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Zenobia

W >> William Ware >> Zenobia







Letter XVI.



I write to you, Curtius, as from my last you were doubtless led to expect,
from Emesa, a Syrian town of some consequence, filled now to overflowing
with the Roman army. Here Aurelian reposes for a while, after the fatigues
of the march across the desert, and here justice is to be inflicted upon
the leaders of the late revolt, as by Rome it is termed.

The prisons are crowded with the great, and noble, and good, of Palmyra.
All those with whom I have for the last few months mingled so much, whose
hospitality I have shared, whose taste, accomplishments, and elegant
displays of wealth I have admired, are now here immured in dungeons, and
awaiting that death which their virtues, not their vices nor their crimes,
have drawn upon them. For I suppose it will be agreed, that if ever
mankind do that which claims the name and rank of virtue, it is when they
freely offer up their lives for their country, and for a cause which,
whatever may be their misjudgment in the case, they believe to be the
cause of liberty. Man is then greater in his disinterestedness, in the
spirit with which he renounces himself, and offers his neck to the axe of
the executioner, than he can be clothed in any robe of honor, or sitting
upon any throne of power. Which is greater in the present instance,
Longinus, Gracchus, Otho--or Aurelian--I cannot doubt for a moment;
although I fear that you, Curtius, were I to declare my opinion, would
hardly agree with me. Strange that such a sacrifice as this which is about
to be made, can be thought to be necessary! It is not necessary; nor can
Aurelian himself in his heart deem it so. It is a peace-offering to the
blood-thirsty legions, who, well do I know it--for I have been of them---
love no sight so well as the dying throes of an enemy. It is, I am told,
with an impatience hardly to be restrained within the bounds of
discipline, that they wait for the moment, when their eyes shall be
feasted with the flowing blood and headless trunks of the brave defenders
of Palmyra. I see that this is so, whenever I pass by a group of soldiers,
or through the camp. Their conversation seems to turn upon nothing else
than the vengeance due to them upon those who have thinned their ranks of
one half their numbers, and who, themselves shielded by their walls,
looked on and beheld in security the slaughter which they made. They cry
out for the blood of every Palmyrene brought across the desert. My hope
for Gracchus is small; not more, however, because of this clamor of the
legions, than on account of the stern and almost cruel nature of Aurelian
himself. He is himself a soldier. He is one of the legions. His sympathies
are with them, one of whom he so long has been, and from whom he sprang.
The gratifications which he remembers himself so often to have sought and
so dearly to have prized, he is willing to bestow upon those who he knows
feel as he once did. He may speak of his want of power to resist the will
of the soldiers; but I almost doubt his sincerity, since nothing can equal
the terror and reverence with which he is regarded throughout the army;
reverence for his genius, terror for his passions, which, when excited,
rage with the fury of a madman, and wreak themselves upon all upon whom
the least suspicion falls, though among his most trusted friends. To this
terror, as you well know, his bodily strength greatly adds.

It was my first office to seek the presence of Gracchus. I found, upon
inquiry, that both he and Longinus were confined in the same prison, and
in the charge of the same keeper. I did not believe that I should
experience difficulty in gaining admission to them, and I found it so.

Applying to the jailer for admittance to Gracchus the Palmyrene, I was
told that but few were allowed to see him, and such only whose names had
been given him. Upon giving him my name, he said that it was one which was
upon his list, and I might enter. 'Make the most of your time,' he added,
'for to-morrow is the day set for the general execution.'

'So soon?' I said.

'Aye,' he replied, 'and that is scarce soon enough to keep the soldiers
quiet. Since they have lost the Queen, they are suspicious lest the
others, or some of them, may escape too,--so that they are well guarded, I
warrant you.'

'Is the Queen,' I asked, 'under your guard, and within the same prison?'

