GOTHS AND CHRISTIANS.
Cornelius was full of his subject, and did not attend to the Greek. “The
wild-beasts hunts,” he continued, “ah, those hunts during the games,
Aristo! they were a spectacle for the gods. Twenty-two elephants, ten
panthers, ten hyænas (by-the-bye, a new beast, not strange, however, to
you here, I suppose), ten camelopards, a hippopotamus, a rhinoceros—I
can’t go through the list. Fancy the circus planted throughout for the
occasion, and turned into a park, and then another set of wild animals,
Getes and Sarmatians, Celts and Goths, sent in against them, to hunt down,
capture and kill them, or to be killed themselves.”
“Ah, the Goths!” answered Aristo; “those fellows give you trouble, though,
now and then. Perhaps they will give you more. There is a report in the
prætorium to-day that they have crossed the Danube.”
“Yes, they _will_ give us trouble,” said Cornelius, drily; “they _have_
given us trouble, and they will give us more. The Samnites gave us
trouble, and our friends of Carthage here, and Jugurtha, and Mithridates;
trouble, yes, that is the long and the short of it; they will give us
trouble. Is trouble a new thing to Rome?” he asked, stretching out his
arm, as if he were making a speech after dinner, and giving a toast.
“The Goths give trouble, and take a bribe,” retorted Aristo; “this is what
trouble means in their case: it’s a troublesome fellow who hammers at our
door till we pay his reckoning. It is troublesome to raise the means to
buy them off. And the example of these troublesome savages is catching; it
was lately rumoured that the Carpians had been asking the same terms for
keeping quiet.”
“It would ill become the majesty of Rome to soil her fingers with the
blood of such vermin,” said Cornelius; “she ignores them.”
“And therefore she most majestically bleeds us instead,” answered Aristo,
“that she may have treasure to give them. We are not so troublesome as
they; the more’s the pity. No offence to you, however, or to the emperor,
or to great Rome, Cornelius. We are over our cups; it’s only a game of
politics, you know, like chess or the _cottabus_. Maro bids you ‘parcere
subjectis, et debellare superbos;’ but you have changed your manners. You
coax the Goths and bully the poor African.”
“Africa can show fight, too,” interposed Jucundus, who had been calmly
listening and enjoying his own wine; “witness Thysdrus. That was giving
every rapacious Quæstor a lesson that he may go too far, and find a dagger
when he demands a purse.”
He was alluding to the revolt of Africa, which led to the downfall of the
tyrant Maximin and the exaltation of the Gordians, when the native
landlords armed their peasantry, killed the imperial officer, and raised
the standard of rebellion in the neighbouring town from impatience of
exactions under which they suffered.
“No offence, I say, Cornelius, no offence to eternal Rome,” said Aristo,
“but you have explained to us why you weigh so heavy on us. I’ve always
heard it was a fortune at Rome for a man to have found out a new tax.
Vespasian did his best; but now you tax our smoke, and our very shadow;
and Pescennius threatened to tax the air we breathe. We’ll play at
riddles, and you shall solve the following:—Say who is she that eats her
own limbs, and grows eternal upon them? Ah, the Goths will take the
measure of her eternity!”
“The Goths!” said Jucundus, who was warming into conversational life, “the
Goths! no fear of the Goths; but,” and he nodded significantly, “look at
home; we have more to fear indoors than abroad.”
“He means the prætorians,” said Cornelius to Aristo, condescendingly; “I
grant you that there have been several untoward affairs; we have had our
problem, but it’s a thing of the past, it never can come again. I venture
to say that the power of the prætorians is at an end. That murder of the
two emperors the other day was the worst job they ever did; it has turned
the public opinion of the whole world against them. I have no fear of the
prætorians.”
