Books: Antonina

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'We marched upon the territories of the Greeks. But how shall I tell
you of the events of those years of war that followed our invasion; of
the glory of our victories; of the hardships of our defences; of the
miseries of our retreats; of the hunger that we vanquished; of the
diseases that we endured; of the shameful peace that was finally
ratified, against the wishes of our king! How shall I tell of all this,
when my thoughts are on the massacre from which I have just escaped--
when these first evils, though once remembered in anguish, are, even
now, forgotten in the superior horrors that ensued!

'The truce was made. Alaric departed with the remnant of his army, and
encamped at AEmona, on the confines of that land which he had already
invaded, and which he is no prepared to conquer. Between our king and
Stilicho, the general of the Romans, passed many messages, for the
leaders disputed on the terms of the peace that should be finally
ordained. Meanwhile, as an earnest of the Gothic faith, bands of our
warriors, and among them Priulf, were despatched into Italy to be allies
once more of the legions of Rome, and with them they took their wives
and their children, to be detained as hostages in the cities throughout
the land.

'I and my children were conducted to Aquileia. In a dwelling within the
city we were lodged with our possessions. It was night when I took
leave of Priulf, my husband, at the gates. I watched him as he departed
with the army, and, when the darkness hid him from my eyes, I re-entered
the town; from which I am the only woman of our nation who has escaped
alive.'

As she pronounced these last words, Goisvintha's manner, which had
hitherto been calm and collected, began to change: she paused abruptly
in her narrative, her head sunk upon her breast, her frame quivered as
if convulsed with violent agony. When she turned towards Hermanric
after an interval of silence to address him again, the same malignant
expression lowered over her countenance that had appeared on it when she
presented to him her wounded child; her voice became broken, hoarse, and
unfeminine; and pressing closely to the young man's side, she laid her
trembling fingers on his arm, as if to bespeak his most undivided
attention.

'Time grew on,' she continued, 'and still there came no tidings that the
peace was finally secured. We, that were hostages, lived separate from
the people of the town; for we felt enmity towards each other even then.
In my captivity there was no employment for me but patience--no pursuit
but hope. Alone with my children, I was wont to look forth over the sea
towards the camp of our king; but day succeeded to day, and his warriors
appeared not on the plains; nor did Priulf return with the legions to
encamp before the gates of the town. So I mourned in my loneliness; for
my heart yearned towards the homes of my people; I longed once more to
look upon my husband's face, and to behold again the ranks of our
warriors, and the majesty of their battle array.

'But already, when the great day of despair was quickly drawing near, a
bitter outrage was preparing for me alone. The men who had hitherto
watched us were changed, and of the number of the new guards was one who
cast on me the eyes of lust. Night after night he poured his entreaties
into my unwilling ear; for, in his vanity and shamelessness, he believed
that I, who was Gothic and the wife of a Goth, might be won by him whose
parentage was but Roman! Soon from prayers he rose to threats; and one
night, appearing before me with smiles, he cried out that Stilicho,
whose desire was to make peace with the Goths, had suffered, for his
devotion to our people, the penalty of death; that a time of ruin was
approaching for us all, and that he alone--whom I despised--could
preserve me from the anger of Rome. As he ceased he approached me; but
I, who had been in many battle-fields, felt no dread at the prospect of
war, and I spurned him with laughter from my presence.

'Then, for a few nights more, my enemy approached me not again. Until
one evening, as I sat on the terrace before the house, with the child
that you have beheld, a helmet-crest suddenly fell at my feet, and a
voice cried to me from the garden beneath: 'Priulf thy husband has been
slain in a quarrel by the soldiers of Rome! Already the legions with
whom he served are on their way to the town; for a massacre of the
hostages is ordained. Speak but the word, and I can save thee even
yet!'

