CHAPTER XIX

OTHO’S SUPPER AND WHAT CAME OF IT

We left Onesimus bound hand and foot in his cell, and expecting the severest punishment. His crimes had been heinous, although the thought of escaping detection by slaying Junia had only been a momentary impulse, such as could never have flashed across his mind if it had not been inflamed by the furies of the amphitheatre. As he looked back in his deep misery, he saw how fatally all his misfortunes dated from the self-will with which he had resisted light and knowledge. He might by this time have been good and honoured in the house of Philemon, less a slave than a brother beloved. He might have been enfranchised, and in any case have enjoyed that happy freedom of soul which he had so often witnessed in those whom Christ had made free indeed. And now his place was among the lowest of the low. Nereus had of course reported to Pudens his attempt at theft. Pudens was sorry for the youth, for he had liked him, and saw in him the germs of better things. But such a crime could not be passed over with impunity. Onesimus was doomed to the scourge, as well as to a trinundine47 of solitude on bread and water, while he remained fettered in his cell.

The imprisonment, the shame, the solitariness which was a cruel trial to one of his quick disposition, were very salutary to him. They checked him in a career which might have ended in speedy shipwreck. And while his heart was sore every kind influence was brought to bear upon him. Pudens visited him and tried to rouse him to penitence and manliness. Nereus awoke in his mind once more the dying embers of his old faith. Above all, Junia came one day to the door of his prison, and spoke a few words of courage and hope, which more than all else made him determined to struggle back to better ways.

His punishment ended, and he was forgiven. He resumed his duties, and took a fresh start, in the hope of better things.

Nero had returned to Rome, and drew still closer his bond of intimacy with Otho. Otho was his evil genius. In vain did Agrippina attempt to keep her son in the paths of outward conformity with the requirements of his position. In vain did Seneca and Burrus remind him of the responsibilities of an Emperor of Rome. Otho became his model, and Otho represented to one half of the Roman population the ideal which they themselves most desired and admired. All the voluptuous æstheticism, all the diseased craving in Nero’s mind for the bizarre, the monstrous, and the impossible; all the ‘opéra bouffe’ elements of his character, with its perverted instincts as of a tenth-rate artist, were strengthened and stimulated by his intercourse with Otho.

As a matter of course, the command of unlimited treasures followed the possession of an unchallenged autocracy. Though there was a theoretical distinction between the public exchequer and the privy purse, there was no real limit between the two. This ‘deified gamin’ had complete command of the resources of Italy and the provinces. Cost was never allowed to stand in the way of his grotesque extravagance. A boy was the lord of the world—a bad boy—who delighted in such monkey-tricks as taking his stand secretly on the summit of the proscenium in the theatre, setting the actors and pantomimes by the ears, and flinging missiles at people’s heads.

Shortly after his return to Rome he gave a banquet, and the chief new feature of the entertainment was that the head of each guest had been sprinkled with precious perfumes. Otho determined that he would not be outdone. He was laden with debts; but what did that matter when he might look forward some day to exhausting some rich province with rapine? He asked Nero to sup with him, and determined that he would set the fashion to imperial magnificence.

The banqueters were nine in number: Otho and Nero; Petronius, as the ‘arbiter of elegance’; Tigellinus, as the most pliable of parasites; the actor Paris, because of his wit, grace, and beauty; Vatinius, as the most unspeakable of buffoons; Clodius Pollio, an ex-prætor, Pedanius Secundus, the Præfect of the city, and Octavius Sagitta, a tribune of the people, whom Nero liked for their dissolute manners.

Pricelessness and refinement—as refinement was understood by the most effeminate of Roman exquisites—were to be the characteristics of the feast. The dining-room was a model of the latest and most fashionable art. It was not large, but its roof was upheld by alternate columns of the rare marbles of Synnada and Carystus—the former with crimson streaks, the latter green-veined—while the two columns at the entrance showed the golden yellow of the quarries of Numidia, and the fretted roof was richly gilded and varied with arabesques of blue and crimson. The walls were inlaid with mother-of-pearl, alternated with slabs of ivory delicately flushed with rose-colour. The chandeliers were of antique shapes, and further light was given by candelabra of gold. In front of Nero was one of exquisite workmanship, which represented Silenus lying on a rock, with his head leaning against a tree which overshadowed it. The table was of cedar wood, supported by pillars of ivory, and it sparkled with goblets of gold and silver embossed by Mys and Mentor, among which were scattered amber cups, and chrysendeta which were of silver rimmed with gold. The bowls in which the rare wines were mixed were of pure crystal or the rubied glass of Alexandria. Although it was winter, garlands of exotic roses were provided for every guest, and these garlands were fastened to lappets of perfumed silk. None but the most youthful and beautiful of Otho’s slaves—bright Greeks, and dark Egyptians, and fair-haired Germans, in sumptuous dresses, one or two of whom Otho had purchased for no less than eight hundred pounds—were permitted to wait upon the guests.

The supper was no supper of Trimalchio, with its coarse and heavy gluttonies. Everything was delicate and recherché. The oysters were from Richborough; the lampreys from the fishponds of a senator who was said to have flung into them more than one slave who had offended him; the mullet came from Tauromenos; the milk-cheeses from Sarsina; the fruits seemed to have been produced in defiance of the seasons, and the roses were as plentiful as though it were midsummer. There were two tiny dishes which represented the last and most extravagant devices of Roman gourmandise, for one was composed of the tongues of nightingales, the other of the brains of Samian peacocks and African flamingoes, of which the iridescent and crimson feathers adorned the silver plates on which they lay. Sea and land had been swept with mad prodigality to furnish every luxury which money could procure. The wines were of the rarest vintages; and whereas four kinds of wine were thought an extravagance in the days of Julius Cæsar, Otho set eighty different sorts of wine before his guests, besides other kinds of delicate drinks. To relieve the plethora of luxuries the guests sometimes alternated hot burning mushrooms with pieces of ice.

