Delphi Complete Works of Sidonius Apollinaris, page 4
“Aëtius, stirred to wrath, thus briefly answered: ‘Curb the impious longings of thy frenzied spirit! Can I order the death of a man who is innocent, not to say our friend? Can anyone urge that where no crime is charged it be made a crime to be wellborn? Who can summon the fates to judgment? I will assail thy body with the sword, Majorian, — yes, if the sun shines by night and the moon by day, if the two Arcadian constellations have their wains refreshed in the sea, if Tanais looks on Atlas and Bagrada on the Caucasus, if the boat compacted of timbers from the Hercynian forest cleaves the eastern Hydaspes instead of the Rhine, if the Spaniard drinks of the Ganges and the Indian comes from warm Erythrae to the Spanish Ebro to draw water, if Castor steeps himself in his brother’s blood, if the hand of Pirithous laid Theseus low, or the hand of Orestes, frenzied as it was, struck Pylades down when the filial matricide was snatching the holy image from the Tauric shrine. Nevertheless, I would fain not be deemed to have slighted thy distress; so he shall live, indeed, but he shall be taken from his soldiering for a brief space. Alas! But for thy gloomy thoughts he might have owed his rise to me!
“So spake he, and ordered the fighter to exchange his wonted toil for his native fields; but fate’s revolving wheel was here at work, to the end that he might learn what is in store for the possessor of land and likewise what conduct the civil law creates, and so he might bring to the throne more than a soldier’s skill. Straightway he had hung up his armour, this veteran young in years, and was making the leanness of a barren land fruitful with the plough. Even so in old times thou wert wont, O Rome, to upturn thy fields by the work of a stooping consul, when peace had intervened for a little and thou hadst relaxed thy campaigning; and his stout left hand would control the plough after he had ruled the legions, while near the lowly hearth a peasant-conqueror’s palm-decked robe drank in the smoke.
“Meanwhile Aëtius had fulfilled his melancholy fate by the sword of the emperor; who, that he might with more safety win over the great hosts of his victim to join the Palatine bands, called on Majorian with prayers to come to him. But punishment for the blood that he had shed was not long in coming (so ’twas a mere mob he had rallied round him, not the hearts of the people); the swords crime he expiated by the sword, and so he fell, O Rome, bringing thee lower than he himself was brought. Yet even then the kindly fates with their golden distaff were evolving the reign of our present chief; but the calamities of the people shrank from bringing enmity on such a man. All who had been chosen to bear the name of Augustus had held a throne left for them by the Caesars; but he, when thou wert captured and in sore trouble, created that which he now holds. Nerva called Trajan to power when his son was already a conqueror; in official title he was styled Germanicus, but his deeds had made him so already. The one thing leads to the other: whoever begins thus aims at the same glory. In olden days after Tiberius in Capri, after Gams’ base assumption of divinity, after the censorship of Claudius, after Nero with his lyre and his lechery, after the parade of that horrible mirror in which Otho, foul because he was fair, was wont to behold himself, after Vitellius’ five millions of money condemned to the bottomless pit of his scandalous belly, Vespasian had been chosen emperor with the same titles won by the same toil as Trajan’s and Majorian’s.
“But lest haply thou think that I am securely hemmed in by the valour of the Robber, know that in him the vileness of his vices has sapped the vigour of his race. His Scythian savagery is governed not by his strength but by his desires; spoils immense he has won, but already by his profligacy he has lost all that made him strong when he was poor. Now he arms mine own flesh against me for his own ends, and after all these years of captivity I am being cruelly torn under his authority by the prowess of mine own; fertile in afflictions I bring forth sons to bring me suffering. Naught doth he perform with his own arms; Gaetulians, Numidians, Garamantians, Autololi, Arzuges, Marmaridae, Psylli, Nasamones — it is these that make him feared, but he is sunk in indolence and, thanks to untold gold, no longer knows aught of steel. His cheeks are bloodless; a drunkard’s heaviness afflicts him, pallid flabbiness possesses him, and his stomach, loaded with continual gluttony, cannot rid itself of the sour wind. His followers live like him: — Hannibal of Barca’s race was not so utterly undone in affluent Capua’s land, when Baiae enfeebled amid all its allurements bodies that were strong for war, and the Massylian took to swimming and flourished his swarthy arms about where Gaurus stoops down to the Lucrine waters. So do thou, I pray thee, give me but this one lord after these many ages to be my avenger, that so Carthage may cease to war against Italy.”
