CHAPTER X

PRINCE BRITANNICUS.

There were few youths in Rome more deserving of pity than the son of Claudius. Britannicus saw himself not only superseded, but deliberately neglected and thrust into the background. The intrigues of his stepmother had succeeded, and he, the true heir to the Empire, was a cipher in the Palace of the Cæsars. The suite of apartments assigned to his use and that of his immediate attendants was in one of the least frequented parts of the Palace. He often heard from the banquet hall and reception rooms, as he passed by them unnoticed, the sounds of revelry, in which he was only allowed on rare occasions to participate. Agrippina, in her varying moods, treated him sometimes with studied coolness and insulting patronage, sometimes with a sort of burning and maudlin affection, as though she were touched by the furies of remorse. The latter mood was more intolerable to him than the former. Sometimes, when she strained him to her steely heart, he felt as if he could have thrust her from him with loathing, and he made his relations with her more difficult because he was too little of an actor to conceal his dislike. Nero usually met him with sneering banter, but he, too, at times, seemed as though he would like to be treated by him with at least the semblance of brotherly cordiality. He found his chief comfort in the society of Octavia. She was, nominally, the Empress, and Nero, though he shunned her to the utmost of his power, had not yet dared to rob her of the dignities which surrounded her exalted rank. It was in the company of his sister that Britannicus spent his happiest hours. Octavia, as often as she dared, invited him to be present on festive occasions, and in her apartments he could find refuge for a time from the most detested of the spies with whom his stepmother had surrounded him from his early boyhood.

There was but one person about him whom he really trusted and loved. It was the centurion Pudens, who, being one of the imperial guard called excubitores, was often stationed at one point or other of the Palace. So vast was the interior of that pile of architecture, so intricate its structure, owing to the numerous additions which had been made to it by each succeeding Emperor, that for a boy bent, as Britannicus was, on occasionally eluding the intolerable watchfulness of his nominal slaves, it was not difficult to conceal his movements. Happily, too, he had one boyish friend whom he loved, and who loved him, with entire affection. It was Titus, the elder son of Vespasian. Even as a boy he gave promise of the fine moral qualities by which he was afterwards distinguished. His father was a soldier who had risen by merit to high command, and had even been Consul; but his grandfather was only a humble provincial, and, as his family was poor, he little dreamed that he too was destined to the purple of which his friend had been deprived. He was only a month or two older than Britannicus. They shared the same studies and the same games, and there was something contagious in his healthy vigour and imperturbable good humour. It was at least some alleviation to the sorrows of the younger boy that this manly and virtuous lad, with his short curly hair and athletic frame, was always ready to exert himself to brighten his loneliness and divert his thoughts. Painters might have called the features of Titus plebeian, but in his eyes and mouth there was an expression of honesty and sweetness which endeared him to the heart of the lonely prince, who admired him far more than any of the boys in the noblest families.

The political insignificance of the Flavian family had been one reason why Agrippina had chosen Titus as a companion for the son of Claudius, instead of some scion of the old aristocracy of Rome. It was well for Britannicus that his fellow-pupil came of a race purer and simpler than that of the youthful patricians.

The two boys had been educated together for some years; and Titus, when he became Emperor, still retained a fond affection for the companion of his youth, to whom he erected an equestrian statue. There was a story, known to very few, which might have endangered the life of Titus, had it been divulged. One day, when the two boys were learning their lessons together, Narcissus had brought in one of the foreign physiognomists who were known as metoposcopi, to look at them from behind a curtain. The man did not know who they were; he only knew that they were in some way connected with the Palace. After carefully studying their faces, he said that the elder of the two, Titus, should certainly become Emperor, but the younger as certainly should not. At that time Britannicus was heir to the throne. Narcissus was superstitious, and his heart misgave him; but he derived some comfort from the absurd improbability of a prophecy that a boy who had been born in so humble a house, and was only the descendant of a Cisalpine haymaker, should ever wear the purple of the Cæsars. He was too kind-hearted to let the anecdote be generally known, for even as a boy Titus was liked by every one, if he was not yet ‘the darling of the human race.’

One day, as Titus went across the viridarium, or chief green court of the Palace, he saw a little slave-boy struggling hard to repress his sobs. His kindly nature was touched by the sight. He had not been trained in the school of those haughty youths who thought it a degradation to speak to their slaves; his father, Vespasian, being himself of lowly origin, held, with Seneca, that slaves, after all, were men, and might become dear and faithful friends.

‘What is your name, and why do you weep, my little man?’ asked Titus.

‘They call me Epictetus,’ said the child; ‘and I am the slave of Epaphroditus, the Emperor’s secretary. I fell and hurt my leg very badly against the marble rim of the fountain. Don’t be angry with me. I will bear the pain.’15

‘A born Stoic!’ said Titus, smiling. ‘But what is the matter with your leg?’

‘I will tell you, sir,’ answered Epictetus. ‘Being deformed and useless, as you see, my master thought that he might turn me to some account by having me taught philosophy, and he made me capsarius16 to his son, who attends the lectures of Musonius Rufus. Musonius, who is kind and good, let me sit in a corner and listen. I am not a Stoic yet, but I shall try to be one some day.’

‘But even now you have not told me how you came to be lame.’

