CHAPTER XVI

EVENTS IN THE VILLA POLLUX

More and more luxurious and irregular became the amusements of the Villa Pollux. Paganism is protected from complete exposure by the enormity of its own vices. To show the divine reformation wrought by Christianity it must suffice that, once for all, the Apostle of the Gentiles seized heathendom by the hair, and branded indelibly on her forehead the stigma of her shame.

Leaving altogether on one side the darker aspects of the life to which Nero and his boon companions now abandoned themselves, neither shall we dwell much upon

If the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life could have brought to Nero and Otho any happiness, they might have been happy. They could lift to their lips the cup of pleasure crowned to the brim. They soon found it to be an envenomed goblet, sparkling with the wine of demons. The rage of luxury, the insanity of egotism, the abandonment to every form of self-indulgence, served only to plunge them into deeper lassitude, and, last of all, into more irretrievable disgust. For, though men have bodies, they still are spirits, and when their bodies have command over their spirits, they only become a lower kind of beast.

To Nero, while he was yet a boy, had been offered all that carnal minds think the highest boons. The ancient philosophers used to discuss the question, ‘Whether any one would still remain perfectly virtuous if he were endowed with the ring of Gyges, which had the power to make a man invisible.’ To Nero had been given alike the ring of Gyges and the lamp of Aladdin. While he was still young and beautiful, and not ungifted, all that was fell and foul in the seductions of the Palace and the Amphitheatre assailed his feeble nature. It was hardly strange that his whole being gave way and he became a prodigy of wickedness. At heart, perhaps, he was not essentially worse than thousands of youths have been, but his crimes, unchecked by any limitations of law or of resources, were enacted under the glare of publicity, on the world’s loftiest stage.

Nor must it be forgotten that he saw and enjoyed all the best, the loveliest, the most intoxicating that could be devised by an epoch which strove madly after pleasure. Thus, when Paris and Aliturus came to the villa, the guests saw in those two actors the most perfect grace set off by the highest advantages, and trained for years by the most artistic skill. They represented the finished result of all that the world could produce in seductive art. Such actors, originally selected for their beauty and genius, made it the effort of their lives to express by the poetry of movement every burning passion and soft desire which can agitate the breast. Their rhythmic action, their mute music, their inimitable grace of motion in the dance, brought home to the spectator each scene which they impersonated more powerfully than description, or painting, or sculpture. Carried away by the glamour of involuntary delusion, the gazers seemed to see before them every incident which they chose to represent. Nothing was neglected which seemed likely to add to the pleasure of the audience. The rewards of success were splendid—wealth, popularity, applause from numberless spectators, the passionate admiration of society, the partiality even of emperors and empresses, and all the power which such influence bestowed. A successful mimic actor, when he sprang on the stage in his glittering and close-fitting dress, knew that if he could once exercise on the multitude his potent spell he might easily become the favourite of the rulers of the world, as Bathyllus was of Mæcenas, and Mnester of Caligula, and another Paris was of the Empress Domitia.

Paris was a Greek, and his face was a perfect example of the fine Greek ideal, faultless in its lines and youthful contour. Aliturus was by birth a Jew, and was endowed with the splendid beauty which still makes some young Arabs the types of perfect manhood. Both of them danced after supper on the day which succeeded their arrival, and it was hard to say which of them excelled the other.37

First Paris danced, in his fleshings of the softest Canusian wool, dyed a light red. His dress revealed the perfect outline of a figure that united fineness with strength. He represented in pantomimic dance the scene of Achilles in the island of Scyros. He brought every incident and person before their eyes—the virgins as they spun in the palace of their father, Lycomedes; the fair youth concealed as a virgin in the midst of them, and called Pyrrha from his golden locks; the maiden Deidamia, whom he loved; the eager summons of Ulysses at his gate; the ear-shattering trumpet of Diomedes; the presents brought by the disguised ambassadors; the young warrior betraying himself by the eagerness with which he turns from jewels and ornaments to nodding helmet and bright cuirass; the doffing of his feminine apparel; the leaping forth in his gleaming panoply. Nothing could be more marvellous than the whole impersonation. So vivid was the illusion that the guests of Nero could hardly believe that they had seen but one young man before them, and not a company of varied characters.

Yet hardly less subtle was the kindling of the imagination when Aliturus ‘danced,’ as it was called, the ‘Death of Hector’ in the tragic style which had first been introduced by the celebrated Bathyllus of Alexandria. They seemed to see the hero bid farewell to his Andromache, and go bounding forth to meet the foe; to see enacted before them the flight of Hector; the deceitful spectre of Deiphobus; the combat; the dying prophecy; the corpse of the gallant Trojan dragged round the walls of Troy; Priam and Hecuba tearing their grey locks. They seemed to hear the wild wail of Andromache, the tender plaint of Helen, the frenzied utterances of Cassandra; and when the scene ended there was not one of them who was not thrilled through and through with pity, with terror, with admiration.

These scenes were innocent and not ignoble, but softer and more voluptuous impersonations followed; for when another and less known actor named Hylas—painted blue, and dragging a fish’s tail behind him—had acted the part of the sea-god Glaucus, to rest the two chief performers, then Paris set forth the story of Ariadne and Bacchus; and Aliturus sank to yet lower depths in dancing the favourite pantomime of Leda.

Such were among the amusements of Nero’s evenings, and part of the pleasure consisted in knowing that he and his guests were enjoying at their leisure a near view of the unequalled genius which enraptured the shouting myriads of Rome when witnessed from a distance after long hours of waiting to secure a place. Further, they had the advantage of watching the speaking faces of the mimists, which in the theatre were hidden by a mask. It is needless to add that Nero rewarded with immense donations the artists whose skill he so passionately admired. And yet for Paris it had been happier if, instead of dazzling the multitude, he had remained the humble slave of Domitia. For in later days Nero, envying him the tumults of applause he won, tried to emulate his skill. Paris did his best to teach him, but the attempt was hopeless. Nothing could then make the obese form of the Emperor graceful, or his thin legs agile. And since he could not rival him, he made the poor wretch pay the penalty by putting him to death.

But no such dread foreboding was in the happy actor’s mind as he witnessed the spell which he cast over the minds of his audience—and audience it might fitly be called, for the actor had spoken to them in the eloquence of rhythmic gesture.

