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A Friend of Caesar
A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic
Time, 50-47 B.C.
By William Stearns Davis
"Others better may mould the life-breathing brass of the image,
And living features, I ween, draw from the marble, and better
Argue their cause in the court; may mete out the span of the heavens,
Mark out the bounds of the poles, and name all the stars in their turnings.
_Thine_ 'tis the peoples to rule with dominion--this, Roman, remember!--
These for thee are the arts, to hand down the laws of the treaty,
The weak in mercy to spare, to fling from their high seats the haughty."
--VERGIL, _AEn._ vi. 847-858.
New York
Grosset & Dunlap Publishers
1900
To My Father
William Vail Wilson Davis
Who Has Taught Me More
Than All My Books
Preface
If this book serves to show that Classical Life presented many phases
akin to our own, it will not have been written in vain.
After the book was planned and in part written, it was discovered that
Archdeacon Farrar had in his story of "Darkness and Dawn" a scene,
"Onesimus and the Vestal," which corresponds very closely to the scene,
"Agias and the Vestal," in this book; but the latter incident was too
characteristically Roman not to risk repetition. If it is asked why such
a book as this is desirable after those noble fictions, "Darkness and
Dawn" and "Quo Vadis," the reply must be that these books necessarily
take and interpret the Christian point of view. And they do well; but
the Pagan point of view still needs its interpretation, at least as a
help to an easy apprehension of the life and literature of the great age
of the Fall of the Roman Republic. This is the aim of "A Friend of
Caesar." The Age of Caesar prepared the way for the Age of Nero, when
Christianity could find a world in a state of such culture, unity, and
social stability that it could win an adequate and abiding triumph.
Great care has been taken to keep to strict historical probability; but
in one scene, the "Expulsion of the Tribunes," there is such a confusion
of accounts in the authorities themselves that I have taken some slight
liberties.
W. S. D.
Harvard University,
January 16,1900.
Contents
Chapter Page
I. Praeneste 1
II. The Upper Walks of Society 21
III. The Privilege of a Vestal 37
IV. Lucius Ahenobarbus Airs His Grievance 50
V. A Very Old Problem 73
VI. Pompeius Magnus 102
VII. Agias's Adventure 117
VIII. "When Greek Meets Greek" 146
IX. How Gabinius Met with a Rebuff 159
X. Mamercus Guards the Door 172
XI. The Great Proconsul 198
XII. Pratinas Meets Ill-Fortune 217
XIII. What Befell at Baiae 241
XIV. The New Consuls 262
XV. The Seventh of January 277
XVI. The Rubicon 302
XVII. The Profitable Career of Gabinius 329
XVIII. How Pompeius Stamped with His Feet 334
XIX. The Hospitality of Demetrius 364
XX. Cleopatra 387
XXI. How Ulamhala's Words Came True 409
XXII. The End of the Magnus 433
XXIII. Bitterness and Joy 448
XXIV. Battling for Life 464
XXV. Calm after Storm 496
Chapter I
Praeneste
I
It was the Roman month of September, seven hundred and four years after
Romulus--so tradition ran--founded the little village by the Tiber which
was to become "Mother of Nations," "Centre of the World," "Imperial
Rome." To state the time according to modern standards it was July,
fifty years before the beginning of the Christian Era. The fierce
Italian sun was pouring down over the tilled fields and stretches of
woodland and grazing country that made up the landscape, and the
atmosphere was almost aglow with the heat. The dust lay thick on the
pavement of the highway, and rose in dense, stifling clouds, as a mule,
laden with farm produce and driven by a burly countryman, trudged
reluctantly along.
Yet, though the scene suggested the heat of midsummer, it was far from
being unrefreshing, especially to the eyes of one newly come. For this
spot was near "cool Praeneste," one of the favourite resorts of Latium to
the wealthy, invalid, or indolent of Rome, who shunned the excessive
heat of the capital. And they were wise in their choice; for Praeneste,
with its citadel, which rose twelve hundred feet over the adjoining
country, commanded in its ample sweep both the views and the breezes of
the whole wide-spreading Campagna. Here, clustering round the hill on
which stood the far-famed "Temple of Fortune," lay the old Latin town of
the Praenestians; a little farther westward was the settlement founded
some thirty odd years before by Sulla as a colony. Farther out, and
stretching off into the open country, lay the farmhouses and villas,
gardens and orchards, where splendid nuts and roses, and also wine, grew
in abundant measure.