The young slave blushed. ‘Eight weeks ago,’ he said, ‘I was walking past the door of the triclinium, when a slave came out with some crystal vases on a tray. He ran against me, and one of the vases fell and was broken. He charged me with having broken it, and Epaphroditus ordered my leg to be twisted. It hurt me terribly, but Musonius had taught me to endure, and I only cried out, “If you go on, you will break my leg.” He went on, and broke it. I did not give way then, and I am ashamed that you saw me crying now.’

‘Poor lad! Come with me to Prince Britannicus and tell him that story. He is kind, and will pity you, and perhaps get the Empress Octavia to do something for you.’

Epictetus limped after Titus, and Britannicus was pleased with the slave-boy’s quaint fortitude and the preternatural gravity of his face. He often sat on the floor while the two friends talked or played at draughts, and would sometimes retail to them what he had heard in the lectures of Musonius. They laughed at his naïveté, but something of the teaching stuck. The Stoicism of Titus had its germ in those boyish days.

One other friend, strange to say, Britannicus had near at hand, though she could not openly have much conversation with him. It was the fair freedwoman Acte. Her situation in the Palace did not argue in her a depraved mind. She had not been trained in an atmosphere which made her suppose that there was anything sinful in her relations with the Emperor. Brought from Asia in early youth, she was practically no more than a slave, though she had been emancipated by Claudius. The will of a master, even if that master was far below an Emperor, was regarded as a necessary law.17 But Acte had a good heart, and so far from being puffed up by the ardent affection of Nero, her one desire was to use her influence for the benefit of others. For Britannicus she felt the deepest pity. She had even aroused the anger of her lover by pleading in his behalf, and though it was impossible that she should do more than interchange with him an occasional salutation, the boy gratefully recognised that Acte did her best to gain for him every indulgence and relaxation in her power.

Britannicus had inherited some of his father’s fondness for history. He was never happier than when Titus told him some of the stories which he had heard from Vespasian about his campaigns in Britain. He had even persuaded Pudens to go with him to visit the old British chief, Caractacus—or, to give him his right name, Caradoc—who had kept the Romans at bay for nine years, until he was betrayed to them by the treacherous Queen Cartismandua. And much had come of this visit; for there Pudens saw for the first time the daughter of Caradoc, the yellow-haired British princess Claudia, and had fallen deeply in love with her. The grey King of the Silures, whose manly eloquence had moved the admiration of Claudius on the day when he had been led along in triumph, was eating away his heart in a strange land. He rejoiced to see the son of the Emperor who had spared his life, and he delighted the boy’s imagination with many a tale of the Druids, and Mona, and the wild Silurian hills and the vast rushing rivers, and the hunting of the wolf and the wild-boar in the marshes and forests of Caer Leon and Caer Went. While Caractacus was telling these stories there was ample opportunity for Pudens to improve his acquaintance with the fair Claudia, who talked to him with a yearning heart of her home on the silver Severn, which Pudens had once visited as a very young soldier.

These interviews made Britannicus eager to form the acquaintance of Aulus Plautius, the conqueror of the southern part of that far island. Plautius stood well at Court, and had been greatly honoured by Claudius, who had condescended to walk by his side in the ovation which rewarded the successful campaigns of four years. Britannicus gained easy permission to visit the old general, and at his house he met his wife, Pomponia Græcina.

This lady was regarded at Rome as a paragon of faithful friendship. She had been deeply attached in early youth to her royal kinswoman Julia, the granddaughter of Tiberius. Julia had been one of the victims of the cruelty of Messalina, and from the day of her execution, for forty years, Pomponia never appeared but in mourning garments, and it was said, though without truth, that she never wore a smile upon her face.

But though she smiled but rarely, the beauty of Pomponia was exquisite from her look of serenity and contentment. She was unlike the other ladies of Roman society. She never tinged her face with walnut juice, or painted it with rouge and cerussa, or reared her tresses into an elaborate edifice of curls, or sprinkled them with gold dust, or breathed of Assyrian odours. Her life and her dress were exquisitely simple. She wore no ornaments, or few. She rarely appeared at any banquet, and then only with her husband at the houses of the graver and more virtuous senators. Vice was involuntarily abashed at her presence. The talk which Roman matrons sometimes did not blush to hear was felt to be impossible where Pomponia was present, nor would any one have dreamed of introducing loose gymnasts or Gaditanian dancers as the amusement of any guests of whom she was one. Hence she was more and more neglected by the jewelled dandies and divorced ladies, who fluttered amid the follies of a heartless aristocracy, and gradually the gossiping pleasure-hunters of Rome came to hate her because her whole life was a rebuke of the degradation of a corrupt society.

Hatred soon took the form of whispered accusations. The suspicion was first broached by Calvia Crispinilla, a lady whose notoriously evil character elevated her high in the confidence of Nero, and who, in spite of her rank, was afterwards proud of the infamy of being appointed keeper of the wardrobe of his favourite Sporus.

Talking one day to Ælia Petina, a divorced wife of Claudius and mother of his daughter Antonia, she expressed her dislike of Pomponia, and said, ‘It is impossible that any worshipper of our gods should live a life so austere as Pomponia’s. Hark, in your ears, Petina. She must be’—and sinking her voice to a tragic whisper she said—‘she must be a secret Christian.’

