Acte, p.1
ACTÉ, page 1
ACTÉ
Translated by Alfred Allinson
Dumas’ first historical novel was published in serial format in 1837 and it is set in ancient times, unlike most of his other works. The author returned to the reign of Nero in the later novel Isaac Laquedem, but sadly it was left unfinished.
Acté hints at the quality and success of Dumas’ upcoming masterpieces, demonstrating his learned knowledge of the classical world, while offering rich historical characters and a compelling love story. The novel begins in 57 AD in the ancient city of Corinth, where many competitors arrive to participate in the Nemean Games. Among them, Lucius, a handsome young Roman meets a comely local girl, whose family welcome the stranger, offering him a place to stay. However, it isn’t long before Lucius appears to be more than an ordinary visitor.
The frontispiece of the first edition
An original illustration
An original illustration
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
A serial part of the novel
The 1951 Hollywood epic inspired by the novel
INTRODUCTION
IT has been said of Dumas the son that to preserve his plays from oblivion he furnished them with imperishable prefaces. It was not in the father’s nature to fear oblivion for his dramas, but nevertheless he, too, frequently wrote a preface; sometimes expressive of thanks to the actors or to the public, but more commonly descriptive of his own exultation at the fall of the curtain on the first performance. Nothing is more characteristic of the man, or more curious, than the preface to his Caligula, produced at the Théâtre Français on the 26th December, 1837. Dumas states that finding his study of the Latin classics insufficient for his purpose, he went to Rome. There he remained for two months, visiting, he says, the Vatican by day and the Coliseum by night, and rebuilding in imagination the city as it appeared to the Emperor. He thus re-peopled the empty houses from the patrician’s palace to the oilseller’s hut, with the result, he proceeds to narrate, that a great ladder like that of Jacob appeared to him in a dream filled with beings ascending and descending, beginning with the Emperor and ending with the slave. This was not enough: he went to them, opened their tunics, raised their cloaks, and found the men themselves, Caligula, although not a wholly satisfactory play, has in fact this indispensable merit, that it lives and moves and that all its characters and scenes besides being full of passion are perfectly realised and coloured. One of Dumas’ most useful gifts was his power of identifying himself with his subject and, as it were, abstracting himself into it. Without this faculty all his historical researches would have been of little avail; with it, when writing Caligula, he was a citizen of ancient Rome, and what of the inhabitants that peopled it he did not know he contrived to divine!
Dumas’ researches for Caligula led him on to study the strange career of Nero; and the character of the freedwoman Acté, Nero’s mistress, once found, he saw his way to a historical romance. He brought to it his fresh vivid imagination, his eye for colour, and what an ardour and vigour! Acté, written in 1838, was an immense advance on anything he had previously accomplished in the field of historical fiction. Indeed he had only produced some spirited “Chroniques,” inspired by de Barante’s History of the Dukes of Burgundy, and Gaule et France, intended as an introduction to them. The publication of Acté fulfilled expectations raised but not satisfied by his previous work.
M. Hippolyte Parigot, whose recent monograph has filled the niche in the French Great Writers Series too long left unoccupied by the bust of Dumas, says of Acté, “Scott could not have written the first two hundred pages. Renan, who recounted the martyrdom of Blandina, would not have been ashamed of them. Tacitus, Suetonius, and St. Paul are authorities for his facts. Dumas does not advance a single step without a document on which to take his stand. Nero’s triumphal entry into the free cities through breaches made in the battlements by the citizens, his ‘Golden House,’ his colossal statue, the enormous porticos, the suppers at Baise, the games in the circus, the fight of Silas with the beasts, the estrade du prince, the letters from Gaul which interrupt the games — the whole story.
in short — including Nero’s flight and his death in the villa of Plancus — is drawn from the best sources. But with what grace — with what wealth of imagination does Dumas make this prodigious epoch live again before our eyes! As he unfolds the story with consummate art, all these pictures, brought together with such lavish expenditure of intellectual force, become one living whole of which we form a part. We glide with Sporus over the lake, bordered by vast stretches of turf where, in the midst of simulated ruins, wild beasts gambol as if in an African desert. We penetrate into the thick night of the forest of pines and sycamores, whose dense foilage deadens the plaintive cries of the Christians crowded together in the adjacent prison; we gaze on the Emperor-god, Lucius Nero the beautiful — the golden-bearded, as clad in white tunic and crowned with olive he languidly reposes on his couch — Singer and Master of the World, until we are compelled to bow before the grandeur of the imagination that can thus infuse life into dead documents and restore monuments that time had crumbled into dust.”
Unfortunately, while Dumas was still writing the story, his excellent mother, whom he had brought to Paris from his birthplace, died on 1st August, 1838. It would appear that the conclusion of the romance was wanted by the newspaper in which it was running as a serial, and that in his trouble finding his raw material ready to his hand in Chateaubriand’s Martyrs, he plagiarized extensively from it, thus sacrificing the personal interest of his characters. Having so brought the book to a conclusion, Dumas, who deeply lamented his mother and was advised to travel, left for a tour in Germany with Gérard de Nerval.
