Alfred J. Church

An Embassy

Lucius found his new work pleasant enough, and certainly easy. Not very much could be done with the young prince as far as study was concerned. He made acquaintance with Homer, and wanted no urging to improve acquaintance into friendship. He came of a family of soldiers; and the stirring pictures of battle, and the glorious verse which sounded like war-music in his ears, possessed him with a charm that never lost its hold. Among other writers he had only one favorite, Xenophon. To be a soldier and a sportsman seemed to him the very height of human happiness. It was a constant delight to him to compare with his own experience what the old Athenian had to say about horses and dogs, about the methods of hunting and the implements of the chase. Equally attractive in another way was the glorious story of the Ten Thousand. These countrymen of his own—for though of a Gallic race he had Greek blood in his veins—fighting their way to the sea and safety through tribe after tribe of savage enemies, across mountains of which they did not know the passes, and rivers of which they had to find the fords, were a perpetual interest to him. But beyond Homer and Xenophon he would not go, nor indeed did Lucius or any one else expect any more.

Meantime the two young men were constant companions, and in a short time became excellent friends. Hunting was a resource for spending their time of which neither of them ever wearied. Once a month there was a great battue, such as has been described in the preceding chapter. More pleasant were the excursions which the two young men made together, with perhaps an old hunter to give them the benefit of his experience, and two or three attendants to act as beaters or carriers. Plenty of game was to be got: partridges and quails, which were to be caught in nets or shot with bow and arrow, and hares to be run down with beagles, of which the king had an excellent pack, or tracked, without the help of dogs, by their footprints in the snow. If they were disposed to go farther afield, larger animals were plentiful. Often they would be absent for two or three days, sometimes contenting themselves with rough quarters in a forester's or peasant's house, sometimes handsomely entertained by one of the neighboring chiefs. These glimpses of the home life of a very strange people, a Western tribe surrounded by the associations of Eastern life, were exceedingly interesting to the young Roman. He was especially struck by the national ballads which he sometimes heard sung to the accompaniment of a rude harp in the hall of some Galatian noble. The Gallic speech was dying out, though it had left many traces of itself in the Greek, which was now the common language of the country, but it still lived in the ballads. The difficulty was in getting them interpreted. The guests for the most part, though they considered them as a necessary part of the entertainment, listened to them without understanding, and sometimes the minstrel himself knew little of the meaning of what he was singing. One night, however, Lucius was fortunate enough to sit by an ancient retainer who was one of the very few that still spoke the old tongue, and who could himself repeat the ballad from beginning to end. It told the story of how the great king Bran (the Brennus of the Roman legend) had marched to the south, how he had put his enemies to flight and sacked their city, and how he had come back in triumph, carrying with him the gold wherewith the men of Rome had purchased their lives. The last part of the story was, of course, new to Lucius, who had been brought up in the tradition, so flattering to the national pride, which told how Camillus had appeared with his host at the very moment when the shameful bargain was being made, had ordered the gold and the scales to be removed, and, challenging the Gauls to conflict, had restored the honor of his country.

Among these fresh occupations and interests the winter and early spring passed pleasantly away. One day, towards the end of April, Lucius received a summons to attend the king. It was not one of the usual days for an audience, and his curiosity was naturally excited. He found the young prince with his father; the old man seemed to be in high good humor.

"You have been reading," he said, "about the Ten Thousand. Well, here is a chance of seeing some of the country through which they passed on their way back to the sea. You know, I dare say, that King Mithradates is in Armenia with Tigranes, his son-in-law, king of kings, as he calls himself. He is in no great favor, but is kept as a prisoner, and Lucullus hopes to induce Tigranes to give him up. You know, I dare say, how very narrowly he escaped getting hold of him two years ago. The soldiers were as near to him as you are to me, when a mule with its pack-saddle full of gold came in the way, and the rascals thought of nothing but the plunder, and let the king go. Well, as I said, he made his way to Tigranes, and now Lucullus is going to send an embassy to demand him. The ambassador is to be Publius Clodius, the general's brother-in-law, and, to make a long story short, my son is to go with him, and you will accompany him. It is a fine opportunity of seeing a country which it would not be very easy to get at, and you are very lucky, I take it, in getting it. You will start in three days' time, so that you may be sure to fall in with the embassy on its way."

