THE TULLIANUM.
To be, or not be, that is the question.
HAMLET.
Night was at hand.
The Roman Senate might not sit after the sun had set.
Although the Tribunes had failed, in the consternation of the moment, to
respond to the call of Cæsar, there was no doubt, that, if one night
should intervene, those miscalled magistrates would check the course of
justice.
Confined, apart one from the other, in free custody, the traitors had not
failed to learn all that was passing, almost ere it passed.
Their hopes had been high, when the rabble were alert and thundering at
the prison gates—nor when the charge of the knights had beaten back the
multitude, did they despair; for simultaneously with those evil tidings,
they learned the effect of Cæsar’s speech; and shortly afterward the news
reached them that Cicero’s reply had found few willing auditors.
Confined, apart one from the other, they had eaten and drunken, and their
hearts were "jocund and sublime"; the eloquence of Cæsar, the turbulence
of the tribunes, were their predominant ideas. Confined, apart one from
the other, one thought was common to them all,—immediate liberation,
speedy vengeance.
And, in truth, immediate was the liberation; speedy the vengeance.
Night was at hand.
The Triumvirs, whose duty it was to superintend all capital punishments—a
thing almost unknown in Rome—had been instructed to prepare whatever
should be needful.
Lentulus sat alone in an inner chamber of the house of Publius Lentulus
Spintherus, an Ædile at that time. There was, it is true, a guard at the
door, and clients under arms in the atrium; but in his own apartment the
proud conspirator was still master of himself indeed, soon to be master of
Rome, in his own frantic fantasy.
Bright lights were burning in bronze candelabra; rich wines were before
him; his own favorite freedman leaned on the back of his ivory arm chair,
and jested lightly on the discomfiture of _noble_ Cicero, on the sure
triumph of _democratic_ Cæsar.
"Fill up the glass again, my Phormio," cried the exhilarated parricide;
"this namesake of my own hath good wine, at the least—we may not taste it
again shortly—fill up, I say; and do not spare to brim your own. What if
our boys were beaten in the streets to-day. Brave Cæsar was not beaten in
the Senate."
"By Hercules! no!" cried the wily Greek, base inheritor of a superb
name—"and if he had been checked, there are the tribunes."
"But he was _not_ checked, Phormio?" asked the conspirator in evident
anxiety.
"By your head, no! You shall yet be the THIRD CORNELIUS!"—
"WHO SHALL RULE ROME!"—
The door of the small room was suddenly thrown open, and the tall form of
Cicero stood in the shadow of the entrance. The gleam of the lamps fell
full on his white robes, and glittered on his ivory sceptre; but behind
him it showed the grim dark features of the Capital Triumvirs, and
flickered on the axe-heads of the lictors.
The glass fell from the hand of Lentulus, the wine untasted; and so deep
was the silence of that awful moment, that the gurgling of the liquor as
it trickled from the shattered fragments of the crystal goblet, was
distinctly audible.
There was a silent pause—no word, no motion followed the entrance of the
Consul. Face to face, he stood with the deadliest of his foes, Catiline
absent. Face to face, he stood with his overthrown and subdued enemy. And
yet on his broad tranquil brow there was no frown of hatred; on his calm
lip there there was no curl of gratified resentment, of high triumph.
Raising his hand, with a slow but very solemn gesture, he uttered in his
deep harmonious accents, accents which at that moment spoke in almost an
unnatural cadence, this one word—
"Come."
And calm, and proud, as the Consul, the degraded Senator, the fallen
Consul replied, with a question,
"To death, Consul?"
"Come!"
"Give me my toga, Phormio."
And robing himself, with an air as quiet and an expression as unconcerned
as if he had been setting forth to a banquet, the proud Epicurean gazed
with a calmer eye upon the Consul, than that good man could fix upon his
victim.
"This signet to Sempronia—that sword to—no! no!—this purse to thyself,
Phormio! Consul, precede. I follow."
And the step of the convicted Traitor, as he descended from the portico of
that mansion, for the last time, was firmer, statelier, prouder, than that
of his conductor.
The streets were thronged—the windows crowded—the housetops heaped—with
glaring mute spectators.
