Callista : a Tale of the Third Century
by John Henry Newman · English · Gutenberg #30664 · 558,151 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Callista : a Tale of the Third Century
Author: John Henry Newman
Release date: December 13, 2009 [eBook #30664]
Most recently updated: June 25, 2019
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30664
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CALLISTA : A TALE OF THE THIRD CENTURY ***
CALLISTA
A TALE OF THE THIRD CENTURY
BY
JOHN HENRY CARDINAL NEWMAN
“Love thy God, and love Him only,
And thy breast will ne’er be lonely.
In that One Great Spirit meet
All things mighty, grave, and sweet.
Vainly strives the soul to mingle
With a being of our kind;
Vainly hearts with hearts are twined:
For the deepest still is single.
An impalpable resistance
Holds like natures still at distance.
Mortal: love that Holy One,
Or dwell for aye alone.”
DE VERE
_NEW IMPRESSION_
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1904
_All rights reserved_
_To_
_HENRY WILLIAM WILBERFORCE._
_To you alone, who have known me so long, and who love me so well, could I
venture to offer a trifle like this. But you will recognise the author in
his work, and take pleasure in the recognition._
_J. H. N._
ADVERTISEMENT.
It is hardly necessary to say that the following Tale is a simple fiction
from beginning to end. It has little in it of actual history, and not much
claim to antiquarian research; yet it has required more reading than may
appear at first sight.
It is an attempt to imagine and express, from a Catholic point of view,
the feelings and mutual relations of Christians and heathens at the period
to which it belongs, and it has been undertaken as the nearest approach
which the Author could make to a more important work suggested to him from
a high ecclesiastical quarter.
_September 13, 1855._
POSTSCRIPTS TO LATER EDITIONS.
_February 8, 1856._—Since the volume has been in print, the Author finds
that his name has got abroad. This gives him reason to add, that he wrote
great part of Chapters I., IV., and V., and sketched the character and
fortunes of Juba, in the early spring of 1848. He did no more till the end
of last July, when he suddenly resumed the thread of his tale, and has
been successful so far as this, that he has brought it to an end.
Without being able to lay his finger upon instances in point, he has some
misgiving lest, from a confusion between ancient histories and modern
travels, there should be inaccuracies, antiquarian or geographical, in
certain of his minor statements, which carry with them authority when they
cease to be anonymous.
_February 2, 1881.—October, 1888._—In a tale such as this, which professes
in the very first sentence of its Advertisement to be simple fiction from
beginning to end, details may be allowably filled up by the writer’s
imagination and coloured by his personal opinions and beliefs, the only
rule binding on him being this—that he has no right to contravene
acknowledged historical facts. Thus it is that Walter Scott exercises a
poet’s licence in drawing his Queen Elizabeth and his Claverhouse, and the
author of “Romola” has no misgivings in even imputing hypothetical motives
and intentions to Savonarola. Who, again, would quarrel with Mr. Lockhart,
writing in Scotland, for excluding Pope, or Bishops, or sacrificial rites
from his interesting Tale of Valerius?
Such was the understanding, as to what I might do and what I might not,
with which I wrote this story; and to make it clearer, I added in the
later editions of this Advertisement, that it was written “from a Catholic
point of view;” while in the earlier, bearing in mind the interests of
historical truth, and the anachronism which I had ventured on at page 82
in the date of Arnobius and Lactantius, I said that I had not “admitted
any actual interference with known facts without notice,” questions of
religious controversy, when I said it, not even coming into my thoughts. I
did not consider my Tale to be in any sense controversial, but to be
specially addressed to Catholic readers, and for their edification.
This being so, it was with no little surprise I found myself lately
accused of want of truth, because I have followed great authorities in
attributing to Christians of the middle of the third century what is
certainly to be found in the fourth,—devotions, representations, and
doctrines, declaratory of the high dignity of the Blessed Virgin. If I had
left out all mention of these, I should have been simply untrue to my idea
and apprehension of Primitive Christianity. To what positive and certain
facts do I run counter in so doing, even granting that I am indulging my
imagination? But I have allowed myself no such indulgence; I gave good
reasons long ago, in my “Letter to Dr. Pusey” (pp. 53–76), for what I
believe on this matter and for what I have in “Callista” described.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. SICCA VENERIA 1
II. CHRISTIANITY IN SICCA 14
III. AGELLIUS IN HIS COTTAGE 25
IV. JUBA 30
V. JUCUNDUS AT SUPPER 39
VI. GOTHS AND CHRISTIANS 51
VII. PERSECUTION IN THE OFFING 64
VIII. THE NEW GENERATION 80
IX. JUCUNDUS BAITS HIS TRAP 92
X. THE DIVINE CALLISTA 111
XI. CALLISTA’S PREACHING, AND WHAT CAME OF IT 122
XII. A DEATH 135
XIII. AND RESURRECTION 145
XIV. A SMALL CLOUD 159
XV. A VISITATION 168
XVI. WORSE AND WORSE 178
XVII. CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES 189
XVIII. AGELLIUS FLITS 199
XIX. A PASSAGE OF ARMS 212
XX. HE SHALL NOT LOSE HIS REWARD 226
XXI. STARTLING RUMOURS 235
XXII. JUCUNDUS PROPOUNDS HIS VIEW OF THE SITUATION 239
XXIII. GURTA 256
XXIV. A MOTHER’S BLESSING 266
XXV. CALLISTA IN DURANCE 274
XXVI. WHAT CAN IT ALL MEAN? 281
XXVII. AM I A CHRISTIAN? 291
XXVIII. A SICK CALL 305
XXIX. CONVERSION 317
XXX. TORRES VEDRAS 329
XXXI. THE BAPTISM 343
XXXII. THE IMPERIAL RESCRIPT 352
XXXIII. A GOOD CONFESSION 357
XXXIV. THE MARTYRDOM 366
XXXV. THE CORPO SANTO 371
XXXVI. LUX PERPETUA SANCTIS TUIS, DOMINE 377
CALLISTA;
A TALE OF THE THIRD CENTURY.
CHAPTER I.
SICCA VENERIA.
In no province of the vast Roman empire, as it existed in the middle of
the third century, did Nature wear a richer or a more joyous garb than she
displayed in Proconsular Africa, a territory of which Carthage was the
metropolis, and Sicca might be considered the centre. The latter city,
which was the seat of a Roman colony, lay upon a precipitous or steep
bank, which led up along a chain of hills to a mountainous track in the
direction of the north and east. In striking contrast with this wild and
barren region was the view presented by the west and south, where for many
miles stretched a smiling champaign, exuberantly wooded, and varied with a
thousand hues, till it was terminated at length by the successive tiers of
the Atlas, and the dim and fantastic forms of the Numidian mountains. The
immediate neighbourhood of the city was occupied by gardens, vineyards,
corn-fields, and meadows, crossed or encircled here by noble avenues of
trees or the remains of primeval forests, there by the clustering groves
which wealth and luxury had created. This spacious plain, though level
when compared with the northern heights by which the city was backed, and
the peaks and crags which skirted the southern and western horizon, was
discovered, as light and shadow travelled with the sun, to be diversified
with hill and dale, upland and hollow; while orange gardens, orchards,
olive and palm plantations held their appropriate sites on the slopes or
the bottoms. Through the mass of green, which extended still more thickly
from the west round to the north, might be seen at intervals two solid
causeways tracking their persevering course to the Mediterranean coast,
the one to the ancient rival of Rome, the other to Hippo Regius in
Numidia. Tourists might have complained of the absence of water from the
scene; but the native peasant would have explained to them that the eye
alone had reason to be discontented, and that the thick foliage and the
uneven surface did but conceal what mother earth with no niggard bounty
supplied. The Bagradas, issuing from the spurs of the Atlas, made up in
depth what it wanted in breadth of bed, and ploughed the rich and yielding
mould with its rapid stream, till, after passing Sicca in its way, it fell
into the sea near Carthage. It was but the largest of a multitude of
others, most of them tributaries to it, deepening as much as they
increased it. While channels had been cut from the larger rills for the
irrigation of the open land, brooks, which sprang up in the gravel which
lay against the hills, had been artificially banked with cut stones or
paved with pebbles; and where neither springs nor rivulets were to be
found, wells had been dug, sometimes to the vast depth of as much as 200
fathoms, with such effect that the spurting column of water had in some
instances drowned the zealous workmen who had been the first to reach it.
And, while such were the resources of less favoured localities or seasons,
profuse rains descended over the whole region for one half of the year,
and the thick summer dews compensated by night for the daily tribute
extorted by an African sun.
At various distances over the undulating surface, and through the woods,
were seen the villas and the hamlets of that happy land. It was an age
when the pride of architecture had been indulged to the full; edifices,
public and private, mansions and temples, ran off far away from each
market-town or borough, as from a centre, some of stone or marble, but
most of them of that composite of fine earth, rammed tight by means of
frames, for which the Saracens were afterwards famous, and of which
specimens remain to this day, as hard in surface, as sharp at the angles,
as when they first were finished. Every here and there, on hill or crag,
crowned with basilicas and temples, radiant in the sun, might be seen the
cities of the province or of its neighbourhood, Thibursicumber, Thugga,
Laribus, Siguessa, Sufetula, and many others; while in the far distance,
on an elevated table-land under the Atlas, might be discerned the Colonia
Scillitana, famous about fifty years before the date of which we write for
the martyrdom of Speratus and his companions, who were beheaded at the
order of the proconsul for refusing to swear by the genius of Rome and the
emperor.
If the spectator now takes his stand, not in Sicca itself, but about a
quarter of a mile to the south-east, on the hill or knoll on which was
placed the cottage of Agellius, the city itself will enter into the
picture. Its name, Sicca Veneria, if it be derived (as some suppose) from
the Succoth benoth, or “tents of the daughters,” mentioned by the inspired
writer as an object of pagan worship in Samaria, shows that it owed its
foundation to the Phœnician colonists of the country. At any rate, the
Punic deities retained their hold upon the place; the temples of the
Tyrian Hercules and of Saturn, the scene of annual human sacrifices, were
conspicuous in its outline, though these and all other religious buildings
in it looked small beside the mysterious antique shrine devoted to the
sensual rites of the Syrian Astarte. Public baths and a theatre, a
capitol, imitative of Rome, a gymnasium, the long outline of a portico, an
equestrian statue in brass of the Emperor Severus, were grouped together
above the streets of a city, which, narrow and winding, ran up and down
across the hill. In its centre an extraordinary spring threw up
incessantly several tons of water every minute, and was inclosed by the
superstitious gratitude of the inhabitants with the peristylium of a
sacred place. At the extreme back, towards the north, which could not be
seen from the point of view where we last stationed ourselves, there was a
sheer descent of rock, bestowing on the city, when it was seen at a
distance on the Mediterranean side, the same bold and striking appearance
which attaches to Castro Giovanni, the ancient Enna, in the heart of
Sicily.
And now, withdrawing our eyes from the panorama, whether in its distant or
nearer objects, if we would at length contemplate the spot itself from
which we have been last surveying it, we shall find almost as much to
repay attention, and to elicit admiration. We stand in the midst of a farm
of some wealthy proprietor, consisting of a number of fields and gardens,
separated from each other by hedges of cactus or the aloe. At the foot of
the hill, which sloped down on the side furthest from Sicca to one of the
tributaries of the rich and turbid river of which we have spoken, a large
yard or garden, intersected with a hundred artificial rills, was devoted
to the cultivation of the beautiful and odoriferous _khennah_. A thick
grove of palms seemed to triumph in the refreshment of the water’s side,
and lifted up their thankful boughs towards heaven. The barley harvest in
the fields which lay higher up the hill was over, or at least was
finishing; and all that remained of the crop was the incessant and
importunate chirping of the _cicadæ_, and the rude booths of reeds and
bulrushes, now left to wither, in which the peasant boys found shelter
from the sun, while in an earlier month they frightened from the grain the
myriads of linnets, goldfinches, and other small birds who, as in other
countries, contested with the human proprietor the possession of it. On
the south-western slope lies a neat and carefully dressed vineyard, the
vine-stakes of which, dwarfish as they are, already cast long shadows on
the eastern side. Slaves are scattered over it, testifying to the
scorching power of the sun by their broad _petasus_, and to its oppressive
heat by the scanty _subligarium_, which reached from the belt or girdle to
the knees. They are engaged in cutting off useless twigs to which the last
showers of spring have given birth, and are twisting those which promise
fruit into positions where they will be safe both from the breeze and from
the sun. Everything gives token of that gracious and happy season which
the great Latin poets have hymned in their beautiful but heathen strains;
when, after the heavy rains, and raw mists, and piercing winds, and fitful
sun-gleams of a long six months, the mighty mother manifests herself anew,
and pours out the resources of her innermost being for the life and
enjoyment of every portion of the vast whole;—or, to apply the lines of a
modern bard—
“When the bare earth, till now
Desert and bare, unsightly, unadorned,
Brings forth the tender grass, whose verdure clads
Her universal face with pleasant green;
Then herbs of every leaf, that sudden flower,
Opening their various colours, and make gay
Her bosom, swelling sweet; and, these scarce blown,
Forth flourishes the clustering vine, forth creeps
The swelling gourd, up stands the corny reed
Embattled in her fields, and the humble shrub,
And bush with frizzled hair implicit; last
Rise, as in dance, the stately trees, and spread
Their branches hung with copious fruit, or gem
Their blossoms; with high woods the hills are crowned
With tufts the valleys, and each fountain side
With borders long the rivers; that earth now
Seems like to heaven, a seat where gods might dwell,
Or wander with delight, and love to haunt
Her sacred shades.”
A snatch from some old Greek chant, with something of plaintiveness in the
tone, issues from the thicket just across the mule-path, cut deep in the
earth, which reaches from the city gate to the streamlet; and a youth, who
had the appearance of the assistant bailiff or _procurator_ of the farm,
leaped from it, and went over to the labourers, who were busy with the
vines. His eyes and hair and the cast of his features spoke of Europe; his
manner had something of shyness and reserve, rather than of rusticity; and
he wore a simple red tunic with half sleeves, descending to the knee, and
tightened round him by a belt. His legs and feet were protected by boots
which came half up his calf. He addressed one of the slaves, and his voice
was gentle and cheerful.
“Ah, Sansar!” he cried, “I don’t like your way of managing these branches
so well as my own; but it is a difficult thing to move an old fellow like
you. You never fasten together the shoots which you don’t cut off, they
are flying about quite wild, and the first ox that passes through the
field next month for the ploughing will break them off.”
He spoke in Latin; the man understood it, and answered him in the same
language, though with deviations from purity of accent and syntax, not
without parallel in the _talkee-talkee_ of the West Indian negro.
“Ay, ay, master,” he said, “ay, ay; but it’s all a mistake to use the
plough at all. The fork does the work much better, and no fear for the
grape. I hide the tendril under the leaf against the sun, which is the
only enemy we have to consider.”
“Ah! but the fork does not raise so much dust as the plough and the heavy
cattle which draw it,” returned Agellius; “and the said dust does more for
the protection of the tendril than the shade of the leaf.”
“But those huge beasts,” retorted the slave, “turn up great ridges, and
destroy the yard.”
“It’s no good arguing with an old vinedresser, who had formed his theory
before I was born,” said Agellius good-humouredly; and he passed on into a
garden beyond.
Here were other indications of the happy month through which the year was
now travelling. The garden, so to call it, was a space of several acres in
extent; it was one large bed of roses, and preparation was making for
extracting their essence, for which various parts of that country are to
this day celebrated. Here was another set of labourers, and a man of
middle age was surveying them at his leisure. His business-like, severe,
and off-hand manner bespoke the _villicus_ or bailiff himself.
“Always here,” said he, “as if you were a slave, not a Roman, my good
fellow; yet slaves have their Saturnalia; always serving, not worshipping
the all-bounteous and all-blessed. Why are you not taking holiday in the
town?”
“Why should I, sir?” asked Agellius; “don’t you recollect old Hiempsal’s
saying about ‘one foot in the slipper, and one in the shoe.’ Nothing would
be done well if I were a town-goer. You engaged me, I suppose, to be here,
not there.”
“Ah!” answered he, “but at this season the empire, the genius of Rome, the
customs of the country, demand it, and above all the great goddess Astarte
and her genial, jocund month. ‘Parturit almus ager;’ you know the verse;
do not be out of tune with Nature, nor clash and jar with the great system
of the universe.”
A cloud of confusion, or of distress, passed over Agellius’s face. He
seemed as if he wished to speak; at length he merely said, “It’s a fault
on the right side in a servant, I suppose.”
“I know the way of your people,” Vitricus replied, “Corybantians,
Phrygians, Jews, what do you call yourselves? There are so many fantastic
religions now-a-days. Hang yourself outright at your house-door, if you
are tired of living—and you are a sensible fellow. How can any man, whose
head sits right upon his shoulders, say that life is worth having, and not
worth enjoying?”
“I am a quiet being,” answered Agellius, “I like the country, which you
think so tame, and care little for the flaunting town. Tastes differ.”
“Town! you need not go to Sicca,” answered the bailiff, “all Sicca is out
of town. It has poured into the fields, and groves, and river side. Lift
up your eyes, man alive, open your ears, and let pleasure flow in. Be
passive under the sweet breath of the goddess, and she will fill you with
ecstasy.”
It was as Vitricus had said; the solemn feast-days of Astarte were in
course of celebration; of Astarte, the well-known divinity of Carthage and
its dependent cities, whom Heliogabalus had lately introduced to Rome, who
in her different aspects was at once Urania, Juno, and Aphrodite,
according as she embodied the idea of the philosopher, the statesman, or
the vulgar; lofty and intellectual as Urania, majestic and commanding as
Juno, seductive as the goddess of sensuality and excess.
“There goes the son of as good and frank a soldier as ever brandished
pilum,” said Vitricus to himself, “till in his last years some infernal
god took umbrage at him, and saddled him and his with one of those absurd
superstitions which are as plentiful here as serpents. He indeed was too
old himself to get much harm from it; but it shows its sour nature in
these young shoots. A good servant, but the plague’s in his bones, and he
will rot.”
His subordinate’s reflections were of a different character: “The very air
breathes sin to-day,” he cried; “oh that I did not find the taint of the
city in these works of God! Alas! sweet Nature, the child of the Almighty,
is made to do the fiend’s work, and does it better than the town. O ye
beautiful trees and fair flowers, O bright sun and balmy air, what a
bondage ye are in, and how do ye groan till you are redeemed from it! Ye
are bond-slaves, but not willingly, as man is; but how will you ever be
turned to nobler purpose? How is this vast, this solid establishment of
error, the incubus of many thousand years, ever to have an end? You
yourselves, dear ones, will come to nought first. Anyhow, the public way
is no place for me this evening. They’ll soon be back from their accursed
revelry.”
A sound of horns and voices had been heard from time to time through the
woods, as if proceeding from parties dispersed through them; and in the
growing twilight might be seen lights, glancing and wandering through the
foliage. The cottage in which Agellius dwelt was on the other side of the
hollow bridle-way which crossed the hill. To make for home he had first to
walk some little distance along it; and scarcely had he descended into it
for that purpose, when he found himself in the front of a band of
revellers, who were returning from some scene of impious festivity. They
were arrayed in holiday guise, as far as they studied dress at all; the
symbols of idolatry were on their foreheads and arms; some of them were
intoxicated, and most of them were women.
“Why have you not been worshipping, young fellow?” said one.
“Comely built,” said another, “but struck by the furies. I know the cut of
him.”
“By Astarte,” said a third, “he’s one of those sly Gnostics! I have seen
the chap before, with his hangdog look. He is one of Pluto’s whelps, first
cousin to Cerberus, and his name’s Channibal.”
On which they all began to shout out, “I say, Channibal, Channibal, here’s
a lad that knows you. Old fellow, come along with us;” and the speaker
made a dash at him.
On this Agellius, who was slowly making his way past them on the broken
and steep path, leapt up in two or three steps to the ridge, and went away
in security; when one woman cried out, “O the toad, I know him now; he is
a wizard; he eats little children; didn’t you see him make that sign? it’s
a charm. My sister did it; the fool left me to be one of them. She was
ever doing so” (mimicking the sign of the cross). “He’s a Christian,
blight him! he’ll turn us into beasts.”
“Cerberus, bite him!” said another, “he sucks blood;” and taking up a
stone, she made it whiz past his ear as he disappeared from view. A
general scream of contempt and hatred followed. “Where’s the ass’s head?
put out the lights, put out the lights! gibbet him! that’s why he has not
been with honest people down in the vale.” And then they struck up a
blasphemous song, the sentiments of which we are not going even to
conceive, much less to attempt in words.
CHAPTER II.
CHRISTIANITY IN SICCA.
