DARKNESS AND DAWN
OR
SCENES IN THE DAYS OF NERO
Transcriber’s Notes:
Punctuation has been standardized.
This book was written in a period when many words had not become standardized in their spelling. Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. These have been left unchanged unless indicated with a Transcriber’s Note.
Footnotes are identified in the text with a superscript number2 and have been accumulated in a single section at the end of the text.
Transcriber Notes are used when making corrections to the text or to provide additional information for the modern reader. These notes are identified in the text with a superscript ‘T’ and a numberT2 and grouped at the very end of the book.
Darkness and Dawn
OR
SCENES IN THE DAYS OF NERO
An Historic Tale
BY
FREDERIC W. FARRAR, D.D., F.R.S.
ARCHDEACON AND CANON OF WESTMINSTER, AUTHOR OF “THE LIFE OF CHRIST,” ETC., ETC.
NEW YORK
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
LONDON AND BOMBAY
1897
By F. W. Farrar
First Edition, September, 1891. Reprinted December, 1891; January and April, 1892; January and September, 1893; February, 1895; May, 1896.
University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.
VXORI
DILECTISSIMAE
LIBERORVM PIENTISSIMAE MATRI
LABORUM OMNIUM ET CURARUM PARTICIPI FIDELISSIMAE
HVNC LIBRVM
D. D. D.
FREDERICVS GVILIELMVS FARRAR
Dolce color d’oriental zaffiro,
Che s’accoglieva nel sereno aspetto
Dell’aer puro infino al primo giro,
Agli occhi miei ricomincio diletto,
Tosto ch’io usci fuor dell’aura morta,
Che m’avea contristato gli occhi e’l petto.
Dante, Purgatorio, I. 13-18.
The orient sapphire’s hue of sweetest tone,
Which gathered in the aspect calm and bright
Of that pure air as far as heaven’s first zone,
Now to mine eyes brought back the old delight
Soon as I passed forth from the dead dank air
Which eyes and heart had veiled with saddest night.
Plumptre.
PREFACE
I have endeavoured to choose a title for this book which shall truly describe its contents. The ‘Darkness’ of which I speak is the darkness of a decadent Paganism; the ‘Dawn’ is the dawn of Christianity. Although the story is continuous, I have called it ‘Scenes in the Days of Nero,’ because the outline is determined by the actual events of Pagan and Christian history, more than by the fortunes of the characters who are here introduced. In other words, the fiction is throughout controlled and dominated by historic facts. The purport of this tale is no less high and serious than that which I have had in view in every other book which I have written. It has been the illustration of a supreme and deeply interesting problem—the causes, namely, why a religion so humble in its origin and so feeble in its earthly resources as Christianity, won so majestic a victory over the power, the glory, and the intellect of the civilised world.
The greater part of the following story has been for some years in manuscript, and, since it was designed, and nearly completed, several books have appeared which deal with the same epoch. Some of these I have not seen. From none of them have I consciously borrowed even the smallest hint.
Those who are familiar with the literature of the first century will recognise that even for the minutest allusions and particulars I have contemporary authority. Expressions and incidents which, to some, might seem to be startlingly modern, are in reality suggested by passages in the satirists, epigrammatists, and romancers of the Empire, or by anecdotes preserved in the grave pages of Seneca and the elder Pliny. I have, of course, so far assumed the liberty accorded to writers of historic fiction as occasionally to deviate, to a small extent, from exact chronology, but such deviations are very trivial in comparison with those which have been permitted to others, and especially to the great masters of historic fiction.
All who know most thoroughly the real features of that Pagan darkness which was deepest before the Christian dawn will see that scarcely even by the most distant allusion have I referred to some of the worst features in the life of that day. While I have not extenuated the realities of cruelty and bloodshed, I have repeatedly softened down their more terrible incidents and details. To have altered that aspect of monotonous misery which pained and wearied its ancient annalist would have been to falsify the real characteristics of the age with which I had to deal.
The book is not a novel, nor is it to be judged as a novel. The outline has been imperatively decided for me by the exigencies of fact, not by the rules of art. I have been compelled to deal with an epoch which I should never have touched if I had not seen, in the features which it presented, one main explanation of an historical event the most sacred and the most interesting on which the mind can dwell.
The same object has made it inevitable that, at least in passing glimpses, the figures of several whose names are surrounded with hallowed associations should appear in these pages. I could not otherwise bring out the truths which it was my aim to set forth. But in this matter I do not think that any serious reader will accuse me of irreverence. Onesimus, Pudens, Claudia, and a few others, must be regarded as imaginary persons, except in name, but scarcely in one incident have I touched the Preachers of early Christianity with the finger of fiction. They were, indeed, men of like passions with ourselves, and as St. Chrysostom says of St. Paul, ‘Even if he was Paul, he was yet a man;’ but recognising their sacred dignity, I have almost entirely confined their words to words of revelation. Even if I had done more than this, I might plead the grave sanction and example of Dante, and Milton, and Browning. But the small liberty which I have dared to use has only been in directions accorded by the cycle of such early legends as may be considered to be both innocent and hallowed.
F. W. FARRAR.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER [I.] The Soliloquies of Agrippina [II.] Agrippina and Nero [III.] Instrumenta Imperii [IV.] The Crime [V.] The Mockery of Death [VI.] The Accession of Nero [VII.] Seneca and his Family [VIII.] Seneca and his Visitors [IX.] Nero and his Companions [X.] Prince Britannicus [XI.] ‘A Foreign Superstition’ [XII.] Onesimus [XIII.] The Adventures of a Runaway [XIV.] Mother and Son [XV.] Emperor and Æsthete [XVI.] Events in the Villa Pollux [XVII.] Amusements of an Emperor [XVIII.] Vespasian’s Farm [XIX.] Otho’s Supper and what came of it [XX.] Brother and Sister [XXI.] Among the Christians [XXII.] Britannicus and his Song [XXIII.] Perils of Britannicus [XXIV.] Britannicus undergoes a New Experience [XXV.] Locusta [XXVI.] A Banquet and a Conversation [XXVII.] Death in the Goblet [XXVIII.] The Last of the Claudii [XXIX.] Agrippina at Bay [XXX.] A Private Trial [XXXI.] The Interior of a Slave-prison [XXXII.] Wanderings of an Outcast [XXXIII.] Titus and the Vestal [XXXIV.] An Evil Epoch [XXXV.] The Matricide [XXXVI.] Self-avenged [XXXVII.] Victor over the Public Servitude [XXXVIII.] The Gladiators’ School [XXXIX.] The Fight in the Arena [XL.] The Spoliarium [XLI.] The King of the Grove [XLII.] A Massacre of Slaves [XLIII.] A Notable Prisoner [XLIV.] A Supper at Vespasian’s [XLV.] Poppæa Victrix [XLVI.] The Death of Octavia [XLVII.] A Fettered Ambassador [XLVIII.] Enslaved and Free [XLIX.] The Depths of Satan [L.] A City in Flames [LI.] An Infernal Suggestion [LII.] Aliturus among the Christians [LIII.] ‘He who saw the Apocalypse’ [LIV.] In the Burning Fiery Furnace [LV.] Two Martyrdoms [LVI.] Living Torches [LVII.] A Conspiracy and its Collapse [LVIII.] The Fall of the House of Seneca [LIX.] The Agony of an Empress [LX.] The Doom of Virtue [LXI.] Before the Lion [LXII.] Nero in Greece [LXIII.] Muttering Thunder [LXIV.] At The Three Fountains [LXV.] In the Clutch of Nemesis [LXVI.] L’Envoi [FOOT] Footnotes [NOTE] Notes [TN] Transcriber’s Notes
BOOK I
‘CLOTHO FERT FUSUM’
CHAPTER I
THE SOLILOQUIES OF AGRIPPINA
‘Oramus, cave despuas, ocelle,
Ne pœnas Nemesis reposcat a te:
Est vehemens Dea; lædere hanc caveto.’
Catull. Carm. L. 18-20.
The Palace of the Cæsars was a building of extraordinary spaciousness and splendour, which had grown with the growing power of the emperors. The state entrance was in the Vicus Apollinis, which led into the Via Sacra. It was an Arch, twenty-nine feet high, surmounted by a statue of Apollo and Diana driving a chariot of four horses, the work of Lysias. Passing the Propylæa the visitor entered the sacred area, paved with white marble and surrounded by fifty-two fluted columns of Numidian giallo antico, with its soft tints of rose and gold. Between these stood statues of the Danaides, with their father Danaus brandishing a naked sword. In the open spaces before them were the statues of their miserable Egyptian husbands, each reining his haughty steed. Here, too, among other priceless works of art, stood the famous Hercules of Lysippus, clothed in his lion’s skin and leaning on his club.On one side was the Temple of Apollo, built of the marble of Luna, designed by Bupalos and Anthermos of Chios. On the top of its pediment was the chariot of Apollo in gilt bronze, and the great bronze valves were encrusted[T1] with ivory bas-reliefs of the triumph over Niobe, and the panic-stricken flight of the Gauls from Delphi. Behind this temple was the shrine of Vesta, and on the west side the famous Palatine Library, large enough to accommodate the whole Senate, and divided into two compartments, Greek and Latin.In its vestibule was a bronze statue, fifty feet high, which is said to have represented Augustus with the attributes of Apollo.[1]
To the Palace and Propylæa of Augustus, with their open spaces, and shrubs, and flowers, and fountains, Tiberius had added a separate palace, known as the Domus Tiberiana, which overlooked the Velabrum; and Gaius—more commonly known by his nickname of Caligula—had filled with buildings the entire space between the Palace and the Forum. He had also purchased the House of Gelotius, and in that humble annex had delighted to spend nights of riotous orgies with the grooms and charioteers of his favourite green faction. Since his time it had been utilised as a training-school for the imperial pages, whose scribblings, sometimes matter-of-fact, sometimes humorous and satirical, can still be traced on the fast-crumbling walls. Vast as was the whole composite structure, it received immense additions from the restless extravagance of Nero, Domitian, and later emperors.
