O Thelymnia! our lives are truly at an end when it convenient for a covering. Euthymedes the we are beloved no longer. Existence may be con- philosopher made this discovery, to which pertinued, or rather may be renewed, yet the agonies haps others may lay equal claim. of death and the chilliness of the grave have been passed through; nor are there Elysian fields, nor the sports that delighted in former times, awaiting us, nor pleasant converse, nor walks with linked hands, nor intermitted songs, nor vengeful kisses for leaving them off abruptly, nor looks that shake us to assure us afterward, nor that bland inquietude, as gently tremulous as the expansion of buds into blossoms, which hurries us from repose to exercise and from exercise to repose." "O! I have been very near loving!" cried Thelymnia. "Where in the world can a philosopher have learned all this about it!" The beauty of Thelymnia, her blushes, first at the deceit, afterward at the encouragement she received in her replies, and lastly from some other things which we could not penetrate, highly gratified Critolaus. Soon however (for wine always brings back to us our last strong feeling) he thought again of Phoroneus, as young, as handsome, and once (is that the word?) as dear to her. He saddened at the myrtle on the head of his beloved; it threw shadows and gloom upon his soul; her smiles, her spirits, her wit, above all her nods of approbation, wounded him. He sighed when she covered her face with her hand; when she disclosed it he sighed again. Every glance of pleasure, every turn of surprise, every movement of her body, pained and oppressed him. He cursed in his heart whoever it was who had stuffed that portion of the couch; there was so little moss, thought he, between Thelymnia and Euthymedes. He might have seen Athos part them, and would have murmured still. After the lesson he had been giving her, which amused her in the dictation, she stood composed and thoughtful, and then said hesitatingly, “But would it be quite proper? would there be nothing of insincerity and falsehood in it, my Critolaus ?" He caught her up in his arms, and, as in his enthusiasm he had raised her head above his, he kissed her bosom. She reproved and pardoned him, making him first declare and protest he would never do the like again. "O soul of truth and delicacy!" cried he aloud; and Thelymnia, no doubt, trembled lest her lover should in a moment be forsworn; so imminent and inevitable seemed the repetition of his offence. But he observed on her eyelashes, what had arisen from his precipitation in our presence, A hesitating long suspended tear, Like that which hangs upon the vine fresh-pruned, Until the morning kisses it away. The Nymphs, who often drive men wild (they tell us) have led me astray: I must return with you to the grot. We gave every facility to the stratagem. One slipt away in one direction, another in another; but, at a certain distance, each was desirous of joining some comrade, and of laughing together; yet each reproved the laughter, even when far off, lest it should do harm, reserving it for the morrow. While they walked along, conversing, the words of Euthymedes fell on the ears of Thelymnia softly as cistus-petals, fluttering and panting for a moment in the air, fall on the thirsty sand. She, in a voice that makes the brain dizzy as it plunges into the breast, replied to him, "O Euthymedes! you must have lived your whole life-time in the hearts of women to know them so thoroughly. I never knew mine before you taught me." The rest of us were in admiration at the facility and grace with which Thelymnia sustained her part, and observing less Critolaus than we did in the commencement, when he acknowledged and enjoyed our transports, indifferently and content edly saw him rise from the table and go away, Euthymedes now was silent, being one of the thinking his departure a preconcerted section of few wise men whom love ever made wiser. But, the stratagem. He retired, as he told us after- in his silence and abstraction, he took especial ward, into a grot. So totally was his mind ab- care to press the softer part of her arm against stracted from the entertainment, he left the his heart, that she might be sensible of its quick table athirst, covered as it was with fruit and wine, pulsation: and, as she rested her elbow within and abundant as ran beside us the clearest the curvature of his, the slenderest of her fingers and sweetest and most refreshing rill. He related solicited, first one, then another, of those beneath to me that, at the extremity of the cavern, he them, but timidly, briefly, inconclusively, and applied his parched tongue to the dripping rock, then clung around it pressingly for countenance shunning the light of day, the voice of friendship, and support. Panætius, you have seen the mounso violent was his desire of solitude and conceal-tains on the left hand, eastward, when you are in ment, and he held his forehead and his palms against it when his lips had closed. We knew not and suspected not his feelings at the time, and rejoiced at the anticipation of the silly things a philosopher should have whispered, which