The Privilege of a Vestal
I
Drusus started long before daybreak on his journey to Rome; with him
went Cappadox, his ever faithful body-servant, and Pausanias, the
amiable and cultivated freedman who had been at his elbow ever since
he had visited Athens. For a while the young master dozed in his
carriage; but, as they whirled over mile after mile of the Campagna,
the sun arose; then, when sleep left him, the Roman was all alive to
the patriotic reminiscences each scene suggested. Yonder to the far
south lay Alba, the old home of the Latins, and a little southward too
was the Lake of Regillus, where tradition had it the free Romans won
their first victory, and founded the greatness of the Republic. Along
the line of the Anio, a few miles north, had marched Hannibal on his
mad dash against Rome to save the doomed Capua. And these pictures of
brave days, and many another vision like them, welled up in Drusus's
mind, and the remembrance of the marble temples of the Greek cities
faded from his memory; for, as he told himself, Rome was built of
nobler stuff than marble;--she was built of the deeds of men strong
and brave, and masters of every hostile fate. And he rejoiced that he
could be a Roman, and share in his country's deathless fame, perhaps
could win for her new honour,--could be consul, triumphator, and lead
his applauding legions up to the temple of Capitoline Jove--another
national glory added to so many.
So the vision of the great city of tall ugly tenement houses, basking
on her "Seven Hills," which only on their summits showed the nobler
temples or the dwellings of the great patricians, broke upon him. And
it was with eyes a-sparkle with enthusiasm, and a light heart, that he
reached the Porta Esquilina, left the carriage for a litter borne by
four stout Syrians sent out from the house of his late uncle, and was
carried soon into the hubbub of the city streets.
Everywhere was the same crowd; shopping parties were pressing in and
out the stores, outrunners and foot-boys were continually colliding.
Drusus's escort could barely win a slow progress for their master.
Once on the Sacred Way the advance was more rapid; although even this
famous street was barely twenty-two feet wide from house wall to house
wall. Here was the "Lombard" or "Wall Street" of antiquity. Here were
the offices of the great banking houses and syndicates that held the
world in fee. Here centred those busy equites, the capitalists, whose
transactions ran out even beyond the lands covered by the eagles, so
that while Gaul was yet unconquered, Cicero could boast, "not a
sesterce in Gaul changes hands without being entered in a Roman
ledger." And here were brokers whose clients were kings, and who by
their "influence" almost made peace or war, like modern Rothschilds.
Thither Drusus's litter carried him, for he knew that his first act on
coming to Rome to take possession of his uncle's property should be to
consult without delay his agent and financial and legal adviser, lest
any loophole be left for a disappointed fortune-hunter to contest the
will. The bearers put him down before the important firm of Flaccus
and Sophus. Out from the open, windowless office ran the senior
partner, Sextus Fulvius Flaccus, a stout, comfortable, rosy-faced old
eques, who had half Rome as his financial clients, the other half in
his debt. Many were his congratulations upon Drusus's manly growth,
and many more upon the windfall of Vibulanus's fortune, which, as he
declared, was too securely conveyed to the young man to be open to any
legal attack.
But when Drusus intimated that he expected soon to invite the good man
to his marriage feast, Flaccus shook his head.
"You will never get a sesterce of Cornelia's dowry," he declared. "Her
uncle Lentulus Crus is head over ears in debt. Nothing can save him,
unless--"
"I don't understand you," said the other.
"Well," continued Flaccus, "to be frank; unless there is nothing short
of a revolution."
"Will it come to that?" demanded Drusus.
"Can't say," replied Flaccus, as if himself perplexed. "Everybody
declares Caesar and Pompeius are dreadfully alienated. Pompeius is
joining the Senate. Half the great men of Rome are in debt, as I have
cause to know, and unless we have an overturn, with 'clean accounts'
as a result, more than one noble lord is ruined. I am calling in all
my loans, turning everything into cash. Credit is bad--bad. Caesar paid
Curio's debts--sixty millions of sesterces.[47] That's why Curio is a
Caesarian now. Oh! money is the cause of all these vile political
changes! Trouble is coming! Sulla's old throat cuttings will be
nothing to it! But don't marry Lentulus's niece!"
