Zenobia or the Fall of Palmyra Part 9

'In Christianity,' said Fausta; 'this is your panacea. May it prove all you desire; yet methinks it gives small promise, seeing it has already been at work more than two hundred years, and has accomplished no more.'

'A close observer,' replied Julia, 'sees much of the effect of Christianity beside that which appears upon the surface. If I err not greatly, a few years more will reveal what this religion has been doing these two centuries and more. Revolutions which are acted out in a day, have often been years or centuries in preparation. An eye that will see, may see the final issue, a long time foreshadowed in the tendencies and character of a preceding age.'

The princess uttered this with earnestness. I have reflected upon it. And if you, my Curtius, will look around upon the state of the empire, you will find many things to startle you. But of this another time.

a.s.sembled in the evening in the court of the elephant, we were made to forget whatever had proved disagreeable during the day, while we listened to the 'Frogs,' read by Julia and Longinus.

The following day was appointed for the chase, and early in the morning I was waked by the braying of trumpets, and the baying of dogs. I found the Queen already mounted and equipped for the sport, surrounded by Zabdas, Longinus, and a few of the n.o.bles of Palmyra. We were soon joined by Julia and Fausta. In order to insure our sport, a tiger, made fierce by being for some days deprived of food, had the preceding evening been let loose from the royal collection into the neighboring forests. These forests, abounding in game, commence immediately, as it were, in the rear of the palace. They present a boundless continuity of crag, mountain, and wooded plain, offering every variety of ground to those who seek the pleasures of the chase. The sun had not been long above the horizon when we sallied forth from the palace gates, and from the smooth and shaven fields of the royal demesne, plunged at once into the

It was a moment of inexpressible horror. At the same instant, our eyes caught the form of the famished tiger, just in the act to spring from the crag upon the unconscious Queen. But before we had time to alarm Zen.o.bia--which would indeed have been useless--a shaft from an unerring arm arrested the monster midair, whose body then tumbled heavily at the feet of Zen.o.bia's Arab. The horse, rearing with affright, had nearly dashed the Queen against the opposite rocks, but keeping her seat, she soon, by her powerful arm and complete horsemans.h.i.+p, reduced him to his obedience, though trembling like a terrified child through every part of his body. A thrust from my hunting spear quickly despatched the dying beast. We now gathered around the Queen.

Hardly were we arrived at the lawn in front of the palace, when a cloud of dust was observed to rise in the direction of the road to Palmyra, as if caused by a body of horse in rapid movement. 'What may this mean?' said Zen.o.bia: 'orders were strict, that our brief retirement should not be disturbed. This indicates an errand of some urgency.'

'Some emba.s.sy from abroad, perhaps,' said Julia, 'that cannot brook delay. It may be from your great brother at Rome.'

While we, in a sportive humor, indulged in various conjectures, an official of the palace announced the approach of a Roman herald, 'who craved permission to address the Queen of Palmyra.' He was ordered to advance.

In a few moments, upon a horse covered with dust and foam, appeared the Roman herald. Without one moment's hesitancy, he saw in Zen.o.bia the Queen, and taking off his helmet, said, 'that Caius Petronius, and Cornelius Varro, amba.s.sadors of Aurelian, were in waiting at the outer gates of the palace, and asked a brief audience of the Queen of Palmyra, upon affairs of deepest interest, both to Zen.o.bia and the Emperor.'

'It is not our custom,' said Zen.o.bia in reply, 'when seeking repose, as now, from the cares of state, to allow aught to break it. But we will not be selfish nor churlish. Bid the servants of your Emperor draw near, and we will hear them.'

I was not unwilling that the messengers of Aurelian should see Zen.o.bia just as she was now. Sitting upon her n.o.ble Arabian, and leaning upon her hunting spear, her countenance glowing with a higher beauty than ever before, as it seemed to me--her head surmounted with a Parthian hunting-cap, from which drooped a single ostrich feather, springing from a diamond worth a nation's rental, her costume also Parthian, and revealing in the most perfect manner the just proportions of her form--I thought I had never seen even her, when she so filled and satisfied the eye and the mind--and, for that moment, I was almost a traitor to Aurelian. Had Julia filled her seat, I should have been quite so. As it was, I could wors.h.i.+p her who sat her steed with no less grace, upon the left of the Queen, without being guilty of that crime. On Zen.o.bia's right were Longinus and Zabdas, Gracchus, and the other n.o.blemen of Palmyra. I and Fausta were near Julia. In this manner, just as we had come in from the chase, did we await the amba.s.sadors of Aurelian.

Announced by trumpets, and followed by their train, they soon wheeled into the lawn, and advanced toward the Queen.

