CHAPTER XLIX

THE DEPTHS OF SATAN

It became daily more difficult for Nero to stimulate the jaded pulse of appetites at once sated and insatiable; but in the year A.D. 64 a new and immense sensation broke the tedious monotony of a life cursed with the gratification of every desire. The influence of Poppæa grew irresistible when it became evident that she was about to make Nero a father. In due time she gave birth to a daughter, who seemed destined to continue the imperial line. Nero went wild with joy. The child was born in the villa at Antium, where he himself had first seen the light. The highest of all titles, that of Augusta, was immediately conferred not only upon Poppæa, but even on the unconscious infant. Public vows, which had already been undertaken for her safety, were paid and multiplied. Thanksgivings on the most superb scale were given to the gods. A temple was reared to the goddess Fecundity. Golden statues of the Antian goddesses of Fortune were placed on the throne of the Capitoline Jupiter. Coins were struck on which the baby was glorified under the names of Claudia Augusta. The entire Senate set forth in long procession from Rome to congratulate the Emperor and Empress. Nero seized the opportunity to indulge his hatred against Pætus Thrasea. When the other senators were received into his presence, he sent an order that Thrasea was not to be admitted. Every one understood the significance of the message. It was a presage of certain doom. But Thrasea received it with unmoved countenance, and set out on his return to Rome with undiminished cheerfulness. To a noble and virtuous Roman all life was at that time the valley of the shadow of death.

The birth of Nero’s child greatly strengthened his position as Emperor. While he remained childless there was the possibility that when he died, or was swept away, the Senate might be able to summon to the purple some worthier successor. That hope was now cut off. Seneca withdrew himself to the utmost from public notice. The fate of Pallas was an additional warning to him. The boundless extravagances of Nero were rapidly exhausting a treasure which would have sufficed for anything except a superhuman rapacity. The wealth of Pallas proved too strong a temptation for Nero. He had the freedman poisoned, and seized his ill-gotten gains. To avoid a similar fate, Seneca entreated the Emperor to accept all his possessions and to suffer him to retire. Nero received the request with hypocritical assurances. How, he asked, could Seneca possibly suspect a prince who was so deeply indebted to his care? But, though Nero refused to accept either his resignation or his property, the philosopher did not deceive himself. He shut himself up in a seclusion into which he suffered none but his most intimate friends to intrude. He found his sole relief in writing to his friend Lucilius letters which were meant to console those who were living like himself under the daily pressure of agonising anticipations.

But the extravagant joy of Nero was rudely quenched. Before four months had ended the infant Claudia Augusta died, and Nero was plunged in a grief as extravagant as had been his delight. The birth of his child was to him a proof that the gods had averted their wrath, by omens of which he was frequently terrified. To train youths for the Neronian games, he had built a gymnasium, in which was placed a bronze statue of himself. The gymnasium had been struck by lightning, and the statue had been fused and disfigured into a mass of shapeless metal. The omen was horrific, and was followed by the news that the bright and wanton little cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum had been shaken almost into ruins by an earthquake of unusual severity. The safe birth of a child had alleviated the haunting fears which these events had excited in his mind; but they returned when the little Claudia died, nor were they greatly eased by making her a goddess, by striking coins with the inscription ‘Diva Claudia Neronis,’ and by appointing in her honour a pulvinar, a temple, and a priest!

Those who understood his needs and his character saw that life could only be made tolerable for him by excitements still more intense, and crimes still more colossal, than those to which he had grown accustomed. It had become his constant boast that the Emperor could do anything he chose, and that he had been the first Emperor to find out the fact. He therefore never hesitated to secure the death of any one whom he disliked. If they were insignificant persons, he had them poisoned and seized their goods. As no instinct of gratitude prevented him from thus murdering Pallas, who had been the chief agent in procuring his adoption and his succession to the Empire, he had the less hesitation in sacrificing others of less fame. Since Torquatus Silanus was the great-great-grandson of Augustus, he determined to get rid of him on charges of ostentation and seditious practices. When he had driven him to suicide he proclaimed that he had intended to forgive him. Against the Senate he cherished so deep a grudge that with his intimates he discussed the plan of putting all the members of the order to death and distributing its functions among the knights and freedmen. Cruelty had not been among his natural vices, but he now became athirst for blood.

But hatred could only be gratified by spasms of brief indulgence, and the animal passions also required something ever new to galvanise their decrepitude. No one understood this better than Tigellinus. Himself a voluptuary, who had exhausted the resources of every base pleasure, he sought to supply by effrontery the lack of new sensations. With this view he organised continuous revelries which should be unparalleled either for costly extravagance or for outrageous infamy.

Ruinous to the well-being of the State as were these portents of materialism, they were innocent in comparison with the deliberate corruption of public morals. Things are at their worst when vice is so hardened that, instead of seeking concealment, it courts notoriety. All Rome, even her ordinarily vicious population, recalled with shame the orgies, at once monstrous and vulgar, which were planned and paid for by Tigellinus to please his patron. Happily the world has never seen or heard of an entertainment more abominable. In the centre of the Campus Martius, near the Pantheon, was the Lake of Agrippa, surrounded by a park full of groves, gardens, and shrines. On the lake Tigellinus had constructed a raft for the guests. The gondolas moored by the margin to convey the banqueters to the raft were decorated with gilding, and vermilion, and silken streamers, and rowed by boy-slaves from Britain, Greece, and Asia, with long curled hair and bracelets of gold on their bare arms and ankles. On the raft were erected pavilions, filled with delicacies, and furnished as luxuriously as the tents of Eastern kings. When the actual feasting was over the whole of the gardens were filled with choirs of musicians, and all the varletry of either sex that could be assembled from the confines of Rome. Not one honest or honourable person was invited. It was to be a banquet of reprobates. Slaves, and gladiators, and nobles, and women of consular families, and soldiers, and men who had held high offices, and the gilded youth of Roman effeminacy, and Greeklings skilled in all refinements of evil, roamed promiscuously under the light of numberless cressets, their heads crowned with roses, their hearts inflamed with wine. It was a chaos of abomination, such as would not have been possible in any other age than the first century after Christ, or in any other place than imperial Rome. No Christian pen can paint that revelry of Antichrist, or do more than distantly allude to the scenes which followed, when Nero, disguised in the skin of a bear, crawled on all fours among the vilest of those wretches, and gave to him ‘who saw the Apocalypse’ the image of the wild beast who sprang from the foul scum of the world’s most turbid sea.

