Produced by Charles Keller
HISTORIC GIRLS
Stories Of Girls Who Have Influenced The History Of Their Times
By E. S. Brooks
PREFACE.
In these progressive days, when so much energy and discussion are
devoted to what is termed equality and the rights of woman, it is well
to remember that there have been in the distant past women, and girls
even, who by their actions and endeavors proved themselves the equals of
the men of their time in valor, shrewdness, and ability.
This volume seeks to tell for the girls and boys of to-day the stories
of some of their sisters of the long-ago,--girls who by eminent position
or valiant deeds became historic even before they had passed the
charming season of girlhood.
Their stories are fruitful of varying lessons, for some of these
historic girls were wilful as well as courageous, and mischievous as
well as tender-hearted.
But from all the lessons and from all the morals, one truth stands out
most clearly--the fact that age and country, time and surroundings, make
but little change in the real girl-nature, that has ever been impulsive,
trusting, tender, and true, alike in the days of the Syrian Zenobia and
in those of the modern American school-girl.
After all, whatever the opportunity, whatever the limitation, whatever
the possibilities of this same never-changing girl-nature, no better
precept can be laid down for our own bright young maidens, as none
better can be deduced from the stories herewith presented, than that
phrased in Kingsley’s noble yet simple verse:
“Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long
And so make life, death, and the vast forever
One grand, sweet song.”
Grateful acknowledgment is made by the author for the numerous
expressions of interest that came to him from his girl-readers as the
papers now gathered into book-form appeared from time to time in the
pages of St. Nicholas. The approval of those for whom one studies and
labors is the pleasantest and most enduring return.
CONTENTS
ZENOBIA OF PALMYRA: THE GIRL OF THE SYRIAN DESERT
HELENA OF BRITAIN: THE GIRL OF THE ESSEX FELLS
PULCHERIA OF CONSTANTINOPLE: THE GIRL OF THE GOLDEN HORN
CLOTILDA OF BURGUNDY: THE GIRL OF THE FRENCH VINEYARDS
WOO OF HWANG-HO: THE GIRL OF THE YELLOW RIVER
EDITH OF SCOTLAND: THE GIRL OF THE NORTHERN ABBEY
JACQUELINE OF HOLLAND: THE GIRL OF THE LAND OF FOGS
CATARINA OF VENICE: THE GIRL OF THE GRAND CANAL
THERESA OF AVILA: THE GIRL OF THE SPANISH SIERRAS
ELIZABETH OF TUDOR: THE GIRL OF THE HERTFORD MANOR
CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN: THE GIRL OF THE NORTHERN FIORDS
MA-TA-OKA OF POW-HA-TAN: THE GIRL OF THE VIRGINIA FORESTS
ZENOBIA OF PALMYRA: THE GIRL OF THE SYRIAN DESERT.
[Afterward known as “Zenobia Augusta, Queen of the East.”] A.D. 250.
MANY and many miles and many days’ journey toward the rising sun, over
seas and mountains and deserts,--farther to the east than Rome, or
Constantinople, or even Jerusalem and old Damascus,--stand the ruins of
a once mighty city, scattered over a mountain-walled oasis of the great
Syrian desert, thirteen hundred feet above the sea, and just across the
northern border of Arabia. Look for it in your geographies. It is known
as Palmyra. To-day the jackal prowls through its deserted streets and
the lizard suns himself on its fallen columns, while thirty or forty
miserable Arabian huts huddle together in a small corner of what was
once the great court-yard of the magnificent Temple of the Sun.
And yet, sixteen centuries ago, Palmyra, or Tadmor as it was originally
called, was one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Nature and
art combined to make it glorious. Like a glittering mirage out of the
sand-swept desert arose its palaces and temples and grandly sculptured
archways. With aqueducts and monuments and gleaming porticos with
countless groves of palm-trees and gardens full of verdure; with wells
and fountains, market and circus; with broad streets stretching away to
the city gates and lined on either side with magnificent colonnades of
rose-colored marble--such was Palmyra in the year of our Lord 250, when,
in the soft Syrian month of Nisan, or April, in an open portico in the
great colonnade and screened from the sun by gayly colored awnings, two
young people--a boy of sixteen and a girl of twelve--looked down upon
the beautiful Street of the Thousand Columns, as lined with bazaars and
thronged with merchants it stretched from the wonderful Temple of the
Sun to the triple Gate-way of the Sepulchre, nearly a mile away.
Both were handsome and healthy--true children of old Tadmor, that
glittering, fairy-like city which, Arabian legends say, was built by the
genii for the great King Solomon ages and ages ago. Midway between
the Mediterranean and the Euphrates, it was the meeting-place for the
caravans from the east and the wagon trains from the west, and it had
thus become a city of merchant princes, a wealthy commercial republic,
like Florence and Venice in the middle ages--the common toll-gate for
both the East and West.
But, though a tributary colony of Rome, it was so remote a dependency
of that mighty mistress of the world that the yoke of vassalage was
but carelessly worn and lightly felt. The great merchants and chiefs
of caravans who composed its senate and directed its affairs, and
whose glittering statues lined the sculptured cornice of its marble
colonnades, had more power and influence than the far-off Emperor at
Rome, and but small heed was paid to the slender garrison that acted as
guard of honor to the strategi or special officers who held the colony
for Rome and received its yearly tribute. And yet so strong a force was
Rome in the world that even this free-tempered desert city had gradually
become Romanized in manners as in name, so that Tadmor had become first
Adrianapolis and then Palmyra. And this influence had touched even these
children in the portico. For their common ancestor--a wealthy merchant
of a century before--had secured honor and rank from the Emperor
Septimus Severus--the man who “walled in” England, and of whom it was
said that “he never performed an act of humanity or forgave a fault.”
