Lucius E-Book

Alfred J. Church

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Alfred John Church (1829-1912) was an English classical scholar. He was born in London and was educated at King’s College London, and Lincoln College, Oxford, he took holy orders and was an assistant-master at Merchant Taylors’ School for many years. Church wrote a number of stories in English re-telling of classical tales and legends for young people. „Lucius Adventures of a Roman Boy”, follows Lucius as he talks with Cicero, meets Spartacus, falls in love, is kidnapped by pirates, joins the Roman army, is captured by king Mithridates, and finds pirate treasure! Sounds exciting? Follow the young Lucius Marius who leads an adventurous life in Ancient Rome from the time of his capture by Spartacus.

Leseprobe

Contents

PREFACE

I. A START IN LIFE

II. AN ADVENTURE

III. SPARTACUS

IV. PHILARETE

V. AGRIGENTUM

VI. VERRES

VII. A CRUISE

VIII. THE RESULT OF THE CRUISE

IX. THE PIRATE CAPTAIN

X. AMONG THE PIRATES

XI. A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE

XII. A MEETING

XIII. TARSUS

XIV. THE CARAVAN

XV. A HUNTING-PARTY

XVI. AN EMBASSY

XVII. CAMPAIGNING

XVIII. CAMPAIGNING (CONTINUED)

XIX. CAPTIVITY

XX. A CHANGE OF SCENE

XXI. THE DEATH OF MITHRADATES

XXII. RETURN

XXIII. IN HARBOR

XXIV. FOUR-AND-TWENTY YEARS AFTERWARDS

XXV. AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE

XXVI. THE PIRATE-CAPTAIN’S STORY

PREFACE

THE main action of this story belongs to a critical and interesting period in the last years of the Roman Republic. In 72 B.C., when my hero is represented as starting to take up an official position in Sicily, Italy was slowly recovering from the effects of the internal struggles which had distracted the state for many years; of the Social War in which Rome had been fighting for her supremacy among the kindred Italian peoples; and of the Civil War, the long conflict between the nobles and the people, terminated, at least for a time, by Sulla’s victory in the year 82, and by the bloody proscription which followed it. Many of the evils of these terrible times still remained. Italy, in particular, abounded with ruined and desperate men. With these and with the fugitives who were always trying to escape from the cruelties of slavery, Spartacus, a gladiator, who in 73 led a revolt at Capua, recruited his army. In the following year this man was at the height of his power. In the same year the insurrection of Sertorius, who had defied the power of Rome in Spain many years, was brought to an end by his assassination. In Asia Mithradates, king of Pontus, had been driven out of his dominion, and had sought shelter in the dominions of his son-in-law, Tigranes, king of Armenia. He was not, however, at the end of his resources, and it was not till nine years afterwards that his final defeat and death took place. During the greater part of this time the pirates held almost undisputed possession of the Mediterranean Sea. Pompey put them down completely in the year 67 B.C.

In the postscript to my story affairs have changed completely. The Republic has passed away, and the Empire is divided between Antony in the East and Augustus in the West. I may remark that the old gardener of the last two chapters is not an arbitrary invention of my own. Virgil, in his forth Georgic (that in which he treats of bee-culture), speaks of having known “an old man of Corycus” who had a garden near Tarentum. As there was a Corycus in Cilicia, it has been suggested that this old man was one of the pirates whose lives Pompey spared after his victory, and some of who he is known to have settled in Italy.

A writer who has been engaged in teaching for the greater part of his life can hardly help trying to make his book useful. I hope, however, that my young readers will not find this story less entertaining because it may help them to realize the period to which it belongs. They will certainly not find it overloaded with learning?a fault which, indeed, it is only too easy for most of us to avoid.

Hadley Green, June 1885

I. A START IN LIFE

TWO lads, each of whom carried a fishing-rod in his hand and a roughly-made basket of willow-work on his shoulders, were making their way up the left or eastern bank of the Liris, near Arpinum. The elder of the two was a lad of about seventeen, though his tall and well-developed frame made him look considerably older; the younger may have been his junior by about three years. The time was about an hour before sunset of a day in the latter half of March.

“Come, Caius,” said the elder of the two lads to his companion, “we have had about enough of this tiresome Liris. I hate this dull, thick water. There is not much fun in catching these fish; and when they are caught they are so muddy and flabby that they are scarcely worth the trouble of carrying home. Let us see whether we cannot get something out of the Fibrenus. At home they always say that a Fibrenus fish is worth twenty out of the Liris. Now that the sun has got so low I think that we may do something.”

