THE SHIP OF THE DEAD.
“It is of no use in the world, Plancus, your attempting to reason me out
of a fixed resolve,” said the lady Longa Duilia, peevishly. “My Corbulo
shall not have a shabby funeral.”
“Madam, I do not suggest that,” said the steward humbly, rubbing his
hands.
“Yes, you do. It is of no good your standing on one leg like a stork.
Shabby it must be—no ancestors present. As the Gods love me, you would not
have me borrow ancestors of Asclepiades, our client, who has lent us this
villa! He may have them or not, that is no concern of mine. Will you have
done preening yourself like an old cockroach. I say it would be an
indignity to have a funeral for my Corbulo without ancestors. O Times! O
Morals! What is the good of having ancestors if you do not use them?”
“But, Madam, they are in your palace at Rome in the Carinæ—or at the
Gabian villa.”
“And for that reason they are not here. Without the attendance of his
forbears, my Corbulo shall not be buried. Besides, who is there to impress
here with the solemnity? Only a lot of wretched sailors, ship sutlers, Jew
pedlers and petty officials, not worth considering. I have said it.”
“But, Lady, Lucius Lamia agrees with me——”
“Lucius Ælius Lamia—it will not exhaust your lungs to give him his name
more fully—is not as yet one of the family.”
“Madam, consider how Agrippina did with Germanicus—she had his pyre at
Antioch, and conveyed his ashes to Rome.”
“Agrippina was able to have the funeral conducted with solemn pomp at
Antioch. There were the soldiers, the lictors, great officers and all that
sort of thing. Here—nothing at all. By the Immortals—consider the
expenses, and none to look on gaping but tarry sailors and Jew
rag-and-bone men.”
“Madam!”
“Silence. Without ancestors!—as impossible as without wood.”
To understand the point made so much of by the widow, the Roman funeral
custom must be understood.
On the death of a noble or high official, his face was immediately moulded
in wax, into a mask, or rather, into two masks, that were colored and
supplied with glass eyes. One was placed over the dead face, when the
corpse lay in state, and when he was conveyed to his funeral pyre, and the
first effect of the rising flames was to dissolve the mask and disclose
the dead features.
The ancient Greeks before they burned their dead laid gold-leaf masks on
their faces, and in a still earlier time the face of the corpse was rouged
with oxide of iron, to give it a false appearance of life.
But the second mask was preserved for the family portrait gallery.
When a Roman gentleman or lady was carried forth to his funeral pyre, he
was preceded by a procession of actors dressed up in the togas and
military or municipal insignia of departed ancestors, each wearing the wax
mask of him he personified. For these masks were preserved with great care
in the _atrium_ of the house.
Now as Longa Duilia saw, to have her husband burned at Cenchræa, without a
procession of imitation ancestors, would be to deprive the funeral of its
most impressive feature.
Plancus had advised the burning at the port, with shorn rites, and that
the ashes should be placed in the family mausoleum at Gabii, and that the
utmost dignity should be accorded to this latter ceremony sufficient to
content the most punctilious widow.
But this did not please the lady. The notion of a funeral with maimed pomp
was distasteful to her; moreover, as she argued, it was illegal to have
two funerals for the same man.
“That,” said Plancus, “hardly applies to one who has died out of Italy.”
“It is against the law,” replied Duilia. “I will give no occasion to
objection, offer no handle to informers. Besides, I won’t have it. The
respect I owe to Corbulo forbids the entertainment of such an idea.
Really, and on my word, Plancus, I am not a child to be amused with shadow
pictures, and unless you are making a rabbit, a fish, or a pig eating out
of a trough, I cannot conceive what you are about with your hands,
fumbling one over the other.”
“Madam, I had no thought——”
“I know you have none. Be pleased another time when addressing me to keep
your hands quiet, it is irritating. One never knows where they are or will
be, sometimes folding and unfolding them, then—they disappear up your
sleeves and project none can guess where—like snails’ horns. Be
pleased,—and now pawing your face like a cat washing itself. Please in
future hold them in front of you like a dog when sitting up, begging. But
as to the funeral—I will not have it cheap and nasty. Without ancestors a
funeral is not worth having.”
“Then,” said the harassed freedman, “there is nothing for it but to engage
an embalmer.”
“Of course—one can be obtained at Corinth. Everything can be had for
money.”
As Plancus was retiring, the lady recalled him.
“Here,” said she, “do not act like a fool, and let the man charge a fancy
price. Say that I have an idea of pickling Corbulo in brine, and have
brought an _amphora_ large enough for the purpose. Don’t close with his
terms at once.”
When the steward was gone, then Longa Duilia turned her head languidly and
summoned a slave-girl.
“Lucilla! The unfortunate feature of the situation is that I must not have
my hair combed till we reach Gabii. It is customary, and for a bracelet of
pearls I would not transgress custom. You can give my head a tousled look,
without being dishevelled, I would wish to appear interesting, not
untidy.”
“Lady! Nothing could make you other than fascinating. A widow in
tears—some stray locks—it would melt marble.”
