CHAPTER VII

SENECA AND HIS FAMILY

If there was one man in all Rome whom the world envied next to the young Emperor, or even more than the Emperor himself, it was his tutor, Seneca. He was the leading man in Rome. By the popular critics of the day his style was thought the finest which any Roman had written, though the Emperor Gaius, in one of his lucid intervals, had wittily remarked that it was ‘sand without lime.’ His abilities were brilliant, his wealth was immense. In all ordinary respects he was innocent and virtuous—he was innocence and virtue itself compared with the sanguinary oppressors and dissolute Epicureans by whom he was surrounded on every side.

But his whole life and character were ruined by the attempt to achieve an impossible compromise, which disgraced and could not save him. A philosopher had no place in the impure Court of the Cæsars. To be at once a Stoic and a minister of Nero was an absurd endeavour. Declamations in favour of poverty rang hollow on the lips of a man whose enormous usury poured in from every part of the Empire. The praises of virtue sounded insincere from one who was living in the closest intercourse with men and women steeped in unblushing wickedness. And Seneca was far from easy in his own mind. He was surrounded by flatterers, but he knew that he was not ranked with patriots like Pætus Thrasea, and genuine philosophers like Cornutus and Musonius Rufus. Unable to resist temptations to avarice and ambition, he felt a deep misgiving that the voice of posterity would honour their perilous independence, while it spoke doubtfully of his endless compromises.

Yet he might have been so happy! His mother, Helvia, was a woman who, in the dignity of her life and the simplicity of her desires, set an example to the matrons of Rome, multitudes of whom, in the highest circles, lived in an atmosphere of daily intrigue and almost yearly divorce. His aunt, Marcia, was a lady of high virtue and distinguished ability. His wife, Paulina, was tender and loving. His pretty boy, Marcus, whose bright young life was so soon to end, charmed all by his mirthfulness and engaging ways. His gardens were exquisitely beautiful, and he never felt happier than when he laid aside his cares and amused himself by running races with his little slaves. His palace was splendid and stately, and he needed not to have burdened himself with the magnificence which gave him no pleasure and only excited a dangerous envy. It would have been well for him if he had devoted his life to literature and philosophy. But he entered the magic circle of the Palace, and with a sore conscience was constantly driven to do what he disapproved, and to sanction what he hated.

Short as was the time which had elapsed since the death of Claudius, he was already aware that in trying to control Nero he was holding a wolf by the ears. Some kind friend had shown him a sketch, brought from Pompeii, of a grasshopper driving a griffin, and he knew that, harmless as it looked, the griffin was meant for himself and the grasshopper for Nero. Men regarded him as harnessed to the car of the frivolous pupil whom he was unable to control.

He was sitting in his study one afternoon, and the low wind sounded mournfully through the trees outside. It was a room of fine proportions, and the shelves were crowded with choice books. There were rolls of vellum or papyrus, stained saffron-colour at the back, and fastened to sticks of ebony, of which the bosses were gilded. All the most valuable were enclosed in cases of purple parchment, with their titles attached to them in letters of vermilion. There was scarcely a book there which did not represent the best art of the famous booksellers, the Sosii, in the Vicus Sandalarius, whose firm was as old as the days of Horace. A glance at the library showed the taste as well as the wealth of the eminent owner—the ablest, the richest, the most popular, the most powerful of the Roman senators.

They who thought his lot so enviable little knew that his pomp and power brought him nothing except an almost sleepless anxiety. Every visitor who came to him that morning spoke of subjects which either tortured him with misgivings or vexed him with a touch of shame.

The first to visit Seneca that day was his brother Gallio, with whom he enjoyed a long, confidential, and interesting conversation. Gallio, to whom every one gave the epithet of ‘sweet’ and ‘charming,’ and of whom Seneca said that those who loved him to the utmost did not love him enough, had recently returned from the proconsulship of Achaia. He had just been nominated Consul as a reward for his services. The brothers had much to tell each other. Gallio described some of his experiences, and made Seneca laugh by a story of how a Jewish Rabbi had been dragged before his tribunal by the Jews of Corinth, who were infuriated with him because he had joined this new, strange, and execrable sect of Christians. This Jew’s name was Paulus, and his countrymen accused him of worshipping a malefactor who, for some sedition or other—but probably only to please the turbulent Jews—had been crucified, in the reign of Tiberius, by the Procurator Pontius Pilatus.

‘I naturally refused to have anything to do with their abject superstition,’ said Gallio.

‘Abject enough,’ answered Seneca; ‘but is our mythology much better?’

Gallio answered with a shrug of the shoulders.

‘They are the gods of the mob,’ he said, ‘not ours; and they are useful to the magistrates.’

‘A new god has recently been added to their number,’ said Seneca, ‘the divine Claudius.’

