Crassus. Hugo no doubt refers to M. Licinius
Crassus (died 53 B.C.), the Triumvir, who, when praetor,
led an army against the revolted gladiators under
Spartacus. He twice defeated them and subsequently
crucified or hung, along the road from Capua to Rome,
six thousand slaves who had been taken prisoners.
Epaphrodite. Epaphroditus, a freedman
and favourite of the Emperor Nero, was the master
of Epictetus, the lame slave and Stoic philosopher,
who was amongst the greatest of pagan moralists.
Epaphroditus, who treated his slave with great cruelty,
is said to have been one day twisting his leg for
amusement. Epictetus said, ‘If you continue,
you will break my leg.’ Epaphroditus went
on, the leg was broken, and Epictetus only said, ’Did
I not tell you that you would break it?’
Hugo seems to have in mind the short reigns of Galba
(r. A.D. 68-9), Otho (r. A.D. 69), and Vitellius
(r. A.D. 69), all of whom perished by violence.
Vitellius was famous even among the later Romans
for his gluttony and voracious appetite. During
the four months of his reign he is said to have spent
seven millions sterling on the pleasures of his table.
When at last the people rose against him, and the soldiers
proclaimed another emperor, Vitellius was found hiding
in his palace. He was dragged out into the Forum
and killed on the Gemoniae (les Gemonies),
a staircase which went up the Capitoline Hill and
on which the corpses of criminals were exposed before
being thrown into the Tiber. This is the Escalier
referred to in the next line.
l. 57. These tortures were not known in Rome.
They suggest rather the Middle Ages.
le cirque. The circus where chariot-races
took place. Hugo seems to be confusing it with
the Colosseum, where the gladiatorial combats were
fought.
Le noir gouffre cloaque. The Cloaca Maxima
was the great sewer of Rome. It is still in existence
and in use. Hugo here first makes it the symbol
of the destruction towards which the Roman Empire was
tending, and then treats it half as a concrete reality,
half as a figure for some underworld in which dethroned
but living emperors meet. This blending of the
symbol and the thing symbolized is characteristic
of the poet.
chiffres du fatal nombre: the figures
or digits that stand for the doomed number, i.e.
the number with which a doomed man is marked.
Attila, the famous king of the Huns, ‘the
Scourge of God’ as he was called, reigned A.D.
434-53.
The poem is founded on the ‘Chanson de Girart
de Viane,’ one of the Carolingian cycles of
epic poems, written by Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube, a
poet of Champagne who lived in the first half of the
thirteenth century.
The story, as told in the Chanson, is as follows:—
