Chapter III: Dancing Girls From Gades (2)

A double row of broad, sharp swords was placed along the floor by a group of slaves, so that the contortionist might show her greatest feat. The flutists began to play a slow, solemn melody, and the contortionist, again standing head downward, began to walk between the swords without disturbing them or touching their sharp edges. The guests, cup in hand, followed her course anxiously through the forest of keen steel blades, which at her slightest wavering would penetrate her body. She paused near a sword, extended one arm, and sustaining herself on a single hand she bent the elbow until she kissed the floor; then she stiffened the muscles, raising herself back to her first position, and throughout this whole maneuvre the cutting edge grazed her breast without even abrading the skin.

When the girl finished her act the guests applauded vigorously. The two old men flung their tunics around her, while her malicious, boyish face peeped forth and sniffed the foods and sweetmeats.

"But, Sónnica," protested Lachares, "when did the beautiful Greek ever forget her friends like this? Athenian, you have maddened her with your love; now intercede for us, and ask that the daughters of Gades present themselves quickly!"

Sónnica appeared to be sleeping upon Actæon's breast, spellbound by his close, warm, throbbing heart.

"Bid them enter----let my guests do what they wish----only leave us in peace!"

Footsteps, giggling, and whispering were heard in the peristyle, and the Gaditanian dancers entered the triclinium, crowding each other like a stampeding flock.

They were girls of small stature, with supple, agile limbs; their skin a pale amber, their eyes large and luminous; their hair black; their bodies floating in vapory veils, alluring and deceptive in their semi-transparency. They wore on their breasts and on their arms and ankles strands of coins and amulets which rung with merry tinkle at the slightest movement, and they stared boldly at the guests like a flock accustomed to such feasts, who traveled from banquet to banquet, seeing men only in their hours of intoxication.

The ruler of the band, a wrinkled, parchment-faced old man with an insolent stare, was dressed like them in feminine veils, his cheeks painted, his eyes encircled with black, having great hoops in his ears, and a cynical leer on his vermilion lips, ready for trade in the most infamous traffic.

Euphobias, indifferent to the charms of the dancing girls, looked at him with amazement, wondering to what sex belonged those skeleton arms peeping from beneath the veils, painted white, and weighted down with jewels.

"Brother, are you a man or a woman?" the philosopher gravely enquired.

"I am the father of all these flowers," replied the eunuch with a squeaking voice, showing as he smiled his repulsive, toothless gums.

Three of the women, squatting on the floor, began to fillip their castanets with lively clacking, while another beat with her hands on a globe-bottomed timbrel tucked under her left arm.

The eunuch rapped on the floor with his staff, and instantly four pairs of dancers whisked into the centre of the triclinium, and began to swing to the sound of clamorous barbaric music played by their companions. They danced with stately step, holding themselves majestically erect, spreading their arms as if swimming in space, their brown bodies wheeling in slow spirals, seeming to float on the waves of transparent foam which enwrapped them. Gradually their movements accelerated; they gracefully extended their bodies, elevating their firm chests, outlining their contours among the veils--contortions in which the trunk revolved on the hips, a whirl of forms enclosed in white and floating drapery, which as it flew into a thousand folds with voluptuous undulations, fanned up the flames of the lamps.

Suddenly, at a signal from the old crone, the music stopped, and the dancing ceased.

"More! More!" shouted the guests, sitting up in their couches with excitement.

It was merely a halt to change the time and to evoke applause by taking a brief rest. The music assumed a gay and noisy rhythm; the old eunuch marked time on the floor with the beating staff; he uttered a prolonged lament, sad, yet with a mild sweetness, which did not seem to come from his infected mouth; and then followed slow dreamy strophes of love with words of double meanings, which acted like aphrodisiacs, and were greeted with a roar of enthusiasm.

The dancers sprang into the centre of the triclinium, whirling swiftly, as if possessed of a fever. Each song served as a lash further to excite their nerves, and their bare feet tripped over the mosaic like snow-white birds, or rose in gentle flight, trailing clouds of gauze, displaying well modeled limbs with tinkling ornaments which scattered silvery tones. Their gently curving abdomens seemed to assume a separate existence, moving like restless animals over their bodies which they held in sacerdotal rigidity, contracting in circular waves, forming a whirlpool of voluptuous undulations, of which the umbilicus was the rosy centre. They accompanied the dance with incessant snapping of fingers. Gathering the gauzy draperies beneath their arms and adjusting them around their hips, they moved their amphoral curves with seductive rhythm, sighing langourously, with bowed heads, as if enchanted by the contemplation of their own beauty. Suddenly the music grew fainter, as if drawing away, and the dancers, their feet together and limbs half opened, descended in a slow spiral, with gentle undulations, until they touched the floor; the instant their callipygian charms grazed the mosaic, they recoiled like suddenly awakened serpents, and the castanets clacked and the timbrel beat louder, accompanied by the howls of the musicians who animated them with lascivious words and exclamations of supreme abandon.