The revellers went on their way; Agellius went on his, and made for his
lowly and lonely cottage. He was the elder of the two sons of a Roman
legionary of the Secunda Italica, who had settled with them in Sicca,
where he lost their mother, and died, having in his old age become a
Christian. The fortitude of some confessors at Carthage in the persecution
of Severus had been the initial cause of his conversion. He had been
posted as one of their guards, and had attended them to the scene of their
martyrdom, in addition to the civil force, to whom in the proconsulate the
administration of the law was committed. Therefore, happily for him, it
could not fall to his duty to be their executioner, a function which,
however revolting to his feelings, he might not have had courage to
decline. He remained a pagan, though he could not shake off the impression
which the martyrs had made upon him; and, after completing his time of
service, he retired to the protection of some great friends in Sicca, his
brother’s home already. Here he took a second wife of the old Numidian
stock, and supported himself by the produce of a small piece of land which
had been given to him for life by the imperial government. If trial were
necessary in order to keep alive the good seed which had been sown in his
heart, he found a never-failing supply of that article in the companion of
his declining years. In the hey-day of her youth she might have been
fitted to throw a sort of sunshine, or rather torchlight, on a military
carouse; but now, when poor Strabo, a man well to do in the world, looking
for peace, had fallen under her arts, he found he had surrendered his
freedom to a malignant, profligate woman, whose passions made her better
company for evil spirits than for an invalided soldier. Indeed, as time
went on, the popular belief, which she rather encouraged, went to the
extent that she actually did hold an intercourse with the unseen world;
and certainly she matured in a hatred towards God and man, which would
naturally follow, and not unnaturally betoken, such intercourse. The more,
then, she inflicted on him her proficiency in these amiable
characteristics, the more he looked out for some consolation elsewhere;
and the more she involved herself in the guilt or the repute of unlawful
arts, the more was he drawn to that religion, where alone to commune with
the invisible is to hold intercourse with heaven, not with hell. Whether
so great a trial supplied a more human inducement for looking towards
Christianity, it is impossible to say. Most men, certainly Roman soldiers,
may be considered to act on mixed motives; but so it was in fact, that, on
his becoming in his last years a Christian, he found, perhaps discovered,
to his great satisfaction, that the Church did not oblige him to continue
or renew a tie which bound him to so much misery, and that he might end
his days in a tranquillity which his past life required, and his wife’s
presence would have precluded. He made a good end; he had been allowed to
take the blessed sacrament from the altar to his own home on the last time
he had been able to attend a _synaxis_ of the faithful, and thus had
communicated at least six months within his decease; and the priest who
anointed him at the beginning of his last illness also took his
confession. He died, begging forgiveness of all whom he had injured, and
giving large alms to the poor. This was about the year 236, in the midst
of that long peace of the Church, which was broken at length by the Decian
persecution.
This peace of well-nigh fifty years had necessarily a peculiar, and not a
happy effect upon the Christians of the proconsulate. They multiplied in
the greater and the maritime cities, and made their way into positions of
importance, whether in trade or the governmental departments; they
extended their family connections, and were on good terms with the
heathen. Whatever jealousy might be still cherished against the Christian
name, nevertheless, individual Christians were treated with civility, and
recognised as citizens; though among the populace there would be
occasions, at the time of the more solemn pagan feasts, when accidental
outbursts might be expected of the antipathy latent in the community, as
we have been recording in the foregoing chapter. Men of sense, however,
began to understand them better, and to be more just to the reasonableness
of their faith. This would lead them to scorn Christianity less, but it
would lead them to fear it more. It was no longer a matter merely for the
populace to insult, but for government deliberately to put down. The
prevailing and still growing unbelief among the lower classes of the
population did but make a religion more formidable, which, as heathen
statesmen felt, was able to wield the weapons of enthusiasm and zeal with
a force and success unknown even to the most fortunate impostors among the
Oriental or Egyptian hierophants. The philosophical schools were impressed
with similar apprehensions, and had now for fifty years been employed in
creating and systematising a new intellectual basis for the received
paganism.
But, while the signs of the times led to the anticipation that a struggle
was impending between the heads of the state religion and of the new
worship which was taking its place, the great body of Christians, laymen
and ecclesiastics, were on better and better terms, individually, with the
members of society, or what is now called the public; and without losing
their faith or those embers of charity which favourable circumstances
would promptly rekindle, were, it must be confessed, in a state of
considerable relaxation; they often were on the brink of deplorable sins,
and sometimes fell over the brink. And many would join the Church on
inferior motives as soon as no great temporal disadvantage attached to the
act; or the families of Christian parents might grow up with so little of
moral or religious education as to make it difficult to say why they
called themselves members of a divine religion. Mixed marriages would
increase both the scandal and the confusion.
“A long repose,” says St. Cyprian, speaking of this very period, “had
corrupted the discipline which had come down to us. Every one was applying
himself to the increase of wealth; and, forgetting both the conduct of the
faithful under the Apostles, and what ought to be their conduct in every
age, with insatiable eagerness for gain devoted himself to the multiplying
of possessions. The priests were wanting in religious devotedness, the
ministers in entireness of faith; there was no mercy in works, no
discipline in manners. Men wore their beards disfigured, and woman dyed
their faces. Their eyes were changed from what God made them, and a lying
colour was passed upon the hair. The hearts of the simple were misled by
treacherous artifices, and brethren became entangled in seductive snares.
Ties of marriage were formed with unbelievers; members of Christ abandoned
to the heathen. Not only rash swearing was heard, but even false; persons
in high place were swollen with contemptuousness; poisoned reproaches fell
from their mouths, and men were sundered by unabating quarrels. Numerous
bishops, who ought to be an encouragement and example to others, despising
their sacred calling, engaged themselves in secular vocations,
relinquished their sees, deserted their people, strayed among foreign
provinces, hunted the markets for mercantile profits, and tried to amass
large sums of money, while they had brethren starving within the Church;
took possession of estates by fraudulent proceedings, and multiplied their
gains by accumulated usuries.”(1)
The relaxation which would extend the profession of Christianity in the
larger cities would contract or extinguish it in remote or country places.
There would be little zeal to keep up Churches, which could not be served
without an effort or without secular loss. Carthage, Utica, Hippo,
Milevis, or Curubis, was a more attractive residence than the towns with
uncouth African names, which amaze the ecclesiastical student in the Acts
of the Councils. Vocations became scarce; sees remained vacant;
congregations died out. This was pretty much the case with the Church and
see of Sicca. At the time of which we write, history preserves no record
of any bishop as exercising his pastoral functions in that city. In matter
of fact there was none. The last bishop, an amiable old man, had in the
course of years acquired a considerable extent of arable land, and
employed himself principally, for lack of more spiritual occupation, in
reaping, stacking, selling, and sending off his wheat for the Roman
market. His deacon had been celebrated in early youth for his boldness in
the chase, and took part in the capture of lions and panthers (an act of
charity towards the peasants round Sicca) for the Roman amphitheatre. No
priests were to be found, and the bishop became _parochus_ till his death.
Afterwards infants and catechumens lost baptism; parents lost faith, or at
least love; wanderers lost repentance and conversion. For a while there
was a flourishing meeting-house of Tertullianists, who had scared more
humble minds by pronouncing the eternal perdition of every Catholic; there
had also been various descriptions of Gnostics, who had carried off the
clever youths and restless speculators; and then there had been the lapse
of time, gradually consuming the generation which had survived the
flourishing old days of the African Church. And the result was, that in
the year 250 it was difficult to say of whom the Church of Sicca
consisted. There was no bishop, no priest, no deacon. There was the old
_mansionarius_ or sacristan; there were two or three pious women, married
or single, who owed their religion to good mothers; there were some slaves
who kept to their faith, no one knew how or why; there were a vast many
persons who ought to be Catholics, but were heretics, or nothing at all,
or all but pagans, and sure to become pagans on the asking; there were
Agellius and his brother Juba, and how far these two had a claim to the
Christian name we now proceed to explain.
They were about the ages of seven and eight when their father died, and
they fell under the guardianship of their uncle, whose residence at Sicca
had been one of the reasons which determined Strabo to settle there. This
man, being possessed of some capital, drove a thriving trade in idols,
large and small, amulets, and the like instruments of the established
superstition. His father had come to Carthage in the service of one of the
assessors of the proconsul of the day; and his son, finding competition
ran too high to give him prospect of remuneration in the metropolis, had
opened his statue-shop in Sicca. Those modern arts which enable an English
town in this day to be so fertile in the production of ware of this
description for the markets of the pagan East, were then unknown; and
Jucundus depended on certain artists whom he imported, especially on two
Greeks, brother and sister, who came from some isle on the Asian coast,
for the supply of his trade. He was a good-natured man, self-indulgent,
positive, and warmly attached to the reigning paganism, both as being the
law of the land and the vital principle of the state; and, while he was
really kind to his orphan nephews, he simply abominated, as in duty bound,
the idiotic cant and impudent fee-fa-fum, to which, in his infallible
judgment, poor old Strabo had betrayed his children. He would have
restored them, you may be quite sure, to their country and to their
country’s gods, had they acquiesced in the restoration: but in different
ways these little chaps, and he shook his head as he said it, were
difficult to deal with. Agellius had a very positive opinion of his own on
the matter; and as for Juba, though he had no opinion at all, yet he had
an equally positive aversion to have thrust on him by another any opinion
at all, even in favour of paganism. He had remained in his catechumen
state since he grew up, because he found himself in it; and though nothing
would make him go forward in his profession of Christianity, no earthly
power would be able to make him go back. So there he was, like a mule,
struck fast in the door of the Church, and feeling a gratification in his
independence of mind. However, whatever his profession might be, still, as
time went on, he plainly took after his step-mother, renewed his
intercourse with her after his father’s death, and at length went so far
as to avow that he believed in nothing but the devil, if even he believed
in him. It was scarcely safe, however, to affirm that the senses of this
hopeful lad were his own.
Agellius, on the other hand, when a boy of six years old, had insisted on
receiving baptism; had perplexed his father by a manifestation of zeal to
which the old man was a stranger; and had made the good bishop lose the
corn-fleet which was starting for Italy from his importunity to learn the
Catechism. Baptized he was, confirmed, communicated; but a boy’s nature is
variable, and by the time Agellius had reached adolescence, the gracious
impulses of his childhood had in some measure faded away, though he still
retained his faith in its first keenness and vigour. But he had no one to
keep him up to his duty; no exhortations, no example, no sympathy. His
father’s friends had taken him up so far as this, that by an extraordinary
favour they had got him a lease for some years of the property which
Strabo, a veteran soldier, had held of the imperial government. The care
of this small property fell upon him, and another and more serious charge
was added to it. The long prosperity of the province had increased the
opulence and enlarged the upper class of Sicca. Officials, contractors,
and servants of the government had made fortunes, and raised villas in the
neighbourhood of the city. Natives of the place, returning from Rome, or
from provincial service elsewhere, had invested their gains in long leases
of state lands, or of the farms belonging to the imperial _res privata_ or
privy purse, and had become virtual proprietors of the rich fields or
beautiful gardens in which they had played as children. One of such
persons, who had had a place in the _officium_ of the quæstor, or rather
procurator, as he began to be called, was the employer of Agellius. His
property adjoined the cottage of the latter; and, having first employed
the youth from recollection of his father, he confided to him the place of
under-bailiff from the talents he showed for farm-business.
Such was his position at the early age of twenty-two; but honourable as it
was in itself, and from the mode in which it was obtained, no one would
consider it adapted, under the circumstances, to counteract the religious
languor and coldness which had grown upon him. And in truth he did not
know where he stood further than that he was firm in faith, as we have
said, and had shrunk from a boy upwards, from the vice and immorality
which was the very atmosphere of Sicca. He might any day be betrayed into
some fatal inconsistency, which would either lead him into sin, or oblige
him abruptly to retrace his steps, and find a truer and safer position. He
was not generally known to be a Christian, at least for certain, though he
was seen to keep clear of the established religion. It was not that he
hid, so much as that the world did not care to know, what he believed. In
that day there were many rites and worships which kept to themselves—many
forms of moroseness or misanthropy, as they were considered, which
withdrew their votaries from the public ceremonial. The Catholic faith
seemed to the multitude to be one of these; it was only in critical times,
when some idolatrous act was insisted on by the magistrate, that the
specific nature of Christianity was tested and detected. Then at length it
was seen to differ from all other religious varieties by that irrational
and disgusting obstinacy, as it was felt to be, which had rather suffer
torments and lose life than submit to some graceful, or touching, or at
least trifling observance which the tradition of ages had sanctioned.
CHAPTER III.
AGELLIUS IN HIS COTTAGE.
The cottage for which Agellius was making, when last we had sight of him,
was a small brick house consisting of one room, with a loft over it, and a
kitchen on the side, not very unlike that holy habitation which once
contained the Eternal Word in human form with His Virgin Mother, and
Joseph, their guardian. It was situated on the declivity of the hill, and,
unlike the gardens of Italy, the space before it was ornamented with a
plot of turf. A noble palm on one side, in spite of its distance from the
water, and a group of orange-trees on the other, formed a foreground to
the rich landscape which was described in our opening chapter. The borders
and beds were gay with the lily, the bacchar, amber-coloured and purple,
the golden abrotomus, the red chelidonium, and the variegated iris.
Against the wall of the house were trained pomegranates, with their
crimson blossoms, the star-like pothos or jessamine, and the symbolical
passionflower, which well became a Christian dwelling.
And it was an intimation of what would be found within; for on one side of
the room was rudely painted a red cross, with doves about it, as is found
in early Christian shrines to this day. So long had been the peace of the
Church, that the tradition of persecution seemed to have been lost; and
Christians allowed themselves in the profession of their faith at home,
cautious as they might be in public places; as freely as now in England,
where we do not scruple to raise crucifixes within our churches and
houses, though we shrink from doing so within sight of the hundred cabs
and omnibuses which rattle past them. Under the cross were two or three
pictures, or rather sketches. In the centre stood the Blessed Virgin with
hands spread out in prayer, attended by the holy Apostles Peter and Paul
on her right and left. Under this representation was rudely scratched upon
the wall the word, “Advocata,” a title which the earliest antiquity
bestows upon her. On a small shelf was placed a case with two or three
rolls or sheets of parchment in it. The appearance of them spoke of use
indeed, but of reverential treatment. These were the Psalms, the Gospel
according to St. Luke, and St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, in the old
Latin version. The Gospel was handsomely covered, and ornamented with
gold.
The apartment was otherwise furnished with such implements and materials
as might be expected in the cottage of a countryman: one or two stools and
benches for sitting, a table, and in one corner a heap of dried leaves and
rushes, with a large crimson coverlet, for rest at night. Elsewhere were
two millstones fixed in a frame, with a handle attached to the rim of one
of them, for grinding corn. Then again, garden tools; boxes of seeds; a
vessel containing syrup for assuaging the sting of the scorpion; the
_asir-rese_ or _anagallis_, a potent medicine of the class of poisons,
which was taken in wine for the same mischance. It hung from the beams,
with a large bunch of _atsirtiphua_, a sort of camomile, smaller in the
flower and more fragrant than our own, which was used as a febrifuge.
Thence, too, hung a plentiful gathering of dried grapes, of the kind
called _duracinæ_; and near the door a bough of the green _bargut_ or
_psyllium_, to drive away the smaller insects.
Poor Agellius felt the contrast between the ungodly turmoil from which he
had escaped, and the deep stillness into which he now had entered; but
neither satisfied him quite. There was no repose out of doors, and no
relief within. He was lonely at home, lonely in the crowd. He needed the
sympathy of his kind; hearts which might beat with his heart; friends with
whom he might share his joys and griefs; advisers whom he might consult;
minds like his own, who would understand him—minds unlike his own, who
would succour and respond to him. A very great trial certainly this, in
which the soul is flung back upon itself; and that especially in the case
of the young, for whom memory and experience do so little, and wayward and
excited feelings do so much. Great gain had it been for Agellius, even in
its natural effect, putting aside higher benefits, to have been able to
recur to sacramental confession; but to confession he had never been,
though once or twice he had attended the public _homologesis_ of the
Church. Shall we wonder that the poor youth began to be despondent and
impatient under his trial? Shall we not feel for him, though we may be
sorry for him, should it turn out that he was looking restlessly into
every corner of the small world of acquaintance in which his lot lay, for
those with whom he could converse easily, and interchange speculation,
argument, aspiration, and affection?
“No one cares for me,” he said, as he sat down on his rustic bench. “I am
nothing to any one; I am a hermit, like Elias or John, without the call to
be one. Yet even Elias felt the burden of being one against many; even
John asked at length in expostulation, ‘Art Thou He that shall come?’ Am I
for ever to have the knowledge, without the consolation, of the truth? am
I for ever to belong to a great divine society, yet never see the face of
any of its members?”
He paused in his thoughts, as if drinking in the full taste and measure of
his unhappiness. And then his reflections took a turn, and he said,
suddenly, “Why do I not leave Sicca? What binds me to my father’s farm? I
am young, and my interest in it will soon expire. What keeps me from
Carthage, Hippo, Cirtha, where Christians are so many?” But here he
stopped as suddenly as he had begun; and a strange feeling, half pang,
half thrill, went through his heart. And he felt unwilling to pursue his
thought, or to answer the question which he had asked; and he settled into
a dull, stagnant condition of mind, in which he seemed hardly to think at
all.
Be of good cheer, solitary one, though thou art not a hero yet! There is
One that cares for thee, and loves thee, more than thou canst feel, love,
or care for thyself. Cast all thy care upon Him. He sees thee, and is
watching thee; He is hanging over thee, and smiles in compassion at thy
troubles. His angel, who is thine, is whispering good thoughts to thee. He
knows thy weakness; He foresees thy errors; but He holds thee by thy right
hand, and thou shalt not, canst not escape Him. By thy faith, which thou
hast so simply, resolutely retained in the midst of idolatry; by thy
purity, which, like some fair flower, thou hast cherished in the midst of
pollution, He will remember thee in thy evil hour, and thine enemy shall
not prevail against thee!
What means that smile upon Agellius’s face? It is the response of the
child to the loving parent. He knows not why, but the cloud is past. He
signs himself with the holy cross, and sweet reviving thoughts enliven
him. He names the sacred Name, and it is like ointment poured out upon his
soul. He rises; he kneels down under the dread symbol of his salvation;
and he begins his evening prayer.
CHAPTER IV.
JUBA.
There was more of heart, less of effort, less of mechanical habit, in
Agellius’s prayers that night, than there had been for a long while
before. He got up, struck a light, and communicated it to his small
earthen lamp. Its pale rays feebly searched the room and discovered at the
other end of it Juba, who had silently opened the door, and sat down near
it, while his brother was employed upon his devotions. The countenance of
the latter fell, for he was not to go to sleep with the resignation and
peace which had just before been poured into his breast. Yet why should he
complain? we receive consolation in this world for the very purpose of
preparing us against trouble to come. Juba was a tall, swarthy,
wild-looking youth. He was holding his head on one side as he sat, and his
face towards the roof; he nodded obliquely, arched his eyebrows, pursed up
his lips, and crossed his arms, while he gave utterance to a strange,
half-whispered laugh.
“He, he, he!” he cried; “so you are on your knees, Agellius.”
“Why shouldn’t I be at this hour,” answered Agellius, “and before I go to
bed?”
“O, every one to his taste, of course,” said Juba; “but to an unprejudiced
mind there is something unworthy in the act.”
“Why, Juba?” said his brother somewhat sharply; “don’t you profess any
religion at all?”
“Perhaps I do, and perhaps I don’t,” answered Juba; “but never shall it be
a bowing and scraping, crawling and cringing religion. You may take your
oath of that.”
“What ails you to come here at this time of night?” asked Agellius; “who
asked for your company?”
“I will come just when I please,” said the other, “and go when I please. I
won’t give an account of my actions to any one, God or man, devil or
priest, much less to you. What right have you to ask me?”
“Then,” said Agellius, “you’ll never get peace or comfort as long as you
live, that I can tell you, let alone the life to come.”
Juba kept silent for awhile, and bit his nails with a smile on his face,
and his eyes looking askance upon the ground. “I want no more than I have;
I am well content,” he said.
“Contented with yourself,” retorted Agellius.
“Of course,” Juba replied; “whom ought one to wish rather to content?”
“I suppose, your Creator.”
“Creator,” answered Juba, tossing back his head with an air of
superiority; “Creator;—that, I consider, is an assumption.”
“O, my dear brother,” cried Agellius, “don’t go on in that dreadful way!”
“ ‘Go on!’ who began? Is one man to lay down the law, and not the other
too? Is it so generally received, this belief of a Creator? Who have
brought in the belief? The Christians. ’Tis the Christians that began it.
The world went on very well without it before their rise. And now, who
began the dispute but you?”