So speaking, she groaned in her distress, and the starting tears gave support to her prayers. Rome answered: “Curb thy long plaint, my faithful one; Majorian shall be thine avenger commissioned by heaven. But a few things in few words I will recall. Ever since Theodosius restored a joint authority to his patron’s exiled brother, whose neck was broken by a hand destined to be turned against itself, my land of Gaul hath even till now been ignored by the lords of the world, and hath languished in slavery unheeded. Since that time much hath been destroyed, for with the emperor, whoe’er he might be, closely confined, it has been the constant lot of the distant parts of a wretched world to be laid waste. What manner of life could satisfy when the ruler required a controlling hand? For many a year the nobility have lain prostrate and-despised, and enmity has been the state’s reward for the valiant. Now our prince is amending all this, and he advances to your wars by way of other wars, adding fresh forces from divers peoples; for ’tis the going, not the fighting, that is hardest. But why do we waste time in words? He comes, he conquers.” With such speech the assembly was ended, and the fateful sisters harmoniously spun golden threads, whose metal humbly obeyed the words of the goddess.
These afflictions of Rome and Africa that I have sung the yearnings of mankind did teach me to proclaim; now it is time to advance to deeds which must needs be told, even were Apollo dumb. Thy Mars shall take the Muses’ place. The savage Alaman had scaled the Alps, and, led down by way of the Rhaetian ridge over its long silences, had emerged, plundering the Roman land; he had sent nine hundred foemen to scour for booty the plains named long ago after Canius. By this time thou wert Master of the Forces ; and thou didst send thither Burco with a band of followers, small indeed, but that suffices when thou bidst them fight; ’tis certain victory for our troops when they go under thine orders; Fortune brings about a triumph not through their numbers but through their love for thee. I crave no armies in a field to which thou sendest but a few men! — The happy issue of that campaign is due to thee, for thou didst fight with the authority of a Master, but with the destiny of an Emperor. Lately, when the throne had been. bestowed on thee in due order by all orders — commons, senate, army, and thy colleague too — ! a savage foe was roaming at his ease over the unguarded sea. Under southerly breezes he invaded the Campanian soil and with his Moorish soldiery attacked the husbandmen when they dreamed not of danger; the fleshy Vandal sat on the thwarts waiting for the spoil, which he had bidden his captives to capture and bring thither. But of a sudden thy bands had thrown themselves between the two enemy hosts into the plains which sunder the sea from the hills and fashion a harbour where the river makes a backward curve. First the multitude of plunderers flees in terror towards the mountains, and so, cut off from the ships they had left, they become the prey of their prey; then the pirates are aroused and mass their whole forces for the battle. Some land their well-trained steeds in hollow skiffs, some don the meshed mail of like hue to themselves, some get ready their shapely bows and the arrows made to carry poison on the iron point and to wound doubly with a single shot. Now the broidered dragon speeds hither and thither in both armies, his throat swelling as the zephyrs dash against it; that pictured form with wide-open jaw counterfeits a wrathful hunger, and the breeze puts a frenzy into the cloth as often as the lithe back is thickened by the blasts and the air is now too abundant for the belly to hold. Now the trumpet’s deep note sounds with terrific blast; a responsive shout greets the clarions, and even the puny spirit of cowards suddenly bursts into frenzy. From everywhere a shower of steel comes down, but from our side it comes down on the throats of the foe; a hurtling javelin lays one man in the dust, scarce to exhaust its force with a second victim; another man is sent spinning by the thrust of a pike; one gashed by a harpoon, another by a lance, falls headlong from his horse; yet another, flung down by a flying shaft, lies there, the prey of a hand