A little stream ran close to the highway, and here an irrigating
machine[1] was raising water for the fields. Two men stood on the
treadmill beside the large-bucketed wheel, and as they continued their
endless walk the water dashed up into the trough and went splashing down
the ditches into the thirsty gardens. The workers were tall,
bronze-skinned Libyans, who were stripped to the waist, showing their
splendid chests and rippling muscles. Beside the trough had just come
two women, by their coarse and unpretentious dress evidently slaves,
bearing large earthen water-pots which they were about to fill. One of
the women was old, and bore on her face all the marks which a life of
hard manual toil usually leaves behind it; the other young, with a
clear, smooth complexion and a rather delicate Greek profile. The
Libyans stopped their monotonous trudge, evidently glad to have some
excuse for a respite from their exertions.
[1] Water columbarium.
"Ah, ha! Chloe," cried one of them, "how would you like it, with your
pretty little feet, to be plodding at this mill all the day? Thank the
Gods, the sun will set before a great while. The day has been hot as
the lap of an image of Moloch!"[2]
[2] The Phoenician god, also worshipped in North Africa, in whose idol
was built a fire to consume human sacrifices.
"Well, Hasdrubal," said Chloe, the younger woman, with a pert toss of
her head, "if my feet were as large as yours, and my skin as black and
thick, I should not care to complain if I had to work a little now and
then."
"Oh! of course," retorted Hasdrubal, a little nettled. "Your ladyship
is too refined, too handsome, to reflect that people with black skins
as well as white may get heated and weary. Wait five and twenty years,
till your cheeks are a bit withered, and see if Master Drusus doesn't
give you enough to make you tired from morning till night."
"You rude fellow," cried Chloe, pouting with vexation, "I will not
speak to you again. If Master Drusus were here, I would complain of
you to him. I have heard that he is not the kind of a master to let a
poor maid of his be insulted."
"Oh, be still, you hussy!" said the elder woman, who felt that a life
of labour had spoiled what might have been quite the equal of Chloe's
good looks. "What do you know of Master Drusus? He has been in Athens
ever since you were bought. I'll make Mamercus, the steward, believe
you ought to be whipped."
What tart answer Chloe might have had on the end of her tongue will
never be known; for at this moment Mago, the other Libyan, glanced up
the road, and cried:--
"Well, mistress, perhaps you will see our master very soon. He was due
this afternoon or next day from Puteoli, and what is that great cloud
of dust I see off there in the distance? Can't you make out carriages
and horsemen in the midst of it, Hasdrubal?"
Certainly there was a little cavalcade coming up the highway. Now it
was a mere blotch moving in the sun and dust; then clearer; and then
out of the cloud of light, flying sand came the clatter of hoofs on
the pavement, the whir of wheels, and ahead of the rest of the party
two dark Numidian outriders in bright red mantles appeared, pricking
along their white African steeds. Chloe clapped her little hands,
steadied her water-pot, and sprang up on the staging of the treadmill
beside Mago.
"It is he!" she cried. "It must be Master Drusus coming back from
Athens!" She was a bit excited, for an event like the arrival of a new
master was a great occurrence in the monotonous life of a country
slave.
The cortege was still a good way off.
"What is Master Drusus like?" asked Chloe "Will he be kind, or will he
be always whipping like Mamercus?"
"He was not in charge of the estate," replied Lais, the older woman,
"when he went away to study at Athens[3] a few years ago. But he was
always kind as a lad. Cappadox, his old body-servant, worshipped him.
I hope he will take the charge of the farm out of the steward's hands."
[3] A few years at the philosophy schools of that famous city were
almost as common to Roman students and men of culture as "studying
in Germany" to their American successors.
