Lords of the World Part 27

Polybius had drawn up a list, which he proceeded to hand to the Jew. He had put down the names, and, as far as he knew or could guess them, the ages of the persons whom he wished to purchase. The Jew's eyes opened wider and wider as he read it.

"But what," he asked, his astonishment overcoming for the moment his usual somewhat servile civility, "what do you want with all these old men and women? They can't all be your fathers and mothers, and uncles and aunts. Excuse me, gentlemen," he added, recovering himself, "but this is not the sort of commission I am in the habit of getting from my customers."

Polybius explained, to the best of his power, his own and his friend's motives. As the Jew listened a gentler expression came into his face.

"By the G.o.d of my fathers," he exclaimed when the historian had finished, "I have never come across such a thing in my life! I don't mean that I haven't known of sons buying back fathers and mothers and that sort of thing, but this is quite outside my experience. Well," he went on with a smile, "you will at all events find that your fancy won't cost you very dear. How much do you propose to spend?"

Polybius named the sum. "But of course," he added, "we must consider your commission. What will that be on this amount?"

Judas meditated a while. "By Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," he broke out after a time, "I won't take a drachma. I have been about the world in this line of business for thirty years, and I have never seen anything like it. I should not have supposed it possible," he muttered to himself in his own language, "that these Gentile dogs should have thought of such a thing. Well, I must not shame Father Abraham by behaving worse than they do. No, gentlemen," he went on, "I shall not charge anything for commission. This is a quite uncommon piece of business, and you must let me please myself by managing it in my own way. Well, you can get a whole ship-load of the old people for this money. Some of the young men will be more expensive. But the really costly articles are the young women, and I don't see one on your list. Depend upon it, you shall have your money's worth. There are some of the meanest scoundrels in the world in Corinth at this moment, but they know better than to bid against Judas."

When sundry details of business had been disposed of, the old Jew grew very communicative about his occupation. He had been a slave himself, carried away by some Syrian marauders in his childhood from a village of Galilee. Bought by a soldier, a captain in the army of the third Antiochus, he had regained his liberty in the rout which followed the victory of Magnesia. After this had come a period of service in the patriot armies raised by the Maccabee brothers. In this he gained some distinction, but he found himself dest.i.tute when a severe wound received at the battle of Elaim compelled him to give up the profession of arms.

He had no relative in the world; his native place had absolutely perished. A countryman offered him a clerk's place. When he found that his new employer was a dealer in slaves he felt a strange thrill of pleasure. He was to make his living out of the miseries of these heathen who had marred his own life. To his own people he never ceased to be tender and generous. To the rest of the world he seemed to be absolutely callous and heartless. On this occasion he related to his hearers experiences so horrible that their blood ran cold at hearing them. His comments on these were often curiously cynical. "What a piece of folly it was that Flamininus committed at Chelys!" he remarked when some chance had brought the conversation round to that subject. Cleanor listened, we may be sure, with all his ears, when he caught the name.

"In a fit of stupid pa.s.sion he threw away at least fifty talents of good money. Imagine the absolute idiotcy of a man who kills some scores of able-bodied men when he might have sold them! What did he do it for? For revenge? Didn't he know that nine out of ten would far sooner have been killed than made slaves of? Why, I always have to watch any spirited young fellow for the first month or so lest he should slip out of my hands. After that they seem to lose heart, and can't even pluck up spirit enough to stab themselves. Of course the order to kill is never really carried out. The soldiers have a knack of stunning those whom they seem to kill. I have had some pretty cargoes of corpses who came to life again when they were safely out of the way. You give a soldier a hundred sesterces,[68] and you get a stout young fellow whom you can sell for five thousand."

Polybius and Cleanor had the satisfaction of seeing their efforts crowned with even more success than they could have expected. The public agent had taken a very liberal view of his duties, and the Jew dealer had carried out his part of the business with great success. Nearly seven hundred of the oldest and most helpless victims of the siege were restored to freedom. It was but a small fraction of the miserable whole, but it was something to have done. None of the rescued captives knew the names of their benefactors, though somehow the secret leaked out afterwards, but the friends felt that their pains had been well bestowed and well rewarded when they stood by and marked, unmarked themselves, the happiness which they had been able to secure to their unfortunate compatriots.

