The fireside sphinx. Agnes Repplier
yet consented to live with many nations on easier terms; that, notwithstanding her gentle imperiousness, she is, as a rule, willing to accord to humanity the freedom she demands for herself; and that the beauty of well-ordered life—as that fair life of Athens—has ever appealed to her exquisite sense of smoothness and moderation. Sparta, with its rigorous study of discomforts, might have repelled her sadly; but in Athens every instinct of her little heart would have been sweetly satisfied. It was her home of homes, and the unkind fates barred her way.
When at last the cat entered Greece, the glory of Greece had waned. Artemis remembered that, in Egypt, Pussy had vaguely symbolized both moon and sun, and took the small night-roaming creature—furry as her old Arcadian emblem, the bear—under her protection; but Artemis was no longer the goddess "excellently bright." Her lustre was dimming fast; and the old myth, imported hazily from the East, which represented the cat moon devouring the grey mice of twilight, had faded from the minds of men. As a plaything, as a pretty household toy. Pussy was carried from Africa to Europe a few hundred years before the Christian era. Diodorus tells a strange story of a mountain in Numidia which was inhabited by a commonwealth of cats, so that no bird ever ventured to nest in its woods; and from this mysterious region, it was said, adventurous hunters carried away a few little captives to be enslaved by decadent Greece. A more probable and a more romantic tale has been adapted from the Greek by that graceful versifier, and true lover of cats, Graham Tomson. It gives a motive, at once cogent and reasonable, for the importation of Pasht's pussies.
"Arsinoë the fair, the amber-tressed,
Is mine no more;
Cold as the unsunned snows are is her breast,
And closed her door.
No more her ivory feet and tresses braided
Make glad mine eyes;
Snapt are my viol strings, my flowers are faded,
My love-lamp dies.
"Yet, once, for dewy myrtle-buds and roses,
All summer long,
We searched the twilight-haunted garden closes
With jest and song.
Ay, all is over now—my heart hath changed
Its heaven for hell;
And that ill chance which all our love estranged
In this wise fell:
"A little lion, small and dainty sweet,
(For such there be!)
With sea-grey eyes and softly stepping feet,
She prayed of me.
For this, through lands Egyptian far away,
She bade me pass:
But, in an evil hour, I said her nay;
And now, alas!
Far-travelled Nicias hath wooed and won
Arsinoë,
With gifts of furry creatures, white and dun,
From over sea."
It is a melancholy truth that after the "little lion" had been domesticated in Greece, we hear nothing to her credit. Theocritus flouts her with a careless word,
"Cats love to sleep softly;"
and decadent poets, in place of singing her beauty and her grace, as Homer sang of Helen on the battlements of Troy, grow ethical and positively evangelical over her too manifest shortcomings. There was a cat of spirit belonging to the epigrammatist, Agathias, who, when the occasion offered, ate her master's tame partridge, for which deed she has been handed down to posterity as an unnatural and infuriate monster. Agathias solaced himself by writing two poems on the tragedy, one of which has been very charmingly—if very freely—translated by Mr. Richard Garnett.
"O cat in semblance, but in heart akin
To canine raveners, whose ways are sin;
Still at my hearth a guest thou dar'st to be?
Unwhipt of Justice, hast no dread of me?
Or deem'st the sly allurements shall avail
Of purring throat and undulating tail?
No! as to pacify Patroclus dead,
Twelve Trojans by Pelides' sentence bled,
So shall thy blood appease the feathery shade.
And for one guiltless life shall nine be paid."
Poor Pussy! wasting thy soft purrs and delicate blandishments on the destroyer. And, as if the wrath of Agathias were not enough to damn thee forever, Damocharis, a friend and disciple, must needs pour forth his eloquent denunciations, likening thee to one of Aktæon's hounds that tore its master—no such guilt was thine—and reproaching thee for long neglected duties. "And thou, base cat, thinkest only of partridges, while the mice dance and play, regaling themselves upon the dainty food that thou disdainest."
The episode is worthy of Hogarth's pencil;—idleness leading the way, the straight, smooth way to murder and the gallows. Alas! for Egypt's little god in that bleak atmosphere of morality.
Rome honoured, if she did not cherish the cat. The conquerors of the world recognized and respected the indomitable love of liberty which won then, as it wins now, for this small weak animal an independence lost wholly and forever by beasts of many times her strength. The dog serves, the horse, the camel, the elephant serve, and are slaves of man. The cat has never served, save briefly and capriciously, casting aside her allegiance when it pleased her to do so, and turning back to that half savage freedom which she held always in reserve. Libertas sine Labore is, and has ever been, her motto. The cat of Agathias had wearied of civilization and well-doing when she forsook her duties in the pantry, and decided to eat her master's bird. It is true that Pliny, whose admirable imagination deserts him strangely now and then, leaving him stranded on the driest of facts, sees in Pussy little but her usefulness. "She keeps well-filled barns free from mice." He even adds in the same breath that weasels do the work better. Palladius echoes this stupid sentiment, but Romans of more heroic mould valued more heroic traits. Tiberius Gracchus placed an image of the cat within his Temple of Liberty; and, if we may trust that pleasant old book. La Vraye et Parfaite Science des Armoiries, published by Palliot in 1664, more than one Roman legion marched to battle with Pussy blazoned on their banners. The Ordines Augustei carried a sea-green cat, courant; the Felices Seniores a cat, rampant, on a buckler gules; and the Alpini a cat with one eye and one ear, evidently a veteran warrior of the wall.
Coming late to Rome, and winning distinction first as a lover of liberty, half tamed and wholly brave, it was long before Pussy's sweeter qualities were duly exhibited, or valued at their worth. That she was known in pleasure-loving Pompeii is proven by the spirited mosaics in the Museum of Naples, one of which represents her springing upon a partridge, like the "base cat" reproached by Damocharis. There is something indefinably pitiless in the attitude of this animal, a savage and ruthless energy in the shedding of innocent blood, which seems ill-calculated to soften the prejudiced mind. Italy was indeed no school of gentleness. Cruelty had been refined to a pleasure, and mercy had been austerely banished from philosophy. Marcus Aurelius could easily endure to sit for hours in the amphitheatre, bored and distrait, it is true, but with unmoved serenity. The slaughter of a hundred lions afforded him no recreation; but, as he had generously given the animals to be killed for the diversion of simpler souls, he found no fault with their enjoyment of the spectacle. A creature, beautiful and weak, might well be cherished one hour for its beauty, and destroyed the next as a penalty for its weakness. In "Marius the Epicurean" there is a pretty description of a white cat purring its way gracefully among the wine cups at a feast given in honour of Apuleius—"coaxed onward from place to place by those at table, as they reclined easily on their cushions of German eiderdown, spread over the long-legged carved couches." This dainty and somewhat supercilious guest has been brought to the supper by a young Roman; and, surfeited with cajolery, she sinks unconcernedly to sleep, until disturbed by the rude antics of the young Commodus.
"It