In order to gain and support this influence, it can easily be understood that Cethegus was forced to be more at court, and oftener absent from Rome, than was advantageous for his interests in that city.
He therefore endeavoured to bring persons into close connection with the Queen, who would, in part, take his place, warmly defend his interests, and keep him au fait of all that passed in the court of Ravenna.
Many Gothic nobles had left the court in anger, and it was necessary to replace their wives in their office near the Queen; and Cethegus determined to use this opportunity to bring Rusticiana, the daughter of Symmachus and wife of Boëthius, once more to court. It was no easy task. For the family of Boëthius, who had been executed as a traitor, had been banished the capital. Before anything could be done, the feeling which the Queen entertained towards this family must be completely altered. Cethegus, however, soon succeeded in appealing to the compassion and magnanimity of Amalaswintha, who possessed a noble heart. At the same time she had never really believed in the unproved guilt of the two noble Romans, one of whom, the husband of Rusticiana, she had honoured as an extremely learned man, and, in some points, as her teacher. Cethegus proved to her that by showing favour to this family, either as an act of grace or of justice, she would touch the hearts of all her Roman subjects, and he thus easily persuaded her to pardon the deeply degraded family.
It was much more difficult to persuade the proud and passionate widow of the murdered man to accept this favour, for her whole soul was filled with bitterness against the royal house, and thirst for revenge. Cethegus even feared that when she was in the presence of the "tyrants," her ungovernable hatred might betray itself. In spite of the great influence he had over her, she had repeatedly rejected this plan.
Matters had come to this pass, when, one day, Rusticiana made a discovery which shortly led to the fulfilment of the Prefect's wish.
Rusticiana had a daughter of scarcely sixteen years of age, named Camilla. She was a lovely girl, with a face of the true Roman type, with nobly-formed features and chiselled lips. Intense feeling beamed from her dark eyes; her figure, slender almost to delicacy, was elegant and light as that of a gazelle, and all her movements were agile and graceful. She had loved her unhappy father with all the energy of filial devotion. The stroke that had laid his beloved head low had entered deeply into her own young life; and inconsolable and sacred grief, mixed with passionate admiration for his heroism, filled all her youthful thoughts. A welcome guest at court before her father's death, she had fled with her mother after the catastrophe over the Alps to Gaul, where they had found an asylum with an old friend, while Anicius and Severinus, Camilla's brothers, who had been also condemned, but who were afterwards reprieved and sent into banishment, hastened at once to the court at Byzantium, where they tried to move heaven and earth against the barbarians.
When the first heat of persecution had abated, the two women had returned to Italy, and led a retired life in the house of one of their faithful freedmen at Perusia, whence, as we have seen, Rusticiana had easily found means to join the conspiracy in Rome.
It was in June, that season of the year when the Roman aristocracy--then as at this day--fled the sultry air of the towns, and sought a refuge in their cool villas on the Sabine mountains, or at the sea-coast. The two noble women, used to every luxury, felt extremely ill at ease in the hot and narrow streets of Perusia, and thought with regret of their beautiful villas in Florence and Neapolis, which, together with all the rest of their fortune, had been confiscated by the Gothic Government.
One day, their faithful servant, Corbulo, came to Rusticiana with a strangely embarrassed expression of countenance, and explained to her "how, having long since noticed how much the 'Patrona' suffered under his unworthy roof, and had to endure much annoyance from his handiwork--he being a mason--he had bought a small, a very small, estate, with a still smaller house, in the mountains near Tifernum. However, she must not compare it with the villa near Florentia; but still there ran a little brook near it, which never dried up, even under the dog-star; oaks and cornel-trees gave broad and pleasant shade; ivy grew luxuriantly over a ruined Temple of Faunus; and in the garden he had planted roses, lilies, and violets, such as Donna Camilla loved; and so he hoped that they would mount their mules or litter, and go to their villa like other noble dames."
The ladies, much touched by their old servant's fidelity, gratefully accepted his kindness, and Camilla, who rejoiced like a child in the anticipation of a little change, was more cheerful and animated than she had ever been since her father's death.