SATIRE XV.
Who knows not, O Volusius[1055] of Bithynia, the sort of monsters Egypt,[1056] in her infatuation, worships? One part venerates the crocodile:[1057] another trembles before an Ibis gorged with serpents. The image of a sacred monkey glitters in gold, where the magic chords sound from Memnon[1058] broken in half, and ancient Thebes lies buried in ruins, with her hundred gates. In one place they venerate sea-fish, in another river-fish; there, whole towns worship a dog;[1059] no one Diana. It is an impious act to violate or break with the teeth a leek or an onion.[1060] O holy nations! whose gods grow for them in their gardens![1061] Every table abstains from animals that have wool: it is a crime there to kill a kid. But human flesh is lawful food.
Were Ulysses[1062] to relate at supper such a deed as this to the amazed Alcinous, he would perhaps have excited the ridicule or anger of some, as a lying babbler.[1063] "Does no one hurl this fellow into the sea, that deserves indeed a savage Charybdis and a real one[1064] too, for inventing[1065] his huge Læstrygones[1066] and Cyclops. For I would far more readily believe in Scylla, or the Cyanean rocks that clash together,[1067] and the skins filled with stormy winds; or that Elpenor, struck with the light touch of Circe's wand, grunted in company with his messmates turned to hogs. Does he suppose the heads of the Phæacians so void[1068] of brains?"
So might any one with reason have argued, who was not yet drunk,[1069] and had taken but a scanty draught[1070] of the potent wine from the Corcyræan[1071] bowl; for the Ithacan[1072] told his adventures alone, with none to attest his veracity. We are about to relate events, wondrous indeed, but achieved only lately, while Junius[1073] was consul, above the walls of sultry Coptos.[1074] We shall recount the crime of a whole people, deeds more atrocious than any tragedy could furnish. For from the days of Pyrrha,[1075] though you turn over every tragic theme,[1076] in none is a whole people[1077] made the perpetrators of the guilt. Here, then, an instance which even in our own days ruthless barbarism[1078] produced. There is an inveterate and long-standing grudge,[1079] a deathless hatred and a rankling wound that knows no cure, burning fiercely still between Ombos[1080] and Tentyra, two neighboring peoples. On both sides the principal rancor arises from the fact that each place hates its neighbor's gods,[1081] and believes those only ought to be held as deities which itself worships. But at a festive period of one of those peoples, the chiefs and leaders of their enemies determined that the opportunity must be seized, to prevent their enjoying their day of mirth and cheerfulness, and the delights of a grand dinner, when their tables were spread near the temples and cross-ways, and the couch that knows not sleep, since occasionally even the seventh day's sun finds it still there, spread without intermission of either night or day.[1082] Savage,[1083] in truth, is Egypt! But in luxury, so far as I myself remarked, even the barbarous mob does not fall short of the infamous Canopus.[1084]
Besides, victory is easily gained over men reeking[1085] with wine, stammering[1086] and reeling. On one side there was a crew of fellows dancing to a black piper; perfumes, such as they were; and flowers, and garlands in plenty round their brows. On the other side was ranged fasting hate. But, with minds inflamed, they begin first of all to give vent to railings[1087] in words.
This was the signal-blast[1088] of the fray. Then with shouts from both sides, the conflict begins; and in lieu of weapons,[1089] the unarmed hand rages.
Few cheeks were without a wound. Scarcely one, if any, had a whole nose out of the whole line of combatants. Now you might see, through all the hosts engaged, mutilated faces,[1090] features not to be recognized, bones showing ghastly beneath the lacerated cheek, fists dripping with blood from their enemies' eyes. But still the combatants themselves consider they are only in sport, and engaged in a childish[1091] encounter, because they do not trample any corpses under foot. What, forsooth, is the object of so many thousands mixing in the fray, if no life is to be sacrificed? The attack, therefore, is more vigorous; and now with arms inclined along the ground they begin to hurl stones[1092] they have picked up—Sedition's[1093] own peculiar weapons.
Yet not such stones as Ajax[1094] or as Turnus[1095] hurled; nor of the weight of that with which Tydides[1096] hit Æneas' thigh; but such as right hands far different to theirs, and produced in our age, have power to project. For even in Homer's[1097] lifetime men were beginning to degenerate. Earth now gives birth to weak and puny mortals.[1098] Therefore every god that looks down on them sneers and hates them!
After this digression[1099] let us resume our story. When they had been re-enforced by subsidies, one of the parties is emboldened to draw the sword, and renew the battle with deadly-aiming[1100] arrows. Then they who inhabit Tentyra,[1101] bordering on the shady palms, press upon their foes, who all in rapid flight leave their backs exposed. Here one of them, in excess of terror urging his headlong course, falls[1102] and is caught. Forthwith the victorious crowd having cut him up into numberless bits and fragments, in order that one dead man might furnish a morsel for many, eat him completely up, having gnawed his very bones. They neither cooked him in a seething caldron, nor on a spit. So wearisome[1103] and tedious did they think it to wait for a fire, that they were even content with the carcass raw. Yet at this we should rejoice, that they profaned not the deity of fire which Prometheus[1104] stole from highest heaven and gave to earth. I congratulate[1105] the element! and you too, I ween, are glad.[1106] But he that could bear to chew a human corpse, never tasted a sweeter[1107] morsel than this flesh. For in a deed of such horrid atrocity, pause not to inquire or doubt whether it was the first maw alone that felt the horrid delight! Nay! he that came up last,[1108] when the whole body was now devoured, by drawing his fingers along the ground, got a taste of the blood!
