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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 167

INTRODUCTION.

The age in which we live seems remarkable for its appreciation of men of renown, and for the homage rendered to them. Societies that are still in their youth are liable to be dazzled by the superficial wonders of historical tradition, and to allow their admiration to be easily taken captive; but an epoch ripened by experience, and by a long habit of literary criticism, should rather reserve its enthusiasm for ascertained facts, and for such deeds of renown as are beyond the pale of doubt and discussion. Thus we find in the present day a marked predilection, not only as a matter of general utility but also from a sense of justice, for a keen research into every doubtful point of history. Nations as well as individuals need the maturity of time to appreciate at their real value the actions and the traditions of past ages.

The art of writing history has two very distinct branches, the combination of which is essential to the production of a complete historian. A research into, and a criticism of, events with no other aim than to elicit truth, is one branch of the historical art; the other is the resolution to interpret, to describe, to give to each event its full signification and colouring; to put that life into it in fact which belongs to every human spectacle. It is only the first part of the task that we propose to undertake in these essays.

Seneca has said that we must not give too ready credence to hearsay, for some disguise the truth in order to deceive, and some because they are themselves the victims of deception. Other Greek and Latin writers have also warned us against a too ready faith in popular traditions. How many errors bequeathed to us by the historians of antiquity owe their enlarged growth, ere they reached us, to their passage through the middle ages.

De Quincy tells us that if a saying has a proverbial fame, the probability is that it was never said. The same opinion may be held of a great many so-called historical facts which are perfectly familiar even to the ignorant, and yet which never happened.

"Books," says the Prince de Ligne, "tell us that the Duke of Alba put to death by the hands of the executioner in the Low Countries eighteen thousand gentlemen, while the fact is that scarcely two thousand could have been altogether collected there.

Who is there who now believes in the story of Dionysius the Tyrant becoming a schoolmaster at Corinth?

We may cite again the often-mooted question of the exhumation of the body of Cromwell, and of the outrages committed on his remains by order of Charles II: the interesting but imaginative picture of Milton dictating Paradise Lost to his daughters, while, if we may believe Doctor Johnson, he never even allowed them to learn to write. Modern historians, however, are often equally incorrect. Among them we may quote the poet laureate Southey, who was guilty of a remarkable perversion of facts regarding one of the wisest men of the 19th century.

We should not know where to stop if we attempted to bring forward examples of all the improbable and the untrue in history. We shall confine ourselves therefore to the examination of a few of the most universally accredited facts, the truth of which, to say the least, is extremely doubtful.

We at one time entertained the project of reconstructing the critical work of the Abb? Lancelotti already mentioned, by enlarging its scope. This rare and scarcely known book would have served us as a basis, upon which we should have proceeded to review history in general. It would have been an instructive and a pleasant task to demolish falsehood in order to arrive at truth; to set aside, in good faith, worn out platitudes, deeds of heroism resting on no proof whatsoever, and crimes wanting the confirmation of authenticity; but when we set ourselves to estimate its extent, we shrank from so laborious an undertaking.

Alfred Maury would have convinced us that Caesar never said, and never would have said, to the pilot "Why do you fear? You have Caesar and his fortunes on board," &c.

On all these subjects an analytical work would be of great use, and for the benefit of those who might be induced to undertake such a task, we proceed to point out the principal chapters in the work of Lancelotti.

THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES.

B. C. 306.

In the elementary works for the instruction of young people, we find frequent mention of the Colossus of Rhodes.

The statue is always represented with gigantic limbs, each leg resting on the enormous rocks which face the entrance to the principal port of the Island of Rhodes; and ships in full sail passed easily, it is said, between its legs; for, according to Pliny the ancient, its height was seventy cubits.

This Colossus was reckoned among the seven wonders of the world, the six others being, as is well known, the hanging gardens of Babylon, devised by Nitocris wife of Nebuchadnezzar; the pyramids of Egypt; the statue of Jupiter Olympus; the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus; the temple of Diana at Ephesus; and the Pharos of Alexandria, completely destroyed by an earthquake in 1303.