The guests, red with emotion, their eyes sparkling and their mouths dry, had rushed into the centre of the triclinium, interrupting the dance, mixing with the couples and grasping them. Euphobias lay snoring at the foot of his couch. Sónnica had disappeared long before, leaving the triclinium, supported by a slave without lifting her head from Actæon's shoulder.

The veils of the dancing girls fell to the foot of the table; they devoured the sweetmeats and fruits, they drank from the amphoræ, plunged their heads into the crater of the nymphs, and laughed on seeing their faces bespattered with wine. The eunuch continued singing and pounding furiously on the floor to mark the rhythm for his musicians. In vain! The girls who tried to dance could not escape from the hands of the guests, who at every turn slapped them on their buttocks and tore off their veils. The young men rolled at the foot of the lamps, maddened by these bacchantes wise in perversion, reared in a port to which navigators brought both the refinements and the corruptions of the entire world. Alorcus the Celtiberian, brutalized by his enthusiasm, walked around the triclinium making a display of his strength by sustaining in his sinewy hands two dancing girls, who screamed with fright, while outside could be noted in the darkness of the peristyle the movement of the slaves, men and women, from the kitchens, creeping near to enjoy from without the spectacle of the bacchanal.

It was not yet dawn when Actæon awoke, wondering, no doubt, at the soft couch and at the perfumes of the dormitory. Sónnica was lying beside him, and by the light of a lamp hanging near the door he could see a smile of felicity flitting over her lips.

After the intoxication of the night the Athenian felt a vehement desire to breathe the fresh, open air. He was stifling where he was, in Sónnica's room, sunk down in the couch that seemed to burn with the fire of their recent passion, near the form, which now lay inert and with no other sign of life than the gentle sighs which inflated her bosom.

The Greek softly tiptoed out to the peristyle. The lamps were still burning in the triclinium, and an insufferable vapor of viands, wines, and sweaty bodies floated through the doorway. He saw the guests lying on the floor among the snoring women. Euphobias had awakened from his drunken sleep, and, occupying the place of honor, Sónnica's couch, was forging for himself the illusion of being master of the villa. Wrapped in his tattered mantle he was compelling two sleepy dancing girls to dance, contemplating their nude flesh with a disdainful stare like a man who considers himself above carnal desires.

As Actæon appeared in the triclinium some slaves fled, fearing lest they should be punished for their curiosity. Not wishing to be seen by the philosopher the Greek went out of the house seeking the cool garden. There he noticed the same flight before his steps. Embracing couples fled along the avenues; from behind the clumps of foliage arose exclamations of surprise as he approached, and in the dissipating shadows of the night the garden seemed animated by a mysterious life beneath its leafy bowers.

They were slaves who, excited by the feast, continued beneath the open sky the scenes of the triclinium.

The Greek smiled, reflecting that the feast was destined to augment his mistress' wealth.

"Let them enjoy themselves in peace. To disturb them would damage Sónnica's interests."

He passed out of the garden so as not to interfere with the joy of the miserable flock which, forgetting every trouble, sought each other there in the dim light of dawn.

He crossed Sónnica's immense dominions, through groves of fig trees and extensive olive orchards, until suddenly he found himself in the highway of the Serpent. It was deserted. In the distance he heard the galloping of a horse and saw in the bluish light of dawn a rider who was undoubtedly making for the port.

As he drew near Actæon recognized him in spite of his head being covered by the hood of a war mantle. It was the Celtiberian shepherd. The Greek dashed into the centre of the roadway and grasped the horse by the bridle, while the rider, checked in his race, leaned back, tugging at the knife which he wore in his belt.

"Be calm!" said Actæon in a low voice. "If I stop you it is to say that I have recognized you. You are Hannibal, the son of the great Hamilcar! Your disguise may serve you among the Saguntines, but your boyhood friend knows you."

The African bent his head forward with its bushy mass of hair, and his imperious eyes made out the Greek in the dim light.

"Is it you, Actæon? When I met you so many times yesterday I knew that you would finally recognize me. What are you doing here?"

"I am living in the house of Sónnica the rich."

"I have heard of her, a Greek as famous for her beauty and her talent as the courtesans of Athens. I was also desirous of knowing her, and I think I should have loved her if it were a man's mission to chase after women. And are you doing nothing else?"

"I am a soldier in the pay of the city."

"You, the son of Lysias, the confidential captain of Hamilcar! You, a man educated in the Prytaneum of Athens, in the service of a city of barbarians and merchants!"