Becoming, by the Emperor’s grace, a Roman citizen, this merchant of
Palmyra, according to a custom of the time, took the name of his royal
patron as that of his own “fahdh,” or family, and the father of young
Odhainat in the portico, as was Odhainat himself, was known as Septimus
Odaenathus, while the young girl found her Arabic name of Bath Zabbai,
Latinized into that of Septima Zenobia.
But as, thinking nothing of all this, they looked lazily on the throng
below, a sudden exclamation from the lad caused his companion to raise
her flashing black eyes inquiringly to his face.
“What troubles you, my Odhainat?” she asked.
“There, there; look there, Bath Zabbai!” replied the boy excitedly;
“coming through the Damascus arch, and we thought him to be in Emesa.”
The girl’s glance followed his guiding finger, but even as she looked a
clear trumpet peal rose above the din of the city, while from beneath
a sculptured archway that spanned a colonnaded cross-street the bright
April sun gleamed down upon the standard of Rome with its eagle crest
and its S. P. Q. R. design beneath. There is a second trumpet peal, and
swinging into the great Street of the Thousand Columns, at the head
of his light-armed legionaries, rides the centurion Rufinus, lately
advanced to the rank of tribune of one of the chief Roman cohorts in
Syria. His coming, as Odhainat and even the young Bath Zabbai knew,
meant a stricter supervision of the city, a re-enforcement of its
garrison, and the assertion of the mastership of Rome over this far
eastern province on the Persian frontier.
“But why should the coming of the Roman so trouble you, my Odhainat?”
she asked. “We are neither Jew nor Christian that we should fear his
wrath, but free Palmyreans who bend the knee neither to Roman nor
Persian masters.”
“Who WILL bend the knee no longer, be it never so little, my cousin,”
exclaimed the lad hotly, “as this very day would have shown had not this
crafty Rufinus--may great Solomon’s genii dash him in the sea!--come
with his cohort to mar our measures! Yet see--who cometh now?” he cried;
and at once the attention of the young people was turned in the
opposite direction as they saw, streaming out of the great fortress-like
court-yard of the Temple of the Sun, another hurrying throng.
Then young Odhainat gave a cry of joy.
“See, Bath Zabbai; they come, they come”! he cried. “It is my father,
Odhainat the esarkos,(1) with all the leaders and all the bowmen and
spearmen of our fahdh armed and in readiness. This day will we fling off
the Roman yoke and become the true and unconquered lords of Palmyra. And
I, too, Must join them,” he added.
(1) The “head man,” or chief of the “fahdh,” or family.
But the young girl detained him. “Wait, cousin,” she said; “watch and
wait. Our fahdh will scarce attempt so brave a deed to-day, with these
new Roman soldiers in our gates. That were scarcely wise.”
But the boy broke out again. “So; they have seen each other,” he said;
“both sides are pressing on!”
“True; and they will meet under this very portico,” said Bath Zabbai,
and moved both by interest and desire this dark-eyed Syrian girl, to
whom fear was never known, standing by her cousin’s side, looked down
upon the tossing sea of spears and lances and glittering shields and
helmets that swayed and surged in the street below.
“So, Odaenathus!” said Rufinus, the tribune, reining in his horse and
speaking in harsh and commanding tones, “what meaneth this array of
armed followers?”
“Are the movements of Septimus Odaenathus, the head-man, of such
importance to the noble tribune that he must needs question a free
merchant of Palmyra as to the number and manner of his servants?” asked
Odaemathus haughtily.
“Dog of a Palmyrean; slave of a camel-driver,” said the Roman angrily,
“trifle not with me. Were you ten times the free merchant you claim, you
should not thus reply. Free, forsooth! None are free but Romans.”
“Have a care, O Rufinus,” said the Palmyrean boldly, “choose wiser words
if you would have peaceful ways. Palmyra brooks no such slander of her
foremost men.”
“And Rome brooks no such men as you, traitor,” said Rufinus. “Ay,
traitor, I say,” he repeated, as Odaenathus started at the word. “Think
not to hide your plots to overthrow the Roman power in your city and
hand the rule to the base Sapor of Persia. Every thing is known to
our great father the Emperor, and thus doth he reckon with traitors.
Macrinus, strike!” and at his word the short Gallic sword in the ready
hand of the big German foot-soldier went straight to its mark and
Odaenathus, the “head-man” of Palmyra, lay dead in the Street of the
Thousand Columns.
So sudden and so unexpected was the blow that the Palmyreans stood as if
stunned, unable to comprehend what had happened. But the Roman was swift
to act.
“Sound, trumpets! Down, pikes!” he cried, and as the trumpet peal rose
loud and clear, fresh legionaries came hurrying through the Damascus
arch, and the pilum(1) and spatha of Rome bore back the shields and
lances of Palmyra.
(1) The pilum was the Roman pike, and the spatha the short single-edged
Roman sword.
But, before the lowered pikes could fully disperse the crowd, the
throng parted and through the swaying mob there burst a lithe and flying
figure--a brown-skinned maid of twelve with streaming hair, loose robe,
and angry, flashing eyes. Right under the lowered pikes she darted and,
all flushed and panting, defiantly faced the astonished Rufinus. Close
behind her came an equally excited lad who, when he saw the stricken
body of his father on the marble street, flung himself weeping upon it.
