of lictors, interminable files of gladiators entered, holding their
knives to Nero that he might see that they were sharp. It was then the
eyes of the vestals lighted; artistic death was their chiefest joy, and
in a moment, when the spectacle began and the first gladiator fell,
above the din you could hear their cry "Hic habet!" and watch their
delicate thumbs reverse.
There was no cowardice in that arena. If by chance any hesitation were
discernible, instantly there were hot irons, the sear of which
revivified courage at once. But that was rare. The gladiators fought
for applause, for liberty, for death; fought manfully, skilfully,
terribly, too, and received the point of the sword or the palm of the
victor, their expression unchanged, the face unmoved. Among them, some
provided with a net and prodigiously agile, pursued their adversaries
hither and thither, trying to entangle them first and kill them later.
Others, protected by oblong shields and armed with short, sharp swords,
fought hand-to-hand. There were still others, mailed horsemen, who
fought with the lance, and charioteers that dealt death from high
Briton cars.
As a spectacle it was unique; one that the Romans, or more exactly,
their predecessors, the Etruscans, had devised to train their children
for war and allay the fear of blood. It had been serviceable, indeed,
and though the need of it had gone, still the institution endured, and
in enduring constituted the chief delight of the vestals and of Rome.
By means of it a bankrupt became consul and an emperor beloved. It had
stayed revolutions, it was the tax of the proletariat on the rich.
Silver and bread were for the individual, but these things were for the
crowd.
During the pauses of the combats the dead were removed by men masked as
Mercury, god of hell; red irons, that others, masked as Charon, bore,
being first applied as safeguard against swoon or fraud. And when, to
the kisses of flutes, the last palm had been awarded, the last death
acclaimed, a ballet was given; that of Paris and Venus, which Apuleius
has described so well, and for afterpiece the romance of Pasipha? and
the bull. Then, as night descended, so did torches, too; the arena was
strewn with vermilion; tables were set, and to the incitement of
crotals, Lydians danced before the multitude, toasting the last act of
that wonderful day.
It was with such magnificence that Nero showed the impresario's skill,
the politician's adroitness. Where the artist, which he claimed to be,
really appeared, was in the refurbishing of Rome.
In spite of Augustus' boast, the city was not by any means of marble.
It was filled with crooked little streets, with the atrocities of the
Tarquins, with houses unsightly and perilous, with the moss and dust of
ages; it compared with Alexandria as London compares with Paris; it had
a splendor of its own, but a splendor that could be heightened.
Whether the conflagration which occurred at that time was the result of
accident or design is uncertain and in any event immaterial. Tacitus
says that when it began Nero was at Antium, in which case he must have
hastened to return, for admitting that he did not originate the fire,
it is a matter of agreement that he collaborated in it. In quarters
where it showed symptoms of weakness it was by his orders coaxed to new
strength; colossal stone buildings, on which it had little effect, were
battered down with catapults.
Fire is a perfect poet. No designer ever imagined the surprises it
creates, and when, at the end of the week, three-fourths of the city
was in ruins, the beauty that reigned there must have been sublime.
That it inspired Nero is presumable. The palace on the Palatine, which
Tiberius embellished and Caligula enlarged, had gone; in its place rose
another, aflame with gold. Before it Neropolis extended, a city of
triumphal arches, enchanted temples, royal dwellings, shimmering
porticoes, glittering roofs, and wide, hospitable streets. It was fair
to the eye, purely Greek; and on its heart, from the Circus Maximus to
the Forum's edge, the new and gigantic palace shone. Before it was a
lake, a part of which Vespasian drained and replaced with an
amphitheatre that covered eight acres. About that lake were separate
edifices that formed a city in themselves; between them and the palace,
a statue of Nero in gold and silver mounted precipitately a hundred and
twenty feet--a statue which it took twenty-four elephants to move.
About it were green savannahs, forest reaches, the call of bird and
deer, while in the distance, fronted by a stretch of columns a mile in
length, the palace stood--a palace so ineffably charming that on the
day of reckoning may it outbalance a few of his sins. Even the cellars
were frescoed. The baths were quite comfortable; you had waters salt or
sulphurous at will. The dining halls had ivory ceilings from which
flowers fell, and wainscots that changed at each service. The walls
were alive with the glisten of gems, with marbles rarer than jewels. In
one hall was a dome of sapphire, a floor of malachite, crystal columns
and red-gold walls.
