CHAPTER XLVI

THE DEATH OF OCTAVIA

In one sense all the people of Rome were the friends of Octavia; in another she was nearly friendless. For the multitudes of every rank were degraded by selfishness and cowed by terror. So long as they were personally untouched by the orgies and crimes of the Emperor, and so long as he was supported by the swords of the Prætorians, they neither wished nor dared to interfere. Rome lay helpless under the bonds of the tyranny which her own vices had riveted. Nero might indeed be murdered, but in what respect would the Empire be better off? There was no Cæsar left. If Nero died, there seemed to be no prospect for Rome except the horrors of civil war with all its attendant pillage, massacre, and crime. It seemed better to endure Nero’s infamies than to see the Empire torn to pieces. After all, were not many of the senators, of the generals, of the aristocracy, capable of becoming as licentious and as cruel as he was, and would not their elevation make their vices loom as monstrous as his?

They rejoiced, therefore, that the popular tumult had been so speedily repressed, and they steeped their consciences in immoral acquiescence. The bad plunged themselves yet more shamelessly into vice, and manœuvred to make their vices known as a passport to imperial favour. As for the better Romans, they tried to bury themselves in such obscurity as would shelter them from notice; or they sought solace in the refined egotism of the Epicureans; or inured themselves to the chances of death and ruin by assuming the haughty self-dependence of the later Stoics. Pætus Thrasea and his friends took refuge in the belief that it would be an absurdity to attempt the impossible. The heart of Seneca was torn with misgivings; but was not he himself in peril? What could he do? He had never spoken out against any one of Nero’s crimes, or lifted a finger to prevent them. Lucan longed to overwhelm the Emperor with invective; but he could only brood in silence over his wrongs, and gloomily await the day of vengeance.

From none of these did Octavia receive any help. If they compassionated her misery, no murmur of pity reached her ears. But from those who were now her fellow-Christians she received both help and consolation. Pomponia, whose gentle influence moved fearlessly with halcyon wings over the turbid abyss of crime, exerted herself to add comfort to the dreary retreat of the Empress in the volcanic isle. With her strong good sense she made arrangements for Octavia’s comfort. She obtained the leave of her husband, Aulus Plautius, to despatch some of her slaves to Pandataria the very day that the decree of Octavia’s banishment was published, with directions to secure for her as fitting a home as was possible, and to take with them such things as might conduce to her well-being. In this she was secretly aided by Acte. The beautiful and generous girl sought an interview with Octavia before she left Campania, fell at her knees, and begged the daughter of Claudius to pardon the wrong which in earlier days her beauty had inflicted. ‘I was but a slave once,’ she said; ‘nor did I know the truths which have since been taught me. I have forsaken the past. Empress, you will forgive me, and accept such little services as I can render?’

‘Rise, Acte!’ said Octavia, with tender dignity. ‘I know that thy heart was innocent, and that no wiles of thine were spread to catch Nero’s love. I forgive thee. Who am I, in my misery, that I should condemn thee?’

She raised the weeping girl from the ground, and gently kissed her. ‘Do not weep any more,’ she said. ‘Acte, it has been told me that thou art a Christian. Nay, start not, and see how much I trust thee. I am a Christian, too.’

Acte was almost speechless with surprise; but Octavia continued: ‘Yes; thou seest that I put my life in thy hands; but are we not sisters now? I used to talk with my brother Britannicus about this new faith, and often with Pomponia, and now I have seen Lucas of Antioch, and from him I have heard of Jesus. Lucas has lent me the letters of Paulus of Tarsus. He has written that “not many rich, not many noble, not many mighty are called;” but though I am noble, I am poor, and weak, and unhappy except for that consolation which He who died for us sends to the sorrowful.’

‘God be praised,’ said Acte, ‘that thou hast found that peace.’

‘Yes,’ answered the Empress; ‘peace I can truly say in the midst of shame, and slander, and tumult. My life will be short; but for us, Acte, the islands of the blest, of which the poets sang, are neither dreams nor fables. Farewell.’

‘Farewell, Empress,’ said Acte. ‘Day and night will our brethren lift up holy hands for thee, and many a purer prayer than mine will rise for thee like incense.’

As Acte left the villa she passed Onesimus. She had long been ignorant of his fate, and shame prevented him from speaking to her. He recognised her at a glance, but she did not penetrate the disguise which changed him into a fair-haired slave, and he shrank back from her presence. He regretted when it was too late that he had not revealed himself to her, for even now she might possibly have retarded the tragedies which were to ensue. Alas! when once men have shown themselves unfaithful, how often do their best impulses come too late!

But he devoted himself heart and soul to the service of the young Empress. She had been permitted to take with her into exile one or two only of her hundreds of slaves. She had chosen Tryphæna to be one of these, though the poor girl, after her cruel torments, was still barely able to stand. She had also chosen Onesimus, by the advice of Pomponia, though she did not yet know that he had been brought under Christian influence.

Nor was he the only disguised Christian in that small and saddened household. The position of Hermas since his rescue from the house of Pedanius had been very perilous. If he were recognised, the fact of his having escaped might be fatal to others besides himself. The Christians were mostly too poor to introduce a stranger into their households. They would have been willing to share with each other the last crust; but the crowded state of the insulæ,88 in which they mostly lived, rendered it difficult and dangerous to procure extra accommodation. The only thing possible, therefore, had been to conceal him in the house of Pudens; but as it was now necessary to find a new home for him he had been enrolled among the out-door slaves in the villa of the Empress, and was selected to accompany her to the lonely island, until his history and face should have been forgotten.