But Bath Zabbai’s eyes flashed still more angrily:
“Assassin, murderer!” she cried; “you have slain my kinsman and
Odhainat’s father. How dare you; how dare you!” she repeated vehemently,
and then, flushing with deeper scorn, she added: “Roman, I hate you!
Would that I were a man. Then should all Palmyra know how----”
“Scourge these children home,” broke in the stern Rufinus, “or fetch
them by the ears to their nurses and their toys. Let the boys and girls
of Palmyra beware how they mingle in the matters of their elders, or in
the plots of their fathers. Men of Palmyra, you who to-day have dared
to think of rebellion, look on your leader here and know how Rome deals
with traitors. But, because the merchant Odaenathus bore a Roman name,
and was of Roman rank--ho, soldiers! bear him to his house, and let
Palmyra pay such honor as befits his name and station.”
The struggling children were half led, half carried into the sculptured
atrium(1) of the palace of Odaenathus which, embowered in palms and
vines and wonderful Eastern plants, stood back from the marble colonnade
on the Street of the Thousand Columns. And when in that same atrium
the body of the dead merchant lay embalmed and draped for its “long
home,” (2) there, kneeling by the stricken form of the murdered father
and kinsman, and with uplifted hand, after the vindictive manner of
these fierce old days of blood, Odaemathus and Zenobia swore eternal
hatred to Rome.
(1) The large central “living-room” of a Roman palace.
(2) The Palmyreans built great tower-tombs, beautiful in architecture
and adornment, the ruins of which still stand on the hill slopes
overlooking the old city. These they called their “long homes,” and you
will find the word used in the same sense in Ecclesiastes xii., 5.
Hatred, boys and girls, is a very ugly as it is a very headstrong fault;
but as there is a good side even to a bad habit, so there is a hatred
which may rise to the heighth of a virtue. Hatred of vice IS virtue;
hatred of tyranny is patriotism. It is this which has led the world from
slavery to freedom, from ignorance to enlightenment, and inspired the
words that have found immortality alike above the ashes of Bradshaw
the regicide and of Jefferson the American. Rebellion to tyrants is
obedience to God.
But how could a fatherless boy and girl, away off on the edge of an
Arabian desert, hope to resist successfully the mighty power of Imperial
Rome? The story of their lives will tell.
If there are some people who are patriots, there are others who are
poltroons, and such a one was Hairan, the elder brother of young
Odhainat, when, succeeding to his dead father’s wealth and power, he
thought less of Roman tyranny than of Roman gold.
“Revenge ourselves on their purses, my brother, and not on their pikes,”
he said. “‘T is easier and more profitable to sap the Roman’s gold than
to shed the Roman’s blood.”
But this submission to Rome only angered Odhainat, and to such a
conflict of opinion did it lead that at last Hairan drove his younger
brother from the home of his fathers, and the lad, “an Esau among the
Jacobs of Tadmor,” so the record tells us, spent his youth amid the
roving Bedaween of the Arabian deserts and the mountaineers of the
Armenian hills, waiting his time.
But, though a homeless exile, the dark-eyed Bath Zabbai did not forget
him. In the palace of another kinsman, Septimus Worod, the “lord of the
markets,” she gave herself up to careful study, and hoped for the day
of Palmyra’s freedom. As rich in powers of mind as in the graces of
form and face, she soon became a wonderful scholar for those distant
days--mistress of four languages: Coptic, Syriac, Latin, and Greek,
while the fiery temper of the girl grew into the nobler ambitions of the
maiden. But above all things, as became her mingled Arabic and Egyptian
blood--for she could trace her ancestry back to the free chiefs of the
Arabian desert, and to the dauntless Cleopatra of Egypt,--she loved the
excitement of the chase, and in the plains and mountains beyond the city
she learned to ride and hunt with all the skill and daring of a young
Diana.
And so it came to pass that when the Emperor Valerian sent an embassy
from Rome to Ctesiphon, bearing a message to the Great King, as Sapor,
the Persian monarch, was called, the embassy halted in Palmyra, and
Septimus Hairan, now the head-man of the city, ordered, “in the name of
the senate and people of Palmyra,” a grand venatio, or wild beast hunt,
in the circus near the Street of the Thousand Columns, in honor of
his Roman guests. And he despatched his kinsman Septimus Zabbai, the
soldier, to the Armenian hills to superintend the capture and delivery
of the wild game needed for the hunt. With a great following of slaves
and huntsmen, Zabbai the soldier departed, and with him went his niece,
Bath Zabbai, or Zenobia, now a fearless young huntress of fifteen. Space
will not permit to tell of the wonders and excitement of that wild-beast
hunt--a hunt in which none must be killed but all must be captured
without mar or wound. Such a trapping of wolves and bears and buffaloes
was there, such a setting of nets and pitfalls for the mountain lion and
the Syrian leopard, while the Arab hunters beat, and drove, and shouted,
or lay in wait with net and blunted lance, that it was rare sport to the
fearless Zenobia, who rode her fleet Arabian horse at the very head of
the chase, and, with quick eye and practised hand, helped largely to
swell the trophies of the hunt. What girl of to-day, whom even the
pretty little jumping-mouse of Syria would scare out of her wits, could
be tempted to witness such a scene? And yet this young Palmyrean girl
loved nothing better than the chase, and the records tell us that she
was a “passionate hunter,” and that---she pursued with ardor the wild
beasts of the desert and thought nothing of fatigue or peril.
