Pompeius Magnus
If we had been painting an ideal heroine, gifted with all the virtues
which Christian traditions of female perfection throw around such
characters, Cornelia would have resigned herself quietly to the
inevitable, and exhibited a seraphic serenity amid tribulation. But
she was only a grieved, embittered, disappointed, sorely wronged,
Pagan maiden, who had received few enough lessons in forbearance and
meekness. And now that her natural sweetness of character had received
so severe a shock, she vented too often the rage she felt against her
uncle upon her helpless servants. Her maid Cassandra--who was the one
that had told Lentulus of her mistress's nocturnal meeting with
Drusus--soon felt the weight of Cornelia's wrath. The young lady, as
soon as Lentulus was out of the way, caused the tell-tale to receive a
cruel whipping, which kept the poor slave-girl groaning in her cell
for ten days, and did not relieve Cornelia's own distress in the
slightest degree. As a matter of fact, Cornelia was perpetually goaded
into fresh outbursts of desperation by the tyrannical attitude of her
uncle. Lentulus boasted in her presence that he would accomplish
Drusus's undoing. "I'll imitate Sulla," he would announce, in mean
pleasure at giving his niece pain; "I'll see how many heads I can have
set up as he did at the Lacus Servilius. You can go _there_, if you
wish to kiss your lover."
But Cornelia's life at Rome was rendered unhappy by many other things
besides these occasional brutal stabs from her uncle. Her mother, as
has been hinted, was a woman of the world, and had an intense desire
to draw her daughter into her own circle of society. Claudia cared for
Cornelia in a manner, and believed it was a real kindness to tear the
poor girl away from her solitary broodings and plunge her into the
whirl of the world of Roman fashion. Claudia had become an intimate of
Clodia, the widow of Quintus Metellus, a woman of remarkable gifts and
a notoriously profligate character. "The Medea of the Palatine Hill,"
Cicero had bitingly styled her. Nearly all the youth of parts and
social distinction enjoyed the wild pleasures of Clodia's garden by
the Tiber. Catullus the poet, Caelius the brilliant young politician,
and many another had figured as lovers of this soulless and enchanting
woman. And into Clodia's gilded circle Claudia tried desperately to
drag her daughter. The Lentuli had a handsome palace on the Carinae,
one of the most fashionable quarters of the capital; and here there
were many gay gatherings and dinner parties. Cornelia was well born
enough, by reputation wealthy enough, and in feature handsome enough,
to have a goodly proportion of the young men of this coterie her
devoted admirers and slaves. Claudia observed her daughter's social
triumphs with glee, and did all she could to give Cornelia plenty of
this kind of company. Cornelia would not have been a mortal woman if
she had not taken a certain amount of pleasure in noticing and
exercising her power. The first occasion when she appeared at a formal
banquet in the splendid Apollo dinner hall of the Luculli, where the
outlay on the feast was fixed by a regular scale at two hundred
thousand sesterces, she gathered no little satisfaction by the
consciousness that all the young men were admiring her, and all the
women were fuming with jealousy. But this life was unspeakably
wearisome, after the first novelty had worn away. Cornelia lived in an
age when many of the common proprieties and decencies of our present
society would have been counted prudish, but she could not close her
eyes to the looseness and license that pervaded her mother's world.
Woman had become almost entirely independent of man in social and
economic matters, though the law still kept its fictions of tutelage.
Honourable marriages were growing fewer and fewer. Divorces were
multiplying. The morality of the time can be judged from the fact that
the "immaculate" Marcus Cato separated from his wife that a friend
might marry her; and when the friend died, married her himself again.
Scandals and love intrigues were common in the highest circles; noble
ladies, and not ballet-dancers[86] merely, thought it of little
account to have their names besmirched. Everything in society was
splendid, polished, decorous, cultivated without; but within, hollow
and rotten.
[86] _Mimae_.
