CHAPTER XXXVI

SELF-AVENGED

‘Sua quemque fraus, suum facinus, suum scelus, sua audacia, de sanitate ac mente deturbat. Hæ sunt impiorum furiæ, hæ flammæ, hæ faces.’—Cic. In Pisonem, xx. 46.

Nero, in a mood of fearful restlessness, awaited news of the issue of his design. Long ere this he ought to have received the intelligence which would relieve his life of a great burden. Hardly for a moment did the enormity of the crime he was committing press upon a soul given up to shameful self-indulgence. He only yearned to be rid of a figure which frightened him, and checked the rushing chariot-wheels of his passions. Once free from his mother and her threats, he would marry Poppæa and give himself up to whatever his heart desired. Too uneasy to sleep, too much occupied with anxiety to follow his usual pleasures, he talked to Tigellinus, who alone was with him, pacing up and down the hall of his villa, tossing down goblet after goblet of wine, and trying to conjure before his imagination the scene which was being enacted. Surely it could not fail! And, if it succeeded, the dead tell no tales, and the sea-waves would keep the secret! Every one had seen the warmth of his attention to his mother, and the affectionate tenderness with which he had bidden her farewell. What remained but publicly to deplore with tears the sad bereavement which had been inflicted on his youth by the treachery of winds and waves, and then to decree to his mother’s memory the temples and the altars which would be ostentatious proofs of his filial regard?

But how was it that no news had reached him? Three or four hours had passed. By this time the deed must have been done. Something had happened—so much was certain; for though he dared not send out to inquire, as though he suspected that anything was wrong, yet from the balcony he saw the torches moving in hurried streams hither and thither, and he could hear the distant cries of excitement and alarm.

A messenger was announced.

‘Who is it?’ asked Nero anxiously.

‘The centurion Pudens,’ said the slave; ‘and he is accompanied by Titus Flavius.’

Nero started at the name, for it recalled the night of the murder of Britannicus.

‘What do they want?’

‘They have important tidings, which they will tell to Cæsar’s ears alone.’

‘Admit them. See that the guard is on duty close at hand.’

Pudens and the youth were ushered into Nero’s presence, and, in answer to his agitated inquiries, told him all that had occurred, and how they had helped to rescue the Empress as she was saving herself by swimming. They were dismissed, each with a handsome gift; and scarcely had they left the room when Nero, pale as death, and with a heart which throbbed with painful palpitations, flung himself on a couch and turned a terrified look on his accomplice.

‘The plan has been bungled,’ he said. ‘I am ruined. My mother has been wounded. She knows all.’

Tigellinus feared that in his terror he would swoon away, and sprinkled his face with water.

‘What will she do?’ asked Nero in a faint voice. ‘Will she arm her slaves to attack and murder me? Will she rouse the soldiers? Will she go to Rome and accuse me of matricide before the Senate and the people?’

The older and robuster villany of Tigellinus was not terrified by these alarms; but he too saw that the situation was serious, and did not know what to advise.

Nero, shaking with alarm, sent messengers in fiery haste for Burrus and Seneca, both of whom had come from Rome to Baiæ at his request to attend upon him during the Quinquatrus. They were roused from their beds at the dead of night, and hurried to Nero’s villa. He told them that, after his mother had left him, her vessel had been wrecked, and that she had swam to land with no worse hurt than a slight wound; but he added, ‘She suspects that I have attempted her life: and how am I to escape her vengeance?’

Burrus and Seneca stood silent and thunderstricken. They were innocent of the vile attempt. Dim rumours of some grave crime which was in contemplation had indeed reached them; and in Nero’s court everything seemed credible. The murder had been the design of the execrable Anicetus and the yet more execrable Tigellinus, and had only been revealed to kindred spirits such as Poppæa. But they at once saw through the story which Nero told them, in which he had indeed betrayed himself.

It was a moment of anguish and of degradation for them both. The blunt, honest soldier was thinking of his happier youth, in which virtue was not compelled to breathe so contaminated an atmosphere. He was secretly cursing the day on which ambition had led him to espouse the cause of Nero, and so to be dragged into loathed complicity with so many crimes.

And through the heart of Seneca there shot a pang of yet keener agony. He a philosopher; he a Stoic; he a writer of so many high-soaring moral truths; he so superior to the vile and vulgar standard of his age—to what had he now sunk! Was this corrupt fratricide—this would-be murderer of his mother—the timid boy who, little more than five years before, had been entrusted to his tutelage? And was he now called upon to advise the most feasible way in which a matricide could be accomplished? Was he, of all men, to be the Pylades to this viler Orestes? Was it to the edge of such a precipice that he had been led by the devious ways of a selfish ambition?

A nobler path was open to him had he desired it. Why should he not have urged Nero to visit his mother, to expostulate with her if need be, to be reconciled with her in reality? Might he not have told him that, if Agrippina were really conspiring, it would be better for him to run that risk than to stain his hands in a mother’s blood? Titus was not a professed philosopher like Seneca, yet Titus rose spontaneously to that height of virtue in later years. He knew that his brother Domitian was working in secret as his deadly enemy, yet he only took him gently aside, and entreated him to behave more worthily of a brother. And when he saw that his entreaty had failed, he did indeed weep as he sat at the games, but he would not shed his brother’s blood.

Alas! the conscience of Seneca did not suggest to him this means by which he could extricate himself. That Agrippina was, at such a crisis, preparing to rebel against her son he did not believe; but might she not—so whispered to him once more the demon of concession—might she not become dangerous hereafter? In other words, must he not help the Emperor to accomplish his fell purpose? The silence became intolerable.

At last Seneca turned his troubled eyes on Burrus, as though to inquire whether it would be safe to command the execution of Agrippina by the Prætorians.

Burrus understood his look and bluntly replied that such a thing was not to be thought of. The Prætorians would never lift a hand against the daughter of Germanicus. The same thought had been in his mind as in that of Seneca, though he had blushed to give it utterance. But now that he saw the drift of his colleague’s purpose, he gulped down his scruples, and said with sullen brevity, ‘Let Anicetus complete what he has begun.’

Anicetus had been on board the deceitful vessel, and, on the failure of the device, had made his way with all speed in a rowing boat to the Emperor’s villa. He entered at the moment when Burrus spoke. Nero turned on him a look of rage, and, walking up to him, stammered into his ear the threat that his life should pay the penalty of his clumsy failure.

‘Be calm, Cæsar,’ he replied in a whisper; ‘your wish shall still be accomplished. Only give me your authority to end the business.’

Anicetus hated Agrippina for private reasons, and he knew that, if she were not put to death, she would demand vengeance upon him, since the treachery on board the vessel could not have been effected without his cognizance. ‘Leave it in my hands,’ he said. ‘If Seneca and Burrus are too timid to strike a blow for their Emperor, at least Anicetus will not shrink.’

