CHAPTER XLIII

A NOTABLE PRISONER

A Roman centurion, whose armour gleamed in the sun, was walking at the head of the decuria of soldiers, several of whom were attached by a loose coupling chain to the arms of various prisoners. The spectacle was common enough, and in the varied turmoil of the principal thoroughfare, with the stream of travellers which swept to and fro about the capital of the world, there was nothing in it to attract notice. But the interest felt in one of the prisoners had induced a throng of people—mostly foreigners, slaves, and artisans—to go and meet him.

Titus recognised in the centurion an old friend. ‘Ha, Julius!’ he cried; ‘so you have returned from Cæsarea. You will have long stories to tell us about those curious and turbulent Jews. Will you sup with my father to-night? You will be welcome.’

‘Yes!’ said Julius, ‘gladly, for I am tired with a long day’s march.’

‘You know our frugal ways. You will have to recline on couches made only by Archias, and sup mainly on vegetables off earthenware plates,’ said Titus laughing, and quoting Horace.

‘It will be a supper of the gods after our fare in the nights and days of storm on the Adramyttian ship off Clauda and Malta,’ said Julius. ‘But I must hurry on now to hand over my prisoners to the Prætorian Præfect.’

‘Who are your prisoners?’

‘They are of the ordinary sort except one. He is the strangest, bravest, wisest man I ever met; and yet he is a fanatical Jew—one of this new sect which the mob calls Christians.’

‘Which is he?’

Julius pointed to a prisoner chained to the foremost soldier, on either side of whom nearly all the visitors were grouped, listening eagerly to every word he uttered, and showing him every sign of love and reverence. He was a man with the aquiline nose and features of his race, somewhat bent, somewhat short of stature, evidently from his gestures a man of nervous and emotional temperament. His hair had grown grey in long years of hardship. Many a care and peril and anxiety had driven its ploughshare across his brow. His cheeks were sunken, and the eyes, though bright, were disfigured by ophthalmia. He was evidently short-sighted, but as he turned his fixed and earnest look now on one, now on another of his companions, the expression of his deeply-marked face was so translucent with some divine light within, that those who once saw him felt compelled to look long on a countenance of no ordinary type of nobleness.

Titus gazed at him. Nothing could be more unlike the worn and weary Jew who had been buffeted by so many storms and escaped from so many terrific perils, than was the athletic young Roman, with his short fair hair which curled round a face ruddy in its prime of youth and health. In the prisoner’s aspect there was none of the Roman dignity which marked the look and bearing of Pætus Thrasea; none of the manly independence which looked the whole world in the face from the eyes of Cornutus or Musonius Rufus; none certainly of the rich Eastern beauty which marked Aliturus or the Herodian princes. Yet Titus as he watched him was, for a moment, too much astonished to speak.

‘He looks all you say of him,’ he murmured. ‘Who is he?’

‘His name is Paulus of Tarsus. He is evidently a great leader among these Christians.’

Hitherto Onesimus, absorbed in his own sad reflections, had neither heeded the throng, nor attended to the conversation between Titus and Julius. But suddenly he caught the name, and looked up with a hasty glance.

He saw before him not a few of the Christian community of Rome. Many of them were known to him. Nereus was there and Junia; and from the household of Cæsar he recognised Tryphæna and Tryphosa and Herodion; and there were Linus, and Cletus, and the soldiers Urban and Celsus, and Claudia Dicæosyne, wife of a freedman of Narcissus, and Andronicus, and Alexander, and Rufus, sons of Simon of Cyrene who had borne Christ’s cross, and many more.

In a single glance he took in the presence of these, and a sense of danger flashed across him, lest any one of them, perhaps a false brother, should penetrate his disguise as Titus had done. But it was not at them that he looked. His whole being was absorbed in the gaze which he fixed on him whom he had always heard spoken of as the Apostle Paulus.

Yes, there he stood; his face thinner and more worn than of old, his hair now almost white with an age which was reckoned less by years than by labours and sorrows; but otherwise just as he was when Philemon had gone from Colossæ and taken with him his boy-slave to listen to the words of impassioned reasoning and burning inspiration which Paul poured forth at Ephesus in the lecture hall of Tyrannus. What a flood of memories surged over the young Phrygian’s soul as he saw him! As though his life, since then, had been written in lightning, he thought in one instant of that long tale of shame and sorrow—from the theft at Colossæ to the wanderings with the priests of the Syrian goddess, the gladiators’ school, the attempted murder at Aricia. It all flashed upon his recollection, and he felt as if he could sink to the earth for shame. His first impulse was to spring forward and cast himself at the Apostle’s feet. But he heard Julius say that they had halted too long, and that he must press forward with his charge. The word ‘Forward, soldiers!’ was given, and Onesimus hid himself behind a tomb, only rejoining Titus when the Christians had passed by. Titus seemed lost in thought, but as they were near Pomponia’s house, he said:

‘Onesimus, did you see that prisoner?’

‘Yes. And I saw him when I was a boy in Ephesus.’

‘I know men when I see them,’ said Titus. ‘He is a man,’ and then he repeated the Greek line—

‘How gracious a thing is a man, if he be but a man.’86

‘He is a Jew; he is small and bent; he is ugly; yet somehow his ugliness is more beautiful tenfold than the beauty of Paris or Tigellinus.’

‘You should hear him speak!’ said Onesimus.

Titus shrugged his shoulders. ‘A Christian!’ he said; ‘a worshipper of a Jew whom they tell me Pilatus crucified! And yet,’ he added, ‘there is something more in these Christians than I can fathom. Britannicus was very much struck by them, and I believe Pomponia is a Christian. She told me once that “no weapon forged against these Christians prospers.” Pilatus, they say, came to a bad end.’

‘What happened to him?’ asked Onesimus.