"At last," Nero murmured, "I am lodged like a man."
No doubt. Yet in a mirror he would have seen a bloated beast in a
flowered gown, the hair done up in a chignon, the skin covered with
eruptions, the eyes circled and yellow; a woman who had hours when she
imitated a virgin at bay, others when she was wife, still others when
she expected to be a mother, and that woman, a senatorial patent of
divinity aiding, was god--Apollo's peer, imperator, chief of the army,
pontifix maximus, master of the world, with the incontestable right of
life and death over every being in the dominions.
It had taken the fresh-faced lad who blushed so readily, just fourteen
years to effect that change. Did he regret it? And what should Nero
regret? Nothing, perhaps, save that at the moment when he declared
himself to be lodged like a man, he had not killed himself like one.
But of that he was incapable. Had he known what the future held,
possibly he might have imitated that apotheosis of vulgarity in which
Sardanapalus eclipsed himself, but never could he have died with the
good breeding and philosophy of Cato, for neither good breeding nor
philosophy was in him. Nero killed himself like a coward, yet that he
did kill himself, in no matter what fashion, is one of the few things
that can be said in his favor.
Those days differed from ours. There were circumstances in which
suicide was regarded as the simplest of duties. Nero did his duty, but
not until he was forced to it, and even then not until he had been
asked several times whether it was so hard to die. The empire had
wearied of him. In Neropolis his popularity had gone as popularity ever
does; the conflagration had killed it.
Even as he wandered, lyre in hand, a train of Lesbians and pederasts at
his heels, through those halls which had risen on the ruins, and which
inexhaustible Greece had furnished with a fresh crop of white
immortals, the world rebelled. Afar on the outskirts of civilization a
vassal, ashamed of his vassalage, declared war, not against Rome, but
against an emperor that played the flute. In Spain, in Gaul, the
legions were choosing other chiefs. The provinces, depleted by imperial
exactions, outwearied by the increasing number of accusers, whose
accusations impoverishing them served only to multiply the
prodigalities of their Caesar, revolted.
Suddenly Nero found himself alone. As the advancing rumor of rebellion
reached him, he thought of flight; there was no one that would
accompany him. He called to the pretorians; they would not hear.
Through the immensity of his palace he sought one friend. The doors
would not open. He returned to his apartment; the guards had gone. Then
terror seized him. He was afraid to die, afraid to live, afraid of his
solitude, afraid of Rome, afraid of himself; but what frightened him
most was that everyone had lost their fear of him. It was time to go,
and a slave aiding, he escaped in disguise from Rome, and killed
himself, reluctantly, in a hovel.
"Qualis artifex pereo!" he is reported to have muttered. Say rather,
qualis maechus.
VI
THE HOUSE OF FLAVIA
It was in those days that the nebulous figure of Apollonius of Tyana
appeared and disappeared in Rome. His speech, a commingling of
puerility and charm, Philostratus has preserved. Rumor had preceded
him. It was said that he knew everything, save the caresses of women;
that he was familiar with all languages; with the speech of bird and
beast; with that of silence, for silence is a language too; that he had
prayed in the Temple of Jupiter Lycoeus, where men lost their shadows,
their lives as well; that he had undergone eighty initiations of
Mithra; that he had perplexed the magi; confuted the gymnosophists;
that he foretold the future, healed the sick, raised the dead; that
beyond the Himalayas he had encountered every species of ferocious
beast, except the tyrant, and that it was to see one that he had come
to Rome.
Nero was quite free from prejudice. Apart from a doll which he
worshipped he had no superstitions. He had the plain man's dislike of
philosophy; Seneca had sickened him of it, perhaps; but he was
sensitive, not that he troubled himself particularly about any lies
that were told of him, but he did object to people who went about
telling the truth. In that respect he was not unique; we are all like
him, but he had ways of stilling the truth which were imperial and his
own.
Promptly on Apollonius he loosed his bull-dog, Tigellin, prefect of
police.
Tigellin caught him. "What have you with you?" he asked.
"Continence, Justice, Temperance, Strength and Patience," Apollonius
answered.
