SECOND SIEGE, A.C. 46.
Cæsar, conqueror at Thapsus, pursued Scipio into Utica, and invested it. This city would not have fallen an easy conquest, if Cato, who had shut himself up in it, together with most of the senators opposed to tyranny, had found in all hearts a courage and a patriotism equal to his own. In vain this noble Roman endeavoured to awaken in those around him the sublime sentiments which had animated the early citizens of Rome; in vain he went through the streets to calm the alarms of the people,—the dread of the conqueror closed all ears against his exhortations: love of country had given place to love of life. Despairing then of defending Rome by defending Utica, he gave his whole care to the preservation of the senators, the companions of his misfortunes, whom the inhabitants wished to give up to Cæsar. When he had taken all the necessary precautions, he prepared to terminate his days in a manner worthy of himself. Some of his friends exhorted him to have recourse to the clemency of the dictator. “He who is conquered,” said he, “may servilely flatter the hand which has subdued him. Cato is invincible; he acknowledges neither master nor conqueror.” He then assembled his friends, and, after a long conversation upon the state of affairs, he strictly forbade his son ever to take any part in the government. “You cannot do so,” said he, “in a manner worthy of the name you bear; and to do it in any other way, would be to cover yourself with eternal ignominy.” He then took a bath, and whilst in it, remembered Statilius, his friend, who had refused to escape with the other senators. He had charged the philosopher Apollonius to persuade him to save himself. “Have you succeeded with Statilius,” said he,—“can he have gone without bidding me farewell?” “He! no,” replied the philosopher; “he is intractable: he declares he will positively remain here, and imitate you in everything.” “It will soon,” replied Cato, with a smile, “be seen how that will be.” After his bath, he gave a magnificent banquet to all his friends and the magistrates of Utica. They sat long at table, and the conversation was animated, lively, and learned, chiefly turning upon points of moral philosophy. Demetrius, a Peripatetic philosopher, undertook to refute, after the principles of his sect, the two Stoic paradoxes: “The wise alone are free; all the vicious are slaves.” But Cato replied to him with a fire, a vehemence, and in a tone of voice which betrayed his intentions, and changed the suspicions his friends had entertained into certainty. All at once, a dismal silence prevailed; sadness was painted in every countenance, and no one durst venture to raise his tear-dewed eyes towards Cato. This tender friend perceived the effect his rigid philosophy had produced; he changed the subject, and, to drive away melancholy ideas, he spoke of those who had just left them, showing the anxious inquietude he experienced respecting them. After the repast, he walked about for some time, according to his usual custom, and then retired to his apartment. There he spoke more affectionately than he had before done, to his son and his friends, which revived and strengthened the idea they had conceived of his determination. When he went into his inner chamber, he threw himself upon the bed, and meditated for a long time upon Plato’s dialogue on the immortality of the soul. He had already read a considerable part of it, when, turning his eyes upon his bolster, he perceived that his sword was not in its customary place; his son had had it removed whilst they were at supper. Cato called to a slave, and asked him what had become of his sword. The slave made no answer, and his master resumed his reading. A few minutes after; he made the same question, without any eagerness or warmth, but like a man who has no particular desire. At last, when he had finished his reading, seeing that nobody seemed disposed to obey him, he called all his slaves, one after the other, and in the tone of a master, said that he insisted upon having his sword; he even went so far as to give one of them so violent a blow, that he made his hand bloody. “What!” cried he, indignantly, “what! are my son and my people conspiring to deliver me up to my enemy, without arms and without defence?” At this moment, his son, coming into the apartment with his friends, burst into tears. He threw himself at his feet, he embraced his knees, and conjured him to depart from his purpose. Cato, angry at seeing his son in such an attitude of supplication, and darting at him glances denoting displeasure,—“Since when,” cried he, “am I fallen into imbecility, to make it necessary for my son to be my curator? I am treated like an insane man; I am not allowed to dispose of my own person; I am to be disarmed too! Brave and generous son, why do you not chain up your father till Cæsar arrives, so that that enemy of his country may find him destitute of defence? Do I stand in need of a sword, if I wished to deprive myself