Some twenty knights, no more, unarmed, with the exception of their swords,
composed the Consul’s escort. Lentulus knew them, man by man, had drunk
with them, played with them, lent money to them, borrowed of them.
He looked upon them.
They were the handful leading him to death! What made them break the ties
which bound them to their brother noble? What made them forget mutual
pleasures enjoyed, mutual perils incurred, mutual benefits accepted?
They were the nobles, true to their order.
He looked upon the thronged streets—upon the crowded windows—upon the
heaped housetops, he saw myriads, myriads who had fed on his bounty,
encouraged his infamy, hoped from his atrocity, urged him to his crime,
myriads who now frowned upon him—cursed him—howled at him—or—more
cowardly—were silent. Myriads, who might have saved him, and did not.
Wherefore?
They were the people, false to their leader.
He looked from the handful to the myriad—and shook himself, as a lion in
his wrath; and stamped the dust from his sandals.
Cicero saw the movement, and read its meaning. He met the glance, not
humiliated, but prouder for the mob’s reprobation; and said, what he would
not have said had the glance been conscious—
"Thou seest!—Hearest!"
"The voice of the People!" answered the traitor with a bitter sneer.
"The voice of God!" replied the Consul, looking upward.
"That voice of God shall shout for joy at thy head on the rostrum! Such is
the fate of all who would serve the people!"
The eloquent tongue, stabbed with the harlot’s bodkin, the head and the
hand, nailed on the beaked column in after days, showed which best knew
the people, their savior, or their parricide.
There is a place in Rome—there _is_ a place—reader, thou mayest have seen
it—on the right hand as thou goest up the steps of the Asylum ascending
from the forum to the capitol.
"There _is_ a place," wrote Sallust, some nineteen hundred years
ago—"There _is_ a place, within the prison, which is called Tullianum,
after you have ascended a little way to the left, about twelve feet
underground. It is built strongly with walls on every side, and arched
above with a stone vaulting. But its aspect is foul and terrible from
neglect, darkness, and stench."
It is there _now_—thou mayest have seen it, reader. Men call it the
Mamertine Prison. It was then called Tullianum, because it was so antique
at that time, that vague tradition only told of its origin long centuries
before, built by the fabulous King Tullius.
The Tullianum—The Mamertine Prison.
The _bath_, which Jugurtha found very cold, when the earrings had been
torn from his bleeding ears, and, stript of his last vestment, he was let
down to die by the hangman’s noose.
The prison, in which, scarce one century later, Saint Paul was held in
durance, what time "Agrippa said unto Festus, This man might have been set
at liberty, had he not appealed unto _Cæsar_."
Unto _Cæsar_?
Cæsar the third Emperor, the third tyrant of the Roman people.
Lentulus _had_ appealed unto Cæsar, and was cast likewise into the
Tullianum.
The voice of the people, is the voice of God.
Whether of the twain slew Lentulus? whether of the twain set free Paul,
from the Tullianum?
In those days, there was a tall and massive structure above that sordid
and tremendous vault, on the right hand as you go up towards the capitol.
The steps of the asylum were lined on either side by legionaries in full
armor; and as the Consul walked up with his victim, side by side, each
soldier faced about, and, by a simple movement, doubling their files,
occupied the whole space of the steep ascent with a solid column; while
all the heights above, and the great capitol itself, bristled with spears,
and flashed with tawny light from the dense ranks of brazen corslets.
The Capital Triumvirs received the Consul at the door; and with his
prisoner he passed inward.
It was in perfect keeping with the Roman character, that a man, hopeless
of success, should die without an effort; and to the fullest, Lentulus
acted out that character.
Impassive and unmoved, he went to his death. He disgraced his evil life by
no cowardice in death; by no fruitless call upon the people for
assistance, by no vain cry to the nobles for mercy.
But it was the impassibility of the Epicurean, not of the Stoic, that
sustained him.
He went to die, like his brother democrats of France, with the madness of
Atheism in his heart, the mirth of Perdition on his tongue.
They two, the Convict and the Consul, ascended a little, two or three
steps, to the left, and entered a large apartment, paved, walled, and
roofed with stone; but in the centre of the floor there was a small round
aperture.