"Your slaves, I suppose. Make out a list of them."
Apollonius shook his head. "They are not my slaves; they are my
masters."
"There is but one," Tigellin retorted--"Nero. Why do you not fear him?"
"Because the god that made him terrible made me without fear."
"I will leave you your liberty," muttered the startled Tigellin, "but
you must give bail."
"And who," asked Apollonius superbly, "would bail a man whom no one can
enchain?" Therewith he turned and disappeared.
At that time Nero was in training to suffocate a lion in the arena. A
few days later he killed himself. Simultaneously there came news from
Syracuse. A woman of rank had given birth to a child with three heads.
Apollonius examined it.
"There will be three emperors at once," he announced. "But their reign
will be shorter than that of kings on the stage."
Within that year Galba, who was emperor for an instant, died at the
gates of Rome. Vitellius, after being emperor in little else than
dream, was butchered in the Forum; and Otho, in that fine antique
fashion, killed himself in Gaul. Apollonius meanwhile was in
Alexandria, predicting the purple to Vespasian, the rise of the House
of Flavia; invoking Jupiter in his protege's behalf; and presently, the
prediction accomplished, he was back in Rome, threatening Domitian,
warning him that the House of Flavia would fall.
The atmosphere was then charged with the marvellous; the world was
filled with prodigies, with strange gods, beckoning chimeras and
credulous crowds. Belief in the supernatural was absolute; the occult
sciences, astrology, magic, divination, all had their adepts. In Greece
there were oracles at every turn, and with them prophets who taught the
art of adultery and how to construe the past. On the banks of the Rhine
there were girls who were regarded as divinities, and in Gaul were men
who were held wholly divine.
Jerusalem too had her follies. There was Simon the Magician, founder of
gnosticism, father of every heresy, Messiah to the Jews, Jupiter to the
Gentiles--an impudent self-made god, who pretended to float in the air,
and called his mistress Minerva--a deification, parenthetically, which
was accepted by Nicholas, his successor, a deacon of the church, who
raised her to the eighth heaven as patron saint of lust. To him, as to
Simon, she was Ennoia, Prunikos, Helen of Troy. She had been Delilah,
Lucretia. She had prostituted herself to every nation; she had sung in
the by-ways, and hidden robbers in the vermin of her bed. But by Simon
she was rehabilitated. It was she, no doubt, of whom Caligula thought
when he beckoned to the moon. In Rome she had her statue, and near it
was one to Simon, the holy god.
But of all manifestations of divinity the most patent was that which
haloed Vespasian. He expected it, Suetonius says, but it is doubtful if
any one else did. One night he dreamed that an era of prosperity was to
dawn for him and his when Nero lost a tooth. The next day he was shown
one which had been drawn from the emperor's mouth. But that was
nothing. Presently at Carmel the Syrian oracle assured him that he
would be successful in whatever he undertook. From Rome word came that,
while the armies of Vitellius and Otho were fighting, two eagles had
fought above them, and that the victor had been despatched by a third
eagle that had come from the East. In Alexandria Serapis whispered to
him. The entire menagerie of Egypt proclaimed him king. Apis bellowed,
Anubis barked. Isis visited him unveiled. The lame and the blind
pressed about him; he cured them with a touch. There could be no
reasonable doubt now; surely he was a god. On his shoulders Apollonius
threw the purple, and Vespasian set out for Rome.
His antecedents were less propitious. The descendant of an obscure
centurion, he had been a veterinary surgeon; then, having got
Caligula's ear, he flattered it abominably. Caligula disposed of, he
flattered Claud, or what amounted to the same thing, Narcissus, Claud's
chamberlain. Through the influence of the latter he became a
lieutenant, fought on remote frontiers--fought well, too--so well even
that, Narcissus gone, he felt Agrippina watching him, and knowing the
jealousy of her eyes, prudently kept quiet until that lady did.
With Nero he promenaded through Greece--sat at the Olympian games and
fell asleep when his emperor sang. Treason of that high
nature--sacrilege, rather, for Nero was then a god--might have been
overlooked, had it occurred but once, for Nero could be magnanimous
when he chose. But it always occurred. To Nero's tremolo invariably
came the accompaniment of Vespasian's snore. He was dreaming of that
tooth, no doubt. "I am not a soporific, am I?" Nero gnashed at him, and
sent the blasphemer away.