“I don’t mean prætorians more than Goths,” said Jucundus; “no, give me the
old weapons, the old maxims of Rome, and I defy the scythe of Saturn. Do
the soldiers march under the old ensign? do they swear by the old gods? do
they interchange the good old signals and watchwords? do they worship the
fortune of Rome; then I say we are safe. But do we take to new ways? do we
trifle with religion? do we make light of Jupiter, Mars, Romulus, the
augurs, and the ancilia? then I say, not all our shows and games, our
elephants, hyænas, and hippopotamuses, will do us any good. It was not the
best thing, no, not the best thing that the soldiers did, when they
invested that Philip with the purple. But he is dead and gone.” And he sat
up and leant on his elbow.
“Ah! but it will be all set right now,” said Cornelius, “_you’ll_ see.”
“He’d be a reformer, that Philip,” continued Jucundus, “and put down an
enormity. Well, they call it an enormity; let it be an enormity. He’d put
it down; but why? there’s the point; why? It’s no secret at all,” and his
voice grew angry, “that that hoary-headed Atheist Fabian was at the bottom
of it; Fabian, the Christian. I hate reforms.”
“Well, we had long wished to do it,” answered Cornelius, “but could not
manage it. Alexander attempted it near twenty years ago. It’s what
philosophers have always aimed at.”
“The gods consume philosophers and the Christians together!” said Jucundus
devoutly. “There’s little to choose between them, except that the
Christians are the filthier animal of the two. But both are ruining the
most glorious political structure that the world ever saw. I am not
over-fond of Alexander either.”
“Thank you in the name of philosophy,” said the Greek.
“And thank you in the name of the Christians,” chimed in Juba.
“That’s good!” cried Jucundus; “the first word that hopeful youth has
spoken since he came in, and he takes on him to call himself a Christian.”
“I’ve a right to do so, if I choose,” said Juba; “I’ve a right to be a
Christian.”
“Right! O yes, right! ha, ha!” answered Jucundus, “right! Jove help the
lad! by all manner of means. Of course, you have a right to go _in malam
rem_ in whatever way you please.”
“I am my own master,” said Juba; “my father was a Christian. I suppose it
depends on myself to follow him or not, according to my fancy, and as long
as I think fit.”
“Fancy! think fit!” answered Jucundus, “you pompous little mule! Yes, go
and be a Christian, my dear child, as your doting father went. Go, like
him, to the priest of their mysteries; be spit on, stripped, dipped; feed
on little boys’ marrow and brains; worship the ass; and learn all the foul
magic of the sect. And then be delated and taken up, and torn to shreds on
the rack, or thrown to the lions and so go to Tartarus, if Tartarus there
be, in the way you think fit. You’ll harm none but yourself, my boy. I
don’t fear such as you, but the deeper heads.”
Juba stood up with a look of offended dignity, and, as on former
occasions, tossed the head which had been by implication disparaged. “I
despise you,” he said.
“Well, but you are hard on the Christians,” said Aristo. “I have heard
them maintain that their superstition, if adopted, would be the salvation
of Rome. They maintain that the old religion is gone or going out; that
something new is wanted to keep the empire together; and that their
worship is just fitted to the times.”
“All I say to the vipers,” said Jucundus, “is, ‘Let well alone. We did
well enough without you; we did well enough till you sprang up.’ A plague
on their insolence; as if Jew or Egyptian could do aught for us when Numa
and the Sibyl fail. That is what I say, Let Rome be true to herself and
nothing can harm her; let her shift her foundation, and I would not buy
her for this water-melon,” he said, taking a suck at it. “Rome alone can
harm Rome. Recollect old Horace, ‘Suis et ipsa Roma viribus ruit.’ He was
a prophet. If she falls, it is by her own hand.”
“I agree,” said Cornelius; “certainly, to set up any new worship is
treason; not a doubt of it. The gods keep us from such ingratitude! We
have grown great by means of them, and they are part and parcel of the law
of Rome. But there is no great chance of our forgetting this; Decius
won’t; that’s a fact. You will see. Time will show; perhaps to-morrow,
perhaps next day,” he added, mysteriously.
