“When the people were met together again, Tiberius placed himself in the rostra and endeavored a second time to persuade Octavius. But all being to no purpose, he referred the whole matter to the people, calling on them to vote at once whether Octavius should be deposed or not; and when seventeen of the thirty-five tribes had already voted against him, and there wanted only the vote of one tribe more for his final deprivation, Tiberius put a short stop to the proceedings, and once more renewed his importunities; he embraced and kissed him before all the assembly, begging with all the earnestness imaginable that he would neither suffer himself to incur the dishonor, nor him to be reputed the author and promoter of so odious a measure. Octavius did seem a little softened and moved with these entreaties; his eyes filled with tears and he continued silent for a considerable time. But presently looking toward the rich men and proprietors of estates, who stood gathered in a body together, partly for shame, and partly for fear of disgracing himself with them, he boldly bade Tiberius use any severity he pleased. The law for his deposition being thus voted, Tiberius ordered one of his servants, whom he had made a freeman, to remove Octavius from the rostra, employing his own domestic freed servants instead of the public officers. And it made the action seem all the sadder that Octavius was dragged out in such an ignominious manner. The people immediately assaulted him, while the rich men ran in to his assistance. Octavius, with some difficulty, was snatched away, and safely conveyed out of the crowd; though a trusty servant of his, who had placed himself in front of his master that he might assist his escape, in keeping off the multitude, had his eyes struck out, much to the displeasure of Tiberius, who ran with all haste, when he perceived the disturbance, to appease the rioters.”
The law was then passed, and commissioners were immediately appointed to make a survey of the lands and see that they were equally divided.
The forcible ejection of Octavius and the subsequent passage of the new agrarian law opened a chasm between Tiberius Gracchus and the patricians, which nothing but his death could close up. He had made himself immensely popular with the poor, and other laws which he introduced increased that popularity. But the more the poor idolized him, the more the rich hated and abhorred him; and a large number of the better and more thoughtful class of plebeians resented his bold violation of the Constitution in removing Octavius from office.
Such were the conditions when the time for the expiration of his official term as tribune approached, and he as well as his friends saw the necessity for his reëlection as a measure for protecting his life. He therefore appeared as a candidate for reëlection; and when on the first day of the election no choice had resulted from the vote, the next day was appointed for the final decision. Tiberius knew that not only his political career, but his very life depended on the result, and he therefore left no stone unturned to rally his friends to the rescue. But unfortunately, it being harvest time, many of his adherents were absent from the city, and could not be reached in time for the struggle.
On the day following, the Senate convened at an early hour, while the people assembled at the Capitol to proceed with the vote. However, great confusion prevailed, and a large number of outsiders tried to force their way in and establish themselves among the voters. And even the appearance of Tiberius Gracchus, although he was received with loud acclamations, failed to restore order in the assemblage. Moreover, he showed by the depression in his countenance and conduct that he had lost confidence in the success of his cause. Several evil omens which he had encountered on his way to the Capitol disturbed his mind. At daybreak a soothsayer, who prognosticated good or bad success by the pecking of fowls, informed him that all his efforts to induce the fowls to eat had failed. Tiberius then remembered that, a short time before, two serpents had been found in his helmet. On stepping out of the house he stumbled on the threshold and hurt his great toe so badly that it bled profusely. As he walked through the streets he saw on his left hand two ravens fighting on the roof of a house, and suddenly a stone, detached from the roof, fell at his feet. The friends of Gracchus, who surrounded him, all stopped, and he himself hesitated as to whether he should proceed or return to his house. However, a philosopher from Cuma, one of his intimates, who was credited with inspiring Gracchus with his democratic ideas and who was free from the superstition of the Romans, persuaded him to continue on his way to the Capitol.