"Here he comes!" cried Hasdrubal. "I can see him in the nearest
carriage." And then all four broke out with their salutation, "_Salve!
Salve, Domine!_"[4] "Good health to your lordship!"
[4] Master, "Lord" of slaves and freedmen.
A little way behind the outriders rolled a comfortable, four-wheeled,
covered carriage,[5] ornamented with handsome embossed plate-work of
bronze. Two sleek, jet-black steeds were whirling it swiftly onward.
Behind, a couple of equally speedy grey mules were drawing an open
wagon loaded with baggage, and containing two smart-looking
slave-boys. But all four persons at the treadmill had fixed their eyes
on the other conveyance. Besides a sturdy driver, whose ponderous
hands seemed too powerful to handle the fine leather reins, there were
sitting within an elderly, decently dressed man, and at his side
another much younger. The former personage was Pausanias, the freedman
and travelling companion[6] of his friend and patron, Quintus Livius
Drusus, the "Master Drusus" of whom the slaves had been speaking.
Chloe's sharp eyes scanned her strange owner very keenly, and the
impression he created was not in the least unfavourable. Drusus was
apparently of about two and twenty. As he was sitting, he appeared a
trifle short in stature, with a thick frame, solid shoulders, long
arms, and large hands. His face was distinctively Roman. The features
were a little irregular, though not to an unpleasant extent. The
profile was aquiline. His eyes were brown and piercing, turning
perpetually this way and that, to grasp every detail of the scene
around. His dark, reddish hair was clipped close, and his chin was
smooth shaven and decidedly firm--stern, even, the face might have
been called, except for the relief afforded by a delicately curved
mouth--not weak, but affable and ingenuous. Drusus wore a dark
travelling cloak,[7] and from underneath it peeped his tunic, with its
stripe of narrow purple--the badge of the Roman equestrian order.[8]
On his finger was another emblem of nobility--a large, plain, gold
ring, conspicuous among several other rings with costly settings.
[5] _Rheda_.
[6] Most wealthy Romans had such a _major domo_, whose position was
often one of honour and trust.
[7] _Paenula_.
[8] The second order of the Roman nobility.
"_Salve! Salve, Domine!_" cried the slaves a second time, as the
carriage drew near. The young master pushed back the blue woollen
curtains in order to gain a better view, then motioned to the driver
to stop.
"Are you slaves of mine?" was his question. The tone was interested
and kindly, and Mago saluted profoundly, and replied:--
"We are the slaves of the most noble Quintus Livius Drusus, who owns
this estate."
"I am he," replied the young man, smiling. "The day is hot. It grows
late. You have toiled enough. Go you all and rest. Here, Pausanias,
give them each a philippus,[9] with which to remember my home-coming!"
[9] A Greek gold piece worth about $3.60 at the time of the story.
At this time Rome coined little gold.
"_Eu! Eu! Io!_[10] _Domine!_" cried the slaves, giving vent to their
delight. And Chloe whispered to Lais: "You were right. The new master
will be kind. There will not be so many whippings."
[10] Good! Good! Hurrah!
But while Pausanias was fumbling in the money-bags, a new instance of
the generosity of Drusus was presented. Down a by-path in the field
filed a sorrowful company; a long row of slaves in fetters, bound
together by a band and chain round the waist of each. They were a
disreputable enough gang of unkempt, unshaven, half-clothed wretches:
Gauls and Germans with fair hair and giant physiques; dark-haired
Syrians; black-skinned Africans,--all panting and groaning, clanking
their chains, and cursing softly at the two sullen overseers, who,
with heavy-loaded whips, were literally driving them down into the
road.
Again Drusus spoke.
"Whose slaves are these? Mine?"
"They are your lordship's," said the foremost overseer, who had just
recognized his newly come employer.
"Why are they in chains?" asked Drusus.
"Mamercus found them refractory," replied the guard, "and ordered them
to be kept in the underground prison,[11] and to work in the chain
gang."
[11] _Ergastulum_.
The young man made a motion of disgust.
"Bah!" he remarked, "the whole _familia_[12] will be in fetters if
Mamercus has his way much longer. Knock off those chains. Tell the
wretches they are to remain unshackled only so long as they behave.