There were a dozen persons in that guard-room, four of whom were his
fellow-traitors—Gabinius, Statilius, Cæparius, and Cethegus—two prætors,
four legionaries, and two Moorish slaves composed the group, until with
the Triumvirs, and his twelve lictors, Cicero entered.
"Ha! my Cæparius!" exclaimed Lentulus, who had not seen him since the
morning of his arrest. "We have met again. But I slept my sleep out. Thou
might’st as well have slept too; for we are both met here"—
"To die! to die! Great Gods! to die!" cried Cæparius utterly overcome, and
almost fainting with despair.
"Great Gods indeed!" replied Lentulus with his accustomed half-sardonic,
half-indolent sneer. "They must be great, indeed, to let such a puppet as
that," and he pointed to Cicero, as he spoke, "do as he will with us. To
die! to die! Tush—what is that but to sleep? to sleep without the trouble
of awaking, or the annoyance of to-morrow? What sayest thou, my Cethegus?"
"That thou art a sluggard, a fool, and a coward; curses! curses! curses
upon thee!" And he made an effort to rush against his comrade, as if to
strike him; and, when the guards seized him and dragged him back, he shook
his fist at Cicero, and gnashed his teeth, and howling out, "Thou too!
thou too shalt die proscribed, and thy country’s foe!" by a sudden effort
cast off the men who held him, and crying, "Slaves and dastards, see how a
Roman noble dies," rushed, with his head down, at the solid wall, as a
buffalo rushes blindly against an elephant.
He fell as if he were dead, the blood gushing from eyes, nose, and mouth,
and lay senseless.
Lentulus thought he was killed, gazed on him for a moment tranquilly, and
then said with a quiet laugh—
"He was a fool always—a rash fool!" Then turning to Cicero, he added—"By
Hercules! this is slow work. I am exceeding hungry, and somewhat dry; and,
as I fancy I shall eat nothing more to-day, nor drink, I would fain go to
sleep."
"Would’st thou drink, Lentulus?" asked one of the Triumvirs.
"Would I not, had I wine?"
"Bring wine," said the magistrate to one of the Moorish slaves; who went
out and returned in an instant with a large brazen platter supporting
several goblets.
Lentulus seized one quickly, and swallowed it at a mouthful—there is a hot
thirst in that last excitement—but as the flavor reached his palate, when
the roughness of the harsh draught had passed away, he flung the cup down
scornfully and said,
"Finish it! Take this filthy taste from my lips! Let me rest!"
And with the words, he advanced to the Moors who stood beside the
well-like aperture, and without a word suffered them to place the rope
under his arms, and lower him into the pit.
Just as his head, however, was disappearing, he cast his eyes upward, and
met the earnest gaze of the Consul.
"The voice of the people! the man of the people!" he cried sarcastically.
"Fool! fool! _they_ shall avenge me! Think upon me near Formiæ!"
Was that spite, or a prophecy?
The eyes of the dying sometimes look far into futurity.
The haughty traitor was beyond the sight, before his words had ceased to
ring in the ears of the spectators.
There was a small low sound heard from below—not a groan, not a
struggle—but a rustle, a sob, a flutter—silence.
’So did(12) that Patrician, of the most noble house of the Cornelii, who
once held consular dominion in Rome, meet his end, merited by his course
of life, and his overt actions.’
Cethegus perished senseless, half dead by his own deed.
Cæparius died sullen; Gabinius weak and almost fainting; Statilius
struggling and howling. All by a hard and slavish death, strangled by the
base noose of a foreign hangman.
An hour afterward, their corpses were hurled down the Gemonian Stairs,
among the shouts and acclamations of the drunken slavish rabble.
An hour afterward, Cicero stood on the rostrum, near the Libonian
well—that rostrum whereon, at a later day Lentulus’ prophecy was
fulfilled—and called out, in a voice as solemn and almost as deep as
thunder,
"THEY WERE!"
And the voice of the people yelled out its joy, because they _were_ no
longer; and hailed their slayer the Savior and Father of his country.
A few years afterward, how did they not hail Anthony?