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

by F. W. Farrar

Such was the Palace of pagan Rome in the days of Christ and His Apostles.

It might well have seemed, even to the most callous worshipper of the old gods, that a dark spirit was walking in that house; that the phantoms of the unavenged dead haunted it; that ghostly footfalls glided through its midnight corridors; and that in hidden corners the lonely wanderer might come on some figure ‘weeping tears of blood,’ which vanished with ‘hollow shriek’ before the presence of the innocent.

No such feelings of dread disturbed the thoughts of the Empress Agrippina on a certain September evening, A.D. 54. The world was at her feet. Her brave and good father, Germanicus, her chaste and virtuous mother, the elder Agrippina, had been the idols alike of the Roman soldiers and the Roman people. She was the great-granddaughter of the Emperor Augustus; the granddaughter of the victorious Agrippa; the great-niece of the Emperor Tiberius; the sister of the Emperor Gaius: and now at last her unwearied intrigues had made her the sixth wife of her uncle, the Emperor Claudius. Not content with such near bonds to so many of those who were honoured as gods on earth, did she not mean that her boy also—her darling Nero—should ere long mount the throne of the Cæsars, and that she herself should govern for many a long year in his name, as she now governed in the name of her husband Claudius? Her ancestress Livia, the stately wife of Augustus, had received the imperial title of Augusta, but not until her husband’s death; Agrippina had received it, and with it every honour which a servile Senate could devise, in her early prime. Had she not sat on a throne, in unwonted splendour, by the side of her weak and prematurely aged husband at the reception of foreign ambassadors? Was she not privileged, alone of Roman princesses, to ride in a chariot to the Capitol? Was not her fine head and lovely face stamped on thousands of coins and medals? Had she not shown, in contrast to her predecessor, the beautiful and abandoned Messalina, how dignified could be a matron’s rule?

Yes, the world was at her feet; and by every glance and every gesture she showed her consciousness of a grandeur such as no woman had hitherto attained. Her agents and spies were numberless. The Court was with her, for in the days of Claudius the Court meant the all-powerful freedmen, who impudently ruled and pillaged their feeble master; and if she could not seduce the stolid fidelity of his secretary Narcissus, she had not disdained to stoop to the still more powerful Pallas. The people were with her, for she was the sole surviving child of the prince whom they had regarded with extravagant affection. The intellect of Rome was on her side, for Seneca, always among her favourites, had been recalled by her influence from his banishment in feverous Corsica, and, holding the high position of tutor to her son, was devoted to her cause. The Prætorian guards were on her side, for Burrus, their bold and honest commander, owed his office to her request. The power of gold was hers, for her coffers had been filled to bursting by an immeasurable rapacity. The power of fascination was hers, for few of those whom she wished to entangle were able to resist her spells. Above all she could rely absolutely upon herself. Undaunted as her mother, the elder Agrippina; popular as her father, the adored Germanicus; brilliant and audacious as her grandmother, Julia, the unhappy daughter of Augustus; full of masculine energy and aptitude for business as her grandfather Agrippa—who else could show such gifts or command such resources?—But she had not yet drunk to the dregs the cup of ambition which she had long ago lifted to her eager lips.

She was sitting on a low broad-backed seat, enriched with gilding and ivory, in the gorgeous room which was set aside for her special use. It was decorated with every resource of art, and the autumnal sunlight which was falling through its warm and perfumed air glinted on statuettes of gold and silver, on marble bas-reliefs of exquisite fancy, and on walls which glowed with painted peacocks, winged genii, and graceful arabesques.

Her face was the index of a soul which only used the meaner passions as aids to the gratification of the grander ambitions. No one who saw her, as she leant back in her easy half-recumbent attitude, could have doubted that he was in the presence of a lady born to rule, and in whose veins flowed the noblest blood of the most ancient families of Rome. She was thirty-seven years old, but was still in the zenith of her imperious charms, and her figure had lost none of the smooth and rounded contour of youth. Her features were small and delicate, the forehead well shaped, the eyes singularly bright, and of a light blue, under finely marked eyebrows. Her nose was slightly aquiline, the mouth small and red and beautiful, while the slight protrusion of the upper lip gave to it an expression of decided energy. Her hair was wavy, and fell in multitudes of small curls over her forehead and cheeks, but was confined at the back of the head in a golden net from which a lappet embroidered with pearls and sapphires fell upon her neck, half concealed by one soft and glowing tress.