Yet though there was no truce to such scenes of darkness, except such as was imposed by the premature paralysis of excess, they were insufficient to occupy Nero’s tedium, or fill to the brim the cup of his desires. To be an actor, to be a public singer—that seemed to him to be the culmination of earthly bliss. Nothing would satisfy his burning caprice but to appear before the multitude as Paris and Aliturus did. But he dared not as yet insult the majesty of Rome with the spectacle of a stage Augustus, and therefore determined to sing first before an enchanted provincial audience, and thence to proceed to Greece, not displaying himself in the theatre of the capital till he could return as a victor in the Olympic and Pythian games. But when he had got as far as Beneventum he changed his mind, and determined to visit Egypt and the Eastern provinces instead of Greece. In Egypt he meant to re-enact with unheard-of splendour the old revelries of Antony and Cleopatra, and thought that in the hot, luxurious valley of the Nile he might hear of new forms of pleasure and luxury. Magnificent preparations were set on foot for his reception, and his foster-brother, Cæcina Tuscus, was sent to superintend them. Tuscus ventured to bathe in a sumptuous bath constructed for Nero’s use, and for this harmless act Nero sentenced him to exile. But the visit to Egypt was never paid. On his return to the Palace, he entered the Temple of Vesta, beside the Forum. Whether he was suddenly smitten with superstitious dread from the recollection of his crimes or from some other cause, he was there seized with a violent fit of shivering. His conscience smote him, not for other enormities, but for a crime which, in mere wanton wickedness, he had committed against the majesty of Vesta and the most sacred beliefs of Rome. In defiance of every law, human and divine, he had recently seized Rubria, one of the vestal virgins. It had become one of the horrible characteristics of his mind that half the fascination of wickedness consisted for him in the scandal which it caused. His rank elevated him above human vengeance, but in that circular shrine, and in presence of the ever-burning fire, he felt as if he were in the power of the goddess, and swooned away. The omen frightened him. Pretending that he could not endure to see his people saddened by the thought of his absence, he abandoned his journey, and announced that he would not leave them.

What new thing could be devised to dispel his weariness? He passionately longed for some tremendous sensation to dissipate his lassitude. If the hours had passed with leaden pace when he first tasted the sweets of autocracy, how unutterably weary had they now become!

‘Tigellinus, cannot you invent for me some new excitement?’ he asked. ‘I shall commit suicide from sheer fatigue. Tiberius went to Capri, but a rock like that would not suit me. I cannot live in the vulgar respectability of an Augustus or a Claudius.’

‘Shall I give you another feast like that at the Lake of Agrippa?’

‘That was all very well,’ said Nero, ‘but things grow tedious by repetition. Petronius used to be suggestive, but even he has long ago exhausted his inventiveness.’

‘I never knew why you gave up going to Greece,’ said the Præfect.

‘I thought it better to put it off till my voice was still more perfect. But what am I to do now? I am dying for a new experience. Of what use is life except to concentrate its essence into thrilling sensations?’

‘Was it not a new sensation, Cæsar, when the elephant walked on the tight rope with the knight Julius Drusus on his back?’

‘It amused me for once,’ said Nero. ‘It would be stale a second time.’

‘Well, then, when you had the “Conflagration” of Afranius put on the stage, and let the actors pillage the burning house?’

‘Aye,’ said Nero, ‘that was worth seeing. It gave me a hint or two for my poem on the “Taking of Troy.” What might not art gain, and how might not my poem be enriched, if I had an actual scene to draw from!’

‘You would hardly like to see Rome in flames, Cæsar?’

‘Indeed I should. It would be worth living for. Happy Priam, who saw the Burning of Troy, about which I can only write.’

‘But Rome is something different from Troy,’ said Tigellinus.

‘Rome!’ answered the Emperor. ‘I am sick of it. Look at these close, narrow, crowded streets. I should like to see a city of broad streets, and palaces, and gardens, like Thebes, or Memphis, or Babylon. Ninus and Sardanapalus had cities worth living in.’

Their conversation was held in a spacious room of the Domus Transitoria, with which Nero had filled up the whole space from the Palatine to the Esquiline.

‘Does not this Palace suffice you?’ asked the Præfect.

‘Not at all,’ replied Nero. ‘Many of the neighbouringT13 houses and temples are in my way, and I should like to clear them off, and give myself air to breathe.’

‘Are you serious, Cæsar?’

‘Of course I am,’ he answered, petulantly.

Tigellinus shrugged his shoulders, and quoted a line from the Bellerophon of Euripides:—

‘When I am dead, let earth be rolled in flame.’

‘Nay, while I live let earth be rolled in flame,’ answered the Emperor, altering the iambic. ‘Anything would be better than to smoulder to death for want of something to amuse me.’

Nero was not altogether in earnest. His conversation was habitually grandiose, because he fed a perverse imagination with phantasmagorias and monstrosities. He was suffering from that blood-poisoning of unchecked vice which has so often maddened Eastern despots.

The fixed idea of watching a conflagration, and getting illustrations for his Trojan epic, often returned to this Emperor of melodrama. Without resolutely entertaining the purpose of wrapping Rome in flames, he allowed himself to hint at it and to play with it. But he had made Tigellinus much more in earnest than himself. That evil genius of the Emperor thought that from such a calamity he at least would have nothing to lose, and might have everything to gain. He had inexhaustible riches at his disposal, and numberless wretches in his pay. He meant to see what could be done. Not long after the above conversation Nero went for a few days of literary leisure and musical practice to his villa at Antium, and Tigellinus gave him hints that at Antium he might expect startling news, and that a first-rate sensation was in store for him. For the magnitude and horror of that sensation even Nero was not prepared.

