I SHALL give one more figure, and that a truly tragical one, from these
“Lives of the Egyptian Fathers,” namely, that of the once great and
famous Arsenius, the Father (as he was at one time called) of the
Emperors. Theodosius, the great statesman and warrior, who for some
twenty years kept up by his single hand the falling empire of Rome, heard
how Arsenius was at once the most pious and the most learned of his
subjects; and wishing—half barbarian as he was himself—that his sons
should be brought up, not only as scholars, but as Christians, he sent
for Arsenius to his court, and made him tutor to his two young sons
Honorius and Arcadius. But the two lads had neither their father’s
strength nor their father’s nobleness. Weak and profligate, they fretted
Arsenius’s soul day by day; and, at last, so goes the story, provoked him
so far that, according to the fashion of a Roman pedagogue, he took the
ferula and administered to one of the princes a caning, which he no doubt
deserved. The young prince, in revenge, plotted against his life. Among
the parasites of the Palace it was not difficult to find those who would
use steel and poison readily enough in the service of an heir-apparent,
and Arsenius fled for his life: and fled, as men were wont in those days,
to Egypt and the Thebaid. Forty years old he was when he left the court,
and forty years more he spent among the cells at Scetis, weeping day and
night. He migrated afterwards to a place called Troe, and there died at
the age of ninety-five, having wept himself, say his admirers, almost
blind. He avoided, as far as possible, beholding the face of man; upon
the face of woman he would never look. A noble lady, whom he had known
probably in the world, came all the way from Rome to see him; but he
refused himself to her sternly, almost roughly. He had known too much of
the fine ladies of the Roman court; all he cared for was peace. There is
a story of him that, changing once his dwelling-place, probably from
Scetis to Troe, he asked, somewhat peevishly, of the monks around him,
“What that noise was?” They told him it was only the wind among the
reeds. “Alas!” he said, “I have fled everywhere in search of silence,
and yet here the very reeds speak.” The simple and comparatively
unlearned monks around him looked with a profound respect on the
philosopher, courtier, scholar, who had cast away the real pomps and
vanities of this life, such as they had never known. There is a story
told, plainly concerning Arsenius, though his name is not actually
mentioned in it, how a certain old monk saw him lying upon a softer mat
than his fellows, and indulged with a few more comforts; and complained
indignantly of his luxury, and the abbot’s favouritism. Then asked the
abbot, “What didst thou eat before thou becamest a monk?” He confessed he
had been glad enough to fill his stomach with a few beans. “How wert
thou dressed?” He was glad enough, again he confessed, to have any
clothes at all on his back. “Where didst thou sleep?” “Often enough on
the bare ground in the open air,” was the answer. “Then,” said the
abbot, “thou art, by thy own confession, better off as a monk than thou
wast as a poor labouring man: and yet thou grudgest a little comfort to
one who has given up more luxury than thou hast ever beheld. This man
slept beneath silken canopies; he was carried in gilded litters, by
trains of slaves; he was clothed in purple and fine linen; he fed upon
all the delicacies of the great city: and he has given up all for Christ.
And what hast thou given up, that thou shouldst grudge him a softer mat,
or a little more food each day?” And so the monk was abashed, and held
his peace.
As for Arsenius’s tears, it is easy to call his grief exaggerated or
superstitious: but those who look on them with human eyes will pardon
them, and watch with sacred pity the grief of a good man, who felt that
his life had been an utter failure. He saw his two pupils, between whom,
at their father’s death, the Roman Empire was divided into Eastern and
Western, grow more and more incapable of governing. He saw a young
barbarian, whom he must have often met at the court in Byzantium, as
Master of the Horse, come down from his native forests, and sack the
Eternal City of Rome. He saw evil and woe unspeakable fall on that world
which he had left behind him, till the earth was filled with blood, and
Antichrist seemed ready to appear, and the day of judgment to be at hand.
