CHAPTER XXII

BRITANNICUS AND HIS SONG

Nero was chary of showing his bruised face. He daily smeared it with the juice of an herb called thapsia from the island of Thapsos where it was found, and with a mixture of wax and frankincense, but it retained for some days the marks of the buffet which he had received from the arm of Pudens. From Octavia he did not care to conceal either that or any other disgrace. He had reduced his unhappy girl-bride to such a condition that she dared ask him no question. From Agrippina he would gladly have concealed it, but he had been unable as yet to break the habit of paying her a daily visit. Intensely miserable was that visit to them both, and, except when Nero chose to bring his friends and attendants with him, the salutations often ended with the stormiest scenes.

They did on this occasion.

The Augusta at once noticed the bruise on Nero’s cheek, and she was perfectly aware of the cause of it; for she had not sunk so completely out of the old habits of power as not to have spies in her pay who kept her well informed of the Emperor’s proceedings.

Supremely wretched, but even in her wretchedness agitated by the furies of pride and passion, she had scarcely received his cold kiss when she began to taunt her son.

‘Cæsar looks gallantly to-day,’ she said; ‘for all the world like some clumsy gladiator who has been hit while practising with wooden foils.’

Nero maintained a sulky silence.

She added: ‘No doubt it is as worthy of a Roman Emperor to roam about at night and join in street brawls with slaves as it is for him to sing, and write verses, and dance on the stage.’

‘How do you know that I have roamed the streets?’

Unwittingly she had betrayed herself, but in an instant she recovered from her confusion.

‘What Otho and your other boon companions do—such as they are—is notorious; and when Cæsar has a black eye the event is hard to account for in any ordinary way.’

‘Say rather that your spies have told you about it,’ said Nero.

‘And if they have,’ she said defiantly—‘what then?’

‘Why this,’ he answered; ‘that, as I have told you before, I am Emperor, and mean to be Emperor; and if you do not choose to be taught it by fair means, by all the gods, you shall be taught it by foul.’

‘By all the gods?’ said Agrippina, repeating his oath. ‘Are you not afraid of their wrath?’

Nero smiled a peculiar smile. ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘Why should I fear gods when I can make them myself?’53

Agrippina was stung by the sense of her impotence, and maddened by the shipwreck of her ambition; but she was too proud and fierce to abandon the contest.

‘If you do not fear any gods,’ she said, ‘you shall fear me. Britannicus has nearly arrived at the age of manhood. He is the son of Claudius; you are not. But for me he would have been Emperor; by my aid he may yet sit upon his father’s throne. Then once more Rome shall see a man ruling her, and not a singer and a dandy.’

Nero, filled with fury, clenched his fist, and strode forward as though he would strike her.

She sprang up with flashing eyes. ‘Would you dare to strike me?’ she shrieked. ‘By heavens, if you did, I would that moment stab you to the heart.’

At the word she drew from her robe a dagger which she always carried there, and raised it in her right hand, while her bosom heaved with passion.

Nero sprang back, but Agrippina, as though in the revulsion of disdain, dropped the dagger at her feet.

‘You would make a fine tragedian, mother,’ said Nero, with a bitter sneer.

The excess of Agrippina’s rage seemed to stifle her. ‘One hope, at least, the gods have left me,’ she gasped forth, as soon as she could find voice to speak. ‘Britannicus yet lives; I will take him with me to the Prætorian camp. I will see whether the soldiers will listen to the daughter of Germanicus, or to Burrus with his mutilated hand and Seneca with his professorial tongue.’

‘I am tired of all this,’ answered Nero. ‘Only remember that some day you may provoke me too far. There are such persons as informers; there is such a law as that of læsa majestas.’

He left her, as he almost always left her now, in angry displeasure, but he did not seriously fear her threats. He had been trained to think himself incomparably superior to Britannicus. Agrippina herself had encouraged the widespread scandal that it was one thing to be a son of Messalina, and quite another to be a son of Claudius. Besides, he traced no steady ambition in the boy. So long as he was left to amuse himself with Titus, he gave hardly any trouble, nor had he, so far as Nero knew, a single partisan who could for a moment withstand the combined authority and popularity of such men as Seneca and the Prætorian Præfect. Still he disliked being threatened so constantly with the claims of the son of Claudius. Tigellinus was always hissing his name in his ears, and Agrippina blazoning him as a resource wherewith to secure her vengeance. If Britannicus were not so insignificant, it might be well to put him out of the way.

A few days afterwards, when his face had nearly resumed its ordinary hue, he determined to celebrate the Saturnalia with a party mainly composed of youthful nobles.

Otho of course was there, and the guests whom he had invited to the villa in the Apennines. Among the others were Nerva, now a young man of twenty-three, and Vespasian, with his two sons, Titus and Domitian, who, with a few other boys, were asked to meet Britannicus. Piso Licinianus, a youth of seventeen, of high lineage and blameless manners, was of a very different stamp from Nero’s favourite companions, but Nero chose to pay him the compliment of commanding his presence. Among the elder guests of the miscellaneous party were invited Galba, a man in the prime of life, who since his return from Africa had been living in retirement, and Vitellius, who, though only forty, had been already infamous under four emperors, and who rose to the highest position in spite of the fact that he was notorious for gluttony alone.

A curious incident occurred at the beginning of the banquet. Among the crowded slaves who waited on the guests was a Christian who, like Agabus and the daughters of Philip, possessed in a high degree that peculiar gift of prophecy which is known as second sight. His name was Herodion; and Apelles, one of his fellow-slaves in Cæsar’s household, in pointing out the guests, mentioned the rumour that Nerva’s horoscope had been cast by an astrologer, who had predicted that he should succeed to the Empire; and that Augustus had laid his hands on the head of Galba when he was a boy, and had said to him, ‘Thou too, my child, shalt have a taste of empire.’

