EMPRESS AND SLAVE.
Using the time-honoured privilege of ubiquity accorded to imaginative
writers, we beg to conduct our readers to a part of the stately palace
of Diocletian, where, if they had really been found in their own proper
persons, it would have been at the peril of their lives. After fifteen
long centuries have passed, we may explore without let or hindrance the
most private apartments of the once all-potent masters of the world. We
may roam through their unroofed banquet-chambers. We may gaze upon the
frescoes, carvings, and mosaics which met their eyes. We may behold the
evidences of their luxury and profligacy. We may thread the secret
corridors and galleries connecting the chambers of the palace--all now
open to the light of day.
We may even penetrate to the boudoirs and tiring rooms of the proud
dames of antiquity. We may even examine at our will the secrets of the
toilet--the rouge pots and vases for cosmetics and unguents, the silver
mirrors, fibulas or brooches, armlets and jewels, and can thus
reconstruct much of that old Roman life which has vanished forever from
the face of the earth.[7]
By the light of modern exploration and discovery, therefore, we may
enter the private apartments of ladies of the Imperial household, and in
imagination re-furnish these now desolate and ruinous chambers with all
the luxury and magnificence of their former prime. A room of commodious
size is paved with tesselated marble slabs, adorned with borders and
designs of brilliant mosaic. The walls are also marble, save where an
elegant fresco on a stucco ground--flowers or fruit or graceful
landscape[8]--greet the eye. A small fountain throws up its silver
spray, imparting a grateful coolness to the air. Windows, void of
glass, but mantled and screened by climbing plants and rare exotics,
look out into a garden where snowy marble statues are relieved against
the dark green of the cypress and ilex. Around the room are busts and
effigies of the Imperial household or of historical characters. There
is, however, a conspicuous absence of the mythological figures, whose
exquisite execution does not atone for their sensuous conception, which,
rescued from the _debris_ of ancient civilization, crowd all the
Art-galleries of Europe. That this is not the result of accident but of
design is seen by an occasional empty pedestal or niche. Distributed at
intervals are couches and tables of costly woods, inlaid with ivory, and
bronze and silver candelabra, lamps and other household objects of
ornament or use. Sitting in an ivory chair amid all this elegance and
luxury was a lady in the very flower of her youth, of queenly dignity
and majestic beauty. She wore a snowy _stola_, or robe of finest linen,
with purple border, flowing in ample folds to her sandaled feet Over
this was negligently thrown a saffron-coloured veil of thinnest tissue.
She held in her hand a burnished silver mirror, at which she glanced
carelessly from time to time, while a comely slave with dark lustrous
eyes and finely-formed features carefully brushed and braided her long
and rippling hair.
This queenly presence was the young and lovely Empress Valeria, the
daughter of Diocletian and Prisca, and wife of the co-Emperor, Galerius
Cæsar. The object of envy of all the women of Borne, she lived to become
within a few short years the object of their profoundest commiseration.
Of her even the unsympathetic Gibbon remarks that "her melancholy
adventures might furnish a very singular subject for tragedy."
"Nay, now, Callirhoë," said the Empress, with a weary smile, "that will
do! Put up my hair and bind it with this fillet," and she held out a
gold-embroidered ribband. "Thou knowest I care not for the elaborate
coiffure that is now so fashionable."
"Your Majesty needs it not," said the slave, speaking Greek with a low
sweet voice, and with an Attic purity of accent. "As one of your own
poets has said, you appear 'when unadorned, adorned the most.'"
"Flatterer," said the Empress, tapping her gaily and almost caressingly
with a plumy fan of ostrich feathers which she held lightly in one hand,
"you are trying to spoil me."
"Such goodness as thine, sweet mistress," said the slave, affectionately
kissing her hand, "it would be impossible to spoil."
"Dost know, Callirhoë," said the young Empress, with a smile of
bewitching sweetness, "that I have a surprise for thee? It is, thou
knowest, my birthday, and in my honour is the banquet given to-day. But
I have a greater pleasure than the banquet can bestow. I give thee this
day thy freedom. Thou art no more a slave, but the freedwoman of the
Empress Valeria. See, here are the papers of thy manumission," and she
drew from the girdle of her robe a sealed and folded parchment, which
she handed to the now emancipated slave.
"Dearest mistress!" exclaimed the faithful creature, who had thrown
herself on the marble pavement and was kissing the sandaled feet of the
beautiful Empress, but an outburst of sobs and tears choked her
utterance.
"What! weeping!" exclaimed Valeria. "Are you sorry then?"
"Nay, they are tears of joy," exclaimed the girl, smiling through her
tears, like the sun shining through a shower; "not that I tire of thy
service; I wish never to leave it. But I rejoice that my father's
daughter can serve thee no longer as thy slave, but as thy freedwoman."
"I should indeed be sorry to lose thee," said the august lady with a
wistful smile. "If I thought I should, I would almost regret thy
manumission; for believe me, Callirhoë, I have need of true friends, and
thou, I think, wilt be a faithful one."