‘They say he became a haunted man. His wife Claudia Procula turned Christian. He was banished to Helvetia and there committed suicide; and his ghost haunts a bare mountain, and is forever wringing and washing its hands. But I believe it is all nonsense,’ said Titus; ‘and here we are at Pomponia’s house.’

They found the gracious noble lady with her boy by her side in the peristyle tending her flowers among her doves, which were so tame that they would perch on her head and shoulder, and coo softly, as they suffered both her and the young Aulus to smooth their plumage.

The heart of Pomponia was open to every kind impulse, and as there was little difficulty in finding room for another slave in the ample palace of a Roman noble like Aulus Plautius, Onesimus, saved once more from ruin and destitution, slept that night in the cell of a new master.

Meanwhile Julius and his prisoner had proceeded on their way. Leaving the Circus Maximus on their left, and going along the Vicus Tuscus, amid temples and statues and arches of triumph, they passed the Prætorian Camp, built by Sejanus, near the Nomentan Road, and reached the Excubitorium and the barracks of that section of the Prætorians whose turn it was to keep guard over the person of the Emperor. Here the centurion found Burrus, and in consigning to his charge the prisoner who had appealed unto Cæsar, handed to him at the same time some letters respecting him from Felix Festus, and King Agrippa. Burrus read them with interest.

‘This is a remarkable prisoner,’ he said. ‘The Jews accuse him of sedition and profanity; but they have sent neither evidence nor witnesses.’

‘We passed through a fearful storm off Crete,’ said Julius, ‘and were shipwrecked at Malta. I hear rumours that another large vessel, which sailed soon after us from Cæsarea, with many Jews on board, foundered at sea. I expect that some of the accusers of Paulus perished with her.’

‘Well, if so, his case will be delayed. He is innocent, I suppose?’

‘Perfectly innocent, I am certain. Christian as he is, it is such men whom the gods love. We all of us should have perished at sea but for his wisdom and good sense, and if we had listened to his advice we should not have been wrecked at all.’

‘Ha!’ said Burrus; ‘he shall be well treated.’ He called to a Prætorian and said: ‘The prisoner in the outer room may hire a lodging for himself. He will, of course, be in custody. The men must take their turns to be chained to him; but mark—choose out the kindest and most honest men for the work, and let them understand that I order him to be as gently dealt with as can be, consistently with his security.’

That night the dream of the life of Paul of Tarsus was accomplished; he was sleeping in Rome. He was an ambassador, though an ambassador in bonds.

CHAPTER XLIV

A SUPPER AT VESPASIAN’S

The centurion Julius was genuinely pleased with the invitation of Titus, and duly presented himself at the modest house of Vespasian. The other guests were Aulus Plautius and Pomponia, King Caradoc, Pudens and Claudia, and Seneca, together with several members of the family, and among them Vespasian’s brother, Flavius Sabinus, who had just been appointed Præfect of the City, in the place of Pedanius Secundus. The fortunes of the Flavian house were rising rapidly; but Sabinus, an eminent soldier, with his blushing honours fresh upon him, was regarded as the head of the family.

Vespasian was poor, and was also fond of money. That he had not amassed a fortune in his various commands was much to his credit. His house, afterwards occupied by Josephus, was so unpretending as to excite the wonder of those who saw it after he had become Emperor, and his entertainments were usually marked by a more than Sabine simplicity.

On this occasion, however, since a king, a prime minister, and a consular—his old commander—who had enjoyed the honour of sharing an Emperor’s triumphs, were among his guests, Vespasian had donned the unwonted splendour of his ‘triumphal ornaments,’ a flowered tunic, over which flowed a purple robe, embroidered with palm branches in gold and silver thread. He was not half at ease in this splendid apparel, and told his wife Cænis that he was an old fool for his pains. The entertainment was sufficient, though Otho would have thought it hardly good enough for his freedmen. The board was graced with old Sabine and Etruscan ware of great antiquity and curious workmanship, as well as with objects of interest which Vespasian had bought when he was an officer in Thrace, Crete, and Cyrene.

But Vespasian himself, who was sturdily indifferent to fashion, and took pleasure in showing how little he regarded the criticisms of Roman dandyism, drank out of a little silver cup which had belonged to his grandmother, and which he would not have exchanged for the loveliest crystal on the table of Petronius. And Caradoc, as he sat there in his simple dress and golden torque, was far more happy at that modest entertainment than he would have been at the house of any other of the Roman nobles.

The party was, so to speak, a British party, for most of them were familiar with the storm-swept Northern island, which was regarded as the Ultima Thule of civilisation. That day Pudens had received an appointment to go to Britain and support as well as he could the wavering fortunes of Suetonius Paulinus. Caradoc was permitted to return with him and take up his abode at Noviomagus, the town of the Regni. They were to sail as early as possible from Ostia. More than this, Aulus Plautius, to whose powerful influence these appointments had been due, had secured for his young friend Titus the excellent position of a tribune of the soldiers to the army in Britain. It was a graceful recognition of the services which Vespasian had rendered to him twenty years before, when, as his legate of the legion, he had fought thirty battles, captured more than twenty towns, and reduced the Isle of Wight to subjection. It was in Britain, as Tacitus says, that Vespasian had first been ‘shown to the Fates.’ The whole party were in the highest spirits. The old king rejoiced to think that he should rest at last in the land of his fathers. Claudia longed to escape from the suffocating atmosphere of Roman luxury. Pudens knew that in Rome his Christian convictions might speedily bring him into peril, and that in far-off Britain he could breathe a freer and purer air. Vespasian had much to tell of the glories of the country. Lastly, Titus felt all the ardour of a young soldier entering on high command in new and deeply interesting fields of adventure, and in the company of the officer whom he most respected and loved.