The start was not made, however, as it turned out, till a couple of days later. Twice in succession the omens were unlucky, the sacrifice on the first day presenting what the soothsayers considered a threatening appearance, and a raven having unluckily thought fit on the second to caw just as the expedition was starting. Nothing could have persuaded the old king to let his son start in the teeth of such warnings. He would far sooner have given up the whole plan; as for being late at the rendezvous, it was a matter of quite secondary importance. On the 2d of May, however, the expedition did get off. The prince, who considered his father's notions about omens to be more than half nonsense, had a private interview with the soothsayer, which Lucius suspected might have had something to do with the favorable answers which that official was able to give next morning to the king's inquiries. It was necessary, owing to this delay, for the party to hurry on. Happily no obstacle intervened, and the travellers joined the embassy just as it was about to cross the borders of Armenia. Beyond this, indeed, it would not have been prudent to travel, except under the safe-conduct which Tigranes had given to the Roman ambassador.

Armenia proved to be quite as interesting a country as Lucius had expected. Its bleak and dreary plains, scarcely broken by a single elevation or even by a tree, would, he thought, have been a miserable place to live in, but they were full of curiosities for a traveller. The underground houses, especially, for the excessive rigor of the climate and the scarcity of timber, and indeed of all building materials, compelled the inhabitants to excavate their dwellings, were exceedingly interesting. The expedition would come suddenly upon a spot in the unvarying expanse of plain which seemed at first sight to be exactly like what they had traversed for many a weary mile, but which was really the site of a populous city. On looking a little more closely, smoke might be seen here and there issuing from chimneys which were raised three or four feet from the ground. Near these chimneys again might be seen what seemed like wells with steps in the sides, but were really the entrances to the under-ground houses. Descending one of these, which they were most hospitably invited to do, the travellers found what might be called an underground farm. Not only did the Armenians inhabit these strange dwellings, but they kept there their cattle and sheep. The season, indeed, was sufficiently advanced for these to have been sent into the upper air, but the stalls and folds were there. Here, too, Lucius made acquaintance with the famous barley wine of which he had read in Xenophon, and which he had been very curious to see and taste. It was not kept in casks or jars, but every house had a cistern, varying in size according to the wealth of its proprietors, in which the liquor, the result of the fermentation of barley, was made and kept. From these it was drawn off for use into tubs. Hosts and guests would sit round one of these tubs, each furnished with a reed through which he drew the liquor up. It was not unpleasant to the taste, but exceedingly potent, stronger even than unmixed wine, and unmixed wine seemed to Lucius, as it did to the majority of his countrymen, a drink to be avoided. After his first taste he pleaded to be permitted to mix it with water, and his hosts, pitying the weakness and bad taste of the barbarian from the West, graciously gave him leave.

Of Armenia they saw more than enough, for the guide who had been furnished by the chief commissioned to reach them as soon as they crossed the border led them astray. He had been instructed to delude the strangers in this way, Tigranes desiring to gain time, and not particularly caring if some lucky accident should prevent the embassy from arriving at all. For several days the fellow, acting on instructions which had been given him, contrived, without making the party actually travel twice over the same road, to conduct them in such a way that they made little or no progress. It is difficult to say how long this game might have gone on had not an accomplishment of Lucius, of which mention has been made before, come to the rescue of the party. He made it a practice, when the encampment was made every night, carefully to observe at the same hour the position of the stars, and a suspicion that their guide had either lost his way, which did not seem very likely, or was fooling them, soon came into his mind. After two or three cloudy days, which had given the man an unusually favorable opportunity of carrying out his scheme, he was convinced that his suspicion was correct, and lost no time in communicating it to the ambassador. Clodius, who had the short temper and peremptory manner of his family, made up his mind at once. He summoned the guide into his presence.

