BOOK IV.—WANDERINGS IN CORSICA.
CHAPTER I.
SOUTHERN PART OF CAPE CORSO.
Cape Corso is the long narrow peninsula which Corsica throws out to the north.
It is traversed by a rugged mountain range, called the Serra, the highest summits of which, Monte Alticcione and Monte Stello, reach an altitude of more than 5000 feet. Rich and beautiful valleys run down on both sides to the sea.
I had heard a great deal of the beauty of the valleys of this region, of their fertility in wine and oranges, and of the gentle manners of their inhabitants, so that I began my wanderings in it with true pleasure. A cheerful and festive impression is produced at the very first by the olive-groves that line the excellent road along the shore, through the canton San Martino. Chapels appearing through the green foliage; the cupolas of family tombs; solitary cottages on the strand; here and there a forsaken tower, in the rents of which the wild fig-tree clings, while the cactus grows profusely at its base,—make the country picturesque. The coast of Corsica is set round and round with these towers, which the Pisans and Genoese built to ward off the piratical attacks of the Saracens. They are round or square, built of brown granite, and stand isolated. Their height is from thirty to fifty feet. A company of watchers lay within, and alarmed the surrounding country when the Corsairs approached. All these towers are now forsaken, and gradually falling to ruin. They impart a strangely romantic character to the Corsican shores.
It was pleasant to wander through this region in the radiant morning; the eye embraced the prospect seawards, with the fine forms of the islands of Elba, Capraja, and Monte Cisto, and was again relieved by the mountains and valleys descending close to the shore. The heights here enclose, like sides of an amphitheatre, little, blooming, shady dales, watered by noisy brooks. Scattered round, in a rude circle, stand the black villages, with their tall church-towers and old cloisters. On the meadows are herdsmen with their herds, and where the valley opens to the sea, always a tower and a solitary hamlet by the shore, with a boat or two in its little haven.
Every morning at sunrise, troops of women and girls may be seen coming from Cape Corso to Bastia, with produce for the market. They have a pretty blue or brown dress for the town, and a clean handkerchief wound as mandile round the hair. These forms moving along the shore through the bright morning, with their neat baskets, full of laughing, golden fruit, enliven the way very agreeably; and perhaps it would be difficult to find anything more graceful than one of those slender, handsome girls pacing towards you, light-footed and elastic as a Hebe, with her basket of grapes on her head. They are all in lively talk with their neighbours as they pass, and all give you the same beautiful, light-hearted Evviva. Nothing better certainly can one mortal wish another than that he should live.
But now forward, for the sun is in Leo, and in two hours he will be fierce. And behind the Tower of Miomo, towards the second pieve of Brando, the road ceases, and we must climb like the goat, for there are few districts in Cape Corso supplied with anything but footpaths. From the shore, at the lonely little Marina di Basina, I began to ascend the hills, on which lie the three communes that form the pieve of Brando. The way was rough and steep, but cheered by gushing brooks and luxuriant gardens. The slopes are quite covered with these, and they are full of grapes, oranges, and olives—fruits in which Brando specially abounds. The fig-tree bends low its laden branches, and holds its ripe fruit steadily to the parched mouth, unlike the tree of Tantalus.
On a declivity towards the sea, is the beautiful stalactite cavern of Brando, not long since discovered. It lies in the gardens of a retired officer. An emigrant of Modena had given me a letter for this gentleman, and I called on him at his mansion. The grounds are magnificent. The Colonel has transformed the whole shore into a garden, which hangs above the sea, dreamy and cool with silent olives, myrtles, and laurels; there are cypresses and pines, too, isolated or in groups, flowers everywhere, ivy on the walls, vine-trellises heavy with grapes, oranges tree on tree, a little summer-house hiding among the greenery, a cool grotto deep under ground, loneliness, repose, a glimpse of emerald sky, and the sea with its hermit islands, a glimpse into your own happy human heart;—it were hard to tell when it might be best to live here, when you are still young, or when you have grown old.
An elderly gentleman, who was looking out of the villa, heard me ask the gardener for the Colonel, and beckoned me to come to him. His garden had already shown me what kind of a man he was, and the little room into which I now entered told his character more and more plainly. The walls were covered with symbolic paintings; the different professions were fraternizing in a group, in which a husbandman, a soldier, a priest, and a scholar, were shaking hands; the five races were doing the same in another picture, where a European, an Asiatic, a Moor, an Australian, and a Redskin, sat sociably drinking round a table, encircled by a gay profusion of curling vine-wreaths. I immediately perceived that I was in the beautiful land of Icaria, and that I had happened on no other personage than the excellent uncle of Goethe's Wanderjahre. And so it was. He was the uncle—a bachelor, a humanistic socialist, who, as country gentleman and land-owner, diffused widely around him the beneficial influences of his own great though noiseless activity.
He came towards me with a cheerful, quiet smile, the Journal des Débats in his hand, pleased apparently with what he had been reading in it.
"I have read in your garden and in your room, signore, the Contrat Social of Rousseau, and some of the Republic of Plato. You show me that you are the countryman of the great Pasquale."
We talked long on a great variety of subjects—on civilisation and on barbarism, and how impotent theory was proving itself. But these are old affairs, that every reflecting man has thought of and talked about.
Much musing on this interview, I went down to the grotto after taking leave of the singular man, who had realized for me so unexpectedly the creation of the poet. After all, this is a strange island. Yesterday a bandit who has murdered ten men out of capriccio, and is being led to the scaffold; to-day a practical philosopher, and philanthropic advocate of universal brotherhood—both equally genuine Corsicans, their history and character the result of the history of their nation. As I passed under the fair trees of the garden, however, I said to myself that it was not difficult to be a philanthropist in paradise. I believe that the wonderful power of early Christianity arose from the circumstance that its teachers were poor, probably unfortunate men.
There is a Corsican tradition that St. Paul landed on Cape Corso—the Promontorium Sacrum, as it was called in ancient times—and there preached the gospel. It is certain that Cape Corso was the district of the island into which Christianity was first introduced. The little region, therefore, has long been sacred to the cause of philanthropy and human progress.
The daughter of one of the gardeners led me to the grotto. It is neither very high nor very deep, and consists of a series of chambers, easily traversed. Lamps hung from the roof. The girl lighted them, and left me alone. And now a pale twilight illuminated this beautiful crypt, of such bizarre stalactite formations as only a Gothic architect could imagine—in pointed arches, pillar-capitals, domed niches, and rosettes. The grottos of Corsica are her oldest Gothic churches, for Nature built them in a mood of the most playful fantasy. As the lamps glimmered, and shone on, and shone through, the clear yellow stalactite, the cave was completely like the crypt of some cathedral. Left in this twilight, I had the following little fantasy in stalactite—
A wondrous maiden sat wrapped in a white veil on a throne of the clearest alabaster. She never moved. She wore on her head a lotos-flower, and on her breast a carbuncle. The eye could not cease to gaze on the veiled maiden, for she stirred a longing in the bosom. Before her kneeled many little gnomes; the poor fellows were all of dropstone, all stalactites, and they wore little yellow crowns of the fairest alabaster. They never moved; but they all held their hands stretched out towards the white maiden, as if they wished to lift her veil, and bitter drops were falling from their eyes. It seemed to me as if I knew some of them, and as if I must call them by their names. "This is the goddess Isis," said the toad sneeringly; she was sitting on a stone, and, I think, threw a spell on them all with her eyes. "He who does not know the right word, and cannot raise the veil of the beautiful maiden, must weep himself to stone like these. Stranger, wilt thou say the word?"
I was just falling asleep—for I was very tired, and the grotto was so dim and cool, and the drops tinkled so slowly and mournfully from the roof—when the gardener's daughter entered, and said: "It is time!" "Time! to raise the veil of Isis?—O ye eternal gods!" "Yes, Signore, to come out to the garden and the bright sun." I thought she said well, and I immediately followed her.
"Do you see this firelock, Signore? We found it in the grotto, quite coated with the dropstone, and beside it were human bones; likely they were the bones and gun of a bandit; the poor wretch had crept into this cave, and died in it like a wounded deer." Nothing was now left of the piece but the rusty barrel. It may have sped the avenging bullet into more than one heart. Now I hold it in my hand like some fossil of horrid history, and it opens its mouth and tells me stories of the Vendetta.
CHAPTER II.
FROM BRANDO TO LURI.
"Say, whither rov'st thou lonely through the hills,
A stranger in the region?"—Odyssey.
I now descended to Erba Lunga, an animated little coast village, which sends fishing-boats daily to Bastia. The oppressive heat compelled me to rest here for some hours.