‘Yes,’ said Gallio, significantly; ‘he has been dragged to heaven with a hook! But you have not let me finish my story. It appears that this Paulus was a tent-maker, and for some reason or other, in spite of his absurd beliefs, he had gained the confidence of Erastus, the city chamberlain, and of a great many Greeks; for, strange to say, he had—so I am told—preached a very remarkable and original code of ethics. It is almost inconceivable that a man can hold insane doctrines, and yet conform to a lofty morality. Yet such seems to have been the case with this strange person. I looked at him with curiosity. He was dressed in the common Eastern costume of the Jews, wearing a turban and a coarse striped robe flung over his tunic. He was short, and had the aquiline nose and general type of Judaic features. But though his eyes were sadly disfigured by ophthalmia, there was something extraordinary about his look. You know how those Jews can yell when once their Eastern stolidity is roused to fury. Even in Rome we have had some experience of that; and you remember how Cicero was once almost terrified out of recollection of his speech by the clamour they made, and had to speak in a whisper that they might not hear what he said. To stand in the midst of a mob of such dirty, wildly gesticulating creatures, shouting, cursing, waving their garments in the air, flinging up handfuls of dust, is enough to terrify even a Roman. I, as you know, am a tolerably cool personage, yet I was half appalled, and had to assume a disdainful indifference which I was far from feeling. But this man stood there unmoved. If he had been a Regulus or a Fabricius he could not have been more undaunted, as he looked on his infuriated persecutors with a glance of pitying forgiveness. Every now and then he made a conciliatory gesture, and tried to speak; but though he spoke in Hebrew, which usually pacifies these fanatics to silence, they would not listen to him for an instant. But the perfect dignity, the nobleness of attitude and aspect, with which that worn little Jew stood there, filled me with admiration. And his face! that of Pætus Thrasea is not more striking. The spirit of virtue and purity, and something more which I cannot describe, seemed to breathe from it. It is an odd fact, but those Jews seem to produce not only the ugliest and the handsomest, but also the best and worst of mankind. I sat quiet in my curule chair, and let the Jews yell, telling them once more that, as no civil crime was charged against Paulus, I refused to be a judge in matters of their superstition. At last, getting tired, I ordered the lictors to clear the prætorium, which they did with infinite delight, driving the yelling Jews before them like chaff, and not sparing the blows of their fasces. I thought I had done with the matter then; but not at all! It was the turn of the Greeks now. They resented the fact that the Jews should be allowed to make a riot, and they sided with Paulus. He was hurried by his friends into a place of safety; but the Greeks seized the head of the Jewish Synagogue—a fellow named Sosthenes—and administered to him a sound beating underneath my very tribunal.’

‘Did you not interfere?’ asked Seneca.

‘Not I,’ said Gallio. ‘On the contrary, I nearly died with laughing. What did it matter to a Roman and a philosopher like me whether a rabble of idle Greeks, most of them the scum of the Forum, beat any number of Jews black and blue? It is what we shall have to do to the whole race before long. But, somehow, the face of that Paulus haunted me. They tell me that he was educated at Tarsus, and he was evidently a man of culture. I wanted to get at him, and have a talk with him. I heard that he had been lodging in a squalid lane of the city with a Jewish tent-maker named Aquila, who was driven from Rome by the futile edict of Claudius. But my lictor either could not or would not find out the obscure haunt where he hid himself. The Christians were chary of information, and perhaps, after all, it was as well not to demean myself by talking to a ringleader of a sect whom all men detest for their enormities. If report says true, the old Bacchanalians, whose gang was broken up two hundred years ago, were nothing to them.’6

‘I have heard their name,’ said Seneca. ‘Our slaves probably know a good deal more about the matter than we do, if one took the trouble to ask them. But unless they stir up a riot at Rome I shall not trouble the Emperor by mentioning them.’

At this point of the conversation a slave announced that Seneca’s other brother, the knight Marcus Annæus Mela, and his son Lucan, were waiting in the atrium.

‘Admit them,’ said Seneca. ‘Ah, brother, and you, my Lucan, perhaps it would have been a better thing for us all if we had never left our sunny Cordova.’

‘I don’t know that,’ said Mela. ‘I prefer to be at Rome, a senator in rank, though I choose the station of a knight. To be procurator of the imperial demesnes is more lucrative, as well as more interesting, than looking after our father’s estates in Spain.’

‘What does the poet say?’ asked Gallio, turning to the young Spaniard, a splendid youth of seventeen, whose earlier poems had already been received with unbounded applause, and whose dark eyes glowed with the light of genius and passion. ‘Is he content to stand only second as a poet—if second—to Silius Italicus, and Cæsius Bassus, and young Persius?’

‘Well,’ said Lucan, ‘perhaps a man might equal Silius without any superhuman merit. Persius, like myself, is still young, but I would give up any skill of mine for his delightful character. And, as for Rome, if to be a constant guest at Nero’s table and to hear him read by the hour his own bad poetry be a thing worth living for, then I am better off at Rome than at Cordova.’

