The Gladiators. A Tale of Rome and Judæa
by G. J. Whyte-Melville · English · Gutenberg #47822 · 1,066,563 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Gladiators. A Tale of Rome and Judæa
Author: G. J. Whyte-Melville
Release date: December 30, 2014 [eBook #47822]
Most recently updated: June 15, 2020
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/47822
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GLADIATORS. A TALE OF ROME AND JUDÆA ***
_Of this Edition of Whyte‐Melville’s Works One Thousand and Fifty
Copies only have been printed by Morrison and Gibb Limited,
Edinburgh, who have distributed the type_
THE WORKS OF
G. J. WHYTE‐MELVILLE
EDITED BY
SIR HERBERT MAXWELL, BART.
VOLUME XXII.
THE GLADIATORS
[Illustration: Monogram]
[Illustration: ‘The Briton watching his opportunity seized the bit in
his powerful grasp.’]
THE GLADIATORS
A TALE OF ROME AND JUDÆA
BY
G. J. WHYTE‐MELVILLE
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY HARRINGTON BIRD
LONDON
W. THACKER & CO., 2 CREED LANE, E.C.
CALCUTTA: THACKER, SPINK & CO.
1901
_All rights reserved_
CONTENTS
EROS
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE IVORY GATE 1
II. THE MARBLE PORCH 6
III. HERMES 15
IV. APHRODITÉ 20
V. ROME 28
VI. THE WORSHIP OF ISIS 36
VII. TRUTH 46
VIII. THE JEW 55
IX. THE ROMAN 61
X. A TRIBUNE OF THE LEGIONS 71
XI. STOLEN WATERS 81
XII. MYRRHINA 86
XIII. NOLENS—VOLENS 95
XIV. CÆSAR 100
XV. RED FALERNIAN 108
XVI. THE TRAINING‐SCHOOL 117
XVII. A VEILED HEART 125
XVIII. WINGED WORDS 135
XIX. THE ARENA 144
XX. THE TRIDENT AND THE NET 155
ANTEROS
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE LISTENING SLAVE 163
II. ATTACK AND DEFENCE 172
III. “FURENS QUID FŒMINA” 179
IV. THE LOVING CUP 186
V. SURGIT AMARI 194
VI. DEAD LEAVES 200
VII. “HABET!” 209
VIII. TOO LATE 214
IX. THE LURE 221
X. FROM SCYLLA TO CHARYBDIS 229
XI. THE RULES OF THE FAMILY 238
XII. A MASTER OF FENCE 245
XIII. THE ESQUILINE 252
XIV. THE CHURCH 260
XV. REDIVIVUS 269
XVI. “MORITURI” 280
XVII. THE GERMAN GUARD 286
XVIII. THE BUSINESS OF CÆSAR 293
XIX. AT BAY 300
XX. THE FAIR HAVEN 307
MOIRA
CHAP. PAGE
I. A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF 311
II. THE LION OF JUDAH 321
III. THE WISDOM OF THE SERPENT 330
IV. THE MASTERS OF THE WORLD 338
V. GLAD TIDINGS 345
VI. WINE ON THE LEES 352
VII. THE ATTAINDER 360
VIII. THE SANHEDRIM 368
IX. THE PAVED HALL 376
X. A ZEALOT OF THE ZEALOTS 384
XI. THE DOOMED CITY 392
XII. DESOLATION 398
XIII. THE LEGION OF THE LOST 406
XIV. FAITH 416
XV. FANATICISM 423
XVI. DAWN 427
XVII. THE FIRST STONE 435
XVIII. THE COST OF CONQUEST 440
XIX. THE GATHERING OF THE EAGLES 446
XX. THE VICTORY 453
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
“THE BRITON, WATCHING HIS OPPORTUNITY, SEIZED THE BIT IN _Coloured
HIS POWERFUL GRASP” Frontispiece_
“‘HAVE AT HIM! GOOD DOGS!’” 2
“LICINIUS HOLDS THE BRITISH MAIDEN TO HIS BREAST” 63
“WITH A SHORT LABOURING TROT HE MOVES ACROSS THE ARENA” 150
“‘YOU ARE SAFE,’ SHE SAID” 197
“SHE WAS ACCOSTED BY A DARK SALLOW OLD WOMAN” 221
“HER EYES GREW DIM, HER SENSES SEEMED FAILING” 255
“‘THEIR POINTS ARE POISONED,’ HE SHOUTED” 304
“SHE WALKED BOLDLY UP TO HIM” 407
“SANK DOWN HELPLESS ON THE PAVEMENT AT HIS FEET” 439
THE GLADIATORS
THE GLADIATORS
*EROS*
CHAPTER I
THE IVORY GATE
[Initial D]
Dark and stern, in their weird beauty, lower the sad brows of the Queen of
Hell. Dear to her are the pomp and power, the shadowy vastness, and the
terrible splendour of the nether world. Dear to her the pride of her
unbending consort; and doubly dear the wide imperial sway, that rules the
immortal destinies of souls. But dearer far than these—dearer than
flashing crown and fiery sceptre, and throne of blazing gold—are the
memories that glimmer bright as sunbeams athwart those vistas of gloomy
grandeur, and seem to fan her weary spirit like a fresh breeze from the
realms of upper earth. She has not forgotten, she never can forget, the
dewy flowers, the blooming fragrance of lavish Sicily, nor the sparkling
sea, and the summer haze, and the golden harvests that wave and whisper in
the garden and granary of the world. Then a sad smile steals over the
haughty face; the stern beauty softens in the gleam, and, for a while, the
daughter of Ceres is a laughing girl once more.
So the Ivory Gate swings back, and gentle doves come forth on snowy wings,
flying upwards through the gloom, to bear balm and consolation to the
weary and the wounded and the lost. Now this was the dream the birds of
Peace brought with them, to soothe the broken spirit of a sleeping slave.
The old boar has turned to bay at last. Long and severe has been the
chase; through many an echoing woodland, down many a sunny glade, by copse
and dingle, rock and cave, through splashing stream, and deep, dank,
quivering morass, the large rough hounds have tracked him, unerring and
pitiless, till they have set him up here, against the trunk of the old
oak‐tree, and he has turned—a true British denizen of the waste—to sell
his life dearly, and fight unconquered to the last. His small eye glows
like a burning coal; the stiff bristles are up along his huge black body,
flecked with white froth that he churns and throws about him, as he offers
those curved and ripping tusks, now to one, now to another of his
crowding, baying, leaping foes.
“Have at him! Good dogs!” shouts the hunter, running in with a short,
broad‐bladed boar‐spear in his hand. Breathless is he, and wearied with
the long miles of tangled forests he has traversed; but his heart is glad
within him, and his blood tingles with a strange wild thrill of triumph
known only to the votaries of the chase.
[Illustration: “Have at him good dogs”]
Gelert is down, torn and mangled from flank to dewlap; Luath has the wild
swine by the throat; and a foot of gleaming steel, driven home by a young,
powerful arm, has entered behind the neck and pierces downwards to the
very brisket. The shaft of the spear snaps short across, as the thick
unwieldy body turns slowly over, and the boar shivers out his life on the
smooth sward, soft and green as velvet, that exists nowhere but in
Britain.
The dream changes. The boar has disappeared, and the woodland gives place
to a fair and smiling plain. Vast herds of shaggy red cattle are browsing
contentedly, with their wide‐horned heads to the breeze; flocks of sheep
dot the green undulating pastures, that stretch away towards the sea. A
gull turns its white wing against the clear blue sky; there is a hum of
insects in the air, mingled with the barking of dogs, the lowing of kine,
the laughter of women, and other sounds of peace, abundance, and content.
A child is playing round its mother’s knee—a child with frank bold brow
and golden curls, and large blue fearless eyes, sturdy of limb, quick of
gesture, fond, imperious, and wilful. The mother, a tall woman, with a
beautiful but mournful face, is gazing steadfastly at the sea, and seems
unconscious of her boy’s caresses, who is fondling and kissing the white
hand he holds in both his own. Her large shapely figure is draped in snowy
robes that trail upon the ground, and massive ornaments of gold encircle
arms and ankles. At intervals she looks fondly down upon the child; but
ever her face resumes its wistful expression, as she fixes her eyes again
upon the sea. There is nothing of actual sorrow in that steadfast
gaze—still less of impatience, or anger, or discontent. Memory is the
prevailing sentiment portrayed—memory, tender, absorbing, irresistible,
without a ray of hope, but without a shadow of self‐reproach. There is a
statue of Mnemosyne at one of the entrances to the Forum that carries on
its marble brow the same crushing weight of thought; that wears on its
delicate features, graven into the saddest of beauty by the Athenian’s
chisel, just such a weary and despondent look. Where can the British child
have seen those tasteful spoils of Greece that deck her imperial mistress?
And yet he thinks of that statue as he looks up in his mother’s face. But
the fair tall woman shivers and draws her robe closer about her, and
taking the child in her arms, nestles his head against her bosom and
covers him over with her draperies, for the wind blows moist and chill,
the summer air is white with driving mist, huge shapeless forms loom
through the haze, and the busy sounds of life and laughter have subsided
into the stillness of a vast and dreary plain.
The child and its mother have disappeared, but a tall, strong youth, just
entering upon manhood, with the same blue eyes and fearless brow, is
present in their stead. He is armed for the first time with the weapons of
a warrior. He has seen blows struck in anger now, and fronted the legions
as they advanced, and waged his fearless unskilful valour against the
courage, and the tactics, and the discipline of Rome. So he is invested
with sword, and helm, and target, and takes his place, not without boyish
pride, amongst the young warriors who encircle the hallowed spot where the
Druids celebrate their solemn and mysterious rites.
The mist comes thicker still, driving over the plain in waves of vapour,
that impart a ghostly air of motion to the stones that tower erect around
the mystic circle. Grey, moss‐grown, and unhewn, hand of man seems never
to have desecrated those mighty blocks of granite, standing there,
changeless and awful, like types of eternity. Dim and indistinct are they
as the worship they guard. Hard and stern as the pitiless faith of
sacrifice, vengeance, and oblation, inculcated at their base. A wild low
chant comes wailing on the breeze, and through the gathering mist a long
line of white‐robed priests winds slowly into the circle. Stern and gloomy
are they of aspect, lofty of stature, and large of limb, with long grey
beards and tresses waving in the wind. Each wears a crown of oak‐leaves
round his head; each grasps a wand covered with ivy in his hand. The youth
cannot resist an exclamation of surprise. There is desecration in his
thought, there is profanity in his words. Louder and louder swells the
chant. Closer and closer still contracts the circle. The white‐robed
priests are hemming him in to the very centre of the mystic ring, and see!
the sacrificial knife is already bared and whetted, and flourished in the
air by a long brawny arm. The young warrior strives to fly. Horror! his
feet refuse to stir, his hands cleave powerless to his sides. He seems
turning to stone. A vague fear paralyses him that he too will become one
of those granite masses to stand there motionless during eternity. His
heart stops beating within him, and the transformation seems about to be
completed, when lo! a warlike peal of trumpets breaks the spell, and he
shakes his spear aloft and leaps gladly from the earth, exulting in the
sense of life and motion once more.
Again the dream changes. Frenzied priest and Druidical stone have vanished
like the mist that encircled them. It is a beautiful balmy night in June.
The woods are black and silver in the moonlight. Not a breath of air stirs
the topmost twigs of the lofty elm cut clear and distinct against the sky.
Not a ripple blurs the surface of the lake, spread out and gleaming like a
sheet of polished steel. The bittern calls at intervals from the adjacent
marsh, and the nightingale carols in the copse. All is peaceful and
beautiful, and suggestive of enjoyment or repose. Yet here, lying close
amongst the foxglove and the fern, long lines of white‐robed warriors are
waiting but the signal for assault. And yonder, where the earthwork rises
dark and level against the sky, paces to and fro a high‐crested sentinel,
watching over the safety of the eagles, with the calm and ceaseless
vigilance of that discipline which has made the legionaries masters of the
world.
Once more the trumpets peal; the only sound to be heard in that array of
tents, drawn up with such order and precision, behind the works, except
the footfall of the Roman guard, firm and regular, as it relieves the
previous watch. In a short space that duty will be performed; and then, if
ever, must the attack be made with any probability of success. Youth is
impatient of delay—the young warrior’s pulse beats audibly, and he feels
the edge of his blade and the point of his short‐handled javelin, with an
intensity of longing that is absolutely painful. At length the word is
passed from rank to rank. Like the crest of a sea‐wave breaking into foam,
rises that wavering line of white, rolling its length out in the
moonlight, as man after man springs erect at the touch of his comrade; and
then a roar of voices, a rush of feet, and the wave dashes up and breaks
against the steady solid resistance of the embankment. But discipline is
not to be caught thus napping. Ere the echo of their trumpets has died out
among the distant hills, the legionaries stand to their arms throughout
the camp. Already the rampart gleams and bristles with shield and helmet,
javelin, sword, and spear. Already the eagle is awake and defiant;
unruffled, indeed, in plumage, but with beak and talons bare and whetted
for defence. The tall centurions marshal their men in line even and
regular, as though about to defile by the throne of Cæsar, rather than to
repel the attack of a wild barbarian foe. The tribunes, with their golden
crests, take up their appointed posts in the four corners of the camp;
while the prætor himself gives his orders calm and unmoved from the
centre.
Over the roar of the swarming Britons sounds the clear trumpet‐note
pealing out its directions, concise and intelligible as a living voice,
and heard by the combatants far and wide, inspiring courage and
confidence, and order in the confusion. Brandishing their long swords, the
white‐clad warriors of Britain rush tumultuously to the attack. Already,
they have filled the ditch and scaled the earthwork; but once and again
they recoil from the steady front and rigid discipline of the invader,
while the short stabbing sword of the Roman soldier, covered as he is by
his ample shield, does fearful execution at close quarters. But still
fresh assailants pour in, and the camp is carried and overrun. The young
warrior rushes exulting to and fro, and the enemy falls in heaps before
him. Such moments are worth whole years of peaceful life. He has reached
the prætorium. He is close beneath the eagles, and he leaps wildly at them
to bring them off in triumph as trophies of his victory. But a grim
centurion strikes him to the earth. Wounded, faint, and bleeding, he is
carried away by his comrades, the shaft of the Roman standard in his hand.
They bear him to a war‐chariot, they lash the wild galloping steeds, the
roll of the wheels thunders in his ears as they dash tumultuously across
the plain, and then ... the gentle mission is fulfilled, the doves fly
down again to Proserpine, and the young, joyous, triumphant warrior of
Britain wakes up a Roman slave.
CHAPTER II
THE MARBLE PORCH
It was the sound of a chariot, truly enough, that roused the dreamer from
his slumbers; but how different the scene on which his drowsy eyes
unclosed, from that which fancy had conjured up in the shadowy realms of
sleep!
A beautiful portico, supported on slender columns of smooth white marble,
protected him from the rays of the morning sun, already pouring down with
the intensity of Italian heat. Garlands of leaves and flowers, cool and
fresh in their contrast with the snowy surface of these dainty pillars,
were wreathed around their stems, and twined amongst the delicate carving
of their Corinthian capitals. Large stone vases, urn‐shaped and massive,
stood in long array at stated intervals, bearing the orange‐tree, the
myrtle, and other dark‐green flowering shrubs, which formed a fair
perspective of retirement and repose. Shapely statues filled the niches in
the wall, or stood out more prominently in the vacant spaces of the
colonnade. Here cowered a marble Venus, in the shamefaced consciousness of
unequalled beauty; there stood forth a bright Apollo, exulting in the
perfection of godlike symmetry and grace. Rome could not finger the chisel
like her instructress Greece, the mother of the Arts, but the hand that
firmly grasps the sword need never want for anything skill produces, or
genius creates, or gold can buy; so it is no marvel that the masterpieces
and treasures of the nations she subdued found their way to the Imperial
City, mistress of the world. Even where the sleeper lay reclined upon a
couch of curiously‐carved wood from the forests that clothe Mount
Hymettus, an owl so beautifully chiseled that its very breast‐plumage
seemed to ruffle in the breeze, looked down upon him from a niche where it
had been placed at a cost that might have bought a dozen such human
chattels as himself; for it had been brought from Athens as the most
successful effort of a sculptor, who had devoted it to the honour of
Minerva in his zeal. Refinement, luxury, nay, profusion, reigned paramount
even here outside the sumptuous dwelling of a Roman lady: and the very
ground in her porch over which she was borne, for she seldom touched it
with her feet, was fresh swept and sanded as often as it had been
disturbed by the tread of her litter‐bearers, or the wheels of her
chariot.
Many a time was this ceremony performed in the twenty‐four hours; for
Valeria was a woman of noble rank, great possessions, and the highest
fashion. Not a vanity of her sex, not a folly was there of her class, in
which she scrupled to indulge; and then, as now, ladies were prone to rush
into extremes, and frivolity, when it took the garb of a female, assumed
preposterous dimensions, and a thirst for amusement, incompatible with
reason or self‐control.
There is always a certain hush, and, as it were, a pompous stillness,
about the houses of the great, even long after inferior mortals are astir
in pursuit of their pleasure or their business. To‐day was Valeria’s
birthday, and as such was duly observed by the hanging of garlands on the
pillars of her porch; but after the completion of this graceful ceremony,
silence seemed to have sunk once more upon the household, and the slave
whose dream we have recorded, coming into her gates with an offering from
his lord, and finding no domestics in the way, had sat him down to wait in
the grateful shade, and, overcome with heat, might have slept on till noon
had he not been roused by the grinding chariot‐wheels, which mingled so
confusedly with his dream.
It was no plebeian vehicle that now rolled into the colonnade, driven at a
furious pace, and stopping so abruptly as to create considerable confusion
and insubordination amongst the noble animals that drew it. The car,
mounted on two wheels, was constructed of a highly‐polished wood, cut from
the wild fig‐tree, elaborately inlaid with ivory and gold; the very spokes
and felloes of the wheels were carved in patterns of vine‐leaves and
flowers, whilst the extremities of the pole, the axle, and the yoke, were
wrought into exquisite representations of the wolf’s head, an animal, from
historical reasons, ever dear to the fancy of the Roman. There was but one
person besides the driver in the carriage, and so light a draught might
indeed command any rate of speed, when whirled along by four such horses
as now plunged and reared and bit each other’s crests in the portico of
Valeria’s mansion. These were of a milky white, with dark muzzles, and a
bluish tinge under the coat, denoting its soft texture, and the Eastern
origin of the animals. Somewhat thick of neck and shoulders, with
semicircular jowl, it was the broad and tapering head, the small quivering
ear, the wide red nostril, that demonstrated the purity of their blood,
and argued extraordinary powers of speed and endurance; while their short,
round backs, prominent muscles, flat legs, and dainty feet, promised an
amount of strength and activity only to be attained by the production of
perfect symmetry. These beautiful animals were harnessed four abreast—the
inner pair, somewhat in the fashion of our modern curricle, being yoked to
the pole, of which the very fastening‐pins were steel overlaid with gold,
whilst the outer horses, drawing only from a trace attached respectively
on the inner side of each to the axle of the chariot, were free to wheel
their quarters outwards in every direction, and kick to their heart’s
content—a liberty of which, in the present instance, they seemed well
disposed to avail themselves.
The slave started to his feet as the nearest horse winced and swerved
aside from his unexpected figure, snorting the while in mingled wantonness
and fear. The axle grazed his tunic while it passed, and the driver,
irritated at his horses’ unsteadiness, or perhaps in the mere insolence of
a great man’s favourite, struck at him heavily with his whip as he went
by. The Briton’s blood boiled at the indignity; but his sinewy arm was up
like lightning to parry the blow, and as the lash curled round his wrist
he drew the weapon quickly from the driver’s hand, and would have returned
the insult with interest, had he not been deterred from his purpose by the
youthful, effeminate appearance of the aggressor.
“I cannot strike a girl!” exclaimed the slave contemptuously, throwing the
whip at the same time into the floor of the chariot, where it lit at the
feet of the other occupant, a sumptuously‐dressed nobleman, who enjoyed
the discomfiture of his charioteer, with the loud frank glee of a master
jeering a dependant.
“Well said, my hero!” laughed the patrician, adding in good‐humoured,
though haughty tones, “Not that I would give much for the chance of man or
woman in a grasp like yours. By Jupiter! you’ve got the arms and shoulders
of Antæus! Who owns you, my good fellow? and what do you here?”
“Nay, I would strike him again to some purpose if I were on the ground
with him,” interrupted the charioteer, a handsome, petulant youth of some
sixteen summers, whose long flowing curls and rich scarlet mantle denoted
a pampered and favourite slave. “Gently, Scipio! So‐ho, Jugurtha! The
horses will fret for an hour now they have been scared by his ugly face.”
