_The Death of a Martyr_
[Sidenote: The Return to Consciousness]
I awoke with a sensation of pain in every limb. A female voice was
singing a faint song near me. But the past was like a dream. I
involuntarily looked down for the gulf on which I had trod; I looked
upward for the burning rafters. I saw nothing but an earthen floor and a
low roof hung with dried grapes and herbs. I uttered a cry. The singer
approached me. There was nothing in her aspect to nurture a diseased
imagination; she was an old and emaciated creature who yet rejoiced in
my restoration. She in turn called her husband, a venerable Jew, whose
first act was to offer thanksgiving to the God of Israel for the safety
of a chief of His nation. But to my inquiries for the fate of my child,
he could give no answer; he had discovered me among the ruins of the
palace of the Æmilii, to which he, with many of his countrymen, had been
attracted, with the object of collecting whatever remnants of furniture
might be left by the flames. I had fallen by the edge of a fountain which
extinguished the fire in its vicinage, and I was found breathing. During
three days I had lain insensible. The Jew now went out and brought back
with him some of the elders of our people, who, notwithstanding the
decree of the Emperor Claudius, had remained in Rome, tho in increased
privacy. I was carried to their house of assemblage, concealed among
groves and vineyards beyond the gates, and attended to with a care which
might cure all things but the wounds of the mind. On the great object
of my solicitude, the fate of my Salome, I could obtain no relief. I
wandered over the site of the palace; it was now a mass of ashes and
charcoal; its ruins had been probed by hundreds; but search for even a
trace of what would have been to me dearer than a mountain of gold, was
in vain.
[Sidenote: The Cry for Revenge]
The conflagration continued for six days, and every day of the number
gave birth to some monstrous report of its origin. Of the fourteen
districts of Rome, but four remained. Thousands had lost their lives,
tens of thousands were utterly undone; the whole empire shook under the
blow. Then came the still deeper horror.
Fear makes the individual feeble, but it makes the multitude ferocious.
A universal cry arose for revenge. Great public misfortunes give the
opportunity that the passions of men and sects love, and the fiercest
crimes of selfishness are justified under the name of retribution.
But the full calamity burst on the Christians, then too new to have
fortified themselves in the national prejudices, if they would have
suffered the alliance; too poor to reckon on any powerful protectors; and
too uncompromising to palliate their scorn of the whole public system of
morals, philosophy, and religion. The Emperor, the priesthood, and the
populace conspired against them, and they were ordered to the slaughter.
I too had my stimulants to hatred. Where was I? In exile, in desperate
hazard; I had been torn from home, robbed of my child, made miserable
by the fear of apostasy in my house; and by whom was this comprehensive
evil done? The name of Christian was gall to me. I heard of the popular
vengeance, and called it justice; I saw the distant fires in which the
Christians were being consumed, and calculated how many each night of
those horrors would subtract from the guilty number. Man becomes cruel by
the sight of cruelty, and when thousands and hundreds of thousands were
shouting for vengeance; when every face looked fury, and every tongue
was wild with some new accusation; when the great and the little, the
philosopher and the ignorant, raised up one roar of reprobation against
the Christian, was the solitary man of mercy to be looked for in one
bleeding from head to foot with wrongs irreparable?
[Sidenote: Preparations for Executions]
On one of those dreadful nights, I was gazing from the housetop on the
fire forcing its way through the remaining quarters, the melancholy
gleams through the country showing the extent of the flight, and in
the midst of the blackened and dreary wastes of Rome, the spots of
livid flame where the Christians were perishing at the pile, when I was
summoned to a consultation below.
