THE MAMERTINE PRISON.
Let us now turn our attention to the fate of the characters in our tale
of Christian trial and triumph, around whom its interest chiefly
centres. They have been consigned to one of the most dismal of the many
gloomy dungeons of Rome--the thrice terrible Mamertine prison--haunted
with memories of long centuries of cruelty and crime. Manacled each to a
Roman soldier, Adauctus, Aurelius, Demetrius, and Callirhoë, together
with other Christians condemned to martyrdom, marched through the
streets under the noontide glare of a torrid sun. A guard armed _cap à
pié_, flung open an iron-studded door, and admitted them to a gloomy
vault a few steps below the level of the street. Here a brawny Vulcan,
with anvil and hammer, with many a brutal gibe smote off the fetters
that linked the prisoners and soldiers together, and riveted them again
so that these victims of oppression were bound together in pairs.
Sometimes it happened that one of a pair thus bound together died, and
the survivor endured the horror of being inseparably fettered to a
festering corpse. To this the apostle refers when, groaning over the
corruptions of his sinful nature, he exclaims: "O wretched man that I
am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"
"My dainty lady," said the hideous Cyclops, as he rudely seized the arm
of Callirhoë, "this is not the sort of bracelet you've been used to
wear. I should not much mind, being bound to such as you myself, only I
would prefer silken fetters to those iron gyves." Then, as she shrank
from his touch and winced as he bruised her tender flesh in unriveting
the fetters, he said, with an insolent jeer, "I wont hurt you more than
I can help, my beauty. You are not used to having such a rough
chamberlain;" and he uttered a coarse jest with which we shall not
pollute our page.
A rosy flush stormed the brow of the maiden as she turned her blushing
cheek to the mildewed and cold stone wall, in haughty silence disdaining
a word of reply to the brutal ruffian.
"Nay, my fine gentlemen," went on this typical Roman jailer, as Adauctus
and the aged Demetrius, weary with their march, sank upon a stone bench,
"this is too luxurious an apartment for you. For you we have a deeper
depth." And Be pointed to an opening in the floor, hitherto unnoticed in
the gloom. "Nay, you need not shrink, old man," he went on, as Demetrius
recoiled from the grave-like opening at his feet. "Your betters have
been there before you."
"Father, your blessing e'er you go," exclaimed Callirhoë, and flinging
herself on his breast, she received his kiss and benediction.
By means of a leathern strap beneath their arms, the prisoners were one
by one let down into a hideous vault, like men to a living burial. Into
this lower dungeon no beam of light struggled, save a precarious ray
from the opening in the floor above. The loathsome cell was even then
dank with the slime of well-nigh a thousand years, its construction
being attributed to Ancus Martius, the fourth king of Rome. Here the
African prince, Jugurtha, was starved to death. "What a cold bath is
this!" he exclaimed, as he descended into its chilly gloom. Here the
Gallic king, Vercingetorix, also died. Here the usurper Sejanus was
executed, and here the fellow conspirators of Cataline lingered to
death. If we would accept Roman tradition, we would also believe that
St. Peter and St. Paul were immured in this dismal vault, and in the
case of the latter illustrious martyr it is more than likely that the
story is true. A stairway has now been constructed to this lower depth,
and the present writer has stood upon the stone pavement worn by the
feet of generations of victims of oppression, and has drunk of a spring
at which the Apostle of the Gentiles may have quenched his thirst.
The prisoners enjoyed not long even this sad reprieve from death. They
were destined soon to finish their course by a glorious martyrdom. The
Emperors determined to gratify at once their own persecuting fury and
the cruel thirst for blood of the Roman mob, by offering a holocaust of
victims in the amphitheatre. The _Acta Diurna_, a sort of public gazette
of the day, which circulated in the great houses, and baths, and other
places of concourse, contained the announcement of a grand exhibition of
the _ludi circenses_, or gladiatorial games, to be celebrated in honour
of the god Neptune--_Neptunus Equestris_. In the public spaces of the
Forum, and in the neighbourhood of the Flavian Amphitheatre and
elsewhere, where the crowd around them would not obstruct the highway,
were displayed large white bulletin boards, on which were written in
coloured chalks a list of the games--like the playbills which placard
the streets of great cities to-day--and heralds proclaimed through every
street, even in the crowded Ghetto, the splendour of the approaching
games. These were on a scale on which no modern manager ever dreamed.
Trajan exhibited games which lasted a hundred and twenty-three days, in
which 10,000 gladiators fought and 11,000 fierce animals were killed.
Sometimes the vast arena was flooded with water, and _naumachia_ or
sea-fights were exhibited. The vast flood-gates and cisterns by which
this was accomplished may still be seen.
The chief attraction of the games provided by the Emperors Diocletian
and Galerius, however, was not the conflict of what might almost be
called armies of trained gladiators, nor the slaughter of hundreds of
fierce Libyan leopards and Numidian lions, but the sacrifice of some
scores of helpless and unarmed Christians--old men, weak women, and
tender and innocent children.
There was much excitement in the schools of the gladiators--vast stone
barracks, where they were drilled in their dreadful trade. They were
originally captives taken in war, or condemned malefactors; but in the
degenerate days of the Empire, knights, senators, and soldiers sought
distinction in the arena, and even unsexed women fought half-naked in
the ring, or lay dead and trampled in the sands. To captives of war was
often offered, as a reward for special skill or courage, their freedom
and fierce and fell were conflicts to which men wore spurred by the
double incentives of life and liberty.
Special interest was given to the forthcoming games by the distinguished
reputation of one of the volunteer gladiators, a brilliant young
military officer, our friend Ligurius Rufus, who, sated and sickened
with the most frenzied dissipations that Rome could offer, plunged into
this mimic war to appease by its excitement the gnawing ennui of his
life.
The bets ran high upon the reckless young noble who was the favourite of
the sporting spend-thrifts and profligates of the city. The vilest
condition of society that ever cursed the earth was filling up the
measure of its iniquity, and invoking the wrath of Heaven. The wine
shops in the Suburra and the gladiators' quarter were overflowing with a
brawling, blaspheming, drunken mob, the vilest dregs of the vilest city
the patient earth has ever borne upon its bosom.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]