The Vascones,[1109] as report says, protracted their lives by the use of such nutriment as this. But the case is very different. There we have the bitter hate of fortune! the last extremity of war, the very climax of despair, the awful destitution[1110] of a long-protracted siege. For the instance of such food of which we are now speaking, ought to call forth our pity.[1111] Since it was only after they had exhausted herbs of all kinds,[1112] and every animal to which the gnawings of an empty stomach drove them, and while their enemies themselves commiserated their pale and emaciated features and wasted limbs, they in their ravenous famine tore in pieces others' limbs, ready to devour even their own! What man, or what god even, would refuse his pardon to brave men[1113] suffering such fierce extremities? men, whom the very spirits of those whose bodies they fed on, could have forgiven! The precepts of Zeno teach us a better lesson. For he thinks that some things only, and not all, ought to be done to preserve life.[1114] But whence could a Cantabrian learn the Stoics' doctrines? especially in the days of old Metellus. Now the whole world has the Grecian and our Athens.
Eloquent Gaul[1115] has taught the Britons[1116] to become pleaders; and even Thule[1117] talks of hiring a rhetorician.
Yet that noble people whom we have mentioned, and their equal in courage and fidelity, their more than equal in calamity, Saguntum,[1118] has some excuse to plead for such a deed as this! Whereas Egypt is more barbarous even than the altar of Mæotis. Since that Tauric[1119] inventress of the impious rite (if you hold as worthy of credit all that poets sing) only sacrifices men; the victim has nothing further or worse to fear than the sacrificial knife. But what calamity was it drove these to crime? What extremity of hunger, or hostile arms that bristled round their ramparts, that forced these to dare a prodigy of guilt so execrable? What greater enormity[1120] than this could they commit, when the land of Memphis was parched with drought to provoke the wrath[1121] of Nile when unwilling to rise?
Neither the formidable Cimbri, nor Britons, nor fierce Sarmatians or savage Agathyrsi, ever raged with such frantic brutality, as did this weak and worthless rabble, that wont to spread their puny sails in pinnaces of earthenware,[1122] and ply the scanty paddles of their painted pottery-canoe. You could not invent a punishment adequate to the guilt, or a torture bad enough for a people in whose breasts "anger" and "hunger" are convertible terms.
Nature confesses that she has bestowed on the human race hearts of softest mould, in that she has given us tears.[1123] Of all our feeling this is the noblest part. She bids us therefore bewail the misfortunes of a friend in distress, and the squalid appearance of one accused, or an orphan[1124] summoning to justice the guardian who has defrauded him. Whose girl-like hair throws doubt[1125] upon the sex of those cheeks bedewed with tears!
It is at nature's dictate that we mourn when we meet the funeral of a virgin of marriageable years, or see an infant[1126] laid in the ground, too young for the funeral pyre. For what good man, who that is worthy of the mystic torch,[1127] such an one as Ceres' priest would have him be, ever deems the ills of others[1128] matter that concerns not himself?
This it is that distinguishes us from the brute herd. And therefore we alone, endued with that venerable distinction of reason[1129] and a capacity for divine things, with an aptitude for the practice as well as the reception of all arts and sciences, have received, transmitted to us from heaven's high citadel,[1130] a moral sense, which brutes prone[1131] and stooping toward earth, are lacking in. In the beginning of the world, the common Creator of all vouchsafed to them only the principle of vitality; to us he gave souls[1132] also, that an instinct of affection reciprocally shared, might urge us to seek for, and to give, assistance; to unite in one people, those before widely-scattered;[1133] to emerge from the ancient wood, and abandon the forests[1134] where our fathers dwelt; to build houses, to join another's dwelling to our own homes, that the confidence mutually engendered by a neighbor's threshold might add security[1135] to our slumbers; to cover with our arms a fellow-citizen[1136] when fallen or staggering from a ghastly wound; to sound the battle-signal from a common clarion; to be defended by the same ramparts, and closed in by the key of a common portal.
But now the unanimity[1137] of serpents is greater than ours. The wild beast of similar genus spares his kindred[1138] spots. When did ever lion, though stronger, deprive his fellow-lion of life? In what wood did ever boar perish by the tusks of a boar[1139] larger than himself? The tigress of India[1140] maintains unbroken harmony with each tigress that ravens. Bears, savage to others, are yet at peace among themselves. But for man![1141] he is not content with forging on the ruthless anvil the death-dealing steel! While his progenitors, those primæval smiths, that wont to hammer out naught save rakes and hoes, and wearied out with mattocks and plowshares, knew not the art of manufacturing swords.[1142] Here we behold a people whose brutal passion is not glutted with simple murder, but deem[1143] their fellows' breasts and arms and faces a kind of natural food.
What then would Pythagoras[1144] exclaim; whither would he not flee, could he be witness in our days to such atrocities as these! He that abstained from all that was endued with life as from man himself; and did not even indulge his appetite with every kind of pulse.