So, through dense Armenian forests and along rugged mountain paths, down
rock-strewn hill-slopes and in green, low-lying valleys, the chase
swept on: and one day, in one of the pleasant glades which, half-sun
and half-shadow, stretch away to the Lebanon hills, young Bath Zabbai
suddenly reined in her horse in full view of one of the typical hunting
scenes of those old days. A young Arabian hunter had enticed a big
mountain lion into one of the strong-meshed nets of stout palm fibres,
then used for such purposes. His trained leopard or cheetah had drawn
the beast from his lair, and by cunning devices had led him on until the
unfortunate lion was half-entrapped. Just then, with a sudden swoop, a
great golden eagle dashed down upon the preoccupied cheetah, and buried
his talons in the leopard’s head. But the weight of his victim was
more than he had bargained for; the cheetah with a quick upward dash
dislodged one of the great bird’s talons, and, turning as quickly,
caught the disengaged leg in his sharp teeth. At that instant the lion,
springing at the struggling pair, started the fastenings of the net,
which, falling upon the group, held all three prisoners. The eagle and
the lion thus ensnared sought to release themselves, but only ensnared
themselves the more, while the cunning cheetah, versed in the knowledge
of the hunter’s net, crept out from beneath the meshes as his master
raised them slightly, and with bleeding head crawled to him for praise
and relief.
Then the girl, flushed with delight at this double capture, galloped to
the spot, and in that instant she recognized in the successful hunter
her cousin the exile.
“Well snared, my Odhainat,” she said, as, the first exclamation of
surprise over, she stood beside the brown-faced and sturdy young hunter.
“The Palmyrean leopard hath bravely trapped both the Roman eagle and
the Persian lion. See, is it not an omen from the gods? Face valor with
valor and craft with craft, O Odhainat! Have you forgotten the vow in
your father’s palace full three years ago?”
Forgotten it? Not he. And then he told Bath Zabbai how in all his
wanderings he had kept their vow in mind, and with that, too, her other
words of counsel, “Watch and Wait.” He told her that, far and wide, he
was known to all the Arabs of the desert and the Armenians of the hills,
and how, from sheikh to camel-boy, the tribes were ready to join with
Palmyra against both Rome and Persia.
“Your time will indeed come, my Odhainat,” said the fearless girl,
with proud looks and ringing voice. “See, even thus our omen gives the
proof,” and she pointed to the net, beneath whose meshes both eagle and
lion, fluttering and panting, lay wearied with their struggles, while
the cheetah kept watch above them. “Now make your peace with Hairan,
your brother; return to Palmyra once again, and still let us watch and
wait.”
Three more years passed. Valerian, Emperor of Rome, leading his legions
to war with Sapor, whom men called the “Great King,” had fallen a
victim to the treachery and traps of the Persian monarch, and was held
a miserable prisoner in the Persian capital, where, richly robed in the
purple of the Roman emperors and loaded with chains, he was used by
the savage Persian tyrant as a living horse-block for the sport of an
equally savage court. In Palmyra, Hairan was dead, and young Odhainat,
his brother, was now Septimus Odaenathus--“headman” of the city and to
all appearances the firm friend of Rome.
There were great rejoicings in Palmyra when the wise Zenobia--still
scarce more than a girl--and the fearless young “head-man” of the desert
republic were married in the marble city of the palm-trees, and her
shrewd counsels brought still greater triumphs to Odaenathus and to
Palmyra.
In the great market-place or forum, Odaenathus and Zenobia awaited the
return of their messengers to Sapor. For the “Great King,” having killed
and stuffed the captive Roman Emperor, now turned his arms against the
Roman power in the east and, destroying both Antioch and Emesa, looked
with an evil eye toward Palmyra. Zenobia, remembering the omen of the
eagle and the lion, repeated her counsel of facing craft with craft,
and letters and gifts had been sent to Sapor, asking for peace and
friendship. There is a hurried entrance through the eastern gate of
the city, and the messengers from the Palmyrean senate rush into the
Market-place.
“Your presents to the Great King have been thrown into the river, O
Odaenathus,” they reported, “and thus sayeth Sapor of Persia: ‘Who is
this Odaenathus, that he should thus presume to write to his lord? If he
would obtain mitigation of the punishment that awaits him, let him fall
prostrate before the foot of our throne, with his hands bound behind his
back. Unless he doeth this, he, his family, and his country shall surely
perish!’”
Swift to wrath and swifter still to act, Zenobia sprang to her feet.
“Face force with force, Odaenathus. Be strong and sure, and Palmyra
shall yet humble the Persian.”
Her advice was taken. Quickly collecting the troops of Palmyra and the
Arabs and Armenian who were his allies, the fearless “head-man” fell
upon the army of the haughty Persian king, defeated and despoiled it,
and drove it back to Persia. As Gibbon, the historian says: “The majesty
of Rome, oppressed by a Persian, was protected by an Arab of Palmyra.”
For this he was covered with favors by Rome; made supreme commander in
the East, and, with Zenobia as his adviser and helper, each year made
Palmyra stronger and more powerful.
