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[Illustration]
[Illustration: SCENE IN THE CATACOMBS--AT THE MARTYR'S TOMB.]
VALERIA,
THE MARTYR OF THE CATACOMBS.
A Tale of Early Christian Life in Rome.
BY
W.H. WITHROW, D.D.,
_Author of "The Catacombs of Rome and their Testimony Relative
to Primitive Christianity," Etc._
[Illustration: "VALERIA SLEEPS IN PEACE."]
TORONTO:
WILLIAM BRIGGS.
MONTREAL: C.W. COATES.
HALIFAX: S.F. HUESTIS.
THE MARTYRS IN THE CATACOMBS.
BY CHARLES J. PETERSON.
THEY lie all around me, countless in their number,
Each martyr with his palm.
No torture now can rack them: safe they slumber,
Hushed in eternal calm!
I read the rude inscriptions, written weeping,
At night with hurried tears.
Yet what a tale they tell! their secret keeping
Through all these thousand years.
"IN PACE." Yes, at peace. By sword, or fire,
Or cross, or lictor's rod--
Virgin, or matron; youth, or gray-haired sire:
For all, the peace of God.
"IN CHRISTO." Died in Christ. Oh, tragic story!
Yet, over shouts, and cries,
And lion's roar, they heard the saints in glory
Singing from Paradise.
"AD DEUM." Went to God. Wide swung the portal;
Dim sank the sands away;
And, chanting "Alleluia," the immortal
Passed to Eternal Day.
Agnes, Cecilia! Names undying ever,--
What's Cæsar's gain to this?
He lived for self; they for their high endeavour.
His, fame; theirs, endless bliss.
And pagan Rome herself? Her wisest teacher
Could teach but how to die!
Sad, hopeless emperor, echoing the Preacher,
"All, all is vanity."
He slew the martyrs. Yet, through ages crying,
This noble truth they give:
"Life is but birth-throes. Death itself, not dying.
We pass to God--to live."
O blessed hope! O faith that conquers sorrow!
Pain, heart-break, all shall cease.
They are but gateways to a glad to-morrow.
"IN PACE." God is peace.
[Illustration]
PREFACE.
The writer having made the early Christian Catacombs a special study for
several years, and his larger volume on that subject having been
received with great favour in Great Britain, the United States, and
Canada, has endeavoured in this story to give as popular an account as
he could of early Christian life and character as illustrated by these
interesting memorials of the primitive Church. He has been especially
careful to maintain historical accuracy in all his statements of fact,
and in the filling up of details he has endeavoured to preserve the
historical "keeping" of the picture. Persons wishing to pursue the study
of the Catacombs still further are referred to the Author's special work
on that subject. See note at the end of this volume.
W.H.W.
THE CATACOMBS.
BY HARRIET ANNIE WILKINS.
"Miles after miles of graves, and not one word or sign of the gloominess
or death." _Professor Jules De Launay._
MILES after miles of graves,
League after league of tombs,
And not one sign of spectre Death,
Waving his shadowy plumes;
Hope, beautiful and bright,
Spanning the arch above
Faith, gentle, overcoming Faith,
And Love, God's best gift, Love.
For early Christians left
Their darlings to their rest,
As mothers leave their little ones
When the sun gilds the west;
No mourning robes of black,
No crape upon the doors,
For the victorious palm-bearers,
Who tread the golden floors.
Arrayed in garments white,
No mournful dirges pealing,
Bearing green branches in their hands,
Around the tomb they're kneeling;
This was their marching song,
"By death we are not holden;"
And this their glorious funeral hymn,
"Jerusalem the golden."
Beautiful girls sleep there,
Waiting the Bridegroom's call.
Each lamp is burning brilliantly,
While the bright shadows fall;
And baby martyrs passed
Straight to the great I AM,
While sturdier soldiers carved o'er each,
"VICTOR, GOD'S LITTLE LAMB."
Miles after miles of graves,
League after league of tombs,
The cross upon each conqueror's brow
Light up the catacombs;
"'Tis in this sign we conquer."
Sounds on the blood-stained track;
"'Tis in this sign we conquer,"
We gladly answer back.