"Scoundrel," he said, "you are leading us wrong."

The man protested, invoking the names of all his native gods and of such Roman and Greek deities as he could remember, that he had been taking them the very shortest way possible to the king's capital.

"Make ready, lictors!" thundered the ambassador, whose imperious temper was roused to fury. In a few moments the axes were ready. The wretch fell on his knees and confessed what he had been doing; but, still loyal to the king, laid the blame on instructions which he said had been given him by a chieftain on the border.

"And you have dared, rascal, to make sport of a Roman! Scourge him, lictors, till he can't stand. And now, sir," he went on, turning to Lucius, "you shall be our guide, if you will. How shall we march?"

"Sir," said Lucius, "I know that we have been lately going out of our way, but beyond that I know very little. Do we know for a certainty where the king is? We may go all the tiresome journey to his capital, and after all not find him. If I may advise, let us strike the Euphrates as soon as we can, travel down it, and when we come to the first frequented ford, inquire. And to strike the Euphrates we must go nearly south from here, at all events for the present."

This advice was accepted and followed, and, much to the relief of Lucius, who felt no little anxiety at having this new responsibility put upon him, turned out to have been right. The Euphrates was reached in due course. Almost immediately afterwards the party was met by an Armenian noble who delivered to Clodius a courteous message from Tigranes. The king was much troubled to think that a distinguished Roman who proposed to honor him with a visit should have had so much trouble. Would he come on to Antioch, to which place he had been summoned on urgent affairs? Even there the king could not at once have the pleasure of receiving him, but would do so as soon as he should have returned from a campaign with which he was at present engaged in Northern Phœnicia.

Clodius was half disposed to regard his absence as an affront, but, as the king had not invited the embassy, was obliged to make the best of it; nor, indeed, was the time wasted. Tigranes was a haughty and brutal tyrant who thought the whole world made for his pleasure, and he had many subjects who would be only too glad of an opportunity of overthrowing him. The Roman envoy had many visitors who came under the pretext of paying their respects to him, but really wanted to know what chance they had of getting the Romans to help them in getting rid of their tyrant. He was liberal in his promises of help, but enjoined caution.

"Don't stir till you see us ready to move, and that in any case cannot be for some time," was his advice to all.

After three weeks of waiting it was announced to Clodius that the "king of kings" had returned, and would be graciously pleased to receive the embassy at noon the next day. Immediately after the delivery of this message came one of the king's principal chamberlains.

He began, "You will make such salutation to the king of kings as is prescribed by the custom of the court."

"And what is that?" said Clodius.

"It is customary to kneel and touch the ground three times with the forehead," returned the chamberlain, who knew how the proposal was likely to be received, but kept his countenance with an admirable gravity.

"Kneel!" cried Clodius; "a Roman kneel!"

"It is not too much honor," replied the chamberlain, "for the king of kings."

"He may be king of kings, but he is not my king. Sir, I am a senator of Rome, and I own no man in the whole world my better save such as the Roman people may set in the offices of state."

The official argued the point in vain, suggested various compromises with equal want of success, and was at last obliged to depart without obtaining any concession. At the audience of the next day every thing was arranged in the way that might seem most likely to impress the imagination of the envoy. The street through which he passed from his lodgings was lined with troops, gathered, as the variety of their equipment showed, from every part of the kingdom. Within the palace the scene was striking. The hall in which the reception took place was crowded with chiefs in every variety of costume, the chain-steel cuirasses of the Parthian horsemen glittering conspicuously among them. At the upper end of the room Tigranes sat in his chair of state, the four corners of which were supported by as many kings, still wearing, to enhance the dignity of their conqueror, their royal robes and crowns.