To us it all seems incredible. It did not seem incredible to Tacitus, and it is positively affirmed by Suetonius, Dion Cassius, and even by the grave and learned Pliny the Elder, who, as a contemporary, must have known infinitely better than we can do ‘the depths to which despotism in delirium can descend.’

CHAPTER L

A CITY IN FLAMES

‘Hoc incendium e turri Mæcenatiana prospectans, lætusque flammæ, ut aiebat, pulchritudine, ἅλωσιν Ilii in illo suo scenico habitu decantavit.’—Suet. Nero, 38.

Ἔκραζον ὁρῶντες τὸν καπὸν τῆς πυρώσεως αὐτῆς—Apoc. xviii. 9.

Nero set out for Antium on July 17. Two days afterwards Rome was in a sea of surging flame. Men noticed that it was the anniversary of the day on which, four and a half centuries earlier, the city had been burnt by the Gauls. The fire had burst forth in the neighbourhood of the Circus Maximus. The shops and storehouses which surrounded that huge structure were full of combustible materials, including the machinery and properties used in the public spectacles. Here the flames seized a secure hold, and, raging about the Cœlian, rolled toward the eastern front of the Palatine. Checked by the steep sides of the hill and its cyclopean architecture, the fire swept down the valleys on either side—to the right, along the Via Nova; to the left, along the Triumphal Way. It ravaged the Velabrum and the Forum; it consumed the temple and altar reared to Hercules by the Arcadian Evander, the palace of Numa, and the circular Temple of Vesta, which enshrined the ever-burning hearth and Penates of the Roman people. Sweeping into the Carinæ, which was crowded by consular palaces, it devoured those stately structures, and the many trophies of ancient victories with which they were enriched. On the Aventine it destroyed the temple which Servius Tullius had erected to the Moon, and in it the priceless relics of Greek art which L. Mummius had brought from Corinth. Rolling back to the Palatine with more victorious violence, it reduced to a blackened ruin the venerable temple which Romulus had vowed to Jupiter Stator. Then, licking up everything which lay in its path, it rioted with voluptuous fury in the more densely crowded regions of the city, raging and crackling among the old, tortuous purlieus and crazy habitations of the Subura. With its hot breath it purged the slums and rookeries, foul with a pauper population of Oriental immigrants, who were massed round the ill-famed shrines of Isis and Serapis. When it had acquired irresistible volume in these lower regions, it again rushed up the hills as with the rage of a demon, to sweep down once more in tumultuous billows over the helpless levels. For six days and seven nights it maintained its horrible and splendid triumph—now bounding from street to street with prodigious rapidity, now seeming to linger luxuriously in some crowded district, flinging up to heaven great sheets of flame, and turning the nightly sky into a vault of suffocating crimson.

No words can paint the horror of a scene which transformed into a Gehenna of destruction a city enriched with the magnificence of nearly eight centuries of victory. There were districts in which the heat was so intense that they were unapproachable, and the rarefaction of the atmosphere, joined to a strong breeze which seemed in league with the destroying element, filled the air with a roar as of ten thousand wild beasts. Here stores of resinous material made the consuming flames white with intensity; and there the burning and smouldering débris, which for a time half choked the conflagration, poured forth black volumes of smoke, which hid its progress under a pall of midnight. Here an insula, many stories high, collapsed with a crash which was heard for miles; and there whole streets, falling simultaneously on both sides, caused continuous bursts of sound like the long roll of incessant thunder.

But the physical horrors of the scene, as it was witnessed by a million or more spectators who thronged from every town of Latium and Campania to behold it, were nothing compared with the prodigies of human agony and the multiform images of death and crime. At first there had been wild efforts on the part of many to save their homes. But their efforts were rendered futile by many causes. The conflagration seemed to break forth, not in one spot, but from various quarters, which rolled together their concurrent seas of flame. No means were adequate to resist a foe which seemed to be ubiquitous. The scorching heat drove back the boldest firemen. The buckets, from which the police derived their nickname of sparteoli, were ludicrously inadequate for an emergency so tremendous. The supplies of water were not available in the wild confusion. It was rumoured on every side that slaves and agents of the imperial household were seen with tow and torches in their hands, which they flung into the houses of the nobles; and, if any attempted to check them, they menacingly declared that they had authority for their doings. If a senator tried to organise his slaves to quench the flames or impede their advance, he was bidden to take care what he was about. Burglary and rapine were let loose. The criminal population of the city seized the opportunity to plunder every burning palace into which they could force their way. Nor was it long before self-preservation became the one absorbing passion of the multitude, surprised by the ever-swelling dimensions of the catastrophe. Here a group of women, as they stood shrieking and tearing their hair, unwilling to leave their homes or unable to save their little ones, were trampled down under the hurrying rush of some group of fugitives. Here the father of a family, hindered in his flight by the helplessness of age or childhood, found himself swept along by reckless pillagers, and with unutterable anguish was compelled to abandon some little child or decrepit grandsire who had been flung down on the pavement with bruised or broken limbs. As the inhabitants of regions which the fire had freshly invaded rushed to escape, they plunged into winding alleys overarched by meeting flames, or their flight was impeded by smouldering ruins, or they were overwhelmed by the thunderous fall of some huge building, many, losing their heads altogether, stood stupefied with despair, and the smoke stifled them, or the fire scorched them, until the streets were filled with charred corpses. Others in raging defiance, seeing themselves reduced to penury by the loss of all they possessed, or with hearts lacerated by the death of their beloved, leapt madly into the flames. Rome during all that week was a pandemonium of horror, in which, amid shrieks and yells and every sound of ruin, were witnessed the wrath of the elements, the passions of devils, and tragedies of despair, and anguish which no heart can conceive, no tongue describe.