Thelymnia in the morning of the festival had promised us to detail the next day. Love is apt to get entangled and to trip and stumble when he puts on the garb of Friendship: it is too long and loose for him to walk in, although he sometimes finds Olympia, and perhaps the little stream that runs from the nearest of them into the Alpheus. Could you have seen them that evening! the moon never shone so calmly, so brightly, upon Latmos, nor the torch of Love before her. And yet many of the stars were visible; the most beautiful were among them; and as Euthymedes taught Thelymnia their names, their radiance seemed more joyous, more effulgent, more beneficent. If you have ever walked forth into the wilds and open plains upon such moonlight nights, cautious as you are, I will venture to say, Panæætius, you have often tript, even though the stars were not your study. There was an arm to support or to catch Thelymnia: yet she seemed incorrigible. Euthymedes was patient: at last he did I know not what, which was followed by a reproof, and a wonder how he could have done so, and another how he could answer for it. He looked ingenuously and apologetically, forgetting to correct his fault in the meanwhile. She listened to him attentively, pushing his hand away at intervals, yet less frequently and less resolutely in the course of his remonstrance, particularly when he complained to her that the finer and more delicate part of us, the eye, may wander at leisure over what is in its way; yet that its dependents in the corporeal system must not follow it; that they must hunger and faint in the service of a power so rich and absolute. "This being hard, unjust, and cruel," said he, "never can be the ordinance of the gods. Love alone feeds the famishing; Love alone places all things, both of matter and of mind, in perfect harmony; Love hath less to learn from Wisdom than Wisdom hath to learn from Love." "I fancy, my sweet scholar! or shall I rather say (for you have been so oftener) my sweet teacher! they are not ivy-leaves: to me they appear to be periwinkles." "I will gather some and see," said Thelymnia. Periwinkles cover wide and deep hollows: of what are they incapable when the convolvulus is in league with them! She slipped from the arm of Euthymedes, and in an instant had disappeared. In an instant too he had followed. Panatius. These are mad pranks, and always end ill. Moonlights! cannot we see them quietly from the tops of our houses, or from the plain pavement? Must we give challenges to mastiffs, make appointments with wolves, run after asps, and languish for stonequarries? Unwary philosopher and simple girl! Were they found again? Polybius. Yea, by Castor! and most unwillingly. Scipio. I do not wonder. When the bones are broken, without the consolation of some great service rendered in such misfortune, and when beauty must become deformity, I can well believe that they both would rather have perished. Polybius. Amaranth on the couch of Jove and Hebe was never softer than the bed they fell on. Critolaus had advanced to the opening of the cavern: he had heard the exclamation of Thelymnia as she was falling.. he forgave her he ran to her for her forgiveness. . he heard some low sounds .. he smote his heart, else it had fainted in him. . he stopped. "Modest man!" said she to herself, "there is a great deal of truth in what he says, considering he is a philosopher." She then asked him, after a pause, why he had not spoken so in the conversation on love, which appeared to give animation, mirth, and wit, to the dullest of the company, and even to make the wines of Chios, Crete, and Lesbos, sparkle with fresh vivacity in their goblets. Euthymedes was raising up Thelymnia, forget"I who was placed by the fountain-head," re-ful (as was too apparent) of himself. "Traitor!" plied he, "had no inclination to follow the shal- exclaimed the fiery Critolaus, " thy blood shall low and slender stream, taking its course toward pay for this. Impostor! whose lesson this very streets and lanes, and dipt into and muddied by day was, that luxury is the worst of poisons." unhallowed and uncleanly hands. After dinner such topics are usually introduced, when the objects that ought to inspire our juster sentiments are gone away. An indelicacy worse than Thracian! The purest gales of heaven, in the most perfect solitudes, should alone lift up the aspiration of our souls to the divinities all men worship." "Sensible creature!" sighed Thelymnia in her bosom, "how rightly he does think!" Come, fairest of wanderers," whispered he softly and persuasively, "such will I call you, though the stars hear me, and though the gods too in a night like this pursue their loves upon earth.. the moon has no little pools filled with her light under the rock yonder; she deceives us in the depth of these hollows, like the limpid sea. Beside, we are here among the pinks and sand-roses: do they never prick your ankles with their stems and thorns? Even their leaves at this late season are enough to hurt you." "I think they do," replied she, and thanked him, with a tender timid glance, for some fresh security his arm or hand had given her in escaping from