THE BETRAYAL--THE PURSUIT.
When the unhappy Isidorus discovered that through his cowardice and
tergiversation, and through the confessions extorted from his
distempered mind, a criminal charge had been trumped up against the fair
Callirhoë, whose beauty and grace had touched his susceptible
imagination, he was almost beside himself with rage and remorse. He
protested to the Prefect Naso and his disreputable son, Calphurnius,
that she was as innocent as an unweaned babe of the monstrous crime
alleged against her--that of conspiracy to poison her beloved mistress.
"Accursed be the day," cried the wretched Isidorus, clenching his hands
till his nails pierced the flesh, "accursed be the day when I first came
to your horrid den to betray innocent blood. Would I had perished e'er
it dawned."
"Hark you, my friend," said Naso, "do you remember by what means you
promised to earn the good red gold with which I bought you?"
"Do not remind me of my shame in becoming a spy upon the Christians,"
cried the Greek with a look of self-loathing and abhorrence.
"Nay; 'by becoming one yourself,' that was the phrase as I wrote it on
my tablets," sneered the prefect.
"Would that I could become one!" exclaimed the unhappy man.
"Suppose I take you at your word and believe you are one?" queried Naso
with a malignant leer.
"What new wickedness is this you have in your mind?" asked the Greek.
"How would you like to share the doom of your friends, the old Jew and
his pretty daughter, who are to be thrown to the lions to-day," went on
the remorseless man, toying with his victim like a tiger with its prey.
"Gladly, were I but worthy," said the Greek. "Had I their holy hopes, I
would rejoice to bear them company."
"But don't you see," said Naso, "a word of mine would send you to the
arena, whether you like it or not? Your neck is in the noose, my
handsome youth, and I do not think, with all your dexterity, you can
wriggle out of it."
"Oh! any fate but that!" cried the Greek, writhing in anguish. "Let me
die as a felon, a conspirator, an assassin, if you will; but not by the
doom of the martyrs."
"Well, you see," went on the prefect, "justice is meted out to the
Christians so much more swiftly and certainly than even against the
worst of felons, that I am tempted to take this plan to secure you your
deserts."
The craven-spirited Greek, to whom the very idea of death was torture,
blanched with terror and stood speechless, his tongue literally cleaving
to the roof of his mouth.
When the prefect perceived that he was sufficiently unnerved for his
final experiment he unveiled his diabolical purpose.
"Hark you, my friend," he whispered or rather hissed into his ear, "you
may do the State, yourself, and me a service, that will procure you life
and liberty and fortune. You know the way to the secret assemblies of
the accursed Christian sect; lead hither a maniple of soldiers and your
fortune's made."
"Tempter, begone!" exclaimed the Greek in a moment of virtuous
indignation, "you would make me worse than Judas whom the Christians
execrate as the betrayer of his Master whom they worship."
"As you please, my dainty youth," answered Naso, with his characteristic
gesture of clutching his sword. "Prepare to feed the lions on the
morrow," and he consigned him to a cell in the vaults of the Coliseum.
Very different was the night spent by this craven soul to that of the
destined martyrs. The darkness, to his distempered imagination, seemed
full of accusing eyes, which glared reproach and vengeance upon him. The
hungry lions' roar smote his soul with fearful apprehensions. When the
savage bounds of the wild beasts shook his cell he cowered upon the
ground, the picture of abject misery and despair.
When by these mental tortures his nerves were all unstrung, the arch
tempter silently entered his cell and whispered in his ear, "Well, my
dainty Greek, are you ready for the games?"
"Save me! save me!" cried the unhappy man, "any death but that! I will
do anything to escape such a fearful doom."
"I thought you would come to terms," replied the prefect, well skilled
in the cruel arts of his office. "Life is sweet. Here is gold. By the
service I require you shall earn liberty," and the compact was sealed
whereby the Greek was to betray the subterranean hiding-places of the
Christians to their enemies.
Hence it was that at the dead of night, a band of Roman soldiers,
reckless ruffians trained to slaughter in many a bloody war, marched
under cover of darkness along the Appian Way to the villa of the Lady
Marcella. It was the work of a moment to force the door of the vineyard
and they soon reached the entrance to the Catacomb.
"It is like a badger's burrow," said the officer in command. "We will
soon bag our game, Here the old priest has his lair. Secure him at any
cost. He is worth a score of the meaner vermin."
Lighting their torches they inarched on their devious way under the
guidance of Isidorus, who had written on a rude chart the number of
turns to be made to the right or left. With Roman military foresight,
the officer marked with chalk the route they took, and fixed
occasionally a torch in the niches in the wall.
Soon the soft, low cadence of the funeral hymn was heard, stealing
weirdly on the ear, and a faint light glimmered from the chamber in
which the Christians were paying the last rites to their martyred
brethren.
