ページの画像
PDF
ePub

Biographical and Historical: This is a supposed speech of Spartacus written by Elijah Kellogg, a New England clergyman. Spartacus was a Thracian by birth, who served in the Roman army. Having deserted, he was taken prisoner, sold as a slave, and trained as a gladiator at Capua. He escaped and gathered about him a large army of slaves and gladiators, with whom he intended to push northward and allow them all. to return to their homes. They, however, after attacking many towns, were finally overcome. Spartacus himself died in battle, and six thousand slaves were crucified on the road from Capua to Rome.

Capua was a city of great luxury, containing an amphitheater nearly as large as the Coliseum at Rome. The ancients attached great importance to the rites of burial, and believed that the soul could not reach the Elysian Fields unless the body had been buried.

MERIT BEFORE BIRTH

TRANSLATED FROM SALLUST

You have committed to my conduct, O Romans, the war against Jugurtha. The patricians take offence. They say, "Why, he has no family statues. He can point to no illustrious ancestors." What of that? Will dead ancestors or motionless statues fight 5 battles? Can your general appeal to them in the hour of extremest danger? How wise it would be, surely, to intrust your army to some untried person without a single scar, but with any number of ancestral statues,-who knows not the simplest rudiments of military service, but is very perfect in pedigree! I have known 10 such holiday heroes, raised, because of family, to positions for which they had no fitness. But, then, in the moment of action they were obliged, in their ignorance and trepidation, to intrust every movement, even the most simple, to some subaltern, some despised plebeian.

15

What they have seen in books, I have seen written on battlefields, with steel and blood. They sneer at my mean origin. Where, and may the gods bear witness,-where, but in the spirit of man, is nobility lodged? Tell these despicable railers that their

haughty lineage cannot make them noble, nor will my humble 20 birth make me base. I profess no indifference to noble descent; but when a descendant is dwarfed in the comparison, it should be a shame, and not a matter to boast of! I can show the standards, the armor, and the spoils which I have in person wrested from the vanquished. I can show the scars of many wounds received in 25 combating the enemies of Rome. These are my statues ! These are my honors, to boast of; not inherited by accident, but earned by toil, by abstinence, by valor, amid clouds of dust and seas of blood. Their titles date from similar acts of their ancestors; but these detractors did not even dare to appear on the field as 30 spectators. These are my credentials! These, O Romans, are my titles of nobility! Tell me, are they not as deserving of your confidence and reward as those of which any patrician of them all can boast?

Biographical and Historical: Sallust, the author of this selection, was a famous Roman historian of the first century B. C. Caius Marius was the son of a small farmer and worked his way up from this humble origin to the highest position, that of consul, in spite of the determined opposition of the senate, and the aristocracy. By the vote of the Roman people, he was given command of the army in the campaign against Jugurtha, a prince who had usurped the Numidian throne.

RIENZI'S ADDRESS TO THE ROMANS

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD

Friends!

5

I come not here to talk. You know too well
The story of our thralldom. We are slaves!
The bright sun rises to his course, and lights
A race of slaves! he sets, and his last beam
Falls on a slave!-not such as, swept along
By the full tide of power, the conqueror leads
To crimson glory and undying fame,
But base, ignoble slaves-slaves to a horde

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Of petty tyrants; feudal despots; lords,

Rich in some dozen paltry villages,

Strong in some hundred spearmen; only great
In that strange spell-a name.

Each hour dark fraud,

Or open rapine, or protected murder,

Cry out against them. But this very day,
An honest man, my neighbor-there he stands-
Was struck-struck like a dog, by one who wore
The badge of Ursini, because, forsooth,

He tossed not high his ready cap in air,
Nor lifted up his voice in servile shouts
At sight of that great ruffian! Be we men,
And suffer such dishonor?-Men, and wash not
The stain away in blood?

Such shames are common.

