Chapter III: A Sacrifice

As in the morning the sight of the crimson and gold hangings of the tent gradually impressed upon Elissa the sense of her surroundings, a weight like lead fell upon her heart; but with a prayer to the gods that they might inspire her with strength to carry out her great and terrible resolve, she rose. A small gong was at hand, she beat upon it for Cleandra; but instead of Cleandra, there entered a stranger.

“Who art thou?” inquired Elissa haughtily, “and where is Cleandra?”

“My name is Chloe, oh lady Elissa, and I have been deputed to thy service by the king. Thine attendant Cleandra was removed hence last night; she hath, by the king’s orders, taken up mine own duties as chief lady in attendance upon Queen Polycratia. His Majesty hath charged me with his royal greetings unto thee, and bids me inform thee that at such time as thou shalt be prepared to receive him he will present himself before thy noble presence to inquire for thy welfare.”

Elissa’s pride and anger rose upon hearing that Cleandra had been taken from her. She was about to give some furious reply when her eye fell upon the torn pieces of paper still lying where the king had spurned them with his foot the previous night, and she refrained. “I am,” she murmured to herself, “but as a fly in the web of some poisonous spider, and have, alas! no power to withdraw myself from the trammels of its horrid folds. But though alone and entangled, yet will I be strong.”

“Leave me to mine ablutions,” she commanded, “and inform thy master that I will see him in an hour’s space.”

At the appointed hour the sound of martial music heralded the king’s approach, while the clanging of arms without denoted the guards saluting. As he entered the tent, the flood of sunlight streamed in with him and lighted upon his figure. The bright beams of morning, shining on his brilliant arms, made him, as he stood there in all the vigour and beauty of youthful manhood, seem as ’twere the sun-god Apollo himself who had alighted upon earth. But Elissa groaned inwardly, to think that one so noble in his bearing could yet be so utterly ignoble in his life.

She remained standing to receive him, looking at him coldly, and making no sign of any salutation.

“Fair lady Elissa,” said the king, “I well see that thou art displeased with me, and I own with contrition that I greatly deserve thy displeasure. For last night the fumes of the rich red wine, combined with thine own excessive charms, did make me forget for a mad moment that I was King Philip thy host, and thou the lady Elissa my guest. Wilt thou not pardon me? for deeply do I grieve if I have offended.”

“King Philip,” replied Elissa proudly, “in sooth thy welcome of me hath not been such as I should have expected from a noble monarch with a glorious name. How canst thou expect forgiveness so soon from a woman whom thou hast so deeply insulted--one, moreover, whose person should be sacred. For she cometh to thee as ambassador from the mighty Hannibal, before whom the power of Rome herself hath for years past trembled. Therefore, before I say I will forgive thee, tell me what wilt thou do to make amends for mine outraged modesty and dignity. It is a matter for consideration.”

Calmly and fearlessly did Elissa stand before him, never flinching, but gazing steadily into his eyes, which fell before her own.

Philip hesitated a minute, toying nervously with the hilt of his sword, ere he replied.

“Full amends will I make, fair lady Elissa, if thou wilt but grant me thy pardon and my request.”

“What is that request? and what are thy amends, oh Philip?”

“My request is this, that thou wilt join thy life unto mine to be my companion for good or ill, through fair weather or through foul. My promised amends are these: if thou wilt but assent to become for me thus the one woman in the world whose sweet companionship shall make earth heaven, I will bind myself in turn, by solemn treaties before the gods, to help Hannibal, thy father, with all my forces by land and by sea. I will bind myself to attack the Romans wherever I can find them, to fall upon and destroy their cities and their colonies, and, moreover, to send a large body of troops to reinforce Hannibal himself. And thou, sweet lady Elissa, shall draft the terms of the treaty, which shall, so soon as we are united, be sent by ambassadors to Hannibal himself to ratify.”

Elissa concealed her rising anger, and answered calmly:

“Good, my lord king; but how can I accept this dishonour, for such it is, and become thy life companion when thou hast a bride already? What wilt thou do with the Queen Polycratia, the noble lady who but yesterday received me so courteously? For know this, oh Philip! that however she may fall, the daughter of Hannibal will, nevertheless, take no second place. Nay, should she listen to thine unscrupulous proposal, she will yet hold the place of queen, and queen alone. There cannot be two queens; and whate’er may be her ties, any other woman must give way before Elissa.”

“Polycratia, ’tis true, must be got rid of,” replied the young king brutally; “but that is easy. Although I made her queen, she is not really my wife, but the wife of one Aratus, from whom I took her. Thus ’tis simple enough. I will send her back to her husband Aratus, and by so doing shall I greatly please this unruly nation of the Achæans. Thus, fair lady Elissa, thou wilt alone reign queen of my heart, and there will be no other to dispute thy sway in Macedon.”