'The Queen?' he rejoined, and lowering his tone added, 'she is far enough
from here. If others know it not, I know that she is well on her way to
Rome. She has let too much Roman blood for her safety within reach of
Roman swords, I can tell you--Aurelian notwithstanding. That butchery of
the Centurions did neither any good.'

'You say to-morrow is the day appointed for the execution?'

'So I said. But you will scarce believe it when you see the prisoners.
They seem rather as if they were for Rome upon a journey of pleasure, than
so soon for the axe. But walk in. And when you would be let out, make a
signal by drawing the cord which you will find within the inner ward.'

I passed in, and meeting another officer of the prison, was by him shown
the door that led to the cell of Gracchus, and the cord by which I was to
make the necessary signal.

I unbarred the door and entered. Gracchus, who was pacing to and fro in
his apartment, upon seeing who his visiter was, greeted me in his cordial,
cheerful way. His first inquiry was,

'Is Fausta well?'

'I left her well; well as her grief would allow her to be.'

'My room is narrow, Piso, but it offers two seats. Let us sit. This room
is not our hall in Palmyra, nor the banqueting room--this window is too
small--nay, it is in some sort but a crevice--and this ceiling is too
low--and these webs of the spider, the prisoner's friend, are not our
purple hangings--but it might all be worse. I am free of chains, I can
walk the length of my room and back again, and there is light enough from
our chink to see a friend's face by. Yet far as these things are from
worst, I trust not to be annoyed or comforted by them long. You have done
kindly, Piso, to seek me out thus remote from Palmyra, and death will be
lighter for your presence. I am glad to see you.'

'I could not, as you may easily suppose, remain in Palmyra, and you here
and thus. For Fausta's sake and my own, I must be here. Although I
should not speak a word, nor you, there is a happiness in being near and
in seeing.'

'There is. Confinement for a long period of time were robbed of much of
its horror, if there were near you but a single human countenance, and
that a stranger's, upon which you might look, especially if you might read
there pity and affection. Then if this countenance should be that of one
known and beloved, it would be almost like living in society, even though
speech were prohibited. Tyrants know this--these walls are the proof of
it. Aurelian is not a tyrant in this sense. He is not without magnanimity.
Are you here with his knowledge?'

'By his express provision. The jailer had been furnished with my name. You
are right surely, touching the character of Aurelian. Though rude and
unlettered, and severe almost to cruelty, there are generous sentiments
within which shed a softening light, if inconstant, upon the darker
traits. I would conceal nothing from you, Gracchus; as I would do nothing
without your approbation. I know your indifference to life. I know that
you would not purchase a day by any unworthy concession, by any doubtful
act or word. Relying with some confidence upon the generosity of
Aurelian--'

'Why, Lucius, so hesitating and indirect? You would say that you have
appealed to Aurelian for my life--and that hope is not extinct in your
mind of escape from this appointed death.'

'That is what I would say. The Emperor inclines to spare your life, but
wavers. Shall I seek another interview with him? And is there any argument
which you would that I should urge?--or--would you rather that I should
forbear? It is, Gracchus, because I feared lest I had been doing you a
displeasing and undesired service, that I have now spoken.'