There the voting of the tribes was proceeding with great noise and confusion. All at once Gracchus noticed that one of his friends, Lucius Flaccus, a Senator, had mounted an elevation from which he could be easily seen, but where he was too far off to be heard, and was indicating by motions of his hand that he wished to communicate some important news. Tiberius told the crowd to let Flaccus pass. With great difficulty the Senator reached Tiberius and informed him that at the session of the Senate, after the Consul had refused to have him arrested, a resolution had been passed to kill him, and that the Senators had armed a large number of their clients and slaves to carry out this purpose. Tiberius immediately informed the friends who surrounded him of the action of the Senate, and signified to those at a greater distance the danger in which he was placed, by raising his hands to his head,—and it was this motion, entirely innocent in itself, which hastened his ruin. His enemies construed it as a desire on his part to wear a crown, and carried this ridiculous news to the Senate chamber. It caused a perfect explosion of maledictions and threats among the Senators; and Scipio Nasica, the most violent of all, immediately made a motion that the Consul be instructed to save the Republic and to exterminate the would-be tyrant. The Consul replied that he would resist any factious and criminal attempt against the Republic, but that he would not put to death a Roman citizen without trial. On this Scipio Nasica turned to the Senators, exclaiming: “Since the Consul betrays the city, let those who want to defend the laws follow me!” and followed by a large number of Senators and their clients, he rushed toward the place where Tiberius Gracchus, surrounded by his friends, was observing the progress of the election. Immediately a riot and fight ensued. The Senators, who were armed with clubs, canes, stones, or whatever weapon they could lay their hands on, rushed upon the crowd of voters, overthrew, beat, and killed them, stamping them under their feet and quickly and irresistibly advancing toward the spot where they beheld the man who was the object of their rage and bloodthirstiness. Tiberius, unarmed and forsaken by his friends, turned round to seek safety in flight, but, stumbling over those who had been knocked down, fell to the ground. It was at that moment, while Tiberius was trying to get on his feet again, that one of his own colleagues, a tribune of the people, dealt him a powerful and fatal blow, striking him on the head with the leg of a stool. Others rushed up and struck him again and again, but it was only a lifeless corpse which suffered from their abuse. Three hundred of his friends had fallen with him. It was the first Roman blood which had been shed in civil war, and this first conflict deprived Rome of one of its most illustrious citizens.
It is unnecessary to go into any details regarding the death of Caius Gracchus, who took up and continued the work of his brother. To the measures in favor of the poor which had been advocated by Tiberius, he added others,—for instance, regular distributions of corn among the poor at half price, the imposition of new taxes upon articles of luxury imported from foreign countries, and employment on public works for mechanics and laborers who could not find employment on private contract. It will be seen that these measures, as well as some other projects of minor importance which Caius Gracchus advocated and caused to be enacted as laws, form part of the platform of modern labor parties, and that the Gracchi can fitly be designated as the founders of these parties. They both fell victims to the attempt to carry out their theories. At first, it would seem, Caius Gracchus at the request of his mother, was inclined to abandon the projects of Tiberius; but one night, says Cicero in his book De Divinatione, he heard Tiberius saying to him: “Why hesitate, Caius? Thy destiny shall be the same as mine—to fight for the people, and to die for them.” It is said that this prophecy determined him in his course, and that his death was the consequence. In 121 B.C., during a public riot and conflict organized by his enemies for his destruction, he committed suicide, dying not by his own hand, but by commanding his slave to stab him,—an order which was promptly obeyed. The assassination of the one and the forced suicide of the other immortalized the two brothers.
CHAPTER III
JULIUS CÆSAR
CHAPTER III
ASSASSINATION OF JULIUS CÆSAR
(44 B. C.)
AMERICANS are not great students of history, especially ancient history. Very likely the assassination of Julius Cæsar, one of the most important events in the history of ancient Rome, would also be among the “things not generally known” among Americans, had not Shakespeare’s great tragedy made them familiar with it. It is true, the aims of the dramatist and of the historian are wide-apart. The dramatist places the hero in the centre of the plot, and causes every part of it to contribute to the catastrophe which overwhelms him under the decree of fate. He is the victim of his own guilt. The historian makes the great man but one of the principal factors in the evolution of events, and if a Cæsar or a Napoleon succumbs in the struggle, it is by force of external circumstances against which his genius is powerless to contend, although his ambition or his passion may have been the dominant cause of arraying those circumstances against him. By his matchless genius and incomparable art, Shakespeare has, to a certain degree, in his “Julius Cæsar,” solved the difficult problem of combining the task of the dramatic poet with that of the historian, and has placed before the spectator not only Cæsar himself with his world-wide and imperialistic ambition as the central figure of the play, but also Rome with its republican recollections and aspirations in antagonism to Cæsar’s ambition. The delineation of the character of the foremost man of the ancient world by the greatest dramatist of modern times, and his skilful grouping of the great republicans struggling for the maintenance of republican institutions, have been so indelibly engraved upon the minds of modern readers that the assassination of Julius Cæsar, which took place at Rome 44 B.C., is nearly as familiar to them as the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. And if we, in this series of Famous Assassinations in History, devote a chapter to it, it is simply for the reason that the series would be incomplete without it. Moreover, it may be both interesting and useful to call to the mind of the reader the circumstances and surroundings which led to the downfall of Cæsar. The conspiracy and assassination removed from the scene of action the master-mind of the age, without saving the republican institutions; and it is only by explaining the causes that we can do justice to the noble intentions of the conspirators, while lamenting the assassination of Cæsar as a public misfortune for Rome, inasmuch as it removed the strong hand that could have prevented the anarchy and civil war which broke out among his successors, immediately after his disappearance from the public stage.
