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COLLECTION 
 
 OF 
 
 BRITISH AUTHORS 
 
 TAUCHNITZ EDITION. 
 VOL. 2777. 
 
 DARKNESS AND DAWN. BY F. W. FARRAR. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. I. , ^ 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
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DARKNESS AND DAWN 
 
 OR 
 
 SCENES IN THE DAYS OF NERO 
 AN HISTORIC TALE 
 
 F. W.^ARRAR, 
 
 AUTHOR OF THE **LIFE OF CHRIST." 
 
 COPYRIGHT EDITION, 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES.-VOL. I. 
 
 LEIPZIG 
 
 BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ 
 
 1891, 
 
ALUMNL'3 
 

 VXORI 
 
 DILECTISSIMAE 
 
 LIBERORVM PIEN'nSSIMAE MATRI 
 
 LABORUM OMNIUM ET CURARUM PARTICIPI FIDELISSIMAE 
 
 HVNC LIBRVM 
 
 D. D. D. 
 
 FREDERICVS GVLIELMVS FARRAR. 
 
 013 
 
Dolce color d'oriental saffiro, 
 
 Che s'accoglieva nel sereno aspetto 
 
 Dell'aer puro infino al primo giro, 
 Agli occhi miei ricomincio diletto, 
 
 Tosto ch'io usci fuor dell'aura morta, 
 
 Che m'avea contristato gli occhi e'l petto. 
 
 Dante, Pur gator io^ I. 13-18. 
 
 The orient sapphire's hue of sweetest tone, 
 "Which gathered in the aspect calm and bright 
 Of that pure air as far as heaven's first zone, 
 
 Now to mine eyes brought back the old delight 
 Soon as I passed forth from the dead dank air 
 Which eyes and heart had veiled with saddest night. 
 
 Plumptre. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 I HAVE endeavoured to choose a title for this book 
 which shall truly describe its contents. The "Darkness" 
 of which I speak is the darkness of a decadent Paganism; 
 the "Dawn" is the dawn of Christianity. Although the 
 story is continuous, I have called it "Scenes in the Days 
 of Nero," because the outline is determined by the actual 
 events of Pagan and Christian history, more than by 
 the fortunes of the characters who are here introduced. 
 In other words, the fiction is throughout controlled and 
 dominated by historic facts. The purport of this tale is 
 no less high and serious than that which I have had in 
 view in every other book which I have written. It has 
 been the illustration of a supreme and deeply interesting 
 problem — the causes, namely, why a religion so humble 
 in its origin and so feeble in its earthly resources as 
 Christianity, won so majestic a victory over the power, 
 the glory, and the intellect of the civilised world. 
 
5 PREFACE. 
 
 The greater part of the following story has been for 
 some years in manuscript, and, since it was designed, 
 and nearly completed, several books have appeared which 
 deal with the same epoch. Some of these I have not 
 seen. From none of them have I consciously borrowed 
 even the smallest hint. 
 
 Those who are familiar with the literature of the first 
 century will recognise that even for the minutest allusions 
 and particulars I have contemporary authority. Expres- 
 sions and incidents which, to some, might seem to be 
 startlingly modern, are in reality suggested by passages 
 in the satirists, epigrammatists, and romancers of the 
 Empire, or by anecdotes preserved in the grave pages of 
 Seneca and the elder Pliny. I have, of course, so far 
 assumed the liberty accorded to writers of historic fiction 
 as occasionally to deviate, to a small extent, from exact 
 chronology, but such deviations are very trivial in com- 
 parison with those which have been permitted to others, 
 and especially to the great masters of historic fiction. 
 
 All who know most thoroughly the real features of 
 that Pagan darkness which was deepest before the 
 Christian dawn will see that scarcely even by the most 
 distant allusion have I referred to some of the worst 
 features in the life of that day. While I have not 
 extenuated the realities of cruelty and bloodshed, I have 
 
PREFACE. 9 
 
 repeatedly softened down their more terrible incidents 
 and details. To have altered that aspect of monotonous 
 misery which pained and wearied its ancient* annalist 
 would have been to falsify the real characteristics of the 
 age with which I had to deal. 
 
 The book is not a novel, nor is it to be judged as a 
 novel. The outline has been imperatively decided for me 
 by the exigencies of fact, not by the rules of art. I have 
 been compelled to deal with an epoch which I should 
 never have touched if I had not seen, in the features 
 which it presented, one main explanation of an historical 
 event the most sacred and the most interesting on which 
 the mind can dwell. 
 
 The same object has made it inevitable that, at least 
 in passing glimpses, the figures of several whose names 
 are surrounded with hallowed associations should appear 
 in these pages. I could not otherwise bring out the 
 truths which it was my aim to set forth. But in this 
 matter I do not think that any serious reader will accuse 
 me of irreverence. Onesimus, Pudens, Claudia, and a 
 few others, must be regarded as imaginary persons, ex- 
 cept in name, but scarcely in one incident have I 
 touched the Preachers of early Christianity with the 
 finger of fiction. They were, indeed, men of like pas- 
 sions with ourselves , and as St. Chrysostom says of St, 
 
lO PREFACE. 
 
 Paul, "Even if he was Paul, he was yet a man;" but, 
 recognising their sacred dignity, I have almost entirely 
 confined their words to words of revelation. Even if I 
 had done more than this, 1 might plead the grave sanc- 
 tion and example of Dante, and Milton, and Browning. 
 But the small liberty which I have dared to use 
 has only been in directions accorded by the cycle 
 of such early legends as may be considered to be both 
 innocent and hallowed. 
 
 F. W. FARRAR. 
 
CONTENTS 
 OF VOLUME I. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 "CLOTHO FERT FUSUM." ., 
 
 Page 
 
 CHAPTER I. The Soliloquies of Agrippina .... 15 
 
 — II. Agrippina and Nero 28 
 
 — III. Instrumenta Imperii 33 
 
 — IV. The Crime 43 
 
 — V. The Mockery of Death 51 
 
 — VI. The Accession of Nero 56 
 
 — VII. Seneca and his Family 65 
 
 — VIII. Seneca and his Visitors 76 
 
 — IX. Nero and his Companions . . . . . 85 
 
 — X. Prince Britannicus 94 
 
 — XI. "A Foreign Superstition" 109 
 
 — XII. Onesimus .^119 
 
 — XIII. The Adventures of a Runaway . . . . 128 
 
 — XIV. Mother and Son 144 
 
12 CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. 
 
 Page 
 CHAPTER XV. Emperor and Esthete 154 
 
 — XVI. Events in the Villa Pollux 164 
 
 — XVII. Amusements of an Emperor . . . . 174 
 
 — XVIII. Vespasian's Farm . . . . . . . 191 
 
 — XIX. Otho's Supper and what came of it . .206 
 
 — XX, Brother and Sister 224 
 
 — XXI. Among the Christians 233 
 
 — XXII. Britannicus and his Song 244 
 
 — XXIII. Perils of Britannicus 264 
 
 NOTES 281 
 
BOOK I. 
 
 "CLOTHO FERT FUSUM." 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 THE SOULOQUIES OF AGRIPPINA. 
 
 "Oramus, cave despuas, ocelle, 
 Ne poenas Nemesis reposcat a te: 
 Est vehemens Dea; laedere banc caveto." 
 
 Catull. Carm. L. 18-20. 
 
 The Palace of. the Caesars was a building of extra- 
 ordinary spaciousness and splendour, which had grown 
 with the growing power of the emperors. The state 
 entrance was in the Vicus Apollinis, which led into the 
 Via Sacra. It was an Arch, twenty-nine feet high, sur- 
 mounted by a statue of Apollo and Diana driving a 
 chariot of four horses, the work of Lysias. Passing the 
 Propylsea the visitor entered the sacred area, paved with 
 white marble and surrounded by fifty-two fluted columns 
 of Numidian giallo antico, with its soft tints of rose and 
 gold. Between these stood statues of the Danaides, 
 with their father Danaus brandishing a naked sword. 
 In the open spaces before them were the statues of their 
 miserable Egyptian husbands, each reining his haughty 
 steed. Here, too, among other priceless works of art, 
 stood the famous Hercules of Lysippus, clothed in his 
 lion's skin and leaning on his club. On one side was 
 the Temple of Apollo, built of the marble of Luna, de- 
 signed by Bupalos and Anthermos of Chios. On thq 
 
l6 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 top of its pediment was the chariot of Apollo in gilt 
 bronze, and the great bronze valves were incrusted with 
 ivory bas-reliefs of the triumph over Niobe, and the 
 panic-stricken flight of the Gauls from Delphi. Behind 
 this temple was the shrine of Vesta, and on the west 
 side the famous Palatine Library, large enough to ac- 
 commodate the whole senate, and divided into two com- 
 partments, Greek and Latin. In its vestibule was a 
 bronze statue, fifty feet high, which is said to have re- 
 presented Augustus with the attributes of Apollo. * 
 
 To the Palace and Propylsea of Augustus, with their 
 open spaces, and shrubs, and flowers, and fountains, 
 Tiberius had added a separate palace, known as the 
 Domus Tiberiana, which overlooked the Velabrum; and 
 Gains — more commonly known by his nickname of Cali- 
 gula — had filled with buildings the entire space between 
 the Palace and the Forum. He had also purchased the 
 House of Gelotius, and in that humble annex had de- 
 lighted to spend nights of riotous orgies with the grooms 
 and charioteers of his favourite green faction. Since his 
 time it had been utilised as a training-school for the 
 imperial pages, whose scribblings, sometimes matter-of- 
 fact, sometimes humorous and satirical, can still be 
 traced on the fast-crumbling walls. Vast as was the 
 whole composite structure, it received immense additions 
 from the restless extravagance of Nero, Domitian, and 
 later Emperors. 
 
 * But if it surpassed all the other buildings of Imperial 
 Rome in magnificence, it surpassed them dlso in misery 
 
 * Note 1. — Palace of the Caesars. (See Lanciani's Ancient Rome 
 in the light of Modern Discoveries^ pp. 107-133.) — For Notes 
 see end of Volume, 
 
THE SOLILOQUIES OF AGRIPPINA. I 7 
 
 and guilt. Here, in the days of Augustus, the Empress 
 Livia had plotted the murder and removal of all who 
 stood in the way of her son's succession. Here in the 
 days of Tiberius the conscious walls had witnessed the 
 deadly intrigues of ^lius Sejanus. In a.d. 2;^^ that 
 daring and cruel conspirator had secured the poisoning 
 of Drusus, the only son of Tiberius, by insinuating him- 
 self into the affections of Livia, his faithless wife. Here 
 in A.D. ^^, the younger Drusus, son of the hero Ger- 
 manicus, was slowly starved to death by order of Tibe- 
 rius. In one of the subterranean vaults he had poured 
 out his mad reproaches against the tyrant, had writhed 
 under the savage rebukes of the centurion, and had 
 been beaten by the brutal slaves who guarded his 
 dungeon. For nine days he had lingered on, chewing 
 in his agony the tow with which his mattress was stuffed. 
 Here the young Tiberius Gemellus, grandson of Tiberius, 
 piteously ignorant how to kill himself, had been shown 
 how to drive the poniard into his throat by the tribune 
 sent for that purpose by his cousin and adoptive brother, 
 Caligula. Chamber after chamber in that huge structure 
 had witnessed the wild and brutal freaks of that mad- 
 man-Emperor and the tortures which he inflicted upon 
 nobles and senators, whose mouths he ordered to be 
 gagged with their own bloodstained garments. Here he 
 had been visited with the dire vengeance of his crimes; 
 for in the covered gallery which he had built as a pas- 
 sage between his palace and the theatre, he had been 
 smitten by the fierce sword of the tribune Cassius 
 Chaerea. Hard by — the stains of blood were still upon 
 the wall — his Empress, the blue-eyed Coesonia, had been 
 stabbed in the throat as she wailed and wept over the 
 
 Darkness and Dawn, /. 2 
 
1 8 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 dead body of her lord; and her little infant, Julia Dru- 
 silla, had been dashed against the stones. 
 
 Such was the Palace of Pagan Rome in the days of 
 Christ and His Apostles. 
 
 It might well have seemed, even to the most callous 
 worshipper of the old gods, that a dark spirit was walk- 
 ing in that house; that the phantoms of the unavenged 
 dead haunted it; that ghostly footfalls glided through 
 its midnight corridors; and that in hidden corners the 
 lonely wanderer might come on some figure "weeping 
 tears of blood," which vanished with "hollow shriek" 
 before the presence of the innocent. 
 
 No such feelings of dread disturbed the thoughts of 
 the Empress Agrippina on a certain September evening, 
 A.D. 54. The world was at her feet. Her brave and 
 good father, Germanicus, her chaste and virtuous mother, 
 the elder Agrippina, had been the idols alike of the 
 Roman soldiers and the Roman people. She was the 
 great-granddaughter of the Emperor Augustus; the 
 granddaughter of the victorious Agrippa; the great-niece 
 of the Emperor Tiberius; the sister of the Emperor 
 Gains: and now at last her unwearied intrigues had made 
 her the sixth wife of her uncle, the Emperor Claudius. 
 Not content with such near bonds to so many of those 
 who were honoured as gods on earth, did she not mean 
 that her boy also — her darling Nero — should ere long 
 mount the throne of the Caesars, and that she herself 
 should govern for many a long year in his name, as she 
 now governed in the name of her husband Claudius? 
 Her ancestress Livia, the stately wife of Augustus, had 
 received the imperial title of Augusta, but not until her 
 husband's death; Agrippina had received it, and with it 
 
THE SOLILOQUIES OF AGRIPPINA. IQ 
 
 every honour which a servile Senate could devise, in her 
 early prime. Had she not sat on a throne^ in unwonted 
 splendour, by the side of her weak and prematurely 
 aged husband at the reception of foreign ambassadors? 
 Was she not privileged, alone of Roman princesses, to 
 ride in a chariot to the Capitol? Was not her fine head 
 and lovely face stamped on thousands of coins and 
 medals? Had she not shown, in contrast to her prede- 
 cessor, the beautiful and abandoned Messalina, how 
 dignified could be a matron's rule? 
 
 Yes, the world was at her feet; and by every glance 
 and every gesture she showed her consciousness of a 
 grandeur such as no woman had hitherto attained. Her 
 agents and spies were numberless. The Court was with 
 her, for in the days of Claudius the Court meant the 
 all-powerful freedmen, who impudently ruled and pil- 
 laged their feeble master; and if she could not seduce 
 the stolid fidelity of his secretary Narcissus, she had not 
 distained to stoop to the still more powerful Pallas. The 
 people were with her, for she was the sole surviving 
 child of the prince whom they had regarded with ex- 
 travagant affection. The intellect of Rome was on her 
 side, for Seneca, always among her favourites, had been 
 recalled by her influence from his banishment in fever- 
 ous Corsica, and, holding the high position of tutor to 
 her son, was devoted to her cause. The Praetorian 
 guards were on her side, for Burrus, their bold and 
 honest commander, owed his office to her request. The 
 power of gold was hers, for her coffers had been filled 
 to bursting by an immeasurable rapacity. The power 
 of fascination was hers, for few of those whom she 
 wished to entangle were able to resist her spells. Above 
 
20 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 all she could rely absolutely upon herself. Undaunted 
 as her mother, the elder Agrippina; popular as her 
 father, the adored Germanicus; brilliant and audacious 
 as her grandmother, Julia, the unhappy daughter of 
 Augustus; full of masculine energy and aptitude for 
 business as her grandfather Agrippa — who else could 
 show such gifts or command such resources? — But she 
 had not yet drunk to the dregs the cup of ambition 
 which she had long ago Hfted to her eager lips. 
 
 She was sitting on a low broad-backed seat, en- 
 riched with gilding and ivory, in the gorgeous room 
 which was set aside for her special use. It was de- 
 corated with every resource of art, and the autumnal 
 sunlight which was falling through its warm and per- 
 fumed air glinted on statuettes of gold and silver, on 
 marble bas-reHefs of exquisite fancy, and on walls which 
 glowed with painted peacocks, winged genii, and grace- 
 ful arabesques. 
 
 Her face was the index of a soul which only used 
 the meaner passions as aids to the gratification of the 
 grander ambitions. No one who saw her, as she leant 
 back in her easy half-recumbent attitude, could have 
 doubted that he was in the presence of a lady born to 
 rule, and in whose veins flowed the noblest blood of 
 the most ancient families of Rome. She was thirty- 
 seven years old, but was still in the zenith of her im- 
 perious charms, and her figure had lost none of the 
 smooth and rounded contour of youth. Her features 
 were small and delicate, the forehead well shaped, the 
 eyes singularly bright, and of a light blue, under finely 
 marked eyebrows. Her nose was slightly aquiline, the 
 mouth small and red and beautiful, while the slight pro- 
 
THE SOLILOQUIES OF AGRIPPINA. 21 
 
 trusion of the upper lip gave to it an expression of de- 
 cided energy. Her hair was wavy, and fell in multi- 
 tudes of small curls over her forehead and cheeks, but 
 was confined at the back of the head in a golden net 
 from which a lappet embroidered with pearls and 
 sapphires fell upon her neck, half concealed by one soft 
 and glowing tress. 
 
 She sat there deep in thought, and her mind was 
 not occupied with the exquisite image of herself re- 
 flected from the silver mirror which hung bright and 
 large upon the wall before her. Her expression was 
 that which she wears in her bust in the Capitol — the 
 expression of one who is anxious, and waits. One 
 sandalled foot rested on the ankle of the other, and her 
 fair hands were lightly folded on her robe. That robe 
 was the long stola worn by noble matrons. It swept 
 down to her feet and its sleeves reached to the elbows, 
 where they were fastened by brooches of priceless onyx, 
 leaving bare the rest of her shapely arms. Two large 
 pearls were in her ears, but she had laid aside her other 
 ornaments. On a little marble abacus beside her lay 
 her many-jewelled rings, her superb armlets set with 
 rubies, and the murenula — a necklace of linked and 
 flexile gold glittering with gems — which had encircled 
 her neck at the banquet from which she just had risen. 
 Her attitude was one of rest; but there was no rest in 
 the bosom which rose and fell unequally with her vary- 
 ing moods — no rest in the countenance with its look of 
 proud and sleepless determination. She was alone, but 
 a frequent and impatient glance showed that she ex- 
 pected some one to enter. She had dismissed her 
 slaves, and was devoting her whole soul to the ab- 
 
±2 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 sorbing design for which at that moment she lived, and 
 in the accompHshment of which she persuaded herself 
 that she was ready to die. That design was the eleva- 
 tion of her Nero, at the first possible moment, to the 
 throne whose dizzy steps were so slippery with blood. 
 
 In the achievement of her purpose no question of 
 right and wrong for a moment troubled her. Guilt had 
 no horror for that fair woman. She had long deter- 
 mined that neither the stings of conscience nor the fear 
 of peril should stop her haughty course. To her, as to 
 most of the women of high rank in the Rome of the 
 Empire, crime was nothing from which to shrink, and 
 virtue was but an empty name. Philosophers she knew 
 talked of virtue. It was interesting to hear Seneca des- 
 cant upon it, as she had sometimes heard him do to 
 her boy, while she sat in an adjoining room only 
 separated from them by an embroidered curtain. But 
 she had long ago convinced herself that this was fine 
 talk, and nothing more. Priests pretended to worship 
 the gods; but what were the gods? Had not the senate 
 made her ancestor Augustus a god, and Tiberius, and 
 her mad brother Caligula, and his little murdered baby, 
 the child of Csesonia, which had delighted its father by 
 its propensity to scratch? If such beings were gods, to 
 whom incense was burned and altars smoked, assuredly 
 she need not greatly trouble herself about the inhabit- 
 ants of Olympus. 
 
 Nemesis? Was there such a thing as Nemesis? Did 
 a Presence stalk behind the guilty, with leaden pace, 
 with feet shod in wool, which sooner or later overtook 
 them — which cast its dark shadow at last beyond their 
 footsteps — which gradually came up to them, laid its 
 
THE SOLILOQUIES OF AGRIPPINA. 2;^ 
 
 hand upon their shoulders, clutched them, looked them 
 in the face, drove into their heads the adamantine nail 
 whose blow was death? For a few moments her coun- 
 tenance was troubled; but it was not long before she 
 had driven away the gloomy thought with a disdainful 
 smile. It was true that there had been calamity enough 
 in the bloodstained annals of her kinsfolk: calamity all 
 the more deadly in proportion to their awful growth in 
 power and wealth. Her thoughts reverted to the story 
 of her nearest relatives. She thought of the days of 
 Tiberius, when men scarcely dared to speak above a 
 whisper, and when murder lurked at the entrance of 
 every noble home. Her uncles Gains and Lucius Caesar 
 had died in the prime of their age. Had they been 
 poisoned by Sejanus? Her other uncle, the young 
 Agrippa Posthumus — bom after the death of his father, 
 Agrippa — had been killed in a mad struggle with the 
 centurion whom Livia had sent to murder him in his 
 lonely exile. Her mother had been cruelly murdered; 
 her aunt, the younger Julia, had died in disgrace and 
 exile on a wretched islet. Her two brothers, Nero and 
 Drusus, had come to miserable ends in the flower of 
 their days. Her third brother, the Emperor Caligula, 
 had been assassinated by conspirators. The two Julias, 
 her sister and her cousin, had fallen victims to the jeal- 
 ous fury of the Empress Messalina. The name of her 
 sister Drusilla had been already stained with a thou- 
 sand shames. She was the sole survivor of a family of 
 six princes and princesses, all of whom, in spite of all 
 the favours of fortune, had come, in the bloom of life, 
 to violent and shameful ends. She had herself been 
 banished by her brother to the island of Pontia, and 
 
24 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 had been made to carry on her journey, in her bosom, 
 the inurned ashes of her brother-in-law, Lepidus, with 
 whom, as with others, her name had been dishonour- 
 ably involved. She had already been twice a widow, 
 and the world said that she had poisoned her second 
 husband, Crispus Passienus. What did she care what 
 the world said? But even if she had poisoned that old 
 and wealthy orator — what then? His wealth had been 
 and would be very useful to her. Since that day her 
 fortunes had been golden. She had been recalled from 
 her dreary banishment. Her soul had been as glowing 
 iron in the flame of adversity; but the day of her ad- 
 versity had passed. When the time was ripe she had 
 made her magnificent way in the Court of her uncle 
 Claudius until she became his wife, and had swept all 
 her rivals out of her path by her brilliant beauty and 
 triumphant intrigues. 
 
 She thought of some of those rivals, and as she 
 thought of them an evil smile lighted up her beautiful 
 features. 
 
 Messalina, her predecessor — did not everything seem 
 to be in her favour? Claudius had doted on her; she 
 fooled him to the top of his bent. She had borne him 
 two fair children, and the emperor loved them. Who 
 could help loving the reserved but noble Britannicus, 
 the gentle and innocent Octavia? No doubt Messalina 
 had felt certain that her boy should succeed his father. 
 But how badly she had managed! How silly had been 
 her preference for pleasure over ambition! How easily 
 Agrippina had contrived that, without her taking any 
 overt share in the catastrophe, Messalina should destroy 
 herself by her own shamelessness, and perish, while still 
 
THE SOLILOQUIES OF AGRIPPINA. 2$ 
 
 little more than girl, by the sword of the executioner, 
 in a pre-eminence of shame! 
 
 And Lollia Paulina? What might she not have 
 done with her enormous riches? Agrippina could recall 
 her — not at one of the Great Court gatherings, but at 
 an ordinary marriage supper, in which she had appeared 
 in a dress embroidered from head to foot with alternate 
 rows of pearls and emeralds, with emeralds in her hair, 
 emeralds of deepest lustre on her fingers, a carcanet of 
 emeralds — the finest Rome had ever seen — around her 
 neck. Yet this was not her best dress, and her jewels 
 were said to be worth eighty millions of sesterces.* 
 She remembered with what a stately step, with what a 
 haughty countenance the great heiress, who had for a 
 short time been Empress as wife of Caligula, passed 
 among the ranks of dazzled courtiers, with the revenues 
 of a province upon her robes. Well, she had dared to 
 be a competitor with Agrippina for the hand of Claudius. 
 It required no small skill to avert the deeply seated 
 Roman prejudice against the union of an uncle with his 
 niece; yet Agrippina had won — thanks to the freedman 
 Pallas, and to other things. She procured the banish- 
 ment of Lollia, and soon afterwards a tribune was sent 
 and she was bidden to kill herself. The countenance 
 of the thinker darkened for a moment as she re- 
 membered the evening when the tribune had returned, 
 and had taken out of its casket the terrible proof that 
 her vengeance was accomplished. How unlike was that 
 ghastly relic to the head whose dark locks had been 
 wreathed with emeralds! 
 
 And Domitia Lepida, her sister-in-law, the mother 
 * Note 2.— Lollia Paulina's jewels. 
 
26 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 of the Empress Messalina, the aunt of her son Nero, 
 the former wife of her own husband, Crispus Passienus? 
 She was wealthy as herself, beautiful as herself, noble 
 as herself, unscrupulous as herself. She might have 
 been a powerful ally, but how dared she to compete 
 for the affections of Nero? How dared she to be in- 
 dulgent when Agrippina was severe? The boy had been 
 brought up in her house when his father was dead and 
 his mother an exile. His chances had seemed very 
 small then, and Lepida had so shamefully neglected 
 him that his only tutors were a barber and a dancer. 
 But now that he held the glorious position of Prince of 
 the Roman Youth; now that he wore the manly toga, 
 while Britannicus only stood in humble boy's dress — 
 the embroidered robe, and the golden bulla round his 
 neck to avert the evil eye; now that it seemed probable 
 to all that Nero, the adopted son of Claudius, would be 
 the future Emperor instead of Britannicus, his real son, 
 it was all very well for Domitia to fondle and pamper 
 him. It was a hard matter to get rid of Lepida, for 
 Narcissus, the faithful guardian of Claudius, had opposed 
 the attempt to get her put to death. Nevertheless, 
 Agrippina seldom failed in her purposes; and as for 
 Lepida and Narcissus — their turn might come! 
 
 She could only recall one insult which she had not 
 avenged. The Senator Galba was rich, and was said 
 by the astrologers to have an imperial nativity. She 
 had therefore made love to him so openly that his 
 mother, Livia Ocellina, had once slapped her in the 
 face. If she had not made Galba and his virago- 
 mother feel the weight of her vengeance, it was only 
 because they were too insignificant to be any longer 
 
THE SOLILOQUIES OF AGRIPPINA. 2*] 
 
 worthy of her attention. She was too proud to take revenge 
 on minor opposition. The eagle, she thought, does not 
 trouble itself about the mole. 
 
 Enough! Her thoughts were getting too agitated! 
 She must go step by step; but who would dare to say 
 that she would not succeed? The wit and purpose of 
 a woman against the world! "Yes, Nero, my Nero, 
 thou shalt be Emperor yet! Thou shalt rule the world, 
 and I have always ruled thee, and will rule thee still. 
 Thy weak nature is under my dominance; and I, 
 whose heart is hard as the diamond, shall be Empress 
 of the world. Nemesis — if there be a Nemesis — must 
 bide her time.'' 
 
 She murmured the words in a low tone to herself; 
 but at this point her reverie was broken. 
 
28 DARKKESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 AGRIPPINA AND NERO. 
 
 "Occidat dum imperet." — Tac. Ann, xiv. 9. 
 
 A VOICE was heard in the corridor, the curtain was 
 drawn aside, and a youth of sixteen, but who had nearly 
 completed his seventeenth year, entered the room. 
 
 He was still in the bloom of his youthful beauty. 
 His face was stamped with all the nobility of the Do- 
 mitian race from which he sprang. It had not as yet 
 a trace of that ferocity engendered in later years from 
 an immense vanity clouded by a dim sense of medio- 
 crity. It was perfectly smooth, and there was nothing 
 to give promise of the famous brazen beards of his 
 ancestors, unless it were the light hair, with its slight 
 tinge of red, which was so greatly admired in antiquity, 
 and which looked golden when it caught the sunlight. 
 Round the forehead it was brushed back, but it covered 
 his head with a mass of short and shining curls, and 
 grew low down over the white neck. His face had not 
 yet lost the rose of youth, though its softness spoke of 
 a luxurious Hfe. The eyes were of light grey, and the 
 expression was not ungenial, though, owing to his short 
 sight, his forehead often wore the appearance of a 
 slight frown. He was of middle height, and of those 
 fine proportions which made his flatterers compare him 
 to the youthful God of Song. 
 
AGRIPPINA AND NERO. 2g 
 
 "Nero!" exclaimed his mother; "I thought you were 
 still in the banquet hall. If the Emperor awakes he 
 may notice your absence." 
 
 "There is little fear of that," said Nero, laughing. 
 "I left the Emperor snoring on his couch, and the 
 other guests decorously trying to suppress the most 
 portentous yawns. They, poor wretches, will have to 
 stay on till midnight or later, unless Narcissus sets 
 them free from the edifying spectacle of a semi-divinity 
 quite intoxicated." 
 
 "Hush!" said Agrippina, severely. "This levity is 
 boyish and ill-timed. Jest at what you like, but never 
 at the majesty of the Imperial power — not even in pri- 
 vate, not even to me. And remember that palace walls 
 have ears. Did you leave Octavia at the table?" 
 
 "I did." 
 
 "Imprudent!" said his mother. "You know what 
 pains I have taken to keep her from seeing too much 
 of her father except when we are present. Claudius 
 sometimes sleeps off the fumes of wine, and after a doze 
 he can talk as sensibly as he ever does. Was Britan- 
 nicus in the Hall?" 
 
 "Britannicus?" said Nero. "Of course not. You 
 have taken pains enough, mother, to keep h'm in the 
 background. According to the antique fashion which 
 the Emperor has revived of late, you saw him at the 
 banquet, sitting at the end of the seat behind his father. 
 But the boys have been dismissed with their pedagogues 
 long ago, and, for all I know, Britannicus has been sent 
 to bed." 
 
 "And for whose sake do I take these precautions?" 
 asked the Empress. "Is it not for your sake, ungrate- 
 
30 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 ful? Is it not that you may wear the purple, and tower 
 over the world as the Imperator Romanus?'' 
 
 "For my sake," thought Nero, "and for her own 
 sake, too." But he said nothing; and as he had not 
 attained to the art of disguising his thoughts from that 
 keenest of observers, he bent down, to conceal a smile, 
 and kissed his mother's cheek, with the murmured 
 words, "Best of mothers!" 
 
 "Best of mothers! Yes; but for how long?" said 
 Agrippina. "When once I have seated you on the 
 
 throne " She broke off her sentence. She had 
 
 never dared to tell her son the fearful augury which the 
 Chaldeans had uttered of him: "He shall be Emperor, 
 and shall kill his mother." He had never dreamed that 
 she had returned the answer: "Let him slay me, so he 
 be Emperor." 
 
 "Optima mater, now and always," he replied. "But 
 I am angry with Britannicus — very angry ! " and he 
 stamped his foot. 
 
 "Why? The boy is harmless enough. I thought 
 you had him completely under your power. You seem 
 to be very good friends, and I have seen you sitting 
 together, and training your magpies and jays to talk, 
 quite amicably. Nay, though Britannicus hates me, I 
 almost won his heart — for two minutes — by promising 
 to give him my talking-thrush, which eyes us so cu- 
 riously from its cage."* 
 
 "Give it to me, mother," said Nero. "A thrush 
 that can talk as yours can is the greatest rarity in the 
 world, and worth ten times over its weight in gold." 
 
 "No, Nero; Britannicus shall have it. I like to see 
 * Note 3. — Agrippina's talking thrush. 
 
AGRIPPINA AND NERO. 31 
 
 him devoting himself to such trifles. I have other views 
 for you. But what has the poor boy done to offend 
 you?" 
 
 "I met him in the Gelotian House," said Nero, "and 
 how do you think he dared to address me? Me — by 
 sacred adoption the son of Claudius, and, therefore, his 
 elder brother?" 
 
 "How?" 
 
 "I said to him, quite civilly, *Good morning, Britan- 
 nicus.' He had actually the audacity to reply, *Good 
 morning, Ahenobarbiis!' Ahenobarbus, indeed! I hate 
 the name. I stand nearer to the divine Augustus than 
 he does.* What did he mean by it?" 
 
 Agrippina broke into a ripple of laughter. "The 
 poor harmless lad!" she said. "It merely was because 
 his wits were wool-gathering, as his father's always are. 
 No doubt he dislikes you — he has good reason to do 
 so; but he meant nothing by it." 
 
 "I doubt that," answered the youth. "I suspect that 
 he was prompted to insult me by Narcissus, or Pudens, 
 or the knight Julius Densus or some of the people who 
 are still about him." 
 
 "Ah!" said Agrippina thoughtfully, "Narcissus is our 
 most dangerous enemy. He is much too proud of his 
 ivory rod and praetor's insignia. But he is not unassail- 
 able. The Emperor was not pleased with the failure of 
 the canal for draining Lake Fucinus, and perhaps I can 
 get Domitius Afer, or some one else, to accuse him of 
 embezzling the funds. How else could he have amassed 
 400,000,000 sesterces? He has the gout very badly, 
 and I will persuade him that it is necessary for him to 
 * Note 4. — Nero's Genealogy. 
 
32 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 go to Campania for the benefit of his heahh. When 
 once he is out of the way But, Nero, I am ex- 
 pecting a visit from Pallas, with whom I have much im- 
 portant business. Go back to the hall, my boy, and 
 keep your eyes open always as to what is going on." 
 
 "I will go back,'' said Nero; "but, mother, I some- 
 times wish that all this was over. I wish I had not 
 been forced to marry Octavia. I shall never like her. 
 I should like to have " 
 
 He stopped, and blushed crimson, for his mother's 
 eagle eye was upon him, and he had almost let out the 
 secret of his sudden and passionate love for Acte, the 
 beautiful freed-woman of his wife. 
 
 "Well?" said Agrippina suspiciously, but not ill- 
 pleased to see how her son quailed before her imperious 
 glance. "Go on." 
 
 "I meant nothing particular," he stammered, his 
 cheek still dyed with its deep blush, "but that I some- 
 times wish I were not going to be Emperor at all. Ju- 
 lius was murdered. Augustus, they say, was poisoned. 
 Tiberius was suffocated. My uncle Gains was stabbed 
 with many wounds. The hfe is not a happy one, and 
 the dagger-stab too often finds its way through the 
 purple." 
 
 "Degenerate boy!" said Agrippina; "I do not wonder 
 that you blush. Is it such a nothing to be a Lord of 
 the World? Have you forgotten that you are a grandson 
 of Germanicus, and that the blood of the Caesars as 
 well as of the Domitii flows in your veins? One would 
 think you were as ordinary a boy as Britannicus. For 
 shame ! " 
 
 "Well, well, mother," he said, "you always get your 
 
INSTRUMENTA IMPERII. 33 
 
 Own way with everyone. Pallas is in the anteroom, and 
 I must go." 
 
 Nero kissed her, and took his leave. Immediately 
 afterwards the slave announced that Pallas was awaiting 
 the pleasure of the Empress. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 INSTRUMENTA IMPERII. 
 
 "It is the curse of kings to be attended 
 By slaves who take their humours for a warrant 
 To break into the bloody house of life." 
 
 Shakespeare, King John, 
 
 The autumn twilight had by this time faded, but 
 one silver lamp, standing on a slab of softly glowing 
 marble, shed a dim light through the room when the 
 freedman was ushered into it. He was a man of portly 
 presence, and of demeanour amazingly haughty for one 
 who had once bawled "Sea-urchins for sale!" in the 
 Subura, and come over the sea from his native Arcadia 
 with his feet chalked as a common slave. His immense 
 wealth, his influence over the Emperor, and his advocacy 
 of the claims of Agrippina to her uncle's hand, together 
 with the honours bestowed upon him by the mean adu- 
 lation of the Senate, had raised him to the pinnacle of 
 his power. Agrippina had stooped to the lowest depths 
 to purchase his adherence, and now there was absolute 
 confidence between them. He was ready to betray the 
 too-indulgent master who had raised him from the dust 
 and heaped upon him gifts and privileges, for which the 
 noblest Consul might have sighed in vain. 
 
 Darkness and Dawn, I. 3 
 
34 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Pallas was in a grave mood. The air was full of 
 portents. A tale was on every lip among the common 
 people that a pig had been born with the talons of a 
 hawk. A swarm of bees had settled on the top of the 
 Capitol. The tents and standards of the soldiers had 
 been struck with fire from heaven. In that year a 
 quaestor, an sedile, a tribune, a praetor, and a consul had 
 all died within a few months of each other. Claudius 
 had nominated two consuls, but had only nominated 
 them for a single month. Had he misgivings about his 
 approaching fate? Agrippina was not superstitious, and 
 she listened to, these stories of the Greek freedman with 
 the indifference of disdain. But it was far otherwise 
 when he told her that Narcissus had been heard to 
 utter very dangerous speeches. He had said that whether 
 Britannicus or Nero succeeded, he himself was doomed 
 to perish. Britannicus would hate him as the man who 
 had brought about the death of his mother Messalina. 
 Nero would hate him, because he had opposed his adop- 
 tion, and the marriage of his mother to the Emperor, 
 both which events had been achieved by the rival in- 
 fluence of Pallas. Still Narcissus was faithful to his 
 kind master, and Britannicus was the Emperor's son. 
 The freedman had been seen to embrace Britannicus; 
 he had spoken of him as the "true image of Claudius"; 
 had stretched forth his hands now to him and now to 
 heaven, and had prayed "that the boy might grow 
 speedily to man's estate, and drive away the enemies of 
 his father, even if he also took vengeance on the slayer 
 of his mother." 
 
 Agrippina listened to this report with anxious dis- 
 quietude, and Pallas told her further that lately the 
 
INSTRUMENTA IMPERII. 35 
 
 Emperor had often pressed Britannicus and Octavia to 
 his heart; had spoken of their wrongs; had declared 
 that they should not be ousted from their place in his 
 affections by the crafty and upstart son of such a wretch 
 as Domitius Ahenobarbus, of whom it might be said, as 
 the orator Licinius Crassus said of his ancestor, "No 
 wonder his beard was of brass, since his tongue was of 
 iron, and his heart of lead." Claudius often repeated 
 himself, and when he saw his son he had several times 
 used the Greek proverb, d rgcoaag xal idoErai, "he who 
 wounded shall also heal you." 
 
 But worse news followed, and Agrippina grasped the 
 side of her couch with an impulse of terror, when, last 
 of all, Pallas told her that, on that very evening, the 
 Emperor, in his cups, had been heard to mutter to some 
 of his intimates "that he more than suspected the de- 
 signs of his wife; and that it had always been his destiny 
 to bear the flagitious conduct of his consorts for a time, 
 but at last to avenge it." 
 
 As she heard these words Agrippina stood up, her 
 arms outstretched, her fine nostril dilated, her whole 
 countenance inflamed with rage and scorn. "The 
 dotard!" she exclaimed, "the miserable, drivelling, 
 drunken dotard ! He to speak thus of me ! Pallas, the 
 hour for delay is over. It is time to act. But," she 
 added, "Narcissus is still here. He loves his master; he 
 watches over him with sleepless vigilance. I dare at- 
 tempt nothing while he remains about the Court." 
 
 "He is crippled with the gout," answered Pallas. 
 "He suffers excruciating agony. He cannot hold out 
 much longer. I told him that you strongly recommended 
 him to try the sulphur baths of Sinuessa. He is nearly 
 
 3* 
 
36 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 certain to take the hint. In a week or two at the latest 
 he will ask leave of absence, for his life is a torture." 
 
 "Good!" whispered the Empress; and then, drop- 
 ping her voice to a whisper, she hissed into the ear of 
 the freedman, "Claudius must not live." 
 
 "You need not drop your voice, Augusta," said 
 Pallas. "No slave is near. I placed one of my own 
 attendants in the corridor, and forbade him on pain of 
 death to let anyone approach your chamber." 
 
 "You ventured to tell him that?" asked Agrippina, 
 amazed at the freedman's boldness. 
 
 "Not to tell him that," answered Pallas. "Do you 
 suppose that I would degrade myself by speaking to one 
 of my own slaves, or even of my own freedmen — I who, 
 as the senate truly says, am descended from Evander 
 and the ancient kings of Arcadia, though I deign to be 
 among Caesar's servants? No! a look, a sign, a wave of 
 the hand is sufficient command from me. If anything 
 more is wanted I write it down on my tablets. I rejoice 
 — as I told the senate when they offered me four million 
 sesterces — to serve Caesar and retain my poverty." 
 
 "The insolent thrall!" thought Agrippina; "and he 
 says this to me who know that he was one of the com- 
 mon slaves of Antonia, the Emperor's mother, and still 
 has to conceal under his hair the holes bored in his 
 ears. And he talks of his poverty to me, though I know 
 as well as he does how he has amassed sixty million 
 sesterces by robbery in fourteen years!" But she in- 
 stantly concealed the disdainful smile which flitted across 
 her lips, and repeated in a low voice, "Claudius must 
 die!" 
 
 "The plan has its perils," said the freedman. 
 
INSTRUMENTA IMPERII. 37 
 
 "Not If it remains unknown to the world," she re- 
 plied. "And who will dare to reveal it, when they know 
 that to allude to it is death?" 
 
 "If you are the daughter of the beloved Germani- 
 cus," he said, " the Emperor is his brother. The soldiers 
 would never rise against him." 
 
 "I did not think of the Praetorians," said Agrippina. 
 "There are other means. In the prison beneath this 
 palace is one who will help me." 
 
 "Locusta?" whispered Pallas, with an involuntary 
 shudder. "But the Emperor has a prcBgustator who 
 tastes every dish and every cup." 
 
 "Yes! The eunuch Halotus," answered Agrippina. 
 "He is in my pay; he will do my bidding." 
 
 "But Claudius also has a physician." 
 
 "Yes! The illustrious Xenophon of Cos," answered 
 the Empress, with a meaning smile. 
 
 Pallas raised his hands, half in horror, half in ad- 
 miration. Careless of every moral consideration, he had 
 never dipped his hands in blood. He had lived in the 
 midst of a profoundly corrupt society from his earliest 
 youth. He knew that poisonings were frequent amid 
 the gilded wickedness and hollow misery of the Roman 
 aristocracy. He knew that they had been far from in- 
 frequent in the House of Caesar, and that Eudemus, the 
 physician of Drusus, son of the Emperor Tiberius, had 
 poisoned his lord. Yet before the cool hardihood of 
 Agrippina's criminality he stood secretly appalled. Would 
 it not have been better for him, after all, to have fol- 
 lowed the example of Narcissus, and to have remained 
 faithful to his master? How long would he be neces- 
 
38 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 sary to the Empress and her son? And when he ceased 
 to be useful, what would be his fate? 
 
 Agrippina read his thoughts in his face, and said, 
 "I suppose that Claudius is still lingering over the wine 
 cup. Conduct me back to him. Acerronia, my lady- 
 in-waiting, will follow us." 
 
 "He has been carried to his own room," said Pallas; 
 "but if you wish to see him, I will attend you." 
 
 He led the way, and gave the watchword of the 
 night to the Praetorian guards and their officer, Pudens. 
 The room of the Emperor was only across the court, 
 and the slaves and freedmen and pages who kept watch 
 over it made way for the Augusta and the all-powerful 
 freedman. 
 
 "The Emperor still sleeps," said the groom of the 
 chamber as they entered. 
 
 "Good," answered Agrippina. "You may depart. 
 We have business to transact with him, and will await 
 his awakening. Give me the lamp. Acerronia will re- 
 main without." 
 
 The slave handed her a golden lamp richly chased, 
 and left the chamber. There on a couch of citron-wood 
 lay the Emperor, overcome, as was generally the case 
 in the evening, with the quantities of strong wine he 
 had drunk. His breathing was deep and stertorous; 
 his thin grey hairs were dishevelled; his purple robe 
 stained, crumpled, and disordered. His mouth was open, 
 his face flushed; the laurel wreath had fallen awry over 
 his forehead, and, in the imbecile expression of intoxica- 
 tion, every trace of dignity and nobleness was obliterated 
 from his features. 
 
 They stood and looked at him under the lamp 
 
INSTRUMENTA IMPERII. 39 
 
 which Agrippina uplifted so that the Hght might stream 
 upon his face. 
 
 "Sot and dotard!" she exclaimed, in low tones, but 
 full of scorn and hatred. "Did not his own mother, 
 Antonia, call him *a portent of a man'? I am not sur- 
 prised that my brother Gains once ordered him to be 
 flung into the Rhone; or that he and his rude guests 
 used to slap him on the face, and pelt him with olives 
 and date-stones when he fell asleep at the table. I 
 have often seen them smear him with grape-juice, and 
 draw his stockings over his hands, that he might rub 
 his face with them when he awoke ! To think that such 
 a man should be lord of the world, when my radiant 
 Nero, so young, so beautiful, so gifted, might be seated 
 on his throne for all the world to admire and love!" 
 
 "The Emperor has learning," said Pallas, looking on 
 him with pity. "His natural impulses are all good. He 
 has been a very kind and indulgent master." 
 
 "He ought never to have been Emperor at all," she 
 answered, vehemently. "That he is so is the merest 
 accident. We owe no thanks to the Praetorian Gratus, 
 who found him hidden behind a curtain on the day 
 that my brother Gains was murdered, and pulled him 
 out by the legs: still less thanks to that supple intrigu- 
 ing Jew, Herod Agrippa, who persuaded the wavering 
 senate to salute him Emperor. Why, all his life long 
 he has been a mere joke. Augustus called him *a poor 
 little wretch,' and as a boy he used to be beaten by a 
 common groom." 
 
 "He has been a kind master," said the freedman 
 once more; and as he spoke he sighed. 
 
 The Empress turned on him. "Will you dare to 
 
40 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 desert me?" she said. "Do you not know that, at this 
 moment, Narcissus has records and letters in his posses- 
 sion which would hand me over to the fate of Messalina, 
 and you to the fate of the noble C. Silius?" 
 
 "I desert you not," he answered, gloomily; "I have 
 gone too far. But it is dangerous for us to remain 
 alone any longer. I will retire." 
 
 He bowed low and left the room, but before he 
 went out he turned and said, very hesitatingly, "He is 
 safe mth you?" 
 
 "Go!" she answered, in a tone of command. 
 "Agrippina does not use the dagger; and there are 
 slaves and soldiers and freedmen at hand, who would 
 come rushing in at the slightest sound." 
 
 She was alone with Claudius, and seeing that it 
 would be many hours before he woke from his heavy 
 slumber, she gently drew from his finger the beryl, en- 
 graved with an eagle — the work of Myron — which he 
 wore as his signet ring. Then she called for Acerronia, 
 and, throwing over her face and figure a large veil, 
 bade her show the ring to the centurion Pudens, and 
 tell him to lead them towards the entrance of the 
 Palace prisons, as there was one of the prisoners whom 
 she would see. 
 
 Pudens received the order and felt no surprise. He 
 who had anything to do with the Palace knew well that 
 the air of it was tremulous with dark intrigues. He 
 went before them to the outer door of the subterranean 
 cells, and unlocked it. Even within the gate slaves 
 were on guard; but, although no one recognised the 
 veiled figure, a glance at the signet ring sufficed to 
 
INSTRUIVIENTA IMPERII. 4 1 
 
 make them unlock for her the cell in which Locusta 
 was confined. 
 
 Agrippina entered alone. By a lamp of earthenware 
 sat the woman who had played her part in so many 
 crimes. She was imprisoned on the charge of having 
 been concerned in various murders, but in those awful 
 times she was too useful to be put to death. The 
 phials and herbs which had been her stock-in-trade were 
 left in her possession. 
 
 "I need," said the Empress, in a tone of voice which 
 she hardly took the trouble to disguise, "a particular 
 kind of poison: not one to destroy life too suddenly; 
 not one which will involve a lingering illness; but one 
 which will first disturb the intellect, and so bring death 
 at last." 
 
 "And who is it that thus commands?" asked Locusta, 
 lifting up to her visitor a face which would have had 
 some traces of beauty but for its hard wickedness. "It 
 is not to everyone that I supply poisons. Who knows 
 but what you may be some slave plotting against our 
 lord and master, Claudius? They who use me must pay 
 me, and I must have my warrant." 
 
 "Is that warrant enough?" said Agrippina, showing 
 her the signet ring. 
 
 "It is," said Locusta, no longer doubtful that her 
 visitor was, as she had from the first suspected, the 
 Empress herself. "But what shall be my reward, 
 Aug " 
 
 "Finish that word," said the Empress, "and you 
 shall die on the rack to-morrow. Fear not, you shall 
 have reward enough. For the present take this;" and 
 she flung upon the table a purse full of gold. 
 
42 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Suspiciously yet greedily the prisoner seized it, and 
 opening it with trembling fingers saw how rich was her 
 guerdon. She went to a chest which lay in the corner 
 of the room and, bending over it with the lamp, pro- 
 duced a small box, in which lay some flakes and powder 
 of a pale yellow colour. 
 
 "This,'' she said, "will do what you desire. Sprinkle 
 it over any well-cooked dish, and it will not be visible. 
 A flew flakes of it will cause first delirium, then death. 
 It has been tested." 
 
 Without a word Agrippina took it, and, slightly 
 waving her hand, glided out of the cell. Acerronia 
 awaited her, and Pudens again went before them to- 
 wards the apartments of the Empress and her ladies. 
 
THE CRBIE. 43 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE CRIME. 
 
 "Une grande reine, fille, femme, mere de rois si puissants." — 
 BOSSUET Oraison Ftmebre d' Henriette de France, 
 
 "Boletos . . . optimi quidem hos cibi, sed imraenso exemplo in 
 crimen adductos." — Plin. H. N, xxn. 46. 
 
 A FORTNIGHT had elapsed since the evening which 
 we have described. Claudius, worn out with the heavy- 
 cares of state, to which he always devoted a conscientious, 
 if somewhat bewildered, attention, had fallen into ill 
 health, which was increased by his unhappy intemperance. 
 Unwilling at all times to allow himself a holiday, even 
 in his advancing years, he had at last been persuaded 
 to visit Sinuessa, near the mouth of the River Vulturnus, 
 in the hope that its charming climate and healing waters 
 might restore him to his usual strength. He had there 
 enjoyed a few days of quiet, during which his suspicions 
 had been lulled to sleep by the incessant assiduities of 
 Agrippina. His children had accompanied him, and 
 Agrippina had been forced to conceal the furious jealousy 
 with which she witnessed the signs of affection which 
 he began to lavish upon them. She did not dare to 
 delay any longer the terrible crime which she had for 
 some time meditated. She stood on the edge of a pre- 
 cipice. There was peril in every day's procrastination. 
 What if Pallas, whose scruples she had witnessed, should 
 feel an impulse of repentance — should fling himself at 
 
44 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 his master^s feet, confess all, and hurry her to execution, 
 as Narcissus had hurried Messalina? The weak mind 
 of Claudius was easily stirred to suspicions. He had 
 already shown marked signs of uneasiness. Halotus, 
 Xenophon, Locusta — they knew all. Could so frightful 
 a secret be kept? Might not any whisper or any ac- 
 cident reveal it? If she would end this harassing un- 
 certainty and reap the glittering reward of crime, there 
 must be no delay. 
 
 She had intended to carry out the fatal deed at 
 Sinuessa, but Claudius felt restless; and as a few days 
 of country air had refreshed his health and spirits, he 
 hurried back to Rome on October 13, a.d. 54. She 
 felt that, if she was not prompt. Narcissus, the vigilant 
 guardian of his master, might return, and the opportunity 
 might slip away for ever. 
 
 They had scarcely reached the Palace when she 
 bade Acerronia to summon Halotus to her presence as 
 secretly as possible. 
 
 The eunuch entered — a wrinkled and evil specimen 
 of humanity, who had grown grey in the household of 
 Claudius. 
 
 "The Emperor," she said, "is far from well. His 
 appetite needs to be enticed by the most delicate kinds 
 of food. You will see that his tastes are consulted in 
 the supper of this evening." 
 
 "Madam," said the slave, "there is nothing of which 
 the noble Claudius is fonder than boletus mushrooms. 
 They are scarce, but a small dish of them has been 
 procured." 
 
 "Let them be brought here, that I may see them." 
 
 Halotus returned in a few moments, followed by a 
 
THE CRIME. 45 
 
 slave, who set the mushrooms before her on a silver 
 dish, and retired. They were few in number, but one 
 was peculiarly fine. 
 
 "I will consult the physician Xenophon, whether 
 they will suit the Emperor's health," said Agrippina. 
 "He is in attendance." 
 
 Passing into an adjoining room, which was empty, 
 she hastily drew from her bosom the little box which 
 Locusta had given her, and sprinkled the yellow flakes 
 and powder among the sporules on the pink inner sur- 
 face of the mushroom. Then returning she said, 
 
 "Halotus, this dainty must be reserved for the table 
 of the Emperor alone, and I design this mushroom 
 particularly for him. He will be pleased at the care 
 which I have taken to stimulate his appetite. And if I 
 have reason to be satisfied with you, your freedom is 
 secured — your fortune made." 
 
 The eunuch bowed; but as he left the room he 
 thrust his tongue into his cheek, and his wrinkled face 
 bore an ugly smile. 
 
 The evening came. The supper party was small, 
 for Claudius still longed for quiet, and had been glad, 
 in the retirement of Sinuessa, to lay aside the superb 
 state of the imperial household. Usually when he was 
 at Rome the hall was crowded with guests; but on this 
 day he had desired that only a few friends should be 
 present. At the sigma, or semicircular table at which 
 he recHned, there were no others except Agrippina, who 
 was next to him, Pallas, Octavia, and Nero. Burrus, 
 the commander of the Praetorian camp, was in attend- 
 ance, and Seneca, Nero's tutor; but they were at an- 
 
46 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Other sIgma, with one or two distinguished senators who 
 had been asked to meet them. 
 
 Except Halotus and Pallas, there was not one person 
 in the room who had the least suspicion of the tragedy 
 which was about to be enacted. Yet there fell on all 
 the guests one of those unaccountable spells of silence 
 and depression which are so often the prelude to great 
 calamities. At the lower table, indeed, Burrus tried to 
 enliven the guests with the narrative of scenes which he 
 had witnessed in Germany and Britain in days of active 
 service, and told once more how he had received the 
 wound which disabled his left hand. But to these 
 stories they listened with polite apathy, nor could they 
 be roused from their languor by the studied impromptus 
 of Seneca. At the upper table Nero, startled by a few 
 vague words which his mother had dropped early in the 
 day, was timid and restless. The young Octavia — she 
 was but fourteen years old — was habitually taciturn in 
 the presence of her husband, Nero, who even in these 
 early days had conceived an aversion, which he was 
 not always able to conceal, for the bride who had been 
 forced upon him by his mother's ambition. Claudius 
 talked but little, for he was intent, as usual, on the 
 pleasures of the table, and all conversation with him 
 soon became impossible, as he drained goblet after goblet 
 of Massic wine. Agrippina alone affected cheerfulness 
 as she congratulated the Emperor on his improving 
 health, and praised the wisdom which had at last in- 
 duced him to yield to her loving entreaties, and to take 
 a much-needed holiday. 
 
 "And now, Caesar," she said, "I have a little surprise 
 for you. There is, I know, nothing which you like better 
 
THE CRIME. 47 
 
 than these rare boleti. They are entirely for ourselves. 
 I shall take some; the rest are for you, especially this — 
 the finest I could procure." 
 
 With her own white and jewelled hand she took from 
 the dish the fatal mushroom, and handed it to her hus- 
 band. He greedily ate the dainty, and thanked her. 
 Not long after he looked wildly round him, tried in vain 
 to speak, rose from the table, and, staggering, fell back 
 into the arms of the treacherous Halotus. 
 
 The unfortunate Emperor was carried out of the 
 triclinium by his attendants. Such an end of the ban- 
 quet was common enough after he had sat long over the 
 wine, but that he should be removed so suddenly be- 
 fore the supper was half over was an unwonted circum- 
 stance. 
 
 The slaves had carried him into the adjoining Nym- 
 phaeum, a room adorned with rare plants, and were 
 splashing his face with the water of the fountain. 
 Xenophon was summoned, and gave orders that he 
 should be at once conveyed to his chamber. The guests 
 caught one last glimpse of his senseless form as the 
 slaves hurriedly carried it back through the dining-hall. 
 
 Seneca and Burrus exchanged terrified glances, but 
 no word was spoken until Agrippina whispered to Pallas 
 to dismiss the guests. He rose, and told them that the 
 Emperor had suddenly been taken ill, but that the ill- 
 ness did not seem to be serious. A night's rest would 
 doubtless set him right. Meanwhile the Empress was 
 naturally anxious, and as she desired to tend her suffer- 
 ing husband, it was better that all strangers should take 
 their farewell. 
 
 As they departed they heard her ordering the pre- 
 
48 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 paration of heated cloths and fomentations, as she hur- 
 ried to the sick room. The Emperor lay gasping and 
 convulsed, sometimes unconscious, sometimes in a de- 
 lirium of agony; and it was clear that the quantities of 
 wine which he had drunk might tend to dilute the 
 poison, possibly even to counteract its working. Hour 
 after hour passed by, and Claudius still breathed. 
 Xenophon, the treacherous physician, saw the danger. 
 Assuring those present in the chamber of the dying man 
 that quiet was essential to his recovery, he urged the 
 Empress to have the room cleared, and to take upon 
 herself the duties of nurse. His commands were obeyed, 
 and under pretence that he might produce some natural 
 relief by irritating the throat, Xenophon sent for a large 
 feather. The feather of a flamingo was brought, and 
 when the slaves had retired, he smeared it with a rapid 
 and deadly poison. The effect was instant. The swollen 
 form of the Emperor heaved with the spasm of a last 
 struggle, and he lay dead before them. 
 
 Not a tear did Agrippina shed, not one sigh broke 
 from the murderess, as her uncle and husband breathed 
 his last. 
 
 "It must not be known that he is dead," she whispered. 
 "Watch here. I will give out that he has fallen into a 
 refreshing sleep, and will probably awake in his accus- 
 tomed health. Fear not for your reward; it shall be 
 immense when my Nero reigns. But much has first to 
 be done." 
 
 She hurried to her room, and despatched messengers 
 in all directions, though it was now near midnight. She 
 sent to the Priests, bidding them to offer vows to all the 
 gods for the Emperor's safety; she ordered the Consuls 
 
THE CRIME. 49 
 
 to convoke the senate, and gave them secret directions 
 that, while they prayed for Claudius, they should be 
 prepared for all emergencies. Special despatches were 
 sent to Seneca and Burrus. The former was to prepare 
 an address which Nero might, if necessary, pronounce 
 before the senate; the latter was to repair to the Palace 
 at earliest dawn and await the issue of events. 
 
 Meanwhile she gave the strictest orders that the Pa- 
 lace gates should be guarded, and that none should be 
 allowed to enter or to leave unless they could produce 
 written permission. All this was easy for her. The 
 Palace was full of her creatures. Britannicus and 
 Octavia had been gradually deprived of nearly all who 
 were known to be faithful to their interests. They were 
 kept in profound ignorance that death had robbed them 
 of the one natural protector, who loved them with a 
 tenderness which had often been obscured by the be- 
 dazed character of his intellect, but which had never 
 been for one moment quenched. All that they learnt 
 from the spies and traitors who were placed about 
 their persons was that the Emperor had been taken sud- 
 denly ill, but was already recovering, and was now in a 
 peaceful slumber. 
 
 Having taken all these precautions, and secured that 
 no one except Pallas or herself should be admitted dur- 
 ing the night into the room where Xenophon kept watch 
 beside the corpse, Agrippina retired to her chamber. 
 One thing alone troubled her. Before she retired she 
 had looked for a moment on the nightly sky, and saw 
 on the far horizon a gleam unknown to her. She called 
 her Greek astrologer, and asked him what it was. He 
 
 Darkness and Dawn. /. 4 
 
50 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 paused, and for a moment looked alarmed. "It is a 
 comet," he said. 
 
 "Is that an omen of disaster?" 
 
 The learned slave was too politic to give it that 
 interpretation. "It may," he said, "portend the brilliant 
 inauguration of a new reign." 
 
 She was reassured by the answer, and laid herself 
 down to rest. Though greatly excited by the events of 
 the day, and the immense cares which fell upon her, 
 she slept as sweetly as a child. No pale faces looked 
 in upon her slumber; no shriek rang through her dreams; 
 no fancy troubled her of gibbering spectre or Fury from 
 the abyss. She had given orders that she should be 
 awakened in a few hours, and by the time that the first 
 grey light shuddered in the east she had dressed herself 
 in rich array, and, with a sense of positive exultation, 
 stepped out of her room, calm and perfumed, to achieve 
 that which had been for years the main ambition of her 
 Hfe. 
 
THE MOCKERY OF DEATH. 5 I 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 THE MOCKERY OF DEATH. 
 
 "Esse aliquos Manes et subterranea regna 
 • ••*•• 
 
 Nee pueri credunt, nisi qui nondum sere lavantur, 
 Sed tu vera puta." — ^Juv. Sat. II. 149-153. 
 
 Agrippina had long contrived to secure the absolute 
 devotion of her slaves, clients, and freedmen. In that 
 vast household of at least sixteen hundred persons, all 
 courteously treated and Hberally paid, there were many 
 who were ready to go any lengths in support of their 
 patroness. Among them was the freedman Mnester, 
 who knew but little of her crimes, but was enthusiastic 
 in her interests. She made constant use of him on that 
 eventful day. 
 
 Among her slaves were some of the Chaldaei and 
 casters of horoscopes, so common in those times, in 
 whom she placed a superstitious confidence. Her first 
 care was to consult them, and she determined to take 
 no overt step until they should announce that the auspi- 
 cious hour had come. She then hastened to the chamber 
 where Xenophon still kept his watch beside the man 
 whom he had murdered. He kept that watch with per- 
 fect indifference. His was a soul entirely cynical and 
 atheistic; greedy of gain only, casehardened by crime. 
 The bargain between him and the Empress was perfectly 
 understood between them. Enormous wealth would be 
 
52 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 the price of his silence and success; death would punish 
 his failure. 
 
 There was nothing to be seen but the dead form 
 covered from head to foot by a purple coverlet. 
 
 She pointed to it. "He must still be supposed to 
 be alive," she said. "The Chaldeans say that the omens 
 are still inauspicious. How are we to keep the secret 
 for some hours longer?'' 
 
 "Asclepiades teaches," answered the physician, with 
 the scarcely veiled sneer which marked his tone of 
 voice, "how good it is that the pains of dying men 
 should be dissipated by comedy and song. The Empress 
 can order some comedians to play in the adjoining 
 chamber. If they cannot avail the divine Claudius, 
 they will at least serve to amuse my humble self, and 
 I have now been in this room for many hours." 
 
 "Does anyone suspect that he is dead?" 
 
 "No, Augusta," he answered. "To dissipate the 
 too suspicious silence, I have occasionally made curious 
 sounds, at which I am an adept. They will delude 
 any chance Hstener into the beUef that my patient is 
 still alive." 
 
 For a moment her soul was shocked by the sug- 
 gestion of sending for the mummers. But she saw that 
 it would help to prevent the truth from leaking out. 
 For one instant she lifted the purple robe and looked 
 on the old man of sixty-four, who had thus ended his 
 reign of fourteen years. She dropped it over the 
 features, which, in the majesty of death, had lost all 
 their coarseness and imbecility, and showed the fine 
 lineaments of his ancestors. The moment afterwards 
 
THE MOCKERY OF DEATH. 53 
 
 she was sorry that she had done it. That dead face 
 haunted all her after life. 
 
 Leaving the chamber \vithout a word, she gave 
 orders that, as the Emperor was now awake, and had 
 asked for something to amuse him, some skilled actors 
 of comedy should be sent for to play to him from the 
 adjoining room. They came and did their best, little 
 knowing that their coarse jests and riotous fun did but 
 insult the sacred majesty of death. After an hour or 
 two Xenophon, who had been laughing uproariously, 
 came out, thanked them in the Emperor's name, and 
 dismissed them. 
 
 But Agrippina had hastened to one of the audience 
 rooms, in which the Palace abounded, and sent for 
 Britannicus and Octavia, and for their half-sister Antonia. 
 She embraced them with effusive fondness. It was her 
 special object to detain Britannicus in her presence, lest 
 if but one faithful friend discovered that Claudius was 
 dead, he might summon the adherents of the young 
 prince, and present him to the people as the true heir 
 to the throne. With pretext after pretext she detained 
 him by her side, telling him of the pride and comfort 
 which she felt in his resemblance to the Emperor, 
 calling him a true Caesar, a true Claudius. Again and 
 again she drew him to her knee; she held him by the 
 hand; she passed her jewelled fingers through his hair; 
 she amused him with the pretence of constant messages 
 to the sick-room of his father. And all the while her 
 soul was half-sick with anxiety, for the Chaldaeans still 
 sent to say that the hour was inauspicious, and she did 
 not fail to observe that the boy, as much as he dared to 
 show his feelings, saw through her hypocrisy, resented 
 
54 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 her caresses. He burned to visit the bedside of his 
 father, and was bitterly conscious that something was 
 going on of which he and his sisters were the special 
 victims. For he was a noble and gifted boy. Some- 
 thing he had of the high bearing of his race, something, 
 too, of the soft beauty of his mother. His tutor, the 
 grammarian Sosibius, had done for him all that had 
 been permitted, and though Britannicus had purposely 
 been kept in the background by the wiles of his step- 
 mother, the teacher had managed to inspire him with 
 liberal culture, and to enrich his memory with some 
 grand passages of verse. Nero was more than three 
 years his senior, and in superficial qualities and graces 
 outshone him; but keen observers whispered that though 
 Britannicus could not sing or paint or drive a chariot 
 Hke his stepbrother, and was less fascinating in manner 
 and appearance, he would far surpass Nero in all manly 
 and Roman virtues. The heart of Octavia was full of 
 unspeakable misgivings. Motherless, unloved, neglected, 
 she had known no aspect of life except its tragedy, and 
 none had as yet taught her any possible region in 
 which to look for comfort under the burden of the in- 
 tolerable mystery. 
 
 The morning hours passed heavily, and Agrippina 
 was almost worn out by the strain put upon her. In 
 vain she tried to interest Britannicus in the talking 
 thrush, which had greatly amused him on previous oc- 
 casions. She went so far as to give him her white 
 nightingale, which was regarded as one of the greatest 
 curiosities in Rome. It had been bought for a large 
 sum of money, and presented to her. Pliny, among 
 his researches in natural history, had never heard of 
 
THE MOCKERY OF DEATH. 55 
 
 another.* At another time Britannicus would have 
 been enraptured by so interesting and valuable a gift; 
 but now he saw that it was the object of the Empress 
 simply to detain him and his friends from any inter- 
 ference with her own designs. He thanked her coldly, 
 and declined to rob her of a possession which all Rome 
 desired to see. 
 
 At last he grew beyond measure impatient. "I am 
 certain," he said, "that my father is very ill, and that 
 he would wish to see me. Augusta, must I be kept in 
 this room like a child among women? Let me go to 
 the Emperor." 
 
 "Wait," she said, "for a little longer, dear Britan- 
 nicus. You surely would not waken the Emperor from 
 the sleep which may prove to be the saving of his life? 
 It is getting towards noon; you must be hungry. The 
 slaves shall bring us our prandium here." 
 
 It was said to save time, but Britannicus saw that 
 it would be vain to escape. The door was beset with 
 soldiers and with the slaves and freedmen of the Em- 
 press. Some great event was evidently at hand. The 
 halls and corridors were full of hurrying footsteps. Out- 
 side they heard the clang of armed men, who marched 
 down the Vicus Apollinis, and stopped at the vestibule 
 of the Palace. 
 
 Then Pallas entered, and, with a deep obeisance, 
 said, "Augusta, I grieve to be the bearer of evil tidings. 
 The Emperor is dead." 
 
 Octavia burst into a storm of weeping at the terrible 
 intelligence, for she had been partially deceived by the 
 protestations of Agrippina. Britannicus sat down and 
 * Note 5. — Agrippina's white nightingale. 
 
56 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 covered his face with his hands. He had always as- 
 sumed that he would at least share the throne with 
 the youth whom Claudius, at the wearying importunities 
 of his mother, had needlessly adopted, and had repented 
 of having adopted. But he loved his father, who had 
 always been kind to him, and at that dreadful moment 
 no selfish thought intruded on his anguish. After the 
 first burst of sorrow, he got up from his seat, and 
 tenderly clasped the hand of his sister. 
 
 "Octavia," he said, "we are orphans now — father- 
 less, motherless, the last of our race. We will be true 
 to each other. Take courage. Be comforted. Antonia,'' 
 he added, gently taking his half-sister by the hand, "I 
 will be a loyal brother to you both.'' 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 THE ACCESSION OF NERO. 
 
 "Le Roi est mort. Vive le Roi!" 
 
 "Agrippina terris altenim venerium, sibique ante omnes, Nero- 
 nem suum dedit." — Plin. H, N. xxii. 46. 
 
 Agrippina did not attend any longer to the children 
 of Claudius; she threw off the mask. For by this time 
 the sundial on the wall marked the hour of noon, and 
 the Chaldaeans were satisfied with the auspices. Her 
 quickened sense of hearing caught the sounds for which 
 she had long been listening. She heard the Palace 
 doors thrown open. She heard the voice of Burrus 
 commanding the soldiers to salute their Emperor. She 
 
THE ACCESSION OF NERO. 57 
 
 heard shout on shout, "Nero Emperor! Nero Emperor! 
 Long live Nero! Long hve the grandson of Germanicus!'' 
 
 She sprang out into the balcony, and there caught 
 one ghmpse of her son. His fair face was flushed with 
 pride and excitement; the sun shone upon his golden 
 hair which flowed dow^n his neck; his slight but well- 
 knit limbs were clothed in the purple of an Emperor. 
 She saw him lean on the arm of the Praetorian Praefect 
 as, surrounded by some of the chief military tribunes, 
 he walked to the guard-house of the cohort which pro- 
 tected the imperial residence. 
 
 "Praetorians," said Burrus, in a loud voice, "behold 
 your Emperor, Nero Claudius Caesar." 
 
 "Nero?" asked one or two voices. "But where is 
 Britannicus?" 
 
 They looked round. No one was visible but Nero, 
 and their question was drowned in the cheers of their 
 comrades. 
 
 "Bring out the richest lectica," they cried; and it 
 was ready in an instant. Nero was placed in it, and 
 Burrus, springing on his war-horse, and followed by the 
 select cohort of imperial cavalry, rode by his side. The 
 Praefect was in full armour, and his cuirass was enriched 
 with gems and gold. He held his drawn sword in his 
 hand, lifting it again and again to excite the soldiers to 
 louder cheers. 
 
 Then followed the very deHrium of Agrippina's 
 triumph. Messenger after messenger entered to tell 
 her that the air was ringing with endless acclamations 
 in honour of her son. The beautiful and happy youth 
 promised to the soldiers the same donative of fifteen 
 sestertia to each man which Claudius had given at his 
 
58 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 succession, and the guardsmen accepted him with rap- 
 ture, and hastily swore to him their oaths of allegiance. 
 
 Then with gleaming ensigns, and joyous songs, and 
 shouting, and clapping of hands, they bore him in long 
 procession to the Senate House, to obtain the ratifica- 
 tion which the Conscript Fathers dared not refuse. At 
 first, indeed, there had been a few shouts, "Britannicus! 
 Where is Britannicus? Where is the true son of Clau- 
 dius?" And she inwardly made a note of the fact that 
 the centurion Pudens and the knight Julius Densus had 
 been among the number of those who raised the shout. 
 Britannicus, too, had heard the cry, faint as it was by 
 comparison; but when he attempted to escape out of 
 the room, Agrippina imperiously waved him back, and 
 Pallas detained him by the arm. He sat down in 
 despair, and once more covered his face with his hands, 
 while now it was the turn of Octavia to caress and com- 
 fort him. But the plot was already accomplished. The 
 few who would have favoured his cause seemed to be 
 swept away by the general stream. The boy had been 
 kept so designedly in the background, that many of the 
 people hardly knew whether he was alive or dead. He 
 felt that he was powerless, and he had heard among 
 the shouts of the soldiers the cry, "All hail, Augusta! 
 All hail, the daughter of our Germanicus!" He resigned 
 himself to his fate, and Agrippina, intent on her own 
 plans, and absorbed in the intensity of her emotions, no 
 longer noticed his presence. 
 
 Suddenly, however, he started from his seat, and 
 stood before her. His face was pale as death, but his 
 eyes shone with indignant light. 
 
 "Why am not I, too, proclaimed Emperor?" he ex- 
 
TEIE ACCESSION OF NERO. 59 
 
 claimed. "I do not believe that my father meant to 
 rob me of my inheritance. I am his son, not his adopted 
 son. This is a conspiracy. Where is my father's will? 
 Why is it not taken to the senate, and there recited?" 
 
 The Empress was amazed at the sudden outburst. 
 Was this the boy who seemed so meek and so helpless? 
 This must be seen to! 
 
 "Foolish boy," she said; "you are but a child. You 
 have not yet assumed the manly garb. How can a boy 
 like you bear the burden of the world's empire? Fear 
 not; your brother Nero will take care of you." 
 
 "Take care of me!" repeated Britannicus, indignantly, 
 restraining with difficulty the torrent of wild words which 
 sprang to his lips. "It is a conspiracy!" he cried. "You 
 have robbed me of my inheritance to give it to your 
 son Ahenobarbus." 
 
 Agrippina lifted up her arm as if she would have 
 struck him, but Pallas interposed. Firmly, but not un- 
 gently, he laid his hand on the young prince's mouth. 
 
 "Hush," he said, "ere you do yourself fatal harm. 
 Boy, these questions are not for you or me to settle. 
 They are for the Senate, and the Praetorians, and the 
 Roman people. If the soldiers have elected Nero, and 
 the senators have confirmed their choice, he is your 
 Emperor, and you must obey." 
 
 "It is useless to resist, my brother," said Octavia, 
 sadly. "Our father is dead. Narcissus has been sent 
 away. We have none to help us." 
 
 "None to help you, ungrateful girl!" said Agrippina. 
 "Are not you now the Empress? Have you not the 
 glory of being Nero's bride?" 
 
 Octavia answered not. "Our father is dead," she 
 
6o DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 said again. "May we not go, Augusta, and weep by 
 his bedside?" 
 
 "Go!" answered Agrippina; "and I for my part will 
 see that he is enrolled among the gods, and honoured 
 with a funeral worthy of the House of Caesar." Then, 
 turning to her attendants, she issued her orders. 
 
 "Put a cypress at the door of the Palace. Let the 
 body be dressed in imperial robes, and incense burned 
 in the chamber. See that every preparation is made 
 for a royal funeral, and that the flute-players, the wail- 
 ing-women, the designatores , with their black lictors, be 
 all in readiness." 
 
 But while Agrippina was giving directions to the 
 archimimus who was to represent the dead Emperor at 
 the funeral, and was examining the waxen masks of his 
 ancestral Claudii, which were to be worn in the procession, 
 the boy and girl were permitted to visit the chamber of 
 the dead. They bent over the corpse of their father, 
 and fondled his cold hands, and let their tears fall on 
 his pale face, and felt something of the bitterness of 
 death in that sudden and shattering bereavement, which 
 changed for ever the complexion of their lives. 
 
 Nero, meanwhile, was addressing the Senate amidst 
 enraptured plaudits in the finely turned and epigram- 
 matic phrases of Seneca, which breathed the quintessence 
 of wise government and Stoic magnanimity. He would 
 rule, he said, on the principles which guided Augustus; 
 and the Senators seemed as if they would never end 
 their plaudits when to the offer of the title "Father of 
 his Country" he modestly repHed, "Not till I shall have 
 deserved it." 
 
 Agrippina, after having ordered the details of the 
 
THE ACCESSION OF NERO. 6 I 
 
 funeral procession, finally dismissed her murdered hus- 
 band fi*om her thoughts, and gave directions that her 
 son, on his return to the Palace, should be received 
 with a fitting welcome. She summoned all the slaves 
 and freedmen of that mass of dependants which made 
 of the Palace not a household, but a city. They were 
 marshalled in throngs by their offices and nationalities 
 in the vast hall. They were arrayed in their richest 
 apparel, and were to scatter flowers and garlands under 
 the feet of the new Emperor as he advanced. The 
 multitudes of the lowest and least distinguished slaves 
 were to stand in the farther parts of the hall; next to 
 them the more educated and valuable slaves, and next 
 to them the freedmen. In the inner ring were placed 
 all the most beautiful and accomplished of the pages, 
 their long and perfumed curls falling over their gay 
 apparel, while some who had the sweetest voices were 
 to break out into a chorus of triumphal songs. Then 
 Nero was to be conducted to the bath, and afterwards 
 a sumptuous banquet was to be served to a hundred 
 guests. There was but a short time for these prepara- 
 tions; but the wealth of the Caesars was unbounded, 
 and their resources inexhaustible, and since the slaves 
 were to be counted by hundreds, and each had his own 
 minute task assigned to him, everything was done as if 
 by magic. 
 
 The afternoon was drawing in when new bursts of 
 shouting proclaimed that, through the densely crowded 
 streets, in which every lattice and balcony and roof was 
 now thronged with myriads of spectators, Nero was re- 
 turning from the Curia to the Palace with his guard of 
 Praetorians. 
 
62 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Walking between the two Consuls, with Burrus and 
 Seneca attending him in white robes, followed by crowds 
 of the greatest Roman nobles, and by the soldiers clash- 
 ing their arms, singing their rude songs, and exulting in 
 the thought of their promised donative, the young ruler 
 of the world returned. The scene which greeted him 
 when the great gates of the Palace were thrown open 
 was gay beyond description. The atrium glowed in 
 zones of light and many-coloured shadow. The 
 autumnal sunbeams streamed over the gilded chapiters, 
 glancing from lustrous columns of yellow and green and 
 violet-coloured marble, and lighting up the open spaces 
 adorned with shrubs and flowers. The fountains were 
 plashing musically into marble and alabaster basins. 
 Between rows of statues, the work of famed artificers, 
 were crowded the glad and obsequious throngs of the 
 rejoicing house. 
 
 Agrippina was seated on a gilded chair of state at 
 the farther end of the hall, her arms resting on the 
 wings of the two sphinxes by which it was supported. 
 She was dressed in the chlamys, woven of cloth of gold, 
 in which Pliny saw her when she had dazzled the 
 spectators as she sat by the side of Claudius in the 
 great festival at the opening of the Emissarium of the 
 Fucine Lake. Beneath this was her rich stola, woven 
 of Tarentine wool and scarlet in colour, but embroidered 
 with pearls. It left bare from the elbow her shapely 
 arms, which were clasped with golden bracelets enriched 
 with large stones of opal and amethyst. 
 
 The moment that she caught sight of her son she 
 descended from her seat with proud step, and Nero 
 advanced to meet her. He was bending to kiss her 
 
THE ACCESSION OF NERO. 63 
 
 hand , but the impulses of nature overcame the stateli- 
 ness of Roman etiquette, and for one instant mother 
 and son were locked in each other's arms in a warm 
 embrace, amid the spontaneous acclamations of the 
 many spectators. 
 
 That evening Agrippina had ascended to the giddiest 
 heights of her soaring ambition. Her son was Emperor, 
 and she fancied he would be as clay in her strong hands. 
 Alone of all the great Roman world it would be her 
 unspeakable glory that she was not only the descendant 
 of Emperors, but the sister, the wife, and the mother of 
 an Emperor. She was already Augusta and Empress in 
 title, and she meant with almost unimpeded sway to rule 
 the world. And while she thus let loose every winged 
 wish over the flowery fields of hope, and suffered her 
 fancy to embark on a sea of glory, the thought of her 
 husband lying murdered there in an adjoining room did 
 not cast the faintest shadow over her thoughts. She 
 was about to deify him, and to acquire a sort of sacred- 
 ness herself by becoming his priestess — was not that 
 enough? She sat revolving her immense plans of domin- 
 ation, when Nero joined her, flushed from the banquet, 
 and weary with the excitement of the day. While he 
 was bidding her good night, and they were exchanging 
 eager congratulations on the magnificent success of his 
 commencing rule, the tribune of the Palace guard came 
 to ask the watchword for the night. 
 
 Without a moment's hesitation Nero gave as the 
 watchword. The Best of Mothers. 
 
 But late into the darkness, in the room of death, un- 
 noticed, unasked for, Britannicus and Octavia mingled 
 
64 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 their sad tears and their low whispers of anguish, beside 
 the rapidly blackening corpse of the father who had 
 been the lord of the world. Yesterday — though his 
 impudent freedmen had for years been selling, plunder- 
 ing, and murdering in his name — two hundred millions 
 of mankind had Hfted up their eyes to him as the 
 arbiter of life and death, of happiness and misery. By 
 to-morrow nothing would be left but a handful of ashes 
 in a narrow urn. Of all who had professed to love and 
 to adore him, not one was there to weep for him ex- 
 cept these two; for their half-sister, Antonia, had been 
 content merely to see the corpse, and had then retired. 
 No one witnessed their agony of bereavement, their 
 helplessness of sorrow, except the dark-dressed slave who 
 tended the golden censer which filled the death chamber 
 with the fumes of Arabian incense. And for them there 
 was no consolation. The objects of their nominal 
 worship were shadowy and unreal. The gods of the 
 heathen were but idols, of whom the popular legends 
 were base and foolish. Such gods as those had no heart 
 to sympathise, no invisible and tender hand to wipe 
 away their orphan tears. 
 
SENECA AND HIS FAMILY. 65 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 SENECA AND HIS FAMILY. 
 
 "Palpitantibus praecordiis vivitur." — Seneca, Ep. lxxii. 
 "Sseculo premimur gravi, 
 Quo scelera regnant." 
 
 Id. Octav. act. 11. 
 
 If there was one man in all Rome whom the world 
 envied next to the young Emperor, or even more than 
 the Emperor himself, it was his tutor, Seneca. He was 
 the leading man in Rome. By the popular critics of 
 the day his style was thought the finest which any 
 Roman had written, though the Emperor Gains, in one 
 of his lucid intervals, had wittily remarked that it was 
 "sand without lime." His abilities were brilliant, his 
 wealth was immense. In all ordinary respects he Was 
 innocent and virtuous — he was innocence and virtue 
 itself compared with the sanguinary oppressors and 
 dissolute Epicureans by whom he was surrounded on 
 every side. 
 
 But his whole life and character were ruined by the 
 attempt to achieve an impossible compromise, which dis- 
 graced and could not save him. A philosopher had no 
 place in the impure Court of the Caesars. To be at 
 once a Stoic and a minister of Nero was an absurd 
 endeavour. Declamations in favour of poverty rang 
 hollow on the lips of a man whose enormous usury 
 poured in from every part of the Empire. The praises 
 
 Darkness and Dawn. /. 5 
 
66 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 of virtue sounded insincere from one who was living in 
 the closest intercourse with men and women steeped in 
 unblushing wickedness. And Seneca was far from easy 
 in his own mind. He was surrounded by flatterers, 
 but he knew that he was not ranked with patriots like 
 Paetus Thrasea, and genuine philosophers like Cornutus 
 and Musonius Rufus. Unable to resist temptations to 
 avarice and ambition, he felt a deep misgiving that the 
 voice of posterity would honour their perilous inde- 
 pendence, while it spoke doubtfully of his endless com- 
 promises. 
 
 Yet he might have been so happy! His mother, 
 Helvia, was a woman who, in the dignity of her life and 
 the simplicity of her desires, set an example to the 
 matrons of Rome, multitudes of whom, in the highest 
 circles, lived in an atmosphere of daily intrigue and 
 almost yearly divorce. His aunt, Marcia, was a lady of 
 high virtue and distinguished ability. His wife, Paulina, 
 was tender and loving. His pretty boy, Marcus, whose 
 bright young Hfe was so soon to end, charmed all by 
 his mirthfulness and engaging ways. His gardens were 
 exquisitely beautiful, and he never felt happier than 
 when he laid aside his cares and amused himself by 
 running races with his little slaves. His palace was 
 splendid and stately, and he needed not to have 
 burdened himself with the magnificence which gave 
 him no pleasure and only excited a dangerous envy. 
 It would have been well for him if he had devoted his 
 life to literature and philosophy. But he entered the 
 magic circle of the Palace, and with a sore conscience 
 was constantly driven to do what he disapproved, and 
 to sanction what he hated. 
 
SENECA AND HIS FAMILY. 67 
 
 Short as was the time which had elapsed since the 
 death of Claudius, he was already aware that in trying 
 to control Nero he was holding a wolf by the ears. 
 Some kind friend had shown him a sketch, brought 
 from Pompeii, of a grasshopper driving a griffin, and 
 he knew that, harmless as it looked, the griffin was 
 meant for himself and the grasshopper for Nero. Men 
 regarded him as harnessed to the car of the frivolous 
 pupil whom he was unable to control. 
 
 He was sitting in his study one afternoon, and the 
 low wind sounded mournfully through the trees outside. 
 It was a room of fine proportions, and the shelves were 
 crowded with choice books. There were rolls of vellum 
 or papyrus, stained saffron -colour at the back, and 
 fastened to sticks of ebony, of which the bosses were 
 gilded. All the most valuable were enclosed in cases 
 of purple parchment, with their titles attached to them 
 in letters of vermilion. There was scarcely a book 
 there which did not represent the best art of the 
 famous booksellers, the Sosii, in the Vicus Sandalarius, 
 whose firm was as old as the days of Horace. A glance 
 at the library showed the taste as well as the wealth of 
 the eminent owner — the ablest, the richest, the most 
 popular, the most powerful of the Roman senators. 
 
 They who thought his lot so enviable little knew 
 that his pomp and power brought him nothing except 
 an almost sleepless anxiety. Every visitor who came to 
 him that morning spoke of subjects which either tor- 
 tured him with misgivings or vexed him with a touch 
 of shame. 
 
 The first to visit Seneca that day was his brother 
 Gallio, with whom he enjoyed a long, confidential, and 
 
 5* 
 
68 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 interesting conversation. Gallio, to whom everyone gave 
 the epithet of "sweet" and "charming," and of whom 
 Seneca said that those who loved him to the utmost did 
 not love him enough, had recently returned from the 
 proconsulship of Achaia. He had just been nominated 
 Consul as a reward for his services. The brothers had 
 much to tell each other. Gallio described some of his 
 experiences, and made Seneca laugh by a story of how 
 a Jewish Rabbi had been dragged before his tribunal 
 by the Jews of Corinth, who were infuriated with him 
 because he had joined this new, strange, and execrable 
 sect of Christians. This Jew's name was Paulus, and 
 his countrymen accused him of worshipping a malefactor 
 who, for some sedition or other — but probably only to 
 please the turbulent Jews — had been crucified, in the 
 reign of Tiberius, by the Procurator Pontius Pilatus. 
 
 "I naturally refused to have anything to do with 
 their abject superstition," said Gallio. 
 
 "Abject enough," answered Seneca; "but is our 
 mythology much better?" 
 
 Gallio answered with a shrug of the shoulders. 
 
 "They are the gods of the mob," he said, "not 
 ours; and they are useful to the magistrates." 
 
 "A new god has recently been added to their 
 number," said Seneca, "the divine Claudius." 
 
 "Yes," said Gallio, significantly; "he has been 
 dragged to heaven with a hook! But you have not let 
 me finish my story. It appears that this Paulus was a 
 tent-maker, and for some reason or other, in spite of 
 his absurd beliefs, he had gained the confidence of 
 Erastus, the city chamberlain, and of a great many 
 Greeks; for, strange to say, he had — so I am told — 
 
SENECA AND HIS FAMILY. 69 
 
 preached a very remarkable and original code of ethics. 
 It is almost inconceivable that a man can hold insane 
 doctrines, and yet conform to a lofty morality. Yet 
 such seems to have been the case with this strange 
 person. I looked at him with curiosity. He was 
 dressed in the common Eastern costume of the Jews, 
 wearing a turban and a coarse striped robe flung over 
 his tunic. He was short, and had the aquiline nose 
 and general type of Judaic features. But though his 
 eyes were sadly disfigured by ophthalmia, there was 
 something extraordinary about his look. You know 
 how those Jews can yell when once their Eastern 
 stolidity is roused to fury. Even in Rome we have 
 had some experience of that; and you remember how 
 Cicero was once almost terrified out of recollection of 
 his speech by the clamour they made, and had to 
 speak in a whisper that they might not hear what he 
 said. To stand in the midst of a mob of such dirty, 
 wildly gesticulating creatures, shouting, cursing, waving 
 their garments in the air, flinging up handfuls of dust, 
 is enough to terrify even a Roman. I, as you know, 
 am a tolerably cool personage, yet I was half appalled, 
 and had to assume a disdainful indifference which I 
 was far from feehng. But this man stood there un- 
 moved. If he had been a Regulus or a Fabricius he 
 could not have been more undaunted, as he looked on 
 his infuriated persecutors with a glance of pitying for- 
 giveness. Every now and then he made a conciliatory 
 gesture, and tried to speak; but though he spoke in 
 Hebrew, which usually pacifies these fanatics to silence, 
 they would not listen to him for an instant. But the 
 perfect dignity, the nobleness of attitude and aspect, 
 
70 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 with which that worn little Jew stood there, filled me 
 with admiration. And his face! that of Psetus Thrasea 
 is not more striking. The spirit of virtue and purity, 
 and something more which I cannot describe, seemed 
 to breathe from it. It is an odd fact, but those Jews 
 seem to produce not only the ugliest and the hand- 
 somest, but also the best and worst of mankind. I sat 
 quiet in my curule chair, and let the Jews yell, telling 
 them once more that, as no civil crime was charged 
 against Paulus, I refused to be a judge in matters of 
 their superstition. At last, getting tired, I ordered the 
 lictors to clear the prsetorium, which they did with in- 
 finite delight, driving the yelling Jews before them like 
 chaff, and not sparing the blows of their fasces. I 
 thought I had done with the matter then; but not at 
 all ! It was the turn of the Greeks now. They resented 
 the fact that the Jews should be allowed to make a 
 riot, and they sided with Paulus. He was hurried by 
 his friends into a place of safety; but the Greeks seized 
 the head of the Jewish Synagogue — a fellow named 
 Sosthenes — and administered to him a sound beating 
 underneath my very tribunal." 
 
 "Did you not interfere?" asked Seneca. 
 
 "Not I," said Gallio. "On the contrary, I nearly 
 died with laughing. What did it matter to a Roman 
 and a philosopher like me whether a rabble of idle 
 Greeks, most of them the scum of the forum, beat any 
 number of Jews black and blue? It is what we shall 
 have to do to the whole race before long. But, some- 
 how, the face of that Paulus haunted me. They tell 
 me that he was educated at Tarsus, and he was evidently 
 a man of culture. I wanted to get at him, and have a 
 
SENECA AND HIS FAMILY. 7 I 
 
 talk with him. I heard that he had been lodging in a 
 squalid lane of the city with a Jewish tent-maker named 
 Aquila, who was driven from Rome by the futile edict 
 of Claudius. But my lictor either could not or would 
 not find out the obscure haunt where he hid himself. 
 The Christians were chary of information, and perhaps, 
 after all, it was as well not to demean myself by talking 
 to a ringleader of a sect whom all men detest for their 
 enormities. If report says true, the old Bacchanalians, 
 whose gang was broken up two hundred years ago, 
 were nothing to them.''* 
 
 "I have heard their name," said Seneca. "Our 
 slaves probably know a good deal more about the 
 matter than we do, if one took the trouble to ask them. 
 But unless they stir up a riot at Rome I shall not 
 trouble the Emperor by mentioning them." 
 
 At this point of the conversation a slave announced 
 that Seneca's other brother, the knight Marcus Annaeus 
 Mela, and his son Lucan, were waiting in the atrium. 
 
 "Admit them," said Seneca. "Ah, brother, and you, 
 my Lucan, perhaps it would have been a better thing 
 for us all if we had never left our sunny Cordova." 
 
 "I don't know that," said Mela. "I prefer to be at 
 Rome, a senator in rank, though I choose the station of 
 a knight. To be procurator of the imperial demesnes 
 is more lucrative, as well as more interesting, than look- 
 ing after our father's estates in Spain." 
 
 "What does the poet say?" said Gallio, turning to 
 
 the young Spaniard, a splendid youth of seventeen, 
 
 whose earlier poems had already been received with 
 
 unbounded applause, and whose dark eyes glowed with 
 
 * Note 6. — The Bacchanalians. 
 
72 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 the light of genius and passion. "Is he content to 
 stand only second as a poet — if second — to Silius 
 Italicus, and Caesius Bassus, and young Persius?" 
 
 "Well," said Lucan, "perhaps a man might equal 
 Silius without any superhuman merit. Persius, like my- 
 self, is still young, but I would give up any skill of 
 mine for his delightful character. And, as for Rome, if 
 to be a constant guest at Nero's table and to hear him 
 read by the hour his own bad poetry be a thing worth 
 living for, then I am better off at Rome than at Cor- 
 dova.^' 
 
 "His poetry is not so very bad," said Seneca. 
 
 "Oh! it is magnificent," answered Lucan, and, with 
 mock rapture, he repeated some of Nero's lines: — 
 
 "Witness thou, Attis! thou, whose lovely eyes 
 Could e'en surprise the mother of the skies ! 
 Witness the dolphin, too, who cleaves the tides, 
 And flouncing rides on Nereus' seagreen sides; 
 Witness thou likewise, Hannibal divine, 
 Thou who didst chine the long-ribb'd Apennine!"* 
 
 What assonance! What reaUsm! What dainty euphuistic 
 audacity! As Persius says, ^It all seems to swim and 
 melt in the mouth ! ' " 
 
 "Well, well," repHed the philosopher, "at least you 
 will admit that he might be worse employed than in 
 singing and versifying?" 
 
 "An Emperor might be better employed," said the 
 young man; "and with him I live on tenter-hooks. I 
 heartily wish that he had never summoned me from 
 Athens, or done me the honour of calling me his in- 
 timate friend. Frankly, I do not Hke him. Much as 
 * Note 7. — Nero's poetry. 
 
SENECA AND HIS FAMILY. 73 
 
 he tries to conceal it, he is horribly jealous of me. He 
 does all he can to make me suppress my poems, though 
 he affects to praise them; and though, of course, when 
 he reads me his verses, I cry ' Euge!' and ^Hocpcbg!' 
 at every line, as needs must when the master of thirty 
 legions writes, yet he sees through my praise. And I 
 really cannot always suppress my smiles. The other 
 day he told me that the people called his voice * divine.' 
 A minute after, as though meaning to express admira- 
 tion for his verses, I repeated his phrase — 
 
 *Thou'dst think it thundered under th' earth.' * 
 
 He was furious! He took it for a twofold reflection, on 
 his voice and on his alHteration; and I was desperately 
 alarmed. It was hard work to pacify him with a deluge 
 of adulation." 
 
 Seneca sighed. "Be careful, Lucan," he said, "be 
 careful ! The character of Nero is rapidly altering. At 
 present I have kept back the tiger in him from tasting 
 blood; but when he does he will bathe his jaws pretty 
 deeply. It is ill jesting when one's head is in a wild 
 beast's mouth." 
 
 "And yet," said Gallio, "I have heard you say that 
 no one could compare the mansuetude even of the aged 
 Augustus with that of the youthful Nero." 
 
 Seneca thought it disagreeable to be reminded of 
 his politic inconsistencies. "I wish to lead him to 
 clemency," he said, "even if he be cruel. But he is 
 his father's son. You know what Lucius Domitius was. 
 He struck out the eye of a Roman knight,' and he pur- 
 posely ran over and trampled on a poor child in the 
 * "Sub terris tonuisse putes." 
 
74 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Appian road. Have I ever told you that the night after 
 I was appointed his tutor I dreamt that my pupil was 
 Caligula ? '' 
 
 There was an awkward pause, and to turn the con- 
 versation, Lucan suddenly asked, "Uncle, do you be- 
 lieve in Babylonians and their horoscopes?" 
 
 "No," said the philosopher. "The star of each man's 
 destiny is in his heart." 
 
 "Do you not? Well, I will not say that I do. And 
 yet — would you hke to hear what a friend told me? 
 He said that he had been a mathematicus under Apol- 
 lonius of Tyana." 
 
 "Tell us," said his father, Mela. "I am not so wise 
 as our Seneca, and I feel certain that there is some- 
 thing in the predictions of the astrologers." 
 
 "He told me," said Lucan, "that he had read by 
 the stars that, before ten years are over, you, my uncles, 
 and you, my father, and I, and" — here the young poet 
 shuddered — "my mother, Atilla — and all of you through 
 my fault — would die deaths of violence. Oh, ye gods, 
 if there be gods, avert this hideous prophecy ! " 
 
 "Come, Lucan," said Seneca, "this is superstition 
 worthy of a Jew, almost of a Christian. The Chal- 
 daeans are arrant quacks. Each man makes his own 
 omens. I am Nero's tutor; you, his friend; our whole 
 family is in the full blaze of favour and prosperity. — 
 But, hark! I hear a soldier's footstep in the hall. Burrus 
 is coming to see me on important state business. Fare- 
 well now, but sup with me this evening, if you will share 
 my simplicity." 
 
 "Simplicity!" answered Mela, with a touch of envy, 
 "your humble couches are inlaid with tortoise-shell; and 
 
SENECA AND HIS FAMILY. 75 
 
 your table shines with crystal and myrrhine vases em- 
 bossed with gems.'' 
 
 "What does it matter whether the goblets of a 
 philosopher be of crystal or of clay?'' answered Seneca 
 gaily; "and as for my poor Thyine tables with ivory 
 feet, which everyone talks of, Cicero was a student, and 
 he was not rich, yet he had one table which cost 
 500,000 sesterces. One may surely admire the tigrine 
 stripes and panther-like spots of the citron-wood without 
 being a Lucullus or an Apicius." 
 
 "But you have five hundred such tables," said 
 Mela, "worth — I am afraid to say how many million 
 sesterces." 
 
 Seneca smiled a little uneasily. ''Accepimus peritura 
 perituri; we and our possessions are but for a day," 
 he said, "and even calumny will bear witness that on 
 those citron tables nothing more sumptuous is usually 
 served to me personally than water and vegetables and 
 fruit." 
 
 Then with a whispered caution to Lucan to control 
 his vehement impulses and act with care, the "austere 
 intriguer" said farewell to his kinsmen, and rose to greet 
 his colleague Burrus. 
 
76 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 SENECA AND HIS VISITORS. 
 
 "Videtur mihi cadere in sapientem segritudo." — Cic. Tiisc. 
 Disp. III. 4. 
 
 BuRRUS was a man in the prime of life, whose whole 
 bearing was that of an honest and fearless Roman; but 
 his look was gloomy, and those who had seen him when 
 he escorted Nero to the camp and the senate house, 
 noticed how fast the wrinkles seemed to be gathering 
 on his open brow. 
 
 We need not repeat the conversation which took 
 place between the friendly ministers, but it was long 
 and troubled. Burrus felt, no less strongly than Seneca, 
 that affairs at Court were daily assuming a more awk- 
 ward complexion. The mass of the populace, and of 
 the nobles, rejoicing in the general tranquillity, were 
 happily ignorant of facts which filled with foreboding 
 the hearts of the two statesmen. The nobles and the 
 people praised with rapture the speech which Nero had 
 pronounced before the senate after the funeral honours 
 had been paid to the murdered Claudius. "I have," he 
 said, "no wrongs to avenge; no ill feeling towards a 
 single human being. I will maintain the purity and 
 independence of legal trials. In the Palace there shall 
 be no bribery and no intrigues. I will command the 
 army, but in no particular will I encroach upon the 
 prerogatives of the Conscript Fathers." Critics recognised 
 
SENECA AND HIS VISITORS. 77 
 
 in the speech the style and sentiments of Seneca, but 
 that only showed that at last philosophy was at the 
 helm of state. And the Fathers had really been allowed 
 to enact some beneficent and useful measures. It was 
 the beginning of a period of government of which the 
 public and external beneficence was due to Seneca and 
 the Praetorian Praefect, who acted together in perfect 
 harmony, and with whom Nero was too indolent to 
 interfere. Long afterwards, so great a ruler as Trajan 
 said that he would emulate, but could not hope to 
 equal, the fame of Nero's golden quinquennium. 
 
 But, meanwhile, unknown to the Roman world in 
 general, the "golden quinquennium" was early stained 
 with infamy and blood; and the contemporary PUny 
 says that all through his reign Nero was an enemy of 
 the human race.* 
 
 The turbulent ambition of Agrippina was causing 
 serious misgivings. When the senators were summoned 
 to meet in the Palace she contrived to sit behind a cur- 
 tain and hear all their deliberations. When Nero was 
 about to receive the Armenian ambassadors she would 
 have scandahsed the majesty of Rome by taking her 
 seat unbidden beside him on the throne, if Seneca had 
 not had the presence of mind to whisper to the Emperor 
 that he should step down to meet his mother and lead 
 her to a seat. Worse than this, she had ordered the 
 murder, not only of Narcissus, but of the noble Junius 
 Silanus, whose brother, the affianced suitor of Octavia 
 before her marriage with Nero, she had already got rid 
 of by false accusations which broke his heart. She was 
 doubly afraid of Junius, both because the blood of 
 * PHn H. N, vn. 6, 
 
78' DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Augustus flowed in his veins, and because she feared 
 that he might one day be the avenger of his brother, 
 though he was a man of mild disposition. She sent the 
 freedman Helius and the knight PubHus Celer, who were 
 procurators in Asia, to poison him at a banquet, and 
 the deed was done with a cynical boldness which dis- 
 dained concealment. So ended a great-great-grandson 
 of Augustus, whom his great-great-grandfather had just 
 lived to see. It was only with difficulty that Seneca and 
 Burrus had been able to stop more tragedies, and they 
 had succeeded in making the world believe in Nero's 
 unique clemency by the anecdote, everywhere retailed 
 by Seneca, that when called upon to sign a death- 
 warrant he had exclaimed, "I wish I did not know how 
 to write!" It was looked on as a further sign of grace 
 that he had forbidden the prosecution of the knight 
 Julius Densus, who was charged with favour towards 
 the wronged Britannicus. 
 
 But now a new trouble had arisen. Nero began to 
 seek the company of such effeminate specimens of the 
 "gilded youth" of Rome as Otho and Tullius Senecio. 
 They were his ready tutors in every vice, and he was a 
 pupil whose fatal aptitude soon equalled, if it did not 
 surpass, the viciousness of his instructors. 
 
 Partly through their bad influence, he had devoted 
 himself heart and soul to Acte, the beautiful freed- 
 woman of Octavia. It was impossible that any secret 
 of the Palace could long be concealed from the vigilant 
 eyes of Agrippina. She had discovered the amour, and 
 had burst into furious reproaches. What angered her 
 was, not that the Emperor should disgrace himself by 
 vice, but that a freedwoman should interfere with the 
 
SENECA AND HIS VISITORS. 79 
 
 supremacy of her will, and be a rival with her for the 
 affections of her son. A little forbearance, a little calm 
 advice, might have proved a turning point in the life of 
 one who was not yet an abandoned libertine, but rather 
 a shy and timid youth dabbling with his first experiences 
 of wrong. His nature, indeed, was endowed with the 
 evil legacy of many an hereditary taint, but if it was as 
 wax to the stamp of evil, it was not as yet incapable of 
 being moulded into good. But Agrippina committed 
 two fatal errors. At first she was loudly indignant, and 
 when by such conduct she had terrified her son into 
 the confidence of Otho and Senecio, she saw her mis- 
 take too late, and flew into the opposite extreme of 
 complaisance. Nero at that time regarded her with 
 positive dread, but his fear was weakened when he saw 
 that, on the least sign of his displeasure, she passed 
 from fierce objurgations to complete submission. In 
 dealing with her son, Agrippina lost the astuteness which 
 had carried her triumphantly through all her previous 
 designs. 
 
 But at this point Seneca also made a mistake no 
 less ruinous. If he had remonstrated, and endeavoured 
 to awaken his pupil to honourable ambition, it was not 
 impossible that the world might have found in Nero a 
 better emperor than most of his predecessors. Instead 
 of this, the philosopher adopted the fatal policy of con- 
 cession. He even induced his cousin Annseus Serenus, 
 the Prsefect of the police, to shield Nero by pretending 
 that he was himself in love with Acte, and by conveying 
 to her the presents which were, in reality, sent to her 
 by the Emperor. Seneca soon learnt by experience that 
 the bad is never a successful engine to use against the 
 
8o DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 worst, and that fire cannot be quenched by pouring oil 
 upon it. When Nero had been encouraged by a philo- 
 sopher to think lightly of immoraHty, the reins of his 
 animal nature were seized by "the unspiritual god Cir- 
 cumstance/' and with mad pace he plunged into the 
 abyss. 
 
 Burrus had come to tell Seneca that Nero's passion 
 for Acte was going to such absurd lengths that he talked 
 of suborning two Romans of consular dignity to swear 
 that the slave girl, who had been brought from Asia, 
 was in reality a descendant of Attains, King of Perga- 
 mus! The senate would be as certain to accept the 
 statement as they had been to pretend belief that Pallas 
 was a scion of Evander and the ancient kings of Arcadia; 
 and Nero had actually expressed to Burrus a desire to 
 divorce Octavia and marry Acte! 
 
 "What did you say to him?" asked Seneca. 
 
 "I told him frankly that, if he divorced Octavia, he 
 ought to restore her dower." 
 
 "Her dower?" 
 
 "Yes — the Roman Empire. He holds it because 
 Claudius adopted him as the husband of his daughter." 
 
 "What did he say?" 
 
 "He pouted like a chidden boy, and I have not 
 the least doubt that he will remember the answer 
 against me." 
 
 "But, Burrus," said Seneca," "I really think that 
 we had better promote, rather than oppose, this love- 
 affair. Acte is harmless and innocent. She will never 
 abuse her influence to injure so much as a fly; nay, 
 more, she may wean Nero from far more dangerous 
 excesses. I think that in this case a little connivance 
 
SENECA AND HIS VISITORS. &t 
 
 may be the truest policy. To tell you the truth, I have 
 endeavoured to prevent scandal by removing all diffi- 
 culties out of the way." 
 
 "You are a philosopher," said Burrus, "and I sup- 
 pose you know best. It would not have been my way. 
 We often perish by permitted things. But, since you 
 do not take so serious a view of this matter as I did, I 
 will say no more. Forgive a brief interview. My duties 
 at the camp require my presence. Farewell." 
 
 Seneca, as we have seen, had spent a somewhat 
 agitated day, but he had one more visitor before the 
 afternoon meal. It was the philosopher Cornutus, who 
 had been a slave in the family of the Annaei, but was 
 now free and had risen to the highest literary distinc- 
 tion by his philosophical writings. 
 
 "Cornutus is always a welcome visitor," he said, as 
 he rose to greet him; "never more so thah this morn- 
 ing. I want to consult you, in deep confidence, about 
 the Emperor's education." 
 
 "Can Seneca need any advice about education?" 
 said Cornutus. "Who has written so many admirable 
 precepts on the subject?" 
 
 Seneca, with infinite plausibility, related to his friend 
 the arguments which he had just used to Burrus. He 
 felt a restless desire that the Stoic should approve of 
 what he had done. To fortify his opinion he quoted 
 Zeno and other eminent philosophers, who had treated 
 graver offences than that of Nero as mere adiaphora — 
 things of no real moment. Cornutus, however, at once 
 tore asunder his web of sophistry. 
 
 "A thing is either right or wrong," he said; "if it is 
 wrong no amount of expediency can sanction it, no skill 
 
 Darkness and Dawn, /. 
 
82 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 of Special pleading can make it other than reprehensible. 
 The passions cannot be checked by sanctioning their 
 indulgence, but by training youth in the manliness of 
 self-control. You wish to prevent the Emperor from 
 disgracing himself with the crimes which rendered exe- 
 crable the reigns of Tiberius and Gains. Can you do it 
 otherwise than by teaching him that what he ougkl to 
 do is also what he can do? Is the many-headed monster 
 of the young man's impulses to be checked by giving it 
 the mastery, or rather by putting it under the dominion 
 of his reason?" 
 
 "I cannot judge by abstract considerations of ethics. 
 I must judge as a statesman," said Seneca, somewhat 
 offended. 
 
 "Then, if you are only a statesman, do not pretend 
 to act as a philosopher. I speak to you frankly, as one 
 Stoic to another." 
 
 Seneca said nothing. It was evident that he felt 
 deeply hurt by the bluntness of Cornutus, who paused 
 for a moment, regarding him with a look of pity. Then 
 he continued. 
 
 "If it pains you to hear the truth I will be silent; 
 but if you wish me to speak without reserve, you are 
 committing two fatal errors. You dream of controlling 
 passion by indulging it. You are conceding liberty in 
 one set of vices in the vain hope of saving Nero from 
 another. But all vices are inextricably linked together. 
 And you have committed a second mistake, not only 
 by addressing your pupil in language of personal flattery, 
 but also by inflating him with a belief in his own illimit- 
 able power." * 
 
 * Note 8. 
 
SENECA AND HIS VISITORS. 83' 
 
 "Nero is Emperor," answered Seneca curtly, "and, 
 after all, he can do whatever he Hkes." 
 
 "Yet even as Emperor he can be told the truth," 
 replied Cornutus. "I for one ventured to offend him 
 yesterday." 
 
 "In what way?" 
 
 "Your nephew Lucan was belauding Nero's fantastic 
 verses, and said he wished Nero would write four hun- 
 dred volumes. *Four hundred!' I said; Hhat is far too 
 many.' *Why?' said Lucan; *Chrysippus, whom you 
 are always praising, wrote four hundred.' *Yes,' I an- 
 swered, 'but they were of use to mankind!' Nero 
 frowned portentously, and I received warning looks from 
 all present; but if a true man is to turn flatterer to 
 please an Emperor, what becomes of his philosophy?" 
 
 "Yes," sighed Seneca: "but your pupil Persius is a 
 youth of the sweetest manners and the purest heart; 
 whereas Nero is — Nero." 
 
 "A finer young Roman than Persius never lived," 
 replied the Stoic, "but if I had encouraged Persius in 
 the notion that vice was harmless, Persius might have 
 been — Nero." 
 
 "Cornutus," said the statesman — and as he said it 
 he sighed deeply — "your lot is humbler and happier 
 than mine. I do not follow, but I assent; I am crushed 
 by an awful weight of uncertainty, and sometimes life 
 seems a chaos of vanities. I wish to rise to a loftier 
 grade of virtue, but I am preoccupied with faults. All 
 I can require of myself is, not to be equal to the best, 
 but only to be better than the bad." * 
 
 "He who aims highest," said the uncompromising 
 * Note 9. 
 
 6* 
 
84 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 freedman, "will reach the loftiest ideal. And surely it 
 is hypocrisy to use fine phrases when you do not intend 
 to put your own advice into practice." 
 
 Seneca was always a little touchy about his style, 
 and he was now thoroughly angry, for he was not ac- 
 customed to be thus bluntly addressed by one so im- 
 measurably beneath him in rank. "Fine phrases!" he 
 repeated, in a tone of deep offence. "It pleases you to 
 be rude, Cornutus. Perhaps the day will come when 
 the *fine phrases' of Seneca will still be read, though 
 the name of Cornutus, and even of Musonius, is for- 
 gotten." 
 
 "Very possibly," answered the uncompromising freed- 
 man. "Nevertheless, I agree with Musonius that stylists 
 who do not act up to their own precepts should be 
 called fiddlers and not philosophers." 
 
 When Cornutus rose to leave, the feelings of the 
 most envied man in Rome were far from enviable. He 
 would have given much to secure the Stoic's approval. 
 And yet the sophistries by which he bHnded his own 
 better feeHngs were unshaken. "Cornutus," he said to 
 himself, "is not only discourteous but unpractical 
 Theory is one thing; life another. We are in Rome, not 
 in Plato's Atlantis." 
 
 Seneca lived to find out that facing both ways is 
 certain failure, and that a man cannot serve two 
 masters. 
 
 In point of fact a struggle was going on for the 
 preponderance of influence over Nero. Agrippina thought 
 that she could use him as a gilded figurehead of the 
 ship of state, while she stood at the helm and directed 
 the real course. Burrus and Seneca, distrusting her 
 
NERO AND HIS COMPANIONS. 85 
 
 cruelty and ambition, believed that they could render her 
 schemes nugatory, and convert Nero into a constitu- 
 tional prince. Both efforts were alike foiled. The pas- 
 sions which were latent in the temperament of the 
 young Emperor were forced into rank growth by in- 
 fluences incomparably less virile than that of his mother, 
 and incomparably more vile than those of the soldier 
 and the philosopher. Otho was a more effective tutor 
 than Seneca, and Seneca's own vacillation paved the 
 way for Otho's corrupting spell. Claudius had been 
 governed by an "aristocracy of valets"; Nero was to be 
 governed neither by the daughter of Germanicus nor by 
 the Stoic moralist, but by a despicable fraternity of 
 minions, actors, and debauchees. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 NERO AND fflS COMPANIONS. 
 
 "Res pertricosa est, Cotile, bellus homo." — Martial, m. 63. 
 
 Nero had been spending the morning with some of 
 the new friends whose evil example was rapidly destroy- 
 ing in his mind every germ of decency or virtue. Though 
 it was still but noon, he was dressed in a loose syn^ 
 thesis — a dress of light green, unconfined by any girdle, 
 and he had soft slippers on his feet. This negligence 
 was due only to the desire for selfish comfort, for in 
 other respects he paid extreme attention to his per- 
 sonal appearance. His fair hair was curled and per- 
 fumed, and his hands were covered with splendid 
 gems. 
 
86 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 But even a brief spell of imperial power, with late 
 hours, long banquets, deep gambling, and reckless dis- 
 sipation, had already left their brand upon his once at- 
 tractive features. His cheeks had begun to lose the 
 rose and glow of youth and to assume the pale and 
 sodden appearance which in a few years obliterated the 
 last traces of beauty and dignity from his ruined face. 
 
 With him sat and lounged and yawned and gos- 
 siped and flattered a choice assemblage of spirits more 
 wicked than himself. 
 
 The room in which they were sitting was one of the 
 most private apartments of the Palace. It had been 
 painted in the reign of Gains with frescoes graceful and 
 brilliant, but such as would now be regarded as proofs 
 of an utterly depraved taste. As he glanced at the 
 works of art with which the chamber was decorated, 
 Otho thought, not without complacency, of the day 
 when the prediction made to him by an astrologer 
 should be fulfilled, and he too would be Emperor of 
 Rome. He highly approved of frescoes such as these, 
 though even Ovid and Propertius had complained of 
 their corrupting tendency. 
 
 Otho was now nearly twenty-three years old, and 
 was a characteristic product of imperial civilisation. His 
 face was smooth, for he had artificially prevented the 
 growth of a beard. To hide his baldness, which he re- 
 garded as the most cruel wrong of the unjust gods, he 
 wore a wig, so natural and close-fitting as scarcely to be 
 recognisable, and this was arranged in front in the 
 fashion which he set, and which Nero followed. Four 
 rows of symmetrical curls half hid the narrrow fore- 
 head. Those curls had cost his barber two hours' 
 
NERO AND HIS COMPANIONS. 87 
 
 labour that morning, and they were dyed with a Ba- 
 tavian pomade into the blonde colour which was the 
 most admired. In figure Otho was small; his legs were 
 bowed, and his feet ill-shaped, but his large eyes and 
 beautiful mouth gave him a sweet and engaging, though 
 effeminate, expression. Indeed, effeminacy was his main 
 characteristic, and there was a touch of effeminacy even 
 in the much-belauded suicide to which his destiny was 
 leading him. When he was a boy, his father was so 
 disgusted by his ways that he flogged him like the 
 lowest of his slaves. He was one of those creatures of 
 perfumed baths, deHcate languor, soft manners, and dis- 
 ordered appetites, who, in that age, so often took refuge 
 from a depraved Hfe in a voluntary death.* He was 
 entirely impecunious, and was loaded with debts — a cir- 
 cumstance which he did not regard as any obstacle to 
 a life of boundless extravagance. In order to get intro- 
 duced to Nero he had the effrontery to make love to a 
 plain and elderly freedwoman, who had some influence 
 at Court. When he had once secured an introduction, 
 he became the ardent friend of Nero, and the intimate 
 accomplice of his worst dissipations. Being six years 
 older than the Emperor, and far more accomplished in 
 vice, he exercised a spell which rapidly undermined the 
 grave lessons of Burrus and Seneca. Precociously cor- 
 rupt, serenely egotistical, cynical in dishonour, and 
 gangrened to the depth of his soul by debauchery, Otho, 
 though still a youth, had so completely got rid of the 
 moral sense as to present to the world a spectacle of 
 unruffled self-content. A radiant and sympathetic soft- 
 ness reigned smiling on his smooth and almost boyish face. 
 * See Nisard: Poetes de la Decadence, i. 91. 
 
88 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 By the side of Otho lounged another youth, whose 
 name was Tullius Senecio. He was wealthy and reck- 
 less, and he had made himself a leader of fashion 
 among the young Roman nobles. With them was the 
 brilliant Petronius Arbiter, a man of refined culture and 
 natural wit, but the most cynically shameless liver and 
 talker even in Rome. The group was completed by the 
 able and rough-tongued but not over-scrupulous Vestinus, 
 the dissolute Quintianus, and the singularly handsome 
 Tigellinus, who was as yet only at the beginning of his 
 career, but who, of all the minions of that foul Court, 
 became the most cruel, the most treacherous, and the 
 most corrupt 
 
 And yet weariness reigned supreme over these 
 luxurious votaries of fashion. They had at first tried to 
 get some amusement out of the antics of Massa, a half- 
 witted boy, and Asturco, a dwarf; but when they had 
 teased Massa into sullenness, and Asturco into tears and 
 bello wings of rage, Petronius interfered, and voted such 
 amusements boorish and in bad taste. Then they tried 
 to kill time by betting and gambling over games at 
 marbles and draughts. The "pieces" (latrunculi and 
 ocellata) of glass, ivory, and silver lay scattered over 
 tables, just as they were when the players got tired of 
 the games, and the draught-boards (tabulce latruncularice) 
 had been carelessly tossed on the floor. Then they sent 
 for plates of honey-apples, and bowls of Falernian wine, 
 and took an extemporised meal. Nero even conde- 
 scended to amuse himself with rolling httle ivory 
 chariots down a marble slab, and betting on their 
 speed. Still they all felt that the hours were somewhat 
 leaden-footed, till a bright thought struck the Emperor. 
 
NERO AND HIS COMPANIONS. 89 
 
 He had passed some of his early years in poverty, and 
 this circumstance, together with his aesthetic apprecia- 
 tion of things beautiful, made him dehght in showing 
 his treasures to his intimates. By way of finding some- 
 thing to do, he suggested to his friends that they should 
 come and look at the wardrobes of the former Em- 
 presses, which were under the charge of a multitude of 
 dressers, folders, and jewellers. Orders were given that 
 everything should be laid out for their inspection. Ex- 
 cept Petronius, they all had an effeminate passion for 
 jewellery, and they whiled away an hour in inspecting 
 the robes, stiff with gold brocade and broideries of pearl, 
 sapphire, and emerald. 
 
 By this time Nero was in high good-humour, and 
 seized the opportunity of a little ostentation towards the 
 "lisping hawthorn-buds'' of fashion by whom he was sur- 
 rounded. 
 
 He chose out a superb cameo, on which was carved 
 a Venus Anadyomene, and gave it to Otho. "There," 
 he said; "that will adorn the neck of your fair Poppaea. 
 Vestinus, this opal was the one for the sake of which 
 Mark Antony procured the proscription of the senator 
 Nonius. You don't deserve it, for you can be very 
 rude " 
 
 "Free speech is a compliment to strong emperors," 
 said Vestinus, hardly concealing the irony of his tone. 
 
 "Ah, well!" continued Nero, "I shall not give it you 
 for your deserts, but because it will look splendid on 
 the ivory arm of your Statilia. A more fitting present 
 to you would be this little viper enclosed in amber;* 
 the viper is your malice, the amber your flattery. And 
 * Mart. rv. 59, 
 
go DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 what on earth am I to give you, Senecio? or you, 
 Petronius? You are devoted to so many fair ladies, 
 that I should have to give you the whole wardrobe; but 
 I will give you, Senecio, a silken fillet embroidered with 
 pearls; and, Petronius, Nature has set out this agate — 
 I believe it is from the spoils of Pyrrhus — for no one 
 but you, for she has marked on it an outHne of Apollo 
 and the Muses. Quintianus, this ring with a Hylas on 
 it will just suit you.'' 
 
 There was a hidden sarcasm in much which he had 
 said even while he distributed his gifts, and not a few 
 serpents hissed among the flowery speeches interchanged 
 in this bad society. But they all thanked him effusively 
 for presents so splendid. 
 
 At this point a sudden thought suggested itself to 
 Nero. He had not seen much of his mother for the last 
 few days, and being in buoyant spirits, and thoroughly 
 pleased with himself, he chose out the most splendid 
 robe and ornaments, and bade some of the wardrobe- 
 keepers to carry them to the apartments of the Augusta, 
 with the message that they were a present from her 
 son. "And do you," he said to his freedman Polycletus, 
 "bring me back word of what the Empress says in 
 thanks." 
 
 Nero and his friends returned to the room in which 
 they had been sitting, and had begun to play at dice 
 for large stakes, when Polycletus came back, flushed and 
 excited. 
 
 Nero was himself a little uneasy at what he had 
 done. His mother, with her unlimited resources, hardly 
 needed a present of this kind. As long as she was 
 Empress, all these robes had been her own; and Nero 
 
NERO AND HIS COMPANIONS. Ql 
 
 was exercising an unwonted sort of patronage when he 
 sent this gift by the hands of an attendant. There was 
 a certain vulgarity in his attention, which was all the 
 worse because it was ostentatious. And yet, if Agrip- 
 pina had been wise, she would have shown greater com- 
 mand over her temper, and have prevented that tragic 
 widening of the "little rift within the lute" which soon 
 silenced the music of a mother's love. 
 
 "Well, and was the Augusta pleased?'' asked Nero, 
 looking up from his dice. 
 
 "I will report to the Emperor when he is alone," 
 said the freedman. 
 
 "Tush, man!" answered Nero, nervously. "We are 
 all friends here, and if my mother was very effusive in 
 her compliments, they will pardon it." 
 
 "She returned no praises and no thanks." 
 
 "Ha! that was ungracious. Tell me exactly what 
 she did." 
 
 " She asked me who were with you, and I mentioned 
 the names of those present." 
 
 "What business is it of hers?" said Nero, reddening, 
 as he noticed the significant glances interchanged be- 
 tween Otho and Vestinus, the latter of whom whispered 
 a Greek proverb about boys tied to their mother's apron- 
 strings. 
 
 "She then asked whether you had given any other 
 presents, and I said that you had. 'To whom?' she asked." 
 
 "A regular cross-examination!" whispered Vestinus. 
 
 "I said that you had made presents to Otho, Vestinus, 
 and others." 
 
 "You need not have been so very communicative, 
 Polycletus," said Nero; "but go on." 
 
92 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 "Her lip curled as I mentioned the names." 
 
 "We are not favourites of the Augusta, alas!" lisped 
 Otho. 
 
 "But what did she say about the robe?" 
 
 "She barely glanced at the robe and jewels, and 
 when she had finished questioning me, she stamped her 
 foot, tossed the dress over a seat, and scattered the gems 
 over the floor." 
 
 Nero grew very red, and as the freedman again re- 
 mained silent, he asked whether the Augusta had sent 
 no message. 
 
 Polycletus hesitated. 
 
 "Go on, man!" exclaimed Nero, impatiently. "In 
 any case you are not to blame for anything she said." 
 
 "I am ashamed to repeat the Augusta's words," said 
 the messenger. "But, if I must tell you, she said: *My 
 son gives a part to me, who have given all to him. What- 
 ever he ha^ he owes to me. He sends me these, I sup- 
 pose, that I may put in no claim to the rest. Let him 
 keep his finery. There are things that I value more 
 highly.' And then she rose, and spurning with her foot 
 the robe which lay in her way, she swept out of the 
 room." 
 
 Nero bit his lip, and his eyes gleamed with rage. 
 He was maddened by the meaning smiles of Senecio, 
 and the expression of cynical amusement which passed 
 over the face of Petronius. 
 
 Otho came to the rescue. "Do not be disturbed, 
 Nero," he said. "Agrippina only forgot for the moment 
 that you are now Emperor." 
 
 "The Augusta evidently thinks that you are still a 
 boy in the purple-bordered toga," sneered Tigellinus. 
 
NERO ANt> HIS COMPANIONS. 93 
 
 Nero dashed down his dicebox, overturned the table 
 at which they were sitting, and began to pace the room 
 in extreme agitation. He had not yet quite shaken off 
 the familiarity of his mother's dominance. He was 
 genuinely afraid of her, and he knew to what fearful 
 lengths she might be hurried by her passion and her 
 hate. 
 
 "I cannot stand it," he muttered to himself. "I am 
 no match for Agrippina. Who knows but what she may 
 prepare a mushroom, or something else, for me? I hate 
 Rome. I hate the Empire. I will lay aside the purple. 
 I only want to enjoy myself I will go to Rhodes and 
 live there. I can sing, if I can do nothing else, and if 
 all else fails, I will support myself with singing in the 
 streets of Alexandria. The astrologers have promised 
 me that I shall be king in Jerusalem, or somewhere in 
 the East. Here I am utterly wretched." 
 
 He flung himself angrily on a couch, and a red spot 
 rose upon his cheeks. "I wonder how she dares to in- 
 sult me thus! If I had sent the robe and jewels to 
 Octavia, the poor child would have touched heaven with 
 her finger. If I had sent them to Acte, her soft eyes 
 would have beamed with love. Of what use is it to be 
 Emperor, if my mother is to flout and domineer like 
 this?'' 
 
 "Does not Caesar know what gives her this auda- 
 city?" asked Tigellinus, in a low tone. 
 
 "No," answered Nero; "except it be that she has 
 ruled me from a child." 
 
 "It is," said the adventurer, "because Pallas abets 
 her, and because " 
 
 He paused. 
 
94 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 "Pallas? Who is Pallas?" said the Emperor. "An 
 ex-slave — nothing more. I am not afraid of him. I will 
 dismiss him at once, and if he gives the least trouble, 
 I will threaten him with an inquisition into his account. 
 He shall go and end his Pallas-ship.* But what else 
 were you going to say?'' 
 
 "Agrippina domineers," he whispered in the Em- 
 peror's ear, "because Britannicus is alive." 
 
 "Britannicus?" answered Nero. 
 
 He said no more, but his brow became dark as 
 night. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 PRINCE BRITANNICUS. 
 
 "We were, fair queen, 
 Two lads that thought there was no more behind, 
 But such a day to-morrow as to-day. 
 And to be boy eternal." 
 
 Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale, i. 2. 
 
 There were few youths in Rome more deserving of 
 pity than the son of Claudius. Britannicus saw himself 
 not only superseded, but deliberately neglected and 
 thrust into the background. The intrigues of his step- 
 mother had succeeded, and he, the true heir to the 
 Empire, was a cipher in the Palace of the Caesars. The 
 suite of apartments assigned to his use and that of his 
 immediate attendants was in one of the least frequented 
 parts of the Palace. He often heard from the banquet 
 * Note 10. 
 
PRINCE BRITANNICUS. 95 
 
 hall and reception rooms, as he passed by them un- 
 noticed, the sounds of revelry, in which he was only 
 allowed on rare occasions to participate. Agrippina, in 
 her varying moods, treated him sometimes with studied 
 coolness and insulting patronage, sometimes with a sort 
 of burning and maudlin affection, as though she were 
 touched by the furies of remorse. The latter mood was 
 more intolerable to him than the former. Sometimes, 
 when she strained him to her steely heart, he felt as if 
 he could have thrust her from him with loathing, and 
 he made his relations with her more difficult because 
 he was too little of an actor to conceal his dislike. Nero 
 usually met him with sneering banter, but he, too, at 
 times, seemed as though he would like to be treated by 
 him with at least the semblance of brotherly cordiality. 
 He found his chief comfort in the society of Octavia. 
 She was, nominally, the Empress, and Nero, though he 
 shunned her to the utmost of his power, had not yet 
 dared to rob her of the dignities which surrounded her 
 exalted rank. It was in the company of his sister that 
 Britannicus spent his happiest hours. Octavia, as often 
 as she dared, invited him to be present on festive occa- 
 sions, and in her apartments he could find refuge for a 
 time from the most detested of the spies with whom 
 his stepmother had surrounded him from his early boy- 
 hood. 
 
 There was but one person about him whom he really 
 trusted and loved. It was the centurion Pudens, who, 
 being one of the imperial guard called excubitores, was 
 often stationed at one point or other of the Palace. So 
 vast was the interior of that pile of architecture, so in- 
 tricate its structure, owing to the numerous addition^ 
 
5 6 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 which had been made to it by each succeeding emperor, 
 that for a boy bent, as Britannicus was, on occasionally 
 eluding the intolerable watchfulness of his nominal slaves, 
 it was not difficult to conceal his movements. Happily, 
 too, he had one boyish friend whom he loved, and who 
 loved him, with entire affection. It was Titus, the elder 
 son of Vespasian. Even as a boy he gave promise of 
 the fine moral qualities by which he was afterwards dis- 
 tinguished. His father was a soldier who had risen by 
 merit to high command, and had even been Consul; 
 but his grandfather was only a humble provincial, and, 
 as his family was poor, he little dreamed that he too 
 was destined to the purple of which his friend had been 
 deprived. He was only a month or two older than Bri- 
 tannicus. They shared the same studies and the same 
 games, and there was something contagious in his healthy 
 vigour and imperturbable good humour. It was at least 
 some alleviation to the sorrows of the younger boy that 
 this manly and virtuous lad, with his short curly hair 
 and athletic frame, was always ready to exert himself to 
 brighten his loneliness and divert his thoughts. Painters 
 might have called the features of Titus plebeian, but in 
 his eyes and mouth there was an expression of honesty 
 and sweetness which endeared him to the heart of the 
 lonely prince, who admired him far more than any of 
 the boys in the noblest families. 
 
 The political insignificance of the Flavian family had 
 been one reason why Agrippina had chosen Titus as a 
 companion for the son of Claudius, instead of some 
 scion of the old aristocracy of Rome. It was well for 
 Britannicus that his fellow-pupil came of a race purer 
 and simpler than that of the youthful patricians. 
 
PRINCE BRITANNICUS. 97 
 
 The two boys had been educated together for some 
 years; and Titus, when he became emperor, still retained 
 a fond affection for the companion of his youth, to whom 
 he erected an equestrian statue. There was a story, 
 known to very few, which might have endangered the 
 Ufe of Titus, had it been divulged. One day, when the 
 two boys were learning their lessons together. Narcissus 
 had brought in one of the foreign physiognomists who 
 were known as metoposcopi, to look at them from behind 
 a curtain. The man did not know who they were; he 
 only knew that they were in some way connected with 
 the Palace. After carefully studying their faces, he said 
 that the elder of the two, Titus, should certainly become 
 Emperor, but the younger as certainly should not. At 
 that time Britannicus was heir to the throne. Narcissus 
 was superstitious, and his heart misgave him; but he 
 derived some comfort from the absurd improbability of 
 a prophecy that a boy who had been born in so humble 
 a house, and was only the descendant of a Cisalpine 
 haymaker, should ever wear the purple of the Caesars. 
 He was too kind-hearted to let the anecdote be generally 
 known, for even as a boy Titus was liked by every- 
 one, if he was not yet "the darling of the human race.'' 
 
 One day, as Titus went across the viridarium, or 
 chief green court of the Palace, he saw a little slave 
 boy struggling hard to repress his sobs. His kindly 
 nature was touched by the sight. He had not been 
 trained in the school of those haughty youths who 
 thought it a degradation to speak to their slaves; his 
 father, Vespasian, being himself of lowly origin, held, 
 with Seneca, that slaves, after all, were men, and might 
 become dear and faithful friends. 
 
 Darkness and Dawn* /, 7 
 
98 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 "What is your name, and why do you weep, my 
 little man?" asked Titus. 
 
 "They call me Epictetus," said the child; "and I am 
 the slave of Epaphroditus, the Emperor's secretary. I 
 fell and hurt my leg very badly against the marble rim 
 of the fountain. Don't be angry with me. I will bear 
 the pain."* 
 
 "A born Stoic!" said Titus, smiling. "But what is 
 the matter with your leg?" 
 
 "I will tell you, sir," answered Epictetus. "Being 
 deformed and useless, as you see, my master thought 
 that he might turn me to some account by having me 
 taught philosophy, and he made me capsarius^^ to his 
 son, who attends the lectures of Musonius Rufus. Mu- 
 sonius, who is kind and good, let me sit in a corner 
 and listen. I am not a Stoic yet, but I shall try to be 
 one some day." 
 
 "But even now you have not told me how you came 
 to be lame." 
 
 The young slave blushed. "Eight weeks ago," he 
 said, "I was walking past the door of the triclinium, 
 when a slave came out with some crystal vases on a 
 tray. He ran against me, and one of the vases fell and 
 was broken. He charged me with having broken it, 
 and Epaphroditus ordered my leg to be twisted. It hurt 
 me terribly, but Musonius had taught me to endure, 
 and I only cried out, ^If you go on, you will break my 
 leg.' He went on, and broke it. I did not give way 
 then, and I am ashamed that you saw me crying -now." 
 
 "Poor lad! Come with me to Prince Britannicus 
 and tell him that story. He is kind, and will pity you, 
 * Note n» ** ^ slave who carried boys' books to school. 
 
PRINCE BRITANNICUS. 99 
 
 and perhaps get the Empress Octavia to do something 
 for you." 
 
 Epictetus limped after Titus, and Britannicus was 
 pleased with the slave-boy's quaint fortitude and the 
 preternatural gravity of his face. He often sat on the 
 floor while the two friends talked or played at draughts, 
 and would sometimes retail to them what he had heard 
 in the lectures of Musonius. They laughed at his 
 naiveti, but something of the teaching stuck. The Stoi- 
 cism of Titus had its germ in those boyish days. 
 
 One other friend, strange to say, Britannicus had 
 near at hand, though she could not openly have much 
 conversation with him. It was the fair freedwoman 
 Acte. Her situation in the Palace did not argue in her 
 a depraved mind. She had not been trained in an 
 atmosphere which made her suppose that there was 
 anything sinful in her relations with the Emperor. 
 Brought from Asia in early youth, she was practically 
 no more than a slave, though she had been emancipated 
 by Claudius. The will of a master, even if that master 
 was far below an emperor, was regarded as a necessary 
 law.* But Acte had a good heart, and so far from 
 being puffed up by the ardent affection of Nero, her 
 one desire was to use her influence for the benefit of 
 others. For Britannicus she felt the deepest pity. She 
 had even aroused the anger of her lover by pleading in 
 his behalf, and though it was impossible that she should 
 do more than interchange with him an occasional salu- 
 tation, the boy gratefully recognised that Acte did her 
 best to gain for him every indulgence and relaxation in 
 her power. 
 
 * Note 12. — Slaves. 
 
 7* 
 
IDO DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Britannicus had inherited some of his father's fond- 
 ness for history. He was never happier than when Titus 
 told him some of the stories which he had heard from 
 Vespasian about his campaigns in Britain. He had 
 even persuaded Pudens to go with him to visit the old 
 British chief, Caractacus — or, to give him his right name, 
 Caradoc — who had kept the Romans at bay for nine 
 years, until he was betrayed to them by the treacherous 
 Queen Cartismandua. And much had come of this 
 visit; for there Pudens saw for the first time the daughter 
 of Caradoc, the yellow-haired British princess Claudia, 
 and had fallen deeply in love with her. The grey Kling 
 of the Silures, whose manly eloquence had moved the 
 admiration of Claudius on the day when he had beei;i 
 led along in triumph, was eating away his heart in a 
 strange land. He rejoiced to see the son of the Em- 
 peror who had spared his life, and he delighted the 
 boy's imagination with many a tale of the Druids, and 
 Mona, and the wild Silurian hills and the vast rushing 
 rivers, and the hunting of the wolf and the wild-boar in 
 the marshes and forests of Caer Leon and Caer Went. 
 While Caractacus was telling these stories there was 
 ample opportunity for Pudens to improve his acquaint- 
 ance with the fair Claudia, who talked to him with a 
 yearning heart of her home on the silver Severn, which 
 Pudens had once visited as a very young soldier. 
 
 These interviews made Britannicus eager to form 
 the acquaintance of Aulus Plautius, the conqueror of 
 the southern part of that far island. Plautius stood 
 well at Court, arid had been greatly honoured by Clau- 
 dius, who had condescended to walk by his side in the 
 gvation which rewarded the successful campaigns of 
 
PRINCE BRITANNICUS. 1 01 
 
 four years. Britannicus gained easy permission to visit 
 the old general, and at his house he met his wife, Pom- 
 ponia Graecina. 
 
 This lady was regarded at Rome as a paragon of 
 faithful friendship. She had been deeply attached in 
 early youth to her royal kinswoman Julia, the grand- 
 daughter of Tiberius. Julia had been one of the victims 
 of the cruelty of Messalina, and from the day of her 
 execution, for forty years, Pomponia never appeared but 
 in mourning garments, and it was said, though without 
 truth, that she never wore a smile upon her face. 
 
 But though she smiled but rarely, the beauty of 
 Pomponia was exquisite from her look of serenity and 
 contentment. She was unlike the other ladies of Roman 
 society. She never tinged her face with walnut juice, 
 or painted it with rouge and cerussa, or reared her 
 tresses into an elaborate edifice of curls, or sprinkled 
 them with gold dust, or breathed of Assyrian odours. 
 Her life and her dress were exquisitely simple. She 
 wore no ornaments, or few. She rarely appeared at any 
 banquet, and then only with her husband at the houses 
 of the graver and more virtuous senators. Vice was in- 
 voluntarily abashed at her presence. The talk which 
 Roman matrons sometimes did not blush to hear was 
 felt to be impossible where Pomponia was present, nor 
 would anyone have dreamed of introducing loose gym- 
 nasts or Gaditanian dancers as the amusement of any 
 guests of whom she was one. Hence she was more 
 and more neglected by the jewelled dandies and 
 divorced ladies, who fluttered amid the follies of a 
 heartless aristocracy, and gradually the gossiping 
 pleasure-hunters of Rome came to hate her because 
 
102 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 her whole Hfe was a rebuke of the degradation of a 
 corrupt society. 
 
 Hatred soon took the form of whispered accusations. 
 The suspicion was first broached by Calvia Crispinilla, 
 a lady whose notoriously evil character elevated her 
 high in the confidence of Nero, and who, in spite of 
 her rank, was afterwards proud of the infamy of being 
 appointed keeper of the wardrobe of his favourite Sporus. 
 
 Talking one day to ^lia Petina, a divorced wife of 
 Claudius and mother of his daughter Antonia, she ex- 
 pressed her dislike of Pomponia, and said, "It is im- 
 possible that any worshipper of our gods should live a 
 life so austere as Pomponia's. Hark, in your ears, Pe- 
 tina. She must be'' — and sinking her voice to a tragic 
 whisper she said — "she must be a secret Christian." 
 
 "Well," said Petina, "what does it matter? Nero 
 himself worships the Syrian goddess, and they say that 
 the lovely Poppaea Sabina, the wife of Otho, is a 
 Jewess." 
 
 "A Jewess! oh, that is comparatively respectable," 
 said Crispinilla. "Why, Berenice, the charming sister 
 — ahem! the very deeply attached sister — of Agrippa, 
 you know, is a Jewess; and what diamonds that woman 
 has! But a Christian! Why, the very word has a taint 
 of vulgarity about it, and leaves a bad flavour in the 
 mouth! None but unspeakable slaves and cobblers and 
 Phrygian runaways belong to those worshippers of the 
 god Onokoites and the head of an ass." * 
 
 What malice had invented as a calumny happened 
 in this instance to be a truth. Pomponia was indeed a 
 secret Christian. The wind bloweth where it listeth, 
 * Note 13. — Onokoites. 
 
PRINCE BRTTANNICUS. IO3 
 
 and none can tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. 
 She had accompanied her husband when he had been 
 sent to subdue Britain, and had known the agonies of 
 long and intensely anxious separation from him, and 
 during those periods of trial she had been compelled 
 to be much alone, and part of the time she had spent 
 in Gaul. Persis, her confidential handmaid, had met 
 one of the early missionaries of the faith, had heard 
 his message, had been converted. Accident had revealed 
 the fact to the noble Roman lady; and as she talked 
 with Persis in many a long and lonely hour, her heart 
 too had been touched by grace, and a life always pure 
 had now become the Ufe of a saint of God. 
 
 Plautius was glad to notice the manly interest taken 
 by Britannicus in the country from which his name had 
 been derived, and in martial achievements rather than 
 in the debasing effeminacies of the Roman nobles. He 
 always welcomed the boy's presence, and introduced 
 him to the kind hospitalities of his wife. Both parents 
 were glad that a scion of the Caesars who seemed to 
 show the old Roman virtues of modesty and manliness 
 should be a frequent companion of their own son, the 
 young Aulus. To Pomponia the son of Claudius felt 
 strongly drawn. She was wholly unlike any type of 
 woman he had ever seen; she seemed to be separated 
 by whole worlds of difference from such ladies as his 
 own mother, Messalina, or his stepmother, Agrippina; 
 and though she only dressed in simple and sombre gar- 
 ments, yet the peace and sweetness which breathed 
 from her countenance made her more lovely in his 
 eyes than the great wives of Consuls and senators whom 
 he had so often seen sweeping through gilded chambers 
 
I04 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 on the Palatine in their gleaming and gold-embroidered 
 robes. He noticed, too, that his sister, the Empress 
 Octavia, never visited her without coming home in a 
 happier and more contented mood. 
 
 One day, being more than ever filled with admira- 
 tion for her goodness, he had spoken to her freely of 
 all his bitter trials, of all his terrible misgivings. She 
 had impressed on him the duties of resignation and 
 forgiveness; and had tried to show him that in a mind 
 conscious of integrity he might have a possession better 
 and more abiding than if he sat amid numberless 
 temptations to baseness on an uneasy throne. 
 
