CAIUS MARIUS

AMIDST THE RUINS OF CARTHAGE.

A SKETCH FROM HISTORY.

———

BY W. GILMORE SIMMS, AUTHOR OF “GUY RIVERS,” “THE YEMASSEE,” “RICHARD HURDIS,” &c.

———

The Dungeon of Minturnæ.

Marius. The Cimbrian.

Marius. What art thou, wretch, that in the darkness com’st,

The midnight of this prison, with sly step,

Most fit for the assassin, and bared dagger

Gleaming in thy lifted grasp!

Cimbrian. I am sent by those

Whose needs demand thy death. A single stroke

Sets us both free forever—thou from Fate,

Me from Captivity.

Marius. Slave, hast thou the heart

To strike at that of Marius!

Cimbrian. That voice! that name

Disarm me; and those fearful eyes that roll

Like red stars in the darkness, fill my soul

With awe that stays my hand. Master of the world,

The conqueror of my people hast thou been!

I know thee as a Fate! I cannot harm thee.

Marius. Go to thy senders, and from Marius, say,

That, if they bare the weapon for my breast,

Let them send hither one who has not yet

Looked in a master’s eye. ’Tis not decreed

That I shall perish yet, or by such hands

As gather in Minturnæ. Get thee hence!

——

Public Hall of Minturnæ.

Magistrates. The Cimbrian. Augur.

Cimbrian. I cannot slay this man. Give me to strike

Some baser victim, or restore to me

My chains. I cannot purchase at such price

The freedom that I covet.

Magistrate. Yet this man

Conquered thy people.

Cimbrian. He hath conquered me!

Augur. And he must conquer still!

His hour is not yet come. The Fates reserve

His weapon for their service. They have need

Of his avenging ministry, to purge

The world of its corruptions. I behold

A fearful vision of the terrible deeds

That wait upon his arm. Let him go free.

Give him due homage; clothe him with fresh robes;

Speed him in secret with a chosen bark

To other shores. So shall your city ’scape

Rome’s wrath, and his hereafter.

Magistrate. It is well:

This counsel looks like wisdom.

Augur. It is more!

So the Gods speak through their interpreter.

Magistrate. Release him straightway—send him forth in honor;

We give him freedom—let the gods give safety.

——

Island of Ænaria.

Marius. Cethegus.

Cethegus. Thou hast slept, Marius.

Marius. And thou hast watched my sleep.

Ah! truest friend and follower, not in vain;

Dismiss that cloudy trouble from thy brows,

The doubts that vex thy heart; for know that Fate

Still has me in its keeping, and decrees

Yet other deeds and conquests at my hand,

And still one glorious triumph. I shall be

Once more, in Rome, a Consul! When a child,

Sporting, on summer slopes, beneath old hills,

Seven infant eagles, from a passing cloud,

Dropt clustering in my lap. The Augurs thence

Gave me seven times the Roman Consulate.

Cethegus. Thou hast had it six.

Marius. One other yet remains.

Cethegus. Alas! the Fates but mock thee with a dream;

For know that, while thou sleptst, our treacherous bark

Loosed sail, and left the shores.

Marius. Gone!

Cethegus. Clean from sight.

Marius. Ha! ha! Now thank the gods that watch my sleep,

And save me when the might of man would fail!

Courage, my friend, that vessel speeds to wreck,

Racked on some lurking rock beneath the wave,

Or foundering in the tempest. We are safe!

Cethegus. Thou’rt confident.

Marius. As Fate and Hope can make me.

Yet look! there is an omen. We must fly

This place for other refuge. See the strife

Betwixt these deadly scorpions on the sands.

Cethegus. What read’st thou in this omen?

Marius. Sylla’s soldiers

Are fast upon our heels. Get to the shore;

Some fisher’s boat will help us from the land,

And bear us whither the directing fates

Decree for refuge—safely o’er the seas

That gulphed our treacherous vessel.

Cethegus. Be it so!

I follow thee whatever be thy fate!

Marius. Hark! dost thou hear?

Cethegus. What sound?

Marius. The tramp of horse;

And lo! the boat awaits us by the shore!

——

Marius, alone, seated among the Ruins of Carthage.

Alone, but not a captive—not o’ercome

By any fate, and reckless of its doom,

Even midst the ruins by his own arm made,

There sits the Exile, lone, but unafraid!

What mighty thoughts, that will not be repressed,

Warm his wild mood, and swell his laboring breast;

What glorious memories of the immortal strife,

Which gave him fame, and took from Carthage life;

That giant-like, sea rival of his own

Proud realm, still challenging the sway and throne;

Doomed in long conflict, through experience dread,

To bend the neck at last, to bow the head;

To feel his foot upon her lordly brow,

And yield to him who shares her ruins now.

How o’er his soul, with passion still that gushed,

The wondrous past with all its memories rushed;

These ruins made his monument. They told

Of wisest strategy, adventure bold.