‘Thanks, Anicetus,’ said Nero, changing his mood. ‘To-day, for the first time, I feel secure. Now I begin to recognise that I am indeed Emperor. And a freedman is the author of the boon!’

He frowned at his two ministers to reprove their backwardness in murder, and effusively grasped the hand of the admiral. Burrus, as he looked at his scowling countenance, felt a fresh pang of remorse that he had ever deserted the cause of Britannicus. Seneca said to his agonised conscience, ‘If one would be the friend of a tyrant, one must not only wink at crimes, but commit them without a moment’s hesitation, however heinous they may be.’

While Anicetus was hastily suggesting the steps to be taken, the announcement came that one of Agrippina’s attendants—Lucius Agerinus—was waiting outside with a verbal message from the Augusta. Before he was admitted Nero whispered something to Anicetus. ‘Yes, yes,’ said the admiral, ‘the plan is excellent.’

Both Seneca and Burrus were amazed and shocked at the stupid and shameless comedy which was then enacted before their eyes. Agerinus had hardly begun to deliver his message when Nero, stepping up to him, dropped a sword at his feet. It fell with a clang on the white and purple mosaic, and instantly Nero and Anicetus began to clamour, ‘Murder! treason! murder! he has been sent by Agrippina to stab the Emperor!’

At this shout the body-guard came running in, and Agerinus was loaded with chains. Anicetus now had the excuse he needed. He summoned a band of soldiers and marines, and, accompanied by Herculeius, one of his naval captains, and Obaritus, an officer of the marines, he made his way to the villa at Bauli, giving out that he was ordered to execute Agrippina, who had just been detected in an attempt to assassinate her son.

They found the precincts of the villa thronged by a curious crowd. These they drove away, and surrounded the grounds with guards. The slaves dispersed in all directions. Agrippina was still in her dimly lighted room, growing momently more alarmed because Agerinus did not return and she received no message from Nero. Nearer and nearer came the tread of feet till they heard the soldiers enter the atrium. There followed a brief altercation as the murderers scattered the few faithful attendants who would still have guarded the door of the chamber. The slave-girl rose to fly.

‘Dost thou also desert me?’ said the Empress bitterly.

But the girl’s figure had scarcely disappeared when the door was rudely burst open, and she saw the cruel face of her enemy Anicetus, who held his drawn sword in his hand.

For a moment they stopped before her imperious gesture.

‘If you have come from my son to inquire after my health,’ she said, ‘tell him that I am better. If you have come to commit a crime, I will not believe that you have his authority.’

‘We have his authority,’ said Anicetus. ‘Behold his signet-ring!’

They advanced upon her. She sprang from her couch and stood erect. Then the brutal Herculeius struck her a blow on the head with his baton, and Anicetus aimed his sword at her breast. She avoided the stroke, and, rending her tunic, ‘Strike here,’ she said, pointing to her womb; ‘it bore a monster!’

She fell, stricken down, and thrust through with many deadly wounds.

Thus ended that career of wickedness and splendour. Almost from the day which consummated her many crimes she heard behind her the fatal footstep of the avenger. Her murder of Claudius had placed the diadem upon the brow of her own murderer. For that young murderer she had felt the frantic love of a tigress for the cub which she licks and fondles. And now the tiger-whelp had shown the nature which it inherited.

---

When Nero received the news that his mother was dead, he would not trust to any testimony. With wild haste and utmost secrecy he went to the villa at Bauli. With trembling hand he drew the winding-sheet from the face, and gazed on the corpse. The colour fled from his cheeks; but after a moment or two he grew bolder. The matricide was still the æsthete. ‘I did not know,’ he said, ‘that I had so beautiful a mother.’ Then he hurried back.

That same night they carried her corpse to the funeral pyre. It was laid upon a couch from her banquet-hall, for lack of a regular bier. Hurried and scant and humble were her obsequies. Her ashes were laid in a mean grave near the road to Misenum, where the villa of the dictator Cæsar crowned an eminence which commanded a wide view of the gulf.

During the remaining ten years of her son’s reign, the site of her sepulchre was left unhonoured and no mound was raised above her ashes. But the spot was not forgotten, and to this day the peasant points to the Sepolcro d’ Agrippina. One instance of faithfulness gave a yet more pathetic interest to the spot where so many lofty hopes were quenched in blood. Before the pyre was kindled, Mnester, her loyal freedman, stabbed himself over her corpse. He would not survive a mistress who, whatever had been her crimes, had been kind to him, and whom he loved.

What pathos is there in the fact that even the worst and most criminal of human souls have rarely died entirely unloved! Even a Marat, even a Robespierre, even a Borgia, even an Agrippina, found at least one to mourn when they were dead.

CHAPTER XXXVII

VICTOR OVER THE PUBLIC SERVITUDE

There is a marvellous force of illumination in a great crime, but it is the lurid illumination of the lightning-flash, revealing to the lost Alpine wanderer the precipices which yawn on every side of him. While the murder was yet to do, Nero could talk of it lightly and eagerly among the accomplices who were in the secret. To the irresponsible Emperor of the world it did not seem so great a matter to order the murder of a mother. But when the deed was done, when he had got back to his Baian villa, when the pale face flecked with crimson bloodstains came hauntingly back upon his memory, a horror of great darkness fell upon him. Then first he realised the atrocious magnitude of his crime, and every moment there rang in his ears a damning accusation. The very birds of the air seemed to flit away from him, twittering ‘Matricide! matricide!’ He drank more Falernian from the glittering table, on which yet lay the remains of the banquet, but it seemed as if all his senses were too preternaturally acute with horror to be dulled by wine. He lay down to sleep, but strange sounds seemed to be creeping through the dead stillness of the night, which made him shudder with alarm. If he closed his eyes, there flashed at once upon them the pale face, the firm-set lips, the splashes of blood. The dead eyes of his mother seemed to open upon him with a gleam of vengeance. Till that night he had never known what it was to dream. He started up with a shriek and summoned his attendants round him, and paced up and down in a frenzy of delirium, declaring that when the dawn came he would certainly be slain. They persuaded him to lie down again, but scarcely had he dropped into an uneasy sleep when it seemed to him as though he saw the three Furies sweeping down upon him with the blue snakes gleaming in their hair and the torches shaken in their hands, while his mother, who pointed them to him, shrieked aloud, ‘Ho! murderer of thy mother! no sleep henceforth for thee!’

Leaping once more from that couch of agony, he sat mute, and trembling in every limb, his clenched hands buried in his hair, waiting in anguish the break of day. When the first beam of dawn lit the east, it showed a youth whose pallid features were haggard with agonies of fear.