The conversation turned naturally on the art of dancing.

‘Paris,’ said Petronius, whose æsthetic sympathies had been intensely gratified, ‘I know not whether you missed the usual accompaniments of pipes and flutes, and still more the thundering reverberations of applause from the enraptured myriads, but I never heard you to greater advantage.’

‘Heard me? Saw me, you mean,’ said Paris, with a pleasant smile.

‘No!’ said Petronius, ‘we have heard, not seen, you. You have not spoken a word, but your feet and your hands have surpassed the eloquence even of lips “tinct with Hyblean honeycombs.”’

‘You remind me of what Demetrius the Cynic said to me,’ answered Paris.

‘What was that?’

‘Do not think me vain if I tell the story,’ said the actor. ‘I do not tell it in my own honour, but only for the glory of my art. Demetrius had been railing and snarling at us poor pantomimes, and said that the only pleasure of the spectators was derived, not from our dancing, but from the flutes and songs. I asked him to let me show him a specimen of what I could do.’

‘Happy Demetrius!’ said Lucan.

‘He was fair-minded enough to consent, and I danced to him the story of Mars and Venus. I tried to bring before him their love, their betrayal by Helios, the rage and jealousy of Vulcan, their capture in the golden net, their confusion, the entreaties of Venus, the intercession of the gods. Demetrius was fairly conquered, and he said to me, “Fellow!” (you observe that he was anything but civil!), “I don’t merely see but I hear your acting, and you seem to me to speak with your very hands.”’

‘Well done, Demetrius!’ said Otho. ‘And perhaps you don’t know, Paris, that a Greek writer, Lesbonax, calls you, not philosophers, but cheirosophers—hand-wise.’

‘I can cap your story, Paris,’ said Nero. ‘The other day a barbarian nobleman from Pontus came to me on some foreign business and brought me some splendid presents. When he left I asked him if I could do anything for him. “Yes,” he said. “Will you make me a present of the beautiful dancer whom I saw in the theatre?” That was you, Paris; and of course I told him that you were much too precious to be given away, and that, if I did, we should have Rome in an uproar. “But,” I said, “of what possible use would he be to you?” “He can interpret things without words,” he replied; “and I want some one to explain my wishes to my barbarous neighbours”!’

‘Nobody has said any of these fine things about me,’ remarked Aliturus, ruefully.

‘Well, I will tell you a compliment paid to you, Aliturus,’ said Petronius. ‘Another barbarian, who came to me with a letter of introduction from the Proconsul of Africa, saw you act a scene which involved five impersonations. He was amazed at your versatility. “That man,” he observed, “has but one body, but he has many minds.”’

‘Thank you, kind Petronius!’ said Aliturus.

‘But now tell us,’ asked Nero, ‘whether in acting you really feel the emotions you express.’

‘When the character is new to us we feel them intensely,’ said the Jewish pantomime. ‘Have you never heard, Cæsar, what happened to Pylades, when he played the part of the mad hero of “Ajax”? It seemed as if he really went mad with the hero whom he personated. He sprang on one of the attendants who was beating time to the music, and rent off his robe. The actor who represented the victorious Ulysses stood by him in triumph, and Pylades, tearing a heavy flute from the hands of one of the choraulæ, dealt Ulysses so violent a blow on the head that he broke the flute and would have broken the head too, if the actor had not been protected by his helmet. He even hurled javelins at Augustus himself. The audience in the theatre was so powerfully affected by the passion of the scene that they went mad too, and leapt up from their seats and shouted, and flung off their garments. Finally, Pylades, unconscious of what he was doing, walked down from the stage to the orchestra and took his seat between two Consulars, who were rather alarmed lest Ajax should flagellate them with his scourge as he had been flagellating the cattle which in his madness he took for Greeks.’

‘A curious and interesting anecdote, my Aliturus,’ said Petronius; ‘but Paris has not yet told us whether he misses the multitudinous applause of Rome.’

‘All Rome is here,’ said Paris with a bow to the Emperor. ‘We actors need nothing but the sunshine of approval, and did not the sun, even before it rose above the horizon, bathe Nero in its rays?’

‘So my nurses have told me,’ said Nero.

‘Trust an actor to pay a compliment,’ whispered Vatinius to Tigellinus.

‘Or a poet either,’ said Tigellinus, with a glance at Lucan.

‘Or an adventurer and a parasite either,’ returned the irascible Spaniard, who had overheard the innuendo.

‘Now, if I am to be the arbiter elegantiarum, I will allow no quarrels,’ said Petronius. ‘And I at least am grateful to Paris and Aliturus, and mean to show my gratitude by a compliment. Don’t class me among the poets who recite in the dog-days, for my little poem—written while Paris was dancing “Achilles”—is only four lines long. Spare my blushes and let Lucan—as he is a poet—read it.’

‘Don’t let him read it,’ whispered Tigellinus; ‘he will read it badly on purpose.’

But Petronius handed his little waxen tablets to Lucan, who, with a glance of disdain at Tigellinus, read with perfect expression the four celebrated lines:

A loud exclamation of ‘Euge!’ and ‘Σοφῶς!’ burst from the hearers when Lucan had read these admirable lines; and the two actors repaid the poet by the most gracious of their bows and smiles. Nor did they confine their gratitude to smiles, but gave further specimens of some of the laughable dances which were in vogue, such as ‘the owl’ and ‘the grimace,’ ending with a spectacle at once graceful and innocent—namely, the lovely flower-dance with its refrain of

‘Where are my roses, where my violets, where my parsleys fair?’

They went to bed that night each of them the happy possessor of twelve thousand sesterces. When Agrippina, a month later, heard this, she reproached Nero for his gross extravagance.

‘What did I give them?’ he asked.

‘You paid them twelve thousand sesterces each for a night’s dancing.’

‘Did I?’ said Nero, glad to show his defiance. ‘I never knew before that I was so mean;’ and he immediately ordered the sum to be doubled.

CHAPTER XVII

AMUSEMENTS OF AN EMPEROR

Among the pleasant distractions of the villa, the dilettantism of literature and art were not forgotten. Nero regarded it as one of his serious occupations to practice singing and harp-playing. Afterwards, when his friends gathered round him, they would write verses, or recite, or lounge on purple couches, listening to Epaphroditus as he read to them the last news from the teeming gossip of Rome. Satires and scandalous stories often created a flutter of excitement in the reception-rooms of the capital, and were keenly enjoyed by all, except those, often entirely innocent and worthy persons, who were perfectly defenceless against these calumnies, and felt them like sparks of fire, or poisoned arrows rankling in the flesh.

