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THE CHILDHOOD OF ROME

THE MOUNTAIN OF FIRE

Marcia, the little daughter of Marcus Vitalos the farmer, sat on a sheltered corner of a stone wall, making a willow basket. Basket weaving was one of the first things that all children of her people learned, and she was very clever at it. Her strong, brown fingers wove the osiers in and out swiftly and deftly, as a bird builds its nest. The boys and girls cut willow shoots, and reeds, and grasses that were good for this work, at the proper time, and bound them together in bundles tidily, for use later on. The straw, too, could be used for making baskets and mats after the grain was threshed out of it.

A great many baskets were needed, for they were used to hold the grain, and the beans, and the onions, and the dried fruit, and the various other things that a thrifty family kept stored away for provisions. They were also used to gather things in and to carry them in, and sometimes they took the place of dishes in serving fruit or nuts. Almost every size and shape and kind could be made use of somewhere. The one Marcia was making was round and squat and quite large, and it was to have an opening at the top large enough to put one's hand into easily, and a cover to fit.

The house in which she lived was one of the oldest in the village on the slopes of the Mountain of Fire. It was so old that there was no knowing how many children had grown up in it, but they were all of the same family,--the family of the Marcus Vitalos Colonus who built it in the first place. This long-ago settler was called Colonus, the farmer, not because he was the only farmer in the neighborhood, for everybody worked on the land, but because he was an unusually good one, a leader among them in the understanding of the good brown earth and all its ways.

His sons after him took the name Colonus, for among their people it was considered very important to belong to a good family. As soon as a man's name was mentioned his ancestry was known, if he had any worth the naming. The ancestor of all this people was said to have been Mars, the god of manhood and all manly deeds. Their names showed this, for the common ones were Marcus, Mamurius, Mavor, Mamertius and so on, with some other name added to describe their occupations, or the place where they lived, or some peculiar thing about them. Plautus meant the splay-footed man; Sylvius, the man of the forest; Marinus, the seaman,--and there had been a Marcus Vitalos Colonus in this family, ever since the first one. Marcia's elder brother, two years older than she was, had this name, but he was usually called Marcs, for in their language the last syllable was apt to be slurred over.

It was very quiet in the village just now, for all the men were off getting in the harvest. The grain lands and the pastures were some distance away, wherever the land was suitable for crops or grazing. Every morning, directly after breakfast, every one who had anything to do away from the village went out, and usually did not come back until supper time. It was said that the first Marcus Vitalos was the leader who had persuaded the people to settle down in one place instead of moving about, driving their herds here and there. It was said also that he began the custom of a common meal in the middle of the day for all the men who were working on the land. This not only saved time and trouble, but made them better acquainted and gave them time to talk over and plan the work during the hottest part of the day. When the day's toil was finished, each man returned to his own house and had supper with his family. The houses were built, not too near together, around an open square. The wall around the house enclosed the sheepfold and the cattle sheds besides. The people worked and played together for much of the time, but there was a certain plot of ground that came down from father to son in each family and belonged to that family alone. Nobody else had any rights there at all.

The people were very careful to do everything according to custom. Almost everything they did had been worked out long ago into a sort of system, which was considered the best possible way to do it. Certain customs were always observed because the gods of the land were said to be pleased with them. Whether the gods had anything to do with it or not, these children of Mars were certainly more prosperous than most of their neighbors, and had many things which they might not have had if it had not been for their careful ways. The soil of the sunshiny mountain slopes was rich and fruitful and easy to work; the clear mountain waters were pleasant and wholesome, and in certain places there were hot springs which had been found good to cure disease. It was not strange that they believed the gods took especial care of them and would go on being kind to them so long as proper respect was shown.

Marcia wove her basket, putting a band of red around the curve before she began to draw it in, and her thoughts went far and near, as thoughts do.