It was natural, therefore, that the conversation should turn on Britain, and the tremendous events of which it had recently been the scene. Aulus Plautius had heard from Suetonius Paulinus himself the story how he had carried his soldiers on flat-bottomed boats across the Straits of Mona, while the horses swam behind; how the British women, with dishevelled hair, stood thick upon the shore in dark robes, and, with torches in their hands, ran to and fro among the soldiers like Furies; above all, how the Druids stood there conspicuous, their long white beards streaming to the winds, and, with hands uplifted to heaven, cursed the Romans; and how at last, ‘falling on the barbarous and lunatic rout, he had beaten them down, scorched and rolling in their own fires.’ But darker news had followed. Roman emissaries—‘and those bad young Romans are the curse of Rome,’ said the old commander, looking up from the tablets of Suetonius—had behaved with infamous cruelty to Boadicea, the heroic Queen of the Iceni, and she was burning to revenge her wrongs. Paulinus described her as ‘a woman big and tall, of visage grim and stern, harsh of voice, her hair of bright colour flowing down to her hips, who wore a plighted garment of divers colours, and a great golden chain under a large flowing mantle.’

‘He has sent me some fierce British verses, King,’ said Aulus, turning to Caradoc, ‘which one of his literary officers—Laureatus, of the island of Vectis—has translated from British into Latin galliambics, the metre which, he says, most resembles their tumultuous lilt. The translator must be a true poet, for not even the “Atys” of Catullus is more impassioned. I shall be half afraid to read them to you, for they will stir your blood like the sound of a trumpet, and you will fancy yourself charging us again at the head of your Silures.’

‘Ah!’ said the old warrior, sadly; ‘my fires have long sunk into white embers. A king who has been led in fetters through the capital of his enemies can fight no more for a free nation, however intolerably it may have been wronged.’

Claudia pressed her father’s hand, and tears shone in her blue eyes.

‘Nay, Claudia,’ said the king; ‘I did not wish to sadden thee. Thou and I have other and brighter hopes than once we had, and it will be like new life to us to tread once more by the broad rivers of Britain, and on her heathy hills. I am an exile and poor. My jewels and trappings were carried before me at the triumph of Claudius and Aulus;—though Cartismandua, who betrayed me, still has her golden corslet and her enamelled chariot. These things are, I know, as the gods decide, and sometimes they suffer wickedness to triumph. But let Aulus Plautius read us the verses.’

Aulus read the galliambics into which the poet of Vectis had translated the British war-song,87

‘Ye gods! What cannot a poet do?’ exclaimed Seneca, with enthusiasm. ‘Those lines would have made me die in battle, if I had been a Briton.’

‘They have caused eighty thousand to die in battle,’ said Aulus. ‘A later letter of Paulinus tells us that, after a fearful massacre of the Romans at the three colonies of Londinium, Verulamium, and Camulodunum, the Britons assembled two hundred and thirty thousand warriors, with whom he fought a tremendous battle near Verulamium. But how could those woad-painted fighters withstand the skill, the discipline, the heavy armour of our legionaries? We lost but four hundred, Paulinus says; and Boadicea, who, in a chariot with her two daughters, had raged through the battle like an angry lioness, has taken poison in despair.’

The wild passionate verses had produced strangely different effects on the little audience. The old king started up from his couch, his breast panting, his eyes full of fire, and then sank back again and hid his face in his mantle. For the lines recalled to him his own heroic struggles, and his great father, Cunobalin, and his noble brothers. Claudia mused in silence, thinking of the day when the Prince of Peace should come again—a thought which Pomponia divined as she laid her hand on the fair head of her friend. Vespasian looked grave, and thought it rather treasonous of a Roman poet to turn such verses into Latin. Pudens and Titus felt a pang of regret that, in combat with a free people, the name of Rome should be stained with the infamies of scamps and weaklings who had provoked that terrible revolt.

Seneca little knew that Aulus, in reading extracts from the letter of Suetonius, had suppressed a passage in which the general had indignantly stated as one cause of the insurrection, not only the wrongs of Boadicea, but the fact that Seneca himself had suddenly called in large sums of money which he had lent to the British at usurious interest, and that the demand for repayment had reduced the poor Iceni to bankruptcy and despair.

‘We have been talking about Britain all this time,’ said Titus; ‘but here is our friend Julius straight from Palestine, and he must have plenty of news to tell us about those odd fanatics, the Jews.’

‘How goes the world in Jerusalem?’ asked Vespasian. ‘The question is very interesting to an old soldier like me. We constantly hear of risings there. I am told that affairs are getting desperate, and who knows but what the Emperor may some day despatch me thither at the head of a legion?’

‘Nothing is more likely,’ said Julius.

‘Unless you snore while the Emperor is singing, father, as you did at Subiaco,’ said Titus, laughing, as did all the guests.

‘Impudent boy!’ said Vespasian, joining in the laugh. ‘Let Julius go on.’

Julius told them that ever since the days when Pontius Pilatus had half maddened the Jews by bringing the Roman ensigns into Jerusalem, and Caligula had reduced them to stupefaction by proposing to set up his own image in their Temple, they had been on the verge of sedition.

‘Felix,’ he added, ‘only got off their impeachment by the influence of his brother, Pallas. Festus had hard work with their bandits. At present they are raging in a first-rate quarrel with young King Agrippa.’

He proceeded to tell them how Agrippa, for the delectation of his friends, had built a dining-room at the top of his Palace, so that his guests as they lay at the banquet could enjoy the highly curious spectacle of all that was going on in the Temple precincts. Indignant at this encroachment, the Jews built up a blank wall of such a height as not only to exclude the view from the Asmonæan Palace of Agrippa, but also to shut out the surveillance of the Roman soldiers in the tower Antonia. Agrippa was furious, and Festus ordered them to demolish the wall. But they said that they would die rather than consent to do this. They appealed to Nero, and Festus allowed them to send their High Priest, Ishmael ben Phabi, with nine others, to plead their cause with the Emperor.

