IN CÆSAR'S PALACE.
Passing beneath the even then grim and hoary archway of the Porta
Capena, or Capuan Gate, with the dripping aqueduct above it, the
centurion and his secretary traversed rapidly the crowded streets of a
fashionable suburb--now mere mouldering mounds of desolation--to the
Imperial Palace on the Palatine Hill. This eminence, which is now a
mass of crumbling ruins, honey-combed with galleries and subterranean
corridors through what was once the stately apartments of the Lords of
the World, where wandering tourists peer and explore and artists sketch
the falling arch or fading fresco of the banquet halls and chambers of a
long line of emperors, was then the scene of life and activity, of pomp
and splendour. Marble courts and columned porticos stretched on in
almost endless vistas, covering many acres of ground. Flashing fountains
leaping sunward sparkled in the beams of noonday, diffusing a coolness
through the air, which was fragrant with blossoms of the orange and
magnolia trees growing in the open courts. Snowy statuary gleamed amid
the vivid foliage, and beneath the shadow of the frescoed corridors.
Having dismounted at the outer court and given their horses to
obsequious grooms, Sertorius and the Greek repaired each to a marble
bath to remove the stains of travel before entering the presence of the
Emperor. Having made their toilet they advanced to the inner court. The
guards who stood in burnished mail at the portal of the palace
respectfully made way for the well-known imperial officer, but were
about to obstruct the passage of the Greek secretary, when with a
gesture of authority Sertorius bade the soldier to permit the man to
pass.
"Quite right, Max, as a rule: but wrong this time. He accompanies me on
business of state, before the Emperor."
Two lictors in white tunics with scarlet hem, and bearing each the
fasces or bundle of rods bound with filets from the top of which
projected a polished silver axe, came forward and conducted the
centurion into the Imperial presence chamber, the secretary remaining in
an ante-room.
The lictors draw aside a heavy gold-embroidered curtain, and Sertorius
stood in the presence of the Lord of the World, the man to whom divine
honours had been ascribed, who held in his hand the lives of all his
myriads of subjects, and the word of whose mouth uttering his despotic
will might consign even the loftiest, without form or process of law, to
degradation or death.
Let us note for a moment what manner of man this god on earth, this
Diocletian, whose name is remembered with abhorrence and execration, the
degenerate usurper of the august name of the Cæsars, may be. He sits in
an ivory, purple-cushioned chair, near a table of inlaid precious woods.
His short and obese figure is enswathed in the folds of an ample
crimson-bordered toga, or fine linen vestment of flowing folds. His
broad, coarse features are of plebeian cast, for he had been originally
a Dalmatian slave, or at least the son of a slave; but the
long-continued exercise of despotic authority had given an imperious
haughtiness to his bearing. He was now in his fifty-eighth year, but his
features, coarsened and bloated by sensuality, gave him a much older
aspect. He was dictating to a secretary who sat at the table writing
with a reed pen on a parchment scroll, when the lictors, lowering their
fasces and holding their hands above their eyes, as if to protect their
dazzled eyes from the effulgence of the noonday sun, advanced into the
apartment.
"May it please your divine Majesty," said one of the servile lictors,
"the centurion whom you summoned to your presence awaits your Imperial
pleasure."
"Most humbly at your Imperial Majesty's service," said Sertorius, coming
forward with a profound inclination of his uncovered head. He had left
his helmet and sword in the ante-chamber.
"Flaccus Sertorius, I have heard that thou art a brave and faithful
soldier, skilled in affairs of State as well as in the art of war. I
have need of such to carry out my purpose here in Rome. Vitalius, the
scribe," he went on, with an allusive gesture toward the secretary, "is
copying a decree to be promulgated to the utmost limits of the empire
against the pestilent atheism of the accursed sect of Christians, who
have spawned and multiplied like frogs throughout the realm. This
execrable superstition must be everywhere destroyed and the worship of
the gods revived.[6] Even hero in Rome the odious sect swarms like
vermin, and 'tis even said that the precincts of this palace are not
free. Now, purge me this city as with a besom of wrath. Spare not young
or old, the lofty or the low; purge even this palace, and look to it
that thy own head be not the forfeit if you fail. This seal shall be
your warrant;" and lashing himself into rage till the purple veins stood
out like whipcords on his forehead, he tossed his signet ring across the
table to the scribe, who prepared a legal instrument to which he affixed
the Imperial seal.
"May it please your Imperial Majesty," said the centurion, with an
obeisance, "I am a rude soldier, unskilled to speak in the Imperial
presence; but I have fought your Majesty's enemies in Iberia, in Gaul,
in Dacia, in Pannonia, and in Libya, and am ready to fight them
anywhere. Nevertheless, I would fain be discharged from this office of
censor of the city. I know naught, save by Rumour, who is ever a lying
jade, your Imperial Majesty, against this outlawed sect. And I know some
of them who were brave soldiers in your Imperial Majesty's service, and
many others are feeble old men or innocent women and children. I pray
you send me rather to fight against the barbarian Dacians than against
these."
"I was well informed then that you were a bold fellow," exclaimed the
Emperor, his brow flushing in his anger a deeper hue; "but I have need
of such. Do thy duty, on thy allegiance, and see that thou soon bring
these culprits to justice. Is it not enough that universal rumour
condemns them? They are pestilent sedition-mongers, and enemies of the
gods and of the State."
"I, too, am a worshipper of the gods," continued the intrepid soldier,
"and will fail not to keep my allegiance to your Imperial Majesty, to
the State, and to those higher powers," and he walked backward out of
the Imperial presence. As he rejoined his secretary a cloud sat on his
brow. He was moody and taciturn, and evidently little pleased with his
newly-imposed duties. But the confirmed habit of unquestioning obedience
inherent in a Roman soldier led to an almost mechanical acceptance of
his uncongenial task. Emerging from the outer court he proceeded to his
own house, in the populous region of the Aventine Hill, now a deserted
waste, covered with kitchen gardens and vineyards. In the meantime we
turn to another part of the great Imperial palace.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[6] Even as far west as Spain the following inscription has been found,
which seems designed as a funeral monument of dead and buried
Christianity: "DIOCLETIAN. CÆS. AVG. SVPERSTITIONE CHRIST. VBIQ.
DELETAET CVLTV, DEOR. PROPAGATO"--"To Diocletian, Cæsar Augustus, the
Christian superstition being everywhere destroyed and the worship of the
gods extended." But though apparently destroyed, Christianity, like its
divine Author, instinct with immortality, rose triumphant over all its
foes.