The Martyrdom of Man, Winwood Reade [best book club books TXT] 📗

anything but a decorous kind. The dinner hour

was made later, and instead of sitting at table they adopted the style of

lying down to eat on sofas inlaid with tortoiseshell and gold. It was

chiefly in the luxuries of the cuisine that the Romans exhibited their

wealth. Prodigious prices were paid for a good Greek cook. Every

patrician villa was a castle of gastronomical delight: it was provided with

its salt-water tank for fish and oysters, and an aviary which was filled

with field-fares, ortolans, nightingales, and thrushes; a white dove-cot,

like a tower, stood beside the house, and beneath it was a dark dungeon

for fattening the birds; there was also a poultry ground, with pea-fowl,

guinea-fowl, and pink feathered flamingoes imported from the East,

while an orchard of fig-trees, honey-apples, and other fruits, and a garden

in which the trees of cypress and yew were clipped into fantastic shapes,

conferred an aspect of rural beauty on the scene. The hills round the Bay

of Naples were covered with these villas; and to that charming region it

became the fashion to resort at a certain season of the year. In such

places gambling, drinking, and lovemaking shook off all restraints.

Black-eyed soubrettes tripped perpetually about with billets-doux in

Greek; the rattle of the ivory dice-box could be heard in the streets, like

the click of billiard balls in the Parisian boulevards; and many a boat with

purple sails and with garlands of roses twined round its mast floated

softly along the water, laughter and sweet music sounding from the prow.

 

Happily for Cato’s peace of mind, he died before the casino with its

cachucha—or cancan, or whatever it might have been—was introduced,

and before the fashions of Asia had been added to those of Greece. But

he lived long enough to see the Graeco-maniacs triumphant. In earlier

and happier days he had been able to expel two philosophers from Rome,

but now he saw them swarming in the streets with their ragged cloaks and

greasy beards, and everywhere obtaining seats as domestic chaplains at

the tables of the rich. He could now do no more than protest in his bitter

and extravagant style against the corruption of the age. He prophesied

that as soon as Rome had thoroughly imbibed the Greek philosophy she

would lose the empire of the world; he declared that Socrates was a

prating, seditious fellow who well deserved his fate; and he warned his

son to beware of the Greek physicians, for the Greeks had laid a plot to

kill all the Romans, and the doctors had been deputed to put it into

execution with their medicines.

 

Cato was a man of an iron body which was covered with honourable

scars, a loud, harsh voice, greenish-grey eyes, foxy hair, and enormous

teeth resembling tusks. His face was so hideous and forbidding that,

according to one of the hundred epigrams that were composed against

him, he would wander for ever on the banks of the Styx, for hell itself

would be afraid to let him in. He was distinguished as a general, as an

orator, and as an author, but he pretended that it was his chief ambition to

be considered a good farmer. He lived in a little cottage on his Sabine

estate, and went in the morning to practise as an advocate in the

neighbouring town. When he came home he stripped to the skin

and worked in the fields with his slaves, drinking as they did the

vinegar-water or the thin, sour wine. In the evening he used to boil the

turnips for his supper while his wife made the bread. Although he cared

so little about external things, if he gave an entertainment and the slaves

had not cooked it or waited to his liking, he used to chastise them with

leather thongs. It was one of his maxims to sell his slaves when they

grew old—the worst cruelty that a slave-owner can commit. “For my

part,” says Plutarch, “I should never have the heart to sell an ox that had

grown old in my service, still less my aged slave.”

 

Cato’s old-fashioned virtue paid very well. He gratified his personal

antipathies and obtained the character of the people’s friend. He was

always impeaching the great men of his country, and was himself

impeached nearly fifty times. The man who sets up as being much better

than his age is always to be suspected, and Cato is perhaps the best

specimen of the rugged hypocrite and austere charlatan that history can

produce. This censor of morals bred slaves for sale. He made laws

against usury and then turned usurer himself. He was always preaching

about the vanity of riches, and wrote an excellent work on the best way of

getting rich. He degraded a Roman knight for kissing his wife in the

day-time in the presence of his daughter, and he himself, while he was

living under his daughter-in-law’s roof, bestowed his favours on one of

the servant girls of the establishment, and allowed her to be impudent to

her young mistress. “Old age,” he once said to a grey-headed debauchee,

“has deformities enough of its own. Do not add to it the deformity of

vice.” At the time of the amorous affair above mentioned Cato was

nearly eighty years of age.

 

On the other hand, he was a most faithful servant to his country; he was a

truly religious man, and his god was the Commonwealth of Rome. Nor

was he destitute of the domestic virtues, though sadly deficient in that

respect. He used to say that those who beat their wives and children laid

their sacrilegious hands on the holiest things in the world. He educated

his son himself, taught him to box, to ride, and to swim, and wrote out for

him a history of Rome in large pothook characters, that he might become

acquainted at an early age with the great actions of the ancient Romans.