If there had been a spark of nobleness in the Roman world, the indignation of a people’s moral sense might have sprung to arms and smitten the tyrant while he was yet red-handed from his crime. Nothing was farther from the general intention. The universal desire was to ‘skin and film the ulcerous place’ with adulation and hypocrisy. Men, not naturally evil or case-hardened, were carried away by the tide of complaisance to the imperial murderer. As though to leave no chance for any feelings of penitence to work, all classes began to flood him with congratulations. The fears which at the moment he half mistook for remorse vanished like the early dew, for society seized upon the convention that Agrippina, detected in a plot against the life of her son, had been justly executed. The tribunes and centurions of the Prætorians, Burrus at their head, came to Nero that morning, poured their felicitations upon him, pressed his hands, expressed their effusive joy that he had escaped from so sudden a peril created by his mother’s crime. His friends crowded to the temples to thank the gods for his safety. There was scarcely a town of Campania which did not express its joy by sending deputations and offering victims. Distant provinces caught the infection, and Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul surpassed all the rest by the fulsome entreaty which they sent by their ambassador, Julius Africanus, ‘that Nero would endure his felicity with fortitude!’ Certainly it did not seem as if there were much cause for fear! In a few days Nero became an adept at the counter-hypocrisy with which he feigned to weep over the fate of his mother, and to be grieved by his own deliverance!

But places cannot change their aspect as do the looks of men. From the windows and gardens of Nero’s villa were always visible the sea which he had attempted to pollute, the long line of shore which he had stained with a mother’s blood. The aspect of nature in that lovely spot had lost its fascination. It seemed to be eloquent with mute reproach. And what were those sounds which assailed his ears at the dead of night? What meant that blast of a solitary trumpet, blown by no earthly breath, from the promontory of Misenum? What meant those ghostly wailings which seemed to shriek around his mother’s grave? He could not endure this haunted place. He fled to Naples.

From thence he despatched to the Senate a letter, of which the conceits betrayed, alas! the hand of Seneca. ‘As yet,’ he wrote, ‘I cannot believe, I do not rejoice, that I am safe.’ Men of letters admired the euphuistic phrases and despised their author. The letter did not mention any details, but left it to be inferred that Agrippina, detected in an attempt to murder her son, had committed suicide. And then with unmanly malignity it dwelt on the long catalogue of her crimes—her bitter enmities, her immense ambition, her unscrupulous intrigues. To her it attributed all the cruelties of the reign of Claudius, and it ended by saying that her death was a public blessing. The more cynical of the senators laughed at the absurdities of this missive, for it narrated Agrippina’s shipwreck as though it had been accidental, and tried to gain credence for the gross absurdity that a woman barely saved from drowning had chosen the moment of her rescue to send off to murder her only son in the midst of his fleets and cohorts!

But though men shook their heads at Seneca, they plunged no less emulously into the vortex of criminal adulation. Public thanksgivings were decreed to all the gods; annual games at the Quinquatrus; a golden statue to Minerva in the senate-house, with a statue of the Emperor beside it. The birthday of Agrippina was pronounced accursed. Such abject servility was too much for the haughty spirit of Pætus Thrasea. He rose from his seat and left the senate-house in silence, and a blush rose to the cheek of not a few who did not dare to follow him.

Yet, after all, Nero was so timid that six months elapsed before he ventured once more to face the people of his capital. An eclipse of the sun had happened during the thanksgiving decreed by the Senate. Fourteen regions of the city had been struck by lightning. Would these portents of heaven awaken the tardy indignation of men? Every piece of news, however trivial, frightened him. He was told the ridiculous story that a woman had given birth to a snake. Was that meant by the gods, if there were any, for a scornful symbol of himself? There were hours in which it seemed to him as if the Empire itself would be a poor price for the purchase of one day of the innocence which he had so frightfully sacrificed.

But the foul creatures who swarmed about him assured him with the effrontery of experienced villany that he need not be in the least anxious as to the obsequiousness of the Senate and the zeal of the people.

‘You will find yourself more popular than before,’ they said. ‘Every one detested Agrippina. Go to Rome with confidence, and you will see that you are as much adored as ever.’

They were right in their conjectures. Even Nero was amazed at the abandon of welcome, the delirium of ostentatious applause with which he was received, while his hands were still red-wet with his mother’s blood. The people thronged forth by their tribes to greet him. The senators were in festal array. They were surrounded by their wives and children. Stages had been built all along the road, in which the spectators had purchased their places to look on as at a triumph. Incense burned in the streets; the shouts of myriads of voices rent the air. Rome received him not as a murderer, but rather as a great conqueror or a human god. And he, as he rode in his gilded chariot through those serried files of cheering flatterers, proudly upheld his head, tossed back the curls from his forehead, smiled, and bent low, and, accepting these greetings as a tribute to his merits, drowned deep within his heart all sense of shame. With long retinue and dazzling pomp he visited the Capitol, gave thanks to Jupiter, best and greatest, and returned to the Palace ‘a victor over the public servitude.’

Yet even so he could not escape. He dared not be left alone. The manes of his mother haunted him by day and by night. In vain he practised the old expiatory rites to rid himself of the menacing phantom. On the night of May 13, two months after Agrippina’s death, he determined to go through the mummery of the Lemuralia, which some of his credulous advisers had told him would be efficacious. At midnight, amid the dead silence, he stole with naked feet to the water of the fountain in the atrium, and there, trembling with excitement, washed his hands thrice. Then with his thumb and finger, he filled his mouth with nine black beans, and, full of superstitious horror, flung them one by one behind him over his shoulder, saying each time, ‘With these beans redeem me and mine.’ Arrived at his chamber he again dipped his hands in water, and beat a great brazen gong to terrify the pursuing ghost.73 Then he turned round, and peered with a frightened glance into the darkness; and as he peered—was even this expiation all in vain?—what were those glimmering lights? What was that white and wavy form? A shriek rang through the villa, and Nero sank fainting into the arms of the timid minions who had awaited the result of the expiation and rushed forward at his cry.

The following year, when he had returned to the city, he repeated this antiquated rite, and he commanded the vestals to bear him specially in mind when, on the Ides of May, they flung from the Sublician Bridge into the Tiber the thirty little figures called argei, made of bulrushes, which were supposed to be in lieu of human sacrifices.

Then he tried yet further forms of magic and yet darker rites of propitiation to the infernal powers, in which it was whispered that human blood—the blood of murdered infants—formed part of the instruments of sorcery. But he could learn no secrets of the future; he could evoke no powers who could ward away that white menacing spectre which gleamed upon him if at any moment he found himself alone in the hours of night.

Nero became a haunted man. The whole earth seemed to him to be ‘made of glass’ to reveal his turpitude. He knew in his miserable heart that the very street boys of Rome—the ragged urchins of the slaves and gladiators—were aware of the crime which he had committed. Kind friends kept him informed, under pretence of officious indignation, that one night an infant had been found exposed in the Forum with a scrap of parchment round its neck, on which was written, ‘I expose you, lest you should murder your mother;’ and that, another night, a sack had been hung round the neck of his statue as though to threaten him with the old weird punishment of parricides. Once, when he was looking on at one of the rude plays known as Atellane, the actor Datus had to pronounce the line,

‘Good health to you, father; good health to you, mother;’

and, with the swift inimitable gestures of which the quick Italian people never missed the significance, he managed to indicate Claudius dying of poison and Agrippina swimming for her life. The populace roared out its applause at an illusion so managed that it could hardly be resented; and once again, when coming to the line,

‘Death drags you by the foot.’