of life? Could I not hold my breath? could I not dash my head against the wall? If a man really wish for death, there are a thousand ways of obtaining it.” A young slave then brought him back his sword. Cato drew it, examined it, and finding that the point was quite straight and sharp, he exclaimed,—“Now, then, I am my own master.” He laid down his sword, took up his book, and read it through again from beginning to end; he then fell into so profound a sleep, that the anxious friends who listened at the door heard him snore; but the fatal moment approached. Cato called for his freed-man, and asked him if all was quiet; and when he was assured that it was, he threw himself upon the bed as if to take his repose for the night; but the moment he was left alone, he plunged the sword into his body a little below the breast. The blow did not kill him at once; he struggled a little, and fell off the bed on to the ground. At the noise of his fall, his people rushed in, and, as he still breathed, his surgeon bound up the wound. But the instant he recovered his senses, he tore away the bandages, and with them dragged out his bowels, and expired. “Oh, Cato!” cried Cæsar, when he heard of his noble end, “I envy thee the glory of thy death, since thou hast envied me that of sparing thy life.” And he entered triumphantly into Utica.
Without entering into the question of suicide in general, or that which would lead to a much longer digression than we can afford,—the strange mania for self-destruction which possessed the Romans of this age,—we cannot help observing that this celebrated death of Cato reads more like a dramatic scene than a reality. Why, if his son and his friends had been in earnest, when they knew of his intention, they ought to have bound him, hand and foot, and never have left him alone a minute. The man’s mind was weakened with trouble, and he ought to have been treated like a maniac. Such is the modern, or common sense view of the case; but the noblest of the Romans thought far otherwise. Stoicism, the favourite philosophy of the day, taught them to despise life without honour and freedom; and there must have been something exalted in this creed, for, whilst we constantly find great public men, for public reasons, laying violent hands upon themselves, we do not learn that the practice extended to persons affected by disappointed passions, or suffering under private calamities. We called it a mania—when we glance at this one point of history, it can be called nothing else: Cato, Brutus, Cassius, Antony, Cleopatra, Porcia, all playing in one short scene of the great drama; all contemporaries, and acted upon, in some way, by each other, all destroyed themselves, and all without a common-sense reason for doing so.
ABYDOS.
A.C. 201.
We now come to a siege which, from being unconnected with any rise or fall of empires, or being made or resisted by any extraordinary personages, may be passed by without particular notice by many readers of history; and yet what horrors are crowded into this short scene; what a picture it presents for human nature to shudder at!
Philip, king of Macedon, father of Perseus, who proved last monarch of that country, was at war with the Rhodians. The inhabitants of Abydos made common cause with that commercial people, who often came to visit the shores of the Dardanelles. Philip was successful in his passage through Thrace and the Chersonesus, where many cities surrendered to his arms, but Abydos shut its gates against him, and prepared for a bold resistance. We need not, in our time, go into any description of the situation of this city: the East is now more familiar to the inhabitants of central England than Cornwall or the isles of Scotland. But Abydos was of more importance in the days of Philip than now; the Dardanelles may still be of consequence as keys to the straits, but this was then a wealthy commercial city and entrepôt. Nothing of what is usually practised in such warlike proceedings was omitted in this siege. No place was ever defended with more bravery; but this bravery, in the end, degenerated into brutality and fury. Confiding in their own strength, the Abydenians repulsed the first attacks of the Macedonians with the greatest vigour. On the side next the sea, the machines no sooner came forward than they were immediately either dismounted by the balistæ or consumed by fire. Even the ships on which they were mounted were in danger, and were saved with difficulty. On the land side they also defended themselves for some time with great courage, and did not despair even of defeating the enemy. But, finding that the outer wall was sapped, and that the Macedonians were carrying their mines under the inner one, they sent deputies to Philip, offering to surrender upon the following terms:—That such forces as had been sent to them by the Rhodians and King Attalus should return to their respective sovereigns, under his safe conduct; and that all free citizens should retire whithersoever