'Piso, it is the simple truth when I say that I anticipate the hour and
the moment of death with the same indifference and composure that I do
any, the most common event. I have schooled myself to patience.
Acquiescence in the will of the gods--if gods there are--or which is the
same thing, in the order of events, is the temper which, since I have
reflected at all, I have cultivated, and to which I can say I have fully
attained. I throw myself upon the current of life, unresisting, to be
wafted withersoever it will. I look with desire neither to this shore nor
the opposite, to one port nor another, but wherever I am borne and
permitted to act, I straightway find there and in that my happiness. Not
that one allotment is not in itself preferable to another, but that there
being so much of life over which man has no control, and cannot, if he
would, secure his felicity, I think it wiser to renounce all action and
endeavor concerning it--receiving what is sent or happens with joy if it
be good, without complaint if it be evil. In this manner have I secured an
inward calm, which has been as a fountain of life. My days, whether they
have been dark ones or bright, as others term them, have flowed along a
smooth and even current. Under misfortune, I believe I have enjoyed more
from this my inward frame, than many a son of prosperity has in the very
height of his glory. That which so disturbs the peace of multitudes--even
of philosophers--the prospect of death, has occasioned me not one moment's
disquiet. It is true, I know not what it is--do I know what life is?--but
that is no reason why I should fear it. One thing I know, which is this,
that it will come, as it comes to all, and that I cannot escape it. It may
take me where it will, I shall be content. If it be but a change, and I
live again elsewhere, I shall be glad, especially if I am then exempt from
evils in my condition which assail me here; if it be extinction of being,
it will but resemble those nights when I sleep without dreaming--it will
not yield any delights, but it will not bring affright nor torment. I
desire not to entertain, and I do not entertain either hope or fear. I am
passive. My will is annihilated. The object of my life has been to secure
the greatest amount of pleasure--that being the best thing of which we can
conceive. This I have done by acting right. I have found happiness, or
that which we agree to call so, in acting in accordance with that part of
my nature which prescribes the lines of duty: not in any set of
philosophical opinions; not in expectations in futurity; not in any
fancies or dreams; but in the substantial reality of virtuous action. I
have sought to treat both myself and others in such a way, that afterward
I should not hear from either a single word of reproach. In this way of
life I have for the most part succeeded, as any one can who will apply
his powers as he may if he will. I have at this hour, which it may be is
the last of my life, no complaints to make or hear against myself. So too
in regard to others. At least I know not that there is one living whom I
have wronged, and to whom I owe the least reparation. Now therefore by
living in the best manner for this life on earth, I have prepared myself
in the best manner for death, and for another life, if there be one. If
there be none--still what I have enjoyed I have enjoyed, and it has been
more than any other manner of life could have afforded. So that in any
event, I am like a soldier armed at all points. To me, Piso, to die is no
more than to go on to live. Both are events: to both I am alike
indifferent; I know nothing about either. As for the pain of death, it is
not worthy a moment's thought, even if it were considerable--but it
appears to me that it is not. I have many times witnessed it, and it has
ever seemed that death, so far from being represented by any word
signifying pain, would be better expressed by one that should stand for
insensibility. The nearer death the nearer apathy. There is pain which
often precedes it, in various forms of sickness; but this is sickness, not
death. Such pains we often endure and recover; worse often than apparently
are endured by those who die.'

'I perceive then, Gracchus, that I have given you neither pain nor
pleasure by any thing I have done.'

'Not that exactly. It has given me pleasure that you have sought to do me
a service. For myself, it will weigh but little whether you succeed or
fail. Your intercession has not displeased me. It cannot affect my good
name. For Fausta's sake--'at her name he paused as if for strength--'and
because she wishes it, I would rather live than die. Otherwise my mind is
even-poised, inclining neither way.'

'But would it not afford you, Gracchus, a sensible pleasure, if, supposing
you are now to die, you could anticipate with certainty a future
existence? You are now, you say, in a state of indifference, as to life or
death? Above all you are delivered from all apprehensions concerning death
and futurity. This is, it cannot be denied, a great felicity. You are able
to sit here calm and composed. But it seems to me, if you were possessed
of a certain expectation of immortality, you would be very much animated
and transported, as it were, with the prospect of the wonderful scenes so
soon to be revealed. If, with such a belief, you could turn back your eye
upon as faultless and virtuous a life as you have passed, you would cast
it forward with feelings far from those of indifference.'

