While in Rome pleasures alternated with horrors the troops commanded
by Numerian marched over rough roads, amid severe privations, to the
Bosporus. Here they were joined by the fugitive Mesembrius who, when
he left Rome, fled directly to Numerian.
No one had been able to see this noble Caesar for several weeks. He
suffered severe pain in his eyes, and did not leave his tent.
Mesembrius made his complaint to the leaders next in command. One,
Diocletian, promised to avenge him, while the second, Aper, referred
to Numerian and refrained from giving any opinion of his own.
"Then let me go to Numerian; if I speak to him, he will be the first
to draw his sword against his brother," urged the Senator.
"You cannot see him," replied Aper, placing himself before the
entrance to Numerian's tent. "No one except myself is allowed to speak
to him during his illness. He even gives his orders to the army
through me alone."
Mesembrius sniffed the air suspiciously.
"Why does so strong a smell of musk and amber come from this tent?"
"Why?" repeated Aper, his face blanching. "Why do you desire to know,
Senator?"
"What?" retorted Mesembrius; "because you lie, Aper, when you say that
Numerian issues his orders through you."
"What? What do you mean?" shouted the soldiers who had gathered around
the two.
"I mean that Numerian is no longer living!" cried Mesembrius in
ringing tones. "No, no, the strong odour of amber issuing from his
tent is only to disguise the scent of corruption, and Aper has long
taken advantage of you by issuing orders in Numerian's name."
The soldiers forced their way into Numerian's tent and found the old
man's words confirmed. Numerian had lain dead a long time; his body
was far advanced in decomposition.
Aper was instantly put in chains by the soldiers on account of this
deception; in the afternoon an empty throne was erected in the open
fields for the election of a new Imperator.
Mesembrius walked through the ranks of the legions, recommending
Diocletian, whom the soldiers fairly forced to take his seat upon the
throne.
Then Aper was brought forward.
"I charge you, publicly and plainly," said Mesembrius, "with having
murdered Numerian and betrayed us to Carinus."
"And we condemn you," roared the army with one voice.
"And I execute the sentence," said Diocletian, stabbing with his own
hand the prisoner sentenced by the troops.
In the midst of this wrathful mood Marcius arrived with the order
given to him by Manlius and, without knowing what had happened, he
delivered his appointment to the new Caesar.
"Who is this?" asked Diocletian, turning to Mesembrius.
"The Caesar's barber."
Diocletian turned smiling to the soldiers.
"Friends! Carinus provided for our beards and sent us a barber with
the rank of an Imperator; pray sit down before him and have yourselves
shaved. But do you take care not to cut my soldiers' faces, my little
friend, for if they should try their big razors on you, you would fare
ill."
The soldiers, amid loud shouts of laughter, dragged Marcius off with
them, and made him shave their bristling beards.
Scarcely an hour later Aevius arrived with the command to dismiss half
the army at once.
This enraged the Caesar and the whole body of troops. To assail their
interests so boldly was presumptuous even from the Imperator.
"To the funeral pyre with the messenger and his message!" cried
Diocletian, and the poet had already been bound to the huge pile of
logs when he sighed bitterly:
"O ye gods, must I, while still living, witness my own apotheosis?"
Diocletian laughed at the idea and ordered the poet to be brought down
from the funeral pyre, contenting himself with putting him in the
pillory, after which he sent him back to Rome with a message
declaring war against Carinus.
* * * * *
The thunderstorm was rising, though as yet it sent forth no lightning.
In Rome it was openly stated that the army sent to the West, filled
with mortal hatred of Carinus, had already reached the Ister, only
nothing was said of it in the Caesar's palace. There revelry was
perpetual and if, from time to time, any one alluded to Diocletian's
approach, he was pitilessly derided.
"Who is this peasant?" asked Manlius. "Who ever heard his name among
the patricians of Rome? Who knew his father? His mother, on the
contrary, was known by many. She was a slave in the house of Senator
Anulinus. Anulinus has a right to demand him as a fruit of his
household."
The courtiers laughed at the jest.
"You must know him, Manlius?"
"I have never seen him. I used to be where danger threatened, and I
never saw Diocletian. I know him because I was told that he always led
the rearguard when we were marching forward, and the vanguard when we
were retiring."
Peals of laughter greeted the words.
"And what is the character of his army?" he was asked.
"It is a valiant, obedient body. It has killed three of its
Imperators. As for its courage and fearlessness, it is peerless in
those qualities, for it retreated from the banks of the Tigris without
having seen an enemy. When I tell you that I myself was the greatest
hero among them, you can judge of the rest."
"And your news of victories?"
"Were two-thirds inventions. Although we sometimes gained one, we owed
it to our superior numbers; but the army must now be greatly reduced
by desertion and disease."