'I looked on the crest. It was bloody, and it was his! For an instant
my heart writhed within me as I thought on my warrior whom I had loved!
Then, as I heard the messenger of death retire, cursing, from his
lurking-place in the garden, I recollected that now my children had none
but their mother to defend them, and that peril was preparing for them
from the enemies of their race. Besides the little one in my arms, I
had two that were sleeping in the house. As I looked round, bewildered
and in despair, to see if a chance were left us to escape, there rang
through the evening stillness the sound of a trumpet, and the tramp of
armed men was audible in the street beneath. Then, from all quarters of
the town rose, as one sudden sound, the shrieks of women and the yells
of men. Already, as I rushed towards my children's beds, the fiends of
Rome had mounted the stairs, and waved in bloody triumph their reeking
swords! I gained the steps; and, as I looked up, they flung down at me
the body of my youngest child. O Hermanric! Hermanric! it was the most
beautiful and the most beloved! What the priests say that God should be
to us, that, the fairest one of my offspring, was to me! As I saw it
mutilated and dead--I, who but an hour before had hushed it on my bosom
to rest!--my courage forsook me, and when the murderers advanced on me I
staggered and fell. I felt the sword-point enter my neck; I saw the
dagger gleam over the child in my arms; I heard the death-shriek of the
last victim above; and then my senses failed me, and I could listen and
move no more!

'Long must I have lain motionless at the foot of those fatal stairs; for
when I awoke from my trance the noises in the city were hushed, and from
her place in the firmament the moon shone softly into the deserted
house. I listened, to be certain that I was alone with my murdered
children. No sound was in the dwelling; the assassins had departed,
believing that their labour of blood was ended when I fell beneath their
swords; and I was able to crawl forth in security, and to look my last
upon my offspring that the Romans had slain. The child that I held to
my breast still breathed. I stanched with some fragments of my garment
the wounds that he had received, and laying him gently by the stairs--in
the moonlight, so that I might see him when he moved--I groped in the
shadow of the wall for my first murdered and my last born; for that
youngest and fairest one of my offspring whom they had slaughtered
before my eyes! When I touched the corpse, it was wet with blood; I
felt its face, and it was cold beneath my hands; I raised its body in my
arms, and its limbs already were rigid in death! Then I thought of the
eldest child, who lay dead in the chamber above. But my strength was
failing me fast. I had an infant who might yet be preserved; and I knew
that if morning dawned on me in the house, all chances of escape were
lost for ever. So, though my heart was cold within me at leaving my
child's corpse to the mercy of the Romans, I took up the dead and the
wounded one in my arms, and went forth into the garden, and thence
towards the seaward quarter of the town.

'I passed through the forsaken streets. Sometimes I stumbled against
the body of a child--sometimes the moonlight showed me the death-pale
face of some woman of my nation whom I had loved, stretched upward to
the sky; but I still advanced until I gained the wall of the town, and
heard on the other side the waters of the river running onward to the
Port of Aquileia and the sea.

'I looked around. The gates I knew were guarded and closed. By the
wall was the only prospect of escape; but its top was high and its sides
were smooth when I felt them with my hands. Despairing and wearied, I
laid my burdens down where they were hidden by the shade, and walked
forward a few paces, for to remain still was a torment that I could not
endure. At a short distance I saw a soldier sleeping against the wall
of a house. By his side was a ladder placed against the window. As I
looked up I beheld the head of a corpse resting on its top. The victim
must have been lately slain, for her blood still dripped slowly down
into an empty wine-pot that stood within the soldier's reach. When I
saw the ladder, hope revived within me. I removed it to the wall--I
mounted, and laid my dead child on the great stones at its top--I
returned, and placed my wounded boy by the corpse. Slowly, and with
many efforts, I dragged the ladder upwards, until from its own weight
one end fell to the ground on the other side. As I had risen so I
descended. In the sand of the river-bank I scraped a hole, and buried
there the corpse of the infant; for I could carry the weight of two no
longer. Then with my wounded child I reached some caverns that lay
onward near the seashore. There throughout the next day I lay hidden--
alone with my sufferings of body and my affliction of heart--until the
night came on, when I set forth on my journey to the mountains; for I
knew that at Aemona, in the camp of the warriors of my people, lay the
only refuge that was left to me on earth. Feebly and slowly, hiding by
day an d travelling by night, I kept on my way until I gained that lake
among the rocks, where the guards of the army came forward and rescued
me from death.'