But the most admired invention of extravagance was the one in which Otho had specially designed to outdo the luxury of Cæsar. The Romans were devoted to delicious odours. Nero had ordered perfumes to be sprinkled on the hair of his guests; but after this had been done to those who reclined at Otho’s banquet, the boys who stood behind them took off their loose slippers and bathed their feet also in liquid essences—a device of which, up to this time, the luxury of an Apicius had never dreamed. And while the guests were still admiring this daring innovation, Otho made a sign with his jewelled hand to Polytimus, the chief favourite among his slaves, who immediately turned two taps of ivory and gold, and then, to the soft breathing of flutes, two fountains sprang into the air, from silver basins, and refreshed the banqueters with a fine dew of the most exquisite fragrance.

To those frivolous spirits all this unbridled materialism seemed to be the one thing which raised them nearest to the gods; and they felt a thrill of delight when it was whispered that for that single supper Otho had expended a sum of four million sesterces.48

The conversation during the meal was vapid and licentious. Beginning with the weather, it proceeded to discuss the gladiators, actors, dancers, and charioteers. Then it repeated all the most recent pasquinades and coarse jokes which had been attached to the statues in the Forum. Then it turned to scandal, and

until it might have seemed that in all Rome not one man was honest, nor one woman pure. To say such things of many of the leading senators and patricians would have been not far from the truth; but the gossip became far more piquant when it dwelt on the immense usury of Seneca, and gave vent to the worst innuendoes about his private life; or when it tried to blacken with its poisonous breath the fair fame of a Pætus Thrasea or a Helvidius Priscus. Yet another resource was boundless adulation of the Emperor and abuse of every other authority, particularly of the Senate, of which Nero, like Gaius, was intensely jealous. It was on this occasion that Vatinius surpassed himself by the celebrated remark, ‘I hate you, Cæsar, because you are a senator.’ After a time, however, scandal and adulation palled, as did the smart procacity of the young slaves, who were trained to say witty and impudent things. And as by that time the drinking bout had begun, after the healths were finished the guests were amused by the strains of the choraulæ and the dances of Andalusian girls.

Among the amusements which Otho had provided was a ventriloquist, who took off all the chief lawyers of the day in a fashion first set by Mutus, in the reign of Tiberius. But the jaded, rose-crowned guests found that the evening was beginning to drag, and then they took to gambling. Nero caught the epidemic of extravagance, and that night he bet four hundred sesterces, not on each cast only, but on each point of the dice.

It was understood that, though the supper and its concomitant orgies were prolonged for hours, there was to be no deliberate drunkenness. Claudius had habitually indulged in a voracity which, on one occasion, had made him turn aside from his own judgment-seat to intrude himself as a guest at one of the celebrated banquets of the Salian priests, of which the appetising smell had reached him from the Temple of Mars. But by Otho and Petronius such forms of animalism were condemned as betraying a want of æsthetic breeding, and they sought to stimulate the lassitude of satiety by other forms of indulgence. That night they proposed to initiate Nero into a new sensation, by persuading him to join the roysterers who, like the Mohawks in the reign of Queen Anne, went about the streets insulting sober citizens, breaking open shops, and doing all the damage and mischief in their power. It was this which made that evening memorable in Nero’s reign, because it was the first instance of a folly which filled genuine Romans with anger and disdain.

But before we touch on these adventures, another incident must be mentioned, which produced a far deeper effect upon the annals of the world. It was on the evening of that supper that Nero first saw Poppæa Sabina.

Poppæa Sabina, though before her marriage to Otho she had been married to Rufius Crispinus, the Prætorian Præfect of Claudius, and had been the mother of a boy, still retained the youthful and enchanting loveliness which became an Empire’s curse. She was a bride well suited in all respects to the effeminate and reckless Otho. If he paid priceless sums for the perruque which no one could distinguish from his natural hair, and used only the costliest silver mirrors, she equalled his absurdities by having her mules shod with gold, and by keeping five hundred she-asses to supply the milk in which she bathed her entire person, with the object of keeping her beautiful complexion in all its softness of hue and contour. And, when she travelled, the hot sunbeams were never allowed to embrown her cheeks, which she entirely covered with a fine and fragrant unguent.

Otho was sincerely attached to her. He was proud of possessing as his bride the haughtiest, the most sumptuous, and the most entrancingly fair of all the ladies in Rome. Before the death of Rufius Crispinus he had estranged her affections from her husband; and it was more than suspected that her object in accepting Otho had not only been her admiration for his luxurious prodigality, but also an ulterior design of casting her sorcery over the youthful Nero. Otho had often praised her beauty to the Emperor, for it was a boastfulness from which he could not refrain. But he did not wish that Nero should see her. He knew too well the inflammable disposition of the youthful Cæsar, and the soaring ambition of his own unscrupulous consort. In this purpose he had been abetted secretly by Agrippina, who felt an instinctive dread of Poppæa, and who, if the day of her lawless exercise of power had not been ended within two months of her son’s accession, would have made Poppæa undergo the fate which she had already inflicted on Lollia Paulina. By careful contrivance Otho had managed to keep Poppæa at a distance from Nero. The task was easier, because Nero was short-sighted, and Poppæa, either in affectation of modesty, or from thinking that it became her, adopted the fashion of Eastern women, in covering the lower part of her face with a veil when she went forth in public.

But that evening Nero, for the first time, saw her near at hand and face to face, and she had taken care that he should see her in the full lustre of her charms.

