The Last Days of Pompeii

'Yes,' replied the young artificer, a curly-headed, handsome youth. 'Yes,' replied he, enviously; 'the women love a gladiator. If I had been a slave, I would have soon found my schoolmaster in the lanista!'

'Would you, indeed?' said Sosia, with a sneer. 'People's notions differ!'

The crowd had now arrived at the place of destination; but as the cell in which the wild beasts were confined was extremely small and narrow, tenfold more vehement than it hitherto had been was the rush of the aspirants to obtain admittance. Two of the officers of the amphitheatre, placed at the entrance, very wisely mitigated the evil by dispensing to the foremost only a limited number of tickets at a time, and admitting no new visitors till their predecessors had sated their curiosity. Sosia, who was a tolerably stout fellow and not troubled with any remarkable scruples of diffidence or good breeding, contrived to be among the first of the initiated.

Separated from his companion the artificer, Sosia found himself in a narrow cell of oppressive heat and atmosphere, and lighted by several rank and flaring torches.

The animals, usually kept in different vivaria, or dens, were now, for the greater entertainment of the visitors, placed in one, but equally indeed divided from each other by strong cages protected by iron bars.

There they were, the fell and grim wanderers of the desert, who have now become almost the principal agents of this story. The lion, who, as being the more gentle by nature than his fellow-beast, had been more incited to ferocity by hunger, stalked restlessly and fiercely to and fro his narrow confines: his eyes were lurid with rage and famine: and as, every now and then, he paused and glared around, the spectators fearfully pressed backward, and drew their breath more quickly. But the tiger lay quiet and extended at full length in his cage, and only by an occasional play of his tail, or a long impatient yawn, testified any emotion at his confinement, or at the crowd which honored him with their presence.

'I have seen no fiercer beast than yon lion even in the amphitheatre of Rome,' said a gigantic and sinewy fellow who stood at the right hand of Sosia.

'I feel humbled when I look at his limbs,' replied, at the left of Sosia, a slighter and younger figure, with his arms folded on his breast.

The slave looked first at one, and then at the other. 'Virtus in medio!—virtue is ever in the middle!' muttered he to himself; 'a goodly neighborhood for thee, Sosia—a gladiator on each side!'

'That is well said, Lydon,' returned the huger gladiator; 'I feel the same.'

'And to think,' observed Lydon, in a tone of deep feeling, to think that the noble Greek, he whom we saw but a day or two since before us, so full of youth, and health, and joyousness, is to feast yon monster!'

'Why not?' growled Niger, savagely: 'many an honest gladiator has been compelled to a like combat by the emperor—why not a wealthy murderer by the law?'

Lydon sighed, shrugged his shoulders, and remained silent. Meanwhile the common gazers listened with staring eyes and lips apart: the gladiators were objects of interest as well as the beasts—they were animals of the same species; so the crowd glanced from one to the other—the men and the brutes—whispering their comments and anticipating the morrow.

'Well!' said Lydon, turning away, 'I thank the gods that it is not the lion or the tiger I am to contend with; even you, Niger, are a gentler combatant than they.'

'But equally dangerous,' said the gladiator, with a fierce laugh; and the bystanders, admiring his vast limbs and ferocious countenance, laughed too.

'That as it may be,' answered Lydon, carelessly, as he pressed through the throng and quitted the den.

'I may as well take advantage of his shoulders,' thought the prudent Sosia, hastening to follow him: 'the crowd always give way to a gladiator, so I will keep close behind, and come in for a share of his consequence.'

The son of Medon strode quickly through the mob, many of whom recognized his features and profession.

'That is young Lydon, a brave fellow: he fights to-morrow,' said one.

'Ah! I have a bet on him,' said another; 'see how firmly he walks!'

'Good luck to thee, Lydon!' said a third.

'Lydon, you have my wishes,' half whispered a fourth, smiling (a comely woman of the middle class)—'and if you win, why, you may hear more of me.'

'A handsome man, by Venus!' cried a fifth, who was a girl scarce in her teens. 'Thank you,' returned Sosia, gravely taking the compliment to himself.

However strong the purer motives of Lydon, and certain though it be that he would never have entered so bloody a calling but from the hope of obtaining his father's freedom, he was not altogether unmoved by the notice he excited. He forgot that the voices now raised in commendation might, on the morrow, shout over his death-pangs. By nature fierce and reckless, as well as generous and warm-hearted, he was already imbued with the pride of a profession that he fancied he disdained, and affected by the influence of a companionship that in reality he loathed. He saw himself now a man of importance; his step grew yet lighter, and his mien more elate.