She ceased. Throughout the latter portion of her narrative her
demeanour had been calm and sad; and as she dwelt, with the painful
industry of grief, over each minute circumstance connected with the
bereavements she had sustained, her voice softened to those accents of
quiet mournfulness, which make impressive the most simple words, and
render musical the most unsteady tones. It seemed as if those tenderer
and kinder emotions, which the attractions of her offspring had once
generated in her character, had at the bidding of memory become
revivified in her manner while she lingered over the recital of their
deaths. For a brief space of time she looked fixedly and anxiously upon
the countenance of Hermanric, which was half averted from her, and
expressed a fierce and revengeful gloom that sat unnaturally on it noble
lineaments. Then turning from him, she buried her face in her hands,
and made no effort more to attract him to attention or incite him to
reply.

This solemn silence kept by the bereaved woman and the brooding man had
lasted but a few minutes, when a harsh, trembling voice was heard from
the top of the waggon, calling at intervals, 'Hermanric! Hermanric!'

At first the young man remained unmoved by those discordant and
repulsive tones. They repeated his name, however, so often and so
perseveringly, that he noticed them ere long; and rising suddenly, as if
impatient of the interruption, advanced towards the side of the waggon
from which the mysterious summons appeared to come.

As he looked up towards the vehicle the voice ceased, and he saw that
the old woman to whom he had confided the child was the person who had
called him so hurriedly but a few moments before. Her tottering body,
clothed in bear-skins, was bent forward over a large triangular shield
of polished brass, on which she leant her lank, shrivelled arms. Her
head shook with a tremulous, palsied action; a leer, half smile, half
grimace, distended her withered lips and lightened her sunken eyes.
Sinister, cringing, repulsive; her face livid with the reflection from
the weapon that was her support, and her figure scarcely human in the
rugged garments that encompassed its gaunt proportions, she seemed a
deformity set up by evil spirits to mock the majesty of the human form--
an embodied satire on all that is most deplorable in infirmity and most
disgusting in age.

The instant she discerned Hermanric, she stretched her body out still
farther over the shield; and pointing to the interior of the waggon,
muttered softly that one fearful and expressive word--dead!

Without waiting for any further explanation, the young Goth mounted the
vehicle, and gaining the old woman's side, saw stretched on her
collection of herbs--beautiful in the sublime and melancholy stillness
of death--the corpse of Goisvintha's last child.

'Is Hermanric wroth?' whined the hag, quailing before the steady,
rebuking glance of the young man. 'When I said that Brunechild was
greater than Hermanric, I lied. It is Hermanric that is most powerful!
See, the dressings were placed on the wounds; and, though the child has
died, shall not the treasures that were promised me be mine? I have
done what I could, but my cunning begins to desert me, for I am old--
old--old! I have seen my generation pass away! Aha! I am old,
Hermanric, I am old!'

When the young warrior looked on the child, he saw that the hag had
spoken truth, and that the victim had died from no fault of hers. Pale
and serene, the countenance of the boy showed how tranquil had been his
death. The dressings had been skilfully composed and carefully applied
to his wounds, but suffering and privation had annihilated the
feebleness of human resistance in their march toward the last dread
goal, and the treachery of Imperial Rome had once more triumphed as was
its wont, and triumphed over a child!

As Hermanric descended with the corpse Goisvintha was the first object
that met his eyes when he alighted on the ground. The mother received
from him the lifeless burden without an exclamation or a tear. That
emanation from her former and kinder self which had been produced by the
closing recital of her sufferings was henceforth, at the signal of her
last child's death, extinguished in her for ever!

'His wounds had crippled him,' said the young man gloomily. 'He could
never have fought with the warriors! Our ancestors slew themselves when
they were no longer vigorous for the fight. It is better that he has
died!'

'Vengeance!' gasped Goisvintha, pressing up closely to his side. 'We
will have vengeance for the massacre of Aquileia! When blood is
streaming in the palaces of Rome, remember my murdered children, and
hasten not to sheathe thy sword!'

