 | NO. II.
A ROMAN CHARIOT RACE.
BY M. T. CICERO. Sporting scenes and sundry sketches |  |
2. NO. II.
A ROMAN CHARIOT RACE.
BY M. T. CICERO.
I send the enclosed with an apology for not translating ALL
the Latin. My plea is, that some friend has miscellaneously
borrowed my dictionary. Don't expect, however, to be troubled
again, in this way, for I have written to Tully that he has
more time to study the people's American than I have to
figure out the Consul's Latin, and that the next chapter be all
in our vernacular.[1]
That is rather a lame excuse for a man who means to trot fair. What
is it but saying “my groom left the stable door open and somebody stole
my saddle?”—But what can WE do? will some of the legal branches of
our tree of knowledge let a small apple of advice fall into our lap? Seven
and sixpence we paid to a night-school-teacher to dig into one of our ministerial
imps, how to render an account current of the stuff into our vernacular.
We forbear to do more than to add the render—the get.
Here it is!
“Cicero in Elysium—heathen E—next door to—vide Virgil:—
Taking his comfort,
Porter, of all joys the gentle guardian,—
Times chronicler; magnificent and Spirit dear:—
Court, Chief, of Wagner and Old Whitenose, Justice of,
Master of horse, head Register of Turf,
And Jove knows what else not— * * * * *
—Taking the shine off every common chariot—
With such a drive—
L. L. D.—O. K., &c. &c. &c.
“Respectfully and profoundly,
“With sentiments of the highest consideration,
“Have the honor to be, &c.
“How much grief I have been cursed with, and how much enjoyment I
have been deprived of, both domestic and forensic”—then comes some
English—after that—“by that infernal break down of Grey Eagle on the
third heat, you being present and weeping—more Latin—`stadii functus
offico'—used up—then a little more English, to the word `course' inclusive,
then, in the first place read `IMPRIMIS'—which every body knows by
heart:—go on—`according to our fashion, my dear fellow.' The rest is
easy as losing a bet. Do you want to go on any thing privately? Put
up your currency. The dew will rust it. Peace, the swifest kind of horses
—a Westly Richards fowling piece of the last and most ample build, rod
and hooks lucky, and most of all a mistress true and beautiful be with you.”
That's pretty much the story. The note is rather familiar than modest.
But, as we said before, what can we do? Cicero writes, and we can't
lose a word of the letter. We shall call our next colt “Atticus,” after
ourselves.—Editors.
Portero, gaudiorum janitori
Temporum spiritui, magnifico, carissimo,
Stadiorum, Wagnerorum, Bostonium, gubernatori,
Equitum omnium magistro registroque
Splendorem abstrahenti omnibus loaferibus ordinariis
L. L. D.—O. K.—&c. &c. &c.
Salutem.
Quantum dolorem acceperim, et quanto fruetu sim privatus
et forensi et domestico,—Cato and Socrates who room with
me take on dreadfully about it,—Aquilæ canæ ab illa dirutione
infelicissima, tertio cursu, te prœsente flenteque, besides the
burst up of the match between Wagner and Boston, and old
Eclipse colting on his former laurels as though he was stadii
functus officio;—and not a heroic stallion to adjure by, on the
course, imprimis, pro nostra consuetudine existimare potes.
Next, all that I have to say, is, that I send you an account of
an old race that was run a little way out of town when I practised
law in Rome. It was just before Cataline abused my
patience so that I had to kick him out of the house. Sceleratus!
Snakes! Infernissimus! Fire and tow! Inter infernos!
I won seven thousand Aurei Denarii—none of your patent
refused to fork up. [Between you and me, that was the reason
I came down upon him in that “Quosque-TANDEM”
style so fulguriously. I rather used him up there. If Pluto
will let him come out, I'll go the same team against him again.
But he must plank the cash.] Pignus deponere, and then
back out or forget the name of the horse you bet on, and refuse
to let the stake-holder pay over—that's almost as bad as
going—through a friend—against your own nag—call him—
Deafaway—and hammering a tack into his hip bone on the
morning he is to start, and swearing at your trainer for letting
the nails fall out of his shoes upon the stable floor. Pax, equi
perceleririssimi, Westlei Ricardi ultimœ amplisimœque structuræ
bombarda, arundo, hami que fausti, et, maxime, amica sincera
et alma, tecum.
P.S. I have enclosed the documents, I speak of, to my
friend, J. Cypress, Jr., to translate for you. He knows my
“p's” and “q's,” and I don't want my hand to get familiar with
your devils.