"What! I, but this moment a poor slave, the friend of the fairest and
most envied lady in all Rome! Nay, now thou laughest at me; but believe
me I am still heart and soul and body thy most devoted servant."
"I do believe it, child," said the Empress; "but tell me, pray, why thou
speakest in that proud melancholy tone of thy father? Was he a
freedman?"
"Nay, your Majesty, he was free-born; neither he nor his fathers were
ever in bondage to any man,"--and the fair face of the girl was suffused
with the glow of honest pride in the freeborn blood that flowed in her
veins.
"Forgive me, child, if I touched a sore spot in thy memory. Perchance I
may heal it. Money can do much, men say."
"In this case, dearest mistress, it is powerless. But from thee I can
have no secrets, if you care to listen to the story of one so long a
slave."
"I never knew thou wert aught else, child. My steward bought thee in the
slave market in the Suburra. Tell me all."
"'Tis a short story, but a sad one, your Majesty," said the girl, as she
went on braiding her mistress's hair. "My father was a Hebrew merchant,
a dealer in precious stones, well esteemed in his nation. He lived in
Damascus, where I was born. He named me after the beautiful fountain
near the Jordan of his native land."
"I thought it had been from the pagan goddess," interrupted the Empress.
"Nay, 'twas from the healing fountain of Callirhoë, in Judea," continued
the girl "When my mother died, my father was plunged into inconsolable
grief, and fell ill, well-nigh to death. The most skilled physician in
Damascus, Eliezer by name, brought him back to life; but his friends
thought he had better let him die, for he converted him to the hated
Christian faith. Persecuted by his kinsmen, he came to Antioch with my
brother and myself, that he might join the great and flourishing
Christian Church in that city.[9] While on a trading voyage to Smyrna,
in which we children accompanied our father, we were captured by
Illyrian pirates, and carried to the slave market at Ravenna. There I
was purchased by a slave dealer from Rome, and my father and brother
were sold I know not whither. I never saw them again,"--and she heaved a
weary and hopeless sigh.
"Poor child!" said the Empress, a tear of sympathy glistening on her
cheek, "I fear that I can give thee little help. 'Tis strange how my
heart went out toward thee when thou wert first brought so tristful and
forlorn into my presence. 'Tis a sad world, and even the Emperors can do
little to set it right."
"There is One who rules on high, dear lady, the God of our fathers, by
whom kings rule and princes decree judgment. He doeth all things well."
"Yes, child, I am not ignorant of the God of the Jews and Christians.
What a pity that there should be such bitter hate on the part of your
countrymen towards those who worship the same great God."
"Yes," said Callirhoë, "blindness in part hath happened to Israel. If
they but knew how Jesus of Nazareth fulfils all the types and prophecies
of their own Scriptures, they would hail Him as the true Messiah of whom
Moses and the prophets did write."
"Well, child, I will help thee to find thy father, if possible, though I
fear it will be a difficult task. Ask me freely anything that I can do.
As my freedwoman, you will, of course, bear my name with your own. Now
send my slave Juba to accompany me to the banquet-hall."
Callirhoë, or as we may now call her, after the Roman usage, Valeria
Callirhoë, fervently kissed the outstretched hand of her august mistress
and gracefully retired.
It may excite some surprise to find such generous sentiments and such
gentle manners as we have described attributed to the daughter of a
persecuting Emperor and the wife of a stern Roman general. But reasons
are not wanting to justify this delineation. Both Valeria and her mother
Prisca, during their long residence at Nicomedia, where the Emperor
Diocletian had established his court, became instructed in the Christian
religion by the bishop of that important see. Indeed, Eusebius informs
us that among them there were many Christian converts, both Prisca and
Valeria, in the Imperial palace. Diocletian and his truculent
son-in-law, Galerius, were bigoted pagans, and the mother of the latter
was a fanatical worshipper of the goddess Cybele. The spread of
Christianity even within the precincts of the palace provoked her
implacable resentment, and she urged on her son to active persecution. A
council was therefore held in the palace at Nicomedia, a joint edict for
the extirpation of Christianity was decreed, and the magnificent
Christian basilica was razed to the ground. The very next day the edict
was torn from the public forum by an indignant Christian, and the
Imperial palace was almost entirely destroyed by fire. The origin of
this disaster is unknown, but it was ascribed to the Christians, and
intensified the virulence of the persecution. Diocletian proceeded to
Rome to celebrate a military triumph and to concert with his western
colleagues more vigorous methods of persecution. It is at this period
that the opening scenes of our story take place.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[7] On the Palatine Hill may still be seen, in the palace of the Flavii,
the frescoed private apartments and banquet-chambers of the emperors--in
the walls are even the lead water-pipes, stamped with the maker's name;
and the innumerable ancient relics in the museums of Rome and Naples
give such an insight as nothing else can impart of the life and
character of the palmy days of the empire.
[8] On the banquet-room mentioned in the last note are some remarkable
frescoes, among other objects being glass vases through whose
transparent sides are seen exquisitely painted fruits--as fresh,
apparently, after eighteen centuries as if executed within a few months.
[9] Shortly after this time, that Church numbered 100,000 persons.
[Illustration]