The family spent very little time indoors when it was possible to be in the open air. The mother sat spinning in the doorway, and the baby played at her feet. The father was harvesting, and Marcs was out with the sheep. The next younger brother, Bruno they called him, had gone fishing. Supper was in an earthen pot comfortably bubbling over the fire. It would be ready by the time they all came home. Marcia had had her dinner and helped clear away before she came out here. Although the people had some vegetables and herbs, their main crop was grain. It was a kind of cereal a little like wheat and a little like barley, with a small hard kernel, and they called it "corn," which meant something that is crushed or ground into meal. When it was pounded in a mortar and then boiled soft, it made good porridge. Boiled until it was very thick, and poured out on a flat stone or board to cool, it could be cut into pieces and eaten from the hand. The children had all they wanted, with some goat's-milk cheese and some figs. Marcia could hear them laughing and shouting as they played with the pet kid. He was old enough now to butt the smaller ones right over on their backs, and he did it whenever they gave him a chance.

Marcia was rather a silent girl, with a great deal of long black hair in heavy braids, level black brows over thoughtful eyes, and a square little chin. As she began to draw in her basket at the top, she was thinking of the stories the old people sometimes told about a long-ago time when their ancestors lived in another and far more beautiful place. There the rivers ran over sands that gleamed like sunshine, and all the land was like a garden. The houses were larger than any here and built of a white stone. There were stone statues like those she and Marcs sometimes made in clay for the children to play with, but as large as men and women and painted to look like life. The gods came and went among the children of men and taught them all that they have ever known, but much had since been forgotten. So ran the story.

Sometimes in the heart of this mountain there were rumblings underground, as if the thunder had gone to earth like a badger. The old people said then that the smith of the gods was working at his forge. The noises were made by his hammer, beating out weapons for the gods. The plume of smoke that drifted lazily up from the deep bowl-shaped hollow in the mountain top came from his fires. To these people the mountain was like a great still creature, maybe a god in disguise. The forest hung on the slopes above like a bearskin on the shoulders of a giant. Up higher were barren rocks and cliffs, where nothing grew.

Marcia looked up at the mighty crest so far above, and then down across the valley, where the stubble of the grain fields shone golden in the westering sun. The river, winding away beyond it, was bluer than the sky. She wondered whether, if her people should ever go away, they would tell their children how beautiful this land was. But of course they never would go. They had lived too long where they were ever to be willing to leave their home on the mountain. No other place could be like it. The floods that sometimes ruined the lowlands never rose as high as this; the wandering, warlike tribes that sometimes attacked their neighbors did not trouble them here. They belonged to the mountain, as the chestnut trees and the squirrels did.

"Me make basket," announced her little sister, pulling at the withes, her rag doll tumbling to the ground as she tried to scramble up on the wall. "Up! up!"

"O Felic'la , don't; you'll spoil sister's work! I'll begin one for you."

The Kitten had got her name from her disposition, which was to insist on doing whatever she saw any one else doing, just long enough to make confusion wherever she went. What with showing the little fingers how to manage the spidery ribs of the little basket she began, and working out the braided border of her own basket, Marcia's attention was fully taken up.

She did not even see that Marcs was driving in the sheep until they began crowding into the sheepfold. The walls of this, like the walls of the house itself, were of stone, laid by that long-ago Colonus, and as solid and firm as if they were built yesterday. The stones were not squared or shaped, and there was no mortar, but they were fitted together so cleverly that they seemed as solid as the mountain itself. They hardly ever needed repair. The roofs, of seasoned chestnut boughs woven in and out, seemed almost as firm as the stonework. This place had been settled when the farmers had to fight wolves every year. Even now, if the wolves had a hard winter and got very hungry, they sometimes came around and tried to get at the sheep. Then the men would take their spears and long knives and go on a wolf-hunt. But that had not happened now for several years.

Why were the sheep coming in so early?

Marcs looked rather disturbed, and he was in a hurry. Bruno too was coming home without any fish, an unusual thing for him; and he looked both scared and puzzled. The mother was standing in the door, shading her eyes with her hand and looking at the sky. Marcs caught sight of the girls in their corner.

"You had better pick up all that and go in," he called to them. "Pater sent us home as quick as we could scamper. See how strange the sky is."

