It was a flaming sunset or late afternoon
in the tiny provincial town of Pompelo, at the foot of the Pyrenees in
Hispania Citerior. The year must have been in the late republic, for the
province was still ruled by a senatorial proconsul instead of a prætorian
legate of Augustus, and the day was the first before the Kalends of November.
The hills rose scarlet and gold to the north of the little town, and the
westering sun shone ruddily and mystically on the crude new stone and plaster
buildings of the dusty forum and the wooden walls of the circus some distance
to the east. Groups of citizens - broad-browed Roman colonists and coarse-haired
Romanised natives, together with obvious hybrids of the two strains, alike
clad in cheap woollen togas - and sprinklings of helmeted legionaries and
coarse-mantled, black-bearded tribesmen of the circumambient Vascones -
all thronged the few paved streets and forum; moved by some vague and ill-defined
uneasiness.
I myself had just alighted from a litter, which the Illyrian bearers
seemed to have brought in some haste from Calagurris, across the Iberus
to the southward. It appeared that I was a provincial quæstor named
L. Cælius Rufus, and that I had been summoned by the proconsul, P.
Scribonius Libo, who had come from Tarraco some days before. The soldiers
were the fifth cohort of the XIIth legion, under the military tribune Sex.
Asellius; and the legatus of the whole region, Cn. Balbutius, had also
come from Calagurris, where the permanent station was.
The cause of the conference was a horror that brooded on the hills.
All the townsfolk were frightened, and had begged the presence of a cohort
from Calagurris. It was the Terrible Season of the autumn, and the wild
people in the mountains were preparing for the frightful ceremonies which
only rumour told of in the towns. They were the very old folk who dwelt
higher up in the hills and spoke a choppy language which the Vascones could
not understand. One seldom saw them; but a few times a year they sent down
little yellow, squint-eyed messengers (who looked like Scythians) to trade
with the merchants by means of gestures, and every spring and autumn they
held the infamous rites on the peaks, their howlings and altar-fires throwing
terror into the villages. Always the same - the night before the Kalends
of Maius and the night before the Kalends of November. Townsfolk would
disappear just before these nights, and would never be heard of again.
And there were whispers that the native shepherds and farmers were not
ill-disposed toward the very old folk - that more than one thatched hut
was vacant before midnight on the two hideous Sabbaths.
This year the horror was very great, for the people knew that the
wrath of the very old folk was upon Pompelo. Three months previously five
of the little squint-eyed traders had come down from the hills, and in
a market brawl three of them had been killed. The remaining two had gone
back wordlessly to their mountains - and this autumn not a single villager
had disappeared. There was menace in this immunity. It was not like the
very old folk to spare their victims at the Sabbath. It was too good to
be normal, and the villagers were afraid.
For many nights there had been a hollow drumming on the hills, and
at last the ædile Tib. Annæus Stilpo (half native in blood)
had sent to Balbutius at Calagurris for a cohort to stamp out the Sabbath
on the terrible night. Balbutius had carelessly refused, on the ground
that the villagers' fears were empty, and that the loathsome rites of hill
folk were of no concern to the Roman People unless our own citizens were
menaced. I, however, who seemed to be a close friend of Balbutius, had
disagreed with him; averring that I had studied deeply in the black forbidden
lore, and that I believed the very old folk capable of visiting almost
any nameless doom upon the town, which after all was a Roman settlement
and contained a great number of our citizens. The complaining ædile's
own mother Helvia was a pure Roman, the daughter of M. Helvius Cinna, who
had come over with Scipio's army. Accordingly I had sent a slave - a nimble
little Greek called Antipater - to the proconsul with letters, and Scribonius
had heeded my plea and ordered Balbutius to send his fifth cohort, under
Asellius, to Pompelo; entering the hills at dusk on the eve of November's
Kalends and stamping out whatever nameless orgies he might find - bringing
such prisoners as he might take to Tarraco for the next proprætor's
court. Balbutius, however, had protested, so that more correspondence had
ensued. I had written so much to the proconsul that he had become gravely
interested, and had resolved to make a personal inquiry into the horror.
