_THE LAST OF THE CLAUDII_
‘Tu quoque extinctus jaces
Deflende nobis semper, infelix puer,
Modo sidus orbis, columen Augustæ domus,
Britannice.’
SENECA, _Octavia_.
The poor young prince was carried by the slaves to his cubiculum. The
poison had been like a dagger-thrust; but he was not quite dead. He
lay at first unconscious, his breast heaving with irregular spasmodic
sighs. Acte stole into his chamber, wept over him, strove to revive
him, and, if possible, to assuage his pangs. It was too late. He did
not recognise her. The moment he could escape from the triclinium
Titus came, and found the slave-boy Epictetus sitting at the foot
of the couch, with his head covered. ‘He yet lives,’ said the boy,
raising for one moment a cheek down which, in spite of every Stoic
lesson, the tears chased each other fast. Titus sat down by his
friend, called his name, clasped his hand, and wailed aloud without
restraint. One almost imperceptible pressure of the hand proved
that there was an instant recognition. A Christian slave had
secretly brought Linus into the room, which was easy in so numerous
a household; and bending over him Linus sprinkled his brow with pure
water, raising up his eyes and his hands to heaven. None present
knew what it meant; but Britannicus knew. A lambent smile lit his
features for a moment, like the last gleam of a fading sunset, for
he understood that he had been baptised.
It was the last conscious impression of his young life. The moment
that the banquet ended, Octavia, still in her splendid apparel,
hurried wildly to the chamber. It was a chamber of death. Already
the incense was burning, already the cypress had been placed before
the Propylæa of the Palatine. The boy lay there, silent, noble,
beautiful, pale as a statue carved in alabaster; and Octavia
disburdened the long-pent agony of repression in such a storm of
weeping that her attendants tried to lead her away. But she tore
off her jewels, and flung her arms round the corpse of her brother,
and laid her head upon his breast, and sobbed aloud. Father, mother,
brother, her first young and noble lover, Silanus--all who had ever
loved and cared for her were gone. He was the last of all his race.
The last male Claudius, whose line was derived through that long and
splendid ancestry of well-nigh seven hundred years, was lying before
her on that lowly bed!
He was to be buried that very night, as though he had been a pauper
and not the noblest boy of an imperial aristocracy. There was
something fatally suspicious in the rapidity with which every
preparation was made.
The obolus for Charon was put under his tongue; the fair young body
was arrayed in its finest robe, was laid on a bier, and was carried
to the vestibule with its feet towards the door; and as it lay there
Titus brought in his hand a wreath of lilies, which he had begged
from the keeper of the exotic flowers, and placed it on the innocent
forehead of his friend. He turned away with the words, which could
scarcely make their way through sobs, ‘Farewell! forever farewell!’
But he never forgot that boyish affection; and long years after, when
he was Emperor, he placed in the Palace a statue of Britannicus in
gold, and at solemn processions he had an equestrian statuette of
ivory carried before him which represented the young prince whose
love to him had been far truer and closer than that of his own
brother.
Only for one instant did Nero venture to look on his handiwork. He
came into the vestibule in his festal robes, his eyes heavy, the
garland still on his dishevelled hair, accompanied by Tigellinus
and Senecio.
‘I suppose he died in the fit?’ he said to one of the slaves.
‘He breathed his last,’ answered the man, ‘within an hour of being
carried from the feast.’
Something disquieted Nero. Furtively pointing his finger towards the
dead boy, he said something to Tigellinus.
‘A little chalk will set that right,’ whispered Tigellinus in reply,
and he gave an order into the ear of his confidential slave. Leave
the corpse a moment,’ he said aloud to the attendants; ‘the Emperor
wishes to take a last look at his brother.’
The slave of Tigellinus brought a piece of chalk; and Nero, with his
own hand, chalked over some livid patches on the dead boy’s face,
which already betrayed the horrible virulence of the poison.
‘Why linger in the charnel-house?’ said Senecio affectedly. ‘Cæsar,
may we not have some more wine to refresh our sorrow?’
They turned away, and, before they were outside the hall, a light
laugh woke a shuddering echo along the fretted roof.
The bearers were on the point of lifting the bier when Agrippina
entered. The dullest of the spectators could see that there was
nothing feigned in her anguish as she wept and tore her hair. She
grieved for Britannicus, whom she had so irreparably wronged, but
hers was a wild and selfish grief, the grief of rage and frustrated
purposes. She had built upon this boy’s life to keep her son in
terror of her influence. She saw now of what crimes Nero had already
become capable. He who in so brief a space had developed into a
fratricide, how long would it be ere he would spare the life of an
obnoxious mother? She felt, even then, in a bitterness of soul which
could not be expressed, that even-handed justice was commending the
ingredients of the poisoned chalice to her own lips.
The obsequies were not only disgracefully hurried, but disgracefully
mean. Every ceremony which marked a great public funeral was omitted.
There were no lictors dressed in black; no _siticines_ with mourning
strains; nor _præficæ_, or wailing women; no _lessus_, or funeral
dirge. Happily too, as some thought, there were not the customary
buffoons, nor the _archimimus_ to imitate the words and actions of
the deceased. Though he was the noblest of the noble, no liberated
slaves walked before his bier, nor men who wore the waxen images
of his long line of ancestors. No relations followed him--men with
veiled heads, women with unbound tresses. Many a freedman, even many
a slave, had a longer funeral procession than the last of the Claudii.
They bore him to his funeral amid storms of rain, which seemed to
betoken the wrath of Heaven. The spectators were few, but those few
saw by the struggling light of their lanterns that where the rain had
washed off the chalk the pale face was marked with patches of black.
They saw this, and pointed it out to one another in silence.
The last offices were paid in haste by the drenched and
half-frightened attendants. The body was laid on the small rough
pyre. Julius Densus was there, and Pudens, and Titus, and Flavius
Clemens. Nero had not the grace to be present. With averted face
Pudens thrust in the torch. The rain had damped the wood, and at
first it would not kindle, but they threw oil and resin into it. At
last it blazed up; the body was consumed: the glowing embers were
quenched with wine. A handful of white ashes in a silver urn, a sad
memory in a few loving hearts, were all that remained on earth of
the poisoned son of an emperor of Rome.
But, when all were gone, a few Christians stole from under the dense
shadow of the trees in that lonely spot, and bowed their heads in
prayer, and sang a low hymn. And among them was he whose hand of
blessing had rested on the young prince’s head, and whose voice of
prophecy had foretold his doom.
And to Pomponia Græcina and her husband, and to Pudens, Claudia,
Titus, Epictetus, and one or two faithful slaves, the world was
poorer than before; but in the heart of the hapless Octavia there
was a void which on earth could never be filled up. And her heart
would haply have broken altogether but for the consolations which
she received from Pomponia, and from Tryphæna, her Christian slave.
For Pomponia had received a letter from Ephesus, where, at that time,
Paul of Tarsus was labouring; and the friend who wrote it told her
something of Paul’s teaching respecting the resurrection of the dead.
One passage in particular, which this friend quoted to her, rang in
her memory: ‘It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption;
it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in
weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is
raised a spiritual body.’ And so, as there remained for Octavia less
and less hope of any joy on earth, glimpses were opened to her more
and more of a hope beyond the grave. And one passage in particular
from one of the old Jewish books, which Linus had pointed out to
Pomponia, seemed to her more lovely than any fragment of lyric song,
and constantly woke a sweet echo in her thoughts. It was--
‘Thy dead men shall live; together with my dead body shall
they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust; for
thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall bring
to life her shades.’