“Well, if I did,” answered Agellius; “but I didn’t. You began in coming
here; what in the world are you come for? by what right do you disturb me
at this hour?”
There was no appearance of anger in Juba; he seemed as free from feeling
of every kind, from what is called _heart_, as if he had been a stone. In
answer to his brother’s question, he quietly said, “I have been down
there,” pointing in the direction of the woods.
An expression of sharp anguish passed over his brother’s face, and for a
moment he was silent. At length he said, “You don’t mean to say you have
been down to poor mother?”
“I do,” said Juba.
There was again a silence for a little while; then Agellius renewed the
conversation. “You have fallen off sadly, Juba, in the course of the last
several years.”
Juba tossed his head, and crossed his legs.
“At one time I thought you would have been baptized,” his brother
continued.
“That was my weakness,” answered Juba; “it was a weak moment: it was just
after the old bishop’s death. He had been kind to me as a child; and he
said some womanish words to me, and it was excusable in me.”
“Oh that you had yielded to your wish!” cried Agellius.
Juba looked superior. “The fit passed,” he said. “I have come to a juster
view of things. It is not every one who has the strength of mind. I
consider that a logical head comes to a very different conclusion;” and he
began wagging his own, to the right and left, as if it were coming to a
great many.
“Well,” said Agellius, gaping, and desiring at least to come to a
conclusion of the altercation, “what brings you here so late?”
“I was on my way to Jucundus,” he answered, “and have been delayed by the
Succoth-benoth in the grove across the river.”
Here they were thrown back upon their controversy. Agellius turned quite
white. “My poor fellow,” he said, “what were you there for?”
“To see the world,” answered Juba; “it’s unmanly not to see it. Why
shouldn’t I see it? It was good fun. I despise them all, fools and idiots.
There they were, scampering about, or lying like hogs, all in liquor. Apes
and swine! However, I will do as others do, if I please. I will be as
drunk as they, when I see good. I am my own master, and it would be no
kind of harm.”
“No harm! why, is it no harm to become an ape or a hog?”
“You don’t take just views of human nature,” answered Juba, with a
self-satisfied air. “Our first duty is to seek our own happiness. If a man
thinks it happier to be a hog, why, let him be a hog,” and he laughed.
“This is where you are narrow-minded. I shall seek my own happiness, and
try this way, if I please.”
“Happiness!” cried Agellius; “where have you been picking up all this
stuff? Can you call such detestable filth happiness?”
“What do you know about such matters?” asked Juba. “Did you ever see them?
Did you ever try them? You would be twice the man you are if you had. You
will not be a man till you do. You are carried off your legs in your own
way. I’d rather get drunk every day than fall down on all fours as you do,
crawling on your stomach like a worm, and whining like a hound that has
been beaten.”
“Now, as I live, you shan’t stop here one instant longer!” cried out
Agellius, starting up. “Be off with you! get away! what do you come here
to blaspheme for? who wants you? who asked for you? Go! go, I say! take
yourself off! Why don’t you go? Keep your ribaldry for others.”
“I am as good as you any day,” said Juba.
“I don’t set myself up,” answered Agellius, “but it’s impossible to
confound Christian and unbeliever as you do.”
“Christian and unbeliever!” said Juba, slowly. “I suppose, when they are
a-courting each other, they _are_ confounded.” He looked hard at Agellius,
as if he thought he had hit a blot. Then he continued, “If I _were_ a
Christian, I’d be so in earnest: else I’d be an honest heathen.”
Agellius coloured somewhat, and sat down, as if under embarrassment.
“I despise you,” said Juba; “you have not the pluck to be a Christian. Be
consistent, and fizz upon a stake; but you’re not made of that stuff.
You’re even afraid of uncle. Nay, you can be caught by those painted
wares, about which, when it suits your purpose, you can be so grave. I
despise you,” he continued, “I despise you, and the whole kit of you.
What’s the difference between you and another? Your people say, ‘Earth’s a
vanity, life’s a dream, riches a deceit, pleasure a snare. Fratres
charissimi, the time is short;’ but who love earth and life and riches and
pleasure better than they? You are all of you as fond of the world, as set
upon gain, as chary of reputation, as ambitious of power, as the jolly old
heathen, who, you say, is going the way of the pit.”
“It is one thing to have a conscience,” answered Agellius; “another thing
to act upon it. The conscience of these poor people is darkened. You had a
conscience once.”
“Conscience, conscience,” said Juba. “Yes, certainly, once I had a
conscience. Yes, and once I had a bad chill, and went about chattering and
shivering; and once I had a game leg, and then I went limping; and so, you
see, I once on a time had a conscience. O yes, I have had many consciences
before now—white, black, yellow, and green; they were all bad; but they
are all gone, and now I have none.”
Agellius said nothing; his one wish, as may be supposed, was to get rid of
so unwelcome a visitor.
“The truth is,” continued Juba, with the air of a teacher—“the truth is,
that religion was a fashion with me, which is now gone by. It was the
complexion of a particular stage of my life. I was neither the better nor
the worse for it. It was an accident, like the bloom on my face, which
soon,” he said, spreading his fingers over his dirty-coloured cheeks, and
stroking them, “which soon will disappear. I acted according to the
feeling, while it lasted; but I can no more recall it than my first teeth,
or the down on my chin. It’s among the things that were.”
Agellius still keeping silence from weariness and disgust, he looked at
him in a significant way, and said, slowly, “I see how it is; I have
penetration enough to perceive that you don’t believe a bit more about
religion than I do.”
“You must not say that under my roof,” cried Agellius, feeling he must not
let his brother’s charge pass without a protest. “Many are my sins, but
unbelief is not one of them.”
Juba tossed his head. “I think I can see through a stone slab as well as
any one,” he said. “It is as I have said; but you’re too proud to confess
it. It’s part of your hypocrisy.”
“Well,” said Agellius coldly, “let’s have done. It’s getting late, Juba;
you’ll be missed at home. Jucundus will be inquiring for you, and some of
those revelling friends of yours may do you a mischief by the way. Why, my
good fellow,” he continued, in surprise, “you have no leggings. The
scorpions will catch hold of you to a certainty in the dark. Come, let me
tie some straw wisps about you.”
“No fear of scorpions for me,” answered Juba; “I have some real good
amulets for the occasion, which even _boola-kog_ and _uffah_ will
respect.”
Saying this, he passed out of the room as unceremoniously as he had
entered it, and took the direction of the city, talking to himself, and
singing snatches of wild airs as he went along, throwing back and shaking
his head, and now and then uttering a sharp internal laugh. Disdaining to
follow the ordinary path, he dived down into the thick and wet grass, and
scrambled through the ravine, which the public road crossed before it
ascended the hill. Meanwhile he accompanied his quickened pace with a
louder strain, and it ran as follows:—
“The little black Moor is the mate for me,
When the night is dark, and the earth is free,
Under the limbs of the broad yew-tree.
“’Twas Father Cham that planted that yew,
And he fed it fat with the bloody dew
Of a score of brats, as his lineage grew.
“Footing and flaunting it, all in the night,
Each lock flings fire, each heel strikes light;
No lamps need they, whose breath is bright.”
Here he was interrupted by a sudden growl, which sounded almost under his
feet, and some wild animal was seen to slink away. Juba showed no
surprise; he had taken out a small metal idol, and whispering some words
to it, had presented it to the animal. He clambered up the bank, gained
the city gate, and made his way for his uncle’s dwelling, which was near
the temple of Astarte.
CHAPTER V.
JUCUNDUS AT SUPPER.
The house of Jucundus was closed for the night when Juba reached it, or
you would see, were you his companion, that it was one of the most showy
shops in Sicca. It was the image-store of the place, and set out for sale,
not articles of statuary alone, but of metal, of mosaic work, and of
jewellery, as far as they were dedicated to the service of paganism. It
was bright with the many colours adopted in the embellishment of images,
and the many lights which silver and gold, brass and ivory, alabaster,
gypsum, talc, and glass reflected. Shelves and cabinets were laden with
wares; both the precious material, and the elaborated trinket. All tastes
were suited, the popular and the refined, the fashion of the day and the
love of the antique, the classical and the barbarian devotion. There you
might see the rude symbols of invisible powers, which, originating in
deficiency of art, had been perpetuated by reverence for the past: the
mysterious cube of marble sacred among the Arabs, the pillar which was the
emblem of Mercury or Bacchus, the broad-based cone of Heliogabalus, the
pyramid of Paphos, and the tile or brick of Juno.
There, too, were the unmeaning blocks of stone with human heads, which
were to be dressed out in rich robes, and to simulate the human form.
There were other articles besides, as portable as these were unmanageable:
little Junos, Mercuries, Dianas, and Fortunas, for the bosom or the
girdle. Household gods were there, and the objects of personal devotion:
Minerva or Vesta, with handsome niches or shrines in which they might
reside. There, too, were the brass crowns, or _nimbi_ which were intended
to protect the heads of the gods from bats and birds. There you might buy,
were you a heathen, rings with heads on them of Jupiter, Mars, the Sun,
Serapis, and above all Astarte. You would find there the rings and signets
of the Basilidians; amulets too of wood or ivory: figures of demons,
preternaturally ugly; little skeletons, and other superstitious devices.
It would be hard, indeed, if you could not be pleased, whatever your
religious denomination—unless indeed you were determined to reject all the
appliances and objects of idolatry indiscriminately—and in that case you
would rejoice that it was night when you arrived there, and, in
particular, that darkness swallowed up other appliances and objects of
pagan worship, which to darkness were due by a particular title, and by
darkness were best shrouded, till the coming of that day when all things,
good and evil, shall be made light.
The shop, as we have said, was closed, concealed from view by large
lumbering shutters, and made secure by heavy bars of wood. So we must
enter by the passage or vestibule on the right side, and that will conduct
us into a modest _atrium_, with an _impluvium_ on one side, and on the
other the _triclinium_ or supper-room, backing the shop. Jucundus had been
pleasantly engaged in a small supper-party; and, mindful that a
_symposium_ should lie within the number of the Graces and of the Muses,
he had confined his guests to two, the young Greek Aristo, who was one of
his principal artists, and Cornelius the son of a freedman of a Roman of
distinction, who had lately got a place in one of the _scrinia_ of the
proconsular _officium_, and had migrated into the province from the
imperial city where he had spent his best days.
The dinner had not been altogether suitable to modern ideas of good
living. The grapes from Tacape, and the dates from the lake Tritonis, the
white and black figs, the nectarines and peaches, and the watermelons,
address themselves to the imagination of an Englishman, as well as of an
African of the third century. So also might the liquor derived from the
sap or honey of the Getulian palm, and the sweet wine, called _melilotus_,
made from the poetical fruit found upon the coast of the Syrtis. He would
have been struck, too, with the sweetness of the mutton; but he would have
asked what the sheep’s tails were before he tasted them, and found how
like marrow the firm substance ate of which they consisted. He would have
felt he ought to admire the roes of mullets, pressed and dried, from
Mauritania; but he would have thought twice before he tried the lion
cutlets though they had the flavour of veal, and the additional _goût_ of
being imperial property, and poached from a preserve. But when he saw the
indigenous dish, the very haggis and cock-a-leekie of Africa, in the shape
of—(alas! alas! it _must_ be said, with whatever apology for its
introduction)—in shape, then, of a delicate puppy, served up with
tomatoes, with its head between its fore-paws, we consider he would have
risen from the unholy table, and thought he had fallen upon the
hospitality of some sorceress of the neighbouring forest. However, to that
festive board our Briton was not invited, for he had some previous
engagement that evening, either of painting himself with woad, or of
hiding himself to the chin in the fens; so that nothing occurred to
disturb the harmony of the party, and the good humour and easy
conversation which was the effect of such excellent cheer.
Cornelius had been present at the Secular Games in the foregoing year, and
was full of them, of Rome, and of himself in connection with it, as became
so genuine a cockney of the imperial period. He was full of the high
patriotic thoughts which so solemn a celebration had kindled within him.
“O great Rome!” he said, “thou art first, and there is no second. In that
wonderful pageant which these eyes saw last year was embodied her majesty,
was promised her eternity. We die, she lives. I say, _let_ a man die. It’s
well for him to take hemlock, or open a vein, after having seen the
Secular Games. What was there to live for? I felt it; life was gone; its
best gifts flat and insipid after that great day. Excellent—Tauromenian, I
suppose? We know it in Rome. Fill up my cup. I drink to the genius of the
emperor.”
He was full of his subject, and soon resumed it. “Fancy the Campus Martius
lighted up from one end to the other. It was the finest thing in the
world. A large plain, covered, not with streets, not with woods, but
broken and crossed with superb buildings in the midst of groves, avenues
of trees, and green grass, down to the water’s edge. There’s nothing that
isn’t there. Do you want the grandest temples in the world, the most
spacious porticoes, the longest racecourses? there they are. Do you want
_gymnasia_? there they are. Do you want arches, statues, obelisks? you
find them there. There you have at one end the stupendous mausoleum of
Augustus, cased with white marble, and just across the river the huge
towering mound of Hadrian. At the other end you have the noble Pantheon of
Agrippa, with its splendid Syracusan columns, and its dome glittering with
silver tiles. Hard by are the baths of Alexander, with their beautiful
groves. Ah! my good friend! I shall have no time to drink if I go on.
Beyond are the numerous chapels and fanes which fringe the base of the
Capitoline hill; the tall column of Antoninus comes next, with its
adjacent basilica, where is kept the authentic list of the provinces of
the empire, and of the governors, each a king in power and dominion, who
are sent out to them. Well, I am now only beginning. Fancy, I say, this
magnificent region all lighted up; every temple to and fro, every bath,
every grove, gleaming with innumerable lamps and torches. No, not even the
gods of Olympus have anything that comes near it. Rome is the greatest of
all divinities. In the dead of night all was alive; then it was, when
nature sleeps exhausted, Rome began the solemn sacrifices to commemorate
her thousand years. On the banks of the Tiber, which had seen Æneas land,
and Romulus ascend to the gods, the clear red flame shot up as the victims
burned. The music of ten thousand horns and flutes burst forth, and the
sacred dances began upon the greensward. I am too old to dance; but, I
protest, even I stood up and threw off. We danced through three nights,
dancing the old millenary out, dancing the new millenary in. We were all
Romans, no strangers, no slaves. It was a solemn family feast, the feast
of all the Romans.”
“Then we came in for the feast,” said Aristo; “for Caracalla gave Roman
citizenship to all freemen all over the world. We are all of us Romans,
recollect, Cornelius.”
“Ah! that was another matter—a condescension,” answered Cornelius. “Yes,
in a certain sense, I grant it; but it was a political act.”
“I warrant you,” retorted Aristo, “most political. We were to be fleeced,
do you see? so your imperial government made us Romans, that we might have
the taxes of Romans, and that in addition to our own. You’ve taxed us
double; and as for the privilege of citizenship, much it is, by Hercules,
when every snob has it who can wear a _pileus_ or cherish his hair.”
“Ah! but you should have seen the procession from the Capitol,” continued
Cornelius, “on, I think, the second day; from the Capitol to the Circus,
all down the Via Sacra. Hosts of strangers there, and provincials from the
four corners of the earth, but not in the procession. There you saw, all
in one _coup-d’œil_, the real good blood of Rome, the young blood of the
new generation, and promise of the future; the sons of patrician and
consular families, of imperators, orators, conquerors, statesmen. They
rode at the head of the procession, fine young fellows, six abreast; and
still more of them on foot. Then came the running horses and the chariots,
the boxers, the wrestlers, and other combatants, all ready for the
competition. The whole school of gladiators then turned out, boys and all,
with their masters, dressed in red tunics, and splendidly armed. They
formed three bands, and they went forward gaily, dancing and singing the
Pyrrhic. By-the-bye, a thousand pair of gladiators fought during the
games—a round thousand, and such clean-made, well-built fellows, and they
came against each other so gallantly! You should have seen it; _I_ can’t go
through it. There was a lot of satyrs, jumping and frisking, in burlesque
of the martial dances which preceded them. There was a crowd of trumpeters
and horn-blowers; ministers of the sacrifices with their victims, bulls
and rams, dressed up with gay wreaths; drivers, butchers, haruspices,
heralds; images of gods with their cars of ivory or silver, drawn by tame
lions and elephants. I can’t recollect the order. O! but the grandest
thing of all was the Carmen, sung by twenty-seven noble youths, and as
many noble maidens, taken for the purpose from the bosoms of their
families to propitiate the gods of Rome. The flamens, augurs, colleges of
priests, it was endless. Last of all came the emperor himself.”
“That’s the late man,” observed Jucundus, “Philip; no bad riddance his
death, if all’s true that’s said of him.”
“All emperors are good in their time and way,” answered Cornelius; “Philip
was good then, and Decius is good now;—whom the gods preserve!”
“True,” said Aristo, “I understand; an emperor cannot do wrong, except in
dying, and then everything goes wrong with him. His death is his first bad
deed; he ought to be ashamed of it; it somehow turns all his great virtues
into vices.”
“Ah! no one was so good an emperor as our man, Gordianus,” said Jucundus,
“a princely old man, living and dead; patron of trade and of the arts;
such villas! he had enormous revenues. Poor old gentleman! and his son
too. I never shall forget the day when the news came that he was gone. Let
me see, it was shortly after that old fool Strabo’s death—I mean my
brother; a good thirteen years ago. All Africa was in tears; there was no
one like Gordianus.”
“That’s old world philosophy,” said Aristo; “Jucundus, you must go to
school. Don’t you see that all that is, is right; and all that was, is
wrong? ‘Te nos facimus, Fortuna, deam,’ says your poet; well, I drink ‘to
the fortunes of Rome,’—while it lasts.”
“You’re a young man,” answered Cornelius, “a very young man, and a Greek.
Greeks never understand Rome. It’s most difficult to understand us. It’s a
science. Look at this medal, young gentleman; it was one of those struck
at the games. Is it not grand? ‘Novum sæculum,’ and on the reverse,
‘Æternitati.’ Always changing, always imperishable. Emperors rise and
fall; Rome remains. The eternal city! Isn’t this good philosophy?”
“Truly, a most beautiful medal,” said Aristo, examining it, and handing it
on to his host. “You might make an amulet of it, Jucundus. But as to
eternity, why, that is a very great word; and, if I mistake not, other
states have been eternal before Rome. Ten centuries is a very respectable
eternity; be content, Rome is eternal already, and may die without
prejudice to the medal.”
“Blaspheme not,” replied Cornelius: “Rome is healthier, more full of life,
and promises more, than at any former time, you may rely upon it. ‘Novum
sæculum!’ she has the age of the eagle, and will but cast her feathers to
begin a fresh thousand.”
“But Egypt,” interposed Aristo, “if old Herodotus speaks true, scarcely
had a beginning. Up and up, the higher you go, the more dynasties of
Egyptian kings do you find. And we hear strange reports of the nations in
the far east, beyond the Ganges.”
“But I tell you, man,” rejoined Cornelius, “Rome is a city of kings. That
one city, in this one year, has as many kings at once as those of all the
kings of all the dynasties of Egypt put together. Sesostris, and the rest
of them, what are they to imperators, prefects, proconsuls, _vicarii_, and
_rationales_? Look back at Lucullus, Cæsar, Pompey, Sylla, Titus, Trajan.
What’s old Cheops’ pyramid to the Flavian amphitheatre? What is the
many-gated Thebes to Nero’s golden house, while it was? What the grandest
palace of Sesostris or Ptolemy but a second-rate villa of any one of ten
thousand Roman citizens? Our houses stand on acres of ground, they ascend
as high as the Tower of Babylon; they swarm with columns like a forest;
they pullulate into statues and pictures. The walls, pavements, and
ceilings are dazzling from the lustre of the rarest marble, red and
yellow, green and mottled. Fountains of perfumed water shoot aloft from
the floor, and fish swim in rocky channels round about the room, waiting
to be caught and killed for the banquet. We dine; and we feast on the head
of the ostrich, the brains of the peacock, the liver of the bream, the
milk of the murena, and the tongue of the flamingo. A flight of doves,
nightingales, beccaficoes are concentrated into one dish. On great
occasions we eat a phœnix. Our saucepans are of silver, our dishes of
gold, our vases of onyx, and our cups of precious stones. Hangings and
carpets of Tyrian purple are around us and beneath us, and we lie on ivory
couches. The choicest wines of Greece and Italy crown our goblets, and
exotic flowers crown our heads. In come troops of dancers from Lydia, or
pantomimes from Alexandria, to entertain both eye and mind; or our noble
dames and maidens take a place at our tables; they wash in asses’ milk,
they dress by mirrors as large as fish-ponds, and they glitter from head
to foot with combs, brooches, necklaces, collars, ear-rings, armlets,
bracelets, finger-rings, girdles, stomachers, and anklets, all of diamond
and emerald. Our slaves may be counted by thousands, and they come from
all parts of the world. Everything rare and precious is brought to Rome:
the gum of Arabia, the nard of Assyria, the papyrus of Egypt, the
citron-wood of Mauretania, the bronze of Ægina, the pearls of Britain, the
cloth of gold of Phrygia, the fine webs of Cos, the embroidery of Babylon,
the silks of Persia, the lion-skins of Getulia, the wool of Miletus, the
plaids of Gaul. Thus we live, an imperial people, who do nothing but enjoy
themselves and keep festival the whole year; and at length we die—and then
we burn: we burn—in stacks of cinnamon and cassia, and in shrouds of
_asbestos_, making emphatically a good end of it. Such are we Romans, a
great people. Why, we are honoured wherever we go. There’s my master,
there’s myself; as we came here from Italy, I protest we were nearly
worshipped as demi-gods.”