Cornelia grew weary and sick of the excitement, the fashionable
chatter, the mongering of low gossips. She loathed the sight of the
effeminate young fops who tried to win her smiles by presenting
themselves for a polite call each morning, polished and furbelowed,
and rubbed sleek and smooth with Catanian pumice. Her mother disgusted
her so utterly that she began to entertain the most unfilial feeling
toward the worthy woman. Cornelia would not or could not understand
that in such hot weather it was proper to wear lighter rings than in
winter, and that each ring must be set carefully on a different finger
joint to prevent touching. Cornelia watched her servants, and reached
the astonishing conclusion that these humble creatures were really
extracting more pleasure out of life than herself. Cassandra had
recovered from her whipping, and was bustling about her tasks as if
nothing had happened. Agias seemed to have a never failing fund of
good spirits. He was always ready to tell the funniest stories or
retail the latest news. Once or twice he brought his mistress
unspeakable delight, by smuggling into the house letters from Drusus,
which contained words of love and hope, if no really substantial
promises for the future. But this was poor enough comfort. Drusus
wrote that he could not for the time see that any good end would be
served by coming to Rome, and he would remain for the present in
Praeneste. He and she must try to wait in patience, until politics took
such a turn as would drive Lentulus into a more tractable attitude.
Cornelia found the days monotonous and dreary. Her uncle's freedman
kept her under constant espionage to prevent a chance meeting with
Drusus, and but for Agias she would have been little better than a
prisoner, ever in charge of his keepers.
In a way, however, Cornelia found that there was enough stirring in
the outside world to lend zest and often venom to the average
emptiness of polite conversation. Politics were penetrating deeper and
deeper into fashionable society. Cornelia heard how Paulus, the
consul, had taken a large present from Caesar to preserve neutrality;
and how Curio, the tribune, had checked Clodius Marcellus, the other
consul, when he wished to take steps in the Senate against Caesar. All
that Cornelia heard of that absent statesman was from hostile lips;
consequently she had him painted to her as blood-thirsty, treacherous,
of flagrant immorality, with his one object to gather a band of
kindred spirits to his cause, and become despot. And to hear such
reports and yet to keep confident that Drusus was not sacrificing both
himself and her in a worse than unworthy cause--this tested her to the
uttermost.
To add to her troubles, Lucius Ahenobarbus was ever thrusting in his
attentions at every party and at the theatre; and her uncle openly
favoured his suit.
"I wish you would be more friendly to him," remarked Lentulus on one
occasion. "I should be glad to have a closer tie between his family
and ours."
"Uncle," said Cornelia, much distressed, "I do not think I understand
what you mean."
"Well," chuckled Lentulus, moving away, "think it over until you do
understand."
Cornelia had been reading in the library when this conversation took
place. There was to be another party that evening at the house of
Marcus Favonius, a prominent anti-Caesarian, and since it was growing
late in the afternoon, it was time to dress. Cornelia went into her
own room, and was summoning her maids, when a young lady of about her
own age, who affected to be on terms of considerable intimacy, was
announced--Herennia, a daughter of a certain rich old eques, Caius
Pontius, who had kept out of politics and hoarded money, which his
daughter was doing her best to spend.
Herennia was already dressed for the party. Her brown hair had been
piled up in an enormous mass on her head, eked out by false tresses
and puffings, and the whole plentifully powdered with gold dust. She
wore a prodigious number of gaudily set rings; her neck and ears and
girdle were ablaze with gold and jewels. So far from aiming, as do
modern ladies, to reduce the waist to the slenderest possible
proportions, Herennia, who was actually quite thin, had carefully
padded out her form to proper dimensions, and showed this fact by her
constrained motions. She was rouged and painted, and around her
floated an incense of a thousand and one rare perfumes. Her
amethystine tunic and palla were of pure silk--then literally worth
its weight in gold--and embroidered with an elaborate pattern in which
pearls and other gems played a conspicuous part. For all this display
of extravagance, Herennia was of only very mediocre beauty; and it was
on this account that she was always glad to make uncomfortable flings
at her "dear friend" Cornelia, whenever possible.
Herennia seated herself on a divan, and proceeded to plunge into all
the flying gossip of the day. Incidentally she managed to hint that
Servius Maccus, her devoted admirer, had told her that the night
before Lucius Ahenobarbus and some of his friends had attacked and
insulted a lady on her way back from a late dinner.[87]
[87] A common diversion for "young men of spirit."
"The outrageous scapegrace!" cried Cornelia, while her maids hurried
along a toilet which, if not as elaborate as Herennia's, took some
little time. "I imagined he might do such things! I always detested
him!"
"Then you are not so very fond of Lucius Ahenobarbus," said Herennia,
raising her carefully painted eyebrows, as if in astonishment. "I am
really a little surprised."
"Surprised?" reëchoed Cornelia. "What have I done or said that makes
Lucius Ahenobarbus anything more than a very distant, a _very_ distant
acquaintance?"