‘I do not believe in horoscopes,’ said Herodion.

‘Not believe in the Chaldæans?’ replied the other. ‘Ah, I remember, thou art one of those Christians, who worship—well, never mind. But canst thou deny that the prognostications of our augurs, and the answers of our oracles, often come true?’

‘They do,’ said Herodion. ‘We believe that the demons have such power sometimes permitted them. There was, for instance, a maid with the spirit of Python at Philippi, whose fame has even reached to Rome. But—’ and here he paused long, and gazed with earnest and troubled countenance on the assembled guests.

‘What is it?’ asked Apelles.

‘Apelles,’ answered Herodion, ‘thou art honest, and lovest me. Dare I tell thee that as I gaze on these guests I seem to see them as through a mist of blood?’

‘Thou art safe with me,’ answered Apelles. ‘Should I be likely to betray the kind sharer of my cell, who nursed me last year through that long and terrible fever?’

But Herodion sank into silence, though his glance grew more and more troubled as he looked around him. Whatever it may have been granted him to see or to divine, he spoke no more. But among those guests there were no less than eight future emperors—Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, Nerva, and Trajan, then a little child, who was led in by a slave; and six of these, as well as Nero and Britannicus, and Piso Licinianus, were destined to violent deaths. Apelles recalled the scene years afterwards, when he too had become a convert to Christianity.

The joyous licence of the Saturnalia put an end to all stiffness of ceremonial. The banquet was gay and mirthful, and as so many youths and boys were present the amusements were purposely kept free from such scenes as disgraced the suppers at Subiaco and the palace of Otho. It was agreed that the younger guests should cast lots which should be the king of the feast. Nero threw the Venus-throw of four sixes, and was accordingly elected with acclamation to the mirthful office. The rex ruled with undisputed sway, and all were obliged to obey his bidding. Good taste and natural kindness usually prevented him from any flagrant abuse of his office.

While the staid elders looked on with smiles, Nero and the younger part of the company amused themselves with various games.

‘And now,’ said the Emperor, ‘you must all obey your symposiarch, and I am going to tell you each in turn what to do.’

Otho was bidden to take off his garland, and place it on the head of the person whom he loved best; and of course he placed it on the head of Nero.

Lucan, as he was fond of stories, was bidden to tell a complete story in one minute; and with surprising readiness he quoted the two Greek lines—

‘Piso Licinianus, you are to pay me the highest compliment you can.’

Piso was no flatterer, and did not like the command, but after a moment’s hesitation he quoted Horace’s lines—

‘That is a compliment to my ancestors, not to me,’ said Nero; ‘but I will let you off, for, though I am Rex, I am not Tyrannus.’

‘Now, Petronius, you are a poet, so I am going to give you a hard command. I will give you five minutes, and you are to produce a line which shall read the same backwards and forwards.’

‘Impossible, Cæsar,’ said Petronius.

‘Nevertheless, I require the impossibility, or you will have to drink by way of fine at least nine cyathi of neat Falernian.’

With humble apologies, Petronius seized his tablets, and before the five minutes had expired he read the line—

‘Roma tibi subito motibus ibit Amor.’

‘Your line is not Latin, and does not make sense,’ said Nero. ‘I should have told you to make me a compliment instead of our grave Licinianus. But now, Senecio, I order you to quote the epitaph which best expresses your view of life.’

Senecio obeyed, and his selection was very characteristic. It was—

‘Eat, drink, enjoy thyself: the rest is nothing.’55

‘What would our small Epictetus say to that?’ whispered Titus in the ear of Britannicus.

Other guests achieved the tasks appointed them with more or less success, and they awaited with some curiosity the injunction which Nero would lay on Britannicus. Britannicus did not feel much anxiety about it, for he supposed it would be of the same playful and frivolous character as the rest. He did not imagine that his brother would single him out at a genial gathering to put upon him a public insult by ordering him to do anything which would cause a blush. He was therefore struck with amazement when Nero said:

‘And now, Britannicus, get up, walk into the middle of the room, and there sing us a song.’

A low and scarcely audible murmur of disapproval ran round the room. As it was the Saturnalitian festival, the slaves were not only present as spectators of these social games, but were allowed by custom to indulge in an almost unlimited licence of satire even against their masters. But that a prince of the blood should be called upon to sing—to sing in public, before a number of noble Romans, and even in the presence of slaves, was regarded as an indignity of the deadliest description. It was a violation of immemorial custom. It was a demand entirely outrageous. The hot blood rushed to the cheeks of Britannicus, and suffused his brow and neck. An indignant refusal sprang to his lips. If Pudens had been near he would at least have glanced at him to see what he would advise; but, to his deep grief, Pudens had been removed to a post in the camp, and his place had been taken by a tribune named Julius Pollio, whom Britannicus distrusted at a glance. The pause was becoming seriously awkward, and many of the guests betrayed uneasiness, when Britannicus heard Titus, who sat next to him, whisper in a low voice, ‘It is a shame; but you had better try, for fear worse should happen.’

