Blood and Guts In Carthage
Can you ID, without the aid of Google, the author behind the following passage of heroic bad-assery?
Matho had at first refrained from fighting, the better to command the Barbarians all at once. By degrees he had drawn near; the smell of blood, the sight of carnage, and the tumult of clarions had at last made his heart leap. Then he had gone back into his tent, and throwing off his cuirass had taken his lion's skin as being more convenient for battle. The snout fitted upon his head, bordering his face with a circle of fangs; the two fore-paws were crossed upon his breast, and the claws of the hinder ones fell beneath his knees.
He had kept on his strong waist-belt, wherein gleamed a two-edged axe, and with his great sword in both hands he had dashed impetuously through the breach. Like a pruner cutting willow-branches and trying to strike off as much as possible so as to make the more money, he marched along mowing down the Carthaginians around him. Those who tried to seize him in flank he knocked down with blows of the pommel; when they attacked him in front he ran them through; if they fled he clove them. Two men leaped together upon his back; he bounded backwards against a gate and crushed them. His sword fell and rose. It shivered on the angle of a wall. Then he took his heavy axe, and front and rear he ripped up the Carthaginians like a flock of sheep.
Is it Robert E. Howard? Fritz Leiber?
Those of you with the smug smiles on your faces already know the answer - it’s Gustave Flaubert, author of Madame Bovary. This is from Salammbo, his 1862 follow-up novel, a thrilling exercise in blood and thunder set during the mercenary revolt against Carthage in the third century BC.
I was not hip to this until recently, when I came across a reference to it in the midst of some research into the surrealist movement of the 20s and 30s. According to the Wikipedia, it’s not well known in English. (It’s perhaps better known as the source of several abortive operas by Mussorgsky and Rachmaninoff.) Its failure to earn a reputation in the English-language world isn’t surprising. Its unflinchingly gruesome violence is still shocking today, and it’s hard to imagine it earning an appreciative audience in Victorian literary salons. I was reminded in some ways of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Here, however, we get less of a sense of apocalyptic moral degradation as an immersion in an alien era that predates our sense of morality.
Flaubert exhaustively researched his subject matter, and any history or fantasy buff should check it out for the evocative density of its descriptions. Any GM worth her D20s will find it packed with eminently stealable images and situations. Take the battle that swings against the Carthaginians in the following manner:
They were re-forming their lines enraged at having been conquered without a fight, when they discovered a vat of petroleum which had no doubt been abandoned by the Carthaginians. Then Spendius had some pigs carried off from the farms, smeared them with bitumen, set them on fire, and drove them towards Utica.
The elephants were terrified by the flames and fled. The ground sloped upwards, javelins were thrown at them, and they turned back;-and with great blows of ivory and trampling feet they ripped up the Carthaginians, stifled them, flattened them. The Barbarians descended the hill behind them; the Punic camp, which was without entrenchments was sacked at the first rush, and the Carthaginians were crushed against the gates.
It’s on Gutenberg, but the effect may be stronger on those around you if you grab a print copy. While you’re home with the family this holiday season, impress them with your literary prowess by busting out some Flaubert on them. They don’t have to know how pulpily thrilling it all is.