"My dear girl," exclaimed Herennia, throwing up her hands, "either you
are the best actress, or the most innocent little wight, in Rome!
Don't you know all that they say about you?"
"Who--say--what--about--me?" stammered Cornelia, rising in her chair
so suddenly, as to disarrange all the work Cassandra had been doing on
her hair.
"Why, everybody," said Herennia, smiling with an exasperating
deliberation. "And then it has all come out in the daily gazette."[88]
[88] _Acta Diurna_, prepared officially.
"Where is it? Read! Let me see," pleaded Cornelia, agitated and
trembling.
"Why, how troubled you are," giggled Herennia. "Yes, I have my
freedman copy down the whole bulletin every day, as soon as it is
posted by the censor's officers; now let me see," and she produced
from under her robe a number of wooden, wax-covered tablets, strung
together: "the last praetor's edict; the will of old Publius Blaesus;"
and she ran over the headings with maddening slowness: "the speech in
the Senate of Curio--what an impudent rascal; the money paid yesterday
into the treasury,--how dull to copy all that down!--the meteor which
fell over in Tibur, and was such a prodigy; oh, yes, here it is at
last; you may as well hear what all Rome knows now, it's at the end,
among the private affairs. 'Lucius Ahenobarbus, son of Lucius
Domitius, the Consular, and Cornelia, daughter of the late tribune,
Caius Lentulus, are in love. They will be married soon.'"
These two brief sentences, which the mechanical difficulties under
which journalistic enterprise laboured at that day made it impossible
to expand into a modern "article," were quite sufficient to tell a
whole story to Rome. Cornelia realized instantly that she had been
made the victim of some vile trick, which she doubted not her would-be
lover and her uncle had executed in collusion. She took the tablets
from Herennia's hand, without a word, read the falsehoods once, twice,
thrice. The meaning of the day attached to the terms used intimated
the existence of a low intrigue, quite as much as any honourable
"engagement." If Cornelia did not soon become the lawful wife of
Lucius Ahenobarbus, the world would feel justified in piling scandal
upon her name. The blow was numbing in its brutality. Instead of
crying and execrating the liars, as Herennia fully expected her to do,
Cornelia merely handed back the tablets, and said with cold dignity,
"I think some very unfortunate mistake has been made. Lucius
Ahenobarbus is no friend of mine. Will you be so kind as to leave me
with my maids?"
Herennia was overborne by the calm, commanding attitude of the rival
she had meant to annoy. When Cornelia became not the radiant
_debutante_, but the haughty patrician lady, there was that about her
which made her wish a mandate. Herennia, in some confusion, withdrew.
When she was gone, Cornelia ordered her maids out of the room,
stripped off the golden tiara they had been plaiting into her hair,
tore away the rings, bracelets, necklaces, and flung herself upon the
pillows of the divan, quivering with sobs. She did not know of a
single friend who could help her. All the knowledge that she had
imbibed taught her that there was no God either to hear prayer, or
succour the wronged. Her name would become a laughing-stock and a
hissing, to be put on a par with Clodia's or that of any other
frivolous woman, unless she not merely gave up the man she loved, but
also threw herself into the arms of the man she utterly hated. The
craving for any respite was intense. She was young; but for the
moment, at least, life had lost every glamour. If death was an endless
sleep, why not welcome it as a blessed release? The idea of suicide
had a grasp on the ancient world which it is hard at first to
estimate. A healthy reaction might have stirred Cornelia out of her
despair, but at that instant the impulse needed to make her commit an
irrevocable deed must have been very slight. But while she lay on the
pillows, wretched and heart-sick, the voice of Agias was heard
without, bidding the maids admit him to their mistress.
"Stay outside. I can't see you now," moaned poor Cornelia, feeling
that for once the sight of the good-humoured, vivacious slave-boy
would be maddening. But Agias thrust back the curtains and boldly
entered. What he said will be told in its due time and place; but the
moment he had gone Cornelia was calling in Cassandra, and ordering the
maids to dress her with all possible speed for the dinner-party.
"I must be all smiles, all enchantments," she was saying to herself.
"I must dissemble. I must win confidences. I must do everything, and
anything. I have no right to indulge in grief any longer. Quintus's
dear life is at stake!"
