Hannibal, during the Punic wars. You see him, at this period of time, looming in the distance over every other object, and standing in Sicily like a great visiting giant. He is accounted, we believe, on military authority, the greatest captain that ever lived. So different is success in art from prosperity in fortune.
Hiero the Second, of Syracuse. A prudent and popular ally of the Romans. He showed no great favour to Theocritus. He built a huge toy-ship, in which were gardens, a wrestling-ground, rooms full of pictures and statues, floors with subjects from Homer painted in mosaic, and eight fortified towers! We should like to know what Tom Bowling would have said to it. When it was completed, it was found that there was no harbour in Sicily fit to receive it; so the king sent it as a present to Ptolemy Philadelphus of Egypt.
Theocritus, the great pastoral and miscellaneous poet, for pastoral was not his only, or his highest excellence. Circumstances appear to have made a present of him also, as well as the ship, to King Ptolemy; for Hiero neglected, and Philadelphus patronised him.
Archimedes, kinsman of Hiero. His wonderful mechanical inventions are among the daily instruments of utility all over the world. The Romans were obliged to suspend their operations against Syracuse, solely by the terror he occasioned them with his cranes that lifted their ships, and his glasses that burnt them. When the city was taken, orders were given to spare the great man, and bring him before the Roman general, that he might be duly honoured; but a stupid soldier unwittingly despatched him, provoked at having been requested to wait while the philosopher finished a problem. The problem part of the story is not very likely. Sir Isaac Newton carried abstraction far enough, when he forgot that he had eaten his dinner, or when he used a lady’s finger for a tobacco-stopper; but an engineer forgetting his own city while it was being taken by storm and howling about his ears, seems a little too hard a sample of it.
Marcellus, the Roman general on this occasion. His eyes are said to have filled with tears at the thought of all that was going to happen to the conquered city. He was the first successful opposer of Hannibal. When reproached for carrying off paintings and other works of art from Sicily, he said he did it to refine the minds of his countrymen. His tears render every anecdote of him precious to posterity.
Verres, one of the governors of Sicily while it was a Roman province;—infamous for the tyranny and effrontery of his extortions, even if but half of what Cicero said of him was true: for we must confess that we seldom believe more of what is told us by that illustrious talker; especially as he warns us against himself, by contradicting in one passage what he says in another. Vide his recommendations of people in his letters, and his discommendations of them in other letters, privately sent at the same time. Also, his vituperations and panegyrics of the same individuals concerned in the civil wars, just as it suited him to condemn or to court them; to say nothing of his divorces and weddings for interest’s sake. We have said the more of him in this place because he too, at one time, held the office of governor in Sicily, where he discovered the tomb of Archimedes—a memorial, alas! forgotten by the philosopher’s countrymen in less than a century and a half after his death! They wanted to “stand out” Cicero, that there was no such thing. However, they had not forgotten Theocritus. The greatest mechanical movers of the earth affect the imagination less than they ought to do, and the heart not at all. The lever and the screw, as the steam-engine will, become homely commonplaces; whereas love and song, and the beauties of Nature, are sought with transport, like holidays after business.
The names thus enumerated (for little or no interest attends the Goth and Vandal portion of the history of this island), may be said to point to all the characters of any importance in Sicilian antiquity, one only excepted. This individual we have kept to the last, though he was little more than a private person, and is not at all famous. But we have a special regard for him; far more indeed, than for most of those who have been mentioned; and we think that such of our readers as are not already acquainted with him, will have one too; for he was of that tip-top class of human beings called Good Fellows, and a very prince of the race. What renders him a still better fellow than he might otherwise have been, and doubles his heroical qualities in discerning eyes, is, that he was but an insignificant little body to look at, and not very well shaped;—a mannikin, in short, that Sir Godfrey Kneller’s nephew, the slave-trader, who rated the painter and his friend Pope at less than “ten guineas’” worth “the pair,” would probably not have valued at more than two pounds five.
The name of this great unknown was Gellias, and you must search into by-corners, even of Sicilian history, to find anything about him; but he was just the man for our Jar;—sweet as the honey that Samson found in the jaws of the lion.
Gellias was the richest man in the rich city of Agrigentum. The Agrigentines, according to a saying of their countryman Empedocles, were famous for “building as if they were to live for ever, and feasting as if they were to die next day.” But they were as good-natured and hospitable as they were festive; and Gellias, in accordance with the superiority of his circumstances, was the most good-natured and hospitable of them all. His magnificence resembled that of a Barmecide. Slaves were stationed at the gates of his noble mansion to invite strangers to enter. His cellar had three hundred reservoirs cut in the solid rock, each containing seven hundred gallons of wine at their service. One day five hundred horsemen halted at his door, who had been overtaken by a storm. He lodged and entertained them all; and, by way of dry clothes, made each man a present of a new tunic and robe.
His wit appears to have been as ready as it was pungent. He was sent ambassador on some occasion to the people of Centauripa, a place at the foot of Mount Ætna. When he rose in the assembly to address them, his poor little figure made so ridiculous a contrast with his mission, that they burst into fits of laughter. Gellias waited his time, and then requested them not to be astonished;—“for,” said he, “it is the custom with Agrigentum to suit the ambassador to his locality; to send noble-looking persons to great cities, and insignificant ones to the insignificant.”