Historical Parallels, vol. 1 (of 3)

by Arthur Thomas Malkin

Some sketch of the life of Starchaterus, a purely fictitious person, may serve as a specimen of these stories.

Starchaterus was born in Sweden, a few years after the Christian era. He was of giant stature, and of strength and courage correspondent to the magnitude of his frame, so that in prowess he was held inferior to none of mortal parentage; and, as he excelled all in bodily endowments, so his life was protracted to three times the usual duration of human existence. Like his great prototype, the Grecian Hercules, he traversed the neighbouring regions, and went even to Ireland and Constantinople in quest of adventures; but, unlike him, he was animated by a most intolerant hatred of everything approaching to luxury, insomuch that he treated an invitation to dinner as an insult, and inflicted severe punishment upon all who were so imprudently hospitable as to request his company. For it was the mark of a buffoon and parasite, he said, to run after the smell of another man’s kitchen, for the sake of better fare.[12] In other respects the severity of his manners was more commendable; when he found any of the classes who live by the follies or vices of mankind mixing with soldiers, he drove them away with the scourge, esteeming them unworthy to receive death from the hands of brave men. In addition to his other accomplishments, he was skilled in poetry, and persecuted luxury in verse no less successfully than by corporeal inflictions, as is evident from certain of his compositions, which have been translated into Latin by Saxo Grammaticus.

He went to Russia on purpose to fight Visin, who possessed the power of blunting weapons with a look, and trusting in this magic power, exercised all sorts of cruelty and oppression. Starchaterus rendered the charm of no avail by covering his sword with thin leather, and then obtained an easy victory.

Nine warriors of tried valour offered to Helgo, king of Norway, the alternative of doing battle singly against the nine, or losing his bride upon his marriage–day. Helgo thought it best to appear by his champion, and requested the assistance of Starchaterus, who was so eager for the adventure, that in following Helgo to the appointed place, in one day, and on foot, he performed a journey which had occupied the king, who travelled on horseback, during twelve days. On the morrow, which was the appointed day, ascending a mountain, which was the place of meeting, he chose a spot exposed to the wind and snow, and then, as if it were spring, throwing off his clothes, he set himself to dislodge the fleas that nestled in them. Then the nine warriors ascended the mountain on the other side, and showed the difference of their hardihood by lighting a fire in a sheltered spot. Not perceiving their antagonist, one went to look out from the mountain top, who saw at a distance an old man covered with snow up to the shoulders. They asked him if it were he who was to fight with them, and being answered in the affirmative, inquired further, whether he would receive them singly or all together. His reply was rather more churlish than the question deserved: “When the dogs bark at me, I drive them off all together, and not one by one.” Then, after a severe battle, he slew them all.

At last, being overtaken by age, he thought it fit to terminate his life before his glory was dimmed by decrepitude; for men used to consider it disgraceful for a warrior to perish by sickness. So he hung round his neck one hundred and twenty pounds of gold, the spoil of one Olo, to buy the good offices of an executioner, thinking it fit that the wealth which he had obtained by another man’s death should be spent in procuring his own. And meeting Hather, whose father he had formerly slain, he exhorted him to take vengeance for that injury, and pointed out what he would gain by doing so. Hather willingly consented, and Starchaterus, stretching out his neck, bade him strike boldly, adding, for his encouragement, that if he leaped between the severed head and the trunk before the latter touched the earth, he would become invincible in arms. Now, whether he said this out of good will, or to be quits with his slayer, who ran a good chance of being crushed by the falling giant, is doubtful. The head, stricken off at a blow, bit the earth, retaining its ferocity in death: but Starchaterus’ real meaning remained unknown, for Hather showed his prudence by declining to take a leap, which had he taken, he might never have leaped again.[13]

This is an early and rude specimen of an errant knight; the same character which was afterwards expanded into Roland and Launcelot, the paladins and peers of Charlemagne and Arthur, worthies closely allied to the heroes of Homer and Hesiod. The triple–bodied Geryon, the Nemean lion and Lernæan hydra, the deliverance of Andromeda by Perseus, the capture of the golden fleece, and above all, perhaps, Amycus, who compelled all strangers to box with him, till he was beaten by Pollux, and bound by oath to renounce the practice, are entirely in unison with the spirit and imagery of chivalric romance. Examples to this effect might easily be multiplied. But an essay on the fictions of the Greeks would be foreign to the scope of this publication: and it would be absurd to enter upon a critical investigation of a series of stories, extended by some chronologers over seven centuries, from the foundation of Argos to the Trojan war, while Newton contracts them within a century and a half, which tell of little but bloodshed, abductions, and violence of all sorts, intermixed, however, with notices of those who invented the useful arts and fostered the gradual progress of civilization. As we approach to the Trojan war, a sort of twilight history begins to dawn upon us. It is to what may seem at first the strongholds of fiction, to the exploits of Hercules and Theseus, that we refer. The earliest ascertained fact is the establishment of a regular government by Minos, who also cleared the sea from pirates. At no long interval the above–named heroes made another step in civilization; they cleared the land from rapine, as Minos had cleared the sea. Other men, roaming in search of adventures, had carried bloodshed through the land at the suggestion of their passions or for the advancement of their fame; but Hercules first traversed the earth with the express design of avenging the oppressed and exterminating their oppressors, and the example was soon after followed by his kinsman Theseus. Their exploits, of course, are chiefly fabulous: but it is worthy of observation that those of Theseus approach much nearer to probability than the far–famed labours of Hercules. Indeed the history of the former presents this peculiarity, that the accounts of his youth are consistent, and scarcely improbable, while those of his age run into all the extravagance of romance. Theseus, travelling from Trœzen to Athens, was strongly urged to go by sea, the way by land being beset with robbers and murderers. He refused to do so, being inflamed with emulation of Hercules’ renown; and on the journey signalized himself by slaying Sinnis, surnamed the Pine–bender, because he dismembered travellers by tying them to the tops of trees forcibly brought together and then allowed to start asunder; Procrustes, who exhibited a passion for uniformity worthy a German general of the old school, in reducing all men to the measure of his own bed, by stretching those who were too short, and docking those who were too long; together with others of less note, and similar habits. That Plutarch believed in these stories is evident, from the tone in which he recites them; a corroboration, indeed, of no great weight, for he proceeds with equal gravity to relate things which no one will credit; but in this instance his account of the state of Greece gives warranty for his belief, and is itself confirmed by our knowledge of later ages. The passage has often been quoted, but it is striking and to the purpose, and its want of novelty, therefore, shall be no bar to its insertion. “The world at that time brought forth men, which for strongness in their arms, for swiftness of their feet, and for a general strength of the whole body, did far pass the common force of others, and were never weary for any labour or travail they took in hand. But for all this, they never employed these gifts of nature to any honest or profitable thing; but rather delighted villainously to hurt and wrong others; as if all the fruit and profit of their extraordinary strength had consisted in cruelty and violence only, and to be able to keep others under and in subjection; and to force, destroy, and spoil all that came to their hands. Thinking that the more part of those which think it a shame to do ill, and commend justice, equity, and humanity, do it of faint, cowardly hearts, because they dare not wrong others, for fear they should receive wrong themselves; and, therefore, that they which by might could have vantage over others, had nothing to do with such qualities.”[14]