For a while Vespasian lived in constant expectation of some civil
message inviting him to die. Finally it came, only he was invited to
die at the head of an army which Nero had projected against seditious
Jews. When he returned, leaving his son Titus to attend to Jerusalem,
it was as emperor.
Only a moment before Vitellius had been disposed of. That curious
glutton, whom the Rhenish legions had chosen because of his coarse
familiarity, would willingly have fled had the soldiery let him. But
not at all; they wanted a prince of their own manufacture. They knew
nothing of Vespasian, cared less; and into the Capitol they chased the
latter's partisans, his son Domitian as well. The besieged defended
themselves with masterpieces, with sacred urns, the statues of gods,
the pedestals of divinities. Suddenly the Capitol was aflame.
Simultaneously Vespasian's advance guard beat at the gates. The
besiegers turned, the mob was with them, and together they fought,
first at the gates, then in the streets, in the Forum, retreating
always, but like lions, their face to the foe. The volatile mob, noting
the retreat, turned from combatant into spectator. Let the soldiers
fight; it was their duty, not theirs; and, as the struggle continued,
from roof and window they eyed it with that artistic delight which the
arena had developed, applauding the clever thrusts, abusing the
vanquished, robbing the dead, and therewith pillaging the wineshops,
crowding the lupanars. During the orgy, Vitellius was stabbed. The
Flavians had won the day, the empire was Vespasian's.
The use he made of it was very modest. In spite of his manifest
divinity he had nothing in common with the Caesars that had gone
before; he had no dreams of the impossible, no desire to frighten
Jupiter or seduce the moon. He was a plain man, tall and ruddy, very
coarse in speech and thought, open-armed and close-fisted, slapping
senators on the back and keeping a sharp eye on the coppers; taxing the
latrinae, and declaring that money had no smell; yet still, in
comparison with Claud and Nero, almost the ideal; absolutely
uninteresting also, yet doing what good he could; effacing at once the
traces of the civil war, rebuilding the Capitol, calming the people,
protecting the provinces, restoring to Rome the gardens of Nero,
clipping the wings of the Palace of Gold, throwing open again the Via
Sacra, over which the Palace had spread; draining the lake that had
shimmered before it, and erecting the Colosseum in its place.
In spite of Serapsis, Anubis and Isis, he had not the faintest odor of
myth about him; absolutely bourgeois, he lacked even that atmosphere of
burlesque that surrounded Claud; he was not even vicious. But he was a
soldier, a brave one; and if, with the acquired economy of a subaltern
who has been obliged to live on his pay, he kept his purse-strings
tight, they were loose enough if a friend were in need, and he paid no
one the compliment of a lie. He was projected sheer out of the
republic. The better part of his life had been passed under arms; the
delicate sensuality of Rome was foreign to him. It was there that
Domitian had lived.
It were interesting to have watched that young man killing flies by the
hour, while he meditated on the atrocities he was to commit--atrocities
so numberless and needless that in the red halls of the Caesars he has
left a portrait which is unique. Slender, graceful, handsome, as were
all the young emperors of old Rome, his blue, troubled eyes took
pleasure, if at all, only in the sight of blood.
In accordance with the fashion which Caligula and Nero had set,
Domitian's earliest manners were those of an urbane and gentle prince.
Later, when he made it his turn to rule, informers begged their bread
in exile. Where they are not punished, he announced, they are
encouraged. The sacrifices were so distressing to him that he forbade
the immolation of oxen. He was disinterested, too, refusing legacies
when the testator left nearer heirs, and therewith royally generous,
covering his suite with presents, and declaring that to him avarice of
all vices was the lowest and most vile. In short, you would have said
another adolescent Nero come to Rome; there was the same silken
sweetness of demeanor, the same ready blush, in addition to a zeal for
justice and equity which other young emperors had been too thoughtless
to show.
His boyhood, too, had not been above reproach. The same things were
whispered about him that had been shouted at Augustus. Manifestly he
lacked not one of the qualities which go to the making of a model
prince. Vespasian alone had his doubts.
"Mushrooms won't hurt you," he cried one day, as Domitian started at
the sight of a ragout a la Sardanapale, which he fancied, possibly, was
a la Locuste, "It is steel you should fear."