“Better let him alone, Automedon!” observed his master, again shaking his
sides at the obvious discomfiture portrayed on the flushed face of his
favourite. “Through your life keep clear of a man when he shuts his mouth
like that, as you would of an ox with a wisp of hay on his horn. You silly
boy! why he would swallow such a slender frame as yours at a gulp: and
nobody but a fool ever strikes at a man unless he knows he can reach him,
ay, and punish him too, without hurting his own knuckles in return! But
what do you here, good fellow?” he repeated, addressing himself once more
to the slave, who stood erect, scanning his questioner with a fearless,
though respectful eye.
“My master is your friend,” was the outspoken answer. “You supped with him
only the night before last. But a man need not be in the household of
Licinius, not have spent his best years at Rome, to know the face of
Julius Placidus, the tribune.”
A smile of gratified vanity stole over the patrician’s countenance while
he listened; a smile that had the effect of imparting to its lineaments an
expression at once mocking, crafty, and malicious. In repose, and such was
its usual condition, the face was almost handsome, perfect in its
regularity, and of a fixed, sedate composure which bordered on vacuity,
but when disturbed, as it sometimes, though rarely, was, by a passing
emotion, the smile that passed over it like a lurid gleam, became truly
diabolical.
The slave was right. Amongst all the notorious personages who crowded and
jostled each other in the streets of Rome at that stormy period, none was
better known, none more courted, flattered, honoured, hated, and
mistrusted, than the occupant of the gilded chariot. It was no time for
men to wear their hearts in their hands—it was no time to make an
additional enemy, or to lose a possible friend. Since the death of
Tiberius, emperor had succeeded emperor with alarming rapidity. Nero had
indeed died by his own hand, to avoid the just retribution of unexampled
vices and crimes; but the poisoned mushroom had carried off his
predecessor, and the old man who succeeded him fell by the weapons of the
very guards he had enlisted to protect his grey head from violence. Since
then another suicide had indued Vitellius with the purple; but the throne
of the Cæsars was fast becoming synonymous with a scaffold, and the sword
of Damocles quivered more menacingly, and on a slenderer hair than ever,
over the diadem.
When great political convulsions agitate a State, already seething with
general vice and luxury, the moral scum seems, by a law of nature, to
float invariably to the surface—the characters most destitute of
principle, the readiest to obey the instincts of self‐aggrandisement and
expediency, achieve a kind of spurious fame, a doubtful and temporary
success. Under the rule of Nero, perhaps, there was but one path to Court
favour, and that lay in the disgraceful attempt to vie with this emperor’s
brutalities and crimes. The palace of Cæsar was then indeed a sink of foul
iniquity and utter degradation. The sycophant who could most readily
reduce himself to the level of a beast in gross sensuality, while he
boasted a demon’s refinement of cruelty, and morbid depravity of heart,
became the first favourite for the time with his imperial master. To be
fat, slothful, weak, gluttonous, and effeminate, while the brow was
crowned with roses, and the brain was drenched with wine, and the hands
were steeped in blood—this it was to be a friend and counsellor of Cæsar.
Men waited and wondered in stupefied awe when they marked the monster
reeling from a debauch to some fresh feast of horrors, some ingenious
exhibition of the complicated tortures that may be inflicted on a human
being, some devilish experiment of all the body can bear, ere the soul
takes wing from its ghastly, mutilated tenement, and this not on one, but
a thousand victims. They waited and wondered what the gods were about,
that divine vengeance should slumber through such provocations as these.
But retribution overtook him at last. The heart which a slaughtered
mother’s spectre could not soften, which remorse for a pregnant wife’s
fate, kicked to death by a brutal lord, failed to wring, quailed at the
approach of a few exasperated soldiers; and the tyrant who had so often
smiled to see blood flow like water in the amphitheatre, died by his own
hand—died as he had lived, a coward and a murderer to the last.
Since then, the Court was a sphere in which any bold unscrupulous man
might be pretty sure of attaining success. The present emperor was a good‐
humoured glutton, one whose faculties, originally vigorous, had been
warped and deadened by excess, just as his body had become bloated, his
eye dimmed, his strength palsied, and his courage destroyed by the same
course. The scheming statesman, the pliant courtier, the successful
soldier had but one passion now, one only object for the exercise of his
energies, both of mind and body—to eat enormously, to drink to excess, to
study every art by which fresh appetite could be stimulated when gorged to
repletion—and then—to eat and drink again.
With such a patron, any man who united to a tendency for the pleasures of
the table, a strong brain, a cool head, and an aptitude for business,
might be sure of considerable influence. The Emperor thoroughly
appreciated one who would take trouble off his hands, while at the same
time he encouraged his master, by precept and example, in his swinish
propensities. It was no slight service to Vitellius, to rise from a
debauch and give those necessary orders in an unforeseen emergency which
Cæsar’s sodden brain was powerless to originate or to understand.
Ere Placidus had been a month about the Court, he had insinuated himself
thoroughly into the good graces of the Emperor. This man’s had been a
strange and stirring history. Born of patrician rank, he had used his
family influence to advance him in the military service, and already,
whilst still in the flower of youth, had attained the grade of tribune in
Vespasian’s army, then occupying Judæa under that distinguished general.
Although no man yielded so willingly, or gave himself up so entirely to
the indolent enjoyments of Asiatic life, Placidus possessed many of the
qualities which are esteemed essential to the character of a soldier.
Personal bravery, or we should rather say, insensibility to danger, was
one of his peculiar advantages. Perhaps this is a quality inseparable from
such an organisation as his, in which, while the system seems to contain a
wealth of energy and vitality, the nerves are extremely callous to
irritation, and completely under control. The tribune never came out in
more favourable colours than when everyone about him was in a state of
alarm and confusion. On one occasion, at the siege of Jotapata, where the
Jews were defending themselves with the desperate energy of their race,
Placidus won golden opinions from Vespasian by the cool dexterity with
which he saved from destruction a whole company of soldiers and their
centurion, under the very eye of his general.
A maniple, or, in the military language of to‐day, a wing of the cohort
led by Placidus was advancing to the attack, and the first centurion, with
the company under his command, was already beneath the wall, bristling as
it was with defenders, who hurled down on their assailants darts,
javelins, huge stones, every description of weapon or missile, including
molten lead and boiling oil. Under cover of a movable pent‐house, which
protected them, the head of the column had advanced their battering‐ram to
the very wall, and were swinging the huge engine back, by the ropes and
pulleys which governed it, for an increased impulse of destruction, when
the Jews, who had been watching their opportunity, succeeded in balancing
an enormous mass of granite immediately above the pent‐house and the
materials of offence, animate and inanimate, which it contained. A Jewish
warrior clad in shining armour had taken a lever in his hand, and was in
the act of applying that instrument to the impending tottering mass; in
another instant it must have crashed down upon their heads, and buried the
whole band beneath its weight. At his appointed station by the eagle, the
tribune was watching the movements of his men with his usual air of
sleepy, indolent approval. And even in this critical moment his eye never
brightened, his colour never deepened a shade. The voice was calm, low,
and perfectly modulated in which he bade the trumpeter at his right hand
sound the recall; nor, though its business‐like rapidity could scarce have
been exceeded by the most practised archer, was the movement the least
hurried with which he snatched the bow from a dead Parthian auxiliary at
his feet and fitted an arrow to its string. In the twinkling of an eye,
while the granite vibrated on the very parapet, that arrow was quivering
between the joints of the warrior’s harness who held the lever, and he had
fallen with his head over the wall in the throes of death. Before another
of the defenders could take his place the assaulting party had retired,
bringing along with them, in their cool and rigid discipline, the
battering‐ram and wooden covering which protected it, while the tribune
quietly observed, as he replaced the bow into the fallen Parthian’s hand,
“A company saved is a hundred men gained. A dead barbarian is exactly
worth my tallest centurion, and the smartest troop I have in the maniple!”
Vespasian was not the man to forget such an instance of cool promptitude,
and Julius Placidus was marked out for promotion from that day forth. But
with its courage, the tribune possessed the cunning of the tiger, not
without something also of that fierce animal’s outward beauty, and much of
its watchful, pitiless, and untiring nature. A brave soldier should have
considered it a degradation, under any circumstances, to play a double
part; but with Placidus every step was esteemed honourable so long as it
was on the ascent. The successful winner had no scruple in deceiving all
about him at Rome, by the eagerness with which he assumed the character of
a mere man of pleasure, while he lost no opportunity the while of
ingratiating himself with the many desperate spirits who were to be found
in the Imperial City, ready and willing to assist in any enterprise which
should tend to anarchy and confusion. While he rushed into every
extravagance and pleasure of that luxurious Court—while he vied with Cæsar
himself in his profusion, and surpassed him in his orgies—he suffered no
symptoms to escape him of a higher ambition than that of excellence in
trifling—of deeper projects than those which affected the winecup, the
pageant, and the passing follies of the hour. Yet all the while, within
that dainty reveller’s brain, schemes were forming and thoughts burning
that should have withered the very roses on his brow. It might have been
the strain of Greek blood which filtered through his veins, that tempered
his Roman courage and endurance with the pliancy essential to conspiracy
and intrigue—a strain that was apparent in his sculptured regularity of
features, and general symmetry of form. His character has already been
compared to the tiger’s, and his movements had all the pliant ease and
stealthy freedom of that graceful animal. His stature was little above the
average of his countrymen, but his frame was cast in that mould of exact
proportion which promises the extreme of strength combined with agility
and endurance. Had he been caught like Milo, he would have writhed himself
out of the trap, with the sinuous persistency of a snake. There was
something snake‐like, too, in his small glittering eye, and the clear
smoothness of his skin. With all its brightness no woman worthy of the
name but would have winced with womanly instincts of aversion and
repugnance from his glance. With all its beauty no child would have looked
up frankly and confidingly in his face. Men turned, indeed, to scan him
approvingly as he passed; but the brave owned no sympathy with that smooth
set brow, that crafty and malicious smile, while the timid or the
superstitious shuddered and shrank away, averting their own gaze from what
they felt to be the influence of the evil eye. Yet, in his snowy tunic
bleached to dazzling white, in his collar of linked gold, his jewelled
belt, his embroidered sandals, and the ample folds of his deep violet
mantle, nearly approaching purple, Julius Placidus was no unworthy
representative of his time and his order, no mean specimen of the wealth,
and foppery, and extravagance of Rome.
Such was the man who now stood up in his gilded chariot at Valeria’s door,
masking with his usual expression of careless indolence, the real
impatience he felt for tidings of its mistress.
CHAPTER III
HERMES
It was customary with the more refined aristocracy of Rome, during the
first century of the Empire, to pay great respect to Mercury, the god of
invention and intrigue. Not that the qualities generally attributed to
that power were calculated to inspire admiration or esteem, but simply
because he had acquired a fortuitous popularity at a period when the
graceful Pantheism of the nation was regulated by general opinion, and
when a deity went in and out of fashion like a dress. At Valeria’s porch,
in common with many other great houses, stood an exquisite statue of the
god, representing him as a youth, of athletic and symmetrical proportions,
poised on a winged foot in the act of running, with the broad‐leaf hat on
his head, and the snake‐turned rod in his hand. The countenance of the
statue was expressive of intellect and vivacity, while the form was
wrought into the highest ideal of activity and strength. It was placed on
a square pedestal of marble immediately opposite the door; and behind this
pedestal, the slave retired in some confusion when a train of maidens
appeared from within, to answer the summons of Julius Placidus in his
chariot.
The tribune did not think it necessary to alight, but producing from the
bosom of his tunic a jewelled casket, leaned one hand on the shoulder of
Automedon, while with the other he proffered his gift to a damsel who
seemed the chief among her fellows, and whose manners partook largely of
the flippancy of the waiting‐maid.
“Commend me to your mistress,” said Placidus, at the same time throwing a
gold chain round her neck on her own account, and bending carelessly down
to take a receipt for the same, in the shape of a caress; “bid her every
good omen from the most faithful of her servants, and ask her at what hour
I may hope to be received on this her birthday, which the trifle you carry
to her from me will prove I have not forgotten.”
The waiting‐maid tried hard to raise a blush, but with all her efforts the
rich Southern colour would not deepen on her cheek; so she thought better
of it, and looked him full in the face with her bold black eyes, while she
replied: “You have forgotten surely, my lord, that this is the feast of
Isis, and no lady that _is_ a lady, at least here in Rome, can have
leisure to‐day for anything but the sacred mysteries of the goddess.”
Placidus laughed outright; and it was strange how his laugh scared those
who watched it. Automedon fairly turned pale, and even the waiting‐maid
seemed disconcerted for a moment.
“I have heard of these mysteries,” said he, “my pretty Myrrhina, and who
has not? The Roman ladies keep them somewhat jealously to themselves; and
by all accounts it is well for our sex that they do so. Nevertheless there
are yet some hours of sunlight to pass before the chaste rites of Egypt
can possibly begin. Will not Valeria see me in the interval?”
A very quick ear might have detected the least possible tremor in the
tribune’s voice as he spoke the last sentence; it was not lost upon
Myrrhina, for she showed all the white teeth in her large well‐formed
mouth, while she enumerated with immense volubility those different
pursuits which filled up the day of a fashionable Roman lady.
“Impossible!” burst out the damsel. “She has not a moment to spare from
now till sunset. There’s her dinner,(1) and her fencing‐lesson, and her
bath, and her dressing, and the sculptor coming for her hand, and the
painter for her face, and the new Greek sandals to be fitted to her feet.
Then she has sent for Philogemon, the augur, to cast her horoscope, and
for Galanthis, who is cleverer than ever Locusta was, and has twice the
practice, to prepare a philtre. Maybe it is for _you_, my lord,” added the
girl roguishly. “I hear the ladies are all using them just now.”
The evil smile crossed the tribune’s face once more; perhaps he too had
been indebted to the potions of Galanthis, for purposes of love or hate,
and he did not care to be reminded of them.
“Nay,” said he meaningly, “there is no need for that. Valeria can do more
with one glance of her bright eyes, than all the potions and poisons of
Galanthis put together. Say, Myrrhina—you are in my interest—does she look
more favourably of late?”
“How can I tell, my lord?” answered the girl, with an arch expression of
amusement and defiance in her face. “My mistress is but a woman after all,
and they say women are more easily mastered by the strong hand, than lured
by the honey lip. She is not to be won by a smooth tongue and a beardless
face, I know, for I heard her say so to Paris myself, in the very spot
where we are now standing. Juno! but the player slunk away somewhat
crestfallen, I can tell you, when she called him ‘a mere girl in her
brother’s clothes’ at the best. No; the man who wins my mistress will be a
man all over, I’ll answer for it! So far, she is like the rest of us for
that matter.”
And Myrrhina sighed, thinking, it may be, of some sunburnt youth the
while, whose rough but not unwelcome wooing had assailed her in her early
girlhood, ere she came to Rome; far away yonder amongst the blushing
vines, in the bright Campanian hills.
“Say you so?” observed the tribune, obviously flattered by the implied
compliment; for he was proud in his secret heart of his bodily strength.
“Nay, there was a fellow standing here when I drove up, who would make an
easy conquest of you, Myrrhina, if, like your Sabine grandams, you must be
borne off to be wed, on your lover’s shoulders. By the body of Hercules!
he would tuck you up under his arm as easily as you carry that casket,
which you seem so afraid to let out of your hand. Ay, there he is! lurking
behind Hermes. Stand forth, my good fellow! What! you are not afraid of
Automedon, are you, and the crack of that young reprobate’s whip?”
While he spoke, the slave stepped forward from his lurking‐place behind
the statue, where the quick eye of Placidus had detected him, and
presented to Myrrhina with a respectful gesture the offering of his lord
to her mistress—a filigree basket of frosted silver, filled with a few
choice fruits and flowers—
“From Caius Licinius, greeting,” said he, “in honour of Valeria’s natal
day. The flowers are scarce yet dry from the spray that brawling Anio
flings upon its banks; the fruits were glowing in yesterday’s sun, on the
brightest slopes of Tibur. My master offers the freshest and fairest of
his fruits and flowers to his kinswoman, who is fresher and fairer than
them all.”
He delivered his message, which he had obviously learned by rote, in
sufficiently pure and fluent Latin, scarcely tinged with the accent of a
barbarian, and bowing low as he placed the basket in Myrrhina’s hand, drew
himself up to his noble height, and looked proudly, almost defiantly, at
the tribune.
The girl started and turned pale—it seemed as if the statue of Hermes had
descended from its pedestal to do her homage. He stood there, that
glorious specimen of manhood, in his majestic strength and symmetry, in
the glow of his youth, and health, and beauty, like an impersonation of
the god. Myrrhina, in common with many of her sex, was easily fascinated
by external advantages, and she laughed nervously, while she accepted with
shaking hands the handsome slave’s offering to his master’s kinswoman.
“Will you not enter?” said she, the colour mantling once more, and this
time without an effort, in her burning cheeks. “It is not the custom to
depart from Valeria’s house without breaking bread and drinking wine.”
But the slave excused himself, abruptly, almost rudely, losing, be sure,
by his refusal, none of the ground he had already gained in Myrrhina’s
good graces. It chafed him to remain even at the porch. The atmosphere of
luxury that pervaded it, seemed to weigh upon his senses, and oppress his
breath. Moreover, the insult he had sustained from Automedon, yet rankled
in his heart. How he wished the boy‐charioteer was nearer his match in
size and strength! He would have hurled him from the chariot where he
stood, turning his curls so insolently round his dainty fingers—hurled him
to earth beyond his horses’ heads, and taught him the strength of a
Briton’s arm and the squeeze of a Briton’s gripe. “Ay! and his master
after him!” thought the slave, for already he experienced towards Placidus
that unaccountable instinct of aversion which seems to warn men of a
future foe, and which, to give him his due, the tribune was not unused to
awaken in a brave and honest breast.
Placidus, however, scanned him once more, as he strode away, with the
critical gaze of a judge of human animals. It was this man’s peculiarity
to look on all he met as possible tools, that might come into use for
various purposes at a future and indefinite time. If he observed more than
usual courage in a soldier, superior acuteness in a freedman, nay, even
uncommon beauty in a woman, he bethought himself that although he might
have no immediate use for these qualities, occasions often arose on which
he could turn them to his profit, and he noted, and made sure of, their
amount accordingly. In the present instance, although somewhat surprised
that he had never before remarked the slave’s stalwart proportions in the
household of Licinius, whose affection for the Briton had excused him from
all menial offices, and consequent contact with visitors, he determined
not to lose sight of one so formed by nature to excel in the gymnasium or
the amphitheatre, while there crept into his heart a cruel cold‐blooded
feeling of satisfaction at the possibility of witnessing so muscular and
shapely a figure in the contortions of a mortal struggle, or the throes of
a painful death.
Besides, there was envy, too, at the bottom—envy in the proud patrician’s
breast, leaning so negligently on the cushions of his gilded chariot, with
all his advantages of rank, reputation, wealth, and influence—envy of the
noble bearing, the personal comeliness, and the free manly step of the
slave.
“Had he struck thee, Automedon,” said his master, unable to resist
taunting the petted youth who held the reins; “had he but laid a finger on
thee, thou hadst never spoken again, and I had been rid of the noisiest
and most useless of my household. Gently with that outside horse; dost see
how he chafes upon the rein? Gently, boy, I say! and drive me back into
the Forum.”
As he settled himself among the cushions and rolled swiftly away, Myrrhina
came forth into the porch once more. She seemed, however, scarcely to
notice the departing chariot, but looked dreamily about her, and then re‐
entered the house with a shake of the head, a smile, and something that
was almost a sigh.
CHAPTER IV
APHRODITÉ
A negro boy, the ugliest of his kind, and probably all the more prized for
that reason, was shifting uneasily from knee to knee, in an attitude of
constraint that showed how long and tiresome he felt his office, and how
wearied he was of Valeria’s own apartment. Such a child, for the urchin
seemed of the tenderest age, might be initiated without impropriety into
the mysteries of a lady’s toilet; and, indeed, the office it was his duty
to undertake, formed the most indispensable part of the whole performance.
With a skill and steadiness beyond his years, though with a rueful face,
he was propping up an enormous mirror, in which his mistress might
contemplate the whole galaxy of her charms—a mirror formed of one broad
plate of silver, burnished to the brightness and lucidity of glass, set in
an oval frame of richly chased gold, wrought into fantastic patterns and
studded with emeralds, rubies, and other precious stones. Not a speck was
to be discerned on the polish of its dazzling surface; and, indeed, the
time of one maiden was devoted to the task alone of preserving it from the
lightest breath that might dim its brightness, and cloud the reflection of
the stately form that now sat before it, undergoing, at the hands of her
attendants, the pleasing tortures of an elaborate toilet.
