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THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII
by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
内容简介
这部历史小说以公元一世纪古罗马的庞贝城为背景，叙述了一双位目失明的卖花女奴尼狄亚帮助相爱着的格劳科斯和伊俄涅战胜邪恶和灾难的动人故事。盲女尼狄亚多次挫败奴隶主阿尔巴克斯企图把伊俄涅占为已有的阴谋诡计，并把格劳科斯从竞技场中救出；在火山爆发时，又带领他们脱险，但她却怀着对格劳科斯深挚的爱投海自尽。作者根据有关史料，在小说中再现了古罗马人各种丰富多彩的生活场景，反映了奴隶主的骄奢淫逸和奴隶们的悲惨境地。
BOOK THE FIRST
Chapter I.
THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF POMPEII.
'HO, Diomed, well met! Do you sup with Glaucus to-night?' said a young
man of small stature, who wore his tunic in those loose and effeminate
folds which proved him to be a gentleman and a coxcomb.
'Alas, no! dear Clodius; he has not invited me,' replied Diomed, a man
of portly frame and of middle age. 'By Pollux, a scurvy trick! for they
say his suppers are the best in Pompeii'.
'Pretty well--though there is never enough of wine for me. It is not
the old Greek blood that flows in his veins, for he pretends that wine
makes him dull the next morning.'
'There may be another reason for that thrift,' said Diomed, raising his
brows. 'With all his conceit and extravagance he is not so rich, I
fancy, as he affects to be, and perhaps loves to save his amphorae
better than his wit.'
'An additional reason for supping with him while the sesterces last.
Next year, Diomed, we must find another Glaucus.'
'He is fond of the dice, too, I hear.'
'He is fond of every pleasure; and while he likes the pleasure of giving
suppers, we are all fond of him.'
'Ha, ha, Clodius, that is well said! Have you ever seen my wine-cellars,
by-the-by?'
'I think not, my good Diomed.'
'Well, you must sup with me some evening; I have tolerable muraenae in
my reservoir, and I ask Pansa the aedile to meet you.'
'O, no state with me!--Persicos odi apparatus, I am easily contented.
Well, the day wanes; I am for the baths--and you...'
'To the quaestor--business of state--afterwards to the temple of Isis.
Vale!'
'An ostentatious, bustling, ill-bred fellow,' muttered Clodius to
himself, as he sauntered slowly away. 'He thinks with his feasts and
his wine-cellars to make us forget that he is the son of a freedman--and
so we will, when we do him the honour of winning his money; these rich
plebeians are a harvest for us spendthrift nobles.'
Thus soliloquising, Clodius arrived in the Via Domitiana, which was
crowded with passengers and chariots, and exhibited all that gay and
animated exuberance of life and motion which we find at this day in the
streets of Naples.
The bells of the cars as they rapidly glided by each other jingled
merrily on the ear, and Clodius with smiles or nods claimed familiar
acquaintance with whatever equipage was most elegant or fantastic: in
fact, no idler was better known in Pompeii.
'What, Clodius! and how have you slept on your good fortune?' cried, in
a pleasant and musical voice, a young man, in a chariot of the most
fastidious and graceful fashion. Upon its surface of bronze were
elaborately wrought, in the still exquisite workmanship of Greece,
reliefs of the Olympian games; the two horses that drew the car were of
the rarest breed of Parthia; their slender limbs seemed to disdain the
ground and court the air, and yet at the slightest touch of the
charioteer, who stood behind the young owner of the equipage, they
paused motionless, as if suddenly transformed into stone--lifeless, but
lifelike, as one of the breathing wonders of Praxiteles. The owner
himself was of that slender and beautiful symmetry from which the
sculptors of Athens drew their models; his Grecian origin betrayed
itself in his light but clustering locks, and the perfect harmony of his
features. He wore no toga, which in the time of the emperors had indeed
ceased to be the general distinction of the Romans, and was especially
ridiculed by the pretenders to fashion; but his tunic glowed in the
richest hues of the Tyrian dye, and the fibulae, or buckles, by which it
was fastened, sparkled with emeralds: around his neck was a chain of
gold, which in the middle of his breast twisted itself into the form of
a serpent's head, from the mouth of which hung pendent a large signet
ring of elaborate and most exquisite workmanship; the sleeves of the
tunic were loose, and fringed at the hand with gold: and across the
waist a girdle wrought in arabesque designs, and of the same material as
the fringe, served in lieu of pockets for the receptacle of the
handkerchief and the purse, the stilus and the tablets.