“And thinkest thou, oh Philip, that Polycratia will be happy thus? But, after all, what is she to me? A woman myself, I cannot seek to rule the fate of other women; yet would I strive to rule the fate of Carthage and to injure Rome, otherwise I had not listened for a moment to thine unworthy proposals. Therefore, King Philip, hearken! If thou wilt send away thy queen, and if thou wilt make a treaty as I shall dictate, then, when I have actually seen, with mine own eyes, the departure of the ambassadors to Hannibal, will I, as my share of the bargain, yield unto thee myself, and become the minister of thy will. But ere these things be accomplished, seek not again to intrude upon my privacy; and, above all things, beware of again taking advantage of my defenceless position to insult me. For seest thou this dagger which I have concealed about me? Had I thought on it last night when thou wast brutally ill-treating me, thou hadst assuredly been slain. But by Melcareth, ruler of the universe! if thou dost, before the despatch of this treaty of alliance--to obtain which I must sacrifice mine honour--but so much as lay a hand on me, I will assuredly slay myself with this weapon. For although I may consent, solely seeking the welfare of my country, to give myself to thee, think not that I do love thee, Philip. Nay, far from it! I do scorn and despise thee, king as thou art!”

Elissa’s nostrils quivered with nervous emotion and angry scorn as, with the dagger uplifted in her hand, and her head thrown back, she gazed upon the king with determined glance and flashing eyes.

Philip was cowed by her demeanour, but he would have liked to have seized her in his arms once more even then had he dared.

“Oh, never mind the love,” he said, smiling; “that will come later. Other women have said that before thee--ay, even this very Polycratia herself did speak just so. But thine assent is the important thing, and that is now settled; it is therefore a bargain between us. Now what may I do to please thee?”

Elissa turned from the king in utter disgust as she thought of her long and steadfast faith to Maharbal, of her pure but fruitless love for Scipio, both now to be sullied and polluted by the surrender of her person to this satyr of a king. And inwardly a great cry rose up in her heart. “Oh, Hannibal, my father, thy precepts have cost me dear!”

“This thou canst do to please me, King Philip,” she exclaimed freezingly. “Remove thyself from my sight until such time as I have to endure thy presence whether I will or no.”

Turning her back upon Philip she left the apartment. But the king laughed aloud, utterly careless of her feelings.

A few days later the treaty was completed on terms most favourable to Hannibal and Carthage. And when Elissa had actually seen an embassy, headed by one Xenophanes, sail with five ships for Italy, she completed her great, her terrible act of self-sacrifice in her country’s cause.

When once the die had been cast, Philip seemed anxious to prove to Elissa that he had been in earnest in concluding for her sake the treaty with Hannibal. He took, within a week or two of the departure of the ambassadors, an irrevocable step, and one which was calculated to embroil him absolutely with Rome. For, having heard that a Roman army, accompanied by King Attalus of Rhodes, and also the Ætolians, had landed on the Peloponnesus to wage war upon the Achæans, with whom he was then allied, Philip took advantage of the occasion, and, without waiting to make any declaration of war, marched out against the Romans in gallant array with all his army.

Falling upon them unexpectedly, he cut all their forces to pieces, and indeed almost annihilated them to a man.

Returning to Elissa, laden with Roman spoils, he laid them at her feet.

Upon seeing this immediate proof of his devotion, Elissa could not help recognising the fact that her self-sacrifice had not been entirely in vain, and she thanked the gods that they had given her the courage to carry it out to the bitter end.

Alas for Elissa! although for long she lived in hope, this first success was also the last. For a series of adverse circumstances coming one upon another utterly frustrated the projects of Philip to assist Hannibal and to combine with the Carthaginians in a war which, had things gone differently, would, in all probability, have had the result of wiping out the Roman nation and of making Carthage supreme on the Mediterranean coasts. The first piece of bad luck was the falling of Xenophanes and all his embassy into the hands, in the province of Campania, of a certain praetor named Valerius; but that first disadvantage was got over by the lying propensities of Xenophanes. For he, of all the Greeks, was one of the greatest adepts in the ancient art of using the power of speech as a means to conceal his thoughts.

Thus, when arrested by Valerius, he readily admitted that he and his suite were come as ambassadors to Italy, but represented that it was to the Consul Marcus Marcellus, the conquerer of Syracuse, who was now in Italy, that he was accredited. Thus, being believed, he was readily given all the necessary information as to how he should proceed so as to avoid the Hannibalian forces, and allowed to continue on his journey unmolested. Owing to the information he had received, the wily Greek was enabled easily to avoid any other Roman army, and actually contrived to find Hannibal himself in the province of Apulia. To the great conqueror he safely communicated the treaty and all the letters that he carried from Philip and from Elissa, which he had contrived to conceal about his clothing. Hannibal, while naturally astonished and greatly annoyed at learning that his daughter was now at the court of such a dissolute monarch as Philip, was delighted with the treaty which she had been the means of bringing about, and which, so favourable were the terms to Carthage, he lost no time in ratifying.

