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

by F. W. Farrar

‘A born Stoic!’ said Titus, smiling. ‘But what is the matter with your leg?’

‘I will tell you, sir,’ answered Epictetus. ‘Being deformed and useless, as you see, my master thought that he might turn me to some account by having me taught philosophy, and he made me capsarius[16] to his son, who attends the lectures of Musonius Rufus. Musonius, who is kind and good, let me sit in a corner and listen. I am not a Stoic yet, but I shall try to be one some day.’

‘But even now you have not told me how you came to be lame.’

The young slave blushed. ‘Eight weeks ago,’ he said, ‘I was walking past the door of the triclinium, when a slave came out with some crystal vases on a tray. He ran against me, and one of the vases fell and was broken. He charged me with having broken it, and Epaphroditus ordered my leg to be twisted. It hurt me terribly, but Musonius had taught me to endure, and I only cried out, “If you go on, you will break my leg.” He went on, and broke it. I did not give way then, and I am ashamed that you saw me crying now.’

‘Poor lad! Come with me to Prince Britannicus and tell him that story. He is kind, and will pity you, and perhaps get the Empress Octavia to do something for you.’

Epictetus limped after Titus, and Britannicus was pleased with the slave-boy’s quaint fortitude and the preternatural gravity of his face. He often sat on the floor while the two friends talked or played at draughts, and would sometimes retail to them what he had heard in the lectures of Musonius. They laughed at his naïveté, but something of the teaching stuck. The Stoicism of Titus had its germ in those boyish days.

One other friend, strange to say, Britannicus had near at hand, though she could not openly have much conversation with him. It was the fair freedwoman Acte. Her situation in the Palace did not argue in her a depraved mind. She had not been trained in an atmosphere which made her suppose that there was anything sinful in her relations with the Emperor. Brought from Asia in early youth, she was practically no more than a slave, though she had been emancipated by Claudius.The will of a master, even if that master was far below an Emperor, was regarded as a necessary law.[17] But Acte had a good heart, and so far from being puffed up by the ardent affection of Nero, her one desire was to use her influence for the benefit of others. For Britannicus she felt the deepest pity. She had even aroused the anger of her lover by pleading in his behalf, and though it was impossible that she should do more than interchange with him an occasional salutation, the boy gratefully recognised that Acte did her best to gain for him every indulgence and relaxation in her power.

Britannicus had inherited some of his father’s fondness for history. He was never happier than when Titus told him some of the stories which he had heard from Vespasian about his campaigns in Britain. He had even persuaded Pudens to go with him to visit the old British chief, Caractacus—or, to give him his right name, Caradoc—who had kept the Romans at bay for nine years, until he was betrayed to them by the treacherous Queen Cartismandua. And much had come of this visit; for there Pudens saw for the first time the daughter of Caradoc, the yellow-haired British princess Claudia, and had fallen deeply in love with her. The grey King of the Silures, whose manly eloquence had moved the admiration of Claudius on the day when he had been led along in triumph, was eating away his heart in a strange land. He rejoiced to see the son of the Emperor who had spared his life, and he delighted the boy’s imagination with many a tale of the Druids, and Mona, and the wild Silurian hills and the vast rushing rivers, and the hunting of the wolf and the wild-boar in the marshes and forests of Caer Leon and Caer Went. While Caractacus was telling these stories there was ample opportunity for Pudens to improve his acquaintance with the fair Claudia, who talked to him with a yearning heart of her home on the silver Severn, which Pudens had once visited as a very young soldier.

These interviews made Britannicus eager to form the acquaintance of Aulus Plautius, the conqueror of the southern part of that far island. Plautius stood well at Court, and had been greatly honoured by Claudius, who had condescended to walk by his side in the ovation which rewarded the successful campaigns of four years. Britannicus gained easy permission to visit the old general, and at his house he met his wife, Pomponia Græcina.

This lady was regarded at Rome as a paragon of faithful friendship. She had been deeply attached in early youth to her royal kinswoman Julia, the granddaughter of Tiberius. Julia had been one of the victims of the cruelty of Messalina, and from the day of her execution, for forty years, Pomponia never appeared but in mourning garments, and it was said, though without truth, that she never wore a smile upon her face.