Anicetus, who had been made the vile instrument of Octavia’s destruction, received the guerdon of his infamy, and was dismissed into nominal exile in Sardinia. To such a man—a slave by birth and a villain by nature—the exile was nothing. He had never regarded life as anything but a feeding-trough, and as long as he had wealth to spend on his own indulgences Sardinia served him as well as Rome. It happened that the ship which was to carry him to Caralis, the Sardinian capital, sailed from Ostia on the day that Octavia was to be conveyed to Pandataria. Thousands of spectators, and among them many Christians, had flocked to Ostia to see her embark. If they dared not express their feelings, they longed at least silently to show their sympathy. They recognised Anicetus. He embarked amid a tempest of groans and hootings so full of execration that he trembled lest he should be torn to pieces by the mob, and abjectly entreated the protection of his guards. Thenceforth he vanishes from history. He died in Sardinia, rich and impenitent; but even there he did not escape the hatred which he felt more than the load of infamy with which he had crushed down his worthless soul.

Later in the afternoon the multitudes caught sight of the litter which was bearing Octavia to the shore. A trireme was waiting to take her away forever from the home of the rulers of the world. Prætorian guards marched on either side of her with drawn swords. Behind her, in a humble carruca, came her few household slaves, and the scanty possessions which alone she could take with her. A deep murmur of pity arose, and as she approached the quay it swelled into a cheer, in which the spectators gave vent to the indignation which they felt against her oppressors. At one time it seemed as if they might break out into violence; but the Prætorians menaced them with their swords, and the angry murmurs died away.

The Christians—who recognised Tryphæna and others of their brethren among Octavia’s slaves, and who, though they did not know the secret of Octavia’s conversion, knew her innocence—showed their sympathy in more quiet ways. They sighed forth prayers and blessings, and strewed with flowers her pathway to the vessel. Onesimus, as he passed, caught sight of Nereus and Junia. No one knew him, but he felt almost certain that he had seen a flash of recognition in Junia’s eyes. Beyond doubt she stood gazing intently on him as he leaned over the vessel’s side. Ah, well! the day might come, he thought, when, purified from shame by suffering, he might obliterate the memories of his dishonoured past, and be worthy once more to stand by her side.

And one incident occurred which, not for him only, but for all that little company, was fraught with blessed consequences. Linus stood with Luke of Antioch in the undistinguished throng, but neither of them had been forgetful of the sorrowful sighing of those who were going into captivity. Linus had told to Paul the prisoner, in deep secrecy, the story of Octavia’s baptism, and the heart of the Apostle was sad at the thought of her sufferings. He had written her a brief letter of comfort, which Linus slid into the hand of Hermas amid the bustle of the embarkation. Nor was this all. Luke also had not been forgetful of the anguish of the last of the Claudian house. Filled with that deep sense of brotherhood which linked all ranks together in the Christian community, he had written out for the exiles some inestimably precious fragments of the materials which he had been collecting for his Gospel. He found means unobserved to give them to Tryphæna, when ceasing for a moment to lean on the arms of the two slaves who were supporting her feeble footsteps, she turned to bid farewell to her mother, Nympha.

The emotion of the spectators made it more easy for the watchful Christians to communicate with each other. For there were few dry eyes among them. Some of them were old enough to have seen Julia, the lovely daughter of Augustus, sail to the same sad bourne. They had seen her daughter, the younger Julia, banished by Claudius to the yet more distant island of Tremerus. They had wept tears almost as bitter when they saw the elder Agrippina driven to the same prison by the insatiable malice of Tiberius. But the case of Octavia was far sadder than that of her noble kinswomen. The elder Julia was steeped in shame, and had well-nigh broken the heart of her father. The younger Julia had also disgraced her high lineage. The wife of Germanicus had been a Roman matron of the purest stamp, yet her passionate haughtiness had diminished the sympathy which would otherwise have been felt with her in her calamities. And, further, these others had enjoyed their days of superb sunlight and prosperity. Ruin had not overtaken them till the happiness and beauty of their youth were past. Not so the pale and hapless girl who was now embarking. Octavia had known no joy. Her childhood had been darkened by the three murders of those whom she best loved. From the first her husband had hated her. His youthful love had been given, not to her, but to her freedwoman; and now, unprotected by her own white innocence, she had been smitten to the earth by a horribly false condemnation. She was still scarcely twenty years old!89 And she was being conducted amid centurions and soldiers to a barren rock, which was haunted by memories of death and anguish. She was as one dead, but without the peace of death:—so thought her pagan sympathisers, and were confirmed in their misgiving that either there are no gods or they care not for the affairs of men.

And Octavia did not deceive herself. She well knew that those islets of the Tyrrhene Sea were wet with the blood of noble exiles; and that Caligula, on being told by one who had been recalled from banishment that the exiles spent their time in praying for the death of the reigning Emperor, had sent soldiers round the islands to put all the prisoners to death. She knew her peril, but she clung to life with the tenacity of youth. Nero had no child. She thought that his excesses would precipitate his end, and that some virtuous man might be chosen by the Senate to succeed. After the death of Narcissus she had been told the anecdote of the physiognomist who had prophesied that Titus would one day be Emperor, and she thought that under her brother’s devoted friend there might be the dawn of brighter days. She therefore wrote a letter to Nero, before the trireme started, in which she said she would but live as his widow and his sister, with no thought of returning to the Palace. She even ventured to remind him that she had always experienced his mother’s protection, and that, as long as Agrippina lived, her marriage dignity had not been assailed.