But if it surpassed all the other buildings of imperial Rome in magnificence, it surpassed them also in misery and guilt. Here, in the days of Augustus, the Empress Livia had plotted the murder and removal of all who stood in the way of her son’s succession. Here in the days of Tiberius the conscious walls had witnessed the deadly intrigues of Ælius Sejanus. In A.D. 23, that daring and cruel conspirator had secured the poisoning of Drusus, the only son of Tiberius, by insinuating himself into the affections of Livia, his faithless wife. Here in A.D. 33, the younger Drusus, son of the hero Germanicus, was slowly starved to death by order of Tiberius. In one of the subterranean vaults he had poured out his mad reproaches against the tyrant, had writhed under the savage rebukes of the centurion, and had been beaten by the brutal slaves who guarded his dungeon. For nine days he had lingered on, chewing in his agony the tow with which his mattress was stuffed. Here the young Tiberius Gemellus, grandson of Tiberius, piteously ignorant how to kill himself, had been shown how to drive the poniard into his throat by the tribune sent for that purpose by his cousin and adoptive brother, Caligula. Chamber after chamber in that huge structure had witnessed the wild and brutal freaks of that madman-emperor and the tortures which he inflicted upon nobles and senators, whose mouths he ordered to be gagged with their own bloodstained garments. Here he had been visited with the dire vengeance of his crimes; for in the covered gallery which he had built as a passage between his palace and the theatre, he had been smitten by the fierce sword of the tribune Cassius Chærea. Hard by—the stains of blood were still upon the wall—his empress, the blue-eyed Cæsonia, had been stabbed in the throat as she wailed and wept over the dead body of her lord; and her little infant, Julia Drusilla, had been dashed against the stones.
Such was the Palace of pagan Rome in the days of Christ and His Apostles.
It might well have seemed, even to the most callous worshipper of the old gods, that a dark spirit was walking in that house; that the phantoms of the unavenged dead haunted it; that ghostly footfalls glided through its midnight corridors; and that in hidden corners the lonely wanderer might come on some figure ‘weeping tears of blood,’ which vanished with ‘hollow shriek’ before the presence of the innocent.
No such feelings of dread disturbed the thoughts of the Empress Agrippina on a certain September evening, A.D. 54. The world was at her feet. Her brave and good father, Germanicus, her chaste and virtuous mother, the elder Agrippina, had been the idols alike of the Roman soldiers and the Roman people. She was the great-granddaughter of the Emperor Augustus; the granddaughter of the victorious Agrippa; the great-niece of the Emperor Tiberius; the sister of the Emperor Gaius: and now at last her unwearied intrigues had made her the sixth wife of her uncle, the Emperor Claudius. Not content with such near bonds to so many of those who were honoured as gods on earth, did she not mean that her boy also—her darling Nero—should ere long mount the throne of the Cæsars, and that she herself should govern for many a long year in his name, as she now governed in the name of her husband Claudius? Her ancestress Livia, the stately wife of Augustus, had received the imperial title of Augusta, but not until her husband’s death; Agrippina had received it, and with it every honour which a servile Senate could devise, in her early prime. Had she not sat on a throne, in unwonted splendour, by the side of her weak and prematurely aged husband at the reception of foreign ambassadors? Was she not privileged, alone of Roman princesses, to ride in a chariot to the Capitol? Was not her fine head and lovely face stamped on thousands of coins and medals? Had she not shown, in contrast to her predecessor, the beautiful and abandoned Messalina, how dignified could be a matron’s rule?
Yes, the world was at her feet; and by every glance and every gesture she showed her consciousness of a grandeur such as no woman had hitherto attained. Her agents and spies were numberless. The Court was with her, for in the days of Claudius the Court meant the all-powerful freedmen, who impudently ruled and pillaged their feeble master; and if she could not seduce the stolid fidelity of his secretary Narcissus, she had not disdained to stoop to the still more powerful Pallas. The people were with her, for she was the sole surviving child of the prince whom they had regarded with extravagant affection. The intellect of Rome was on her side, for Seneca, always among her favourites, had been recalled by her influence from his banishment in feverous Corsica, and, holding the high position of tutor to her son, was devoted to her cause. The Prætorian guards were on her side, for Burrus, their bold and honest commander, owed his office to her request. The power of gold was hers, for her coffers had been filled to bursting by an immeasurable rapacity. The power of fascination was hers, for few of those whom she wished to entangle were able to resist her spells. Above all she could rely absolutely upon herself. Undaunted as her mother, the elder Agrippina; popular as her father, the adored Germanicus; brilliant and audacious as her grandmother, Julia, the unhappy daughter of Augustus; full of masculine energy and aptitude for business as her grandfather Agrippa—who else could show such gifts or command such resources?—But she had not yet drunk to the dregs the cup of ambition which she had long ago lifted to her eager lips.
She was sitting on a low broad-backed seat, enriched with gilding and ivory, in the gorgeous room which was set aside for her special use. It was decorated with every resource of art, and the autumnal sunlight which was falling through its warm and perfumed air glinted on statuettes of gold and silver, on marble bas-reliefs of exquisite fancy, and on walls which glowed with painted peacocks, winged genii, and graceful arabesques.
Her face was the index of a soul which only used the meaner passions as aids to the gratification of the grander ambitions. No one who saw her, as she leant back in her easy half-recumbent attitude, could have doubted that he was in the presence of a lady born to rule, and in whose veins flowed the noblest blood of the most ancient families of Rome. She was thirty-seven years old, but was still in the zenith of her imperious charms, and her figure had lost none of the smooth and rounded contour of youth. Her features were small and delicate, the forehead well shaped, the eyes singularly bright, and of a light blue, under finely marked eyebrows. Her nose was slightly aquiline, the mouth small and red and beautiful, while the slight protrusion of the upper lip gave to it an expression of decided energy. Her hair was wavy, and fell in multitudes of small curls over her forehead and cheeks, but was confined at the back of the head in a golden net from which a lappet embroidered with pearls and sapphires fell upon her neck, half concealed by one soft and glowing tress.
She sat there deep in thought, and her mind was not occupied with the exquisite image of herself reflected from the silver mirror which hung bright and large upon the wall before her. Her expression was that which she wears in her bust in the Capitol—the expression of one who is anxious, and waits. One sandalled foot rested on the ankle of the other, and her fair hands were lightly folded on her robe. That robe was the long stola worn by noble matrons. It swept down to her feet and its sleeves reached to the elbows, where they were fastened by brooches of priceless onyx, leaving bare the rest of her shapely arms. Two large pearls were in her ears, but she had laid aside her other ornaments. On a little marble abacus beside her lay her many-jewelled rings, her superb armlets set with rubies, and the murenula—a necklace of linked and flexile gold glittering with gems—which had encircled her neck at the banquet from which she just had risen. Her attitude was one of rest; but there was no rest in the bosom which rose and fell unequally with her varying moods—no rest in the countenance with its look of proud and sleepless determination. She was alone, but a frequent and impatient glance showed that she expected some one to enter. She had dismissed her slaves, and was devoting her whole soul to the absorbing design for which at that moment she lived, and in the accomplishment of which she persuaded herself that she was ready to die. That design was the elevation of her Nero, at the first possible moment, to the throne whose dizzy steps were so slippery with blood.
In the achievement of her purpose no question of right and wrong for a moment troubled her. Guilt hid no horror for that fair woman. She had long determined that neither the stings of conscience nor the fear of peril should stop her haughty course. To her, as to most of the women of high rank in the Rome of the Empire, crime was nothing from which to shrink, and virtue was but an empty name. Philosophers she knew talked of virtue. It was interesting to hear Seneca descant upon it, as she had sometimes heard him do to her boy, while she sat in an adjoining room only separated from them by an embroidered curtain. But she had long ago convinced herself that this was fine talk, and nothing more. Priests pretended to worship the gods; but what were the gods? Had not the Senate made her ancestor Augustus a god, and Tiberius, and her mad brother Caligula, and his little murdered baby, the child of Cæsonia, which had delighted its father by its propensity to scratch? If such beings were gods, to whom incense was burned and altars smoked, assuredly she need not greatly trouble herself about the inhabitants of Olympus.
Nemesis? Was there such a thing as Nemesis? Did a Presence stalk behind the guilty, with leaden pace, with feet shod in wool, which sooner or later overtook them—which cast its dark shadow at last beyond their footsteps—which gradually came up to them, laid its hand upon their shoulders, clutched them, looked them in the face, drove into their heads the adamantine nail whose blow was death? For a few moments her countenance was troubled; but it was not long before she had driven away the gloomy thought with a disdainful smile. It was true that there had been calamity enough in the bloodstained annals of her kinsfolk: calamity all the more deadly in proportion to their awful growth in power and wealth. Her thoughts reverted to the story of her nearest relatives. She thought of the days of Tiberius, when men scarcely dared to speak above a whisper, and when murder lurked at the entrance of every noble home. Her uncles Gaius and Lucius Cæsar had died in the prime of their age. Had they been poisoned by Sejanus? Her other uncle, the young Agrippa Posthumus—born after the death of his father, Agrippa—had been killed in a mad struggle with the centurion whom Livia had sent to murder him in his lonely exile. Her mother had been cruelly murdered; her aunt, the younger Julia, had died in disgrace and exile on a wretched islet. Her two brothers, Nero and Drusus, had come to miserable ends in the flower of their days. Her third brother, the Emperor Caligula, had been assassinated by conspirators. The two Julias, her sister and her cousin, had fallen victims to the jealous fury of the Empress Messalina. The name of her sister Drusilla had been already stained with a thousand shames. She was the sole survivor of a family of six princes and princesses, all of whom, in spite of all the favours of fortune, had come, in the bloom of life, to violent and shameful ends. She had herself been banished by her brother to the island of Pontia, and had been made to carry on her journey, in her bosom, the inurned ashes of her brother-in-law, Lepidus, with whom, as with others, her name had been dishonourably involved. She had already been twice a widow, and the world said that she had poisoned her second husband, Crispus Passienus. What did she care what the world said? But even if she had poisoned that old and wealthy orator—what then? His wealth had been and would be very useful to her. Since that day her fortunes had been golden. She had been recalled from her dreary banishment. Her soul had been as glowing iron in the flame of adversity; but the day of her adversity had passed. When the time was ripe she had made her magnificent way in the Court of her uncle Claudius until she became his wife, and had swept all her rivals out of her path by her brilliant beauty and triumphant intrigues.
She thought of some of those rivals, and as she thought of them an evil smile lighted up her beautiful features.
Messalina, her predecessor—did not everything seem to be in her favour? Claudius had doted on her; she fooled him to the top of his bent. She had borne him two fair children, and the emperor loved them. Who could help loving the reserved but noble Britannicus, the gentle and innocent Octavia? No doubt Messalina had felt certain that her boy should succeed his father. But how badly she had managed! How silly had been her preference for pleasure over ambition! How easily Agrippina had contrived that, without her taking any overt share in the catastrophe, Messalina should destroy herself by her own shamelessness, and perish, while still little more than girl, by the sword of the executioner, in a pre-eminence of shame!