 "You speak," he said, "like Musonius Rufus; for 
 the young Phrygian slave, Epictetus, whom Titus took 
 compassion on and sometimes brings to our rooms, has 
 told me much about his Stoic lectures. But there is 
 something — I know not what — in your advice which is 
 higher and more cheerful than in his." 
 
 Pomponia smiled. "Much that Musonius teaches is 
 true and beautiful," she said; "but there is a diviner 
 truth in the world than his." 
 
 Britannicus was silent for a moment, and then, hesi- 
 tatingly and with reluctance, he said, "Will you forgive 
 me, noble Pomponia, if I ask you a question?" 
 
 The pale countenance of the lady grew a shade 
 paler, and she replied, "You might ask me what I 
 should not think it right to answer." 
 
 "You know," said the boy, "that at banquets and 
 other gatherings I cannot help hearing the gossip and 
 scandal which they talk all the day long. And all the 
 worst ladies — persons like Crispinilla and Petina and 
 Silana — seem to hate you, I know not why; and they 
 
PRINCE BRITANNICUS. IO5 
 
 said that you would be accused some day of holding a 
 foreign superstition." 
 
 Pomponia clasped her hands, and uttered a few 
 words which Britannicus could not hear. Then, turn- 
 ing to him, she said, "Perhaps Musonius has quoted 
 those lines of Cleanthes, *Lead me, O Father of the 
 world. I will follow thee, even though I weep.'* We 
 can never prevent the wicked from accusing us, but we 
 can always give the lie to their accusations by innocent 
 lives.'' 
 
 "What they said besides, must have been an absurd 
 and wicked lie," continued Britannicus. "They said" 
 — and here he made the sign of averting an evil omen 
 which has been prevalent in Italy from the earliest days 
 — "that — you — were — dare I speak the vulgar word? — a 
 Christian." 
 
 "And what do you know about the Christians, Bri- 
 tannicus?" 
 
 "In truth I know very little, for I am not allowed 
 to go about much; but Titus, who hears more than I do, 
 tells me that they meet at night, and kill a babe, and 
 drink its blood; and bind themselves by horrid oaths; 
 and tie dogs to the lamp-stands, and hark them on to 
 throw over the lamps, and are afterwards guilty of 
 dreadful orgies. And they worship an ass's head." 
 
 "WTiat makes you believe that slanderous non- 
 sense?" 
 
 "Why, Titus is fond of scratching his name on the 
 
 wall, and when we were going out of the paedogogium 
 
 in the House of Gelotius, which, you know, is now used 
 
 as a training school for the pages, he scrawled Titus 
 
 * Note 14. — Lines of Cleanthes, 
 
106 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Flavins Vespasiamis leaves the pcedagogium , and then 
 drew a little sketch of a donkey, and underneath it 
 Toilj little ass, as I have done, and it will do you good, 
 I laughed at him for scribbling on the wall, and to make 
 fun of him I wrote underneath — 
 
 "I wonder, oh wall, that your stones do not fall, 
 Bescribbled all o'er with the nonsense of all." 
 
 And I told him that I should put up a notice Hke that 
 at the Portus Portuensis, which begs boys and idlers 
 not to scarify {scarificare) the walls. But while I was 
 writing the lines, I caught sight of an odd picture which 
 some one had scratched there. It was a figure with an 
 ass's head on a cross, and underneath it *Alexamenos 
 adores God.' I asked Titus what it meant, and sug- 
 gested that it was a satire on the worship of the Egyptian 
 Anubis. But Titus said, *No! that is intended to annoy 
 the Christians.' " * 
 
 "Well, Britannicus," said Pomponia, "I know some- 
 thing more about these poor Christians than that. All 
 these are hes. I dare say you have read, or Sosibius 
 has read to you, some of the writings of Seneca?" 
 
 "No," said Britannicus, reddening. "Seneca is my 
 brother Nero's tutor. It is he, and Agrippina, and 
 Pallas, who have done away with the will of my father, 
 Claudius. I don't care to hear anything he says. He 
 is not a true philosopher, like Musonius or Cornutus. 
 He only writes fine things which he does not beHeve." 
 
 "A man may write very true things. Prince," said 
 Pomponia, "yet not live up to them. I have here some 
 of his letters, which his friend Lucilius has shown me. 
 Let me read you a few passages." 
 
 * Note 15. — Ancient wall-scribblings. 
 
PRINCE BRITANNICUS. I07 
 
 She took down the scroll of purple vellum, on 
 which she had copied some of the letters, and, unrolling 
 it, read a sentence here and there: — 
 
 " ' God is near you, is with you, is within you. A 
 sacred spirit dwells within us, the observer and guardian 
 of all our evil and our good; there is no good man with- 
 out God.* 
 
 " ' What advantage is it that anything is hidden 
 from man? Nothing is closed to God.' 
 
 " 'Even from a corner it is possible to spring up 
 ifito heaven. Rise, therefore, and form thyself into a 
 fashion worthy of God' 
 
 "'Do you wish to render the gods propitious? Be 
 virtuous; to honour them it is enough to imitate them.' 
 
 " 'You must live for another, if you wish to live for 
 yourself 
 
 " 'In every good man, God dwells.' * 
 
 "I could read you many more thoughts like these 
 from Seneca's letters. Are they not true and beautiful?" 
 
 "I wish his own acts were as true and beautiful," 
 answered Britannicus. "But what has this to do with 
 the Christians?" 
 
 "This: every one of those thoughts, and many much 
 deeper, are commonplaces among Christians; but the 
 difference between them and the worshippers of the 
 gods is that they possess other truths which make these 
 real They alone are innocent." 
 
 "And they do not worship an ass's head? Well, at 
 any rate Christus or Chrestus, whom they do worship, 
 was crucified in Palestine by Pontius Pilatus." 
 
 * For these and similar passages of Seneca, see Epp.^ 31, 41, 73 ; 
 De Benef.^ i. 6; &c. 
 
I08 DARKNESS AND DAWN, 
 
 "And does suffering prevent a man from being 
 divine? All Romans worship Hercules, yet they believe, 
 or profess to believe, that he was burnt alive on CEta." 
 
 Britannicus was silent, for he had always thought it 
 a colossal insanity on the part of the Christians to 
 worship one who had been crucified like a slave. 
 
 "Tell me," said Pomponia, "when Epictetus reads 
 you his notes of the lectures of Musonius, does not the 
 name of Socrates sometimes occur in them?" 
 
 "Yes," said the young prince; "it occurs constantly. 
 Musonius talked of Socrates as a perfect pattern, and 
 all but divine." 
 
 "And how did Socrates die?" 
 
 "He was poisoned by the Athenians with hemlock 
 in their common prison." 
 
 "As a malefactor?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Does it, then, prove him to be worthless that he, 
 too, died the death of a felon? And are all philosophers 
 fools for extending so much reverence to a poisoned 
 criminal?" 
 
 "I never thought of that," said Britannicus. "And 
 are all the other stories about these Christians Hes?" he 
 asked, after a pause. 
 
 "They are," said Pomponia. "Some day, perhaps, 
 you shall judge for your own self." 
 
*A FOREIGN SUPERSTITION. lOQ 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 "a foreign superstition." 
 
 *'Quos, per flagitia invisos, vulgus Christianos appellabat." — 
 Tacitus. Ann. xv. 44. 
 
 The young son of Claudius, burdened as he was by 
 a sense of wrong, was not only cheered by the kindness 
 of the conqueror of Britain, but had been deeply in- 
 terested in all that he had heard from his high-minded 
 wife. Pomponia had warned him that to mention the 
 subject of their conversation might needlessly imperil 
 her life, and to no one did he venture to say a word 
 on the subject except to Pudens. It struck him that in 
 the words and bearing of the handsome young soldier 
 there was something not unHke the moral sincerity which 
 he admired and loved in Pomponia Graecina. 
 
 "Pudens," he said to him the next morning, when 
 Titus was absent, "what do you think of the Christ- 
 ians?" 
 
 Pudens started; but, recovering himself, he said, 
 coldly, "The Christians in Rome are humble and per- 
 secuted. Most persons confuse them with the Jews, but 
 many Jews are nobler specimens than the beggars on 
 the bridges, and many Christians are not Jews at all." 
 
 "Are they such wretches as men say?" 
 
 "No, Britannicus, they are not. A man may call 
 himself a Christian, and be a bad man; but it is so 
 perilous to be a Christian that most of them are per^ 
 
no DARKNESS AND DAWN, 
 
 fectly sincere. They preach innocence, and they prac- 
 tise it. You know well enough that the air is full of 
 lies, and certainly not one tenth part of what is said of 
 the Christians has in it the least truth." 
 
 The time had not yet come for Pudens to avow that 
 his Claudia had been secretly baptised by an early mis- 
 sionary in Britain, as Pomponia had been in Gaul; and 
 that he himself was beginning seriously to study the 
 doctrines of the hated sect. 
 
 But the next time Britannicus was able to visit Pom- 
 ponia, he asked her if there were any Christian books 
 which he might read. 
 
 "There are the old Jewish books," said Pomponia,. 
 "which Christians regard as sacred, and which a few 
 Romans have read out of curiosity, for they were trans- 
 lated into Greek nearly four hundred years ago. But 
 they are rare, and it is not easy to get them. And even 
 if you read them, there is much in them which we Ro- 
 mans cannot understand." 
 
 "But has no Christian written anything?" 
 
 "Scarcely anything," she said. "You know the 
 Christians are mostly very poor, and some of them quite 
 illiterate. But there is a great Christian teacher named 
 Paulus of Tarsus, and many who have heard him preach 
 in Ephesus and in Philippi, and even in Athens and 
 Corinth, say that his words are like things of Hfe. My 
 friend Sergius Paulus, the late Proconsul of Cyprus, has 
 met him, and spoke of him with enthusiastic reverence. 
 He has written nothing as yet except two short letters 
 to the Christians in Thessalonica. They are only casual 
 letters, and do not enter into the life of Jesus the Christ, 
 
"a foreign superstition/' I 1 1 
 
 or the general belief of Christians. But I have them 
 here, and will read parts of them to you if you like." 
 
 She read to him the opening salutation, and on his 
 expressing astonishment that he could join "much afflic- 
 tion," with "joy," she explained to him that this was 
 the divine paradox of all Christianity, in which sorrow 
 never destroyed joy, but sometimes brought out a deeper 
 joy, even as there are flowers which pour forth their 
 sweetest perfumes in the midnight. 
 
 Then she read him the exhortations to purity and 
 holiness,* and asked him "whether that sounded like 
 the teaching of men who practised the evil deeds of 
 which the Christians were accused by the popular 
 voice." 
 
 He sat silent, and she read him the passage about 
 the coming day of the Lord, and the sons of light, and 
 the armour of righteousness.** Lastly, she read him 
 the concluding part of the Second Letter, with its ex-- 
 hortations to diligence and order. 
 
 "I think," she said, "that in one passage Paulus 
 may perhaps refer in a mysterious way to your father, 
 the late Emperor. He is speaking of the coming of 
 some lawless tyrant and enemy of God before the day 
 of the Lord; and he adds, *only he who letteth will let, 
 until he be taken away.'" 
 
 "The Greek words 6 xaxexo^v,^^ she said, "might be 
 rendered in Latin qui claudit. The Christians are so 
 surrounded by enemies that they are sometimes obliged 
 to express themselves in cryptograms, and Linus tells 
 me that some Christians see in the words qui claudit an 
 allusion to your father, Claudius. If so, Paulus seems 
 * I Thess. IV. 1-8, ** i Thess. v. i-u, 
 
1 1 2 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 to think that the day of the Lord's return is very 
 near." 
 
 The young prince, though he had but a dim sense 
 of what some of the phrases meant, was struck with 
 what he had heard. There was something in the mo- 
 raHty more vivid and more searching than anything 
 which Epictetus had reported, or than Sosibius had read 
 to him out of Zeno and Chrysippus. And besides the 
 high morality there were tones which caused a more 
 thrilling chord to vibrate within him than anything of 
 which he had yet dreamed. The morality seemed to 
 be elevated to a purer region of life and hope, and, in 
 spite of the strange style, to be transfused through and 
 through with a divine emotion. 
 
 "And these," he said, "are the men whom they 
 charge with every kind of atrocity! Surely, Pomponia, 
 the world is rife with lies! Would it be too dangerous 
 for you to let me see and speak to some of the Christ- 
 ian teachers? You might disguise me; it is quite easy. 
 Even Pudens need not know; he never feels dull," he 
 added with a smile, "if he may talk to Claudia, who is 
 staying with you now." 
 
 "There was an excellent Jewish workman here named 
 Aquila of Pontus," she said. "You might have talked 
 to him, but he left Rome when the Jews were banished 
 in your father's days. He used to mend the awning 
 over the viridarium, and those which kept the sun from 
 blazing too hotly into our Cyzicene room.* He some- 
 times brought with him his still more excellent wife, 
 Prisca. They knew Paulus, and said that he had pro- 
 mised some day to come to Rome. I am obliged to be 
 * Note 1 6, — Cyzicene room. 
 
"a foreign superstition/' 113 
 
 very careful; but perhaps you can speak to Linus, who 
 is the Elder of the Christians in Rome." 
 
 "But, Pomponia, the Christians believe, you tell me, 
 in a leader named Jesus; is he the same as Christus or 
 Chrestos?" 
 
 "He is." 
 
 "Is there anyone in Rome who has seen him?" 
 
 "He was put to death," said Pomponia, bowing her 
 head, "more than twenty years ago, when Tiberius was 
 Emperor. But His disciples, who lived with Him, whom 
 He called Apostles or messengers, were many of them 
 young men, and they are living still." 
 
 "Had Paulus of Tarsus ever seen him?" 
 
 "In heavenly vision, yes; but not when He was 
 teaching in Palestine. But there was one disciple whom 
 He loved very dearly, and who is now living in Jerusa- 
 lem, though Agrippa I. beheaded his elder brother. Per- 
 haps he may some day come to Rome." 
 
 "But you, Pomponia, must have heard much about 
 Christus. Tell me, then, something about him. How 
 could a Judaean peasant be, as you say Jesus was, 
 divine?" 
 
 "Self-sacrifice for the sake of others is always 
 divine," said Pomponia. "Even in Greek mythology the 
 gods assume the likeness of men in order to help and 
 deliver them. Does not the poet tell us how Apollo 
 once kept, as a slave, the oxen of Admetus? how Her- 
 cules was the servant of Eurystheus? how Jupiter came 
 to visit Baucis and Philemon? Is it so strange that the 
 God of all should reveal Himself to man as man? 
 Doubtless you have read with your tutor the grandest 
 play of ^schylus — the * Prometheus Bound.' Does not 
 
 Darkness and Dawn^ /, 8 
 
114 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 the poet there sing that Prometheus, who is the type of 
 Humanity, can never be dehvered 'until some god 
 descends for him into the Mack depths of Tartarus' ? 
 And does not Plato say that man will never know God 
 until He has revealed Himself in the guise of suffering 
 man; and that *when all is on the verge of destruction^ 
 God sees the distress of the universe, and, placing him- 
 self at the rudder, restores it to order'?* And does not 
 Seneca teach that man cannot save himself?** Seneca 
 even says, *Do you wonder that men go to the Gods? 
 God comes to men — yea, even into men/ No one 
 laughs at such thoughts in the most popular of our 
 philosophers; why should they laugh at Christians for 
 believing them?" 
 
 "But what made his disciples believe that Christus 
 was a son of God?" he asked. 
 
 Sitting quietly there, she told him, that day, of the 
 Jews as the people who had kept alive for centuries the 
 knowledge of the one true God; of their age-long hopes 
 of a Deliverer; of their prophecies; and of the coming 
 of the Baptist. On his next visit she told him of Jesus, 
 and read to him parts of one of the old sketches of His 
 ministry which were current, in the form of notes and 
 fragments, among Christians who had heard the preach- 
 ing of Peter or other Apostles. Lastly, she told him 
 some of His miracles, and the story of His death and 
 resurrection. "He spake," she said, "as never man 
 spake. He did what man never did. Above all. He 
 rose from the dead the third day. Even the centurion 
 
 * Plat. PoUticuSi § i6; comp. Phcedo^ § 7 8. 
 ** Note 17. — The unconscious prophecies of heathendom. 
 
"a foreign superstition." 115 
 
 who watched the crucifixion returned to Jerusalem and 
 said, 'Truly this was a Son of God!'" 
 
 Britannicus felt almost stunned by the rush of new 
 emotions. His mind, like that of most boys of his age 
 at Rome, was almost a blank as regards any belief in 
 the old mythology. In Stoicism he had found some 
 half-truths which attracted his Roman nature; but its 
 doctrines were stern, and proud, and harshly repressive 
 of feelings which he felt to be natural and not ignoble. 
 Here, at last, in Christianity, he heard truths which, 
 while they elevated the character of man even to heaven 
 — while they kindled his aspirations and fortified his 
 endurance — were suited also to soothe, to calm, to con- 
 sole. He had heard them to the best advantage. They 
 had been told him, not by lips of untaught slaves and 
 humble workmen, but by the noblest of Roman matrons. 
 She spoke in Latin worthy of the best days of Cicero, 
 and adorned all she said not only by the sweetness of 
 her voice and the grace of her language, but also by 
 her broad sympathies and her cultivated intelligence. 
 Most of all, her words came weighty with the consistency 
 of a Hfe which, in comparison with that of the women 
 around her, shone like a star in the darkness. It was 
 this beauty of holiness which won him first and most. 
 He saw it in Pudens, whom he suspected of stronger 
 Christian leanings than he had acknowledged. He saw 
 it conspicuously in Claudia, 
 
 "A flower of meekness on a stem of grace," 
 
 before whose beautiful personality the tinsel compliments 
 of her many admirers seemed to sink into shamed 
 silence. The precocious maidens of the great consular 
 
 8* 
 
Il6 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 families hated Claudia because, in her white and simple 
 dress, and her long natural fair hair, unadorned by a 
 single flower or gem, she outshone their elaborate 
 beauty. Yet they saw, and were astonished to see, that 
 no youth — not even an Otho or a Petronius or any of 
 the most hardened libertines — dared to speak a light 
 word to one who looked as chaste as "the consecrated 
 snow on Dianas lap." 
 
 Britannicus did not venture to breathe a word to 
 Titus of a secret which was not his own; but there was 
 one person from whom he could have no secret, and 
 that was the young Empress, his sister Octavia. When 
 he could be secure that no spy was at hand, that no 
 ear was listening at the door, that no eye was secretly 
 watching him, he would talk to her with wonder and 
 admiration of all that he had heard. She was no less 
 impressed than he, and without venturing to embrace 
 the new faith, both sister and brother found a vague 
 source of hope and strength in what they had learnt 
 from Pomponia. To them it was like a faint rose of 
 dawn, seen from a dark valley, shining far off upon the 
 summit of icy hills. And as they learnt more of what 
 the Gospel meant, and learnt even to pour forth dim 
 prayer into the unknown, they were able to discover, by 
 certain signs, that not a few of the slaves in the house- 
 hold of Caesar — Patrobas, Eubulus, Philologus, Tryphaena, 
 and others — were secret Christians. The manner in 
 which they discovered that these slaves were Christians 
 was very simple. Pomponia, implicitly trusting the young 
 Caesar, had ventured to teach him the Greek Christian 
 watchword, ""lypvq, "fish."* The brother and sister 
 * Note 1 8. 
 
"a foreign superstition." ri7 
 
 found that if, in the presence of several slaves, they 
 brought in this word in any unusual manner, a slave 
 who was a Christian would at once, if only for a second, 
 glance quickly up at them. When they had thus as- 
 sured themselves of the religion of a few of their at- 
 tendants, whom they invariably found to be the most 
 upright and trustworthy, they would repeat the word 
 again, in a lower voice and a more marked manner, 
 when they passed them; and if the slave in reply mur- 
 mured low the word tx^dtov or pisciculiis (i.e. little fish), 
 they no longer felt in doubt. The use which they made 
 of their knowledge was absolutely innocent. Often they 
 did not say a word more on the subject to their slaves 
 and freedmen. Only they knew that, among the base 
 instruments of a wicked tyranny by whom they were on 
 every side surrounded, there was at least a presumption 
 that these would be guilty of no treacherous or dis- 
 honourable deed. 
 
 And thus, while Agrippina was growing daily more 
 furious and discontented; while Seneca and Burrus were 
 plunged into deeper and deeper anxieties; while Paetus 
 Thrasea, and Musonius, and Cornutus found it more 
 and more necessary to entrench themselves in the armour 
 of a despairing fortitude; while Nero was sinking lower 
 and lower into the slough of vice — Octavia and Britan- 
 nicus began to draw nearer to the Unknown God, and 
 found that when the sea of calamity does not mingle 
 its bitter waters with the sea of guilt, calamity itself 
 might be full of divine alleviations. Agrippina and Nero 
 were provoked by their appearance and bearing. The 
 last thing which they would have suspected was that the 
 Christianity which, in common with all Rome, they re- 
 
1 1 8 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 garded as an execrable supersition, should have found 
 its way into patrician circles — should even have met 
 with favourable acceptance under the roof of the Caesars. 
 When they saw the disinherited Britannicus plapng ball 
 in the tennis-court, or beating his young fellow-pupils in 
 races in the gardens, or wrestling not unsuccessfully with 
 the sturdy and ruddy Titus, they were astonished to 
 think that a boy who had been robbed of all his rights 
 should be poor-spirited enough to throw himself into en- 
 joyments in which his merry and musical laugh often 
 rang out louder than that of any of his companions. 
 What hope or what consolation could sustain him? They 
 jealously fancied that some plot must be afoot; but 
 suspicion was disarmed by the boy's transparent frank- 
 ness and innocence of manner. And Octavia — they 
 treated her as a nullity; they permitted themselves to 
 indulge in every sneer and slight which they could 
 devise. More than once Nero, fresh from some revel 
 and lost to shame, had seized her by her long, dark 
 tresses, or struck her with his brutal hand. Yet no 
 passionate murmur had betrayed her resentment. What 
 could be the secret of a beatitude which no misfortunes 
 seemed wholly able to destroy? 
 
ONESIMUS. 1 19 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 ONESIMUS. 
 "Non tressis agaso.'' — Persius, v. 76. 
 
 But we must now turn for a time from the Palace 
 of the Emperor and the grand houses of the nobles 
 crowded with ancestral images, gleaming with precious 
 marbles, enriched with Greek statues of priceless beauty, 
 to the squalid taverns and lodging-houses of the poorest 
 of that vast and mongrel populace which surged through 
 the streets of Rome. 
 
 It was not an Italian populace, but was composed 
 of the dregs of all nations, which had been flowing for 
 several generations into the common sewer of Rome. It 
 congregated in all the humbler and narrower streets; in 
 the Velabrum it bawled mussels and salt fish for sale; 
 it thronged the cookshops of the Esquiline; it crowded 
 densely into the cheaper baths; it swarmed in the haunts 
 of vice which gave so bad a name to the Subura. Long 
 ago the Syrian Orontes had flowed into the Tiber, and 
 brought with it its flute-players, and dancers, and im- 
 moralities.* Long ago, when the Forum loungers dared 
 to howl at him, the great Scipio had stormed at them 
 as stepsons of Italy — as people who had no father and 
 no mother — and bidden them to be silent. 
 
 The city was almost as much a Greek as it was a 
 * Juv. Sat. m. 60-65. 
 
I20 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Roman city. But, besides this, it abounded in Orientals. 
 Here would be heard the shaken sistra of the Egyptian 
 Serapis, whose little temple in the Campus Martins was 
 crowded by credulous women. Here you would be met 
 by the drunken Galli of the Phrygian Cybele, whose 
 withered, beardless faces, cracked voices, orgiastic dances, 
 and gashings of themselves with knives, made their men- 
 dicancy more offensive than the importunities of the 
 beggars who" lounged all day about the Sublician and 
 Fabrician bridges, or half-stormed the carriages of the 
 nobles as they slowly drove up the steep hill of Aricia. 
 Of this promiscuous throng — to say nothing of Asiatics, 
 Gauls, Germans, Spaniards, and Scythians — some were 
 
 "From farthest south, 
 Syene, and where the shadow both way falls, 
 Meroe, Nilotic isle; and more to west 
 The realm of Bocchus to the Blackmoor sea; 
 From India and the Golden Chersonese, 
 And utmost Indian isle, Taprobane, 
 Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed.'* 
 
 One quarter of the City — that across the Tiber — 
 was largely given up to Jews. They had flocked to 
 Rome in extraordinary numbers after the visit of Pompey 
 to Jerusalem. Sober Roman burghers long remembered 
 with astonishment, and something of alarm, the wild 
 wail which they raised at the funeral of Julius Caesar, 
 who had always been their generous patron. They were 
 numerous enough, and organised enough, to make it a 
 formidable matter to offend them, though the majority 
 of them — conspicuous everywhere by the basket and 
 hay which they carried to keep their food clean from 
 Gentile profanation — pursued the humblest crafts, and 
 
ONESIMUS. I 2 r 
 
 sold sulphur-matches or mended broken pottery, while 
 the lowest of all told fortunes, or begged, or cheated, 
 with cringing mien. The persistence and ability of 
 many of their race had, however, gained them a footing 
 in the houses of the great. Aliturus, the actor, was at 
 this moment a favourite of Nero, and of Rome. The 
 authors of that age — Martial, Juvenal, Persius, Tacitus 
 — abound with wondering and stinging allusions to the 
 votaries of Mosaism. 
 
 They made many converts, and the splendid beauty 
 of Berenice and Drusilla, the daughters of Herod 
 Agrippa I., together with the wealth of their brother, 
 Agrippa 11., had given them a prominent position in 
 distinguished circles. To their father, the brilliant ad- 
 venturer Agrippa I., the favourite of Caligula, Claudius 
 had practically owed his elevation to the Empire, since 
 he it was who induced the senators to acquiesce in that 
 uncouth dominion. 
 
 The streets of Rome were full of persons who lived 
 in semi-pauperism: lazzaroni who had nothing to depend 
 upon but the sportula or dole supplied by noble and 
 wealthy families, or grants of corn made at nominal 
 prices by the Emperor. They lived anyhow, by their 
 wits and by their vices. In that sunny climate the wants 
 of life are few, and they found abundance of excitement 
 and amusement, while they could hardly be left to 
 starve amid the universal profusion which sometimes 
 squandered millions of sesterces over a single meal. 
 
 But few of the dregs of the people presented a more 
 miserable aspect than a Phrygian youth who was loiter- 
 ing aimlessly about the forum near the hour of noon. 
 The forum was nearly deserted, for most of the people 
 
122 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 were taking their siesta, and the youth sat down, look- 
 ing the picture of wretchedness. He was pale and thin, 
 as though he had gone through many hardships. His 
 tunic was soiled and ragged, and he appeared to be, as 
 he was, a homeless and friendless stranger, alone among 
 the depraved and selfish millions of the world's capital. 
 
 While he was thinking what he had best do to 
 allay the pangs of hunger, he saw a young student enter 
 the forum followed by a little slave. He paid no par- 
 ticular attention to them, but a few moments later his 
 curiosity was aroused, first by hearing the blows of an 
 axe, and then by seeing the student run hastily out of 
 the forum with the slave-child at his heels. Strolling 
 to the corner from which the sounds had come, he 
 found himself opposite to the lattice-work which pro- 
 jected over the shops of the silversmiths, and seeing an 
 axe lying on the ground, picked it up, and examined it. 
 Alarmed by a rush of feet, he looked up and saw the 
 "bucket-men"* (as the mob nicknamed the police) run- 
 ning up to him. While he was wondering what they 
 could want, he found himself rudely arrested, and 
 saluted with a volley of violent abuse.** 
 
 "What have I done?" he asked in Greek. 
 
 "What have you done, you thievish rascal? You ask 
 that, when we have caught you, axe in hand, hewing at 
 and stealing the lead of the roof?" 
 
 The youth, who knew Latin imperfectly, was too much 
 puzzled and confused to understand the objurgations 
 
 * Sparteolt, "bucket-men," was the slang term for the police, 
 perhaps from the spartum^ or rope-basket covered with pitch, in 
 which they carried water as firemen. 
 ** Note 19. — Arrest of Onesimus. 
 
ONESIMUS* 123 
 
 addressed to him; but a crowd of idlers rapidly collected, 
 and speaking to one of them, he was answered in Greek 
 that the people of the neighbourhood had long been 
 blamed for stealing the lead from the silversmiths. They 
 had not done it, and were indignant at being falsely 
 accused. And now, as he had been caught in the act, 
 he would be haled off to the court of the City Praetor, 
 and it would be likely to go hard with him. If he got 
 off with thirty lashes he might think himself lucky. More 
 probably he would be condemned to branding, or — 
 since an example was needed — to the cross. 
 
 The youth could only cry, and wring his hands, and 
 protest his innocence; but his protests were met by the 
 jeers of the crowd. 
 
 "Ah!" said one, "how will you like to have the three 
 letters branded with a hot iron right across your fore- 
 head? That won't make the girls like your face better." 
 
 "Whose slave are you?" asked another. "Won't you 
 catch it from your master! You'll have to work chained 
 in the slave-jail or at the mill, and may bid good-bye 
 to the sunlight for a year or two at least." 
 
 *' Slave?" said another. "I don't beHeve he's a slave. 
 He looks too ragged and starved. He's had no regular 
 rations for a long time, I'll be bound." 
 
 "A runaway, I expect," said a third. "Well, anyhow 
 he'll have to give an account of himself, unless he likes 
 to have a ride on the little horse,* or have his neck 
 wedged tight into a wooden fork." 
 
 "Furcifer! Gallows-bird!" cried others of the crowd. 
 "And we honest citizens are to be accused of stealing 
 because of his tricks ! " 
 
 * Equuleus was an instrument of torture. 
 
124 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 "It's a sad pity, too/' said a young woman; "for 
 look how handsome he is with those dark Asiatic 
 eyes ! " 
 
 As most of these remarks had been poured out in 
 voluble and slang Latin, the young Phrygian could only 
 make out enough to know that he was in evil case; 
 and, weakened as he was by exposure and insufficient 
 food, he could but feebly plead for mercy, and 'protest 
 that he had done no wrong. 
 
 But the police had not dragged him far when they 
 saw Pudens and Titus approaching them down the 
 Viminal Hill, on which the centurion lived. At the sight 
 of a centurion in the armour of the Praetorians, and a 
 boy who wore a golden bulla, and whom some of them 
 recognised as a son of the brave general Vespasian, the 
 crowd made way. As they passed by, Titus noticed 
 the youth's distress, and, compassionate as usual, begged 
 Pudens to ask what was the matter. The vigiles briefly 
 explained how they had seized their prisoner, who must 
 have been guilty of the lead -stealing complained of, for 
 the axe was in his hand, and no one else was near. 
 
 "What have you to say for yourself?" asked the 
 centurion. 
 
 "I am innocent," said the prisoner, in Greek; "the 
 axe is not mine. I only picked it up to look at it. It 
 must have been a young student who was using it, for 
 I saw him run out of the Forum with his slave." 
 
 Pudens and Titus exchanged glances, for they had 
 met the student and slave still hurrying rapidly along. 
 He was the real culprit, but he had heard the silver- 
 smiths call for the police, and had taken to his heels. 
 Pudens had seen him stop at the house of a knight a 
 
ONESIMUS. 125 
 
 Street or two distant, and run up the steps with a speed 
 which a Roman regarded as very undignified. 
 
 "Come with me," he said to the police, "and I think 
 I can take you to the real offender. This youth is in- 
 nocent, though things look against him." 
 
 Followed by the crowd, who grumbled a little at 
 losing the enjoyment of watching the trial, Pudens led 
 them to the knight's house. The little slave was amusing 
 himself with hopping to and fro under the vestibule. 
 
 "Keep back, Quirites," said the head vigil, "The 
 centurion and I will ask a question here." 
 
 "Do you know this axe, my small salapufium'^V^ 
 said Pudens. 
 
 "Yes," said the child with alacrity, for he was too 
 young to understand the situation. "It is ours. We 
 dropped it not long ago." 
 
 "The case is clear," said Pudens. "I will be wit- 
 ness;" and he offered his ears for the officer to touch.** 
 "Meanwhile you can set this youth free." 
 
 The officer touched his ear with the recognised 
 formula. "Remember, you will be my witness in this 
 case." 
 
 The student was arrested, but his father got him off 
 by a large secret bribe to the police and to the silver- 
 smiths. The crowd dispersed, and Pudens and Titus, 
 without waiting to watch the issue of the affair, turned 
 their steps towards the Vicus Apollinis, which led to 
 the Palace. 
 
 * Salaputiumy "hop-o'-my-thumb." 
 
 ** To offer the ears to be touched was a sign of willingness to 
 give witness. See Hor. Sat. ix. yy; and for the reason of the 
 custom, Plin. If, iV. xi. 103. 
 
126 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Soon afterwards they heard footsteps behind them, 
 and, turning round, saw the youth whom they had 
 rescued. 
 
 "What more do you want?" said Pudens, in answer 
 to his eager, appealing look. "I have got you out of 
 your trouble; is not that enough?" 
 
 "I am weak, and hungry, and a stranger," said the 
 youth, humbly. 
 
 "He wants money," whispered Titus, and drawing a 
 denarius from the breast of his toga, he put it into his 
 hand. 
 
 But, kneeling down, the stranger seized the hem of 
 the scarlet sagum which Pudens happened to be wear- 
 ing, and kissing it, exclaimed, "Oh, sir, take me into 
 your household! I will do anything 1" 
 
 "Who are you?" 
 
 "My name is Onesimus." 
 
 "A good name, and of good omen.* W/ia^ are 
 you? You look like a slave. Not a runaway slave, I 
 hope?" 
 
 "No, sir," said Onesimus, to whom a lie came as 
 easy as to most of his race. "I lived at Colossse. I 
 was kidnapped by a slave-dealer, but I escaped." 
 
 "And you want to go back to Colossae?" 
 
 "No, sir. I am left an orphan. I want to earn my 
 living here." 
 
 "Take him," said Titus. "You have plenty of room 
 for an extra slave, and I like his looks." 
 
 But Pudens hesitated. 
 
 "A Phrygian slave!" he said; "why even proverbs 
 
 * Vvfjoi/Ltog, "profitable." St. Paul plays on the meaning of 
 the name in Philemon, lo, ii. 
 
ONESIMUS. 127 
 
 warn me against him." He quoted two, sotto voce, to 
 Titus — "Worst of the Mysians," used of persons 
 despicably bad; and "More cowardly than a Phrygian 
 hare." 
 
 "Well," said Titus, "I will give you proverb for 
 proverb: * Phrygians are improved by scourging.'"* 
 
 "Yes," answered Pudens; "but I am not accustomed 
 to rule my slaves by the whip." 
 
 The boy had not heard them, for they spoke in low 
 tones, but he marked the hesitation of Pudens, and, 
 still crying bitterly, stooped as though to make marks 
 with his finger on the ground. His motion was quick, 
 but Pudens saw that he had drawn in the dust very 
 rapidly a rude outline of a fish, which he had almost 
 instantaneously obliterated with a movement of his palm. 
 
 Pudens understood the sign. The youth was, or 
 had been, a Christian, and knew that if Pudens hap- 
 pened to be a Christian too his favour would be se- 
 cured. 
 
 "Follow me," he said. "My household is small and 
 humble, but I have just lost my lacquey, who died of 
 fever. I will speak to my head freedman. Perhaps, 
 when we have heard something more about you, he will 
 let you fill the vacant place." 
 
 * Cic. Pro Flacco, 27 : "Phrygium plagis solere fieri meliorem," 
 
128 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 THE ADVENTURES OF A RUNAWAY. 
 
 "Exaorog Ss jisiQaCsrai vjto rrjg idiag EJiid^vfJiiag s^sXxofiEvog 
 Tcai SsXsaCo/Lisvog. — S. Jac. £^J>. I. 14. 
 
 ^Qvya oixstfjv s'xco tiovtjqov. — Alciphr. Ep. ill. 38. 
 
 The real history of Onesimus was this. He had been 
 born at Thyatira; his parents had once been in a re- 
 spectable position, but his father had been unfortunate, 
 and when the boy became an orphan he had sunk so 
 low in the world that, to save him from the pangs of 
 hunger, the creditors sold him as a slave to the purple- 
 factory of which Lydia — who afterwards became St. 
 Paul's convert at Philippi — was part-owner. There he 
 had learnt a great deal about the purple-trade and the 
 best way of folding and keeping purple robes. But he 
 was wild and careless and fond of pleasure, and the 
 head workman, not finding him profitable or easy to 
 manage, had again offered him for sale. He was a 
 quick, good-looking boy, and Philemon, a gentleman of 
 Colossse, touched with his forlorn look as he stood on 
 the slave-platform {catastd) with his feet chalked and a 
 description {titulus) round his neck, had felt compassion 
 for him and had bought him. Not long after this, Phile- 
 mon, with his wife Apphia, his son Archippus, and 
 several slaves of their household, had been converted 
 by St. Paul. The Apostle had not, indeed, visited the 
 
THE ADVENTURES OF A RUNAWAY. I2g 
 
 Strange Phrygian city, where the Lycus flows under its 
 natural bridges of gleaming travertine; but Philemon 
 and his party had gone down to witness the great Asian 
 games at Ephesus, and to view the treasures of the 
 famous Temple of Artemis, which was one of the won- 
 ders of the world. There they had heard Paul preach 
 in the hall of the rhetorician Tyrannus, and, being of 
 sweet and serious disposition, had been profoundly im- 
 pressed by the message of the Gospel. The grace of 
 God had taken possession of their hearts. They exulted 
 in the purity, the hope, and the gladness of Christianity, 
 and under the fostering care of Epaphras, to whose 
 charge St. Paul had entrusted the Churches of the Ly- 
 cian valley, they had finally been led to the full ac- 
 ceptance of the Gospel, and had been baptised in the 
 waters of their native river. 
 
 Onesimus had not been baptised with them, though 
 he had learnt something of Christianity as a young 
 catechumen. He had lived in daily contact with these 
 good people from early boyhood, and they had treated 
 him with a kindness and consideration which was in 
 marked contrast to the brutal manner of most Pagans 
 towards the human beings whom they regarded as chat- 
 tels of which they were the indefeasible owners. But 
 Colossae was a sleepy and decaying city. It offered 
 none of the pleasures and excitements which Onesimus 
 had tasted at Thyatira and Ephesus. He longed to 
 escape from the narrow valley of the dull town; to hear 
 in the streets of Ephesus the shrill wail of the Priests 
 of Cybele; to gaze at the superb Artemisian proces- 
 sions; to sit palpitating with enthusiasm as he watched 
 the chariots dash past him in wild career in the circus, 
 
 Darkness and Dawn, /, 9 
 
130 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 or the gorgeous spectacles of the amphitheatre. Above 
 all he sighed and yearned for Rome, for he had often 
 heard of its glory, its magnificence, its unchecked in- 
 dulgences. He was only a slave — only one of those 
 Phrygian slaves, who were the least esteemed; but he 
 had been free born. The passions of the Asiatic Greek 
 were strong in him. Other slaves had made their way 
 — why should not he? He was strong, clever, good- 
 looking — was he not certain to secure some fortune in 
 the world? 
 
 The "tempting opportunity" met the *^ susceptible 
 disposition." Philemon was engaged in the wool-dyeing 
 which formed the most prosperous industry of Colossal, 
 and on a certain day after the great fair of Laodicea 
 considerable sums were paid to him. He had never 
 had any reason to distrust Onesimus, and the youth 
 knew where the money was kept. One day, when 
 Philemon had been summoned by business to Hiera- 
 polis and was likely to be absent for a week, Onesimus 
 abstracted some of the gold coins — enough, he thought, 
 to take him safely to Rome if necessary — and absconded 
 to Ephesus. There, for a few days, he enjoyed himself 
 in visiting the marvels and amusements of the city. But 
 a fair youth, in servile dress, alone, in a crowded town, 
 could hardly escape falling among companions of the 
 lowest type. Fain would they have plunged him into 
 vice and dissipation; but though the runaway was not 
 always truthful, and had fallen into dishonesty, he was 
 far from being depraved. One who had breathed in a 
 pure Christian household the dewy dawn of the Christian 
 faith, and had watched its purple glow transfiguring the 
 commonest elements of life, could hardly sink to the 
 
THE ADVENTURES OF A RUNAWAY. 131 
 
 depths of Satan in the great weltering sea of heathen 
 wickedness. Fallen as he was, he never wholly lost his 
 self-respect, and when he had satisfied his first wild 
 impulse he longed to return and plead for forgiveness. 
 After all, how infinitely more happy had he been in 
 sleepy Colossse than in tumultuous Ephesus! But for a 
 slave to abscond from a kind master, and in abscond- 
 ing to steal his master's gold, was not only a heinous 
 but a capital offence. He did not know but what Phile- 
 mon, good and kind as he was, might still deem it right 
 to uphold the laws of the State, and to hand him over 
 to the magistrates. And then he shuddered to think 
 of what awaited him: what blows, what brandings, what 
 wearing of the furca, or thrusting into the stocks, or 
 being made to work in the mines or the galleys, or 
 among the chained wretches of some public slave-prison. 
 The soft nature of the Eastern shrank from such hor- 
 rors, and almost more from the intolerable sense of 
 shame which would overwhelm him when he stood for 
 the first time a convict- fugitive in his master's house. 
 
 His ill-got money was soon ill-gone. A Httle of it 
 was lost in gambling; some he had to squander on 
 worthless companions, who tried to insinuate themselves 
 into his favour, or to terrify him with their suspicions; 
 the rest was stolen one night in the low lodging which 
 he had been obliged to seek. Penniless, and sick at 
 heart, he hurried down to the great quay of the city, 
 and offered to work his passage to Italy in a galley. 
 Landed in Italy he had begged his way to Rome, and 
 in Rome he had sunk to the wretchedness in which we 
 first saw him. No career seemed open to him but a 
 career of vice; no possibility offered of earning his daily 
 
 9* 
 
132 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 bread but by criminal courses. He sank back horri- 
 fied from the rascality which he had witnessed on every 
 side, among those who, being past feehng, and having 
 their consciences seared as with a hot iron, wrought all 
 uncleanness with greediness. He grew more and more 
 emaciated, more and more wretched, sleeping under 
 arches or porticoes, and depending for his scant supply 
 of polenta on the chance of a farthing flung to him now 
 and then in scornful alms. The accident which threw 
 him in the path of Pudens came only just in time to 
 save him from ruin and despair. 
 
 Nereus, the freedman of Pudens, was not unwilling 
 to get for nothing an active youth who might turn out 
 to be a useful slave; and in that household he once 
 more found kindness and happiness. It is true that 
 Pudens was not yet an open Christian, but several of 
 his slaves were, as Onesimus soon discovered; and he 
 had learnt by experience that, among Christian men 
 and women, he was safe from a thousand miseries and 
 a thousand temptations. The busy thronging, rushing 
 life of Rome delighted his quick intelligence, and all 
 the more from the contrast it presented to the silent 
 streets of Colossae, and the narrow valley of its strange 
 white stream. 
 
 He had several adventures, and such principles of 
 righteousness as were left to him were severely tried. 
 Some of the young slaves whom he encountered took 
 him to the theatres, and in the pantomimic displays 
 and Atellan fables a cynical shamelessness reigned 
 supreme. To witness the acting of a Paris or an Aliturus 
 was to witness consummate human skill and beauty 
 pandering to the lowest instincts of humanity. Yet One- 
 
THE ADVENTURES OF A RUNAWAY. 1 33 
 
 simus could not keep away from these scenes, though 
 Stachys and Nereus and Junia and others of the 
 Christian slaves of Pudens did their best, when the 
 chance offered, to save him from the vortex of such 
 perilous dissipation. 
 
 Still more brutalising, still more destructive of every 
 element of pureness and kindness were the gladiatorial 
 games. Of these he had no experience. In the pro- 
 vinces they were comparatively rare, and Philemon had 
 forbidden his slaves ever to be present in the amphi- 
 theatre when they were exhibited. Onesimus, who had 
 nothing cruel in his nature, had so far preserved a sort 
 of respect for the wishes of Philemon, that he de- 
 termined not to witness a gladiatorial show. When the 
 great day came, all the slaves were talking of the prowess 
 of Gallina and Syrus, two famous gladiators, and of the 
 magnificent number of lions and tigers which were to be 
 exhibited. 
 
 He could not help being interested in a topic which 
 seemed so absorbing, but he still meant to keep away. 
 Some of his comrades, however, thought that scruples 
 which might suit a Cicero and a Seneca were quite out 
 of place in a Phrygian footboy, and seized him in the 
 street and said, "We are going to take you to the am- 
 phitheatre by force." 
 
 "It is of no use to take me," said Onesimus, re- 
 peating a sentiment which he had heard from Philemon. 
 "I am not going to see fine fellows — fine Dacians and 
 Britons — hack one another to pieces to please a multitude 
 of whom the majority deserve life much less than the 
 gladiators themselves." 
 
 ''Di magni, salaputium disertum !" exclaimed Lygdus, 
 
134 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 one of the gay and festal company who belonged to 
 Caesar's household. "I heard Epictetus say something 
 of the kind, and we all know that the poor little fellow 
 is only a small echo of Musonius. But you, Onesimus, 
 cannot pretend to be a philosopher, and instead of talk- 
 ing seditious nonsense against the majesty of the Roman 
 people, go you shall.'' 
 
 "Well then, you will have to drag me there by 
 force," said Onesimus. 
 
 "Never mind; go you shall," said Lygdus; and, seiz- 
 ing him by the neck and arms, they hurried him along 
 with them into the top seats set apart for slaves and the 
 proletariat. 
 
 When once there, Onesimus had not the wisdom to 
 behave as young Alypius did three centuries later, and 
 to close his eyes. On the contrary, he caught fire, al- 
 most from the first moment, with the wild excitement, 
 and returned home paganised in every fibre of his being 
 by the horrid voluptuous maddening scene which he 
 had witnessed — in which he had taken part. All that 
 was sweet and pure and tender in the lessons which he 
 had learnt in the house of Philemon seemed to have 
 been swept away for the time in that crimson tide of 
 blood, in that demoniac spectacle of strong men sacri- 
 ficed as on a Moloch-altar for the amusement of the 
 idle populace. The more splendid the agility of the 
 netsman, the more brawny the muscles of the Samnite, 
 the more dazzling the sweep of the mirmillo's steel, the 
 more vivid was the excitement of watching the glazing 
 eye and ebbing life. It was thrilling to see the supreme 
 moments and most unfathomed mysteries of existence 
 turned into the spectacle of a holiday; and even to help 
 
THE ADVENTURES OF A RUNAWAY. 1 35 
 
 in deciding by the movement of a thumb whether some 
 blue-eyed German from the Teutobergian forests should 
 live or die. What wonder was it that waves of emotion 
 swept over the assembled multitude as the gusts of a 
 summer tempest sweep over the waving corn? What 
 wonder that the hearts of thousands, as though they 
 were the heart of one man, throbbed together in fierce 
 sympathy, and became like a wild ^olian harp, of which 
 the strings were beaten into murmurs or shrieks or sobs 
 by some intermittent hurricane? In the concentrated 
 passion of those hours, when eveiy pulse leapt and tingled 
 with excitement, the youth seemed to live through years 
 in moments; his whole being palpitated with a delicious 
 horror, which annihilated all the ordinary interests of life. 
 Here, for the mere dissipation of time, the most consum- 
 mate tragedies were enacted as part of a scenic display. 
 The spasms of anguish and the heroism of endurance 
 were but the passing incidents of a gymnastic show. 
 
 When Onesimus returned to his cell that night he 
 was a changed being. For a long time he could not 
 sleep, and when he did sleep the tumult of the arena 
 still rolled through his troubled dreams. His fellow- 
 slaves, long familiar with such games, were amused to 
 hear him start up from his pallet with shouts oi Habet! 
 Occide! Verbera! and all the wild cries of the am- 
 phitheatre, and from these bloodshot dreams he would 
 awake panting as from a nightmare, while the chant of 
 the gladiators, Ave, Ccesar! Morituri te salutamus, still 
 woke its solemn echoes in his ears. 
 
 All life looked stale and dull to the Phrygian slave 
 when the glow of an Italian morning entering his cell 
 aroused him to the duties of the day. Slaves, even in 
 
136 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 a humble home like that of Pudens, were so numerous 
 as to make those duties inconceivably light. For the 
 greater part of the day his time was his own, for all he 
 had to do was to wait on Pudens when he went out, 
 carrying anything which his master might require. But 
 henceforth his thoughts were daydreams, and, when not 
 engaged in work, he found nothing to do but to join in 
 the gossip of his fellow-slaves. Their talk turned usu- 
 ally on three subjects — their masters, and all the low 
 society slanders of the city; the delights of the taverns; 
 the merits of rival gladiators and charioteers, whose 
 names were on every lip. Such conversation led of 
 course to incessant betting, and many a slave lost the 
 whole amount of his savings again and again by back- 
 ing the merits of a Pacideianus or a Spicillus; or by 
 running up too long scores at the cookshop (^popina) to 
 which his fellow-slaves resorted; or by trying to win the 
 affections of some favourite female flute-player from 
 Syria or Spain. 
 
 Gambling, too, was the incessant diversion of these 
 idle hordes. The familia of Pudens only consisted of 
 the modest number of thirty, but the slave population 
 of Rome was of colossal magnitude, and there was a 
 terrible freemasonry among the members of this wretched 
 and corrupted class. The companions of Onesimus 
 were not chiefly to be found in the household to which 
 he belonged, but among the lewd idlers whom he picked 
 up as acquaintances in every street. With these he 
 played at dice, and sauntered about, and jested, and 
 drank, and squabbled, and betted, until he was on the 
 high road towards being as low a specimen of the slave- 
 world as any of them all — a beautiful human soul caught 
 
THE ADVENTURES OF A RUNAWAY. I 37 
 
 in the snare of the devil, lured by the glittering bait of 
 vice, to be dragged forth soon to die lacerated and gasp- 
 ing upon the shore. 
 
 Hitherto a very little had sufficed him, but now he 
 began to need money — money for gambling, money for 
 the taverns, money to spend in the same sins and follies 
 in which the slaves about him spent their days. He 
 could indeed have gained it, had he sunk so low, in a 
 thousand nefarious ways; and, gifted as he was with a 
 quick and supple intelligence, as well as with no small 
 share of the beauty of his race, he might have run away 
 once more, or have secured his purchase into many a 
 Pagan household, where he might have become the pam- 
 pered favourite of some luxurious master. Such, in such 
 a city as Rome, would have been the certain fate of any 
 youth like him, had it not been for the truths which he 
 had heard from Epaphras in the house of Philemon. 
 When he was most willing to forget those holy lessons 
 they still hung about him and gave him checks. The 
 grace of God still lived as a faint spark, not wholly 
 quenched, under the whitening embers of his life. He 
 could not forget that what were now his pleasures had 
 once been pains, and sometimes amid the stifling at- 
 mosphere of a dissipation which rapidly tended to be- 
 come pleasureless, his soul seemed to "gasp among the 
 shallows," sore athirst for purer air. 
 
 But he resisted these retarding influences, and by 
 fiercer draughts of excitement strove to dispel the plead- 
 ings of the still small voice. 
 
 It was not long before he felt hard pressed, for he 
 had gambled away the little he had earned. 
 
138 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 He had stolen before — he would steal again. 
 
 The slaves of Pudens were mostly of a simpler and 
 more faithful class than those of the more luxurious 
 houses. There was no need for Pudens to take great 
 precautions about the safety of his money. Most of it 
 was safe in the hands of his banker (mensarius) , but 
 sums which to a slave would seem considerable were 
 locked up in a chest under the charge of Nereus. Nereus, 
 as we have already mentioned, was a Christian, and 
 Onesimus, until he had begun to degenerate, had felt 
 warmly drawn towards his daughter Junia. He thought, 
 too, that the simple maiden was not wholly indifferent 
 to him. Nereus had watched his career, and as it be- 
 came too probable that the Phrygian would sink into 
 worthlessness, he had taken care that Onesimus and his 
 daughter should scarcely ever meet. 
 
 But when, as in every Roman house, a multitude 
 live in a confined space, the whole ways of the house 
 become known to all, and Onesimus knew the place 
 where Nereus kept the ready money of his master. He 
 watched his opportunity when all but a few members of 
 the household were absent to witness a festival, from 
 which he had purposely absented himself on a plea of 
 sickness. The only persons left at home were Nereus 
 and others who, being Christians, avoided giving the 
 smallest sanction to Pagan ceremonies. The house was 
 still as the grave in the noontide, when the youth glided 
 into the cell of the sleeping Nereus, and deftly ab- 
 stracted from his tunic the key which he wanted. Armed 
 with this, he slipped into the tablinum, or private room, 
 of Pudens — whom he knew to be on duty at the Palace 
 — and had already opened the casket in which he kept 
 
THE ADVENTURES OF A RUNAWAY. 1 39 
 
 his money, when he was startled by a low voice and a 
 gliding footstep. 
 
 He had not been unobserved. Nereus was too faithful, 
 and too much aware of the dishonesty of the unhappy 
 class to which he belonged, to leave his master's interests 
 unprotected. He had directed his daughter always to 
 be watchful at the hour when he knew that a theft was 
 most feasible. Junia, from the apartments of the female 
 slaves , on the other side of the house, had heard some 
 one moving stealthily along the passage. Hidden 
 behind a statue, she had observed a slave stealing into 
 her father's cell, had followed lightly, and with a pang 
 of shame had seen the youth of whom she had thought 
 as a lover make his way noiselessly to the room of his 
 master. 
 
 She followed him to the en trace; she saw him open 
 the casket; and she grew almost sick with terror when 
 she thought of the frightful punishment — possibly even 
 crucifixion itself — which might follow the crime he was 
 on the eve of committing. She would fain have stopped 
 him, but did not dare to enter the chamber; and, 
 meanwhile, for some reason the youth was lingering. 
 
 He was Hngering because there rang in his ear a 
 voiceless memory of words which Epaphras had quoted 
 as a message of Paul of Tarsus. The still voice said to 
 him: "Let him that stole steal no more; but rather let 
 him labour, working with his hands." 
 
 He was trying to suppress the mutiny of "the 
 blushing shamefast spirit" within him, as he thought of 
 the games and the dice-box and the Subura, when he 
 was thrilled through and through by a terrified and 
 scarcely audible whisper of his name — 
 
140 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 "Onesimus!" 
 
 He turned round, and with nervous haste relocking 
 the casket, hurried into the passage. There, with head 
 bowed over her hands, he saw the figure of a young 
 girl. For one instant she raised her face as he came 
 out, and he exclaimed — 
 
 "Junia!^' 
 
 She raised her hand with a warning gesture, put her 
 finger to her lips, and vanished. She fled towards the 
 garden behind the farthest precincts of the house, and 
 he overtook her in a walk sheltered from view by a 
 trellis covered with the leaves of a spreading vine. 
 
 "Junia,'' he said, flinging himself on his knees, "will 
 you betray me?" 
 
 The girl stood pale and trembling. "Onesimus," 
 she said, "I conceal nothing from my father." 
 
 "From your father? Oh, Junia, he would drag me 
 before Pudens. Would you see me beaten, perhaps to 
 death, with the leaded thongs? Would you hear me 
 shriek under the horrible scutica? Could you bear to 
 see the crows tearing my flesh as I hung on the cross?" 
 
 "Pudens is just and kind," she said, faintly; "he 
 never inflicts upon his slaves such horrors as these." 
 
 "No," answered Onesimus, bitterly; "it would suffice 
 to send me, chained, to work in some sunless pit to the 
 music of clanking fetters. It would suffice to brand 
 three letters on my forehead, and turn me into the 
 world to starve as a spectacle of shame." 
 
 "Onesimus," she said, "would God I could " 
 
 She stopped, confused and terrified, for she did not 
 know that Onesimus had ever heard the truths of 
 Christianity. 
 
THE ADVENTURES OF A RUNAWAY. I4I 
 
 "Junia/' he exclaimed, "you are a Christian; so am 
 I" — and he marked on the gravel the monogram of 
 Christ. 
 
 "Alas!" she answered, "a Christian you cannot be. 
 It seems that you have heard of Jesus; but Christians 
 cannot steal, and cannot live as you have been living. 
 Christians are innocent." 
 
 "Then you will betray me? Ah! but if you do, you 
 are in my power. Christianity is a foreign superstition. 
 The City Praetor " 
 
 "Base," she answered, "and baser than I thought. 
 Know you not" — and a light came into her eye, and a 
 glow over all her face — "that a Christian can suffer? 
 that even a Christian slave-girl does not fear at all 
 to die?" 
 
 He thought that she had never looked so beautiful 
 — so like one of the angels of whom he had heard in 
 the gatherings at Colossse. But the sight of the gladiators 
 hacking each other to pieces had inured him to cruelty 
 and blood — had filled him with fierce egotism, and in- 
 difference to human life. A horrible thought suddenly 
 leapt upon him as with a tiger's leap. Why not get rid 
 of the sole witness of his crime? 
 
 "Then you will betray me to chains, to branding, to 
 the scourge, to the cross?" he asked, fiercely. 
 
 Weeping, hiding her face in her hands, she said: 
 "What duty tells me, I must do. I must tell my father." 
 
 In an instant the devil had Onesimus in his grip. 
 He thrust his right hand into his bosom, where he had 
 purposely concealed a dagger. 
 
 "Then die!" he exclaimed, seizing her with his left 
 hand, while the steel gleamed in the sun. 
 
142 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 The girl moved not; but his own shriek startled the 
 air, as he felt a hand come down on his shoulder with 
 the grasp of a vice. The dagger was wrenched out of 
 his hand; he was whirled round, the blow of a power- 
 ful fist stretched him on the path, and a foot which 
 seemed as if it would crush out his life was placed upon 
 his breast. 
 
 "Oh, father, spare him!" said Junia. 
 
 Nereus still kept his foot on the prostrate youth, still 
 held the dagger in his hand; his eyes still flashed, his 
 whole frame was dilated with righteous indignation. He 
 had misunderstood the meaning of the scene. 
 
 "Explain!" he said. "Junia! You here alone with 
 Onesimus in the vine- walk, at the lonely noon! How 
 did he inveigle you here? Did he dare to insult 
 you?" 
 
 The girl had risen; and while Onesimus lay on the 
 ground, stunned with the violence of his fall, she told 
 her father all that had happened. 
 
 Nereus spurned the youth with his foot. 
 
 "And I once thought," he said, "that he was a secret 
 Christian! I once thought that some day he might be 
 worthy to be the husband of my Junia! A thief! a 
 would-be murderer ! This comes of harbouring a strange 
 Phrygian in an honest household." 
 
 "Father, forgive him!" said Junia. "Are not we 
 forgiven?" 
 
 "The wrong to me — the threat against the Hfe of 
 the child I love — yes, that might be forgiven," said 
 Nereus; "forgiven if repented of But how can I do 
 otherwise than tell Pudens? How can I keep this youth 
 a member of the household?" 
 
THE ADVENTURES OF A RUNAWAY. 1 43 
 
 And again, moved by strong passion, he spurned 
 him with his foot. 
 
 "Is there one house in Rome, father,'' she said, "in 
 which there are not thieves? in which there are not 
 men — aye, and women too — who steal, and would 
 murder if they could? Is he worse than thousands 
 whom yet we do not see chained in the prisons or 
 rotting on the crosses? And have we not all sinned? 
 and did not Jesus say, * Forgive one another your 
 trespasses?' " 
 
 A half-suppressed groan from Onesimus stopped the 
 conversation. 
 
 "I know not what to do," said Nereus. "Go back, 
 my child, to your cell and to your distaff. I will see 
 you soon. And you," he said, " thrice- wretched boy, 
 come with me." 
 
 He dragged Onesimus from the ground, and was in 
 such a transport of wrath that he could not refrain from 
 shaking him by the shoulders with the roughest and 
 most contemptuous violence, before he thrust him into 
 the house, and into the cell which had been assigned 
 to him. Then, calling two of his fellow-slaves, Stachys 
 and Amplias, Christians like himself, whom he could 
 implicitly trust, he bade them bind Onesimus hand and 
 foot, and leave him, not un watched, till he should have 
 time to consider his case. 
 
144 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 MOTHER AND SON. 
 
 "Asper et immitis, breviter vis omnia dicam? 
 Dispeream si te mater amare potest." 
 
 SuETON. Tih, 59. 
 
 Nero was now firmly seated on the throne of the 
 Empire. Its cares sat lightly on him. The government 
 went on admirably without him. He had nothing to do 
 but to glut himself with enjoyments, and to make what 
 he could of the kingdoms of the world and the glory of 
 them. 
 
 At first, Hke one dazed with a sudden outburst of 
 light, he had been unable to understand the immensity 
 of his own power. For the first month of his reign he 
 could hardly realise that he was more than a boy. He 
 had always been passionately fond of chariot races, 
 which as a boy he had not been permitted to frequent. 
 One day, while, at his lessons, he had been deploring to 
 his companions the fate of a charioteer of the green 
 faction who had been thrown out of his chariot and 
 dragged to death by his own horses. His master, over- 
 hearing the conversation, reproved him, and the boy, 
 with a clever and ready lie, said, "I was only talking 
 about Hector being dragged round the walls of Troy by 
 Achilles.'' And now he might watch the races all day 
 long and plunge into the hottest rivalry of the factions. 
 
MOTHER AND SON. 1 45 
 
 and neither in this pursuit nor in any other was there a 
 single human being to say him nay. 
 
 The only thing which troubled him was the jealous 
 interference of his mother. Agrippina still clutched with 
 desperate tenacity at the vanishing fruits of the ambition 
 for the sake of which all her crimes had been com- 
 mitted. She had sold her soul, and was beating back 
 the conviction that she had sold it for nought. How could 
 that slight boy of seventeen, whom as a child she had so 
 often chastised with her own hand, dream of resisting her? 
 Was not her nature, compared with his, as adamant to 
 clay? She had been a Princess of the blood from in- 
 fancy, surrounded by near relatives who had been adored 
 in life and deified after death; she had enjoyed power 
 during two reigns, and now at last she had fancied that 
 she would control the Empire for the remainder of her 
 life. Was not her skill in intrigue as great as that of 
 Li via? Was not her indomitable purpose even more 
 intense? She forgot that Livia had been, what Caligula 
 called her, Ulysses stolatus, "a Ulysses in petticoats," a 
 woman with absolute control over her own emotions. 
 Agrippina, on the other hand, was full of a wild passion 
 which ruined her caution and precipitated her end. 
 
 And she forgot, more fatally, the total collapse of 
 Livia's soaring ambitions. Livia had procured the death 
 of prince after prince who stood between her son 
 Tiberius and the throne. Tiberius did indeed become 
 Emperor, but "had Zimri peace who slew his master''? 
 Pliny calls Tiberius "confessedly the gloomiest of men." 
 He himself wrote to the senate that he felt himself 
 daily destroyed by all the gods and goddesses. And, 
 after all, his only son died, and he was succeeded by 
 
 Darkness and Daijun, /, IO 
 
146 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Caligula, the bad and brutal son of the hated and 
 murdered Germanicus and the hated and murdered 
 Agrippina the elder. He might have said with the 
 blood-stained usurper of our great tragedy: — 
 
 "Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown, 
 And put a barren sceptre in my gripe; 
 Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand, 
 No son of mine succeeding." 
 
 Was it likely to be otherwise with her son Nero? 
 
 Nero — slight boy as she thought him — had hardly 
 been seated on the throne when he began to slip out 
 of her control. Pallas, her secret lover, her chief sup- 
 porter, was speedily ejected and disgraced. Seneca 
 and Burrus were both opposed to her influence, and 
 neither of them dreaded her vengeance. Suitors for 
 favours were more anxious to secure the intercession of 
 Acte than hers. Nero, surrounded by dissolute young 
 aristocrats, and also by adventurers, buffoons and para- 
 sites, was daily showing himself more indifferent to her 
 threats, her commands, even her reasonable wishes. He 
 Hked to parade his newborn freedom. She felt sure 
 that among the circle of his familiar companions, she 
 and her pretensions were turned into ridicule. Her 
 proud cheek flushed even in solitude to think that she, 
 who, for Nero's sake, had dared all, should have been 
 superseded in her influence by such curled and jewelled 
 weaklings as Otho, and ousted from her son's affections 
 by a meek freedwoman like Acte. How terribly had 
 she miscalculated! In the reign of Claudius she had 
 been the mightiest person in the Court and in the 
 State. Had she become the murderess of her husband 
 
MOTHER AND SON. 1 47 
 
 only to transfer from herself into the hands of men 
 whom she despised too much to hate, the power which 
 was once her own? Had she flung away the substance 
 and only grasped a flickering shadow? 
 
 A thousand plans of revenge crossed her mind, only 
 to be rejected. The die was cast. The deeds done 
 were irrevocable. It only remained for her to dree the 
 judgment for her crimes, and to take such few steps as 
 still were possible to her along the precipice's edge. 
 She had plucked a tempting fruit, and she found that 
 its taste was poison; she had nursed a serpent in her 
 bosom, and its sting was death. 
 
 But she would not resign her power without at least 
 one mad struggle to retain it. She still had access to 
 the Emperor whenever she desired, and many a wild 
 scene had occurred between the mother and the son. 
 In such interviews she let her tongue run riot. She 
 refrained from nothing. She no longer attempted to 
 conceal from him that Claudius had died by her hand. 
 She wrapped the youth round in the whirlwind of her 
 sulphurous passion; she raised her voice so loud in a 
 storm of reproaches and recriminations that sometimes 
 even the freedmen and soldiers outside the imperial 
 apartments heard the fierce voices of altercation, and 
 were in doubt whether they should not rush in and 
 interfere. And often the feeble nature of Nero cowered 
 before her menaces as she poured on him a flood of 
 undisguised contempt. Sometimes she wrapped him in 
 a storm of satire and sarcasm. She upbraided him 
 with his unmanliness; she contrasted him unfavourably 
 with Britannicus; she told him that he was more fit to 
 be an actor of melodrama, or a tenth-rate charioteer, 
 
148 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 or a fiftieth-rate singer, than to be the Emperor of 
 Rome. 
 
 "To think," she said, raising her voice almost to a 
 scream, as he sat before her in sullen silence — "to think 
 that the blood of the Domitii and of the Neros and of 
 the Caesars is in your veins! You an emperor! Yes; 
 an emperor of pantomime! You have nothing of the 
 Roman, much less of the ruler, nay, not even of the 
 man, in you. Who made you Emperor? Who but I?" 
 
 "I wish you had left me alone, then," he answered, 
 desperately. "It is no such pleasure to be Emperor with 
 you to spy on me and domineer over me." 
 
 "Spy on you? Domineer over you? Ungrateful! 
 Infamous! You, who have made a slave-girl the rival of 
 your mother! Let me tell you, Ahenobarbus, that I at 
 at least am the daughter of Germanicus, though you 
 are wholly unworthy to be his grandson. Whence did 
 you get your pale and feeble blood? Not from me, 
 coward and weakling as you are; not from your father 
 Domitius, who, if he was cruel, was at least a man! 
 He would not have chosen such creatures as Otho and 
 Senecio for his friends. He had a man's taste and a 
 man's ambition. He would have blushed to be father 
 of a singing and painting girl like you! But beware! 
 You are an agrippa; you were born feet- foremost — a 
 certain augury of future misery."* 
 
 Stung to the quick by these reproaches, trembling 
 with impotent anger to hear his effeminate vanity — to 
 which his comrades burnt daily incense — thus ruthlessly 
 insulted, and angry, above all, that his mother dared to 
 
 * Note 20. — Agrippas. 
 
MOTHER AND SON. 1 49 
 
 pour contempt on his cherished accomplishments, Nero's 
 timid nature at last turned in self-defence. 
 
 "I am Emperor now, at any rate," he said; "and 
 ere now the wives and sisters, if not the mothers, of the 
 Caesars have had to cool their rage on the rocks of 
 Gyara or Pontia!" 
 
 "You dare to threaten me?" she cried. ''You to 
 threaten me; me, your mother; me, who have toiled and 
 schemed, aye, and committed crimes for you, from a 
 child; me, whose womb bare you, whose hand has often 
 beaten you; me, to whom you owe it that you are not 
 at this moment a disgraced and penniless boy!" 
 
 "You call me an actor. Are not you more than 
 half an actress?" he said, in a sneering tone. 
 
 Agrippina sprang from her seat in a burst of passion. 
 
 "Oh, if there be gods!" she exclaimed, upHfting her 
 hands, "let them hear me! Infernal Furies at least there 
 are, for I have felt them! Oh! may they avenge on 
 you my wrongs!" 
 
 Nero cared but little for the curse. He was not 
 superstitious. He thought how Senecio and Petronius 
 would laugh at the notion of there being real Furies or 
 subterranean gods! 
 
 "You know more of the Furies than I do, then," he 
 said, in a mocking tone. "Besides, I have an amulet. 
 Look at this!" 
 
 He handed to her the icuncula puellaris — the wooden 
 doll which had been given him in the streets, with the 
 mysterious promise that it would prove to be a charm 
 against every malignant influence. He honoured it as 
 Louis XL did the little leaden saint which he wore in 
 his hat when he had ceased to honour anything else. 
 
150 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 She glanced at it with utter scorn; then, to his horror, 
 flung it on the ground and spurned it away. 
 
 "And you are Pontifex Maximus!" she said, concen- 
 trating into the words a world of unmitigated scorn. 
 
 Nero was silent, but his look was so dark that, 
 fearing lest she should have gone too far, she said in 
 calmer tones, "You have a better amulet than that 
 paltry image, and one which your mother gave you. 
 But your foHies render it unavailing." 
 
 She pointed to a golden armlet, in which was set 
 the skin of a serpent, which he wore on his right arm. 
 The serpent had been found gliding in his room near 
 his cradle; or perhaps, according to another story, its 
 cast-off skin had been found beside his pillow. Many 
 legends had sprung up about it. The populace beHeved 
 that it was a sacred spirit which had protected him, and 
 had driven from his infant cradle the murderers sent 
 by Messalina to destroy him. But, while Nero was yet 
 a child, Agrippina had had the skin of the serpent 
 curiously set in a jewelled armlet of great value, with 
 rubies for its eyes, and emeralds marking the traces of 
 its scales, and had clasped it on Nero's arm, and bidden 
 him to wear it for ever. And as his hfe advanced in 
 golden prosperity she had come to believe, or to half 
 beheve, that there was some mysterious charm about it 
 — for a mind may be atheistical and yet profoundly 
 superstitious. 
 
 But as she gazed at it with a sort of fascination, 
 she was seized by one of the violent reactions of feeling 
 which often swept over a mind untrained in the control 
 of its passions. It brought before her the image of a 
 little boy, whose sweet and sunny face looked the 
 
MOTHER AND SON. I5I 
 
 picture of engaging innocence; whose golden hair, when 
 it caught the sunUght, shone hke an aureole round his 
 head; whose blue eyes danced with childish glee at the 
 sight of what was beautiful; to whom his mother was 
 all in all; who had often flung his arms round her 
 neck, in joy and in sorrow, with the fondness of a 
 loving child. That child stood before her — through her 
 crimes Emperor of Rome. He stood there, hateful and 
 hating her — on his lips the flickering smile of mockery; 
 on his once bright forehead the scowl of anger. Yet 
 whom had she in all the world besides? Her father 
 had been murdered; her mother murdered; three of her 
 brothers murdered; her sisters were dead, and had 
 died in shame; her first husband dead; two others of 
 her husbands poisoned — and by her; her lovers dead, 
 or banished far away. She knew that a chaos of 
 hatreds yawned wide and deep around her; she knew 
 that in all the wide world no single person, except pos- 
 sibly one or two of her freedmen, cared for her. In 
 her agony, in her loneliness, she had tried of late to 
 win something like forgiveness, something like tolerance, 
 if not affection, from the deeply injured Britannicus and 
 Octavia. She pitied the sorrows and wrongs which she 
 had herself inflicted on them. She had even learnt to 
 admire some gracious quality in them both, for which 
 she could find no name. But, alas! she soon found 
 that, while they were perfect in courtesy, they could 
 never love her. The Hfe, the affection of her son was 
 the sole thing left her; and he was turning against her 
 with a feehng akin to loathing stamped upon his face. 
 All these thoughts rushed over her mind like a 
 tornado. Unable to bear them, she ended the inter- 
 
152 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 view by a passion of uncontrollable weeping. And, as 
 she wept, she held out her appealing arms to her son, 
 and wailed: 
 
 "Oh, Nero, forgive my wild words. Whom have we 
 but one another? In this drowning sea must we not 
 sink or rise together? My son! my son! your mother 
 pleads with you. Forgive me — kiss me; let Agrippina 
 feel once more that she has the love of the son for 
 whose sole sake she has lived — for whom she would 
 gladly die!" 
 
 A noble nature would have been moved by the 
 tragic appeal of so proud a mother; but the nature of 
 Nero, essentially mean, had become constantly meaner. 
 He trembled before those who confronted him with 
 boldness; but he triumphed over all who showed that 
 they feared him. He wanted to feel perfectly indepen- 
 dent. The only person whose power he feared was his 
 mother. And here was this all-dreaded mother plead- 
 ing with him, at whose lightest look he had been ac- 
 customed for years to tremble! He was not in the 
 least moved; he only intended to secure the ascendency 
 of which, in that struggle, he had won the first step. 
 
 "You curse me," he said, "one moment, and the 
 next you are all tears and entreaties. Do you think that 
 it is only your amulet that keeps me from your Furies? 
 You have dishonoured my image; see how much I care 
 for your amulet. I will never wear it again." 
 
 He unclasped the armlet from his wrist, and flung 
 it to the other end of the room. 
 
 "There!" he said. ''You may have it; I have done 
 with it!" And with these words he turned his back 
 upon her, and went out without a farewell. 
 
MOTHER AND SON. I 53 
 
 It seemed a small matter, and what else could she 
 expect from such a being as her son — a youth soft 
 without tenderness, caressing without affection, cruel 
 without courage? 
 
 She stood and looked towards the curtain through 
 which he had disappeared. She stood with gleaming 
 eyes and dilated nostrils, and firm-set Hps. Every tear 
 was dried up in her burning glance, as she outstretched 
 her clenched hand and vowed a terrible vengeance. 
 
 "O wronged Britannicus ! " she murmured; "O 
 wronged Octavia! cannot I even now redress your 
 wrongs? Alas! it cannot be. Their first act would be 
 to avenge the injured Manes of Claudius. But does not 
 Rubellius Plautus live, and CorneHus Sulla? Could I 
 not even yet brush this mean and thankless actor like 
 an insect from my path — son though he be — and seat 
 one of them upon the throne of the Caesars?" 
 
 She picked up the armlet with the serpent's skin. 
 "It shall be as he said," she murmured; "he shall never 
 wear or see it more." 
 
 When his hour of doom had come, Nero searched 
 for that amulet in vain! 
 
154 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 EMPEROR AND .ESTHETE. 
 
 "The skipping king, he ambled up and down 
 With shallow jesters and rash bavin wits, 
 Soon kindled and soon burned: carded his state, 
 Mingled his royalty with capering fools, 
 Had his great name profaned with their scorns." 
 
 I Henry IV, lii. 2. 
 
 Nero tried to persuade himself that he cared little 
 for such scenes as that which we have witnessed; but 
 in reality they troubled him. It required a strong effort 
 to shake off their effects, and they left his small pleas- 
 ure-loving nature in a state of tremor and disgust. He 
 longed to escape from them to some complete retirement, 
 where, away from all pomp, he could give himself up, 
 heart and soul, to selfish aestheticism and voluptuous 
 delight. 
 
 He had villas at Antium and at Baiae, but even they 
 were more public than he desired, and he determined 
 to escape from the noise and heat and worry of Rome 
 to an enchanting lodge which had been designed by 
 the architects, Severus and Celer, in one of the wildest 
 gorges of the Simbruine ridge of the Apennines, a little 
 above the modern town of Subiaco. Through this gorge 
 the icy stream of the Anio forces its way, leaping down 
 into the valley beneath in tumultuous cataracts. By 
 damming the river the architects had, with consummate 
 
EMPEROR AND .ESTHETE. 1 55 
 
 taste and skill, caused it to spread into three mountain 
 lakes, 300 feet above the valley. On either side of the 
 gorge they had built a hunting-lodge half hidden amid 
 the dense foliage, and the two villas — for such they 
 practically were — had been united by a bridge which 
 spanned the abyss with a graceful arch at a stupendous 
 height above the valley. Nature and art combined to 
 make the scene supremely beautiful. The grounds and 
 gardens of the villas spread down to the smiling vale 
 beneath, by walks under overhanging rocks, tapestried 
 with the luxuriant growth of creepers and wild flowers. 
 Underfoot the moss of the softest emerald was now 
 variegated with the red autumnal leaves. Where the 
 pure runnels trickled down little gullies of the rocks they 
 were brightened with maidenhair and arborescent ferns. 
 The artificial sheets of water, in which many waterfowl 
 swam undisturbed, were overshadowed by beeches and 
 oaks and golden platanes which late autumn had touched 
 with her fiery finger. 
 
 It was an enchanting spot. Gay shallops were 
 always ready on the artificial lakes if any guest cared to 
 row or to plunge in the cool bright water. On the 
 smooth lawn the "gemmy peacocks," as the Latin poets 
 called them, strutted and displayed their Indian glories, 
 mingled with tame pheasants and partridges. Kids 
 leaped and sported about the rocky slopes. The cushat- 
 doves cooed from the groves, and white pigeons from 
 the dovecotes would come crowding round for maize- 
 grain at the slightest call. The Rhodian hens clucked 
 contentedly about the farmyard, which was crowded 
 also with geese and guinea-fowls. The long-haired young 
 town-slaves, full of frolic, worked in the garden in mock 
 
156 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 obedience to the orders of the country bailiif; but the 
 gardener did not attach much importance to their 
 labours, for they were far more intent on pilfering the 
 best fruit they could find in the granaries than on culti- 
 vating the soil; and the rustics knew that to offend them 
 was as much as their place was worth. 
 
 The lodges themselves made no pretence to the 
 Caesarean magnificence of the Palace [at Rome. But 
 their simplicity did not exclude the exercise of luxurious 
 taste in their construction and adornment. All the 
 rooms were brightened with lovely frescoes painted by 
 the most famous rhyparographists. On the walls of the 
 richer apartments there were orbs of porphyry and lapis 
 lazuli. The impluvium, into which fell the ceaseless 
 plash of a musical fountain, was a basin of Thasian 
 stone, once a rarity even in temples, and the stop which 
 regulated the play of the water was formed into the 
 winged figure of a child moulded in silver. In the 
 centre of the hall, which was tesselated with small pieces 
 of blue and white marble, there was an exquisite copy 
 of the doves of Scopas. Statues by such masters as 
 Myron and Praxiteles stood between the pillars of the 
 peristyle. The windows were filled with glass, and be- 
 tween them were abaci of peacock-marble, supported on 
 the gilded wings of Cupids, and of griffins which looked 
 in opposite directions. On these slabs of marble stood 
 some of the gold and silver plate which Augustus had 
 ordered to be made out of the statuettes of precious 
 metals which had been erected to him by too-adulatory 
 provincials. On other tables of ivory and fragrant 
 woods lay engraved gems and cameos, or curiosities, 
 brought from all lands. The walls of the small .but 
 
EMPEROR AND .ESTHETE. I 57 
 
 precious library were covered, in imitation of the famous 
 library of Apollo, with medallions of the most famous 
 Greek and Roman authors in repousse work of gold and 
 silver, or moulded of Corinthian bronze. Poets, historians, 
 jurists, orators were grouped together, and between the 
 groups were framed specimens of the most exquisite 
 palaeography. 
 
 Nero was going for the first time to take possession 
 of this enchanting retreat, the loveliness of which had 
 kindled the surprise and admiration of the few who had 
 seen it. He started from Rome with a splendid retinue. 
 He himself rode in a light car, inlaid with ivory and 
 silver, and was followed by an army of a thousand 
 slaves and retainers. One of the earhest lessons which 
 he learnt was that his resources were practically bound- 
 less, so that from the first he broke out into unheard-of 
 extravagance. His mules were shod with silver. The 
 muleteers were dressed in liveries of Canusian wool, 
 dyed scarlet. The runners in front of his chariot, and 
 the swarthy cohort of outriders from Mazaca in Numidia, 
 selected for their skill in horsemanship, were adorned 
 with bracelets and trappings of gold. The more delicate 
 slaves had their faces covered with masks, or tinged 
 with cosmetics, lest their complexions should suffer from 
 the sunlight. Many of the slaves had no other office 
 than to carry, with due care, the lyres and other musical 
 instruments which were required for the theatrical enter- 
 tainments. 
 
 Agrippina, devoured with chagrin and resentment, 
 had indeed been asked to accompany him, but in a 
 way so insultingly ungracious, that she declined. She 
 
158 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 dreaded to share with him a place so retired, in which 
 she knew that almost every hour would fill her with 
 disgust and anger. She had chosen instead to go alone 
 to her stately villa at Bauli, on the Campanian shore. 
 There, if she had little else to occupy her time, she 
 could continue her own memoirs, or amuse herself with 
 the lampreys and mullets, which were so tame that they 
 would come at her call, and feed out of her hand. 
 Her husband's mother, Antonia, had attached earrings 
 to one pet lamprey, so that people used to visit the villa 
 to see it. Agrippina followed her example. 
 
 Octavia followed Nero. She had not been suffered 
 to possess any villa which she could call her own, and 
 much as Nero would have liked to leave her behind, he 
 was compelled by pubHc opinion to observe a certain 
 conventional respect for his Empress, the daughter of 
 Claudius. The sedan in which she travelled was carried 
 by eight stalwart Bithynian porters, but she was not 
 honoured with any splendour or observance, and had 
 only a modest retinue out of her six hundred nominal 
 attendants. Still humbler was the following of Britan- 
 nicus. He had been bidden to come partly because it 
 would have seemed shameful to leave him alone in Rome 
 during an unhealthy season, when even persons of low 
 position were driven into the country by the month in 
 which Libitina claimed her most numerous victims; and 
 also because Nero was glad to keep him in sight. He 
 was happy enough, for Titus was with him, and Pudens 
 was one of the escort; and as Epaphroditus necessarily 
 attended his master, Nero, it was not difficult to get 
 leave for Epictetus to come in his train. The two kind- 
 
EMPEROR AND ESTHETE. 1 59 
 
 hearted boys thought that the pale face of the slave- 
 child might gain a touch of rose from the fresh winds 
 of the Apennines. 
 
 Very few ladies were invited. It was necessary, in- 
 deed, that one or two should accompany Octavia; and 
 Nero, for his own reasons, wished Junia Silana and Calvia 
 Crispinilla to be of the party. These were ladies with 
 whom a young matron like Octavia could scarcely ex- 
 change a word, but happily for her, Flavia Domitilla, 
 the wife of Vespasian, was asked to accompany the 
 Empress. Vespasian, who had just returned from his 
 proconsulate, had been summoned to have an interview 
 with Nero on the state of affairs in Africa, and to stay 
 for some days. Acte was in the train of Nero, but, 
 though she rarely saw Octavia, the unfortunate Empress 
 little knew that the presence of Domitilla, the only lady 
 to whom she could speak without a shudder, was really 
 due to the private suggestion of the lovely and kind- 
 hearted freedwoman. Flavia Domitilla was of the 
 humblest origin, and her father had occupied no higher 
 office than that of a quaestor's clerk. That no nobler 
 companion had been sought for her would have been 
 regarded as an insult by any lady of haughty character; 
 but Octavia preferred the society of the honest matron 
 to that of a thousand Crispinillas. 
 
 Seneca and Burrus were invited for a brief visit only, 
 and as Nero liked to give a flavour of intellectuality to 
 the society which he gathered round him, Lucan was 
 asked, as the rising poet of the day; and Silius Italicus, 
 as a sort of established poet laureate; and Persius, the 
 young Etrurian knight, who, though but twenty-one years 
 old, was so warmly eulogised by his tutor, Cornutus, 
 
l6o DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 that great things were expected of him. None of his 
 satires had yet seen the Kght, but his head would hardly 
 have been safe if Nero could have read some of the 
 lines locked up in his writing-desk. With these had 
 been also invited C. Plinius Secundus, a wealthy knight, 
 thirty-four years of age, in whose encyclopaedic range of 
 knowledge it was hoped that the guests might find an 
 endless fund of amusement and anecdote in their more 
 serious moments. 
 
 But while Nero liked to keep up the credit of 
 dabbling in literary pursuits, the choice spirits to whom 
 he looked for his real delight were very different from 
 these graver personages. The fashionable elegance of 
 Otho and the luxurious cynicism of Petronius were in- 
 dispensable for his amusement. Tigellinus was too in- 
 timate to be excluded; and with these came Vatinius, 
 the witty buffoon and cobbler of Beneventum, an in- 
 former of the lowest class. This cobbler's chief recom- 
 mendations were personal deformity, an outrageous tongue, 
 and an abnormally prominent nose. He avenged him- 
 self on society for the wrongs inflicted on him by nature. 
 He rejoiced in the immortality of having given his name 
 to a drinking-cup with a long nozzle, which has pre- 
 served his memory in the verse of Juvenal and Martial. 
 
 Here Nero enjoyed Hfe to his heart's content. The 
 happy accident that the villa really consisted of two 
 edifices, separated by the bridge across the -glen, 
 enabled him to keep his least welcome guests in the 
 Villa Castor, and his chosen companions in the Villa 
 Pollux. 
 
 In the grounds of the Villa Castor, Seneca and 
 Burrus had rooms in which they could transact with 
 
EMPEROR AND .^STttETE. l6l 
 
 their secretaries their ministerial and military business. 
 Pliny could bury himself among the rarer treasures of 
 the library, or amuse his leisure by seeing what further 
 he could learn about the habits of the flamingoes and 
 other foreign birds, which were carefully kept in cages 
 and fed from the hands of the visitors. For Britannicus 
 and Titus, who often asked Persius to be their com- 
 panion, there was the resource of the tennis-court, the 
 gymnastic room, and rowing, bathing, and fishing in the 
 lakes; and Persius, who had heard all about Epictetus 
 from his young patron, sometimes let the little slave sit 
 at his feet while he read choice passages of old Roman 
 poems in works which had been found for him by the 
 clever librarian. 
 
 The meals were held separately in the two villas, 
 though sometimes all the guests were invited to Nero's 
 table. He varied his amusements in every possible way. 
 Sometimes he would take a long swim in the cold lake; 
 sometimes he would fish with a purple line and a golden 
 hook, though he caught fewer fish in a morning than 
 Britannicus would catch in an hour. He delighted to 
 spend hours at a time with the harpist Terpnos or the 
 singer Diodorus, who trained him how to use what 
 it had become the fashion to describe as his celestial 
 voice. 
 
 He soon got tired of the small restraint upon his 
 amusements which resulted from the presence of the 
 graver guests across the bridge. But they helped to 
 form an audience for him in the room which had been 
 fitted up as a theatre. One evening he had been dis- 
 playing his accomplishments to all the guests at both 
 villas, and had been received by the listening slaves 
 
 Darkness and Dawn. /. H 
 
1 62 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 and courtiers with tumults of applause. The others 
 were obliged, or felt themselves obliged, to join in the 
 clapping; but Nero could read in their faces that they 
 were unwilling listeners. Seneca blushed, and his smooth 
 tongue stumbled, as he attempted to express his grati- 
 fication. Burrus looked on with profound disapproval. 
 A look of involuntary scorn stole over the grave features 
 of Persius, whom Nero already hated, because the young 
 man's virginal modesty formed such a contrast to his 
 own shamelessness. But, worst of all, the blunt soldier, 
 Vespasian, to the intense amusement of Titus and 
 Britannicus, had first of all begun to nod, and then had 
 fallen asleep with his mouth wide open, and had snored 
 — had actually and audibly snored, so that all the 
 audience heard it, while Nero was chanting his own 
 divine verses with the most bewitching trills of his own 
 divine voice! 
 
 Nero, in his rage, half thought of having him 
 arrested on the charge of high treason — an accusation 
 of which the meshes were equally adapted to entangle 
 the most daring criminals and the most trivial offenders. 
 But when he poured out his wrath to Petronius, his 
 elegant friend laughed immoderately, and pacified Nero's 
 offended vanity by dwelling on Vespasian's somnolence 
 as a proof of his vulgarity. 
 
 "I suppose, then," said Nero, "I must say with 
 Horace, 'solvuntur risu tabulce' ?" 
 
 "Yes," said Petronius, "and you may add Uu missus 
 ahihis.' Why not make a clean sweep of these dread- 
 ful old fogies in the Villa Castor? Pliny has told us all 
 we care to know about flamingoes and lampreys. Seneca's 
 pomposities grow stale. We have been sufficiently amused 
 
EMPEROR AND .ESTHETE. 1 63 
 
 for the present by the blushes of Persius, and the good 
 Silius Italicus is as tedious as his own epic. Give them 
 a respectful farewell. Send for Paris the actor, and 
 Aliturus the pantomime, and some of your fairest slaves 
 to wait on us at our choicest banquets. Let us dismiss 
 this humbug of respectability and pluck the blossom of 
 the days." 
 
 The advice fell on congenial ears. It was intimated 
 to the guests in the Villa Castor that they might present 
 their respects to the Emperor, and disperse where they 
 chose. They were not sorry to depart from such dubious 
 neighbours as those in the Villa Pollux. Vespasian and 
 Titus were rudely sent off the next morning, without 
 being permitted to see Nero again. Flavia Domitilla 
 accompanied them, and as the presence of Britannicus 
 was always a trouble to Nero, he was allowed to spend 
 the rest of the autumn in the humble Sabine villa of 
 Vespasian's family at Phalacrine, near Reate, where he 
 would not only have Titus as a companion, but also his 
 cousins — the two young sons of Vespasian's brother, 
 Flavins Sabinus. 
 
 "Among those dull farmers," said Nero, "he is not 
 likely to have any nonsense put into his head. Let 
 him eat beans and bacon, and grow as sluggish as his 
 friends." 
 
 To Nero and the fashionable nobles of his time 
 every man was sluggish and plebeian who did not care 
 to season his recreation with a variety of vices. 
 
 ii' 
 
164 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 EVENTS IN THE VILLA POLLUX. 
 
 "Who dares, who dares, 
 In purity of manhood stand upright 
 And say *This man's a flatterer?' If one be, 
 So are they all . . . 
 
 the learned pate 
 Ducks to the golden fool." 
 
 Timon of Athens, IV. 3. 
 
 More and more luxurious and irregular became the 
 amusements of the Villa Pollux. Paganism is protected 
 from complete exposure by the enormity of its own 
 vices. To show the di\dne reformation wrought by 
 Christianity it must suffice that, once for all, the Apostle 
 of the Gentiles seized heathendom by the hair, and 
 branded indelibly on her forehead the stigma of her 
 shame. 
 
 Leaving altogether on one side the darker aspects 
 of the life to which Nero and his boon companions 
 now abandoned themselves, neither shall we dwell much 
 upon 
 
 "Their gorgeous gluttonies and sumptuous feasts 
 On citron table and Atlantic stone." 
 
 If the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the 
 pride of life could have brought to Nero and Otho any 
 happiness, they might have been happy. They could 
 lift to their lips the cup of Pleasure crowned to the 
 
EVENTS IN THE VILLA POLLUX. I 65 
 
 brim. They soon found it to be an envenomed goblet, 
 sparkling with the wine of demons. The rage of luxury, 
 the insanity of egotism, the abandonment to every form 
 of self-indulgence, served only to plunge them into 
 deeper lassitude, and, last of all, into more irretrievable 
 disgust For, though men have bodies, they still are 
 spirits, and when their bodies have command over their 
 spirits, they only become a lower kind of beast. 
 
 To Nero, while he was yet a boy, had been offered 
 all that carnal minds think the highest boons. The 
 ancient philosophers used to discuss the question, 
 "Whether any one would still remain perfectly virtuous 
 if he were endowed with the ring of Gyges, which had 
 the power to make a man invisible." To Nero had 
 been given alike the ring of Gyges and the lamp of 
 Aladdin. While he was still young and beautiful, and 
 not ungifted, all that was fell and foul in the seductions 
 of the Palace and the Amphitheatre assailed his feeble 
 nature. It was hardly strange that his whole being 
 gave way and he became a prodigy of wickedness. At 
 heart, perhaps, he was not essentially worse than thou- 
 sands of youths have been, but his crimes, unchecked 
 by any limitations of law or of resources, were enacted 
 under the glare of publicity, on the world's loftiest stage. 
 
 Nor must it be forgotten that he saw and enjoyed 
 all the best, the loveliest, the most intoxicating that 
 could be devised by an epoch which strove madly after 
 pleasure. Thus, when Paris and Aliturus came to the 
 villa, the guests saw in those two actors the most per- 
 fect grace set off by the highest advantages, and trained 
 for years by the most artistic skill. They represented 
 the finished result of all that the world could produce in 
 
l66 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 seductive art. Such actors, originally selected for their 
 beauty and genius, made it the effort of their lives to 
 express by the poetry of movement every burning pas- 
 sion and soft desire which can agitate the breast. Their 
 rhythmic action, their mute music, their inimitable grace 
 of motion in the dance, brought home to the spectator 
 each scene which they impersonated more powerfully 
 than description, or painting, or sculpture. Carried 
 away by the glamour of involuntary delusion, the gazers 
 seemed to see before them every incident which they 
 chose to represent. Nothing was neglected which seemed 
 likely to add to the pleasure of the audience. The re- 
 wards of success were splendid — wealth, popularity, ap- 
 plause from numberless spectators, the passionate ad- 
 miration of society, the partiality even of emperors and 
 empresses, and all the power which such influence 
 bestowed. A successful mimic actor, when he sprang 
 on the stage in his glittering and close-fitting dress, 
 knew that if he could once exercise on the multitude 
 his potent spell he might easily become the favourite of 
 the rulers of the world, as Bathyllus was of Maecenas, 
 and Mnester of Caligula, and another Paris was of the 
 Empress Domitia. 
 
 Paris was a Greek, and his face was a perfect ex- 
 ample of the fine Greek ideal, faultless in its lines and 
 youthful contour. Aliturus was by birth a Jew, and was 
 endowed with the splendid beauty which still makes 
 some young Arabs the types of perfect manhood. Both 
 of them danced after supper on the day which suc- 
 ceeded their arrival, and it was hard to say which of 
 them excelled the other.* 
 
 * Note 21. — Ancient dancing. 
 
EVENTS IN THE VILLA POLLUX. I67 
 
 First Paris danced, in his fleshings of the softest 
 Canusian wool, dyed a light red. His dress revealed 
 the perfect outline of a figure that united fineness with 
 strength. He represented in pantomimic dance the 
 scene of Achilles in the island of Scyros. He brought 
 every incident and person before their eyes — the virgins 
 as they spun in the palace of their father, Lycomedes; 
 the fair youth concealed as a virgin in the midst of 
 them, and called Pyrrha from his golden locks; the 
 maiden Deidamia, whom he loved; the eager summons 
 of Ulysses at his gate; the ear-shattering trumpet of 
 Diomedes; the presents brought by the disguised am- 
 bassadors; the young warrior betraying himself by the 
 eagerness with which he turns from jewels and orna- 
 ments to nodding helmet and bright cuirass; the dof- 
 fing of his feminine apparel; the leaping forth in his 
 gleaming panoply. Nothing could be more marvellous 
 than the whole impersonation. So vivid was the illusion 
 that the guests of Nero could hardly believe that they 
 had seen but one young man before them, and not a 
 company of varied characters. 
 
 Yet hardly less subtle was the kindling of the 
 imagination when Aliturus "danced," as it was called, 
 the "Death of Hector" in the tragic style which had 
 first been introduced by the celebrated Bathyllus of 
 Alexandria. They seemed to see the hero bid farewell 
 to his Andromache, and go bounding forth to meet the 
 foe; to see enacted before them the flight of Hector; 
 the deceitful spectre of Deiphobus; the combat; the 
 dying prophecy; the corpse of the gallant Trojan dragged 
 round the walls of Troy; Priam and Hecuba tearing 
 their grey locks. They seemed to hear the wild wail 
 
1 68 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 of Andromache, the tender plaint of Helen, the frenzied 
 utterances of Cassandra; and when the scene ended 
 there was not one of them who was not thrilled through 
 and through with pity, with terror, with admiration. 
 
 These scenes were innocent and not ignoble, but 
 softer and more voluptuous impersonations followed; for 
 when another and less known actor named Hylas — 
 painted blue, and dragging a fish's tail behind him — 
 had acted the part of the sea-god Glaucus, to rest the 
 two chief performers, then Paris set forth the story of 
 Ariadne and Bacchus; and Aliturus sank to yet lower 
 depths in dancing the favourite pantomime of Leda. 
 
 Such were among the amusements of Nero's even- 
 ings, and part of the pleasure consisted in knowing that 
 he and his guests were enjoying at their leisure a near 
 view of the unequalled genius which enraptured the 
 shouting myriads of Rome when witnessed from a dis- 
 tance after long hours of waiting to secure a place. 
 Further, they had the advantage of watching the speak- 
 ing faces of the mimists, which in the theatre were 
 hidden by a mask. It is needless to add that Nero 
 rewarded with immense donations the artists whose skill 
 he so passionately admired. And yet for Paris it had 
 been happier if, instead of dazzling the multitude, he 
 had remained the humble slave of Domitia. For in 
 later days Nero, envying him the tumults of applause 
 he won, tried to emulate his skill. Paris did his best 
 to teach him, but the attempt was hopeless. Nothing 
 could then make the obese form of the Emperor grace- 
 ful, or his thin legs agile. And since he could not rival 
 him, he made the poor wretch pay the penalty by put- 
 ting him to death, 
 
EVENTS IN THE VILLA POLLUX. 1 69 
 
 But no such dread foreboding was in the happy 
 actor's mind as he witnessed the spell which he cast 
 over the minds of his audience — and audience it might 
 fitly be called, for the actor had spoken to them in the 
 eloquence of rhythmic gesture. 
 
 The conversation turned naturally on the art of 
 dancing. 
 
 "Paris," said Petronius, whose aesthetic sympathies 
 had been intensely gratified, "I know not whether you 
 missed the usual accompaniments of pipes and flutes, 
 and still more the thundering reverberations of applause 
 from the enraptured myriads, but I never heard you to 
 greater advantage." 
 
 "Heard me? Saw me, you mean," said Paris, with 
 a pleasant smile. 
 
 "No!" said Petronius, "we have heard, not seen, 
 you. You have not spoken a word, but your feet and 
 your hands have surpassed the eloquence even of lips 
 Uinct with Hyblean honeycombs.'" 
 
 "You remind me of what Demetrius the Cynic said 
 to me," answered Paris. 
 
 "What was that?" 
 
 "Do not think me vain if I tell the story," said 
 the actor. "I do not tell it in my own honour, but 
 only for the glory of my art. Demetrius had been 
 railing and snarling at us poor pantomimes, and said that 
 the only pleasure of the spectators was derived, not 
 from our dancing, but from the flutes and songs. I 
 asked him to let me show him a specimen of what I 
 could do." 
 
 "Happy Demetrius!" said Lucan. 
 
 "He was fair-minded enough to consent, and I 
 
170 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 danced to him the story of Mars and Venus. I tried 
 to bring before him their love, their betrayal by Helios, 
 the rage and jealousy of Vulcan, their capture in the 
 golden net, their confusion, the entreaties of Venus, the 
 intercession of the gods. Demetrius was fairly con- 
 quered, and he said to me, * Fellow!' (you observe that 
 he was anything but civil!), *I don't merely see but I 
 hear your acting, and you seem to me to speak with 
 your very hands.'" 
 
 "Well done, Demetrius!" said Otho. "And perhaps 
 you don't know, Paris, that a Greek writer, Lesbonax, 
 calls you, not philosophers, but cheirosophers — hand- 
 wise." 
 
 "I can cap your story, Paris," said Nero. "The 
 other day a barbarian nobleman from Pontus came to 
 me on some foreign business and brought me some 
 splendid presents. When he left I asked him if I could 
 do anything for him. 'Yes,' he said. *Will you make 
 me a present of the beautiful dancer whom I saw in the 
 theatre?' That was you, Paris; and of course I told him 
 that you were much too precious to be given away, and 
 that, if I did, we should have Rome in an uproar. 'But,' 
 I said, 'of what possible use would he be to you?' 'He 
 can interpret things without words,' he replied; 'and I 
 want some one to explain my wishes to my barbarous 
 neighbours ' ! " 
 
 "Nobody has said any of these fine things about 
 me/' remarked Aliturus, ruefully. 
 
 "Well, I will tell you a compliment paid to you, 
 Aliturus," said Petronius. "Another barbarian, who came 
 to me with a letter of introduction from the Proconsul 
 of Africa, saw you act a scene which involved five im- 
 
EVENTS IN THE VILLA POLLUX. 1 7 I 
 
 personations. He was amazed at your versatility. *That 
 man/ he observed, *has but one body, but he has many 
 minds.' " 
 
 "Thank you, kind Petronius!" said AHturus. 
 
 "But now tell us," asked Nero, "whether in acting 
 you really feel the emotions you express." 
 
 "When the character is new to us we feel them in- 
 tensely," said the Jewish pantomime. "Have you never 
 heard, Caesar, what happened to Pylades, when he played 
 the part of the mad hero of *Ajax'? It seemed as if he 
 really went mad with the hero whom he personated. He 
 sprang on one of the attendants who was beating time to 
 the music, and rent off his robe. The actor who repre- 
 sented the victorious Ulysses stood by him in triumph, 
 and Pylades, tearing a heavy flute from the hands of one 
 of the choraulse, dealt Ulysses so violent a blow on the 
 head that he' broke the flute and would have broken the 
 head too, if the actor had not been protected by his 
 helmet. He even hurled javelins at Augustus himself 
 The audience in the theatre was so powerfully affected 
 by the passion of the scene that they went mad too, and 
 leapt up from their seats and shouted, and flung off their 
 garments. Finally, Pylades, unconscious of what he was 
 doing, walked down from the stage to the orchestra and 
 took his seat between two Consulars, who were rather 
 alarmed lest Ajax should flagellate them with his scourge 
 as he had been flagellating the cattle which in his mad- 
 ness he took for Greeks." 
 
 "A curious and interesting anecdote, my Aliturus," 
 said Petronius; "but Paris has not yet told us whether 
 he misses the multitudinous applause of Rome." 
 
 "All Rome is here," said Paris with a bow to the 
 
172 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Emperor. "We actors need nothing but the sunshine of 
 approval, and did not the sun, even before it rose above 
 the horizon, bathe Nero in its rays?" 
 
 "So my nurses have told me," said Nero. 
 
 "Trust an actor to pay a compliment," whispered 
 Vatinius to Tigellinus. 
 
 "Or a poet either," said Tigellinus, with a glance at 
 Lucan. 
 
 "Or an adventurer and a parasite either," returned 
 the irascible Spaniard, who had overheard the innuendo. 
 
 "Now, if I am to be the arbiter elegantiarunij I will 
 allow no quarrels," said Petronius. "And I at least am 
 grateful to Paris and Aliturus, and mean to show my 
 gratitude by a compliment. Don't class me among the 
 poets who recite in the dogdays, for my little poem — 
 written while Paris was dancing * Achilles' — is only four 
 lines long. Spare my blushes and let Lucan — as he is 
 a poet — read it." 
 
 "Don't let him read it," whispered Tigellinus; "he 
 will read it badly on purpose." 
 
 But Petronius handed his little waxen tablets to 
 Lucan, who, with a glance of disdain at Tigellinus, read 
 with perfect expression the four celebrated lines: 
 
 "He fights, plays, revels, loves and whirls, and stands, 
 Speaks with mute eloquence and rhythmic hands. 
 Silence is voiceful through each varying part. 
 In each fair feature — 'tis the crown of Art." * 
 
 * *'De Pantomimo. 
 
 "Pugnat, ludit, amat, bacchatur, vertitur, astat, 
 lUustrat verum, cuncta decore replet; 
 Tot linguae, tot membra viro : mirabilis ars est 
 Quae facit articulos, ore sileute, loqui." 
 
EVENTS m THE VILLA POLLUX. I73 
 
 A loud exclamation of ''Eiige!" and ''Socpcbgl" 
 burst from the hearers when Lucan had read these ad- 
 mirable lines; and the two actors repaid the poet by 
 the most gracious of their bows and smiles. Nor did 
 they confine their gratitude to smiles, but gave further 
 specimens of some of the laughable dances which were 
 in vogue, such as "the owl" and "the grimace," ending 
 with a spectacle at once graceful and innocent — namely, 
 the lovely flower-dance with its refrain of 
 
 "Where are my roses, where my violets, where my parsleys fair?'* 
 
 They went to bed that night each of them the 
 happy possessor of twelve thousand sesterces. When 
 Agrippina, a month later, heard this, she reproached 
 Nero for his gross extravagance. 
 
 "What did I give them?" he asked. 
 
 "You paid them twelve thousand sesterces each for 
 a nighf s dancing." 
 
 "Did I?" said Nero, glad to show his defiance. "I 
 never knew before that I was so mean;" and he im- 
 mediately ordered the sum to be doubled. 
 
174 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 AMUSEMENTS OF AN EMPEROR. 
 
 ov TtavoofxaL rag XaQirag 
 Movoaig ovyKaxaiiiyvvg. 
 
 Euripides. 
 
 *'Esclave! apporte-moi des roses, 
 Le parfum des roses est doux." 
 
 Victor Hugo. 
 
 Among the pleasant distractions of the villa, the 
 dilettantism of Literature and Art were not forgotten. 
 Nero regarded it as one of his serious occupations to 
 practise singing and harp-playing. Afterwards, when 
 his friends gathered round him, they would write verses, 
 or recite, or lounge on purple couches, listening to 
 Epaphroditus as he read to them the last news from 
 the teeming gossip of Rome. Satires and scandalous 
 stories often created a flutter of excitement in the re- 
 ception-rooms of the capital, and were keenly enjoyed 
 by all, except those, often entirely innocent and worthy 
 persons, who were perfectly defenceless against these 
 calumnies, and felt them like sparks of fire, or poisoned 
 arrows rankling in the flesh. 
 
 One morning, when the stay of the courtiers at the 
 villa was drawing to a close, Epaphroditus announced 
 to them that he had a sensation for them of the first 
 magnitude. The trifle which he would read to them 
 
AMUSEMENTS OF AN EMPEROR. I 75 
 
 was perhaps a little broad in parts, but he was sure 
 that Caesar would excuse it. It was called, he said, by 
 a curious name, Apokolokyntosis. This was in truth a 
 clever invention of the librarian himself, for he did not 
 venture to mention its real title, which was Ludus de 
 morte Claudii Ccesaris. 
 
 "Apocolokyntosis?" asked Nero; "why, that means 
 gourdification or pumpkinification ! One has heard of 
 deification, but what on earth does * gourdification' 
 mean?" 
 
 "Perhaps, Caesar, in this instance it means the same 
 thing," said Epaphroditus; "but have I your permission 
 to read it?" 
 
 The guests — Lucan among them — settled themselves 
 in easy positions and Hstened. The reader had not 
 finished a dozen sentences before they found that they 
 were hearing the most daring and brilliant satire which 
 antiquity had as yet produced. 
 
 It was a satire on the death of Claudius, and it was 
 not long before peal after peal of astonished laughter 
 rang from all the group. 
 
 It began by a jesting refusal to quote any authority 
 for the events the writer was going to relate. If any- 
 one wanted evidence he referred to the senator who had 
 sworn that he had seen Drusilla mounting to heaven, 
 and would be equally ready to swear that he had seen 
 Claudius stalking thitherward with unequal steps along 
 the Appian road, by which Augustus and Tiberius had 
 also gone to heaven. 
 
 "It was late autumn, verging on winter — it was, in 
 fact, October 13. As for the hour, that was uncertain, 
 but might be generally described as noontide, when 
 
176 DARKNESS ANt) DAWN. 
 
 Claudius was trying to die. Since he found it hard to 
 die, Mercury, who had always admired his learning, 
 began to abuse one of the Fates for keeping him alive 
 for sixty-three years. Why could not she allow the 
 astrologers to be right for once, who had been predict- 
 ing his demise every month? Yet, no wonder! for how 
 could they cast the horoscope of a man so imperfect 
 that he could hardly be said to have ever been born? 
 *I only meant,' pleads Clotho, Ho keep him alive a little 
 longer, till he had made all the rest of the world Roman 
 citizens. But since you order it, he shall die.' There- 
 upon she opened a casket, and took out three spindles 
 — one on which was wound the life-thread of Claudius, 
 and on the other two those of the two idiots, Augurinus 
 and Baba, both of whom, she said, should die about 
 the same time, that Claudius might have fitting com- 
 pany. 
 
 " She said, and broke short the royal period of stolid 
 life." At this point the author bursts into poetry, and 
 describes how Lachesis chooses a thread of gold instead 
 of wool, and joyously weaves a web of surpassing loveli- 
 ness. The life it represents is to surpass the years of 
 Tithonus and of Nestor. Phoebus comes and cheers 
 her on her task with heavenly song, bidding her 
 weave on. 
 
 "Let him whose thread you are weaving," he sings, 
 "exceed the space of mortal life, for he is like me in 
 countenance, like me in beauty, and not inferior in song 
 or voice. He shall accord happy times to the weary, 
 and shall burst the silence of the laws, like the rising 
 of the morning or the evening star, or of rosy dawn at 
 sunrise. Such a Caesar is at hand, such a Nero shall 
 
AMUSEMENTS OF AN EMPEROR. I 77 
 
 Rome now behold! his bright countenance beams with 
 attempered lustre, and his neck is lovely with its flowing- 
 locks!" So sang Apollo, and Lachesis did even more 
 than he required. Meanwhile, Claudius died while 
 listening to the comedians. Then, after a touch of in- 
 conceivable coarseness, the writer adds, "What happened 
 on earth I need not tell you, for we none of us forget 
 our own felicity, but I will tell you what happened in 
 heaven. Jupiter is informed that a being is approach- 
 ing who is tall, greyhaired, and looks menacing, because 
 he shakes his head and drags his right foot. He is 
 asked to what country he belongs, and returns an 
 entirely unintelligible answer in no distinguishable 
 dialect. As Hercules is a travelled person, Jupiter 
 sends him to enquire to what class of human beings the 
 new-comer appertains. Hercules had never seen a 
 portent like this, with a voice like that of a sea-monster, 
 and thought that this must be his thirteenth labour; but, 
 on looking, perceived that it was a sort of man, and 
 addressed him in Greek. Claudius answers in Greek, 
 and would have imposed on Hercules, had not Fever, 
 who had accompanied Claudius, said, "He is not from 
 Ilium; he is a genuine Gaul, born near Lyons, and, like 
 a true Gaul, he took Rome." Claudius got into a rage 
 at this, but no one could comprehend his jargon; he had 
 made a signal that Fever should be decapitated, and 
 one might have thought that all present were his freed- 
 men, for no one cared for what he said. Hercules ad- 
 dresses him in severe tones, and Claudius says, "You of 
 all the gods, Hercules, ought to know me and support 
 me, for I sat all July and August listening to lawyers 
 before your temple." A discussion follows, and then 
 
 Darkness and Dawn, /. 12 
 
178 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Jupiter asks the gods how they will vote.* Janus thinks 
 there are too many gods already. Godhead has become 
 cheap of late. He votes that no more men shall be 
 made gods. Claudius, however, since he is akin to the 
 divine Augustus, and has himself made Livia a goddess, 
 seems likely to gain the majority of votes; but Augustus 
 rises and pleads against this strange candidate for god- 
 ship with indignant eloquence. "This man,'' he pleads, 
 "caused the death of my daughter and my grand- 
 daughter, the two Julias, and my descendant, L. Silanus. 
 Also he has condemned many unheard. Jupiter, who 
 has reigned so many years, has only broken one leg — 
 the leg of Vulcan — and has once hung Juno from 
 heaven: but Claudius, inspired by female jealousies and 
 the intrigues of a varletry of pampered freedmen, has 
 killed his wife, Messalina, and a multitude of others. 
 Who would believe that they were gods, if they made 
 this portent a god? Rather let him be expelled from 
 Olympus within three days." 
 
 Accordingly, Mercury puts a rope round his neck, 
 and drags him towards Tartarus. On the way they 
 meet a vast crowd, who all rejoice except a few lawyers. 
 It was, in fact, the funeral procession of Claudius him- 
 self, and he wants to stop and look at it; but Mercury 
 covers him with a veil, that no one may recognise him, 
 and drags him along. Narcissus had preceded him by 
 a shorter route, and Mercury bids the freedman hurry 
 on to announce the advent of Claudius to the shades. 
 Narcissus speedily arrives among them, gouty though he 
 was, since the descent is steep, and shouts in a loud 
 voice, "Claudius Caesar is coming." Immediately a 
 crowd of shades shouts out, "We have found him; let 
 
AMUSEMENTS OF AN EMPEROR. I 79 
 
 US rejoice!" They advance to meet him — among them 
 Messalina and her lover, Mnester the pantomime, and 
 numbers of his kinsmen whom he had put to death. 
 "Why, all my friends are here!" exclaims Claudius, 
 quite pleased. "How did you all get here?" "Do you 
 ask us?" said Pedo Pompeius; "you most cruel of men, 
 who killed us all?" Pedo drags him before the judg- 
 ment-seat of ^acus, and accuses him on the Cornelian 
 law of having put to death 30 senators, 315 Roman 
 knights, and 221 other persons. Claudius, terrified, 
 looks round him for an advocate, but does not see one. 
 Publius Petronius wants to plead for him, but is not 
 allowed to do so. He is condemned. Deep silence 
 falls on them all, as they wait to hear his punishment. 
 It is to be as endless as that of Sisyphus, Tantalus, 
 and Ixion; it is to be a toil and a desire futile and 
 frustrate and without end. He is to throw dice for 
 ever in a dice-box without a bottom! 
 
 No sooner said than done! Claudius began at once 
 to seek the dice, which for ever escaped him. Every 
 time he attempted to throw them they slipped through, 
 and the throw, though constantly attempted, could never 
 be performed. 
 
 Then all of a sudden appears Caligula, and demands 
 that Claudius should be recognised as his slave. He 
 produces witnesses who swear that they have seen 
 Caligula scourge him and slap him, and beat him. He 
 is assigned to Caligula, who hands him over to his 
 freedman, Menander, to be his legal assessor. 
 
 Such was this daring satire, of which we can hardly 
 estimate the audacity and wit — written as it was within 
 
l8o DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 a year of events which the Roman senate and Roman 
 people professed to regard as profoundly solemn. 
 
 Nero was convulsed with laughter throughout, and 
 was equally delighted by the insults upon his predecessor 
 and the flattery of himself. 
 
 When the speaker's voice ceased, a burst of applause 
 came from the lips of the hearers; and Lucan turned 
 to the gratified Nero and repeated the lines which de- 
 scribed his radiant beauty, his song, and the brilliant 
 prognostications of his coming reign. 
 
 "Yes," said Otho; "that is true poetry — 
 
 *Such is our Csesar; such, O happy Rome, 
 Thy radiant Nero gilds his Palace home; 
 His gentle looks with tempered splendour shine, 
 Round his fair neck his golden tresses twine.* " — 
 
 and, in the intimacy of friendship, he ventured to pass 
 his hand over the soft golden hair which flowed over 
 the neck of the proud and happy youth. 
 
 "How witty it is, and how powerful !'' said Petronius. 
 "Who could have written it?'' 
 
 Lucan gave a meaning smile. He had not been 
 dismissed from the Villa Castor with the other guests, 
 because the Emperor, although jealous of him, could 
 not help admiring his fiery, original, and declamatory 
 genius. 
 
 "You smile, Lucan," said Otho; "surely your uncle 
 Seneca — that grave and stately philosopher — could not 
 have written this sparkling farce?" 
 
 "Seneca?" said Vestinus; "what, he who grovelled 
 at the feet of the freedman Polybius, and told him that 
 the one supreme consolation to him for the loss of his 
 
AMUSEMENTS OF AN EMPEROR. l8l 
 
 wife would be the divine beneficence of the Pumpkinity 
 whom here he paints as an imbecile slaverer?" 
 
 "I think Seneca deserves to be brought up on a 
 charge of treason, if he really wrote it," said Tigellinus. 
 
 "Nonsense, Tigellinus," said Petronius; "you need 
 not be so sanguinary. The thing is but a jest, after 
 all. On the stage we allow the freest and broadest 
 jokes against the twelve greater gods, and even the 
 Capitoline Jupiter; why should not a wit jest harmlessly 
 upon the deified Claudius, now that he has died of 
 eating a mushroom?" 
 
 "You are right," said Nero; "the author is too witty 
 to be punished; and now I always call mushrooms *the 
 food of the gods.' But was Seneca the writer?" he 
 asked, turning to Lucan. 
 
 "I think I may say quite confidently that he was 
 not/' said Lucan, a little alarmed by the savage remark 
 of Tigellinus. In point of fact, he beheved that the 
 brochure had been written by his own father, Marcus 
 Annseus Mela, but he felt it desirable that the secret 
 should be kept. 
 
 "We all know that the Annaei are loyal," sneered 
 TigelUnus. 
 
 "As loyal, at any rate, as men who would sell their 
 souls for an aureus," answered the Spaniard. He looked 
 full at Tigellinus, who remembered the scene, and put 
 it down in his note-book for the day of vengeance. 
 
 But Petronius loved elegance, and did not care for 
 quarrels, and he tried to turn the conversation from 
 unpleasant subjects. "Lucan," he asked, "have you 
 written any verses about Nero? If so, pray let us have 
 the pleasure of hearing them." 
 
1 82 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Lucan was far from unwilling to show that he too 
 could flatter, and he recited the lines of colossal adula- 
 tion from the opening of the "Pharsalia." Even the 
 civil wars, he sang, with all their slaughter, were not 
 too heavy a price to pay for the blessing of having ob- 
 tained a Nero; and he begs him to be careful what 
 part of Olympus he chooses for his future residence, 
 lest the burden of his greatness should disturb the 
 equilibrium of the world ! * 
 
 Nero had just heard the deification of Claudius 
 torn to shreds with mordant sarcasm, but his own 
 vanity was impervious to any wound, and he eagerly 
 drank in the adulation which — with no more sincerity 
 than that which had been addressed to his predecessor 
 by the senate and people of Rome — assured him of the 
 honour of plenary divinity among the deities of heaven 
 in whom, nevertheless, he scarcely even affected to be- 
 lieve. 
 
 He turned to Petronius and asked him to recite his 
 poem on the Sack of Troy. Petronius did so, and the 
 Emperor listened with eager interest. It was a subject 
 which fascinated him. 
 
 "Ah!'' he said, "to see a city in flames — that would 
 be worth living for! I have tried to write something on 
 that subject myself." 
 
 All present, of course, pressed him to favour them 
 with his poem, and after a little feminine show of re- 
 luctance, and many protestations of mock modesty, he 
 read them, in an affected voice, some verses which were 
 marked in every phrase by the falsetto of the age. It 
 was evident that they had been painfully elaborated. 
 * Note 22. — Lucan's flatteries. 
 
AMUSEMENTS OF AN EMPEROR. 1 83 
 
 Indeed, as they looked at the note-book from which the 
 Emperor read they saw that the labor limcB had been 
 by no means wanting. The book, which afterwards fell 
 into the hands of Suetonius, was scratched and scrawled 
 over in every direction, and it showed that many a turn 
 of expression had been altered twenty times before it 
 became tinkling enough and fantastic enough to suit 
 Nero's taste. It was clear from the tone in which he 
 read them that the most bizarre lines were exactly those 
 that pleased him best, and they were therefore the ones 
 which his flatterers selected for their loudest applause. 
 
 " * Filled the grim homs with Mimallonean buzz* " — 
 
 repeated Lucan. "How energetic! how picturesque!'* 
 
 "He is laughing at you in his sleeve, Caesar," whis- 
 pered TigelHnus; "and he thinks his own most im- 
 promptu Hne far superior." 
 
 Lucan did not overhear the remark, and he pro- 
 ceeded to quote and praise the three lines on the river 
 Tigris, which 
 
 *' 'Deserts the Persian realms he loved to lave, 
 And to non-seekers shows his sought-for wave.* 
 
 Now those lines I feel sure will live." 
 
 "Of course they will," said Tigellinus, "long after 
 your poems are forgotten." 
 
 The young poet only shrugged his shoulders, and 
 turned on the adventurer a glance of disdain. Petronius, 
 however, who disliked and despised Tigellinus, was now 
 thoroughly disgusted by his malignity, and did not 
 hesitate to express his contempt. "TigelHnus," he said, 
 "if you are so rude I shall ask Caesar to dismiss you. 
 
184 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 What nonsense on your part to pretend to know any- 
 thing about poetry! You know even less than Calvisius 
 Sabinus, who confounds Achilles with Ulysses, and has 
 bought ten slaves who know all the poets by heart to 
 prompt him when he makes a mistake."* 
 
 TigelHnus reddened with ^nger, but he did not 
 venture to reply. 
 
 "For my part," said Senecio, "I prefer the line 
 
 *Thou who didst chine the long-ribb'd Apennine,' 
 
 not to speak of the fine effect of the spondaic, there is 
 the daring image." 
 
 "There is something finer than both," said Petronius, 
 and he quoted a line of real beauty which Seneca has 
 preserved for us in his "Natural Questions," and in 
 which Nero describes the ruffled iridescence of a dove's 
 neck: 
 
 "Fair Cytherea's startled doves illume 
 With sheeny lustre every glancing plume." ** 
 
 "Many," said the polished courtier, "have seen the 
 mingled amethyst and emerald on the necks of doves 
 and peacocks, but it has been reserved for Caesar to 
 describe it." 
 
 Somehow or other, in spite of all they said, Nero 
 was not satisfied. He had an uneasy misgiving that all 
 of them except Petronius — whom he knew to be genuinely 
 good-natured — were only foohng him to the top of his 
 bent. Not that this misgiving at all disturbed his con- 
 
 ,* Sen. Ep. 21. 
 
 ** Sen. Nat. Qucest. i. 5: "Colla Cytheriacse splendent agitata 
 columbse. Ut ait Nero Caesar disertissime." 
 
AMUSEMENTS OF AN EMPEROR. I 85 
 
 ceit. He was convinced that he was a first-rate poet, 
 as well as a first-rate singer and lyrist, and indeed a 
 first-rate artist in all respects. It was the thing of which 
 he was most proud , and if these people were only pre- 
 tending to recognise his enormous merits, that was simply 
 the result of their jealousy. 
 
 "Thank you, friends,'' he said. "What you say of 
 me, Lucan, is very kind, but" — he felt it necessary to 
 show his superiority by a little criticism — "I should not 
 recommend you to publish your poem just yet. It is 
 crude in parts. It is too Spanish and provincial. It 
 wants a great deal of polishing before it can reach the 
 aesthetic standard." 
 
 Lucan bowed, and bit his lip. He felt that among 
 these poetasters he was like a Triton among minnows, 
 and his sense of mortification was so bitter that he 
 could not trust himself to speak, lest he should risk his 
 head by insulting Nero to his face. 
 
 The group broke up. Only Petronius, Paris, and 
 Tigellinus remained. 
 
 "Petronius," said Nero, "you are a genuine poet. 
 What do you think of Persius and Lucan as poets?" 
 
 "Lucan is more of a rhetorician than a poet," said 
 Petronius, "and Persius more of a Stoic pedagogue. 
 Both have merits, but neither of them can say anything 
 simply and naturally. They are laboured, artificial, de- 
 clamatory, monotonous, and more or less unoriginal. 
 Their 'honeyed globules of words' are only a sign of 
 decadence."* 
 
 "And what do you think of my poetry?" asked the 
 Emperor, sorely thirsting for a compliment. 
 
 * Petron. Sat, i, "Melliti verborum globuli." 
 
1 86 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 "A Caesar must be supreme in all he does," said 
 Petronius, with one of his enigmatical smiles. 
 
 He rose, and bowed as he left the room, leaving 
 Nero puzzled and dissatisfied. 
 
 " Oh, Paris 1 " exclaimed Nero, flinging his arm round 
 the actor's neck, "you alone are to be envied. You are 
 a supreme artist. No one is jealous of you. When I 
 see you on the stage, moving the people at your will 
 to tears or to laughter, or kindling them to the most 
 delicious emotions — when I hear the roar of applause 
 which greets you as you stand forth in all your grace, 
 and make the huge theatre ring with your fine penetrat- 
 ing voice, I often wish we could change our parts, and 
 1 be the actor, and you the Emperor." 
 
 "You mock a poor mummer, Caesar," said Paris; 
 "but if I am to amuse you after the banquet to-night 
 you must let me go and arrange something with Ali- 
 turus." 
 
 Nero was left alone with Tigellinus. He yawned 
 wearily. "How tedious all Ufe is!" he said. "Well, 
 never mind, there is the banquet of the night to look 
 forward to." 
 
 "Yes," said Tigellinus, "and when we are heated 
 with wine we will wander out into the grounds; and in 
 the caves and winding pathways Petronius and Crispinilla 
 have invented a new amusement for you." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 "Do not ask me, Caesar, and you will all the more 
 enjoy its novelty." 
 
 ' "Yes, but our time here is rapidly drawing to a 
 close, and then comes Rome again, and all the bore- 
 dom of the senate, and of hearing causes, and enter- 
 
AMUSEMENTS OF AN EMPEROR. 1 87 
 
 taining dull people of consequence. And there I must 
 more or less play at propriety." 
 
 "Why must you, Caesar? Cannot you do exactly as 
 you like? Who is there to question you?" 
 
 "My mother, Agrippina, if no one else." 
 
 "You have only one reason to fear the Augusta." 
 
 "What is that?" 
 
 "Because, Caesar, as I have already warned you, she 
 is making much of Britannicus. I have reason to be- 
 lieve that she is also plotting to secure the elevation of 
 Rubellius Plautus or Sulla. She is not at all too old to 
 marry either of them, and both of them have imperial 
 blood in their veins." 
 
 "Rubellius Plautus?" asked Nero; "why, he is a 
 peaceful pedant. And that miserable creature Sulla 
 cares for nothing but his dinner." 
 
 "We shall see in time," said Tigellinus; "but mean- 
 while, so long as Britannicus lives " 
 
 "Finish your sentence." 
 
 "So long as Britannicus lives, Nero is not safe." 
 
 Nero sank into a gloomy reverie. He had not sus- 
 pected that the dark-eyed adventurer had designs as 
 deep as those of Sejanus himself. That guilty and in- 
 triguing minister of Tiberius was only a Roman knight, 
 and the whole family of Germanicus, as well as the son 
 and the grandson of Drusus, stood in the direct line of 
 descent as heirs to the throne. Yet he had for years 
 worked on with the deliberate intention of clearing every 
 one of them from his path, and climbing to that throne 
 himself. 
 
 Why should not TigeUinus follow a similar course? 
 He had persuaded Nero that he knew something about 
 
1 88 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 soldiership. He had made himself popular among the 
 Praetorian guards. Burrus might be got rid of, and 
 Tigellinus, by pandering to Nero's worst instincts, en- 
 couraging his alarms, and awakening his jealousies, might 
 come to be accepted as an indispensable guardian of his 
 interests, and so be made the Praetorian Praefect. Once 
 let him gain that position, and he might achieve almost 
 anything. Octavia would evidently be childless. Nero 
 was the last of his race. It would be just as well to get 
 rid, beforehand, of all possible rivals to his ambitious 
 designs. Plautus and Sulla might wait, but nothing 
 could be done till Britannicus was put out of the way. 
 It would then be more easy to deal with Agrippina and 
 with Octavia. 
 
 So he devised; and the spirits of evil laughed, know- 
 ing that he was but paving the road for his own head- 
 long destruction. 
 
 But that night no one was gayer and more smiling 
 than he at the soft Ionian festival, where they were 
 waited on by boys robed in white and crowned with 
 roses. It had been spread in the viridarium, a green 
 garden surrounded by trees cut and twisted into quaint 
 shapes of birds and beasts by the ars topiaria. The 
 larger dishes were spread on the marble rim of a foun- 
 tain, while the smaller ones floated among the water- 
 lilies in vessels made in the shape of birds or fish. By 
 one novel and horrible refinement of luxury, a fish was 
 caught and boiled alive during the feast in a transparent 
 vase, that the guests might watch its dying gleams of 
 ruby and emerald. When the drinking was finished 
 they went into the groves and gardens of the villa, and 
 the surprise which had been prepared for Nero was a 
 
AMUSEMENTS OF AN EMPEROR. I 89 
 
 loose sylvan pageant. Every grove and cavern and 
 winding walk had been illuminated at twilight by lamps 
 which hung from tree to tree. In the open spaces 
 Naiads were bathing in the lake, and leaving trails of 
 light in the water, and uplifting their white arms, which 
 glittered like gold in the moonlight; and youths with 
 torches sprang out of the lurking-places dressed like 
 Fauns or Satyrs, and danced with maidens in the guise 
 of Hamadryads, and crowned the guests with flowers, 
 and led them to new dances and new orgies and new 
 revelries, while their cries and songs woke innumerable 
 echoes, which mocked the insulted majesty of the night. 
 
 And in those very caves, four hundred years later, 
 there came and lived a boy a little younger than Nero 
 was, and amid the pleasances of the villas, which had 
 fallen to ruin, and in the lonely caverns high up among 
 the hills, he made his solitary home. He had deserted 
 the world, disgusted and disillusioned with the wicked- 
 ness of Rome. And once, when the passions of the 
 flesh seemed to threaten him, he rushed out of his cave 
 and rolled his naked body on the thorns where now the 
 roses grow. And multitudes were struck by his holiness 
 and self-devotion, and monasteries rose on every crag, 
 and the scene, once desecrated by the enchantments of 
 the sorceress Sense, were purified by the feet of saintly 
 men, and the cavern where young slaves had lurked in 
 the guise of the demons of the Gentiles is now called 
 the Holy Cave. 
 
 That boy of fourteen was Benedict. The name of 
 
I go DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Nero has rotted for more than eighteen centuries, but to 
 this day the memory of St. Benedict is fragrant as his 
 own roses; for 
 
 " Only the actions of the just 
 Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.'* 
 
Vespasian's farm. igi 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 Vespasian's farm. 
 
 "At secura quies, et nescia fallere vita, 
 Dives opum variarum, at latis otia fiindis, 
 
 Mugitusque boum, moUesque sub arbore somni, 
 
 Et patiens operum exiguoque assueta juventus, 
 Sacra Deum, sanctique patres." 
 
 ViRG. Georg. il. 467. 
 
 OcTAViA was left in the comparative desertion of the 
 Villa Castor, without even the homely companionship of 
 Vespasian's wife. The respectable guests had departed. 
 There was scarcely a person about her to whom she 
 could speak. As for her young husband, he treated her 
 with habitual neglect and open scorn. His conduct to- 
 wards her was due partly to the indifference which he 
 had always felt, partly to jealousy — lest he should be 
 thought to owe the empire to his union with her. He 
 therefore followed his own devices; and she desired no 
 closer intercourse with him, for she shrank from the 
 satyr which lay beneath his superficial graces. She was 
 best pleased that he should be out of her sight. The 
 void of an unloved heart was preferable to the scenes 
 which took place between them when Nero's worst 
 qualities were evoked by the repulsion which she could 
 not wholly conceal Accustomed to hourly adulation, 
 
IQ2 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 it was intolerable to him that from those who constituted 
 his home circle he never received the shadow of a com- 
 pliment. He was disturbed by the sense that those who 
 knew him most intimately saw through him most com- 
 pletely. His mother did not abstain from telling him 
 what he really was with an almost brutal frankness; his 
 wife seemed to shrink from him as though there were 
 pollution in his touch. 
 
 As there was Httle occasion for him to pay any re- 
 gard to conventionalities in the retirement of Subiaco, 
 he rarely paid the Empress even a formal visit — rarely 
 even crossed the bridge which divided one villa from 
 the other. 
 
 Octavia spent the long hours in loneliness. She 
 sometimes reheved the tedium of her days by sending 
 loving letters to her brother at Phalacrine, and some- 
 times summoned one of the young slave-maidens to sit 
 and read to her. While Nero associated with the most 
 worthless slaves, Octavia selected for her attendants the 
 girls whose modest demeanour had won her notice, and 
 whom she generally found to be Christians. Christianity, 
 though overwhelmed with slanders, was not yet sup- 
 pressed by law; and in the lowest ranks of society, 
 where no one cared what religion anyone held, the sole 
 reason which induced the slaves to conceal their faith 
 was the ridicule which the acknowledgment of it in- 
 volved. The Cross, which was in those days the gibbet 
 of the vilest malefactors, was to all the world an emblem 
 only of shame and horror. It was a thing scarcely to 
 be mentioned, because its associations of disgrace and 
 agony were so intense as to disturb the equanimity of 
 the luxurious. And when a Christian slave was taunted 
 
Vespasian's farm. 193 
 
 with the gibe that he worshipped "a crucified malefac- 
 tor," how could he explain a truth which was to the 
 Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness? 
 
 Octavia, whom sorrow had taught to be kind, was 
 gentle in her demeanour to her slaves. The multitude 
 of girls who waited on a patrician matron had a terrible 
 time of it when their mistresses happened to be in an ill 
 humour. The gilded boudoirs of the Aventine not un- 
 frequently rang with shrieks. As one entered the stately- 
 hall one heard the clanking chain of the ostiarius, who, 
 with his dog and his staff, occupied the little cell by the 
 entrance; and if a visitor came a little too soon for the 
 banquet he might be greeted by the cries which followed 
 the whistling strokes of the scourge, or might meet some 
 slave girl with dishevelled hair and bleeding cheeks, 
 rushing from the room of a mistress whom she had in- 
 furiated by the accidental displacement of a curl. The 
 slaves of Octavia had no such cruelties to dread. Lydus, 
 who kept her chair; Hilara, who arranged her robes; 
 Aurelia, who had charge of her lapdog; Aponia, who 
 adorned her tresses; Verania, who prepared her sandals, 
 had nothing to fear from her. There was not one of 
 her slaves who did not love the young mistress, whose 
 lot seemed less happy than that of the humblest of 
 them all. 
 
 And thus it happened that Tryphsena and others of 
 her slaves were not afraid to speak freely, when she 
 seemed to invite their confidence. From Britannicus 
 she had heard what Pomponia had taught him; she had 
 found from these meek followers of the "foreign super- 
 stition," that their beliefs and practice were inconceiv- 
 ably unlike the caricatures of them which were current 
 
 Darkness and Dawn, /. 13 
 
194 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 among the populace. Because all men hated them, 
 they were accused of hating all men; but Octavia found 
 that love, no less than purity and meekness, was among 
 their most essential duties. She was obliged to exercise 
 the extremest caution in the expression of her own 
 opinions, but she felt an interest deeper than she could 
 express in all that Tryphaena told her of the chief doc- 
 trines of Christianity. And though she could scarcely 
 form any judgment on what she heard, she felt a sense 
 of support in truths which, if they did not convince her 
 reason, yet kindled her imagination and touched her 
 heart. One doctrine of the Christians came home to 
 her with quickening power — the doctrine of the life 
 everlasting. In Paganism that doctrine had no practical 
 existence. The poets' dream of meadows of asphodel 
 and islands of the blest, where Achilles and Tydides 
 unbound the helmets from their shadowy hair, and 
 where the thin eidola of kings and heroes pursued a 
 semblance of their earthly life, had little meaning for 
 her. Like Britannicus, she was fond of reading the best 
 Greek poets. But there was no hopefulness in them. 
 In Pindar she read — 
 
 "By night, by day, 
 
 The glorious sun 
 Shines equal, where the blest, 
 
 Their labours done, 
 Repose for ever in unbroken rest."* 
 
 And in Homer — 
 
 "Thee to the Elysian plain, earth's farthest end, 
 Where Rhadamanthus dwells the gods shall send; 
 
 * Pind. OL II. 119. 
 
Vespasian's farm. 195 
 
 There mortals easiest pass the careless hour, 
 No lingering winter there, nor snow, nor shower; 
 But Ocean ever, to refresh mankind. 
 Breathes the shrill spirit of the western wind.'* 
 
 But she had only to unroll the manuscript a little 
 further, and was chilled to the heart by the answer of 
 Agamemnon to the greeting of Ulysses: — 
 
 "Talk not of reigning in this dolorous gloom, 
 Nor think vain words, he cried, can ease my doom I 
 Better by far laboriously to bear 
 A weight of woe, and breathe the vital air. 
 Slave to the meanest hind that begs his bread, 
 Than reign the sceptred monarch of the dead!" 
 
 And though Cicero had written his Tusculan disputa- 
 tions to prove the doctrine of immortality, had he not, 
 in his letters and speeches, spoken of that doctrine as 
 a mere pleasing speculation, which might be discussed 
 with interest, but which no one practically held? Yet 
 to these good Christians that doctrine was an unshake- 
 able conviction, a truth which consoled their heaviest 
 afflictions. To them the Eternal, though unseen, was 
 ever present. It was not something future, but a con- 
 dition of which they breathed the atmosphere both here 
 and now. To them the Temporal was the shadowy; 
 the Eternal was the only real. 
 
 While Octavia was thus silently going through the 
 divine education which was to prepare her for all that 
 was to come, Britannicus was supremely happy in the 
 Sabine farm. Its homeHness and security furnished a 
 delightful contrast to the oppressive splendour of the 
 Palace at Rome. There, in the far wild country, he 
 had none but farm labourers about him, except the 
 
 13* 
 
196 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 members of the Flavian family, who, on the father's 
 side, rose but little above the country folk. He was as 
 happy as the day was long. He could lay aside all 
 thoughts of rank and state, could dress as he liked, 
 and do as he liked, and roam over the pleasant hills, 
 and fish in the mountain streams, with no chance of 
 meeting anyone but simple peasant lads. With Titus 
 and his two cousins, young Flavins Sabinus and Flavins 
 Clemens, he could find sympathy in every mood, whether 
 grave or gay. Titus, with his rude health, his sunny 
 geniality, his natural courtesy — a boy "tingling with Hfe 
 to the finger tips" — was a friend in whose society it 
 was impossible to be dull. Flavins Clemens was a 
 youth of graver nature. The shadow of far-distant 
 martyrdom, which would dash to the ground his splendid 
 earthly prospects, seemed to play over his early years. 
 He had already been brought into contact with Christian 
 influences, and showed the thought fulness, the absence 
 of intriguing ambition, and the dishke to Pagan amuse- 
 ments, which stamped him in the vulgar eyes of his 
 contemporaries as a youth of "most contemptible in- 
 dolence." A fourth boy was often with them. It was 
 Domitian, the younger brother of Titus, destined here- 
 after to be the infamy of his race. He was still a child, 
 and a stranger unable to read the mind's construction 
 in the face would have pronounced that he was the 
 best-looking of the five boys. For his cheeks wore a 
 glow of health as ruddy as his brother's, and his features 
 were far softer. But it was not a face to trust, and 
 Britannicus, trained in a palace to recognise what was 
 indicated by the expression of every countenance, never 
 felt any liking for the sly younger son of Vespasian. 
 
VESPASIAN'S FARM. 1 97 
 
 Vespasian was proud of his farm, and was far more 
 at home there than in the reception rooms of Nero. He 
 was by no means ashamed of the humiUty of his origin. 
 As he sat in his Httle villa, he used to tell people that 
 his ancestor was only one of the Umbrian farmers, who, 
 during the civil war between Marius and Sylla, had 
 settled at Reate and married a Sabine maiden. Amazed 
 indeed would those humble progenitors have been if 
 they had been told that their great-grandson would be 
 an Emperor of Rome! Nothing made him laugh more 
 heartily than the attempt of his flatterers to deduce his 
 genealogy from a companion of Hercules. He had not 
 a single bust or waxen image of any illustrious ancestor 
 to boast of, but was proud that the cities of Asia had 
 reared a statue to his father, Sabinus, with the in- 
 scription, "To the honest Publican." 
 
 He delighted to recall the memories of Cincinnatus 
 and Fabricius and the old dictators, who had been taken 
 from the ploughtail, and to whom their wives had to 
 bring the single toga they possessed in order that they 
 might meet the ambassadors of the senate when they 
 were summoned to subdue the enemies of Rome. He 
 was never happier than when he took the boys round 
 with him to visit his horses and his cows, and even 
 Domitilla's hens. He delighted in the rude plenty of 
 the house, the delicious cream, the fresh eggs, the crisp 
 oatcakes, the beautiful apples at breakfast, the kid and 
 stewed fruits of the mid-day meal. Anyone who watched 
 those rustic meals would little have conjectured that, in 
 that low, unadorned room, with the watchdogs slumber- 
 ing before the hearth, they saw before them three 
 Emperors, two Consuls, and a Princess. Still less 
 
igS DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 would he have dreamed that one of them only would 
 die peacefully in his bed; that, of those five boys, four 
 would be the victims of murder, and one of martyrdom; 
 and that the younger Domitilla, though she did not 
 share her husband's martyrdom, would die in a bleak 
 and lonely island as a confessor of the faith. Our life 
 lies before us, and the mercy of a Divine Providence 
 hides its issues in pitchy night. 
 