Cæsar was at the height of his power. His achievements had eclipsed the military glory of Pompey, and by his wonderful career he might truly be looked upon as the “man of destiny.” On his return from Gaul, when the Senate had rejected his request for a prolongation of his command, and had ordered him to disband his army and to give up the administration of his province, his popularity was so great that his homeward journey, escorted as he was by his victorious army, was but a continuous triumphal march. Not only Rome, but all Italy welcomed him home as its greatest man, and was ready to heap its greatest, nay even divine honors upon him.
The Senate and its chosen commander-in-chief, Pompey, had fled on the approach of Cæsar. In the decisive battle of Pharsalus Cæsar defeated Pompey, and by this victory became the sole ruler of the Roman Republic. Pompey was assassinated on landing in Egypt, as a fugitive, and Cæsar returned to Rome, where he was received with the tumultuous acclamations of the people, and conducted to the Capitol as the savior of the country. The Senate, which had just made war upon him and outlawed him as an enemy of the fatherland, appointed him dictator for ten years with absolute and supreme power, gave him a body-guard of seventy-two lictors to proclaim his majesty and inviolability, and ordered his statue to be placed beside that of Jupiter on the Capitol. A public thanksgiving festival, continuing for forty days, was proclaimed, and four brilliant triumphs for his victories in Gaul, Egypt, Pontus, and Africa, were accorded to him.
Never before in the history of Rome had such honors, which seemed to pass the human limit, been conferred on any Roman citizen. It was evident that of the Republic nothing but the name remained, and that Cæsar, the dictator, was in fact the absolute monarch of the immense Empire. Once more the friends of liberty made an effort to shake off the yoke which Cæsar had imposed on the Republic. They flocked to the standards of the sons of Pompey, but the bloody and hard-fought battle of Munda sealed their fate; and Cæsar, again victorious, remained the absolute master of the civilized world,—not without an enemy, but certainly without a rival.
On his return to Rome new honors and new ovations awaited him. The dignity and pride of Roman citizenship seemed to have been lost entirely in the crouching servility with which the most distinguished and most highly stationed citizens prostrated themselves at the feet of the all-powerful ruler. Resistance to Cæsar had apparently disappeared. All bowed to his surpassing genius and ability, and to these qualities he added acts of clemency, kindness, and gentleness, which won him the hearts even of those who, from political principle, had opposed him. But while thus openly the more than imperial power of Cæsar was generally recognized, and while the Senate and the tribunes had been degraded to the position of mere tools to his autocratic will, there still remained in the hearts of a number of high-minded patriots the hope and anxious desire to save the republican form of government from the grasping ambition of the conqueror, who was evidently not satisfied with being Imperator in fact, but wanted to be also Imperator in name. At least the repeated attempts of the most intimate friends and most trusted lieutenants of Cæsar to induce him to accept the crown at the hands of a subservient people, and his rather hesitating conduct in refusing these proposals, seemed to confirm this suspicion.
These enthusiastic Republicans cautiously disguised their hostility to the Imperator under the mask of devoted friendship. Their hope was, perhaps, that Cæsar’s imperial régime would be but temporary and that, like Sulla, he would sooner or later get tired of his dictatorship, and resign his imperial honors. But Cæsar did not think of abdicating the honors he had won; on the contrary, every act and every public utterance of his indicated that he wished to prolong and augment them rather than to abandon them. In public he was anxious to show his preëminence. He appeared dressed in the costume of the kings of Alba, and with royal insignia. One day, when the entire Senate waited upon him in front of the temple of Venus, he remained seated while he was addressed, during the entire ceremony. His statue at the Capitol was placed beside those of the ancient kings of Rome, as though he were to continue their line. New titles of honor, not to say worship, were added to those which had been conferred upon him at the first moment of his brilliant victories, and his lieutenants and followers welcomed and adopted them as something that was due to his superhuman wisdom and greatness. He was called not only “Father of the Country,” but “Demi-God,” the “Invincible God,” “Jupiter Julius,”—as though Jupiter himself had taken mortal form and shape in him.