Clodius approached the royal presence. The young Deiotarus followed him as far as the middle of the room, where, as he was informed, etiquette required that he should stay. Lucius, as not being more than a private citizen, remained at the lower end. With a courteous salutation, into which he put as much respect as he felt to be consistent with his dignity, the envoy presented his credentials from Lucullus. The letter was taken by an attendant, who, after prostrating himself upon the ground, presented it to the king. A frown gathered on his forehead as he read it.

"Your general," he said, "might have given me my due title. 'King' he calls me. Does he not know that I am 'king of kings'? But let that pass. What is your errand? Speak on."

"My errand, sir, may be briefly told. You have within your dominions, and I believe in your own hands, an enemy of the Roman people, Mithradates, formerly king of Pontus. Lucullus having vanquished the said Mithradates in battle and stripped him of his dominions, and being desirous to show him, according to custom, to the Roman people as a proof of his victory, desires you to deliver him up forthwith. And I have further to say that so delivering him up you will deserve and receive the favor and protection of the Roman people; but that if you refuse, Lucullus, according to the authority committed to him, will forthwith proceed to take the said Mithradates by force of arms."

The speech fell like a thunderbolt on the assembly. Such words had never been heard in that presence before. For five-and-twenty years Tigranes had never had a wish ungratified or an opinion contradicted, and he now listened to the words of freedom for the first time. He made a stupendous effort to control himself, and succeeded. He had begun to listen with a courteous smile, and he contrived to keep the smile upon his face. But it was only on his lips that he kept it, it died out of his eyes; while those who watched, and indeed every eye in the room was fixed intently upon him, saw the blood surge up, so to speak, into his face. For a few minutes he remained silent, struggling to master his rage. Then he spoke in a calm low voice.

"What may be the custom of the Romans, I know not, but the Armenians are not wont to betray their guests. Mithradates has eaten my salt. That is enough. But if it were not, there is more. Lucullus has forgotten that the King of Pontus is not only my guest but my father. That is my answer. But with you, sir, who have come upon this errand, much, I doubt not, against your will, I have no quarrel. I pray you to honor me with your presence at the banquet this evening. The prince will of course accompany you, and you will bring such others of your suite as you may think fit."

The morning after the banquet, which had been a scene of wild and noisy revelry, the ambassador had another visit from the same official that had vainly endeavored to instruct him in Armenian etiquette. He was now the bearer of splendid presents from the king, all of which, however, with the exception of one silver cup of small value, Clodius had the fortitude to refuse. As the party was leaving the chamber in which the ambassador had received them, one of them lingered for a moment behind the rest, and thrust a billet into the hands of the prince. When opened it was found to run thus:

"To Prince Deiotarus an unknown friend greeting.

"Do not linger in Antioch unless you wish to be a hostage. Think not that, even if Appius is safe, you must needs be safe also. The rights of ambassadors are not always respected, much less of those whom ambassadors may bring with them. Those, too, who would not willingly offend Rome may care little about Galatia. In any case, this is a cause it which it is better to be condemned when you are absent than to be acquitted when you are present."

The matter was at once put before the ambassador. His advice was clear. "This is a warning," he said at once, "which you cannot afford to neglect. With you, Prince, in his hands, Tigranes would be able to make such terms with your father as would leave very little for him to possess or for you to inherit. As for me, I feel pretty safe. What a barbarian may do in his rage, without any thought of profiting by it, no one can tell; but he cannot hope to make any thing of me. He knows perfectly well that Rome would not give up an inch of land for a hundred ambassadors."

The next question was, if they were determined to escape, and this seemed unquestionably the wisest plan, which way should they try?

"The easiest," said Lucius, when his opinion was asked, "the easiest would be to go by sea. But we must not risk it, for we may be sure that the harbor is being watched. The best plan, I think, will be to go back, at first at least, the very way we came. We shall be riding away from home, and if they look for us there, their search won't be particularly keen."