Acté is usually considered not to have appeared in book form till 1839. A copy in our possession, however, published in Brussels by Adolphe Wahlen et Compagnie is dated 1838. The first Paris edition, issued by Dumont, appears to be dated 1839 as to some copies and 1840 as to others. The second volume is made up with Monseigneur Gaston de Phébus, a story derived from Froissart. Acted may be usefully compared with Dean Farrar’s Darkness and Dawn, or Scenes in the Life of Nero, and with Mr. Bernard W. Henderson’s brilliant study The Life and Principate of the Emperor Nero. In the latter will be found a full account of Claudia Acté. Two romances on the same subject are Sienkiewicz’s celebrated Quo Vadis and Mr. Hugh Westbury’s Acté.
R. S. G.
TO
THE MEMORY OF MY VERY HONOURED
MOTHER
WHO DIED WHILE I WAS
FINISHING THIS WORK
ALEX DUMAS.
CHAPTER I
ON the seventh of May (the month called Thargelion by the Greeks) in the year 57 A.D., and eight hundred and ten years after Rome was founded, a girl of fifteen or sixteen, tall, handsome, and fleet as the huntress Diana, passed through the west gate of Corinth and proceeded towards the sea-shore. On reaching a small meadow bordered on one side by a grove of olives, on the other by a stream shaded by orange-trees and oleanders, she stopped and began to look for wild flowers. She paused for a moment in indecision between the violets and gladioli which flourished beneath the shade of the olives, and the daffodils and water-lilies growing on the banks of the stream or floating on its surface; soon, however, she decided in favour of the latter, and, bounding like a young fawn, ran towards the water.
On reaching the bank of the stream she stopped; the speed with which she had run had loosened her long hair; she knelt down at the water’s edge, looked at herself in the stream, and smiled to see herself so beautiful. She was, indeed, one of the loveliest maidens of Achaia, with dark, voluptuous eyes, an Ionic nose, and lips of coral; her body, firm as marble, yet at the same time supple as the reed, resembled a statue of Phidias animated by Prometheus, though her feet, apparently too small to support the weight of her frame, seemed out of proportion, and might have constituted a defect, if you could have dreamed of reproaching a girl with such an imperfection. At any rate, the nymph Pyrené, who, true woman that she was, lent her the mirror of her tears, could not refrain from reproducing her image in all its grace and purity. After a moment of silent contemplation, the girl divided her hair into three tresses, made two plaits of those which fell over her temples, joined them together at the top of her head, fixed them with a garland of oleander and orange-blossoms which she wove then and there, and, letting the tress which fell down her back float like the mane on the helmet of Pallas, leaned over the water to quench the thirst which had drawn her to this side of the meadow, but which, urgent as it was, had nevertheless yielded to a need still more urgent, that of assuring herself that she was the most beautiful of the daughters of Corinth. The reality and the reflection now approached one another imperceptibly; you would have said that two sisters, a nymph and a naiad, were about to join in a sweet embrace; their lips met in a moist bath, the water quivered, and a light breeze, passing through the air like a voluptuous breath, rained down upon the stream a pink and scented snow which the current carried away to the sea.
As she r ose from the ground, the girl directed her eyes to the gulf and remained for an instant motionless with curiosity; a galley with two banks of oars, with gilded hull and purple sails, was making for the shore, urged by the wind that blew from Delphi; although still a quarter of a mile distant, the sailors could be heard singing a chorus to Neptune. The girl recognised the Phrygian mode, which was consecrated to religious hymns; but, instead of the rough voices of the mariners of Calydon or Cephalonia, the notes which reached her ear, though scattered and weakened by the breeze, were skilfully modulated and sweet as those sung by the priestesses of Apollo. Attracted by this melody, the young Corinthian maiden got up, broke off some boughs of orange and oleander destined to form a second garland which she intended on her return to deposit in the temple of Flora, to whom the month of May was consecrated; then with slow steps, at once curious and timid, she advanced towards the shore, weaving the scented branches which she had broken off by the bank of the stream.
The bireme had now drawn nearer, and the girl could not only hear the voices, but even distinguish the faces of the musicians; the song consisted of an invocation to Neptune, chanted by a single leader and repeated in chorus, with a rhythm so sweet and well balanced that it imitated the regular movement of the sailors bending to their oars and the oars beating the water. The principal singer, who also appeared to be the master of the vessel, was standing at the prow, accompanying himself on a three-stringed lyre resembling the instrument which sculptors depict in the hands of Euterpé, the Muse of Harmony. At his feet, covered with a long Asiatic robe, reclined a slave whose dress belonged equally to either sex — so that the girl could not distinguish if it were a man or a woman; while the melodious rowers stood up beside their benches and clapped their hands in measured time, thanking Neptune for the favourable wind which was bringing them rest from their toil.