A Jew had just brought an imperial edict proclaiming pardon of all
offenses to the discoverer of Christians. I would not have purchased my
life by the life of a dog. But my safety was important to the Jewish
cause, and I was pressed on every side by arguments on the wisdom,
nay, the public duty, of accepting freedom on any terms. And what was
to be the price?—the life of criminals long obnoxious to the laws and
now stained beyond mercy. I loathed delay; I loathed Rome; I was wild
to return to the great cause of my country, which never could have a
fairer hope than now. An emissary was sent out; money soon effected the
discovery of a Christian assemblage; I appeared before the prætor with my
documents, and brought back in my hand the imperial pardon, given with
the greater good will as the assemblage chanced to comprehend the chiefs
of the heresy. They were seized, ordered forthwith to the pile, and I was
commanded to be present at this completion of my national service.
The executions were in the gardens of the imperial palace, which had
been thrown open by Nero for the double purpose of popularity and of
indulging himself with the display of death at the slightest personal
inconvenience. The crowd was prodigious, and to gratify the greatest
possible number at once, those murders were carried on in different
parts of the gardens. In the vineyard, a certain portion were to be
crucified; in the orangery, another portion were to be burned; in the
pleasure-ground, another portion were to be torn by lions and tigers;
gladiators were to be let loose, and when the dusk came on, the whole of
the space was to be lighted by human torches, Christians wrapped in folds
of linen covered with pitch and bitumen, and thus burning down from the
head to the ground.
[Sidenote: A Christian Martyr]
I was horror-struck, but escape was now impossible, and I must go through
the whole hideous round. With my flesh quivering, my ears ringing, my
eyes dim, I was forced to see miserable beings, men—nay women, nay
infants—sewed up in skins of beasts, and hunted and torn to pieces by
dogs; old men, whose hoary hairs might have demanded reverence of
savages, scourged, racked, and nailed to the trees to die; lovely young
females, creatures of guileless hearts and innocent beauty, flung on
flaming scaffolds. And this was the work of man, civilized man, in the
highest civilization of the arts, the manners, and the learning of the
pagan world!
But the grand display was prepared for the time when those Christians who
had been denounced on my discovery were to be executed; an exhibition
at which the Emperor himself announced his intention to be present. The
great Circus was no more, but a temporary amphitheater had been erected,
in which the usual games were exhibited during the early part of the
day. At the hour of my arrival, the low bank circling this immense
enclosure was filled with the first names of Rome—knights, patricians,
senators, military tribunes, consuls; the Emperor alone was wanting to
complete the representative majesty of the empire. I was to form a part
of the ceremony, and the guard who had me in charge cleared the way to
a conspicuous place, where my national dress fixed every eye on me.
Several Christians had perished before my arrival. Their remains lay
on the ground, and in their midst stood the man who was to be the next
victim.[29] By what influence I know not, but never did I see a human
being who made on me so deep an impression. I have him before me at this
instant.
The victims had been generally offered life for recantation, and this
man was giving his reply. I see the figure: low, yet with an air of
nobleness; stooped a little with venerable age, but the countenance
full of life, and marked with all the traits of intellectual power; the
strongly aquiline nose, the bold lip, the large and rapid eye; the whole
man conveying the idea of an extraordinary permanence of early vigor
under the weight of labor or of years. Even the hair was thick and black,
with scarcely a touch of silver. If the place and time were Athens and
the era of Demosthenes, I should have said that Demosthenes stood before
me. The vivid action; the flashing rapidity with which he seized a new
idea, and compressed it to his purpose; the impetuous argument that,
throwing off the formality of logic, smote with the strength of a new
fact, were Demosthenic. Even a certain infirmity of utterance, and an
occasional slight difficulty of words, added to the likeness; but there
was a hallowed glance and a solemn yet tender reach of thought interposed
among those intense appeals that asserted the sacred superiority of the
subject and the man. He was already speaking when I reached the scene of
terrors. I can give but an outline of his language.
[Sidenote: The Christian Speaks]
He pointed to the headless bodies round him.
“For what have these my brethren died? Answer me, priests of Rome; what
temple did they force—what altar overthrow—what insults offer to the
slightest of your public celebrations? Judges of Rome, what offense did
they commit against the public peace? Consuls, where were they found in
rebellion against the Roman majesty? People of Rome, whom among your
thousands can charge one of these holy dead with extortion, impurity, or
violence; can charge them with anything but the patience that bore wrong
without a murmur, and the charity that answered tortures only by prayer?”