This course was taken. It was thought best to put off the start till just before nightfall, when they had the best chance of getting off unobserved. At nightfall the gates of the city would be closed. It was arranged that two of the ambassador's attendants should ride out early in the afternoon, and that the prince and Lucius should start, as if for an evening stroll, two or three hours afterwards. At an appointed place they were to exchange clothes. The attendants would return to the city, having left their horses for the two fugitives.

The plan was successfully carried out, but only up to a certain point. Neither party was noticed as they left the city, but the attention of one of the keepers of the gate was unluckily attracted to the supposed prince on his return. The man was not sufficiently sure to venture to stop the suspected person, but he told his suspicions to the authorities, and a pursuit was immediately ordered.

Meanwhile, however, the fugitives had got a start, and they reached the Euphrates some time before dawn. But now an unexpected difficulty met them. They were still about half a mile from the river bank when the moon, breaking, almost for the first time in their journey, through the clouds that covered the sky, showed them the presence of a body of horsemen on the opposite side of the ford. It was only for a moment, but the glitter of the steel caps of the riders could not be mistaken. It was evident that the plan of seizing them had been entertained for some time, and that every road had probably been barred against them. At the same time it became equally certain that they would be soon, if they were not already, pursued from the city.

Lucius felt that the chances of escape were now heavily against them, and considered it to be his duty to advise surrender. The prince peremptorily refused to think of any such thing.

The escape of Prince Deiotarus and Lucius.

"No!" he cried, "I would sooner die than be made what Tigranes means to make me, the instrument of ruining my country. He hopes to work on my father's affection for me to make him give up, it may be, part of his dominions, or it may be abjure his friendship with Rome. To do either would be to ruin Galatia. But if I were to be a prisoner in the hands of Tigranes, subject any day to torture, he might be weak enough to do either the one or the other. On the other hand, if I were dead, he would find another heir to the throne. My sister has children who would be soon of age to succeed. Even if our house should fail, there are other families in Galatia which would be equal to the honor. No, I will not surrender! But you shall do what you think best. I have no right to endanger your life; and the reasons which are convincing for me have nothing to do with you."

"Prince," said the young Roman, I gave you the advice that seemed to me to be the best if we were two private persons who had to choose between the risks of prison or death. But I acknowledge that the arguments which you use as the heir to the throne are irresistible. As for myself, the king, your father, has appointed me to accompany you, and till you command me, I shall not leave you."

"And now," said the prince, "what is to be done? What do you advise?"

"I see," answered Lucius, "but one chance, almost, but yet not quite, a desperate one. We must give up our horses. With them we can go neither backwards nor forwards, for the road is blocked either way. My advice as to them is to start them down the road to the river, give them each a hard stroke with the whip, and they will probably gallop down to the ford. The horsemen on the other side will be sure to see, or, at least, to hear them; but they will hardly be able to distinguish whether they have riders or no, or anyhow, if they do perceive so much, will not easily understand what has become of us. Meanwhile we must escape by the river. Some provident person has given us, you see, two goats' skins, which, when blown out, would help us to swim across the river. We will use them not to swim across, but to swim down. We could do it without, but they will make it far less fatiguing. It will still be dark for a couple of hours or more. Even when it is light, by covering our heads and the skins with weeds, we may very well look as little like two swimmers as could be. That is all that I can see for the present. After that we must trust to fortune and to whatever may turn up."

The plan was carried out with success. First the horses were started down the road, then the two companions crept through the wood which bordered the road till they had traversed a distance of about half a mile. They then struck for the river, and judging, when they reached it, that they were out of sight of the party which was watching the ford, committed themselves to the water, having first inflated the skins.

