University of Virginia Library

20. CHAPTER XX.
THE FIELD OF PISTORIA.

Macbeth.

The first faint streaks of day were scarcely visible in
the east, when Catiline, glad to escape the horrors which
he had endured through the dark solitude of the night
watches, issued from his tent, armed at all points, and
every inch a captain.

All irresolution, all doubt, all nervousness had passed
away. Energy and the strong excitement of the moment
had overpowered conscience; and looking on his high,
haughty port, his cold hard eye, his resolute impassive
face, one would have said that man, at least, never trembled
at realities, far less at shadows.

But who shall say in truth, which are the shadows of this
world, which the realities? Many a one, it may be, will
find to his sorrow, when the great day shall come, that the
hard, selfish, narrow fact, the reality after which his whole
life was a chase, a struggle, is but the shadow of a shade;
the unsubstantial good, the scholar's or the poet's dream,
which he scorned as an empty nothing, is an immortal
truth, an everlasting and immutable reality.

Catiline shook at shadows, whom not the `substance of
ten thousand soldiers armed in proof,' could move, unless
it were to emulation and defiance.

Which were in truth more real, more substantial causes

of dismay, those shadows which appalled him, or those
realities which he despised.

Ere that sun set, upon whose rising he gazed with an
eye so calm and steadfast, that question, to him at least,
was solved for ever—to us it is, perhaps, still a question.

But, at that moment, he thought nothing of the past, nothing
of the future. The present claimed his whole undivided
mind, and to the present he surrendered it, abstracted
from all speculations, clear and unclouded, and pervading
as an eagle's vision.

All his arrangements for the day had been made on the
previous night so perfectly, that the troops were already
filing out from the Prætorian gate in orderly array, and
taking their ground on the little plain at the mouth of the
gorge, in the order of battle which had been determined
by the chiefs beforehand.

The space which he had selected whereon to receive
the attack of Antonius' army, was indeed admirably chosen.
It front it was so narrow, that eight cohorts, drawn
up in a line ten deep, according to the Roman usage, filled
it completely; behind these, the twelve remaining cohorts,
which completed the force of his two legions, were arrayed
in reserve in denser and more solid order, the interval
between the mountains on the left, and the craggy hill on
the right, which protected his flanks, being much narrower
as it ascended toward the gorge in which the rebel camp
was pitched.

In front of the army, there was a small plain, perfectly
level, lying in an amphitheatre, as it were, of rocks and
mountains, with neither thicket, brake, nor hillock to mar
its smooth expanse or hinder the shock of armies, and extending
perhaps half a mile toward the consular army.
Below this, the ground fell off in a long abrupt and rugged
declivity, somewhat exceeding a second half mile in length,
with many thickets and clumps of trees on its slope, and
the hillock at its foot, whereon still frowned Chærea's cross
with the gory and hideous carcase, already blackened by
the frosty night wind, hanging from its rough timbers, an
awful omen to that army of desperate traitors.

Beyond that hillock, the ground swelled again into a
lofty ridge, facing the mouth of the gorge in which Catiline

had arrayed his army, with all advantages of position,
sun and wind in his favor.

The sun rose splendid and unclouded, and as his long
rays streamed through the hollows in the mountain top,
nothing can be conceived more wildly romantic than the
mountain scene, more gorgeous and exciting than the living
picture, which they illuminated.

The hoary pinnacles of the huge mountains with their
crowns of thunder-splintered rocks, the eyries of innumerable
birds of prey, gleaming all golden in the splendors of
the dawn—their long abrupt declivities, broken with crags,
feathered with gray and leafless forests, and dotted here
and there with masses of rich evergreens, all bathed in
soft and misty light—and at the base of them the mouth
of the deep gorge, a gulf of massive purple shadow,
through which could be descried indistinctly the lines of
the deserted palisades and ramparts, whence had marched
out that mass of living valor, which now was arrayed in
splendid order, just where the broad rays, sweeping down
the hills, dwelt in their morning glory.

Motionless they stood in their solid formation, as living
statues, one mass, as it appeared, of gold and scarlet; for
all their casques and shields and corslets were of bright burnished
bronze, and all the cassocks of the men, and cloaks
of the officers of the vivid hue, named from the flower of
the pomegranate; so that, to borrow a splendid image of
Xenophon describing the array of the ten thousand, the
whole army lightened with brass, and bloomed with crimson.

And now, from the camp in the rear a splendid train
came sweeping at full speed, with waving crests of crimson
horse hair dancing above their gleaming helmets, and
a broad banner fluttering in the air, under the well-known
silver eagle, the tutelar bird of Marius, the God of the
arch-traitor's sacrilegious worship.

Armed in bright steel, these were the body guard of
Catiline, three hundred chosen veterans, the clients of his
own and the Cornelian houses, men steeped to the lips in
infamy and crime, soldiers of fifty victories, Sylla's atrocious
colonists.

Mounted on splendid Thracian chargers, with Catiline

at their head, enthroned like a conquering king on his superb
black Erebus, they came sweeping at full gallop
through the intervals of the foot, and, as they reached the
front of the array, wheeled up at once into a long single
line, facing their infantry, and at a single wafture of their
leader's hand, halted all like a single man.

Then riding forward at a foot's pace into the interval
between the horse and foot, Catiline passed along the
whole line from end to end, surveying every man, and
taking in with his rapid and instinctive glance, every minute
detail in silence.

At the right wing, which Manlius commanded, he paused
a moment or two, and spoke eagerly but shortly to his
subordinate; but when he reached the extreme left he
merely nodded his approbation to the Florentine, crying
aloud in his deep tones the one word, “Remember!”