This public adoration irritated the Republicans we have mentioned, to the highest degree. They secretly charged Cæsar with encouraging or instigating this worship of himself, because they knew that his friends would not have proposed it unless confident that he would be pleased by it. Brutus and Cassius were at the head of these Republicans. Brutus, a stern Republican, a Roman in the noblest acceptation of the word, was reputed to be Cæsar’s son, the offspring of an adulterous love-affair, and was openly favored and distinguished by him. Cassius, a distinguished general, was much more prompted by jealousy and envy than by civic virtue and republican principle. When these two men and their friends became thoroughly convinced that Cæsar’s ambition would stop at nothing, and that the new imperialistic régime was to be permanent, they came to the conclusion that nothing but Cæsar’s death could prevent these calamities. They therefore resolved to assassinate him.
The ides of March (the fifteenth day of the month) in the year 44 B.C., was selected as the day of the assassination. The conspiracy had been formed with the greatest secrecy, but it came near failing at the eleventh hour. Cæsar’s wife had had dreams and presentiments of bad omen, and she persuaded him not to go to the Senate on that day. Very reluctantly he consented to remain at home. But Decimus Brutus, one of the conspirators, who was afraid that the postponement of the assassination might lead to its discovery, went to Cæsar’s residence, ridiculed the dreams of a timid woman, and said he could not believe that they would influence the mind of the great Cæsar. Then Cæsar, half ashamed at having yielded to his wife’s entreaties, accompanied him. On his way to the Senate a paper was handed to Cæsar, which gave all the particulars of the conspiracy, and warned him not to go to the Senate session on the fifteenth of March, because it was the day set for his assassination. But Cæsar kept the paper in his hand without reading it. Under various pretexts, all the particular friends of Cæsar had been kept from attending the session of the Senate, so that when he arrived, he was surrounded only by enemies or by those who were not considered his friends. The conspirators acted promptly. Cæsar was defenceless, and in a few minutes he lay prostrate,—a lifeless corpse, showing thirty-five wounds, many of which were absolutely fatal. The most celebrated of all political assassinations had been successful; and by a peculiar irony of fate, the dying Cæsar fell at the feet of the statue of Pompey, his great rival, whom he had vanquished at Pharsalus. His death did not, as the conspirators had hoped, prevent the establishment of the Empire; it but delayed it for a few years.
Cæsar has had many worshippers and admirers, and comparatively few calumniators and belittlers. Unquestionably he was one of the most extraordinary geniuses that ever lived, equally great as a general and as a statesman, as an orator and as a historian. In the whole range of history there is but one man—Napoleon—who, in the vastness of his conceptions and the masterly perfection of their execution, can be justly compared with him. All other men whom national vanity has occasionally placed by Cæsar’s side only suffer from the comparison; their immense inferiority appears on even superficial investigation. He was in fact the foremost man the world had seen to his day, and, but for his equally great rival in modern times, would still occupy the pinnacle of human greatness alone. Very likely, if he had lived, Rome would have been the happier.
CHAPTER IV
TIBERIUS, CALIGULA, CLAUDIUS, NERO
CHAPTER IV
ASSASSINATIONS OF TIBERIUS, CALIGULA, CLAUDIUS, NERO
(A. D. 37-68.)
AT the time of the assassination of Julius Cæsar, the Roman people, and especially the higher classes, had reached a degree of perversity and degeneracy which appears to the modern reader almost incredible. They had become utterly unfit for self-government. The most atrocious public and private vices in both sexes had taken the place of the civic virtues and the private honor for which the ancient Roman had been famous the world over. In public life, corruption, venality, and bribery were general; a public office-holder was synonymous with a robber of the public treasury. Nepotism prevailed to an alarming degree, and the ablest men were unceremoniously pushed aside for the incapable descendants of the nobility. In times like those, only the very strongest hand and the sternest character and mind can restrain the masses from falling into anarchy and civil war, and impose on society moderation and the rule of law.