I have known deeper wrongs. I that speak to you,
I had a brother once, a gracious boy,

Full of gentleness, of calmest hope,

Of sweet and quiet joy: there was the look
Of heaven upon his face, which limners give
To the beloved disciple. How I loved
That gracious boy! Younger by fifteen years,
Brother at once and son! He left my side,
A summer bloom on his fair cheek, a smile
Parting his innocent lips: in one short hour,
The pretty, harmless boy was slain! I saw
The corse, the mangled corse, and then I cried
For vengeance!

Rouse ye, Romans! rouse ye, slaves!
Have ye brave sons? Look in the next fierce brawl
To see them die. Have ye fair daughters? Look
To see them live, torn from your arms, distained,
Dishonored; and, if ye dare call for justice,
Be answered by the lash!

[blocks in formation]

Yet this is Rome,

That sat on her seven hills, and from her throne
Of beauty ruled the world! Yet we are Romans!
Why, in that elder day, to be a Roman

Was greater than a king! And, once again,—
Hear me, ye walls, that echoed to the tread
Of either Brutus!-once again, I swear,

The Eternal City shall be free!

Biographical and Historical: Mary Russell Mitford, born in 1787. was an English writer of miscellaneous works. Among her most noted productions is the tragedy "Rienzi," which was presented in London in 1828. It is the story of the Roman patriot, Rienzi, who led a revolution at Rome in 1347. He overthrew the power of the aristocracy and introduced many reforms in the government. After establishing himself in power, however, he is said to have become in turn haughty and arbitrary.

10

EMMET'S VINDICATION

MY LORDS: What have I to say why sentence of death should not be pronounced on me, according to law? I have nothing to say that can alter your predetermination, nor that it will become me to say with any view to the mitigation of that sentence which 5 you are here to pronounce, and I must abide by. But I have that to say which interests me more than life, and which you have labored to destroy. I have much to say why my reputation should be rescued from the load of false accusation and calumny which has been heaped upon it.

Were I only to suffer death, after being adjudged guilty by your tribunal, I should bow in silence, and meet the fate that awaits me without a murmur; but the sentence of law which delivers my body to the executioner will, through the ministry of that law, labor, in its own vindication, to consign my character 15 to obloquy; for there must be guilt somewhere—whether in the sentence of the court, or in the catastrophe, posterity must deter

mine. The man dies, but his memory lives.

That mine may

not perish that it may live in the respect of my countrymen— I seize upon this opportunity to vindicate myself from some of the 20 charges alleged against me.

When my spirit shall be wafted to a more friendly port; when my shade shall have joined the bands of those martyred heroes who have shed their blood, on the scaffold and in the field, in defense of their country and virtue; this is my hope-I wish that 25 my memory and name may animate those who survive me, while I look down with complacency on the destruction of that perfidious government which upholds its domination by blasphemy of the Most High, which displays its powers over man as over the beasts of the forest, which sets man upon his brother, and 30 lifts his hand, in the name of God, against the throat of his fellow who believes or doubts a little more or less than the government standard—a government which is steeled to barbarity by the cries of the orphans and the tears of the widows which its cruelty has made.

35

I swear by the throne of Heaven, before which I must shortly appear by the blood of the murdered patriots who have gone before me that my conduct has been, through all this peril and all my purposes, governed only by the convictions which I have uttered, and no other view than that of the emancipation of my 40 country from the superinhuman oppression under which she has so long and too patiently travailed; and that I confidently and assuredly hope, wild and chimerical as it may appear, that there is still union and strength in Ireland to accomplish this noble enterprise.

45

My country was my idol. To it I sacrificed every selfish, every endearing sentiment; and for it I now offer up my life! I acted as an Irishman, determined on delivering my country from the yoke of a foreign and unrelenting tyranny, and from the more galling yoke of a domestic faction, its joint partner and perpetrator 50 in the patricide, whose reward is the ignominy of existing with an exterior of splendor and a consciousness of depravity. It was

« 前へ次へ »