'Caius Petronius and Cornelius Varro,' said Zen.o.bia, first addressing the amba.s.sadors, and moving toward them a few paces, 'we bid you heartily welcome to Palmyra. If we receive you thus without form, you must take the blame partly to yourselves, who have sought us with such haste. We put by the customary observances, that we may cause you no delay. These whom you see are all friends or counsellors. Speak your errand without restraint.'

'We come,' replied Petronius, 'as you may surmises great Queen, upon no pleasing errand. Yet we cannot but persuade ourselves, that the Queen of Palmyra will listen to the proposals of Aurelian, and preserve the good understanding which has lasted so long between the West and the East. There have been brought already to your ears, if I have been rightly informed, rumors of dissatisfaction on the part of our Emperor, with the affairs of the East, and of plans of an eastern expedition. It is my business now to say, that these rumors have been well founded. I am further to say, that the object at which Aurelian has aimed, in the preparations he has made, is not Persia, but Palmyra.'

'He does us too much honor,' said Zen.o.bia, her color rising, and her eye kindling; 'and what, may I ask, are specifically his demands, and the price of peace?'

'For a long series of years,' replied the amba.s.sador, 'the wealth of Egypt and the East, as you are aware, flowed into the Roman treasury. That stream has been diverted to Palmyra. Egypt, and Syria, and Bithynia, and Mesopotamia, were dependants upon Rome, and Roman provinces. It is needless to say what they now are. The Queen of Palmyra was once but the Queen of Palmyra; she is now Queen of Egypt and of the East--Augusta of the Roman empire--her sons styled and arrayed as Caesars. By whatever consent of former emperors these honors have been won or permitted, it is not, we are required to say, with the consent of Aurelian. By whatever service in behalf of Rome they may, in the judgment of some, be thought to be deserved, in the judgment of Aurelian the reward exceeds greatly the value of the service rendered. But while we would not be deemed insensible to those services, and while he honors the greatness and the genius of Zen.o.bia, he would, he conceives, be unfaithful to the interests of those who have raised him to his high office, if he did not require that in the East, as in the West, the Roman empire should again be restored to the limits which bounded it in the reigns of the virtuous Antonines. This he holds essential to his own honor, and the glory of the Roman world.'

'You have delivered yourself, Caius Petronius,' replied the Queen, in a calm and firm voice, 'as it became a Roman to do, with plainness, and as I must believe, without reserve. So far I honor you. Now hear me, and as you hear, so report to him who sent you. Tell Aurelian that what I am, I have made myself; that the empire which hails me Queen has been moulded into what it is by Odenatus and Zen.o.bia; it is no gift, but an inheritance--a conquest and a possession; it is held, not by favor, but by right of birth and power; and that when he will give away possessions or provinces which he claims as his or Rome's, for the asking, I will give away Egypt and the Mediterranean coast. Tell him that as I have lived a queen, so, the G.o.ds helping, I will die a queen,--that the last moment of my reign and my life shall be the same. If he is ambitious, let him be told that I am ambitious too--ambitious of wider and yet wider empire--of an unsullied fame, and of my people's love. Tell him I do not speak of grat.i.tude on the part of Rome, but that posterity will say, that the Power which stood between Rome and Persia, and saved the empire in the East, which avenged the death of Valerian, and twice pursued the king of kings as far as the gates of Ctesiphon, deserved some fairer acknowledgment than the message you now bring, at the hands of a Roman emperor.'

'Let the Queen,' quickly rejoined Petronius, but evidently moved by what he had heard, 'let the Queen fully take me. Aurelian purposes not to invade the fair region where I now am, and where my eyes are rejoiced by this goodly show of city, plain and country. He hails you Queen of Palmyra! He does but ask again those appendages of your greatness, which have been torn from Rome, and were once members of her body.'

'Your emperor is gracious indeed!' replied the Queen, smiling; 'if he may hew off my limbs, he will spare the trunk!--and what were the trunk without the limbs?'

'And is this,' said Petronius, his voice significant of inward grief, 'that which I must carry back to Rome? Is there no hope of a better adjustment?'

'Will not the Queen of Palmyra delay for a few days her final answer?' added Varro: 'I see, happily, in her train, a n.o.ble Roman, from whom, as well as from us, she may obtain all needed knowledge of both the character and purposes of Aurelian. We are at liberty to wait her pleasure.'

'You have our thanks, Romans, for your courtesy, and we accept your offer; although in what I have said, I think I have spoken the sense of my people.'

'You have indeed, great Queen,' interrupted Zabdas with energy.

'Yet I owe it to my trusty counsellor, the great Longinus,' continued the Queen, 'and who now thinks not with me, to look farther into the reasons--which, because they are his, must be strong ones---by which he supports an opposite judgment.'