‘Well,’ said Petina, ‘what does it matter? Nero himself worships the Syrian goddess, and they say that the lovely Poppæa Sabina, the wife of Otho, is a Jewess.’

‘A Jewess! oh, that is comparatively respectable,’ said Crispinilla. ‘Why, Berenice, the charming sister—ahem! the very deeply attached sister—of Agrippa, you know, is a Jewess; and what diamonds that woman has! But a Christian! Why, the very word has a taint of vulgarity about it, and leaves a bad flavour in the mouth! None but unspeakable slaves and cobblers and Phrygian runaways belong to those worshippers of the god Onokoites and the head of an ass.’18

What malice had invented as a calumny happened in this instance to be a truth. Pomponia was indeed a secret Christian. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and none can tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. She had accompanied her husband when he had been sent to subdue Britain, and had known the agonies of long and intensely anxious separation from him, and during those periods of trial she had been compelled to be much alone, and part of the time she had spent in Gaul. Persis, her confidential handmaid, had met one of the early missionaries of the faith, had heard his message, had been converted. Accident had revealed the fact to the noble Roman lady; and as she talked with Persis in many a long and lonely hour, her heart too had been touched by grace, and a life always pure had now become the life of a saint of God.

Plautius was glad to notice the manly interest taken by Britannicus in the country from which his name had been derived, and in martial achievements rather than in the debasing effeminacies of the Roman nobles. He always welcomed the boy’s presence, and introduced him to the kind hospitalities of his wife. Both parents were glad that a scion of the Cæsars who seemed to show the old Roman virtues of modesty and manliness should be a frequent companion of their own son, the young Aulus. To Pomponia the son of Claudius felt strongly drawn. She was wholly unlike any type of woman he had ever seen; she seemed to be separated by whole worlds of difference from such ladies as his own mother, Messalina, or his stepmother, Agrippina; and though she only dressed in simple and sombre garments, yet the peace and sweetness which breathed from her countenance made her more lovely in his eyes than the great wives of Consuls and senators whom he had so often seen sweeping through gilded chambers on the Palatine in their gleaming and gold-embroidered robes. He noticed, too, that his sister, the Empress Octavia, never visited her without coming home in a happier and more contented mood.

One day, being more than ever filled with admiration for her goodness, he had spoken to her freely of all his bitter trials, of all his terrible misgivings. She had impressed on him the duties of resignation and forgiveness; and had tried to show him that in a mind conscious of integrity he might have a possession better and more abiding than if he sat amid numberless temptations to baseness on an uneasy throne.

‘You speak,’ he said, ‘like Musonius Rufus; for the young Phrygian slave, Epictetus, whom Titus took compassion on and sometimes brings to our rooms, has told me much about his Stoic lectures. But there is something—I know not what—in your advice which is higher and more cheerful than in his.’

Pomponia smiled. ‘Much that Musonius teaches is true and beautiful,’ she said; ‘but there is a diviner truth in the world than his.’

Britannicus was silent for a moment, and then, hesitatingly and with reluctance, he said, ‘Will you forgive me, noble Pomponia, if I ask you a question?’

The pale countenance of the lady grew a shade paler, and she replied, ‘You might ask me what I should not think it right to answer.’

‘You know,’ said the boy, ‘that at banquets and other gatherings I cannot help hearing the gossip and scandal which they talk all the day long. And all the worst ladies—persons like Crispinilla and Petina and Silana—seem to hate you, I know not why; and they said that you would be accused some day of holding a foreign superstition.’

Pomponia clasped her hands, and uttered a few words which Britannicus could not hear. Then, turning to him, she said, ‘Perhaps Musonius has quoted those lines of Cleanthes, “Lead me, O Father of the world. I will follow thee, even though I weep.”19 We can never prevent the wicked from accusing us, but we can always give the lie to their accusations by innocent lives.’

‘What they said besides, must have been an absurd and wicked lie,’ continued Britannicus. ‘They said’—and here he made the sign of averting an evil omen which has been prevalent in Italy from the earliest days—‘that—you—were—dare I speak the vulgar word?—a Christian.’

‘And what do you know about the Christians, Britannicus?’

‘In truth I know very little, for I am not allowed to go about much; but Titus, who hears more than I do, tells me that they meet at night, and kill a babe, and drink its blood; and bind themselves by horrid oaths; and tie dogs to the lamp-stands, and hark them on to throw over the lamps, and are afterwards guilty of dreadful orgies. And they worship an ass’s head.’

‘What makes you believe that slanderous nonsense?’

‘Why, Titus is fond of scratching his name on the wall, and when we were going out of the pædagogium in the House of Gelotius, which, you know, is now used as a training school for the pages, he scrawled Titus Flavius Vespasianus leaves the pædagogium, and then drew a little sketch of a donkey, and underneath it Toil, little ass, as I have done, and it will do you good. I laughed at him for scribbling on the wall, and to make fun of him I wrote underneath—

And I told him that I should put up a notice like that at the Portus Portuensis, which begs boys and idlers not to scarify (scarificare) the walls. But while I was writing the lines, I caught sight of an odd picture which some one had scratched there. It was a figure with an ass’s head on a cross, and underneath it “Alexamenos adores God.” I asked Titus what it meant, and suggested that it was a satire on the worship of the Egyptian Anubis. But Titus said, “No! that is intended to annoy the Christians.”’20

‘Well, Britannicus,’ said Pomponia, ‘I know something more about these poor Christians than that. All these are lies. I dare say you have read, or Sosibius has read to you, some of the writings of Seneca?’