'What you assert is very true: doubtless it would be as you say. I can
conceive that death may be approached not only with composure, but with a
bursting impatience; just as the youthful traveller pants to leap from the
vessel that bears him to a foreign land. This would be the case if we were
as secure of another and happier life as we are certain that we live now.
In future ages, perhaps through the discoveries of reason, perhaps by
disclosures from superior beings, it may be so universally, and death come
to be regarded even with affection, as the great deliverer and rewarder.
But at present it is very different; I have found no evidence to satisfy
me in any of the systems of ancient or modern philosophers, from
Pythagoras to Seneca, and our own Longinus, either of the existence of a
God, or of the reality of a future life. It seems to me oftentimes in
certain frames of mind, but they are transient, as if both were true; they
feel true, but that is all. I find no evidence beyond this inward feeling
at all complete and sufficient; and this feeling is nothing, it is of the
nature of a dream, I cannot rely upon it. So that I have, as I still
judge, wisely intrenched myself behind indifference. I have never indulged
in idle lamentations over evils that could not be removed, nor do I now.
Submission is the law of my life, the sum of my philosophy.'

'The Christians,' I here said, 'seem to possess that which all so much
desire, a hope, amounting to a certain expectation, of immortality.
They all, so I am informed, the poor and the humble, as well as the
rich and the learned, live while they live, as feeling themselves to be
only passengers here, and when they die, die as those who pass from one
stage of a journey to another. To them death loses its character of
death, and is associated rather in their minds with life. It is a
beginning rather than an ending; a commencement, not a consummation;
being born, not dying.'

'So I have heard; but I have never considered their doctrine. The
Christian philosophy or doctrine is almost the only one of all, which lay
claim to such distinction, that I have not studied. I have been repelled
from that I suppose by seeing it in so great proportion the property of
the vulgar. What they so rejoiced in, it has appeared to me, could not at
the same time be what would yield me either pleasure or wisdom. At least
in other things the vulgar and the refined seek their knowledge and their
pleasures from very different sources. I cannot conceive of the same
philosophy approving itself to both classes. Do you learn, Piso, when the
time for the execution of the prisoners is appointed?'

'To-morrow, as I heard from the jailer.'

'To-morrow. It is well. Yet I marvel that the jailer told not me. I am
somewhat more concerned to know the hour than you, yet to you he has
imparted what he has withheld from me. He is a partial knave. Have you yet
seen Longinus?'

'I have not, but shall visit him in the morning.'

'Do so. He will receive you with pleasure. Tell me if he continues true in
his affections for the Queen. His is a great trial, laboring, as at first
he did, to turn her from the measures that have come to this end; now
dying, because at last, out of friendship for her rather than anything
else, he espoused her cause. Yet it is almost the same with me. And for
myself, the sweetest feeling of this hour is, that I die for Zenobia, and
that perhaps my death is in part the sacrifice that spares her.
Incomparable woman! how the hearts of those who have known thee are bound
to thee, so that thy very errors and faults are esteemed to be virtues!'

Our conversation here ended, and I turned from the prison, resolved to
seek the presence of Aurelian. I did so. He received me with urbanity as
before, but neither confirmed my hopes nor my fears. I returned again to
the cell of Gracchus, with whom, in various, and to me most instructive
conversation, we passed the remainder of the day.

In the morning, with a spirit heavy and sad, burdened indeed with a grief
such as I never before had experienced, I turned to seek the apartment of
Longinus. It was not far from that of Gracchus. The keeper of the prison
readily admitted me, saying, 'that free intercourse was allowed the
prisoners with all whom it was their desire to see, and that there were
several friends of Longinus already with him.' With these words he let
fall a heavy bar, and the door of the cell creaked upon its hinges.

The room into which I passed seemed a dungeon, rather than any thing else
or better, for the only light it had, came from a small barred window far
above the reach. Longinus was seated near a massy central column, to which
he was bound by a chain; his friends were around him, with whom he
appeared to have been engaged in earnest conversation, He rose as I
approached him, and saluted me with the grace that is natural to him, and
which is expressive, not more of his high breeding, than of an inward
benevolence that goes forth and embraces all who draw near him.

'Although,' said he, 'I am forsaken of that which men call fortune, yet I
am not forgotten by my friends. So that the best things remain. Piso, I
rejoice truly to see you. These whom you behold are pupils and friends
whom you have often met at my house, if this dim light will allow you to
distinguish them.'