One morning, when the stay of the courtiers at the villa was drawing to a close, Epaphroditus announced to them that he had a sensation for them of the first magnitude. The trifle which he would read to them was perhaps a little broad in parts, but he was sure that Cæsar would excuse it. It was called, he said, by a curious name, Apokolokyntosis. This was in truth a clever invention of the librarian himself, for he did not venture to mention its real title, which was Ludus de morte Claudii Cæsaris.

‘Apokolokyntosis?’T3 asked Nero; ‘why, that means gourdification or pumpkinification! One has heard of deification, but what on earth does “gourdification” mean?’

‘Perhaps, Cæsar, in this instance it means the same thing,’ said Epaphroditus; ‘but have I your permission to read it?’

The guests—Lucan among them—settled themselves in easy positions and listened. The reader had not finished a dozen sentences before they found that they were hearing the most daring and brilliant satire which antiquity had as yet produced.

It was a satire on the death of Claudius, and it was not long before peal after peal of astonished laughter rang from all the group.

It began by a jesting refusal to quote any authority for the events the writer was going to relate. If any one wanted evidence he referred to the senator who had sworn that he had seen Drusilla mounting to heaven, and would be equally ready to swear that he had seen Claudius stalking thitherward with unequal steps along the Appian road, by which Augustus and Tiberius had also gone to heaven.

‘It was late autumn, verging on winter—it was, in fact, October 13. As for the hour, that was uncertain, but might be generally described as noontide, when Claudius was trying to die. Since he found it hard to die, Mercury, who had always admired his learning, began to abuse one of the Fates for keeping him alive for sixty-three years. Why could not she allow the astrologers to be right for once, who had been predicting his demise every month? Yet, no wonder! for how could they cast the horoscope of a man so imperfect that he could hardly be said to have ever been born? “I only meant,” pleads Clotho, “to keep him alive a little longer, till he had made all the rest of the world Roman citizens. But since you order it, he shall die.” Thereupon she opened a casket, and took out three spindles—one on which was wound the life-thread of Claudius, and on the other two those of the two idiots, Augurinus and Baba, both of whom, she said, should die about the same time, that Claudius might have fitting company.

‘She said, and broke short the royal period of stolid life.’ At this point the author bursts into poetry, and describes how Lachesis chooses a thread of gold instead of wool, and joyously weaves a web of surpassing loveliness. The life it represents is to surpass the years of Tithonus and of Nestor. Phœbus comes and cheers her on her task with heavenly song, bidding her weave on.

‘Let him whose thread you are weaving,’ he sings, ‘exceed the space of mortal life, for he is like me in countenance, like me in beauty, and not inferior in song or voice. He shall accord happy times to the weary, and shall burst the silence of the laws, like the rising of the morning or the evening star, or of rosy dawn at sunrise. Such a Cæsar is at hand, such a Nero shall Rome now behold! his bright countenance beams with attempered lustre, and his neck is lovely with its flowing locks!’ So sang Apollo, and Lachesis did even more than he required. Meanwhile, Claudius died while listening to the comedians. Then, after a touch of inconceivable coarseness, the writer adds, ‘What happened on earth I need not tell you, for we none of us forget our own felicity, but I will tell you what happened in heaven.’ Jupiter is informed that a being is approaching who is tall, grey-haired, and looks menacing, because he shakes his head and drags his right foot. He is asked to what country he belongs, and returns an entirely unintelligible answer in no distinguishable dialect. As Hercules is a travelled person, Jupiter sends him to enquire to what class of human beings the new-comer appertains. Hercules had never seen a portent like this, with a voice like that of a sea-monster, and thought that this must be his thirteenth labour; but, on looking, perceived that it was a sort of man, and addressed him in Greek. Claudius answers in Greek, and would have imposed on Hercules, had not Fever, who had accompanied Claudius, said, ‘He is not from Ilium; he is a genuine Gaul, born near Lyons, and, like a true Gaul, he took Rome.’ Claudius got into a rage at this, but no one could comprehend his jargon; he had made a signal that Fever should be decapitated, and one might have thought that all present were his freedmen, for no one cared for what he said. Hercules addresses him in severe tones, and Claudius says, ‘You of all the gods, Hercules, ought to know me and support me, for I sat all July and August listening to lawyers before your temple.’ A discussion follows, and then Jupiter asks the gods how they will vote. Janus thinks there are too many gods already. Godhead has become cheap of late. He votes that no more men shall be made gods. Claudius, however, since he is akin to the divine Augustus, and has himself made Livia a goddess, seems likely to gain the majority of votes; but Augustus rises and pleads against this strange candidate for godship with indignant eloquence. ‘This man,’ he pleads, ‘caused the death of my daughter and my grand-daughter, the two Julias, and my descendant, L. Silanus. Also he has condemned many unheard. Jupiter, who has reigned so many years, has only broken one leg—the leg of Vulcan—and has once hung Juno from heaven: but Claudius, inspired by female jealousies and the intrigues of a varletry of pampered freedmen, has killed his wife, Messalina, and a multitude of others. Who would believe that they were gods, if they made this portent a god? Rather let him be expelled from Olympus within three days.’

Accordingly, Mercury puts a rope round his neck, and drags him towards Tartarus. On the way they meet a vast crowd, who all rejoice except a few lawyers. It was, in fact, the funeral procession of Claudius himself, and he wants to stop and look at it; but Mercury covers him with a veil, that no one may recognize him, and drags him along. Narcissus had preceded him by a shorter route, and Mercury bids the freedman hurry on to announce the advent of Claudius to the shades. Narcissus speedily arrives among them, gouty though he was, since the descent is steep, and shouts in a loud voice, ‘Claudius Cæsar is coming.’ Immediately a crowd of shades shouts out, ‘We have found him; let us rejoice!’ They advance to meet him—among them Messalina and her lover, Mnester the pantomime, and numbers of his kinsmen whom he had put to death. ‘Why, all my friends are here!’ exclaims Claudius, quite pleased. ‘How did you all get here?’ ‘Do you ask us?’ said Pedo Pompeius; ‘you most cruel of men, who killed us all?’ Pedo drags him before the judgment-seat of Æacus, and accuses him on the Cornelian law of having put to death thirty senators, three hundred and fifteen Roman knights, and two hundred and twenty-one other persons. Claudius, terrified, looks round him for an advocate, but does not see one. Publius Petronius wants to plead for him, but is not allowed to do so. He is condemned. Deep silence falls on them all, as they wait to hear his punishment. It is to be as endless as that of Sisyphus, Tantalus, and Ixion; it is to be a toil and a desire futile and frustrate and without end. He is to throw dice forever in a dice-box without a bottom!