‘No,’ said Britannicus, reddening. ‘Seneca is my brother Nero’s tutor. It is he, and Agrippina, and Pallas, who have done away with the will of my father, Claudius. I don’t care to hear anything he says. He is not a true philosopher, like Musonius or Cornutus. He only writes fine things which he does not believe.’

‘A man may write very true things, Prince,’ said Pomponia, ‘yet not live up to them. I have here some of his letters, which his friend Lucilius has shown me. Let me read you a few passages.’

She took down the scroll of purple vellum, on which she had copied some of the letters, and, unrolling it, read a sentence here and there:—

‘“God is near you, is with you, is within you. A sacred spirit dwells within us, the observer and guardian of all our evil and our good; there is no good man without God.”

‘“What advantage is it that anything is hidden from man? Nothing is closed to God.”

‘“Even from a corner it is possible to spring up into heaven. Rise, therefore, and form thyself into a fashion worthy of God.”

‘“Do you wish to render the gods propitious? Be virtuous; to honour them it is enough to imitate them.”

‘“You must live for another, if you wish to live for yourself.”

‘“In every good man, God dwells.”21

‘I could read you many more thoughts like these from Seneca’s letters. Are they not true and beautiful?’

‘I wish his own acts were as true and beautiful,’ answered Britannicus. ‘But what has this to do with the Christians?’

‘This: every one of those thoughts, and many much deeper, are commonplaces among Christians; but the difference between them and the worshippers of the gods is that they possess other truths which make these real. They alone are innocent.’

‘And they do not worship an ass’s head? Well, at any rate, Christus or Chrestus, whom they do worship, was crucified in Palestine by Pontius Pilatus.’

‘And does suffering prevent a man from being divine? All Romans worship Hercules, yet they believe, or profess to believe, that he was burnt alive on Œta.’

Britannicus was silent, for he had always thought it a colossal insanity on the part of the Christians to worship one who had been crucified like a slave.

‘Tell me,’ said Pomponia, ‘when Epictetus reads you his notes of the lectures of Musonius, does not the name of Socrates sometimes occur in them?’

‘Yes,’ said the young prince; ‘it occurs constantly. Musonius talked of Socrates as a perfect pattern, and all but divine.’

‘And how did Socrates die?’

‘He was poisoned by the Athenians with hemlock in their common prison.’

‘As a malefactor?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does it, then, prove him to be worthless that he, too, died the death of a felon? And are all philosophers fools for extending so much reverence to a poisoned criminal?’

‘I never thought of that,’ said Britannicus.

‘And are all the other stories about these Christians lies?’ he asked after a pause.

‘They are,’ said Pomponia. ‘Some day, perhaps, you shall judge for your own self.’

CHAPTER XI

‘A FOREIGN SUPERSTITION’

‘Quos, per flagitia invisos, vulgus Christianos appellabat.’—Tacitus, Ann. xv. 44.

The young son of Claudius, burdened as he was by a sense of wrong, was not only cheered by the kindness of the conqueror of Britain, but had been deeply interested in all that he had heard from his high-minded wife. Pomponia had warned him that to mention the subject of their conversation might needlessly imperil her life, and to no one did he venture to say a word on the subject except to Pudens. It struck him that in the words and bearing of the handsome young soldier there was something not unlike the moral sincerity which he admired and loved in Pomponia Græcina.

‘Pudens,’ he said to him the next morning, when Titus was absent, ‘what do you think of the Christians?’

Pudens started; but, recovering himself, he said, coldly, ‘The Christians in Rome are humble and persecuted. Most persons confuse them with the Jews, but many Jews are nobler specimens than the beggars on the bridges, and many Christians are not Jews at all.’

‘Are they such wretches as men say?’

‘No, Britannicus, they are not. A man may call himself a Christian, and be a bad man; but it is so perilous to be a Christian that most of them are perfectly sincere. They preach innocence, and they practise it. You know well enough that the air is full of lies, and certainly not one-tenth part of what is said of the Christians has in it the least truth.’

The time had not yet come for Pudens to avow that his Claudia had been secretly baptised by an early missionary in Britain, as Pomponia had been in Gaul; and that he himself was beginning seriously to study the doctrines of the hated sect.

But the next time Britannicus was able to visit Pomponia, he asked her if there were any Christian books which he might read.

‘There are the old Jewish books,’ said Pomponia, ‘which Christians regard as sacred, and which a few Romans have read out of curiosity, for they were translated into Greek nearly four hundred years ago. But they are rare, and it is not easy to get them. And even if you read them, there is much in them which we Romans cannot understand.’

‘But has no Christian written anything?’

‘Scarcely anything,’ she said. ‘You know the Christians are mostly very poor, and some of them quite illiterate. But there is a great Christian teacher named Paulus of Tarsus, and many who have heard him preach in Ephesus and in Philippi, and even in Athens and Corinth, say that his words are like things of life. My friend Sergius Paulus, the late Proconsul of Cyprus, has met him, and spoke of him with enthusiastic reverence. He has written nothing as yet except two short letters to the Christians in Thessalonica. They are only casual letters, and do not enter into the life of Jesus the Christ, or the general belief of Christians. But I have them here, and will read parts of them to you if you like.’