[Illustration]
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
ON THE APPIAN WAY 7
CHAPTER II.
IN CÆSAR'S PALACE 17
CHAPTER III.
EMPRESS AND SLAVE 23
CHAPTER IV.
THE IMPERIAL BANQUET 33
CHAPTER V.
THE CHRISTIANS AND THE LIONS 43
CHAPTER VI.
THE MARTYR'S BURIAL 54
CHAPTER VII.
WITH HILARUS, THE FOSSOR 64
CHAPTER VIII.
WITH PRIMITIUS, THE PRESBYTER 75
CHAPTER IX.
A DIFFICULT QUEST 86
CHAPTER X.
A WICKED PLOT 92
CHAPTER XI
THE SLAVE MARKET 97
CHAPTER XII.
THE LOST FOUND 105
CHAPTER XIII.
FATHER AND DAUGHTER 111
CHAPTER XIV.
"UNSTABLE AS WATER" 117
CHAPTER XV.
AT THE BATHS 124
CHAPTER XVI.
THE GAMING TABLE 129
CHAPTER XVII.
"IN PERICULIS TUTUS" 135
CHAPTER XVIII
THE MIDNIGHT PLOT 142
CHAPTER XIX
IN THE TOILS OF THE TEMPTER 148
CHAPTER XX
THE PLOT THICKENS 153
CHAPTER XXI.
A CRIME PREVENTED 161
CHAPTER XXII.
THE STORM BURSTS 168
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE MAMERTINE PRISON 177
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE EVE OF MARTYRDOM 184
CHAPTER XXV.
A ROMAN HOLIDAY 188
CHAPTER XXVI
THE MARTYRS CROWNED 199
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE MARTYRS BURIED 205
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE BETRAYAL--THE PURSUIT 215
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE DOOM OF THE TRAITOR 224
CHAPTER XXX.
FATE OF THE PERSECUTORS--TRIUMPH OF
CHRISTIANITY 229
[Illustration]
VALERIA, THE MARTYR OF THE CATACOMBS.
CHAPTER I.
THE APPIAN WAY.
[Illustration: "ENTRANCE TO A CATACOMB."]
On a bright spring morning in the year of our Lord 303--it was in the
"Ides of March," about the middle of the month, but the air was balmy as
that of June in our northern clime--two note-worthy-looking men were
riding along the famous Appian Way, near the city of Rome The elder of
the two, a man of large size and of mighty thews and sinews, was mounted
on a strong and richly-caparisoned horse. He wore the armour of a Roman
centurion--a lorica or cuirass, made of plates of bronze, fastened to a
flexible body of leather; and cothurni, or a sort of laced boots,
leaching to mid-leg. On his back hung his round embossed shield; by his
side, in its sheath, his short, straight sword, and on his head was a
burnished helmet, with a sweeping horsehair crest. His face was bronzed
with the sun of many climes. But when, for a moment, he removed his
helmet to cool his brow, one saw that his forehead was high and white.
His hair curled close to his head, except where it was worn bare at his
temples by the chafing of his helmet, and was already streaked with
grey, although he looked not more than five-and forty years of age. Yet
the eagle glance of his eye was undimmed, and his firm-set muscles, the
haughty expression of his countenance, and the high courage of his
bearing, gave evidence that his natural strength was not abated.
His companion contrasted strongly in every respect. He had a slender,
graceful figure, a mobile and expressive face, a mouth of almost
feminine softness and beauty, dark and languishing eyes, and long,
flowing hair. He wore a snowy toga, with a brilliant scarlet border of
what is still known as "Greek fret;" and over this, fastened by a brooch
at his throat, a flowing cloak. On his head sat jauntily a soft felt
hat, not unlike those still worn by the Italian peasantry, and on his
feet were low-laced shoes or sandals. Instead of a sword, he wore at his
side a metal case for his reed-pen and for a scroll of papyrus. He was
in the bloom and beauty of youth, apparently not more than twenty years
of age.
The elder of the two was the Roman officer Flaccus Sertorius, a
centurion of the 12th Legion, returning with his Greek secretary,
Isidorus, from the town of Albano, about seventeen miles from Rome,
whither he had been sent on business of state.
