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THE FALL OF PALMYRA.

A HISTORICAL ROMANCE.

IN LETTERS OF LUCIUS M. PISO FROM PALMYRA, TO HIS

FRIEND MARCUS CURTIUS AT ROME.

VOL. II.

LONDON:

H. G. CLARKE AND CO. 66, OLD BAILEY.

1845.

LETTER X.

As I returned from the worship of the Christians to the house of Gracchus, my thoughts wandered from the subjects which had just occupied my mind to the condition of the country, and the prospect now growing more and more portentous of an immediate rupture with Rome. On my way I passed through streets of more than Roman magnificence, exhibiting all the signs of wealth, taste, refinement, and luxury. The happy, light-hearted populace were moving through them, enjoying at their leisure the calm beauty of the evening, or hastening to or from some place of festivity. The earnest tone of conversation, the loud laugh, the witty retort, the merry jest, fell upon my ear from one and another as I passed along. From the windows of the palaces of the merchants and nobles, the rays of innumerable lights streamed across my path, giving to the streets almost the brilliancy of day; and the sound of music, either of martial instruments, or of the harp accompanied by the voice, at every turn arrested my attention, and made me pause to listen.

A deep melancholy came over me. It seemed to me that the days of this people were numbered, and

that the gods, intending their ruin, had first made them mad. Their gaiety appeared to me no other than madness. They were like the gladiators of our circuses, who, doomed to death, pass the last days of life in a delirium of forced and frantic joy. Many of the inhabitants I could not but suppose utterly insensible to the dangers which impend—or ignorant of them; but more, I believe, are cheerful, and even gay, through a mad contempt of them. They look back upon their long and uninterrupted prosperity— they call to mind their late glorious achievements under Odenatus and their Queen-they think of the wide extent of their empire-they remember that Longinus is their minister, and Zenobia still their queen-and give their fears to the winds. A contest with Rome they approach as they would the games of the amphitheatre.

The situation of their city, defended as it is by the wide-stretching deserts, is indeed enough of itself to inspire the people with a belief that it is impregnable. It requires an effort, I am aware, to admit the likelihood of an army from the far west first overcoming the dangers of the desert, and then levelling the walls of the city, which seem more like ramparts of Nature's making, so massy are they, than any work of man. And the Palmyrenes have certainly also some excuse in the wretched management of our generals, ever since the expedition of Valerian, and in the brilliancy of their own achievements, for thinking well of themselves, and anticipating, without much apprehension for the issue, a war with us. But these and the like apologies, however they may serve for the common people, surely are of no force in their application to the intelligent, and such as fill the

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