The enormities ascribed to Sinnis and his fellows have discredited the whole train of adventures to which they belong; but this is an untenable ground of doubt. He who reads descriptions of the state of England, before laws were strong enough to control private violence, given by contemporaries who saw what they relate, and whose narratives bear the impress of sincerity, will better appreciate the extent of human ferocity. In the reign of Stephen disorder was at its height. “The barons cruelly oppressed the wretched men of the land with castle–works, and when the castles were made, they filled them with devils and evil men. Then took they those whom they supposed to have any goods, both by night and day, labouring men and women, and threw them into the prison for their gold and silver, and inflicted on them unutterable tortures: for never were any martyrs so tortured as they were. Some they hanged up by the feet, and smoked them with foul smoke, and some by the thumbs, or the head, and hung coats of mail on their feet. They tied knotted cords about their heads, and twisted them until the pain went to their brains. They put them into dungeons where were adders, and snakes, and toads, and so destroyed them. Some they placed in a crucet house; that is, in a chest that was short and narrow, and not deep, wherein they put sharp stones, and so thrust the man therein, that they broke all the limbs. In many of the castles were things loathsome and grim, called Sachenteges, of which two or three men had enough to bear one. They were thus made: they were fastened to a beam, having a sharp iron to go about a man’s throat, so that he could in no direction either sit, or lie, or sleep, but bear all that iron. Many thousands they wore out with hunger. I neither can, nor may I tell all the wounds and pains which they inflicted on wretched men in this land.”[15]

“Some, seeing the sweetness of their country turned into bitterness, went into foreign parts: others built hovels about churches in hope of security, and there passed life in fear and pain, subsisting for lack of food (for famine was felt dreadfully over all England) upon the forbidden and unused flesh of dogs and horses, or relieving hunger with raw herbs and roots, until throughout the provinces men, wasted by famine, died in crowds, or went voluntarily with their families into a miserable exile. You might see towns of famous name, standing lonely, and altogether emptied by the death of their inhabitants of all ages and sexes; the fields whitening under a thriving harvest, but the husbandman cut off by pestilential famine ere it ripened: and all England wore the face of grief and calamity, of misery and oppression. In addition to these evils, the savage multitude of barbarians who resorted to England for the gains of warfare was moved neither by the bowels of piety nor by any feeling of human compassion for such misery: everywhere they conspired from their castles to do all wickedness, being always at leisure to rob the poor, to promote quarrels, and intent everywhere upon slaughter with all the malice of a wicked mind.” Even churchmen amused themselves with these pastimes. “The bishops themselves, as I am ashamed to say, not all indeed, but many of them, clad in handsome armour, rode up and down on prancing horses with these upsetters of their country; shared in their booty; exposed to fetters, or torture, knights, or any wealthy persons soever, whom they intercepted; and being themselves the head and cause of all this wickedness, they threw the blame not on themselves, but only upon their followers.”[16]

Enough of general descriptions, which are fully borne out by the particulars related. “In the reign of Stephen, Robert, the son of Hubert, had gotten possession of the castle of Devizes. He was a man exceeding all within memory in barbarity and blasphemy, who used freely to make boast, that he had been present when twenty–four monks were burnt together with their church, and profess that he would do as much in England, and ruin utterly the abbey of Malmesbury. If he ever dismissed a prisoner unransomed, and without the torture, which very seldom happened, at such times, when they thanked him in God’s name, I have with these ears heard him answer, ‘God will never own the obligation to me.’ He would expose his captives naked to the burning sun, anointed with honey, to attract flies, and such other tormenting insects.”[17] This worthy met with a fit end, being taken and hanged; but this act of retribution was one of illegal violence, being done by a knight who held Marlborough Castle, without a shadow of authority, and apparently on the principle that any one had a right to abate a nuisance.