"This new edict of the Emperor's," remarked Sertorius to his secretary,
with an air of affable condescension, "is likely to give us both work
enough to do before long."
"Your Excellency forgets," replied Isidorus, with an obsequious
inclination of the head, "that your humble secretary has not the same
means of learning affairs of state as his noble master."
"Oh, you Greeks learn everything!" said the centurion, with a rather
contemptuous laugh. "Trust you for that."
"We try to make ourselves useful to our patrons," replied the young man,
"and it seems to be a sort of hereditary habit, for my Athenian
ancestors were proverbial for seeking to know some new thing."
"Yes, new manners, new customs, new religions; why, your very name
indicates your adherence to the new-fangled worship of Isis."
"I hold not altogether that way," replied the youth. "I belong rather to
the eclectic school. My father, Apollodorus, was a priest of Phoebus,
and named me, like himself, from the sungod, whom he worshipped; but I
found the party of Isis fashionable at court, so I even changed my name
and colours to the winning side. When one is at Rome, you know, he must
do as the Romans do."
"Yes, like the degenerate Romans, who forsake the old gods, under whom
the State was great and virtuous and strong," said the soldier, with an
angry gesture. "The more gods, the worse the world becomes. But this new
edict will make short work of some of them."
"With the Christians you mean," said the supple Greek. "A most
pernicious sect, that deserve extermination with fire and sword."
"I know little about them," replied Sertorius, with a sneer, "save that
they have increased prodigiously of late. Even in the army and the
palace are those known to favour their obscene and contemptible
doctrines."
"'Tis whispered that even their sacred highnesses the Empresses Prisca
and Valeria are infected with their grovelling superstition," said the
Greek secretary. "Certain it is, they seem to avoid being present at the
public sacrifices, as they used to be. But the evil sect has its
followers chiefly among the slaves and vile plebs of the poorest
Transtiberine region of Rome."
"What do they worship, anyhow?" asked the centurion, with an air of
languid curiosity. "They seem to have no temples, nor altars, nor
sacrifices."
"They have dark and secret and abominable rites," replied the fawning
Greek, eager to gratify the curiosity of his patron with popular
slanders against the Christians. "'Tis said they worship a low-born
peasant, who was crucified for sedition. Some say he had an ass's
head,[1] but that, I doubt not, is a vulgar superstition; and one of our
poets, the admirable Lucian, remarks that their doctrine was brought to
Rome by a little hook-nosed Jew, named Paulus, who was beheaded by the
divine Nero over yonder near the Ostian gate, beside the pyramid of
Cestius, which you may see amongst the cypresses. They have many strange
usages. Their funeral customs, especially, differ very widely from the
Greek or Roman ones. They bury the body, with many mysterious rites, in
vaults or chambers underground, instead of burning it on a funeral pyre.
They are rank atheists, refusing to worship the gods, or even to throw
so much as a grain of incense on their altar, or place a garland of
flowers before their shrines, or even have their images in their
houses. They are a morose, sullen, and dangerous people, and are said to
hold hideous orgies at their secret assemblies underground, where they
banquet on the body of a newly-slain child.[2] See yonder," he
continued, pointing to a low-browed arch almost concealed by trees in a
neighbouring garden, "is the entrance to one of their secret crypts,
where they gather to celebrate their abominable rites, surrounded by the
bones and ashes of the dead. A vile and craven set of wretches; they are
not fit to live."
"They are not all cravens; to that I can bear witness," interrupted
Sertorius. "I knew a fellow in my own company--Lannus was his name--who,
his comrades said, was a Christian. He was the bravest and steadiest
fellow in the legion;--saved my life once in Libya;--rushed between me
and a lion, which sprang from a thicket as I stopped to let my horse
drink at a stream--as it might be the Anio, there. The lion's fangs met
in his arm, but he never winced. He may believe what he pleases for me.
I like not this blood-hound business of hunting down honest men because
they worship gods of their own. But the Emperor's edict is written, as
you may say, with the point of a dagger--'The Christian religion must
everywhere be destroyed.'"