 Vespasian alone of that little company was old 
 enough to feel in all its fulness the blessing of a 
 temporary escape from the horrible world of Rome, 
 which tossed like a troubled sea whose waters cast up 
 mire and dirt. He knew, as those lads could hardly 
 know, that it was a world of insolence and passion, of 
 treachery and intrigue, of ruthless cruelty and un- 
 fathomable corruption. He had seen the government 
 of it pass from a madman like Caligula to a half-dazed 
 blunderer like Claudius, and knew that the two had 
 been preceded by a Tiberius, and succeeded by a Nero. 
 One morning, when the weather did not permit them 
 to go out to their usual outdoor sports, the boys had 
 amused themselves with a genealogy of the Caesars, in 
 which they had become interested in consequence of 
 some questions about the descendants of Augustus. As 
 the blunt soldier looked at them while they bent over 
 the genealogy, he became very thoughtful. For that 
 Stem of the Caesars had something portentous in its 
 characteristics. It was a grim reflex of the times. 
 Here were Emperors who had married five or six wives, 
 and Empresses who had married four or five husbands, 
 and some of these marriages had been fruitful; and yet 
 the Caesars were hardly Caesars at all, but a mixed 
 
Vespasian's farm. 199 
 
 breed of ancient Claudii, Domitii, Silani, and of modern 
 Octavii and Agrippas. The genealogy showed a con- 
 fused mass of divorces and adoptions, and neither the 
 men nor the women of the royal house were safe. 
 Many of the women were adulteresses; many of the 
 men were murderers or murdered victims. Out of 
 sixteen empresses, six had been killed and seven 
 divorced. Julia, daughter of Augustus, after three mar- 
 riages, had been banished by her father for shameless 
 misconduct, and Tiberius had ordered her to be starved 
 to death at Rhegium. Could Augustus have felt no 
 anguish in his proud spirit, when he had to write to a 
 young patrician "You have committed an indiscretion 
 in going to visit my daughter at Baiae"? or when on 
 hearing that Phoebe, JuUa's freedwoman, had hanged 
 herself, he cried "Would that I had been the father of 
 that Phoebe^'? And, alas! what multitudes of his de- 
 scendants had equalled Julia alike in misery and shame! 
 Death and infamy had rioted in that deplorable family. 
 Well might Augustus exclaim, in the line of Homer: 
 
 "Would I had died unwed, nor been the father of children!" 
 
 When the people demanded the recall of the two Julias, 
 after five or six years of exile, he exclaimed in a burst 
 of indignation and anguish, "I wish you similar wives 
 and similar daughters." He described his wife Scribonia, 
 his daughter Julia, and his granddaughter Julia the 
 younger as "his three cancers."* 
 
 But while the boys were eagerly talking together, 
 and discussing those Caesars, and members of their 
 family, who from the time of JuHus Caesar downwards 
 
 * Note 23. — The Stemma Ccssarum. 
 
200 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 had been deified, Vespasian suddenly grew afraid lest 
 the same thought which struck him should strike them. 
 In those days he did not dream that he too should 
 wear the purple and die the apparent founder of a 
 dynasty. He was not, indeed, unaware of various 
 prognostics which were supposed to portend for him a 
 splendid fate. At Phalacrine, his native hamlet, was an 
 ancient oak sacred to Mars, which had put out a new 
 branch at the birth of each of the three children of his 
 father, Sabinus. The third, which represented himself, 
 grew like a great tree. Sabinus, after consulting an 
 augur, told his mother, Tertulla, that her grandson 
 would become a Caesar. But Vespasian shared the 
 feelings of the old lady, who had only laughed im- 
 moderately at the prophecy, and remarked, "How odd 
 it is that I am in my senses, while my son has gone 
 raving mad!" 
 
 Seeing that the boys were fascinated by the grandeur 
 of Caesarism, he rolled up the Stemma. "Do not be 
 ambitious, lads," he said. "Could the name oilmperator, 
 or the sight of your radiated heads upon a coin, give 
 you more happiness than you are enjoying here and 
 now?" 
 
 The advice of Vespasian was perfectly sincere. In 
 his homely way he saw too deeply into the heart of 
 things to care for the outside veneer. It was his mother, 
 Vespasia Polla — the daughter of a military tribune — 
 who, led on by dreams and omens, had forced him into 
 the career of civil honours. His brother obtained the 
 right to wear the laticlave, or broad purple stripe on 
 the toga, and the silver C on the boots, which marked 
 the rank of senator. Vespasian was unwilHng to lay 
 
VESPASIAN'S FARM. 20I 
 
 aside the narrow stripe, the angusticlave, which showed 
 him to be of equestrian rank. He only yielded to the 
 pressure, and even to the abuse, of his mother, who 
 asked him how long he meant to be the lacquey — the 
 anteambulo — of his brother. He had nearly thrown up 
 his public life in disgust, when during his aedileship 
 Gains had ordered the soldiers to cpver him with mud, 
 and to heap mud into the folds of his embroidered 
 magisterial robe, because he found the roads insuffi- 
 ciently attended to. He had practised the advice he 
 was now giving. 
 
 "My head has been struck on coins," said Britan- 
 nicus, with a sigh; "but I can't say that it has made 
 me much happier." 
 
 "You are as happy as Nero is," said Titus. "I am 
 quite sure that all the revels at Subiaco will not be 
 worth the boar-hunt we mean to have to-morrow." 
 
 "Clemens," said Vespasian, "Domitilla tells me that 
 yesterday morning you were learning my favourite poem, 
 the *Epode' of Horace about the pleasures of country 
 hfe, and the lines of Virgil on the same subject. As 
 we have nothing special to do this morning, suppose 
 you repeat the poems to us, while the boys and I make 
 z. formido for our next deer-hunt." 
 
 The boys got out the long line of string, and busied 
 themselves with tying to it, at equal distances, the 
 crimson feathers which were to frighten the deer into 
 the nets; while Flavins, standing up, recited feelingly 
 and musically the well-known lines of the Venusian 
 poet, whose Sabine farm lay at no great distance from 
 the place where they were living — 
 
202 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 "Blessed is he — remote as were the mortals 
 
 Of the first age, from business and its cares — 
 Who ploughs paternal fields with his own oxen, 
 
 Free from the bonds of credit or of debt. 
 No soldier he, roused by the savage trumpet, 
 
 Not his to shudder at the angry sea; 
 His life escapes from the contentious forum, 
 
 And shuns the insolent thresholds of the great." * 
 
 And when, to the great delight of his uncle, he had 
 finished repeating this poem, he repeated the still finer 
 lines of Virgil, who pronounces "Happy above human 
 happiness the husbandmen for whom far beyond the 
 shock of arms Earth pours her plenteous sustenance." "^^ 
 The boys talked together on all sorts of subjects; 
 only if Domitian was with them, they were instinctively 
 careful about what they said. For Domitian could never 
 forget that Britannicus was a prince. If Britannicus be- 
 came Emperor he might be highly useful in many ways, 
 and it was worth Domitian's while to insinuate himself 
 into his favour. In this he soon saw that he would fail. 
 The young prince disliked him, and could not entirely 
 conceal his dislike under his habitual courtesy. Domi- 
 tian then changed his tactics. He would try to be 
 Nero's friend, and if he could find out anything to the 
 disadvantage of Britannicus, so much the better. He 
 had already attracted the notice of two courtiers — the 
 dissolute Clodius Pollio, who had been a praetor, and 
 the senator Nerva, both of whom stood well with the 
 Emperor. Already this young reprobate had all the 
 baseness of an informer. But in this direction also his 
 
 * Hor. Epod. II. I ; Lord Lytton's version. 
 ** Virg. Georg.w. 458. 
 
Vespasian's farm. 203 
 
 little plans were defeated, for in his presence Britannicus 
 was as reticent as to Titus he was unreserved. 
 
 Britannicus was to have had a room to himself, in 
 consideration of his exalted rank, but he asked to share 
 the sleeping-room of Titus and Clemens. They went 
 to bed at an early hour, for Vespasian was still a poor 
 man, and oil was expensive. But they often talked to- 
 gether before they fell asleep. Titus would rarely hear 
 a word about the Christians. He declared that they 
 were no better than the worshippers of the dog-headed 
 Anubis, and he appealed to the caricature of the Domus 
 Gelotiana as though it proved the reality of the asper- 
 sions against them. He was, however, never tired of 
 talking about the Jews. He had seen Agrippa; he had 
 been dazzled into a boyish love by the rich Eastern 
 beauty of Berenice. The dim foreshadowing of the 
 future gave him an intense interest in the nation whose 
 destiny he was to affect so powerfully in after years. 
 Stories of the Jewish Temple seemed to have a fascina- 
 tion for him. But he was as credulous about the Jews 
 as the rest of his race, and believed the vague scandals 
 that they were exiles from Crete, and a nation of lepers, 
 and about Moses and the herd of asses — which after- 
 wards found a place in Tacitus and later historians. 
 
 Another subject about which he liked to talk was 
 Stoicism. He thought nothing so grand as the doctrine 
 that the Ideal Wise Man was the most supreme of kings. 
 He was full of high arguments, learnt through Epictetus, 
 to prove that the wise man would be happy even in 
 the bull of Phalaris, and he quoted Lucretius and Virgil 
 to prove that he would be always happy — 
 
204 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 " If to know 
 Causes of things, and far below 
 His feet to feel the lurid flow 
 Of terror, and insane distress, 
 And headlong fate, be happiness." 
 
 At all of which propositions Britannicus was inclined to 
 laugh good-naturedly, and to ask — much to the indigna- 
 tion of his friend — if Musonius was happy when he had 
 a bad toothache. 
 
 Finding him unsympathetic on the subject of the 
 Christians, Britannicus ceased to speak of them. On 
 the other hand, he soon discovered that Clemens knew 
 more about them than himself 
 
 "Are you a Christian, Flavins?" asked Britannicus, 
 when they were alone, after one of these conversa- 
 tions. 
 
 "I have not been baptised," he answered. "No one 
 is regarded as a full Christian until he has been ad- 
 mitted into their Church by baptism." 
 
 "Baptism? What is that?" 
 
 "It is the washing with pure water," said Clemens. 
 "Our Roman ceremonies are pompous and cumber- 
 some. It is not so with the Christians. Their symbols 
 are the simplest things in the world. Water, the sign 
 of purification from guilt, bread and wine, the common 
 elements of life, taken in remembrance of Christ who 
 died for them." 
 
 "And are the elders of these Christians — the pres- 
 byters, as they call them — the same sort of persons as 
 our priests?" 
 
 "I should hope not!" said Clemens. "They are 
 simple and blameless men — more like the best of the 
 
VESPASIAN'S FARM. 2O5 
 
 philosophers, and more consistent, though not so 
 learned." 
 
 The entrance of Domitian — whom they more than 
 suspected of having listened at the door — stopped their 
 conversation. But what Britannicus had heard filled 
 him with deeper interest, and he felt convinced that 
 the Christians were possessors of a secret more pre- 
 cious than any which Seneca or Musonius had ever 
 taught. 
 
 But the happy days at the Sabine farm drew to an 
 end. When November was waning to its close it was 
 time to return from humble Phalacrine and its russet 
 hills, to the smoke and wealth and roar of Rome. 
 
206 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 OTHO'S SUPPER AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 
 
 "Quoi cum sit viridissimo upta flore puella 
 Et puella tenellulis delicatior haedis, 
 Asservanda nigellulis diligentius uvis, 
 Ludere hanc sinit, ut lubet." 
 
 Catull. Carm, xvii. 14. 
 
 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 detec- 
 tion by slaying Junia had only been a momentary im- 
 pulse, such as could never have flashed across his mind 
 if it had not been inflamed by the furies of the amphi- 
 theatre. 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 be- 
 loved. 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 
 
OTHO S SUPPER AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 207 
 
 over with impunity. Onesimus was doomed to the 
 scourge, as well as to a trinundine * 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 determine 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 require- 
 ments 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 aestheticism, all the diseased craving in 
 Nero's mind for the bizarre, the monstrous, and the im- 
 possible; all the " opera-bouffe'' elements of his charac- 
 ter, with its perverted instincts as of a tenth-rate artist, 
 * A period of seventeeft days. 
 
208 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 were strengthened and stimulated by his intercourse 
 with Otho. 
 
 As a matter of course, the command of unhmited 
 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 sum- 
 mit 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 pre- 
 cious 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"; Tigel- 
 linus, 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- 
 praetor, Pedanius Secundus, the Prsefect of the city, and 
 Octavius Sagitta, a tribune of the people, whom Nero 
 liked for their dissolute manners. 
 
OTHO'S SUPPER AND WHAT CAMfi OF It. 50Q 
 
 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 fashion- 
 able 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 ex- 
 quisite workmanship, which represented Silenus lying on 
 a rock, with his head leaning against a tree which over- 
 shadowed 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. 
 
 Darkness and Dawn, /. I <J. 
 
2IO DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 The supper was no supper of Trimalchio, with its 
 coarse and heavy gluttonies. Everything was deUcate 
 and recherche. 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 gourmandiscj 
 for one was composed of the tongues of nightingales, 
 the other of the brains of Samian peacocks and African 
 flamingoes, of which tfie 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 Caesar, Otho set eighty different sorts of wine 
 before his guests, besides other kinds of deHcate 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 Caesar. 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 hoys 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 
 
OTHO'S SUPPER AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 211 
 
 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 breath- 
 ing 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 mate- 
 rialism 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.* 
 
 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 . 
 
 "Raged like a fire among the noblest names, 
 Imputing and polluting," 
 
 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 innuen- 
 does about his private life; or when it tried to blacken 
 with its poisonous breath the fair fame of a Psetus 
 Thrasea or a Helvidius Priscus. Yet another resource 
 
 * Note 24. — Otho's banquet. 
 
 14* 
 
2t2 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 was boundless adulation of the Emperor and abuse of 
 every other authority, particularly of the senate, of which 
 Nero, like Gains, was intensely jealous. It was on this 
 occasion that Vatinius surpassed himself by the cele- 
 brated remark, "I hate you, Caesar, 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 choraulae and the dances of An- 
 dalusian 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 extra- 
 vagance, and that night he bet four hundred sesterces, 
 not on each cast only, but on each pom^ of the dice. 
 
 It was understood that, though the supper and its 
 concomitant orgies were prolonged for hours, there was 
 to be no deHberate drunkenness. Claudius had habit- 
 ually 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 aesthetic breeding, 
 and they sought to stimulate the lassitude of satiety by 
 Other forms of indulgence. That night they proposed 
 
OTHOS SUPPER AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 213 
 
 to initiate Nero into a new sensation, by persuading 
 him to join the roysterers who, Hke 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 Popp?ea 
 Sabina. 
 
 Poppaea Sabina, though before her marriage to Otho 
 she had been married to Rufius Crispinus, the Praetorian 
 praefect of Claudius, and had been the mother of a 
 boy, still retained the youthful and enchanting love- 
 liness 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 per- 
 ruque 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 em- 
 brown 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 
 
^14 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 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 in- 
 flammable disposition of the youthful Caesar, 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 Poppaea, 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 Poppsea undergo the fate which she had 
 already inflicted on Lollia Paulina. By careful con- 
 trivance Otho had managed to keep Poppaea at a distance 
 from Nero. The task was easier, because Nero was 
 short-sighted, and Poppaea, either in affectation of mod- 
 esty, 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 beauti- 
 ful, 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 Cleo- 
 patra to kindle the love of Julius Caesar, and to hold 
 
OTHO^S SUPPER AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 215 
 
 empeiy over the heart of Marcus Antonius. Her features 
 were ahuost 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 exqui- 
 site 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 — 
 
 "Her vesture showed the yellow samphire-pod, 
 Her^rdle the dove-coloured wave serene;" 
 
 and, indeed, the sea-nymph's robe had already been de- 
 scribed by Ovid, speaking of the dress known as un- 
 dulata — 
 
 "Hie, undas imitatus, habet quoque nomen ab undis, 
 Crediderim nymphas hac ego veste tegi." 
 
 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 
 
2l6 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 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 Gains, 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, Poppaea," 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 Caesar as he steps across her threshold? Will he 
 be content with the croaking 'Salve, Ccesar!' of the 
 parrot whom you have hung in his gilded cage at the 
 entrance of the atrium?" 
 
 "Poppaea is lovely," said Otho, "and Nero is — what 
 he is. Would you endanger the hfe 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 Poppaea, 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 
 
OTHOS SUPPER AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 21 7 
 
 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 abso- 
 lutely obliged to do so. He said: 
 
 "You must not adopt these tragic tones, my sweet 
 Poppaea. 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 Poppaea 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 Poppaea; "but surely I have a right to ask that 
 when the slave sees the gilded lectica with its purple 
 awnings I may for one moment advance across the hall, 
 and tell Nero that Poppaea Sabina greets the friend of 
 her lord, and thanks him for honouring their poor house 
 with his august presence." 
 
 "Well, Poppaea," 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 dis- 
 pleasure against Otho on your lips." 
 
 So, when Nero arrived, Poppaea 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 atmo- 
 sphere, and every word and look and gesture, while it 
 
2l8 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 was meant to seem exquisitely simple, had been pro- 
 foundly studied with a view to its effect. Poppsea 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 Poppaea'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 Poppaea and was lost in ad- 
 miration at so superb a specimen of acting. His know- 
 ledge 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 Poppaea was to set a cygnet 
 beside a swan. Poppaea vanished the moment her greet- 
 ing 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 loveHest and most charming wife in 
 Rome; I have the coldest and least attractive." 
 
 "Let not Caesar 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 
 
OTHO'S SUPPER AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 2ig 
 
 enjoy the best banquet of his reign, until he had called 
 for his tablets, and written on them a message for Pop- 
 paea. "I am thanking your lovely lady for her entertain- 
 ment," 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 Poppaea 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 Poppoea 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 adven- 
 ture of the evening. When the revel was over, the 
 guests, instead of going home in pompous retinue at- 
 tended by their slaves, determined to enjoy a frolic in 
 the streets. "Flown with insolence and wine," they per- 
 suaded 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 expens- 
 iveness. Hence it was dangerous for unprotected per- 
 sons to go out at night, and the police had more than 
 
220 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 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* 
 That night the party of aristocratic Mohawks caught 
 several poor burghers, and amused themselves with ter- 
 rifying 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 sud- 
 denly 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 hap- 
 pened 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 dis- 
 tance. 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 
 * See Note 25. — Tossing in a blanket. 
 
OTHO^S SUPPER AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 221 
 
 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 liie lantern here; let us look 
 at a face which will be presumably pretty." 
 
 Junia shrank back, and Otho seized, and was at- 
 tempting 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 stag- 
 gering 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 
 
2 22 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 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 crest-fallen, 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 Mon- 
 tanus, 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 pru- 
 
OTHOS SUPPER AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 22^ 
 
 dence to * conceal his knowledge. Alarmed that he 
 should have struck and wounded the sacrosanct person 
 of a Caesar, 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 sen- 
 suous egotism. 
 
224 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 • 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 BROTHER AND SISTER. 
 
 "Hopes have precarious life: 
 They are oft bhghted, withered, snapped sheer off 
 In vigorous growth, and turned to rottenness; 
 But faithfulness can feed on suffering 
 And knows no disappointment." 
 
 George Eliot. 
 
 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 Epaphro- 
 ditus did not chance to bring with him the quaint boy 
 Epictetus; if the duties of Pudens summoned him else- 
 where, 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 sup- 
 porter, 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 of the Ludus de morte Claudii Ccesaris lying on 
 
BROTHER AND SISTER. 22 5 
 
 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 
 Caesarean funeral; he had been deified by the decree 
 of the senate; a grand temple had been reared in his 
 honour on the CoeUan 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 miser- 
 able 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 Ufetime, as it were to hck 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 
 
 Darkness and Dawn. /. ' 5 
 
226 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 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 in- 
 stantly 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 shoul- 
 ders. "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 asssume the manly toga."* 
 
 "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 praetexta 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 
 * Note 26. — Age of Britannicus. 
 
BROTHER AND SISTER. 227 
 
 too far. Do not forget that I am Emperor. When 
 Tiberius came to the throne there was a young prince 
 named Agrippa Posthumus. When Gains came to the 
 throne there was a young prince named Tiberius Ge- 
 mellus." 
 
 "The Emperor Gains 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 Pan- 
 dataria, 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; 
 
 15* 
 
22^ DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 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 : 
 
 "Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento; 
 Hse tibi erunt artes, pacisque imponere morem, 
 Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos." 
 
 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 de- 
 baucheries? He saw on every side of him a remorse- 
 less egotism, an unutterable sadness, the fatalism of in- 
 fidelity and despair. A poisoning of the blood with 
 physical and moral madness seemed to have become 
 
BROTHER AND SISTER. 229 
 
 the heritage of the ruling Caesars. 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 wduld he tell her about the infamous attack 
 
230 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 on their father's memory which he had seen on Nero's 
 table. He Httle 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 some- 
 thing 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 
 @edv "'OTcra^iav — "the goddess Octavia." * "I was think- 
 ing, 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 this 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 
 
 * A coin of Teos with this inscription is still extant. — Mionnet, 
 IV. 123. 
 
BROTHER AND SISTER. 2^1 
 
 less our enemy than she was. She has withdrawn her 
 spies. We are not worth the hatred of anyone 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 de- 
 formed, 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." 
 
 "Poppsea 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 
 
2^2 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 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 Flavins Clemen's." 
 
 "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. 
 
AMONG THE CHRISTIANS. 2;^^ 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 AMONG THE CHRISTIANS. 
 
 Avxixa 01 slg Xqiotov nsTiioxevxoxsg ji^Qrioxoi xs etoi xal 
 Isyovxai. — Clem. Alex. Stro?n. 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 establish- 
 ments. 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 sur- 
 roundings which showed that he at least had not plun- 
 dered 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 Em- 
 press; 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 
 
534 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 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 Pom- 
 ponia 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 eyewitness 
 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 in- 
 junctions 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 
 
AMONG THE CHRISTIANS. 235 
 
 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. Pomponia, who stayed with the Em- 
 press, entrusted Britannicus to the charge of Pudens, 
 who, though not yet baptised, was now a recognised 
 catechumen. He had been at Christian gatherings be- 
 fore, and was all the more glad to go this evening, be- 
 cause 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 faith- 
 ful 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 con- 
 gregation, and represented only a fraction of the entire 
 number of beHevers in Rome, who formed a multitude 
 which no single room could have accommodated. He 
 told him, further, that though the Jewish and the Roman 
 
236 DATOCNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 — or, as they called 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 coun- 
 tenances. 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 pos- 
 session 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 under- 
 standing. 
 
 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 in- 
 herited the haughty beauty of patrician generations; 
 
AMONG THE CHRISTIANS. 237 
 
 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-contr8l, 
 how would the pallid faces of those dandies have looked 
 like a fulfilment of the forebodings which even Horace 
 had expressed! 
 
 Notliing 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 smihng 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 Ufe, 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 In- 
 visible Presence of their Lord Himself. 
 
 First they prayed; — and Britannicus had never be- 
 fore 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 com- 
 munity of worship, were alike admissions into the 
 
2;^S DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 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 inter- 
 course 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, be- 
 ginning — 
 
 "Faithful the saying, 
 Great the mystery — Christ! 
 Manifested in the flesh, 
 Justified in the spirit; 
 Seen of Angels; 
 Preached among the nations; 
 Believed on in the world; 
 Received up in glory ! " 
 
 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 
 "angehcal 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 — 
 
AMONG THE CHRISTIANS. 239 
 
 "Awake thee, O thou sleeper, 
 And from the dead arise, 
 And Christ shall dawn upon thee, 
 To light thy slumbering eyes. * 
 
 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 heathen- 
 dom, 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, longsuffering, 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 trans- 
 
 * Eph. v. 14 (apparently the fragment of a hymn). 
 
2^0 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 fixed 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 startHng, 
 penetrating, appalling power; and although he was un- 
 able 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 im- 
 pulse 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, 
 
AMONG THE CHRISTIANS. 24 1 
 
 and they conveyed no meaning to any but the speakers, 
 who, in producing these barbarous tones, feh 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 irre- 
 sistible utterance, and, in another moment, through that 
 humble throng of Christians would have rung in impas- 
 sioned 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 
 
 Darkness and Dawn, /. 1 6 
 
242 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 boy the assembly sank into silence, and after two or 
 three moments the impulse left him. Panting, uncon- 
 scious, 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-un- 
 conscious boy into the house of Pomponia, where his 
 sister awaited him. Octavia was alarmed at the wild- 
 ness of his look, but the fresh air had already revived 
 him, "I am quite well," he said, as the Empress bent 
 anxiously oyer 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, Pom- 
 ponia, while he was at the gathering the Power came 
 
AMONG THE CHRISTIANS. 243 
 
 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. 
 
 16* 
 
244 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 BRITANNICUS AND HIS SONG. 
 
 "Even then 
 The princely blood flows in his cheek, he sweats, 
 Strains his young nerves, and puts himself in posture." 
 
 Shakspeare, Cymbeline, ill. 3. 
 
 Nero was chary of showing his bruised face. He 
 daily smeared it with the juice of a 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 con- 
 dition that she dared ask him no question. From Agrip- 
 pina 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 
 
BRTTANNICUS AND HIS SONG. 245 
 
 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. 
 
 "Caesar 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 in- 
 stant she recovered from her confusion. 
 
 "What Otho and your other boon companions do — 
 such as they are — is notorious; and when Caesar has a 
 black eye the event is hard to account for in any or- 
 dinary 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?" 
 
246 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Nero smiled a peculiar smile. "Not at all," he 
 said. "Why should I fear gods when I can make them 
 myself?"* 
 
 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. "Bri- 
 tannicus yet lives; I will take him with me to the Prae- 
 torian camp. I will see whether the soldiers will listen 
 
 * Note 27. — Making gods. 
 
BRITANNICUS AND HIS SONG. 247 
 
 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 re- 
 member that some day you may provoke me too far. 
 There are such persons as informers; there is such a 
 law as that of Icesa 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 incom- 
 parably superior to Britannicus. Agrippina herself had 
 encouraged the wide-spread 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 am- 
 bition 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 Praetorian 
 praefect. 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 bla- 
 zoning him as a resource wherewith to secure her ven- 
 geance. 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 youth- 
 ful 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, 
 
248 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 who, with a few other boys, were asked to meet Britan- 
 nicus. 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 in- 
 famous under four emperors, and who rose to the high- 
 est 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 Caesar's household, in pointing out the 
 guests, mentioned the rumour that Nervals 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 Chaldseans?" 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 
 
BRTTANNICUS AND fflS SONG. 249 
 
 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 Hcence 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 ac- 
 
250 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 cordingly 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 them- 
 selves 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 — 
 
 "A, finding some gold, left a rope on the ground; 
 B, missing his gold, used the rope which he found." * 
 
 "Piso Licinianus, you are to pay me the highest 
 compHment you can." 
 
 Piso was no flatterer, and did not like the com- 
 mand, but after a momenf s hesitation he quoted Horace's 
 
 lines — 
 
 "How great thy debt to Nero's race, 
 O Rome, let red Metaurus say, 
 Slain Hasdrubal, and Victory's grace. 
 First granted on that glorious day." 
 
 "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." 
 
 * Note 28. — Greek epigram. 
 
BRITANNICUS AND HIS SONG. 25 I 
 
 "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, Caesar," 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 com- 
 pliment instead of our grave Licinianus. But now, 
 Senecio, I order you to quote the epitaph which best 
 expresses your view of Hfe." 
 
 Senecio obeyed, and his selection was very char- 
 acteristic. 
 
 It was — 
 
 "Eat, drink, eojoy thyself: the rest is nothing."* 
 
 "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 Britan- 
 nicus. 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 gather- 
 
 * Note 29. — Epitaph, 
 
252 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 ing to put upon him a public insult by ordering him to 
 do anything which would cause a blush. He was there- 
 fore 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 Hcence 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 de- 
 mand 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 be- 
 coming seriously awkward, and many of the guests be- 
 trayed 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 
 
BRITANNICUS AND HIS SONG. 253 
 
 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 confla- 
 gration. 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." * 
 
 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 modem 
 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 dis- 
 playing 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 fill- 
 ing 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 
 * Note 30. 
 
254 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 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 distin- 
 guish 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 spon- 
 taneous 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 anyone else should 
 be admitted seemed like a reflection on himself. "They 
 call Britannicus as good as me!'' was a thought which 
 filled his Httle soul with spite and wrath. 
 
 "This is poor stuff," he said, in high dudgeon, pre- 
 tending to yawn in the most insulting way he could. 
 "Who would have expected mock heroics at the Sa- 
 turnalia?" Then he rose, and said, with a slight wave 
 
BRITANNICUS AND HIS SONG. 255 
 
 of the hand, "I am tired of this. I bid farewell to the 
 guests. You may go without ceremony." 
 
 Everyone 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 eye- 
 brow, they departed. Only Tigellinus remained. 
 
 "What does Caesar 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 Sej anus-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 Tryphsena. Usually she 
 read from the Roman poets, and Octavia was never tired 
 of hearing the finer odes of Horace, or the ^neid and 
 BucoUcs of Virgil. Sometimes she Hstened to the history 
 of Livy, and to the treatises of Seneca, which she liked 
 better than their author. But this evening Tryphsena — 
 between whom and her young mistress there was a con- 
 fidence 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 
 
256 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 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, Tryphaena," 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 in- 
 variably deserved the comprehensive epithet of frugu 
 How well would it be if the worthless multitude of the 
 slave population — the cunning veteratores, the impudent 
 verncB, the abject coprece, 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 
 
BRITANNICUS AND fflS SONG. 257 
 
 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 Paetus Thrasea as happy; but scarcely of an- 
 other except that of Pomponia — and Pomponia was a 
 Christian. 
 
 Tryphaena had just begun the following passage: — 
 
 "Finally, be ye all likeminded " 
 
 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 likeminded, compassionate, loving as brethren, 
 tender-hearted, humbleminded ; not rendering evil for evU, or revihng 
 for reviling; but contrariwise blessing; for hereunto were ye called, 
 that ye should inherit a blessing. For, 
 
 He that would love Hfe, 
 
 And see good days, 
 
 Let him refrain his tongue from evil. 
 
 And his lips that they speak no guile: 
 
 And let him turn away from evil, and do good; 
 
 Let him seek peace, and pursue it." 
 
 Britannicus listened in astonishment. "Who wrote 
 those noble words?" he asked. "It cannot be Chry sip- 
 pus; the Greek is too modem, and too unpoHshed. Is 
 this some new philosopher? Has something been re- 
 cently published by Cornutus or Musonius?" 
 
 "Perhaps you will see, if Tryphaena reads a little 
 further," said the Empress. 
 
 Darkness and Dawn. /. 17 
 
258 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 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, Tryphaena 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, Tryphaena," said Octavia, deeply moved. "I 
 would talk with my brother alone." 
 
 "A Christian writing!" said Britannicus again, as 
 the slave-girl quietly ghded out of the room. "Who 
 wrote it?" 
 
 "Tryphaena says it is part of a letter written to 
 Christians, who are scattered everywhere, by a fisher- 
 man, 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, start- 
 ing, 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 em- 
 
BRITANNICUS AND HIS SONG. 259 
 
 broidered 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 beUeves in them any longer? But they re- 
 present 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 mur- 
 dered; ourselves surrounded with perils; Nero on the 
 throne. Oh, Britannicus! wherein have we oflended?" 
 
 "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, for ever, though I see that Nero 
 
 17* 
 
26o DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 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 flat- 
 terers 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 ex- 
 pected time. 
 
 He was alone, and his thoughts naturally reverted 
 to the song of Britannicus, and to his own fierce morti- 
 fication. 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 rememberd 
 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 him- 
 self in the happy and radiant days of his early boy- 
 
BRITANNICUS AND HIS SONG. 26 1 
 
 hood, 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, "Klill 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 be- 
 tween 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, reck- 
 lessly 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 Poppaea 
 from his thoughts, return to the neglected Octavia, 
 
262 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 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 
 
BRITANNICUS AND HIS SONG. 263 
 
 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 
 downhillward 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. 
 
264 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 PERILS OF BRITANNICUS. 
 
 "Cast thine eye 
 On yon young boy. I'll tell thee what, my friend, 
 He is a very serpent in my way; 
 And, wheresoe'er this foot of mine doth tread, 
 He hes before me. Dost thou understand me? 
 Thou art his keeper." 
 
 Shakspeare, King John^ III. 3. 
 
 At this time a change came over the fortunes of 
 Onesimus. 
 
 Pudens had been dismissed from his post among the 
 excuhitors of the Palace, under the semblance of honour- 
 able 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 ac- 
 customed 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 Caesar's slaves, Onesimus heard a low voice singing 
 the burden of one of the Phrygian songs with which he 
 had been famiHar 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. 
 
PERILS OF BRITANNICUS. 265 
 
 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 ex- 
 claimed, "Can this be Onesimus?" 
 
 "Do you know my name, lady?" he asked in sur- 
 prise. 
 
 "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." 
 
266 DARKNESS ANB DAWN. 
 
 "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 com- 
 passion 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 Caesar'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 Caesar, 
 there lay before him the far nearer chances of eman- 
 cipation and riches, so that he would be more likely in 
 
PERILS OF BRITANNICUS. 267 
 
 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 /^w ///«;/ 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 Caesar 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 Ccesar's cobbler, he at once became a personage 
 of importance, and was flattered on every side. Onesi- 
 mus had much the same experience. Among those who 
 knew him he found that he had risen indefinitely by 
 
268 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 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 neces- 
 sary 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 mes- 
 sage to Locusta. She was allowed to move about the 
 Palace, but was under the nominal charge of the 
 guardsmen. 
 
PERILS OF BRITANNICUS. 269 
 
 It might well seem amazing that a youth whose dis- 
 position 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 Hfe of a young boy, who stood in his way, to 
 one who had unchallenged power over the life and 
 death of milHons 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 in- 
 evitably 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 Shakspeare re- 
 presents 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 
 
270 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 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 sur- 
 rounded 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 skrinking 
 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 un- 
 observed. 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 
 
PERILS OF BRTTANNICUS. 27 I 
 
 Julius PoUio; 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 under- 
 stood 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 ex- 
 pressed 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 
 
272 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 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 in- 
 stance known in which anyone had dared to interfere 
 between an Emperor and his victims. In the general 
 paralysis of servihty, in the terror inspired by the little 
 despicable human god, in the indifference to bloodshed 
 caused by the games of the amphitheatre, why should 
 anyone 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 in 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 any- 
 thing," he added, when Titus seemed inclined to ques- 
 tion him further; "hurry back, if you would save his 
 Ufe." 
 
 Titus hurried back, but the meal was quite informal, 
 
PERILS OF BRITANNICUS. 273 
 
 and Britannicus, hungry with exercise, had already 
 helped himself to the dainty set before him. 
 
 "Give me some of that fig-pecker/' said Titus des- 
 perately; "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 peed- 
 agogus, 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 can- 
 not 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 at- 
 tempt had been made upon his Hfe, and that it had 
 been partially frustrated by the faithfulness of his 
 
 Da7'kness and Dawn, /. 1 8 
 
274 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 friend. He had no doubt on the subject, when, a little 
 later, he was seized with violent pains. Happily, how- 
 ever, 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 ex- 
 cruciating 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 1?^' 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 at- 
 tendants 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 
 
PERILS OF BRITANNICUS. 275 
 
 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 re- 
 morse for the wrongs which she had inflicted on him, 
 that he did not shrink from her embrace. 
 
 Nero, too, sent messages of inquiry to "his beloved 
 brother" by his freedman, Claudius Etruscus. As he 
 heard them, the old spirit of Britannicus flashed out. 
 
 "Tell Caesar," 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 lightheaded. Claudius Etruscus," she said, 
 "you pass for an honest man. I pray you, do not men- 
 tion 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." 
 
 18* 
 
576 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 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 Cahgula 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 Hght, and, as he fixed 
 them on the face of Nero, they seemed to read his in- 
 most soul. 
 
 Nero averted his glance. He dared not look upon 
 his victim. Indeed, under that steady gaze, the con- 
 sciousness 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. 
 
PERILS OF BRITANNICUS. 277 
 
 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 Britan- 
 nicus, 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 in- 
 gratitude," 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 reflexion 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 freed woman 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, 
 
578 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 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 
 
PERILS OF BRITANNICUS. 2^^ 
 
 Onesimus to keep watch in concealment outside, and 
 make a noise if anyone 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 Caesar's life, Onesimus put on a black 
 lacerna, shrouded himself in a dark corner, hidden be- 
 hind 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 Britan- 
 nicus. 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 vio- 
 lently. Onesimus repeated the sound, which was imme- 
 diately taken up by a dog which belonged to one of the 
 freed women. 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, un- 
 
28o DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 fastened 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 freed- 
 men 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. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 Note i. Page i6. 
 
 The Palace of the Ccesars. — In this description of the Palace 
 of the Caesars, I chiefly follow Lanciani and Burn's Rome and the 
 Campagnay ch. viii. See, too, Statins, Sylv, iv. 26-31; Claudian, 
 De VI, Cons, Hon, 39-41. 
 
 Note 2. Page 25. 
 Lollia Paulina's jewels, — See Plin. H. N, ix. 58. 
 
 Note 3. Page 30. 
 
 Agrippina*s talking thrush. — "Agrippina, Claudii Principis, 
 turdum habuit, quod nunquam ante, imitantem sermones humanos, 
 cum haec proderem. Habebant et Csesares juvenes \i,e. Nero and 
 Britannicus] sturnum, item luscinias, Grseco et Latino sermone do- 
 ciles, prseterea . . . loquentes longiore etiam contextu," — Plin. H, N. 
 X. 59. 
 
 Note 4. Page 31. 
 
 Nero's genealogy, — Nero was, in the female line, ahnepos — 
 great-great-grandson — of Augustus. Britannicus was only the pro- 
 nepos — great-grandson — of Octavia (the sister of Augustus), and 
 great-nephew of Tiberius ; — 
 
282 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Augustus ^ Scribonia 
 
 I 
 
 Julia = Agrippa 
 
 I 
 
 Agrippina I. = Germanicus 
 
 I 
 
 Agrippina II. = Claudius 
 
 I 
 
 Nero 
 Octavia =: Mark Antony 
 
 I 
 
 Antonia Minor ==: Drusus, brother of Tiberius 
 
 I I 
 
 Germanicus Claudius = Messalina 
 
 I 
 
 Britannicus. 
 
 Note 5. Page 55. 
 
 Agrippina' s white nightingale, — Pliny says it cost more 
 than 40/. H. N. x. 43. 
 
 Note 6. Page 71. 
 
 The Bacchanalians. — The orgies of this pseudo-religious 
 body had been denounced and suppressed in B.C. 186. — See Livy, 
 XXXIX. 9-14. 
 
 Note 7. Page 72. 
 
 Nero's poetry. — The Hues of Persius, Sat. i. 92-105, have been 
 supposed to contain these quotations from Nero's poems. 
 
 Note 8. Page 82. 
 
 Seneca's flatteries. — The opening of Seneca's De dementia 
 abounds in this fulsome and impolitic flattery. 
 
NOTES. 28;^ 
 
 Note 9. Page 83. 
 
 For these self-criticisms of Seneca, see Epp. XLV. Lxxx. &c.; 
 De ViL Beat. 3. 
 
 Note id. Page 94. 
 Nero really made this jest. — Tac. Ann. xiv. 14. 
 
 Note ii. Page 98. 
 
 Epictetus. — No date in the life of Epictetus is certain; but as 
 he was certainly the slave of Epaphroditus, Nero's secretary, I take 
 no violent liberty in introducing him here. 
 
 Note 12. Page 99. 
 
 Slaves were not held culpable for what their masters or- 
 dered. — The sentiment which Petronius puts into the mouth of 
 Trimalchio — "Nee turpe est quod dominus jubet" — is echoed by 
 Seneca, "Impudicitia ... in servo necessitas est." 
 
 Note 13. Page 102. 
 
 The ass-headed god. — One of the ancient calumnies against the 
 Christians is that they worshipped a god with an ass's head named 
 Onokoites. See the writer's Lives of the Fathers, I. § V. Hence 
 the Christians were called Asinarii, and the ancients thought that 
 Jews also worshipped the ass. See Tac. Hist. v. 4 ; Plut. Sympos. 
 IV. 5, § 2; Diod. Sic. XXXIV. Fragm.; Jos. C. Apion. 11. 7. For 
 the slander as regards Christians, see Min. Fel. Octav. ix. 28; Tert. 
 Ad Natt. I. 14, Apol. 16. The celebrated graffito of "Alexamenos 
 adoring his god," known by the Germans as the Spott-Crucifix, 
 is now in the Library of the CoUegio Romano at Rome, in the 
 Miiseo Kircheriano. It was really found in the Gelotian Pceda- 
 gogiuniy but is probably of much later date than the reign of Nero. 
 
 Note 14. Page 105. 
 
 Due me. Parens, celsique Dominator poli, 
 Quoaimque placuit; nulla parendi mora est. 
 Adsum impiger. Fac nolle, comitabor tamen. 
 
 Cleanthes apud Senecam. 
 
284 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Note 15. Page 106. 
 
 Ancient wall-scrihhlings. — For the graffito alluded to see 
 note 13. The playful distich attributed to Britannicus is really 
 scrawled on a wall at Pompeii: — 
 
 "Admiror, paries, te non cecidisse ruina 
 Qui tot stultorum tsedia sustineas." 
 The graffiti ascribed to Titus are on the walls of the Domus Gelo- 
 iiana^ but are becoming fast obliterated. They were discovered in 
 1857. — See Lanciani's Rome) p. 121. 
 
 Note 16. Page 112. 
 
 The "Cyzicene room" of a luxurious Roman house or villa 
 faced the north, and opened by folding doors on the garden. The 
 younger PMny had such rooms in his villa. They were built for 
 warmth and sunlight. 
 
 Note 17. Page 114. 
 
 For a remarkable ^"^ unconscious prophecy of heathendom/' see 
 -^sch. Prom. Vinct, 1026-1029. Seneca's words are: — "Nemo 
 per se satis valet ut emergat. Oportet manum aliquis porrigat, 
 ahquis educat." — Sen. Ep. 52. 
 
 Note 18. Page 116. 
 
 The Fish.—lihQ initial letters of IXGYS , "fish," stood for 
 "Irjoovg Xgiorog Osov Ytog ScatrjQ , "Jesus Christ, the Son of 
 God, the Saviour." It was the commonest of ancient Christian 
 symbols. See Tert. De Bapt. l. ; Jer. Ep. 43 ; Aug. De Civ. Dei, 
 XVIII. 23; and the writer's Lives of the Fathers , i. § xvi. 
 
 Note 19. Page 122. 
 
 Arrest of Onesimus. — Some readers will recognise an incident 
 which really occurred in the life of Alypius, the friend of 
 St. Augustine, which the English reader may see narrated in my 
 Lives of the Fathers^ 11. 313. 
 
NOTES. 285 
 
 Note 20. Page 148. 
 
 Agrippas. — Ctdldren bom feet-first were called agrzppas, and 
 to be so bom was regarded as a certain augury of misfortune. — 
 PHn. H. N. VII. 6. 
 
 Note 21. Page 166. 
 
 Ancient dancing. — The allusions to the dancing of the panto- 
 mimic actors may all be foimd in Lucan's De Saltatione; Veil. 
 Paterc. 11. 83; Athen. xiv. 627-630; and other ancient writers. 
 
 Note 22. Page 182. 
 Lucan's daring flatteries may be read in Pharsal. I. 33-66. 
 
 Note 23. Page 199. 
 
 The Stemma Ccesarum. — For further facts and details about 
 the Caesarian family, see Champagny, Les Cisars^ n. "j^, and 
 passim. 
 
 Note 24. Page 211. 
 
 Oiho's banquet. — The details here described are derived in 
 every particular from Pliny, Suetonius, Seneca, and other ancient 
 writers. 
 
 Note 25. Page 220. 
 
 Tossing in a blanket. Sagatio. — Suet, OthOf 2; Mart. I. 4, 
 A case is mentioned in Ulpian of a boy who was killed by it. 
 Greek, 7ialfA,6g. 
 
 Note 26. Page 226. 
 
 Age of Britannictts. — There is some historic uncertainty about 
 the age of Britannicus. The proper date for assuming the toga 
 virilis was the end of the fifteenth year, but Nero had been allowed 
 to assume it soon after his fourteenth birthday (Tac. Ann. xii. 41). 
 In Ann. xn. 25 Tacitus says that Nero was two years older {biennio 
 majorem) than Britannicus; but from Xiil. 6 and 15, where we are 
 told that Nero was barely seventeen at the beginning of his reign, 
 
286 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 and that Britanniais was nearly fifteen when he was murdered, it 
 seems clear that triennio would be nearer the truth than biennio. 
 Eckhel, in his Doctr. Num. vi. 260, comes to the conclusion that 
 Nero was three years and two months older than Britannicus ; and 
 other circumstances seem to make this probable. Suetonius also 
 {Claud. 27) makes some admitted blunders. It seems likely that 
 Nero was born on Dec. 15, A.D. 37, and Britannicus on February 
 12 or 13, A.D. 41, on the twentieth day of his father's reign. On 
 this subject I must refer to Nipperdey on Tac. Ann. xil. 25 ; Orelli 
 on Tac. Ann. xii. 25, 41, xiii. 6, 15; H. Schiller, Gesch. d, 
 Romischen Kaiser reichs^ pp. 71, &c. 
 
 Note 27. Page 246. 
 
 Making gods. — Nero makes the remark in the text to Seneca in 
 the tragedy of Octavia: — 
 
 "Stulte verebor, ipse quum faciam, Deos." 
 
 Octav. Act. II. 450. 
 
 Note 28. Page 250. 
 
 Xqvoov avrjQ svqwv ihjts ^Qoxov, avtag 6 xqvoov 
 ''Ov Xljisv ovx svqcov, fjipsv ov svQs Pqoxov. 
 This epigram was once quoted to Coleridge as proof of the 
 condensation possible in Greek. He at once rendered it in the two 
 English lines:— 
 
 *'Jack, finding some gold, left a rope on the ground, 
 Tom, missing his gold, used the rope which he found." 
 
 Note 29. Page 251. 
 
 Pagan epitaphs. — For those quoted see Nov. Fiorentini, xxxiil. 
 (ap. 'DbYLmgQXf Judaism^ &c. n. 147; and Muratori, p. 1677). 
 
 Note 30. Page 253. 
 
 The magnificent verses sung by Britannicus are preserved by 
 Cicero (Tusc. Disp. in. 19), and were deservedly admired for their 
 
NOTES. 2^^ 
 
 force and rhythm. They end thus, with a striking specimen of 
 ancient rhyme: — 
 
 "Hsec omnia vidi inflammari, 
 Priamo vitam vi evitari, 
 Jovis aram sanguine turpari." 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
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 BEITISH AUTHOES 
 
 TAUCHNITZ EDITION. 
 VOL. 2778. 
 
 DARKNESS AND DAWN. BY F. W. FARRAR. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. II. 
 
DARKNESS AND DAWN 
 
 OR 
 
 SCENES IN THE DAYS OF NERO 
 AN HISTORIC TALE 
 
 R W. FARRAR, 
 
 AUTHOR OF THE *'LIFE OF CHRIST.'' 
 
 COPYRIGHT EDITION, 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES.-VOL. II. 
 
 LEIPZIG 
 BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ 
 
 1891, ()l 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 OF VOLUME II. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 "CLOTHO FERT FUSUM." 
 
 (continued.) Page 
 CHAPTER XXIV. Britannicus undergoes a new Ex- 
 perience 9 
 
 — XXV. Locusta 22 
 
 — XXVI. A Banquet and a Conversation . 31 
 
 — XXVII. Death in the Goblet 43 
 
 — XXVIII. The Last of the Claudii .... 48 
 
 — XXIX. Agrippina at Bay 54 
 
 — XXX. A private Trial 76 
 
 -— XXXI. The Interior of a Slave-Prison . . 92 
 
 — XXXn. Wanderings of an Outcast . . . 104 
 
 — XXXIIL Titus and the Vestal . . . . . 121 
 
 BOOK IL 
 "lachesis rotat!" 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. An evil Epoch 131 
 
 -^ XXXV. The Matricide . 140 
 
CONTENTS OF VOLUME II. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. Self-avenged , 
 
 — XXXVII. Victor over the Public Servitude 
 ~ XXXVIII. The Gladiators' School 
 
 — XXXIX. The Fight in the Arena 
 
 — XL. The Spoliarium . . 
 
 — XLI. The King of the Grove 
 
 — XLI I. The Massacre of Slaves 
 
 — XLIII. A Notable Prisoner . 
 
 — XLIV. A Supper at Vespasian's 
 
 — XLV. Poppsea Victrix . . 
 
 NOTES 
 
 Page 
 
 158 
 167 
 
 177 
 
 i8S 
 
 202 
 
 224 
 241 
 248 
 260 
 279 
 
BOOK I. 
 
 "CLOTHO FERT FUSUM." 
 
 (CONTINUED.) 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 BRITANNICUS UNDERGOES A NEW EXPERIENCE. 
 
 "For life, with all it yields of joy and woe, 
 And hope and fear — beUeve the aged friend — 
 Is just a chance of the prize of learning love; 
 How love might be, hath been indeed, and is; 
 And that we hold thenceforth to the uttermost 
 Such prize, despite the envy of the world." 
 
 Browning, A Death in the Desert, 
 
 It was New Year's Day in Rome. The day was 
 kept as a universal holiday. Everybody aimed at cheer- 
 fulness, and abstained from any word of evil omen. 
 Quarrels were suspended; calumny was hushed. Fires 
 were kindled on every side, and fed with scented woods 
 and leaves of odorous saffron. The gilded fretwork of 
 every temple-roof glimmered with twinkling reflections 
 of the sacred flames. All the people were clad in white, 
 and went in procession to the Capitol. The lictors were 
 provided with new fasces; the magistrates were clad in 
 new purple, and assumed, for the first time, their curule 
 chairs of ivory. The white oxen of Clitumnus were led 
 for sacrifice to the altar of Jupiter, their necks wreathed 
 with garlands. Friends exchanged presents, which, even 
 when they were of trifling value, yet served to show that 
 
10 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 they had not forgotten to express their love. Among 
 presents from Octavia, and Titus, and Pudens, and Pom- 
 ponia, and other friends, Britannicus, who had now re- 
 covered, was greeted by Epictetus with the customary- 
 gift of gilded dates — called strencs, whence the French 
 etrennes — and a little honey in its snowy comb. These 
 the poor lame boy had bought, with such copper coins 
 as he had been able to save, at the little market for 
 such trifles near the Porta Mugionis; and he had not 
 forgotten to bring a few sprigs of vervain, good-naturedly 
 given to him as an augury of blessing by one of the 
 priests at the half-forgotten shrine of Vacuna, on the 
 Sacred Way. But Britannicus had received more splen- 
 did presents than these. Agrippina had given him a 
 double-branched silver candelabrum, up the shaft of 
 which crept a wild cat towards two unsuspecting birds 
 perched on either dish above. But when he showed it 
 to Octavia she shuddered. To her fancy it seemed as if 
 Nero were the wild cat, and herself and her brother the 
 harmless birds. 
 
 Never had Britannicus and Octavia been more sad 
 than in the days which followed Nero's frustrated plots 
 to assassinate his brother. They knew that further at- 
 tempts would not be long delayed. On February 13 
 Britannicus would be fifteen years old, and it would be 
 impossible to withhold from him the manly toga. But 
 he felt sure that the sword was dangling by a hair 
 over his neck, and that he would not long be suffered 
 to live. 
 
 And thus, in the dawn of youth, he found himself 
 in a situation so terrible that it has shaken the fortitude 
 of many a full-grown man. Even the iron nerves of 
 
BRITANNICUS UNDERGOES A NEW EXPERIENCE. I 1 
 
 Cromwell were affected by the daily danger of assassi- 
 nation; and now Britannicus never sat down to a meal 
 without dread of treachery, and never went to bed with- 
 out a misgiving as to whether that sleep would not be 
 his last. From the latter terror Titus relieved him as 
 much as he could, by nightly drawing his own couch 
 across the door. Onesimus had told Titus that if any 
 deed of darkness were in immediate contemplation he 
 would be almost sure to hear of it from Acte. Yet, in 
 spite of all, the poor boy's mind might have been un- 
 hinged by the secret and manifold dangers with which 
 the hatred of the Emperor surrounded him, had it not 
 been for the lessons which he had heard from the 
 humble followers of the Gospel. Never could he forget 
 the awful expansion and dilatation of spirit which had 
 accompanied the emotion he had experienced at the 
 Christian gathering. At that moment he had felt a 
 foretaste of immortality. 
 
 And, happily for the Empress and himself, there 
 remained one more transcendent experience before the 
 fall of the thunderbolt which separated them from each 
 other. 
 
 The Ides of January were kept as a festival to 
 Jupiter, and the next day was also the anniversary on 
 which Octavianus had been saluted by the title of 
 Augustus. The day was therefore observed with various 
 ceremonies, and, as they were chiefly of a public char- 
 acter, it was easier for the children of Claudius to move 
 about with less observation than usual. They had long 
 desired to hear the words of one who had seen Jesus, 
 and on the morning of January 14 a letter reached 
 Octavia from Pomponia, conveying a cautious intimation 
 
12 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 that now their wish could be granted. Their young 
 companion Flavins Clemens was to visit the Palace in 
 the afternoon, and after they had supped with Aulus 
 Plautius they were to arrange the way in which the rest 
 of the evening should be spent. 
 
 When the supper was over, the two boys, Clemens 
 and Britannicus, disguised in the dress of humble slaves, 
 went with Pudens down the Velabrum and along the 
 bank of the Tiber, which they crossed by the island 
 and the Fabrician and Cestian bridges. The region in 
 which they found themselves was poor and squalid, and 
 was largely inhabited by Jews. The Jewish and Gentile 
 Christians at this early period worshipped in separate 
 communities, but they met together on so great an 
 occasion as the visit of an Apostle. But the laws about 
 assemblies and foreign superstitions were a two-edged 
 sword which might easily be wielded with fatal effect, 
 and it was desirable for the Christians to hold their 
 gatherings with as Httle publicity as possible, in order 
 to escape the hatred both of Jews and Pagans. This 
 meeting, therefore, was to be held at a remote spot in 
 the hollow of one of the arenarice, or sand-pits, and 
 those who attended it were to use one or other of the 
 Christian watchwords. They were to approach the place 
 in scattered groups and from different directions, while 
 scouts were stationed in the neighbourhood to give in- 
 stant signal of approaching danger. 
 
 Using these precautions, Britannicus and his attend- 
 ants found themselves among the latest arrivals at the 
 rendezvous. The winter darkness, deepened by the 
 overhanging sides of the tufa quarry, rendered it neces- 
 sary to have a few lights, but most of the assembled 
 
BRITANNICUS UNDERGOES A NEW EXPERIENCE. I3 
 
 Christians extinguished or concealed their lamps. The 
 dimness, the silence, the starry sky which overhung them, 
 the strained expectation, the signs of intense devotion, 
 made the scene overwhelming in its solemnity. At last 
 a little group of the chief Christian presbyters, headed 
 by Linus, was seen to approach. They passed under 
 the shadow of the cliffs, and emerged before the table, 
 on which one or two lamps were burning. Then the 
 presbyters divided to the right and left hand, and the 
 light fell full on the face and figure of one man who 
 stepped a pace or two to the front. 
 
 He was dressed, as was not unusual at Rome, in 
 Eastern costume. He was a man a Httle past the prime 
 of life. The hair which escaped from under his turban 
 was already sprinkled with grey. His dark eyes seemed 
 to be lighted from within by a spiritual fire; his figure 
 was commanding, his attitude full of dignity. His face 
 was a perfect oval, and the features were of the finest 
 type of Eastern manhood. When once you had gazed 
 upon him it seemed impossible to take the eyes from a 
 countenance so perfect in its light and spiritual beauty 
 — a countenance in which a fiery vehemence was ex- 
 quisitely tempered by a pathetic tenderness. His whole 
 appearance was magnetic. It seemed to flash into all 
 around him its own nobleness, and to kindle there that 
 flame of love to God and man which burnt on the altar 
 of his own heart. That such a soul should be con- 
 vinced of a truth seemed alone sufficient to convince 
 others. That such lips should testify to a fact rendered 
 all disbelief of the fact impossible to those who once 
 fell under his influence. That such a man could be the 
 herald of a new religion seemed like a certain pledge 
 
14 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 that the faith which he held must sooner or later over- 
 come the world. 
 
 In his aspect was something indescribably different 
 from that worn by the noblest philosophers of Rome. 
 On all sides, in the Roman amphitheatre and in the 
 Roman streets, you saw faces which were cruel, and 
 proud, and seamed with every evil passion; faces cun- 
 ning, and sly, and leering, and degraded; the slavish 
 faces of those who were slaves in soul, and the ignoble 
 faces of those whom an ignoble society had cowed by 
 its terror and degraded by its vice. Even in the senate 
 you saw noble lineaments on which servility, and care, 
 and a life spent under tyrants and in households where 
 every slave might be a potential enemy, had impressed 
 the stamp of gloom and fear. But in the face of this 
 Apostle there was softness as well as strength, and hope 
 as well as courage. His eyes shone with a joy which 
 seemed to brighten in the midst of affliction, as the stars 
 brighten in the deepening twilight. 
 
 As he entered the whole assembly rose to their feet 
 by a spontaneous movement of reverence, and then no 
 less spontaneously some of those present fell upon their 
 knees. But instantly his voice was heard, as, in an 
 accent of command, almost of sternness, he bade them 
 rise. 
 
 "Rise," he said, "brethren and saints. What homage 
 is this? We are men of like passions with yourselves. 
 I do not mistake your feelings. Ye think that such 
 reverence must be due to a disciple whom, unworthy as 
 he was, yet Jesus loved. But know ye not that every 
 true saint among you is nearer to Him now by His 
 spirit than it was possible for us to be in the days of 
 
BRITANNICUS UNDERGOES A NEW EXPERIENCE. I 5 
 
 His flesh? Has not our brother Paul taught you in his 
 preaching that your bodies are temples of the Holy 
 Ghost, who dwelleth in you, except ye be reprobate?'' 
 
 Then Linus rose and said, "Let us kneel and thank 
 God in prayer that He has suffered an Apostle of His 
 Son to visit us, and then we will join in a common 
 hymn/' 
 
 When the simple prayer was over they united their 
 voices in that earliest Christian hymn which has been 
 happily preserved for us by Clement of Alexandria. 
 They began, in accents soft and sweet and low — 
 
 "Shepherd of sheep that own 
 Their Master on the throne, 
 Stir up Thy children weak 
 With guileless hps to speak, 
 In hymn and song, Thy praise, 
 Guide of their infant ways." 
 
 Then the strain swelled louder — 
 
 **0 King of saints, O Lord, 
 Mighty, all-conquering Word; 
 Son of the highest God, 
 Wielding His wisdom's rod; 
 Our stay when cares annoy. 
 Giver of endless joy; 
 Of all our mortal race 
 Saviour, of boundless grace, 
 O Jesus, hear ! " * 
 
 They knelt down once more, and the strain of 
 thanksgiving rose among them, with no confusion in its 
 blended utterance, as they responded to the words of 
 their bishop. And when the voices ceased Nereus, the 
 slave of Pudens, said, after a brief pause, "O that John 
 
 * Note 31. Early Christian hymns. 
 
l6 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 of Bethsaida would tell us first of that Resurrection 
 whereof he is one of the appointed witnesses ! '^ 
 
 John rose, and gave them the narrative which long 
 years after he embodied in his Gospel. 
 
 He told them of the startling words of Mary of 
 Magdala on that first glad Easter morning; and how he 
 himself and Peter ran together to the empty tomb, ere 
 yet they knew the Scripture that He must rise again 
 from the dead. 
 
 He told them of the vision of Angels which ap- 
 peared in the tomb to Mary, and how Jesus had spoken 
 to her in the garden. 
 
 He told of the appearance to the Ten, and the 
 words of peace; and again, on the next Sunday, to the 
 Eleven, when He convinced the doubting Thomas, and 
 bade him to be not faithless, but believing. 
 
 He told them of the appearance on the shore of the 
 misty silver sea, and of His last behest to Simon Peter; 
 and he corrected the false impression as to what had 
 been said concerning himself, which had not been, as 
 had been mistakenly reported, that he should not die, 
 but "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to 
 thee?" 
 
 And as he spoke these words, in a voice which rose 
 like a divine melody, the attention grew more and more 
 rapt, and, as he ended, the awful, penetrating, thrilling 
 sound of the tongue began to be heard. But John 
 checked it by a gentle lifting of his hand, and Linus 
 said, "Let the spirits of the prophets be subject to the 
 prophets. Let us rather hear the witness of the Lord." 
 
 Then Hermas, slave of Pedanius Secundus, the City 
 Praetor, rose, and asked, "What meant the Lord by those 
 
BRITANNICUS UNDERGOES A NEW EXPERIENCE. 1 7 
 
 words, ^that he tarry //// / come' ? When should be 
 the day of His coming?'' 
 
 "That question we also asked," said John, "before 
 His death; and though He spake of signs of the times, 
 like the redness and lowering of the sky, yet He added 
 to us, ^Of that day and that hour knoweth no man — 
 no, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the 
 Father.'" 
 
 "And are there no signs of the time now?" asked 
 Linus. 
 
 "There are many," he answered, "by which we may 
 know that the coming of the Lord is even at the door. 
 I have walked through this Babylon, and have seen all 
 the splendour of her merchandise, as of Tyrus in old 
 days, and amid it all — slaves and souls of men. Yea, 
 and as I have witnessed all the cruelty and all the vile- 
 ness, like the scum of that seething caldron which the 
 prophet saw of old, I feel compelled to ask with him, 
 ^ Shall I not judge for these things?' saith the Lord; 
 * shall not My soul be avenged on such a nation as 
 this?' Yea, sometimes a voice seems to ring within me 
 which says, *Woe, woe! to the dwellers upon earth!' 
 The great tribulation must come of which the Lord 
 spake and the Antichrist must be revealed, and God 
 must accomplish the number of the elect." 
 
 "The night is drawing in, O brother, revered in the 
 Lord," said Linus; "and it were well that we should 
 speedily separate to our homes. But ere we part give 
 to us one word of exhortation of how we are to save 
 ourselves from this untoward generation." 
 
 The Apostle raised his hands towards heaven, and 
 his eye seemed to be lit with heavenly ecstasy as he 
 
 Darkness and Dawn. II. 2 
 
1 8 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 answered in this brief exhortation: "My children, love 
 one another. Love is the fulfilling of the law. There 
 is no fear in love. Perfect love casteth out fear, be- 
 cause fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made 
 perfect in love. And this commandment have we 
 from Him, that he who loveth God love his brother 
 also." 
 
 When he had thus exhorted them they broke out 
 with passionate jubilance in the hymn — 
 
 "Fisher of men, the blest, 
 Out of the world's unrest, 
 Out of sin's troubled sea 
 Taking us, Lord, to Thee, 
 With choicest fish, good store. 
 Drawing Thy nets to shore, 
 
 "Lead us, O Shepherd true; 
 Thy mystic sheep, we sue! 
 O path where Christ hath trod, 
 O way that leads to God, 
 O Word, abiding aye, 
 O endless Light on high, 
 O glorious Life of all 
 That on their Maker call, 
 Christ Jesus, hear." 
 
 All present knelt in prayer, ending with the united 
 utterance of the words that the Lord had taught; and 
 the great Amen rose Kke the low sound of distant thun- 
 der. Then the Apostle raised his hands and blessed 
 them. Again the Amen and the solemn Maranatha 
 rolled through the air like the sound of mighty waters, 
 and after a moment of deep stillness the assembly 
 peaceably departed. 
 
 Britannicus and his attendants, wishing to avoid 
 notice, waited for a time, until the twinkling streams of 
 
BRITANNICUS UNDERGOES A NEW EXPERIENCE. I 9 
 
 light from the torches and lanterns carried by the wor- 
 shippers grew fainter and more scattered. Hence it 
 happened that they were left the last in the arenaria, 
 except the little group of deacons and presbyters who 
 stood round John of Bethsaida. The young Prince had 
 been deeply moved by the look and by the words of 
 the Beloved Disciple. He wished to see him nearer, 
 and whispered to Pudens not to go until he had passed 
 them, for never yet had he seen so glorious a specimen 
 of lofty and holy manhood. 
 
 But the boy's heart thrilled with strange emotion as 
 the Apostle paused on his way, and, standing before 
 the little group, fixed his eyes upon his face, ap- 
 proached him, and softly laid his hand upon his 
 shoulder. 
 
 He motioned to all except Flavins Clemens to stand 
 aside, and he was left speaking to the two youths. 
 
 "My sons," he asked, "do ye believe in the Lord 
 Jesus Christ?" 
 
 The youths were silent, till Britannicus, who felt in 
 his heart the confidence of an exceeding peace, said — 
 
 "My father, I know not. All that you have said to 
 us is beautiful as a song of heaven. It stirs my heart; 
 it seems to give wings to my spirit; but I know too 
 little, and all is yet too strange." 
 
 "My son," said the Apostle, "go in peace. It is 
 given me to know who thou art; thy slave's attire does 
 not conceal thee from me. Nay, start not; none else 
 shall know. But the seed hath been sown in thy young 
 heart; it shall blossom and bear fruit in a life beyond. 
 For there is a baptism, not of water only, but of blood. 
 
20 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Would to God that thou mightest remain for the further- 
 ance of the kingdom of His Son; but it may not be. 
 And my message to thee is, *Be strong, and He shall 
 comfort thine heart, and put thou thy trust in the 
 Lord.' " 
 
 He laid his right hand gently on the young Prince's 
 head and blessed him, and his whole soul seemed to 
 thrill under that holy touch. 
 
 "And hast thou no word for me, my father?" said 
 Flavins Clemens. 
 
 The Apostle turned towards him, and kindly laying 
 his left hand on the boy's dark curls, he said — 
 
 "I say to thee, as the Lord said to another, 'And 
 thou too, my son, when thou wast young, thou girdedst 
 thyself and wentest whither thou wouldest; but when 
 thou shalt be old another shall gird thee and carry 
 thee whither thou wouldest not.' Thy life shall be 
 prolonged, and thou shalt rise to great things; but thy 
 heart shall be the Lord's, and many a year hence thou 
 too shalt be His witness. One of you shall see my 
 face no more, but the Angel of His Presence bless you 
 both." 
 
 He spoke, and passed out of their sight into the 
 gloom, leaving in their hearts a sound as of angelic 
 music, a light as of purple wings. Neither of them 
 spoke, or could speak. In silence and haste they made 
 their way back over the dark flowing river to the house 
 of Aulus Plautius. Flavins was conducted home by 
 faithful Christian slaves, while the escort of the Empress 
 accompanied her and her brother to the Palace, which 
 still rang with sounds of revelry. And that night Titus 
 
BRITANNICUS UNDERGOES A NEW EXPERIENCE. 2 1 
 
 wondered at the radiant serenity of the countenance 
 of his friend, and Brittannicus slept as sweetly as a 
 child; and as he slumbered the spirits of the blessed 
 dead seemed to keep guard over him, and he smiled to 
 hear strange snatches of immortal melody. 
 
22 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 LOCUSTA. 
 
 "Circe inter vernas nota Neronis." — Turnus, Ft. 
 
 Nero had been angered beyond measure by the 
 failure of both his attempts upon the life of his brother, 
 but he had also been a little terrified. A feeling of the 
 eternal sanctity of the moral law had scarcely ever found 
 a place in his slight and frivolous mind; but he was by 
 no means free from superstition. He did not believe 
 seriously in the gods; but he believed more or less in 
 omens, and for a time he wavered in the dreadful pur- 
 pose of committing his earliest unpardonable crime. 
 
 But he could not waver long. Britannicus was 
 rapidly approaching his fifteenth year. It was evident 
 that he was also developing new powers. He was already 
 nearly as tall as Nero, and while Nero's early beauty 
 was beginning to fade the face of Britannicus became 
 constantly nobler. All this Nero observed with deepen- 
 ing rancour, and to this was added a secret terror. He 
 began to fear lest the Praetorians should find out their 
 mistake in rejecting this princely boy for one who, in 
 spite of his small acomplishments, was so far his inferior. 
 He never visited Agrippina without noticing that in some 
 way she regarded Britannicus, if not as the mainstay of 
 her hopes, at least as the ultimate resource of her 
 vengeance and despair. 
 
LOCUSTA. 2^ 
 
 But it was Sophonius Tigellinus who had the chief 
 hand in goading Nero to the final consummation of his 
 guilt. The Emperor was not by nature sanguinary; his 
 cruelty was only developed amid the rank growth of 
 his other vices. 
 
 He was planning with Tigellinus a banquet of un- 
 usual splendour, which was to be held at the Feralia — 
 the Roman All Souls' Day, a festival in honour of the 
 dead — on February 7. 
 
 "You will have to give another banquet, Caesar," 
 said Tigellinus, "on the Ides (February 13)." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Because that day is the fifteenth birthday. of Britan- 
 nicus; and I presume that then you will let him assume 
 the manly toga." 
 
 "You are always dragging in the name of Britan- 
 nicus," said Nero. "I hate it, and I hate him." 
 
 "On the contrary," said the Praetorian; "I should 
 say that you love him very much. Who can tell how 
 soon he may be your successor?" 
 
 "My successor?" answered Nero, scowling. "What 
 do you mean?" 
 
 "I meant no offence, Caesar," said Tigellinus; "for- 
 give the faithfulness of a friend and an honest soldier 
 who loves you. Do you not see what a fine young 
 fellow Britannicus is growing? Octavia brings you no 
 children. He must in any case succeed you." 
 
 Nero paced the room, as he always did when he 
 felt agitated; and, after leaving his remarks to work, 
 Tigellinus added — 
 
 "Besides, is it not easy to divine the plans of the 
 
^4 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Augusta, with whom at present you are on such bad 
 terms?" 
 
 Nero strode up and down with still more passion, 
 and Tigellinus continued at intervals to heap fuel on 
 the flames of his fury. 
 
 "You heard the murmurs of applause which greeted 
 his insolent song the other night?" 
 
 Nero nodded. 
 
 "Do you think that the Praetorians are absolutely 
 loyal to you? I have heard them talking about Britan- 
 nicus among themselves. Pudens, I know, is a favourite 
 officer of theirs, and he adores Britannicus. Supposing 
 it came to civil war, do you think that you would be 
 quite sure to win?" 
 
 Nero still said nothing. 
 
 "Why not put an end to the difficulty? Rome is 
 sick at the thought of another civil war. Everyone 
 would be glad if you put your brother out of the way. 
 And really, why should you hesitate? You have at- 
 tempted it twice already, only you have been unlucky." 
 
 By this time the subtle tempter had worked the 
 Emperor into a frenzy of wrath and fear. The crime 
 had long been assuming shape in his mind, and in point 
 of fact he had already incurred its guilt. 
 
 "It shall be done on the Ides," he said. "Send 
 Julius Pollio to me." 
 
 Tigellinus struck while the iron was hot, and the 
 tribune was in attendance before Nero's rage had had 
 time to cool. 
 
 "Bring Locusta here at once," he said. 
 The tribune executed the command, and Locusta's 
 green eye gleamed even more balefully than was its 
 
LOCUSTA. 2 5 
 
 wont when the tribune ushered her into the Emperor's 
 chamber. 
 
 But Nero received them both with a burst of petulant 
 anger. 
 
 "You have failed me!" he exclaimed. "You are 
 traitors, both of you. While you are taking measures 
 to shield yourselves you leave me obnoxious to the 
 worst perils. I told you to provide me with a sure 
 poison." 
 
 "We were but anxious to avert suspicion, Emperor," 
 said Locusta, in the soft tones which involuntarily re- 
 minded the hearer of a serpent's hiss. "You know 
 there is a JuHan law against murder and poisoning." 
 
 The anger of Nero showed itself in mean, ignoble 
 ways, and, like a bad boy in a passion, he was not 
 ashamed to strike Locusta in the face. 
 
 "Don't talk of the Julian law to me, woman," he 
 said; "as if I was afraid of the laws! Make me a 
 poison which shall work like a dagger-stab, or you shall 
 be ordered off for execution to-morrow on the old 
 charges." 
 
 Locusta shrank from his blow, and for one instant 
 glared at him as though she would have liked to poison 
 him. But she knew his power, and felt sure of his re- 
 wards; so she merely said — 
 
 "Britannicus is such a strong, healthy boy, that the 
 task is less easy. But Caesar shall have his wish. I 
 have a poison here which will do the work." 
 
 "Try it, then, on some animal," he said. 
 
 "I dare say the tribune could procure me a kid," 
 said Locusta. 
 
 A slave was despatched to find a kid, and when the 
 
26 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 bounding, playful creature was brought Locusta dropped 
 some of the poison on a piece of bread dipped in milk. 
 
 The kid ate the bread and milk, and frisked no 
 more but lay down and curled up its Hmbs, which 
 quivered with convulsive twitchings. 
 
 "Leave the poison to work," she said, "and if Caesar 
 will summon me an hour hence the kid will be dead." 
 
 An hour later she was summoned. The kid lay on 
 the ground, feeble and with glazing eyes; but it was not 
 dead, and Nero was in the worst of humours. He 
 pointed to the little creature and said — 
 
 "Woman, you are trifling with me! Add henbane, 
 or hemlock, or any other infernal thing you like, to your 
 accursed poison. It must be made stronger." 
 
 Locusta dropped other ingredients into the phial, 
 and another animal was sent for. The slave brought a 
 little pig. Some of the poison was sprinkled on a leaf 
 of lettuce. The creature ate it, and in a few moments 
 died in spasms. 
 
 "That will do," said Nero, flinging to the woman a 
 purse of gold. "If all goes as I desire, you shall have 
 ample recompense. But breathe one syllable about this 
 matter, and you shall die under the scourge." 
 
 She went, leaving the phial in his hands. He struck 
 a silver bell, and ordered Tigellinus to be summoned. 
 
 "I have decided," he said to the Praetorian. "Britan- 
 nicus shall die." 
 
 "You will deserve the title of * father of your country,' 
 which you so modestly rejected," said Tigellinus. 
 "Augustus received that title on the Nones of February, 
 more than eighty years ago; doubtless the senate will 
 confer it upon you soon after the Ides." 
 
LOCUSTA. 27 
 
 "But how is the deed to be done?" asked Nero 
 gloomily. "I shrink from the business even if it be 
 necessary." 
 
 "WTiat are you afraid of, Caesar?" 
 
 "The voice of the people. It can shake the throne 
 of the greatest." 
 
 "How will the people know anything about it?" 
 
 "Britannicus has a prcegustator, just as I and Agrip- 
 pina have. If that wretch is poisoned too, everyone 
 will know what has taken place." 
 
 "His prcegustator is ?" 
 
 "A freedman named Syneros." 
 
 "In your pay, of course?" 
 
 Nero nodded. 
 
 "And you can trust him?" 
 
 Nero nodded again. 
 
 "Then leave the rest to me," said Tigellinus, "and 
 do not trouble yourself any further in the matter. If I 
 have your orders, regard the deed as done." 
 
 "I give no orders," said Nero; "but here is 
 Locusta's poison." 
 
 Glad of her success in having twice saved the Hfe 
 of Britannicus, Acte was more than ever determined to 
 be a watchful guardian over him. She was feverishly 
 anxious to ascertain every plot formed against him, and 
 had gone so far as to take a step of extreme peril. She 
 had heard that, in the reign of Tiberius, when evidence 
 had been wanted against the Consular Sabinus, three 
 persons of no less rank than senators had concealed 
 themselves in the roof, and looked down through Judas- 
 
28 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 holes, to report his conversation. Might she not use for 
 good the devices which had been perverted to such 
 deadly ends? At any rate she would try. She ascer- 
 tained from Tigellinus that Nero had been amusing him- 
 self by trying the efficacy of certain poisons, and he 
 mentioned this in answer to Acte's inquiries as to the 
 reason why his slaves had carried a dead kid out of 
 Nero's room. 
 
 But Acte learnt more by her other devices. The 
 rooms which she occupied happened to adjoin the 
 apartment assigned to Tigellinus; and by pretending a 
 desire for some small repairs she had ordered the 
 marble panelling of her room to be removed in one 
 corner, and a cupboard to be constructed behind it. A 
 person concealed in this recess could, by the aid of a 
 few holes perforated in the walls, hear what was going 
 on in the room of Tigellinus. Then she sent to Onesimus 
 the coin on which was the head of Britannicus, and 
 when he came to her room she concealed him in the 
 recess, and he overheard enough to make him suspect 
 that Britannicus was to be poisoned a week later. 
 
 The information was vague, and to act upon it was 
 perilous; but Acte told Onesimus to inform Titus, and 
 then to use their combined wit to defeat, at all costs, 
 the wicked plan. 
 
 And this Onesimus meant to do, and might have 
 done but for his own misconduct. 
 
 He was weak in character, and if he had gone 
 astray in the safe obscurity of the house of Pudens he 
 was liable to far worse temptations in the familia of the 
 Palace. All his old companions cringed to the hand- 
 some slave of Octavia, who might rise, as others had 
 
LOCUSTA. 29 
 
 done, to be an all-powerful freedman. With his youth, 
 his quickness, his good looks, who could tell whether 
 he might not even become a favourite of Caesar himself, 
 and have untold influence and power? Onesimus found 
 himself the centre of flattering attention in the slave 
 world both of the Palace and the city. He began to 
 think himself a person of importance. Was he not 
 under the immediate patronage of Acte, and, in order 
 to avoid scandal, had it not even been necessary to 
 make it known that he was her kinsman and foster- 
 brother, brought up under the same roof? 
 
 Onesimus was too unstable to withstand the com- 
 bined temptations by which he was surrounded. The 
 image of Junia might have acted as an amulet, but he 
 scarcely ever got an opportunity of seeing her, for 
 Nereus looked upon him with anything but favour. He 
 kept aloof from Christians, for he never heard them 
 mentioned except with contempt and hatred, and he 
 liked the atmosphere of compliment and pleasure. Slaves 
 naturally imitate the vices of their masters, and the 
 wicked world of the aristocracy was reflected in darker 
 colours in the wicked world of servile myriads. Fling- 
 ing all that he had learnt of morals to the winds, betting, 
 gambling, frequenting the lewdest shows of the theatre 
 and the most sanguinary spectacles of the games, and 
 for ever haunting the cook-shops, the taverns, and the 
 Subura, he spent his almost unlimited leisure in that 
 vicious idleness above which only the best slaves had 
 strength to rise. 
 
 And so it happened that at the time when he ought 
 to have been most on the alert he got entangled in a 
 low dispute at a drinking bout, and returned to the 
 
30 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Palace not only wounded and smeared with blood, but 
 also in a state of shameful intoxication. In this guise 
 Nero had seen him, and, without even knowing his name, 
 or anything about him, had furiously ordered him to be 
 taken to his steward, Callicles, for severe punishment. 
 He had again been scourged, put into fetters, thrust into 
 a prison, and fed on bread and water. This disgrace 
 was concealed from Acte, and while she was relying 
 upon his quick intelligence to convey a warning to 
 Britannicus, and to devise means of frustrating the plot 
 of Tigellinus, Onesimus lay sick, and shamed, and 
 fettered in a prison among the lowest of offending 
 slaves. 
 
A BANQUET AND A CONVERSATION. 3 I 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 A BANQUET AND A CONVERSATION. 
 
 "The citron board, the bowl embossed with gems, 
 And tender foliage wildly wreathed around 
 Of seeming ivy . . . whatever is known 
 Of rarest acquisition ; Tyrian garbs, 
 Neptunian Albion's high testaceous food. 
 And flavoured Chian wines with incense fumed. 
 To slake patrician thirst." 
 
 Dyer, Ruins of Rome, 
 
 We are far more likely to underrate than to ex- 
 aggerate the splendour of a great Csesarean banquet. 
 It differed wholly from the soft, luxurious, disreputable 
 feast of voluptuous debauchees at which we have been 
 present in the house of Otho. Nothing was allowed to 
 disturb its magnificent decorum. 
 
 Nero's feast was arranged in the highest style of 
 imperial grandeur. Many a gilded and ivory lectica, 
 borne by African slaves in rich liveries and surrounded 
 by crowds of freedmen and clients, had been carried 
 down the Sacred Way and the Street of Apollo; and if 
 any distinguished nobles looked through the curtains 
 the populace raised a cheer. The guests were set down 
 under the great arch of the state entrance. 
 
 The noblest senators were there, and the representa- 
 tives of the oldest families of Rome, and not a few who 
 were destined to wear hereafter the purple shroud of 
 
^2 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 imperial power. Most of them came dressed in togas 
 of dazzling whiteness, and there were few who did not 
 display the broad purple band of the senator, or at 
 least the narrower band of the Roman knight. The 
 knights were conspicuous by their large gold rings, the 
 senators by the crescent of silver or of ivory which they 
 wore in the front of their shoes. Those who, like Otho, 
 were professional dandies were clothed in the most 
 elaborate dresses, but nearly all the guests wore gay 
 tunics under their white togas, which, during the banquet, 
 they laid aside for the lighter and more elegant loose 
 dress of green, violet, or other vernal colours. Nero 
 himself received them in a paludament bordered with 
 golden stars. Agrippina was dressed in robes of rich 
 violet, and on her neck was a great opal from the spoils 
 of Mithridates. Octavia had arrayed herself in one of 
 the most costly dresses from the imperial wardrobe, and 
 her stola was of that amethystine tint the use of which 
 Nero afterwards reserved for himself alone. 
 
 But many of the other ladies were hardly less splen- 
 did in their attire. The necklaces which reached to 
 their breasts had often as many as fifty fine rubies de- 
 pendent from their links of gold. Some of them carried 
 fans of peacocks' feathers. Some were dressed in robes 
 variegated with soft and brilliantly coloured plumage; 
 the mantles of others had broad bands of gold sewed 
 across the folds at the breast; others wore robes of 
 interchanging sheen, or of the favourite mallow-colour, 
 or Coan dresses of fine linen, woven with gold thread. 
 The whole atrium looked like a bed of flowers, and 
 even the pavement flashed with the light of jewelled 
 feet. 
 
A BANQUET AND A CONVERSATION. ;^^ 
 
 When the guests entered the vast triclinium they 
 were almost dazzled with the display of splendour which 
 greeted them. Beautiful statues of youths stood round 
 the room, holding in their hands lamps of gold, which 
 filled the house with the fragrance of perfumed oil. 
 Other cressets of fantastic workmanship hung by golden 
 chains from the gilded fretwork of the roof, which was 
 so constructed that its aspect and colouring could be 
 altered between each course, and that scented essences 
 and little presents of flowers and ornaments could be 
 showered down upon the guests. The great triclinia 
 and sigma-tables of Mauretanian citron and ivory blazed 
 with gold and silver. The goblets from which the guests 
 drank were enriched with gems. The oldest and richest 
 wines of the Opimian, Falernian, and Setine vintages 
 stood cooling in vases full of snow, round which were 
 twined wreaths of ivy and of roses. In front of Nero's 
 seat was a superb candelabrum of soHd gold represent- 
 ing a tree with lamps hanging from its boughs like 
 golden fruit. It belonged to the Palatine Temple of 
 Apollo, and had been one of the spoils taken by 
 Alexander the Great at the sack of Thebes.* Among 
 the other ornaments of the table were a handled vase 
 of white and purple, for which Nero had paid a million 
 sesterces, and the myrrhine goblet which alone Augustus 
 had reserved for himself from the treasures of Cleo- 
 patra. There were also some of the vasa diatreta, 
 curious triumphs of art in which a reticulated shellwork 
 of pale blue was fastened by threads of glass to the 
 opalescent vase within. Even the sawdust which was 
 scattered over the poHshed floor was dyed with minium 
 * P in. iV. H. XXXIV. 8. 
 Darkness and Dawn, IL 3 
 
34 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 and breathed of saffron. Underneath the tables had 
 been sprinkled a mixture of vervain and maidenhair, 
 which was believed to promote hilarity in the guests.* 
 Vitellius, as he gloated on the veins of the thyine table 
 at which he sat, and the glories with which it was 
 laden, exclaimed, "If Jupiter and Nero were both to 
 invite me to dinner, I should accept the invitation of 
 Nero."** 
 
 Even the ancients had a custom closely analogous 
 to our "saying grace." Before the guests sat down, a 
 number of boys, in white robes of byssus, placed upon 
 the table figures of the lares, and carrying round a jar 
 of wine, exclaimed, "May the gods be favourable!" 
 
 When the ice had been broken by the usual com- 
 monplaces, there was no lack of animated and even 
 brilliant conversation among the most polished repre- 
 sentatives of a society in which conversation was an 
 art. Much of the talk, indeed, was trivial, and much 
 was scandalous. This was the inevitable result of a 
 tyranny which had driven even Hterature into such safe 
 ineptitudes as the imaginary conversations between a 
 mushroom and a figpecker, which had earned an im- 
 mense reward from the Emperor Tiberius. Seneca, 
 Burrus, and Paetus Thrasea, who were present and sat 
 at the same sigma, talked on the foreign affairs of the 
 Empire, canvassed the doings of FeHx in Palestine and 
 the movements of Tiridates in Armenia. Lucan was 
 eagerly discussing with Otho the sources of the Nile. 
 Not a few of the ladies were listening to stories of 
 magic and vampires and were -wolves told them by 
 
 * Plutarch, Sympos, I. ** Note 32. 
 
A BANQUET AND A CONVERSATION. 35 
 
 travelled youths from Athens or Ephesus, and gossip 
 amply filled up the talk of others. 
 
 Britannicus, with some of the youngest scions of 
 noble families, sat, instead of reclining, at a lower table 
 than the elder guests. Augustus had introduced, and 
 Claudius had kept up, the custom of young guests din- 
 ing on these public occasions in less state, and being 
 served with a less luxurious meal. 
 
 The boy had no suspicion of danger, for Acte, though 
 surprised not to have heard from Onesimus, did not 
 know that her purpose had failed in consequence of 
 the levity and folly of her foster-brother. The face of 
 the young Prince was radiant, for his heart was full of 
 peace. His whole soul seemed to be expanded by the 
 larger horizons which had opened before him since he 
 had learnt about the truths and promises of the new 
 faith. The light of the dawn, which shone for him upon 
 the distant hills, seemed to shed its rays even upon the 
 evil and troubled world. He maintained a pleasant talk, 
 broken by many a happy and innocent laugh. His peril 
 had been mercifully hidden from him, and on the pre- 
 vious night he had had a dream so happy, and so un- 
 like anything which he had imagined as possible, that 
 he hardly knew how to tell it to Titus and Clemens, 
 who sat on either side of him. 
 
 In his dream he had seemed to himself to be sink- 
 ing to sleep amid strains of melody more tender than 
 any which he had ever heard. And, while his soul was 
 thus lapped in Elysium, a winged youth, whose face 
 looked pure as the flowers of spring, and whose wings 
 were coloured like the rainbow, had come to him and 
 
 3* 
 
36 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 offered him his choice between purple with a diadem, 
 and a white robe with a wreath of lilies. He had 
 chosen the white robe, and with a radiant smile the 
 Vision dropped on the ground the purple robe, and 
 Britannicus saw that it was rent with dagger-thrusts and 
 stained with blood. Then the youth had taken Bri- 
 tannicus by the hand and led him through a vale of 
 fire unhurt into a pleasant land beyond. Bright hands 
 had there clothed him in the robe of shining white, 
 and had placed the wreath of Hlies round his hair. 
 After that he looked up, and on every side of him were 
 clouds of light, full of glittering faces; and two other 
 winged youths grasped him by the hands, and led him 
 along a vista of light towards a throne, which looked 
 like a sapphire; but, before he could see Who sat 
 thereon, he awoke in such an ecstasy that he lay quiver- 
 ing with joy till the music and the fragrance died away. 
 Never in all his life had he experienced such unutter- 
 able blessedness, and it seemed to him as if he could 
 never be unhappy again. 
 
 But while Britannicus was thus supremely happy the 
 lord of the banquet was miserable. How could he be 
 happy? On one side of him reclined his mother, once 
 so passionately fond of him, now bitter, furious, and 
 sarcastic — a woman whose life was poisoned by the dis- 
 appointment of her ambition. On the other side of him 
 reclined his wife, Octavia, young, beautiful, not un- 
 accomplished, but to him cold as death. He could buy 
 the venal love of as many as he chose, but he could 
 command no love that was not either purchasable or 
 shameful. The fires of Tartarus were burning on the 
 altar of his Penates, and his own heart was smouldering 
 
A BANQUET AND A CONVERSATION. 37 
 
 with secret crimes, which could only be shared with the 
 most villainous or the most despicable of mankind. 
 
 And of all the guests how few were even tolerably- 
 happy, except one or two of the boys at the table of 
 Britannicus! Under that thin film of iridescence what 
 abysses of misery filled the Stygian pool of the society 
 which lay beneath! 
 
 Among the guests that night was the young king 
 Herod Agrippa 11. He sat in a conspicuous position 
 at the highest table. As a boy he had been at Rome, 
 but this was the first time that he had been present at 
 any public gathering for many years. He had only just 
 arrived on a mission from Palestine. He had inherited 
 Chalcis, the little kingdom of his uncle Herod, but he 
 was anxious to add to this domain the city of Tiberias 
 and part of Galilee, where Herod Antipas had ruled, 
 and this year the Emperor granted his wish. Nero had 
 entrusted him to the care of Gallic, with whom he was 
 eagerly conversing in Greek, and whom he overwhelmed 
 with multitudes of questions. They spoke low, and, as 
 they reclined at the banquet side by side, there was 
 little chance of their being overheard, though their 
 conversation was often of that kind which was the more 
 interesting from its being somewhat dangerous. 
 
 "How gay Caesar's guests must be," said Agrippa; 
 "they are all smiles!" 
 
 "It is with many of them the fixed smile of a mask," 
 said Gallic. "They smile to hide their misery." 
 
 It was necessary for the success of Agrippa's mission 
 
38 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 that he should stand well at Rome, and know something 
 about the chief members of Roman society. He there- 
 fore asked Gallio the names and history of some of the 
 guests. We will follow his pointed fingers, and perhaps 
 the answers of Gallio may enable us to realise some- 
 thing more of the condition of things in Pagan Rome. 
 For Gallio did not spare a single reputation. He did 
 not require to invent. Malignity had no need to search 
 with candles. She only had to tell the truth, and there 
 were few guests there whose reputation did not wither 
 at her breath. 
 
 Agrippa first wanted to know something about the 
 ladies who were present, and Gallio drew caustic 
 sketches of Poppaea, on whom Nero's eyes were con- 
 stantly fastened, and of Calvia Crispinilla. Agrippa's 
 attention was next attracted by Domitia Lepida, whose 
 tutulus, or conical head-dress, it was the exclusive task 
 of a slave-maiden to adorn. 
 
 "That lady," said GalHo, "is the Emperor's aunt. 
 She used to neglect him, but now that he is Emperor 
 she worships the very ground on which he treads." 
 
 "And who is that lady in the sea-green Coan dress 
 whose hair seems to be powdered with gold-dust?" 
 
 "That is Junia Silana, nominally a bosom friend of 
 Agrippina, really her deadliest enemy. Observe that 
 lady near her, whose grey hairs are so elaborately dyed, 
 and her cheeks so thickly rouged, and who is dressed 
 with such juvenility. She is ^lia Catella. Would you 
 beheve that, though she is nearly eighty, she still 
 dances?" 
 
 "O temporal O mores!" said Agrippa. "That ex- 
 
A BANQUET AND A CONVERSATION. 39 
 
 clamation sufficed for Cicero a hundred years ago; but 
 he would want stronger expletives now." 
 
 "I will give you Horace for your Cicero. Did he 
 not sing — 
 
 "What has not cankering Time made worse? 
 
 Viler than grandsires, sires beget 
 Ourselves, yet baser, soon to curse 
 
 The world with offspring baser yet." 
 
 "Is there no honest and virtuous woman here?" 
 asked the young King. 
 
 Gallio pointed a little mockingly to the King's sister, 
 the beautiful Berenice, who had come with him to Rome. 
 She was now twenty -six, but had lost none of her 
 voluptuous loveliness. In her ears were earrings, each 
 formed of three orient pearls, and the famous diamond 
 on her finger — a gem of priceless value, her brother's 
 gift — blazed conspicuously at every movement of her 
 hand. 
 
 Agrippa blushed and bit his lips; and GalUo, always 
 courteous, added with seriousness, "There are some, but 
 not many. My brother, Seneca, is not compHmentary 
 to the ladies. He speaks of them as * animal impudens, 
 ferum, cupiditatum incontinens,' * which is, to say the 
 least, ungrateful of him, for our mother, Helvia, was 
 perfect; and our aunt, Marcia, gained him his earhest 
 honours; and his own wife, Paulina — she sits there — is 
 one of the Roman matrons who almost deserve the 
 obsolete epitaph, 'She stayed at home; she spun wool.' 
 I think, however, that Seneca exaggerates the number 
 of the ladies, who, he says, count the years not by the 
 consuls, but by the number of their divorced husbands." * 
 
 * De Const, Sap. 14. ** Sen. De Benef. m. 16. 
 
4a DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 "Point me out another such lady as Paulina," said 
 Agrippa. 
 
 "There is one," answered Gallio, bending his head 
 towards the Empress Octavia; "and there is another." 
 He pointed to a lady dressed simply in a white stola 
 beneath a light-blue palla, who wore no jewels except 
 the cameos which fastened the loops of her sleeve. It 
 was Antistia, the wife of Antistius Verus, the daughter 
 of Rubellius Plautus. "Antistia," said Gallio, "is as 
 pure and devoted a lady as you could find anywhere. 
 There, too, sits Servilia, daughter of Barea Soranus; 
 and yonder is Arria, wife of Paetus Thrasea. Pomponia 
 Graecina, wife of Aulus Plautius, is the sweetest and 
 noblest matron in Rome; but she avoids Court society, 
 and she is not here. Nor is Claudia, the fairest of 
 maidens, the daughter of King Caractacus." 
 
 "And who is that handsome and venerable old man 
 at the second table?" 
 
 "The handsome and venerable old man — his name 
 is Domitius Afer — is, I am sorry to say, a handsome 
 and venerable old scoundrel. He is, or rather was, the 
 greatest orator of his day — as the Emperor Tiberius 
 said, a born orator, suo jure diserius. But he has been 
 neither more nor less than an informer, and one of bad 
 character. He would have lost his head under Caligula, 
 but he pretended to be so thunderstruck and over- 
 whelmed by the mad Emperor's eloquence that he not 
 only saved his Hfe but rose into high favour. But it is 
 time for him to leave off making speeches. Whenever 
 he attempts a great oration now, half his hearers laugh 
 and the other half blush." 
 
A BANQUET AND A CONVERSATION. 41 
 
 "And the young man near him?" 
 
 "King," said Gallio, "I shall begin to think that you 
 are a physiognomist, and are picking out some of the 
 worst persons present. That is another informer; his 
 name is M. Aquillius Regulus. He is a fortune-hunter 
 as well as an informer. He has earned by infamy a 
 fortune of 60,000,000 sesterces. I had better tell you 
 at once that there are several of them nearly as bad. 
 That brazen-faced man is Suilius Nerulinus, who helped 
 Messalina to ruin Valerius Asiaticus. He was convicted 
 of taking bribes as a judge even in the reign of Tiberius. 
 And, worst of the whole company, there is Eprius Mar- 
 cellus, a splendid orator, but a man, as you see, of 
 savage countenance, whose eyes flash their fiercest flame, 
 and whose voice rolls its loudest thunder, when he is 
 denouncing any person of special virtue." 
 
 "Well," said Agrippa, "unless I am tiring your 
 courtesy I will turn to another table. Who is that ex- 
 tremely stout personage with a red face, bushy eye- 
 brows, and apoplectic neck, who is devouring his 
 dainties with such brutal voracity?" 
 
 "He is a very distinguished person named Vitellius, 
 chiefly distinguished, however, for eating and drinking. 
 He is descended from a cobbler and a cook. He began 
 his childhood with Tiberius at Capreae. His father set 
 up golden statues of the freedmen Narcissus and Pallas 
 among his household gods, by which merit he won a 
 statue on the rostra. Our friend then turned charioteer 
 to please Gains, gambler to please Claudius, and has 
 now curried favour with Nero by urging him to sing. 
 His domestic history is not amiable. He had by his 
 first wife a son named Petronianus, to whom she left 
 
42 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 her wealth. Vitellius made him drink a cup of poison, 
 which he says that the youth had prepared for himJ' 
 
 "I shall begin to believe," said Agrippa, "that the 
 Greek sage was right when he said, *Most men are bad.' 
 Why, Berytus would not show more dubious characters — 
 nor even Jerusalem." 
 
 "But there are some honest men," said Gallio, "as 
 well as virtuous women. Burrus is fairly honest; Fenius 
 Rufus is indifferent honest; Paetus Thrasea is honest, 
 though in these days even he has to dissemble; Hel- 
 vidius Priscus, Barea Soranus, and Arulenus Rusticus, 
 friends of Thrasea, are as honest as the day. So is 
 that old man Lucius Saturninus, who, strange to say, in 
 spite of his worth, has reached the age of ninety-three 
 without being either killed or banished." 
 
 "I will only ask you one more name. Who is the 
 man to whom Domitius Afer is talking?" 
 
 "His name is Fabricius Veiento. At present he is 
 only known as the editor of a book called 'Codicilli/ 
 which is immensely popular and is bringing him in a 
 fortune. It is composed of the spiciest libels against 
 every senator of note whom he ventures to attack. He 
 has found that one secret of getting rich is to pander 
 to the appetite for scandal, and half the people who 
 are talking so fast around us are whispering stories 
 which he has discovered or invented for them." 
 
 At this moment their conversation was rudely inter- 
 rupted. 
 
DEATH IN THE GOBLET. 43 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 DEATH IN THE GOBLET. 
 
 "Fratrum, conjugum, parentum neces, alia solita parentibus 
 ausi."— Tag. Hist. v. 3. 
 
 A CRY rang through the banquet-room! 
 
 It was the cry of Titus. Every guest started as if 
 a thunderbolt had fallen. In that guilty time, when 
 obscene wings flapped about so many gilded roofs, 
 when the sword dangled by a hair over so many noble 
 heads, when foes cut throats by a whisper, when any 
 day might expose a man to denunciation for imaginary 
 crimes by one of the slaves whom he regarded as his 
 natural enemies, any sudden movement, any unexpected 
 event, was enough to drive the blood from the blanch- 
 ing cheek. But when such a cry — so wild, so startling — 
 rang over the tumultuous sound of an Imperial banquet, 
 they knew not whether the very earth was not about to 
 open beneath their feet. 
 
 What had happened? 
 
 Britannicus, as we have said, was in no alarm that 
 evening. Of all times and places it seemed the least 
 likely to attempt his poisoning. The fact that at this 
 feast he had his appointed prcegustator , and that two 
 deaths would terribly reveal a crime, was, he thought, a 
 sufficient safeguard. 
 
 But these were the very reasons why Tigellinus had 
 
44 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 arranged that Nero's desire for his brother's murder 
 should be carried out that night. He fancied that no 
 one would suspect Nero of choosing a scene of such 
 festive splendour and unusual publicity for a crime so 
 dark. 
 
 The ingenuity of wickedness easily got over the dif- 
 ficulty about the prcegustator. This man was one of the 
 smooth, civil, plausible wretches who abounded at that 
 epoch. He was a Greek slave named Syneros, trained 
 in the worst vices and ready to sell his soul at any time 
 for a few sestertia. He handed to Britannicus a myr- 
 rhine goblet filled with some mulled Falernian, which he 
 tasted first. It had been purposely made so hot that 
 no one could drink it. The Prince gave it back, and 
 told Syneros to put some cold water to it. The slave 
 did so, and into that cold water — which he had hidden 
 in a vial of Alexandrian glass behind one of the coolers 
 full of snow — had been already dropped the deadly 
 potion which Locusta had given to Nero. 
 
 Britannicus drank it unsuspectingly, and Titus had 
 taken it up and drunk a little, when his eye caught sight 
 of Britannicus, and with the cry which had alarmed 
 those three hundred guests he had dropped the myrrhine 
 vase, crashing it to shivers on the mosaic floor. 
 
 For Britannicus had scarcely finished his draught 
 when with one wild look he clutched the arm of Titus, 
 and then, half supported by Clemens, sank speechless 
 and breathless from his seat. It seemed as if in one 
 instant the swift poison had pervaded all his limbs. His 
 last conscious thought had been for another. Titus re- 
 membered, with undying gratitude, that the clutch upon 
 his arm had saved his Ufe. He felt sure that with one 
 
DEATH IN THE GOBLET. 45 
 
 and the same flash of intuition Britannicus had recognised 
 that the draught was poisoned, and had tried to prevent 
 Titus from drinking it. 
 
 But when the guests turned their eyes to the table 
 where the young Prince was sitting they saw the terror- 
 stricken look on the faces of Titus and the other boys, 
 and Flavins Clemens supporting in his arms the white 
 and convulsed form of the son of Claudius. At that 
 spectacle many of them leapt from their couches, and 
 even began to fly in different directions. Who could 
 tell what charges of plots might be founded on such an 
 incident, and who might be involved in them? But 
 those who were more familiar with the mysteries of the 
 Court, though they had started to their feet, stood rooted 
 in their places with their eyes fixed on Nero, waiting 
 for some sign to guide or reassure them. 
 
 And then Nero showed the consummate coolness of 
 villainy which could hardly have been expected from so 
 young a murderer. He was short-sighted, but he could 
 very well guess what had happened, and he had his 
 little speech ready prepared. Indeed, he had been re- 
 peating it over to himself while he vainly endeavoured 
 to get up a conversation with his mother or his mfe. 
 Putting his emerald to his eye, * he raised himself on 
 one elbow from his soft mass of cushions, and said, 
 amid the dead silence — 
 
 "Oh, I see what is the matter. My brother Britan- 
 nicus, poor boy, has been afilicted from childhood with 
 the comitial disease. His epileptic fit will soon be over, 
 and all his senses will return. Pray resume your places, 
 
 * Plin. H, N, xxxvn. i6. 
 
46 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 my friends. Do not let the mirth of the banquet be 
 disturbed by this little accident." 
 
 Agrippina was in a ferment of alarm. She could 
 scarcely believe her ears. That ready He about the 
 epilepsy! She knew — and many of the guests knew — 
 that Britannicus was a fine strong lad, who had never 
 had an epileptic attack in his life. One thing only 
 could have happened. Britannicus, in whom rested the 
 last hopes of her vengeance and her ambition, must 
 have been poisoned by his brother. Infernal gods! was 
 it possible? Could this have been the deed of that 
 youth whom it seemed but yesterday that she had clasped 
 to her bosom as a lovely, rosy, smiling child? Panic, 
 consternation seized her. "How long," she thought, 
 "will he abstain from the prophesied murder of me, his 
 mother?" She panted; she shuddered in every limb; 
 she required all her efforts not to faint; she grew white 
 and red by turns, and those who were watching her saw 
 the cup of wine which she seized shake so violently in 
 her trembling hand that she spilled half its contents 
 over her bosom. 
 
 "She, at least, is as innocent of this as Octavia her- 
 self," whispered Seneca to Burrus. "But, oh! horror! 
 where will these things end?" 
 
 Octavia looked as though she had been turned to 
 marble. She spoke no word; she made no sign. Agrip- 
 pina had tried in vain to prevent her speaking counten- 
 ance from betraying the violence of her emotions; but 
 Octavia, young as she still was, and little more than a 
 child, had been taught from her earliest years to hide 
 her emotions under a mask of impassibility; and, indeed, 
 the blow which had thus fallen upon her was beyond 
 
DEATH IN THE GOBLET. 47 
 
 her power to realise. The awful grief struck her dumb. 
 One shrinking motion, one stifled scream, and she re- 
 clined there as though she were dead — as pale and as 
 motionless, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, conscious of 
 nothing, her white cheek looking all the more ghastly 
 from the crimson roses which circled her dark tresses 
 and fell twining over her fair neck. 
 
 But how should the mirth of the banquet be re- 
 sumed? The stereotyped smile on the features of Seneca 
 looked like a grin of anguish. The brow of Paetus 
 Thrasea was dark as a thunder-cloud. Clemens and 
 several of the Prince's boyish friends were weeping 
 audibly and uncontrollably, while Titus, already feeling 
 ill as well as terrified, was sobbing with his head on the 
 table. Nero himself in vain attempted a fitful hilarity, 
 which could wake no echo among guests of whom 
 many — 
 
 "Like the Ithacensian suitors of old time, 
 Stared with great eyes, and laughed with alien lips, 
 And knew not what they meant." 
 
 So dense a cloud fell over their minds that it was 
 a relief to all when, without waiting for the termination 
 of the banquet, Nero dismissed his guests, availing him- 
 self of the excuse that the comitial disease had always 
 been regarded as an evil omen, and that, though he 
 hoped his brother's attack would prove but slight, he 
 saw how deeply it had affected the spirits of his friends. 
 
 They had come to that superb feast in pride and 
 gaiety; they hurried home in horror and alarm. 
 
4$ DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 THE LAST OF THE CLAtHDII. 
 
 " Tu qiioque extinctus jaces 
 Deflende nobis semper, infelix puer, 
 Modo sidus orbis, columen Augustse domus, 
 Britannice." 
 
 Seneca, Octavia. 
 
 The poor young Prince was carried by the slaves to 
 his cubiculum. The poison had been like a dagger- 
 thrust; but he was not quite dead. He lay at first un- 
 conscious, his breast heaving with irregular spasmodic 
 sighs. Acte stole into his chamber, wept over him, strove 
 to revive him, and, if possible, to assuage his pangs. It 
 was too late. He did not recognise her. The moment 
 he could escape from the triclinium Titus came, and 
 found the slave-boy Epictetus sitting at the foot of the 
 couch, with his head covered. "He yet lives," said the 
 boy, raising for one moment a cheek down which, in 
 spite of every Stoic lesson, the tears chased each other 
 fast. Titus sat down by his friend, called his name, 
 clasped his hand, and wailed aloud without restraint. 
 One almost imperceptible pressure of the hand proved 
 that there was an instant recognition. A Christian slave 
 had secretly brought Linus into the room, which was 
 easy in so numerous a household; and bending over him 
 Linus sprinkled his brow with pure water, raising up his 
 
THE LAST OF THE CLAUDII. 49 
 
 eyes and his hands to heaven. None present knew what 
 it meant; but Britannicus knew. A lambent smile lit 
 his features for a moment, like the last gleam of a fad- 
 ing sunset, for he understood that he had been bap- 
 tized. 
 
 It was the last conscious impression of his young 
 life. The moment that the banquet ended, Octavia, still 
 in her splendid apparel, hurried wildly to the chamber. 
 It was a chamber of death. Already the incense was 
 burning, already the cypress had been placed before the 
 Propylaea of the Palatine. The boy lay there, silent, 
 noble, beautiful, pale as a statue carved in alabaster; 
 and Octavia disburdened the long-pent agony of repres- 
 sion in such a storm of weeping that her attendants 
 tried to lead her away. But she tore off her jewels, and 
 flung her arms round the corpse of her brother, and 
 laid her head upon his breast, and sobbed aloud. 
 Father, mother, brother, her first young and noble lover, 
 Silanus — all who had ever loved and cared for her were 
 gone. He was the last of all his race. The last male 
 Claudius, whose line was derived through that long and 
 splendid ancestry of well-nigh seven hundred years, was 
 lying before her on that lowly bed! 
 
 He was to be buried that very night, as though he 
 had been a pauper and not the noblest boy of an im- 
 perial aristocracy. There was something fatally suspi- 
 cious in the rapidity with which every preparation was 
 made. 
 
 The obolus for Charon was put under his tongue; 
 the fair young body was arrayed in its finest robe, was 
 laid on a bier, and was carried to the vestibule with its 
 feet towards the door; and as it lay there Titus brought 
 
 Darkness and Dawn. 11. 4 
 
50 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 in his hand a wreath of Hlies, which he had begged 
 from the keeper of the exotic flowers, and placed it on 
 the innocent forehead of his friend. He turned away 
 with the words, which could scarcely make their way 
 through sobs, "Farewell! for ever farewell!" But he 
 never forgot that boyish affection; and long years after, 
 when he was Emperor, he placed in the Palace a statue 
 of Britannicus in gold, and at solemn processions he 
 had an equestrian statuette of ivory carried before him 
 which represented the young prince whose love to him 
 had been far truer and closer than that of his own 
 brother. 
 
 Only for one instant did Nero venture to look on 
 his handiwork. He came into the vestibule in his festal 
 robes, his eyes heavy, the garland still on his dishevelled 
 hair, accompanied by Tigellinus and Senecio. 
 
 "I suppose he died in the fit?" he said to one of 
 the slaves. 
 
 "He breathed his last," answered the man, "within 
 an hour of being carried from the feast." 
 
 Something disquieted Nero. Furtively pointing his 
 finger towards the dead boy, he said something to 
 Tigellinus. 
 
 "A little chalk will set that right," whispered Tigel- 
 linus in reply, and he gave an order into the ear of his 
 confidential slave. "Leave the corpse a moment," he 
 said aloud to the attendants; "the Emperor wishes to 
 take a last look at his brother." 
 
 The slave of Tigellinus brought a piece of chalk; 
 and Nero, with his own hand, chalked over some livid 
 patches on the dead boy's face, which already betrayed 
 the horrible virulence of the poison. 
 
THE LA!5T OF THE CLAUDII. 5 I 
 
 "Why linger in the charnel-house?" said Senecio 
 affectedly. "Caesar, may we not have some more wine 
 to refresh our sorrow?" 
 
 They turned away, and, before they were outside 
 the hall, a light laugh woke a shuddering echo along 
 the fretted roof. 
 
 The bearers were on the point of lifting the bier 
 when Agrippina entered. The dullest of the spectators 
 could see that there was nothing feigned in her anguish 
 as she wept and tore her hair. She grieved for Bri- 
 tannicus, whom she had so irreparably wronged, but 
 hers was a wild and selfish grief, the grief of rage and 
 frustrated purposes. She had built upon this boy's Hfe to 
 keep her son in terror of her influence. She saw now of 
 what crimes Nero had already become capable. He 
 who in so brief a space had developed into a fratricide, 
 how long would it be ere he would spare the Hfe of an 
 obnoxious mother? She felt, even then, in a bitterness 
 of soul which could not be expressed, that even-handed 
 justice was commending the ingredients of the poisoned 
 chalice to her own lips. 
 
 The obsequies were not only disgracefully hurried, 
 but disgracefully mean. Every ceremony which marked 
 a great public funeral was omitted. There were no 
 lictors dressed in black; no siticijies with mourning 
 strains; no prceficcBj or wailing- women; no lessus, or 
 funeral dirge. Happily too, as some thought, there 
 were not the customary buffoons, nor the archimimus to 
 imitate the words and actions of the deceased. Though 
 he was the noblest of the noble, no liberated slaves 
 walked before his bier, nor men who wore the waxen 
 images of his long line of ancestors. No relations 
 
52 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 followed him — men with veiled heads, women with un- 
 bound tresses. Many a freedman, even many a slave, 
 had a longer funeral procession than the last of the 
 Claudii. 
 
 They bore him to his funeral amid storms of rain, 
 which seemed to betoken the wrath of Heaven. The 
 spectators were few, but those few saw by the strug- 
 gling light of their lanterns that where the rain had 
 washed off the chalk the pale face was marked with 
 patches of black. They saw this, and pointed it out to 
 one another in silence. 
 
 The last offices were paid in haste by the drenched 
 and half-frightened attendants. The body was laid on 
 the small rough pyre. Julius Densus was there, and 
 Pudens, and Titus, and Flavins Clemens. Nero had 
 not the grace to be present. With averted face Pudens 
 thrust in the torch. The rain had damped the wood, 
 and at first it would not kindle, but they threw oil and 
 resin into it. At last it blazed up; the body was con- 
 sumed: the glowing embers were quenched with wine. 
 A handful of white ashes in a silver urn, a sad 
 memory in a few loving hearts, were all that remained 
 on earth of the poisoned son of an Emperor of Rome. 
 
 But, when all were gone, a few Christians stole from 
 under the dense shadow of the trees in that lonely spot, 
 and bowed their heads in prayer, and sang a low hymn. 
 And among them was he whose hand of blessing had 
 rested on the young Prince's head, and whose voice of 
 prophecy had foretold his doom. 
 
 And to Pomponia Grsecina and her husband, and 
 to Pudens, Claudia, Titus, Epictetus, and one or two 
 faithful slaves, the world was poorer than before; but 
 
THE LAST OF THE CLAUDII. 53 
 
 in the heart of the hapless Octavia there was a void 
 which on earth could never be filled up. And her 
 heart would haply have broken altogether but for the 
 consolations which she received from Pomponia, and 
 from Tryphaena, her Christian slave. For Pomponia 
 had received a letter from Ephesus, where, at that time, 
 Paul of Tarsus was labouring; and the friend who wrote 
 it told her something of Paul's teaching respecting the 
 resurrection of the dead. One passage in particular, 
 which this friend quoted to her, rang in her memory: 
 "It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it 
 is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in 
 weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural 
 body, it is raised a spiritual body." And so, as there re- 
 mained for Octavia less and less hope of any Joy on earth, 
 glimpses were opened to her more and more of a hope 
 beyond the grave. And one passage in particular from 
 one of the old Jewish books, which Linus had pointed 
 out to Pomponia, seemed to her more lovely than any 
 fragment of lyric song, and constantly woke a sweet 
 echo in her thoughts. It was — 
 
 "Thy dead men shall live; together with my dead body shall 
 they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust; for thy 
 dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall bring to life her 
 shades." 
 
54 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 AGRIPPINA AT BAY. 
 
 "Caritas quae est inter natos et parentes dirimi nisi detestabili 
 scelere non potest." — Cic. Lcel. viii. § 28. 
 
 There were some who thought it an unparelleled 
 tragedy that Britannicus should not only have died so 
 young, but also at a banquet, and so suddenly, and by 
 the hand of a bitter enemy, and under his very eyes. 
 There were few in the Pagan world who realised the 
 truth that he who needed their shuddering pity was not 
 the boy who perished, but the youth who murdered 
 him. 
 
 At first Nero was alarmed by what he had done. 
 He thought that he would be haunted by the Manes of 
 the wronged Britannicus. He shunned Octavia, and if 
 he met her was forced to avert his glance. He faced 
 his mother with shy moroseness. He never dared to 
 sleep alone. The sound of a shaken leaf terrified him. 
 A thunderstorm, which happened a few days later, 
 drove him into a paroxysm of terror, during which, like 
 Gains before him, he hid himself under a bed, and 
 sent for the skin of a seal as a fancied protection against 
 the flame of heaven. 
 
 But it was not thus that he was to feel the wrath 
 of God. The doom was past, but the punishment de- 
 ferred. The most terrible part of his retribution was 
 
AGRIPPINA AT BAY. 55 
 
 that he was let alone to fill to the brim the cup of his 
 iniquity. Sin was to be to him the punishment of sin, 
 and the avenging scourge was put into the hand of his 
 own vices. The first fearful crime which he had com- 
 mitted ought to have lit up his dark conscience with its 
 fierce, unnatural, revealing glare. It did so for a mo- 
 ment, but only to leave him in deeper darkness. His 
 moral sense was hardened to a still deadlier callosity, until 
 he developed into the execration of mankind. 
 
 What helped him to this rapid obduracy was the 
 vileness and hypocrisy of the world around him. 
 
 The death of Britannicus had to be announced to 
 the senate. The eyes of Nero had to weep crocodile 
 tears, and the pen of Seneca to be employed in venal 
 falsities. No one could doubt the hand of Seneca in 
 the elegant pathos of the sentence which told the Con- 
 script Fathers that deaths so immature as that of Bri- 
 tannicus were subjects of such bitter grief that his funeral 
 had been hurried over in accordance with the ancestral 
 custom which forbade the protraction of anguish by 
 pubKc oration or funeral obsequies. 
 
 "I have lost the aid of my brother,'^ continued the 
 specious oration which Nero learnt by heart; "no hopes 
 are left to me save in the commonwealth. A prince 
 like myself, who is now the sole survivor of a family 
 born to the supremest dignity, needs all the love and all 
 the help of the senate and the people." 
 
 Even the semblance of sorrow was abandoned almost 
 before the cypress had been moved from the doors of 
 the Palatine. Nero was anxious to implicate others as 
 far as possible in the frightful responsibility which he 
 had himself incurred. Britannicus had left a consider- 
 
56 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 able heritage in houses, villas, and personal possessions, 
 which had come to him from his father and mother. 
 Nero, who as yet had not squandered a treasure which 
 might well have been deemed inexhaustible, had no 
 need of these things, and was eager to get rid of them. 
 He therefore distributed them among leading senators, 
 giving a pleasant villa to Seneca and a town house to 
 Burrus. He thought that gifts would serve as a sort 
 of hush-money, and both statesmen felt with inward 
 anguish that they were the price of blood. Seneca 
 was specially humiliated. He knew what men thought 
 and said of him in secret, and his own conscience could 
 not accept the facile excuse that it would have been 
 fatal to refuse a largesse which was meant to bind his 
 destiny irrevocably with that of the guilty Emperor. He 
 thanked Nero for his munificence, and acted as if no- 
 thing had happened. Yet the inward voice spoke to 
 him with unmistakable clearness. He called himself a 
 Stoic: he wrote grand eulogies of virtue and simplicity. 
 Ought he to have entered the magic circle of a court 
 steeped in licentiousness and blood? Ought he to have 
 yielded to the avarice which made his usury so noto- 
 rious? Would Paetus Thrasea have accepted gifts in- 
 tended to screen complicity with murder? Would such 
 gifts have been offered to the modest poverty of Cor- 
 nutus or Musonius? or, if so, would they not have faced 
 exile or death rather than accept them? Conscience 
 worked so painfully that he could not induce himself 
 to visit the villa which had been presented to him on 
 the death of Britannicus. "Alas!" he moaned sadly to 
 himself in the watches of the night, "it is a viscosum 
 heneficium — a kindness smeared with birdlime." 
 
AGRIPPINA AT BAY. 57 
 
 But the great mass of the Roman world, lying as it 
 did in wickedness, was pleased rather than otherwise to 
 hear of the death — which they all knew to have been 
 the murder — of the son of Claudius. The horrors of 
 the civil wars were still vivid in many recollections, and 
 knowing that rival princes rarely lived in concord, they 
 hailed with satisfaction the bold iniquity which had 
 succeeded in ridding them of a nightmare of the future. 
 The story of the murder of a young and innocent 
 prince, the only son of their late deified Emperor, 
 sounded rather ugly, no doubt; but did not nine-tenths 
 of them expose their own superfluous children? Had 
 not Claudius himself exposed the infant of his wife, 
 Petina? And what was death? Was it not a dreamless 
 sleep, which anyone might be glad to exchange for the 
 present state of things, and which many of them would 
 probably seek by suicide? 
 
 And why should Nero trouble himself any more 
 about a death which scarcely caused so much as a ripple 
 on the bitter and stagnant pool of Roman society? 
 On the contrary, he and all Rome felt a glow of con- 
 scious virtue when, a few days later, an order was given 
 to execute a knight, named Antonius, as a poisoner, 
 and pubHcly to burn his poisons. When Locusta heard 
 that fact she smiled grimly. But what had she to 
 fear? 
 
 There was one breast in which the earthquake of 
 excitement, caused by the murder of Britannicus, did 
 not soon subside. Octavia, in the depth of her anguish, 
 had known where to find something of consolation. Not 
 so Agrippina. To her also Nero had offered presents, 
 which she refused with disdainful sullenness. Her soul 
 
58 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 was full of madness. Was she to be totally defeated by 
 the slight, contemptible son on whom she had built all 
 her hopes? 
 
 Not without a struggle would she abandon the power 
 which it had been the object of her life to attain, and 
 the fabric of which she had with her own hand shat- 
 tered to the dust. 
 
 Suddenly as the Nemesis had come upon her, she 
 would not yet admit herself to be defeated. She was 
 rich; she would be yet richer. She had friends, and 
 she held many a secret interview with them. Octavia 
 might still become in her hands an engine for political 
 purposes, and Agrippina constantly embraced and con- 
 soled her. Every tribune and centurion who attended 
 her levees was received with extreme graciousness. She 
 paid her court to all the nobles of high birth and 
 promising ability. She thought that even now it was 
 not too late to create a conspiracy, and put a fitting 
 leader at the head of it. 
 
 But all her efforts were broken like foam on the rock 
 of the Emperor's deified autocracy and the unscrupulous 
 wickedness of the favourites by whom he was surrounded. 
 At the suggestion of Otho and Tigellinus, Nero dealt 
 blow after blow at the dignity of his mother. One day 
 she no longer saw the two lictors who attended her 
 litter, and was told that they had been discharged by 
 the Emperor. Soon afterwards she missed the accus- 
 tomed escort of soldiers who guarded her chambers, 
 and heard with sinking heart that they had been re- 
 moved. Worst of all, she was suddenly deprived of the 
 body-guard of tall, blue-eyed, fair-haired Germans, to 
 whom she had grown attached, and who were the most 
 
AGRTPPINA AT BAY. 59 
 
 splendid outward sign of her imperial station. And, as 
 though all this were not enough, at last the final thun- 
 derbolt was launched. She received a message from 
 her son that he had assigned to her, as her residence, 
 the house of his grandmother Antonia. She was dis- 
 missed from the Palace in which so many of her years 
 had been spent, in order that the courtiers who thronged 
 the audience-hall of the Emperor might have no excuse 
 for paying their respects at the same time to her. 
 
 Her feelings, as she left the chambers of the Palatine 
 for a private residence, must be imagined rather than 
 described. Her heart was too dry for tears. She felt 
 humihated to the very dust, and tasted the bitterness of 
 a thousand deaths. All hope of re-establishing her em- 
 pire over the heart of her son was gone. Thenceforth 
 he scarcely saw her. If he came to visit her, he came, 
 as though to evidence his distrust, amid a throng of 
 soldiers and centurions, did not speak to her in private, 
 and departed after a cold, hurried, and formal interview. 
 
 She felt how poisonous was the fruit of ambition by 
 which she had been allured. Her power had never 
 been more than the pale reflection of the imperial des- 
 potism, and after her breach with Nero it crumbled to 
 ashes. 
 
 From that moment she felt that the coloured bubble 
 of her life had burst. Never had she been so wretched. 
 Her exile at Pandataria had been but brief, and she 
 was then young, and she had many schemes on hand, 
 and might hope for immeasurable success. But now 
 her last arrow had sped from the string, and had fallen 
 useless to the ground. The cold shadow of her son's 
 displeasure blighted her whole being. She — in whose 
 
6o DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 honour coins had been struck; in whose name decrees 
 had run; under whose auspices colonies had been 
 founded; to whom kings and governors had once made 
 their appeal, and for whose ambition kingdoms had been 
 too small — suddenly found she was nothing and nobody. 
 Even such a creature as Calvia Crispinilla had more 
 influence, and was more sought after than she. The 
 house of Antonia, in which she lived, was shunned like 
 a lazar-house by all who wished to stand well with Nero. 
 No one visited her, no one consoled her, no one helped 
 to dissipate her weariness. The only exceptions were a 
 few ladies whom she knew too well to trust. They did 
 not come to see her out of affection, but because they 
 hated her, and liked to annoy her with the cold curiosity 
 of an insulting pity. Among these was Junia Silana. 
 In old days she had been a bosom-friend of the Augusta, 
 but the ostensible friendship gave ample opportunity 
 for feline amenities on both sides. Junia had been the 
 wife of the handsome Silius, who had fallen a victim to 
 the love of Messalina. In her early widowhood she had 
 been sought in marriage by Sextius Africanus, but Agrip- 
 pina, not wishing to see him made too powerful by the 
 ample wealth of the childless Silana, had confidentially 
 dissuaded him from the marriage, by telling him that 
 Silana was a woman of dissolute character, and was now 
 getting on in years. The secret had reached the ears 
 of Silana, and while openly she continued to speak of 
 her "sweetest and dearest Agrippina," she vowed an ex- 
 emplary revenge. 
 
 And now that the time seemed ripe, she matured 
 her plans. 
 
 It would be useless to trump up the old charges 
 
AGRIPPINA AT BAY. 6 1 
 
 that Agrippina mourned the murder of Britannicus, or 
 spread abroad the wrongs of Octavia. She determined 
 to devise something entirely new, and to charge Agrip- 
 pina with the design of marrying and forming a con- 
 spiracy with RubelHus Plautus, who, hke Nero, was, on 
 the mother's side, a great-great-grandson of the deified 
 Augustus. Silana sent two of her freedmen, Iturius and 
 Calvisius, with this intelligence to Atimetus, a freedman 
 of Domitia, Nero's aunt. Atimetus had once been a 
 fellow-slave with Paris. He went to his old friend, and 
 urged him to go at once to Nero, and to denounce the 
 supposed plot with all his consummate vehemence and 
 skill. 
 
 The actor was not naturally a villain, but he had 
 been trained in an abominable school, and had erased 
 the words "ought" and "ought not" from his vocabulary 
 as completely as most of his contemporaries. That night, 
 at a late hour, he hurried to the Emperor, not in the 
 glittering dress which usually set off his perfect beauty, 
 but in dark and disordered array. His familiarity with 
 Nero procured him at all times a ready entrance into 
 the Palace. He found the Emperor still carousing amid 
 his favourites, and he was received with a burst of wel- 
 come by the flushed and full-fed guests. 
 
 "Now this is good of you, Paris," said Nero. "You 
 alone were wanting to our mirth. Come, brim this 
 crystal vase with our best Falernian, and then let us see 
 a spectacle which would thrill the Muses and the Graces 
 even if Apollo were with them. But — can this be Paris? 
 — our bright, gay, lovely Paris? Why, what is the 
 matter?" 
 
 "Matter enough," said Paris in such accents of woe, 
 
62 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 and with such a flood of tears, that the guests could not 
 help weeping with him. "Dare I speak, Caesar?'' 
 
 "Tell us all," said Nero, raising himself on his elbow 
 in agitation. "What has happened? Have the legions 
 revolted? Is the praetorium in an uproar?" 
 
 "Not yet," said Paris; "but — Agrippina " 
 
 "Ha!" said Nero. "Go on" — for the actor's voice 
 seemed to be speechless with emotion. 
 
 " Agrippina — and — Rubellius Plautus " 
 
 Nero was listening with painful interest; and, pre- 
 tending to recover himself with a great effort, Paris told 
 them the fictitious plot, and succeeded in rousing the 
 Emperor to such a pitch of terror that he started from 
 his couch and tore his hair. 
 
 "Agrippina shall die!" he exclaimed; "and Rubel- 
 lius Plautus shall die. Here, give me my tablets. Des- 
 patch instant orders for their arrest and execution. And 
 send for Burrus — no! he is the creature of my mother; 
 she made him Praetorian prefect. My foster-brother 
 Caecina Tuscus shall command the Praetorians, and 
 Burrus shall die. Quick, quick, send for Seneca; not a 
 moment is to be lost!" 
 
 Late as was the hour, one of the centurions on guard 
 was despatched to the Palace of Seneca. He was read- 
 ing the "Repubhc" of Plato to his wife, Paulina, and 
 his friend Fabius Rusticus, after a frugal supper in a 
 modestly furnished room. When the slave announced 
 that he was summoned by soldiers from the Palace, 
 Paulina and Rusticus grew deadly pale; and Seneca, 
 though he strove to conceal his emotion, trembled in 
 every limb. He ordered the centurion to be admitted, 
 ^nd, striving to conceal the agitation of his voice, asked 
 
AGRIPPINA AT BAY. 63 
 
 if he knew why the Emperor desired his presence at so 
 late an hour. The centurion did not know, but said 
 that the Emperor seemed to be alarmed about some- 
 thing, and needed the advice of his minister. Seneca 
 demanded his toga, and hastened to the Palace. Nero 
 told him what Paris had disclosed. He did not believe 
 in the reality of the plot, but in those days anything 
 was possible. He, however, pledged his own life on the 
 fidelity of Burrus, and urged the Emperor to summon 
 him into his presence. Burrus came, and listened 
 gravely. 
 
 "It is a serious matter," he said, "to order the exe- 
 cution of anyone without allowing an opportunity for 
 defence. It would be still more serious to execute with- 
 out a trial an Augusta, and your own mother." 
 
 "Think again," said Nero. "Rubellius Plautus has 
 the blood of the Caesars in his veins, and my mother is 
 capable of anything to get power." 
 
 "I need not think again," answered Burrus bluntly. 
 "When once I have made up my mind, I do not alter it." 
 
 Nero frowned, but Burrus only added: "There are 
 no accusers. You are relying on the sole voice of Paris, 
 a freedman of a hostile family, and you have only heard 
 his story late at night during a drinking bout. Surely 
 the life of even a common citizen ought not to be sworn 
 away so cheaply, much less the life of an Empress." 
 
 Nero, sobered by the gravity of these considerations, 
 still kept a sullen silence; but Burrus would not yield. 
 
 "Caesar, we will examine her at earliest dawn. If 
 we find her guilty she shall die." 
 
 By this time the Emperor's teiTor had exhausted it- 
 self, and he was weary. Agrippina's residence was sur- 
 
64 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 rounded with a guard, and at daylight Seneca and 
 Burrus went together to question her. They were ac- 
 companied by a number of Nero's most trusted freed- 
 men, who were to report the trial, and to act as spies 
 both on the ministers and the Augusta. 
 
 To be summoned from her sleep into such a pres- 
 ence — to see her house surrounded with soldiers — to 
 be aware that some unknown crisis of the utmost gravity 
 was at hand, might well have shaken the strongest nerves. 
 But, in spite of the horror of this unknown mystery, the 
 indomitable woman swept into the presence of the two 
 statesmen with a demeanour not only undaunted, but 
 conspicuously haughty. The soldier and the philosopher 
 rose at her entrance, and the freedmen bowed low. The 
 freedmen she did not deign to notice, but slightly in- 
 cHned her head as she motioned the two ministers to be 
 seated, and herself sat down on a stately chair covered 
 with purple cushions. 
 
 "And now,'' she said, "as this seems to be a solemn 
 audience, I am informed that the Emperor has sent you 
 two, and these other — persons" — glancing at the freed- 
 men — "to speak with me. What may be my son's 
 pleasure?" 
 
 "Augusta," said Burrus in his sternest tones, "this is, 
 as you have said, a serious occasion; you are accused 
 of nothing short of high treason." 
 
 The charge in days like those was awful enough to 
 have forced back the blood into her heart, and for one 
 instant she felt as if the solid earth were about to yawn 
 beneath her feet. But in that instant she rallied all the 
 forces of her nature. She looked, indeed, pale as a 
 statue, but not the faintest tremor was perceptible in her 
 
' AGRIPPINA AT BAY. ' 65 
 
 accents as she exclaimed, in a tone of the most freez- 
 ing irony: 
 
 "Indeed? / am accused? and of high treason?" 
 
 "You are accused," said Burrus, "of desiring to form 
 a party among the legionaries to raise Rubellius Plautus 
 to the throne and then to marry him." 
 
 Agrippina's only answer was a scornful laugh. 
 
 "Poor Rubellius Plautus! the ^golden sheep' of my 
 brother Gaius!" 
 
 "You will find it no matter for laughter. The 
 Emperor is seriously alarmed," said Burrus. 
 
 "I have no other answer to an accusation so ridi- 
 culous." 
 
 "The Augusta has not been so careful as she might 
 have been," said Seneca, in his mildest manner. "Those 
 frequent secret meetings with her friends; that courting 
 of senators of influence; those attentions to military per- 
 sonages; those open complaints about the children of 
 Claudius, have aroused suspicion." 
 
 Agrippina turned upon the speaker her flashing 
 glance, and he quailed beneath it. "Is this your philo- 
 sophic gratitude?" she said. "But for me, you might 
 have been dying of malaria in Corsica; and you, Burrus, 
 might have remained a tenth-rate tribune." 
 
 "We are but obeying the Emperor's behests," said 
 Burrus, in a less threatening tone. 
 
 "And, pray, who are my accusers?" 
 
 "Late last night this charge was laid before the 
 Emperor by Paris " 
 
 "By Paris!" said Agrippina, in tones of crushing 
 scorn. "Paris is an actor, a bufibon, a pantomime, a 
 
 Darkness and Dawn, II. 5 
 
66 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 thing of infamy whom I scarcely brook to name. Pray, 
 go on." 
 
 "He had been sent by Atimetus, the freedman of 
 Domitia." 
 
 • "Domitia- — and her slave concubine 1 " said Agrippina. 
 "Of him I deign no word; but she — what has she been 
 doing all these years? While I was arranging the adop- 
 tion of Nero, his marriage with Octavia, his promotion 
 to the proconsular dignity, his nomination as a future 
 consul, all that led to his imperial elevation — what was 
 she doing? Improving her fishponds! And now she 
 wants to rob me of my Nero, and for that purpose gets 
 up a pantomine with her paramour and her dancer! 
 Pray, is that all?" 
 
 "The sources of the information were Iturius and 
 Calvisius." 
 
 "Iturius and Calvisius! — ex-slaves, spendthrifts, de- 
 bauchees, the scum of the earth, who want to repair 
 their squalid bankruptcies by the gain of turning in- 
 formers. They are nobodies; poor pieces on the draughts- 
 board. Who moved them?" 
 
 "Junia Silana." 
 
 "Junia Silana! Ah! now I understand it all — the 
 whole vile plot from beginning to end! Silana — false 
 wife, false friend, evil woman — what does she know of 
 the sacredness of motherhood? Children cannot be got 
 rid of by their mother so easily as lovers are by an 
 adulteress. So! I am to be branded with the fictitious 
 infamy of parricide, and Nero with its actual guilt, that 
 two broken-down freedmen may repay their debts to the 
 old woman their mistress?" 
 
 "And you, sirs," she said, raising herself to the full 
 
AGRIPPINA AT BAY. 67 
 
 height of her stature, "ought you not to blush for the 
 sorry part you have played? Instead of repaying me 
 the gratitude which you owe to one who recalled you, 
 Seneca, from your disgraceful exile, and raised you, 
 Burrus, from the dust — instead of making the Emperor 
 ashamed of attaching a feather's-weight of importance 
 to this paralytic comedy of pantomimes, scoundrels, and 
 rancorous old women — you have encouraged him to try 
 and humiliate me! I am ashamed of you," she cried, 
 with the imperious gesture which had often made bold 
 men tremble; "for as for these — gentlemen" — and she 
 glanced at the freedmen — "they, of course, must do as 
 they are bid. And so, such are my accusers! Who will 
 bear witness that I have ever tampered with the city 
 cohorts? who that I have intrigued in the provinces? 
 who that I have bribed one slave or one freedman? 
 They charge me with mourning for the death of Bri- 
 tannicus. Why, had Britannicus become emperor, 
 whose head would have fallen sooner than that of his 
 mother's enemy and his own? And Rubellius Plautus 
 — if he were emperor — would he be able for a single 
 month to protect me from accusers who, alas ! would be 
 able to charge me, not with the incautious freedom of a 
 mother's indignant utterance, but with deeds from which 
 I can be absolved by no one but that son for whose 
 sake they were committed." 
 
 For one moment her nature broke down under the 
 rush of her emotion, and her glowing cheek was bathed 
 in tears; but, recovering herself before she could dash 
 the tears aside, she repudiated the awkward attempts at 
 consolation offered by her judges, who themselves were 
 deeply moved. 
 
"68 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 "Enough!" she said. "Sirs, I have done with you. 
 By the claims of the innocent and the calumniated, if 
 not by the rights of a mother, I demand an interview 
 with my son this very day — this very hour." 
 
 While yet the two ministers, and even the freedmen 
 — in spite of the open scorn which she had manifested 
 towards them — were under the spell of her powerful 
 ascendency, they declared to Nero her complete inno- 
 cence of the charges laid against her. ReHeved from 
 his alarm, Nero came to her. Receiving him with calm 
 dignity, she said not a word about her innocence, which 
 she chose to assume as a matter of course; not a word 
 about the gratitude which he owed to her, lest she 
 should seem to be casting it in his teeth. She only 
 begged for rewards for her friends, and the punishment 
 of her defeated adversaries. Nero was unable to resist 
 her demands. Silana was banished from Italy; Calvisius 
 and Iturius were expelled from Rome; Atimetus was 
 executed. Paris alone was spared, because he was too 
 dear to the Emperor to permit of his being punished. 
 The men for whom Agrippina asked favours were men 
 of honour. Fsenius Rufus was made commissioner of 
 the corn market; Arruntius Stella was made super- 
 intendent of the games which Nero was preparing to 
 exhibit; the learned Balbillus was made governor of Egypt. 
 Nero was intensely jealous of Rubellius Plautus, but his 
 hour had not yet come. 
 
 It was the last flash of Agrippina's dying power, and 
 it encouraged a few to visit her once more. One or two 
 independent senators, pitying her misfortunes, came to 
 salute her, and some of the Roman matrons. Yet among 
 these women there was not one whom she could either 
 
AGRIPPINA AT BAY. 69 
 
 respect or trust. She had sinned so deeply in her days 
 of power that women Hke the younger Arria, wife of 
 Paetus Thrasea, and Servilia, the daughter of Barea Soranus, 
 and Sextia, the mother of Antistius Vetus, held aloof 
 from her. Paulina, the wife of Seneca, cordially disliked 
 her, and the Vestal Virgins had never lent her the 
 countenance of their private friendship. 
 
 But one noble lady came to her, who had never paid 
 her the least court in the days of her splendour. It was 
 Pomponia Grsecina. She came on the evening of that 
 memorable trial, and found the Empress prostrate with 
 the reaction which followed the tumultuous passion of 
 the scenes through which she had passed. She lay on 
 her couch an object for even her enemies to pity. The 
 strong, imperial, ambitious princess was utterly broken 
 down in her — only the weeping, broken-hearted woman 
 remained. In spite of her apparent victory, her life, and 
 all its aims, and all it held dear, lay in ruins around her. 
 Even hope was gone. What remained for her but re- 
 morse, and anguish, and the cup of humiliation, and the 
 agonising recollection of a brilliant past which she had 
 herself destroyed? There were no loyal friends around 
 her. No children's faces smiled upon her. There was 
 no brother, or sister, or daughter to comfort her. Those 
 to whom she had been a benefactress either felt no 
 gratitude, or did not dare to show it, or deemed that 
 she had forfeited it by crimes. Homeless, desolate, un- 
 loved, left like a stranded wreck by the ebbing tide upon a 
 naked shore, she lay there weeping like a child. Oh! 
 that she had been innocent, like her own mother — like 
 one or two whom she had known; — but, alas! she could 
 only look back upon a life of guilt, flecked here and 
 
70 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 there with blood which nothing could wash out. And 
 now the Retribution which she had doubted and defied 
 — the Retribution which had been stealing with silent 
 footstep behind her — had broken upon her crowned 
 with fire, and had smitten her into the dust with a blow 
 from which she never could uprise. 
 
 And while her head burned and throbbed, and her 
 veins seemed to be full of liquid flame, and ghosts of 
 those who had perished by her machinations glimmered 
 upon her haunted imagination in the deepening gloom, 
 her lady in waiting, Acerronia, came to announce a 
 visitor. 
 
 "Did I not say that I would see no one else to-day?'' 
 said Agrippina, wearily. "I am worn out, and fain would 
 sleep." 
 
 "It is Pomponia Graecina. She told the janitor that 
 though you might not see others who belong to the 
 Court, perhaps you would see her.'' 
 
 "Yes; I will see her. She is not like the rest of 
 them. She is sincere, and her presence is like balm." 
 
 Pomponia entered, and could scarcely believe that 
 the lady who lay there, with her dress disregarded, her 
 face haggard and stricken, her eyes dim, her cheeks 
 stained with tears, her hair dishevelled and, as Pomponia 
 thought, of a perceptibly greyer tinge than when she 
 had seen her last — was indeed the once magnificent and 
 all-powerful Augusta. 
 
 An impulse of pity overcame her, and she knelt down 
 by the couch of the unhappy Empress, who pressed her 
 fevered lips to her cheeks, and then wept uncontrollably 
 with her head on Pomponia's shoulder. 
 
 The two ladies presented a strange contrast, not only 
 
AGRIPPINA AT BAY. 7 I 
 
 in their dress, but in their entire aspect. Agrippina 
 was still arrayed in the magnificent robes in which 
 she had received her son, and which, irksome as they 
 were, she had been too weary to lay aside. Pomponia 
 was in the dark mourning dress which she had worn 
 for so many years since the death of the friend of her 
 childhood, Julia, the granddaughter of Tiberius and 
 mother of Rubellius Plautus. The tresses of Agrippina, 
 though disarranged, showed the elaborate care of the 
 ornatrix. Pomponia wore her dark hair, now beginning 
 to silver, in the simplest bands, and without an ornament. 
 But the chief difference was in their faces. Pride and 
 cruel determination, as well as calamity, had left their 
 marks on the noble lineaments of the daughter of 
 Germanicus; over the calm face of the wife of Plautius 
 it was evident that the shadows of many a sorrow had 
 been cast, but the sorrow was irradiated by hope and 
 gladness, and in her eyes was the sweet light of the 
 Peace of God. 
 
 "Augusta," she said, "I have come to congratulate 
 you on the defeat of a nefarious conspiracy. I thought I 
 should find you happier after many trials. Pardon me 
 if I have thrust myself too presumptuously upon your 
 sorrow." 
 
 "Not so," said Agrippina. "You are always welcome; 
 and more so now than ever. You sought me not in my 
 hour of prosperity. No one would come to me in my 
 hour of ruin who did not wish me well." 
 
 "It is not, I trust, an hour of ruin. The plot 
 against you has been ignominiously defeated. You may 
 have many happy days in store." 
 
 "Nay, Pomponia; happiness can never be linked again 
 
72 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 with the name of Agrippina. It is a dream. I did not 
 find it in the days of my splendour; it is little likely 
 that I should find it when all desert me and I am brought 
 low. I know no one who is happy. We are the slaves 
 and playthings of a horrible destiny, which is blind and 
 pitiless and irresistible. Are you happy?" 
 
 "Yes, Augusta, I am happy, though hardly, perhaps, 
 in the sense you mean. To me, as to all of us, Hfe has 
 brought bitter trials. These dark robes tell of the loss 
 of one whom I loved as my own soul, and even at this 
 moment I am threatened with terrible calamity — perhaps 
 with exile, perhaps with death. On all sides, there are 
 terrors and anxieties, and the state of society seems to 
 portend catastrophe and the vengeance of heaven , for 
 wickedness can hardly go to any greater lengths than 
 now. Yet I am happy.'' 
 
 "Oh, that you would give me your secret!" said the 
 Empress. "I can read character; I can detect the accents 
 of sincerity. These words of yours are no pompous and 
 hollow Stoic paradox." 
 
 Pomponia hesitated. The woman before her was, as 
 she well knew, steeped in crime from her childhood. Of 
 what avail would it be, without any of the evangelic 
 preparation, to tell her of Jesus and the Resurrection? 
 Could there be the remotest possibility of exciting in her 
 mind anything but contempt by telling her at that mo- 
 meift of the Cross which was to the Romans something 
 between a horror and a jest? 
 