“And perhaps some fine morning,” said Aristo, “Rome herself will burn in
cinnamon and cassia, and in all her burnished Corinthian brass and scarlet
bravery, the old mother following her children to the funeral pyre. One
has heard something of Babylon, and its drained moat, and the soldiers of
the Persian.”
A pause occurred in the conversation as one of Jucundus’s slaves entered
with fresh wine, larger goblets, and a vase of snow from the Atlas.
CHAPTER VI.
GOTHS AND CHRISTIANS.
Cornelius was full of his subject, and did not attend to the Greek. “The
wild-beasts hunts,” he continued, “ah, those hunts during the games,
Aristo! they were a spectacle for the gods. Twenty-two elephants, ten
panthers, ten hyænas (by-the-bye, a new beast, not strange, however, to
you here, I suppose), ten camelopards, a hippopotamus, a rhinoceros—I
can’t go through the list. Fancy the circus planted throughout for the
occasion, and turned into a park, and then another set of wild animals,
Getes and Sarmatians, Celts and Goths, sent in against them, to hunt down,
capture and kill them, or to be killed themselves.”
“Ah, the Goths!” answered Aristo; “those fellows give you trouble, though,
now and then. Perhaps they will give you more. There is a report in the
prætorium to-day that they have crossed the Danube.”
“Yes, they _will_ give us trouble,” said Cornelius, drily; “they _have_
given us trouble, and they will give us more. The Samnites gave us
trouble, and our friends of Carthage here, and Jugurtha, and Mithridates;
trouble, yes, that is the long and the short of it; they will give us
trouble. Is trouble a new thing to Rome?” he asked, stretching out his
arm, as if he were making a speech after dinner, and giving a toast.
“The Goths give trouble, and take a bribe,” retorted Aristo; “this is what
trouble means in their case: it’s a troublesome fellow who hammers at our
door till we pay his reckoning. It is troublesome to raise the means to
buy them off. And the example of these troublesome savages is catching; it
was lately rumoured that the Carpians had been asking the same terms for
keeping quiet.”
“It would ill become the majesty of Rome to soil her fingers with the
blood of such vermin,” said Cornelius; “she ignores them.”
“And therefore she most majestically bleeds us instead,” answered Aristo,
“that she may have treasure to give them. We are not so troublesome as
they; the more’s the pity. No offence to you, however, or to the emperor,
or to great Rome, Cornelius. We are over our cups; it’s only a game of
politics, you know, like chess or the _cottabus_. Maro bids you ‘parcere
subjectis, et debellare superbos;’ but you have changed your manners. You
coax the Goths and bully the poor African.”
“Africa can show fight, too,” interposed Jucundus, who had been calmly
listening and enjoying his own wine; “witness Thysdrus. That was giving
every rapacious Quæstor a lesson that he may go too far, and find a dagger
when he demands a purse.”
He was alluding to the revolt of Africa, which led to the downfall of the
tyrant Maximin and the exaltation of the Gordians, when the native
landlords armed their peasantry, killed the imperial officer, and raised
the standard of rebellion in the neighbouring town from impatience of
exactions under which they suffered.
“No offence, I say, Cornelius, no offence to eternal Rome,” said Aristo,
“but you have explained to us why you weigh so heavy on us. I’ve always
heard it was a fortune at Rome for a man to have found out a new tax.
Vespasian did his best; but now you tax our smoke, and our very shadow;
and Pescennius threatened to tax the air we breathe. We’ll play at
riddles, and you shall solve the following:—Say who is she that eats her
own limbs, and grows eternal upon them? Ah, the Goths will take the
measure of her eternity!”
“The Goths!” said Jucundus, who was warming into conversational life, “the
Goths! no fear of the Goths; but,” and he nodded significantly, “look at
home; we have more to fear indoors than abroad.”
“He means the prætorians,” said Cornelius to Aristo, condescendingly; “I
grant you that there have been several untoward affairs; we have had our
problem, but it’s a thing of the past, it never can come again. I venture
to say that the power of the prætorians is at an end. That murder of the
two emperors the other day was the worst job they ever did; it has turned
the public opinion of the whole world against them. I have no fear of the
prætorians.”
“I don’t mean prætorians more than Goths,” said Jucundus; “no, give me the
old weapons, the old maxims of Rome, and I defy the scythe of Saturn. Do
the soldiers march under the old ensign? do they swear by the old gods? do
they interchange the good old signals and watchwords? do they worship the
fortune of Rome; then I say we are safe. But do we take to new ways? do we
trifle with religion? do we make light of Jupiter, Mars, Romulus, the
augurs, and the ancilia? then I say, not all our shows and games, our
elephants, hyænas, and hippopotamuses, will do us any good. It was not the
best thing, no, not the best thing that the soldiers did, when they
invested that Philip with the purple. But he is dead and gone.” And he sat
up and leant on his elbow.
“Ah! but it will be all set right now,” said Cornelius, “_you’ll_ see.”
“He’d be a reformer, that Philip,” continued Jucundus, “and put down an
enormity. Well, they call it an enormity; let it be an enormity. He’d put
it down; but why? there’s the point; why? It’s no secret at all,” and his
voice grew angry, “that that hoary-headed Atheist Fabian was at the bottom
of it; Fabian, the Christian. I hate reforms.”
“Well, we had long wished to do it,” answered Cornelius, “but could not
manage it. Alexander attempted it near twenty years ago. It’s what
philosophers have always aimed at.”
“The gods consume philosophers and the Christians together!” said Jucundus
devoutly. “There’s little to choose between them, except that the
Christians are the filthier animal of the two. But both are ruining the
most glorious political structure that the world ever saw. I am not
over-fond of Alexander either.”
“Thank you in the name of philosophy,” said the Greek.
“And thank you in the name of the Christians,” chimed in Juba.
“That’s good!” cried Jucundus; “the first word that hopeful youth has
spoken since he came in, and he takes on him to call himself a Christian.”
“I’ve a right to do so, if I choose,” said Juba; “I’ve a right to be a
Christian.”
“Right! O yes, right! ha, ha!” answered Jucundus, “right! Jove help the
lad! by all manner of means. Of course, you have a right to go _in malam
rem_ in whatever way you please.”
“I am my own master,” said Juba; “my father was a Christian. I suppose it
depends on myself to follow him or not, according to my fancy, and as long
as I think fit.”
“Fancy! think fit!” answered Jucundus, “you pompous little mule! Yes, go
and be a Christian, my dear child, as your doting father went. Go, like
him, to the priest of their mysteries; be spit on, stripped, dipped; feed
on little boys’ marrow and brains; worship the ass; and learn all the foul
magic of the sect. And then be delated and taken up, and torn to shreds on
the rack, or thrown to the lions and so go to Tartarus, if Tartarus there
be, in the way you think fit. You’ll harm none but yourself, my boy. I
don’t fear such as you, but the deeper heads.”
Juba stood up with a look of offended dignity, and, as on former
occasions, tossed the head which had been by implication disparaged. “I
despise you,” he said.
“Well, but you are hard on the Christians,” said Aristo. “I have heard
them maintain that their superstition, if adopted, would be the salvation
of Rome. They maintain that the old religion is gone or going out; that
something new is wanted to keep the empire together; and that their
worship is just fitted to the times.”
“All I say to the vipers,” said Jucundus, “is, ‘Let well alone. We did
well enough without you; we did well enough till you sprang up.’ A plague
on their insolence; as if Jew or Egyptian could do aught for us when Numa
and the Sibyl fail. That is what I say, Let Rome be true to herself and
nothing can harm her; let her shift her foundation, and I would not buy
her for this water-melon,” he said, taking a suck at it. “Rome alone can
harm Rome. Recollect old Horace, ‘Suis et ipsa Roma viribus ruit.’ He was
a prophet. If she falls, it is by her own hand.”
“I agree,” said Cornelius; “certainly, to set up any new worship is
treason; not a doubt of it. The gods keep us from such ingratitude! We
have grown great by means of them, and they are part and parcel of the law
of Rome. But there is no great chance of our forgetting this; Decius
won’t; that’s a fact. You will see. Time will show; perhaps to-morrow,
perhaps next day,” he added, mysteriously.
“Why in the world should you have this frantic dread of these poor
scarecrows of Christians,” said Aristo, “all because they hold an opinion?
Why are you not afraid of the bats and the moles? It’s an opinion: there
have been other opinions before them, and there will be other opinions
after. Let them alone and they’ll die away; make a hubbub about them and
they’ll spread.”
“Spread?” cried Jucundus, who was under the twofold excitement of personal
feeling and of wine, “spread, they’ll spread? yes, they’ll spread. Yes,
grow, like scorpions, twenty at a birth. The country already swarms with
them; they are as many as frogs or grasshoppers; they start up everywhere
under one’s nose, when one least expects them. The air breeds them like
plague-flies; the wind drifts them like locusts. No one’s safe; any one
may be a Christian; it’s an epidemic. Great Jove! _I_ may be a Christian
before I know where I am. Heaven and earth! is it not monstrous?” he
continued, with increasing fierceness. “Yes, Jucundus, my poor man, you
may wake and find yourself a Christian, without knowing it, against your
will. Ah! my friends, pity me! I may find myself a beast, and obliged to
suck blood and live among the tombs as if I liked it, without power to
tell you how I loathe it, all through their sorcery. By the genius of Rome
something must be done. I say, no one is safe. You call on your friend; he
is sitting in the dark, unwashed, uncombed, undressed. What is the matter?
Ah! his son has turned Christian. Your wedding-day is fixed, you are
expecting your bride; she does not come; why? she will not have you; she
has become a Christian. Where’s young Nomentanus? Who has seen Nomentanus?
in the forum, or the campus, in the circus, in the bath? Has he caught the
plague or got a sunstroke? Nothing of the kind; the Christians have caught
hold of him. Young and old, rich and poor, my lady in her litter and her
slave, modest maid and Lydia at the Thermæ, nothing comes amiss to them.
All confidence is gone; there’s no one we can reckon on. I go to my
tailor’s: ‘Nergal,’ I say to him, ‘Nergal, I want a new tunic,’ The
wretched hypocrite bows, and runs to and fro, and unpacks his stuffs and
cloths, like another man. A word in your ear. The man’s a Christian,
dressed up like a tailor. They have no dress of their own. If I were
emperor, I’d make the sneaking curs wear a badge, I would; a dog’s collar,
a fox’s tail, or a pair of ass’s ears. Then we should know friends from
foes when we meet them.”
“We should think that dangerous,” said Cornelius; “however, you are taking
it too much to heart; you are making too much of them, my good friend.
They have not even got the present, and you are giving them the future,
which is just what they want.”
“If Jucundus will listen to me,” said Aristo, “I could satisfy him that
the Christians are actually falling off. They once were numerous in this
very place; now there are hardly any. They have been declining for these
fifty years; the danger from them is past. Do you want to know how to
revive them? Put out an imperial edict, forbid them, denounce them. Do you
want them to drop away like autumn leaves? Take no notice of them.”
“I can’t deny that in Italy they _have_ grown,” said Cornelius; “they
_have_ grown in numbers and in wealth, and they intermarry with us. Thus
the upper class becomes to a certain extent infected. We may find it
necessary to repress them; but, as you would repress vermin, without
fearing them.”
“The worshippers of the gods are the many, and the Christians are the
few,” persisted Aristo; “if the two parties intermarry, the weaker will
get the worst of it. You will find the statues of the gods gradually
creeping back into the Christian chapel; and a man must be an honest
fellow who buys our images, eh, Jucundus?”
“Well, Aristo,” said the paterfamilias, whose violence never lasted long,
“if your sister’s bright eyes win back my poor Agellius you will have
something more to say for yourself than, at present, I grant.”
“I see,” said Cornelius, gravely, “I begin to understand it. I could not
make out why our good host had such great fear for the stability of Rome.
But it is one of those things which the experience of life has taught me.
I have often seen it in the imperial city itself. Whenever you find a man
show special earnestness against these fanatics, depend on it there is
something that touches him personally in the matter. There was a very
great man, the present Flamen Dialis, for whom I have unbounded respect;
for a long time I was at a loss to conceive why a person of his weight,
sound, sensible, well-judging, should have such a fear of the Christians.
One day he made an oration against them in the senate-house; he wanted to
send them to the rack. But the secret came out; the good man was on the
rack himself about his daughter, who persisted in calling herself a
Christian, and refused to paint her face or go to the amphitheatre. To be
sure, a most trying affair this for the old gentleman. The venerable Pater
Patratus, too, what suppers he gave! a fine specimen of the Lucullus type;
yet he was always advocating the lictor and the _commentariensis_ in the
instance of the Christian. No wonder; his wife and son were disgracing him
in the eyes of the whole world by frequenting the meetings of these
Christians. However, I agree with Decius, they must be put down. They are
not formidable, but they are an eyesore.”
Here the rushing of the water-clock which measured time in the
neighbouring square, ceased, signifying thereby that the night was getting
on. Juba had already crept into the dark closet which served him for a
sleeping-place; had taken off his sandals, and loosened his belt; had
wrapt the serpent he had about him round his neck, and was breathing
heavily. Jucundus made the parting libation, and Cornelius took his leave.
Aristo rose too; and Jucundus, accompanying them to the entrance, paid the
not uncommon penalty of his potations, for the wine mounted to his head,
and he returned into the room, and sat him down again with an impression
that Aristo was still at table.
“My dear boy,” he said, “Agellius is but a wet Christian; that’s all, not
obstinate, like his brother there. ’Twas his father; the less we say about
him the better; he’s gone. The Furies make his bed for him! an odious set!
Their priests, little ugly men. I saw one when I was a boy at Carthage. So
unlike your noble Roman Saliares, or your fine portly priest of Isis, clad
in white, breathing odours like spring flowers; men who enjoyed this life,
not like that sour hypocrite. He was as black as an Ethiopian, and as
withered as a Saracen, and he never looked you in the face. And, after
all, the fellow must die for his religion, rather than put a few grains of
golden incense on the altar of great Jove. Jove’s the god for me; a
glorious, handsome, curly god—but they are all good, all the gods are
good. There’s Bacchus, he’s a good, comfortable god, though a sly,
treacherous fellow—a treacherous fellow. There’s Ceres, too; Pomona; the
Muses; Astarte, too, as they call her here; all good;—and Apollo, though
he’s somewhat too hot in this season, and too free with his bow. He gave
me a bad fever once. Ah! life’s precious, most precious; so I felt it
then, when I was all but gone to Pluto. Life never returns, it’s like
water spilt; you can’t gather it up. It is dispersed into the elements, to
the four winds. Ah! there’s something more there than I can tell; more
than all your philosophers can determine.”
He seemed to think awhile, and began again: “Enjoyment’s the great rule;
ask yourself, ‘Have I made the most of things?’ that’s what I say to the
rising generation. Many and many’s the time when I have not turned them to
the best account. Oh, if I had now to begin life again, how many things
should I correct! I might have done better this evening. Those abominable
pears! I might have known they would not be worth the eating. Mutton, that
was all well; doves, good again; crane, kid; well, I don’t see that I
could have done much better.”
After a few minutes he got up half asleep, and put out all the lights but
one small lamp, with which he made his way into his own bed-closet. “All
is vanity,” he continued, with a slow, grave utterance, “all is vanity but
eating and drinking. It does not pay to serve the gods except for this.
What’s fame? what’s glory? what’s power? smoke. I’ve often thought the hog
is the only really wise animal. We should be happier if we were all hogs.
Hogs keep the end of life steadily in view; that’s why those toads of
Christians will not eat them, lest they should get like them. Quiet,
respectable, sensible enjoyment; not riot, or revel, or excess, or
quarrelling. Life is short.” And with this undeniable sentiment he fell
asleep.
CHAPTER VII.
PERSECUTION IN THE OFFING.
Next morning, as Jucundus was dusting and polishing his statues and other
articles of taste and devotion, supplying the gaps in their ranks, and
grouping a number of new ones which had come in from his workmen, Juba
strutted into the shop, and indulged himself from time to time in an
inward laugh or snigger at the various specimens of idolatry which grinned
or frowned or frisked or languished on all sides of him.
“Don’t sneer at that Anubis,” said his uncle; “it is the work of the
divine Callista.”
“That, I suppose, is why she brings into existence so many demons,”
answered Juba; “nothing more can be done in the divine line; like the
queen who fell in love with a baboon.”
“Now I come to think,” retorted Jucundus, “that god of hers is something
like _you_. She must be in love with you, Juba.”
The youth, as was usual with him, tossed his head with an air of lofty
displeasure; at length he said, “And why should she not fall in love with
me, pray?”
“Why, because you are too good or too bad to need her plastic hand. She
could not make anything out of you. ‘Non ex quovis ligno.’ But she’d be
doing a good work if she wiled back your brother.”
“_He_ does not want wiling any more than I,” said Juba, “_I_ dare say!
he’s no Christian.”
“What’s that?” said his uncle, looking round at him in surprise; “Agellius
no Christian?”
“Not a bit of it,” answered Juba; “rest assured. I taxed him with it only
last night; let him alone, _he’ll_ come round. He’s too proud to change,
that’s all. Preach to him, entreat him, worry him, try to turn him, work
at the bit, whip him, and he will turn restive, start aside, or run away;
but let him have his head, pretend not to look, seem indifferent to the
whole matter, and he will quietly sit down in the midst of your images
there. Callista has an easy task; she’ll bribe him to do what he would
else do for nothing.”
“The very best news I have heard since your silly old father died,” cried
Jucundus; “the very best—if true. Juba, I’ll give you an handsome present
the first sow your brother sacrifices to Ceres. Ha, ha, what fine fun to
see the young farmer over his cups at the Nundinæ! Ha, ha, no Christian!
bravo, Juba! ha, ha, I’ll make you a present, I say, an Apollo to teach
you manners, or a Mercury to give you wit.”
“It’s quite true,” said Juba; “he would not be thinking of Callista, if he
were thinking of his saints and angels.”
“Ha, ha! to be sure!” returned Jucundus; “to be sure! yet why shouldn’t he
worship a handsome Greek girl as well as any of those mummies and death’s
heads and bogies of his, which I should blush to put up here alongside
even of Anubis, or a scarabæus?”
“Mother thinks she is not altogether the girl you take her for,” said his
nephew.
“No matter, no matter,” answered Jucundus, “no matter at all; she may be a
Lais or Phryne for me; the surer to make a man of him.”
“Why,” said Juba, “mother thinks her head is turning in the opposite way.
D’you see? Strange, isn’t it?” he added, annoyed himself yet not unwilling
to annoy his uncle.
“Hm!” exclaimed Jucundus, making a wry face and looking round at him, as
if to say, “What on earth is going to turn up now?”
“To tell the truth,” said Juba, gloomily, “I did once think of her myself.
I don’t see why I have not as much right to do so as Agellius, if I
please. So I thought old mother might do something for me; and I asked her
for a charm or love potion, which would bring her from her brother down to
the forest yonder. Gurta took to it kindly, for she has a mortal hatred of
Callista, because of her good looks, though she won’t say so, and because
she’s a Greek! and she liked the notion of humbling the haughty minx. So
she began one of the most tremendous spells,” he shrieked out with a
laugh, “one of the most tremendous spells in her whole budget. All and
everything in the most exact religious way: wine, milk, blood, meal, wax,
old rags, gods, Numidian as well as Punic; such names; one must be
barbarian to boot, as well as witch, to pronounce them: a score of things
there were besides. And then to see the old woman, with her streaming grey
hair, twinkling eyes, and grim look, twirl about as some flute girl at a
banquet; it was enough to dance down, not only the moon, but the whole
milky way. But it did not dance down Callista; at which mother got savage,
and protested that Callista was a Christian.”
Jucundus looked much perplexed. “Medius fidius!” he said, “why, unless we
look sharp, she will be converting him the wrong way;” and he began pacing
up and down the small room.