[47] I.e. $2,400,000; a sesterce was about 4 cents.
"Well," said Drusus, when the business was done, and he turned to go,
"I want Cornelia, not her dowry."
"Strange fellow," muttered Flaccus, while Drusus started off in his
litter. "I always consider the dowry the principal part of a
marriage."
II
Drusus regained his litter, and ordered his bearers to take him to the
house of the Vestals,--back of the Temple of Vesta,--where he wished
to see his aunt Fabia and Livia, his little half-sister. The Temple
itself--a small, round structure, with columns, a conical roof which
was fringed about with dragons and surmounted by a statue--still
showed signs of the fire, which, in 210 B.C., would have destroyed it
but for thirteen slaves, who won their liberty by checking the blaze.
Tradition had it that here the holy Numa had built the hut which
contained the hearth-fire of Rome,--the divine spark which now shed
its radiance over the nations. Back of the Temple was the House of the
Vestals, a structure with a plain exterior, differing little from the
ordinary private dwellings. Here Drusus had his litter set down for a
second time, and notified the porter that he would be glad to see his
aunt and sister. The young man was ushered into a spacious, handsomely
furnished and decorated atrium, where were arranged lines of statues
of the various _maximae_[48] of the little religious order. A shy young
girl with a white dress and fillet, who was reading in the apartment,
slipped noiselessly out, as the young man entered; for the novices
were kept under strict control, with few liberties, until their elder
sisters could trust them in male society. Then there was a rustle of
robes and ribbons, and in came a tall, stately lady, also in pure
white, and a little girl of about five, who shrank coyly back when
Drusus called her his "Liviola"[49] and tried to catch her in his
arms. But the lady embraced him, and kissed him, and asked a thousand
things about him, as tenderly as if she had been his mother.
[48] Senior Vestals.
[49] A diminutive of endearment.
Fabia the Vestal was now about thirty-seven years of age. One and
thirty years before had the Pontifex Maximus chosen her out--a little
girl--to become the priestess of Vesta, the hearth-goddess, the
home-goddess of Pagan Rome. Fabia had dwelt almost all her life in the
house of the Vestals. Her very existence had become identified with
the little sisterhood, which she and her five associates composed. It
was a rather isolated yet singularly pure and peaceful life which she
had led. Revolutions might rock the city and Empire; Marians and
Sullians contend; Catilina plot ruin and destruction; Clodius and his
ruffians terrorize the streets; but the fire of the great
hearth-goddess was never scattered, nor were its gentle ministers
molested. Fabia had thus grown to mature womanhood. Ten years she had
spent in learning the Temple ritual, ten years in performing the
actual duties of the sacred fire and its cultus, ten years in teaching
the young novices. And now she was free, if she chose, to leave the
Temple service, and even to marry. But Fabia had no intention of
taking a step which would tear her from the circle in which she was
dearly loved, and which, though permitted by law, would be publicly
deplored as an evil omen.
The Vestal's pure simple life had left its impress on her features.
Peace and innocent delight in innocent things shone through her dark
eyes and soft, well-rounded face. Her light brown hair was covered and
confined by a fillet of white wool.[50] She wore a stola and outer
garment of stainless white linen--the perfectly plain badge of her
chaste and holy office; while on her small feet were dainty sandals,
bound on by thongs of whitened leather. Everything about her dress and
features betokened the priestess of a gentle religion.
[50] _Infula_.
When questions and repeated salutations were over, and Livia had
ceased to be too afraid of her quite strange brother, Fabia asked what
she could do for her nephew. As one of the senior Vestals, her time
was quite her own. "Would he like to have her go out with him to visit
friends, or go shopping? Or could she do anything to aid him about
ordering frescoers and carpenters for the old Praeneste villa?"