Dread fields of strife—an issue doubtful long,

That tried his genius, and approved it strong;

That left him robed in conquest, and supreme,

His country’s boast, his deeds her brightest theme;

Written in brass and marble—sung in strains

That warm the blood to dances in the veins;

That make young hearts with wild ambition thrill,

And crown the spirit with achieving will;

That seem eternal in the deeds they show,

And waken echoes that survive below;

Brood o’er the mortal slumbering in the tomb,

And keep his name in song, his works in bloom,

Till envious rivals, hopeless of pursuit,

Join in the homage, who till then were mute;

Catch up the glorious anthem, and unite

To sing the bird they could not match in flight;

Content to honor where they could not shame,

And praise the worth they could not rob of fame.

How, with these memories gathering in his breast,

Of all the labors that denied him rest —

Of all the triumphs that his country bore

To heights of fame she had not won before —

Broods he, the exile from his state and home,

On what awaits thee and himself, O Rome!

Of what thy hate deserves, and his decrees,

Whom thou hast brought unwilling to his knees.

No sad submission yields he to his fate,

So long as solace comes to him from hate,

Or hope from vengeance. In his eyes, ye trace

No single look to recompense disgrace;

With no ambition checked, no passion hushed,

No pride o’erthrown, no fond delusion crushed;

With every fire alive that ever swayed,

His soul as lordly as when most obeyed,

He broods o’er wrongs, forgetful of his own,

And from his heart hears vengeance cry alone.

Fixed on the ruins round him, his dread eye

Glances, as if fastened on his enemy;

His hand is on the fragment of a shrine

That Hate may henceforth deem a thing divine:

Grasped firmly—could the fingers but declare

How dread the oath the soul was heard to swear!

The awful purpose nursed within, denies

Speech to the lips, but lightens up the eyes,

Informs each muscle with the deadliest will,

But till the murderous moment, bids “be still!”

Come read, ye ministers of Fate, the lore

That fills the dark soul of the fiend ye bore;

Reveal the secret purpose that inspires

That deadly mood, and kindles all its fires;

Scan the dread meaning in that viperous glance

Fixed on those ruins in intensest trance,

That nothing speaks to that it still surveys,

And looks within alone with meaning gaze;

Unclose that lip, that rigidly compressed,

Stops the free rush of feeling from the breast;

And on that brow, with seven deep furrows bound,

Write the full record of his thought profound.

What future scene beneath that piercing eye

Depicts the carnage and the victory;

The flashing steel—the shaft in fury sped —

The shrieking victim, and the trampled dead:

Say, what wild sounds have spelled that eager ear,

That stretches wide, the grateful strain to hear;

How many thousands perish in that cry

That fills his bloody sense with melody;

What pleading voices, stifling as they swell,

Declare the vengeance gratified too well?

What lordly neck, beneath that iron tread,

Strangled in utterance, leaves the prayer unsaid?

What horrid scene of triumph and of hate,

Do ye discover to this man of Fate,

Which, while his Fortune mocks the hope he bears,

Consoles his Past, and still his Future cheers?

He hath no speech, save in the ruins round;

But there’s a language, born without a sound,

A voice whose thunders, though unuttered, fly

From the red lightnings of the deep-set eye;

There passion speaks of hate that cannot spare,

Still tearing those who taught him how to tear;

One dream alone delighting his desire —

The dream that finds the fuel for his fire;

Let fancy shape the language for his mood,

And speak the purpose burning in his blood.

——

Marius. “If thou hadst ears, O Carthage! for the voice

That speaks among thy ruins, it would cheer

The spirit that was crushed beneath my heel,

To hear the tongue of thy destroyer swear

To live as thy avenger. I have striven

For Rome against thee, till, in frequent strife,

Thy might was overthrown—thy might as great

As Rome’s in days most palmy—save in this:

Thou hadst no soul as potent in thy service,

As I have been in hers. And thou, and all —

The Gaul, the Goth, the Cimbrian—all the tribes

That swelled the northern torrents, and brought down,

Yearly, the volumed avalanche on Rome,

Have sunk beneath my arm, until secure

She sat aloft in majesty, seven-throned,

And knew or feared no foe. This was my work —

Nor this alone; from the patrician sway,

That used her as the creature of his will,

I plucked her eagles, casting down his power

Beneath plebeian footstep. For long years

Of cruellest oppression and misrule,

I took a merited vengeance on her pride,

Debasing her great sons, that in their fall

Her people might be men. I loved her tribes,

Since they were mine. I made their homes secure;

I raised their free condition into state —

And I am here! These ruins speak for me —

An exile; scarred with honorable wounds,

At seventy years, alone and desolate.