This was once the seat of the most powerful seigniors of Cape Corso, and above Erba Lunga stands the old castle of the Signori dei Gentili. The Gentili, with the Seigniors da Mare, were masters of the Cape. The neighbouring island of Capraja also belonged to the latter family. Oppressively treated by its violent and unscrupulous owners, the inhabitants rebelled in 1507, and placed themselves under the Bank of Genoa. Cape Corso was always, from its position, considered as inclining to Genoa, and its people were held to be unwarlike. Even at the present day the men of the Corsican highlands look down on the gentle and industrious people of the peninsula with contempt. The historian Filippini says of the Cape Corsicans: "The inhabitants of Cape Corso clothe themselves well, and are, on account of their trade and their vicinity to the Continent, much more domestic than the other Corsicans. Great justice, truth, and honour, prevail among them. All their industry is in wine, which they export to the Continent." Even in Filippini's time, therefore, the wine of Cape Corso was in reputation. It is mostly white; the vintage of Luri and Rogliano is said to be the best; this wine is among the finest that Southern Europe produces, and resembles the Spanish, the Syracusan, and the Cyprian. But Cape Corso is also rich in oranges and lemons.
If you leave the sea and go higher up the hills, you lose all the beauty of this interesting little wine-country, for it nestles low in the valleys. The whole of Cape Corso is a system of such valleys on both its coasts; but the dividing ranges are rugged and destitute of shade; their low wood gives no shelter from the sun. Limestone, serpentine, talc, and porphyry, show themselves. After a toilsome journey, I at length arrived late in the evening in the valley of Sisco. A paesane had promised me hospitality there, and I descended into the valley rejoicing in the prospect. But which was the commune of Sisco? All around at the foot of the hills, and higher up, stood little black villages, the whole of them comprehended under the name Sisco. Such is the Corsican custom, to give all the hamlets of a valley the name of the pieve, although each has its own particular appellation. I directed my course to the nearest village, whither an old cloister among pines attracted me, and seemed to say: Pilgrim, come, have a draught of good wine. But I was deceived, and I had to continue climbing for an hour, before I discovered my host of Sisco. The little village lay picturesquely among wild black rocks, a furious stream foaming through its midst, and Monte Stello towering above it.
I was kindly received by my friend and his wife, a newly married couple, and found their house comfortable. A number of Corsicans came in with their guns from the hills, and a little company of country-people was thus formed. The women did not mingle with us; they prepared the meal, served, and disappeared. We conversed agreeably till bedtime. The people of Sisco are poor, but hospitable and friendly. On the morrow, my entertainer awoke me with the sun; he took me out before his house, and then gave me in charge to an old man, who was to guide me through the labyrinthine hill-paths to the right road for Crosciano. I had several letters with me for other villages of the Cape, given me by a Corsican the evening before. Such is the beautiful and praiseworthy custom in Corsica; the hospitable entertainer gives his departing guest a letter, commending him to his relations or friends, who in their turn receive him hospitably, and send him away with another letter. For days thus you travel as guest, and are everywhere made much of; as inns in these districts are almost unknown, travelling would otherwise be an impossibility.
Sisco has a church sacred to Saint Catherine, which is of great antiquity, and much resorted to by pilgrims. It lies high up on the shore. Once a foreign ship had been driven upon these coasts, and had vowed relics to the church for its rescue; which relics the mariners really did consecrate to the holy Saint Catherine. They are highly singular relics, and the folk of Sisco may justly be proud of possessing such remarkable articles, as, for example, a piece of the clod of earth from which Adam was modelled, a few almonds from the garden of Eden, Aaron's rod that blossomed, a piece of manna, a piece of the hairy garment of John the Baptist, a piece of Christ's cradle, a piece of the rod on which the sponge dipped in vinegar was raised to Christ's lips, and the celebrated rod with which Moses smote the Red Sea.
Picturesque views abound in the hills of Sisco, and the country becomes more and more beautiful as we advance northwards. I passed through a great number of villages—Crosciano, Pietra, Corbara, Cagnano—on the slopes of Monte Alticcione, but I found some of them utterly poverty-stricken; even their wine was exhausted. As I had refused breakfast in the house of my late entertainer, in order not to send the good people into the kitchen by sunrise, and as it was now mid-day, I began to feel unpleasantly hungry. There were neither figs nor walnuts by the wayside, and I determined that, happen what might, I would satisfy my craving in the next paese. In three houses they had nothing—not wine, not bread—all their stores were expended. In the fourth, I heard the sound of a guitar. I entered. Two gray-haired men in ragged blouses were sitting, the one on the bed, the other on a stool. He who sat on the bed held his cetera, or cithern, in his arm, and played, while he seemed lost in thought. Perhaps he was dreaming of his vanished youth. He rose, and opening a wooden chest, brought out a half-loaf carefully wrapped in a cloth, and handed me the bread that I might cut some of it for myself. Then he sat down again on the bed, played his cithern, and sang a vocero, or dirge. As he sang, I ate the bread of the bitterest poverty, and it seemed to me as if I had found the old harper of Wilhelm Meister, and that he sung to me the song—
"Who ne'er his bread with tears did eat,
Who ne'er the weary midnight hours
Weeping upon his bed hath sate,
He knows you not, ye heavenly powers!"
Heaven knows how Goethe has got to Corsica, but this is the second of his characters I have fallen in with on this wild cape.
Having here had my hunger stilled, and something more, I wandered onwards. As I descended into the vale of Luri, the region around me, I found, had become a paradise. Luri is the loveliest valley in Cape Corso, and also the largest, though it is only ten kilometres long, and five broad.[G] Inland it is terminated by beautiful hills, on the highest of which stands a black tower. This is the tower of Seneca, so called because, according to the popular tradition, it was here that Seneca spent his eight years of Corsican exile. Towards the sea, the valley slopes gently down to the marina of Luri. A copious stream waters the whole dale, and is led in canals through the gardens. Here lie the communes which form the pieve of Luri, rich, and comfortable-looking, with their tall churches, cloisters, and towers, in the midst of a vegetation of tropical luxuriance. I have seen many a beautiful valley in Italy, but I remember none that wore a look so laughing and winsome as that fair vale of Luri. It is full of vineyards, covered with oranges and lemons, rich in fruit-trees of every kind, in melons, and all sorts of garden produce, and the higher you ascend, the denser become the groves of chestnuts, walnuts, figs, almonds, and olives.
CHAPTER III.
PINO.
A good road leads upwards from the marina of Luri. You move in one continual garden—in an atmosphere of balsamic fragrance. Cottages approaching the elegant style of Italian villas indicate wealth. How happy must the people be here, if their own passions deal as gently with them as the elements. A man who was dressing his vineyard saw me passing along, and beckoned me to come in, and I needed no second bidding. Here is the place for swinging the thyrsus-staff; no grape disease here—everywhere luscious maturity and joyous plenty. The wine of Luri is beautiful, and the citrons of this valley are said to be the finest produced in the countries of the Mediterranean. It is the thick-skinned species of citrons called cedri which is here cultivated; they are also produced in abundance all along the west coast, but more especially in Centuri. The tree, which is extremely tender, demands the utmost attention. It thrives only in the warmest exposures, and in the valleys which are sheltered from the Libeccio. Cape Corso is the very Elysium of this precious tree of the Hesperides.
I now began to cross the Serra towards Pino, which lies at its base on the western side. My path lay for a long time through woods of walnut-trees, the fruit of which was already ripe; and I must here confirm what I had heard, that the nut-trees of Corsica will not readily find their equals. Fig-trees, olives, chestnuts, afford variety at intervals. It is pleasant to wander through the deep shades of a northern forest of beeches, oaks, or firs, but the forests of the south are no less glorious; walking beneath these trees one feels himself in noble company. I ascended towards the Tower of Fondali, which lies near the little village of the same name, quite overshadowed with trees, and finely relieving their rich deep green. From its battlements you look down over the beautiful valley to the blue sea, and above you rise the green hills, summit over summit, with forsaken black cloisters on them; on the highest rock of the Serra is seen the Tower of Seneca, which, like a stoic standing wrapt in deep thought, looks darkly down over land and sea. The many towers that stand here—for I counted numbers of them—indicate that this valley of Luri was richly cultivated, even in earlier times; they were doubtless built for its protection. Even Ptolemy is acquainted with the Vale of Luri, and in his Geography calls it Lurinon.
I climbed through a shady wood and blooming wilderness of trailing plants to the ridge of the Serra, close beneath the foot of the cone on which the Tower of Seneca stands. From this point both seas are visible, to the right and to the left. I now descended towards Pino, where I was expected by some Carrarese statuaries. The view of the western coast with its red reefs and little rocky zig-zag coves, and of the richly wooded pieve of Pino, came upon me with a most agreeable surprise. Pino has some large turreted mansions lying in beautiful parks; they might well serve for the residence of any Roman Duca:—for Corsica has its millionnaires. On the Cape live about two hundred families of large means—some of these possessed of quite enormous wealth, gained either by themselves or by relations, in the Antilles, Mexico, and Brazil.
One fortunate Crœsus of Pino inherited from an uncle of his in St. Thomas a fortune of ten millions of francs. Uncles are most excellent individuals. To have an uncle is to have a constant stake in the lottery. Uncles can make anything of their nephews—millionnaires, immortal historical personages. The nephew of Pino has rewarded his meritorious relative with a mausoleum of Corsican marble—a pretty Moorish family tomb on a hill by the sea. It was on this building my Carrarese friends were engaged.