The assassination of Cæsar had a most demoralizing effect on the Roman people. The hand of the master who might have controlled the unruly masses and restrained the degenerate nobility lay palsied in death; the giant intellect, which had embraced the civilized world in its dream of establishing a universal monarchy, thought no more; and the results were chaos, anarchy, and civil war. The absence of the master mind was lamentably felt; his heirs were unable to control the wild elements which the assassins had set free; and for many years, rapine, bloodshed, murder, and spoliation ruled supreme throughout the vast extent of the Roman Republic, until finally, in the year 30 B.C., Octavianus Augustus, Cæsar’s nephew, succeeded in establishing that imperium of which Cæsar had dreamed, and for which his genius and his victories had paved the way.
The imperial era, beginning with a display of magnificence and splendor, both in military achievements and literary production, soon degenerated into an era of crime, which, at least in the highest classes of society, has never been equalled in history. Its worst feature was, perhaps, the utter degradation and depravity of the women even of the highest classes, and their readiness to sacrifice everything—chastity, shame, name, and reputation—to the gratification of their passions. Soon the women excelled the men in assassinating, by poison or dagger, their victims or rivals. Augustus, the first Emperor, showed on the throne much less cruelty than he had manifested as a triumvir; but Livia Drusilla, his third wife, was the first of those female monsters on the throne of the Cæsars—Livia, Agrippina, Messalina, Domitia—who never shrank from murder, if by blood or poison they could rid themselves of a rival or of an obstacle to their criminal ambition. Livia, who wished Tiberius, her son by a former marriage, to be the successor of Augustus on the imperial throne, caused Marcellus (the
husband of Julia, daughter of Augustus), and also Julia’s two sons, to be poisoned; and by these crimes secured the succession for Tiberius. She is also suspected of having poisoned Augustus himself.
Tiberius, the second of the Roman Emperors, lives immortal in history rather by his crimes than by his valorous deeds. So does Caligula, the third, and Claudius, the fourth, and Nero, the fifth Emperor,—who were all assassinated after comparatively short reigns, but who had exhausted all forms of cruelty and crime; while their wives, Messalina, Agrippina, and Poppæa will live in history forever as the unrivalled types of female depravity. Above all, Messalina, the wife of Claudius, who ruled from the year 41 to the year 54 of the Christian era, became notorious for every species of vice. In her libidinous and voluptuous excesses, as well as in the demoniacal conception of her murderous plots against her enemies, she was easily first and foremost,—the real empress of the vicious and fallen women of Rome: she became their open rival in the houses of ill-fame in her capital, she contended with them for the palm of obscenity and prostitution, and vanquished them all.
Unless the great historians of Rome had recorded these excesses as facts abundantly substantiated by irrefutable testimony, the reports would have been relegated to the domain of fable, because they are too revolting to be believed without sufficient authority. Can the human mind conceive, for instance, an act of greater criminal insolence than that which the Empress Messalina committed by marrying, publicly and under the very eyes of the capital, a young Roman aristocrat, Caius Silius, for whom she was inflamed with an adulterous passion, while her husband, the Emperor, was but a few miles away at Ostia? And yet Tacitus, a stern and truthful historian, records this as an undeniable fact, adding that future generations will be loath to believe it.
When, in the year 68 A.D., Nero expired by the dagger of a freedman, courage having failed him to commit suicide, the family of Cæsar the Great became extinct, even in its adopted members. Only one hundred and twelve years had elapsed since the greatest of the Romans had fallen by the daggers of the Republican conspirators; but that short period had sufficed to subvert the Republic and to erect a despotic Empire on its ruins, to flood the vast territory of Rome, which embraced the entire civilized world, with streams of blood, to place imbeciles and assassins on the throne of the Cæsars, and to adorn the brows of courtesans and prostitutes, their partners in crime and depravity, with the imperial diadem. Never before in human history had human depravity and human lust displayed themselves more shamelessly; never before had the beast in man shown its innate cruelty so boldly and so openly as during the reigns of these five Roman Emperors. It is almost a consolation for the sorrowing mind to read that Tiberius was choked to death; that Caligula was beaten down and stabbed; that Claudius was killed by a dish of poisonous mushrooms; and that Nero, the last of Cæsar’s dynasty, was helped to his untimely death by the poniard of a freedman. Quick assassination was all too light a punishment for these monsters of iniquity who had so often feasted their eyes on the tortures of their innocent victims.
CHAPTER V
HYPATIA
CHAPTER V
ASSASSINATION OF HYPATIA
(A. D. 415.)
