Zenobia; or, the Fall of Palmyra by William Ware (latest ebook reader TXT) 📖

varying color and changing expression showing how deeply she sympathized with the narrator. When he had ended, and we had become weary of the excitement of this first interview, Fausta proposed that we should separate to meet again at supper. To this we agreed.

According to the proposal of Fausta, we were again, soon as evening had come, assembled around the table of the princely Gracchus.

When we had partaken of the luxuries of the feast, and various lighter discourse had caused the time to pass by in an agreeable manner, I said thus, turning to my brother:

'I would, Calpurnius, that the temper of one's mind could as easily be changed as one's garments. You now seem to me, having put off your Persian robes, far more like Piso than before. Your dress, though but in part Roman and part Palmyrene, still brings you nearer. Were it wholly Roman it were better. Is nothing of the Persian really put off, and nothing of the Roman put on, by this change?'

'Whatever of the Persian there was about me,' replied Calpurnius, 'I am free to say I have laid aside with my Persian attire. I was a Persian not by choice and preference, I need scarcely assure you, but by a sort of necessity, just as it was with my costume. I could not procure Roman clothes if I would. I could not help too putting off the Roman--seeing how I was dealt by--and putting on the Persian. Yet I part with whatever of the Persian has cleaved to me without reluctance--would it were so that I could again assume the Roman--but that can never be. But Isaac has already told you all.'

'Isaac has indeed informed me in his letter from Ecbatana, that you had renounced your country, and that it was the expectation of war with Rome that alone had power to draw you from your captivity. But I have not believed that you would stand by that determination. The days of republican patriotism I know are passed, but even now under the empire our country has claims and her children owe her duties.'

'The figure is a common one,' Calpurnius answered, 'by which our country is termed a parent, and we her children. Allow it just. Do I owe obedience to an unjust or tyrannical parent? to one who has abandoned me in helplessness or exposed me in infancy? Are not the natural ties then sundered?'

'I think not,' I replied; 'no provocation nor injury can justify a parricidal blow. Our parent is our creator--in some sense a God to us. The tie that binds us to him is like no other tie; to do it violence, is not only a wrong, but an impiety.'

'I cannot think so,' he rejoined. 'A parent is our creator, not so much for our good as his own pleasure. In the case of the gods this is reversed: they have given us being for our advantage, not theirs. We lie under obligation to a parent then, only as he fulfils the proper duties of one. When he ceases to be virtuous, the child must cease to respect. When he ceases to be just, or careful, or kind, the child must cease to love. And from whomsoever else then the child receives the treatment, becoming a parent, that person is to him the true parent. It is idle to be governed by names rather than things; it is more, it is mischievous and injurious.'

'I still am of opinion,' I replied, 'that nature has ordained what I have asserted to be an everlasting and universal truth, by the instincts which she has implanted. All men, of all tribes, have united in expressions of horror against him who does violence to his parents. And have not the poets truly painted, when they have set before us the parricide, forever after the guilty act, pursued by the Furies, and delivered over to their judicial torments?'

'All instincts,' he replied, 'are not to be defended: some animals devour their own young as soon as born. Vice is instinctive. If it be instinctive to honor, and love, and obey a vicious parent, to be unresisting under the most galling oppression, then I say, the sooner reason usurps the place of instinct the safer for mankind. No error can be more gross or hurtful, than to respect vice because of the person in whom it is embodied, even though that person be a parent. Vice is vice, injustice is injustice, wrong is wrong, wheresoever they are found; and are to be detested and withstood. But I might admit that I am in an error here; and still maintain my cause by denying the justice of the figure by which our country is made our parent, and our obligations to her made to rest on the same ground. It is mere fancy, it is a nullity, unless it be true, as I think it is, that it has been the source of great mischiefs to the world, in which case it cannot be termed a nullity, but something positively pernicious. What age of the world can be named when an insane devotion to one's country has not been the mother of war upon war, evil upon evil, beyond the power of memory to recount? Patriotism, standing for this instinctive slavery of the will, has cursed as much as it has blessed mankind. Men have not reasoned, they have only felt: they have not inquired, is the cause of my country just--but is it her cause? That has ever been the cry in Rome. "Our country! our country!--right or wrong--our country!" It is a maxim good for conquest and despotism; bad, for peace and justice. It has made Rome mistress of the world, and at the same time the scourge of the world, and trodden down into their own blood-stained soil the people of many a clime, who had else dwelt in freedom. I am no Roman in this sense, and ought never to have been. Admit that I am not justified in raising my hand against the life of a parent--though if I could defend myself against violence no otherwise, I should raise that hand--I will never allow that I am to approve and second with my best blood all the acts of my country; but when she errs am bound, on the other hand, to blame, and if need be oppose. Why not? What is this country? Men like myself. Who enact the decrees by which I am to be thus bound? Senators, no more profoundly wise perhaps, and no more irreproachably virtuous, than myself. And do I owe their judgments, which I esteem false, a dearer allegiance than I do to my own, which I esteem right and true? Never: such patriotism is a degradation and a vice. Rome, Lucius, I think to have dealt by me and the miserable men who, with me, fell into the hands of Sapor, after the manner of a selfish, cold-hearted, unnatural parent, and I renounce her, and all allegiance to her. I am from this hour a Palmyrene, Zenobia is my mother, Palmyra my country.'