Beyond all doubt she was not only dazzlingly beautiful, but also possessed that spell of brilliant and mobile expression, and the consummate skill in swaying the minds of men, which in earlier days had enabled Cleopatra to kindle the love of Julius Cæsar, and to hold empery over the heart of Marcus Antonius. Her features were almost infantile in their winning piquancy, and wore an expression of the most engaging innocence. Her long and gleaming tresses, which almost the first among the ladies of Rome she sprinkled with gold, were not tortured and twisted into strange shapes, but parted in soft, natural waves over her forehead, and flowed with perfect grace over her white neck, setting off the exquisite shape of her head. She was dressed that evening in robes which made up for their apparent simplicity by their priceless value. They were of the most delicate colours and the most exquisite textures. The tunic was of that pale shining gold which the ancients described by the word ‘hyaline’; the stola was of saffron colour. Her dress might have been described in terms like those which the poet applies to his sea-nymph—

and, indeed, the sea-nymph’s robe had already been described by Ovid, speaking of the dress known as undulata—

She had divined the reasons which led Otho to prevent her from meeting the Emperor; but she was ambitious of a throne, and, while using neither look nor word which awoke suspicion in her husband’s mind, she smiled to think how vain would be his attempt to set a man’s clumsy diplomacy against a woman’s ready wit.

‘My Otho,’ she had said to him, ‘you are about to entertain the Emperor this evening at a supper such as Rome has not yet seen. The feast which Sestius Gallus gave to Tiberius, the supper which Agrippa the Elder gave to Gaius, and which helped him to a kingdom, were very well in their way; but they were vulgar and incomplete in comparison with that of which your guests will partake to-night.’

‘I know it, Poppæa,’ he said; ‘and though my own taste sets the standard in Rome, I know how much the arrangements of my banquet will owe to the suggestions of my beautiful wife.’

‘And ought not the wife, whom you are pleased to call beautiful, at least to welcome into the house our imperial guest? Will it not be a marked rudeness if the matron of the house has no word wherewith to greet the Cæsar as he steps across her threshold? Will he be content with the croaking “Salve, Cæsar!” of the parrot whom you have hung in his gilded cage at the entrance of the atrium?’

‘Poppæa is lovely,’ said Otho, ‘and Nero is—what he is. Would you endanger the life of the last of the Salvii, merely for the pleasure of letting a short-sighted youth, perhaps a would-be lover, stare at you a little more closely?’

A pout settled on the delicate lips of Poppæa, as she turned away with the remark: ‘I thought, Otho, that I had been to you too faithful a bride to find in you an unreasonable husband. Is there any lady in Rome except myself who would be deemed unworthy to see the Emperor when he sups in her house? Have I deserved that you should cast this slur upon me as though I—I, whose piety is known to all the Romans—were a Julia or an Agr— I mean, a Messalina?’

Otho tried to bring back her lips to their usual smile, but he did not wish to give way unless he were absolutely obliged to do so. He said:

‘You must not adopt these tragic tones, my sweet Poppæa. This is but a bachelor’s party. You shall meet Nero some day in this house when all the noblest matrons of Rome are with you to sanction your presence, and you shall outshine them all. But there are guests coming to-night whom I should not care for Poppæa to greet, though I have asked them as companions of Nero. Surely you would not demean yourself by speaking to a Vatinius or a Paris, to say nothing of a Tigellinus or a Sagitta.’

‘I need not see or speak to any of the others, Otho,’ said Poppæa; ‘but surely I have a right to ask that when the slave sees the gilded letica with its purple awnings I may for one moment advance across the hall, and tell Nero that Poppæa Sabina greets the friend of her lord, and thanks him for honouring their poor house with his august presence.’

‘Well, Poppæa,’ said Otho, ‘if it must be so it must. You know that I can never resist your lightest petition, and I would rather give up the banquet altogether than see tears in those soft eyes, and that expression of displeasure against Otho on your lips.’

So, when Nero arrived, Poppæa met him, and, brief as was the interview, she had thrown into it all the sorcery of a potent enchantress. A sweet and subtle odour seemed to wrap her round in its seductive atmosphere, and every word and look and gesture, while it was meant to seem exquisitely simple, had been profoundly studied with a view to its effect. Poppæa was well aware that Nero was accustomed to effrontery, and that Acte had won his heart by her maidenly reserve. Nothing, therefore, could have been more sweetly modest than Poppæa’s greeting. Only for one moment had she unveiled her whole face and let the light of her violet eyes flow through his soul. There was one observer who fully understood the pantomime. It was Paris, who read the real motives of Poppæa and was lost in admiration at so superb a specimen of acting. His knowledge of physiognomy, his insight into human nature, his mastery of his art, enabled him to see the truth which Nero did not even suspect, that this lovely lady with the infantile features was ‘a fury with a Grace’s mask.’

She saw that her glance had produced the whole effect which she had intended. Nero was amazed, and for the moment confused. He had never experienced such witchery as this. Acte was modest and beautiful, but to compare Acte with Poppæa was to set a cygnet beside a swan. Poppæa vanished the moment her greeting had been delivered, but Nero stood silent. Almost the first word he said to his host struck like a death-knell on Otho’s heart.

‘Otho,’ he said, ‘how much luckier you are than I am! You have the loveliest and most charming wife in Rome; I have the coldest and least attractive.’

‘Let not Cæsar disparage the sharer of his throne,’ said Otho, concealing under measured phrases his deep alarm. ‘The Empress Octavia is as beautiful as she is noble.’

But Nero could hardly arouse himself to admire and enjoy the best banquet of his reign, until he had called for his tablets, and written on them a message for Poppæa. ‘I am thanking your lovely lady for her entertainment,’ said the Emperor, as he handed his tablets to his freedman Doryphorus, and told him to take them to the lady of the house. But what he had really written was a request that Poppæa would deign to greet him for a moment during some pause in the long feast.