NEVER, perhaps, did the wonderful genius of Alexander the Great appear to better advantage than when he selected Alexandria as a commercial centre and distributing point for the products of three continents, and as an intellectual focus from which Hellenic culture should be transmitted to those countries of Asia and Africa which his victories had opened to Greek civilization. The rapidity with which the city—to which Alexander had given his own name—grew to the dimensions of a great capital and a world-emporium, proved the sagacity and ingenious foresight of its founder, and was unrivalled among all the cities of the ancient world. It became the greatest seaport of the world, surpassing in the grandeur and magnificence of its buildings every other city except Rome itself; and when, through the genius of the Ptolemies, the successors of Alexander as rulers of Egypt, the great library was added to its monuments and treasures of art, it became also the intellectual capital of the world, rivalling and in some respects eclipsing the city of the Cæsars. It is true, long before Alexandria had reached its greatest prosperity, the creative power of Hellenic genius in the higher spheres of poetry and philosophy had passed its zenith. In the so-called Alexandrian age of literature the most beautiful and most poetical inspirations were the idyls of Theocritus. But Alexandria was the first city in the ancient world which became the seat of a many-sided, methodical scholarship, and of systematic, zealous studies of the exact sciences,—a university in the modern sense. It also became the great library city of the world.
It is true, the great library of inestimable value collected by Ptolemy Philadelphus (who also purchased the large library of Aristoteles) had been ruthlessly destroyed in the Alexandrian war of Julius Cæsar. But Ptolemy Physcon collected a second valuable library, which was augmented by the splendid library of King Eumenes of Pergamus, and formed by far the grandest collection of books to be found in the world. Mark Antony gave this splendid library to Queen Cleopatra. It comprised the intellectual treasures of the ancient world, and was placed in a wing of the Serapeum,—in that gigantic and magnificent building which was the grandest temple of ancient Egypt and the pride of Alexandria. The great city of the Ptolemies, with a population of nearly a million souls, had also become a sort of neutral territory upon which all religions could meet on equal terms. The cosmopolitan character of this great commercial centre, in which Christians, Jews, and pagans of all countries competed for the acquisition of wealth, made it natural for all these different citizens to live in harmony and mutual toleration. The time came, however, when Christianity was proclaimed the official state religion under Theodosius the Great, upon whose instigation or order the Roman Senate (not by a unanimous, but by a simple majority vote) passed a resolution declaring that the Christian religion should be the only true religion for the Roman Empire. This official declaration became the signal for a brutal persecution of the old religion throughout the Empire, and especially in its eastern provinces. Very prominent in this work of persecution and destruction was Theophilus, Archbishop of Alexandria, who was famous far and wide as one of the great lights of the Church and as a man of exceptional piety, although many of his actions are utterly inexcusable from a moral point of view. Theophilus was in constant warfare with the pagans and Jews of Alexandria, who quite often joined hands in fighting him. But, as a rule, they were defeated by the pugnacious prelate, who, on such occasions, always found at his command a formidable army composed of the mob of the city and of the monks of the desert of Nitria, which was near the city. The main object of Theophilus’s attacks was the great Serapeum, in which immense treasures of gold, silver, and sacred vessels were stored away, and which contained also the great collection of books,—a perfect armory of pagan philosophy, religion, and poetry,—which was especially obnoxious to him. By shrewdly misrepresenting the spirit of revolt among the Jews and pagans of the city, he succeeded in getting an edict from the Emperor authorizing him to destroy this temple of ancient wisdom and culture,—and, for the second time, the magnificent library of Alexandria was partly destroyed, partly scattered to the winds.
The audacity of Theophilus had inflicted terrible defeats on the non-Christian population of Alexandria, and had utterly disheartened it. On the other hand, the Christian inhabitants showed by their increasing arrogance that they were conscious of the supremacy of their church and of the exclusive protection to which their religion entitled them. However, in spite of this cruel discrimination there still remained at Alexandria a large and intelligent element true to the old religion, or rather to the old philosophy.
Theophilus died in the year 412 A.D., and was succeeded by his nephew Kyrillos, better known as St. Cyril, who continued the vindictive policy against the Jews and pagans which his uncle had inaugurated. It was not long before Cyril had fanaticized the mob against the Jews to such an extent that the latter, driven to despair, took up arms against their aggressors, who had undertaken a regular crusade against their lives and property. Pitched battles and massacres took place in the streets of Alexandria. Hundreds of the unfortunate Jews were slain, and very likely the Jewish population would have been entirely exterminated or expelled from the city, had not Orestes, the imperial governor, interfered in their behalf, and defeated the infuriated mob and the monks of Nitria, who as usual had taken a hand in the fight. But it was a long and stubbornly contested battle. Although Cyril personally did not show himself, it was nevertheless well known that he directed the attacks against the Jews from his hiding-place. Moreover all his most intimate friends actively participated in the riot and strenuously resisted the efforts of the governor to restore peace.