Datus indicated Nero’s hatred to the Senate by pointing significantly to Nero at the word ‘death’ and to the senatorial seats as he emphasized the word ‘you.’

But Nero was liable to insults still more direct. Could he not read with his own eyes the graffito scrawled upon every blank space of wall in Rome: ‘Nero, Orestes, Alcmæon, matricidæ’? He could not detect or punish these anonymous scrawlers, but he would have liked to punish men of rank, whom he well knew to have written stinging satires against him, branding him with every kind of infamy.

Two resources alone were adequate to dissipate the terrors of his conscience—the intoxication of promiscuous applause and the self-abandonment to a sensuality which grew ever more shameless as the restraints of Agrippina’s authority and Seneca’s influence were removed.

Nero had long delighted to sing to the harp at his own banquets in citharœdic array. To the old Roman dignity such conduct seemed unspeakably degrading in the Emperor of the legions. Yet Nero divulged his shame to the world by having himself represented in statues and on coins in the dress of a harpist, his lips open as though in the act of song, his lyre half supported on a baldric embossed with gems, his tunic falling in variegated folds to his feet, and his arms covered by the chlamys, while with his delicate left hand he twanged the strings, and with his right struck them with the golden plectrum. The pains which he took to preserve his voice, which after all was dull and harsh, were almost incredible. Following the advice of every quack who chose to pass himself off as an expert, he used to walk about with his thick neck encircled in a puffy handkerchief, to sleep with a plate of lead on his chest, and to live for a month at a time on peas cooked in oil.

To give him more opportunities for display he instituted the Juvenalia to celebrate his arrival at full manhood, as marked by the shaving of his beard. His first beard was deposited in a box of gold, adorned with costly pearls, and he dedicated it to the Capitoline Jupiter. But even this event in his life was accompanied by a crime. Shortly before he laid aside his beard he paid a visit to his aunt Domitia, who was ill.

Laying her hand on the soft down, she said to him in her blandishing way, ‘As soon as I have received this, I am ready to die.’

Nero turned round to the loose comrades who usually attended him and whispered, with a coarse jest, ‘Then I will shave it off at once.’

From that sick-bed Domitia, who was almost the last of Nero’s living relatives, never rose again. The Roman world suspected foul play on the part of the physicians at Nero’s order. Certain it is that he seized all her ample possessions, and suppressed her will.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE GLADIATORS’ SCHOOL

‘Commorabor inter homicidas, inclusus turpiore custodia et sordido cellarum situ.’ ‘In ludo fui, qua pœna nullam graviorem scelera noverunt, cujus ad comparationem ergastulum leve est.’—Quinctilian.

Although the intervention of the vestal and the kindly ruse of Pudens had saved the life of Onesimus, his condition was far from enviable. He was once more—now for the third time in his life—in overwhelming disgrace. It is true that all the legal customs were observed, in a house controlled by that respect for archæology which the fashion had been set by Augustus. The chains were taken off his limbs and flung out of the court through the impluvium. None the less he felt that he was marked and shunned. One day, after his escape, Nero passed him in one of the corridors, and, struck by the appearance of a handsome youth, beckoned him to approach. He came forward trembling, and the Emperor, peering into his face, recognised the purple-keeper of Octavia. Inspired by sudden disgust at the memories thus called to his recollection, he summoned his dispensator Callicles into his presence, and ordered him to get rid of ‘that worthless Phrygian.’

‘Shall I put him in prison, or have him sent again to the ergastulum at Antium?’ asked Callicles.

‘Neither,’ said Nero. ‘The City Prætor, Pedanius Secundus, is about to give some votive games of beasts and gladiators. Make a present to him of this youth.’

Onesimus heard the words, and his heart sank within him. But resistance was useless. On his way he passed the door of Acte’s apartments, and not without peril ventured to sing a few notes of the old Thyatiran ballad which had first attracted her notice. She heard it, and came out.

‘That youth comes from my native land,’ she said to the dispensator. ‘Step back a few paces and let me have a word with him.’

Callicles would hardly have granted the favour to any one else, but every one loved Acte, and he only said, ‘If Nero should come?’...

‘I will hold you clear,’ said Acte.

Onesimus, overcome with shame, knelt on one knee, kissed the fringe of her robe, and whispered, ‘Oh, Acte, I am condemned to be a gladiator.’

‘In which school?’

‘Under Rutulus, the trainer of Pedanius Secundus—the cruellest man in Rome.’

He told her something of his story, and she saw that to help him was beyond her power. All she could do was to slip into his hand her own purse, and to tell him that if ever the day came when she could befriend him she would do her utmost. More she dared not say, for the suspicious eyes of Callicles were upon her, and she had to repress the emotion which agitated her frame.

In the school of Rutulus, Onesimus experienced a phase of misery even deeper than in the slave-prison of Antium. Once more he was the companion of felons of every dye and fugitives of every nationality. Every day came the severe drill, the coarse food which was worse than hunger, the odious society of hardened ruffians, the recounting of the brutal tragedies with which they were familiar. Among them all he found but one whose society he could tolerate. He was a dark-haired, blue-eyed Briton, young like himself, but in all other respects unlike him. For Æquoreus, as they called him, was full of manly pride and hardihood, and had none of the subtle softness of the Asiatic in his temperament. He had been reduced to his hard lot for no other crime than the outburst of a passionate independence. He had been brought over with Caractacus, as one of the Britons pre-eminent in stature and beauty to grace the ovation of Claudius and Aulus Plautius. He had not been treated cruelly, for the admiration inspired by the dauntless bearing of the British king had secured protection to his countrymen; but Glanydon—to give him his Silurian name—loathed the effeminate luxuries of Rome, and, forgetting that he was a captive, had once struck in the face a Prætorian officer who insulted him. For this offence he had been first scourged and then handed over to the master of the gladiators. It was ordered that he should fight, as soon as he was trained, in some great display. Onesimus saw that the young Briton shared his own disgust at the orgies of ribald talk in which their fellows indulged. The two had no other friends, and they were drawn together for mutual defence against the rude horse-play of their comrades. Glanydon was one of the class of gladiators called Samnites, who fought in heavy armour, while, after various trials, the trainer (lanista) decided that the exceptional activity of Onesimus marked him out for the work of a net-thrower (retiarius). Their training had to be hurried on at the utmost speed, for the games were to take place within a month.