At this instant, as if to rouse still further the fierce determination
that appeared already in the face of the young Goth, the voice of Alaric
was heard commanding the army to advance. Hermanric started, and drew
the panting woman after him to the resting-place of the king. There,
armed at all points, and rising, by his superior stature, high above the
throng around him, stood the dreaded captain of the Gothic hosts. His
helmet was raised so as to display his clear blue eyes gleaming over the
multitude around him; he pointed with his sword in the direction of
Italy; and as rank by rank the men started to their arms, and prepared
exultingly for the march, his lips parted with a smile of triumph, and
ere he moved to accompany them he spoke thus:--

'Warriors of the Goths, our halt is a short one among the mountains; but
let not the weary repine, for the glorious resting-place that awaits our
labours is the city of Rome! The curse of Odin, when in the infancy of
our nation he retire before the myriads of the Empire, it is our
privilege to fulfil! That future destruction which he denounced against
Rome, it is ours to effect! Remember your hostages that the Romans have
slain; your possessions that the Romans have seized; your trust that the
Romans have betrayed! Remember that I, your king, have within me that
supernatural impulse which never deceives, and which calls to me in a
voice of encouragement--Advance, and the Empire is thine! Assemble the
warriors, and the City of the World shall be delivered to the conquering
Goths! Let us onward without delay! Our prey awaits us! Our triumph is
near! Our vengeance is at hand!'

He paused; and at that moment the trumpet gave signal for the march.

'Up! up!' cried Hermanric, seizing Goisvintha by the arm, and pointing
to the waggon which had already begun to move; 'make ready for the
journey! I will charge myself with the burial of the child. Yet a few
days and our encampment may be before Aquileia. Be patient, and I will
avenge thee in the palaces of Rome!'

The mighty mass moved. The multitude stretched forth over the barren
ground; and even now the warriors in front of the army might be seen by
those in the rear mounting the last range of passes that lay between the
plains of Italy and the Goths.

CHAPTER 2. THE COURT.

The traveller who so far departs from the ordinary track of tourists in
modern Italy as to visit the city of Ravenna, remembers with
astonishment, as he treads its silent and melancholy streets, and
beholds vineyards and marshes spread over an extent of four miles
between the Adriatic and the town, that this place, now half deserted,
was once the most populous of Roman fortresses; and that where fields
and woods now present themselves to his eyes the fleets of the Empire
once rode securely at anchor, and the merchant of Rome disembarked his
precious cargoes at his warehouse door.

As the power of Rome declined, the Adriatic, by a strange fatality,
began to desert the fortress whose defence it had hitherto secured.
Coeval with the gradual degeneracy of the people was the gradual
withdrawal of the ocean from the city walls; until, at the beginning of
the sixth century, a grove of pines already appeared where the port of
Augustus once existed.

At the period of our story--though the sea had even then receded
perceptibly--the ditches round the walls were yet filled, and the canals
still ran through the city in much the same manner as they intersect
Venice at the present time.

On the morning that we are about to describe, the autumn had advanced
some days since the events mentioned in the preceding chapter. Although
the sun was now high in the eastern horizon, the restlessness produced
by the heat emboldened a few idlers of Ravenna to brave the sultriness
of the atmosphere, in the vain hope of being greeted by a breeze from
the Adriatic as they mounted the seaward ramparts of the town. On
attaining their destined elevation, these sanguine citizens turned their
faces with fruitless and despairing industry towards every point of the
compass, but no breath of air came to reward their perseverance. Nothing
could be more thoroughly suggestive of the undiminished universality of
the heat than the view, in every direction, from the position they then
occupied. The stone houses of the city behind them glowed with a vivid
brightness overpowering to the strongest eyes. The light curtains hung
motionless over the lonely windows. No shadows varied the brilliant
monotony of the walls, or softened the lively glitter on the waters of
the fountains beneath. Not a ripple stirred the surface of the broad
channel, that now replaced the ancient harbour. Not a breath of wind
unfolded the scorching sails of the deserted vessels at the quay. Over
the marshes in the distance hung a hot, quivering mist; and in the
vineyards, near the town, not a leaf waved upon its slender stem. On
the seaward side lay, vast and level, the prospect of the burning sand;
and beyond it the main ocean--waveless, torpid, and suffused in a flood
of fierce brightness--stretched out to the cloudless horizon that closed
the sunbright view.