Upon his sending back the Macedonian ambassadors, however, accompanied by some Carthaginian envoys to Philip, the whole of the embassy, after arriving safely on board their ships, were detained at sea by a Roman fleet, and once again Xenophanes was taken before Valerius. He, from the Carthaginian envoys, discovered the whole plot, although by his aptitude for lying, Xenophanes had a second time almost escaped.

They all were now taken as prisoners to Rome, where they suffered great tortures and hardships.

Thus, from want of a concerted plan of action, Philip was utterly unable to render to Hannibal the necessary assistance at the required time. Nevertheless, hearing of the capture of his ambassadors, Philip sent fresh envoys to Hannibal, and the treaty being ratified, he set to sea with a few ships to try to organise a large fleet of his own vessels, added to some from his Grecian allies and others lying in various ports, with which to harass the whole Italian coast. Unfortunately, owing to the sudden unwarranted fears of his captains, which panic, it is said, even gained upon the king himself, this enterprise proved utterly fruitless. For upon the false alarm that a large Roman fleet was advancing, whereas there were at the utmost only some ten Roman frigates which were lying, themselves fearful of his approach, in a Sicilian harbour, Philip fled precipitately with his ships, and returned to Macedon without striking a blow by sea. For, in sooth, he was no sailor, although a right gallant warrior on land. And the Romans, being reinforced, captured all the ships he would have mustered, and remained completely masters of the sea.

Elissa was not long in learning the facts of this expedition, which Philip had vainly sought to colour to his own advantage, and being furious with herself for having given way to him without having gained any commensurate advantages for her country, and furious also with Philip, she taunted him bitterly, telling him that the only wars in which he was successful were those that he waged upon women.

After this, although Philip remained captivated with Elissa’s regal beauty, life became almost intolerable between them. Hannibal’s daughter continually stirred the king up with her invectives and reproaches to fresh enterprises; but for want of a sufficient fleet he was unable, after his first naval reverse, to invade Italy, and go to Hannibal’s assistance. He therefore contented himself with warlike expeditions by land in all parts of Greece, and even Asia Minor, against all such as were the allies of Rome. But between the Romans and himself there were no serious conflicts, and, in fact, only a state of semi-warfare existed, the Romans being too much employed elsewhere to pay any serious attention to the Macedonian so long as he left their own actual coasts alone. They, therefore, contented themselves by constantly sending embassies requesting him to desist, under threat of serious punishment, at which embassies Philip merely snapped his fingers. Thus, despite the prayers of Elissa to either build ships or else march by land to Italy, as her father had done from Spain before him, the war upon which Philip had launched, in his ardour to win over Hannibal’s daughter, proved of no use to Hannibal himself whatever. Nevertheless it continued for years, and the name of Philip was so dreaded on land that so long as the Macedonian was unable to effect any junction with Hannibal, the Romans were quite contented to leave him alone, other than, as already mentioned, by sending threatening embassies.

But Elissa’s discontent grew continually more and more, for she ever regretted bitterly having given over her fate into this man’s hands. In one of these wars, fearing to leave Elissa behind in case she might perchance either leave his court in his absence or be captured by some rival monarch, Philip took her with him, and Cleandra with her. It was an expedition upon which he had embarked against the city of Abydos, upon the Hellespont. The city was obstinately defended, and while King Attalus and all the Rhodians sailed through the Ægean Sea to the assistance of Tenedos, the Romans sent the youngest of their ambassadors, one Marcus Æmilius, to Abydos itself to warn Philip to desist.

Now this Marcus Æmilius had been, as quite a lad, present with Scipio at the court of Syphax at the time of Elissa’s presence there, and she knew him well. But when she saw him appear before Philip she made no sign of ever having seen the man before, for he was now celebrated as the handsomest man of his time; and having already quite enough to suffer from the tyranny of Philip, she determined to give the Macedonian king no opportunity of making her life more unbearable than usual by becoming jealous also.

Æmilius having, however, been received honourably and appointed certain tents in the king’s encampments before Abydos, Cleandra easily obtained access to him before he had had more than the most formal interview with Philip, one merely, indeed, to present his credentials, upon which occasion Elissa had seen him, and longed to speak to him for the sake of old times.

Cleandra soon told Æmilius that her royal Mistress Elissa sent him warm and friendly greetings, and inquired kindly for himself and for Scipio, his former chief.

Marcus in return sent greetings to Elissa, and informed her that not only had he recent tidings of Scipio, but had also a letter from him to deliver to herself; further, that he awaited the result of his embassy to the king to see whether he should deliver the letter in person or send it to her by the hand of Cleandra, for he would like if possible to make its delivery an opportunity of approaching her mistress. But Cleandra he retained a long time with him, for she was still young and beautiful, and had, moreover, travelled greatly. The young Roman was not enjoying life at all in his present capacity, among a people with whom he could only talk by means of an interpreter, and was delighted to meet a handsome young woman with whom he could converse freely in the Latin tongue. Eventually Cleandra left him, promising to see him again after he had had audience of the king.