them. "O now we are quite out of them all! How cool is the saxifrage! how cool the ivy-leaves!" "Critolaus," answered he calmly, drawing his robe about him (for, falling in so rough a place, his vesture was a little disordered), " we will not talk of blood; but as for my lesson of to-day, I must defend it. In few words then, since I think we are none of us disposed for many, hemlock does not hurt goats, nor luxury philosophers." Thelymnia had risen more beautiful from her confusion; but her colour soon went away, and, if any slight trace of it were remaining on her cheeks, the modest moonlight and the severer stars would let none show itself. She looked as the statue of Pygmalion would have looked, had she been destined the hour after animation to return into her inanimate state. Offering no excuse, she was the worthier of pardon : but there is one hour in which pardon never entered the human breast, and that hour was this. Critolaus, who always had ridiculed the philosophers, now hated them from the bottom of his heart. Every sect was detestable to him, the Stoic, the Platonic, the Epicurean; all equally; but especially those hypocrites and impostors in each, who, under the cloak of philosophy, came forward with stately figures, prepossessing countenances, and bland discourse. Panatius. We do not desire to hear what such on your head in the street, should make you cry, foolish men think of philosophers, true or false;" O Jupiter! what a curse is water!" but pray tell us how he acted on his own notable discovery; for I opine he was the unlikeliest of the three to grow quite calm on a sudden. Polybius. He went away; not without fierce glances at the stars, reproaches to the gods themselves, and serious and sad reflections upon destiny. Being however a pious man by constitution and education, he thought he had spoken of the omens unadvisedly, and found other interpretations for the stones we had thrown down with the ivy. "And ah!" said he sighing, "the bird's nest of last year too! I now know what that is!" Panatius. Polybius, I considered you too grave a man to report such idle stories. The manner is not yours: I rather think you have torn out a page or two from some love-feast (not generally known) of Plato. Polybius. Your judgment has for once deserted you, my friend. If Plato had been present, he might then indeed have described what he saw, and elegantly; but if he had feigned the story, the name that most interests us would not have ended with a vowel. Panatius. I am ready to propose almost such an exchange with you, Emilianus, as Diomedes' with Glaucus . . . my robe for yours. Scipio. Panatius, could it be done, you would wish it undone. The warfare you undertake is the more difficult: we have not enemies on both sides, as you have. Panatius. If you had seen" strait, you would have seen that the offer was, to exchange my philosophy for yours. You need less meditation, and employ more, than any man. Now if you have aught to say on luxury, let me hear it. Scipio. It would be idle to run into the parts of it, and to make a definition of that which we agree on; but it is not so to remind you that we were talking of it in soldiers; for the pleasant tale of Thelymnia is enough to make us forget them, even while the trumpet is sounding. Believe me, my friend (or ask Polybius), a good general will turn this formidable thing, luxury, to some account. He will take care that, like the strong vinegar the legionaries carry with them, it should be diluted, and thus be useful. Panatius. Then it is luxury no longer. Scipio. You convince me, Polybius. you. Polybius. My usual manner is without variety. I endeavour to collect as much sound sense and as many solid facts as I can, to distribute them as commodiously, and to keep them as clear of ornament. If anyone thought of me or my style in reading my history, I should condemn myself as a defeated man. Scipio. Polybius, you are by far the wisest that ever wrote history, though many wise have written it, and if your facts are sufficiently abundant, your work will be the most interesting and important. Polybius. Live then, Scipio! Polybius. I know what I can do and what I can not (the proudest words perhaps that ever man uttered), I say it plainly to you, my sincere and judicious monitor; but you must also let me say that, doubtful whether I could amuse our Emilianus in his present mood, I would borrow a tale, unaccustomed as I am to such, from the libraries of Miletus, or snatch it from the bosom of Elephantis. Scipio. Your friendship comes under various forms to me, my dear Polybius, but it is always warm and always welcome. Nothing can be kinder or more delicate in you, than to diversify as much as possible our conversation this day. Panatius would be more argumentative on luxury than I even Euthymedes (it appears) was unanswerable. Panatius. O the knave! such men bring reproaches upon philosophy. Scipio. I see no more reason why they should, than why a slattern who empties a certain vase riches, as to maintain a great army long together in sheer luxury? I am not speaking of cities that have been sacked, but of the allied and friendly, whose interests