She sat there deep in thought, and her mind was not occupied with the exquisite image of herself reflected from the silver mirror which hung bright and large upon the wall before her. Her expression was that which she wears in her bust in the Capitol—the expression of one who is anxious, and waits. One sandalled foot rested on the ankle of the other, and her fair hands were lightly folded on her robe. That robe was the long stola worn by noble matrons. It swept down to her feet and its sleeves reached to the elbows, where they were fastened by brooches of priceless onyx, leaving bare the rest of her shapely arms. Two large pearls were in her ears, but she had laid aside her other ornaments. On a little marble abacus beside her lay her many-jewelled rings, her superb armlets set with rubies, and the murenula—a necklace of linked and flexile gold glittering with gems—which had encircled her neck at the banquet from which she just had risen. Her attitude was one of rest; but there was no rest in the bosom which rose and fell unequally with her varying moods—no rest in the countenance with its look of proud and sleepless determination. She was alone, but a frequent and impatient glance showed that she expected some one to enter. She had dismissed her slaves, and was devoting her whole soul to the absorbing design for which at that moment she lived, and in the accomplishment of which she persuaded herself that she was ready to die. That design was the elevation of her Nero, at the first possible moment, to the throne whose dizzy steps were so slippery with blood.

In the achievement of her purpose no question of right and wrong for a moment troubled her. Guilt hid no horror for that fair woman. She had long determined that neither the stings of conscience nor the fear of peril should stop her haughty course. To her, as to most of the women of high rank in the Rome of the Empire, crime was nothing from which to shrink, and virtue was but an empty name. Philosophers she knew talked of virtue. It was interesting to hear Seneca descant upon it, as she had sometimes heard him do to her boy, while she sat in an adjoining room only separated from them by an embroidered curtain. But she had long ago convinced herself that this was fine talk, and nothing more. Priests pretended to worship the gods; but what were the gods? Had not the Senate made her ancestor Augustus a god, and Tiberius, and her mad brother Caligula, and his little murdered baby, the child of Cæsonia, which had delighted its father by its propensity to scratch? If such beings were gods, to whom incense was burned and altars smoked, assuredly she need not greatly trouble herself about the inhabitants of Olympus.

Nemesis? Was there such a thing as Nemesis? Did a Presence stalk behind the guilty, with leaden pace, with feet shod in wool, which sooner or later overtook them—which cast its dark shadow at last beyond their footsteps—which gradually came up to them, laid its hand upon their shoulders, clutched them, looked them in the face, drove into their heads the adamantine nail whose blow was death? For a few moments her countenance was troubled; but it was not long before she had driven away the gloomy thought with a disdainful smile. It was true that there had been calamity enough in the bloodstained annals of her kinsfolk: calamity all the more deadly in proportion to their awful growth in power and wealth. Her thoughts reverted to the story of her nearest relatives. She thought of the days of Tiberius, when men scarcely dared to speak above a whisper, and when murder lurked at the entrance of every noble home. Her uncles Gaius and Lucius Cæsar had died in the prime of their age. Had they been poisoned by Sejanus? Her other uncle, the young Agrippa Posthumus—born after the death of his father, Agrippa—had been killed in a mad struggle with the centurion whom Livia had sent to murder him in his lonely exile. Her mother had been cruelly murdered; her aunt, the younger Julia, had died in disgrace and exile on a wretched islet. Her two brothers, Nero and Drusus, had come to miserable ends in the flower of their days. Her third brother, the Emperor Caligula, had been assassinated by conspirators. The two Julias, her sister and her cousin, had fallen victims to the jealous fury of the Empress Messalina. The name of her sister Drusilla had been already stained with a thousand shames. She was the sole survivor of a family of six princes and princesses, all of whom, in spite of all the favours of fortune, had come, in the bloom of life, to violent and shameful ends. She had herself been banished by her brother to the island of Pontia, and had been made to carry on her journey, in her bosom, the inurned ashes of her brother-in-law, Lepidus, with whom, as with others, her name had been dishonourably involved. She had already been twice a widow, and the world said that she had poisoned her second husband, Crispus Passienus. What did she care what the world said? But even if she had poisoned that old and wealthy orator—what then? His wealth had been and would be very useful to her. Since that day her fortunes had been golden. She had been recalled from her dreary banishment. Her soul had been as glowing iron in the flame of adversity; but the day of her adversity had passed. When the time was ripe she had made her magnificent way in the Court of her uncle Claudius until she became his wife, and had swept all her rivals out of her path by her brilliant beauty and triumphant intrigues.

She thought of some of those rivals, and as she thought of them an evil smile lighted up her beautiful features.