She read to him the opening salutation, and on his expressing astonishment that he could join ‘much affliction’ with ‘joy,’ she explained to him that this was the divine paradox of all Christianity, in which sorrow never destroyed joy, but sometimes brought out a deeper joy, even as there are flowers which pour forth their sweetest perfumes in the midnight.

Then she read him the exhortations to purity and holiness,22 and asked him ‘whether that sounded like the teaching of men who practised the evil deeds of which the Christians were accused by the popular voice.’

He sat silent, and she read him the passage about the coming day of the Lord, and the sons of light, and the armour of righteousness.23 Lastly, she read him the concluding part of the Second Letter, with its exhortations to diligence and order.

‘I think,’ she said, ‘that in one passage Paulus may perhaps refer in a mysterious way to your father, the late Emperor. He is speaking of the coming of some lawless tyrant and enemy of God before the day of the Lord; and he adds, “only he who letteth will let, until he be taken away.”’

‘The Greek words ὁ κατέχων,’ she said, ‘might be rendered in Latin qui claudit. The Christians are so surrounded by enemies that they are sometimes obliged to express themselves in cryptograms, and Linus tells me that some Christians see in the words qui claudit an allusion to your father, Claudius. If so, Paulus seems to think that the day of the Lord’s return is very near.’

The young prince, though he had but a dim sense of what some of the phrases meant, was struck with what he had heard. There was something in the morality more vivid and more searching than anything which Epictetus had reported, or than Sosibius had read to him out of Zeno and Chrysippus. And besides the high morality there were tones which caused a more thrilling chord to vibrate within him than anything of which he had yet dreamed. The morality seemed to be elevated to a purer region of life and hope, and, in spite of the strange style, to be transfused through and through with a divine emotion.

‘And these,’ he said, ‘are the men whom they charge with every kind of atrocity! Surely, Pomponia, the world is rife with lies! Would it be too dangerous for you to let me see and speak to some of the Christian teachers? You might disguise me; it is quite easy. Even Pudens need not know; he never feels dull,’ he added with a smile, ‘if he may talk to Claudia, who is staying with you now.’

‘There was an excellent Jewish workman here named Aquila of Pontus,’ she said. ‘You might have talked to him, but he left Rome when the Jews were banished in your father’s days. He used to mend the awning over the viridarium, and those which kept the sun from blazing too hotly into our Cyzicene room.24 He sometimes brought with him his still more excellent wife, Prisca. They knew Paulus, and said that he had promised some day to come to Rome. I am obliged to be very careful; but perhaps you can speak to Linus, who is the Elder of the Christians in Rome.’

‘But, Pomponia, the Christians believe, you tell me, in a leader named Jesus; is he the same as Christus or Chrestos?’

‘He is.’

‘Is there any one in Rome who has seen him?’

‘He was put to death,’ said Pomponia, bowing her head, ‘more than twenty years ago, when Tiberius was Emperor. But His disciples, who lived with Him, whom He called Apostles or messengers, were many of them young men, and they are living still.’

‘Had Paulus of Tarsus ever seen him?’

‘In heavenly vision, yes; but not when He was teaching in Palestine. But there was one disciple whom He loved very dearly, and who is now living in Jerusalem, though Agrippa I. beheaded his elder brother. Perhaps he may some day come to Rome.’

‘But you, Pomponia, must have heard much about Christus. Tell me, then, something about him. How could a Judæan peasant be, as you say Jesus was, divine?’

‘Self-sacrifice for the sake of others is always divine,’ said Pomponia. ‘Even in Greek mythology the gods assume the likeness of men in order to help and deliver them. Does not the poet tell us how Apollo once kept, as a slave, the oxen of Admetus? how Hercules was the servant of Eurystheus? how Jupiter came to visit Baucis and Philemon? Is it so strange that the God of all should reveal Himself to man as man? Doubtless you have read with your tutor the grandest play of Æschylus—the “Prometheus Bound.” Does not the poet there sing that Prometheus, who is the type of humanity, can never be delivered until some god descends for him into the black depths of Tartarus? And does not Plato say that man will never know God until He has revealed Himself in the guise of suffering man; and that “when all is on the verge of destruction, God sees the distress of the universe, and, placing himself at the rudder, restores it to order”?25 And does not Seneca teach that man cannot save himself?26 Seneca even says, “Do you wonder that men go to the gods? God comes to men—yea, even into men.” No one laughs at such thoughts in the most popular of our philosophers; why should they laugh at Christians for believing them?’

‘But what made his disciples believe that Christus was a Son of God?’ he asked.

Sitting quietly there, she told him, that day, of the Jews as the people who had kept alive for centuries the knowledge of the one true God; of their age-long hopes of a Deliverer; of their prophecies; and of the coming of the Baptist. On his next visit she told him of Jesus, and read to him parts of one of the old sketches of His ministry which were current, in the form of notes and fragments, among Christians who had heard the preaching of Peter or other Apostles. Lastly, she told him some of His miracles, and the story of His death and resurrection. ‘He spake,’ she said, ‘as never man spake. He did what man never did. Above all, He rose from the dead the third day. Even the centurion who watched the crucifixion returned to Jerusalem and said, “Truly this was a Son of God!”’