Here, rightly, the story of the girl Zenobia ends. A woman now, her
life fills one of the most brilliant pages of history. While her husband
conquered for Rome in the north, she, in his absence, governed so wisely
in the south as to insure the praise of all. And when the time was ripe,
and Rome, ruled by weak emperors and harassed by wild barbarians, was
in dire stress, the childish vow of the boy and girl made years before
found fulfilment. Palmyra was suddenly declared free from the dominion
of Rome, and Odaenathus was acknowledged by senate and people as
“Emperor and King of kings.”
But the hand of an assassin struck down the son as it had stricken
the father. Zenobia, ascending the throne of Palmyra, declared herself
“Zenobia Augusta, the Empress of the East,” and, after the manner of her
time, extended her empire in every direction until, as the record says:
“A small territory in the desert, under the government of a woman,
extended its conquests over many rich countries and several states.
Zenobia, lately confined to the barren plains about Palmyra, now held
sway from Egypt in the south, to the Bosphorus and the Black Sea in the
north.”
But a new emperor ruled in Rome: Aurelian, soldier and statesman.
“Rome,” he said, “shall never lose a province.” And then the struggle
for dominion in the East began. The strength and power of Rome, directed
by the Emperor himself, at last triumphed. Palmyra fell, and Zenobia,
after a most heroic defence of her kingdom, was led a prisoner to Rome.
Clad in magnificent robes, loaded with jewels and with heavy chains
of gold, she walked, regal and undaunted still, in the great triumphal
procession of her conqueror, and, disdaining to kill herself as did
Cleopatra and Dido, she gave herself up to the nobler work of the
education and culture of her children, and led for many years, in her
villa at Tibur, the life of a noble Roman matron.
Such, in brief, is the story of Zenobia. You must read for yourselves
the record of her later years, as it stands in history, if you would
know more of her grandeur in her days of power, and her moral grandeur
in her days of defeat.
And with Zenobia fell Palmyra. Centuries of ruin and neglect have passed
over the once fairy-like city of the Syrian oasis. Her temples and
colonnades, her monuments and archways and wonderful buildings are
prostrate and decayed, and the site even of the glorious city has been
known to the modern world only within the last century. But while time
lasts and the record of heroic deeds survives, neither fallen column nor
ruined arch nor all the destruction and neglect of modern barbarism can
blot out the story of the life and worth of Bath Zabbai, the brave girl
of the Syrian desert, whom all the world honors as the noblest woman of
antiquity--Zenobia of Palmyra, the dauntless “Queen of the East.”
HELENA OF BRITAIN: THE GIRL OF THE ESSEX FELLS.
(Afterward known as “St. Helena,” the mother of Constantine.) A.D. 255.
Ever since that far-off day in the infancy of the world, when lands
began to form and rivers to flow seaward, the little river Colne has
wound its crooked way through the fertile fields of Essex eastward to
the broad North Sea.
Through hill-land and through moor-land, past Moyns and Great Yeldham,
past Halstead and Chappel and the walls of Colchester, turning now this
way and now that until it comes to Mersea Island and the sea, the little
river flows to-day even as it sped along one pleasant summer morning
sixteen hundred and forty years ago, when a little British princess,
only fairly in her teens, reclined in comfortable contentment in her
gilded barge and floated down the river from her father’s palace at
Colchester to the strand at Wivanloe.
For this little girl of fourteen, Helena, the princess, was a king’s
daughter, and, according to all accounts, a very bright and charming
girl besides--which all princesses have not been. Her father was Coel,
second prince of Britain and king of that part of ancient England, which
includes the present shires of Essex and of Suffolk, about the river
Colne.
Not a very large kingdom this, but even as small as it was, King Coel
did not hold it in undisputed sway. For he was one of the tributary
princes of Britain, in the days when Roman arms, and Roman law, and
Roman dress, and Roman manners, had place and power throughout England,
from the Isle of Wight, to the Northern highlands, behind whose
forest-crowned hills those savage natives known as the Picts--“the
tattooed folk”--held possession of ancient Scotland, and defied the
eagles of Rome.
The monotonous song of the rowers, keeping time with each dip of the
broad-bladed oars, rose and fell in answer to the beats of the master’s
silver baton, and Helena too followed the measure with the tap, tap, of
her sandaled foot.
Suddenly there shot out around one of the frequent turns in the river,
the gleam of other oars, the high prow of a larger galley, and across
the water came the oar-song of a larger company of rowers. Helena
started to her feet.
“Look, Cleon,” she cried, pointing, eagerly towards the approaching
boat, “‘t is my father’s own trireme. Why this haste to return, think’st
thou?”
“I cannot tell, little mistress,” replied the freedman Cleon, her
galley-master; “the king thy father must have urgent tidings, to make
him return thus quickly to Camalodunum.”
Both the girl and the galley-master spoke in Latin, for the language of
the Empire was the language of those in authority or in official life
even in its remotest provinces, and the galley-master did but use the
name which the Roman lords of Britain had given to the prosperous city
on the Colne, in which the native Prince, King Coel, had his court--the
city which to-day is known under its later Saxon name of Colchester.
It was, indeed, a curious state of affairs in England. I doubt if many
of my girl and boy readers, no matter how, well they may stand in
their history classes, have ever thought of the England of Hereward and
Ivanhoe, of Paul Dombey and Tom Brown, as a Roman land.
And yet at the time when this little Flavia Julia Helena was sailing
down the river Colne, the island of Britain, in its southern section
at least, was almost as Roman in manner, custom, and speech as was Rome
itself.
