Chapter III.
The Christian's Feast.
The large clepsydra in the atrium of the villa indicated the fourth watch of the night, an hour corresponding at the winter solstice to one o'clock in the morning, of the 8th of the Kalends, that is, the 25th of December. The slaves had ended their merry-making and retired to rest, when Aurelian and Sisinnius, led by Zoilus, took their way by a by-path over the fields toward the Latin road. The path crossed the stream and wooded hill near the villa.
Standing on the further slope of the hill, they paused to view the city and the surrounding country. The darkness of the early night had been relieved by the rays of the moon. Her white disc was painted on the sky between the luminous edges of the thin clouds, which were driven by the wind, as if in review, before her face. On the earth beneath, moonlight and shadow pursued each other over the woods and uplands. The palaces and monuments bordering the Latin and Appian Ways showed at times as if they were roofed with silver. Now and again her beams, stretching down like white bars between the clouds, rested on the roofs, cupolas, and steeples of the distant city, which stretched in illimitable magnificence before them, flashed out, and the next moment faded like a mirage into indistinctness and shadow. The lights in the streets and country villas flickered feebly "few and far between." The hum of life and business was not, as in the daytime, borne on the wind to their ears from the metropolis, whose great heart, that in a few hours would throb with the pulses of renewed activity through all its arteries, was at rest, save only where the voice of the watchman or of the midnight reveller disturbed its slumber. Turning toward the Appian Way, which for fourteen miles was lined by a double row of monuments—homes for the living and homes for the dead—the trees bowed and tossed their branches in the fitful gusts like hearse-plumes above the tombs. In the lulls it was heard wandering and moaning within the vaults and the columbaria; [Footnote 233] so called because the ashes of the departed reposed in bronze and earthenware urns, ranged in hundreds, tier over tier, as in the cells of a dove-cote. The branches, dry and leafless, pointing their skeleton fingers skyward and creaking dolefully, might well remind a Greek or Roman imagination of imprisoned genii. And the melancholy wail of the breeze might be mistaken for that of unearthly visitants weeping over the remains of the dead.
[Footnote 233: From columba, a dove.]
Having delayed to survey this sombre scene, they continued their journey, and soon reached the Latin road, along which they proceeded to the Crossway, formed by it and the Appian Way about a quarter of a mile outside the Capena Gate. The old walls built by Servius Tullius around the city still remained; through these the gate opened between the Aventine and Coelian hills, nearly a mile from the present entrance of the "Queen of Highways" into the forum through the walls built subsequently by the Emperor Aurelian. The Appian aqueduct, of which scarce a stone remains to-day, rose before them from the ground some sixty paces from the gate, and, travelling on high arches, emptied itself into the reservoir within the walls. The lofty parapets of this gigantic structure, which carried the water underground for eight miles, were marked in the moonlight against the sky as if they had been cut from pasteboard. Turning their backs to the gate and facing southward, they saw that great military highway, built by and named after the Censor Appius four hundred years previously, as it topped the undulations of the country until it was lost in darkness and distance. Its pavement, made of solid blocks of basaltic lava, as the fitful moonlight rested on its receding line, might by a stranger be mistaken for the surface of a glancing stream. The death-like stillness of the sepulchral monuments and of the mysterious columbaria, and the motion of the cypress and other funereal trees interspersed among them, contrasted with the living magnificence and luxury of the villas, temples, and villages by which it passed. It was death beside life. The etymology of the word monuments [Footnote 234] proves that they were built designedly beside the public roads to warn travellers of the goal at which all their earthly journeyings would surely end. Thoughts like these passed through the minds of the three companions; nor were they put to flight by what followed.
[Footnote 234: Monumentum, moners mentem, to warn the mind.]
A funeral procession was issuing from the gate as they arrived at the Crossway. They concealed themselves among the trees of the gardens known for ages afterward as those of the poet Terence. Without being seen, they observed the procession as it wended near them. In front of and at intervals through it were slaves carrying torches, whose glare colored the sky and the monuments on either side with a red glow. Musicians, playing mournful strains on the flute, the pipes, and the horn, startled the silence of the time and place. They were aided by mourning females hired to chant the funeral song. After these came the mimics, directed by a principal, who represented the life and character of the deceased by imitations of his words and actions; slaves wearing the cap of freedom, as a sign that they had been emancipated before his death, followed. Some of these bore the images of himself and of his ancestors; others, the civil and military crowns he had won, which proved him to have been distinguished as a citizen and a soldier. The remains rested on an ivory couch covered with drapery of purple and gold. Behind them were the children of the deceased, the sons in black mourning, with heads veiled; the daughters in white, with heads bare, and hair dishevelled. The quick march of the procession, the restless flames of the torches, and the acting of the mimics seemed strangely out of place with the sad occasion, and music, with the dirge of the female mourners and the silence or suppressed sobs of the children of the departed. It was another picture of life and death beside each other—a union so frequent with the ancients.
"There goes the funeral of Senecio," said Zoilus.
"Herenius Senecio, the senator! What, did he too incur the imperial anger?" asked Aurelian.
"He wrote a life of the proconsul Priscus, at the request of the widow Faunia."