‘I suspect that this deputation was on board the vessel whose shipwreck I mentioned,’ said Julius.

‘Will this appeal be successful?’ asked Vespasian.

‘I believe it will,’ answered the centurion; ‘for Poppæa is very favourable to the Jews.’

‘Shall we really see a Jewish High Priest in Rome?’ asked Pomponia.

‘Yes, lady,’ answered Julius; ‘but a very unworthy one. He rules by terror. He robs and defrauds the inferior priests to such an extent that they die of starvation, and his blows have become proverbial. To the disgust of the Jews he wears silk gloves when he is offering sacrifice, in order to keep his hands clean. And yet, so scrupulous are these oddest of people, that they would not let his father perform the very greatest sacrifice in their whole year because of the most insignificant accident.’

‘What was it?’ asked Pomponia.

‘You will really hardly believe it. On the eve of the great festival which they call the Kippurim—a sort of day of expiation—the father of this High Priest was talking to Aretas, king of Arabia, and by an accident a speck of the Emir’s saliva fell on Ishmael’s beard. This made him “unclean,” in their opinion; and a deputy, whom they call the Sagan, had to perform its principal function!’

The guests laughed.

‘But tell us now,’ said Vespasian, ‘about these new Christians. I suppose they, and their Christus, are more turbulent even than the Jews?’

‘So we Romans are led to believe,’ said Julius. ‘It is exactly the reverse. The Christians are the most peaceful of men, and they reverence the Roman power.’

‘Have you seen much of them?’ asked Aulus.

‘I witnessed a remarkable scene,’ said Julius, ‘just before I left Jerusalem. Festus, as you are aware, died the other day, worn out with cares and worries. Pending the appointment of his successor, Agrippa appointed a new High Priest—Annas, son of the priest before whom Christus was tried. This Annas took upon himself unwonted authority. He summoned the head of the Christians—James, a brother of their Christus—before their Sanhedrin, and ordered him to be stoned to death. But this James was almost worshipped by the people, who called him “the Just.” To give him a chance of life, they asked him what he thought of Christus, and he called him a God. On hearing this answer they flung him down from the roof of the Temple. The fall did not kill him; he was able to rise to his knees and pray for them. It was a wonderful sight—that man of noble presence, with the long locks streaming over his shoulders, and his white robe stained with blood, kneeling in the Temple court among his furious enemies! One of the bystanders pleaded for him; but a fuller came up and dashed out his brains with a club.’

‘The cup of that nation’s iniquity is full,’ said Pomponia, who had listened with a shudder to this tale of martyrdom.

‘It is,’ said Julius. ‘Immediately after I had witnessed this sad scene, I was talking to a brilliant young priest in Jerusalem named Josephus, of whose abilities they think highly, and who evidently has a great future before him. He made the same remark.’

‘But tell us something about that wonderful prisoner whom you brought to Rome,’ said Titus.

Julius detailed to them his voyage, the storm when they drifted so long up and down Adria in the starless nights and sunless days; the strong influence of the Jewish prisoner over the whole crew; the spirit which he breathed into their despair; the practical wisdom of all his counsels; the intense gratitude which he had kindled in the Protos of Malta and in the barbarous inhabitants, by what they believed to be a miraculous healing. ‘His teaching,’ he added, ‘is the most wonderful thing I ever heard.’

‘What can a Jew really teach?’ asked Seneca, with some disdain.

‘He preaches that their Prophet whom Pilatus crucified, was God Himself,’ said Julius; ‘and no sane man can believe that. But there is a sort of supernatural spell about the goodness of this Paulus; and when I hear him speak to “the brethren,” as he calls the Christians, I am always reminded of Homer’s lines—

‘He may have the gift of speech,’ said Seneca; ‘many Orientals have. But it is monstrous to suppose that a fanatical Jew, with a senseless creed, should have anything to teach us.’

‘Has he written anything?’ asked Flavius Sabinus.

‘Yes; he has written some wonderful letters—a strange mixture (as friends in Palestine told me) of fantastic doctrine and perfect ethics.’

‘Has he taught a single moral truth which has not been taught for four centuries, since Aristotle and Plato and Chrysippus?’ asked Seneca.

‘I have not read his letters,’ said Julius. ‘They were difficult to get hold of, for the Christians are very shy about their writings. But he lives the truth he teaches.’

‘Ah!’ said Seneca; ‘if he has the secret of that—! As for us, too many of us are open to the reproach that we are only philosophers by wearing beards.’

‘Well,’ said Titus, ‘I have been to hear the lectures of Musonius Rufus, and I defy any mortal man to teach better truths than he and Cornutus do; for I must not speak of the illustrious Seneca in his presence. We have no need to consult barbarian Jews with insane new mythologies.’

Pomponia and Claudia and Pudens were of necessity silent in that mixed company; but they thought that the good soil of the Christian faith was the one thing lacking to Seneca, which might have made the roses of his moral teaching produce something better than mere perfume.

And if Titus had but laid aside the ignorant disdain which marked him in common with the mass of philosophic Pagans, his manly virtues might have shone forth with yet more beautiful lustre, and he might have been saved from the sins and errors wherewith he afterwards defiled a noble name.

CHAPTER XLV

POPPÆA VICTRIX

Not long after the arrival of Paul at Rome, Burrus died. He was seized with inflammation of the throat, and Nero, under the pretence of solicitude, betrayed an ill-concealed satisfaction. He had not dared to get rid of Burrus, whom the Prætorians loved; but he fretted under the restraint of the soldier’s presence, and resented an influence which endeavoured to exert itself for good. Nero could not mistake the innuendos of Tigellinus, that this was a good opportunity to set himself free. He promised to send Burrus a remedy recommended by his own physician. The remedy was a poison. Burrus perceived the fact too late. When Nero came to visit his sick bed, he turned away from him, with undisguised aversion.