This last was precisely what Drusus had had in mind. And so forth aunt
and nephew sallied. Some of the streets they visited were so narrow
that they had to send back even their litters; but everywhere the
crowds bowed such deference and respect to the Vestal's white robes
that their progress was easy. Drusus soon had given his orders to
cabinet-makers and selected the frescoer's designs. It remained to
purchase Cornelia's slave-boy. He wanted not merely an attractive
serving-lad, but one whose intelligence and probity could be relied
upon; and in the dealers' stalls not one of the dark orientals,
although all had around their necks tablets with long lists of
encomiums, promised conscience or character. Drusus visited, several
very choice boys that were exhibited in separate rooms, at fancy
prices, but none of these pretty Greeks or Asiatics seemed promising.
Deeply disgusted, he led Fabia away from the slave-market.
"I will try to-morrow," he said, vexed at his defeat. "I need a new
toga. Let us go to the shop on the Clivus Suburanus; there used to be
a good woollen merchant, Lucius Marius, on the way to the Porta
Esquilina."
Accordingly the two went on in the direction indicated; but at the
spot where the Clivus Suburanus was cut by the Vicus Longus, there was
so dense a crowd and so loud a hubbub, that their attendants could not
clear a way. For a time it was impossible to see what was the matter.
Street gamins were howling, and idle slaves and hucksters were pouring
forth volleys of taunts and derision at some luckless wight.
"Away with them! the whip-scoundrel! _Verbero!_"[51] yelled a lusty
produce-vender. "Lash him again! Tan his hide for him! Don't you enjoy
it? Not accustomed to such rough handling, eh! my pretty sparrow?"
[51] A coarse epithet.
Fabia without the least hesitation thrust herself into the
dirty-robed, foul-mouthed crowd. At sight of the Vestal's white dress
and fillets the pack gave way before her, as a swarm of gnats at the
wave of a hand. Drusus strode at her heels.
It was a sorry enough sight that met them--though not uncommon in the
age and place. Some wretched slave-boy, a slight, delicate fellow, had
been bound to the bars of a furca, and was being driven by two brutal
executioners to the place of doom outside the gates. At the
street-crossing he had sunk down, and all the blows of the driver's
scourge could not compel him to arise. He lay in the dust, writhing
and moaning, with the great welts showing on his bare back, where the
brass knots of the lash had stripped away the cloth.
"Release this boy! Cease to beat him!" cried Fabia, with a commanding
mien, that made the crowd shrink further back; while the two
executioners looked stupid and sheepish, but did nothing.
"Release this boy!" commanded the Vestal. "Dare you hesitate? Do you
wish to undo yourselves by defying me?"
"Mercy, august lady," cried Alfidius,--for the chief executioner was
he,--with a supplicatory gesture. "If our mistress knows that her
commands are unexecuted, it is we, who are but slaves, that must
suffer!"
"Who is your mistress?" demanded Fabia.
"Valeria, wife of Lucius Calatinus."
"Livia's precious mother!" whispered Drusus. "I can imagine her doing
a thing like this." Then aloud, "What has the boy done?"
"He dropped a murrhine vase," was the answer.
"And so he must be beaten to death!" exclaimed the young man, who,
despite the general theory that most slaves were on a par with cattle,
had much of the milk of human kindness in his nature. "_Phui!_ What
brutality! You must insist on your rights, aunt. Make them let him
go."
Sulkily enough the executioners unbound the heavy furca. Agias
staggered to his feet, too dazed really to know what deliverance had
befallen him.
"Why don't you thank the Vestal?" said Alfidius. "She has made us
release you--you ungrateful dog!"
"Released? Saved?" gasped Agias, and he reeled as though his head were
in a whirl. Then, as if recollecting his faculties, he fell down at
Fabia's feet, and kissed the hem of her robe.
"The gods save us all now," muttered Alfidius. "Valeria will swear
that we schemed to have the boy released. We shall never dare to face
her again!"
"Oh! do not send me back to that cruel woman!" moaned Agias. "Better
die now, than go back to her and incur her anger again! Kill me, but
do not send me back!"
And he broke down again in inward agony.