"They are at their incantations now," said the Centurion. "'Tis a fit
place for their abominable orgies. Let us hasten, and we will spoil
their wicked spells!" and he gave the command, at which the soldiers
rushed forward toward the distant light.
Instantly it disappeared, and when they reached the spot naught was
seen, save the tomb of Adauctus; and in the distant darkness was heard
the sound of hurrying feet.
"The rats have fled," cried the officer; "after them, ferrets! Let not
one escape!" and at the head of the maniple he darted down the echoing
corridor.
But Hilarus guided his friends amid the darkness more swiftly than the
soldiers could pursue by the light of their torches. He followed many a
devious winding, especially contrived to frustrate capture, and
facilitate escape. Threading a very narrow passage, he drew from a niche
a wooden ladder, and placing it against the wall reached a stairway
which began high up near the roof. The whole party followed, and
Hilarus, drawing up the ladder after him, completely cut off pursuit.
They soon reached the comparatively lofty vaults of a deserted
_arenarium_, or sand pit, which communicated with the open air. As he
stood with bared brow beneath the light of the silent stars, the good
Presbyter Primitius devoutly exclaimed:--"_Anima nostra sicut passer
erepta est de lagueo venantium_--Our soul is escaped as a bird out the
snare of the fowler, the snare is broken and we are escaped."
The writer has not drawn upon his imagination in describing the
arrangements for escape made by the persecuted Christians, when taking
refuge in these dens and caves of the earth. In this very Catacomb of
Callixtus, such a secret stairway still exists, and is illustrated by
drawings in his book on this subject. The main entrance was completely
obstructed and the stairway partially destroyed, so as to prevent
ingress to the Catacomb, and a narrow stairway was constructed in the
roof which could only be reached by a moveable ladder, connecting it
with the floor. By drawing up this ladder pursuit could be easily cut
off, and escape to a neighbouring _arenarium_ secured. Stores of corn,
and oil, and wine have been found in these crypts, evidently as a
provision in time of persecution; frequent wells also occur, amply
sufficient for the supply of water; and the multitude of lamps which
have been found would dispel the darkness, while their sudden extinction
would prove the best concealment from attack by their enemies. Hence the
Christians were stigmatized as a skulking, darkness-loving race,[55] who
fled the light of day to burrow like moles in the earth. These
labyrinths were admirably adapted for eluding pursuit. Familiar with
their intricacies, and following a well-known clew, the Christian could
plunge fearlessly into the darkness, where his pursuer would soon be
inextricably lost.
Such hairbreadth escapes as we have described from the Roman soldiers,
like sleuth hounds tracking their prey, must have been no uncommon
events in those troublous times. But sometimes the Christians were
surprised at their devotions, and their refuge became their sepulchre.
Such was the tragic fate of Stephen, slain even while ministering at the
altar; such the event described by Gregory of Tours, when a hecatomb of
victims were immolated at once by heathen hate; such the peril which
wrung from a stricken heart the cry, not of anger but of grief, recorded
on a slab in the Catacombs: _Tempora infausta, quibus inter sacra et
vota ne in cavernis quidem salvari possimus!_--"Oh! sad times in which,
among sacred rites and prayers, even in caverns, we are not safe." It
requires no great effort of imagination to conceive of the dangers and
escapes which must have been frequent episodes in the heroic lives of
the early soldiers of the cross.
With what emotions must the primitive believers, seeking refuge in these
crypts, have held their solemn worship and heard the words of life,
surrounded by the dead in Christ! With what power would come the
promise of the resurrection of the body, amid the crumbling relics of
mortality! How fervent their prayers for their companions in
tribulation, when they themselves stood in jeopardy every hour! Their
holy ambition was to witness a good confession even unto death. They
burned to emulate the zeal of the martyrs of the faith, the plumeless
heroes of a nobler chivalry than that of arms, the Christian athletes
who won in the bloody conflicts of the arena, or amid the fiery tortures
of the stake, not a crown of laurel or of bay, but a crown of life,
starry and unwithering, that can never pass away. Their humble graves
are grander monuments than the trophied tombs of Rome's proud conquerors
upon the Appian Way. Reverently may we mention their names. Lightly may
we tread beside their ashes.
Though the bodily presence of those conscripts of the tomb no longer
walked among men, their intrepid spirit animated the heart of each
member of that little community of persecuted Christians, "of whom the
world was not worthy; who wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in
dens and caves of the earth, ... being destitute, afflicted,
tormented."[56]
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[55] Latebrosa et lucifugax natio. _Minuc. Felix._
[56] Compare the following spirited lines of Bernis:--
"La terre avail gemi sous le fer des tyrans;
Elle cachait encore des martyrs expirans,
Qui dans les noirs detours des grottes reculees
Derobaient aux bourreaux leurs tetes mutilees."
_Poeme de la Religion Vengee,_ chap. viii.