Pompilia

“ It lives, If precious be the soul of man to man." 472 CRITICAL STUDIES It lives, and is likely to live as long as any master- work of our generation. First we are to hear how Half- Rome, with a typical worthy for its mouthpiece, found for Guido much excuse. Then how to the other Half-Rome, Pompilia seemed a saint and martyr both. ”

“ Pompeia told her, triumphantly, "all Rome is sure of it."
"I don't believe a word of it," Mucia exclaimed. "Because you hate me you want to think the worst of me, and because you credit anything, however improbable, you persuade yourself that all Rome believes what your malignity conjectures. The idea! Pompey is the handsomest, the kindest, the most fascinating, the most agreeable, the most popular, the most successful, the greatest man the world has ever seen. The idea of me, who am lucky enough to be his wife, so much as thinking of any other man, absurd! ”

“ Pompey, envious of the glory of Lucullus, follows his example, conquers Syria, sends new treasures to Italy, carries from the East the jewels of Mithridates, and displaying them in the temple of Jove, rouses a passion for gems in the Roman women; he also builds the first great stone theatre to rise in Rome. All the political men in Rome try to make money out of foreign countries: those who cannot, like the great, conquer an empire, confine themselves to blackmailing the countries and petty states that tremble before the shadow of Rome ”

“ Pompey laughed gently and softly, but he laughed. He still held Mucia's hands, holding her away from him and looking down at her.
Pompeia, withdrawn the width of the tent, gazing from under her raven-black hair, her brown eyes wide in her proud swarthy face, not only admired her brother, but confessed to herself that they were a well-matched, well-looking pair. He was very handsome; bareheaded, after the Roman fashion; his hair glossy brown, soft and wavy, his face healthily tanned, and ruddy; his eyes a very dark bluish-gray, transparent and bright; around big, black pupils. ”

“ When the tumult slackened Pompey held up one hand. Every man in whatever attitude he might be was frozen mute. Pompey gave a low-voiced order. The two lictors and the three standard-bearers went down into the crowd, retrieved their precious charges and returned to their places, no other man moving the while.
Mucia looked about her. Crassus she saw, but not Clodius. In fact she never saw him again that near, never at all again to speak to. Caesar's eyes met hers with an expression of relished amusement.
She looked again at Pompey, at the deity who had saved her, had saved Rome. ”

“ The consuls also followed after in a hurry, without offering the sacrifices to the gods, usual before a war. But in all this, Pompey himself had the glory, that in the midst of such calamities, he had so much of men's love and good-will. For though many found fault with the conduct of the war, yet no man hated the general; and there were more to be found of those that went out of Rome, because that they could not forsake Pompey, than of those that fled for love of liberty. ”

“ POMPEY GOES TO WAR WITH MITHRIDATES When the Romans heard that the pirates had been scattered and forced to submit to Pompey their joy knew no bounds.
No longer need they live in dread of the sudden appearance of the ships with scarlet sails and silver oars along the Italian coasts, no longer need they fear the sudden capture of their corn. And this was due to Pompey! In Rome at this time no one was so popular as he.
His success determined the Senate to send him to take command of the war that was going on in the East, against Mithridates. ”

“ With the exception of the Greek temple mentioned above, all the public buildings of Pompeii that do not belong to the time of the Roman colony have a homogeneous character; a list of them would include the colonnade about the Forum, the Basilica, the temples of Apollo and of Jupiter, the Large Theatre with the colonnades of the Forum Triangulare and the Barracks of the Gladiators, the Stabian Baths, the Palaestra, and the outer part of the Porta Marina with the inner parts of the other gates. Closely associated with these public edifices is a large number of private houses ”

“ After his death there was no one to lead an army against the Romans. So the rebellion in Asia came to an end, and Pompey the Great was free to return to Italy.
Once again the Roman citizens wondered what would happen when he came. Would his many victories have changed the conqueror into a tyrant? But once again the349 people found that their fears were groundless. For as soon as he landed in Italy Pompey disbanded his army and set out for Rome, attended only by a few friends. ”

“ LXVIII. However, by importunity and agitation, after the army had descended into the plain of Pharsalus, [366] they compelled Pompeius to hold a council of war, in which Labienus, who was commander of the cavalry, got up first, and swore that he would not leave the battle till he had routed the enemy; and they all swore to the same effect. In the night Pompeius dreamed that as he was entering the theatre, the people clapped, and that he was decorating a temple of Venus the Victorious [367] with many spoils. ”

“ Suppose Pompey should do as Sulla had done, and bring his army to Rome! Suppose he should make himself Dictator, and destroy his enemies!
But these fears proved groundless, for no sooner had Pompey reached Italy than he disbanded his army, bidding his soldiers to go home until he recalled them to grace his triumph.
He was at once elected Consul, while his colleague was the wealthy Crassus. The two Consuls did not agree well, for Pompey’s sympathies were, in these days, with the people, while Crassus was anxious to please the Optimates. ”

“ It is in these crowded quarters of the ancient city, these streets through which the noisy, swarthy, dirty people were seething just as they are now when Pompeii was a peopled town and the hawkers went up and down the streets of Herculaneum,—it is here that one can grasp most easily those peculiarities which fence off life in southern Italy from that of other regions in the peninsula. ”

“ Thus Pompey, victorious over every nation to which he had gone, grown greater than the wish of his countrymen or even than his own, and having in every way exceeded the measure of human fortune, returned to Italy. An opinion that had prevailed rendered his return extremely popular; for most people had asserted that he would not come into the city without his army, and that he would limit the liberty of the people by his own will. The more strongly they were affected by this apprehension, the more grateful was the unassuming manner in which that great commander returned ”