The reflection was that of a large handsome woman in the very prime and
noontide of her beauty—a woman whose every movement and gesture bespoke
physical organisation of a vigorous nature and perfect health. While the
strong white neck gave grace and dignity to her carriage—while the deep
bosom and somewhat massive shoulders partook more of Juno’s majestic frame
than Hebe’s pliant youth—while the full sweep and outline of her figure
denoted maturity and completeness in every part—the long round limbs, the
shapely hands and feet, might have belonged to Diana, so perfect was their
symmetry; the warm flush that tinted them, the voluptuous ease of her
attitude, the gentle languor of her whole bearing, would have done no
discredit to the goddess, hanging over the mountain‐tops in the golden
summer nights to look down upon Endymion, and bathe her sleeping favourite
in floods of light and love.
Too fastidious a critic might have objected to Valeria’s form that it
expressed more of physical strength than is compatible with perfect
womanly beauty, that the muscles were developed overmuch, and the whole
frame, despite its flowing outlines, partook somewhat of a man’s
organisation, and a man’s redundant strength. The same fault might have
been found in a less degree with her countenance. There was a little too
much resolution in the small aquiline nose, something of manly audacity
and energy in the large well‐formed mouth, with its broad white teeth that
the fullest and reddest of lips could not conceal—a shade of masculine
sternness on the low wide brow, smooth and white, but somewhat prominent,
and scarcely softened by the arch of the marked eyebrows, or the dark
sweep of the lashes that fringed the long laughing eyes.
And yet it was a face that a man, and still more a boy, could hardly have
looked on without misgivings that he might too soon learn to long for its
glances, its smiles, its approval, and its love. There was such a glow of
health on the soft transparent skin, such a freshness and vitality in the
colour of those blooming cheeks, such a sparkle in the grey eyes, that
flashed so meaningly when she smiled, that gleamed so clear and bright and
cold when the features resumed their natural expression, grave, scornful,
almost stern in their repose; and then such womanly softness in the masses
of rich nut‐brown hair that showered down neck and shoulders, to form a
framework for this lovely, dangerous, and too alluring picture. Even the
little negro, wearied as he was, peeped at intervals from the back of the
mirror he upheld, fawning like a dog for some sign of approval from his
haughty, careless mistress. At length she bade him keep still, with a
half‐scornful smile at his antics; and the sharp white teeth gleamed from
ear to ear of the dusky little face, as it grinned with pleasure, while
the boy settled himself once more in an attitude of patience and steady
submission.
Nor was Valeria’s apartment unworthy of the noble beauty who devoted it to
the mysterious rites of dress and decoration. Everything that luxury could
imagine for bodily ease, everything that science had as yet discovered for
the preservation or the production of feminine attractions, was there to
be found in its handsomest and costliest form. In one recess, shrouded by
transparent curtains of the softest pink, was the bath that could be
heated at will to any temperature, and the marble steps of which that
shapely form was accustomed to descend twice and thrice a day. In another
stood the ivory couch with its quilted crimson silks and ornamental
pillars of solid gold, in which Valeria slept, and dreamed such dreams as
hover round the rest of those whose life is luxury, and whose business is
a ceaseless career of pleasure. On a table of cedar‐wood, fashioned like a
palm‐leaf opening out from a pedestal that terminated in a single claw of
grotesque shape, stood her silver night‐lamp, exhaling odours of perfumed
oil, and near it lay the waxen tablets, on which she made her memorandums,
or composed her love‐letters, and from which, as from an unfinished task,
the sharp‐pointed steel pencil had rolled away upon the shining floor.
Through the whole court—for court it might be called, with its many
entrances and recesses, its cool and shady nooks, its lofty ceiling and
its tesselated pavement—choice vases, jewelled cups, burnished chalices,
and exquisite little statues, were scattered in systematic irregularity
and graceful profusion. Even the very water in the bath flowed through the
mouth of a marble Cupid; and two more winged urchins wrought in bronze,
supported a stand on which was set a formidable array of perfumes,
essences, cosmetics, and such material for offensive and defensive
warfare.
The walls, too, of this seductive arsenal, were delicately tinted of a
light rose‐colour, that should throw the most becoming shade over its
inmates, relieved at intervals by oval wreaths wrought out in bas‐relief,
enclosing diverse mythological subjects, in which the figure of Venus,
goddess of love and laughter, predominated. Round the cornices stretched a
frieze representing, also in relief, the fabulous contests of the Amazons
with every description of monster, amongst which the most conspicuous foe
was the well‐known gryphon, or griffin, an abnormal quadruped, with the
head and neck of a bird of prey. It was curious to trace in the female
warriors thus delineated, something of the imperious beauty, the vigorous
symmetry, and the dauntless bearing that distinguished Valeria herself,
though their energetic and spirited attitudes afforded, at the same time,
a marked contrast to the pleasing languor that seemed to pervade every
movement of that luxurious lady reclining before her mirror, and
submitting indolently to the attentions of her maid‐servants.
These were five in number, and constituted the principal slaves of her
household; the most important among them seemed to be a tall matronly
woman, considerably older than her comrades, who filled the responsible
office of housekeeper in the establishment—a dignity which did not,
however, exempt her from insult, and even blows, when she failed to
satisfy the caprices of a somewhat exacting mistress; the others, comely
laughing girls, with the sparkling eyes and white teeth of their
countrywomen, seemed principally occupied with the various matters that
constituted their lady’s toilet—a daily penance, in which, notwithstanding
the rigour of its discipline, and the severities that were sure to follow
the most trifling act of negligence, they took an inexplicable and
essentially feminine delight.
Of these it was obvious that Myrrhina was the first in place as in favour.
She it was who brought her mistress the warm towels for her bath; who was
ready with her slippers when she emerged; who handed every article of
clothing as it was required; whose taste was invariably consulted, and
whose decision was considered final, on such important points as the
position of a jewel, the studied negligence of a curl, or the exact
adjustment of a fold.
This girl possessed, with an Italian exterior, the pliant cunning and
plausible fluency of the Greek. Born a slave on one of Valeria’s estates
in the country, she had been reared a mere peasant, on a simple country
diet, and amidst healthful country occupations, till a freak of her
mistress brought her to Rome. With a woman’s versatility—with a woman’s
quickness in adapting herself to a strange phase of life and a total
change of circumstances—the country girl had not been a year in her new
situation, ere she became the acutest and cleverest waiting‐maid in the
capital, with what benefit to her own morals and character, it is needless
to inquire. Who so quick as Myrrhina to prepare the unguents, the
perfumes, or the cosmetics that repaired the injuries of climate, and
effaced the marks of dissipation? Who so delicate a sempstress; who had
such taste in colours; who could convey a note or a message with half such
precision, simplicity, and tact? In short, who was ever so ready, in an
emergency, with brush, crisping‐iron, needle, hand, eye, or tongue?
Intrigue was her native element. To lie on her mistress’s behalf, seemed
as natural as on her own. He who would advance in Valeria’s goodwill, must
begin by bribing her maid; and many a Roman gallant had ere this
discovered that even that royal road to success was as tedious as it was
costly, and might lead eventually to discomfiture and disgrace.
As she took the pouncet‐box from one of the girls, and proceeded to
sprinkle gold‐dust in Valeria’s hair, Myrrhina’s eye was caught by the
gift of Placidus, lying neglected at her feet, the casket open, the jewels
scattered on the floor. Such as it was, the waiting‐maid owned a
conscience. It warned her that she had not as yet worked out the value of
the costly chain thrown round her neck by the tribune. Showering the gold‐
dust liberally about her lady’s head, Myrrhina felt her way cautiously to
the delicate theme.
“There’s a new fashion coming in for headgear when the weather gets
cooler,” said she. “It’s truth I tell you, madam, for I heard it direct
from Selina, who was told by the Empress’s first tirewoman, though even
Cæsar himself cannot think Galeria looks well, with that yellow mop stuck
all over her head. But it’s to be the fashion, nevertheless, and right
sorry I am to hear it; nor am I the only one for that matter.”
“Why so?” asked Valeria languidly; “is it more troublesome than the
present?”
Myrrhina had done with the gold‐dust now, and, holding the comb in her
mouth, was throwing a rich brown curl across her wrist, while she laid a
plat carefully beneath it. Notwithstanding the impediment between her
lips, however, she was able to reply with great volubility.
“The trouble counts for nothing, madam, when a lady has got such hair as
yours. It’s a pleasure to run your hands through it, let alone dressing
and crisping it, and plaiting it up into a crown that’s fit for a queen.
But this new fashion will make us all alike, whether we’re as bald as old
Lyce, or wear our curls down to our ankles, like Neæra. Still, to hide
such hair as _yours_;—as my lord said, only this morning”—
“What lord? this morning!” interrupted Valeria, a dawn of interest waking
on her handsome features; “not Licinius, my noble kinsman? His approval is
indeed worth having.”
“Better worth than his gifts,” answered Myrrhina pertly; pointing to the
filigree basket which occupied a place of honour on the toilet‐table.
“Such a birthday present I never saw! A few late roses and a bunch or two
of figs to the richest lady in Rome! To be sure, he sent a messenger with
them, who might have come direct from Jove, and the properest man I ever
set eyes on.”
And Myrrhina moved to one side, that her lady might not observe the blush
that rose, even to her shameless brow, as she recalled the impression made
on her by the handsome slave. Valeria liked to hear of proper men; she
woke up a little out of her languor, and flung the hair back from her
face.
“Go on,” said she, as Myrrhina hesitated, half eager and half loth to
pursue the pleasing topic.
But the waiting‐maid felt the chain round her neck, and acknowledged in
her heart the equivalent it demanded.
“It was the tribune, madam,” said she, “who spoke about your hair—Julius
Placidus, who values every curl you wear, more than a whole mine of gold.
Ah! there’s not a lord in Rome has such a taste in dress. Only to see him
this morning, with his violet mantle and his jewels sparkling in the sun,
with the handsomest chariot and the four whitest horses in the town. Well!
if I was a lady, and wooed by such a man as that”—
“_Man_ call you him?” interrupted her mistress, with a scornful smile.
“Nay, when these curled, perfumed, close‐shaven things are called men,
’tis time for us women to bestir ourselves, lest strength and courage die
out in Rome altogether. And you, too, Myrrhina, who know Licinius and
Hippias, and saw with your own eyes two hundred gladiators in the circus
only yesterday, you ought to be a better judge. Man, forsooth! Why, you
will be calling smooth‐faced Paris a man next!”
Here maid and mistress burst out laughing, for thereby hung a tale of
which Valeria was not a little proud. This Paris, a young Egyptian, of
beautiful but effeminate appearance, had lately come to Italy to figure
with no small success on the Roman stage. His delicate features, his
symmetrical shape, and the girlish graces of his pantomimic gestures, had
made sad havoc in the hearts of the Roman ladies, at all times too
susceptible to histrionic charms. He lost nothing, either, of public
attention, by bearing the name of Nero’s ill‐fated favourite, and embarked
at once, unhesitatingly, on the same brilliant and dangerous career. But
although it was the fashion to be in love with Paris, Valeria alone never
yielded to the mode, but treated him with all the placid indifference she
felt for attractions that found no favour in her sight. Stung by such
neglect, the petted actor paid devoted court to the woman who despised
him, and succeeded, after much importunity, in prevailing on her to accord
him an interview in her own house. Of this he had the bad taste to make no
small boast in anticipation; and Myrrhina, who found out most things, lost
no time in informing her mistress that her condescension was already as
much misrepresented as it was misplaced. The two laid their plans
accordingly; and when Paris, attired in the utmost splendour, arrived
panting to the promised interview, he found himself seized by some half‐
dozen hideous old negresses, who smothered him with caresses, stripped him
from head to foot, forced him into the bath, and persisted in treating him
as if he were a delicate young lady, but with a quiet violence the while,
that it was useless to resist. The same swarthy tirewomen then dressed him
in female garments; and despite of threats, struggles, outcries, and
entreaties, placed him in Valeria’s litter, and so carried him home to his
own door. The ready wit of the play‐actor put upon his metamorphosis the
construction least favourable to the character of its originator; but he
vowed a summary vengeance, we may be sure, nevertheless.
“I think Paris knows what you think of him only too well,” resumed
Myrrhina; “not but that he has a fair face of his own, and a lovely shape
for dancing, though, to be sure, Placidus is a finer figure of a man. Oh!
if you could have seen him this morning, madam, when he lay back so
graceful in his chariot, and chid that pert lad of his for striking with
his whip at the tall slave, who to be sure vanished like a flash of
lightning, you would have said there wasn’t such another patrician in the
whole city of Rome!”
“Enough of Placidus!” interrupted her mistress impatiently; “the subject
wearies me. What of this tall slave, Myrrhina, who seems to have attracted
your attention? Did he look like one of the barbarians my kinsman Licinius
cries up so mightily? Is he handsome enough to step with my Liburnians,
think you, under the day‐litter?”
The waiting‐maid’s eyes sparkled as she thought how pleasant it would be
to have him in the same household as herself; and any little restraint she
might have experienced in running over the personal advantages that had
captivated her fancy disappeared before this agreeable prospect.
“Handsome enough, madam!” she exclaimed, removing the comb from her mouth,
dropping her lady’s hair, and flourishing her hands with true Italian
emphasis and rapidity,—“handsome enough! why he would make the Liburnians
look like bald‐headed vultures beside a golden eagle! Barbarian, like
enough, he may be, Cimbrian, Frisian, Ansibarian, or what not, for I
caught the foreign accent tripping on his tongue, and we have few men in
Rome of stature equal to his. A neck like a tower of marble; arms and
shoulders like the statue of Hercules yonder in the vestibule; a face, ay,
twice as beautiful as Pericles on your medallion, with the golden curls
clustering round a forehead as white as milk and eyes”—
Here Myrrhina stopped, a little at a loss for a simile, and a good deal
out of breath besides.
“Go on,” said Valeria, who had been listening in an attitude of languid
attention, her eyes half closed, her lips parted, and the colour deepening
on her cheek. “What were his eyes like, Myrrhina?”
“Well, they were like the blue sky of Campania in the vintage; they were
like the stones round the boss of your state‐mantle; they were like the
sea at noonday from the long walls of Ostia. And yet they flashed into
sparks of fire when he looked at poor little Automedon. I wonder the boy
wasn’t frightened! I am sure I should have been; only nothing frightens
those impudent young charioteers.”
“Was he my kinsman’s slave; are you sure, Myrrhina?” said her mistress, in
an accent of studied unconcern, and never moving a finger from her
listless and comfortable attitude.
“No doubt of it, madam,” replied the waiting‐maid; and would probably have
continued to enlarge on the congenial subject, had she not been
interrupted by the entrance of one of the damsels who had been summoned
from the apartment, and returned to announce that Hippias, the retired
gladiator, was in waiting—“Would Valeria take her fencing‐lesson?”
But Valeria declined at once, and sat on before her mirror, without even
raising her eyes to the tempting picture it displayed. Whatever was the
subject of her thoughts, it must have been very engrossing, she seemed so
loth to be disturbed.
CHAPTER V
ROME
[Initial M]
Meanwhile the British slave, unconscious that he was already the object of
Valeria’s interest and Myrrhina’s admiration, was threading his way
through the crowded streets that adjoined the Forum, enjoying that vague
sense of amusement with which a man surveys a scene of bustle and
confusion that does not affect his immediate concerns. Thanks to the
favour of his master, his time was nearly at his own disposal, and he had
ample leisure to observe the busiest scene in the known world, and to
compare it, perhaps, with the peace and simplicity of those early days,
which seemed now like the memories of a dream, so completely had they
passed away. The business of the Forum was over: the markets were
disgorging their mingled stream of purveyors, purchasers, and idle
lookers‐on. The whole population of Rome was hurrying home to dinner, and
a motley crowd it was. The citizens themselves, the Plebeians, properly so
called, scarcely formed one half of the swarming assemblage. Slaves
innumerable hurried to and fro, to speed the business or the pleasure of
their lords; slaves of every colour and of every nation, from the
Scandinavian giant, with blue eyes and waving yellow locks, to the sturdy
Ethiopian, thick‐lipped, and woolly‐haired, the swarthy child of Africa,
whose inheritance has been servitude from the earliest ages until now.
Many a Roman born was there, too, amongst the servile crowd, aping the
appearance and manner of a citizen, but who shrank from a master’s frown
at home, and who, despite the acquirement of wealth, and even the
attainment of power, must die a bondsman as he had lived.
Not the least characteristic feature of the state of society under the
Empire was the troop of freedmen that everywhere accompanied the person,
and swelled the retinue of each powerful patrician. These manumitted
slaves were usually bound by the ties of interest as much as gratitude to
the former master, who had now become their patron. Dependent on him in
many cases for their daily food, doled out to them in rations at his door,
they were necessarily little emancipated from his authority by their
lately acquired freedom. While the relation of patron and client was
productive of crying evils in the Imperial City, while the former threw
the shield of his powerful protection over the crimes of the latter, and
the client in return became the willing pander to his patron’s vices, it
was the freedman who, more than all others, rendered himself a willing
tool to his patrician employer, who yielded unhesitatingly time,
affections, probity, and honour itself, to the caprices of his lord. They
swarmed about the Forum now, running hither and thither with the
obsequious haste of the parasite, bent on errands which in too many cases
would scarce have borne the light of day.
Besides these, a vast number of foreigners, wearing the costumes of their
different countries, hindered the course of traffic as they stood gaping,
stupefied by the confusing scene on which they gazed. The Gaul, with his
short, close‐fitting garment; the Parthian, with his conical sheepskin
cap; the Mede, with his loose silken trousers; the Jew, barefoot and robed
in black; the stately Spaniard, the fawning Egyptian, and amongst them
all, winding his way wherever the crowd was closest, with perfect ease and
self‐possession, the smooth and supple Greek. When some great man passed
through the midst, borne aloft in his litter, or leaning on the shoulder
of a favourite slave, and freedmen and clients made a passage for him with
threat, and push, and blow, the latter would invariably miss the Greek to
light on the pate of a humble mechanic, or the shoulders of a sturdy
barbarian, while the descendant of Leonidas or Alcibiades would reply in
whining sing‐song tones to the verbal abuse, with some biting retort,
which was sure to turn the laughter of the crowd on the aggressor.
If Rome had once overrun and conquered the dominions of her elder sister
in civilisation, the invasion seemed now to be all the other way. With the
turn of the tide had come such an overflow of Greek manners, Greek
customs, Greek morals, and Greek artifice, that the Imperial City was
already losing its natural characteristics; and the very language was so
interlarded with the vocabulary of the conquered, that it was fast
becoming less Latin than Greek. The Roman ladies, especially, delighted in
those euphonious syllables, which clothed Athenian eloquence in such
melodious rhythm; and their choicest terms of endearment in the language
of love, were invariably whispered in Greek.
That supple nation, too, adapting itself to the degradation of slavery and
the indulgence of ease, as it had risen in nobler times to the exigencies
of liberty and the efforts demanded by war, had usurped the greater
portion of art, science, and even power, in Rome. The most talented
painters and sculptors were Greeks. The most enterprising contractors and
engineers were Greeks. Rhetoric and elocution could only be learned in a
Greek school, and mathematics, unless studied with Greek letters, must be
esteemed confused and useless; the fashionable invalid who objected to
consult a Greek physician deserved to die; and there was but one
astrologer in Rome who could cast a patrician horoscope. Of course he was
a Greek. In the lower walks of criminal industry; in the many iniquitous
professions called into existence by the luxury of a great city, the
Greeks drove a thriving and almost an exclusive trade. Whoever was in most
repute, as an evil counsellor, a low buffoon, a money‐lender, pimp,
pander, or parasite, whatever might be his other qualifications, was sure
to be a Greek. And many a scrutinising glance was cast by professors of
this successful nation at the Briton’s manly form as he strode through the
crowd, making his way quietly but surely from sheer weight and strength.
They followed him with covetous eyes, as they speculated on the various
purposes to which so much good manhood might be applied. They appraised
him, so to speak, and took an inventory of his thews and sinews, his
limbs, his stature, and his good looks; but they refrained from accosting
him with importunate questions or insolent proposals, for there was a bold
confident air about him, that bespoke the stout heart and the ready hand.
The stamp of freedom had not yet faded from his brow, and he looked like
one who was accustomed to take his own part in a crowd.
Suddenly a stoppage in the traffic arrested the moving stream, which
swelled in continually to a struggling, eager, vociferating mass. A dray,
containing huge blocks of marble, and drawn by several files of oxen, had
become entangled with the chariot of a passing patrician, and another
great man’s litter being checked by the obstruction, much confusion and
bad language was the result. Amused with the turmoil, and in no hurry to
get home, the British slave stood looking over the heads of the populace
at the irritated and gesticulating antagonists, when a smart blow on the
shoulder caused him to wheel suddenly round, prepared to return the injury
with interest. At the same instant a powerful hand dragged him back by the
tunic, and a grasp was laid on him, from which he could not shake himself
free, while a rough good‐humoured voice whispered in his ear—
“Softly, lad, softly! Keep hands off Cæsar’s lictors an’ thou be’st not
mad in good earnest. These gentry give more than they take, I can promise
thee!”