He was as careful in what he said before the child as if he had been in the

presence of the vestal virgins.

 

This Cato was the man on whom rests chiefly the guilt of the murder

which we must now relate. In public and in private, by direct

denunciation, by skilful innuendo, by appealing to the fears of some and

to the interests of others, he laboured incessantly towards his end. Once,

after he had made a speech against Carthage in the senate, he shook the

skirt of his robe as if by accident, and some African figs fell upon the

ground. When all had looked and wondered at their size and beauty he

observed that the place where they grew was only three days’ sail from

Rome.

 

It is possible that Cato was sincere in his alarms, for he was one of the

few survivors of the second Punic War. He had felt the arm of Carthage

in its strength. He could remember that day when even Romans had

turned pale; when the old men covered their faces with their mantles;

when the young men clambered on the walls; when the women ran

wailing round the temples of the gods, praying for protection and

sweeping the shrines with their hair; when a cry went forth that Hannibal

was at the gates; when a panic seized the city; when the people, collecting

on the roofs, flung tiles at Roman soldiers, believing them to be the

enemy already in the town; when all over the Campagna could be seen

the smoke of ricks and farmhouses mounting in the air, and the wild

Berber horsemen driving herds of cattle to the Punic camp.

 

Besides, it was his theory that the annihilation of foreign powers was the

building up of Rome. He used to boast that in his Peninsular campaign

he had demolished a Spanish town a day. There were in the senate many

enlightened men who denied that the prosperity of Rome could be

assisted by the destruction of trading cities, and Carthage was

defended by the Scipio party. But the influence of the banker class

was employed on Cato’s side. They wanted every penny that was spent

in the Mediterranean world to pass through their books. Carthage and

Corinth were rival firms which it was to their profit to destroy. These

money-mongers possessed great power in the senate and the state, and at

last they carried the day. It was privately resolved that Carthage should

be attacked as soon as an opportunity occurred.

 

Thus in Africa and in Italy Masinissa and Cato prepared the minds of

men for the deed of blood. It was as if the Furies of the slaughtered dead

had entered the bodies of those two old men and kept them alive beyond

their natural term. Cato had done his share. It was now Masinissa’s turn.

As soon as he was assured that he would be supported by the Romans he

struck again and again the wretched people, who were afraid to resist and

yet who soon saw that it would be folly to submit. It was evident that

Rome would not interfere. If Masinissa was not checked he would strip

them of their cornfields; he would starve them to death. The war party at

last prevailed; the city was fortified and armed. Masinissa descended on

their villas, their gardens, and their farms. Driven to despair, the

Carthaginians went forth to defend the crops which their own hands had

sown. A great battle was fought, and Masinissa was victorious.

 

On a hill near the battlefield sat a young Roman officer, Scipio

Aemilianus, a relative of the man who had defeated Hannibal. He had

been sent over from Spain for a squadron of elephants, and arrived in

Masinissa’s camp at this interesting crisis. The news of the battle was

soon despatched by him to Rome. The treaty had now been broken, and

the senate declared war.

 

The Carthaginians fell into an agony of alarm. They were now so broken

down that a vassal of Rome could defeat them in the open field. What

had they to expect in a war with Rome? Ambassadors were at once

dispatched with full powers to obtain peace—peace at any price—from

the terrible Republic. The envoys presented themselves before the senate;

they offered the submission of the Carthaginians, who formally disowned

the act of war, who had put the two leaders of the war-party to death, and

who desired nothing but the alliance and goodwill of Rome. The answer

which they received was this: “Since the Carthaginians are so well

advised, the senate returns them their country, their laws, their sepulchres,

their liberties, and their estates, if they will surrender three hundred sons

of their senators as hostages, and obey the orders of the consuls.”

 

The Roman army had already disembarked. When the consuls landed on

the coast no resistance was made. They demanded provisions. Then the

city gates were opened, and long trains of bullocks and mules laden with

corn were driven to the Roman camp. The hostages were demanded.

Then the senators brought forth their children and gave them to the city;

the city gave them to the Romans; the Romans placed them on board the

galleys, which at once spread their sails and departed from the coast. The

roofs of the palaces of Carthage were crowded with women who watched

these receding sails with straining eyes and outstretched arms. Never

more would they see their beloved ones. Yet they would not perhaps

have grieved so much at the children leaving Carthage had they known

what was to come.

 

The city gates again opened. The senate sent its council to the Roman

camp. A company of venerable men clad in purple, with golden chains,

presented themselves at headquarters and requested to know what were

the “orders of the consuls.” They were told that Carthage must disarm.

They returned to the