'My eyes are not yet so used to darkness as to see with much distinctness,
but I recognise well-known faces.'

After mutual salutations, Longinus said, 'Let me now first inquire
concerning the daughter of Gracchus, that bright emanation of the Deity. I
trust in the gods she is well!'

'I left her,' I replied, 'overwhelmed by sorrow. To lose at once country,
parent, and friends, is loss too great I fear for her. Death to Gracchus
will he death also to her.'

'The temper of Fausta is too sanguine, her heart too warm: she was
designed for a perpetual prosperity. The misfortunes that overtake her
friends she makes more than her own. Others' sufferings--her own she could
bear--falling upon her so thickly, will, if they leave her life, impart a
lasting bitterness to it. It were better perhaps that she died with us.
Gracchus you have found altogether Gracchus?'

'I have. He is in the prison as he was in his own palace. His thoughts
will sometimes wander to his daughter--oftener than he would--and then in
the mirror of the face you behold the inward sorrow of the heart, but it
is only a momentary ruffling of the surface, and straightway it is calm
again. Except this only, and he sits upon his hard seat in the same
composure as if at the head of the Senate.'

'Gracchus,' said Longinus in reply, 'is naturally great; he is a
giant! the ills of life, the greater and the lesser, which assail and
subdue so many, can make nothing of him. He is impenetrable,
immovable. Then he has aided nature by the precepts of philosophy.
What he wanted of insensibility to evil, he has added from a doctrine,
to which he himself clings tenaciously, to which he refers and will
refer, as the spring of his highest felicity, but from which I--so
variously are we constituted--shrink with unfeigned horror. Doubtless
you all know what it is?'

'We do.'

'I grant it thus much; that it steels the mind against pain; that it is
unrivalled in its power to sear and harden the soul; and that if it were
man's common lot to be exposed to evil, and evil chiefly, it were a
philosophy to be greatly coveted. But it is benumbing, deadening in its
influences. It oppresses the soul and overlays it; it delivers it by
rendering it insensible, not by imparting a new principle of vitality
beyond the reach of earthly ill. It does the same service that a
stupifying draught does to him who is about to submit to the knife of the
surgeon, or the axe of the executioner. But is it not nobler to meet such
pains fortified in no other way than by a resolute purpose to bear them as
well as the nature the gods have given you will allow? And suppose you
shrink or give signs of suffering? that does not impeach the soul. It is
rather the gods themselves who cry out through you: you did not; it was
your corporeal nature, something beside your proper self. It is to be no
subject of humiliation to us, or of grief, that when the prospect of acute
suffering is before us; or, still more, when called to endure it, we give
many tokens of a keen sensibility; so it be that at the same time we
remain unshaken in our principles, and ready to bear what we must.'

'And what,' asked the young Cleoras, a favorite disciple of the
philosopher, 'is it in your case that enables you to meet misfortune and
death without shrinking? If you take not shelter behind indifference, what
other shield do you find to be sufficient?'