He then touched upon the nature of his faith.
“Do I stand here demanding to be believed for opinions? No, but for
facts. I have seen the sick made whole, the lame walk, the blind receive
their sight, by the mere name of Him whom you crucified. I have seen
men, once ignorant of all languages but their own, speaking with the
language of every nation under heaven; the still greater wonder of
the timid defying all fear, the unlearned instantly made wise in the
mysteries of things divine and human, the peasant putting to shame the
learned—awing the proud, enlightening the darkened; alike in the courts
of kings, before the furious people, and in the dungeon, armed with an
irrepressible spirit of knowledge, reason, and truth that confounded
their adversaries. I have seen the still greater wonder of the renewed
heart; the impure suddenly abjuring vice; the covetous, the cruel, the
faithless, the godless, gloriously changed into the holy, the gentle, the
faithful, worshipers of the true God in spirit and in truth—the conquest
of the passions which defied your philosophers, your tribunals, your
rewards, and your terrors, achieved in the one mighty name. Those are
facts, things which I have seen with these eyes; and who that had seen
them could doubt that the finger of God was there? Dared I refuse my
belief to the divine mission of the Being by whom, and even in memory of
whom, things baffling the proudest human means were wrought before my
senses? Irresistibly compelled by facts to believe that Christ was sent
by God, I was with equal force compelled to believe in the doctrines
declared by that glorious revealer of the King alike of quick and dead.
And thus I stand before you this day, at the close of a long life of
labor and love, a Christian.”
[Sidenote: The Faith of a Christian]
This appeal to the understanding, divested as it was of all studied
ornament, was listened to by the immense multitude with the most unbroken
interest. It was delivered with the strong simplicity of conviction. He
then spoke of the Founder of his faith.
“Men may be insane for opinions, but who can be insane for facts? The
coming of Christ was prophesied a thousand years before! From the
beginning of His ministry, He lived wholly before the eyes of mankind.
His life corresponds with the prophecies in circumstances totally beyond
human conjecture, contrivance, or power. The Virgin Mother, the village
in which He was born, the lowliness of His cradle, the worship paid to
Him there, the hazard of His life—all were predicted. Could the infant
have shaped the accomplishment of those predictions? The death that He
should die, the hands by which it was to be inflicted, even the draft
that He should drink, the raiment that He should be clothed in, and the
sepulcher in which He should be laid, were predicted. Could the man have
shaped their accomplishment? The time of His resting in the tomb, His
resurrection, His ascent to heaven, the sending of the Holy Spirit after
He was gone—all were predicted; all were beyond human collusion, human
power, even beyond human thought; all were accomplished! Is not here the
finger of God?
[Sidenote: Christ, the Crucified]
“Those things, too, were universally known to the nation most competent
to detect collusion. Did Christ come to Rome, where every new religion
finds adherents, and where all pretensions might be advanced without
fear; where a deceiver might have quoted prophecies that never existed,
and vaunted of wonders done where there was no eye to detect them? No!
His life was spent in Judea. He made His appeal to the Scriptures, in
a country where they were in the hands of the nation. His miracles
were brought before the eyes of a priesthood that watched him step by
step; His doctrines were spoken, not to the mingled multitude holding a
thousand varieties of opinion, and careless of all, but to an exclusive
race, subtle in their inquiries, eager in their zeal, and proud of their
peculiar possession of divine knowledge.
“Yet against His life, His miracles, or His doctrine, what charge could
they bring? None. There is not a single stigma on the purity of His
conduct; the power of His wonder-working control over man and nature; the
holiness, wisdom, and grandeur of His views of Providence; the truth,
charity, and meekness of His counsels to man. Their single source of
hatred was the pride of worldly hearts, that expected a king where they
were to have found a teacher.
“Their single charge against Him was His prophecy that there should be an
end to their Temple and their state within the life of man.