'Niger,' said he, turning suddenly, as he had now threaded the crowd; 'we have often quarrelled; we are not matched against each other, but one of us, at least, may reasonably expect to fall—give us thy hand.'

'Most readily,' said Sosia, extending his palm.

'Ha! what fool is this? Why, I thought Niger was at my heels!'

'I forgive the mistake,' replied Sosia, condescendingly: 'don't mention it; the error was easy—I and Niger are somewhat of the same build.'

'Ha! ha! that is excellent! Niger would have slit thy throat had he heard thee!'

'You gentlemen of the arena have a most disagreeable mode of talking,' said Sosia; 'let us change the conversation.'

'Vah! vah!' said Lydon, impatiently; 'I am in no humor to converse with thee!'

'Why, truly,' returned the slave, 'you must have serious thoughts enough to occupy your mind: to-morrow is, I think, your first essay in the arena. Well, I am sure you will die bravely!'

'May thy words fall on thine own head!' said Lydon, superstitiously, for he by no means liked the blessing of Sosia. 'Die! No—I trust my hour is not yet come.'

'He who plays at dice with death must expect the dog's throw,' replied Sosia, maliciously. 'But you are a strong fellow, and I wish you all imaginable luck; and so, vale!'

With that the slave turned on his heel, and took his way homeward.

'I trust the rogue's words are not ominous,' said Lydon, musingly. 'In my zeal for my father's liberty, and my confidence in my own thews and sinews, I have not contemplated the possibility of death. My poor father! I am thy only son!—if I were to fall…'

As the thought crossed him, the gladiator strode on with a more rapid and restless pace, when suddenly, in an opposite street, he beheld the very object of his thoughts. Leaning on his stick, his form bent by care and age, his eyes downcast, and his steps trembling, the grey-haired Medon slowly approached towards the gladiator. Lydon paused a moment: he divined at once the cause that brought forth the old man at that late hour.

'Be sure, it is I whom he seeks,' thought he; 'he is horror struck at the condemnation of Olinthus—he more than ever esteems the arena criminal and hateful—he comes again to dissuade me from the contest. I must shun him—I cannot brook his prayers—his tears.'

These thoughts, so long to recite, flashed across the young man like lightning. He turned abruptly and fled swiftly in an opposite direction. He paused not till, almost spent and breathless, he found himself on the summit of a small acclivity which overlooked the most gay and splendid part of that miniature city; and as there he paused, and gazed along the tranquil streets glittering in the rays of the moon (which had just arisen, and brought partially and picturesquely into light the crowd around the amphitheatre at a distance, murmuring, and swaying to and fro), the influence of the scene affected him, rude and unimaginative though his nature. He sat himself down to rest upon the steps of a deserted portico, and felt the calm of the hour quiet and restore him. Opposite and near at hand, the lights gleamed from a palace in which the master now held his revels. The doors were open for coolness, and the gladiator beheld the numerous and festive group gathered round the tables in the atrium; while behind them, closing the long vista of the illumined rooms beyond, the spray of the distant fountain sparkled in the moonbeams. There, the garlands wreathed around the columns of the hall—there, gleamed still and frequent the marble statue—there, amidst peals of jocund laughter, rose the music and the lay.

EPICUREAN SONG       Away with your stories of Hades,          Which the Flamen has forged to affright us—       We laugh at your three Maiden Ladies,          Your Fates—and your sullen Cocytus.       Poor Jove has a troublesome life, sir,          Could we credit your tales of his portals—       In shutting his ears on his wife, sir,          And opening his eyes upon mortals.       Oh, blest be the bright Epicurus!          Who taught us to laugh at such fables;        On Hades they wanted to moor us,          And his hand cut the terrible cables.       If, then, there's a Jove or a Juno,          They vex not their heads about us, man;        Besides, if they did, I and you know          'Tis the life of a god to live thus, man!       What! think you the gods place their bliss—eh?—         In playing the spy on a sinner?        In counting the girls that we kiss, eh?          Or the cups that we empty at dinner?       Content with the soft lips that love us,          This music, this wine, and this mirth, boys,        We care not for gods up above us—         We know there's no god for this earth, boys!

