University of Virginia Library

19. CHAPTER XIX.
THE EVE OF BATTLE.

Macbeth.

Nearly a fortnight had elapsed since the rescue of Julia,
and the sad death of Catiline's unhappy daughter, and yet
the battle which was daily and hourly expected, had not
been fought.

With rare ability and generalship, Catiline had avoided
an action with the troops of Antonius, marching and countermarching
among the rugged passes of the Appennines,
now toward Rome, now toward Gaul, keeping the enemy
constantly on the alert, harassing the consul's outposts,
threatening the city itself with an assault, and maintaining
with studious skill that appearance of mystery, which is so
potent an instrument whether to terrify or to fascinate the
vulgar mind.

During this period the celerity of his movements had
been such that his little host appeared to be almost ubiquitous,
and men knew not where to look for his descent, or
how to anticipate the blow, which he evidently had it in
contemplation to deliver.

In the meantime, he had given such of his adherents as
fled from Rome immediately on the execution of the conspirators,
an opportunity to join him, and many had in fact
done so with their clients, and bands of gladiators.

The disaffected of the open country had all united themselves
to him; and having commenced operations with a

force not exceeding two thousand men, he was now at the
head of six times that number, whom he had formed into
two complete legions, and disciplined them with equal
assiduity and success.

Now, however, the time had arrived when it was for
his advantage no longer to avoid an encounter with the
troops of the commonwealth; for having gained all that he
proposed to himself by his dilatory movements and Fabian
policy, time namely for the concentration of his adherents,
and opportunity to discipline his men, he now began to
suffer from the inconveniences of the system.

Unsupplied with magazines, or any regular supply of
provisions, his army like a flight of locusts had stripped the
country bare at every halting place, and that wild hill
country had few resources, even when shorn by the licentious
band of his desperadoes, upon which to support an
army. The consequence, therefore, of his incessant hurrying
to and fro, was that the valleys of the mountain chain
which he had made the theatre of his campaign, were now
utterly exhausted; that his beasts of burthen were broken
down and foundered; and that the line of his march might
be traced by the carcasses of mules and horses which had
given out by the wayside, and by the flights of carrion
birds which bovered in clouds about his rear, prescient of
the coming carnage.

His first attempt was to elude Metellus Celer, who had
marched down from the Picene district on the Adriatic
sea,
with great rapidity, and taken post at the foot of the mountains,
on the head waters of the streams which flow down
into the great plain of the Po.

In this attempt he had been frustrated by the ability of
the officer who was opposed to him, who had raised no less
than three legions fully equipped for war.

By him every movement of the conspirator was anticipated,
and met by some corresponding measure, which
rendered it abertive. Nor was it, any longer, difficult for
him to penetrate the designs of Catiline, since the peasantry
and mountaineers, who had throughout that district been
favorable to the conspiracy in the first instance, and who
were prepared to favor any design which promised to deliver
them from inexorable taxation, had been by this time
so unmercifully plundered and harassed by that banditti,

that they were now as willing to betray Catiline to the
Romans, as they had been desirous before of giving the
Romans into his hands at disadvantage.

Fully aware of all these facts, and knowing farther that
Antonius had now come up so close to his rear, with a large
army, that he was in imminent danger of being surrounded
and taken between two fires, the desperate traitor suddenly
took the boldest and perhaps the wisest measure.

Wheeling directly round he turned his back toward Gaul,
whither he had been marching, and set his face toward the
city. Then making three great forced marches he came
upon the army of Antonius, as it was in column of march,
among the heights above Pistoria, and had there been daylight
for the attack when the heads of the consul's cohorts
were discovered, it is possible that he might have forced
him to fight at disadvantage, and even defeated him.

In that case there would have been no force capable of
opposing him on that side Rome, and every probability
would have been in favor of his making himself master of
the city, a success which would have gone far to insure his
triumph.

It was late in the evening, however, when the hostile
armies came into presence, each of the other, and on that
account, and, perhaps, for another and stronger reason,
Catiline determined on foregoing the advantages of a
surprise.

