FICTIONS OF HISTORY.

Star (Christchurch), 30 September 1893, Page 3

FICTIONS OF HISTORY.

The " Mau in the Iron Ma^k " did not wear a mask of iron. It was black velvet, secured by steel springs. The wonderful Damascus blades that cut bars of iron in two were not superior to the Toledo blades made to-day. Caspar did- not say "Et tv, Brute." Eye-witnesse3 to the assassination deposed that " he died fighting, but silent like a wolf." Bichard 111 wasnojba hunchbaokj bub a .soldier of fine form, come pretentions to good looks, and great personal strength aud courage. Seneca was not a half - Christian philosopher, but a grasping moneylender and usurer, who died worth over 43.000,000. j Muoius Scsvola never put his hand in the fire. The story was a fabrication of a Soman historian hundreds of years after the supposed time. Blondel, the harper, did not discover the prison of King Bichard. Bichard paid his ransom, and the receipt for it is among the Austrian archives. Os sar did not cross the Rubicon j it lay 1 oh the opposite side ofthe Italian peninsula : from the point where he left hiß own poasessions and entered Italy. Augustus was not the public benefactor he is represented. He was the moat exacting tax collector the .Roman world had up to hia time ever seen. - ! Horatiuß never defended the bridge. ! The story was manufactured by the same gifted author who gave the world the ; account of Sea. vola'a heroism. | The Bridge of Sighs at Venice has no [romance worthy the name. Most of the unfortunates who cross it are petty thieves I who are sent to the workhouse. | General Cambronne did not say, "The i guard dies, but does not surrender." The ! words were the invention of a Paris 1 journalist, aud attributed to him. j Fair Rosamund .was not poisoned by ! Queen Eleanor, but, after a long residence I as a nun in the Convent of Gadstow died j greatly esteemed by her associates. | William B'ufus was not accidentally shot j by an arrow from the bow of Walter Tyrrell. j He waa assassinated. His body, when found, bore the marks of three or four sword thrusts. There was probably no such man as ! Romulus. The first historian who mentions him lived at a distance of time so great ac to throw extreme discredit on the story as told by him. i Diogenes never lived in a .tub. The | story that he did so has no better origin I than a comment by a biographer that "a man so crabbed ought to have lived iv a tub like a dog." j Alexander the Great did not weep for I other worlds to conquer. There is reason to suspect that his army met with a serious reverse in India, a fact that induced him to retrace his Bteps. I Vinegar will not split rocks ; so Hannibal could not thus have made his way through ! the Alps. Nor will ib dissolve pearls ; i so that the story, of Cleopatra drinking I pearls melte.d ia vinegap must have been, a j fiction. The immense burning glasses- with which Archimedes burned the ships of the besiegers of Syracuse at ten miles distance were never manufactured, and it is now known that they oould not have, existed.,- ; .•'-..; : ..•.•; The existence of the Colossus of Rhodes is considered by some historians extremely doubtful. There is no evidence' that the ancients were able to cast pieces of metal of such size as must have entered into its composition. "Madcap Harry" was not sent to prison by Sir William Gascoigne, the stern judge, Aor was the latter reappointed by the Prince when he became king, and the story did not appear for one hundred and fifty years after that time. The blood of Bizzio, Mary Stuart's favourite, can not be seen on the floor where he was murdered by Darnley and the other conspirators. What is seen there is a daub of red paint, annually renewed for the benefit of gaping tourists. The Pass of Thermopylae was defended, noh by 300, but by at least 7000 Greeks, or, according to some writers, 12,000. The : 300 were the Spartan contingent, who | showed no more bravery on that occasion j than their companions in arms from other I Greek States. ■ - ..-: i Mary Stuart, of Scotland, was not a beauty. She had cross-eye?, and to save the trouble of having her h_i_ dressed, cut it off close to her head and wore a wig. When, after her death, the executioners lifted her head to show it to the people, the wig came off and displayed a cloße-cropped skull covered with grey hair. Queen Elizabeth was not the angelic creature represented in the histories and poems of her own times. Her hair was red, her temper red-hot. She sometimes drank too much, and at any provocation would carry on like a trooper. She frequently raved at her maids, and sometimes struck, kioked, aud pinched them. Nero waß no monster. His mother, Agrippina, was not put to death by his order, nor did he play upoa his harp, and sing " The Burning of Troy," while Borne was on fire. Our knowledge of him is gained from Tacitus, who hatad him, and from Petroniua Arbiter, who was put to de .th for conspiring againat him. Hannibal did not send three bushels of gold rings, plucked from the handa of Roman knights killed on the field of Cannes, back to Carthage as evidence of his victory. The messenger who carried the news back to the Carthaginian Senate, on concluding his report, "opened his robe and threw out a number of gold rings g..t_-«_.ea oo th&ii-Jd."