They had made between two and three miles, swimming and floating alternately, and were beginning to feel exhausted by long immersion, when they caught sight of a small boat which a fisherman had fastened to an overhanging bough, intending, it would appear, to use it early in the morning. It was happily furnished with oars, and seemed too good a chance to neglect. Luckily at this moment the sky cleared, and the moonlight gave them some idea of where they were going. The river, too, was high, and carried them over rocks and sandbanks, on which during the dry season they would infallibly have been wrecked or stranded. The strength of the current enabled them to move very rapidly, so that by the time it was broad daylight they had put at least five and twenty miles between themselves and the place at which they had embarked on their singular voyage.

For the present, therefore, they were safe; but they could not hope not to be pursued; and it was certain that they would be stopped and questioned as soon as they should arrive at any roadside town or even village.

"It will never do," said the prince, "for us to get into the hands of the officials of the king. To avoid that we must risk any thing and every thing. I have an idea; it is the merest chance, but still it is better than nothing. You have heard, I dare say, that Tigranes has carried off thousands and thousands of people from Western Asia to colonize these desolate regions. From Galatia itself he has taken not a few; and it is possible that we may find among the inhabitants of the river bank an old neighbor or even a countryman. Anyhow we will make the trial."

Make the trial they accordingly did, and with the happiest results. The next bend of the river brought them in sight of a fisherman, who, with the help of his two sons, was dragging a seine-net over a sandy bay of the stream. The prince and Lucius brought their boat to land and offered their help, which was gladly accepted. The haul finished, and the fish—a take so numerous as to put the man into high good-humor—counted, the two were invited to share the morning meal. The language in which the invitation was given was sufficient to show that the fisherman was a Greek, or, at all events, one of the tribes which had adopted Greek habits and the Greek language. The prince, who spoke in the broad Galatian dialect, which he knew how to use on occasion (Lucius remaining discreetly silent), discovered that his host was a Cappadocian who had been forcibly brought from his native country to increase the scanty population of Armenia. Before long he managed to find an opportunity of speaking to him in private. He frankly told his story, and promised liberal rewards if he would help him and his companion to escape. The man, who knew the king by reputation, and was ready to grasp at any chance of returning to his country, promptly consented, and it only remained to consider how the thing might best be done.

"You must not think of it for the present," said the fisherman after reflecting a while. "The whole country will be raised, and every road will be watched. You must be content to try for a while your employment of this morning, in which, I must say, you were both uncommonly handy. In fact you must be fishermen for a few weeks, perhaps months, till the thing has blown over. I can find you proper clothes. My two eldest sons were drowned, poor fellows, a year ago, and I can fit you out with what they used to wear. You, sir," he said, "can talk just like the country-folk, and may very well be taken for one of us. As for your friend, the less he opens his mouth the better. When things are a little quieter you cannot do better, I should say, than go back to Antioch. They won't be looking for you there. Sometimes, you know, the lion's mouth is the safest place, that is if he happens to be asleep. Then Antioch is a big place; people are always going to and fro, and strangers are very little heeded. It will be hard if you don't get a passage in a fishing or trading vessel perhaps to Tarsus."

Lucius pricked up his ears at the name of Tarsus, and naturally thought the plan an excellent one. It was clear indeed that for the present nothing else remained to be done. Towards afternoon a troop of horsemen was seen on the right bank of the river, who were evidently on the lookout for the fugitives. Similar parties were seen for some days, but as they could be seen approaching from a distance the prince and Lucius were always on their guard, and took care to be busy at their work when they came by; nor did it occur to any one to examine them more closely.

Towards autumn it seemed possible to make an effort to escape. Tigranes with his court had left Antioch and was busy with preparations for the war, which, after the refusal to surrender Mithradates, had become a certainty. In the mean time the various articles which were wanted for a second disguise had been gradually obtained, for it had been arranged that the prince should play the part of a merchant, with Lucius for his attendant. About the middle of September they bade farewell, with many thanks and promises, to their host, reached Antioch without any further adventure, took passage in a small coasting vessel, and after five or six more days found themselves safe in Tarsus.