All was now ready. The sailors drew up the anchor, and the assembled crowd watched the white sails of the trireme till they became rosy in the light of sunset, and the vessel dipped beneath the horizon.

Octavia awaited, in deep anxiety, the answer to her letter. There were points in it which might perhaps have touched the heart of Nero if Poppæa and Tigellinus had not been at his elbow as the evil genii of his degradation. But, when the tablets of Octavia came, Nero was sitting with the enchantress. Taking them out of his hands, she turned the letter into such ridicule, and laughed over it so sweetly and so immoderately, and mixed her silvery laughter with so many acts of fascination, that the fear of her ridicule—to which, like all vain persons, Nero was inordinately sensitive—quenched in his heart all thoughts of mercy. She also played upon his fears. ‘As long as Octavia lives,’ she said, ‘neither you nor I will be safe. You saw how the people rose in her behalf. You do not know what assassins she may have in her pay. All that the spirit of insurrection needs is a leader, and, while Octavia lives, conspirators have only to provide her with a husband, and she will bring him the Empire as her dower, as she did to you. The tomb is the only safe prison. The dead excite no tumult and tell no tales.’

So the messenger was sent back without an answer, and Octavia knew that she had only to prepare for her fate. No day dawned that might not be her last; no sail shone on the horizon which might not be bringing her executioners from Rome—nay, the orders might even now be in possession of her military guard, and the tramp of the changing sentries each morning and evening might be to her the echoing foot-fall of death. No situation in the world is more harrowing or more terrific than this. We can confront death when we know that we stand face to face with him; but to have his sword dangling over our necks by a thread of gossamer, and not to know at what moment it will fall; to know that somewhere near us he lies in wait, but not to know where or how he will leap out upon us—this adds a nameless dread to the king of terrors, and it has been sufficient to break down the iron nerves even of trained soldiers who have ridden fearlessly to many a bloody fight.

There was not a person on the little island who was not aware that Octavia was thus standing on the edge of the awful precipice. Great, therefore, was the astonishment of all, and especially of the Roman soldiers, at the strange placidity, the sweet fortitude which she displayed. None else could laugh during those sad days; but she could laugh—laugh more gaily than she had ever done in the gorgeous chambers of the Palatine. As escape was impossible, she was left free, and she loved to sit on the rocks in the evening sunlight and enjoy the cooler breeze. Unfamiliar with the sea-shore, it was a pleasure to her to watch the black-headed sea-mews rising and falling on the gentle swell of the tideless waters, or waving over it their immaculate white wings, or suddenly dashing down on some fish, and breaking the surface into concentric rings of rippled gold. She found pleasure in the shells, and sea-weeds, and purple medusæ, and laughed again and again as she noticed for the first time the curious motion of the hippocampi as they gambolled in the shallow waves. It was strange, too, to the few islanders to see her gathering garlands of their wild flowers, and having them placed in her bare, half-furnished rooms. She had never cared for splendour. It wearied a soul which had never seen it dissociated from guilt. The simplicity of her new life had a charm for her, and if Nero would but relent she could gladly live here, reading and doing her little acts of kindness and musing on the high thoughts which had recently become so radiant to her—sustained by the hope that better days would come on earth, or that, if not, there was a heaven beyond.

There were three of her household who knew the secret of the calm and resignation which struck her Prætorian custodians with astonishment. One of the officers, a rough youth named Vulfenius, had been heard saying to his comrade that the Empress must have been getting private lessons from the Stoics or Cynics;—‘only,’ he said, ‘a hundred of those philosophers are not worth a cracked farthing—arrant humbugs nearly all of them. But this girl—she smiles death in the face!—Or is it that she does not know?’

Yes, she knew; but the source of her cheerful courage lay in those scrolls which had been handed to her attendants by Linus and by Luke. Ever since the lustral dews of baptism had touched her brow, she had felt a change in her whole being, but her deep peace was confirmed by what was now read to her daily by Onesimus, or Hermas, or Tryphæna.

It was with strange feelings that when she broke the silken thread of the small waxen tablets of Linus, she had read the salutation in which Paulus, the prisoner, wished grace, mercy, and peace to Octavia, Empress, and now beloved in Christ. But as she eagerly read the few lines which he had engraved with his trembling stylus—for he had written this message in large letters with his own hand—she felt his words thrill into her soul with strange power. He rejoiced and thanked God that He had called her out of darkness into His marvellous light, and told her that this was a boon more precious than all the kingdoms of the world. He comforted her under all the affliction with which she was afflicted, with the comfort wherewith he too was comforted of God. He told her that she was a partaker of the sufferings of Christ, and that the sufferings of this present time were not worthy to be compared with that glory which shall be revealed in us. He exhorted her to look, not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