And he had been called to do what he could to stave off this ruin, to
make those young princes decree justice and rule in judgment by the fear
of God. But he had failed; and there was nothing left to him save
self-accusation and regret, and dread lest some, at least, of the blood
which had been shed might be required at his hands. Therefore, sitting
upon his palm-mat there in Troe, he wept his life away; happier,
nevertheless, and more honourable in the sight of God and man than if,
like a Mazarin or a Talleyrand, and many another crafty politician, both
in Church and State, he had hardened his heart against his own mistakes,
and, by crafty intrigue and adroit changing of sides at the right moment,
had contrived to secure for himself, out of the general ruin, honour and
power and wealth, and delicate food, and a luxurious home, and so been
one of those of whom the Psalmist says, with awful irony, “So long as
thou doest well unto thyself, men will speak good of thee.”
One good deed at least Arsenius had seen done—a deed which has lasted to
all time, and done, too, to the eternal honour of his order, by a
monk—namely, the abolition of gladiator shows. For centuries these
wholesale murders had lasted through the Roman Republic and through the
Roman Empire. Human beings in the prime of youth and health, captives or
slaves, condemned malefactors, and even free-born men, who hired
themselves out to death, had been trained to destroy each other in the
amphitheatre for the amusement, not merely of the Roman mob, but of the
Roman ladies. Thousands sometimes, in a single day, had been
“Butchered to make a Roman holiday.”
The training of gladiators had become a science. By their weapons and
their armour, and their modes of fighting, they had been distinguished
into regular classes, of which the antiquaries count up full eighteen:
Andabatæ, who wore helmets without any opening for the eyes, so that they
were obliged to fight blindfold, and thus excited the mirth of the
spectators; Hoplomachi, who fought in a complete suit of armour;
Mirmillones, who had the image of a fish upon their helmets, and fought
in armour with a short sword, matched usually against the Retiarii, who
fought without armour, and whose weapons were a casting-net and a
trident. These, and other species of fighters, were drilled and fed in
“families” by Lanistæ; or regular trainers, who let them out to persons
wishing to exhibit a show. Women, even high-born ladies, had been seized
in former times with the madness of fighting, and, as shameless as cruel,
had gone down into the arena to delight with their own wounds and their
own gore the eyes of the Roman people.
And these things were done, and done too often, under the auspices of the
gods, and at their most sacred festivals. So deliberate and organized a
system of wholesale butchery has never perhaps existed on this earth
before or since, not even in the worship of those Mexican gods whose
idols Cortez and his soldiers found fed with human hearts, and the walls
of their temples crusted with human gore. Gradually the spirit of the
Gospel had been triumphing over this abomination. Ever since the time of
Tertullian, in the second century, Christian preachers and writers had
lifted up their voice in the name of humanity. Towards the end of the
third century, the Emperors themselves had so far yielded to the voice of
reason, as to forbid by edicts the gladiatorial fights. But the public
opinion of the mob in most of the great cities had been too strong both
for saints and for emperors. St. Augustine himself tells us of the
horrible joy which he, in his youth, had seen come over the vast ring of
flushed faces at these horrid sights; and in Arsenius’s own time, his
miserable pupil, the weak Honorius, bethought himself of celebrating once
more the heathen festival of the Secular Games, and formally to allow
therein an exhibition of gladiators. But in the midst of that show
sprang down into the arena of the Colosseum of Rome an unknown monk, some
said from Nitria, some from Phrygia, and with his own hands parted the
combatants in the name of Christ and God. The mob, baulked for a moment
of their pleasure, sprang on him, and stoned him to death. But the crime
was followed by a sudden revulsion of feeling. By an edict of the
Emperor the gladiatorial sports were forbidden for ever; and the
Colosseum, thenceforth useless, crumbled slowly away into that vast ruin
which remains unto this day, purified, as men well said, from the blood
of tens of thousands, by the blood of one true and noble martyr.