If in this respect Polybius went, and was content to go, without the praises of his countrymen, there was another matter in the conduct of which he deservedly won almost universal applause. Some miserable sycophants--and sycophants were only too common among the Greeks of the time--proposed to Mummius that the statues of Philopoemen should be thrown down. He had been always, they alleged, an energetic opponent of Rome, and it was a contradiction that monuments erected in his honour should be permitted to stand now that Rome had finally triumphed. The consul, who, to tell the truth, had but the slightest acquaintance with even recent history, was at first impressed by the argument. This Philopoemen had been the chief of the Achaean League, and it was the Achaean League that had defended, or tried to defend, Corinth against him.

Polybius, who, of course, knew what was meditated, begged to be allowed to defend the departed patriot, and Mummius consented to hear him. A kind of impromptu court was const.i.tuted. The consul and his quaestor, with the legates or generals of division, formed the bench of judges.

Polybius, who spoke with a depth of personal feeling that touched the hearts of all who heard him, delivered a most eloquent and convincing apology for the venerable man whom he had once been privileged to call his friend. He allowed that Philopoemen had struggled for the independence of Greece as long as that independence was possible. What honest Greek, he asked, could have done less? But he had always been an honourable enemy, and as soon as he saw that the true interests of his country demanded it he had always been a loyal ally. The judges gave an unanimous verdict in his favour.

"He was an honest man," said the consul with emphasis. "His statue shall remain standing here and everywhere, whatever may be thrown down, and as honest men are not too common, it shall be set up in every city of Greece."

It was now time for the friends to part. Polybius had received a commission from Rome to arrange the affairs of the other cities of the Peloponnese, and he would gladly have taken his young friend with him in the capacity of secretary. But Cleanor felt irresistibly called, and by more motives than one, to Italy. There awaited him there an honourable and lucrative employment, which would be all the more welcome because it was wholly remote from the scenes, so full of painful a.s.sociations, through which he had pa.s.sed during the last two years of his life. This, as my readers will remember, was the translation of the famous treatise on Agriculture. And he never forgot for a moment that Italy now contained the two beings who were dearest to him in the world. Corinth, which the savage decree of the Senate had doomed to the flames, both were anxious to leave without delay. They parted on the deck of the _Ino_, the ship which carried Polybius to Sicyon, the first city which he was to visit in his official capacity, and which was to take Cleanor further westward to Rome. "Farewell!" said Polybius. "I shall be busy with my history when these affairs are settled. Remember that you have promised to criticise it. I shall not like to give it to the world till it has had your approval."

FOOTNOTES:

65: This was made of an alloy known as _Corinthian bra.s.s_ or _bronze_, and said to have been composed of gold, silver, and copper. In later times it was believed to have been first made, and that by accident, at this very taking of Corinth, when gold, silver, and other metals were found to have been melted by the violent conflagration and to have run together; but it had been known long before.

66: About 9000.

67: It was the Roman custom, and Polybius naturally uses Roman terms on this occasion, to set up a spear when an auction was going on.

68: Something less than 1.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

TO ITALY.

The _Ino_ had a quick and prosperous voyage. But though Cleanor arrived safely at his destination, he learned, not without astonishment, that he had been running a very considerable danger of having a different ending to his travels. The Roman Republic was extending her borders in every direction, and was levelling to the dust the cities which had disputed with her the empire of the world, but she suffered herself to be insulted and her citizens and allies to be maltreated by insignificant enemies. While her legions and fleets were winning great victories abroad, her own coasts were harried by pirates. Near Ithaca the _Ino_ picked up a boat in which were three sailors reduced to the last stage of exhaustion by hunger and thirst. The poor fellows, who were almost unconscious when they were taken on board, had a piteous story to tell when they had recovered sufficient strength to speak. They had been drifting about for nine days, and were the survivors of a company of nine, the crew of a trader of Patrae which was bound with a cargo of wine for Tarentum.

"We were overhauled," said the captain, who was one of the three, "when we had accomplished half our voyage by a Cilician pirate galley. They took what they wanted of my cargo, scuttled my ship, and being, for some reason or other, in high good-humour, instead of making us walk the plank, as is their common custom, let us take our chance in our boat, and even gave us a keg of water and a bag of biscuits. This was my first venture on my own account," said the man, with tears in his eyes, "and I have lost everything I had in the world. We pay taxes to the Romans; why don't they keep the seas safe for us?"

