University of Virginia Library

Scene I.

—Crotona. A public banqueting-hall. Citizens assembled, drinking after the banquet. Hannibal, Maharbal, Adherbal, and other Carthaginians, as guests of the Greek Citizens, the Master of the Feast presiding.
Mast. of the Feast.
O Hannibal, yet one more health we owe thee,
Ere for the longed-for lyre we hush the board,
And with sweet songs delay the brimming cup.
Proud is Crotona that her temple adds
To priceless stores from countless votaries
The sacred story of a hero's deeds,
Told as a hero tells them! Thou hast told them;
Others must praise them. Proud are we to think
How oft the pious thousands of the towns
That honour Juno, when they hither crowd
To celebrate her day of awful pomp,
Shall on thy dedicated column read,
In thine own words, the wonders of thy life;
And more shall read than yet is graven there,
For fiery letters in the dark I see,
Wherein thy last achievement shall be writ.
I drink to the next record on thy column!

Han.
Receive my thanks. Whatever record stands,
Come ruin, or come triumph, 'gainst my name,
Be it a true one, I desire no better.
But were my deeds all even that you say,
May Juno's temple and Crotona long
Outlive their fame, and greater fames than mine!
I drink to the great goddess.

All.
Hail to her!

Mah.
[Aside.]
Their wine is good; but for their chatter! oh,
Pray heaven 'tis the last time I ever sit
At a Greek supper-table! Ha, the lyre!
Now for a love-song, for Adherbal's smiling
His sweetest o'er that jingling toy he dotes on.

Adh.
[Sings.]

Mah.
That voice cloys me like honey. He a soldier!—
Could Rome be won by singing!—

Han.
Pardon him,
For that sweet voice in noisy battle still
Outrings the trumpet with its silver cry.

[Adherbal passes the lyre to a Citizen.]
Cit.
Deign, Hannibal, to choose a theme for me.

Han.
Pray thee, a lay from Homer.

Cit.
Willingly.
Say, what strain shall I choose?

Han.
Sing Hector's slaughter,
And the lament of Troy around his corpse.

[The Citizen sings.]
Enter Silanus, and seats himself by Hannibal.
Mast. of the Feast.
Welcome, Silanus! Thou hast missed our supper,
But if thou com'st to share the wine-cup with us,
Thou art not yet too late.

Sil.
Thanks, it sufficeth.
[To Hannibal.]
In the cool colonnade I looked to find thee,
According to thy wont. To-day it seems
Thou scorn'st not the symposium.

Han.
As thou say'st.
Whence com'st thou?

Sil.
From Lacinium. I have spent
The supper-hour in studying on thy column
The battles, sieges, marches, dates and numbers,
Drily inscribed there, as the trader notes
His bargains on his tablets. When I first
At thy dictation penned the list of them,
I had no time to reckon up the sum.
To-day I have done so.

Han.
And what sayst thou, then?
Find'st thou that column an authentic record?

Sil.
I think it is the sole authentic one
Thy deeds are like to have in after-times;
Unless, indeed, I finish ere I die
The narrative I mean to give the world.

Mah.
Thou write a history of war, forsooth!
Thou man of peace! A pretty tale thou'lt make.

Han.
I'll trust Silanus; but forbid it, Clio,
My fame be forced to beg its bread from Rome!
My ghost would scarcely know myself so handled.
A monster, first, of cruelty, and next,
A blunderer after Cannæ. Then for Capua—
The luxury we all did live in there!
What a pet theme for moralists! Besides,
Did I not lose an eye this side the Alps?

Sil.
Thy strange disguises in Cisalpine Gaul
Must bear, I think, the credit of that story.—
I wonder oft with what a simple faith
We read the pretty stories of old authors,
Who know how gossip deals with us that live;
And how we think we understand men's motives,
And are as much at home in minds that lived
Some hundred years ago as in our own,
Which yet our nearest understand not.

Han.
Nor,
Perchance, ourselves much better.

Mah.
The gods save us!
How thou wilt make thy personages talk!
I pray put no fine speeches in my mouth!
Plain sense for me! I'd start out of my grave,
If any man should think I prosed in Greek.

Sil.
Fear not—I shall deal tenderly with thee.
I'll tell posterity that thou couldst ride
As well as a Numidian—couldst much better
Manœuvre cavalry for Hannibal,
Than comprehend an epic—and, moreover,
I'll say thou wert an early riser—hadst
A head most potent wine could never vanquish—
Wert punctual to appointments, also wont
To curse and swear at every man that was not,
And never couldst be brought to understand
Why any woman should be taught to read.
Will this content thee?

Mah.
Have it thine own way—
Be sure I'll never read a page of it.

Sil.
[to Hannibal.]
Thou art not in the spirit present here.
Where art thou, then?

Han.
In Carthage.

Sil.
There? Methinks
Thy spirit must behold her through a mist,
Left in such early childhood. Canst thou still
Feel it thy home?

Han.
As it so chanced, last night
I dreamed of Carthage, and was there, I think,
As verily as if my soul had been
Rapt from my sleeping body, and borne thither.
The vivid vision is all round me now.

Sil.
Would I could see it too! Paint it for me.