 "Agrippina," she answered, "the day may come when 
 I may tell you more of the strange secret. It is not mine 
 only; it is meant for all the world. But it cannot be 
 attained, it cannot be approached, without humility and 
 
AGRIPPINA AT BAY. 73 
 
 repentance for wrongdoing, and the love of virtue, and 
 of something higher than virtue, and the Hfting to 
 heaven of holy hands." 
 
 "Alas!" said Agrippina; "you speak to me in a 
 strange language. The Greek tragedians are always 
 telling us that when blood has fallen to the ground it 
 has fallen for ever. Can wrong be atoned for? Can 
 guilt be washed away?" 
 
 "It can," said Pomponia, gently; and she longed to 
 speak the words which lingered in her memory from the 
 letter of Peter of Bethsaida — "Redeemed . . . with pre- 
 cious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and witliout 
 spot, even the blood of Christ." But to Agrippina they 
 would at that time have been simply meaningless. 
 
 "I have heard of the mysteries," said the Empress, 
 " and of the taurobolies. Would it be of any avail if I 
 too were to crouch in a hollow, and let the blood of a 
 bull which has been sacrificed to the gods drop over 
 me?" 
 
 "It would not," said Pomponia. "God does not re- 
 quire of us things so revolting, nor any mere external 
 ceremonies and superstitions. What that sacred and 
 supreme Majesty requires of us is innocence alone.* 
 Can you not pray to Him, Augusta? You have read 
 Homer, and you know how the old poet sings about 
 A/e, and the Litai, the Prayers which follow in her 
 path." 
 
 "At^? Ah! I know that fearful deity," groaned Agrip- 
 pina. "She is the Fury Megaera. I have seen her petri- 
 fying face turned towards me. She is the Harpy Celaeno. 
 I have often heard her in the banquet-halls of the 
 * Lactantius. 
 
74 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Palatine, and thought of Phineus and his polluted feasts. 
 But the Prayers — will you not repeat me the lines, 
 Pomponia?" 
 
 Pomponia repeated the famous lines of the old bard 
 of Chios: — 
 
 "The gods (the only great and only wise) 
 Are mov'd by offerings, vows, and sacrifice; 
 Offending man their high commission wins. 
 And daily prayers atone for daily sins. 
 Prayers are Jove's daughters of celestial race, 
 Lame are their feet, and wrinkled is their face; 
 With humble mien, and with dejected eyes 
 Constant they follow, where Injustice flies. 
 Who hears these daughters of almighty Jove, 
 For him they mediate to the throne above; 
 When man rejects the humble suit they make 
 The Sire revenges for the daughters' sake." * 
 
 "Alas! they have been strangers to me, those Prayers,'' 
 said Agrippina; "and though you have spoken truth to 
 me, I see that you have not told me all." 
 
 "There are times for all things," said Pomponia, as 
 she rose to leave; "and perhaps, if you will think of 
 what we have said, the day may come when you will 
 be able to bear more. Farewell, Augusta; you need rest 
 and quiet. Pardon me if I have wearied you." 
 
 "Farewell, Pomponia," said the Empress; "you are 
 good and true. Your words have been to me as soft 
 and pure as the falling snow. I know not whether the 
 Litai of whom Homer speaks may plead for us through 
 another." 
 
 "They may." 
 
 "Then will you ask them to say something which 
 
 * //. IX. 502 (Pope). 
 
AGRIPPINA AT BAY. 75 
 
 may avert the fury of At^ from one who, to you, is not 
 ashamed to confess that she is wretched above all 
 women?" 
 
 "May you find peace!" murmured the noble lady, 
 as the Empress once more kissed her, and pressed her 
 to her heart. "All may find it who seek it rightly from 
 the Heavenly Powers." 
 
76 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 A PRIVATE TRIAL. 
 
 "Tan to vogl' io die vi sia manifesto, 
 Pur che mia coscienza non mi garra, 
 Che alia fortuna, come vuol, son presto." 
 
 Dante, Inf. xv. 91-93. 
 
 PoMPONiA had incidentally mentioned to Agrippina 
 that she was threatened by a calamity, and it was in- 
 deed a serious one. It was strange that one so retired 
 in her mode of life, and so entirely free from rancour 
 and malice, should yet have been the butt of calumny. 
 Yet such was the case. It was the tribute which vice 
 paid to virtue. The base mob of Roman matrons avenged 
 themselves on the chaste wife of the conqueror of Britain 
 for the involuntary shame which they felt as they con- 
 trasted her life with theirs. Her constancy; her silence 
 amid the universal buzz and roar of gossip and spite; 
 her aloofness from the cliques and coteries of a scandalous 
 society; her love of good works; her discountenance of 
 their loose talk and complicated intrigues; her absence 
 from the games and theatres; the simplicity of her dress, 
 her home, her manners, her hospitality; the calmness of 
 her temper, and even the sort of sacred beauty on which 
 time seemed to make no impression, made her an object 
 of hatred to the Calvia Crisp inillas and the ^lia Catellas 
 of the capital. Her presence among them was like a 
 
A PRIVATE TRIAL. 77 
 
 perpetual reproach, and they determined, if possible, to 
 get rid of her. They would have said of her what the 
 wicked say of the righteous in the Book of Wisdom, 
 that they would lie in wait for her, because she was 
 "clean contrary to their doings, and objected to their 
 infamy." 
 
 But how was it to be done? Would it not be easy 
 to set an informer to work? Pomponia was wealthy, and 
 since an informer got a grant of a fourth part of the 
 property of anyone who was condemned on his accusa- 
 tion, there were men who sat watching for their op- 
 portunity like a crowd of obscene and greedy vultures. 
 Aulus Plan tins was a person of distinction, and it might 
 be dangerous to offend him; but if an informer of the 
 front rank, like the eloquent Eprius Marcellus, could 
 not be induced to undertake the risk, surely they might 
 secure the services of a Veiento, a Messallinus, or a 
 Regulus. And as for corroborative evidence of any 
 charge, they thought that it could be obtained with the 
 utmost ease among the herd of dehumanised slaves 
 who thronged every considerable house. If they could 
 not witness to facts, they were first-rate hands at in- 
 venting fictions. If the masters were a terror to their 
 slaves, a slave might any day become a terror to an 
 obnoxious master. It was personally disagreeable to 
 tremble before beings who seemed so abject, but there 
 was some convenience in having such agents at hand 
 for the ruin of an enemy. 
 
 But what charge could be brought against a lady so 
 blameless as Pomponia? To accuse her of conspiracy, or 
 poisoning, or magic, would sound too preposterous; and 
 it would be impossible to find against her the sort of 
 
78 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 evidence of evil manners which had amply sufficed in 
 old and even in recent days to confound a lady who 
 was disliked. The question was carefully discussed in 
 a secret meeting of some of the worst beldames of 
 social distinction, and as it was clear that Pomponia 
 took no part in the public religious ceremonies, they 
 agreed to get her charged with being guilty of "a for- 
 eign superstition." 
 
 The wretches whose business it was to work up a 
 case of this kind, and who were largely bribed to enable 
 them to carry out their designs, began secretly to worm 
 their way on various pretexts into the household of 
 Plautius. Their success was smaller than their hopes. 
 They found that there was some peculiar element in 
 that familia. Many of the slaves and the few chief 
 freedmen were Christians, but the secret was faithfully 
 kept. Danger made them vigilant, and they had been 
 carefully selected for worth and character. The female 
 slaves, without exception, were devoted to a mistress who 
 never addressed to them an unkind word, and who made 
 their lives a paradise of happiness when compared with 
 those who attended the toilettes of Pagan ladies. The 
 male slaves were no less faithful to the heads of a 
 household in which they were treated with generosity 
 and consideration. The spies of the informers could 
 scarcely find a slave in the whole family whom they 
 could tempt to drunkenness and indiscreet babbHng. All 
 that they could learn from the gossip of the least worthy 
 was that Pomponia did not burn incense in the Lara- 
 rium, or attend the temples. The informers had to 
 content themselves with these meagre facts, trusting to 
 perjury and invention to do the rest. Regulus under- 
 
A PRIVATE TRIAL. 79 
 
 took the case. The sound of his name was sufficient 
 to strike a chill into an innocent and honest heart, and 
 feeling certain of success, or, at the worst, of impunity, 
 he laid before the Emperor a public information that 
 Pomponia Graecina was the guilty votary of a foreign 
 superstition. 
 
 The friends and relatives of Pomponia had heard 
 rumours that some attack of the kind was in contempla- 
 tion; but in the days of the Empire such rumours were 
 rife, and they often came to nothing. When the charge 
 was published they were filled with consternation. They 
 knew that it mattered very little whether it was true or 
 false. The result would turn on the influences which 
 had been brought to bear on Nero. If Nero favoured 
 the prosecution, Pomponia might be as innoqent as a 
 new-born child, yet it was certain that she would be 
 condemned. One could commit no fault so slight but 
 what Caesar's house might be mixed up with it. Had 
 not JuUus Graecinus been put to death under Gains 
 simply because he was too honest a man? Were not 
 the wretched little islets of Gyara and Tremerus crowded 
 with illustrious and innocent exiles? If beauty and 
 wealth, and imperial blood had not saved the two Julias, 
 or the two Agrippinas, what should save a lady so alien 
 from the common interests of Roman society as the wife 
 of Plautius? 
 
 One thing saved her. 
 
 Nothing had been more remote from her mind than 
 any thought of self-interest when she visited Agrippina. 
 She had gone to see her chiefly because she knew that 
 the threshold, once thronged with suitors and applicants, 
 had now become so solitary, and because an habitual 
 
80 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 sense of pity drew her to the side of the unfortunate. 
 Her sole object had been, if possible, to bring a little 
 peace and consolation to a sister- woman, whose dejec- 
 tion and misery could only be measured by the height 
 from which she had fallen. True that Agrippina was 
 guilty. True that every law of the moral world must 
 have been violated if impunity were granted her as the 
 sequel of so many and such various crimes. But there 
 was nothing Pharisaic in Pomponia's heart. Familiar 
 with sorrow, she was sensitive to the influence of com- 
 passion, and she had learnt from the lips of Christian 
 teachers that there may be recovery and forgiveness 
 even for the most fallen. She had gone to the Em- 
 press with no desire but to speak gentle and healing 
 words. 
 
 Yet it was that little unnoticed impulse of natural 
 kindness and Christian charity which saved her fortunes, 
 perhaps even her life. 
 
 For Regulus was rich, eloquent, unscrupulous, for- 
 midable; and Nero was intensely timid and suspicious. 
 The notion of a "foreign superstition'' was mixed up 
 with that of magic; and magic was supposed to be 
 chiefly practised for treasonable ends. If a panic were 
 created in Nero's mind, it was certain that the feeble 
 senate would interpose no barrier to his suggestions of 
 punishment. 
 
 But at the moment of consternation in the heart of 
 Pomponia's friends, Agrippina did one of the few good 
 deeds of her unhappy hfe. Availing herself of the 
 momentary resuscitation of her influence, she no sooner 
 heard of the information laid against Pomponia, than 
 she wrote a letter to the Emperor strongly urging the 
 
A PRIVATE TRIAL. 8 I 
 
 innocence and goodness of the wife of Plautius, and 
 entreating him not to stain with a deed of needless in- 
 justice the annals of his rule. Nero was struck with 
 his mother's letter, and with the fact that she should 
 have taken the trouble to intercede for one who had 
 never pretended to pay court to her, and whose char- 
 acter was the antithesis of her own. Octavia also ven- 
 tured to say a few words of pleading earnestness for 
 her friend. Nero had as yet no grudge, either against 
 Pomponia, whose sombre robe was rarely visible in the 
 Palace, or against her brave, loyal, and simple-minded 
 husband. On the other hand, he did not like to check 
 the activity of the informers. Domitian said in after 
 years, "The prince who does not check informers, en- 
 courages them." Nero did not dream of checking 
 them. Seneca, who was a friend of Plautius, and who 
 had been grieved by the news of this attack upon one 
 whom he and the ladies of his family highly esteemed, 
 suggested to Nero a way out of the difficulty. "Fol- 
 low," he said, "the ancient custom, and permit Pom- 
 ponia to be tried at home by her husband, relatives, 
 and friends." 
 
 The Emperor accepted the suggestion, and the meet- 
 ing of the domestic tribunal was fixed to take place on 
 the next nundine. When Pomponia was told of the 
 Emperor's decision, she felt that her prayers had been 
 heard, and that her pardon was secured, although it 
 was not impossible that the trial might elicit painful 
 secrets, which, for the sake of others, she thought it her 
 duty to conceal. 
 
 She asked Seneca himself to undertake her defence, 
 and he gladly assumed the task. Plautius sat in his 
 
 Darkness and Dawn. II. 6 
 
82 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 own atrium, and had summoned only those of his family 
 whom he could trust. The evidence on which the in- 
 formers and their patrons relied was slight and negative, 
 and Seneca had no difficulty in tearing it to pieces. 
 To the intense relief and heartfelt gratitude of Pom- 
 ponia, she was not definitely charged with being a 
 Christian. Indeed, that specific charge could hardly be 
 urged, because no proof was forthcoming. Regulus 
 skilfully made the most of old precedents. He told 
 how, nearly a hundred years ago, the senate had de- 
 creed the destruction of the Temples of Isis and Serapis 
 (b.c. 46), and how ^milius Paulus had been the first to 
 shatter the doors with an axe. He mentioned the stern 
 dealings with the Bacchanalians (b.c. 186). He told 
 how (b.c. 139) the priests of Sabazius had been driven 
 from Rome. Referring to the days of the Empire, he 
 mentioned the edict of Claudius against the Jews, and 
 reminded Aulus that Tiberius had banished 4,000 Jews 
 to Sardinia. He appealed triumphantly to the old law 
 of the Twelve Tables, "Let no one separately wor- 
 ship foreign gods." When the accusers had mentioned 
 every unfavourable circumstance, and when, on the 
 other hand, an abundance of testimony had been ehcited 
 to prove the habitual purity and blamelessness of Pom- 
 ponian's life, Seneca rose to argue for her honourable 
 acquittal. 
 
 "What was meant," he asked, "by a * foreign 
 superstition'? Was the worship of Isis a foreign supersti- 
 tion? Was the worship of the Pessinuntian Cybele a 
 foreign superstition? Was the worship of lao — if that 
 were the secret name of the deity — by the Jews a 
 foreign superstition? The State was entirely unconcerned 
 
 J 
 
A PRIVATE TRIAL. 83 
 
 with any of these private beliefs. When, indeed, the 
 votaries of any strange cult were guilty of riotous, licen- 
 tious, and dishonest conduct, they were justly punished. 
 Referring to the precedents quoted by Regulus, he 
 said that the priests of Isis had deserved the vengeance 
 which fell upon them for having betrayed the stupid 
 credulity of a Roman lady. The Jews, who had been 
 guilty of cheating and embezzlement in the matter of 
 purple hangings for the Temple, were rightly punished. 
 Claudius had been justified in driving all the Jews 
 from Rome when they made tumults at the instigation 
 of one Chrestus; but on the other hand, JuHus Caesar 
 had always been favourable to the Jews, and Augustus 
 had by public edict protected their Sabbath. The 
 priests of the Syrian goddess were for the most part 
 worthless vagabonds, and no one was sorry when they 
 were detected and executed for their nefarious practices. 
 The State took no cognisance of opinions, but only of 
 evil practices. A Roman matron, by way of supposed 
 purification, had gone down to the wintry Tiber, had 
 broken the ice, had plunged into the freezing waters, 
 and had crawled across the Campus Martins with bleed- 
 ing knees. In such acts we might see the workings of 
 a foreign superstition; but of no such act — of no secret 
 visit to the base temple of Serapis — of no dealings with 
 the mutilated priests of Cybele — of no lightings of 
 lamps at Jewish festivals, had Pomponia been guilty. 
 And who, he asked, can allege one immoral deed, one 
 malefic practice, against the noble wife of the conqueror 
 of Britain? Is it to her discredit that she differs from 
 so many of the noble ladies in Rome? Do we blame 
 her or rather admire her, that she has never betrayed 
 
 6* 
 
84 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 a friend, or changed a husband, or exposed an infant, 
 or plundered a province, or ruined a reputation? Is it 
 to be her destruction that her life has ever been simple, 
 and her words sincere? Or is she to be banished be- 
 cause, through long years, she has continued to mourn 
 for a friend, when so many forget their dearest relatives 
 in less than a month? Cicero mourned the death of a 
 slave, though he was half ashamed of his sensibility; 
 Crassus wept for the death of a favourite lamprey. Is 
 it a crime to cherish a beloved memory? What evi- 
 dence is there against Pomponia? Have not her slaves, 
 though Regulus has tampered with them, shown them- 
 selves entirely faithful? And what wonder? Most of 
 us treat our slaves as though they were enemies — as 
 though they could not claim the rights of human beings. 
 She has treated her slaves as men and women like 
 ourselves; as sharers of her home; as heirs with her of 
 the common slavery of life and death. She has asked 
 their aid; she has admitted them to festive tables; she 
 has sought their love, and not their fear. She has 
 lived, as we should all live, like a member of one great 
 brotherhood, of which all are bound to mutual as- 
 sistance. She has done good in secret. In the midst 
 of wealth she has been as one who is poor. She has 
 stretched her hand to the shipwrecked; shown his path 
 to the wanderer; divided her brea^ with the hungry; 
 and has been, as so few are, a friend to the dis- 
 tressed. 
 
 "But she does not go to the theatre! Is that to be 
 accounted a crime? Rather let us erect a statue to a 
 virtue which can still blush for infamies at which so 
 many women dare to be spectators. Is the licence of 
 
A PRIVATE TRIAL. 85 
 
 the Fescennines, and the grossness of the Atellan plays, 
 acted by slaves whom the ancient laws branded with 
 shame, a fit amusement for pure matrons? If these be 
 deemed tolerable, what shall be said of the softer luxury, 
 the subtler indecency, the more fascinating corruption 
 of the modern mimes? Instead of blaming Pomponia 
 for not patronising such spectacles, let us commend her 
 example ! 
 
 "Or is it a sign of moroseness and alienation from 
 the customs of her country, that she is never to be 
 seen among the multitudes of every rank and age who 
 gaze with frenzied delight at the gladiatorial shows? 
 Nay, she is to be applauded for shunning scenes so 
 fatal to true morality! It is shocking enough to see 
 noble beasts ruthlessly mangled, and once, at least, a 
 cry of compassion has risen from the dense throngs 
 when they saw that frightful combat between five hun- 
 dred Gaetulians and twenty elephants. But their com- 
 passion was for the elephants!* How much deeper is 
 the compassion due to the unhappy human beings 
 whose carcases encrimson the white sands of the amphi- 
 theatre! Augustus tried to check and limit this savagery. 
 To see men torn by wild beasts in the morning, and 
 hacking each other to pieces in the afternoon — and 
 that as a mere amusement, to kill the time — is simply 
 degrading, however much custom may sanction it. It 
 is true that Cicero invented an excuse for this brutality 
 of pleasure, this delirium of homicide, by the absurd 
 plea that it stimulated courage. The courage of the 
 tiger, which leaps with bare breast on the hunter's steel, 
 exists in the lowest of the human race, without the need 
 * Plin. H. N, vm. 7. 
 
86 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 for this bloody stimulus. Man should be to man a 
 sacred thing; the only result of gazing at such scenes is 
 to destroy this generous sense of a common humanity. 
 It may be said that the gladiators, or those who fight 
 the wild beasts, are often criminals. Be it so; but are 
 we criminals also? If not, why should we condemn 
 ourselves to the shame of gloating over the supreme 
 agony and mystery of death? 
 
 "But Pomponia is charged with speaking as though 
 there were but one God. Well, do we not read even 
 in the sacred poems of Orpheus — 
 
 " *One God, one Hades, one Sun, and one Dionysus?* 
 
 Does not Varro, one of the most honoured of Roman 
 writers, distinguish carefully between the mythology of 
 poets, the religion of the commonwealth, and the beliefs 
 of philosophers? It is true that he deprecated the 
 revelation of these truths to the multitude, because there 
 is no way to keep them in order but by illusions. Yet 
 scarcely an old woman or beardless boy in Rome really 
 believes in these fables; and it is a good thing that 
 they do not. If they attached genuine credence to the 
 supposed deeds of this rabble of gods, they would 
 have patrons and examples of every lust and of every 
 crime. But they are dimly aware that Stator, Liber, 
 Hercules, Mercury, are but names or manifestations of 
 one Divine Existence. The mysteries are divulged; 
 the oracles are dumb; and as the wailing spirits cried 
 to Epitherses thirty years ago as he sailed past the 
 promontory of Paludes, * Great Pan is dead/* 
 
 * Plutarch, De Defect, Orac, p. 419, h. 
 
A PRIVATE TRIAL. 87 
 
 "A person, then, who can regard it as criminal to 
 reject the popular belief must be ignorant of all philo- 
 sophy and all literature. Is anyone bound to suppose 
 that there really is such a god as Panic; or such god- 
 desses as Muta, Febris, and Strenia? Are the Greek 
 poets to be comdemned who have repeatedly spoken of 
 one God? God is everywhere. He is that without 
 which nothing is. He comes to men; He comes into 
 men. No one is good without God. Pomponia's char- 
 acter alone is sufficient to prove that there is nothing 
 harmful in her belief. To the God who is near us, to 
 the sacred Spirit who dwells with us, the observer and 
 guardian of all our evil and our good, she has been 
 supremely true. The image of the gods cannot be 
 formed with gold and silver, or such materials, but 
 with the beauty and dignity of human souls. God is 
 best worshipped, not by sacrifices of bulls, but by in- 
 nocence and rectitude." 
 
 "And you, O Aulus, you know what a wife Pom- 
 ponia has been to you, how chaste, how gentle, how 
 faithful! How often have you found her quietly spin- 
 ning wool among her modest maidens, when other 
 matrons are sitting at riotous banquets, or gazing at 
 dishonourable scenes! How wisely and quietly has she 
 managed your fortunes, and governed your family! How 
 true and tender she was as a mother to the little boy 
 whose immature death you wept, whose ashes are in- 
 urned in the tomb of your house ! How purely has she 
 trained your youthful Aulus! To whom save to her 
 does he owe that beautiful mixture of manly courage 
 and virginal modesty which distinguishes him among 
 the youth of Rome? And will you, at the word of a 
 
S& DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 vile informer actuated by base greed, and set on by 
 female rancour — will you desecrate the shrine of your 
 own household gods? Will you dishonour the fame of 
 your ancestors? Will you sever a union which has 
 been to you so fruitful of blessings? Remember how 
 she smiled on you on the day that you walked in proud 
 ovation with Caesar by your side! Remember how she 
 shared the toils, the hardships, the anxieties of your 
 campaigns in that far-off Thule, which was subdued by 
 your valour! Remember how by her sympathy she has 
 diminished all your troubles, and intensified all your 
 joys! And will you hand over such a wife, and such 
 a mother — so gentle, so pure, so noble — to the fury of 
 the executioner? Will you see the sword flash down upon 
 a head which has often rested on your breast? Or will 
 you coldly and sternly dismiss your innocent and well- 
 loved wife to end her days on some dreary island-rock, 
 amid the storms of Adria or the Tyrrhene Sea? Yours, 
 O Auius, yours and not hers, will be the infamy; yours, 
 not hers, will be the loss ! Not hers the shame — for no 
 informer, and no unjust condemnation, can fix a stain 
 upon the guiltless; not hers the misery — for wherever 
 she goes she will carry the God within her, since in 
 each one of us, as our great poet says, 
 
 " *Some god is dwelling, though we know not who.' 
 
 You may banish her to Pontia or Pandataria, but every- 
 where she will see the sunlight and the stars, and will 
 feel that she is not abandoned. When we enter a 
 dense forest, we are struck with awe at its huge tree- 
 trunks, its spreading boughs, its dark shade, and we 
 feel that the Divine is there; when we enter some 
 
A PRIVATE TRIAL. 89 
 
 cavern in the hills, we feel the presence of a Deity : but 
 we feel it much more when we see a brave and pure 
 soul rising superior to the menaces of calamity. Look 
 at her, Aulus, where she sits. In her calmness, in her 
 fortitude, in the serene and tranquil beauty of a coun- 
 tenance on which no vice has set its mark, see the liv- 
 ing proof of her freedom from all blame! Proclaim to 
 Caesar, to Regulus, to the society of Rome, to all the 
 world, that Pomponia has done or thought nothing un- 
 worthy of the immortal gods, nothing unworthy of her 
 ancestors, of her husband, and of her home ! " 
 
 Many a cry of applause had greeted Seneca, as he 
 thus ventured to pour forth, in the secrecy of a domestic 
 tribunal, the thoughts which he had often uttered to 
 his friends, and even published in his writings. He sat 
 down amid a murmur of admiration, during which not 
 a few of the noblest of his auditors pressed round him 
 with expressions of warmest congratulation, and Amplias, 
 the Christian freedman of Pomponia, in a burst of 
 enthusiam, bent down and kissed his hand. He was 
 deeply gratified by the impression he had made, for 
 when there was nothing to arouse his fear or imperil 
 his ambition, he felt a genuine happiness in doing deeds 
 of kindness. But he raised his hands for silence while 
 the assembly awaited the decision of those whom Plau- 
 tius had asked to be his assessors in the judgment. 
 
 They consulted together for a few moments, and 
 then, amid the deepest silence, Plautius rose. He was 
 almost too much moved to speak. It required all his 
 Roman firmness and dignity to force back the tears 
 which were brimming in his eyes, and to control into 
 
go DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Steadiness the voice which seemed ready to break; but 
 he succeeded. Rising with dignity, he said: 
 
 "Friends and kinsmen, I have consulted with those 
 who have shared with me the responsibility of judg- 
 ment. We are agreed. The evidence is altogether 
 worthless. Pomponia is innocent of anything hostile to 
 religion, or forbidden by the laws of Rome. Friends 
 and kinsmen, I thank you for your presence and your 
 counsel, and I thank you most of all, illustrious Seneca. 
 I thank the Emperor, that he has spared us the pain 
 and anxiety of a public trial, and I shall announce to 
 him, and to all Rome, that Aulus Plan tins will thank 
 the gods, even till death, that they have given him a 
 wife so innocent, so noble, and so chaste." 
 
 Pomponia raised her eyes and her clasped hands to 
 heaven in a transport of gratitude, and as she did so a 
 sudden burst of sunshine streamed through the window, 
 and glorified her face. The lambent flame played over 
 her hair, and lit up her features, and gave to her calm 
 beauty a heavenly radiance. This was regarded as a 
 complete justification of the sentence of acquittal, and 
 a visible proof of the Divine favour. The hall resounded 
 with acclamations, and Claudia, who had been among 
 the witnesses of the scene, flung herself into the arms 
 of Pomponia, who tenderly folded the fair British 
 maiden to her heart, while Pudens looked on with a 
 happy smile. 
 
 And when Pomponia retired to her own room, she 
 knelt down, and with bowed head, and clasped hands, 
 and outstretched arms, poured out her thanks to Him 
 who had been her Protector in this most painful trial 
 
A PRIVATE TRIAL. 9 1 
 
 of her life. She was a confessor and a martyr, in will 
 if not in deed; for though she had not been called upon 
 to declare herself a Christian, she had been prepared 
 to do so if the question had been put to her. When 
 Plan tins entered he found her praying, and as she rose 
 at his entrance he saw upon her features a beauty even 
 brighter than that which she had caught from the sun- 
 beam which had shone upon her in the hall. 
 
 "My wife," he said to her very tenderly, as he kissed 
 her. "I know not what to think of thy beliefs. Thou 
 hast not concealed from me that thou art of this new 
 sect. I know that men call it despicable and execrated; 
 but if it makes its votaries such as thou art, it is more 
 blessed and more potent than the worship of the gods 
 of Rome." 
 
 "My Aulus," she answered, "I know well that as yet 
 thou canst not think with me. Yet thou, too, art dear 
 to God, for thou hast felt after Him if haply thou 
 mightest find Him. Our teachers say that He is no 
 respecter of persons, but that in every nation he that 
 seeketh Him and doeth righteousness, as thou dost, is 
 accepted of Him. Fear not, my husband; in the next 
 world, as in this, we shall be united, for thou art not 
 far from the kingdom of heaven." 
 
92 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 THE INTERIOR OF A SLAVE-PRISON. 
 
 "Magnam rem sine dubio fecerimus si servulum infelicem in 
 ergastulum miserimus." — Seneca, De Ira, iii. 32. 
 
 We left Onesimus in a prison cell among the sub- 
 structions of the Palatine, his back sore with scourging, 
 his soul torn with shame and indignation. He cursed 
 his folly, without repenting of his faults. Once more 
 he had thrown away every element of prosperity; and 
 his manner of looking on life was so entirely selfish 
 that the source of his self-reproach was rather the ship- 
 wreck of his chances than the moral instability which 
 had led to it. No news reached him in his prison. It 
 was not till his liberation that he learnt the fate of Bri- 
 tannicus — a fate which, if he had continued steadfast 
 in duty, he might have averted or delayed. 
 
 He knew that he could not be restored to his 
 trusted position as the servus a purpura of the Empress. 
 He would lose that, and with it lose all the flattery and 
 gain which accrued so easily to the higher slaves of 
 Caesar's household. He doubted whether even Acte's 
 influence could screen him from the consequences of 
 an offence so deadly as misconduct in the august pre- 
 sence of the imperial divinity. But he felt a desperate 
 pride and a morbid shame which made him determine 
 to conceal all traces of himself and his misdemeanour 
 from Acte's knowledge. 
 
THE INTERIOR OF A SLAVE-PRISON. 93 
 
 His behaviour in prison was refractory, for the jailer 
 had taken a strong dislike to him, and delighted to 
 humiliate this bird of finer feather than those who 
 usually came under his charge. He was quite safe in 
 doing so. There was little compassion in the breast of 
 the steward who managed the slaves, and rarely, if 
 ever, did he take the trouble to inquire how a prisoner 
 was getting on, or whether he was alive or dead. Amid 
 blows and insults the heavy days dragged on, and 
 seemed interminable to the poor Phrygian youth. In 
 the desperation of idleness he tried to find some amuse- 
 ment from scribbling with a nail on the plaster wall of 
 his dungeon, and one day, thinking of the drunken 
 bout which had reduced him to this level, he defiantly 
 scrawled "When I am set free, I will drain every wine- 
 jar in the house." * 
 
 "Will you?" said the jailer, who had entered unob- 
 served as he finished his scrawl. "You won't have a 
 chance just yet, my fine friend." 
 
 He gave Onesimus a blow with his whip, which made 
 him writhe with anguish, and said, "Thank Anubis, I 
 shall be rid of you to-day. You are sent to the slave- 
 prison {ergastulum)^ 
 
 "Who sends me?" asked Onesimus, shuddering. 
 
 "What's that to you, crucisalus ?'' said the slave, 
 dealing him another blow. "Oh you writhe, do you, 
 my fine bird? What will you do when the bulls' hides 
 rattle the cottabus on your shoulders?" 
 
 What he said was true. That evening Onesimus 
 was loaded with fetters and taken into the country. 
 
 The sight of slaves in chains being hurried off to 
 * An actual ancient graffito of some imprisoned slave. 
 
94 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 punishment was far too familiar to excite much notice 
 in the streets of Rome, but it was torture to Onesimus 
 to be thus exposed to the gaze and jeers of idle passers- 
 by. He felt a painful dread lest any of his friends — 
 above all, lest Acte, or Pudens, or Titus, or Junia — 
 should see him in this wretched and disgraceful guise. 
 No one, however, saw him, and that evening he was 
 safely lodged in the slave-jail attached to Nero's villa at 
 Antium. 
 
 The slave-jail was a perfect hell on earth. It pre- 
 sented the spectacle of human beings in their worst 
 aspect, entirely dehumanised by despair and misery. 
 The slaves who were imprisoned there were treated 
 like wild beasts, and became no better than wild beasts, 
 with less of rage but more of malice and foulness. 
 They worked in chains, and were driven to work with 
 scourges. Torture and starvation were the sole methods 
 of government. They were a herd of ^vretches clothed 
 in rags, ill-fed, untended, unpitied, passing their days 
 and nights under filthy conditions and in pestilential air, 
 hateful and hating one another. Some of them were 
 men half mad and wholly untameable, who could not 
 be depended upon except so far as they were coerced 
 by violence. Others were pure barbarians, only speak- 
 ing a few words of any intelligible language, and there- 
 fore useless in a town familia. Others were criminals 
 only exempted from death because of the value of their 
 labour. Some of them knew that there was little chance 
 of their being taken thence, unless it were to be cruci- 
 fied, and that when death released them, their bodies 
 would be carelessly flung to rot amid the seething 
 abominations of the corpse-pits {puticidi) like that which 
 
THE INTERIOR OF A SLAVE-PRISON. 95 
 
 Onesimus had once seen in Rome near the Esqui- 
 line hill. 
 
 The only slaves who retained any vestige of decency 
 and self-respect in these seething masses of human 
 misery and degradation, were those who found them- 
 selves denizens of an ergastulum for a short period, at 
 the caprice of a master or mistress. The experience 
 was so terrible that it cowed the most contumacious 
 into trembling servility. A few came there for no real 
 fault, who were far less guilty of any misdoing than the 
 owners who subjected them to this dreaded punishment. 
 Sometimes a page or favourite who had been tempted 
 to speak pertly in consequence of too much petting, or 
 a youth who had been goaded into rebellion by the 
 intolerable tyranny of a freedman, or a slave whose 
 blood had been turned into flame by some atrocious 
 wrong, learnt for ever the hopelessness of his condition, 
 and the abjectness of his servitude, by being sent there 
 for a week or even for a month. Emerging from that 
 den of despair, a human being felt the conviction enter 
 like iron into his soul, that slaves were not men, and 
 had none of the rights of men; and that, unless they 
 wished to throw away their lives altogether, no com- 
 plaisance to an owner could be too abject, and nothing 
 must be considered criminal which an owner required 
 of his human chattel. 
 
 Oaths, and curses, and the lowest abysses of vileness 
 in human conduct, and that blackness of darkness which 
 follows the extinction of the last spark of humanity in 
 the soul of man, and the clanking of fetters all day 
 long, and the shrieks of the tortured, and the yelling of 
 the scourged, and jests more horrible than weeping, and 
 
96 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 the manifold leprosies of all moral and physical disease 
 — all this Onesimus had to witness, and had to endure, 
 in the slave-jail at Antium. We have read what prisons 
 were before the days of Howard; what penal settlements 
 and convict ships were forty years ago; but men trained 
 in the most rudimentary principles of Christianity could 
 not, under the worst circumstances, sink quite so low, 
 or be so wholly beyond the sphere of pity, as the off- 
 scourings of Pagan slavery, the scum of the misery of 
 all nations, huddled into these abodes of death. 
 
 It was soon whispered among the wretches there 
 that the handsome Phrygian youth had been high in 
 place among the attendants of Octavia, and had been 
 favoured and promoted by Acte. In their baseness 
 they exulted at his humiliation, and the extent to which 
 his soul revolted from their malice happily helped to 
 preserve him from the contamination which would have 
 been involved in their friendliness. He lived from day 
 to day in the sullen silence of an indomitable purpose. 
 He did not know how long he would be kept there. 
 He waited a month, sustained by fierce resolve, and 
 then determined that, at the cost of life itself — even if 
 it should end in feeding the crows upon a cross — he 
 would attempt his escape. He knew that he had many 
 foes among the struggling envies of Caesar's palace, and 
 he suspected that Nero's dispensator purposely intended 
 to forget him, and to leave him there to rot. 
 
 After a few days he was left comparatively un- 
 molested by his companions in misfortune, for there 
 was no amusement to be got out of his savage taci- 
 turnity. Once, when one of the ruder denizens had 
 tried to molest him, Onesimus struck him so furious a 
 
THE INTERIOR OF A SLAVE-PRISON. 97 
 
 blow with his fettered hands that he was looked upon 
 as dangerous. As he glanced round at the degraded 
 ugliness of the majority of the prisoners, whose faces 
 only varied in degrees of villany, he had less than no 
 desire to join their society. He saw but one on whom 
 he could look with any pleasure, or from whom he could 
 hope for any sympathy. This was a young man of 
 honest and pleasant countenance, whose name, he learnt, 
 was Hermas, and who bore himself under his misfortunes 
 with sweetness and dignity. Like Onesimus, he seemed 
 to find his only relief in the strenuous performance of 
 the tasks allotted to him by the ergastidariiis , and as 
 Onesimus watched him he felt convinced that he was 
 there for no crime, and also that he was a Christian. 
 
 His conjecture was turned into a certainty by an 
 accident. One day, as Hermas was digging the stub- 
 bom soil, something dropped out of the fold of his 
 dress. He snatched it up hastily and in confusion, and 
 seemed relieved when he noticed that no one but One- 
 simus had seen him. But the quick eyes of the Phrygian 
 had observed that what he dropped was a tiny fish 
 rudely fashioned in glass, on which had been painted 
 the one word C2CIC, "May'st thou save!" They were 
 not uncommon among Christians, and some of them 
 have been found in the catacombs. 
 
 The fettered slaves were taken out in gangs every 
 morning under the guardianship of armed drivers, whose 
 whips enforced diligence, and whose swords protected 
 them from assault. The refractory were soon reduced 
 to discipline, but those who worked diligently were not 
 often tormented. In the various works of tillage, One- 
 simus, hampered though he was by his intolerable 
 
 Darkness and Dawn, //. 7 
 
9 8 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 manacles, found some outlet for his pent-up anguish 
 and hard remorse. But no one can live without some 
 human intercourse, and one day, when Hermas was 
 working beside him, and none of the rest were near, 
 Onesimus glanced up at him and said the one word 
 ""IX&vg, "Fish.'' 
 
 Quick as lightning came the whispered answer 
 ''IX'&vdiov, "a little fish," by which Hermas meant to 
 imply that he was a weak and humble Christian. 
 
 "And you?" he asked. "Are you one of us?" 
 
 Onesimus sadly shook his head. "Perhaps I was, 
 or might have been, a Christian once." 
 
 "Have you been illuminated and fallen away, un- 
 happy one?" 
 
 "Ask me no more," said Onesimus. "I am a lost 
 wretch." 
 
 "The Good Shepherd," said Hermas, "came to seek 
 and save the lost." 
 
 "It is vain to talk to me," said Onesimus. "Tell 
 me of yourself You are not a criminal, or a madman, 
 or a barbarian, like these." 
 
 "Talk not of them with scorn," said Hermas. "Are 
 they worse than the harlots and sinners whose friend 
 Christ was?" 
 
 Onesimus would not talk of Christ. "I never saw 
 you," he said, "in Caesar's household." 
 
 "No," said Hermas; "I was the slave of Pedanius 
 Secundus, the city praefect. He has no rustic prison, 
 and, being a friend of Nero, he asked his freedman to 
 get leave to send me here." 
 
 "But why?" 
 
 "He bade me do what I could not do. Seeing that 
 
THE INTERIOR OF A SLAVE-PRISON. 99 
 
 I was Strong and vigorous, he wanted me to marry one 
 of his slave girls. The worshippers of the gods know 
 nothing of what marriage means. I loved a Christian 
 maiden; I refused the union with a girl of evil char- 
 acter, who, being beautiful, had been the victim of 
 Pedanius already. He scourged me; he tortured me; 
 he threatened to fling me into his fishponds; and, when 
 I still held out, he sent me here." 
 
 "Is there no escape from this horrible place?" 
 
 "When you go in again, look round you, and see 
 how hopeless is the attempt. The ergastulum is half- 
 subterranean. Its windows are narrow, and high above 
 our heads. If we attempted to escape, the least noise 
 would wake the jailers, and some of these around us 
 would be the first to curry favour by helping to defeat 
 our plan." 
 
 "Is bribery useless?" 
 
 "Even if I could get the money, I do not think it 
 right to bribe." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Because I think that Christ means us to endure all 
 He sends. I trust in Him. If He sends me hunger, I 
 bear it. If He casts me down, I believe that in due 
 time He will lift me up. If He suffers me to be sent 
 to prison, I try to turn the prison into His Temple. 
 But I feel sure that He will deliver me — and that soon." 
 
 Hermas was not wrong. His incarceration was short, 
 because he was one of the few slaves in the family of 
 Pedanius whom the praefect could trust. Pedanius was 
 a man whose cruel indifference and imperious temper 
 made him more than usually obnoxious to his slaves. 
 He lived in terror of them, and tried to avert danger 
 
 7* 
 
lOO DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 by inspiring terror into them. He could not do without 
 Hermas. He did not know that he was a Christian; 
 but he knew that in other houses besides his own there 
 had recently sprung up a class of slaves honest and 
 faithful, and that Hermas was one of them. He married 
 his slave girl to another youth, and Hermas was set free. 
 
 And then Onesimus, seeing that every other method 
 of escape was impossible, tried the effects of bribery. 
 He had managed, though with infinite difficulty, to con- 
 ceal the gold piece which Octavia had given him, and 
 he had noted that one of the underlings of the prison- 
 keeper seemed to be not unkindly disposed to him. He 
 was a man named Croto, chosen for the office because 
 his stalwart proportions and herculean strength would 
 make him formidable to any unruly slave; but there 
 was a certain rough honesty and kindliness in his face 
 which made Onesimus think that he might move his 
 compassion. 
 
 Seizing his opportunity one day, as Croto passed 
 him in the field, he boldly whispered, 
 
 "Croto, if I gave you an aureus, would you swear 
 to let me have a chance to escape ?'' 
 
 Croto looked long and hard at his beautiful face, 
 and walked on without a word. But as he returned 
 from his rounds he touched him, and said, 
 
 "Yes; I pity you. You are not like the rest of this 
 herd of swine. Such things as an escape have hap- 
 pened ere now, and no one is the wiser. Masters don't 
 care to ask many questions." 
 
 "I will trust you,'' said Onesimus; and tearing the 
 aureus from the hem of his dark serge dress, he slipped 
 it into Croto's hand. 
 
THE INTERIOR OF A SLAVE-PRISON. lOI 
 
 "Keep awake to-night. The two who guard the 
 door shall be drunk. Get up a disturbance after mid- 
 night; be near the door, and when it opens The 
 
 plan may fail, but it is the only chance I can give you.'' 
 
 Onesimus pointed in despair to the fetters on his 
 feet. 
 
 "When a slave has shown himself quiet and reason- 
 able, they are sometimes removed; and yours shall be. 
 But the manacles on your wrists must remain; they are 
 never removed at night." 
 
 Onesimus made his plans. At the dead of night, 
 when the prison was plunged in darkness — for oil was 
 much too dear to be wasted on chained slaves — he 
 raised a great outcry, as though he had been suddenly 
 attacked. The slaves sprang up from their pallets, 
 heavy and confused with sleep. But Onesimus had all 
 his senses on the alert, and by violently pushing one, 
 jostling against another, and striking a third, he soon 
 had the whole place in a tumultuous uproar of rage 
 and panic, during which he quietly crouched down be- 
 side the door. It was opened by the sleepy and drunken 
 guardians, to find the cause of the disturbance, and, 
 before they could be reinforced by their more sober 
 colleagues, Onesimus dashed the lamp out of the hand 
 of one of them, tripped up the other, and ran to hide 
 himself in the dark corner of an adjacent street, behind 
 the Temple of Fortune. He succeeded, though with 
 great pain, in forcing one hand free from the chain; and 
 hiding the other, with the manacle which dangled from 
 it, under his sleeve, he determined, at the first gleam of 
 light, to try and find some assembly of Christians. He 
 knew that it was their custom to meet at earhest dawn 
 
I02 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 in secret places^generally, if possible, the secluded en- 
 trance to some sandpit — to sing hymns to Christ as 
 God, before the slumbering Pagan population began to 
 stir. He was fortunate, for soon, with senses preter- 
 naturally quickened by peril, he heard at no great 
 distance the faint sound of a hymn. He made his way 
 towards the spot, and concealed himself till the con- 
 congregation should break up. He knew that the last 
 to leave was generally the Presbyter; and, waiting for 
 him, he called him as he passed. 
 
 The Presbyter started, and said, "Who goes there?" 
 
 Onesimus stepped out of his hiding-place, and said, 
 "Oh, for the love of Christ, help me to get free from 
 this chain!" 
 
 "Thou usest the language of a Christian," said the 
 Presbyter, "but thy chain would prove thee a fugitive 
 or a criminal." 
 
 "I have erred," said Onesimus; "but I am not a 
 criminal." 
 
 The Presbyter fixed on him a long and troubled 
 look. 
 
 "Thou hast adjured me," he said, "in the name of 
 Christ: I dare not refuse thee. But neither must I, for 
 thy sake, imperil the brethren. Hide thyself again. I 
 will send my son, Stephanus, to file thy chain, and then 
 thou must depart. If thou hast erred, may Christ for- 
 give thee!" 
 
 It was not many minutes before the young man 
 came, and, without a word, filed the thinnest part of the 
 manacle till Onesimus was free. 
 
 "Peace be with thee, brother!" said Stephanus. 
 "Men begin to stir. Thou wilt be in danger. We dare 
 
THE INTERIOR OF A SLAVE-PRISON. IO3 
 
 not shelter thee. It were best to hide here till nightfall. 
 Food shall be brought thee." 
 
 Onesimus saw that the advice was good. Search 
 might be made for him; but Antium was a large place, 
 and the sandpit might escape observation. It was so; 
 bread and water were left near his hiding-place, and at 
 night he made his way to Gaieta, which was twenty 
 miles away from Antium. 
 
I04 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 WANDERINGS OF AN OUTCAST. 
 
 "Matrisque Deum chorus intrat, et ingens 
 Semivir, obscaeno fades reverenda minori, 
 
 Jam pridem cui rauca cohors, cui tympana cedunt 
 Plebeia, et Phrygia vestitur bucca tiara.'* 
 
 Juv. Sat. VI. 511. 
 
 Onesimus was still in evil case. Everywhere he was 
 looked upon with suspicious eyes. The mass of the 
 population felt an aversion for fugitive slaves, and such, 
 at the first glance, they conjectured him to be. His 
 dress was a slave's dress — he had no means of chang- 
 ing it — and his hand still bore the bruises of the 
 manacle. There was nothing for him to do but to beg 
 his way, and he rarely got anything but scraps of food 
 which barely sufficed to keep body and soul together. 
 In those days there had long been visible that sure sign 
 of national decadence, 
 
 "Wealth, a monster gorged 
 'Mid starving populations." 
 
 "Huge estates," says Pliny, "ruined Italy." Along the 
 roads villas were visible here and there, among um- 
 brageous groves of elm and chestnut, and their owners, 
 to whom belonged the land for miles around, often did 
 not visit these villas once in a year. Onesimus would 
 
WANDERINGS OF AN OUTCAST. IO5 
 
 gladly have laboured, but labour was a drug in the 
 market. The old honest race of Roman farmers, who 
 ate their beans and bacon in peace and plenty by fount 
 and stream, and who each enlisted the services of a few 
 free labourers and their sons, had almost entirely dis- 
 appeared. The fields were tilled by gangs of slaves, 
 whose only home was often an ergastulum, and who 
 worked in chains. Luxury surrounded itself with hordes 
 of superfluous and vicious ministers; but these were 
 mainly purchased from foreign slave-markets, and a 
 slave who had already been in service was regarded as 
 a veteraior, up to every trick and villany — for otherwise 
 no master would have parted with him. A good, honest, 
 sober, well-behaved slave, on whose fidelity and love a 
 master could trust, was regarded as a treasure; and 
 happy were the nobles or wealthy knights and burghers 
 who possessed a few such slaves to rid them from the 
 terror of being surrounded by thieves and secret foes. 
 But how was Onesimus, now for a second time a fugi- 
 tive, to find his way again into any honourable house- 
 hold? As he thought of the fair lot which might have 
 befallen him, he sat down by the dusty road and wept. 
 He was hungry, and in rags. Life lay wasted and dis- 
 graced behind him, while the prospect of the future was 
 full of despair and shame. He was a prodigal among 
 the swine in a far country, and no man gave him even 
 the husks to eat. 
 
 Misery after misery assailed him. One night as he 
 slept under a plane tree in the open air the wolves 
 came down from the neighbouring hills, and he only 
 saved his life from their hungry rage by the agility with 
 which he climbed the tree. One day as he came near 
 
I06 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 a villa to beg for bread he was taken for a spy of 
 bandits. The slaves set a fierce Molossian dog upon 
 him, and he would have been torn to pieces if he had 
 not dropped on all fours, and confronted the dog with 
 such a shout that the Molossus started back, and One- 
 simus had time to dash a huge stone against his snarling 
 teeth, which drove him howling away. 
 
 For one who thus wandered through the country- 
 there were abundant proofs of the wretchedness and 
 wickedness of the lower classes of Pagan life. He ob- 
 served one day the blackened ruins of a large farm- 
 house with its ricks and cattle-sheds, and not far from 
 it he saw the white skeleton of a man chained to the 
 hollow trunk of an aged fig-tree. The spot seemed to 
 be shunned by all human beings, as though the curse 
 of God were upon it. Onesimus was wandering curiously 
 about it, and trying to appease his hunger with a few 
 ears of corn from one of the half-burnt ricks, when the 
 shout of a shepherd on a distant hill attracted his at- 
 tention. He went to the man, who shared with him 
 some of his black barley bread, and told him that he 
 had shouted to warn him from an "ill-omened and fatal 
 place." "Why ill-omened and fatal?" asked Onesimus. 
 "The place belonged," answered the peasant, "to a 
 master who had entrusted the care of it to a head 
 slave. This man, though married, deserted his wife for 
 a free woman of foreign extraction, whom his master 
 had brought to the villa. The fury of his slave-wife 
 turned into raging madness. She burnt all her hus- 
 band's accounts and possessions. She thrust a torch 
 into every rick and barn, and when she saw the flames 
 mount high, tied herself to her little son, and precipit- 
 
WANDERINGS OF AN OUTCAST. IO7 
 
 ated herself with him into a deep well. The master, 
 furious at his losses, and shocked by such a tragedy, 
 inflicted a terrible vengeance on the guilty slave. Strip- 
 ping him naked, he chained him to the fig-tree, of 
 which the hollow trunk had been the immemorial nest 
 of swarms of bees. He smeared the wretch's body 
 with honey, and left him to perish." The bleaching 
 skeleton had become the terror of the neighbourhood. 
 No one dared to touch it, and the place, haunted with 
 dark spirits of crime and retribution, was shunned far 
 and wide as an accursed spot. 
 
 Sickened with miseries, Onesimus gradually made 
 his way to Pompeii. Every street and wall of the bright 
 little Greek town bore witness to the depths of degra- 
 dation into which the inhabitants had fallen, and the 
 youth found that the radiant scene, under the shadow 
 of Vesuvius and its glorious vineyards by that blue and 
 sparkling sea, was a garden of God indeed, but, like 
 that of the Cities of the Plain, awaiting the fire and 
 brimstone which were to fall on it from heaven. He 
 was specially disgusted because, alien as he was now 
 from all Christian truth, he saw on the walls of a large 
 assembly room in the Street of the Baths a mass of 
 scribblings full of deadly insults towards the Christians. 
 One in particular offended him, for, by way of coarse 
 satire on some Christian teacher, it said: — 
 
 "Mulus hie muscellas docuit." 
 "Here a mule taught small flies." 
 
 It was evidently no place for anyone who still loved 
 Christianity. Hurrying from its fascination of corrup- 
 tion, to which he felt it only too possible that he might 
 
I08 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 succumb, he was for some time reduced to the very 
 brink of starvation, and was at last driven to Hve on 
 such fruits and berries as he could pluck from the trees 
 and hedges. Once, while he was trying to reach some 
 wild crab-apples in a place by the side of a little stream, 
 which was overgrown with dense foliage, he slipped, 
 and fell crashing through the brushwood into the deep 
 and muddy water which was hidden by the under- 
 growth. Too weak to rise and struggle, he could only 
 just support himself by cHnging to a bough, when his 
 cries were heard. A labourer came and rescued him, 
 and left him sitting in the sunlight to dry his soaking 
 rags. And now he thought that there was nothing left 
 him but to die, and seriously meditated whether it would 
 not be best to fling himself into the green-covered sludge 
 of black water from which he had been rescued, and so 
 to end his miseries. 
 
 A sound arrested him, and, lifting his head, he saw 
 a group of the eunuch priests of the Syrian goddess 
 approaching along the road, one of whom shook the 
 jingling sistrum which had attracted his attention. They 
 were a company of seven, and were men taken from the 
 dregs of the populace. With them was a stout youth, 
 who rode an ass which carried their various properties, 
 the chief of which were musical instruments, and the 
 image of the goddess wrapped in an embroidered veil. 
 
 As they passed they eyed him curiously, and 
 stopped a few paces beyond him as though for a con- 
 sultation. 
 
 "A likely youth," he heard one of them say, "though 
 now he looks thin and miserable. We have long wanted 
 another servant. Would not he do for us, Philebus?" 
 
WANDERINGS OF AN OUTCAST. ICQ 
 
 "Probably a runaway slave," said another. 
 
 "What does that matter to us?" said Philebus. "We 
 can say that he called himself freeborn, and told us 
 that he ran away from the cruelties of a step-mother 
 — or anything else we choose to invent. I will go and 
 question him." 
 
 Philebus was an old man with a wizened and wrinkled 
 face. The top of his head was bald; the rest of his grey 
 locks were trained to hang round his head in long curls. 
 
 "Are you hungry?" he asked. 
 
 Onesimus nodded. 
 
 "Here is bread for you, and some flesh of kid, and 
 some wine." 
 
 Onesimus ate and drank with ravenous eagerness, 
 and the old man asked him, "A fugitive slave?" 
 
 "I was free born." 
 
 "Hum-m!" muttered Philebus, incredulously. "Well, 
 you are wet, hungry, ragged, miserable. Will you be 
 our servant?" 
 
 "I am not going to be a priest of the Syrian goddess," 
 said Onesimus, with horror. 
 
 "No one asked you to be," answered Philebus, with 
 a sneer. "You will have light work, good pay, good 
 food." 
 
 "What do you want me to do?" 
 
 "Only to help in tending the ass, and cooking our 
 meals, and going round with the bag for us when we 
 perform." 
 
 The youth paused. Could he, once a Christian, ac- 
 cept this degrading servitude to the vilest of mankind? 
 Yet, after all, what was servitude? What was degrada- 
 tion? Could he be more miserable than he was? To 
 
no DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 be a servant of the Galli was better than the suicide 
 and the dimly imagined horrors of that unknown world 
 which he had just been about to brave. 
 
 "I will come," he said. 
 
 The old man brought him a tunic in place of his 
 soaked and torn dress, gave him more wine and food, 
 and taking him to the rest congratulated them on their 
 new and handsome servant. 
 
 Then began a mode of Hfe which Onesimus could 
 never recall in after years without a blush of shame 
 and indignation — a life of squalor, mendicity, and im- 
 posture, made more vile by the sanction of abject super- 
 stition. In the morning, when the priests drew near to 
 any place where a few spectators could be gathered to- 
 gether, they set out in motley array, dressed in many- 
 coloured robes, and with yellow caps of linen or woollen 
 on their heads. They smeared their faces with a dye, 
 and painted their eyes with henna. Some of them put 
 on white tunics, embroidered with stripes of purple, and 
 fastened with a girdle, and on their feet they wore 
 shoes dyed of a saffron colour. They placed on the 
 back of the ass the image of their goddess in its silken 
 covering, and then, with wild cries, began a dervish-like 
 dance to the tones of the flute played by their youthful 
 attendant. During this dance they bared their arms to 
 the shoulder, and flourished aloft swords and axes. In 
 this way they wandered through various hamlets till 
 they reached the villa of a wealthy landowner. Here 
 they determined to exhibit the full extent of their mer- 
 cenary fanaticism. Looking on the ground, turning 
 from side to side with various contortions, whirHng 
 themselves round and round till their long curls streamed 
 
WANDERINGS OF AN OUTCAST. Ill 
 
 from their heads, they bit their arms, and at length cut 
 some of their veins with the weapons which they carried. 
 Then Philebus simulated a sort of epilectic fit. Falling 
 to the ground, with long sobs, which seemed to shake 
 his whole body, he rolled about, accusing himself of the 
 deadliest crimes, like one possessed. After this he 
 seized a scourge, of which the long leathern thongs were 
 studded with bones, and scourged himself with all the 
 endurance of a fakir, till the soil was wet with the blood 
 which streamed from his own wounds and the gashes 
 of his comrades. The crowd looked on with a sort of 
 stupor at the hideous spectacle, and when it ended it 
 was the part of Onesimus, on the attraction of whose 
 personal appearance the wretches relied, to go round 
 with a bag for the offerings of copper and silver coins 
 which were abundantly bestowed on them by the dis- 
 torted religionism of the spectators. The Galli were 
 further rewarded with gifts in kind. One peasant 
 brought them milk, another bread, and corn, and 
 cheeses, and barley; and a farmer gave them a cask of 
 wine. All these were placed in sacks, side by side with 
 the image of the goddess, upon the ass, which, as the 
 flute-player wittily remarked to Onesimus, "was now 
 both a barn and a temple." In this way they made 
 spoil of all the country side. 
 
 Occasionally they were even more successful. If 
 they found a farmer specially credulous, they would tell 
 him that their goddess was thirsty, and needed the 
 blood of a ram, promising him a prophecy of the future 
 if he would provide one for sacrifice. The sacrificial 
 victim afforded them an excellent banquet, to which 
 they would invite the lowest scoundrels, and fearlessly 
 
I I 2 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 reveal themselves in their true colours. Once one of 
 the country landowners, named Britinnus, awe-struck by 
 their supposed sanctity, invited the whole company to 
 the hospitality of his farm. Their stay might have been 
 prolonged but for two accidents. The cook had been 
 ordered to prepare a side of venison for a feast, but 
 this was stolen; and, while he was in despair at the 
 punishment which would be inflicted on him for the 
 loss, his wife suggested that they should secretly kill the 
 ass of the priests, and cook part of it instead of the 
 lost venison. But when the cook came to the stable, 
 the ass took fright, and rushed straight through the 
 house into the dining-room of the farmer, upsetting the 
 table with a huge crash. The next day a boy burst in, 
 with his face as white as a sheet, and told the terrified 
 Britinnus that a dog had gone mad, had sprung among 
 the hounds, and had bitten not only some of them and 
 some of the farm-cattle, but also Myrtilus, the muleteer, 
 and Hephaestion, the cook, and Hypatius, the footman. On 
 this Britinnus assumed that the Galli had brought him 
 ill luck, and sent the whole troupe about their business. 
 In the neighbourhood of one town they took to 
 fortune-telling. Binding each person who consulted 
 them to absolute secrecy, they showed their lack of in- 
 vention by returning the same oracle to all. It was 
 simpHcity itself, consisting of the two lines — 
 
 "The oxen plough the furrowed soil, 
 And harvests rich repay their toil." 
 
 Whether they were asked about plans for a matrimonial 
 alliance, or the heirdom to an estate, or anything else, 
 this oracle admitted of any interpretation they chose to 
 put upon it. 
 
Wanderings of an outcast. 1 1 3 
 
 Altogether sickened with his companions and with 
 their way of living, Onesimus was further troubled by 
 the insight into every hidden wound and portent of 
 Pagan wickedness which came to his ears, or which he 
 witnessed in these country wanderings. Long after- 
 wards, when he was an old man in Ephesus, he used 
 to tell these stories to his friends, to urge them to yet 
 more zealous effort for the healing of that heathen 
 wickedness of which the whole head was sick and the 
 whole heart faint. 
 
 On one occasion, for instance, in his wanderings, 
 the Galli had been unable to collect an audience, be- 
 cause the entire population of the little town of Varia 
 was absorbed in the interest of a trial which affected 
 the family of one of their prominent residents. A 
 wealthy burgher had been left a widower with an only 
 son, a boy of modest character, and devoted to his 
 studies. Some years afterwards he married again, and 
 another son was born to him. By the time this second 
 boy was twelve years old his half-brother had grown 
 into manhood, and his step-mother, who hated him for 
 his virtues, determined to poison him. Summoning a 
 slave who was in her confidence, she sent him to a 
 physician to purchase poison, which she mixed in a cup 
 of wine and placed ready for the youth at the next 
 meal. It happened, however, that her own boy, return- 
 ing hot and thirsty from school, saw the wine on the 
 table and drank it. He had scarcely finished the draught, 
 when he fell to the ground as dead. The slave who 
 attended him filled the air with his clamour, and when 
 the inmates of the house came flocking in, one accused 
 
 Darkness and Dawn, 11% 8 
 
I 1 4 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 another of the crime. The master of the house was 
 out, and his wife sent to inform him that her boy had 
 been poisoned, that her step-son was the murderer. 
 The husband was crushed to the earth by the double 
 calamity. His boy was dead; the elder son, of whom 
 he had been so proud, was to be tried for murder. 
 Scarcely were the boy's obsequies finished when the 
 hapless father, his grey hairs defiled with dust, hastened 
 to the forum, and there embraced the knees of the 
 magistrates, and besought them to avenge him on the 
 fratricide. The local senate was assembled, and the 
 herald summoned the accuser. Onesimus, who had 
 nothing to do that day, was present at the trial. He 
 heard the old man plead pathetically against the son 
 who had been the pride of his life and home; he 
 heard the youth, with all the calm of innocence, deny 
 the charge. There was no evidence against him but 
 the word of his step-mother and her confidential slave. 
 This man stood up with a front of brass, and declared 
 that the youth had been actuated by jealousy of his 
 brother, and had poisoned him. There was nothing to 
 rebut this evidence, and every juryman was prepared to 
 drop into the brazen urn the fatal ticket marked with 
 the letter C, for condemno, which would have handed 
 over the offender to be first scourged until his bones 
 were laid bare, and then to be sewed up in a sack with 
 a cock, a dog, and a viper, and to be flung into the 
 sea. The heart of Onesimus bled for the youth. With 
 his instinctive power of reading character, he felt con- 
 vinced of his innocence. But while with palpitating 
 heart he awaited the voting, an aged physician arose, 
 
WANDERINGS OF AN OUTCAST. I 1 5 
 
 and, covering the orifice of the voting-urn with his hand, 
 he said: "Fathers, let me prevent the triumph of an in- 
 famous woman and a perjured slave. That wretch 
 came to me as a physician, and offered me a hundred 
 gold pieces for a poison. I read crime in the man's 
 face, and put the gold in a purse, which I made him 
 stamp with his seal. Here is the bag. Seize his hand, 
 take off his iron ring, and see whether this be not his 
 seal. If it is, clearly he, and not the poor youth yonder, 
 was the purchaser of the poison." Onesimus turned 
 his eyes on the slave. His face had assumed a deadly 
 pallor, and all his limbs had burst into a cold sweat; 
 but even when his seal was recognised, he continued to 
 stammer protestations of his innocence. He was tor- 
 tured, but would not confess. Then the physician rose 
 with a mysterious smile. "Enough of tortures," he said. 
 "The time has come to unravel this web of villany. I 
 sold to yonder wretch, not poison, but mandragora. If, 
 indeed, the boy drank that draught, he does but sleep. 
 About this time he will be awakening, and may be 
 brought back to the light of day." The magistrates at 
 once sent messengers to the sepulchre where the boy's 
 body had been laid. The father with his own hands 
 removed the cover of the tomb, and there lay the little 
 lad, unchanged, and just beginning to awake, with 
 intense astonishment depicted on his features. Striving 
 in vain to express his joy in words, the happy father — 
 father once more of two dear sons, both of whom he 
 thought that he had lost — folded the child to his heart 
 in a close embrace, and carried him as he was, with all 
 his grave-clothes about him, to the judgment-seat. 
 Terror-stricken by such a portent, the woman confessed 
 
 8* 
 
1 1 6 Darkness and dawn. 
 
 her crime, and was sentenced to perpetual banishment; 
 the slave was crucified.* 
 
 Next morning Onesimus, as he accompanied the 
 priests and their ass, saw the criminal hanging naked 
 on his cross. He was a man of fine proportions and in 
 the prime of life, and his strength was slowly ebbing 
 away in horrible and feverish torture. The Galli as 
 they passed spat on him, but Onesimus stayed behind. 
 The wretch was not only living, though in extreme 
 agony, but would probably continue to live for two days 
 more, unless the wolves got at him or the magistrates 
 thought fit to send their lictors to end his life by two 
 blows of a ponderous mallet in order to save the trouble 
 of having the cross watched. It was no base curiosity 
 which made the Phrygian linger by that spectacle of 
 shame and anguish. It was rather an awful pity — a 
 heartrending remembrance. Sunk, fallen, ruined, guilty 
 as he himself was, he yet could not see without horror 
 this awful reminder of One who had perished, since his 
 own birth, in Palestine, and in whom he had not yet 
 ceased to believe as a Saviour, though he had fallen 
 away from his heavenly calling. 
 
 The man turned towards him his tortured face and 
 glazing eyes. "By all the infernal gods," he said, "give 
 me something to quench my thirst." 
 
 "There are no infernal gods," Onesimus said, "but 
 I will give thee;'' and taking out from the bag which 
 he carried a bottle of the common posca — sour wine 
 which was the ordinary drink of the peasantry — he 
 poured a full draught into an earthenware cup and 
 held it to the sufferer's lips. This he could easily do, 
 '^ Note 33, 
 
WANDERINGS OF AN OUTCAST, I I 7 
 
 for the cross (as always) was raised but a little from the 
 ground. 
 
 "God help thee!" he said, as he turned away. "He 
 helped the robber on Golgotha," he murmured to him- 
 self; "who knows whether He may not find even this 
 poor wretch in his hour of agony — yea, and even me?" 
 
 "My blessing would be a curse," moaned the cruci- 
 fied slave, "or I would say *The gods bless thee who 
 canst pity such as I am.'" 
 
 Onesimus left him there in the pathos and tragedy 
 of his awful helplessness. The youth's soul was appalled 
 by sense of the mystery of human life and human 
 agony, and it came home to him, as it had never done 
 before, that the solution of the fearful riddle of human 
 wickedness could only lie, if anywhere, in the life and 
 death of Him in whom in some sense he believed, but 
 whose peace he did not know. 
 
 Before he joined his base troupe of companions he 
 looked back for a moment. There, in the blinding sun- 
 light of the Italian noon, stood the cross, accursed of 
 God and man, the gibbet of the malefactor, the infamy 
 of the slave, confronting the eye of heaven with a sight 
 which, no less than that of the Thyestean banquet, 
 might have made the sun itself turn dark; and there, upon 
 it, a mass of living agony, conscious, and burning with 
 thirst, and blinded with glare, and unpitied, and burdened 
 with an awful load of guilt, hung the human victim who 
 had once played an innocent child beside his mother's 
 knee. The soul of Onesimus was harrowed as he gazed 
 on that awful insult to humanity. The existence of 
 crucifixion showed how far the shadow had advanced 
 on the dial-plate of Rome's history. That form of pun- 
 
Il8 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 ishment — so cynical, so ruthless, so abhorrent, which 
 less than three centuries later was to be abolished by 
 the indignation of mankind — had been not indigenous 
 in the Western world. It had only been borrowed by 
 Rome, in the days of her commencing corruption, from 
 the dark and cruel East That such a spectacle should 
 be permitted to the gaze of women and little children; 
 that it should indurate still further the callosity of 
 hardened hearts, was in itself a token of degeneracy. 
 The heart of Onesimus was full even to bursting as he 
 saw that fearful instrument of inhuman vengeance stand- 
 ing there by the roadside among the darting lizards and 
 chirping cicalas and murmuring bees; and the goats 
 stared at it with glassy eyes as they cropped the luxu- 
 riant grass at the very feet of the victim in whom the 
 majestic ideal of manhood was thus horribly laughed to 
 scorn. 
 
 Onesimus, as he finally turned away, felt it more 
 degrading than ever to continue his present life. Its 
 plenty and coarse comfort, accompanied as it was by 
 the necessity of spending his days with these sexless 
 and lying vagabonds, filled him with a sense of name- 
 less humiliation. Yet what could he do? What other 
 choice had he save to starve or to commit suicide? For 
 then he remembered with a start that he was twice a 
 thief, twice a fugitive, almost a murderer; that he had 
 betrayed the trust reposed in him by Acte; that by his 
 mad drunkenness he had insulted the majesty of Nero. 
 In every sense even his fellow-slaves would have called 
 him furcifer. And if he were once detected, in spite of 
 the dye with which he had stained his face, and the 
 blond wig by which the Galli had tried at once to con- 
 
WANDERINGS OF AN OUTCAST. I 1 Q 
 
 ceal his identity and to enhance his beauty, what awaited 
 him? Was he, too, destined to feed the wild birds upon 
 the cross? 
 
 It seemed as if that would be better than to beg 
 from the gulled throngs of peasants, and dupe the cre- 
 dulity of farmers, and witness day by day the stupid 
 and loathly self-gashing and self-scourging of these de- 
 plorable eunuch priests. More than once he thought 
 that he would get up by night, seize the image of the 
 Syrian goddess, and fling her into the greenest and 
 slimiest pool he could find, among the efts and water- 
 beetles and frogs; while he himself would plunge into 
 the pathless wastes until he should gain the sea-shore, 
 work his passage on board a ship to Troas or Ephesus, 
 and so making his way back to quiet Colossae, would 
 fling himself at the feet of Philemon and implore the 
 forgiveness which he felt sure would not be long with- 
 held. 
 
 But that "unseen Providence which men nickname 
 chance" came to rescue him from his unhealthy bondage. 
 As they were starting for one of their exhibitions in 
 their usual motley and many-coloured gear, the Galli 
 suddenly heard the sound of horses' hoofs, and, before 
 they knew where to turn, a body of mounted soldiers 
 came thundering down upon them, drew their swords, 
 surrounded and seized the whole company, and, beating 
 the wretched priests with their fists and the flat of their 
 swords, called them thieves and all other opprobrious 
 names, and charged them with having stolen a golden 
 beaker from a neighbouring temple of the Mother of 
 the Gods. In vain the Galli protested and swore their 
 innocence and threatened the soldiers with the venge- 
 
I20 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 ance of the Syrian goddess for this insult to her min- 
 isters. The soldiers silenced their curses with blows, 
 and, tearing away the covering of the image, found the 
 golden beaker wrapped up within it. 
 
 Detected in their theft, the priests were still un- 
 abashed. After an evening sacrifice they had watched 
 their opportunity, concealed the sacred cup of Cybele, 
 and at the grey dawn had made their way out of the 
 pomoerium of the city, trusting to get sufficiently far to 
 elude pursuit. The beaker was, however, ancient and 
 valuable, and the police asked the mounted soldiers to 
 help them in tracking the fugitives. 
 
 "It was not a theft," said Philebus, who was archi- 
 gallus, "The mother of the gods freely lent the beaker 
 to her sister the Syrian goddess, who intended shortly 
 to return it to her. You cannot escape her wrath for 
 this outrage." 
 
 The soldiers and their decurio broke into loud 
 laughter at the threat, and without ceremony put g)rves 
 on the wrists of the seven Galli. They consulted whe- 
 ther they should also arrest Onesimus and the flute- 
 player, but Onesimus said that he was ignorant of the 
 theft, and that neither he nor his companion — who were 
 acting as slaves of the priests — had ever been permitted 
 to see the contents of the silken veil. The soldiers be- 
 lieved him, and all the more because they did not care 
 to burden themselves with too many prisoners. They 
 took the Galli to Naples, where Onesimus was after- 
 wards told that they had been scourged, imprisoned, 
 and mulcted of all they possessed. 
 
 Free once more, and not troubling himself about 
 their fate, Onesimus asked the flute-player what he 
 
TITUS AND THE VESTAL. 121 
 
 meant to do. Finding that he regarded his present 
 calling as too comfortable a berth to be given up, One- 
 simus left him and made his way disconsolately to 
 Baiae. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 TITUS AND THE VESTAL. 
 "Laudabile est infelicis scire misereri. — Val. Max. v. i. 8. 
 
 Cast once more on his own resources, Onesimus 
 tried his chance of earning a living in the streets. He 
 had a little money in hand, and, seeing that the street 
 vendors drove a brisker trade in drink than in anything 
 else, he bought two or three dozen bottles oi posca, and 
 sold them at a small profit to the poorer wayfarers. In 
 this, as in all his adventures, his good looks were of use 
 to him, for men and women alike were more inclined 
 to buy of a lively and pleasant youth than of the wander- 
 ing Jews and beggars who sometimes attempted the 
 same trade. He began to think that, for the present, 
 he could keep soul and body together in this way; but 
 he had been rash in choosing a place so near Rome, 
 and still more rash in discarding his disguise. 
 
 For one day, as he was calling out the merits of his 
 wine in his clear ringing voice, and making the people 
 laugh with his jokes, Dama, the steward of the lovely 
 villa which Nero owned at Baiae, caught sight of him. 
 The man had often been to the Palace on business 
 connected with his accounts, and had noticed Onesimus, 
 then dressed in gay attire and at the zenith of his 
 
122 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 prosperity, as a youth high in favour in the imperial 
 household. He had heard from Callicles, Nero's dispen- 
 sator, of the drunken escapade which had put so sudden 
 an end to his good fortune, and of his subsequent flight 
 from the ergastulum. Now the flight of any slave, but 
 above all of one of Caesar's slaves, was so capital an 
 offence that Callicles had asked his friend to keep a 
 good look out for the recovery of the fugitive. A glance 
 made him nearly sure of the identity of Onesimus, but 
 to be quite certain he took out a copy of the reward 
 which had been offered. It ran as follows: — 
 
 "Wanted, a fugitive slave, 
 
 Aged about 17. 
 
 Handsome, with dark curly hair, 
 
 Named Onesimus. 
 
 Anyone who will give him up, or indicate 
 
 where he may be arrested, shall receive a reward of 
 
 A thousand sesterces." 
 
 To be quite sure of his prey, Dama stole away so as 
 to approach Onesimus from behind, and coming up to 
 him tapped him smartly on the shoulder and said 
 "Onesimus." 
 
 "Yes?" said Onesimus with a violent start, taken 
 completely off his guard. 
 
 "I thought so," said Dama, with an unpleasant smile. 
 "Come with me, my gay fugitive. Caesar can't possibly 
 spare such a lively and good-looking slave as you; and 
 I shall be very glad of a thousand sesterces." 
 
 Onesimus tried to dart away in flight, but the re- 
 morseless hand of Dama clutched his shoulder with too 
 tight a grasp, and with a gesture of despair he remained 
 silent. 
 
TITUS AND THE VESTAL. 123 
 
 "Rescue! rescue!" cried some of the crowd who 
 pitied him, and with whom he was a favourite; and as 
 no soldiers or poHce were in sight one or two stepped 
 forward to give the youth a chance. 
 
 "Rescue?" said Dama, looking round him with cool 
 contempt. "Don't you know who I am? Do you dare 
 to interfere with the arrest of a runaway from Caesar's 
 Palace?" 
 
 The crowd fell back awe-struck before the awful 
 name of Caesar, and Dama despatched a slave to bring 
 fetters from Nero's villa hard by. Onesimus was once 
 more a chained criminal with a destiny before him even 
 more horible than any of which he had yet been in 
 danger. He thought of the poor wretch to whom he 
 had given drink as he hung on his cross. Would that 
 be his own fate of agony now ill the flush and heyday 
 of his youth ? 
 
 Next morning he was sent off towards Rome. He 
 thought of trying to communicate with Acte, who had 
 been deeply grieved by losing sight of him. But this was 
 impossible. There was no one to take any message for 
 him. He was told that not only Callicles — on whom fell 
 in part the disgrace of his escape — but Nero himself was 
 bitterly incensed against him, first, for his unpardonable 
 indiscretion, then for his flight, and lastly — though this 
 was a secret motive — because it had come to his ears 
 that Onesimus had been the slave who had defeated 
 the midnight attempt on the life of Britannicus. Onesi- 
 mus, when he had drunk too much Sabine wine, had 
 sometimes forgotten all reticence, and Nero beHeved that 
 it was through him that certain dark secrets of the Palace 
 had come to be whispered among the lower orders of 
 
124 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 the Roman population. Acte herself would have been 
 powerless to defend him. One day Octavia, finding 
 that her purple robes had been looked after less skil- 
 fully than they had been when under his care, had 
 asked some question about him in the presence of Nero. 
 The Emperor was angry at the mention of his name. 
 Some slaves had been in the room on the occasion, and 
 the circumstance had become notorious in the gossip 
 of the Palace. The unhappy young Phrygian was told 
 that he would probably be crucified; but if not, he 
 would be tied to the furca and scourged, perhaps to 
 death, with the horrible thongs. 
 
 On his arrival at Rome the order was given. He 
 was to be beaten — practically to death. In indescribable 
 anguish of soul he spent what he believed to be his 
 last night on earth. 
 
 Next morning the furca — two pieces of wood nailed 
 together in the shape of the letter yy — was placed on 
 his neck, his hands were fast bound to the ends of the 
 wood, and he was led out towards the Esquiline, where 
 afterwards his corpse would be flung into the common 
 pit. 
 
 He was too much stunned and stupefied even to pray. 
 The iron had entered deep into his soul. He looked 
 on himself as a lost apostate who would end a life of 
 miserable failure by entering into the outer gloom be- 
 yond, where he feared that the face of the Saviour of 
 whom he once had heard would be utterly turned away 
 from him. 
 
 But his hour had not yet come. 
 
 Stooping under the furca, with his arms already 
 cramped by their unnatural position, he was led by the 
 
TITUS AND THE VESTAL. 1^5 
 
 slaves and lictors who were to preside at his execution 
 into the Vicus Tuscus on the way to the EsquiHne. But 
 as they entered the long street a boy who was strolling 
 towards the Gelotian house caught sight of them, and 
 no sooner had his quick eye seen them than he took 
 in the whole situation at a glance. 
 
 It was Titus, much sobered from the gay lad he 
 once had been, and still pale from the illness caused by 
 the sip he had taken of the poison which had carried 
 off Britannicus. He recognised Onesimus, and a Palace 
 rumour had that morning made him aware of the 
 Phrygian's peril. He looked on the slave-youth as a 
 protege of his own, for his admission into the family of 
 Pudens had been mainly due to his intercession. He 
 also felt grateful to him for his ready services towards 
 the murdered friend of his youth, and his kindly heart 
 was filled with pity. 
 
 A way of saving him had flashed across his mind, 
 and, bidding his slaves follow him, he darted off at a 
 pace too swift for Roman dignity. In an adjoining 
 street he met — as he was well aware that he should 
 meet — a beautiful and stately lady whom he knew, and 
 who was very fond of him. It was Laelia, the senior 
 Vestal, the Virgo Maxima. 
 
 Greeting her with extreme reverence, he yet ventured 
 to make her an unsuspecting agent in his little plot. 
 
 "Noble Laelia," he said, with the charm of manner 
 which few could resist, and with a ready fertility of in- 
 vention, "I have just seen in the bookshop of Atrectus, 
 in the Argiletum, just opposite the Forum of Julius, a 
 charming little copy of Virgil's Eclogues with such a 
 good portrait! You promised me a present on my last 
 
126 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 birthday, and said I should choose it myself. May I 
 have that book, and will you come and buy it for me? 
 It is my birthday to-day." 
 
 "Certainly," said the Vestal, with a smile. "For a 
 boy like you, so good and steady, I would do much 
 more than that." She little guessed that the birthday 
 was a fib extemporised by Titus for his own purposes, 
 for his birthday was on December 30. 
 
 "Thanks, dear Vestal," said Titus. "Will you not 
 come by this short cut?" 
 
 He led her by the hand, her lictor following, into 
 the Vicus Tuscus, which was close by the Argiletum, 
 where he well knew that she would not fail to meet 
 Onesimus and his escort. As they approached he said: 
 
 "Oh, Lselia, how I should like to have your privilege 
 of saving the lives of the wretched ! See, there is some 
 miserable slave whom they are taking to scourge or 
 crucify. Will you not intercede for him?" 
 
 "For a ^oor furcifer like that?" asked Laelia. "Our 
 high privilege is used for nobles — at the lowest, for 
 freedmen." 
 
 "Are not slaves men like ourselves?" he asked. 
 "Musonius says so; and Seneca says so. Look, what a 
 fine youth he is! He looks as if he had been freeborn; 
 and I dare say he has done nothing really wrong." 
 
 Lselia glanced at the pallid beautiful face of the 
 sufferer. It would hardly have touched her heart, accus- 
 tomed as she had been to the massacres of the arena, 
 to which Nero of late years had invited the Vestal 
 Virgins. But there was something in his youth, and 
 something in the earnest pleading of her favourite Titus 
 
TITUS AND THE VESTAL. I 27 
 
 — something perhaps also in the sense of power — which 
 decided her to interfere. 
 
 "Stop!" she said to the lictors and soldiers, as they 
 bowed reverently before her majestic presence. "By 
 virtue of my office, I bid you take off that furca, and 
 spare the life of your prisoner." 
 
 "He is a runaway slave, whom for great mis- 
 demeanours the Emperor has ordered to be scourged," 
 said Callicles, stepping forward. 
 
 "Dare you disobey the Virgo Maxima?" asked Laelia, 
 with flashing eye. "Do you think that even the Emperor 
 will insult the majesty of Vesta and her sacred fire, by 
 questioning the immemorial prerogative of her eldest 
 Vestal? Take off the furca at once!" 
 
 The very lictors were overawed by her gesture of 
 command. They hastily unbound the tired arms of 
 Onesimus, and took the furca off his neck. What would 
 happen to him he knew not, but he knew that for the 
 time his life was saved. 
 
 "Thanks, kindest of Vestals," said Titus, gratefully 
 kissing the purple hem of her suffihulunij and not be- 
 traying by look or sign that Onesimus was known to 
 him. "I never saw a Vestal exercise her prerogative 
 before, and I am so glad to have seen it. May Vesta 
 reward your sleep with her divinest dreams! May Opi- 
 consiva bless you!" 
 
 "Opiconsiva?" said the Vestal, with difficulty sup- 
 pressing a smile; "is the boy laughing at me? What 
 do you know of Opiconsiva?" 
 
 "Not much,'' said Titus, "except that she has some- 
 thing to do with Vestals; and if so, Laelia must be very 
 dear to her!" 
 
128 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Onesimus, with his usual quickness, took his cue from 
 the conduct of Titus. The right of the Vestals was well 
 known in Rome, though it was rarely used, for they 
 were not often seen in the streets. But it was under- 
 stood that, in order to be valid, the meeting of Vestal 
 and criminal must be accidental. Lselia would have 
 been seriously displeased had she known that she was 
 in reality the victim of a little plot on the part of her 
 boy-friend, and Titus was in some trepidation till he had 
 hurried the Vestal past the prisoner, and to the choice 
 book-stall which was spread with the purple bindings 
 of Atrectus. There she not only purchased for him the 
 copy of Virgil, but, as he had quoted Seneca, she also 
 gave him a radiant little volume of some of his treatises 
 from the shop of his bookseller, Dorus, hard by. When 
 she gave him this second gift the delighted youth felt a 
 little compunction at his manoeuvre. 
 
 No one knew what he had done; but, when he 
 narrated the incident to Pudens, the tribune suspected 
 the real state of the case, for the boy's eye twinkled 
 suspiciously as he told his little story with the most 
 innocent candour. 
 
BOOK II. 
 
 "LACHESIS ROTAT!" 
 
 Darkness and Dawn. II, 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 AN EVIL EPOCH. 
 
 "Inde metus maculat poenanim prsemia vitse, 
 Circumretit enim vis atque injuria quemque . . 
 Nee facile est placidam ac pacatam degere vitam 
 Qui violat facteis communia federa vitae." 
 
 LUCRET. De Rer, Nat, V. 1151. 
 
 The career and character of Nero grew darker every 
 year, for every year more fully revealed to him the awful 
 absoluteness of his autocracy. No one dreamed of dis- 
 puting his will. Every desire, however frivolous, how- 
 ever shameful, however immense, was instantly gratified. 
 His Court was proHfic of the vilest characters. There 
 was scarcely a man near his person who did not daily 
 extol his power, his wit, his accomplishments, his beauty, 
 his divinity. "Do you not yet know that you are 
 Caesar ?'' they whispered to him if he hesitated for a 
 moment to commit some deadly crime, or plunge into 
 some unheard-of prodigality. 
 
 All things went on much as usual in the corrupt, 
 trembling world of Rome. To-day some wealthy noble- 
 man would commit suicide, amid the laudations of his 
 friends, out of utter weariness of life. To-morrow all 
 Rome would be talking of the trial of some provincial 
 
132 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 governor who had gorged himself with the rapine of a 
 wealthy province. Or everybody would be whispering 
 a series of witty pasquinades, attributed to Antistius 
 Sosianus or Fabricius Veiento, full of lacerating innuendos, 
 aimed now at the Emperor and now at some prominent 
 senator. Psetus Thrasea and the peril he incurred by 
 his opposition to the Court furnished a frequent subject 
 of conversation, both to his Stoic admirers and to the 
 rabble of venal senators, who cordially hated him. "To 
 put Thrasea to death would be to slay virtue itself," 
 said the graver citizens. "He is a pompous sham, who 
 wants taking down," said the gilded youth. 
 
 It was a fearful comment on the wretchedness of the 
 times that most of the prominent thinkers and states- 
 men looked on self-destruction as the sole path to free- 
 dom, and the best boon of heaven. They thought it a 
 proof of philosophic heroism when a man died calmly 
 by his own hand, though the act involves no more 
 courage than the vilest of mankind can evince. Seneca 
 tells with rapture the story of the death of Julius Canus. 
 The Emperor Gains had said to him, after a quarrel, 
 "That you may not deceive yourself, I have ordered you 
 to be led to execution." "I thank you, excellent prince," 
 said Canus. Ten days passed, and Canus spent them with- 
 out the smallest sign of trepidation, awaiting the tyrant's 
 mandate. When the centurion arrived at his house with 
 the order that he was to die, he was playing at draughts. 
 He first counted the pieces, and then said with a smile to 
 his friend, " Mind you don't claim the victory when I am 
 dead. You, centurion, will be the witness that I have 
 one piece more than he has." Observing the grief of 
 his friends, he said, "Why are you sad? You are per- 
 
AN EVIL EPOCH. 1 33 
 
 plexed about the question whether souls are immortal 
 or not. In a moment or two I shall know. If I can 
 come back I will tell you."* 
 
 The letters, and all the latest writings, of Seneca 
 vibrate with terror. They are full of the thought of 
 death, and doubtless he lived with the sense of such grim 
 satisfaction as could be derived from the thought that 
 if life became too unbearable he could end it. "And 
 death,'^ he said to himself, "means only *not to be.'"*"* 
 
 And all this was felt even in Nero's "golden quin- 
 quennium"! Men boasted of the happiness of the days 
 in which their lot was cast, but they knew that under 
 their vineyards burnt the fires of a volcano. Common 
 conversation, home life, dinner parties, literature, philo- 
 sophy, virtue, wealth, were all dangerous. Neither 
 retirement nor obscurity always availed to save a man. 
 The only remedy was to learn endurance; not to fill too 
 prominent a place; not to display too much abihty; 
 never to speak in public without a digression in flattery 
 of the Emperor; to pretend cheerfulness though one 
 felt anguish; and to thank the tyrant for the deadliest 
 injuries, like the rich knight who thanked Gains when 
 he had killed his son. 
 
 Now and then some painful incident, like the bitumen 
 which floats up from the Dead Sea depths, showed the 
 foulness which lay beneath the film of civilisation. Such, 
 for instance, was the fate of Octavius Sagitta, the tribune 
 of the people, and one of Nero's intimates, who was 
 banished for the brutal murder of a married lady who 
 
 * Sen. De Tranq. An. xrv. 7. 
 
 ** Sen. Ep, Liv. : "Mors est non esse." Troades, V. 393: 
 "Post mortem nihil est, ipsaque Mors nihil." 
 
134 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 had played fast and loose with his affections. Such, too, 
 was the savage attack made upon Seneca in the Senate 
 by the aged informer, Publius Suillius, whose sneers 
 and denunciations caused bitter anguish to the un- 
 happy philosopher. But Nero recked little of such 
 scenes, and as time went on, he fell wholly under the 
 influence which, even more than that of Tigellinus, de- 
 veloped his worst impulses. He became more and more 
 enslaved by the fatal fascinations of the wife of Otho. 
 
 Poppsea had every charm and every gift except that 
 of virtue. From the moment that she had riveted the 
 wandering fancy of Nero at the banquet of her husband, 
 she felt sure that her succession to the splendour of an 
 Augusta was only a matter of time. There were ob- 
 stacles in the way. Otho loved her to distraction. Nero 
 still admired him, and did not think of putting him to 
 death. Nor did he venture to defy public opinion by tak- 
 ing her from her husband, as Augustus had taken Livia 
 from the elder Tiberius. Octavia was Empress, and, as 
 the daughter of Claudius, she had a hold on the affec- 
 tions of the people. As the niece of Germanicus, she 
 was dear to the soldiers. Her life was blameless, and 
 Agrippina was anxious to protect her, though she knew 
 that it was impossible to make Nero a faithful husband. 
 Octavia retained the distinction of a consort, if she had 
 none of the love which was a wife's due. 
 
 Poppsea determined to surmount these difficulties, 
 and she it was who gradually goaded her imperial lover 
 to the worst crimes which disgrace his name. Through 
 two murders and two divorces she waded her way to a 
 miserable throne. 
 
 Her first husband was Rufius Crispinus, by whom 
 
 J 
 
AN EVIL EPOCH. 135 
 
 she had a son. She had accepted the advances of 
 Otho, who passed for the finest of the young Roman 
 aristocrats; but she aimed from the first at becoming 
 Empress, and it was with this aim that she had flung 
 her spells over Nero. Her consummate beauty was 
 enhanced by the utmost refinements of a coquette. She 
 pretended to love Nero passionately for his own sake, 
 as though she had become enamoured of his personal 
 beauty; yet while she thus allured his devotion, she 
 carefully checked his advances with a bewitching sem- 
 blance of modesty. She played the part of the honour- 
 able Roman matron. She extolled the open-handed 
 liberality and artistic grace of Otho. She taunted Nero 
 with his love for a freedwoman like Acte. Above all, 
 she missed no opportunity of deepening his irritation 
 against his mother. She saw the instinctive fear of 
 Agrippina which Nero could never quite throw off, and, 
 feeling convinced that so long as the Empress-mother 
 lived she could not supplant Octavia, she made it her 
 aim to goad Nero to her murder or banishment. When- 
 ever she saw him most enraptured with her charms — 
 when his hand wandered to the golden tresses, full of 
 burning gleams in the sunlight, which Nero had 
 astonished the poets by describing as " amber-hued," 
 and which were the despair and envy of the Roman 
 ladies — she would push his hand aside, and tell him 
 that she was much happier as the wife of Otho than 
 she could be in a palace where her lover was still 
 subject to the maternal sway of one who detested her. 
 Nero became haunted by the fixed impression that he 
 could never be free and never be happy while Agrip- 
 pina lived. Poppsea did not even hesitate to taunt 
 
136 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 him. "You a Caesar!" she said. "Why, you are not 
 even a free man! You are still a schoolboy, tied to your 
 mother's girdle!" 
 
 Nero saw but little of Agrippina. She spent much 
 of her time at one or other of her numerous villas, and 
 rarely occupied the palace of Antonia at Rome. Yet he 
 felt sure that during her sullen isolation she had never 
 abandoned her designs. She might seem to be living 
 in retirement, busy with the improvement of her gardens, 
 or amusing herself with her talking starlings and night- 
 ingales; but he knew her too well to imagine that she 
 acquiesced in a defeat which she might yet retrieve. 
 She was but forty-two years old, and in past days she 
 had shown that she knew how to wait. It was known 
 that she was writing her own memoirs, and that their 
 scandalous pages abounded in accusations against others, 
 so dark as to render men more credulous of the worst 
 accusations which were launched against herself How 
 could Nero tell what might be passing between her and 
 Octavia when they exchanged visits? His timid and 
 conscience-stricken nature often imagined that she might 
 be intriguing with Faustus Sulla or Rubellius Plautus, 
 both of whom, like himself, were scions of the imperial 
 family of the Caesars. He saw in her the one fatal 
 obstacle to the fulfilment of his desires. 
 
 And she, in those grim years of terror, knew well 
 that Poppaea was no gentle girl like Acte, but would 
 strive to traaiple on her rivals as Agrippina herself had 
 done in former years. The struggle against Poppaea 
 and her beauty and her ambition would be a struggle 
 of Hfe and death. And, indeed, the bitterness of death 
 was almost past, for her son stooped to the most ignoble 
 
AN EVIL EPOCH. 1 37 
 
 methods for rendering her life miserable, and humiliat- 
 ing her even to the dust. At Rome he set on his 
 emissaries to harass her with lawsuits; and, stooping to 
 yet more vulgar baseness, he paid the lowest of the 
 populace to annoy her with coarse jests and infamous 
 reproaches, which they shouted at her from boat or 
 roadside, when she was resting at her country houses. 
 
 An attempt was made to poison her at a banquet 
 given by Otho; but Agrippina was wary and abstemious. 
 She had watchful slaves and freedmen near her person, 
 and the attempt failed. Nero persuaded himself that 
 his mother was watching him like a tiger-cat in act to 
 spring. It was not only Poppaea who inflamed his 
 hatred. Tigellinus also had his own designs. He sug- 
 gested that Otho should first be got out of the way, 
 and then that the death of Agrippina should leave the 
 path open for Nero's union with the siren who had 
 mastered his soul. Octavia, without Agrippina to help 
 her, was hardly considered in the light of an obstacle. 
 She could be swept aside with ease. 
 
 The first step was soon taken. Otho was sent as 
 governor to Lusitania. So long as he was there he could 
 not stand in Nero's way. The exile cherished his love 
 for Poppaea to the last; and during his brief spell of 
 empire he induced the Senate to honour her with 
 statues. But he never saw her more. 
 
 One day, as Nero sat, with Tigellinus by his side, 
 looking on at a sham sea-fight, for the purpose of which 
 the arena had been flooded, they were struck with one 
 of the novelties which Arruntius Stella, the president of 
 the games, had devised for the amusement of the 
 populace. During the fight one of the vessels had been 
 
138- DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 SO constructed as to go to pieces, to pour a number of 
 armed men out of its hold, and then to be reunited into 
 a trireme as before. 
 
 Tigellinus touched the arm of Nero, and Nero, 
 filled with the same thought, turned to him a glance of 
 intelhgence. 
 
 "The sea is a treacherous element," said Tigellinus. 
 "All sorts of strange and unaccountable accidents happen 
 at sea." 
 
 "I wonder who could make me a ship of that kind," 
 said the Emperor. 
 
 "Your old tutor, Anicetus. He is at this moment 
 admiral of the fleet at Misenum. Stella would put at 
 his disposal the artist who contrived this vessel. One 
 like it could be made in a few weeks, and magnificently 
 adorned for the use of the Empress." 
 
 "How could she be induced to go on board?" 
 
 "She is at Antium; you are going to Baiae. The 
 feast of Minerva is coming on. You must be reconciled 
 to her publicly, must invite her to your villa, and must 
 place the galley at her disposal." 
 
 The sea-fight went on, but it was observed that, 
 after the new contrivance of the mechanical ship, Nero 
 did not pay much attention to it. He was apparently 
 lost in thought. He was impatiently revolving in his 
 mind the intolerable conditions by which he was sur- 
 rounded. On the one side was his mother — haughty, 
 menacing, powerful in spite of her dethronement; and, 
 on the other, Poppaea entangling him in her sorceries, 
 worrying him with importunities, goading him to matri- 
 cide with envenomed taunts. And behind them both 
 
AN EVIL EPOCH. 1 39 
 
 Stood the spectre of his tormenting conscience, with 
 thrilling whisper and outstretched hand. 
 
 And thus it was that the world went on. In that 
 age morality had well-nigh vanished because faith was 
 well-nigh dead. Man cannot live without a conscience 
 or without God. Guilty pleasure is brief-lived, and after- 
 wards it stingeth like a serpent. It is self-slain by the 
 Nemesis of satiety. The wickedest age the world has 
 ever seen was also the most incurably sad. 
 
 But, for the poor Christians of Rome, though the 
 days were so evil, life had neither tumult nor terror. 
 They had found that which more than compensated 
 them for the trials of the world. Their life was a 
 spiritual life. To them, to live was Christ. They pos- 
 sessed the strange secret of joy in sorrow, the boast of 
 which upon the lips of the Stoics was an idle vaunt. 
 That secret lay in a spiritual conviction, an indomitable 
 faith, above all, in an Indwelling Presence which breathed 
 into their souls a peace which the world could neither 
 give nor take away. The life which was, to most of 
 their contemporaries, a tragedy without dignity, or a 
 comedy without humour, was to them a gift sweet and 
 sacred, a race to be bravely run under that lucent cloud 
 which shone with the faces of angel witnesses; — a 
 mystery indeed, yet a mystery luminous with a ray 
 which streamed to them out of God's Eternity from the 
 Glory of their Risen Lord. 
 
140 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 THE MATRICIDE. 
 
 "It was not in the battle, 
 
 No tempest gave the shock; 
 She sprang no fatal leak, 
 
 She ran upon no rock" 
 
 COWPER. 
 
 "Hsec monstra Neroni 
 Nee jussae quondam praestiteratis aquae." 
 
 Mart. rv. 63. 
 
 BAiiE in the springtide of a.d. 59 must have been 
 as lovely a place as the world can show. Its blue sky, 
 its soft air, its sparkling sea, its delightful shore, its dry 
 hard yellow sands and rocks gleaming in the clear water, 
 its green and wooded heights, combined with its healing 
 waters and splendid buildings to make it a fairyland of 
 beauty and enjoyment. Marius, Pompey, Caesar, had 
 built villas there, and the whole line of coast to Puteoli 
 had gradually become crowded with the gay houses of 
 the Roman aristocracy. Temples, and baths, and theatres, 
 and palaces rose on every side, among groves enriched 
 with grottos and blooming like a garden of enchantment 
 with fruits and flowers. Passing the promontory of 
 Misenum, the traveller first arrived at the bright town of 
 Baiae itself, and then at the more quiet and exclusive 
 Bauli, until he reached the lakes of Lucrine and 
 Avernus, of which the former had been joined to the 
 
THE MATRICIDE. I4I 
 
 sea by a canal, and protected by the magnificent cause- 
 way of Agrippina's grandfather Agrippa. Beyond these 
 was Puteoli, with the stately and pillared fane of 
 Serapis, the ruins of which still attest its former mag- 
 nificence. 
 
 The festive splendour of the lovely and dissolute re- 
 sort was heightened by the universal holiday of the 
 Quinquatrus, or Feast of Minerva. It was kept almost 
 like our Christmas-tide. All the boys had five days' 
 holiday, beginning on March 19, and were at home 
 from their various schools, adding fresh mirth to the 
 joyous watering-place. There were exhibitions of wild 
 beasts, and plays, and poetic and oratorical contests; 
 and on the fifth day of the festival, which was called 
 the Tubilustrium, all the trumpets were blown, and the 
 sacred implements of the temples lustrated. 
 
 By this time Nero had accustomed himself to the 
 thought of getting rid of his mother by treacherous 
 violence. His five years of empire had inspired him 
 with audacity and confidence. His passion for Poppaea 
 burned with ever fiercer flame. His hatred for Agrippina, 
 as the main obstacle in the path of his desires, grew 
 daily more sullen; and Poppaea had aroused his fears 
 by persuading him that his mother was plotting against 
 his life. Since poison had failed, and he shrank from 
 using the dagger, he had determined to follow the 
 deadly suggestion of Tigellinus, and to make it appear 
 that the Augusta had perished in an accident at sea. 
 
 To prepare the way for his purpose, he began to 
 express his determination to be reconciled with his 
 mother. "The anger of parents," he said, "must be 
 cheerfully borne. It is my duty as a son to soothe my 
 
142 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 mother^s irritation. I long to be on good terms with 
 her once more." Again and again he repeated these 
 sentiments to various persons, and he took care that 
 they should reach the ears of his mother. Octavia her- 
 self, grateful for the efforts of Agrippina on her behalf, 
 told the Augusta that Nero's feelings seemed to be 
 undergoing a change, and that perhaps he would restore 
 to her, spontaneously, her former honours. The hope 
 kindled by this intelligence fell on the last days of the 
 Empress-mother like a ray of cruel sunshine out of the 
 thunderclouds which had so long been gathering around 
 her. It was natural that in her misery she should be 
 credulous of good tidings, and perhaps her heart was 
 softened to her son by the fact that she was now hving 
 in the villa at Antium where she had given him birth, 
 and in which nearly every room recalled the memories 
 of his childish brightness, and the winning trustfulness 
 of a heart as yet unstained, of a beauty as yet un- 
 shadowed by evil secrets and base desires. The villa 
 was full of splendour. The Apollo Belvedere and 
 the Fighting Gladiator were but two of the many 
 statues which adorned it. But what was art, what was 
 splendour, to a mind diseased? She found more happi- 
 ness in the tame birds which would settle on her finger, 
 and the yellow brown-marbled lampreys which came to 
 feed out of her hand. 
 
 On March 18, the day before the Feast of Minerva 
 began, her heart throbbed with pleasure to receive a 
 delightful letter from her son. Couched in the most 
 loving terms, it conveyed to her a genial invitation to 
 come to him at Baiae, and there to spend, in due mirth 
 and feast, the first day of the festival. "Fancy that I 
 
THE MATRICIDE. 1 43 
 
 am a schoolboy once more," wrote Nero, "and that you, 
 my loving mother, are welcoming me home for my holi- 
 days." How could Agrippina help indulging the hope 
 that better days had at last begun to dawn? The next 
 morning, gladder than she had ever been since her hus- 
 band's murder, she made her way through the grounds 
 of her villa to the little haven where was moored the 
 Liburnian galley which she used for excursions along 
 the shore. 
 
 Agrippina thought that nature had never looked 
 loveher as she glided over the flashing waves, and her 
 stalwart rowers in gay liveries, 
 
 "Bending to their oars with splash and strain, 
 Made white with foam the green and purple sea," 
 
 They had hardly rounded Cape Misenum when they met 
 the Imperial yacht in which Nero had sailed to meet 
 her. He came on board her galley, warmly embraced 
 her, and accompanied her to the landing-stage of her 
 villa at Bauh, where he bade her farewell, saying that 
 they would meet again in the evening. "And look, 
 mother," he said, "I have provided that you shall be 
 conducted to Baiae with proper splendour." 
 
 He pointed to a yacht anchored under the trees of 
 her villa, manned with the Imperial marines, and superb 
 with fluttering pennons and decorations of gilding and 
 vermiHon. It was more splendid than any to which she 
 had been accustomed in the days when, as the sole 
 Augusta and as all-powerful with Claudius, she wielded 
 the resources of the Empire. This yacht, he told her, 
 was to be rowed in front of her Liburnian, and to an- 
 nounce her arrival. There it lay, making a lovely show, 
 
144 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 and casting its bright broken reflection on the dancing 
 sunHt waters. She was deHghted, for she loved mag- 
 nificence, both for its own sake and for the impression 
 which it makes on the multitude; and she took this as 
 an omen that Nero would restore to her the bodyguard 
 of Germans and the escort of Praetorians the withdrawal 
 of which had cut her most deeply to the heart. 
 
 As Agrippina rested after her voyage, she prepared 
 to array herself in her richest and most jewelled robes. 
 She was full of bright anticipations, and thought that 
 now the tortures of the last five years were at an end. 
 The whole world had turned for her to thorns; would 
 some new rose-bud now unfold itself among them? 
 Hardly! It was the custom of ladies on the first day 
 of the Quinquatrus to consult astrologers and fortune- 
 tellers, and the answers of those whom Agrippina con- 
 sulted that day were far from encouraging. And a 
 disagreeable incident occurred during the morning. 
 While she was being dressed, the message was brought 
 her that, in the concourse of vessels which had attended 
 the Emperor, one of them had accidentally crashed into 
 her own galley, and so broken its sides that it was 
 temporarily unfit for service; happily, however, she 
 could now sail on board the bright vessel which had 
 been sent to wait upon her. 
 
 Little did the unhappy woman know that all this 
 had been pre-arranged, and that the chief reason why 
 Nero had sailed to meet her was in order to make the 
 disabling of her galley wear the aspect of a colourable 
 accident ! 
 
 But she felt an unaccountable unwilHngness to go 
 on board the untried vessel. She had heard mysterious 
 
THE MATRICIDE. 1 45 
 
 hints of danger, too impalpable to be understood, but 
 sufficient to awaken a dim suspicion. Her astrologer, 
 whom she again consulted, vaguely indicated that a 
 storm might arise, and it might be as well for her to 
 go to Baiae by the road. These faint surmises were 
 emphasised by the arbitrary foreboding of her own 
 heart, which every now and then seemed to pause in 
 its beating, and to chill her happiness with the suspense 
 of the unknown. In vain she tried to dispel these vague 
 spiritual fears. At the last moment she ordered her 
 litter to be prepared, and, making some excuse about 
 the better protection of her robes, had herself conveyed 
 to Baiae by land. 
 
 She was received with open arms from the moment 
 that, with queenly step, she descended from her litter. 
 The guests, and the many slaves, all in their finest 
 array, were grouped around the entrance, and broke 
 into a respectful murmur of greeting and applause as 
 the gleam of the westering sun flashed on the diamonds, 
 emeralds, and sapphires which encircled her neck and 
 arms and thickly encrusted the broidery of her inner 
 robe. The assembled nobles and courtiers bowed low, 
 the attendants almost prostrated themselves as she ad- 
 vanced towards her son. He seemed to be in his 
 brightest mood of hilarity and affection. He welcomed 
 her with playful sentences and attractive tenderness. 
 He himself conducted her to the banquet, which, to 
 add to its delight, was spread in a room where the 
 couches were so arranged that each guest could have 
 a full view on one side of that "golden shore of happy 
 Venus," proud with the gifts of nature and of art; and, 
 on the other side, of the river with its painted shallops 
 
 Darkness and Dawn. 11^ 10 
 
146 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 and merry holiday-makers. No refinement of luxury or 
 beauty was lacking to the banquet. Nero assured her — 
 but she knew that no one could believe a word he 
 said — he had himself caught the fish by a line from 
 the window beneath which the sea-waves flowed. Then 
 there were plates of melimela, sweet as honeycombs, 
 glowing rosily from their baskets of silver filagree, and 
 olives from Picenum, and cinnamon from the shop of 
 Niceros in Rome, which was so choice that, as he 
 solemnly assured his wealthy purchasers, it could only 
 be procured from the nest of the Phoenix. 
 
 Nero insisted that Agrippina should occupy the seat 
 of honour at the table above himself When she gently 
 remonstrated, he said, "To whom is the precedence due 
 but to the mother who gave me both my life and my 
 Empire?'^ Never had he seemed to her to shine with 
 more princely charm than at that entertainment! He 
 exerted himself to display all his geniality and all his 
 accomplishments. He bade her look at the sea, and 
 quoted some lines of young Martial to her: 
 
 "The wavelets wake from their purple sleep, 
 The soft breeze ruffles the dimphng deep, 
 Gently the painted shallops glide. 
 Borne by the breeze o'er the rippling tide." 
 
 Sometimes he entered with grave dignity upon 
 questions of State, which he respectfully submitted to 
 her maturer judgment; at other times, dropping the 
 tone of confidential inquiry, he plunged into almost 
 boyish gaiety, and interchanged witticisms with the 
 younger nobles to beguile her into laughter. His con- 
 duct was a consummate piece of acting, which would 
 not have disgraced Paris or Aliturus, and Agrippina fell 
 
THE MATRICIDE. 1 47 
 
 into the snare. At first the shadowy foreboding flitted 
 every now and then across her soul, but now she dis- 
 missed it. Surely all those blandishments were sincere! 
 After all, was not she his mother? was not he her son? 
 What was more natural than such a reconciliation be- 
 tween two who were so dear to each other? The hours 
 sped by almost unnoticed, and the exhilaration of the 
 rich wine of which, on an occasion so joyful, she freely 
 partook, added to the hope and bliss which for four 
 weary summers had been strangers to her heart. 
 
 But at last it was time to leave, for the banquet 
 and its amusements had prolonged themselves far into 
 the evening. Even Nero, frivolous, corrupt, abandoned 
 as he was, felt the awful solemnity of the moment when 
 he would for the last time behold in life the mother to 
 whom he owed so immense a debt. He strained her 
 again and again to his heart; he gazed long and earnestly 
 into the eyes which were so soon to be closed for ever; 
 he covered her hands and her cheeks and even her 
 eyes with his passionate kisses. Almost he wished that 
 the terrible deed had never been contemplated, that the 
 sham reconciliation had indeed been real. "Farewell, 
 dear mother," he said, almost with a sob, which came 
 easily to a nature so superficially emotional. "Take 
 care of your health for my sake." And then, handing 
 her to the charge of Anicetus, he turned hastily away. 
 
 With deep obeisances, but with a smile in his evil 
 eye, the Admiral, who had once been a slave, conducted 
 her on board the fatal ship, along the planks which had 
 been covered with purple for her proud footsteps. He 
 led her to the stern, where a canopy of purple silk, 
 fringed with golden broiderings, overshadowed the 
 
148 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 sumptuous couch on which she was now glad to rest. 
 There were but two attendants with her, her lady-in- 
 waiting, Acerronia Polla, and Crepereius Gallus. Little 
 did those three dream that it was to be their last night 
 on earth! 
 
 The night was as enchanting as only a night of the 
 spring on the shores of Italy can be. Overhead, in the 
 deep blue vault, numberless stars seemed to hang Hke 
 golden cressets, raining their large lustre over that un- 
 equalled scene. Beneath the rhythmic strokes of the 
 rowers the sea flashed into brighter phosphorescence in 
 the shadow of the boat, and the waves rolled away in 
 molten gold. From the near coast, as they steered 
 northwards, the air seemed to come laden with the per- 
 fume of flowers from the gardens and blossoming trees. 
 Countless spectators watched the gilded barque, and 
 their torches gUmmered along the crowded sands, and 
 the music of their gay songs and serenades came to the 
 happy voyagers. The balm and peacefulness and beauty 
 of the night seemed to set its seal on the reunion of 
 hearts too long divided, and for that hour of blessed- 
 ness it almost seemed worth while to have lived. 
 
 Acerronia, bending over the feet of the Empress as 
 she reclined on the couch, was congratulating her with 
 all her heart on the warmth with which she had been 
 received, and was indulging in a hundred flattering 
 auguries of the future. Surely Agrippina would now be 
 restored to her full honours as Augusta! Once more 
 she would have her home in the Palace of the Caesars, 
 and ride in a carriage to the capital, and be surrounded 
 by her tall and glittering bodyguard! "He kissed your 
 eyes, Augusta," said Acerronia, "as though he would 
 
THE MATRICIDE. 1 49 
 
 embrace your very soul."* To Agrippina also at that 
 moment 
 
 "Hope enchanted smiled, and waved the golden hair." 
 
 Crepereius stood near them, only joining in the con- 
 versation by an occasional word of congratulation, but 
 enjoying with the two ladies the happy events of the 
 day and the splendour of the balmy night. 
 
 Suddenly a whistle was heard from near the prow, 
 where Anicetus was standing. The whistle was followed 
 by a frightful crash. The gay canopy over the Empress 
 had been weighted with lead, and so contrived that by 
 the pulling of a rope it could be freed from its supports. 
 Down it rushed upon the heads of the unsuspecting 
 victims. Crepereius, who was standing up, was instantly 
 crushed to death; but not so the two ladies. They 
 were protected by the side of the boat and of the 
 couch on which the Empress was resting. Half stunned 
 by the terrible accident, they had scarcely reaHsed what 
 had occurred before they saw the galley in a state of 
 indescribable confusion. Only a few of the sailors 
 shared the hideous secret with Anicetus; and as the 
 machinery had failed to act — for the loosing of the 
 canopy ought to have been accompanied by the dis- 
 solution of the vessel — they rushed to the larboard in 
 order to upset the boat by their weight. Those who 
 had not been warned of the intended murder rushed 
 to the starboard to prevent an accident. Fierce cries 
 and discordant commands sounded on every side. Half 
 wild with selfish terror, Acerronia struggled from the 
 
 * Plin. H. N. XI. 54: "Oculos cum osculamur, animum ipsu7n 
 videmur attingere," 
 
I50 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 debris of the canopy and screamed out, "I am the 
 Empress; help the mother of the Caesar." A shower of 
 fierce blows, dealt on her head with oars and boat- 
 hooks, was the answer to her cry and the punishment 
 of her faithlessness. In a moment she too lay out- 
 stretched in death. Agrippina was sobered by peril 
 from the fumes of the Falernian of which she had 
 plentifully partaken, and was enabled, by her familiarity 
 with guilty plots, to take in at a glance the significance 
 of the scene. She kept perfect silence. The murder 
 of Acerronia showed her that it was her own life which 
 was being deliberately attempted under pretence of a 
 shipwreck; but she clung fiercely to that life, horrible 
 as it had become, and httle as she could now hope 
 ultimately to escape the machinations of her son. Tak- 
 ing advantage of the confusion and the darkness, she 
 dropped herself unobserved into the sea. She was a 
 good swimmer, and boldly struck out for the land; 
 though she then first became conscious that during the 
 scuffle she had received a wound in the shoulder, either 
 from the falling canopy or from the oar of one of the 
 conspirators. Every stroke was painful; she was weighted 
 by her heavy robes, and she doubted whether her 
 strength would hold out; but still she swam for the land 
 with all her remaining force. Surely the silent stars 
 had never looked down on a stranger scene! Here was 
 a matron who but recently had swayed the world, a 
 half-deified Empress, the great granddaughter of Augustus, 
 the daughter of Germanicus, the wife and priestess of 
 one deified Emperor, and the mother of the reigning 
 Caesar, swimming for her life in the jewelled robes 
 which she had worn at the Imperial banquet — swimming 
 
THE MATRICIDE. I5I 
 
 for her life in the dark waves, which became phos- 
 phorescent at every stroke, and thus trying to escape to 
 land from the gilded barge which had been murderously 
 wrecked by the contrivance of her son! 
 
 It happened that Pudens, as one of the officers in 
 charge of the Praetorian escort, was spending his holiday 
 at Baiae, and had asked Titus to accompany him. King 
 Caractacus and Claudia were also there, and had ac- 
 cepted the invitation of Pudens to join him and their 
 young favourite Titus for a moonlight sail on one of the 
 scores of painted shallops in which the visitors to the 
 watering-place were enjoying the beauty of the night. 
 The youth's eyes had been following the gay vessel 
 which bore Agrippina to Bauli. He saw that there had 
 been some strange disaster; he had heard the crash of 
 the falling canopy, and the discordant tumult of cries 
 and groans which followed. He had seen a splash in 
 the water, and observed the golden divided ripple be- 
 hind some one who was evidently swimming to escape. 
 He instantly steered the pleasure-boat towards the 
 swimmer, as did some fishermen in another vessel who, 
 then as now, were plying their trade by night. The 
 unhappy Empress first reached the boat of Pudens, and 
 the centurion stretched out his strong arm to rescue 
 her. As she grasped it the light of a torch upheld by 
 Titus shone on his face, and she recognised the young 
 friend of Britannicus. He, too, by the same light caught 
 the flash of her jewels, and saw who she was. 
 
 "Immortal gods!" he exclaimed, "it is the Empress 
 Agrippina!" 
 
 Claudia at once pressed to her side. Her face was 
 deadly pale, and the blood of Acerronia had left on it 
 
152 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 some ghastly spots of crimson. The sleeve of her robe 
 was stained with blood from the wound in her shoulder. 
 She was almost too exhausted to speak, but she faintly- 
 whispered, "Hush! Do not mention my name. Let me 
 be unknown.'' 
 
 They laid her on the cushioned seat, and Claudia, 
 sitting beside her, clasped her hand, wrung the sea-water 
 from the folds of her dripping robe, tenderly parted the 
 wet disordered tresses which clung about her face, and 
 covered her with a mantle, while, at her request, they 
 rowed her towards the Lucrine lake and the landing- 
 place of her villa. Titus bade the fisher-boat accompany 
 them, for their own little pinnace was overloaded. When 
 they touched the land he offered to run up to the villa 
 and order her slaves to bring a litter for their mistress. 
 The Empress, however, entreated them not to wait, but 
 to carry her as best they could, for she was too weak 
 to walk. A rude litter was hastily constructed from a 
 bench of the fishing-boat, and in this humble and pathe- 
 tic guise the Augusta was carried by Pudens and Titus 
 into the hall of her house, where a group of wondering 
 and terrified slaves awaited her. 
 
 The news had spread like wildfire among the thou- 
 sands of idlers who were promenading on the shore, and 
 tumult reigned among them. What did it mean? The 
 night was absolutely calm. There were no rocks in the 
 bay. No colHsion had occurred. That there could have 
 been a real shipwreck was impossible. The gods them- 
 selves, by the exceptional calmness of sea and air, 
 seemed to have interfered to expose the hypocritical 
 pretence of any accident. But if there could have been 
 no accident, what was it that had happened? What 
 
THE MATRICIDE. I 53 
 
 were they to do? They were in wild excitement. All 
 along the shore of the bay were crowds of men and 
 women, who had streamed out of the villas at the news 
 of some variously reported disaster. No one knew the 
 real facts of the case. The strangest tales were repeated 
 from mouth to mouth, and on all sides were heard 
 agitated questions and startling but discordant answers. 
 The sea-road and the sands and the causeway of the 
 Lucrine lake glimmered with countless torches, which 
 flowed now in one direction, now in another, like streams 
 of fire. The one steady report was that the Empress 
 had been shipwrecked, and was in danger of her Hfe; 
 and the one object was to get a share in the credit of 
 saving her. The piers and boats were crowded with an 
 impatient throng. Some stood at the very edge of the 
 summer waves; others waded neck-deep into the warm 
 and glowing water, and stood with outstretched hands 
 staring over the sea to catch sight of any floating form. 
 Amid the confusion, the little pleasure-boat of Pudens 
 was seen rippling its golden path towards Baiae from the 
 landing-stage of Agrippina's villa, and was instantly sur- 
 rounded by throngs of eager questioners. In answer to 
 the confused inquiries, Pudens and Titus said that un- 
 doubtedly the splendid state galley had, in some way 
 or other, been shipwrecked, but that the Empress-mother 
 had escaped by swimming, and was now safe at her 
 own villa. 
 
 As the news spread among the multitudes, they 
 streamed off" to the villa at Bauli to convey their con- 
 gratulations and to surround the house and gardens 
 with applauding cries. Most of them felt an agreeable 
 sensation in the fact that a first-rate incident had oc- 
 
154 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 curred to break the monotony of idleness and vulgar 
 dissipation. 
 
 But Agrippina was lying in her chamber, shivering, 
 agitated, with aching body and despairing soul. The 
 undaunted woman had betrayed to her slaves and house- 
 hold no sign that she was aware of what had been in- 
 tended. She only told them that her galley had been 
 shipwrecked, and her life marvellously preserved. She 
 expressed her deep regret at the loss of her friends 
 Acerronia and Crepereius, and ordered the will of the 
 former to be produced, and all her effects sealed. Not 
 till then did she withdraw into privacy, to meditate on 
 what she should do. All was too plain now! She 
 understood that sugared letter which had summoned her 
 from Antium! She understood why her son had sailed 
 to Cape Misenum to meet her; why her own galley had 
 been purposely run into; why the gorgeous state-barge 
 had been pressed upon her acceptance ! She saw through 
 the exquisite banquet, the hypocritical caresses, the 
 murder so deliberately and diabolically planned. . . . 
 Alas! alas! 
 
 Revenge, the appeal to force, was out of the question. 
 She was ill and miserable, and felt drained of all her 
 energies. The crowd buzzed and shouted outside; but 
 she gauged too well their cowardly and vacillating nature 
 to rely on any protection from them. She knew that at 
 the sight of a dozen soldiers they would be scattered 
 like the chaff. And who would strike a blow for her? 
 Not the mob, for she was universally hated; not the 
 nobles or the Senate,, for they loved her not, and were 
 in any case too selfish, too servile, and too much steeped 
 in dissolute luxury to lift a hand on her behalf Would 
 
THE MATRICIDE. I 55 
 
 the Praetorians rise at her bidding? It was more than 
 doubtful; and if they would, she was at Bauli and they 
 at Rome. 
 
 But one thistledown of hope remained to bear the 
 weight of her ruined fortunes. Was it possible that, at 
 the last moment, her son would relent? Those farewell 
 embraces seemed to express something genuine. Perhaps 
 when he found that he had, in spite of himself, escaped 
 the guilt of actual matricide, he might come to a better 
 mind. The gods had offered him one more opportunity 
 for repentance: would he embrace it? Yes; she came to 
 the decision that her best course was to feign ignorance 
 of the design of which she had been the victim, and to 
 trust to the reawakenment of filial affection in Nero's 
 mind. 
 
 She summoned to her presence her freedman Lucius 
 Agerinus. 
 
 "Go to the Emperor,'' she said, "and tell him that, 
 by the merciful protection of the gods, his mother has 
 been saved from a terrible disaster. Anxious as he must 
 naturally be about my safety, ask him not to cherish 
 any solicitude, but to postpone for the present the visit 
 which he will wish to pay me. I am greatly in need of 
 rest." 
 
 Agerinus set out, little foreseeing that he too was 
 potentially a murdered man. Agrippina — ill, disen- 
 chanted, utterly weary of the world — once more lay on 
 her couch, with throbbing brows and lacerated soul, a 
 prey to unspeakable anguish. A single slave-maiden 
 was her attendant; a single golden lamp shed its dim 
 light from its marble stand over her room. In her ut- 
 most need there was not one to whom she could speak, 
 
156 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 or in whom she could confide. Oh, how she longed 
 for one hour of Pomponia's company, for one whisper 
 of the consolation which had once fallen for a moment 
 like the dew upon her soul! But Baiae was the last 
 place where Pomponia would be likely to be found. 
 
 The slave-girl, withdrawn into the shadow, and en- 
 gaged in spinning wool, looked up furtively again and 
 again at the face of the Empress, who was too much 
 absorbed in her own thoughts to notice her. The girl 
 saw passion after passion chase each other like dark 
 clouds across Agrippina^s face. At one moment the 
 clenched hand, the quivering nostril, the flashing glance, 
 showed that the thought of possible vengeance was pass- 
 ing through her soul. Then for a moment a softer ex- 
 pression would smooth her features, as she dreamed of 
 the possibility of her son's remorse. Then terror would 
 express itself on her features as she recognised the 
 frightfulness of her position. Last of all, an infinite 
 languor seemed to droop through her whole being, as 
 she resigned herself to sullen despair. 
 
 In those dark uncertain hours she realised all the 
 error and infatuation of her life. Impunity, after so 
 many crimes? Impunity, when the menacing spectres of 
 perjury and adultery and murder kept starting upon her 
 out of the darkness? Crispus Passienus poisoned; Lucius 
 Silanus hounded to death by lying informers; his mur- 
 dered brother Junius; her husband Claudius — were they 
 all to be unavenged? Had the gods no thunderbolts? 
 Had the guilty ever escaped them? Had Tiberius died 
 in peace after his atrocities and crimes? Had Gains 
 died in peace amid the tears of his beloved? Had 
 Messalina escaped the consequences of her debaucheries 
 
THE MATRICIDE. I 57 
 
 and murders? Did not the violated laws of heaven put 
 into the hand of their transgressors their whips of flame ? 
 And as she began to reaHse that Retribution dogs guilt 
 like its own inevitable shadow, the line of the old Greek 
 poet rang ominously in her memory: 
 
 "Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding 
 small. 
 Though in patience long He waiteth, with exactness grinds 
 He aU.» 
 
 And, all the while, the nightingales in the gardens 
 of her villa were pealing forth their ecstasy, and the 
 stars shone, and the soft wind breathed of perfume. 
 
158 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 SELF-AVENGED. 
 
 "Sua quern que fraus, suum facinus, suum scelus, sua audacia, 
 de sanitate ac mente deturbat. Hse sunt impiorum furise, hae 
 flammse, hae faces." — ClC In Pisonem^ XX. 46. 
 
 Nero, in a mood of fearful restlessness, awaited 
 news of the issue of his design. Long ere this he ought 
 to have received the intelligence which would relieve his 
 life of a great burden. Hardly for a moment did the 
 enormity of the crime he was committing press upon a 
 soul given up to shameful self-indulgence. He only 
 yearned to be rid of a figure which frightened him, and 
 checked the rushing chariot- wheels of his passions. 
 Once free from his mother and her threats, he would 
 marry Poppaea and give himself up to whatever his heart 
 desired. Too uneasy to sleep, too much occupied with 
 anxiety to follow his usual pleasures, he talked to Tigel- 
 linus, who alone was with him, pacing up and down the 
 hall of his villa, tossing down goblet after goblet of wine, 
 and trying to conjure before his imagination the scene 
 which was being enacted. Surely it could not fail ! And, 
 if it succeeded, the dead tell no tales, and the sea-waves 
 would keep the secret! Everyone had seen the warmth 
 of his attention to his mother, and the affectionate ten- 
 derness with which he had bidden her farewell. What 
 remained but publicly to deplore with tears the sad 
 
SELF-AVENGED. 159 
 
 bereavement which had been inflicted on his youth by 
 the treachery of winds and waves, and then to decree 
 to his mother's memory the temples and the altars which 
 would be ostentatious proofs of his filial regard? 
 
 But how was it that no news had reached him? 
 Three or four hours had passed. By this time the deed 
 must have been done. Something had happened — so 
 much was certain; for though he dared not send out to 
 inquire, as though he suspected that anything was wrong, 
 yet from the balcony he saw the torches moving in hur- 
 ried streams hither and thither, and he could hear the 
 distant cries of excitement and alarm. 
 
 A messenger was announced. 
 
 "Who is it?" asked Nero anxiously. 
 
 "The centurion Pudens," said the slave; "and he is 
 accompanied by Titus Flavins.'' 
 
 Nero started at the name, for it recalled the night 
 of the murder of Britannicus. 
 
 "What do they want?" 
 
 "They have important tidings, which they will tell 
 to Caesar's ears alone." 
 
 "Admit them. See that the guard is on duty close 
 at hand." 
 
 Pudens and the youth were ushered into Nero's pre- 
 sence, and, in answer to his agitated inquiries, told him 
 all that had occurred, and how they helped to rescue 
 the Empress as she was saving herself by swimming. 
 They were dismissed, each with a handsome gift; and 
 scarcely had they left the room when Nero, pale as death, 
 and with a heart which throbbed with painful palpita- 
 tions, flung himself on a couch and turned a terrified 
 look on his accomplice. 
 
l6o DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 "The plan has been bungled," he said. "I am 
 ruined. My mother has been wounded. She knows 
 all." 
 
 Tigellinus feared that in his terror he would swoon 
 away, and sprinkled his face with water. 
 
 "What will she do?" asked Nero in a faint voice. 
 "Will she arm her slaves to attack and murder me? 
 Will she rouse the soldiers? Will she go to Rome and 
 accuse me of matricide before the Senate and the 
 people?" 
 
 The older and robuster villany of Tigellinus was not 
 terrified by these alarms; but he too saw that the situa- 
 tion was serious, and did not know what to advise. 
 
 Nero, shaking with alarm, sent messengers in fiery 
 haste for Burrus and Seneca, both of whom had come 
 from Rome to Baiae at his request to attend upon him 
 during the Quinquatrus. They were roused from their 
 beds at the dead of night, and hurried to Nero's villa. 
 He told them that, after his mother had left him, her 
 vessel had been wrecked, and that she had swum to 
 land with no worse hurt than a slight wound; but he 
 added, "She suspects that I have attempted her Hfe: 
 and how am I to escape her vengeance?" 
 
 Burrus and Seneca stood silent and thunderstricken. 
 They were innocent of the vile attempt. Dim rumours 
 of some grave crime which was in contemplation had 
 indeed reached them; and in Nero's court everything 
 seemed credible. The murder had been the design of 
 the execrable Anicetus and the yet more execrable 
 Tigellinus, and had only been revealed to kindred spirits 
 such as Poppsea. But they at once saw through the 
 
SELF-AVENGED. 101 
 
 Story which Nero told them, in which he had indeed 
 betrayed himself. 
 
 It was a moment of anguish and of degradation for 
 them both. The blunt, honest soldier was thinking of 
 his happier youth, in which virtue was not compelled to 
 breathe so contaminated an atmosphere. He was secretly 
 cursing the day on which ambition had led him to es- 
 pouse the cause of Nero, and so to be dragged into 
 loathed complicity with so many crimes. 
 
 And through the heart of Seneca there shot a pang 
 of yet keener agony. He a philosopher; he a Stoic; he 
 a writer of so many high-soaring moral truths; he so 
 superior to the vile and vulgar standard of his age — to 
 what had he now sunk! Was this corrupt fratricide — 
 this would-be murderer of his mother — the timid boy 
 who, Httle more than five years before, had been en- 
 trusted to his tutelage? And was he now called upon 
 to advise the most feasible way in which a matricide 
 could be accompUshed? Was he, of all men, to be the 
 Pylades to this viler Orestes? Was it to the edge of 
 such a precipice that he had been led by the devious 
 ways of a selfish ambition? 
 
 A nobler path was open to him had he desired it. 
 Why should he not have urged Nero to visit his mother, 
 to expostulate with her if need be, to be reconciled with 
 her in reality? Might he not have told him that, if 
 Agrippina were really conspiring, it would be better for 
 him to run that risk than to stain his hands in a mother's 
 blood? Titus was not a professed philosopher like 
 Seneca, yet Titus rose spontaneously to that height of 
 virtue in later years. He knew that his brother Domitian 
 was working in secret as his deadly enemy, yet he only 
 
 Darkness and Dawn^ II, 1 1 
 
1 62 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 took him gently aside, and entreated him to behave 
 more worthily of a brother. And when he saw that his 
 entreaty had failed, he did indeed weep as he sat at 
 the games, but he would not shed his brother's blood. 
 
 Alas! the conscience of Seneca did not suggest to 
 him this means by which he could extricate himself. 
 That Agrippina was, at such a crisis, preparing to rebel 
 against her son he did not beheve; but might she not 
 — so whispered to him once more the demon of conces- 
 sion — might she not become dangerous hereafter? In 
 other words, must he not help the Emperor to accompHsh 
 his fell purpose? The silence became intolerable. 
 
 At last Seneca turned his troubled eyes on Burrus, 
 as though to inquire whether it would be safe to com- 
 mand the execution of Agrippina by the Praetorians. 
 
 Burrus understood his look and bluntly replied that 
 such a thing was not to be thought of. The Praetorians 
 would never lift a hand against the daughter of Ger- 
 manicus. The same thought had been in his mind as 
 in that of Seneca, though he had blushed to give it 
 utterance. But now that he saw the drift of his col- 
 league's purpose, he gulped down his scruples, and said 
 with sullen brevity, "Let Anicetus complete what he has 
 begun." 
 
 Anicetus had been on board the deceitful vessel, 
 and, on the failure of the device, had made his way 
 with all speed in a rowing boat to the Emperor's villa. 
 He entered at the moment when Burrus spoke. Nero 
 turned on him a look of rage, and, walking up to him, 
 stammered into his ear the threat that his life should 
 pay the penalty of his clumsy failure. 
 
 "Be calm, Caesar," he replied in a whisper; "your 
 
SELF-AVENGED. 1 63 
 
 wish shall still be accomplished. Only give me your 
 authority to end the business." 
 
 Anicetus hated Agrippina for private reasons, and 
 he knew that, if she were not put to death, she would 
 dema;nd vengeance upon him, since the treachery on 
 board the vessel could not have been effected without 
 his cognisance. "Leave it in my hands," he said. "If 
 Seneca and Burrus are too timid to strike a blow for 
 their Emperor, at least Anicetus will not shrink." 
 
 "Thanks, Anicetus," said Nero, changing his mood. 
 "To-day, for the first time, I feel secure. Now I begin 
 to recognise that I am indeed Emperor. And a freed- 
 man is the author of the boon!" 
 
 He frowned at his two ministers to reprove their 
 backwardness in murder, and effusively grasped the hand 
 of the Admiral. Burrus, as he looked at his scowling 
 countenance, felt a fresh pang of remorse that he had 
 ever deserted the cause of Britannicus. Seneca said to 
 his agonised conscience, "If one would be the friend of 
 a tyrant, one must not only wink at crimes, but commit 
 them without a moment's hesitation, however heinous 
 they may be." 
 
 While Anicetus was hastily suggesting the steps to 
 be taken, the announcement came that one of Agrip- 
 pina's attendants — Lucius Agerinus — was waiting outside 
 with a verbal message from the Augusta. Before he 
 was admitted Nero whispered something to Anicetus. 
 "Yes, yes," said the Admiral, "the plan is excellent." 
 
 Both Seneca and Burrus were amazed and shocked 
 at the stupid and shameless comedy which was then 
 enacted before their eyes. Agerinus had hardly begun 
 to deliver his message when Nero, stepping up to him, 
 
 II* 
 
164 DARICNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 dropped a sword at his feet. It fell with a clang on the 
 white and purple mosaic, and instantly Nero and Anicetus 
 began to clamour, "Murder! treason! murder! he has 
 been sent by Agrippina to stab the Emperor!" 
 
 At this shout the bodyguard came running in, and 
 Agerinus was loaded with chains. Anicetus now had 
 the excuse he needed. He summoned a band of 
 soldiers and marines, and, accompanied by Herculeius, 
 one of his naval captains, and Obaritus, an officer of 
 the marines, he made his way to the villa at Bauli, 
 giving out that he was ordered to execute Agrippina, 
 who had just been detected in an attempt to assassinate 
 her son. 
 
 They found the precincts of the villa thronged by 
 a curious crowd. These they drove away, and sur- 
 rounded the grounds with guards. The slaves dispersed 
 in all directions. Agrippina was still in her dimly 
 lighted room, growing momently more alarmed because 
 Agerinus did not return and she received no message 
 from Nero. Nearer and nearer came the tread of feet 
 till they heard the soldiers enter the atrium. There 
 followed a brief altercation as the murderers scattered 
 the few faithful attendants who would still have guarded 
 the door of the chamber. The slave-girl rose to fly. 
 
 "Dost thou also desert me?" said the Empress 
 bitterly. 
 
 But the girFs figure had scarcely disappeared when 
 the door was rudely burst open, and she saw the cruel 
 face of her enemy Anicetus, who held his drawn sword 
 in his hand. 
 
 For a moment they stopped before her imperious 
 gesture. 
 
SELF- AVENGED. I 65 
 
 "If you have come from my son to inquire after my 
 health/' she said, "tell him that I am better. If you 
 have come to commit a crime, I will not believe that 
 you have his authority." 
 
 "We have his authority," said Anicetus. "Behold 
 his signet-ring!" 
 
 They advanced upon her. She sprang from her 
 couch and stood erect. Then the brutal Herculeius 
 struck her a blow on the head with his baton, and 
 Anicetus aimed his sword at her breast. She avoided 
 the stroke, and, rending her tunic, "Strike here," she 
 said, pointing to her womb; "it bore a monster!" 
 
 She fell, stricken down, and thrust through with 
 many deadly wounds. 
 
 Thus ended that career of wickedness and splen- 
 dour. Almost from the day which consummated her 
 many crimes she heard behind her the fatal footstep of 
 the avenger. Her murder of Claudius had placed the 
 diadem upon the brow of her own murderer. For that 
 young murderer she had felt the frantic love of a tigress 
 for the cub which she licks and fondles. And now the 
 tiger-whelp had shown the nature which it inherited. 
 
 When Nero received the news that his mother was 
 dead, he would not trust to any testimony. With wild 
 haste and utmost secrecy he went to the villa at Bauli. 
 With trembling hand he drew the winding-sheet from 
 the face, and gazed on the corpse. The colour fled 
 from his cheeks; but after a moment or two he grew 
 bolder. The matricide was still the aesthete, "I did 
 
1 66 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 not know," he said, "that I had so beautiful a mother." 
 Then he hurried back. 
 
 That same night they carried her corpse to the 
 funeral pyre. It was laid upon a couch from her 
 banquet-hall, for lack of a regular bier. Hurried and 
 scant and humble were her obsequies. Her ashes were 
 laid in a mean grave near the road to Misenum, where 
 the villa of the dictator Caesar crowned an eminence 
 which commanded a wide view of the gulf. 
 
 During the remaining ten years of her son's reign, 
 the site of her sepulchre was left unhonoured and no 
 mound was raised above her ashes. But the spot was 
 not forgotten, and to this day the peasant points to the 
 Sepolcro d' Agrippina. One instance of faithfulness gave 
 a yet more pathetic interest to the spot where so many 
 lofty hopes were quenched in blood. Before the pyre 
 was kindled, Mnester, her loyal freedman, stabbed him- 
 self over her corpse. He would not survive a mistress 
 who, whatever had been her crimes, had been kind to 
 him, and whom he loved. 
 
 What pathos is there in the fact that even the worst 
 and most criminal of human souls have rarely died en- 
 tirely unloved ! Even a Marat, even a Robespierre, even 
 a Borgia, even an Agrippina, found at least one to 
 mourn when they were dead. 
 
VICTOR OVER THE PUBLIC SERVITUDE. 1 67 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 VICTOR OVER THE PUBLIC SERVITUDE. 
 
 "PaUidumque visa 
 Matris lampade respicis Neronem." 
 
 Stat. Sylv, II. vii. 118. 
 
 "Prima est hsec iiltio, quod se 
 Judice nemo nocens absolvitur." 
 
 Juv. Sat. xin. 2. 
 
 There is a marvellous force of illumination in a 
 great crime, but it is the lurid illumination of the light- 
 ning-flash, revealing to the lost Alpine wanderer the 
 precipices which yawn on every side of him. While 
 the murder was yet to do, Nero could talk of it lightly 
 and eagerly among the accomplices who were in the 
 secret. To the irresponsible Emperor of the world it did 
 not seem so great a matter to order the murder of a 
 mother. But when the deed was done, when he had 
 got back to his Baian villa, when the pale face flecked 
 with crimson bloodstains came hauntingly back upon his 
 memory, a horror of great darkness fell upon him. 
 Then first he realised the atrocious magnitude of his 
 crime, and every moment there rang in his ears a damn- 
 ing accusation. The very birds of the air seemed to flit 
 away from him, twittering "Matricide! matricide!" He 
 drank more Falemian from the glittering table, on which 
 yet lay the remains of the banquet, but it seemed as if 
 
1 68 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 all his senses were too preternaturally acute with horror 
 to be dulled by wine. He lay down to sleep, but 
 strange sounds seemed to be creeping through the dead 
 stillness of the night, which made him shudder with 
 alarm. If he closed his eyes, there flashed at once upon 
 them the pale face, the firm-set lips, the splashes of 
 blood. The dead eyes of his mother seemed to open 
 upon him with a gleam of vengeance. Till that night 
 he had never known what it was to dream. He started 
 up with a shriek and summoned his attendants round 
 him, and paced up and down in a frenzy of delirium, 
 declaring that when the dawn came he would certainly 
 be slain. They persuaded him to lie down again, but 
 scarcely had he dropped into an uneasy sleep when it 
 seemed to him as though he saw the three Furies 
 sweeping down upon him with the blue snakes gleam- 
 ing in their hair and the torches shaken in their hands, 
 while his mother, who pointed them to him, shrieked 
 aloud, "Ho! murderer of thy mother! no sleep hence- 
 forth for thee!" 
 
 Leaping once more from that couch of agony, he 
 sat mute, and trembling in every limb, his clenched 
 hands buried in his hair, waiting in anguish the break 
 of day. When the first beam of dawn lit the east, it 
 showed a youth whose pallid features were haggard with 
 agonies of fear. 
 
 If there had been a spark of nobleness in the 
 Roman world, the indignation of a people's moral sense 
 might have sprung to arms and smitten the tyrant while 
 he was yet red-handed from his crime. Nothing was 
 farther from the general intention. The universal desire 
 was to "skin and film the ulcerous place" with adula- 
 
VICTOR OVER THE PUBLIC SERVITUDE. l6g 
 
 tion and hypocrisy. Men, not naturally ^evil or case- 
 hardened, were carried away by the tide of complaisance 
 to the Imperial murderer. As though to leave no chance 
 for any feelings of penitence to work, all classes began 
 to flood him with congratulations. The fears which at 
 the moment he half mistook for remorse vanished like 
 the early dew, for society seized upon the convention 
 that Agrippina, detected in a plot against the life of her 
 son, had been justly executed. The tribunes and cen- 
 turions of the Praetorians, Burrus at their head, came to 
 Nero that morning, poured their felicitations upon him, 
 pressed his hands, expressed their effusive joy that he 
 had escaped from so sudden a peril created by his 
 mother's crime. His friends crowded to the temples to 
 thank the gods for his safety. There was scarcely a 
 town of Campania which did not express its joy by 
 sending deputations and offering victims. Distant pro- 
 vinces caught the infection, and Cisalpine and Trans- 
 alpine Gaul surpassed all the rest by the fulsome en- 
 treaty which they sent by their ambassador, Julius 
 Africanus, "that Nero would endure his felicity with 
 fortitude!" Certainly it did not seem as if there were 
 much cause for fear! In a few days Nero became an 
 adept at the counter-hypocrisy with which he feigned to 
 weep over the fate of his mother, and to be grieved by 
 his own deliverance! 
 
 But places cannot change their aspect as do the 
 looks of men. From the windows and gardens of Nero's 
 villa were always visible the sea which he had attempted 
 to pollute, the long line of shore which he had stained 
 with a mother's blood. The aspect of nature in that 
 lovely spot had lost its fascination. It seemed to be 
 
170 t)ARICNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 eloquent with mute reproach. And what were those 
 sounds which assailed his ears at the dead of night? 
 What meant that blast of a solitary trumpet, blown by- 
 no earthly breath, from the promontory of Misenum? 
 What meant those ghostly wailings which seemed to 
 shriek around his mother's grave? He could not endure 
 this haunted place. He fled to Naples. 
 