The other gladiators sometimes talked of their lot with pretended rapture. They spoke of the liberal supply of food, of the presents sent them, of the favour with which they were regarded by fair ladies—even by the wives and daughters of great patricians—of the fame they acquired, so that their prowess and the comparison of their merits was one of the commonest topics of talk at Roman dinner-parties. They boasted of the delight of seeing their likenesses painted in red on the play-bills; of the shouts with which a favourite fighter was welcomed; of the yell of applause which greeted them when they had performed a gallant feat; of the chance of retiring with wreaths and gifts and money, when they had earned by their intrepidity the wooden foil.74

‘Poor wretches,’ said Onesimus to Glanydon; ‘they do not talk of the panic which sometimes seizes them, and how they are howled at when, in ignominious defeat, they fly to the end of the arena to beg for their lives; how, when they see overwhelming odds against them and grim death staring them in the face, they are still driven into the fight with cracking scourges and plates of iron heated red hot; nor—but what is the use of talking of all this, Glanydon? you know it all better than I do.’

‘Brutal, bloody, slaves and women, are these Romans,’ cried Glanydon. ‘The Druids of my native land served the gods with cruel rites, but they did not play with death as though it were a pretty toy, as these weaklings do. And to think that by arms and discipline they conquered my countrymen! Oh, for one hour again under Caradoc or under Boudicca! I would never leave another field alive.’

‘You do not, then, fear death?’ said Onesimus.

‘Why should I? What has life for me? The maiden I loved is in her hut on my Silurian hills. I shall never see her more, nor set foot on those purple mist-clad mountains. I shall be butchered to amuse these swine. Death! No,’ he said, while he indignantly dashed away the tear which had burst forth at the thought of his home—‘I do not fear death, but I hate to die thus.’

‘Did your Druids think that death ended all?’

Glanydon turned his blue eyes on the speaker. ‘I do not think they did. There were mysteries which they hid from us. But’....

With amazement Onesimus saw him sketch in the dust the helmet of a mirmillo, of which the crest was a dolphin. The Phrygian said nothing, but scratched in the dust the same symbol. Glanydon started up and seized his hand. ‘A Christian?’ he asked in amazement; ‘and yet here?’

‘You too are here,’ said Onesimus, hanging his head.

‘Ah, yes!’ said the Briton; ‘but surely for no crime. What could I do but strike a wretch viler than a worm? Nor have I been illuminated—my teacher would not baptise me till he could see proof that I had controlled the fierce outbursts of passion.’

‘Your teacher?’

‘There came from Jerusalem an old white-haired man. They called him Joseph. He had seen the Christ; he had buried Him in his own tomb.—But you, Onesimus?’

‘I am no better than a renegade. My own follies have brought me here. There is no more hope for me. Ask me no more.’

‘Do you fear death?’ asked the Briton. ‘If so, I pity your lot.’

‘The gods—or God if there be but one God—cannot be worse than men,’ answered Onesimus gloomily.

Glanydon was silent. After a pause, he said, ‘I am a rude barbarian, as they call me here; yet he who taught me spoke much of “love for all and hope for all.”’

Onesimus sat with bowed head, and the Briton was moved. ‘We are brothers,’ he said. ‘Even in this hell we can love one another.’

But one sickening thought was in the breasts of both of them. They had sat side by side in daily intercourse; their common friendlessness, their common sympathies, had thrown them together in the closest bonds, and those bonds had been strengthened by the discovery that both had been taught at least the rudiments of a holy faith. But the day of the games was rapidly approaching, and the chances of the lot, or the caprice of the Prætor, might easily cause them to be pitted against each other. It was horrible to think that either of them might be compelled to drive sword or dagger into the throat or heart of his friend.

‘Supposing that we are matched together?’ said Glanydon, the evening before the display.

‘Then we must fight,’ said Onesimus. ‘Have we not taken the oath “to be bound, to be burned, to be scourged, to be slain,” or do anything else that is required of us as legitimate gladiators, giving up alike our souls and our bodies?’75

‘Which of us will win?’ asked Glanydon, with a sad smile.

‘You,’ said the Phrygian. ‘You are stronger than I am, and taller.’

‘Yes, but you are quicker and more active, and you can’t tell how I hate that net of yours. I know you will catch me in it—’

‘If I do, you will still have fought so well that the people will all turn down their thumbs, and you will be spared. A tall fine fellow like you is just the gladiator whom the Roman ladies like to look at, and they won’t have you killed in your first fight. But as for me—a mere Phrygian slave!—Yes, Glanydon, to-morrow your short sword will perhaps be red with my blood.’

‘Never!’ said Glanydon. ‘I will fight because I must, and will do my best; and when my blood is up I might kill you or any other opponent in the blind heat of the combat; but as for slaughtering in cold blood I could not do it—least of all could I murder the friend I love.’

‘You won’t be able to help yourself, Glanydon. And we netsmen (worse luck!) have our faces uncovered. Many of the spectators, like the late “divine” Claudius, as they call him, like to see us killed, because our dying expression is not concealed by a helmet.’

‘But why should we not both escape?’ asked the Briton. ‘Perhaps before this time to-morrow we may each be the happy possessor of the ivory ticket with “Sp.”76 upon it, or even of the palm and the foil. Who knows but what by our bravery we may be rude donati?’

‘Don’t you know, then, that to-morrow’s games will very likely be sine missione? We must either die or kill.’

The Briton had not been aware of it. He sank into gloomy silence. Onesimus gently laid his hand on his friend’s shoulder, and said, ‘Well, perhaps, like Priscus and Verrus, we may both be victors and both vanquished. Pugnavere pares, succubuere pares.’

Glanydon shook his head. He said, ‘Let us talk no more, or we shall both be unmanned. Life—death—to-morrow; the rudis or the stab? Which shall it be?’

‘It is in God’s hands,’ said Onesimus, ‘if what we have been taught is true.’

With that awful issue before them, overshadowed by misgivings and almost with despair, finding life horrible, yet shrinking from the death which neither of them dared to regard with full Christian hope, the two youths lay down on their pallets. Before they closed their eyes in sleep, each of them had breathed some sort of unuttered cry into the dim unknown.

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE FIGHT IN THE ARENA

‘Mera homicidia sunt.’—Seneca, Ep. 7.

The morning broke in cloudless splendour. Long before the dawn thousands of the Roman populace had thronged into the amphitheatre to secure the best places. The City Præfect was known to be a man of taste and a favourite of Nero, and the Emperor himself was certain to grace the display with his idolised presence. The pairs of gladiators were not numerous, nor were there many wild beasts; but everything was to be choice of its kind, and it was rumoured that some beautiful foreign youths were to make their first appearance as fighters.

About eleven o’clock the rays of the sun became too strong for comfort, and a huge awning, decorated with gay streamers, was drawn over the audience by gilded cords.

