Savagery of Classic Times

From the Painting in the Louvre

Africa on behalf of Cæsar, rushed amidst his enemies' swords and was slaughtered. King Juba, who conquered him, failing to kill himself, had himself killed by a slave. Attius Varus, who had held the province for Pompey, fell afterwards at Munda. Marc Antony, Cæsar's great lieutenant in the Pharsalian wars, stabbed himself. Cassius Longinus, another lieutenant under Cæsar, was drowned. Scipio, Pompey's partner in greatness at Pharsalia, destroyed himself in Africa. Bibulus, his chief admiral, pined to death. Young Ptolemy, to whom Pompey fled, was drowned in the Nile. The fate of his sister Cleopatra is known to all the world. Pharnaces, Cæsar's enemy in Asia, fell in battle. Cato destroyed himself at Utica. Pompey's eldest son, Cnæus, was caught wounded in Spain and slaughtered. Sextus the younger was killed some years afterward by one of Antony's soldiers. Brutus and Cassius, the two great conspirators, both committed suicide. But of these two we hear little or nothing in the "Commentaries"; nor of Augustus Cæsar, who did contrive to live in spite of all the bloodshed through which he had waded to the throne. Among the whole number there are not above three, if so many, who died fairly fighting in battle.

The above is a list of the names of men of mark, of warriors chiefly, of men who, with their eyes open, knowing what was before them, went out to encounter danger for certain purposes. The bloody catalogue is so complete, so nearly comprises all whose names are mentioned, that it strikes the reader with almost a comic horror. But when we come to the slaughter of whole towns, the devastation of a country effected purposely that men and women might starve, to the abandonment of the old, the young, and the tender, that they might perish on the hillsides, to the mutilation of crowds of men, to the burning of cities told us in a passing word, to the drowning of many thousands, mentioned as we should mention the destruction of a brood of rats, the comedy is all over, and the heart becomes sick. Then it is that we remember that the coming of Christ has changed all things, and that men now though terrible things have been done since Christ came to us are not as men were in the days of Cæsar.

ROMAN AND CELT IN OUR DAYS.

BY PROFESSOR CHARLES F. JOHNSON.

UNDER the slanting light of the yellow sun of October,

A "gang of Dagos" were working close by the side of the car track.
Pausing a moment to catch a note of their liquid Italian,
Faintly I heard an echo of Rome's imperial accents,-

Broken-down forms of Latin words from the Senate and Forum,
Now smoothed over by use to the musical lingua Romana.

Then came the thought - Why! these are the heirs of the conquering Romans;

These are the sons of the men who founded the empire of Cæsar.
These are they whose fathers carried the conquering eagles
Over all Gaul and across the sea to Ultima Thule.

[figures

The race type persists unchanged in their eyes, and profiles, and Muscular, short, and thick-set, with prominent noses, recalling "Romanos rerum dominos, gentemque togatam."

See, Labienus is swinging a pick with rhythmical motion;
Yonder one pushing the shovel might be Julius Cæsar,
Lean, deep-eyed, broad-browed, and bald, a man of a thousand;
Further along stands the jolly Horatius Flaccus;

Grim and grave, with rings in his ears, see Cato the Censor;
And the next has precisely the bust of Cneius Pompeius.
Blurred and worn the surface, I grant, and the coin is but copper;
Look more closely, you'll catch a hint of the old superscription,
Perhaps the stem of a letter, perhaps a leaf of the laurel.

On the side of the street, in proud and gloomy seclusion,
"Bossing the job," stood a Celt, the race enslaved by the legions,
Sold in the market of Rome to meet the expenses of Cæsar.
And as I loitered, the Celt cried out, "Worruk, ye Dagos!

Full up your shovel, Paythro, ye haythen,- I'll dock yees a quarther!"
This he said to the one who resembled the great Imperator.
Meekly the dignified Roman kept on patiently digging.

Such are the changes and chances the centuries bring to the nations;
Surely the ups and downs of this world are past calculation.
How the races troop over the stage in endless procession!
Persian and Arab and Greek, and Hun and Roman and Saxon,
Master the world in turn, and then disappear in the darkness,
Leaving a remnant as hewers of wood and drawers of water.
"Possibly" (this I thought to myself) "the yoke of the Irish
May in turn be lifted from us in the tenth generation.
Now the Celt is on top; but Time may bring his revenges,
Turning the Fenian down once more to be 'bossed by a Dago.""