"Why, indeed?" said the captain of the _Ino_. "Things are far worse now," he continued, addressing himself to Cleanor, "than they were when I first began to sail these seas some thirty years ago. They used to be fairly well kept in those days by the Rhodian ships. It was very seldom that the pirates ever came west of Cyprus. But then Rhodes began to go down the hill. She was ruined by Delos being made a free port, and could not afford to keep up her fleet. Since then things have been going from bad to worse. You wouldn't believe, sir, the things that have happened almost in the sight of Rome. Two years ago half of a praetor's establishment was carried off as it was on its way along the coast-road from Barium to Brundisium, and it was only by good luck that they did not lay hands upon the great man himself. He happened to have gone on in advance instead of being behind, as was usual. Perhaps if they had caught him something might have been done. As it is, n.o.body seems to care."

The next day the _Ino_ herself had what looked like a narrow escape.

At daybreak the look-out man descried in the offing a craft of suspicious-looking build, long, and low in the water. It was then almost a dead calm, and if the stranger was a pirate, as seemed only too likely, her long sweeps would soon bring her dangerously near. "We will have a fight for it," said the captain, as he inspected his stock of arms.

Happily the occasion to use them never arrived. A brisk breeze sprang up as the sun rose higher, and the _Ino_, which was an excellent sailer, soon left the strange ship far behind. The same evening she was moored to one of the quays in the harbour of Brundisium. By noon next day Cleanor was well on his way along the great Appian Road to Rome.

It was yet early in the autumn, the unhealthiest time of the year, then as now, for the Italian capital, and the city was empty, as far at least as its wealthier inhabitants were concerned. The translation committee, however, was about to commence its work, which was considered to be urgent. Scipio, with the thoughtful kindness which was characteristic of him, had placed a villa of his own near Ostia at the disposal of the members, and they were able to devote themselves to their task under favourable conditions of health and quiet. Under these pleasant circ.u.mstances the work progressed rapidly. Cleanor's a.s.sistance was found to be of the greatest value. He was now equally familiar with the three languages, Carthaginian, Greek, and Latin. The first two had been spoken almost indifferently in his native town; the third he had learned grammatically in his childhood, and he had since acquired the colloquial use of it. It is easy to understand how useful an educated man, who had had these unusual advantages, could be in dealing with a book which was largely concerned with common things and the affairs of everyday life.

Not one of his colleagues united in himself so many qualifications.

The time, taken up as it was with this occupation, pa.s.sed quickly, and, on the whole, pleasantly enough. Still, the continuous labour, and the sedentary life, so unlike the continuous activity in which he had spent the preceding months, began to tell upon his health and spirits, and he was glad when the approach of the Holidays of Saturn[69] promised an interval of rest and, possibly, a change of scene. It was with no small delight that early in December he received a letter from the younger Scipio. It was as follows:--

_L. Cornelius Scipio to his friend Cleanor, heartily greeting._

_This is but the third day since I arrived in Italy, and I hasten to make sure that we should meet as soon as possible. My aunt Cornelia, from whose villa at Misenum I am now writing, invites you, as I write at her request, to spend here the approaching holiday. She desires me to say that she now hears for the first time where you are and what you are doing. Other things concerning you have been told her, not without much praise, by some whose names I need not mention. Come, therefore, as soon as circ.u.mstances permit. That you will come welcome to many, and especially to me, be a.s.sured. Farewell!_

FOOTNOTE:

69: The "Holidays of Saturn" (_Saturnalia_) occurred in the early part of the latter half of December. They extended to as many as seven days. It is not improbable that they were, in a way, carried on by the Christmas festivities.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

AT MISENUM.

Cornelia, the "Mother of the Gracchi", was at this time not far from fifty years of age, but retained by favour of nature, often so capricious in what she gives or takes away, much of the beauty of youth. Left a widow with a numerous family--she had borne twelve children to her husband, but all had not survived--she had found a royal suitor in Ptolemy, king of Egypt. This suit it had probably not caused her any effort to decline. A daughter of the great Cornelian house would have disdained in any case an alliance with so doubtful a race as the Ptolemies, and this particular Ptolemy, whose bloated appearance had earned him the name of Physcon, was a degenerate scion of it. But Cornelia had had serious troubles. Of her twelve children two only were now alive, Tiberius, now a lad of seventeen, and Caius, a child of five.