For nearly five hundred years, from the days of Caesar the conqueror,
to those of Honorius the unfortunate, was England, or Britain as it was
called, a Roman province, broken only in its allegiance by the early
revolts of the conquered people or by the later usurpations of ambitious
and unprincipled governors.
And, at the date of our story, in the year 255 A.D., the beautiful
island had so far grown out of the barbarisms of ancient Britain as to
have long since forgotten the gloomy rites and open-air altars of the
Druids, and all the half-savage surroundings of those stern old priests.
Everywhere Roman temples testified to the acceptance by the people of
the gods of Rome, and little Helena herself each morning hung the altar
of the emperor-god Claudius with garlands in the stately temple which
had been built in his honor in her father’s palace town, asked the
protection of Cybele, “the Heavenly Virgin,” and performed the rites
that the Empire demanded for “the thousand gods of Rome.”
Throughout the land, south of the massive wall which the great Emperor
Hadrian had stretched across the island from the mouth of the Solway to
the mouth of the Tyne, the people themselves who had gathered into or
about the thirty growing Roman cities which the conquerors had founded
and beautified, had become Roman in language, religion, dress, and ways,
while the educational influences of Rome, always following the course of
her conquering eagles, had planted schools and colleges throughout the
land, and laid the foundation for that native learning which in later
years was to make the English nation so great and powerful.
And what a mighty empire must have been that of Rome that, in those
far-off days, when rapid transit was unknown, and steam and electricity
both lay dormant, could have entered into the lives of two bright young
maidens so many leagues removed from one another--Zenobia, the dusky
Palmyrean of the East, and Helena, the fresh-faced English girl of the
West.
But to such distant and widely separated confines had this power of the
vast Empire extended; and to this thoughtful young princess, drifting
down the winding English river, the sense of Roman supremacy and power
would come again and again.
For this charming young girl--said, later, to have been the most
beautiful woman of her time in England--though reared to Roman ways and
Roman speech, had too well furnished a mind not to think for herself.
“She spake,” so says the record, “many tongues and was replete with
piety.” The only child of King Coel, her doting old father had given
her the finest education that Rome could offer. She was, even before she
grew to womanhood, so we are told, a fine musician, a marvellous worker
in tapestry, in hammered brass and pottery, and was altogether as wise
and wonderful a young woman as even these later centuries can show.
But, for all this grand education, she loved to hear the legends and
stories of her people that in various ways would come to her ears,
either as the simple tales of her British nurse, or in the wild songs of
the wandering bards, or singers.
As she listened to these she thought less of those crude and barbaric
ways of her ancestors that Rome had so vastly bettered than of their
national independence and freedom from the galling yoke of Rome, and,
as was natural, she cherished the memory of Boadicea, the warrior queen,
and made a hero of the fiery young Caractacus.
It is always so, you know. Every bright young imagination is apt to find
greater glories in the misty past, or grander possibilities in a still
more misty future than in the too practical and prosaic present in which
both duty and destiny lie. And so Helena the princess, Leaning against
the soft cushions of her gilded barge, had sighed for the days of the
old-time British valor and freedom, and, even as she looked off toward
the approaching triareme, she was wondering how she could awake to
thoughts of British glory her rather heavy-witted father, Coel the
King--an hereditary prince of that ancient Britain in which he was now,
alas, but a tributary prince of the all too powerful Rome.
Now, “old King Cole,” as Mother Goose tells us--for young Helena’s
father was none other than the veritable “old King Cole” of our nursery
jingle--was a “jolly old soul,” and a jolly old soul is very rarely an
independent or ambitious one. So long as he could have “his pipe and his
bowl” not, of course, his long pipe of tobacco that all the Mother
Goose artists insist upon giving him--but the reed pipe upon which his
musicians played--so long, in other words, as he could live in ease and
comfort, undisturbed in his enjoyment of the good things of life by his
Roman over-lords, he cared for no change. Rome took the responsibility
and he took things easily. But this very day, while his daughter Helena
was floating down the river to meet him on the strand at Wivanloe, he
was returning from an unsuccessful boar-hunt in the Essex woods, very
much out of sorts--cross because he had not captured the big boar he
had hoped to kill, cross because his favorite musicians had been
“confiscated” by the Roman governor or propraetor at Londinium (as
London was then called), and still more cross because he had that day
received dispatches from Rome demanding a special and unexpected tax
levy, or tribute, to meet the necessary expenses of the new Emperor
Diocletian.
Something else had happened to increase his ill temper. His “jolly old
soul,” vexed by the numerous crosses of the day, was thrown into still
greater perplexity by the arrival, just as he stood fretful and chafing
on the shore at Wivanloe, of one who even now was with him
on the trireme, bearing him company back to his palace at
Camolodunum--Carausius the admiral.
This Carausius, the admiral, was an especially vigorous, valorous, and
fiery young fellow of twenty-one. He was cousin to the Princess Helena
and a prince of the blood royal of ancient Britain. Educated under the
strict military system of Rome, he had risen to distinction in the naval
force of the Empire, and was now the commanding officer in the northern
fleet that had its central station at Gessoriacum, now Boulogne, on the
northern coast of France. He had chased and scattered the German pirates
who had so long ravaged the northern seas, had been named by the Emperor
admiral of the north, and was the especial pride, as he was the dashing
young leader, of the Roman sailors along the English Channel and the
German shores.