He made the requisite opportunity by saying that he would cool himself in the viridarium, and again he found Poppæa a miracle of reserve and sweetness. From that moment he determined, if it could in any way be compassed, to take her from her husband.

---

But this, as we have said, was not the only adventure of the evening. When the revel was over, the guests, instead of going home in pompous retinue attended by their slaves, determined to enjoy a frolic in the streets. ‘Flown with insolence and wine,’ they persuaded the Emperor to disguise himself in the dress of a simple burgher and to roam with them along the Velabrum and the Subura and every street in which they were likely to meet returning guests.

They all accompanied him except Vatinius, who was too weak and deformed to suit their purpose. The streets of Rome were dark at night. The expedient of public lamps, or even of lamps hung outside each house, had never occurred to a people that revelled in expensiveness. Hence it was dangerous for unprotected persons to go out at night, and the police had more than they could really do. Nero and his companions were able, with perfect impunity, to insult, annoy and injure group after group of sober or peaceful citizens, whom the exigencies of duty or society had compelled to return to their homes after dark without a slave to bear a lantern or a torch. They enjoyed the novel sensation of terrifying timid women and of throwing harmless passengers into the gutters, indulging in every form of rowdyism which could furnish a moment’s excitement.

The custom of ‘tossing in a blanket’ is not modern but ancient; only that among the ancients a large sagum or war-cloak was used, as our schoolboys use a blanket.49 That night the party of aristocratic Mohawks caught several poor burghers, and amused themselves with terrifying them almost out of their wits by this boisterous amusement. It needed, however, a spice of cruelty to make it still more piquant; and when they had tossed one of their victims as high as they could they suddenly let go of the sagum, and suffered him to fall, bruised, and often stunned, to the ground, while they made good their escape.

But they were not allowed to have it all their own way. As they were near the Milvian Bridge it happened that Pudens met them. He was accompanied by Onesimus, who carried a lantern of bronze and horn, and by Nereus and Junia, who followed at a little distance. They had been, in considerable secrecy, to a Christian gathering, and were on their way homewards when they met these roving sons of Belial, two of whom also carried lanterns. The stalwart form of Pudens looked sufficiently formidable in the circle of dim light to prevent them from annoying him; but when they caught sight of the veiled figure of Junia they thought that her father Nereus, who was evidently only a slave, would be unable to protect her from their rude familiarities.

‘Ha, maiden!’ exclaimed Otho. ‘What, veiled though it is night? Do you need protection from Cotytto? Come, bring me the lantern here; let us look at a face which will be presumably pretty.’

Junia shrank back, and Otho seized, and was attempting by force to uplift her veil when a blow from the oaken cudgel of Nereus benumbed his arm. But the Emperor, secure in the numbers of his companions, came up to the trembling slave-girl, who little dreamed whose was the hand laid upon her robe.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘when slave-girls are so modest there is nothing so effective for their education as the sagatio. What say you, comrades? It will be a novel excitement to toss a girl.’

‘Brutes!’ said Pudens, ‘whoever you are—brutes and not Romans! Would you insult and injure a modest maiden, slave though she be? Stand back at your peril.’

But Nero, excited with wine, and closely followed by Pollio and Sagitta, was still endeavouring to drag away Junia, who clung convulsively to her father, when a blow from the strong hand of Pudens sent him staggering to the wall. He stumbled over a stone in the street, the mask slipped down from his face, and Pudens saw who it was. The sense of the peril in which he and his slaves were involved, at once flashed upon his mind. There was at least a chance that Nero had not recognised him in the darkness. He hastily whispered to Onesimus to put out his lantern and, if possible, those of their assailants also. The Phrygian rose to the occasion. Springing upon Petronius, he dashed the lantern out of his grasp by the suddenness of his assault, and, whirling his staff into the air, struck with all his force at the hand of Paris, who held the other lantern. The lights were extinguished by the fall of the lanterns, and covering his own under his tunic he called on Pudens and Nereus to follow him closely, and seized Junia by the hand. The by-ways of the streets had become familiar to him, and while the revellers were discomfited, and were absorbed in paying attention to Nero, whose face was bleeding, they all four made their escape, and got home by a more circuitous route.

‘The bucket-men are coming, Emperor,’ said Paris.

None of the party wanted the police to recognise them, or to have the trouble of an explanation which was sure to get talked of to their general discredit, and feeling a little crestfallen, they all hurried off, to a secret entrance of the Palatine.

This was a rough beginning for Nero in his career of a practical joker. But the delights of such adventures were too keen to be foregone. He had not recognised Pudens, who took care not to look too closely at the bruise on Nero’s cheek when he went next morning to the Palace. In general he was safe in attacking small, and feeble parties of citizens; but not long afterwards he received another rebuff from the senator Julius Montanus, whose wife he insulted as they were returning from supper at a friend’s house. Montanus, like Pudens, had recognised the Emperor, but he had not the prudence to conceal his knowledge. Alarmed that he should have struck and wounded the sacrosanct person of a Cæsar, he was unwise enough to apologise. The consequence was natural. Had he held his tongue he might have escaped. Nero did not care to be detected in his escapades, and he ordered Montanus to commit suicide.

Having, however, been hurt more than once in these nocturnal encounters by men who had some courage, he made assurance doubly sure by taking with him some gladiators who were always to be within call if required. He was thus able to continue his pranks with impunity until they, too, lost their novelty, and began to pall upon a mind in which every spark of virility was dead, and which was rapidly degenerating into a mass of sensuous egotism.

CHAPTER XX

BROTHER AND SISTER

Far different was the way in which Britannicus had spent the memorable evening of Otho’s supper.