Within the town, in those streets where the tall houses cast a deep
shadow on the flagstones of the road, the figures of a few slaves might
here and there be seen sleeping against the walls, or gossiping
languidly on the faults of their respective lords. Sometimes an old
beggar might be observed hunting on the well-stocked preserves of his
own body the lively vermin of the South. Sometimes a restless child
crawled from a doorstep to paddle in the stagnant waters of a kennel;
but, with the exception of these doubtful evidences of human industry,
the prevailing characteristic of the few groups of the lowest orders of
the people which appeared in the streets was the most listless and utter
indolence. All that gave splendour to the city at other hours of the
day was at this period hidden from the eye. The elegant courtiers
reclined in their lofty chambers; the guards on duty ensconced
themselves in angles of walls and recesses of porticoes; the graceful
ladies slumbered on perfumed couches in darkened rooms; the gilded
chariots were shut into the carriage-houses; the prancing horses were
confined in the stables; and even the wares in the market-places were
removed from exposure to the sun. It was clear that the luxurious
inhabitants of Ravenna recognised no duties of sufficient importance,
and no pleasures of sufficient attraction, to necessitate the exposure
of their susceptible bodies to the noontide heat.

To give the reader some idea of the manner in which the indolent
patricians of the Court loitered away their noon, and to satisfy, at the
same time, the exigencies attaching to the conduct of this story, it is
requisite to quit the lounging-places of the plebeians in the streets
for the couches of the nobles in the Emperor's palace.

Passing through the massive entrance gates, crossing the vast hall of
the Imperial abode, with its statues, its marbles, and its guards in
attendance, and thence ascending the noble staircase, the first object
that might on this occasion have attracted the observer, when he gained
the approaches to the private apartments, was a door at an extremity of
the corridor, richly carved and standing half open. At this spot were
grouped some fifteen or twenty individuals, who conversed by signs, and
maintained in all their movements the most decorous and complete
silence. Sometimes one of the party stole on tiptoe to the door, and
looked cautiously through, returning almost instantaneously, and
expressing to his next neighbour, by various grimaces, his immense
interest in the sight he had just beheld. Occasionally there came from
this mysterious chamber sounds resembling the cackling of poultry,
varied now and then by a noise like the falling of a shower of small,
light substances upon a hard floor. Whenever these sounds were audible,
the members of the party outside the door looked round upon each other
and smiled--some sarcastically, some triumphantly. A few among these
patient expectants grasped rolls of vellum in their hands; the rest held
nosegays of rare flowers, or supported in their arms small statues and
pictures in mosaic. Of their number, some were painters and poets, some
orators and philosophers, and some statuaries and musicians. Among such
a motley assemblage of professions, remarkable in all ages of the world
for fostering in their votaries the vice of irritability, it may seem
strange that so quiet and orderly a behaviour should exist as that just
described. But it is to be observed that in attending at the palace,
these men of genius made sure at least of outward unanimity among their
ranks, by coming equally prepared with one accomplishment, and equally
animated by one hope: they waited to employ a common agent--flattery; to
attain a common end--gain.

The chamber thus sacred, even from the intrusion of intellectual
inspiration, although richly ornamented, was of no remarkable extent.
At other times the eye might have wandered with delight on the exquisite
plants and flowers, scattered profusely over a noble terrace, to which a
second door in the apartment conducted; but, at the present moment, the
employment of the occupant of the room was of so extraordinary a nature,
that the most attentive observation must have missed all the inferior
characteristics of the place, to settle immediately on its inhabitant
alone.

In the midst of a large flock of poultry, which seemed strangely
misplaced on a floor of marble and under a gilded roof, stood a pale,
thin, debilitated youth, magnificently clothed, and holding in his hand
a silver vase filled with grain, which he ever and anon distributed to
the cackling multitude at his feet. Nothing could be more pitiably
effeminate than the appearance of this young man. His eyes were heavy
and vacant, his forehead low and retiring, his cheeks sallow, and his
form curved as if with a premature old age. An unmeaning smile dilated
his thin, colourless lips; and as he looked down on his strange
favourites, he occasionally whispered to them a few broken expressions
of endearment, almost infantine in their simplicity. His whole soul
seemed to be engrossed by the labour of distributing his grain, and he
followed the different movements of the poultry with an earnestness of
attention which seemed almost idiotic in its ridiculous intensity. If
it be asked, why a person so contemptible as this solitary youth has
been introduced with so much care, and described with so much
minuteness, it must be answered, that, though destined to form no
important figure in this work, he played, from his position, a
remarkable part in the great drama on which it is founded--for this
feeder of chickens was no less a person than Honorius, Emperor of Rome.

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