“They crucified Him; He died in prayer, that His murderers might be
forgiven; and His prayer was mightily answered. He had scarcely risen to
His eternal throne when thousands believed and were forgiven. To Him be
the glory, forever and ever!”
All this was heard in wonder. I could see eyes lifted to heaven, and lips
as if moved in prayer.
[Sidenote: A Face Inspired]
“Compare Him with your legislators. He gives the spirit of all law in a
single sentence: ‘Do unto others as you would they should do unto you.’
Compare Him with your priesthood. He gives a single prayer, containing
the substance of all that man can rationally implore of heaven. Compare
Him with your moralists. He lays the foundation of virtue in love to
God! Compare him with your sages. He leads a life of privation without
a murmur; He dies a death of shame, desertion, and agony, and His last
breath is mercy! Compare him with your conquerors. Without the shedding
of a drop of blood He has already conquered hosts that would have
resisted all the swords of earth; hosts of stubborn passions, cherished
vices, guilty perversions of the powers and faculties of man. In proof
of all, look on these glorious dead, whom I shall join before the set of
yonder sun. Yes, martyrs of God! ye were His conquests, and ye too are
more than conquerors, through Him that loved us and gave Himself for us.
But a triumph shall come, magnificent and terrible, when all eyes shall
behold Him, and the tribes of the earth, even they who pierced Him, shall
mourn.”
Some raged, more listened, many wept. He spoke with still loftier energy.
“Then rejoice, ye dead! for ye shall rise; ye shall be clothed with
glory; ye shall be as the angels, bright and powerful, immortal,
intellectual kings! ‘For tho worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh
shall I see God.’”
He paused, as if he saw the vision.
The sky was cloudless; the sun was in the west, but shining in his
broadest beams; the whole space before me was flooded with light; when,
as I gazed upon the martyr, I saw a gleam issue from his upturned face;
it increased to brightness, to radiance, to an intense luster that made
the sunlight utterly pale. All was astonishment in the amphitheater,
all was awe. The old man seemed unconscious of the wonder that invested
him. He continued with his open hands lifted up and his eyes fixed on
heaven. The glory spread over his form, and he stood before us robed
in an effulgence which shot from him, like a living fount of splendor,
round the colossal circle. Yet the blaze, tho it looked the very essence
of light, was strangely translucent; we could see with undazzled eyes
every feature, and whether it was the working of my overwhelmed mind, or
a true change, the countenance appeared to have passed at once from age
to youth. A lofty joy, a look of supernal grandeur, a magnificent yet
ethereal beauty, had transformed the features of the old man into the
likeness of the winged sons of Immortality!
[Sidenote: A Christian’s Prayer]
He spoke again, and the first sound of his voice thrilled through every
bosom and made every man start from his seat.
“Men and brethren! it is the desire of your Father that all should be
saved—Jew and Gentile alike—for with Him there is no respect of persons.
He is the Father of all! Christianity is not a philosophic dream, but a
divine command—the summons of the God of gods, that you should accept His
mercy—the opening of the gates of an eternal world! It is not a call to
the practise of barren virtue, but a declaration of reward mightier than
the imagination of man can conceive. Would you be immortals—would you be
glorious as the stars of heaven—would you possess eternal faculties of
happiness, supremacy, and knowledge? Ask for forgiveness of your evil,
in the name of Jesus of Nazareth! What is easier than the price? What
more transcendent than the reward? Who shall tell the limit of the risen
soul? What resistless power, what more than regal majesty, what celestial
beauty may be in His fame! What expansion of intellect, what overflowing
tides of new sensation, what shapes of loveliness, what radiant stores
of thought and mysteries of exhaustless knowledge, may be treasured for
Him! What endless ascent through new ranks of being, each as much more
glorious than the last as the risen spirit is above man! For what can be
the limit to the power of God to make those happy, glorious, and mighty
whom He will? For what can be the bound to the fellow heirs with Christ,
their Leader in trial, their Leader in triumph? Omnipotence for their
protector, for their friend, for their father! He who gave to us His own
Son, will He not with Him give us all things?”
