The Works of Lord Byron Volume V Part 28

[5] {13}[This prince surpa.s.sed all his predecessors in effeminacy, luxury, and cowardice. He never went out of his palace, but spent all his time among a company of women, dressed and painted like them, and employed like them at the distaff. He placed all his happiness and glory in the possession of immense treasures, in feasting and rioting, and indulging himself in all the most infamous and criminal pleasures. He ordered two verses to be put upon his tomb, signifying that he carried away with him all he had eaten, and all the pleasures he had enjoyed, but left everything else behind him,--_an epitaph_, says Aristotle, _fit for a hog_. Arbaces, governor of Media, having found means to get into the palace, and having with his own eyes seen Sardanapalus in the midst of his infamous seraglio, enraged at such a spectacle, and not able to endure that so many brave men should be subjected to a prince more soft and effeminate than the women themselves, immediately formed a conspiracy against him. Beleses, governor of Babylon, and several others, entered into it. On the first rumour of this revolt the king hid himself in the inmost part of his palace. Being afterwards obliged to take the field with some forces which he had a.s.sembled, he at first gained three successive victories over the enemy, but was afterwards overcome, and pursued to the gates of Nineveh; wherein he shut himself, in hopes the rebels would never be able to take a city so well fortified, and stored with provisions for a considerable time. The siege proved indeed of very great length. It had been declared by an ancient oracle that Nineveh could never be taken unless the river became an enemy to the city. These words buoyed up Sardanapalus, because he looked upon the thing as impossible. But when he saw that the Tigris, by a violent inundation, had thrown down twenty stadia (two miles and a half) of the city wall, and by that means opened a pa.s.sage to the enemy, he understood the meaning of the oracle, and thought himself lost. He resolved, however, to die in such a manner as, according to his opinion, should cover the infamy of his scandalous and effeminate life. He ordered a pile of wood to be made in his palace, and, setting fire to it, burnt himself, his eunuchs, his women, and his treasures.--Diod.

Sic., _Bibl. Hist_., lib. ii. pag. 78, sqq., ed. 1604, p. 109.]

[a] {14} _He sweats in dreary, dulled effeminacy_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[b] {15} _And see the gewgaws of the glittering girls_.--[MS. M.

erased.]

[6] ["The words _Queen_ (_vide infra_, line 83) and _pavilion_ occur, but it is not an allusion to his Britannic Majesty, as you may tremulously (for the admiralty custom) imagine. This you will one day see (if I finish it), as I have made Sardanapalus _brave_ (though voluptuous, as history represents him), and also as _amiable_ as my poor powers could render him. So that it could neither be truth nor satire on any living monarch."--Letter to Murray, May 25, 1821, _Letters_, 1901, v. 299.

Byron pretended, or, perhaps, really thought, that such a phrase as the "Queen's wrongs" would be supposed to contain an allusion to the trial of Queen Caroline (August-November, 1820), and to the exclusion of her name from the State prayers, etc. Unquestionably if the play had been put on the stage at this time, the pit and gallery would have applauded the sentiment to the echo. There was, too, but one "pavilion" in 1821, and that was not on the banks of the Euphrates, but at Brighton. _Qui s'excuse s'accuse_. Byron was not above "paltering" with his readers "in a double sense."]

[7] {16} "The Ionian name had been still more comprehensive; having included the Achaians and the Botians, who, together with those to whom it was afterwards confined, would make nearly the whole of the Greek nation; and among the Orientals it was always the general name for the Greeks."--MITFORD'S _Greece_, 1818. i. 199.

[c] {17} _To Byblis_----.--[MS. M.]

[d] _I know each glance of those deep Greek-souled eyes_.--[MS. M.

erased.]

[e] {19}

----_I have a mind_ _To curse the restless slaves with their own wishes_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[8] {21}[For the occupation of India by Dionysus, see Diod. Siculi _Bib.

Hist_., lib. ii, pag. 87, c.]

[f] _He did, and thence was deemed a G.o.d in story_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[9] [Strabo (_Rerum Geog_., lib. iii. 1807, p. 235) throws some doubt on the existence of these columns, which he suggests were islands or "pillar" rocks. According to Plutarch (Langhorne's Translation, 1838, p.

490), Alexander built great altars on the banks of the Ganges, on which the native kings were wont to "offer sacrifices in the Grecian manner."

Hence, perhaps, the legend of the columns erected by Dionysus.]