Han.
Strange, how the scenes beheld in childhood last,
With all the slight details in waking hours
Forgotten, stood out in sharp colouring!
There, in their threefold ring of walls and towers,
With here and there a straight black cypress-spire,
Or plumy palm-top, pointing to the sky,
Lay all the shining crowd of its white houses,
Marching, as 'twere, into the smooth, bright sea,
And wound in its blue girdle; bounding all,
The spacious outer harbour, galley-thronged;
The Kothon's mighty quays more deep within—
Its thick-set fringe of masts, like lifted spears,
Glimpsed through its white Ionic colonnade;
Then, high above, the Bozra's stately steep
Rising through terraced streets to the vast stair
Of Esmun's Temple, the whole city's crown;
And all the garden-suburb of Magalia—
A walled-in paradise with its green shrine
Of orange groves and lightly-feathering trees,
O'er breadths of glittering water strewn in isles.
There was I standing in the streets again:
I saw the loaded elephants, I heard
The cries of them that drove the strings of mules,
And through the gates watched the long trains stream in
Of sable slaves from the far savage south.
My father's palace I beheld once more,
'Neath whose broad archway, to and fro, so oft
The brothers of my childhood have passed with me.
Then, with a sudden flitting of the scene,
O'er miles of corn and olive, trellised vines,
And mantling fig-tree foliage, I was borne
To his Byzacean mansion, dark and cool,
In cedar-shade, and labyrinths of rose.

Sil.
Were I a cunning soothsayer, I would tell thee
This vision did portend thy swift return,
Loaded, of course, with laurels, and so forth.
There's still room for the story on thy column.

Han.
Ill did the shade of solemn sadness thrown—
As 'twere a haze across the spendid sun—
Over the scene I saw, that flattery suit.
I am content to have seen my city thus.
Nought but calamity can call me home.

Enter a Messenger.
Mess.
My lord, a ship from Carthage is in port,
Whose captain brings you letters. He is here,
And waits to place them in your hands.

Han.
Admit him.

Enter Carthaginian Captain, and salutes the assembly. He presents his letters to Hannibal.
Mast. of the Feast.
Gladly, O stranger, to our board we welcome
Hannibal's countryman. I pray you sit.

Han.
[starting from his seat].
Traitors and cowards! The fires of hell devour them!
Shame blast their names to all eternity!
[Re-seats himself.]
Pardon me, friends, I interrupt your revel;
Heed not, I pray, my rudeness.

Sil.
[aside to him].
Have a care!
Men's hearts break with such efforts.

Han.
I am well.

Sil.
Thy face is stony, but thou art not well;
Whate'er thy secret be, hide not too long
The inward pang that rends thee.

Han.
I can bear it.

A Cit.
[to another].
What follows next? I thought some god had doomed us,
And this was but a banquet of dead men!

Another.
What thunderbolt from Afric has been hurled,
To set that swarthy darkness in a blaze?

Another.
This comes when mighty conquerors deign to sup
With peaceful citizens!

Another.
His generals
Roll their fierce eyes on him with gloomy wonder;
The stranger captain sits in a stern silence.
[To Maharbal.]
I trust our city, sir, is not in danger?
Methought that Rome was at our very gates!

Mah.
Plague take your foolish city! You are safe
As Punic shields can keep you!

A Cit.
[aside].
He may say so,
Yet non the less the revel has grown tasteless.

Mast. of the Feast.
Friends, have we drained enough of cups to-night?
Let us depart, I pray you.
[All rise together. The Greek guests disperse hastily; the Carthaginians gather round Hannibal.]

Mah.
Ay, hence with you.

Han.
O my unsatisfied revenge! that hast
Haunted me like a beggar for so long,
Be patient, for thy waiting is not done!
Yet, thou stern ghost, no pardon do I ask
Of thy beheaded form, and all the wounds
Which made a ruin of thy mortal house,
Because that Tiber runs not yet with blood,
Because that Rome is not yet changed to flames!
I ask no pardon, for thou sitt'st so close
To the most secret counsels of my heart,
Dead though thou art, thou still art one with me,
As ever in those days, when the great dread
Of thee walked living over Italy!

Adh.
O Hannibal, awake from this dire trance,
And let us share thine agony with thee!

Han.
A second time the fool of Roman gods,
A second time the plaything of their scorn!
They jest upon me, Hasdrubal, my brother!—
Comrades, I am recalled.

Adh.
Recalled!—Thou? Whither?

Han.
Recalled to Africa. Scipio has thrice
Routed the Son of Gisco, and King Syphax;
Cirtha is taken, and Syphax is a prisoner;
Carthage is threatened, and will fall, unless
I am in time to save her.

Adh.
Are we dreaming?

Han.
Scipio has now my place. Long have I borne
In patience the slow death of my heart's hope,
And well I might have guessed that this would be—
Yet scarcely thought so to revisit Carthage.

Mah.
Accursed news!

Adh.
This is the heaviest blow
Save one, thou hast been called to bear and live!

Mah.
Thou yet shalt march on Rome.

Han.
Never again.
Yet here I would have lingered till old age,
So her deep wounds might bleed at last to death.—
Read here, too—little may we doubt that Scipio
Holds for the foremost trophy of his triumph
A Carthaginian's daughter and a queen.
I think Rome will enjoy her holiday!

Adh.
Unless we spoil it for her.

Han.
Knowing this,
You'll further look to hear my brother Mago,
Like me, has been recalled.

Mah.
That's easy guessed.

Han.
In truth this does not take me by surprise.
Sooner or later 'twas inevitable,
If Mago's desperate effort in Liguria—
Our last hope—failed; but Mago has done nobly,
And bringing me himself, brings me a host.

Mah.
Now shalt thou meet him the first time since Cannæ.
Let Rome look to it when you come together.

Han.
Back to my quarters now—no time to lose.
[To the Captain.]
Come with me, sir, and let me hear from you
What further you are charged with from the State.

[Exeunt omnes.