The two friends had just reached the Fibrenus, a little stream that, after running a short, swift course from the hills among which Arpinum was situated, mingled its clear waters with the slower and more turbid current of the Liris. It broadened out just before the point of junction into a reach which had something of the look of a small lake. Most of this pool was covered with water-weed, which was then just breaking out into flower, but a narrow channel in the middle was kept open by the force of the stream. The water was remarkably bright, and curiously cold to the touch. The first peculiarity made the fish particularly difficult to catch; the second gave them, it was supposed, the firmness of flesh and the delicacy of flavor for which they were celebrated through the whole country-side. Only the most skilful of the neighboring anglers found it worth while to try their hands on the shy perch and still shyer trout which inhabited the Fibrenus, and even these returned more often than not with empty baskets. At the upper end of the pool which has been just described was one of the most favorite spots for the exercise of the angler’s craft. The river here made a little fall. The water was therefore broken; commonly, too, it was covered with foam, which sometimes helped the angler by concealing the fall of his bait. The elder of the two companions, whom we may without further delay introduce to our readers by the name of Lucius Marius, had often taken a fine fish out of the little eddies that were formed by the cascade, and he now resolved to try them again.

The younger lad, who had a modest distrust of his powers, stood at some distance from the water’s side, and contented himself with watching the operations of his more experienced comrade. Putting a new bait, the largest and freshest worm which he could find in his bag, upon his hook, he waited for a little puff of wind to help him in his cast, for the breeze was, as usual, dying away as the sun sank towards the horizon. The puff, the approach of which was signified by a gentle rustling of the tree- tops behind, came in due course, and Lucius threw his bait with all the skill which he possessed, and, as it happened, exactly at the right moment. It fell on the centre of the deepest eddy, about four or five feet below the fall, and had not sunk more than half-way to the bottom when it was seized by a large fish, heavier and stronger, as Lucius, with his well- practised hand, felt in a moment, than any that he had before had the chance of securing. The place, he knew, was one in which it would require all his skill to play a large fish with success. The water for some five or six yards below the cascade was clear and deep. If the fish could be kept there all would be well, if only he had been securely hooked, for the tackle was both new and strong. But beyond this distance the water began to shoal, and the weed-beds afforded a refuge by help of which, as the anglers of Arpinum knew to their cost, many a fine fish had escaped. The trout, a fine fellow of three pounds, for such he had shown himself to be by a frantic leap into the air almost immediately after feeling the hook, would infallibly make for this shelter. It was the choice which the angler knows so well, and which he always finds so difficult to make between two dangers, the danger of losing the fish by checking him in his rush, the danger of losing him by allowing him to reach some place from which it is impossible to get him out. In this instance fortune favored the angler. The fish, as a heavy fish sometimes will, seemed to prefer to keep his head up against the stream; and for the first two or three minutes, always the most dangerous time in such an affair, wasted his strength, now in rushes down to the bottom of the pool, now in wild leaps out of the water. When he changed his tactics and began to make for the weed-beds he was sensibly weaker, and it became less dangerous to check his course. Once, and once only, he managed to get the line round a weed, and Lucius’ heart, to use a common phrase, was in his mouth. Happily for the fisherman, the weed had not reached its strongest growth, and yielded to the pressure which he ventured to put upon it. The trout was not yet taken, but he was practically vanquished. Once and again he showed his broad spotted side, his rushes became weaker and shorter, his leaps out of the water ceased altogether. Lucius skilfully piloted him to a place where the bank over- hung the water. Then, shortening the line as much as possible, and handing the rod to his young companion, he threw himself at full length upon the bank, and, reaching out his hand, thrust his fingers into the trout’s open gills. A strong and skilful jerk landed the creature on the bank, where it lay, glittering with purple and gold in the slanting sunbeams, the most splendid prize that Fibrenus had yielded for many a year to the angler’s skill.

“My best fish,” said Lucius, after looking at his captive in silent delight for a few seconds; “and, I strongly suspect, my last out of Fibrenus for many a day.”

“Your last!” replied his young companion; “why your last? What is going to happen to you?”

“Happen to me! That I don’t know: ‘all these things lie upon the knees of the gods.’ But I know that I have got to go out into the world. Arpinum is a dear old place, but one can’t stay here all one’s days. The farm is not enough to satisfy one; and besides, there is not really work enough for me. My father can manage it very well with his bailiff, and I must do something for myself. Do you know, Caius, sometimes I like the idea of going, and sometimes I hate it. At this moment I am envying you with all my heart. You will go back to school and have the jolliest time of it, the working for prizes, the games–I never knew how jolly these things were till I had left them behind me. And then you will come back here, and there will be the fishing, and the hare-hunting, and the harvest, and the vintage. Yes; just now I should like to be a boy again. Now you, I dare say, are almost ready to give one of your eyes to put on the man’s gown, and be, as people say, your own master. Well, it is a good thing, perhaps, that wishing has nothing to do with it. I can’t go back, and you can’t go forward–at least, as fast as you wish. The thing is to be content with what one has and where one is. Somehow or other I have a kind of presentiment that I shall hear something to-day about my future. Marcus Tullius–the great barrister at Rome, you know–has been looking out for something for me, and he is expected home to-night, and may very well have something to tell me.”

