The Roman Traitor, Vol. 1

by Henry William Herbert

"By the Gods! we are of it."

"But not the less, for that, slaves to it!" answered Cataline! "See! from the lowest to the highest, each petty pelting officer lords it above the next below him; and if the tribunes for a while, at rare and singular moments, uplift a warning cry against the corrupt insolence of the patrician houses, gold buys them back into vile treasonable silence! Patricians be we, and not slaves, sayest thou? Come tell me then, did the patrician blood of the grand Gracchi preserve them from a shameful doom, because they dared to speak, as free-born men, aloud and freely? Did his patrician blood save Fulvius Flaccus? Were Publius Antonius, and Cornelius Sylla, the less ejected from their offices, that they were of the highest blood in Rome; the lawful consuls by the suffrage of the people? Was I, the heir of Sergius Silo's glory, the less forbidden even to canvass for the consulship, that my great grandsire's blood was poured out, like water, upon those fields that witnessed Rome's extremest peril, Trebia, and the Ticinus, and Thrasymene and Cannæ? Was Lentulus, the noblest of the noble, patrician of the eldest houses, a consular himself, expelled the less and stricken from the rolls of the degenerate senate, for the mere whining of a mawkish wench, because his name is Cornelius? Tush, Tush! these be but dreams of poets, or imaginings of children!—the commons be but slaves to the nobles; the nobles to the senate; the senate to their creditors, their purchasers, their consuls; the last at once their tools, and their tyrants! Go, young man, go. Salute, cringe, fawn upon your consul! Nathless, for thou hast mind enough to mark and note the truth of what I tell thee; thou wilt think upon this, and perchance one day, when the time shall have come, wilt speak, act, strike, for freedom!"

And as he finished speaking, he turned aside with a haughty gesture of farewell; and wrapping his toga closely about his tall person, stalked away slowly in the direction neither of the capitol nor of the consul's house; turn[pg 58]ing his head neither to the right hand nor to the left; and taking no more notice of the person to whom he had been speaking, than if he had not known him to be there, and gazing toward him half-bewildered in anxiety and wonder!

"Wonderful! by the Gods!" he said at last. "Truly he is a wonderful man, and wise withal! I fain would know if all that be true, which they say of him—his bitterness, his impiety, his blood-thirstiness! By Hercules! he speaks well! and it is true likewise. Yea! true it is, that we, patricians, and free, as we style ourselves, may not speak any thing, or act, against our order; no! nor indulge our private pleasures, for fear of the proud censors! Is this, then, freedom? True, we are lords abroad; our fleets, our hosts, everywhere victorious; and not one land, wherein the eagle has unfurled her pinion, but bows before the majesty of Rome—but yet—is it, is it, indeed, true, that we are but slaves, sovereign slaves, at home?"

The whole tenor of the young man's thoughts was altered by the few words, let fall for that very purpose by the arch traitor. Ever espying whom he might attach to his party by operating on his passions, his prejudices, his weakness, or his pride; a most sagacious judge of human nature, reading the character of every man as it were in a written book, Cataline had long before remarked young Arvina. He had noted several points of his mental constitution, which he considered liable to receive such impressions as he would—his proneness to defer to the thoughts of others, his want of energetic resolution, and not least his generous indignation against every thing that savored of cruelty or oppression. He had resolved to operate on these, whenever he might find occasion; and should he meet success in his first efforts, to stimulate his passions, minister to his voluptuous pleasures, corrupt his heart, and make him in the end, body and soul, his own.

Such were the intentions of the conspirator, when he first addressed Paullus. His desire to increase the strength of his party, to whom the accession of any member however humble of the great house of Cæcilii could not fail to be useful, alone prompting him in the first instance. But, when he saw by the young man's startled aspect that he was prepossessed against him, and had listened probably to the damning rumors which were [pg 59]rife everywhere concerning him, a second motive was added, in his pride of seduction and sophistry, by which he was wont to boast, that he could bewilder the strongest minds, and work them to his will. When by the accidental disarrangement of Arvina's gown, and the discovery of his own dagger, he perceived that the intended victim of his specious arts was probably cognizant in some degree of his last night's crime, a third and stronger cause was added, in the instinct of self-preservation. And as soon as he found out that Paullus was bound for the house of Cicero, he considered his life, in some sort, staked upon the issue of his attempt on Arvina's principles.

No part could have been played with more skill, or with greater knowledge of his character whom he addressed. He said just enough to set him thinking, and to give a bias and a colour to his thoughts, without giving him reason to suspect that he had any interest in the matter; and he had withdrawn himself in that careless and half contemptuous manner, which naturally led the young man to wish for a renewal of the subject.

And in fact Paul, while walking down the hill, toward the house of the Consul, was busied in wondering why Cataline had left so much unsaid, departing so abruptly; and in debating with himself upon the strange doctrines which he had then for the first time heard broached.

It was about the second hour of the Roman day, corresponding nearly to eight o'clock before noon—as the winter solstice was now passed—when Arvina reached the magnificent dwelling of the Consul in the Carinæ at the angle of the Cærolian place, hard by the foot of the Sacred Way.

This splendid building occupied a whole insula, as it was called, or space between four streets, intersecting each other at right angles; and was three stories in height, the two upper supported by columns of marble, with a long range of glass windows, at that period an unusual and expensive luxury. The doors stood wide open; and on either hand the vestibule were arranged the lictors leaning upon their fasces, while the whole space of the great Corinthian hall within, lighted from above, and adorned with vast black pillars of Lucullean marble, was [pg 60]crowded with the white robes of the consul's plebeian clients tendering their morning salutations; not unmixed with the crimson fringes and broad crimson facings of senatorial visitors.