Such words fall too often on our cold and careless ears with the triteness of long familiarity; but to Octavia, as to all who first learnt to feel their meaning in that despairing age, they seemed to be written in sunbeams. The new wine of the Kingdom of Heaven filled them as with divine intoxication; that which to the Pagans appeared like a half-insane enthusiasm or a blank obstinacy90 was, in truth, but the exhilaration of conviction, in comparison with whose preciousness the whole world and all the glory of it seemed but as the light dust of the balances. Octavia had not been unaccustomed to hear the paradoxes of the Stoics; and she regarded them as spurious ornaments of life’s misery—spangles sewed upon its funeral pall. But in the words of Paul the prisoner, and of the poor persecuted Christians, there rang tones of perfect sincerity. Their doctrines were not learnt, but lived. They came attested by the evidence of characters not only innocent but holy; such as had been hitherto unknown to the world, and had no antitype even in the fabled age of gold. They came, morever, as the revelation of a law, not only general, but individual. In those who had grace to accept them, the Spirit Himself bore witness to their spirit that they were children of God.

Knowing the doom which trembled over Octavia’s head, and the impossibility of her escape, the soldiers who were in charge were ordered to allow her such liberty as the little islet permitted, and not to intrude upon the occupations of her household. Hence, during the early evening hours, it was possible for her to call one or two of her Christian handmaids around her, while Onesimus, as the Greek reader, read to them the scrolls which Luke had sent as his parting present. He had selected those which he thought would convey the deepest consolation. As Onesimus read them to that little circle, they were as the oracular gems on Aaron’s breast—Urim and Thummim ardent with the light of heaven. One of them was the Parable of the Prodigal Son. To Onesimus it was as the voice of God calling him back from the far country and the rags and the swine. As he read its concluding verses, again and again his voice was broken with sobs. Even when he had read it aloud on several evenings he could never come to the verse—

‘I will arise, and go unto my Father, and will say unto Him, Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before Thee—’

without stopping to recover from the emotion which stifled his utterance, and the tears which blinded his sight.

Another little fragment contained the Evangelist’s record of the Sermon on the Mount. As Octavia heard it she felt more and more that her miseries had been blessings in disguise, and that if her life had been spent in the blaze of luxury and prosperity she could never have become an inheritor of that kingdom of which the commands were not burdens but beatitudes.

But what came most deeply home to all of them was that scroll on which Luke had written the story of the Crucifixion. They could never hear it read without requiring Onesimus to read after it the record of the last scroll, which contained the story of the two disciples at Emmaus, of whom it was privately thought among the Christians that Luke himself had been one. As Octavia listened to those inspired records, if the dreadful act of dying had not lost its horror, yet the grave had lost its victory, and death his sting.

---

Entranced by the rapture of these wondrous narratives, they had been reading later than usual. It was the ninth of June. The dusk of evening had fallen; the lamps had been lit. They had been too much absorbed to notice the Liburnian galley whose red sail on the horizon had attracted all the inhabitants of their rocky prison to the shore. They had not seen the Prætorians from Rome, who landed at the little jetty.

Ah! but they could not be deaf to the unwonted murmur which began to swell about the villa, nor to the clank of legionaries, nor to the gruff unfamiliar voices of command. They knew too well the meaning of those sounds. With faces whitened by terror they heard the summons at the gate, and the tramp of armed feet, and the cry, ‘A message from the Emperor!’ Hardly knowing what they did, Onesimus and Hermas barred the entrance to the chamber where they were sitting, while Tryphæna and the two other maidens grouped themselves round their mistress. There came a thundering challenge, followed by fierce blows rained upon the door. A moment afterwards it gave way with a crash. Hermas and Onesimus, as if by an instinctive motion, thrust themselves in the path of the advancing soldiers. A legionary struck down Hermas with the flat of his sword; Onesimus was dashed aside by a blow of the centurion’s iron glaive. They tore away the slave-girls who clung to their fainting mistress. Her they fettered, and opened her veins in many places. But she had sunk into a swoon, and the blood would not flow. Then they dragged her to the bath, heated it to boiling heat, and suffocated her in the burning vapour.

Nor was this enough for Nero’s vengeance. The corpse of the daughter of Claudius, the chaste wife of the Emperor, was not suffered to rest in peace. Poppæa would not be satisfied with anything short of the visible proof that her rival had been swept forever out of her path. There lay the fair form, with its long dark hair and girlish beauty, and more beautiful than in life, for a look as of rapturous surprise had lit up her pale features. It availed not. The head was struck off by the centurion, and he carried to Rome the ghastly relic, at once to claim his reward, and to glut the eyes of Poppæa with the sight of ‘death made proud by pure and princely beauty.’

And for this crime the slavish and degraded Senate vowed gifts to the temples! In those days every unjust banishment, every judicial murder inflicted by the Emperor, was the signal for a fresh outburst of infamous adulation. The thanksgivings to the gods, which had once been the signs of public prosperity, became the certain memorials of private infamy and public disaster.

CHAPTER XLVII

A FETTERED AMBASSADOR

Ὥστε τοὺς δεσμοὺς μου φανεροὺς ἐν Χριστῷ γενέσθαι ἐν ὅλῳ τῷ Πραιτωρίῳ καὶ τοῖς λοιποῖς μᾶσι.—Ep. S. Paul, ad Phil. i. 13.

There was one spot in Rome which was calm amid all tumults, happy amid all calamities, though it was the last place where any of the Roman world would have deemed it possible for happiness to dwell. It was the narrow room which served as a prison to Paul of Tarsus.

