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

by F. W. Farrar

‘Like to like,’ whispered Tigellinus. ‘He is half of slave-origin himself.’

‘And what may your origin be?’ asked Vestinus, to whom the remark had been made, and who loathed Tigellinus.

The rumour had spread that all the slaves of Pedanius were to be executed, and the attitude of the people grew very threatening. Many of them had been slaves themselves, and many of them lived in intimacy with the slave population, which immensely outnumbered the freedmen. Familiar with the insolence and the exactions of the wealthy, they assembled in throngs and demanded that there should be a trial, and that the innocent should be spared. Their language became so menacing that the Senate was hastily convened. It was hoped by all the more just and kind of the senators that mild counsels would prevail, and the Silanian decree be repealed or modified. They pointed out that the extreme rarity of the crime showed that the peril was not great; that, in this particular instance, Pedanius, besides being a merciless master, had provoked his own fate; that there was not a tittle of evidence to prove the complicity of the familia in this deed of isolated vengeance; that it would be monstrous to kill innocent boys and girls, and faithful men and women, for one madman’s crime. But the Senate was carried away partly by the selfish fears of many of its members, and partly by the impassioned speech of Cassius Longinus. An eminent jurist, a conservative who considered the traditions of the past incomparably superior to the wisdom of the present, a man of great wealth, high rank, and a certain Roman integrity, he rose in his place, and threw the weight of his influence into the scale of the old pagan ruthlessness.

‘Often have I been present, Conscript Fathers,’ he said, ‘at meetings of the Senate in which I have only protested by my silence against the innovations which are almost invariably for the worse. I did not wish you to think that I was unduly biassed by my personal studies, nor did I wish to weaken such weight as I may possess by too frequent and fruitless interpositions. But to-day the commonwealth demands my undivided efforts. A consular of Rome has been murdered in his own house by a slave’s treachery, and an unrepealed decree of the Senate threatens punishment to the whole family of slaves who neither prevented nor revealed the plot. Decree impunity for them, that when the chief magistracy of the city has been no protection we may each of us, forsooth, be defended by our own dignity! Who can be protected by any number of slaves, if four hundred were not enough to protect Pedanius Secundus? If fear did not suffice to make his slaves vigilant, which of us will be safe? There are some who do not blush to pretend,’ he continued, darting an angry glance at Seneca, ‘that the murderer did but avenge his own wrongs! Let us, then, pronounce at once that Pedanius was justly murdered! Are we to argue a case which our wiser ancestors have already decided? Why, even if the decision had now to be made for the first time, do you imagine that a slave would have had the daring to murder his master without one threat, without one rash murmur about his design? He concealed his plan, forsooth; he prepared his dagger, and no one knew of it! Could he, then, with equal facility pass through the slaves who were on night-watch, unfasten the doors of the bedchamber, carry in a light, perpetrate the bloody deed, without one person being aware of it? Guilt betrays itself beforehand in many ways. If slaves reveal to us our peril, we can live, though we be single among multitudes, safe among those who tremble for themselves—at the worst not unavenged among the guilty. Our ancestors looked with suspicion on the character of slaves, even when the slaves, born on their estates or in their houses, had learnt from infancy to love their master. But in these days we count nations among our households. Their rites are different; their religions are foreign or nil. We cannot keep in order this sink and scum of humanity except by fear. But, you say, “some of the innocent will perish among them.” Be it so! Are no brave soldiers beaten to death with rods when a routed army is punished by decimation? No great example can be inflicted without some unfairness, but the public advantage outweighs the individual injustice; and in any case, if four hundred slaves do perish, it will be a cheap loss.’

There was more than one senator who burned to refute the glittering sophisms and cruel hardness of the jurist’s speech; but Pætus Thrasea was absent, as he often was, and Seneca was cowed by his habitual timidity. He felt how easily he could have torn the speech of Longinus into shreds, and with what genuine lightnings of indignant conviction he could have shattered its pedantries and its inhumanity. But he had not the nerve to confront the impulses of a selfish panic. He longed to plead the cause of mercy and of justice, as he was so well capable of doing, and had the murmurs of dissent which the speech of Cassius evoked been but a little louder he might have plucked up courage and have saved the Senate from a deed of blood. But it was whispered on all sides that Nero leaned to severity, and Seneca’s heart failed him once more. The murmurs died away; and Cingonius Varro, emboldened by the devilish plea of necessity, rose to propose further that not only the slaves of Pedanius should be killed, but all the freedmen who lived under his roof be banished. Nero, however, made known that, while he did not wish the ancient severity to be mitigated, neither did he wish it to be increased, and the proposal dropped without a seconder.

But let us notice in passing that retribution followed cruelty. The merciless met with no mercy themselves. Cassius, who meanwhile had become blind, was not long afterwards banished by Nero to unwholesome Sardinia. Varro, a little later, was put to death by Galba just after he had become Consul elect. Many who thus voted for the murder of the innocent were murdered though innocent themselves.

The Senate might decree, but the people were indignant even to fury. Those who knew one or other of these poor slaves, and knew their innocence of what had been an act of sudden fury on the part of Vibius, did their utmost to raise a tumult. Hermas, the slave of Pedanius, whom Onesimus had seen in the Antian ergastulum, was known to all the Christians as one of their brethren; and though their principles forbade them to resist the decree of the state by violence, their lamentations and appeals that some pity should be extended to the victims stirred the hearts of the multitude. And they knew that many senators and Prætorians were in their favour. At one time an attempt at rescue seemed probable. A crowd armed with stones and torches gathered in front of the house of Pedanius, where the four hundred slaves were now in chains under a guard of soldiers. But they were terrified by the blind deification of the imperial authority, and a mixed and cowardly mob found no leader to inspirit them to attack the house.

Titus was deeply moved and excited, and he went to his old friend Pudens to see if anything could be done. Pudens was dreading lest he should be appointed to see the execution carried out. When Claudia, hanging on his shoulder and looking into his manly face with her innocent blue eyes, entreated him to fear God rather than man, he assured her with a kiss and a smile, that at all costs, even at the cost of martyrdom, he would refuse. But Nereus had told him about poor Hermas, and the sweet and engaging character of that young man was so well known in the Christian community, that Pudens would have been ready if possible to provide for his escape.

‘I wish,’ said Titus, ‘that Onesimus had not been killed as he is said to have been at the last gladiatorial show. There is a rumour that, after all, he escaped with his life, but if so he has disappeared, poor fellow, no one knows where. He helped us when Britannicus was in danger. He might help us now.’

The centurion shook his head. He knew nothing of the attack on the King of the Grove, and supposed that Onesimus was still with Dromo at Aricia, but he thought it safest to say nothing about him even to Titus.