Nowhere has any authority been found for the assertion that the Colossus of Rhodes spanned the entrance to the harbour of the island and admitted the passage of vessels in full sail between its wide-stretched limbs. No old drawing even of that epoch exists, when the statue was yet supposed to be standing; several modern engravings may be seen, but they are mere works of the imagination, executed to gratify the curiosity of amateur antiquarians, or to feed the naive credulity of the ignorant. Nevertheless, the historian Rollin, several French dictionaries, and even some encyclopedias, have adopted the fiction of their predecessors.

A century ago, the Comte de Caylus, a distinguished French archeologist, found fault with his countrymen for admitting this fiction into the school books for young people, but he sought in vain to trace its origin.

He says: "This fable has for years enjoyed the privilege so readily accorded to error. It is commonly received, and discarded only by the few who have made ancient history their study. Most persons have accepted without investigation an assertion which is unsupported by any authority from ancient authors."

Nevertheless the Belgian Colonel Rottiers, and the English geologist Hamilton, do not yield to this opinion, but endeavour still to place the site of the statue at the entrance to one of the smaller harbours of the island, scarcely forty feet wide. Rottiers goes even further, and gives a superb engraving of the Colossus, under the form of an Apollo, the bow and quiver on his shoulders, his forehead encircled by rays of light, and a beacon flame above his head.

The elder Pliny records that the Colossus, after having stood for fifty-six years, was overthrown by an earthquake, and that it took Char?s of Lindos, to whom the Rhodians had entrusted its re-construction, twelve years to complete his task.

It is probable that the statue of Minerva, from 50 to 60 feet in height, which was designed and partly executed by Phidias for the Acropolis at Athens, served as a model for Char?s, not only for the material, but for the conception of the Colossus and for the site on which it stood.

Minerva was the patroness of Athens as the sun-god Helios was the patron of the island of Rhodes.

About 150 years before Christ a certain Philo-Byzantius wrote a short treatise on the seven wonders of the ancient world. In it he gives an explanation of the construction of the Colossus, but nowhere speaks of the extended legs under which vessels in full sail entered the port, nor of the beacon light. On the contrary, he mentions one sole pedestal, which was of white marble. Moreover, the statue was said to be 105 feet in height, and the great harbour entrance, according to modern research, was 350 feet wide; it could not therefore possibly reach across this space.

Lastly, if the statue had stood at the entrance of the great harbour, the earthquake must have overthrown it into the sea, whereas Strabo and Pliny tell us that its fragments remained for a considerable time embedded in the earth, and attracted much attention by their wonderful size and dimensions.

The following is the real truth concerning the Colossus. Towards the year 305 before Christ, Demetrius Poliorcetes laid siege to Rhodes, and the inhabitants defended themselves with so much bravery, that after a whole year of struggle and endurance, they forced the enemy to retire from the island.

The Rhodians, inspired by a sentiment of piety, and excited by fervent gratitude for so signal a proof of the divine favour, commanded Char?s to erect a statue to the honour of their deity. An inscription explained that the expenses of its construction were defrayed out of the sale of the materials of war left by Demetrius on his retreat from the island of Rhodes.

This statue was erected on an open space of ground near the great harbour, and near the spot where the pacha's seraglio now stands; and its fragments, for many years after its destruction, were seen and admired by travellers.

We have seen that Strabo, who wrote and travelled during the reigns of the first two Roman emperors, was, after Polybius, the earliest author who mentions the fall of the Colossus of Rhodes, and that very concisely. Pliny enters into somewhat fuller details, and speaks of the dimensions of the mutilated limbs. "Even while prostrate," says he, "this statue excited the greatest admiration; few men could span one of its thumbs with their arms, and each of its fingers was as large as an ordinary full-sized statue. Its broken limbs appeared to strangers like caverns, in the interior of which were seen enormous blocks of stone."

This passage is certainly not very clear, and it remains to be proved if the author here speaks of the Colossus which had been restored and had escaped the earthquake, or of some other bronze statue.

Pausanias, who wrote shortly after Aristides, speaks also in two places of the earthquake in the time of Antoninus, without making any mention of the Colossus; but in a description of Athens, he alludes in terms of great admiration to a temple of Jupiter built by Adrian, and he adds: "The emperor consecrated to it a magnificent statue of the god, which surpassed all other statues except the Colossus of Rhodes and of Rome."