By this time the amphitheatre, except the seats reserved for distinguished persons, was thronged from the lowest seats to the topmost ambulatory, where stood a dense array of slaves and of the lowest proletariat. They did not get tired of waiting, for the scene was one of continual bustle and brightness, as group after group of burghers, in their best array, took their seats with their wives and families. Any well-known patrician or senator was greeted with applause or with hisses. The buzz of general conversation sometimes rose into a roar of laughter, and sometimes sank into a hush of expectancy. Little incidents kept occurring every moment. Interlopers tried to thrust themselves into the fourteen rows of seats which were set apart for the knights, and an altercation often ensued between the seat-keeper, Oceanus, and these impostors. Now the people laughed at the unceremonious way in which he shook one of them who, to escape notice, had pretended to be asleep. They were still more amused when the impatient official turned out a finely dressed personage who protested that he was a knight, but unluckily dropped in the scuffle a large key, which showed him to be a slave.

At last the shouting of the multitude who thronged about the principal entrance announced the arrival of the Præfect. Amid the acclamations of the populace, the magnificent procession by which Pedanius was accompanied passed round the arena to the reserved seats. Pedanius was scarcely seated, when the Emperor, surrounded by a group of his most brilliant courtiers, took his place in the imperial box. As the roar of applause continued, he rose again and again with his hand on his heart, to bow and cringe before the public—omnia serviliter pro imperio. For the mob of Rome was at once his master and his slave, and was as ready at slight excuse to burst into open menaces as into blasphemous adulation. Nero was as well aware as Tiberius that ‘he was only holding a wolf by the ears;’ and he often quoted the saying of that keen observer, that few realised ‘what a monster Empire was.’

Then Pedanius rose in his seat and flung down the scarlet napkin which was the signal that the sports were to begin.

The opening amusements were harmless and curious. First a number of German aurochs were led round the circus. They had been trained to stand still while boys hung from their huge horns, or danced and fenced standing on their broad backs. A tiger was guided by its keeper with a chain of flowers. Four chariots swept past in succession, the first drawn by leopards with gay silken harness, the second by stags champing golden bits, the third by shaggy bisons, the fourth by four camels who amused the people by their expression of supercilious disapproval. Then an elephant performed some clumsy dances under the bidding of its black keeper. Next a winged boy led in a wild boar by a purple halter. Last of all, a tame lion was introduced, which, to the delight of the shouting populace, dandled a hare in its paws without hurting it, and then suffered its keeper to put his head and his hand in its open mouth. But at this point a frightful tragedy occurred. Wherever the dazzling white sand of the arena chanced to have been disturbed or stained, it was raked smooth, and fresh sand sprinkled, by boys dressed as Cupids with glittering wings. One of these boys, presuming on the lion’s tameness, hit it rather sharply with his rake. The royal brute had been already excited by hearing the howling of the animals of all sorts with which the vivarium was crowded, as well as by the shouts of the spectators, and its keeper had stupidly neglected to notice the signs of its rising rage. But when the sharp edge of the rake struck it, the lion’s mane bristled, and with a terrific snarl he first laid the poor lad dead with one stroke of his paw, and then sprang with a mighty bound upon a second lad, on whose quivering limbs he fleshed his claws and teeth.77 A cry of horror and alarm rose from the people, and those who sat just above the level of the amphitheatre started up in terror, for they were only protected from the wild beasts by rails, which had been finished off with amber and silver, but did not look very strong. The brute, which had thus shown ‘a wild trick of its ancestors,’ was soon overpowered, for the keeper was skilled in the use of the lasso. But this incident did but whet the appetite of the spectators for blood. They shouted to Pedanius to begin the venatio and the wild-beast fights which formed the morning show. No expense had been spared to sate the insatiable cruelty of the mob. For an hour or two longer they were gratified with a prodigality of anguish. Ostriches and giraffes were chased round and round, and shot to death with arrows. Wild beasts fought with tame beasts and with wild beasts, and beasts with men. Bears, lions, and tigers were worried and hacked by armed bestiarii, and sometimes a bestiarius in his turn lay rolling on the sand, crushed by a bear or torn by the fierce struggles of a panther. Lastly, some unskilled, defenceless criminals were turned loose into the amphitheatre amid a fresh batch of animals, infuriated by hunger and mad with excitement. None of the poor weaponless wretches—sine armis, sine arte, seminudi—could stand up for a moment against the bear’s hug or the tiger’s leaps. They stood in attitudes of despairing stupefaction, watching the horrible rolling gait of the bears, or the crouching of the tigers as they glared on them with yellow eyeballs and bristling manes, lashing their haunches with their tails, and at last, with a hoarse carnivorous roar, curving their backs for the final spring. The venatio degenerated into a mere butchery meant to fill up the time.78

All this was regarded as child’s play in comparison with the luxury of courage, skill, and massacre which was expected in the afternoon; but it was already too much for one of the spectators. This was the philosophic thaumaturge Apollonius of Tyana, who happened to be paying a brief visit to Pætus Thrasea. Thrasea had been compelled to be present, because he knew that everything which he did or failed to do was watched with deadly suspicion; and Apollonius had accompanied his host from a desire to see the strange animals which were to be exhibited. At first he had looked on with real delight and interest; but when he saw the noble creatures wantonly killed, his Greek instinct for the beautiful was disgusted. He had been shocked by the callousness with which the vast audience had recovered from its momentary fright when the two poor boys had been slain by the lions; but when he saw them shouting with delight while the arena was wet with the blood of mangled men and tortured beasts, he turned his back on the amphitheatre with disdain and horror, and whispered in the ear of his companion, ‘Rome is a Bacchante rolling in blood and mud.’

Of all these scenes Onesimus and Glanydon had been spectators; and such spectacles were little calculated to dispel the gloom of dreadful anticipation which hung over the coming afternoon. They had marched in the procession of gladiators which formed part of the opening pomp, and from behind a lattice-work of one of the dressing-rooms they could see all that was going on. But now the rays of the early summer were pouring a dazzling flood of warmth and light which penetrated even through the awning. The vast audience required a little rest. The awning was sprinkled with perfumes. Saffron-water fell in a delicate dew upon the hot and tired multitude. The passages between the seats were flushed with pure cold water. Refreshments and baskets of fruit were freely handed about, and while they were enjoying the light mid-day meal every one chatted freely with his neighbour.

‘Who are those in the podium with the Emperor?’ asked a provincial from Gaul of the young Spaniard who sat beside him.

‘Don’t you know?’ said Martial, for he it was. ‘That well-dressed, handsome, smiling man is Petronius. The tall senator with the intellectual face is Seneca. He is a countryman of whom I am proud.’

‘Seneca!’ said the provincial; ‘the greatest man of his age! Only to think that I have seen Seneca!’

Martial only smiled. Such enthusiasm was refreshing.

