Calpurnia

“ Pp. 76–77. Let it be noted that Caesar is addressing Calpurnia in the presence of the Priest, and it would ill become the conqueror of the world to show fear or vacillation before them. He is discussing his wife’s dream, yet in spite of his expressed disbelief in omens, it was he who ordered the fateful sacrifice, which, as the First Messenger announces after the catastrophe, he himself inspected. Evidently he was in doubt even then, but his vanity and the urging of the conspirators lured him to his doom. Compare his boasts of fearlessness with Shakespeare:
“Would he were fatter! ”

“ The Chorus declaims the fickleness of mankind, whereupon Brutus and Portia reappear. The former, believing that his wife has wounded herself in some domestic labor, reproves her for turning her hands to such work. She tells him that she has wounded herself to prove that she could commit suicide were her death necessary. She fears that her husband may perish in his attempt against Caesar and has resolved to restrain him. This dialogue, filled with mutual protestations of love and constancy, is terminated by the appearance of Calpurnia, whose perturbed countenance prompts them to overhear her. ”

“ Transformed with their fear, who swore they saw
Men all in fire walk up and down the streets.
And yesterday the bird of night did sit
Even at noon-day upon the Market-place,
Hooting and shrieking. When these prodigies
Do so conjointly meet, let not men say,
‘These are their reasons: they are natural:’
For, I believe, they are portentous things
Unto the climate that they point upon.” [31] In addition to the supernatural elements recounted in Casca’s speech, Calpurnia trying to dissuade Caesar, says:
“... ”

“ For though our consul possessed many excellent qualities of mind and body, they were all nullified by avarice. He had great endurance, a keen intellect, no little foresight, considerable military experience, and a stout heart in the face of dangers and plots. Now the legions were transported across Italy to Rhegium, from there to Sicily, from Sicily to Africa. Then Calpurnius, having provided himself with supplies, began by making a vigorous attack on the Numidians, taking many prisoners and storming several of their towns. ”

“ Calpurnius (in a whisper) , I'll be your Lydia. Oh, to drive with you on such a night as this, all crowned with roses, from Rome to Baiae on the sea.
Calpurnius: These are dreams.
Gleva (passionately) : Why? Why? Are these women in Rome more beautiful than I? Look! (She rises.) I can dress, too, as the Roman women do. I wear the combs you gave me. I don't think they are pretty, but I wear them. See, I wear, too, the sandals, the bracelets.
Calpurnius: No. There are no women in Rome more beautiful than you--but--but----
Gleva (all her passion dying away) : You would be ashamed of me. ”

“ CALPURNIUS, TITUS, Roman bucolic poet, surnamed Siculus from his birthplace or from his imitation of the style of the Sicilian Theocritus, most probably flourished during the reign of Nero. Eleven eclogues have been handed down to us under his name, of which the last four, from metrical considerations and express MS. testimony, are now generally attributed to Nemesianus (q.v.) , who lived in the time of the emperor Carus and his sons (latter half of the 3rd century A.D.) . Hardly anything is known of the life of Calpurnius ”

“ Calpurnius is “a fair scholar, and an apt courtier, and not devoid of real poetical feeling. The bastard style of pastoral cultivated by him, in which the description of nature is made the writer’s pretext, while ingenious flattery is his real purpose, nevertheless excludes genuine pleasure, and consequently genuine poetical achievement. ”

“ But in the mean time, for the sake of security, Sextus the quæstor is sent by the consul into a town belonging to Jugurtha, called Vacca, the pretext of which movement was the receipt of corn, which Calpurnius had openly enjoined upon the lieutenants, as now from a delay in the surrender a truce was observed. Therefore the king as he had appointed came to the camp, and having spoken a few words to the assembled council concerning the odium attached to his actions, and that he might be admitted to a surrender, he transacts the rest of the matters in private with Bestia and Scaurus ”

