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056 - Book 5 Chapter The Last · Last Days of Pompeii

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  Speaker 1: Book five, chapter The Last of Last Days of Pompeii.
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  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
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  Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Last the Days of Pompeii by
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  Speaker 1: Edward G. Bulverlytten, Book five, chapter The Last, where in
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  Speaker 1: all things sees letter from Glaucus to Solust ten years
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  Speaker 1: after the destruction of Pompeii Athens. Glaucus to his beloved Sallust,
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  Speaker 1: greeting and health, you request me to visit you at Rome. No, Sallust,
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  Speaker 1: come rather to me at Athens. I have forsworn the
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  Speaker 1: imperial city, its mighty tumult and hollow joys. In my
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  Speaker 1: own land, henceforth I dwell forever. The ghost of our
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  Speaker 1: departed greatness is dearer to me than the gaudy life
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  Speaker 1: of your loud prosperity. There is a charm to me
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  Speaker 1: which no other spot can supply. In the porticos, hallowed
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  Speaker 1: still by holy and venerable shades, in the olive groves
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  Speaker 1: of Ilysses, I still hear the voice of poetry. On
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  Speaker 1: the heights of Felae. The clouds of twilight seem yet
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  Speaker 1: the shrouds of departed freedom, the heralds, the heralds of
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  Speaker 1: the morrow that shall come. You smile at my enthusiasm. Sallust,
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  Speaker 1: better be hopeful in chains than resigned to their glitter.
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  Speaker 1: You tell me you are sure that I cannot enjoy
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  Speaker 1: life in these melancholy hounds of a fallen majesty. You
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  Speaker 1: dwell with rapture in the Roman splendors and the luxuries
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  Speaker 1: of the Imperial court. My Sallust, nonsomb qualis aram. I
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  Speaker 1: am not what I was. The events of my life
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  Speaker 1: have sobered the bounding blood of my youth. My health
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  Speaker 1: has never quite recovered its wanted elasticity, ere it felt
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  Speaker 1: the pangs of disease and languished in the damps of
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  Speaker 1: a criminal's dungeon. My mind has never shaken off the
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  Speaker 1: dark shadow of the last day of Pompeii, the horror
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  Speaker 1: and the desolation of that awful ruin our beloved, our
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  Speaker 1: remembered media. I have reared a tomb to her shade,
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  Speaker 1: and I see it every day from the window of
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  Speaker 1: my study. It keeps alive in me, a tender recollection,
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  Speaker 1: a not unpleasing sadness, which are but a fitting homage
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  Speaker 1: to her fidelity and the mysteriousness of her early death.
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  Speaker 1: Yona gathers the flowers, but my own hand raises them
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  Speaker 1: daily around the tomb she has worthy of a tomb
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  Speaker 1: in Athens. You speak of the growing sect of the
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  Speaker 1: Christians in Rome, sallust to you, I may confide my secret.
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  Speaker 1: I have pondered much over that fate. I have adopted it.
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  Speaker 1: After the destruction of POMPEII, I met once more with Olnsos,
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  Speaker 1: saved alas only for a day, and falling afterwards a
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  Speaker 1: martyr to the indomitable energy of his zeal in my
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  Speaker 1: preservation from the lion and the earthquake. He taught me
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  Speaker 1: to behold the hand of the unknown God. I listened, believed,
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  Speaker 1: adored my own, my more than ever beloved. Yone has
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  Speaker 1: also embraced the creed. I creed sallust, which, shedding light
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  Speaker 1: over this world, gathers its uncentrated glory like a sunset
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  Speaker 1: over the next. We know that we are united in
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  Speaker 1: the soul as in the flesh. Forever and forever. Ages
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  Speaker 1: may roll on. Our very dust be dissolved, the earth
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  Speaker 1: shriveled like a scroll, but round and round the circle
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  Speaker 1: of eternity rolls the wheel of life, imperishable, unceasing, and
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  Speaker 1: at the earth from the sun. So immortality drinks happiness
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  Speaker 1: from virtue, which is the smile upon the face of God.