At that time, with a father for emperor and a brother who was sacking
Jerusalem, Domitian had but one cause for anxiety, to wit--that the
empire might escape him. It was then he began his meditations over
holocausts of flies. For hours he secluded himself, occupied solely
with their slaughter. He treated them precisely as Titus treated the
Jews, enjoying the quiver of their legs, the little agonies of their
silent death.
Tiberius had been in love with solitude, but never as he. Night after
night he wandered on the terraces of the palace, watching the red moon
wane white, companioned only by his dreams, those waking dreams that
poets and madmen share, that Pallas had him in her charge, that Psyche
was amorous of his eyes.
Meanwhile he was a nobody, a young gentleman merely, who might have
moved in the best society, and who preferred the worst--his own. The
sudden elevation of Vespasian preoccupied him, and while he knew that
in the natural course of events his father would move to Olympus, yet
there was his brother Titus, on whose broad shoulders the mantle of
purple would fall. If the seditious Jews only knew their business! But
no. Forty years before a white apparition on the way to Golgotha had
cried to a handful of women, "The days are coming in which they shall
say to the mountains, 'Fall on us'; to the hills, 'Cover us.'" And the
days had come. A million of them had been butchered. From the country
they had fled to the city; from Acra they had climbed to Zion. When the
city burst into flames their blood put it out. Decidedly they did not
know their business. Titus, instead of being stabbed before Jerusalem's
walls, was marching in triumph to Rome.
The procession that presently entered the gates was a stream of
splendor; crowns of rubies and gold; garments that glistened with gems;
gods on their sacred pedestals; prisoners; curious beasts; Jerusalem in
miniature; pictures of war; booty from the Temple, the veil, the
candelabra, the cups of gold and the Book of the Law. To the rear
rumbled the triumphal car, in which laurelled and mantled Titus stood,
Vespasian at his side; while, in the distance, on horseback, came
Domitian--a supernumerary, ignored by the crowd.
When the prisoners disappeared in the Tullianum and a herald shouted,
"They have lived!" Domitian returned to the palace and hunted morosely
for flies. The excesses of the festival in which Rome was swooning then
had no delights for him. Presently the moon would rise, and then on the
deserted terrace perhaps he would bathe a little in her light, and
dream again of Pallas and of the possibilities of an emperor's sway,
but meanwhile those blue troubled eyes that Psyche was amorous of were
filled with envy and with hate. It was not that he begrudged Titus the
triumph. The man who had disposed of a million Jews deserved not one
triumph, but ten. It was the purple that haunted him.
Domitian was then in the early twenties. The Temple of Peace was
ascending; the Temple of Janus was closed; the empire was at rest. Side
by side with Vespasian, Titus ruled. From the Euphrates came the rumor
of some vague revolt. Domitian thought he would like to quell it. He
was requested to keep quiet. It occurred to him that his father ought
to be ashamed of himself to reign so long. He was requested to vacate
his apartment. There were dumb plots in dark cellars, of which only the
echo of a whisper has descended to us, but which at the time were quite
loud enough to reach Vespasian's ears. Titus interceded. Domitian was
requested to behave.
For a while he prowled in the moonlight. He had been too precipitate,
he decided, and to allay suspicion presently he went about in society,
mingling his hours with those of married women. Manifestly his ways had
mended. But Vespasian was uneasy. A comet had appeared. The doors of
the imperial mausoleum had opened of themselves, besides, he was not
well. The robust and hardy soldier, suddenly without tangible cause,
felt his strength give way. "It is nothing," his physician said; "a
slight attack of fever." Vespasian shook his head; he knew things of
which the physician was ignorant. "It is death," he answered, "and an
emperor should meet it standing."
Titus' turn came next. A violent, headstrong, handsome, rapacious
prince, terribly prodigal, thoroughly Oriental, surrounded by dancers
and mignons, living in state with a queen for mistress, startling even
Rome with the uproar of his debauches--no sooner was Vespasian gone
than presto! the queen went home, the dancers disappeared, the
debauches ceased, and a ruler appeared who declared he had lost a day
that a good action had not marked; a ruler who could announce that no
one should leave his presence depressed.