"And quite right, too, your Excellency," said the soft-smiling Greek.
"They are seditious conspirators, the enemies of Cæsar and of Rome."
"A Roman soldier does not need to learn of thee, hungry Greekling,"[3]
exclaimed the centurion, haughtily, "what is his duty to his country!"
"True, most noble sir," faltered the discomfited secretary, yet with a
vindictive glance from his treacherous eyes. "Your Excellency is always
right."
For a time they rode on in silence, the secretary falling obsequiously a
little to the rear. It was now high noon, and the crowd and bustle on
the Appian Way redoubled. This Queen of Roads[4] ran straight as an
arrow up-hill and down from Rome to Capua and Brundisium, a distance of
over three hundred miles. Though then nearly six hundred years old, it
was as firm as the day it was laid, and after the lapse of fifteen
hundred years more, during which "the Goth, the Christian, Time, War,
Flood and Fire," have devastated the land, its firm lava pavement of
broad basaltic slabs seems as enduring as ever. On every side rolled the
undulating Campagna, now a scene of melancholy desolation, then
cultivated like a garden, abounding in villas and mansions whose marble
columns gleamed snowy white through the luxuriant foliage of their
embosoming myrtle and laurel groves. On either side of the road were the
stately tombs of Rome's mighty dead-her prætors, proconsuls, and
senators some, like the mausoleum of Cæcilia Metella,[5] rising like a
solid fortress; others were like little wayside altars, but all were
surrounded by an elegantly kept green sward, adorned with parterres of
flowers. Their ruins now rise like stranded wrecks above the sea of
verdure of the tomb-abounding plain. On every side are tombs--tombs
above and tombs below--the graves of contending races, the sepulchres of
vanished generations. Across the vast field of view stretched, supported
high in air on hundreds of arches, like a Titan procession, the Marcian
Aqueduct, erected B.C. 146, which after two thousand years brings to the
city of Rome an abundant supply of the purest water from the far distant
Alban Mountains, which present to our gaze to-day the same serrated
outline and lovely play of colour that delighted the eyes of Horace and
Cicero.
As they drew nearer the gates of the city, it became difficult to thread
their way through the throngs of eager travellers--gay lecticæ or
silken-curtained carriages and flashing chariots, conveying fashionable
ladies and the gilded gallants of the city to the elegant villas without
the walls--processions of consuls and proconsuls with their guards, and
crowds of peasants bringing in the panniers of their patient donkeys
fruits, vegetables, and even snow from the distant Soracte, protected
from the heat by a straw matting--just as they do in Italy to-day. The
busy scene is vividly described in the graphic lines of Milton:
"What conflux issuing forth or entering in;
Prætors, proconsuls to their provinces
Hasting, or on return, in robes of state;
Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power,
Legions and cohorts, turms of horse and wings;
Or embassies from regions far remote,
In various habits on the Appian Road."
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] I have myself seen in the museum of the _Collegio Romano_ at Rome, a
rude caricature which had been scratched upon the wall of the barracks
of Nero's palace, representing a man with an ass's head upon a cross,
and beneath it the inscription, _"Alexomenos sebete Theon"_ "Alexomenos
worships his God." Evidently some Roman soldier had scratched this in an
idle hour in derision of the worship of our Lord by his Christian
fellow-soldier. Tertullian also refers to the same calumny; and Lucian,
a pagan writer, speaks of our Lord as "a crucified impostor." It is
almost impossible for us to conceive the contempt and detestation in
which crucifixion was held by the Romans. It was a punishment reserved
for the worst of felons, or the vilest of slaves.--ED.
[2] All these calumnies, and others still worse, are recorded by pagan
writers concerning the early Christians. Their celebration of the Lord's
Supper in the private meetings became the ground of the last-mentioned
distorted accusation.--ED.
[3] "Graeculus esuriens," the term applied by Juvenal to those foreign
adventurers who sought to worm their way into the employment and
confidence of great Roman houses.
[4] _Regina Viarum_, as the Romans called it.
[5] It is a circular structure sixty-five feet in diameter, built upon a
square base of still larger size. After two thousand years it still
defies the gnawing tooth of Time.
[Illustration]