In the evening we paid a visit to the Curato. We found him walking before his beautifully-situated parsonage, in the common brown Corsican jacket, and with the Phrygian cap of liberty on his head. The hospitable gentleman led us into his parlour. He seated himself in his arm-chair, ordered the Donna to bring wine, and, when the glasses came in, reached his cithern from the wall. Then he began with all the heartiness in the world to play and sing the Paoli march. The Corsican clergy were always patriotic men, and in many battles fought in the ranks with their parishioners. The parson of Pino now put his Mithras-cap to rights, and began a serenade to the beautiful Marie. I shook him heartily by the hand, thanked him for wine and song, and went away to the paese where I was to lodge for the night. Next morning we proposed wandering a while longer in Pino, and then to visit Seneca in his tower.
On this western coast of Cape Corso, below Pino, lies the fifth and last pieve of the Cape, called Nonza. Near Nonza stands the tower which I mentioned in the History of the Corsicans, when recording an act of heroic patriotism. There is another intrepid deed connected with it. In the year 1768 it was garrisoned by a handful of militia, under the command of an old captain, named Casella. The French were already in possession of the Cape, all the other captains having capitulated. Casella refused to follow their example. The tower mounted one cannon; they had plenty of ammunition, and the militia had their muskets. This was sufficient, said the old captain, to defend the place against a whole army; and if matters came to the worst, then you could blow yourself up. The militia knew their man, and that he was in the habit of doing what he said. They accordingly took themselves off during the night, leaving their muskets, and the old captain found himself alone. He concluded, therefore, to defend the tower himself. The cannon was already loaded; he charged all the pieces, distributed them over the various shot-holes, and awaited the French. They came, under the command of General Grand-Maison. As soon as they were within range, Casella first discharged the cannon at them, and then made a diabolical din with the muskets. The French sent a flag of truce to the tower, with the information that the entire Cape had surrendered, and summoning the commandant to do the same with all his garrison, and save needless bloodshed. Hereupon Casella replied that he would hold a council of war, and retired. After some time he reappeared and announced that the garrison of Nonza would capitulate under condition that it should be allowed to retire with the honours of war, and with all its baggage and artillery, for which the French were to furnish conveyances. The conditions were agreed to. The French had drawn up before the tower, and were now ready to receive the garrison, when old Casella issued, with his firelock, his pistols, and his sabre. The French waited for the garrison, and, surprised that the men did not make their appearance, the officer in command asked why they were so long in coming out. "They have come out," answered the Corsican; "for I am the garrison of the Tower of Nonza." The duped officer became furious, and rushed upon Casella. The old man drew his sword, and stood on the defensive. In the meantime, Grand-Maison himself hastened up, and, having heard the story, was sufficiently astonished. He instantly put his officer under strict arrest, and not only fulfilled every stipulation of Casella's to the letter, but sent him with a guard of honour, and a letter expressive of his admiration, to Paoli's head-quarters.
Above Pino extends the canton of Rogliano, with Ersa and Centuri—a district of remarkable fertility in wine, oil, and lemons, and rivalling Luri in cultivation. The five pievi of the entire Cape—Brando, Martino, Luri, Rogliano, and Nonza—contain twenty-one communes, and about 19,000 inhabitants; almost as many, therefore, as the island of Elba. Going northwards, from Rogliano over Ersa, you reach the extreme northern point of Corsica, opposite to which, with a lighthouse on it, lies the little island of Girolata.
CHAPTER IV.
THE TOWER OF SENECA.
"Melius latebam procul ab invidiæ malis
Remotus inter Corsici rupes maris."
Roman Tragedy of Octavia.
The Tower of Seneca can be seen at sea, and from a distance of many miles. It stands on a gigantic, quite naked mass of granite, which rises isolated from the mountain-ridge, and bears on its summit the black weather-beaten pile. The ruin consists of a single round tower—lonely and melancholy it stands there, hung with hovering mists, all around bleak heath-covered hills, the sea on both sides deep below.
If, as imaginative tradition affirms, the banished stoic spent eight years of exile here, throning among the clouds, in the silent rocky wilds—then he had found a place not ill adapted for a philosopher disposed to make wise reflections on the world and fate; and to contemplate with wonder and reverence the workings of the eternal elements of nature. The genius of Solitude is the wise man's best instructor; in still night hours he may have given Seneca insight into the world's transitoriness, and shown him the vanity of great Rome, when the exile was inclined to bewail his lot. After Seneca returned from his banishment to Rome, he sometimes, perhaps, among the abominations of the court of Nero, longed for the solitary days of Corsica. There is an old Roman tragedy called Octavia, the subject of which is the tragic fate of Nero's first empress.[H] In this tragedy Seneca appears as the moralizing figure, and on one occasion delivers himself as follows:—
"O Lady Fortune, with the flattering smile
On thy deceitful face, why hast thou raised
One so contented with his humble lot
To height so giddy? Wheresoe'er I look,
Terrors around me threaten, and at last
The deeper fall is sure. Ah, happier far—
Safe from the ills of envy once I hid—
Among the rocks of sea-girt Corsica.
I was my own; my soul was free from care,
In studious leisure lightly sped the hours.
Oh, it was joy,—for in the mighty round
Of Nature's works is nothing more divine,—
To look upon the heavens, the sacred sun,
With all the motions of the universe,
The seasonable change of morn and eve,
The orb of Phœbe and the attendant stars,
Filling the night with splendour far and wide.
All this, when it grows old, shall rush again
Back to blind chaos; yea, even now the day,
The last dread day is near, and the world's wreck
Shall crush this impious race."
A rude sheep-track led us up the mountain over shattered rocks. Half-way up to the tower, completely hidden among crags and bushes, lies a forsaken Franciscan cloister. The shepherds and the wild fig-tree now dwell in its halls, and the raven croaks the de profundis. But the morning and the evening still come there to hold their silent devotions, and kindle incense of myrtle, mint, and cytisus. What a fragrant breath of herbs is about us! what morning stillness on the mountains and the sea!
We stood on the Tower of Seneca. We had clambered on hands and feet to reach its walls. By holding fast to projecting ledges and hanging perilously over the abyss, you can gain a window. There is no other entrance into the tower; its outer works are destroyed, but the remains show that a castle, either of the seigniors of Cape Corso or of the Genoese, stood here. The tower is built of astonishingly firm material; its battlements, however, are rent and dilapidated. It is unlikely that Seneca lived on this Aornos, this height forsaken by the very birds, and certainly too lofty a flight for moral philosophers—a race that love the levels. Seneca probably lived in one of the Roman colonies, Aleria or Mariana, where the stoic, accustomed to the conveniences of Roman city life, may have established himself comfortably in some house near the sea; so that the favourite mullet and tunny had not far to travel from the strand to his table.
A picture from the fearfully beautiful world of imperial Rome passed before me as I sat on Seneca's tower. Who can say he rightly and altogether comprehends this world? It often seems to me as if it were Hades, and as if the whole human race of the period were holding in its obscure twilight a great diabolic carnival of fools, dancing a gigantic, universal ballet before the Emperor's throne, while the Emperor sits there gloomy as Pluto, only breaking out now and then into insane laughter; for it is the maddest carnival this; old Seneca plays in it too, among the Pulcinellos, and appears in character with his bathing-tub.
Even a Seneca may have something tragi-comic about him, if we think of him, for example, in the pitiably ludicrous shape in which he is represented in the old statue that bears his name. He stands there naked, a cloth about his loins, in the bath in which he means to die, a sight heart-rending to behold, with his meagre form so tremulous about the knees, and his face so unutterably wo-begone. He resembles one of the old pictures of St. Jerome, or some starveling devotee attenuated by penance; he is tragi-comic, provocative of laughter no less than pity, as many of the representations of the old martyrs are, the form of their suffering being usually so whimsical.
Seneca was born, B.C. 3, at Cordova, in Spain, of equestrian family. His mother, Helvia, was a woman of unusual ability; his father, Lucius Annæus, a rhetorician of note, who removed with his family to Rome. In the time of Caligula, Seneca the younger distinguished himself as an orator, and Stoic philosopher of extraordinary learning. A remarkably good memory had been of service to him. He himself relates that after hearing two thousand names once repeated, he could repeat them again in the same order, and that he had no difficulty in doing the same with two hundred verses.
In favour at the court of Claudius, he owed his fall to Messalina. She accused him of an intrigue with the notorious Julia, the daughter of Germanicus, and the most profligate woman in Rome. The imputation is doubly comical, as coming from a Messalina, and because it makes us think of Seneca the moralist as a Don Juan. It is hard to say how much truth there is in the scandalous story, but Rome was a strange place, and nothing can be more bizarre than some of the characters it produced. Julia was got out of the way, and Don Juan Seneca sent into banishment among the barbarians of Corsica. The philosopher now therefore became, without straining the word, a Corsican bandit.
There was in those days no more terrible punishment than that of exile, because expulsion from Rome was banishment from the world. Eight long years Seneca lived on the wild island. I cannot forgive my old friend, therefore, for recording nothing about its nature, about the history and condition of its inhabitants, at that period. A single chapter from the pen of Seneca on these subjects, would now be of great value to us. But to have said nothing about the barbarous country of his exile, was very consistent with his character as Roman. Haughty, limited, void of sympathetic feeling for his kind, was the man of those times. How different is the relation in which we now stand to nature and history!