Juba on his part began singing—
“Gurta the witch would have part in the jest;
Though lame as a gull, by his highness possessed,
She shouldered her crutch, and danced with the rest.
“Sporting and snorting, deep in the night,
Their beards flashing fire, and their hoofs striking light,
And their tails whisking round in the heat of their flight.”
By this time Jucundus had recovered from the qualm which Juba’s
intelligence had caused him, and he cried out, “Cease your rubbish; old
Gurta’s jealous; I know her spite; Christian is the most blackguard word
in her vocabulary, its Barbar for toad or adder. I see it all; no,
Callista, the divine Callista, must take in hand this piece of wax, sing a
charm, and mould him into a Vertumnus. She’ll show herself the more potent
witch of the two. The new emperor too will help the incantation.”
“What! something is coming?” asked Juba, with a grin.
“Coming, boy? yes, I warrant you,” answered his uncle. “_We’ll_ make them
squeak. If gentle means don’t do, then we’ll just throw in another
ingredient or two: an axe, or a wild cat, or a firebrand.”
“Take care what you are about, if you deal with Agellius,” said Juba.
“He’s a sawney, but you must not drive him to bay. Don’t threaten; keep to
the other line; he’s weak-hearted.”
“Only as a background to bring out the painting; the Muse singing, all in
light, relieved by sardix or sepia. It _must_ come; but perhaps Agellius
will come first.”
It was indeed as Jucundus had hinted; a new policy, a new era was coming
upon Christianity, together with the new emperor. Christians had hitherto
been for the most part the objects of popular fury rather than of imperial
jealousy. Nero, indeed, from his very love of cruelty, had taken pleasure
in torturing them: but statesmen and philosophers, though at times
perplexed and inconsistent, yet on the whole had despised them; and the
superstition of priests and people, with their “Christianos ad leones,”
had been the most formidable enemy of the faith. Accordingly, atrocious as
the persecution had been at times, it had been conducted on no plan, and
had been local and fitful. But even this trial had been suspended, with
but few interruptions, during the last thirty, nay, fifty years. So
favourable a state of things had been more or less brought about by a
succession of emperors, who had shown an actual leaning to Christianity.
While the vigorous rule of the five good emperors, as they are called, had
had many passages in its history of an adverse character, those who
followed after, being untaught in the traditions, and strangers to the
spirit of old Rome, foreigners, or adventurers, or sensualists, were
protectors of the new religion. The favourite mistress of Commodus is even
said to have been a Christian; so is the nurse of Caracalla. The wretched
Heliogabalus, by his taste for Oriental superstitions, both weakened the
influence of the established hierarchy, and encouraged the toleration of a
faith which came from Palestine. The virtuous Alexander, who followed him,
was a philosopher more than a statesman; and, in pursuance of the
syncretism which he had adopted, placed the images of Abraham and our Lord
among the objects of devotion which his private chapel contained. What is
told us of the Emperor Philip is still more to the point: the gravest
authorities report that he was actually a Christian; and, since it cannot
be doubted that Christians were persuaded of the fact, the leaning of his
government must have been emphatically in their favour to account for such
a belief. In consequence, Christians showed themselves without fear; they
emerged from the catacombs, and built churches in public view; and, though
in certain localities, as in the instance of Africa, they had suffered
from the contact of the world, they spread far and wide, and faith became
the instrument at least of political power, even where it was wanting in
charity, or momentarily disowned by cowardice. In a word, though Celsus a
hundred years before had pronounced “a man weak who should hope to unite
the three portions of the earth in a common religion,” that common
Catholic faith had been found, and a principle of empire was created which
had never before existed. The phenomenon could not be mistaken; and the
Roman statesman saw he had to deal with a rival. Nor must we suppose,
because on the surface of the history we read so much of the vicissitudes
of imperial power, and of the profligacy of its possessors, that the
fabric of government was not sustained by traditions of the strongest
temper, and by officials of the highest sagacity. It was the age of
lawyers and politicians; and they saw more and more clearly that if
Christianity was not to revolutionize the empire, they must follow out the
line of action which Trajan and Antoninus had pointed out.
Decius then had scarcely assumed the purple, when he commenced that new
policy against the Church which was reserved to Diocletian, fifty years
later, to carry out to its own final refutation. He entered on his power
at the end of the year 249; and on the January 20th following, the day on
which the Church still celebrates the event, St. Fabian, Bishop of Rome,
obtained the crown of martyrdom. He had been pope for the unusually long
space of fourteen years, having been elected in consequence of one of
those remarkable interpositions of Divine Providence of which we now and
then read in the first centuries of the Church. He had come up to Rome
from the country, in order to be present at the election of a successor to
Pope Anteros. A dove was seen to settle on his head, and the assembly rose
up and forced him, to his surprise, upon the episcopal throne. After
bringing back the relics of St. Pontian, his martyred predecessor, from
Sardinia, and having become the apostle of great part of Gaul, he seemed
destined to end his history in the same happy quiet and obscurity in which
he had lived; but it did not become a pope of that primitive time to die
upon his bed, and he was reserved at length to inaugurate in his own
person, as chief pastor of the Church, a fresh company of martyrs.
Suddenly an edict appeared for the extermination of the name and religion
of Christ. It was addressed to the proconsuls and other governors of
provinces; and alleged or implied that the emperors, Decius and his son,
being determined to give peace to their subjects, found the Christians
alone an impediment to the fulfilment of their purpose; and that, by
reason of the enmity which those sectaries entertained towards the gods of
Rome,—an enmity which was bringing down upon the world multiplied
misfortunes. Desirous, then, above all things, of appeasing the divine
anger, they made an irrevocable ordinance that every Christian, without
exception of rank, sex, or age, should be obliged to sacrifice. Those who
refused were to be thrown into prison, and in the first instance submitted
to moderate punishments. If they conformed to the established religion,
they were to be rewarded; if not, they were to be drowned, burned alive,
exposed to the beasts, hung upon the trees, or otherwise put to death.
This edict was read in the camp of the prætorians, posted up in the
Capitol, and sent over the empire by government couriers. The authorities
in each province were themselves threatened with heavy penalties, if they
did not succeed in frightening or tormenting the Christians into the
profession of paganism.
St. Fabian, as we have said, was the first-fruits of the persecution, and
eighteen months passed before his successor could be appointed. In the
course of the next two months St. Pionius was burned alive at Smyrna, and
St. Nestor crucified in Pamphylia. At Carthage some perplexity and delay
were occasioned by the absence of the proconsul. St. Cyprian, its bishop,
took advantage of the delay, and retired into a place of concealment. The
populace had joined with the imperial government in seeking his life, and
had cried out furiously in the circus, demanding him “ad leonem,” for the
lion. A panic seized the Christian body, and for a while there were far
more persons found to compromise their faith than to confess it. It seemed
as if Aristo’s anticipation was justified, that Christianity was losing
its hold upon the mind of its subjects, and that nothing more was needed
for those who had feared it, than to let it die a natural death. And at
Sicca the Roman officials, as far as ever they dared, seemed to act on
this view. Here Christians did no harm, they made no show, and there was
little or nothing in the place to provoke the anger of the mob or to
necessitate the interference of the magistrate. The proconsul’s absence
from Carthage was both an encouragement and an excuse for delay; and hence
it was that, though we are towards the middle of the year 250, and the
edict was published at Rome at its commencement, the good people of Sicca
had, as we have said, little knowledge of what was taking place in the
political world, and whispered about vague presages of an intended
measure, which had been in some places in operation for many months.
Communication with the seat of government was not so very frequent or
rapid in those days, and public curiosity had not been stimulated by the
facilities of gratifying it. And thus we must account for a phenomenon,
which we uphold to be a fact in the instance of Sicca, in the early summer
of A.D. 250, even though it prove unaccountable, and history has nothing
to say about it, and in spite of the _Acta Diurna_.
The case, indeed, is different now. In these times, newspapers, railroads,
and magnetic telegraphs make us independent of government messengers. The
proceedings at Rome would have been generally and accurately known in a
few seconds; and then, by way of urging forward the magistracy, a question
of course would have been asked in the parliament of Carthage by the
member for Sicca, or Laribus, or Thugga, or by some one of the pagani, or
country party, whether the popular report was true, that an edict had been
promulgated at Rome against the Christians, and what steps had been taken
by the local authorities throughout the proconsulate to carry out its
provisions. And then the “Colonia Siccensis” would have presented some
good or bad reason for the delay: that it arose from the absence of the
proconsul from the seat of government, or from the unaccountable loss of
the despatch on its way from the coast; or, perhaps, on the other hand,
the under-secretary would have maintained, amid the cheers of his
supporters, that the edict had been promulgated and carried out at Sicca
to the full, that crowds of Christians had at once sacrificed, and that,
in short, there was no one to punish; assertions which at that moment were
too likely to be verified by the event.
In truth, there were many reasons to make the magistrates, both Roman and
native, unwilling to proceed in the matter, till they were obliged. No
doubt they one and all detested Christianity, and would have put it down,
if they could; but the question was, when they came to the point, _what_
they should put down. If, indeed, they could have got hold of the
ringleaders, the bishops of the Church, they would have tortured and
smashed them _con amore_, as you would kill a wasp; and with the greater
warmth and satisfaction, just because it was so difficult to get at them.
Those bishops were a set of fellows as mischievous as they were cowardly;
they would not come out and be killed, but they skulked in the desert, and
hid in masquerade. But why should gentlemen in office, opulent and happy,
set about worrying a handful of idiots, old, or poor, or boys, or women,
or obscure, or amiable and well-meaning men, who were but a remnant of a
former generation, and as little connected with the fanatics of Carthage,
Alexandria, or Rome, as the English freemasons may seem to be with their
namesakes on the continent? True, Christianity was a secret society, and
an illegal religion; but would it cease to be so when those harmless or
respectable inhabitants of the place had been mounted on the rack or the
gibbet?
And then, too, it was a most dangerous thing to open the door to popular
excitement;—who would be able to shut it? Once rouse the populace, and it
was all over with the place. It could not be denied that the bigoted and
ignorant majority, not only of the common people, but of the better
classes, was steeped in a bitter prejudice, and an intense, though latent,
hatred of Christianity. Besides the antipathy which arose from the
extremely different views of life and duty taken by pagans and Christians,
which would give a natural impulse to persecution in the hearts of the
former, there were the many persons who wished to curry favour at Rome
with the government, and had an eye to preferment or reward. There was the
pagan interest, extended and powerful, of that numerous class which was
attached to the established religions by habit, position, interest, or the
prospect of advantage. There were all the great institutions or
establishments of the place; the law courts, the schools of grammar and
rhetoric, the philosophic _exedræ_ and lecture-rooms, the theatre, the
amphitheatre, the market—all were, for one reason or another, opposed to
Christianity; and who could tell where they would stop in their onward
course, if they were set in motion? “Quieta non movenda” was the motto of
the local government, native and imperial, and that the more, because it
was an age of revolutions, and they might be most unpleasantly compromised
or embarrassed by the direction which the movement took. Besides, Decius
was not immortal; in the last twelve years eight emperors had been cut
off, six of them in a few months; and who could tell but the successor of
the present might revert to the policy of Philip, and feel no thanks to
those who had suddenly left it for a policy of blood.
In this cautious course they would be powerfully supported by the
influence of personal considerations. The Roman _officia_, the city
magistrates, the heads of the established religions, the lawyers, and the
philosophers, all would have punished the Christians, if they could; but
they could not agree whom to punish. They would have agreed with great
satisfaction, as we have said, to inflict condign and capital punishment
upon the heads of the sect; and they would have had no objection, if
driven to do something, to get hold of some strangers or slaves, who might
be a sort of scapegoats for the rest; but it was impossible, when they
once began to persecute, to make distinctions, and not a few of them had
relations who were Christians, or at least were on that border-land which
the mob might mistake for the domain of Christianity—Marcionites,
Tertullianists, Montanists, or Gnostics. When once the cry of “the gods of
Rome” was fairly up, it would apply to tolerated religions as well as to
illicit, and an unhappy votary of Isis or Mithras might suffer, merely
because there were few Christians forthcoming. A duumvir of the place had
a daughter whom he had turned out of his house for receiving baptism, and
who had taken refuge at Vacca. Several of the decurions, the _tabularius_
of the district, the _scriba_, one of the exactors, who lived in Sicca,
various of the retired gentry, whom we spoke of in a former chapter, and
various _attachés_ of the prætorium, were in not dissimilar circumstances.
Nay, the priest of Esculapius had a wife, whom he was very fond of, who,
though she promised to keep quiet, if things continued as they were,
nevertheless had the madness to vow that, if there were any severe
proceedings instituted against her people, she would at once come forward,
confess herself a Christian, and throw water, instead of incense, upon the
sacrificial flame. Not to speak of the venerable man’s tenderness for her,
such an exposure would seriously compromise his respectability, and, as he
was infirm and apoplectic, it was a question whether Esculapius himself
could save him from the shock which would be the consequence.
The same sort of feeling operated with our good friend Jucundus. He was
attached to his nephew; but, be it said without disrespect to him, he was
more attached to his own reputation; and, while he would have been
seriously annoyed at seeing Agellius exposed to one of the panthers of the
neighbouring forest, or hung up by the feet, with the blood streaming from
his nose and mouth, as one of the dogs or kids of the market, he would
have disliked the _éclat_ of the thing still more. He felt both anger and
alarm at the prospect; he was conscious he did not understand his nephew,
or (to use a common phrase) know where to find him; he was aware that a
great deal of tact was necessary to manage him; and he had an instinctive
feeling that Juba was right in saying that it would not do to threaten him
with the utmost severity of the law. He considered Callista’s hold on him
was the most promising quarter of the horizon; so he came to a resolution
to do as little as he could personally, but to hold Agellius’s head, as
far as he could, steadily in the direction of that lady, and to see what
came of it. As to Juba’s assurance that Agellius was not a Christian at
heart, it was too good news to be true; but still it might be only an
anticipation of what would be, when the sun of Greece shone out upon him,
and dispersed the remaining mists of Oriental superstition.
In this state of mind the old gentleman determined one afternoon to leave
his shop to the care of a slave, and to walk down to his nephew, to judge
for himself of his state of mind; to bait his hook with Callista, and to
see if Agellius bit. There was no time to be lost, for the publication of
the edict might be made any day; and then disasters might ensue which no
skill could remedy.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE NEW GENERATION.
Jucundus, then, set out to see how the land lay with his nephew, and to do
what he could to prosper the tillage. His way led him by the temple of
Mercury, which at that time subserved the purpose of a boy’s school, and
was connected with some academical buildings, the property of the city,
which lay beyond it. It cannot be said that our friend was any warm patron
of literature or education, though he had not neglected the schooling of
his nephews. Letters seemed to him in fact to unsettle the mind; and he
had never known much good come of them. Rhetoricians and philosophers did
not know where they stood, or what were their bearings. They did not know
what they held, and what they did not. He knew his own position perfectly
well, and, though the words “belief” or “knowledge” did not come into his
religious vocabulary, he could at once, without hesitation, state what he
professed and maintained. He stood upon the established order of things,
on the traditions of Rome, and the laws of the empire; but as to Greek
sophists and declaimers, he thought very much as old Cato did about them.
The Greeks were a very clever people, unrivalled in the fine arts; let
them keep to their strong point; they were inimitable with the chisel, the
brush, the trowel, and the fingers; but he was not prepared to think much
of their _calamus_ or _stylus_, poetry excepted. What did they ever do but
subvert received principles without substituting any others? And then they
were so likely to take some odd turn themselves; you never could be sure
of them. Socrates, their patriarch, what was he after all but a culprit, a
convict, who had been obliged to drink hemlock, dying under the hands of
justice? Was this a reputable end, a respectable commencement of the
philosophic family? It was very well for Plato or Xenophon to throw a veil
of romance over the transaction, but this was the plain matter of fact.
Then Anaxagoras had been driven out of Athens for his revolutionary
notions; and Diogenes had been accused, like the Christians, of atheism.
The case had been the same in more recent times. There had been that
madman, Apollonius, roaming about the world; Apuleius, too, their
neighbour, fifty years before, a man of respectable station, a gentleman,
but a follower of the Greek philosophy, a dabbler in magic, and a
pretender to miracles. And so, in fact, of letters generally; as in their
own country Minucius, a contemporary of Apuleius, became a Christian.
Such, too, had been his friend Octavius; such Cæcilius, who even became
one of the priests of the sect, and seduced others from the religion he
had left. One of them had been the public talk for several years, and he
too originally a rhetorician, Thascius Cyprianus of Carthage. It was the
one thing which gave him some misgiving about that little Callista, that
she was a Greek.
As he passed the temple, the metal plate was sounding as a signal for the
termination of the school, and on looking towards the portico with an
ill-natured curiosity, he saw a young acquaintance of his, a youth of
about twenty, coming out of it, leading a boy of about half that age, with
his satchel thrown over his shoulder.
“Well, Arnobius,”(2) he cried, “how does rhetoric proceed? are we to take
the law line, or turn professor? Who’s the boy? some younger brother?”
“I’ve taken pity on the little fool,” answered Arnobius; “these
schoolmasters are a savage lot. I suffered enough from them myself, and
‘miseris succurrere disco.’ So I took him from under the roof of friend
Rupilius, and he’s under my tutelage. How did he treat thee, boy?”
“He treated me like a slave or a Christian,” answered he.
“He deserved it, I’ll warrant,” said Jucundus; “a pert, forward imp. ’Twas
Gete against Briton. Much good comes of schooling! He’s a wicked one
already. Ah, the new generation! I don’t know where the world’s going.”
“Tell the gentleman,” said Arnobius, “what he did first to you, my boy.”
“As the good gentleman says,” answered the boy, “first I did something to
him, and then he did something to me.”
“I told you so,” said Jucundus; “a sensible boy, after all; but the
schoolmaster had the best of it, I’ll wager.”
“First,” answered he, “I grinned in his face, and he took off his wooden
shoe, and knocked out one of my teeth.”
“Good,” said Jucundus, “the justice of Pythagoras. Zaleuchus could not
have done better. The mouth sins, and the mouth suffers.”
“Next,” continued he, “I talked in school-time to my chum; and Rupilius
put a gag in my jaws, and kept them open for an hour.”
“The very Rhadamanthus of schoolmasters!” cried Jucundus: “and thereupon
you struck up a chant, divine though inarticulate, like the statue of
Memnon.”
“Then,” said the boy, “I could not say my Virgil, and he tore the shirt
from off my back, and gave it me with the leather.”
“Ay,” answered Jucundus, “ ‘arma virumque’ branded on your hide.”
“Afterwards I ate his dinner for him,” continued the boy, “and then he
screwed my head, and kept me without food for two days.”
“Your throat, you mean,” said Jucundus; “a cautious man! lest you should
steal a draught or two of good strong air.”
“And lastly,” said he, “I did not bring my pence, and then he tied my
hands to a gibbet, and hung me up _in terrorem_.”
“There I came in,” said Arnobius; “he seemed a pretty boy, so I cut him
down, paid his æra, and took him home.”
“And now he is your pupil?” asked Jucundus.
“Not yet,” answered Arnobius; “he is still a day-scholar of the old
wolf’s; one is like another; he could not change for the better: but I am
his bully, and shall tutorize him some day. He’s a sharp lad, isn’t he,
Firmian?” turning to the boy; “a great hand at composition for his years;
better than I am, who never shall write Latin decently. Yet what can I do?
I must profess and teach, for Rome is the only place for the law, and
these city professorships are not to be despised.”
“Whom are you attending here?” asked Jucundus, drily.
“You are the only man in Sicca who needs to ask the question. What! not
know the great Polemo of Rhodes, the friend of Plotinus, the pupil of
Theagenes, the disciple of Thrasyllus, the hearer of Nicomachus, who was
of the school of Secundus, the doctor of the new Pythagoreans? Not feel
the presence in Sicca of Polemo, the most celebrated, the most intolerable
of men? That, however, is not his title, but the ‘godlike,’ or the
‘oracular,’ or the ‘portentous,’ or something else as impressive. Every
one goes to him. He is the rage. I should not have a chance of success if
I could not say that I had attended his lectures; though I’d be bound our
little Firmian here would deliver as good. He’s the very cariophyllus of
human nature. He comes to the schools in a litter of cedar, ornamented
with silver and covered with a lion’s skin, slaves carrying him, and a
crowd of friends attending, with the state of a proconsul. He is dressed
in the most exact style; his pallium is of the finest wool, white, picked
out with purple; his tresses flow with unguent, his fingers glitter with
rings, and he smells like Idalium. As soon as he puts foot on earth, a
great hubbub of congratulation and homage breaks forth. He takes no
notice; his favourite pupils form a circle round him, and conduct him into
one of the _exedræ_, till the dial shows the time for lecture. Here he
sits in silence, looking at nothing, or at the wall opposite him, talking
to himself, a hum of admiration filling the room. Presently one of his
pupils, as if he were præco to the duumvir, cries out, ‘Hush, gentlemen,
hush! the godlike’—no, it is not that. I’ve not got it. What _is_ his
title? ‘the Bottomless,’ that’s it—‘the Bottomless speaks.’ A dead silence
ensues; a clear voice and a measured elocution are the sure token that it
is the outpouring of the oracle. ‘Pray,’ says the little man, ‘pray, which
existed first, the egg or the chick? Did the chick lay the egg, or the egg
hatch the chick?’ Then there ensues a whispering, a disputing, and after a
while a dead silence. At the end of a quarter of an hour or so, our præco
speaks again, and this time to the oracle. ‘Bottomless man,’ he says, ‘I
have to represent to you that no one of the present company finds himself
equal to answer the question, which your condescension has proposed to our
consideration!’ On this there is a fresh silence, and at length a fresh
_effatum_ from the hierophant: ‘Which comes first, the egg or the chick?
