CHAPTER II
THE PEARL OF ANDALUSIA

SEVILLE, in the glory of the Andalusian summer, is a city of white and gold. Her brilliancy dazzles you, as it dazzled those who wrote of her, a little wildly, as the eighth wonder of the world. Luis Guevara, a poet born within her walls, declared that she was not the eighth but the first of those wonders. In our own day, men of genius have felt her spell. "Seville," says Valdés, "has ever been for me the symbol of light, the city of love and joy." So much few northerners would feel justified in saying. To them this must be the city that most closely corresponds to their preconceived ideas of the sunny and romantic South. To Seville belong the sweep of lute-strings, the click of the castanets, the serenade, and above all, the bull-fight. There is something feminine about the radiant city, compared with the masculine strength of Toledo and Avila, and the harsh decadence of Granada. You will agree that no town is prettier, except perhaps Cadiz. So Byron said, and by him and all the poets of his school—Alfred de Musset for one—the city by the Guadalquivir was ardently loved. Yet though so conventionally romantic of aspect, Seville is busy, prosperous, and well peopled, before all other Andalusian towns. The blood still courses hotly through her veins—her vitality intoxicates. If you come from Cordova or Granada, you feel as though you were returning to the world. Here is life, here is gaiety; yet your driver the next instant takes you into a narrow, winding street, no broader than an alley, where absolute silence reigns. The windows are shuttered, no one seems to stir in the patios. There reigns a Sabbath-like calm. A minute later you are in a broad plaza, where electric cars boom and whirr, where all is animation and bustle. Such contrasts are very sharp in this city, where the streets exist simply for folk to dwell in, the squares and paseos for them to gather in and do their business. There are notable exceptions, it is true. There is no want of life in the Sierpes, the narrow street which is the Strand and Charing Cross of Seville. Here you return again and again, feeling it is the focus of the city's life. Little better than a lane is the Sierpes, where no wheeled traffic can pass. It is amazingly dark in the summer, when awnings are drawn right across it from roof to roof, and penetrating into it from the sunny plaza, it is a little time before you can accustom your eyes to the shadow. Here are the best shops, the banks, and those elegant and ostentatious casinos, where the aristocracy and leisured class lounge and smoke, and survey at their ease the unceasing procession of passers by. There are cafés here of a different sort, some of which are frequented by the bull-fighters and their admirers. Here too may be seen in all his glory that peculiar type of Andalusian, the "Majo," a curious blend of the English "masher" the "sporting man" and the "troubadour"! The people sit in the cafés to see the others pass, and the others walk down the street to see the people in the cafés. This is a form of amusement and exercise common on the Continent, and acclimatized already at our English seaside towns. Selling lottery tickets is a great industry in the Sierpes, the sale of tickets for the next Corrida de toros even more so. The boot-blacking saloons remind the American visitor of his native land. For his delectation the New York Herald is displayed in the windows of the few booksellers. There is nothing about this gay little thoroughfare to remind us of the past. The history of Seville is more easily recoverable by the fancy, when you are seated by the Guadalquivir, in sight of the Torre del Oro, on the spot perhaps where George Borrow, in an unwonted fit of hysteria, wept over the beauty of the scene before him.

Phœnician, Carthaginian, Roman, Vandal, Goth, and Moor—the city has known them all and outlived them all. There seems to have been a settlement of the Turdetani here, before the first Phœnicians came. The name at all events was bestowed by the Tyrian traders, if it is really derived from "sephela," a plain. Then came the Carthaginians, whom the Spaniards accuse of having corrupted the pure and simple-minded natives. The city became known to the little world of civilization, and was spoken of by Grecian geographers as "Ispola" and "Hispalis." The terrible Hamilcar reduced the greater part of Spain to the Punic yoke. He and his successor Hasdrubal filled Andalusia with their massive ungainly fortresses. Salambo, the Semitic Venus, was worshipped on the banks of the Guadalquivir. From time to time, we doubt not, human sacrifices stained the altars of Baal. One wonders if the descendants of the Carthaginians became identified with the other great Semitic people, and passed as Jews. Certainly it is otherwise a little difficult to account for the presence in Spain of the Israelites in such numbers at a very early period.