And Lollia Paulina? What might she not have done with her enormous riches? Agrippina could recall her—not at one of the great Court gatherings, but at an ordinary marriage supper, in which she had appeared in a dress embroidered from head to foot with alternate rows of pearls and emeralds, with emeralds in her hair, emeralds of deepest lustre on her fingers, a carcanet of emeralds—the finest Rome had ever seen—around her neck.Yet this was not her best dress, and her jewels were said to be worth eighty millions of sesterces.[2] She remembered with what a stately step, with what a haughty countenance the great heiress, who had for a short time been Empress as wife of Caligula, passed among the ranks of dazzled courtiers, with the revenues of a province upon her robes. Well, she had dared to be a competitor with Agrippina for the hand of Claudius. It required no small skill to avert the deeply seated Roman prejudice against the union of an uncle with his niece; yet Agrippina had won—thanks to the freedman Pallas, and to other things. She procured the banishment of Lollia, and soon afterwards a tribune was sent and she was bidden to kill herself. The countenance of the thinker darkened for a moment as she remembered the evening when the tribune had returned, and had taken out of its casket the terrible proof that her vengeance was accomplished. How unlike was that ghastly relic to the head whose dark locks had been wreathed with emeralds!
And Domitia Lepida, her sister-in-law, the mother of the Empress Messalina, the aunt of her son Nero, the former wife of her own husband, Crispus Passienus? She was wealthy as herself, beautiful as herself, noble as herself, unscrupulous as herself. She might have been a powerful ally, but how dared she to compete for the affections of Nero? How dared she to be indulgent when Agrippina was severe? The boy had been brought up in her house when his father was dead and his mother an exile. His chances had seemed very small then, and Lepida had so shamefully neglected him that his only tutors were a barber and a dancer. But now that he held the glorious position of Prince of the Roman Youth; now that he wore the manly toga, while Britannicus only stood in humble boy’s dress—the embroidered robe, and the golden bulla round his neck to avert the evil eye; now that it seemed probable to all that Nero, the adopted son of Claudius, would be the future Emperor instead of Britannicus, his real son, it was all very well for Domitia to fondle and pamper him. It was a hard matter to get rid of Lepida, for Narcissus, the faithful guardian of Claudius, had opposed the attempt to get her put to death. Nevertheless, Agrippina seldom failed in her purposes; and as for Lepida and Narcissus—their turn might come!
She could only recall one insult which she had not avenged. The senator Galba was rich, and was said by the astrologers to have an imperial nativity. She had therefore made love to him so openly that his mother, Livia Ocellina, had once slapped her in the face. If she had not made Galba and his virago-mother feel the weight of her vengeance, it was only because they were too insignificant to be any longer worthy of her attention. She was too proud to take revenge on minor opposition. The eagle, she thought, does not trouble itself about the mole.
Enough! Her thoughts were getting too agitated! She must go step by step; but who would dare to say that she would not succeed? The wit and purpose of a woman against the world! ‘Yes, Nero, my Nero, thou shalt be Emperor yet! Thou shalt rule the world, and I have always ruled thee, and will rule thee still. Thy weak nature is under my dominance; and I, whose heart is hard as the diamond, shall be Empress of the world. Nemesis—if there be a Nemesis—must bide her time.’
She murmured the words in a low tone to herself; but at this point her reverie was broken.
CHAPTER II
AGRIPPINA AND NERO
‘Occidat dum imperet.’—Tac. Ann. xiv. 9.
A voice was heard in the corridor, the curtain was drawn aside, and a youth of sixteen, but who had nearly completed his seventeenth year, entered the room.
He was still in the bloom of his youthful beauty. His face was stamped with all the nobility of the Domitian race from which he sprang. It had not as yet a trace of that ferocity engendered in later years from an immense vanity clouded by a dim sense of mediocrity. It was perfectly smooth, and there was nothing to give promise of the famous brazen beards of his ancestors, unless it were the light hair, with its slight tinge of red, which was so greatly admired in antiquity, and which looked golden when it caught the sunlight. Round the forehead it was brushed back, but it covered his head with a mass of short and shining curls, and grew low down over the white neck. His face had not yet lost the rose of youth, though its softness spoke of a luxurious life. The eyes were of light grey, and the expression was not ungenial, though, owing to his short sight, his forehead often wore the appearance of a slight frown. He was of middle height, and of those fine proportions which made his flatterers compare him to the youthful God of Song.
‘Nero!’ exclaimed his mother: ‘I thought you were still in the banquet hall. If the Emperor awakes he may notice your absence.’
‘There is little fear of that,’ said Nero, laughing. ‘I left the Emperor snoring on his couch, and the other guests decorously trying to suppress the most portentous yawns. They, poor wretches, will have to stay on till midnight or later, unless Narcissus sets them free from the edifying spectacle of a semi-divinity quite intoxicated.’
‘Hush!’ said Agrippina, severely. ‘This levity is boyish and ill-timed. Jest at what you like, but never at the majesty of the Imperial power—not even in private, not even to me. And remember that palace walls have ears. Did you leave Octavia at the table?’
‘I did.’
‘Imprudent!’ said his mother. ‘You know what pains I have taken to keep her from seeing too much of her father except when we are present. Claudius sometimes sleeps off the fumes of wine, and after a doze he can talk as sensibly as he ever does. Was Britannicus in the Hall?’
‘Britannicus?’ said Nero. ‘Of course not. You have taken pains enough, mother, to keep him in the background. According to the antique fashion which the Emperor has revived of late, you saw him at the banquet, sitting at the end of the seat behind his father. But the boys have been dismissed with their pedagogues long ago, and, for all I know, Britannicus has been sent to bed.’
‘And for whose sake do I take these precautions?’ asked the Empress. ‘Is it not for your sake, ungrateful? Is it not that you may wear the purple, and tower over the world as the Imperator Romanus?’
‘For my sake,’ thought Nero, ‘and for her own sake, too.’ But he said nothing; and as he had not attained to the art of disguising his thoughts from that keenest of observers, he bent down, to conceal a smile, and kissed his mother’s cheek, with the murmured words, ‘Best of mothers!’
‘Best of mothers! Yes; but for how long?’ said Agrippina. ‘When once I have seated you on the throne—’ She broke off her sentence. She had never dared to tell her son the fearful augury which the Chaldeans had uttered of him: ‘He shall be Emperor, and shall kill his mother.’ He had never dreamed that she had returned the answer: ‘Let him slay me, so he be Emperor.’
‘Optima mater, now and always,’ he replied. ‘But I am angry with Britannicus—very angry!’ and he stamped his foot.
‘Why? The boy is harmless enough. I thought you had him completely under your power. You seem to be very good friends, and I have seen you sitting together, and training your magpies and jays to talk, quite amicably.Nay, though Britannicus hates me, I almost won his heart—for two minutes—by promising to give him my talking-thrush, which eyes us so curiously from its cage.’[3]
‘Give it to me, mother,’ said Nero. ‘A thrush that can talk as yours can is the greatest rarity in the world, and worth ten times over its weight in gold.’
‘No, Nero; Britannicus shall have it. I like to see him devoting himself to such trifles. I have other views for you. But what has the poor boy done to offend you?’
‘I met him in the Gelotian House,’ said Nero, ‘and how do you think he dared to address me? Me—by sacred adoption the son of Claudius, and, therefore, his elder brother?’
‘How?’
‘I said to him, quite civilly, “Good morning, Britannicus.” He had actually the audacity to reply, “Good morning, Ahenobarbus!” Ahenobarbus, indeed! I hate the name. I stand nearer to the divine Augustus than he does.[4] What did he mean by it?’
Agrippina broke into a ripple of laughter. ‘The poor harmless lad!’ she said. ‘It merely was because his wits were wool-gathering, as his father’s always are. No doubt he dislikes you—he has good reason to do so; but he meant nothing by it.’
‘I doubt that,’ answered the youth. ‘I suspect that he was prompted to insult me by Narcissus, or Pudens, or the knight Julius Densus or some of the people who are still about him.’
‘Ah!’ said Agrippina, thoughtfully, ‘Narcissus is our most dangerous enemy. He is much too proud of his ivory rod and prætor’s insignia. But he is not unassailable. The Emperor was not pleased with the failure of the canal for draining Lake Fucinus, and perhaps I can get Domitius Afer or some one else, to accuse him of embezzling the funds. How else could he have amassed 400,000,000 sesterces? He has the gout very badly, and I will persuade him that it is necessary for him to go to Campania for the benefit of his health. When once he is out of the way—. But, Nero, I am expecting a visit from Pallas, with whom I have much important business. Go back to the hall, my boy, and keep your eyes open always as to what is going on.’
‘I will go back,’ said Nero; ‘but, mother, I sometimes wish that all this was over. I wish I had not been forced to marry Octavia. I shall never like her. I should like to have—’
He stopped, and blushed crimson, for his mother’s eagle eye was upon him, and he had almost let out the secret of his sudden and passionate love for Acte, the beautiful freedwoman of his wife.
‘Well?’ said Agrippina suspiciously, but not ill-pleased to see how her son quailed before her imperious glance. ‘Go on.’
‘I meant nothing particular,’ he stammered, his cheek still dyed with its deep blush, ‘but that I sometimes wish I were not going to be Emperor at all. Julius was murdered. Augustus, they say, was poisoned. Tiberius was suffocated. My uncle Gaius was stabbed with many wounds. The life is not a happy one, and the dagger-stab too often finds its way through the purple.’
‘Degenerate boy!’ said Agrippina; ‘I do not wonder that you blush. Is it such a nothing to be a Lord of the World? Have you forgotten that you are a grandson of Germanicus, and that the blood of the Cæsars as well as of the Domitii flows in your veins? One would think you were as ordinary a boy as Britannicus. For shame!’
‘Well, well, mother,’ he said, ‘you always get your own way with every one. Pallas is in the anteroom, and I must go.’
Nero kissed her, and took his leave. Immediately afterwards the slave announced that Pallas was awaiting the pleasure of the Empress.
CHAPTER III
INSTRUMENTA IMPERII
‘It is the curse of kings to be attended
By slaves who take their humours for a warrant
To break into the bloody house of life.’
Shakespeare, King John.