The egg comes first in relation to the causativity of the chick, and the
chick comes first in relation to the causativity of the egg,’ on which
there is a burst of applause; the ring of adorers is broken through, and
the shrinking professor is carried in the arms or on the shoulders of the
literary crowd to his chair in the lecture-room.”
Much as there was in Arnobius’s description which gratified Jucundus’s
prejudices, he had suspicions of his young acquaintance, and was not in
the humour to be pleased unreservedly with those who satirized anything
whatever that was established, or was appointed by government, even
affectation and pretence. He said something about the wisdom of ages, the
reverence due to authority, the institutions of Rome, and the magistrates
of Sicca. “Do not go after novelties,” he said to Arnobius; “make a daily
libation to Jove, the preserver, and to the genius of the emperor, and
then let other things take their course.”
“But you don’t mean I must believe all this man says, because the
decurions have put him here?” cried Arnobius. “Here is this Polemo saying
that Proteus is matter, and that minerals and vegetables are his flock;
that Proserpine is the vital influence, and Ceres the efficacy of the
heavenly bodies; that there are mundane spirits, and supramundane; and
then his doctrine about triads, monads, and progressions of the celestial
gods?”
“Hm!” said Jucundus; “they did not say so when I went to school; but keep
to my rule, my boy, and swear by the genius of Rome and the emperor.”
“I don’t believe in god or goddess, emperor or Rome, or in any philosophy,
or in any religion at all,” said Arnobius.
“What!” cried Jucundus, “you’re not going to desert the gods of your
ancestors?”
“Ancestors?” said Arnobius; “I’ve no ancestors. I’m not African certainly,
not Punic, not Libophœnician, not Canaanite, not Numidian, not Gætulian.
I’m half Greek, but what the other half is I don’t know. My good old
gaffer, you’re one of the old world. I believe nothing. Who can? There is
such a racket and whirl of religions on all sides of me that I am sick of
the subject.”
“Ah, the rising generation!” groaned Jucundus; “you young men! I cannot
prophesy what you will become, when we old fellows are removed from the
scene. Perhaps you’re a Christian?”
Arnobius laughed. “At least I can give you comfort on that head, old
grandfather. A pretty Christian _I_ should make, indeed! seeing visions,
to be sure, and rejoicing in the rack and dungeon! I wish to enjoy life; I
see wealth, power, rank, and pleasure to be worth living for, and I see
nothing else.”
“Well said, my lad,” cried Jucundus, “well said; stick to that. I declare
you frightened me. Give up all visions, speculations, conjectures,
fancies, novelties, discoveries; nothing comes of them but confusion.”
“No, no,” answered the youth; “I’m not so wild as you seem to think,
Jucundus. It is true I don’t believe one single word about the gods; but
in their worship was I born, and in their worship I will die.”
“Admirable!” cried Jucundus in a transport; “well, I’m surprised; you have
taken me by surprise. You’re a fine fellow; you are a boy after my heart.
I’ve a good mind to adopt you.”
“You see I can’t believe one syllable of all the priests’ trash,” said
Arnobius; “who does? not they. I don’t believe in Jupiter or Juno, or in
Astarte or in Isis; but where shall I go for anything better? or why need
I seek anything good or bad in that line? Nothing’s known anywhere, and
life would go while I attempted what is impossible. No, better stay where
I am; I may go further, and gain a loss for my pains. So you see I am for
myself, and for the genius of Rome.”
“That’s the true principle,” answered the delighted Jucundus. “Why,
really, for so young a man, surprising! Where _did_ you get so much good
sense, my dear fellow? _I’ve_ seen very little of you. Well, this I’ll
say, you are a youth of most mature mind. To be sure! Well! Such youths
are rare now-a-days. I congratulate you with all my heart on your strong
sense and your admirable wisdom. Who’d have thought it? I’ve always, to
tell the truth, had a little suspicion of you; but you’ve come out nobly.
Capital! I don’t wish you to believe in the gods if you can’t; but it’s
your duty, dear boy, your duty to Rome to maintain them, and to rally
round them when attacked.” Then with a changed voice, he added, “Ah, that
a young friend of mine had your view of the matter!” and then, fearing he
had said too much, he stopped abruptly.
“You mean Agellius,” said Arnobius. “You’ve heard, by-the-bye,” he
continued in a lower tone, “what’s the talk in the Capitol, that at Rome
they are proceeding on a new plan against the Christians with great
success. They don’t put to death, at least at once; they keep in prison,
and threaten the torture. It’s surprising how many come over.”
“The Furies seize them!” exclaimed Jucundus: “they deserve everything bad,
always excepting my poor boy. So they are cheating the hangman by giving
up their atheism, the vile reptiles, giving in to a threat. However,” he
added gravely, “I wish threats would answer with Agellius; but I greatly
fear that menace would only make him stubborn. That stubbornness of a
Christian! O Arnobius!” he said, shaking his head and looking solemn,
“it’s a visitation from the gods, a sort of _nympholepsia_.”
“It’s going out,” said Arnobius, “mark my words; the frenzy is dying. It’s
only wonderful it should have lasted for three centuries. The report runs
that in some places, when the edict was published, the Christians did not
wait for a summons, but swept up to the temples to sacrifice, like a shoal
of tunnies. The magistrates were obliged to take so many a day; and, as
the days went on, none so eager to bring over the rest as those who have
already become honest men. Nay, not a few of their mystic or esoteric
class have conformed.”
“If so, unless Agellius looks sharp,” said Jucundus, “his sect will give
him up before he gives up his sect. Christianity will be converted before
him.”
“Oh, don’t fear for him!” said Arnobius; “I knew him at school. Boys
differ; some are bold and open. They like to be men, and to dare the deeds
of men; they talk freely, and take their swing in broad day. Others are
shy, reserved, bashful, and are afraid to do what they love quite as much
as the others. Agellius never could rub off this shame, and it has taken
this turn. He’s sure to outgrow it in a year or two. I should not wonder
if, when once he had got over it, he went into the opposite fault. You’ll
find him a drinker and a swaggerer and a spendthrift before many years are
over.”
“Well, that’s good news,” said Jucundus; “I mean, I am glad you think he
will shake off these fancies. I don’t believe they sit very close to him
myself.”
He walked on for a while in silence; then he said, “That seems a sharp
child, Arnobius. Could he do me a service if I wanted it? Does he know
Agellius?”
“Know him?” answered the other; “yes, and his farm too. He has rambled
round Sicca, many is the mile. And he knows the short cuts, and the blind
ways, and safe circuits.”
“What’s the boy’s name?” asked Jucundus.
“Firmian,” answered Arnobius. “Firmian Lactantius.”
“I say, Firmian,” said Jucundus to him, “where are you to be found of a
day, my boy?”
“At class morning and afternoon,” answered Firmian, “sleeping in the
porticoes in midday, nowhere in the evening, and roosting with Arnobius at
night.”
“And you can keep a secret, should it so happen?” asked Jucundus, “and do
an errand, if I gave you one?”
“I’ll give him the stick worse than Rupilius, if he does not,” said
Arnobius.
“A bargain,” cried Jucundus; and, waving his hand to them, he stept
through the city gate, and they returned to their afternoon amusements.
CHAPTER IX.
JUCUNDUS BAITS HIS TRAP.
Agellius is busily employed upon his farm. While the enemies of his faith
are laying their toils for him and his brethren in the imperial city, in
the proconsular _officium_, and in the municipal curia,—while Jucundus is
scheming against him personally in another way and with other
intentions,—the unconscious object of these machinations is busy about his
master’s crops, housing the corn in caves or pits, distilling the roses,
irrigating the _khennah_, and training and sheltering the vines. And he
does so, not only from a sense of duty, but the more assiduously, because
he finds in constant employment a protection against himself, against idle
thoughts, wayward wishes, discontent, and despondency. It is doubtless
very strange to the reader how any one who professed himself a Christian
in good earnest should be open to the imputation of resting his hopes and
his heart in the tents of paganism; but we do not see why Agellius has not
quite as much right to be inconsistent in one way as Christians of the
present time in another, and perhaps he has more to say for himself than
they. They have not had the trial of solitude, nor the consequent
temptation to which he has been exposed, of seeking relief from his own
thoughts in the company of unbelievers. When a boy he had received his
education at that school in the Temple of Mercury of which we heard in the
foregoing chapter; and though happily he had preserved himself from the
contagion of idolatry and sin, he had on that very account formed no
friendships with his schoolfellows. Whether there were any Christians
there besides himself he did not know; but while the worst of his
schoolfellows were what heathen boys may be supposed to be, the lightest
censure which could be passed on any was that they were greedy, or
quarrelsome, or otherwise unamiable. He had learned there enough to open
his mind, and to give him materials for thinking, and instruments for
reflecting on his own religion, and for drawing out into shape his own
reflections. He had received just that discipline which makes solitude
most pleasant to the old, and most insupportable to the young. He had got
a thousand questions which needed answers, a thousand feelings which
needed sympathy. He wanted to know whether his guesses, his perplexities,
his trials of mind, were peculiar to himself, or how far they were shared
by others, and what they were worth. He had capabilities for intellectual
enjoyment unexercised, and a thirst after knowledge unsatisfied. And the
channels of supernatural assistance were removed from him at a time when
nature was most impetuous and most clamorous.
It was under circumstances such as these that two young Greeks, brother
and sister, the brother older, the sister younger, than Agellius, came to
Sicca at the invitation of Jucundus, who wanted them for his trade. His
nephew in time got acquainted with them, and found in them what he had
sought in vain elsewhere. It is not that they were oracles of wisdom or
repositories of philosophical learning; their age and their calling
forbade it, nor did he require it. For an oracle, of course, he would have
looked in another direction; but he desiderated something more on a level
with himself, and that they abundantly supplied. He found, from his
conversations with them, that a great number of the questions which had
been a difficulty to him had already been agitated in the schools of
Greece. He found what solutions were possible, what the hinge was on which
questions turned, what the issue to which they led, and what the principle
which lay at the bottom of them. He began better to understand the
position of Christianity in the world of thought, and the view which was
taken of it by the advocates of other religions or philosophies. He gained
some insight into its logic, and advanced, without knowing it, in the
investigation of its evidences.
Nor was this all; he acquired by means of his new friends a great deal
also of secular knowledge as well as philosophical. He learned much of the
history of foreign countries, especially of Greece, of its heroes and
sages, its poets and its statesmen, of Alexander, of the Syro-Macedonic
empire, of the Jews, and of the series of conquests through which Rome
advanced to universal dominion.
To impart knowledge is as interesting as to acquire it; and Agellius was
called upon to give as well as to take. The brother and sister, without
showing any great religious earnestness, were curious to know about
Christianity, and listened with the more patience that they had no special
attachment to any other worship. In the debates which ensued, though there
was no agreement, there was the pleasure of mental exercise and
excitement; he found enough to tell them without touching upon the more
sacred mysteries; and while he never felt his personal faith at all
endangered by their free conversation, his charity, or at least his
good-will and his gratitude, led him to hope, or even to think, that they
were in the way of conversion themselves. In this thought he was aided by
his own innocence and simplicity; and though, on looking back afterwards
to this eventful season, he recognized many trivial occurrences which
ought to have put him on his guard, yet he had no suspicion at the time
that those who conversed so winningly, and sustained so gracefully and
happily the commerce of thought and sentiment, might in their actual
state, nay, in their governing principles, be in utter contrariety to
himself when the veil was removed from off their hearts.
Nor was it in serious matters alone, but still more on lighter occasions
of intercourse, that Aristo and Callista were attractive to the solitary
Agellius. She had a sweet thrilling voice, and accompanied herself on the
lyre. She could act the _improvisatrice_, and her expressive features were
a running commentary on the varied meaning, the sunshine and the shade, of
her ode or her epic. She could relate how the profane Pentheus and the
self-glorious Hippolytus gave a lesson to the world of the feebleness of
human virtue when it placed itself in opposition to divine power. She
could teach how the chaste Diana manifests herself to the simple shepherd
Endymion, not to the great or learned; and how Tithonus, the spouse of the
Morn, adumbrates the fate of those who revel in their youth, as if it were
to last for ever; and who, when old, do nothing but talk of the days when
they were young, wearying others with tales of “their amours or their
exploits, like grasshoppers that show their vigour only by their
chirping.”(3) The very allegories which sickened and irritated Arnobius
when spouted out by Polemo, touched the very chords of poor Agellius’s
heart when breathed forth from the lips of the beautiful Greek.
She could act also; and suddenly, when conversation flagged or suggested
it, she could throw herself into the part of Medea or Antigone, with a
force and truth which far surpassed the effect produced by the male and
masked representations of those characters at the theatre. Brother and
sister were Œdipus and Antigone, Electra and Orestes, Cassandra and the
Chorus. Once or twice they attempted a scene in Menander; but there was
something which made Agellius shrink from the comedy, beautiful as it was,
and clever as was the representation. Callista could act Thais as truly as
Iphigenia, but Agellius could not listen as composedly. There are certain
most delicate instincts and perceptions in us which act as first
principles, and which, once effaced, can never, except from some
supernatural source, be restored to the mind. When men are in a state of
nature, these are sinned against, and vanish very soon, at so early a date
in the history of the individual that perhaps he does not recollect that
he ever possessed them; and since, like other first principles, they are
but very partially capable of proof, a general scepticism prevails both as
to their existence and their truth. The Greeks, partly from the vivacity
of their intellect, partly from their passion for the beautiful, lost
these celestial adumbrations sooner than other nations. When a collision
arose on such matters between Agellius and his friends, Callista kept
silence; but Aristo was not slow to express his wonder that the young
Christian should think customs or practices wrong which, in his view of
the matter, were as unblamable and natural as eating, drinking, or
sleeping. His own face became almost satirical as Agellius’s became grave;
however, he was too companionable and good-natured to force another to be
happy in his own way; he imputed to the extravagance of his friend’s
religion what in any but a Christian he would have called moroseness and
misanthropy; and he bade his sister give over representations which,
instead of enlivening the passing hour, did but inflict pain.
This friendly intercourse had now gone on for some months, as the leisure
of both parties admitted. Once or twice brother and sister had come to the
suburban farm; but for the most part, in spite of his intense dislike of
the city, he had for their sake threaded its crowded and narrow
thoroughfares, crossed its open places, and presented himself at their
apartments. And was it very strange that a youth so utterly ignorant of
the world, and unsuspicious of evil, should not have heard the warning
voice which called him to separate himself from heathenism, even in its
most specious form? Was it very strange, under these circumstances, that a
sanguine hope, the hope of the youthful, should have led Agellius to
overlook obstacles, and beguile himself into the notion that Callista
might be converted, and make a good Christian wife? Well, we have nothing
more to say for him; if we have not already succeeded in extenuating his
offence, we must leave him to the mercy, or rather to the justice, of his
severely virtuous censors.
But all this while Jucundus had been conversing with him; and, unless we
are quick about it, we shall lose several particulars which are necessary
for those who wish to pursue without a break the thread of his history.
His uncle had brought the conversation round to the delicate point which
had occasioned his visit, and had just broken the ice. With greater tact,
and more ample poetical resources than we should have given him credit
for, he had been led from the scene before him to those prospects of a
moral and social character which ought soon to employ the thoughts of his
dear Agellius. He had spoken of vines and of their culture, _apropos_ of
the dwarf vines around him, which stood about the height of a
currant-bush. Thence he had proceeded to the subject of the more common
vine of Africa, which crept and crawled along the ground, the extremity of
each plant resting in succession on the stock of that which immediately
preceded it. And now, being well into his subject, he called to mind the
high vine of Italy, which mounts by the support of the slim tree to which
it clings. Then he quoted Horace on the subject of the marriage of the elm
and the vine. This lodged him _in medias res_; and Agellius’s heart beat
when he found his uncle proposing to him, as a thought of his own, the
very step which he had fancied was almost a secret of his own breast,
though Juba had seemed to have some suspicion of it.
“My dear Agellius,” said Jucundus, “it would be a most suitable
proceeding. I have never taken to marrying myself; it has not lain in my
way, or been to my taste. Your father did not set me an encouraging
example; but here you are living by yourself, in this odd fashion, unlike
any one else. Perhaps you may come in time and live in Sicca. We shall
find some way of employing you, and it will be pleasant to have you near
me as I get old. However, I mean it to be some time yet before Charon
makes a prize of me; not that I believe all that rubbish more than you,
Agellius, I assure you.”
“It strikes me,” Agellius began, “that perhaps you may think it
inconsistent in me taking such a step, but—”
“Ay, ay, that’s the rub,” thought Jucundus; then aloud, “Inconsistent, my
boy! who talks of inconsistency? what superfine jackanapes dares to call
it inconsistent? You seem made for each other, Agellius—she town, you
country; she so clever and attractive, and up to the world, you so fresh
and Arcadian. You’ll be quite the talk of the place.”
“That’s just what I don’t want to be,” said Agellius. “I mean to say,” he
continued, “that if I thought it inconsistent with my religion to think of
Callista—”
“Of course, of course,” interrupted his uncle, who took his cue from Juba,
and was afraid of the workings of Agellius’s human respect; “but who knows
you have been a Christian? no one knows anything about it. I’ll be bound
they all think you an honest fellow like themselves, a worshipper of the
gods, without crotchets or hobbies of any kind. I never told them to the
contrary. My opinion is, that if you were to make your libation to Jove,
and throw incense upon the imperial altar to-morrow, no one would think it
extraordinary. They would say for certain that they had seen you do it
again and again. Don’t fancy for an instant, my dear Agellius, that you
have anything whatever to get over.”
Agellius was getting awkward and mortified, as may be easily conceived,
and Jucundus saw it, but could not make out why. “My dear uncle,” said the
youth, “you are reproaching me.”
“Not a bit of it,” said Jucundus, confidently, “not a shadow of reproach;
why should I reproach you? We can’t be wise all at once; _I_ had my
follies once, as you may have had yours. It’s natural you should grow more
attached to things as they are,—things as they are, you know,—as time goes
on. Marriage, and the preparation for marriage, sobers a man. You’ve been
a little headstrong, I can’t deny, and had your fling in your own way; but
‘nuces pueris,’ as you will soon be saying yourself on a certain occasion.
Your next business is to consider what kind of a marriage you propose. I
suppose the Roman, but there is great room for choice even there.”
It is a proverb how different things are in theory and when reduced to
practice. Agellius had thought of the end more than of the means, and had
had a vision of Callista as a Christian, when the question of rites and
forms would have been answered by the decision of the Church without his
trouble. He _was_ somewhat sobered by the question, though in a different
way from what his uncle wished and intended.
Jucundus proceeded—“First, there is _matrimonium confarreationis_. You
have nothing to do with that: strictly speaking, it is obsolete; it went
out with the exclusiveness of the old patricians. I say ‘strictly
speaking’; for the ceremonies remain, waiving the formal religious rite.
Well, my dear Agellius, I don’t recommend this ceremonial to you. You’d
have to kill a porker, to take out the entrails, to put away the gall, and
to present it to Juno Pronuba. And there’s fire, too, and water, and
frankincense, and a great deal of the same kind, which I think
undesirable, and you would too; for there, I am sure, we are agreed. We
put this aside then, the religious marriage. Next comes the marriage _ex
coemptione_, a sort of mercantile transaction. In this case the parties
buy each other, and become each other’s property. Well, every man to his
taste; but for me, I don’t like to be bought and sold. I like to be my own
master, and am suspicious of anything irrevocable. Why should you commit
yourself (do you see?) for ever, _for ever_, to a girl you know so little
of? Don’t look surprised: it’s common sense. It’s very well to buy _her_;
but to be bought, that’s quite another matter. And I don’t know that you
can. Being a Roman citizen yourself, you can only make a marriage with a
citizen; now the question is whether Callista is a citizen at all. I know
perfectly well the sweeping measure some years back of Caracalla, which
made all freemen citizens of Rome, whatever might be their country; but
that measure has never been carried out in fact. You’d have very great
difficulty with the law and the customs of the country; and then, after
all, if the world were willing to gratify you, where’s your proof she is a
freewoman? My dear boy, I must speak out for your good, though you’re
offended with me. I wish you to have her, I do; but you can’t do
impossibilities—you can’t alter facts. The laws of the empire allow you to
have her in a certain definite way, and no other; and you cannot help the
law being what it is. I say all this, even on the supposition of her being
a freewoman; but it is just possible she may be in law a slave. Don’t
start in that way; the pretty thing is neither better nor worse for what
she cannot help. I say it for your good. Well, now I’m coming to my point.