At the first news that Rome was in flames, and that they were already approaching his Domus Transitoria, Nero hurried back from Antium. Now indeed he had a sensation to his heart’s content. At first he was shocked by the magnitude of a catastrophe more overwhelming than had ever before happened to Rome or any other city. He mounted the tower of Mæcenas, and gazed for hours upon the scene—thrilling with excitement which was not without its delicious elements. Safe himself, he was looking down on a storm of tempestuousT14 agony, which he could regard in the light of a spectacle. He was accustomed to gaze unmoved on human pangs in the bloody realism of the amphitheatre, and to see slave after slave flung to the lions, with their arms bound in chains concealed with flowers. But what scene of the circus, when the gilded chariots were reduced to a crashing wreck of collisions, in which the horses kicked one another and their charioteers to death—what gladiatorial massacre, filling the air with the reek of blood, was for a moment comparable to the sight of Rome in flames? The sublime horror of the moment stimulated in him all the genius of melodrama and artificial epic. Surrounded by his parasites, he compared Rome, now to a virgin whom the tigers of flame devoured, now to a gladiator wrestling with troops of lions in the arena. He was lost in admiration of the beauty of the fire. Now he called it a splendid rose, with petals of crimson; now a diadem of flaming and radiating gold; now again an enormous hydra with smoky pinions and tongue of flickering gleam. He wrote many a quaint and fantastic phrase in the notebooks which were crowded with his much-lined commonplaces of poetic imagery! Here were the materials for many future poems before him. He could, for instance, write an Ode on Tartarus—its horrible spaces of silent anguish, its black vapours, its brazen gates, and iron pillars, its ghosts and demons gibbering and shrieking in the shade, its torments and its Pyriphlegethon with cataracts of blood and fire. He felt sure that after these incitements of emotion and infusions of realism, his poem on the Burning of Troy would be immortal, since it could not fail to catch from such a scene a tinge of voluptuous sublimity!

And as he gazed for hours together of the day and of the night, he endeavoured to realise the aspect of the spectacle, and did not allow himself to be disturbed by the multitudinous agonies which it implied. He did, indeed, accept some suggestions of Seneca, who, abandoning his seclusion from generous impulse, hurried to him as soon as it became evident that the fire meant wide-spread destitution. Nero felt a spasm of terror when the philosopher expressed a doubt whether sullen misery might not flash up into rage, and cause a formidable rebellion. For want of houses, the people were huddling into tombs and catacombs. Nero, therefore, took the hint that he should offer the Campus Martius and the monuments of Agrippa—his porticoes, baths, gardens, and the Temple of Neptune—as a refuge for the shivering throngs whom the flames had driven from their homes. But, this done, he flattered himself that the public disaster would redound to his popularity; and as it never occurred to him that any one would suspect his complicity, he gave himself up once more to æsthetic enjoyment. He ordered masses of roses to be strewn around him on the summit of the tower; he twanged his harp as he thought of refrains and songs which he intended to write on the subject; and he meant that Troy should stand as a transparent symbol of Rome. When he was for a time tired of watching, he induced his minions to ask him for an opportunity of hearing once more his celestial voice; and putting on his tragic syrmos, appeared on a private stage, harp in hand, and affectedly chanted to them his insipid strophes and emasculate conceits.

But even these first-rate sensations became in time monotonous. He had seen as much as he wanted, and to his great delight the conflagration had destroyed the buildings near the Palace on which he had cast covetous eyes. When after a pause the fire, which had been checked on the seventh night, broke out a second time from the Æmilian estate of Tigellinus, and raged fitfully for three days more, he was tired of it. There was no object in suffering the whole of Rome to be destroyed. He assented to a proposition that masses of buildings should be pulled down on the Esquiline, in order that the progress of the flames might be checked. The expedient was successful. There was now time to note the extent of the devastation. Rome was divided into fourteen districts. Three of these were reduced to utter wreck and destruction. Seven more were in a condition of desperate ruin; four alone remained untouched. The loss of antiquities, of venerable buildings rich in historic associations, of precious manuscripts, of priceless relics of the past, above all, of works of art,

was such as none could estimate. The rumour arose that Nero was about to rebuild the city with unparalleled magnificence and call it Neronia; but whatever gain might accrue to another generation from endless straight lines, ‘vast monumental perspectives, and sumptuosities of parade,’ those who regarded cities as something more than official masses of architectural monotony were wounded to the heart. No new Rome could ever make up to them for the loss of the old beloved city which sat dreaming on her seven hills among the glorious memories of the past.93

The name of Nero was on every lip, and it was blended with curses not loud but deep. As he wandered over the blackened areas, his lictors accompanying him, his head crowned with garlands and his thoughts full of magnificent schemes of reconstruction, he became aware that the blank walls of the ruins were already scribbled over with infamies with which his name was connected, and that scowling brows were bent upon him and looks of hatred mingled with terror. His proclamation that none were to approach the ruins of their own houses, since he would charge himself with the burial of the human remains and the clearance of the débris, was interpreted into a design to enrich himself with any objects of value, or uninjured works of art, which might be disencumberedT15 from the general destruction. He found it necessary to take measures to prevent the indignation of the multitude from finding vent in furious outbreak. Inviting aid from the senators, he started a sort of patriotic fund, which did not differ greatly from a forced loan. He threw open his gardens to the desolate paupers, who had no distant villas such as those in which the rich took refuge; he ordered the erection of multitudes of temporary huts; he decreed that the necessaries of subsistence should be imported with all haste from Ostia and the neighbouring municipalities, and he reduced the fixed price of corn to the lowest possible limit. Under ordinary circumstances such measures would have been welcomed with gratitude, as they were some years later in the reign of Titus. As it was, they were insufficient to remove the odium with which rumour surrounded his name. The public voice accused him of being the author of a misery which it was beyond his power to alleviate. It was all very well for him to lavish a liberality which cost him nothing, and came from national resources; but while he was still steeped to the lips in superhuman luxury, who could restore to that nation of ruined men their lost children and relatives, their lost homes and cherished possessions, their lost materials and opportunities for gaining an honourable livelihood? The story that he had harped and sung and poetised while the city was crashing into ruins had first been whispered as a secret, but was now familiar to every lip; and it filled all hearts with execration and contempt. The ruthless egotism of the Emperor seemed likely to cost him dear.

All that was left of religious feeling in the old Paganism was overwhelmed with a sense that the gods were wroth. There rose a clamour that expiations and purifications were necessary. But litanies, and vigils, and sacred banquets were in vain, and Rome presented the piteous scene of a starving and homeless populace who regarded the past with horror and the future with despair, having no hope, and without God in the world.