For the banished Seneca the island was merely a prison that he detested. The little that he says about it in his book De Consolatione ad Matrem Helviam, shows how little he knew of it. For though it was no doubt still more rude and uncultivated than at present, its natural grandeur was the same. He composed the following epigrams on Corsica, which are to be found in his poetical works:—
"Corsican isle, where his town the Phocæan colonist planted,
Corsica, called by the Greeks Cyrnus in earlier days,
Corsica, less than thy sister Sardinia, longer than Elba,
Corsica, traversed by streams—streams that the fisherman loves,
Corsica, dreadful land! when thy summer's suns are returning,
Scorch'd more cruelly still, when the fierce Sirius shines;
Spare the sad exile—spare, I mean, the hopelessly buried—
Over his living remains, Corsica, light lie thy dust."
The second has been said to be spurious, but I do not see why our heart-broken exile should not have been its author, as well as any of his contemporaries or successors in Corsican banishment.
"Rugged the steeps that enclose the barbarous Corsican island,
Savage on every side stretches the solitude vast;
Autumn ripens no fruits, nor summer prepares here a harvest.
Winter, hoary and chill, wants the Palladian gift;[I]
Never rejoices the spring in the coolness of shadowy verdure,
Here not a blade of grass pierces the desolate plain,
Water is none, nor bread, nor a funeral-pile for the stranger—
Two are there here, and no more—the Exile alone with his Wo."[J]
The Corsicans have not failed to take revenge on Seneca. Since he gives them and their country such a disgraceful character, they have connected a scandalous story with his name. Popular tradition has preserved only a single incident from the period of his residence in Corsica, and it is as follows:—As Seneca sat in his tower and looked down into the frightful island, he saw the Corsican virgins, that they were fair. Thereupon the philosopher descended, and he dallied with the daughters of the land. One comely shepherdess did he honour with his embrace; but the kinsfolk of the maiden came upon him suddenly, and took him, and scourged the philosopher with nettles.
Ever since, the nettle grows profusely and ineradicably round the Tower of Seneca, as a warning to moral philosophers. The Corsicans call it Ortica de Seneca.
Unhappy Seneca! He is always getting into tragi-comic situations. A Corsican said to me: "You have read what Seneca says of us? ma era un birbone—but he was a great rascal." Seneca morale, says Dante,—Seneca birbone, says the Corsican—another instance of his love for his country.
Other sighs of exile did the unfortunate philosopher breathe out in verse—some epigrams to his friends, one on his native city of Cordova. If Seneca wrote any of the tragedies which bear his name in Corsica, it must certainly have been the Medea. Where could he have found a locality more likely to have inspired him to write on a subject connected with the Argonauts, than this sea-girt island? Here he might well make his chorus sing those remarkable verses which predict Columbus:—
"A time shall come
In the late ages,
When Ocean shall loosen
The bonds of things;
Open and vast
Then lies the earth;
Then shall Tiphys
New worlds disclose.
And Thule no more
Be the farthest land."
Now the great navigator Columbus was born in the Genoese territory, not far from Corsica. The Corsicans will have it that he was born in Calvi, in Corsica itself, and they maintain this till the present day.
CHAPTER V.
SENECA MORALE.
——"e vidi Orfeo
Tullio, e Livio, e Seneca morale."—Dante.
Fair fruits grew for Seneca in his exile; and perhaps he owed some of his exalted philosophy rather to his Corsican solitude than to the teachings of an Attalus or a Socio. In the Letter of Consolation to his mother, he writes thus at the close:—You must believe me happy and cheerful, as when in prosperity. That is true prosperity when the mind devotes itself to its pursuits without disturbing thoughts, and, now pleasing itself with lighter studies, now thirsting after truth, elevates itself to the contemplation of its own nature and of that of the universe. First, it investigates the countries and their situations, then the nature of the circumfluent sea, and its changes of ebb and flow; then it contemplates the terrible powers that lie between heaven and earth—the thunder, lightnings, winds, rain, snow and hail, that disquiet this space; at last, when it has wandered through the lower regions, it takes its flight to the highest, and enjoys the beautiful spectacle of celestial things, and, mindful of its own eternity, enters into all which has been and shall be to all eternity.
When I took up Seneca's Letter of Consolation to his mother, I was not a little curious to see how he would console her. How would one of the thousand cultivated exiles scattered over the world at the present time console his mother? Seneca's letter is a quite methodically arranged treatise, consisting of seventeen chapters. It is a more than usually instructive contribution to the psychology of these old Stoics. The son is not so particularly anxious to console his mother as to write an excellent and elegant treatise, the logic and style of which shall procure him admiration. He is quite proud that his treatise will be a species of composition hitherto unknown in the world of letters. The vain man writes to his mother like an author to a critic with whom he is coolly discussing the pros and cons of his subject. I have, says he, consulted all the works of the great geniuses who have written upon the methods of moderating grief, but I have found no example of any one's consoling his friends when it was himself they were lamenting. In this new case, therefore, in which I found myself, I was embarrassed, and feared lest I might open the wounds instead of healing them. Must not a man who raises his head from the funeral-pile itself to comfort his relatives, need new words, such as the common language of daily life does not supply him with? Every great and unusual sorrow must make its own selection of words, if it does not refuse itself language altogether. I shall venture to write to you, therefore, not in confidence on my talent, but because I myself, the consoler, am here to serve as the most effectual consolation. For your son's sake, to whom you can deny nothing, you will not, as I trust (though all grief is stubborn), refuse to permit bounds to be set to your grief.
He now begins to console after his new fashion, reckoning up to his mother all that she has already suffered, and drawing the conclusion that she must by this time have become callous. Throughout the whole treatise you hear the skeleton of the arrangement rattling. Firstly, his mother is not to grieve on his account; secondly, his mother is not to grieve on her own account. The letter is full of the most beautiful stoical contempt of the world.
"Yet it is a terrible thing to be deprived of one's country." What is to be said to this?—Mother, consider the vast multitude of people in Rome; the greater number of them have congregated there from all parts of the world. One is driven from home by ambition, another by business of state, by an embassy, by the quest of luxury, by vice, by the wish to study, by the desire of seeing the spectacles, by friendship, by speculation, by eloquence, by beauty. Then, leaving Rome out of view, which indeed is to be considered the mother-city of them all, go to other cities, go to islands, come here to Corsica—everywhere are more strangers than natives. "For to man is given a desire of movement and of change, because he is moved by the celestial Spirit; consider the heavenly luminaries that give light to the world—none of them remains fixed—they wander ceaselessly on their path, and change perpetually their place." His poetic vein gave Seneca this fine thought. Our well-known wanderer's song has the words—
"Fix'd in the heavens the sun does not stand,
He travels o'er sea, he travels o'er land."[K]
"Varro, the most learned of the Romans," continues Seneca, "considers it the best compensation for the change of dwelling-place, that the nature of things is everywhere the same. Marcus Brutus finds sufficient consolation in the fact that he who goes into exile can take all that he has of truly good with him. Is not what we lose a mere trifle? Wherever we turn, two glorious things go with us—Nature that is everywhere, and Virtue that is our own. Let us travel through all possible countries, and we shall find no part of the earth which man cannot make his home. Everywhere the eye can rise to heaven, and all the divine worlds are at an equal distance from all the earthly. So long, therefore, as my eyes are not debarred that spectacle, with seeing which they are never satisfied; so long as I can behold moon and sun; so long as my gaze can rest on the other celestial luminaries; so long as I can inquire into their rising and setting, their courses, and the causes of their moving faster or slower; so long as I can contemplate the countless stars of night, and mark how some are immoveable—how others, not hastening through large spaces, circle in their own path, how many beam forth with a sudden brightness, many blind the eye with a stream of fire as if they fell, others pass along the sky in a long train of light; so long as I am with these, and dwell, as much as it is allowed to mortals, in heaven; so long as I can maintain my soul, which strives after the contemplation of natures related to it, in the pure ether, of what importance to me is the soil on which my foot treads? This island bears no fruitful nor pleasant trees; it is not watered by broad and navigable streams; it produces nothing that other nations can desire; it is hardly fertile enough to supply the necessities of the inhabitants; no precious stone is here hewn (non pretiosus lapis hic cæditur); no veins of gold or silver are here brought to light; but the soul is narrow that delights itself with what is earthly. It must be guided to that which is everywhere the same, and nowhere loses its splendour."
Had I Humboldt's Cosmos at hand, I should look whether the great natural philosopher has taken notice of these lofty periods of Seneca, where he treats of the sense of the ancients for natural beauty.
This, too, is a spirited passage:—"The longer they build their colonnades, the higher they raise their towers, the broader they stretch their streets, the deeper they dig their summer grottos, the more massively they pile their banqueting-halls—all the more effectually they cover themselves from the sky.—Brutus relates in his book on virtue, that he saw Marcellus in exile in Mitylene, and that he lived, as far as it was possible for human nature, in the enjoyment of the greatest happiness, and never was more devoted to literature than then. Hence, adds he, as he was to return without him, it seemed to him that he was rather himself going into exile than leaving the other in banishment behind him."