The speaker was a broad powerful man of middle size, with the chest of a
Hercules; he held the Briton firmly pinioned in his arms while he spoke,
and it was well that he did so, for the lictors were indeed forcing a
passage for the Emperor himself, who was proceeding on foot, and as far as
was practicable _incog._, to inspect the fish‐market.
Vitellius shuffled along with the lagging step of an infirm and bloated
old man. His face was pale and flabby, his eye dim, though sparkling at
intervals with some little remnant of the ready wit and pliant humour that
had made him the favourite of three emperors ere he himself attained the
purple. Supported by two freedmen, preceded and followed only by a file of
lictors, and attended by three or four slaves, Cæsar was taking his short
walk in hopes of acquiring some little appetite for dinner: what locality
so favourable for the furtherance of this object as the fish‐market, where
the imperial glutton could feast his eyes, if nothing else, on the
choicest dainties of the deep? He was so seldom seen abroad in Rome, that
the Briton could not forbear following him with his glance, while his new
friend, relaxing his hold with great caution, whispered once more in his
ear—
“Ay, look well at him, man, and give Jove thanks thou art not an emperor.
There’s a shape for the purple! There’s a head to carry a diadem! Well,
well, for all he’s so white and flabby now, like a Lucrine turbot, he
could drive a chariot once, and hold his own at sword and buckler with the
best of them. They say he can drink as well as ever still. Not that he was
a match for Nero in his best days, even at that game. Ay, ay, they may
talk as they will: we’ve never had an emperor like _him_ before nor since.
Wine, women, shows, sacrifices, wild‐beast fights;—a legion of men all
engaged in the circus at once! Such a friend as he was to _our_ trade.”
“And that trade?” inquired the Briton good‐humouredly enough, now his
hands were free: “I think I can guess it without asking too many
questions.”
“No need to guess,” replied the other. “I’m not ashamed of my trade, nor
of my name neither. Maybe you have heard of Hirpinus, the gladiator?
Tuscan born, free Roman citizen, and willing to match himself with any man
of his weight, on foot or on horseback, blindfold or half‐armed, in or out
of a war‐chariot, with two swords, sword and buckler, or sword or spear.
Any weapon, and every weapon, always excepting the net and the noose.
Those I can’t bear talking about—to my mind they are not fair fighting.
But what need I tell _you_ all about it?” he added, running his eye over
the slave’s powerful frame. “I must surely have seen you before. You look
as if you belonged to the Family(2) yourself!”
The slave smiled, not insensible to the compliment.
“’Tis a manlier way of getting bread than most of the employments I see
practised in Rome,” was his reply, though he spoke more to himself than
his companion. “A man might die a worse death than in the amphitheatre,”
he added meditatively.
“A worse death!” echoed Hirpinus. “He could scarce die a better! Think of
the rows of heads one upon another piled up like apples to the very
awnings. Think of the patricians and senators wagering their collars and
bracelets, and their sesterces in millions, on the strength of your arm,
and the point of your blade. Think of your own vigour and manhood, trained
till you feel as strong as an elephant, and as lithe as a panther, with an
honest wooden buckler on your arm, and two feet of pliant steel in your
hand, as you defile by Cæsar and bid him ‘Good‐morrow, from those who have
come here to die!’ Think of the tough bout with your antagonist, foot to
foot, hand to hand, eye to eye, feeling his blade with your own (why a
swordsman, lad, can fence as well in the dark as the daylight!), foiling
his passes, drawing his attack, learning his feints, watching your
opportunity; when you catch it at last, in you dash like a wild‐cat, and
the guard of your sword rings sharp and true against his breastbone, as he
goes over backwards on the sand!”
“And if _he_ gets the opportunity first?” asked the slave, interested in
spite of himself at the enthusiasm which carried him irresistibly along
with it. “If your guard is an inch too high, your return a thought too
slow? If you go backwards on the sand, with the hilt at your breastbone,
and the two feet of steel in your bosom? How does it feel then?”
“Faith, lad, you must cross the Styx to have that question fairly
answered,” replied the other. “I have had no such experience yet. When it
comes I shall know how to meet it. But this talking makes a man thirsty,
and the sun is hot enough to bake a negro here. Come with me, lad! I know
a shady nook, where we can pierce a skin of wine, and afterwards play a
game at quoits, or have a bout of wrestling, to while away the afternoon.”
The slave was nothing loth. Besides the debt of gratitude he owed for
preservation from a serious danger, there was something in his new
friend’s rough, good‐humoured, and athletic manhood that won on the
Briton’s favour. Hirpinus, with even more than their fierce courage, had
less than the usual brutality of his class, and possessed besides a sort
of quaint and careless good‐humour, by no means rare among the athletes of
every time, which found its way at once to the natural sympathies of the
slave. They started off accordingly, on the most amicable terms, in search
of that refreshment which a few hours’ exposure to an Italian sun rendered
very desirable; but the crowd had not yet cleared off, and their progress
was necessarily somewhat slow, notwithstanding that the throng of
passengers gave way readily enough before two such stalwart and athletic
forms.
Hirpinus thought it incumbent on him to take the Briton, as it were, under
his protection, and to point out to him the different objects of interest,
and the important personages, to be seen at that hour in the streets of
the capital, totally irrespective of the fact that his pupil was as well
instructed on these points as himself. But the gladiator dearly loved a
listener, and, truth to tell, was extremely diffuse in his narratives when
he had got one to his mind. These generally turned on his own physical
prowess, and his deadly exploits in the amphitheatre, which he was by no
means disposed to underrate. There are some really brave men who are also
boasters, and Hirpinus was one of them.
He was in the midst of a long dissertation on the beauties of an encounter
fought out between naked combatants, armed only with the sword, and was
explaining at great length a certain fatal thrust outside his antagonist’s
guard, and over his elbow, which he affirmed to be his own invention, and
irresistible by any party yet discovered, when the slave felt his gown
plucked by a female hand, and turning sharply round was somewhat
disconcerted to find himself face to face with Valeria’s waiting‐maid.
“You are wanted,” said she unceremoniously, and with an imperious gesture.
“You are to come to my lady this instant. Make haste, man; she cannot
brook waiting.”
Myrrhina pointed while she spoke to where a closed litter borne aloft by
four tall Liburnian slaves, had stopped the traffic, and already become
the nucleus of a crowd. A white hand peeped through its curtains, as the
slave approached, surprised and somewhat abashed at this unexpected
appeal. Hirpinus looked on with grave approval the while. Arriving close
beneath the litter, of which the curtain was now open, the slave paused
and made a graceful obeisance; then, drawing himself up proudly, stood
erect before it, looking unconsciously his best, in the pride of his youth
and beauty. Valeria’s cheek was paler than usual, and her attitude more
languid, but her grey eyes sparkled, and a smile played round her mouth as
she addressed him.
“Myrrhina tells me that you are the man who brought a basket of flowers to
my house this morning from Licinius. Why did you not wait to carry back my
salutations to my kinsman?”
The colour mounted to the slave’s brow as he thought of Automedon’s
insolence, but he only replied humbly, “Had I known it was your wish,
lady, I had been standing in your porch till now.”
She marked his rising colour, and attributed it to the effect of her own
dazzling beauty.
“Myrrhina knew you at once in the crowd,” said she graciously; “and indeed
yours is a face and figure not easily mistaken in Rome. I should recognise
you myself anywhere now.”
She paused, expecting a suitable reply, but the slave, albeit not
insensible to the compliment, only blushed again and was silent. Valeria,
meanwhile, whose motives in summoning him to her litter had been in the
first instance of simple curiosity to see the stalwart barbarian who had
so excited Myrrhina’s admiration, and whom that sharp‐sighted damsel had
recognised in an instant amongst the populace, now found herself pleased
and interested by the quiet demeanour and noble bearing of this foreign
slave. She had always been susceptible to manly beauty, and here she
beheld it in its noblest type. She was rapacious of admiration in all
quarters; and here she could not but flatter herself she gathered an
undoubted tribute to the power of her charms. She owned all a woman’s
interest in anything that had a spice of mystery or romance, and a woman’s
unfailing instinct in discovering high birth and gentle breeding under
every disguise; and here she found a delightful puzzle in the manner and
appearance of her kinsman’s messenger, whose position seemed so at
variance with his looks. She had never in her life laid the slightest
restraint on her thoughts, and but little on her actions—she had never
left a purpose unfulfilled, nor a wish ungratified—but a strange and new
feeling, at which even her courageous nature quailed, seemed springing up
in her heart while she gazed with half‐closed eyes at the Briton, and
hesitated to confess, even to herself, that she had never seen such a man
as this in her life before. It was in a softened tone that she again
addressed him, moving on her couch to show an ivory shoulder and a rounded
arm to the best advantage.
“You are a confidential servant of my kinsman’s? You are attached to his
person, and always to be found in his household?” she asked, more with a
view of detaining him than for any fixed purpose.
“I would give my life for Licinius!” was the prompt and spirited reply.
“But you are gentle born,” she resumed, with increasing interest; “how
came you in your present dress, your present station? Licinius has never
mentioned you to me. I do not even know your name. What is it?”
“Esca,” answered the slave proudly, and looking the while anything but a
slave.
“Esca!” she repeated, dwelling on the syllables, with a slow soft cadence;
“Esca! ’Tis none of our Latin names; but that I might have known already.
Who and what are you?”
There was something of defiance in the melancholy tone with which he
answered—
“A prince in my own country, and a chief of ten thousand. A barbarian and
a slave in Rome.”
She gave him her hand to kiss, with a gesture of pity that was almost a
caress, and then, as though ashamed of her own condescension, bade the
Liburnians angrily to “go on.”
Esca looked long and wistfully after the litter as it disappeared; but
Hirpinus, clapping him on the back with his heavy hand, burst into a
hearty laugh while he declared—
“’Tis a clear case, comrade. ‘Came, saw, and conquered,’ as the great
soldier said. I have known it a hundred times, but always to men of muscle
like thee and me. By Castor and Pollux! lad, thou art in luck. Ay, ay,
’tis always so. She takes thee for a gladiator, and they’ll look at
nothing but a gladiator now. Come on, brother; we’ll drink a cup to every
letter of her name!”
CHAPTER VI
THE WORSHIP OF ISIS
It was the cool and calming hour of sunset. Esca was strolling quietly
homewards after the pursuits of the day. He had emptied a wineskin with
Hirpinus; and, resisting that worthy’s entreaties to mark so auspicious a
meeting by a debauch, had accompanied him to the gymnasium, where the
Briton’s magnificent strength and prowess raised him higher than ever in
the opinion of the experienced athlete. Untiring as were the trained
muscles of the professional, he found himself unable to cope with the
barbarian in such exercises as demanded chiefly untaught physical power
and length of limb. In running, leaping, and wrestling, Esca was more than
a match for the gladiator. In hurling the quoit, and fencing with wooden
foils, the latter’s constant practice gave him the advantage, and when he
fastened round his wrists and hands the leathern thong or _cestus_, used
for the same purpose as our modern boxing‐glove, and proposed a round or
two of that manly exercise to conclude with, he little doubted that his
own science and experience would afford him an easy victory. The result,
however, was far different from his expectations. His antagonist’s powers
were especially adapted to this particular kind of contest; his length of
limb, his quickness of eye, hand, and foot, his youthful elasticity of
muscle, and his unfailing wind, rendered him an invincible combatant, and
it was with something like pique that Hirpinus was compelled to confess as
much to himself.
At the end of the first round he was satisfied of his mistake in
underrating so formidable an opponent. Ere the second was half through, he
had exhausted all the resources of his own skill without gaining the
slightest advantage over his antagonist; and with the conclusion of a
third, he flung away the _cestus_ in well‐feigned disgust at the heat of
the weather, and proposed one more skin of wine before parting, to drink
success to the profession, and speedy employment for the gladiators at the
approaching games in the amphitheatre.
“Join us, man!” said Hirpinus, dropping something of the patronising air
he had before affected. “Thou wert born to be a swordsman. Hippias would
teach thee in a week to hold thine own against the best fencers in Rome. I
myself will look to thy food, thy training, and thy private practice. Thou
wouldst gain thy liberty easily, after a few victories. Think it over,
man! and when thou hast decided, come to the fencing‐school yonder, and
ask for old Hirpinus. The steel may have a speck of rust on it, but it’s
tough and true still; so fare thee well, lad. I count to hear from thee
again before long!”
The gladiator accordingly rolled off with more than his usual assumption
of manly independence, attributable to the measure of rough Sabine wine of
which he had drunk his full share, whilst the Briton walked quietly away
in the direction of his home, enjoying the cool breeze that fanned his
brow, and following out a train of vague and complicated reflections,
originating in the advice of his late companion.
The crimson glow of a summer evening had faded into the serene beauty of a
summer night. Stars were flashing out, one by one, with mellow lustre, not
glimmering faintly, as in our northern climate, but hanging like silver
lamps, in the infinity of the sky. The busy turmoil of the streets had
subsided to a low and drowsy hum; the few chance passengers who still
paced them, went softly and at leisure, as though enjoying the soothing
influence of the hour. Even here, in the great city, everything seemed to
breathe of peace, and contentment, and repose. Esca walked slowly on, lost
in meditation.
Suddenly, the clash of cymbals and the sound of voices struck upon his
ear. A wild and fitful melody, rising and falling with strange thrilling
cadence, was borne upon the breeze. Even while he stopped to listen, it
swelled into a full harmonious chorus, and he recognised the chant of the
worshippers of Isis, returning from the unholy celebration of her rites.
Soon the glare of torches heralded its approach, and the tumultuous
procession wound round the corner of the street with all the strange
grotesque ceremonies of their order. Clashing their cymbals, dashing their
torches together till the sparks flew up in showers, tossing their bare
arms aloft with frantic gestures, the smooth‐faced priests, having girt
their linen garments tightly round their loins, were dancing to and fro
before the image of the goddess with bacchanalian energy. Some were
bareheaded, some crowned with garlands of the lotus‐leaf, and some wore
masks representing the heads of dogs and other animals; but all, though
leaping wildly here and there, danced in the same step, all used the same
mysterious gestures of which the meaning was only known to the initiated.
The figure of the goddess herself was borne aloft on the shoulders of two
sturdy priests, fat, oily, smooth, and sensual, with the odious look of
their kind. It represented a stately woman crowned with the lotus, holding
a four‐barred lyre in her hand. Gold and silver tinsel was freely
scattered over her flowing garments, and jewels of considerable value, the
gifts of unusually fervent devotees, might be observed upon her bosom and
around her neck and arms. Behind her were carried the different symbols by
which her qualities were supposed to be typified; amongst these an image
of the sacred cow, wrought in frosted silver with horns and hoofs of gold,
showed the most conspicuous, borne aloft as it was by an acolyte in the
wildest stage of inebriety, and wavering, with the uncertain movements of
its bearer, over the heads of the throng. In the van moved the priests,
bloated eunuchs clad in white; behind these came the sacred images carried
by younger votaries, who, aspiring to the sacerdotal office, and already
prepared for its functions, devoted themselves assiduously in the meantime
to the orgies with which it was their custom to celebrate the worship of
their deity. Maddened with wine, bare‐limbed and with dishevelled locks,
they danced frantically to and fro, darting at intervals from their ranks,
and compelling the passengers whom they met to turn behind them, and help
to swell the rear of the procession. This was formed of a motley crew.
Rich and poor, old and young, the proud patrician and the squalid slave,
were mingled together in turbulent confusion; it was difficult to
distinguish those who formed a part of the original pageant from the
idlers who had attached themselves to it, and, having caught the
contagious excitement, vociferated as loudly, and leaped about as wildly,
as the initiated themselves. Amongst these might be seen some of the
fairest and proudest faces in Rome. Noble matrons reared in luxury, under
the very busts of those illustrious ancestors who had been counsellors of
kings, defenders of the commonwealth, senators of the empire, thought it
no shame to be seen reeling about the public streets, unveiled and flushed
with wine, in the company of the most notorious and profligate of their
sex. A multitude of torches shed their glare on the upturned faces of the
throng, and on one that looked, with its scornful lips and defiant brow,
to have no business there.
Amongst the wildest of these revellers, Valeria’s haughty head moved on,
towering above the companions, with whom she seemed to have nothing in
common, save a fierce determination to set modesty and propriety at
defiance. Esca caught her glance as she swept by. She blushed crimson, he
observed even in the torchlight, and seemed for an instant to shrink
behind the portly form of a priest who marched at her side; but,
immediately recovering herself, moved on with a gradually paling cheek,
and a haughtier step than before.
He had little leisure, however, to observe the scornful beauty, whose
charms, to tell the truth, had made no slight impression on his
imagination; for a disturbance at its head, which had now passed him some
distance, had stopped the progress of the whole procession, and no small
confusion was the result. The torch‐bearers were hurrying to the front.
The silver cow had fallen and been replaced in an upright position more
than once. The goddess herself had nearly shared the same fate. The sacred
chant had ceased, and instead a hundred tongues were vociferating at once,
some in anger, some in expostulation, some in maudlin ribaldry and mirth.
“Let her go!” cried one. “Hold her fast!” shouted another. “Bring her
along with you!” reasoned a drunken acolyte. “If she be worthy she will
conform to the worship of the goddess. If she be unworthy she shall
experience the divine wrath of Isis!” “Mind what you are about,”
interposed a more cautious votary. “She is a Roman maiden,” said one.
“She’s a barbarian!” shrieked another. “A Mede!” “A Spaniard!” “A
Persian!” “A Jewess! A Jewess!”
In the meantime the unfortunate cause of all this turmoil, a young girl
closely veiled and dressed in black, was struggling in the arms of a large
unwieldy eunuch, who had seized her as a hawk pounces on a pigeon, and
despite her agonised entreaties, for the poor thing was in mortal fear,
held her ruthlessly in his grasp. She had been surrounded by the lawless
band, ere she was aware, as she glided quietly round the street corner, on
her homeward way, had shrunk up against the wall in the desperate hope
that she might remain unobserved or unmolested, and found herself, as was
to be expected, an immediate object of insult to the dissolute and
licentious crew. Though her dress was torn and her arms bruised from the
unmanly violence to which she was subjected, with true feminine modesty
she kept her veil closely drawn round her face, and resisted every effort
for its removal, with a firm strength of which those slender wrists seemed
hardly capable. As the eunuch grasped her with drunken violence, bending
his huge body and bloated face over the shrinking figure of the girl, she
could not suppress one piercing shriek for help, though, even while it
left her lips, she felt how futile it must be, and how utterly hopeless
was her situation. It was echoed by a hundred voices in tones of mockery
and derision.
Little did Spado, for such was the eunuch’s name, little did Spado think
how near was the aid for which his victim called; how sudden would be the
reprisals that should astonish himself with their prompt and complete
redress, reminding him of what he had long forgotten, the strength of a
man’s blow, and the weight of a man’s arm. At the first sound of the
girl’s voice, Esca had forced his way through the crowd to her assistance.
In three strides he had come up with her assailant, and laid his heavy
grasp on Spado’s fat shoulder, while he bade him in low determined accents
to release his prey. The eunuch smiled insolently, and replied with a
brutal jest.
Valeria, interested in spite of herself, could not resist an impulse to
press forward and see what was going on. Long afterwards she delighted to
recall the scene she now beheld with far more of exultation and excitement
than alarm. It had, indeed, especial attraction for an imagination like
hers. Standing out in the red glare of the torches, like the bronze statue
of some demigod starting into life, towered the tall figure of Esca,
defiance in his attitude, anger on his brow, and resistless strength in
the quivering outline of each sculptured limb. Within arm’s length of him,
the obese, ungraceful shape of Spado, with his broad fat face, expressive
chiefly of gluttony and sensual enjoyment, but wearing now an ugly look of
malice and apprehension. Starting back from his odious embrace to the
utmost length of her outstretched arms, the veiled form of the frightened
girl, her head turned from the eunuch, her hands pressed against his
chest, every line of her figure denoting the extreme of horror, and
aversion, and disgust. Round the three, a shifting mass of grinning faces,
and tossing arms, and wild bacchanalian gestures; the whole rendered more
grotesque and unnatural by the lurid, flickering light. With an
unaccountable fascination Valeria watched for the result.
“Let her go!” repeated Esca, in the distinct accents with which a man
speaks who is about to strike, tightening at the same time a gripe which
went into the eunuch’s soft flesh like iron.
Spado howled in mingled rage and fear, but released the girl nevertheless,
who cowered instinctively close to her protector.