“Oh, don’t you hope,” eagerly cried the younger lad, “that it will be something to take you across the seas? Wouldn’t you like a commission under Lucullus, and to get a cut at Mithradates, or to make a cruise against the pirates? Then there is always something going on in Gaul, and Spain, and in Africa against the blacks. Oh! it makes me mad to think that I shall be tied to those stupid books for two or three years yet. It is all very well for you to preach to me about being content. You were just as bad yourself six months ago, and now you do nothing but talk about ‘happy school-days,’ and ‘the delight of being a boy again,’ and such rubbish. But promise me that if you hear of a chance you won’t forget me. Father would very likely take a year off my time. You know Pompey was a soldier before he was sixteen.”

The two companions had by this time reached the house of Lucius’ father.

“Come in, Caius,” said the elder lad, “and help us to eat the big trout.”

“My dear Lucius, I should be delighted above all things, but it is impossible. You know my dear mother. By this time she is probably in the agonies of bereavement. It is the same thing every time I go out. She sends me away with her blessing; and as she likes me to enjoy myself she is really cheerful for about an hour after I have started. Then she begins to be a little anxious. Her fears increase as the sun goes down. At sunset, if by any chance I have not yet returned, they become positive despair. At this moment, I dare say, she is dismally reckoning up the cost of the wood and spices for burning me, and of putting the slaves into mourning, and of a neat little monument in the family burying-place with an appropriate inscription to the best of sons! No; I must go, or she will positively have given out the contract for my funeral. Farewell; and don’t forget to look out for me.”

“Farewell! I doubt whether I should not be doing you an ill turn by taking you away too soon from your books; but, depend upon it, I won’t forget you.”

Lucius found on entering his home that the preparations for the evening meal were far advanced. The great fish was duly admired; his tail- fin was cut off to serve as a witness of his size against the incredulity of future times–for anglers were even then the victims of the cruel suspicion which doubts the accuracy of their weights–and he was then consigned to the gridiron under the clever hands of Ofella, the old Sabine cook, a freewoman whose honest and skilful services the house of Marius had been fortunate enough to enjoy for many years past.

The apartment in which the household was collected was a long, low room, not unlike the kitchen of an old-fashioned English farmhouse. Hams and flitches of bacon hung from the rafters, and a great log of beech wood was burning cheerily in a large open fire-place. On the mantle-piece were quaint images of a highly antique appearance. These were the household gods, and were almost the only peculiar features of the room. A long table of polished oak ran down the middle of the room, its only ornament being a silver salt-cellar of considerable size, the old-fashioned shape of which showed that it was an ancient possession of the family. At this table the whole family sat clown to the evening meal; the older slaves, among whom were two or three gray-headed men (for the elder Marius did not hold with Cato’s cruel counsel to the farmer that he should sell his worn-out slaves), joined from time to time in the conversation of their masters. Smoking bowls of pease-porridge, a dish of young cabbages stewed in a savory gravy, huge loaves of rye and barley bread, with one of wheaten flour for the upper end of the table, and a cheese made from goat’s milk, were the principal viands. There was also a knuckle of ham, which had already seen some service, and some salt fish. The trout made, as may be supposed, a welcome addition to the fare of the evening.

Lucius, who had commonly all the healthy appetite of youth, sharpened by exercise, could hardly eat for excitement. His presentiment had been correct: he was to hear something of his future that day. “Marcus Tullius wishes to see you to-night,” his father had said to him before they sat down to their meal. In the impatience of youth he was for starting off at once, but his father insisted on his taking some food. “Have your supper in peace,” he said, “and let our friend have his.”

The lad was content to obey, but he waited for the time to start with manifest impatience.

The house of the great advocate, to which he soon made his way, had evidently been in former times very much the same kind of dwelling as that which has been just described–a simple farmhouse; but it had had additions made to it as its owners grew richer and came to have more wants and more refined tastes. The room into which he was introduced by the young slave to whose guidance the porter at the outer door committed him, was evidently one of these additions. It was a handsome chamber, fitted up with book-cases on the three sides which were not occupied by the windows. Each book-case was surmounted by a marble bust of some philosopher or poet, while the spaces between them were occupied with pedestal statues of Mercury and Minerva.

In this room four persons were sitting when Lucius was announced. One of these was an old man with a remarkably pleasing and refined face, who sat by the fire reading a parchment roll, and occasionally making a remark to a lady who faced him on the opposite side of the hearth, and who was busy embroidering a little child’s cloak. The lady was a handsome woman, somewhat fair in complexion for an Italian, of five-and-twenty or thereabouts, simply dressed in a matron’s robe of white, reaching to her feet, and confined at her waist by a crimson girdle. Her hair, which was abundant and of a rich chestnut color, was fastened in a Greek knot, through which a silver arrow was run. Two silver bracelets on her left arm, and two or three rings, one of which contained a particularly fine sapphire, were her only ornaments. Marcus Tullius himself, whom our readers will recognize by the more familiar name of Cicero, was walking up and down the room, dictating to a secretary, who sat busily writing at a table. He was a man of about four-and-thirty, slightly above the middle height, spare in figure, with a long, rather sallow face, generally somewhat grave in expression, but able to light up occasionally with a pleasant smile. On hearing the slave announce Lucius’ name he suspended his dictation, and came forward with a frank and hearty greeting.