'I know,' said Longinus, 'that you ask this question not because you have
never heard from me virtually at least its answer, but because you wish to
hear from me at this hour, whether I adhere with firmness to the
principles I have ever inculcated, respecting death, and whether I myself
derive from them the satisfactions I have declared them capable to impart.
It is right and well that you do so. And I on my part take pleasure in
repeating and re-affirming what I have maintained and taught. But I must
be brief in what I say, more so than I have been in replying to your other
inquiries, Cleoras and Bassus, for I perceive by the manner in which the
rays of the sun shoot through the bars of the window, that it is not long
before the executioner will make his appearance. It affords me then, I
say, a very especial satisfaction, to declare in the presence of so many
worthy friends, my continued attachment and hearty devotion to the truths
I have believed and taught, concerning the existence of a God, and the
reality of a future and immortal life. Upon these two great points I
suffer from no serious doubts, and it is from this belief that I now
derive the serenity and peace which you witness. All the arguments which
you have often heard from me in support of them, now seem to me to be
possessed of a greater strength than ever--I will not repeat them, for
they are too familiar to you, but only re-affirm them, and pronounce them,
as in my judgment, affording a ground for our assurance in the department
of moral demonstration, as solid and sufficient as the reasonings of
Euclid afford in the science of geometry. I believe in a supreme God and
sovereign ruler of the world, by whose wisdom and power all things and
beings have been created, and are sustained, and in whose presence I live
and enjoy, as implicitly as I believe the fifth proposition of Euclid's
first book. I believe in a future life with the like strength. It is
behind these truths, Cleoras, that I entrench myself at this hour; these
make the shield which defends me from the assaults of fear and despair,
that would otherwise, I am sure, overwhelm me.'

'But how do they defend you, Longinus,' asked Cleoras--'by simply
rendering you inaccessible to the shafts which are directed against you,
or by any other and higher operation upon the soul?'

'Were it only,' replied the philosopher, 'that truth made me insensible
and indifferent, I should pray rather to be left to the tutelage of
nature. I both despise and abhor doctrines that can do no more than this.
I desire to bless the gods that the philosophy I have received and taught
has performed for me a far more essential service. This elevates and
expands: it renders nature as it were superior to itself and its
condition: it causes the soul to assert its entire supremacy over its
companion, the body, and its dwelling-place the earth, and in the perfect
possession of itself to inhabit a better world of its own creation: it
infinitely increases all its sensibilities, and adds to the constitution
received from nature, what may be termed new senses, so vividly does it
come to apprehend things, which to those who are unenlightened by this
excellent truth, are as if they had no existence, their minds being
invested with no faculty or power whereby to discern and esteem them. So
far from carrying those who embrace it farther toward insensibility and
indifference, which may truly be called a kind of death, it renders them
intensely alive, and it is through the transforming energies of this new
life that the soul is made not insensible to pain, but superior to it, and
to all the greater ills of existence. It soars above them. The knowledge
and the belief that fill it furnish it with wings by which it is borne far
aloft, even at the very time that the body is in the deepest affliction.
Gracchus meets death with equanimity, and that is something. It is better
than to be convulsed with vulgar and excessive fear. But it is a state of
the soul very inferior to what exists in those who truly receive the
doctrines which I have taught. I, Cleoras, look upon death as a release,
not from a life which has been wholly evil, for I have, through the favor
of the gods, enjoyed much, but from the dominion of the body and the
appetites which clog the soul and greatly hinder it in its efforts after a
perfect virtue and a true felicity. It will open a way for me into those
elysian realms in whose reality all men have believed, a very few
excepted, though few or none could prove it. Even as the great Roman could
call that "O glorious day," that should admit him to the council of the
gods, and the society of the great and good who had preceded him, so can I
in like manner designate the day and hour which are now present. I shall
leave you whom I have known so long; I shall be separated from scenes
familiar and beloved through a series of years; the arts and the sciences,
which have ministered so largely to my happiness, in these forms of them I
shall lose; the very earth itself, venerable to my mind for the events
which have passed upon it, and the genius it has nurtured and matured,
and beautiful too in its array of forms and colors, I shall be conversant
with no more. Death will divide me from them all: but it will bear me to
worlds and scenes of a far exceeding beauty: it will introduce me to
mansions inconceivably more magnificent than anything which the soul has
experience of here; above all it will bring me into the company of the
good of all ages, with whom I shall enjoy the pleasures of an
uninterrupted intercourse. It will place me where I shall be furnished
with ample means for the prosecution of all those inquiries which have
engaged me on earth, exposed to none or fewer of the hindrances which have
here thronged the way. All knowledge and all happiness will then be
attainable. Is death to be called an evil, or is it to be feared or
approached with tears and regrets, when such are to be its issues?'

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