Callista : a Tale of the Third Century

by John Henry Newman

  CHAPTER XV.

  A VISITATION.

  The plague of locusts, one of the most awful visitations to which thecountries included in the Roman empire were exposed, extended from theAtlantic to Ethiopia, from Arabia to India, and from the Nile and Red Seato Greece and the north of Asia Minor. Instances are recorded in historyof clouds of the devastating insect crossing the Black Sea to Poland, andthe Mediterranean to Lombardy. It is as numerous in its species as it iswide in its range of territory. Brood follows brood, with a sort of familylikeness, yet with distinct attributes, as we read in the prophets of theOld Testament, from whom Bochart tells us it is possible to enumerate asmany as ten kinds. It wakens into existence and activity as early as themonth of March; but instances are not wanting, as in our present history,of its appearance as late as June. Even one flight comprises myriads uponmyriads passing imagination, to which the drops of rain or the sands ofthe sea are the only fit comparison; and hence it is almost a proverbialmode of expression in the East (as may be illustrated by the sacred pagesto which we just now referred), by way of describing a vast invading army,to liken it to the locusts. So dense are they, when upon the wing, that itis no exaggeration to say that they hide the sun, from which circumstanceindeed their name in Arabic is derived. And so ubiquitous are they whenthey have alighted on the earth, that they simply cover or clothe itssurface.

  This last characteristic is stated in the sacred account of the plagues ofEgypt, where their faculty of devastation is also mentioned. Thecorrupting fly and the bruising and prostrating hail had preceded them inthat series of visitations, but _they_ came to do the work of ruin morethoroughly. For not only the crops and fruits, but the foliage of theforest itself, nay, the small twigs and the bark of the trees are thevictims of their curious and energetic rapacity. They have been known evento gnaw the door-posts of the houses. Nor do they execute their task in soslovenly a way, that, as they have succeeded other plagues so they mayhave successors themselves. They take pains to spoil what they leave. Likethe Harpies, they smear every thing that they touch with a miserableslime, which has the effect of a virus in corroding, or, as some say, inscorching and burning it. And then, as if all this were little, when theycan do nothing else, they die;--as if out of sheer malevolence to man, forthe poisonous elements of their nature are then let loose, and dispersedabroad, and create a pestilence; and they manage to destroy many more bytheir death than in their life.

  Such are the locusts,--whose existence the ancient heretics brought forwardas their palmary proof that there was an evil creator, and of whom anArabian writer shows his national horror, when he says that they have thehead of a horse, the eyes of an elephant, the neck of a bull, the horns ofa stag, the breast of a lion, the belly of a scorpion, the wings of aneagle, the legs of a camel, the feet of an ostrich, and the tail of aserpent.

  And now they are rushing upon a considerable tract of that beautifulregion of which we have spoken with such admiration. The swarm to whichJuba pointed grew and grew till it became a compact body, as much as afurlong square; yet it was but the vanguard of a series of similar hosts,formed one after another out of the hot mould or sand, rising into the airlike clouds, enlarging into a dusky canopy, and then discharged againstthe fruitful plain. At length the huge innumerous mass was put intomotion, and began its career, darkening the face of day. As became aninstrument of divine power, it seemed to have no volition of its own; itwas set off, it drifted, with the wind, and thus made northwards, straightfor Sicca. Thus they advanced, host after host, for a time wafted on theair, and gradually declining to the earth, while fresh broods were carriedover the first, and neared the earth, after a longer flight, in theirturn. For twelve miles did they extend from front to rear, and theirwhizzing and hissing could be heard for six miles on every side of them.The bright sun, though hidden by them, illumined their bodies, and wasreflected from their quivering wings; and as they heavily fell earthward,they seemed like the innumerable flakes of a yellow-coloured snow. Andlike snow did they descend, a living carpet, or rather pall, upon fields,crops, gardens, copses, groves, orchards, vineyards, olive woods,orangeries, palm plantations, and the deep forests, sparing nothing withintheir reach, and where there was nothing to devour, lying helpless indrifts, or crawling forward obstinately, as they best might, with the hopeof prey. They could spare their hundred thousand soldiers twice or thriceover, and not miss them; their masses filled the bottoms of the ravinesand hollow ways, impeding the traveller as he rode forward on his journey,and trampled by thousands under his horse-hoofs. In vain was all thisoverthrow and waste by the road-side; in vain their loss in river, pool,and watercourse. The poor peasants hastily dug pits and trenches as theirenemy came on; in vain they filled them from the wells or with lightedstubble. Heavily and thickly did the locusts fall: they were lavish oftheir lives; they choked the flame and the water, which destroyed them thewhile, and the vast living hostile armament still moved on.