The autumn twilight had by this time faded, but one silver lamp, standing on a slab of softly glowing marble, shed a dim light through the room when the freedman was ushered into it. He was a man of portly presence, and of demeanour amazingly haughty for one who had once bawled ‘Sea-urchins for sale!’ in the Subura, and come over the sea from his native Arcadia with his feet chalked as a common slave. His immense wealth, his influence over the Emperor, and his advocacy of the claims of Agrippina to her uncle’s hand, together with the honours bestowed upon him by the mean adulation of the Senate, had raised him to the pinnacle of his power. Agrippina had stooped to the lowest depths to purchase his adherence, and now there was absolute confidence between them. He was ready to betray the too-indulgent master who had raised him from the dust and heaped upon him gifts and privileges, for which the noblest Consul might have sighed in vain.
Pallas was in a grave mood. The air was full of portents. A tale was on every lip among the common people that a pig had been born with the talons of a hawk. A swarm of bees had settled on the top of the Capitol. The tents and standards of the soldiers had been struck with fire from heaven. In that year a quæstor, an ædile, a tribune, a prætor, and a consul had all died within a few months of each other. Claudius had nominated two consuls, but had only nominated them for a single month. Had he misgivings about his approaching fate? Agrippina was not superstitious, and she listened to these stories of the Greek freedman with the indifference of disdain. But it was far otherwise when he told her that Narcissus had been heard to utter very dangerous speeches. He had said that whether Britannicus or Nero succeeded, he himself was doomed to perish. Britannicus would hate him as the man who had brought about the death of his mother Messalina. Nero would hate him, because he had opposed his adoption, and the marriage of his mother to the Emperor, both which events had been achieved by the rival influence of Pallas. Still Narcissus was faithful to his kind master, and Britannicus was the Emperor’s son. The freedman had been seen to embrace Britannicus; he had spoken of him as the ‘true image of Claudius;’ had stretched forth his hands now to him and now to heaven, and had prayed ‘that the boy might grow speedily to man’s estate, and drive away the enemies of his father, even if he also took vengeance on the slayer of his mother.’
Agrippina listened to this report with anxious disquietude, and Pallas told her further that lately the Emperor had often pressed Britannicus and Octavia to his heart; had spoken of their wrongs; had declared that they should not be ousted from their place in his affections by the crafty and upstart son of such a wretch as Domitius Ahenobarbus, of whom it might be said, as the orator Licinius Crassus said of his ancestor, ‘No wonder his beard was of brass, since his tongue was of iron, and his heart of lead.’ Claudius often repeated himself, and when he saw his son he had several times used the Greek proverb, ὁ τρώσας καὶ ἰάσεται, ‘he who wounded shall also heal you.’
But worse news followed, and Agrippina grasped the side of her couch with an impulse of terror, when, last of all, Pallas told her that, on that very evening, the Emperor, in his cups, had been heard to mutter to some of his intimates ‘that he more than suspected the designs of his wife; and that it had always been his destiny to bear the flagitious conduct of his consorts for a time, but at last to avenge it.’
As she heard these words Agrippina stood up, her arms outstretched, her fine nostril dilated, her whole countenance inflamed with rage and scorn. ‘The dotard!’ she exclaimed, ‘the miserable, drivelling, drunken dotard! He to speak thus of me! Pallas, the hour for delay is over. It is time to act. But,’ she added, ‘Narcissus is still here. He loves his master; he watches over him with sleepless vigilance. I dare attempt nothing while he remains about the Court.’
‘He is crippled with the gout,’ answered Pallas. ‘He suffers excruciating agony. He cannot hold out much longer. I told him that you strongly recommended him to try the sulphur baths of Sinuessa. He is nearly certain to take the hint. In a week or two at the latest he will ask leave of absence, for his life is a torture.’
‘Good!’ whispered the Empress; and then, dropping her voice to a whisper, she hissed into the ear of the freedman, ‘Claudius must not live.’
‘You need not drop your voice, Augusta,’ said Pallas. ‘No slave is near. I placed one of my own attendants in the corridor, and forbade him on pain of death to let anyone approach your chamber.’
‘You ventured to tell him that?’ asked Agrippina, amazed at the freedman’s boldness.
‘Not to tell him that,’ answered Pallas. ‘Do you suppose that I would degrade myself by speaking to one of my own slaves, or even of my own freedmen—I who, as the senate truly says, am descended from Evander and the ancient kings of Arcadia, though I deign to be among Cæsar’s servants? No! a look, a sign, a wave of the hand is sufficient command from me. If anything more is wanted I write it down on my tablets. I rejoice—as I told the senate when they offered me four million sesterces—to serve Cæsar and retain my poverty.’
‘The insolent thrall!’ thought Agrippina; ‘and he says this to me who know that he was one of the common slaves of Antonia, the Emperor’s mother, and still has to conceal under his hair the holes bored in his ears. And he talks of his poverty to me, though I know as well as he does how he has amassed sixty million sesterces by robbery in fourteen years!’ But she instantly concealed the disdainful smile which flitted across her lips, and repeated in a low voice, ‘Claudius must die!’
‘The plan has its perils,’ said the freedman.
‘Not if it remains unknown to the world,’ she replied. ‘And who will dare to reveal it, when they know that to allude to it is death?’
‘If you are the daughter of the beloved Germanicus,’ he said, ‘the Emperor is his brother. The soldiers would never rise against him.’
‘I did not think of the Prætorians,’ said Agrippina. ‘There are other means. In the prison beneath this palace is one who will help me.’
‘Locusta?’ whispered Pallas, with an involuntary shudder. ‘But the Emperor has a prægustator who tastes every dish and every cup.’
‘Yes! The eunuch Halotus,’ answered Agrippina. ‘He is in my pay; he will do my bidding.’
‘But Claudius also has a physician.’
‘Yes! The illustrious Xenophon of Cos,’ answered the Empress, with a meaning smile.
Pallas raised his hands, half in horror, half in admiration. Careless of every moral consideration, he had never dipped his hands in blood. He had lived in the midst of a profoundly corrupt society from his earliest youth. He knew that poisonings were frequent amid the gilded wickedness and hollow misery of the Roman aristocracy. He knew that they had been far from infrequent in the House of Cæsar, and that Eudemus, the physician of Drusus, son of the Emperor Tiberius, had poisoned his lord. Yet before the cool hardihood of Agrippina’s criminality he stood secretly appalled. Would it not have been better for him, after all, to have followed the example of Narcissus, and to have remained faithful to his master? How long would he be necessary to the Empress and her son? And when he ceased to be useful, what would be his fate?
Agrippina read his thoughts in his face, and said, ‘I suppose that Claudius is still lingering over the wine cup. Conduct me back to him. Acerronia, my lady-in-waiting, will follow us.’
‘He has been carried to his own room,’ said Pallas; ‘but if you wish to see him, I will attend you.’
He led the way, and gave the watchword of the night to the Prætorian guards and their officer, Pudens. The room of the Emperor was only across the court, and the slaves and freedmen and pages who kept watch over it made way for the Augusta and the all-powerful freedman.
‘The Emperor still sleeps,’ said the groom of the chamber as they entered.
‘Good,’ answered Agrippina. ‘You may depart. We have business to transact with him, and will await his wakening. Give me the lamp. Acerronia will remain without.’
The slave handed her a golden lamp richly chased, and left the chamber. There on a couch of citron-wood lay the Emperor, overcome, as was generally the case in the evening, with the quantities of strong wine he had drunk. His breathing was deep and stertorous; his thin grey hairs were dishevelled; his purple robe stained, crumpled, and disordered. His mouth was open, his face flushed; the laurel wreath had fallen awry over his forehead, and, in the imbecile expression of intoxication, every trace of dignity and nobleness was obliterated from his features.
They stood and looked at him under the lamp which Agrippina uplifted so that the light might stream upon his face.
‘Sot and dotard!’ she exclaimed, in low tones, but full of scorn and hatred. ‘Did not his own mother, Antonia, call him “a portent of a man”? I am not surprised that my brother Gaius once ordered him to be flung into the Rhone; or that he and his rude guests used to slap him on the face, and pelt him with olives and date-stones when he fell asleep at the table. I have often seen them smear him with grape juice, and draw his stockings over his hands, that he might rub his face with them when he awoke! To think that such a man should be lord of the world, when my radiant Nero, so young, so beautiful, so gifted, might be seated on his throne for all the world to admire and love!’
‘The Emperor has learning,’ said Pallas, looking on him with pity. ‘His natural impulses are all good. He has been a very kind and indulgent master.’
‘He ought never to have been Emperor at all,’ she answered, vehemently. ‘That he is so is the merest accident. We owe no thanks to the Prætorian Gratus, who found him hidden behind a curtain on the day that my brother Gaius was murdered, and pulled him out by the legs: still less thanks to that supple intriguing Jew, Herod Agrippa, who persuaded the wavering senate to salute him Emperor. Why, all his life long he has been a mere joke. Augustus called him “a poor little wretch,” and as a boy he used to be beaten by a common groom.’
‘He has been a kind master,’ said the freedman once more; and as he spoke he sighed.
The Empress turned on him. ‘Will you dare to desert me?’ she said. ‘Do you not know that, at this moment, Narcissus has records and letters in his possession which would hand me over to the fate of Messalina, and you to the fate of the noble C. Silius?’
‘I desert you not,’ he answered, gloomily; ‘I have gone too far. But it is dangerous for us to remain alone any longer. I will retire.’
He bowed low and left the room, but before he went out he turned and said, very hesitatingly, ‘He is safe with you?’
‘Go!’ she answered, in a tone of command. ‘Agrippina does not use the dagger; and there are slaves and soldiers and freedmen at hand, who would come rushing in at the slightest sound.’
She was alone with Claudius, and seeing that it would be many hours before he woke from his heavy slumber, she gently drew from his finger the beryl, engraved with an eagle—the work of Myron—which he wore as his signet ring. Then she called for Acerronia, and, throwing over her face and figure a large veil, bade her show the ring to the centurion Pudens, and tell him to lead them towards the entrance of the Palace prisons, as there was one of the prisoners whom she would see.
Pudens received the order and felt no surprise. He who had anything to do with the Palace knew well that the air of it was tremulous with dark intrigues. He went before them to the outer door of the subterranean cells, and unlocked it. Even within the gate slaves were on guard; but, although no one recognised the veiled figure, a glance at the signet ring sufficed to make them unlock for her the cell in which Locusta was confined.