[10] "For this expedition he took only a small chosen body of the phalanx, but all his light troops. In the first day's march he reached Anchialus, a town said to have been founded by the king of a.s.syria, Sardanapalus. The fortifications, in their magnitude and extent, still in Arrian's time, bore the character of greatness, which the a.s.syrians appear singularly to have affected in works of the kind. A monument representing Sardanapalus was found there, warranted by an inscription in a.s.syrian characters, of course in the old a.s.syrian language, which the Greeks, whether well or ill, interpreted thus: 'Sardanapalus, son of Anacyndaraxes, in one day founded Anchialus and Tarsus. Eat, drink, play; all other human joys are not worth a fillip.' Supposing this version nearly exact (for Arrian says it was not quite so), whether the purpose has not been to invite to civil order a people disposed to turbulence, rather than to recommend immoderate luxury, may perhaps reasonably be questioned. What, indeed, could be the object of a king of a.s.syria in founding such towns in a country so distant from his capital, and so divided from it by an immense extent of sandy deserts and lofty mountains, and, still more, how the inhabitants could be at once in circ.u.mstances to abandon themselves to the intemperate joys which their prince has been supposed to have recommended, is not obvious. But it may deserve observation that, in that line of coast, the southern of Lesser Asia, ruins of cities, evidently of an age after Alexander, yet barely named in history, at this day astonish the adventurous traveller by their magnificence and elegance amid the desolation which, under a singularly barbarian government, has for so many centuries been daily spreading in the finest countries of the globe. Whether more from soil and climate, or from opportunities for commerce, extraordinary means must have been found for communities to flourish there; whence it may seem that the measures of Sardanapalus were directed by juster views than have been commonly ascribed to him. But that monarch having been the last of a dynasty ended by a revolution, obloquy on his memory would follow of course from the policy of his successors and their partisans.

The inconsistency of traditions concerning Sardanapalus is striking in Diodorus's account of him."--MITFORD's _Greece_, 1820, ix. 311-313, and note 1.

[The story of the sepulchral monument with its cynical inscription rests on the authority of Aristobulus, who served under Alexander, and wrote his history. The pa.s.sage is quoted by Strabo (lib. xiv. ed. 1808, p.

958), and as follows by Athenaeus (lib. xii. cap. 40) in the _Deipnosophistae_: "And Aristobulus says, 'In Anchiale, which was built by Sardanapalus, did Alexander, when he was on his expedition against the Persians, pitch his camp. And at no great distance was the monument of Sardanapalus, on which there is a marble figure putting together the fingers of its right hand, as if it were giving a fillip. And there was on it the following inscription in a.s.syrian characters:--

Sardanapalus The king, and son of Anacyndaraxes, In one day built Anchiale and Tarsus: Eat, drink, and love, the rest's not worth e'en this.'

By '_this_' meaning the fillip he was giving with his fingers."

"We may conjecture," says Canon Rawlinson, "that the monument was in reality a stele containing the king [Sennacherib] in an arched frame, with the right hand raised above the left, which is the ordinary att.i.tude, and an inscription commemorating the occasion of its erection"

[the conquest of Cilicia and settlement of Tarsus].--_The Five Great Monarchies, etc._, 1871, ii. 216.]

[11] {25}[Compare "Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us; and we fat ourselves for maggots."--_Hamlet_.

act iv. sc. 3, lines 21-23.]

[12] {27}[Compare--"The fickle reek of popular breath." _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza clxxi. line 2.]

[13] Compare--"I have not flattered its rank breath." _Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza cxiii. line 2.

Compare, too, Shakespeare, _Coriola.n.u.s_, act iii. sc. i, lines 66, 67.

[14] {28}["Rode. Winter's wind somewhat more unkind than ingrat.i.tude itself, though Shakespeare says otherwise. At least, I am so much more accustomed to meet with ingrat.i.tude than the north wind, that I thought the latter the sharper of the two. I had met with both in the course of the twenty-four hours, so could judge."--_Extracts from a Diary_, January 19, 1821, _Letters_, 1901, v. 177.]

[g] {31} ----_and even dared_ _Profane our presence with his savage jeers_.--[MS. M.]

[h] {34} _Who loved no gems so well as those of nature_.--[MS. M.]

[i] _Wis.h.i.+ng eternity to dust_----.--[MS. M.]

[j] {38} _Each twinkle unto which Time trembles, and_ _Nations grow nothing_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[15] {40}[Compare "these swoln silkworms," _Marino Faliero_, act ii. sc.

2. line 115, _Poetical Works_, 1901, iv. 386, note 4.]

[k] {43} _But found the Monarch claimed his privacy_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[l]

----_not else_ _It quits this living hand_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[m] _I know them beautiful, and see them brilliant_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[n] {49} ----_by the foolish confidence_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[16] [The first edition reads "grantor." In the MS. the word may be either "granter" or "grantor." "Grantor" is a technical term, in law, for one "who grants a conveyance."]

[17] {50}[According to aelian, _Var. Hist._, vii. i, Semiramis, having obtained from her husband permission to rule over Asia for five days, thrust him into a dungeon, and obtained the sovereign power for herself (ed. Paris, 1858, p. 355).]

[o] {52} _Aye--that's earnest!_--[MS. M. erased.]

[p] {54} _Nay, if thou wilt not_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[q] {56} _Nor silent Baal, our imaged deity_, _Although his marble face looks frowningly_, _As the dusk shadows of the evening cast_ _His trow in coming dimness and at times_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[r]

/ _a wide-spread_ _In distant flashes_ < _tempest_=""> --[MS. M erased]

_the approaching_ /

[s] _As from the G.o.ds to augur_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[t] {58} _The weaker merit of our Asian women_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[u] _Rather than prove that love to you in griefs_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[v] {60} _Wors.h.i.+ppers in the air_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[18] {61}[Perhaps Grillparzer's _Sappho_ was responsible for the anachronism. See "Extracts from a Diary," January 12, 1821, _Letters_, 1901, V. 171, note 1.]