beyond his ken; some of them, with the thigh-sinews severed, live on to envy death; again, a warrior sweeps off part of a foeman’s brain and part of his helmet together, cleaving the hapless skull with two-edged sword wielded by a strong arm. Soon as the Vandal began to turn and flee, carnage took the place of battle; all were laid low promiscuously throughout the plain, and even the coward did the most doughty deeds. In their panic flight the horsemen plunged pallid into the water and passed beyond the ships, then swam back in disgrace to their boats from the open sea. Like to this in olden days was the third fight of Pyrrhus: when Dentatus had slain thousands and pressed him sore, he scarce dragged some fragments of his shattered fleet to Epirus — he who had spread over thy shores bands of Chaonians and Molossians, Thracians and Macedonians, he at whose might Oenotria grew pale and luxurious Tarentum, that invited him, was herself dismayed. With the foe driven out there was freedom to survey the plain, which now stood up high. Here in that slaughtered pile could be discerned the spirit of each host: no man of thine but had been stricken in the breast, none of the foe who was not stabbed in the back. This truth is loudly proclaimed by the wounds of him who chanced on that day to be commander of the robbers, a man whom it is said the daughter of the greedy king had wedded; enveloped by the blindly flying dust and crushed under a mass of pikes he still carried the infamous marks of a shameful flight. Thus thy battalions hold the field with all its spoils and reap the reward of their prowess.
Meanwhile thou buildest on the two shores-fleets for the Upper and the Lower Sea. Down into the water falls every forest of the Apennines; for many a long day there is hewing on both slopes of those mountains so rich in ships’ timber, mountains that send down to the sea as great an abundance of wood as of waters. Gaul, though wearied by unceasing tribute, is now eager to gain approval by a new levy for this end, and feels not a burden wherein she beholds a benefit. The elder son of Atreus did not cover the Carpathian Sea with so many ships when the Dorian foe, bent on seizing the wealth of Sigeum, beleaguered Rhoeteian Pergamum; not so vast was the fleet that Xerxes had when he sought to link Sestos with Abydos and paved the swelling waters, setting a bridge over the breakers, and with haughty step burst in upon the outraged flood, and his multitudinous squadrons pranced over the Hellespontine deep. Not so fully did the Mareotic fleet in Leucas’ harbour hide the waters of Actium, when a multitude that was a woman’s dower came from Egyptian Canopus to fight her husband’s battles, and proud Cleopatra, with her country’s sistrum girded upon her and her yellow boats loaded with pitch-black warriors, weighted the wide sea with the treasure of the Ptolemies. Thou dost not fight in this array, but rather as our forerunners did, with wealth of steel, whereto the wealthy coward’s gold submits. Yet scorn not such troublers of the peace, for these splendours, though they grace not the ranks of battle, grace the pageantry of a triumph. And truly I shall never grieve to have mentioned the house of Lagos as prototype of thy foe; for I forecast a like fate for these two kingdoms, since on their side the luxuriousness is equal, and on our side is a Caesar as good as there was then.
Straightway thou dost attempt what no emperor in our time has availed to do: thou dost carry off to war the frozen army of the seven-mouthed Danube. All the multitude that the sluggish quarter of the earth doth produce in the Sithonian region beneath the Arcadian bear fears thy standards; Bastarnian, Suebian, Pannonian, Neuran, Hun, Getan, Dacian, Alan, Bellonotan, Rugian, Burgundian, Visigoth, Alites, Bisalta, Ostrogoth, Procrustian, Sarmatian, Moschan have ranged themselves behind thine eagles; in thy service are the whole Caucasus and the drinker of the Don’s Scythian waters. What shall such a hero’s fortune accomplish? Every band wherewith he now threatens others has at some time caused Rome to tremble; but now under thy sovereignty she counts it almost a small thing to be free from fear, unless she also sees humbly at her service that which she feared when another reigned.