Then gallopping back at the top of his horse's speed to
the eagle which stood in front of the centre, he checked
black Erebus so suddenly that he reared bolt-upright and
stood for a second's space pawing the vacant air, uncertain
if he could recover that rude impulse. But the rare
horsemanship of Catiline prevailed, and horse and man
stood statue-like and immoveable.

Then, pitching his voice so high and clear that every
man of that dense host could hear and follow him, he
burst abruptly into the spirited and stirring speech which
has been preserved complete by the most elegant[1] of Roman
writers.

“Soldiers, I hold it an established fact, that words cannot
give valor—that a weak army cannot be made strong,
nor a coward army brave, by any speech of their commander.
How much audacity is given to each man's spirit,
by nature, or by habit, so much will be displayed in
battle. Whom neither glory nor peril can excite, you
shall exhort in vain. Terror deafens the ears of his intellect.
I have convoked you, therefore, not to exhort, but
to admonish you in brief, and to inform you of the causes
of my counsel. Soldiers, you all well know how terrible
a disaster the cowardice and sloth of Lentulus brought on
himself and us; and how, expecting reinforcements from

the city, I was hindered from marching into Gaul. Now
I would have you understand, all equally with me, in what
condition we are placed. The armies of our enemy, two
in number, one from the city, the other from the side of
Gaul, are pressing hard upon us. In this place, were it
our interest to do so, we can hold out no longer, the scarcity
of corn and forage forbid that. Whithersoever we
desire to go, our path must be opened by the sword.
Wherefore I warn you that you be of a bold and ready
spirit; and, when the battle have commenced, that ye remember
this, that in your own right hand ye carry wealth,
honor, glory, moreover liberty and your country. Victorious,
all things are safe to us, supplies in abundance shall
be ours, the colonies and free boroughs will open their
gates to us. Failing, through cowardice, these self-same
things will become hostile to us. Not any place nor any
friend shall protect him, whom his own arms have not protected.
However, soldiers, the same necessity doth not
actuate us and our enemies. We fight for our country,
our liberty, our life! To them it is supererogatory to do
battle for the power of a few nobles. Wherefore, fall on
with the greater boldness, mindful of your own valor. We
might all of us, have passed our lives in utter infamy as
exiles; a few of you, stripped of your property, might still
have dwelt in Rome, coveting that of your neighbors. Because
these things appeared too base and foul for men's
endurance, you resolved upon this career. If you would
quit it, you must perforce be bold. No one, except victorious,
hath ever exchanged war for peace. Since to expect
safety from flight, when you have turned away from the
foe, that armor which defends the body, is indeed madness.
Always in battle to who most fears, there is most
peril. Valor stands as a wall to shield its possessor. Soldiers,
when I consider you, and recall to mind your deeds,
great hopes of victory possess me. Your spirit, age, and
valor, give me confidence; moreover that necessity of
conquest, which renders even cowards brave. As for the
numbers of the enemy, the defiles will not permit them to
surround you. And yet, should Fortune prove jealous
of your valor, beware that ye lose not your lives unavenged;
beware that, being captured, ye be not rather butchered
like sheep, than slain fighting like men, and leaving
to your foes a victory of blood and lamentation.”

He ceased, and what a shout went up, seeming to shake
the earth-fast hill, scaring the eagles from their high nests,
and rolling in long echoes, like reverberated thunder
among the resounding hills. Twice, thrice, that soul
fraught acclamation pealed up to heaven, sure token of
resolution unto death, in the hardened hearts of that desperate
banditti.

Catiline drank delighted inspiration from the sound, and
cried in triumphant tones:

“Enough! your shout is prophetic! Soldiers, already
we have conquered!”

Then leaping from his charger to the ground, he turned
to his body-guard, exclaiming,

“To fight, my friends, we have no need of horses; to
fly we desire them not! On foot we must conquer, or on
foot die! In all events, our peril as our hope must be equal.
Dismount then, all of ye, and leading your chargers to the
rear slay them; so shall we all run equal in this race of
death or glory!”

And, with the word, leading his superb horse through
the intervals between the cohorts of the foot, he drew his
heavy sword, and smote him one tremendous blow which
clove through spine and muscle, through artery and vein
and gullet, severing the beauteous head from the graceful
and swanlike neck, and hurling the noble animal to the
earth a motionless and quivering mass.

It was most characteristic of the ruthless and brutal temper
of that parricidal monster, that he cut down the noble
animal which had so long and so gallantly borne him,
which had saved his life more than once by its speed and
courage, which followed him, fed from his hand, obeyed
his voice, like a dog, almost like a child, without the slightest
show of pity or compunction.

Many bad, cruel, savage-hearted men, ruthless to their
own fellows, have proved themselves not devoid altogether
of humanity by their love to some faithful animal, but it
would seem that this most atrocious of mankind lacked
even the “one touch of nature which makes the whole world
kin.”

He killed his favorite horse, the only friend, perhaps,

that he possessed on earth, not only unreluctant, but with
a sort of savage glee, and a sneering jest—

“If things go ill with us to day, I shall be fitly horsed
on Erebus, by Hades!”

Then, hurrying to the van, he took post with his three
hundred, and all the picked centurions and veterans of the
reserve, mustered beneath the famous Cimbric Eagle, in
the centre of the first rank, prepared to play out to the
last his desperate and deadly game, the ablest chief, and
the most daring soldier, that ever buckled blade for parricide
and treason.