Give them three skins to-night from which to drink their master's
health. Drive on, Cappadox!"
[12] Slave household.
And before the fettered slaves could comprehend their release from
confinement, and break out into a chorus of barbarous and uncouth
thanksgivings and blessings, the carriage had vanished from sight down
the turn of the road.
II
Who was Quintus Livius Drusus? Doubtless he would have felt highly
insulted if his family history had not been fairly well known to every
respectable person around Praeneste and to a very large and select
circle at Rome. When a man could take Livius[13] for his gentile name,
and Drusus for his cognomen, he had a right to hold his head high, and
regard himself as one of the noblest and best of the imperial city.
But of course the Drusian house had a number of branches, and the
history of Quintus's direct family was this. He was the grandson of
that Marcus Livius Drusus[14] who, though an aristocrat of the
aristocrats, had dared to believe that the oligarchs were too strong,
the Roman Commons without character, and that the Italian freemen were
suffering from wrongs inflicted by both of the parties at the capital.
For his efforts to right the abuses, he had met with a reward very
common to statesmen of his day, a dagger-thrust from the hand of an
undiscovered assassin. He had left a son, Sextus, a man of culture and
talent, who remembered his father's fate, and walked for a time warily
in politics. Sextus had married twice. Once to a very noble lady of
the Fabian gens, the mother of his son Quintus. Then some years after
her death he took in marriage a reigning beauty, a certain Valeria,
who soon developed such extravagance and frivolity, that, soon after
she bore him a daughter, he was forced "to send her a messenger"; in
other words, to divorce her. The daughter had been put under the
guardianship of Sextus's sister-in-law Fabia, one of the Vestal
virgins at Rome. Sextus himself had accepted an appointment to a
tribuneship in a legion of Caesar in Gaul. When he departed for the
wars he took with him as fellow officer a life-long friend, Caius
Cornelius Lentulus; and ere leaving for the campaign the two had
formed a compact quite in keeping with the stern Roman spirit that
made the child the slave of the father: Young Quintus Drusus should
marry Cornelia, Lentulus's only child, as soon as the two came to a
proper age. And so the friends went away to win glory in Gaul; to
perish side by side, when Sabinus's ill-fated legion was cut off by
the Eburones.[15]
[13] Every Roman had a _praenomen_, or "Christian name"; also a gentile
name of the gens or clan to which he belonged; and commonly in addition
a cognomen, usually an epithet descriptive of some personal peculiarity
of an ancestor, which had fastened itself upon the immediate descendants
of that ancestor. The _Livii Drusi_ were among the noblest of the Roman
houses.
[14] Died in 91 B.C.
[15] In 54 B.C.
The son and the daughter remained. Quintus Drusus had had kindly
guardians; he had been sent for four years to the "University" at
Athens; had studied rhetoric and philosophy; and now he was back with
his career before him,--master of himself, of a goodly fortune, of a
noble inheritance of high-born ancestry. And he was to marry Cornelia.
No thought of thwarting his father's mandate crossed his mind; he was
bound by the decree of the dead. He had not seen his betrothed for
four years. He remembered her as a bright-eyed, merry little girl, who
had an arch way of making all to mind her. But he remembered too, that
her mother was a vapid lady of fashion, that her uncle and guardian
was Lucius Cornelius Lentulus Crus, Consul-elect,[16] a man of little
refinement or character. And four years were long enough to mar a
young girl's life. What would she be like? What had time made of her?
The curiosity--we will not call it passion--was overpowering. Pure
"love" was seldom recognized as such by the age. When the carriage
reached a spot where two roads forked, leading to adjacent estates,
Drusus alighted.
[16] The two Roman consuls were magistrates of the highest rank, and
were chosen each year by the people.
"Is her ladyship Cornelia at the villa of the Lentuli?" was his demand
of a gardener who was trimming a hedge along the way.
"Ah! Master Drusus," cried the fellow, dropping his sickle in delight.