Britannicus felt almost stunned by the rush of new emotions. His mind, like that of most boys of his age at Rome, was almost a blank as regards any belief in the old mythology. In Stoicism he had found some half-truths which attracted his Roman nature; but its doctrines were stern, and proud, and harshly repressive of feelings which he felt to be natural and not ignoble. Here, at last, in Christianity, he heard truths which, while they elevated the character of man even to heaven—while they kindled his aspirations and fortified his endurance—were suited also to soothe, to calm, to console. He had heard them to the best advantage. They had been told him, not by lips of untaught slaves and humble workmen, but by the noblest of Roman matrons. She spoke in Latin worthy of the best days of Cicero, and adorned all she said not only by the sweetness of her voice and the grace of her language, but also by her broad sympathies and her cultivated intelligence. Most of all, her words came weighty with the consistency of a life which, in comparison with that of the women around her, shone like a star in the darkness. It was this beauty of holiness which won him first and most. He saw it in Pudens, whom he suspected of stronger Christian leanings than he had acknowledged. He saw it conspicuously in Claudia,

‘A flower of meekness on a stem of grace,’

before whose beautiful personality the tinsel compliments of her many admirers seemed to sink into shamed silence. The precocious maidens of the great consular families hated Claudia because, in her white and simple dress, and her long natural fair hair, unadorned by a single flower or gem, she outshone their elaborate beauty. Yet they saw, and were astonished to see, that no youth—not even an Otho or a Petronius or any of the most hardened libertines—dared to speak a light word to one who looked as chaste as ‘the consecrated snow on Dian’s lap.’

Britannicus did not venture to breathe a word to Titus of a secret which was not his own; but there was one person from whom he could have no secret, and that was the young Empress, his sister Octavia. When he could be secure that no spy was at hand, that no ear was listening at the door, that no eye was secretly watching him, he would talk to her with wonder and admiration of all that he had heard. She was no less impressed than he, and without venturing to embrace the new faith, both sister and brother found a vague source of hope and strength in what they had learnt from Pomponia. To them it was like a faint rose of dawn, seen from a dark valley, shining far off upon the summit of icy hills. And as they learnt more of what the Gospel meant, and learnt even to pour forth dim prayer into the unknown, they were able to discover, by certain signs, that not a few of the slaves in the household of Cæsar—Patrobas, Eubulus, Philologus, Tryphæna, and others—were secret Christians. The manner in which they discovered that these slaves were Christians was very simple. Pomponia, implicitly trusting the young Cæsar, had ventured to teach him the Greek Christian watchword, Ἰχθύς, ‘fish.’27 The brother and sister found that if, in the presence of several slaves, they brought in this word in any unusual manner, a slave who was a Christian would at once, if only for a second, glance quickly up at them. When they had thus assured themselves of the religion of a few of their attendants, whom they invariably found to be the most upright and trustworthy, they would repeat the word again, in a lower voice and a more marked manner, when they passed them; and if the slave in reply murmured low the word ἰχθύδιον or pisciculus (i. e. little fish), they no longer felt in doubt. The use which they made of their knowledge was absolutely innocent. Often they did not say a word more on the subject to their slaves and freedmen. Only they knew that, among the base instruments of a wicked tyranny by whom they were on every side surrounded, there was at least a presumption that these would be guilty of no treacherous or dishonourable deed.

And thus, while Agrippina was growing daily more furious and discontented; while Seneca and Burrus were plunged into deeper and deeper anxieties; while Pætus Thrasea, and Musonius, and Cornutus found it more and more necessary to entrench themselves in the armour of a despairing fortitude; while Nero was sinking lower and lower into the slough of vice—Octavia and Britannicus began to draw nearer to the Unknown God, and found that when the sea of calamity does not mingle its bitter waters with the sea of guilt, calamity itself might be full of divine alleviations. Agrippina and Nero were provoked by their appearance and bearing. The last thing which they would have suspected was that the Christianity which, in common with all Rome, they regarded as an execrable superstition, should have found its way into patrician circles—should even have met with favourable acceptance under the roof of the Cæsars. When they saw the disinherited Britannicus playing ball in the tennis-court, or beating his young fellow-pupils in races in the gardens, or wrestling not unsuccessfully with the sturdy and ruddy Titus, they were astonished to think that a boy who had been robbed of all his rights should be poor spirited enough to throw himself into enjoyments in which his merry and musical laugh often rang out louder than that of any of his companions. What hope or what consolation could sustain him? They jealously fancied that some plot must be afoot; but suspicion was disarmed by the boy’s transparent frankness and innocence of manner. And Octavia—they treated her as a nullity; they permitted themselves to indulge in every sneer and slight which they could devise. More than once Nero, fresh from some revel and lost to shame, had seized her by her long, dark tresses, or struck her with his brutal hand. Yet no passionate murmur had betrayed her resentment. What could be the secret of a beatitude which no misfortunes seemed wholly able to destroy?

CHAPTER XII

ONESIMUS

‘Non tressis agaso.’—Persius, v. 76.

But we must now turn for a time from the Palace of the Emperor and the grand houses of the nobles crowded with ancestral images, gleaming with precious marbles, enriched with Greek statues of priceless beauty, to the squalid taverns and lodging-houses of the poorest of that vast and mongrel populace which surged through the streets of Rome.