This sycophantic nation liked nothing better than to hear the soldiers
slandered, and therefore Manlius even slandered himself.
When Diocletian's army approached so close, however, that there could
no longer be any doubt as to the danger, the imperial generals
urgently pressed the Imperator to prepare for war, and Carinus
gathered his troops from the European provinces.
Suddenly the rumour spread that Carinus would command his army in
person. He could be seen at two military exercises, the reviews of the
troops. Manlius was always at his side, constantly stimulating his
vanity or his jealousy by entreating him not to leave the victories to
his leaders or commit the course of the campaign to their knowledge
and prudence.
"The victorious general is a new foe," Manlius was in the habit of
saying, and the Imperator assumed the chief command of the assembled
forces, and produced no bad effect mounted on his grey charger and
clad in a suit of gold armour, with a purple striped violet mantle
floating around his shoulders.
On the day before the departure of the army, the leaders went to all
the temples in turn, offering sacrifices everywhere, even on the
altars of the Egyptian gods. Manlius assisted in bringing the animals
selected for victims to the haruspex.
The populace listened in solemn devotion to the augur's words.
Quaterquartus extended his arms and, with closed eyes, said, in deep
tones:
"This battle will ruin the enemy of Rome."
True, he did not say whom he considered the enemy of Rome--whether
Diocletian or Carinus.
At last the imperial procession reached Cybele's temple. Amid a
deafening uproar of drums and blaring trumpets, the frantic
priestesses were dancing in the open portico, stabbing their bodies
with knives, muttering with foaming lips incomprehensible words, and
whirling around till, overcome by giddiness, they fell to the floor.
Suddenly a shriek, shriller, more terrible than any other sound in
this inharmonious uproar, rang above the din; a shriek so piercing, so
heart-rending, that every one gazed trembling in the direction of the
sound.
A woman's tall figure stood beneath the pillars; a long white mantle,
which she clutched with both hands, floated from her head to her feet.
"Woe betide thee, Rome! Woe betide ye, Roman people! Woe betide thee,
Imperator of Rome!"
The woman came out into the portico and, as she fixed her cold,
expressionless eyes upon the throng, Carinus, seized with horror,
grasped the hand of Manlius, who stood by his side.
"That is Glyceria."
Manlius also shrank back in terror.
The madwoman, with the face of a prophetess, stood upon the steps of
the temple.
"Woe to those born on Roman soil, the children who must atone for the
sins of the fathers, and the fathers upon whom the curse of their
children falls. O Roma! The stars of ruin will appear in thy sky, and
the earth will tremble beneath thee! Horror will dwell within thy
walls, and peace will remain far distant. Foes will trample thee under
their feet, foreign nations will show thee thy banners which they have
wrested from thee, thou wilt beseech Barbarian enemies to grant thee
the bare gift of life, and thy greatest foes will dwell within thy
walls, for they are thine own emperors! The air, corrupted by the
curses uttered, will bring the plague upon ye, miserable mortals!
Those whom famine spares will perish in battle; those whom the sea
rejects the earth will swallow! O Rome, thou queen of nations, thou
wilt be orphaned; thou wilt vanish like the star that falls into the
waves; nothing will be left of thee save the memory of thy sins, and
the grass which will grow over thy palaces; even thy gods will
disappear from thy temples so that, in thy despair, thou canst pray to
no one!"
A tribune bent forward to kiss the maniac's hand, and ask in a timid
voice:
"What result dost thou predict for the battle to which Carinus is just
marching?"
Glyceria heard the question, and looked gloomily at the soldiers.
"Fear nothing! Destroy, set brother against brother, whoever may
conquer--Rome has lost. If Carinus is victor, he will uproot half
Rome; if Diocletian conquers, he will destroy the other half, and
both are well deserved. March to battle, mad nation; shed thy blood,
kill thy sons, let them die in tortures and remain unburied. When
their souls flutter away in the autumn mist, they will be forgotten.
Men, behold your wives clasped in the arms of others, your houses
burned, your children dragged to slavery, and know that there is no
world where ye can find compensation. Go! Die accursed and
despairing!"
Amid terrible convulsions, she sank down on the steps of the temple
and, with outstretched arms, cursed the Roman people even while her
lips were almost incapable of speech.
"Take back your curse!" shouted the flamen Dialis, rushing up to her
and seizing her hand.
With her last strength Glyceria raised herself, her eyes rolled wildly
over the throng and, once more summoning all the bitterness of her
heart, she raised both hands and extending them over the multitude
shrieked:
"Be accursed!"
With these words she fell back lifeless, her staring eyes, even in
death, fixed upon Manlius.