Now follows a panegyric on poverty and moderation, as contrasted with the luxurious gluttony of the rich, who ransack heaven and earth to tickle their palates, bring game from Phasis, and fowls from Parthia, who vomit in order to eat, and eat in order to vomit. "The Emperor Caligula," says Seneca, "whom Nature seems to me to have produced to show what the most degrading vice could do in the highest station, ate a dinner one day, that cost ten million sesterces; and although I have had the aid of the most ingenious men, still I have hardly been able to make out how the tribute of three provinces could be transformed into a single meal." Like Rousseau, Seneca preaches the return of men to the state of nature. The times of the two moralists were alike; they themselves resemble each other in weakness of character, though Seneca, as compared with Rousseau, was a Roman and a hero.
Scipio's daughters received their dowries from the public treasury, because their father left nothing behind him. "O happy husbands of such maidens," cries Seneca; "husbands to whom the Roman people was father-in-law! Are they to be held happier whose ballet-dancers bring with them a million sesterces as dowry?"
After Seneca has comforted his mother in regard to his own sufferings, he proceeds to comfort her with reference to herself. "You must not imitate the example," he writes to her, "of women whose grief, when it had once mastered them, ended only with death. You know many, who, after the loss of their sons, never more laid off the robe of mourning that they had put on. But your nature has ever been stronger than this, and imposes upon you a nobler course. The excuse of the weakness of the sex cannot avail for her who is far removed from all female frailties. The most prevailing evil of the present time—unchastity, has not ranked you with the common crowd; neither precious stones nor pearls have had power over you, and wealth, accounted the highest of human blessings, has not dazzled you. The example of the bad, which is dangerous even to the virtuous, has not contaminated you—the strictly educated daughter of an ancient and severe house. You were never ashamed of the number of your children, as if they made you old before your time; you never—like some whose beautiful form is their only recommendation—concealed your fruitfulness, as if the burden were unseemly; nor did you ever destroy the hope of children that had been conceived in your bosom. You never disfigured your face with spangles or with paint; and never did a garment please you, that had been made only to show nakedness. Modesty appeared to you the alone ornament—the highest and never-fading beauty!" So writes the son to his mother, and it seems to me there is a most philosophical want of affectation in his style.
He alludes to Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi; but he does not conceal from himself that grief is a disobedient thing. Traitorous tears, he knows, will appear on the face of assumed serenity. "Sometimes," says Seneca, "we entangle the soul in games and gladiator-shows; but even in the midst of such spectacles, the remembrance of its loss steals softly upon it. Therefore is it better to overcome than to deceive. For when the heart has either been cheated by pleasure, or diverted by business, it rebels again, and derives from repose itself the force for new disquiet; but it is lastingly still if it has yielded to reason." A wise man's voice enunciates here simply and beautifully the alone right, but the bitterly difficult rules for the art of life. Seneca, accordingly, counsels his mother not to use the ordinary means for overcoming her grief—a picturesque tour, or employment in household affairs; he advises mental occupation, lamenting, at the same time, that his father—an excellent man, but too much attached to the customs of the ancients—never could prevail upon himself to give her philosophical cultivation. Here we have an amusing glimpse of the old Seneca, I mean of the father. We know now how he looked. When the fashionable literary ladies and gentlemen in Cordova, who had picked up ideas about the rights of woman, and the elevation of her social position, from the Republic of Plato, represented to the old gentleman, that it were well if his young wife attended the lectures of some philosophers, he growled out: "Absurd nonsense; my wife shall not have her head turned with your high-flying notions, nor be one of your silly blue-stockings; cook shall she, bear children, and bring up children!" So said the worthy gentleman, and added, in excellent Spanish, "Basta!"
Seneca now speaks at considerable length of the magnanimity of which woman is capable, having no idea then that he was yet, when dying, to experience the truth of what he said, in the case of his own wife, Paulina. A noble man, therefore, a stoic of exalted virtue, has addressed this Letter of Consolation to Helvia. Is it possible that precisely the same man can think and write like a crawling parasite—like the basest flatterer?
CHAPTER VI.
SENECA BIRBONE.
"Magni pectoris est inter secunda moderatio."—Seneca.
Here is a second Letter of Consolation, which Seneca wrote in the second or third year of his Corsican exile, to Polybius, the freedman of Claudius, a courtier of the ordinary stamp. Polybius served the over-learned Claudius as literary adviser, and tormented himself with a Latin translation of Homer and a Greek one of Virgil. The loss of his talented brother occasioned Seneca's consolatory epistle to the courtier. He wrote the treatise with the full consciousness that Polybius would read it to the Emperor, and, not to miss the opportunity of appeasing the wrath of Claudius, he made it a model of low flattery of princes and their influential favourites. When we read it, we must not forget what sort of men Claudius and Polybius were.
"O destiny," cries the flatterer, "how cunningly hast thou sought out the vulnerable spot! What was there to rob such a man of? Money? He has always despised it. Life? His genius makes him immortal. He has himself provided that his better part shall endure, for his glorious rhetorical works cannot fail to rescue him from the ordinary lot of mortals. So long as literature is held in honour, so long as the Latin language retains its vigour, or the Greek its grace, so long shall he live with the greatest men, whose genius his own equals, or, if his modesty would object to that, at least approaches.—Unworthy outrage! Polybius mourns, Polybius has an affliction, and the Emperor is gracious to him! By this, inexorable destiny, thou wouldst, without doubt, show that none can be shielded from thee, no, not even by the Emperor! Yet, why does Polybius weep? Has he not his beloved Emperor, who is dearer to him than life? So long as it is well with him, then is it well with all who are yours, then have you lost nothing, then must your eyes be not only dry, but bright with joy. The Emperor is everything to you, in him you have all that you can desire. To him, your divinity, you must therefore raise your glance, and grief will have no power over your soul.
"Destiny, withhold thy hand from the Emperor, and show thy power only in blessing, letting him remain as a physician to mankind, who have suffered now so long, that he may again order and adjust what the madness of his predecessor destroyed. May this star, which has arisen in its brightness on a world plunged into abysses of darkness, shine evermore! May he subdue Germany, open up Britain, and celebrate ancestral victories and new triumphs, of which his clemency, which takes the first place among his virtues, makes me hope that I too shall be a witness. For he did not so cast me down, that he shall not again raise me up: no, it was not even he who overthrew me; but when destiny gave me the thrust, and I was falling, he broke my fall, and, gently intervening with godlike hand, bore me to a place of safety. He raised his voice for me in the senate, and not only gave me, but petitioned for, my life. He will himself see how he has to judge my cause; either his justice will recognise it as good, or his clemency will make it so. The benefit will still be the same, whether he perceives, or whether he wills, that I am innocent. Meanwhile, it is a great consolation to me, in my wretchedness, to see how his compassion travels through the whole world; and as he has again brought back to the light, from this corner in which I am buried, many who lay sunk in the oblivion of a long banishment, I do not fear that he will forget me. But he himself knows best the time for helping each. Nothing shall be wanting on my part that he may not blush to come at length to me. All hail to thy clemency, Cæsar! thanks to which, exiles live more peacefully under thee than the noblest of the people under Caius. They do not tremble, they do not hourly expect the sword, they do not shudder to see a ship coming. Through thee they have at once a goal to their cruel fate, and the hope of a better future, and a peaceful present. Surely the thunderbolts are altogether righteous which even those worship whom they strike."
O nettles, more nettles, noble Corsicans,—era un birbone!
The epistle concludes in these terms: "I have written this to you as well as I could, with a mind grown languid and dull through long inactivity; if it appears to you not worthy of your genius, or to supply medicine too slight for your sorrow, consider that the Latin word flows but reluctantly to his pen, in whose ear the barbarians have long been dinning their confused and clumsy jargon."
His flattery did not avail the sorrow-laden exile, but changes in the Roman court ended his banishment. The head of Polybius had fallen. Messalina had been executed. So stupid was Claudius, that he forgot the execution of his wife, and some days after asked at supper why Messalina did not come to table. Thus, all these horrors are dashed with the tragi-comic. The best of comforters, the Corsican bandit, returns. Agrippina, the new empress of Claudius, wishes him to educate her son Nero, now eleven years old. Can there be anything more tragi-comic than Seneca as tutor to Nero? He came, thanking the gods that they had laid upon him such a task as that of educating a boy to be Emperor of the world. He expected now to fill the whole earth with his own philosophy by infusing it into the young Nero. What an undertaking—at once tragical and ridiculous—to bring up a young tiger-cub on the principles of the Stoics! For the rest, Seneca found in his hopeful pupil the materials of the future man totally unspoiled by bungling scholastic methods; for he had grown up in a most divine ignorance, and, till his twelfth year, had enjoyed the tender friendship of a barber, a coachman, and a rope-dancer. From such hands did Seneca receive the boy who was destined to rule over gods and men.