Caius Antonius, the consul in command, it must be remembered,
had been one of the original confederates in
Catiline's first scheme of massacre and conflagration,
which had been defeated by the unexpected death of
Curius Piso.

Detached from the conspiracy only by Cicero's rare
skill, and disinterested cession to him of the rich province
of Macedonia. Antonius might therefore justly be supposed
unlikely to urge matters to extremities against his quondam
comrades; and it was probably in no small degree
on this account that Catiline had resolved on trying the
chances of battle rather against an old friend, than against
an enemy so fixed, and of so resolute patrician principles
as Metellus Celer.

He thought, moreover, that it was just within the calculation
of chances that Antonius might either purposely

mismanœuvre, so as to allow him to descend upon Rome
without a battle, or adopt such tactics as should give him
a victory.

He halted his army, therefore, in a little gorge of the
hills opening out upon a level plain, flanked on the left by
the steep acclivities of the mountain, which towered in
that direction, ridge above ridge, inaccessible, and on the
right by a rugged and rocky spur, jutting out from the
same ridge, by which his line of battle would be rendered
entirely unassailable on the flanks and rear.

In this wild spot, amid huge gray rocks, and hanging
woods of ancient chesnuts and wild olive, as gray and
hoary as the stones among which they grew, he had pitched
his camp, and now lay awaiting in grim anticipation
what the morrow should bring forth; while, opposite to
his front, on a lower plateau of the same eminence, the
great army of the consul might be descried, with its regular
entrenchments and superb array of tents, its forests of
gleaming spears, and its innumerable ensigns, glancing
and waving in the cold wintry moonshine.

The mind of the traitor was darker and more gloomy
than its wont. He had supped with his officers, Manlius
and a nobleman of Fæsulæ, whose name the historian has
not recorded, who held the third rank in the rebel army,
but their fare had been meagre and insipid, their wines
the thin vintage of that hill country; a little attempt at
festivity had been made, but it had failed altogether; the
spirits of the men, although undaunted and prepared to
dare the utmost, lacked all that fiery and enthusiastic ardor,
which kindles patriot breasts with a flame so pure and
pervading, on the eve of the most desperate encounters.

Enemies of their country, enemies almost of mankind,
these desperadoes were prepared to fight desperately, to
fight unto the death, because to win was their only salvation,
and, if defeated, death their only refuge.

But for them there was no grand heart-elevating spur
to action, no fame to be won, no deathless name to be purchased—their
names deathless already, as they knew too
well, through black infamy!—no grateful country's praises,
to be gained cheaply by a soldier's death!—no! there
were none of these things.

All their excitements were temporal, sensual, earthy.

The hope to conquer, the lust to bask in the sunshine of
power, the desire to revel at ease in boundless luxury and
riot.

And against these, the rewards of victory, what were
the penalties of defeat—death, infamy, the hatred and the
scorn of ages.

The wicked have no friends. Never, perhaps, was this
fact exemplified more clearly than on that battle eve.
Community of guilt, indeed, bound those vicious souls together—community
of interests, of fears, of perils, held
them in league—yet, feeling as they did feel that their sole
chance of safety lay in the maintenance of that confederation,
each looked with evil eyes upon his neighbor, each
almost hated the others, accusing them internally of having
drawn them into their present perilous peril, of having
failed at need, or of being swayed by selfish motives only.

So little truth there is in the principle, which Catiline
had set forth in his first address to his banded parricides,
“that the community of desires and dislikes constitutes, in
one word, true friendship!”—

And now so darkly did their destiny lower on those depraved
and ruined spirits, that even their recklessness,
that last light which emanates from crime in despair, had
burned out, and the furies of conscience,—that conscience
which they had so often stifled, so often laughed to scorn,
so often drowned with riot and debauch, so often silenced
by fierce sophistry—now hunted them, harpies of the soul,
worse than the fabulous Eumenides of parricide Orestes.

