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

by F. W. Farrar

Octavia answered not. ‘Our father is dead,’ she said again. ‘May we not go, Augusta, and weep by his bedside?’

‘Go!’ answered Agrippina; ‘and I for my part will see that he is enrolled among the gods, and honoured with a funeral worthy of the House of Cæsar.’ Then, turning to her attendants, she issued her orders.

‘Put a cypress at the door of the Palace. Let the body be dressed in imperial robes, and incense burned in the chamber. See that every preparation is made for a royal funeral, and that the flute-players, the wailing-women, the designatores, with their black lictors, be all in readiness.’

But while Agrippina was giving directions to the archimimus who was to represent the dead Emperor at the funeral, and was examining the waxen masks of his ancestral Claudii, which were to be worn in the procession, the boy and girl were permitted to visit the chamber of the dead. They bent over the corpse of their father, and fondled his cold hands, and let their tears fall on his pale face, and felt something of the bitterness of death in that sudden and shattering bereavement, which changed for ever the complexion of their lives.

Nero, meanwhile, was addressing the Senate amidst enraptured plaudits in the finely turned and epigrammatic phrases of Seneca, which breathed the quintessence of wise government and Stoic magnanimity. He would rule, he said, on the principles which guided Augustus; and the senators seemed as if they would never end their plaudits when to the offer of the title ‘Father of his Country’ he modestly replied, ‘Not till I shall have deserved it.’

Agrippina, after having ordered the details of the funeral procession, finally dismissed her murdered husband from her thoughts, and gave directions that her son, on his return to the Palace, should be received with a fitting welcome. She summoned all the slaves and freed men of that mass of dependants which made of the Palace not a household, but a city. They were marshalled in throngs by their offices and nationalities in the vast hall. They were arrayed in their richest apparel, and were to scatter flowers and garlands under the feet of the new Emperor as he advanced. The multitudes of the lowest and least distinguished slaves were to stand in the farther parts of the hall; next to them the more educated and valuable slaves, and next to them the freedmen. In the inner ring were placed all the most beautiful and accomplished of the pages, their long and perfumed curls falling over their gay apparel, while some who had the sweetest voices were to break out into a chorus of triumphal songs. Then Nero was to be conducted to the bath, and afterwards a sumptuous banquet was to be served to a hundred guests. There was but a short time for these preparations; but the wealth of the Cæsars was unbounded, and their resources inexhaustible, and since the slaves were to be counted by hundreds, and each had his own minute task assigned to him, everything was done as if by magic.

The afternoon was drawing in when new bursts of shouting proclaimed that, through the densely crowded streets, in which every lattice and balcony and roof was now thronged with myriads of spectators, Nero was returning from the Curia to the Palace with his guard of Prætorians.

Walking between the two Consuls, with Burrus and Seneca attending him in white robes, followed by crowds of the greatest Roman nobles, and by the soldiers clashing their arms, singing their rude songs, and exulting in the thought of their promised donative, the young ruler of the world returned. The scene which greeted him when the great gates of the Palace were thrown open was gay beyond description. The atrium glowed in zones of light and many-coloured shadow. The autumnal sunbeams streamed over the gilded chapiters, glancing from lustrous columns of yellow and green and violet-coloured marble, and lighting up the open spaces adorned with shrubs and flowers. The fountains were plashing musically into marble and alabaster basins. Between rows of statues, the work of famed artificers, were crowded the glad and obsequious throngs of the rejoicing house.

Agrippina was seated on a gilded chair of state at the farther end of the hall, her arms resting on the wings of the two sphinxes by which it was supported. She was dressed in the chlamys, woven of cloth of gold, in which Pliny saw her when she had dazzled the spectators as she sat by the side of Claudius in the great festival at the opening of the Emissarium of the Fucine Lake. Beneath this was her rich stola, woven of Tarentine wool and scarlet in colour, but embroidered with pearls. It left bare from the elbow her shapely arms, which were clasped with golden bracelets enriched with large stones of opal and amethyst.

The moment that she caught sight of her son she descended from her seat with proud step, and Nero advanced to meet her. He was bending to kiss her hand, but the impulses of nature overcame the stateliness of Roman etiquette, and for one instant mother and son were locked in each other’s arms in a warm embrace, amid the spontaneous acclamations of the many spectators.