Perpetua. A Tale of Nimes in A.D. 213

by S. Baring-Gould

Great anxiety was entertained relative to the [pg 257]weather. Unless the mistral ceased and the rain passed away, it would be impossible for the sports to be held. It was true that the entire oval could be covered in by curtains and mats, stretched between poles, but this contrivance was intended as shelter against sun and not rain. Moreover, the violence of the wind had rendered it quite impossible to extend the curtains.

The town was in the liveliest excitement. The man guilty of having mutilated the statue had been sentenced to be cast to the beasts, and this man was no vulgar criminal out of the slums, but belonged to one of the superior “orders.”

That a great social change had taken place in the province, and that the freedmen had stepped into power and influence, to the displacement of their former masters, was felt by the descendants of the first Ægypto-Greek colonists, and by the relics of the Gaulish nobility, but they hardly endured to admit the fact in words. The exercise of the rights of citizenship, the election of the officials, the qualification for filling the superior secular and religious offices, belonged to the decurion or noble families. Almost the sole office open to those below was that of the seviri; and yet even in elections the freed[pg 258]men were beginning to exhibit a power of control.

Now, one of the old municipal families was to be humbled by a member being subjected to the degradation of death in the arena, and none of the Falerii ventured to raise a voice in his defence, so critical did they perceive the situation to be. The sodality of the Augustals in conclave had determined that an example was to be made of Marcianus, and had made this plain to the magistrates. They had even insisted on the manner of his execution. His death would be a plain announcement to the decurion class that its domination was at an end. The ancient patrician and plebeian families of Rome had been extinguished in blood, and their places filled by a new nobility of army factors and money-lenders. A similar revolution had taken place in the provinces by less bloody means. There, the transfer of power was due largely to the favor of the prince accorded to the freedmen.

In the Augustal colleges everywhere, the Cæsar had a body of devoted adherents, men without nationality, with no historic position, no traditions of past independence; men, moreover, who were shrewd enough to see that by combination they [pg 259]would eventually be able to wrest the control of the municipal government from those who had hitherto exercised it.

The rumor spread rapidly that a fresh entertainment was to be provided. The damsel who had been rescued from the basin of Nemausus had surrendered herself in order to obtain the release of her mother; and the magistrate in office, Petronius Atacinus, out of consideration for the good people of the town, whom he loved, and out of reverence for the gods who had been slighted, had determined that she should be produced in the arena, and there obliged publicly to sacrifice, and then to be received into the priesthood. Should she, however, prove obdurate, then she would be tortured into compliance.

Nor was this all. Baudillas Macer, the last scion of a decayed Volcian family, who had been cast into the pit of the robur, but had escaped, was also to be brought out and executed, as having assisted in the rescue of Perpetua from the fountain, but chiefly for having connived at the crime of Falerius Marcianus.

To the general satisfaction, the wind fell as suddenly as it had risen, and that on the night preceding [pg 260]the sports. The weather remained bitterly cold, and the sky was dark with clouds that seemed ready to burst. Not a ray of sunlight traveled across the arena and climbed the stages of the amphitheater. The day might have been one in November, and the weather that encountered on the northern plains of Germania.

The townsfolk, and the spectators from the country, came provided against the intemperance of the weather, wrapped in their warmest mantles, which they drew as hoods over their heads. Slaves arrived, carrying boxes with perforated tops, that contained glowing charcoal, so that their masters and mistresses might keep their feet warm whilst attending the games. Some carried cushions for the seats, others wolf-skin rugs to throw over the knees of the well-to-do spectators.

The ranges of the great oval were for the most part packed with spectators. The topmost seats were full long before the rest. The stone benches were divided into tiers. At the bottom, near the podium or breastwork confining the arena, were those for the municipal dignitaries, for the priests, and for certain strangers to whom seats had been granted by decree of the town council. Here might be read, [pg 261]“Forty seats decreed to the navigators of the Rhône and Saone;” at another part of the circumference, “Twenty-five places appointed to the navigators of the Ardèche and the Ouvèze.”