 From thence he despatched to the Senate a letter, 
 of which the conceits betrayed, alas ! the hand of Seneca. 
 "As yet," he wrote, "I cannot believe, I do not rejoice, 
 that I am safe." Men of letters admired the euphuistic 
 phrases and despised their author. The letter did not 
 mention any details, but left it to be inferred that 
 Agrippina, detected in an attempt to murder her son, 
 had committed suicide. And then with unmanly ma- 
 lignity it dwelt on the long catalogue of her crimes — 
 her bitter enmities, her immense ambition, her un- 
 scrupulous intrigues. To her it attributed all the 
 cruelties of the reign of Claudius, and it ended by say- 
 ing that her death was a public blessing. The more 
 cynical of the senators laughed at the absurdities of this 
 missive, for it narrated Agrippina's shipwreck as though 
 it had been accidental, and tried to gain credence for 
 the gross absurdity that a woman barely saved from 
 drowning had chosen the moment of her rescue to send 
 off to murder her only son in the midst of his fleets 
 and cohorts! 
 
 But though men shook their heads at Seneca, they 
 plunged no less emulously into the vortex of criminal 
 adulation. Public thanksgivings were decreed to all the 
 gods; annual games at the Quinquatrus; a golden statue 
 to Minerva in the senate-house, with a statue of the 
 
\aCTOR OVER THE PUBLIC SERVITUDE. 1 7 I 
 
 Emperor beside it. The birthday of Agrippina was 
 pronounced accursed. Such abject servility was too 
 much for the haughty spirit of Psetus Thrasea. He rose 
 from his seat and left the senate-house in silence, and 
 a blush rose to the cheek of not a few who did not 
 dare to follow him. 
 
 Yet, after all, Nero was so timid that six months 
 elasped before he ventured once more to face the people 
 of his capital. An eclipse of the sun had happened 
 during the thanksgiving decreed by the Senate. Four- 
 teen regions of the city had been struck by lightning. 
 Would these portents of heaven awaken the tardy in- 
 dignation of men? Every piece of news, however trivial, 
 frightened him. He was told the ridiculous story that a 
 woman had given birth to a snake. Was that meant 
 by the gods, if there were any, for a scornful symbol of 
 himself? There were hours in which it seemed to him 
 as if the Empire itself would be a poor price for the 
 purchase of one day of the innocence which he had so 
 frightfully sacrificed. 
 
 But the foul creatures who swarmed about him as- 
 sured him with the effrontery of experienced villany 
 that he need not be in the least anxious as to the 
 obsequiousness of the Senate and the zeal of the people. 
 
 "You will find yourself more popular than before," 
 they said. "Everyone detested Agrippina. Go to Rome 
 with confidence, and you will see that you are as much 
 adored as ever." 
 
 They were right in their conjectures. Even Nero 
 was amazed at the abandon of welcome, the delirium of 
 ostentatious applause with which he was received, while 
 his hands were still red-wet with his mother's blood. 
 
172 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 The people thronged forth by their tribes to greet him. 
 The senators were in festal array. They were sur- 
 rounded by their wives and children. Stages had been 
 built all along the road, in which the spectators had 
 purchased their places to look on as at a triumph. In- 
 cense burned in the streets; the shouts of myriads of 
 voices rent the air. Rome received him not as a mur- 
 derer, but rather as a great conqueror or a human god. 
 And he, as he rode in his gilded chariot through those 
 serried files of cheering flatterers, proudly upheld his 
 head, tossed back the curls from his forehead, smiled, 
 and bent low, and, accepting these greetings as a tribute 
 to his merits, drowned deep within his heart all sense 
 of shame. With long retinue and dazzling pomp he 
 visited the Capitol, gave thanks to Jupiter, best and 
 greatest, and returned to the palace "a victor over the 
 public servitude." 
 
 Yet even so he could not escape. He dared not 
 be left alone. The Manes of his mother haunted him 
 by day and by night. In vain he practised the old ex- 
 piatory rites to rid himself of the menacing phantom. 
 On the night of May 13, two months after Agrippina's 
 death, he determined to go through the mummery of 
 the Lemuralia, which some of his credulous advisers 
 had told him would be efficacious. At midnight, amid 
 the dead silence, he stole with naked feet to the water 
 of the fountain in the atrium, and there, trembling with 
 excitement, washed his hands thrice. Then, with his 
 thumb and finger, he filled his mouth with nine black 
 beans, and, full of superstitious horror, flung them one 
 by one behind him over his shoulder, saying each time, 
 "With these beans redeem me and mine." Arrived at 
 
VICTOR OVER THE PUBLIC SERVITUDE. 173 
 
 his chamber he again dipped his hands in water, and 
 beat a great brazen gong to terrify the pursuing ghost.* 
 Then he turned round, and peered with a frightened 
 glance into the darkness; and as he peered — was even 
 this expiation all in vain? — what were those glimmer- 
 ing lights? What was that white and wavy form? A 
 shriek rang through the villa, and Nero sank fainting 
 into the arms of the timid minions who had awaited 
 the result of the expiation and rushed forward at his 
 cry. 
 
 The following year, when he had returned to the 
 city, he repeated this antiquated rite, and he com- 
 manded the Vestals to bear him specially in mind when, 
 on the Ides of May, they flung from the Sublician 
 Bridge into the Tiber the thirty little figures called 
 argei, made of bulrushes, which were supposed to be in 
 lieu of human sacrifices. 
 
 Then he tried yet further forms of magic and yet 
 darker rites of propitiation to the infernal powers, in 
 which it was whispered that human blood — the blood 
 of murdered infants — formed part of the instruments of 
 sorcery. But he could learn no secrets of the future; 
 he could evoke no powers who could ward away that 
 white menacing spectre which gleamed upon him if at 
 any moment he found himself alone in the hours of 
 night. 
 
 Nero became a haunted man. The whole earth 
 seemed to him to be "made of glass" to reveal his 
 turpitude. He knew in his miserable heart that the 
 very street boys of Rome — the ragged urchins of the 
 slaves and gladiators — were aware of the crime which 
 * Note 34. 
 
174 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 he had committed. Kind friends kept him informed, 
 under pretence of officious indignation, that one night 
 an infant had been found exposed in the Forum with 
 a scrap of parchment round its neck, on which was 
 written, *■*"/ expose you, lest you should murder your 
 mother'' ; and that, another night, a sack had been 
 hung round the neck of his statue as though to threaten 
 him with the old weird punishment of parricides. Once, 
 when he was looking on at one of the rude plays known 
 as Atellane, the actor Datus had to pronounce the line, 
 
 "Good health to you, father; good health to you, mother;" 
 
 and, with the swift inimitable gestures of which the 
 quick Italian people never missed the significance, he 
 managed to indicate Claudius dying of poison and Agrip- 
 pina swimming for her Hfe. The populace roared out 
 its applause at an allusion so managed that it could 
 hardly be resented; and once again, when coming to 
 the Hne, 
 
 "Death drags you by the foot," 
 
 Datus indicated Nero's hatred to the Senate by pointing 
 significantly to Nero at the word "death" and to the 
 senatorial seats as he emphasised the word ''you'' 
 
 But Nero was liable to insults still more direct. 
 Could he not read with his own eyes the graffito 
 scrawled upon every blank space of wall in Rome: 
 ''Nero, Orestes, AlcmcEon, matricidce" ? He could not 
 detect or punish these anonymous scrawlers, but he 
 would have liked to punish men of rank, whom he well 
 knew to have written stinging satires against him, brand- 
 ing him with every kind of infamy. 
 
VICTOR OVER THE PUBLIC SERVITUDE. I 75 
 
 Two resources alone were adequate to dissipate the 
 terrors of his conscience — the intoxication of promis- 
 cuous applause and the self-abandonment to a sensuality 
 which grew ever more shameless as the restraints of 
 Agrippina's authority and Seneca's influence were re- 
 moved. 
 
 Nero had long delighted to sing to the harp at his 
 own banquets in citharoedic array. To the old Roman 
 dignity such conduct seemed unspeakably degrading in 
 the Emperor of the legions. Yet Nero divulged his 
 shame to the world by having himself represented in 
 statues and on coins in the dress of a harpist, his lips 
 open as though in the act of song, his lyre half sup- 
 ported on a baldric embossed with gems, his tunic 
 falling in variegated folds to his feet, and his arms 
 covered by the chlamys, while with his delicate left 
 hand he twanged the strings, and with his right struck 
 them with the golden plectrum. The pains which he 
 took to preserve his voice, which after all was dull and 
 harsh, were almost incredible. Following the advice 
 of every quack who chose to pass himself off as an ex- 
 pert, he used to walk about with his thick neck en- 
 circled in a puffy handkerchief, to sleep with a plate of 
 lead on his chest, and to live for a month at a time on 
 peas cooked in oil. 
 
 To give him more opportunities for display he in- 
 stituted the Juvenalia to celebrate his arrival at full 
 manhood, as marked by the shaving of his beard. His 
 first beard was deposited in a box of gold, adorned 
 with costly pearls, and he dedicated it to the Capitoline 
 Jupiter. But even this event in his life was accorrj- 
 
176 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 panied by a crime. Shortly before he laid aside his 
 beard he paid a visit to his aunt Domitia, who was ill. 
 
 Laying her hand on the soft down, she said to him 
 in her blandishing way, "As soon as I have received 
 this, I am ready to die." 
 
 Nero turned round to the loose comrades who 
 usually attended him and whispered, with a coarse jest, 
 "Then I will shave it off at once." 
 
 From that sick-bed Domitia, who was almost the 
 last of Nero's living relatives, never rose again. The 
 Roman world suspected foul play on the part of the 
 physicians at Nero's order. Certain it is that he seized 
 all her ample possessions, and suppressed her will. 
 
THE gladiators' SCHOOL. I77 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIIL 
 
 THE gladiators' SCHOOL. 
 
 " Commorabor inter homicidas , inclusus turpiore custodia et 
 sordido cellarum situ." "In ludo fui, qua poena nuUam graviorem 
 scelera novenint, cujus ad comparationein ergastulum leve est." 
 
 QUINCTILIAN. 
 
 Although the intervention of the Vestal and the 
 kindly ruse of Pudens had saved the Hfe of Onesimus, 
 his condition was far from enviable. He was once more 
 — now for the third time in his life — in overwhelming 
 disgrace. It is true that all the legal customs were 
 observed, in a house controlled by that respect for 
 archaeology of which the fashion had been set by 
 Augustus. The chains were taken off his limbs and 
 flung out of the court through the impluvium. None 
 the less he felt that he was marked and shunned. One 
 day, after his escape, Nero passed him in one of the 
 corridors, and,' struck by the appearance of a hand- 
 some youth, beckoned him to approach. He came for- 
 ward trembling, and the Emperor, peering into his face, 
 recognised the purple-keeper of Octavia. Inspired by 
 sudden disgust at the memories thus called to his re- 
 collection, he summoned his dispensator Callicles into 
 his presence, and ordered him to get rid of "that worth- 
 less Phrygian." 
 
 Darkness and Dawn. 11, 1 2 
 
178 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 "Shall I put him in prison, or have him sent again 
 to the Ergastulum at Antium?" asked Callicles. 
 
 "Neither," said Nero. "The city praetor, Pedanius 
 Secundus, is about to give some votive games of beasts 
 and gladiators. Make a present to him of this youth." 
 
 Onesimus heard the words, and his heart sank within 
 him. But resistance was useless. On his way he passed 
 the door of Acte's apartments, and not without peril 
 ventured to sing a few notes of the old Thyatiran bal- 
 lad which had first attracted her notice. She heard it, 
 and came out. 
 
 "That youth comes from my native land," she said 
 to the dispensator. "Step back a few paces and let me 
 have a word with him." 
 
 Callicles would hardly have granted the favour to 
 any one else, but everyone loved Acte, and he only 
 said, "If Nero should come?" . . . 
 
 "1 will hold you clear," said Acte. 
 
 Onesimus, overcome with shame, knelt on one knee, 
 kissed the fringe of her robe, and whispered, " Oh, Acte, 
 I am condemned to be a gladiator." 
 
 "In which school?" 
 
 "Under Rutulus, the trainer of Pedanius Secundus 
 — the cruellest man in Rome." 
 
 He told her something of his story, and she saw 
 that to help him was beyond her power. All she could 
 do was to slip into his hand her own purse, and to tell 
 him that if ever the day came when she could befriend 
 him she would do her utmost. More she dared not 
 say, for the suspicious eyes of Callicles were upon her, 
 and she had to repress the emotion which agitated her 
 frame. 
 
THE GLADUTORS^ SCHOOL. 1 79 
 
 In the school of Rutulus, Onesimus experienced a 
 phase of misery even deeper than in the slave-prison of 
 Antium. Once more he was the companion of felons 
 of every dye and fugitives of every nationality. Every 
 day came the severe drill, the coarse food which was 
 worse than hunger, the odious society of hardened ruf- 
 fians, the recounting of the brutal tragedies with which 
 they were familiar. Among them all he found but one 
 whose society he could tolerate. He was a dark-haired, 
 blue-eyed Briton, young like himself, but in all other 
 respects unlike him. For ^quoreus, as they called 
 him, was full of manly pride and hardihood, and had 
 none of the subtle softness of the Asiatic in his tem- 
 perament. He had been reduced to his hard lot for 
 no other crime than the outburst of a passionate in- 
 dependence. He had been brought over with Caractacus, 
 as one of the Britons pre-eminent in stature and beauty 
 to grace the ovation of Claudius and Aulus Plautius. 
 He had not been treated cruelly, for the admiration 
 inspired by the dauntless bearing of the British king 
 had secured protection to his countymen; but Glanydon 
 — to give him his Silurian name — loathed the effeminate 
 luxuries of Rome, and, forgetting that he was a captive, 
 had once struck in the face a Praetorian officer who in- 
 sulted him. For this offence he had been first scourged 
 and then handed over to the master of the gladiators. 
 It was ordered that he should fight, as soon as he was 
 trained, in some great display. Onesimus saw that the 
 young Briton shared his own disgust at the orgies of 
 ribald talk in which their fellows indulged. The two 
 had no other friends, and they were drawn together 
 for mutual defence against the rude horseplay of their 
 
 12* 
 
l8o DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 comrades. Glanydon was one of the class of gladiators 
 called Saranites, who fought in heavy armour, while, 
 after various trials, the trainer (lanista) decided that the 
 exceptional activity of Onesimus marked him out for 
 the work of a net-thrower {retiarius). Their training 
 had to be hurried on at the utmost speed, for the games 
 were to take place within a month. 
 
 The other gladiators sometimes talked of their lot 
 with pretended rapture. They spoke of the liberal supply 
 of food, of the presents sent them, of the favour with 
 which they were regarded by fair ladies — even by the 
 wives and daughters of great patricians — of the fame 
 they acquired, so that their prowess and the comparison 
 of their merits was one of the commonest topics of talk 
 at Roman dinner-parties. They boasted of the delight 
 of seeing their likenesses painted in red on the play- 
 bills; of the shouts with which a favourite fighter was 
 welcomed; of the yell of applause which greeted them 
 when they had performed a gallant feat; of the chance 
 of retiring with wreaths and gifts and money, when 
 they had earned by their intrepidity the wooden foil.* 
 
 "Poor wretches,'' said Onesimus to Glanydon; "they 
 do not talk of the panic which sometimes seizes them, 
 and how they are howled at when, in ignominious de- 
 feat, they fly to the end of the arena to beg for their 
 lives; how, when they see overwhelming odds against 
 them and grim death staring them in the face, they 
 are still driven into the fight with cracking scourges 
 and plates of iron heated red hot; nor — but what is the 
 use of talking of all this, Glanydon? you know it all 
 better than I do." 
 
 * Note 35.— The Gladiators' School 
 
THE gladiators' SCHOOL. l8l 
 
 "Brutal, bloody, slaves and women, are these Romans," 
 cried Glanydon. "The Druids of my native land served 
 the gods with cruel rites, but they did not play with 
 death as though it were a pretty toy, as these weaklings 
 do. And to think that by arms and discipline they 
 conquered my countrymen! Oh, for one hour again 
 under Caradoc or under Boudicca ! I would never leave 
 another field alive." 
 
 "You do not, then, fear death?" said Onesimus. 
 
 "Why should I? What has life for me? The 
 maiden I loved is in her hut on my Silurian hills. I 
 shall never see her more, nor set foot on those purple 
 mist-clad mountains. I shall be butchered to amuse 
 these swine. Death! No," he said, while he indignantly 
 dashed away the tear which had burst forth at the 
 thought of his home — "I do not fear death, but I hate 
 to die thus." 
 
 "Did your Druids think that death ended all?" 
 
 Glanydon turned his blue eyes on the speaker. "I 
 do not think they did. There were mysteries which 
 they hid from us. But" . . . 
 
 With amazement Onesimus saw him sketch in the 
 dust the helmet of a mirmillo, of which the crest was a 
 dolphin. The Phrygian said nothing, but scratched in 
 the dust the same symbol. Glanydon started up and 
 seized his hand. "A Christian?" he asked in amaze- 
 ment; "and yet here?" 
 
 "You too are here," said Onesimus, hanging his 
 head. 
 
 "Ah, yes!" said the Briton; "but surely for no 
 crime. What could I do but strike a wretch viler than 
 a worm? Nor have I been illuminated — my teacher 
 
l82 t>ARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 would not baptize me till he could see proof that I had 
 controlled the fierce outbursts of passion.'' 
 
 "Your teacher?" 
 
 "There came from Jerusalem an old white-haired 
 man. They called him Joseph. He had seen the 
 Christ; he had buried Him in his own tomb. — But you, 
 Onesimus?" 
 
 "I am no better than a renegade. My own follies 
 have brought me here. There is no more hope for me. 
 Ask me no more." 
 
 "Do you fear death?" asked the Briton. "If so, I 
 pity your lot." 
 
 "The gods — or God if there be but one God — can- 
 not be worse than men," answered Onesimus gloomily. 
 
 Glanydon was silent. After a pause, he said, "I 
 am a rude barbarian, as they call me here; yet he 
 who taught me spoke much of 'love for all and hope 
 for all.'" 
 
 Onesimus sat with bowed head, and the Briton was 
 moved. "We are brothers," he said. "Even in this 
 hell we can love one another." 
 
 But one sickening thought was in the breasts of 
 both of them. They had sat side by side in daily 
 intercourse; their common friendlessness, their common 
 sympathies, had thrown them together in the closest bonds, 
 and those bonds had been strengthened by the dis- 
 covery that both had been taught at least the rudiments 
 of a holy faith. But the day of the games was rapidly 
 approaching, and the chances of the lot, or the caprice 
 of the Prsetor, might easily cause them to be pitted 
 against each other. It was horrible to think that either 
 of them might be compelled to drive sword or dagger 
 
THE gladiators' SCHOOL. I §3 
 
 into the throat or heart of his friend. 
 
 "Supposing that we are matched together?" said 
 Glanydon, the evening before the display. 
 
 "Then we must fight," said Onesimus. "Have we 
 not taken the oath Ho be bound, to be burned, to be 
 scourged, to be slain,' or do anything else that is required 
 of us as legitimate gladiators, giving up alike our souls 
 and our bodies?"* 
 
 "Which of us will win?" asked Glanydon, with a 
 sad smile. 
 
 "You," said the Phrygian. "You are stronger than 
 I am, and taller." 
 
 "Yes, but you are quicker and more active, and you 
 can't tell how I hate that net of yours. I know you 
 will catch me in it " 
 
 "If I do, you will still have fought so well that the 
 people will all turn down their thumbs, and you will be 
 spared. A tall fine fellow like you is just the gladiator 
 whom the Roman ladies like to look at, and they won't 
 have you killed in your first fight. But as for me — a 
 mere Phrygian slave! — Yes, Glanydon, to-morrow your 
 short sword will perhaps be red with my blood." 
 
 "Never!" said Glanydon. "I will fight because I 
 niust, and will do my best; and when my blood is up 
 I might kill you or any other opponent in the blind 
 heat of the combat; but as for slaughtering in cold 
 blood I could not do it — least of all could I murder 
 the friend I love." 
 
 "You won't be able to help yourself, Glanydon. 
 And we netsman (worse luck!) have our faces uncovered. 
 Many of the spectators, like the late * divine' Claudius, 
 * Note 36.— The Gladiator's Oath. 
 
184 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 as they call him, like to see us killed, because our dying 
 expression is not concealed by a helmet." 
 
 "But why should we not both escape?" asked the 
 Briton. "Perhaps before this time to-morrow we may 
 each be the happy possessor of the ivory ticket with 
 'Sp/^ upon it, or even of the palm and the foil. 
 Who knows but what by our bravery we may be rude 
 donati?'* 
 
 "Don't you know, then, that to-morrow's games will 
 very likely be sine missione? We must either die 
 or kill." 
 
 The Briton had not been aware of it. He sank 
 into gloomy silence. Onesimus gently laid his hand on 
 his friend's shoulder, and said, "Well, perhaps, like 
 Priscus and Verus, we may both be victors and both 
 vanquished. Piignavere pares, succubuere pares.'' 
 
 Glanydon shook his head. He said, "Let us talk 
 no more, or we shall both be unmanned. Life — death 
 — to-morrow; the rudis or the stab? Which shall 
 it be?" 
 
 "It is in God's hands," said Onesimus, "if what we 
 have been taught is true." 
 
 With that awful issue before them, overshadowed 
 by misgivings and almost with despair, finding life hor- 
 rible, yet shrinking from the death which neither of 
 them dared to regard with full Christian hope, the two 
 youths lay down on their pallets. Before they closed 
 their eyes in sleep, each of them had breathed some 
 sort of unuttered cry into the dim unknown. 
 
 * For Spectatus — a gladiator who had made his debut in the 
 arena. 
 
THE FIGHT IN THE ARENA. 1 85 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 THE FIGHT IN THE ARENA. 
 
 "Quid vesani sibi vult ars impia ludi? 
 Quid mortes juvenum? qiiid sanguine parta voluptas?" 
 
 Prudentius. 
 
 "Mera homicidia sunt." — Seneca, Ep, 7. 
 
 The morning broke in cloudless splendour. I^ong 
 before the dawn thousands of the Roman populace had 
 thronged into the amphitheatre to secure the best places. 
 The City Prsefect was known to be a man of taste and 
 a favourite of Nero, and the Emperor himself was cer- 
 tain to grace the display with his idiolised presence. 
 The pairs of gladiators were not numerous, nor were there 
 many wild beasts; but everything was to be choice of 
 its kind, and it was rumoured that some beautiful 
 foreign youths were to make their first appearance as 
 fighters. 
 
 About eleven o'clock the rays of the sun became 
 too strong for comfort, and a huge awning, decorated 
 with gay streamers, was drawn over the audience by 
 gilded cords. 
 
 By this time the amphitheatre, except the seats 
 reserved for distinguished persons, was thronged from 
 the lowest seats to the topmost ambulatory, where stood 
 a dense array of slaves and of the lowest proletariat. 
 They did not get tired of waiting, for the scene was one 
 
l86 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 of continual bustle and brightness, as group after group 
 of burghers, in their best array, took their seats with 
 their wives and families. Any well-known patrician or 
 senator was greeted with applause or with hisses. The 
 buzz of general conversation sometimes rose into a roar 
 of laughter, and sometimes sank into a hush of expec- 
 tancy. Little incidents kept occurring every moment. 
 Interlopers tried to thrust themselves into the fourteen 
 rows of seats which were set apart for the knights, and 
 an altercation often ensued between the seatkeeper, 
 Oceanus, and these impostors. Now the people laughed 
 at the unceremonious way in which he shook one of 
 them who, to escape notice, had pretended to be asleep. 
 They were still more amused when the impatient official 
 turned out a finely dressed personage who protested 
 that he was a knight, but unluckily dropped in the 
 scuffle a large key, which showed him to be a slave. 
 
 At last the shouting of the multitude who thronged 
 about the principal entrance announced the arrival of 
 the Praefect. Amid the acclamations of the populace, 
 the magnificent procession by which Pedanius was ac- 
 companied passed round the arena to the reserved 
 seats. Pedanius was scarcely seated, when the Emperor, 
 surrounded by a group of his most brilliant courtiers, 
 took his place in the Imperial box. As the roar of 
 applause continued, he rose again and again with his 
 hand on his heart, to bow and cringe before the public 
 — omnia serviliter pro imperio. For the mob of Rome 
 was at once his master and his slave, and was as ready 
 at slight excuse to burst into open menaces as into 
 blasphemous adulation. Nero was as well aware as 
 Tiberius that "he was only holding a wolf by the ears;" 
 
THE FIGHT IN THE ARENA. 187 
 
 and lie often quoted the saying of that keen observer, 
 that few realised "what a monster Empire was." 
 
 Then Pedanius rose in his seat and flung down the 
 scarlet napkin which was the signal that the sports 
 were to begin. 
 
 The opening amusements were harmless and curious. 
 First a number of German aurochs were led round the 
 circus. They had been trained to stand still while boys 
 hung from their huge horns, or danced and fenced 
 standing on their broad backs. A tiger was guided by 
 its keeper with a chain of flowers. Four chariots swept 
 past in succession, the first drawn by leopards with gay 
 silken harness, the second by stags champing golden 
 bits, the third by shaggy bisons, the fourth by four 
 camels who amused the people by their expression of 
 supercilious disapproval. Then an elephant performed 
 some clumsy dances under the bidding of its black 
 keeper. Next a winged boy led in a wild boar by a 
 purple halter. Last of all, a tame lion was introduced, 
 which, to the delight of the shouting populace, dandled 
 a hare in its paws without hurting it, and then suffered 
 its keeper to put his head and his hand in its open 
 mouth. But at this point a frightful tragedy occurred. 
 Wherever the dazzling white sand of the arena chanced 
 to have been disturbed or stained, it was raked smooth, 
 and fresh sand sprinkled, by boys dressed as cupids 
 with glittering wings. One of these boys, presuming on 
 the Uon's tameness, hit it rather sharply with his rake. 
 The royal brute had been already excited by hearing 
 the howling of the animals of all sorts with which the 
 vivarium was crowded, as well as by the shouts of the 
 spectators, and its keeper had stupidly neglected to notice 
 
l88 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 the signs of its rising rage. But when the sharp edge 
 of the rake struck it, the Hon's mane bristled, and with 
 a terrific snarl he first laid the poor lad dead with one 
 stroke of his paw, and then sprang with a mighty- 
 bound upon a second lad, on whose quivering limbs he 
 fleshed his claws and teeth.* A cry of horror and 
 alarm rose from the people, and those who sat just 
 above the level of the amphitheatre started up in terror, 
 for they were only protected from the wild beasts by 
 rails, which had been finished off with amber and silver, 
 but did not look very strong. The brute, which had 
 thus shown "a wild trick of its ancestors," was soon 
 overpowered, for the keeper was skilled in the use of the 
 lasso. But this incident did but whet the appetite of 
 the spectators for blood. They shouted to Pedanius to 
 begin the venatio and the wild-beast fights which formed 
 the morning show. No expense had been spared to 
 sate the insatiable cruelty of the mob. For an hour or 
 two longer they were gratified with a prodigality of 
 anguish. Ostriches and giraffes were chased round and 
 round, and shot to death with arrows. Wild beasts 
 fought with tame beasts and with wild beasts, and 
 beasts with men. Bears, lions, and tigers were worried 
 and hacked by armed bestiarii, and sometimes a hestiariiis 
 in his turn lay rolling on the sand, crushed by a bear 
 or torn by the fierce struggles of a panther. Lastly, 
 some unskilled, defenceless criminals were turned loose 
 into the amphitheatre amid a fresh batch of animals, 
 infuriated by hunger and mad with excitement. None 
 of the poor weaponless wretches — sine armis, sine arte, 
 seminudi — could stand up for a moment against the 
 * Mart, n, 75. 
 
THE FIGHT IN THE ARENA. 1 89 
 
 bear's hug or the tiger's leaps. They stood in attitudes 
 of despairing stupefaction, watching the horrible rolling 
 gait of the bears, or the crouching of the tigers as they 
 glared on them with yellow eyeballs and bristling manes, 
 lashing their haunches with their tails, and at last, with 
 a hoarse carnivorous roar, curving their backs for the 
 final spring. The venatio degenerated into a mere 
 butchery meant to fill up the time.* 
 
 All this was regarded as child's play in comparison 
 with the luxury of courage, skill, and massacre which 
 was expected in the afternoon; but it was already too 
 much for one of the spectators. This was the philo- 
 sophic thaumaturge Apollonius of Tyana, who happened 
 to be paying a brief visit to Paetus Thrasea. Thrasea 
 had been compelled to be present, because he knew 
 that everything which he did or failed to do was watched 
 with deadly suspicion; and Apollonius had accom- 
 panied his host from a desire to see the strange animals 
 which were to be exhibited. At first he had looked on 
 with real delight and interest; but when he saw the 
 noble creatures wantonly killed, his Greek instinct for 
 the beautiful was disgusted. He had been shocked by 
 the callousness with which the vast audience had re- 
 covered from its momentary fright when the two poor 
 boys had been slain by the lions; but when he saw 
 them shouting with delight while the arena was wet 
 with the blood of mangled men and tortured beasts, he 
 turned his back on the amphitheatre with disdain and 
 horror, and whispered in the ear of his companion, 
 "Rome is a Bacchante rolling in blood and mud." 
 
 ''' Note 37. — Gladiatorial Games. 
 
I go DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Of all these scenes Onesimus and Glanydon had 
 been spectators; and such spectacles were little calculated 
 to dispel the gloom of dreadful anticipation which hung 
 over the coming afternoon. They had marched in the 
 procession of gladiators which formed part of the open- 
 ing pomp, and from behind a lattice-work of one of the 
 dressing rooms they could see all that was going on. 
 But now the rays of the early summer were pouring a 
 dazzling flood of warmth and light which penetrated 
 even through the awning. The vast audience required 
 a little rest. The awning was sprinkled with perfumes. 
 Saffron-water fell in a delicate dew upon the hot and 
 tired multitude. The passages between the seats were 
 flushed with pure cold water. Refreshments and baskets 
 of fruit were freely handed about, and while they were 
 enjoying the Hght midday meal everyone chatted freely 
 with his neighbour. 
 
 "Who are those in the podium with the Emperor?" 
 asked a provincial from Gaul of the young Spaniard 
 who sate beside him. 
 
 "Don't you know?" said Martial, for he it was. 
 "That well-dressed, handsome, smiling man is Petronius. 
 The tall senator with the intellectual face is Seneca. 
 He is a countryman of whom I am proud." 
 
 "Seneca!" said the provincial; "the greatest man of 
 his age! Only to think that I have seen Seneca!" 
 
 Martial only smiled. Such enthusiasm was re- 
 freshing. 
 
 "The young man with black hair who sits just be- 
 hind him with a frown on his forehead is his nephew 
 Lucan, the poet. The king in purple robe is Herod 
 Agrippa IL, with his lovely sister Berenice by his side. 
 
THE FIGHT IN THE ARENA. I9I 
 
 Just watch the flash of that diamond on her neck. That 
 splendid fellow with fair hair, all smiles, who has grace 
 and beauty in every movement, is the actor Paris, and 
 beside him is his friend and rival, Aliturus. The ex- 
 quisite, who looks as if he would be paralysed by the 
 weight of his own rings, is Senecio." 
 
 "And that lady with her face half veiled, so that 
 you only catch a glimpse now and then of her love- 
 liness?" 
 
 "That is Poppaea, Otho's wife. No wonder Nero 
 loves her better than that pale sad lady who sits among 
 the six Vestals." 
 
 "Yet she, too, is young and beautiful. Who is she?" 
 
 "The Empress." 
 
 "Octavia, the daughter of Claudius? May the gods 
 bless her!" 
 
 The provincial gazed long at Octavia. 
 
 "But now tell me," he continued, "who is that pur- 
 pureal personage, with large rings, scarlet boots, and a 
 very white forehead?" 
 
 Martial laughed aloud. "His forehead may well be 
 white," he said. "Do you know what it is made of?" 
 
 "Made of?" asked the young Gaul in astonishment. 
 
 "Yes. It is made of sticking-plaster! If you took 
 it off, what do you think you would see under it?" 
 
 "His skin, I suppose." 
 
 "His skin, yes! But with three letters on it." 
 
 "What three letters?" 
 
 ''O Simplicitas!" said Martial; "the three letters 
 F. U. R." 
 
 "Is he a thief?" asked the Gaul. "Then why do 
 they let him sit there among the knights?" 
 
192 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 "Because his thieving has made him rich/^ an- 
 swered Martial. 
 
 "But his riches don't make him honest; and every- 
 one seems to be treating him with great respect." 
 
 Martial laughed long and loud. ''O Sapiential'' he 
 exclaimed, ''O Innocentia! From what new Atlantis do 
 you come? Don't you know that at Rome the rule 
 always is * Riches first, virtue next'?" 
 
 "If that be the rule at Rome," said the other, "I 
 should prefer to live at Ulubrae or at Venta Belgarum." 
 
 But Martial had no more time to listen to a morality 
 so refreshingly unsophisticated. "Hush!" he said. "They 
 are going to scatter down the presents and the lottery 
 tickets on us." 
 
 First came a shower of countless coins of thin metal, 
 every one of which was stamped with a wanton image. 
 Then all kinds of httle presents like those exchanged at 
 the SatumaHa. The audience did not exert themselves 
 to catch these, but it was very different when handfuls 
 of lottery tickets were flung among them. For these 
 they scrambled wildly, and with many a curse and blow; 
 for he who secured one might find himself the happy 
 possessor of a slave, a statue, a fine vase, a rare foreign 
 bird, a suit of armour, a Molossian dog, a Spanish horse, 
 or even a villa; although the mystery which the number 
 concealed could not be made known till he presented 
 the ticket the next day. 
 
 But by this time the attendants with rakes were 
 scraping the surface of the arena smooth, and sprinkling 
 it afresh with dazzling white sand brought in shiploads 
 from Africa, to hide the crimson stains of the lifeblood 
 of animals and men. For now was to begin the splendid 
 
THE FIGHT IN THE ARENA. I93 
 
 exhibition of strength and skill and pluck, and the awful 
 pageantry of death, under that blue sky, under that 
 gleaming sunlight; and men and women were preparing 
 themselves to be thrilled with sanguinary and voluptuous 
 excitement which would make the blood course through 
 their veins like fire. Most of the gladiators were men 
 of approved prowess, stalwart and well known; and from 
 the senators' seats to the topmost gallery bets were 
 being freely laid on their chances of victory, and on 
 those who should be left dead at evening, indifferent 
 for ever to those wild shouts. The only two who were 
 not spectati — the only two tiros who were to make their 
 appearance — were the young British captive and the 
 young Phrygian slave. 
 
 The long defiant blast of a trumpet smote the air; 
 the folding doors of the main entrance were flung open, 
 and, headed by their trainer, the gladiators in a body 
 marched in proud procession and with firm steps to the 
 space beneath the podium, on which stood the gilded 
 chair of the Emperor. They were only sixty in number, 
 but had been selected for their skill and physique, and 
 belonged to various classes of gladiators. They were 
 clad in glittering array — their helmets, their shields, and 
 even their greaves, richly embossed and gilded. 
 
 And none were more curiously scanned than One- 
 simus, who walked last of the net-throwers, and Glany- 
 don, who closed the file of the Samnites. It was im- 
 possible not to observe the towering stature and herculean 
 mould of the Briton, the lithe and sinewy frame of the 
 dark-eyed Asiatic. Then the Praetor once more flung 
 down the napkin, in sign that the fighting should begin. 
 Grouped under the Emperor's seat, they all uplifted tg 
 
 Darkness and Dawn, //, 1 3 
 
194 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 i ;- 
 
 him their right hands and chanted in monotone their 
 sublime greeting: "Hail, Caesar! we who are about to 
 die salute thee!" 
 
 Nero flung them a careless glance, and scarcely- 
 broke the animated conversation which he was holding 
 with Petronius. 
 
 Before the hard fighting began there was some pre- 
 liminary skirmishing among all the gladiators, with blunt 
 weapons, merely to display their skill; and a pair of 
 andabatcB amused the people by their difficulties in fight- 
 ing practically blindfold, for their loose helmets had no 
 eyelet-holes. 
 
 Then the trumpet blew once more, and a herald 
 cried out, "Lay aside your blunt swords and fight with 
 sharp swords;" and Pedanius examined the weapons to 
 see that they were duly sharp. The display began with 
 the contests of the horsemen and the charioteers {esse- 
 darii). It was not long before two of the chariots were 
 broken, and their wounded occupants flung down under 
 the hoofs of their own plunging horses. 
 
 Next, two horsemen, both of them popular favourites, 
 of well-tried prowess and well-matched strength, rode 
 out on white horses to fight each other in mortal con- 
 flict. Hippias wore a short mantle of blue, and rode 
 from the east side of the arena; Aruns, in a red mantle, 
 rode from the western side. Both wore on their heads 
 golden helmets, and military standards were carried be- 
 fore them."^ The combat between them was long and 
 fierce, for each knew that it was to be his last. They 
 charged each other furiously, raining on heads and 
 'shoulders a tempest of blows, till, after a tremendous 
 "^ 3ee Isidor. Orig. xviii. 53, 
 
THE FIGHT IN THE ARENA. I 95 
 
 bout, Aruns thrust his spear through a joint in the 
 armour of Hippias, and the stream of crimson blood 
 which followed was greeted by the roar of "Habet!" 
 from eighty thousand throats. The rider fell Ufeless. 
 He required no finishing stroke, and the mob cried, 
 "Peractum est!" ("There's an end of him!") This con- 
 test had excited much interest from the fame of the 
 fighters, and large sums of money changed hands on 
 the result. One of the senators, named Caecina, had 
 hit on an ingenious way of telling his distant friends 
 whether they had lost or gained. Since Hippias was in 
 blue, and Aruns in red, he had carried with him into 
 the amphitheatre a number of swallows in two cages, of 
 which some were painted blue and some red; and, since 
 Aruns had slain his adversary, he let loose those which 
 were painted red.* 
 
 After this the other mounted gladiators joined com- 
 bat. In a very short time nearly all were wounded, 
 and three acknowledged their defeat. Dropping their 
 swords or javelins, they upheld their clenched hands 
 with one finger extended to plead for mercy. The plea 
 was vain. No handkerchief was waved in sign of mercy, 
 and, standing over them, the victors callously drove 
 their swords into the throats of their defeated comrades. 
 The poor conquered fighters did not shrink. They 
 looked up at the shouting populace with something of 
 disdain on their faces, as though to prove that they 
 thought nothing of death, and did not wish to be pitied. 
 To see that none were shamming dead, a figure entered 
 disguised as Charon, who smote them with his hammer; 
 
 ** Plin. H. N. X. 34. 
 
 13* 
 
t96 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 but the work of the sword had been done too faithfully 
 — he only smote the corpses of the slain."^ 
 
 By this time the whole atmosphere of the place 
 seemed to reek with the suffocating fumes of blood, 
 which acted like intoxication on the brutalised passions 
 of the multitude. They awaited with savage eagerness 
 the next combat, which was to be the main show of the 
 afternoon. Twelve Samnites and mirmillos were to be 
 matched against as many net- throwers and chasers; and 
 the contest was all the more thrilling because the latter 
 were very lightly clad, so that every wound and gash 
 was visible in all its horror on their naked limbs, while 
 the unhelmed faces showed every triumphant or agonised 
 expression which swept across them in that stormy scene. 
 
 After half an hour's fighting in terrible earnest, in 
 which each side had exchanged many a well-aimed 
 blow, and had shown prodigies of skill, valour, and 
 swiftness, many of the gladiators had fallen, and others 
 dropped their arms in sign of defeat. Their vanquishers 
 strode over them awaiting the signal to be executioners 
 of their brethren. The fight was stopped till the signal 
 had been given with ruthless unanimity. The defeated 
 men,, like those who had been killed before them, gazed 
 without blenching on the hard and lolling multitude, as 
 though to show by their calm demeanour how easy a 
 thing it was to die. 
 
 But to make sure that they had been really killed, 
 once more a slave entered, who, for variety's sake, was 
 dressed in the wings and carried the serpent-rod of 
 Mercury. He touched each corpse with a red-hot iron 
 wand. No limb shrank from his touch. Other attend- 
 * Note 38. — Dead Gladiators. 
 
THE FIGHT IN THE ARENA. I 97 
 
 ants, therefore, laid the dead on biers — which the ad- 
 miring spectators observed to be inlaid with amber — 
 and they were carried out through the gate of Libitina 
 into the spoliarium, where they were carelessly flung 
 out in a heap."^ 
 
 So far both the tiros had escaped. They had in- 
 stinctively avoided each other, and neither had butchered 
 his opponent except in fair fight. Of the eight who 
 survived, four were Samnites and mirmillos, four were 
 net-throwers. They thought that the fight was over and 
 that they might severally be regarded as victors, and 
 might look for the gifts of crowns and money, or even 
 of the foil which set them free from the horrid trade. 
 They stepped back beyond the hues which the trainer 
 had marked, resting on their arms, and expecting to be 
 ushered out of the triumphal gate. 
 
 The multitude had far other intentions. They were 
 not yet sated with slaughter; they had not yet gloated 
 long enough on faces convulsed with the death-agony; 
 they wanted to see how the beautiful young Phrygian 
 would look when an opponent stood over him with a 
 sword at his throat. 
 
 But the soul of Glanydon was filled with disgust 
 and disdain. He loathed those fat, shouting, comfort- 
 able burghers, those hard-faced women, those finical 
 dandies, of whom he felt that he could have driven a 
 score before him like sheep. He strode to the barriers 
 and set his back against them, refusing to fight. 
 
 A yell of fury rose from the people. "Kill him!" 
 they shouted. "Kill him! scourge him! burn him! Why 
 is he so afraid of cold steel? Why can't he die like a 
 * Sen. Ep, xcin, 12; Quinct. Decl. 7. 
 
IgS DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 man? Ho! scourgers, lash the youth into the combat 
 again, to make the sides equal." 
 
 The Briton stood as in a dream, and as his thoughts 
 reverted to his home and the maiden whom he loved, 
 the amphitheatre swam before his eyes. Five or six 
 mastigophori came running up to him, and he felt the 
 curling lash of one of them come stinging round his 
 body. The agony aroused him. With a cry as of a 
 wounded lion he sprang on the scourger, and with one 
 buffet laid him senseless, while the others fled in con- 
 fusion before him. Then, with the boldness of despair, 
 he strode under the podium, and, raising his clenched 
 fist, cursed the Emperor aloud. 
 
 "Murderer of thy mother!" he cried; "thou infamy 
 of manhood, I will fight again. But think not that thou 
 shalt escape. Speedily the doom shall overtake thee, 
 and thy death shall be more shameful and horrible than 
 mine." 
 
 He had thundered forth so loudly his indignant 
 words that they rang through the whole amphitheatre, 
 and the wildest tumult arose. The Emperor cowered 
 back in his seat, pale with superstitious terror, yet almost 
 suffocated with rage; and his favourite page, springing 
 up from the low stool at his feet, began to sprinkle his 
 face with perfume. 
 
 The Praetorians drew their swords, and in one mo- 
 ment would have slain the criminal who thus dared to 
 blaspheme their human god. That a common gladiator 
 — a thing to flesh men's swords upon — should dare to 
 curse the Emperor! It was a portent! But there was 
 no time to interfere, for, with a shout, Glanydon sprang 
 back among the gladiators, and began so furious an 
 
THE FIGHT IN THE ARENA. IQQ 
 
 affray that the other side gave way and fled. He sprang 
 on an opponent, and the crimson rush that followed his 
 sword-thrust again awoke the deep "Habet!" of the ex- 
 cited crowd. But as he pressed on, now blind with 
 fury, he fell, face forward, over the loose helmet of a 
 slain mirmillo, and before he could recover himself a 
 netsman, seizing his opportunity, flung his net, entangled 
 the limbs of the Briton by a dexterous twist, and, with- 
 out waiting for any signal, drove his trident into his 
 breast. The Briton died without a groan. But the ad- 
 vantage of the hght-armed fighters was only momentary. 
 Their courage had been daunted by Glanydon, and, 
 after a few moments of flight and fight, the Samnites 
 were victorious and the net-throwers were all wounded 
 and dropped their arms, except Onesimus. They knelt 
 with their forefingers uplifted, and, as they had fought 
 with courage and had been hardly used, handkerchiefs 
 began to be waved in their favour and thumbs to be 
 turned downwards. Octavia and Acte had both re- 
 cognised the face of Onesimus as he retreated before 
 one of the Samnites, and failed to entangle him by the 
 throw of his net. Filled with pity, they turned their 
 thumbs downward in sign that the combat should be 
 stopped and the lives of the defeated be spared. 
 
 But unhappily Onesimus was only a few feet distant 
 from Nero, and Nero had recognised him too. The 
 curse of Glanydon had shaken the Emperor's nerves. 
 He was in a peculiarly brutal mood, and, with thumb 
 turned towards his breast, he gave the fatal sign that 
 the four netsmen should be slain. Three of them were 
 so deeply wounded already that their limbs were bathed 
 in blood, and without an instant's pause the Samnites 
 
200 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 thrust their swords through them to the hilt. But the 
 sight seemed to inspire Onesimus with some divine 
 despair. He seized his trident and dagger — he had 
 aheady gathered the net round his shoulder — and, 
 springing towards one of the Samnites, flung, entangled, 
 tripped, and stabbed him. Plucking his trident from 
 the wound, but not waiting to recover his net, he flew 
 on the second and smote him down. The third, who 
 was already staggering from a wound received earlier 
 in the fight, dropped his arms and upheld his fore- 
 finger; and, before the fourth could recover from his 
 amazement, Onesimus, leaving the defeated combatant, 
 had again seized his net and chased his opponent with 
 it in act to throw. Being far superior in speed, he 
 swiftly overtook him, flung the net and, hurling his op- 
 ponent to the ground, brandished his dagger over him. 
 The peopled walls of the amphitheatre rang with shouts 
 of delight and admiration. Never had they seen a 
 more astonishing and gallant feat. This retiarius — and 
 he a mere tiro — had, single-handed, defeated four 
 Samnites in succession. The thing was unheard of. 
 Every thumb was turned up for Onesimus to give the 
 finishing stroke to his conquered enemy, and thousands 
 of voices clamoured that, as the sole surviving victor 
 of the combat, he should be rewarded with the palm 
 and foil. 
 
 But the brief spasm of wrath was over. Onesimus 
 could not and would not butcher his comrades in cold 
 blood. He recognised in the young Samnite a gladiator 
 named Kalendio, one of the least objectionable of his 
 fellows in the school — the only one who had never 
 gone out of his way to annoy or taunt him. At the 
 
THE FIGHT IN THE ARENA. 20I 
 
 same moment he caught sight of the body of Glanydon. 
 A rush of tears blinded him; he flung down net and 
 dagger and trident, and, retreating to the barrier, stood 
 there with folded arms. The acclamations which had 
 greeted his prowess were followed by a groan of as- 
 tonishment and disappointment. Kalendio had by this 
 time torn and cut himself free from the net, and sprang 
 upon the unhappy Phrygian who had spared his life. 
 Onesimus did not resist him or appeal for mercy; the 
 Samnite, who was an utter stranger to the scruples and 
 compunctions which had led Onesimus to spare him, 
 drove his sword into him; life and sense flowed from 
 him, and he fell heavily upon the bloody sand. 
 
202 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 THE SPOLIARIUM. 
 
 "Sanguinem quoque gladiatorum bibunt, ut viventibus poculis, 
 comitiales morbi ... At hercule illi ex homine ipso sorbere effica- 
 cissimum putant calidum spirantemque , et una ipsam animam ex 
 osculo vulnerum." — Plin. H. N. xxviii. 2. 
 
 A FEW days before the scene described in the last 
 chapter there had been gladness in the bright but 
 humble home of Pudens. He had risen to the rank of 
 a primipilar centurion, and was now in a position to 
 ask the British king Caradoc for the hand of his lovely- 
 Claudia. He had only delayed his nuptials until he 
 felt himself able to give his bride a secure and fitting 
 home. Everything was fresh and beautiful in the 
 adornments of the house. The atrium was full of 
 flowers and statues, the door was hung with garlands, 
 the frescoes in the tablinum and triclinium were all 
 new. No mythological scene had been admitted, but 
 the walls of the triclinium were painted with festoons 
 of fruit and flowers and trellises of roses, among which 
 little winged genii held their sports; and the tablinum 
 with scenes of street life and the toils of agriculture, 
 and purple vineyards, as perfect as the pencil of 
 Dorotheus could make them. One Httle corner of the 
 fresco was universally admired as a master-piece. 
 Pudens had asked the painter to imitate one of the 
 
THE SPOLIARIUM. 203 
 
 vases of iridescent glass which were then in fashion, 
 and, in honour of Claudia, to fill it with lilies. Pudens 
 had greatly admired a similar painting on the wall of 
 the house of Germanicus on the Palatine (where it may- 
 be seen to this day), and in reproducing it Dorotheus 
 had surpassed himself. 
 
 The betrothal had taken place some time before, 
 and on that occasion Pudens had given to his future 
 bride a golden necklace of old Etrurian workmanship, 
 ^vith pendants of amethyst. It gleamed round her fair 
 neck as she sat waiting for the bridal summons in her 
 father's house, trying to dispel the gloom which fell on 
 the old king when he recalled that he was losing for a 
 time the light of his home. 
 
 All the ordinary conventions of a Roman marriage 
 were carried out, except such as were purely pagan. 
 Claudia was dressed in a long white tunic with purple 
 fringe, bound round the waist with an embroidered 
 girdle. Her bridal veil and her shoes were of bright 
 yellow, as custom required, and the long fair hair which 
 fell over her shoulders had been duly parted with the 
 point of a spear. It was evening, and the three youths 
 who were to accompany her stood laughing in the 
 vestibule, and ready to start. One of them was Titus, 
 who was to carry before her a torch of white- thorn; the 
 other two were Flavins Clemens and young Aulus 
 Plautius, who walked on either side to support her 
 arms. The fourth lad, who was called the camillus, 
 and who carried in a vase some of the bride's jewels 
 and childish playthings, was Marcus, the bright little 
 son of Seneca. She herself bore in her hand a distaff 
 and spindle full of wool, as a type of domestic industry. 
 
204 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Outside the door waited her friends, five of whom carried 
 wax candies and the others pinewood torches. And so, 
 with songs and laughter and snatches of the old 
 Thalassio, the happy procession made its way through 
 the streets till they reached the door of Pudens. When 
 she had wound wool round the doorposts and touched 
 them with wolfs fat, his groomsmen — who were chiefly 
 his brother-officers — lifted Claudia across the threshold 
 to prevent any ill-omened stumble. Within the vestibule 
 stood Pudens, with fire and water. These she had to 
 touch, as symbols of purification, which might be re- 
 garded as Christian no less than pagan; and then she 
 spoke the marriage formula — "Where thou art Gains 
 I am Gaia." After this she was led to a seat upon an 
 outspread sheepskin, and Pudens handed to her the 
 keys of the house. The bridal supper followed, and its 
 mirth was none the less sparkling from its perfect in- 
 nocence. 
 
 By the wish of both Pudens and Claudia, the slaves 
 of the household were invited to have their share in the 
 festivities, which lasted for several days. But the newly 
 wedded pair had in store for Nereus and his daughter 
 Junia a bliss which they had not dared to anticipate. 
 At the close of the week of rejoicing he bade them, 
 with a smile, to accompany him to the Praetor's tribunal. 
 The order could have but one meaning — that he meant 
 to set them free. The tears rushed into the old slave's 
 eyes. Nereus and Junia had, indeed, learnt to be content 
 with any condition to which God called them, but now 
 that liberty had spontaneously been offered they felt an 
 almost incommunicable joy. 
 
 Pudens sympathised with them in their emotion, 
 
THE SPOLIARIUM. 205 
 
 and, with a few cheering words, bade them walk behind 
 him towards the Forum. The ceremony of emancipa- 
 tion was very brief The centurion stated to the Praetor 
 that he wished to manumit Nereus and Junia — of whom 
 the latter had been born in his house — for their great 
 merits and long faithfulness. The Praetor's lictor laid 
 a rod on each of their heads, with a slight blow, and 
 turned them each round; then the Praetor declared them 
 free in accordance with the right of citizens, and they 
 became liberti. On their return home, the rest of the 
 familia, formerly their fellow-slaves, received them with 
 showers of sweetmeats and clapping of hands and con- 
 gratulations, and were allowed to hold one more humble 
 banquet in their honour. 
 
 Nereus still wished to serve Pudens and Claudia as 
 their freedman; but it was arranged that he should live 
 in lodgings near the house. He and Junia soon made 
 the new home of their freedom look as pleasant as 
 their circumstances admitted, and one evening they 
 were sitting hand in hand thanking the Lord of their 
 life for His mercy, when a timid knock was heard. 
 Opening the door, Junia saw a pretty slave-girl, who 
 asked to speak with her in private. Junia had known 
 her as one of the slaves of Pedanius Secundus, and felt 
 the deepest pity for her because she was afflicted with 
 epilepsy — a disease which among the ancients was so 
 ill-omened as to be the cause of endless trouble and 
 distress. 
 
 There was but one remedy for the disease which 
 the ancients thought perfectly efficacious, and it is con- 
 ceivable that the desperate nature of this remedy may 
 
206 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 have had some mysterious effect upon the nerves, and 
 have proved in some cases to be a real cure through 
 its influence on the mind of the sufferer. It was to 
 drink blood from a recent wound. 
 
 The consequences of a fit of epilepsy were dis- 
 astrous. It was called the comitial disease, because its 
 occurrence put an end to the most important business 
 of the commonwealth by necessitating the dissolution of 
 any public assembly. Consequently, persons so afflicted 
 were condemned to a life of misery, and could never 
 move about with freedom. Their presence in a house 
 was regarded as a misfortune, and they were sometimes 
 got rid of to save trouble. The pretty face and winning 
 ways of poor young Syra had saved her, but since she 
 heard of the supposed cure for her malady her one 
 desire had been to avail herself of it. 
 
 This had made her go frequently to the games of 
 the amphitheatre, and Hnger near the gate of Libitina, 
 through which the confector^ who had, when necessary, 
 to give the finishing stroke, dragged the dead and 
 wounded gladiators into the spoUarium. She had thus 
 attracted the notice of the young slave Phlegon, who 
 held this horrible office. 
 
 That he did so was not his own fault. He too was 
 a slave of Pedanius, who had cruelly degraded him to 
 this place in the amphitheatre as a punishment for a 
 trivial offence, followed by an outbreak of resentment, 
 when, in his younger days, he had been a favourite 
 cupbearer of his master. It would be useless to aver 
 that his character had not been somewhat brutalised 
 
THE SPOLIARIUM. 207 
 
 by the hideous duties forced upon him; but he regarded 
 himself as the victim of necessity, and therefore as not 
 responsible — a view not without a grim element of 
 truth in the case of a pagan slave. Seeing Syra as she 
 lingered about the amphitheatre, he had been struck by 
 her helpless prettiness, and she had learnt to admire a 
 face which still retained its good looks, if not its good 
 expression. They fell in love with each other; but 
 when she was forced to tell him of her misfortune, he 
 declared all question of marriage to be impossible unless 
 she were cured of her comitial disease. He had him- 
 self persuaded her to come this evening to the spoli- 
 arium after the games, and to try the remedy which 
 alone seemed to offer any chance of success. 
 
 But poor Syra dared not go alone through the 
 darkening, crowded, and vicious streets, and thought 
 that Junia, as she was now a freedwoman, could protect 
 her. Junia was always actuated by the principle as 
 well as by the instinct of kindness. Not guessing the 
 object of the girl's errand, but knowing her hapless love 
 for Phlegon, she consented to accompany her. It cost 
 her a pang to leave her father on that happy evening, 
 but she knew that with him, no less than with herself, 
 the claims of charity were paramount, and all the more 
 towards those who seemed to need it most. 
 
 "Could you find no better youth to love than one 
 of so dire a trade, Syra?" she gently asked the girl, as, 
 with their heads covered with shawls, they went in the 
 deepening dusk down the Via Sacra towards the amphi- 
 theatre. 
 
2o8 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 "It is not his fault, Junia. He hates it. His heart 
 is naturally pitiful. He was brought up in the midst of 
 luxury in the house of Pedanius, where he was a 
 favourite. But Pedanius is a wretch, and once he treated 
 Phlegon so cruelly that, in a fit of rage, the boy struck 
 him. He might have been crucified for it, or flung to 
 the lampreys; but, instead of that, Pedanius made him 
 take to this work in the amphitheatre. How else could 
 he live?" 
 
 "There are some lives worse than death," said 
 Junia. ^ 
 
 "Well," answered Syra; "many a time he has longed 
 to stab himself with his own sword; but ... he loves 
 me." 
 
 "I did not mean that he should have killed him- 
 self," said Junia; "none of us have a right to fling away 
 the life which God gives us. I meant that it would be 
 worth while facing any risk to escape doing wrong." 
 
 "Nothing can be wrong which our masters make us 
 do," answered Syra simply; and Junia could only sigh, 
 for she knew that this was an axiom with both slaves 
 and their masters. 
 
 By this time they had reached the outer door of 
 the spoliarium, and, in answer to a whispered watch- 
 word, Phlegon admitted Syra, who promised to return 
 very speedily, while Junia waited for her outside. 
 
 A few moments only had elapsed when Syra sprang 
 out of the door agitated and breathless. 
 
 "Oh, Junia!" she cried; "I did it! I did it!" 
 
THE SPOLIARIUM. 20g 
 
 "Did what?'' 
 
 "I have drunk some blood from a fresh wound, and 
 I am cured." 
 
 "HoiTible!" said Junia, with a shudder, now for the 
 first time understanding what Syra had come for. 
 
 "Yes; it was horrible," said the girl; "but how could 
 I help it? Everyone who saw me in a fit, however 
 slight, used to spit so as to avert the omen. I tried 
 everything first. I tried galbanum, garHc, hellebore; I 
 ate some young swallows; I tried to get a bit of the 
 liver of an elephant, or the brain of a camel, which they 
 say is a certain remedy.* But how could I? Never 
 mind! I am cured now. But oh, Junia!" exclaimed 
 the girl, "as he lay there" — 
 
 "As who lay there?" 
 
 "The young gladiator who fought so bravely to-day, 
 and was dragged out by the hook as dead — well, he is 
 not dead! His limbs were warm. I put my hand on 
 his heart; there was a faint pulse." 
 
 "But who is he?" 
 
 "I thought you knew him, for he was once a slave 
 in your house — that young Phrygian." 
 
 "Onesimus!" exclaimed Junia, with a startled cry. 
 
 "Yes; that was his name. Did you not know that 
 he fought as a net- thrower to-day?" 
 
 "No," she answered faintly. "We never go to the 
 games. I had long lost sight of him, and thought 
 that he had left Rome, or was dead. Syra, save 
 him!" 
 
 * Plin. H, N. Xxm. 63 and passim. 
 Darkness and Dawn. II, 1 4 
 
2IO DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 "Phlegon will be glad to save him, if it can be 
 done undiscovered. He loathes stabbing the poor 
 gladiators when they have not quite been killed. Yet, 
 if it were discovered that he spared but one of them, 
 he would certainly be torn to pieces or crucified." 
 
 Junia's mind was instantly made up. At all costs, 
 Onesimus should have such chance of life secured to 
 him as nature rendered possible. She told Syra to let 
 Phlegon speak with her. Entering the spoliarium, and 
 repressing the awful sense of repugnance which almost 
 made her faint as the dim light of his lamp gHmmered 
 over the heap of mangled corpses, she recognised the 
 features of Onesimus, and convinced herself that the 
 spark of life was not wholly quenched in him. Then, 
 putting into the hand of the confector a gold coin which 
 had been the gift of Claudia, she entreated him to let 
 her come back and remove the hapless youth. He 
 consented, and, touched by her anguish, he himself 
 took the body of the gladiator in his arms, laid him 
 on his own pallet of straw, and poured some common 
 Sabine wine down his throat. Junia, meanwhile, thank- 
 ful now for the slave-girFs company, went to the house 
 of Linus, which was near at hand, and implored his aid. 
 The good old pastor readily consented, and, when it 
 was quite dark, took a mule and went with the two 
 girls to the door of the spoliarium, where Phlegon 
 awaited them. 
 
 He had not been idle. With such rough kindness 
 as was possible to him he had washed away in tepid 
 water the stains of blood from the breast and face of 
 
THE SPOLIARIUM. 2 I I 
 
 the poor gladiator, and had bandaged the deep wounds 
 in his breast. 
 
 With tender care they h'fted the still unconscious 
 Phrygian upon a bundle of soft clothes which they had 
 laid upon the mule. Linus, though the task was not 
 without peril, agreed to tend and give him shelter for 
 that night. 
 
 Then Junia fled back through the deserted streets. 
 Nereus had begun to be anxious at her long delay, and 
 listened to her story with a grave face. He had never 
 liked Onesimus, and the youth's many sins and errors 
 might well have shaken his confidence. But he and 
 Junia had read not long before the letter which Paul of 
 Tarsus had written to their brother- Christians in Corinth; 
 and, if he wavered for a moment, he was decided in 
 the cause of mercy by Junia's whispered words, "Love 
 suffereth long and is kind; love thinketh no evil; 
 beareth all things; believeth all things; endureth all 
 things; hopeth all things." 
 
 It was agreed that after dark next evening Nereus 
 should remove the dreadfully wounded sufferer from the 
 house of Linus. Pudens, to whom he told the whole 
 story, arranged, with Claudia's full consent, that Onesi- 
 mus, as a former member of the household, should be 
 concealed and tended in the hut of one of their country 
 slaves who had charge of a little farm not far from 
 Aricia. This peasant was a Christian, and he carried 
 out the injunctions of his master with faithful kindness. 
 
 For many weeks Onesimus hung between life and 
 death; at last, slowly, very slowly, he began to recover. 
 Youth and the natural strength of his constitution, 
 
 14* 
 
.212 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 aided by the fresh air of the country, the pure milk, 
 the quiet, the simple wholesome food, and the fact that 
 there was nothing to thwart the recuperative forces of 
 nature, won the day in the battle, and once more Death 
 released the victim whom he seemed to hold securely 
 in his grasp. 
 
THE KING OF THE GROVE. 2 1 3 
 
 CHAPTER LXI. 
 
 THE KING OF THE GROVE. 
 
 "Vallis Aricinae sylva prsecinctus opaca 
 Est lacus, antiqua religione sacer." 
 
 Ovid. Fast. iii. 263. 
 
 When Onesimus recovered full consciousness he did 
 not recognise his unfamiliar surroundings, and was too 
 weak to piece together the broken threads of his 
 memory. Gradually he recalled the incidents of the 
 past. He remembered the gladiators' school, the fight 
 in the amphitheatre, the death of Glanydon, the recoil 
 of feeling which prevented him from killing the Samnite 
 Kalendio, even the sensation which he felt when the 
 sword-thrust pierced his ribs. All the rest was dark- 
 ness. Where was he? How had he been rescued from 
 the spoliarium? How had he escaped the finishing blow 
 of the confector? 
 
 Old Dromo, the vineyard-keeper, was very reticent, 
 for he did not wish to endanger any of those who had 
 taken part in the youth's deliverance. But the quick 
 intelligence of Onesimus, working upon broken hints, 
 conjectured that Nereus and Junia, as members of his 
 old familia, must have had some share in saving his 
 life. Pudens, when he visited his vineyard to receive 
 his accounts, . came and saw him, and spoke a few 
 kindly words; but the youth could see that the centurion 
 
214 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 had lost his old regard for him. He saw no one else, 
 except occasionally one of the peasant neighbours. 
 Junia, of course, came not. Such a visit would have 
 been impossible to her maiden modesty. What could 
 she do but silently combat a love which she felt to be 
 hopeless? How could she ever marry a gladiator with 
 such a past, and with so hopeless a probable future — 
 a renegade, to all appearance, from the faith of Christ? 
 She could but pray for him, and then strive to prevent 
 her thoughts from turning to him any more. And 
 Nereus came not to see him. He distrusted him, as he 
 thought of all the crimes through which he must have 
 fallen, from the position of a Christian brother, into 
 such a sink of degradation as a gladiators' school. 
 
 Lonely, disgraced, abandoned, in deadly peril of 
 his life from a hundred sources if once he should be 
 recognised, prostrated by weakness, often suffering tor- 
 ments from the pain of wounds which as yet were but 
 half healed, Onesimus sank deeper and deeper into 
 despair. Repentance and the love of God may often 
 grow in the midst of adversity, like some Alpine gentian 
 amid the snows; but sometimes there is a deadliness in 
 the chill of hopeless misfortune which kills every green 
 leaf of faith. The youth, smitten by so many calamities, 
 began to feel as though the river of his life, which might 
 have been so full and rejoicing, had lost itself in mud 
 and sand. His sun had gone down while it yet was 
 day. What was he to do? How could he live? Why 
 had they saved him? If Nereus and Junia and Pudens 
 had done it, by what means he knew not, it was a cruel 
 kindness. Why should they have preserved him to a 
 destiny so miserable? Junia must despise him now: 
 
THE KING OF THE GROVE. 215 
 
 why should she have wished that his life should be 
 spared? 
 
 He murmured against God in his heart. He cursed 
 the day of his birth. He had had many chances and 
 recklessly flung away one after another. Sometimes he 
 thought of Christ and of all that he had heard from 
 the lips of Paul in Ephesus about the Friend of publicans 
 and sinners. But had he not denied the faith? Had 
 he not lived Hke an apostate? If Christ could still love 
 him, why was he left in all this misery and hopeless- 
 ness? Why did no ray of light gleam through his 
 darkened sky? 
 
 And thus he made his heart like the day which the 
 fire does but harden, not like the gold which it melts. 
 But, notwithstanding his despair, he grew stronger. In 
 two or three months his wounds healed, and he was 
 free to leave his couch of hay and beechen leaves and 
 to wander about the exquisite scenery of his temporary 
 home. Aricia was built in a valley, the crater of an 
 extinct volcano, at the foot of the Alban Mount. Below 
 it the Lacus Nemorensis, "the Mirror of Diana," lay 
 gleaming like a transparent emerald, while the steep 
 lava slopes which descended to its level were rich with 
 vineyards and groves and flowers. 
 
 But he seldom ventured out in the broad daylight. 
 Aricia lay on the Appian road, only sixteen miles from 
 Rome, and its hill was the haunt of a throng of 
 clamorous beggars, who assailed with their importunity 
 every vehicle that passed along that "queen of ways." 
 Hundreds were familiar with the features of Onesimus, 
 and, though their beauty was now impaired by pallor 
 and emaciation, he might again be recognised, with 
 
2l6 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 fatal consequences. He only went out after sunset, 
 and by the unfrequented paths which led him towards 
 the grove of Diana and the Nemorensian lake. The 
 lower slopes of the Alban Mount were so overshadowed 
 with dense foliage that, among the woods, he could 
 easily escape observation and indulge without disturb- 
 ance in his melancholy thoughts. 
 
 One day, as he sat under a huge chestnut- tree, he 
 heard the pipe of a shepherd lad driving home his herd 
 of goats from the upland pastures; and, as the hut of 
 the boy's parents adjoined the lodge of Pudens' vine- 
 yard, he recognised him as an acquaintance whose 
 name was Ofellus. But instead of coming up to talk 
 with him, as usual, the boy gave a low whistle and 
 beckoned. Onesimus thought that Ofellus only wanted 
 to play a game at mora after he had herded his goats, 
 but the boy laid a finger on his lip, and made signs to 
 him to be on his guard until they had got some dis- 
 tance from the place where he was sitting. 
 
 "What is the matter?'' whispered the Phrygian, in 
 alarm. "Is anyone pursuing me?" 
 
 "No," answered Ofellus, "but if the King sees you 
 he will think you mean mischief" 
 
 "The King! What king?" 
 
 "Don't you know?" said the boy. "Come and help 
 me to drive in my goats, and I will tell you." 
 
 When they were well out of the grove, and the 
 goats, with their frisking kids, which gave Ofellus so 
 much trouble, were safe in their pen, the boy said: 
 "We may speak aloud now; and don't you really know 
 who the King is?" 
 
 "I did not know that Romans had had a king since 
 
THE KING OF THE GROVE. 217 
 
 Tarquin the Proud," said Onesimus, laughing; "unless 
 you mean some Jewish or Eastern Alabarch, Hke Herod 
 or Izates." 
 
 "No, no," said Ofellus, "but the priest of yon temple 
 has been called for ages Hhe King of the Grove/" 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "I don't know why, except that there are some 
 sacrifices which only a king can offer; so they have to 
 call him king, just as they call one of the priests at 
 Rome Hhe King of the Sacred Rites.'" 
 
 "Well, but why were you in such terror of this so- 
 called king?" 
 
 Again the boy lifted up his hands in astonishment, 
 with the question, "Don't you know?" 
 
 Onesimus explained that he was an Asiatic, and 
 did not know much about the neighbourhood of Rome. 
 Ofellus therefore garrulously poured out the legend of 
 the place. "There was once some Greek or other," he 
 said, "named Hippolytus, who had vowed to live a 
 virgin life for Diana. He was killed by the jealousy of 
 his father, who got Neptune to frighten his chariot 
 horses with a sea monster. So the poor youth was 
 flung out of his chariot, and dragged to death. Then 
 Diana brought him here, and raised him to life again, 
 and called him Virbius, and he was her priest. But, 
 because he was raised to life, every priest has to 
 murder his predecessor before he can be priest him- 
 self" 
 
 "And may anyone kill the priest who can?" 
 
 "Yes, but first they've to pluck the golden bough." 
 
 "The golden bough?" 
 
 "Yes. It is not really golden, you know; it is that 
 
2l8 DARKNHESS AND DAWN. 
 
 yellow- white plant, which grows on an old oak in the 
 wood." 
 
 "Mistletoe?" said Onesimus. 
 
 "Yes. If a man wants to be King he has to pluck 
 it, and then fight or murder the present King. If he 
 fails he is killed; if he wins he kills the King, and be- 
 comes King in his place." 
 
 "Is the King often killed?" 
 
 "Very often. Some runaway slave is sure to kill 
 him, and so escape the cross or the branding-iron. 
 Hardly a year passes that he is not attacked. My 
 father says that, before I was born, one King, who was 
 very strong and fierce, was priest for a good many 
 years; and then the Emperor Caligula, out of sheer 
 mad malice, sent a strong young slave on purpose to 
 kill him." 
 
 "But what harm would the King have done to us?" 
 
 "None to a boy like me, nor to one who is free- 
 born; but " 
 
 "You take me for a runaway slave?" asked Onesimus. 
 
 Ofellus nodded his head, and added, "I saw the 
 King among the trees." And then he quoted an old 
 Roman song about — 
 
 "The dim lake that sleeps 
 Beneath Alicia's trees; 
 The trees in whose dim shadow 
 The ghastly priest doth reign: 
 The priest who slew the slayer, 
 And shall himself be slain." 
 
 Onesimus, too, had seen the Priest of Diana; but, 
 as he was some distance off, had not observed him 
 closely. Now, however, the goat-boy's words seized his 
 
THE KING OF THE GROVE. 2ig 
 
 attention. Whoever succeeded in killing the Nemorensian 
 King was secure from the consequences of all past mis- 
 deeds, and had ample maintenance and a fine spacious 
 temple to live in. Wandering down the rocky bed of 
 the stream sacred to Egeria, Onesimus had seen the 
 shrine, and had wondered why the trees around it were 
 hung with so many gay woollen streamers, and so many 
 votive tablets; and why women came to it from Rome 
 with garlands on their heads and torches in their hands; 
 and why they treated the priest with so much reverence. 
 
 Surely the man's life was a ghastly one, with a 
 murder on his conscience and a murderer on his track ! 
 Yet a terrible purpose gradually fixed itself in the mind 
 of Onesimus. He persuaded himself that he was utterly 
 God-forsaken; that such a deluge of calamities could 
 not otherwise have come upon him. Every hope of his 
 life was frustrated; for him there seemed no future pos- 
 sibility of honesty, or happiness, or home, and his heart 
 was burdened with the sore weight of a hopeless love. 
 Why should he not become the King of the Arician 
 Grove? ''The King is always a runaway slave." Those 
 words of Ofellus rang in his ear. He was regaining 
 strength. He was swift of foot. His gladiatorial train- 
 ing had taught him how to wield a sword. If Christ 
 had forsaken him, why should not he forsake Christ? 
 What mattered it that he would soon be murdered in 
 his turn? For a few years, at any rate, he might keep 
 his life, and be in honour, and share in gay festivals. 
 He resolved to watch for his opportunity, and to try his 
 chance. 
 
 Full of his desperate purpose, he stole under the 
 dark shadows of the trees, with no guide but the strag- 
 
220 DARKNESS AND DAW^. 
 
 gling starlight, to find the great oak which Ofellus had 
 described to him. It grew deep in the green hollow 
 close beside the lake, and the hoary mistletoe tufted its 
 upper branches. He climbed the tree, plucked "the 
 golden bough," and waited for the rising of the moon 
 to attack the Arician priest if he came out of the temple, 
 as he usually did, before he went to rest. 
 
 It was not long before the moon began to silver the 
 dense foliage of the grove, and then he heard a wicket 
 open, and from the place where he knelt crouched 
 among the brushwood he saw the tall figure of the 
 priest, whose shadow fell across the sward and almost 
 reached his hiding-place. He was a gaunt-looking man, 
 but of powerful frame. He carried a large sword in his 
 hand and looked round him suspiciously on every side.* 
 In his excitement Onesimus moved, and a fallen branch 
 snapped under his foot. The priest looked round with 
 a startled glance, and Onesimus could see his features 
 working in the moonlight. He had armed himself for 
 his frightful purpose with the only weapon he could find 
 — a reaping-hook, whick he took down from Dromo's 
 wall. Listening intently, the priest walked along the 
 grassy path, but as no other sound followed he seemed 
 to relax his vigilance and turned back. Then, with a 
 sudden shout, Onesimus sprang upon him. 
 
 But habitual terror had made the priest an adept 
 at self-defence. It was impossible to take him wholly 
 off his guard. At the first sound he turned, quick as 
 lightning, and, dropping his sword, seized with one arm 
 the hand which grasped the reaping-hook — the gleam 
 
 * Note 39. — The King of the Grove. 
 
THE KING OF THE GROVE. 221 
 
 of which he had caught in the moonlight — and with the 
 other dealt Onesimus a blow on the face which knocked 
 him stunned upon the turf. To stoop over his prostrate 
 form and wrench from his grasp the reaping-hook, was 
 the work of a moment. With a scornful laugh he 
 flung the weapon over the wall which enclosed the 
 sacred shrine, and then placed his foot on the youth's 
 breast. 
 
 Onesimus came to his senses, felt the heavy foot on 
 his breast, and opened his eyes. 
 
 "So," said the priest, with a grim laugh, "you wanted 
 to be Rex Nemorensis, did you? It's none so enviable 
 a post, let me tell you; and it will take a stronger and 
 craftier man than you to kill Croto when his day 
 comes." 
 
 "Kill me at once," said the Phrygian, with a groan. 
 
 Croto stooped to pick up his sword, and placed its 
 point at the throat of his assailant; but he paused. "By 
 Hercules," he said — "or perhaps officially I ought to 
 say, by Virbius — I have seen this face before!" 
 
 Onesimus looked up at him, and dimly recalled the 
 slave-prison at Antium. 
 
 "Do you know me?" asked the priest. 
 
 "I once gave an aureus to a man named Croto to 
 let me escape from a slave-prison. You are Uke him." 
 
 "I am Croto," said the priest, again laughing grimly. 
 "Is that how you repay your benefactor? Do you know 
 that it is through you I am here, and am never sure 
 any day of not being murdered before evening? Some 
 sneaking slave betrayed that I had let you escape from 
 Antium. I was threatened with chains and torture. I 
 had seen enough of that sort of thing, so I fled. I 
 
2 22 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 thought of Aricia; plucked the golden bough, as I see 
 you have done; and killed Manius, my predecessor." 
 
 "I did not know," answered Onesimus. "Kill me. 
 I ask nothing better." 
 
 But Croto still did not drive home the sword. "Poor 
 wretch!" he said. "You are but a youth, and are you 
 tired of Ufe already?" 
 
 "Utterly tired, or I should not have been the wicked 
 fool I have shown myself to-night." 
 
 "Why should I kill thee?" said Croto. "Swear never 
 again to attack me, and thou shalt go unscathed." 
 
 "It. would be kinder to kill a wretch whom God 
 hates." 
 
 "Go," said Croto. "Diana has so many victims, she 
 can spare this one. Give me your * golden bough,' and 
 let us part good friends." 
 
 Onesimus rose, miserable and crestfallen. "I am 
 penniless," he said, "or I would try to show myself 
 grateful." 
 
 "Tush!" answered Croto. "I am King of the Grove 
 and priest of Diana and of Virbius — whoever Virbius 
 was," he added under his breath. "The women give 
 me so many offerings that, but for the never knowing 
 where or when the sword will smite, 1 should be as fat 
 as a Salian, and I feed nearly as well. Nay, poor lad, 
 I can well do something for thee and never feel the 
 loss. I have more money than I know what to do with, 
 for I can never leave the grove. Take some. I dare 
 say you will need it." 
 
 He forced into the youth's hands a leather bag, 
 full of silver coins, and turned away. Onesimus stood 
 ^bashed in the moonlight. Then he burst into tears. 
 
THE KING OF THE GROVE. 22^ 
 
 He had found pity and magnanimity in the heart of the 
 doomed and murderous fugitive ! Was there no hope for 
 such a man? Shall any germ of good in man's soul 
 perish unperfected? Shall generosity and forgiveness 
 pass without their reward? The unexpected mercy ex- 
 tended to him by the grim priest of Virbius, in that 
 dark wood of Nemi, brought a blessing to Onesimus, 
 and as he went back to Dromons hut, the whole scene 
 — the lake, the white mist, the moonlit-silvered foliage, 
 the twinkling of the stars, the song of the nightingale, 
 the silence of the hills — fell with a healing touch on 
 the anguish of his heart. 
 
2 24 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 A MASSACRE OF SLAVES. 
 
 "Frigidus a rostris manat per compita rumor." 
 
 HoR. Sat. II. VI. 50. 
 "Servos in numero hominum esse non pateris?" — Sen. Ep. 
 XLVU., ap. Macrob. Sat. i. 1 1 . 
 
 Rome was in a state of wild excitement. The city 
 had hardly been more agitated when the news of Cali- 
 gula's murder had spread among the citizens. The as- 
 sassination of an emperor was always a possible event. 
 The little human divinity was certain to make so many 
 enemies, and was envied by so many powerful rivals, 
 that the fate of Caesar after Caesar made it no more 
 than a nine days' wonder if another fell. But the vic- 
 tim this time was not a Caesar. It was one of the chief 
 men in the city, a man of consular rank — no less a 
 person than the Praefect of the city, Pedanius Secundus. 
 
 And the dread news was whispered from mouth to 
 mouth that he had been murdered by one of his own 
 slaves ! 
 
 The people in the Forum and the Velabrum and 
 the Subura and at. Libo's Well, and the merchants at 
 the Janus, and the patricians in their palaces, and the 
 priests in the temples, and the boys of Rome as they 
 played on the steps of the Julian Basilica, were all dis- 
 cussing this sinister event. 
 
A MASSACRE OF SLAVES. 225 
 
 Tigellinus and Petronius, and a group of courtiers, 
 were standing together under the porch of the Temple 
 of Castor when the news reached them. They eagerly- 
 questioned the messenger. 
 
 "Is it certain that the murderer was a slave?" asked 
 Tigellinus in tones of horror. 
 
 "He was caught red-handed," said the messenger. 
 "The dagger was wrenched from him, dripping with 
 blood. His name is Vibius, and he does not deny the 
 crime." 
 
 "And what was his motive?" 
 
 "Some say that the Praefect had promised him his 
 liberty for a certain sum of money. The slave pinched 
 himself for years to raise it, and when he brought the 
 money Pedanius broke his bargain." 
 
 The hearers only shrugged their shoulders. 
 
 "That happens commonly enough," said Csecina 
 Tuscus, Nero's foster-brother, who had himself been 
 born a slave. 
 
 "It only meant," said Senecio, "that the Praefect had 
 changed his mind." 
 
 "Others say," continued the man, "that Pedanius 
 had a favourite, who had been also a favourite of Vi- 
 bius, who was driven wildly jealous." 
 
 "The notion of a slave presuming to have a favour- 
 ite!" hsped the effeminate Quintianus. "What next?" 
 
 '*How many slaves had Pedanius?" asked Petronius. 
 
 "Four hundred." 
 
 "Is that all?" said Tigellinus. "It is lucky that he 
 had no more. They will be executed, every one of 
 them — that's one comfort. Let us thank the gods for 
 the Silanian law." 
 
 Darkness and Dawn, //. 15 
 
2 26 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 They saw Seneca approaching them; and it was 
 evident that he had heard the news, for his face wore 
 a look of sorrow and alarm. 
 
 "How say you, Seneca?'^ asked Lucan; "is the Sila- 
 nian law to be carried out, and are all Pedanius's four 
 hundred slaves to die?'' 
 
 "I should hope not," said the philosopher, in- 
 dignantly. "What! are we to butcher this multitude, of 
 whom three hundred and ninety-nine are probably in- 
 nocent? The Silanian law is fit for barbarians. Every 
 good feeling within us abhors the cruel wrong of mur- 
 dering young and old, innocent and guilty, in one pro- 
 miscuous massacre." 
 
 "But that the Prsefect of Rome should be murdered 
 by one of his own slaves!" murmured his hearers. 
 
 "By one of his own slaves — but maddened, report 
 says, by an intolerable wrong." 
 
 "Wrong?" answered Vestinus, in surprise. "Are not, 
 then, our slaves, our chattels? Has a slave rights?" 
 
 "He has the rights of a human being," answered 
 Seneca. "Are not our slaves of the same flesh and blood 
 as we? Has not a slave feelings? Has not a slave 
 passions?" 
 
 "Yes; very bad passions," said young Vedius Pollio. 
 
 "Do they stand alone in that respect?" asked Seneca, 
 fixing a keen look on him. "Do masters never show 
 bad passions?" 
 
 Everyone understood the allusion, for in the days of 
 Augustus the young man's ancestor, Vedius Pollio, had 
 ordered a slave to be flung into the fishpond to feed 
 the lampreys, merely because he fell and broke a crystal 
 vase. Augustus, who was dining with Pollio that day, 
 
A MASSACRE OF SLAVES. 227 
 
 was SO indignant that he ordered the slave to be set 
 free, and every crystal vase in the house to be broken. 
 
 " Seneca will begin to think himself mistaken if I say 
 that / agree with him," said Petronius. "Nevertheless, 
 I do. I cannot bear to enter a friend's house and hear 
 it clanking with chains and ringing with yells, like an 
 ergastulum." 
 
 "Petronius is the soul of good nature," said Cassius 
 Longinus; "but I pity Rome if those maudlin views 
 prevail." 
 
 "Yes," echoed the fierce Cingonius Varro; "so many 
 slaves, so many foes. We nobles live all our Hves in a 
 sort of beleaguered garrison. If the senate does not do 
 its duty, I shall emigrate." 
 
 "Who makes our slaves our foes?" answered Seneca. 
 "Mine are not. Most of them are faithful to me. They 
 are my humble friends. I believe they love me. I know 
 that many of them would die for me. We become slaves 
 ourselves because we have so many." 
 
 "Tush!" said Scaevinus. "These sentimentalities will 
 ruin us. Why, some of us have a thousand slaves, and 
 some of us have more. We don't know their names, 
 and have to keep a nomenclator to tell us. Galba is 
 the only person I know who keeps up the ridiculous old 
 fashion of all the slaves and freedmen coming in twice 
 daily, to say *Good morning' and *Good evening.' Are 
 we to waste our time in trying to curry favour with 
 them? I rule mine by the lash and the chain and the 
 torture. Ha! Pudens, my grave newly- wedded primi- 
 pilar; here will be some work for you." 
 
 "Never!" said Pudens. "I would rather resign my 
 
 15* 
 
228 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 commission than carry out the Silanian law and super- 
 intend the slaughter of the innocent." 
 
 "And you, my young Titus?" asked Petronius. "I 
 hear you are going soon to see some military service. 
 Do you think that your step-mother Caenis and the boy 
 Domitian will be able to keep your slaves in order?" 
 
 "We have but few, Petronius," said Titus; "but they 
 love us. When I was ill, all the familia were as tender 
 in their attentions as if they had been brothers." 
 
 "Like to like," whispered Tigellinus. "He is half of 
 slave-origin himself" 
 
 "And what may your origin be?" asked Vestinus, 
 to whom the remark had been made, and who loathed 
 Tigellinus. 
 
 The rumour had spread that all the slaves of Pedanius 
 were to be executed, and the attitude of the people 
 grew very threatening. Many of them had been slaves 
 themselves, and many of them lived in intimacy with 
 the slave population, which immensely outnumbered the 
 freedmen. Familiar with the insolence and the exac- 
 tions of the wealthy, they assembled in throngs and de- 
 manded that there should be a trial, and that the inno- 
 cent should be spared. Their language became so 
 menacing that the senate was hastily convened. It was 
 hoped by all the more just and kind of the senators 
 that mild counsels would prevail, and the Silanian decree 
 be repealed or modified. They pointed out that the 
 extreme rarity of the crime showed that the peril was 
 not great; that, in this particular instance, Pedanius, be- 
 sides being a merciless master, had provoked his own 
 fate; that there was not a tittle of evidence to prove the 
 complicity of the familia in this deed of isolated ven- 
 
A MASSACRE OF SLAVES. 229 
 
 geance; that it would be monstrous to kill innocent boys 
 and girls, and faithful men and women, for one mad- 
 man's crime. But the senate was carried away partly 
 by the selfish fears of many of its members, and partly 
 by the impassioned speech of Cassius Longinus. An 
 eminent jurist, a conservative who considered the tradi- 
 tions of the past incomparably superior to the wisdom 
 of the present, a man of great wealth, high rank, and a 
 certain Roman integrity, he rose in his place, and threw 
 the weight of his influence into the scale of the old 
 Pagan ruthlessness. 
 
 "Often have I been present. Conscript Fathers,'^ he 
 said, "at meetings of the senate in which I have only 
 protested by my silence against the innovations which 
 are almost invariably for the w^orse. I did not wish you 
 to think that I was unduly biassed by my personal 
 studies, nor did I msh to weaken such weight as I may 
 possess by too frequent and fruitless interpositions. But 
 to-day the commonwealth demands my undivided efforts. 
 A consular of Rome has been murdered in his own 
 house by a slave's treachery, and an unrepealed decree 
 of the senate threatens punishment to the whole family 
 of slaves who neither prevented nor revealed the plot. 
 Decree impunity for them, that when the chief magistracy 
 of the city has been no protection we may each of us, 
 forsooth, be defended by our own dignity! Who can 
 be protected by any number of slaves, if four hundred 
 were not enough to protect Pedanius Secundus? If fear 
 did not suffice to make his slaves vigilant, which of us 
 will be safe? There are some who do not blush to 
 pretend," he continued, darting an angry glance at 
 Seneca, "that the murderer did but avenge his own 
 
230 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 wrongs! Let us, then, pronounce at once that Pedanius 
 was justly murdered! Are we to argue a case which 
 our wiser ancestors have already decided? Why, even 
 if the decision had now to be made for the first time, 
 do you imagine that a slave would have had the daring 
 to murder his master without one threat, without one 
 rash murmur about his design? He concealed his plan, 
 forsooth; he prepared his dagger, and no one knew of 
 it! Could he, then, with equal facility pass through the 
 slaves who were on night watch, unfasten the doors of 
 the bedchamber, carry in a light, perpetrate the bloody 
 deed, without one person being aware of it? Guilt be- 
 trays itself beforehand in many ways. If slaves reveal 
 to us our peril, we can live, though we be single among 
 multitudes, safe among those who tremble for them- 
 selves — at the worst not unavenged among the guilty. 
 Our ancestors looked with suspicion on the character of 
 slaves, even when the slaves, born on their estates or in 
 their houses, had learnt from infancy to love their 
 master. But in these days we count nations among our 
 households. Their rites are different; their religions are 
 foreign or nil. We cannot keep in order this sink and 
 scum of humanity except by fear. But, you say, *some 
 of the innocent will perish among them.' Be it so! 
 Are no brave soldiers beaten to death with rods when 
 a routed army is punished by decimation? No great 
 example can be inflicted without some unfairness, but 
 the public advantage outweighs the individual injustice; 
 and in any case, if four hundred slaves do perish, it 
 will be a cheap loss." 
 
 There was more than one senator who burned to 
 refute the glittering sophisms and cruel hardness of the 
 
A MASSACRE OF SLAVES. 23 I 
 
 jurist's Speech; but Paetus Thrasea was absent, as he 
 often was, and Seneca was cowed by his habitual timidity. 
 He felt how easily he could have torn the speech of 
 Longinus into shreds, and with what genuine lightnings 
 of indignant conviction he could have shattered its pe- 
 dantries and its inhumanity. But he had not the nerve 
 to confront the impulses of a selfish panic. He longed 
 to plead the cause of mercy and of justice, as he was 
 so well capable of doing, and had the murmurs of dis- 
 sent which the speech of Cassius evoked been but a 
 little louder he might have plucked up courage and 
 have saved the senate from a deed of blood. But it 
 was whispered on all sides that Nero leaned to severity, 
 and Seneca's heart failed him once more. The mur- 
 murs died away; and Cingonius Varro, emboldened by 
 the devilish plea of necessity, rose to propose further 
 that not only the slaves of Pedanius should be killed, 
 but all the freedmen who lived under his roof be ban- 
 ished. Nero, however, made known that, while he did 
 not wish the ancient severity to be mitigated, neither did 
 he wish it to be increased, and the proposal dropped 
 without a seconder. 
 
 But let us notice in passing that retribution followed 
 cruelty. The merciless met with no mercy themselves. 
 Cassius, who meanwhile had become blind, was not long 
 afterwards banished by Nero to unwholesome Sardinia. 
 Varro, a little later, was put to death by Galba just after 
 he had become Consul elect. Many who thus voted for 
 the murder of the innocent were murdered though in- 
 nocent themselves. 
 
 The senate might decree, but the people were in- 
 dignant even to fury. Those who knew one or other of 
 
2^2 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 these poor slaves, and knew their innocence of what had 
 been an act of sudden fury on the part of Vibius, did 
 their utmost to raise a tumult. Hermas, the slave of 
 Pedanius, whom Onesimus had seen in the Antian er- 
 gastulum, was known to all the Christians as one of 
 their brethren; and though their principles forbade them 
 to resist the decree of the state by violence, their lamen- 
 tations and appeals that some pity should be extended 
 to the victims stirred the hearts of the multitude. And 
 they knew that many senators and praetorians were in 
 their favour. At one time an attempt at rescue seemed 
 probable. A crowd armed with stones and torches 
 gathered in front of the house of Pedanius, where the 
 four hundred slaves were now in chains under a guard 
 of soldiers. But they were terrified by the blind deifi- 
 cation of the imperial authority, and a mixed and cow- 
 ardly mob found no leader to inspirit them to attack 
 the house. 
 
 Titus was deeply moved and excited, and he went 
 to his old friend Pudens to see if anything could be 
 done. Pudens was dreading lest he should be appointed 
 to see the execution carried out. When Claudia, hang- 
 ing on his shoulder and looking into his manly face 
 with her innocent blue eyes, entreated him to fear God 
 rather than man, he assured her with a kiss and a smile, 
 that at all costs, even at the cost of martyrdom, he 
 would refuse. But Nereus had told him about poor 
 Hermas, and the sweet and engaging character of that 
 young man was so well known in the Christian com- 
 munity, that Pudens would have been ready if possible 
 to provide for his escape. 
 
 "I wish," said Titus, "that Onesimus had not been 
 
A MASSACRE OF SLAVES. 2^^ 
 
 killed as he is said to have been at the last gladiatorial 
 show. There is a rumour that, after all, he escaped 
 with his life, but if so he has disappeared, poor fellow, 
 no one knows where. He helped us when Britannicus 
 was in danger. He might help us now." 
 
 The centurion shook his head. He knew nothing 
 of the attack on the King of the Grove, and supposed 
 that Onesimus was still with Dromo at Aricia, but he 
 thought it safest to say nothing about him even to Titus. 
 
 They could think of no step to take; but Nereus, 
 who, as a confidential freedman, had been present, 
 heard the hint, and he determined to act upon it on 
 his own responsibility. He knew that Onesimus was not 
 available, but he knew a young Christian slave-boy 
 named Protasius in the house of Pudens who had been 
 acquainted with some of the home-born slaves of Pe- 
 danius, and was thus famiUar with the slaves' cells in 
 his house. There was no time to lose. The massacre 
 was to be carried out the next day. Nereus went to 
 the boy, who said that he knew of a little neglected 
 window half hidden by thick bushes in the peristyle, 
 and if he could only get there he could make his way 
 to the cell of Hermas. The night would be dark and 
 moonless, yet the risk would be terrific, the chance al- 
 most hopeless. But the Christians were taught not to 
 hold their Hves dear unto themselves, and they con- 
 sidered that martyrdom in the cause of duty was the 
 most glorious of crowns. Further than this, they always 
 acted together, as a faithful, secret, well-organised body. 
 With the connivance of the praetorian Vitalis, who was 
 a Christian, Nereus found means to get the boy intro- 
 duced into the house, and, creeping along in the dark- 
 
234 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 ness, he found Hermas tied with cords in his cell. He 
 had taken a knife with him, the rope was quickly 
 severed, and both he and Hermas, knowing every in- 
 tricacy of the house and grounds, got away in safety 
 with an ease which they attributed to the special inter- 
 position of Heaven in their behalf. What were those 
 glimmering lights which seemed to flash and fade in the 
 dim silence as they stole through the peristyle? Was 
 not some white angel of God helping to deliver them, 
 as angels had stood by the three youths in the furnace, 
 and had liberated Peter and John from prison? The 
 belief aided them, for it gave them a confidence which 
 was ready for any emergency, and contributed in no 
 small measure to the unheard-of facility of their escape. 
 
 Nereus had confided to Junia his secret attempt to 
 save Hermas, and she pleaded that something should 
 be done at the same time to save the hapless Syra, who 
 in the meantime had been married to Phlegon. But 
 this proved to be impossible. All the women slaves 
 were shut up in the triclinium together, and the door 
 was carefully guarded. Syra remained among the 
 doomed. Phlegon was still technically the slave of 
 Pedanius, but as he was not in the household he had 
 been passed over. This was poor Syra's only comfort, 
 and it was taken from her. Phlegon left his duties at 
 the spoHarium, and behaved so menacingly in the mob 
 that he was seized and, on the evidence of a freedman, 
 included in those set apart for execution. 
 
 Meanwhile, after his humiliating adventure in the 
 grove of Diana, Onesimus was unwilling to linger at 
 Aricia. With no plan, but in the restlessness of despair, 
 he disguised himself as well as he could, and by un- 
 
A MASSACRE OF SLAVES. 235 
 
 frequented paths slunk back to Rome, not knowing and 
 not caring what might befall him there. He slept under 
 the vestibule of the Temple of Mars, and next morning, 
 mingling with the crowd that surged through the streets, 
 he heard that the dreadful sentence against the slaves 
 of Pedanius was to be carried into immediate execution. 
 All thoughts of a rescue had been abandoned, for Nero 
 had published a notice that any interference with the 
 sentence would be treated with the extremest penalty. 
 The clang of soldiers' armour was heard on every side, 
 and praetorians lined the entire distance between the 
 house of Pedanius and the remote part of the Esquiline, 
 where the slaves were to be killed. The poor victims, 
 tied together by fours, were led out of the house. 
 Eagerly Onesimus scanned their faces, and was glad 
 that he did not see the face of Hermas among them. 
 
 A little delay occurred when the soldiers on guard 
 discovered that Hermas had escaped, but as they them- 
 selves ran serious peril of being punished for careless- 
 ness in the matter, they prudently held their tongues. 
 
 When the procession began to move, the wail which 
 rose from the doomed victims was taken up by the 
 multitude, and they abandoned themselves to their 
 emotions with all the passion of a Southern people. 
 They wept and wrung their hands, and raised their 
 arms to heaven, as though to appeal for vengeance. 
 But the praetorians surrounded the slaves with drawn 
 swords, and armed gladiators, who lined the streets, 
 sternly thrust back the surging mob. A ghastly sense 
 of fascination drew Onesimus to the scene of execution. 
 There was no time to be particular as to the mode of 
 death. The soldiers, dreading a riot, were chiefly 
 
236 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 anxious to get through their odious task as quickly as 
 possible. One after another, amid groans and shrieks, 
 and pools of blood, old grey-haired men and women, 
 and young boys and little children and fair girls, had 
 the sword driven into their throats or through their 
 hearts. The agony of the boys was pitiable to witness. 
 Some of them had belonged to the order of slaves who 
 were chosen for their beauty, were dressed in rich robes, 
 and pampered with every form of luxury and indulgence. 
 Their mode of life had left no courage in them, and 
 death meant to them the end of all things, or some 
 tormenting Tartarus. But in vain they wept, in vain 
 they pleaded for mercy. 
 
 On the other hand, the high bearing of some of the 
 slaves moved a deeper pity than the fate of these victims 
 of luxury and cruelty. For some of the Christians in 
 the household of Pedanius, who had not been so for- 
 tunate as Hermas, knew that their brethren were look- 
 ing on with prayer and sympathy, and went to their 
 fate, not only with Stoic dignity, but with beautiful 
 humility and simple peace. They felt something of the 
 glory of martyrdom. A light shone in their upturned 
 faces, and there was an accent as of music in their 
 murmured prayers, There were a few of their heathen 
 fellow-sufferers who bared their breasts to the sword 
 with stoHd indifference, and even with unseemly levity; 
 but the Christians went to death as to a coronation. 
 One poor boy — his name was Verus — moved many to 
 tears. When first he heard the groans of those who 
 fell as the sword smote them, he shrank back and 
 trembled, for he was little more than a child. His 
 father had become a convert of Linus, and he had 
 
A MASSACRE OF SLAVES. 237 
 
 caused his children to be baptized in infancy, and this 
 was his favourite son. Even in that evil slave-house- 
 hold the boy had grown up unstained, like some white 
 lily whose roots are in the mud. When Verus saw the 
 sword driven into his father's heart, he sprang back 
 with a cry, and in his excitement grasped the hand of 
 one of the legionaries. The brutal executioner flung 
 him back so violently that he fell. Instantly regaining 
 his composure, he rose to his knees, clasped his hands, 
 and turning his eyes heavenwards, began to pray — 
 "Our Father, which art in Heaven." At that moment 
 the sun shone forth out of dark clouds, and as the 
 light streamed over him, and made a natural aureole 
 round his bright hair, they saw his face as it had been 
 the face of an angel. Even the soldier who had raised 
 his hand to strike stood amazed, and delayed his blow. 
 But with a jeer the ruffian who had flung him back, 
 brought down his sword on the boy's head. He fell 
 without a word, and the blood streamed over the bright 
 face, and bedabbled the fair hair. As for Syra and 
 Phlegon, they stood hand in hand in mute despair, and 
 perished together, having known no consolation in life 
 but their pure love for each other, and appalled by the 
 mystery which crowned lives so miserable as theirs had 
 been with a death so cruel and undeserved. 
 
 In vain the agonised spectators cursed the soldiers, 
 cursed the dead Pedanius, cursed the senate, and in 
 their madness did not even refrain from cursing Nero. 
 Before an hour was over the deed was done. The yet 
 warm bodies, the yet palpitating limbs,* of these three 
 hundred and ninety-eight victims, were flung into one 
 of the deep pits of the Esquiline, and a cartload of 
 
2^8 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 sawdust soaked up the bloody traces of that slaughter 
 of the innocent. 
 
 Sickened, dazed, horrified, Onesimus left the dread- 
 ful scene, and went back to the Forum, where he sat 
 half-stunned, on the steps of the great JuHan Basilica. 
 The life of Rome was going on as though nothing had 
 happened. Peasants were selling chestnuts and olives 
 and macerated chickpeas to the crowd. Idlers were 
 sauntering up and down, occasionally stopping to Hsten 
 to the lampoons of a bawling poetaster, or to watch the 
 tame vipers of a snake-charmer. Others, who could not 
 stand poets reciting in the dog-days, were devoting their 
 attention to the performances of a learned pig.* The 
 Vestal Rubria passed by in all the pride of her stola, 
 and tasselled pallium, and jewelled necklace, amid the 
 deep reverence of the people, and unconscious of the 
 coming doom which Nero's vileness had soon in store 
 for her. Boys were playing at draughts on the circles 
 which they had cut in the marble pavement, where they 
 may still be seen. The swallows twittered and chased 
 each other about under the blue sky; but nothing could 
 charm away the gloom of the Phrygian's heart, and with 
 his head bent over both palms he sat, the picture of 
 despair. 
 
 A touch on the shoulder, the whisper of his name, 
 made him spring to his feet in alarm; but looking round 
 he saw the bright, honest face of Titus smiling down on 
 him. 
 
 "How did you recognise me?" he asked. 
 
 "A disguise does not often deceive me," said Titus; 
 "but I recognised you by your figure and attitude. I 
 * Petron. Sat. 47 ; Juv. Sal, m. 9. 
 
A MASSACRE OF SLAVES. 239 
 
 won't betray you. Come here, behind the shrine of 
 Vesta, and tell me about yourself." 
 
 "How wretched and ill you look!" he said, as they 
 stood alone under the shadow of the little circular temple 
 and the House of the Vestals. "Where have you been 
 this long time? What has happened to you? Why are 
 you here? I was mentioning you to Pudens only this 
 morning, and if we had known that you were in Rome 
 you might have been of use." 
 
 "You once helped to save my Hfe," said Onesimus, 
 "when I did not deserve it. I will tell you all." 
 
 He gave an outline of what had befallen him, con- 
 cealing only the shameful attack on the Rex at Aricia. 
 
 "And what will you do now?" asked Titus. 
 
 "Starve — beg — die!" he answered, in deep de- 
 jection. 
 
 "Listen," said Titus. "I have just heard from Pudens 
 that he is likely to be sent to a command in Britain, 
 and I shall go with him. Claudia will accompany him, 
 and the old British king, Caractacus. I think that when 
 you left Aricia you might have come to Pudens and 
 shown yourself more grateful for his kindness. But the 
 centurion is very good and forgiving, and, if I ask him, 
 I am sure that he will let you go with us to Britain." 
 
 Onesimus longed to accept the offer, but he thought 
 of Junia. He was near her now. 
 
 "Is Nereus to go?" he asked. 
 
 "No," said Titus. "Nereus is a freedman now, and 
 he is too old for so distant a voyage and so hard a 
 service." 
 
 Then Onesimus confessed his love for Junia, and 
 the wild hope which he still entertained that he might 
 
240 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 some day be accepted by her. Humbly he took the 
 hand of Titus and kissed it, and said — 
 
 "Forgive me; I will struggle on as best I may.^' 
 "Nay," said Titus; "I have not forgotten what you 
 once did for me and Britannicus, though in that matter, 
 too, you fell short afterwards. I never forget Britanni- 
 cus,'' he added, sadly, and stood for a moment silent. 
 "Listen,'' he said. "I know two people in Rome, be- 
 sides Pudens, who are good and kind. One is my 
 uncle, Flavins Sabinus; the other is Pomponia Graecina. 
 I am sure that one of them would find some place for 
 you. Acte has asked about you more than once, and 
 was, I know, fond of you. But it would not be safe for 
 you to enter Nero's palace again." 
 
 "Then let me serve the Lady Pomponia, if I may." 
 "Follow me," said Titus; "I will see what I can do 
 for you." 
 
 Their way led towards the Capenian Gate, where 
 the Appian Road enters the city. They had not pro- 
 ceeded far when they met a procession of humble people 
 thronging round a band of soldiers, who were entering 
 Rome in charge of several prisoners. 
 
A NOTABLE PRISONER. 24 1 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 A NOTABLE PRISONER. 
 
 "He that hath light within his own clear breast, 
 May sit i' the centre, and enjoy bright day; 
 But he that hath a dark soul, and foul thoughts, 
 Benighted walks under the midday sun; 
 Himself is his own dungeon." 
 
 Milton, Comm. 
 
 A Roman centurion, whose armour gleamed in the 
 sun, was walking at the head of the decuria of soldiers, 
 several of whom were attached by a loose coupling 
 chain to the arms of various prisoners. The spectacle 
 was common enough, and in the varied turmoil of the 
 principal thoroughfare, with the stream of travellers 
 which swept to and fro about the capital of the world, 
 there was nothing in it to attract notice. But the in- 
 terest felt in one of the prisoners had induced a throng 
 of people — mostly foreigners, slaves, and artisans — to go 
 and meet him. 
 
 Titus recognised in the centurion an old friend. 
 "Ha, Julius!" he cried; "so you have returned from 
 Csesarea. You will have long stories to tell us about 
 those curious and turbulent Jews. Will you sup with 
 my father to-night? You will be welcome." 
 
 "Yes," said Julius, "gladly, for I am tired with a 
 long day's march." 
 
 Darkness and Dawn, 11% 1 6 
 
2^2 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 "You know our frugal ways. You will have to re- 
 cline on couches made only by Archias, and sup mainly 
 on vegetables off earthenware plates," said Titus laugh- 
 ing, and quoting Horace. 
 
 "It will be a supper of the gods after our fare m 
 the night and days of storm on the Adramyttian ship 
 off Clauda and Malta,'' said Julius. "But I must hurry 
 on now to hand over my prisoners to the Praetorian 
 Prsefect." 
 
 "Who are your prisoners?" 
 
 "They are of the ordinary sort except one. He is 
 the strangest, bravest, wisest man I ever met; and yet 
 he is a fanatical Jew — one of this new sect which the 
 mob calls Christians." 
 
 "Which is he?" 
 
 Julius pointed to a prisoner chained to the foremost 
 soldier, on either side of whom nearly all the visitors 
 were grouped, listening eagerly to every word he uttered, 
 and showing him every sign of love and reverence. He 
 was a man with the aquiline nose and features of his 
 race, somewhat bent, somewhat short of stature, evidently 
 from his gestures a man of nervous and emotional tem- 
 perament. His hair had grown grey in long years of 
 hardship. Many a care and peril and anxiety had 
 driven its ploughshare across his brow. His cheeks 
 were sunken, and the eyes, though bright, were dis- 
 figured by ophthalmia. He was evidently shortsighted, 
 but as he turned his fixed and earnest look now on 
 one, now on another of his companions, the expression 
 of his deeply-marked face was so translucent with some 
 divine light within, that those who once saw him felt 
 
A NOTABLE PRISONER. 243 
 
 compelled to look long on a countenance of no ordinary 
 type of nobleness. 
 
 Titus gazed at him. Nothing could be more unlike 
 the worn and weary Jew who had been buffeted by so 
 many storms and escaped from so many terrific perils, 
 than was the athletic young Roman, with his short fair 
 hair which curled round a face ruddy in its prime of youth 
 and health. In the prisoner's aspect there was none of 
 the Roman dignity which marked the look and bearing 
 of Paetus Thrasea; none of the manly independence 
 which looked the whole world in the face from the eyes 
 of Cornutus or Musonius Rufus; none certainly of the 
 rich Eastern beauty which marked Aliturus or the Hero- 
 dian princes. Yet Titus as he watched him was, for a 
 moment, too much astonished to speak. 
 
 "He looks all you say of him," he murmured. "Who 
 is he?" 
 
 "His name is Paulus of Tarsus. He is evidently a 
 great leader among these Christians." 
 
 Hitherto Onesimus, absorbed in his own sad reflec- 
 tions, had neither heeded the throng, nor attended to 
 the conversation between Titus and Julius. But sud- 
 denly he caught the name, and looked up with hasty 
 glance. 
 
 He saw before him not a few of the Christian com- 
 munity of Rome. Many of them were known to him. 
 Nereus was there and Junia; and from the household 
 of Caesar he recognised Tryphaena and Tryphosa and 
 Herodion; and there were Linus, and Cletus, and the 
 soldiers Urban and Celsus, and Claudia Dicaeosyne, 
 wife of a freedman of Narcissus, and Andronicus, and 
 
 16* 
 
244 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Alexander, and Rufus, sons of Simon of Cyrene who 
 had borne Christ's cross, and many more. 
 
 In a single glance he took in the presence of these, 
 and a sense of danger flashed across him, lest any one 
 of them, perhaps a false brother, should penetrate his 
 disguise as Titus had done. But it was not at them 
 that he looked. His whole being was absorbed in the 
 gaze which he fixed on him whom he had always heard 
 spoken of as the Apostle Paulus. 
 
 Yes, there he stood; his face thinner and more worn 
 than of old, his hair now almost white with an age 
 which was reckoned less by years than by labours and 
 sorrows; but otherwise just as he was when Philemon 
 had gone from Colossse and taken with him his boy- 
 slave to listen to the words of impassioned reasoning 
 and burning inspiration which Paul poured forth at 
 Ephesus in the lecture hall of Tyrannus. What a flood 
 of memories surged over the young Phrygian's soul as 
 he saw him! As though his Hfe, since then, had been 
 written in Hghtning, he thought in one instant of that 
 long tale of shame and sorrow — from the theft at 
 Colossae to the wanderings with the priests of the Syrian 
 goddess, the gladiators' school, the attempted murder 
 at Aricia. It all flashed upon his recollection, and he 
 felt as if he could sink to the earth for shame. His first 
 impulse was to spring forward and cast himself at the 
 Apostle's feet. But he heard Julius say that they had 
 halted too long, and that he must press forward with 
 his charge. The word "Forward, soldiers!" was given, 
 and Onesimus hid himself behind a tomb, only rejoin- 
 ing Titus when the Christians had passed by. Titus 
 
A NOTABLE PRISONER. 245 
 
 seemed lost in thought, but as they were near Pompo- 
 
 nia's house, he said: 
 
 "Onesimus, did you see that prisoner?" 
 
 "Yes. And I saw him when I was a boy in 
 
 Ephesus." 
 
 "I know men when I see them," said Titus. "He 
 
 is a man," and then he repeated the Greek hne — 
 
 "How gracious a thing is a man, if he be but a man." * 
 
 "He is a Jew; he is small and bent; he is ugly; yet 
 somehow his ugliness is more beautiful tenfold than the 
 beauty of Paris or Tigellinus." 
 
 "You should hear him speak!" said Onesimus. 
 
 Titus shrugged his shoulders. "A Christian!" he 
 said; "a worshipper of a Jew whom they tell me Pilatus 
 crucified! And yet," he added, "there is something 
 more in these Christians than I can fathom. Britannicus 
 was very much struck by them, and I believe Pomponia 
 is a Christian. She told me once that *no weapon 
 forged against these Christians prospers.' Pilatus, they 
 say, came to a bad end." 
 
 "What happened to him?" asked Onesimus. 
 
 "They say he became a haunted man. His wife 
 Claudia Procula turned Christian. He was banished to 
 Helvetia and there committed suicide; and his ghost 
 haunts a bare mountain, and is for ever wringing and 
 washing its hands. But I believe it is all nonsense," 
 said Titus; "and here we are at Pomponia's house." 
 
 They found the gracious noble lady with her boy 
 by her side in the peristyle tending her flowers among 
 her doves, which were so tame that they would perch 
 * 'Q<i ^o-^dv SOT av&Qcojtog 7]v av^Qcojtog fj. 
 
546 DARltNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 on her head and shoulder, and coo softly, as they 
 suffered both her and the young Aulus to smooth their 
 plumage — 
 
 " Bathed in such hues as when the peacock's neck 
 Assumes its brightest tint of amethyst 
 Embathed in emerald glory." 
 
 The heart of Pomponia was open to every kind im- 
 pulse, and as there was little difficulty in finding room 
 for another slave in the ample palace of a Roman noble 
 like Aulus Plautius, Onesimus, saved once more from 
 ruin and destitution, slept that night in the cell of a 
 new master. 
 
 Meanwhile Julius and his prisoner had proceeded on 
 their way. Leaving the Circus Maximus on their left, 
 and going along the Vicus Tuscus, amid temples and 
 statues and arches of triumph, they passed the Prae- 
 torian Camp, built by Sejanus, near the Nomentan Road, 
 and reached the Excubitorium and the barracks of that 
 section of the praetorians whose turn it was to keep 
 guard over the person of the Emperor. Here the cen- 
 turion found Burrus, and in consigning to his charge 
 the prisoner who had appealed unto Caesar, handed to 
 him at the same time some letters respecting him from 
 Fehx, Festus, and King Agrippa. Burrus read them 
 with interest. 
 
 "This is a remarkable prisoner," he said. "The 
 Jews accuse him of sedition and profanity; but they 
 have sent neither evidence nor witnesses." 
 
 "We passed through a fearful storm off Crete," said 
 Julius, "and were shipwrecked at Malta. I hear rumours 
 that another large vessel, which sailed soon after us 
 from Caesarea, with many Jews on board, foundered at 
 
A NOTABLE PRISONER. 247 
 
 sea. I expect that some of the accusers of Paulus 
 perished with her." 
 
 "Well, if so, his case will be delayed. He is inno- 
 cent, I suppose?" 
 
 "Perfectly innocent, I am certain. Christian as he 
 is, it is such men whom the gods love. We all of us 
 should have perished at sea but for his wisdom and 
 good sense, and if we had listened to his advice we 
 should not have been wrecked at all." 
 
 "Ha!" said Burrus; "he shall be well treated." He 
 called to a praetorian and said: "The prisoner in the 
 outer room may hire a lodging for himself. He will, of 
 course, be in custody. The men must take their turns 
 to be chained to him; but mark — choose out the kindest 
 and most honest men for the work, and let them under- 
 stand that I order him to be as gently dealt with as can 
 be, consistently with his security." 
 
 That night the dream of the life of Paul of Tarsus 
 was accomplished; he was sleeping in Rome. He was 
 an ambassador, though an ambassador in bonds. 
 
248 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 A SUPPER AT Vespasian's. 
 
 "You'll have no scandal while you dine, 
 But honest talk and wholesome wine." 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
 "Arma quidem ultra 
 Littora Juvernse promovimus, et modo captas 
 Orcadas et minima contentos nocte Britannos. 
 Sed quae nunc populi fiunt victoris in urbe 
 Non faciunt illi quos vicimus." 
 
 Juv. Sat. II. 159-163. 
 
 The centurion Julius was genuinely pleased with the 
 invitation of Titus, and duly presented himself at the 
 modest house of Vespasian. The other guests were Aulus 
 Plautius and Pomponia, King Caradoc, Pudens and 
 Claudia, and Seneca, together with several members of 
 the family, and among them Vespasian's brother. Flavins 
 Sabinus, who had just been appointed Praefect of the 
 City, in the place of Pedanius Secundus. The fortunes 
 of the Flavian house were rising rapidly; but Sabinus, 
 an eminent soldier, with his blushing honours fresh 
 upon him, was regarded as the head of the family. 
 
 Vespasian was poor, and was also fond of money. 
 That he had not amassed a fortune in his various com- 
 mands was much to his credit. His house, afterwards 
 occupied by Josephus, was so unpretending as to excite 
 the wonder of those who saw it after he had become 
 
A SUPPER AT Vespasian's. 249 
 
 Emperor, and his entertainments were usually marked 
 by a more than Sabine simplicity. 
 
 On this occasion, however, since a king, a prime 
 minister, and a consular — his old commander — who had 
 enjoyed the honour of sharing an Emperor's triumphs, 
 were among his guests, Vespasian had donned the un- 
 wonted splendour of his "triumphal ornaments," a 
 flowered tunic, over which flowed a purple robe, em- 
 broidered with palm branches in gold and silver thread. 
 He was not half at ease in this splendid apparel, and 
 told his wife Caenis that he was an old fool for his pains. 
 The entertainment was sufficient, though Otho would 
 have thought it hardly good enough for his freedmen. 
 The board was graced with old Sabine and Etruscan 
 ware of great antiquity and curious workmanship, as 
 well as with objects of interest which Vespasian had 
 bought when he was an officer in Thrace, Crete, and 
 Cyrene. 
 
 But Vespasian himself, who was sturdily indiflerent 
 to fashion, and took pleasure in showing how little he 
 regarded the criticisms of Roman dandyism, drank out 
 of a little silver cup which had belonged to his grand- 
 mother, and which he would not have exchanged for the 
 loveliest crystal on the table of Petronius. And Caradoc, 
 as he sat there in his simple dress and golden torque, 
 was far more happy at that modest entertainment than 
 he would have been at the house of any other of the 
 Roman nobles. 
 
 The party was, so to speak, a British party, for most 
 of them were familiar with the storm-swept Northern 
 island, which was regarded as the Ultima Thule of 
 civilisation. That day Pudens had received an appoint- 
 
250 • DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 ment to go to Britain and support as well as he could 
 the wavering fortunes of Suetonius Paulinus. Caradoc 
 was permitted to return with him and take up his abode 
 at Noviomagus, the town of the Regni. They were to 
 sail as early as possible from Ostia. More than this, 
 Aulus Plautius, to whose powerful influence these ap- 
 pointments had been due, had secured for his young 
 friend Titus the excellent position of a tribune of the 
 soldiers to the army in Britain. It was a graceful re- 
 cognition of the services which Vespasian had rendered 
 to him twenty years before, when, as his legate of the 
 legion, he had fought thirty battles, captured more than 
 twenty towns, and reduced the Isle of Wight to sub- 
 jection. It was in Britain, as Tacitus says, that Vespasian 
 had first been "shown to the Fates.'' The whole party 
 were in the highest spirits. The old king rejoiced to 
 think that he should rest at last in the land of his 
 fathers. Claudia longed to escape from the suffocating 
 atmosphere of Roman luxury. Pudens knew that in 
 Rome his Christian convictions might speedily bring 
 him into peril, and that in far-off Britain he could 
 breathe a freer and purer air. Vespasian had much to 
 tell of the glories of the country. Lastly, Titus felt all 
 the ardour of a young soldier entering on high com- 
 mand in new and deeply interesting fields of adventure, 
 and in the company of the officer whom he most re- 
 spected and loved. 
 
 It was natural, therefore, that the conversation should 
 turn on Britain, and the tremendous events of which it 
 had recently been the scene. Aulus Plautius had heard 
 from Suetonius PauHnus himself the story how he had 
 carried his soldiers on flat-bottomed boats across the 
 
A SUPPER AT Vespasian's. 251 
 
 Straits of Mona, while the horses swam behind; how the 
 British women, with dishevelled hair, stood thick upon 
 the shore in dark robes, and, with torches in their hands, 
 ran to and fro among the soldiers like Furies; above 
 all, how the Druids stood there conspicuous, their long 
 white beards streaming to the winds, and, with hands 
 uplifted to heaven, cursed the Romans; and how at 
 last, "falling on the barbarous and lunatic rout, he had 
 beaten them down, scorched and rolling in their own 
 fires." But darker news had followed. Roman emis- 
 saries — "and those bad young Romans are the curse 
 of Rome," said the old commander, looking up from 
 the tablets of Suetonius — had behaved with infamous 
 cruelty to Boadicea, the heroic Queen of the Iceni, and 
 she was burning to revenge her wrongs. Paulinus de- 
 scribed her as "a woman big and tall, of visage grim 
 and stern, harsh of voice, her hair of bright colour 
 flowing down to her hips, who wore a plighted garment 
 of divers colours, and a great golden chain under a 
 large flowing mantle." 
 
 "He has sent me some fierce British verses. King," 
 said Aulus, turning to Caradoc, "which one of his 
 literary officers — Laureatus, of the island of Vectis — 
 has translated from British into Latin galliambics, the 
 metre which, he says, most resembles their tumultuous 
 lilt. The translator must be a true poet, for not even 
 the *Atys' of Catullus is more impassioned. I shall be 
 half afraid to read them to you, for they will stir your 
 blood like the sound of a trumpet, and you will fancy 
 yourself charging us again at the head of your Silures." 
 
 "Ah!" said the old warrior, sadly; "my fires have 
 long sunk into white embers. A king who has been led 
 
252 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 in fetters through the capital of his enemies can fight no 
 more for a free nation, however intolerably it may have 
 been wronged." 
 
 Claudia pressed her father^s hand, and tears shone 
 in her blue eyes. 
 
 "Nay, Claudia," said the King; "I did not wish to 
 sadden thee. Thou and I have other and brighter 
 hopes than once we had, and it will be like new life to 
 us to tread once more by the broad rivers of Britain, 
 and on her heathy hills. I am an exile and poor. My 
 jewels and trappings were carried before me at the 
 triumph of Claudius and Aulus; — though Cartismandua, 
 who betrayed me, still has her golden corslet and her 
 enamelled chariot. These things are, I know, as the 
 gods decide, and sometimes they suffer wickedness to 
 triumph. But let Aulus Plautius read us the verses." 
 
 Aulus read the galliambics into which the poet of 
 Vectis had translated the British war-song.* 
 
 "They that scorn the tribes, and call us Britain's barbarous popu- 
 laces, 
 
 Shall I heed them in their anguish? Shall I brook to be sup- 
 plicated? 
 
 Hear, Icenian, Catieuchlanian ; hear, Coritanian, Trinobant! 
 
 Must their ever-ravening eagle's beak and talon annihilate us? 
 
 Bark an answer, Britain's raven! bark and blacken innumerable! 
 
 Hear it, gods! The gods have heard it, O Icenian, O Coritanian! 
 
 Doubt not ye the gods have answered, Catieuchlanian, Trinobant! 
 
 Lo ! their precious Roman bantling, lo ! the colony Camulodune, 
 
 Shall we teach it a Roman lesson? shall we care to be pitiful? 
 
 Shout, Icenian, Catieuchlanian; shout, Coritanian, Trinobant! 
 
 Bloodily, bloodily fall the battle-axe, unexhausted, inexorable! 
 
 * The author has the kind permission of the illustrious Laureatus 
 of Vectis to make this use of his lines. 
 
A SUPPER AT Vespasian's. 253 
 
 Take the hoary Roman head, and shatter it, hold it abominable, 
 Cut the Roman boy in pieces in his lust and voluptuousness. 
 Fall the colony, city, and citadel, London, Verulam, Camulo- 
 dune ! " 
 
 "Ye gods! What cannot a poet do?" exclaimed 
 Seneca, with enthusiasm. "Those lines would have made 
 me die in battle, if I had been a Briton." 
 
 "They have caused 80,000 to die in battle," said 
 Aulus. "A later letter of Paulinus tells us that, after a 
 fearful massacre of the Romans at the three colonies of 
 Londinium, Verulamium, and Camulodunum, the Britons 
 assembled 230,000 warriors, with whom he fought a 
 tremendous battle near Varulamium. But how could 
 those woad-painted fighters withstand the skill, the dis- 
 cipline, the heavy armour of our legionaries? We lost 
 but 400, PauHnus says; and Boadicea, who, in a chariot 
 with her two daughters, had raged through the battle 
 like an angry lioness, has taken poison in despair." 
 
 The wild passionate verses had produced strangely 
 different effects on the little audience. The old king 
 started up from his couch, his breast panting, his eyes 
 full of fire, and then sank back again and hid his face 
 in his mantle. For the lines recalled to him his own 
 heroic struggles, and his great father, Cunobalin, and 
 his noble brothers. Claudia mused in silence, thinking 
 of the day when the Prince of Peace should come again 
 — a thought which Pomponia divined as she laid her 
 hand on the fair head of her friend. Vespasian looked 
 grave, and thought it rather treasonous of a Roman poet 
 to turn such verses into Latin. Pudens and Titus felt a 
 pang of regret that, in combat with a free people, the 
 name of Rome should be stained with the infamies of 
 
254 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 scamps and weaklings who had provoked that terrible 
 revolt. 
 
 Seneca little knew that Aulus, in reading extracts 
 from the letter of Suetonius had suppressed a passage 
 in which the general had indignantly stated as one cause 
 of the insurrection, not only the wrongs of Boadicea, but 
 the fact that Seneca himself had suddenly called in large 
 sums of money which he had lent to the British at 
 usurious interest, and that the demand for repayment 
 had reduced the poor Iceni to bankruptcy and despair. 
 
 "We have been talking about Britain all this time,'' 
 said Titus; "but here is our friend Julius straight from 
 Palestine, and he must have plenty of news to tell us 
 about those odd fanatics, the Jews." 
 
 "How goes the world in Jerusalem?" asked Vespasian. 
 "The question is very interesting to an old soldier like 
 me. We constantly hear of risings there. I am told 
 that affairs are getting desperate, and who knows but 
 what the Emperor may some day despatch me thither 
 at the head of a legion?" 
 
 "Nothing is more likely," said Julius. 
 
 "Unless you snore while the Emperor is singing, 
 father, as you did at Subiaco," said Titus, laughing, as 
 did all the guests. 
 
 "Impudent boy!" said Vespasian, joining in the 
 laugh. "Let Julius go on." 
 
 Julius told them that ever since the days when Pontius 
 Pilatus had half maddened the Jews by bringing the 
 Roman ensigns into Jerusalem, and Caligula had reduced 
 them to stupefaction by proposing to set up his own 
 image in their Temple, they had been on the verge of 
 sedition, 
 
A SUPPER AT VESPASIAN^S. 255 
 
 "Felix/' he added, "only got off their impeachment 
 by the influence of his brother, Pallas. Festus had hard 
 work with their bandits. At present they are raging in 
 a first-rate quarrel with young King Agrippa." 
 
 He proceeded to tell them how Agrippa, for the de- 
 lectation of his friends, had built a dining-room at the 
 top of his palace, so that his guests as they lay at the 
 banquet could enjoy the highly curious spectacle of all 
 that was going on in the Temple precincts. Indignant 
 at this encroachment, the Jews built up a blank wall of 
 such a height as not only to exclude the view from the 
 Asmonsean palace of Agrippa, but also to shut out the 
 surveillance of the Roman soldiers in the tower Antonia. 
 Agrippa was furious, and Festus ordered them to de- 
 molish the wall. But they said that they would die 
 rather than consent to do this. They appealed to Nero, 
 and Festus allowed them to send their High Priest, 
 Ishmael ben Phabi, with nine others, to plead their cause 
 with the Emperor. 
 
 "I suspect that this deputation was on board the 
 vessel whose shipwreck I mentioned," said Julius. 
 
 "Will this appeal be successful?" asked Vespasian. 
 
 "I believe it will," answered the centurion; "for Pop- 
 paea is very favourable to the Jews." 
 
 "Shall we really see a Jewish High Priest in Rome?" 
 asked Pomponia. 
 
 "Yes, lady," answered Julius; "but a very unworthy 
 one. He rules by terror. He robs and defrauds the 
 hiferior priests to such an extent that they die of star- 
 vation, and his blows have become proverbial. To the 
 disgust of the Jews he wears silk gloves when he is offer- 
 ing sacrifice, in order to keep his hands clean. And 
 
256 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 yet, so scrupulous are these oddest of people, that they 
 would not let his father perform the very greatest sacri- 
 fice in their whole year because of the most insignificant 
 accident." 
 
 "What was it?'' asked Pomponia. 
 
 "You will really hardly beheve it. On the eve of 
 the great festival which they call the Kippurim — a sort 
 of day of expiation — the father of this High Priest was 
 talking to Aretas, king of Arabia, and by an accident a 
 speck of the Emir's saliva fell on IshmaeFs beard. This 
 made him * unclean,' in their opinion; and a deputy, 
 whom they call the Sagan, had to beform his principal 
 function!" 
 
 The guests laughed. 
 
 "But tell us now," said Vespasian, "about these new 
 Christians. I suppose they, and their Chrestus, are more 
 turbulent even than the Jews?" 
 
 "So we Romans are led to believe," said Julius. "It 
 is exactly the reverse. The Christians are the most 
 peaceful of men, and they reverence the Roman power." 
 
 "Have you seen much of them?" asked Aulus. 
 
 "I witnessed a remarkable scene," said JuHus, "just be- 
 fore I left Jerusalem. Festus, as you are aware, died the 
 other day, worn out with cares and worries. Pending 
 the appointment of his successor, Agrippa appointed a 
 new High Priest — Annas, son of the priest before whom 
 Christus was tried. This Annas took upon himself un- 
 wonted authority. He summoned the head of the 
 Christians — James, a brother of their Christus — before 
 their Sanhedrin, and ordered him to be stoned to death. 
 But this James was almost worshipped by the people, 
 who called him *the Just' To give hkn a chance of 
 
A SUPPER AT VESPASlAN^S. :257 
 
 life, they asked him what he thought of Christus, and 
 he called him a God. On hearing this answer they 
 flung him down from the roof of the Temple. The fall 
 did not kill him; he was able to rise to his knees and 
 pray for them. It was a wonderful sight — that man of 
 noble presence, with the long locks streaming over his 
 shoulders, and his white robe stained with blood, kneel- 
 ing in the Temple court among his furious enemies! 
 One of the bystanders pleaded for him; but a fuller 
 came up and dashed out his brains with a club." 
 
 "The cup of that nation's iniquity is full," said Pom- 
 ponia, who had listened with a shudder to this tale of 
 martyrdom. 
 
 "It is," said Julius. "Immediately after I had wit- 
 nessed this sad scene, I was talking to a brilliant young 
 priest in Jerusalem named Josephus, of whose abilities 
 they think highly, and who evidently has a great future 
 before him. He made the same remark." 
 
 "But tell us something about that wonderful prisoner 
 whom you brought to Rome," said Titus. 
 
 Julius detailed to them his voyage, the storm when 
 they drifted so long up and down Adria in the starless 
 nights and sunless days; the strong influence of the 
 Jewish prisoner over the whole crew; the spirit which he 
 breathed into their despair; the practical wisdom of all 
 his counsels; the intense gratitude which he had kindled 
 in the Protos of Malta and in the barbarous inhab- 
 itants, by what they believed to be a miraculous healing. 
 "His teaching," he added, "is the most wonderful thing 
 I ever heard." 
 
 "What can a Jew really teach?" asked Seneca, with 
 some disdain. 
 
 Darkness and DavjHk II* 1 7 
 
258 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 "He preaches that their Prophet whom Pilatus cruci- 
 fied, was God Himself," said JuHus; "and no sane man 
 can beHeve that. But there is a sort of supernatural 
 spell about the goodness of this Paulus; and when I 
 hear him speak to Hhe brethren,' as he calls the Chris- 
 tians, I am always reminded of Homer's lines — 
 
 "In thought profound 
 His modest eyes he fixed upon the ground; 
 But when he speaks, what elocution flows, 
 Soft as the fleeces of descending snows ! 
 The copious accents fall with easy art, 
 Melting they fall, and sink into the heart." 
 
 "He may have the gift of speech," said Seneca; 
 "many Orientals have. But it is monstrous to suppose 
 that a fanatical Jew, with a senseless creed, should have 
 anything to teach us." 
 
 "Has he written anything?" asked Flavins Sabinus. 
 
 "Yes; he has written some wonderful letters — a 
 strange mixture (as friends in Palestine told me) of 
 fantastic doctrine and perfect ethics." 
 
 "Has he taught a single moral truth which has not 
 been taught for four centuries, since Aristotle and Plato 
 and Chrysippus?" asked Seneca. 
 
 "I have not read his letters," said Julius. "They 
 were difficult to get hold of, for the Christians are very 
 shy about their writings. But he lives the truths he 
 teaches." 
 
 "Ah!" said Seneca; "if he has the secret of 
 
 that ! As for us, too many of us are open to the 
 
 reproach that we are only philosophers by wearing 
 beards." 
 
 "Well," said Titus, "I have been to hear the lectures 
 
A SUPPER AT VESPASIAN S. 259 
 
 of Musonius Rufus, and I defy any mortal man to teach 
 better truths than he and Cornutus do; for I must not 
 speak of the illustrious Seneca in his presence. We 
 have no need to consult barbarian Jews with insane new 
 mythologies." 
 
 Pomponia and Claudia and Pudens were of neces- 
 sity silent in that mixed company; but they thought that 
 the good soil of the Christian faith was the one thing 
 lacking to Seneca, which might have made the roses of 
 his moral teaching produce something better than mere 
 perfume. 
 
 And if Titus had but laid aside the ignorant disdain 
 which marked him in common with the mass of philo- 
 sophic Pagans, his manly virtues might have shone forth 
 with yet more beautiful lustre, and he might have been 
 saved from the sins and errors wherewith he afterwards 
 defiled a noble name. 
 
 i;* 
 
^6o Darkness and dawn. 
 
 CHAPTER XLV. 
 POPPiEA VICTRIX. 
 
 "On that hard Pagan world disgust 
 And secret loathing fell; 
 Deep weariness and sated lust 
 Made human life a heU." 
 
 Matthew Arnold. 
 
 Not long after the arrival of Paul at Rome, Burrus 
 died. He was seized with inflammation of the throat, 
 and Nero, under the pretence of solicitude, betrayed an 
 ill-concealed satisfaction. He had not dared to get rid 
 of Burrus, whom the praetorians loved; but he fretted 
 under the restraint of the soldier's presence, and re- 
 sented an influence which endeavoured to exert itself 
 for good. Nero could not mistake the innuendos of 
 Tigellinus, that this was a good opportunity to set him- 
 self free. He promised to send Burrus a remedy re- 
 commended by his own physician. The remedy was a 
 poison. Burrus perceived the fact too late. When Nero 
 came to visit his sick bed, he turned away from him, 
 with undisguised aversion. 
 
 "How are you, Praefect?" asked the Emperor, taking 
 his hand as it lay on the coverlet. 
 
 Burrus hastily withdrew his hand. The question 
 recalled to him the scene of the death of Scipio, the 
 father-in-law of Pompey, who, seeing his ship in the 
 
POPPiEA VICTRIX. 261 
 
 possession of the enemy, stabbed himself, and on hear- 
 ing the question, "Where is the general?" answered, 
 "The general is well." Burrus remained silent, but 
 when the Emperor once more asked how he was, an- 
 swered, "I am well." They were the last words he 
 spoke, and every good man in Rome mourned the loss 
 of one of the few virtuous men of whom the state could 
 yet boast. 
 
 Nero might have bestowed the vacant command on 
 the best soldier of his time, the brave and honest Cor- 
 bulo, who had supported the fame of Roman courage 
 on so many a hard-fought field. 
 
 He thought of no such man. In spite of Corbulo's 
 utter loyalty Nero feared to trust him. He divided the 
 office between Fenius Rufus and Sophonius Tigellinus. 
 The former was popular from his generosity as corn 
 commissioner in a time of famine, and it was hoped 
 that the appointment would cover the deadly unpopu- 
 larity of his colleague. But it was with Tigellinus that 
 the real power rested. In his hands was the sword of 
 Nero, and the secret of his influence lay in the similarity 
 of his vices to those of the Emperor. The career of 
 the man from boyhood upwards had been a career of 
 infamy. He had been a lover of Agrippina, and of her 
 sister, and he had paraded his crime with cynical cool- 
 ness. With him Nero could always throw off the mask, 
 and display the depths of his own turpitude. He was 
 a tenth-rate Sejanus, only more deeply dyed in infamies. 
 If he pandered to Nero^s vices with sumptuous pro- 
 fligacy, this was part of a deep-laid design to drag the 
 imperial purple through the foulest mire. But the 
 scum of many nations which called itself the populace 
 
262 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 of Rome applauded each vileness, in proportion to its 
 monstrosity, and was glad to see its Emperor the slave 
 of passions as abject as its own. The degeneracy caused 
 by such scenes was incredible. The ultimate result was 
 that— 
 
 "Rome now might nowhere rid herself of Rome: 
 The heavens were all distempered with the breath 
 Of her old age. She, very nigh to death, 
 Paced through her perishing world in search of air 
 Unpoisoned by herself." 
 
 Though Britannicus had been done to death, there 
 were still two men who might stand seriously in the 
 way of the new favourite's schemes. One was Faustus 
 Cornelius Sulla, the last of that famous name. He was 
 poor and slothful, but he had for a time been the hus- 
 band of Antonia, the daughter of Claudius, and the 
 freedman Graptus had already persuaded Nero to banish 
 him to Marseilles, on a trumpery charge of complicity 
 in a plot. TigeUinus persuaded Nero that Sulla only 
 simulated indolence, and that he was tampering with the 
 legions in Gaul. Executioners were sent to Marseilles, 
 and Sulla was murdered as he lay at suppen Rubel- 
 lius Plautus was the next victim. He had imperial 
 blood in his veins, and many had fixed their eyes upon 
 him with hope, for he was a man of Stoic dignity and 
 domestic virtue. In a.d. 60, a comet had been inter- 
 preted to indicate a change in the Empire, and Nero 
 recommended Plautus, though he was only living the 
 quiet Hfe of an ordinary citizen, to retire to his estates 
 in Asia. He obeyed without a murmur, living in simple 
 duties with his wife Antistia, and devoting his thoughts 
 to philosophy. Soldiers were now despatched to murder 
 
POPP^EA VICTRIX. 263 
 
 him. A faithful freedman , at imminent risk of his Ufe, 
 made his way to Asia, arrived before Nero's centurion, 
 and warned Rubellius of his impending doom. He was 
 the bearer of a letter from his father-in-law, Antistius 
 Vetus, urging Rubellius not tamely to submit. Only 
 sixty soldiers were coming to carry out the iniquitous 
 mandate of Nero; let him repulse them, throw himself 
 under the protection of Corbulo, and all would be well. 
 But Rubellius was sickened by the thought of doubtful 
 hopes. He wished, if possible, to avert, by submission, 
 the future ruin of the wife and children whom he loved. 
 Further than this, his philosophic teacher, Coeranus, 
 persuaded him that a firm death was preferable to 
 troubled and uncertain life. He therefore took no step 
 in self-defence. The centurion found him at midday, 
 stripped of his clothes, taking athletic exercise in his 
 g)minasium, and butchered him on the spot, in the sight 
 of the worthless eunuch, Pelago, whom Nero, as though 
 he were some Asiatic despot, had sent to keep watch 
 over the officer and soldiers. According to the ghastly 
 fashion of the times his head was carried back to Nero. 
 "Why did you want to be a Nero?" said the brutal 
 jester. "Gods! what a nose the man had!" 
 
 Thus it was reserved for a Domitius Ahenobarbus to 
 put to death Rubellius Plautus, the last descendant of 
 Tiberius, as he afterwards put to death L. Junius Silanus, 
 the last descendant of Augustus. 
 
 But there was an influence over Nero which was 
 more powerful than that of all the other wretches of his 
 Court. It was the influence of Poppaea. His infatua- 
 tion for this beautiful, evil, astute woman had taken 
 
264 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 complete possession of him. She had led him on step 
 by step, now alluring, now repelling him, keeping him 
 ever in a maddening fever of passion, on which she 
 played as on an instrument. Already she had suf- 
 ficiently established her empire over him to permit of 
 his sending Otho to Lusitania. Nor had she hesitated 
 to leave her home and to become an inmate of Nero's 
 palace. But it was far from her intention to sink into 
 the humble position which had been enough for Acte, 
 who, in her ignorance, had felt for Nero a love ten 
 times more genuine than that which she had inspired. 
 Poppaea, whose infantine and cherubic loveliness could 
 easily have secured for her the hand of the noblest of 
 the patricians, intended to be Empress and nothing less. 
 She knew the evanescent character of such love as she 
 had kindled, and she bent the powers of her mind to 
 rule Nero by plajdng with his hopes. There was but 
 one obstacle in the path of her ambition. Octavia still 
 lived, and Octavia must be got rid of 
 
 It is true that the hapless Empress had long been 
 reduced to a cipher by the mutual repulsion of herself 
 and her husband. She could scarcely help shrinking 
 from his touch. To look in his face made her shudder. 
 While still in the charm of youth he had been odious 
 to her. Now that his face was unhealthy with excess, 
 his cruel frown and lowering countenance wore in her 
 eyes the look of a demon. His faithlessness did not 
 wound her, for the gleams of happiness which rarely 
 illumined the tragedy of her life came to her only when 
 he neglected her utterly. Nevertheless, she was Em- 
 press. She had the undeniable rights of her position, 
 
POPPiEA VICTRIX. 265 
 
 and in public it was necessary for Nero to treat with 
 decency the daughter of the Divine Claudius and the 
 grand-daughter of the beloved Germanicus. 
 
 Yet Poppaea had determined that, on one pretext or 
 other, she should be set aside, and never doubted that 
 sooner rather than later she would goad the timid Em- 
 peror to repudiate his wife, that he might be free for 
 another marriage. 
 
 One day when Poppaea knew that Nero intended to 
 visit her she prepared all her wiles. He came in after 
 the midday prandium, and he found her reclining on 
 her couch of ivory and silver in the cool, well-shaded, 
 voluptuously-furnished room. She had let loose over 
 her shoulders the splendid ripples of her golden tresses. 
 An odour as of blown roses clung to her person and 
 her robes. Every jewel that she wore, whether ruby, 
 or sapphire, or emerald, or diamond, was so arranged as 
 to set off her soft and glowing complexion, and there 
 was exquisite grace in her way of handling the fan of 
 peacock's feathers which swept in iridescent glory over 
 her dress from the golden handle which drooped from 
 her right hand. Nero, as he took his seat beside her, 
 felt like a clumsy and awkward boy. 
 
 "Why do you pretend to love me, Nero?" she asked. 
 
 "Love you!" he said. "It is not love, it is passion, 
 it is adoration!" 
 
 " Words are all very well, Nero," she said, in a voice 
 which seemed to tremble with tears; "but see how you 
 treat me! When I came to the Palace you were not 
 Emperor, but the slave of Agrippina. I helped you to 
 free yourself from that bondage. You have taken me 
 from Otho, my dear and noble husband " 
 
266 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Nero frowned angrily, but Poppaea took no notice. 
 
 "You have," she continued, "banished him to Lusi- 
 tania, and have brought me to this dull court, under 
 pretence that you would make me Empress. Yet I am 
 no nearer becoming your wife. Go to your pale, sad 
 Octavia: doubtless you think her common features fairer 
 than mine. Her dreary talk and drearier silence can- 
 not fail to be more fascinating.'' 
 
 "I loathe her," said Nero. 
 
 "And she loathes you, whereas I worship the ground 
 you tread upon. No, no!" she said, as he attempted to 
 seize her hand; "I will not live here to be your mere 
 plaything. I will rejoin Otho in Lusitania. He loves me, 
 and knows how to treat me properly." 
 
