Marcia. How could I?
Commodus. What a rigid ugliness you stand. I hate you.
The World at Auction follows The Race of Leaves historically (though it appeared earlier) with the inglorious episode of the reign of Didius Julianus. This is he who is said to have bought the Empire with his fortune and to have paid for it with his head; and that barter is the whole plot of the drama. Julia Domna takes up the chronicle after the death of Severus has left his sons Caracalla and Geta joint emperors. Its plot is concerned with the jealous struggle between the two brothers and its fatal issue, which all the astuteness and the passionate devotion of their mother, Julia Domna, could not avert.
Lack of space prevents one from dealing fully with these plays; and from The World at Auction it is impossible to do more than quote, from the initial incident of the barter, Marcia’s protest. The Prætorian Guard has just assassinated the uncomfortably virtuous Pertinax, and the Imperial seat is vacant. We are introduced to the house of Didius, and are shown his wealth, his vanity, his weakness, and the greed and ambition of his wife and daughter; that is to say, the elements which make for his downfall. His treasurer, Abascantus, enters with the news that the Prætorians are putting Rome up for sale, and he proposes that Didius shall bid for it. Marcia interposes, horrified:
Rome for sale!
The empire offered! Didius, do not listen;
There is no verity behind this cry;
The world may be possessed in many ways,
It may not know its lord; but oh, believe me,
It has its Cæsar; nothing alters that,
No howling of a little, greedy crowd.
Why should you rule this city? Have you raised it
To higher honour? Have you borne its griefs?
Will it remember you?
Act I
There follows a masterly passage in which Didius vacillates between the indignation of Marcia and the persuasions of his family. At length he yields to them (though still half afraid of Marcia) to the extent of sending Abascantus to bid for him; and then turns whining to Marcia:
Didius. Is Rome bought and sold?
Alas, you see, she is. A purchaser
Is not ashamed to trade in noblest blood,
If once a state of servitude is owned.
We traffic in all creatures, and, if fate
Allow the traffic, we are justified.
Marcia. You are forbidden; something holds you back.
Rome to be bought! [Showing the city.] Look there!
Didius. But if I stood,
An army at my back to overwhelm,
You would not interpose.
Marcia. It is the strong,
And they must be accoutred by the gods—;
What helmets and what spears!—;who may prevail
In circumstance so awful. Dare you call
The Mighty Helpers who have fought for Rome
To aid you in this enterprise? I know
The day will come she will bear many evils,
And many kingdoms build their seat on her:
But touch her with a manacle for gold!
O Didius, do not dream that what is done
Of foolish men can ever come to pass;
It is the Sibyls’ books that are fulfilled,
The prophecies—;no doings of a crowd.
They are laid by as dust. “If fate allow,”
You say, “the traffic”! You may change the current
And passage of whole kingdoms by not knowing
Just what is infamy; a common deed
It may be, nothing monstrous to the eye,
And yet your children may entreat the hills
To hide them from its terror.
Act I