Now thou wert moving thy camp, and around thee thronged thousands under divers standards. Only one race denied thee obedience, a race who had lately, in a mood even more savage than their wont, withdrawn their untamed host from the Danube because they had lost their lords in warfare, and Tuldila stirred in that unruly multitude a mad lust of fighting for which they must needs pay dear. Hereupon, having scarce laid down thine arms, thou takest them up again; as when the Thracian women fill the frosty land of the Ciconians with Theban troops of revellers, and on the fields by the Strymon or over the slopes of Rhodope, or where cloudy Hismarus rolls Hebrus down amid the Hyperborean rocks to the sea, the roaming band give themselves up to sleep, and straightway the rout falls into wearied repose, and no longer does the breath awake a resounding note in the double pipe; but scarce has rest begun, when... an inspired Bass arid once more whirls the thyrsus, and, bristling in her dappled garb of Erythraean fawn-skin, rouses the Odrysian votaries to beat the languid tabors. Yet thou didst put off the punishment of this offence; but in sparing thou didst cause greater bloodshed; for a band of thy men, more careful of thy weal, could bear this crime no longer, and for thy sake spurned thy mildness, and the rebels fell one and all, victims offered at the war’s beginning. Thou didst divide the spoil among those whose hearts had been true; and these hearts, that trembled when they aided in the punishment, were cheered by their reward. Caesar, bound for the field of Pharsalia, stayed a mutinous outburst with the sword; yet as he thus cut off his own limbs, driven thereto by the compelling need of his cause, he wept for those he destroyed. But this rising was a benefit to thine arms; henceforth whatever thine orders might be, if a barbarian hearkened not he fell, that the soldiers might fear.
And now in winter thou didst thyself lead the way over the marble slopes of the Alps, over crags that rise to meet the sky, over rocks like glass and dry rain resting amid threatening scaurs; and with a lance thrust out before thee thou didst steady thy slipping feet. Half-way up the mountain the main part of thy force felt a chilling frost encrusting their very hearts, for confined in narrow paths on a hill-slope they could not clamber up the frozen face, but ever rolled back; then it came to pass that one of the column, a man whose wheels had in their time scoured the whitened Danube, exclaimed: “I would rather have a sword-thrust and that common coldness that comes from a quiet death: numbness ties my limbs with cramping stiffness, and my body is seared and consumed by the burning cold. We follow a young general that persists in toil without ceasing; but even the bravest, whether king or people, is now enclosed in camp or fort or lies down under tents of skin in sunny places, while we pervert the uses of the year. What he orders will be a law to all creation. He is never turned from his enterprises, and he thinks his character is lost if even his losses make him fear the violence of the season. Of what race must I pronounce him born, with whom I, a Scythian, cannot cope? What tigress gave suck to him in infancy under some Hyrcanian height? What land more severe than mine own clime reared him? Lo! on the very summit he musters his chilled squadrons, and laughs at the cold, for he alone has in his soul a warmth that is stronger. When I followed the standards of a northern king I heard that the emperor’s arms and the house of the Caesars were sunk in unending luxury. It is no gain to me that my former lords are gone if, after all, there is here too a valiant king.” He was ready to utter more violent words when thou, speaking from the crest, didst stir him with bitter taunts: “Whosoe’er thou art that fearest the slippery rise that confronts thee, break the skin of the hanging water, then dig into the flow and make the pool thy stepping-stone. Have done with thy base complaints; idleness is the cause of cold. Did nature give me the limbs of doublebodied Hylaeus? Did Pegasus help me with wings over the ground I tread? Do I fly with plumage bestowed by Calais and Zethus — I, whom thou seest already trampling the snow-clad brow of this ridge? Art thou overcome by the cold, by the Alps? Then ’tis time I sought to compensate thee for the frosts; I will give thee a summer near the Syrtes.” Thus dost thou brace thy troops with thy words and cheer them by thine example, ever the first to essay whatever tasks thou dost order; and the others willingly obey when the lawgiver makes himself the servant of his own laws.