"Joy to see you! Yes, she is in the grove by the villa; by the great
cypress you know so well. But how you have changed, sir--"
But Drusus was off. The path was familiar. Through the trees he caught
glimpses of the stately mazes of colonnades of the Lentulan villa,
surrounded by its artificially arranged gardens, and its wide
stretches of lawn and orchard. The grove had been his playground. Here
was the oak under which Cornelia and he had gathered acorns. The
remnants of the little brush house they had built still survived. His
step quickened. He heard the rush of the little stream that wound
through the grove. Then he saw ahead of him a fern thicket, and the
brook flashing its water beyond. In his recollection a bridge had here
crossed the streamlet. It had been removed. Just across, swayed the
huge cypress. Drusus stepped forward. At last! He pushed carefully
through the thicket, making only a little noise, and glanced across
the brook.
There were ferns all around the cypress. Ivies twined about its trunk.
On the bank the green turf looked dry, but cool. Just under the tree
the brook broke into a miniature cascade, and went rippling down in a
score of pygmy, sparkling waterfalls. On a tiny promontory a marble
nymph, a fine bit of Greek sculpture, was pouring, without respite,
from a water-urn into the gurgling flood. But Drusus did not gaze at
the nymph. Close beside the image, half lying, half sitting, in an
abandon only to be produced by a belief that she was quite alone,
rested a young woman. It was Cornelia.
Drusus had made no disturbance, and the object on which he fastened
his eyes had not been in the least stirred out of a rather deep
reverie. He stood for a while half bashful, half contemplative.
Cornelia had taken off her shoes and let her little white feet trail
down into the water. She wore only her white tunic, and had pushed it
back so that her arms were almost bare. At the moment she was resting
lazily on one elbow, and gazing abstractedly up at the moving ocean of
green overhead. She was only sixteen; but in the warm Italian clime
that age had brought her to maturity. No one would have said that she
was beautiful, from the point of view of mere softly sensuous Greek
beauty. Rather, she was handsome, as became the daughter of Cornelii
and Claudii. She was tall; her hair, which was bound in a plain knot
on the back of her head, was dark--almost black; her eyes were large,
grey, lustrous, and on occasion could be proud and angry. Yet with it
all she was pretty--pretty, said Drusus to himself, as any girl he had
seen in Athens. For there were coy dimples in her delicate little
chin, her finely chiselled features were not angular, while her cheeks
were aglow with a healthy colour that needed no rouge to heighten. In
short, Cornelia, like Drusus, was a Roman; and Drusus saw that she was
a Roman, and was glad.
Presently something broke the reverie. Cornelia's eyes dropped from
the treetops, and lighted up with attention. One glance across the
brook into the fern thicket; then one irrepressible feminine scream;
and then:--
"Cornelia!" "Quintus!"
Drusus sprang forward, but almost fell into the brooklet. The bridge
was gone. Cornelia had started up, and tried to cover her arms and
shake her tunic over her feet. Her cheeks were all smiles and blushes.
But Drusus's situation was both pathetic and ludicrous. He had his
fiancee almost in his arms, and yet the stream stopped him. Instantly
Cornelia was in laughter.
"Oh! My second Leander," she cried, "will you be brave, and swim again
from Abydos to Sestos to meet your Hero?"
"Better!" replied Drusus, now nettled; "see!" And though the leap was
a long one he cleared it, and landed close by the marble nymph.
Drusus had not exactly mapped out for himself the method of
approaching the young woman who had been his child playmate. Cornelia,
however, solved all his perplexity. Changing suddenly from laughter
into what were almost tears, she flung her arms around his neck, and
kissed him again and again.
"Oh, Quintus! Quintus!" she cried, nearly sobbing, "_I am_ so glad you
have come!"
"And I am glad," said the young man, perhaps with a tremor in his
voice.
"I never knew how I wanted you, until you are here," she continued; "I
didn't look for you to-day. I supposed you would come from Puteoli
to-morrow. Oh! Quintus, you must be very kind to me. Perhaps I am very
stupid. But I am tired, tired."
Drusus looked at her in a bit of astonishment.
"Tired! I can't see that you look fatigued."