No sooner said than done! Claudius began at once to seek the dice, which forever escaped him. Every time he attempted to throw them they slipped through, and the throw, though constantly attempted, could never be performed.

Then all of a sudden appears Caligula, and demands that Claudius should be recognised as his slave. He produces witnesses who swear that they have seen Caligula scourge him and slap him, and beat him. He is assigned to Caligula, who hands him over to his freedman, Menander, to be his legal assessor.

Such was this daring satire, of which we can hardly estimate the audacity and wit—written as it was within a year of events which the Roman Senate and Roman people professed to regard as profoundly solemn.

Nero was convulsed with laughter throughout, and was equally delighted by the insults upon his predecessor and the flattery of himself.

When the speaker’s voice ceased, a burst of applause came from the lips of the hearers; and Lucan turned to the gratified Nero and repeated the lines which described his radiant beauty, his song, and the brilliant prognostications of his coming reign.

‘Yes,’ said Otho; ‘that is true poetry—

and, in the intimacy of friendship, he ventured to pass his hand over the soft golden hair which flowed over the neck of the proud and happy youth.

‘How witty it is, and how powerful!’ said Petronius. ‘Who could have written it?’

Lucan gave a meaning smile. He had not been dismissed from the Villa Castor with the other guests, because the Emperor, although jealous of him, could not help admiring his fiery, original, and declamatory genius.

‘You smile, Lucan,’ said Otho; ‘surely your uncle Seneca—that grave and stately philosopher—could not have written this sparkling farce?’

‘Seneca?’ said Vestinus; ‘what, he who grovelled at the feet of the freedman Polybius, and told him that the one supreme consolation to him for the loss of his wife would be the divine beneficence of the Pumpkinity whom here he paints as an imbecile slaverer?’

‘I think Seneca deserves to be brought up on a charge of treason, if he really wrote it,’ said Tigellinus.

‘Nonsense, Tigellinus,’ said Petronius; ‘you need not be so sanguinary. The thing is but a jest, after all. On the stage we allow the freest and broadest jokes against the twelve greater gods, and even the Capitoline Jupiter; why should not a wit jest harmlessly upon the deified Claudius, now that he has died of eating a mushroom?’

‘You are right,’ said Nero; ‘the author is too witty to be punished; and now I always call mushrooms “the food of the gods.” But was Seneca the writer?’ he asked, turning to Lucan.

‘I think I may say quite confidently that he was not,’ said Lucan, a little alarmed by the savage remark of Tigellinus. In point of fact, he believed that the brochure had been written by his own father, Marcus Annæus Mela, but he felt it desirable that the secret should be kept.

‘We all know that the Annæi are loyal,’ sneered Tigellinus.

‘As loyal, at any rate, as men who would sell their souls for an aureus,’ answered the Spaniard. He looked full at Tigellinus, who remembered the scene, and put it down in his note-book for the day of vengeance.

But Petronius loved elegance, and did not care for quarrels, and he tried to turn the conversation from unpleasant subjects. ‘Lucan,’ he asked, ‘have you written any verses about Nero? If so, pray let us have the pleasure of hearing them.’

Lucan was far from unwilling to show that he too could flatter, and he recited the lines of colossal adulation from the opening of the ‘Pharsalia.’ Even the civil wars, he sang, with all their slaughter, were not too heavy a price to pay for the blessing of having obtained a Nero; and he begs him to be careful what part of Olympus he chooses for his future residence, lest the burden of his greatness should disturb the equilibrium of the world!39

Nero had just heard the deification of Claudius torn to shreds with mortal sarcasm, but his own vanity was impervious to any wound, and he eagerly drank in the adulation which—with no more sincerity than that which had been addressed to his predecessor by the Senate and people of Rome—assured him of the honour of plenary divinity among the deities of heaven in whom, nevertheless, he scarcely even affected to believe.

He turned to Petronius and asked him to recite his poem on the Sack of Troy. Petronius did so, and the Emperor listened with eager interest. It was a subject which fascinated him.

‘Ah!’ he said, ‘to see a city in flames—that would be worth living for! I have tried to write something on that subject myself.’

All present, of course, pressed him to favour them with his poem, and after a little feminine show of reluctance, and many protestations of mock modesty, he read them, in an affected voice, some verses which were marked in every phrase by the falsetto of the age. It was evident that they had been painfully elaborated. Indeed, as they looked at the note-book from which the Emperor read they saw that the labor limæ had been by no means wanting. The book, which afterwards fell into the hands of Suetonius, was scratched and scrawled over in every direction, and it showed that many a turn of expression had been altered twenty times before it became tinkling enough and fantastic enough to suit Nero’s taste. It was clear from the tone in which he read them that the most bizarre lines were exactly those that pleased him best, and they were therefore the ones which his flatterers selected for their loudest applause.

‘“Filled the grim horns with Mimallonean buzz”’—

repeated Lucan. ‘How energetic! how picturesque!’

‘He is laughing at you in his sleeve, Cæsar,’ whispered Tigellinus; ‘and he thinks his own most impromptu line far superior.’

Lucan did not overhear the remark, and he proceeded to quote and praise the three lines on the river Tigris, which

Now those lines I feel sure will live.’

‘Of course they will,’ said Tigellinus, ‘long after your poems are forgotten.’