‘His poetry is not so very bad,’ said Seneca.

‘Oh! it is magnificent,’ answered Lucan, and, with mock rapture, he repeated some of Nero’s lines:—

What assonance! What realism! What dainty euphuistic audacity! As Persius says, ‘It all seems to swim and melt in the mouth!’

‘Well, well,’ replied the philosopher, ‘at least you will admit that he might be worse employed than in singing and versifying?’

‘An Emperor might be better employed,’ said the young man; ‘and with him I live on tenter-hooks. I heartily wish that he had never summoned me from Athens, or done me the honour of calling me his intimate friend. Frankly, I do not like him. Much as he tries to conceal it, he is horribly jealous of me. He does all he can to make me suppress my poems, though he affects to praise them; and though, of course, when he reads me his verses, I cry “Euge!” and “Σοφῶς!” at every line, as needs must when the master of thirty legions writes, yet he sees through my praise. And I really cannot always suppress my smiles. The other day he told me that the people called his voice “divine.” A minute after, as though meaning to express admiration for his verses, I repeated his phrase—

‘“Thou d’st think it thundered under th’ earth.”8

He was furious! He took it for a twofold reflection, on his voice and on his alliteration; and I was desperately alarmed. It was hard work to pacify him with a deluge of adulation.’

Seneca sighed. ‘Be careful, Lucan,’ he said, ‘be careful! The character of Nero is rapidly altering. At present I have kept back the tiger in him from tasting blood; but when he does he will bathe his jaws pretty deeply. It is ill jesting when one’s head is in a wild beast’s mouth.’

‘And yet,’ said Gallio, ‘I have heard you say that no one could compare the mansuetude even of the aged Augustus with that of the youthful Nero.’

Seneca thought it disagreeable to be reminded of his politic inconsistencies. ‘I wish to lead him to clemency,’ he said, ‘even if he be cruel. But he is his father’s son. You know what Lucius Domitius was. He struck out the eye of a Roman knight, and he purposely ran over and trampled on a poor child in the Appian road. Have I ever told you that the night after I was appointed his tutor I dreamt that my pupil was Caligula?’

There was an awkward pause, and to turn the conversation, Lucan suddenly asked, ‘Uncle, do you believe in Babylonians and their horoscopes?’

‘No,’ said the philosopher. ‘The star of each man’s destiny is in his heart.’

‘Do you not? Well, I will not say that I do. And yet—would you like to hear what a friend told me? He said that he had been a mathematicus under Apollonius of Tyana.’

‘Tell us,’ said his father, Mela. ‘I am not so wise as our Seneca, and I feel certain that there is something in the predictions of the astrologers.’

‘He told me,’ said Lucan, ‘that he had read by the stars that, before ten years are over, you, my uncles, and you, my father, and I, and’—here the young poet shuddered—‘my mother, Atilla—and all of you through my fault—would die deaths of violence. Oh, ye gods, if there be gods, avert this hideous prophecy!’

‘Come, Lucan,’ said Seneca, ‘this is superstition worthy of a Jew, almost of a Christian. The Chaldæans are arrant quacks. Each man makes his own omens. I am Nero’s tutor; you, his friend; our whole family is in the full blaze of favour and prosperity.—But, hark! I hear a soldier’s footstep in the hall. Burrus is coming to see me on important state business. Farewell, now, but sup with me this evening, if you will share my simplicity.’

‘Simplicity!’ answered Mela, with a touch of envy, ‘your humble couches are inlaid with tortoise-shell; and your table shines with crystal and myrrhine vases embossed with gems.’

‘What does it matter whether the goblets of a philosopher be of crystal or of clay?’ answered Seneca gaily; ‘and as for my poor Thyine tables with ivory feet, which every one talks of, Cicero was a student, and he was not rich, yet he had one table which cost 500,000 sesterces. One may surely admire the tigrine stripes and panther-like spots of the citron-wood without being a Lucullus or an Apicius.’

‘But you have five hundred such tables,’ said Mela, ‘worth—I am afraid to say how many million sesterces.’

Seneca smiled a little uneasily. ‘Accepimus peritura perituri; we and our possessions are but for a day,’ he said, ‘and even calumny will bear witness that on those citron tables nothing more sumptuous is usually served to me personally than water and vegetables and fruit.’

Then with a whispered caution to Lucan to control his vehement impulses and act with care, the ‘austere intriguer’ said farewell to his kinsmen, and rose to greet his colleague Burrus.

CHAPTER VIII

SENECA AND HIS VISITORS

‘Videtur mihi cadere in sapientem ægritudo.’—Cic. Tusc. Disp. iii. 4.