“Why in the world should you have this frantic dread of these poor
scarecrows of Christians,” said Aristo, “all because they hold an opinion?
Why are you not afraid of the bats and the moles? It’s an opinion: there
have been other opinions before them, and there will be other opinions
after. Let them alone and they’ll die away; make a hubbub about them and
they’ll spread.”
“Spread?” cried Jucundus, who was under the twofold excitement of personal
feeling and of wine, “spread, they’ll spread? yes, they’ll spread. Yes,
grow, like scorpions, twenty at a birth. The country already swarms with
them; they are as many as frogs or grasshoppers; they start up everywhere
under one’s nose, when one least expects them. The air breeds them like
plague-flies; the wind drifts them like locusts. No one’s safe; any one
may be a Christian; it’s an epidemic. Great Jove! _I_ may be a Christian
before I know where I am. Heaven and earth! is it not monstrous?” he
continued, with increasing fierceness. “Yes, Jucundus, my poor man, you
may wake and find yourself a Christian, without knowing it, against your
will. Ah! my friends, pity me! I may find myself a beast, and obliged to
suck blood and live among the tombs as if I liked it, without power to
tell you how I loathe it, all through their sorcery. By the genius of Rome
something must be done. I say, no one is safe. You call on your friend; he
is sitting in the dark, unwashed, uncombed, undressed. What is the matter?
Ah! his son has turned Christian. Your wedding-day is fixed, you are
expecting your bride; she does not come; why? she will not have you; she
has become a Christian. Where’s young Nomentanus? Who has seen Nomentanus?
in the forum, or the campus, in the circus, in the bath? Has he caught the
plague or got a sunstroke? Nothing of the kind; the Christians have caught
hold of him. Young and old, rich and poor, my lady in her litter and her
slave, modest maid and Lydia at the Thermæ, nothing comes amiss to them.
All confidence is gone; there’s no one we can reckon on. I go to my
tailor’s: ‘Nergal,’ I say to him, ‘Nergal, I want a new tunic,’ The
wretched hypocrite bows, and runs to and fro, and unpacks his stuffs and
cloths, like another man. A word in your ear. The man’s a Christian,
dressed up like a tailor. They have no dress of their own. If I were
emperor, I’d make the sneaking curs wear a badge, I would; a dog’s collar,
a fox’s tail, or a pair of ass’s ears. Then we should know friends from
foes when we meet them.”
“We should think that dangerous,” said Cornelius; “however, you are taking
it too much to heart; you are making too much of them, my good friend.
They have not even got the present, and you are giving them the future,
which is just what they want.”
“If Jucundus will listen to me,” said Aristo, “I could satisfy him that
the Christians are actually falling off. They once were numerous in this
very place; now there are hardly any. They have been declining for these
fifty years; the danger from them is past. Do you want to know how to
revive them? Put out an imperial edict, forbid them, denounce them. Do you
want them to drop away like autumn leaves? Take no notice of them.”
“I can’t deny that in Italy they _have_ grown,” said Cornelius; “they
_have_ grown in numbers and in wealth, and they intermarry with us. Thus
the upper class becomes to a certain extent infected. We may find it
necessary to repress them; but, as you would repress vermin, without
fearing them.”
“The worshippers of the gods are the many, and the Christians are the
few,” persisted Aristo; “if the two parties intermarry, the weaker will
get the worst of it. You will find the statues of the gods gradually
creeping back into the Christian chapel; and a man must be an honest
fellow who buys our images, eh, Jucundus?”
“Well, Aristo,” said the paterfamilias, whose violence never lasted long,
“if your sister’s bright eyes win back my poor Agellius you will have
something more to say for yourself than, at present, I grant.”
“I see,” said Cornelius, gravely, “I begin to understand it. I could not
make out why our good host had such great fear for the stability of Rome.
But it is one of those things which the experience of life has taught me.
