 | The last night of Pompeii |  |
NOTES
TO
THE LAST NIGHT OF POMPEII.
Note 1, p. 17.—The hoar Apennines:
I have represented Mount Vesuvius throughout the poem as a
portion of the Campanian hills.
Note 2, p. 18.—Thou needest not thy tephilim—
The prestiges of Augurs.
Charms in Hebrew and pagan worship, the tricks of jugglers
and imaginary protections against evil spirits and earthly
calamities.
Note 4, p. 26.—The Ambracian waters were not deeper dyed.
The battle of Actium, fought upon the Ambracian gulf, for
ever decided the fate of Roman liberty. The glory of Octavius
Cæsar rose from the blood of that fearful day, and most fearfully
did it glow till barbarian retribution made Italy's charms a curse.
Note 5, p. 27.—Diomede's apparitors.
I have appropriated to the chief Ruler of Pompeii the name
of its wealthiest citizen. It has been asserted, by some, that he
was only a freedman, yet the Emperors seldom hesitated to confer
their judicial or fiscal offices upon any who scrupled not to
embrace the most oppressive means in the irresponsible administration
of power. His character, therefore, as I have attempted
to depict it, would synchronize with the condition of the age and
the avowed crimes of Pompeii. Apparitors were officers of justice
or injustice—bailiffs—so called from their suddenly appearing
when undesired.
Note 8, p. 49.—The story of his doom.
Both the time and mode of St. Paul's martyrdom are problematical.
The opinion is generally received that he died during the persecution
of Nero, about ten years before the period of my story;
but as chronologists differ and biographers cannot agree, I have
assumed the right to narrate his death, in the person of Pansa, as
in the text.
Note 9, p. 54.—The Accursed field.
The Campus Sceleratus, where vestal virgins were buried
alive when they followed the example of Rhœa Sylvia. The
Tarpeian Rock was not far removed from such appropriate
neighborhood.
Note 10, p. 54.—The aruspices in purple trabeæ walked.
The prognosticators of Rome were allowed extraordinary
honors; and their trabeæ or robes of office nearly resembled
those of the Emperors. Every superstition exalts its expositors;
and the Roman priests well knew the power which fear and ignorance
conferred upon them, and abhorred in the same degree that
they dreaded the illumination of Christianity. The fasces, the
trabeæ, pretextæ, and curule chair were introduced by Tarquin
Priscus from conquered Tuscany.
Note 11, p. 56.—The Gracchi from the Aventine dragged forth.
For attempting by the enactment of the Agrarian Law, to
restrain the exorbitant power of the patricians, Tiberius Gracchus
was assassinated in the Capitol by Scipio Nasica; Caius Gracchus
and Fulvius Flaceus were killed by Opimius, the consul;
Saturnmus the tribune was murdered by a mob of Conscript
Fathers; and Livius Drusus, on the same account, was slain in
his own house. All in Rome, who could not trace their descent
from the highwayman Romulus or some one of his least merciful
banditti, were esteemed no better than vassals. The Romans
never understood either justice, mercy, or freedom; their dominion
was acquired by the sword without remorse, and it perished
by the sword without regret.
Note 12, p. 59.—The isles shall wait, Jehovah! for thy law.
I have made the dying ejaculations of St. Paul to consist
mostly of portions of his own powerful writings. Nothing more
beautiful or splendid can be found in any compositions—more vivid
with the heart's best emotions and the mind's most lofty conceptions—than
who devoted himself to the propagation of that religion he
had once assailed, with an energy and enthusiasm and utter
oblivion of self, which should find more imitators among the curates
of men's souls.
Note 13, p. 63.—Shalt quaff the massic or the tears of Christ.
The wine of Mount Vesuvius is profanely called Lacrymæ
Christi.
Note 14, p. 65.—The Mamertine abysses.
Dungeons even more horrible than those of Venitian and
Austrian tyranny, dug immediately beneath the elevated seat of
the Prætor, in the hall of judgment; and so called from the
Roman consul Mamertinus, who planned their construction, and
who should have been, like Phalaris and the inventor of the
guillotine, the first to test the merit of his philanthropic ingenuity.
Note 15, p. 70.—For they were stricken from the roll of men
And banished from humanity.
Probably among no people, not even the mercenary Africans
themselves, who are always more ready to sell than the Christian
trafficker is to buy, was the condition of slaves so utterly hopeless
and irreclaimable as in the republics of Greece and Rome.