The gloomy meal was ended; the parties separated, all
of them, as it would seem, relieved by the termination of
those mock festivities which, while they brought no gayity
to the heart, imposed a necessity of seeming mirthful
and at ease, when they were in truth disturbed by dark
thoughts of the past, and terrible forebodings of the future.

As soon as his guests had departed and the traitor was
left alone, he arose from his seat, according to his custom,
and began to pace the room with vehement and rapid
strides, gesticulating wildly, and muttering sentences, the
terrible oaths and blasphemies of which were alone audible.

Just at this time a prolonged flourish of trumpets from
without, announced the changing of the watch. I was

nine o'clock. “Ha! the third hour!” already, he exclaimed,
starting as he heard the wild blast, “and Chærea
not yet returned from Antonius. Can it be that the dog
freedman has played me false, or can Antonius have seized
him as a hostage?—I will go forth,” he added, after a
short pause, “I will go forth, and observe the night.”

And throwing a large cloak over his armor, and putting
a broad-brimmed felt hat upon his head, in lieu of the
high crested helmet, he sallied out into the camp, carrying
in addition to his sword a short massive javelin in his
right hand.

The night was extremely dark and murky. The moon
had not yet risen, and but for the camp-fires of the two armies,
it would have been impossible to walk any distance
without the aid of a torch or lantern. A faint lurid light
was dispersed from these, however, over the whole sky,
and thence was reflected weakly on the rugged and broken
ground which lay between the entrenched lines of
the two hosts.

For a while, concealed entirely by his disguise, Catiline
wandered through the long streets of tents, listening to the
conversation of the soldiers about the watch-fires, their
strange superstitious legends, and old traditionary songs;
and, to say truth, the heart of that desperate man was
somewhat lightened by his discovery that the spirits of the
men were alert and eager for the battle, their temper keen
and courageous, their confidence in the prowess and ability
of their chief unbounded.

“He is the best soldier, since the days of Sylla,” said
one gray-headed veteran, whose face was scarred by the
Pontic scymetars of Mithridates.

“He is a better soldier in the field, than ever Sylla was,
by Hercules!” replied another.

“Aye! in the field! Sylla, I have heard say, rarely unsheathed
his sword, and never led his men to hand and
hand encounter,” interposed a younger man, than the old
colonists to whom he spoke.

“It is the head to plan, not the hand to execute, that
makes the great captain. Caius, or Marcus, Titus or Tullus,
can any one of them strike home as far, perhaps farther,
than your Syllas or your Catilines.”

“By Mars! I much doubt it!” cried another. “I would

back Catiline with sword and buckler against the stoutest
and the deftest gladiator that ever wielded blade. He is
as active and as strong as a Libyan tiger.”

“Aye! and as merciless.”

“May the foe find him so to-morrow!”

“To-morrow, by the Gods! I wish it were to-morrow
It is cold work this, whereas, to-morrow night, I promise
you, we shall be ransacking Antonius' camp, with store of
choice wines, and rare viands.”

“But who shall live to share them is another question.”

“One which concerns not those who win.”

“And by the God of Battles! we will do that to-morrow,
let who may fall asleep, and who may keep awake to
tell of it.”

“A sound sleep to the slumberers, a merry rouse to the
quick boys, who shall keep waking!” shouted another
and the cups were brimmed, and quaffed amid a storm of
loud tumultuous cheering.

Under cover of this tumult, Catiline withdrew from the
neighborhood, into which he had intruded with the stealthy
pace of the beast to which the soldiers had compared him;
and as he retired, he muttered to himself—“They are in
the right frame of mind—of the right stuff to win—and yet
—and yet—” he paused, and shook his head gloomily, as
if he dared not trust his own lips to complete the sentence
he had thus begun.

A moment afterward he exclaimed—“But Chærea! but
Chærea! how long the villain tarries! By heaven! I will
go forth and meet him.”

And suiting the action to the word, he walked rapidly
down the Quintana or central way to the Prætorian gate,
there giving the word to the night-watch in a whisper, and
showing his grim face to the half-astonished sentinel on
duty, he passed out of the lines, alone and unguarded.