“ And quickly they sighted and sailed past his shrine and the broad banks of the river and the plain, and deep-flowing Calpe, and all the windless night and the day they bent to their tireless oars. And even as ploughing oxen toil as they cleave the moist earth, and sweat streams in abundance from flank and neck; and from beneath the yoke their eyes roll askance, while the breath ever rushes from their mouths in hot gasps; and all day long they toil, planting their hoofs deep in the ground; like them the heroes kept dragging their oars through the sea. ”

“ He was near Zabdas when he fell, and revenged his death by hewing down the soldier who had pierced him with his lance.
"'Zabdas,' said Calpurnius, when in the evening we recalled the sad events of the day, 'was not instantly killed by the thrust of the spear, but falling backward from his horse, found strength and life enough remaining to raise himself upon his knee, and cheer me on, as I flew to revenge his death upon the retreating Roman. As I returned to him, having completed my task, he had sunk upon the ground, but was still living, and his eye bright with its wonted fire. ”

“ Caliphronas was an amphibious creature, and lived quite as much in the water as on the shore. Whenever he had the time to spare, he went off to Brasdimir for a dip in the sea, and would plunge and wallow in the water like a dolphin. Fortunately that summer at Roylands was unusually hot, and what with the cloudless skies, the burning sun, and the delicate emerald tints of foliage, grass, and herb, Caliphronas might well have imagined that he was still in his beloved Greece, bathing off some pebbly beach of the Ægean. ”

“ In this way was Calcutta founded, and such was the manner of the coming of Job Charnock to his last port—the spot where his bones were to lie beneath a stately mausoleum through the centuries, while the settlement he founded amid every circumstance of discouragement and discomfort grew and prospered till it became the capital city of the British Empire in India, such an Empire as the wildest dreams of the Great Mogul never compassed. ”

“ I have bartered my nobility—for which I feel neither shame nor sorrow—for the sake of others." It is difficult to reconcile this statement with the assurance given in the "Confession" that his father was a humble deacon. "It is inconceivable," as Father Bullen Morris argues, "that the Saint, sprung from a noble family, should base his claim to nobility on the fact that his father, Calphurnius, was a deacon. On the other hand, the theory that Calphurnius was a Roman officer fits in with both statements of the Saint" ("St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland," p. 285, Appendix) . ”

“ Even now, at night, the cries of packs of jackals come swelling and fading, and swelling again in wild, sad cadences upon the ear at the dead of night, reminding you that Calcutta is but a strip of human habitations redeemed from the waste lands that lie just behind its stately palaces. ”

“ Through his influence Calpurnius apparently secured a post at Rome. The time at which Calpurnius lived has been much discussed, but all the indications seem to point to the time of Nero. The emperor is described as a handsome youth, like Mars and Apollo, whose accession marks the beginning of a new golden age, prognosticated by the appearance of a comet, doubtless the same that appeared some time before the death of Claudius; he exhibits splendid games in the amphitheatre (probably the wooden amphitheatre erected by Nero in 57) ”

“ What we do and are, is not for ourselves, but for our country. Friends, the hour of redemption draweth nigh!'"
Soon after Calpurnius's return—who has imbibed a hatred of Rome during his long captivity, and who espouses Zenobia's cause with great zeal—the Roman ambassadors leave Palmyra, bearing with them, from the Queen to Aurelian, a virtual declaration of war. The busy note of preparation for contest resounds through the city, the whole aspect of which is changed. Even Fausta makes ready for battle, and dons her armor. ”

“ Calcutta has a saving grace, known to her Anglo-Indians as the Casuarina-avenue. You can lose your soul in the infinite filmy shadows of the marching trees. Even the Indian sunlight, filtering through their soft dead green, becomes a delicate thing. The Brownes saw this ranged before them, misty and wonderful in the evening, hiding the last of the glow in its plumy nearer branches, and piling up soft clouds of dusk as it stretched further away. ”

“ These remains are thought to be those of the great soondrie forest which once covered the site of Calcutta, when the land had newly emerged from the waters of the Gangetic Delta, which, shifting eastward, have left the once impassable tract to man, and have wrested from him what was a fertile and populated country, now a tangle of waterways among forest-hidden islands, which form the Soonderbunds. ”