As long as Burrus was Præfect of the Prætorians the prisoner’s lot had been made as easy as the strictness of Roman discipline allowed. He had been allowed to hire a lodging of his own, and no hindrance was placed on the visits or kindly offices of his friends. He was, indeed, compelled to submit to the one intolerable condition of being fastened night and day by a coupling-chain to the wrist of a Roman soldier; but Julius and others had spoken to Burrus about him in such warm terms that, as in the case of Agrippa I., care was taken that he should be consigned to the charge of a kind centurion, and that the Prætorians to whom in turn he was chained should, as far as possible, be good-tempered and reasonable men.

There was no service which the soldiers more hated than this of guarding prisoners. Each soldier was for the time as much a prisoner as the prisoner to whom he was chained. To be chained to a Jew was regarded by most of the Prætorians as an intolerable humiliation. If indeed the Jew happened to be a handsome and cosmopolitan young prince like Agrippa, the duty had its alleviations; but at the present time the soldiers had in charge some Jewish priests sent to Rome by Festus, who shuddered to be brought into contact with them. To be chained to these haughty hierarchs, who did not conceal their disdain for their gentile guards, was a cause of incessant annoyance, and there was not a Prætorian who did not groan when it was rumored that Julius had consigned to them another Jew, of weak bodily presence, and with health enfeebled by toil and hardship.

But the soldiers to whose lot it first fell to be coupled to the new prisoner soon spread a favourable report of him. They told their comrades that though he was not only a Jew, but a Christian, he was yet so sweetly reasonable, so generously considerate, so anxious to alleviate the necessary tedium of their duty, that it was a pleasure, and not a misery, to take a turn in guarding him. Unlike the priests, he seemed to take a human interest in everything human. He would talk freely with them on gentile subjects. He listened earnestly to all they had to tell him of Rome, its daily incidents and accidents, its senatorial debates, its foreign campaigns, the edicts of the Emperor, and the fortunes of the imperial family. It was whispered that everything which he did and said was worthy and noble, and the centurions observed a marked change for the better in some of the men who had been brought into contact with him. The Jews, it was noticed, looked on him with hatred as a renegade, and even of the Jewish Christians there were few who visited him. But some Christian was almost always with him, and these friends of his, particularly the modest and engaging Timotheus, deepened the favourable impression which the prisoner himself had made.

In truth, this was not the least happy period of Paul’s career. He was freed from the fret of endless anxiety and embittered opposition; he was no longer harassed by the multiform and terrible perils by which for so many years his life had been assailed. To many the forced cessation of the great work of their careers would have seemed an intolerable trial, and faith would have been weakened by the semblance of God’s desertion. It was not so with Paul. He knew that he was where God meant him to be, and that he was still an ambassador, though, as he playfully said to his friends, an ambassador in a coupling-chain.

He ought in justice to have been brought to speedy trial, seeing that he had already been imprisoned for two years at Cæsarea on a charge wholly without foundation. But in his shipwreck the documents sent by Felix and Festus had been lost, and when fresh documents came Nero’s capricious idleness put off the trial from month to month. So Paul continued in prison, and became a missionary to the Prætorium, and to many Romans. His imprisonment was not lacking in elements of interest. Linus and many of the Roman Christians sought his lodging, and showed him every mark of affection. Luke was constantly with him, consulted with him about every detail of his Gospel, and took charge of his health. He was in frequent correspondence with his friends and with the converts of the churches which he had founded. Timotheus, who was the child of his heart, treated him with all the tenderness of a son. Tychicus and Epaphras came from Asia, and brought him news of the Church of Ephesus and of the valleys of the Lycus. Mark, the cousin of his first companion, Barnabas, came to cheer him with news of Peter and of Jerusalem, and of his travels in many lands. Epaphroditus ministered to his necessities by bringing him a gift from his beloved and generous Philippians. The soldiers heard the letters which he dictated to his converts, and heard what Luke read to him of his Gospel. Many of them were deeply influenced by the new world of thought and holiness which was thus revealed to them. Some were converted and baptised, and found that the lodging of the Jewish prisoner was to them the vestibule of the house of God.

And when the soldier on guard was a brother, the intercourse which the prisoner could hold with any who came to visit him was unconstrained. Most of all was this the case when the Prætorian Celsus was chained to him, and the veteran soldier was so happy in the charge that he was ready to relieve any Prætorian by taking his turn in addition to his own. It was the armour of Celsus, as it lay beside him on the floor, dinted with the blows of many a battle, which suggested to Paul his beautiful description of the Christian panoply.

One day there came to the Apostle a lady deeply veiled attended by a Christian freedwoman. She was so agitated that, when she had sunk on one of the humble seats, she could scarcely find words in which to pour forth her anguish. When she grew a little calmer, she lifted her veil, and Celsus rose and made her a respectful salutation, for he recognised the mourning robes and sad but beautiful face of the wife of Aulus Plautius.