I have often seen it in the imperial city itself. Whenever you find a man
show special earnestness against these fanatics, depend on it there is
something that touches him personally in the matter. There was a very
great man, the present Flamen Dialis, for whom I have unbounded respect;
for a long time I was at a loss to conceive why a person of his weight,
sound, sensible, well-judging, should have such a fear of the Christians.
One day he made an oration against them in the senate-house; he wanted to
send them to the rack. But the secret came out; the good man was on the
rack himself about his daughter, who persisted in calling herself a
Christian, and refused to paint her face or go to the amphitheatre. To be
sure, a most trying affair this for the old gentleman. The venerable Pater
Patratus, too, what suppers he gave! a fine specimen of the Lucullus type;
yet he was always advocating the lictor and the _commentariensis_ in the
instance of the Christian. No wonder; his wife and son were disgracing him
in the eyes of the whole world by frequenting the meetings of these
Christians. However, I agree with Decius, they must be put down. They are
not formidable, but they are an eyesore.”
Here the rushing of the water-clock which measured time in the
neighbouring square, ceased, signifying thereby that the night was getting
on. Juba had already crept into the dark closet which served him for a
sleeping-place; had taken off his sandals, and loosened his belt; had
wrapt the serpent he had about him round his neck, and was breathing
heavily. Jucundus made the parting libation, and Cornelius took his leave.
Aristo rose too; and Jucundus, accompanying them to the entrance, paid the
not uncommon penalty of his potations, for the wine mounted to his head,
and he returned into the room, and sat him down again with an impression
that Aristo was still at table.
“My dear boy,” he said, “Agellius is but a wet Christian; that’s all, not
obstinate, like his brother there. ’Twas his father; the less we say about
him the better; he’s gone. The Furies make his bed for him! an odious set!
Their priests, little ugly men. I saw one when I was a boy at Carthage. So
unlike your noble Roman Saliares, or your fine portly priest of Isis, clad
in white, breathing odours like spring flowers; men who enjoyed this life,
not like that sour hypocrite. He was as black as an Ethiopian, and as
withered as a Saracen, and he never looked you in the face. And, after
all, the fellow must die for his religion, rather than put a few grains of
golden incense on the altar of great Jove. Jove’s the god for me; a
glorious, handsome, curly god—but they are all good, all the gods are
good. There’s Bacchus, he’s a good, comfortable god, though a sly,
treacherous fellow—a treacherous fellow. There’s Ceres, too; Pomona; the
Muses; Astarte, too, as they call her here; all good;—and Apollo, though
he’s somewhat too hot in this season, and too free with his bow. He gave
me a bad fever once. Ah! life’s precious, most precious; so I felt it
then, when I was all but gone to Pluto. Life never returns, it’s like
water spilt; you can’t gather it up. It is dispersed into the elements, to
the four winds. Ah! there’s something more there than I can tell; more
than all your philosophers can determine.”
He seemed to think awhile, and began again: “Enjoyment’s the great rule;
ask yourself, ‘Have I made the most of things?’ that’s what I say to the
rising generation. Many and many’s the time when I have not turned them to
the best account. Oh, if I had now to begin life again, how many things
should I correct! I might have done better this evening. Those abominable
pears! I might have known they would not be worth the eating. Mutton, that
was all well; doves, good again; crane, kid; well, I don’t see that I
could have done much better.”
After a few minutes he got up half asleep, and put out all the lights but
one small lamp, with which he made his way into his own bed-closet. “All
is vanity,” he continued, with a slow, grave utterance, “all is vanity but
eating and drinking. It does not pay to serve the gods except for this.
What’s fame? what’s glory? what’s power? smoke. I’ve often thought the hog
is the only really wise animal. We should be happier if we were all hogs.
Hogs keep the end of life steadily in view; that’s why those toads of
Christians will not eat them, lest they should get like them. Quiet,
respectable, sensible enjoyment; not riot, or revel, or excess, or
quarrelling. Life is short.” And with this undeniable sentiment he fell
asleep.