He had at length proceeded to Pompelo with his lictors and attendants;
there hearing enough rumours to be greatly impressed and disturbed, and
standing firmly by his order for the Sabbath's extirpation. Desirous of
conferring with one who had studied the subject, he ordered me to accompany
Asellius' cohort - and Balbutius had also come along to press his adverse
advice, for he honestly believed that drastic military action would stir
up a dangerous sentiment of unrest amongst the Vascones both tribal and
settled.
So here we all were in the mystic sunset of the autumn hills - old
Scribonius Libo in his toga prætexta, the golden light glancing on
his shiny bald head and wrinkled hawk face, Balbutius with his gleaming
helmet and breastplate, blue-shaven lips compressed in conscientiously
dogged opposition, young Asellius with his polished greaves and superior
sneer, and the curious throng of townsfolk, legionaries, tribesmen, peasants,
lictors, slaves, and attendants. I myself seemed to wear a common toga,
and to have no especially distinguishing characteristic. And everywhere
horror brooded. The town and country folk scarcely dared speak aloud, and
the men of Libo's entourage, who had been there nearly a week, seemed to
have caught something of the nameless dread. Old Scribonius himself looked
very grave, and the sharp voices of us later comers seemed to hold something
of curious inappropriateness, as in a place of death or the temple of some
mystic god.
We entered the prætorium and held grave converse. Balbutius
pressed his objections, and was sustained by Asellius, who appeared to
hold all the natives in extreme contempt while at the same time deeming
it inadvisable to excite them. Both soldiers maintained that we could better
afford to antagonise the minority of colonists and civilised natives by
inaction, than to antagonise a probable majority of tribesmen and cottagers
by stamping out the dread rites.
I, on the other hand, renewed my demand for action, and offered to
accompany the cohort on any expedition it might undertake. I pointed out
that the barbarous Vascones were at best turbulent and uncertain, so that
skirmishes with them were inevitable sooner or later whichever course we
might take; that they had not in the past proved dangerous adversaries
to our legions, and that it would ill become the representatives of the
Roman People to suffer barbarians to interfere with a course which the
justice and prestige of the Republic demanded. That, on the other hand,
the successful administration of a province depended primarily upon the
safety and good-will of the civilised element in whose hands the local
machinery of commerce and prosperity reposed, and in whose veins a large
mixture of our own Italian blood coursed. These, though in numbers they
might form a minority, were the stable element whose constancy might be
relied on, and whose cooperation would most firmly bind the province to
the Imperium of the Senate and the Roman People. It was at once a duty
and an advantage to afford them the protection due to Roman citizens; even
(and here I shot a sarcastic look at Balbutius and Asellius) at the expense
of a little trouble and activity, and of a slight interruption of the draught-playing
and cock-fighting at the camp in Calagurris. That the danger to the town
and inhabitants of Pompelo was a real one, I could not from my studies
doubt. I had read many scrolls out of Syria and Ægyptus, and the
cryptic towns of Etruria, and had talked at length with the bloodthirsty
priest of Diana Aricina in his temple in the woods bordering Lacus Nemorensis.
There were shocking dooms that might be called out of the hills on the
Sabbaths; dooms which ought not to exist within the territories of the
Roman People; and to permit orgies of the kind known to prevail at Sabbaths
would be but little in consonance with the customs of those whose forefathers,
A. Postumius being consul, had executed so many Roman citizens for the
practice of the Bacchanalia - a matter kept ever in memory by the Senatus
Consultum de Bacchanalibus, graven upon bronze and set open to every eye.
Checked in time, before the progress of the rites might evoke anything
with which the iron of a Roman pilum might not be able to deal, the Sabbath
would not be too much for the powers of a single cohort. Only participants
need be apprehended, and the sparing of a great number of mere spectators
would considerably lessen the resentment which any of the sympathising
country folk might feel. In short, both principle and policy demanded stern
action; and I could not doubt but that Publius Scribonius, bearing in mind
the dignity and obligations of the Roman People, would adhere to his plan
of despatching the cohort, me accompanying, despite such objections as
Balbutius and Asellius - speaking indeed more like provincials than Romans
- might see fit to offer and multiply.