Agrippina entered alone. By a lamp of earthernware sat the woman who had played her part in so many crimes. She was imprisoned on the charge of having been concerned in various murders, but in those awful times she was too useful to be put to death. The phials and herbs which had been her stock-in-trade were left in her possession.
‘I need,’ said the Empress, in a tone of voice which she hardly took the trouble to disguise, ‘a particular kind of poison: not one to destroy life too suddenly; not one which will involve a lingering illness; but one which will first disturb the intellect, and so bring death at last.’
‘And who is it that thus commands?’ asked Locusta, lifting up to her visitor a face which would have had some traces of beauty but for its hard wickedness. ‘It is not to everyone that I supply poisons. Who knows but what you may be some slave plotting against our lord and master, Claudius? They who use me must pay me, and I must have my warrant.’
‘Is that warrant enough?’ said Agrippina, showing her the signet ring.
‘It is,’ said Locusta, no longer doubtful that her visitor was, as she had from the first suspected, the Empress herself. ‘But what shall be my reward, Aug—’
‘Finish that word,’ said the Empress, ‘and you shall die on the rack to-morrow. Fear not, you shall have reward enough. For the present take this;’ and she flung upon the table a purse full of gold.
Suspiciously yet greedily the prisoner seized it, and opening it with trembling fingers saw how rich was her guerdon. She went to a chest which lay in the corner of the room and, bending over it with the lamp, produced a small box, in which lay some flakes and powder of a pale yellow colour.
‘This,’ she said, ‘will do what you desire. Sprinkle it over any well-cooked dish, and it will not be visible. A few flakes of it will cause first delirium, then death. It has been tested.’
Without a word Agrippina took it, and, slightly waving her hand, glided out of the cell. Acerronia awaited her, and Pudens again went before them towards the apartments of the Empress and her ladies.
CHAPTER IV
THE CRIME
‘Une grande reine, fille, femme, mère de rois si puissants.’—Bossuet, Oraison Funèbre d’Henriette de France.
‘Boletos ... optimi quidem hos cibi, sed immenso exemplo in crimen adductos.’—Pliny, N. H. xxii. 46.
A fortnight had elapsed since the evening which we have described. Claudius, worn out with the heavy cares of state, to which he always devoted a conscientious, if somewhat bewildered, attention, had fallen into ill health, which was increased by his unhappy intemperance. Unwilling at all times to allow himself a holiday, even in his advancing years, he had at last been persuaded to visit Sinuessa, near the mouth of the River Vulturnus, in the hope that its charming climate and healing waters might restore him to his usual strength. He had there enjoyed a few days of quiet, during which his suspicions had been lulled to sleep by the incessant assiduities of Agrippina. His children had accompanied him, and Agrippina had been forced to conceal the furious jealousy with which she witnessed the signs of affection which he began to lavish upon them. She did not dare to delay any longer the terrible crime which she had for some time meditated. She stood on the edge of a precipice. There was peril in every day’s procrastination. What if Pallas, whose scruples she had witnessed, should feel an impulse of repentance—should fling himself at his master’s feet, confess all, and hurry her to execution, as Narcissus had hurried Messalina? The weak mind of Claudius was easily stirred to suspicions. He had already shown marked signs of uneasiness. Halotus, Xenophon, Locusta—they knew all. Could so frightful a secret be kept? Might not any whisper or any accident reveal it? If she would end this harassing uncertainty and reap the glittering reward of crime, there must be no delay.
She had intended to carry out the fatal deed at Sinuessa, but Claudius felt restless; and as a few days of country air had refreshed his health and spirits, he hurried back to Rome on October 13, A.D. 54. She felt that, if she was not prompt, Narcissus, the vigilant guardian of his master, might return, and the opportunity might slip away for ever.
They had scarcely reached the Palace when she bade Acerronia to summon Halotus to her presence as secretly as possible.
The eunuch entered—a wrinkled and evil specimen of humanity, who had grown grey in the household of Claudius.
‘The Emperor,’ she said, ‘is far from well. His appetite needs to be enticed by the most delicate kinds of food. You will see that his tastes are consulted in the supper of this evening.’
‘Madam,’ said the slave, ‘there is nothing of which the noble Claudius is fonder than boletus mushrooms. They are scarce, but a small dish of them has been procured.’
‘Let them be brought here, that I may see them.’
Halotus returned in a few moments, followed by a slave, who set the mushrooms before her on a silver dish, and retired. They were few in number, but one was peculiarly fine.
‘I will consult the physician Xenophon, whether they will suit the Emperor’s health,’ said Agrippina. ‘He is in attendance.’
Passing into an adjoining room, which was empty, she hastily drew from her bosom the little box which Locusta had given her, and sprinkled the yellow flakes and powder among the sporules on the pink inner surface of the mushroom. Then returning she said,
‘Halotus, this dainty must be reserved for the table of the Emperor alone, and I design this mushroom particularly for him. He will be pleased at the care which I have taken to stimulate his appetite. And if I have reason to be satisfied with you, your freedom is secured—your fortune made.’
The eunuch bowed; but as he left the room he thrust his tongue into his cheek, and his wrinkled face bore an ugly smile.
The evening came. The supper party was small, for Claudius still longed for quiet, and had been glad, in the retirement of Sinuessa, to lay aside the superb state of the imperial household. Usually when he was at Rome the hall was crowded with guests; but on this day he had desired that only a few friends should be present. At the sigma, or semicircular table at which he reclined, there were no others except Agrippina, who was next to him, Pallas, Octavia, and Nero. Burrus, the commander of the Prætorian camp, was in attendance, and Seneca, Nero’s tutor; but they were at another sigma, with one or two distinguished senators who had been asked to meet them.
Except Halotus and Pallas, there was not one person in the room who had the least suspicion of the tragedy which was about to be enacted. Yet there fell on all the guests one of those unaccountable spells of silence and depression which are so often the prelude to great calamities. At the lower table, indeed, Burrus tried to enliven the guests with the narrative of scenes which he had witnessed in Germany and Britain in days of active service, and told once more how he had received the wound which disabled his left hand. But to these stories they listened with polite apathy, nor could they be roused from their languor by the studied impromptus of Seneca. At the upper table Nero, startled by a few vague words which his mother had dropped early in the day, was timid and restless. The young Octavia—she was but fourteen years old—was habitually taciturn in the presence of her husband, Nero, who even in these early days had conceived an aversion, which he was not always able to conceal, for the bride who had been forced upon him by his mother’s ambition. Claudius talked but little, for he was intent, as usual, on the pleasures of the table, and all conversation with him soon became impossible, as he drained goblet after goblet of Massic wine. Agrippina alone affected cheerfulness as she congratulated the Emperor on his improving health, and praised the wisdom which had at last induced him to yield to her loving entreaties, and to take a much-needed holiday.
‘And now, Cæsar,’ she said, ‘I have a little surprise for you. There is, I know, nothing which you like better than these rare boleti. They are entirely for ourselves. I shall take some; the rest are for you, especially this—the finest I could procure.’
With her own white and jewelled hand she took from the dish the fatal mushroom, and handed it to her husband. He greedily ate the dainty, and thanked her. Not long after he looked wildly round him, tried in vain to speak, rose from the table, and, staggering, fell back into the arms of the treacherous Halotus.
The unfortunate Emperor was carried out of the triclinium by his attendants. Such an end of the banquet was common enough after he had sat long over the wine, but that he should be removed so suddenly before the supper was half over was an unwonted circumstance.
The slaves had carried him into the adjoining Nymphæum, a room adorned with rare plants, and were splashing his face with the water of the fountain. Xenophon was summoned, and gave orders that he should be at once conveyed to his chamber. The guests caught one last glimpse of his senseless form as the slaves hurriedly carried it back through the dining-hall.
Seneca and Burrus exchanged terrified glances, but no word was spoken until Agrippina whispered to Pallas to dismiss the guests. He rose, and told them that the Emperor had suddenly been taken ill, but that the illness did not seem to be serious. A night’s rest would doubtless set him right. Meanwhile the Empress was naturally anxious, and as she desired to tend her suffering husband, it was better that all strangers should take their farewell.
As they departed, they heard her ordering the preparation of heated cloths and fomentations, as she hurried to the sick room. The Emperor lay gasping and convulsed, sometimes unconscious, sometimes in a delirium of agony; and it was clear that the quantities of wine which he had drunk might tend to dilute the poison, possibly even to counteract its working. Hour after hour passed by, and Claudius still breathed. Xenophon, the treacherous physician, saw the danger. Assuring those present in the chamber of the dying man that quiet was essential to his recovery, he urged the Empress to have the room cleared, and to take upon herself the duties of nurse. His commands were obeyed, and under pretence that he might produce some natural relief by irritating the throat, Xenophon sent for a large feather. The feather of a flamingo was brought, and when the slaves had retired, he smeared it with a rapid and deadly poison. The effect was instant. The swollen form of the Emperor heaved with the spasm of a last struggle, and he lay dead before them.
Not a tear did Agrippina shed, not one sigh broke from the murderess, as her uncle and husband breathed his last.
‘It must not be known that he is dead,’ she whispered. ‘Watch here. I will give out that he has fallen into a refreshing sleep, and will probably awake in his accustomed health. Fear not for your reward; it shall be immense when my Nero reigns. But much has first to be done.’
She hurried to her room, and despatched messengers in all directions, though it was now near midnight. She sent to the Priests, bidding them to offer vows to all the gods for the Emperor’s safety; she ordered the Consuls to convoke the Senate, and gave them secret directions that, while they prayed for Claudius, they should be prepared for all emergencies. Special despatches were sent to Seneca and Burrus. The former was to prepare an address which Nero might, if necessary, pronounce before the Senate; the latter was to repair to the Palace at earliest dawn and await the issue of events.
Meanwhile she gave the strictest orders that the Palace gates should be guarded, and that none should be allowed to enter or to leave unless they could produce written permission. All this was easy for her. The Palace was full of her creatures. Britannicus and Octavia had been gradually deprived of nearly all who were known to be faithful to their interests. They were kept in profound ignorance that death had robbed them of the one natural protector, who loved them with a tenderness which had often been obscured by the bedazed character of his intellect, but which had never been for one moment quenched. All that they learnt from the spies and traitors who were placed about their persons was that the Emperor had been taken suddenly ill, but was already recovering, and was now in a peaceful slumber.