‘How are you, Præfect?’ asked the Emperor, taking his hand as it lay on the coverlet.

Burrus hastily withdrew his hand. The question recalled to him the scene of the death of Scipio, the father-in-law of Pompey, who, seeing his ship in the possession of the enemy, stabbed himself, and on hearing the question, ‘Where is the general?’ answered, ‘The general is well.’ Burrus remained silent, but when the Emperor once more asked how he was, answered, ‘I am well.’ They were the last words he spoke, and every good man in Rome mourned the loss of one of the few virtuous men of whom the state could yet boast.

Nero might have bestowed the vacant command on the best soldier of his time, the brave and honest Corbulo, who had supported the fame of Roman courage on so many a hard-fought field.

He thought of no such man. In spite of Corbulo’s utter loyalty Nero feared to trust him. He divided the office between Fenius Rufus and Sophonius Tigellinus. The former was popular from his generosity as corn commissioner in a time of famine, and it was hoped that the appointment would cover the deadly unpopularity of his colleague. But it was with Tigellinus that the real power rested. In his hands was the sword of Nero, and the secret of his influence lay in the similarity of his vices to those of the Emperor. The career of the man from boyhood upwards had been a career of infamy. He had been a lover of Agrippina, and of her sister, and he had paraded his crime with cynical coolness. With him Nero could always throw off the mask, and display the depths of his own turpitude. He was a tenth-rate Sejanus, only more deeply dyed in infamies. If he pandered to Nero’s vices with sumptuous profligacy, this was part of a deep-laid design to drag the imperial purple through the foulest mire. But the scum of many nations which called itself the populace of Rome applauded each vileness, in proportion to its monstrosity, and was glad to see its Emperor the slave of passions as abject as its own. The degeneracy caused by such scenes was incredible. The ultimate result was that—

Though Britannicus had been done to death, there were still two men who might stand seriously in the way of the new favourite’s schemes. One was Faustus Cornelius Sulla, the last of that famous name. He was poor and slothful, but he had for a time been the husband of Antonia, the daughter of Claudius, and the freedman Graptus had already persuaded Nero to banish him to Marseilles, on a trumpery charge of complicity in a plot. Tigellinus persuaded Nero that Sulla only simulated indolence, and that he was tampering with the legions in Gaul. Executioners were sent to Marseilles, and Sulla was murdered as he lay at supper. Rubellius Plautus was the next victim. He had imperial blood in his veins, and many had fixed their eyes upon him with hope, for he was a man of Stoic dignity and domestic virtue. In A.D. 60, a comet had been interpreted to indicate a change in the Empire, and Nero recommended Plautus, though he was only living the quiet life of an ordinary citizen, to retire to his estates in Asia. He obeyed without a murmur, living in simple duties with his wife Antistia, and devoting his thoughts to philosophy. Soldiers were now despatched to murder him. A faithful freedman, at imminent risk of his life, made his way to Asia, arrived before Nero’s centurion, and warned Rubellius of his impending doom. He was the bearer of a letter from his father-in-law, Antistius Vetus, urging Rubellius not tamely to submit. Only sixty soldiers were coming to carry out the iniquitous mandate of Nero; let him repulse them, throw himself under the protection of Corbulo, and all would be well. But Rubellius was sickened by the thought of doubtful hopes. He wished, if possible, to avert, by submission, the future ruin of the wife and children whom he loved. Further than this, his philosophic teacher, Cœranus, persuaded him that a firm death was preferable to troubled and uncertain life. He therefore took no step in self-defence. The centurion found him at mid-day, stripped of his clothes, taking athletic exercise in his gymnasium, and butchered him on the spot, in the sight of the worthless eunuch, Pelago, whom Nero, as though he were some Asiatic despot, had sent to keep watch over the officer and soldiers. According to the ghastly fashion of the times his head was carried back to Nero. ‘Why did you want to be a Nero?’ said the brutal jester. ‘Gods! what a nose the man had!’

Thus it was reserved for a Domitius Ahenobarbus to put to death Rubellius Plautus, the last descendant of Tiberius, as he afterwards put to death L. Junius Silanus, the last descendant of Augustus.

But there was an influence over Nero which was more powerful than that of all the other wretches of his Court. It was the influence of Poppæa. His infatuation for this beautiful, evil, astute woman had taken complete possession of him. She had led him on step by step, now alluring, now repelling him, keeping him ever in a maddening fever of passion, on which she played as on an instrument. Already she had sufficiently established her empire over him to permit of his sending Otho to Lusitania. Nor had she hesitated to leave her home and to become an inmate of Nero’s Palace. But it was far from her intention to sink into the humble position which had been enough for Acte, who, in her ignorance, had felt for Nero a love ten times more genuine than that which she had inspired. Poppæa, whose infantine and cherubic loveliness could easily have secured for her the hand of the noblest of the patricians, intended to be Empress and nothing less. She knew the evanescent character of such love as she had kindled, and she bent the powers of her mind to rule Nero by playing with his hopes. There was but one obstacle in the path of her ambition. Octavia still lived, and Octavia must be got rid of.

It is true that the hapless Empress had long been reduced to a cipher by the mutual repulsion of herself and her husband. She could scarcely help shrinking from his touch. To look in his face made her shudder. While still in the charm of youth he had been odious to her. Now that his face was unhealthy with excess, his cruel frown and lowering countenance wore in her eyes the look of a demon. His faithlessness did not wound her, for the gleams of happiness which rarely illumined the tragedy of her life came to her only when he neglected her utterly. Nevertheless, she was Empress. She had the undeniable rights of her position, and in public it was necessary for Nero to treat with decency the daughter of the divine Claudius and the granddaughter of the beloved Germanicus.