As Seneca was banished to Corsica in the first year of the reign of Claudius, and returned in the eighth, he was privileged to enjoy this "divinity and celestial star" for more than five years. One day, however, Claudius died, for Agrippina gave him poison in a pumpkin which served as drinking-cup. The notorious Locusta had mixed the potion. The death of Claudius furnished Seneca with the ardently longed for opportunity of venting his revenge. Terribly did the philosopher make the Emperor's memory suffer for that eight years' banishment; he wrote on the dead man the satire, called the Apokolokyntosis—a pasquil of astonishing wit and almost incredible coarseness, equalling the writings of Lucian in sparkle and cleverness. The title is happy. The word, invented for the nonce, parodies the notion of the apotheosis of the Emperors, or their reception among the gods; and would be literally translated Pumpkinification, or reception of Claudius among the pumpkins. This satire should be read. It is highly characteristic of the period of Roman history in which it was written—a period when an utterly limitless despotism nevertheless allowed of a man's using such daring freedom of speech, and when an Emperor just dead could be publicly ridiculed by his successor, his own family, and the people, as a jack-pudding, without compromising the imperial dignity. In this Roman world, all is ironic accident, fools' carnival, tragi-comic, and bizarre.
Seneca speaks with all the freedom of a mask and as Roman Pasquino, and thus commences—"What happened on the 13th of October, in the consulship of Asinius Marcellus and Acilius Aviola, in the first year of the new Emperor, at the beginning of the period of blessing from heaven, I shall now deliver to memory. And in what I have to say, neither my vengeance nor my gratitude shall speak a word. If any one asks me where I got such accurate information about everything, I shall in the meantime not answer, if I don't choose. Who shall compel me? Do I not know that I have become a free man, since a certain person took his leave, who verified the proverb—One must either be born a king or a fool? And if I choose to answer, I shall say the first thing that comes into my head." Seneca now affirms, sneeringly, that he heard what he is about to relate from the senator who saw Drusilla [sister and mistress of Caligula] ascend to heaven from the Appian Way.[L] The same man had now, according to the philosopher, been a witness of all that had happened to Claudius on occasion of his ascension.
I shall be better understood, continued Seneca, if I say it was on the 13th of October; the hour I am unable exactly to fix, for there is still greater variance between the clocks than between the philosophers. It was, however, between the sixth and the seventh hour—Claudius was just gasping for a little breath, and couldn't find any. Hereupon Mercury, who had always been delighted with the genius of the man, took one of the three Parcæ aside, and said—"Cruel woman, why do you let the poor mortal torment himself so long, since he has not deserved it? He has been gasping for breath for sixty-four years now. What ails you at him? Allow the mathematicians to be right at last, who, ever since he became Emperor, have been assuring us of his death every year, nay, every month. And yet it is no wonder if they make mistakes. Nobody knows the man's hour—for nobody has ever looked on him as born. Do your duty,
Give him to death,
And let a better fill his empty throne."
Atropos now cuts Claudius's thread of life; but Lachesis spins another—a glittering thread, that of Nero; while Phœbus plays upon his lyre. In well-turned, unprincipled verses, Seneca flatters his young pupil, his new sun—
"Phœbus the god hath said it; he shall pass
Victoriously his mortal life, like me
In countenance, and like me in my beauty;
In song my rival, and in suasive speech.
A happier age he bringeth to the weary,
For he will break the silence of the laws.
Like Phosphor when he scares the flying stars,
Like Hesper rising, when the stars return;
Or as, when rosy night-dissolving dawn
Leads in the day, the bright sun looks abroad,
And bids the barriers of the darkness yield
Before the beaming chariot of the morn,—
So Cæsar shines, and thus shall Rome behold
Her Nero; mild the lustre of his face,
And neck so fair with loosely-flowing curls."
Claudius meanwhile pumped out the air-bubble of his soul, and thereafter, as a phantasma, ceased to be visible. "He expired while he was listening to the comedians; so that, you perceive, I have good reason for dreading these people." His last words were—"Vae me, puto concavi me."
Claudius is dead, then. It is announced to Jupiter, that a tall personage, rather gray, has arrived; that he threatens nobody knows what, shakes his head perpetually, and limps with his right leg; that the language he speaks is unintelligible, being neither that of the Greeks nor that of the Romans, nor the tongue of any known race. Jupiter now orders Hercules, since he has vagabondized through all the nations of the world, and is likely to know, to see what kind of mortal this may be. When Hercules, who had seen too many monsters to be easily frightened, set eyes on this portentous face, and strange gait, and heard a voice, not like the voice of any terrestial creature, but like some sea-monster's—hoarse, bellowing, confused, he was at first somewhat discomposed, and thought that a thirteenth labour had arrived for him. On closer examination, however, he thought the portent had some resemblance to a man. He therefore asked, in Homer's Greek—
"Who art thou, of what race, and where thy city?"
Claudius was mightily rejoiced to meet with philologers in heaven, and hoped he might find occasion of referring to his own histories. [He had written twenty books of Tyrrhenian, and eight of Carthaginian history, in Greek.] He immediately answers from Homer also, sillily quoting the line—
"From Troy the wind has brought me to the Cicons."
Fever, who alone of all the Roman gods has accompanied Claudius to heaven, gives him the lie, and affirms him to be a Gaul. "And therefore, since as Gaul he could not omit it, he took Rome." [While I write down this sentence of the old Roman's here in Rome, and hear at the same moment Gallic trumpets blowing, its correctness becomes very plain to me.] Claudius immediately gives orders to cut off Fever's head. He prevails on Hercules to bring him into the assembly of the gods. But the god Janus proposes, that from this time forward none of those who "eat the fruits of the field" shall be deified; and Augustus reads his opinion from a written paper, recommending that Claudius should be made to quit Olympus within three days. The gods assent, and Mercury hereupon drags off the Emperor to the infernal regions. On the Via Sacra they fall in with the funeral procession of Claudius, which is thus described: "It was a magnificent funeral, and such expense had been lavished on it, that you could very well see a god was being buried. There were flute-players, horn-blowers, and such crowds of players on brazen instruments, and such a din, that even Claudius could hear it. Everybody was merry and pleased; the Populus Romanus was walking about as if it were a free people. Agatho only, and a few pleaders, wept, and that evidently with all their heart. The jurisconsults were emerging from their obscure retreats—pale, emaciated, gasping for breath, like persons newly recalled to life. One of these noticing how the pleaders laid their heads together and bewailed their misfortunes, came up to them and said: 'I told you your Saturnalia would not last always!'" When Claudius saw his own funeral, he perceived that he was dead; for, with great sound and fury, they were singing the anapæstic nænia:—
Floods of tears pouring,
Beating the bosom,
Sorrow's mask wearing,
Wail till the forum
Echo your dirge.
Ah! he has fallen,
Wisest and noblest,
Bravest of mortals!
He in the race could
Vanquish the swiftest;
He the rebellious
Parthians routed;
With his light arrows
Follow'd the Persian;
Stoutly his right hand
Stretching the bowstring,
Small wound but deadly
Dealt to the headlong
Fugitive foe,
Piercing the painted
Back of the Mede.
He the wild Britons,
Far on the unknown
Shores of the ocean,
And the blue-shielded,
Restless Brigantes,
Forced to surrender
Their necks to the slavish
Chains of the Romans.
Even old Ocean
Trembled, and owned the new
Sway of the axes
And Fasces of Rome.
Weep, weep for the man
Who, with such speed as
Never another
Causes decided,
Heard he but one side,
Heard he e'en no side.
Who now will judge us?
All the year over
List to our lawsuits?
Now shall give way to thee,
Quit his tribunal,
He who gives law in the
Empire of silence,
Prince of Cretan
Cities a hundred.
Beat, beat your breasts now,
Wound them in sorrow,
All ye pleaders
Crooked and venal;
Newly-fledged poets
Swell the lament;
More than all others,
Lift your sad voices,
Ye who made fortunes,
Rattling the dice-box.
When Claudius arrives in the nether regions, a choir of singers hasten towards him, crying: "He is found!—joy! joy!" [This was the cry of the Egyptians when they found the ox Apis.] He is now surrounded by those whom he had caused to be put to death, Polybius and his other freedmen appearing among the rest. Æacus, as judge, examines into the actions of his life, and finds that he has murdered thirty senators, three hundred and fifteen knights, and citizens as the sands of the sea. He thereupon pronounces sentence on Claudius, and dooms him to cast dice eternally from a box with holes in it. Suddenly Caligula appears, and claims him as his slave. He produces witnesses, who prove that he had frequently beat, boxed, and horsewhipped his uncle Claudius; and as nobody seems able to dispute this, Claudius is handed over to Caligula. Caligula presents him to his freedman Menander, whom he is now to help in drawing out law-papers.
Such is a sketch of this remarkable "Apokolokyntosis of Claudius." Seneca, who had basely flattered the Emperor while alive, was also mean enough to drag him through the mire after he was dead. A noble soul does not take revenge on the corpse of its foe, even though that foe may have been but the parody of a man, and as detestable as he was ridiculous. The insults of the coward alone are here in place. The Apokolokyntosis faithfully reflects the degenerate baseness of Imperial Rome.