Their vivid jealousy of personal privileges peculiarly fitted them
to tyrannize over every people not incorporated within their chartered
dominions. Nothing is so cruel as boasting philanthropy;
nothing, so unjust as a dominant hierarchy; nothing, so capricious
and despotic as an unrestrained democracy.
Note 16, p. 71.— - - - - - - - gazed,
Bewildered on the amphoræ—
The priests of Pompeii were no believers in a preshadowed
Mahommedan sobriety or the Genevan doctrine of total abstinence;
but, rather, devout apostles of good fellowship, bonhommie
and bienseance, whose credenda have lacked no devotees among the
administrators of a very different religion. Their amphoræ or
wine casks were always amply supplied by votaries who did not
doubt that their spiritual guides possessed the same prerogatives
in Tartarus which less remote exclusives in sanctity assume to exercise
in Hades. The skeletons of many priests, on the excavation
of Pompeii, were found amidst the relics of their revel.
Can we suppose that even the ministers of a degraded superstition
and a most lascivious mythology could trust in the protection of
Jove or Osiris? or must we rather conclude that criminal appetite
his last journey—“It is necessary that we should be gluttons and
revellers, but it is not necessary that we should live.”?
Note 17, p. 75.— - - - - - - Untrimmed lamps
Sculptured with shapes of ribaldry to lure.
The sensualities of Pompeii were not restricted by any deference
to decorum even in external dissembling; but the passions,
which burned in their bosoms, were too graphically represented
upon their customary utensils. The secret deposites of the Museum
Borbonico at Naples will illustrate this to any who are incredulous
of the noisome excess to which sin may be extended.
Note 18, p. 77.—The Sybarite from Salmacis arose.
Even in an age proverbial for its effeminacy and vice, the Sybarites
were quoted as the acme of examples; and the waters of
Salmacis, by some mysterious properties, were considered capable
of restoring the frame, exhausted by profligacy, to its original
vigor.
No one who had broken an oath made by the Styx (which not
even the gods dared to infringe) could be permitted to drink of
Lethe or oblivion of the evils and sufferings which he had been
doomed to bear for his crimes.
Note 19, p. 78.— - - - - Now towered the gonfalon
Of Isis, glowing with devices shame
Shrunk to behold, the shapes of earth's worst sins.
The pamylia and phallephoria. The character of the Romans
under the emperors renders it unnecessary for me to create any
reluctancy on their part to gaze upon objects, in public processions,
which in other communities, would have never been imagined.
Greece took her religion from Egypt—Rome her's from
Greece—and both had public temples dedicated to the Aspasias,
Galateas and Campaspes of the age. The pastophori or priests
of Isis, therefore, felt themselves much at home in Pompeii.
Note 20, p. 79.—The war god with the Ancilia.
The sacred shields of Rome—borne in the processions of Mars,
who of all the monstrous idols was the most worshipped because
the least merciful. Is it not a singular anomaly of the human
mind that in every creed the god of vengeance has always been
the most opulent and popular? “By what casuistry can infinite
punishments be reconciled with finite offence? or why should
men be instructed to fear an endlessness of torment for sins ephemeral
as their breath?”
Note 21, p. 80.—And we must drag them to the altar.
Nothing could be more ominous of evil than any resistance or
even reluctancy on the part of the victims to be sacrificed. That
the offering might be auspicious it was necessary that the animal
should seem to rejoice in its sacred death.
It was held unholy to offer up any maimed or imperfect creature,
and herein the Judean ecclesiastical enactments agreed with
those of the Greeks and Romans. All their animal sacrifices
were “chosen for beauty and young quickening life.”
Any blemish inflicted by the Huntress or Pythias, by Sun or
Moon namely, was deemed a particular offence to the deity.
Note 23, p. 94.—And each Promethean divination brought.
See Potter's Antiquities, Von Hammer &c. for the various superstitious
observances of the Greeks and Romans. In the scene
of the sacrifice I have introduced evil omens—such as the Romans
feared in their height of power—throughout the ceremonial.
Note 24, p. 95.—Bore Pompeii's loveliest virgin.
Human sacrifices were not uncommon during the earlier periods
of the Greek and Roman history; and I cast no additional
discredit upon the ancient character of heathenism by representing
the disappointed consulters of the gods putting in action their
cannibal ferocities. Iphigenia and Jeptha's daughter illustrate
Grecian mythology and Jewish vows.