Both, indeed, gave the fairest promise; the elder, though he had but lately a.s.sumed the manly gown, had exhausted such education as Roman teachers could then supply, and was already an accomplished rhetorician; the younger was a boy of singular beauty and intelligence. But Cornelia, a remarkably clear-sighted woman, had already begun to view with alarm the rapid development of Tiberius's character. The young man's political tendencies were strongly marked, and they seemed likely to bring him into dangerous collision with the aristocratic traditions of his mother's house. As for Caius, he was self-willed and imperious to an extraordinary degree. Still, no mother could have been prouder of her children, as none certainly could have been more devoted to them.

At this particular time, however, when Cleanor paid his first visit to the villa at Misenum, all was brightness and gaiety. Theoxena and her daughter had learned by this time to feel themselves thoroughly at home in Cornelia's hospitable house. The elder woman had suffered so much in the past that the best happiness which could be hoped for her was peace; but Daphne had blossomed out into a most attractive personality. There was a peculiar radiance about her beauty, which had all the greater charm because the girl's own disposition and the gracious example of her hostess, a very pearl among women, tempered it with a certain air of virginal reserve. Cleanor she met at first with her old sisterly frankness, but there was an ardour in the young man's glance, and a thrill in his voice--though he vainly attempted to subdue them into the greeting of a respectful affection--which seemed to alarm her. As for Cleanor, after the first day spent in her company, he could doubt no longer as to the real nature of his feelings. Daphne would be thenceforward the one woman in the world for him.

The holiday, which was prolonged to the beginning of the new year, pa.s.sed only too quickly. The days were spent either in hare-hunting--larger game was not to be found in a region already thickly populated--or in excursions on the water, which were favoured by weather that, though it was the depth of winter, was remarkably calm and warm. Possibly the most delightful expedition of the season was the ascent of Vesuvius, then clothed almost to the summit with lovely woods, and giving no sign of the hidden forces which, two centuries later, were to spread desolation over the fairest region of Italy.

The evenings were begun by a meal, simply yet elegantly served, at which the whole party a.s.sembled, even the little Caius being allowed to be present for at least a time. The meal over, there was no lack of entertainment. Tiberius was an accomplished reciter, and could give one of Terence's comedies with an artistic variety of voice and emphasis.

Cleanor charmed the company with a pa.s.sage from Homer, from Pindar, or from one of the great Athenian dramatists. Sometimes, by special request, he would dance the Pyrrhic dance, a pastime which in sterner Roman society would have more than savoured of frivolity. And now and then Daphne was persuaded to sing to the lute an exquisite little lyric from Stesichorus.

The last day of the year, which was also to be the last of the most delightful of visits, Cleanor determined to make as long as possible.

Rising as soon as the first streaks of dawn began to show themselves in the sky, he began to explore more thoroughly than he had before an opportunity of doing, the beautifully ordered gardens which surrounded the villa. Following a path of velvet sward, sheltered on either side by shrubberies of box-wood, he came to a spot which gave him a wide prospect over the lovely bay of Naples. He noticed, but in the most casual way, the figure of a gardener, who was busy, as it seemed, in tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the surrounding shrubs, the whole spot, except on that side which fronted the sea, being protected from the wind by a dense growth of box and laurel, arbutus and bay.

He threw himself down on a rustic bench and gazed on the scene before him. He was looking westward, and the sea at his feet lay in shadow, a dark purple in colour. In the distance the sun was just touching with golden light the crags of Prochyta and of the more remote Inarime. For a time the beauty of the scene wholly occupied him, for nature stirred the hearts of the men of those days even as it stirs ours, though they had only begun to give their feelings articulate expression.

Then his thoughts recurred to what was the dominant emotion of the time with him, his love for Daphne. How, he asked himself, how should he make it known? How should he approach her? To speak directly, at least in the first instance, was not the custom of his race, though doubtless love, there as elsewhere, made exceptions of his own to the severest rule.

Through her mother? But Theoxena was, he knew, only too thoroughly devoted to him. To her his wish would be a command; she would make it a matter of filial obedience with her daughter, and he wanted the voluntary submission that was wholly free. Through Cornelia? But would she favour such an alliance? She was a n.o.ble of the n.o.bles, filled with the keenest sympathy for the people, but profoundly conscious of the social difference between her cla.s.s and them, and with her own cla.s.s she would certainly rank the well-born Cleanor.

Well, he said to himself, after a pause of reflection, which did not seem to make the matter clearer, "these things will settle themselves. I love her, and I think she loves me, so that nothing will keep us apart."

And he broke into the beautiful choric song of the _Antigone_--for it was his habit, as it is the habit of all true lovers of poetry, thus to interrupt his solitary musings--

"O love invincible!"