CHAPTER VII.
SENECA EROE.
"Alto morire ogni misfatto amenda."—Alfieri.
Pasquino Seneca now transforms himself in a twinkling into the dignified moralist; he writes his treatise "Concerning Clemency, to the Emperor Nero"—a pleasantly contradictory title, Nero and clemency. It is well enough known, however, that the young Emperor, like all his predecessors, governed without cruelty during the first years of his reign. This work of Seneca's is of high merit, wise, and full of noble sentiment.
Nero loaded his teacher with riches; and the author of the panegyric on poverty possessed a princely fortune, gardens, lands, palaces, villas outside the Porta Nomentana, in Baiæ, on the Alban Mount, upwards of six millions in value. He lent money at usurious rates of interest in Italy and in the provinces, greedily scraped and hoarded, fawned like a hound upon Agrippina and her son—till times changed with him.
In four years Nero had thrown off every restraint. The murder of his mother had met with no resistance from the timid Seneca. The high-minded Tacitus makes reproachful allusion to him. At length Nero began to find the philosopher inconvenient. He had already put his prefect Burrhus to death, and Seneca had hastened to put all his wealth at the disposal of the furious monarch; he now lived in complete retirement. But his enemies accused him of being privy to the conspiracy of Calpurnius Piso; and his nephew, the well-known poet Lucan, was, not without ground, affirmed to be similarly implicated. The conduct of Lucan in the matter was incredibly base. He made a pusillanimous confession; condescended to the most unmanly entreaties; and, sheltering himself behind the illustrious example set by Nero in his matricide, he denounced his innocent mother as a participant in the conspiracy. This abominable proceeding did not save him; he was condemned to voluntary death, went home, wrote to his father Annæus Mela Seneca about some emendations of his poems, dined luxuriously, and with the greatest equanimity opened his veins. So self-contradictory are these Roman characters.
Seneca is noble, great, and dignified in his end; he dies with an almost Socratic cheerfulness, with a tranquillity worthy of Cato. He chose bleeding as the means of his death, and consented that his heroic wife Paulina should die in the same way. The two were at that time in a country-house four miles from Rome. Nero kept restlessly despatching tribunes to the villa to see how matters were going on. Word was brought him in haste that Paulina, too, had had her veins opened. Nero instantly sent off an order to prevent her death. The slaves bind the lady's wounds, staunch the bleeding, and Paulina is rescued against her will. She lived some years longer. Meanwhile, the blood flowed from the aged Seneca but sparingly, and with an agonizing slowness. He asked Statius Annæus for poison, and took it, but without success; he then had himself put in a warm bath. He sprinkled the surrounding slaves with water, saying; "I make this libation to Zeus the Liberator." As he still could not die here, he was carried into a vapour bath, and there was suffocated. He was in his sixty-eighth year.
Reader, let us not be too hard on this philosopher, who, after all, was a man of his degenerate time, and whose nature is a combination of splendid talent, love of truth, and love of wisdom, with the most despicable weaknesses. His writings exercised great influence throughout the whole of the Middle Ages, and have purified many a soul from vicious passion, and guided it in nobler paths. Seneca, let us part friends.
CHAPTER VIII.
THOUGHTS OF A BRIDE.
"The wedding-day is near, when thou must wear
Fair garments, and fair gifts present to all
The youths that lead thee home; for of such things
The rumour travels far, and brings us honour,
Cheering thy father's heart, and loving mother's."—Odyssey.
Every valley or pieve of Cape Corso has its marina, its little port, and anything more lonely and sequestered than these hamlets on the quiet shore, it would be difficult to find. It was sultry noon when I reached the strand of Luri, the hour when Pan is wont to sleep. The people in the house where I was to wait for the little coasting-vessel, which was to convey me to Bastia, sat all as if in slumber. A lovely girl, seated at the open window, was sewing as if in dream upon a fazoletto, with a mysterious faint smile on her face, and absorbed, plainly, in all sorts of secret, pretty thoughts of her own. She was embroidering something on the handkerchief; and this something, I could see, was a little poem which her happy heart was making on her near marriage. The blue sea laughed through the window behind her back; it knew the story, for the fisher-maiden had made it full confession. The girl had on a sea-green dress, a flowered vest, and the mandile neatly wound about her hair; the mandile was snow-white, checked with triple rows of fine red stripes. To me, too, did Maria Benvenuta make confession of her open mystery, with copious prattle about winds and waves, and the beautiful music and dancing there would be at the wedding, up in the vale of Luri. For after some months will come the marriage festival, and as fine a one it will be as ever was held in Corsica.
On the morning of the day on which Benvenuta is to leave her mother's house, a splendid trovata will stand at the entrance of her village, a green triumphal arch with many-coloured ribbons. The friends, the neighbours, the kinsfolk, will assemble on the Piazzetta to form the corteo—the bridal procession. Then a youth will go up to the gaily-dressed bride, and complain that she is leaving the place where she was so well cared for in her childhood, and where she never wanted for corals, nor flowers, nor friends. But since now she is resolved to go, he, with all his heart, in the name of her friends, wishes her happiness and prosperity, and bids her farewell. Then Maria Benvenuta bursts into tears, and she gives the youth a present, as a keepsake for the commune. A horse, finely decorated, is brought before the house, the bride mounts it, young men fully armed ride beside her, their hats wreathed with flowers and ribbons, and so the corteo moves onwards through the triumphal arch. One youth bears the freno—the symbol of fruitfulness, a distaff encircled at its top with spindles, and decked with ribbons. A handkerchief waves from it as flag. This freno in his hand, the freniere rides proudly at the head of the procession.
The cortège approaches Campo, where the bridegroom lives, and into his house the bride is now to be conducted. At the entrance of Campo stands another magnificent trovata. A youth steps forward, holding high in his hand an olive-twig streaming with ribbons. This, with wise old-fashioned sayings, he puts into the hand of the bride. Here two of the young men of the bride's corteo gallop off in furious haste towards the bridegroom's house; they are riding for the vanto, that is, the honour of being the first to bring the bride the key of the bridegroom's house. A flower is the symbol of the key. The fastest rider has won it, and exultingly holding it in his hand, he gallops back to the bride, to present to her the symbol. The procession is now moving towards the house. Women and girls crowd the balconies, and strew upon the bride, flowers, rice, grains of wheat, and throw the fruits that are in season among the procession with merry shoutings, and wishes of joy. This is called Le Grazie. Ceaseless is the din of muskets, mandolines, and the cornamusa, or bagpipe. Such jubilation as there is in Campo, such shooting, and huzzaing, and twanging, and fiddling! Such a joyous stir as there is in the air of spring-swallows, lark-songs, flying flowers, wheat-grains, ribbons—and all about this little Maria Benvenuta, who sits here at the window, and embroiders the whole story on the fazoletto.
But now the old father-in-law issues from the house, and thus gravely addresses the Corteo of strangers:—"Who are you, men thus armed?—friends or foes? Are you conductors of this donna gentile, or have you carried her off, although to appearance you are noble and valiant men?" The bridesman answers, "We are your friends and guests, and we escort this fair and worthy maiden, the pledge of our new friendship. We plucked the fairest flower of the strand of Luri, to bring it as a gift to Campo."
"Welcome, then, my friends and guests, enter my house, and refresh you at the feast;" thus replies again the bridegroom's father, lifts the maiden from her horse, embraces her, and leads her into the house. There the happy bridegroom folds her in his arms, and this is done to quite a reckless amount of merriment on the sixteen-stringed cithern, and the cornamusa.
Now we go into the church, where the tapers are already lit, and the myrtles profusely strewn. And when the pair have been joined, and again enter the bridegroom's house, they see, standing in the guest-chamber, two stools; on these the happy couple seat themselves, and now comes a woman, roguishly smiling, with a little child in swaddling clothes in her arms. She lays the child in the arm of the bride. The little Maria Benvenuta does not blush by any means, but takes the baby and kisses and fondles it right heartily. Then she puts on his head a little Phrygian cap, richly decked with particoloured ribbons. When this part of the ceremony has been gone through, the kinsfolk embrace the pair, and each wishes the good old wish:—
"Dio vi dia buona fortuna,
Tre di maschi e femmin' una:"
—that is, God give you good luck, three sons and a daughter. The bride now distributes little gifts to her husband's relatives; the nearest relation receives a small coin. Then follow the feast and the balls, at which they will dance the cerca, and the marsiliana, and the tarantella.
Whether they will observe the rest of the old usages, as they are given in the chronicle, I do not know. But in former times it was the custom that a young relation of the bride should precede her into the nuptial chamber. Here he jumped and rolled several times over the bridal-bed, then, the bride sitting down on it, he untied the ribbons on her shoes, as respectfully as we see upon the old sculptures Anchises unloosing the sandals of Venus, as she sits upon her couch. The bride now moved her little feet prettily till the shoes slipped to the ground; and to the youth who had untied them, she gave a present of money. To make a long story short, they will have a merry time of it at Benvenuta's wedding, and when long years have gone by, they will still remember it in the Valley of Campo.
