‘Your home is empty, Nero,’ she said. ‘No child will succeed you. I have a little son. Octavia must be dismissed, if you would have an heir to be Emperor of Rome.’
‘How can I dismiss her?’ said Nero gloomily. ‘Even my freedmen espouse her cause. Doryphorus is for her, and Pallas.’
‘Doryphorus! Pallas!’ she repeated, with a laugh of ringing scorn. ‘An effeminate slave-minion; a miserly dotard! Tush, Cæsar! be a man. Sweep aside these flies. Poison them both; no one will miss Doryphorus, and Pallas has riches which will prove very convenient to you.’
‘That shall be done,’ said Nero. ‘I am sick of Doryphorus, and Pallas has lived long enough. But to repudiate Octavia is different. She is strong in the name of her father, and stronger still in the favour of the people and the Prætorians.’
‘Is Cæsar truly Cæsar?’ she asked, with contempt.
‘Cæsar can do what he likes in his own private life,’ he answered; ‘but woe to Cæsar if he degrade the majesty of Empire by any public deed.’
He said truly, and she knew it; but she knew also that he had not yet fathomed, as she had done, the abysses of Roman servility. Had they not applauded him after the murder of Agrippina? Had they not passed in silence the murder of Britannicus? Had they not suffered the doom of Sulla and of Plautus to pass by without creating so much as a ripple on the surface of the general tranquillity?
By her urgency, by her wiles, by her taunts, by the supreme ascendency which she had now acquired over the Emperor, she prevailed on him at length to divorce Octavia on the plea of her barrenness, and to make Poppæa his wife. This, however, did not content her, while her unhappy rival remained an inmate of the Palace. Poppæa therefore endeavoured to blacken her character. She put into play every poisonous art of slander. In most cases nothing was easier than to trump up a false charge against any one whom the Emperor desired to ruin. The white innocence of Octavia, her stainless purity in that age of infamy, were no protection to her. The faithful love of her few attendants was a partial safeguard. Most of them were tampered with in vain. At last, however, a worthless Alexandrian flute-player, who had sometimes played before her to while away a heavy hour, was induced by a great bribe to swear that he had been her lover. The charge was too monstrous to deceive a single person, but on this pretext Octavia’s handmaids were seized and tortured. The majority, however, stood firm even against the torture-chamber, and one of them, named Pythias, cried out to Tigellinus, as he heightened the torture and pressed her with questions, that Octavia’s worst offence was white as snow beside the blackness of his best virtues. It was impossible to pretend a conviction on evidence which would have been invalid against the humblest slave.
It was, nevertheless, decided that Octavia should be removed from the Palatine, and she was sent from the home of her father with the ill-omened gifts of the estate of Plautus as her dower, and the house of Burrus as her residence.
The unhappy girl—she was but nineteen—obeyed without a murmur. She had wept floods of tears when her husband, instigated by his cruel paramour, had attempted to stain her name. She shed no tear when she laid aside the purple of the Empress, and, clad in the simplest garb of a Roman matron, was conveyed to her new home. Thither, too, were sent her unhappy maidens. Those who had most enjoyed her confidence—and among these the poor Christian girl, Tryphæna—were still disabled by the dislocations of the torture. With tenderest solicitude Octavia herself visited their cells, and ministered to their infirmities. She flung her arms, weeping, round Tryphæna’s neck, and thanked her and Pythias for the heroic constancy with which they had held out and, when stretched on the rack, had unflinchingly asseverated the stainless honour of their mistress.