‘The Lady Pomponia,’ he said, ‘may speak freely, and fear not. I will unloose the coupling-chain, and go into the outer room,’

Pomponia thanked him, and told the Apostle that she had long been a baptised sister, and had read his letters to Rome and other churches, and had now come to him for consolation in unutterable distress of heart. She had but one son—the young and beautiful Aulus, the heir and the hope of their great house. But Nero had begun to hate her husband and herself, and was jealous lest some day the army should prefer the Conqueror of Britain to the tenth-rate actor and singer. For Agrippina, in one of her fits of rage, had, before her death, unwisely and unkindly mentioned the youthful Aulus as a virtuous boy who might one day wear the purple more worthily than Nero, who disgraced it; and Nero, wounded in his vanity, had determined on revenge. With a wicked cruelty which would have been infamous even in a Tiberius or a Caligula, he had invited the boy to the Palace, had subjected him to the deadliest insults, and had then ordered him to be slain, accompanying the order with a brutal jest against his mother Agrippina. And the people knew of the crime, and hardly did more than laugh and shrug their shoulders; and the Senate knew of the crime, and did not cease for a single day from its adulation to the tyrant; and the army knew of the crime, and not one sword flashed from its scabbard; and the philosophers and the poets knew of the crime, and not one denunciation scathed that deed of hell.

Pomponia’s heart was broken. Did God deal thus with His servants? Was the Christ far away in His blue heaven, and heeded not these things? And was it not lawful, was it not a duty, for Christians to help to sweep away from the earth such a monster of iniquity? Might she not rouse her husband, Aulus Plautius—not to avenge the individual wrong which was breaking his heart, and bringing him down to the gates of the grave—but to rid mankind from the incubus of an intolerable curse?

The Apostle saw that his task was difficult. For a moment he bowed his head, and clasped his hands in prayer. He needed threefold wisdom—to console the mother’s anguish; to avert the thought of vengeance; to strengthen the faith which had been assailed by sore perplexity. And the grace came to him. He banished from Pomponia’s heart the dread that because her Aulus had died unbaptised, he was doomed to perish: he told her not to dream that the boy, who had thus gone home, had departed unloved by his Heavenly Father. Fearful times were coming on the earth, and her beloved son, in whom the signs of virtue had not been wanting, might have been taken only to save him from the furnace of moral temptation and the wrath to come. Then taking from the hand of Luke the scroll in which he had been writing the great discourse on the Mount of Olives, he read to her the words of Jesus: ‘Ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake. And yet a hair from your head shall not perish. In your endurance ye shall acquire your souls.’

‘Alas!’ she cried, ‘how may I interpret this promise that a hair of our heads shall not fall, when my very heart is cleft in twain?’

He answered that the Lord spake not of earthly things. He warned us that in the world we should have tribulation; but He has overcome the world. And he prayed her not to dream of hastening the tyrant’s punishment. ‘Leave him in God’s hands. “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.”’

When his voice ceased, the passion of Pomponia’s grief had sunk to rest. The tears which still coursed down her cheeks were but the natural tears of a mother’s bereavement. Her beautiful soul was prepared for consolation, and her faith had but bowed for a moment like the upper foliage of a tree under the stress of some mighty storm. To calm her yet further, the Beloved Physician began to read aloud a passage here and there from the Evangel which occupied his daily thoughts. He read of the love of Jesus for children; he read the beatitudes; he read the story of the Cross. The music of the words and thoughts, borne on the music of his sweet and solemn voice, sank into Pomponia’s soul. She thanked the Evangelist, and, asking for the blessing of the Apostle, dropped her veil and departed to her desolate home.

The Heavenly Father who had suffered anguish to fall upon her had also sent medicine and a physician of the soul to heal her sickness. When she reached her palace on the Aventine, she was able to devote her whole strength to save her husband from succumbing to a sorrow which for him was beyond the reach of consolation. He had chosen for the epitaph of his boy’s tomb the defiant words, ‘I Aulus, the son of Aulus Plautius, uplift my hands against the gods, who took me hence in my innocence, at the age of fifteen years.’91 But she dissuaded him. ‘Why complain,’ she said, ‘against the decree of Heaven? It may be good, and even the best, did we but know it. Nay, my Aulus, carve rather on his tomb a green leaf, and the two words, “In peace,” and add, if thou wilt, the line of Euripides,

‘“Who knows if life be death, and death be life?”’

CHAPTER XLVIII

ENSLAVED AND FREE

Pomponia Græcina was only one of many to whom Paul of Tarsus from his prison-lodging brought joy and consolation. There was a twofold element in the happiness which seems to rise to exultation in the letter which he wrote from Rome to his Philippians. On the one hand he felt that from his bonds there streamed illumination, so that the grace of Christ became manifest even in Cæsar’s household, and among his chosen soldiers; and, on the other, he was enabled to hear the groanings of them who were in a captivity far sorer than his own—to undo many a heavy burden, and let the oppressed go free.

Shortly after the visit he had received from Pomponia, he was told that a young man was waiting outside who desired to speak with him. His sympathy with the young in their trials and temptations was always deep, and he asked Luke to admit the visitor. With hesitating step and downcast mien he entered, and the Apostle bade him come and sit by his side.

‘Dost thou recognise me?’ asked the visitor, in a low voice.

‘I have met many youths in many cities,’ answered the Apostle, ‘and I have seen thy face before, but where I cannot remember. Art thou Eutychus of Troas?’

‘No,’ he answered, glancing at the Prætorian; ‘but,’ he added in a whisper, ‘I am, or rather I was, a Christian.’

‘Speak without fear,’ said Celsus; ‘I, too, am one of the brethren.’

‘Thou wilt soon remember me,’ said the youth to Paul, removing the disguise which covered his dark locks and greatly altered his appearance. ‘I saw thee in the school of Tyrannus at Ephesus, when I came there with my master, Philemon of Colossæ.’