‘The young man with black hair who sits just behind him with a frown on his forehead is his nephew Lucan, the poet. The king in purple robe is Herod Agrippa II., with his lovely sister Berenice by his side. Just watch the flash of that diamond on her neck. That splendid fellow with fair hair, all smiles, who has grace and beauty in every movement, is the actor Paris, and beside him is his friend and rival, Aliturus. The exquisite, who looks as if he would be paralyzed by the weight of his own rings, is Senecio.’

‘And that lady with her face half veiled, so that you only catch a glimpse now and then of her loveliness?’

‘That is Poppæa, Otho’s wife. No wonder Nero loves her better than that pale sad lady who sits among the six vestals.’

‘Yet she, too, is young and beautiful. Who is she?’

‘The Empress.’

‘Octavia, the daughter of Claudius? May the gods bless her!’

The provincial gazed long at Octavia.

‘But now tell me,’ he continued, ‘who is that purpureal personage, with large rings, scarlet boots, and a very white forehead?’

Martial laughed aloud. ‘His forehead may well be white,’ he said. ‘Do you know what it is made of?’

‘Made of?’ asked the young Gaul in astonishment.

‘Yes. It is made of sticking-plaster! If you took it off, what do you think you would see under it?’

‘His skin, I suppose.’

‘His skin, yes! But with three letters on it.’

‘What three letters?’

‘O Simplicitas!’ said Martial; ‘the three letters F. U. R.’

‘Is he a thief?’ asked the Gaul. ‘Then why do they let him sit there among the knights?’

‘Because his thieving has made him rich,’ answered Martial.

‘But his riches don’t make him honest; and every one seems to be treating him with great respect.’

Martial laughed long and loud. ‘O Sapientia!’ he exclaimed, ‘O Innocentia! From what new Atlantis do you come? Don’t you know that at Rome the rule always is “Riches first, virtue next”?’

‘If that be the rule at Rome,’ said the other, ‘I should prefer to live at Ulubræ or at Venta Belgarum.’

But Martial had no more time to listen to a morality so refreshingly unsophisticated. ‘Hush!’ he said. ‘They are going to scatter down the presents and the lottery tickets on us.’

First came a shower of countless coins of thin metal, every one of which was stamped with a wanton image. Then all kinds of little presents like those exchanged at the Saturnalia. The audience did not exert themselves to catch these, but it was very different when handfuls of lottery tickets were flung among them. For these they scrambled wildly, and with many a curse and blow; for he who secured one might find himself the happy possessor of a slave, a statue, a fine vase, a rare foreign bird, a suit of armour, a Molossian dog, a Spanish horse, or even a villa; although the mystery which the number concealed could not be made known till he presented the ticket the next day.

But by this time the attendants with rakes were scraping the surface of the arena smooth, and sprinkling it afresh with dazzling white sand brought in ship-loads from Africa, to hide the crimson stains of the life-blood of animals and men. For now was to begin the splendid exhibition of strength and skill and pluck, and the awful pageantry of death, under that blue sky, under that gleaming sunlight; and men and women were preparing themselves to be thrilled with sanguinary and voluptuous excitement which would make the blood course through their veins like fire. Most of the gladiators were men of approved prowess, stalwart and well known; and from the senators’ seats to the topmost gallery bets were being freely laid on their chances of victory, and on those who should be left dead at evening, indifferent forever to those wild shouts. The only two who were not spectati—the only two tiros who were to make their appearance—were the young British captive and the young Phrygian slave.

The long defiant blast of a trumpet smote the air; the folding doors of the main entrance were flung open, and, headed by their trainer, the gladiators in a body marched in proud procession and with firm steps to the space beneath the podium, on which stood the gilded chair of the Emperor. They were only sixty in number, but had been selected for their skill and physique, and belonged to various classes of gladiators. They were clad in glittering array—their helmets, their shields, and even their greaves, richly embossed and gilded.

And none were more curiously scanned than Onesimus, who walked last of the net-throwers, and Glanydon, who closed the file of the Samnites. It was impossible not to observe the towering stature and herculean mould of the Briton, the lithe and sinewy frame of the dark-eyed Asiatic. Then the Prætor once more flung down the napkin, in sign that the fighting should begin. Grouped under the Emperor’s seat, they all uplifted to him their right hands and chanted in monotone their sublime greeting: ‘Hail, Cæsar! we who are about to die salute thee!’

Nero flung them a careless glance, and scarcely broke the animated conversation which he was holding with Petronius.

Before the hard fighting began there was some preliminary skirmishing among all the gladiators, with blunt weapons, merely to display their skill; and a pair of andabatæ amused the people by their difficulties in fighting practically blindfold, for their loose helmets had no eyelet-holes.

Then the trumpet blew once more, and a herald cried out, ‘Lay aside your blunt swords and fight with sharp swords;’ and Pedanius examined the weapons to see that they were duly sharp. The display began with the contests of the horsemen and the charioteers (essedarii). It was not long before two of the chariots were broken, and their wounded occupants flung down under the hoofs of their own plunging horses.

Next, two horsemen, both of them popular favourites, of well-tried prowess and well-matched strength, rode out on white horses to fight each other in mortal conflict. Hippias wore a short mantle of blue, and rode from the east side of the arena; Aruns, in a red mantle, rode from the western side. Both wore on their heads golden helmets, and military standards were carried before them.79 The combat between them was long and fierce, for each knew that it was to be his last. They charged each other furiously, raining on heads and shoulders a tempest of blows, till, after a tremendous bout, Aruns thrust his spear through a joint in the armour of Hippias, and the stream of crimson blood which followed was greeted by the roar of ‘Habet!’ from eighty thousand throats. The rider fell lifeless. He required no finishing stroke, and the mob cried, ‘Peractum est!’ (‘There’s an end of him!’) This contest had excited much interest from the fame of the fighters, and large sums of money changed hands on the result. One of the senators, named Cæcina, had hit on an ingenious way of telling his distant friends whether they had lost or gained. Since Hippias was in blue, and Aruns in red, he had carried with him into the amphitheatre a number of swallows in two cages, of which some were painted blue and some red; and, since Aruns had slain his adversary, he let loose those which were painted red.80

After this the other mounted gladiators joined combat. In a very short time nearly all were wounded, and three acknowledged their defeat. Dropping their swords or javelins, they upheld their clenched hands with one finger extended to plead for mercy. The plea was vain. No handkerchief was waved in sign of mercy, and, standing over them, the victors callously drove their swords into the throats of their defeated comrades. The poor conquered fighters did not shrink. They looked up at the shouting populace with something of disdain on their faces, as though to prove that they thought nothing of death, and did not wish to be pitied. To see that none were shamming dead, a figure entered disguised as Charon, who smote them with his hammer; but the work of the sword had been done too faithfully—he only smote the corpses of the slain.81

By this time the whole atmosphere of the place seemed to reek with the suffocating fumes of blood, which acted like intoxication on the brutalised passions of the multitude. They awaited with savage eagerness the next combat, which was to be the main show of the afternoon. Twelve Samnites and mirmillos were to be matched against as many net-throwers and chasers; and the contest was all the more thrilling because the latter were very lightly clad, so that every wound and gash was visible in all its horror on their naked limbs, while the unhelmed faces showed every triumphant or agonised expression which swept across them in that stormy scene.