“Welcome, my dear Lucius. I made sure that we should have you here directly. I got home last night for my holiday. You have not left school so long as to have forgotten that these are Minerva’s Five Days. The good people at Rome are busy with the shows, which, I own, are not very much to my taste. So I have stolen away for a breath of country air, and I don’t know where one can get this fresher than at Arpinum. But I can’t get quite quit of work, and am busy revising my last speech for the booksellers.”

Then turning to his secretary:

“That will do for the present, Tiro. Read it over and mark anything that does not seem to you to run quite smoothly. And now for your business, my dear boy. You will remember, I dare say, that I was in Sicily two or three years ago. I was quaestor there in the western division of the island, and I think I may say, without flattering myself, did pretty well. Now, my friend Manilius is just about starting to take up the very same office, and he wants some one to help him. I thought of you at once. You will not be a mere clerk, you understand, though you will, of course, have to do a good deal of clerk’s work. You will live with the quaestor, go with him on his journeys, and be in fact a sort of aide-de-camp to him. It is a kind of work that will give you a great insight into how things are managed in the provinces; and you could not be under a kinder; more good-natured man than Manilius. Don’t be vexed,” added the speaker, fancying that he noticed a shade of disappointment on the lad’s face, “that it is not a bit of soldiering I am sending you to. That will come soon enough. A Roman is not likely to suffer for want of fighting. But to learn something about business is a chance that does not come every day. It is much easier, though you may not think it, to conquer a province than to govern it. No one can blame Rome for the way in which she has done the first business; but the second–that is another affair altogether. And this reminds me of something I want to say to you. I don’t hear altogether good reports of what is going on in Sicily just now. I must not prejudice you against any one; but still I must put you on your guard. You have but just ceased to be a boy here, but there you will have a man’s work. You will have some power, and the people in Sicily will fancy that you have a great deal more than is really the fact. They will always be wanting you to speak a word in your chief’s ear, and will be ready with their bribes. Whatever you do, keep your hands clean. You come of a race that never cared for money, and you will not disgrace it. And there is another thing for you to remember. They are poor creatures, many of these Sicilians. In their best days they were always falling out of the hands of one tyrant into those of another, and they are very little better than slaves now. But remember that they are Greeks; their ancestors were educated gentlemen when ours were little better than barbarians. Almost every scrap in our literature that is worth having comes from them. Remember this, and try not to despise them. And now about your journey. The quaestor is going by land as far as Laüs in Lucania. There he takes ship. It is a choice of evils, you know. There is Spartacus with his gladiators on the land, and there are the pirates on the sea. You see, my boy, you have got a fair chance of adventures. Spartacus, however, is at present at Thurii, and I should think that you may easily get as far as Laüs without being troubled by him. However, the quaestor has business in the South that must be attended to, and he has made up his mind. The voyage from there to Messina is not a long one, and as safe, I fancy, as any voyage is nowadays. He starts from Rome to-morrow, so it will be of no use your going there. You must join him at Capua, where he is to stay till the 5th of April. And now good-night. Come and see me again while I am here, which will be for four days more. But stay; here is a little keepsake and companion for you.”

He went to one of the book-cases and took down a parchment roll, which he handed to Lucius. It was about eight inches long and five or six in diameter, and the page which he unrolled to exhibit to Lucius showed that it was covered with Greek writing, small and close, but exceedingly clear.

“There,” he said, “is the best part of the equipment with which Alexander went out to conquer the world. You have heard, I dare say, that he always slept with the Iliad under his pillow. I know you love Homer, for the last time that I was here I overheard you reciting him to your young friend Caius Frentanus. You had been fishing in the Fibrenus, and I was in my reading-room on the island. And very well you gave it, I must tell you. It was Hector’s speech to Polydamas. I never appreciated it so much before. You remember the lines:

“‘His sword the brave man draws, And owns no omen but his country’s cause.’

If you are not in too great hurry to get home I should like you to stay and hear a little translation I have made of the passage into our own language.”

Lucius, who knew, as indeed did all his neighbors and friends, the great man’s weakness for his own verses, professed himself of course anxious to hear. He listened to the translation, which, to tell the truth, was of not more than moderate merit, with deferential attention, and praised it possibly beyond the strict limits of truth. His admiration was certainly not so sincere as his gratitude for Cicero’s kindness. This he expressed in the heartiest way. Then, after saying good-night to the elder Cicero, to Terentia, who kindly invited him to pay a special visit to her and to her daughter, his little playfellow Tullia, he made the best of his way home.

