Valerius. A Roman Story

Since you are desirous, my friends, that I should relate to you, at length and in order, the things which happened to me during my journey to Rome, notwithstanding the pain which it must cost me to throw myself back into some of the feelings of that time, I cannot refuse to comply with your request. After threescore years spent in this remote province of an empire, happy, for the most part, in the protection of enlightened, just, and benevolent princes, I remember, far more accurately than things which occurred only a few months ago, the minutest particulars of what I saw and heard while I sojourned, young and a stranger, among the luxuries and cruelties of the capital of the world, as yet imperfectly recovered from the effects of the flagitious tyranny of the last of the Flavii.

My father, as you have heard, came with his legion into this island, and married a lady of native blood, some years before the first arrival of Agricola. In the wars of that illustrious commander, during the reigns of Vespasian and Titus, he had the fortune to find opportunities of distinguishing himself; but when his general was recalled, by the jealousy of Domitian, he retired from public life, and determined to spend the remainder of his days in peace, on the lands which belonged to him in right of his wife here in Britain. He laid the foundations of the house in which I have now the pleasure of receiving you; and here, in the cultivation of his fields, and in the superintendence of my education, he found sufficient employment for an active, though no longer an ambitious mind. Early in the reign of Trajan he died. Never did either Roman or British dwelling lament a more generous master.

I cannot pretend to regret the accident which immediately afterwards separated me from a gentle mother—never to see her more upon the earth. Yet deeply was the happiness of my returning hour stained by that privation. It is the common rule of nature, that our parents should precede us to the grave; and it is also her rule, that our grief for them should not be of such power as to prevent us from entering, after they are gone, into a zealous participation both of the business and the pleasures of life. Yet, in after years, the memory of that buried tenderness rises up ever and anon, and wins rather than warns us to a deliberate contemplation of our own dissolution.

Towards the end of the winter following the death of my father, there arrived letters which engaged anxious consideration. They were from members of his family, none of whom either my mother or myself had seen. It was explained, especially by Caius Licinius, the lawyer, (who was near of kin to our house,) that by the death of a certain Patrician, Cneius Valerius by name, I had become legally entitled to a very considerable fortune, to claim and take possession of which, demanded my immediate presence in the metropolis. My rights, said this jurist, were indeed called in question by another branch of the family, but were I on the spot, his professional exertions, with whatever interest he or any of his friends could command, should be at my service, for the sake of my father and of my name.

The love of travel had never before been excited in my bosom; but now that I knew I was so soon to embark for Italy, the delights which I might there hope to experience came crowding upon my imagination. The dark and pine-clad banks of my native Anton, said I, shall now be exchanged for that golden-waved Tiber, of which so many illustrious poets have sung. Instead of moving here among the ill-cemented and motley fabric of an insulated colony, and seeing only the sullen submission of barbarians on the one hand, or the paltry vanity of provincial deputies on the other, I shall tread the same ground with the rulers of the earth, and wear, among native Romans, the gown of my ancestors. I shall behold the Forum, which has heard the eloquence of Cicero and Hortensius; I shall ascend to the Capitol, where Cæsar triumphed; I shall wander in the luxurious gardens of Sallust, or breathe the fresh air in the fields of Cato: I shall gaze upon the antique majesty of temples and palaces, and open my eyes on all that art and nature have been able to heap together through eight centuries, for the ornament of the chosen seat of wisdom and valour.

A single trusty slave was selected to accompany me. It was not certainly on account of his accomplishments that Boto had been chosen for this duty; for although he had lived all his days in the vicinity of the colonists at Venta, there was scarcely a person within the bounds of the British Belgæ that spoke worse Latin. He was, however, a man of natural sagacity, possessing shrewd discernment concerning whatever things had fallen under his customary observation; and he shewed no symptom either of diffidence respecting his qualifications for this new office, or of regret at being separated from those in whose company many years of gentle servitude had glided over his sun-burnt countenance. It was reported to me, that he invited several of our rustics to drink with him in one of the out-houses, where his exultation knew no limits. He was going to Rome, for his young master very well knew he could never get on in such a journey without the helping eye and hand of Boto; and he had a brother in Italy already, (he had gone over with a distinguished legionary some ten years before,) and from him (for he would of course meet with him as soon as our arrival should be known) he would receive all requisite information concerning the doings of the great city. The usefulness which, he doubted not, I should be constrained to acknowledge in his manifold qualifications, would, without all question, entitle him to some signal reward—perhaps nothing less than manumission on his return.

Two days passed more quickly than any I ever remember to have spent amidst a strange mixture of mirth, and sorrow, and noisy preparation.

Where that single tall naked pine now stands buffeted by the wind, then grew a thick grove, of which that relic alone survives. It was there that I turned round to gaze once more on the quiet verdure of these paternal fields, and our small pastoral stream glistening here and there beneath the shady covert of its margin.