“And I think I shall outdo Agrippina,” said Duilia, “she carried her
husband’s cinders in an urn at the head of her berth and on appropriate
occasions howled in the most tragic and charming manner. But I shall
convey the unconsumed body of my Corbulo in state exposed on his bier, in
his military accoutrements all the way to Rhegium, then up the coast to
Ostia and so to Gabii. There will be talk!”
“You will be cited in history as a widow the like of which the world has
never seen. As for Agrippina, in your superior blaze she will be eclipsed
forever.”
“I should prefer doing what Agrippina did—make a land journey from
Brindisium, but—but—one must consider. It would be vastly expensive,
and——”
But the lady did not finish the sentence. She considered that Nero might
resent such a demonstration, as exciting indignation against himself, in
having obliged Corbulo to put an end to his life. But she did not dare to
breathe her thought even into the ear of a slave.
“No,” she said; “it would come too expensive. I will do what I can to
honor my husband, but not ruin myself.”
When Longa Duilia had resolved to have her own way, and that was always,
then all the entire family of slaves and retainers, freedmen and clients
knew it must be done.
The vessel after a brief stay at Cenchræa had left for Diolcus where it
had been placed on rollers and conveyed across the isthmus, and was
launched in the Corinthian Gulf.
Nero had been engaged for some days in excavating a canal between the two
seas. He had himself turned the first sod, but after getting some little
way, rock was encountered of so hard a quality that to cut through it
would cost time, toil and money.
He speedily tired of the scheme, wanted the money it would have cost for
some dramatic exhibition, and was urged by Helios, a freedman whom he had
left in Rome, to return to Italy, to prevent an insurrection that was
simmering. Nero did not much believe in danger, but he had laden his fleet
with the plunder of Greece, he had strutted and twittered on every stage,
carried off every prize in every contest, and was desirous of being
applauded in Italy and at Rome for what he had achieved, and exhibit there
the chaplets he had won.
Accordingly he started, and hardly had he done so before the Artemis with
spread sail swept down the Corinthian Gulf.
The ship, a Liburnian, of two banks of oars, was constructed very
differently from a modern vessel. The prow was armed above water-mark with
three strong and sharp blades, called the _rostra_, the beaks, which when
driven into the side of an enemy would tear her open and sink her.
The quarter-deck was midships, and served a double purpose, being raised
as high as the bulwarks it served as an elevated place where the captain
could stand and survey the horizon and watch the course of the vessel, and
it also served to strengthen the mast.
On this quarter-deck, on a bed of state, lay the body of Cnæus Domitius
Corbulo, with his sword at his side, and the wax mask over his face. At
his feet was a tripod with glowing coals on which occasionally incense and
Cilician crocus were sprinkled, and on each side of his head blazed
torches of pinewood dipped in pitch.
The poop had a covered place, called the _aplaustre_, in which sat the
steerer. The hinged rudder had not then been invented, it was a discovery
of the Middle Ages, and the head of the vessel was given its direction by
the helmsman, _gubernator_, who worked a pair of broad flat paddles, one
on each side.
The rowers, under the deck, were slaves, but the sailors were freemen. The
rowers were kept in stroke by a piper, who played continually when the
vessel was being propelled; and the rowers were under the direction and
command of a _hortator_, so called because his voice was incessantly
heard, urging, reprimanding, praising, threatening.
The captain of a Roman vessel was not supreme in authority on board ship
as with us, but if the vessel contained military, he was subject to the
control of the superior military officer.
The passage down the Corinthian Bay was effected without difficulty,
before a favorable wind, but as the vessel was about to pass out of it,
the wind suddenly changed and blew a squall from the west. And at this
moment an accident occurred that was seriously embarrassing. Whilst the
captain was standing near the steersman giving him directions relative to
the passage of the straits, a wave rolling in caught the paddle, and
caused it by the blow to snap the bronze bolt of the eye in which it
worked, and the handle flying up and forward, struck the captain on the
forehead, threw him down, and he fell against the bulwark so as to cut
open his head. He had to be carried below insensible.
The Artemis lay under shelter till the gale abated, and then consultation
arose as to what was to be done.
Lucius Lamia took the command, he was competent to manage the vessel, with
the advice, if needed, of the mate. He and all were reluctant to put back
to Lechæum, the port of Corinth, on the Gulf, and the broken eye in which
the paddle worked was repaired with a stout thong, which, as the steersman
said, would hold till Adria was crossed and Rhegium was reached.
The squall had passed, and the look of the sky was promising; moreover the
wind was again favorable.
“Sir,” said the mate, “my opinion is that we should make all speed across
Adria. This is a bad season of the year. It is a month in which sailing is
overpassed. We must take advantage of our chances. While the wind blows,
let us spread sail. The rowers can ship their oars; should the wind fail,
or prove contrary, they will be required, and they may have a hard time of
it. Therefore let them husband their strength.”
“So be it,” answered Lucius Lamia.
And now the Artemis, with sail spread, leaning on one side, drave through
the rippling water, passed the Straits into the Adriatic, with the
mountains of Ætolia to the north, and the island of Cephalonia in the blue
west before her; and as she flew, she left behind her a trail of foam in
the water, and a waft of smoke in the air from the torches that glowed
about the dead general on the quarter-deck.