II. AN ADVENTURE

LUCIUS did not fail to present himself on the day appointed at the residence of the Prefect of Capua. He was perhaps a little disappointed with the appearance and manner of his superior. The quaestor was a man of about thirty-two, sufficiently good-looking, but already somewhat unwieldy and corpulent, foppish in his dress, and with a drawling, affected voice, which was not a little irritating to any one who was compelled to listen to it. Just then he was full of the grievance of having to leave Rome at such an inconvenient time, and began at once to pour his griefs into the ears of his subordinate.

“It is perfectly monstrous,” he said, “making one leave Rome in April! If it had been in December, now, it would have been different. I am told that Sicily is very pleasant and warm in winter, while Rome is so cold that one can hardly keep one’s self alive. But now, at the very best time of the year, when it is neither too hot nor too cold, when all the best people are in town and there are entertainments every day, it is cruel to be banished in this way.”

These complaints were repeated again and again at every stage of the journey. Lucius was soon exceedingly weary of them, and was not much better pleased when the quaestor varied them with anecdotes about himself and his friends. According to his own showing there had never been a man so popular and so ill-treated.

“I should have been on the highroad to be consul,” he would say, “if I had had my deserts. But there are some great people whom I didn’t please; too independent, my dear lad, too original for them. If you want to get on you must be commonplace.”

His talk, however, was not always so empty and conceited. He had lived among great people, and had seen great events; and though he did not really understand either the one or the other, the personal details which as an eye-witness he could sometimes give were often remarkably interesting. He had been a spectator of some of the most dreadful scenes of the civil wars, and he made his young hearer’s blood run cold by describing how he had seen the market-place of Rome almost ankle-deep in blood, with human heads piled up in heaps against the walls of the houses. All his reminiscences, however, were not of so dismal a character. He had been a boy of ten when Lucius’ great kinsman, Caius Marius, came back from his victory over the barbarians from beyond the Alps, and had had such a triumph as Rome had never seen before. Lucius was intensely interested in hearing all that he could recollect about it.

“I can see it all,” he said, “as if it had happened yesterday. How the streets were crowded! I remember my father saying that all Italy seemed to have emptied itself into them. And what shouting! And then the procession itself! Of course it wasn’t so splendid as some that have been seen. The barbarians hadn’t much gold and silver and jewels to make a great show; but all that there was was so strange, it seemed as if it came from another world. There were the great wagons lumbering along, drawn by such oxen as never had been seen, with horns five feet long from root to tip. And then the prisoners! If the oxen were big, what were the men! Our tallest Romans seemed children beside them. One could not imagine how the soldiers had managed to make a stand against them and actually conquer them. And they were as like to each other as so many brothers, all with yellow hair and ruddy faces, and eyes as blue as the sea. The king was an absolute giant, nearly eight feet high. I remember being almost afraid to look at him, and dreaming of him for weeks and weeks afterwards.”

The quaestor had also much that was interesting to say about Marcus Tullius. For the most part he was far too fashionable a person to show anything like enthusiasm; but for Tullius he did seem to have a genuine admiration.

“Ah!” he said, “you people at Arpinum ought to be proud of your townsman. You have never heard him speak? Well, that is a real treat in store for you. I don’t care much in general for law or politics; but I never miss a chance of hearing him. He is absolutely irresistible. There is nothing that he won’t talk you into believing. You may know that he has got no case; but before he has done he makes every thing so plain and clear that you can’t imagine how you ever thought otherwise.”

For two or three days the travellers pursued their journey without interruption; but as they went farther south they found a general feeling of uneasiness along the road. At an inn which had been built just where a branch road turned off to Paestum, the host, who had been much gratified by the quaestor’s loudly-expressed appreciation of his fare, especially some fat beccaficos and a haunch of roe-buck, was very emphatic in his warnings about the dangers which threatened all travellers in Southern Italy.

“My dear sir,” he said, “be advised by me, if you don’t want to fall into the hands of Spartacus. Since the spring began he has been on the move, and the roads are not safe. I had a couple of merchants here the other day, and they told me all about him. He does not seem such a bad sort of fellow, though he is a rebel. They were taken, it seems, on the road near Laüs, and of course gave themselves up for lost. But they got no harm after all. They were marched up to Thurii, where Spartacus and his men have been all the winter. The place, they said, was a wonderful scene, as much like a fair as a camp. People were thronging in from all the country to buy and sell, and the harbor was full of ships. You see, sir, these people have picked up a pretty lot of plunder from one place or another; for they have run over nearly the whole of the east side of Italy from north to south, and they are ready to sell what they have got very cheap. There are some capital bargains to be had there, I am told, and I can very well believe it. My friends the merchants made a very good business of their trip, even according to their own account, and one does not expect a trader to be quite correct when he gives you the credit side of his account. You see they had six mules’ loads of arms with them, swords and daggers of the very best quality from Corsica and Spain, and these are just what Spartacus is always ready to buy. He gave them pretty well their own prices, and I don’t suppose they spared him. And then they did a little business on their own account. They might have bought any amount of silver plate, but that wouldn’t have suited them. You see pieces of plate can be recognized, and that would not have answered their purpose. They did buy a few gold cups for about half the price of the metal, as I understood, and had them melted down. But the chief business they did was in jewels and fine stuffs, linen and silks (the new textures, you know, that they bring now from the far East). They sold two of their mules, and came away with the others pretty well laden; and if you will believe me, sir, they did not lose a pennyweight of goods or a penny’s worth of money. And Spartacus gave them a safe-conduct too. If it had not been for that, they told me, they would have been taken half-a-dozen times or more upon their journey back.”