The young poet only shrugged his shoulders, and turned on the adventurer a glance of disdain. Petronius, however, who disliked and despised Tigellinus, was now thoroughly disgusted by his malignity, and did not hesitate to express his contempt. ‘Tigellinus,’ he said. ‘if you are so rude I shall ask Cæsar to dismiss you. What nonsense on your part to pretend to know anything about poetry! You know even less than Calvisius Sabinus, who confounds Achilles with Ulysses, and has bought ten slaves who know all the poets by heart to prompt him when he makes a mistake.’40

Tigellinus reddened with anger, but he did not venture to reply.

‘For my part,’ said Senecio, ‘I prefer the line

‘“Thou who didst chine the long-ribb’d Apennine,”

not to speak of the fine effect of the spondaic, there is the daring image.’

‘There is something finer than both,’ said Petronius, and he quoted a line of real beauty which Seneca has preserved for us in his ‘Natural Questions,’ and in which Nero describes the ruffled iridescence of a dove’s neck:

‘Many,’ said the polished courtier, ‘have seen the mingled amethyst and emerald on the necks of doves and peacocks, but it has been reserved for Cæsar to describe it.’

Somehow or other, in spite of all they said, Nero was not satisfied. He had an uneasy misgiving that all of them except Petronius—whom he knew to be genuinely good-natured—were only fooling him to the top of his bent. Not that this misgiving at all disturbed his conceit. He was convinced that he was a first-rate poet, as well as a first-rate singer and lyrist, and indeed a first-rate artist in all respects. It was the thing of which he was most proud, and if these people were only pretending to recognise his enormous merits, that was simply the result of their jealousy.

‘Thank you, friends,’ he said. ‘What you say of me, Lucan, is very kind, but’—he felt it necessary to show his superiority by a little criticism—‘I should not recommend you to publish your poem just yet. It is crude in parts. It is too Spanish and provincial. It wants a great deal of polishing before it can reach the æsthetic standard.’

Lucan bowed, and bit his lip. He felt that among these poetasters he was like a Triton among minnows, and his sense of mortification was so bitter that he could not trust himself to speak, lest he should risk his head by insulting Nero to his face.

The group broke up. Only Petronius, Paris, and Tigellinus remained.

‘Petronius,’ said Nero, ‘you are a genuine poet. What do you think of Persius and Lucan as poets?’

‘Lucan is more of a rhetorician than a poet,’ said Petronius, ‘and Persius more of a Stoic pedagogue. Both have merits, but neither of them can say anything simply and naturally. They are laboured, artificial, declamatory, monotonous, and more or less unoriginal. Their “honeyed globules of words” are only a sign of decadence.’42

‘And what do you think of my poetry?’ asked the Emperor, sorely thirsting for a compliment.

‘A Cæsar must be supreme in all he does,’ said Petronius, with one of his enigmatical smiles.

He rose, and bowed as he left the room, leaving Nero puzzled and dissatisfied.

‘Oh, Paris!’ exclaimed Nero, flinging his arm round the actor’s neck, ‘you alone are to be envied. You are a supreme artist. No one is jealous of you. When I see you on the stage, moving the people at your will to tears or to laughter, or kindling them to the most delicious emotions—when I hear the roar of applause which greets you as you stand forth in all your grace, and make the huge theatre ring with your fine penetrating voice, I often wish we could change our parts, and I be the actor, and you the Emperor.’

‘You mock a poor mummer, Cæsar,’ said Paris; ‘but if I am to amuse you after the banquet to-night you must let me go and arrange something with Aliturus.’

Nero was left alone with Tigellinus. He yawned wearily. ‘How tedious all life is!’ he said. ‘Well, never mind, there is the banquet of the night to look forward to.’

‘Yes,’ said Tigellinus, ‘and when we are heated with wine we will wander out into the grounds; and in the caves and winding pathways Petronius and Crispinilla have invented a new amusement for you.’

‘What is it?’

‘Do not ask me, Cæsar, and you will all the more enjoy its novelty.’

‘Yes, but our time here is rapidly drawing to a close, and then comes Rome again, and all the boredom of the Senate, and of hearing causes, and entertaining dull people of consequence. And there I must more or less play at propriety.’

‘Why must you, Cæsar? Cannot you do exactly as you like? Who is there to question you?’

‘My mother, Agrippina, if no one else.’

‘You have only one reason to fear the Augusta.’

‘What is that?’

‘Because, Cæsar, as I have already warned you, she is making much of Britannicus. I have reason to believe that she is also plotting to secure the elevation of Rubellius Plautus or Sulla. She is not at all too old to marry either of them, and both of them have imperial blood in their veins.’

‘Rubellius Plautus?’ asked Nero; ‘why, he is a peaceful pedant. And that miserable creature Sulla cares for nothing but his dinner.’

‘We shall see in time,’ said Tigellinus; ‘but meanwhile, so long as Britannicus lives—’

‘Finish your sentence.’

‘So long as Britannicus lives, Nero is not safe.’

Nero sank into a gloomy reverie. He had not suspected that the dark-eyed adventurer had designs as deep as those of Sejanus himself. That guilty and intriguing minister of Tiberius was only a Roman knight, and the whole family of Germanicus, as well as the son and the grandson of Drusus, stood in the direct line of descent as heirs to the throne. Yet he had for years worked on with the deliberate intention of clearing every one of them from his path, and climbing to that throne himself.

Why should not Tigellinus follow a similarT4 course? He had persuaded Nero that he knew something about soldiership. He had made himself popular among the Prætorian guards. Burrus might be got rid of, and Tigellinus, by pandering to Nero’s worst instincts, encouraging his alarms, and awakening his jealousies, might come to be accepted as an indispensable guardian of his interests, and so be made the Prætorian Præfect. Once let him gain that position, and he might achieve almost anything. Octavia would evidently be childless. Nero was the last of his race. It would be just as well to get rid, beforehand, of all possible rivals to his ambitious designs. Plautus and Sulla might wait, but nothing could be done till Britannicus was put out of the way. It would then be more easy to deal with Agrippina and with Octavia.

So he devised; and the spirits of evil laughed, knowing that he was but paving the road for his own headlong destruction.