While Lydon's piety (which accommodating as it might be, was in no slight degree disturbed by these verses, which embodied the fashionable philosophy of the day) slowly recovered itself from the shock it had received, a small party of men, in plain garments and of the middle class, passed by his resting-place. They were in earnest conversation, and did not seem to notice or heed the gladiator as they moved on.

'O horror on horrors!' said one; 'Olinthus is snatched from us! our right arm is lopped away! When will Christ descend to protect his own?'

'Can human atrocity go farther said another: 'to sentence an innocent man to the same arena as a murderer! But let us not despair; the thunder of Sinai may yet be heard, and the Lord preserve his saint. "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God."'

At that moment out broke again, from the illumined palace, the burden of the reveller's song:—

    We care not for gods up above us—       We know there's no god for this earth, boys!

Ere the words died away, the Nazarenes, moved by sudden indignation, caught up the echo, and, in the words of one of their favorite hymns, shouted aloud:—

THE WARNING HYMN OF THE NAZARENES       Around—about—for ever near thee,        God—OUR GOD—shall mark and hear thee!        On his car of storm He sweeps!        Bow, ye heavens, and shrink, ye deeps!        Woe to the proud ones who defy Him!—       Woe to the dreamers who deny Him!            Woe to the wicked, woe!          The proud stars shall fail—         The sun shall grow pale—       The heavens shrivel up like a scroll—         Hell's ocean shall bare          Its depths of despair,        Each wave an eternal soul!          For the only thing, then,          That shall not live again            Is the corpse of the giant TIME.           Hark, the trumpet of thunder!           Lo, earth rent asunder!         And, forth, on His Angel-throne,           He comes through the gloom,           The Judge of the Tomb,         To summon and save His own!              Oh, joy to Care, and woe to Crime,              He comes to save His own!        Woe to the proud ones who defy Him!        Woe to the dreamers who deny Him!              Woe to the wicked, woe!

A sudden silence from the startled hall of revel succeeded these ominous words: the Christians swept on, and were soon hidden from the sight of the gladiator. Awed, he scarce knew why, by the mystic denunciations of the Christians, Lydon, after a short pause, now rose to pursue his way homeward.

Before him, how serenely slept the starlight on that lovely city! how breathlessly its pillared streets reposed in their security!—how softly rippled the dark-green waves beyond!—how cloudless spread, aloft and blue, the dreaming Campanian skies! Yet this was the last night for the gay Pompeii! the colony of the hoar Chaldean! the fabled city of Hercules! the delight of the voluptuous Roman! Age after age had rolled, indestructive, unheeded, over its head; and now the last ray quivered on the dial-plate of its doom! The gladiator heard some light steps behind—a group of females were wending homeward from their visit to the amphitheatre. As he turned, his eye was arrested by a strange and sudden apparition. From the summit of Vesuvius, darkly visible at the distance, there shot a pale, meteoric, livid light—it trembled an instant and was gone. And at the same moment that his eye caught it, the voice of one of the youngest of the women broke out hilariously and shrill:—

TRAMP! TRAMP! HOW GAILY THEY GO!HO, HO! FOR THE MORROW'S MERRY SHOW!

BOOK THE FIFTH

Chapter I

THE DREAM OF ARBACES. A VISITOR AND A WARNING TO THE EGYPTIAN. THE awful night preceding the fierce joy of the amphitheatre rolled drearily away, and greyly broke forth the dawn of THE LAST DAY OF POMPEII! The air was uncommonly calm and sultry—a thin and dull mist gathered over the valleys and hollows of the broad Campanian fields. But yet it was remarked in surprise by the early fishermen, that, despite the exceeding stillness of the atmosphere, the waves of the sea were agitated, and seemed, as it were, to run disturbedly back from the shore; while along the blue and stately Sarnus, whose ancient breadth of channel the traveler now vainly seeks to discover, there crept a hoarse and sullen murmur, as it glided by the laughing plains and the gaudy villas of the wealthy citizens. Clear above the low mist rose the time-worn towers of the immemorial town, the red-tiled roofs of the bright streets, the solemn columns of many temples, and the statue-crowned portals of the Forum and the Arch of Triumph. Far in the distance, the outline of the circling hills soared above the vapors, and mingled with the changeful hues of the morning sky. The cloud that had so long rested over the crest of Vesuvius had suddenly vanished, and its rugged and haughty brow looked without a frown over the beautiful scenes below.