“Help!” shouted the eunuch, looking round for assistance from his
comrades. “Help! I say. Will ye see the priest mishandled and the goddess
reviled? Down with him! down with him, comrades, and keep him down!”
There is little doubt that had Esca’s head once touched the ground it had
never risen again, for the priests were crowding about him with wild yells
and savage eyes, and the fierce revelry of a while ago was fast warming
into a thirst for blood. Valeria thrust her way into the circle, though
she never feared for the Briton—not for an instant.
It was getting dangerous, though, to remain any longer amongst this
frantic crew. Esca wound one arm round the girl’s waist and opposed the
other shoulder to the throng. Spado, encouraged by his comrades, struck
wildly at the Briton, and made a furious effort to recover his prey. Esca
drew himself together like a panther about to spring, then his long sinewy
arm flew out with the force and impulse of a catapult, and the eunuch,
reeling backwards, fell heavily to the ground, with a gash upon his cheek
like the wound inflicted by a sword.
“_Euge!_” exclaimed Valeria, in a thrill of admiration and delight. “Well
struck, by Hercules! Ah! these barbarians have at least the free use of
their limbs. Why, the priest went down like a white ox at the Mucian Gate.
Is he much hurt, think ye? Will he rise again?”
The last sentence was addressed to the throng who now crowded round the
prostrate Spado, and was but the result of that pity which is never quite
dormant in a woman’s breast. The fallen eunuch seemed indeed in no hurry
to get upon his legs again. He rolled about in hideous discomfiture, and
gave vent to his feelings in loud and pitiful moans and lamentations.
After such an example of the Briton’s prowess, none of her other votaries
seemed to think it incumbent on them to vindicate the majesty of the
goddess by further interference with the maiden and her protector.
Supporting and almost carrying her drooping form, Esca hurried her away
with swift firm strides, pausing and looking back at intervals, as though
loth to leave his work half finished, and by no means unwilling to renew
the contest. The last Valeria saw of him was the turn of his noble head
bending down with a courteous and protecting gesture, to console and
reassure his frightened charge. All her womanly instincts revolted at that
moment from the odious throng with whom she was involved. She could have
found it in her heart to envy that obscure and unknown girl hurrying away
yonder through the darkening streets on the arm of her powerful
protector—could have wished herself a peasant or a slave, with some one
being in the world to look up to, and to love.
Valeria’s life had been that of a spoiled child from the day she left her
cradle—that gilded cradle over which the nurses had repeated their
customary Roman blessing with an emphasis that in her case seemed to be
prophetic—
“May monarchs woo thee, darling! to their bed,
And roses blossom where thy footsteps tread!”
The metaphorical flowers of wealth, prosperity, and admiration, did indeed
seem to spring up beneath her feet, and her stately beauty would have done
no discredit to an imperial bride; but it must have been something more
than outward pomp and show—something nobler than the purple and the
diadem—that could have won its way to Valeria’s heart.
She was habituated to the beautiful, the costly, the refined, till she had
learned to consider such qualities as the mere essentials of life. It
seemed to her a simple matter of course that houses should be noble, and
chariots luxurious, and horses swift, and men brave. The _nil admirari_
was the maxim of the class in which she lived; and whilst their standard
was thus placed at the superlative, that which came up to it received no
credit for excellence, that which fell short was treated with disapproval
and contempt. Valeria’s life had been one constant round of pleasure and
amusement; yet she was not happy, not even contented. Day by day she felt
the want of some fresh interest, some fresh excitement; and it was this
craving probably, more than innate depravity, which drove her, in common
with many of her companions, into such disgraceful scenes as were enacted
at the worship of Juno, Isis, and the other gods and goddesses of
mythology.
Lovers, it is needless to say, Valeria had won in plenty. Each new face
possessed for her but the attraction of its novelty. The favourite of the
hour had small cause to plume himself on his position. For the first week
he interested her curiosity, for the second he pleased her fancy, after
which, if he was wise, he took his leave gracefully, ere he was bidden to
do so with a frankness that admitted of no misconception. Perhaps the only
person in the world whom she respected was her kinsman Licinius; and this,
none the less, that she possessed no kind of influence over his feelings
or his opinions; that she well knew he viewed her proceedings often with
disapprobation, and entertained for her character a kindly pity not far
removed from contempt. Even Julius Placidus, who was the most persevering,
as he was the craftiest, of her adorers, had made no impression on her
heart. She appreciated his intellect, she was amused with his
conversation, she approved of his deep schemes, his lavish extravagance,
his unprincipled recklessness; but she never thought of him for an instant
after he was out of her sight, and there was something in the cold‐blooded
ferocity of his character from which, even in his presence, she
unconsciously recoiled. Perhaps she admired the person of Hippias, her
fencing‐master, a retired gladiator, who combined handsome regularity of
features with a certain worn and warlike air, not without its charm, more
than that of any man whom she had yet seen, and with all her pride and her
cold exterior, Valeria was a woman to be captivated by the eye; but
Hippias, from his professional reputation, was the darling of half the
matrons in Rome, and it may be that she only followed the example of her
friends, with whom, at this period of the Empire, it was considered a
proof of the highest fashion, and the best taste, to be in love with a
gladiator.
Strong in her passions, as in her physical organisation, the former were
only bridled by an unbending pride, and an intensity of will more than
masculine in its resolution. As under that smooth skin the muscles of the
round white arm were firm and hard like marble, so beneath that fair and
tranquil bosom there beat a heart that for good or evil could dare,
endure, and defy the worst. Valeria was a woman whom none but a very bold
or very ignorant suitor would have taken to his breast; yet it may be that
the right man could have tamed, and made her gentle and patient as the
dove. And now something seemed to tell her that the void in her heart was
filled at last. Esca’s manly beauty had made a strong impression on her
senses; the anomaly of his position had captivated her imagination; there
was something very attractive in the mystery that surrounded him; there
was even a wild thrill of pleasure in the shame of loving a slave. Then,
when he stood forth, the champion of that poor helpless girl, brave,
handsome, and victorious, the charm was complete; and Valeria’s eyes
followed him as he disappeared with a longing loving look, that had never
glistened in them in her life before.
The Briton hurried away with his arm round the drooping figure of his
companion, and for a time forbore to speak a word even of encouragement or
consolation. At first the reaction of her feelings turned her sick and
faint, then a burst of weeping came to her relief; ere long the tears were
flowing silently; and the girl, who indeed showed no lack of courage, had
recovered herself sufficiently to look up in her protector’s face, and
pour out her thanks with a quiet earnestness that showed they came direct
from the heart.
“I can trust you,” she said, in a voice of peculiar sweetness, though her
Latin, like his own, was touched with a slightly foreign accent. “I can
read a brave man’s face—none better. We have not far to go now. You will
take me safe home?”
“I will guard you to your very door,” said he, in tones of the deepest
respect. “But you need fear nothing now; the drunken priests and their
mysterious deity are far enough off by this time. ’Tis a noble worship,
truly, for such a city as this—the mistress of the world!”
“False gods! false gods!” replied the girl, very earnestly. “Oh! how can
men be so blind, so degraded?” Here she stopped suddenly, and clung closer
to her companion’s arm, drawing her veil tighter round her face the while.
Her quick ear had caught the sound of hurrying footsteps, and she dreaded
pursuit.
“’Tis nothing,” said Esca, encouraging her; “the most we have to dread now
is some drunken freedman or client reeling home from his patron’s supper‐
table. They are a weakly race, these Roman citizens,” he added good‐
humouredly; “I think I can promise to stave them off if they come not more
than a dozen at a time.”
The cheerful tone reassured her no less than the strong arm to which she
clung. It was delightful to feel so safe after the fright she had
undergone. The footsteps were indeed those of a few dissolute idlers
loitering home after a debauch. They had hastened forward on espying a
female figure; but there was something in the air of her protector that
forbade a near approach, and they shrank to the other side of the way
rather than come in contact with so powerful an opponent. The girl felt
proud of her escort, and safer every minute. By this time she had guided
him into a dark and narrow street, at the end of which the Tiber might be
seen gleaming under the starlit sky. She stopped at a mean‐looking door,
let into a dead‐wall, and applying her hand to a secret spring, it opened
noiselessly to her touch. Then she turned to face her companion, and said
frankly, “I have not thanked you half enough. Will you not enter our poor
dwelling, and share with us a morsel of food and a cup of wine, ere you
depart upon your way?”
Esca was neither hungry nor thirsty, yet he bowed his head, and followed
her into the house.
CHAPTER VII
TRUTH
The dwelling in which the Briton now found himself presented a strange
contrast of simplicity and splendour, of wealth and frugality, of obscure
poverty and costly refinement. The wall was bare and weather‐stained; but
a silver lamp, burning perfumed oil, was fixed against its surface on a
bracket of common deal. Though the stone floor was damp and broken, it was
partially covered by a soft thick carpet of brilliant colours, while
shawls from the richest looms of Asia hung over the mutilated wooden seats
and the crazy couch, which appeared to be the congenial furniture of the
apartment. Esca could not but remark on the same inconsistency throughout
all the minor details of the household. A measure of rich wine from the
Lebanon was cooling in a pitcher of coarse earthenware, a draught of fair
water sparkled in a cup of gold. A bundle of Eastern javelins, inlaid with
ivory and of beautiful finish and workmanship, kept guard, as it were,
over a plain two‐edged sword devoid of ornament, and with a handle frayed
and worn as though from constant use, that looked like a weapon born for
work not show, some rough soldier’s rude but trusty friend. The room of
which Esca thus caught a hasty glance as he passed through, opened on an
inner apartment, which seemed to have been originally equally bare and
dilapidated, but of which the furniture was even more rich and
incongruous. It was flooded by a soft warm light, shed from a lamp burning
some rare Syrian oil, that was scarcely to be procured for money in Rome.
It dazzled Esca’s eyes as he followed the girl through the outer apartment
into this retreat, and it was a few seconds ere he recovered his sight
sufficiently to take note of the objects that surrounded him.
A venerable man with bald head and long silvery beard was sitting at the
table when they entered, reading from a roll of parchment filled to the
very margin with characters in the Syriac language, then generally spoken
over the whole of Asia Minor, and sufficiently familiar at Rome. So
immersed was he in his studies, that he did not seem to notice her
arrival, till the girl rushed up to him, and, without unveiling, threw
herself into his arms with many expressions of endearment and delight at
her own return. The language in which she spoke was unknown to the Briton;
but he gathered from her gestures, and the agitation which again overcame
her for an instant, that she was relating her own troubles, and the part
he had himself borne in the adventures of the night. Presently she turned,
and drew him forward, while she said in Latin, with a little sob of
agitation between every sentence—
“Behold my preserver—the youth who came in like a lion to save me from
those wicked men! Thank him in my father’s name, and yours, and all my
kindred and all my tribe. Bid him welcome to the best our house affords.
It is not every day a daughter of Judah meets with an arm and a heart like
his, when she falls into the grasp of the heathen and the oppressor!”
The old man stretched his hand to Esca with cordiality and goodwill; as he
did so, the Briton could not but observe how kindly was the smile that
mantled over his serene and gentle face.
“My brother will be home ere long,” said he, “and will himself thank you
for preserving his daughter from insult and worse. Meantime Calchas bids
you heartily welcome to Eleazar’s house. Mariamne,” he added, turning to
the girl, “prepare us a morsel of food that we may eat. It is not the
custom of our nation to send a stranger fasting from the door.”
The girl departed on her hospitable mission, and Esca, making light of his
prowess, and of the danger incurred, gave his own version of the night’s
occurrence, to which Calchas listened with grave interest and approval.
When he had concluded, the old man pointed to the scroll he had been
reading, which now lay rolled up on the table at his hand.
“The time will come,” said he, “when the words that are written here shall
be in the mouths of all men on the surface of the known earth. Then shall
there be no more strife, nor oppression, nor suffering, nor sorrow. Then
shall men love each other like brothers, and live only in kindliness and
goodwill. The day may seem far distant, and the means may seem poor and
inadequate now, yet so it is written here, and so will it be at last.”
“You think that Rome will extend her dominions farther and farther? That
she will conquer all known nations, as she has conquered us? That she
means to be in fact what she proudly styles herself, the Mistress of the
World? In truth, the eagle’s wings are wide and strong. His beak is very
sharp, and where his talons have once fastened themselves, they never
again let go their hold!”
Calchas smiled and shook his head.
“The dove will prevail against the eagle, as love is a stronger power than
hate. But it is not of Rome I speak as the future influence that shall
establish the great good on earth. The legions are indeed well trained,
and brave even to the death; but I know of soldiers in a better service
than Cæsar’s, whose warfare is harder, whose watches are longer, whose
adversaries are more numerous, but whose triumph is more certain, and more
glorious at the last.”
Esca looked as if he understood him not. The Briton’s thoughts were
wandering back to the tramp of columns and the clash of steel, and the
gallant stand made against the invader by the white‐robed warriors with
their long swords, amongst whom he had been one of the boldest and the
best.
“It is hard to strive against Rome,” said he, with a glowing cheek and
sparkling eye. “Yet I cannot but think, if we had never been provoked to
an attack, if we had kept steadily on the defensive, if we had moved
inland as he approached, harassing and cutting him off whenever we saw an
opportunity, but never suffering him to make one for himself—trusting more
to our woods and rivers, and less to our own right hands—we might have
tamed the eagle and clipped his wings, and beat him back across the sea at
last. But what have I to do with such matters now?” he added, while his
whole countenance fell in bitter humiliation. “I, a poor barbarian
captive, and a slave here in Rome!”
Calchas studied his face with a keen scrutinising glance, then he laid his
hand on the young man’s shoulder, and said inquiringly—
“There is not a grey hair in your clustering locks, nor a wrinkle on your
brow, yet you have known sorrow?”
“Who has not?” replied the other cheerfully; “and yet I never thought to
have come to this.”
“You are a slave, and you would be free?” asked Calchas, slowly and
impressively.
“I am a slave,” repeated the Briton, “and I shall be free. But not till
death.”
“And after death?” proceeded the old man, in the same gentle inquiring
tone.
“After death,” answered the other, “I shall be free as the elements I have
been taught to worship, and into which they tell me I shall be resolved.
What need I know or care more than that in death there will be neither
pleasure nor pain?”
“And is not life with all its changes too sweet to lose on such terms as
these?” asked the older man. “Are you content to believe that, like one
walking through a quicksand, the footsteps you leave are filled up and
obliterated behind you as you pass on? Can you bear to think that
yesterday is indeed banished and gone for ever? That a to‐morrow must come
of black and endless night? Death should be really terrible if this is
your conviction and your creed!”
“Death is never terrible to a brave man,” answered Esca. “A Briton need
not be taught how to die sword in hand.”
“You think you are brave,” said Calchas, looking wistfully on the other’s
rising colour and kindling eyes. “Ah! you have not seen my comrades die,
or you would know that something better than courage is required for the
service to which we belong. What think ye of weak women, tender shrinking
maidens, worn with fatigue, emaciated with hunger, fainting with heat and
thirst, brought out to be devoured by beasts, or to suffer long and
agonising tortures, yet smiling the while in quiet calm contentment, as
seeing the home to which they are hastening, the triumph but a few short
hours off? What think ye of the captains under whom I served, who here at
Rome, in the face of Cæsar and his power, vindicated the honour of their
Lord and died without a murmur for His cause? I was with Peter, I tell
you, Peter the Galilean, of whom men talk to this day, of whom men shall
never cease to talk in after ages, when he opposed to Simon’s magic arts
his simple faith in the Master whom he served, and I saw the magician
hurled like a stricken vulture to the ground. I was present when the
fiercest and the wickedest of the Cæsars, returning from the expedition to
Greece, wherein his buffooneries had earned the contempt even of that
subtle nation of flatterers, sentenced him to death upon the cross for
that he had dared to oppose Nero’s vices, and to tell Nero the truth. I
heard him petition that he might be crucified with his head downward, as
not worthy to suffer in the same posture as his Lord—and I can see him
now, the pale face, the noble head, the dark keen eye, the slender sinewy
form, and, above all, the self‐sustaining confidence, the triumphant
daring of the man as he walked fearlessly to death. I was with Paul, the
noble Pharisee, the naturalised Roman citizen, when he, alone amongst a
crowd of passengers and a century of soldiers, quailed not to look on the
black waves raging round our broken ship, and bade us all be of good
cheer, for that every soul, to the number of two hundred and seventy‐five,
should come safe to shore. I remember how trustfully we looked on that low
spare form, that grave and gracious face with its kindly eyes, its bushy
brows and thick beard sprinkled here and there with grey. It was the soul,
we knew, that sustained and strengthened the weakly body of the man. The
very barbarians where we landed acknowledged its influence, and would fain
have worshipped him for a god. Nero might well fear that quiet, humble,
trusting, yet energetic nature; and where the imperial monster feared, as
where he admired, loved, hated, envied, or despised, the sentiment must be
quenched in blood.”
“And did he too fall a victim?” inquired Esca, whose interest,
notwithstanding occasional glances at the door through which Mariamne had
gone out, seemed thoroughly awakened by the old man’s narrative.
“They might not crucify him,” answered Calchas, “for he was of noble
lineage and a Roman citizen born; but they took him from amongst us, and
they let him languish in a prison, till they released him at last and
brought him out to be beheaded. Ay, Rome was a fearful sight that day; the
foot was scorched as it trod the ashes of the devastated city, the eye
smarted in the lurid smoke that hung like a pall upon the heavy air and
would not pass away. Palaces were crumbling in ruins, the shrivelled
spoils of an empire were blackening around, the dead were lying in the
choked‐up highways half‐festering, half‐consumed—orphan children were
wandering about starved and shivering, with sallow faces and large shining
eyes, or, worse still, playing thoughtlessly, unconscious of their doom.
They said the Christians had set fire to the city, and many an innocent
victim suffered for this foul and groundless slander. The Christians,
forsooth! oppressed, persecuted, reviled; whose only desire was to live in
brotherhood with all men, whose very creed is peace and goodwill on earth.
I counted twenty of them, men, women, and children, neighbours with whom I
had held kindly fellowship, friends with whom I had broken bread, lying
stiff and cold in the Flaminian Way on the morning Paul was led out to
die. But there was peace on the dead faces, and the rigid hands were
clasped in prayer; and though the lacerated emaciated body, the mere
shell, was grovelling there in the dust, the spirit had gone home to God
who made it, to the other world of which you have not so much as heard,
yet which you too must some day visit, to remain for ever. Do you
understand me? not for ages, but _for ever_—without end!”
“Where is it?” asked Esca, on whom the idea of a spiritual existence,
innate from its very organisation in every intelligent being, did not now
dawn for the first time. “Is it here, or there? below, or above? in the
stars, or the elements? I know the world in which I live; I can see it,
can hear it, can feel it; but that other world, where is it?”
“Where is it?” repeated Calchas. “Where are the dearest wishes of your
heart, the noblest thoughts of your mind? Where are your loves, your
hopes, your affections, above all, your memories? Where is the whole
better part of your nature? your remorse for evil, your aspirations after
good, your speculations on the future, your convictions of the reality of
the past? Where these are, there is that other world. You cannot see it,
you cannot hear it, yet you _know_ that it must be. Is any man’s happiness
complete? is any man’s misery when it reaches him so overwhelming as it
seemed at a distance? And why is it not? Because something tells him that
the present life is but a small segment in the complete circle of a soul’s
existence. And the circle, you have not lived in Rome without learning, is
the symbol of infinity.”
Esca pondered and was silent. There are convictions which men hold
unconsciously, and to which they are so accustomed that their attention
can only be directed to them from without, just as they wear their skins
and scarcely know it, till the familiar covering has been lacerated by
injury or disease. At last he looked up with a brightening countenance,
and exclaimed, “In that world, surely, all men will be free!”
“All men will be equal,” replied Calchas, “but no mortal or immortal ever
can be free. Suppose a being totally divested of all necessity for effort,
all responsibility to his fellows or himself, all participation in the
great scheme of which government is the essential condition in its every
part, and you suppose one whose own feelings would be an intolerable
burden, whose own wishes would be an unendurable torture. Man is made to
bear a yoke; but the Captain whom I serve has told me that His yoke is
easy and His burden is light. How easy and how light, I experience every
moment of my life.”
“And yet you said but now that death and degradation were the lot of those
who bore arms by your side in the ranks,” observed the Briton, still
intently regarding his companion.
A ray of triumphant courage and exultation flashed up into the old man’s
face. For an instant Esca recognised the fierce daring of a nature
essentially bold, reckless, and defiant; but it faded as it came, and was
succeeded by an expression of meek, chastened humility, whilst he replied—
“Death welcome and long looked‐for! Degradation that confers the highest
honours in this world and the next!—at least to those who are held worthy
of the great glory of martyrdom. Oh! that I might be esteemed one of that
noble band! But my work will be laid to my hand, and it is enough for me
to be the lowest of the low in the service of my Master.”