He was thrown largely upon himself and his own resources. If Titus happened to be absent; if Epaphroditus did not chance to bring with him the quaint boy Epictetus; if the duties of Pudens summoned him elsewhere, he had few with whom he could converse in his own apartments. Sometimes Burrus visited him, and was kind; but he could hardly forgive Burrus for his share in Agrippina’s plot. Seneca occasionally came to see him, and Seneca felt a genuine wish to alleviate the boy’s unhappy lot. But Seneca had been Nero’s supporter, and Britannicus could not quite get over the misgiving that his fine sentences were insincere. And at last an incident occurred which made it impossible for him ever to speak to Seneca without dislike. One day Nero had sent for his brother, and Britannicus, entering the Emperor’s room before he came in, saw a copy ofT6 the Ludus de morte Claudii Cæsaris lying on the table. Naturally enough he had not heard of this ferocious satire upon his unhappy father. Attracted by the oddness of the title ‘Apokolokyntosis,’ which the librarian had written on the outer case, he took up the book, and had read the first few columns when Nero entered. As he read, his soul burned with inexpressible indignation. His father had received a sumptuous Cæsarean funeral; he had been deified by the decree of the Senate; a grand temple had been reared in his honour on the Cœlian hill; priests and priestesses had been appointed to worship his divinity. He knew very well that this might be regarded as a conventional officialism; but that the writer of this book should thus openly laugh in the face of Rome, her religion, and her Empire; that he should class Claudius with two miserable idiots like Augurinus and Baba; that he should brutally ridicule his absence of mind, his slavering lips, his ungainly aspect, and represent the Olympian deities in consultation as to whether he was a god, a human being, or a sea-monster—this seemed to him an act of shameless hypocrisy. He had seen how the Romans prostrated themselves in the dust before his father in his lifetime, as it were to lick his sandals; how Seneca himself had blazoned his earthly godship in paragraphs of sonorous eloquence. Yet here, on the table of his successor and adopted son, was a satire replete in every line with enormous slanders. And who could have written it? Britannicus could think of no one but Seneca; and all the more since the marks on the manuscript showed that Nero had read it, and read it with amused appreciation.

When Nero entered he found Britannicus standing by the table transfixed with anger. His cheeks were crimson with shame and indignation. Panting with wrath, he was unable even to return the greeting of Nero, who looked at him with astonishment till he saw the scroll from which he had been reading. Nero instantly snatched it out of his hand. He was vexed that the boy had seen it. It had not been intended for his eyes. But now that the mischief was done he thought it better to make light of it.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I see that you have been reading that foolish satire. Don’t be in such a state of mind about it. It is meant for a mere jest.’

‘A jest!’ exclaimed Britannicus, as soon as he found voice to speak. ‘It is high treason against the religion of Rome, against the majesty of the Empire.’

‘Nonsense!’ said Nero, with a shrug of his shoulders. ‘If I don’t mind it, why should you? You are but a boy. Leave such matters to those who understand them, and know more of the world.’

‘Why do you always treat me as a child?’ asked Britannicus indignantly. ‘I am nearly fifteen years old. I am older than you were when my father allowed you to assume the manly toga.’50

‘Yes,’ said the Emperor; ‘but there are differences. I am Nero, and you are—Britannicus. I shall not let you have the manly toga just yet; the golden bulla and the prætexta suit you a great deal better.’

Britannicus turned away to conceal the emotion which pride forbade him to show. He was about to leave the audience-room when Nero called him.

‘Listen, Britannicus,’ he said. ‘Do not provoke me too far. Do not forget that I am Emperor. When Tiberius came to the throne there was a young prince named Agrippa Posthumus. When Gaius came to the throne there was a young prince named Tiberius Gemellus.’

‘The Emperor Gaius adopted Tiberius Gemellus, and made him Prince of the Youth,’ said Britannicus; ‘you have never done that for me.’

‘You interrupt me,’ said Nero. ‘Do you happen to remember what became of those two boys?’

Britannicus remembered only too well. Through the arts of Livia, Agrippa Posthumus, accused of a ferocious temperament, had been first banished to the Island Pandataria, then violently murdered. Tiberius Gemellus had not been murdered, because the news of such a death would have sounded ill; but he had had the sword placed against his heart, and had been taught to kill himself, so that his death might wear the semblance of suicide.

Nero left time for such recollections to pass through his brother’s mind, and then he slowly added, ‘And now that Nero has come to the throne, there happens to be a young prince named Britannicus.’

Britannicus shuddered. ‘Do you menace me with murder?’ he asked.

Nero only laughed. ‘What need have I to menace?’ he asked. ‘Do you not know that I have but to lift a finger, if it so pleases me, and you die? But don’t be alarmed. It does not please me—at present.’

Britannicus turned very pale. He knew that Nero’s words conveyed no idle boast. He was but a down-trodden boy— the orphan son of a murdered mother; of a father foully dealt with, infamously calumniated. What cared the Roman world whether he perished or not, or how he perished? He choked down the sob which rose, and left his brother’s presence in silence; but, as he traversed the long corridor to the room of Octavia, he could not help asking himself, with dread forebodings, what would be his fate? Would he be starved, like the younger Drusus? or poisoned, like the elder? or bidden to end his own life, like poor young Tiberius Gemellus? or assassinated by violence, like Agrippa Posthumus? How was he better than they? And if he perished, who would care to avenge him? But, oh God! if there were such a God as He in whom the Christians believed, what a world was this into which he had been plunged! What sin had he or his ancestors committed, that these hell-dogs of wrong and murder banned his steps from birth? The old Romans had been strong and noble and simple. Even in the days of Augustus they could thrill to the lesson of Virgil:

Whence the present dearth of all nobleness? What creeping paralysis of immoral apathy had stricken this corrupt and servile aristocracy, this nerveless and obsequious Senate? From what black pit of Acheron had surged up the slime of universal corruption which polluted every class around him with ignoble debaucheries? He saw on every side of him a remorseless egotism, an unutterable sadness, the fatalism of infidelity and despair. A poisoning of the blood with physical and moral madness seemed to have become the heritage of the ruling Cæsars. Where could he look for relief? Men had ceased to believe in the gods. The Stoics had nothing better to offer than hard theories and the possibility of suicide—and what a thing must life be if it had no more precious privilege than the means of its own agonising and violent suppression!