Burrus was a man in the prime of life, whose whole bearing was that of an honest and fearless Roman; but his look was gloomy, and those who had seen him when he escorted Nero to the camp and the senate house, noticed how fast the wrinkles seemed to be gathering on his open brow.

We need not repeat the conversation which took place between the friendly ministers, but it was long and troubled. Burrus felt, no less strongly than Seneca, that affairs at Court were daily assuming a more awkward complexion. The mass of the populace, and of the nobles, rejoicing in the general tranquillity, were happily ignorant of facts which filled with foreboding the hearts of the two statesmen. The nobles and the people praised with rapture the speech which Nero had pronounced before the Senate after the funeral honours had been paid to the murdered Claudius. ‘I have,’ he said, ‘no wrongs to avenge; no ill feeling towards a single human being. I will maintain the purity and independence of legal trials. In the Palace there shall be no bribery and no intrigues. I will command the army, but in no particular will I encroach upon the prerogatives of the Conscript Fathers.’ Critics recognised in the speech the style and sentiments of Seneca, but that only showed that at last philosophy was at the helm of state. And the Fathers had really been allowed to enact some beneficent and useful measures. It was the beginning of a period of government of which the public and external beneficence was due to Seneca and the Prætorian Præfect, who acted together in perfect harmony, and with whom Nero was too indolent to interfere. Long afterwards, so great a ruler as Trajan said that he would emulate, but could not hope to equal, the fame of Nero’s golden quinquennium.

But, meanwhile, unknown to the Roman world in general, the ‘golden quinquennium’ was early stained with infamy and blood; and the contemporary Pliny says that all through his reign Nero was an enemy of the human race.9

The turbulent ambition of Agrippina was causing serious misgivings. When the senators were summoned to meet in the Palace she contrived to sit behind a curtain and hear all their deliberations. When Nero was about to receive the Armenian ambassadors she would have scandalised the majesty of Rome by taking her seat unbidden beside him on the throne, if Seneca had not had the presence of mind to whisper to the Emperor that he should step down to meet his mother and lead her to a seat. Worse than this, she had ordered the murder, not only of Narcissus, but of the noble Junius Silanus, whose brother, the affianced suitor of Octavia before her marriage with Nero, she had already got rid of by false accusations which broke his heart. She was doubly afraid of Junius, both because the blood of Augustus flowed in his veins, and because she feared that he might one day be the avenger of his brother, though he was a man of mild disposition. She sent the freedman Helius and the knight Publius Celer, who were procurators in Asia, to poison him at a banquet, and the deed was done with a cynical boldness which disdained concealment. So ended the great-great-grandson of Augustus, whom his great-great-grandfather had just lived to see. It was only with difficulty that Seneca and Burrus had been able to stop more tragedies, and they had succeeded in making the world believe in Nero’s unique clemency by the anecdote, everywhere retailed by Seneca, that when called upon to sign a death-warrant he had exclaimed, ‘I wish I did not know how to write!’ It was looked on as a further sign of grace that he had forbidden the prosecution of the knight Julius Densus, who was charged with favour towards the wronged Britannicus.

But now a new trouble had arisen. Nero began to seek the company of such effeminate specimens of the ‘gilded youth’ of Rome as Otho and Tullius Senecio. They were his ready tutors in every vice, and he was a pupil whose fatal aptitude soon equalled, if it did not surpass, the viciousness of his instructors.

Partly through their bad influence, he had devoted himself heart and soul to Acte, the beautiful freedwoman of Octavia. It was impossible that any secret of the Palace could long be concealed from the vigilant eyes of Agrippina. She had discovered the amour, and had burst into furious reproaches. What angered her was, not that the Emperor should disgrace himself by vice, but that a freedwoman should interfere with the supremacy of her will, and be a rival with her for the affections of her son. A little forbearance, a little calm advice, might have proved a turning point in the life of one who was not yet an abandoned libertine, but rather a shy and timid youth dabbling with his first experiences of wrong. His nature, indeed, was endowed with the evil legacy of many an hereditary taint, but if it was as wax to the stamp of evil, it was not as yet incapable of being moulded into good. But Agrippina committed two fatal errors. At first she was loudly indignant, and when by such conduct she had terrified her son into the confidence of Otho and Senecio, she saw her mistake too late, and flew into the opposite extreme of complaisance. Nero at that time regarded her with positive dread, but his fear was weakened when he saw that, on the least sign of his displeasure, she passed from fierce objurgations to complete submission. In dealing with her son, Agrippina lost the astuteness which had carried her triumphantly through all her previous designs.