"Not in body," went on Cornelia, still holding on to him. "But here,
sit down on the grass. Let me hold your hands. You do not mind. I want
to talk with you. No, don't interrupt. I must tell you. I have been
here in Praeneste only a week. I wanted to get away from Baiae.[17] I
was afraid to stay there with my mother."
[17] The famous watering-place on the Bay of Naples.
"Afraid to stay at that lovely seashore house with your mother!"
exclaimed Drusus, by no means unwilling to sit as entreated, but
rather bewildered in mind.
"I was afraid of Lucius Ahenobarbus, the consular[18] Domitius's
second son. _I don't like him! there!_" and Cornelia's grey eyes lit
up with menacing fire.
[18] An ex-consul was known by this title.
"Afraid of Lucius Ahenobarbus!" laughed Drusus. "Well, I don't think I
call him a very dear friend. But why should he trouble you?"
"It was ever since last spring, when I was in the new theatre[19]
seeing the play, that he came around, thrust himself upon me, and
tried to pay attentions. Then he has kept them up ever since; he
followed us to Baiae; and the worst of it is, my mother and uncle
rather favour him. So I had Stephanus, my friend the physician, say
that sea air was not good for me, and I was sent here. My mother and
uncle will come in a few days, but not that fellow Lucius, I hope. I
was so tired trying to keep him off."
[19] Built by Pompeius the Great, in 55-54 B.C.
"I will take care of the knave," said Drusus, smiling. "So this is the
trouble? I wonder that your mother should have anything to do with
such a fellow. I hear in letters that he goes with a disreputable
gang. He is a boon companion with Marcus Laeca, the old Catilinian,[20]
who is a smooth-headed villain, and to use a phrase of my father's
good friend Cicero--'has his head and eyebrows always shaved, that he
may not be said to have one hair of an honest man about him.' But he
will have to reckon with me now. Now it is my turn to talk. Your long
story has been very short. Nor is mine long. My old uncle Publius
Vibulanus is dead. I never knew him well enough to be able to mourn
him bitterly. Enough, he died at ninety; and just as I arrive at
Puteoli comes a message that I am his sole heir. His freedmen knew I
was coming, embalmed the body, and wait for me to go to Rome to-morrow
to give the funeral oration and light the pyre. He has left a fortune
fit to compare with that of Crassus[21]--real estate, investments, a
lovely villa at Tusculum. And now I--no, _we_--are wealthy beyond
avarice. Shall we not thank the Gods?"
[20] A member of the band who with Catiline conspired in 63 B.C. to
overthrow the Roman government.
[21] The Roman millionaire who had just been slain in Parthia.
"I thank them for nothing," was her answer; then more shyly, "except
for your own coming; for, Quintus, you--you--will marry me before very
long?"
"What hinders?" cried the other, in the best of spirits. "To-morrow I
go to Rome; then back again! And then all Praeneste will flock to our
marriage train. No, pout no more over Lucius Ahenobarbus. He shan't
pay disagreeable attentions. And now over to the old villa; for
Mamercus is eating his heart out to see me!"
And away they went arm in arm.
Drusus's head was in the air. He had resolved to marry Cornelia, cost
what it might to his desires. He knew now that he was affianced to the
one maiden in the world quite after his own heart.
III
The paternal villa of Drusus lay on the lower part of the slope of the
Praeneste citadel, facing the east. It was a genuine country and
farming estate--not a mere refuge from the city heat and hubbub. The
Drusi had dwelt on it for generations, and Quintus had spent his
boyhood upon it. The whole mass of farm land was in the very pink of
cultivation. There were lines of stately old elms enclosing the
estate; and within, in regular sequence, lay vineyards producing the
rather poor Praeneste wine, olive orchards, groves of walnut trees, and
many other fruits. Returning to the point where he had left the
carriage, Drusus led Cornelia up a broad avenue flanked by noble
planes and cypresses. Before them soon stood, or rather stretched, the
country house. It was a large grey stone building, added to, from time
to time, by successive owners. Only in front did it show signs of
modern taste and elegance. Here ran a colonnade of twelve red porphyry
pillars, with Corinthian capitals. The part of the house reserved for
the master lay behind this entrance way. Back of it rambled the
structure used by the farm steward, and the slaves and cattle. The
whole house was low--in fact practically one-storied; and the effect
produced was perhaps substantial, but hardly imposing.