Having taken all these precautions, and secured that no one except Pallas or herself should be admitted during the night into the room where Xenophon kept watch beside the corpse, Agrippina retired to her chamber. One thing alone troubled her. Before she retired she had looked for a moment on the nightly sky, and saw on the far horizon a gleam unknown to her. She called her Greek astrologer and asked him what it was. He paused, and for a moment looked alarmed. ‘It is a comet,’ he said.
‘Is that an omen of disaster?’
The learned slave was too politic to give it that interpretation. ‘It may,’ he said, ‘portend the brilliant inauguration of a new reign.’
She was reassured by the answer, and laid herself down to rest. Though greatly excited by the events of the day, and the immense cares which fell upon her, she slept as sweetly as a child. No pale faces looked in upon her slumber; no shriek rang through her dreams; no fancy troubled her of gibbering spectre or Fury from the abyss. She had given orders that she should be awakened in a few hours, and by the time that the first grey light shuddered in the east she had dressed herself in rich array, and, with a sense of positive exultation, stepped out of her room, calm and perfumed, to achieve that which had been for years the main ambition of her life.
CHAPTER V
THE MOCKERY OF DEATH
‘Esse aliquos Manes et subterranea regna
Nec pueri credunt, nisi qui nondum ære lavantur,
Sed tu vera puta.’—Juv. Sat. ii. 149-153.
Agrippina had long contrived to secure the absolute devotion of her slaves, clients, and freedmen. In that vast household of at least sixteen hundred persons, all courteously treated and liberally paid, there were many who were ready to go any lengths in support of their patroness. Among them was the freedman Mnester, who knew but little of her crimes, but was enthusiastic in her interests. She made constant use of him on that eventful day.
Among her slaves were some of the Chaldæai and casters of horoscopes, so common in those times, in whom she placed a superstitious confidence. Her first care was to consult them, and she determined to take no overt step until they should announce that the auspicious hour had come. She then hastened to the chamber where Xenophon still kept his watch beside the man whom he had murdered. He kept that watch with perfect indifference. His was a soul entirely cynical and atheistic; greedy of gain only, case-hardened by crime. The bargain between him and the Empress was perfectly understood between them. Enormous wealth would be the price of his silence and success; death would punish his failure.
There was nothing to be seen but the dead form covered from head to foot by a purple coverlet.
She pointed to it. ‘He must still be supposed to be alive,’ she said. ‘The Chaldæans say that the omens are still inauspicious. How are we to keep the secret for some hours longer?’
‘Asclepiades teaches,’ answered the physician, with the scarcely veiled sneer which marked his tone of voice, ‘how good it is that the pains of dying men should be dissipated by comedy and song. The Empress can order some comedians to play in the adjoining chamber. If they cannot avail the divine Claudius, they will at least serve to amuse my humble self, and I have now been in this room for many hours.’
‘Does any one suspect that he is dead?’
‘No, Augusta,’ he answered. ‘To dissipate the too suspicious silence, I have occasionally made curious sounds, at which I am an adept. They will delude any chance listener into the belief that my patient is still alive.’
For a moment her soul was shocked by the suggestion of sending for the mummers. But she saw that it would help to prevent the truth from leaking out. For one instant she lifted the purple robe and looked on the old man of sixty-four, who had thus ended his reign of fourteen years. She dropped it over the features, which, in the majesty of death, had lost all their coarseness and imbecility, and showed the fine lineaments of his ancestors. The moment afterwards she was sorry that she had done it. That dead face haunted all her after life.
Leaving the chamber without a word, she gave orders that, as the Emperor was now awake, and had asked for something to amuse him, some skilled actors of comedy should be sent for to play to him from the adjoining room. They came and did their best, little knowing that their coarse jests and riotous fun did but insult the sacred majesty of death. After an hour or two Xenophon, who had been laughing uproariously, came out, thanked them in the Emperor’s name, and dismissed them.
But Agrippina had hastened to one of the audience rooms, in which the Palace abounded, and sent for Britannicus and Octavia, and for their half-sister Antonia. She embraced them with effusive fondness. It was her special object to detain Britannicus in her presence, lest if but one faithful friend discovered that Claudius was dead, he might summon the adherents of the young prince, and present him to the people as the true heir to the throne. With pretext after pretext she detained him by her side, telling him of the pride and comfort which she felt in his resemblance to the Emperor, calling him a true Cæsar, a true Claudius. Again and again she drew him to her knee; she held him by the hand; she passed her jewelled fingers through his hair; she amused him with the pretence of constant messages to the sick-room of his father. And all the while her soul was half-sick with anxiety, for the Chaldæans still sent to say that the hour was inauspicious, and she did not fail to observe that the boy, as much as he dared to show his feelings, saw through her hypocrisy, resented her caresses. He burned to visit the bedside of his father, and was bitterly conscious that something was going on of which he and his sisters were the special victims. For he was a noble and gifted boy. Something he had of the high bearing of his race, something, too, of the soft beauty of his mother. His tutor, the grammarian Sosibius, had done for him all that had been permitted, and though Britannicus had purposely been kept in the background by the wiles of his stepmother, the teacher had managed to inspire him with liberal culture, and to enrich his memory with some grand passages of verse. Nero was more than three years his senior, and in superficial qualities and graces outshone him; but keen observers whispered that though Britannicus could not sing or paint or drive a chariot like his stepbrother, and was less fascinating in manner and appearance, he would far surpass Nero in all manly and Roman virtues. The heart of Octavia was full of unspeakable misgivings. Motherless, unloved, neglected, she had known no aspect of life except its tragedy, and none had as yet taught her any possible region in which to look for comfort under the burden of the intolerable mystery.
The morning hours passed heavily, and Agrippina was almost worn out by the strain put upon her. In vain she tried to interest Britannicus in the talking-thrush, which had greatly amused him on previous occasions. She went so far as to give him her white nightingale, which was regarded as one of the greatest curiosities in Rome.It had been bought for a large sum of money, and presented to her. Pliny, among his researches in natural history, had never heard of another.[5] At another time Britannicus would have been enraptured by so interesting and valuable a gift; but now he saw that it was the object of the Empress simply to detain him and his friends from any interference with her own designs. He thanked her coldly, and declined to rob her of a possession which all Rome desired to see.
At last he grew beyond measure impatient. ‘I am certain,’ he said, ‘that my father is very ill, and that he would wish to see me. Augusta, must I be kept in this room like a child among women? Let me go to the Emperor.’
‘Wait,’ she said, ‘for a little longer, dear Britannicus. You surely would not waken the Emperor from the sleep which may prove to be the saving of his life? It is getting towards noon; you must be hungry. The slaves shall bring us our prandium here.’
It was said to save time, but Britannicus saw that it would be vain to escape. The door was beset with soldiers and with the slaves and freedmen of the Empress. Some great event was evidently at hand. The halls and corridors were full of hurrying footsteps. Outside they heard the clang of armed men, who marched down the Vicus Apollinis, and stopped at the vestibule of the Palace.
Then Pallas entered, and, with a deep obeisance, said, ‘Augusta, I grieve to be the bearer of evil tidings. The Emperor is dead.’
Octavia burst into a storm of weeping at the terrible intelligence, for she had been partially deceived by the protestations of Agrippina. Britannicus sat down and covered his face with his hands. He had always assumed that he would at least share the throne with the youth whom Claudius, at the wearying importunities of his mother, had needlessly adopted, and had repented of having adopted. But he loved his father, who had always been kind to him, and at that dreadful moment no selfish thought intruded on his anguish. After the first burst of sorrow, he got up from his seat, and tenderly clasped the hand of his sister.
‘Octavia,’ he said, ‘we are orphans now—fatherless, motherless, the last of our race. We will be true to each other. Take courage. Be comforted. Antonia,’ he added, gently taking his half-sister by the hand, ‘I will be a loyal brother to you both.’
CHAPTER VI
THE ACCESSION OF NERO
‘Le Roi est mort. Vive le Roi!’
‘Agrippina terris alterum venenum, sibique ante omnes, Neronem suum dedit.’—Pliny, N. H. xxii. 46.
Agrippina did not attend any longer to the children of Claudius; she threw off the mask. For by this time the sundial on the wall marked the hour of noon, and the Chaldæans were satisfied with the auspices. Her quickened sense of hearing caught the sounds for which she had long been listening. She heard the Palace doors thrown open. She heard the voice of Burrus commanding the soldiers to salute their Emperor. She heard shout on shout, ‘Nero Emperor! Nero Emperor! Long live Nero! Long live the grandson of Germanicus!’
She sprang out into the balcony, and there caught one glimpse of her son. His fair face was flushed with pride and excitement; the sun shone upon his golden hair which flowed down his neck; his slight but well-knit limbs were clothed in the purple of an Emperor. She saw him lean on the arm of the Prætorian Præfect as, surrounded by some of the chief military tribunes, he walked to the guard-house of the cohort which protected the imperial residence.
‘Prætorians,’ said Burrus, in a loud voice, ‘behold your Emperor, Nero Claudius Cæsar.’
‘Nero?’ asked one or two voices. ‘But where is Britannicus?’
They looked round. No one was visible but Nero, and their question was drowned in the cheers of their comrades.
‘Bring out the richest lectica,’ they cried; and it was ready in an instant. Nero was placed in it, and Burrus, springing on his war-horse, and followed by the select cohort of imperial cavalry, rode by his side. The Præfect was in full armour, and his cuirass was enriched with gems and gold. He held his drawn sword in his hand, lifting it again and again to excite the soldiers to louder cheers.
Then followed the very delirium of Agrippina’s triumph. Messenger after messenger entered to tell her that the air was ringing with endless acclamations in honour of her son. The beautiful and happy youth promised to the soldiers the same donative of fifteen sestertia to each man which Claudius had given at his succession, and the guardsmen accepted him with rapture, and hastily swore to him their oaths of allegiance.
Then with gleaming ensigns, and joyous songs, and shouting, and clapping of hands, they bore him in long procession to the Senate House, to obtain the ratification which the Conscript Fathers dared not refuse. At first, indeed, there had been a few shouts, ‘Britannicus! Where is Britannicus? Where is the true son of Claudius?’ And she inwardly made a note of the fact that the centurion Pudens and the knight Julius Densus had been among the number of those who raised the shout. Britannicus, too, had heard the cry, faint as it was by comparison; but when he attempted to escape out of the room, Agrippina imperiously waved him back, and Pallas detained him by the arm. He sat down in despair, and once more covered his face with his hands, while now it was the turn of Octavia to caress and comfort him. But the plot was already accomplished. The few who would have favoured his cause seemed to be swept away by the general stream. The boy had been kept so designedly in the background, that many of the people hardly knew whether he was alive or dead. He felt that he was powerless, and he had heard among the shouts of the soldiers the cry, ‘All hail, Augusta! All hail, the daughter of our Germanicus!’ He resigned himself to his fate, and Agrippina, intent on her own plans, and absorbed in the intensity of her emotions, no longer noticed his presence.