The light barge of the princess approached the heavier boat of the king,
her father. At her signal the oarsmen drew up alongside, and, scarce
waiting for either boat to more than slacken speed, the nimble-footed
girl sprang lightly to the deck of her father’s galley. Then bidding
the obedient Cleon take her own barge back to the palace, she hurried at
once, and without question, like the petted only child she was, into the
high-raised cabin at the stern, where beneath the Roman standards sat
her father the king.
Helena entered the apartment at a most exciting moment. For there,
facing her portly old father, whose clouded face bespoke his troubled
mind, stood her trimly-built young cousin Carausius the admiral, bronzed
with his long exposure to the sea-blasts, a handsome young viking, and,
in the eyes of the hero-loving Helen, very much of a hero because of his
acknowledged daring and his valorous deeds.
Neither man seemed to have noticed the sudden entrance of the girl, so
deep were they in talk.
“I tell thee, uncle,” the hot-headed admiral was saying, “it is beyond
longer bearing. This new emperor--this Diocletian--who is he to dare to
dictate to a prince of Britain? A foot-soldier of Illyria, the son of
slaves, and the client of three coward emperors; an assassin, so it
hath been said, who from chief of the domestics, hath become by his own
cunning Emperor of Rome, And now hath he dared to accuse me--me, a free
Briton and a Roman citizen as well, a prince and the son of princes,
with having taken bribes from these German pirates whom I have
vanquished. He hath openly said that I, Carausius the admiral, have
filled mine own coffers while neglecting the revenues of the state. I
will not bear it. I am a better king than he, did I but have my own
just rights, and even though he be Diocletian the Emperor, he needeth to
think twice before he dare accuse a prince of Britain with bribe-taking
and perjury.”
“True enough, good nephew,” said King Coel, as the admiral strode up and
down before him, angrily playing with the hilt of his short Roman sword,
“true enough, and I too have little cause to love this low-born emperor.
He hath taken from me both my players and my gold, when I can illy spare
either from my comfort or my necessities. ‘T is a sad pass for Britain.
But Rome is mistress now. What may we hope to do?”
The Princess Helena sprang to her father’s side, her young face flushed,
her small hand raised in emphasis. “Do!” cried she, and the look of
defiance flamed on her fair young face. “Do! Is it thou, my father,
thou, my cousin, princes of Britain both, that ask so weak a question?
O that I were a man! What did that brave enemy of our house,
Cassivellaunus, do? what Caractacus? what the brave queen Boadicea?
When the Roman drove them to despair they raised the standard of revolt,
sounded their battle cries, and showed the Roman that British freemen
could fight to the death for their country and their home. And thus
should we do, without fear or question, and see here again in Britain a
victorious kingdom ruled once more by British kings.”
“Nay, nay, my daughter,” said cautious King Coel, “your words are those
of an unthinking girl. The power of Rome----”
But the Prince Carausius, as the girl’s brave words rang out, gave her
an admiring glance, and, crossing to where she stood, laid his hand
approvingly upon her shoulder.
“The girl is right, uncle,” he said, breaking in upon the king’s
cautious speech. “Too long have we bowed the neck to Roman tyranny. We,
free princes of Britain that we are, have it even now in our power to
stand once again as altogether free. The fleet is mine, the people are
yours, if you will but amuse them. Our brothers are groaning under
the load of Roman tribute, and are ripe to strike. Raise the cry at
Camalodunum, my uncle; cry: ‘Havoc and death to Rome!’ My fleet shall
pour its victorious sailors upon the coast; the legions, even now full
of British fighters, shall flock to out united standards, and we shall
rule--Emperors in the North, even as do the Roman conquerors rule
Emperors in the South.”
Young blood often sways and leads in council and in action, especially
when older minds are over-cautious or sluggish in decision. The words
of Carausius and Helena carried the day with Coel the king, already
smarting under a sense of ill-treatment by his Roman over-lords.
The standard of revolt was raised in Camalodunum. The young admiral
hurried back to France to make ready his fleet, while Coel the king,
spurred on to action by the patriotic Helena, who saw herself another
Boadicea--though, in truth, a younger and much fairer one--gathered a
hasty following, won over to his cause the British-filled legion in his
palace-town, and, descending upon the nearest Roman camps and stations,
surprised, captured, scattered, or brought over their soldiers, and
proclaimed himself free from the yoke of Rome and supreme prince of
Britain.
Ambition is always selfish. Even when striving for the general good
there lies, too often, beneath this noble motive the still deeper one of
selfishness. Carausius the admiral, though determined upon kingly power,
had no desire for a divided supremacy. He was determined to be
sole emperor, or none. Crafty and unscrupulous, although brave and
high-spirited, he deemed it wisest to delay his part of the compact
until he should see how it fared with his uncle, the king, and then,
upon his defeat, to climb to certain victory.
He therefore sent to his uncle promises instead of men, and when
summoned by the Roman governor to assist in putting down the revolt, he
returned loyal answers, but sent his aid to neither party.
King Coel after his first successes knew that, unaided, he could not
hope to withstand the Roman force that must finally be brought against
him. Though urged to constant action by his wise young daughter, he
preferred to do nothing; and, satisfied with the acknowledgment of his
power in and about his little kingdom on the Colne, he spent his time in
his palace with the musicians that he loved so well, and the big bowl of
liquor that he loved, it is to be feared, quite as dearly.
The musicians--the pipers and the harpers--sang his praises, and told of
his mighty deeds, and, no doubt, their refrain was very much the same as
the one that has been preserved for us in the jingle of Mother Goose:
“O, none so rare as can compare
With King Cole and his fiddlers three.”