Drusus had been surveying the boy, and saw that though he was now in a
pitiable enough state, he had been good-looking; and that though his
back had been cruelly marred, his face had not been cut with the
lashes. Perhaps the very fact that Agias had been the victim of
Valeria, and the high contempt in which the young Drusian held his
divorced stepmother, made him instinctively take the outraged boy's
part.
"See here," began Drusus, "were you to be whipped by orders of
Calatinus?"
"No," moaned Agias; "Valeria gave the orders. My master was out."
"Ha!" remarked Drusus to his aunt, "won't the good man be pleased to
know how his wife has killed a valuable slave in one of her tantrums?"
Then aloud. "If I can buy you of Calatinus, and give you to the Lady
Cornelia, niece of Lentulus, the consul-elect, will you serve her
faithfully, will you make her wish the law of your life?"
"I will die for her!" cried Agias, his despair mingled with a ray of
hope.
"Where is your master?"
"At the Forum, I think, soliciting votes," replied the boy.
"Well then, follow me," said Drusus, "our road leads back to the
Forum. We may meet him. If I can arrange with him, your executioners
have nothing to fear from Valeria. Come along."
Agias followed, with his head again in a whirl.
III
The little company worked its way back to the Forum, not, as now, a
half-excavated ruin, the gazing-stock for excursionists, a commonplace
whereby to sum up departed greatness: the splendid buildings of the
Empire had not yet arisen, but the structures of the age were not
unimposing. Here, in plain view, was the Capitoline Hill, crowned by
the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus and the Arx. Here was the site of
the Senate House, the Curia (then burned), in which the men who had
made Rome mistress of the world had taken counsel. Every stone, every
basilica, had its history for Drusus--though, be it said, at the
moment the noble past was little in his mind. And the historic
enclosure was all swarming, beyond other places, with the dirty,
bustling crowd, shoppers, hucksters, idlers. Drusus and his company
searched for Calatinus along the upper side of the Forum, past the
Rostra, the Comitium,[52] and the Temple of Saturn. Then they were
almost caught in the dense throng that was pouring into the plaza from
the busy commercial thoroughfares of the Vicus Jugarius, or the Vicus
Tuscus. But just as the party had almost completed their circuit of
the square, and Drusus was beginning to believe that his benevolent
intentions were leading him on a bootless errand, a man in a
conspicuously white toga rushed out upon him from the steps of the
Temple of Castor, embraced him violently, and imprinted a firm,
garlic-flavoured kiss on both cheeks; crying at the same time
heartily:--
[52] _Comitium_, assembly-place round the Rostra.
"Oh, my dear Publius Dorso, I am so glad to meet you! How are all your
affairs up in Fidenae?"
Drusus recoiled in some disgust, and began rubbing his outraged
cheeks.
"Dorso? Dorso? There is surely some mistake, my good man. I am known
as Quintus Drusus of Praeneste."
Before he had gotten further, his assailant was pounding and shaking a
frightened-looking slave-lad who had stood at his elbow.
"The gods blast you, you worthless _nomenclator_![53] You have
forgotten the worthy gentleman's name, and have made me play the fool!
You may have lost me votes! All Rome will hear of this! I shall be a
common laughing-stock! _Hei! vah!_ But I'll teach you to behave!" And
he shook the wretched boy until the latter's teeth rattled.
[53] Great men, and candidates for office who wished to "know"
everybody, kept smart slaves at their elbow to whisper strangers'
names in their ears. Sometimes the slaves themselves were at fault.
At this instant a young man of faultless toilet, whom we have already
recognized as Lucius Ahenobarbus, pushed into the little knot as a
peacemaker.
"Most excellent Calatinus," said he, half suppressing his laughter at
the candidate's fury, the nomenclator's anguish, and Drusus's vexed
confusion, "allow me to introduce to you a son of Sextus Drusus, who
was an old friend of my father's. This is Quintus Drusus, if in a few
years I have not forgotten his face; and this, my dear Quintus, is my
good friend Lucius Calatinus, who would be glad of your vote and
influence to help on his candidacy as tribune."