I had at first intended to cross over to Gaul, and traversing that province, enter Italy, either by the route of the Alps, in case we could procure convenient guides and companions, or by some vessel sailing from Marseilles or Forum Julii to Ostium. But the advice of one of my neighbours, who had himself been a great traveller, made me alter this plan, and resolve to commit myself to the care of an experienced mariner who was just about to sail for Italy, by the way of the pillars of Hercules, in a vessel laden chiefly with tin; and on reaching the Clausentum, I found this man, with several passengers, ready for the voyage.

For the first three or four days, I was so afflicted by the motion of the vessel, that I could bestow little attention on any external object; my eyes were so confused and dazzled, that I saw nothing beyond the corner of the deck on which I had caused my carpets to be laid; and a few ejaculations to Castor and Pollux were all the articulate sounds that I uttered. By degrees, however, the weight of my depression began to be alleviated; and at intervals, more particularly during the night watches, if I was not altogether in possession of myself, I was at least well enough to enjoy a sort of giddy delight in watching the billows as they rose and retreated from the prow. There were moments, also, in which the behaviour of Boto, under this new species of calamity, could furnish me, as it had already done the more hardy of my fellow-voyagers, with store of mirth. Near us frequently, upon the deck, sat a Captain of the Prætorian Bands, who, more than any other of these, displayed a florid complexion and cheerful eye, unalterable by the fluctuation of the waters. This Sabinus had served in all the wars of Agricola, and accompanied him even in his perilous circumnavigation of the islands which lie scattered to the north of Britain. He had also gone back to Rome with his commander, not, like him, to extenuate imperial jealousy by the affectation of indolence, but to seek for new occupation on some other disturbed frontier of the Empire. In Syria and Cappadocia he had spent some years; after which, he had attended the Emperor himself through Mæsia and Illyricum, and all those countries he traversed and retraversed, during that shameful contest in which so many Roman eagles were made the prey of barbarous enemies, and which terminated at last in that cowardly treaty, by which Domitian granted a diadem to Decebalus, and condescended to place the Roman Senate among the tributaries of a Dacian. Our friend had also strutted his part in that gorgeous triumph, or rather succession of triumphs, by which the defeated and disgraced Prince, on his return from the Ister, mocked the eyes and ears of the incredulous and indignant Romans. In a word, he had partaken in all kinds of fortune, good and evil, and preserved his rubicundity and equanimity unaltered in them all. Having attained to a situation of some dignity, he had now been visiting Britain on a special message from the new Emperor, and was returning in the hope that no future accident of fortune, or princely caprice, would ever again make it necessary for him to quit the shows and festivities of the capital.

This good-natured man sat down beside my suffering peasant, endeavouring to withdraw his attention from the pangs of his sickness, by pointing out the different boats which came in view as we held on from the Gobæan rocks, keeping close to the shore as we went, in order to shun, as well as we could, the customary fury of the Aquitanic Ocean. “Behold these fishing-vessels,” he would cry, “which have undoubtedly been upon the coast of Rutupia for oysters, or it may be about the mouth of yonder Ligoris for turbot, and are now stretching all their canvass to get home with their booty to Italy. Smooth be your winds and fair your passage, oh rare fish!” To which the downcast Boto would reply, “Lavish not, oh master, your good wishes upon the mute fish, which have been tossed about all their lives, but reserve them rather for me (unhappy) who am thus tormented in an unnatural and intolerable manner;” or perhaps, “Speak not, I beseech you, of oysters, or of turbot, or of any other eatable, for I believe I shall never again feel hungry, so grievously are all my internal parts discomposed. Oh, that I had never left my native fields, and bartered the repose of my whole body for the vain hope of gratification to my eyes!”

By degrees, however, custom reconciled all of us to the motion of the bark, and the weather being calm during the greater part of the voyage, I enjoyed, at my leisure, the beauties, both of the sea, and of the shores alongst which we glided. From time to time, we put in for water and other necessaries, to various sea-ports of the Spanish Peninsula; but our stay was never so long at any place as to admit of us losing sight of our vessel. Our chief delight, indeed, consisted in the softness and amenity of the moonlight nights we spent in sailing along the coasts of Mauritania,—now the dark mountains of the family of Atlas throwing their shadows far into the sea—and anon, its margin glittering with the white towers of Siga, or Gilba, or Cartenna, or some other of the rich cities of that old Carthaginian region. On such nights it was the custom of all the passengers to be congregated together upon the deck, where the silent pleasures of contemplation were, from time to time, interrupted by some merry song chanted in chorus by the mariners, or perhaps some wild barbarian ditty, consecrated by the zeal of Boto to the honour of some ancient indigenous hero of the North. Nor did our jovial Prætorian disdain to contribute now and then to the amusement of the assembly, by some boisterous war-song, composed, perhaps, by some light-hearted young spearman, which our centurion might have learned by heart, without any regular exertion, from hearing it sung around many a British and Dacian watch-fire.