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This economy of room is no doubt due to the fact that the 'colonia' was not only a home for time-expired soldiers, but, as Prof. Cagnat has justly observed, a quasi-fortress watching the slopes of Mount Aurès south of it, just as Aosta watched its Alpine valley. As Machiavelli thought it worth while to observe, the shorter the line of a town's defence, the fewer the men who can hold it.
The Duc d'Aumale had saved his life in the Aurés. He was then a young captain. A ball had pierced his body; he fell into a thicket; the Kabyles rushed up to cut off and carry away his head, when the Duc d'Aumale arriving with two officers, a soldier, and a bugler, charged the Kabyles and saved this captain. Having saved him, he loved him. One was grateful, the other was not.
We mean not to deny that there is something in this objection. It might even seem to plead the authority of Scripture in its favour "He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen ?" And it was indeed no new remark in Horace's days, Segnius irritant animos demissa per aures, Quam quæ sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus.
But the settlement was far from being complete and final. As a consequence of the edict, the whole region of the Aures had been in revolution. The Bishop of Bagai, fortified in his episcopal city and basilica, had stood an actual siege from the Roman troops. Almost everywhere the struggle between Donatists and Catholics still went on below the surface.
The old saying still holds good: Aures habent et non audient!* Not only does this passageway exist, but I've taken advantage of it on several occasions. Without it, I wouldn't have ventured today into such a blind alley as the Red Sea." *Latin: "They have ears but hear not." Ed. "Is it indiscreet to ask how you discovered this tunnel?"
The town of Thamugadi, now Timgad, lay on the northern skirts of Mount Aurès, halfway between Constantine and Biskra and about a hundred miles from the Mediterranean coast. Here the emperor Trajan founded in A.D. 100 a 'colonia' on ground then wholly uninhabited, and peopled it with time-expired soldiers from the Third Legion which garrisoned the neighbouring fortress of Lambaesis. The town grew.
There were five compartments in the box: in each of them was a little jar or vase of glass with a round body, a narrow neck, and spreading out a little at the top. The top of each was covered with a plate of metal and on each plate was a word or two in capital letters. On the one in the middle there were the words unge oculos, the other jars had one word apiece, aures, linguam, frontem, pectus.
And you may see the nymphas discentes and the aures satyrorum acutas," cries the chaplain, with a shrug of his shoulders. "That may be as you say, Sampson," Mr. Warrington replies, "but if ever I hear any man speak against my character I'll punish him. Mark that."
He turned the pages with his thumb, stopped at a certain one, opened the book wide on the stove, and read, "'De Denasatis, it is here." And he continued, "Bucca fissa usque ad aures, genezivis denudatis, nasoque murdridato, masca eris, et ridebis semper." "There it is for certain." Then he replaced the book on one of the shelves, growling.
I confess Dido was a very infidel in this point; for she would not believe, as Virgil makes her say, that ever Jupiter would send Mercury on such an immoral errand. But this needs no answer at least, no more than Virgil gives it: "Fata obstant, placidasque viri Deus obstruit aures."
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