  They moved right on like soldiers in their ranks, stopping at nothing, andstraggling for nothing: they carried a broad furrow or wheal all acrossthe country, black and loathsome, while it was as green and smiling oneach side of them and in front, as it had been before they came. Beforethem, in the language of prophets, was a paradise; and behind them adesert. They are daunted by nothing; they surmount walls and hedges, andenter enclosed gardens or inhabited houses. A rare and experimentalvineyard has been planted in a sheltered grove. The high winds of Africawill not commonly allow the light trellis or the slim pole; but here thelofty poplar of Campania has been possible, on which the vine plant mountsso many yards into the air, that the poor grape-gatherers bargain for afuneral pile and a tomb as one of the conditions of their engagement. Thelocusts have done what the winds and lightning could not do, and the wholepromise of the vintage, leaves and all, is gone, and the slender stems areleft bare. There is another yard, less uncommon, but still tended withmore than common care; each plant is kept within due bounds by a circulartrench round it, and by upright canes on which it is to trail; in an hourthe solicitude and long toil of the vine-dresser are lost, and his pridehumbled. There is a smiling farm; another sort of vine, of remarkablecharacter, is found against the farm-house. This vine springs from oneroot, and has clothed and matted with its many branches the four walls;the whole of it is covered thick with long clusters, which another monthwill ripen:--on every grape and leaf there is a locust. Into the dry cavesand pits, carefully strewed with straw, the harvest-men have (safely, asthey thought just now) been lodging the far-famed African wheat. One grainor root shoots up into ten, twenty, fifty, eighty, nay, three or fourhundred stalks: sometimes the stalks have two ears apiece, and these againshoot into a number of lesser ones. These stores are intended for theRoman populace, but the locusts have been beforehand with them. The smallpatches of ground belonging to the poor peasants up and down the country,for raising the turnips, garlic, barley, watermelons, on which they live,are the prey of these glutton invaders as much as the choicest vines andolives. Nor have they any reverence for the villa of the civic decurion orthe Roman official. The neatly arranged kitchen-garden, with its cherries,plums, peaches, and apricots, is a waste; as the slaves sit round, in thekitchen in the first court, at their coarse evening meal, the room isfilled with the invading force, and news comes to them that the enemy hasfallen upon the apples and pears in the basement, and is at the same timeplundering and sacking the preserves of quince and pomegranate, andrevelling in the jars of precious oil of Cyprus and Mendes in thestore-rooms.

  They come up to the walls of Sicca, and are flung against them into theditch. Not a moment's hesitation or delay; they recover their footing,they climb up the wood or stucco, they surmount the parapet, or they haveentered in at the windows, filling the apartments, and the most privateand luxurious chambers, not one or two, like stragglers at forage orrioters after a victory, but in order of battle, and with the array of anarmy. Choice plants or flowers about the _impluvia_ a
nd _xysti_, forornament or refreshment, myrtles, oranges, pomegranates, the rose and thecarnation, have disappeared. They dim the bright marbles of the walls andthe gilding of the ceilings. They enter the triclinium in the midst of thebanquet; they crawl over the viands and spoil what they do not devour.Unrelaxed by success and by enjoyment, onward they go; a secret mysteriousinstinct keeps them together, as if they had a king over them. They movealong the floor in so strange an order that they seem to be a tesselatedpavement themselves, and to be the artificial embellishment of the place;so true are their lines, and so perfect is the pattern they describe.Onward they go, to the market, to the temple sacrifices, to the baker'sstores, to the cook-shops, to the confectioner's, to the druggists;nothing comes amiss to them; wherever man has aught to eat or drink, thereare they, reckless of death, strong of appetite, certain of conquest.