Britannicus was intelligent beyond his years, and thoughts like these chased each other through his mind as he made his way with slow and painful steps to the rooms of his sister. For an instant the thought of a rebellion flashed across his mind, but it was at once rejected. What could he do? He was but a friendless boy. He felt as if he had heard the sentence of early death; as if his innocence were nothing to such gods as those whom his childhood had been taught to name; as if the burden of an intolerable world were altogether too heavy for him to understand or to bear. And yet he was not unsupported by some vague hope in the dim, half-explored regions of that new gospel of which he now had heard.

To Octavia the visits of her brother were almost the only happiness left. As he entered she dismissed the slaves, for she saw at a glance that some profound emotion had swept over his mind, and longed to give him consolation.

In their forlornness the brother and sister always tried to spare each other any needless pang. Octavia had never hinted to Britannicus that Nero’s base hand had often been lifted to strike her. She did not tell him that on that morning he had seized her by the hair, and in the frenzy of his rage had almost strangled her. Nor would he tell her about the infamous attack on their father’s memory which he had seen on Nero’s table. He little dreamt that she knew of it already, nay, even that, with coarse malice, Nero had shown it to her, and read passages aloud in her tortured hearing on purpose to humiliate and trouble her. Still less would he reveal the threat which seemed to give fresh significance to the feline gleam which he had caught a few days before in the eyes of the horrible Locusta.

Yet by secret intuition each of them divined something of what was in the heart of the other.

When Britannicus entered he found his sister gazing with a sad smile at a gold coin of the island of Teos, which lay on the palm of her hand.

‘What amuses you in that coin?’ he asked.

‘Look at it,’ she said, pointing to the inscription Θεὰν Ὀκταβίαν—‘the goddess Octavia.’51 ‘I was thinking, Britannicus, that if the other goddesses are as little happy as I am, I should prefer to be a mortal!’

Her brother smiled too, but remained silent. He dreaded to deepen her sorrow.

‘Have you nothing to tell me, Britannicus?’ she asked. ‘What is it which makes you so much sadder than your wont?’

‘Nothing that I can tell you,’ he answered. ‘But oh, Octavia, what thoughts strike you when you look round upon this Palace and society? Is there no such thing as virtue?’ he asked impetuously. ‘The Romans used to honour it. Who cares for virtue now, except one or two philosophers ? and—’

‘Speak on, Britannicus,’ she said. ‘Agrippina is less our enemy than she was. She has withdrawn her spies. We are not worth the hatred of any one else. Of the slaves who chiefly wait on me, most are faithful, and some are Christians.’

‘You have guessed my meaning, Octavia. Of the men and women around us, how very few there are, except the Christians, who are pure and good. How comes it?’

‘Their strange faith sustains them.’

‘But does it not seem inconceivable that the gods—or that God, if there be but one, should have revealed the truth to barbarian Jews?’

‘I don’t know, Britannicus. Who is the most virtuous person you know—I mean, excepting the Christians?’

‘Have we met any—except perhaps Persius and my Titus? and—well, perhaps the most virtuous of all is that little slave, Epictetus.’

‘Yet Epictetus is a Phrygian, and a slave, and deformed, and lame. And as for the Jews, you know that your friend Titus thinks them the most interesting people in the world; and it is whispered that some of the noblest ladies in Rome—Otho’s wife among them—have secretly embraced Judaism.’

‘Poppæa does little credit to their religion if all be true that is said of her. But Pomponia is a Christian, and Claudia, the fairest maiden in Rome. Whether they hold truth or falsehood I know not, but if religion has anything to do with goodness there seems to be no religion like theirs.’

‘Britannicus,’ she answered, ‘like you, I am deeply interested in all that Pomponia has told me; but I will tell you what has struck me most. Nero, and Seneca, and Agrippina, and all the rest of them, are full of misery and despair, though they are rich, and praised, and powerful; but these Christians, on the other hand, are paupers, hated, persecuted—and yet happy. It is that which amazes me most of all.’

Britannicus sighed. ‘Octavia,’ he said, ‘I would gladly know more of this foreign superstition, which makes men good amid wickedness, and joyful amid afflictions; which makes women like Pomponia, and girls like Claudia, and boys like Flavius Clemens.’

‘Let us, then, sup to-night with Pomponia,’ said Octavia. ‘She knows that I am lonely, and she has told me that her old general and herself will always delight to see us, if I will come without state and share their simplicity. Nero sups to-night with Otho. No one will prevent us from going together to the house of one whose loyalty is so little suspected as that of Aulus Plautius.’

And thus it was that while Nero revelled, and drank, and made the streets of his capital unsafe with riot and assault, Britannicus was present at the first Christian assembly which he had ever witnessed.

CHAPTER XXI

AMONG THE CHRISTIANS

Αὐτίκα οἱ εἰς Χριστὸν πεπιστευκότες χρηστοί τέ εἰσι καὶ λέγονται.—Clem. Alex. Strom. ii. 4.

Aulus Plautius, without any pretence to be a philosopher or a republican, prided himself on retaining the antique fashion of Roman simplicity. His house was in every way a contrast to that of Otho. It excited the laughter of the dandies of the new school, with its old rude statuary, its hard couches, its plain tables, its floor of simple black and white marble, the limited number of faithful and sober slaves, among whom but few were Greeks, and not one resembled the pampered pages who were the pride of more modern establishments. The whole service of the house was modest and yet stately; and the conqueror of Britain, so far from blushing at the moderate fortune and Roman surroundings which showed that he at least had not plundered the provinces which he had governed, was, on the contrary, pleased that men should see this example of honesty and justice.

