THE SATURNALIA OF 69.
Eboracus brushed aside some urchins and girls blocking the door, looking
in with eager, twinkling eyes at the strange lady and at the set out of
dolls on the table.
There passed whispers and nudges from one to another—but all ceased as the
British slave put together his hands as a swimmer and plunged through
them.
“Get away you sprats and gudgeons,” said he, good-humoredly.
Then entering, he said to Domitia:
“Lady, your mother has reached home in safety. I chanced to run across
Amphibolus, sent out in quest of you, and the good-for-naught had turned
sulky, because it is the Saturnalia, when, said he, the mistress should do
the slave’s bidding. ‘That can be,’ said he, ‘but at one time in the year,
and should not be forgotten.’ And the lanes are clear of rabble. If Paris
here will walk on one side of you and I on the other, it will be well.
That rascal Amphibolus I bade wait, but not he, said he, ‘Io Saturne!’”
“I will attend with joy,” announced the actor.
Domitia rose to leave, she tendered thanks to Glyceria and took two steps
towards the entrance, halted, turned back, and taking the thin hand of the
sick woman in hers, somewhat shyly said:
“I may come again and see you?”
Before Glyceria could reply, so great was her surprise, Domitia was gone.
The streets were nearly empty, they were mere lanes between huge blocks of
windowless buildings, towering into the sky, but from the forum could be
heard a hubbub of voices, cries, the clash of arms, and anon a cheer.
Presently—“Stand aside!” said Paris, and there swept down the lane a
number of young fellows masked and tricked out in ribbons and scraps of
tawdry finery.
“I am the king!” shouted one, “Præfect of the guard, arrest those people.
Ha! a woman. She shall be my captive and grace my triumph.”
Eboracus administered a blow with his fist, planted between the eyes of
the youth in pasteboard armor who came towards his young mistress. The
blow sent him flying backwards against the king and upset him on the
pavement.
A roar of laughter from his mates, and one shouted,
“Hey Tarquinius! thou must e’en fare like the rest, Nero, Galba, Otho—and
hem! we know not who else—but down thou art with the others.”
“Let us go on,” said Paris, and without further attempt at molestation
from the revellers they pursued their way.
On reaching the palace inhabited by Longa Duilia, a fresh difficulty
arose. Eboracus knocked, but there was no porter at the door to answer. He
knocked again and continued to rattle against the panels, till at length
the bolt was withdrawn, and Euphrosyne with timid face, and holding a lamp
appeared in the entrance.
“Why have you kept us so long waiting?” asked the Briton.
“Eboracus, I could not help myself. It is the Saturnalia, and the slaves
will do no menial work. They are carousing in the triclinium and, though
they heard the rap well enough, none would rise and respond. Then, for
very shame I came, for I thought it might be my dear mistress.”
As Domitia crossed the atrium, she heard song and laughter and the click
of goblets issue from the dining-room. She hurried by and entered her
mother’s chamber.
Longa Duilia was in a condition of resentment and irritation.
“You have arrived at last!” said the lady. “I’ll have that British slave’s
hide well basted when the Seven Days are over, for disregarding me and
considering your safety alone. Body of Bacchus! This time of the
Saturnalia is insufferable. Not a servant will do a stroke of work, nor
execute a single order. They are all, forsooth, lords and ladies for seven
days, and we must wait on them. Well! if it were not an old custom, I’d
get up a procession of all the matrons of Rome to entreat the Senate to
abolish the usage.”
“Oh, mother dear, how did you escape?”
“My child! it was as bad as that bit of storm we had getting out of the
Gulf of Corinth, tossed about in my palanquin I hardly knew whether I were
thinking with my head or with my toes. But after a while they got me
through. Never, never again will I go gadding after the Gods to their
Lectisternia. As the Gods love me! this is a topsy-turvy time indeed. At
the Saturnalia no strife is permissible, not a lawsuit, all quarrels are
supposed to cease, not even a malefactor may be executed, and there are
those precious Immortals with their glass eyes, and extended hands
snuffing up the fumes of their dinner, and they allow fighting to go on
before them, under their immortal noses, and never interfere! But I don’t
wonder. There was Summanus, God of the night thunders—and will you believe
it, his own head was struck off by the heavenly bolt. Ye Gods! if ye
cannot mind your own heads ye are not to be trusted with ours.”
The lady was in a condition of towering indignation. She was
affronted—she, highborn, with a drop of Julian blood in her,
somewhere,—she had been tossed about among the heads and over the
shoulders of a dirty, garlic-smelling asafœtida chewing rabble—had been
exposed to danger from the swords of the Vigiles on one side, of the
Palatine guard on the other. And when finally, she reached home ruffled in
garments, her hair in disorder, and her heart beating fast, she found the
house in disorder, the slaves in possession keeping high holiday, and
disregarding her shrilly uttered, imperiously expressed orders.
