The only thing now wanting to render Seba’s supper a worthy specimen of nocturnal Roman feasts was, to produce before the guests one of those spectacles which outrage morals and humanity. Nero’s freed-man had been too well tutored to refuse them this diversion. Young Syrians,[XXXV_95] or bewitching Spanish girls,[XXXV_96] went through lascivious dances,[XXXV_97] which raised no blush on the brow of rigid magistrates, who forgot, in the abode of the vile slave, the respect due to their age and dignity.
After the voluptuous scenes of the lewd Celtiberians, blood was required: for they seem to have been formed by nature to take a strange delight in sudden contrasts. Ten couples of gladiators, armed with swords and bucklers, occupied a space assigned to them, and ten horrible duels recreated the attentive assembly. For a long time nothing was heard but the clash of arms; but the thirst for conquest animated those ferocious combatants, and they rushed with loud cries on one another. Blood flowed on all sides; the couches were dyed with it, and the white robes of the guests were soon spotted. Some of the combatants fell, and the rattles announced approaching death; others preserved, in their last struggle, a funereal silence, or endeavoured to fix their teeth in the flesh of their enemies standing erect beside them.[XXXV_98] The spectators, stupified with wine and good cheer, contemplated this carnage with cold impassibility; they only roused from their torpor when one of those men, happening to trip against a table, struck his head on the ivory, and his antagonist, prompt as lightning, plunged his sword into the throat of his foe, whence torrents of black, reeking blood inundated the polished ivory, and flowed in long streams among the fruits, cups, and flowers.
The deed was applauded; servants washed the tables and the floor with perfumed water, and these stirring scenes were soon forgotten. A last cup was drunk to the good genius,[XXXV_99] whose protection they invoked before returning home.
Meantime a stifling atmosphere pervades every part of the hall, and a hollow noise, rumbling in the distance, excites at intervals in the minds of the guests a sort of undefinable apprehension—the ordinary presage of an unknown but imminent catastrophe. The consuls raise themselves on their couches and listen; their host endeavours to calm their fears; but at this moment a slave, panting for breath, rushes towards Seba, and pronounces a few inarticulate words. “Fire!” cries the anguished freed-man. “Where is the fire?” inquire all the terrified guests, who have heard but this one sinistrous word. “Everywhere!” replies the slave; “it has burst forth simultaneously in every part of the city!” No one waits to hear more. Consuls, senators, knights, musicians, and servants, jostle one another; and, abandoning those who fall, arrive pell-mell at the atrium. The porter still chained, trembles at his post; the flames already envelop the sumptuous edifice—the entire street is one vast brazier! Rome burns, and will soon be a heap of ruins and ashes! Flight is impossible—the flames intercept every issue! * * * Nero has taken his measures well.
We will not attempt to depict the mute but terrible despair of those proud patricians, at bay in the midst of an ocean of fire, in which they are fated ere long to perish. The wreaths of flowers which bind their brows are already parched by the scorching breath of those roaring flames, which engulf and consume everything as they sweep along. A thick smoke begrimes the lustrous robes, whose graceful folds erewhile displayed the exquisite urbanity of Seba’s guests, and which now exhibit only a sad emblem of festive joys. The dread of death, and I know not what strange anguish at this all-important moment, blanch those human faces, to which the choicest wines of Greece and Italy had just given a hue of purple. These men feel—instinct tells them—that life is theirs no longer, and they have not the courage to die!
The opulent freed-man calls to his slaves, and promises them their liberty if they consent to risk their lives in an attempt to save his. But the vile herd is already dispersed; the porter alone remains—for no one has thought to liberate him—and he, in his impotent fury, replies by insulting clamours to the cowardly supplications of his quondam master.
This horrible scene soon changed by the very action of that torrent of fire which was pursuing its devastating course; and the next day, when Aurora appeared, a heap of ruins was all that remained of the odious Seba’s magnificent palace.
The two consuls and some of the senators were fortunate enough to escape the common danger. Less besotted, perhaps, by the wine and good cheer, and finding in despair that incredible energy which sometimes operates the same prodigies as courage, they rushed through the flames, and gained the country, or those obscure portions of the city which the son of Agrippina had apparently forgotten.
Thus it was that Lucius Domitius Nero celebrated the tenth anniversary of his glorious reign. While the fire was rolling on with its resistless flood of flame from temples to palaces, and from the Circus to the Pantheon, the young, poetic Cæsar, his brow bound with laurel, and holding in his hands a golden lyre, viewed from the top of a tower—where he was surrounded by a troop of histrions and buffoons—the conflagration he had just kindled.
And while the imperial Apollo sang some melancholy verses on the fatal destiny of the antique city of Troy, his ignoble courtiers cried with enthusiasm: “May the Gods preserve Nero, their august son, and the delight of the human race!”