‘Onesimus!’ said the Apostle. ‘Welcome, my son—though I have heard sad things of thee from many.’

‘It is true, it is all true, that thou hast heard of me, O my father!’ said Onesimus, as he knelt before the Apostle, and kissed the hand on which his tears were falling fast. ‘Yes; I stole money from Philemon, my beloved master. I ran away from him; I am a worthless fugitive, a thievish Phrygian slave, whom most masters would crucify. And worse—I have denied the faith; I have done all things vile. Can there be forgiveness, can there be hope, for such as I am?’

‘My son,’ said the Apostle, ‘there is forgiveness, there is hope, for all who seek it.’

‘But oh, thou knowest not, my father, to what depths I have sunk. I have stolen a second time. I have been drunken with the drunken, slothful with the slothful, unclean with the unclean. I have been false to my trust. I have been in the slaves’ prison, and the gladiators’ school. I have fought in the amphitheatre. I have served the shameful wandering priests of the Syrian goddess. Twice over have I been all but a murderer. Can all this be forgiven?’

‘My son,’ said Paul, deeply touched, ‘thou hast sinned deeply; but so have many, who now are washed, cleansed, justified, sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and in the Spirit of our God.’

‘Ah, but,’ cried the youth, ‘they have never been renegades.’

‘Onesimus,’ answered Paul, ‘hast thou not heard how the Lord Jesus told us to forgive our brethren, not only seven times, but seventy times seven? Will He be less merciful than He has bidden us to be? I bid thee hope in His infinite forgiveness. The blind and the leper, the publican and the harlot, the impotent man, and she out of whom he cast seven devils, went to Him, and were forgiven. Go thou, if thou canst not otherwise, as a leper, as a demoniac, as a paralytic, and He will abundantly pardon. Hast thou, indeed, sought Him?’

‘Nay, father, I could not,’ said Onesimus. ‘Ever since that theft from Philemon, ever since that flight, I have prayed but faintly; I felt as if I could not pray, as if no prayer of mine could be heard. A cloud of despair has hidden God’s face from me. Oh!’ he cried, wringing his hands, ‘I am an outcast—I am a castaway. I have no part in Him. My lot is now with this world, of which I have seen the infamies and loathe the crimes. It was but two weeks ago that any gleam of hope came back to me.’

‘What gave thee hope?’

‘Lucas of Antioch, whom I see with thee, gave some parts of his records of Jesus to one of Octavia’s slaves. I, too, went with the unhappy Empress to Pandataria, and there I read the Master’s parable of the Prodigal Son, and I tried to say, “I will arise and go to my father, and will say—”’

But here Onesimus stopped, and though he made an effort, he was unable to proceed.

With all his heart the great Apostle pitied him; indeed he pitied him so much that he found no words to speak. He could only lay his hand gently on the suppliant’s head, and uplift his eyes to heaven in prayer.

So Luke spoke and said, ‘I can tell thee, Onesimus, of other words of the Master. He cried: “Come unto me, all that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will refresh you;” and “him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out.”’

‘Did He say that? Did He say that?’ asked Onesimus, eagerly.

‘He did,’ said Luke, ‘and no word of His can pass away.’

The Prætorian Celsus had heard the conversation, and he too was touched. ‘Those words,’ he said, ‘called me from Satan to God. I was as deep a sinner as any man in the cohort, and no man can be much worse than that. I used to shrink from no cruelty, and to abstain from no sin. I was one of the soldiers employed in the massacre of the innocent slaves of Pedanius Secundus. So deep was my misery that one night I went in full armour to the Sublician Bridge, meaning to end a life so shamed and empty. But as I climbed the parapet, I was seized by the strong arm of a man in a slave’s dress. I drew my dagger and asked him, with a savage oath, if he held his life cheap, since he, a slave, thus dared to interfere with me, a Prætorian soldier. He fixed his steady eyes on me, and said, “I am unarmed; you can slay me if you will; but I will try to prevent you from self-murder.” “My life is my own,” I answered sullenly. “It is not your own,” he answered. “It is God’s, who gave it. He set you here, and you have no right to desert your post.” The man was Nereus, now the freedman of Pudens. He drew me away from the bridge, and I talked long with him. He was the first to give me the hope that I might live for better things. He taught me about Christ, and Christ’s promise that He would cast out none who came to Him. That saved me. When I was a Pagan I knew shame and guilt, but never knew that it could be washed away.’

‘Thanks be to God for His great goodness,’ said the Apostle. ‘And thou, my son, Onesimus, hear what Celsus has said. Thou hast had no fruit in the things of which thou art now ashamed, for the end of those things is death. But now, if thou wilt return to Christ, thy fruit shall be to holiness, and the end shall be eternal life.’

That interview completed the change in the heart of the Phrygian youth. He had returned from Pandataria a freedman, for on the night before her murder Octavia had freed her Christian slaves. He had also received gifts from his generous mistress which placed him above present need. He had therefore hired himself a lodging, and now, being readmitted, at Paul’s intercession, into the Christian assemblies, he recovered life and happiness. He waited on the Apostle with ceaseless assiduity, and anticipated all his wants. If ever Paul needed one to serve him—which was often the case, for Timotheus had been sent on a message to Ephesus—the Phrygian was at hand, and the Apostle found in his society and cheerful vivacity a great alleviation of a captive’s weariness. It was not long before he confided to the Apostle his whole story, concealing nothing, and he asked for his advice as to his future course.