“Well,” said Manilius, “I don’t particularly wish to make this gentleman’s acquaintance. I have nothing to sell, you see, and I am in a hurry. But what would you advise, for I must get on, you understand? I want, as I think you know, to make the best of my way to Sicily, and I should best like, for more reasons than one, to go as far as I can by land.”

The landlord considered a while. “I have it. Wait here two or three days. I will answer for it you won’t repent it, for I see that you are a gentleman who knows what is good. This will give you time to send a messenger on to the nearest camp, and to get an answer back. Varro the praetor has got a very fair force with him at Velia– two legions, I understand, and about as many more auxiliaries, encamped about thirty miles to the south from here; and I did hear of his intending to march as far as Laüs. Well, if he does, you might go with him, and the rebels will think twice before they meddle with a force like that. Will that suit you?”

“Exactly,” answered the quaestor. “Laüs is the very place I want to go to. I have business of importance there which I should not like to neglect. That done I can take ship.”

“Very good,” said the landlord. “Then I will send off a messenger to the praetor, if you will write a few lines for him to carry. It is now about an hour to noon, and he will do the thirty miles, barring accidents, in five hours. Give him three hours to rest, and he will be back long before you are out of your beds to-morrow, for he is as active and long- winded a young fellow as ever I saw. You will see from the answer he brings back what you had best do. You can, if need be, by making an early start, reach the camp to-morrow. But if there is no need for hurry, I should strongly recommend you to stay.”

The letter was written and the messenger despatched, with strict injunctions to lose no time upon the road. The man, a spare young fellow, whose legs seemed to have been developed out of all proportion to the rest of his body, started at a good round trot. He made indeed such excellent use of his time that he was back at the inn before dawn the next day. He brought a despatch addressed to the quaestor, which, as it was marked “urgent” on the outside, that official, not altogether to his liking, was roused to receive. It ran as follows:–

“Marcus Terentius Varro to Tiberius Manilius Quaestor greeting.

“It will be very grateful to me to afford you the protection which you seek for your journey, and, if I may speak as a friend, to have your companionship. Know, therefore, that it is my intention to set out, if the auspices be favorable, at daybreak the day after to-morrow. It will be necessary that you should reach the camp to-morrow. If you can arrive in good time, which, indeed, is a thing to be desired for other reasons, the road being not altogether safe, you and your friend will, if it is pleasing to you, dine with me. Farewell.

“Given at my camp, at Velia, the tenth day of April.”

The party started at early dawn. Two traders, who had business in towns farther south, had asked and received permission to join them, and the party numbered about twenty, the greater part of whom were, of course, slaves. All were armed. Though unable to resist any serious attacks from the rebels, if they should be unlucky enough to fall in with them, they might count on being safe from any chance marauders, bands of whom infested the country, making a profit out of its disturbed condition. As it turned out they met with no molestation. A number of ill-looking fellows, in parties of two or three, were hanging about the roads, who probably would have robbed and murdered a ] single traveller, but felt it prudent to have nothing to do with the quaestor and his well-equipped company.

The praetor’s camp was reached about an hour before sunset; and Manilius found awaiting him a message from the general, renewing for him and his companion the invitation to dinner. They had just time to enjoy the luxury of a bath, and to change their clothes, when the dinner hour, which, for their accommodation, had been fixed unusually late, arrived. They found a numerous party assembled in the praetor’s tent, a spacious erection which was used only on occasions when he gave an entertainment to his officers. Six tribunes and about twice as many centurions of the first rank were present, and the party was completed by two or three young men, none of them much older than our hero, friends or connections of the praetor, who lived in his quarters, and had much the same relation to him as an aide-de-camp in the present day has to the general to whom he is attached. The talk turned, of course, very much on the prospects of the war, and Lucius found that those who were best qualified to judge thought that it would be a serious matter. One of the youngsters, his tongue possibly loosened by copious draughts of the praetor’s wine, began to talk in a loud and boastful tone of the short work which would be made with the rebels.

