THE IMPERIAL BANQUET.
At the summons of Callirhoë a Nubian female slave, Juba by name, an old
family nurse, skilled in the use of herbs and potions, made her
appearance. Her huge and snowy turban and her bright-coloured dress
strikingly contrasted with her jet complexion and homely features. Yet,
as the personal attendant of the young empress, it was her duty to
accompany her mistress to the banquet-hall, to stand behind her chair,
to adjust her robes, hold her fan, and obey her every word or gesture.
As she drew aside the curtain of the apartment which shut out the light
and heat, two lictors who guarded the door sprang to their feet and
preceded the empress through the marble corridor to the _triclinium_, or
banquet chamber. It was a family party, rather than a state banquet, but
neither Greeks nor Romans practised a profuse hospitality nor held large
social or festive gatherings like those of modern times. Their feasts
were rather for the intense epicurean pleasure of a favoured few than
for the rational enjoyment of a larger company.[10]
Couches inlaid with ivory and decked with cushions surrounded three
sides of a hollow square. On these the emperor and his male guests
reclined, each resting on his left arm. On ivory chairs facing the open
side of the square sat the Empress Prisca (a majestic-looking matron of
somewhat grave aspect), Valeria, and a lady of the court, each
accompanied by her female slave. The extreme ugliness of the Nubian Juba
acted as a foil for the striking beauty of Valeria.
First of all, the guests were crowned with wreaths of fair and fragrant
flowers. Then elegantly dressed slaves brought in, to the sound of
music, the different courses: first eggs dressed with vinegar, olives
and lettuce, like our salad; then roast pheasants, peacocks' tongues and
thrushes, and the livers of capons steeped in milk; next oysters brought
alive from the distant shores of Great Britain, and, reversing our
order, fish in great variety--one of the most beautiful of these was the
purple mullet--served with high-seasoned condiments and sauces. Of solid
meats the favourite dish was a roast sucking pig, elegantly garnished.
Of vegetables they had nothing corresponding to our potatoes, but,
instead, a profusion of mallows, lentils, truffles, and mushrooms. The
banquet wound up with figs, olives, almonds, grapes, tarts and
confections, and apples--hence the phrase _ab ovo ad mala_.
After the first course the emperor poured out a libation of Falernian
wine, with the Greek formula, "to the supreme God," watching eagerly if
his wife and daughter would do the same. Lacking the courage to make a
bold confession of Christianity, and thinking, with a casuistry that we
shall not attempt to defend, that the ambiguity of the expression
excused the act, they also, apparently to the great relief of the
emperor, poured out a libation and sipped a small quantity of the wine.
The emperor then drank to the health of his wife and daughter, wishing
the latter many returns of the auspicious day they had met to celebrate.
Each of the guests also made, according to his ability, a complimentary
speech, which the ladies acknowledged by a gracious salutation. After
the repast slaves brought perfumed water and embroidered napkins for the
guests to wash their fingers, which had been largely employed in the
process of dining.
The most of the guests were sycophants and satellites of the emperor,
and in the intervals between the courses employed their art in
flattering his vanity or fomenting his prejudices. One of them,
Semphronius by name, an old fellow with a very bald and shiny head and
a very vivacious manner, made great pretensions to the character of a
philosopher or professor of universal knowledge, and was ever ready,
with a great flow of often unmeaning words, to give a theory or
explanation of every conceivable subject. Others were coarse and
sensual-looking _bon vivants_, who gave their attention chiefly to the
enjoyment of the good fare set before them. Another sinister-looking
fellow, with a disagreeable cast in one eye and a nervous habit of
clenching his hand as if grasping his sword, was Quintus Naso, the
prefect of the city. He had been a successful soldier, or rather
butcher, in the Pannonian wars, and was promoted to his bad eminence of
office on account of his truculent severity. Of very different
character, however, was a young man of noble family, Adauctus by name,
who was present in his official character as Treasurer of the Imperial
Exchequer.[11] He almost alone of the guests paid a courteous attention
to the high-born ladies of the party, to whom he frequently addressed
polite remarks while the others were intent only in fawning on the great
source of power. He, also, alone of all present, conspicuously refrained
from pouring out a libation--a circumstance which did not escape the
keen eye of the emperor. After interrupted talk on general topics, in
which the ladies took part, the conversation drifted to public matters,
on which they were not expected to meddle.
"Well, Naso, how was the edict received?" said the emperor to the
prefect, as a splendid roast peacock, with sadly despoiled plumage, was
removed.
"As every command of your divine Majesty should be received," replied
Naso, "with respectful obedience. One rash fool, indeed, attempted to
tear it down from the rostra of the Forum, like that mad wretch at
Nicomedia; but he was taken in the act. He expiates to-night his crime,
so soon as I shall have wrung from him the names of his fanatical
accomplices,"--and he clenched his hands nervously, as though he were
himself applying the instruments of torture.
"And you know well how to do that," said the emperor with a sneer, for,
like all tyrants, he despised and hated the instruments of his tyranny.
"You may well call them fanatics, good Naso," chimed in the would-be
philosopher, Semphronius; "a greater set of madmen the world never saw.
They believe that this Chrestus whom they worship actually rose from the
dead. Heard ever any man such utter folly as that! Whereas I have
satisfied myself, from a study of the official records, that he was
only a Jewish thaumaturge and conjuror, who used to work pretended
miracles by means of dupes and accomplices. And when, for his sedition,
he was put to death as the vilest of felons, these accomplices stole his
body and gave out that he rose from the dead."[12]
"I have heard," said Adauctus gravely, "that the Romans took care to
prevent such a trick as that by placing a maniple of soldiers on guard
at His grave."