It was not an Italian populace, but was composed of the dregs of all nations, which had been flowing for several generations into the common sewer of Rome. It congregated in all the humbler and narrower streets; in the Velabrum it bawled mussels and salt fish for sale; it thronged the cook-shops of the Esquiline; it crowded densely into the cheaper baths; it swarmed in the haunts of vice which gave so bad a name to the Subura. Long ago the Syrian Orontes had flowed into the Tiber, and brought with it its flute-players, and dancers, and immoralities.28 Long ago, when the Forum loungers dared to howl at him, the great Scipio had stormed at them as step-sons of Italy—as people who had no father and no mother—and bidden them to be silent.

The city was almost as much a Greek as it was a Roman city. But, besides this, it abounded in Orientals. Here would be heard the shaken sistra of the Egyptian Serapis, whose little temple in the Campus Martius was crowded by credulous women. Here you would be met by the drunken Galli of the Phrygian Cybele, whose withered, beardless faces, cracked voices, orgiastic dances, and gashings of themselves with knives, made their mendicancy more offensive than the importunities of the beggars who lounged all day about the Sublician and Fabrician bridges, or half-stormed the carriages of the nobles as they slowly drove up the steep hill of Aricia. Of this promiscuous throng—to say nothing of Asiatics, Gauls, Germans, Spaniards, and Scythians—some were

One quarter of the city—that across the Tiber—was largely given up to Jews. They had flocked to Rome in extraordinary numbers after the visit of Pompey to Jerusalem. Sober Roman burghers long remembered with astonishment, and something of alarm, the wild wail which they raised at the funeral of Julius Cæsar, who had always been their generous patron. They were numerous enough, and organised enough, to make it a formidable matter to offend them, though the majority of them—conspicuous everywhere by the basket and hay which they carried to keep their food clean from Gentile profanation—pursued the humblest crafts, and sold sulphur-matches or mended broken pottery, while the lowest of all told fortunes, or begged, or cheated, with cringing mien. The persistence and ability of many of their race had, however, gained them a footing in the houses of the great. Aliturus, the actor, was at this moment a favourite of Nero, and of Rome. The authors of that age—Martial, Juvenal, Persius, Tacitus—abound with wondering and stinging allusions to the votaries of Mosaism.

They made many converts, and the splendid beauty of Berenice and Drusilla, the daughters of Herod Agrippa I., together with the wealth of their brother, Agrippa II., had given them a prominent position in distinguished circles. To their father, the brilliant adventurer Agrippa I., the favourite of Caligula, Claudius had practically owed his elevation to the Empire, since he it was who induced the senators to acquiesce in that uncouth dominion.

The streets of Rome were full of persons who lived in semi-pauperism; lazzaroni who had nothing to depend upon but the sportula or dole supplied by noble and wealthy families, or grants of corn made at nominal prices by the Emperor. They lived anyhow, by their wits and by their vices. In that sunny climate the wants of life are few, and they found abundance of excitement and amusement, while they could hardly be left to starve amid the universal profusion which sometimes squandered millions of sesterces over a single meal.

But few of the dregs of the people presented a more miserable aspect than a Phrygian youth who was loitering aimlessly about the Forum near the hour of noon. The Forum was nearly deserted, for most of the people were taking their siesta, and the youth sat down, looking the picture of wretchedness. He was pale and thin, as though he had gone through many hardships. His tunic was soiled and ragged, and he appeared to be, as he was, a homeless and friendless stranger, alone among the depraved and selfish millions of the world’s capital.

While he was thinking what he had best do to allay the pangs of hunger, he saw a young student enter the Forum followed by a little slave. He paid no particular attention to them, but a few moments later his curiosity was aroused, first by hearing the blows of an axe, and then by seeing the student run hastily out of the Forum with the slave-child at his heels. Strolling to the corner from which the sounds had come, he found himself opposite to the lattice-work which projected over the shops of the silversmiths, and seeing an axe lying on the ground, picked it up, and examined it. Alarmed by a rush of feet, he looked up and saw the ‘bucket-men’29 (as the mob nicknamed the police) running up to him. While he was wondering what they could want, he found himself rudely arrested, and saluted with a volley of violent abuse.30

‘What have I done?’ he asked in Greek.

‘What have you done, you thievish rascal? You ask that, when we have caught you, axe in hand, hewing at and stealing the lead of the roof?’

The youth, who knew Latin imperfectly, was too much puzzled and confused to understand the objurgations addressed to him; but a crowd of idlers rapidly collected, and speaking to one of them, he was answered in Greek that the people of the neighbourhood had long been blamed for stealing the lead from the silversmiths. They had not done it, and were indignant at being falsely accused. And now, as he had been caught in the act, he would be haled off to the court of the City Prætor, and it would be likely to go hard with him. If he got off with thirty lashes he might think himself lucky. More probably he would be condemned to branding, or—since an example was needed—to the cross.

The youth could only cry, and wring his hands, and protest his innocence; but his protests were met by the jeers of the crowd.

‘Ah!’ said one, ‘how will you like to have the three letters branded with a hot iron right across your forehead? That won’t make the girls like your face better.’

‘Whose slave are you?’ asked another. ‘Won’t you catch it from your master! You’ll have to work chained in the slave-jail or at the mill, and may bid good-bye to the sunlight for a year or two at least.’