CHAPTER LI

AN INFERNAL SUGGESTION

Nero was harassed night and day by a new terror. The grand spectacle of Rome in flames, and the touches of local colouring, æsthetic and realistic, which it had enabled him to add to his poem on the Taking of Troy, would have been dearly purchased if they were to involve the forfeiture of his throne and life. Yet the sinister attitude of the people could not be mistaken, nor their menacing murmurs hushed. Tigellinus began to doubt whether the allegiance of the Prætorians, Germans and other foreign mercenaries as many of them were, would remain unshaken. They showed inclination to sympathise with the proletariat in their dangerous disaffection.

Except Tigellinus and Poppæa there was no one to whom the Emperor dared open his secrets. Both of them were closeted with him, but could suggest nothing to awaken him from the abject alarm into which he was sinking. It was evident that alike the people and the Senate held him responsible for the late conflagration, and it was impossible to detect the author of the rumours which had made his actions the common theme of Roman gossip. The only way to save himself from the hatred which threatened to destroy him, would be to divert the suspicion of the masses into some other channel. But whom could Nero accuse with any semblance of probability? Tigellinus was unscrupulous and Poppæa shrewd, but they knew not what to advise.

While they were thus consulting, a slave announced that Aliturus, the Jewish pantomimist, accompanied by the High Priest of Jerusalem and a distinguished Rabbi, desired an audience.

‘Aliturus is welcome,’ said Nero; ‘but I do not want to be troubled by his countrymen.’

‘Give them an audience, Cæsar,’ said Poppæa, who was secretly addicted to Judaism, and had even been admitted as a proselyte of the gate. ‘Aliturus presented them to me at Puteoli. They are worth conciliating. This High Priest is so rich that his mother (I am told) once presented him with a tunic worth a hundred minæ, and he only deigned to wear it once. You know the prophecy of the astrologer, that you are to have an Oriental Empire, and perhaps to reign at Jerusalem.’

Nero consented, and Aliturus, who was always among his favourites, was ushered into his presence. The actor wore the ordinary dress of a wealthy Roman youth, but the two friends who accompanied him were in the costume of the East, with rich robes and silken turbans. The elder of the two was an old man, whose white beard flowed in waves over his breast, and whose sumptuous dress and haughty bearing accorded with the dignity, if not with the humility, of the High-Priesthood. The younger was a man not yet thirty years old, splendidly handsome and full of the genius of his race.

‘Welcome, Aliturus,’ said the Empress. ‘Cæsar, this is the venerable Ishmael ben Phabi, High Priest of the Jews, on whose ephod has hung the twelve-gemmed oracle, and who has worn the golden robes; and this is Josephus of Jerusalem, son of the Priest Matthias, a Priest, a Rabbi, and a soldier.’

The High Priest and the Rabbi bowed almost to the ground, and kissed the hand which Nero extended to them as he asked them on what business they had come to consult him.

‘Half of our task in Rome has failed,’ said the High Priest. ‘We came, commissioned by our nation to impeach Paulus of Tarsus, a ringleader of the Galileans, for a sedition which he stirred up in Jerusalem; but while our shipwreck detained us your clemency has acquitted the criminal. We came also to entreat the liberation of some of our priests who are here in prison, sent hither on frivolous charges by the Procurator Festus.’

‘I will intercede for them,’ said Poppæa. ‘Those Procurators of Judæa constantly maltreat an innocent and venerable people.’

‘The last Procurator is of your appointment, Poppæa,’ said the Emperor. ‘I only nominated Gessius Florus, because you are a friend of his wife Cleopatra.’

‘And he is the worst of them all,’ whispered Josephus to Aliturus. ‘He takes bribes from the bandits. He impales Jews who are knights and Roman citizens, and he would not desist, though Berenice went before his tribunal barefooted and with dishevelled hair.’

‘I have no doubt that Florus will be kinder than his predecessors,’ said Poppæa. ‘The others have stirred up against Rome the anger of the Jewish God.’

‘Who is that?’ asked Nero. ‘Is it Moses?’

‘Moses,’ said Ishmael, ‘was a great law-giver, to whom was granted more than human wisdom; but we worship not a mortal man. Our God is He who made heaven and earth.’

‘Anchialus?’ asked Nero.94

‘Anchialus is some gentile scoff which I understand not,’ said the High Priest, with dignity.

Nero whispered to Poppæa a line of Lucan’s:—

‘Judæa, votaress of a dubious God.’

‘Suffer me to answer,’ said Josephus; ‘and as the Emperor is learned in Greek I will answer in the line of an oracle given by the Clarian Apollo himself:—

‘“Deem that the God Supreme, the Lord of Lords, is IAO”’95

‘And do you mean to say that this God of yours—Iaô, as you call him—can injure Rome?’

‘He punishes all who insult His majesty,’ answered the young Rabbi, ‘and He blesses those that honour Him. Cæsar, in his wisdom, knows how Pompeius burst into our Holy of Holies, and found that we did not worship, as men lyingly said, the image of an ass, but that the shrine was dark and empty. But from that time forth, Pompeius was overwhelmed in that sea of ruin which flung him, a headless corpse, on the shore of Alexandria. Heliodorus, the treasurer of Seleucus Philopator, was scourged out of our Holiest by a vision of angels. But Alexander the Great bowed before our High Priest Iaddua, and God gave him unexampled victories. And Julius, your mighty ancestor, was dear to our race, and he prospered through our prayers.’

‘Yea,’ said the High Priest, ‘and when the Cæsar Gaius would have profaned our Temple with a statue of himself, our God smote him with madness, and ere a year was over the dagger reached his heart.’

Nero had fits of superstition, and he listened with greedy ears. ‘I thought,’ he said, ‘that you Jews hated all mankind except yourselves.’

‘We hate them not,’ answered Ishmael. ‘On the contrary, we pray for all the seventy nations of mankind, and we offer daily sacrifices for their welfare. If those sacrifices ceased, the world would perish.’

‘Listen, Cæsar, to the High Priest’s words,’ said Poppæa, ‘and set these priests free.’

