Part 109 (2/2)

--Calpurnius, Eclog., vii. 47. A baltheus was a shoulder-belt or baldric.]

all the sides of this vast s.p.a.ce filled and environed, from the bottom to the top, with three or four score rows of seats, all of marble also, and covered with cus.h.i.+ons:

”Exeat, inquit, Si pudor est, et de pulvino surgat equestri, Cujus res legi non sufficit;”

[”Let him go out, he said, if he has any sense of shame, and rise from the equestrian cus.h.i.+on, whose estate does not satisfy the law.”

--Juvenal, iii. 153. The Equites were required to possess a fortune of 400 sestertia, and they sat on the first fourteen rows behind the orchestra.]

where a hundred thousand men might sit at their ease: and, the place below, where the games were played, to make it, by art, first open and cleave in chasms, representing caves that vomited out the beasts designed for the spectacle; and then, secondly, to be overflowed by a deep sea, full of sea monsters, and laden with s.h.i.+ps of war, to represent a naval battle; and, thirdly, to make it dry and even again for the combat of the gladiators; and, for the fourth scene, to have it strown with vermilion grain and storax,--[A resinous gum.]--instead of sand, there to make a solemn feast for all that infinite number of people: the last act of one only day:

”Quoties nos descendentis arenae Vidimus in partes, ruptaque voragine terrae Emersisse feras, et eisdem saepe latebris Aurea c.u.m croceo creverunt arbuta libro!....

Nec solum n.o.bis silvestria cernere monstra Contigit; aequoreos ego c.u.m certantibus ursis Spectavi vitulos, et equorum nomine dignum, Sen deforme pecus, quod in illo nascitur amni....”

[”How often have we seen the stage of the theatre descend and part asunder, and from a chasm in the earth wild beasts emerge, and then presently give birth to a grove of gilded trees, that put forth blossoms of enamelled flowers. Nor yet of sylvan marvels alone had we sight: I saw sea-calves fight with bears, and a deformed sort of cattle, we might call sea-horses.”--Calpurnius, Eclog., vii. 64.]

Sometimes they made a high mountain advance itself, covered with fruit-trees and other leafy trees, sending down rivulets of water from the top, as from the mouth of a fountain: otherwhiles, a great s.h.i.+p was seen to come rolling in, which opened and divided of itself, and after having disgorged from the hold four or five hundred beasts for fight, closed again, and vanished without help. At other times, from the floor of this place, they made spouts of perfumed water dart their streams upward, and so high as to sprinkle all that infinite mult.i.tude. To defend themselves from the injuries of the weather, they had that vast place one while covered over with purple curtains of needlework, and by-and-by with silk of one or another colour, which they drew off or on in a moment, as they had a mind:

”Quamvis non modico caleant spectacula sole, Vela reduc.u.n.tur, c.u.m venit Hermogenes.”

[”The curtains, though the sun should scorch the spectators, are drawn in, when Hermogenes appears.”-Martial, xii. 29, 15. M.

Tigellius Hermogenes, whom Horace and others have satirised. One editor calls him ”a noted thief,” another: ”He was a literary amateur of no ability, who expressed his critical opinions with too great a freedom to please the poets of his day.” D.W.]

The network also that was set before the people to defend them from the violence of these turned-out beasts was woven of gold:

”Auro quoque torts refulgent Retia.”

[”The woven nets are refulgent with gold.”

--Calpurnius, ubi supra.]

If there be anything excusable in such excesses as these, it is where the novelty and invention create more wonder than the expense; even in these vanities we discover how fertile those ages were in other kind of wits than these of ours. It is with this sort of fertility, as with all other products of nature: not that she there and then employed her utmost force: we do not go; we rather run up and down, and whirl this way and that; we turn back the way we came. I am afraid our knowledge is weak in all senses; we neither see far forward nor far backward; our understanding comprehends little, and lives but a little while; 'tis short both in extent of time and extent of matter:

”Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona Mufti, sed omnes illacrymabiles Urgentur, ignotique longs Nocte.”

[ Many brave men lived before Agamemnon, but all are pressed by the long night unmourned and unknown.”--Horace, Od., iv. 9, 25.]

”Et supra bellum Thebanum et funera Trojae Non alias alii quoque res cecinere poetae?”

[”Why before the Theban war and the destruction of Troy, have not other poets sung other events?”--Lucretius, v. 327. Montaigne here diverts himself m giving Lucretius' words a construction directly contrary to what they bear in the poem. Lucretius puts the question, Why if the earth had existed from all eternity, there had not been poets, before the Theban war, to sing men's exploits.

--Coste.]

And the narrative of Solon, of what he had learned from the Egyptian priests, touching the long life of their state, and their manner of learning and preserving foreign histories, is not, methinks, a testimony to be refused in this consideration:

”Si interminatam in omnes partes magnitudinem regionum videremus et temporum, in quam se injiciens animus et intendens, ita late longeque peregrinatur, ut nullam oram ultimi videat, in qua possit insistere: in haec immensitate . . . infinita vis innumerabilium appareret fomorum.”

[”Could we see on all parts the unlimited magnitude of regions and of times, upon which the mind being intent, could wander so far and wide, that no limit is to be seen, in which it can bound its eye, we should, in that infinite immensity, discover an infinite force of innumerable atoms.” Here also Montaigne puts a sense quite different from what the words bear in the original; but the application he makes of them is so happy that one would declare they were actually put together only to express his own sentiments. ”Et temporum” is an addition by Montaigne.--Coste.]

Though all that has arrived, by report, of our knowledge of times past should be true, and known by some one person, it would be less than nothing in comparison of what is unknown. And of this same image of the world, which glides away whilst we live upon it, how wretched and limited is the knowledge of the most curious; not only of particular events, which fortune often renders exemplary and of great concern, but of the state of great governments and nations, a hundred more escape us than ever come to our knowledge. We make a mighty business of the invention of artillery and printing, which other men at the other end of the world, in China, had a thousand years ago. Did we but see as much of the world as we do not see, we should perceive, we may well believe, a perpetual multiplication and vicissitude of forms. There is nothing single and rare in respect of nature, but in respect of our knowledge, which is a wretched foundation whereon to ground our rules, and that represents to us a very false image of things. As we nowadays vainly conclude the declension and decrepitude of the world, by the arguments we extract from our own weakness and decay:

”Jamque adeo est affecta aetas effoet aque tellus;”

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