Up the broad avenue went the two young people; too busy with their own
gay chatter to notice at a distance how figures were running in and
out amid the colonnade, and how the pillars were festooned with
flowers. But as they drew nearer a throng was evident. The whole farm
establishment--men, women, and children--had assembled, garlanded and
gayly dressed, to greet the young master. Perhaps five hundred
persons--nearly all slaves--had been employed on the huge estate, and
they were all at hand. As Drusus came up the avenue, a general shout
of welcome greeted him.
"_Ave! Ave! Domine!_" and there were some shouts as Cornelia was seen
of, "_Ave! Domina!_"
"_Domina_[22] here very soon," said Drusus, smiling to the young lady;
and disengaging himself from her, he advanced to greet personally a
tall, ponderous figure, with white, flowing hair, a huge white beard,
and a left arm that had been severed at the wrist, who came forward
with a swinging military stride that seemed to belie his evident years.
[22] _Domina_, mistress.
"All hail, dearest Mamercus!" exclaimed the young man, running up to
the burly object. "Here is the little boy you used to scold, fondle,
and tell stories to, back safe and sound to hear the old tales and to
listen to some more admonitions."
The veteran made a hurried motion with his remaining hand, as if to
brush something away from his eyes, and his deep voice seemed a trifle
husky when he replied, speaking slowly:--
"_Mehercle!_[23] All the Gods be praised! The noble Sextus living
again in the form of his son! Ah! This makes my old heart glad;" and
he held out his hand to Drusus. But the young man dashed it away, and
flinging his arms around Mamercus's neck, kissed him on both cheeks.
Then when this warm greeting was over, Drusus had to salute Titus
Mamercus, a solid, stocky, honest-faced country lad of eighteen, the
son of the veteran; and after Titus--since the Mamerci and Drusi were
remotely related and the _jus oscului_[24]--less legally, the "right
of kissing"--existed between them, he felt called upon to press the
cheek of AEmilia, Mamercus's pretty daughter, of about her brother's
age. Cornelia seemed a little discomposed at this, and perhaps so gave
her lover a trifling delight. But next he had to shake all the
freedmen by the hand, also the older and better known slaves; and to
say something in reply to their congratulations. The mass of the
slaves he could not know personally; but to the assembled company he
spoke a few words, with that quiet dignity which belongs to those who
are the heirs of generations of lordly ancestors.
[23] By Hercules.
[24] The right of kissing kinsfolk within the sixth degree.
"This day I assume control of my estate. All past offences are
forgiven. I remit any punishments, however justly imposed. To those
who are my faithful servants and clients I will prove a kind and
reasonable master. Let none in the future be mischievous or idle; for
them I cannot spare. But since the season is hot, in honour of my
home-coming, for the next ten days I order that no work, beyond that
barely needed, be done in the fields. Let the familia enjoy rest, and
let them receive as much wine as they may take without being unduly
drunken. Geta, Antiochus, and Kebes, who have been in this house many
years, shall go with me before the praetor, to be set free."
And then, while the slaves still shouted their _aves_ and _salves_,
Mamercus led Drusus and Cornelia through the old villa, through the
atrium where the fountain tinkled, and the smoky, waxen death-masks of
Quintus's noble ancestors grinned from the presses on the wall;
through the handsomely furnished rooms for the master of the house;
out to the barns and storehouses, that stretched away in the rear of
the great farm building. Much pride had the veteran when he showed the
sleek cattle, the cackling poultry-yard, and the tall stacks of hay;
only he growled bitterly over what he termed the ill-timed leniency of
his young patron in releasing the slaves in the chain-gang.
"Oh, such times!" he muttered in his beard; "here's this young upstart
coming home, and teaches me that such dogs as I put in fetters are
better set at large! There'll be a slave revolt next, and some night
all our throats will be cut. But it's none of my doing."