They all looked. Little Felic'la, with round eyes, dropped her basket and pointed.

"Giants," said she.

It did not take much imagination to see, in the dark clouds spreading over the heavens, huge misty figures like gigantic men, or like gods about to descend upon the earth.

"Mater," said Bruno, "the spring and the stream have dried up."

The father was hurrying up from the grain fields, and the boys ran to help him manage the frightened cattle and get the load under cover. Other flocks of sheep and other men with oxen were hastening to shelter. The sky was growing darker and darker. Blue lights were wavering in the marshy lands by the river. The fowls, croaking and squawking in frightened haste, huddled on to their roosts, all but Felic'la's pet white chicken, which scuttled for the house. Birds were flying overhead, uttering some sort of warnings in bird language, but there was no understanding what they said.

Suddenly there was a crash as if the earth had cracked in two. Everything turned black. The air was filled with smoke and dust and ashes raining down from the sky.

Marcia caught up her little sister and the baskets together and groped her way to the door. Her mother darted out to drag them in and barred the door against the unknown terrors outside. The boys and their father were under the cattle shed, with the stout timber brace against the door; it had been made to keep out wild beasts. In the roar of the tumult outside the loudest shout could not have been heard.

The terrific detonations above were heavier than any thunder that ever rolled down the valley, sharper than any blows of a giant hammer. The earth trembled and rocked under foot. Then came a pounding from all sides at once, like the trampling of frantic herds. An avalanche of dust and cinders came through the smoke hole and put out the fire. Part of the roof had fallen in, for they could hear stones tumbling down on the earth floor. Through the opening they saw a crimson glow spreading over the sky. Only the beams in one corner, the corner where the mother and her children were, still held firm.

At last the rain of ashes was over, the stones no longer fell, and it was light enough for them to see each other's faces. They had no way of knowing how long they had crouched there in the dark, but they had been there all night. The house had no windows and only one door. Now the father and the boys were trying to get the door open against a heap of fallen roof beams and thatch and stones and ashes and broken furniture. In a minute or two they got it far enough open to let them in.

"Are you safe, Livia? And the children?" The man's deep voice was shaking. But even as he spoke he saw that they were alive and unhurt. He took his baby boy from his wife's arms, and put the other arm round the two girls, while the little boys clung to him as far up as they could reach. Livia sprang up at the first sight of Marcs and Bruno, for Marcs was bleeding all down one side of his face and his shoulder, where a stone had glanced along.

"I was trying to catch the white heifer," he said rather shamefacedly, "but she got away. It's only a scrape along the skin--let me go, Mater." And before she had fairly done washing off the blood and bandaging the cuts, he was out from under her hands and out of doors after Bruno.

Cautiously they all went out, and stood outside the wall, gazing about them. Everything as far as they could see was gray with ashes and cinders and stones. Here and there the woods were on fire. Far up toward the top of the mountain, one tall tree by itself was burning like a torch. An arched hole was broken out in the cliff above, and down through it flowed a fiery river of molten rock, like boiling honey or liquid flame, cooling as it went. Ravines were broken out, great slices of rock and earth had fallen or slid, and the river, choked by fallen trees and earth and rocks, was tearing out another channel for itself. The very face of the earth was strange and unnatural.

The walls of their own house and of most of the others in the village had been wrenched and thrown down in places by the twisting of the earth. Then the roof had given way under the pelting rocks. In the corner where Livia and her children had taken shelter, one timber, a tree trunk set deep in the ground, had held firm and kept the roof from falling. The same thing had happened in the narrow cattle shed. They went on to see how their neighbors had fared.

There was less loss of life than one might have expected, considering that the oldest man there had never seen anything like this. The people were trained to obey orders and look out for themselves. The father was the head of the family, and in any sudden emergency the people did not run about aimlessly but looked to whoever was there to give orders. The children had each the care of some younger child or some possession of the family. Even Felic'la, trotting along beside Marcia, held tightly in her arms her white chicken. The chicken was trying to get away, but Felic'la felt that this was no time for the family to be separated.