 Nero rose in a passion. Fearful lest she should 
 goad him too far, Poppaea called him to her side and 
 changed her tone. 
 
 "Your home i& empty, Nero,'' she said. "No child 
 will succeed you. I have a Httle son. Octavia must be 
 dismissed, if you would have an heir to be Emperor of 
 Rome." 
 
 "How can 1 dismiss her?" said Nero gloomily. 
 "Even my freedmen espouse her cause. Doryphorus is 
 for her, and Pallas." 
 
 "Doryphorus! Pallas!" she repeated, with a laugh of 
 ringing scorn. "An effeminate slave-minion; a miserly 
 dotard! Tush, Caesar! be a man. Sweep aside these 
 flies. Poison them both; no one will miss Doryphorus, 
 and Pallas has riches which will prove very convenient 
 to you." 
 
 "That shall be done," said Nero. "I am sick of 
 Doryphorus, and Pallas has lived long enough. But to 
 
POPPiEA VICTRIX. 267 
 
 repudiate Octavia is different. She is strong in the 
 name of her father, and stronger still in the favour of 
 the people and the praetorians." 
 
 "Is Caesar truly Caesar?" she asked, with contempt. 
 
 "Caesar can do what he likes in his own private 
 life," he answered; "but woe to Caesar if he degrade 
 the majesty of Empire by any public deed." 
 
 He said truly, and she knew it; but she knew also 
 that he had not yet fathomed, as she had done, the 
 abysses of Roman servility. Had they not applauded 
 him after the murder of Agrippina? Had they not passed 
 in silence the murder of Britannicus? Had they not 
 suffered the doom of Sulla and of Plautus to pass by 
 without creating so much as a ripple on the surface of 
 the general tranquillity? 
 
 By her urgency, by her wiles, by her taunts, by the 
 supreme ascendency which she had now acquired over 
 the Emperor, she prevailed on him at length to divorce 
 Octavia on the plea of her barrenness, and to make 
 Poppaea his wife. This, however, did not content her, 
 while her unhappy rival remained an inmate of the 
 Palace. Poppaea therefore endeavoured to blacken her 
 character. She put into play every poisonous art of 
 slander. In most cases nothing was easier than to trump 
 up a false charge against anyone whom the Emperor 
 desired to ruin. The white innocence of Octavia, her 
 stainless purity in that age of infamy, were no protection 
 to her. The faithful love of her few attendants was a 
 partial safeguard. Most of them were tampered with in 
 vain. At last, however, a worthless Alexandrian flute- 
 player, who had sometimes played before her to while 
 
268 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 away a heavy hour, was induced by a great bribe to 
 swear that he had been her lover. The charge was 
 too monstrous to deceive a single person, but on this 
 pretext Octavia's handmaids were seized and tortured. 
 The majority, however, stood firm even against the 
 torture- chamber, and one of them, named Pythias, cried 
 out to Tigellinus, as he heightened the torture and 
 pressed her with questions, that Octavia's worst offence 
 was white as snow beside the blackness of his best 
 virtues. It was impossible to pretend a conviction on 
 evidence which would have been invalid against the 
 humblest slave. 
 
 It was, nevertheless, decided that Octavia should be 
 removed from the Palatine, and she was sent from the 
 home of her father with the ill-omened gifts of the 
 estate of Plautus as her dower, and the house of Burrus 
 as her residence. 
 
 The unhappy girl — she was but nineteen — obeyed 
 without a murmur. She had wept floods of tears when 
 her husband, instigated by his cruel paramour, had 
 attempted to stain her name. She shed no tear when 
 she laid aside the purple of the Empress, and, clad in 
 the simplest garb of a Roman matron, was conveyed to 
 her new home. Thither, too, were sent her unhappy 
 maidens. Those who had most enjoyed her confidence 
 — and among these the poor Christian girl, Tryphaena 
 — were still disabled by the dislocations of the torture. 
 With tenderest solicitude Octavia herself visited their 
 cells, and ministered to their infirmities. She flung her 
 arms, weeping, round Tryphaena's neck, and thanked 
 her and Pythias for the heroic constancy with which 
 they had held out and, when stretched on the rack. 
 
POPPi£A VICTRIX. 269 
 
 had unflinchingly asseverated the stainless honour of 
 their mistress. 
 
 "How could you endure it, Tryphsena?" she asked. 
 "The blood of the Claudii and of deified emperors flows 
 in my veins, yet if my frame had been wrenched with 
 such pangs, I know not what my lips might not have 
 said." 
 
 "Lady," said the slave-girl, "I hardly felt it. The 
 spirit sustained the body. I thought of " 
 
 "Go on," said Octavia. 
 
 "I thought of Him of whom I have read to you in 
 the letter of Peter of Bethsaida; and how He had 
 endured the contradiction of sinners against Himself; 
 and I was not weary, and did not faint in my mind." 
 
 "How could the Crucified One help you?" 
 
 "He is not the Crucified One now," answered Try- 
 phaena. "He is the Risen, the Ascended: and He sits 
 on the right hand of the Father." 
 
 "Oh that I could believe all this!" said Octavia. 
 "I have scarcely had a happy hour in all my life. I 
 have been more miserable than any slave-girl. If He 
 whom you called the Risen One were all that you say, 
 why does He not help the innocent?" 
 
 "He does help them," she said. "Not by delivering 
 them out of all their troubles, but by enabling them to 
 bear, and by making them feel that their brief troubles, 
 which are but for a moment, are nothing to the eternal 
 weight of glory." 
 
 "Did He help you?" 
 
 "He did. As I lay outstretched on the rack I saw 
 Him for a moment. His hand upraised to bless." 
 
 "Does He do so for all Christians when they suffer?" 
 
270 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 "I think He does, for all His true children. Lady, 
 do you know that Paulus of Tarsus — the Apostle whose 
 letters to the Churches I have read to you — is in 
 Rome?" 
 
 "So Pomponia told me," said Octavia, "and she 
 asked if I would not see him. But how can I? Burrus 
 is dead, and Paulus sits chained to a praetorian soldier 
 in his own lodging." 
 
 "He has friends who would bring you his teachings," 
 said Tryphaena. "One of them I have seen. His name 
 is Lucas of Antioch, and he is a physician. To comfort 
 me after I had been tortured, he told me how Paulus, 
 before his conversion — when he was a blasphemer, and 
 persecutor, and injurious — had witnessed and even in- 
 cited the stoning of our first martyr, the young deacon 
 Stephen; and how when Stephen stood before the 
 Council, and they were all gnashing their teeth at him, 
 his face was as an angel's. And he says that Stephen 
 saw the heavens opened, and Jesus standing at the right 
 hand of God." 
 
 While Octavia stood talking with the young slave- 
 girl, she was told that Pomponia had come to see her, 
 and humbly kissing the poor sufferer on the brow, she 
 went to the tablinum to receive her guest 
 
 "Wherever sorrow is, there Pomponia comes," she 
 said, embracing her. 
 
 "That is not my individual virtue," said Pomponia. 
 "We Christians are all taught to be kind to one an- 
 other, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as 
 God in Christ forgives us." 
 
 "Your faith seems to make you all very happy." 
 
POPPiEA VICTRIX. 271 
 
 "It does indeed. Oh, if you could see our Paulus, 
 how would he comfort you!" 
 
 "What made him a Christian?" asked Octavia. 
 "Tryphaena has just been telling me that he was once 
 a persecutor." 
 
 "He saw a vision of Christ, as he went to extirpate 
 the Christians at Damascus. From that time he has 
 preached the faith which he once destroyed. While 
 Burrus lived the guards were bidden to leave him when 
 his friends came, but since Tigellinus has been Prsefect 
 his lot is harder. I know not how you can with safety 
 visit him. But his friend and companion is Lucas the 
 physician. Why should you not have him sent for to 
 tend your poor wounded slaves?" 
 
 The hint was taken. Octavia's household was now 
 a very simple and quiet one. The swarm of courtiers 
 had deserted her. None of the fine ladies of Rome 
 who desired the approval of Nero, came near her gate. 
 The last of the great house of the Claudii, the wife and 
 daughter and descendant of Emperors, was left to her 
 seclusion, and she rejoiced in it. She spun wool among 
 her maidens; she was considerate of the happiness of 
 her slaves. She manumitted Pythias and Tryphaena, 
 who had suffered for her. Fair peace began to reign 
 around her, and she nursed the hope that she might be 
 suffered to live out her life in quietude until a fairer 
 day should haply dawn. Lucas was summoned, and to 
 her, as to the Christians of her household, he proved 
 himself to be indeed also a physician of the soul. 
 
 He was an Asiatic in the prime of life, with a 
 countenance singularly radiant and refined. He spoke 
 
2^2 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 the purest Greek, and had been accustomed to the 
 society of Theophilus of Antioch and other persons of 
 rank, to whom he had been endeared by his medical 
 skill. Already, during the imprisonment of Paulus at 
 Caesarea, he had busied himself in the collection of those 
 facts which he was soon to enrol in "the most beautiful 
 book in all the world." It was common for Roman 
 families to listen to readings from accomplished Greeks, 
 and it was not difficult for Octavia, with the aid of 
 Pomponia and her Christian slaves, to arrange that Lucas 
 should read to them his yet unfinished records of the Life 
 of the Saviour. Those records, and the conversations 
 which she held with the Evangelist, and his answers to her 
 questions, at last convinced the heart of the Empress. 
 She saw that in the faith of the Gospel there was a 
 peace, a beauty, a blessedness, such as she had never 
 known, of which she had never dreamed. Perilous as 
 the decision was, she determined to be admitted by 
 baptism into the flock of Christ. One morning, at break 
 of day, in the presence of Lucas, Pomponia, and Try- 
 phaena, but otherwise in the deepest secrecy, she was 
 baptised by Linus. 
 
 And thenceforth there reigned in her heart a peace 
 which no further waves of trouble could disturb. She 
 began to understand why it was that, in spite of her 
 mourning garb, in spite of her many trials, Pomponia, 
 though her face was often sad, was far happier than 
 any of the Roman matrons. She began to experience 
 that there is a bliss in faith and hope and love which 
 the world can neither give nor take away. 
 
 And this boon of heaven only came just in 
 time to save her from sinking into utter despair 
 
POPPiEA VICTRIX. 273 
 
 under the horrible tempest of afflictions which fell 
 upon her. 
 
 For though Nero would have been content to dis- 
 miss her into obscurity and oblivion, Poppsea was not 
 content. She wearied the Emperor with her insistence 
 that he should take still further steps against his 
 repudiated wife. Nero ordered Octavia to leave Rome 
 and live in Campania. 
 
 As she was preparing to obey the insulting order, 
 which was rendered still more insulting by the addition 
 that she was to be kept under military surveillance, it 
 struck Pomponia that it might add to the comfort and 
 safety of the Empress if she could once more command 
 the services of Onesimus. Octavia had been pleased 
 with his assiduity when he was her purple-keeper, and 
 she knew that he had once rendered a high service to 
 her beloved Britannicus. In the solitudes of Campania 
 it would be well for her to have at hand a slave and 
 messenger whom she could implicitly trust. With the 
 precaution of a disguise he might remain unrecognised, 
 and serve as a medium of communication between the 
 ex-Empress and her friends in Rome. Onesimus was 
 more than willing to undertake the charge. At Rome 
 he was never safe. After all that had occurred, he did 
 not dare to enter the secret assemblies of the Christians, 
 though it was there alone that he could hope to see 
 Junia. After Octavia had started with her despised 
 and scanty retinue, he made his way to her villa with 
 letters from Pomponia, and was retained in her service 
 as a Greek reader, under a changed name. 
 
 But scarcely had his wife vanished from Rome 
 when Nero became alarmed by the temper of the 
 
 Darkness and Dawn, II, 1 8 
 
274 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 people. They openly murmured at his conduct. In 
 the circus and the amphitheatre they received him with 
 grim silence or cold applause. He knew that the mob 
 was his ultimate master, and, being a coward, he hastily 
 sent word that Octavia might return to Rome and re- 
 sume the style and title of his wife. 
 
 When this edict was pubHshed, the people went wild 
 with joy. All loved Octavia. No base, no cruel action, 
 no rapacity or folly, could be laid to her charge. If 
 deadly crimes were committed, they knew that Octavia 
 disapproved of them no less entirely than themselves. 
 Every honest citizen who enjoyed but one gleam of 
 happiness on his own domestic hearth pitied the pale 
 and neglected daughter of Claudius, and felt inclined 
 to protect her from further wrongs. Their enthusiasm 
 communicated itself to the crowd. When Octavia re- 
 entered Rome they surrounded her litter with tumults 
 of delight. Their affection cheered her heart, and, 
 stirred by her words of gratitude, they broke inter 
 dangerous excitement. Rushing through the city, they 
 flung down and trampled and spat upon the statues of 
 Poppsea. Those of Octavia they uplifted on their 
 shoulders, showered blossoms over them, and, carrying 
 them to the forum and the temples, crowned them with 
 garlands. They shouted their approval of Nero's tardy 
 repentance, and, donning their holiday attire, organised 
 an immense procession to the Capitol, to thank Jupiter 
 for the restoration of their Empress. Returning from 
 this procession they crowded to the Palatine, and Nero 
 in alarm appealed to the praetorians. Tigellinus let 
 loose the soldiers upon the people. He had armed 
 them with batons, and they struck out without dis- 
 
POPPi^A VICTRIX. 275 
 
 crimination among the swaying mob. When this was 
 insufficient to disperse the crowd, they drew their swords, 
 and charged them in close array. It was night before 
 they had swept the streets clear of obstruction, and 
 replaced the statues of Poppaea upon their pedestals. 
 
 Poppsea was nearly wild with fear and hatred. After 
 Nero had supped she entered his room, and, flinging 
 herself at his feet with dishevelled hair, burst into 
 passionate tears. She wailed that, though to wed with 
 him was dearer to her than life, she had now come, 
 not to plead for her marriage, but for mere safety. 
 Who did he suppose was the real author of that dis- 
 graceful riot? Octavia, of course. He thought her 
 simple. Her simplicity was but the veneer of deeply- 
 seated cunning. Was it the people who had broken 
 into sedition? Not at all. It was only the clientage 
 and varletry of Octavia who had dared to assume the 
 people's name. If they had but found a leader, who 
 could say whether Nero might not by this time have 
 been a fugitive or a mangled corpse? 
 
 "The tumult has been aimed at you," she cried, 
 "not at me. What harm have I done to anyone, that 
 they should hate me? Do they hate me because I shall 
 give Caesar a genuine heir? Do they prefer the offspring 
 of Octavia and some Egyptian fluteplayer? Be a man, 
 Nero ! It only needs the smallest display of resolution 
 to suppress these disorders. But if you show yourself 
 timid and incapable, the rebellion may become formidable. 
 If the people despair of making you Octavia's husband, 
 they may make Octavia another's wife." 
 
 The daring and indomitable purpose of the woman 
 
 18* 
 
276 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 succeeded. She goaded his timidity; she fired his rage. 
 He sent for TigeUinus, determined at last to stop short 
 at nothing. 
 
 With Tigellinus he needed no concealment. 
 
 "Praefect," he said, "Octavia must at all costs be 
 got rid of." 
 
 "Locusta is here/' said Tigellinus, with alacrity. 
 
 "No, no," said Nero, stamping on the ground; "I 
 will not have the scene of Britannicus acted over again. 
 I am haunted by too many ghosts already." 
 
 "Devise something," he said, impatiently, while 
 Tigellinus mused. "Poppaea, suggest something to this 
 fool." 
 
 "A charge must be made against her," said Poppaea, 
 eager if possible to shame as well as to kill. 
 
 "The last charge broke down." 
 
 "Nonsense!" answered Poppaea. "Say that you have 
 positive evidence that she has made away with her own 
 unborn child." 
 
 "No one will believe it. And, besides, I have just 
 divorced her on the charge of barrenness." 
 
 "Say it all the same, Nero. Some person of im- 
 portance must be induced to confess." 
 
 "Who would be so infamous?" said Nero. "After 
 all, Poppaea, you know she is innocent — ten times more 
 innocent than you." 
 
 " Call me some infamous name at once," said Poppaea, 
 bursting into passion. "And is it for you to taunt me? 
 Was it not for love of you that I became faithless to 
 my Otho? No," she cried, as Nero approached her; 
 "keep away from me! I will return to the wronged 
 
POPP^A VICTRIX. 277 
 
 Otho. He loved me. He will take me back." And 
 she rushed towards the door. 
 
 "Poppaea," pleaded Nero, hasting to intercept her 
 flight, "forgive me. You see how miserable I am. I 
 have no one to love me but you." 
 
 "And who could help loving you?" she continued, 
 weeping crocodile tears in floods. "Who could resist 
 those golden locks, that lovely countenance, that divine 
 voice?" 
 
 Her cajolery won the day. Nero played with her 
 hand, and turned an inquiring look on the Praetorian 
 Prsefect. 
 
 "I have it," said Tigellinus. "Send for Anicetus." 
 
 Nero winced at the name. Anicetus was still ad- 
 miral of the fleet at Misenum; but, since his share in 
 the murder of Agrippina, Nero could never see him 
 without recalling the image of his mother's bloodstained 
 corpse. He had practically banished Anicetus from 
 Court, and when the sunshine of Court favour was with- 
 drawn from him, the wretch had sunk into contempt. 
 But now his unscrupulosity was once more needed for 
 a crime which was, if possible, still blacker. He had 
 murdered Nero's mother by violence; he was to murder 
 Nero's wife by calumny. He was offered a vast reward, 
 and a purely nominal punishment, if he would confess 
 and make it public that Octavia had treasonably tam- 
 pered with him, to seduce the allegiance of the imperial 
 sailors at Misenum, and that, in furtherance of her ob- 
 ject, she had not stopped short of offering him her 
 hand. 
 
278 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 The infamous tale was published; and since Nero 
 proclaimed his conviction of its truth, the world was 
 compelled to profess belief in it also, although every 
 man and woman in Rome knew it to be a lie. An 
 edict was published proclaiming Octavia's guilt, and 
 she was banished to the dreary islet of Pandataria. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 Note 31. Page 15. 
 
 This ancient hymn is preserved for us at the end of the Pceda- 
 gogus of St. Clement of Alexandria. I avail myself of the transla- 
 tion by my friend the late Dean of Wells [Lazarus, and other 
 Poems), 
 
 Note 32. Page 34. 
 
 An imperial banquet. — See Sen. Ep. xc. 15, cxv. 9. The 
 menu of a banquet of luxurious Salian priests is preserved in 
 Macrobius, Saturn, m. 13. 
 
 Note 33. Page 116. 
 
 The classical reader will recognise that I have not invented these 
 stories of rural Pagan Hfe. They are found in Apuleius. 
 
 Note 34. Page 173. 
 
 The Lemuralia. — See this expiatory rite described in Ovid, 
 Fasti, V. 421-444; and compare Latour St.-Ybars, Neron, pp. 213, 
 214. The custom is also alluded to in Varro, Vit, Pop. Rom. 
 Fr. 241; Servius ad ^n. i. 276. 
 
 Note 35. Page 180. 
 
 Gladiators' school. — "Alebat devotum corpus pravior omni 
 fauce sagina." — Quinct. "Qui dabit immundse venalia fata saginae." 
 — Propert. iv. 8. 25. AeX oe evxaycxeXv, avayxocpayeXv , aTikyieod^ai 
 jieiA^dxcov, fj,f] tpv^Qov jtivsiv. — Epict. Dissert, in. 15, § 3, 
 
28o DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Note 36. Page 183. 
 
 The gladiator's oath was comprehensively horrible. "In verba 
 Eumolpi sacramentum juravimus uri^ vinciri^ verberari, ferroque 
 necari, et quicquid aliud Eumolpus jussisset; tamquam legitimi 
 gladiatores domino corpora animosque religiosissinie addicimus." 
 — Petronius. 
 
 Note 37. Page 189. 
 
 Gladiatorial games. — Not one incident is here described which 
 does not find its authority in Martial De Spectaculis^ and other 
 epigrams, or in one or other of the many contemporary or later 
 writers of the Empire. See Lipsius, De Gladiatoribus in his 
 Saturnalia. 
 
 Note 38. Page 196. 
 
 Dead gladiators. — "Quinetiam percussos jacentesque repeti 
 jubent, et cadavera ictibus dissipari, ne quis illos simulata morte 
 deludat" (Lactantius). 
 
 Note 39. Page 220. 
 
 The Rex Nemorensis. — See Ovid, Fasti^ ill. 263-277; Propert. 
 III. 24. 9; Stat. Sylv. III. I. 32; and Mr. Eraser's Golden Bough. 
 
 The appearance and cautious terror of the priest are described 
 by Strabo (v. 3. 12): — ^KprjQTjg ovv eoxiv, del TieoLOxoTtwv , tag 
 sjtid'sosig sroijuog di^vvsod^ai. 
 
 END OF VOL. II. 
 
 PRINTING OFFICE OF THE PUBLISHER. 
 
COLLECTION 
 
 OF 
 
 BEITISH AUTHOES 
 
 TAUCHNITZ EDITION. 
 VOL. 2779. 
 
 DARKNESS AND DAWN. BY F. W. FARRAR. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. in. 
 
DARKNESS AND DAWN 
 
 OR 
 
 SCENES IN THE DAYS OF NERO 
 AN HISTORIC TALE 
 
 F. W. FARRAR, 
 
 AUTHOR OF THE ''LIFE OF CHRIST." 
 
 COPYRIGHT EDITION, 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES.-VOL. III. 
 
 LEIPZIG 
 
 BERN HARD TAUCHNITZ 
 
 1891. 
 
CONTENTS 
 OF VOLUME III. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVI. 
 
 — XLVII. 
 
 — XLVIII. 
 
 BOOK II. 
 "lachesis rotat!" 
 
 (continued.) 
 
 The Death of Octavia 
 A fettered Ambassador 
 Enslaved and free 
 XLIX. The Depths of Satan 
 L. A City in Flames . . 
 LI. An infernal Suggestion 
 LII. Aliturus among the Christians 
 LIII. "He who saw the Apocalypse' 
 LIV. In the burning Fiery Furnace 
 
 LV. Two Martyrdoms .... 
 LVI. Living Torches .... 
 LVII. A Conspiracy and its Collapse 
 LVIII. The Fall of the House of Seneca 
 
 Page 
 
 7 
 
 25 
 
 33 
 
 42 
 52 
 62 
 
 71 
 
 81 
 
 91 
 III 
 129 
 146 
 157 
 
6 CONTENTS OF VOLUIVIE 111. 
 
 Page 
 
 CHAPTER LIX. The Agony of an Empress .... 167 
 
 — LX. The Doom of Virtue 179 
 
 — LXI. Before the Lion 193 
 
 BOOK III. 
 "atropos occat." 
 
 CHAPTER LXII. Nero in Greece ........ 207 
 
 — LXin. Muttering Thunder 214 
 
 — LXIV. At the Three Fountains 226 
 
 — LXV. In the Clutch of Nemesis .... 238 
 
 — LXVI. L'Envoi 249 
 
 NOTES 276 
 
BOOK 11. 
 
 "LACHESIS ROTAT!" 
 (continued.) 
 
CHAPTER XLVI. 
 THE DEATH OF OCTAVIA. 
 
 "O gioia! O inefFabile allegrezza! 
 O vita intera d' amore e di pace ! 
 O senza brama sicura ricchezza ! '* 
 
 Dante, Paradiso^ xxvn. 7-9. 
 
 In one sense all the people of Rome were the 
 friends of Octavia; in another she was nearly friend- 
 less. For the multitudes of every rank were degraded 
 by selfishness and cowed by terror. So long as they 
 were personally untouched by the orgies and crimes of 
 the Emperor, and so long as he was supported by the 
 swords of the praetorians, they neither wished nor dared 
 to interfere. Rome lay helpless under the bonds of the 
 tyranny which her own vices had riveted. Nero might 
 indeed be murdered, but in what respect would the 
 Empire be better off? There was no Caesar left. If 
 Nero died, there seemed to be no prospect for Rome 
 except the horrors of civil war with all its attendant 
 pillage, massacre, and crime. It seemed better to 
 endure Nero's infamies than to see the Empire torn to 
 pieces. After all, were not many of the senators, of 
 the generals, of the aristocracy, capable of becoming as 
 licentious and as cruel as he was, and would not their 
 elevation make their vices loom as monstrous as his? 
 
10 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 They rejoiced, therefore, that the popular tumult 
 had been so speedily repressed, and they steeped their 
 consciences in immoral acquiescence. The bad plunged 
 themselves yet more shamelessly into vice, and manoeuvred 
 to make their vices known as a passport to imperial favour. 
 As for the better Romans, they tried to bury themselves 
 in such obscurity as would shelter them from notice; or 
 they sought solace in the refined egotism of the Epi- 
 cureans; or inured themselves to the chances of death 
 and ruin by assuming the haughty self-dependence of 
 the later Stoics. Psetus Thrasea and his friends took 
 refuge in the belief that it would be an absurdity to 
 attempt the impossible. The heart of Seneca was torn 
 with misgivings; but was not he himself in peril? What 
 could he do? He had never spoken out against any 
 one of Nero's crimes, or lifted a finger to prevent them. 
 Lucan longed to overwhelm the Emperor with invective; 
 but he could only brood in silence over his wrongs, and 
 gloomily await the day of vengeance. 
 
 From none of these did O eta via receive any help. 
 If they compassionated her misery, no murmur of pity 
 reached her ears. But from those who were now her 
 fellow- Christians she received both help and consolation. 
 Pomponia, whose gentle influence moved fearlessly with 
 halcyon wings over the turbid abyss of crime, exerted 
 herself to add comfort to the dreary retreat of the Em- 
 press in the volcanic isle. With her strong good sense 
 she made arrangements for Octavia's comfort. She ob- 
 tained the leave of her husband, Aulus Plautius, to 
 despatch some of her slaves to Pandataria the very day 
 that the decree of Octavia's banishment was published, 
 with directions to secure for her as fitting a home as 
 
THE DEATH OF OCTAVIA. 1 1 
 
 was possible, and to take with them such things as 
 might conduce to her well-being. In this she was 
 secretly aided by Acte. The beautiful and generous 
 girl sought an interview with Octavia before she left 
 Campania, fell at her knees, and begged the daughter 
 of Claudius to pardon the wrong which in earlier days 
 her beauty had inflicted. "I was but a slave once," 
 she said; "nor did I know the truths which have since 
 been taught me. I have forsaken the past. Empress, 
 you will forgive me, and accept such little services as I 
 can render?" 
 
 "Rise, Acte!" said Octavia, with tender dignity. "I 
 know that thy heart was innocent, and that no wiles 
 of thine were spread to catch Nero's love. I forgive 
 thee. Who am I, in my misery, that I should condemn 
 thee?" 
 
 She raised the weeping girl from the ground, and 
 gently kissed her. "Do not weep any more," she said. 
 "Acte, it has been told me that thou art a Christian. 
 Nay, start not, and see how much I trust thee. I am 
 a Christian, too." 
 
 Acte was almost speechless with surprise; but Octavia 
 continued: "Yes; thou seest that I put my life in thy 
 hands; but are we not sisters now? I used to talk with 
 my brother Britannicus about this new faith, and often 
 with Pomponia, and now I have seen Lucas of Antioch, 
 and from him I have heard of Jesus. Lucas has lent 
 me the letters of Paulus of Tarsus. He has written 
 that *not many rich, not many noble, not many mighty 
 are called;' but though I am noble, I am poor, and 
 weak, and unhappy except for that consolation which 
 He who died for us sends to the sorrowful." 
 
12 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 "God be praised," said Acte, "that thou hast found 
 that peace." 
 
 "Yes," answered the Empress; "peace I can truly 
 say in the midst of shame, and slander, and tumult. 
 My life will be short; but for us, Acte, the islands of 
 the blest, of which the poets sang, are neither dreams 
 nor fables. Farewell." 
 
 "Farewell, Empress," said Acte. "Day and night 
 will our brethren lift up holy hands for thee, and many 
 a purer prayer than mine will rise for thee like in- 
 cense." 
 
 As Acte left the villa she passed Onesimus. She 
 had long been ignorant of his fate, and shame prevented ' 
 him from speaking to her. He recognised her at a 
 glance, but she did not penetrate the disguise which 
 changed him into a fair-haired slave, and he shrank 
 back from her presence. He regretted when it was too 
 late that he had not revealed himself to her, for even 
 now she might possibly have retarded the tragedies 
 which were to ensue. Alas! when once men have 
 shown themselves unfaithful, how often do their best 
 impulses come too late! 
 
 But he devoted himself heart and soul to the ser- 
 vice of the young Empress. She had been permitted 
 to take with her into exile one or two only of her hun- 
 dreds of slaves. She had chosen Tryphaena to be one 
 of these, though the poor girl, after her cruel torments 
 was still barely able to stand. She had also chosen 
 Onesimus, by the advice of Pomponia, though she did 
 not yet know that he had been brought under Christian 
 influence. 
 
 Nor was he the only disguised Christian in that 
 
THE DEATH OF OCTAVIA. I3 
 
 small and saddened household. The position of Hernias 
 since his rescue from the house of Pedanius had been 
 very perilous. If he were recognised, the fact of his 
 having escaped might be fatal to others besides him- 
 self The Christians were mostly too poor to introduce 
 a stranger into their households. They would have 
 been willing to share with each other the last crust; 
 but the crowded state of the insulce,^ in which they 
 mostly lived, rendered it difficult and dangerous to pro- 
 cure extra accommodation. The only thing possible, 
 therefore, had been to conceal him in the house of 
 Pudens; but as it was now necessary to find a new 
 home for him he had been enrolled among the outdoor 
 slaves in the villa of the Empress, and was selected to 
 accompany her to the lonely island, until his history 
 and face should have been forgotten. 
 
 Anicetus, who had been made the vile instrument 
 of Octavia's destruction, received the guerdon of his 
 infamy, and was dismissed into nominal exile in Sar- 
 dinia. To such a man — a slave by birth and a villain 
 by nature — the exile was nothing. He had never 
 regarded Hfe as anything but a feeding- trough, and as 
 long as he had wealth to spend on his own indulgences 
 Sardinia served him as well as Rome. It happened 
 that the ship which was to carry him to Caralis, the 
 Sardinian capital, sailed from Ostia on the day that 
 Octavia was to be conveyed to Pandataria. Thousands 
 of spectators, and among them many Christians, had 
 flocked to Ostia to see her embark. If they dared not 
 express their feelings, they longed at least silently to 
 show their sympathy. They recognised Anicetus. He 
 ••* The insulcB were large, isolated lodging-houses. 
 
14 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 embarked amid a tempest of groans and hootings so 
 full of execration that he trembled lest he should be 
 torn to pieces by the mob, and abjectly entreated the 
 protection of his guards. Thenceforth he vanishes from 
 history. He died in Sardinia, rich and impenitent; but 
 even there he did not escape the hatred which he felt 
 more than the load of infamy with which he had crushed 
 down his worthless soul. 
 
 Later in the afternoon the multitudes caught sight 
 of the litter which was bearing Octavia to the shore. 
 A trireme was waiting to take her away for ever from 
 the home of the rulers of the world. Praetorian guards 
 marched on either side of her with drawn swords. 
 Behind her, in a humble carruca, came her few house- 
 hold slaves, and the scanty possessions which alone she 
 could take with her. A deep murmur of pity arose, 
 and as she approached the quay it swelled into a cheer, 
 in which the spectators gave vent to the indignation 
 which they felt against her oppressors. At one time it 
 seemed as if they might break out into violence; but 
 the praetorians menaced them with their swords, and 
 the angry murmurs died away. 
 
 The Christians — who recognised Tryphaena and 
 others of their brethren among Octavia's slaves, and 
 who, though they did not know the secret of Octavia's 
 conversion, knew her innocence — showed their sympathy 
 in more quiet ways. They sighed forth prayers and 
 blessings, and strewed with flowers her pathway to the 
 vessel. Onesimus, as he passed, caught sight of Nereus 
 and Junia. No one knew him, but he felt almost cer- 
 tain that he had seen a flash of recognition in Junia's 
 eyes. Beyond doubt she stood gazing intently on him 
 
THE DEATH OF OCTAVIA. I 5 
 
 as he leaned over the vessel's side. Ah, well! the day- 
 might come, he thought, when, purified from shame by- 
 suffering, he might obliterate the memories of his dis- 
 honoured past, and be worthy once more to stand by 
 her side. 
 
 And one incident occurred which, not for him only, 
 but for all that little company, was fraught with blessed 
 consequences. Linus stood with Luke of Antioch in 
 the undistinguished throng, but neither of them had 
 been forgetful of the sorrowful sighing of those who 
 were going into captivity. Linus had told to Paul the 
 prisoner, in deep secrecy, the story of Octavia's baptism, 
 and the heart of the Apostle was sad at the thought of 
 her sufferings. He had written her a brief letter of 
 comfort, which Linus slid into the hand of Hermas amid 
 the bustle of the embarkation. Nor was this all. Luke 
 also had not been forgetful of the anguish of the last of 
 the Claudian house.^ Filled with that deep sense of 
 brotherhood which linked all ranks together in the 
 Christian community, he had written out for the exiles 
 some inestimably precious fragments of the materials 
 which he had been collecting for his Gospel. He found 
 means unobserved to give them to Tryphaena, when, 
 ceasing for a moment to lean on the arms of the two 
 slaves who were supporting her feeble footsteps, she 
 turned to bid farewell to her mother, Nympha. 
 
 The emotion of the spectators made it more easy 
 for the watchful Christians to communicate with each 
 other. For there were few dry eyes among them. Some 
 of them were old enough to have seen Julia, the lovely 
 daughter of Augustus, sail to the same sad bourne. 
 They had seen her daughter, the younger Julia', ban- 
 
l6 t)ARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 ished by Claudius to the yet more distant island of 
 Tremerus. They had wept tears almost as bitter when 
 they saw the elder Agrippina driven to the same prison 
 by the insatiable malice of Tiberius. But the case of 
 Octavia was far sadder than that of her noble kins- 
 women. The elder Julia was steeped in shame, and 
 had well-nigh broken the heart of her father. The 
 younger Julia had also disgraced her high lineage. The 
 wife of Germanicus had been a Roman matron of the 
 purest stamp, yet her passionate haughtiness had dimin- 
 ished the sympathy which would otherwise have been 
 felt with her in her calamities. And, further, these 
 others had enjoyed their days of superb sunlight and 
 prosperity. Ruin had not overtaken them till the hap- 
 piness and beauty of their youth were past. Not so the 
 pale and hapless girl who was now embarking. Octavia 
 had known no joy. Her childhood had been darkened 
 by the three murders of those whom she best loved. 
 From the first her husband had hated her. His youth- 
 ful love had been given, not to her, but to her freed- 
 woman; and now, unprotected by her own white in- 
 nocence, she had been smitten to the earth by a hor- 
 ribly false condemnation. She was still scarcely twenty 
 years old ! * And she was being conducted amid cen- 
 turions and soldiers to a barren rock, which was haunted 
 by memories of death and anguish. She was as one 
 dead, but without the peace of death: — so thought her 
 Pagan sympathisers, and were confirmed in their mis- 
 giving that either there are no gods or they care not for 
 the affairs of men. 
 
 And Octavia did not deceive herself She well 
 * Note 40. — Age of Octavia. 
 
THE DEATH OF OCTAVIA. I 7 
 
 knew that those islets of the Tyrrhene Sea were wet 
 with the blood of noble exiles; and that Caligula, on 
 being told by one who had been recalled from banish- 
 ment that the exiles spent their time in praying for the 
 death of the reigning Emperor, had sent soldiers round 
 the islands to put all the prisoners to death. She knew 
 her peril, but she clung to life with the. tenacity of 
 youth. Nero had no child. She thought that his 
 excesses would precipitate his end, and that some vir- 
 tuous man might be chosen by the senate to succeed. 
 After the death of Narcissus she had been told the 
 anecdote of the physiognomist who had prophesied that 
 Titus would one day be Emperor, and she thought that 
 under her brother's devoted friend there might be the 
 dawn of brighter days. She therefore wrote a letter to 
 Nero, before the trireme started, in which she said she 
 would but live as his widow and his sister, with no 
 thought of returning to the Palace. She even ventured 
 to remind him that she had always experienced his 
 mother's protection, and that, as long as Agrippina 
 lived, her marriage dignity had not been assailed. 
 
 All was now ready. The sailors drew up the anchor, 
 and the assembled crowd watched the white sails of 
 the trireme till they became rosy in the light of sunset, 
 and the vessel dipped beneath the horizon. 
 
 Octavia awaited, in deep anxiety, the answer to her 
 letter. There were points in it which might perhaps 
 have touched the heart of Nero if Poppaea and Tigel- 
 linus had not been at his elbow as the evil genii of his 
 degradation. But, when the tablets of Octavia came, 
 Nero was sitting with the enchantress. Taking them 
 
 Darkness and Dawn. III. 2 
 
1 8 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 out of his hands, she turned the letter into such ridicule, 
 and laughed over it so sweetly and so immoderately, and 
 mixed her silvery laughter with so many acts of fascina- 
 tion, that the fear of her ridicule — to which, like all 
 vain persons, Nero was inordinately sensitive — quenched 
 in his heart all thoughts of mercy. She also played 
 upon his fears. "As long as Octavia lives," she said, 
 "neither you nor I will be safe. You saw how the 
 people rose in her behalf. You do not know what as- 
 sassins she may have in her pay. All that the spirit of 
 insurrection needs is a leader, and, while Octavia lives, 
 conspirators have only to provide her with a husband, 
 and she will bring him the Empire as her dower, as 
 she did to you. The tomb is the only safe prison. 
 The dead excite no tumult and tell no tales." 
 
 So the messenger was sent back without an answer, 
 and Octavia knew that she had only to prepare for her 
 fate. No day dawned that might not be her last; no 
 sail shone on the horizon which might not be bringing 
 her executioners from Rome — nay, the orders might 
 even now be in possession of her military guard, and 
 the tramp of the changing sentries each morning and 
 evening might be to her the echoing footfall of death. 
 No situation in the world is more harrowing or more 
 terrific than this. We can confront death when we 
 know that we stand face to face with him; but to have 
 his sword dangling over our necks by a thread of 
 gossamer, and not to know at what moment it will fall; 
 to know that somewhere near us he lies in wait, but 
 not to know where or how he will leap out upon us — 
 this adds a nameless dread to the king of terrors, and 
 it has been sufficient to break down the iron nerves 
 
THE DEATH OF OCTAVIA. IQ 
 
 even of trained soldiers who haven ridden fearlessly to 
 many a bloody fight. 
 
 There was not a person on the little island who 
 was not aware that Octavia was thus standing on the 
 edge of the awful precipice. Great, therefore, was the 
 astonishment of all, and especially of the Roman soldiers, 
 at the strange placidity, the sweet fortitude which she 
 displayed. None else could laugh during those sad 
 days; but she could laugh — laugh more gaily than she 
 had ever done in the gorgeous chambers of the Palatine. 
 As escape was impossible, she was left free, and she 
 loved to sit on the rocks in the evening sunlight and 
 enjoy the cooler breeze. Unfamiliar with the sea-shore, 
 it was a pleasure to her to watch the black-headed sea- 
 mews rising and falling on the gentle swell of the tide- 
 less waters, or waving over it their immaculate white 
 wings, or suddenly dashing down on some fish, and 
 breaking the surface into concentric rings of rippled 
 gold. She found pleasure in the shells, and sea-weeds, 
 and purple medusae, and laughed again and again as 
 she noticed for the first time the curious motion of the 
 hippocampi, as they gambolled in the shallow waves. It 
 was strange, too, to the few islanders to see her gather- 
 ing garlands of their wild flowers, and having them 
 placed in her bare, half- furnished rooms. She had 
 never cared for splendour. It wearied a soul which had 
 never seen it dissociated from guilt. The simplicity of 
 her new life had a charm for her, and if Nero would 
 but relent she could gladly live here, reading and doing 
 her Uttle acts of kindness and musing on the high 
 thoughts which had recently become so radiant to her 
 
20 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 — sustained by the hope that better days would come 
 on earth, or that, if not, there was a heaven beyond. 
 
 There were three of her household who knew the 
 secret of the calm and resignation which struck her 
 praetorian custodians with astonishment. One of the 
 officers, a rough youth named Vulfenius, had been 
 heard saying to his comrade that the Empress must 
 have been getting private lessons from the Stoics or 
 Cynics; — "only,'' he said, "a hundred of those philo- 
 sophers are not worth a cracked farthing — arrant hum- 
 bugs nearly all of them. But this girl — she smiles 
 death in the face! — Or is it that she does not know?" 
 
 Yes, she knew; but the source of her cheerful 
 courage lay in those scrolls which had been handed to 
 her attendants by Linus and by Luke. Ever since the 
 lustral dews of baptism had touched her brow, she had 
 felt a change in her whole being, but her deep peace 
 was confirmed by what was now read to her daily by 
 Onesimus, or Hermas, or Tryphaena. 
 
 It was with strange feelings that when she broke 
 the silken thread of the small waxen tablets of Linus, 
 she had read the salutation in which Paulus, the pri- 
 soner, wished grace, mercy, and peace to Octavia, 
 Empress, and now beloved in Christ. But as she 
 eagerly read the few lines which he had engraved with 
 his trembling stylus — for he had written this message 
 in large letters with his own hand — she felt his words 
 thrill into her soul with strange power. He rejoiced 
 and thanked God that He had called her. out of dark- 
 ness into His marvellous light, and told her that this 
 was a boon more precious than all the kingdoms of the 
 
THE DEATH OF OCTAVIA. 21 
 
 world. He comforted her under all the affliction with 
 which she was afflicted, with the comfort wherewith he 
 too was comforted of God. He told her that she was 
 a partaker of the sufferings of Christ, and that the 
 sufferings of this present time were not worthy to be 
 compared with that glory which shall be revealed 
 in us. He exhorted her to look, not at the things 
 which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; 
 for the things which are seen are temporal, but the 
 things which are not seen are eternal. 
 
 Such words fall too often on our cold and careless 
 ears with the triteness of long familiarity; but to Octavia, 
 as to all who first learnt to feel their meaning in that 
 despairing age, they seemed to be written in sunbeams. 
 The new wine of the Kingdom of Heaven filled them 
 as with divine intoxication; that which to the Pagans 
 appeared like a half-insane enthusiam or a blank ob- 
 stinacy * was, in truth, but the exhilaration of conviction, 
 in comparison with whose preciousness the whole world 
 and all the glory of it seemed but as the light dust of 
 the balances. Octavia had not been unaccustomed to 
 hear the paradoxes of the Stoics; and she regarded 
 them as spurious ornaments of Hfe's misery — spangles 
 sewed upon its funeral pall. But in the words of Paul 
 the prisoner, and of the poor persecuted Christians, 
 there rang tones of perfect sincerity. Their doctrines 
 were not learnt, but lived. They came attested by the 
 evidence of characters not only innocent but holy; 
 such as had been hitherto unknown to the world, and 
 had no antitype even in the fabled age of gold. They 
 came, moreover, as the revelation of a law, not only 
 * Note 41. — Christian Fortitude. 
 
22 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 general, but individual. In those who had grace to 
 accept them, the Spirit Himself bore witness to their 
 spirit that they .were children of God. 
 
 Knowing the doom which trembled over Octavia's 
 head, and the impossibility of her escape, the soldiers 
 who were in charge were ordered to allow her such 
 liberty as the Httle islet permitted, and not to intrude 
 upon the occupations of her household. Hence, during 
 the early evening hours, it was possible for her to call 
 one or two of her Christian handmaids around her, 
 while Onesimus, as the Greek reader, read to them the 
 scrolls which Luke had sent as his parting present. He 
 had selected those which he thought would convey the 
 deepest consolation. As Onesimus read them to that 
 little circle, they were as the oracular gems on Aaron's 
 breast — Urim and Thummim ardent with the light of 
 heaven. One of them was the Parable of the Prodigal 
 Son. To Onesimus it was as the voice of God calling 
 hitn back from the far country and the rags and the 
 swine. As he read its concluding verses, again and 
 again his voice was broken with sobs. Even when he 
 had read it aloud- on several evenings he could never 
 come to the verse — 
 
 "I will arise, and go unto my Father, and will say unto Him, 
 Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before Thee " 
 
 without stopping to recover from the emotion which stifled 
 his utterance, and the tears which blinded his sight. 
 
 Another Httle fragment contained the Evangelists 
 record of the Sermon on the Mount. As Octavia heard 
 it she felt more and more that her miseries had been 
 blessings in disguise, and that if her Ufe had been spent 
 in the blaze of luxury and prosperity she could never 
 
THE DEATH OF OCTAVIA. 23 
 
 have become an inheritor of that kingdom of which the 
 commands were not burdens but beatitudes. 
 
 But what came most deeply home to all of them 
 was that scroll on which Luke had written the story of 
 the Crucifixion. They could never hear it read without 
 requiring Onesimus to read after it the record of the 
 last scroll, which contained the story of the two disciples 
 at Emmaus, of whom it was privately thought among 
 the Christians that Luke himself had been one. As 
 Octavia listened to those inspired records, if the dread- 
 ful act of dying had not lost its horror, yet the grave 
 had lost its victory, and death his sting. 
 
 Entranced by the rapture of these wondrous narra- 
 tives, they had been reading later than usual. It was 
 the ninth of June. The dusk of evening had fallen; the 
 lamps had been lit. They had been too much absorbed 
 to notice the Liburnian galley whose red sail on the 
 horizon had attracted all the inhabitants of their rocky 
 prison to the shore. They had not seen the praetorians 
 from Rome, who landed at the little jetty. 
 
 Ah! but they could not be deaf to the unwonted 
 murmur which began to swell about the villa, nor to the 
 clank of legionaries, nor to the gruff unfamiliar voices of 
 command. They knew too well the meaning of those 
 sounds. With faces whitened by terror they heard the 
 summons at the gate, and the tramp of armed feet, and 
 the cry, "A message from the Emperor!" Hardly know- 
 ing what they did, Onesimus and Hermas barred the 
 entrance to the chamber where they were sitting, while 
 Tryphsena and the two other maidens grouped them- 
 selves round their mistress. There came a thundering 
 
24 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 challenge, followed by fierce blows rained upon the door. 
 A moment afterwards it gave way ^vith a crash. Hermas 
 and Onesimus, as if by an instinctive motion, thrust 
 themselves in the path of the advancing soldiers. A 
 legionary struck down Hermas with the flat of his sword; 
 Onesimus was dashed aside by a blow of the cen- 
 turion's iron glaive. They tore away the slave-girls who 
 clung to their fainting mistress. Her they fettered, and 
 opened her veins in many places. But she had sunk 
 into a swoon, and the blood would not flow. Then they 
 dragged her to the bath, heated it to boiHng heat, and 
 suflbcated her in the burning vapour. 
 
 Nor was this enough for Nero's vengeance. The 
 corpse of the daughter of Claudius, the chaste wife of 
 the Emperor, was not suffered to rest in peace. Poppaea 
 would not be satisfied with anything short of the visible 
 proof that her rival had been swept for ever out of her 
 path. There lay the fair form, with its long dark hair 
 and girlish beauty, and more beautiful than in life, for 
 a look as of rapturous surprise had lit up her- pale, 
 features. It availed not. The head was struck off by 
 the centurion, and he carried to Rome the ghastly relic, 
 at once to claim his reward, and to glut the eyes of 
 Poppaea with the sight of "death made proud by pure 
 and princely beauty." 
 
 And for this crime the slavish and degraded senate 
 vowed gifts to the temples! In those days every unjust 
 banishment, every judicial murder inflicted by the Em- 
 peror, was the signal for a fresh outburst of infamous 
 adulation. The thanksgivings to the gods, which had 
 once been the signs of public prosperity, became the 
 certain memorials of private infamy and public disaster. 
 
A FETTERED AMBASSADOR. 2^ 
 
 CHAPTER XLVII. 
 A FETTERED AMBASSADOR. 
 
 MOTE rovg dsojuovg fiov (pavsQOvg iv Xgiorcp yevEC&ai sv 
 oXco TM IJQaiTCOQiq) ?cal zoTg XoiJtoTg jtdoi. — Ep. S. Paul, ad 
 Phil. I. 13. 
 
 There was one spot in Rome which was calm amid 
 all tumults, happy amid all calamities, though it was 
 the last place where any of the Roman world would 
 have deemed it possible for happiness to dwell. It was 
 the narrow room which served as a prison to Paul of 
 Tarsus. 
 
 As long as Burrus was praefect of the praetorians the 
 prisoner's lot had been made as easy as the strictness 
 of Roman discipline allowed. He had been allowed to 
 hire a lodging of his own, and no hindrance was placed 
 on the visits or kindly offices of his friends. He was, 
 indeed, compelled to submit to the one intolerable con- 
 dition of being fastened night and day by a coupling- 
 chain to the wrist of a Roman soldier; but Julius and 
 others had spoken to Burrus about him in such warm 
 terms that, as in the case of Agrippa L, care was taken 
 that he should be consigned to the charge of a kind 
 centurion, and that the praetorians to whom in turn he 
 was chained should, as far as possible, be good-tempered • 
 and reasonable men. 
 
 There was no service which the soldiers more hated 
 
26 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 than this of guarding prisoners. Each soldier was for 
 the time as much a prisoner as the prisoner to whom 
 he was chained. To be chained to a Jew was regarded 
 by most of the praetorians as an intolerable humiliation. 
 If indeed the Jew happened to be a handsome and 
 cosmopolitan young prince like Agrippa, the duty had 
 its alleviations; but at the present time the soldiers had 
 in charge some Jewish priests sent to Rome by Festus, 
 who shuddered to be brought into contact with them. 
 To be chained to these haughty hierarchs, who did not 
 conceal their disdain for their Gentile guards, was a 
 cause of incessant annoyance, and there was not a prae- 
 torian who did not groan when it was rumoured that 
 Julius had consigned to them another Jew, of weak 
 bodily presence, and with health enfeebled by toil and 
 hardship. 
 
 But the soldiers to whose lot it first fell to be coupled 
 to the new prisoner soon spread a favourable report of 
 him. They told their comrades that though he was not 
 only a Jew, but a Chrestian, he was yet so sweetly 
 reasonable, so generously considerate, so anxious to 
 alleviate the necessary tedium of their duty, that it was 
 a pleasure, and not a misery, to take a turn in guarding 
 him. Unlike the priests, he seemed to take a human 
 interest in everything human. He would talk freely 
 with them on Gentile subjects. He listened earnestly 
 to all they had to tell him of Rome, its daily incidents 
 and accidents, its senatorial debates, its foreign cam- 
 paigns, the edicts of the Emperor, and the fortunes of 
 the imperial family. It was whispered that everything 
 which he did and said was worthy and noble, and the 
 centurions observed a marked change for the better in 
 
A FETTERED AMBASSADOR. 2^ 
 
 some of the men who had been brought into contact 
 with him. The Jews, it was noticed, looked on him 
 with hatred as a renegade, and even of the Jewish 
 Christians there were few who visited him. But some 
 Christian was almost always with him, and these friends 
 of his, particularly the modest and engaging Timotheus, 
 deepened the favourable impression which the prisoner 
 himself had made. 
 
 In truth, this was not the least happy period of 
 Paul's career. He was freed from the fret of endless 
 anxiety and embittered opposition; he was no longer 
 harassed by the multiform . and terrible perils by which 
 for so many years his Hfe had been assailed. To many 
 the forced cessation of the great work of their careers 
 would have seemed an intolerable trial, and faith would 
 have been weakened by the semblance of God's deser- 
 tion. It was not so with Paul. He knew that he was 
 where God meant him to be, and that he was still an 
 ambassador, though, as he playfully said to his friends, 
 an ambassador in coupling-chains. 
 
 He ought in justice to have been brought to speedy 
 trial, seeing that he had already been imprisoned for 
 two years at Caesarea on a charge wholly without foun- 
 dation. But in his shipwreck the documents sent by 
 Felix and Festus had been lost, and when fresh docu- 
 ments came Nero's capricious idleness put off the trial 
 from month to month. So Paul continued in prison, 
 and became a missionary to the Praetorium, and to many 
 Romans. His imprisonment was not lacking in elements 
 of interest Linus and many of the Roman Christians 
 sought his lodging, and showed him every mark of 
 affection. Luke was constantly with him, consulted with 
 
28 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 him about every detail of his Gospel, and took charge 
 of his health. He was in frequent correspondence with 
 his friends and with the converts of the Churches which 
 he had founded. Timotheus, who was the child of his 
 heart, treated him with all the tenderness of a son. 
 Tychicus and Epaphras came from Asia, and brought 
 him news of the Church of Ephesus and of the valleys 
 of the Lycus. Mark, the cousin of his first companion, 
 Barnabas, came to cheer him with news of Peter and 
 of Jerusalem, and of hig travels in many lands. Epaphro- 
 ditus ministered to his necessities by bringing him a gift 
 from his beloved and generous Philippians. The soldiers 
 heard the letters which he dictated to his converts, and 
 heard what Luke read to him of his Gospel. Many of 
 them were deeply influenced by the new world of 
 thought and holiness which was thus revealed to them. 
 Some were converted and baptized, and found that the 
 lodging of the Jewish prisoner was to them the vestibule 
 of the house of God. 
 
 And when the soldier on guard was a brother, the 
 intercourse which the prisoner could hold with any who 
 came to visit him was unconstrained. Most of all was 
 this the case when the praetorian Celsus was chained to 
 him, and the veteran soldier was so happy in the charge 
 that he was ready to relieve any praetorian by taking his 
 turn in addition to his own. It was the armour of 
 Celsus, as it lay beside him on the floor, dinted with 
 the blows of many a battle, which suggested to Paul his 
 beautiful description of the Christian panoply. 
 
 One day there came to the Apostle a lady deeply 
 veiled attended by a Christian freedwoman. She was 
 so agitated that, when she had sunk on one of the 
 
A FETTERED AlVIBASSADOR. 2g 
 
 humble seats, she could scarcely find words in which 
 to pour forth her anguish. "Wlien she grew a little 
 calmer, she lifted her veil, and Celsus rose and made 
 her a respectful salutation, for he recognised the mourn- 
 ing robes and sad but beautiful face of the wife of 
 Aulus Plautius. 
 
 "The Lady Pomponia,'' he said, "may speak freely, 
 and fear not. I will unloose the coupling-chain, and go 
 into the outer room." 
 
 Pomponia thanked him, and told the Apostle that 
 she had long been a baptized sister, and had read his 
 letters to Rome and other Churches, and had now come 
 to him for consolation in unutterable distress of heart. 
 She had but one son — the young and beautiful Aulus, 
 the heir and the hope of their great house. But Nero 
 had begun to hate her husband and herself, and was 
 jealous lest some day the army should prefer the Con- 
 queror of Britain to the tenth-rate actor and singer. For 
 Agrippina, in one of her fits of rage, had, before her 
 death, unwisely and unkindly mentioned the youthful 
 Aulus as a virtuous boy who might one day wear the 
 purple more worthily than Nero, who disgraced it; and 
 Nero, wounded in his vanity, had determined on revenge. 
 With a wicked cruelty which would have been infamous 
 even in a Tiberius or a Caligula, he had invited the 
 boy to the palace, had subjected him to the deadliest 
 insults, and had then ordered him to be slain, accom- 
 panying the order with a brutal jest against his mother 
 Agrippina. And the people knew of the crime, and 
 hardly did more than laugh and shrug their shoulders; 
 and the senate knew of the crime, and did not cease 
 for a single day from its adulation to the tyrant; and 
 
30 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 the army knew of the crime, and not one sword flashed 
 from its scabbard; and the philosophers and the poets 
 knew of the crime, and not one denunciation scathed 
 that deed of hell. 
 
 Pomponia's heart was broken. Did God deal thus 
 with His servants? Was the Christ far away in His blue 
 heaven, and heeded not these things? And was it not 
 lawful, was it not a duty, for Christians to help to sweep 
 away from the earth such a monster of iniquity? Might 
 she not rouse her husband, Aulus Plautius — not to 
 avenge the individual wrong which was breaking his 
 heart, and bringing him down to the gates of the grave 
 —but to rid mankind from the incubus of an intoler- 
 able curse? 
 
 The Apostle saw that his task was difficult. For a 
 moment he bowed his head, and clasped his hands in 
 prayer. He needed threefold wisdom — to console the 
 mother's anguish: to avert the thought of vengeance; to 
 strengthen the faith which had been assailed by sore 
 perplexity. And the grace came to him. He banished 
 from Pomponia's heart the dread that because her Aulus 
 had died unbaptized, he was doomed to perish: he told 
 her not to dream that the boy, who had thus gone 
 home, had departed unloved by his Heavenly Father. 
 Fearful times were coming on the earth, and her beloved 
 son, in whom the signs of virtue had not been wanting, 
 might have been taken only to save him from the 
 furnace of moral temptation and the wrath to come. 
 Then taking from the hand of Luke the scroll in which 
 he had been writing the great discourse on the Mount 
 of Olives, he read to her the words of Jesus: "Ye shall 
 ^e hated of all men for my name's sake. And yet a 
 
A FETTERED AMBASSADOR. 3 1 
 
 hair from your head shall not perish. In your en- 
 durance ye shall acquire your souls." 
 
 "Alas!" she cried, "how may I interpret this pro- 
 mise that a hair of our heads shall not fall, when my 
 very heart is cleft in twain?" 
 
 He answered that the Lord spake not of earthly 
 things. He warned us that in the world we should 
 have tribulation; but He has overcome the world. And 
 he prayed her not to dream of hastening the tyrant's 
 punishment. "Leave him in God's hands. * Vengeance 
 is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.'" 
 
 When his voice ceased, the passion of Pomponia's 
 grief had sunk to rest. The tears which still coursed 
 down her cheeks were but the natural tears of a mother's 
 bereavement. Her beautiful soul was prepared for con- 
 solation, and her faith had but bowed for a moment 
 like the upper foliage of a tree under the stress of some 
 mighty storm. To calm her yet further, the Beloved 
 Physician began to read aloud a passage here and there 
 from the Evangel which occupied his daily thoughts. 
 He read of the love of Jesus for children; he read the 
 beatitudes; he read the story of the Cross. The music 
 of the words and thoughts, borne on the music of his 
 sweet and solemn voice, sank into Pomponia's soul. She 
 thanked the Evangelist, and, asking for the blessing of 
 the Apostle, dropped her veil and departed to her de- 
 solate home. 
 
 The Heavenly Father who had suffered anguish to 
 fall upon her had also sent medicine and a physician 
 of the soul to heal her sickness. When she reached 
 herjpalace on the Aventine, she was able to devote her 
 whole strength to save her husband from succumbing to 
 
;^2 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 a sorrow which for him was beyond the reach of con- 
 solation. He had chosen for the epitaph of his boy's 
 tomb the defiant words, "I Aulus, the son of Aulus 
 Plautius, upHft my hands against the gods, who 
 took me hence in my innocence, at the age of fifteen 
 years.''* But she dissuaded him. "Why complain," 
 she said, "against the decree of Heaven? It may be 
 good, and even the best, did we but know it. Nay, 
 my Aulus, carve rather on his tomb a green leaf, and 
 the two words, *In peace,' and add, if thou wilt, the line 
 of Euripides, 
 
 "Who knows if life be death, and death be life?" 
 
 * A real Pagan epitaph. 
 
ENSLAVED AND FREE. ^^ 
 
 CHAPTER XLVIII. 
 
 ENSLAVED AND FREE. 
 
 "These rags, this grinding, is not yet so base 
 As was my former servitude, ignoble, 
 Unmanly, ignominious, infamous. 
 True slavery." 
 
 Samson Agonistes. 
 
 PoMPONiA Gr^cina was only one of many to whom 
 Paul of Tarsus from his prison-lodging brought joy and 
 consolation. There was a twofold element in the happi- 
 ness which seems to rise to exultation in the letter 
 which he wrote from Rome to his Philippians. On the 
 one hand he felt that from his bonds there streamed 
 illumination, so that the grace of Christ became manifest 
 even in Caesar's household, and among his chosen 
 soldiers; and, on the other, he was enabled to hear the 
 groanings of them who were in a captivity far sorer 
 than his own — to undo many a heavy burden, and let 
 the oppressed go free. 
 
 Shortly after the visit he had received from Pomponia, 
 he was told that a young man was waiting outside who 
 desired to speak with him. His sympathy with the 
 young in their trials and temptations was always deep, 
 and he asked Luke to admit the visitor. With hesitat- 
 ing step and downcast mien he entered, and the Apostle 
 bade him come and sit by his side. 
 
 Darkness and Dawn. Ill, 3 
 
34 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 "Dost thou recognise me?'' asked the visitor, in a 
 low voice. 
 
 "I have met many youths in many cities," answered 
 the Apostle, "and I have seen thy face before, but where 
 I cannot remember. Art thou Eutychus of Troas?" 
 
 "No," he answered, glancing at the praetorian; 
 "but," he added in a whisper, "I am, or rather I was, a 
 Christian." 
 
 "Speak without fear," said Celsus; "I, too, am one 
 of the brethren." 
 
 "Thou wilt soon remember me," said the youth to 
 Paul, removing the disguise which covered his dark locks 
 and greatly altered his appearance. "I saw thee in the 
 school of Tyrannus at Ephesus, when I came there with 
 my master, Philemon of Colossae." 
 
 "Onesimus!" said the Apostle. "Welcome, my son 
 — though I have heard sad things of thee from many." 
 
 "It is true, it is all true, that thou hast heard of me, 
 
 my father!" said Onesimus, as he knelt before the 
 Apostle, and kissed the hand on which his tears were 
 falling fast. "Yes; I stole money from Philemon, my 
 beloved master. I ran away from him; I am a 
 worthless fugitive, a thievish Phrygian slave, whom most 
 masters would crucify. And worse — I have denied the 
 faith; I have done all things vile. Can there be for- 
 giveness, can there be hope, for such as I am?" 
 
 "My son," said the Apostle, "there is forgiveness, 
 there is hope, for all who seek it." 
 
 "But oh, thou knowest not, my father, to what depths 
 
 1 have sunk. I have stolen a second time. I have been 
 drunken with the drunken, slothful with the slothful, un- 
 clean with the unclean. I have been false to my trust. 
 
ENSLAVED AND FREE. 35 
 
 I have been in the slaves' prison, and the gladiators' 
 school. I have fought in the amphitheatre. I have 
 served the shameful wandering priests of the Syrian 
 goddess. Twice over have I been all but a murderer. 
 Can all this be forgiven?'' 
 
 "My son," said Paul, deeply touched, "thou hast 
 sinned deeply; but so have many, who now are washed, 
 cleansed, justified, sanctified in the name of the Lord 
 Jesus, and in the Spirit of our God." 
 
 "Ah, but," cried the youth, "they have never been 
 renegades." 
 
 "Onesimus," answered Paul, "hast thou not heard 
 how the Lord Jesus told us to forgive our brethren, not 
 only seven times, but seventy times seven? Will He be 
 less merciful than He has bidden us to be? I bid thee 
 hope in His infinite forgiveness. The blind and the 
 leper, the pubHcan and the harlot, the impotent man, 
 and she out of whom He cast seven devils, went to Him, 
 and were forgiven. Go thou, if thou canst not other- 
 wise, as a leper, as a demoniac, as a paralytic, and He 
 will abundantly pardon. Hast thou, indeed, sought Him?" 
 
 "Nay, father, I could not," said Onesimus. "Ever 
 since that theft from Philemon, ever since that flight, I 
 have prayed but faintly; I felt as if I could not pray, 
 as if no prayer of mine could be heard. A cloud of 
 despair has hidden God's face from me. Oh!" he 
 cried, wringing his hands, "I am an outcast — I am a 
 castaway. I have no part in Him. My lot is now with 
 this world, of which I have seen the infamies and loathe 
 the crimes. It was but two weeks ago that any gleam 
 of hope came back to me." 
 
 "What gave thee hope?" 
 
 3* 
 
36 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 "Lucas of Antioch, whom I see with thee, gave 
 some parts of his records of Jesus to one of Octavia's 
 slaves. I, too, went with the unhappy Empress to Pan- 
 dataria, and there I read the Master's parable of the 
 Prodigal Son, and I tried to say, *I will ari§e and go 
 to my father, and will say ' " 
 
 But here Onesimus stopped, and though he made 
 an effort, he was unable to proceed. 
 
 With all his heart the great Apostle pitied him; in- 
 deed he pitied him so much that he found no words to 
 speak. He could only lay his hand gently on the sup- 
 plicant's head, and uplift his eyes to heaven in prayer, i 
 
 So Luke spoke and said, "I can tell thee, Onesimus, 
 of other words of the Master. He cried : * Come unto 
 me, all that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will 
 refresh you;' and *him that cometh unto me, I will in 
 no wise cast out' " 
 
 "Did He say that? Did He say that?" asked One- 
 simus, eagerly. 
 
 "He did," said Luke, "and no word of His can pass 
 away." 
 
 The praetorian Celsus had heard the conversation, 
 and he too was touched. "Those words," he said, 
 "called me from Satan to God. I was as deep a sinner 
 as any man in the cohort, and no man can be much 
 worse than that. I used to shrink from no cruelty, 
 and to abstain from no sin. I was one of the soldiers 
 employed in the massacre of the innocent slaves of 
 Pedanius Secundus. So deep was my misery that one 
 night I went in full armour to the Sublician Bridge, 
 meaning to end a life so shamed and empty. But as 
 I climbed the parapet, I was seized by the strong arm 
 
ENSLAVED AND FREE. 37 
 
 of a man in a slaveys dress. I drew my dagger and 
 asked him, with a savage oath, if he held his life 
 cheap, since he, a slave, thus dared to interfere with 
 me, a praetorian soldier. He fixed his steady eyes on 
 me, and said, ^I am unarmed; you can slay me if you 
 will; but I will try to prevent you from self-murder.' 
 *My life is my own,' I answered sullenly. *It is not 
 your own,' he answered. *It is God's, who gave it. He 
 set you here, and you have no right to desert your 
 post' The man was Nereus, now the freedman of 
 Pudens. He drew me away from the bridge, and I 
 talked long with him. He was the first to give me the 
 hope that I might live for better things. He taught me 
 about Christ, and Christ's promise that He would cast 
 out none who came to Him. That saved me. When 
 I was a Pagan I knew shame and guilty, but never knew 
 that it could be washed away." 
 
 "Thanks be to God for His great goodness," said 
 the Apostle. "And thou, my son, Onesimus, hear what 
 Celsus has said. Thou hast had no fruit in the things 
 of which thou art now ashamed, for the end of those 
 things is death. But now, if thou wilt return to Christ, 
 thy fruit shall be to holiness, and the end shall be 
 eternal life." 
 
 That interview completed the change in the heart 
 of the Phrygian youth. He had returned from Pan- 
 dataria a freedman, for on the night before her murder 
 Octavia had freed her Christian slaves. He had also 
 received gifts from his generous mistress which placed' 
 him above present need. He had therefore hired him- 
 self a lodging, and now, being readmitted, at Paul's 
 intercession, into the Christian assemblies, he recovered 
 
38 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 life and happiness. He waited on the Apostle with 
 ceaseless assiduity, and anticipated all his wants. If 
 ever Paul needed one to serve him — which was often 
 the case, for Timotheus had been sent on a message to 
 Ephesus — the Phrygian was at hand, and the Apostle 
 found in his society and cheerful vivacity a great alle- 
 viation of a captive's weariness. It was not long be- 
 fore he confided to the Apostle his whole story, con- 
 cealing nothing, and he asked for his advice as to his 
 future course. 
 
 That advice fell like a death-blow on all his hopes. 
 With the impetuosity of youth he had entirely lost sight 
 of the fact that he was still Philemon's slave, and that 
 the manumission conferred on him by Octavia, in her 
 ignorance that he was the personal chattel of another, 
 was legally invalid. He was, therefore, stricken with 
 amazement when the Apostle told him that he was not 
 a freedman, but still a slave. At those words the fabric 
 of his life seemed once more to be smitten into ruins. 
 He had exulted with passionate joy at the thought that 
 he was no longer at the beck and call of a master, no 
 longer liable to the horrors of the cross and the 
 branding-iron, of the scourge or the furca. To be told 
 that he was still a Phrygian slave, that duty required 
 him to go back to the familia of Philemon, to restore 
 what he had stolen, to face any punishment which the 
 law of Colossae might inflict on him, to place his future 
 life unreservedly in the hands of his owner, and to 
 face the humihation of returning to the company of his 
 old companions as a thief and a runaway — this was 
 like a sentence of hopeless condemnation. And there 
 was yet another circumstance which made the pang 
 
ENSLAVED AND FREE. 39 
 
 more deadly. He still cherished for the gentle daughter 
 of Nereus a love which might not have seemed hope- 
 less. If he stayed at Rome, if as a freedman he could 
 strike out for himself an honourable career — which his 
 Greek education rendered possible — he felt sure that he 
 could yet win the hand of the Christian girl. But to 
 return to Colossae as a slave, and a guilty slave, and to 
 be perhaps compelled to grow old in servitude on the 
 banks of the Lycus — it seemed too terrible a sacrifice ! 
 
 Yet his sincerity stood the test. After a great 
 struggle with himself he bowed his head, and answered : 
 "If it is my duty, my father, I will do it." 
 
 "It is thy duty, my son Onesimus, and doubt not 
 that the path of thy duty will also be the path of thy 
 happiness. Thou wilt gain by losing. I know and I 
 love Philemon, and his wife Apphia, and their son 
 Archippus; and I will write to Philemon for thee, and I 
 do not doubt that now he will set thee free — for indeed 
 I need thee. Thou art as a son to me; I have be- 
 gotten thee in my bonds, and thou art true to thy name 
 in all thy help to me. But even if Philemon does not 
 set thee free, he is now thy fellow-Christian, and there- 
 fore thy brother beloved, and no slavery can make thee 
 other than the Lord's freedman." 
 
 The letter to Philemon was written — the Magna 
 Charta of ultimate emancipation — and Onesimus was 
 sent with it to his former master. He was accompanied 
 by Tychicus of Ephesus, who was charged with the 
 circular letter to that and other cities, as well as with 
 the letter to the Colossians. They had an affecting 
 parting with the Apostle, for though he was full of 
 hope, yet the issue of his approaching trial was un- 
 
40 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 certain, and they knew not whether they should ever 
 see his face again-. He shed tears as he embraced 
 Onesimus, to whom he had grown deeply attached, but 
 they left him in the kind care of Aristarchus, and of 
 the two Evangelists Mark and Luke. Above all, Timo- 
 theus had again come from Ephesus to stay with him, 
 and Timotheus was to him as the son of his old age. 
 
 His case excited little attention. When it was heard 
 in Nero's presence the Emperor was amusing himself 
 with composing a loose satire, paragraphs of which he 
 handed from time to time to some delighted favourite. 
 He poHshed his wicked verses again and again, till his 
 notebook was almost illegible with erasures, and he 
 paid little heed to the Apostle's accusers. The evidence, 
 scanty as it was, broke down completely, and testimony 
 in favour of the innocence and the services of the 
 prisoner was given gladly by Gentile witnesses. 
 
 The impeachment might have been more formidable 
 but for the shipwreck of the vessel which, as Julius had 
 told Vespasian, was conveying to Rome a commission of 
 his accusers among whom were two persons no less im- 
 portant than Josephus, the young and learned Rabbi of 
 Jerusalem, and Ishmael ben Phabi,"^ the high priest. 
 But their ship foundered in a terrible storm. Its entire 
 cargo was lost, including the documents on which the 
 Sadducean hierarchs of Jerusalem had relied to procure 
 the Apostle's condemnation. Of the two hundred souls 
 on board only eighty had been picked up, by a ship of 
 Gyrene, after they had swum or floated all night in the 
 tempestuous waves. Ishmael and Josephus had indeed 
 been saved, but several of their witnesses had perished. 
 * Note 42. — Ishmael ben Phabi. 
 
ENSLAVED AND FREE. 4 1 
 
 On the other hand, when men so different as Felix the 
 brother of Pallas, and the honourable Festus, and the 
 centurion Juhus, and Publius the Protos of Melite, and 
 Lysias the chief captain at Jerusalem, all wrote in PauFs 
 favour, and when the good-natured King Agrippa 11. 
 and Berenice had taken the trouble to subscribe to this 
 favourable testimony with their own hands, there could 
 be no reason for detaining him. Not even Tigellinus 
 had any object in keeping his clutch upon a prisoner 
 who was too poor for purposes of extortion. The 
 Apostle was acquitted. Accompanied by rejoicing friends, 
 he went to Ostia, and thence set sail for Ephesus. After 
 a brief sojourn in the city of Artemis, he paid his 
 promised visit to Philemon at Colossae. The first to 
 greet him with happy smiles in the house of the Colos- 
 sian gentleman was Onesimus, and as the Apostle 
 pressed him to his heart, he learnt that all his hopes 
 had been fulfilled. Philemon, on receiving Paul's letter, 
 had summoned the fugitive to his presence, and frankly 
 forgiven him. Orders were given to all the slaves of 
 the household that no reference was to be made to the 
 past. .Apphia and Archippus treated the runaway with 
 marked kindness, and he himself restored the full sum 
 which he had stolen and strove in every way to repair 
 the old wrong. Philemon had not thought it advisable, 
 under the circumstances, at once to set Onesimus free, 
 but now in honour of PauFs visit he manumitted him 
 and others of his Christian slaves, and allowed him 
 henceforth to devote his grateful services to the comfort 
 of the Apostle, with whom he set forth for Crete. 
 
42 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIX. 
 THE DEPTHS OF SATAN. 
 
 "He made a feast, drank fierce and fast, 
 And crowned his hair with flowers — 
 No easier nor no quicker passed 
 The impracticable hours." 
 
 Matthew Arnold. 
 
 It became daily more difficult for Nero to stimulate 
 the jaded pulse of appetites at once sated and insa- 
 tiable; but in the year a.d. 64 a new and immense 
 sensation broke the tedious monotony of a life cursed 
 with the gratification of every desire. The influence of 
 Poppaea grew irresistible when it became evident that 
 she was about to make Nero a father. In due time 
 she gave birth to a daughter, who seemed destined to 
 continue the imperial line. Nero went wild with joy. 
 The child was born in the villa at Antium, where he 
 himself had first seen the hght. The highest of all 
 titles, that of Augusta, was immediately conferred not 
 only upon Poppaea, but even on the unconscious infant. 
 Pubhc vows, which had already been undertaken for 
 her safety, were paid and multiplied. Thanksgivings 
 on the most superb scale were given to the gods. A 
 temple was reared to the goddess Fecundity. Golden 
 statues of the Antian goddesses of Fortune were placed 
 on the throne of the Capitoline Jupiter. Coins were 
 
THE DEPTHS OF SATAN. 43 
 
 Struck on which the baby was glorified under the names 
 of Claudia Augusta. The entire senate set forth in 
 long procession from Rome to congratulate the Emperor 
 and Empress. Nero seized the opportunity to indulge 
 his hatred against Paetus Thrasea. When the other 
 senators were received into his presence, he sent an 
 order that Thrasea was not to be admitted. Everyone 
 understood the significance of the message. It was a 
 presage of certain doom. But Thrasea received it with 
 unmoved countenance, and set out on his return to 
 Rome with undiminished cheerfulness. To a noble and 
 virtuous Roman all life was at that time the valley of 
 the shadow of death. 
 
 The birth of Nero's child greatly strengthened his 
 position as Emperor. While he remained childless there 
 was the possibility that when he died, or was swept 
 away, the senate might be able to summon to the purple 
 some worthier successor. That hope was now cut off. 
 Seneca withdrew himself to the utmost from public 
 notice. The fate of Pallas was an additional warning 
 to him. The boundless extravagances of Nero were 
 rapidly exhausting a treasure which would have sufficed 
 for anything except a superhuman rapacity. The wealth 
 of Pallas proved too strong a temptation for Nero. He 
 had the freedman poisoned, and seized his ill-gotten 
 gains. To avoid a similar fate, Seneca entreated the 
 Emperor to accept all his possessions and to suffer him 
 to retire. Nero received the request with hypocritical 
 assurances. How, he asked, could Seneca possibly 
 suspect a prince who was so deeply indebted to his 
 care? But, though Nero refused to accept either his 
 resignation or his property, the philosopher did not de- 
 
44 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 ceive himself. He shut himself up in a seclusion into 
 which he suffered none but his most intimate friends 
 to intrude. He found his sole relief in writing to his 
 friend Lucilius letters which were meant to console 
 those who were living like himself under the daily pres- 
 sure of agonising anticipations. 
 
 But the extravagant joy of Nero was rudely quenched. 
 Before four months had ended the infant Claudia 
 Augusta died, and Nero was plunged in a grief as ex- 
 travagant as had been his delight. The birth of his 
 child was to him a proof that the gods had averted 
 their wrath, by omens of which he was frequently 
 terrified. To train youths for the Neronian games, he 
 had built a gymnasium, in which was placed a bronze 
 statue of himself The gymnasium had been struck by 
 lightning, and the statue had been fused and disfigured 
 into a mass of shapeless metal. The omen was horrific, 
 and was followed by the news that the bright and wanton 
 little cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum had been shaken 
 almost into ruins by an earthquake of unusual severity. 
 The safe birth of a child had alleviated the haunting 
 fears which these events had excited in his mind; but 
 they returned when the little Claudia died, nor were 
 they greatly eased by making her a goddess, by striking 
 coins with the inscription ''Diva Claudia Neronis/' and 
 by appointing in her honour a pulvinar, a temple, and 
 a priest! 
 
 Those who understood his needs and his character 
 saw that life could only be made tolerable for him by 
 excitements still more intense, and crimes still more 
 colossal, than those to which he had grown accustomed. 
 It had become his constant boast that the Emperor 
 
THE DEPTHS OF SATAN. 45 
 
 could do anything he chose, and that he had been the 
 first Emperor to find out the fact. He therefore never 
 hesitated to secure the death of anyone whom he dis- 
 Hked. If they were insignificant persons, he had them 
 poisoned and seized their goods. As no instinct of 
 gratitude prevented him from thus murdering Pallas, 
 who had been the chief agent in procuring his adop- 
 tion and his succession to the Empire, he had the less 
 hesitation in sacrificing others of less fame. Since 
 Torquatus Silanus was the great-great-grandson of 
 Augustus, he determined to get rid of him on charges 
 of ostentation and seditious practices. When he had 
 driven him to suicide he proclaimed that he had in- 
 tended to forgive him. Against the senate he cherished 
 so deep a grudge that with his intimates he discussed 
 the plan of putting all the members of the order to 
 death and distributing its functions among the knights 
 and freedmen. Cruelty had not been among his natural 
 vices, but he now became athirst for blood. 
 
 But hatred could only be gratified by spasms of 
 brief indulgence, and the animal passions also required 
 something ever-new to galvanise their decrepitude. 
 No one understood this better than Tigellinus. Him- 
 self a voluptuary, who had exhausted the resources of 
 every base pleasure, he sought to supply by effrontery 
 the lack of new sensations. With this view he 
 organised continuous revelries which should be un- 
 paralleled either for costly extravagance or for out- 
 rageous infamy. 
 
 Ruinous to the well-being of the State as were these 
 portents of materialism, they were innocent in com- 
 parison with the deliberate corruption of public morals. 
 
46 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Things are at their worst when vice is so hardened that, 
 instead of seeking concealment, it courts notoriety. All 
 Rome, even her ordinarily vicious population, recalled 
 with shame the orgies, at once monstrous and vulgar, 
 which were planned and paid for by Tigellinus to please 
 his patron. Happily the world has never seen or heard 
 of an entertainment more abominable. In the centre 
 of the Campus Martins, near the Pantheon, was the 
 Lake of Agrippa, surrounded by a park full of groves, 
 gardens, and shrines. On the lake TigelHnus had con- 
 structed a raft for the guests. The gondolas moored 
 by the margin to convey the banqueters to the raft 
 were decorated with gilding, and vermilion, and silken 
 streamers, and rowed by boy-slaves from Britain, Greece, 
 and Asia, with long curled hair and bracelets of gold 
 on their bare arms and ankles. On the raft were 
 erected pavilions, filled with delicacies, and furnished as 
 luxuriously as the tents of Eastern kings. When the 
 actual feasting was over the whole of the gardens were 
 filled with choirs of musicians, and all the varletry of 
 either sex that could be assembled from the confines 
 of Rome. Not one honest or honourable person was 
 invited. It was to be a banquet of reprobates. Slaves, 
 and gladiators, and nobles, and women of consular 
 families, and soldiers, and men who had held high 
 offices, and the gilded youth of Roman effeminacy, and 
 Greeklings skilled in all refinements of evil, roamed 
 promiscuously under the light of numberless cressets, 
 their heads crowned with roses, their hearts inflamed 
 with wine. It was a chaos of abomination, such as 
 would not have been possible in any other age than 
 the first century after Christ, or in any other place 
 
THE DEPTHS OF SATAN. 47 
 
 than Imperial Rome. No Christian pen can paint that 
 revelry of Antichrist, or do more than distantly allude 
 to the scenes which followed, when Nero, disguised in 
 the skin of a bear, crawled on all fours among the 
 vilest of those wretches, and gave to him "who saw 
 the Apocalypse" the image of the wild beast who sprang 
 from the foul scum of the world's most turbid sea. 
 
 Yet though there was no truce to such scenes of 
 darkness, except such as was imposed by the premature 
 paralysis of excess, they were insufficient to occupy 
 Nero's tedium, or fill to the brim the cup of his desires. 
 To be an actor, to be a public singer — that seemed to 
 him to be the culmination of earthly bliss. Nothing 
 would satisfy his burning caprice but to appear before 
 the multitude as Paris and Aliturus did. But he dared 
 not as yet insult the majesty of Rome with the spectacle 
 of a stage Augustus, and therefore determined to sing 
 first before an enchanted provincial audience, and 
 thence to proceed to Greece, not displaying himself in 
 the theatre of the capital till he could return as a 
 victor in the Olympic and Pythian games. But when 
 he had got as far as Beneventum he changed his mind, 
 and determined to visit Egypt and the eastern provinces 
 instead of Greece. In Egypt he meant to re-enact with 
 unheard-of splendour the old revelries of Antony and 
 Cleopatra, and thought that in the hot, luxurious valley 
 of the Nile he might hear of new forms of pleasure 
 and luxury. Magnificent preparations were set on foot 
 for his reception, and his foster-brother, Caecina Tuscus, 
 was sent to superintend them. Tuscus ventured to 
 bathe in a sumptuous bath constructed for Nero's use, 
 and for this harmless act Nero sentenced him to exile. 
 
48 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 But the visit to Egypt was never paid. On his return 
 to the Palace, he entered the Temple of Vesta, beside 
 the Forum. Whether he was suddenly smitten with 
 superstitious dread from the recollection of his crimes 
 or from some other cause, he was there seized with a 
 violent fit of shivering. His conscience smote him, not 
 for other enormities, but for a crime which, in mere 
 wanton wickedness, he had committed against the 
 majesty of Vesta and the most sacred beliefs of Rome. 
 In defiance of every law, human and divine, he had 
 recently seized Rubria, one of the Vestal Virgins. It 
 had become one of the horrible characteristics of his 
 mind that half the fascination of wickedness consisted 
 for him in the 'scandal which it caused. His rank 
 elevated him above human vengeance, but in that 
 circular shrine, and in presence of the ever-burning fire, 
 he felt as if he were in the power of the goddess, and 
 swooned away. The omen frightened him. Pretending 
 that he could not endure to see his people saddened 
 by the thought of his absence, he abandoned his 
 journey, and announced that he would not leave them. 
 
 What new thing could be devised to dispel his weari- 
 ness? He passionately longed for some tremendous 
 sensation to dissipate his lassitude. If the hours had 
 passed with leaden pace when he first tasted the sweets 
 of autocracy, how unutterably weary had they now be- 
 come! 
 
 "Tigellinus, cannot you invent for me some new 
 excitement?" he asked. "I shall commit suicide from 
 sheer fatigue. Tiberius went to Capri, but a rock like 
 that would not suit me. I cannot live in the vulgar re- 
 spectability of an Augustus or a Claudius." 
 
THE DEPTHS OF SATAN. 49 
 
 "Shall I give you another feast like that at the Lake 
 of Agrippa?" 
 
 "That was all very well," said Nero, "but things 
 grow tedious by repetition. Petronius used to be sug- 
 gestive, but even he has long ago exhausted his in- 
 ventiveness." 
 
 "I never knew why you gave up going to Greece," 
 said the Praefect. 
 
 "I thought it better to put it off till my voice was 
 still more perfect. But what am I to do now? I am 
 dying for a new experience. Of what use is life ex- 
 cept to concentrate its essence into thrilling sensations?" 
 
 "Was it not a new sensation, Caesar, when the ele- 
 phant walked on the tight rope with the knight Julius 
 Drusus on his back?" 
 
 "It amused me for once," said Nero. "It would be 
 stale a second time." 
 
 "Well, then, when you had the * Conflagration' of 
 Afranius put on the stage, and let the actors pillage the 
 burning house?" 
 
 "Aye," said Nero, "that was worth seeing. It gave 
 me a hint or two for my poem on the * Taking of Troy.' 
 What might not art gain, and how might not my poem 
 be enriched, if I had an actual scene to draw from ! " 
 
 "You would hardly like to see Rome in flames, 
 Caesar?" 
 
 "Indeed I should. It would be worth living for. 
 Happy Priam, who saw the Burning of Troy, about 
 which I can only write." 
 
 "But Rome is something different from Troy," said 
 Tigellinus. 
 
 "Rome!" answered the Emperor. "I am sick of it. 
 
 Darkness and Dawn, III, 4 
 
50 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Look at these close, narrow, crowded streets. I should 
 like to see a city of broad streets, and palaces, and 
 gardens, like Thebes, or Memphis, or Babylon. Ninus 
 and Sardanapalus had cities worth living in.'^ 
 
 Their conversation was held in a spacious room of 
 the Domiis Transitoria j with which Nero had filled up 
 the whole space from the Palatine to the Esquiline. 
 
 "Does not this palace suffice you?" asked the 
 Praefect. 
 
 "Not at all," replied Nero. "Many of the neigh- 
 bouring houses and temples are in my way, and I 
 should Hke to clear them off, and give myself air to 
 breathe." 
 
 "Are you serious, Caesar?" 
 
 "Of course I am," he answered, petulantly. 
 
 Tigellinus shrugged his shoulders, and quoted a line 
 from the Bellerophon of Euripides: — 
 
 "When I am dead, let earth be rolled in flame." 
 
 "Nay, while I live let earth be rolled in flame," an- 
 swered the Emperor, altering the iambic. "Anything 
 would be better than to smoulder to death for want of 
 something to amuse me." 
 
 Nero was not altogether in earnest. His conversa- 
 tion was habitually grandiose, because he fed a perverse 
 imagination with phantasmagorias and monstrosities. He 
 was suffering from that blood-poisoning of unchecked 
 vice which has so often maddened Eastern despots. 
 
 The fixed idea of watching a conflagration, and get- 
 ting illustrations for his Trojan Epic, often returned to 
 this Emperor of melodrama. Without resolutely enter- 
 taining the purpose of wrapping Rome in flames, he 
 
THE DEPTHS OF SATAN. 5 I 
 
 allowed himself to hint at it and to play with it. But 
 he had made Tigellinus much more in earnest than 
 himself. That evil genius of the Emperor thought that 
 from such a calamity he at least would have nothing to 
 lose, and might have everything to gain. He had in- 
 exhaustible riches at his disposal, and numberless 
 wretches in his pay. He meant to see what could be 
 done. Not long after the above conversation Nero went 
 for a few days of literary leisure and musical practice 
 to his villa at Antium, and Tigellinus gave him hints 
 that at Antium he might expect startHng news, and that 
 a first-rate sensation was in store for him. For the 
 magnitude and horror of that sensation even Nero was 
 not prepared. 
 
 To us it all seems incredible. It did not seem in- 
 credible to Tacitus, and it is positively affirmed by 
 Suetonius, Dion Cassius, and even by the grave and 
 learned Pliny the Elder, who, as a contemporary, must 
 have known infinitely better than we can do "the depths 
 to which despotism in delirium can descend." 
 
52 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER L. 
 A CITY IN FLAMES. 
 
 "Hoc incendium e turri Msecenatiana prospectans, laetusque 
 flammce^ ut aiebat, pulchritudine, dlcooiv Ilii in illo suo scenico 
 habitu decantavit." — Suet. Ner. 38. 
 
 sxgaCov oQMVTsg zov ^eajtvov zrJQ jivQcooecog avzfjg. — Apoc. 
 XVIII. 9. 
 
 Nero set out for Antium on July 17. Two days 
 afterwards Rome was in a sea of surging flame. Men 
 noticed that it was the anniversary of the day on which, 
 four and a half centuries earlier, the City had been 
 burnt by the Gauls. The fire had burst forth in the 
 neighbourhood of the Circus Maximus. The shops and 
 storehouses which surrounded that huge structure were 
 full of combustible materials, including the machinery 
 and properties used in the public spectacles. Here the 
 flames seized a secure hold, and, raging about the 
 Coelian, rolled towards the eastern front of the Palatine. 
 Checked by the steep sides of the hill and its cyclopean 
 architecture, the fire swept down the valleys on either 
 side — to the right, along the Via Nova; to the left, along 
 the Triumphal Way. It ravaged the Velabrum and the 
 Forum; it consumed the temple and altar reared to 
 Hercules by the Arcadian Evander, the palace of Numa, 
 and the circular Temple of Vesta, which enshrined the 
 ever-burning hearth and Penates of the Roman people. 
 
A CITY IN FLAMES. 53 
 
 Sweeping into the Carinae, which was crowded by con- 
 sular palaces, it devoured those stately structures, and 
 the many trophies of ancient victories with which they 
 were enriched. On the Aventine it destroyed the temple 
 which Servius Tullius had erected to the Moon, and in 
 it the priceless relics of Greek art w^hich L. Mummius 
 had brought from Corinth. Rolling back to the Palatine 
 with more victorious violence, it reduced to a blackened 
 ruin the venerable temple which Romulus had vowed 
 to Jupiter Stator. Then, licking up everything which 
 la^ in its path, it rioted with voluptuous fury in the 
 more densely crowded regions of the city, raging and 
 crackling among the old, tortuous purlieus and crazy 
 habitations of the Subura. With its hot breath it purged 
 the slums and rookeries, foul with a pauper population 
 of Oriental immigrants, who were massed round the ill- 
 famed shrines of Isis and Serapis. When it had ac- 
 quired irresistible volume in these lower regions, it again 
 rushed up the hills as with the rage of a demon, to 
 sweep down once more in tumultuous billows over the 
 helpless levels. For six days and seven nights it main- 
 tained its horrible and splendid triumph — now bounding 
 from street to street with prodigious rapidity, now seem- 
 ing to linger luxuriously in some crowded district, fling- 
 ing up to heaven great sheets of flame, and turning the 
 nightly sky into a vault of suflbcating crimson. 
 
 No words can paint the horror of a scene which 
 transformed into a Gehenna of destruction a city en- 
 riched with the magnificence of nearly eight centuries 
 of victory. There were districts in which the heat was 
 so intense that they were unapproachable, and the rare- 
 faction of the atmosphere, joined to a strong' breeze 
 
54 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 which seemed in league with the destroying element, 
 filled the air with a roar as of ten thousand wild beasts. 
 Here stores of resinous material made the consuming 
 flames white with intensity; and there the burning and 
 smouldering debris^ which for a time half choked the 
 conflagration, poured forth black volumes of smoke, 
 which hid its progress under a pall of midnight. Here 
 an insula i many stories high, collapsed with a crash 
 which was heard for miles; and there whole streets, 
 falling simultaneously on both sides, caused continuous 
 bursts of sound like the long roll of incessant thunder. 
 But the physical horrors of the scene, as it was wit- 
 nessed by a million or more spectators who thronged 
 from every town of Latium and Campania to behold it, 
 were nothing compared with the prodigies of human 
 agony and the multiform images of death and crime. 
 At first there had been wild efforts on the part of many 
 to save their homes. But their efforts were rendered 
 futile by many causes. The conflagration seemed to 
 break forth, not in one spot, but from various quarters, 
 which rolled together their concurrent seas of flame. 
 No means were adequate to resist a foe which seemed 
 to be ubiquitous. The scorching heat drove back the 
 boldest firemen. The buckets, from which the police 
 derived their nickname of sparteoli, were ludicrously in- 
 adequate for an emergency so tremendous. The sup- 
 plies of water were not available in the wild confusion. 
 It was rumoured on every side that slaves and agents 
 of the Imperial household were seen with tow and 
 torches in their hands, which they flung into the houses 
 of the nobles; and, if any attempted to check them, they 
 menacingly declared that they had authority for their 
 
A CITY IN FLAMES. 55 
 
 doings. If a senator tried to organise his slaves to 
 quench the flames or impede their advance, he was 
 bidden to take care what he was about. Burglary and 
 rapine were let loose. The criminal population of the 
 city seized the opportunity to plunder every burning 
 palace into which they could force their way. Nor was 
 it long before self-preservation became the one absorb- 
 ing passion of the multitude, surprised by the ever- 
 swelling dimensions of the catastrophe. Here a group 
 of women, as they stood shrieking and tearing their hair, 
 unwilling to leave their homes or unable to save their 
 little ones, were trampled down under the hurrying rush 
 of some group of fugitives. Here the father of a family, 
 hindered in his flight by the helplessness of age or 
 childhood, found himself swept along by reckless pil- 
 lagers, and with unutterable anguish was compelled to 
 abandon some little child or decrepit grandsire who had 
 been flung down on the pavement with bruised or broken 
 limbs. As the inhabitants of regions which the fire had 
 freshly invaded rushed to escape, they plunged into 
 winding alleys overarched by meeting flames, or their 
 flight was impeded by smouldering ruins, or they were 
 overwhelmed by the thunderous fall of some huge build- 
 ing. Many, losing their heads altogether, stood stupefied 
 with despair, and the smoke stifled them, or the fire 
 scorched them, until the streets were filled with charred 
 corpses. Others in raging defiance, seeing themselves 
 reduced to penury by the loss of all they possessed, or 
 with hearts lacerated by the death of their beloved, 
 leapt madly into the flames. Rome during all that week 
 was a pandemonium of horror, in which, amid shrieks 
 and yells and every sound of ruin, were witnessed the 
 
56 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 wrath of the elements, the passions of devils, and tra- 
 gedies of despair, and anguish which no heart can con- 
 ceive, no tongue describe. 
 
 At the first news that Rome was in flames, and that 
 they were already approaching his Domus Transitoria, 
 Nero hurried back from Antium. Now indeed he had 
 a sensation to his heart's content. At first he was 
 shocked by the magnitude of a catastrophe more over- 
 whelming than had ever before happened to Rome or 
 any other city. He mounted the tower of Maecenas, and 
 gazed for hours upon the scene — thrilling with excite- 
 ment which was not without its delicious elements. Safe 
 himself, he was looking down on a storm of tempestuous 
 agony, which he could regard in the light of a spectacle. 
 He was accustomed to gaze unmoved on human pangs 
 in the bloody reahsm of the amphitheatre, and to see 
 slave after slave flung to the lions, with their arms 
 bound in chains concealed with flowers. But what scene 
 of the circus, when the gilded chariots were reduced to 
 a crashing wreck of collisions, in which the horses 
 kicked one another and their charioteers to death — 
 what gladiatorial massacre, filling the air with the reek 
 of blood, was for a moment comparable to the sight of 
 Rome in flames? The sublime horror of the moment 
 stimulated in him all the genius of melodrama and arti- 
 ficial epic. Surrounded by his parasites, he compared 
 Rome, now to a virgin whom the tigers of flame de- 
 voured, now to a gladiator wrestling with troops of lions 
 in the arena. He was lost in admiration of the beauty 
 of the fire. Now he called it a splendid rose, with 
 petals of crimson; now a diadem of flaming and radiat- 
 ing gold; now again an enormous hydra with smoky 
 
A CITY IN FLAMES. 57 
 
 pinions and tongue of flickering gleam. He wrote many 
 a quaint and fantastic phrase in the notebooks which 
 were crowded with his much-Hned commonplaces of 
 poetic imagery ! Here were the materials for many future 
 poems before him. He could, for instance, write an Ode 
 on Tartarus — its horrible spaces of silent anguish, its black 
 vapours, its brazen gates, and iron pillars, its ghosts 
 and demons gibbering and shrieking in the shade, its 
 torments and its Pyriphlegethon with cataracts of blood 
 and fire. He felt sure that after these incitements of 
 emotion and infusions of realism, his poem on the Burn- 
 ing of Troy would be immortal, since it could not fail 
 to catch from such a scene a tinge of voluptuous 
 sublimity ! 
 
 And as he gazed for hours together of the day and 
 of the night, he endeavoured to realise the aspect of the 
 spectacle, and did not allow himself to be disturbed by 
 the multitudinous agonies which it implied. He did, 
 indeed, accept some suggestions of Seneca, who, aban- 
 doning his seclusion from generous impulse, hurried to 
 him as soon as it became evident that the fire meant 
 widespread destitution. Nero felt a spasm of terror 
 when the philosopher expressed a doubt whether sullen 
 misery might not flash up into rage, and cause a formid- 
 able rebellion. For want of houses, the people were 
 huddling into tombs and catacombs. Nero, therefore, 
 took the hint that he should offer the Campus Martins 
 and the monuments of Agrippa — his porticoes, baths, 
 gardens, and the Temple of Neptune — as a refuge for 
 the shivering throngs whom the flames had driven from 
 their homes. But, this done, he flattered himself that 
 
58 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 the public disaster would redound to his popularity; 
 and as it never occurred to him that anyone would 
 suspect his complicity, he gave himself up once more to 
 aesthetic enjoyment. He ordered masses of roses to be 
 strewn around him on the summit of the tower; he 
 twanged his harp as he thought of refrains and songs 
 which he intended to write on the subject ; and he meant 
 that Troy should stand as a transparent symbol of 
 Rome. When he was for a time tired of watching, he 
 induced his minions to ask him for an opportunity of 
 hearing once more his celestial voice; and putting on 
 his tragic syrmos, appeared on a private stage, harp in 
 hand, and affectedly chanted to them his insipid strophes 
 and emasculate conceits. 
 
 But even these first-rate sensations became in time 
 monotonous. He had seen as much as he wanted, and 
 to his great delight the conflagration had destroyed the 
 buildings near the Palace on which he had cast covetous 
 eyes. When after a pause the fire, which had been 
 checked on the seventh night, broke out a second time 
 from the ^milian estate of Tigellinus, and raged fitfully 
 for three days more, he was tired of it. There was no 
 object in suffering the whole of Rome to be destroyed. 
 He assented to a proposition that masses of buildings 
 should be pulled down on the Esquiline, in order that 
 the progress of the flames might be checked. The ex- 
 pedient was successful. There was now time to note the 
 extent of the devastation. Rome was divided into four- 
 teen districts. Three of these were reduced to utter 
 wreck and destruction. Seven more were in a condition 
 of desperate ruin; four alone remained untouched. The 
 
A CITY IN FLAMES. 59 
 
 loss of antiquities, of venerable buildings rich in historic 
 associations, of precious manuscripts, of priceless relics 
 of the past, above all, of works of art, 
 
 " the hand of famed artificers 
 In cedar, marble, ivory, or gold," 
 
 was such as none could estimate. The rumour arose 
 that Nero was about to rebuild the city with unparalleled 
 magnificence and call it Neronia; but whatever gain 
 might accrue to another generation from endless straight 
 lines, "vast monumental perspectives, and sumptuosities 
 of parade,'' those who regarded cities as something 
 more than official masses of architectural monotony 
 were wounded to the heart. No new Rome could ever 
 make up to them for the loss of the old beloved city 
 which sat dreaming on her seven hills among the glorious 
 memories of the past* 
 
 The name of Nero was on every lip, and it was 
 blended with curses not loud but deep. As he wandered 
 over the blackened areas, his lictors accompanying him, 
 his head crowned with garlands and his thoughts full of 
 magnificent schemes of reconstruction, he became aware 
 that the blank walls of the ruins were already scribbled 
 over with infamies with which his name was connected, 
 and that scowling brows were bent upon him and looks 
 of hatred mingled with terror. His proclamation that 
 none were to approach the ruins of their own houses, 
 since he would charge himself with the burial of the 
 human remains and the clearance of the debris, was 
 interpreted into a design to enrich himself with any ob- 
 jects of value, or uninjured works of art, which might 
 * Renan, U Antichrist^ p. 152. 
 
6o DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 be disencumbered from the general destruction. He 
 found it necessary to take measures to prevent the in- 
 dignation of the multitude from finding vent in furious 
 outbreak. Inviting aid from the senators, he started a 
 sort of patriotic fund, which did not differ greatly from 
 a forced loan. He threw open his gardens to the de- 
 solate paupers, who had no distant villas such as those 
 in which the rich took refuge; he ordered the erection 
 of multitudes of temporary huts; he decreed that the 
 necessaries of subsistence should be imported with all 
 haste from Ostia and the neighbouring municipalities, 
 and he reduced the fixed price of corn to the lowest 
 possible hmit. Under ordinary circumstances such 
 measures would have been welcomed with gratitude, as 
 they were some years later in the reign of Titus. As it 
 was, they were insufficient to remove the odium with 
 which rumour surrounded his name. The public voice 
 accused him of being the author of a misery which it 
 was beyond his power to alleviate. It was all very well 
 for him to lavish a liberality which cost him nothing, 
 and came from national resources; but while he was 
 still steeped to the Hps in superhuman luxury, who 
 could restore to that nation of ruined men their lost 
 children and relatives, their lost homes and cherished 
 possessions, their lost materials and opportunities for 
 gaining an honourable livelihood? The story that he 
 had harped and sung and poetised while the city was 
 crashing into ruins had first been whispered as a secret, 
 but was now familiar to every lip; and it filled all hearts 
 with execration and contempt. The ruthless egotism of 
 the Emperor seemed likely to cost him dear. 
 
 All that was left of religious feehng in the old 
 
A CITY IN FLAMES. 6 1 
 
 Paganism was overwhelmed with a sense that the gods 
 were wroth. There rose a clamour that expiations and 
 purifications were necessary. But litanies, and vigils, 
 and sacred banquets were in vain, and Rome presented 
 the piteous scene of a starving and homeless populace 
 who regarded the past with horror and the future with 
 despair, having no hope, and without God in the world. 
 
62 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER LI. 
 
 AN INFERNAL SUGGESTION. 
 
 "I, under fair pretence of friendly ends, 
 And well-placed words of glozing courtesy, 
 Baited with reasons not unplausible. 
 Wind me into the easy-hearted man, 
 And hug him into snares." 
 
 Milton, Comus. 
 
 Nero was harassed night and day by a new terror. 
 The grand spectacle of Rome in flames, and the touches 
 of local colouring, aesthetic and realistic, which it had 
 enabled him to add to his poem on the Taking of Troy, 
 would have been dearly purchased if they were to in- 
 volve the forfeiture of his throne and life. Yet the 
 sinister attitude of the people could not be mistaken, 
 nor their menacing murmurs hushed. Tigellinus began 
 to doubt whether the allegiance of the praetorians, Ger- 
 mans and other foreign mercenaries as many of them 
 were, would remain unshaken. They showed inclination 
 to sympathise with the proletariat in their dangerous 
 disaffection. 
 
 Except Tigellinus and Poppaea there was no one to 
 whom the Emperor dared open his secrets. Both of them 
 were closeted with him, but could suggest nothing to 
 awaken him from the abject alarm into which he was 
 sinking. It was evident that alike the people and the 
 senate held him responsible for the late conflagration, 
 
AN INFERNAL SUGGESTION. 63 
 
 and it was impossible to detect the author of the rumours 
 which had made his actions the common theme of 
 Roman gossip. The only way to save himself from the 
 hatred which threatened to destroy him, would be to 
 divert the suspicion of the masses into some other 
 channel. But whom could Nero accuse with any sem- 
 blance of probability? Tigellinus was unscrupulous and 
 Poppaea shrewd, but they knew not what to advise. 
 
 While they were thus consulting, a slave announced 
 that Aliturus, the Jewish pantomimist, accompanied by 
 the High Priest of Jerusalem and a distinguished Rabbi, 
 desired an audience. 
 
 "Aliturus is welcome," said Nero; "but I do not want 
 to be troubled by his countrymen." 
 
 "Give them an audience, Caesar," said Poppsea, who 
 was secretly addicted to Judaism, and had even been 
 admitted as a proselyte of the gate. "Aliturus presented 
 them to me at Puteoli. They are worth conciliating. 
 This High Priest is so rich that his mother (I am told) 
 once presented him with a tunic worth a hundred minae, 
 and he only deigned to wear it once. You know the 
 prophecy of the astrologer, that you are to have an 
 Oriental Empire, and perhaps to reign at Jerusalem." 
 
 Nero consented, and Ah turns, who was always among 
 his favourites, was ushered into his presence. The actor 
 wore the ordinary dress of a wealthy Roman youth, but 
 the two friends who accompanied him were in the 
 costume of the East, with rich robes and silken turbans. 
 The elder of the two was an old man, whose white 
 beard flowed in waves over his breast, and whose 
 sumptuous dress and haughty bearing accorded with 
 the dignity, if not with the humility, of the High Priest- 
 
64 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 hood. The younger was a man not yet thirty years old, 
 splendidly handsome and full of the genius of his race. 
 
 "Welcome, Aliturus," said the Empress. "Caesar, 
 this is the venerable Ishmael ben Phabi, High Priest of 
 the Jews, on whose ephod has hung the twelve-gemmed 
 oracle, and who has worn the golden robes; and this is 
 Josephus of Jerusalem, son of the Priest Matthias, a 
 Priest, a Rabbi, and a soldier." 
 
 The High Priest and the Rabbi bowed almost to the 
 ground, and kissed the hand which Nero extended to 
 them as he asked them on what business they had come 
 to consult him. 
 
 "Half of our task in Rome has failed," said the 
 High Priest. "We came, commissioned by our nation 
 to impeach Paulus of Tarsus, a ringleader of the GaH- 
 leans, for a sedition which he stirred up in Jerusalem; 
 but while our shipwreck detained us your clemency has 
 acquitted the criminal. We came also to entreat the 
 liberation of some of our priests who are here in prison, 
 sent hither on frivolous charges by the Procurator 
 Festus." 
 
 "I will intercede for -them," said Poppaea. "Those 
 Procurators of Judaea constantly maltreat an innocent 
 and venerable people." 
 
 "The last Procurator is of your appointment, Pop- 
 paea," said the Emperor. "I only nominated Gessius 
 Florus, because you are a friend of his wife Cleopatra." 
 
 "And he is the worst of them all," whispered Josephus 
 to Aliturus. "He takes bribes from the bandits. He 
 impales Jews who are knights and Roman citizens, and 
 he would not desist, though Berenice went before his 
 tribunal barefooted and with dishevelled hair." 
 
AN INFERNAL SUGGESTION. 65 
 
 "I have no doubt that Floras will be kinder than 
 his predecessors," said Poppaea. "The others have 
 stirred up against Rome the anger of the Jewish God." 
 
 "Who is that?" asked Nero. "Is it Moses?" 
 
 "Moses," said Ishmael, "was a great lawgiver, to 
 whom was granted more than human wisdom; but we 
 worship not a mortal man. Our God is He who made 
 heaven and earth." 
 
 "Anchialus?" asked Nero.* 
 
 "Anchialus is some Gentile scoff which I understand 
 not," said the High Priest, with dignity. 
 
 Nero whispered to Poppaea a line of Lucan's: — 
 
 " *Judaea, votaress of a dubious God.' " 
 
 "Suffer me to answer," said Josephus; "and as the 
 Emperor is learned in Greek I will answer in the line 
 of an oracle given by the Clarian Apollo himself: — 
 
 " *Deem that the God Supreme, the Lord of Lords, is lAO.' " ** 
 
 "And do you mean to say that this God of yours 
 — lao, as you call him — can injure Rome?" 
 
 "He punishes all who insult His majesty," answered 
 the young Rabbi, "and He blesses those that honour 
 Him. Caesar, in his wisdom, knows how Pompeius burst 
 into our Holy of Holies, and found that we did not 
 worship, as men lyingly said, the image of an ass, but 
 that the shrine was dark and empty. But from that 
 time forth, Pompeius was overwhelmed in that sea of 
 ruin which flung him, a headless corpse, on the shore 
 of Alexandria. Heliodorus, the treasurer of Seleucus 
 
 * Note 43. 
 ** ^Qa^so xov JidvTCOv vjiaxov d'eov k'fif^sv 'lAQ. 
 Darkness and Dawn, III. 5 
 
66 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Philopator, was scourged out of our Holiest by a vision 
 of angels. But Alexander the Great bowed before our 
 High Priest laddua, and God gave him unexampled 
 victories. And Julius, your mighty ancestor, was dear 
 to our race, and he prospered through our prayers." 
 
 "Yea," said the High Priest, "and when the Caesar 
 Gains would have profaned our Temple with a statue 
 of himself, our God smote him with madness, and ere 
 a year was over the dagger reached his heart." 
 
 Nero had fits of superstition, and he listened with 
 greedy ears. "I thought," he said, "that you Jews 
 hated all mankind except yourselves." 
 
 "We hate them not," answered Ishmael. "On the 
 contrary, we pray for all the seventy nations of man- 
 kind, and we offer daily sacrifices for their welfare. If 
 those sacrifices ceased, the world would perish." 
 
 "Listen, Caesar, to the High Priest's words," said 
 Poppaea, "and set these priests free." 
 
 "What Poppaea asks is done," said Nero. "But," 
 he continued, turning to the Jews, "is not your nation 
 seditious and turbulent?" 
 
 "It is not," answered Ishmael. "We never stir un- 
 less we are wronged. We would fain sit in peace, each 
 under his own vine and his own fig-tree. We offer 
 sacrifices in our Temple for the Emperor's safety." 
 
 "Nero must not confuse us with the Christians," 
 said Josephus, quietly. "The Romans and Greeks have 
 not yet learnt the difference between us; and all their 
 crimes are set down to us." 
 
 "The Christians?" said Nero. "Who are they? I 
 have heard of them as malefactors, the scum of the 
 earth, but always thought they were a sect of Jews." 
 
AN INFERNAL SUGGESTION. 67 
 
 "Forbid it Heaven !" said the High Priest, vehemently. 
 "They worship a crucified mesithy who deceived the 
 people. Some of them, I confess with anguish, are of 
 our race, but far more are Gentiles." 
 
 "But did not Claudius drive the Jews from Rome, 
 because they were always rioting at the instigation of 
 one Chrestus? Indeed, I thought they were called 
 Christians." 
 
 "They like to be called Christians," said Josephus, 
 "as though they were chrestoi, or excellent. But 
 Christos is the Greek for * anointed,' and they use it 
 for our Hebrew Messiah. It was not the Jews who 
 rioted in the days of Claudius, Emperor, but the sect 
 of Christians. Their Christus was crucified, thirty years 
 ago, by Pontius Pilatus. This Paulus of Tarsus is their 
 chief man now." 
 
 "Paulus?" said Nero. "I vaguely remember his 
 being tried and acquitted a month ago. He seemed to 
 me a harmless sort of man. He spoke, as I remember, 
 very eloquently. Agrippa, and Berenice, and Festus, 
 and even Felix, spoke well of him." 
 
 "They are the enemies of our race," said the High 
 Priest, "and they deceive thee, O Emperor. It is this 
 very Paulus who turns the world upside down, and not 
 only preaches against our holy law, but forbids to pay 
 tribute to Caesar, and teaches men to worship Jesus as 
 their king." 
 
 "Do they dare to set up another king than Caesar?" 
 exclaimed Nero, hotly. "This must be seen to." 
 
 "I have heard of them," said Poppaea. *'It is they, 
 and not the Jews, who hate the whole human race." 
 
 "I am sorry I let that Paulus go," said Nero. "Tigel- 
 
 5* 
 
68 ' DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 linus, have you any complaints against these imprisoned 
 priests?" 
 
 "None," said Tigellinus; "they cost nothing, for they 
 live chiefly on olives and figs." 
 
 "Then set them free this evening." 
 
 "We thank Caesar for his goodness," said the High 
 Priest, once more making a low obeisance; "and we 
 hope that he will deign to accept our present." 
 
 The present was a golden box, in which were many 
 vials of rose-tinted alabaster, full of the most precious 
 balsam of Jericho, which filled the chamber with per- 
 fume as Josephus took it from an attendant slave and 
 laid it at Nero's feet. 
 
 "This shall be for Poppaea," said the Emperor, "and 
 on her behalf I will send you a purple hanging for 
 your Temple. I hope you will ask lao to be propitious 
 to me." 
 
 They were ushered out, and no sooner had they 
 left the room than Tigellinus rose, and impetuously ex- 
 claimed — "I have it! Those Jews have taught me the 
 secret. Strange that it never occurred to me before." 
 
 "What is the secret, Prsefect?" asked Poppaea. 
 
 "The Christians! we must accuse them of being the 
 incendiaries of Rome. Caesar, dismiss your fears. The 
 propitiated gods have found a victim, and the people 
 will be satisfied." 
 
 Nero's spirits instantly rose. "Excellent!" he ex- 
 claimed; "and thanks to that handsome Rabbi for the 
 hint; but who will tell us something more about them?" 
 
 "Aliturus will," said Poppaea. "As an actor he 
 moves constantly among the people." 
 
 Aliturus had hardly left the Palace when he was 
 
AN INFERNAL SUGGESTION. 6g 
 
 summoned back to the imperial conclave, and asked to 
 tell what he knew about the Christians. He retailed all 
 the vile calumnies which were current in antiquity about 
 the ass-worship, the drinking of the blood of slain chil- 
 dren, the promiscuous orgies of darkness, the deadly 
 hatred to all mankind, the Thyestean banquets and 
 CEdipodean unions. He told all these things because 
 he had heard them from common report, and had never 
 taken the trouble to ascertain the truth. 
 
 "Have they any friends among the populace?" asked 
 the Praefect. 
 
 "None," replied the actor. "The people hate them. 
 They are foes to all pleasure: they will not enter a 
 theatre. They spit when they pass a temple; they turn 
 away with horror from sacrifices. They hate wine, and 
 will never wear a garland. They are morose mis- 
 anthropes, devoutly brutal, and capable of any crime." 
 
 "It would be a good thing to get rid of such 
 enemies of gods and men," said Tigellinus. "Do you 
 think they could have been the authors of the late con- 
 flagration?" 
 
 "It is more than possible," answered Aliturus. "I 
 hear that they often talk about the burning up of the 
 world." 
 
 "Yes," said Poppaea; "and the part of the city which 
 has most completely escaped being burned is the region 
 across the Tiber where most of them live." 
 
 Nero clapped his hands with delight. "Suspicion 
 all points in that direction," he said; "but how could 
 we get evidence against them?" 
 
 "It would not be easy, Caesar. They meet in the 
 most secret places, and have their watchwords." 
 
70 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 "That looks bad," said Nero. "I do not like secret 
 meetings." 
 
 " Could you not get into one of their assemblies and 
 bribe some of them?" asked Tigellinus. 
 
 "I will try," said Aliturus, "if Caesar wishes it. I 
 can at any time disguise myself and alter my face so 
 that no one can recognise me; and I dare say some 
 slave will find out their watchword for me." 
 
 "Manage this for us, Aliturus, and your reward shall 
 be gold enough to make you a rich man for life. I 
 gave a senator's property to Menecrates, the harpist, 
 and a Consul's patrimony to Spicillus, the mirmillo, and 
 a town-house and a villa to Paneros, the usurer. Caesar 
 knows how to reward with a princely hand those that 
 serve him." 
 
 "Caesar is a god," said the supple actor; "and 
 Aliturus will not fail him." 
 
ALHURUS AMONG THE CHRISTIANS. 7 I 
 
 CHAPTER LII. 
 ALITURUS AMONG THE CHRISTIANS. 
 
 'Eav 8s jtdvTsg jtQocprjtsvcooiv , eloiXd^ij de rig ajtiorog, 
 iXeyxsrai vno navxcov , dvaxQivsrai vno ndvrcov. — S. Pauli I. ad 
 Cor. XIV. 24. 
 
 Aliturus did not find it easy to fulfil his promise. 
 Ishmael Ben Phabi, stimulated by Sadducean hatred, 
 made every inquiry among the Jews of Rome, and learnt 
 much that was useful to him. Josephus, who had no 
 special hatred against the Christians, but wished to know 
 more about them, because, as a Pharisee, he was in- 
 terested in their doctrine of the Resurrection, was able 
 to give him some useful hints. Esther, a Jewish freed- 
 woman of Nero, wife of Arescusus, was still more service- 
 able. At one time she had been drawn to the Christians 
 by their sanctity of life, but she was an intense enthusiast 
 of Mosaism, and, shocked by the views of Gentile 
 converts respecting the nullity of the Law, she had felt 
 the reaction of antipathy against them.* But Primitivus, 
 who had succeeded Phlegon (the lover of the epileptic 
 girl, Syra), as keeper of the Spoliarium, gave him the 
 key he needed. Primitivus, in his work at the amphi- 
 theatre, had more than once come in contact with 
 Christians, and Phlegon had told him what he had heard 
 about them from Syra. He revealed to Aliturus the 
 mystic watchword of the Fish. 
 
 * Note 44. 
 
72 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Armed with this watchword, the actor managed to 
 estabHsh relations with Philetus, a slave of dubious cha- 
 racter, who had nominally joined the Christians because 
 he found among them a sympathy and a kindness which 
 he had forfeited in his Gentile surroundings. This thank- 
 less traitor conducted him one evening, in the disguise 
 of an Ephesian merchant, into the remote sandpit where 
 the Christians held their largest gatherings. 
 
 He found himself in an assembly of at least a thou- 
 sand persons, who had come by various roundabout ob- 
 scure paths. A narrow opening led to the half-subter- 
 ranean place of rendezvous, and this was strongly guarded 
 by a body of Christian youths, who challenged and 
 scrutinised every comer. As they entered, the worshippers 
 extinguished their lamps and torches, and the vast space 
 was in complete darkness, except that a few lights 
 glimmered in its deepest recesses. Aliturus was ac- 
 customed to scenes of hardened wickedness, but he 
 shuddered in expectation of the nameless horrors which 
 Pagan slander led him to suppose he would witness. 
 How deep was his astonishment at the order, the decorum, 
 the innocent fervour, the holy devotion, the almost child- 
 like simplicity of the entire ceremony ! Truly these men 
 and women were no orgiastic rioters! Linus was in the 
 chair of the chief pastor, and he was assisted by Cletus 
 and other presbyters. Sometimes he offered up prayers 
 for all, sometimes the whole assembly joined in common 
 prayer, and the deep "Amen" swelled like the sound of 
 a mighty wave. They joined in hymns addressed to 
 God and to Christ, and then the assembly was swept 
 by the indescribable emotion of Spiritual Presence which 
 found vent in speaking in the Tongue. But there was 
 
ALITURUS AMONG THE CHRISTIANS. 73 
 
 nothing disorderly or tumultuous in the manifestations, 
 for the worshippers had taken to heart the warnings 
 which Paul had given to the Church of Corinth. The 
 pantomimist was struck with the awful depth and pene- 
 trative force of those strange sounds, which no skill of 
 his — trained as he had been for years — would enable 
 him to reproduce. When some rose to interpret the 
 mysterious utterances, he heard many allusions to Babylon 
 — which his Jewish origin made him recognise as a 
 cryptogram for Rome — and references to the recent fire. 
 But it was only spoken of as an awful judgment of God, 
 a sign of Christ's second Advent, a prelude to the con- 
 flagration of the world. He heard nothing wicked, 
 nothing seditious. On the contrary, every exhortation in- 
 culcated innocence and purity of life; and prayers were 
 offered for the Emperor, and all in authority. In Roman 
 society he had heard many a bitter jest, many a mordant 
 innuendo aimed at the Emperor, by men who were too 
 vain to conceal their sarcasms, even when they were 
 perilous.* But here he heard no such objurgations. 
 When the interpretation of tongues was over, Linus rose 
 to address his flock. 
 
 He spoke first of the conflagration, and of all the 
 disasters which they had recently witnessed. He alluded 
 with many tears to the brethren who had perished in the 
 burning streets, or lay buried under the ruins of fallen 
 houses, and he bade them not to sorrow as men without 
 hope, since the dead who die in the Lord were blessed. 
 How far more awful was the fate of those worshippers 
 of false gods, who had lived in defiant wickedness, and 
 who, instead of passing from life to life, had passed 
 * Sen. Controv. ill. 12 (Boissier, p. 80). 
 
74 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 from death unto death, and a fiery looking for of judgment! 
 One practical duty he pressed upon them. Most of 
 them were poor; but God had given them the true 
 riches. And now that so many of their brethren were 
 left destitute, it was their duty to show that they believed 
 the words of the Lord Jesus, that it is more blessed to 
 give than to receive. The heathen said, "See how these 
 Christians love one another." Yes, they loved one 
 another, and all who were of the household of faith; 
 but let them also be kind and gentle to those who 
 treated them despite fully, remembering Him who had 
 said, "I say unto you, ^Love your enemies.'" 
 
 From this topic he passed to the duty of watchful- 
 ness. All around them lay the kingdom of Satan and 
 of darkness. They knew its grossness, its misery. Their 
 beloved Apostle Paul had painted it for them to the life 
 in his letter to their Church. "Be sober, then," he said, 
 "be vigilant! Already there are wars and rumours of 
 wars, and earthquakes, and famines, the sea and the 
 waves roaring, and men's hearts failing them for fear of 
 the things coming on the earth. Is not the mighty 
 calamity which we have witnessed one of the birth-throes 
 of the Messiah? Love not the world, therefore, brethren, 
 nor the things of the world. Count the things that are, 
 as though they are not. For, speaking in the Spirit, 1. 
 tell you that very soon will the great tribulation begin, 
 which must be before the end. But ye know the words 
 of the Master, ^He that shall endure to the end, the 
 same shall be saved.'" 
 
 A deep murmur rose from the multitude, and many 
 wept at the thought of coming woes. But they did not 
 shrink from the peril of that baptism of blood which 
 
ALITURUS AMONG THE CHRISTIANS. 75 
 
 they knew would be to them the portal of salvation, 
 and the murmur swelled into an Hosanna and a Hallelujah 
 which rang with steadfastness and exultation. 
 
 Then Cletus, the second presbyter, rose and said: 
 "Our father Linus has spoken. He has warned us that 
 evil days are at hand. Already it is whispered, we 
 cannot tell by whom, that our hands kindled this great 
 conflagration. You know, brethren, that we would rather 
 die than be guilty of such a monstrous crime. But at 
 the bar of the Gentiles innocence will not avail us; nor 
 will pity touch the hearts of our enemies in Babylon, 
 where Satan's throne is. But though a host should 
 encamp against us, yet will we not be afraid. He who 
 set His angel to stand by the three children in the 
 furnace; He who saved Daniel from the lions, and Jonah 
 in the belly of the whale, will not forsake us. We thank 
 God in this great crisis that Paul, the apostle to us 
 Gentiles, has been set free. He knew not what was 
 coming, or he would have stayed with us; but John the 
 beloved is on his way to us, and he will comfort us in 
 all our afflictions." 
 
 At the close of his address, young men, clad in 
 white, of modest demeanour, went round among the 
 worshippers and received in earthen vessels the humble 
 contributions of men and women, of whom not a few 
 were themselves in deep poverty. Aliturus, moved to 
 an extent of which he could give no account, dropped 
 into the vessel every piece of gold which he had with 
 him, and amazed those who afterwards counted the 
 offerings. With uplifted arms and solemn voice, Linus 
 pronounced the benediction. Lanterns and torches were 
 
76 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 rekindled, and silently, in twos and threes, by the same 
 secret paths, the multitude melted away. 
 
 But as he made his way home with the attendant 
 slave, the heart of Aliturus burned within him. He 
 had come to curse and to betray; he went back bless- 
 ing these Christians altogether. How unlike was the 
 reality to the lies which he had confidently believed! 
 These men and women, whose name was the synonym 
 of malefactor — those of whom the scum of the forum 
 spoke as incestuous cannibals — they were innocent, they 
 were holy! they alone were innocent, they alone were 
 holy! Aliturus had heard the philosophers talking to- 
 gether. How hard and unnatural were their doctrines; 
 how inconsistent their lives; how hopeless their aspira- 
 tions; how hollow their vaunts of blessedness compared 
 with those of these men! Among these was happiness, 
 or it was nowhere. He had seen palaces — their gilded 
 misery, their monotonous weariness, their reckless guilt 
 — he had experienced the emptiness of that intoxicating 
 fame which shouted in the voice of innumerable specta- 
 tors. Alas, alas! what a bubble was the Hfe of the 
 Gentile world, and what spectres followed those who 
 chased it! 
 
 His thoughts went back to the days of a childhood 
 spent in Hebron under the rustling boughs of the oak 
 of Mamre. Happier for him had he lived and died in 
 his native Palestine, unknown, innocent, faithful to the 
 rehgion of his people. But his grandfather- had been 
 implicated in the tearing down of the golden eagle, in- 
 stigated by the two bold young Rabbis Judas and Mat- 
 thias, in the days of Herod the Great, and had been 
 put to death. His father had struggled in vain against 
 
ALITURUS AMONG THE CHRISTIANS. 77 
 
 adversity, and his widowed mother, left in utter destitu- 
 tion, had died of a broken heart. Penniless and an 
 orphan, the boy had been carried down to Gaza by a 
 villainous agent of Herod, and had been sold to a Ro- 
 man slave-dealer. This trader in human flesh had seen 
 in him the promise of extraordinary beauty, which would 
 enable him to repay himself in a few years a hundred 
 times over the paltry sum which he had paid for the 
 Jewish orphan. He kept him with care, fed him well, 
 had him taught Greek, and gave him an artistic educa- 
 tion: — not from any feelings of kindness, but solely with 
 a view to ultimate gain. He kept him apart from the 
 other slave-boys of his shop, who were meant for less 
 luxurious destinies, and would only command moderate 
 prices as grooms or footboys. They, with chalked feet, 
 were exposed for sale on the public catasta in sight of 
 every passer-by, and could be purchased for little more 
 than five hundred sesterces; but those who wished to 
 see the brilliant Aliturus must be persons of wealth and 
 distinction, who were admitted into the inner apartments, 
 and who would be willing to pay at least eight thousand 
 sesterces. He had been purchased by the wealthy and 
 luxurious Sulla, who, charmed by his vivacity, grace, 
 and genius, saw a means of enriching himself by having 
 him trained as a pantomime. During these years AU- 
 turus had not only seen the darkest side of Pagan life, 
 but had grown familiar with its viciousness in every 
 form. Abandoning the religion of Moses, he had found 
 no other in its place, and lived only for the present. 
 On the stage he had rapidly surpassed all competitors, 
 with the exception of Paris, who shared with him the 
 position of a favourite of the Roman people. The 
 
78 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 large sums of money which he amassed by his art 
 enabled him to purchase his freedom before he was 
 twenty-three; and, in a career of unchecked outward 
 prosperity he had become a familiar inmate of the 
 noblest patrician houses, and even of the imperial circle. 
 For some years he had been the favourite of all the 
 gilded youth, the darling of the Roman ladies. But 
 the faith of his childhood still hung about him. Amid 
 the giddiest whirl of vice and pleasure, he still felt in 
 his heart an aching void; and the events of this evening 
 had revealed to him not only how aching the void was, 
 but also the misery and failure in which his Hfe would 
 end, with no vista beyond it save the darkness of the 
 grave. Often before, in his loneHer moments, he had 
 seen virtue and pined for its loss; but now that pure 
 ideal shone before him with a more heavenly lustre, 
 and remorse pierced him like a sword. 
 
 He awaited the next gathering of the Christians 
 with feverish impatience — not with his first purpose of 
 accumulating evidence for their extirpation, but rather 
 for the sake of his own soul and that he might leave 
 no stone unturned to save them. He was also deeply 
 anxious to see him whom Cletus had described as 
 "John the beloved.'' He longed to hear more of the 
 Master whom the Christians worshipped with such pas- 
 sionate devotion, and to know wherein lay the secrets 
 of the hope which He had kindled, of the peace which 
 He had bequeathed, of the righteousness which He had 
 placed within reach of attainment, not only by the noble 
 and the learned, but by the despised and by paupers 
 and by slaves. 
 
 It was to him a time of anxiety and trial. He had 
 
ALITURUS AMONG THE CHRISTIANS. 79 
 
 to act that week one of his favourite, most exciting, and 
 most unworthy parts. He was pledged to it; myriads 
 were expecting to see him in it; he had already re- 
 ceived for it a large sum of money from Varro, the pre- 
 sident of the games, and he had neither the courage to 
 withdraw from it nor any appreciable excuse for doing 
 so. He acted it with all his accustomed supremacy of 
 skill , but he acted it -mechanically and with a wounded 
 conscience; and he listened to the thunders of applause 
 which his grace evoked with loathing for himself and 
 for his degraded audience. He returned to his house 
 physically weary, but even more mentally prostrate, and, 
 flinging himself on a couch, turned his face to the wall 
 and wept. A summons from the Palace forced him to 
 rouse himself, to put on a Court dress, and assume 
 his usual aspect of easy gaiety. Nero asked him with 
 feverish eagerness whether he had succeeded in tracking 
 the Christians to their haunts, and what evidence he 
 had been able to collect against them. 
 
 "Give me time, Caesar," he said. "I went three 
 days ago to their assembly and I heard nothing which 
 could be construed into sedition, and I saw nothing to 
 their discredit. I am driven to disbelieve what I told 
 you about them." 
 
 "They are sly foxes," said Nero. "Poppsea has heard 
 more about them from the Jew Josephus. You are not 
 initiated into their mysteries, so that you did not really 
 see what they are." 
 
 "And what matters it what they are?" said Tigelli- 
 nus. "We must have some criminals to accuse of hav- 
 ing caused the fire; and who so handy as this secret, 
 morose, man-hating, child-killing, flesh-eating sect of 
 
8o DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 darkness, whom the people detest, and whom in any 
 case it would be a merit to exterminate?'' 
 
 "Poor wretches!" said Ali turns. "I should be sorry 
 to do them more harm than I have done already; but 
 after the next nundine I may have more to tell you.'' 
 
 "That man is wavering," said Tigellinus, when Ali- 
 turus had gone. "He is a Jew, and he is not so much 
 in earnest as he was. He seems to be touched by the 
 squeamish effeminacy of pity." 
 
 "Poppsea says that the Jews hate these Christians 
 even more than we do," answered Nero. 
 
 "Nevertheless, Caesar, you may be certain that the 
 two superstitions spring from the same root. I will find 
 out the Christian haunts for myself It is high time to 
 strike a blow." 
 
*HE WHO SAW THE APOCALYPSE/ 
 
 CHAPTER LIII. 
 
 "he who saw the apocalypse/' 
 
 "Questi e colui, che giacque sopra '1 petto 
 Del nostro Pellicano; e questi fue 
 Di su la croce al grande ufficio eletto." 
 
 Dante, Faradiso, xxv. 112- 114. 
 
 The slave Philetus came to the house of Aliturus 
 on the next Sunday evening, and told him that the 
 Christians now knew themselves to be menaced by im- 
 minent peril. They had consequently changed their 
 place of meeting to another sandpit near the Appian 
 road, where they would be assembled in unusual num- 
 bers, expecting the presence of John, one of the twelve 
 companions of Jesus whom they called Apostles. Alitu- 
 rus, seeing the character of the man, who was one of 
 those who are ever ready to sell their souls for gain, 
 said as little to him as possible; but while he donned 
 his Ephesian disguise he determined to do his utmost 
 to warn the Christians secretly of the toils which, before 
 he knew their true character, he himself had designed 
 to spread for them. 
 
 The worship of the congregation resembled that on 
 the previous First-day evening, except that the impression 
 of solemn expectation was even more thrilling and in- 
 tense. Aliturus was at a distance from the Apostle, 
 whom his fellow- Christians surrounded with a reverence 
 
 Darkness and Dawn. III. 
 
82 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 akin to awe, and whose bearing, though full of love and 
 humility, was yet more full of natural dignity than Ali- 
 turus had ever observed in Consul or Emperor. During 
 the day the Apostle had walked through the areas of 
 encumbered ruin and blackened waste, which in ten re- 
 gions of the city were all that was left of Rome. He 
 had walked along the lines of temporary huts in the 
 Campus Martins, and heard the wail of men and women 
 who refused to be comforted for the loss of all. He 
 had stood behind the base of a half-calcined pillar on 
 the Aventine when Nero had been carried past him in 
 an open litter of silver, in which he lolled on purple 
 cushions. He was discinctured and clad in a light 
 Coan synthesis, looking the picture of cruel and disso- 
 lute effeminacy. A young Greek slave shared his litter, 
 and some of his worst associates laughed and jested by 
 his side. The sight of the Antichrist had stirred the 
 heart of John to uttermost indignation, and as he now 
 rose in the assembly, the mystic golden petalon of 
 priesthood upon his forehead flashing under the Hght 
 of the lamps in the far recess of the sandpit, his whole 
 figure seemed to burn and dilate with inspired passion. 
 He spoke at times with something of the holy frenzy of 
 a Hebrew prophet, in language purposely couched in 
 Eastern metaphors. To those who were unfamiliar with 
 the style of Jewish Apocalypses, much of what he said 
 might have seemed wholly unintelligible; but most of 
 those who heard him had a clue to his utterances, 
 either from their Jewish birth or from familiarity with 
 sacred books of the Hebrews. Among these was Ali- 
 turus. Knowing the high authority of the speaker, the 
 whole assembly listened with beating hearts to the tones 
 
"he who saw the apocalypse." 83 
 
 of a voice which throbbed with fire and life, and some- 
 times rose to awful power. 
 
 In imagery afterwards embodied in his Apocalypse 
 he spoke of a wild beast, rising out of the sea with a 
 name of blasphemy on his forehead. And men wor- 
 shipped the beast, and said, "Who is like the wild 
 beast?'' and "Who can fight against him?" Those who 
 had heard of Nero in his disguise at the infamous ban- 
 quet on the Lake of Agrippa knew that by the wild 
 beast he meant the Emperor, and by the sea the sea 
 of nations, and by the name of blasphemy the divine 
 title Augustus, and by his superhuman exaltation the 
 adoring flattery of his votaries. He described the misery 
 of the people as of men gnawing their tongues for pain; 
 and he spoke of a war of the wild beast against the 
 saints, and of blood rolling in a great river; and of the 
 vengeance which should follow, and of the vain rage of 
 the nations against Him which is, and was, and is to 
 come. 
 
 His voice ceased. He sat down, and an awful hush 
 fell over the Hsteners. And then the whole assembly 
 knelt down as with one great sob, and Aliturus sobbed 
 with them. Pitying their emotion, the Beloved arose 
 once more, and said: "Nay, brethren, you must not re- 
 turn thus with broken hearts to your homes. It is given 
 unto me to foresee that ye must resist unto blood. 
 Many of you must be tortured, many slain. At this 
 moment there is a traitor among you, and it is no 
 longer possible to escape. And there is another, not a 
 traitor, but who meant to be an open enemy." The 
 speaker paused, and the heart of Aliturus became chill 
 as a stone within him. "But," continued the Apostle, 
 
 6* 
 
84 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 "the grace of God hath called this one to repentance, 
 and he shall be saved, though through much tribula- 
 tion. And now, my children, give your customary gifts 
 to God and to the suffering ones, for many are now in 
 depths of affliction, and there are not a few of you 
 whose children shall be fatherless and their wives widows, 
 who must be the care of the Church hereafter. But I 
 say to you all, as our Lord said the night that He was 
 betrayed, ^Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's 
 good pleasure to give you the kingdom.' And as my 
 last words, take this His new commandment: * Little 
 children, love one another.'" 
 
 He bade them sing a hymn to calm their troubled 
 souls, and they sang: — 
 
 "Curb for the stubborn steed, 
 Making its will give heed; 
 Wing that directest right 
 The wild bird's wandering flight; 
 Helm for the ships that keep 
 Their pathway on the deep; 
 Our stay when cares annoy, 
 Giver of endless joy, 
 
 O Jesus, hear! 
 
 Thine infant children seek, 
 With baby lips all weak, 
 Filled with the Spirit's dew 
 From that dear bosom true, 
 Thy praises pure to sing. 
 Hymns meet for Thee, their King; 
 O Jesus, hear! 
 
 We, heirs of peace unpriced. 
 We, who are bom in Christ, 
 
"he who saw the apocalypse." 85 
 
 A people pure from stain, 
 
 Praise we our God again! 
 
 O Jesus , hear ! * 
 
 The deacons went round among the worshippers, 
 and collected the alms. AH turns, more deeply moved 
 than ever in his life, flung into the offering the large 
 sum of gold which he had received for his unhallowed 
 dance. Linus rose and said, "Beloved, the times are 
 perilous. We know not when or where the cloud will 
 burst. Let us meet again on the third day hence, and 
 hear the word of exhortation.'^ 
 
 Then the Apostle committed them to God's gracious 
 mercy and protection, and to the grace of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, and the communion of the Holy Spirit; 
 and once more, like phantoms, that great throng melted 
 into the darkness. 
 
 But Aliturus, telling Philetus that it would be better 
 for them to separate, dismissed him, and waited for the 
 Presb)^ers who were conducting John to the house of 
 Linus. 
 
 "I would speak to thee," he said, addressing the 
 Apostle in Hebrew, which he had not entirely forgotten 
 since the day when he learnt it at his brave father's 
 knee. "I am " 
 
 "I know thee who thou art, my son," answered the 
 Apostle, in the same language. "Thou wast born a 
 child of Abraham; thou hast become a firstborn of 
 Satan. Yea, weep, for thy sins have been many; yet 
 rejoice, for thou shalt be snatched as a brand out of 
 the burning." 
 
 "I have never been a Christian, O Apostle," said 
 * Note 45. 
 
86 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Aliturus; "I have never heard the name of Christ ex- 
 cept in mockery; but now, convinced of all, judged of 
 all, I see that the secret of God is with you. I have 
 led you into peril, but I did it ignorantly, and now, if 
 thou wouldst direct me, I fain would do my utmost to 
 save you all." 
 
 "Thou shalt be forgiven, my son, because (as thou 
 sayest) thou didst it ignorantly: but save us thou canst 
 not. Nevertheless, do what thou canst, and may God 
 be with thee!" 
 
 "Oh that I might ask for thy blessing; for my heart 
 is sore even to breaking." 
 
 "My son," said the Apostle, laying his hand on the 
 bowed head of the actor; "the blessing of God is wdth 
 them that repent, and the Lord rejecteth none who come 
 to Him." 
 
 They parted in the darkness, and the next day 
 Aliturus sought an audience with the Emperor alone. 
 He had been so great a favourite that Nero always 
 rejoiced to see him, and to while away an hour under 
 the spell of his natural brightness. But, to his surprise, 
 Aliturus had no sooner kissed his hand than he flung 
 himself at his feet and craved his indulgence. 
 
 "What ails the gay actor?" asked Nero. "Is it 
 something more about these Christians?" 
 
 "It is," said the actor. "Spare them, Emperor. 
 Spare them, I entreat you. I have ascertained that they 
 are perfectly innocent. Caesar has no more virtuous 
 subjects." 
 
 "Virtue?" said Nero. "It is three- fourths humbug, 
 and the other fourth hypocrisy. Give me pleasure; 
 give me art. These fanatics would quench all joy in 
 
"he who saw the apocalypse." 87 
 
 the world. They would kill Venus and starve Bacchus. 
 I hate them." 
 
 "Would Caesar slay the innocent?" 
 
 "Innocent? They are anything but innocent. They 
 are conspirators, and sorcerers, and murderers, and 
 haters of mankind." 
 
 "Oh, Caesar," exclaimed the actor, in despair. "I, 
 too, believed this; but these are only the Ues of the 
 multitude." 
 
 "At any rate, they are gloomy and pestilent fanatics. 
 Why should Aliturus care for the wretches who worship 
 a man whom Pilatus crucified? What is their execrable 
 superstition to Rome's favourite pantomime? I am to 
 be King of the East, and these Galileans set up another 
 king, whom they call Christus. It is flat sedition! Be- 
 sides, how am I to appease the populace, if I do not 
 find them some victims?" 
 
 "You may yet find the true criminals, Caesar; it 
 may be that they are nearer your own person than these 
 poor Christians." 
 
 "Don't let Tigellinus hear you say that, or you may 
 yet know what the tunica molesta is like, and may leave 
 a trail of burning pitch on the sand of the amphi- 
 theatre ! Come, Aliturus, this is tedious. Enough of it. 
 I prefer your dancing." 
 
 At this moment Poppaea entered, and the young 
 man withdrew. As he passed down the corridor the 
 slaves were surprised to see the bright darling of the 
 populace wringing his hands and muttering "Too late! 
 too late!" 
 
 On one point he was determined. No word, no 
 sign of his should do any further injury to the Christians. 
 
88 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 He would not reveal their meeting-place, nor help their 
 enemies. 
 
 Alas! his aid was no longer needed. We can 
 abstain from evil deeds, but when we have done them 
 their consequences are beyond us, nor can we escape 
 their punishment. Tigellinus, by his spies, had put 
 himself in communication with Philetus; he knew enough 
 to palliate in the eyes of the people the arrest of a 
 community which they regarded with detestation. His 
 nets were spread in every direction. Unless the Christians 
 abandoned all attempt at meeting together, it was im- 
 possible that they could escape the agents of the 
 tyranny which had determined to destroy them as the 
 scapegoat of its own crimes. To warn them would in 
 any case have been in vain, and Aliturus was unable 
 to warn them , for Tigellinus did not make him a con- 
 fidant of his intentions. 
 
 Unaccompanied by Philetus, the actor went to the 
 meeting which Linus had announced, and found the 
 Christians gathered in undiminished numbers, anxious 
 to hear once more the words of him who at the Last 
 Supper had leaned his head on the bosom of their 
 Lord. 
 