“ The angasto has hair or wool so long that its limbs are almost hidden, just before shearing-time, in the tresses that hang from the body half way to the ground. The calperze, a bird no larger than a Norfolk turkey, has the hinder part developed to an enormous size, so that the graceful peacock-like neck and shoulders appear as if lost in the huge proportions of the body, and the little wings are totally unfit to raise it in the air; while it lays almost daily eggs as large as those of the ostrich and of peculiar richness and flavour. ”

“ The light struck on the stuccoed upper verandahs of the houses in Chowringhee which made behind their gardens the other border, and seemed to push them back, to underline their scattered insignificance, hinting that the Maidan at its pleasure might surge over them altogether. Calcutta, the teeming capital, lived in the streets and gullies behind that chaste frontage and quarrelled over drainage schemes; but out here cattle grazed in quiet companies, and squirrels played on the boles of the trees. ”

“ Paul’s, dominates the whole riverside city with its crowded shipping and animated quays—fit symbol of modern influences. Round no temple or mosque or minster does the civilising Englishman group his city, but round the G.P.O. It would235 almost seem, here in Calcutta, as if the mere rush of commercial interests had smashed up the native sanctions of race and religion. The orderly rigor of caste, which is evident in Madras, is not seen; dress is untidy and unclean, the religious marks if put on at all are put on carelessly; faces are low in type, lazy, cunning, bent on mere lucre. ”

“ Hardouin informs us that he was the accuser of Calpurnius, that he was prætor during the consulship of P. Lentulus Spinther and L. Metellus Nepos, and was oppressed by Clodius. Pliny refers to Cælius, and his accusation of Calpurnius, in a subsequent passage, B. xxvii. c. 2.—B. Licinius Calvus Macer was by some considered, as an orator, to rival even Cicero himself; and as a poet, is generally mentioned by the side of Catullus. He exhausted his constitution by his severe application, and died in his thirty-fifth or thirty-sixth year. ”

“ Quintus: I am here. (He speaks with the voice of a man accustomed to command, and to have his orders obeyed without question. Gleva stands erect questioning his authority. Then she crosses her hands upon her bosom and bows her head.)
Gleva: My Lord Calpurnius.
[Calpurnius laughs. He runs down the slope.]
Calpurnius: That's well. (He takes her in his arms.) You have a trick of saying "Calpurnius." I shall remember it till I die.
[Gleva draws away from him.]
Say it again.
Gleva: With all my soul in the word. It is a prayer. Calpurnius! ”

“ But the Palmyrenes are repulsed with great slaughter; the routed army press back into the city, and the gates are closed upon the pursuers. In the evening, at the house of Gracchus, where the events of the day are discussed, Calpurnius, who had been in the thickest of the fight, but had escaped unhurt, relates the fate of Zabdas. The scene is one for the pencil:
"Calpurnius had been in the thickest of the fight, but had escaped unhurt. ”

“ At the back of the creature there plainly appears to be an opening, leading into its fiery stomach, and therein the men upon its back do place the food of the creature, which appears to consist of great blocks of black marble."
"Oh, Almirvan, unhappy traveller! what hast thou done that thou shouldest be tired of thy life?" said the Caliph. "What wouldest thou have me believe—that in the farthest islands of the sea, or in remotest ages yet to come, this monster of thine, huger than an elephant, fleeter than a bird, and swallowing great pieces of stone from behind, can by any possibility exist?" ”

“ Neither poem possesses the slightest literary importance; both are polished but utterly insipid examples of foolish court flattery. The author is unknown. An ingenious suggestion [385] has been made that he is no other than Calpurnius Piso, the supposed Meliboeus of Calpurnius Siculus. The second of these eclogues begins, 'Quid tacitus, Mystes?' The fourth eclogue of Calpurnius Siculus begins (Meliboeus loquitur) , 'Quid tacitus, Corydon?' Is Meliboeus speaking in person and quoting his own poem? It may be so, but the evidence is obviously not such as to permit any feeling of certainty. ”