“I can’t conceive,” he said, “how it is that these fellows have been allowed to make head against us so long. It is a shame to think of a parcel of slaves beating consuls and their armies. Don’t you think, sir, that we might do what I heard some fellows did with their slaves some hundreds of years ago? My tutor, who was a Greek, read the story to me out of one of his books, and I have never forgotten it; it seemed to me such a capital way of dealing with such rascals. I remember it was something of this kind. The masters had been away, fighting somewhere for years and years; and when they came back they found that their slaves had rebelled, and had taken possession of their houses and every thing else, and were encamped on the border of the country with a regular army, ready to fight. Well, they did fight; and the first day neither got much the better of it, and the masters saw that if they did win in the end there would not be many of them left, and of their slaves none at all. Well, sir, the story went on to say, they went out the next day, not with arms in their hands but with whips, and the slaves, as soon as ever they saw them, gave in and begged for mercy, the old habit was so strong. I vote we go out against these rascals with whips.”

“My young friend,” said the praetor, “that is a very good story, and I am very much obliged to you for telling it. But, depend upon it, we shall have to use our swords, and use them with all our might, against Spartacus and his people. You may call them slaves, and so in a sense they are; but there are few of them who were not born free. Spartacus himself was a Thracian shepherd, taken prisoner in some foray; and a number of the others have come to be what they are in just the same way. We pick out from our prisoners of war the very best and strongest we can find for our gladiators, teach them all we can, make them as strong and brave and skilful as is possible; and now we find ourselves matched to fight them. I tell you, gentlemen, it is no trifle we have before us. Man for man these fellows are better than we are; as brave, for they have been used to hold their lives in their hands; and stronger, for they are all picked men; and better swordsmen, for they have handled nothing else but the sword all their lives. We shall beat them in the end, but we shan’t do it to-day or to-morrow.”

The young Roman made no answer, though he whispered to Lucius, who was his neighbor, “The old fellow is rather a croaker; but he is as good a soldier, they say, as there is–thirty campaigns, and pretty nearly as many wounds. He will tell you the story of them whenever he has had a cup more than usual, but commonly he is as modest as a girl about them. That cut over the left eye he got from Sertorius himself. You see he has lost the little finger of his left hand; it was cut off by a Teuton at Raudium. Yes; he has a right to talk; but I don’t see, for all that, why we should not make mincemeat of these ruffians a little quicker than he thinks.”

Lucius was soon to see whether the old man or the young was in the right. The army moved, as had been arranged, early the next morning. The praetor marched with all the caution of a veteran who knew his business, and who did not despise his enemy; but the line of march was one which it was not easy to reconnoitre. The first day and the second the progress of the army was unimpeded. Not a single enemy showed himself from morning to night; and, consequently, though the vigilance of the commander was not relaxed, some of his subordinates began to grow a little careless. It was late in the afternoon of the third day that the advanced guard of the army, which was moving without scouts properly thrown out, found itself suddenly attacked. A squadron of cavalry was in the extreme front of the line of march. Its commanding officer was unluckily ill, and was being carried in a litter; his next subordinate was ignorant and careless, and the men, who were not kept in hand as they should have been, and had been making free with the wine-casks of the farm where they had made their mid- day halt, were half asleep upon their horses. In a moment a body of two or three hundred men, which had been lying ambushed in a valley on the left side of the road, threw itself between the horsemen and the infantry which was following them. The squadron was left without orders, for the officer in command had lost his head, but the instinct of safety made them turn their horses’ heads and try to regain their connection with the main body. They made a charge, but it was languid and spiritless, and made little impression upon the enemy. Only a few troopers, who happened to be particularly well horsed, or especially good swordsmen, cut their way through; the rest were either taken prisoners or killed. The alarm passed quickly along the whole line; a halt was immediately called; and as but little daylight was left, the praetor resolved to encamp for the night where he was, and to make his position as safe as he could. Such a camp as the nature of the ground allowed was hastily made, an hour’s labor from the practised hands of the Roman soldiers rendering it sufficiently strong to resist any but a most determined attack. The night, however, was spent in the midst of continual alarm, and every one was glad when the light of the next day appeared. At first it seemed that the enemy had disappeared, and that their advance was not to be disputed. The praetor, who had now taken up his position with the van, moved cautiously forward, and had accomplished a march of about six miles by noon when the scouts came racing in from the front, with the news that a formidable body of the enemy were in position about half a mile farther along the road. A few minutes brought the praetor in view of this force. The line of march was here crossed by a river, narrow but deep, and now swollen by the spring rains. There was a bridge across this stream, so strongly built of stone that the enemy had not been able to break it down, as they would probably have done had it been possible; but they had occupied it in force. The praetor’s disposition was already made. Two squadrons of cavalry were in advance, with about an equal number of men carefully picked from the infantry among them; behind there was a number of catapults, and behind these again the main body of the legions. At an arranged signal from the praetor, who had foreseen an obstruction of this kind, the advanced force divided, making room for the action of the catapults. These poured a storm of stones and bullets upon the defenders of the bridge. The range had been carefully taken, and almost every missile took effect. A retreat, which was almost a flight, was the result, and before many moments had passed the bridge was clear. The cavalry took immediate advantage of the opportunity and charged, the infantry following them at the double. Before the enemy could rally, or could be joined by re-enforcements from their main body, the passage was secured and a strong position established, protected by the catapults, which were now posted on the river bank on either side of the bridge. Meanwhile a ford had been discovered higher up the stream, a not very easy one certainly, and indeed almost dangerous, but still available for the cavalry and for the light-armed troops, and relieving the pressure on the narrow thoroughfare of the bridge. Rafts, too, were hastily constructed, and some of the Spanish auxiliaries attached to the legions made the passage in the way with which they were familiar in their own country, swimming across by the help of inflated skins. Early in the afternoon the whole of the fighting men had crossed, excepting the guard which protected the baggage, and the non-combatants. These could hardly be transported before nightfall. Orders had been issued that the men should take their midday meal as opportunity served. This had been easily done, many finding a convenient time while they were waiting for their turn to cross. The men, their strength thus recruited, and greatly inspirited by the brilliant success at the bridge, were eager to fight. It soon became evident that they were not to be disappointed. The enemy, whose numbers were roughly guessed to be about a third greater than the praetor’s army, had made their dispositions for a battle, and were manifestly determined not to give way. The ground on the farther side of the river was such that there would be little room for strategy, and that the two armies would have a fair trial of strength. It rose gently to a height of about three hundred feet, with an incline which may have measured a mile in length. It was unenclosed and open, except for a few small copses scattered about it.