But at this point Seneca also made a mistake no less ruinous. If he had remonstrated, and endeavoured to awaken his pupil to honourable ambition, it was not impossible that the world might have found in Nero a better Emperor than most of his predecessors. Instead of this, the philosopher adopted the fatal policy of concession. He even induced his cousin Annæus Serenus, the Præfect of the police, to shield Nero by pretending that he was himself in love with Acte, and by conveying to her the presents which were, in reality, sent to her by the Emperor. Seneca soon learnt by experience that the bad is never a successful engine to use against the worst, and that fire cannot be quenched by pouring oil upon it. When Nero had been encouraged by a philosopher to think lightly of immorality, the reins of his animal nature were seized by ‘the unspiritual god Circumstance,’ and with mad pace he plunged into the abyss.

Burrus had come to tell Seneca that Nero’s passion for Acte was going to such absurd lengths that he talked of suborning two Romans of consular dignity to swear that the slave girl, who had been brought from Asia, was in reality a descendant of Attalus, King of Pergamus! The Senate would be as certain to accept the statement as they had been to pretend belief that Pallas was a scion of Evander and the ancient kings of Arcadia; and Nero had actually expressed to Burrus a desire to divorce OctaviaT2 and marry Acte!

‘What did you say to him?’ asked Seneca.

‘I told him frankly that, if he divorced Octavia, he ought to restore her dower.’

‘Her dower?’

‘Yes—the Roman Empire. He holds it because Claudius adopted him as the husband of his daughter.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He pouted like a chidden boy, and I have not the least doubt that he will remember the answer against me.’

‘But, Burrus,’ said Seneca, ‘I really think that we had better promote, rather than oppose, this love-affair. Acte is harmless and innocent. She will never abuse her influence to injure so much as a fly; nay, more, she may wean Nero from far more dangerous excesses. I think that in this case a little connivance may be the truest policy. To tell you the truth, I have endeavoured to prevent scandal by removing all difficulties out of the way.’

‘You are a philosopher,’ said Burrus, ‘and I suppose you know best. It would not have been my way. We often perish by permitted things. But, since you do not take so serious a view of this matter as I did, I will say no more. Forgive a brief interview. My duties at the camp require my presence. Farewell.’

Seneca, as we have seen, had spent a somewhat agitated day, but he had one more visitor before the afternoon meal. It was the philosopher Cornutus, who had been a slave in the family of the Annæi, but was now free and had risen to the highest literary distinction by his philosophical writings.

‘Cornutus is always a welcome visitor,’ he said, as he rose to greet him; ‘never more so than this morning. I want to consult you, in deep confidence, about the Emperor’s education.’

‘Can Seneca need any advice about education?’ said Cornutus. ‘Who has written so many admirable precepts on the subject?’

Seneca, with infinite plausibility, related to his friend the arguments which he had just used to Burrus. He felt a restless desire that the Stoic should approve of what he had done. To fortify his opinion he quoted Zeno and other eminent philosophers, who had treated graver offences than that of Nero as mere adiaphora—things of no real moment. Cornutus, however, at once tore asunder his web of sophistry.

‘A thing is either right or wrong,’ he said; ‘if it is wrong no amount of expediency can sanction it, no skill of special pleading can make it other than reprehensible. The passions cannot be checked by sanctioning their indulgence, but by training youth in the manliness of self-control. You wish to prevent the Emperor from disgracing himself with the crimes which rendered execrable the reigns of Tiberius and Gaius. Can you do it otherwise than by teaching him that what he ought to do is also what he can do? Is the many-headed monster of the young man’s impulses to be checked by giving it the mastery, or rather by putting it under the dominion of his reason?’

‘I cannot judge by abstract considerations of ethics. I must judge as a statesman,’ said Seneca, somewhat offended.

‘Then, if you are only a statesman, do not pretend to act as a philosopher. I speak to you frankly, as one Stoic to another.’

Seneca said nothing. It was evident that he felt deeply hurt by the bluntness of Cornutus, who paused for a moment, regarding him with a look of pity. Then he continued.

‘If it pains you to hear the truth I will be silent; but if you wish me to speak without reserve, you are committing two fatal errors. You dream of controlling passion by indulging it. You are conceding liberty in one set of vices in the vain hope of saving Nero from another. But all vices are inextricably linked together. And you have committed a second mistake, not only by addressing your pupil in language of personal flattery, but also by inflating him with a belief in his own illimitable power.’10

‘Nero is Emperor,’ answered Seneca curtly, ‘and, after all, he can do whatever he likes.’

‘Yet even as Emperor he can be told the truth,’ replied Cornutus. ‘I for one ventured to offend him yesterday.’

‘In what way?’

‘Your nephew Lucan was belauding Nero’s fantastic verses, and said he wished Nero would write four hundred volumes. “Four hundred!” I said; “that is far too many.” “Why?” said Lucan; “Chrysippus, whom you are always praising, wrote four hundred.” “Yes,” I answered, “but they were of use to mankind!” Nero frowned portentously, and I received warning looks from all present; but if a true man is to turn flatterer to please an Emperor, what becomes of his philosophy?’

‘Yes,’ sighed Seneca: ‘but your pupil Persius is a youth of the sweetest manners and the purest heart; whereas Nero is—Nero.’