Then Britannicus summoned up all his courage and all his dignity. He rose and walked with a firm step into the middle of the triclinium, asked the harpist Terpnos, whom he saw standing near with his harp in his hand, to give him a note, and in a voice sweet and clear began to sing one of the finest choruses from the ‘Andromache’ of the old Roman poet, Ennius. It described the ruin of the House of Priam. ‘I have seen,’ says Andromache, the captive wife of Hector, ‘the palace with its roof embossed and fretted with gold and ivory, and all its lofty portals, wrapped in conflagration. I have seen Priam slain with violence, and the altar of Jove incarnadined with blood. What protection shall I seek? Whither shall I fly? What shall be my place of exile? Robbed of citadel and city, whither shall I fare? Shattered and scattered are the altars of my home and native land! The shrines are calcined by flame; scorched are their lofty walls, and warped their beams of fir by the strong heat.’56

Nero listened in astonishment and alarm. The strain which the boy had chosen for his song was conceived in the grandest and most heroic style of the old Roman poetry, and was incomparably nobler and manlier than the conceits and tintinnabulations which were in modern vogue. The taste, the knowledge, the readiness, shown in the selection of such a strain were remarkable. And was this Britannicus who sang? Nero was always displaying and boasting of his divine voice, but it was harsh as a crow’s in comparison with the ringing notes of his modest brother. And then the meaning of the song? Was it not aimed at Nero and his usurpation? Did it not show decisively the thoughts which were filling the soul of the dispossessed prince, and his clear consciousness that he had been robbed of his hereditary rights?

But there was something worse than this. For by the time that Britannicus had ended his song, the brief winter twilight had nearly ended, and the banqueting-room lay deep in shadow. It was too dark to distinguish individual faces, and this fact, together with the liberty of the jocund season, made those present less careful to conceal their thoughts. No sooner had the voice of Britannicus ceased than a murmur of spontaneous applause arose on every side, and not only of applause, but of pity and favour. Nero had meant to humiliate his brother: but, on the contrary, his brother had so behaved under trying circumstances as to win all hearts!

Jealousy, rage, hatred, swept in turbulent gusts across the Emperor’s soul. He would have liked to strike Britannicus, to scourge those insolent guests. But he did not dare to take any overt step, for there had been no overt offence. Britannicus had been bidden to obey the festive order of the King of the Feast, and he had accomplished the behest as the others had done, in a way which kindled admiration. To act as if the chorus from Ennius had been aimed at himself would have been to betray uneasiness and confess wrongdoing.

He could not, however, conceal, and took no pains to conceal, his petulant spleen. Praise of another was poison to Nero. That the merit of any one else should be admitted seemed like a reflection on himself. ‘They call Britannicus as good as me!’ was a thought which filled his little soul with spite and wrath.

‘This is poor stuff,’ he said, in high dudgeon, pretending to yawn in the most insulting way he could. ‘Who would have expected mock heroics at the Saturnalia?’ Then he rose, and said, with a slight wave of the hand, ‘I am tired of this. I bid farewell to the guests. You may go without ceremony.’

Every one felt that the Emperor’s ill-humour had thrown a deadly chill over the gladdest night of the year. With mutual glancings, and slight shrugs of the shoulder, and almost imperceptible liftings of the eyebrow, they departed. Only Tigellinus remained.

‘What does Cæsar think of Britannicus now?’ he asked in malignant triumph.

‘I think,’ said Nero, savagely, ‘that swans sing sweetest before they die.’

‘Ah-h!’ said the base plotter; and he knew that now the first step in the Sejanus-course of his ambition was accomplished.

But Britannicus went straight from the supper to the rooms of his sister. Octavia sat there in the old Roman fashion of matronly simplicity. She was spinning wool at her distaff, and with kind heart she often gave what she spun to the children of her slaves. And while she spun, a maiden was reading to her.

It was the Christian girl Tryphæna. Usually she read from the Roman poets, and Octavia was never tired of hearing the finer odes of Horace, or the Æneid and Bucolics of Virgil. Sometimes she listened to the history of Livy, and to the treatises of Seneca, which she liked better than their author. But this evening Tryphæna—between whom and her young mistress there was a confidence akin to affection—had timidly asked ‘whether she might read a Christian writing.’ She knew that the Empress had been interested in the Christians by the conversation of Pomponia, and she was anxious to show how shamefully her brethren and sisters in the faith were misrepresented and slandered.

She drew forth from her bosom a manuscript, which had been lent her as a precious favour by the Christian Presbyter Cletus. It was a copy of a general letter of the Apostle Peter, which had been written to encourage the struggling Christian communities. It was not the letter which we now know as the First Epistle of St. Peter, which was written perhaps ten years later, but one of those circular addresses which touched, as did so many of the Epistles, upon the same universal duties, and used in many passages the same form of words. She had read the beautiful passage about obeying the ordinances of man for the Lord’s sake, and putting to silence by well-doing the ignorance of foolish men. And pausing there, she asked ‘whether Octavia was interested in it, and whether she should continue.’

‘Yes, Tryphæna,’ she said, ‘continue this strange letter. How different it is from the treatise of Seneca which you were reading to me the other day! There rings through it I know not what accent of elevation and sincerity.’

The girl then read the noble advice to slaves, and Octavia no longer wondered that Christian slaves so invariably deserved the comprehensive epithet of frugi. How well would it be if the worthless multitude of the slave population—the cunning veteratores, the impudent vernæ, the abject copreæ, the pampered minions of luxury, the frivolous Greeklings—could act in the spirit of such exhortations!

Then she read the duty of husbands towards their wives, and of wives towards their husbands. Octavia bowed her head. She thought of all the numberless divorces; of the ladies who reckoned their years by the number of their husbands; of the scandals caused by the women who stooped to court gladiators and charioteers; of the fires of hell which Nero’s unfaithfulness had kindled on her own hearth. She could think of the home of Pætus Thrasea as happy; but scarcely of another except that of Pomponia—and Pomponia was a Christian.

Tryphæna had just begun the following passage:—

‘Finally, be ye all like-minded—’

when Britannicus entered. He did not know what was being read, and Octavia put her finger on her lip, and made a sign to him to sit down and listen.