'My dear Glaucus!' said Clodius, 'I rejoice to see that your losses have
so little affected your mien. Why, you seem as if you had been inspired
by Apollo, and your face shines with happiness like a glory; any one
might take you for the winner, and me for the loser.'
'And what is there in the loss or gain of those dull pieces of metal
that should change our spirit, my Clodius? By Venus, while yet young,
we can cover our full locks with chaplets--while yet the cithara sounds
on unsated ears--while yet the smile of Lydia or of Chloe flashes over
our veins in which the blood runs so swiftly, so long shall we find
delight in the sunny air, and make bald time itself but the treasurer of
our joys. You sup with me to-night, you know.'
'Who ever forgets the invitation of Glaucus!'
'But which way go you now?'
'Why, I thought of visiting the baths: but it wants yet an hour to the
usual time.'
'Well, I will dismiss my chariot, and go with you. So, so, my Phylias,'
stroking the horse nearest to him, which by a low neigh and with
backward ears playfully acknowledged the courtesy: 'a holiday for you
to-day. Is he not handsome, Clodius?'
'Worthy of Phoebus,' returned the noble parasite--'or of Glaucus.'
Chapter II
THE BLIND FLOWER-GIRL, AND THE BEAUTY OF FASHION. THE ATHENIAN'S
CONFESSION. THE READER'S INTRODUCTION TO ARBACES OF EGYPT.
TALKING lightly on a thousand matters, the two young men sauntered
through the streets; they were now in that quarter which was filled with
the gayest shops, their open interiors all and each radiant with the
gaudy yet harmonious colors of frescoes, inconceivably varied in fancy
and design. The sparkling fountains, that at every vista threw upwards
their grateful spray in the summer air; the crowd of passengers, or
rather loiterers, mostly clad in robes of the Tyrian dye; the gay groups
collected round each more attractive shop; the slaves passing to and fro
with buckets of bronze, cast in the most graceful shapes, and borne upon
their heads; the country girls stationed at frequent intervals with
baskets of blushing fruit, and flowers more alluring to the ancient
Italians than to their descendants (with whom, indeed, "latet anguis in
herba," a disease seems lurking in every violet and rose); the numerous
haunts which fulfilled with that idle people the office of cafes and
clubs at this day; the shops, where on shelves of marble were ranged the
vases of wine and oil, and before whose thresholds, seats, protected
from the sun by a purple awning, invited the weary to rest and the
indolent to lounge--made a scene of such glowing and vivacious
excitement, as might well give the Athenian spirit of Glaucus an excuse
for its susceptibility to joy.
'Talk to me no more of Rome,' said he to Clodius. 'Pleasure is too
stately and ponderous in those mighty walls: even in the precincts of
the court--even in the Golden House of Nero, and the incipient glories
of the palace of Titus, there is a certain dulness of magnificence--the
eye aches--the spirit is wearied; besides, my Clodius, we are
discontented when we compare the enormous luxury and wealth of others
with the mediocrity of our own state. But here we surrender ourselves
easily to pleasure, and we have the brilliancy of luxury without the
lassitude of its pomp.'
'It was from that feeling that you chose your summer retreat at
Pompeii?'
'It was. I prefer it to Baiae: I grant the charms of the latter, but I
love not the pedants who resort there, and who seem to weigh out their
pleasures by the drachm.'
'Yet you are fond of the learned, too; and as for poetry, why, your
house is literally eloquent with AEschylus and Homer, the epic and the
drama.'