 Again — lest in the presence of traitors and enemies 
 he should use language which might be turned into 
 an engine of condemnation against the brethren — the 
 Apostle addressed them in allegoric terms. The Christians 
 understood his words, and the rich comfort which lay 
 beneath their poetic imagery. But he had not been 
 speaking long, when from the narrow entrance which 
 led into the sandpit — for the Christians had barricaded 
 every approach but one — there arose first a cry of sur- 
 
"he who saw the apocalypse." 89 
 
 prise, then a sound of struggling, and a clash of arms, 
 and a tramp of feet. The youths to whom was en- 
 trusted the guardianship of the approach were borne 
 back by numbers, and flying into the assembly raised a 
 shout of "Fly, brethren, fly! the praetorians are upon 
 us." The lamps flashed on the gilded armour of a 
 centurion, who leapt, sword in hand, into the midst of 
 the worshippers. In a moment every lamp was ex- 
 tinguished, and by the straggling starlight might be 
 caught ghmpses of a scene of wild confusion, as men 
 and shrieking women sprang in vain to the egress, and, 
 driven back on each other by the swords of the sol- 
 diers, struggled in mad panic towards the various sub- 
 terranean hiding-places and passages, which branched 
 out of the sandpit, and were the beginning of the cata- 
 combs. Many made their escape in the tumult, for 
 they were more familiar than the soldiers with the exits 
 and winding ways. Except that one or two Christians 
 were struck to earth and trampled upon in the obscurity, 
 no blood was shed; for the principles of the Christians 
 forbade them to resist lawful authority. The centurion, 
 the moment he entered, strode straight towards the 
 group of presbyters, and arrested Linus, who sat in the 
 seat of the bishop. Another officer laid his hand on 
 the robe of the Apostle, but while Aliturus involuntarily 
 sprang forward to make him release his hold, a gigantic 
 fossor — whose trade it was to hew graves in the tufa 
 for all the brethren — flung his arms round the officer, 
 and pinned them to his side, while Cletus, seizing the 
 hand, of John, hurried him along a tortuous and half- 
 subterranean path by which they emerged into the 
 upper air. They lay concealed among the thick leaves 
 
go DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 of a vineyard, until they heard the tramp of the soldiers 
 who marched off with about a hundred prisoners, whose 
 arms they had tied behind their backs. Aliturus was 
 in no personal danger, but he had followed the escap- 
 ing steps of Cletus and the Apostle, and he lay hidden 
 with them in the vineyard till the sound of footsteps 
 had died away in the echoing gloom. 
 
 "Alas, father, what can I do?" exclaimed the pres- 
 byter. "I am but a freedman in the house of the 
 Senator Nerva. I have no home, no refuge to offer thee 
 which would not be full of hardship and the peril of 
 certain death." 
 
 "Come to my house," exclaimed Aliturus to the 
 Apostle, eagerly. "I am not a Christian — I am but a 
 pantomime. But, if thou wilt trust me, thy life will be 
 safer with me than in any house in Rome, till oppor- 
 tunity enables thee to escape to Asia." 
 
 "My son," said the Apostle, "I trust thee. Lead 
 me on." 
 
 That night the son of Zebedee was sheltered in 
 the house of the actor, who told his most confidential 
 slaves to treat with all honour a friend of Jewish race 
 who had come from Palestine. But all night long the 
 Apostle was on his knees, praying for his brethren. 
 For the Great Tribulation — the first of the ten great 
 Christian persecutions — had begun. 
 
IN THE BURNING FIERY FURNACE. 9 1 
 
 CHAPTER LIV. 
 
 IN THE BURNING FIERY FURNACE. 
 
 'AyajtTjtot , (xtj ^evl^eo'&e xfj iv vf^Tv TivQcooet jtQog jisiQaofiov 
 Vfuv ytvofjiivjj. — I Pet. iv. 12. 
 
 "Christianus etiam extra carcerem saeculo renuntiavit , in carcere 
 autem etiam carceri." — Tert. Ad Mart. 2. 
 
 The prisoners, men and women alike, were hurried 
 into promiscuous dungeons, in a suffocating confinement 
 which was itself an anticipated death. Next day an 
 edict was published by the Emperor, saying that the 
 Christians were the incendiaries of Rome, and would 
 be set apart for exemplary punishment. He characterised 
 the whole sect as public enemies, enemies of the gods, 
 and of the human race, whom he should make it his 
 duty as far as possible to exterminate. The edict was 
 well received. It was at first supposed that its allega- 
 tions were true, and that the Emperor had really suc- 
 ceeded in lifting from his rule the vast weight of in- 
 dignation which had threatened to endanger it. 
 
 Next day, half suffocated and half starved, and alto- 
 gether in miserable plight, a number of the prisoners 
 were put to the torture, to enforce confession and a 
 betrayal of their accompHces. Tigellinus personally pre- 
 sided, and gloated over their torments. It had become 
 known that Linus was their leader, and he was the first 
 to suffer. The old man remained nobly constant. Urged 
 
92 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 to confess his crime, he said, "I am a Christian; but to 
 be a Christian is not a crime." Charged with com- 
 phcity in the deeds of darkness which were attributed 
 to Christians, he indignantly repudiated them, and said 
 that the laws of Christians branded not only such deeds 
 with infamy, but even those vices which the heathen 
 regarded as indifferent or venial. Bidden to give up 
 the names of his fellow- Christians, he said that they 
 were many, but that he would rather die than betray 
 them. No added intensity of torment could wring from 
 him anything further, and he was carried back to prison, 
 a pitiable sufferer, dislocated in every limb. Indeed, 
 so nigh was he unto death, that the jailors, burdened 
 by the crowded and horrible condition of the prisoners, 
 accepted a bribe from the Christians to allow him to 
 be removed. He was taken, by Pomponia's kindness, 
 into her own house, and there was lovingly tended 
 many days. He lived to send a greeting to Timotheus 
 by St. Paul some years later; but he was never again 
 able to resume his functions as the bishop of the little 
 community. Stricken to the heart by the anguish of 
 witnessing the apparent destruction of the Church, and 
 hopelessly maimed by torture, he was removed in secrecy 
 to one of the country villas of Aulus Plautius, and after 
 being long confined to his bed, he died no less a 
 martyr of the Neronian persecution than any of his 
 brethren. 
 
 Others showed equal fortitude. Foiled and savage, 
 Tigellinus noticed among the prisoners a timid, shrink- 
 ing boy, and ordered him to be stripped and laid upon 
 the rack, confident that anything might be wrung from 
 him. But the poor boy could only keep repeating. 
 
IN THE BURNING FIERY FURNACE. 93 
 
 "I am a Christian! I am a Christian! but we are in- 
 nocent. We do no wrong. The crimes you charge us 
 with are false." 
 
 "Give up the names of your accomplices,' jail-bird," 
 said Tigellinus, striking him fiercely on the cheek. 
 
 "I am no jail-bird," said the boy; "I am free-born. 
 Oh, set me free from this anguish! I have done no 
 wrong." 
 
 "You shall try another turn or two of the rack first, 
 crucisalus/' said Tigellinus. "Confess, and you shall 
 not only be set free, but rewarded." 
 
 His limbs were stretched still further. A groan of 
 agony burst from his lips, and the sweat stood in 
 thick dews over the face which had become pale as 
 death; but he spoke not, and fainted. When they were 
 taken back to prison, the Christians did their utmost to 
 tend and console the glorious young confessor. 
 
 "How were you strengthened," they asked him, "to 
 endure such pangs?" 
 
 "When all was at the worst," he said, "it seemed to 
 me that music sounded in my ears, and a fair youth 
 with wings stood by me who wiped the perspiration 
 from my forehead. And seeing him. I felt that I could 
 hold out even to death." 
 
 "Try a woman this time," said Tigellinus. 
 
 The executioners seized the deaconess Phoebe, who, 
 since she left Cenchreae with the Epistle of the Romans, 
 had stayed and worked in Rome; and with her they 
 seized two other virgins who were also deaconesses. 
 
 But the constancy of womanhood also remained un- 
 shaken, and the Praefect began to fear that the attempt 
 to secure evidence would fail as completely as in his 
 
94 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 plot against Octavia. He stamped, and cursed the 
 Christians by all his gods, and raved impotently against 
 their brutal obstinacy, as effort after effort failed. Then 
 he ran his experienced eyes over the throng, and fixed 
 them on one man whose abject face seemed to promise 
 good effects from the application of terror. His name 
 was Phygellus. 
 
 "Seize that man,'^ he said to the lictors. 
 
 "Oh, do not torture me!" exclaimed the wretch. 
 "I am not — I am not, indeed, a Christian." 
 
 The other Christians turned their eyes upon him 
 with a look of reproach, and he trembled; but he con- 
 tinued to asseverate, "I am not a Christian." 
 
 "Then how came you to be arrested in the assembly 
 of those vagabonds?'^ 
 
 "They seduced me; they bewitched me; they are 
 sorcerers." 
 
 "Then throw these grains of frankincense on the fire 
 in honour of Jupiter, and worship the Genius of the 
 Emperor." 
 
 The man did as he was required, though the 
 Christians murmured to him — 
 
 "Will you be an apostate? Will you deny the cross 
 of Christ?" 
 
 "Now then," said Tigellinus, "tell us the names of 
 their ringleaders." 
 
 Phygellus hesitated. He had been ready to save 
 himself; but he had not contemplated the destruction 
 of his fellows. 
 
 "On to the rack with him!" said Tigellinus. 
 
 The man was laid shrieking on the instrument of 
 torture, but the moment the screw was turned, he cried, 
 
IN THE BURNING FIERY FURNACE. 95 
 
 "I will confess; I will confess." 
 
 "Do the Christians kill infants, and eat their flesh?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Do you persist in that?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Try the rack again." 
 
 "Spare me! spare me!" he cried. "If you torture 
 me, I shall say anything — any lie you ask me, but these 
 stories about the Christians are not true." 
 
 "Will you now tell us all you know, without any 
 more torture?" 
 
 "I will." 
 
 "Did the Christians set fire to Rome?" 
 
 "I did not see them doing it; but they were always 
 talking about Christ being manifested in flaming fire, 
 and about the burning of the world." 
 
 "That will do. Now give us some names." 
 
 "There are hundreds — there are thousands of them," 
 said the renegade. 
 
 "Then it will be all the easier for you to tell us 
 some of them." 
 
 "Must I?" he pleaded. "They have done no harm." 
 
 "On to the rack with him," said Tigellinus, furiously. 
 "He trifles with us, and wastes our time." 
 
 "No, no," moaned the coward; "I will tell you. 
 There is Linus the bishop, and Cletus the presbyter, 
 and Prisca, and Aquila." 
 
 "Who are they?" 
 
 "They are Jewish tent-makers, and they live on the 
 Aventine; but they left Rome recently. And AmpHas, 
 Claudia, Stachys, Apelles, of the household of Narcissus; 
 Persis, a freedwoman of Pomponia Grsecina; Asyncritus, 
 
96 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Patrobas, slaves of Flavius Clemens; and Nereus and his 
 daughter Junia, manumitted by the centurion Pudens." 
 
 "We want more names still." 
 
 "There are Marcus, Felicitas, Phoebe, Helpis, in the 
 house of Aulus Plautius; and there are Tryphaena, 
 Tryphosa, Stephanus, Crescens, Thallus, Herodion, and 
 Artemas, of Caesar's household/' 
 
 "None but slaves and freedmen?" 
 
 "There is Aristobulus, the auctioneer, who has a 
 house in the Subura. He and all his family are 
 Christians. And Andronicus, and Junius — they are 
 merchants who import goats' hair from Cilicia, and are 
 relations of Paulus of Tarsus, whom they call an Apostle." 
 
 "Come, this is to the purpose," said Tigellinus, rub- 
 bing his hands. "Are there any soldiers?" 
 
 "Yes; Vitalis and Celsus, the praetorians, and, I 
 think, Pudens the centurion, who has gone to Britain 
 and " 
 
 He stopped suddenly, and his face assumed a look 
 of terror. For the soldier Urbanus who stood behind 
 the chair of Tigellinus was one who, though not yet a 
 Christian, had been among those who had been chained 
 to Paul, and had acquired a kindly feeling towards the 
 persecuted brethren. Fixing his eyes on the apostate, 
 he made so menacing a gesture with his hand on his 
 dagger, that Phygellus began to stammer. 
 
 "I do not know," he said, "the names of any more 
 soldiers." 
 
 "Are there any persons of rank?" 
 
 Fortunately Phygellus had never found much favour 
 among the Christians. Their leaders had not entrusted 
 to him their secrets. He was unaware that Pomponia 
 
IN THE BURNING FIERY FURNACE. 97 
 
 was a Christian, and had not heard of the conversion 
 of Flavins Clemens and Domitilla. But he ventured at 
 haphazard to mention Ali turns, whom he had seen in 
 the tumult. 
 
 But Tigellinus knew that it was not yet time to 
 interfere with such a man as Aliturus. He laughed 
 aloud. 
 
 "What!" he said; "do you think that on the evi- 
 dence of such scum as you we are going to arrest the 
 delight of the populace — the gayest and fairest panto- 
 mime in Rome? There, we have had enough of you.'' 
 
 And, spurning him with his foot, he bade the lictors 
 to keep him safe, till more evidence was required. 
 
 There were a few others — chiefly neophytes and 
 catechumens of unformed character — who, either from 
 indifference and insincerity, or to escape for the moment 
 from the tormentors, gave evidence sufficient for the 
 nefarious purpose of the Praefect. The consequence 
 was a wholesale series of arrests, till every prison in 
 Rome was crowded to deadliness with innocent con- 
 fessors, who, while they denied all crime, admitted 
 themselves to be Christians, and were ready, if God so 
 willed, to die for their faith. 
 
 Tigellinus savagely recommended to Nero that they 
 should be executed in a mass. 
 
 "Rome," he said, "is too crowded. As it is, Caesar, 
 you are maintaining many thousands of the destitute, 
 and among them hundreds of these Christians, whose 
 lodgings have been burnt. \Vhy not get rid of such 
 criminal wretches?" 
 
 "All the people hate them," said Poppaea, "as de- 
 spisers of the gods, and all the Jews hate them. From 
 
 Darkness and Dawn, III, 7 
 
98 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Josephus, and the High Priest, and Tiberius Alexander, 
 the nephew of their great writer Philo, who once headed 
 a deputation to the Emperor Gaius, I hear nothing of 
 them but evil." 
 
 "Their arrest has made a wonderful difference 
 already," said Tigellinus, "and has silenced many in- 
 convenient rumours. Publish another edict, Emperor, 
 saying that you have now the amplest evidence of their 
 guilt, and that they shall be executed when you have 
 decided the method of their death." 
 
 "I will reserve some of their ringleaders for more 
 conspicuous punishment," said Nero. "The common 
 herd can be dealt with afterwards." 
 
 "We have got the man they call their bishop," said 
 the Praefect. "He is an artisan named Linus. He has 
 been tortured, and is said to be dying. But we can 
 strike a deadlier blow yet. My spies tell me that one 
 of the Twelve they call Apostles, whose name is John, 
 is in Rome, and that another is on his way whose name 
 is Peter. They were friends of him whom they call 
 Christus. We have lost sight of John for the moment; 
 but we shall make sure of having them both soon." 
 
 The Church in Rome was smitten to the very dust 
 by the terrible blow which had befallen her, and it was 
 necessary that the brethren should take the utmost pre- 
 cautions, and meet only in the deepest secrecy. In this 
 they were aided by Aliturus. He had a villa a short 
 distance from Rome on the Salarian road, the grounds 
 of which could be approached by country paths known 
 to few but shepherds and goatherds. To this villa he 
 
IN THE BURNING FIERY FURNACE. 99 
 
 took the Apostle John for safety, and there he received 
 from him such wise and loving instruction that he be- 
 came a catechumen. Meanwhile he freely used the 
 wealth which he had acquired, to alleviate the suffer- 
 ings of the brethren. The visiting of those in prison 
 was regarded as one of the primary duties of the 
 Christian's life, and no considerations of personal safety 
 were allowed to interfere with it. The Apostle went 
 from prison to prison breaking bread, and entrusting to 
 the officers of the Church, or to those who had been 
 longest in the faith, the money which was supplied to 
 him by Pomponia and by the actor. In this way he 
 and others, who were as yet unmolested, were enabled 
 to minister to the necessities of the captives, and also 
 to speak to them such words of hope as fell upon their 
 souls hke dew from heaven. It was inevitable that his 
 noble and venerable figure should soon be recognised. 
 The spies of the Prsefect were everywhere, and, noticing 
 the profound reverence with which the Elder was re- 
 ceived, they were soon able to identify him. He had 
 prepared Aliturus to expect that if on any day he did 
 not return to the villa it would be because he was 
 lodged in prison. The ordinary dungeons were so full 
 that the Apostle was confined in the wet and rocky 
 vault of the Mamertine. 
 
 In that prison he was visited by Pomponia, who 
 contributed by every means in her power to mitigate 
 his hardships, and received his counsel and his apostolic 
 blessing. She no longer hesitated to go in person to 
 console the confessors. She found, indeed, that they 
 needed but little consolation. The majority of them 
 were in a state of spiritual exaltation which made their 
 
lOO DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 faces radiant and transformed their hard fare into 
 manna which was angels' food. They turned their 
 prisons into minsters, and the coarse Pagan jailors and 
 German guards were amazed when they heard those 
 abodes of misery ringing with sweet voices and the holy 
 melodies of unknown songs. In each place of confine- 
 ment they held their daily worship, conducted by 
 presbyter, or deacon, or reader, and broke with one an- 
 other the bread of Holy Communion. They knew that 
 death awaited them, but death was to be a martyrdom, 
 and they looked to it, not as a curse, but as a corona- 
 tion. Pomponia, sharing all their feelings, found that it 
 was only to their bodily wants that she had need to 
 minister. 
 
 She did not shrink from personal danger: if arrested, 
 she would have at once avowed that she was a Christian. 
 But her name had not been mentioned by those who 
 gave evidence. Having once been tried on the charge 
 of holding a foreign superstition and acquitted, it was 
 contrary to the principle of the Roman law that she 
 should again be accused. The deadly wrong which 
 Nero's wickedness had already inflicted on Aulus Plautius 
 had excited an indignation among all the best elements 
 of Roman society, which, though it was voiceless, had 
 made itself felt; and among the populace Pomponia was 
 half worshipped for her abounding kindness and large- 
 handed charities. Her visiting of the prisons was set 
 down to the same strange but harmless eccentricity 
 which made her eschew jewels and wear robes of such 
 sombre hue. 
 
 One day, during a visit to the largest prison, she 
 encountered Tigellinus, who was going his rounds with 
 
IN THE BURNING FIERY FURNACE. lOI 
 
 an escort of praetorians to exult over the multitudes of 
 his victims. He inspired such dread that the noblest 
 senators cringed to him, and Pomponia had reason to 
 know that he hated her with all the energy of wicked- 
 ness which is reproved by the spectacle of virtue. 
 
 He made her a low obeisance of mock respect, which 
 she scarcely noticed by the slightest inclination of her 
 head. 
 
 "The fair Pomponia is fond of prisons," he said, 
 with a sneer, "but she despises the poor Prsefect of the 
 praetorians." 
 
 "Pomponia," she replied, "is not accustomed to the 
 language of insincere and empty compliment. She de- 
 spises none; but, if the Praefect desires her opinion, 
 there are some of his humblest soldiers whom she 
 respects more than him." 
 
 Tigellinus cast on her a glance of savage hatred. 
 He quailed before her queenly dignity of goodness, but 
 could not bear to be foiled in the hearing of his escort, 
 whose smiles had scarcely been suppressed. 
 
 "Let Pomponia take care that she does not herself 
 become the denizen of a prison. Some have whispered 
 that she is as much a Christian as these whom she 
 visits, and deserves the same fate." 
 
 "I deserve it," she says, "as much and as little as 
 these do, for none knows better than Tigellinus that 
 they are perfectly innocent." 
 
 Tigellinus lost all self-control. "Do you not know, 
 woman," he exclaimed hoarsely, "that your life is in 
 my power?" 
 
 "Man!" she answered, with the calmest disdain, 
 "you are addressing the wife of Aulus Plautius. My 
 
I02 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 life is not in your power, but in the power of Him who 
 gave it. I leave you, and shall continue to tend these 
 hapless prisoners." 
 
 She passed by him and he dared not meet her 
 glance. To beard Tigellinus required a courage of 
 which scarcely one person was capable. But Pomponia 
 thought it her duty to attempt a yet more dangerous 
 effort, and, if possible, to have an appeal made to the 
 Emperor on behalf of the doomed Christians. She 
 went to Seneca in his retirement. She found him anxious 
 and miserable, full of disappointment and self-disgust. 
 He did not respond to her entreaties. "I have no 
 sympathy," he said, "with the Christians. "They are 
 only a sect of the Jews, and I should like to see their 
 whole superstition eradicated." 
 
 "You call it their superstition," said Pomponia. "Is 
 it more of a superstition than the worship of what you 
 have called *our ignoble crowd of gods'?" 
 
 "Perhaps not," said Seneca. "But the popular 
 religion is one thing, and philosophy is another." 
 
 "Would you, then, be content to see the mass of 
 the Pagan population unjustly tortured, unjustly slain, 
 because their religion is a noxious superstition?" 
 
 "They do not render themselves amenable to the 
 laws." 
 
 "Nor do these poor Christians. I know their tenets. 
 Their moral teaching again and again reminds me of 
 your own, which it sometimes resembles almost to verbal 
 identity." 
 
 "I have heard," said Seneca, "that their Paulus of 
 Tarsus has genius and style; but it is to me incredible. 
 What can he know of philosophy?" 
 
IN THE BURNING FIERY FURNACE. IO3 
 
 "Pardon me, dear friend," replied Pomponia, "he 
 knows a philosophy far diviner than that of the Porch, 
 far nobler than that of the Garden or the Lyceum. It 
 is a philosophy which may not puff up the pride of in- 
 tellect, but can sway the motives of the life. You may 
 perhaps find in Rome — though I doubt it — ten philo- 
 sophers who live purely and simply, but I could find 
 you many hundreds of Christians." 
 
 "Men of the common herd," he said, in a tone of 
 some disdain. 
 
 "Are they not our fellow-men? Did not one God 
 make them and us? Did He mean only a handful to 
 be blessed, and the rest to perish? Have you no pity 
 for them? Have not you yourself said, *Man is a sacred 
 thing to man'?" 
 
 "Why should I waste my life in an unavailing pity? 
 Pity is a weakness which the true philosopher should 
 suppress." 
 
 "Ah!" replied Pomponia, "I see the secret why 
 Stoicism fails. It talks of following nature, and it flings 
 away its sweetest elements." 
 
 "I could do nothing for you, Pomponia, even if I 
 would," said Seneca, wearily; "I live a daily death." 
 
 "A daily death?" she replied — "in this splendid 
 palace, with every resource of wealth, with slaves, with 
 villas, with books, with gardens, with boundless fame, 
 with a wife faithful and beloved, with a host of friends?" 
 
 "What avail such things," said Seneca, "with the 
 sword of Damocles trembling over my neck? My only 
 safety is the life w^hich I describe in my little tragedy 
 of ^Thyestes' — a life which causes neither jealousy nor 
 fear, and where one does not dread to drink poison in 
 
I04 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 golden goblets."'^ If I am alive at this moment, I believe 
 I owe it to the fact that my freedman Cleonicus, whom 
 Nero bribed to poison me, failed to do so because I 
 only eat fruits from the tree, and drink nothing but 
 running water.** Yet I am wretched. Sometimes I all 
 but accept the view that, after all, men are no better 
 than a laughing-stock of the gods, whatever gods 
 there be." 
 
 "And are you so miserable, Seneca," she said, "and 
 so hopeless? Come with me to the prisons of the poor 
 Christians, and I will show you men who are poor and 
 yet happy; ground to the dust by daily hatred and 
 cruelty, in hunger, and nakedness, and prison, and yet 
 happy; with torture and the vilest deaths immediately 
 awaiting them, and yet happy. Shall I tell you how 
 Paulus of Tarsus describes himself and them? *We are 
 troubled on every side,' he wrote to Corinth, ^yet not 
 distressed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, 
 but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.'" 
 
 "That is very eloquent," said Seneca. "I should 
 like to read more that this Christian has written." 
 
 "You shall," she answered; "and you will find in 
 his letters something better than eloquence of style. But 
 will you despise, will you do nothing to assist, the men 
 and women whose faith enables them not only to write 
 thus, but thus to live?" 
 
 Seneca sighed deeply. "My power with the Em- 
 peror is gone, and I am menaced with death and con- 
 fiscation. But I am rich still, Pomponia. Take the sum 
 of gold in this purse. It may at least help to relieve 
 the sufferings of these poor creatures, perhaps even to 
 * Sen. Thy est, 446. ** Tac. Ann, xv. 45. 
 
EST THE BURNING FIERY FURNACE. IO5 
 
 secure by bribes the escape of some of them. It is all 
 that I can do." 
 
 Pomponia did not refuse it, and bade him a kindly- 
 farewell. But she never visited the philosopher without 
 feeling, in spite of her affection for him and her grati- 
 tude to him, how ineffectual were his half-truths, how 
 vain the pomp of declamatory epigram in which they 
 were enshrined. The same ineffectualness, having its 
 roots in an insincerity so insincere as to be habitual and 
 unconscious, marked the whole of the contemporary 
 morality. It ended, and was understood to end, in self- 
 deceiving words. 
 
 But, having failed with Seneca, Pomponia hardly 
 knew what to do. To the Emperor himself she would 
 not go. His mere presence, since his foul murder of 
 her young Aulus, made her tremble with loathing as 
 though she stood before an incarnate demon. His 
 leering sensuous looks, his slothful obesity, his face de- 
 formed by an eczema caused by gluttony, intemperance, 
 and uncleanness, filled her with such repulsion that she 
 could not speak to him. But she had sometimes met 
 Poppaea in her least guilty days, when she was the wife 
 of Rufius Crispinus, and she hoped that there might 
 remain some spot in the heart of the lovely Empress 
 which was not wholly callous to the appeal of pity. 
 
 To her surprise she found Poppaea bathed in tears, 
 and gently asked her why she wept. There was some- 
 thing about Pomponia which seemed at once to awaken 
 confidence. She had that temperament which in modern 
 times would be called magnetic, and she always called 
 out the best feelings of those with whom she spoke. 
 The haughty, beautiful, triumphant wife of Nero would 
 
I06 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 not have dreamed of suffering anyone to be admitted to 
 her in a moment of sorrow and weakness, except the 
 wife of Aulus Plautius. To others she never appeared 
 except in dresses such as the world could not parallel, 
 surrounded by luxury, and breathing of the most delicate 
 perfumes. But as Pomponia entered she did not even 
 attempt to remove the stain of tears from her glowing 
 cheeks, or to arrange the disordered tresses of her 
 gleaming hair. 
 
 "Pomponia is welcome," she said. "She does not 
 often deign to visit the poor Empress. She should have 
 been a Vestal Virgin, and moved about surrounded by 
 sanctities. But we wicked people have our sorrows too. 
 I was thinking of my boy Rufius. I love him more than 
 anything on earth, and Nero hates to see him, and will 
 not let him visit me. The poor boy might just as well 
 have no mother." 
 
 Pomponia paused before she spoke, and had to gulp 
 down a choking sob. "I can sympathise with you. 
 Empress. My son Aulus was a little older than your 
 charming Rufius. He was manly; he was beautiful; he 
 gave promise of all his father's virtues." 
 
 "I know, I know," said Poppaea, turning away her 
 face, on which rose, in spite of herself, a burning blush. 
 "He offended Nero in some way, and he is dead." 
 
 "He offended him not," said Pomponia. "How could 
 an innocent lad like my Aulus have been guilty of trea- 
 son? Let us speak no more of him. There are those 
 for whom death is more merciful than life, and I did 
 not come here to bewail my own bereavements." 
 
 "I pleaded for your boy, Pomponia — indeed, I did. 
 I deigned to prostrate myself before Nero that he would 
 
IN THE BURNING FIERY FURNACE. IO7 
 
 not injure him, that he would not have him slain. Would 
 you believe that I — I, the Empress — have fears lest 
 something evil should be done to my young Rufius?" 
 
 "May heaven protect his youth!" said Pomponia. 
 "If it ^vill be any comfort to you I will see him, and 
 ask him to our palace. My husband is kind to all the 
 young, and will love him for the sake of his own lost 
 boy. And I will take your messages to him." 
 
 . "Thanks, Pomponia, thanks," said the Empress. 
 "Nowhere could he be better than in your virtuous home. 
 But why have you sought me — yoii to whom the Palace 
 is justly hateful?" 
 
 "I come," answered Pomponia, "to plead for your 
 pity. There is not a prison in Rome which is not full 
 of innocent men and women, called Christians. They 
 are charged with having set fire to Rome, and with 
 many other atrocities. Empress, they are innocent! 
 Will you not use your influence for them? If you have 
 ever done evil — forgive me, Poppaea, but I know not 
 the language of falsehood, or of flattery — will you not 
 now try to do a great deed of good?" 
 
 "Your kindness deceives you," answered the Empress. 
 "From all that I have heard they thoroughly deserve 
 their fate." 
 
 "Your mind has been poisoned against them by 
 their enemies the Jews. Believe me, Poppaea — for I 
 know them well — their lives are almost the only beauti- 
 ful lives spent in this wicked city." 
 
 "Anything I could say for them would be vain, 
 Pomponia. I am not as you are — would that I were ! — 
 but let me tell you what no other living being should 
 hear from me. Since our child Claudia died, I am no 
 
I08 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 longer all-powerful with Nero. I can stimulate his course 
 in evil — a touch will do that; but I cannot turn him 
 from any wrong on which he and Tigellinus have 
 agreed." 
 
 Seeing that her efforts were useless, Pomponia left 
 her, and would have kissed her hand; but the Empress 
 kissed her on the cheek, and said, "Oh, Pomponia, deign 
 to be the friend of the hapless Poppaea. The work of 
 her ambitious guilty dreams is already crumbling into 
 ruins. She needs to have one friend who is not wicked.'^ 
 
 In times so oppressive the Christians who were still 
 free could not forego the duty and support of common 
 prayer and Holy Communion, however great might be 
 the risk. Accustomed to hatred and persecution, they 
 were also accustomed to precautions and secret signs, 
 and by ways of communicating with each other un- 
 observed and unexpected they made it known that on 
 the next Sunday, deep in the night, they would meet in 
 a secluded vineyard at the back of the villa of Aliturus, 
 and that Peter of Bethsaida, the Apostle of Christ, had 
 arrived in Rome, and would be present. 
 
 By far routes, under the curtain of darkness, they 
 met in the vineyard, a deeply sorrowing and diminished 
 band. But they felt reasonably secure. Aliturus was 
 beloved by his slaves, to whom he was always generous, 
 and he had trusted those in whom he most confided to 
 watch on every side, and give signals by waving a torch 
 at the sHghtest approach of danger. He himself went 
 to the assembly, and, though as a catechumen he could 
 not receive the holy mysteries, he joined in the prayers. 
 
IN THE BURNING FIERY FURNACE. lOQ 
 
 and received the blessing of Peter, as he had received 
 the blessing of John. Nothing could have been more 
 comforting than the brief words of the great Apostle. 
 His grey hair added to the venerable aspect of his ad- 
 vancing years; but his eye was undimmed, his cheek 
 still ruddy with the long years of the winds of Galilee, 
 and holy courage shone in his weather-beaten features. 
 There was a certain fire and force in all he said which 
 gave it an impressiveness beyond that which was con- 
 tained in the words themselves. Plain and practical as 
 was "the pilot of the Galilean Lake," there hung about 
 him a reflexion of something which elevated him above 
 himself — as though the sunlight of Gennesareth still 
 played around him, and the glory of Hermon shone 
 upon his face. Everywhere among the good he com- 
 manded the deep reverence which his simplicity did not 
 seek; and everywhere among the evil, he inspired the 
 awe which his humble manliness might seem to depre- 
 cate. He told the Christians that he had hastened his 
 journey to Rome, when he had heard at Corinth the 
 frightful perils with which his beloved brethren were 
 surrounded. Were they suffering as Christians? Then 
 happy were they! Had not Jesus said, "Ye shall be 
 hated of all men for my name's sake; but he that en- 
 dureth to the end shall be saved''? Only let them give 
 no ground for the enemy to blaspheme. "It is the will 
 of God, brethren," he said — and every syllable came 
 home to their hearts in the deep stillness — "that by 
 well-doing ye put to silence the ignorance of foolish 
 men; as free, yet not using your freedom as a pretext 
 for vice, but as the servants of God. Christ suffered 
 for us; let us be ready to suffer for Him. Be united, 
 
no DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 then, brethren; have compassion one for another in this 
 dread crisis; be not afraid of their faces; be not afraid 
 of their words; be not afraid of their terror; neither be 
 troubled, but sanctify the Lord God, and the peace 
 which passeth understanding shall stand sentry over 
 your hearts." 
 
 The Apostle ceased, and Cletus, who during the 
 desperate illness of Linus was the leading presbyter, 
 told the brethren that, from information which had 
 reached him, a fresh edict would be immediately pro- 
 claimed, which declared Christianity to be an unlawful 
 religion, and threatened with the worst forms of death 
 anyone who was convicted of it. Under these circum- 
 stances they could not find a securer place of meeting 
 than the present, but they were surrounded by spies, 
 and in spite of all caution must be prepared for the 
 worst. And John the Beloved, from the vault of the 
 Tullianum, had sent them his blessing, and messages of 
 peace. 
 
TWO MARTYRDOMS. I I I 
 
 CHAPTER LV. 
 
 TWO MARTYRDOMS. 
 
 "And as the Apostle, on the hill 
 Facing the Imperial town, 
 First gazed upon his fair domain, 
 Then on the Cross lay down: 
 
 So thou , from out the streets of Rome 
 
 Didst turn thy failing eye 
 Unto that mount of martyrdom, 
 
 Take leave of it, and die." 
 
 Newman. 
 
 "... aut crucibus affixi, aut flammandi." — Tag. Ann, xv. 44. 
 
 The Apostle Peter, whose friends were chiefly among 
 the Jewish Christians, went to his humble quarters 
 across the Tiber, where Miriam, a Jewish widow, had 
 provided a lodging for him, his wife Plautilla, and his 
 daughter Petronilla. If he had held his life dear unto 
 himself, he would have left Rome without delay, or only 
 haye walked out at night and in secrecy. So long as 
 he stayed in the Trastevere, it was not likely that the 
 myrmidons of Tigellinus could find out his hiding-place. 
 But this he would not do. The restless energy of his 
 character rendered inaction impossible to. him, and a 
 voice ever rang in his ears from the lilied fields of 
 Galilee, "I was hungry and ye gave me meat. I was 
 thirsty, and ye gave me drink; naked, and ye clothed 
 
I 1 2 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 me: sick and in prison, and ye visited me. . . . And in- 
 asmuch as ye did it unto the least of these my brethren, 
 ye did it unto Me.'^ He asked Miriam's son to guide 
 him to the prisons, and spent the whole day among his 
 suffering brethren. Wherever he went, his presence was 
 to them as the sunlight, and the most wavering could 
 not but be confirmed by his calm wisdom, his genial 
 tenderness, and the lessons which he so freely imparted 
 to them from his personal memories of the Divine 
 Example. It needed money to secure admission into 
 their places of confinement, and Aliturus and Pomponia 
 had seen that sufficient was provided for all his needs. 
 But the inevitable result followed. The jailors noticed 
 the tumult of joy which hailed his presence, and saw 
 that he was some great leader among the Christians. 
 Tigellinus had given orders that the ringleaders of the 
 baleful superstition should be seized, and especially 
 those whom they called Apostles. His emissaries, 
 listening to the conversations of the Christians among 
 themselves, were not long in ascertaining that this was 
 Peter of Bethsaida, and that in securing him and John 
 they would 'have seized two chief personages of the en- 
 tire Christian community throughout the world, and two 
 who had been personal friends and followers of the 
 Crucified founder of the sect. Before evening the spies 
 had ascertained the quarter of the city where Peter was 
 lodged. 
 
 It was from Simon the Sorcerer that Tigellinus learnt 
 who Peter was, and how important was the place which 
 he filled in the new community. This miserable im- 
 postor — the father of all heresies — had won himself 
 wealth and power, and something not far short of adora- 
 
TWO MARTYRDOMS. II3 
 
 tion, not only in Samaria, but in many kingdoms. It 
 was owing to his detestable machinations that Drusilla, 
 the sister of Agrippa, had been persuaded to desert her 
 husband, King Azizus of Emesa, and to become the 
 mistress of FeUx, brother of Pallas, who, by his brother's 
 influence, had risen from a slave to be Procurator of 
 Judaea, and the husband, or lover, of three queens. 
 Simon had now come to Rome to push his fortunes, 
 and his keen eye had caught sight of the Apostle in the 
 streets. He had set a savage dog upon him, which in- 
 stantly became gentle when the Apostle laid his hand 
 upon its head. He was afraid of his counter-influence, 
 and still remembered with burning wrath the old days 
 when Peter, shaming him before his Samaritan votaries, 
 had overwhelmed him with the apostrophe, "Thy money 
 perish with thee!" He gave immediate notice to Tigel- 
 Hnus that the leading Christian was in Rome. He felt 
 more secure in his attempted miracles and professed in- 
 spiration, when Peter was in prison, and he was left un- 
 checked to dupe the Emperor or the gullible women of 
 the Roman aristocracy. 
 
 That evening there was a Httle meeting of Jewish 
 Christians who had met together in the house of Rufus 
 and Alexander, sons of Simon of Cyrene, to eat the 
 Supper of the Lord. The meeting was surprised, and 
 many were thrown into bonds. But Rufus, at the first 
 sound of alarm, hurried the Apostle to his lodging by a 
 path at the back of the house. Before they reached it, 
 Miriam's son, Nazarius, a bright and active boy, met 
 them with the warning that his mother's house had been 
 seized; but that Plautilla and Petronilla, being unknown, 
 had taken refuge in the house of the Samaritan Thallus. 
 
 Darkness and Dawn. III. 8 
 
114 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 The weeping Christians entreated Peter to fly from 
 Rome while there yet was time: for the brethren at 
 Rome he could do nothing more; to stay among them 
 meant death, and his life was sorely needed by the 
 Church of God. Overcome by their entreaties, and 
 those of his wife and daughter, he started at the grey 
 dawn with the young Nazarius for his guide, and pro- 
 ceeded about two miles on the Appian Way. There, as 
 Nazarius afterwards described the scene, a light seemed 
 to shine round them; the Apostle stopped as if amazed, 
 fell on his knees with uplifted hands, spoke earnest 
 words, and then, with wet eyes, said, "We must return, 
 my boy. It is the will of Christ." To him he said no 
 more; but he afterwards told his fellow- Apostle that 
 (near the spot where now stands the little church of 
 " Dominej quo vadis?'') he had seen a vision of Christ 
 walking towards Rome, and bearing His Cross. "Whither 
 goest thou, Lord?" he asked, in amazement. "I go to 
 Rome," He said, "to be crucified again." "Lord, I re- 
 turn," said the Apostle, "to be crucified with Thee." 
 And the Vision smiled upon him, and vanished. 
 
 So Peter went back with the boy to the house of 
 Thallus, and next day began to visit the prisons once 
 more. Seeking for Miriam to console her, and tell her 
 of the safety of her son, he found that she was a pris- 
 oner. He had hardly entered the first dungeon when 
 he was roughly arrested, and carried off to the rock- 
 hewn Tullianum. He was chained to the floor beside 
 his brother- Apostle John, in that damp and dreary vault. 
 There King Jugurtha, before he was strangled, had com- 
 plained so bitterly of the cold; there the brave Gaulish 
 patriot, Vercingetorix, had been led aside from Julius 
 
TWO MARTYRDOMS. II5 
 
 Caesar's triumph to pay the forfeit of his life; there the 
 Catilinarian conspirators, Lentulus and Cethegus, had 
 expiated their crimes. Fervently did the Apostles em- 
 brace one another, and between the two there blos- 
 somed up reminiscences of early days, infinitely tender 
 and sacred. They talked of the summer hours when 
 they had played in boyhood on the strip of silver sand 
 beside the limpid lake at Bethsaida; of the fisherboats, 
 and draughts of fish, and straining nets, in the years 
 when they were partners together; of bright Capernaum, 
 with its marble synagogue, throwing its white reflection 
 on the waves lit with the rose of eventide; of the green 
 hills beyond, with the naked demoniacs among the 
 tombs. Then they spoke of the time when they had 
 gone with Andrew and Nathanael to see the Prophet of 
 the Wilderness, whose notes of warning had made the 
 flinty echoes ring with the preaching of Repentance, 
 Then, with hushed voices, in regions of sacred thought 
 where we may not follow them, they spoke of the Days 
 of the Sofi of Man. 
 
 They who looked down into that vault from the 
 upper aperture would have seen a rocky chamber, 
 lighted only by one iron lamp, bare of all but the 
 merest necessaries. The prisoners had nothing but a 
 water jar, and two wooden seats, and mats upon the 
 rocky floor, on which at night they could stretch their 
 cramped and wearied limbs, and which Pomponia had 
 bribed the jailor for permission to supply. And in this 
 cell would have been seen two men of Jewish aspect 
 and poor clothing, of whom the elder had exceeded 
 man's threescore years and ten, and the younger was 
 long past^ life's prime. Chilly, and in chains, and fed 
 
 8* 
 
I I 6 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 only on bread and water, and the leaders of a cause 
 on which the world poured its most passionate execra- 
 tion, they yet felt perfect trust in God. With Emperor 
 and mob alike arrayed against them, and with hundreds 
 of their brethren in the same evil case, and with Death 
 in its ghastliest form striding visibly upon them, amid 
 what looked like the extreme of uttermost failure — 
 might not even their enemies have pitied them? Pity? 
 Nay, Nero might have given all the kingdoms of the 
 earth and the glory of them, and Seneca have bartered 
 all his wisdom and his wealth, for one hour of their 
 radiant serenity, of their unshaken peace ! 
 
 In the evening the jailor, Martinianus — who had been 
 so much touched by their bearing, and by all that he 
 had heard from them as they talked, that he was 
 already in heart almost a Christian — came, full of sor- 
 row, to tell them that on the morrow they should die. 
 To his amazement a Hght as of heaven dawned upon 
 their faces, and they turned and looked on each other 
 with a smile. They, asked him in what way they were 
 to suffer. He either was uninformed or shrank from 
 telling them, and they were content that the morrow 
 should reveal it. 
 
 "I knew it, my brother, I knew it," said Peter. 
 "Again and again a Voice has repeated in my dreams, 
 * Verily I say to thee. When thou wast young thou 
 girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest; 
 but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy 
 hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee 
 whither thou wouldest not.' And I am not troubled 
 that I know not yet by what death I shall glorify God. 
 But thou, my brother, shalt not die yet." 
 
TWO MARTYRDOMS. II7 
 
 "How that may be I know not," replied the other, 
 deeply musing. "But to us to live is to die. Said He 
 not, *He who is near Me is near the fire; he who is far 
 from Me is far from the kingdom'?" 
 
 The jailor had told them truly. The execution of 
 the Christians was to be hurried on with all speed, for 
 Nero had on hand the weighty business of supervising 
 the reconstruction of his capital and of his Golden 
 House. He could only recover the popularity necessary 
 for these undertakings by sacrificing a holocaust of 
 victims to assuage the popular suspicions. And the 
 most diaboHc feature of this massacre of the innocent 
 was to be that they were not only to be slain, but that 
 their tortures were to subserve the amusement of the 
 people. The solemn moment of each Christian's death 
 was to be the motive for delighted acclamations and 
 shouts of laughter — in which, surely, all the demons 
 joined! To any feelings less exalted, to any hope less 
 fervent than theirs, it would have been the most in- 
 tolerable aggravation to die amid Pagan pageants and 
 brutal idleness, insulted by bacchanalia of revelry and 
 sanguinary pomp. 
 
 But the inventiveness of cruelty which Tigellinus and 
 Nero studied and planned together amid the faint, un- 
 avaihng remonstrances of Poppaea, had to be hastened, 
 for the special reason that already their victims were 
 beginning to escape them fast through the narrow gate 
 of death. Owing to the suffocating atmosphere of over- 
 peopled prisons in the malarious autumn air, a danger- 
 ous form of typhoid had broken out among the Christ- 
 ians. Not a few had died, robbed, as they feared, of 
 the crown of martyrdom. It had required all the wis- 
 
I I 8 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 dom and tenderness of their fellows to persuade them 
 that they had deserved no less than others the longed- 
 for amaranth, and that they would not be losers by not 
 surviving until that Second Coming which many of them 
 were expecting from hour to hour. Tigellinus was not 
 more anxious to bestow than they to receive the death 
 of violence. All Nero's aims would be frustrated, if, 
 with so great a multitude of victims ready for them, 
 the wild beasts of the amphitheatre, human as well as 
 animal, were baulked of their infernal festival and their 
 infernal joy. 
 
 Pending, therefore, the necessary preparations to deal 
 with the rest in mass, bizarre and insulting forms of 
 death were devised for the leaders on the following day. 
 Notice was given that of the two Jewish ringleaders of 
 the Christian sect, whom they called Apostles, one would 
 be crucified head downwards by the obelisk in the 
 Circus on the Mons Vaticanus, under the terebinth tree, 
 and that the other would be flung into a caldron of 
 boiling oil on the Latin Road. 
 
 And that night a great joy was permitted them. 
 Tliey had noticed that again and again Martinianus had 
 not only shown them kindnesses to which the prisoners 
 of the Tullianum were little accustomed, but also that 
 he had humbly lingered in their presence, had asked 
 permission to Hsten to them when they spake of Jesus, 
 had put many questions to them, had evidently felt in 
 his heart some stirrings of heavenly grace. That night 
 he came to them, and, falling on his knees, said that 
 they had taught him to believe in Christ, and begged 
 baptism at their hands. The spring was there welling 
 up, as it still does, from its native rock. Nothing hin- 
 
TWO MARTYRDOMS. IIQ 
 
 dered. Martinianus received baptism at the hands of 
 the Apostles, and afterwards died a martyr. 
 
 The morning dawned sulphurously hot, and there 
 seemed to be menace and meaning in the sky which 
 glowed overhead like molten copper. At the entrance 
 of the Tullian vault the Apostles enfolded one another 
 in a long farewell embrace. They reminded each other, 
 with faces which smiled through the tears of parting, of 
 the blessings and words of Christ, and, being then 
 rudely separated, were led in opposite directions by two 
 decurions with their soldiers, amid accompanying throngs. 
 The places of execution had been fixed in order that 
 spectators might have their free choice of delightful 
 horror, and that the division of the multitudes might 
 enable all to have a good view. 
 
 A fresh trial awaited the elder Apostle. He had 
 hardly been set free from his chains, that he might 
 walk to the place of execution with his hands tied 
 behind his back, when he saw his wife, who was also 
 being led on her way to die. Brief, and free from all 
 anguish, were the words that they interchanged. 
 
 "Be of good cheer," he said, "true yokefellow. He 
 will be with thee who raised thy mother from the great 
 fever at Capernaum. I rejoice that thou, too, art going 
 home." 
 
 "Farewell, my beloved," she replied, in a firm voice; 
 "I am not afraid. In one short hour we shall be with 
 Him where He is." 
 
 He cast one long look upon her, and said in Hebrew, 
 "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow 
 of death I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me; Thy 
 rod and Thy staff they comfort me." And when they 
 
I20 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 were parted he still turned round to her once more, and 
 said, "Oh, remember the Lord!" 
 
 Most of the spectators who accompanied the pro- 
 cession had seen the then common spectacle of cruci- 
 fixion; but to see a man crucified head downwards was 
 a novelty sufficient to have assembled all the dregs of 
 the populace, but for the counter-attraction at what, for 
 the sake of brevity, we will call the Latin Gate.* In 
 point of fact, Nero had read in Seneca's "Consolation 
 to Marcia'' "^"^ that tyrants had been known to adopt 
 this grotesque form of cruelty, and he himself suggested 
 it to Tigellinus, and said that he meant to witness it. 
 When St. Peter was told what awaited him, he only 
 smiled. He well knew that what had been intended 
 for insult was overruled to him for mercy. He would 
 be spared the long unspeakable pangs of lingering 
 death. On the ordinary cross he might have lived for 
 three days in complications of agony, but crucified head 
 downwards, he knew that in a very short time he would 
 pass from unconsciousness to death. 
 
 Nero, as he had promised, was present to see the 
 new sight. While the cross was being prepared, Peter 
 caught sight of the Emperor, and lifting the right hand, 
 which for a moment the executioner had loosened, fixed 
 his gaze on him till he shrank. 
 
 He spoke not, but one of the Christians, who had 
 noticed the Emperor's alarm, exclaimed — 
 
 "O murderer of the saints, yet a little time hence, 
 
 * The Latin Gate did not at this time exist. It was in the wall 
 of Aurelian, of which the date is a.d. 271. But it is possible that 
 tradition may have had reason for fixing on this locaUty. 
 
 ** Sen. Consol, ad Marc. 20, 
 
TWO MARTYRDOMS. 121 
 
 and thou, too, shalt be summoned before the bar of 
 God/' 
 
 "Crucify him!'' said Nero, passionately. "Stop his 
 ill-omened and blaspheming mouth!" 
 
 But the speaker had shrunk back into the dense 
 multitude. 
 
 They nailed St. Peter to the cross, and lifted it with 
 his head downwards; but while the brutal heathen 
 laughed, and the fear of death could not suppress the 
 wail of the Christians, he said only — and they were the 
 last words of the great Apostle — "I rejoice that ye 
 crucify me thus, for my Master's sake. I am much un- 
 worthy to die in the same manner as He died." 
 
 The old man passed speedily and almost painlessly 
 away, and in the glimmering, flashing sky, over which, 
 in the far distance, began to roll the chariot wheels of 
 gathering storm, the brethren thought that they saw the 
 wings of angels and shadows of the avengers. 
 
 The Christians always perplexed and irritated their 
 pagan persecutors by behaving in a manner the very 
 opposite to what was expected. After their first shud- 
 dering emotion at witnessing the martyrdom of their great 
 Apostle, they seemed rather radiant than depressed. 
 But the reason for this was that their young deacon, 
 Clemens, speaking to them in Greek, said, "I see him, 
 not head downwards, but upright on the cross, and 
 the angels crown him with roses and lilies, and the 
 Lord is putting a book into his hands from which he 
 reads." 
 
 It was natural that they should desire to keep his 
 mortal remains. Marcellus, who had been a pupil of 
 Simon Magus, but whom Peter had converted, obtained 
 
122 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 his body from the executioner for a great sum of money, 
 bathed it in milk and wine, and had it embalmed. 
 That night they conveyed it to a spot, secretly remem- 
 bered, at the foot of the Vatican hill. 
 
 Marcellus watched by the grave that night; but as 
 he watched he thought that the Apostle came to him 
 in vision, and said, "Let the dead bury their dead. 
 Preach thou the gospel of God." On that spot was 
 reared the humble "trophy," or memorial cell, which 
 the Presbyter Gains saw there in the second century. 
 Thence, in due time, the relics were removed to that 
 unequalled shrine, where the tomb which enclosed them 
 is encircled by ever-burning lights, and visited century 
 after century by the devotion of tens of thousands. 
 Fools counted his life madness and his end to be 
 without honour. How is he numbered among the chil- 
 dren of God, and his lot is among the saints! 
 
 The procession which accompanied the Apostle 
 John had taken longer to arrive at the scene of martyr- 
 dom. The awful heat of the morning, the more crowded 
 parts of the city through which they had to pass, the 
 greater throngs which accompanied them, had caused 
 delay. The Apostle walked with firm step in the midst 
 of the ten soldiers. Though his hands were tied behind 
 his back, his appearance struck all beholders with in- 
 voluntary dread. The high forehead, the long hair 
 which streamed over his shoulders, the perfect self- 
 possession, the beauty of holiness, gave to his move- 
 ments an unconscious majesty. His face was mostly 
 lifted heavenward in prayer, but whenever he turned on 
 those around him his bright and searching glance, their 
 eyes fell before him. If any began to jeer at him and 
 
TWO MARTYRDOMS. 123 
 
 Utter words of ribald blasphemy, he had but to look 
 towards them, and in spite of themselves they stopped 
 short. An unwonted hush fell on the throng which 
 surged around the soldiers — a silence of which the mul- 
 titudes themselves could give no account. 
 
 "He is a sorcerer, that is certain," said Tullius 
 Senecio as he looked down on the passing procession 
 from a window in the house of Crispinilla. 
 
 "He must be," she answered. "I never saw the 
 crowd of the forum so strangely quiet." 
 
 "Let me see the Christian," said a boy in the crowd. 
 "Soldier, Uft me up that I may see him." 
 
 "What, Gervasius? How camest thou here? But 
 thou art a soldier's son, and I will humour thee," said 
 the decurio. "Thy father and I were comrades in 
 Palestine, and it was once his lot to see a scene after 
 which he never had one happy day." 
 
 He Hfted the boy in his arms, and he gazed long. 
 
 "Is that the Christian?" he said. "Yon man does 
 not look like an enemy of the gods, or an eater of 
 children's flesh." 
 
 The Apostle heard him, and turned towards him 
 with a soft light of blessing in his eyes. 
 
 "I should not mind being like thee," said the boy, 
 "and I will not go to see thee killed." 
 
 Fifty years later he remembered that gentle glance 
 when in a later persecution he, too, was led out to die. 
 
 At the scene of execution a high scaflblding had 
 been erected so that many thousands could be gratified 
 by witnessing the new form of death. On the sum- 
 mit, on ten rows of bricks, had been kindled a fire, 
 and over this was placed a huge caldron of iron, full 
 
124 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 of boiling oil. Not blenching in a single feature, with 
 a step of perfect dignity, without assistance, without the 
 slightest tremor, the Apostle mounted the wooden steps 
 and stood in the sight of all, the fire flinging its red 
 glare over him as the executioner tore oflf his outer 
 robe. 
 
 But meanwhile the storm, gathering into its bosom 
 the fierce heat of that day in late August, had begun 
 to burst over Rome. The thunderclouds passed from 
 threatening purple into midnight blackness, and roll 
 after roll of thunder throbbed and crashed as though to 
 menace the guilty city with the doom of its congregated 
 iniquity. Then blazed forth the Hghtning, and filled 
 the air, and ran along the ground. So tremendous were 
 the explosions of sound, whose rending, cracking, and 
 splitting outbursts settled into a long continued roar, 
 and so vivid were the flashes of forked lightning which 
 gleamed like dazzling dagger-stabs aimed at an enemy 
 who must at all costs be slain, that the soldiers and the 
 executioners and the spectators grew livid with dread. 
 Women shrieked and cowered, and clung to their hus- 
 bands, and men looked round them uneasily, and some 
 began to hurry away, and the hearts of all were benumbed 
 as with some strange misgiving. 
 
 An exceptionally terrific crash of the artillery of 
 heaven, a flash of levin which seemed to wrap them all 
 in a white robe of dazzHng flame, a shriek from hun- 
 dreds of voices! And when the crash ended, the Chris- 
 tians were murmuring together in awestruck voices, 
 Maranatha! Maranatha! and there arose scattered cries 
 from the multitude. "He is a sorcerer! Stay the exe- 
 cution ! We are all dead men ! The wrath of the gods 
 
TWO MARTYRDOMS. I 25 
 
 is upon us!" The ancients, from ignorance combined 
 with superstition, were far more terrified than the mod- 
 ems by thunderstorms. It was evident that they were 
 in the centre of the storm. The scaffold and the caldron 
 formed its inmost focus, having attracted the electric 
 fluid by their woodwork and iron. The decurion him- 
 self and his soldiers and the executioners were terrified. 
 They dared not disobey their orders, yet amid the 
 general terror they seemed paralysed into helplessness. 
 Aliturus, hoping that he might in some way render some 
 kindness, had asked to be one of those spectators, of 
 higher position than the mob, who were allowed to stand 
 on the scaffold. Seizing his opportunity, he hastily 
 whispered, "The executioner has untied your hands. 
 You have friends in the crowd. Escape! Fear not the 
 lightning — this skin of a seal which I brought under my 
 robe, expecting a thunderstorm, is an amulet against 
 lightning." 
 
 "I thank thee, my son," said the Apostle; "unless 
 the will of God be clearly manifested, I cannot fly. And 
 if we trust in God we need no amulet, for neither the 
 pestilence nor the arrow can hurt us." 
 
 Again the thunder roared, again they were wrapped 
 in a blinding flash. Hardly conscious what he did, the 
 Apostle uplifted his right hand. It became the nucleus 
 of the electric phenomenon known as St. Elmo's fire, 
 and at once appeared to burn like a torch with lambent 
 flame. A cry of fresh terror rose from the heathen 
 multitude. "Fly, fly!" they exclaimed; "he is a sorcerer 
 or a god. He lifts against us his flaming hand, tipped 
 with the fire of Castor and Pollux. We shall all be 
 
126 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 killed by fire from heaven. The spot is accursed. It 
 is a bid^ntal." "^ 
 
 A rush took place, and the crowd fled promiscuously 
 in every direction. The soldiers could not resist the 
 contagion. They leapt down and fled, and the decurio 
 followed, shouting to them in vain. The executioners 
 joined the soldiers in their flight. For a moment the 
 Apostle and Aliturus stood alone on the scaffold, and 
 then hurried down the steps. Scarcely had they reached 
 the ground when the lightning struck the metal caldron 
 and tore it from its chains. It fell with a mighty crash, 
 and the oil streaming over the flame burst up in a fierce 
 blaze which would very rapidly have reduced the whole 
 scaffold to ashes had not the deluging rain begun to 
 fall in cataracts, quenching the fire, but leaving a charred 
 and shapeless ruin. 
 
 The news was brought to Nero and Tigellinus that 
 evening by multitudes of witnesses when the storm had 
 cleared and the heavens had resumed their azure sleep. 
 They shared the superstition of the mob, and thought 
 that, by magic powers unusually terrible, the Apostle 
 had brought down the wrath of heaven. At the same 
 time this could have nothing to do with the Christians 
 in general, for had not the execution of the other Apostle 
 been carried out with perfect ease? They were officially 
 informed that the Apostle, of his own free will, had 
 thought it right to return to the door of the Tullianum 
 and surrender himself as a prisoner. Such strange 
 security deepened the impression that he could wield 
 supernatural powers. Afraid to detain him in Rome, 
 
 * Note 46, 
 
TWO MARTYRDOMS. 12^ 
 
 Nero ordered him to banishment in the rocky ^gean 
 island of Patmos. * 
 
 Thither the Apostle was conveyed, and there, gazing 
 on the sea that burned Uke glass in the sunlight, he 
 wrote his Apocalypse. In that strange book we can still 
 read the echo of the horror kindled in the heart of an 
 eyewitness by an Emperor who had degenerated into a 
 portent of iniquity, fighting with empoisoned breath and 
 dragon-like fury against the saints of God. The Apoca- 
 l)rpse is the "thundering reverberation" of the Apostle's 
 mighty spirit, smitten into wrathful dissonance amid its 
 heavenly music by the plectrum of the Neronian perse- 
 cution. All the horrors of that frightful age of storms, 
 and eruptions, and earthquakes, and falling meteors, and 
 famine, and pestilence, and threatenings of Parthian in- 
 vasion and imminent massacres of civil war, threw 
 gigantic and blood-red shadows across the Apostle's 
 page. The air was being shattered by the trumpet- 
 blasts of doom which would bury in flame and ruin 
 alike the Harlot City on the seven hills which had made 
 herself so drunken with the blood of the saints, and the 
 Holy City which had become a den of murderers — 
 which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt — where the 
 Lord was crucified. When he wrote his vision, three or 
 four years later, the souls of those who had been slain 
 in the great Neronian tribulation for the Word of God 
 and the testimony which they held were still under the 
 altar, and cried, "How long, O Lord, how long dost 
 thou not avenge our blood on them that dwell on the 
 earth?" But white robes were given them, and they 
 were bidden to rest yet a Uttle while till the number of 
 * Note 47. — St. John banished by Nero. 
 
128 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 their brethren was fulfilled. And afterwards one of the 
 four-and-twenty elders who sat around the throne asked 
 him, "Who are these which .are arrayed in white robes? 
 and whence came they?" And he said unto him, "Sir, 
 thou knowest." And the Elder answered, "These are 
 they which came out of the great tribulation, and 
 have washed their robes and made them white in the 
 blood of the Lamb." 
 
LIVING TORCHES. 12g 
 
 CHAPTER LVI. 
 LIVING TORCHES. 
 
 ovsiSia/ioTg re xal 'd'kiyjsoi ^sarQi^o/usvoi. — Hebr. X. 33. 
 
 *'Sec. Br. O night and shades! 
 
 How are ye joined with hell in triple knot. 
 
 Is this the confidence 
 You gave me, brother? 
 
 Eld. Br. Yes, and keep it still. 
 
 If this fail 
 The pillared firmament is rottenness, 
 And earth's base built on stubble." 
 
 Milton, Comus. 
 
 The news of the Neronian persecution did not reach 
 St. Paul at once. When he left the hospitable home of 
 Philemon he first rejoined Timothy at Ephesus. He left 
 him to arrange the affairs of the Church of Ephesus, 
 and Onesimus took the place which had been filled by 
 the son of Eunice in former years. He became the 
 Apostle's travelling companion, to lend him the affec- 
 tionate attendance now necessary to his age and in- 
 firmities. It was not till they reached Corinth that they 
 heard the heart-shaking intelligence that the Christian 
 Church at Rome had been smitten by Antichrist as with 
 red-hot thunderbolts. Though no accurate details reached 
 them, Paul's first impulse was to fly to the succour of 
 
 Darkness and Dawn* III* 9 
 
130 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 his Roman brethren; but Titus of Corinth, who was with 
 him, urged him to remember that two of his brother 
 Apostles were at Rome; that the persecution was now 
 certain to break out in nearly every Church of the Em- 
 pire, and that his presence was more needed in Crete 
 and in the Churches of Asia and Europe of which he 
 had been the immediate founder. Anxious to confront 
 the growth of subtle heresies, more perilous in his eyes 
 than persecution, he reluctantly abandoned his wish to 
 return to Italy, and sailed to Crete. It was some time 
 before he learnt that St. Peter had sealed his testimony 
 by martyrdom, and that St. John was a prisoner at 
 Patmos. 
 
 But Onesimus was distressed at heart by the perils 
 which would befall the beloved daughter of Nereus, and 
 he entreated the Apostle to let him be the bearer to 
 Rome of his messages of consolation and encourage- 
 ment. Receiving ready permission, he hurried to the 
 capital by the earliest ship, and arrived on the very day 
 of the storm which had witnessed the crucifixion of St. 
 Peter and the miraculous deliverance of the Beloved 
 Disciple. 
 
 With amazement he saw Rome lying in ruins and 
 the Christian cause apparently destroyed for ever. 
 "Christian" was now the synonym of incendiary and 
 desperate malefactor. His heart sank within him as he 
 went from house to house only to find that the Christian 
 inhabitants had disappeared. So great a multitude had 
 been arrested that for the time being the prisons were 
 the only churches. He went to the palace of Aulus 
 Plautius, thinking that there he was certain to receive 
 information; but there, too, he found that scarcely one 
 
LIVING TORCHES. I3I 
 
 of the Christian slaves was left, and that Pomponia her- 
 self had caught the virulent typhoid which had broken 
 out among the crowded sufferers, and lay unconscious 
 and dangerously ill. 
 
 Risking everything, he visited the prisons, and in one 
 of them he found Nereus, wasted and haggard, but still 
 animated by a cheerful courage. From him he learnt, 
 with a deep sense of relief, that at the first outbreak of 
 danger he had sent Junia to the safe refuge of Aricia. 
 Pudens, when he sailed for Britain, felt a prescient in- 
 tuition of the days which were to come, and told the 
 Christian members of his household that they might al- 
 ways find a place of shelter with Dromo in the little 
 country farm. Thither Junia had gone with a few others, 
 obedient to the wish and command of her father, though 
 reluctant to leave him. There Onesimus found her, and 
 carried to her the blessing and the messages of Nereus. 
 Nereus sent her word that he was doomed to die, as 
 they were all doomed to die, though by what form of 
 death was at yet unknown to them. He bade her to 
 stay at Aricia. She could do nothing for him, and to 
 come to Rome would only be to throw away her life. 
 In the few lines he was able to write to her he com- 
 mended Onesimus. He confessed that in former days 
 the youth had been altogether displeasing to him, but 
 now he was a changed character. Paulus had won him 
 back to the paths of hoHness. He had been illuminated. 
 He had tasted of the heavenly calling, and had devoted 
 himself to the personal tendance of the aged Apostle. 
 In Rome he had given proof of his courage and con- 
 sistency by showing pity for the prisoners and not being 
 ashamed of their chains. It was no time now to talk 
 
132 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 of marrying or giving in marriage, for surely the day of 
 the Lord was very nigh at hand; yet, if Junia loved the 
 youth, Nereus would not forbid their plighting troth to 
 each other, and awaiting the day when the marriage 
 might be possible. And this he granted the more readily, 
 for he feared that very soon Junia would be left alone, 
 a helpless and friendless Christian maiden in the midst 
 of an evil world. 
 
 So the lovers met, but the interchange of their 
 common vows was solemn and sacred, under the darken- 
 ing skies of persecution, and as it were in the valley of 
 the shadow of death. For Junia entreated Onesimus 
 to return to Rome and do his utmost to watch over her 
 father and to save him if by any means it were possible 
 or lawful. He bade her farewell, and found time to 
 pay one brief visit to the temple at Aricia that he might 
 express his gratitude to the priest of Virbius for having 
 spared his hfe. Alas, he was too late! A new Rex 
 Nemorensis — the ex-gladiator Rutilus — reigned in Croto's 
 room. He had surprised and murdered him the even- 
 ing before, and Onesimus saw the gaunt corpse of Croto 
 outstretched upon its wooden bier awaiting burial in the 
 plot assigned to the succession of murdered priests. 
 
 Sick at heart, Onesimus hurried from the dark 
 precincts, and by the morning dawn he was in Rome. 
 
 On that day the terrible massacres began which were 
 to baptise the infant Church in a river of blood, and 
 to consecrate Rome in the memory of Christendom as 
 the city of slaughtered saints. For there Paganism was 
 to display herself, naked and not ashamed, a harlot 
 holding in her hand the brimming goblet of her wicked- 
 ness, drunken with the blood of the beloved of 
 
LIVING TORCHES. 1 33 
 
 God. Mankind was to see exhibited a series of start- 
 ling contrasts: human nature at its best and sweetest; 
 human nature at its vilest and worst: — unchecked 
 power smitten with fatal impotence; unarmed weakness 
 clothed with irresistible strength: — pleasure and self-in- 
 dulgence drowned in wretchedness; misery and martyr- 
 dom exulting with joy unspeakable, and full of glory. 
 On the one side was the splendour and civilisation of 
 the City of the Dragon revelling in brutal ferocity and 
 lascivious pride; on the other side the down- trodden and 
 the despised of the City of God rose to a height of 
 nobleness which no philosophy had attained, and en- 
 riched with sovereign virtues the ideal of mankind. 
 While the deified lord of the empire of darkness with 
 his nobles and his myrmidons sank themselves below 
 the level of the beasts, paupers and nameless slaves, 
 young boys and feeble girls towered into tragic dignity, 
 faced death with unflinching heroism, and showed that 
 even amid satyrs and demons humanity may still be meas- 
 ured with the measure of a man — that is, of the angel. 
 Herein lay the secret of the victory of Christianity. 
 In the Rome of Nero heathendom showed the worst 
 that she could be, and the worst that she could do; and 
 Christianity showed, coinstantaneously, that manhood 
 can preserve its inherent grandeur when it seems to be 
 trampled into the very mire under the hoofs of swine. 
 The sweetness and the dignity with which the Christians 
 suffered kindled not only amazement but admiration in 
 many a Pagan breast. It was seen that with the Church 
 in its poverty and shame, not with the world in its 
 gorgeous criminality, lay the secret of all man's happi- 
 ness and hope. Many a senator, as he looked on the 
 
134 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 saturnalia of lubricity and blood, felt that the Christian 
 slave-girl, tied naked to a stake in the amphitheatre for 
 the wild beasts to devour, was more blessed than the 
 jewelled lady by his side, whom he knew to be steeped 
 in baseness; and there were youths to whose taste the 
 apples of the Dead Sea had already crumbled into dust, 
 who in their secret hearts felt themselves nothing less 
 than abject compared with those Christian boys who, 
 with the light of heaven on their foreheads and the 
 name of Jesus on their lips, faced without flinching the 
 grotesque horror of their doom. 
 
 But Nero and Tigellinus, and those who advised with 
 them, never wavered in their hideous policy of pur- 
 chasing popularity by making the murder of thousands 
 of the innocent subserve the brutal passions of the 
 multitude. They thought to abase the Christians, and 
 they kindled round their brows an aureole of light. 
 They thought to flatter the people, but made them vile 
 by a carnival which showed that their natures had be- 
 come a mixture of the tiger and the ape. 
 
 The jubilee of massacre began with cruel flagellations, 
 for the intention was to combine amusement with utility 
 and to represent these unnumbered agonies as a festival 
 of expiation. So low had the Romans sunk since the 
 days when they had believed that the wrath of the gods 
 had been kindled because before some public games a 
 master had scourged his slave round the arena! 
 
 As they wished to add derision to torture, it did not 
 suffice them that at these piacular displays men should 
 merely fight with wild beasts who would soon be glutted 
 with the multitude of victims. A novelty was devised 
 for the delight of the spectators. 
 
LIVING TORCHES. I 35 
 
 The first batch of martyrs were clad in the skins of 
 wolves and leopards and torn to death by hordes of 
 fierce and hungry dogs. 
 
 Others had to take part in mythologic operas. 
 Among them was the soldier Urbanus. Clad in the 
 guise of Hercules on QEta, he was burned alive upon a 
 funeral pyre. Another martyr, Celsus, had to figure as 
 Mucins Scaevola, and to burn his hand to ashes in a 
 flame upon an altar, with the promise that his life should 
 be given him if, in carrying out his historic role, he 
 would voluntarily consume his right hand, and not once 
 shrink. Vitalis had to take his part in the favourite 
 drama of Laureolus, in which character, after being 
 made a laughing-stock, he was first crucified, and then, 
 while yet living, devoured upon the cross by a bear. It 
 was thought a favourable opportunity to try experiments. 
 Simon Magus, after securing the arrest of Peter, had 
 been admitted to an interview with Poppaea, whose 
 superstitious turn of mind inclined her to consult every 
 charlatan who visited the capital, and through her he 
 gained admittance to the Emperor. He awakened Nero's 
 interest in a machine by which he pretended that he 
 could enable men to fly. Nero determined to test the 
 capabilities of the machine in corpore vili. The story 
 of Daedalus and Icarus should be enacted, and as a 
 slim and graceful youth was needed for the part of 
 Icarus, poor Nazarius, the son of Miriam, was selected 
 for this character. A lofty wooden tower was erected 
 in the mimic scene. The wild beasts were roaming 
 loose in the amphitheatre, and if either Daedalus or 
 Icarus was not killed by a fall from the tower, he would 
 be devoured in the arena. The martyr Amplias, who 
 
136 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 represented Daedalus, was precipitated at once, and 
 killed by a lion. The broad wings of the machine up- 
 bore for a moment the light form of Nazarius as he 
 sprang from the tower, but he fell on the very podium 
 of the Emperor, and so close beside him that, to the 
 horror of all, and with an omen of the worst import, he 
 spattered the white robe of Nero with his blood.* 
 
 Unsated by these scenes the spectators demanded the 
 sacrifice of the women victims. Hundreds of them were 
 crowded in cells under the amphitheatre, and were in- 
 formed that they were to appear in a series of pageants 
 representing the torments of the dead. The spectacle 
 was deemed impious by many, but it had been exhibited 
 by Egyptians and Ethiopians in the days of Caligula. 
 Fifty of these poor female martyrs were to be clothed in 
 scarlet mantles as the daughters of Danaus, and, after 
 undergoing nameless insults, were to be stabbed by an 
 actor who personated Lynceus.** To many of them it 
 was an anguish worse than death that they should have 
 to bear part in dramas which represented the idolatries 
 of heathendom; but Prisca, the wife of Aquila, who had 
 returned from Ephesus to Rome with her husband on 
 matters connected with their trade, visited the sufferers 
 in prison, and effectually consoled them. This Jewish 
 matron, to whom with her husband had been granted 
 the honour of no inconspicuous share in the founding 
 of the three great Churches of Rome, of Corinth, and 
 of Ephesus, had not been arrested by any informer, 
 owing to long residence in Achaia and Asia. She toid 
 the poor women that resistance was in vain, and that 
 no insult inflicted on them by the heathen could dim 
 
 * Note 48. — Icarus. ** Note 49. — Danaides. 
 
LIVING TORCHES. I 37 
 
 the lustre of their martyr-crown. Cheered by her calm 
 wisdom, they paced across the stage carrying vases on 
 their shoulders, and bore their fate without a cry. 
 
 More terrible was the destiny of others. They were 
 to enact the part of Dirce. One after another, in imita- 
 tion of the much-admired statue now known as the Far- 
 nese Bull, which had recently been brought from Rhodes, 
 they were tied by actors representing Amphion and 
 Zethus, to the horns of furious oxen, and so were tossed 
 or gored to death. They, too, were sustained by the 
 Presence of the Invisible, and the modesty of their bear- 
 ing, even in such agonies, caused a pang in the hearts 
 of all but the most hardened spectators. 
 
 At all these spectacles of shame Nero looked on. 
 There he sat day after day in the podium, lolling on 
 cushions of gold and purple, staring through the concave 
 emerald which helped his short-sightedness, and finding 
 new sensations in the spectacle of insulted innocence. 
 He was never tired of wondering whence these wretches 
 got their "blank callosity.'' And they, ere their eyes 
 opened on that other land, where they knew they should 
 gaze upon their King in His beauty, saw as their last 
 glimpse of earth, this despicable Antichrist, with his face 
 like that of a base overgrown boy, watching with greedily 
 curious stare the agony of their immolation. 
 
 But there were too many martyrs to render it easy 
 to dispose of them. After they had exhausted the in- 
 ventiveness of cruelty, after they had heaped up the 
 puticuli even to the danger of pestilence with crucified, 
 charred, and mangled corpses, at least a thousand of 
 the great multitude still rotted in the feverous prisons. 
 Then an idea truly infernal presented itself to the mind 
 
138 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 of Nero. Were not these masses of human beings sup- 
 posed to be expiating their crimes as incendiaries? But 
 the proper and congruous punishment of incendiaries 
 was the tunica molesta, or robe of pitch. He wondered 
 that he had never thought of it before! It would, in- 
 deed, be somewhat tame merely to burn alive a certain 
 number of people in succession. At first there might be 
 an agreeable sense of curiosity in studying the faces of 
 men and women in such circumstances, and in hearing 
 their groans and cries. But after watching the first 
 dozen or so, that pleasure would grow monotonous. He 
 determined to prevent the danger of any satiety in the 
 gratification by concentrating it all into one hour of 
 multiplex and complicated agony. 
 
 He possessed magnificent gardens, stretching from 
 the Vatican Hill to the Tiber. There was a circus, rich 
 with gilding and marble, of which the meta was the 
 obelisk, brought from Heliopolis, now standing in the 
 piazza of St. Peter's. He would throw open these 
 gardens to the public, for one of the nightly spectacles 
 of which he had copied the fashion from the mad Ca- 
 ligula. Everyone should wander at will about the green 
 copses, and the umbrageous retreats, and he would 
 furnish them with an illumination unseen, unheard of, in 
 the world's history before or since. It should be the 
 illumination of a thousand living torches, of which each 
 should be a martyr in his shirt of flame! 
 
 And it was done. Martyrdoms inflicted by wild 
 beasts, and dogs, and gibbets, had become tedious from 
 repetition. Here should be a new and intense sensation 
 for himself, and for all Rome, for he would be present 
 in person and enjoy to the full his hateful popularity. 
 
LIVING TORCHES. 1 39 
 
 At intervals, all along the paths, masts, strong and large, 
 were driven deep into the ground. To each of these 
 was tied a man or a woman, who were taken in throngs 
 from the pestilential and now emptied prisons. Each 
 was tied to the stake, and in front of each was put a 
 smaller stake with a sharpened point, fixed under the 
 chin, lest their heads should sink on their breasts and 
 baulk the festal sightseers from gloating on the expres- 
 sion of their dying agonies. Hundreds of Nero's slaves 
 were at work, for the preparations had all to be begun 
 many hours before the dusk fell. The last thing which 
 had to be done was to saturate the robes of the martyrs 
 with pitch and oil, and then to heap around the feet of 
 each, as high as their waists, a mass of straw and brush- 
 wood and shavings. These balefires were not to be 
 kindled till it was dark, in order that the world of Rome 
 might have complete enjoyment of the pageant and look 
 in each other's rejoicing faces by the mighty blaze. 
 
 But Onesimus had determined to do his utmost to 
 save Nereus, if nothing else was possible. Hanging 
 about the gardens in the dress of a slave, he managed 
 to gain admission by the connivance of a praetorian 
 whom he knew to be a secret Christian. Once inside 
 the precincts, he could easily escape detection among 
 the hundreds who were so busily employed. Carrying 
 now a stake, and now a bucket of pitch, and now a 
 heap of fuel, he hurried from place to place, at each 
 convenient moment whispering some bright message of 
 cheer such as St. Paul had taught him, and rewarded 
 by grateful smiles from those who were so soon to under- 
 go their awful fate. At last he saw Nereus, who, hap- 
 pily for the young man's purpose, had been fastened to 
 
140 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 a stake at the end of one of the remoter alleys. Nereus 
 deep in prayer, and dead to the things of earth, did not 
 recognise him, but started when he heard a voice whis- 
 pering to him that he should attempt to secure his es- 
 cape. 
 
 "It is impossible," said Nereus. "I am more than 
 ready to share the fate of my comrades, and to win 
 their crown." 
 
 "Nay, father," said Onesimus, "think of Junia, who, 
 if thou diest, will be left a helpless orphan in the world. 
 I dare speak no more, but be ready to fly in one in- 
 stant behind yonder shrine, if I am able to set thee 
 free." 
 
 Reconnoitring the ground, Onesimus observed that 
 the green alley where Nereus was tied was close beside 
 a wall. At no great distance beyond the wall he knew 
 that there was one of the corpse-pits into which were 
 thrown the bodies of the poor. Gliding about, he saw 
 on the ground a basket containing a hammer and large 
 nails. He snatched it up, and, hid from observation 
 behind the tangled masses of rank foliage at the back 
 of a shrine of Priapus, he drove the nails one over the 
 other between the huge disjointed stones, so as to make 
 it easy to climb the wall. Then he awaited his op- 
 portunity, which he knew would be when the crowd of 
 more than a hundred thousand spectators pushed and 
 crowded into the gardens, and the fires of death began. 
 
 He was right in all his calculations. A scene of 
 tumultuous excitement, and the hoarse murmur of in- 
 numerable voices, greeted the almost simultaneous kind- 
 ling of many of the stakes. At that very moment, be- 
 fore the executioners had reached the end of the alley, 
 
LIVING TORCHES. I4I 
 
 Onesimus, gliding behind Nereus, cut his thongs, sHpped 
 the chain over his head, tore off the pitchy outer robe, 
 and hurrying the old man to the back of the shrine of 
 Priapus, half dragged him up the wall, and took refuge 
 in the dense gloom of a subterranean passage in the 
 dreadful burial-place. 
 
 The executioners noticed, of course, that one of 
 their victims had, by some strange unknown means, 
 escaped; but it did not greatly concern them. One 
 simply whispered to the other, "It will not be observed. 
 Let the poor cacodaemon get off. What matters it 
 to us?'' 
 
 Meanwhile on every side the flames shot up around 
 the stakes, and glared with hideous brightness, and sent 
 up huge tongues of waving Hght, and each stake be- 
 came a torch of hell, and black smoke swirled around 
 them, and groans and cries of anguish arose which 
 were drowned in bursts of music and laughter and 
 ribald songs. And all the while the moon was silvering 
 the rich foliage, and the stars shone down with peace- 
 ful rays over that revelry of hell, and the smoke and 
 flame were to those poor sufferers as chariots of fire 
 and horses of fire to bear their souls to heaven. And 
 while the agony and madness and hilarity were at their 
 height, and the statues of obscene gods and lascivious 
 nymphs, which glimmered from beneath the trees, 
 looked like demons over whose faces the red glow 
 flickered in smiles of seeming ecstasy as they watched 
 this triumph of demoniac wickedness — at this moment 
 shouts of adulation arose, and Nero was seen, his face 
 wreathed in smiles, in the dress of a charioteer. With 
 some of his basest creatures round him, he mingled 
 
142 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 familiarly with the mob, exchanged jokes with them, 
 and stood peering with them into the ghastly faces in 
 which flickered longest the gleam of life. 
 
 "What think you of these sarmenticii, these semaxzi?" 
 he asked repeatedly of the plebeian throng. 
 
 "Call us * faggot-birds,' and * stake-fellows,' " said 
 one of the martyrs, who calmly awaited the rekindling 
 of his stake from which, by some chance, the flame had 
 expired. "These faggots with which we are burned, 
 these stakes to which we are bound, are our robes of 
 victory, our triumphal chariot."* 
 
 "Child of the Devil," exclaimed another, before his 
 robe had caught the flames, "I would not, even at this 
 moment, change my lot with thine." 
 
 "Antichrist," murmured another, "thine hour is 
 nigh." 
 
 Nero shrank before the prophecy, but afterwards 
 sprang upon his chariot, and seeking the applause which 
 rose like a storm wherever he appeared, drove his 
 four horses round every part of the circus, and the broad 
 paths of the gardens, until the last human torch had 
 flared out, and the multitude began to stream away. 
 
 It was an amazing thing that Pagan fathers and 
 mothers should have taken even their children to see 
 such sights as these. But, inured as they were to 
 blood and anguish by the harrowing homicides of the 
 amphitheatre, their hearts in these matters were "brazed 
 by damned custom." And so it happened that a Roman 
 knight named CorneHus Tacitus had led his little son, 
 a grave child of eight years old, to walk through the 
 
 * Tert. ApoL 50. Note 50. 
 
LIVING TORCHES. 1 43 
 
 gardens of Nero on that awful night. He looked on 
 the scene with an impulse of childish pity, and asked 
 his father "whether these Christians had really set fire 
 to Rome." 
 
 "Perhaps not," said his father. 
 
 "Why, then, are they burnt alive?" he asked. 
 
 "They are criminals," said the knight; "and they 
 hate the whole human race. They are akin to the 
 Jews, and it would be no bad thing for the Empire if 
 both of those accursed superstitions were destroyed." 
 
 The young Tacitus remembered and recorded the 
 remark more than thirty years later, when he had be- 
 come a great historian. He was influenced, too, by the 
 conversation which he then heard between his father 
 and the friends who accompanied him. "These men," 
 said one of them, "die every whit as bravely as the 
 Stoics whom we so greatly admire." But the elder 
 Tacitus would not admit the analogy. "In these Chris- 
 tians," he said, "the contempt of death is mere custom, 
 or madness, or sheer obstinacy." 
 
 Seneca, too, was in those gardens or the Vatican 
 for a few moments, perplexed, horrified, miserable. 
 The Emperor had commanded his presence, as though 
 it would lend some sanction to the carnival of horror. 
 The agonising deaths of such a multitude were indeed, 
 to him, a repulsive sight, but it was not so wholly un- 
 familiar as to harrow his feehngs to their depths. What 
 struck him most, and what he has dwelt upon in his 
 obvious allusions to this monstrous execution, was the 
 inexplicable fortitude, the unflinching heroism, shown, 
 not by nobles and philosophers, but by slaves, and 
 
144 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 women, and boys, and the very dregs of the populace. 
 He pondered in vain over that disturbing problem."^ 
 
 Before an hour had passed, the stakes stood charred 
 and black, and underneath them were horrible heaps of 
 death, still keeping some awful semblance of humanity; 
 and the smoke curled and writhed about them, and 
 streams of the melted and bubbling pitch quivered with 
 small blue flames, or left black furrows on the burnt 
 grass or the trampled sand. 
 
 And thus amid foul laughter the martyrs had died 
 whose lives alone were innocent, who alone loved one 
 another and all mankind. And the moon still shed 
 her soft lustre on the scene, and the stars looked down 
 through the untroubled night, and lighted home the 
 myriads whose consciences, seared as with hot iron, 
 smote them in no wise for their share in that crime — 
 the vilest in the long annals of the world's vilest days. 
 
 The numerous and flourishing Church of Rome was 
 all but destroyed; yet on that night the seed of her 
 mighty power in the development of Christianity was 
 sown afresh. Watered by the blood of the martyrs, 
 that seed sprang into more vigorous Hfe, and rushing 
 sunwards, spead forth arms laden with fruit and foliage, 
 and grew into a giant bole, strong with the rings of a 
 thousand summers, under whose shadows and "com- 
 plicated glooms and cool impleach^d twilights," the 
 hopes and fears of generations found their refuge — 
 yes! and shall find it for evermore, unless it be severed 
 from the root, and blighted into barrenness, and the axe 
 * Sen. Epp. 15, 78. 
 
LIVING TORCHES. 1 45 
 
 be uplifted and the doom go forth, "Never fruit grow 
 upon thee more!" 
 
 And the obelisk which witnessed that night of abo- 
 mination, and which is now dedicated "To the Un- 
 known Martyrs," still towers into the clear air, and on 
 it is inscribed — 
 
 "CHRISTUS regnat: 
 FUGITE PARTES ADVERSE." 
 
 And over the ground with its groves and gardens 
 where they perished — those nameless heroes, those 
 nameless demigods — rose the vast cathedral to the 
 honour of the Christ for whom they died; and round 
 its dome is written in huge golden letters the name of 
 the Apostle who fell first before the wild beast's wrath: 
 — "I say unto thee, Thou art Peter, and on this rock 
 will I build My Church." 
 
 Darkness and Dawn. Ill, 
 
146 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER LVII. 
 A CONSPIRACY AND ITS COLLAPSE. 
 
 "Ma cruaute se lasse, et ne peut s'arreter, 
 Je veux me faire craindre, et ne fais qu'irriter, 
 Et le sang repandu de mille conjures 
 Rend mes jours plus maudits et non plus assures." 
 
 CORNEILLE, Cinna, IV. 2. 
 
 "Our emperor is a tyrant, fear'd and hated; 
 I scarce remember in his reign one day 
 Pass guiltless o'er his execrable head. 
 He thinks the sun is lost that sees not blood, 
 When none is shed, we count it holiday; 
 We who are most in favour, cannot call 
 This our own." 
 
 Dryden, The Cruelty of Tyranny^ V. 15-16. 
 
 The persecution of the Christians, once begun, did 
 not cease, but broke out again and again, in various 
 parts of the Empire, like a conflagration which only 
 pauses from the exhaustion of materials which it can 
 devour. But a few more sporadic executions could 
 furnish no further excitement to Nero, after he had 
 supped so full of horrors. The jaded "old man of 
 thirty" therefore turned his whole attention to the 
 building and embellishment of the Palace, which was 
 not only to cover the vast area of the Domus Transi- 
 toria, but also the additional room which he had 
 
A CONSPIRACY AND ITS COLLAPSE. 1 47 
 
 snatched from the ruins. It extended over a space 
 equal to that covered by the Louvre and Tuileries to- 
 gether. It was called the Golden House, and exceeded 
 in sumptuosity everything which the world had hitherto 
 seen. It showed the degeneracy of taste which marked 
 that age, by its tendency to hugeness of size and 
 strangeness of material. Nothing but the grotesque 
 and the enormous suited the diseased appetite of Nero. 
 At the entrance stood a colossus of himself, of which 
 the base is still visible, beside the Colosseum. It was 
 a hundred and twenty feet high, and was the work of 
 Zenodorus. Inside the hall was also a picture of Nero, 
 a hundred and twenty feet high, painted on linen, 
 which was afterwards burnt up by lightning.* The 
 famous architects Severus and Celer were set to work, 
 with all the power of the Empire to back them, and all 
 the treasures of the world at command. Triple colon- 
 nades of marble pillars led to the Palace from the 
 vestibule, and the outer spaces of the columns were 
 filled with statues and flowers. At the four corners of 
 the hall, on tables of citron, of which the veins looked 
 like curled tresses, stood huge vases of silver, embossed 
 by Acragas, with scenes of the chase derived from the 
 "Cynegetica" of Xenophon. The painter Fabullus, who 
 stood at the head of the artists of the age, was bidden 
 to enrich the halls of audience with scenes of history 
 and mythology. One of his paintings was a Pallas, . 
 which to the astonishment of the spectators seemed 
 always to follow them with her eyes. The most dis- 
 tinguished pupils of the schools of landscape, founded 
 by Ludius, and of the rhyparographer Pyroeicus, were 
 * Plin. XXXV. 33. 
 
148 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 set to adorn the private chambers. A thousand statues 
 of bronze, alabaster, gold, silver, and delicately tinted 
 marble were ranged about the building, and in porticoes 
 a thousand feet long. Not only were the old temples 
 of Rome plundered of their treasures, but Acratus the 
 freedman and Carinas the Greek philosopher were sent 
 to Greece to seize whatever was most precious in her 
 ancient cities. So shameless was the rapacity with 
 which they served the Emperor's greed, that at Delphi 
 — from which he carried off five hundred statues of 
 bronze — the population rose in arms to protect the 
 images and bas-reliefs of their temples. 
 
 The baths of alabaster, inlaid with lapis lazuli, were 
 supplied from the Aqua Virgo, and from the sea, and 
 from the pale sulphur -impregnated waters of the river 
 Albula. The vaulted roof of one banquet-room was 
 made to represent the heavens, and to revolve in imi- 
 tation of the movements of the sun, moon, and stars. 
 The roof of another, fretted with gold and ivory, was 
 so constructed as to shower roses on the guests, or to 
 sprinkle them with the fine dew of fragrant essences. 
 
 Nero's own bedroom was a prodigy of gorgeousness. 
 It contained the golden statue of Victory, which spread 
 her wings in sign of good omen over the slumbers of 
 successive Caesars. On a slab of agate stood the statuette 
 of Nero, five inches high, armed in a corslet which had 
 been carved with infinite labour out of hard jasper. A 
 debased art — which did not rely for its triumph on the 
 genius of the artist or the beauty of the result, but 
 stimulated the languors of imagination by the conquest 
 of apparent impossibilities — was further illustrated by 
 other minute images cut out of emerald or topaz, Uke 
 
A CONSPIRACY AND ITS COLLAPSE. 149 
 
 those described by Pliny. On abaci of carved ivory 
 stood myrrhine vases — the most precious known to 
 antiquity — red, veined, lustrous, of a value which could 
 hardly be expressed in terms of purchase. Besides 
 such treasures there was a little gem of sculpture, the 
 Amazon of Strongylion, known as Eucnemos, from its 
 exquisite proportions, which Nero took with him wherever 
 he went. A place of special honour was assigned to 
 Nero's harp of gold, adorned with precious stones. 
 
 Still more marvellous were the gardens. They covered 
 a space so large that a single lake on which imperial 
 galleys were moored, sufficed, when filled up, for the 
 site of the Colosseum. They were full of grottoes, and 
 gardens for exotic plants, and waterfalls shaded with 
 masses of foliage, and pastures in which the sheep, with 
 revolting bad taste, were dyed blue or crimson. They 
 also contained aviaries of rare tropical birds, and dens 
 for animals — among the rest a monster which was said 
 to be fed with human flesh. The palace-stables of 
 Nero's favourite horse Asturco, and of the other horses 
 which drew his chariot, were in distant parts of these 
 enchanting grounds, and were far more magnificent in 
 their appointments than the houses of the poorer senators. 
 The chief ornament of the garden was a Temple of 
 Seia, the goddess who was propitious to harvests. It 
 was built of a newly discovered marble, so warm and 
 glowing that, according to Pliny, it seemed rather to 
 enclose than to transmit the light. 
 
 But the splendour with which he had surrounded 
 himself soon became insupportably wearisome. It in- 
 volved him further in pecuniary anxieties. Buoyed up 
 for a time by the chimera of a Roman knight, who, 
 
150 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 giving credence to a dream, promised, at small expense, 
 to discover the legendary treasures which Dido had 
 carried with her from Troy, and which were supposed 
 to be hidden in the caves of Carthage, he was com- 
 pelled, when that bubble burst, to have recourse to ex- 
 pedients both pitiful and violent. With great peril to 
 himself he had to let the payments of his praetorians 
 fall into arrears. Instead of half the patrimony left by 
 his freedmen, he now impropriated nine- tenths. Con- 
 fiscations raged on every side. Temples were plundered, 
 and their statues — even those of the Roman Penates — 
 were sent to the melting-pot. A law was made against 
 wearing amethystine colours, and once when he saw a 
 lady with the forbidden colour at the games, he pointed 
 her out to his procurator, and not only inflicted the fine, 
 but forfeited her entire property. No meanness was too 
 base for him to practise, no wrong too cruel for him 
 to inflict. Italy, the provinces, the allied peoples, the 
 free states, groaned under intolerable burdens. 
 
 And while his bodily functions, disordered by riotous 
 living, made of his Hfe a physical burden, he was dis- 
 tracted by daily superstitions. In his theatric way he 
 used to tell his intimates that he was haunted by all 
 the Furies. His effeminated intellect was constantly un- 
 nerved by rumours of storms, and earthquakes, and 
 strange births, and comets, which the astrologers inter- 
 preted to imply change and political disaster. A revolt 
 of gladiators at Praeneste threatened a renewal of the 
 devastations in the days of Spartacus. In consequence 
 of an ill-advised order of Nero, the whole fleet of triremes 
 and smaller vessels was hopelessly shipwrecked at Mise- 
 num, and he had to bear the odium of the disaster. 
 
A CONSPIRACY AND ITS COLLAPSE. I5I 
 
 While he was thus wearied and agitated, there burst 
 upon him the immense weight of Piso's conspiracy, 
 which afforded him a proof how many and how varied 
 were the forces of hatred and contempt which he had 
 kindled in the hearts of all. 
 
 Piso stood at the head of the great Calpurnian 
 house, and was connected by ties of relationship with 
 many of the noblest famihes in Rome. He was not 
 himself the author of the conspiracy, for which, indeed, 
 his character was altogether too unstable and corrupt. 
 He was dragged into it by Subrius Flavus, a tribune, 
 and Sulpicius Asper, a centurion of the praetorian guards. 
 Faenius Rufus, the Praetorian Praefect, approved of the 
 plot, out of disgust for the machinations of his rival, 
 Tigellinus, who was constantly incriminating him to the 
 Emperor. Seneca lent a dubious sanction, which many 
 believed to be mixed up with personal designs. Lucan 
 was goaded into complicity by the wrongs heaped upon 
 him by Nero's jealousy. Perhaps the most important, 
 courageous, and disinterested adherent was Plautius 
 Lateranus, the consul-elect. He had no motive but a 
 noble patriotism which felt the shame of a Roman at 
 being governed by a histrionic debauchee. Joined to 
 these were very unpromising elements. No credit could 
 accrue to any cause from the support of such men as 
 Flavins Scaevinus, a man of dissolute character and sloth- 
 ful life; Quintianus, stained with the same vices which 
 made Nero infamous; Senecio, a dandy long endeared to 
 Nero by similarity of tastes; Natalis, a confidential friend 
 of Piso, who had probably meditated treachery from the 
 first; and Epicharis, a freed woman of the lowest cha- 
 racter, though for some unknown reason she proved her- 
 
152 . DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 self the most impassioned and the most courageous of 
 them all. 
 
 The conspiracy was revealed through the fantastic 
 and effeminate folly of Scaevinus, but not until it had 
 left Nero almost wild with terror. Natalis, Scaevinus, 
 Quintianus, Senecio, shrinking from the thought of tor- 
 ture — which the poor freedwoman heroically braved, 
 and under which she expired — turned informers. The 
 friends of Piso strove in vain to awaken him to manly 
 counsels. He went home, and lay hidden there till the 
 band of tiros arrived whom Nero — distrusting the older 
 soldiers — had sent to bid him kill himself. He opened 
 his veins, wrote a will full of the grossest flattery to the 
 Emperor and ignobly died. 
 
 More courageous was the death of Lateranus. When 
 Epaphroditus came to question him, he answered: "If I 
 should have anything to say, I will say it to your master.'' 
 Nero did not allow him to choose his mode of death, or 
 to embrace his children. Hurried to a place of servile 
 execution, he maintained a disdainful silence, not even 
 reproaching the tribune Statins, an accomplice in the 
 conspiracy, by whose hand he was to die. He stretched 
 out his neck without a word, and stretched it out again 
 when the first blow failed. 
 
 Faenius Rufus did not escape. He overdid his part 
 by trying to terrify the conspirators as he sat by Nero 
 and Tigellinus before his own name had been denounced. 
 It was too much to expect that among that crowd of 
 cowards, dupes, and traitors no one would find it in- 
 tolerable to have the same man as both an accompHce 
 and inquisitor. So, as he browbeat and threatened 
 Scaevinus, he answered with a smile that no one knew 
 
A CONSPIRACY AND ITS COLLAPSE. 1 53 
 
 more than Rufus himself, and urged him to show his 
 gratitude to such an excellent Emperor. Rufus turned 
 pale, stammered, and so completely betrayed his guilt 
 that Nero ordered a powerful soldier to seize and bind 
 him then and there. His death was pusillanimous. He 
 poured his lamentations even into his will. 
 
 Subrius Flavus was the next to be betrayed. "As 
 if I, a soldier, could ever have undertaken such work 
 with such helpless women as these!" he exclaimed. 
 But, pressed with questions, he confessed and gloried in 
 the deed. 
 
 "What made you forget your oath of allegiance to 
 me?" asked Nero. 
 
 "Because I hated you," he answered. "While you 
 were worthy to be loved, you had no more faithful 
 soldier than myself I began to hate you when you 
 displayed yourself as the murderer of your mother and 
 your wife, a jockey, a mummer, and an incendiary." 
 
 The words struck the ears of Nero like a terrific 
 blow. Familiar with crime, he was unaccustomed to be 
 charged with it. Indifferent to the deeds, he shrank 
 from the name of a criminal, and nothing in the con- 
 spiracy caused him worse pain than this. He ordered 
 the tribune Veianus Niger to execute Flavus. To in- 
 crease the terror of the condemned it was customary to 
 dig a grave before their eyes. The grave was dug for 
 Flavus in a field hard by. Looking at its shortness and 
 shallowness with contempt, as at a scamped piece of 
 work, he exclaimed with disdain, "You cannot even do 
 a thing like that as a soldier should." 
 
 "Stretch out your neck manfully," said Niger. 
 
154 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 "Would that you would strike as manfully!" he 
 replied. 
 
 Unwarned by the answer which he had received 
 from Flavus, Nero, who felt himself specially injured by 
 the defection of his soldiers, asked Sulpicius Asper also 
 "why he had conspired to murder him." 
 
 "It was the only remedy left for so many infamies," 
 answered the centurion; and spoke no more. 
 
 After this Nero still continued to bathe in blood. 
 The consul Vestinus was his enemy, and a man of 
 courage, but he had not engaged in the plot. He had 
 once been one of the Emperor's intimate circle, and 
 Nero, who had felt the weight of his rough wit and 
 shrunk from its truthfulness, had cause to dread his 
 spirit. Before the consul had been accused or even 
 mentioned, the Emperor sent a tribune with a cohort to 
 seize his best slaves, and take his house as it were by 
 storm. Vestinus was giving a banquet, and when sum- 
 moned by the soldiers, rose from the table without 
 hesitation. He was immediately shut up in his chamber, 
 his veins were opened, and, without uttering so much 
 as a word of complaint, he was stifled in a bath. His 
 terrified guests were meanwhile kept in their places by 
 the soldiers, expecting that their fate would follow. It 
 was late at night before Nero, who had secretly gloated 
 over the imagination of their terrors, allowed them to 
 be dismissed, with the remark that they had been suffi- 
 ciently punished for their consular banquet. 
 
 Nero seized the opportunity to get rid of all who 
 were for any reason obnoxious to him. Rufius Crispinus 
 was banished because he had once been Poppaea's hus- 
 band; Verginius, because he was an eloquent orator and 
 
A CONSPIRACY AND ITS COLLAPSE. I 55 
 
 instructor of youth; Musonius Rufus, because he was a 
 genuine Stoic. There was no room for such eminence 
 in such a Rome. 
 
 There was no room even for a Petronius Arbiter, by 
 the side of a Tigellinus. To Pagan conceptions Petro- 
 nius, despite his dissolute life, was still a gentleman, 
 and Tigellinus, whatever might be his position, was the 
 opposite. Petronius, however vicious, was the reverse of 
 cruel; Tigellinus, far blacker and baser in his vices, 
 superadded to them a savage ruthlessness. It was he 
 who developed this phase of Nero's degradation, whereas 
 Petronius entirely disapproved of it. The Prsefect felt, 
 therefore, that Petronius must be crushed. He suborned 
 one of the household to give false witness against him, 
 permitted him no defence, and threw most of his slaves 
 into chains. Petronius had left home for Campania to 
 pay his respects to Nero. At Cumae he was ordered to 
 stop, and, not choosing to await the tedious delays of 
 hope and fear, he set the example of a death as satirical 
 as any which history records. There was nothing tragic 
 in it, nothing remotely serious. He treated death as a 
 jest no less contemptible than hfe, and died with com- 
 plete coolness, effeminately brave, and sincerely frivolous. 
 If in the deaths of some of the philosophic republicans 
 of that day we see the theatric pomposity 6f Stoicism, 
 in that of Petronius we see the callous levity of the in- 
 fidel voluptuary. 
 
 Opening his veins, he discoursed with his friends, 
 not on high topics, but on trivial literature and vers de 
 soci^te. If he felt interested, he had his veins bound 
 up again, and banqueted, and slept, to make his death 
 seem a matter of freewill, not of compulsion. He had 
 
156 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 his bad slaves scourged, his good slaves rewarded. In- 
 stead of mentioning Nero and Tigellinus in his will with 
 lying adulation, he penned a scathing satire, in which 
 he drew a vivid picture of Nero's infamies, and sent a 
 sealed copy of the document to the Emperor himself. 
 Then he broke his signet ring, that it might not, after 
 his death, be abused for purposes of forgery and de- 
 lation; and dashed into shivers a myrrhine vase for 
 which he had paid a fabulous sum, that it might not 
 fall into Nero's hands. When Nero received his satire, 
 he writhed under it. He could not tell how Petronius 
 had become acquainted with some of those deeds which 
 he had concealed in the closet and the midnight, but 
 which were here blazoned in the noonday. Thinking 
 that Petronius could only have learnt them from an 
 abandoned lady, named Silia, the wife of a senator, he 
 drove her into exile on the suspicion that she had be- 
 trayed the secrets which she had shared and witnessed. 
 At the same time he banished the ex-praetor Minucius 
 Thermus, and tortured one of his freedmen, because the 
 latter had spread similar reports about Tigellinus. 
 
 And so, day after day, "the hard reality of death 
 was brushed by the rustling masquerade of life," and 
 society presented the spectacle of a lascivious dance on 
 the edge of a precipice, over which some dancer or 
 some indignant spectator from hour to hour was violently 
 hurled. 
 
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF SENECA. 1 57 
 
 CHAPTER LVIII. 
 
 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF SENECA. 
 
 "Hoc inter csetera vel pessimum habet crudelitas, quod per- 
 severandum est." — Seneca. 
 
 The family of Spanish Romans from Cordova of 
 which Seneca was the head had risen to strange pros- 
 perity only to be dragged through deadlier overthrow; 
 but the fate of their greatest scion, the poet Lucan, was 
 the most humiliating. He might seem to have been 
 marked out from infancy as the spoiled favourite of 
 fortune. While little more than a boy, he had gained 
 such a reputation for ability, that Nero had summoned 
 him from Athens before his studies were completed. 
 For a year or two he was the Emperor's intimate friend, 
 and at the same time he rose to be the favourite poet 
 and writer of the day. When he recited in the lecture- 
 rooms he achieved an astonishing success. He was 
 appointed augur and quaestor before the legal age, and 
 when, as quaestor, he exhibited games to the people, he 
 was received with thunders of applause as loud as those 
 which had greeted Virgil in the days of Augustus. It 
 is impossible to imagine a giddier pinnacle of tempta- 
 tion for a hot-blooded Spanish youth of genius, who at 
 the age of twenty could not have been a friend and 
 courtier of Nero without being plunged into every sort 
 of moral temptation. Let it be remembered in Lucan's 
 
158 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 honour, that if he did not escape from that furnace un- 
 scathed — if his hair had been singed and the smell of 
 fire had passed upon his garments — he yet never showed 
 himself lost to virtue. In the midst of deplorable weak- 
 ness he retained his conviction that freedom, and truth, 
 and purity, were best. 
 
 Nero's jealousy showed itself in the most public and 
 insulting manner, when one day he got up and went 
 out of the room for no reason whatever, in the middle 
 of one of Lucan's readings. It culminated in a pro- 
 hibition to Lucan to read or publish anything further. 
 The young poet, feeling within him the true fire of 
 genius, nursed his rage in secret, and changed the tone 
 of the "Pharsalia" from inflated Caesarism to savage 
 denunciation. He mocks at the sham liberty which it 
 accorded; brands with satire its shameful flatteries; and 
 treating its apotheoses as a sacrilegious comedy, declares 
 that the day would come "when a freer and truer Rome 
 would make a god, not of Gsesar, but of Cato."* Ten 
 years earher he had been writing of Nero as a supreme 
 divinity; now in his writing-desk lay the fierce complaint 
 that, as a consequence of the Civil Wars, men had come 
 to worship shadows in the temples of the gods.** He 
 consoled his seclusion by living in virtuous union with 
 the young wife whom he loved, and as he poured forth 
 the epic of a soul lacerated by indignation, conscious of 
 his future immortality, he wrote in secret — 
 
 "Pharsalia nostra 
 Vivet, et a nuUo tenebris damnabitur sevo." 
 
 When Piso's conspiracy began, Lucan became its pas- 
 * Pharsal, ix. 601. ** PharsaL vn. 455-459. 
 
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF SENECA. 1 59 
 
 sionate supporter. Men might ask what was the use of 
 substituting one actor like Piso for another Hke Nero, 
 but if a Repubhc was impossible, Lucan felt that no 
 change of a Caesar could be for the worse, and in his 
 burning hatred promised that he would slay the Emperor 
 with his own hand. 
 
 Alas! when detection came; when he saw knights 
 and senators and soldiers sinking all around him into 
 treacherous weakness; when the grim executioner stood 
 at his elbow pointing to the rack, Lucan had none of 
 the inward strength or ennobling convictions which 
 might have enabled him to retain his manhood. Sink- 
 ing to an incredible depth of baseness, he betrayed the 
 name of his own mother as an accomplice in the plot. 
 His momentary infamy did not save his life, though it 
 milst have cost him a pang worse than that of death. 
 Bidden to die, he opened his veins in four places, and 
 went into a hot bath. His last thoughts at the end of 
 a Hfe so brief, so full of glory, so full of shame, are left 
 unrecorded. Only as he watched the blood flow, he 
 was reminded of the fantastic lines of the "PharsaHa" 
 in which he had described the similar death of a soldier 
 on the field of battle. He recited them with a feeble 
 voice, and spoke no more. That he should, at such a 
 moment, have recalled verses so fantastic is characteristic 
 of a soul not naturally ignoble, but distorted and, so to 
 speak, encrimsoned by the horrors of Hfe's tragedies and 
 life's amusements in the midst of which he lived. 
 
 The death of his father, Mela, was also stained with 
 dishonour. Avarice seems to have run in the family, 
 and not even the death of his glorious son could check 
 Mela's besetting vice. A nobler man would have hid 
 
l6o DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 his head in shame as well as sorrow, but Mela showed 
 a discreditable eagerness in recovering the debts due to 
 Lucan, whose great wealth was now added to his own. 
 Among other debtors, he pressed hard on Fabius 
 Romanus, who had been Lucan's intimate friend. What 
 a picture do we see of the noble and literary society of 
 Rome when we are told, as if it were a quite ordinary 
 occurrence, that, in base revenge, this intimate friend of 
 a poet who had betrayed his mother resorted to forgery 
 in order to ruin his friend's father! He forged a letter 
 of Lucan to prove an imaginary complicity in the plot 
 between him and his father. Mela knew that his wealth 
 would be his death warrant. Nero no sooner read the 
 forged letter than he summoned Mela to his presence, 
 with a keen eye on his possessions. Mela saw that the 
 game of life was over, and opened his veins, after having 
 written a will which was doubly base. To save his 
 estate from confiscation, he left a large donation to 
 Tigellinus, and his worthless son-in-law, Cossutianus 
 Capito. He added spite to his greed and baseness. "I 
 am condemned to die," he said, "though I have done 
 nothing to deserve punishment; but Crispinus and Ani- 
 cius Cerealis live, though they are enemies of the Em- 
 peror.'^ Anicius Cerealis was the consul-designate who, 
 after the conspiracy, had proposed in the senate that a 
 temple should with all speed be reared at the public 
 expense "to the Divine Nero.'' His abjectness did not 
 save him. On hearing of the sentence in Mela's will 
 he, too, committed suicide. 
 
 The senators seemed to take a pleasure in pusil- 
 lanimous adulation. They decreed supplications to the 
 gods, and a special honour to the Sun as the detector 
 
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF SENECA. l6l 
 
 of the conspiracy, and a restoration of the Temple of 
 Fortune from which Scaevinus had taken his dagger. 
 Amid these decrees, "the sweet Gallic" pleaded humbly 
 that his life might be spared, although his only crime 
 was his relationship to Seneca and Lucan. Whereupon 
 a senator got up and denounced him as an enemy and 
 a parricide. The rest had the decency to interfere on 
 behalf of their popular and distinguished colleague. 
 They begged the accuser to let sleeping dogs lie. But 
 Gallic felt that his career of glory and popularity was 
 over, and he too committed suicide. 
 
 The city was full of deaths, and the streets witnessed 
 the daily spectacle of the stately funerals of these 
 political victims, of whom so many were judicially 
 murdered for their wealth, or to gratify the hatred of 
 the Emperor. Yet such was the prevalent baseness, 
 that men whose sons, or brothers, or friends, or kinsmen 
 had been thus slain, returned thanks to the gods, 
 adorned their doors with laurel as at the news of a 
 public victory, and rushed to fling themselves at the 
 knees of Nero, and cover his hand with their kisses! 
 Many of the people believed that the reign of terror 
 had been enacted simply to replenish the Emperor's 
 treasury, and pitied the murdered aristocrats as though 
 they had been as innocent as the murdered Christians. 
 
 No delation pleased Nero more than when Natalis 
 coupled the name of Seneca with the name of Piso. 
 How far Seneca was really an accomplice is doubtful. 
 He had been cautious, but he can hardly have been 
 ignorant that Subrius Flavus had formed a design to set 
 Piso aside and elevate Seneca himself to the Empire. It 
 was certainly suspicious that on the eve of the conspiracy 
 
 Darkness and Dawn, III. 1 1 
 
1 62 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Seneca had returned from his Campanian retreat, and 
 stopped at one of his villas only four miles from the city. 
 There was no evidence against him except this: — Natalis 
 had been sent from Piso to complain that Seneca would 
 never see him, and to ask "why their friendship should 
 thus be allowed to drop." Seneca had replied "that 
 frequent intercourse was inexpedient for them both, but 
 that his happiness depended on Piso's safety." But it 
 was whispered among Seneca's most intimate friends 
 that he had, in fact, assented to the assassination of 
 Nero "in order to free Rome from Nero, and Nero from 
 himself." The glittering antithesis betrayed its own 
 authorship. 
 
 Nero sent a praetorian tribune, named Silvanus — not 
 knowing that he too was one of the conspirators — to 
 require an explanation from Seneca. He found the 
 philosopher at supper with his beloved wife, Pompeia 
 Paulina, and two friends. 
 
 Seneca gave a calm explanation. He had merely 
 told Piso that he was in weak health, and desired per- 
 fect quiet. "Why," he said, in reply to the Emperor's 
 inquiry, "should I have preferred the fortunes of a 
 private person to my own safety? I am no flatterer, 
 that I should have made such a speech. No one knows 
 this better than Nero, who has experienced my boldness 
 more often than my servility." 
 
 When Silvanus brought- back the answer, he found 
 Nero sitting with Poppsea and Tigellinus — a bad omen 
 for Seneca's safety. 
 
 "Is he preparing to put himself to death?" asked 
 the Emperor. 
 
 "No," said the tribune. "He showed no sign of 
 
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF SENECA. 1 63 
 
 panic. His look and his words were entirely cheer- 
 ful." 
 
 "Go, bid him die," was Nero's brief answer. 
 
 Silvanus was, however, unwiUing to deliver such a 
 mandate in person to a brother conspirator. He sent 
 it in by a centurion. 
 
 On receiving it, Seneca quietly rose from table and 
 said to a slave, "Bring me my will. I should like to 
 leave a few legacies to those who love me." 
 
 "I am sorry," said the centurion, "that the Emperor's 
 commands admit of no such delay." 
 
 "Be it so," said Seneca, turning to his friends. 
 "Since, then, I have nothing else to leave you, I will 
 leave you my fairest possession, the memory of my life. 
 Be mindful of it, and you will win the fame of honest 
 purpose and loyal friendship. Nay, my friends, do not 
 weep. Where is your firmness? Where is your philo- 
 sophy? I forbid these tears. Have I not been long 
 preparing myself for this crisis? Was any one of us 
 unaware of Nero's cruelty? After murdering his mother 
 and his brother, what remained for him but to kill his 
 tutor?" 
 . Then he embraced Paulina, and, softening for a 
 moment, entreated her not to waste her life in endless 
 grief, but to mitigate the pang of widowhood by ever 
 recalling that the life of her husband had been spent 
 in virtue. 
 
 "I will die with you," said Paulina. "Let the 
 physician open my veins as well as yours." 
 
 "I will not check you," said Seneca, "if such is your 
 glorious desire. Were I to forbid it, I should but leave 
 you to the endurance of future wrongs. If you prefer 
 
 II* 
 
164 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 the dignity of death to the endurance of bereavement, 
 let us both die with courage, though the greater distinc- 
 tion will be yours." 
 
 In truth it would have been strange, and far from 
 creditable, if Seneca had shown any pusillanimity when 
 the hour of his condemnation came. Many of the philo- 
 sophers had contracted life into a contemplation of 
 death. The constant presentment of death to the mind 
 in days so perilous was natural, and the possibility of a 
 violent death must have been in Seneca's thoughts as 
 often as though, like Trimalchio, he had possessed a 
 little skeleton of articulated ivory, and had it passed 
 round among his guests at every banquet with the 
 melancholy refrain, "What a little nothingness is man!" 
 Even Lucan, in his short life, had come to the conclu- 
 sion that "Man's best lot is to know how to die, and 
 the next best to be compelled to die" — 
 
 "Scire mori sors prima viris, sed proxima cogi." * 
 
 The veins of Seneca and Paulina were opened with 
 the same cut, but, as Seneca was old and attenuated by 
 asceticism, his blood flowed slowly, and the veins of his 
 legs were also cut. The ancients were under a strange 
 delusion in supposing that bleeding was a mild kind of 
 death. Seneca was so convulsed with agony that, fear- 
 ing to break down Paulina's courage, he persuaded her 
 to depart to another room. When she was gone, he 
 began to dictate his last words. They were afterwards 
 published and had been read by Tacitus, but they were 
 so well known that he would not record them. They 
 probably added little or nothing to what he has said 
 * Fharsal. ix. 2U, 
 
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF SENECA. I 65 
 
 about death so many times in his letters to LuciHus. 
 He still Hngered in agony, and bade his physician, 
 Statins Annaeus, to give him hemlock. When the poison 
 failed to act, he stepped into a hot bath to expedite 
 the flow of blood, and as he did so he sprinkled the 
 slaves nearest to him, saying that it was his libation to 
 Jupiter the Liberator. He was then carried into a bath- 
 room and stifled with the vapour. His body was burnt, 
 by the direction of his will, without any solemnity of 
 funeral. Nero meanwhile had forbidden the suicide of 
 Paulina. Her wounds were bound up, and she re- 
 covered; but during the few years of her survival the 
 excessive pallor of her face was a memorial of those 
 tragic hours. 
 
 That Seneca's life was a failure is admitted even by 
 those who justly regard him as a Seeker after God. 
 He knocked at the gates of virtue, but he scarcely en- 
 tered. He lacked consistency; he lacked whole-hearted- 
 ness. Charity makes us reject the dark charges made 
 against him by the maUce of Dion Cassius, but the 
 history of his life shows that he laid himself fatally 
 open to the accusation of hypocrisy. A Christian he 
 certainly was not, though it is far from impossible that, 
 through Pomponia or some other Christian, he may 
 have seen some of the writings of St. Paul, and that 
 this may account for the singular resemblance of tone 
 and expression between some passages. Yet the re- 
 semblance is more superficial than real, and between 
 the character of the Christian Apostle and that of the 
 Pagan philosopher there is an impassable chasm. In 
 the whole course of his life and in every action and 
 writing of it, St. Paul gave splendid evidence that his 
 
I 66 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 convictions swayed the whole current of his being; but 
 Seneca's high- wrought declamations constitute the self- 
 condemnation of every decisive incident in his personal 
 history. A life dominated by avarice and ambition 
 was unworthy of a professed philosopher; it fell far 
 below the attainments of the humblest of those true 
 Christians whom Nero burnt and Seneca despised. 
 Seneca did little or nothing to make his age more 
 virtuous; the Christians were the salt of the earth. The 
 Pagans fled from despair to suicide; the Christians, in 
 patient submission and joyful hope, meekly accepted the 
 martyr's crown. 
 
THE AGONY OF AN EMPRESS. 1 67 
 
 CHAPTER LIX. 
 
 THE AGONY OF AN EMPRESS. 
 
 "Satiety 
 And sloth , poor counterfeits of thee, 
 Mock the tired worldling. Idle Hope 
 And dire Remembrance interlope, 
 And vex the feverish slumbers of the mind : 
 The bubble floats before; the spectre stalks behind." 
 
 Coleridge, Ode to Tranquillity, 
 
 In one of the most enchanting rooms of the Golden 
 Palace, surrounded by every object of beauty and 
 splendour which the wealth of kingdoms could supply, 
 sat Poppaea, miserable in heart with a misery which no- 
 thing could alleviate — no luxury of the present, no 
 memory of the past, no hope of the future. Like Agrip- 
 pina, like Seneca, like Nero, she had been "cursed with 
 every granted prayer." Nothing which this world could 
 give was left for her to attain. Of the honours which 
 overpower, of the riches which clog, of the pleasures 
 which inflame the soul, she had unbounded experience. 
 They had left her heart weary and her life in ashes, 
 and she had never dreamed of the secret which had 
 enabled so many thousands of humble Christians, whom 
 she would have regarded as the dust beneath her feet, 
 to find exaltation in abasement, wealth in penury, and 
 joy in tribulation. 
 
 She was Empress; she was Augusta; she was mother 
 
1 68 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 of an infant who had been deified; her smile meant 
 prosperity, her frown was death. Of what avail was it 
 all? Could this awful power, could those inestimable 
 gems, could the gorgeousness of her Golden House fill 
 up the void in a heart numbed by satiety and chilled 
 by despair? What had she to aim at? Her enemies 
 had been swept out of her path. What had she left to 
 hope for? There was no object of earthly wishes which 
 she had not attained. Ah! but what work worth doing 
 could she find to do in order to fill up the vacuity of 
 aimless self-indulgence? Who was there to love her, or 
 whom she could love? 
 
 She thought of her early home, of her lovely mother, 
 of her consular and triumphant grandfather, of the 
 adoration which had surrounded her in the days of her 
 own dawning beauty. She thought of Rufius Crispinus, 
 the bridegroom of her youth, who had loved her tenderly, 
 and whom she had loved, and of the little son whom 
 she had borne him. He had grown up into a beauti- 
 ful and gallant child, and the mother had always listened 
 with pride to the anecdotes about him which were 
 secretly brought to her. One of the heaviest of the 
 many afflicting thoughts which were weighing upon her 
 to-day was the manner in which Nero had treated her 
 former husband and her son. Rufius Crispinus had 
 once been Praetorian Praefect, and had been rewarded 
 with consular insignia, but Nero hated his very name 
 because he had been Poppaea's husband; and he had 
 taken advantage of Piso's conspiracy first to banish him 
 to Sardinia and recently to order him to put an end to 
 his life. How fatal had her love been to him! It had 
 blighted his career; it had stained his home; it had cut 
 
THE AGONY OF AN EMPRESS. 1 69 
 
 short his life. But what had her poor boy done that 
 he too should perish? She had heard only a few days 
 since that simply because in his games the high-spirited 
 lad had played at being general or emperor, Nero had 
 given orders to his slaves to drown him by suddenly 
 pushing him into the sea while he sat fishing on a rock. 
 She knew that this crime had been committed, and his 
 bright young life sacrificed simply because he shared 
 her blood; and what maddened her most of all was 
 that she dared make no complaint, dared not even to 
 reveal that she was aware of the murder, because to 
 allude to her first husband or her son was always to 
 rouse Nero into a paroxysm of fury. In the brightest 
 and most luxurious room of the Golden House she sat 
 soHtary, and sobbing as if her heart would break. 
 
 Then she thought of Otho. Dandy as he was, and 
 debauchee, to her at least he had been passionately 
 faithful. She had abandoned Crispinus to live with 
 Otho partly from a certain fascination which hung about 
 his wickedness, but even more from motives of ambi- 
 tion, and because he was Nero's most cherished 
 favourite. She heard good acounts of his administra- 
 tion in Lusitania. Her intrigues to entangle the love of 
 Nero had succeeded; but would she not have been in- 
 comparably more happy if she had remained in the 
 home of Otho, and still more if she had lived as the 
 virtuous wife of her first husband? 
 
 For with Nero she had long been disgusted, while 
 she was obliged to feed his gluttonous vanity with per- 
 petual eulogies of his beauty. And when in the close 
 intercourse of daily Hfe she saw to the depths of the 
 man's nature, it was impossible for her to find any 
 
170 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 words sufficiently bitter for the expression of her con- 
 tempt. And this wretched meticulous creature, with no 
 manliness in him; this tenth-rate singer and dilettante 
 twangler on harps; this lump of egregious vanity; this 
 catspaw of Tigellinus, whose effeminacy was steeped in 
 the blood of the innocent which he had shed like 
 water — this womanish man, with none of the worth of 
 Crispinus, and none of the charm of Otho, was to be 
 her husband and companion for life! The day for 
 other lovers, the day when she could have the excite- 
 ment of secret intrigues, was past, for anything of the 
 kind would mean instant death. And yet she felt 
 more and more that it was impossible to retain secure 
 hold on such love as Nero's. It was an ignoble love, 
 tigerish and animal, which would evanesce long before 
 her youth and beauty had faded away. If Nero had 
 been a man — if there had been in his passion for her 
 a single ennobling element — she might have retained 
 him in her bondage for long years, as she could cer- 
 tainly have retained Otho. But already Nero preferred 
 to her society the flattery of parasites and minions, and 
 at this very time, though she was sick and languid with 
 the approach of motherhood, to which she looked for- 
 ward with neither hope nor happiness, he had left her 
 to her weary solitude, and for days had scarcely so 
 much as seen or talked with her. Was some rival cast- 
 ing her spells over his volatile and evil nature and tak- 
 ing vengeance on her for the wrongs of Octavia? The 
 thought made her heart burn with a fury of impotent 
 indignation. 
 
 She was determined that she would sit up this 
 night and await his return in his own bedchamber; 
 
THE AGONY OF AN EMPRESS. I 7 I 
 
 and, as opportunity occurred, would either assail him 
 by reproaches, or win him back by caresses. How 
 could she kill the interminable hours? She had no 
 friend, no child, no confidante — none near her but slaves 
 who hated her and yet trembled at her presence. She 
 had no resources in herself, nothing to occupy her but 
 her own evil thoughts and deplorable regrets. 
 
 The Empress grew more and more weary, more and 
 more tormented with intolerable thoughts through the 
 leaden hours. At length, long after midnight, she heard 
 the footsteps of the watch and of many slaves as they 
 conducted Nero to his chamber. 
 
 *'What! you here?" he said with contemptuous in- 
 difference as he dismissed his attendants. 
 
 She looked at him. He had evidently been drink- 
 ing, and was fresh from one of the scenes of debauchery 
 which always formed the conclusion of his charioteering 
 displays. For he still wore the dress of a jockey of the 
 green faction, and its succinctness revealed his thin legs 
 and protuberant person. To her he looked a spectacle 
 of ignominy. Where was the passionate courtesy with 
 which her Otho would have greeted her? Where the 
 fond caress which Crispinus would have printed on her 
 cheek? To think that this thing was the Emperor of 
 Rome! 
 
 She half-rose from her couch, her pale face aflame 
 with indignation. 
 
 "Jockey!" she hissed out. "Companion of base 
 minions, comrade of coarse gladiators, where have you 
 been? Why do you thus steep manhood in ignominy 
 and drag the purple of Empire through the mud?" 
 
 It was the pent-up passion of her woman's heart 
 
172 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 which thus burst forth, and it came on Nero like an 
 unexpected blow. He looked at her for a moment 
 with eyes opened to their fullest, and then, staggering 
 forwards, dealt her a brutal kick. 
 
 Poppaea, with a groan of anguish, sank swooning to 
 the ground. She lay on the floor as dead, her features 
 white as marble, her hair streaming from its bands and 
 covering the floor with its gleaming waves. The sight 
 sobered Nero. Had he killed her? Furious as he was, 
 he had not intended that. He loudly summoned his 
 slaves and Poppaea's attendants, and they bore her, 
 still unconscious, to her own apartments. Nero did not 
 tell anyone what had happened, but when the physicians 
 saw the bruise which his foot had made they knew 
 everything, and when she had awoke from her swoon 
 Poppaea disdainfully told them the simple truth. From 
 the first they did not conceal from her or from Nero 
 that, in her delicate situation, her life would be in ex- 
 treme peril. 
 
 She lingered on in anguish for many days, her heart 
 broken, her Hfe sacrificed. Nero would fain have testified 
 his maudlin and unavailing remorse. He passionately 
 desired a child to continue his line, and now he had 
 shattered his own hopes. If he had ever loved any 
 woman with anything resembling real love, it was Pop- 
 paea. He had only kicked her in the blind rage of 
 ruthless egotism. Nothing had been further from his 
 intention than to murder her or even to cause her ex- 
 cruciating pangs. 
 
 He asked to be admitted to her presence, but she 
 refused to see him. She sent to tell him that unless 
 he wished to kill her, he would not visit her. The 
 
THE AGONY OF AN EMPRESS. I 73 
 
 physicians assured him that the mere suggestion of his 
 entering the room had thrown her into dangerous con- 
 vulsions. As for the expressions of regret which he had 
 written to her, she was too weak and ill to write any 
 reply, and she deigned to send no message. 
 
 There was one person, and one only, whom she 
 wished to see. It was Pomponia Graecina. For her 
 Poppaea had always felt an involuntary respect, and had 
 been deeply impressed by her words and bearing when 
 she came to plead for the Christians. If there were 
 anyone who could bring healing to her wounded soul, 
 or suggest one moment's peace to her tortured heart, it 
 was the stainless wife of Aulus Plautius. 
 
 Pomponia had been sick nigh unto death. The 
 prison fever which she had caught in ministering to the 
 Christians had been a virulent typhoid, from which she 
 would not have recovered but for her untroubled con- 
 science, her pure and simple life. For herself she did 
 not wish to live. Not only had her young Aulus been 
 disgraced and murdered, but what she had witnessed of 
 the treatment of the Christians, and what she had heard 
 of their exterminating martyrdoms, had ploughed up the 
 depths of her soul with horror. She almost longed that 
 it could have been permitted her to share the fate of 
 all those dear men and women whom she had known, 
 and who had now passed with white robes and palms 
 in their hands into the presence of their Saviour. But 
 her husband was falling into deep melancholy, and for 
 his sake she made every effort to recover. And because 
 in all her troubles the peace of God was with her, her 
 constitution triumphed over the ravages of the disease, 
 and when she received a message that Poppaea was 
 
174 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 lying on her death-bed and longed to see her, she was 
 daily regaining her strength in her villa at Tibur. 
 
 She did not hesitate; — for what purpose was there 
 in Hfe if it were not to do deeds of helpfulness and 
 love? She was carried in her litter from Tibur to the 
 Golden House, and conducted to the chamber of the 
 Empress. She was spared the trial of meeting Nero, 
 who that day was taking part in a contest of singing 
 and harp-playing on the public stage at the quinquennial 
 Neronia. To prevent that disgrace, the senate had 
 spontaneously offered him the crowns of eloquence and 
 song. But the semblance of victory did not suit his 
 vanity. He played at being a fair competitor. The 
 theatre was crowded to suffocation, not only with 
 Romans but with provincials, and several knights and 
 burghers had been trodden to death in the opening 
 rush to secure seats. And there stood Nero on the 
 stage, harp in hand, bowing and scraping to the as- 
 sembly, and trembling with sham nervousness before the 
 adjudicators! It was an infinitely dreary entertainment, 
 for the soldiers stood in every gangway with batons, 
 beating those who did not applaud or who applauded 
 in wrong places, and as no one was allowed to leave the 
 theatre on pain of death, not a few were taken seriously 
 ill, while some braved the risk of dropping down from 
 the outside, and some pretended to faint or die that 
 they might be carried out of the theatre. It was on 
 this occasion that poor Vespasian fell into new disgrace. 
 Harp-playing and singing, whether good or execrable, 
 was not at all in his line, and, do what he would, he 
 found it impossible to prevent himself from falling asleep, 
 ^s he had already done in the villa at Subiaco. He was 
 
THE AGONY OF AN EMPRESS. I 75 
 
 caught in the act by Phoebus, the freedman of Nero, 
 who roughly shook him by the shoulder, and abused 
 him without stint. He was very near being condemned 
 to death, but so many persons of distinction interceded 
 for him, that this time Nero spared him. He was, how- 
 ever, forbidden ever again to appear at Court, and re- 
 ceived a strong hint that the more entirely he kept out 
 of the way the safer it would be for him. "What am I 
 to do?" he asked Phoebus, "and whither am I to go?" 
 " Abi Morboniam ! Go to the dogs!" answered the in- 
 solent freedman. A few years later, when Vespasian wore 
 the purple, the freedman implored his pardon for the 
 insult. '' Abi Morboniam! Go to the dogs!" was the 
 only answer of the good-humoured Emperor. 
 
 While Nero was fooling away his Empire in such 
 scenes Pomponia entered the chamber of death. There 
 lay Poppaea in the miserable wreck of her youth and 
 loveliness. Wicked she had been, and crowned with 
 every gift but that of virtue, yet Pomponia could not but 
 pity one so young and so lost, childless, hopeless, un- 
 loved, bereaved — thrice wedded, though little more than 
 girl, and now the victim of her husband's brutality. 
 
 Poppaea turned her languid glance towards the 
 opening door, but when she saw who her visitor was, 
 the poor face, drawn and convulsed with pain, brightened 
 for an instant. The "amber" tresses which Nero had 
 sung of had been cut off to relieve her feverish brows, 
 and Pomponia's experienced eye detected on her coun- 
 tenance the seal of death. 
 
 "You think that there is no hope?" whispered 
 Poppaea as she saw the look of compassion deepen on 
 Pomponia's face. "Ah, tell me the truth as it is, 
 
176 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 and do not flatter me with false hopes as these 
 slaves do." 
 
 "I fear that you will die, Augusta," answered 
 Pomponia, solemnly yet tenderly. 
 
 "Call me not by that vain title. Would that I had 
 never borne it! Would that I had died in childhood, 
 or in my first home! Had I done so, loving faces might 
 have been looking on me now." 
 
 "Linger not in the thoughts of the past, Poppaea; it 
 is irrevocable." 
 
 "Yes," she said, "it is irrevocable; "and I cannot 
 bear the faces which look upon me so reproachfully — 
 the face of my murdered husband, Crispinus; of my 
 drowned son; worst of all the sad face of Octavia." A 
 shudder ran through all her frame. "At every moment," 
 she said, "directly I close my eyes, her head is before 
 me, as I saw it in all its ghastliness.'^ 
 
 "Grieve not for Octavia," said Pomponia. "I have 
 heard all about her death. She died forgiving all her 
 enemies, and in perfect peace." 
 
 "Peace? Where is it to be had?" asked Poppaea. "It 
 is not a pearl, I think, of any earthly ocean." 
 
 "No," said Pomponia, "but of a heavenly." 
 
 "Heavenly? What is heaven?" asked Poppaea, 
 wearily. "All that we know is life; and life has given me 
 all that pleasure can give, and rank and riches, and the 
 adoration of self; and it has left me so miserable that 
 life itself has grown hateful to me, while yet I fear death." 
 
 Pomponia listened in profound sadness. "Poppaea," 
 she said, "I need not fear now to tell you that I am a 
 Christian; and we Christians have been taught that *he 
 who saveth his life shall lose it, and he who loseth it for 
 
THE AGONY OF AN EMPRESS. I 77 
 
 Christ's sake, shall find it/ It is too late for you to 
 redeem the life which you have flung away, or to find 
 the pleasure which you have slain in seeking for it. But 
 while there is life, there is hope. The God in whom 
 we Christians believe is a God of mercy, and we believe 
 also that Christ, the Son of God, died for our sins, and 
 that by Him they may be washed away." 
 
 "All the waters of Adria would not wash mine away. 
 Oh, Pomponia, do you know that Seneca, and Octavia, 
 and many others owed their deaths to me?" 
 
 "You have sinned deeply; but you have, I know, 
 been taught about the sacred books of the Jews, and 
 have you not read there of a guilty king, an adulterer 
 and murderer, who yet prayed *0h, pardon mine 
 iniquity, for it is great?' And has no Jewish teacher 
 read you the promise of God by His prophet, * Though 
 your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; 
 though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool?' " 
 
 "I have heard those words," said Poppaea. "They 
 were quoted to me once by Helen, Queen of Adiabene, 
 who is now living as a proselyte at Jerusalem; and I 
 have been taught that there is but one God." 
 
 "Oh, pray to Him, then," said Pomponia, "for He is 
 abundant in pardon." 
 
 "I know not how to pray," said the dying Empress; 
 "pray for me." 
 
 If Poppsea knew not, Pomponia knew well; for to 
 her, as a Christian, prayer had become the habit, the 
 attitude of her life. Poppaea had never before heard 
 such words as those. She knew that when she died she 
 would be made a goddess by the senate, as her infant 
 child had been; yet here by her bedside Pojnponia 
 
 Darkness and Dawn. Ill, 1 2 
 
178 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 was speaking of her as though she were any other 
 woman, speaking of her deep sinfuhiess, and not making 
 any difference between her case and that of the com- 
 monest slave-girl who might have lived an evil life. And 
 all that she could do was to resign her soul , and suffer - 
 it to be borne along unresisting on that stream of 
 prayer. 
 
 And yet she felt, even in her misery, some dim 
 sense of consolation, some faint gleam of hope such as 
 she had never felt before. She knew that death was 
 near, and urged Pomponia not to leave her. Pomponia 
 sat by the bedside, holding the weak hand, and doing 
 every act of tenderness, and speaking words of consola- 
 tion, until the sinful troubled life had ebbed away. 
 
 Such a mind as Nero's had become was incapable 
 of sorrow. He announced, indeed, that he was over- 
 whelmed with grief, and he indulged in a certain amount 
 of hysterical and theatric lamentation, which interfered 
 in no way with his follies or his appetites. A funeral 
 was decreed to Poppsea at the public expense, and 
 Nero at the Rostra pronounced a eulogy — not on her 
 virtues, for there were none on which he could speak, 
 but on her beauty and high fortune, and because she 
 had been the mother of a divine infant. By her own 
 wish — learnt doubtless from the Jews — she was buried, 
 and not burnt as was the Roman custom. Nero had 
 so many spices burnt at her funeral that the learned 
 doubted whether Arabia could furnish more in a single 
 summer. But not one genuine tear was shed upon her 
 grave. 
 
THE DOOM OF VIRTUE. I 79 
 
 CHAPTER LX. 
 THE DOOM OF VIRTUE. 
 
 "Each new morn 
 New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows 
 Strike heaven on the face, that it resounds." 
 
 Shakespere, Macbeth, rv. 3. 
 
 Nero went on, unchecked, from folly to folly, from 
 crime to crime. One of his earliest objects was to 
 secure another Empress. He paid his addresses to 
 Antonia, the only surviving child of Claudius, the half- 
 sister of Octavia and Britannicus. She spurned his 
 odious offer of marriage, and paid the forfeit with her 
 Kfe. In adopting Nero the unhappy Claudius had 
 caused the murder of all his race. The Emperor then 
 married Statilia Messalina, wife of the consul Vestinus, 
 whom he had already killed. 
 
 In reading the affairs of Rome at this period we 
 seem to be suffering from nightmare. The whole of the 
 sixteenth book of the "Annals" of Tacitus is one tragedy 
 of continuous murders. Whenever Nero wanted to 
 terrify a noble Roman by the presage of death , he in- 
 flicted on him a public insult. The world understood 
 what was meant when Caius Cassius, the great lawyer, 
 whose speech about the slaves of Pedanius we have 
 already recorded, was forbidden to attend the funeral 
 of Poppsea. The real cause of Nero's hatred was that 
 
 12* 
 
l8o DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 he was a man of wealth, of ancient family, of moral 
 dignity; but the charges brought against him were that 
 he had a likeness of Cassius, the murderer of Caesar, 
 among the waxen masks of his ancestors, and that he 
 had taken an interest in Lucius Silanus, a noble youth, 
 the great-great-great-grandson of Augustus. The youth's 
 father, Marcus Silanus (the "golden sheep" of Caligula), 
 had already been poisoned by Agrippina, and his uncle 
 been driven to suicide. It seemed a good opportunity 
 to destroy the nephew also. He was attacked with 
 false charges of magic, and was banished to Bari. 
 Cassius, being an old man, was relegated to Sardinia, 
 and Nero was content to wait for his death; but Silanus 
 was young, and a centurion was sent to bid him open 
 his veins. The youth refused to kill himself with the 
 sheeplike docility of so many of his contemporaries. 
 When the centurion ordered his soldiers to attack and 
 slay him, he fought for his life with his unarmed hands, 
 and was hewn down as though in battle. 
 
 At this point the historian Tacitus grew so sick and 
 tired of his task in recording events so dismal, that he 
 pauses to apologise to his reader, and to say a word 
 for all these great nobles who, at the command of a 
 Nero, committed suicide one after another so tamely. 
 He begs the reader not to suspect his motives in de- 
 tailing their slavish patience and pusillanimous ac- 
 quiescence.* All that he can say is that it was des- 
 tiny — it was the wrath of heaven against the crimes 
 of Rome. 
 
 We pass over many a tragic scene in silence, but 
 we cannot escape from this long death-agony of a 
 * Tac. Ann, xvi. i6. 
 
THE DOOM OF VIRTUE. l8l 
 
 Paganism which poisoned the world with its dying breath 
 before its corpse was swept aside by Christianity. The 
 wild beast who had dipped his foot in the blood of the 
 saints, and made the tongue of his dogs red through 
 the same, was now bathing in the noblest blood of 
 Rome. The world was in a condition truly horrible, 
 and there were all kinds of portents and physical dis- 
 asters, as though Nature sympathised with the birth- 
 throes of the coming age. There were earthquakes in 
 divers places, shaking down city after city in Asia 
 Minor, and volcanic phenomena, and irruptions of the 
 sea, and rains of meteors as though the stars fell from 
 heaven, and comets, and eclipses, and monstrous births 
 — which all afflicted the guilty conscience of Paganism 
 as signs of the anger of the gods at the degree of 
 ^vickedness at which it had arrived. The year 65, 
 marked by the many atrocities which we have narrated, 
 was foul with storm and pestilence, which caused un- 
 told misery. A whirlwind swept over Campania, wreck- 
 ing villas and orchards and harvests in its ruthless 
 course, and leaving famine and destitution in its rear. 
 A pestilence broke out with fearful malignity. It spared 
 neither young nor old, neither rich nor poor, neither 
 slave nor master. The houses were filled with corpses, 
 the roads with funerals. Streets in the infected quai:ters 
 became little more than dwellings of the dead. The 
 dead among the poor were flung into common pits, 
 whither their bearers had often to be flung after them; 
 and while the wives and children of the rich sat waiHng 
 round the funeral pyres, they were often swept off" by 
 the same disease, and burnt in the same flames. Senators 
 and knights fell victims to the plague no less than 
 
102 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 paupers; but their fate was less pitied, for it seemed less 
 sad to pay the common debt of mortality than to perish 
 by imperial cruelty. In that pestilence thirty thousand 
 perished in Rome alone. 
 