The voice sank into prayer.
[Sidenote: The Arrival of Nero]
“King of kings! if through a long life I have labored in Thy cause, in
perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen,
in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the
wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in
weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in
cold and nakedness—Thine alone be the praise, Thine the glory, O Thou who
hast brought me through them all, with a strong hand and an outstretched
arm. And now, Lord, Thou who shalt change my vile body into the likeness
of Thy glorious body, be with Thy servant in this last hour! Savior and
God! receive my spirit, that where Thou art, even I may be with Thee!”
He was silent; the splendor gradually passed away from his form, and he
knelt upon the sand, bowing his neck to receive the blow. But to lift a
hand against such a being seemed now an act of profanation. The ax-bearer
dared not approach. The spectators sat hushed in involuntary homage; and
not a word, not a gesture broke the silence of veneration.
At length a flourish of distant trumpets was heard. Cavalry galloped
forward, announcing the Emperor, and Nero, habited as a charioteer in the
games, drove his gilded car into the arena. The Christian had risen and,
with his hands clasped upon his breast, was awaiting death. Nero cast the
headsman an execration at his tardiness; the ax swept round, and when I
glanced again, the old man lay beside his brethren.
This man I had sacrificed. My heart smote me; I would have fled the place
of blood, but I was in the midst of guards; more of my victims were to be
slain, and I must be the shrinking witness of all. The Emperor’s arrival
commenced the grand display. He took his place under the curtains of the
royal pavilion. The dead were removed; perfumes were scattered through
the air; rose-water was sprinkled from silver tubes upon the exhausted
multitude; music resounded, incense burned, and in the midst of those
preparations of luxury the lion-combat began.
A portal of the arena opened and the combatant, with a mantle thrown
over his face and figure, was led in surrounded by soldiery. The lion
roared and ramped against the bars of its den at the sight. The guard
put a sword and buckler into the hands of the Christian, and he was left
alone. He drew the mantle from his face, and looked slowly and steadily
round the amphitheater. His fine countenance and lofty bearing raised
a universal sound of admiration. He might have stood for an Apollo
encountering the Python. His eyes at last turned on mine. Could I
believe my senses? Constantius was before me!
[Sidenote: Constantius and the Lion]
All my rancor vanished. In the moment before, I could have struck the
betrayer to the heart; I could have called on the severest vengeance
of man and Heaven to smite the destroyer of my child. But to see him
hopelessly doomed; the man whom I had honored for his noble qualities,
whom I had even loved, whose crime was at worst but the crime of giving
way to the strongest temptation that can bewilder man; to see this noble
creature flung to the savage beast, torn piecemeal before my eyes—I would
have cried to earth and heaven to save him. But my tongue cleaved to
the roof of my mouth; I would have thrown myself at the feet of Nero,
but I sat like a man of stone, pale, paralyzed—the beating of my pulse
stopped—my eyes alone alive.
The gate of the den was now thrown back, and the lion rushed in with a
roar and a bound that bore him half across the arena. I saw the sword
glitter in the air; when it waved again it was covered with blood, and
a howl told that the blow had been driven home. The lion, one of the
largest from Numidia, and made furious by thirst and hunger, an animal of
prodigious power, crouched for an instant as if to make sure of his prey,
crept a few paces onward, and sprang at the victim’s throat. He was met
by a second wound, but his impulse was irresistible, and Constantius was
flung upon the ground.
A cry of natural horror rang round the amphitheater. The struggle was now
for instant life or death. They rolled over each other; the lion reared
on his hind feet and with gnashing teeth and distended talons plunged
on the man; again they rose together. Anxiety was now at its wildest
height. The sword swung round the champion’s head in bloody circles. They
fell again. The hand of Constantius had grasped the lion’s mane, and the
furious bounds of the monster could not loose his hold; but his strength
was evidently giving way; he still struck terrible blows, but each was
weaker than the one before; till, collecting his whole force for a last
effort, he darted one mighty blow into the lion’s throat and sank. The
savage yelled, and, spouting out blood, fled bellowing round the arena.