Pudens was in command of the escort of the Empress; and it was on his return from the Palace to his own house that the rencontre with Nero occurred which has been already narrated. Caractacus, too, and Claudia were present, though the guests were few; and young Flavius Clemens had been invited to meet the children of Claudius. After the modest supper was over, the Empress and her brother enjoyed a conversation with their noble hostess, and learnt from her that in one of the outer offices of the house of Plautius the Christian assembly was that night to be held. It would have been too dangerous for Octavia to be present, but Pomponia had many Christian slaves and some freedmen who shared her secret, and were men and women of unquestioned fidelity. Britannicus had now heard from her a great deal about the elementary doctrines of the new faith. There seemed to be no reason why she should any longer refuse his desire to be an eye-witness of Christian worship. She had spoken on the subject to Linus, the bishop of the Gentile community; and, without revealing any name, had told him that a young stranger, for whom she could vouch as one who would not be guilty of any treachery, would be entrusted with the watchword, and would be present at the evening prayers. Flavius Clemens was also to be present as a companion to Britannicus. Pomponia’s own son, a bright boy, named Aulus Plautius after his father, had not yet been taught any of the truths of Christianity. His mother had trained him in all high and noble things; but the general, who knew that she had ‘taken up unusual religious views,’ had laid on her his injunctions not to teach them without his permission to their son.

So retired had been the life of the young prince, and so intentional the seclusion in which he had been brought up, that few knew him by sight. But to prevent the danger of his being recognised by any chance informer, Pomponia so altered his appearance that even Octavia might have failed to recognise him. The Flavian boy was at that time a person of little or no importance, and it was not necessary that he should be disguised. Pomponius, who stayed with the Empress, entrusted Britannicus to the charge of Pudens, who, though not yet baptised, was now a recognised catechumen. He had been at Christian gatherings before, and was all the more glad to go this evening, because Claudia also was to be present, in whom the soul of the centurion was more and more bound up. But to avoid all possibility of suspicion he placed his faithful Nereus in charge of the young stranger, while he himself stood a little apart, and watched.

The heart of the noble boy beat fast as he entered that unwonted scene. The room in which the Christians met was a large granary in which Plautius stored the corn which came from his Sicilian estates. It was as well lighted as circumstances admitted, but chiefly by the torches and lanterns of those who had come from all parts of the city to be present at this winter evening assembly.

Britannicus was astonished at their numbers. He was quite unaware that a religion so strange—a religion of yesterday, whose founder had perished in Palestine little more than twenty years before—already numbered such a multitude of adherents in the imperial city. Clemens whispered to him that this was but one congregation, and represented only a fraction of the entire number of believers in Rome, who formed a multitude which no single room could have accommodated. He told him, further, that though the Jewish and the Roman—or, as they call them, the Gentile—converts formed a common brotherhood, only separated from each other by a few national observances, they usually worshipped at Rome in separate communities.

If Britannicus was surprised by the numbers of the Christians, he was still more surprised by their countenances. The majority were slaves, whose native home was Greece or Asia. Their faces bore the stamp which had been fixed on them by years of toil and hardship; but even on the worn features of the aged there was something of the splendour and surprise of the divine secret. The young prince saw that they were in possession of something more divine than the world could understand. For the first time he beheld not one or two only, but a blessed company of faithful people who had felt the peace of God which passeth all understanding.

The children also filled him with admiration. He had seen lovely slaves in multitudes; there were throngs of them in the Palace and in the houses of men like Otho and Petronius. But their beauty was the beauty of the flesh alone. How little did it resemble the sweet and sacred innocence which brightened the eyes of these boys and girls who had been brought up in the shelter of Christian homes!

But he was struck most of all with the youths. How many Roman youths had he seen who had been trained in wealthy households, in whom had been fostered from childhood every evil impulse of pride and passion! He daily saw the young men who were the special favourites of his brother Nero. Many of them had inherited the haughty beauty of patrician generations; but luxury and wine had left their marks upon them, and if they had been set side by side with these, whose features glowed with health and purity and self-control, how would the pallid faces of those dandies have looked like a fulfilment of the forebodings which even Horace had expressed!

Nothing could have been more simple than the order of worship. The Christians had ended the Agape, the common meal of brotherly love, consisting of bread and fish and wine. They had exchanged the kiss of peace. The tables had now been removed by the young and smiling acolytes, and the seats arranged in front of the low wooden desk at which Linus and the elders and deacons stood. They had no distinctive dress, but wore the ordinary tunic or cloak of daily life, though evidently the best and neatest that they could procure. In such a community, so poor, so despised, there could be no pomp of ritual, but the lack of it was more than compensated by the reverent demeanour which made each Christian feel that, for the time being, this poor granary was the house of God and the gate of heaven. They knelt or stood in prayer as though the mud floor were sacred as the rocks of Sinai, and every look and gesture was happy as of those who felt that not only angels and archangels were among them, but the invisible presence of their Lord Himself.

First they prayed;—and Britannicus had never before heard real prayers. But here were men and women, the young and the old, to whom prayer evidently meant direct communion with the Infinite and the Unseen; to whom the solitude of private supplication, and the community of worship, were alike admissions into the audience-chamber of the Divine. Never had he heard such outpourings of the soul, in all the rapture of trust, to a Heavenly Father. How different seemed such intercourse with the Eternal from the vague conventional aspirations of the Stoics towards an incomprehensible Soul of the Universe, which had no heart for pity and no arm to save!