 Nero was safe enough, for he could escape the in- 
 fection in his distant delicious villas at Antium, or Baiae, 
 or Naples, or Subiaco, and could live in the midst of 
 his dissolute enormities undisturbed. He was turning 
 the world giddy with his senseless vanities, his Golden 
 House, his prurient art, his insane ostentations, his 
 statues and portraits a hundred and twenty feet high. 
 Yet he had his own dread warnings that, though the 
 sword of heaven was not in haste to strike, it was not 
 thrust back into the scabbard. There were hours when 
 the voice of flattery was hushed perforce, when the in- 
 cense of adulation grew sickening, when pleasure be- 
 came loathsome, and when in the dark and silent hours 
 the torturing mind shook its scourge over him. Not 
 even at Subiaco was he safe from conspirators; he never 
 knew what slave, what soldier, what minion might stab 
 his heart or poison his wine. Of the society which 
 had thronged that villa in his earlier days of empire, 
 there was scarcely one whom he had not killed. Britan- 
 nicus and Octavia, Seneca and Burrus, Lucan and 
 Vestinus, even Petronius, had been in turns his victims; 
 and poor, handsome Paris did not long escape. Pale 
 faces, dyed with blood, looked in upon him from dim 
 recesses, or started to meet him from the bushy garden- 
 dells. Tigellinus was with him, and his new colleague 
 in the praetorian prefectship, the big, brutal Nymphidius, 
 a man of base origin, who boasted that he was a 
 natural son of CaHgula, but was probably the son of a 
 
THE DOOM OF VIRTUE. 1 83 
 
 gladiator. But these men had nothing wherewith to 
 amuse him — no wit, no learning — nothing but the coarse 
 satieties of adulation, debauchery, and blood. No poet, 
 no artist, no great writer now graced the board which 
 was polluted by parasites, and poisoners, and effeminate 
 slaves. And to add to his secret misery and terror, 
 one day, as he was feasting at Subiaco in such society, 
 a storm came on, and rolled among the mountains with 
 reverberating echoes; and, as though he were the sole 
 mark for the thunderbolts of heaven, the lightning 
 dashed out of his hand the golden goblet which he was 
 lifting to his lips, and split the citron table at which 
 he sat. He fell back screaming upon his couch, and 
 for some time grovelled there — a heap of abject terror. 
 But the cup of his iniquity had yet to overflow the 
 brim, as this and every other warning was sent in vain. 
 Indeed, he sometimes imagined that he was elevated 
 above the reach of all human destiny, and that the gods 
 were weary of opposing his prosperity. When some of 
 his precious effects had been lost in a shipwreck, he 
 told his friends that the fishes would bring them back 
 to him. For now an event happened which powerfully 
 magnetised the imagination of the Romans, and elevated 
 Nero to a splendour which Augustus might have envied. 
 Tiridates, the Parthian, the descendant of the Arsacids, 
 was journeying all the way to Rome, to receive from 
 Nero's hand as a vassal the crown of Armenia. Being 
 a Magian, he would not pollute the sacredness of the 
 sea, and therefore came all the way by land, and on 
 horseback, only crossing the Hellespont. He was ac- 
 companied by his harem and family, and by three thou- 
 sand horsemen. The journey occupied nine months, 
 
184 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 and when he reached Italy he did not stop at Rome, 
 but went to Naples to visit Nero. The scene of the 
 Parthian's investment with the diadem of Armenia was 
 the most magnificent which Rome had ever beheld. 
 Armed cohorts were ranged through all the temples 
 round the forum. Nero sat on the Rostra, among the 
 standards and ensigns of the army, robed in triumphal 
 insignia. Tiridates, mounting the steps, knelt before 
 him. Nero raised him by the right hand, and embraced 
 him. The king then begged that he might receive a 
 diadem from the Emperor, and his petition was repeated 
 to the people by a praetorian interpreter. Nero placed 
 the diadem — a band of purple silk woven with pearls 
 — upon the head of Tiridates, and he was conducted 
 to the Theatre of Pompey. It had been redecorated 
 for the occasion, and was so enriched with gilding that 
 the day was known as "the gilded day." The purple 
 awning over the theatre was richly broidered with a 
 picture of Nero in the costume of Apollo, driving his 
 chariot among the stars. On this occasion Nero sang 
 and drove his chariot in public, and won the hearty 
 contempt of the wily Parthian, who, struck with his 
 weakness in comparison with the manly valour of his 
 general, Corbulo, remarked to him that "in Corbulo he 
 had a good slave." 
 
 The sums which Nero lavished on the Parthian by 
 way of largesse before his departure were almost in- 
 credible. It was believed that one motive for urging 
 the visit had been the Emperor's desire to be initiated 
 into the secrets of necromancy by the Persian Magi, in 
 order to appease the angry Manes of his mother. At- 
 tempts were made, and it was whispered that human 
 
THE DOOM OF VIRTUE. I 85 
 
 blood had not been lacking as one of the ingredients 
 of the incantation. But the initiation was futile, and 
 the Magians secretly averred that the failure was due 
 to the unworthiness of the novice. The Armenian king 
 vanished like a gorgeous cloud, leaving Nero more 
 than ever in need of funds and more than ever reck- 
 less in the wicked means by which they might be 
 amassed, though he dedicated a laurel wreath in the 
 Capitol, and closed, as Augustus had done, the Temple 
 of Janus. 
 
 But the time when the whole attention of the popu- 
 lace was absorbed in the pomp of this reception was 
 purposely selected for the commission of further crimes. 
 Nero had tried to obliterate on false charges the inno- 
 cent Christians; he had swept away all the noblest of 
 the aristocracy; he had banished or killed the philo- 
 sophers; he now ventured to strike a blow at Paetus 
 Thrasea and Barea Soranus, the two most honoured and 
 virtuous of the Roman senators; and in doing so, as 
 Tacitus says, to exterminate virtue itself 
 
 The question arose whether Thrasea should defend 
 himself, or treat the accusation with disdain, and die. 
 The braver spirits longed to hear him speaking in the 
 senate and rising above the sluggish acquiescence with 
 which so many had obeyed the tyrant, and bled them- 
 selves to death in their private baths. His feebler friends 
 advised him not to undergo the insults, the contumelious 
 speeches, possibly even the personal violence, which 
 might await him in that degraded assembly of the timid 
 and the servile, in which even the good would be sure 
 to be cowed into base concessions. His defence would 
 assuredly be in vain, and it might involve the ruin of 
 
1 86 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 his wife, his family, and all whom he loved. The young 
 tribune Rusticus Arulenus went so far as to promise 
 that he would exercise his ancient tribunician privilege, 
 and veto a decree of condemnation. But Thrasea de- 
 cided to follow the ordinary course. He forbad the 
 generous tribune to plunge himself into futile peril. His 
 life and his career were over; those of Arulenus were 
 only beginning. He decided to await the decision, and 
 not to appear in his own defence. When his friends 
 remonstrated, he quoted to them with a smile a line 
 from the "QEdipus" of Seneca — 
 
 "Tacere liceat; nulla libertas minor 
 A rege petitur." 
 
 "Let Nero," he said, "at least accord me the privilege 
 of holding my tongue." We can only regret that he 
 did not rise to an energy which might have startled the 
 degenerate nobles from the pusillanimity which yielded 
 everything in despair of striking a blow. Thrasea might, 
 indeed, have been murdered in the Senate-house, but 
 such a murder would have aroused a reaction and pre- 
 cipitated a beneficent revolution. Daring is contagious, 
 and one dauntless spirit may flash nobleness into a host 
 of slaves. 
 
 The senate was summoned to meet next morning in 
 the Temple of Venus Genetrix, and found the temple 
 beset by two praetorian cohorts, who, in insolent defiance 
 of the law, did not hesitate to display to the assembling 
 senators their menacing swords. The Emperor's com- 
 plaints were read by a quaestor. Without naming anyone, 
 he inveighed against senators who set a slothful and 
 pernicious example by neglecting their legislative duties. 
 
THE DOOM OF VIRTUE. 1 87 
 
 Then Capito sprang to his feet, and used this charge 
 Hke a fatal weapon. But though he was animated by 
 personal hatred of Thrasea, the speech of the orator 
 Marcellus Eprius was still more passionate and en- 
 venomed. With frowning brow, with threatening gestures, 
 with his eyes, his face, his words blazing with fury, he 
 charged Thrasea with encouraging the spirit of sedition 
 by impotent disdain for his clear duties. But if the 
 senate was terrified by this hicrosa et sanguinans elo- 
 quentia,* it was terrified still more by the crowd of 
 soldiers and the gleam of arms. Thrasea was con- 
 demned to death; his son-in-law, Helvidius Prisons, was 
 banished from Italy. 
 
 It was evening, and Thrasea was in his gardens 
 among a throng of illustrious men and women. They 
 were Hstening to his conversation with the Cynic De- 
 metrius on the nature of the soul, when a messenger 
 came to tell Thrasea of his condemnation. He urged 
 all his friends to leave him immediately, and not to im- 
 peril themselves by association with one who had been 
 condemned. In those days compassion was dangerous; 
 the kindly bonds of human relationship had been snap- 
 ped by fear. 
 
 He was only allowed an hour in which to die. His 
 wife, Arria, wished to die with him. Her mother, the 
 elder Arria, when her husband, Csecina Paetus, had been 
 condemned under Claudius, plunged a dagger into her 
 own breast, and, plucking it from the wound, put it into 
 the hand of her husband with the words, "My Paetus, 
 it does not hurt.'' The daughter would fain have emu- 
 lated her mother. But Thrasea would not let her open 
 * Dial. de. Or at., 12. 
 
I 88 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 her veins. He bade her to live for the sake of their 
 child, Fannia. In the porch he met the quaestor, and 
 seemed more cheerful at the thought that Helvidius 
 had been spared than grieved that he himself had been 
 condemned. "Nero may slay me," he said, "but destroy 
 me he cannot. He can kill me, but he cannot make 
 me do wrong." 
 
 He took Helvidius and Demetrius with him into his 
 chamber. The indomitable spirit of the latter was well 
 adapted to confirm his resolution. Demetrius had re- 
 duced hfe to its simplest elements, and Seneca, who 
 greatly admired him, said that he delighted to leave 
 courtiers arrayed in purple and to talk with this half- 
 clad philosopher, to whom nothing was lacking because 
 he desired nothing. On one occasion, when Nero 
 threatened Demetrius with death, he calmly replied, 
 "You denounce death to me, and Nature denounces it 
 to you." 
 
 Thrasea sat down, and extended both arms to the 
 physician. When his blood began to flow he sprinkled 
 some of it on the ground, and exclaimed, as Seneca 
 had done, "I pour a Hbation to Jupiter the Liberator." 
 Then calling the quaestor nearer to him, he said, "Look, 
 young man. May Heaven avert the omen from you, 
 but you are born to times in which it is well to [fortify 
 your mind by examples of constancy." 
 
 They are his last recorded words. His funeral was 
 humble. His pyre burned silently in the gardens of his 
 deserted house, and when they had gathered his ashes 
 his wife and daughter had yet to endure the anguish 
 of parting with Helvidius. The hours of their heart- 
 breaking sorrow were insulted by shouts of rapture with 
 
THE DOOM OF VIRTUE. l8g 
 
 which the people greeted the Parthian Tiridates and 
 the murderer of their beloved. 
 
 During the condemnation of Thrasea and Helvidius 
 the Temple of Venus Genetrix had been the scene of 
 a tragedy still more pathetic — of a tragedy perhaps the 
 most pathetic ever witnessed in that assembly 'of woe. 
 Barea Soranus, like Thrasea, was a Stoic. He had been 
 the Proconsul of Asia, and was charged with the double 
 crime of friendship for Rubellius Plautius and of having 
 administered his province rather with a view to his own 
 glory than for the public good. This was an allusion 
 to his honourable conduct in having supported the people 
 of Pergamus in their opposition to the greedy robbery 
 of their statues by Acratus, the freedman of Nero. 
 These were old charges, but to them was added the 
 new and deadly one that his daughter, Servilia, had 
 practised arts of sorcery and given money to the 
 diviners of horoscopes. 
 
 The hapless Servilia was little more than a girl, yet 
 she was practically a widow. Her husband, Annius 
 Pollio, had been driven into exile, as an accomplice in 
 the Pisonian conspiracy, though no evidence had |been 
 brought against him. The poor young widow — she was 
 not yet twenty years old — was falling sick with the in- 
 tensity of her anxiety for the father whom she tenderly 
 loved. She had merely consulted the Chaldeans, in the 
 anguish of her heart and the inexperience of her youth, 
 to know whether Nero would be placable, and Soranus 
 be able to refute the charges brought against him, or, 
 at any rate, to escape with his life. The impostors, 
 after accepting large sums and exhausting her resources, 
 had basely betrayed her. 
 
190 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 On opposite sides of the tribunal where Nero sat 
 between the two consuls stood the hapless prisoners— 
 the father grey with age, the young daughter not even 
 venturing to Hft up her eyes to his face, because in her 
 rash affection she had increased his perils. 
 
 The accuser was a knight named Ostorius Sabinus. 
 "Did you not," he asked the trembling girl, "sacrifice 
 the revenues of your dower, did you not even sell the 
 necklace off your neck, to get funds for your magic in- 
 cantations?" 
 
 Servilia prostrated herself upon the ground, and for 
 some time could find no voice to speak; then rising, 
 and embracing the altar of Venus Genetrix, "I invoked," 
 she exclaimed, "no infernal deities; I uttered no prayers 
 of imprecation. The sole object of my ill-omened sup- 
 plications was that thou, O Caesar, that ye, O Senators, 
 might preserve to me this the best of fathers. I gave 
 the Chaldeans my gems, my robes, the adorment of my 
 matronly dignity; I would have given them, had they 
 demanded it, my blood, my life. Let them look to it; 
 their very existence and the nature of their arts were 
 hitherto unknown to me. I never mentioned the name 
 of the Emperor, except among the deities. And of all 
 that I did my father knew nothing. If what I have 
 done be a crime, I have sinned alone." 
 
 "Senators!" exclaimed her father, Soranus, "let her 
 be at once acquitted. She is free from all the charges 
 urged against me. She did not accompany me to my 
 province; she was too young to have known Rubellius 
 Plan tins; she was in no way implicated in the accusa- 
 tions against her husband. Her sole error has been her 
 filial affection. Separate her case from mine, She is 
 
THE DOOM OF VIRTUE. ^ IQI 
 
 Still in early youth. Let one victim suffice you. I am 
 prepared to undergo whatever fate you inflict upon me, 
 but spare my child!" 
 
 At those tender words he opened his arms, and his 
 daughter sprang to his embrace, but the Hctors lowered 
 their cruel fasces, and interposed between them. 
 
 Then the witnesses were called, and a murmur of 
 contempt and indignation broke out even among those 
 abject senators when Publius Egnatius Celer stepped out 
 first among them. The lip of Soranus curled in strong 
 disdain, and he muttered the one word "Traitor!" For 
 Egnatius was a professed Stoic; he was a client of So- 
 ranus; he had been his teacher in philosophy; he was 
 old, and Soranus young; he had received from his hands 
 unnumbered kindness; he had himself encouraged Ser- 
 vilia to consult the astrologers. He wore the dress of 
 a philosopher; he had trained his features to assume the 
 aspect of Stoic dignity. But on this day he tore the 
 mask off his own face, and revealed himself as what he 
 was — a lecherous, treacherous, avaricious, hypocritic vil- 
 lain, who, having concealed his leprous character under 
 the guise of honour, did not hesitate for a moment to 
 sell his friend for money in the hour of calamity, and 
 thereby dishonoured his grey hairs, and earned for him- 
 self the execration of all time.* The wretch lived on 
 in deserved and general infamy. In better days he was 
 accused by Musonius Rufus and himself condemned. 
 But to Soranus and Servilia were meted out such justice 
 
 * "Stoicus occidit Baream, delator amicum, 
 Discipulumque senex, ripa nutritus in ilia 
 Ad quam Gorgonei delapsa est pinna caballi." 
 Juv. Sat, III. 1 1 6, 
 
192 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 as could alone be expected from such judges. The only 
 mercy extended to them was the permission to choose 
 their mode of death. 
 
 Such was the state of things in the days of Nero. 
 The aristocracy were like men who live in an unknown 
 land, glancing on every side at the slightest sound. 
 Seneca, who had lived through that reign of terror, most 
 truly depicts it. His sole remedy is stubborn resigna- 
 tion. Even abstinence from action requires prudence, 
 for you may be condemned for what you do not do. 
 Above all must men shun the Court, "that sad prison 
 of slaves." But, after every precaution, no one could 
 be safe, and therefore. Stoic-fashion, men must accustom 
 themselves to regard all calamities as matters of in- 
 difference. "Above all, is not suicide always possible?" 
 Seneca asks; "and is not that the best antidote in 
 tyranny? The path of escape is open everywhere. Do 
 you see this precipice? It is the descent to Liberty! 
 Do you see this sea, this well, this river? Liberty lies 
 hidden in their depths! Do you see this Httle barren, 
 distorted tree? Liberty hangs from its branches!"* 
 The historian is reminded of the picture of Pascal. 
 "Imagine a number of men in chains, all condemned to 
 death, some of whom have their throats cut daily in 
 sight of the rest, while the survivors see in their fate 
 their own condition, and gaze one on another with 
 sorrow, and without hope." 
 
 * Sen. De Ira, m. 15. 
 
BEFORE THE LION. I 93 
 
 CHAPTER LXI. 
 
 BEFORE THE LION. 
 
 xal sQQvod'rjv sx ozofiazog keovxog. 
 
 S. Paul, ad Tim. ^. iv. 17. 
 
 When Onesimus had succeeded in rescuing Nereus 
 from the pitchy tunic on the dreadful-glorious night of 
 the Church's martyrdom, the two made their way 
 through the darkness to Aricia, which they reached at 
 the earliest dawn. Old Dromo welcomed them, and 
 Junia received her father with transports of love and 
 gratitude. Onesimus hung modestly back during their 
 meeting, but when the girl had ceased to weep on her 
 father's neck, she turned to his deliverer, and thanked 
 him from her heart as one to whose courage and devo- 
 tion she owed his preservation from that death of 
 agony. 
 
 During that day they arranged their plans. In the 
 little farm and vineyard of Pudens there was ample 
 room for free labour, and it was settled that Nereus and 
 Junia should stay there for the present, Nereus working 
 in the vineyard, and Junia helping in the care of the 
 flocks and fowls, and in the management of the house- 
 hold. Among those groves, in that remote and humble 
 homestead, they were safe in their obscurity, and there 
 they could abide until some other opportunity offered, 
 or happier times came round. 
 
 Darkness and Dawn. III^ 1 3 
 
194 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Onesimus thought it his duty to return to the 
 Apostle, to whose service he had devoted his life. The 
 generosity of Octavia had left him with sufficient funds 
 for his simple needs, and he prepared to make his way 
 to Crete, where he expected to find St. Paul. But be- 
 fore he started he asked Nereus to sanction his mar- 
 riage with Junia. Both of them were baptized Christ- 
 ians, and Onesimus had now sufficiently proved the 
 sincerity of his faith, and the depth of his repentance 
 for former errors. 
 
 "I am grateful to thee, youth,'' said the old man, 
 "and I know that thou art a brand plucked from the 
 burning. But the coming of the Lord draweth nigh, 
 and the sky is red and lowering, and Antichrist is striv- 
 ing to destroy the Church of God. Is it a time to 
 marry and give in marriage? Is it not rather a time for 
 them who have wives to be as though they had none, 
 and for the unmarried to abide as virgins because of 
 the present necessity?" 
 
 "I know it, my father,'' said Onesimus; "but thou 
 mayst die, and Junia be left an orphan in these evil 
 days. Let us be married, and she will have an earthly 
 arm to defend her and toil for her. We will marry, 
 and will separate to-day. I will seek the Apostle, and 
 if it be God's will He will make our way plain before 
 our face." 
 
 Nereus consented. At a little distance from Rome, 
 in the loneliness of the Campagna, the fossors had 
 already begun to construct the catacomb now known as 
 that of St. Callistus, and there in a small subterranean 
 chapel in one of those dim galleries, the Christians be- 
 gan to hold their evening or early morning assemblies. 
 
BEFORE THE LION. ig5 
 
 Thither after sunset Nereus, Onesimus, and Junia made 
 their way. They found but a handful of Christians who 
 had escaped the fury of the persecution, and though 
 these were, in one sense, deeply discouraged by the 
 shattering blow which had destroyed their Church, and 
 almost heartbroken at the agonising loss of their loved 
 brethren, in another sense they were full of hope and 
 exalted courage, and uttered to one another their 
 watchword Mara?iatha, with more intense conviction. 
 And among them was Cletus, who had escaped as by 
 miracle. His name had been denounced, but being 
 young and active, he had succeeded in hiding himself 
 and eluding research. He was now the humble bishop 
 of the ruined community. He it was who joined the 
 hands of Onesimus and Junia in the holy bond, and he 
 it was who blessed the bread and wine of which the 
 little band of brethren partook in humble communion. 
 Marriage gladness, marriage festivities there were none. 
 The Phrygian freedman and the Roman maiden pledged 
 their faith to each other under the shadow of the 
 Cross. 
 
 Before the dawn was red, Onesimus was making 
 his way to Rhegium, whence he purposed to get to 
 Messana, and so by ship to Lasaea on the stormy shores 
 of Crete. On his arrival he found only Titus of Corinth, 
 whom St. Paul had left in charge of the young and 
 struggling Churches. He sailed in search of the Apostle, 
 and his ship stopped for a day at Patmos, where he 
 found the Beloved Disciple in his exile. The ascend- 
 ency of St. John's personality had overawed the inhabit- 
 ants of that rocky islet, and he was suffered to spend 
 his time in freedom. Onesimus sat with him under a 
 
 13* 
 
196 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 grey olive tree, on the grassy summit of a rock, the 
 highest point of the island, and discoursed with him for 
 hours. The scene was lovely. The brilHant sapphire 
 of the sea lay beneath them in unbroken calm, rippled 
 here and there by the white wings of the beautiful sea- 
 birds. The crags glowed a deep rich red, except when 
 they were covered with grass, on which the pink sea- 
 thrift had already faded into white. On every side the 
 sea-line was broken by the fantastic contour of isles and 
 islets. Eastward on the Ionian shore, so rich in heroic 
 and philosophic memories, they saw the historic summit 
 of Mount Mycale, and northwards the island of Thera. 
 A burning mountain, cast into the midst of the sea, and 
 at that time in a crisis of violent eruption, it vomited, 
 as though from the depths of the abyss, its volumes of 
 turbid smoke which hung like a cloud at one spot of 
 the far horizon.* It was here that St. John heard from 
 Onesimus the scenes which had followed his providen- 
 tial deliverance from the boiling oil, the illumination of 
 Nero's gardens with living torches, the orgies of the wild 
 beast from the sea of nations as he wallowed in the 
 blood of the saints. His whole soul was already brood- 
 ing on the awful manifesto in which he answered the 
 fury of the world, and spoke of the impending destruc- 
 tion of the two great cities of antiquity — Jerusalem, the 
 metropolis of God's olden Temple; Rome, the metropolis 
 of the dragon and the Anti-Christ. Here, too, he en- 
 trusted to Onesimus — in whose youth, prudence, and 
 courage he was interested — some of the keys to that 
 strange cryptogram of the Apocalypse, which, if it had 
 been written otherwise than in symbols, might have in- 
 * Sen. Qucest. Nat, li. 26, Vi. 21. 
 
BEFORE THE LION. 1 97 
 
 volved the ruin of whole communities. Among other 
 things he told him that, by the cabbalistic system of 
 Gematria, which the Greeks called isopsephism, "Nero 
 Caesar'' in Hehreiv letters gave that which he had called 
 the number of the Beast, 666. It was necessary that 
 such secrets should be kept with care, for in the hands 
 of an informer they might lead to overwhelming dis- 
 asters; yet Onesimus did not wholly throw into the 
 Maeander the key to the secret; but in due time revealed 
 enough to guide the guesses which Irenaeus and others 
 of the ancient Christian Fathers had heard through the 
 martyr Poly carp. 
 
 From Patmos Onesimus sailed to Ephesus, but did 
 not overtake the Apostle Paul till he had followed him 
 to Nicopolis, in Epirus. After a restful winter there 
 St. Paul went through Macedonia to Troas. There, in 
 the hospitable house of Carpus, he was suddenly ar- 
 rested at the instance of Alexander the coppersmith, 
 who was animated by trade grudges, because that part 
 of his work which was connected with small images of 
 Diana of the Ephesians had suffered from Paul's preach- 
 ing. Paul was seized by night, and so suddenly that 
 he had no time to take with him his few precious books 
 and documents and his large cloak. He was hurried 
 to Ephesus, and tried before the proconsul; but, know- 
 ing that there he was little likely to obtain justice, he 
 again appealed to Caesar. During his imprisonment at 
 Ephesus he had been cheered by Onesiphorus, and by 
 the son of his heart Timotheus, who had shared with 
 him for so many years the life of a despised and hunted 
 missionary. They parted with streaming tears which 
 Paul long remembered. With Onesimus as his attend- 
 
198 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 ant, and Luke, Demas, Tychicus, Trophimus, and Erastus 
 as his fellow-helpers, the glorious prisoner set forth on 
 his last journey. Trophimus fell ill at Miletus; Erastus 
 stayed at Corinth, of which city he had been chamber- 
 lain. They went over the Diolkos to Lechaeum, along 
 the Gulf of Corinth, and across the Adriatic to Brundi- 
 sium. Thence they made their dreary way to Rome. 
 This time there were no rejoicing crowds of Christians 
 to meet them at Appii Forum or the Three Taverns, at 
 sight of whom he could thank God and take courage. 
 He found the Church of Rome in its ashes. No one 
 could visit him without peril; and indeed no Christian 
 of rank was left at Rome. Clemens and his family 
 shared the disgrace into which Vespasian had fallen, 
 and were living at the Sabine farm. Pomponia, after 
 her visit to Poppsea, had suffered a severe relapse, and 
 had been moved to a distant villa in the Apennines. 
 Every leader of the Christian Church except Cletus and 
 Hermas had perished in the persecution. Pudens was 
 in Britain with Caractacus and Claudia. In later days 
 the devotion of Christians to their imprisoned brethren 
 struck Pagans with curious amazement, but Paul him- 
 self discouraged visits which might so easily bring death 
 to the visitors. He was left, therefore, in painful lone- 
 hness, except for the loving care of Luke and Onesi- 
 mus. Of his companions, Demas had forsaken him, and 
 the presence of others had been necessary in various 
 Churches. He was imprisoned, as his brother Apostles 
 had been, in the TuHianum, and it was difficult to find 
 out where he was. The Ephesian Onesiphorus, who 
 came to Rome for the purpose, cheered his heart by 
 fearlessly seeking him, and, unashamed of his chain, re- 
 
BEFORE THE LION. 1 99 
 
 freshed him in this his seventh imprisonment with that 
 sense of human sympathy which he most required. But 
 this one gleam of Hght was speedily quenched, for 
 Onesiphorus caught the prison fever, and died at 
 Rome. . 
 
 Nero himself presided at the first trial of the Apostle. 
 The crime which the Emperor had committed against 
 the Christians was so enormous that the recollection of 
 it haunted him, and intensified his hatred. He would 
 not lose the opportunity of condemning the greatest of 
 the Christian leaders. Paul was conducted to the ba- 
 silica in the Golden House. It was a hall of the ut- 
 most splendour. The floor was of mosaic, in which 
 porphyry, and serpentine, and giallo antico blended their 
 soft lustres in patterns of wonderful variety and grace. 
 The pillars were of Hght-green cipollino, the walls were 
 inlaid with pavonazzetto from the Apennines near Pisa, 
 and their cornices of alabaster were sculptured with 
 animals, and dolphins, and winged figures. The Em- 
 peror sat in the centre of the apse, which was divided 
 from the body of the hall by a balustrade of white 
 marble. His gilded and ivory chair was elevated on 
 an inlaid pavement, approached by steps of porphyry. 
 Round him stood a group of praetorians with their silver 
 eagles and other military ensigns. The lictors with their 
 axed fasces stood at the back of his chair, and near 
 him on lower seats sat Tigellinus, Eprius Marcellus, Cos- 
 sutianus Capito, and other informers who had recently 
 been enriched with the spoils of the innocent. Not far 
 from these were some of the leading Jews, and con- 
 spicuous among them were the High Priest Ishmael, 
 
200 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 the alabarch Tiberius Alexander the unworthy nephew 
 of Philo, and the foxy features of that arch-impostor, 
 the magician Simon. 
 
 The great prisoner was made to stand in front of 
 the balustrade on the spot marked by a circle of giallo 
 antico on the floor. His hands were fastened together 
 with a long coupling chain. The two chief Ephesian 
 accusers, Alexander the coppersmith, and Demetrius the 
 silversmith, were animated with the keenest hatred. And 
 Paul was left absolutely alone. Onesimus and Luke ac- 
 companied him to the entrance, but they were both 
 "suspects," and were not permitted to enter. But there 
 were Gentiles and soldiers who might have helped him 
 had they chosen, and the Apostle would not have been 
 human if he had not felt the bitterness of desertion. 
 "At my first trial," he wrote to Timothy, "no man took 
 his place at my side. All abandoned me. God forgive 
 them!" In all that city, where his previous bonds had 
 made the Gospel known alike in the Palace and the 
 camp; in that world, for which he had sacrificed his 
 life in loftiest services, there was no patron to protect, 
 no advocate to support him, no favourable witness to 
 plead extenuation. But he felt and said that One more 
 powerful than many legions stood by him — even the 
 Lord whom he had served. 
 
 Nero was in his most savage mood, and Tigellinus, 
 as always, added fuel to his rage. He insulted Paul, 
 he glared upon him, he roared at him, he attempted to 
 browbeat him, with utter violation of every principle of 
 justice. Paul was a man the very sight of whom natur- 
 
BEFORE THE LION. 20I 
 
 ally inspired Nero with ferocity. For Nero, whom all 
 the world knew to be a robber, a poisoner, a murderer, 
 a matricide — a sensualist, effeminate, degraded, and un- 
 utterably depraved — had become aware that these Chris- 
 tians lived lives of purity and holiness, the possibility of 
 which he affected to deny. And his guilty splendour 
 and luxurious misery were forced at last to blush and 
 tremble before the irresistible weakness of that despised, 
 ragged, fettered prisoner. For Paul did not in the least 
 fear him, and Paul's courage was so marvellous to those 
 who were accustomed to the pusillanimity of senators, 
 who went away and committed suicide if Nero did but 
 frown at them, that the courtiers and soldiers turned 
 their eyes from the purple of the world's master to gaze 
 upon the rags of this sick prisoner who stood there with 
 his pale countenance, his stooping figure and thin sable- 
 silvered hair, more dauntless in chains, and under the 
 axe of doom, than the Emperor amid his guards. 
 
 The first trial turned on Ephesian accusations of 
 riot and disorder, and Paul, producing the diploma of 
 his franchise, stood on his rights as a Roman citizen. 
 He demanded to answer for himself, and, in the manly 
 speech which he made, the chained ambassador of 
 Christ struck a feeling akin to terror into the heart of 
 the deified autocrat of heathendom. He was able to 
 prove by the written evidence of the Recorder of Ephe- 
 sus, and of friendly Asiarchs, that the testimony of the 
 metal-workers was false, and that he had ever behaved 
 as a peaceable citizen. The calm dignity of his defence, 
 and the perfect courtesy and fearlessness which he had 
 shown in his desperate position, left a deep impression 
 
202 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 on the jurors. Eprius Marcellus tried to cow him with 
 that Hercules-Furens style of oratory which had so often 
 driven the blood from the cheeks of consulars and gen- 
 erals. But when Paul turned on him his quiet glance, 
 Eprius Marcellus stopped short, stammered in the middle 
 of a sentence, and ignominiously sat down, muttering 
 something about "the evil eye.'' 
 
 In spite of Nero's scorn and anger, the jurors voted 
 in accordance with their convictions. When the votes 
 were counted in the urn there were a few C.s for Con- 
 demno dropped by Court "sycophants, but most of the 
 tablets were A. for Absolvo and N. L. for Non Liquet, 
 "not proven." To the astonishment of all, this first de- 
 fence ended in acquittal on the first capital charge, and 
 ampliatio —\h& postponement of the trial — for the 
 examination of the second count. The second count 
 was that Paul was a Christian, and, as such, the adherent 
 of an illegal religion. On this he knew that he could 
 not escape; but of the result of the first trial he wrote 
 to Timothy with heartfelt gratitude that "God had saved 
 him out of the mouth of the lion." 
 
 There was nothing to cheer his cold and rocky 
 prison except the light within his soul, and that human 
 tenderness which, when all others had deserted him, 
 was still lavished upon him by Onesimus and Luke. 
 The Evangelist did all that was in his power to keep 
 alive in Rome the flickering flame which the violence of 
 persecution had overwhelmed. In this way Onesimus 
 could do but little. He regarded it as the present work 
 of his life to console and tend the Apostle, and he de- 
 
BEFORE THE LION. 203 
 
 voted himself to this work with all the more thorough- 
 ness because, when he was able to visit Aricia, Junia 
 impressed him with its necessity and sacredness. He 
 had his reward; for day by day he himself advanced in 
 righteousness and knowledge, as he Hstened to words 
 which have helped forward the regeneration of the 
 world. 
 
BOOK III. 
 
 "ATROPOS OCCAT." 
 
CHAPTER LXII. 
 NERO IN GREECE. 
 
 "Haec opera atque hse sunt generosi Principis artes 
 Gaudentis foedo peregrina ad pulpita cantu 
 Prostitui, Graiseque apium meruisse coronse." 
 Juv. Sat. vin. 224. 
 
 Nero grew weary of Rome. While he was there 
 he could not wholly exclude the voice of the conscience 
 of mankind which awoke echoes in his own. With art, 
 and aesthetics, and the race-course, and the theatre, he 
 tried to create around him the elements of a sham and 
 shadowy world. It was a world filled with the ghosts 
 of crime and weird with insensate projects and monstrous 
 revellings. He had attempted everything, abused every- 
 thing, polluted everything, and "the scoriae river of 
 passion accursed," of which he drank so freely, did but 
 consume and burn up his powers. He had become like 
 a dead thing in a wilderness of dead capacities, inspired 
 at once by "insatiable desires and incurable disgusts." 
 While he played the god he sank lower than Christian 
 eye can follow him, into the beast. With Domitian, 
 Tiberius, Caligula, and Helagabalus — with Vitellius, 
 Commodus, and Maximin — he was one of a group of 
 Caesars who have been set forth last on the stage of 
 
208 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 history, a spectacle to angels and to men to show that 
 human nature can sink into "half beast and half devil" 
 when there are no restraints to save men from all that 
 is most abject. They became, as St. Paul said, inventors 
 of evil; not only doers of whatsoever things are vile, 
 whatsoever things are infamous, whatsoever things are 
 of ill report, but also delighters in those that do them. 
 
 But at Rome, even in his beloved theatre, Nero was 
 not safe from insults. They scorched him as with the 
 touch of flame, and yet were so impalpable that he could 
 not avenge them unless he put a whole population to 
 death. Opposite his Palace, or on the outer circus, 
 were written, in chalk or coal, denunciations so stinging 
 as to show that if blank walls are the paper of fools 
 they may also be the avengers of tyrants. One of these 
 pasquinades hailed him as the true descendant of ^neas, 
 since ^neas "took off" his father, Nero his mother. 
 Another criticised the overgrown space of the Golden 
 House, and bade the Quirites to emigrate to Veii, if 
 the House did not forestall them by extending so far. 
 Yet another reminded him that the Parthian could be 
 an Apollo with his arrows no less than Nero with his 
 harp. 
 
 He pretended indifference to these things, but he 
 felt them, and longed to find a fresh scene for display. 
 At Rome he considered that his musical talent, though 
 he had exhibited it to the promiscuous populace, was 
 yet a flower which blushed unseen. The astute and 
 adulatory Greeks had sent him the crowns of all their 
 citharoedic contests. He was delighted, and asked their 
 delegates to supper. When they begged him to give 
 them a specimen of his powers, they went into such 
 
NERO IN GREECE. 20g 
 
 ecstasies over his performance that he said the Greeks 
 were the only connoisseurs who were worthy of his 
 proficiency. 
 
 To Greece, therefore, he set forth with a retinue 
 which would h^ve sufficed for the conquest of India, 
 only that they were more concerned with masks and 
 robes and musical instruments • than with arms. He 
 was accompanied, too, by all his train of minions, as 
 well as by an army of claqueurs. When he appeared 
 at Naples he was so enchanted by the "Kentish fire" 
 of some Alexandrians who were present — a mode of 
 applause which was new to him — that he took a number 
 of these Egyptians into his service. He had also trained 
 a band of youths of equestrian rank, and more than five 
 thousand of the lustiest plebeians to act together in 
 bands and learn certain modes of cheering, which were 
 called "buzzings," "tiles," and "jars." They were mostly 
 boys, and were arrayed in fine dresses, with their thick 
 hair shining with perfumes, and with jings on their left 
 hands. 
 
 With such accompaniments he might feel tolerably 
 secure of victory, yet when he appeared at a contest he 
 always felt or pretended a girlish timidity. The Emperor 
 of Rome might be seen on the stage of Greek towns 
 bending his knee before the mob, humbly adoring them 
 with his hands, assuring the judges that he had done 
 his little best, tremblingly solicitous to observe the 
 slightest rules, and perspiring with anxiety if he made 
 the smallest mistake. Besides this, he debased himself 
 with all the pettiest intrigues of tenth-rate theatrical life. 
 He defamed his competitors, or bribed them not to do 
 their best, or cajoled them to cede the victory to him. 
 
 Darkness and Dawn. Ill, 1 4 
 
2IO DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 When an Epirot, with a fine voice, refused to cede the 
 prize unless Nero paid him ten talents, he was pushed 
 against a column by Nero's clique and stabbed to death. 
 It required the power of the Emperor to secure the 
 rewards of the comedian. 
 
 Without believing, or even alluding to, the deeds 
 recorded of him by Dion Cassius, it is clear that his 
 plunderings, and crimes, and secret orgies continued 
 unabated. From the Thespians he stole the Cupid of 
 Praxiteles in Pentelic marble; from the Pisatans of 
 Olympia the statue of Ulysses among the Greek chiefs 
 drawing lots to answer the challenge of Hector. Rich 
 men were proscribed in consequence of secret delations, 
 which often sprang from the greed of the detestable 
 Calvia Crispinilla, who was now the keeper of the ward- 
 robe of Sporus. They were struck down, unheard, and 
 their possessions were divided. Rome had been left 
 under the government of two ex-slaves, Helius and 
 Polycletus, who were so rapacious that the people com- 
 plained of being under two Neros instead of one. 
 
 Amid such crimes little was thought of the fate of 
 Paris. The poor pantomime, whose beauty, grace, and 
 skill had been the delight of Rome, had excited the 
 jealousy of Nero because he could not teach him how 
 to dance. Paris, like Aliturus, had been no better than 
 a slave, and we cannot blame him too severely if, in 
 such an age and such surroundings, he had been stained 
 by the vices in the midst of which he lived, and his 
 nature, not originally ignoble, had been 
 
 "subdued 
 To what it wrought in, like the dyer's hand." 
 
NERO IN GREECE. 2 I I 
 
 But his death, like that of Roscius, "eclipsed the gaiety 
 of nations," and gave one warning more — had it been 
 needed — to Aliturus, that the friendship of tyrants means 
 death. 
 
 But the worst of these Grecian enormities — many of 
 which cannot be narrated — involved the acme of 
 treachery and ingratitude. No man had shed a purer 
 lustre over the age of Nero than the brave and honest 
 Corbulo. His Ufe had been devoted to the service of 
 the Empire. To him had been due those splendid 
 victories which kept the Parthians in check, and induced 
 Tiridates to put the colophon on Nero's glory by com- 
 ing to receive at his hands before the Roman people 
 the diadem of Armenia. Well might the Arsacid tell 
 Nero that in Corbulo he had a good slave. The great 
 victorious general had spent his life in foreign service. 
 He had never come near the Court; had received no 
 civil honours; had never returned to enjoy a triumph or 
 an ovation. He had been content to keep himself 
 away from those scenes of gilded slavery and miserable 
 splendour, and perhaps anticipated the sole reward 
 which tyrants can give to true greatness. Now, how- 
 ever, that Nero was in Greece, he wrote to Corbulo a 
 letter of almost filial reverence, and invited him to come 
 and receive proofs of his gratitude. To refuse would 
 have been tantamount to rebellion, and Corbulo had 
 always been stainlessly loyal to his worthless master. 
 But good men invariably have their slanderers, and one 
 of his officers, Arrius Varus, had been whispering suspi- 
 cions about him into the Emperor's ear. He was not 
 granted so much as an audience. No sooner had he 
 landed at Cenchreae than Nero sent him the command 
 
 14* 
 
212 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 to die. Corbulo wasted no words on execration or com- 
 plaint. For a moment, perhaps, it flashed across him 
 that he would have been wiser to Hsten to the voice of 
 Rome and of the East, which had invited him to be 
 their liberator. But it was too late to repent of the 
 fault of putting trust in a monster. He drew his sword 
 and stabbed himself with the single word "Deserved!"* 
 
 We cannot wonder that Nero did not visit Sparta, 
 because every tradition of Sparta would have cried 
 shame on his histrionic effeminacy. He did not visit 
 Athens, because Athens did not deign to invite him, 
 and because he shrank from eliciting a keenness of wit 
 which had not spared the bloodstained Sylla. But his 
 chief reason for avoiding "the Eye of Greece" was be- 
 cause he dreaded the Temple of the Furies, who had 
 avenged the less guilty and more expiable matricide of 
 Orestes. Nor did he dare to visit Eleusis, because the 
 voice of the herald forbade the profane to be initiated 
 into its mysteries. He did not even venture to present 
 himself to the hierophants of the little mysteries of Agra 
 on the banks of the Ilissus. Visits open to the humblest, 
 and mysteries revealed to the simplest of the pure, were 
 barred to him. 
 
 And before his journey was over, amid his sham 
 triumphs, he began to be disturbed by disquieting 
 rumours. 
 
 Judaea was in a state of violent revolt, and the 
 presence of an able general was urgently needed. Nero 
 therefore appointed Vespasian to the command. The 
 old general was expiating in seclusion and obscurity 
 the crime of having snored while Nero sang. One day 
 * Note 51. 
 
NERO IN GREECE. 213 
 
 an Imperial messenger was announced at his humble 
 home. His blood ran cold, for he made sure that the 
 soldier brought him an order to die. Instead of that 
 he brought a nomination to the government of Judaea 
 and the command of the army. To these high offices 
 Nero appointed him because a man of valour and 
 military ability was wanted. Nero overlooked what he 
 called his want of taste because, though eminent as a 
 soldier, he was a man of such humble name and origin 
 that he could not possibly be regarded as dangerous. 
 But the revolt of the Jews, though it was a serious 
 matter, was far less alarming than the other news which 
 now reached Nero. 
 
 Helius wrote to say that affairs in the city urgently 
 required his presence. "You summon me back," he 
 wrote in reply; "your wish ought rather to be that I 
 should return worthy of Nero." But the menace of dis- 
 aster was too grave to admit of its being neglected for 
 a verbal pomposity, and Helius hurried to Corinth in 
 person to rouse the Emperor from his insensate frivolity. 
 The weather was so stormy that his enemies fondly 
 hoped for his shipwreck if he sailed. Delay, however, 
 was impossible. His day of doom was close at hand. 
 
214 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER LXIII. 
 MUTTERING THUNDER. 
 
 Atsi TO [A,EV Cfjf ^o Ss fjLsd'iotaxai xanov, 
 TO S' sxTtecpYjvsv av'&ig i^ olqx^? vsov. 
 Euripides. 
 
 The insistency of Heliiis, and the alarming reports 
 which reached Nero from all quarters, roused him at 
 last from his intoxication of frivolous vanity and com- 
 pelled him to cut short the "ignoble masquerade with 
 which he had soiled Greece." But he would not reveal 
 the least consciousness of alarm, and, indeed, in the 
 madness of the moment, he did not realise it. What 
 did it matter if he was deposed? "All the world," he 
 used to say, "supports art," and he could easily gain 
 his living as a favourite harpist or singer on the public 
 stage. The glory of the actor, won by his own talents, 
 should be more dazzling than the diadem of the Emperor, 
 which was but the heritage of his race! 
 
 He first entered Naples, because there he had made 
 his first stage appearance. He entered it as a h'erom'ces, 
 riding in a chariot drawn by four milk-white steeds, 
 through a breach made in the walls. He made the 
 same magnificent entry into Antium, dear to him as the 
 place of his birth, and into Alba, the city where the 
 Temple of Jupiter Latiaris was venerated by the entire 
 Latin race. But he reserved for Rome the fullest 
 
MUTTERING THUNDER. 215 
 
 magnificence of a triumph heretofore undreamed of, 
 and such as might well cause every true Roman to 
 blush for shame. He degraded to his ignoble purpose 
 the chariot in which Augustus had triumphed after the 
 battle of Actium. His robe was of purple; over it flowed 
 a chlamys gleaming with golden stars; on his brow he 
 wore the olive wreath of the Olympic victors: in his 
 right hand he carried the laurel crown of Pythia. 
 Seated in the chariot by his side was no brave soldier 
 or noble statesman, but Diodorus the harpist! Before 
 him went a long procession of heralds, each carrying 
 some garland of victory, with tablets on which were in- 
 scribed the names of those whom he had conquered, 
 and the songs or tragedies in which he had gained the 
 prize. Thousands of the trained applauders whom he 
 called Augustiani, followed his chariot proclaiming them- 
 selves the soldiers and comrades of his successes. An 
 arch of the Circus Maximus had been broken down for 
 him, and through it he made his way along the Vela- 
 brum and the Forum, not to the temple of Jupiter on 
 the Capitol, or to that of Mars the Avenger, but to the 
 Palace and the temple of his patron Apollo. The senate 
 had gone forth in festal robes to meet and greet him. 
 As the champing steeds tossed their white manes and 
 bore him slowly along, every door and window and roof 
 and lattice was crowded with spectators, and the air 
 was rent with shouts of "Hail, Olympic, hail, Pythic 
 victor! Hail, %<d\^ periodonices!"^ Augustus, Augustus! 
 Hail, Nero-Hercules! Nero- Apollo! Hail, sacred voice! 
 Happy are they who hear it!" In street after street 
 victims were immolated as he passed; showers of fragrant 
 * "Conqueror in all the games." 
 
2l6 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 saffron were sprinkled down; the air was rich with the 
 perfume of incense burning on hundreds of altars; birds 
 and httle ornaments, and jewels and flowers were 
 scattered over him. It rained roses from the balconies 
 full of matrons and maidens. Of his eighteen hundred 
 and eight crowns he arranged the choicest in his own 
 bedchamber and around his bed. The rest he sent in 
 masses to adorn the great Egyptian obelisk which 
 Augustus had reared to be the goal of the Circus 
 Maximus. 
 
 Such men as the consuls of the year — the dull poet 
 Silius Italicus and the orator Trachalus — might estimate 
 highly the successes of a comedian, but the indignant 
 shade of Thrasea might have rejoiced in its Elysian 
 fields to have been spared the sight of such a triumph! 
 
 But so far from being ashamed, Nero henceforth 
 made his celestial voice his chief concern. As it was 
 too precious to be wasted in addressing crass praetorians, 
 he contented himself with sending messages to them, or 
 having his addresses read aloud in his presence. What 
 he had to say to the senate was similarly read by one 
 of the Consuls. An attendant whom he called a phonascus 
 stood constantly at his side to warn him to be careful 
 of his throat, and to keep a handkerchief before his 
 mouth. Whoever extolled his wretched voice was his 
 friend; whoever praised it insufficiently was his enemy. 
 
 It is part of the subtle irony of history that the 
 zenith of apparent prosperity is often the culminating 
 moment of misfortune, and the scene of most splendid 
 exaltation is that in which the fingers of a man's hand 
 steal forth and write on the palace-wall the flashing 
 messages of doom. The triumph of the sole periodonices 
 
MUTTERING THUNDER. 217 
 
 whom the world had ever seen was the last hour of his 
 sham glory. The patience of God and man was ex- 
 hausted, and "down rushed the thunderbolt." 
 
 Romans might be too deeply abased to avenge the 
 degradation of their name by the latest of those triumphs 
 which seemed to cover with ridiculous parody the three 
 hundred which had preceded it. But there was yet a 
 Gaul brave enough to arouse the Empire from its fatal 
 apathy. 
 
 His name was Julius Vindex, and he was the Pro- 
 praetor of Gaul. He was rich, and he was a senator, 
 as his father had been before him, for Claudius had 
 granted this distinction to the descendant of the ancient 
 kings of Aquitania. Nero envied his wealth, but Vindex, 
 in order to make the greedy parasites of the Court think 
 that he would soon die and leave them his possessions, 
 drank cumin-water and made himself artificially pale. 
 In Gaul he received constant news of Nero's villanies 
 both paltry and heinous, and his soul burned within 
 him. He sounded the legionaries to discover whether 
 they were as much ashamed and weary as himself ot 
 the tyranny of a comedian and a monster. He found 
 them ripe for rebellion. He had no personal objects. 
 He knew that a Gaul could hardly be Emperor, and he 
 secretly offered the Empire to Galba. On March 16, 
 A.D. 68, he gave, a little too prematurely, the signal of 
 revolt. Nero had gone to Naples to refresh himself and 
 to rest his precious voice, and there he received the 
 news of the insurrection on March 19, the anniversary 
 of the murder of his mother. 
 
 The idiotic frivolity with which he acted upon such 
 serious intelligence astonished even his courtiers. He 
 
2l8 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 only laughed, and pretended to rejoice at the opportunity 
 which would thus be afforded him of spoiling the 
 wealthiest of the provinces. He went into the gymnasium, 
 and watched with affected transport the contests of the 
 athletes. At supper still more perilous tidings reached 
 him, but he contented himself with saying, "Woe to the 
 rebels!" Meanwhile the walls of Rome were scrawled 
 over with satirical inscriptions. Yet for eight days he 
 took no step whatever, answered no letters, gave no 
 orders, attempted to get over the peril by calmly ignor- 
 ing it. His long impunity had made him a fatalist. 
 Had not Britain been lost and recovered? Whatever 
 happened, was he not promised an Eastern kingdom, 
 or could he not support himself by his voice and lyre? 
 
 A few days later came an edict of Vindex, in which 
 he spoke of Nero as Ahenobarbus, which angered Nero 
 as much as it angered Henry VII. to be described by 
 Richard III. as "one Henry Tidder or Tudor." Vindex 
 also described Nero as a wretched twangler on the harp. 
 Now indeed he was furious. To call him a wretched 
 twangler! Did any of his friends know of a better 
 harpist than himself? Was not such a criticism a proof 
 of ignorance and bad taste? Let the senate rouse itself 
 to avenge him! He would come in person, but that he 
 felt a certain weakness in his throat. 
 
 Messenger after messenger came spurring to Naples, 
 and Nero was compelled to hurry back in alarm to 
 Rome. Vindex was by this time at the head of a hundred 
 thousand men, yet Nero quite recovered his spirits when, 
 on his road to Rome, he saw the statue of a Gaulish 
 soldier subdued and dragged by the hair by a Roman 
 knight. At the sight of it he leapt up for joy, and 
 
MUTTERING THUNDER. 2 I Q 
 
 adored heaven. When he reached Rome, instead of 
 summoning an assembly of the senate and the people 
 to meet him, he only invited a few leading men to the 
 Palace, and after a brief consultation, spent the after- 
 noon in showing them new kinds of hydraulic organs. 
 "I intend to display them all on the stage," he said — 
 with the affected afterthought "if Vindex will let me.'' 
 
 When Galba first received the secret overtures of 
 Vindex he temporised. He had only preserved his life 
 under various tyrants by consummate care, and by 
 affecting a policy of submission and indifference. Vindex 
 implored him to constitute himself "the leader and 
 avenger of the human race," but he took no step until 
 he discovered that Nero had sent secret orders that he 
 was to be murdered, and found that he had only es- 
 caped very narrowly and by the merest accident. Be- 
 sides, as his officer T. Vinius reminded him, he had 
 hesitated in his allegiance, and to hesitate was to be 
 lost. He must either assume the purple or prepare 
 to die. 
 
 The fresh intelligence that Galba and the two 
 provinces of Spain had also revolted, struck Nero with 
 panic. He swooned away, and remained for some time 
 speechless and motionless. On recovering his senses he 
 tore his robe, and beat his head, with the cry, "I am 
 ruined!" His nurse tried to console him with the re- 
 mark that other Princes had suffered similar calamities. 
 "Nay," he answered, "my fate is more unheard of than 
 that of all others, for / lose the Empire while yet I live." 
 Some steps were suggested to him. He recalled some 
 troops from lllyria, and put Petronius Turpilianus at the 
 head of such forces as he could secure. He set a price 
 
2 20 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 on the head of Vindex, and Vindex repHed with 
 the "subHme gasconade," "Nero promises ten mil- 
 lion sesterces to anyone who will bring him my head. 
 I promise my head to anyone who will bring me his." 
 But scarcely a single plan occurred to Nero which was 
 not puerile; not one measure which was not monstrous. 
 He would execute the provincial governors, and appoint 
 new ones. He would send round to the islands and kill 
 all the exiles, for they might join the revolters. He would 
 order a general massacre of all the Gauls in Rome, for they 
 might favour their countrymen. He would give up the 
 Gallic provinces to be plundered by the soldiers. He would 
 invite the whole senate to a banquet, and poison them. 
 He deposed the two consuls, appointed himself sole consul, 
 and as he left the banquet, leaning on the shoulders of his 
 intimates, he declared that he would present himself before 
 the legions unarmed and weeping; and, when he had melted 
 their hearts by his tears, he would sing strains of victory 
 to the rejoicing soldiers — which he must immediately 
 compose. Above this "lugubrious buffoonery" he could 
 not rise! 
 
 His other preparations to meet the crisis — such as 
 they were — bore the same stamp of infructuous folly. 
 They were all tainted with vanity, imbecility, and corruption. 
 In choosing vehicles for his expedition, his chief care 
 was about those which were necessary for his stage pro- 
 perties. The women who were to accompany him had 
 their hair cut short to make them look like Amazons, 
 and were armed with axes and targets. In raising 
 money he was very fastidious that the silver should be 
 freshly minted and the gold fine. Many flatly refused 
 to contribute, exclaiming that he ought to get back the 
 
MUTTERING THUNDER. 22 1 
 
 sums with which the informers had been gorged to re- 
 pletion. He was made daily to feel that his power was 
 gone. When he summoned the city tribes to renew their 
 oath of allegiance, and to enrol themselves as soldiers, 
 the result was such a failure that he had to order each 
 household to furnish a proportionate number of slaves. 
 Among these he would only enrol the most approved, 
 not even excepting stewards and secretaries. 
 
 But he had to submit to the agony of daily insults. 
 The people were suffering from famine prices, and the 
 arrival of an Alexandrian corn-vessel was announced. 
 This always gave an occasion for rejoicing, but when it 
 turned out that the vessel was only. laden with a cargo 
 of Nile sand to sprinkle over the arena, there was an 
 outburst of rage and contumely. Scoffs at his chariot- 
 racing and singing were heard everywhere. Burghers 
 pretended to get up quarrels with their slaves at night, 
 and then shouted Vindex! Vindex! as though they 
 were merely appealing to the police. Nor was this all. 
 He was tormented with dreams and portents of every 
 description, which made his days and nights hideous. 
 He dreamt that he was steering a ship, and that some 
 one wrenched the helm out of his hand; that his mur- 
 dered wife Octavia dragged him into the nethermost 
 abyss; that he was covered over with a multitude of 
 winged ants. There was a stateliness and tragic sense 
 of condemnation in another of his dreams, in which the 
 ideal statues of the nations at Pompey^s theatre sprang 
 to life, surrounded him, and blocked his path. It was 
 rumoured that on the first day of the year, the Lares 
 had fallen down in the middle of a sacrifice, and that 
 the great gates of the mauseleum of his family had 
 
222 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Opened spontaneously, while a voice came from their 
 awful recesses which summoned him by name. When 
 a solemn rite was to be performed at the Capitol, the 
 keys were nowhere to be found. When his speech 
 against Vindex was pronounced in the senate, and he 
 said that "criminals should soon meet the end they had 
 deserved," the senators had joined to an ill-omened shout 
 of approval. It was noticed, too, that the last tragedy 
 which he had chanted in pubHc was that of "QEdipus 
 in Exile,'' and that the last verse which he had spoken 
 was — 
 
 "Wife, Mother, Father, join to bid me die." 
 
 If, on receiving the news of the revolt of Vindex, he 
 had put himself, like a true Roman Emperor, at the 
 head of his legions, the terrible prestige of a Caesar, the 
 remembered failure of previous conspiracies, and the dis- 
 union of his enemies, might have secured his triumph. 
 For the German legions of Verginius Rufus disdained 
 to follow the initiative of the Gauls. Their own general 
 refused the Empire, and declared for Galba; but an un- 
 happy and accidental collision between the jealous 
 cohorts led to a battle in which twenty thousand Gauls 
 were left dead upon the field. Vindex, in despair, 
 stabbed himself with his own sword. Galba, in scarcely 
 less despair, meditated suicide at Clunia, hearing that 
 the soldiers of Verginius were anything but favourable 
 to his claims. If but one pulse of true blood of his 
 brave patrician ancestors had stirred in the veins of 
 Nero, if he could have shown but one momentary flash 
 of their spirit, he would have been gloriously saved. But 
 Jiis abuse of passion, his disgraced manhood, his pol- 
 
MUTTERING THUNDER. 22 ^ 
 
 luted mind, his enervated frame, stamped upon him the 
 curse of nullity, and the infamous throng of contaminated 
 courtiers who formed his band of intimates were as 
 empty and effeminate as himself No strength was left 
 among them to evoke the ghost of a manly sentiment in 
 that sty of transformed humanity in which they had 
 long voluntarily wallowed. No heart was left them to 
 do, or dare, or even nobly to die. 
 
 And so Nero, while sitting at dinner, received fresh 
 letters, telling him that his sluggishness and ineptitude 
 had alienated from him the last semblance of allegiance 
 among the legions; Otho had declared against him in 
 Lusitania; Clodius Macer, in Africa; Vespasian, more or 
 less covertly, in Syria. The bitterness of death was 
 come, if it was not passed. In petulant passion he tore 
 the letters to pieces. Then, Hke a spoilt boy in a rage, 
 he seized from the table two crystal cups, of priceless 
 value, of which he was specially fond, and which were 
 embossed with scenes from Homer, and dashed them to 
 shivers on the marble floor. 
 
 More wild and wicked follies suggested themselves 
 to his diseased and whirling brain. Why should he not 
 again set fire to the city, and prevent all attempts to 
 extinguish the flames, by sending to the vivaria of the 
 amphitheatre, and letting loose all the wild beasts 
 among the people? What a scene it would be! Lions, 
 and tigers, and bears, and panthers, growling, leaping, 
 roaring, amid the streets of a city bursting everywhere 
 into conflagration, and — while themselves wild with 
 terror — striking fresh terror into a screaming populace! 
 Incapable of consecutive thought, he had not even con- 
 sidered what would come of this. Suffice it that it 
 
2 24 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 would be a magnificent excitement, a thrilling and 
 supreme sensation! He did not repent of this design; 
 he was not appalled by the stupendous and selfish 
 wickedness; he was only deterred by the impossibility 
 of carrying it out. It may be said that such schemes 
 bel;ray the madman; but Nero's brain was undisturbed 
 by any madness except that which consists in, and is 
 the Nemesis of, a soul eaten away by conceit, selfishness, 
 and lust. Caligula, it has been truly said, would, in 
 modern days, have found his way to Bedlam; but Nero 
 to Tyburn. His hour was come. He sent his most 
 trusted freedman to Ostia to prepare the fleet. He 
 sounded the tribunes and centurions of the praetorian 
 guard to see if they would share his flight. Some of 
 them made excuses; some flatly refused; one of them 
 even dared to quote to him the Hne: "Is it so very 
 difficult to die?" As for his Praefects — Tigellinus, 
 whom he had laden with wealth and honours; Nymphi- 
 dius, the son of a slave- woman — creatures who had 
 crawled and sunned themselves in the noon of his pros- 
 perity, they shamelessly and without hesitation betrayed 
 and abandoned him. The poisonous sunlight of his 
 favour had bred no creature nobler than adders. What 
 should he do? Should he array himself in his tragic 
 robe and present himself as a suppHant before the 
 Parthians, or before Galba, moving them to tears by his 
 histrionic skill? But how could he get so far in safety? 
 No; he would clothe himself in black garments, would 
 go to the Forum, and there would weep before the 
 Rostra, imploring pardon for the past, and begging the 
 people — if only he succeeded in moving their minds — 
 at least to allow him to be Prefect of Egypt in place 
 
MUTTERING THUNDER. 22 5 
 
 of Tiberius Alexander! He even wrote the oration 
 which he intended to deliver on the occasion, and it 
 was found in his writing-desk after his death. His one 
 dread was that, if he so much as ventured outside the 
 gates of the Golden House, he would be torn to pieces 
 before he could make his way to the Forum. He post- 
 poned the decision, and, summoning Locusta, obtained 
 from her a poison which he placed in a golden box. 
 Then he passed over to his favourite retreat in the 
 Servilian gardens, and slept as well as he could his last 
 wretched sleep on earth. 
 
 Darkness and Dawn, lit. 1$ 
 
2 26 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER LXIV. 
 AT THE THREE FOUNTAINS. 
 
 "For out of prison he cometh to reign." — ECCL. IV. 14. 
 
 "Lieblich wie der Iris Farbenfeuer 
 
 Auf der Donnerwolke duft'gem Thau 
 Schimmert durch der Wehmuth diistern Schleier 
 Hier der Ruhe heitres Blau." — Schiller. 
 
 After his first defence, the Apostle Paul had lived 
 on in his narrow prison, indomitably cheerful though 
 death stood almost visibly beside him. Himself un- 
 daunted, he strove to kindle the same faith and courage 
 in those whom he loved. He had heard that Timothy 
 was sad and despondent, and had not got over the 
 grief of being separated from him. The Apostle had a 
 deep human yearning to see once again the dear com- 
 panion of his earlier conflicts. He wrote to him the 
 beautiful, pathetic letter which contains for us his last 
 words. He exhorted him to strenuous cheerfulness, 
 and urged him to face the shame of the Gospel at 
 Rome, and to come and share his sufferings. "Come, 
 my child" — such was the burden of his message — 
 "come before winter; come quickly; come, or it will be 
 too late." And when he comes let him send to Carpus 
 at Troas for the large cloak which Paul had left at his 
 house in the hurry and tumult of his arrest, and the 
 books, especially the parchments. It is often cold in 
 
AT THE THREE FOUNTAINS. 22 7 
 
 his prison, and that old "dreadnought," which he had 
 woven with his own hands of the black goat's-hair of 
 his native province, old as it was, and often whitened 
 with the dust of the long Roman roads, and drenched 
 in the water-torrents of the Taurus, and stained with 
 the brine of Adria, would yet be a comfort to him as 
 he sat on the rocky floor. And the papyrus books and 
 the parchments — few and worn as they were — would 
 help to while away the monotonous hours, and were very 
 dear to him. With some of them he had been familiar 
 ever since he was a happy boy in the dear old Tarsian 
 home. So when Timothy comes to shed the last rays 
 of life's sunshine on Paul's prison, let him bring the 
 old cloak and the books — poor inventory of a saint's 
 possessions after unequalled labours for mankind! And 
 let him, if possible, bring Mark the Evangelist with him; 
 for Peter, with whom Mark had travelled, had now 
 sealed his testimony by martyrdom, and Mark's know- 
 ledge of Latin might be serviceable, and his personal 
 tendance would be very dear. The immediate danger 
 of arrest would not be great, for the rage of the in- 
 formers had now been glutted to repletion, and the 
 State and the Emperor had more than enough to oc- 
 cupy their thoughts. Pudens and Claudia had written 
 to him with all affection from their British home, and 
 sent to minister to his necessities. He gives to Timothy 
 the greetings which they had sent supposing him to be 
 at Rome. Linus had also sent greetings, in a letter 
 dictated from his bed of death. As for himself, he 
 was more than ready to die. He had finished his 
 course; he had kept the faith; henceforth there was laid 
 up for him the crown of righteousness. Thinking, per- 
 
 '5* 
 
2 28 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 haps, how Psetus Thrasea and Seneca had sprinkled 
 their blood as a libation to Jupiter the Liberator, he 
 wrote the striking words, "I am being already poured 
 out in libation, and the time of my setting sail is close 
 at hand." Was he heavy at the thought? Not so. He 
 quotes a fragment of a fine early Christian hymn which 
 had consoled many a martyrdom: — 
 
 **If we died, we shall also live with Him; 
 If we endure, we shall also reign with Him; 
 If we deny Him , He will deny us. 
 If we are faithless , He abideth faithful. 
 He is not able to deny Himself." 
 
 And thus the old man's soul was joyful in the Lord. 
 Did Mark, did Timothy come to him 
 
 "Before the white sail of his soul had rounded 
 The misty cape, the promontory Death"? 
 
 Mark was at Alexandria, and Timothy did not see him. 
 The Lycaonian hastened to Rome the moment he had 
 received PauFs letter, but he came too late — came to be 
 himself imprisoned, though happily only for a time. 
 The Apostle was not mistaken in saying that his death 
 was imminent. During Nero's absence in Greece he 
 had been summoned before the two wretched freedmen, 
 Helius and Polycletus, on the second ground of his in- 
 dictment — that he was a Christian, and therefore the 
 preacher of a forbidden religion. That cause needed 
 no trial. The accused not only confessed, but gloried 
 in the accusation. Defence, therefore, was superfluous, 
 since no apology for Christianity could alter the now 
 estabhshed law that its practice was prohibited on pain 
 of death. He would have been put to death at once, 
 
AT THE THREE FOUNTAINS. 229 
 
 but Nero in a letter from Greece had expressed some 
 wish to see him, and to ask him some further questions 
 about the Christians before he attached his sign manual 
 to the order of execution. 
 
 The truth was that Nero was half mad with anxiety, 
 and as all magic incantations had failed to give him the 
 least inkling of the future he desired to learn something 
 from the Christians. Among the slaves in the Palace 
 who had been denounced as Christians by the informers, 
 Herodion only had been spared, not only because of his 
 age and blameless fidelity, but also because, in a house- 
 hold where the buzz of incessant gossip made it impos- 
 sible to keep anything secret, it had been generally 
 rumoured that he possessed the gift of prophecy. Nero 
 therefore summoned Herodion into his presence. But 
 Herodion refused to speak, and Nero, in a transport of 
 fury, unsheathed his dagger, and held it over the poor 
 old slave with his uplifted hand. But Herodion's 
 countenance did not blench, and he said with perfect 
 calmness — 
 
 "O Caesar, thou canst not kill me if thou wilt." 
 
 "How? canst not?" said the Emperor, stooping to 
 pick up the dagger, which had dropped from his 
 astonished grasp. " Canst not? One step, one thrust, 
 and thou art a dead man." 
 
 "Canst not," said Herodion, with unmoved serenity. 
 "I shall die, indeed, but it is not thus, nor by thy hand, 
 that I shall die." 
 
 "Lead him off to death," said Nero. "These fanatics 
 are inexplicable." 
 
 But his yearning to divine the future was only in- 
 tensified, and Simon Magus persuaded him that he might 
 
230 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 learn it from the imprisoned Apostle, whom he repre- 
 sented as a powerful sorcerer. 
 
 Once more, therefore, the Apostle stood face to face 
 with the Emperor, on one of the troubled tumultuous 
 days which followed his hasty return from Naples, after 
 he had received the news of the revolt of Vindex. It 
 was an interview, not a judicial audience. The Emperor 
 saw him in private, with no one about him except a 
 few trusted freedmen, and one favourite slave, named 
 Patroclus. Several amulets lay scattered round him to 
 avert magic and the evil eye. For form's sake he first 
 asked the Apostle about the crimes with which Christians 
 were charged, and heard once more the proofs of their 
 righteousness, loyalty, and holiness. Then he offered 
 Paul his freedom and pardon if he would reveal to him 
 the future. Onesimus, who had been allowed to attend 
 the Apostle, and who stood at the far end of the apart- 
 ment among a group of slaves, used to say afterwards 
 that if the Apostle would only have spoken a word of 
 hope, or even some ambiguous promise which might be 
 interpreted in almost any way, the chains would have 
 been struck off his hands. But he answered that the 
 secrets of the future were in the hands of God alone, 
 and that he had no commission to reveal them. Nero 
 was scanning his features with intense anxiety, and as 
 the Apostle fixed on him his earnest, undaunted, pitying 
 gaze, the Emperor — more than ever convinced that he 
 could prophesy the unknown — told all the slaves except 
 Phaon and Patroclus to withdraw. But Paul, weak with 
 long imprisonment, and scarcely able to stand, begged 
 that he might support his weary frame on the shoulder 
 of Onesimus. Otherwise they were alone. The Emperor, 
 
AT THE THREE FOUNTAINS. 23 I 
 
 who had no dignity at that hour of calamity, appealed 
 to his prisoner. "They tell me," he said, "that thy God, 
 or thy Chrestus, does enable thee to foretell events to 
 come. I am in danger. The legions are revolting 
 against me on all sides. The astrologers have promised 
 me that I shall be King of Jerusalem. All is uncertain. 
 See, I appeal to thee. I, the Emperor, ask thee, the 
 doomed and wretched Jew, to tell me what will happen. 
 Will Vindex conquer? Will Galba conquer? Will the 
 guards be faithful? Shall I be murdered? Answer me 
 these questions, and I will spare thy life, and send thee 
 away with rich rewards." 
 
 , "I answer," said the Apostle, "as a Prophet of the 
 East answered a king before. If Nero should give me 
 his house full of silver and gold, yet cannot I go beyond 
 the word of the Lord; and the Lord has not bidden me 
 to speak to thee. And what were wealth, and what 
 were all the Empire to me? Thinkest thou, O Emperor, 
 that I fear death? To us Christians to die is to depart 
 and to be with Christ, which is far better; and Christ 
 hath conquered death." 
 
 "Wilt thou not even tell me whether I shall be 
 killed? I adjure thee by thy Christ, or thy lao, or 
 whatever thou boldest most sacred, tell me!" 
 
 The Emperor was trembling and weeping. 
 
 Another might have scorned his unmanliness, or re- 
 rejoiced with malignant triumph over the disgrace of the 
 enemy of all the good. But Paul knew too much of 
 human weakness to indulge in scorn. He felt for him 
 a sincere, a trembling, a yearning pity. He uplifted 
 his eyes to heaven, paused for a moment, during which 
 
2^2 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 the Emperor's eager and almost imploring gaze was 
 fixed upon his face, and then solemnly replied — 
 
 "Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die, and 
 not live." 
 
 "Tell me more," said Nero, passionately. 
 
 *'I may not tell thee more. Only," he continued, 
 raising his chained hand, "I say to thee. Repent! Re- 
 pent of thy life of crime and infamy! Repent of thy 
 many murders — the murder of thy brother, the murder 
 of thy mother, of " 
 
 "Accursed Jew, darest thou revile me?" said Nero, 
 leaping up from his gilded chair, his face burning with fury. 
 
 The Apostle remained unmoved. Onesimus told 
 afterwards that he had not felt the tremor of a single 
 muscle as the storm of the Emperor's rage burst over 
 him. Nero stood amazed — his wrath stilled before so 
 majestic an indifference. 
 
 "Tell me more," he said again, in a voice of en- 
 treaty. 
 
 "Think, rather," said the Apostle, "that thy hour of 
 judgment is nigh at hand — yea, it standeth at the door. 
 The blood of the innocent, slain by thee, cries against 
 thee from the ground. I pity thee — Paul the prisoner, 
 Paul the aged, pities thee, and he will pray for thee if 
 haply the thoughts of thy heart, and the shames of thy 
 wickedness, may be forgiven." 
 
 "Dismiss this man," whispered Phaon to the Emperor, 
 impatiently. "He is a Jew, evidently half insane with 
 dreamings in prison. Were it otherwise, I would here 
 and now chastise his insolence." 
 
 "Nay," said the boy Patroclus, in a voice of deep 
 emotion, "Rather listen to him. O Nero, I will confess 
 
AT THE THREE FOUNTAINS. 233 
 
 to thee that I have talked to Acte; I have talked to 
 Christian slaves — once my fellow-slaves — in thy Palace 
 and the household of Narcissus, and I know that the 
 gods — or that God, if (as they say) there be but one 
 God — is with them. Dismiss Paulus, I entreat thee; set 
 him free. He tells the truth.'' And with these words 
 the young cupbearer flung himself on his knees with a 
 gesture of appeal.* 
 
 Nero had been startled — almost moved — by the solemn 
 tones and inspired aspect of the Apostle; but the appeal 
 of Patroclus and his mention of Acte produced a dif- 
 ferent effect from what the youth had intended. The 
 Emperor was jealous that such potent influences should 
 have been at work in his own Palace; that in spite of 
 his persecution of the Saints, in spite of his having made 
 Christianity an illegal religion, those who had been so 
 near to his own person as Acte and Patroclus should 
 reject his divinity, and own Jesus as their king. 
 
 "Thou art bewitched," he said to Patroclus, rudely 
 pushing the boy aside. 
 
 And, unhappily, at that moment Gaditanian strains, 
 accompanied by the words of a gay song, reached 
 his ear from an adjoining room in which some of his 
 light companions and favourites were sitting. The 
 sound awoke all his heartless and incurable frivolity. 
 Bursting into a forced laugh, he said, "I see there is no 
 more to be got out of this Jew. Take him hence," he 
 said to the praetorian in attendance, "and see that he 
 be led to death as soon as the day shall dawn." 
 
 "He is a Roman citizen," said the centurion. 
 
 "Yes," said the Emperor. "He has been tried and 
 * Note 52. 
 
234 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 condemned. I will here countersign the condemnation 
 which orders him to be beheaded.'' 
 
 The Apostle spent that last night on earth in sleep 
 as sweet as that of an innocent child. He rose in the 
 morning smiling and refreshed, and Onesimus was early 
 at the prison to help him in all his last arrangements 
 and preparations. As the soldiers would allow Onesimus, 
 and no one else, to accompany him, he bade an affecting 
 farewell to Luke, who had been for so long a time his 
 beloved physician, and started on his way. 
 
 His doom was secret and sudden. At that early 
 morning hour the centurion and soldiers were not likely 
 to be troubled with many spectators. One or two 
 humble Christians from the poorest haunts of the 
 Trastevere would fain have followed, but the soldiers, 
 who were in savage humour from the perilous uncertainty 
 of the times, suffered none of them to attach themselves to 
 the Httle procession. Hence the death of the Apostle 
 was so lonely and obscure that scarcely a breath of 
 tradition survived to commemorate it to posterity. An 
 ordinary faith might have been overwhelmed by the ap- 
 parent utterness of failure which had crowned that Hfe of 
 unparalleled exertions for the cause of Christ and for 
 the good of man. Deserted, abandoned, a pauper, a 
 prisoner — the founder, indeed, of Churches, but of 
 Churches some of which were already the prey of 
 Judaisers and of alien heretics, and were cold to him — in 
 the capital of the world, where he seemed to be but an 
 insignificant atom, and where Jew and Pagan were united 
 in irreconcilable hostility to the Faith which he had 
 
AT THE THREE FOUNTAINS. 235 
 
 preached — deserted by all them of Asia — no one with 
 him but the poor emancipated slave — yet he was in no 
 sense disillusioned, nor did his faith fail. It did not 
 trouble him that the curtain was about to fall in dark- 
 ness on one of the noblest and greatest of all human 
 lives. That life seemed to him but as the life of a great 
 sinner whom God had forgiven, whom Christ had saved. 
 The winter of his trials was past, the eternal spring of 
 the Resurrection was breathing through the air its 
 heavenly perfume. 
 
 Along the Appian road they passed, through the 
 gate of Rome which still — nigh upon two thousand years 
 afterwards — is called by his name. They passed the 
 pyramid of Gaius Cestius, with all its statues. Only one 
 incident occurred on his journey. Just as they were 
 passing the pyramid of Cestius, a lady, young and deeply 
 veiled, met the mournful procession, and stopped the 
 centurion in command of the soldiers. "I am Plautilla," 
 she said, "the daughter of Flavins Sabinus, the Prefect 
 of the City, the relative of Aulus Plautius and Pomponia 
 Grsecina. Suffer me for a moment to speak to your 
 prisoner." 
 
 Impressed by the great names which she had men- 
 tioned, the centurion bade the soldiers stand aside for a 
 moment, and Plautilla, kneeling on the grass, asked 
 with tears for the Apostle's blessing. He laid his chained 
 hand on her head and blessed her, and she gave him 
 from her kinswoman Pomponia a handkerchief with which 
 to bind his eyes as he knelt for the blow of the exe- 
 cutioner. He gratefully accepted it, and said, "I know 
 the name of Pomponia. It is ever pronounced with the 
 blessings of the saints of God.'' 
 
236 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 "Yes/' she said, "O Apostle, and my brother, the 
 nephew of Vespasian, who is in commmand in Judaea 
 — he too is a Christian." 
 
 The Apostle upraised in thankfulness his fettered 
 hands. "The night," he said, "is far spent. The day- 
 is at hand." 
 
 The centurion beckoned to the soldiers to proceed, 
 and Plautilla stood gazing after them under the shadow 
 of the pyramid. 
 
 About three miles from the walls of Rome, on a 
 green and level space amid low, undulating hills, was 
 the spot then known as Aquae Salviae, and now as Tre 
 Fontane. To this spot they marched in the early 
 morning — the chained prisoner with the soldiers round 
 him, and the centurion walking at their head. Onesimus 
 followed close behind. The martyr scarcely spoke. His 
 face was lit with an inward rapture; his lips moved in- 
 cessantly in silent prayer. He had no fear. Lovely to 
 him as the colours of the rainbow on the thundercloud 
 gleamed the azure of his home. They reached the 
 green level under the trees. The prisoner was bidden 
 to kneel down. Onesimus helped him to take off his 
 upper garment, received his last few words of prayer 
 and encouragement and blessing, and the gentle pressure 
 of his hand in farewell. He bound over the Apostle's 
 eyes Plautilla's handkerchief, and then turned away, 
 hiding his face in his hands, weeping as if his heart 
 would break. Then he heard the word of command 
 given. For one instand he looked up — in that instant 
 the sword flashed, and the life of the greatest of the 
 Apostles was shorn away. 
 
 The work of the soldiers was over. They had no 
 
AT THE THREE FOUNTAINS. 237 
 
 further concern in the matter, except that the centurion 
 had to certify to Nero that the execution had been 
 carried out. They left the mortal body of the martyr 
 on the green turf When they were gone, the Christians, 
 whom they had repelled but who had followed them 
 afar off, came to weep over it and to bury it. Onesimus 
 took his part in digging the nameless grave. But the 
 site of it was kept in loving remembrance until in due 
 time there rose over that spot the "trophy" which 
 existed, as we are told by Gains the Presbyter, as far 
 back as the second century, where now stands in all the 
 splendour of its many-coloured marbles the great church 
 of San Paolo fuori le Mura. 
 
 And, as they sorrowfully left the scene of martyrdom, 
 the grey light which had touched the eastern clouds 
 began to flush into the rosy dawn, and the sun rose on 
 the world^s new day. 
 
238 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 CHAPTER LXV. 
 IN THE CLUTCH OF NEMESIS. 
 "I'll find him out, 
 
 Or drag him by the curls to a foul death, 
 Cursed as his life." 
 
 Milton, Comtis. 
 
 "And so I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone 
 from the place of the holy .... this also is vanity." — Eccles. viii. 10. 
 
 It was on the evening of June 8 that Nymphidius 
 Sabinus betrayed Nero, and, by the forged promise of 
 an enormous donative, which was never paid, induced 
 the praetorians to embrace the cause of Galba. A 
 worthless master makes worthless slaves. This man, 
 whom Nero had lifted out of the dust as a reward for 
 his crimes, sold his bad benefactor without a blush. 
 
 Nero heard the grim news before he retired to rest 
 in the evening, and he was well aware that the morrow 
 must decide his fate. At midnight he leapt from his 
 troubled couch, and from that moment there began for 
 him once more the long slow agony of an irremediably 
 shameful death. The first thing he discovered was that 
 all the soldiers who guarded the Palace, and whose 
 barracks were in the Excubitorium, had deserted their 
 posts. In utter despair, he sent for advice to those 
 whom he deemed to be his friends. As he received 
 
IN THE CLUTCH OF NEMESIS. 239 
 
 from them no word of answer, he went to their houses, 
 one by one, in the dead ol night, with a few attendants. 
 Inconceivably dreary was that walk through the dark 
 streets, which, as he passed by the silent palaces, 
 seemed to be haunted by the ghosts of the many whom 
 he had slain. But he found every door closed against 
 him. Not a single response was made to his appeals. 
 Almost mad with misery, he returned to his splendid 
 chamber in the Golden House, only to find that during 
 his brief absence the attendants and slaves had fled, 
 after plundering it of all its magnificence, even to the 
 embroidered purple coverlets and the golden box 
 which contained Locusta's poison. Recalling the memory 
 of his murdered mother, he sought everywhere for the 
 amulet — the bracelet containing the serpent's skin found 
 near his cradle — which Agrippina had clasped upon 
 his boyish arm. But he had once carelessly flung it 
 away, in a fit of petulance, and now it could nowhere 
 be seen. Then he sought for Spicillus, the mirmillo, 
 to stab him; but neither he nor anyone else could be 
 found to fulfil the office. "So," he said, with one of 
 the small smart epigrams which showed throughout 
 these last scenes that the spirit of melodrama had not 
 deserted him — "So, it seems, I have neither a friend nor 
 an enemy!" 
 
 Upon this he set out to fling himself into the Tiber, 
 and the back door by which he went led through a 
 part of the circus which had witnessed his disgraceful 
 triumphs. But when he was half way, his courage 
 failed him, and he told his attendants that he wanted 
 some quiet hiding-place in which to collect his thoughts. 
 His freedman Phaon, one of the very few who, to their 
 
240 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 credit, remained true to him in the hour of his utmost 
 shame, offered him his suburban villa. It was at the 
 fourth milestone from the city, between the Salarian 
 and Nomentan roads. It lay on a more remote path 
 called the Patinarian Way, on the other side of the 
 Anio. On that hot night of June Nero had gone out 
 only in sandals and a funic; so he threw over his 
 shoulders an old washed-out cloak, covered his head 
 with the hood, held up a handkerchief to conceal his 
 face, and mounted the first sorry horse which could be 
 obtained. Thus, in beggar's guise, he left the gorgeous 
 scene of his manifold iniquities. None were found to 
 accompany him except his secretary Epaphroditus, his 
 freedman Phaon, and Sporus his unhappy favourite. 
 They started together before the first gleam of that 
 most miserable day. The stories that, as he rode, he 
 felt the shock of an earthquake, and saw a flash of 
 lightning which gleamed on the ghostly faces of his 
 victims rising to menace him from the abyss, are doubt- 
 less coloured by the agitation of the witnesses. But 
 on his way he had to pass through the Colline gate, 
 and there he heard the shouts of his praetorians cheer- 
 ing for Galba and cursing Nero. There were but few 
 stirring on the roads at that early hour, but from one 
 group which they passed they heard the remark, "These 
 men are in pursuit of Nero." "Any news about Nero?" 
 asked another traveller. This was disturbing; but it was 
 a far more serious incident when Nero's horse swerved 
 at the stench of an unburied corpse which lay by the 
 roadside, and the handkerchief fell from his face. For 
 at that moment a discharged praetorian chanced to pass, 
 who not only recognised but saluted the Emperor, 
 
IN THE CLUTCH OF NEISIESIS. 24 1 
 
 rendering it too certain that the pursuers would soon 
 be on his track. 
 
 By this time it was light. It was the anniversary of 
 the murder of his wife, Octavia! 
 
 When the fugitives reached the path that led to 
 Phaon's property, they let their horses run loose among 
 the trees and brambles, and made their way to the 
 back of the villa by a track through a bed of reeds 
 where the oozy sludge was sometimes so deep that 
 they had to fling a cloak over it to prevent their sink- 
 ing in the mire. There was obvious peril in taking re- 
 fuge here. A great price was sure to be set on Nero's 
 head, and how could the freedman trust his rustic 
 slaves with so perilous a secret? He therefore urged 
 Nero to hide himself in the deep cave of a neighbour- 
 ing sandpit till something fresh could be devised. But 
 Nero refused. "What!" he exclaimed tragically, "go 
 alive into the bowels of the earth?" The only other 
 course was to make an opening in the back of the villa, 
 through which he could creep secretly, unknown to the 
 household. While this was being done, he complained 
 of thirst. There was nothing for him but some stagnant 
 water in a pool. He drank a little from his hand, with 
 the remark, "This, then, is Nero's choice drink!" He 
 sat down ruefully in his tattered cloak, which had been 
 torn to shreds by the briers through which he had 
 forced his way; and when the hole in the wall was 
 large enough, crawled through it on all fours into the 
 empty cell of one of Phaon's slaves. There he flung 
 himself down on the mean straw pallet of the slave, 
 with nothing to cover him except its old dirty coverlet. 
 Hungry and thirsty as he was, it was difficult to pro- 
 
 Darkness and Dawn, III* Xv 
 
242^ DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 cure him any food without arousing suspicion. They 
 could only get him some black bread, at which his 
 stomach revolted, but he drank a mouthful or two of 
 tepid water. 
 
 It became evident to them that all hope of escape 
 or concealment was impossible. The fatal recognition 
 of Nero by the praetorian betrayed the course he had 
 taken. The numberless mounted pursuers would be 
 sure to find the four horses which they had let loose; 
 nor would it be possible for him to conceal the fact of 
 his presence from Phaon's slaves. His three com- 
 panions therefore urged him, time after time, to save 
 himself by suicide from the nameless contumelies which 
 awaited him. Even Sporus entreated him again and 
 again to show himself a man. It was in vain! In 
 that coward and perverted nature every spark of man- 
 liness was quenched. "It is not time yet," he said. 
 "The destined hour has not arrived. How cruel you 
 are to me!" 
 
 "Cruel?" said Epaphroditus, indignantly; "do not 
 we — alone of all your thousands of slaves — risk our 
 lives for your sake? Since you must die, were it not 
 better to die like an Emperor than like a whipped 
 hound?" 
 
 "Well, then," whimpered Nero, "can't you at least 
 dig me a grave, one of you? See, I will lie down to 
 show you the right length." 
 
 They began to dig the grave, and he whined out, 
 "Oh, what an artist to perish! What an artist to perish!'* 
 
 "The grave is ready," said Phaon. 
 
 "But can't you find some bits of marble to adorn 
 it? Surely there must be some lying about." 
 
m THE CLUTCH OF NEMESIS. 243 
 
 They saw through his pusillanimous delays, but 
 managed to pick up a few fragments of common marble, 
 while he still kept whimpering, "Only to think that such 
 an artist as I am must perish!" 
 
 "That is all the marble we can find," said Phaon. 
 
 "Well, but you will have to burn my body," he said. 
 "You must get some water to wash me, and some wood 
 for the pyre." 
 
 "Nero, Nero," said Sporus to him again, "will you 
 not die like a man?" 
 
 In the midst of these idle pretexts a runner came 
 with a letter for Phaon. Nero snatched it out of his 
 hand and read "that the Senate had pronounced him 
 a public enemy, and decreed that he should be punished 
 after the fashion of our ancestors." 
 
 "What punishment is that?" he asked. 
 
 Is it possible that he did not know? He, who had 
 so often heard it passed on others? he who, as men 
 believed, had secretly wished it should be inflicted on 
 Antistius for libelling him? he who had suffered it to be 
 pronounced against L. Vetus and the innocent Pollutia? 
 Nevertheless Epaphroditus told him that it meant strip- 
 ping him naked, thrusting his head into the opening of 
 a forked gibbet, and then beating him to death with 
 rods. Nero turned deadly pale. The thought of such 
 agony and such outrage overwhelmed him. He plucked 
 from their sheaths two daggers which he had brought 
 with him, tried the edge of them, and then once more 
 thrust them back with the threadbare tragic phrase, 
 that "the destined hour had not yet come." Again the 
 unhappy Sporus entreated him to remember that he was 
 a man, a Roman, an Emperor. 
 
 16* 
 
^44 DARKNESS AND DAWN, 
 
 "There is time, boy," he said. "Sing my funeral 
 song; raise a lamentation for me." And all the while 
 he wept, and whimpered, "Such an artist! Such an 
 artist to perish!" 
 
 Phaon and Epaphroditus rebuked his abject timidity. 
 
 "Oh!" he cried, "I cannot die. 'Wife, father, 
 mother, join to bid me die,' but I dare not. Will not 
 one of you kill himself and show me how to die?" 
 
 They were amazed at such depths of abject selfish- 
 ness, and, reading his condemnation in their faces, he 
 groaned out, "Nero, Nero, this is infamy; come, rouse 
 thyself; be a man!" 
 
 But how could the soul of this vicious, babyish, 
 self-indulgent, overgrown, corrupted boy — this soul 
 steeped through and through its every fibre with selfish- 
 ness, vanity, and crime — how could it be thrilled with 
 one virile impulse? The man within him was dead — 
 only the cowardly animal survived. 
 
 The sound of horses' hoofs was heard galloping 
 along the rough road leading to the villa. It denoted 
 the approach of horsemen who had been bidden at all 
 hazards to seize him alive. Strange that even at such 
 a moment he could not help being self-conscious and 
 melodramatic. 
 
 " * Thunder of swift-foot coursers smites my ears,' '* * 
 
 he said, trembling — quoting a verse of Homer. But at 
 last, when not one second was to be lost, he placed the 
 dagger against his throat; and, seeing that he would be 
 too much of a poltroon to inflict anything more than an 
 
 * ijzncov [X wxvjiodcov dju^l xxvuiog ovara ^aXXei, 
 
IN THE CLUTCH OF NEMESIS. 245 
 
 Ineffectual wound, Epaphroditus with one thrust drove 
 it home. 
 
 Then in burst the centurion. Anxious to seize him 
 aHve, he cried, "Stay, stay, Nero! I have come to help 
 you!" and tried with his cloak to stanch the bleeding 
 wound. 
 
 "Too late," gasped the dying wretch. — "Is this your 
 fidelity?" 
 
 With these words he died, and the spectators were 
 horror-stricken at the wild, staring look of his rigid eyes, 
 which seemed to stand out of his head. 
 
 Fidelity! What fidehty had Nero himself shown to 
 God, to human nature, to Rome, to his mother, his 
 adoptive father, his wives, his brother, his tutors, 
 his family, his friends, his slaves, his freedmen, his 
 people, his own self? What more worthless Hfe was 
 ever disgraced by a more contemptible and abject 
 death? 
 
 Forty-one princes and princesses of his race had 
 perished since the beginning of the century, by the 
 sword, by famine, or by poison; and the historian 
 imagines the shades of those unhappy ones gathered 
 round the miserable pallet on which — more miserably, 
 more pusillanimously, more guiltily, more abjectly than 
 any one of them — perished the last of a race whom 
 heaven had been supposed to receive as gods, and 
 whom earth rejected with disgust. And had their race 
 ended in this manikin, in this cowardly and corrupted 
 actor? "The first of the Caesars," says the historian, 
 "had married four times; the second thrice; the third 
 twice; the fourth thrice again; the fifth six times; and 
 
246 darkness' AND DAWN. 
 
 lastly this sixth Caesar thrice: — of these repeated unions 
 a large number had borne offspring/' Where were 
 they all? Cut off for the most part by open murder, or 
 secret suicide, or diseases mysterious and premature! 
 And now the prophecy of the Sibyl had been fulfilled — 
 
 "Last of the ^neadae shall reign — a matricide!" 
 
 How many of his fancied enemies, how many of the* 
 innocent, had he caused to be decapitated! How often 
 had he allowed their heads to be the mockery of their 
 enemies ! How had he himself insulted the ghastly relics 
 of Sulla and of Rubellius Plautus; and suffered his 
 mother and his wife to insult the murdered remains of 
 Lollia Paulina, and of the sad and innocent Octavia! 
 His one dread was that his head should be similarly 
 insulted; his one main entreaty to the companions of his 
 flight had been that he should be burnt whole, and his 
 head not be given to his enemies. 
 
 Fairer and kinder measure was dealt to him than 
 he had dealt to others. Among those who hurried to 
 the villa was Icelus, the powerful freedman of his rival 
 Galba. Nero had thrown him into prison at the news of 
 Galba's revolt, but at Nero's flight he had been set free. 
 It was not the usual way with the Romans to make war 
 with the dead, and Icelus gave permission that the body 
 should be burnt. It was consumed in the white robe 
 broidered with gold which he had worn at his ill-omened 
 sacrifice on the first of January. 
 
 No hindrance was put in the way of his funeral. 
 Two women who had nursed his infancy, and Acte, who 
 had loved him in his youth, wept over his bier. No 
 tear was shed besides. They laid his ashes in a por- 
 
IN THE CLUTCH OF NEMESIS. 247 
 
 phyry sarcophagus, over which was raised an altar of 
 the white marble of Luna, surrounded by a Thasian 
 balustrade. 
 
 He was but thirty-one when he died; and he had 
 crowded all that colossal criminality, all that mean 
 rascality, all that insane degradation, extravagance, and 
 lust, into a reign of fourteen years! 
 
 So great was the exultation over his fall of the people 
 whom he had pampered, that the whole body of ple- 
 beians appeared in the streets wearing hats. A slave 
 could only wear a hat after he had been manumitted, 
 and the people wished to show that by his death they 
 had been emancipated from slavery. Yet he and they 
 had mutually corrupted each other, and the vicious 
 populace had reacted on the vicious ruler. Nor was it 
 long before those to whom vice was dear began to show 
 their sympathy by adorning his tomb with spring and 
 summer flowers. Every base and foul ruler who suc- 
 ceeded him — lascivious Otho, gluttonous Vitellius, savage 
 Domitian, womanish Elagabalus, brutal Commodus — all 
 who disgraced the name of Roman and of man — made 
 him their ideal and their hero. 
 
 And since so very few had witnessed his death, the 
 multitude in every land persisted in the belief that an- 
 other body and not his had been burnt; that he had 
 taken refuge among the Parthians; that he would return 
 to take vengeance on his enemies. The fancy gilded 
 the brief fortune and precipitated the miserable punish- 
 ment of at least two impostors. Of these Perkin War- 
 becks and Lambert Simnels of antiquity, one was put 
 to death in the reign of Otho, the other in the reign of 
 
248 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Domitian; and for nearly three centuries the legend 
 Hngered on in the Christian Church that Nero was the 
 wild beast, wounded to death, but whose deadly wound 
 had been healed — the Antichrist who should return 
 again. 
 
 And the people fancied that his restless, miserable 
 ghost haunted for centuries the Collis Hortulorumy the 
 Monte Pincio, where stood the monument of the Domitii; 
 until in pity for their terrors it was exorcised in 1099 
 by Pope Pascal 11., the superb successor of the humble 
 Linus. The Church of Santa Maria del Popolo stands 
 to this day as a witness of the changed fortunes of that 
 Church which Nero well-nigh extinguished and ex- 
 terminated when he made light more ghastly than the 
 darkness by kindling those living torches in the gardens 
 of the Mons Vaticanus. Over that desecrated spot, as 
 I have said, now falls the shadow of the vast Christian 
 basilica, and the obelisk of Heliopolis, which towered 
 over Nero as he drove his chariot through lines of 
 burning men, testifies by its triumphant inscriptions to 
 the victory of the Faith of Christ. 
 
l'envoi. 249 
 
 CHAPTER LXVI. 
 l'envoi. 
 
 "Many kiogs have sat down upon the ground, and one that 
 was never thought of hath worn the crown." — Eccles. xi. 5. 
 
 "All is best, though we oft doubt 
 What the unsearchable dispose 
 Of highest wisdom brings about, 
 And ever best found in the close." 
 
 Samson Agonistes, 
 
 But little remains to be said; for, unless the writer 
 has entirely failed of his purpose, the history of the 
 preceding pages has told, and the fiction has illustrated, 
 the truths which it was his object to set forth. We have 
 seen something of what Paganism had become in the 
 days of the Empire, and of what Christianity was in its 
 life, and motives, and purposes. The contrast between 
 the two gives us the secret why Christianity was destined 
 to grow from that tiny grain of mustard-seed to a great 
 tree, under whose shadow the nations of the world 
 should rest. 
 
 But the reader may perhaps care to learn what was 
 the future of those who played their little hour on the 
 stage of life and have appeared in these pages. It is 
 characteristic of that age of trouble and rebuke and 
 blasphemy, in which the sun and the moon were 
 darkened and the stars of heaven shaken, that many of 
 
250 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 the great and mighty and rich hardly looked for any 
 other death than the steep declivities of murder and 
 suicide. Heathendom had grown to a monster which, 
 like the decrepit Saturn, devoured its own offspring. 
 Those whom we ushered into the reader's presence at 
 the beginning of this book had nearly all been swept 
 away by violent deaths before the period at which it 
 closes. We have seen the murders of Claudius, of 
 Agrippina, of Britannicus, of Octavia, in that Palace 
 thronged with the ghosts of crime. We have stood by 
 the dreary deathbed of the honest and manly Burrus, 
 and by Corbulo when he fell on his own sword, and by 
 Poppaea when she passed away in agony, her husband's 
 victim. We have seen the shameful end of Lucan and 
 of Mela; the terrible disillusionment and suicides of 
 Gallio and of Seneca. We know how Paetus Thrasea 
 died, and how the great nobles — the Silani, and Sulla, < 
 and Rubellius Plautus, and Antistius Vetus, and Ostorius 
 Scapula, and Piso, and that host of conspirators — met 
 their doom. Vice, and the favour of the Emperor, 
 proved no protection to such gay courtiers as Tullius 
 Senecio and Csecina Tuscus; nor genius and refined 
 Epicureanism to Petronius Arbiter; nor beauty and 
 talent to poor handsome Paris. The vicious as well as 
 the virtuous were often mingled in indiscriminate ruin. 
 Of the guests whom we saw assembled at the Villa 
 Castor, and to whose conversation we have listened as 
 they gathered round the citron tables of Nero and Otho, 
 the majority met with a miserable doom. With the ex- 
 ception of the family of Seneca, the literary men 
 escaped fairly well. Persius died young, and by a na- 
 tural death. The older Pliny, who was a successor of 
 
L*ENVOI. 251 
 
 Anicetus in the office of Admiral at Misenum, perished 
 of the scientific curiosity which led him to watch too 
 closely from the Liburnian galleys of his fleet the great 
 eruption of Vesuvius, which destroyed Herculaneum 
 and Pompeii in a.d. 79. Martial grew up to disgrace 
 hiinself by shameful epigrams, to practise the arts of a 
 fawning parasite to "his lord and his god," the vile 
 Domitian, and at last to marry a rich wife, and retire 
 to Spain with the memories of talents wasted, for the 
 most part, over things vain and vile. 
 
 The philosophers were scattered and banished. Mu- 
 sonius Rufus, whom Demetrius the Cynic saw at work 
 as a common labourer on the Isthmus of Corinth, was 
 recalled by Galba, and honoured by Vespasian. He 
 had the satisfaction of bringing to justice the infamous 
 Publius Egnatius Celer, who had caused the murder of 
 Barea Soranus and his daughter. Cornutus, who carried 
 to the grave his sorrow for his bright young pupil, 
 Persius, was banished in the last year of Nero's reign, 
 and we hear of him no more. Demetrius the Cynic 
 was banished by Vespasian. The Emperor passed him 
 after his condemnation, and Demetrius, deigning neither 
 to rise nor salute him, broke into open abuse; but 
 Vespasian was not cruel, and took no further revenge 
 than to utter the one word "Dog!" 
 
 The freedmen, too, were swept away one after an- 
 other, Narcissus was poisoned by the order of Agrippina; 
 Pallas and Doryphorus by the order of Nero. Epaphro- 
 ditus was put to death by Domitian for having helped 
 Nero to drive into his own throat the fatal dagger- 
 thrust. Sporus — miserable victim of an evil age — had 
 urged Nero to show one touch of manliness, and dare 
 
252 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 to die. Not long afterwards he, too, died by his own 
 hands, rather than submit to that degradation of ap- 
 pearing on the stage which Nero had so often done 
 and so eagerly desired to do. Helius, Polycletus, Pa- 
 trobius, and others, were condemned and put to death 
 by Galba, after having been led through the streets in 
 chains. Spicillus, the favourite gladiator of Nero, was 
 tied to one of his statues and crushed to death by it; 
 Locusta died a death of infamy amid intense and uni- 
 versal rejoicing. 
 
 The informers met, for the most part, the fate that 
 they deserved. Under previous emperors they had 
 been — it is the comparison used by Seneca — like dogs 
 whom their patrons fed with human flesh.* They cut 
 men's throats with a whisper. A joke, a sarcasm, the 
 babble of a drunkard, the confidential remark of private 
 intercourse, the most casual and unpremeditated reflec- 
 tion — nay, even a careless gesture before the dumb 
 image of the Emperor — might become, in their hands, 
 an engine of destruction. They could earn one-fourth 
 of the spoils by accusing a man either for something 
 which he did, or for something which he did not do. 
 Upon this evil gang of scoundrels, the worst curse of 
 that day, Titus laid his heavy hand. He ordered the 
 vilest of them to be beaten with rods in the Forum, 
 to be dragged round the Amphitheatre, to be sold as 
 slaves, to be deported to the rockiest and most desolate 
 islands. 
 
 Epictetus, who had been sold as an infant from his 
 
 * "Acerrimi canes, quos ille, ut sibi uni mansuetos . . . 
 sanguine humano pascebat," — Sen. Consol, ad Marc, xxii. 3 ; comp. 
 Dq Benef, ill, 26, 
 
L^ENVOI. 253 
 
 cradle in Hierapolis, and whom we have heard talking 
 to Titus and Britannicus in the days when he was the 
 little slave of Epaphroditus, lived to bequeath to the 
 world the legacy of thoughts purer and sweeter than 
 any which we have received from classical antiquity, 
 with the exception of those uttered by Marcus Aurelius, 
 that "bright consummate flower'' of Pagan morahty. 
 Those thoughts seem to absorb and to reflect the auroral 
 glow of Christianity, and could never have been attained 
 by a Pagan if Christianity had not been in the air. 
 Epictetus was so poor that his sole possession was a 
 small lamp — and even that was stolen from him! His 
 virtue and political insignificance, his plain living and 
 high thinking, did not save him from banishment. He 
 retired to Nicopolis (where the Apostle Paul had spent 
 his last winter), and there 
 
 "taught Arrian, when Vespasian's brutal son 
 Cleared Rome of what most shamed him." 
 
 And when he ended his peaceful life of obscurity and 
 self-denial in extreme old age, he deserved the epitaph, 
 "I, Epictetus, was a slave, and lame, and a pauper, and 
 dear to the Immortals." 
 
 And did Vengeance suffer such wretches as Nymphi- 
 dius Sabinus and Tigellinus to escape? After crimes 
 so many and so heinous, did they come to a good end? 
 The traitor Nymphidius, after a futile and impudent 
 attempt to secure the Empire for himself, was murdered 
 by his own praetorians. He dragged down with him to 
 destruction the fierce Cingonius Varro, who had written 
 an oration which Nymphidius was to pronounce to the 
 soldiers. Tigellinus, indeed, was strangely protected by 
 
254 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Nero's old and miserly successor when the clamour of 
 the people demanded his life as an expiation for his 
 crimes. He escaped by giving enormous bribes to Titus 
 Vinius, Galba's legate, and priceless gems to his daughter 
 Crispina. But to him also, as to all, "punishment was 
 but another name for guilt, taken a little lower down 
 the stream," and vengeance in due time fell upon him, 
 and suffered him not to live. After a vain attempt to 
 bribe his executioners, he committed suicide at Sinuessa 
 amid a coarse and brutal orgy, which reads like a 
 parody upon the death of Petronius Arbiter. It was a 
 death exceptionally squalid, vile, and agonising — fit end 
 for a traitor, a coward, a villain of the deepest dye. 
 
 As for the succeeding Emperors, the spasm of their 
 brief elevation was marked by universal horrors — wars, 
 and rumours of wars, and massacres, and civil conflicts; 
 nation rising against nation, kingdom against kingdom, 
 plagues and famines and earthquakes in divers places. 
 There was, as Christ had warned His disciples, great 
 tribulation, such as had not been since the beginning of 
 the earth, no nor shall be* These things were the be- 
 ginning of troubles. The epoch is so described on the 
 sacred page, and the best comment on those Christian 
 prophecies is furnished by the dreary summary of the 
 greatest of Pagan historians. 
 
 And amid all these calamities and this unbelief, as 
 the lightning cometh from the east and shineth even to 
 the west, the sign was seen in heaven of the Son of 
 Man coming in power and great glory. Against the 
 Old Dispensation and the old world the doom visibly 
 went forth. The abomination of desolation — the de- 
 solating wing of Rome's abominable eagle — was seen in 
 
l'envol 255 
 
 the Holy Place. The marble floors of the Temple of 
 Jerusalem swam in blood. Zealots laid their gory and 
 brutal hands on the holiest things. Priests, gaunt with 
 famine, were seen leaping madly into the flames 
 kindled upon the altars. The gold which overlaid the 
 cedarwork ran molten through the hissing stream of the 
 carnage of its defenders, and the Holiest Place sank 
 into heaps of ghastly ruin to have its site defiled with 
 swinish oflerings and Pagan shrines. The Temple was 
 doomed to annihilation, because it was the centre and 
 type of an inferior and abrogated worship. And the 
 same year which saw this visible abrogation of Judaism 
 and all its pompous ineffectuality of ceremonies and 
 sacrifices, saw also the great Temple of the Capitoline 
 Jupiter reduced to ashes in the fierce faction-fight be- 
 tween Sabinus, the elder brother of Vespasian, and the 
 partisans of Vitellius. Thus, within a few months, the 
 chief shrines of the Jew and the Pagan were polluted 
 with massacre, and flung high into the air their flaming 
 signals of the New Faith which was to dominate the 
 world. Their destruction was a beacon -light of the 
 coming fulfilment of the old and awful prophecy, "I 
 will overturn, overturn, overturn, saith the Lord, till He 
 come whose right it is." 
 
 The three shadowy Emperors who followed Nero 
 passed away within a few months, like phantoms, in 
 defeat and shame. Galea — old, prosaic, unattractive, 
 niggardly, with his feet so gouty that he could not wear 
 a shoe, and his hands so gouty that he could not hold 
 up a book — had disgusted Rome before six months 
 were over, and was butchered in the streets. His body 
 was left lying where it fell till a common soldier, rQ- 
 
256 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 turning from harvesting, flung down his corn, cut off 
 Galba's head, and, since there was no hair to hold it 
 by, first hid it in his bosom, and then brought it to 
 Otho with horrible indignities. Otho, hurried to Imperial 
 dignity by his freedman and a score of soldiers, was 
 Emperor for ninety-five days, and then was totally de- 
 feated by the German legions of Vitellius at the bloody 
 battle of Bedriacum. It happened that one of the 
 legionaries had brought evil tidings, and being treated 
 partly as a liar and partly as a coward who had fled 
 from battle, drew his sword, and, stabbing himself, fell 
 dead at Otho's feet. Otho shuddered and recoiled at 
 the sight. "Men so brave, men so well -deserving," 
 he exclaimed, "shall not be further imperilled on my 
 account." He might still have held out; he might still 
 have been victorious; but at the age , of thirty-seven he 
 had seen enough of life. He had drained to the dregs 
 the cup of its unsatisfying pleasures; he had discounted 
 its hopes and fears. He wrote some kindly letters; 
 divided among his servants what he had at hand; 
 pardoned some deserters; saw anyone who wished to 
 see him; and then, hiding a dagger under his pillow, 
 closed the doors and fell fast asleep. He awoke at 
 dawn, and with one blow drove the dagger into his 
 heart. He felt his own total unfitness for Empire. Ti 
 yCLQ juoi xal /uaxQOig avkoig; "What have I to do with 
 long flutes?" he was often heard to murmur to himself. 
 Voluptuous, unheroic, this "sweet and impudent crea- 
 ture" had, at one time, been more at home in the rites 
 of the Bona Dea than among the banners of the legions. 
 He was half inclined to fancy that he was one of those 
 >vho are raised to power by a jest of Fortune;— but hq 
 
L^ENVOI. 257 
 
 had been sobered a little by responsibility, and there 
 was a touch of grace in the courage of his end. 
 
 His successor, Vitellius, the yet more infamous son 
 of an infamous father, after a reign of seven months, 
 chiefly noticeable for its drunkenness and voracity, was 
 murdered in the streets with every expression of con- 
 tumely. His body, pierced with multitudes of slight 
 wounds, was first flung down the Gemonian steps, and 
 then dragged through the streets by a hook, and flung 
 into the Tiber. 
 
 The good plebeian, Vespasian, inaugurated a respite 
 of simpler manners and better days, in which Rome 
 and its society returned to decency and good sense.- A 
 man of robust commonplace and kindly instincts, he 
 won the Romans by his honesty and rough wit. When 
 the consular Menstrius Florus corrected his pronuncia- 
 tion (as Kemble did that of George III.) and told him 
 that he ought not to say plostra (wagons) but plaustra, 
 he only resented the impertinence when he met him the 
 next day by addressing him, not as Florus, but as 
 Flaunts {(pXavQog), or "not worth much." When a 
 youth came, reeking with perfume, to thank him for an 
 appointment to the praetorship, Vespasian, with a frown 
 of disgust, said, "I would have preferred that you smelt 
 of garhc," and cancelled the dandy's office. Tolerant 
 and fearless, he resented no injuries, and ruled for ten 
 years without making an enemy. Too sensible, and 
 with a conscience too much at ease, for superstitious 
 fears, when a comet was pointed out to him as portent- 
 ous, he said — alluding to the Roman expression, "a 
 hairy star" — that "it could not refer to a bald person 
 like himself, but to the king of the Parthians, who had 
 
 Darkness and Dawn, III, 1 7 
 
258 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 long hair!" When he felt the first touch of mortal 
 illness, he observed, with a jest at the folly of senatorial 
 apotheosis, "I think I am becoming a god." He was 
 charged, indeed, with avarice, and the story was told 
 that, when informed of a colossal statue which was to 
 be reared to him at the public expense, he held out the 
 hollow of his hand as though for the money, and said, 
 "The pedestal is ready." But, if he was parsimonious, 
 it was for the public good, and he returned from the 
 proconsulate of Africa so poor that he had to mortgage 
 all his possessions to his brother Sabinus. A thorough 
 man of business, he was indifferent to parade and pomp. 
 Napoleon I. was probably but half sincere when, on his 
 return from the magnificences of his coronation, he flung 
 his gorgeous robes into the corner, and said that "he 
 had never spent so tedious a day in his Hfe"; but 
 Vespasian was quite in earnest when, on the day of his 
 great Judaean triumph, he found the procession so tardy 
 and tedious that he called himself "an old fool who had 
 been deservedly punished for his silly vanity." 
 
 And what shall we say of Titus, who has played a 
 considerable part in our earHer pages? A Marcus Aure- 
 lius he was not; nor did he knock at the door of truth 
 so earnestly or sit at the feet of virtue so humbly as 
 did that saintly heathen. Yet there was an infinite 
 charm about him. He was a man of fine presence, of 
 dignified yet winning demeanour, endowed with great 
 personal strength and tenacious memory, eloquent, poetic, 
 accomplished, a splendid rider, a fine swordsman, a 
 patient and skilful general, a soldier of unflinching per- 
 sonal bravery. Josephus is constantly telling us of his 
 firmness, his pity, his stern discipline, his splendid brav- 
 
L ENVOI. 259 
 
 ery. Again and again he exposed his person as freely 
 as the commonest soldier in his ranks. Again and again 
 he extricated himself from personal peril, and his legions 
 from imminent defeat, with a strength which was un- 
 equalled, and a prowess which was contagious. At the 
 siege of Jerusalem he constantly rode near the walls, 
 and on one occasion shot down twelve of its defenders 
 with twelve consecutive arrows. Amid all his heroic 
 labours and anxious responsibiHties he lost none of the 
 fascination of his youth. When he left the Province to 
 visit his father, the soldiers, who had already saluted 
 him Emperor, demanded with supplications, and almost 
 with threats, that he would either stay or take them 
 with him. Unjustly suspected of a disloyal intention to 
 found for himself an Eastern kingdom, he hurried to 
 Rhegium, and thence to Puteoli with the utmost possible 
 speed; and when he reached Rome, bursting into his 
 father's presence, as though to confute the calumny, he 
 embraced him with the touching cry, *'I have come, my 
 father, I have come!" He did not escape the sins and 
 temptations of his youth, and his passionate love for 
 Berenice, which she as passionately returned, involved 
 him in discredit. But while he was still the support of 
 his father's throne, he gave proofs of his faithfulness 
 and self-control, and if he had been guilty of the faults 
 which scandal charges upon him, the change which 
 came over him when he was summoned to the purple 
 was greater than the traditional change of our own 
 hero-king, Henry V. As an Emperor, no vice was visible 
 in him, but many supreme virtues. Deeply as he was 
 attached to Berenice, he dismissed her from the city 
 because Rome condemned an amour which would have 
 
 17* 
 
560 DAkKNESS ANt) DAWN. 
 
 been held venial and almost innocent in a Nero or a 
 Domitian. He became chaste and self-controlled, full 
 of munificence, entirely free from avarice. Gracious and 
 generous to all, he acted on the rule ''that no one 
 should leave the Emperor's presence with a gloomy brow." 
 His famous saying, ''Friends, I have lost a day/' was 
 spoken when, at supper-time, he was unable to recall a 
 favour conferred on anyone since morning. He courted 
 the goodwill of the people, but without base conces- 
 sions. Desirous as Pontifex Maximus to keep his hands 
 unstained by the blood of the innocent, he declared 
 "that he would rather perish than destroy." Nothing 
 was more touching than the forgiving lenity with which 
 he tolerated the plots and hatred of his execrable 
 brother, Domitian. Aware of his wicked designs, he 
 only took him aside secretly, and begged him with tears 
 to act as a brother should. A deep misgiving oppressed 
 his soul. At the end of the games which he had dis- 
 played to the people, he wept abundantly, and, op- 
 pressed by evil omens, started for his Sabine farm, full 
 of grief. Stricken down with fever before he reached 
 his home, he drew back the curtains of his litter, and 
 looking heavenwards, he murmured, "I do not deserve 
 that my life should be thus cut short, nor have I done 
 any deed to be repented of, except one." What that 
 one sin was he did not reveal, and no one could con- 
 jecture. He died in the same homely villa as his father, 
 and, though he had only reigned two years and three 
 months, in that brief time he had earned an affection 
 which expressed itself in a genuine outburst of eulogy 
 and regret, and which won for him the title of "the 
 darling of the human race." But how vain a thing is 
 
l'envoi. 261 
 
 glory! On the Arch of Titus the hero is represented 
 being borne heavenward by an eagle with outspread 
 wings. Vain triumphs! Vain and profane apotheosis! 
 Little did it avail him to have won the passionate affec- 
 tion of his subjects ! There is something infinitely sad in 
 his shortened days and his brief tenure of power. It is 
 only too probable that he fell a victim to the machina- 
 tions of his brother, and died by poison secretly ad- 
 ministered. And Destiny — let us say rather the will of 
 God, of which he was the instrument — forced him, 
 against his own wish, to be the exterminator of the 
 City and — had extermination been possible — of the na- 
 tionality of the Chosen People. To them the darling of 
 the human race is Titus ha-Raskang, "Titus the Wicked." 
 They fable how, when he boasted that he had escaped 
 vengeance, after escaping from a storm at sea, God sent 
 a tiny gnat, which crept up his nostril into his brain. 
 On his brain it fed, and caused him, day and night, 
 excruciating agonies. Finding once that it ceased to 
 gnaw for an instant on hearing the banging of an anvil, 
 he had an anvil constantly banged with a huge hammer 
 at his side. But the creature soon became accustomed 
 to the sound ! When Titus died, it was taken out of his 
 brain, and found to be of the size of a bird, and to be 
 furnished with a beak and claws of iron. Such is the 
 torment which hatred devised for the best of the Twelve 
 Caesars, and the best but one or two of all the Em- 
 perors for three hundred years. But the sad truth is 
 that, apart from such frenetic imaginations, the last 
 years of the life of Titus were full of anxiety and dis- 
 quietude, for which he did not find in a sounding phi- 
 
262 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 losophy the alleviation which he would have found 
 abundantly in a humble faith. 
 
 With DoMiTiAN we have happily been less concerned. 
 How such a mixture of depravity and savageness, of 
 falsity and ingratitude can have sprung from the vir- 
 tuous union which also produced a Titus, is a mystery 
 of atavism. But at last the dagger of Stephanus struck 
 him down, and a better phase of the Empire was re- 
 newed. Rome gauged his character right when she 
 nicknamed him "the bald Nero." 
 
 Of the Jews whom we have introduced, Ishmael 
 Ben Phabi vanishes into obscurity. He lives, however, 
 in the energetic curse which the Talmud pronounces 
 upon family after family of the priests of that epoch. 
 He occurs in the line, which denounces the violence of 
 himself and his sons: "Woe to the family of Ishmael 
 Ben Phabi! woe to their fists! . . . Their servants strike 
 the people with their rods!'' 
 
 JosEPHUs became the devoted creature of the Flavian 
 dynasty. By timely prophecies he managed to secure 
 the favour of Vespasian and Titus, as he had won their 
 admiration by his genius and courage. He played his 
 difficult part with consummate astuteness, and secured 
 his safety in spite of the execration of the Jews and the 
 suspicion of the Romans. But what shall we say of a 
 man who, in spite of his boasted patriotism, could, after 
 being an eye-witness of the long, slow agony of his coun- 
 try's dissolution, be a guest of the Romans during the 
 games in which hundreds of his miserable fellow-coun- 
 trymen perished in the amphitheatre? — of a man who 
 could commemorate without a pang the unequalled 
 
l'envoi. 263 
 
 splendour of the triumph at Rome, when Vespasian and 
 Titus, robed in purple and silk and crowned with laurel, 
 sat in their chariots amid rivers of splendid spoils, and 
 Domitian rode a gallant war-horse by their side, and 
 Simon Bar-Gioras, after cruel insults, was led aside at 
 the foot of the Capitol to be strangled in the TuUian 
 Vault? Judaea Captiva wept under her palm-tree, deso- 
 late, broken-hearted, with her hair about her ears, and 
 the famous Arch of Triumph was built which still shows 
 the golden candlestick, and table of shewbread, and 
 vessels of incense — beneath which it is said that no 
 Jew will walk, because even in a strange land they re- 
 member thee, O Zion! But the sleek priest and warrior 
 who had been selected as one of the defenders of his 
 country, accepted an assignment of land from devastated 
 territories of his native country; inhabited a suite of 
 rooms in Vespasian's own house; and continued to live 
 in the sunHght of Court favour, not only under Titus, 
 but also under Domitian. And then, not by martyrdom, 
 not as a patriot, but as the pensioned favourite of those 
 who had massacred his countrymen and destroyed the 
 tombs and city of his fathers, he died, and went to his 
 own place, leaving behind him, even in the light of his 
 own falsified records, an ignoble and dishonoured name. 
 King Agrippa II., after a considerable portion of his 
 domains had been reduced to a desert, lived also in 
 Rome, as a titular king, and died, at the age of seventy, 
 in the reign of Trajan — the last prince of the House of 
 Herod. Happy had it been for him if St. Paul had, 
 not almost, but altogether persuaded him to be a Chris- 
 tian. He languished on, wealthy and despised, with 
 Josephus as his bosom friend. It might have been said 
 
264 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 of him, in the language of the Prophet: "All the kings 
 of the nations, all of them, sleep in glory, every one in 
 his own house. But thou art cast away from thy se- 
 pulchre, like an abominable branch. . . . Thou shalt not 
 be joined with them in burial, because thou hast destroyed 
 thy land, thou hast slain thy people." 
 
 Berenice, the widow of two kings, was no longer 
 young when she won Vespasian by her splendid presents, 
 and Titus by her Eastern beauty and fascination. But 
 he listened to the voice of duty when he dismissed her 
 from Rome, and when she returned he avoided seeing 
 her. She, too, vanished into the darkness, and died we 
 know not when. 
 
 Aliturus, no longer the apostate Jew, but the humble 
 Christian, found it, of course, impossible to play any 
 longer the part of the favourite pantomime of the Roman 
 stage. He loathed the thought of ever again wearing his 
 motley before the grinning and degraded populace. He 
 would fain have aided the struggling Church of Rome, 
 but there was nothing that he could do; and the pre- 
 sence of one whose person was so well known would 
 only imperil the gatherings of that handful of slaves and 
 artisans in the catacombs. The Christians themselves 
 advised him to leave the city, which he could not dis- 
 sociate from his dead past. He sold his house in Rome, 
 and his villa in the suburbs, and, leaving a large sum in 
 the hands of Cletus to help his flock, he sailed for Pa- 
 lestine, receiving before he started the blessing of Paul 
 the prisoner, and carrying with him letters of commenda- 
 tion from the Beloved Disciple to Simeon and others 
 of the Desposyni, or "relations of the Lord." These 
 letters neither revealed his real name, which he had 
 
l'envoi. 265 
 
 changel to Amandus, nor his past history, which might 
 have created an invincible prejudice; but certified that 
 he had been converted to the faith, and was now a 
 brother, faithful and beloved. He freely gave of his 
 wealth to the destitute, and was of great service to a 
 Church pre-eminently poor. 
 
 And, remaining in Jerusalem, he was an eye-witness 
 of all that horrid siege, in which a nation overwhelmed 
 with unutterable calamities, intensified by their own un- 
 utterable guilt, sighed in vain to see one of the days of 
 the Son of Man. Joining the moderate party, he did 
 his little best to counteract the overweening tyranny of 
 John of Giscala. He witnessed the slaughter committed 
 by the Idumeans, when they had been invited into the 
 city. He saw the insults heaped on the corpse of the 
 murdered High Priest Hanan; and the martyrdom of 
 Zechariah, the son of Baruch, in the middle of the 
 Temple; and the High Priest Matthias murdered by 
 Simon Bar-Gioras, after his three sons had been slain 
 before his eyes. He heard the roar of internecine 
 conflict, when three sections of fanatics fought furiously 
 against each other. Day by day he was agonised by 
 the inconceivable miseries of the starving and maddened 
 people. He saw the granaries madly burnt in civil dis- 
 cords; the marble floor of the sanctuary wet with foot- 
 steps dipped in blood; the gore of worshippers slain by 
 the hurtling engines of Zealots, mingling with the blood 
 of the sacrifices; the deserters sent back with their 
 hands cut off, or ripped open to search for the gold 
 which they had swallowed, or crucified outside the city- 
 walls, till wood failed for the crosses, and crosses for 
 the bodies; the streets and houses full only of the corpses 
 
266 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 of those whom famine had slain; the horrible disorders 
 of rampant licentiousness, which were the expression of 
 blasphemous despair. He saw Martha, the daughter of 
 the wealthy Gamaliel, trying to pick grains for food from 
 the ordure of the streets; he saw the miserable mother 
 who, in the pangs of hunger, roasted and devoured her 
 own child. He heard the incessant thunder of the batter- 
 ing-rams upon the walls, and the whizz of the dazzHng 
 stones hurled from the catapults, and the monotonous 
 cry of the poor scourged maniac wandering about day 
 and night with the wail: '^A voice from the East, a voice 
 from the West, a voice from the four winds! Woe, woe 
 to Jerusalem, and to the people, and to the Holy House!" 
 He heard Josephus and Titus pleading with the frantic 
 people, and the false prophets deluding them. He heard 
 the crash of the falling cloister which buried six thou- 
 sand men, women, and children under its ruins, and the 
 roaring of the flames, and the groans of the wounded, 
 and the shout of the victors, and the despairing yell of 
 the defeated. He saw the priests tearing the gilded 
 spikes from the Temple roof, and hurling them down 
 upon the Romans. In spite of the strong efforts of Titus 
 — under the urgent entreaties of Agrippa and Josephus 
 — to spare the Temple, he saw a Roman soldier, as 
 though inspired by some divine fury, snatch up a burn- 
 ing brand, and spring upon the back of a comrade, and 
 hurl his torch through the golden window of one of the 
 chambers which surrounded the Holiest Place; and then, 
 when the flames burst out on every side, he saw the 
 whole Temple hill assume the aspect of a great bellow- 
 ing volcano stored with fire, while amid the upheaped 
 corpses the blood, streaming in rivers from fresh wounds, 
 
l'envoi. 267 
 
 hissed and bubbled as though it would almost have 
 quenched the flames. He saw something of that awfully 
 desperate struggle of madness and fury, 
 
 "When through the cedarn courts, and gates of gold, 
 The trampled ranks in miry carnage rolled. 
 To save their Temple every hand essayed. 
 And with cold fingers clutched the feeble blade; 
 Through their torn veins reviving fury ran. 
 And life's last anger warmed the dying man." 
 
 And how his Hfe was preserved — famine-stricken, 
 wounded, horrified, daily imperilled as he was in that 
 circle of fire in which the scorpions of religious faction 
 madly stung each other to death —he never knew. From 
 April 10, A.D. 70, when Titus pitched his camp near 
 Jerusalem, till July 17, when, for the first time, the per- 
 petual sacrifice ceased, for lack of priests to offer it — 
 and on till August 10, when the Holiest sank in flames, 
 and the Roman soldiers adored their idolatrous ensigns 
 in its blackened area — and onwards till September 8, 
 when all resistance ended, Aliturus had scarcely known 
 one day which was not full of terror and misery. In 
 the final indiscriminate slaughter of the captured city 
 he was selected as one of the seven hundred youths, 
 conspicuous for size and beauty, who were destined to 
 grace the triumph of Vespasian and Titus. But he 
 sought an interview with Josephus and the astonished 
 Titus, and when he revealed to them his identity, and 
 convinced them that his one desire had been to win 
 the Jews to counsels of moderation, and to do good 
 works among the miserable, he was set free, and large 
 presents were given to him, and he was suffered to go 
 whither he would. 
 
268 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 He could not return to Jerusalem, for Jerusalem was 
 no more and on the Jews had fallen their own awful 
 imprecation — "His blood be on us and on our children!" 
 He went to Pella, whither the Church of Jerusalem had, 
 so to speak, fled into the wilderness. With the 
 Christians there he abode for some time, and then he 
 visited St. John at Ephesus, and Onesimus at Hierapolis. 
 The memories of his own country had been too striking 
 and oppressive, and the brilliant favourite of the Roman 
 populace died at HierapoHs, a beloved but obscure 
 presbyter of its happy Church. 
 
 The persecutions of the Christians continued inter- 
 mittently for three centuries, and the rhythmic cry — the 
 double antispastus, Christianos ad leones — rang through 
 the amphitheatre of many a Pagan city. But the Church 
 grew and flourished and shone in the world like that 
 Vision of the Apocalypse — a woman clothed with the 
 sun, the moon beneath her feet, and a crown of twelve 
 stars upon her head. The Church of Rome rose from 
 her ashes, and in many a seven-times-heated flame of 
 affliction there stood beside her One like unto the Son 
 of Man. 
 
 When Linus died, Cletus succeeded him as the third 
 "Pope" of Rome — although that title was not given to 
 the humble presbyter-bishops of the struggling com- 
 munity for more than two centuries, and not formally 
 adopted by them till about a.d. 400. Cletus was suc- 
 ceeded by Clement. Of the first thirty Popes it is said 
 by Christian tradition that all but two were martyrs. 
 The blood of those martyrs was the seed of the Church. 
 That Church had been consumed to ashes, and, rising 
 from her ashes, soared heavenwards, first waveringly, 
 
L^ENVOL 269 
 
 then steadily, at last with supreme dominion, ^* reflecting 
 the sunlight from every glancing plume." 
 
 Hermas, having been made a freedman by Octavia, 
 set up in trade, and married. But he was unfortunate. 
 In one of the later persecutions under Domitian he was 
 betrayed to the informers by his own sons. He escaped 
 with his life; and in the reign of Nerva he, with other 
 victims of the cruel Flavian Emperor, received lands in 
 lieu of the goods of which he had been despoiled. He 
 cultivated his little farm in peace, and lived to write the 
 celebrated "Shepherd," which some have described as 
 "a fusionless screed of dry morality," and some as a 
 dull novel, but which may be called "the * Pilgrims Pro- 
 gress' of the Early Church." Simple as it is, it was so 
 well suited to the days in which it was written that it 
 was read in the churches, and almost attained the dignity 
 of Scripture. 
 
 PuDENS and Claudia made their permanent home in 
 Britain. They found it a more congenial residence for 
 Christians than bloodstained Rome, and by the beauty 
 of their lives, as well as by their teaching, they escaped 
 the hostility of the Druids, and founded a Church in 
 their house, and in the city of Noviomagus, where they 
 chiefly lived. They acquired a deep affection for "the 
 isle of blossoming woodlands, isle of silvery parapets," 
 which they adopted as their own, in spite of the courteous 
 invitation of Titus, who urged them to return to Rome. 
 And sometimes Pudens thought that there must be a 
 prescience in the British prophecy which their friend 
 Laureatus, the Latin poet of Vectis, had turned into 
 galliambics from the wild songs which fired the patriotism 
 of the host of Boadicea, and which said — 
 
270 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 "Though the Roman eagle shadow thee, though the gathering 
 
 enemy harrow thee, 
 Thou shalt wax and he shall dwmdle, thou shalt be the mighty one 
 
 yet; 
 Thine the liberty, thine the glory, thine the deeds to be celebrated ; 
 Thine the myriad-rolling ocean, light and shadow illimitable, 
 Thine the lands of lasting summer, many-blossoming Paradises, 
 Thine the North, and thine the South, and thine the batde- 
 
 thunder of God." 
 
 The old king Caradoc lived with them for a time in 
 the charming villa which they had built. He had fancied 
 at first that, after the disgrace of defeat and betrayal, 
 he would never be able to show his face among the 
 warlike Silures whom he had led to victory. But 
 Christianity softened his soul. He received a warm 
 welcome from many of his friends and former subjects, 
 and it was no little due to his conversion and his teach- 
 ing that Christianity secured a footing among the Cymry 
 long before its truths had been accepted in other 
 portions of the British Isles. 
 
 PoMPONiA crowned a life of love and gracious kind- 
 ness with a death of perfect peace. She recovered from 
 the virulent fever which she had caught in the prisons, 
 and consoled the drooping years of her husband, Aulus 
 Plautius. He died in the reign of Titus, and she did 
 not long survive him. She was happily spared the 
 spectacle of the reign of Domitian and the martyrdom 
 of Flavins Clemens. All who were in sorrow sought her 
 for consolation. Even the imperial Titus came gladly to 
 her when his dark hour was upon him, and his heart 
 was broken by the cruel ingratitude of his brother. She 
 heard often from Pudens and Claudia, and from all 
 whom she had loved, She fostered by every means in 
 
L ENVOI. 271 
 
 her power the struggling community of the catacombs, 
 and when she lay upon her deathbed St. Clement, the 
 fourth Bishop of Rome, administered to her the last 
 sacrament. Her example had been of high benefit even 
 to the Pagans of Roman society. It was her influence 
 which told in the improved manners of the reign of 
 Vespasian, and no Vestal was more honoured for her 
 official sanctity than Pomponia Graecina for her Christian 
 holiness. When the ear heard her it blessed her, and 
 when the eye saw her it gave witness to her. The 
 blessings of those that were ready to perish came 
 upon her, and she caused the widow's heart to sing 
 for joy. 
 
 The close of the life of Onesimus was as peaceful as 
 its youthful years had been full of trouble and storm. 
 After the martyrdom of the Apostle Paul, and the all- 
 but-extinction of the Church in Rome, he proposed that 
 Nereus, and Junia, who was now united to him in holy 
 wedlock, should leave Aricia, and, with the means which 
 they possessed, should establish a new home in his 
 native Thyatira, or in Hierapolis, or in Ephesus. Nereus 
 gladly consented, for the gloom and loneliness of Aricia 
 weighed upon his spirits, and he was haunted by the 
 thoughts of the agonies which he had witnessed in the 
 imprisonment and death of his brethren at Rome. Be- 
 fore they started, Onesimus sought a secret interview 
 with his cousin and foster-sister Acte. He found her 
 still living in the Golden House, but profoundly uncer- 
 tain about the future. She had bathed the mangled 
 corpse of Nero with her tears; she had adorned his 
 grave with flowers; she had ventured even to pray for 
 his soul To her he was not the monster into which he 
 
272 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 developed, but still the youth who had loved her, and 
 whom she had loved. But now, amid the terrible 
 scenes which Rome was witnessing, and seemed Hkely 
 long to witness in the fierce struggles of rival generals 
 for power, her life was anxious. Apart from the ob- 
 vious perils which might befall her in the hands of 
 such wretches as Nymphidius and Tigellinus, she had 
 long desired to escape from that city of Circean 
 splendour. Eagerly she offered Onesimus to accompany 
 him, and told him that now she, like himself, was a 
 baptised Christian. She resumed her old name of 
 Eunice, which she had borne as a child before the evil 
 days of Rome, and she had wealth sufficient to maintain 
 them all. 
 
 Her preparations were made secretly, with the aid 
 of the Christian slaves in Caesar's household. She sold 
 her jewels, and, taking much of her property with her, 
 sailed with Onesimus and his wife and Nereus to Ephesus. 
 They fixed their home at Hierapolis, where they could 
 enjoy the teaching of the Deacon Philip, and where 
 Acte, gladly serving as a deaconess of the little Church, 
 gave all her goods to the poor, and lived in happy 
 friendship with the virgin daughters of the Evangelist. 
 The children of Onesimus and Junica owed much to 
 her kindly nature and teaching. In due time Onesimus 
 himself was ordained to the ministry, and became in 
 later years a bishop of the Church of Ephesus. There, 
 when he was quite an old man, in the year a.d. 107, 
 he met the martyr Ignatius of Antioch, when he was 
 being conducted to his martyrdom in the Colosseum by 
 the decuria of soldiers whom he calls "his ten leopards." 
 He showed the greatest kindness to the holy martyr, 
 
L ENVOI. 273 
 
 who, in his letter to the Ephesians, gratefully com- 
 memorates the "inexpressible love" which Onesimus had 
 manifested towards him. Some say that he, too, suffered 
 martyrdom at Ephesus, after a long Hfe and many happy 
 years. 
 
 And now that Judaism had been utterly crushed, 
 Paganism again and again wrestled with Christianity, and 
 put forth all its force. It strove to rival the new faith 
 by ritual splendour and orgiastic rites, and "the extreme 
 sensuality of superstition." It strove to put forth Pytha- 
 goras, or Socrates, or Apollonius of Tyana as parallels 
 to Christ; and Stoicism and Neo-Platonism as substitutes 
 for the truths of the Gospel. It kindled its expiring 
 lamps with "sparks from the incorruptible fountain of 
 wisdom," and turned its back on the Sun of Righteous- 
 ness, from which they were derived. It tried all that 
 sneers and banter could do in the writings of the Pseudo- 
 Lucian, and all the power and passion of argument 
 in the books of Porphyry, Hierocles, and Celsus. 
 Waging deadly war against all who called them- 
 selves Christians, it tried to burn them at its stakes, to 
 crucify them on its countless gibbets, to devour them by 
 its herds of wild beasts, at least to daunt them by its 
 horrible tortures. On every field Christians met and 
 conquered them with the two sacred and invincible 
 weapons of Martyrdom and Innocence. The Church 
 escaped from and soared out of their reach on "the 
 two great wings of pureness and kindness," and so "by 
 the unresistible might of weakness shook the world." 
 
 Darkness and Dawn. HI, 1 8 
 
2 74 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 The Christians refuted the arguments urged against 
 them; they turned the edge of the jeers; they exposed 
 the feebleness of the philosophers who wrote to denounce 
 them. Meekly enduring the tortures devised against 
 them "they stood safe'' (as said their martyr Cyprian); 
 " stronger than their conquerors, the beaten and lacerated 
 members conquered the beating and lacerating hooks." 
 These obscure Sectaries — barbarians, Orientals, Jews, 
 slaves, artisans — fought against the indignant world, 
 and won. And when they had won, and in proportion 
 as they won, they ennobled and purified the world. 
 Wrestling with the Pagan curse of corruption they made 
 pure the homes, and the conversation, and the amuse- 
 ments, and the literature, and the inmost hearts of all 
 who faithfully accepted the truths they preached. Wrest- 
 Hng with the curse of cruelty they suppressed infanticide, 
 they sanctified compassion, they put down the cruel and 
 ghastly scenes of human slaughter in the amphitheatre, 
 they made the wretched and the sick and the outcast 
 their special care, "they encircled the brow of sorrow 
 with the aureole of sanctity." Wrestling with the curses 
 of slavery and selfish exclusiveness they taught the 
 inalienable rights of humanity, they confronted tyranny, 
 they inspired nations with the spirit of liberty, they flung 
 over the oppressed a shield of adamant, they taught 
 that all men are the children of God. Intellectually, 
 socially, politically, in national life and in individual life, 
 in art and in literature, Christianity has inspired all that 
 the world has seen of best and noblest, and still offers 
 to the soul of every mart the purest hope, the divinest 
 comfort, the loftiest aspirations. To talk of "the crimes 
 of Christianity" is a preposterous paradox. There is 
 
L ENVOI. 275 
 
 not one evil thought that can be thought, not one evil 
 deed that can be done, which is not utterly alien from 
 its true spirit. Crimes, indeed, without number have 
 been committed in its name. Kings, and priests, and 
 peoples have misinterpreted its documents, forged its 
 commissions, falsified the image and superscription of its 
 current coins, while "swarms of vile creatures have made 
 it an inexhaustible prey." But "it has lived through all, 
 and has suffered that which would have been tenfold 
 death to aught less than Divine." And even yet, after 
 nearly nineteen centuries have sped since its Dawn began, 
 and its Sun of Righteousness arose with healing in His 
 wings, this Faith alone sets before mankind the Divine 
 Example of a Perfect and a Sinless Man, and alone 
 offers the sure promises of pardon and of peace. All 
 the best wisdom of the world Hes in the brief Book of 
 its New Covenant, and all the hopes of the world lie 
 centred in the faithful acceptance of its Law and of 
 its Life. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 Note 40. Page 16. 
 Age of Octavia. — Nothing certain can be ascertained as to the 
 exact age of Octavia at her death. Tillemont, Neron^ Art. xv., 
 thinks that she was twenty-two; and Nipperdey on Tac. Ann. 
 XIV. 64 conjectures that the true reading is "II et vicesimo." See 
 Stahr, Agrippina, p. 54; Lehmann, 132; Sievers, Studien zur 
 Gesch. des Rom. Kaiser. 129; H. Schiller, Gesch. des Rom. 
 Kaiser reichs, 67. When she married Nero she was apparently 
 thirteen, and he fifteen; SchiUer, I.e. 83. 
 
 Note 41. Page 21. 
 Christian fortitude. — These are the explanations given by 
 Pagans of the calmness of Christians under martyrdom. Marc. 
 Aurehus says that men should die calmly, yet not bia xpiXyiv jcagd- 
 za^iv (hg ot XQioxiavol , Medit. XI. 3; vjio fA^avlag, vjto k'^ovg, 
 (hg ot raXdaXoi, says Epictetus, Dissert, iv. 7. 
 
 Note 42. Page 40. 
 Ishmael ben Phahi. — An Ishmael ben Phabi was made high 
 priest by Valerius Gratus; and another, or the same at a later age, 
 by Festus. The younger is here intended. 
 
 Note 43. Page 65. 
 Anchialus is a dubious word found in Martial, Ep, xi. 94, and 
 very variously explained. The famous oracle quoted by Josephus 
 is found in Macrobius, Saturn. I. 18. 
 
NOTES. • 277 
 
 Note 44. Page 71. 
 Esther, in her epitaph, charges Arescusus not to put "D.M." 
 or any other Pagan symbol on her tomb. The name of Primitivus, 
 a Curator Spoliarii in Nero's time (mentioned in the next para- 
 graph), has been preserved in an inscription found in the Colum- 
 baria. 
 
 Note 45. Page 85. 
 I borrow this ancient hymn from the conclusion of the Pceda- 
 gogus of Clement of Alexandria. The translation is by my friend 
 the late Dean of Wells. 
 
 Note 46. Page 126. 
 What we call St. Elmo's fire was known to the ancients as 
 "the fires of Castor and Pollux." A hidental was an enclosure 
 round a place struck by lightning. For such legends of St. John 
 as I have here adopted I may refer to Tert. De Prcescr, Hcer. 36; 
 Jer. C.Jovin. I. 26; and In Matt. XX. 23, Orig. In. Matt. Hom. 
 XII.; Zahn, Acta Johannis, CXVII.-CXXII. 
 
 Note 47. Page 127. 
 I have elsewhere given strong reasons for the behef that 
 St. John was banished to Patmos by Nero, not by Domitian. See 
 Early Days of Christianity^ n. 147, \%\sqq. 
 
 Note 48. Page 136. 
 Icarus. — See Sueton. Nero^ 12; Dio Chrysost. Orat. XXI. 9. 
 There seems to be an echo of this incident in the legend about the 
 attempted flight of Simon Magus. Cyril Hierosol. Catech. vi. 15; 
 Arnob. C. Gentes, II. 12. See Lipsius, Petrtis-Sage^ and Fabricius, 
 Cod. Apocr. N. T. m. 632. 
 
 Note 49. Page 136. 
 See Clem. Rom. Ad Cor. i. 6. Aia ^fjXog dtcoxd'Stoai yvvaXxeg 
 AavatSsg xal AiQxat aixlafiaxa deiva xai dvooia Jia'&ovaai' em 
 rov Tfjg Jiiotecog Pspaiov dgojuov xar^vrrjoav xal k'Xa^ov ysgag 
 ysvvaiov at do&EvsTg rco ocofiati. I do not see any reason to ac- 
 cept any alterations of the reading. See, too, Renan, L'Ante- 
 christy p. 167. The Dirce-statue, known as the Farnese Bull, is 
 now in the Museo Borbonico at Naples. 
 
278 DARKNESS AND DAWN. 
 
 Note 50. Page 142. 
 I am indebted for one slight touch in this scene to the other- 
 wise absurd sketch in Latour St.-Ybars' Neron. 
 
 Note 51. Page 212. 
 Dion Cassius tells the fate of Corbulo in three energetic words : 
 nalcov elsysv'A^tog (Lxni. 17). 
 
 Note 52. Page 233. 
 The reader who is familiar with the cycles of early Christian 
 legend will recognise that I borrow the character of Patroclus and 
 various incidents of these scenes from the Acts of Linus. They 
 are printed in De la Eigne, Bibl. Pair. Max. 11. 67 ; and some 
 account of them is given by Dr. Salmon in Diet. Christ. Biog. 
 III. 726. See, too, the allusion of St. Chrysostom, Horn. xlvi. in 
 Actt. App. 
 
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