A Struggle for Rome, v. 1

by Felix Dahn

He passed the statue, and threw a glance at some military maps of the Roman Empire, which lay unrolled upon the table.

"First trample upon these barbarians: Rome! Then once more subdue the North: Paris! Then reduce the rebellious East to its old subjection to the Cæsar-city: Byzantium! and farther, even farther, to the Tigris, to the Indus; farther than Alexander; and back to the West, through Scythia and Germania, to the Tiber; the path, Cæsar, which Brutus' dagger cut off for thee. And so to be greater than thou, greater than Alexander----hold, my thought! Enough!"

And the heart of the icy Cethegus flamed and glowed; the veins of his temples throbbed violently; he pressed his burning forehead against the cold marble breast of Julius Cæsar, who majestically looked down upon him.

CHAPTER IX.

The day of the King's death was not only decisive for Cethegus, but also for the conspiracy in the Catacombs, for Italy, and for the Gothic kingdom.

Although the intrigues of the patriots--led by different men, who were not agreed upon the means, nor even upon the aims of their plots--had, till now, made slow and doubtful progress, this state of things was completely altered from the moment when Cethegus took the conduct of affairs into his own strong hands. Only then did the conspiracy become really dangerous to the Goths.

Cethegus untiringly sought to undermine the security of their kingdom. With his great capacity for winning and governing men, and penetrating their motives, he was able daily to increase the number of important members and the means of success. He understood how to avoid the suspicion of the Goths on the one hand, and to prevent any untimely rebellion on the other. For it would have been easy to attack the barbarians in all the towns of the Peninsula on some special day, and to call upon the Byzantines--who had long since been on the watch for such a crisis--to complete the conquest. But in this way the Prefect would not have been able to carry out his secret plans. He would merely have put Byzantine tyranny in the place of Gothic rule. And we know that he had very different intentions. In order to fulfil them, he wished first to create for himself a power in Italy, greater than any other man possessed. Before the foot of a Byzantine was set upon Italian soil, he must become--although in secret--the mightiest man in the country. All must be so prepared that the barbarians should be driven away by Italy itself, that is, by Cethegus, with the least possible help from Byzantium; so that, after the victory, the Emperor could not avoid giving the dominion over the country to its saviour, even if only as a governor. Then he would soon gain time and opportunity to excite the national pride of the Romans against the rule of the "Greek-lings," as they contemptuously called the Byzantines. For, although for two hundred years--since the days of the great Constantine--the glory of the Empire of the world had been removed from widowed Rome to the golden town on the Hellespont, and the sceptre of the sons of Romulus seemed to have passed over to the Greeks; though East and West formed one state of antique culture opposed to the barbarian world; yet even now the Romans hated and despised the Greeks as much as in the days when Flaminius declared humbled Hellas to be a freedman of Rome. The old hate was now increased by envy.

Therefore Cethegus was sure of the enthusiasm and support of all Italy, which, after the removal of the barbarians, would also banish the Byzantines from the country; and the crown of Rome, the crown of the Western Empire, would be his certain reward.

And if he succeeded in exciting the newly-awakened national feeling to an offensive war on the other side of the Alps, when he had again erected the throne of the Roman Empire on the ruins of the Frankish Kingdom at Orleans and Paris, then the attempt would not be too rash once again to subdue the Eastern Empire and continue the Empire of the World in the Eternal City from the point at which Trajan and Hadrian had left it.

In order to reach this distant and shining goal, every step on the dizzy path must be taken with the greatest prudence; any stumble might precipitate him into an abyss. In order to gain his end, Cethegus must first of all make sure of Rome; on Rome alone could his plans be based.