The Carthaginians fought hard for the province of Bætica, but Punic force and fraud were alike powerless before the sword of Scipio. The dominion of the province of Iberia passed to Rome. When the conquering hero turned his face homewards to claim his triumph, he was mindful of his warworn veterans. For them the journey back to Italy was too long and wearisome; they were content to die in the land they had conquered. Outside Hispalis a place of rest and refreshment was found for them in the village of Sancios. Scipio laid there the foundation of a colony, bestowed it on his veterans, and named it Italica, in memory of their fatherland. And thus was founded the first Latin-speaking settlement outside Italy. It lies—all that remains of it—on the slopes of the hills that bound the prospect westwards.

Hispalis, not overshadowed by its new neighbour, flourished under the Roman sway. Julius Cæsar besieged the city, which was garrisoned by Pompey's partisans, and inscribed the date of its capture in the calendar of the Republic (August 9, B.C. 45). His fleet, they say, lay in the river between the Torre del Oro and the Palace of San Telmo. The townsfolk were devoted to him, and he renamed the place Julia Romula. As a Roman colony the town had a senate and consuls, ediles and censors. The wall Cæsar built endured intact until the time of Juan II., so that monarch wrote in his Chronicle.

While its Punic physiognomy was hard to efface, Seville soon became in spirit a Latin town. All Andalusia was in course of time thoroughly Romanized. Seneca, Lucan, the Ælii, as most of us remember, were Spaniards—if Spaniards could be said, as yet, to have existed.

Then came the era of persecutions, the establishment of Christianity and the disappearance of Astarte and Baal from the forum and the temple—to be worshipped, perhaps, for a little while longer in the recesses of the mountains, where Islam lingered in after times. Presently came the Vandals, and their fury having spent itself, they made Seville their capital, though they did not give their name, as some have thought, to Andalusia. When they passed over—a whole nation—to Africa, the barbarous Suevi took possession of their old camping-ground. The Suevian king, Recchiarus, became a Catholic, at the persuasion of Sabinus, Bishop of Seville, in the year 448. We next hear of him murdering the Byzantine ambassador Censorius, in this city, and of being defeated and slain by the Visigoths in 456. Now comes an interregnum of seventy-five years. The Suevi were expelled from Seville, but their conquerors did not occupy the town. It must have been governed by its Catholic bishops, who are spoken of as miracles of wisdom and sanctity. Under Theudis the Gothic king, Seville again rose to the rank of a capital—or at any rate shared the dignity with Toledo. Here Theudis was assassinated, and his son and successor Theudisel also, a few months later. The latter sovereign is described as a detestably wicked person. He was of course an Aryan, and gave a shocking example of his hard-hearted incredulity. Among the hills where lies Italica is a village called San Juan de Aznalfarache. Near this in the sixth century was a tank which was miraculously filled once a year, when the Catholics resorted to it to baptize their catechumens. Theudisel had the tank, when it was dry, thoroughly investigated, and, satisfied that it was fed by no spring, had a lid fastened over it and sealed with his own seal. But next Easter it was full of water! Not to be baffled, the king dug a ditch to the depth of twenty-five feet all round the tank, but found no trace of a spring. He would perhaps have gone on digging for years had not his nobles rid the world of so sceptical a monarch.

We come now to the days of good King Leovgild, who consolidated the Visigothic monarchy and warred successfully against the Greeks and barbarous Suevi. His son, Ermengild, being sent to govern Seville, was converted by Leander, the bishop of the city, to the Catholic faith. The prince thought he could give no better proof of his zeal for his new creed than by revolting against his father. A bloody war resulted. Ermengild was worsted and was shut up in Seville, while his father occupied Italica and pressed him closely. The rebels capitulated and were treated leniently. The prince afterwards headed a second revolt against his father, was captured and executed. He has been enrolled among the saints of the Catholic Church.