Despite the earliness of the hour, the gates of the city were already opened. Horsemen upon horsemen, vehicle after vehicle, poured rapidly in; and the voices of numerous pedestrian groups, clad in holiday attire, rose high in joyous and excited merriment; the streets were crowded with citizens and strangers from the populous neighborhood of Pompeii; and noisily—fast—confusedly swept the many streams of life towards the fatal show.

Despite the vast size of the amphitheatre, seemingly so disproportioned to the extent of the city, and formed to include nearly the whole population of Pompeii itself, so great, on extraordinary occasions, was the concourse of strangers from all parts of Campania, that the space before it was usually crowded for several hours previous to the commencement of the sports, by such persons as were not entitled by their rank to appointed and special seats. And the intense curiosity which the trial and sentence of two criminals so remarkable had occasioned, increased the crowd on this day to an extent wholly unprecedented.

While the common people, with the lively vehemence of their Campanian blood, were thus pushing, scrambling, hurrying on—yet, amidst all their eagerness, preserving, as is now the wont with Italians in such meetings, a wonderful order and unquarrelsome good humor, a strange visitor to Arbaces was threading her way to his sequestered mansion. At the sight of her quaint and primaeval garb—of her wild gait and gestures—the passengers she encountered touched each other and smiled; but as they caught a glimpse of her countenance, the mirth was hushed at once, for the face was as the face of the dead; and, what with the ghastly features and obsolete robes of the stranger, it seemed as if one long entombed had risen once more amongst the living. In silence and awe each group gave way as she passed along, and she soon gained the broad porch of the Egyptian's palace.

The black porter, like the rest of the world, astir at an unusual hour, started as he opened the door to her summons.

The sleep of the Egyptian had been usually profound during the night; but, as the dawn approached, it was disturbed by strange and unquiet dreams, which impressed him the more as they were colored by the peculiar philosophy he embraced.

He thought that he was transported to the bowels of the earth, and that he stood alone in a mighty cavern supported by enormous columns of rough and primaeval rock, lost, as they ascended, in the vastness of a shadow athwart whose eternal darkness no beam of day had ever glanced. And in the space between these columns were huge wheels, that whirled round and round unceasingly, and with a rushing and roaring noise. Only to the right and left extremities of the cavern, the space between the pillars was left bare, and the apertures stretched away into galleries—not wholly dark, but dimly lighted by wandering and erratic fires, that, meteor-like, now crept (as the snake creeps) along the rugged and dank soil; and now leaped fiercely to and fro, darting across the vast gloom in wild gambols—suddenly disappearing, and as suddenly bursting into tenfold brilliancy and power. And while he gazed wonderingly upon the gallery to the left, thin, mist-like, aerial shapes passed slowly up; and when they had gained the hall they seemed to rise aloft, and to vanish, as the smoke vanishes, in the measureless ascent.

He turned in fear towards the opposite extremity—and behold! there came swiftly, from the gloom above, similar shadows, which swept hurriedly along the gallery to the right, as if borne involuntarily adown the sides of some invisible stream; and the faces of these spectres were more distinct than those that emerged from the opposite passage; and on some was joy, and on others sorrow—some were vivid with expectation and hope, some unutterably dejected by awe and horror. And so they passed, swift and constantly on, till the eyes of the gazer grew dizzy and blinded with the whirl of an ever-varying succession of things impelled by a power apparently not their own.

Arbaces turned away, and, in the recess of the hall, he saw the mighty form of a giantess seated upon a pile of skulls, and her hands were busy upon a pale and shadowy woof; and he saw that the woof communicated with the numberless wheels, as if it guided the machinery of their movements. He thought his feet, by some secret agency, were impelled towards the female, and that he was borne onwards till he stood before her, face to face. The countenance of the giantess was solemn and hushed, and beautifully serene. It was as the face of some colossal sculpture of his own ancestral sphinx. No passion—no human emotion, disturbed its brooding and unwrinkled brow: there was neither sadness, nor joy, nor memory, nor hope: it was free from all with which the wild human heart can sympathize. The mystery of mysteries rested on its beauty—it awed, but terrified not: it was the Incarnation of the sublime. And Arbaces felt the voice leave his lips, without an impulse of his own; and the voice asked:

'Who art thou, and what is thy task?'