‘A finer young Roman than Persius never lived,’ replied the Stoic, ‘but if I had encouraged Persius in the notion that vice was harmless, Persius might have been—Nero.’

‘Cornutus,’ said the statesman—and as he said it he sighed deeply—‘your lot is humbler and happier than mine. I do not follow, but I assent; I am crushed by an awful weight of uncertainty, and sometimes life seems a chaos of vanities. I wish to rise to a loftier grade of virtue, but I am preoccupied with faults. All I can require of myself is, not to be equal to the best, but only to be better than the bad.’11

‘He who aims highest,’ said the uncompromising freedman, ‘will reach the loftiest ideal. And surely it is hypocrisy to use fine phrases when you do not intend to put your own advice into practice.’

Seneca was always a little touchy about his style, and he was now thoroughly angry, for he was not accustomed to be thus bluntly addressed by one so immeasurably beneath him in rank. ‘Fine phrases!’ he repeated, in a tone of deep offence. ‘It pleases you to be rude, Cornutus. Perhaps the day will come when the “fine phrases” of Seneca will still be read, though the name of Cornutus, and even of Musonius, is forgotten.’

‘Very possibly,’ answered the uncompromising freedman. ‘Nevertheless, I agree with Musonius that stylists who do not act up to their own precepts should be called fiddlers and not philosophers.’

When Cornutus rose to leave, the feelings of the most envied man in Rome were far from enviable. He would have given much to secure the Stoic’s approval. And yet the sophistries by which he blinded his own bitter feelings were unshaken. ‘Cornutus,’ he said to himself, ‘is not only discourteous but unpractical. Theory is one thing; life another. We are in Rome, not in Plato’s Atlantis.’

Seneca lived to find out that facing both ways is certain failure, and that a man cannot serve two masters.

In point of fact the struggle was going on for the preponderance of influence over Nero. Agrippina thought that she could use him as a gilded figurehead of the ship of state, while she stood at the helm and directed the real course. Burrus and Seneca, distrusting her cruelty and ambition, believed that they could render her schemes nugatory, and convert Nero into a constitutional prince. Both efforts were alike foiled. The passions which were latent in the temperament of the young Emperor were forced into rank growth by influences incomparably less virile than that of his mother, and incomparably more vile than those of the soldier and the philosopher. Otho was a more effective tutor than Seneca, and Seneca’s own vacillation paved the way for Otho’s corrupting spell. Claudius had been governed by an ‘aristocracy of valets;’ Nero was to be governed neither by the daughter of Germanicus nor by the Stoic moralist, but by a despicable fraternity of minions, actors, and debauchees.

CHAPTER IX

NERO AND HIS COMPANIONS

‘Res pertricosa est, Cotile, bellus homo.’—Martial, iii. 63.

Nero had been spending the morning with some of the new friends whose evil example was rapidly destroying in his mind every germ of decency or virtue. Though it was still but noon, he was dressed in a loose synthesis—a dress of light green, unconfined by any girdle, and he had soft slippers on his feet. This negligence was due only to the desire for selfish comfort, for in other respects he paid extreme attention to his personal appearance. His fair hair was curled and perfumed, and his hands were covered with splendid gems.

But even a brief spell of imperial power, with late hours, long banquets, deep gambling, and reckless dissipation, had already left their brand upon his once attractive features. His cheeks had begun to lose the rose and glow of youth and to assume the pale and sodden appearance which in a few years obliterated the last traces of beauty and dignity from his ruined face.

With him sat and lounged and yawned and gossiped and flattered a choice assemblage of spirits more wicked than himself.

The room in which they were sitting was one of the most private apartments of the Palace. It had been painted in the reign of Gaius with frescoes graceful and brilliant, but such as would now be regarded as proofs of an utterly depraved taste. As he glanced at the works of art with which the chamber was decorated, Otho thought, not without complacency, of the day when the prediction made to him by an astrologer should be fulfilled, and he too would be Emperor of Rome. He highly approved of frescoes such as these, though even Ovid and Propertius had complained of their corrupting tendency.