'But,' I could not but still urge, 'should no distinction be made between your country and her emperor? Is the country to rest under the imputation which is justly perhaps cast upon him? That were hardly right. To renounce Gallienus, were he now emperor, were a defensible act: But why Rome or Aurelian?'

'I freely grant, that had a just emperor been put upon the throne, a man with human feelings, the people, had he projected our rescue or revenge, would have gone with him. But how is their conduct to be defended during the long reign of the son of Valerian? Was such a people as the people of Rome to conform their minds and acts to a monster like him? Was that the part of a great nation? Is it credible that the senate and the people together, had no power to compel Gallienus to the performance of his duties to his own father, and the brave legions who fell with him? Alas! they too wanted the will.'

'O not so, Calpurnius,' I rejoined; 'Gallienus wished the death or captivity of his father, that he might reign. To release him was the last act that wretch could have been urged to do. And could he then have been made to interpose for the others? He might have been assassinated, but all the power of Rome could not have compelled him to a war, the issue of which might have been, by the rescue of Valerian, to lose him his throne.'

'Then he should have been assassinated. Rome owed herself a greater duty than allegiance to a beast in human form.'

'But, Galpurnius, you now enjoy your liberty. Why consider so curiously whence it comes? Besides, you have, while in Persia, dwelt in comfort, and at last even in magnificence. The Prince himself has been your companion and friend.'

'What was it,' he replied, 'what was it, when I reflected upon myself, but so much deeper degradation, to find that in spite of myself I was every day sinking deeper and deeper in Persian effeminacy? What was it but the worst wretchedness of all to feel as I did, that I, a Roman and a Piso, was losing my nature as I had lost my country? If any thing served to turn my blood into one hot current of bitterness and revenge, it was this. It will never cool till I find myself, sword in hand, under the banners of Zenobia. Urge me no more: it were as hopeful an endeavor to stem the current of the Euphrates, as to turn me from my purpose. I have reasoned with you because you are a brother, not because you are a Roman.'

'And I,' I replied, 'can still love you, because you are a brother, nor less because you are also a Palmyrene. I greet you as the head of our house, the elder heir of an illustrious name. I still will hope, that when these troubles cease, Rome may claim you as her own.'

'No emperor,' he answered, 'unless he were a Piso, I fear, would permit a renegade of such rank ever to dwell within the walls of Rome. Let me rather hope, that when this war is ended, Portia may exchange Rome for Palmyra, and that here, upon this fair and neutral ground, the Pisos may once more dwell beneath the same roof.'

'May it be so,' said Gracchus; 'and let not the heats of political opposition change the kindly current of your blood, nor inflame it. You, Lucius Piso, are to remember the provocations of Calpurnius, and are to feel that there was a nobleness in that sensibility to a declension into Persian effeminacy that, to say the least, reflects quite as much honor upon the name of Piso, and even Roman, as any loyalty to an emperor like Gallienus, or that senate filled with his creatures. And you, Calpurnius Piso, are to allow for that instinctive veneration for every thing Roman which grows up with the Roman, and even in spite of his better reason ripens into a bigotry that deserves the name of a crime rather than a virtue, and are to consider, that while in you the growth of this false sentiment has been checked by causes, in respect to which you were the sport of fortune, so in Lucius it has been quickened by other causes over which he also was powerless. But to utter my belief, Lucius I think is now more than half Palmyrene, and I trust yet, if committed as he has been to the further tuition of our patriot Fausta, will be not only in part, but altogether of our side.'

'In the mean time, let us rejoice,' said Fausta, 'that the noble Calpurnius joins our cause. If we may judge by the eye, the soft life of a Persian Satrap has not quite exhausted the native Roman vigor.'

'I have never intermitted,' replied Calpurnius, 'martial exercises: especially have I studied the whole art of horsemanship, so far as the chase and military discipline can teach it. It is in her cavalry, as I learn, that Zenobia places her strength: I shall there, I trust, do her good service.'

'In the morning,' said Fausta, 'it shall be my office to bring you before our Queen.'

'And now, Fausta,' said Gracchus,'bring your harp, and let music perfect the harmony which reason and philosophy have already so well begun; music--which for its power over our souls, may rather be held an influence of the gods, a divine breathing, than any thing of mortal birth.'

'I fear,' said Fausta, as she touched the instrument--the Greek and not the Jewish harp--'I shall still further task your philosophy; for I can sing nothing else than the war-song, which is already heard all through the streets of Palmyra, and whose author, it