Darkness and Dawn; Or, Scenes in the Days of Nero. An Historic Tale

by F. W. Farrar

If there had been a spark of nobleness in the Roman world, the indignation of a people’s moral sense might have sprung to arms and smitten the tyrant while he was yet red-handed from his crime. Nothing was farther from the general intention. The universal desire was to ‘skin and film the ulcerous place’ with adulation and hypocrisy. Men, not naturally evil or case-hardened, were carried away by the tide of complaisance to the imperial murderer. As though to leave no chance for any feelings of penitence to work, all classes began to flood him with congratulations. The fears which at the moment he half mistook for remorse vanished like the early dew, for society seized upon the convention that Agrippina, detected in a plot against the life of her son, had been justly executed. The tribunes and centurions of the Prætorians, Burrus at their head, came to Nero that morning, poured their felicitations upon him, pressed his hands, expressed their effusive joy that he had escaped from so sudden a peril created by his mother’s crime. His friends crowded to the temples to thank the gods for his safety. There was scarcely a town of Campania which did not express its joy by sending deputations and offering victims. Distant provinces caught the infection, and Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul surpassed all the rest by the fulsome entreaty which they sent by their ambassador, Julius Africanus, ‘that Nero would endure his felicity with fortitude!’ Certainly it did not seem as if there were much cause for fear! In a few days Nero became an adept at the counter-hypocrisy with which he feigned to weep over the fate of his mother, and to be grieved by his own deliverance!

But places cannot change their aspect as do the looks of men. From the windows and gardens of Nero’s villa were always visible the sea which he had attempted to pollute, the long line of shore which he had stained with a mother’s blood. The aspect of nature in that lovely spot had lost its fascination. It seemed to be eloquent with mute reproach. And what were those sounds which assailed his ears at the dead of night? What meant that blast of a solitary trumpet, blown by no earthly breath, from the promontory of Misenum? What meant those ghostly wailings which seemed to shriek around his mother’s grave? He could not endure this haunted place. He fled to Naples.

From thence he despatched to the Senate a letter, of which the conceits betrayed, alas! the hand of Seneca. ‘As yet,’ he wrote, ‘I cannot believe, I do not rejoice, that I am safe.’ Men of letters admired the euphuistic phrases and despised their author. The letter did not mention any details, but left it to be inferred that Agrippina, detected in an attempt to murder her son, had committed suicide. And then with unmanly malignity it dwelt on the long catalogue of her crimes—her bitter enmities, her immense ambition, her unscrupulous intrigues. To her it attributed all the cruelties of the reign of Claudius, and it ended by saying that her death was a public blessing. The more cynical of the senators laughed at the absurdities of this missive, for it narrated Agrippina’s shipwreck as though it had been accidental, and tried to gain credence for the gross absurdity that a woman barely saved from drowning had chosen the moment of her rescue to send off to murder her only son in the midst of his fleets and cohorts!

But though men shook their heads at Seneca, they plunged no less emulously into the vortex of criminal adulation. Public thanksgivings were decreed to all the gods; annual games at the Quinquatrus; a golden statue to Minerva in the senate-house, with a statue of the Emperor beside it. The birthday of Agrippina was pronounced accursed. Such abject servility was too much for the haughty spirit of Pætus Thrasea. He rose from his seat and left the senate-house in silence, and a blush rose to the cheek of not a few who did not dare to follow him.

Yet, after all, Nero was so timid that six months elapsed before he ventured once more to face the people of his capital. An eclipse of the sun had happened during the thanksgiving decreed by the Senate. Fourteen regions of the city had been struck by lightning. Would these portents of heaven awaken the tardy indignation of men? Every piece of news, however trivial, frightened him. He was told the ridiculous story that a woman had given birth to a snake. Was that meant by the gods, if there were any, for a scornful symbol of himself? There were hours in which it seemed to him as if the Empire itself would be a poor price for the purchase of one day of the innocence which he had so frightfully sacrificed.

But the foul creatures who swarmed about him assured him with the effrontery of experienced villany that he need not be in the least anxious as to the obsequiousness of the Senate and the zeal of the people.

‘You will find yourself more popular than before,’ they said. ‘Every one detested Agrippina. Go to Rome with confidence, and you will see that you are as much adored as ever.’

They were right in their conjectures. Even Nero was amazed at the abandon of welcome, the delirium of ostentatious applause with which he was received, while his hands were still red-wet with his mother’s blood. The people thronged forth by their tribes to greet him. The senators were in festal array. They were surrounded by their wives and children. Stages had been built all along the road, in which the spectators had purchased their places to look on as at a triumph. Incense burned in the streets; the shouts of myriads of voices rent the air. Rome received him not as a murderer, but rather as a great conqueror or a human god. And he, as he rode in his gilded chariot through those serried files of cheering flatterers, proudly upheld his head, tossed back the curls from his forehead, smiled, and bent low, and, accepting these greetings as a tribute to his merits, drowned deep within his heart all sense of shame. With long retinue and dazzling pomp he visited the Capitol, gave thanks to Jupiter, best and greatest, and returned to the Palace ‘a victor over the public servitude.’

Yet even so he could not escape. He dared not be left alone. The manes of his mother haunted him by day and by night. In vain he practised the old expiatory rites to rid himself of the menacing phantom. On the night of May 13, two months after Agrippina’s death, he determined to go through the mummery of the Lemuralia, which some of his credulous advisers had told him would be efficacious. At midnight, amid the dead silence, he stole with naked feet to the water of the fountain in the atrium, and there, trembling with excitement, washed his hands thrice. Then with his thumb and finger, he filled his mouth with nine black beans, and, full of superstitious horror, flung them one by one behind him over his shoulder, saying each time, ‘With these beans redeem me and mine.’Arrived at his chamber he again dipped his hands in water, and beat a great brazen gong to terrify the pursuing ghost.[73] Then he turned round, and peered with a frightened glance into the darkness; and as he peered—was even this expiation all in vain?—what were those glimmering lights? What was that white and wavy form? A shriek rang through the villa, and Nero sank fainting into the arms of the timid minions who had awaited the result of the expiation and rushed forward at his cry.

The following year, when he had returned to the city, he repeated this antiquated rite, and he commanded the vestals to bear him specially in mind when, on the Ides of May, they flung from the Sublician Bridge into the Tiber the thirty little figures called argei, made of bulrushes, which were supposed to be in lieu of human sacrifices.