Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

and caught to her bosom with maternal love the alluvial monsters of the Nile. Philosophy, never fit for the people, had entered the best houses, and the image of Epicurus had taken the place of the Lemures. But men can not bear to be deprived long together of anything they are used to; not even of their fears; and, by a reaction of the mind appertaining to our nature, new stimulants were looked for, not on the side of pleasure, where nothing new could be expected or imagined, but on the opposite. Irreligion is followed by fanaticism, and fanaticism by irreligion, alternately and perpetually.

Lucullus. The religion of our country, as you observe, is well 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 complaisance 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.

Cæsar. 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 inclosure: 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.

Cæsar. What is that so white, toward 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.

Casar. 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.

Cæsar. 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.

Casar. 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 Cæsar.

Cæsar. 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.

Casar. 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.

Cæsar. We have no writer who could keep up long together his severity and strength. I would follow him; but I shall be contented with my genius, if (Thucydides in sight) I come many paces behind, and attain by study and attention the graceful and secure mediocrity of Xenophon.

Lucullus. You will avoid, I think, Cæsar, one of his peculiarities; his tendency to superstition.

Cæsar. I dare promise this; and even to write nothing so flat and idle as his introduction to the Cyropædia. The first sentence that follows it, I perceive, repeats the same word, with its substantive, four times. This is a trifle: but great

confectionary 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, so that I hope they may be crisp, independently of their coolness.

writers and great painters do miracles or mischief the upper three, eight each, but diminutive. The by a single touch. Our authors are so addicted of late to imitate the Grecian, that a bad introduction is more classical than a good one. Not to mention any friend of yours, Crispus Sallustius, who is mine, brought me one recently of this description; together with some detached pieces of a history, which nothing in our prose or poetry hath surpassed in animation.

Cæsar. I wonder not at anything of refined elegance in Lucullus: but really here Antiochia and Alexandria seem to have cooked for us, and

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.

:

Lucullus. We ought to talk of these things by ourselves; not before the vulgar; by which ex-magicians to be our attendants. pression I mean the unlearned and irreverent, in forum and in senate. Our Cicero has indeed avoided such inelegance as that of Xenophon : one perhaps less pardonable may be found repeatedly in his works: I would say an inelegance not arising from neglect, or obtusity of ear, but coming forth in the absence of reflection. He often says, 66 mirari soleo." Now surely a wise man soon ceases to wonder at anything, and, instead of indulging in the habitude of wonder at one object, brings it closer to him, makes it familiar, discusses, and dismisses it. He told me in his last letter of an incredible love and affection for me. Pardon me, Cæsar! pardon me, Genius of Rome! and Mercury! I exclaimed, “the clown!" laughing heartily. He would not that I should really have thought his regard incredible; on the contrary, that I should believe it and confide in it to its full extent, and that I should flatter myself it was not only possible but reasonable. In vain will any one remark to me, "such phrases are common." In our ordinary language there are many beauties, more or less visible according to their place and season, which a judicious writer and forcible orator will subject to his arbitration and service there are also many things which, if used at all, must be used cautiously. I may be much at my ease, without being in tatters, and without treading on the feet of those I come forward to salute. I arrogate to myself no superiority, in detecting a peculiar and latent mark upon that exalted luminary: his own effulgence showed me it. From Cicero down to me the distance is as great, as between the prince of the senate and the lowest voter. I influenced the friends of order; he fulminated and exterminated the enemies. I have served my country; he hath saved it.

Casar. 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.

This other is my dining-room. You expect the dishes.

Cæsar. I misunderstood. . I fancied .. Lucullus. Repose yourself, and touch with the ebony wand, beside you, the sphynx on either of those obelisks, right or left.

Cæsar. 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;

Cæsar. Returning to Rome or Baiæ, 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.

Cæsar. 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.

Cæsar. 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 Fæsulæ, 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

Lucullus. I attend you.

Cæsar. Lucullus! who is here? what figure is

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, | that on the poop of the vessel ? can it be . . .
and look forward too despondently on future. As
for friends, lampreys and turbots beget them, and
they spawn not amid the solitude of the Apen-
nines. 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 con-
cert with twenty; so barbarous and herdlike a
practice does it now appear to me; such an in-
centive 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.

Lucullus. The subject was dictated by myself; you gave it.

Cæsar. 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 educa tion, and preferable to any, excepting yourself and Marcus Tullius, in eloquence and urbanity. Cesar. 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.

Cesar. I revere him, but can not 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 over-head : 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 Danae 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?

Cæsar. 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.

Casar. Oh how beautifully is the water painted! how vividly the sun strikes against the snows on Taurus! the grey temples and pier-head of Tarsus catch it differently, and the monumental mount 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."

[ocr errors]

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 dif ferent it smiles; as surely the goddess must have done, at the first heroic act of her descendant,"

Cæsar. 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 led me up to 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 ?

Casar. 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 strengthens 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

health is benefited by the gentle play thus opened than offer one. Reflections must strike you, to the most delicate of the fibres.

Cæsar. Let me augur that a disorder so tractable may be soon removed. What is it thought to be?

Lucullus. There are they who would surmise and signify, and my physician did not long attempt to persuade me of the contrary, that the ancient realms of Eates have supplied me with some other plants than the cherry, and such as I should be sorry to see domesticated here in Italy. Casar. 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.

Casar. Rightly and gravely said: but your country at this time can not do well without you. Lucullus. The bowl of milk which to-day is presented to me, will shortly be presented to my Manes. Casar. Do you suspect the hand?