“And that master? Tell me of that master,” exclaimed Esca, whose interest
was excited, as his feelings were roused, by converse with one who seemed
so thoroughly impressed with the truth of what he spoke, who was at once
so earnest, so gentle, and so brave. The old man bowed his head with
unspeakable reverence, but in his face shone the deep and fervent joy of
one who looks back with intense love and gratitude to the great epoch of
his existence.
“I saw Him once,” said he, “on the shore of the Sea of Galilee—I that
speak to you now saw Him with my own eyes—there were little children at
His feet. But we will talk of this again, for you are weary and exhausted.
Meat and drink are even now prepared for you. It is good to refresh the
body if the mind is to be vigorous and discerning. You have done for us
to‐night the act of a true friend. You will henceforth be always welcome
in Eleazar’s house.”
While he spoke, the girl whom Esca had rescued so opportunely entered the
apartment, bearing in some food on a coarse and common trencher, with a
wineskin, of which she poured the contents into a jewelled cup, and
presented it to her preserver with an embarrassed but very graceful
gesture, and a soft shy smile.
Mariamne had unveiled; and, if Esca’s expectations during their homeward
walk had been raised by her gentle feminine manners, and the sweet tones
of her voice, they were not now disappointed with what he saw. The dark
eyes that looked up so timidly into his own, were full and lustrous as
those of a deer. They had, moreover, the mournful pleading expression
peculiar to that animal, and, through all their softness and intelligence,
betrayed the watchful anxiety of one whose life is passed in constant
vicissitudes and occasional danger. The girl’s face was habitually pale,
though the warm blood mantled in her cheek as she drooped beneath Esca’s
gaze of honest admiration, and her regular features were sharpened, a
little more than was natural to them, by daily care and apprehension. This
was especially apparent in the delicate aquiline of the nose, and a slight
prominency of the cheek‐bones. It was a face that in prosperity would have
been rich and sparkling as a jewel, that in adversity preserved its charms
from the rare and chastened beauty in which it was modelled. Her dress
betrayed the same incongruity that was so remarkable in the furniture of
her home. Like her veil it was black, and of a coarse and common material,
but where it was looped up, the folds were fastened by one single gem of
considerable value; and two or three links of a heavy gold chain were
visible round her white and well‐turned neck.
Moving through the room, busied with the arrangements of the meal which
she must herself have prepared, Esca could not but observe the pliant
grace of her form, enhanced by a certain modest dignity, very different
from the vivacious gestures of the Roman maidens to whom he was
accustomed, and especially pleasing to the eye of the Briton.
Calchas seemed to love the girl as a daughter; and his kind face grew
kinder and gentler still, while he followed her about in her different
movements, with eyes of the deepest and fondest affection.
Esca could not but observe that the board was laid for three persons, and
that by one of the wooden platters stood a drinking‐cup of great beauty
and value. Mariamne’s glance followed his as it rested on the spare place.
“For my father,” said she gently, in answer to the inquiry she read on his
face. “He is later than usual to‐night, and, I fear—I fear; my father is
so bold, so prompt to draw steel when he is angered. To‐night he has left
his sword at home; and I know not whether to be most frightened or
reassured at his being alone in this wicked town, unarmed.”
“He is in God’s hand, my child,” said Calchas reverently. “But I should
not fear for Eleazar,” he added, with a proud and martial air, “were he
surrounded by a score of such as we see prowling nightly in the streets of
Rome, though they were armed to the teeth, and he with only a shepherd’s
staff to keep his head.”
“Is he, then, so redoubtable a warrior?” asked Esca, on whom good manhood
seldom failed to produce a favourable impression. While he spoke he looked
from one to the other with increasing curiosity and interest.
“You shall judge for yourself,” answered Calchas, “for it cannot now be
long ere he return. Nevertheless, the man who could leap down from the
walls of a beleaguered city, as my brother did, naked and unarmed; who
could break the head off a Roman battering‐ram by main force, and render
that engine useless; who could reach the wall again with his prize,
covered with wounds, having fought his way through a whole maniple of
Roman soldiers, and could ask but for a draught of water, ere he donned
his armour, and took his place once more upon the rampart, is not likely
to fear aught that can befall him from a few idlers in a common street‐
broil. Nevertheless, as I said before, you shall judge for yourself.”
“And here he is!” exclaimed Mariamne, while the outer door shut to, and a
man’s step was heard advancing through the adjoining apartment, with a
firm and measured footfall.
She had been pale enough all night in the eyes of Esca, who was watching
her intently; but he thought now she seemed to turn a shade paler than
before.
CHAPTER VIII
THE JEW
The man who entered the apartment with the air of one to whom every nook
and corner was familiar, must have been fully three‐score years of age,
yet his dark eye still glittered with the fire of youth, his thick curling
beard and hair were but slightly sprinkled with grey, and the muscles of
his square powerful frame seemed but to have acquired solidity and
consistency with age. His appearance was that of a warrior, toughened,
and, as it were, forged into iron, by years of strife, hardship, and
unremitting toil.
If something in the line of his aquiline features resembled Calchas, no
two faces could have been more different in their character and expression
than those of Eleazar and his brother. The latter was all gentleness,
kindliness, and peace; on the former, fiery passions, deep schemes,
continual peril, and contention, had set their indelible marks. The one
was that of the spectator, who is seated securely on the cliff, and marks
the seething waters below with interest, indeed, and sympathy, but with
feelings neither of agitation nor alarm; the other was the strong swimmer,
breasting the waves fiercely, and battling with their might, striving for
his life inch by inch, and stroke by stroke, conscious of his peril,
confident in his strength, and never despairing for an instant of the
result. At times, indeed, the influence of opposite feelings, softening
the one and kindling the other, would bring out the family likeness clear
and apparent upon each; but in repose no two faces could be more
dissimilar, no two types of character more utterly at variance, than those
of the Christian and the Jew.
As Eleazar’s warlike figure came into the light, Esca could not but remark
with what a glance of mistrust his quick eye took in the presence of a
stranger, how the strong fingers closed instinctively round the staff he
was in the act of laying down, and the whole form seemed to gather itself
in an instant as though ready for the promptest measures of resistance or
attack. Such trifling gestures spoke volumes of the character and habits
of the man.
Nevertheless Calchas rapidly explained to his brother the cause of this
addition to their supper‐party; and Mariamne, who seemed in considerable
awe of her father, busied herself in placing food and wine before him,
with even more alacrity than she had shown when serving their guest.
The Jew thanked his new friend for the kindness he had rendered his
daughter, with a few brief cordial words, as one brave man expresses his
gratitude to another, then fell to on the meat and drink provided, with a
voracity that argued well for his physical powers, and denoted a strong
constitution and a long fast. As he took breath after a deep draught of
wine in which, though he pledged him not, he challenged his guest to join,
Calchas asked his brother how he had sped in the affairs that kept him
from home all day.
“Ill,” answered the other, shooting from under his thick eyebrows a
penetrating glance at the Briton. “Ill and slowly, yet not so ill but that
something has been gained, another step taken in the direction at which I
aim. Yet I have been to‐day in high places, have seen those bloated
gluttons and drunkards who are the ministers of Cæsar’s will, have spoken
with that spotted panther, Vespasian’s scheming agent forsooth! who thinks
he hath the cunning, as he can doubtless boast of the treachery and the
gaudy colours, of the beast of prey. Let him take care! Weaker hands than
mine have ere this strangled a fiercer animal for the worth of his shining
skin. Let him beware! Eleazar‐Ben‐Manahem is a match, and more than a
match, for Julius Placidus the tribune!”
Esca glanced quickly at the speaker, as his ear caught the familiar name.
The look was not lost upon his host.
“You know him?” said he, with a fierce smile that showed the strong white
teeth gleaming through his bushy beard. “Then you know as cool and well‐
taught a soldier as ever buckled on a sword. I wish I had a few like him
to officer the Sicarii(3) at home. But you know, also, a man who would not
scruple to slay his own father for the worth of the clasp that fastens his
gown. I have seen him in the field, and I have seen him in the council. He
is bold, skilful, and he can be treacherous in both! Where met you him
last?” he added, with a searching glance at Esca, while at the same time
he desired Mariamne to fill the stranger’s cup and his own.
The latter proceeding engrossed the Briton’s whole attention. It was with
the utmost carelessness that he replied to the question, by relating his
interview, that very morning, with the tribune at Valeria’s door. He
scarcely marked how precisely the father noted down the name in his
tablets, for the daughter’s white arm was reaching over his shoulder, so
close that it almost touched his cheek.
It was indeed well worth Eleazar’s while to obtain information, from
whatever source, of any influence that might affect those in authority
with whom he was in daily contact at Rome. His position was one which
called for courage, tact, skill, and even cunning, to a great extent.
Charged by the Supreme Council at Jerusalem, then in the last stage of
perplexity and sorely beset by Vespasian and his legions, with a private
mission to Vitellius, who much mistrusted the successful general, he
represented the hopes and fears, the temporal and political prosperity,
nay, the very existence of the Chosen People. Nor to all appearance could
a better instrument have been selected for the purpose. Eleazar, though a
bigoted and fanatical Jew of the strictest sect, was a man of keen and
powerful intellect, whose obstinacy was open to no conviction, whose
perseverance was to be deterred by no obstacle. A distinguished and
fearless soldier, he possessed the confidence of the large and fighting
portion of the nation, who looked on Roman supremacy with abhorrence, and
who clung dearly to the notion of earthly dominion, wrested from the
heathen with the sword. His rigid observance of its fasts, its duties, and
its ceremonials, had gained him the affections of the priesthood, and the
more enthusiastic followers of that religion in which outward forms were
so strictly enjoined and so faithfully observed; while a certain fierce,
defiant, and unbending demeanour towards all classes of men, had won for
him a character of frankness which did him good service in the schemes of
intrigue and dissimulation with which he was continually engaged.
Yet perhaps the man was honest too, as far as his own convictions went. He
esteemed all means lawful for the furtherance of a lawful object. He was
one of those who deem it the most contemptible of weakness to shrink from
doing evil that good may come. Like Jephthah he would have sacrificed his
daughter unflinchingly in performance of a vow; nay, had Mariamne stood
between him and the attainment of his ambition, or even the accomplishment
of his revenge, he would have walked ruthlessly over the body of his
child. Versed in the traditions of his family and the history of his
nation, he was steeped to the lips in that pride of pedigree which was so
essential a feature of the Jewish character: he was convinced that the
eventual destiny of his people was to lord it over the whole earth. He
possessed more than his share of that haughty self‐sufficiency which bade
the Pharisee hold aloof from those of lower pretensions and humbler
demeanour than himself; while he had all the fierce courage and energy of
the Lion of Judah, so terrible when roused, so difficult to be appeased
when victorious. In his secret heart he anticipated the time when
Jerusalem should again become a sovereign city, when the Roman eagles
should be scared away from Syria, and a hierarchy established once more as
the government of the people chosen by Heaven. That he should be a second
Judas Maccabæus, a chief commander of the armies of the faithful in the
new order of things, was an ambition naturally enough entertained by the
bold and skilful soldier; but, to do Eleazar justice, individual
aggrandisement had but little share in his schemes, and personal interest
never crossed those visions for the future, on which his dark and
dangerous enthusiasm so loved to dwell.
It was a delicate matter to intrigue with Vitellius in Rome against the
very general who held supreme authority, at least ostensibly, from the
Emperor. It was playing a hazardous game, to receive power and
instructions from the Council at Jerusalem, and to use or suppress them
according to the bearer’s own political views and future intentions.
It was no easy task to hold his own against such men as Placidus, in the
contest of _finesse_, subtlety, and double‐dealing; yet the Jew entered
upon his perilous career with a strenuous energy, a cool calculating
audacity, that was engraved in the very character of the man.
Another draught of the rich Lebanon wine served to improve their
acquaintance, and Eleazar, with considerable tact, drew from the Briton
all the information he could obtain as to the habits and movements of his
antagonist the tribune, while he seemed but to be carrying on the
courteous conversation of a host with his guest. Esca’s answers,
notwithstanding that thoughts and eyes wandered frequently towards
Mariamne, were frank and open like his disposition. He, too, entertained
no very cordial liking for Placidus, and experienced towards the tribune
that unconscious antipathy which the honest man so often feels for the
knave.
Calchas, meanwhile, had returned to the perusal of his scroll, on which
his brother cast occasional glances of unfeigned contempt, notwithstanding
that the reader was the person whom he most loved and respected on earth.
Mariamne, moving about the apartment, looked covertly on the fair face and
stately form of her preserver, approving much of what she saw; once their
eyes met, and the Jewess blushed to her temples for very shame. So the
time passed quickly; the night stole on, the Lebanon was nearly finished,
and Esca rose to bid his entertainers farewell.
“You have done me a rare service,” said Eleazar, feeling in his breast
while he spoke, and producing, from under his coarse garment, a jewel of
considerable value, “a service neither thanks nor guerdon can requite;
yet, I pray you, keep this trinket in remembrance of the Jew and the Jew’s
daughter, who come of a people that forgive not an injury, and forget not
a benefit.”
The colour mounted to Esca’s forehead, and an expression of pain, almost
of anger, came into his face, while he replied—
“I have done nothing to merit either thanks or reward. It is no such
matter to put a fat eunuch on his back, or to defend an unprotected woman
in a town like this. Take back your jewel, I pray you. Any other man would
have done as much.”
“It is not every man who could have interposed so effectually,” replied
Eleazar, with a glance of hearty approval at the thews and sinews of his
friend, replacing the jewel meanwhile in his vestment, without the least
sign of displeasure at its being declined. He would have bestowed it
freely, no doubt, but if Esca did not want it, it would serve some other
purpose: precious stones and gold would always fetch their value at Rome.
“At least you will let me give you a safe‐conduct home,” he added; “the
night is far advanced, and I should be loth that you should suffer wrong
for your interposition in our behalf.”
Esca burst out laughing now. In the pride of his strength, it seemed so
impossible that he should require protection or assistance from anyone. He
squared his large shoulders and drew himself to his full height.
“I should wish no better pastime,” said he, “than a bout with a dozen of
them! I, too, was brought up a warrior, in a land you have never heard of,
many a long mile from Rome; a land fairer far than this, of green valleys
and wooded hills, and noble rivers winding calmly towards the sea; a land
where the oaks are lofty and the flowers are sweet, where the men are
strong and the women fair. I have followed the chase afoot from sunrise to
sunset through many a summer’s day. I have fronted the invader, sword in
hand, ever since my arm was long enough to draw blade from sheath, or I
had not been here now. You too are a soldier, I see it in your eye—you can
believe that my limbs grow stiff, my spirits droop for lack of martial
exercise. In faith, it seems to me that even a vulgar broil in the street
makes my blood dance in my veins once more!”
Mariamne was listening with parted lips and shining eyes. She drank in all
he said of his distant home with its woodland scenery, its forest trees,
its fragrant flowers, and, above all, its lovely women. She felt so kindly
towards this bold young stranger, exiled from kin and country, she
attributed her interest to pity and gratitude, nor could she help
wondering to find these sentiments so strong.
Calchas looked up from his studies.
“Fare thee well!” said he. “Take an old man’s warning, and strike not
unless it be in self‐defence. Mark well the turning from the main street
to the Tiber, so shalt thou find thy way to our poor home again.”
Esca promised faithfully to return, and fully intended to redeem his
promise.
“Another cup of wine,” said Eleazar, emptying the leathern bottle into a
golden vessel; “the sun of Italy cannot ripen such a vintage as this.”
But the rich produce of the Lebanon was all too cloying for the healthy
palate and the thirst of youth. Esca prayed for a draught of fair water,
and Mariamne brought him the pitcher and gave him to drink with her own
hand. For the second time to‐night their eyes met, and although they were
instantly averted, the Briton felt that he was drinking from a cup more
intoxicating than all the wine‐presses of Syria could produce—a cup that
made him unconscious of the past as of the future, and only too keenly
sensible of the present by its joy. He forgot that he was a barbarian, he
forgot that he was a slave.
He forgot everything but Mariamne and her dark imploring trustful eyes.
CHAPTER IX
THE ROMAN
[Initial I]
It is time to give some account of Esca’s anomalous position in the
capital of the world—to explain how the young British noble (for that was
indeed the rank he held in his own country) found himself a slave in the
streets of Rome. In order to do so it is necessary to take a glimpse at
the interior of a patrician’s house about the hour of supper; perhaps also
to intrude upon the reflections of its owner, as he paces up and down the
colonnade in the cool air of sunset, absorbed in his own thoughts, and
deep in the memories of the past.
His mansion is of stately proportion, and large size, but all its
ornaments and accessories are chastened by a severe simplicity of taste.
An observer might identify the man by the very nature of the objects that
surround him. In his vestibule the columns are of the Ionic order, and
their elaborate capitals have been wrought into the utmost degree of
finish which that style will allow. In the smaller entrance‐hall or lobby,
which leads to the principal apartments, and which is guarded by an image
of a dog, let into the pavement in mosaic, there are no florid sculptures
nor carvings, nor any attempt at decoration beyond the actual beauty of
the stonework and the scrupulous care with which it is kept clean. The
doors themselves are of bronze, so well burnished as to need no mixture of
gold or silver inlaid to enhance its brightness; whilst in the principal
hall itself, the room in which friends are welcomed, clients received, and
business transacted, the walls, instead of frescoes and such gaudy
ornaments, are simply overlaid with entablatures of white and polished
marble. The dome is very lofty, rising majestically towards the circular
opening at the top, through which the sky is visible; and round the
fountain or cistern immediately below this are ranged four colossal
statues, representing the elements. These, with the busts of a long line
of illustrious ancestors, are the only efforts of the sculptor’s art
throughout the apartment. A large banqueting‐hall, somewhat more
luxuriously furnished, opens from one side of the central room, and as
much as can be seen of it displays considerable attention to convenience
and personal comfort. Frescoes, representing scenes of military life,
adorn the walls, and at one end stands a trophy, composed of deadly
weapons and defensive armour, arranged so as to form a glittering and
conspicuous ornament. Large flagons and chalices of burnished gold, some
of them adorned with valuable jewels, are ranged upon a sideboard; but it
is evident that no guests are expected to‐night, for near the couch
against the wall has been drawn a small table, laid for one person only,
with a clean napkin, and a cup and platter of plain silver thereon. That
person is none other than the master of the house, bodily pacing up and
down his own colonnade in Rome, mentally gazing on a fair expanse of wood
and vale and shining river, drinking in the cool breezes, the fragrant
odours, and the wild luxuriant beauty of distant Britain.
Five‐and‐twenty years! and yet it seems but yesterday. The brow wrinkles,
the hair turns grey, strength wastes, energy fails, the brain gets torpid,
and the senses dull, but the heart never grows old. Business, ambition,
pleasure, dangers, duties, difficulties, and successes have filled that
quarter of a century, and passed away like a dream; but the touch of a
hand, the memory of a face, have outlived them all. Caius Lucius Licinius,
Roman patrician, general, prætor, consul, and procurator of the Empire, is
the young commander of a legion once more, with the world before him, and
the woman he loves by his side. This is what he sees now, as he has seen
it so often in his dreams by night, and his waking visions by day.
An old oak‐tree, a mossy sward soft and level as velvet, delicate fern
bending and whispering in the summer breeze, fleecy clouds drifting across
the blue sky, and a graceful form, in its white robes, coming shyly up the
glade, with faltering step, and sidelong glance, and timid gesture, to
keep her tryst with her Roman lover. She is in his arms now. The rich
brown curls are scattered over his breastplate, and the blue eyes are
looking up into his own, liquid with the love‐light that thrills to a
man’s heart but from one pair of eyes in a lifetime. She is, indeed, no
contemptible prize, in the glory of her beauty and the pride of her
blooming womanhood. With the rounded form, the noble features, and the
dazzling colour of her nation, she possesses the courage and constancy of
a highborn race, and a witchery half imperious, half playful, peculiarly
her own. There are women who find their way to the core of a man’s heart,
who pervade it all, and saturate it, so to speak, with their influence.
“Quo semel est imbuta recens, servabit odorem(4)
Testa diu”——
The vessel that has once held this rich and rare liquid is ever after
impregnated with its fragrance, and even when it has been spilt every
drop, and a fresh infusion poured in, the new wine smacks strangely and
wildly of the old. She is one of them; he knows it too well.