Yet Poppæa had determined that, on one pretext or other, she should be set aside, and never doubted that sooner rather than later she would goad the timid Emperor to repudiate his wife, that he might be free for another marriage.

One day when Poppæa knew that Nero intended to visit her she prepared all her wiles. He came in after the mid-day prandium, and he found her reclining on her couch of ivory and silver in the cool, well-shaded, voluptuously-furnished room. She had let loose over her shoulders the splendid ripples of her golden tresses. An odour as of blown roses clung to her person and her robes. Every jewel that she wore, whether ruby, or sapphire, or emerald, or diamond, was so arranged as to set off her soft and glowing complexion, and there was exquisite grace in her way of handling the fan of peacock’s feathers which swept in iridescent glory over her dress from the golden handle which drooped from her right hand. Nero, as he took his seat beside her, felt like a clumsy and awkward boy.

‘Why do you pretend to love me, Nero?’ she asked.

‘Love you!’ he said. ‘It is not love, it is passion, it is adoration!’

‘Words are all very well, Nero,’ she said, in a voice which seemed to tremble with tears; ‘but see how you treat me! When I came to the Palace you were not Emperor, but the slave of Agrippina. I helped you to free yourself from that bondage. You have taken me from Otho, my dear and noble husband—’

Nero frowned angrily, but Poppæa took no notice.

‘You have,’ she continued, ‘banished him to Lusitania, and have brought me to this dull Court, under pretence that you would make me Empress. Yet I am no nearer becoming your wife. Go to your pale, sad Octavia: doubtless you think her common features fairer than mine. Her dreary talk and drearier silence cannot fail to be more fascinating.’

‘I loathe her,’ said Nero.

‘And she loathes you, whereas I worship the ground you tread upon. No, no!’ she said, as he attempted to seize her hand; ‘I will not live here to be your mere plaything. I will rejoin Otho in Lusitania. He loves me, and knows how to treat me properly.’

Nero rose in a passion. Fearful lest she should goad him too far, Poppæa called him to her side and changed her tone.

‘Your home is empty, Nero,’ she said. ‘No child will succeed you. I have a little son. Octavia must be dismissed, if you would have an heir to be Emperor of Rome.’

‘How can I dismiss her?’ said Nero gloomily. ‘Even my freedmen espouse her cause. Doryphorus is for her, and Pallas.’

‘Doryphorus! Pallas!’ she repeated, with a laugh of ringing scorn. ‘An effeminate slave-minion; a miserly dotard! Tush, Cæsar! be a man. Sweep aside these flies. Poison them both; no one will miss Doryphorus, and Pallas has riches which will prove very convenient to you.’

‘That shall be done,’ said Nero. ‘I am sick of Doryphorus, and Pallas has lived long enough. But to repudiate Octavia is different. She is strong in the name of her father, and stronger still in the favour of the people and the Prætorians.’

‘Is Cæsar truly Cæsar?’ she asked, with contempt.

‘Cæsar can do what he likes in his own private life,’ he answered; ‘but woe to Cæsar if he degrade the majesty of Empire by any public deed.’

He said truly, and she knew it; but she knew also that he had not yet fathomed, as she had done, the abysses of Roman servility. Had they not applauded him after the murder of Agrippina? Had they not passed in silence the murder of Britannicus? Had they not suffered the doom of Sulla and of Plautus to pass by without creating so much as a ripple on the surface of the general tranquillity?

By her urgency, by her wiles, by her taunts, by the supreme ascendency which she had now acquired over the Emperor, she prevailed on him at length to divorce Octavia on the plea of her barrenness, and to make Poppæa his wife. This, however, did not content her, while her unhappy rival remained an inmate of the Palace. Poppæa therefore endeavoured to blacken her character. She put into play every poisonous art of slander. In most cases nothing was easier than to trump up a false charge against any one whom the Emperor desired to ruin. The white innocence of Octavia, her stainless purity in that age of infamy, were no protection to her. The faithful love of her few attendants was a partial safeguard. Most of them were tampered with in vain. At last, however, a worthless Alexandrian flute-player, who had sometimes played before her to while away a heavy hour, was induced by a great bribe to swear that he had been her lover. The charge was too monstrous to deceive a single person, but on this pretext Octavia’s handmaids were seized and tortured. The majority, however, stood firm even against the torture-chamber, and one of them, named Pythias, cried out to Tigellinus, as he heightened the torture and pressed her with questions, that Octavia’s worst offence was white as snow beside the blackness of his best virtues. It was impossible to pretend a conviction on evidence which would have been invalid against the humblest slave.

It was, nevertheless, decided that Octavia should be removed from the Palatine, and she was sent from the home of her father with the ill-omened gifts of the estate of Plautus as her dower, and the house of Burrus as her residence.

The unhappy girl—she was but nineteen—obeyed without a murmur. She had wept floods of tears when her husband, instigated by his cruel paramour, had attempted to stain her name. She shed no tear when she laid aside the purple of the Empress, and, clad in the simplest garb of a Roman matron, was conveyed to her new home. Thither, too, were sent her unhappy maidens. Those who had most enjoyed her confidence—and among these the poor Christian girl, Tryphæna—were still disabled by the dislocations of the torture. With tenderest solicitude Octavia herself visited their cells, and ministered to their infirmities. She flung her arms, weeping, round Tryphæna’s neck, and thanked her and Pythias for the heroic constancy with which they had held out and, when stretched on the rack, had unflinchingly asseverated the stainless honour of their mistress.

‘How could you endure it, Tryphæna?’ she asked. ‘The blood of the Claudii and of deified emperors flows in my veins, yet if my frame had been wrenched with such pangs, I know not what my lips might not have said.’

‘Lady,’ said the slave-girl, ‘I hardly felt it. The spirit sustained the body. I thought of—’

‘Go on,’ said Octavia.