This spectacle, which two hundred years earlier would scarcely have attracted the notice of a child looking for shells among the sand, excited the girl’s astonishment to the highest pitch. Corinth was no longer at this period what she had been in the days of Sylla — the rival and the sister of Athens. Taken by assault in the year of Rome 608 (146 B.C.) by the Consul Mummius, she had seen her citizens put to the sword, her wives and children sold as slaves, her houses burnt, her walls demolished, her statues sent to Rome, and her pictures, for one of which Attaeus had offered a million sesterces, used as a carpet by those Roman soldiers whom Polybius found playing dice on the masterpiece of Aristides. Rebuilt eighty years later by Julius Caesar, who restored the walls and sent thither a Roman colony, Corinth had resumed her life, but was still far from having recovered her ancient splendour. However, the Roman Proconsul, with the view of restoring to her some importance, had announced for the 10th of May and following days, Nemean, Isthmian, and Floral games, in which the strongest athlete, the most skilful charioteer,, and the most expert singer would be crowned. Consequently, for some days past, a crowd of strangers of all nationalities had been travelling towards the capital of Achaia, attracted either by curiosity or the desire to carry off prizes. For the time being this event restored to the town, still feeble from loss of blood and treasure, the pomp and fame of her ancient days. Some had arrived in chariots, some on horseback; others, again, in vessels which they had hired or built; but none of these last had entered the harbour in so splendid a ship as the vessel which at this moment touched that shore for which, out of sheer love of it, Apollo and Neptune had contended in days of old.
Hardly had the bireme been drawn up on the sands, when the sailors set against her prow a ladder of citron-wood inlaid with brass and silver, and the singer, throwing his lyre over his shoulder, stepped ashore leaning on the slave whom we have seen reclining at his feet. The former was a handsome man of seven or eight and twenty, with fair hair, blue eyes, and golden beard; he was dressed in a purple tunic, a blue chlamys spangled with gold, and wore round his neck knotted in front, a scarf, the floating ends of which fell down to his girdle. The other appeared about ten years younger; he was a lad hardly entered on manhood, with slow gait and a look of sadness and suffering; the freshness of his cheeks, however, would have put a woman’s complexion to shame, his rosy and transparent skin might have contended for delicacy with that of the most voluptuous maidens of effeminate Athens, while his white, plump hand seemed by its shape and weakness much more designed to turn a spindle or ply a needle than to wield sword or javelin, emblems of the man and the warrior. He was dressed, as we have said, in a white robe embroidered with golden palms, which descended below the knee; his flowing locks fell over his bare shoulders, and a little mirror framed in pearls was suspended by a gold chain from his neck.
As he was about to set foot to the ground his companion checked him sharply; the youth started.
“What is the matter, master?” said he, in a soft and timid voice.
“The matter is that you were about to touch the shore with your left foot, and by this imprudence to expose us to the loss of the whole fruit of my calculations, thanks to which we have arrived on the day of the Nones, which is a good omen.”
“You are right, master,” said the youth; and he placed his right foot on the shore, his companion doing the same.
“Stranger,” said the girl, who had heard these words pronounced in the Ionic dialect, addressing the elder of the two travellers, “the land of Greece, with whatever foot you touch it, is propitious to any one who lands thereon with friendly intent; it is the land of love, of poetry, and of combat; it has crowns for lovers, for poets, and for warriors. Whoever you may be, stranger, accept this wreath while waiting for the one you have, doubtless, come to seek.”
The young man eagerly took the garland offered him by the Corinthian maiden and placed it on his head.
“The gods smile upon us,” cried he. “See, Sporus, the orange, that apple of the Hesperides whose golden fruit gave victory to Hippomenes by delaying the course of Atalanta, and the oleander, tree beloved of Apollo. What is your name, prophetess of good fortune?”
“I am called Acté,” answered the girl with a blush.
“Acté!” cried the elder of the two travellers. “Do you hear, Sporus? A fresh augury: Acte — that is to say, the shore. You see the land of Corinth was awaiting me to crown me.”
“What is there astonishing in that? are you not predestined, Lucius?” answered the youth.
“If I mistake not,” inquired the girl timidly, “you come to contest for one of the prizes offered to the victors by the Roman Proconsul?”
“You have received the talent of divination as well as the gift of beauty,” said Lucius.
“And you, no doubt, have some relation in the town?”
“All my family is at Rome.”
“Some friend, perhaps?”
“My only friend is the one you see here, and he, like myself, is a stranger to Corinth.”
“Some acquaintance, then?”
“Not one.”
“Our house is large, and my father hospitable,” continued the girl. “Will Lucius deign to give us the preference? We will pray Castor and Pollux to be favourable to him.”
“Might you not be their sister Helen?” interrupted Lucius with a smile. “It is said that she loved to bathe in a fountain which cannot be far from here; and doubtless this fountain had the gift of prolonging life and preserving beauty. Venus must have confided the secret to Paris, and Paris to you. If it be so, conduct me, fair Acté, to this fountain; for, now that I have seen you, I would live for ever, in order to see you always.”
“Alas! I am no goddess,” answered Acté, “nor does Helen’s fount possess this wonderful privilege. However, you are not wrong as regards its situation; there it is, a few yards from us, throwing its waters into the sea from the top of yonder cliff.”
“Then the temple that rises near it is Neptune’s?”
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