are to be observed, whose affection to be conciliated and retained. Hannibal knew this, and minded it. Polybius. You might have also added to the interrogation, if you had thought proper, those cities which have been sacked; for there plenty is soon wasted, and not soon supplied again. Scipio. Let us look closer at the soldier's board, and see what is on it in the rich Capua. Is plentiful and wholesome food luxury? or do soldiers run into the market-place for a pheasant? or do those on whom they are quartered pray and press them to eat it? Suppose they went hunting quails, hares, partridges; would it render them less active? There are no wild boars in that neighbourhood, or we might expect from a boarhunt a visitation of the gout. Suppose the men drew their idea of pleasure from the school or from the practices of Euthymedes. One vice is corrected by another, where a higher principle does not act, and where a man does not exert the proudest dominion over the most turbulent of states . . . himself. Hannibal, we may be sure, never allowed his army to repose in utter inactivity; no, nor to remain a single day without its exercise . . . a battle, a march, a foraging, a conveyance of wood or water, a survey of the banks of rivers, a fathoming of their depth, a certification of their soundness or unsoundness at bottom, a measurement of the greater or less extent of their fords, a review, or a castrametation. The plenty of his camp at Capua (for you hardly can imagine, || Panatius, that the soldiers had in a military sense 1 the freedom of the city, and took what they pleased without pay and without restriction) attached to him the various nations of which it was composed, and kept together the heterogeneous and discordant mass. It was time that he should think of this: for probably there was not a soldier left who had not lost in battle or by fatigue his dearest friend and comrade. of state; kings on the contrary lay the foundations of their power on abject hearts and prostituted intellects, and fear and abominate those whom the breath of God hath raised higher than the breath of man. Hence, from being the dependents of their own slaves, both they and their slaves become at last the dependents of free nations, and alight from their cars to be tied by the neck to the cars of better men. Scipio. Deplorable condition! if their education had allowed any sense of honour to abide in them. But we must consider them as the tulips and Dry bread and hard blows are excellent things in themselves, and military requisites. . to those who converse on them over their cups, turning their heads for the approbation of others on whose bosom they recline, and yawning from sad dis-anemones and other gaudy flowers, that shoot quietude at the degeneracy and effeminacy of the age. But there is finally a day when the cement of power begins to lose its strength and coherency, and when the fabric must be kept together by pointing it anew, and by protecting it a little from that rigour of the seasons which at first compacted it. The story of Hannibal and his army wasting away in luxury, is common, general, universal : its absurdity is remarked by few, or rather by none. Polybius. The wisest of us are slow to disbelieve what we have learned early: yet this story has always been to me incredible. Scipio. Beside the reasons I have adduced, is it necessary to remind you that Campania is subject to diseases which incapacitate the soldier? Those of Hannibal were afflicted by them: few indeed perished; but they were debilitated by their malady, and while they were waiting for the machinery which (even if they had had the artificers among them) could not have been constructed in double the time requisite for importing it, the period of dismay at Rome, if ever it existed, had elapsed. The wonder is less that Hannibal did not take Rome, than that he was able to remain in Italy, not having taken it. Considering how he held together, how he disciplined, how he provisioned (the most difficult thing of all, in the face of such enemies) an army in great part, as one would imagine, so intractable and wasteful; what commanders, what soldiers, what rivers, and what mountains, opposed him; I think Polybius, you will hardly admit to a parity or comparison with him, in the rare union of political and military science, the most distinguished of your own countrymen; not Philopomen, nor Philip of Macedon; if indeed you can hear me without anger and indignation name a barbarian king with Greeks. Polybius. When kings are docile, and pay due respect to those who are wiser and more virtuous than themselves, I would not point at them as objects of scorn or contumely, even among the free. There is little danger that men educated as we have been should value them too highly, or that men educated as they have been should eclipse the glory of Philopoemen. People in a republic know that their power and existence must depend on the zeal and assiduity, the courage and integrity, of those they employ in their first offices from the earth to be looked upon in idleness, and to be snapped by the stick or broken by the wind, without our interest, care, or notice. We