II
Lentulus did not go to the banquet of Favonius, to see the unwonted
graciousness with which his niece received the advances of Lucius
Ahenobarbus, Neither was Favonius himself present at his own
entertainment. They, and several others of the high magnates of their
party, had been called away by an urgent summons, and spent the
evening in secluded conference with no less a personage than Pompeius,
or as he dearly loved to be called, "the Magnus," in his splendid
palace outside the walls on the Campus Martius. And here the conqueror
of Mithridates--a stout, soldierly man of six-and-fifty, whose best
quality was a certain sense of financial honesty, and whose worst an
extreme susceptibility to the grossest adulation--told them that he
had received letters from Labienus, Caesar's most trusted lieutenant in
Gaul, declaring that the proconsul's troops would never fight for him,
that Caesar would never be able to stir hand or foot against the
decrees of the Senate, and that he, Labienus, would desert him at the
first opportunity.
Cheerful news this to the noble lords, who had for years scented in
Caesar's existence and prosperity destruction to their own oligarchic
rule of almost the known world. But when Cato, the most violent
anti-Caesarian of them all, a sharp, wiry man with angular features,
and keen black eyes, demanded:--
"And now, Magnus, you will not hesitate to annihilate the enemies of
the Republic?" a look of pained indecision flitted across Pompeius's
face.
"_Perpol_, gentlemen," he exclaimed, "I would that I were well out of
this. Sometimes I think that you are leading me into breaking with
Caesar for some ends of your own. He was my friend before you had a
word of praise for me. He loved Julia; so did I." And the Magnus
paused a moment, overcome by the thought of his dead wife. "Perhaps
the Republic demands his sacrifice, perhaps--" and he cast a glance
half of menace upon Lentulus Crus and Cato, "you are the guilty, not
he. But I am in grievous doubt."
"Perhaps, Magnus," said Favonius, with half a sneer, "you think your
forces inadequate. The two legions at Luceria are just detached from
Caesar. Perhaps you question their fidelity."
"Man," retorted the general, fiercely, bringing his foot down upon the
soft rug on the floor, "I have but to stamp upon the ground to call up
legions out of Italy; it is not that which I fear!"
The members of the conference looked uneasy; there was still a bare
chance that Pompeius would go back to his old friendship with Caesar.
"Gentlemen," went on the Magnus, "I have called you here to reach a
final decision--peace or war. Let us consult a higher power than
human." And he touched a little silver bell that was upon the table
close at hand.
Forthwith there was a rustle of curtains, and out of the gloom of the
doorway--for the hour was now very late--advanced a tall, gaunt
figure, dressed in a plain, sleeveless robe that fell to the feet. The
skin was dry, hard, wrinkled by a hundred furrows; the bones of the
face were thrust out prominently; on the head was a plain white
turban, and a beard quite as white fell down upon the breast. Only
from under the turban shone the eyes, which were bright and piercing
as coals of fire.
The stranger advanced without a word, till he stood before Pompeius,
then knelt and made an elaborate Oriental prostration. The noble
Romans, twelve or more of the magnates of the greatest power on the
earth, held their breath in uneasy anticipation. Not one of them
perhaps really believed in a personal god; but though atheists, they
could not forswear their superstition. Piso, the censor, who
notoriously feared neither divine nor human law in his reckless life,
spat thrice to ward off the effects of the evil eye, if the stranger
were a magician.
"Ulamhala," said Pompeius, addressing the newcomer, "arise. Since I
have been in the East,[89] I have consulted you and your science of
the stars, in every intended step, and your warnings have never
failed."
[89] "Chaldean" astrologers played an almost incredibly important
part among even the highest-class Romans of the period.
"My lord doth overcommend the wisdom of his slave," replied Ulamhala
(for such was his name) in Syriac Greek, with a second deep obeisance.
"Now, therefore," went on Pompeius--and his voice was unsteady with
evident excitement and anxiety,--"I have called you hither to declare
the warnings of the stars upon the most important step of my life.
What lies now at stake, you know full well. Three days ago I bade you
consult the heavens, that this night you might be able to declare
their message, not merely to me, but to these my friends, who will
shape their actions by mine. Have you a response from the planets?"
"I have, lord," and again Ulamhala salaamed.
"Then declare, be it good or ill;" commanded Pompeius, and he gripped
the arms of his chair to conceal his anxiety.
The scene was in a way weird enough. The visitors exchanged uneasy
glances, and Cato, who broke out in some silly remark to Favonius, in
a bold attempt to interrupt the oppressive silence, suddenly found his
words growing thick and broken, and he abruptly became silent. Each
man present tried to tell himself that Pompeius was a victim of
superstition, but every individual felt an inward monition that
something portentous was about to be uttered.