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  Speaker 1: With it me, then, Sallust, bring with you the lorentz
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  Speaker 1: grows of Epicurus, Petagorus, Diogenes. Arm yourself for defeat, and
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  Speaker 1: let us, amidst the growds of Academus, dispute under a
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  Speaker 1: surer guide than any granted to our fathers, on the
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  Speaker 1: mighty problem of the true ends of life and the
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  Speaker 1: nature of the soul. Yone at that name my heart
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  Speaker 1: it beats. Yone is by my side. As I write,
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  Speaker 1: I lift my eyes amid her smile. The sunlight quivers
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  Speaker 1: over Himatus, and along my garden I hear the hum
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  Speaker 1: of the summer bees. Am I happy? Ask you, Oh,
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  Speaker 1: what can Rome give me equal to what I possess
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  Speaker 1: at Athens. Here everything awakens the soul and inspire The affections,
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  Speaker 1: the trees, the waters, the hills, the skies are those
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  Speaker 1: of Athens, fair though mourning, mother of the poetry and
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  Speaker 1: the wisdom of the world. In my whole I see
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  Speaker 1: the marble faces of my ancestors. In the Charamichus, I
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  Speaker 1: survey their tombs. In the streets, I behold the hand
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  Speaker 1: of Phidias, and the soul of Pericles, Harmodius, Aristogiton. They
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  Speaker 1: are everywhere, but in our hearts. In mine, at least
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  Speaker 1: they shall not perish. If anything can make me forget
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  Speaker 1: that I am an Athenian and not free, it is
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  Speaker 1: partly the soothing the love, watchful, vivid, sleepless of yone,
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  Speaker 1: a love that has taken a new sentiment in our
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  Speaker 1: new creed, a love which none of our poets, beautiful
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  Speaker 1: though they be, had shadowed forth in description. For mingled
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  Speaker 1: with religion, it partakes of religion. It is blended with
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  Speaker 1: pure and unworldly thoughts. It is that which we may
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  Speaker 1: hope to carry through eternity and keep therefore white and unsullied,
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  Speaker 1: that we may not blush to confess it to our God.
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  Speaker 1: This is the true type of the dark fable of
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  Speaker 1: our Grecian arrows and seahe It is, in truth the
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  Speaker 1: soul asleep in the arms of love. And if this
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  Speaker 1: our love support me partly against the fever of the
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  Speaker 1: desire for freedom, my religion supports me more. For whenever
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  Speaker 1: I would grasp the sword and sound the shell, and
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  Speaker 1: rush to new marathon, but marathon without victory. I feel
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  Speaker 1: my despair at this chilling thought of my country's impotence,
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  Speaker 1: the crushing weight of the Roman yoke, comforted at least
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  Speaker 1: by the thought that earth is but the beginning of life,
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  Speaker 1: that the glory of a few years matters little in
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  Speaker 1: the vast space of eternity, that there is no perfect
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  Speaker 1: freedom till the chains of clay fall from the soul,
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  Speaker 1: and all space, all time become its heritage, and the
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  Speaker 1: main yet sallust some mixture of the soft Greek blood
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  Speaker 1: still mingles with my faith. I can share not the
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  Speaker 1: zeal of those who see crime and eternal wrath in
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  Speaker 1: men who cannot believe as they. I shudder not at
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  Speaker 1: the creed of others. I dare not curse them. I
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  Speaker 1: praise the Great Father to convert this lookwarmness. Exposes me
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  Speaker 1: to some suspicion amongst the Christians, but I forgive it, and,
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  Speaker 1: not offending openly the prejudices of the crowd, I am
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  Speaker 1: thus enabled to protect my brethren from the danger of
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  Speaker 1: the law and the consequences of their own zeal. If
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  Speaker 1: moderations seem to me the natural creature of benevolence. It
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  Speaker 1: gives also the greatest scope to beneficence. Such then, O
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  Speaker 1: sallust is my life, such my opinions in this manner
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  Speaker 1: a great existence, and await death. And though glad hearted
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  Speaker 1: and kindly pupil of Epicurus, though but come hither and
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  Speaker 1: see what enjoyments, what hopes are ours? And not the
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  Speaker 1: splendor of imperial banquets, nor the shouts of the crowded circus,
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  Speaker 1: nor the noisy forum, nor the glittering theater, nor the
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  Speaker 1: luxuriant gardens, nor the voluptuous baths of Rome, shall seem
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  Speaker 1: to thee to constitute a life of more vivid and
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  Speaker 1: uninterrupted happiness than that which, though so unreasonably pitiased as
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  Speaker 1: the carrier of Glaucus, the Athenian farewell nearly seventeenth centuries
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  Speaker 1: had rolled away when the city of Pompeii was disinterred
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  Speaker 1: from its silent tomb, all vivid with undimmed hues, its
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  Speaker 1: walls fresh as if painted yesterday, not a hue faded
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  Speaker 1: on the rich mosaic of its floors. In its forum,
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  Speaker 1: they have finished columns, as left by the workman's hand.