But that night no one was gayer and more smiling than he at the soft Ionian festival, where they were waited on by boys robed in white and crowned with roses. It had been spread in the viridarium, a green garden surrounded by trees cut and twisted into quaint shapes of birds and beasts by the ars topiaria. The larger dishes were spread on the marble rim of a fountain, while the smaller ones floated among the water-lilies in vessels made in the shape of birds or fish. By one novel and horrible refinement of luxury, a fish was caught and boiled alive during the feast in a transparent vase, that the guests might watch its dying gleams of ruby and emerald. When the drinking was finished they went into the groves and gardens of the villa, and the surprise which had been prepared for Nero was a loose sylvan pageant. Every grove and cavern and winding walk had been illuminated at twilight by lamps which hung from tree to tree. In the open spaces naiads were bathing in the lake, and leaving trails of light in the water, and uplifting their white arms, which glittered like gold in the moonlight; and youths with torches sprang out of the lurking-places dressed like fauns or satyrs, and danced with maidens in the guise of hamadryads, and crowned the guests with flowers, and led them to new dances and new orgies and new revelries, while their cries and songs woke innumerable echoes, which mocked the insulted majesty of the night.

---

And in those very caves, four hundred years later, there came and lived a boy a little younger than Nero was, and amid the pleasances of the villas, which had fallen to ruin, and in the lonely caverns high up among the hills, he made his solitary home. He had deserted the world, disgusted and disillusioned with the wickedness of Rome. And once, when the passions of the flesh seemed to threaten him, he rushed out of his cave and rolled his naked body on the thorns where now the roses grow. And multitudes were struck by his holiness and self-devotion, and monasteries rose on every crag, and the scene, once desecrated by the enchantments of the sorceress Sense, was purified by the feet of saintly men, and the cavern where young slaves had lurked in the guise of the demons of the Gentiles is now called the Holy Cave.

That boy of fourteen was Benedict. The name of Nero has rotted for more than eighteen centuries, but to this day the memory of St. Benedict is fragrant as his own roses; for

CHAPTER XVIII

VESPASIAN’S FARM

Octavia was left in the comparative desertion of the Villa Castor, without even the homely companionship of Vespasian’s wife. The respectable guests had departed. There was scarcely a person about her to whom she could speak. As for her young husband, he treated her with habitual neglect and open scorn. His conduct towards her was due partly to the indifference which he had always felt, partly to jealousy—lest he should be thought to owe the Empire to his union with her. He therefore followed his own devices; and she desired no closer intercourse with him, for she shrank from the satyr which lay beneath his superficial graces. She was best pleased that he should be out of her sight. The void of an unloved heart was preferable to the scenes which took place between them when Nero’s worst qualities were evoked by the repulsion which she could not wholly conceal. Accustomed to hourly adulation, it was intolerable to him that from those who constituted his home circle he never received the shadow of a compliment. He was disturbed by the sense that those who knew him most intimately saw through him most completely. His mother did not abstain from telling him what he really was with an almost brutal frankness; his wife seemed to shrink from him as though there were pollution in his touch.

As there was little occasion for him to pay any regard to conventionalities in the retirement of Subiaco, he rarely paid the Empress even a formal visit—rarely even crossed the bridge which divided one villa from the other.

Octavia spent the long hours in loneliness. She sometimes relieved the tedium of her days by sending loving letters to her brother at Phalacrine, and sometimes summoned one of the young slave-maidens to sit and read to her. While Nero associated with the most worthless slaves, Octavia selected for her attendants the girls whose modest demeanour had won her notice, and whom she generally found to be Christians. Christianity, though overwhelmed with slanders, was not yet suppressed by law; and in the lowest ranks of society, where no one cared what religion any one held, the sole reason which induced the slaves to conceal their faith was the ridicule which the acknowledgment of it involved. The cross, which was in those days the gibbet of the vilest malefactors, was to all the world an emblem only of shame and horror. It was a thing scarcely to be mentioned, because its associations of disgrace and agony were so intense as to disturb the equanimity of the luxurious. And when a Christian slave was taunted with the gibe that he worshipped ‘a crucified malefactor,’ how could he explain a truth which was to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness?

Octavia, whom sorrow had taught to be kind, was gentle in her demeanour to her slaves. The multitude of girls who waited on a patrician matron had a terrible time of it when their mistresses happened to be in an ill-humour. The gilded boudoirs of the Aventine not unfrequently rang with shrieks. As one entered the stately hall one heard the clanking chain of the ostiarius, who, with his dog and his staff, occupied the little cell by the entrance; and if a visitor came a little too soon for the banquet he might be greeted by the cries which followed the whistling strokes of the scourge, or might meet some slave-girl with dishevelled hair and bleeding cheeks, rushing from the room of a mistress whom she had infuriated by the accidental displacement of a curl. The slaves of Octavia had no such cruelties to dread. Lydus, who kept her chair; Hilara, who arranged her robes; Aurelia, who had charge of her lap-dog; Aponia, who adorned her tresses; Verania, who prepared her sandals, had nothing to fear from her. There was not one of her slaves who did not love the young mistress, whose lot seemed less happy than that of the humblest of them all.

And thus it happened that Tryphæna and others of her slaves were not afraid to speak freely, when she seemed to invite their confidence. From Britannicus she had heard what Pomponia had taught him; she had found from these meek followers of the ‘foreign superstition,’ that their beliefs and practice were inconceivably unlike the caricatures of them which were current among the populace. Because all men hated them, they were accused of hating all men; but Octavia found that love, no less than purity and meekness, was among their most essential duties. She was obliged to exercise the extremest caution in the expression of her own opinions, but she felt an interest deeper than she could express in all that Tryphæna told her of the chief doctrines of Christianity. And though she could scarcely form any judgment on what she heard, she felt a sense of support in truths which, if they did not convince her reason, yet kindled her imagination and touched her heart. One doctrine of the Christians came home to her with quickening power—the doctrine of the life everlasting. In Paganism that doctrine had no practical existence. The poets’ dream of meadows of asphodel and islands of the blest, where Achilles and Tydides unbound the helmets from their shadowy hair, and where the thin eidola of kings and heroes pursued a semblance of their earthly life, had little meaning for her. Like Britannicus, she was fond of reading the best Greek poets. But there was no hopefulness in them. In Pindar she read—

And in Homer—

But she had only to unroll the manuscript a little further, and was chilled to the heart by the answer of Agamemnon to the greeting of Ulysses:—

And though Cicero had written his Tusculan disputations to prove the doctrine of immortality, had he not, in his letters and speeches, spoken of that doctrine as a mere pleasing speculation, which might be discussed with interest, but which no one practically held? Yet to these good Christians that doctrine was an unshakable conviction, a truth which consoled their heaviest afflictions. To them the eternal, though unseen, was ever present. It was not something future, but a condition of which they breathed the atmosphere both here and now. To them the temporal was the shadowy; the eternal was the only real.