‘What Poppæa asks is done,’ said Nero. ‘But,’ he continued, turning to the Jews, ‘is not your nation seditious and turbulent?’

‘It is not,’ answered Ishmael. ‘We never stir unless we are wronged. We would fain sit in peace, each under his own vine and his own fig-tree. We offer sacrifices in our Temple for the Emperor’s safety.’

‘Nero must not confuse us with the Christians,’ said Josephus, quietly. ‘The Romans and Greeks have not yet learnt the difference between us; and all their crimes are set down to us.’

‘The Christians?’ said Nero. ‘Who are they? I have heard of them as malefactors, the scum of the earth, but always thought they were a sect of Jews.’

‘Forbid it Heaven!’ said the High Priest, vehemently. ‘They worship a crucified mesîth, who deceived the people. Some of them, I confess with anguish, are of our race, but far more are Gentiles.’

‘But did not Claudius drive the Jews from Rome, because they were always rioting at the instigation of one Chrestus? Indeed, I thought they were called Chrestians.’

‘They like to be called Chrestians,’ said Josephus, ‘as though they were chrestoi, or excellent. But Christos is the Greek for “anointed,” and they use it for our Hebrew Messiah. It was not the Jews who rioted in the days of Claudius, Emperor, but the sect of Christians. Their Christus was crucified, thirty years ago, by Pontius Pilatus. This Paulus of Tarsus is their chief man now.’

‘Paulus?’ said Nero. ‘I vaguely remember his being tried and acquitted a month ago. He seemed to me a harmless sort of man. He spoke, as I remember, very eloquently. Agrippa, and Berenice, and Festus, and even Felix, spoke well of him.’

‘They are the enemies of our race,’ said the High Priest, ‘and they deceive thee, O Emperor. It is this very Paulus who turns the world upside down, and not only preaches against our holy law, but forbids to pay tribute to Cæsar, and teaches men to worship Jesus as their king.’

‘Do they dare to set up another king than Cæsar?’ exclaimed Nero, hotly. ‘This must be seen to.’

‘I have heard of them,’ said Poppæa. ‘It is they, and not the Jews, who hate the whole human race.’

‘I am sorry I let that Paulus go,’ said Nero. ‘Tigellinus, have you any complaints against these imprisoned priests?’

‘None,’ said Tigellinus; ‘they cost nothing, for they live chiefly on olives and figs.’

‘Then set them free this evening.’

‘We thank Cæsar for his goodness,’ said the High Priest, once more making a low obeisance; ‘and we hope that he will deign to accept our present.’

The present was a golden box, in which were many vials of rose-tinted alabaster, full of the most precious balsam of Jericho, which filled the chamber with perfume as Josephus took it from an attendant slave and laid it at Nero’s feet.

‘This shall be for Poppæa,’ said the Emperor, ‘and on her behalf I will send you a purple hanging for your Temple. I hope you will ask Iaô to be propitious to me.’

They were ushered out, and no sooner had they left the room than Tigellinus rose, and impetuously exclaimed—‘I have it! Those Jews have taught me the secret. Strange that it never occurred to me before.’

‘What is the secret, Præfect?’ asked Poppæa.

‘The Christians! we must accuse them of being the incendiaries of Rome. Cæsar, dismiss your fears. The propitiated gods have found a victim, and the people will be satisfied.’

Nero’s spirits instantly rose. ‘Excellent!’ he exclaimed; ‘and thanks to that handsome Rabbi for the hint; but who will tell us something more about them?’

‘Aliturus will,’ said Poppæa. ‘As an actor he moves constantly among the people.’

Aliturus had hardly left the Palace when he was summoned back to the imperial conclave, and asked to tell what he knew about the Christians. He retailed all the vile calumnies which were current in antiquity about the ass-worship, the drinking of the blood of slain children, the promiscuous orgies of darkness, the deadly hatred to all mankind, the Thyestean banquets and Œdipodean unions. He told all these things because he had heard them from common report, and had never taken the trouble to ascertain the truth.

‘Have they any friends among the populace?’ asked the Præfect.

‘None,’ replied the actor. ‘The people hate them. They are foes to all pleasure: they will not enter a theatre. They spit when they pass a temple; they turn away with horror from sacrifices. They hate wine, and will never wear a garland. They are morose misanthropes, devoutly brutal, and capable of any crime.’

‘It would be a good thing to get rid of such enemies of gods and men,’ said Tigellinus. ‘Do you think they could have been the authors of the late conflagration?’

‘It is more than possible,’ answered Aliturus. ‘I hear that they often talk about the burning up of the world.’

‘Yes,’ said Poppæa; ‘and the part of the city which has most completely escaped being burned is the region across the Tiber where most of them live.’

Nero clapped his hands with delight. ‘Suspicion all points in that direction,’ he said; ‘but how could we get evidence against them?’

‘It would not be easy, Cæsar. They meet in the most secret places, and have their watchwords.’

‘That looks bad,’ said Nero. ‘I do not like secret meetings.’

‘Could you not get into one of their assemblies and bribe some of them?’ asked Tigellinus.

‘I will try,’ said Aliturus, ‘if Cæsar wishes it. I can at any time disguise myself and alter my face so that no one can recognise me; and I dare say some slave will find out their watchword for me.’

‘Manage this for us, Aliturus, and your reward shall be gold enough to make you a rich man for life. I gave a senator’s property to Menecrates, the harpist, and a Consul’s patrimony to Spicillus, the mirmillo, and a town-house and a villa to Paneros, the usurer. Cæsar knows how to reward with a princely hand those that serve him.’

‘Cæsar is a god,’ said the supple actor; ‘and Aliturus will not fail him.’

CHAPTER LII

ALITURUS AMONG THE CHRISTIANS

Ἐὰν δὲ πάντες προφητεύωσιν, εἰσέλθῃ δὲ τις ἄπιστος, ἐλέγχεται ὑπὸ πάντων, ἀνακρίνεται ὑπὸ πάντων.—S. Pauli I. ad Cor. xiv. 24.