‘Slave?’ said another. ‘I don’t believe he’s a slave. He looks too ragged and starved. He’s had no regular rations for a long time, I’ll be bound.’

‘A runaway, I expect,’ said a third. ‘Well, anyhow he’ll have to give an account of himself, unless he likes to have a ride on the little horse,31 or have his neck wedged tight into a wooden fork.’

‘Furcifer? Gallows-bird!’ cried others of the crowd. ‘And we honest citizens are to be accused of stealing because of his tricks!’

‘It’s a sad pity, too,’ said a young woman; ‘for look how handsome he is with those dark Asiatic eyes!’

As most of these remarks had been poured out in voluble and slang Latin, the young Phrygian could only make out enough to know that he was in evil case; and, weakened as he was by exposure and insufficient food, he could but feebly plead for mercy, and protest that he had done no wrong.

But the police had not dragged him far when they saw Pudens and Titus approaching them down the Viminal Hill, on which the centurion lived. At the sight of a centurion in the armour of the Prætorians, and a boy who wore a golden bulla, and whom some of them recognised as a son of the brave general Vespasian, the crowd made way. As they passed by, Titus noticed the youth’s distress, and, compassionate as usual, begged Pudens to ask what was the matter. The vigiles briefly explained how they had seized their prisoner, who must have been guilty of the lead-stealing complained of, for the axe was in his hand, and no one else was near.

‘What have you to say for yourself?’ asked the centurion.

‘I am innocent,’ said the prisoner, in Greek; ‘the axe is not mine. I only picked it up to look at it. It must have been a young student who was using it, for I saw him run out of the Forum with his slave.’

Pudens and Titus exchanged glances, for they had met the student and slave still hurrying rapidly along. He was the real culprit, but he had heard the silversmiths call for the police, and had taken to his heels. Pudens had seen him stop at the house of a knight a street or two distant, and run up the steps with a speed which a Roman regarded as very undignified.

‘Come with me,’ he said to the police, ‘and I think I can take you to the real offender. This youth is innocent, though things look against him.’

Followed by the crowd, who grumbled a little at losing the enjoyment of watching the trial, Pudens led them to the knight’s house. The little slave was amusing himself with hopping to and fro under the vestibule.

‘Keep back, Quirites,’ said the head vigil. ‘The centurion and I will ask a question here.’

‘Do you know this axe, my small salaputium32?’ said Pudens.

‘Yes,’ said the child with alacrity, for he was too young to understand the situation. ‘It is ours. We dropped it not long ago.’

‘The case is clear,’ said Pudens. ‘I will be witness;’ and he offered his ears for the officer to touch.33 ‘Meanwhile you can set this youth free.’

The officer touched his ear with the recognised formula. ‘Remember, you will be my witness in this case.’

The student was arrested, but his father got him off by a large secret bribe to the police and to the silversmiths. The crowd dispersed, and Pudens and Titus, without waiting to watch the issue of the affair, turned their steps towards the Vicus Apollinis, which led to the Palace.

Soon afterwards they heard footsteps behind them, and, turning round, saw the youth whom they had rescued.

‘What more do you want?’ said Pudens, in answer to his eager, appealing look. ‘I have got you out of your trouble; is not that enough?’

‘I am weak, and hungry, and a stranger,’ said the youth, humbly.

‘He wants money,’ whispered Titus, and drawing a denarius from the breast of his toga, he put it into his hand.

But, kneeling down, the stranger seized the hem of the scarlet sagum which Pudens happened to be wearing, and kissing it, exclaimed, ‘Oh, sir, take me into your household! I will do anything!’

‘Who are you?’

‘My name is Onesimus.’

‘A good name, and of good omen.34 What are you? You look like a slave. Not a runaway slave, I hope?’

‘No sir,’ said Onesimus, to whom a lie came as easy as to most of his race. ‘I lived at Colossæ. I was kidnapped by a slave-dealer, but I escaped.’

‘And you want to go back to Colossæ?’

‘No sir. I am left an orphan. I want to earn my living here.’

‘Take him,’ said Titus. ‘You have plenty of room for an extra slave, and I like his looks.’

But Pudens hesitated.

‘A Phrygian slave!’ he said; ‘why even proverbs warn me against him.’ He quoted two, sotto voce, to Titus—‘Worst of the Mysians,’ used of persons despicably bad; and ‘More cowardly than a Phrygian hare.’

‘Well,’ said Titus, ‘I will give you proverb for proverb; “Phrygians are improved by scourging.”’35

‘Yes,’ answered Pudens; ‘but I am not accustomed to rule my slaves by the whip.’

The boy had not heard them, for they spoke in low tones, but he marked the hesitation of Pudens, and, still crying bitterly, stooped as though to make marks with his finger on the ground. His motion was quick, but Pudens saw that he had drawn in the dust very rapidly a rude outline of a fish, which he had almost instantaneously obliterated with a movement of his palm.

Pudens understood the sign. The youth was, or had been, a Christian, and knew that if Pudens happened to be a Christian too his favour would be secured.

‘Follow me,’ he said. ‘My household is small and humble, but I have just lost my lacquey, who died of fever. I will speak to my head freedman. Perhaps, when we have heard something more about you, he will let you fill the vacant place.’