There is a third kind of marriage, and that is what I should recommend for
you. It’s the _matrimonium ex usu_, or _consuetudine_; the great advantage
here is, that you have no ceremonies whatever, nothing which can in any
way startle your sensitive mind. In that case, a couple are at length man
and wife _præscriptione_. You are afraid of making a stir in Sicca; in
this case you would make none. You would simply take her home here; if, as
time went on, you got on well together, it would be a marriage; if
not,”—and he shrugged his shoulders—“no harm’s done; you are both free.”
Agellius had been sitting on a gate of one of the vineyards; he started on
his feet, threw up his arms, and made an exclamation.
“Listen, listen, my dear boy!” cried Jucundus, hastening to explain what
he considered the cause of his sudden annoyance; “listen, just one moment,
Agellius, if you can. Dear, dear, how I wish I knew where to find you!
What _is_ the matter? I’m not treating her ill, I’m not indeed. I have not
had any notion at all even of hinting that you should leave her, unless
you both wished the bargain rescinded. No, but it is a great rise for her;
you are a Roman, with property, with position in the place; she’s a
stranger, and without a dower: nobody knows whence she came, or anything
about her. She ought to have no difficulty about it, and I am confident
will have none.”
“O my good, dear uncle! O Jucundus, Jucundus!” cried Agellius, “is it
possible? do my ears hear right? What is it you ask me to do?” and he
burst into tears. “Is it conceivable,” he said, with energy, “that you are
in earnest in recommending me—I say in recommending me—a marriage which
really would be no marriage at all?”
“Here is some very great mistake,” said Jucundus, angrily; “it arises,
Agellius, from your ignorance of the world. You must be thinking I
recommend you mere _contubernium_, as the lawyers call it. Well, I confess
I did think of that for a moment, it occurred to me; I should have liked
to have mentioned it, but knowing how preposterously touchy and skittish
you are on supposed points of honour, or sentiment, or romance, or of
something or other indescribable, I said not one word about that. I have
only wished to consult for your comfort, present and future. You don’t do
me justice, Agellius. I have been attempting to smooth your way. You
_must_ act according to the received usages of society! you cannot make a
world for yourself. Here have I proposed three or four ways for your
proceeding: you will have none of them. What _will_ you have? I thought
you didn’t like ceremonies; I thought you did not like the established
ways. Go, then, do it in the old fashion; kill your sheep, knead your
meal, light your torches, sing your song, summon your flamen, if he’ll
come. Any how, take your choice; do it either with religion or without.”
“O Jucundus!” said the poor fellow, “am I then come to this?” and he could
say no more.
His distress was not greater than his uncle’s disappointment, perplexity,
and annoyance. The latter had been making everything easy for Agellius,
and he was striking, do what he would, on hidden, inexplicable
impediments, whichever way he moved. He got more and more angry the more
he thought about it. An unreasonable, irrational coxcomb! He had heard a
great deal of the portentous stubbornness of a Christian, and now he
understood what it was. It was in his blood, he saw; an offensive, sour
humour, tainting him from head to foot. A very different recompense had he
deserved. There had he come all the way from his home from purely
disinterested feelings. He had no motive whatever, but a simple desire of
his nephew’s welfare; what other motive could he have? “Let Agellius go to
the crows,” he thought, “if he will; what is it to me if he is seized for
a Christian, hung up like a dog, or thrown like a dead rat into the
_cloaca_ of the prison? What care I if he is made a hyæna’s breakfast in
the amphitheatre, all Sicca looking on, or if he is nailed on a cross for
the birds to peck at before my door? Ungrateful puppy! it is no earthly
concern of mine what becomes of him. I shall be neither better nor worse.
No one will say a word against Jucundus; he will not lose a single
customer, or be shunned by a single jolly companion, for the exposure of
his nephew. But a man can’t be saved against his will. Here am I, full of
expedients and resources for his good; there is he, throwing cold water on
everything, and making difficulties as if he loved them. It’s his
abominable pride, that’s the pith of the matter. He could not have behaved
worse though I had played the bully with him, and had reproached him with
his Christianity. But I have studiously avoided every subject which could
put his back up. He’s a very Typhon or Enceladus for pride. Here he’d give
his ears to have done with Christianity; he wants to have this Callista;
he wants to buy her at the price of his religion; but he’d rather be
burned than say, I’ve changed! Let him reap as he has sown; why should I
coax him further to be merciful to himself? Well Agellius,” he said aloud,
“I’m going back.”
Agellius, on the other hand, had his own thoughts; and the most urgent of
them at the moment was sorrow that he had hurt his uncle. He was sincerely
attached to him, in consequence of his faithful guardianship, his many
acts of kindness, the reminiscences of childhood, nay, the love he bore to
the good points of his character. To him he owed his education and his
respectable position. He could not bear his anger, and he had a fear of
his authority; but what was to be done? Jucundus, in utter insensibility
to certain instincts and rules which in Christianity are first principles,
had, without intending it, been greatly dishonouring Agellius, and his
passion, and the object of it. Uncle and nephew had been treading on each
other’s toes, and each was wincing under the mischance. It was Agellius’s
place, as the younger, to make advances, if he could, to an adjustment of
the misunderstanding; and he wished to find some middle way. And, also, it
is evident he had another inducement besides his tenderness to Jucundus to
urge him to do so. In truth, Callista exerted a tremendous sway over him.
The conversation which had just passed ought to have opened his eyes, and
made him understand that the very first step in any negotiations between
them was her _bonâ fide_ conversion. It was evident he could not, he
literally had not the power of marrying her as a heathen. Roman might
marry a Roman; but a degradation of each party in the transaction was the
only way by which a Roman could make any sort of marriage with a Greek. If
she were converted, they would be both of them under the rules of the
Catholic Church. But what prospect was there of so happy an event? What
had ever fallen from her lips which looked that way? Could not a clever
girl throw herself into the part of Alcestis, or chant the majestic verses
of Cleanthes, or extemporize a hymn upon the spring, or hold an argument
on the _pulchrum_ and _utile_, without having any leaning towards
Christianity? A calm, sweet voice, a noble air, an expressive countenance,
refined and decorous manners, were these specific indications of heavenly
grace? Ah, poor Agellius! a fascination is upon you; and so you are
thinking of some middle term, which is to reconcile your uncle and you;
and therefore you begin as follows:—
“I see by your silence, Jucundus, that you are displeased with me, you who
are always so kind. Well, it comes from my ignorance of things; it does
indeed. I ask your forgiveness for anything which seemed ungrateful in my
behaviour, though there is not ingratitude in my heart. I am too much of a
boy to see things beforehand, and to see them in all their bearings. You
took me by surprise by talking on the subject which led to our
misunderstanding. I will not conceal for an instant that I like Callista
very much; and that the more I see her, I like her the more. It strikes me
that, if you break the matter to Aristo, he and I might have some talk
together, and understand each other.”
Jucundus was hot-tempered, but easily pacified; and he really did wish to
be on confidential terms with his nephew at the present crisis; so he
caught at his apology. “Now you speak like a reasonable fellow, Agellius,”
he answered. “Certainly, I will speak to Aristo, as you wish; and on this
question of _consuetudo_ or prescription. Well, don’t begin looking queer
again. I mean I will speak to him on the whole question and its details.
He and I will talk together for our respective principals. We shall soon
come to terms, I warrant you; and then _you_ shall talk with him. Come,
show me round your fields,” he continued, “and let me see how you will be
able to present things to your bride. A very pretty property it is. I it
was who was the means of your father thinking of it. You have heard me say
so before now, and all the circumstances.
“He was at Carthage at this time, undecided what to do with himself. It so
happened that Julia Clara’s estates were just then in the market. An
enormous windfall her estates were. Old Didius was emperor just before my
time; he gave all his estates to his daughter as soon as he assumed the
purple. Poor lady! she did not enjoy them long; Severus confiscated the
whole, not, however, for the benefit of the state, but of the _res
privata_. They are so large in Africa alone, that, as you know, you are
under a special procurator. Well, they did not come into the market at
once; the existing farmers were retained. Marcus Juventius farmed a very
considerable portion of them; they were contiguous, and dovetailed into
his own lands, and accordingly, when he got into trouble, and had to sell
his leases, there were certain odds and ends about Sicca which it was
proposed to lease piecemeal. Your employer, Varius, would have given any
money for them, but I was beforehand with him. Nothing like being on the
spot; he was on business of the proconsul at Adrumetum. I sent off Hispa
instantly to Strabo; not an hour’s delay after I heard of it. The sale was
at Carthage; he went to his old commander, who used his influence, and the
thing was done.
“I venture to say there’s not such a snug little farm in all Africa; and I
am sanguine we shall get a renewal, though Varius will do his utmost to
outbid us. Ah, my dear Agellius, if there is but a suspicion you are not a
thorough-going Roman! Well, well,—here! ease me through this gate,
Agellius; I don’t know what’s come to the gate since I was here.
Indeed!—yes! you have improved this very much. That small arbour is
delicious; but you want an image, an Apollo or a Diana. Ah! do now stop
for a moment; why are you going forward at such a pace? I’ll give you an
image: it shall be one that you will really like. Well, you won’t have it?
I beg you ten thousand pardons. Ha, ha! I mean nothing. Ha, ha, ha! Oh,
what an odd world it is! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Well, I am keeping you from
your labourers. Ha, ha, ha!”
And having thus smoothed his own ruffled temper, and set things right, as
he considered, with Agellius, the old pagan took his journey homewards,
assuring Agellius that he would make all things clear for him in a very
short time, and telling him to be sure to make a call upon Aristo before
the ensuing calends.
CHAPTER X.
THE DIVINE CALLISTA.
The day came which Agellius had fixed for paying his promised visit to
Aristo. It is not to be denied that, in the interval, the difficulties of
the business which occasioned his visit had increased upon his
apprehensions. Callista was not yet a Christian, nor was there any reason
for saying that a proposal of marriage would make her one; and a strange
sort of convert she would be, if it did. He would not suffer himself to
dwell upon difficulties which he was determined never should be realized.
No; of course a heathen he could not marry, but a heathen Callista should
not be. He did not see the process, but he was convinced she would become
a Christian. Yet somehow so it was, that, if he was able to stultify his
reason, he did not quite succeed to his satisfaction with his conscience.
Every morning found him less satisfied with himself, and more disposed to
repent of having allowed his uncle to enter on the subject with Aristo.
But it was a thing done and over; he must either awkwardly back out, or he
must go on. His middle term, as he hastily had considered it, was nothing
else than siding with his uncle, and committing himself to go all lengths,
unless some difficulty rose with the other party. Yet could he really wish
that the step had not been taken? Was it not plain that if he was to put
away Callista from his affections, he must never go near her? And was he
to fall back on his drear solitude, and lose that outlet of thought and
relief of mind which he had lately found in the society of his Greek
friends?
We may easily believe that he was not very peaceful in heart when he set
out on that morning to call upon Aristo; yet he would not allow that he
was doing wrong. He recurred to the pleasant imagination that Callista
would certainly become a Christian, and dwelt pertinaciously upon it. He
could not tell on what it was founded; he knew enough of his religion not
to mean that she was too good to be a heathen; so it is to be supposed he
meant that he discerned what he hoped were traces of some supernatural
influence operating upon her mind. He had a perception, which he could not
justify by argument, that there was in Callista a promise of something
higher than anything she yet was. He felt a strange sympathy with her,
which certainly unless he utterly deceived himself, was not based on
anything merely natural or human,—a sympathy the more remarkable from the
contrariety which existed between them in matters of religious belief. And
hope having blown this large and splendid bubble, sent it sailing away,
and it rose upon the buoyant atmosphere of youth, beautiful to behold.
And yet, as Agellius ascended the long flight of marble steps which led
the foot-passenger up into that fair city, while the morning sun was
glancing across them, and surveyed the outline of the many sumptuous
buildings which crested and encircled the hill, did he not know full well
that iniquity was written on its very walls, and spoke a solemn warning to
a Christian heart to go out of it, to flee it, not to take up a home in
it, not to make alliance with anything in it? Did he not know from
experience full well that, when he got into it, his glance could no longer
be unrestrained, or his air free; but that it would be necessary for him
to keep a control upon his senses, and painfully guard himself against
what must either be a terror to him and an abhorrence, or a temptation?
Enter in imagination into a town like Sicca, and you will understand the
great Apostle’s anguish at seeing a noble and beautiful city given up to
idolatry. Enter it, and you will understand why it was that the poor
priest, of whom Jucundus spoke so bitterly, hung his head, and walked with
timid eyes and clouded brow through the joyous streets of Carthage.
Hitherto we have only been conducting heathens through it, boys or men,
Jucundus, Arnobius, and Firmian; but now a Christian enters it with a
Christian’s heart and a Christian’s hope.
Well is it for us, dear reader, that we in this age do not experience—nay,
a blessed thing that we cannot even frame to ourselves in imagination—the
actual details of evil which hung as an atmosphere over the cities of
Pagan Rome. An Apostle calls the tongue “a fire, a world of iniquity,
untameable, a restless evil, a deadly poison;” and surely what he says
applies to hideous thoughts represented to the eye, as well as when they
are made to strike upon the ear. Unfortunate Agellius! what takes you into
the city this morning? Doubtless some urgent, compulsive duty; otherwise
you would not surely be threading its lanes or taking the circuit of its
porticoes, amid sights which now shock and now allure; fearful sights—not
here and there, but on the stateliest structures and in the meanest
hovels, in public offices and private houses, in central spots and at the
corners of the streets, in bazaars and shops and house-doors, in the
rudest workmanship and in the highest art, in letters or in emblems or in
paintings—the insignia and the pomp of Satan and of Belial, of a reign of
corruption and a revel of idolatry which you can neither endure nor
escape. Wherever you go it is all the same; in the police-court on the
right, in the military station on the left, in the crowd around the
temple, in the procession with its victims and its worshippers who walk to
music, in the language of the noisy market-people; wherever you go, you
are accosted, confronted, publicly, shamelessly, now as if a precept of
religion, now as if a homage to nature, by all which, as a Christian, you
shrink from and abjure.
It is no accident of the season or of the day; it is the continuous
tradition of some thousands of years; it is the very orthodoxy of the
myriads who have lived and died there. There was a region once, in an
early age, lying upon the Eastern Sea, which is said at length to have
vomited out its inhabitants for their frightful iniquity. They, thus cast
forth, took ship, and passed over to the southern coast; and then,
gradually settling and spreading into the interior, they peopled the woody
plains and fertile slopes of Africa, and filled it with their cities.
Sicca is one of these set up in sin; and at the time of which we write
that sin was basking under the sun, and rioting and extending itself to
its amplest dimensions, like some glittering serpent or spotted pard of
the neighbourhood, without interposition from heaven or earth in
correction of so awful a degradation. In such scenes of unspeakable
pollution, our Christian forefathers perforce lived; through such a scene,
though not taking part in it, Agellius, blessed with a country home, is
unnecessarily passing.
He has reached the house, or rather the floor, to which he has been making
his way. It is at the back of the city, where the rock is steep; and it
looks out upon the plain and the mountain range to the north. Its inmates,
Aristo and Callista, are engaged in their ordinary work of moulding or
carving, painting or gilding the various articles which the temples or the
private shrines of the established religion required. Aristo has received
from Jucundus the overtures which Agellius had commissioned him to make,
and finds, as he anticipated, that they are no great news to his sister.
She perfectly understands what is going on, but does not care to speak
much upon it, till Agellius makes his appearance. As they sit at work,
Aristo speaks:—
“Agellius will make his appearance here this morning. I say, Callista,
what can he be coming for?”
“Why, if your news be true, that the Christians are coming into trouble,
of course he means to purchase, as a blessing on him, some of these bits
of gods.”
“You are sharp enough, my little sister,” answered Aristo, “to know
perfectly well who is the goddess he is desirous of purchasing.”
Callista laughed carelessly, but made no reply.
“Come, child,” Aristo continued, “don’t be cruel to him. Wreath a garland
for him by the time he comes. He’s well to do, and modest withal, and
needs encouragement.”
“He’s well enough,” said Callista.
“I say he’s a fellow too well off to be despised as a lover,” proceeded
her brother, “and it would be a merit with the gods to rid him of his
superstition.”
“Not much of a Christian,” she made answer, “if he is set upon me.”
“For whose sake has he been coming here so often, mine or yours,
Callista?”
“I am tired of such engagements,” she replied. She went on with her
painting, and several times seemed as if she would have spoken, but did
not. Then, without interrupting her work, she said calmly, “Time was, it
gratified my conceit and my feelings to have hangers on. Indeed, without
them, how should we have had means to come here? But there’s a weariness
in all things.”
“A weariness! Where is this bad humour to end?” cried Aristo; “it has been
a long fit; shake it off while you can, or it will be too much for you.
What can you mean? a weariness! You are over young to bid youth farewell.
Aching hearts for aching bones. So young and so perverse! We must take
things as the gods give them. You will ask for them in vain when you are
old. One day above, another day beneath; one while young, another while
old. Enjoy life while you have it in your hand.” He had said this as he
worked. Then he stopped, and turned round to her, with his graving-tool in
his hand. “Recollect old Lesbia, how she used to squeak out to me, with
her nodding head and trembling limbs”—here he mimicked the old crone—“ ‘My
boy, take your pleasure while you can. I can’t take pleasure—my day is
over; but I don’t reproach myself. I had a merry time of it while it
lasted. Time stops for no one, but I did my best; I don’t reproach
myself.’ There’s the true philosopher, though a slave; more outspoken than
Æsop, more practical than Epictetus.”
Callista began singing to herself:—
“I wander by that river’s brink
Which circles Pluto’s drear domain;
I feel the chill night breeze, and think
Of joys which ne’er shall be again.
“I count the weeds that fringe the shore,
Each sluggish wave that rolls and rolls;
I hear the ever-splashing oar
Of Charon, ferryman of souls.
“Heigho!” she continued, “little regret, but much dread. The young have to
fear more than the old have to mourn over. The future outweighs the past.
Life is not so sweet as death is bitter. It is hard to quit the light, the
light of heaven.”
“Callistidion!” he said, impatiently; “my girl, this is preposterous. How
long is this to go on? We must take you to Carthage; there is more trade
there, if we can get it; and it will be on the bright, far-resounding sea.
And I will turn rhetorician, and you shall feed my classes.”
“O beautiful, divine light,” she continued, “what a loss! O, to think that
one day I must lose you for ever! At home I used to lie awake at night
longing for the morning, and crying out for the god of day. It was like
choice wine to me, a cup of Chian, the first streaks of the Aurora, and I
could hardly bear his bright coming, when he came to me like Semele, for
rapture. How gloriously did he shoot over the hills! and then anon he
rested awhile on the snowy summit of Olympus, as in some luminous shrine,
gladdening the Phrygian plain. Fair, bright-haired god! thou art my
worship, if Callista worships aught: but somehow I worship nothing now. I
am weary.”
“Well,” said her brother in a soothing tone, “it is a change. That light,
elastic air, that transparent heaven, that fresh temperate breeze, that
majestic sea! Africa is not Greece; O, the difference! That’s it,
Callista; it is the _nostalgia_; you are home-sick.”
“It may be so,” she said; “I do not well know what I would have. Yes, the
poisonous dews, the heavy heat, the hideous beasts, the green
fever-gendering swamps. This vast thickly-wooded plain, like some
mysterious labyrinth, oppresses and disquiets me with its very richness.
The luxuriant foliage, the tall, rank plants, the deep, close lanes, I do
not see my way through them, and I pant for breath. I only breathe freely
on this hill. O, how unlike Greece, with the clear, soft, delicate
colouring of its mountains, and the pure azure or the purple of its
waters!”
“But, my dear Callista,” interrupted her brother, “recollect you are not
in those oppressive, gloomy forests, but in Sicca, and no one asks you to
penetrate them. And if you want mountains, I think those on the horizon
are bare enough.”