'Yes, but those Romans who mimic my Athenian ancestors do everything so
heavily. Even in the chase they make their slaves carry Plato with
them; and whenever the boar is lost, out they take their books and their
papyrus, in order not to lose their time too. When the dancing-girls
swim before them in all the blandishment of Persian manners, some drone
of a freedman, with a face of stone, reads them a section of Cicero "De
Officiis". Unskilful pharmacists! pleasure and study are not elements
to be thus mixed together, they must be enjoyed separately: the Romans
lose both by this pragmatical affectation of refinement, and prove that
they have no souls for either. Oh, my Clodius, how little your
countrymen know of the true versatility of a Pericles, of the true
witcheries of an Aspasia! It was but the other day that I paid a visit
to Pliny: he was sitting in his summer-house writing, while an
unfortunate slave played on the tibia. His nephew (oh! whip me such
philosophical coxcombs!) was reading Thucydides' description of the
plague, and nodding his conceited little head in time to the music,
while his lips were repeating all the loathsome details of that terrible
delineation. The puppy saw nothing incongruous in learning at the same
time a ditty of love and a description of the plague.'
'Why, they are much the same thing,' said Clodius.
'So I told him, in excuse for his coxcombry--but my youth stared me
rebukingly in the face, without taking the jest, and answered, that it
was only the insensate ear that the music pleased, whereas the book (the
description of the plague, mind you!) elevated the heart. "Ah!" quoth
the fat uncle, wheezing, "my boy is quite an Athenian, always mixing the
utile with the dulce." O Minerva, how I laughed in my sleeve! While I
was there, they came to tell the boy-sophist that his favorite freedman
was just dead of a fever. "Inexorable death!" cried he; "get me my
Horace. How beautifully the sweet poet consoles us for these
misfortunes!" Oh, can these men love, my Clodius? Scarcely even with
the senses. How rarely a Roman has a heart! He is but the mechanism of
genius--he wants its bones and flesh.'
Though Clodius was secretly a little sore at these remarks on his
countrymen, he affected to sympathize with his friend, partly because he
was by nature a parasite, and partly because it was the fashion among
the dissolute young Romans to affect a little contempt for the very
birth which, in reality, made them so arrogant; it was the mode to
imitate the Greeks, and yet to laugh at their own clumsy imitation.
Thus conversing, their steps were arrested by a crowd gathered round an
open space where three streets met; and, just where the porticoes of a
light and graceful temple threw their shade, there stood a young girl,
with a flower-basket on her right arm, and a small three-stringed
instrument of music in the left hand, to whose low and soft tones she
was modulating a wild and half-barbaric air. At every pause in the
music she gracefully waved her flower-basket round, inviting the
loiterers to buy; and many a sesterce was showered into the basket,
either in compliment to the music or in compassion to the
songstress--for she was blind.
'It is my poor Thessalian,' said Glaucus, stopping; 'I have not seen her
since my return to Pompeii. Hush! her voice is sweet; let us listen.'
THE BLIND FLOWER-GIRL'S SONG
I.
Buy my flowers--O buy--I pray!
The blind girl comes from afar;
If the earth be as fair as I hear them say,
These flowers her children are!
Do they her beauty keep?
They are fresh from her lap, I know;
For I caught them fast asleep
In her arms an hour ago.
With the air which is her breath--
Her soft and delicate breath--
Over them murmuring low!
On their lips her sweet kiss lingers yet,
And their cheeks with her tender tears are wet.
For she weeps--that gentle mother weeps--
(As morn and night her watch she keeps,
With a yearning heart and a passionate care)
To see the young things grow so fair;
She weeps--for love she weeps;
And the dews are the tears she weeps
From the well of a mother's love!
II.
Ye have a world of light,
Where love in the loved rejoices;
But the blind girl's home is the House of Night,
And its beings are empty voices.
As one in the realm below,
I stand by the streams of woe!
I hear the vain shadows glide,
I feel their soft breath at my side.
And I thirst the loved forms to see,
And I stretch my fond arms around,
And I catch but a shapeless sound,
For the living are ghosts to me.
Come buy--come buy?--
(Hark! how the sweet things sigh
For they have a voice like ours),
`The breath of the blind girl closes
The leaves of the saddening roses--
We are tender, we sons of light,
We shrink from this child of night;
From the grasp of the blind girl free us--
We yearn for the eyes that see us--
We are for night too gay,
In your eyes we behold the day--
O buy--O buy the flowers!'