they pleased, with the clothes they had then on. Philip answered coolly, that the Abydenians had only to choose whether they would surrender at discretion, or continue to defend themselves bravely. This report being made by the deputies, the besieged, in transports of despair, assembled to debate what was best to be done. They came to the following resolutions:—First, that the slaves should be all set free, to animate them to defend the city; secondly, that all the women should be shut up in the Temple of Diana, and all the children, with their nurses, in the Gymnasium; that they should bring into the great square all the gold and silver in the city, and carry all the rest of the valuable effects to the vessels of the Rhodians and the Cyzicenians. These resolutions having passed unanimously, another assembly was called, in which they chose fifty of the wisest and most ancient of the citizens, but who at the same time had vigour enough left to execute what might be determined on; and they were made to take an oath, in presence of all the inhabitants, that the instant they saw the enemy master of the inner wall, they would kill the women and children, set fire to the galleys laden with their effects, and throw into the sea all their gold and silver, which they had heaped together: then, sending for their priests, they took an oath either to conquer or die, sword in hand; and, after having sacrificed the victims, they obliged the priests and priestesses to pronounce before the altar the greatest curses on those who should break their oath. This being done, they left off countermining, and resolved, the instant the wall should fall, to fly to the breach, and to fight till the last. Accordingly, the inward wall tumbling down, the besieged, true to the oath they had taken, fought in the breach with such unparalleled bravery, that, though Philip had perpetually sustained with fresh soldiers those who had mounted to the assault, yet, when night separated the combatants, he was still doubtful with regard to the success of the siege. Such Abydenians as marched first to the breach, over heaps of slain, fought with fury, and not only made use of their swords and javelins, but after their arms were broken to pieces, or forced out of their hands, they rushed headlong upon the Macedonians, knocked some down, and broke the long spears of others, and with the pieces struck their faces and such parts of their bodies as were uncovered, till they made them absolutely despair of the event. When night put an end to the slaughter, the breach was quite covered with the dead bodies of the Abydenians; and those who had escaped were so overwhelmed with fatigue, and had received so many wounds, that they could hardly support themselves. Things being come to this dreadful extremity, two of the principal citizens, being unable to bring themselves to execute the awful task they had undertaken, and which now came before them as a horrid reality, agreed that, to save their wives and children, they should send to Philip by daybreak all their priests and priestesses, clothed in their pontifical habits, to implore his mercy, and open the gates to him. Accordingly, next morning, the city was surrendered to Philip, whilst the greatest part of the Abydenians who survived vented millions of imprecations against their two fellow-citizens, but more particularly against the priests and priestesses for delivering up to the enemy those whom themselves had devoted to death with the most solemn oaths. Philip marched into the city, and seized, without opposition, all the rich effects which the Abydenians had collected together. But now he beheld a spectacle which might have terrified even an ambitious monarch or a conqueror. Among these ill-fated citizens, whom despair had made furious and distracted, some were smothering their wives and children, and others stabbing them with their own hands; some were running after them to strangle them, others were plunging them into wells, whilst again others were precipitating them from the tops of houses; in a word, death appeared in all its variety of terrors. Philip, penetrated with horror and grief at this spectacle, stopped the soldiers, who were eager to plunder, and published the strange declaration that he would allow three days to all who were resolved to lay violent hands on themselves. He was in hopes that in that interval they would change their determination: but their resolution was fixed. They thought it would be degenerating from those who had lost their lives in defending their country, if they should survive them. The individuals of every family killed one another, and none escaped this murderous sacrifice but a few whose hands were tied, or were otherwise kept, by force, from destroying themselves. And Philip, during the three days, satisfied his ideas of humanity by refraining from plundering the city he saw burning, and by beholding a people destroy each other, whom he might have saved with a word!