Otho was now nearly twenty-three years old, and was a characteristic product of imperial civilisation. His face was smooth, for he had artificially prevented the growth of a beard. To hide his baldness, which he regarded as the most cruel wrong of the unjust gods, he wore a wig, so natural and close-fitting as scarcely to be recognisable, and this was arranged in front in the fashion which he set, and which Nero followed. Four rows of symmetrical curls half hid the narrow forehead. Those curls had cost his barber two hours’ labour that morning, and they were dyed with a Batavian pomade into the blonde colour which was the most admired. In figure Otho was small; his legs were bowed, and his feet ill-shaped, but his large eyes and beautiful mouth gave him a sweet and engaging, though effeminate, expression. Indeed, effeminacy was his main characteristic, and there was a touch of effeminacy even in the much belauded suicide to which his destiny was leading him. When he was a boy, his father was so disgusted by his ways that he flogged him like the lowest of his slaves. He was one of those creatures of perfumed baths, delicate languor, soft manners, and disordered appetites, who, in that age, so often took refuge from a depraved life in a voluntary death.12 He was entirely impecunious, and was loaded with debts—a circumstance which he did not regard as any obstacle to a life of boundless extravagance. In order to get introduced to Nero he had the effrontery to make love to a plain and elderly freedwoman, who had some influence at Court. When he had once secured an introduction he became the ardent friend of Nero, and the intimate accomplice of his worst dissipations. Being six years older than the Emperor, and far more accomplished in vice, he exercised a spell which rapidly undermined the grave lessons of Burrus and Seneca. Precociously corrupt, serenely egotistical, cynical in dishonour, and gangrened to the depth of his soul by debauchery, Otho, though still a youth, had so completely got rid of the moral sense as to present to the world a spectacle of unruffled self-content. A radiant and sympathetic softness reigned smiling on his smooth and almost boyish face.

By the side of Otho lounged another youth, whose name was Tullius Senecio. He was wealthy and reckless, and he had made himself a leader of fashion among the young Roman nobles. With them was the brilliant Petronius Arbiter, a man of refined culture and natural wit, but the most cynically shameless liver and talker even in Rome. The group was completed by the able and rough-tongued but not over-scrupulous Vestinus, the dissolute Quintianus, and the singularly handsome Tigellinus, who was as yet only at the beginning of his career, but who, of all the minions of that foul Court, became the most cruel, the most treacherous, and the most corrupt.

And yet weariness reigned supreme over these luxurious votaries of fashion. They had at first tried to get some amusement out of the antics of Massa, a half-witted boy, and Asturco, a dwarf; but when they had teased Massa into sullenness, and Asturco into tears and bellowings of rage, Petronius interfered, and voted such amusements boorish and in bad taste. Then they tried to kill time by betting and gambling over games at marbles and draughts. The ‘pieces’ (latrunculi and ocellata) of glass, ivory, and silver lay scattered over tables, just as they were when the players got tired of the games, and the draught boards (tabulæ latrunculariæ) had been carelessly tossed on the floor. Then they sent for plates of honey-apples, and bowls of Falernian wine, and took an extemporised meal. Nero even condescended to amuse himself with rolling little ivory chariots down a marble slab, and betting on their speed. Still they all felt that the hours were somewhat leaden-footed, till a bright thought struck the Emperor. He had passed some of his early years in poverty, and this circumstance, together with his æsthetic appreciation of things beautiful, made him delight in showing his treasures to his intimates. By way of finding something to do, he suggested to his friends that they should come and look at the wardrobes of the former empresses, which were under the charge of a multitude of dressers, folders, and jewellers. Orders were given that everything should be laid out for their inspection. Except Petronius, they all had an effeminate passion for jewellery, and they whiled away an hour in inspecting the robes, stiff with gold brocade and broideries of pearl, sapphire, and emerald.

By this time Nero was in high good-humour, and seized the opportunity of a little ostentation towards the ‘lisping hawthorn-buds’ of fashion by whom he was surrounded.

He chose out a superb cameo, on which was carved a Venus Anadyomene, and gave it to Otho. ‘There,’ he said; ‘that will adorn the neck of your fair Poppæa. Vestinus, this opal was the one for the sake of which Mark Antony procured the proscription of the senator Nonius. You don’t deserve it, for you can be very rude—’

‘Free speech is a compliment to strong emperors,’ said Vestinus, hardly concealing the irony of his tone.

‘Ah, well!’ continued Nero, ‘I shall not give it you for your deserts, but because it will look splendid on the ivory arm of your Statilia. A more fitting present to you would be this little viper enclosed in amber;13 the viper is your malice, the amber your flattery. And what on earth am I to give you, Senecio? or you, Petronius? You are devoted to so many fair ladies, that I should have to give you the whole wardrobe; but I will give you, Senecio, a silken fillet embroidered with pearls; and, Petronius, Nature has set out this agate—I believe it is from the spoils of Pyrrhus—for no one but you, for she has marked on it an outline of Apollo and the Muses. Quintianus, this ring with Hylas on it will just suit you.’

There was a hidden sarcasm in much which he had said even while he distributed his gifts, and not a few serpents hissed among the flowery speeches interchanged in this bad society. But they all thanked him effusively for presents so splendid.

At this point a sudden thought suggested itself to Nero. He had not seen much of his mother for the last few days, and being in buoyant spirits, and thoroughly pleased with himself, he chose out the most splendid robe and ornaments, and bade some of the wardrobe-keepers to carry them to the apartments of the Augusta, with the message that they were a present from her son. ‘And do you,’ he said to his freedman Polycletus, ‘bring me back word of what the Empress says in thanks.’