‘I thought of Him of whom I have read to you in the letter of Peter of Bethsaida; and how He had endured the contradiction of sinners against Himself; and I was not weary, and did not faint in my mind.’

‘How could the Crucified One help you?’

‘He is not the Crucified One now,’ answered Tryphæna. ‘He is the Risen, the Ascended: and He sits on the right hand of the Father.’

‘Oh that I could believe all this!’ said Octavia. ‘I have scarcely had a happy hour in all my life. I have been more miserable than any slave-girl. If He whom you called the Risen One were all that you say, why does He not help the innocent?’

‘He does help them,’ she said. ‘Not by delivering them out of all their troubles, but by enabling them to bear, and by making them feel that their brief troubles, which are but for a moment, are nothing to the eternal weight of glory.’

‘Did He help you?’

‘He did. As I lay outstretched on the rack I saw Him for a moment, His hand upraised to bless.’

‘Does He do so for all Christians when they suffer?’

‘I think He does, for all His true children. Lady, do you know that Paulus of Tarsus—the Apostle whose letters to the churches I have read to you—is in Rome?’

‘So Pomponia told me,’ said Octavia, ‘and she asked if I would not see him. But how can I? Burrus is dead, and Paulus sits chained to a Prætorian soldier in his own lodging.’

‘He has friends who would bring you his teachings,’ said Tryphæna. ‘One of them I have seen. His name is Lucas of Antioch, and he is a physician. To comfort me after I had been tortured, he told me how Paulus, before his conversion—when he was a blasphemer, and persecutor, and injurious—had witnessed and even incited the stoning of our first martyr, the young deacon Stephen; and how when Stephen stood before the Council, and they were all gnashing their teeth at him, his face was as an angel’s. And he says that Stephen saw the heavens opened, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.’

While Octavia stood talking with the young slave-girl, she was told that Pomponia had come to see her, and humbly kissing the poor sufferer on the brow, she went to the tablinum to receive her guest.

‘Wherever sorrow is, there Pomponia comes,’ she said, embracing her.

‘That is not my individual virtue,’ said Pomponia. ‘We Christians are all taught to be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgives us.’

‘Your faith seems to make you all very happy.’

‘It does indeed. Oh, if you could see our Paulus, how would he comfort you!’

‘What made him a Christian?’ asked Octavia. ‘Tryphæna has just been telling me that he was once a persecutor.’

‘He saw a vision of Christ, as he went to extirpate the Christians at Damascus. From that time he has preached the faith which he once destroyed. While Burrus lived the guards were bidden to leave him when his friends came, but since Tigellinus has been Præfect his lot is harder. I know not how you can with safety visit him. But his friend and companion is Lucas the physician. Why should you not have him sent for to tend your poor wounded slaves?’

The hint was taken. Octavia’s household was now a very simple and quiet one. The swarm of courtiers had deserted her. None of the fine ladies of Rome who desired the approval of Nero, came near her gate. The last of the great house of the Claudii, the wife and daughter and descendant of emperors, was left to her seclusion, and she rejoiced in it. She spun wool among her maidens; she was considerate of the happiness of her slaves. She manumitted Pythias and Tryphæna, who had suffered for her. Fair peace began to reign around her, and she nursed the hope that she might be suffered to live out her life in quietude until a fairer day should haply dawn. Lucas was summoned, and to her, as to the Christians of her household, he proved himself to be indeed also a physician of the soul.

He was an Asiatic in the prime of life, with a countenance singularly radiant and refined. He spoke the purest Greek, and had been accustomed to the society of Theophilus of Antioch and other persons of rank, to whom he had been endeared by his medical skill. Already, during the imprisonment of Paulus at Cæsarea, he had busied himself in the collection of those facts which he was soon to enroll in ‘the most beautiful book in all the world.’ It was common for Roman families to listen to readings from accomplished Greeks, and it was not difficult for Octavia, with the aid of Pomponia and her Christian slaves, to arrange that Lucas should read to them his yet unfinished records of the Life of the Saviour. Those records, and the conversations which she held with the Evangelist, and his answers to her questions, at last convinced the heart of the Empress. She saw that in the faith of the gospel there was a peace, a beauty, a blessedness, such as she had never known, of which she had never dreamed. Perilous as the decision was, she determined to be admitted by baptism into the flock of Christ. One morning, at break of day, in the presence of Lucas, Pomponia, and Tryphæna, but otherwise in the deepest secrecy, she was baptised by Linus.

And thenceforth there reigned in her heart a peace which no further waves of trouble could disturb. She began to understand why it was that, in spite of her mourning garb, in spite of her many trials, Pomponia, though her face was often sad, was far happier than any of the Roman matrons. She began to experience that there is a bliss in faith and hope and love which the world can neither give nor take away.

And this boon of heaven only came just in time to save her from sinking into utter despair under the horrible tempest of afflictions which fell upon her.

For though Nero would have been content to dismiss her into obscurity and oblivion, Poppæa was not content. She wearied the Emperor with her insistence that he should take still further steps against his repudiated wife. Nero ordered Octavia to leave Rome and live in Campania.

As she was preparing to obey the insulting order, which was rendered still more insulting by the addition that she was to be kept under military surveillance, it struck Pomponia that it might add to the comfort and safety of the Empress if she could once more command the services of Onesimus. Octavia had been pleased with his assiduity when he was her purple-keeper, and she knew that he had once rendered a high service to her beloved Britannicus. In the solitudes of Campania it would be well for her to have at hand a slave and messenger whom she could implicitly trust. With the precaution of a disguise he might remain unrecognised, and serve as a medium of communication between the ex-Empress and her friends in Rome. Onesimus was more than willing to undertake the charge. At Rome he was never safe. After all that had occurred, he did not dare to enter the secret assemblies of the Christians, though it was there alone that he could hope to see Junia. After Octavia had started with her despised and scanty retinue, he made his way to her villa with letters from Pomponia, and was retained in her service as a Greek reader, under a changed name.