But the hand still grasped the mane, and his conqueror was dragged
whirling through the dust at his heels. A universal outcry now arose to
save Constantius, if he were not already dead. But the lion, tho bleeding
from every vein, was still too terrible, and all shrank from the hazard.
At length the grasp gave way and the body lay motionless on the ground.
[Sidenote: The Appearance of Salome]
What happened for some moments after I know not. There was a struggle at
the portal; a woman forced her way through the guards, rushed in alone,
and flung herself upon the victim. The sight of a new prey roused the
lion; he tore the ground with his talons; he lashed his streaming sides
with his tail; he lifted up his mane and bared his fangs. But he came no
longer with a bound; he dreaded the sword, and crept, snuffing the blood
on the sand, and stealing round the body in circuits still diminishing.
The confusion in the vast assemblage was now extreme. Voices innumerable
called for aid. Women screamed and fainted. Even the hard-hearted
populace, accustomed as they were to the sacrifices of life, were roused
to honest curses. The guards grasped their arms, and waited but for a
sign of mercy from the Emperor. But Nero gave no sign. I glanced upon the
woman’s face. It was Salome! I sprang upon my feet. I called on her name;
I implored her to fly from that place of death, to come to my arms, to
think of the agonies of all who loved her.
She had raised the head of Constantius on her knee, and was wiping the
pale visage with her hair. At the sound of my voice she looked up, and
calmly casting back the locks from her forehead, fixed her gaze upon me.
She still knelt; one hand supported the head, and with the other she
pointed to it, as her only answer. I again adjured her. There was the
silence of death among the thousands round me. A sudden fire flashed
into her eye—her cheek burned. She waved her hand with an air of superb
sorrow.
[Illustration: “I heard the gnashing of his white fangs above me.”
[_see page 169._
Copyright, 1901, by Funk & Wagnalls Company, N. Y. and London.]
[Sidenote: The End of the Combat]
“I am come to die,” she uttered, in a lofty tone. “This bleeding body
was my husband. I have no father. The world contains for me but this
clay in my arms. Yet,” and she kissed the ashy lips before her, “yet, my
Constantius, it was to save that father that your generous heart defied
the peril of this hour. It was to redeem him from the hand of evil that
you abandoned our quiet home! Yes, cruel father, here lies the preserver
who threw open your dungeon, who led you safe through conflagration, who
to the last moment of his liberty only thought how he might protect you.”
Tears at length fell in floods from her eyes.
“But,” said she, in a tone of wild power, “he was betrayed, and may
the Power whose thunders avenge the cause of His people pour down just
retribution upon the head that dared——”
I heard my own condemnation about to be unconsciously pronounced by the
lips of my child. Wound up to the last degree of suffering, I tore my
way, leaped on the bars before me, and plunged into the arena by her
side. The height was stunning; I tottered forward a few paces, and fell.
The lion gave a roar and sprang upon me. I lay helpless under him; I felt
his fiery breath; I saw his lurid eye glaring; I heard the gnashing of
his white fangs above me——
An exulting shout arose. I saw him reel as if struck—gore filled his
jaws. Another mighty blow was driven to his heart. He sprang high into
the air with a howl. He dropped—he was dead! The amphitheater thundered
with acclamation.
With Salome clinging to my bosom, Constantius raised me from the ground.
The roar of the lion had roused him from his swoon, and two blows saved
me. The falchion was broken in the heart of the monster. The whole
multitude stood up supplicating for our lives, in the name of filial
piety and heroism. Nero, devil as he was, dared not resist the strength
of the popular feeling; he waved a signal to the guards; the portal was
opened, and my children, sustaining my feeble steps, and showered with
garlands and ornaments from innumerable hands, slowly led me from the
arena.
END OF BOOK I.
[Illustration: BOOK II]