Hannibal was silent for a moment as if wondering at the conduct of the Greek. At last he added resolutely:

"Mount behind me on my horse! Come with me! In the port a Carthaginian ship, loading with silver, is waiting for me. I go to New Carthage to place myself at the head of my troops. Days of glory are coming, an immense and sublime enterprise, like that of the giants when, heaping mountain on mountain, they scaled your Olympus. Come! You are the friend of my childhood; I knew you before Hasdrubal and Mago, those sons of Hamilcar, whom the glorious captain gave me for brothers, calling all three of us 'my lion's brood.' I know you. You are astute and brave like your father; at my side you will conquer riches. Who knows but that you may reign as king in some fair land when, imitating Alexander, I divide my conquests among my captains!"

"No, Carthaginian," said Actæon gravely. "I do not hate you; I remember our early years with pleasure; but I will never go with you. Your lineage prevents it, the past record of your nation, and the bloody shade of my father."

"Nationality is but a fiction; 'the people' a pretext for making war. What matters it to you whether you serve Carthage or any other republic, since you are a Greek? If my own people should abandon me I would fight for any country. We are men of war; we fight for glory, power, and riches; the needs of our people only serve to justify our victory and our despoiling of the enemy. I hate the merchants of Carthage, pacific and stuck to their shops, as much as I hate the proud Romans. Come, Actæon, since we have met, follow me! Fortune goes with me."

"No, Hannibal; here shall I remain. Seeing your African soldiers I should remember the mob that crucified Lysias."

"That was an unavoidable crime, a mad deed of that truceless war to which the mercenaries impelled us. My father lamented it a thousand times, remembering his faithful Lysias. With my protection I will make amends for that injustice of Carthage."

"I will not follow you, Hannibal. I have bid farewell to war and booty. I prefer to grow old here in this sweet and tranquil life, at the side of my Sónnica, loving peace like any one of those Saguntines who dwells in the merchants' ward."

"Peace? Peace?"

A strident and brutal shout of laughter, like that which Actæon had heard on the steps of Aphrodite's temple when the Roman legates were embarking, broke the silence of the roadway.

"Listen well, Actæon," said the African, recovering his gravity, "the proof that I still remember my boyhood affection for you lies in the frankness with which I speak my mind. Only to you, understand it well! If, sleeping in my tent, I should learn on awaking that what is in my mind had escaped in words, I would stab the sentinel who guarded my sleep. You speak of peace! Actæon, awake! If you think of growing old in tranquility in any part of the world, flee with that Greek woman whom you love, far, far away! Where I am, there shall be no peace until I have become the sovereign of the world! War marches ahead of my footsteps; he who will not submit to me must die or become my slave!"

The Greek comprehended the significance of the threat.

"Remember, Hannibal, that this city is Rome. The Republic has taken it for an ally and protects it."

"Do you imagine that I fear Rome? If I hate Saguntum it is because she is proud of her alliance, and that she scorns and forgets me, in spite of my being near. She fancies herself secure because that far-away Republic protects her, and she laughs at me, though I reign over all the Peninsula as far as the Ebro, and am encamped almost at her very gates. She antagonizes the Turdetani, who are my allies, as are all the Iberian tribes, and within her walls she beheads the citizens who love me, those who were friends of the great Hamilcar. Ah, blind and vainglorious city! How dear shall it cost thee to live near to Hannibal without knowing him!"

Turning about in his saddle he glared with menacing eyes at the Acropolis of Saguntum, which stood forth above the fog of the early morn.

"You could scarcely lay siege to her ally before Rome would fall upon you!"

"Let her come!" replied the African arrogantly. "That is what I want, I hate peace! I will not submit to seeing Carthage subdued while there exist men like me and my friends. Either Rome or Africa! Let the final clash come! The sooner the better, the supreme struggle; and let that nation which is left standing be ruler of the world! I hate the rich of my country who live content in the shame of defeat because it enables them to traffic calmly and to cram their vaults with silver. Those are the wretches who, after our defeat in Sicily, dared to dream of abandoning Carthage and of moving wholesale to the islands of the Great Sea to live in tranquility. They are Carthaginians indeed; true sons of Phoenicia, with no other conception of glory than trade, nor other aspiration than to find new ports where they can market their wares! We Barcas are Libyans; we descend from the gods; like them we have greatness of thought; we must be masters, or die! Those merchants do not understand that it is not enough to be rich; that one must dominate and instill fear; and they formed in Carthage a peace-party, which embittered my father's life by defeats, and they leave me with no other resources than those that I can procure on the Peninsula. They do not know the Barcas, despite the fact that we struggle to make Carthage a world power! My father, when he lost Sicily, foresaw the future extinction of our nation, and he wished to prevent it. We had lost a great part of our ancient commerce. We needed an army to defend us from ambitious Rome, and we did not have it. The citizens of Carthage are good, at the best, to fight on their own soil. The merchant cannot bear the weight of arms nor endure marches for months and years through hostile countries. The profit derived from booty conquered with blood, he can win more easily standing behind his bales of goods, and as he loves money he does not wish to pay it out to foreign soldiers. That is why Hamilcar brought us to the Peninsula, and here we have given Carthage new ports and markets, and the Barcas have an army gathered together by their own efforts. Little does it matter that the Carthaginian Senate, lovers of peace, refuse to send us soldiers. The Iberian tribes loved my father after putting his bravery to the test, and they will rise in arms at the voice of the Barcas against whatever enemy we may designate."