“ Imagine how the excavators' hearts leaped when the spades took the gray ashes off this bright picture. It was too precious a thing to leave here in the rain and wind. So the excavators carefully took it up and put it into the museum of Naples where there are other valuable things from Pompeii.
There are many other houses almost as pleasant and beautiful as this House of the Faun. Every one has its atrium and its sunny court and its fountains and statues and its painted walls. But Pompeii was a city of business, too, and had many workshops. ”

“ Then, again, it was as impossible to have any good intelligence of the enemy; for what each man heard by chance upon a flying rumor, he would report for truth, and exclaim against Pompey if he did not believe it. Pompey, at length, seeing such a confusion in Rome, determined with himself to put an end to their clamors by his departure, and therefore commanding all the senate to follow him, and declaring, that whosoever tarried behind, should be judged a confederate of Cæsar's, about the dusk of the evening he went out and left the city. ”

“ Pompeji, that was the name of the city, was a favourite haunt of the leading Romans, who founded and administered an empire which our own is only just now beginning to rival in extent, its riches being out of the question. The richest men in Pompeji were content with houses which no farmer in England would tolerate. ”

“ Upon which Pompey himself went first aboard, and bid the mariners weigh anchor, declaring with a loud voice, that there was a necessity to sail, but no necessity to live. So that with this spirit and courage, and having met with favorable fortune, he made a prosperous return, and filled the markets with corn, and the sea with ships. So much so that this great plenty and abundance of provisions yielded a sufficient supply, not only to the city of Rome, but even to other places too, dispersing itself, like waters from a spring, into all quarters. ”

“ It was agreed that Pompey should receive Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and Achaia, and that he should send to Rome an immediate supply of corn. The chiefs then feasted one another, and Pompey entertained Octavian and Antony on board his own galley. When the banquet was at its height, a Greek named Menas, or Menodorus, one of Pompey's captains, whispered to him, "Shall I cut off the anchors of the ship, and make you master of the Roman world?" ”

“ But from Formiae I go to Tarracina on the last of December. Thence to the upper end of the Pomptine marsh: thence to Pompey's Alban villa: and so to Rome on the 3rd, my birthday.
The political crisis is causing me greater fear every day. The loyalists are not, as is imagined, in agreement. I have met numbers of Roman knights, and numbers of Members, ready to inveigh bitterly against everything and especially this journey of Pompey's. Peace is our want. Victory will bring many evils, and without doubt a tyrant. ”

“ But why have you sought me—you to whom the Palace is justly hateful?’
‘I come,’ answered Pomponia, ‘to plead for your pity. There is not a prison in Rome which is not full of innocent men and women, called Christians. They are charged with having set fire to Rome, and with many other atrocities. Empress, they are innocent! Will you not use your influence for them? If you have ever done evil—forgive me, Poppæa, but I know not the language of falsehood, or of flattery—will you not now try to do a great deed of good?’
‘Your kindness deceives you,’ answered the Empress. ”

“ There is not an approach to truth in anything you say."
"Is there not?" Pompeia began again. "Do I not see clear? Do I not see that you are merely a simpleton? All Rome else believes that you are in the plot, that you have abetted Clodius to devise this threatened mutiny, that you have come out to your husband's camp to-day, as all Rome predicted days and days ago that you would come, to behold the outburst of the mutineers and gloat with your lover over your husband's discomfiture."
"Pompeia," Mucia said solemnly and with conviction, "you are surely insane. ”

“ Pompey was now in fact ruler of the greater part of the empire, while Caesar had only the two provinces of Gaul. The control of the capital, the supreme command of the army in Italy and of the Mediterranean fleet, the governorship of the two Spains, the superintendence of the corn supplies, which were mainly drawn from Sicily and Africa, and on which the vast population of Rome was wholly dependent, were entirely in the hands of Pompey, who was gradually losing the confidence of all political parties in Rome. ”

“ In one respect there is an essential difference between the remains of Pompeii and those of the large and famous cities of antiquity, as Rome or Athens, which have associated with them the familiar names of historical characters. Mars' Hill is clothed with human interest, if for no other reason, because of its relation to the work of the Apostle Paul; while the Roman Forum and the Palatine, barren as they seem to-day, teem with life as there rise before the mind's eye the scenes presented in the pages of classical writers. ”

“ It is needless to write that no one can go to Naples without paying a visit to Pompeii, if he would get a true idea of a Roman city, with its streets, and shops, and baths, and forum, and temples; and it is as well to read over Bulwer’s ‘Last Days of Pompeii’—that master work of genius, compared with which our present popular novels are poor indeed—and then let the reader spend an entire day, if he can, among the Pompeiian remains, in the museum at Naples, which Garibaldi, when Dictator of Naples, handed over to the people. ”

“ The case of us, who stay at home, is worse than that of those who have gone with Pompey, for they have only one to fear, while we have both. You ask then, why I stay. Well, in compliance with your request, or because I could not meet Pompey on his departure, or because it was the more honourable course. I say you will see poor Italy trodden down next summer or in the hands of their slaves drawn from every quarter of the globe. It will not be a proscription (in spite of the talk and threats we hear of at Luceria) which we shall have to dread, but general destruction. ”

“ But king Tigranes, having lately suffered much in the war with Lucullus, and understanding that Pompey was of a kind and gentle disposition, admitted Roman troops into his royal palaces, and taking along with him his friends and relations, went in person to surrender himself into the hands of Pompey. He came as far as the trenches on horseback, but there he was met by two of Pompey's lictors, who commanded him to alight and walk on foot, for no man ever Was seen on horseback within a Roman camp. ”