But a new and yet more powerful sensation was kindled in his mind, when at the close of the prayers they sang a hymn. It was a hymn to Christ, beginning—

Britannicus listened entranced to the mingled voices as they rose and fell in exquisite cadence. He had heard in theatres all the most famous singers of Rome; he had heard the chosen youths and the maidens chanting in the temple processions; he had heard the wailing over the dead, and the Thalassio-chorus of the bridal song. But he had heard nothing which distantly resembled this melody and harmony of voices wedded to holy thoughts; and, although there were no instruments, the ‘angelical soft trembling voices’ seemed to him like echoes from some new and purer region of existence. He rejoiced, therefore, when they began yet another hymn, of which the first verse was—

When the hymn was over they sat down, and Linus rose to speak to them a few words of exhortation. He reminded them that they had been called from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God. He told them that they had fled to the rock of Christ amid a weltering sea of human wickedness, and though the darkness was around them he bade them to walk in the light, since they were the children of light. Many of them had lived of old in the vices and sins of heathendom, but they were washed, they were justified, they were sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus and in the Spirit of their God. Were not their bodies temples of the Holy Ghost which dwelt in them, except they were reprobates? Since, then, they were in the Spirit, let them bring forth the fruits of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, goodness, charity—against which there was no law. The world was passing away and the fashion of it; their own lives were but as the withering grass and the fading flower; and was not the day of the Lord at hand? Would He not speedily return to judge His people? Would not that day come as a thief in the night, and how should they stand its probatory fire unless they were safe in the love of their Redeeming Lord?

So far had he proceeded when a mighty answering ‘Maranatha’ of the deeply-moved assembly smote the air, and immediately afterwards Britannicus stood transfixed and thrilled to the very depths of his whole being.

For now a voice such as he had never heard—a sound unearthly and unaccountable—seemed not only to strike his ears but to grasp his very heart. It was awful in its range, its tone, its modulations, its startling, penetrating, appalling power; and although he was unable to understand its utterance, it seemed to convey the loftiest eloquence of religious transport, thrilling with rapture and conviction. And, in a moment or two, other voices joined it. The words they spoke were exalted, intense, impassioned, full of mystic significance. They did not speak in their ordinary familiar tongue, but in what seemed to be as it were the essence and idea of all languages, though none could tell whether it was Hebrew, or Greek, or Latin, or Persian. It resembled now one and now the other, as some overpowering and unconscious impulse of the moment might direct. The burden of the thoughts of the speakers seemed to be the ejaculation of ecstasy, of amazement, of thanksgiving, of supplication, of passionate dithyramb or psalm. They spoke not to each other, or to the congregation, but seemed to be addressing their inspired soliloquy to God. And among these strange sounds of many voices, all raised in sweet accord of entranced devotion, there were some which no one could rightly interpret. The other voices seemed to interpret themselves. They needed no translation into significant language, but spontaneously awoke in the hearts of the hearers the echo of the impulse from which they sprang. There were others which rang on the air more sharply, more tumultuously, like the clang of a cymbal or the booming of hollow brass, and they conveyed no meaning to any but the speakers, who, in producing these barbarous tones, felt carried out of themselves. But there was no disorderly tumult in the various voices. They were reverberations of one and the same supernatural ecstasy—echoes awakened in different consciousnesses by one and the same intense emotion.

Britannicus had heard the Glossolalia—the gift of the tongue. He had been a witness of the Pentecostal marvel, a phenomenon which heathendom had never known.

Nor had he only heard it, or witnessed it. For as the voices began to grow fainter, as the whole assembly sat listening in the hush of awful expectation, the young prince himself felt as if a spirit passed before him, and the hair of his flesh stood up; he felt as if a Power and a Presence stronger than his own dominated his being; annihilated his inmost self; dealt with him as a player does who sweeps the strings of an instrument into concord or discord at his will. He felt ashamed of the impulse; he felt terrified by it; but it breathed all over and around and through him, like the mighty wind; it filled his soul as with ethereal fire; it seemed to inspire, to uplift, to dilate his very soul; and finally it swept him onward as with numberless rushings of congregated wings. The passion within him was burning into irresistible utterance, and, in another moment, through that humble throng of Christians would have rung in impassioned music the young voice of the last of the Claudii pouring forth things unutterable, had not the struggle ended by his uttering one cry, and then sinking into a faint. Before that unwonted cry from the voice of a boy the assembly sank into silence, and after two or three moments the impulse left him. Panting, unconscious, not knowing where he was, or whether he had spoken or not, or how to explain or account for the heart-shaking inspiration which had seemed to carry him out of himself beyond all mountain barriers and over unfathomable seas, the boy sank back into the arms of Pudens, who, alarmed and amazed and half ashamed, had sprung forward to catch him as he fell.

As he seemed to be in a swoon, one of the young acolytes came to him, and gently bathed his face with cold water. And meanwhile as the hour was late, and they all had to get home in safety through the dark streets and lanes through which they had come—some of them from considerable distances—Linus rose, and with uplifted hand dismissed the congregation with the words of blessing in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Pudens and Nereus carried back the still half-unconscious boy into the house of Pomponia, where his sister awaited him. Octavia was alarmed at the wildness of his look, but the fresh air had already revived him. ‘I am quite well,’ he said, as the Empress bent anxiously over him, ‘but I am tired, and should like to be silent. Let us go home, Octavia.’

‘The escort is waiting,’ said Pudens.

So they bade farewell to Pomponia, and the soldiers saw them safely to the Palace.

When they had started, Claudia said: ‘Oh, Pomponia, while he was at the gathering the Power came upon him; he seemed scarcely able to resist it; but for his fainting I believe that he would have spoken with the tongue!’

Pomponia clasped her hands, and bowed her head in silent prayer.