'Those reasons have now,' said the Greek, 'lost much or all of their force,'--Zabdas smiled triumphantly--'yet still I would advocate delay.'

'Let it be so then,' said the Queen; 'and in the meanwhile, let the amba.s.sadors of Aurelian not refuse the hospitalities of the Eastern Queen. Our palace is yours, while it shall please you to remain.'

'For the night and the morning, we accept your offers; then, as strangers in this region, we would return to the city, to see better than we have yet done the objects which it presents. It seemed to us, on a hasty glance, surrounded by its luxuriant plains, like the habitation of G.o.ds. We would dwell there a s.p.a.ce.'

'It shall be as you will. Let me now conduct you to the palace.'

So saying, Zen.o.bia, putting spurs to her horse, led the way to the palace, followed by a long train of Romans and Palmyrenes. The generous hospitality of the tables closed the day and wore away the night.

Letter VII.

You will be glad to learn, my Curtius, that the time has now come, when I may with reason look for news from Isaac, or for his return. It was his agreement to write of his progress, so soon as he should arrive at Ecbatana. But since he would consume but a very few days in the accomplishment of his task, if, the G.o.ds helping, he should be able to accomplish it at all, I may see him even before I hear from him, and, O day thrice happy! my brother perhaps with him. Yet am I not without solicitude, even though Calpurnius should return. For how shall I meet him?--as a Persian, or a Roman?--as a friend, or an enemy? As a brother, I can never cease to love him; as a public enemy of Rome, I may be obliged to condemn him.

You have indeed gratified me by what you have said concerning the public works in which the emperor is now engaged. Would that the erection of temples and palaces might draw away his thoughts from the East. The new wall, of so much wider sweep, with which he is now enclosing the city, is well worthy the greatness of his genius. Yet do we, my Curtius, perceive in this rebuilding and strengthening of the walls of Rome, no indication of our country's decline? Were Rome vigorous and sound, as once, in her limbs, what were the need of this new defence about the heart? It is to me a confession of weakness, rather than any evidence of greatness and strength. Aurelian achieves more for Rome by the strictness of his discipline, and his restoration of the ancient simplicity and severity among the troops, than he could by a triple wall about the metropolis. Rome will then already have fallen, when a Gothic army shall have penetrated so far as even to have seen her gates. The walls of Rome are her living and moving walls of flesh. Her old and crumbling ramparts of masonry, upon which we have so often climbed in sport, rolling down into the surrounding ditch huge ma.s.ses, have ever been to me, when I have thought of them, pregnant signs of security and power.

The amba.s.sadors, Petronius and Varro, early on the morning succeeding their interview with the Queen, departed for the city. They were soon followed by Zen.o.bia and her train of counsellors and attendants. It had been before agreed that the princess, Fausta, and myself, should remain longer at the palace, for the purpose of visiting, as had been proposed, the aged Christian hermit, whose retreat is among the fastnesses of the neighboring mountains. I would rather have accompanied the Queen, seeing it was so certain that important interviews and discussions would take place, when they should be all returned once more to the city. I suppose this was expressed in my countenance, for the Queen, as she took her seat in the chariot, turned and said to me: 'We shall soon see you again in the city. A few hours in the mountains will be all that Julia will require; and sure I am that the wisdom of St. Thomas will more than repay you for what you may lose in Palmyra. Our topics will relate but to worldly aggrandizement--yours to more permanent interests.'

How great a pity that the love of glory has so fastened upon the heart of this wonderful woman; else might she live, and reign, and die the object of universal idolatry. But set as her heart is upon conquest and universal empire throughout the East, and of such marvellous power to subdue every intellect, even the strongest, to her will, I can see nothing before her but a short and brilliant career, ending in ruin, absolute and complete. Zen.o.bia has not, or will not allow it to be seen that she has, any proper conception of the power of Rome. She judges of Rome by the feeble Valerian, and the unskilful Heraclia.n.u.s, and by their standard measures such men as Aurelian, and Probus, and Carus. She may indeed gain a single battle, for her genius is vast, and her troops well disciplined and brave. But the loss of a battle would be to her the loss of empire, while to Rome it would be but as the sting of a summer insect. Yet this she does not or will not see. To triumph over Aurelian is, I believe, the vision that dazzles, deludes, and will destroy her.