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  Speaker 1: In its gardens, the sacrificial tripod in its halls, the
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  Speaker 1: chest of treasure in its bass, the strigil in its theaters,
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  Speaker 1: the counter of admission in its saloons, the furniture and
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  Speaker 1: the lamp in its striclinia, the fragments of the last
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  Speaker 1: feast in its cubicula, the perfumes and the rogue of
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  Speaker 1: faded beauty, and everywhere the bones and skeletons of those
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  Speaker 1: who once moved the springs of that minute, yet gorgeous
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  Speaker 1: machine of luxury and of life. In the House of
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  Speaker 1: diomed In the subterranean vaults, twenty skeletons, one of a
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  Speaker 1: babe were discovered, in one spot by the door, covered
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  Speaker 1: by a fine ashen dust that had evidently been waffed
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  Speaker 1: slowly through the apertures until it had filled the whole space.
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  Speaker 1: There were jewels and coins, candelabra for an availing light,
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  Speaker 1: and wine hardened in the amphora for a prolongation of
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  Speaker 1: agonized life. The sand, consolidated by damps had taken the
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  Speaker 1: forms of the skeletons as in a cast, and the
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  Speaker 1: traveler may yet see the impression of a female neck
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  Speaker 1: and bosom of young and round propersians the trace of
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  Speaker 1: the fated Julia. It seems to the inquirer as if
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  Speaker 1: the air had been gradually changed into a sulfrost vapor.
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  Speaker 1: The inmates of the vaults had rushed to the door
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  Speaker 1: to find it closed and blocked up by the scoria without,
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  Speaker 1: and in their attempts to force it had been suffocated
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  Speaker 1: with the atmosphere. In the garden was found a skeleton
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  Speaker 1: with a key by its bony hand, and near it
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  Speaker 1: a bag of coins. This is believed to have been
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  Speaker 1: the master of the house, the unfortunate diomed, who had
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  Speaker 1: probably sought to escape by the garden and been destroyed
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  Speaker 1: either by the wapers or some fragment of stone. Besides
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  Speaker 1: some silver raises lay another skeleton publives the slave. The
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  Speaker 1: houses of Sallust and of Pansa, the Temple of Esies,
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  Speaker 1: with the juggling concealments behind the statues, the larking place
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  Speaker 1: of its holy oracles had now bared to the gaze
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  Speaker 1: of the curious. In one of the chambers of that
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  Speaker 1: temple was found a huge skeleton with an ax beside it.
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  Speaker 1: Two walls had been pierced by the axe. The victim
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  Speaker 1: could penetrate no forth in the midst of the city
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  Speaker 1: was found another skeleton, by the side of which was
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  Speaker 1: a heap of coins, and many of the mystic ornaments
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  Speaker 1: of the fane of Issies. Death had fallen upon him
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  Speaker 1: in his avarice, and Calum was perished simultaneously with Burbo.
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  Speaker 1: As the excavators cleared on through the mass of ruin,
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  Speaker 1: they found the skeleton of a man, literally severed in
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  Speaker 1: two by a prostrate column. The skull was of so
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  Speaker 1: striking a confirmation, so boldly marked in its intellectual as
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  Speaker 1: well as its worst physical developments, but it has excited
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  Speaker 1: the constant speculation of every itinerant believer in the theories
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  Speaker 1: of Sportsheim who has gazed upon the ruined palace of
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  Speaker 1: the mind. Still after the lapse of ages, the traveler
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  Speaker 1: may survey that airy hall, within whose cunning galleries and
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  Speaker 1: elaborate chambers once sought, reasoned, dreamed, and sinned. The soul
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  Speaker 1: of arbaces the Egyptian, viewing the various witnesses of a
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  Speaker 1: social system which has passed from the world by ever
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  Speaker 1: a stranger from that remote and barbarian isle which the
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  Speaker 1: Imperial Roman shivered when he named posed amidst the delights
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  Speaker 1: of the soft Campania and composed this history. End of
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  Speaker 1: Book five, chapter the last, and this is also the
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  Speaker 1: end of the last days of POMPEII. Edward G. Bolverlytton