Aliturus did not find it easy to fulfil his promise. Ishmael Ben Phabi, stimulated by Sadducean hatred, made every inquiry among the Jews of Rome, and learnt much that was useful to him. Josephus, who had no special hatred against the Christians, but wished to know more about them, because, as a Pharisee, he was interested in their doctrine of the Resurrection, was able to give him some useful hints. Esther, a Jewish freedwoman of Nero, wife of Arescusus, was still more serviceable. At one time she had been drawn to the Christians by their sanctity of life, but she was an intense enthusiast of Mosaism, and, shocked by the views of gentile converts respecting the nullity of the Law, she had felt the reaction of antipathy against them.96 But Primitivus, who had succeeded Phlegon (the lover of the epileptic girl Syra), as keeper of the Spoliarium, gave him the key he needed. Primitivus, in his work at the amphitheatre, had more than once come in contact with Christians, and Phlegon had told him what he had heard about them from Syra. He revealed to Aliturus the mystic watchword of the Fish.

Armed with this watchword, the actor managed to establish relations with Philetus, a slave of dubious character, who had nominally joined the Christians because he found among them a sympathy and a kindness which he had forfeited in his gentile surroundings. This thankless traitor conducted him one evening, in the disguise of an Ephesian merchant, into the remote sand-pit where the Christians held their largest gatherings.

He found himself in an assembly of at least a thousand persons, who had come by various roundabout obscure paths. A narrow opening led to the half-subterranean place of rendezvous, and this was strongly guarded by a body of Christian youths, who challenged and scrutinised every comer. As they entered, the worshippers extinguished their lamps and torches, and the vast space was in complete darkness, except that a few lights glimmered in its deepest recesses. Aliturus was accustomed to scenes of hardened wickedness, but he shuddered in expectation of the nameless horrors which pagan slander led him to suppose he would witness. How deep was his astonishment at the order, the decorum, the innocent fervour, the holy devotion, the almost childlike simplicity of the entire ceremony! Truly these men and women were no orgiastic rioters! Linus was in the chair of the chief pastor, and he was assisted by Cletus and other presbyters. Sometimes he offered up prayers for all, sometimes the whole assembly joined in common prayer, and the deep ‘Amen’ swelled like the sound of a mighty wave. They joined in hymns addressed to God and to Christ, and then the assembly was swept by the indescribable emotion of Spiritual Presence which found vent in speaking in the Tongue. But there was nothing disorderly or tumultuous in the manifestations, for the worshippers had taken to heart the warnings which Paul had given to the Church of Corinth. The pantomimist was struck with the awful depth and penetrative force of those strange sounds, which no skill of his—trained as he had been for years—would enable him to reproduce. When some rose to interpret the mysterious utterances, he heard many allusions to Babylon—which his Jewish origin made him recognise as a cryptogram for Rome—and references to the recent fire. But it was only spoken of as an awful judgment of God, a sign of Christ’s second Advent, a prelude to the conflagration of the world. He heard nothing wicked, nothing seditious. On the contrary, every exhortation inculcated innocence and purity of life; and prayers were offered for the Emperor, and all in authority. In Roman society he had heard many a bitter jest, many a mordant innuendo aimed at the Emperor, by men who were too vain to conceal their sarcasms, even when they were perilous.97 But here he heard no such objurgations. When the interpretation of tongues was over, Linus rose to address his flock.

He spoke first of the conflagration, and of all the disasters which they had recently witnessed. He alluded with many tears to the brethren who had perished in the burning streets, or lay buried under the ruins of fallen houses, and he bade them not to sorrow as men without hope, since the dead who die in the Lord were blessed. How far more awful was the fate of those worshippers of false gods, who had lived in defiant wickedness, and who, instead of passing from life to life, had passed from death unto death, and a fiery looking for of judgment! One practical duty he pressed upon them. Most of them were poor; but God had given them the true riches. And now that so many of their brethren were left destitute, it was their duty to show that they believed the words of the Lord Jesus, that it is more blessed to give than to receive. The heathen said, ‘See how these Christians love one another.’ Yes, they loved one another, and all who were of the household of faith; but let them also be kind and gentle to those who treated them despitefully, remembering Him who had said, ‘I say unto you, “Love your enemies.”’

From this topic he passed to the duty of watchfulness. All around them lay the kingdom of Satan and of darkness. They knew its grossness, its misery. Their beloved Apostle Paul had painted it for them to the life in his letter to their Church. ‘Be sober, then,’ he said, ‘be vigilant! Already there are wars and rumours of wars, and earthquakes, and famines, the sea and the waves roaring, and men’s hearts failing them for fear of the things coming on the earth. Is not the mighty calamity which we have witnessed one of the birth-throes of the Messiah? Love not the world, therefore, brethren, nor the things of the world. Count the things that are, as though they are not. For, speaking in the Spirit, I tell you that very soon will the great tribulation begin, which must be before the end. But ye know the words of the Master, “He that shall endure to the end, the same shall be saved.”’

A deep murmur rose from the multitude, and many wept at the thought of coming woes. But they did not shrink from the peril of that baptism of blood which they knew would be to them the portal of salvation, and the murmur swelled into an Hosanna and a Hallelujah which rang with steadfastness and exultation.

Then Cletus, the second presbyter, rose and said: ‘Our father Linus has spoken. He has warned us that evil days are at hand. Already it is whispered, we cannot tell by whom, that our hands kindled this great conflagration. You know, brethren, that we would rather die than be guilty of such a monstrous crime. But at the bar of the Gentiles innocence will not avail us; nor will pity touch the hearts of our enemies in Babylon, where Satan’s throne is. But though a host should encamp against us, yet will we not be afraid. He who set His angel to stand by the three children in the furnace; He who saved Daniel from the lions, and Jonah in the belly of the whale, will not forsake us. We thank God in this great crisis that Paul, the Apostle to us Gentiles, has been set free. He knew not what was coming, or he would have stayed with us; but John the beloved is on his way to us, and he will comfort us in all our afflictions.’

At the close of his address, young men, clad in white, of modest demeanour, went round among the worshippers and received in earthen vessels the humble contributions of men and women, of whom not a few were themselves in deep poverty. Aliturus, moved to an extent of which he could give no account, dropped into the vessel every piece of gold which he had with him, and amazed those who afterwards counted the offerings. With uplifted arms and solemn voice, Linus pronounced the benediction. Lanterns and torches were rekindled, and silently, in twos and threes, by the same secret paths, the multitude melted away.