TEN FAMILIES

Whatever the strange and terrible outbreak of the Mountain of Fire could have meant, the people had no thought of abandoning the land. Within a few days they were repairing or rebuilding their huts and returning to the habits of their daily life. Centuries might pass, more than one such calamity might befall the village, but there would still be men living on the same spot where their forefathers lived, on the slopes of the Mountain of Fire.

All the same, a great change had taken place, and they felt it more as time went on. They began to see that the land that had once brought forth food for them all would not now feed them with any such abundance. They would be lucky if they could secure enough food to keep them alive. Some of the fields were burned over by the lava stream; some were ruined by the dammed-up river. Cattle and sheep had been killed or had run away. Much of the grain and wool and other provision for the future had been destroyed. It was a very hard winter.

Yet rather than leave their homes and be strangers and outcasts without a country, they endured cold and scarcity and every kind of discomfort, even suffering. Outside the land they knew were unknown terrors,--races who did not speak their language or worship their gods; soil whose ways they did not understand, and very likely far worse troubles than had come upon them here. Most of the people simply made up their minds that what must be, they must endure, because anything else would only be a change for the worse.

There were a few, however, who did not take this view. The first to suggest that some might go away was Marcus Colonus. He spoke of it to a little group of his friends while they were in the forest cutting wood. Sylvius, whose wife and children were killed when the stones fell, and Urso the shaggy hunter, who never feared anything, man or beast, and Muraena the metal-worker, a restless fellow who knew that he could get a living wherever men used plows and weapons, all agreed that if Colonus went they would go. If ten heads of households joined the party, it would make a clan. But first the head of the village must be consulted.

Old Vitalos was the grandfather of Marcus Colonus and related in one way or another to nearly every person in the village. When his grandson came to him and told what he had in mind, the old chief stroked his long white beard and did not answer at once. He seemed to be thinking, and he thought for a long time.

Before written histories, or pictured records, or even songs telling the history of a people, were in use, the memories of the old folk formed the only source of information that there was. As old men will, they told what they knew over and over again, and those who heard, even if they did not know they were remembering it, often remembered a story and told it over again, when their time came. The experiences and the wisdom that old Vitalos had gathered in the eighty years of his useful life were stored in his mind in layers, like silt in the bed of a river. Now he was digging down into his memory for something that had happened a long time ago.

When he had done thinking, he spoke.

"My son," he said, "you tell me that you desire to go forth and make your home in another land."

"I desire it not, my father," said Colonus, "unless it is the will of the gods. I have thought that it may be best."

He did not know it, but while the old man's mind was busy with the past, his keen old eyes were busy with the strong, well-built figure, the stubborn chin and the fearless eye of this man of his own blood. Colonus walked with the long, sure step of the man who knows where he is going. The fingers of his hand were square-tipped and rugged, the kind that can work. He was Saturn's own man, made to work the land and produce food for his people. He would not give up easily, nor would he be dismayed by difficulties.

"And where will you go?" was the chief's next question.

"That I do not know," said Colonus. "Yet something I do know. The mountain folk are not friends to us, and we should have to fight them. Their land is all one fortress, not easy to take. To the sea we will not go, for we know nothing of the ways of the sea-tamers. Perhaps our gods would not help us in those things, which are strange to our lives. There remains the plain beyond the marsh, where the river runs out of the valley. I have been there only once, but I remember it. Around it are mountains, and the plain itself is broken by low hills, as we have seen from our heights. In such a land we might live according to customs of our forefathers. The little hills can be defended, and if enemies come we can see them from far off. Is this a good plan that we make, my father?"

The patriarch looked at the fire on the altar, which burned in his house as in every other house of the village; then he looked keenly at his grandson.

"There are two ways of living in a strange place, Marcus Colonus," he said. "One is, to live after the manner of those who are born there, obey their gods, learn their law, eat their food, work as they do, join in their feasts and their games. The other is to fight them, and drive them away, or make them your servants. Which is your choice?"

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