One of these friends personally assaulted and seriously wounded the governor. After the revolt had been quelled, this man was put on trial and sentenced to death. In vain Cyril appealed for mercy and tried to save the life of the accused man. Orestes was implacable, and the condemned man was executed. The disdain with which he had been treated by the governor, enraged the prelate and stimulated him to revenge. A large procession of priests and citizens took the body of the criminal from the gibbet and carried it to the principal church of Alexandria, where the Archbishop read high mass and delivered a sermon full of admiration and eulogy for the victim, filling the hearts of the congregation with hatred and contempt for the authorities, and invoking the punishment of Heaven upon their heads. But even this public demonstration did not satisfy the Archbishop; and with consummate cruelty he hit upon a plan for deeply wounding the governor without attacking him personally.
At that time there lived at Alexandria a young lady of great talent and renown. Her name was Hypatia. She was the daughter of Theon, a celebrated mathematician who lived at Alexandria, and whose genius for mathematics she seemed to have inherited. She first became his pupil, but soon surpassed him in ability and reputation. She also applied herself with great zeal and rare penetration to the study of the philosophy of Plato, whom she greatly admired and much preferred to Aristotle. Since Alexandria had no professors superior to herself in attainments and learning, Hypatia went to Greece and for several years attended the lectures of the most famous professors of Athens. She then returned to Alexandria, and was immediately invited by the authorities to the chair of philosophy in the University. Hypatia accepted this honor and filled the position with brilliant success. It was not only her profound and extensive learning, embracing the entire compass of the exact sciences, but also the charm of her persuasive and mellifluous eloquence which filled her hearers with admiration.
Her reputation as a public lecturer soon equalled her renown as a mathematician and philosopher, and a number of the most distinguished men of Alexandria and other cities were among her regular disciples, listening with delight to her dissertations. One of her most enthusiastic students was Synesius, afterwards Bishop of Ptolemais, who always held her in affectionate reverence, although she had steadily refused to profess the Christian religion. Orestes, the governor, was also among the number of her admirers and was frequently seen at her lectures, which were attended by Christians as well as by pagans. To the great qualities of her mind were added rare physical beauty and a suavity of manners which won the hearts of all those who became acquainted with her. Several of Alexandria’s most prominent citizens desired to marry her, but she refused all proposals because she wanted to live only for the sciences to which she had devoted her life. In spite of her great popularity and the steadily increasing number of admirers, Hypatia’s reputation was spotless; she had many friends, but never had a lover. While this eminent woman’s celebrity as a thinker—which entirely eclipsed his own—would have been sufficient to fill the heart of Cyril with envy and jealousy, there was an additional reason for his hatred and hostility. Orestes, the governor, was a frequent visitor at her house and was known to consult her frequently on important public questions. The Archbishop, perhaps justly, attributed to Hypatia’s influence the governor’s evident leaning toward paganism and his open admiration for the philosophical doctrines of the Greek philosophers. Seeking for a victim on whom to vent his spite against Orestes, he therefore selected Hypatia as the one whose destruction would hurt him most deeply, while at the same time it would deliver himself and the church from their most dangerous opponent. It was comparatively easy for him to inflame the minds of the ignorant masses with rage against the woman who was represented to them as the implacable enemy of their religion, and whose pernicious teachings had led so many others from the path of virtue and salvation.
Everything was carefully but secretly prepared for the fatal blow, which was struck in the month of March, 415. It was a beautiful sunny day, and Hypatia got ready to proceed to the University, where she was to lecture that forenoon. A carriage was waiting for her at the door of her residence. When she entered the carriage she was surprised at the unusual number of people filling the street, and at the great number of monks passing through their ranks and apparently haranguing them. She could not account for this strange gathering, for it was not a Christian holiday, nor was any civil procession to come off that morning.
All at once she noticed that this great assemblage of people began to move in the direction of her own house. As it came nearer she heard wild exclamations and threats, without comprehending, however, that she was the object of this hostile demonstration. At the head of the procession marched Peter, the reader, one of the most fanatical of the priests of the city; he had played a very prominent part in the previous riots, and was evidently the leader in this new movement. With growing astonishment Hypatia saw them coming, but in the consciousness of her innocence she had no fear. She was soon to be cruelly disabused.
