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Galleporto Bavicarius Directory 08
Page 07
Duvaucel affirms that he has seen the females carry their young to the water-side and there wash their faces, in spite of resistance and cries. They are gentle and affectionate in captivity--full of tricks and pettishness, like spoiled children, and yet not devoid of a certain conscience, as an anecdote, told by Mr. Bennett will show. It would appear that his Gibbon had a peculiar inclination for disarranging things in the cabin. Among these articles a piece of soap would especially attract his notice, and for the removal of this he had been once or twice scolded. "One morning," says Mr. Bennett, "I was writing, the Ape being present in the cabin, when, casting my eyes toward him, I saw the little fellow taking the soap. I watched him without him perceiving that I did so: and he occasionally would cast a furtive glance toward the place where I sat. I pretended to write; he seeing me busily occupied, took the soap, and moved away with it in his paw. When he had walked half the length of the cabin, I spoke quietly, without frightening him. The instant he found I saw him he walked back again and deposited the soap nearly in the same place from whence he had taken it. There was certainly something more than instinct in that action: he evidently betrayed a consciousness of having done wrong both by his first and last actions--and what is reason if that is not an exercise of it?"
He slaughtered the Boii without mercy, and made it one of the claims of his triumph that he had left only children and old men alive. This warlike people was now thoroughly subdued, and from henceforth Cisalpine Gaul became a Roman province, and gradually adopted the language and customs of Rome. The submission of the people was secured by the foundation of new colonies and the formation of military roads. In B.C. 190 a colony was established at Bononia, now Bologna, in the country of the Boii, and six years afterward others were also founded at Mutina (Modena) and Parma. A military road made by M. AEmilius Lepidus, Consul for B.C. 180, and called the Via AEmilia, was a continuation of the Via Flaminia, and ran from Ariminum past Placentia, Mutina, and Parma to Placentia. The subjugation of the Ligurians was a longer and more difficult task. These hardy mountaineers continued the war, with intermissions, for a period of eighty years. The Romans, after penetrating into the heart of Liguria, were seldom able to effect more than to compel the enemy to disperse, and take refuge in their villages and castles, of which the latter were mountain fastnesses, in which they were generally able to defy their pursuers. But into the details of these long-protracted and inglorious hostilities it is unnecessary to enter.
It is, at any rate, certain that after St. Chrysostom Christmas was observed on the 25th of December in East and West alike, except in the Armenian Church, which still remains faithful to January 6th. St. Chrysostom, who died in the beginning of the fifth century, informs us, in one of his Epistles, that Julius, on the solicitation of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, caused strict inquiries to be made on the subject, and thereafter, following what seemed to be the best authenticated tradition, settled authoritatively the 25th of December as the anniversary of Christ's birth, the _Festorum omnium metropolis_, as it is styled by Chrysostom. It may be observed, however, that some have represented this fixing of the day to have been accomplished by St. Telesphorus, who was Bishop of Rome A.D. 127-139, but the authority for the assertion is very doubtful.
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