“I shall go to bed,” said the lady, “I’d lie in bed all these horrible
seven days, but that I know no one will bring me my meals. Never mind—when
the Saturnalia are over, I shall remember which were insolent and
disobliging, and they shall get whippings.”
But in the house, on the morrow the condition of affairs was not quite so
bad. The servants were alive to the fact that they had liberty for seven
days only, and that their mistress had a faculty of remembering and
punishing disobedience; not indeed during the holiday period, nor
ostensibly because of faults then committed, but by administering double
chastisement for light offences committed later.
Some of the slaves, moreover, made no attempt to use their liberty so as
to cause inconvenience to their mistress.
But if some sort of order was established within the palace, none reigned
without. There civil war raged, at the same time that the citizens
observed the festival, and so long as they kept out of the way of the
soldiery, it did not much concern them whether the city force or the
palace garrison prevailed. Primus, at the head of the Illyrian legions was
rapidly advancing on Rome. News had arrived that Spain and Gaul had
declared for Vespasian. Britain had renounced allegiance to Vitellius,
only Africa still remained faithful.
Next tidings arrived that the army of Vitellius that was at Narnia had
surrendered. Thereupon the gross, aged Emperor dressed in black,
surrounded by his servants, and carrying his son, still a child, came
howling and sobbing from the Palatine through the Forum, to surrender the
insignia of Empire into the hands of the Consul, in the Temple of Concord.
But the Consul refused to receive them, and then the German guard, having
wind of his intention, became clamorous, and cried out for the head of
Flavius Sabinus. Vitellius, unable to resign, and incapable of reigning,
wandered from one residence to another, asking advice of all his friends
as to what he ought to do, but taking none.
Meanwhile the fighting in the streets of Rome had recommenced. Titus
Flavius Sabinus, for security escaped into the Capitol, and took with him
his sons and daughter, and his nephew Domitian. There he was formally
besieged by the Imperial guard; and Sabinus, doubting his ability to hold
out long, sent off a despatch to Primus to bid him hasten to his
assistance.
“Madam!” exclaimed Eboracus rushing in, “I pray you come on the roof of
the house.”
“What is the matter? Ye Gods! surely Rome is not on fire again!”
“Madam! The household guard are assaulting the Capitol and have indeed set
fire to the houses below, I doubt if the Præfect can hold out till Primus
arrives.”
Duilia ascended to the flat top of the house. The palace of the family was
in the Carinæ, on the slope of the Esquiline hill, hard by the gardens of
Nero’s Golden House. Being on high ground it commanded the Forum and the
Capitol, and looked over the tops of the vulgar _insulæ_ in the dip of the
Suburra.
It was the evening of the second day. Heavy clouds had lowered throughout
the hours of daylight and the evening had prematurely closed. There had
been desultory fighting all day, but as the night approached a determined
set was made by the German guard to capture the Capitol, and the citadel
of Rome that adjoined it, connected by only a small neck of hill. They
knew that Primus was close at hand, and they were determined not to be
caught between a foe before and another behind.
The Capitol is a rocky height rising precipitately above the Forum, and
enormous substructures had strengthened it and formed a platform on which
rose the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus that stood to Rome almost in the
relation that the Temple did to Jerusalem, as the centre of its religious
and civil institutions.
It was almost the paladium of the city, the fate of Rome was held to be
bound up with its preservation.
And now Domitia and her mother looked on in the gathering darkness at the
temple looming out as of gold against the purple black clouds behind, lit
with the glare of the flames of the houses below that had been fired by
the soldiery.
The roar of conflict came up in waves of sound.
“Really,” said Duilia, “Revolutions are only tolerable when seen from a
house-top; that is, to cultivated minds—the common rabble like them.”
Shrill above the roar came the scream of a whistle, that a boy was blowing
as he went down the street.
Suddenly the clamor boiled up into a mighty spout or geyser of noise, and
the reason became manifest in another moment. The whole sky was lit by a
sheet of flame of golden yellow. The conflagration had caught an oil
merchant’s stores that were planted against the substructures supporting
the temple. Columns, shoots of dazzling light rushed up against the rocks
and the walls, recoiled, swept against them again, overleaped them and
curled like tongues around the temple.
Instantly every sound ceased. The soldiers sheathed their swords. The
citizens held their breath. Nothing for a few minutes was audible, save
the mutter of the fire.
“My lady,” said Euphrosyne, coming to the roof, and addressing Longa
Duilia, “A priest of Jupiter is below, and desires to speak with you.”