Suddenly, however, he started from his seat, and stood before her. His face was pale as death, but his eyes shone with indignant light.
‘Why am not I, too, proclaimed Emperor?’ he exclaimed. ‘I do not believe that my father meant to rob me of my inheritance. I am his son, not his adopted son. This is a conspiracy. Where is my father’s will? Why is it not taken to the senate, and there recited?’
The Empress was amazed at the sudden outburst. Was this the boy who seemed so meek and so helpless? This must be seen to!
‘Foolish boy,’ she said; ‘you are but a child. You have not yet assumed the manly garb. How can a boy like you bear the burden of the world’s empire? Fear not; your brother Nero will take care of you.’
‘Take care of me!’ repeated Britannicus, indignantly, restraining with difficulty the torrent of wild words which sprang to his lips. ‘It is a conspiracy!’ he cried. ‘You have robbed me of my inheritance to give it to your son Ahenobarbus.’
Agrippina lifted up her arm as if she would have struck him, but Pallas interposed. Firmly, but not ungently, he laid his hand on the young prince’s mouth.
‘Hush,’ he said, ‘ere you do yourself fatal harm. Boy, these questions are not for you or me to settle. They are for the Senate, and the Prætorians, and the Roman people. If the soldiers have elected Nero, and the senators have confirmed their choice, he is your Emperor, and you must obey.’
‘It is useless to resist, my brother,’ said Octavia, sadly. ‘Our father is dead. Narcissus has been sent away. We have none to help us.’
‘None to help you, ungrateful girl!’ said Agrippina. ‘Are not you now the Empress? Have you not the glory of being Nero’s bride?’
Octavia answered not. ‘Our father is dead,’ she said again. ‘May we not go, Augusta, and weep by his bedside?’
‘Go!’ answered Agrippina; ‘and I for my part will see that he is enrolled among the gods, and honoured with a funeral worthy of the House of Cæsar.’ Then, turning to her attendants, she issued her orders.
‘Put a cypress at the door of the Palace. Let the body be dressed in imperial robes, and incense burned in the chamber. See that every preparation is made for a royal funeral, and that the flute-players, the wailing-women, the designatores, with their black lictors, be all in readiness.’
But while Agrippina was giving directions to the archimimus who was to represent the dead Emperor at the funeral, and was examining the waxen masks of his ancestral Claudii, which were to be worn in the procession, the boy and girl were permitted to visit the chamber of the dead. They bent over the corpse of their father, and fondled his cold hands, and let their tears fall on his pale face, and felt something of the bitterness of death in that sudden and shattering bereavement, which changed for ever the complexion of their lives.
Nero, meanwhile, was addressing the Senate amidst enraptured plaudits in the finely turned and epigrammatic phrases of Seneca, which breathed the quintessence of wise government and Stoic magnanimity. He would rule, he said, on the principles which guided Augustus; and the senators seemed as if they would never end their plaudits when to the offer of the title ‘Father of his Country’ he modestly replied, ‘Not till I shall have deserved it.’
Agrippina, after having ordered the details of the funeral procession, finally dismissed her murdered husband from her thoughts, and gave directions that her son, on his return to the Palace, should be received with a fitting welcome. She summoned all the slaves and freed men of that mass of dependants which made of the Palace not a household, but a city. They were marshalled in throngs by their offices and nationalities in the vast hall. They were arrayed in their richest apparel, and were to scatter flowers and garlands under the feet of the new Emperor as he advanced. The multitudes of the lowest and least distinguished slaves were to stand in the farther parts of the hall; next to them the more educated and valuable slaves, and next to them the freedmen. In the inner ring were placed all the most beautiful and accomplished of the pages, their long and perfumed curls falling over their gay apparel, while some who had the sweetest voices were to break out into a chorus of triumphal songs. Then Nero was to be conducted to the bath, and afterwards a sumptuous banquet was to be served to a hundred guests. There was but a short time for these preparations; but the wealth of the Cæsars was unbounded, and their resources inexhaustible, and since the slaves were to be counted by hundreds, and each had his own minute task assigned to him, everything was done as if by magic.
The afternoon was drawing in when new bursts of shouting proclaimed that, through the densely crowded streets, in which every lattice and balcony and roof was now thronged with myriads of spectators, Nero was returning from the Curia to the Palace with his guard of Prætorians.
Walking between the two Consuls, with Burrus and Seneca attending him in white robes, followed by crowds of the greatest Roman nobles, and by the soldiers clashing their arms, singing their rude songs, and exulting in the thought of their promised donative, the young ruler of the world returned. The scene which greeted him when the great gates of the Palace were thrown open was gay beyond description. The atrium glowed in zones of light and many-coloured shadow. The autumnal sunbeams streamed over the gilded chapiters, glancing from lustrous columns of yellow and green and violet-coloured marble, and lighting up the open spaces adorned with shrubs and flowers. The fountains were plashing musically into marble and alabaster basins. Between rows of statues, the work of famed artificers, were crowded the glad and obsequious throngs of the rejoicing house.
Agrippina was seated on a gilded chair of state at the farther end of the hall, her arms resting on the wings of the two sphinxes by which it was supported. She was dressed in the chlamys, woven of cloth of gold, in which Pliny saw her when she had dazzled the spectators as she sat by the side of Claudius in the great festival at the opening of the Emissarium of the Fucine Lake. Beneath this was her rich stola, woven of Tarentine wool and scarlet in colour, but embroidered with pearls. It left bare from the elbow her shapely arms, which were clasped with golden bracelets enriched with large stones of opal and amethyst.
The moment that she caught sight of her son she descended from her seat with proud step, and Nero advanced to meet her. He was bending to kiss her hand, but the impulses of nature overcame the stateliness of Roman etiquette, and for one instant mother and son were locked in each other’s arms in a warm embrace, amid the spontaneous acclamations of the many spectators.
That evening Agrippina had ascended to the giddiest heights of her soaring ambition. Her son was Emperor, and she fancied he would be as clay in her strong hands. Alone of all the great Roman world it would be her unspeakable glory that she was not only the descendant of emperors, but the sister, the wife, and the mother of an Emperor. She was already Augusta and Empress in title, and she meant with almost unimpeded sway to rule the world. And while she thus let loose every winged wish over the flowery fields of hope, and suffered her fancy to embark on a sea of glory, the thought of her husband lying murdered there in an adjoining room did not cast the faintest shadow over her thoughts. She was about to deify him, and to acquire a sort of sacredness herself by becoming his priestess—was not that enough? She sat revolving her immense plans of domination, when Nero joined her, flushed from the banquet, and weary with the excitement of the day. While he was bidding her good night, and they were exchanging eager congratulations on the magnificent success of his commencing rule, the tribune of the Palace guard came to ask the watchword for the night.
Without a moment’s hesitation Nero gave as the watchword, The Best of Mothers.
But late into the darkness, in the room of death, unnoticed, unasked for, Britannicus and Octavia mingled their sad tears and their low whispers of anguish, beside the rapidly blackening corpse of the father who had been the lord of the world. Yesterday—though his impudent freedmen had for years been selling, plundering, and murdering in his name—two hundred millions of mankind had lifted up their eyes to him as the arbiter of life and death, of happiness and misery. By to-morrow nothing would be left but a handful of ashes in a narrow urn. Of all who had professed to love and to adore him, not one was there to weep for him except these two; for their half-sister, Antonia, had been content merely to see the corpse, and had then retired. No one witnessed their agony of bereavement, their helplessness of sorrow, except the dark-dressed slave who tended the golden censer which filled the death chamber with the fumes of Arabian incense. And for them there was no consolation. The objects of their nominal worship were shadowy and unreal. The gods of the heathen were but idols, of whom the popular legends were base and foolish. Such gods as those had no heart to sympathise, no invisible and tender hand to wipe away their orphan tears.
CHAPTER VII
SENECA AND HIS FAMILY
‘Palpitantibus præcordiis vivitur.’—Seneca, Ep. lxxii.
‘Sæculo premimur gravi,
Quo scelera regnant.’
Id. Octav. act. ii.
If there was one man in all Rome whom the world envied next to the young Emperor, or even more than the Emperor himself, it was his tutor, Seneca. He was the leading man in Rome. By the popular critics of the day his style was thought the finest which any Roman had written, though the Emperor Gaius, in one of his lucid intervals, had wittily remarked that it was ‘sand without lime.’ His abilities were brilliant, his wealth was immense. In all ordinary respects he was innocent and virtuous—he was innocence and virtue itself compared with the sanguinary oppressors and dissolute Epicureans by whom he was surrounded on every side.
But his whole life and character were ruined by the attempt to achieve an impossible compromise, which disgraced and could not save him. A philosopher had no place in the impure Court of the Cæsars. To be at once a Stoic and a minister of Nero was an absurd endeavour. Declamations in favour of poverty rang hollow on the lips of a man whose enormous usury poured in from every part of the Empire. The praises of virtue sounded insincere from one who was living in the closest intercourse with men and women steeped in unblushing wickedness. And Seneca was far from easy in his own mind. He was surrounded by flatterers, but he knew that he was not ranked with patriots like Pætus Thrasea, and genuine philosophers like Cornutus and Musonius Rufus. Unable to resist temptations to avarice and ambition, he felt a deep misgiving that the voice of posterity would honour their perilous independence, while it spoke doubtfully of his endless compromises.
Yet he might have been so happy! His mother, Helvia, was a woman who, in the dignity of her life and the simplicity of her desires, set an example to the matrons of Rome, multitudes of whom, in the highest circles, lived in an atmosphere of daily intrigue and almost yearly divorce. His aunt, Marcia, was a lady of high virtue and distinguished ability. His wife, Paulina, was tender and loving. His pretty boy, Marcus, whose bright young life was so soon to end, charmed all by his mirthfulness and engaging ways. His gardens were exquisitely beautiful, and he never felt happier than when he laid aside his cares and amused himself by running races with his little slaves. His palace was splendid and stately, and he needed not to have burdened himself with the magnificence which gave him no pleasure and only excited a dangerous envy. It would have been well for him if he had devoted his life to literature and philosophy. But he entered the magic circle of the Palace, and with a sore conscience was constantly driven to do what he disapproved, and to sanction what he hated.
