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"'This man, said he, 'employs our ships as buckets to draw water, and, boxing about our sackbuts, as if they were unworthy to be associated with him, drives them from his company with disgrace. Such was the success of the siege on the side of the sea. "Appius also, on his part, having met with the same obstacles in his approaches, was in like manner forced to abandon his design.
There was at the same time a triumphant sound of drums and trumpets, clarions and sackbuts, mingled with the sweet melody of the dulcimer, which came swelling in bursts of harmony that seemed to rise up to the heavens.* * Cura de los Palacios, c. 92.
The bell in the tower, used only upon great occasions, pealed forth merrily. The musicians stationed in court, terrace, and hall struck up, and viols, sackbuts, cornets and recorders sounded, while from the retainers and people who thronged the roads and the court there went up a great shout of acclamation as a glittering cavalcade appeared.
With trumpets, sackbuts, and horns the Egyptians made their assault, and the Lord thundered in the heavens, and the Most High uttered His voice. In vain the Egyptians marched forward in orderly battle array; the Lord deprived them of their standards, and they were thrown into wild confusion.
In this opera there were choruses of a hundred virgins and a hundred soldiers; a hundred horsemen in steel armor; a hundred performers on trumpets, cornets, sackbuts, drums, flutes, and other instruments, on horseback and on foot; two lions led by two Turks, and two elephants led by two Indians; Berenice's triumphal car drawn by four horses, and six other cars with spoils and prisoners, drawn by twelve horses.
So the Tens and Nines began to blow on their flutes and pipes; the Eights and Sevens played on their sackbuts and viols; and even the Twos and Threes began to beat madly on their drums. When this tumultous gust of music came, it swept away at one blast all those sighings and mopings. And then what a torrent of laughter and words poured forth!
Or of harps, lutes, dulcimers, sackbuts, psalteries, and all kinds of instruments, he might have added; all of which, together with all rites, postures, pacings, and offerings, were nothing to him unless channels through which the divine li might be induced to flow. Yet on his wanderings, by the roadside, in lonely places, he would go through ceremonies with his disciples. Why?
Even the changing colours of the lights referred to the course of growth and decay in the universe and in human life, and the magnificent close of the chant of homage which represented the reception of the royal soul into the essence of the deity, the apotheosis of the sovereign, was well suited to stir the heart; for a sea of light unexpectedly flooded the whole procession and, while its glow irradiated the huge pile of the palace, the sea with its forest of ships and masts, and the shore with its temples, pylons, obelisks, and superb buildings, all the choruses, accompanied by the music of sackbuts, cymbals, and lutes, blended in a mighty hymn, whose waves of sound rose to the star-strewn sky and reached the open sea beyond the Pharos.
This man, said he, employs our ships as buckets to draw water: and boxing about our sackbuts, as if they were unworthy to be associated with him, drives them from his company with disgrace. Such was the success of the siege on the side of the sea." Subsequently, however, Marcellus took the city by strategy, and Archimedes was killed, contrary, it is said, to the express orders of Marcellus.
The moment the strange concourse, human and mythological, began to move, the conch-shells, horns, trumpets, sackbuts, pipes, dulcimers, flutes, and harps rent the air with wild wailing; but above the din rose the deep, booming, measured beat of the death-drums.
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