'I am That which thou hast acknowledged,' answered, without desisting from its work, the mighty phantom. 'My name is NATURE! These are the wheels of the world, and my hand guides them for the life of all things.'

'And what,' said the voice of Arbaces, 'are these galleries, that strangely and fitfully illumined, stretch on either hand into the abyss of gloom?'

'That,' answered the giant-mother, 'which thou beholdest to the left, is the gallery of the Unborn. The shadows that flit onward and upward into the world, are the souls that pass from the long eternity of being to their destined pilgrimage on earth. That which thou beholdest to thy right, wherein the shadows descending from above sweep on, equally unknown and dim, is the gallery of the Dead!'

'And wherefore, said the voice of Arbaces, 'yon wandering lights, that so wildly break the darkness; but only break, not reveal?'

'Dark fool of the human sciences! dreamer of the stars, and would-be decipherer of the heart and origin of things! those lights are but the glimmerings of such knowledge as is vouchsafed to Nature to work her way, to trace enough of the past and future to give providence to her designs. Judge, then, puppet as thou art, what lights are reserved for thee!'

Arbaces felt himself tremble as he asked again, 'Wherefore am I here?'

'It is the forecast of thy soul—the prescience of thy rushing doom—the shadow of thy fate lengthening into eternity as declines from earth.'

Ere he could answer, Arbaces felt a rushing WIND sweep down the cavern, as the winds of a giant god. Borne aloft from the ground, and whirled on high as a leaf in the storms of autumn, he beheld himself in the midst of the Spectres of the Dead, and hurrying with them along the length of gloom. As in vain and impotent despair he struggled against the impelling power, he thought the WIND grew into something like a shape—a spectral outline of the wings and talons of an eagle, with limbs floating far and indistinctly along the air, and eyes that, alone clearly and vividly seen, glared stonily and remorselessly on his own.

'What art thou?' again said the voice of the Egyptian.

'I am That which thou hast acknowledged'; and the spectre laughed aloud—'and my name is NECESSITY.'

'To what dost thou bear me?'

'To the Unknown.'

'To happiness or to woe?'

'As thou hast sown, so shalt thou reap.'

'Dread thing, not so! If thou art the Ruler of Life, thine are my misdeeds, not mine.'

'I am but the breath of God!' answered the mighty WIND.

'Then is my wisdom vain!' groaned the dreamer.

'The husbandman accuses not fate, when, having sown thistles, he reaps not corn. Thou hast sown crime, accuse not fate if thou reapest not the harvest of virtue.'

The scene suddenly changed. Arbaces was in a place of human bones; and lo! in the midst of them was a skull, and the skull, still retaining its fleshless hollows, assumed slowly, and in the mysterious confusion of a dream, the face of Apaecides; and forth from the grinning jaws there crept a small worm, and it crawled to the feet of Arbaces. He attempted to stamp on it and crush it; but it became longer and larger with that attempt. It swelled and bloated till it grew into a vast serpent: it coiled itself round the limbs of Arbaces; it crunched his bones; it raised its glaring eyes and poisonous jaws to his face. He writhed in vain; he withered—he gasped—beneath the influence of the blighting breath—he felt himself blasted into death. And then a voice came from the reptile, which still bore the face of Apaecides and rang in his reeling ear:

'THY VICTIM IS THY JUDGE! THE WORM THOU WOULDST CRUSH BECOMES THE SERPENT THAT DEVOURS THEE!'

With a shriek of wrath, and woe, and despairing resistance, Arbaces awoke—his hair on end—his brow bathed in dew—his eyes glazed and staring—his mighty frame quivering as an infant's, beneath the agony of that dream. He awoke—he collected himself—he blessed the gods whom he disbelieved, that he was in a dream—he turned his eyes from side to side—he saw the dawning light break through his small but lofty window—he was in the Precincts of Day—he rejoiced—he smiled; his eyes fell, and opposite to him he beheld the ghastly features, the lifeless eye, the livid lip—of the hag of Vesuvius!

'Ha!' he cried, placing his hands before his eyes, as to shut out the grisly vision, 'do I dream still?—Am I with the dead?'

'Mighty Hermes—no! Thou art with one death-like, but not dead. Recognize thy friend and slave.'

There was a long silence. Slowly the shudders that passed over the limbs of the Egyptian chased each other away, faintlier and faintlier dying till he was himself again.