That advice fell like a death-blow on all his hopes. With the impetuosity of youth he had entirely lost sight of the fact that he was still Philemon’s slave, and that the manumission conferred on him by Octavia, in her ignorance that he was the personal chattel of another, was legally invalid. He was, therefore, stricken with amazement when the Apostle told him that he was not a freedman, but still a slave. At those words the fabric of his life seemed once more to be smitten into ruins. He had exulted with passionate joy at the thought that he was no longer at the beck and call of a master, no longer liable to the horrors of the cross and the branding-iron, of the scourge or the furca. To be told that he was still a Phrygian slave, that duty required him to go back to the familia of Philemon, to restore what he had stolen, to face any punishment which the law of Colossæ might inflict on him, to place his future life unreservedly in the hands of his owner, and to face the humiliation of returning to the company of his old companions as a thief and a runaway—this was like a sentence of hopeless condemnation. And there was yet another circumstance which made the pang more deadly. He still cherished for the gentle daughter of Nereus a love which might not have seemed hopeless. If he stayed at Rome, if as a freedman he could strike out for himself an honourable career—which his Greek education rendered possible—he felt sure that he could yet win the hand of the Christian girl. But to return to Colossæ as a slave, and a guilty slave, and to be perhaps compelled to grow old in servitude on the banks of the Lycus—it seemed too terrible a sacrifice!

Yet his sincerity stood the test. After a great struggle with himself he bowed his head, and answered: ‘If it is my duty, my father, I will do it.’

‘It is thy duty, my son Onesimus, and doubt not that the path of thy duty will also be the path of thy happiness. Thou wilt gain by losing. I know and I love Philemon, and his wife Apphia, and their son Archippus; and I will write to Philemon for thee, and I do not doubt that now he will set thee free—for indeed I need thee. Thou art as a son to me; I have begotten thee in my bonds, and thou art true to thy name in all thy help to me. But even if Philemon does not set thee free, he is now thy fellow-Christian, and therefore thy brother beloved, and no slavery can make thee other than the Lord’s freedman.’

The letter to Philemon was written—the Magna Charta of ultimate emancipation—and Onesimus was sent with it to his former master. He was accompanied by Tychicus of Ephesus, who was charged with the circular letter to that and other cities, as well as with the letter to the Colossians. They had an affecting parting with the Apostle, for though he was full of hope, yet the issue of his approaching trial was uncertain, and they knew not whether they should ever see his face again. He shed tears as he embraced Onesimus, to whom he had grown deeply attached, but they left him in the kind care of Aristarchus, and of the two Evangelists Mark and Luke. Above all, Timotheus had again come from Ephesus to stay with him, and Timotheus was to him as the son of his old age.

His case excited little attention. When it was heard in Nero’s presence the Emperor was amusing himself with composing a loose satire, paragraphs of which he handed from time to time to some delighted favourite. He polished his wicked verses again and again, till his note-book was almost illegible with erasures, and he paid little heed to the Apostle’s accusers. The evidence, scanty as it was, broke down completely, and testimony in favour of the innocence and the services of the prisoner was given gladly by gentile witnesses.

The impeachment might have been more formidable but for the shipwreck of the vessel which, as Julius had told Vespasian, was conveying to Rome a commission of his accusers among whom were two persons no less important than Josephus, the young and learned Rabbi of Jerusalem, and Ishmael ben Phabi,92 the High Priest. But their ship foundered in a terrible storm. Its entire cargo was lost, including the documents on which the Sadducean hierarchs of Jerusalem had relied to procure the Apostle’s condemnation. Of the two hundred souls on board only eighty had been picked up, by a ship of Cyrene, after they had swum or floated all night in the tempestuous waves. Ishmael and Josephus had indeed been saved, but several of their witnesses had perished. On the other hand, when men so different as Felix the brother of Pallas, and the honourable Festus, and the centurion Julius, and Publius the Protos of Melite, and Lysias the chief captain at Jerusalem, all wrote in Paul’s favour, and when the good-natured King Agrippa II. and Berenice had taken the trouble to subscribe to this favourable testimony with their own hands, there could be no reason for detaining him. Not even Tigellinus had any object in keeping his clutch upon a prisoner who was too poor for purposes of extortion. The Apostle was acquitted. Accompanied by rejoicing friends, he went to Ostia, and thence set sail for Ephesus. After a brief sojourn in the city of Artemis, he paid his promised visit to Philemon at Colossæ. The first to greet him with happy smiles in the house of the Colossian gentleman was Onesimus, and as the Apostle pressed him to his heart, he learnt that all his hopes had been fulfilled. Philemon, on receiving Paul’s letter, had summoned the fugitive to his presence, and frankly forgiven him. Orders were given to all the slaves of the household that no reference was to be made to the past. Apphia and Archippus treated the runaway with marked kindness, and he himself restored the full sum which he had stolen and strove in every way to repair the old wrong. Philemon had not thought it advisable, under the circumstances, at once to set Onesimus free, but now in honour of Paul’s visit he manumitted him and others of his Christian slaves, and allowed him henceforth to devote his grateful services to the comfort of the Apostle, with whom he set forth for Crete.