Note 25, p. 96.—When has the bigot, whatsoe'er his crown.—
I appeal to all history, civil, sacred, ecclesiastical and profane.
Persecution is not exclusive; give preponderance to any sect or
faction and it will tyrannize; the faggot would be lighted, the
dungeon filled, the deathaxe red. The civil power would collude
with the church as it has always done, when the latter claimed
the prerogatives of heaven to exempt it from human accountability
—because superstitious ignorance fears more the anathemas of a
priesthood than the agonies and blood of a thousand victims.
Representations of eternal punishments due to those who indulge
humanity, by sparing the proscribed, the heretics, namely—have
influenced mankind far more than the view of nations banished
and provinces depopulated by the relentless malignity of some
Torquemada of paynimrie or Christendom. Factions and sects,
in politics and religion, never yet won any thing but ruin and
disgrace, yet they are perpetuated and multiplied as the world
wears to waste!
Note 26, p. 96.—O'er the lava walks.
The streets of Pompeii were paved with blocks of lava; and
the audacious apathy, which they manifested amidst the threatenings
of Vesuvius, may be ascribed to their familiarity with earthquakes
and volcanoes. The wretched inhabitants of Portici,
Torre del Greco and other exposed villages are, at this day, as
unapprehensive of the peril that has overhung them since their
birth, as were the Pompeiians at their death-hour. Cities buried
in lava or ashes, may lie beneath even Herculaneum and Pompeii.
Note 27, p. 97.—The music of the sistrum.
A stringed instrument peculiar to the mysterious rites of Isis,
which, like most other mysteries, concealed the most nefarious
practices.
Note 28, p. 101.—Holy Diana! hath thine Iris come.
The rainbow, in every mythology, has been beautifully personified.
Iris, its goddess, was the messenger of the ancient deities;
and though employed by jealous Juno to create “green eyed monsters,”
she was more happily occupied, in general, in separating
virtuous souls from feeble frames and escorting them to Elysium.
No one is ignorant of the Scandinavian bifrost, and the romantic
tales of the Eddas.
Note 29, p. 104.—Breathes not the soul of mystery in this?
The whole art of uttering oracles consisted in choosing terms
capable of any construction. The desires of the consulter determined
the meaning; and neither Delphi nor Dodona could
commit its credit by the failure of a prophecy which, it might allege,
was never properly understood. No one can have forgotten
the celebrated response (which illustrates the sophistries and
follies of the ancients) “Aio te, æacide, Romanos vincere
posse.”
The maiden now consents to give an Isean response, prefiguring
the ruin impending, from which all who escape, must fly
by sea, that the absence of the priest may afford her an opportunity
to shun his embraces.
Note 30, p. 105.—The mocker Momus has his jest.
Momus, the Jester of the gods, when Jupiter presented the
man whom he had created to his inspection, and asked him how,
characteristically, he could find fault with such workmanship, replied
with a sneer that the defect was both obvious and incurable
—that one so wise as the king of gods and men should have placed
a mirror over his heart that all might discern evil purposes in
aperture of the image, pleasantly deems himself the mirror that
reveals and directs the minds of men.
Note 31, p. 122.— - - The wanton canvass lived
With Mycon's impure thought.
All the ancient sculptors and painters, inimitable as they were
in the execution of their conceptions, faithfully followed, perhaps
led the blush-disowning taste of the times; and every banquet-hall
and chamber exhibited indubitable testimonials of their
uses.—Mycon, Xeuxis and Parrhasius, it is hardly necessary to
say, were gifted and celebrated artists.
Note 32, p. 123.—Or I may brand the theta on thy brow.
The Greek letter (theta) was burned upon the foreheads of
slaves as an indelible sign of proprietorship; hence they were
called literati—a term strictly applicable to some less ancient
and better conditioned persons than the captive barbarians of buried
times.
Note 33, p. 123.—The tintinnaculus may shame thy clink!
The Prætor may, perhaps, be allowed a pun. Tintinnaculus
may mean a public whipper—an inflicter of the bastinado—and
a jingling rhymer; lashes and verses both may be melodious.
Note 34, p. 127.—Hath the caduceus met the eye of day.
The wand of Mercury was the sign of peace; the caduceus
was, therefore, seldom out of the hand of the lord of larceny.