Nero and his friends returned to the room in which they had been sitting, and had begun to play at dice for large stakes, when Polycletus came back, flushed and excited.

Nero was himself a little uneasy at what he had done. His mother, with her unlimited resources, hardly needed a present of this kind. As long as she was Empress, all these robes had been her own; and Nero was exercising an unwonted sort of patronage when he sent this gift by the hands of an attendant. There was a certain vulgarity in his attention, which was all the worse because it was ostentatious. And yet, if Agrippina had been wise, she would have shown greater command over her temper, and have prevented that tragic widening of the ‘little rift within the lute’ which soon silenced the music of a mother’s love.

‘Well, and was the Augusta pleased?’ asked Nero, looking up from his dice.

‘I will report to the Emperor when he is alone,’ said the freedman.

‘Tush, man!’ answered Nero, nervously. ‘We are all friends here, and if my mother was very effusive in her compliments, they will pardon it.’

‘She returned no praises and no thanks.’

‘Ha! that was ungracious. Tell me exactly what she did.’

‘She asked me who were with you, and I mentioned the names of those present.’

‘What business is it of hers?’ said Nero, reddening, as he noticed the significant glances interchanged between Otho and Vestinus, the latter of whom whispered a Greek proverb about boys tied to their mother’s apron-strings.

‘She then asked whether you had given any other presents, and I said that you had. “To whom?” she asked.’

‘A regular cross-examination!’ whispered Vestinus.

‘I said that you had made presents to Otho, Vestinus, and others.’

‘You need not have been so very communicative, Polycletus,’ said Nero; ‘but go on.’

‘Her lip curled as I mentioned the names.’

‘We are not favourites of the Augusta, alas!’ lisped Otho.

‘But what did she say about the robe?’

‘She barely glanced at the robe and jewels, and when she had finished questioning me, she stamped her foot, tossed the dress over a seat, and scattered the gems over the floor.’

Nero grew very red, and as the freedman again remained silent, he asked whether the Augusta had sent no message.

Polycletus hesitated.

‘Go on, man!’ exclaimed Nero, impatiently. ‘In any case you are not to blame for anything she said.’

‘I am ashamed to repeat the Augusta’s words,’ said the messenger. ‘But, if I must tell you, she said: “My son gives a part to me, who have given all to him. Whatever he has he owes to me. He sends me these, I suppose, that I may put in no claim to the rest. Let him keep his finery. There are things that I value more highly.” And then she rose, and spurning with her foot the robe which lay in her way, she swept out of the room.’

Nero bit his lip, and his eyes gleamed with rage. He was maddened by the meaning smiles of Senecio, and the expression of cynical amusement which passed over the face of Petronius.

Otho came to the rescue. ‘Do not be disturbed, Nero,’ he said. ‘Agrippina only forgot for the moment that you are now Emperor.’

‘The Augusta evidently thinks that you are still a boy in the purple-bordered toga,’ sneered Tigellinus.

Nero dashed down his dice-box, overturned the table at which they were sitting, and began to pace the room in extreme agitation. He had not yet quite shaken off the familiarity of his mother’s dominance. He was genuinely afraid of her, and he knew to what fearful lengths she might be hurried by her passion and her hate.

‘I cannot stand it,’ he muttered to himself. ‘I am no match for Agrippina. Who knows but what she may prepare a mushroom, or something else, for me? I hate Rome. I hate the Empire. I will lay aside the purple. I only want to enjoy myself. I will go to Rhodes and live there. I can sing, if I can do nothing else, and if all else fails, I will support myself with singing in the streets of Alexandria. The astrologers have promised me that I shall be king in Jerusalem, or somewhere in the East. Here I am utterly wretched.’

He flung himself angrily on a couch, and a red spot rose upon his cheeks. ‘I wonder how she dares to insult me thus! If I had sent the robe and jewels to Octavia, the poor child would have touched heaven with her finger. If I had sent them to Acte, her soft eyes would have beamed with love. Of what use is it to be Emperor, if my mother is to flout and domineer like this?’

‘Does not Cæsar know what gives her this audacity?’ asked Tigellinus, in a low tone.

‘No,’ answered Nero; ‘except it be that she has ruled me from a child.’

‘It is,’ said the adventurer, ‘because Pallas abets her, and because—’

He paused.

‘Pallas? Who is Pallas?’ said the Emperor. ‘An ex-slave—nothing more. I am not afraid of him. I will dismiss him at once, and if he gives the least trouble, I will threaten him with an inquisition into his account. He shall go and end his Pallas-ship.14 But what else were you going to say?’

‘Agrippina domineers,’ he whispered in the Emperor’s ear, ‘because Britannicus is alive.’

‘Britannicus?’ answered Nero.

He said no more, but his brow became dark as night.