Lucullus, no less forcibly than me, and perhaps more justly; you are calmer. Consider all the late actions of Cneius, and tell me who has ever committed any so indecorous with so grave a face? He abstained in great measure from the follies of youth, only to reserve them accumulated for maturer age. Human life, if I may venture to speak fancifully in your presence, hath its equinoxes. In the vernal its flowers open under violent tempests: in the autumnal it is more exempt from gusts and storms, more regular, serene, and temperate, looks complacently on the fruits it has gathered, on the harvests it has reaped, and is not averse to the graces of order, to the avocations of literature, to the genial warmth of honest conviviality, and to the mild necessity of repose. Thrown out from the course of Nature, this man stood aside and solitary, and found everything around him unattractive. And now, in the decline of life, he has recourse to those associates, of whom the best that can be said is, that they would have less disgraced its outset. Repulsing you and Cicero and Cato, the leaders of his party and the propagators of his

Lucullus. I will not suspect a Roman: let us power, Pompeius the Great takes the arm of Cloconverse no more about it.

Casar. 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. Lucius, I will not divine your thoughts: I will not penetrate into your suspicions, nor suggest mine. I am lost in admiration of your magnanimity and forbearance; that your only dissimulation should be upon the guilt of your assassin; that you should leave him power, and create him virtues.

Lucullus. Caius Julius, if I can assist you in anything you meditate, needful or advantageous to our country, speak it unreservedly.

dius, and walks publicly with him in the forum ; who nevertheless the other day headed a chorus (I am informed) of the most profligate and opprobrious youths in Rome, and sang responsively worse than Fescennine songs to his dishonour. Where was he? Before them? in court? defending a client? He came indeed with that intention; but sat mortified, speechless, and despondent. The senate connived at the indignity. Even Gabinius, his flatterer and dependent, shuns him. The other consul is alienated from him totally, and favours me through Calpurnia, who watches over my security and interests at home. Julia, my daughter, was given in marriage to Pompeius for this purpose only: she fails to accomplish it: politically then and morally, the marriage loses its validity by losing its intent. I go into Gaul, commander for five years: Crassus is preparing for an expedition against the Parthians: the senate and people bend before Pompeius, but reluctantly and indignantly. Everything would be more tolerable to me, if I could permit him to boast that he had duped me: but my glory requires that, letting him choose his own encampment, square the declivities, clear the ground about the eminence, foss and pale it, I should storm and keep it. Whatever he may boast of his eloquence and military skill, I fear nothing from the

Cæsar. I really am ashamed of my association with Crassus and Pompeius: I would not have anything in common with them, not even power itself. Unworthy and ignominious must it appear to you, as it does to me, to compromise with an auctioneer and a rope-dancer; for the meanness and venality of Crassus, the levity and tergiversation of Pompeius, leave them no better names. The bestiality of the one, the infidelity of the other, urge and inflame me with an inextinguishable desire of uniting my authority to yours for the salvation of the republic. Lucullus. I foretold to Cicero, in the words of orator who tells us what he would have spoken, Lucretius on the dissolution of the world,

[blocks in formation]

nor from the general who sees what he should have done. My first proposal for accommodation and concord shall be submitted to you (if indeed you will not frame it for me), and, should you deem it unfair, shall be suppressed. No successive step shall be made by me without your concurrence: in short, I am inclined to take up any line of conduct, in conjunction with you, for the settling of the commonwealth. Does the proposal

BB

seem to you so unimportant on the one hand, or so impracticable and unreasonable on the other, that you smile and shake your head?

Lucullus. Cæsar! Cæsar! you write upon language and analogy; no man better. Tell me then whether mud is not said to be settled when it sinks to the bottom? and whether those who are about to sink a state, do not in like manner talk of settling it?

Cæsar. I wish I had time to converse with you on language, or skill to parry your reproofs with equal wit; for serious you can not be. At present let us remove what is bad; which must always be done before good of any kind can spring up.

The designs of Cneius are suspected by many in the senate, and his pride is obnoxious to all. Your party would prevail against him; for he has enriched fewer adherents than you have; and even his best friends are for the most part in a greater degree yours.

Lucullus. I have enriched no adherents, Caius Julius. Many of my officers, it is true, are easy in their circumstances: they however gained their wealth, not from the plunder of our confederates, not from those who should enjoy with security their municipal rights and paternal farms in Italy, but from the enemy's camps and cities.

Cæsar. We two might appease the public mind, preparing the leaders of the senate for our labours, and intimidating the factious.

Lucullus. Hilarity never forsakes you, Cæsar! and you are the happiest man upon earth in the facility with which you communicate it. Hear me, and believe me. I am about to mount higher than triumviral tribunal or than triumphal car. They who are under me will turn their faces from me; such are the rites: but not a voice of reproach or of petulance shall be heard, when the trumpets tell our city that the funereal flames are surmounting the mortal spoils of Lucullus.

Caesar. Mildest and most equitable of men! I have been much wronged; would you also wrong me? Lucius, you have forced from me a tear before the time. I weep at magnanimity; which no man does who wants it.

Lucullus. Why can not you enjoy the command of your province, and the glory of having quelled so many nations?

Cæsar. I can not bear the superiority of another. Lucullus. The weakest of women feel so but even the weakest of them are ashamed to acknowledge it who hath ever heard any one? Have you, who know them widely and well? Poetasters and mimes, labouring under such infirmity, put the mask on. You pursue glory: the pursuit is just and rational: but reflect that statuaries and painters have represented heroes calm and quiescent, not straining and panting like pugilists and gladiators.

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?

[ocr errors]

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 Phere. 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 inac curate 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 can not at once catch the applauses 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 can not quite divest ourselves of infirmities and passions, let us think however that there is enough in us to be divided into two por tions, 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 Cæsar! 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,

« AnteriorContinuar »