But scarcely had his wife vanished from Rome when Nero became alarmed by the temper of the people. They openly murmured at his conduct. In the circus and the amphitheatre they received him with grim silence or cold applause. He knew that the mob was his ultimate master, and, being a coward, he hastily sent word that Octavia might return to Rome and resume the style and title of his wife.

When this edict was published, the people went wild with joy. All loved Octavia. No base, no cruel action, no rapacity or folly, could be laid to her charge. If deadly crimes were committed, they knew that Octavia disapproved of them no less entirely than themselves. Every honest citizen who enjoyed but one gleam of happiness on his own domestic hearth pitied the pale and neglected daughter of Claudius, and felt inclined to protect her from further wrongs. Their enthusiasm communicated itself to the crowd. When Octavia re-entered Rome they surrounded her litter with tumults of delight. Their affection cheered her heart, and, stirred by her words of gratitude, they broke into dangerous excitement. Rushing through the city, they flung down and trampled and spat upon the statues of Poppæa. Those of Octavia they uplifted on their shoulders, showered blossoms over them, and, carrying them to the Forum and the temples, crowned them with garlands. They shouted their approval of Nero’s tardy repentance, and, donning their holiday attire, organised an immense procession to the Capitol, to thank Jupiter for the restoration of their Empress. Returning from this procession they crowded to the Palatine, and Nero in alarm appealed to the Prætorians. Tigellinus let loose the soldiers upon the people. He had armed them with batons, and they struck out without discrimination among the swaying mob. When this was insufficient to disperse the crowd, they drew their swords, and charged them in close array. It was night before they had swept the streets clear of obstruction, and replaced the statues of Poppæa upon their pedestals.

Poppæa was nearly wild with fear and hatred. After Nero had supped she entered his room, and, flinging herself at his feet with dishevelled hair, burst into passionate tears. She wailed that, though to wed with him was dearer to her than life, she had now come, not to plead for her marriage, but for mere safety. Who did he suppose was the real author of that disgraceful riot? Octavia, of course. He thought her simple. Her simplicity was but the veneer of deeply-seated cunning. Was it the people who had broken into sedition? Not at all. It was only the clientage and varletry of Octavia who had dared to assume the people’s name. If they had but found a leader, who could say whether Nero might not by this time have been a fugitive or a mangled corpse?

‘The tumult has been aimed at you,’ she cried, ‘not at me. What harm have I done to any one, that they should hate me? Do they hate me because I shall give Cæsar a genuine heir? Do they prefer the offspring of Octavia and some Egyptian flute-player? Be a man, Nero! It only needs the smallest display of resolution to suppress these disorders. But if you show yourself timid and incapable, the rebellion may become formidable. If the people despair of making you Octavia’s husband, they may make Octavia another’s wife.’

The daring and indomitable purpose of the woman succeeded. She goaded his timidity; she fired his rage. He sent for Tigellinus, determined at last to stop short at nothing.

With Tigellinus he needed no concealment.

‘Præfect,’ he said, ‘Octavia must at all costs be got rid of.’

‘Locusta is here,’ said Tigellinus, with alacrity.

‘No, no,’ said Nero, stamping on the ground; ‘I will not have the scene of Britannicus acted over again. I am haunted by too many ghosts already.’

‘Devise something,’ he said, impatiently, while Tigellinus mused. ‘Poppæa, suggest something to this fool.’

‘A charge must be made against her,’ said Poppæa, eager if possible to shame as well as to kill.

‘The last charge broke down.’

‘Nonsense!’ answered Poppæa. ‘Say that you have positive evidence that she has made away with her own unborn child.’

‘No one will believe it. And, besides, I have just divorced her on the charge of barrenness.’

‘Say it all the same, Nero. Some person of importance must be induced to confess.’

‘Who would be so infamous?’ said Nero. ‘After all, Poppæa, you know she is innocent—ten times more innocent than you.’

‘Call me some infamous name at once,’ said Poppæa, bursting into passion. ‘And is it for you to taunt me? Was it not for love of you that I became faithless to my Otho? No,’ she cried, as Nero approached her; ‘keep away from me! I will return to the wronged Otho. He loved me. He will take me back.’ And she rushed towards the door.

‘Poppæa,’ pleaded Nero, hasting to intercept her flight, ‘forgive me. You see how miserable I am. I have no one to love me but you.’

‘And who could help loving you?’ she continued, weeping crocodile tears in floods. ‘Who could resist those golden locks, that lovely countenance, that divine voice?’

Her cajolery won the day. Nero played with her hand, and turned an inquiring look on the Prætorian Præfect.

‘I have it,’ said Tigellinus. ‘Send for Anicetus.’

Nero winced at the name. Anicetus was still admiral of the fleet at Misenum; but, since his share in the murder of Agrippina, Nero could never see him without recalling the image of his mother’s bloodstained corpse. He had practically banished Anicetus from Court, and when the sunshine of court favour was withdrawn from him, the wretch had sunk into contempt. But now his unscrupulosity was once more needed for a crime which was, if possible, still blacker. He had murdered Nero’s mother by violence; he was to murder Nero’s wife by calumny. He was offered a vast reward, and a purely nominal punishment, if he would confess and make it public that Octavia had treasonably tampered with him, to seduce the allegiance of the imperial sailors at Misenum, and that, in furtherance of her object, she had not stopped short of offering him her hand.

The infamous tale was published; and since Nero proclaimed his conviction of its truth, the world was compelled to profess belief in it also, although every man and woman in Rome knew it to be a lie. An edict was published proclaiming Octavia’s guilt, and she was banished to the dreary islet of Pandataria.