P.P.S. Your Spirit comes here very irregularly. I wish
you would write a letter to the C. and Enquirer, and blow up
Amos Kendall, that Loco Foco postmaster. Pretty loco—not
to know better our locus in quo. If existing contracts go on
much more, I shall abandon all hopes of your ever getting a
permanent foothold on Elysian Turf.[2]
Cato sends his best
respects. If you see Colonel Johnson, tell him I've got a new
white hat that I want to bet on against any trifle that he will
run against its fly in a thunder-squall. Why don't he bring
out something? Are American horses good for nothing but
to make smoked beef for soldiers in Florida?—Pax, again,
tecum, et tuo Spiritu. Sing now this.
PSALMODIC SERVICE.
Air—“Nonne vides!”
The youthful charioteers with beating heart
Rush to the race; and panting scarcely bear
Th' extremes of feverish hope, and chilling fear;
Stoop to the reins, and lash with all their force;
The flying chariot kindling in its course.
And now alow and now aloft they fly,
As borne thro' air, and seem to touch the sky;
No stop; no stay; but clouds of dust arise
Spurned and cast backward on the followers' eyes;
The hindmost blows the foam upon the first.
Such is the love of praise, and honorable thirst.”
The Lupercal was past. The solemn priests, with vestals
bearing torches—fed from the flame that burned young
Romulus a king, swift rushing from a lupine mother—
majestic, paced the stones of Rome, that sang beneath their
glad retiracy, and, thirsty, sought the secret places of their
temples. “We've had enough of such revivals,” now quoth
youthful Curtius, descendant he direct—so his blood showed
forth, rich swelling in his neck veins—from him who leaped
his horse into that horrid gulf to save his country, filling the
gaping ditch, not with his body juvenile, but with his glowing
soul. Deep from his mother's breast, and pure, he sucked the
essence of the noble soul of daring Scævola. Mutius she called
him, as she staunched the crimson glory of his severed arm, the
hand cut off to throw into the teeth of a besieger of the walls
that held his Love.
Mount Palatine, Tarpeian Hill, Curia Hostilia, Esquiline
Place, Aventine Row, Viminal Square, and all the other building
lots laid out for private use at public expense, from Battery
to Tauri Caput, exjected their eye-rubbing sun-rivals.
into foam, so that he might see the race, and hold back
Sol at least two heats, and then have time to cool an easy jog
by nightfall, and light fierce Peleus down to the barnacled bedchamber
of expecting Thetis.
“Forum boarium”—Fly-market,—“Forum piscarium”—
Catharine-slip,—all punctured mutton, and flounders fast decaying—smiling
in death, like Patience on a monument, in
hope long lingering, for a Five-point bidder—threw out their
tainted stock, and in the dock most merciful, full fed the doubtful
eels. No proud Basilica contained a solitary dandy, in a
new coat unpaid for, strutting. No safe Comitium, with
threatened vengeance of “contempt of court,” held a pert lawyer,
boring the sick Subsellia. No Rostrum breasted out the
figure-head of orators. No bullock died, no dove was sacrificed
with riteful ceremonies. The fanes, altars, temples all,
and theatres were silent. The sacred groves let loose their
grasshoppers. Glad pedagogues discharged their scholars alphabetic,
and horse-hide flogged, in extacies, preferred to joy
of human flesh-cuts. Plebeians, patrons, orators, patricians,
knights, poets, freedmen, loafers, and logicians, homeborn,
Gallician, British slaves, and Afric—the city Prætor, the newly
appointed sub-treasury Quæstor, the tribunes of “the people”—office
seekers—and of the seven-hilled tyrant every
scrub shoemaker was afoot, and for the stadium panting. It
was a race-day, and notes were not protested. Every body
rose before daylight to be happy. Two capiases only were
issued to the Sheriff during twenty-four hours. Both of these,
however, were in actions on the case for felonious insinuation
by German liberti in paying bills of a fraudulent banking incorporation,
which Cataline had dinnered and suppered and drunk
through the Senate—for the amount of their by-bets as to who
rather be a bale of cotton, and walked over by all the niggers
in Louisiana, than to be handled and footed as they were after
the go was done—
“On sharp-cuf rails their ragged corduroy sat,
The conscious chesnut smoking with their fat.”
The ladies' stand was gemmed with pearls and brilliants,
early. Brightly Metella sparkled, lip-love full. Gently, with
languid goodness, fainting, repulsing, seemingly, with half-forgiving,
half-inviting eye-lashes, that fanned the air into a
poisonous deliciousness of agony, as it blew death of Love,
and love of Death, upon the unaccustomed eye-ball of the long-locked,
yellow-curled Ascanius in the next box—who dared
to bet a pair of gloves against her—sat, shone, killed—O!
sweetest murder!—the terrible Lueretia;—omnipotent in
Beauty, cruel Victress! gentle Tyrant! merciless happiness!
wearing Grief in one pitying ear, Heaven haughty in the
other!—rings—rings—Lorenzo;—everlasting circles of mad
idolatry, half hidden by careless tresses;—no other jewel
showing but a breast-bound ruby, that swelled out upon her
partly—by accident—unkerchiefed bosom, in the excitement
of the race;—nothing much—a strawberry—a rosebud. Proud
was the eye that on her bust might look and blench not. He
might gaze into the sun by summer noonday—Eagle challenger.