The slave-girl continued—

‘Finally, be ye all like-minded, compassionate, loving as brethren, tender-hearted, humble-minded; not rendering evil for evil, or reviling for reviling; but contrariwise blessing; for hereunto were ye called, that ye should inherit a blessing. For,

Britannicus listened in astonishment. ‘Who wrote those noble words?’ he asked. ‘It cannot be Chrysippus; the Greek is too modern, and too unpolished. Is this some new philosopher? Has something been recently published by Cornutus or Musonius?’

‘Perhaps you will see, if Tryphæna reads a little further,’ said the Empress.

The slave-girl continued—

‘And who is he that will harm you, if ye be zealous of that which is good? But if ye suffer for the sake of righteousness, blessed are ye: and fear not their fear, neither be troubled; but sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord—’

‘It is a Christian writing!’ exclaimed the boy, in a low voice; and when he again caught the thread of the exhortation, Tryphæna was reading—

‘For it is better, if the will of God be so, that ye suffer for well-doing rather than for evil-doing; because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God.’

‘Go, Tryphæna,’ said Octavia, deeply moved. ‘I would talk with my brother alone.’

‘A Christian writing!’ said Britannicus again, as the slave-girl quietly glided out of the room. ‘Who wrote it?’

‘Tryphæna says it is part of a letter written to Christians, who are scattered everywhere, by a fisherman, Peter of Galilee, who, she says, was one of the apostles of Christus.’

‘Octavia,’ said Britannicus, ‘I feel as if voices out of heaven were calling me. I feel as if this unknown Christus were drawing me irresistibly to Himself. It is a message to me—and a message before my death.’

‘Your death, Britannicus?’ said the Empress, starting, and turning pale. ‘Oh, withdraw those ill-omened words.’

‘Do not fear omens, Octavia. But you must hear what has happened to me.’

‘You have been at the Saturnalitian feast, and you are soon to lay aside the golden ball and the embroidered toga,’ said Octavia, proudly; ‘and very well you will look in your new manly toga and the purple tunic underneath it.’

‘Yes, but it reminds me of Homer. It is a “purple death,” as Alexander the Great called it.’

‘Why are your thoughts so full of gloom?’ asked his sister, pushing back the hair from his forehead, and looking into his face.

He told her all that had happened that night. She saw the fatal significance of what had occurred.

‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, sobbing, ‘the gods are too cruel. What have we done that they should thus afflict our innocence? I lift up my hands against them.’

‘Hush, Octavia! All these ridiculous and polluted deities—who believes in them any longer? But they represent the Divine, and what the Divine does must be for some good end, and we must breast the storm like Romans and like rulers, if we cannot reach the peace of which this poor Christian fisherman has written.’

‘Our mother disgraced and slain; our father murdered; ourselves surrounded with perils; Nero on the throne. Oh, Britannicus! wherein have we offended?’

‘We have not offended, my Octavia. The good suffer as well as the bad. The good are often made better by their sufferings.’

‘Oh, my brother! my brother!’ sobbed Octavia. ‘I will not spare you. I cannot part from you. I have no one left but you. You shall not, you must not, die.’

He gently disengaged the arms of his sister from his neck, and kissed her cheek.

‘I must not linger here any longer to-night,’ he said. ‘Farewell; not, I trust, forever, though I see that Nero has dismissed our friend Pudens, and put an ill-looking stranger in his place. But, Octavia, something—some voice like that of a god within me—tells me that it will be happier to die than to live.’

---

That evening, when Tigellinus left him, Nero first realised, with a start of horror, that he was on the eve of a fearful crime. By a rare accident he was alone. One of the reasons why he knew so little of himself was that he scarcely ever endured a moment’s solitude. From the time that he awoke in the morning till the latest hour of his nightly revels, he was surrounded by flatterers and favourites, by dissolute young nobles or adoring slaves. It was only for an occasional hour or two of state business that he saw any person of dignity or moral worth. This evening he would have been encircled by his usual throng of idlers if he had not broken up the banquet in anger long before the expected time.

He was alone, and his thoughts naturally reverted to the song of Britannicus, and to his own fierce mortification. The words ‘He shall die!’ broke from his lips. But at that moment, looking up, his glance was arrested by two busts of white marble, standing out from the wall on pedestals of porphyry. He remembered the day on which they had been placed there by the orders of Claudius, in whose private tablinum he chanced to be sitting. One was a beautiful likeness of Britannicus at the age of six years. The other was a bust of himself in the happy and radiant days of his early boyhood, before guilt had clouded his brow and stained his heart.

He rose and stood before the bust of Britannicus. For some years they had been inmates of the same palace. They had been playmates, and at first, before the development of Agrippina’s darker plots, there had been between them some shadow of affection. Nero had always felt that there was a winning charm about the character and bearing of his adoptive brother. Anger and jealousy whispered, ‘Kill him;’ conscience pleaded, ‘Dip not your young hands in blood. There has been enough of crime already. You know how Claudius died, and who was his murderess, and for whose gain. Let it suffice. Britannicus is no conspirator. It is not too late, even yet, to make him your friend.’

He turned to his own bust. It represented a face fairer, more joyous, more mobile than that of the son of Claudius. ‘I was a very pretty child,’ said Nero, and then gazed earnestly into the mirror which hung between the busts. It showed him a face, of which the features were the same, but of which the expression was changed, and on which many a bad passion, recklessly indulged, had already stamped its debasing seal.

‘Ye gods! how altered I am!’ he murmured; and he hid his face in his hands, as though to shut out the image in the mirror.

And then his dark hour came upon him. The paths of virtue which he had abandoned looked enchantingly beautiful to him. He saw them, and pined his loss. Was amendment hopeless? Might he not dismiss his evil friends, send Tigellinus to an island, banish Poppæa from his thoughts, return to the neglected Octavia, abandon his vicious courses, live like a true Roman? Was he about to develop into a Tiberius or a Caligula—he who had hated not long ago to sign the death-warrant of a criminal? Should history record of him hereafter that he had dyed the commencement of his power with the indelible crimson of a brother’s blood?