No sooner had the Queen and her train departed, than, mounting our horses, we took our way, Julia, Fausta, and myself, through winding valleys and over rugged hills, toward the hermit's retreat. Reaching the base of what seemed an almost inaccessible crag, we found it necessary to leave our horses in the care of attendant slaves, and pursue the remainder of the way on foot. The hill which we now had to ascend was thickly grown over with every variety of tree and bush, with here and there a mountain stream falling from rock to rock, and forcing its way to the valley below. The sultry heat of the day compelled us frequently to pause, as we toiled up the side of the hill, seating ourselves, now beneath the dark shadows of a branching cedar or the long-lived terebinth, and now on the mossy banks of a descending brook. The mingled beauty and wildness of the scene, together with such companions, soon drove the Queen, Rome, and Palmyra, from my thoughts. I could not but wish that we might lose our way to the hermit's cave, that by such means our walk might be prolonged.

'Is it, I wonder,' said Fausta, 'the instruction of his religion which confines this Christian saint to these distant solitudes? What a singular faith it must be which should drive all who embrace it to the woods and rocks! What would become of our dear Palmyra, were it to be changed to a Christian city? The same event, I suppose, Julia, would change it to a desert.'

'I do not think Christianity prescribes this mode of life, though. I do not know but it may permit it,' replied the princess. 'But of this, the Hermit will inform us. He may have chosen this retreat on account of his extreme age, which permits him no longer to engage in the affairs of an active life.'

'I trust for the sake of Christianity it is so,' added Fausta; 'for I cannot conceive of a true religion inculcating, or even permitting inactivity. What would become of the world, if it could be proved that the G.o.ds required us to pa.s.s our days in retired contemplation?'

'Yet it cannot be denied,' said Julia, 'that the greatest benefactors of mankind have been those who have in solitude, and with patient labor, pursued truth till they have discovered it, and then revealed it to shed its light and heat upon the world.'

'For my part,' replied Fausta, 'I must think that they who have sowed and reaped, have been equal benefactors. The essential truths are instinctive and universal. As for the philosophers, they have, with few exceptions, been occupied as much about mere frivolities as any Palmyrene lady at her toilet. Still, I do not deny that the contemplative race is a useful one in its way. What I say is, that a religion which enjoined a solitary life as a duty, would be a very mischievous religion. And what is more, any such precept, fairly proved upon it, would annihilate all its claims to a divine origin. For certainly, if it were made a religious duty for one man to turn an idle, contemplative hermit, it would be equally the duty of every other, and then the arts of life by which we subsist would be forsaken. Any of the prevalent superst.i.tions, if we may not call them religions, were better than this.'

'I agree with you entirely,' said Julia; 'but my acquaintance with the Christian writings is not such as to enable me to say with confidence that they contain no such permission or injunction. Indeed some of them I have not even read, and much I do not fully understand. But as I have seen and read enough to believe firmly that Christianity is a divine religion, my reason teaches me that it contains no precept such as we speak of.'

We had now, in the course of our walk, reached what we found to be a broad and level ledge, about half way to the summit of the hill. It was a spot remarkable for a sort of dark and solemn beauty, being set with huge branching trees, whose tops were woven into a roof, through which only here and there the rays of the fierce sun could find their way. The turf beneath, uninc.u.mbered with any smaller growth of tree or shrub, was sprinkled with flowers that love the shade. The upper limit of this level s.p.a.ce was bounded by precipitous rocks, up which ascent seemed difficult or impossible, and the lower by similar ones, to descend which seemed equally difficult or impossible.

'If the abode of the Christian is hereabouts,' we said, 'it seems well chosen both for its security and the exceeding beauty of the various objects which greet the eye.'

'Soon as we shall have pa.s.sed that tumbling rivulet,' said Julia, 'it will come into view.'

Upon a rude bridge of fallen trunks of trees, we pa.s.sed the stream as it crossed our path, and which then shooting over the edge of the precipice, was lost among the rocks and woods below. A cloud of light spray fell upon us as we stood upon the bridge, and imparted a most refres.h.i.+ng coolness.

'Where you see,' said Julia, 'that dark entrance, beneath yonder low-browed rock, is the dwelling of the aged Christian.'

We moved on with slow and silent steps, our spirits partaking of the stillness and solitariness of the place. We reached the front of the grotto, without disturbing the meditations of the venerable man. A part of the rock which formed his dwelling served him for a seat, and another part projecting after the manner of a shelf, served him for a table, upon which lay unrolled a large volume. Bending over the book, his lean and shrivelled finger pointing to the words, and aiding his now dim and feeble eye, he seemed wholly wrapped in the truths he was contemplating, and heeded not our presence. We stood still for a moment, unwilling to break a repose so peaceful and profound. At length, raising his eyes from the page, they caught the form and face of the princess, who stood nearest to him. A quick and benignant smile lighted up his features; and rising slowly to his full height, he bade her welcome, with sweet and tremulous tones, to his humble roof.