While Octavia was thus silently going through the divine education which was to prepare her for all that was to come, Britannicus was supremely happy in the Sabine farm. Its homeliness and security furnished a delightful contrast to the oppressive splendour of the Palace at Rome. There, in the far wild country, he had none but farm labourers about him, except the members of the Flavian family, who, on the father’s side, rose but little above the country folk. He was as happy as the day was long. He could lay aside all thoughts of rank and state, could dress as he liked, and do as he liked, and roam over the pleasant hills, and fish in the mountain streams, with no chance of meeting any one but simple peasant lads. With Titus and his two cousins, young Flavius Sabinus and Flavius Clemens, he could find sympathy in every mood, whether grave or gay. Titus with his rude health, his sunny geniality, his natural courtesy—a boy ‘tingling with life to the finger tips’—was a friend in whose society it was impossible to be dull. Flavius Clemens was a youth of graver nature. The shadow of far-distant martyrdom, which would dash to the ground his splendid earthly prospects, seemed to play over his early years. He had already been brought into contact with Christian influences, and showed the thoughtfulness, the absence of intriguing ambition, and the dislike to pagan amusements, which stamped him in the vulgar eyes of his contemporaries as a youth of ‘most contemptible indolence.’ A fourth boy was often with them. It was Domitian, the younger brother of Titus, destined hereafter to be the infamy of his race. He was still a child, and a stranger unable to read the mind’s construction in the face would have pronounced that he was the best-looking of the five boys. For his cheeks wore a glow of health as ruddy as his brother’s, and his features were far softer. But it was not a face to trust, and Britannicus, trained in a palace to recognize what was indicated by the expression of every countenance, never felt any liking for the sly younger son of Vespasian.

Vespasian was proud of his farm, and was far more at home there than in the reception-rooms of Nero. He was by no means ashamed of the humility of his origin. As he sat in his little villa, he used to tell people that his ancestor was only one of the Umbrian farmers, who, during the civil war between Marius and Sylla, had settled at Reate and married a Sabine maiden. Amazed indeed would those humble progenitors have been if they had been told that their great-grandson would be an Emperor of Rome! Nothing made him laugh more heartily than the attempt of his flatterers to deduce his genealogy from a companion of Hercules. He had not a single bust or waxen image of any illustrious ancestor to boast of, but was proud that the cities of Asia had reared a statue to his father, Sabinus, with the inscription, ‘To the honest publican.’

He delighted to recall the memories of Cincinnatus and Fabricius and the old dictators, who had been taken from the plough-tail, and to whom their wives had to bring the single toga they possessed in order that they might meet the ambassadors of the Senate when they were summoned to subdue the enemies of Rome. He was never happier than when he took the boys round with him to visit his horses and his cows, and even Domitilla’s hens. He delighted in the rude plenty of the house, the delicious cream, the fresh eggs, the crisp oat-cakes, the beautiful apples at breakfast, the kid and stewed fruits of the midday meal. Any one who watched those rustic meals would little have conjectured that, in that low, unadorned room, with the watch-dogs slumbering before the hearth, they saw before them three emperors, two consuls and a princess. Still less would he have dreamed that one of them only would die peacefully in his bed; that, of those five boys, four would be the victims of murder, and one of martyrdom; and that the younger Domitilla, though she did not share her husband’s martyrdomT5 would die in a bleak and lonely island as a confessor of the faith. Our life lies before us, and the mercy of Divine Providence hides its issues in pitchy night.

Vespasian alone of that little company was old enough to feel in all its fulness the blessing of a temporary escape from the horrible world of Rome, which tossed like a troubled sea whose waters cast up mire and dirt. He knew, as those lads could hardly know, that it was a world of insolence and passion, of treachery and intrigue, of ruthless cruelty and unfathomable corruption. He had seen the government of it pass from a madman like Caligula to a half-dazed blunderer like Claudius, and knew that the two had been preceded by a Tiberius, and succeeded by a Nero. One morning, when the weather did not permit them to go out to their usual outdoor sports, the boys had amused themselves with a genealogy of the Cæsars, in which they had become interested in consequence of some questions about the descendants of Augustus. As the blunt soldier looked at them while they bent over the genealogy, he became very thoughtful. For that stem of the Cæsars had something portentous in its characteristics. It was a grim reflex of the times. Here were emperors who had married five or six wives, and empresses who had married four or five husbands, and some of these marriages had been fruitful; and yet the Cæsars were hardly Cæsars at all, but a mixed breed of ancient Claudii, Domitii, Silani, and of modern Octavii and Agrippas. The genealogy showed a confused mass of divorces and adoptions, and neither the men nor the women of the royal house were safe. Many of the women were adulteresses; many of the men were murderers or murdered victims. Out of sixteen empresses, six had been killed and seven divorced. Julia, daughter of Augustus, after three marriages, had been banished by her father for shameless misconduct, and Tiberius had ordered her to be starved to death at Rhegium. Could Augustus have felt no anguish in his proud spirit, when he had to write to a young patrician ‘You have committed an indiscretion in going to visit my daughter at Baiæ’? or when on hearing that Phœbe, Julia’s freedwoman, had hanged herself, he cried ‘Would that I had been the father of that Phœbe’? And, alas! what multitudes of his descendants had equalled Julia alike in misery and shame! Death and infamy had rioted in that deplorable family. Well might Augustus exclaim, in the line of Homer:

‘Would I had died unwed, nor been the father of children!’

When the people demanded the recall of the two Julias, after five or six years of exile, he exclaimed in a burst of indignation and anguish, ‘I wish you similar wives and similar daughters.’ He described his wife Scribonia, his daughter Julia, and his granddaughter Julia the younger as ‘his three cancers.’44

But while the boys were eagerly talking together, and discussing those Cæsars, and members of their family, who from the time of Julius Cæsar downward had been deified, Vespasian suddenly grew afraid lest the same thought which struck him should strike them. In those days he did not dream that he too should wear the purple and die the apparent founder of a dynasty. He was not, indeed, unaware of various prognostics which were supposed to portend for him a splendid fate. At Phalacrine, his native hamlet, was an ancient oak sacred to Mars, which had put out a new branch at the birth of each of the three children of his father, Sabinus. The third, which represented himself, grew like a great tree. Sabinus, after consulting an augur, told his mother, Tertulla, that her grandson would become a Cæsar. But Vespasian shared the feelings of the old lady, who had only laughed immoderately at the prophecy, and remarked, ‘How odd it is that I am in my senses, while my son has gone raving mad!’

