CHAPTER XXV
THE SPEAKING OF EUTYCHUS
The imperial ruin drooped in the gilded lectica, now comatose, now animate. Under the purple robe the long, old, wasted limbs vibrated and the gems, quivering on the gnarled fingers, scintillated incessantly. Now that the rich winds from the gardens of Tusculum breathed on him, he cursed and groped for his mantle; again, when the inimitable sun of the Alban Hills smiled on him, his face purpled with suffusions of heat. Now that his wrinkled blue lids drooped half-way, Euodus, who walked by his side, told himself that he looked on death; but when the sunken eyes unclosed, he had to say that the will therein was immortal.
It was a great, withered, tall, old frame, diseased and fallen into decay. Life seldom of its own accord clings with tenacity to so ancient and utter a ruin. Mind stood in the way of the soul's egress and penned it into its dilapidated shell. It was a habit Cæsar's mind had of blocking people, things and himself. A creature of contradicting impulses, affectionate, sensitive, soldierly, immeasurably capable, with harsh standards of uprightness for others, stoic, enduring, ruggedly simple for the time, he was on the other hand one of the bloodiest and most unnatural monsters that ever disgraced the throne of the Cæsars. Moody, taciturn, perverse, superstitious, unspeakably sensual and cruel, yet withal an admirer of honor, the inalienable friend of the inalienable servant, he was a Roman emperor in every phase of his many-sided nature. It is not recorded that any ever loved Tiberius; neither is it recorded that any ever failed to respect him.
He was finishing his twenty-fifth year as Emperor of the World, but of late, Macro's capacities as prætorian prefect had been enlarged to those of vice-regent, and Cæsar returned from Capri, his retreat from the trying climate of Rome, only on occasions.
Beside him walked eight prætorian guards, picked, not for appearance but for age and integrity. There walked Gallus who had followed Augustus, thirty years before; Attius Paulus, who had one hundred and thirty-nine wounds on his huge hulk; Severus Vespasian, who had been a soldier forty years and had twice refused to be retired; Plautius Asper who had been surnamed Leonidas, because he and a handful had held a German defile in the face of a whole barbarian army—and lived to refuse to be knighted. If Cæsar spoke to one, the answer came in monosyllables and with a touch of the helmet. Flattery never passed their lips, but if one lent his arm to the tall old emperor it was done with a rude tenderness that even the most polished courtier could not have improved. And Tiberius, being blunt and impatient of pretenses, walled himself away from the rest of his following with this bulwark of dependable ruggedness.
After his lectica came another, borne by four Georgian youths. Within lounged the latest of Tiberius' favorite ladies, Euodus' daughter, the Lady Junia.
They had passed the corner of Cicero's villa when a litter approached from an intersecting avenue and was set down.
A woman stepped out. White her hair, her dress the ancient palla and stola of white and purple, her jewels, amethysts. The rheumy emperor saw her imperfectly.