‘I am a tyrant and a murderer,’ he cried. ‘I am falling, falling headlong. Cannot I check myself in this career? Ye gods! ye gods!’

Whom had he to help him to choose the difficult course? Who would encourage him to turn his back on his past self? The philosophers, he felt, despised him. He could recall the cold, disapproving glances of Musonius, and Cornutus, and Demetrius the Cynic, on the rare occasions when he had seen them. And as for Seneca, of what use would it be to send for him? ‘I have learnt to distrust Seneca,’ he said to himself. ‘He might have advised me better than he did in the matter of Acte.’

But the powers of evil never lightly resign a soul in which they have once planted their throne, and they took care to bring back upon Nero’s heart a great flood of jealousy, suspicion, and dislike. And as he gave himself up to these ill-feelings, he began to feel how disagreeable it would be to grow up year by year with such a youth as Britannicus beside him. It would be impossible to keep him in leading-strings, or to thrust him wholly into the background. What if the virtues of Britannicus should only throw into relief the vices of Nero? ‘No,’ he said; ‘Britannicus must die.’

So Nero deliberately chose the evil and refused the good, and the narrow wicket-gate of repentance was closed behind him, and the enemies of his soul flung wide open before him the portals of crime, and the wild steeds of his passions, as they sprang forth on their down-hillward path, soon flung from his seat the charioteer who had seemed inclined for one brief instant to tighten the reins and check their headlong speed.

CHAPTER XXIII

PERILS OF BRITANNICUS

At this time a change came over the fortunes of Onesimus.

Pudens had been dismissed from his post among the excubitors of the Palace, under the semblance of honourable promotion, but in reality because Nero was doubly displeased by his fidelity to Britannicus and by the blow which (as he had accidentally discovered) Pudens had given him during the nocturnal encounter. But, as he had been an excubitor for so long, he had been accustomed to keep some of his armour and a few books in a room in the Palace, and he sent Onesimus to fetch them.

As he went to this room under the guidance of one of Cæsar’s slaves, Onesimus heard a low voice singing the burden of one of the Phrygian songs with which he had been familiar in old days at Thyatira.

He was a creature of impulse, and, without thinking what he was doing, he took up the refrain of the song.

Immediately the door opened, and a beautiful dark-eyed girl asked in an agitated voice, and in the dialect of Phrygia, who had taken up the song.

The sound of his native tongue sent through the heart of Onesimus that indescribable thrill which we feel when past recollections are suddenly brought home to us in long-accumulated arrears. Greek had been spoken in the household of Philemon. He had scarcely heard his native Phrygian since he had been a free-born child, before he had incurred the stain of being sold as a slave. He answered in Phrygian that he had known the song since he was a child at his mother’s knee in Thyatira.

‘In Thyatira?’ said the girl; then gazing at him long and earnestly, she flung up her arms and exclaimed, ‘Can this be Onesimus?’

‘Do you know my name, lady?’ he asked in surprise.

‘Look at me,’ she answered. ‘It is twelve years since we met, but do you not recall—’

He fixed his eyes on her face and said in a troubled voice, ‘You are like Eunice, the daughter of my mother’s sister, with whom I was brought up as a child.’

‘Hush!’ she exclaimed; ‘step aside for a moment, Onesimus; I am Eunice, but for many years I have not been known by that name. When the fortunes of our house were ruined I too was sold as a slave with you to the purple factory of Lydia; but a freedman of the Emperor Claudius saw me and brought me to wait upon the Empress Messalina. He thought my name too fine, and changed it to Acte.’

‘Acte?’ burst out Onesimus; ‘then you are,’—he broke off and remained silent.

A blush suffused the girl’s cheek. ‘A slave,’ she said, ‘is forced to do her master’s bidding. Nero loved me sincerely, and I loved him, and I was ignorant and very young. But it is past. The affections of Nero are turned elsewhere; yet none can say that I have ever used my influence for any but kind ends.’

‘I reproached you not, Acte,’ said Onesimus, ‘if I must call you by your new name. I have far too much wherewith to reproach myself.’

‘Meet me here,’ said Acte, ‘two hours after noon, and you shall tell me all your story, and how I can help you.’

Onesimus came that afternoon. He and Acte had been like brother and sister in the house at Thyatira in happier days, and he told her his sad story and all his sufferings, and how he had been rescued by the compassion of Pudens, and how, even in the house of Pudens, he had not shown himself worthy of the centurion’s kindness, and how he loved Junia—and all his fears and all his hopes.

‘Should you like to be one of Cæsar’s household?’ asked Acte. ‘If so, I do not doubt that I can get you a place by mentioning your name to the steward of the Empress.’

For the slave of a poor soldier the offer involved immense promotion and still larger possibilities. The thought of Junia checked Onesimus for a moment, but Acte told him that, if he rose in the house of Cæsar, there lay before him the far nearer chances of emancipation and riches, so that he would be more likely in due time to make Junia his own. She did not conceal from him that, in such a community as the sixteen hundred imperial slaves, the temptations to every form of wrong-doing were far deadlier than in a humble and more modest familia; but she longed to have near her one whom she could trust as a brother and a friend. Onesimus had acquired at Thyatira a good knowledge of all that concerned the purchase and the preservation of purple. It would not be difficult for Acte, without her name appearing in the matter, to secure him a place as the purple-keeper in the household of Octavia. She knew that Parmenio, the servus a purpura, had died recently, and that the qualifications for the post were a little less common than those which sufficed for the majority of slaves.

