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Taglagallo Remarcafkus Directory 01
Page 10
Twelve years elapsed between the subjugation of Latium and the commencement of the Second Samnite War. During this time the Roman arms continued to make steady progress. One of their most important conquests was that of the Volscian town of Privernum in B.C. 329, from which time the Volscians, so long the formidable enemies of Rome, disappear as an independent nation. The extension of the Roman power naturally awakened the jealousy of the Samnites; and the assistance rendered by them to the Greek cities of Palaeopolis and Neapolis was the immediate occasion of the Second Samnite War. These two cities were colonies of the neighboring Cumae, and were situated only five miles from each other. The position of Palaeopolis, or the "Old City," is uncertain; but Neapolis, or the "New City," stands on the site of a part of the modern Naples. The Romans declared war against the two cities in B.C. 327, and sent the Consul Q. Publilius Philo to reduce them to subjection. The Greek colonists had previously formed an alliance with the Samnites, and now received powerful Samnite garrisons. Publilius encamped between the cities; and as he did not succeed in taking them before his year of office expired, he was continued in the command with the title of _Proconsul_, the first time that this office was created. At the beginning of the following year Palaeopolis was taken; and Neapolis only escaped the same fate by concluding an alliance with the Romans. Meanwhile the Romans had declared war against the Samnites.
Then he walks away at once in silence, leaning on the arm of Theseus, and when at last the watchers dare to look, they see Theseus afar off, alone, screening his eyes with his hand, as if some sight too dreadful for mortal eyes had passed before him; but OEdipus is gone, and not with lamentation, but in hope and wonder. Even when Hamlet dies, and the peal of ordnance is shot off, it is to congratulate him upon his escape from unbearable woe; and that is the same in life. If our eye falls on the sad stories of men and women who have died by their own hand, how seldom do they speak in the scrawled messages they leave behind them as though they were going to silence and nothingness! It is just the other way. The unhappy fathers and mothers who, maddened by disaster, kill their children are hoping to escape with those they love best out of miseries they cannot bear; they mean to fly together, as Lot fled with his daughters from the city of the plain. The man who slays himself is not the man who hates life; he only hates the sorrow and the shame which make unbearable that life which he loves only too well. He is trying to migrate to other conditions; he desires to live, but he cannot live so. It is the imagination of man that makes him seek death; only the animal endures, but man hurries away in the hope of finding something better.
Some of Charles's best friends were very much grieved at his pursuing such a course; others were very indignant; but the majority of the people around him at court were like himself in character and manners, and were only led to more open irregularity and vice themselves by this public example of their sovereign. In the mean time, the king moved on to Portsmouth, escorted by a body of his Life Guards. He found that his intended bride was confined to her bed with a sort of slow fever. It was the result, they said, of the roughness and discomforts of the voyage, though we may certainly imagine another cause. Charles went immediately to the house where she was residing, and was admitted to visit her in her chamber, the many attendants who were present at the interview watching with great interest every word and look on either side by which they might judge of the nature of the first impression made by the bride and bridegroom upon each other. Catharine was not considered beautiful, and it was natural that a degree of curiosity should be manifested to learn how Charles would regard her.
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