The slanting sun was now very low, and the whole hushed town seemed
draped in an unreal and malign glamour. Then P. Scribonius the proconsul
signified his approval of my words, and stationed me with the cohort in
the provisional capacity of a centurio primipilus; Balbutius and Asellius
assenting, the former with better grace than the latter. As twilight fell
on the wild autumnal slopes, a measured, hideous beating of strange drums
floated down from afar in terrible rhythm. Some few of the legionarii shewed
timidity, but sharp commands brought them into line, and the whole cohort
was soon drawn up on the open plain east of the circus. Libo himself, as
well as Balbutius, insisted on accompanying the cohort; but great difficulty
was suffered in getting a native guide to point out the paths up the mountain.
Finally a young man named Vercellius, the son of pure Roman parents, agreed
to take us at least past the foothills. We began to march in the new dusk,
with the thin silver sickle of a young moon trembling over the woods on
our left. That which disquieted us most was the fact that the Sabbath
was to be held at all. Reports of the coming cohort must have reached
the hills, and even the lack of a final decision could not make the rumour
less alarming - yet there were the sinister drums as of yore, as if the
celebrants had some peculiar reason to be indifferent whether or not the
forces of the Roman People marched against them. The sound grew louder
as we entered a rising gap in the hills, steep wooded banks enclosing us
narrowly on either side, and displaying curiously fantastic tree-trunks
in the light of our bobbing torches. All were afoot save Libo, Balbutius,
Asellius, two or three of the centuriones, and myself, and at length the
way became so steep and narrow that those who had horses were forced to
leave them; a squad of ten men being left to guard them, though robber
bands were not likely to be abroad on such a night of terror. Once in a
while it seemed as though we detected a skulking form in the woods nearby,
and after a half-hour's climb the steepness and narrowness of the way made
the advance of so great a body of men - over 300, all told - exceedingly
cumbrous and difficult. Then with utter and horrifying suddenness we heard
a frightful sound from below. It was from the tethered horses - they had
screamed,
not neighed, but screamed... and there was no light down there,
nor the sound of any human thing, to shew why they had done so. At the
same moment bonfires blazed out on all the peaks ahead, so that terror
seemed to lurk equally well before and behind us. Looking for the youth
Vercellius, our guide, we found only a crumpled heap weltering in a pool
of blood. In his hand was a short sword snatched from the belt of D. Vibulanus,
a subcenturio, and on his face was such a look of terror that the stoutest
veterans turned pale at the sight. He had killed himself when the horses
screamed... he, who had been born and lived all his life in that region,
and knew what men whispered about the hills. All the torches now began
to dim, and the cries of frightened legionaries mingled with the unceasing
screams of the tethered horses. The air grew perceptibly colder, more suddenly
so than is usual at November's brink, and seemed stirred by terrible undulations
which I could not help connecting with the beating of huge wings. The whole
cohort now remained at a standstill, and as the torches faded I watched
what I thought were fantastic shadows outlined in the sky by the spectral
luminosity of the Via Lactea as it flowed through Perseus, Cassiopeia,
Cepheus, and Cygnus. Then suddenly all the stars were blotted from the
sky - even bright Deneb and Vega ahead, and the lone Altair and Fomalhaut
behind us. And as the torches died out altogether, there remained above
the stricken and shrieking cohort only the noxious and horrible altar-flames
on the towering peaks; hellish and red, and now silhouetting the mad, leaping,
and colossal forms of such nameless beasts as had never a Phrygian priest
or Campanian grandam whispered of in the wildest of furtive tales. And
above the nighted screaming of men and horses that dæmonic drumming
rose to louder pitch, whilst an ice-cold wind of shocking sentience and
deliberateness swept down from those forbidden heights and coiled about
each man separately, till all the cohort was struggling and screaming in
the dark, as if acting out the fate of Laocoön and his sons. Only
old Scribonius Libo seemed resigned. He uttered words amidst the screaming,
and they echo still in my ears.
"Malitia vetus - malitia vetus est ...
venit ... tandem venit ..."1
And then I waked. It was the most vivid dream in years,
drawing upon wells of the subconscious long untouched and forgotten. Of
the fate of that cohort no record exists, but the town at least was saved
- for encyclopædias tell of the survival of Pompelo to this day,
under the modern Spanish name of Pompelona...
Yrs for Gothick Supremacy -
C . IVLIVS . VERVS . MAXIMINVS.
1"Wickness of old ... it is wickeness of old ... happened
... happened at last ..."
