‘Quoi cum sit viridissimo nupta flore puella
Et puella tenellulis delicatior hædis,
Asservanda nigellulis diligentius uvis,
Ludere hanc sinit, ut lubet.’
Catull. Carm. xvii. 14.
We left Onesimus bound hand and foot in his cell, and expecting the severest punishment. His crimes had been heinous, although the thought of escaping detection by slaying Junia had only been a momentary impulse, such as could never have flashed across his mind if it had not been inflamed by the furies of the amphitheatre. As he looked back in his deep misery, he saw how fatally all his misfortunes dated from the self-will with which he had resisted light and knowledge. He might by this time have been good and honoured in the house of Philemon, less a slave than a brother beloved. He might have been enfranchised, and in any case have enjoyed that happy freedom of soul which he had so often witnessed in those whom Christ had made free indeed. And now his place was among the lowest of the low. Nereus had of course reported to Pudens his attempt at theft. Pudens was sorry for the youth, for he had liked him, and saw in him the germs of better things.But such a crime could not be passed over with impunity. Onesimus was doomed to the scourge, as well as to a trinundine[47] of solitude on bread and water, while he remained fettered in his cell.
The imprisonment, the shame, the solitariness which was a cruel trial to one of his quick disposition, were very salutary to him. They checked him in a career which might have ended in speedy shipwreck. And while his heart was sore every kind influence was brought to bear upon him. Pudens visited him and tried to rouse him to penitence and manliness. Nereus awoke in his mind once more the dying embers of his old faith. Above all, Junia came one day to the door of his prison, and spoke a few words of courage and hope, which more than all else made him determined to struggle back to better ways.
His punishment ended, and he was forgiven. He resumed his duties, and took a fresh start, in the hope of better things.
Nero had returned to Rome, and drew still closer his bond of intimacy with Otho. Otho was his evil genius. In vain did Agrippina attempt to keep her son in the paths of outward conformity with the requirements of his position. In vain did Seneca and Burrus remind him of the responsibilities of an Emperor of Rome. Otho became his model, and Otho represented to one half of the Roman population the ideal which they themselves most desired and admired. All the voluptuous æstheticism, all the diseased craving in Nero’s mind for the bizarre, the monstrous, and the impossible; all the ‘opéra bouffe’ elements of his character, with its perverted instincts as of a tenth-rate artist, were strengthened and stimulated by his intercourse with Otho.
As a matter of course, the command of unlimited treasures followed the possession of an unchallenged autocracy. Though there was a theoretical distinction between the public exchequer and the privy purse, there was no real limit between the two. This ‘deified gamin’ had complete command of the resources of Italy and the provinces. Cost was never allowed to stand in the way of his grotesque extravagance. A boy was the lord of the world—a bad boy—who delighted in such monkey-tricks as taking his stand secretly on the summit of the proscenium in the theatre, setting the actors and pantomimes by the ears, and flinging missiles at people’s heads.