The conference had lasted long. The lamps were flickering low. Dark
shadows were loitering in every corner of the room. The aroma of
flowers from the adjacent gardens floated in at the open windows, and
made the hot air drugged and heavy. Ulamhala slowly and noiseless as a
cat stepped to the window, and, leaning out over the marble railing,
looked up into the violet-black heavens. There was no moon, but a
trembling flame on one of the candelabras threw a dull, ruddy glow
over his white dress and snowy turban. His face was hid in the gloom,
but the others knew, though they could hardly see, that he was
pointing upward with his right hand.
"Behold," began the astrologer, "three thousand seven hundred and
fifty years since the days of the great Sargon of Agade have we of the
race of the Chaldeans studied the stars. One generation of watchers
succeeded another, scanning the heavens nightly from our
_ziggurats_,[90] and we have learned the laws of the constellations;
the laws of Sin the moon, the laws of Samas the sun, the laws of the
planets, the laws of the fixed stars. Their motions and their
influence on the affairs of men our fathers discovered, and have
handed their wisdom down to us."
[90] Babylonian temple towers.
"But the word of the stars to _us_?" broke in Pompeius, in extreme
disquietude, and trying to shake off the spell that held him in
mastery.
"Know, lord, that thy slave has not been disobedient unto thy
commandment. Look, yonder burneth a bright red planet, called by us
Nergal, which ye Westerns call by the name of Mars. Who denieth that
when Mars shines in the heavens, war will break forth among men? Know
that I have carefully compared the settings, risings, and movements of
the planets at this season with their settings, risings, and movements
at the time when my lord was born; and also at the time of the birth
of his great enemy. I have made use of the tables which my wise
predecessors among the Chaldees have prepared; and which I myself, thy
slave, copied from those at the Temple of Bel, in Babylon."
"And they say?" breathlessly interrupted Lentulus.
"This is the message from the planets," and Ulamhala's form grew
higher, his voice firmer; he raised his long bony arms above his head,
and stood in the dull light like a skeleton arisen in all its white
grave clothes to convey a warning to the living. "To the Lord
Pompeius, this is the warning, and to his enemy,
"'_He that is highest shall rise yet higher;
He that is second shall utterly fall!_'
I have said."
And before the noble Romans could command the free play of their
senses, the vision at the window had vanished, either out of doors, or
behind some doorway or curtain. The company sat gazing uneasily at
each other for several minutes. The Magnus was breathing heavily, as
though he had passed through a terrible mental ordeal. Cato, the Stoic
and ascetic, had his eyes riveted on the carpet, and his face was as
stony as an Egyptian Colossus.
Then a coarse forced laugh from Piso broke the spell.
"Capital, Pompeius! You _are_ a favourite of the gods!"
"I?" ventured the Magnus, moving his lips slowly.
"Of course," cried several voices at once, catching the cue from Piso.
"You are the first in the world, Caesar the second! You are to rise to
new glories, and Caesar is to utterly fall!"
"The stars have said it, gentlemen," said Pompeius, solemnly; "Caesar
shall meet his fate. Let there be war."
* * * * *
Lentulus Crus rode away from the conference, his litter side by side
with that of Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, the consular, whom we will
know as Domitius to distinguish from his son and namesake. Domitius, a
handsome, highly polished, vigorous, but none the less unprincipled
man, who was just reaching the turn of years, was in high spirits. No
oligarch hated Caesar more violently than he, and the decision of
Pompeius was a great personal triumph, the crowning of many years of
political intrigue. What Pompeius had said, he had said; and Caesar,
the great foe of the Senate party, was a doomed man.
Lentulus had a question to ask his companion.
"Would you care to consider a marriage alliance between the Lentuli
and the Domitii?" was his proposition.
"I should be rejoiced and honoured to have the opportunity," was the
reply; and then in another tone Domitius added, "Lentulus, do you
believe in astrologers?"
"I do not really know," answered the other, uneasily.
"Neither do I," continued Domitius. "But suppose the stars speak
truly; and suppose," and here his voice fell, "it is Caesar who is
highest in power, in ability, in good fortune;--what then for
Pompeius? for us?"
"Be silent, O prophet of evil!" retorted Lentulus, laughing, but not
very naturally.