66 Spain is annexed to Carthage's domain. He bounds across the Pyrenees. Nature opposed in vain the Alps with all their snows; he cleaves the rocks and rives the mountains with vinegar. Now he is lord of Italy! Yet still he presses on. Naught is achieved," he says, "unless we burst through the gates of Rome with the soldiery of Carthage, and I plant my standard in the heart of the Suburra!" Oh what a face!3 and worthy what a picture! when the huge Gætulian beast bore on his back the one-eyed general! What then was the issue? Oh glory! This self-made man is conquered, and flees with head-long haste to exile, and there, a great and much-to-be-admired client, sits at the palace of the king, until his Bithynian majesty' be pleased to wake! To that soul, that once shook the very world's base, it is not sword, nor stone, nor javelin, that shall give the final stroke; but, that which atoned for Cannæ, and avenged such mighty carnage, a ring! Go then, madman, and hurry over the rugged Alps, that you may be the delight of boys, and furnish subjects for declamations ! 6 1 Aceto. Vid. Liv., xxi., 37. Polybius omits the story as fabulous. There appears, now, no reason to doubt the fact. 2 Actum. "Nil actum referens si quid superesset agendum." 3 Facies. Johnson. "Oh! for some master-hand, the lines to trace !" Gifford. 4 Lusoum. Hannibal lost one eye, while crossing the marshes, in making his way to Etruria: "quia medendi nec locus nec tempus erat altero oculo capitur;" he rode, Livy tells us, on his sole surviving elephant, xxii., 2. 5 Bithyno. When accused by the Romans at Carthage, Hannibal fled to Antiochus, king of Syria, and thence to the court of Prusias, king of Bithynia, for whom he carried on successfully the war against Eumenes. But when Flaminius was sent to demand his surrender, he destroyed himself with poison, which he always carried in a ring. 6 Sanguinis. Forty-five thousand dead were left on the field of Cannæ, with the Consul Emilius Paulus, eighty senators, and very many others of high rank. Declamatio. Cf. vii., 167, "Sexta quâque die miserum dirus caput Hannibal implet." So 1. 150, and i., 15. 66 'Go, climb the rugged Alps, ambitious fool! To please the boys, and be a theme at school." Dryden. One world is not enough for the youth of Pella! He chafes within the narrow limits of the universe, poor soul, as though confined in Gyarus'2 small rock, or scanty Seriphös. Yet when he shall have entered the city that the brickmakers3 fortified, he will be content with a sarcophagus !+ Death alone discloses how very small are the puny bodies of men ! Men do believe that Athos was sailed through of yore; and all the bold assertions that lying Greeks hazard in history— that the sea was bridged over by the same fleets, and formed into a solid pavement for the transit of wheels. We believe that deep rivers failed, and streams were drunk dry5 when the 1 Unus. "Heu me miserum! quod ne uno quidem adhuc potitus sum!" is the exclamation put into Alexander's mouth by Val. Max., viii., 14. 2 Gyaris. Cf. i., 73; vi., 563. 3 Figulis. Cf. Herod., i., 78. Ov., Met., iv., 27, "Ubi dicitur altam Coctilibus muris cinxisse Semiramis urbem." 4 Sarcophago. A stone was found at Assos, near Troy, which was said to possess the property of consuming the flesh of bodies inclosed in it within the space of forty days, hence called σapkopάyoç. Plin., ii., 96; xxxvi., 17. Cf. Henry's speech to Hotspur's body: "Ill-weaved ambition, how much art thou shrunk! A kingdom for it was too small a bound: So Hall: "Fond fool! six feet shall serve for all thy store, And Shirley: "How little room do we take up in death, And Webster's Duchess of Malfy : "Much you had of land and rent; Your length in clays 's now competent." So K. Henry VI. : Is nothing left me but my body's length." And Dryden's Antony: "The place thou pressest on thy mother Earth Cf. Esch., S. Theb., 731. Soph., Ed. Col., 789. Shakspeare's Richard II., Act iii., sc. 2. 5 Epota. Herodotus mentions the Scamander, Onochnous, Apidanus, and Echedorus. "Rivers, whose depth no sharp beholder sees, Persian dined; and all the flights of Sostratus" song, when his wings are moistened by the god of wine. And yet, in what guise did he return after quitting Salamis, who, like a true barbarian as he was, used to vent his rage in scourges on Corus and Eurus, that had never suffered in this sort in Æolus' prison; and bound in gyves Ennosigæus2 himself. It was, in fact, an act of clemency that he did not think he deserved branding3 also. Would any of the gods choose to serve such a man as this? But how did he return? Why, in a single ship; through waves dyed with blood, and with his galley retarded by the shoals of corpses. Such was the penalty that glory, for which he had so often prayed, exacted. "Grant length of life, great Jove, and many years!" This is your only prayer in health and sickness. But with what unremitting and grievous ills is old age crowded! First of all, its face is hideous, loathsome, and altered from its former self; instead of skin a hideous hide and flaccid cheeks; and see! such wrinkles, as, where Tabraca extends her shady dells, the antiquated ape scratches on her wizened jowl! There are many points of difference in the young: this youth is handsomer than that; and he again than a third: one is far sturdier than another. Old mens faces are all alike-limbs 1 Sostratus. Of this poet nothing is known.