Short as was the time which had elapsed since the death of Claudius, he was already aware that in trying to control Nero he was holding a wolf by the ears. Some kind friend had shown him a sketch, brought from Pompeii, of a grasshopper driving a griffin, and he knew that, harmless as it looked, the griffin was meant for himself and the grasshopper for Nero. Men regarded him as harnessed to the car of the frivolous pupil whom he was unable to control.
He was sitting in his study one afternoon, and the low wind sounded mournfully through the trees outside. It was a room of fine proportions, and the shelves were crowded with choice books. There were rolls of vellum or papyrus, stained saffron-colour at the back, and fastened to sticks of ebony, of which the bosses were gilded. All the most valuable were enclosed in cases of purple parchment, with their titles attached to them in letters of vermilion. There was scarcely a book there which did not represent the best art of the famous booksellers, the Sosii, in the Vicus Sandalarius, whose firm was as old as the days of Horace. A glance at the library showed the taste as well as the wealth of the eminent owner—the ablest, the richest, the most popular, the most powerful of the Roman senators.
They who thought his lot so enviable little knew that his pomp and power brought him nothing except an almost sleepless anxiety. Every visitor who came to him that morning spoke of subjects which either tortured him with misgivings or vexed him with a touch of shame.
The first to visit Seneca that day was his brother Gallio, with whom he enjoyed a long, confidential, and interesting conversation. Gallio, to whom every one gave the epithet of ‘sweet’ and ‘charming,’ and of whom Seneca said that those who loved him to the utmost did not love him enough, had recently returned from the proconsulship of Achaia. He had just been nominated Consul as a reward for his services. The brothers had much to tell each other. Gallio described some of his experiences, and made Seneca laugh by a story of how a Jewish Rabbi had been dragged before his tribunal by the Jews of Corinth, who were infuriated with him because he had joined this new, strange, and execrable sect of Christians. This Jew’s name was Paulus, and his countrymen accused him of worshipping a malefactor who, for some sedition or other—but probably only to please the turbulent Jews—had been crucified, in the reign of Tiberius, by the Procurator Pontius Pilatus.
‘I naturally refused to have anything to do with their abject superstition,’ said Gallio.
‘Abject enough,’ answered Seneca; ‘but is our mythology much better?’
Gallio answered with a shrug of the shoulders.
‘They are the gods of the mob,’ he said, ‘not ours; and they are useful to the magistrates.’
‘A new god has recently been added to their number,’ said Seneca, ‘the divine Claudius.’
‘Yes,’ said Gallio, significantly; ‘he has been dragged to heaven with a hook! But you have not let me finish my story. It appears that this Paulus was a tent-maker, and for some reason or other, in spite of his absurd beliefs, he had gained the confidence of Erastus, the city chamberlain, and of a great many Greeks; for, strange to say, he had—so I am told—preached a very remarkable and original code of ethics. It is almost inconceivable that a man can hold insane doctrines, and yet conform to a lofty morality. Yet such seems to have been the case with this strange person. I looked at him with curiosity. He was dressed in the common Eastern costume of the Jews, wearing a turban and a coarse striped robe flung over his tunic. He was short, and had the aquiline nose and general type of Judaic features. But though his eyes were sadly disfigured by ophthalmia, there was something extraordinary about his look. You know how those Jews can yell when once their Eastern stolidity is roused to fury. Even in Rome we have had some experience of that; and you remember how Cicero was once almost terrified out of recollection of his speech by the clamour they made, and had to speak in a whisper that they might not hear what he said. To stand in the midst of a mob of such dirty, wildly gesticulating creatures, shouting, cursing, waving their garments in the air, flinging up handfuls of dust, is enough to terrify even a Roman. I, as you know, am a tolerably cool personage, yet I was half appalled, and had to assume a disdainful indifference which I was far from feeling. But this man stood there unmoved. If he had been a Regulus or a Fabricius he could not have been more undaunted, as he looked on his infuriated persecutors with a glance of pitying forgiveness. Every now and then he made a conciliatory gesture, and tried to speak; but though he spoke in Hebrew, which usually pacifies these fanatics to silence, they would not listen to him for an instant. But the perfect dignity, the nobleness of attitude and aspect, with which that worn little Jew stood there, filled me with admiration. And his face! that of Pætus Thrasea is not more striking. The spirit of virtue and purity, and something more which I cannot describe, seemed to breathe from it. It is an odd fact, but those Jews seem to produce not only the ugliest and the handsomest, but also the best and worst of mankind. I sat quiet in my curule chair, and let the Jews yell, telling them once more that, as no civil crime was charged against Paulus, I refused to be a judge in matters of their superstition. At last, getting tired, I ordered the lictors to clear the prætorium, which they did with infinite delight, driving the yelling Jews before them like chaff, and not sparing the blows of their fasces. I thought I had done with the matter then; but not at all! It was the turn of the Greeks now. They resented the fact that the Jews should be allowed to make a riot, and they sided with Paulus. He was hurried by his friends into a place of safety; but the Greeks seized the head of the Jewish Synagogue—a fellow named Sosthenes—and administered to him a sound beating underneath my very tribunal.’
‘Did you not interfere?’ asked Seneca.
‘Not I,’ said Gallio. ‘On the contrary, I nearly died with laughing. What did it matter to a Roman and a philosopher like me whether a rabble of idle Greeks, most of them the scum of the Forum, beat any number of Jews black and blue? It is what we shall have to do to the whole race before long. But, somehow, the face of that Paulus haunted me. They tell me that he was educated at Tarsus, and he was evidently a man of culture. I wanted to get at him, and have a talk with him. I heard that he had been lodging in a squalid lane of the city with a Jewish tent-maker named Aquila, who was driven from Rome by the futile edict of Claudius. But my lictor either could not or would not find out the obscure haunt where he hid himself. The Christians were chary of information, and perhaps, after all, it was as well not to demean myself by talking to a ringleader of a sect whom all men detest for their enormities.If report says true, the old Bacchanalians, whose gang was broken up two hundred years ago, were nothing to them.’[6]
‘I have heard their name,’ said Seneca. ‘Our slaves probably know a good deal more about the matter than we do, if one took the trouble to ask them. But unless they stir up a riot at Rome I shall not trouble the Emperor by mentioning them.’
At this point of the conversation a slave announced that Seneca’s other brother, the knight Marcus Annæus Mela, and his son Lucan, were waiting in the atrium.
‘Admit them,’ said Seneca. ‘Ah, brother, and you, my Lucan, perhaps it would have been a better thing for us all if we had never left our sunny Cordova.’
‘I don’t know that,’ said Mela. ‘I prefer to be at Rome, a senator in rank, though I choose the station of a knight. To be procurator of the imperial demesnes is more lucrative, as well as more interesting, than looking after our father’s estates in Spain.’
‘What does the poet say?’ asked Gallio, turning to the young Spaniard, a splendid youth of seventeen, whose earlier poems had already been received with unbounded applause, and whose dark eyes glowed with the light of genius and passion. ‘Is he content to stand only second as a poet—if second—to Silius Italicus, and Cæsius Bassus, and young Persius?’
‘Well,’ said Lucan, ‘perhaps a man might equal Silius without any superhuman merit. Persius, like myself, is still young, but I would give up any skill of mine for his delightful character. And, as for Rome, if to be a constant guest at Nero’s table and to hear him read by the hour his own bad poetry be a thing worth living for, then I am better off at Rome than at Cordova.’
‘His poetry is not so very bad,’ said Seneca.
‘Oh! it is magnificent,’ answered Lucan, and, with mock rapture, he repeated some of Nero’s lines:—
‘Witness thou, Attis! thou, whose lovely eyes
Could e’en surprise the mother of the skies!
Witness the dolphin, too, who cleaves the tides,
And flouncing rides on Nereus’ sea-green sides;
Witness thou likewise, Hannibal divine,
Thou who didst chine the long ribb’d Apennine!’[7]
What assonance! What realism! What dainty euphuistic audacity! As Persius says, ‘It all seems to swim and melt in the mouth!’
‘Well, well,’ replied the philosopher, ‘at least you will admit that he might be worse employed than in singing and versifying?’
‘An Emperor might be better employed,’ said the young man; ‘and with him I live on tenter-hooks. I heartily wish that he had never summoned me from Athens, or done me the honour of calling me his intimate friend. Frankly, I do not like him. Much as he tries to conceal it, he is horribly jealous of me. He does all he can to make me suppress my poems, though he affects to praise them; and though, of course, when he reads me his verses, I cry “Euge!” and “Σοφῶς!” at every line, as needs must when the master of thirty legions writes, yet he sees through my praise. And I really cannot always suppress my smiles. The other day he told me that the people called his voice “divine.”A minute after, as though meaning to express admiration for his verses, I repeated his phrase—
‘“Thou d’st think it thundered under th’ earth.”[8]
He was furious! He took it for a twofold reflection, on his voice and on his alliteration; and I was desperately alarmed. It was hard work to pacify him with a deluge of adulation.’
Seneca sighed. ‘Be careful, Lucan,’ he said, ‘be careful! The character of Nero is rapidly altering. At present I have kept back the tiger in him from tasting blood; but when he does he will bathe his jaws pretty deeply. It is ill jesting when one’s head is in a wild beast’s mouth.’
‘And yet,’ said Gallio, ‘I have heard you say that no one could compare the mansuetude even of the aged Augustus with that of the youthful Nero.’
Seneca thought it disagreeable to be reminded of his politic inconsistencies. ‘I wish to lead him to clemency,’ he said, ‘even if he be cruel. But he is his father’s son. You know what Lucius Domitius was. He struck out the eye of a Roman knight, and he purposely ran over and trampled on a poor child in the Appian road. Have I ever told you that the night after I was appointed his tutor I dreamt that my pupil was Caligula?’
There was an awkward pause, and to turn the conversation, Lucan suddenly asked, ‘Uncle, do you believe in Babylonians and their horoscopes?’
‘No,’ said the philosopher. ‘The star of each man’s destiny is in his heart.’
‘Do you not? Well, I will not say that I do. And yet—would you like to hear what a friend told me? He said that he had been a mathematicus under Apollonius of Tyana.’
‘Tell us,’ said his father, Mela. ‘I am not so wise as our Seneca, and I feel certain that there is something in the predictions of the astrologers.’