Onesimus, therefore, grasped at the dazzling bait of better pay and loftier position. That evening he spoke to Nereus, who, after consulting Pudens, told him that there would be no difficulty, whether by exchange or otherwise, in permitting his acceptance of the offer which had been made to him.

The great men who visited Cæsar looked down upon the hundreds of slaves who thronged the Palace as beings separated from themselves by an immeasurable abyss of inferiority; but to the mass of paupers who formed the chief part of the population servitude to the Emperor seemed a condition of enviable brilliance. We are told that when Felicio was promoted to the post of Cæsar’s cobbler, he at once became a personage of importance, and was flattered on every side. Onesimus had much the same experience. Among those who knew him he found that he had risen indefinitely by the exchange which transferred him to the office of servus a purpura in the household of Octavia.

He was received into the slaves’ quarters with the showers of sweetmeats and the other humble festivities which welcomed the advent of a new slave; and on the evening of his admission Acte sent for him.

‘Onesimus,’ she said, ‘I have it in my power to befriend you; and if you will be faithful you may rise to posts of the greatest importance. But such promotion must depend on your character. May I trust you?’

‘Surely, Acte!’

‘Then let me confide to you a secret of the deepest import. You have seen the Prince Britannicus?’

‘Yes. He looks a noble boy.’

‘I fear that his life is imperilled—it is not necessary to say by whom. I could weep when I think of the dangers which threaten him. Your office will give you opportunities of sometimes seeing him. It is not possible that I should meet you often; but here is a coin which has on it the head of Britannicus. If ever I send you one of these coins, as though I wanted you to purchase something, will you come to me at once? It will be a sign that he is menaced.’

Onesimus promised; and, in truth, the need for watchfulness was very pressing; for, on the day which followed the evening of the Saturnalitian games, Nero, fretting with jealousy and alarm, summoned Julius Pollio, the tribune on whom had been bestowed the post which Pudens had occupied, and sent him with a message to Locusta. She was allowed to move about the Palace, but was under the nominal charge of the guardsmen.

It might well seem amazing that a youth whose disposition was not innately cruel, and who a few years before had been a timid, blushing boy, caring mainly for art and amusement, should have developed, in so brief a space of time, into the murderer of his brother. But the effects produced by the vertigo of autocracy on a mean disposition are rapid as well as terrible. He had soon discovered that it was in his power to do exactly what he liked; and when he had learnt to regard himself as a god on earth, to whose wishes every law, divine and human, must give way, there was no vice of which he did not rapidly become capable. What was the life of a young boy, who stood in his way, to one who had unchallenged power over the life and death of millions of subjects over all the civilised world?

And yet the fate of his predecessors showed him that the pinnacle of absolute power was a place of constant peril. The loss of empire would mean inevitably the loss also of life. Was this peevish lad to be a source of constant danger to the darling of the soldiers, of the mob, and of the world?

He had no reason to approach Julius Pollio with any of the circumspection with which Shakespeare represents King John as opening his designs to Hubert. When, at the suggestion of Tigellinus, he had appointed Pollio to supersede Pudens, he knew the sort of man whom he would have at his beck. He simply said to the tribune—

‘I want some poison. Locusta is under your charge. Tell her to prepare some for me.’ He did not trouble himself to mention the person for whom the poison was intended.

Locusta was too familiar with her trade to hesitate. Had she not taught many a guilty wife, in spite of rumour, in spite of the populace, to bury undetected the blackening body of her husband? Her fiendish nature rejoiced at the consciousness of secret power. She supplied Pollio with a poison which was, she assured him, of tried efficacy, and she again received a large sum of money in reward for her services. Nero knew that among the wretches by whom his mother had surrounded Britannicus, and not all of whom had been removed, it would be easy to find some one who would administer the poison. He decided that the deed should be done at some private meal, and by the hands of one of the boy’s tutors, who never thought of shrinking from the infamy. In that midnight and decadence of a dying Paganism the crime of ordinary murder was too cheap to excite remorse.

But it was impossible that all this should pass unobserved. Acte had been brought under Christian influences, and was anxious by all means in her power to atone for the unintended wrong which her beauty had inflicted upon Octavia. Nero was no longer her lover, though she still lived in the Palace, and held a high position as one for whom the Emperor had once conceived so strong an infatuation. She had her own slaves assigned to her, and of these some were Christians. In her self-imposed task of watching over the life of Britannicus she asked them to obtain information of any circumstance that seemed to threaten him with danger. From them she learnt that Nero had been closeted with Julius Pollio; that Pollio had paid a visit to Locusta; and that, when Locusta had sent a small vial to Nero, the Emperor had summoned to his presence the tutor of Britannicus, who had been observed to carry away the vial in his closed hand. Her spies further told her that, by watching and listening, they had ascertained that the poison was to be given to the son of Claudius, not at supper but at the light midday meal which he took with Titus. After they had been enjoying vigorous exercise in the morning the boys usually showed an excellent appetite.

More than this they could not discover; but this much Acte confided to Onesimus, and implored him to keep watch, and if possible, devise some means by which to forewarn Britannicus of his imminent peril.

At first the quick Phrygian youth, who was understood to be under the patronage of Acte, had been a favourite in the household, and he found little difficulty in making friends with the cooks and other slaves who superintended the meals of the imperial family. By a visit to the kitchen—in which he flattered the cook and his young assistants by the lively curiosity which he expressed about the various dishes, and the enthusiasm with which he admired their skill—he learnt that, as a special treat, a beccafico was to be sent in for the prandium of Britannicus, and he conjectured that it would be poisoned. That the cook was innocent of any evil design he was sure, and he guessed that the fig-pecker would be poisoned by some slave of higher office about the young prince’s person. But he knew not how to forewarn the unsuspecting boy. The time was short. It was not easy to find an excuse by which he—whose duty lay in a different part of the Palace—could find access to the apartments of Britannicus. And whom could he warn? There was scarcely an instance known in which any one had dared to interfere between an emperor and his victims. In the general paralysis of servility, in the terror inspired by the little despicable human god, in the indifference to bloodshed caused by the games of the amphitheatre, why should any one be troubled by one death the more?

