“There we talked of our approaching nuptials. Love ripened into rapture. I kissed her lips, and chid the slow-paced hours that kept us from our bliss. The marriage day was fixed. With curtains richly wrought, and coverings of finest linen, spun by her own hands and by her maidens’, my mother had adorned the couch.
“To that sweet home where I had hoped through happy years to cherish her a wife, I bore her mangled corpse, gashed by her father’s hand. Her blood bedewed the bed decked with those nuptial gifts.
“To you, mates of my boyhood, brethren in battle tried, I stretch my hands; not in the petty interest of private wrong, but in the sacred right of Roman liberty, of virgin purity, sweet household joys, and in the name of those whose fair forms mingle with your dreams, in the fierce shock of battle nerve your arms, the fragrance of whose parting kiss yet lingers on your lips.
“The blood of age creeps slowly, and in its timid counsels interest and fear bear sway. Shall youthful swords lie rusting in the scabbards, and young men count the odds, when slaughtered beauty from its bloody grave clamors for vengeance?
“Behold this mantle, drenched in the blood of her whose fingers wove it as a gift of love,—each precious drop a tongue to shame your lingering courage. Led by the father with his bloody knife, your comrades thunder at the gates of Rome, while you, unworthy sons of sires who banished Tarquin and expelled the kings, sit here deliberating whether the virgin’s sanctity, the wife’s fair virtue, and all that men and gods hold sacred, are worth the striking for. Consume your youth in hunger, cold, and vigils, with spoils of conquered realms to pamper tyrants, till, waxing wanton on your bounty, they desolate your homes; and ye, hedged in by mercenary spears, revile your misery.”
His words were drowned in the clash of steel and the cries of multitudes calling to arms. Tearing the bloody garments in pieces, he flung them among the thronging battalions. “Be these your eagles. Bind them to your helmets; and, in the spirit they inspire, strike down the oppressor, that sweet Virginia’s unquiet ghost no more may wander shrieking for vengeance on the midnight air, but to the silent shades appeased return.”
DECIUS
Patriotism in the Roman breast was something more than principle; it was a passion. The sacred fire, so far from being diminished by age, waxed purer through the decay of the flesh, and, partaking of the nature of a divine afflatus, expired only with life itself. After all reasonable allowances made for the enchantment which distance flings around the great of past ages, the instances of devotion to country, scattered here and there through the pages of their history, fill us with amazement. To extend its empire, contribute to its glory, repel its enemies, no sacrifice was deemed too great. In common with other ancient nations they believed that the blood of a human victim, smoking upon the altar, was a sacrifice most acceptable to the gods, and in great emergencies an argument of wondrous power. It was therefore resorted to only when the fate of armies and nations hung trembling in the balance.