Note 35, p. 128.—The tyrant raised his hundred banquet halls,
Tritoli's stews and Baiae's palaces.
The Cento Camarelle of Nero and Piscina Mirabile (wonderful
fishpond) of Lucullus, even in ruins, are objects of amazement
to less abominable despots of modern times. Baiae was the
most voluptuous of all the voluptuous resorts of the Romans, and
the baths of Tritoli were necessary to restore the patricians after
Falernian excesses. Here Lucullus fed his fish on human flesh
—here Cicero perished—by the permission of his friend Octavius.
Note 36, p. 132.—A darker doom than his, &c.
Marius. Sylla died at Puteoli, as Herod afterwards perished,
of a most loathsome disease and in the midst of debaucheries.
Note 38, p. 134.—I see a hoary head o'ercrowned.
The Pope—whose tiara was the very meteor of ruin.
Note 39, p. 134.—Though thou with Epaphroditus shalt live,
Empedocles and Barcochab in fame.
Epaphroditus, to immortalize himself, set fire to the temple of
Ephesian Diana on the night Macedonian Alexander was born;
Empedocles, to persuade men he was a god, threw himself into
Mount ætna, but the volcano cast out his slipper and betrayed
him; Barcocnab, who called himself the Son of a Star, but whom
his countrymen named the Son of a Lie, was one of the innumerable
false prophets of that strange people—the Jews.
Note 40, p. 135.—The Lectisternian banquet.
The funeral festival—the last of earthly indulgencies.
Note 41, p. 139.—The Attic Sage.
Socrates. His execution was delayed on the occurrence of a
sacred festival—the annual voyage to the Immortal Isle, where
none were permitted to be born or to die. Superstition sported
with the tortures of injustice and cruelty.
Note 42, p. 145.—Gaze from the podium.
What is now the orchestra—then, the envied place of power
and privilege.
Note 43, p. 146.—Mingle the fiats of philosophy.
However the sages of antiquity condemned the cruel sports of
their countrymen, they seldom hesitated to witness and thereby
sanction the atrocities which were perpetrated in every amphitheatre.
Like the bullfights of modern Spain, the gladiatorial contests
(the death-struggle of the agonistes and athlete) always attracted
the presence and enjoyment of the most learned, opulent
and famed of the Romans.
Note 44, p. 147.—Salute the ruthless Genius of the Games.
Morituri te salutant (the dead salute thee) were the melancholy
words of prophecy uttered by all condemned to fight in the arena.
Note 45, p. 149.—Mutters Domitian and Locasta's cup.
Titus is supposed to have been poisoned by his brother Domitian
—who was himself finally assassinated. Locasta was the female
fiend of Colchian drugs.
Note 49, p. 163.—And low the lion cowered.
A scene somewhat like this is depicted in “The Vestal,” a
little work published two or three years ago, and written by Dr.
Gray of Boston. But while I am happy to acknowledge both the
pleasure and benefit I have derived from that elegant story, I must
be allowed to say that the causes of the lion's submission are unlike.
He cowers at the feet of the aged Christian in that work, because
he sees an old master; here, he is made to submit on the well-known
principle familiar to naturalists, that during any great convulsion
of nature, the most savage animals forget their common
animosities, and that the lion will not attack a man who steadily
fixes his eyes upon him.—Having formed the plan of the whole
poem and finished a considerable portion of it previous to my
first perusal of the “Tale of Pompeii,” I was unwilling to forego
the scene I had conceived previous to even the knowledge of the
publication of Dr. Gray; and, therefore, have ventured to tread
upon ground which has been trod by Milman and Croly.
Note 50, p. 174.—The voice of age.
that is, of the aged Christian with whom Mariamne had taken
refuge on her escape from the temple of Venus.
Note 52, p. 179.—The hoar devoter of earth's diadems.
The allusion throughout is to the Head of what was, for a long
time, the Catholic Church; and even the very strictest disciple of
papal supremacy must lament the desecration of almost unlimited
power in the hands of many who better understood the law of
might, the pageantries of the tournament, the forms of the duello,
the shock of war and the dominion of the castle, than the edicts
and ceremonies and devotions of the pontificate. The “Rock
amid the ruins” alludes to Peter, the reputed founder of the
bishopric of Rome—his Greek name means a rock.
| The last night of Pompeii | |