"Well," said Drusus, smiling, "I've been interested at Athens in
learning from philosophy that one owes some kindness even to a slave.
But it's always your way, Mamercus, to tell how much better the old
times were than the new."
"And I am right," growled the other. "Hasn't a man who fought with
Marius, and helped to beat those northern giants, the Cimbri and
Teutones, a right to his opinion? The times are evil--evil! No justice
in the courts. No patriotism in the Senate. Rascality in every consul
and praetor. And the 'Roman People' orators declaim about are only a
mob! _Vah!_ We need an end to this game of fauns and satyrs!"
"Come," said Drusus, "we are not at such a direful strait yet. There
is one man at least whom I am convinced is not altogether a knave; and
I have determined to throw in my lot with him. Do you guess,
Mamercus?"
"Caesar?"
Drusus nodded. Mamercus broke out into a shout of approval.
"_Euge!_ Unless my son Decimus, who is centurion with him, writes me
false, _he_ is a man!"
But Cornelia was distressed of face.
"Quintus," she said very gravely, "do you know that I have often heard
that Caesar is a wicked libertine, who wishes to make himself tyrant?
What have you done?"
"Nothing rashly," said Drusus, also quite grave; "but I have counted
the matter on both sides--the side of Pompeius and the Senate, and the
side of Caesar--and I have written to Balbus, Caesar's manager at Rome,
that I shall use my tiny influence for the proconsul of the Gauls."
Cornelia seemed greatly affected; she clasped and unclasped her hands,
pressed them to her brows; then when she let them fall, she was again
smiling.
"Quintus," she said, putting her arm around him, "Quintus, I am only a
silly little girl. I do not know anything about politics. You are
wiser than I, and I can trust you. But please don't quarrel with my
uncle Lentulus about your decision. He would be terribly angry."
Quintus smiled in turn, and kissing her, said: "Can you trust me? I
hope so. And be assured I will do all I may, not to quarrel with your
uncle. And now away with all this silly serious talk! What a pity for
Mamercus to have been so gloomy as to introduce it! What a pity I must
go to Rome to-morrow, and leave this dear old place! But then, I have
to see my aunt Fabia, and little Livia, the sister I haven't met since
she was a baby. And while I am in Rome I will do something else--can
you guess?" Cornelia shook her head. "Carpenters, painters, masons! I
will send them out to make this old villa fresh and pretty for some
one who, I hope, will come here to live in about a month. No, don't
run away," for Cornelia was trying to hide her flushed face by flight;
"I have something else to get--a present for your own dear self. What
shall it be? I am rich; cost does not matter."
Cornelia pursed her lips in thought.
"Well," she remarked, "if you could bring me out a pretty boy, not too
old or too young, one that was honest and quick-witted, he would be
very convenient to carry messages to you, and to do any little
business for me."
Cornelia asked for a slave-boy just as she might have asked for a new
pony, with that indifference to the question of humanity which
indicated that the demarcation between a slave and an animal was very
slight in her mind.
"Oh! that is nothing," said Drusus; "you shall have the handsomest and
cleverest in all Rome. And if Mamercus complains that I am extravagant
in remodelling the house, let him remember that his wonderful Caesar,
when a young man, head over ears in debt, built an expensive villa at
Aricia, and then pulled it down to the foundations and rebuilt on an
improved plan. Farewell, Sir Veteran, I will take Cornelia home, and
then come back for that dinner which I know the cook has made ready
with his best art."
Arm in arm the young people went away down the avenue of shade trees,
dim in the gathering twilight. Mamercus stood gazing after them.
"What a pity! What a pity!" he repeated to himself, "that Sextus and
Caius are not alive; how they would have rejoiced in their children!
Why do the fates order things as they do? Only let them be kind enough
to let me live until I hold another little Drusus on my knee, and tell
him of the great battles! But the Gods forbid, Lentulus should find
out speedily that his lordship has gone over to Caesar; or there will
be trouble enough for both his lordship and my lady. The consul-elect
is a stubborn, bitter man. He would be terribly offended to give his
niece in marriage to a political enemy. But it may all turn out well.
Who knows?" And he went into the house.