortunate may we call ourselves to have been born in an age so
productive of eloquence, so rich in erudition. Neither of us would be
excluded, or hooted at, on canvassing for these honours. He who can
think dispassionately and deeply as I do, is great as I am; none
other. But his opinions are at freedom to diverge from mine, as mine
are from his; and indeed, on recollection, I never loved those most
who thought with me, but those rather who deemed my sentiments worth
discussion, and who corrected me with frankness and affability.
_Caesar._ Lucullus, you perhaps have taken the wiser and better part,
certainly the pleasanter. I cannot argue with you: I would gladly hear
one who could, but you again more gladly. I should think unworthily of
you if I thought you capable of yielding or receding. I do not even
ask you to keep our conversation long a secret, so greatly does it
preponderate in your favour; so much more of gentleness, of eloquence,
and of argument. I came hither with one soldier, avoiding the cities,
and sleeping at the villa of a confidential friend. To-night I sleep
in yours, and, if your dinner does not disturb me, shall sleep
soundly. You go early to rest I know.
_Lucullus._ Not, however, by daylight. Be assured, Caius Julius, that
greatly as your discourse afflicts me, no part of it shall escape my
lips. If you approach the city with arms, with arms I meet you; then
your denouncer and enemy, at present your host and confidant.
_Caesar._ I shall conquer you.
_Lucullus._ That smile would cease upon it: you sigh already.
_Caesar._ Yes, Lucullus, if I am oppressed I shall overcome my
oppressor: I know my army and myself. A sigh escaped me, and many more
will follow; but one transport will rise amid them, when, vanquisher
of my enemies and avenger of my dignity, I press again the hand of
Lucullus, mindful of this day.
EPICURUS, LEONTION, AND TERNISSA
* * * * *
_Ternissa._ The broad and billowy summits of yon monstrous trees, one
would imagine, were made for the storms to rest upon when they are
tired of raving. And what bark! It occurs to me, Epicurus, that I have
rarely seen climbing plants attach themselves to these trees, as they
do to the oak, the maple, the beech, and others.
_Leontion._ If your remark be true, perhaps the resinous are not
embraced by them so frequently because they dislike the odour of the
resin, or some other property of the juices; for they, too, have their
affections and antipathies no less than countries and their climes.
_Ternissa._ For shame! what would you with me?
_Epicurus._ I would not interrupt you while you were speaking, nor
while Leontion was replying; this is against my rules and practice.
Having now ended, kiss me, Ternissa!
_Ternissa._ Impudent man! in the name of Pallas, why should I kiss
you?
_Epicurus._ Because you expressed hatred.
_Ternissa._ Do we kiss when we hate?
_Epicurus._ There is no better end of hating. The sentiment should not
exist one moment; and if the hater gives a kiss on being ordered to do
it, even to a tree or a stone, that tree or stone becomes the monument
of a fault extinct.
_Ternissa._ I promise you I never will hate a tree again.
_Epicurus._ I told you so.
_Leontion._ Nevertheless, I suspect, my Ternissa, you will often be
surprised into it. I was very near saying, 'I hate these rude square
stones!' Why did you leave them here, Epicurus?
_Epicurus._ It is true, they are the greater part square, and seem to
have been cut out in ancient times for plinths and columns; they are
also rude. Removing the smaller, that I might plant violets and
cyclamens and convolvuluses and strawberries, and such other herbs as
grow willingly in dry places, I left a few of these for seats, a few
for tables and for couches.
_Leontion._ Delectable couches!
_Epicurus._ Laugh as you may, they will become so when they are
covered with moss and ivy, and those other two sweet plants whose
names I do not remember to have found in any ancient treatise, but
which I fancy I have heard Theophrastus call 'Leontion' and
'Ternissa'.
_Ternissa._ The bold, insidious, false creature!
_Epicurus._ What is that volume, may I venture to ask, Leontion? Why
do you blush?
_Leontion._ I do not blush about it.
_Epicurus._ You are offended, then, my dear girl.
_Leontion._ No, nor offended. I will tell you presently what it
contains. Account to me first for your choice of so strange a place to
walk in: a broad ridge, the summit and one side barren, the other a
wood of rose-laurels impossible to penetrate. The worst of all is, we
can see nothing of the city or the Parthenon, unless from the very
top.
_Epicurus._ The place commands, in my opinion, a most perfect view.
_Leontion._ Of what, pray?
_Epicurus._ Of itself; seeming to indicate that we, Leontion, who
philosophize, should do the same.
_Leontion._ Go on, go on! say what you please: I will not hate
anything yet. Why have you torn up by the root all these little
mountain ash-trees? This is the season of their beauty: come,
Ternissa, let us make ourselves necklaces and armlets, such as may
captivate old Sylvanus and Pan; you shall have your choice. But why
have you torn them up?
_Epicurus._ On the contrary, they were brought hither this morning.
Sosimenes is spending large sums of money on an olive-ground, and has
uprooted some hundreds of them, of all ages and sizes. I shall cover
the rougher part of the hill with them, setting the clematis and vine
and honeysuckle against them, to unite them.
_Ternissa._ Oh, what a pleasant thing it is to walk in the green light
of the vine trees, and to breathe the sweet odour of their invisible
flowers!
_Epicurus._ The scent of them is so delicate that it requires a sigh
to inhale it; and this, being accompanied and followed by enjoyment,
renders the fragrance so exquisite. Ternissa, it is this, my sweet
friend, that made you remember the green light of the foliage, and
think of the invisible flowers as you would of some blessing from
heaven.
_Ternissa._ I see feathers flying at certain distances just above the
middle of the promontory: what can they mean?
_Epicurus._ Cannot you imagine them to be the feathers from the wings
of Zethes and Caläis, who came hither out of Thrace to behold the
favourite haunts of their mother Oreithyia? From the precipice that
hangs over the sea a few paces from the pinasters she is reported to
have been carried off by Boreas; and these remains of the primeval
forest have always been held sacred on that belief.
_Leontion._ The story is an idle one.
_Ternissa._ Oh no, Leontion! the story is very true.
_Leontion._ Indeed!
_Ternissa._ I have heard not only odes, but sacred and most ancient
hymns upon it; and the voice of Boreas is often audible here, and the
screams of Oreithyia.
_Leontion._ The feathers, then, really may belong to Caläis and
Zethes.
_Ternissa._ I don't believe it; the winds would have carried them
away.