“But the o’er-ruling Deities decree

My triumph. From thy ruins comes a voice

Full of most sweet assurance. Hark! it cries

To me as thy avenger. Thou forgiv’st

My hand the evil it has wrought on thee,

That the same hand, upon thy conqueror’s head

May work like ruin. The atoning Fates

Speak through thy desolation. They declare

That I shall tread the ungrateful city’s streets,

Armed with keen weapon and consuming fire,

And still unglutted rage. My wrath shall sow

The seeds of future ruins in her heart,

So that her fall, if far less swift than thine,

Shall be yet more complete. She shall consume

With more protracted suffering. She shall pass

Through thousand ordeals of the strife and storm,

Each bitterer than the last—each worse than thine —

A dying that shall linger with its pain

Its dread anxieties, its torturing scourge;

A period long as life, with life prolonged,

Only for dire, deserved miseries.

Her state shall fluctuate through successive years,

With now great shows of pride—with arrogance

That goes before destruction—that her fall

May more increase her shame. The future grows —

Drear characters, as written on a wall —

In fiery lines before me; and I read

The rise of thousands who shall follow me,

Each emulous of vengeance fell as mine,

By mine at first begotten. Yet why gaze

In profitless survey of the work of years,

Inevitable to the prescient soul,

And leave our own undone? I hear a voice

Reproaching me that I am slow to vengeance;

I, whom the Fates but spare a few short hours,

That I may open paths to other masters,

For whom they find the scourge. They tutor me

That mine’s a present mission; not for me

To traverse the wide future in pursuit

Of those who shall succeed me in their service,

But to speed onward in the work of terror,

So that no hungering Fate, the victim ready,

Shall be defrauded of its prey. I rise,

Obeying the deep voice that, from these ruins,

Rings on mine ear its purpose. I obey,

And bound to my performance as the lion,

Long crouching in his jungle, who at last

Sees the devoted nigh. The impatient blood

Rounds with red circle all that fills mine eye;

A crimson sea receives me, and I tread

In billows thus incarnadined from nations

That bleed through ages thus at every vein.

Be satisfied, ye Fates! Ye gods, who still

Lark homeless in these ruins that ye once

Made sacred as abodes, and deemed secure,

I take the sword of vengeance that ye proffer,

And swear myself your soldier. I will go,

And with each footstep on some mighty neck,

Shall work your full revenge, nor forfeit mine!

Dost thou not feel my presence, like a cloud,

Before my coming, Rome?^[A] Is not my spirit,

That goes abroad in earnest of my purpose,

Upon thy slumbers, City of the Tyrant,

Like the fell hag on breast of midnight sleeper,

That loads him with despair? Alone I come;

But thousands of fell ministers shall crowd

About me with their service—willing creatures

That shall assist me first to work on thee,

And last upon themselves! The daylight fades,

And night belongs to vengeance. I depart,

Carthage, to riot on thy conqueror’s heart.”

Silent once more the ruins—dark the night,

Yet vengeance speeds with unembarrassed flight;

No fears delay, no toils retard the speed

Of that fierce exile, sworn to deadliest deed;

And thou, O Queen of Empires, now secure

Of state that might be peaceful, were it pure,

Too soon thy halls shall echo with the yell

That summons human fiends to works of hell!

Ambition, long unsated, urged by Hate,

Queen of the Nations, speaks thy mournful fate;

Thy valor wasted, and thy might in vain,

Thy virtues sapped to break thy despot’s chain;

Long didst thou rule, in simple courage strong,

The guardian friend of right, the foe to wrong;

Great in thyself, and conscious of the sway

That kept meet progress with the march of day;

That from all nations plucked the achieving arts,

That make sway sov’reign in a people’s hearts;

Proud on thy heights rose forms to worship dear,

There swelled the temple’s crest, the column there,

Each with its chronicle to spell the soul,

And each most precious to the crowning whole;

A world thyself—a wondrous world—that made

The admiring nations silent in thy shade;

Genius and art commingling in thy cause,

And gods presiding o’er thy matchless laws.

But dark the hour impends—the storm is nigh,

And thy proud eagles flaunt no more the sky;

Thou hast not kept thy virtues to the last,

And all thy glories centre in thy past —

Thy safety in thy glories. From beneath

Thy altars swells the midnight cry of death;

The tocsin summons—not to brave the foe,

But to make bare thy bosom to the blow;

From thy own quiver flies the shaft of doom,

And thy own children hollow out thy tomb.

The exulting shouts that mock thee in thy shame,

Were those that led thee once to heights of fame;

The bird that swoops to riot on thy breast,

Is the same eagle that made safe thy nest.

Hark at his shrilly scream! the sleuth-hounds wake,

The bloody thirst which in thy heart they slake;

Thy proud patricians, hunted down, survey

The herds they kept most busy with the prey.

These are the flocks they fostered from their foes,

And these are first to drink the blood that flows.

Wondrous the arts of vengeance, to inspire

The maddened son to prey upon the sire!

Wondrous the skill that fierce plebeian wields

To make this last the bloodiest of his fields.

Vain all thy prayer and struggle—thou art down,

His iron footstep planted on thy crown;

But in thy fate, ’tis something for thy pride,

Thus self-destroyed, thou mighty suicide!