As soon as the rioters were within a few hundred feet of her residence and saw her seated in her carriage ready to start, the leaders and those in the front rank rushed toward her. Peter, the reader, was the first to reach her and to lay hands on her. As she recoiled from his touch in terror, others climbed upon the wheels of the carriage and dragged her down into the street. She resisted and called for help, but her cries died away unheard in the tumult of the roaring and jeering multitude who surrounded the carriage and with ever-increasing violence uttered threats against her.
Popular excitement is a flame which feeds itself by the electric current emanating from thousands of impassioned and excited minds. It is ready on slight provocation to burst forth in all-devouring violence. But a few minutes had passed from the moment the procession reached Hypatia’s carriage until the infuriated mob, holding the victim firmly in their grasp, had torn the garments from her body and hurried her with wild cheers and laughter to the Cæsarium, the great Christian church. Paralyzed with fear, unable to utter anything but screams and cries for help, she was dragged, in a state of perfect nudity, through the streets, and neither her helplessness nor her beauty softened the hearts of her tormentors and murderers. She was doomed to die, to be sacrificed at a Christian altar, atoning for her unbelief and her pernicious teachings with her life. One of her own friends, like herself adhering to the ancient cult and to Platonic philosophy, fitly compared Hypatia’s murder to the sacrifice of a Greek goddess by drunken and infuriated barbarians. But the crowning infamy of this assassination, as brutal as any that history has recorded, was that the victim was dragged to the church of Christ,—Christ, the incarnation of love and mercy,—and slaughtered there amidst the yells and curses of the so-called believers.
Hundreds of women had swelled the mob, and like the men they were brandishing flints, shells, and broken pottery, with which to cut and lacerate their victim that they might feast their eyes on her agony.
Charles Kingsley has given in his famous novel, “Hypatia,” a heart-rending description of the last moments of the illustrious woman-philosopher. The description may not be accurate in every little detail, but Mr. Kingsley sees the scene with the eye and with the imagination of a poet, and his description is poetically true. Our readers will thank us for quoting his words in rendering this final scene:—
“Whither were they dragging her?... On into the church itself! Into the cool dim shadow, with its fretted pillars, and lowering domes, and candles, and incense, and blazing altar, and great pictures looking from the walls athwart the gorgeous gloom; and right in front, above the altar, the colossal Christ watching unmoved from off the wall, his right hand raised to give a blessing—or a curse?
“On, up the nave, fresh shreds of her dress strewing the holy pavement—up the chancel steps themselves—right underneath the great, still Christ: and there even those hell-hounds paused.... She shook herself free from her tormentors, and springing back, rose for one moment to her full height, naked, snow-white against the dusky mass around—shame and indignation in those wide, clear eyes, but not a stain of fear. With one hand she clasped her golden locks around her; the other long white arm was stretched upward toward the great still Christ, appealing—and who dare say in vain?—from man to God. Her lips were open to speak; but the words that should have come from them reached God’s ear alone; for in an instant Peter struck her down, the dark mass closed over her again ... and then wail on wail, long, wild, ear-piercing, ran along the vaulted roofs.... What in the name of the God of mercy were they doing? Tearing her piece-meal? Yes, and worse than that!... It was over. The shrieks had died away into moans, the moans to silence.... A new cry rose through the dome: ‘To the Cinaron! Burn the bones to ashes! Scatter them into the sea!’”
In the whole annals of crime not a more heart-rending and more brutal scene can be found than the murder of Hypatia. The assassination of the beautiful young Princess de Lamballe, the friend of Marie Antoinette, during the worst days of the French Revolution, bears some resemblance to it; but, after all, political fanaticism is never equal in its intensity and cruelty to religious fanaticism. Moreover, the fate of Hypatia shows that not all the martyrs were on the side of Christianity in the early ages of the Christian church. It should be stated, however, that a general cry of horror resounded through the world when the terrible news of Hypatia’s death crossed the seas and was echoed from land to land, and that the Christian Church, by its most illustrious representatives, was loud in its denunciation of the murder.
Upon the fame and name of St. Cyril the murder of Hypatia has left a lasting stain; for the plan and execution were generally attributed to him. Even Catholic Church historians, both ancient and modern, criticise him severely for his imprudent and ill-advised instigations against Hypatia and her followers, although they try to protect his memory against the reproach of having intentionally caused her death.