Hannibal turned his gaze toward the distant mountains, as if he could behold the innumerable barbarian tribes who lived behind them scratching the earth, or pasturing their flocks. "Hamilcar fell," he said sadly, "just as he was beginning to see his dreams realized in a great army with which to enter anew into strife with Rome, with riches of his own to carry on the war without need of assistance from the African merchants. Hasdrubal, the handsome husband of my sister, frittered away eight years on succeeding to his authority. He was a good governor, but a timid commander. Perhaps it was Baal, our savage god, who guided the arm of his assassin that he might be succeeded by another capable of exterminating the eternal enemy of Carthage. That one shall be I! Listen well, Greek! You are the only one who shares my thought. The moment for fighting the final battle has come. Soon shall Rome know that there exists a Hannibal who defies her by taking possession of Saguntum."

"You have scant power for that, African. Saguntum is strong, and I, who come from New Carthage, have seen there nothing but the elephants, the fragments of the army which your father brought, and the Numidian cavalry which your friends have sent from Africa."

"You forget the Iberians and the Celtiberians, the whole Peninsula, which will rise bodily and flock to the taking of Saguntum. The country is poor, and the city is overstocked with riches. I have noted it well. There is enough in it to pay an army for entire years, and even the Lusitanian tribes from the coast of the Great Sea will come attracted by the hope of loot and urged on by the hatred of rude natives for a city, opulent and civilized, where dwell their exploiters. It will be no great task for Hannibal to take possession of a republic of farmers and merchants."

"And after you become master, what then?"

The African answered nothing, but shrugged his shoulders with an enigmatic smile.

"You are silent, Hannibal. But after you are master of Saguntum you will have gained nothing. Rome will hurl her thunder at you for violating her treaties, and the Carthaginian Senate will curse you; it will set a price upon your head; it will order your soldiers to disobey you; and you will die crucified, or you will wander about the world like a fugitive slave."

"No! Fire of Baal!" shouted the chief arrogantly. "Carthage will attempt nothing against me; she will accept war with Rome, even though to-day she may not wish it. I have there innumerable partisans of the Barcas; the populace which loves war, because it yields cargoes of loot for distribution; the people of the out-lying districts, whose enthusiasm I keep at white heat by sending them riches sacked on the Peninsula, after having paid my troops. Hamilcar and Hasdrubal did the same. They would be ready to cut off the heads of the rich if anything were attempted against Hannibal. Since following my father for nine years, I have not returned to Carthage, but the people adore my name. Even those of the peace-party will follow me to war, if to war I drag them."

"And how will you conquer Rome?"

"I know not," said Hannibal with his mysterious smile. "I harbor a world of thoughts which would provoke the laughter of my friends if I should relate them. I see myself like a Titan scaling immense mountains, following the course of the eagle, ploughing through the snow, climbing to the very sky to fall upon my enemy with greater force. Ask me no more; I know nothing further. My will says, 'I desire,' and that is enough--I shall carry it through!"

Hannibal was silent, wrinkling his brows as if fearing he had said too much.

It was now daylight. Women with baskets on their heads were passing along the road. Two slaves carrying a great amphora hanging from a pole swung between their shoulders, stopped near them a moment to rest. The African patted his horse's neck as if preparing to leave.

"For the last time, Greek, will you come?"

Actæon shook his head.

"I know you too well to beg you to forget that you have seen Hannibal. You are astute. You know that what we have spoken here must be swallowed in the silence of the fields, and must be repeated to no one. Be happy in your new love, and live in peace, since, though born to soar as an eagle, you choose to stay here in a barnyard. If ever you oppose me as an enemy and contend against me, I will not crucify you; you shall not become my slave. I love you, although you will not follow me. I do not forget that you were the first who taught me to hurl a dart. May Baal guard you, Actæon! My men await me at the port."

His mantle floating in the breeze, he started on a gallop, raising a cloud of dust, scattering the country people and slaves, who scurried to the sides of the road to give him passage.