But Onesimus, less familiar with a world so plague-stricken with torpid corruption, felt in his heart a spring of pity for the doomed boy. After rejecting plan after plan as impossible, it flashed upon him that he might get a message conveyed to Titus. He had but a few minutes left, and Titus could not be found until he and the prince, still warm and glowing from their game of ball, entered the parlour. Onesimus grew desperate, and, boldly summoning a young slave, sent him to Titus with the extemporised message that the centurion Pudens urgently desired to speak with him.

Titus went into the hall, and recognised Onesimus as the youth whom his own kindness had first brought under the notice of Pudens. The Phrygian led him to a remote part of the hall, behind one of the statues of the Danaides, and whispered to him, ‘Britannicus is in danger. Let him not touch the bird which has been provided for his lunch. Oh, stay not to ask me anything,’ he added, when Titus seemed inclined to question him further; ‘hurry back, if you would save his life.’

Titus hurried back, but the meal was quite informal, and Britannicus, hungry with exercise, had already helped himself to the dainty set before him.

‘Give me some of that fig-pecker,’ said Titus desperately; ‘I am very fond of those birds; we catch them at Reate.’

Britannicus at once handed the dish to him with a smile. ‘I don’t know what Epictetus would think,’ he said, ‘of a Stoic who is fond of dainties.’

‘It is meant exclusively for you, Sir,’ said the pædagogus, hastily. ‘I wonder that Titus should be so greedy.’

Titus blushed; but the remark helped him out of a serious difficulty. He had thought in vain how he could avoid eating the bird which Onesimus had told him was poisoned.

‘After that remark,’ he answered, ‘of course I cannot touch it.’

‘Then give it back to Britannicus,’ said the tutor.

‘Nay,’ said the prince; ‘if Titus is to be called greedy for liking it, I must be greedy too. I have had enough. Besides there is a taste about it which I do not like. Bread and a few olives are more than enough.’

He pushed away his plate, and when they had risen from the table, he looked curiously at his friend.

Titus blushed again. ‘I know,’ he whispered, ‘that you will not think me greedy, Britannicus.’

‘Titus,’ he answered, ‘you know something.’

‘Ask me nothing,’ said Titus; ‘I was only just in time, if, indeed, I have been in time.’

Britannicus was silent. He suspected that some attempt had been made upon his life, and that it had been partially frustrated by the faithfulness of his friend. He had no doubt on the subject, when, a little later, he was seized with violent pains. Happily, however, he had scarcely more than tasted of the beccafico, and in the fit of sickness which followed, nature came to his relief. His recovery was aided by the pure and glowing state of his health. After a few hours of excruciating agony he sank into a long refreshing sleep.

He woke in the twilight, to find himself lying on a couch, while Octavia and Titus, sitting on either side of him, were rubbing his cold hands.

‘Where am I?’ he asked. ‘Oh, I remember!’ And he said no more; but he took the hand of Titus, and drew his sister near to him and kissed her.

The hearts of all three were too full for words, but as they sat there a message came that the Augusta was coming to visit them.

Agrippina was of course admitted, and left her attendants at the door. As the lovely haughty lady entered, they could not help observing, even by the dim light of the two silver lamps which had just been lit, that a change had passed over her features, and that she had been weeping. Haughty they still were, but wrath and disappointment and failure, purchased at the cost of crime, had stamped them with an expression of agony, as though she wore the brand of Cain. When she heard of the sudden illness of Britannicus, she divined its cause too well. While her power was waning so rapidly, she had been no longer able to maintain the elaborate system of espionage which had helped her when she was Empress; but she, too, was aware that Pollio had visited Locusta, and the misgiving had seized her that the poison might be meant for herself. That it turned out to be for Britannicus was hardly less appalling to her. She felt that her imprudence had made Nero jealous of him, and that his death would deprive her of her last resource. She rejoiced, therefore, unfeignedly at the boy’s recovery, and when she visited him he saw that, for the first time, she spoke with genuine kindness to Octavia, and that her expressions of pity and condolence to himself were sincere. There was no feigning in the hot teardrops which fell on his cheek when she kissed him, and as he lay there, weak and pale, she felt, with deepening remorse for the wrongs which she had inflicted on him, that he did not shrink from her embrace.

Nero, too, sent messages of enquiry to ‘his beloved brother’ by his freedman, Claudius Etruscus. As he heard them, the old spirit of Britannicus flashed out.

‘Tell Cæsar,’ he said, ‘that this time his poi—’

Before the word could be spoken, Titus with hasty gesture placed his hand over his friend’s mouth, and Agrippina, knowing well that every syllable would be reported, and interpreted in the most malignant manner, turned her queenly head to the freedman who had brought the message.

‘Tell the Emperor that his brother is much better, but is still light-headed. Claudius Etruscus,’ she said, ‘you pass for an honest man. I pray you, do not mention to Nero anything which Britannicus has spoken in his delirium.’

Etruscus bent low, and, touched by passing pity at the scene which he had witnessed, he determined to abstain from reporting what he had heard. ‘The Augusta,’ he said, ‘has always been kind to me. Her wish shall be obeyed.’

