Zenobia; or, The fall of Palmyra. In letters of L. Manlius Piso [pseud.] from Palmyra, to his friend Marcus Curtius at Rome
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| Ware, William, 1797-1852 |
A series of letters written from Palmyra by a Roman, and depicting in an imaginative manner the splendours of the desert city and its overthrow by Aurelian
. A good historical picture of the life and manners of the early 3rd century when Paganism and Christianity were at war. The author was a traveller and a scholar.
Excerpt
But to the purpose of this letter, which is, in agreement with my promise, to tell you of my fortunes since I parted from you, and of my good or ill success, as it may be, in the prosecution of that affair which has driven me so far from my beloved Rome. O, Humanity ! why art thou so afflicted ?
Why have the immortal gods made the cup of life so bitter ? And why am I singled out to partake of one that seems all bitter ? My feelings sometimes overmaster my philosophy. You can forgive this, who know my sorrows. Still I am delaying to inform you concerning my journey and my arrival. Now will begin.
As soon as I had lost sight of you weeping on the quay, holding in your hand the little Callus, and of the dear Lucilia leaning on your arm, and could no longer, even by mounting upon the highest part of the vessel, discern the waving of your hands, nor cause you to see the fervor with which I returned the sign of friendship, I at once left off thinking of you, as far as I could, and to divert my thoughts, began to examine, as if I had never seen them before, the banks of the yellow Tiber.
At first the crowds of shipping, of every form and from every part of the world, distracted the sight, and compelled me to observe what was immediately around me. The cries of the sailors, as they were engaged in managing different parts of their vessels, or as they called out in violent and abusive terms to those who passed them, or as their several galleys struck against each other in their attempts to go up or down the river, together with the frequent roarings and bellowings of whole cargoes of wild beasts f