before whose beautiful personality the tinsel compliments of her many admirers seemed to sink into shamed silence. The precocious maidens of the great consular families hated Claudia because, in her white and simple dress, and her long natural fair hair, unadorned by a single flower or gem, she outshone their elaborate beauty. Yet they saw, and were astonished to see, that no youth—not even an Otho or a Petronius or any of the most hardened libertines—dared to speak a light word to one who looked as chaste as ‘the consecrated snow on Dian’s lap.’

Britannicus did not venture to breathe a word to Titus of a secret which was not his own; but there was one person from whom he could have no secret, and that was the young Empress, his sister Octavia. When he could be secure that no spy was at hand, that no ear was listening at the door, that no eye was secretly watching him, he would talk to her with wonder and admiration of all that he had heard. She was no less impressed than he, and without venturing to embrace the new faith, both sister and brother found a vague source of hope and strength in what they had learnt from Pomponia. To them it was like a faint rose of dawn, seen from a dark valley, shining far off upon the summit of icy hills. And as they learnt more of what the Gospel meant, and learnt even to pour forth dim prayer into the unknown, they were able to discover, by certain signs, that not a few of the slaves in the household of Cæsar—Patrobas, Eubulus, Philologus, Tryphæna, and others—were secret Christians.The manner in which they discovered that these slaves were Christians was very simple. Pomponia, implicitly trusting the young Cæsar, had ventured to teach him the Greek Christian watchword, Ἰχθύς, ‘fish.’[27] The brother and sister found that if, in the presence of several slaves, they brought in this word in any unusual manner, a slave who was a Christian would at once, if only for a second, glance quickly up at them. When they had thus assured themselves of the religion of a few of their attendants, whom they invariably found to be the most upright and trustworthy, they would repeat the word again, in a lower voice and a more marked manner, when they passed them; and if the slave in reply murmured low the word ἰχθύδιον or pisciculus (i. e. little fish), they no longer felt in doubt. The use which they made of their knowledge was absolutely innocent. Often they did not say a word more on the subject to their slaves and freedmen. Only they knew that, among the base instruments of a wicked tyranny by whom they were on every side surrounded, there was at least a presumption that these would be guilty of no treacherous or dishonourable deed.

And thus, while Agrippina was growing daily more furious and discontented; while Seneca and Burrus were plunged into deeper and deeper anxieties; while Pætus Thrasea, and Musonius, and Cornutus found it more and more necessary to entrench themselves in the armour of a despairing fortitude; while Nero was sinking lower and lower into the slough of vice—Octavia and Britannicus began to draw nearer to the Unknown God, and found that when the sea of calamity does not mingle its bitter waters with the sea of guilt, calamity itself might be full of divine alleviations. Agrippina and Nero were provoked by their appearance and bearing. The last thing which they would have suspected was that the Christianity which, in common with all Rome, they regarded as an execrable superstition, should have found its way into patrician circles—should even have met with favourable acceptance under the roof of the Cæsars. When they saw the disinherited Britannicus playing ball in the tennis-court, or beating his young fellow-pupils in races in the gardens, or wrestling not unsuccessfully with the sturdy and ruddy Titus, they were astonished to think that a boy who had been robbed of all his rights should be poor spirited enough to throw himself into enjoyments in which his merry and musical laugh often rang out louder than that of any of his companions. What hope or what consolation could sustain him? They jealously fancied that some plot must be afoot; but suspicion was disarmed by the boy’s transparent frankness and innocence of manner. And Octavia—they treated her as a nullity; they permitted themselves to indulge in every sneer and slight which they could devise. More than once Nero, fresh from some revel and lost to shame, had seized her by her long, dark tresses, or struck her with his brutal hand. Yet no passionate murmur had betrayed her resentment. What could be the secret of a beatitude which no misfortunes seemed wholly able to destroy?

CHAPTER XII
ONESIMUS

‘Non tressis agaso.’—Persius, v. 76.

But we must now turn for a time from the Palace of the Emperor and the grand houses of the nobles crowded with ancestral images, gleaming with precious marbles, enriched with Greek statues of priceless beauty, to the squalid taverns and lodging-houses of the poorest of that vast and mongrel populace which surged through the streets of Rome.

It was not an Italian populace, but was composed of the dregs of all nations, which had been flowing for several generations into the common sewer of Rome. It congregated in all the humbler and narrower streets; in the Velabrum it bawled mussels and salt fish for sale; it thronged the cook-shops of the Esquiline; it crowded densely into the cheaper baths; it swarmed in the haunts of vice which gave so bad a name to the Subura.Long ago the Syrian Orontes had flowed into the Tiber, and brought with it its flute-players, and dancers, and immoralities.[28] Long ago, when the Forum loungers dared to howl at him, the great Scipio had stormed at them as step-sons of Italy—as people who had no father and no mother—and bidden them to be silent.

The city was almost as much a Greek as it was a Roman city. But, besides this, it abounded in Orientals. Here would be heard the shaken sistra of the Egyptian Serapis, whose little temple in the Campus Martius was crowded by credulous women. Here you would be met by the drunken Galli of the Phrygian Cybele, whose withered, beardless faces, cracked voices, orgiastic dances, and gashings of themselves with knives, made their mendicancy more offensive than the importunities of the beggars who lounged all day about the Sublician and Fabrician bridges, or half-stormed the carriages of the nobles as they slowly drove up the steep hill of Aricia. Of this promiscuous throng—to say nothing of Asiatics, Gauls, Germans, Spaniards, and Scythians—some were

‘From farthest south,

Syene, and where the shadow both way falls,