After advancing a few paces, he was challenged again
by the pickets of the velites, who were thrust out in advance
of the gates, and again giving the word was suffered
to pass on, and now stood beyond the farthest outpost of
his army.

Cautiously and silently, but with a swift step and determined
air, he now advanced directly toward the front of
the Roman entrenchments, which lay at a little more than

a mile's distance from his own lines, and ere long reached
a knoll or hillock which would by daylight have commanded
a complete view of the whole area of the consul's
camp, not being much out of a sling's cast from the ramparts.

The camp of the consul lay on the slope of a hill, so that
the rear was considerably higher than the front; Catiline's
eye, as he stood on that little eminence, could therefore
clearly discern all the different streets and divisions of the
camp, by the long lines of lamps and torches which blazed
along the several avenues, and he gazed anxiously and long,
at that strange silent picture.

With the exception of a slight clash and clang heard at
times on the walls, where the skirmishers were going on
their rounds, and the neigh of some restless charger, there
was nothing that should have indicated to the ear that
nearly twenty thousand men were sleeping among those
tented lines of light—sleeping how many of them their
last natural slumber.

No thoughts of that kind, however, intruded on the
mind of the desperado.

Careless of human life, reckless of human suffering, he
gazed only with his enquiring glance of profound penetration,
hoping to espy something, whereby he might learn
the fate—not of his messenger, that was to him a matter
of supreme indifference—but of his message to Antonius.

Nor was he very long in doubt on this head; for while
he was yet gazing, there was a bustle clearly perceptible
about the prætorium, lights were seen flitting to and fro,
voices were heard calling and answering to one another,
and then the din of hammers and sounds of busy preparation.

This might have lasted perchance half an hour, to the
great amazement of the traitor, who could not conceive
the meaning of that nocturnal hubbub, when the clang of
harness succeeded by the heavy regular tramp of men
marching followed the turmoil, and, with many torches
borne before them, the spears and eagle of a cohort were
seen coming rapidly toward the Prætorian Gate.

“By Hecate!” cried Catiline—“what may this mean, I
wonder. They are too few for an assault, nay! even for

a false alarm. They have halted at the gate! By the
Gods! they are filing out! they march hitherward! and
lo! Manlius is aware of them. I will risk something to
tarry here and watch them.”

As he spoke, the cohort marched forward, straight on
the hillock where he stood; and so far was it from seeking
to conceal its whereabout, that its trumpets were blown
frequently and loudly, as if to attract observation.

Meantime the camp of Catiline was on the alert also,
the ramparts were lined with torches, by the red glare of
which the legionaries might be seen mustering in dense
array with shields in serried order, and spear heads twinkling
in the torch-light.

As the cohorts approached the hill, Catiline fell back
toward his own camp a little, and soon found shelter in
a small thicket of holleys and wild myrtle which would effectually
conceal him from the enemy, while he could observe
their every motion from its safe covert.

On the hillock, the cohort halted—one manipule stood to
its arms in front, while the rest formed a hollow square,
all facing outward around its summit. The torches were
lowered, so that with all his endeavors, Catiline could by
no means discover what was in process within that guarded
space.

Again the din of hammers rose on his ear, mixed now
with groans and agonizing supplications, which waxed at
length into a fearful howl, the utterance of one, past doubt,
in more than mortal agony.

A strange and terrible suspicion broke upon Catiline,
and the sweat started in beadlike drops from his sallow
brow. It was not long ere that suspicion became certainty.

The clang of the hammers ceased; the wild howls sank
into a continuous weak pitiful wailing. The creak of pullies
and cordage, the shouts of men plying levers, and
hauling ropes, succeeded, and slowly sullenly uprose, hardly
seen in the black night air, a huge black cross. It
reached its elevation, and was made fast in almost less
time than it has taken to relate it, and instantly a pile of
faggots which had been raised a short distance in front of
it, and steeped in oil or some other unctuous matter, was
set on fire.