Such was a Roman's daughter—Woman and Goddess
mixed. Is the blood all lost? Are there no Deities
whom we of modern years may love and worship too. Is it
all—[3]
The eternal city gasped with hot anxiety. Not a newspaper
was published on that morn, except the “Bona Dea Ob
club laureate, was in the mouths of all, excluding thoughts of
trade in sugar and tobacco.[4] The laticlavium ruffled its broad
The Plebs communis, and the Turba sine nomine of sleepers
under stoops, communed with senators and knights, and eased
nobility of quickly bagged sestertia, by honest thimble-riggery.
Jove! how full the air and roads were! Bacchus turned out
his tigers before a pearl-silvered wagonett, built by Opifex &
Co., out of a monster oyster-shell, fresh captured from the
Lucrine lake. Not a horse was left in Rome. The lady
Abbess of the Convent of the Delphic oracle, drove, four-in-hand,
a team of wild-cats. Mercury lit upon an oak that over-looked
the course. Iris got up a shower and sat upon a rainbow.
Vulcan smuggled himself inside the track, under pretence
that he was a blacksmith, sent to shoe a colt who had
lost his slipper. Mars was seen fighting an Irishman, who
had got drunk on bad liquor. Ceres stretched up her auburn
flowing tresses in a neighboring corn-field on the hill-side.
Pan was pointing out the nags to her. All—aye, all—were
there; Gods, Mortals, and Infernals. Happy, happy Rome!
sole city worthy of such glorious company!
Pindar, the best poet in the world—whom Horace calls “inimitable”
—wrote his poems in praise of swift horses, and victorious riders. Hiero
was a king, and a gentleman, but he was not too proud to ride his own
matches. The first Olympic is addressed to him as a horseback-man, the
second to him as a charioteer. Quinctilian goes the craziest nonsense about
the Poet's Union—Olympic—Beacon—Pythian—Camden—Nemean—and
Trenton—Isthmian—course outpourings. Some of them are fair, that's a
fact. But I can't find the time set down in a single report. Time, or no
time, however, it would make some of our nags grit their teeth, to read the
odes in the original Greek.
One principal reason why our turf is so quiet, so deathlike, is that the
club dont elect a poet laureate, and people are ashamed, or dare not, mount
their own steeds.—The only exceptions are in the cases of an English
steeple-chase, and an Irish fox-hunt.—Let somebody come out with something
in the style of
“Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum”
horses onward, as though Burns' witches were after them. Then, then we
might be able to come home and say
“There was mounting 'mong boys of the Netherby clan
Fosters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran;”
reined back his curving charger, before the admiring ladies, up to taw,
in front of the Judges' Stand. Now, instead of a chivalrous knight willing
to do to death for the cross that hangs upon his ladye-love's forehead, we
look upon the ghastly face of some pale boy, consumptive, blanket-sweated,
to bring him down to weight; or upon the black eye-very, and the white ivory
of an Abyssinian baboon licked into the shape of humanity, and pivotted
with tiny feet upon the back of a steed who neighs for a master. What
pretty execution would that babe do against helmet, cuirass and slashing
battle-axe! Knighthood! horsemanship! Bring up your horses! That's
a good cry, and enables one to say a thing or two in favor of modern racing.
It sounds like that “Quadrupedante” sentence I just now quoted from Virgil.
I heard it when Eclipse lost the first heat, and a man mounted him.
I knew that Purdy would win. I saw his eye. It was like a conqueror's.
I saw his seat. It was firm as Roman cement ten years old. He was
glued to the saddle. He was part of the horse. I saw a centaur that
once. His legs added two ribs to the glorious steed, but were adopted and
formed a happy strengthening plaster to the whole family circle. His left
hand felt the bit, and Eclipse looked back. His eyes, at a glance, told him
there was no mistake about that feel. Then there walked up to the starting
post, a dignified, fleet, and certain nag, as ever retrieved begun defeat,
bearing upon his back one whom we might have wished to have lived in
Pindar's time, but for the hope he will yet contrive to bring the Sun and
Moon together, get up a new Eclipse, and ride a triumph again.—Printcr's
Asmodeus.
| NO. II.
A ROMAN CHARIOT RACE.
BY M. T. CICERO. Sporting scenes and sundry sketches | |