They should have nothing in common, these two, the British chieftain’s
daughter and the Roman conqueror. But there is a truce between the
nations; a truce in which the elements of discord are nevertheless
smouldering, ready to blaze out afresh at the first opportunity, and they
have seen each other accidentally, and been thrown together by
circumstances, till curiosity has become interest, and interest grown into
liking, and liking ripened into love. The British maiden might not be won
lightly, and many a tear she wept in secret, and sore she strove against
her own heart; but when it conquered her at last she gave it, as such
women will, wholly and unreservedly. She would have lived for him, died
for him, followed him to the end of the world. And Licinius worshipped her
as a man worships the one woman who is the destiny of his life. Most men
have at some time or other experienced this folly, infatuation, madness,
call it what you will. They are not likely to forget it. Possibly—alas!
probably—the bud they then watched opening has never expanded into bloom,
at least for _them_. The worm may have destroyed it, or the cold wind cut
it to the earth, or another’s hand may have borne it away in triumph to
gladden another’s breast; but there is something in the May mornings that
reminds them of the sweet flower still, and they wander round the fairest
gardens of earth rather drearily to‐day, because of the memory that has
never faded, and the blank where _she_ is not.
[Illustration: ‘Licinius holds the British maiden to his breast’]
Licinius holds the British maiden to his breast, and they discourse of
their own happiness and revel in the sunny hour, and plan schemes for the
future—schemes in which each is to the other all in all, and dream not
that when to‐day is past for them there will be no to‐morrow. The woman,
indeed, heaves a gentle sigh at intervals, as though in the midst of her
happiness some foreboding warned her of the brooding tempest; but the man
is hopeful, buoyant, and impetuous, playful in his tenderness, and joyous
in his own triumphant love. They parted that evening more reluctantly than
usual. They lingered round the oak, they found excuse after excuse for
another loving word, another fond caress. When at last they went their
several ways, how often Licinius turned to look after the receding form
that carried with it all his hope and all his happiness! Little did he
think how, and when, and where, he would see Guenebra again.
Ten years went heavily by. The commander of a legion was the chief of an
army now. Licinius had served Rome in Gaul, in Spain, in Syria. Men said
he bore a charmed life; and, indeed, while his counsels showed the
forethought, the caution, and the patience of a skilful officer, his
personal conduct was remarkable for a reckless disregard of danger, which
would have been esteemed foolhardy in the meanest soldier. It was
observed, too, that a deep and abiding melancholy had taken possession of
the once light‐hearted patrician. He only seemed to brighten up into his
former self under the pressure of imminent danger, in the confusion of a
repulse, or the excitement of a charge. At other times he was silent,
depressed, preoccupied; never morose, for his kindly heart was open to the
griefs of others, and the legionaries knew that their daring general was
the friend of all who were in sorrow or distress. But the men talked him
over, too, by their watch‐fires; they marvelled, those honest old
campaigners, how one who was so ready in the field could be so sparing of
the winecup; how the leader who could stoop to fill his helmet from the
running stream under a storm of javelins, and drink composedly with a jest
and a smile, should be so backward in the revel, should show such a
disinclination to those material pleasures which they esteemed the keenest
joys of life.
One old centurion, who had followed his fortunes from the Thames to the
Euphrates, from the confines of Pannonia to the Pillars of Hercules,
averred that he had never seen his chief discomfited but once, and that
was on the day when he had been accorded a triumph for his services in the
streets of Rome. The veteran used to swear he never could forget the
dejected look upon those brows, encircled with their laurel garland, nor
the weary listlessness of that figure, to which all eyes were directed in
its gilded chariot; the object of admiration to the whole city, and, for
that day, scarcely second even to Cæsar himself. It was a goodly triumph,
no doubt; the spoils were rich, the car was lofty, the people shouted, and
the victims fell. But what was glory without Guenebra? and the hero’s eye
could not rest in peace on one of all those gazing thousands, for lack of
the loving face framed in its rich brown hair.
On the very night Licinius and Guenebra parted, a long‐meditated rising
had broken out among the islanders—conquered, but not subdued. Nothing but
the cool courage of its young commander, and the immovable discipline of
the legionaries, saved the Roman camp. Ere morning, Guenebra had been
forced away by her tribe many miles from the scene of action; the Britons,
too, retired into their strongholds, those natural fastnesses impregnable
by regular troops. The whole country was once more in a state of open
warfare. Prompt and decisive measures were taken; Publius Ostorius, the
Roman general, in execution of a manœuvre by which he preserved his line
of operation, despatched Licinius and his legion to a different part of
the island, and with all his exertions and all his influence, the young
officer could never obtain tidings of Guenebra again. It was after this
event that the change came over Licinius which was so commented on by the
soldiers under his command.
Ten years of brilliant and successful services had elapsed when he
returned to Britain. Nero had but lately succeeded to the purple, nor had
he then degenerated into the monster of iniquity which he afterwards
became. Until sapped by his ungovernable passions, the Emperor’s
administrative abilities were of no mean order; and he selected Licinius
for the important post assigned to him, as being a consummate soldier, and
experienced in the country with which he had to deal. The latter accepted
the appointment with alacrity; through all change of time and fortune, he
had never forgotten his British love. Under the burning skies of Syria, by
the frozen shores of the Danube, at home or abroad, in peace or war,
Guenebra’s face was ever present to him, fond and trustful as when they
last parted under the old oak‐tree. He longed but to see it once more. And
so he did. Thus—
A partial insurrection had been quelled beyond the Trent. The Roman
vanguard had surprised the Britons, and forced them to fly in great
confusion, leaving their baggage, their valuables, in some cases even
their arms, behind. When Licinius came up with the main body of his
forces, he found, indeed, no prisoners taken, for everything animate had
fled, but a goodly amount of spoil, over which Roman discipline had placed
a strong guard. One of his tribunes approached him with a list of the
captured articles; and when his general had perused it, the officer
hesitated as though there was still some further report to make. At last
he spoke out—
“There is a hut left standing within the lines of the enemy. I would not
order it to be destroyed till I had provided for the burial of a dead body
that lies beneath its shelter.”
Licinius was counting the arms taken.
“A dead body!” said he carelessly; “is it an officer of rank?”
“’Tis a woman’s corpse,” answered the tribune; “a fair and stately woman,
apparently the wife of some prince or chieftain at the least.”
For Guenebra’s sake, every woman, much more every British woman, was an
object of respect and interest to Licinius.
“Lead on,” said he. “I will give directions when I have seen it;” and the
general followed his officer to the place already indicated.
It was but a rude hut made of a few planks and branches hastily thrown
together. It seemed to have been erected at a moment’s notice, probably to
shelter an inmate in the last stage of dissolution. Through a wide rent in
the roof the summer sun streamed in brilliantly, throwing a sheet of light
on the dead face below. The prostrate form was swathed in its white robe,
the bridal garment of the destroyer. A band of white encircled the head
and chin, and the brown hair was parted modestly on the smooth forehead
calm and womanly as of old. It was Guenebra’s face that lay there so
strangely still. Guenebra’s face, how like and yet how changed! As he
stooped over it, and looked on the closed eyes beneath their arching
brows, the fair and noble features chiseled by the hand of death—the sweet
lips wreathed even now with a chastened loving smile—he could not but mark
that there were lines of thought upon the forehead, streaks of silver in
the hair, the result it might be of regrets, and memories, and sorrows,
and care for _him_.
Then the warm tears gushed up into the soldier’s eyes, the pressure on his
heart and brain seemed to be relieved. As when the spear is drawn out of a
wound and the red stream spouts freely forth, the previous agony was
succeeded by a dull hopeless resignation, that in comparison seemed almost
akin to peace. He pressed his lips hard upon the cold dead forehead, and
turned away—a man for whom from henceforth there was neither good to
covet, nor evil to be feared.
And thus it was that here, on earth, Licinius looked once more upon his
love.
Fresh victories crowned his arms in Britain—a fresh triumph awaited his
return to Rome; but still as of old with Licinius, the glory seemed to
count for nothing, the service seemed to be all‐in‐all. Only, now, the
restless, eager look had left his face. He was always calm and unmoved,
even in the uncertainty of conflict or the triumph of success. Still
kindly in his actions, his outward demeanour was very stern and cold. He
kept aloof from the intrigues, as from the pleasures, of the Court; but
was ever ready to serve Rome with his sword, and on many occasions by his
coolness and conduct redeemed the errors and incapacity of his colleagues
or predecessors. Fortune smiled upon the man who was insensible to her
frowns. Honours poured in on the soldier who seemed so careless of their
attainment; and Caius Lucius Licinius was perhaps the object of more
respect and less envy than any other person of his rank in Rome.
It fell out that shortly before the death of Nero, the general, in
traversing the slave‐market on the way from the Forum, felt his sleeve
plucked by a notorious dealer in human wares, named Gargilianus, who
begged him earnestly to come and examine a fresh importation of captives
lately arrived from Britain. To mention their country was at once to
excite the interest of Licinius, who readily acceded to the request, and
spoke a few kind words in their native language to the unhappy barbarians
as he passed through their ranks. His attention was, however, especially
arrested by the appearance of one of the conquered, a fine young man of
great strength and stature, who seemed to feel painfully the indignity of
his position, placed as he was on a huge stone block, whereon his own
towering height rendered him a conspicuous object in the throng. He had
been severely wounded, too, in several places, as was apparent from the
scars scarce yet healed over. Indeed, had it not been so, he would never
probably have been here. There was something in his face, and the
expression of his large blue eyes, that roused a painful thrill in the
Roman general’s breast. He felt a strange and undefinable attraction
towards the captive, for which he could not account, and, pausing in his
walk, scanned him with a wistful searching gaze, which was not lost on the
practised perceptions of the dealer.
“He should have been shown in private,” whispered Gargilianus, with an
important and mysterious air. “Indeed, my man was just taking him away,
when I saw you coming, my honoured patron, and I called to him to stop.
Ay! you may examine him all over—tall, young, and healthy. Sound, wind and
limb, and stronger than any gladiator in the amphitheatre. They are men of
iron, these barbarians, that’s the truth, and he has only just come over.
There! look for yourself, noble general; you will see the chalk‐marks(5)
on his feet.”
“But he is badly wounded,” observed Licinius, beginning to scan him, as
the other instinctively felt, with the eye of a purchaser.
“That is nothing!” exclaimed Gargilianus. “Mere scratches, skin deep, and
healed over now. You will not be able to run your nail against them in a
week. Eyesores, I grant you, to‐day, otherwise I would ask two thousand
sesterces at least for him. These islanders are cheap at any price.”
“I will give you a thousand,” said Licinius quietly.
“Impossible!” burst out the dealer, with a quiver of his fingers, that
expressed a most emphatic negative. “I should lose money by him, generous
patron! What! A man must live. Cæsar would give more for him to die in the
circus. Look at his muscles! He would stand up for a good five minutes
against the tiger!”
This last consideration was probably not without its influence. After a
little more haggling, the British captive became the property of Licinius
at the cost of fifteen hundred sesterces;(6) and Esca found the most
indulgent and the kindest‐hearted master in Rome.
We must return to that master, pacing thoughtfully up and down the
colonnade, in the cool and pleasant evening air.
It is, perhaps, one of the most consoling and merciful dispensations of
Providence that the human mind is so constituted as to dwell on past
pleasures, rather than past pain. The sorrow that is done with, returns
indeed at intervals vividly and bitterly enough; but every fresh
recurrence is less cruel than the last, and we can look back to our
sufferings at length with a calm and chastened humility which is the first
step towards resignation and eventual peace. But the memory of a great
happiness seems so interwoven with the imperishable part of our being,
that it loses none of its reality by the lapse of time, none of its
brightness from the effect of distance. Anger, sorrow, hatred,
contentions, fleet away like a dream; but the smile that gladdened us long
ago, has passed into the very sunlight of noonday; the whisper that
softened our sternest moods, steals with the breeze of evening to our
heart, gently and tenderly as of yore, and we know, we feel, that while
crime, and misery, and remorse, are the temporary afflictions of humanity,
pardon, and hope, and love are its inheritance for evermore.
Licinius, pacing his long shadowy colonnade, dwells not on the anxieties,
and the separation, and the sorrows of years; on the loss of his dearest
treasure and its possession by another; not even on the calm dead face
bound with its linen band. No; he is back in Britain once more with his
living love, in the green glade where the bending ferns are whispering
under the old oak‐tree.
A step in the hall rouses him from his meditations, and a kind grave smile
steals over the general’s face at the approach of his favourite slave.
The Roman patrician looks what he is—a war‐worn veteran, bronzed and
hardened by the influence of many campaigns in many climates. He is not
yet past the prime of his bodily vigour, and there is a severe beauty
about his noble features, and beard and hair already touched with grey,
that possesses considerable attraction still. Valeria, no mean judge,
asserts that he is, and always will be, a handsome man, but that he does
not know it. She respects him much, likes him a good deal, and he is the
only person on earth for whose good opinion she has the slightest value.
In truth, though she would not confess it even to herself, she is a little
afraid of her good‐hearted, brave, and thoughtful kinsman.
A man who has reached mature age without forming family ties is always to
a certain extent in a false position. No amount of public interest will
stop up the little chinks and corners, so to speak, which are intended by
Nature to contain the petty cares and pleasures and vexations of domestic
life. Without the constant association—the daily friction—of wife and
children, a cynical disposition becomes selfish and morose; a kind one,
melancholy and forlorn. Licinius feels a blank in his existence, which
nothing he has yet found serves to fill; and he often wonders in himself
why the barbarian slave should be almost the only creature in Rome for
whom he entertains a feeling of interest and regard.
As he takes his place on the couch by the supper‐table, Esca gives him to
drink; and the patrician cannot help thinking the while, how he would like
to have such a son, tall and handsome, with so warlike an air; a son whom
he could instruct in all the intricacies of his glorious profession, whose
mind he could educate, whose genius he could foster, and whose happiness
he could watch over and ensure. They converse freely enough during the
general’s temperate meal—an egg, a morsel of kid, a few grapes, and a
flask of common Sabine wine. Esca tells his master the encounter of the
previous evening, and the friendship he had made in consequence, after
nightfall. Licinius laughs at his account of the skirmish, and the
eunuch’s discomfiture.
“Nevertheless,” says he, “I trust he did not recognise you. It can have
been none other than Spado, whom you treated so unceremoniously; and Spado
is just now a prime favourite with Cæsar. I might find it difficult to
protect you if he knew where to find you, for charms and philtres are
deadlier weapons in such hands as his, than sword and spear in yours and
mine. Did he take note of your person, think you, Esca, ere he went down?”
“I can hardly believe it,” answered Esca. “The evening was dark, and the
confusion great. Moreover, I fled with the poor girl they had surrounded,
the very instant I could snatch her out of the throng.”
“And you saw these Jews in their home, you say?” pursued Licinius gravely.
“I have heard much of that people, and, indeed, served against them in
Syria. Are they not morose, cruel, bloodthirsty? Slayers of men, devourers
of children? Have they not fearful orgies in which they feast upon human
flesh? And one day in the week that they devote to solitude and silence,
and schemes of hatred against all mankind? Are you sure that your
entertainers belonged to this detestable nation?”
“Christians and Jews,” replied Esca, who had caught the sound of the
former title in the course of his conversation with Calchas.
“Are they not the same?” returned Licinius, and to this question the
barbarian was unable to furnish a reply.
CHAPTER X
A TRIBUNE OF THE LEGIONS
Under the porch of one of the most luxurious houses in Rome, two men
jostled in the dubious light of early morning. Exclamations of impatience
were succeeded by a mutual recognition, and a hearty laugh, as Damasippus
and Oarses, freedmen and staunch clients of Julius Placidus, recognised
each other’s eagerness to pay court to their joint patron. They had risen
from their beds while it was yet dark, and hurried hither in order to be
the first to salute the tribune at his morning levée. Yet they found the
great hall filling already with a bustling crowd of friends, retainers,
clients, and dependants. Damasippus was a short, square, beetle‐browed
man, with a villainous leer; Oarses, a pale, sedate, and somewhat precise
personage. But with this marked difference of exterior, an expression of
unscrupulous and thorough‐paced knavery was common to both. Said
Damasippus to Oarses, with a shrug of affected disgust—
“It may be hours yet ere he will see us! Look at this wretched crowd of
parasites and flatterers! They will follow the patron to his bath! They
will besiege him in his very bed! Oh, my friend! Rome is no longer the
place for an honest man.”
To which Oarses replied, in subdued and humble tones—
“The flies gather round the honey, though it is only for what they can
get. But the sincerest gratitude and affection draw you and me, my dear
companion, to the side of the illustrious tribune.”
“You speak truth,” returned Damasippus. “It is sad to see how few clients
are uninfluenced by mean and sordid thoughts. An honest man is becoming as
rare at Rome as at Athens. It was not so in the days of the republic—in
the golden age—in the good old times!”
“Oh for the good old times!” exclaimed Oarses, still in the same low and
unmoved voice.
“Oh for the good old times!” echoed Damasippus; and the two knaves, with
their arms on each other’s shoulders, fell to pacing the extremity of the
hall, and exchanging spiteful remarks on the concourse with which it was
filled.
The tribune’s house was the most perfect of its kind in the whole city.
Standing apart and surrounded by a wall and garden of its own, it combined
the luxurious splendour of a palace with the comfort and seclusion of a
private residence. Everything of ornament that was most costly and
gorgeous, had been procured by Placidus to decorate his mansion.
Everything of art that was most conspicuous and effective hung on his
walls, stood in picturesque groups about his apartments, or lay scattered
in rich profusion on his floor. The hangings that veiled his own sleeping‐
room from the public eye, were of embroidered crimson silk, woven in the
looms of Asia, and probably taken by the strong hand of the successful
soldier as spoils of war. The very pavement of the hall was of the richest
mosaic, traced in fanciful patterns and inlaid with gold. As the morning
drew on, it was trodden by a multitude of feet. No one of his rank held so
numerous a levée as Julius Placidus. In the concourse that thronged it
now, might be seen men of all countries, classes, characters, professions,
and denominations. Unlike Licinius, who, indeed, owed his influence solely
to the firm consistency and unbending rectitude of his character, the
tribune let no opportunity pass of binding an additional partisan to his
cause by the ties of self‐interest and expectation. They were crowding in
now through the wide open doors; and while the spacious hall was nearly
filled, the approach to it, and the street itself outside, were choked
with applicants, who had one and all, directly or indirectly, something to
get, or ask, or hope for, from the tribune. Here, an artist brought his
picture carefully draped in the remains of an old garment; yet not so
entirely concealed but that a varnished corner might be visible, and the
painter, nothing loth, might be prevailed on by earnest solicitations to
reveal, bit by bit, all the beauties of his production. There, a sculptor
was diligently preserving the outlines of his model, wrapped in its wet
cloth, from collision with the bystanders, and assuming credit for the
mysterious beauties of a work, which, perhaps, if uncovered, would have
grievously disappointed the eyes that scanned it so curiously. In one
corner stood a jeweller, holding in his hand a gorgeous collar of pearls
and rubies, prepared by the patrician’s orders, and testifying at once to
the ingenuity of the tradesman, and the munificence of his employer. In
another, waited a common‐looking slave, with a downcast eye and a bloated
unwholesome face; who, nevertheless, assumed an important air that seemed
to say he was sure of an early audience, as, indeed, was more than
probable in consideration of his tidings, a message from venal beauty to
the admirer who paid his welcome tribute in gold. Parasites and flatterers
elbowed their way insolently in the midst, as though they had a right to
be there, whilst honest men, brown with toil, and sighing wistfully for
the fresh breezes of Tibur or Præneste, kept aloof, abashed and shrinking,
though they had but come to ask for their due. Nearest the hangings that
concealed the bedroom, stood a dirty slave, bespattered with the filth of
the fish‐market, and exhaling an odour of garlic that cleared for him an
ample breathing‐space even in a Roman crowd; but the knave knew the value
of his intelligence, and how it would obtain him favour in the tribune’s
eyes. No less important a communication than this, that a mullet had been
taken the night before of nearly six pounds weight, and that so lavish a
patron as Placidus should have the first offer to purchase at a thousand
sesterces(7) a pound. He waited with his eyes intently fastened on the
curtains, and took no notice of the jabber and confusion that pervaded the
hall.
Presently the crowd gave way a little, ebbing backward on either side, and
forming a lane as it were for three men, who were regarded as they passed
with glances of great awe and admiration. There was no mistaking the deep
chest and broad shoulders of one of these, even apart from the loud frank
voice in which Hirpinus the gladiator was wont to convey his observations,
without much respect for persons. He was accompanied, on the present
occasion, by two individuals, obviously of the same profession as
himself—Hippias the fencing‐master, and Euchenor the boxer. All three
conversed and laughed boisterously. It was obvious that even at that early
hour they had not broken their fast without a generous draught of wine.
“Talk not to me,” said Hirpinus, rolling his strong shoulders, and
observing with great complacency the attention he excited—“talk not to me:
I have seen them all—Dacians, Gauls, Cimbrians, Ethiopians, every
barbarian that ever put on a breastplate. By Hercules, they were fools to
this lad. Why, the big yellow‐haired German, whom Cæsar gave us for the
lion last summer, would not have stood up to him for a quarter of an hour.