All this we gossiped over very gravely in the boatman's little house at Luri; and I know the cradle-song too with which Maria Benvenuta will hush her little son to sleep—
"Ninniná, my darling, my doated-on!
Ninniná, my one only good!
Thou art a little ship dancing along,
Dancing along on an azure flood,
Fearing not the waves' rough glee,
Nor the winds that sweep the sea
Sweet sleep now get—sleep, mother's pet,
I'll sing thee ninni nani.
"Little ship laden with pearls, my precious one,
Laden with silks and with damasks so gay,
With sails of brocade that have wafted it on
From an Indian port, far, far away;
And a rudder all of gold,
Wrought with skill to worth untold.
Sound sleep now get—sleep, mother's pet,
I'll sing thee ninni nani.
"When thou wast born, thou darling one,
To the holy font they bore thee soon.
God-papa to thee the sun,
And thy god-mamma the moon;
And the baby stars that shine on high,
Rock'd their gold cradles joyfully.
Soft sleep now get—sleep, mother's pet,
I'll sing thee ninni nani.
"Darling of darlings—brighter the heaven,
Deeper its blue as it smiled on thee;
Even the stately planets seven,
Brought thee presents rich and free;
And the mountain shepherds all,
Kept an eight-days' festival!
Sweet sleep now get—sleep, mother's pet,
I'll sing thee ninni nani.
"Nothing was heard but the cithern, my beauty,
Nothing but dancing on every side,
In the sweet vale of Cuscioni
Through the country far and wide
Boccanera and Falconi
Echoed with their wonted glee.
Sound sleep now get—sleep, mother's pet,
I'll sing thee ninni nani.
"Darling, when thou art taller grown,
Free thou shalt wander through meadows fair,
Every flower shall be newly-blown,
Oil shall shine 'stead of dewdrops there,
And the water in the sea
Changed to rarest balsam be.
Soft sleep now get—sleep, mother's pet,
I'll sing thee ninni nani.
"Then the mountains shall rise before baby's eyes,
All cover'd with lambs as white as snow;
And the Chamois wild shall bound after the child,
And the playful fawn and gentle doe;
But the hawk so fierce and the fox so sly,
Away from this valley far must hie.
Sweet sleep now get—sleep, mother's pet,
I'll sing thee ninni nani.
"Darling—earliest blossom mine,
Beauteous thou, beyond compare;
In Bavella born to shine,
And in Cuscioni fair,
Fourfold trefoil leaf so bright,
Kids would nibble—if they might!
Sweet sleep now get—sleep, mother's pet,
I'll sing thee ninni nani."
Should, perhaps, the child be too much excited by such a fanciful song, the mother will sing him this little nanna, whereupon he will immediately fall asleep—
"Ninni, ninni, ninni nanna,
Ninni, ninni, ninni nolu,
Allegrezza di la mamma
Addormentati, O figliuolu."
CHAPTER IX.
CORSICAN SUPERSTITIONS.
In the meantime, voices from the shore had announced the arrival of the boatmen; I therefore took my leave of the pretty Benvenuta, wished her all sorts of pleasant things, and stepped into the boat. We kept always as close as possible in shore. At Porticcioli, a little town with a Dogana, we ran in to have the names of our four passengers registered. A few sailing vessels were anchored here. The ripe figs on the trees, and the beautiful grapes in the gardens, tempted us; we had half a vineyard of the finest muscatel grapes, with the most delicious figs, brought us for a few pence.
Continuing our voyage in the evening, the beauty of the moonlit sea, and the singular forms of the rocky coast, served to beguile the way pleasantly. I saw a great many towers on the rocks, here and there a ruin, a church, or cloister. As we sailed past the old Church of St. Catherine of Sicco, which stands high and stately on the shore, the weather seemed going "to desolate itself," as they say in Italian, and threatened a storm. The old steersman, as we came opposite St. Catherine, doffed his baretto, and prayed aloud: "Holy Mother of God, Maria, we are sailing to Bastia; grant that we get safely into port!" The boatmen all took off their baretti, and devoutly made the sign of the cross. The moonlight breaking on the water from heavy black clouds; the fear of a storm; the grim, spectrally-lighted shore; and finally, St. Catherine,—suddenly brought over our entire company one of those moods which seek relief in ghost-stories. The boatmen began to tell them, in all varieties of the horrible and incredible. One of the passengers, meanwhile, anxious that at least not all Corsicans should seem, in the strangers' eyes, to be superstitious, kept incessantly shrugging his shoulders, indignant, as a person of enlightenment, that I should hear such nonsense; while another constantly supported his own and the boatmen's opinion, by the asseveration: "I have never seen witches with my own eyes, but that there is such a thing as the black art is undoubted." I, for my part, affirmed that I confidently believed in witches and sorceresses, and that I had had the honour of knowing some very fine specimens. The partisan of the black art, an inhabitant of Luri, had, I may mention, allowed me an interesting glimpse into his mysterious studies, when, in the course of a conversation about London, he very naïvely threw out the question, whether that great city was French or not.
The Corsicans call the witch strega. Her penchant is to suck, as vampire, the blood of children. One of the boatmen described to me how she looked, when he surprised her once in his father's house; she is black as pitch on the breast, and can transform herself from a cat into a beautiful girl, and from a beautiful girl into a cat. These sorceresses torment the children, make frightful faces at them, and all sorts of fattura. They can bewitch muskets, too, and make them miss fire. In this case, you must make a cross over the trigger, and, in general, you may be sure the cross is the best protection against sorcery. It is a very safe thing, too, to carry relics and amulets. Some of these will turn off a bullet, and are good against the bite of the venomous spider—the malmignatto.
Among these amulets they had formerly in Corsica a "travelling-stone," such as is frequently mentioned in the Scandinavian legends. It was found at the Tower of Seneca only—was four-cornered, and contained iron. Whoever tied such a stone over his knee made a safe and easy journey.
Many of the pagan usages of ancient Corsica have been lost, many still exist, particularly in the highland pasture-country of Niolo. Among these, the practice of soothsaying by bones is remarkable. The fortune-teller takes the shoulder-blade (scapula) of a goat or sheep, gives its surface a polish as of a mirror, and reads from it the history of the person concerned. But it must be the left shoulder-blade, for, according to the old proverb—la destra spalla sfalla—the right one deceives. Many famous Corsicans are said to have had their fortunes predicted by soothsayers. It is told that, as Sampiero sat with his friends at table, the evening before his death, an owl was heard to scream upon the house-top, where it sat hooting the whole night; and that, when a soothsayer hereupon read the scapula, to the horror of all, he found Sampiero's death written in it.
Napoleon's fortunes, too, were foretold from a spalla. An old herdsman of Ghidazzo, renowned for reading shoulder-blades, inspected the scapula one day, when Napoleon was still a child, and saw thereon, plainly represented, a tree rising with many branches high into the heavens, but having few and feeble roots. From this the herdsman saw that a Corsican would become ruler of the world, but only for a short time. The story of this prediction is very common in Corsica; it has a remarkable affinity with the dream of Mandane, in which she saw the tree interpreted to mean her son Cyrus.
Many superstitious beliefs of the Corsicans, with a great deal of poetic fancy in them, relate to death—the true genius of the Corsican popular poetry; since on this island of the Vendetta, death has so peculiarly his mythic abode; Corsica might be called the Island of Death, as other islands were called of Apollo, of Venus, or of Jupiter. When any one is about to die, a pale light upon the house-top frequently announces what is to happen. The owl screeches the whole night, the dog howls, and often a little drum is heard, which a ghost beats. If any one's death is near, sometimes the dead people come at night to his house, and make it known. They are dressed exactly like the Brothers of Death, in the long white mantles, with the pointed hoods in which are the spectral eye-holes; and they imitate all the gestures of the Brothers of Death, who place themselves round the bier, lift it, bear it, and go before it. This is their dismal pastime all night till the cock crows. When the cock crows, they slip away, some to the churchyard, some into their graves in the church.
The dead people are fond of each other's company; you will see them coming out of the graves if you go to the churchyard at night; then make quickly the sign of the cross over the trigger of your gun, that the ghost-shot may go off well. For a full shot has power over the spectres; and when you shoot among them, they disperse, and not till ten years after such a shot can they meet again.
Sometimes the dead come to the bedside of those who have survived, and say, "Now lament for me no more, and cease weeping, for I have the certainty that I shall yet be among the blessed."
In the silent night-hours, when you sit upon your bed, and your sad heart will not let you sleep, often the dead call you by name: "O Marì!—O Josè!" For your life do not answer, though they cry ever so mournfully, and your heart be like to break. Answer not! if you answer, you must die.
"Andate! andate! the storm is coming! Look at the tromba there, as it drives past Elba!" And vast and dark swept the mighty storm-spectre over the sea, a sight of terrific beauty; the moon was hid, and sea and shore lay wan in the glare of lightning.—God be praised! we are at the Tower of Bastia. The holy Mother of God had helped us, and as we stepped on land, the storm began in furious earnest. We, however, were in port.