About three o’clock the legions began to move up the slope, the skirmishers being in front, and the cavalry moving along at a foot’s pace on either wing. Lucius was of course eager to do his part, and begged the praetor to employ him in any way or at any place where he might be of use. The general answered with much good sense and kindness:

“My dear lad,” he said, “you must be guided by me. It is your business to make the best of your way into Sicily. It is not your business to fight in South Italy. You have to help Tiberius Manilius the quaestor, and not Marcus Varro the praetor. I might order you to go to the rear and get out of the way of danger. But I won’t. You might take it as an affront. But I do order you not to strike a blow if you can help it. I have got foot-soldiers and troopers enough to win the day if we are to win it, and one more would make no difference. Stay with me. I may make use of you as a messenger. If the need comes I shan’t scruple to do it, for the work of the republic must be done somehow. Meanwhile stay with me, and be content with looking on. You shall see something, I promise you, worth seeing. My men are pretty good, and these fellows there are not to be disposed of in such a hurry as our young friend thought the other night. We have begun well. You see they were not prepared for the catapults. I fancy they have none themselves, and could not make much of them if they had. I only hope that we shall end as well as we have begun.”

The battle had now fairly begun. The skirmishers had fallen back on the main body, which was now within a few yards of the enemy. The heavy javelins which the Romans carried were discharged with great effect, and the rebel line began to waver. But when the two opposing armies actually closed the advantage seemed to be the other way. The fact was that man for man, as the praetor had foreseen, the enemy were superior. Wherever the Romans could act in a body, could keep their military formation and advance in an unbroken line, their discipline and the power it gave them of acting together told heavily in their favor. Whenever, on the contrary, the battle became a series of hand-to-hand conflicts, they suffered severely. The ordinary foot-soldier, often fresh from the plough, was no match in strength, or stature, or skill in arms for the gladiator, always a practised swordsman, and often a giant in stature, with whom he was matched. On the whole, it was true, the ground favored the better- disciplined troops, and the Romans slowly advanced. The experienced eye of the praetor saw, however, that this advance was not made without serious losses, and, aware that his own forces were outnumbered, began to grow anxious for the result. Meanwhile he continued to follow the movement of his troops, directing, by messages conveyed by his aides-de-camp, the manœuvres of his subordinate officers. It was nearly sunset when an incident occurred that compelled him to use the services of Lucius. His quick eye discerned an admirable opportunity for throwing his cavalry, which hitherto had taken little part in the action, upon the left flank of the enemy.

“Ah!” he cried to Lucius in a cheerful voice, for he was one of the men whose spirits rise under the excitement of danger, “now is your time. I must use you, whether I will or no. Ride as fast as you can to Lucius Verus, prefect of the cavalry, and tell him to charge. He is to make his way up that hollow yonder on the left of the enemy. It will pretty well keep him out of sight till he is close upon them. Then he is to charge and do his best. But, mind, you are not to go with him. On your obedience now, promise.”

Lucius started off at full speed and delivered his message. He found the cavalry fretting at their inaction, and delighted to receive the order to charge. The young aide-de-camp whose vain self-confidence had been so severely reproved by the praetor had been told off to do staff duty with the prefect of cavalry, and recognized our hero.

“Ah!” he cried; “well met. Come along with us and see what these fellows are made of.”

“I must go back to the praetor. He strictly commanded me not to charge, and I gave him my promise.”

“Very good!” cried the other lightly; “and glad to give it, I dare say. Farewell, then, till we meet again.”