After half an hour’s fighting in terrible earnest, in which each side had exchanged many a well-aimed blow, and had shown prodigies of skill, valour, and swiftness, many of the gladiators had fallen, and others dropped their arms in sign of defeat. Their vanquishers strode over them awaiting the signal to be executioners of their brethren. The fight was stopped till the signal had been given with ruthless unanimity. The defeated men, like those who had been killed before them, gazed without blenching on the hard and lolling multitude, as though to show by their calm demeanour how easy a thing it was to die.

But to make sure that they had been really killed, once more a slave entered, who, for variety’s sake, was dressed in the wings and carried the serpent-rod of Mercury. He touched each corpse with a red-hot iron wand. No limb shrank from his touch. Other attendants, therefore, laid the dead on biers—which the admiring spectators observed to be inlaid with amber—and they were carried out through the gate of Libitina into the spoliarium, where they were carelessly flung out in a heap.82

So far both the tiros had escaped. They had instinctively avoided each other, and neither had butchered his opponent except in fair fight. Of the eight who survived, four were Samnites and mirmillos, four were net-throwers. They thought that the fight was over and that they might severally be regarded as victors, and might look for the gifts of crowns and money, or even of the foil which set them free from the horrid trade. They stepped back beyond the lines which the trainer had marked, resting on their arms, and expecting to be ushered out of the triumphal gate.

The multitude had far other intentions. They were not yet sated with slaughter; they had not yet gloated long enough on faces convulsed with the death-agony; they wanted to see how the beautiful young Phrygian would look when an opponent stood over him with a sword at his throat.

But the soul of Glanydon was filled with disgust and disdain. He loathed those fat, shouting, comfortable burghers, those hard-faced women, those finical dandies, of whom he felt that he could have driven a score before him like sheep. He strode to the barriers and set his back against them, refusing to fight.

A yell of fury rose from the people. ‘Kill him!’ they shouted. ‘Kill him! scourge him! burn him! Why is he so afraid of cold steel? Why can’t he die like a man? Ho! scourgers, lash the youth into the combat again, to make the sides equal.’

The Briton stood as in a dream, and as his thoughts reverted to his home and the maiden whom he loved, the amphitheatre swam before his eyes. Five or six mastigophori came running up to him, and he felt the curling lash of one of them come stinging round his body. The agony aroused him. With a cry as of a wounded lion he sprang on the scourger, and with one buffet laid him senseless, while the others fled in confusion before him. Then, with the boldness of despair, he strode under the podium, and, raising his clenched fist, cursed the Emperor aloud.

‘Murderer of thy mother!’ he cried; ‘thou infamy of manhood, I will fight again. But think not that thou shalt escape. Speedily the doom shall overtake thee, and thy death shall be more shameful and horrible than mine.’

He had thundered forth so loudly his indignant words that they rang through the whole amphitheatre, and the wildest tumult arose. The Emperor cowered back in his seat, pale with superstitious terror, yet almost suffocated with rage; and his favourite page, springing up from the low stool at his feet, began to sprinkle his face with perfume.

The Prætorians drew their swords, and in one moment would have slain the criminal who thus dared to blaspheme their human god. That a common gladiator—a thing to flesh men’s swords upon—should dare to curse the Emperor! It was a portent! But there was no time to interfere, for, with a shout, Glanydon sprang back among the gladiators, and began so furious an affray that the other side gave way and fled. He sprang on an opponent, and the crimson rush that followed his sword-thrust again awoke the deep ‘Habet!’ of the excited crowd. But as he pressed on, now blind with fury, he fell, face forward, over the loose helmet of a slain mirmillo, and before he could recover himself a netsman, seizing his opportunity, flung his net, entangled the limbs of the Briton by a dexterous twist, and, without waiting for any signal, drove his trident into his breast. The Briton died without a groan. But the advantage of the light-armed fighters was only momentary. Their courage had been daunted by Glanydon, and, after a few moments of flight and fight, the Samnites were victorious and the net-throwers were all wounded and dropped their arms, except Onesimus. They knelt with their forefingers uplifted, and, as they had fought with courage and had been hardly used, handkerchiefs began to be waved in their favour and thumbs to be turned downwards. Octavia and Acte had both recognised the face of Onesimus as he retreated before one of the Samnites, and failed to entangle him by the throw of his net. Filled with pity, they turned their thumbs downward in sign that the combat should be stopped and the lives of the defeated be spared.

But unhappily Onesimus was only a few feet distant from Nero, and Nero had recognised him too. The curse of Glanydon had shaken the Emperor’s nerves. He was in a peculiarly brutal mood, and, with thumb turned towards his breast, he gave the fatal sign that the four netsmen should be slain. Three of them were so deeply wounded already that their limbs were bathed in blood, and without an instant’s pause the Samnites thrust their swords through them to the hilt. But the sight seemed to inspire Onesimus with some divine despair. He seized his trident and dagger—he had already gathered the net round his shoulder—and, springing towards one of the Samnites, flung, entangled, tripped, and stabbed him. Plucking his trident from the wound, but not waiting to recover his net, he flew on the second and smote him down. The third, who was already staggering from a wound received earlier in the fight dropped his arms and upheld his forefinger, and, before the fourth could recover from his amazement, Onesimus, leaving the defeated combatant, had again seized his net and chased his opponent with it in act to throw. Being far superior in speed, he swiftly overtook him, flung the net and, hurling his opponent to the ground, brandished his dagger over him. The peopled walls of the amphitheatre rang with shouts of delight and admiration. Never had they seen a more astonishing and gallant feat. This retiarius—and he a mere tiro—had, single-handed, defeated four Samnites in succession. The thing was unheard of. Every thumb was turned up for Onesimus to give the finishing stroke to his conquered enemy, and thousands of voices clamoured that, as the sole surviving victor of the combat, he should be rewarded with the palm and foil.

But the brief spasm of wrath was over. Onesimus could not and would not butcher his comrades in cold blood. He recognised in the young Samnite a gladiator named Kalendio, one of the least objectionable of his fellows in the school—the only one who had never gone out of his way to annoy or taunt him. At the same moment he caught sight of the body of Glanydon. A rush of tears blinded him; he flung down net and dagger and trident, and, retreating to the barrier, stood there with folded arms. The acclamations which had greeted his prowess were followed by a groan of astonishment and disappointment. Kalendio had by this time torn and cut himself free from the net, and sprang upon the unhappy Phrygian who had spared his life. Onesimus did not resist him or appeal for mercy; the Samnite, who was an utter stranger to the scruples and compunctions which had led Onesimus to spare him, drove his sword into him; life and sense flowed from him, and he fell heavily upon the bloody sand.