A tall wavering snowwhite glare shot upward, and revealed,

writhing in agony, and wailing wofully, the naked
form of Chærea, bleeding at every pore from the effects of
the merciless Roman scourging, nailed on the fatal cross.

So near was the little thicket in which Catiline lay, that
he could mark every sinew of that gory frame working in
agony, could read every twitch of those convulsed features.

Again the Roman trumpets were blown shrill and piercing,
and a centurion stepping forward a little way in front
of the advanced manipule, shouted at the pitch of his voice,

“Thus perish all the messengers of parricides
and traitors!”

Excited, almost beyond his powers of endurance, by
what he beheld and heard, the fierce traitor writhed in his
hiding place, not sixty paces distant from the speaker, and
gnashed his teeth in impotent malignity. His fingers
griped the tough shaft of his massive pilum, as if they
would have left their prints in the close-grained ash.

While that ferocious spirit was yet strong within him,
the wretched freedman, half frenzied doubtless by his tortures,
lifted his voice in a wild cry on his master—

“Catiline! Catiline!” he shrieked so thrillingly that every
man in both camps heard every syllable distinct and
clear. “Chærea calls on Catiline. Help! save! Avenge!
Catiline! Catiline!”

A loud hoarse laugh burst from the Roman legionaries,
and the centurion shouted in derision.

But at that instant the desperate spectator of that horrid
scene sprang to his feet reckless, and shouting, as he leaped
into the circle of bright radiance,

“Catiline hears Chærea, and delivers,”—hurled his
massive javelin with deadly aim at his tortured servant.

It was the first blow Catiline ever dealt in mercy, and
mercifully did it perform its errand.

The broad head was buried in the naked breast of the
victim, and with one sob, one shudder, the spirit was released
from the tortured clay.

Had a thunderbolt fallen among the cohort, the men
could not have been more stunned—more astounded. Before
they had sufficiently recovered from their shock to cast
a missile at him, much less to start forth in pursuit, he was
half way toward his own camp in safety; and ere long a

prolonged burst, again and again reiterated, of joyous acclamations,
told to the consular camp that the traitors knew
and appreciated the strange and dauntless daring of that
almost ubiquitous leader.

An hour afterward that leader was alone, in his tent,
stretched on his couch, sleeping. But oh! that sleep—not
gentle slumber, not nature's soft nurse—but nature's horrible
convulsion! The eyes wide open, glaring, dilated in
their sockets as of a strangled man—the brow beaded
with black sweat drops—the teeth grinded together—the
white lips muttering words too horrible to be recorded—
the talon-like fingers clutching at vacancy.

It was too horrible to last. With a wild cry, “Lucia!
Ha! Lucia! Fury! Avenger! Fiend!” he started to his
feet, and glared around him with a bewildered eye, as if
expecting to behold some ghastly supernatural visitant.

At length, he said, with a shudder—which he could not
repress, “It was a dream! A dream—but ye Gods! what
a dream! I will sleep no more—'till to-morrow. To-morrow,”
he repeated in a doubtful and enquiring tone,
“to-morrow. If I should fall to-morrow, and such dreams
come in that sleep which hath no waking, those dreams
should be reality—that reality should be—Hell! I know
not—I begin to doubt some things, which of yore I held
certain! What if there should be Gods! avenging, everlasting
torturers! If there should be a Hell! Ha! ha!”
he laughed wildly and almost frantically. “Ha! ha! what
matters it? Methinks this is a hell already!” and with
the words he struck his hand heavily on his broad breast,
and relapsed into gloomy and sullen meditation.

That night he slept no more, but strode backward and
forward hour after hour, gnawing his nether lip till the
blood streamed from the wounds inflicted by his unconscious
teeth.

What awful and mysterious retribution might await him
in the land of spirits, it is not for mortals to premise; but
in this at least did he speak truth that night—conscience
and crime may kindle in the human heart a Hell, which
nothing can extinguish, so long as the soul live identical
self-knowing, self-tormenting.