The author could hardly have made this comparison if there had only existed in his time fragments of the Colossus of Rhodes.

Lastly, the satirist Lucian makes frequent mention of the Colossus, and he even introduces it in a dialogue of the assembled gods.

It is probable, therefore, judging from these passages from Aristides, Pausanias, and Lucian, that, at the epoch in which they lived, the Colossus of Rhodes had been restored or reconstructed; for if during four centuries past the fragments had been lying in the dust, these writers would not have thus expressed themselves.

A long time after the fall of the Roman empire, the island of Rhodes was conquered by the general-in-chief of the caliph Othman, in the 7th century of the Christian era; and then mention is once more made of a Colossus in metal. "This last memorial of a glorious past was not respected by the conqueror," says the Byzantine history; "the general took down the Colossus, which stood erect on the island, transported the metal into Syria, and sold it to a Jew, who loaded 980 camels with the materials of his purchase."

Such is the account given by the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenetos, and confirmed by that of Theophanes, Zonaras, and others. As to the fable of the ancient Colossus between whose gigantic limbs ships in full sail were believed to have passed, we are disposed to think that it originated at the time of the Crusades, when the inhabitants of Rhodes must have amused themselves by relating to the new-comers all sorts of incredible stories of their past grandeur.

BELISARIUS.

A. D. 565.

This tradition relates to the general Belisarius, the conqueror of the Vandals, who, after having been falsely accused of treason, is said to have been deprived of his sight by the Emperor Justinian, and to have been reduced to such a state of poverty that he was compelled to beg his bread in the streets of Constantinople.

No contemporary historian mentions these circumstances; but they have been repeated age after age without examination, and several learned men of repute, such as Volaterranus, Pontanus, &c., have helped to propagate the error in the literary world.

Between the years 1637 and 1681, this fable was made the subject of several tragedies. In the following century Marmontel composed and published his romance of Belisarius, the conception of which arose from an engraving that came into his possession. In his Memoirs he himself thus explains the circumstance:

"I had received a present of an engraving of Belisarius taken from the fine picture of him by Van Dyck. My eyes were continually attracted to the face, and I was seized with an irresistible desire to treat this interesting subject in prose; and as soon as the idea took possession of me, the pains in my chest and lungs seemed to leave me as if by magic. The pleasure of composing my story, the care I took in arranging and developing it, occupied my mind so entirely, that I was drawn away from all thoughts of self."

After having traced as briefly as possible the origin of this fable, we will dwell for a moment on the manner in which the best and most learned critics have treated it.

The hackneyed story of Belisarius, blind and begging, was unknown to all contemporary authors without exception. Not one can be quoted as having mentioned so remarkable a circumstance. From the 6th to the 12th century, no writer who speaks of this great general ever alludes to his blindness or to his poverty.

The real fact, drawn from the best sources, and recorded by Gibbon, is this:

About two years after the last victory of Belisarius over the Bulgarians, the Emperor Justinian returned in bad health from a journey to Thracia. There being a rumour of his death, a conspiracy was formed in the palace, but the conspirators were detected, and on being seized were found to have daggers hidden under their garments. Two officers of the household of Belisarius were accused, and torture induced them to declare that they had acted under the secret instructions of their chief. Belisarius appeared before the council, indignant and undaunted. Nevertheless, his fidelity, which had remained unshaken for forty years, availed him nothing. The emperor condemned him without evidence; his life was spared, but his fortune was sequestrated, and from December 563 to July 564 he was guarded as a prisoner in his own palace. At length his innocence was acknowledged, and his freedom and honours were restored; but death, which might possibly have been hastened by grief and resentment, removed him from the world within a year of his liberation.

About 600 years after this event, John Tzetzes, poet and grammarian, born in Constantinople, attempted in ten bad Greek verses to draw a picture of Belisarius deprived of sight and penniless. The tale was imported into Italy with the manuscripts of Greece, and before the close of the 15th century it was taken up by more than one learned writer and universally believed.

The credulity of the multitude is such, that they still persist in ignoring the refutation of Samuel Schelling , of Th. Fr. Zeller , of Roth and many others.

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