"Yes, I believe they say so," went on the unabashed Semphronius; "but if
they did, the dastards were either overpowered, or they all fell asleep
while his fellow-knaves stole his body away."
"Come now, Semphronius," said the emperor, "that is too improbable a
story about a whole maniple of soldiers. You and I know too well, Naso,
the Roman discipline to accept such an absurd story as that."
"Oh, if your divine Majesty thinks it improbable, I fully admit that it
is so," the supple sophist eagerly replied. "I am inclined to identify
this impostor and a kinsman of his who was beheaded by the divine Herod
with the Janus and Jambres whose story is told in the sacred books of
the Jews. But it is evident, from the identity of name of one of these
with the god Janus, that they merely borrowed the story from the Roman
mythology. This execrable superstition, they say, was brought to Rome by
two brothers named Paulus and Simon Magus. They both expiated their
crimes, one in the Mammertine Prison, the other without the Ostian Gate.
They say also that when Simon the magician struck the prison wall, a
well of water gushed forth for some of their mystic rites; and that when
the head of Paulus was smitten off it bounded three times on the ground,
and at each spot where it touched a well of water sprang up. But these
are stories that no sane man can believe."[13]
"I quite agree with you in that," said Adauctus.
"Do you, indeed?" exclaimed the Emperor; "I am glad to know that so
brave and trusted an officer can say so."
"I believe, your Majesty, that half the stories told about the
Christians are calumnies that no candid man can receive," continued the
young officer.
"You are a bold man to say so, for they have few friends and many
enemies at court," replied Diocletian; "but we will soon extort their
secrets by this edict. Will we not, good Naso?"
"It will not be my fault if we do not, your divine Majesty," replied
that worthy, with a more hideous leer than usual in his cruel eye.
"Another thing these fools of Christians believe," interjected the
garrulous philosopher, "is, that when they die their souls shall live in
some blander clime, and breathe some more ethereal air. 'Tis this that
makes them seem to covet martyrdom, as they call it, instead of, like
all sane men, shunning death."
"But do not your own poets," chimed in the soft voice of Valeria, "speak
of the Elysian fields and the asphodel meadows where the spirits of
heroes walk, and of the bark of Charon, who ferries them across the
fatal Styx?"
"True, your most august Highness," replied the pedant with grimace
intended to be polite, "but those fables are intended for the vulgar,
and not for the cultured classes, to which your Imperial Highness
belongs. Even the priests themselves do not believe in the existence of
the gods at whose altars they minister; so that Cicero, you will
remember, said that 'he wondered how one augur could look in the face of
another without laughing.'"
"I quite admit," remarked Adauctus, "that the priests are often
impostors, deceiving the people; but our wisest philosophers--the
thoughtful Pliny, the profound Tacitus, the sage Seneca, and even the
eloquent Cicero whom you have quoted--teach the probability if not the
certainty of a future state, where virtue shall be rewarded and
wickedness punished."
"What do they know about it any more than any of us?" interrupted the
truculent Naso, to whom ethical themes were by no means familiar or
welcome. "My creed is embodied in the words of that clever fellow,
Juvenal, that I used to learn at school--
'Esse aliquid manes, et subterranea regna,
Nec pueri credunt, nisi qui nondum ære lavantur.'"[14]
"What's the use of all this talk?" lisped a languid-looking epicurean
fop, who, sated with dissipation, at twenty-five found life as empty as
a sucked orange. "We cannot alter fate. Life is short; let us make the
most of it. I'd like to press its nectar into a single draught and have
done with it for ever. As the easy-going Horace says, 'The same thing
happens to us all. When our name, sooner or later, has issued from the
fatal urn, we leave our woods, our villa, our pleasant homes, and enter
the bark which is to bear us into eternal exile!'"[15]
Here the Emperor made an impatient gesture, to indicate that he was
weary of this philosophic discourse. At the signal the ladies rose and
retired. Adauctus also made his official duties an excuse for leaving
the table, where Diocletian and his other guests lingered for hours in
a drunken symposium.
Thus we find that the very questions which engage the agnostics and
skeptics and pessimists of the present age--the Mallocks, and Cliffords,
and Harrisons and their tribe--have agitated the world from the very
dawn of philosophy. Did space permit, we might cite the theories of
Lucretius as a strange anticipation of the development hypothesis.
Indeed the writings of Pyrrho, Porphyry and Celsus show us that the
universal tendency of human philosophy, unaided by divine inspiration,
is to utter skepticism.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[10] On a single supper for his friends, Lucullus, who is said to have
fed his lampreys with the bodies of his slaves, is recorded to have
expended 50,000 denarii--about $8,500.
[11] His name and office are recorded even by so skeptical a critic as
Gibbon, and his epitaph has been found in the Catacombs. See Withrow's
Catacombs, p. 46.
[12] Strauss and Renan and their rationalizing school rival this pagan
sophist in eliminating the miraculous from the sacred record.
[13] Yet these stories, too incredible for this old pagan, were gravely
related to the present writer, on the scene of the alleged miracles, by
the credulous Romans of to-day.
[14] _Sat._ ii. 49. "That the manes are anything, or the nether world
anything, not even boys believe, unless those still in the nursery."
[15] See that saddest but most beautiful of the ode of Horace, To
Delius, II. 3:
... Et nos in æternum
Exilium impositura cymbæ.