No More Learning

It is probable that Livy is correct when he
says that the Roman general, in the hour of peril, vowed a temple
to Castor. If so, nothing could be more natural than that the
multitude should ascribe the victory to the favor of the Twin
Gods. When such was the prevailing sentiment, any man who chose
to declare that, in the midst of the confusion and slaughter, he
had seen two godlike forms on white horses scattering the
Latines, would find ready credence. We know, indeed, that in
modern times a very similar story actually found credence among a
people much more civilized than the Romans of the fifth century
before Christ. A chaplain of Cortes, writing about thirty years
after the conquest of Mexico, in an age of printing presses,
libraries, universities, scholars, logicians, jurists, and
statesmen, had the face to assert that, in one engagement against
the Indians, St. James had appeared on a gray horse at the head
of the Castilian adventurers. Many of those adventurers were
living when this lie was printed. One of them, honest Bernal
Diaz, wrote an account of the expedition. He had the evidence of
his own senses against the legend; but he seems to have
distrusted even the evidence of his own senses. He says that he
was in the battle, and that he saw a gray horse with a man on his
back, but that the man was, to his thinking, Francesco de Morla,
and not the ever-blessed apostle St. James. "Nevertheless,"
Bernal adds, "it may be that the person on the gray horse was
the glorious apostle St. James, and that I, sinner that I am, was
unworthy to see him. " The Romans of the age of Cincinatus were
probably quite as credulous as the Spanish subjects of Charles
the Fifth. It is therefore conceivable that the appearance of
Castor and Pollux may be become an article of faith before the
generation which had fought at Regillus had passed away.
Nor
could anything be more natural than that the poets of the next
age should embellish this story, and make the celestial horsemen
bear the tidings of victory to Rome.

Many years after the temple of the Twin Gods had been built in
the Forum, an important addition was made to the ceremonial by
which the state annually testified its gratitude for their
protection. Quintus Fabius and Publius Decius were elected
Censors at a momentous crisis. It had become absolutely necessary
that the classification of the citizens should be revised. On
that classification depended the distribution of political power.
Party spirit ran high; and the republic seemed to be in danger of
falling under the dominion either of a narrow oligarchy or of an
ignorant and headstrong rabble. Under such circumstances, the
most illustrious patrician and the most illustrious plebeian of
the age were entrusted with the office of arbitrating between the
angry factions; and they performed their arduous task to the
satisfaction of all honest and reasonable men.

One of their reforms was the remodelling of the equestrian order;
and, having effected this reform, they determined to give to
their work a sanction derived from religion. In the chivalrous
societies of modern times,--societies which have much more than
may at first sight appear in common with with the equestrian
order of Rome,--it has been usual to invoke the special
protection of some Saint, and to observe his day with peculiar
solemnity. Thus the Companions of the Garter wear the image of
St. George depending from their collars, and meet, on great
occasions, in St. George's Chapel. Thus, when Louis the
Fourteenth instituted a new order of chivalry for the rewarding
of military merit, he commended it to the favor of his own
glorified ancestor and patron, and decreed that all the members
of the fraternity should meet at the royal palace on the feast of
St. Louis, should attend the king to chapel, should hear mass,
and should subsequently hold their great annual assembly. There
is a considerable resemblance between this rule of the order of
St. Louis and the rule which Fabius and Decius made respecting
the Roman knights.