But Nero was restless and anxious, and was pacing to and fro like a caged wild beast. The thought of plots and perils haunted him. That morning, as he passed along the covered way which led from the Palace into the theatre, he had seen the red stain of the blood of Caligula on the walls—a red stain which could not be washed out—and felt a spasm of suffocation as if a dagger were at his throat. He was frightened to hear from Etruscus that Agrippina was with his brother. Were they conspiring to bring about a revolution? He would himself go and see.

He had been drinking, and as he entered took no notice of Titus or of Octavia. To Agrippina he only vouchsafed a cold salute, and she, dreading another scene in the presence of witnesses, rose and left the chamber. He took the cold hand of Britannicus in his own hot and feverish grasp, and a pang of hatred shot through him as he felt it shrink at his touch. The boy was propped up on his couch with pillows, and a hectic spot burned on each of his pallid cheeks; but his eyes were filled with strange light, and, as he fixed them on the face of Nero, they seemed to read his inmost soul.

Nero averted his glance. He dared not look upon his victim. Indeed, under that steady gaze, the consciousness of his crime brought the tell-tale crimson over his face. He was not yet too far gone to blush, though the days were rapidly approaching in which he would wear a front of brass.

He muttered some hypocritical words of condolence, which rang false and were overdone. Britannicus spoke not.

Octavia said, ‘Pardon his silence, Nero; he is too weak to thank you.’

‘I did not ask you to interfere,’ answered Nero brutally.

‘I give you such thanks as are due,’ said Britannicus in a faint voice; but he tried to withdraw his hand from Nero’s grasp.

Nero rose in a towering passion. ‘I came to inquire about your illness. You meet me with scowls and ingratitude,’ he said, flinging away the hand of Britannicus. ‘If you do not choose to behave as a brother, I will make you feel that you are a subject. Octavia and Titus, you may retire.’

‘Oh, do not leave me alone. I am very ill,’ pleaded the poor prince. ‘Indeed, indeed I cannot be left alone.’

The terrible thought which had flashed through the mind of Nero—the thought that, if left alone, the boy might be killed that night—had woke its reflection in the mind of Britannicus. But Nero strode angrily out of the room, and neither repeated nor withdrew his command.

‘May the spirits of all the good protect thee!’ said Octavia, as she fondly kissed her brother. ‘I dare not stay; it might be the worse for thee if I did.’

‘But I will stay, Empress,’ said Titus, ‘and I will do my best for him.’

When the young Empress had withdrawn, Titus beckoned to her faithful freedwoman Pythias, and told her to send for Onesimus. He came, and Titus, after slipping into his hand an aureus, which the Empress had left for him as a reward for his faithful warning, begged him to be on the alert, and to return in an hour. The Phrygian went to Acte, and told her all that had occurred. She kept him near at hand, and in a short time informed him that two of Nero’s worst creatures —Tigellinus and Doryphorus—were closeted with the Emperor, and that there was too much reason to fear that some deadly measure would be attempted that evening.

Such was indeed the case. For now, to the joy of Tigellinus, Nero had openly declared that Britannicus must be swept out of his path; had even admitted to him that poison had been attempted, and had failed.

‘How soon do you wish the deed to be done?’ asked the wicked adventurer.

‘If we are to prevent some accursed plot,’ said Nero, ‘it cannot be too soon.’

‘To-night?’

‘To-night, if you will,’ answered Nero, ‘but it must be secret. There must be no scandal. A story must be trumped up. The Augusta must be deceived. Octavia must be deceived. None of his adherents must know of it, unless they can be trusted to hold their tongues.’

‘Nearly all the people about him are in our pay,’ said Tigellinus. ‘I think it can be done.’

That night no soldier was on guard near the room of Britannicus, and Titus regarded this as a fatal sign. When he received from Onesimus the intelligence which Acte had given him, he said that he would draw his own bed across the door of the Prince’s room inside, so that none could enter without his knowledge. He asked Onesimus to keep watch in concealment outside, and make a noise if any one should approach.

‘I can imitate exactly the bark of the Empress’s lap-dog,’ said Onesimus, ‘for Aponia, who has charge of it, often lets me tease it. If I make this noise in the quiet of the night it is sure to set other dogs barking, and then I will spring out of my hiding-place as if the sound had awoke me.’

Proud of the confidence reposed in him, proud to be the guard of a Cæsar’s life, Onesimus put on a black lacerna, shrouded himself in a dark corner, hidden behind the shield of an Amazon. The Palace sank to deep silence, broken only by the faint, distant tramp of the sentinel who kept watch outside the passage which led to the cubiculum of the Emperor.

About an hour after midnight he heard a stealthy footstep approaching, and saw the occasional gleam of a lantern which was hidden under the cloak of the murderer. Breathless with anxiety, he watched and listened. The slave came near to the room of Britannicus. Noiselessly he placed his lantern on the floor, then he drew a large dagger, and Onesimus saw its blade flash in the light as the wretch examined it. One instant more and his hand was thrusting an oiled key into the lock.

Then it was that Onesimus gave a short, sharp sound like the bark of a pet dog. The murderer started violently. Onesimus repeated the sound, which was immediately taken up by a dog which belonged to one of the freedwomen. Hesitating no longer, he leapt out of his shelter with the challenge, ‘Who goes there?’ and at the same moment Titus, who had slept in his clothes, unfastened the door, and sprang in front of it with a sword in his hand.

Without staying an instant longer the murderer dashed down his lantern and fled, for slaves and freedmen were heard stirring on every side. Onesimus did not attempt to pursue him, but quietly slipped back to his own cell. He knew that for that night the dark plot was frustrated and Britannicus was safe.

To the slaves whom the noise had disturbed Titus only said that he had been troubled by the nightmare, and bade them return to sleep. But not a few of them shrewdly suspected that they had not been told the whole truth.