  They have passed on; the men of Sicca sadly congratulate themselves, andbegin to look about them, and to sum up their losses. Being theproprietors of the neighbouring districts, or the purchasers of itsproduce, they lament over the devastation, not because the fair country isdisfigured, but because income is becoming scanty, and prices are becominghigh. How is a population of many thousands to be fed? where is the grain,where the melons, the figs, the dates, the gourds, the beans, the grapes,to sustain and solace the multitudes in their lanes, caverns, and garrets?This is another weighty consideration for the class well-to-do in theworld. The taxes, too, and contributions, the capitation tax, thepercentage upon corn, the various articles of revenues due to Rome, howare they to be paid? How are cattle to be provided for the sacrifices andfor the tables of the wealthy? One-half, at least, of the supply of Siccais cut off. No longer slaves are seen coming into the city from thecountry in troops with their baskets on their shoulders, or beatingforward the horse, or mule, or ox, overladen with its burden, or drivingin the dangerous cow, or the unresisting sheep. The animation of the placeis gone; a gloom hangs over the Forum; and if its frequenters are stillmerry there is something of sullenness and recklessness in their mirth.The gods have given the city up; something or other has angered them.Locusts, indeed, are no uncommon visitation, but at an earlier season.Perhaps some temple has been polluted, or some unholy rite practised, orsome secret conspiracy has spread.

  Another and a still worse calamity. The invaders, as we have alreadyintimated, could be more terrible still in their overthrow than in theirravages. The inhabitants of the country had attempted, where they could,to destroy them by fire and water. It would seem as if the malignantanimals had resolved that the sufferers should have the benefit of thispolicy to the full; for they had not got more than twenty miles beyondSicca when they suddenly sickened and died. Thus after they had done allthe mischief they could by their living, when they had made their foulmaws the grave of every living thing, then they died themselves, and madethe desolated land their own grave. They took from it its hundred formsand varieties of beautiful life, and left it their own fetid and poisonouscarcases in payment. It was a sudden catastrophe; they seemed making forthe Mediterranean, as if, like other great conquerors, they had otherworlds to subdue beyond it; but whether they were overgorged, or struck bysome atmospheric change, or that their time was come and they paid thedebt of nature, so it was that suddenly they fell, and their glory came tonought, and all was vanity to them as to others, and "their stench roseup, and their corruption rose up, because they had done proudly."

  The hideous swarms lay dead in the moist steaming underwoods, in the greenswamps, in the sheltered valleys, in the ditches and furrows of thefields, amid the monuments of their own prowess, the ruined crops and thedishonoured vineyards. A poisonous element, issuing from their remains,mingled with the atmosphere, and corrupted it. The dismayed peasant foundthat a pestilence had begun; a new visitation, not confined to theterritory which the enemy had made its own, but extending far and wide, asthe atmosphere extends, in all directions. Their daily toil, no longerclaimed by the produce of the earth, which has ceased to exist, is nowdevoted to the object of ridding themselves of the deadly legacy whichthey have received in its stead. In vain; it is their last toil; they aredigging pits, they are raising piles, for their own corpses, as well asfor the bodies of their enemies. Invader and victim lie in the same grave,burn in the same heap; they sicken while they work, and the pestilencespreads. A new invasion is menacing Sicca, in the shape of companies ofpeasants and slaves, (the panic having broken the bonds of discipline,)with their employers and overseers, nay the farmers themselves andproprietors, rushing thither from famine and infection as to a place ofsafety. The inhabitants of the city are as frightened as they, and moreenergetic. They determine to keep them at a distance; the gates areclosed; a strict _cordon_ is drawn; however, by the continued pressure,numbers contrive to make an entrance, as water into a vessel, or lightthrough the closed shutters, and anyhow the air cannot be put intoquarantine; so the pestilence has the better of it, and at last appears inthe alleys, and in the cellars of Sicca.