-Madidis, probably in the same sense as in Sat. xv., 47, "Facilis victoria de madidis." Sil., xii., 18, "Madefacta mero." 2 Ennosigaum. ȧπÒ TOŨ ¿VÓÐε Thy yatav. Cf. Hom., Il., vii., 455. Eolis is an allusion to Virgil, Æn., i., 51, “Vinclis ac carcere frænat,” "That shackles o'er th' earth-shaking Neptune threw, And thought it lenient not to brand him too." Gifford. 4 Servire Deorum. As Apollo served Admetus; Neptune, Laomedon, etc. "Ye gods! obeyed ye such a fool as this?" Tarda. Perhaps alluding to Her., viii., 118. Hodgson. Th' encumbered oar scarce leaves the dreaded coast 6 Tabraca, on the coast of Tunis, now Tabarca. Johnson. 7 Simia. So Ennius, in Cic., Nat. De., i., 35, "Simia, quam similis turpissima bestia nobis !" "A stick-fallen cheek! that hangs below the jaw, Such wrinkles as a skillful hand would draw For an old grandam ape, when, with a grace, She sits at squat, and scrubs her leathern face." Dryden. tottering and voice feeble,1 a smooth bald pate, and the second childhood of a driveling nose; the poor wretch must mumble his bread with toothless gums; so loathsome to his wife, his children, and even to himself, that he would excite the disgust even of the legacy-hunter Cossus ! His palate2 is grown dull; his relish for his food and wine3 no more the same; the joys of love are long ago forgotten; and in spite of all efforts to reinvigorate them, all manly energies are hopelessly extinct. Has this depraved and hoary lechery aught else to hope? Do we not look with just suspicion on the lust that covets the sin but lacks the power?1 Now turn your eyes to the loss of another sense. For what pleasure has he in a singer, however eminent a harper it may be; nay, even Seleucus himself; or those whose habit it is to glitter in a cloak of gold?5 What matters it in what part of the wide theatre he sits, who can scarcely hear the horn-blowers, and the general clang of trumpets? You must bawl out loud before his ear can distinguish who it is his slave says has called, or tells him what o'clock it is. Besides, the 1. Cum voce trementia membra. Compare Hamlet's speech to Polonius, and As you like it, Act ii., 7: "His big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in its sound." "The self-same palsy both in limbs and tongue." Dryden. Palato. Compare Barzillai's speech to David, 2 Sam., xix., 35, "I am this day fourscore years old; and can I discern between good or evil? can thy servant taste what I eat and what I drink? can I hear any more the voice of singing men and singing women ?" 3 Vini. "Now pall the tasteless meats, and joyless wines, And Luxury with sighs her slave resigns." Johnson. Viribus. Shakspeare, King Henry IV., Part ii., Act ii., sc. 4, "Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance ?" 5 Auratâ. Cic. ad Heren., iv., 47, "Uti citharædus cum prodierit optimè vestitus, pallâ inauratâ indutus, cum chlamyde purpureâ coloribus variis intextâ, cum coronâ aureâ, magnis fulgentibus gemmis illuminatâ. Horace, A. P., 215, "Luxuriem addidi arti Tibicen, traxitque vagus per pulpita vestem.” Nuntiet horas. Slaves were employed to watch the dials in the houses of those who had them, and report the hour: those who had no dial sent to the Forum. Cf. Mart., viii., 67. Suet., Domit., xvi., "Sexta nuntiata est." scanty blood that flows in his chill' body is warmed by fever only. Diseases of every kind dance round him in full choir. If you were to ask their names, I could sooner tell you how many lovers Hippia had; how many patients Themison2 killed in one autumn; how many allies Basilus plundered; how many wards Hirrus defrauded; how many lovers long Maura received in the day; how many pupils Hamillus corrupts. I could sooner run through the list of villas owned by him now, beneath whose razor3 my stiff beard resounded when I was in my prime. One is weak in the shoulder; another in the loins; another in the hip. Another has lost both eyes, and envies the one-eyed. Another's bloodless lips receive their food from others' fingers. He that was wont to relax his features to a smile at the sight of his dinner, now only gapes1 like the young swallow to whom the parent bird, herself fasting, flies with full beak. But worse than all debility of limb is that idiocy which recollects neither the names of his slaves nor the face of the friend with whom he supped the evening before; not even those whom he begot and brought up! For by a heartless will he disinherits them; and all his property is made over to Phiale:-such power has the breath of her artificial mouth, that stood for hire so many years in the brothel's dungeon. 5 Even though the powers of intellect retain their vigor, yet he must lead forth the funerals of his children; must gaze upon the pyre of a beloved wife, and the urns filled with all 1 Gelido. Virg., Æn., v., 395, "Sed enim gelidus tardante senectâ Sanguis hebet, frigentque effectæ in corpore vires." 2 Themison of Laodicea in Syria, pupil of Asclepiades, was an eminent physician of the time of Pompey the Great, and is said to have been the founder of the "Methodic" school, as opposed to the "Empiric." Vid. Cels., Præf. Plin., N. H., xxix., 15. Others say he lived in Augustus' time, and Hodgson thinks he may have lived even to Juvenal's days. Cicero (de Orat., i., 14) mentions an Asclepiades; and the names of at least three others are mentioned in later times. 3 Quo tondente. Cf. i., 35. * Hiat. Cf. Lucian, Tim., ἐμὲ περιμένουσι κεχηνότες ὥσπερ τὴν χε λιδόνα προσπετομένην τετριγότες οἱ νεοσσοί. P. 72, E., ed. Bened. 5 Jejuna, from Hom., Il., ix., 323, ὡς δ ̓ ὄρνις ἀπτῆσι νεοσσοῖσι προφέρῃσι μάστακ ̓, ἐπεί κε λάβῃσι, κακῶς δέ τέ οἱ πέλει αὐτῇ. Phialen. "Forgets the children he begot and bred, And makes a strumpet heiress in their stead." Gifford. |