“And the race of man,” she continued, “is worse than all. Where is the
genius of our bright land? where its intelligence, playfulness, grace, and
noble bearing? Here hearts are as black as brows, and smiles as
treacherous as the adders of the wood. The natives are crafty and
remorseless; they never relax; they have no cheerfulness or mirth; their
very love is a furnace, and their sole ecstasy is revenge.”
“No country like home to any of us,” said Aristo; “yet here you are. Habit
would be a second nature if you were here long enough; your feelings would
become acclimated, and would find a new home. People get to like the
darkness of the extreme north in course of time. The painted Britons, the
Cimmerians, the Hyperboreans, are content never to see the sun at all,
which is your god. Here your own god reigns; why quarrel with him?”
“The sun of Greece is light,” answered Callista; “the sun of Africa is
fire. I am no fire-worshipper.”
“I suspect even Styx and Phlegethon are tolerable, at length,” said her
brother, “if Phlegethon and Styx there be, as the poets tell us.”
“The cold, foggy Styx is the north,” said Callista, “and the south is the
scorching, blasting Phlegethon, and Greece, clear, sweet, and sunny, is
the Elysian fields.” And she continued her improvisations:—
“Where are the islands of the blest?
They stud the Ægean sea;
And where the deep Elysian rest?
It haunts the vale where Peneus strong
Pours his incessant stream along,
While craggy ridge and mountain bare
Cut keenly through the liquid air,
And, in their own pure tints arrayed,
Scorn earth’s green robes which change and fade,
And stand in beauty undecayed,
Guards of the bold and free.”
“A lower flight, if you please, just now,” said Aristo, interrupting her.
“I do really wish a serious word with you about Agellius. He’s a fellow I
can’t help liking, in spite of his misanthropy. Let me plead his cause.
Like him or not yourself, still he has a full purse; and you will do a
service to yourself and to the gods of Greece, and to him too, if you will
smile on him. Smile on him at least for a time; we will go to Carthage
when you are tired. His looks have very little in them of a Christian
left; you may blow it away with your breath.”
“One might do worse than be a Christian,” she answered slowly, “if all is
true that I have heard of them.”
Aristo started up in irritation. “By all the gods of Olympus,” he said,
“this is intolerable! If a man wants a tormentor, I commend him to a girl
like you. What has ailed thee some time past, you silly child? What have I
done to you that you should have got so cross and contrary and so hard to
please?”
“I mean,” she said, “if I were a Christian, life would be more bearable.”
“Bearable!” he echoed; “bearable! ye gods! more bearable to have Styx and
Tartarus, the Furies and their snakes, in this world as well as in the
next? to have evil within and without, to hate one’s self and to be hated
of all men! to live the life of an ass, and to die the death of a dog!
Bearable! But hark! I hear Agellius’s step on the staircase. Callista,
dear Callista, be yourself. Listen to reason.”
But Callista would not listen to reason, if her brother was its
embodiment; but went on with her singing:—
“For what is Afric but the home
Of burning Phlegethon?
What the low beach and silent gloom,
And chilling mists of that dull river,
Along whose bank the thin ghosts shiver,
The thin, wan ghosts that once were men,
But Tauris, isle of moor and fen;
Or, dimly traced by seaman’s ken,
The pale-cliffed Albion?”
Here she stopped, looked down, and busied herself with her work.
CHAPTER XI.
CALLISTA’S PREACHING, AND WHAT CAME OF IT.
It is undeniably a solemn moment, under any circumstances, and requires a
strong heart, when any one deliberately surrenders himself, soul and body,
to the keeping of another while life shall last; and this, or something
like this, reserving the supreme claim of duty to the Creator, is the
matrimonial contract. In individual cases it may be made without thought
or distress, but surveyed objectively, and as carried out into a
sufficient range of instances, it is so tremendous an undertaking that
nature seems to sink under its responsibilities. When the Christian binds
himself by vows to a religious life, he makes a surrender to Him who is
all-perfect, and whom he may unreservedly trust. Moreover, looking at that
surrender on its human side, he has the safeguard of distinct _provisos_
and regulations, and of the principles of theology, to secure him against
tyranny on the part of his superiors. But what shall be his encouragement
to make himself over, without condition or stipulation, as an absolute
property, to a fallible being, and that not for a season, but for life?
The mind shrinks from such a sacrifice, and demands that, as religion
enjoins it, religion should sanction and bless it. It instinctively
desires that either the bond should be dissoluble, or that the subjects of
it should be sacramentally strengthened to maintain it. “So help me God,”
the formula of every oath, is emphatically necessary here.
But Agellius is contemplating a superhuman engagement without superhuman
assistance; and that in a state of society in which public opinion, which
in some sense compensates for the absence of religion, supplied human
motives, not for, but against keeping it, and with one who had given no
indication that she understood what marriage meant. No wonder then, that,
in spite of his simplicity, his sanguine temperament, and his delusion,
the more he thought of the step he had taken, the more unsatisfactory he
found it, and the nearer he grew to the time when he must open the subject
with Aristo, the less he felt able to do so. In consequence he was in a
distress of mind, as he ascended the staircase which led to his friend’s
lodging, to which his anxiety, as he mounted the hill on the other side of
the city, was tranquillity itself; and, except that he was coming by
engagement, he would have turned back, and for the time at least have put
the whole subject from his thoughts. Yet even then, as often as Callista
rose in his mind’s eye, his scruples and misgivings vanished before the
beauty of that image, as mists before the sun; and when he actually stood
in her sweet presence, it seemed as if some secret emanation from her
flowed in upon his heart, and he stood breathless and giddy under the
intensity of the fascination.
However, the reader must not suppose that in the third century of our era
such negotiations as that which now seems to be on the point of coming off
between Callista and Agellius, were embellished with those transcendental
sentiments and that magnificent ceremonial with which chivalry has
invested them in these latter ages. There was little occasion then for
fine speaking or exquisite deportment; and if there had been, we, who are
the narrators of these hitherto unrecorded transactions, should have been
utterly unable to do justice to them. At that time of day the Christian
had too much simplicity, the heathen too little of real delicacy, to
indulge in the sublimities of modern love-making, at least as it is found
in novels; and in the case before us both gentleman and lady will be
thought, we consider, sadly matter-of-fact, or rather semi-barbarous, by
the votaries of what is just now called European civilization.
On Agellius’s entering the room, Aristo was pacing to and fro in some
discomposure; however, he ran up to his friend, embraced him, and, looking
at him with significance, congratulated him on his good looks. “There is
more fire in your eye,” he said, “dear Agellius, and more eloquence in the
turn of your lip, than I have ever yet seen. A new spirit is in you. So
you are determined to come out of your solitude? That you should have been
able to exist in it so long is the wonderment to me.”
Agellius had recovered himself, yet he dared not look again on Callista.
“Do not jest, Aristo,” he said; “I am come, as you know, to talk to you
about your sister. I have brought her a present of flowers; they are my
best present, or rather not mine, but the birth of the opening year, as
fair and fragrant as herself.”
“We will offer them to our Pallas Athene,” said his friend, “to whom we
artists are especially devout.” And he would have led Agellius on, and
made him place them in her niche in the opposite wall.
“I am more serious than you are,” said Agellius; “and I have brought the
best my garden contains as an offering to your sister. _She_ will not
think I bring them for any other purpose. Where are you going?” he
continued, as he saw his friend take down his broad _petasus_.
“Why,” answered Aristo, “since I am so poor an interpreter of your
meaning, you can dispense with me altogether. I will leave you to speak
for yourself, and meanwhile will go and see what old Dromo has to tell,
before the sun is too high in the heavens.”
Saying this, with a half-imploring, half-satirical look at his sister, he
set off to the barber’s at the Forum.
Agellius took up the flowers, and laid them on the table before her, as
she sat at work. “Do you accept my flowers, Callista?” he asked.
“Fair and fragrant, like myself, are they?” she made reply. “Give them to
me.” She took them, and bent over them. “The blushing rose,” she said,
gravely, “the stately lily, the royal carnation, the golden moly, the
purple amaranth, the green bryon, the diosanthos, the sertula, the sweet
modest saliunca, fit emblems of Callista. Well, in a few hours they will
have faded; yes, they will get more and more like her.”
She paused and looked him steadily in the face, and then continued:
“Agellius, I once had a slave who belonged to your religion. She had been
born in a Christian family, and came into my possession on her master’s
death. She was unlike any one I have seen before or since; she cared for
nothing, yet was not morose or peevish or hard-hearted. She died young in
my service. Shortly before her end she had a dream. She saw a company of
bright shades, clothed in white, like the hours which circle round the god
of day. They were crowned with flowers, and they said to each other,
‘_She_ ought to have a token too.’ So they took her hand, and led her to a
most beautiful lady, as stately as Juno and as sweet as Ariadne, so
radiant in countenance that they themselves suddenly looked like
Ethiopians by the side of her. She, too, was crowned with flowers, and
these so dazzling that they might be the stars of heaven or the gems of
Asia for what Chione could tell. And that fair goddess (angel you call
her) said, ‘My dear, here is something for you from my Son. He sends you
by me a red rose for your love, a white lily for your chastity, purple
violets to strew your grave, and green palms to flourish over it.’ Is this
the reason why you give me flowers, Agellius, that I may rank with Chione?
and is this their interpretation?”
“Callista,” he answered, “it is my heart’s most fervent wish, it is my
mind’s vivid anticipation, that the day may come when you will receive
such a crown, nay, a brighter one.”
“And you are come, of course, to philosophize to me, and to put me in the
way of dying like Chione,” she made answer. “I implore your pardon. You
are offering me flowers, it seems, not for a bridal wreath, but for a
funeral urn.”
“Is it wonderful,” said Agellius, “that the two wishes should have gone
together in my heart; and that while I trusted and prayed that you might
have the same Master in heaven as I have myself, I also hoped you would
have the same service, the same aims, the same home upon earth?”
“And that you should speak one word for your Master and two for yourself!”
she retorted.
“It has been by feeling how much you could be to me,” he answered, “that I
have been led to think how much my Master may be doing for you already,
and how much in time to come you might do for Him. Callista, do not urge
me with your Greek subtlety, or expect me to analyze my feelings more
precisely than I have the ability to do. May I calmly tell you the state
of my mind, as I do know it, and will you patiently listen?”
She signified her willingness, and he continued—“This only I know,” he
said, “what I have experienced ever since I first heard you converse, that
there is between you and me a unity of thought so strange that I should
have deemed it could not have been, before I found it actually to exist,
between any two persons whatever; and which, widely as we are separated in
opinion and habit, and differently as we have been brought up, is to me
inexplicable. I find it difficult to explain what I mean; we disagree
certainly on the most important subjects, yet there is an unaccountable
correspondence in the views we take of things, in our impressions, in the
line in which our minds move, and the issues to which they come, in our
judgment of what is great and little, and the manner in which objects
affect our feelings. When I speak to my uncle, when I speak to your
brother, I do not understand them, nor they me. We are moving in different
spheres, and I am solitary, however much they talk. But to my
astonishment, I find between you and me one language. Is it wonderful
that, in proportion to my astonishment, I am led to refer it to one cause,
and think that one Master Hand must have engraven those lines on the soul
of each of us? Is it wonderful that I should fancy that He who has made us
alike has made us for each other, and that the very same persuasives by
which I bring you to cast your eyes on me, may draw you also to cast
yourself in adoration at the feet of my Master?”
For an instant tears seemed about to start from Callista’s eyes, but she
repressed the emotion, if it were such, and answered with impetuosity,
“Your Master! who is your Master? what know I of your Master? what have
you ever told me of your Master? I suppose it is an esoteric doctrine
which I am not worthy to know; but so it is, here you have been again and
again, and talked freely of many things, yet I am in as much darkness
about your Master as if I had never seen you. I know He died; I know too
that Christians say He lives. In some fortunate island, I suppose; for,
when I have asked, you have got rid of the subject as best you could. You
have talked about your law and your various duties, and what you consider
right, and what is forbidden, and of some of the old writers of your sect,
and of the Jews before them; but if, as you imply, my wants and
aspirations are the same as yours, what have you done towards satisfying
them? what have you done for that Master towards whom you now propose to
lead me? No!” she continued, starting up, “you have watched those wants
and aspirations for yourself, not for Him; you have taken interest in
them, you have cherished them, as if you were the author, you the object
of them. You profess to believe in One True God, and to reject every
other; and now you are implying that the Hand, the Shadow of that God is
on my mind and heart. Who is this God? where? how? in what? O Agellius,
you have stood in the way of Him, ready to speak for yourself, using Him
as a means to an end.”
“O Callista,” said Agellius, in an agitated voice, when he could speak,
“do my ears hear aright? do you really wish to be taught who the true God
is?”
“No, mistake me not,” she cried passionately, “I have no such wish. I
could not be of your religion. Ye Gods! how have I been deceived! I
thought every Christian was like Chione. I thought there could not be a
cold Christian. Chione spoke as if a Christian’s first thoughts were
goodwill to others; as if his state were of such blessedness, that his
dearest heart’s wish was to bring others into it. Here is a man who, so
far from feeling himself blest, thinks I can bless him! comes to me—me,
Callista, a herb of the field, a poor weed, exposed to every wind of
heaven, and shrivelling before the fierce sun—to me he comes to repose his
heart upon. But as for any blessedness he has to show me, why, since he
does not feel any himself, no wonder he has none to give away. I thought a
Christian was superior to time and place; but all is hollow. Alas, alas, I
am young in life to feel the force of that saying, with which sages go out
of it, ‘Vanity and hollowness!’ Agellius, when I first heard you were a
Christian, how my heart beat! I thought of her who was gone; and at first
I thought I saw her in you, as if there had been some magical sympathy
between you and her; and I hoped that from you I might have learned more
of that strange strength which my nature needs, and which she told me she
possessed. Your words, your manner, your looks were altogether different
from others who came near me. But so it was; you came, and you went, and
came again; I thought it reserve, I thought it timidity, I thought it the
caution of a persecuted sect; but O, my disappointment, when first I saw
in you indications that you were thinking of me only as others think, and
felt towards me as others may feel; that you were aiming at me, not at
your God; that you had much to tell of yourself, but nothing of Him! Time
was I might have been led to worship you, Agellius; you have hindered it
by worshipping _me_.”
It is not often, we suppose, that such deep offence is given to a lady by
the sort of admiration of which Agellius had been guilty in the case of
Callista; however, startled as he might be, and startled and stung he was,
there was too much earnestness in her distress, too much of truth in her
representations, too much which came home to his heart and conscience, to
allow of his being affronted or irritated. She had but supplied the true
interpretation of the misgiving which had haunted him that morning, from
the time he set out till the moment of his entering the room. Jucundus
some days back had readily acquiesced in his assurance that he was not
inconsistent; but Callista had not been so indulgent, though really more
merciful. There was a pause in the conversation, or rather in her
outpouring; each had bitter thoughts, and silently devoured them. At
length, she began again:—
“So the religion of Chione is a dream; now for four years I had hoped it
was a reality. All things again are vanity; I had hoped there was
something somewhere more than I could see; but there is nothing. Here am I
a living, breathing woman, with an over-flowing heart, with keen
affections, with a yearning after some object which may possess me. I
cannot exist without something to rest upon. I cannot fall back upon that
drear, forlorn state, which philosophers call wisdom, and moralists call
virtue. I cannot enrol myself a votary of that cold Moon, whose arrows do
but freeze me. I cannot sympathize in that majestic band of sisters whom
Rome has placed under the tutelage of Vesta. I must have something to
love; love is my life. Why do you come to me, Agellius, with your
every-day gallantry. Can you compete with the noble Grecian forms which
have passed before my eyes? Is your voice more manly, are its tones more
eloquent, than those which have thrilled through my ears since I ceased to
be a child? Can you add perfume to the feast by your wit, or pour sunshine
over grot and rushing stream by your smile? _What_ can you give me? There
was one thing which I thought you _could_ have given me, better than
anything else; but it is a shadow. You have nothing to give. You have
thrown me back upon my dreary, dismal self, and the deep wounds of my
memory.... Poor, poor Agellius! but it was not his fault, it could not be
helped,” she continued, as if in thought; “it could not be helped; for, if
he had nothing to give, how could he give it? After all, he wanted
something to love, just as I did; and he could find nothing better than
me.... And they thought to persuade her to spend herself upon him, as she
had spent herself upon others. Yes, it was Jucundus and Aristo—my brother,
even my own brother. They thought not of _me_.” Here her tears gushed out
violently, and she abandoned herself to a burst of emotion. “They were
thinking of _him_. I had hoped he could lead me to what was higher; but
woe, woe!” she cried, wringing her hands, “they thought I was only fit to
bring him low. Well; after all, _is_ Callista really good for much more
than the work they have set her to do?”
She was absorbed in her own misery in an intense sense of degradation, in
a keen consciousness of the bondage of nature, in a despair of ever
finding what alone could give meaning to her existence, and an object to
her intellect and affections. And Agellius on the other hand, what
surprise, remorse, and humiliation came upon him! It was a strange
contrast, the complaint of nature unregenerate on the one hand, the
self-reproach of nature regenerate and lapsing on the other. At last he
spoke, and they were his last words.
“Callista,” he said, “whatever injury I may have unwillingly inflicted
upon you, you at least have returned me good for evil, and have made
yourself my benefactress. Certainly, I now know myself better than I did;
and He who has made use of you as His instrument of mercy towards me, will
not forget to reward you tenfold. One word will I say for myself; nay, not
for myself, but for my Master. Do not for an instant suppose that what you
thought of the Christian religion is not true. It reveals a present God,
who satisfies every affection of the heart, yet keeps it pure. I serve a
Master,” he continued, blushing from modesty and earnestness as he spoke,
“I serve a Master whose love is stronger than created love. God help my
inconsistency! but I never meant to love you as I love Him. You are
destined for His love. I commit you to Him, your true Lord, whom I never
ought to have rivalled, for whom I ought simply to have pleaded. Though I
am not worthy to approach you, I shall trace you at a distance, who knows
where? perhaps even to the prison and to the arena of those who confess
the Saviour of men, and dare to suffer and die for His name. And now,
farewell; to His keeping and that of His holy martyrs I commit you.”
He did not trust himself to look at her as he turned to the door, and left
the room.
CHAPTER XII.
A DEATH.
The first stages of repentance are but a fever, in which there is
restlessness and thirst, hot and cold fits, vague, dreary dreams, long
darkness which seems destined never to have a morning, effort without
result, and collapse without reaction. These symptoms had already
manifested themselves in Agellius; he spoke calmly to Callista, and
sustained himself by the claims of the moment; but no sooner had he left
the room and was thrown upon himself, than his self-possession left him,
and he fell into an agony, or rather anarchy of tumultuous feelings. Then
rose up before his mind a hundred evil spectres, not less scaring and more
real than the dreams of the delirious. He thought of the singular favour
which had been shown him in his reception into the Christian fold, and
that at so early a date; of the myriads all around who continued in
heathenism as they had been born, and of his utter insensibility to his
own privilege. He felt how much would be required of him, and how little
hitherto had been forthcoming. He thought of the parable of the barren
fig-tree, and the question was whispered in his ear whether it would not
be fulfilled in him. He asked himself in what his heart and his conduct
differed from the condition of a fairly virtuous heathen. And then he
thought of Callista in contrast with himself, as having done more with the
mite which she possessed than he had done with many pounds. He felt that
Tyre and Sidon were rising up against him in her person; or rather how the
saying seemed about to be verified in her, that strangers should sit down
in the kingdom from far countries, while those who were the heirs should
be thrust out. He had been rebuked by one to whom he rather ought to have
brought self-knowledge and compunction, and she was sensitively alive to
his want of charity. She had felt bitterly that she was left in ignorance
and sin by one who had what she had not. She had accused him of being
zealous enough to win her to himself, when he had shown no zeal at all to
win her to her Maker. If she was brought to the truth at length, there
would be no thanks to him for the happy change; yet on the other hand,
though he had predicted it, alas! was it likely that it would be granted?
Had she not had her opportunity, which was lost because he had not
improved it? Yes, she had with a deliberate mind and in set words put
aside and taken leave of that which she once desired and hoped might have
been her own, sorrowfully indeed, but peremptorily, as firmly persisting
in rejecting it, as she might have persisted in maintaining it; and, if
she died in infidelity, horrible thought! would not the burden lie on him,
and was this to be the token of the love which he pretended to entertain
for her?
What was he living for? what was the work he had set himself to do? Did he
live to plant flowers, or to rear fruit, to maintain himself and to make
money? Was that a time to pride himself on vineyards and oliveyards, when,
like Eliseus, he was one among myriads who were in unbelief? Ah, the
difference between a saint and him? Of what good was he on earth; why
should not he die? why so chary of his life? why preserve his wretched
life at all? Could he not do
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