Produced by Al Haines
Vergilius
A Tale of the Coming of Christ
By
Irving Bacheller
Author of
"Eben Holden" "D'ri and I" "Darrel of the Blessed Isles"
New York and London
Harper & Brothers Publishers
1904
Copyright, 1904, by IRVING BACHELLER.
All rights reserved.
Published August, 1904.
Vergilius
A Tale of the Coming of Christ
CHAPTER 1
Rome had passed the summits and stood looking into the dark valley of
fourteen hundred years. Behind her the graves of Caesar and Sallust
and Cicero and Catullus and Vergil and Horace; before her centuries of
madness and treading down; round about her a multitude sickening of
luxury, their houses filled with spoil, their mouths with folly, their
souls with discontent; above her only mystery and silence; in her
train, philosophers questioning if it were not better for a man had he
never been born--deeming life a misfortune and extinction the only
happiness; poets singing no more of "pleasantries and trifles," but
seeking favor with poor obscenities. Soon they were even to celebrate
the virtue of harlots, the integrity of thieves, the tenderness of
murderers, the justice of oppression. Leading the caravan were types
abhorrent and self-opposed--effeminate men, masculine women, cheerful
cynics, infidel priests, wealthy people with no credit, patricians,
honoring and yet despising the gods, hating and yet living on the
populace. Here was the spectacle of a republican empire, and an
emperor gathering power while he affected to disdain it.
The splendor of the capital had attracted from all nations the idle
rich, gamblers, speculators, voluptuaries, profligates, intriguers,
criminals. To such an extreme had luxury been carried that nothing was
too sacred, nothing too costly to be enjoyed. Digestion had become a
science, courtship an art, sleep a nightmare, comfort an
accomplishment, and the very act of living an industry. Almost one may
say that the gods lived only in the imagination of the ignorant and the
jests of the learned. In a growing patriciate home had become a
weariness, marriage a form, children a trouble, and the decline of
motherhood an alarming fact. Augustus tried the remedy of legislation.
Henceforth marriage became a duty to the state. As between men and
women, things were near a turning-point. Woman cannot long endure
scorn nor the absence of veneration. A law older than the tablets of
stone shall be her defence. Love is the price of motherhood. Soon or
late, unless it be mingled in some degree with her passion, the
wonderful gift is withdrawn and men cease to be born of her. Slowly,
both the bitterness and the understanding of its loss turn the world to
virtue. A new and lofty sentiment was appearing. Woman, weary of her
part in the human comedy, had begun to inspire a love sublime as the
miracle in which she is born to act.
Happily, there were good people in Rome, even noble families, with whom
sacrifice had still a sacred power, and who practised the four virtues
of honor, bravery, wisdom, and temperance. In rural Latium, rich and
poor clung to the old faith, and everywhere a plebeian feared alike the
assessor and the gods, and sacrificed to both.
It is no wonder the gods were falling when even Jupiter had been
outdone by a modest man who dwelt on the Palatine. One might have seen
him there any day--a rather delicate figure with shiny blue eyes and
hair now turning gray. He flung his lightning with unerring aim across
the great purple sea into Arabia, Africa, and Spain, and northward to
the German Ocean and eastward to the land of the Goths. The genius of
this remarkable man had outdone the imagination of priest and poet. A
genius for organization, like that of his illustrious uncle, gave to
Augustus a power greater than human hands had yet wielded.
A bit of gossip had travelled far and excited his curiosity. It spoke
of a new king, with power above that of men, who was to conquer the
world. Sayings of certain learned men came out of Judea into the land
of lost hope. They told of the king of promise--that he would bring to
men the gift of immortal life, that the heavens would declare his
authority. Superstitious to the blood and bone, not a few were
thrilled by the message.
The minds of thinking men were sad, fearful, and beset with curiosity.
"If there be no gods," they were wont to ask, "have we any hope and
responsibility?" They studied the philosophers Plato, Aristotle, Zeno,
Epicurus, and were unsatisfied.
The nations were at peace, but not the souls of men. A universal and
mighty war of the spirit was near at hand. The skirmishers were
busy--patrician and plebeian, master and slave, oppressor and
oppressed. Soon all were to see the line of battle, the immortal
captains, the children of darkness, the children of light, the
beginning of a great revolution.
Rome was like a weary child whose toys are gods and men, and who, being
weary of them, has yet a curiosity in their destruction.