The atmosphere was cleared instantly. Calatinus forgot his anger, in
order to apologize in the most obsequious manner for his headlong
salutation. Drusus, pleased to find the man he had been seeking,
forgave the vile scent of the garlic, and graciously accepted the
explanation. Then the way was open to ask Calatinus whether he was
willing to dispose of Agias. The crestfallen candidate was only too
happy to do something to put himself right with the person he had
offended. Loudly he cursed his wife's temper, that would have wasted a
slave worth a "hundred thousand sesterces" to gratify a mere burst of
passion.
"Yes, he was willing to sell the boy to accommodate his excellency,
Quintus Drusus," said Calatinus, "although he was a valuable slave.
Still, in honesty he had to admit that Agias had some mischievous
points. Calatinus had boxed his ears only the day before for licking
the pastry. But, since his wife disliked the fellow, he would be
constrained to sell him, if a purchaser would take him."
The result of the conference was that Drusus, who had inherited that
keen eye for business which went with most of his race, purchased
Agias for thirty thousand sesterces, considerably less than the boy
would have brought in the market.
While Drusus was handing over a money order payable with Flaccus,
Lucius Ahenobarbus again came forward, with all seeming friendliness.
"My dear Quintus," said he, "Marcus Laeca has commissioned me to find a
ninth guest to fill his _triclinium_[54] this evening. We should be
delighted if you would join us. I don't know what the good Marcus will
offer us to-night, but you can be sure of a slice of peacock[55] and a
few other nice bits."
[54] Dining room with couch seats for nine, the regular size.
[55] The _ne plus ultra_ of Roman gastronomy at the time.
"I am very grateful," replied Drusus, who felt all the while that
Lucius Ahenobarbus was the last man in the world with whom he cared to
spend an evening's carousing; "but," and here he concocted a white
lie, "an old friend I met in Athens has already invited me to spend
the night, and I cannot well refuse him. I thank you for your
invitation."
Lucius muttered some polite and conventional terms of regret, and fell
back to join Servius Flaccus and Gabinius, who were near him.
"I invited him and he refused," he said half scornfully, half
bitterly. "That little minx, Cornelia, has been complaining of me to
him, I am sure. The gods ruin him! If he wishes to become my enemy,
he'll have good cause to fear my bite."
"You say he's from Praeneste," said Gabinius, "and yet can he speak
decent Latin? Doesn't he say '_conia_' for '_ciconia_,' and
'_tammodo_' for '_tantummodo_'_?_ I wonder you invite such a boor."
"Oh! he can speak good enough Latin," said Lucius. "But I invited him
because he is rich; and it might be worth our while to make him
gamble."
"Rich!" lisped Servius Flaccus. "Rich (h)as my (h)uncle the broker?
That silly straightlac(h)ed fellow, who's (h)a C(h)ato, (h)or worse?
For shame!"
"Well," said Lucius, "old Crassus used to say that no one who couldn't
pay out of his own purse for an army was rich. But though Drusus
cannot do quite that, he has enough sesterces to make happy men of
most of us, if his fortune were mine or yours."
"(H)its (h)an (h)outrage for him to have (h)it," cried Servius
Flaccus.
"It's worse than an outrage," replied Ahenobarbus; "it's a sheer
blunder of the Fates. Remind me to tell you about Drusus and his
fortune, before I have drunk too much to-night."
* * * * *
Agias went away rejoicing with his new master. Drusus owned an
apartment house on the Vicus Longus, and there had a furnished suite
of rooms. He gave Agias into the charge of the porter[56] and ordered
him to dress the boy's wounds. Cappadox waited on his master when he
lunched.
[56] Porter--_Insularius._
"Master Quintus," said he, with the familiar air of a privileged
servant, "did you see that knavish-looking Gabinius following Madame
Fabia all the way back to the Temple of Vesta?"
"No," said Drusus; "what do you mean, you silly fellow?"
"Oh, nothing," said Cappadox, humbly. "I only thought it a little
queer."
"Perhaps so," said his master, carelessly.