can not thus calmly contemplate the utter subversion of a mighty capital; we can not thus indifferently stand over the strong agony of an expiring nation, after a gasp of years in a battle of ages, to win a world, or be for ever fallen. Panatius. You estimate, O Æmilianus, the abilities of a general, not by the number of battles he has won, nor of enemies he hath slain or led captive, but by the combinations he hath formed, the blows of fortune he hath parried or avoided, the prejudices he hath removed, and the difficulties of every kind he hath overcome. In like manner we should consider kings. Educated still more barbarously than other barbarians, sucking their milk alternately from Vice and Folly, guided in their first steps by Duplicity and Flattery, whatever they do but decently is worthy of applause; whatever they do virtuously, of admiration. I would say it even to Caius Gracchus; I would tell him it even in the presence of his mother; unappalled by her majestic mien, her truly Roman sanctity, her brow that can not frown, but that reproves with pity; for I am not so hostile to royalty as other philosophers are . perhaps because I have been willing to see less of it. Polybius. Eternal thanks to the Romans! who, whatever reason they may have had to treat the Greeks as enemies, to traverse and persecute such men as Lycortas my father, and as Philopomen my early friend, to consume our cities with fire, and to furrow our streets with torrents (as we have read lately) issuing from the remolten images of gods and heroes, have however so far respected the mother of Civilisation and of Law, as never to permit the cruel mockery of erecting Barbarism and Royalty on their vacant bases. Panatius. Our ancient institutions in part exist; we lost the rest when we lost the simplicity of our forefathers. Let it be our glory that we have resisted the most populous and wealthy nations, and that, having been conquered, we have been conquered by the most virtuous; that every one of our cities hath produced a greater number of illustrious men than all the remainder of the earth around us; that no man can anywhere enter his hall or portico, and see the countenances of his ancestors from their marble columels, without a commemorative and grateful sense of obligation to us; that neither his solemn feasts nor his cultivated fields are silent on it; that not the lamp which shows him the glad faces of his children, and prolongs his studies, and watches by his rest; that not the ceremonies whereby he hopes to avert the vengeance of the gods, nor the tenderer ones whereon are founded the affinities of domestic life, nor finally those which lead toward another; would have existed in his country, if Greece had not conveyed them. Bethink thee, Scipio, how little hath been done by any other nation, to promote the moral dignity or enlarge the social pleasures of the human race. What parties ever met, in their most populous cities, for the enjoyment of liberal and speculative conversation? What Alcibiades, elated with war and glory, turned his youthful mind from general admiration and from the cheers and caresses of coeval friends, to strengthen and purify it under the cold reproofs of the aged? What Aspasia led Philosophy to smile on Love, or taught Love to reverence Philosophy? These, as thou knowest, are not the safest guides for either sex to follow; yet in these were united the gravity and the graces of wisdom, never seen, never imagined, out of Athens. walked together, O Scipio, by starlight, on the shores of Surrentum and Baiæ, of Ischia and Caprea, and hath it not occurred to thee that the heavens themselves, both what we see of them and what lieth above our vision, are peopled with our heroes and heroines? The ocean, that roars so heavily in the ears of other men, hath for us its tuneful shells, its placid nymphs, and its beneficent ruler. The trees of the forest, the flowers, the plants, passed indiscriminately elsewhere, awaken and warm our affection; they mingle with the objects of our worship; they breathe the spirit of our ancestors; they lived in our form; they spoke in our language; they suffered as our daughters may suffer; the deities revisit them with pity; and some (we think) dwell among them. Scipio. Poetry! poetry! Panatius. Yes; I own it. The spirit of Greece, passing through and ascending above the world, hath so animated universal nature, that the very rocks and woods, the very torrents and wilds burst forth with it. . . and it falls, Emilianus! even from me. Scipio. It is from Greece I have received my friends, Panatius and Polybius. I would not offend thee by comparing the genius of the Roman people with ours: the offence Panatius. Say more, Æmilianus ! You have is removable, and in part removed already, by thy indeed said it here already; but say it again at hand. The little of sound learning, the little of Rome: it is Greece who taught the Romans all pure wit, that hath appeared in Rome from her beyond the rudiments of war: it is Greece who foundation, hath been concentrated under thy placed in your hand the sword that conquered roof: one tile would cover it. Have we not | Carthage. |