But as he made his way home with the attendant slave, the heart of Aliturus burned within him. He had come to curse and to betray; he went back blessing these Christians altogether. How unlike was the reality to the lies which he had confidently believed! These men and women, whose name was the synonym of malefactor—those of whom the scum of the Forum spoke as incestuous cannibals—they were innocent, they were holy! they alone were innocent, they alone were holy! Aliturus had heard the philosophers talking together. How hard and unnatural were their doctrines; how inconsistent their lives; how hopeless their aspirations; how hollow their vaunts of blessedness compared with those of these men! Among these was happiness, or it was nowhere. He had seen palaces—their gilded misery, their monotonous weariness, their reckless guilt—he had experienced the emptiness of that intoxicating fame which shouted in the voice of innumerable spectators. Alas, alas! what a bubble was the life of the gentile world, and what spectres followed those who chased it!

His thoughts went back to the days of a childhood spent in Hebron under the rustling boughs of the oak of Mamre. Happier for him had he lived and died in his native Palestine, unknown, innocent, faithful to the religion of his people. But his grandfather had been implicated in the tearing down of the golden eagle, instigated by the two bold young Rabbis Judas and Matthias, in the days of Herod the Great, and had been put to death. His father had struggled in vain against adversity, and his widowed mother, left in utter destitution, had died of a broken heart. Penniless and an orphan, the boy had been carried down to Gaza by a villanous agent of Herod, and had been sold to a Roman slave-dealer. This trader in human flesh had seen in him the promise of extraordinary beauty, which would enable him to repay himself in a few years a hundred times over the paltry sum which he had paid for the Jewish orphan. He kept him with care, fed him well, had him taught Greek, and gave him an artistic education—not from any feelings of kindness, but solely with a view to ultimate gain. He kept him apart from the other slave-boys of his shop, who were meant for less luxurious destinies, and would only command moderate prices as grooms or foot-boys. They, with chalked feet, were exposed for sale on the public catasta in sight of every passer-by, and could be purchased for little more than five hundred sesterces; but those who wished to see the brilliant Aliturus must be persons of wealth and distinction, who were admitted into the inner apartments, and who would be willing to pay at least eight thousand sesterces. He had been purchased by the wealthy and luxurious Sulla, who, charmed by his vivacity, grace, and genius, saw a means of enriching himself by having him trained as a pantomime. During these years Aliturus had not only seen the darkest side of pagan life, but had grown familiar with its viciousness in every form. Abandoning the religion of Moses, he had found no other in its place, and lived only for the present. On the stage he had rapidly surpassed all competitors, with the exception of Paris, who shared with him the position of a favourite of the Roman people. The large sums of money which he amassed by his art enabled him to purchase his freedom before he was twenty-three; and, in a career of unchecked outward prosperity he had become a familiar inmate of the noblest patrician houses, and even of the imperial circle. For some years he had been the favourite of all the gilded youth, the darling of the Roman ladies. But the faith of his childhood still hung about him. Amid the giddiest whirl of vice and pleasure, he still felt in his heart an aching void; and the events of this evening had revealed to him not only how aching the void was, but also the misery and failure in which his life would end, with no vista beyond it save the darkness of the grave. Often before, in his lonelier moments, he had seen virtue and pined for its loss; but now that pure ideal shone before him with a more heavenly lustre, and remorse pierced him like a sword.

He awaited the next gathering of the Christians with feverish impatience—not with his first purpose of accumulating evidence for their extirpation, but rather for the sake of his own soul and that he might leave no stone unturned to save them. He was also deeply anxious to see him whom Cletus had described as ‘John the beloved.’ He longed to hear more of the Master whom the Christians worshipped with such passionate devotion, and to know wherein lay the secrets of the hope which He had kindled, of the peace which He had bequeathed, of the righteousness which He had placed within reach of attainment, not only by the noble and the learned, but by the despised and by paupers and by slaves.

It was to him a time of anxiety and trial. He had to act that week one of his favourite, most exciting, and most unworthy parts. He was pledged to it; myriads were expecting to see him in it; he had already received for it a large sum of money from Varro, the president of the games, and he had neither the courage to withdraw from it nor any appreciable excuse for doing so. He acted it with all his accustomed supremacy of skill, but he acted it mechanically and with a wounded conscience; and he listened to the thunders of applause which his grace evoked with loathing for himself and for his degraded audience. He returned to his house physically weary, but even more mentally prostrate, and, flinging himself on a couch, turned his face to the wall and wept. A summons from the Palace forced him to rouse himself, to put on a court dress, and assume his usual aspect of easy gaiety.T16 Nero asked him with feverish eagerness whether he had succeeded in tracking the Christians to their haunts, and what evidence he had been able to collect against them.

‘Give me time, Cæsar,’ he said. ‘I went three days ago to their assembly and I heard nothing which could be construed into sedition, and I saw nothing to their discredit. I am driven to disbelieve what I told you about them.’

‘They are sly foxes,’ said Nero. ‘Poppæa has heard more about them from the Jew Josephus. You are not initiated into their mysteries, so that you did not really see what they are.’

‘And what matters it what they are?’ said Tigellinus. ‘We must have some criminals to accuse of having caused the fire; and who so handy as this secret, morose, man-hating, child-killing, flesh-eating sect of darkness, whom the people detest, and whom in any case it would be a merit to exterminate?’

‘Poor wretches!’ said Aliturus. ‘I should be sorry to do them more harm than I have done already; but after the next nundine I may have more to tell you.’

‘That man is wavering,’ said Tigellinus, when Aliturus had gone. ‘He is a Jew, and he is not so much in earnest as he was. He seems to be touched by the squeamish effeminacy of pity.’

‘Poppæa says that the Jews hate these Christians even more than we do,’ answered Nero.

‘Nevertheless, Cæsar, you may be certain that the two superstitions spring from the same root. I will find out the Christian haunts for myself. It is high time to strike a blow.’