From the Roman age,
however, I take but two episodes, for I find that to write this town's
history were to write the history of half the Mediterranean world. When
the slaves rose in the Servile War, they intrenched themselves on this
hill, and in their hands the city bore its siege by the Roman consul as
hardily as was ever its custom. Cruel they were, no doubt, and
vindictive. With horror Monsignore relates that they were so resolved
not to yield that, starving, they ate their children, their wives, and
one another; and he rejoices when they were at last betrayed and
massacred, and this disgrace was wiped away. I hesitate. I cannot feel
regret when those whom man has made brutal answer brutally to their
oppressors. I have enough of the old Taorminian spirit to remember that
the slaves, too, fought for liberty. I am sorry for those penned and
dying men; their famine and slaughter in these walls were least horrible
for their part in the catastrophe, if one looks through what they did to
what they were, and remembers that the civilization they violated had
stripped them of humanity.
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