But if the pleasure-loving old king was listless, young Helena was not.
The misty records speak of her determined efforts, and though it is hard
to understand how a girl of fifteen can do any thing toward successful
generalship, much can be granted to a young lady who, if the records
speak truth, was, even while a girl, “a Minerva in wisdom, and not
deficient in statecraft.”
So, while she advised with her father’s boldest captains and
strengthened so wisely the walls of ancient Colchester, or Camalodunum,
that traces of her work still remain as proof of her untiring zeal, she
still cherished the hope of British freedom and release from Rome. And
the loving old king, deep in his pleasures, still recognized the will
and wisdom of his valiant daughter, and bade his artists make in her
honor a memorial that should ever speak of her valor. And this memorial,
lately unearthed, and known as the Colchester Sphinx, perpetuates the
lion-like qualities of a girl in her teens, who dared withstand the
power of Imperial Rome.
And still no help came from her cousin, the admiral. But one day a
galley speeding up the Colne brought this unsigned message to King Coel:
“To Coel, Camalodunum, Greeting:
“Save thyself. Constantius the sallow-faced, prefect of the Western
praetorians, is even now on his way from Spain to crush thy revolt. Save
thyself. I wait. Justice will come.”
“Thou seest, O daughter,” said King Coel as Helena read the craven
missive, “the end cometh as I knew it would. Well, man can but die.” And
with this philosophic reflection the “jolly old soul” only dipped his
red nose still deeper into his big bowl, and bade his musicians play
their loudest and merriest.
But Helena, “not deficient in statecraft,” thought for both. She would
save her father, her country, and herself, and shame her disloyal
cousin. Discretion is the better part of valor. Let us see how discreet
a little lady was this fair young Princess Helena.
The legions came to Camalodunum. Across Gaul and over the choppy channel
they came, borne by the very galleys that were to have succored the
British king. Up through the mouth of Thames they sailed, and landing
at Londinium, marched in close array along the broad Roman road that led
straight up to the gates of Camalodunum. Before the walls of Camalodunum
was pitched the Roman camp, and the British king was besieged in his own
palace-town.
The Roman trumpets sounded before the gate of the beleaguered city, and
the herald of the prefect, standing out from his circle of guards, cried
the summons to surrender:
“Coel of Britain, traitor to the Roman people and to thy lord the
Emperor, hear thou! In the name of the Senate and People of Rome, I,
Constantius the prefect, charge thee to deliver up to them ere this
day’s sun shall set, this, their City of Camalodunum, and thine own
rebel body as well. Which done they will in mercy pardon the crime of
treason to the city, and will work their will and punishment only upon
thee--the chief rebel. And if this be not done within the appointed
time, then will the walls of this their town of Camalodunum be
overthrown, and thou and all thy people be given the certain death of
traitors.”
King Coel heard the summons, and some spark of that very patriotism
that had inspired and incited his valiant little daughter flamed in his
heart. He would have returned an answer of defiance. “I can at least die
with my people,” he said, but young Helena interposed.
“Leave this to me, my father,” she said. “As I have been the cause, so
let me be the end of trouble. Say to the prefect that in three hours’
time the British envoy will come to his camp with the king’s answer to
his summons.”
The old king would have replied otherwise, but his daughter’s
entreaties and the counsels of his captains who knew the hopelessness
of resistance, forced him to assent, and his herald made answer
accordingly.
Constantius the prefect--a manly, pleasant looking young commander,
called Chlorus or “the sallow,” from his pale face,--sat in his tent
within the Roman camp. The three hours’ grace allowed had scarcely
expired when his sentry announced the arrival of the envoy of Coel of
Britain.
“Bid him enter,” said the prefect. Then, as the curtains of his tent
were drawn aside, the prefect started in surprise, for there before him
stood, not the rugged form of a British fighting man, but a fair young
girl, who bent her graceful head in reverent obeisance to the youthful
representative of the Imperial Caesars.
“What would’st thou with me, maiden?” asked the prefect.
“I am the daughter of Coel of Britain,” said the girl, “and I am come to
sue for pardon and for peace.”
“The Roman people have no quarrel with the girls of Britain,” said the
prefect. “Hath then King Coel fallen so low in state that a maiden must
plead for him?”
“He hath not fallen at all, O Prefect,” replied the girl proudly; “the
king, my father, would withstand thy force but that I, his daughter,
know the cause of this unequal strife, and seek to make terms with the
victors.”
The girl’s fearlessness pleased the prefect, for Constantius Chlorus was
a humane and gentle man, fierce enough in fight, but seeking never to
needlessly wound an enemy or lose a friend.
“And what are thy terms, fair envoy of Britain?” he demanded.
“These, O Prefect,” replied Helena, “If but thou wilt remove thy cohorts
to Londinium, I pledge my father’s faith and mine, that he will, within
five days, deliver to thee as hostage for his fealty, myself and twenty
children of his councillors and captains. And further, I, Helena the
princess, will bind myself to deliver up to thee, with the hostages, the
chief rebel in this revolt, and the one to whose counselling this strife
with Rome is due.”
Both the matter and the manner of the offered terms still further
pleased the prefect, and he said: “Be it so, Princess.” Then summoning
his lieutenant, he said: “Conduct the envoy of Coel of Britain with all
courtesy to the gates of the the city,” and with a herald’s escort the
girl returned to her father.
Again the old king rebelled at the terms his daughter had made.