Seeing that the boys were fascinated by the grandeur of Cæsarism, he rolled up the stemma. ‘Do not be ambitious, lads,’ he said. ‘Could the name of Imperator or the sight of your radiated heads upon a coin, give you more happiness than you are enjoying here and now?’

The advice of Vespasian was perfectly sincere. In his homely way he saw too deeply into the heart of things to care for the outside veneer. It was his mother, Vespasia Polla—the daughter of the military tribune—who, led on by dreams and omens, had forced him into the career of civil honours. His brother obtained the right to wear the laticlave, or broad purple stripe on the toga, and the silver C on the boots, which marked the rank of senator. Vespasian was unwilling to lay aside the narrow stripe, the angusticlave, which showed him to be of equestrian rank. He only yielded to the pressure, and even to the abuse, of his mother, who asked him how long he meant to be the lacquey—the anteambulo—of his brother. He had nearly thrown up his public life in disgust, when during his ædileship Gaius had ordered the soldiers to cover him with mud, and to heap mud into the folds of his embroidered magisterial robe, because he found the roads insufficiently attended to. He had practised the advice he was now giving.

‘My head has been struck on coins,’ said Britannicus, with a sigh; ‘but I can’t say that it has made me much happier.’

‘You are as happy as Nero is,’ said Titus. ‘I am quite sure that all the revels at Subiaco will not be worth the boar-hunt we mean to have to-morrow.’

‘Clemens,’ said Vespasian, ‘Domitilla tells me that yesterday morning you were learning my favourite poem, the “Epode” of Horace about the pleasures of country life, and the lines of Virgil on the same subject. As we have nothing special to do this morning, suppose you repeat the poems to us, while the boys and I make a formido for our next deer-hunt.’

The boys got out the long line of string, and busied themselves with tying to it, at equal distances, the crimson feathers which were to frighten the deer into the nets; while Flavius, standing up, recited feelingly and musically the well-known lines of the Venusian poet, whose Sabine farm lay at no great distance from the place where they were living—

And when, to the great delight of his uncle, he had finished repeating this poem, he repeated the still finer lines of Virgil, who pronounces ‘Happy above human happiness the husbandmen for whom far beyond the shock of arms earth pours her plenteous sustenance.’46

The boys talked together on all sorts of subjects; only if Domitian was with them, they were instinctively careful about what they said. For Domitian could never forget that Britannicus was a prince. If Britannicus became Emperor he might be highly useful in many ways, and it was worth Domitian’s while to insinuate himself into his favour. In this he soon saw that he would fail. The young prince disliked him, and could not entirely conceal his dislike under his habitual courtesy. Domitian then changed his tactics. He would try to be Nero’s friend, and if he could find out anything to the disadvantage of Britannicus, so much the better. He had already attracted the notice of two courtiers—the dissolute Clodius Pollio, who had been a prætor, and the senator Nerva, both of whom stood well with the Emperor. Already this young reprobate had all the baseness of an informer. But in this direction also his little plans were defeated, for in his presence Britannicus was as reticent as to Titus he was unreserved.

Britannicus was to have had a room to himself, in consideration of his exalted rank, but he asked to share the sleeping-room of Titus and Clemens. They went to bed at an early hour, for Vespasian was still a poor man, and oil was expensive. But they often talked together before they fell asleep. Titus would rarely hear a word about the Christians. He declared that they were no better than the worshippers of the dog-headed Anubis, and he appealed to the caricature of the Domus Gelotiana as though it proved the reality of the aspersions against them. He was, however, never tired of talking about the Jews. He had seen Agrippa; he had been dazzled into a boyish love by the rich eastern beauty of Berenice. The dim foreshadowing of the future gave him an intense interest in the nation whose destiny he was to affect so powerfully in after years. Stories of the Jewish Temple seemed to have a fascination for him. But he was as credulous about the Jews as the rest of his race, and believed the vague scandals that they were exiles from Crete, and a nation of lepers, and about Moses and the herd of asses—which afterwards found a place in Tacitus and later historians.

Another subject about which he liked to talk was Stoicism. He thought nothing so grand as the doctrine that the ideal wise man was the most supreme of kings. He was full of high arguments, learnt through Epictetus, to prove that the wise man would be happy even in the bull of Phalaris, and he quoted Lucretius and Virgil to prove that he would be always happy—

At all of which propositions Britannicus was inclined to laugh good-naturedly, and to ask—much to the indignation of his friend—if Musonius was happy when he had a bad toothache.

Finding him unsympathetic on the subject of the Christians, Britannicus ceased to speak of them. On the other hand, he soon discovered that Clemens knew more about them than himself.

‘Are you a Christian, Flavius?’ asked Britannicus, when they were alone, after one of these conversations.

‘I have not been baptised,’ he answered. ‘No one is regarded as a full Christian until he has been admitted into their church by baptism.’

‘Baptism? What is that?’

‘It is the washing with pure water,’ said Clemens. ‘Our Roman ceremonies are pompous and cumbersome. It is not so with the Christians. Their symbols are the simplest things in the world. Water, the sign of purification from guilt; bread and wine, the common elements of life, taken in remembrance of Christ who died for them.’

‘And are the elders of these Christians—the presbyters, as they call them—the same sort of persons as our priests?’

‘I should hope not!’ said Clemens. ‘They are simple and blameless men—more like the best of the philosophers, and more consistent, though not so learned.’

The entrance of Domitian—whom they more than suspected of having listened at the door—stopped their conversation. But what Britannicus had heard filled him with deeper interest, and he felt convinced that the Christians were possessors of a secret more precious than any which Seneca or Musonius had ever taught.

But the happy days at the Sabine farm drew to an end. When November was waning to its close it was time to return from humble Phalacrine and its russet hills, to the smoke and wealth and roar of Rome.