He was taller, maybe, a little, but he hadn’t the shape, man—he hadn’t the
shape! You’ll hardly call _me_ a kid that hasn’t put his horns out, will
ye? Well, he gave me so much to do with the _cestus_, that I wouldn’t have
taken it off for a flagon of cheap wine, I tell ye. What think ye of
_that_, my little Greek? You don’t call it so bad for a beginner, I hope?”
He turned to Euchenor as he spoke, a beautifully‐made young man, of
extraordinary strength and symmetry, with the regular chiseled features of
his country, and as evil an expression as ever lowered on a fair face. The
Greek pondered awhile before he answered. Then he made the apposite
inquiry—
“Were you sober, Hirpinus, when you stood up to him? or had you sucked
down a skinful of wine, before you took your bellyful of boxing?”
The other burst into a loud laugh.
“Drunk or sober,” said he, “you know the stuff I am made of, just as well
as I know your weight to an ounce, and your reach to an inch. Ay, and your
mettle too, my lad! though it don’t take a six‐foot rod to get to the
bottom of _that_. Harkye, this Briton of mine would _eat_ such a man as
you, body and bones and all, just as I would eat a thrush, and be ready
for another directly, without so much as washing his mouth out.”
A very sinister scowl passed across Euchenor’s face, who did not quite
relish this low valuation of his prowess, and, above all, his courage; but
he was a professional boxer, and, as such, necessarily possessed thorough
command of temper, so he only glanced a little scornfully over the other’s
frame, which was getting somewhat into flesh, and observed—
“There will be money to be made out of him then in the arena, if he falls
into good hands, and is properly trained.”
Hitherto, the fencing‐master had joined but carelessly in the
conversation, and, indeed, scarcely seemed aware of its purport; but the
concluding sentence arrested his attention, and turning upon Hirpinus
rather angrily, and with the air of one accustomed to command, he said
abruptly—
“Why did you not bring him to me at once? If you have let him slip through
those great fingers of yours, it will be the worst job you have been
concerned in for many a day. Have a care, Hirpinus! Better men than you
have been under the net ere now, and the great games are not so far off.
It needs but a word from me to send you into the arena to‐morrow, a fair
prey for a clumsy trident and a fathom or two of twine. You know that as
well as I do.”
Hippias spoke truth. A retired gladiator, celebrated for his deadly
swordsmanship and the number of his victories, he had been long ago
invested by Nero with the wooden foil, which represented a free discharge
and immunity from future services in the amphitheatre. Habituated,
however, to the excitement of the fatal sport, and rejoicing in that
spurious fame which so distinguished men of his class at Rome, he had set
up a school for the express purpose of training swordsmen for the arena;
and had won such favour, under two successive emperors, by the proficiency
to which he brought his pupils, and his talent for arranging the deadly
pageants in which they figured, that he had gradually become an
incontrovertible authority on such matters, and the principal manager of
the games in the amphitheatre. Of his reputation for gallantry, and the
strange fascination such men possessed for the Roman ladies, we have
already spoken; but if his smiles were courted amongst the fair spectators
of their contests, his word was law with the gladiators themselves. He it
was who paired the combatants, supplied them with weapons, adjusted their
disputes, and, in most cases, held the balance on which their very lives
depended. A threat from Hippias was more dreaded by these ruffians than
the home‐thrust of spear and sword.
Now, Hirpinus, although a fearless and skilful fighter, had his assailable
point. On one occasion, when he had entered the circus as a _secutor_,
that is to say, a combatant armed with sword and helmet, against the
_retiarius_, who bore nothing but a trident and net, he had the misfortune
to find himself involved in the meshes of the latter, and at the mercy of
his antagonistic. The Roman crowd, though fickle in its approval, and
uncertain in its antipathies, spared him in consideration of the gallant
fight he had made; but Hirpinus never forgot his sensations at that
moment. Bold and fierce as he was, it completely _cowed_ him; and the
boisterous, boastful prize‐fighter would turn pale at the mention of a
trident and a net. There was something ludicrous in the manner in which he
now quailed before Hippias, eyeing him with the same sort of imploring
glance that a dog casts at his master, and obviously persuaded of the
speedy fulfilment of his threat.
“Patience, patron!” he growled apologetically. “I know where the lad is to
be found. I can lay my hand on him at any time. I can bring him with me to
the school. Why I talked myself well‐nigh hoarse, and stayed out the
drinking of two flagons of sour Sabine to boot, while I canvassed him to
become one of _us_ and join the Family forthwith. Why, you don’t think,
patron, I would be so thick‐witted as to let him go without finding out
where he lives? He is either a freedman, or a slave of”—
“Hush, fool!” interrupted Hippias angrily, observing that Damasippus and
Oarses were hovering near, and listening intently for a piece of
intelligence which he had resolved should be conveyed by himself, and none
other, to the tribune’s ear. “There is no occasion to publish it by the
crier. Hadst thou but brains, man, in any sort of proportion to those
great muscles of thine, I could tell thee why, with some hope of being
understood. Enough! lose not sight of the lad; and, above all, keep thy
tongue within thy teeth!”
The big gladiator nodded a sulky affirmative, puzzled, but obedient; and
the two freedmen, with many courteous bows and gestures, accosted the
champions with all the humility and deference to which such public
characters were entitled.
“They say there will be two hundred pairs of swordsmen, matched at the
same moment,” observed Damasippus, in allusion to the coming games; “and
not a plate of steel allowed in the circus, save sword and helmet. But of
course, my Hippias, you know best if this is true.”
“And three new lions from Libya, loose at once,” added Oarses, “with a
scene representing shepherds surprised over their watch‐fires; real rocks,
I have been told, and a stream of running water in the amphitheatre, with
a thicket of live shrubs, from which the beasts are to emerge. Your taste,
illustrious Hippias, the people say, is perfect. It has obviously been
consulted here.”
Hippias smiled mysteriously, and a little scornfully.
“There _is_ a lion from Libya,” said he; “I can tell you thus much. I,
myself, saw him fed only yesterday at sunset.”
“Is he large? is he strong? is he fierce?” questioned the two almost in a
breath. “When did he come? is he quite full‐grown? will they keep him
without flesh? Of course the shepherds are not to be armed? Will they be
condemned criminals, or only paid gladiators? Not that it matters much, if
the lion is a pretty good one. We had a tiger, you know, last year, that
killed five Ethiopian slaves, though they all set on him at once.”
“But they were unarmed,” interrupted Euchenor, whose cheek had turned a
shade paler during the discussion. “Give me the proper weapons, and I fear
no beast that walks the earth.”
“Unarmed, of course!” repeated Damasippus, “and so was the tiger. A more
beautiful creature was never seen. Do you not remember, Oarses, how he
waved his long tail and stroked his face with his paws, like a kitten
before it begins to play? And then, when he made his spring, the first
black was rolled up like a ball? I was in the fifth row, my friends, yet I
heard his bones crack, distinctly, even there.”
“He was a great loss, that tiger,” observed Oarses, more sadly than usual;
“they should never have pitted him against a tusked elephant. The moment I
saw the ivory, I knew how the fight must end, and I wagered against the
smaller animal directly. I would have lost my sesterces, I think,
willingly, for it to have won; but the beautiful beast never had a
chance.”
“It was the weight that did it, patrons—the weight,” observed Hirpinus.
“Man or beast, I will explain to you that weight must always”—
But here the gladiator’s dissertation was broken off by the movement of
the crimson hangings, and the appearance of Placidus emerging on his levée
of expectants, bright and handsome, ready dressed for the day.
The tribune owned one advantage at least, which is of no small service to
a man who embarks on a career demanding constant energy and watchfulness;
he possessed that good digestion which is proverbially held to accompany
an elastic conscience and a hard heart. Though supper the previous evening
had been a luxurious and protracted meal—though the winecup had passed
round very often, and the guests with singing brains had shown themselves
in their own characters to their cool‐headed and designing host—the
latter, refreshed by a night’s rest, now appeared with the glow of health
on his cheek, and its lustre in his eye. As he looked about him on the
throng of clients and dependants, his snow‐white gown fastened and looped
up with gold, his mantle adorned with a broad violet hem, his hair and
beard carefully perfumed and arranged, a murmur of applause went round the
circle which, perhaps, for once was really sincere, and even the rough
gladiators could not withhold their approbation from a figure that was at
once so richly attired, so manly, and so refined.
“Hail, my friends!” said the tribune, pausing in the entrance, and looking
graciously around him on the crowd.
“Hail, patron!” answered a multitude of voices, in every key, from the
subdued and polished treble of Oarses to the deep hoarse voice of the
gladiators.
Placidus moved from one to the other, with an easy though dignified
cordiality of manner which he well knew how to assume when disposed to
cultivate the favour of his inferiors. Clear‐headed and discerning, in a
wonderfully short space of time he had despatched the various matters
which constituted the business of his morning levée. He had admired the
model, declined the painting, ordered the statue, bought the jewels,
answered the fair suppliant’s message, and secured the mullet by sending
to the market for it at once. The honest countrymen, too, he dismissed
sufficiently well pleased, considering they had received nothing more
substantial than smiles; and he now turned leisurely to Hippias, as if
life had no duty so engrossing as the pursuit of pleasure, and asked him
eagerly after the training of his gladiators, and the prospects of the
amphitheatre.
Hippias knew his own value; he conversed with the patrician as an equal;
but Hirpinus and Euchenor, appreciating the worth of a rich patron, gazed
on Placidus with intense respect and admiration. The latter, especially,
watched the tribune with his bright cunning eye, as if prepared to plant a
blow on the first unguarded place.
“But your swordsmen are all too well known,” urged the patrician on the
fencing‐master. “Here is old Hirpinus covers his whole body with two feet
of steel as if it were a complete suit of armour, and never takes his
point off his adversary’s heart the while. The others are nearly as wary;
if they encounter ordinary fencers they are sure to conquer; if we match
them against each other and the people would see blood drawn, they must
fight blindfolded,(8) and it becomes a matter of mere chance. No, what we
want is a new man—one whom we can train without his being discovered, and
bring out as an unknown competitor to try for the Emperor’s prize. What
say you, Hippias? ’Tis the only chance for a winning game now.”
“I have heard of such a one,” answered Hippias. “I think I can lay my hand
on an untried blade, that a few weeks’ training will polish up into the
keenest weapon we have sharpened yet; at least, so Hirpinus informs me.
What say’st thou, old Trojan? Tell the patron how thou camest to light on
thy match at last.”
Thus adjured, the veteran gladiator related at considerable length,
interrupted by many exclamations of wonder from Damasippus and Oarses, his
chance meeting with Esca in the Forum, and subsequent trial of strength
and skill at the gymnasium. Somewhat verbose, as we have seen, when he
could secure an audience, Hirpinus waxed eloquent on so congenial a theme
as the beauty and stature of his new friend. “As strong as an ox, patron,”
said he, “and as lithe as a panther! Hand, and foot, and eye, all keeping
time together like a dancing girl’s. The spring of a wild‐cat, and the
light footfall of a deer. Then he would look so well in the arena, with
his fair young face, set on his towering neck, like that of the son of
Peleus. Indeed, if he should be vanquished, the women would save him every
time. Why, one of the fairest and the noblest ladies in Rome stopped her
litter in the crowded street while we walked together, and bade him come
and speak to her from sheer goodwill. In faith, he was as tall, and twice
as handsome, as the very Liburnians who carried her on their shoulders.”
The tribune was laughing heartily at the athlete’s eloquence; but
Damasippus, who never took his eyes off his patron’s face, thought the
evil laugh was more malicious than usual at the mention of the Liburnians,
and there was a false ring in the mirthful tones with which he asked for
more information as to this young Apollo, and the dame on whom his
appearance seemed to have made such an impression.
“I know most of the great ladies pretty well by sight,” answered the
honest swordsman. “Faith, a man does not easily forget the faces he sees
turned on him in the arena, when he has his point at his adversary’s
throat, and they bid him drive it merrily home, and never spare. But of
all the faces I see under the awning, there’s not one looks down so calm
and beautiful on a death‐struggle as that of the noble Valeria.”
“Like the moon on the torrent of Anio,” observed Damasippus.
“Like the stars on the stormy Egean,” echoed Oarses.
“Like nothing but herself,” continued Hirpinus, who esteemed his own
judgment incontrovertible on all matters relating to physical beauty,
whether male or female. “The handsomest face and the finest form in Rome.
It was not likely I could be mistaken, though I only caught a glimpse of
her neck and arm for a moment, as she drew back the curtains of her
litter, like”—and here Hirpinus paused for a simile, concluding with
infinite relish,—“like a blade half drawn, and returned with a clash into
the sheath.”
Again Damasippus thought he perceived a quiver on his patron’s face. Again
there was something jarring in the tribune’s voice, as he said to Hippias—
“We must not let this new Achilles escape us! See to it, Hippias. Who
knows? He may make a worthy successor, even for thee, thou artist in
slaughter, when he has worked his way up, step by step, and victory by
victory, to the topmost branch of the tree.”
Hippias laughed good‐humouredly, turning at the same time his right thumb
outward, and pointing with it to the roof. It was the gesture with which
the Roman crowd in the amphitheatre refused quarter to the combatant who
was down.
CHAPTER XI
STOLEN WATERS
The broken column of one of the buildings destroyed in the great fire of
Rome, and not yet restored, was glowing crimson in the setting sun.
Beneath its base, the Tiber was gliding gently on towards the sea. There
was a subdued hum even in the streets of the Imperial City that denoted
how the burden and heat of the day were now past; and the languor of the
hour seemed to pervade even those who were compelled to toil on in the
struggle for bread, and who could only in imagination abandon themselves
to repose. On a fragment of the ruin sat Esca, gazing intently on the
water as it stole by. To all appearance his listless and dreamy mood was
unconscious of surrounding objects, yet his attitude was that of one
prepared to start into action at a moment’s notice; and though his arms
were folded and his head bent down, his ear was watching eagerly to catch
the faintest sound.
It is a patience‐wearing process, that same waiting for a woman; and under
the most favourable circumstances is productive of much irritation,
disappointment, and disgust. In the first place a man is invariably too
soon, and this knowingly and as it were with _malice prepense_. Taking
time thus by the forelock, delays his flight considerably, and indeed
reduces his pace to the slowest possible crawl; so that when the appointed
moment does arrive, it seems to the watcher that it has been past a
considerable period, and that his vigil should be already over, when in
reality it is only just begun. Then, as the minutes steal on, come the
different misgivings and suspicions which only arise on such occasions,
and which in his right senses the self‐torturer would be incapable of
harbouring. Circumstances which, when the appointment was made, seemed
expressly adapted to further his designs, now change to insurmountable
difficulties, or take their place as links in a chain of deception which
he persuades himself has been forged with unheard‐of duplicity, expressly
for his discomfiture. He thinks badly of everyone, worst of all of her,
whose unpardonable fault is that she is now some fifty seconds late. Then
comes a revulsion of feeling, and his heart leaps to his mouth, for
yonder, emerging on the long perspective, is a female figure obviously
advancing this way. The expected object is tall, slim, pliant, and walks
with the firm free step of a deer on the heather. The advancing shape is
short, fat, awkward, and waddles in its gait; nevertheless, it is not till
it has reached within arm’s length that he will allow himself to be
convinced of his disappointment. If its ears are pretty quick, the
unoffending figure may well be shocked at the deep and startling
execration which its presence calls forth. Then begins another phase of
despondency, humiliation, and bitter self‐contempt, through all which
pleasant changes of feeling the old feverish longing remains as strong as
ever. At last she comes round the corner in good earnest, with the well‐
known smile in her eyes, the well‐known greeting on her lips, and he
forgets in an instant, as if they had never been, his anxiety, his anger,
his reproaches, all but the presence that brings light to his life and
gladness to his heart once more.
Esca rose impatiently at intervals, walked a few paces to and fro, sat
down again, and threw small fragments of the ruin into the water.
Presently a figure, draped in black and closely veiled, moved down to the
river’s side near where the Briton sat, and began filling a pitcher from
the stream. It could hardly have passed the column without seeing him, yet
did it seem unconscious of his presence; and who could tell how the heart
might be beating within the bosom, or the cheek blushing behind the veil?
That veil was lifted, however, with an exclamation of surprise, when Esca
stooped over her to take the pitcher from her hand, and Mariamne’s cheek
turned paler now than it had been even on the memorable night when he
rescued her from the grasp of Spado and his fellow‐bacchanals. He, too,
murmured some vague words of astonishment at finding her here. If they
were honest, for whom could he have been waiting so impatiently? and it is
possible, besides, Mariamne might have been a little disappointed had she
been allowed to fill her pitcher from the Tiber for herself.
The Jewess had been thinking about him a good deal more than she intended,
a good deal more than she knew, for the last two days. It is strange how
very insensibly such thoughts gain growth and strength without care or
culture. There are plants we prune and water every day which never reach
more than a sickly and stunted vitality after all, and there are others
that we trample down, cut over, tear up by the very roots, which
nevertheless attain such vigour and luxuriance that our walls are covered
by their tendrils, and our dwellings pervaded by their fragrance.
Mariamne was no bigoted daughter of Judah, for whom the stranger was an
outcast because a heathen. Her constant intercourse with Calchas had
taught her nobler truths than she had derived from the traditions of her
fathers. And with all her pride of race and national predilections, she
had imbibed those principles of charity and toleration which formed the
groundwork of a new religion, destined to shed its light upon all the
nations of the earth.
It was not precisely as a brother, though, that Mariamne had yet brought
herself to regard the handsome British slave. They were soon conversing
happily together. The embarrassment of meeting had disappeared with the
first affectation of surprise. It was not long before he told her how
tired he had been of watching by the broken column at the riverside.
“How could you know I should come here?” asked the girl with a look of
infinite simplicity and candour, though she must have remembered all the
time, that she had not scrupled to hint at the daily practice in course of
conversation with Calchas, on the night when Esca brought her safely home.
“I hoped it,” he replied, with a smile. “I have been a hunter, you know,
and have learned that the shyest and wildest of animals seek the waterside
at sunset. I was here yesterday, and waited two long hours in vain.”
She glanced quickly at him, but withdrew her eyes immediately, while the
blood mounted to her pale face.
“Did you expect to see me?” she asked in a trembling voice; “and I never
left the house the whole of yesterday! Oh, how I wish I had known it!”
Then she stopped in painful embarrassment, as having said too much. He
appeared not to notice her confusion. He seemed to have some confession to
make on his own part—something he hardly dared to tell her, yet which his
honest nature could not consent should be withheld. At last he said with
an effort—
“You know what I am! My time is not my own, my very limbs belong to
another. It matters not that the master is kind, good, and considerate.
Mariamne, I am a slave!”
“I know it,” she answered, very gently, with a loving pity beaming in her
dark eyes. “My kinsman Calchas told me as much after you went away.”
He drew a long breath as if relieved.
“And yet you wished to see me again?” he asked, while a gleam of happiness
brightened his face.
“Why not?” she replied, with a kind smile. “Though that hand is a slave’s,
it struck my enemy down with the force of a hundred warriors; though that
arm is a slave’s, it bore me home with the care and tenderness of a woman.
Ah! tell me not of slavery when the limbs are strong, and the heart is
brave and pure. Though the body be chained with iron fetters, what matter
so long as the spirit is free? Esca, you do not believe I think the worse
of you because you are a heathen and a slave?”
Her voice was very soft and low while she spoke his name. No voice had
ever sounded so sweetly in his ears before. A new, strange sense of
happiness seemed to pervade his whole being, yet he had never felt his
situation so galling and unendurable as now.
“I would not have you think the worse of me,” he answered eagerly, “upon
any account. Listen, Mariamne. I was taken captive in war and brought here
with a hundred others to Rome. We were set up like cattle in the slave‐
market. Like cattle also we were purchased, one by one, by those who
esteemed themselves practised judges of such human wares. I was bought by
Caius Lucius Licinius at the price of a yoke of oxen, or a couple of
chariot‐horses. Bought and sold like a beast of the field, and driven home
to my new master!”
He spoke with a scorn all the more bitter from having been repressed so
long. Yet he kept back and smothered the indignation rising within him.
This was the first ear that had ever been open to his wrongs, and the
temptation was strong to pour them freely forth to so interested and
partial a listener. To do him justice, he refrained from the indulgence.
He had been taught from childhood that it was weak and womanish to
complain; and the man had not forgotten the lessons of the boy.
Her gentle voice again interposed in soothing and consoling accents.
“But he is kind,” she said, “kind and considerate—you told me so yourself.
I could not bear to think him otherwise. Indeed, Esca, it would make me
very unhappy to know that you”—
Here she b
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