Tibur.
It seemed to me, from the manner of the Emperor more than from what he
said, that he was settled and bound up to the bad work of an assault
upon the Christians. To what extent it was in his mind to go, I could
not judge; for his language was ambiguous, and sometimes contradictory.
But that the darkest designs were harbored by him, over which he was
brooding with a mind naturally superstitious, but now almost in a state
of exasperation, from the late events, was most evident.
LETTER VI.
FROM PISO TO FAUSTA.
Having confined myself, in my last letter, to the affairs of Marcus and
Lucilia, I now, Fausta, turn to those which concern us and Rome.
I found, on my return to the city, that the general anxiety concerning
the designs of Aurelian had greatly increased. Many rumors were current
of dark sayings of his, which, whether founded in truth or not,
contributed to alarm even the most hopeful, and raise serious
apprehensions for the fate of this much and long-suffering religion.
Julia herself partakes--I cannot say of the alarm--but of the anxiety.
She has less confidence than I have in the humanity of the Emperor. In
the honours heaped upon Zenobia, and the favors shown herself and
Vabalathus, she sees, not so much the outpouring of benevolent feeling,
as a rather ostentatious display of imperial generosity, and, what is
called, Roman magnanimity. For the true character of the man she looks
into the graves of Palmyra, upon her smoking ruins, and upon the blood,
yet hardly dry, that stains the pavements of the Coelian. Julia may be
right, though I am unwilling to believe it. Her judgment is entitled to
the more weight in this severe decision, that it is ever inclined to the
side of a too favorable opinion of character and motive. You know her
nature too well, to believe her capable of exaggerating the faults of
even the humblest. Yet, though such are her apprehensions, she
manifests the same calm and even carriage as on the approach of more
serious troubles in Palmyra. She is full of deepest interest in the
affairs of the Christians, and by many families of the poorer sort is
resorted to continually for aid, for counsel, or sympathy. Not one in
the whole community is a more frequent and devout attendant upon the
services of the church; and, I need not add, that I am her constant
companion. The performance of this duty gives a value to life in Rome
such as it never had before. Every seventh day, as with the Jews, only
upon a different day of the week, do the Christians assemble for the
purposes of religious worship. And, I can assure you, it is with no
trifling accession of strength for patient doing and patient bearing,
that we return to our every-day affairs, after having listened to the
prayers, the reasonings, or exhortations of Probus.
So great is the difference in my feelings and opinions from what they
were before I left Rome for Palmyra, that it is with difficulty I
persuade myself that I am the same person. Between Piso the Pyrronist
and Piso the Christian, the distance seems immeasurable--yet in how
short a time has it been past. I cannot say that I did not enjoy
existence and value it in my former state, but I can say that my
enjoyment of it is infinitely heightened as a Christian, and the rate at
which I value it infinitely raised. Born and nurtured as I was, with
Portia for my mother, a palace for my home, Rome for my country and
capital, offering all the luxuries of the earth, and affording all the
means I could desire for carrying on researches in study of every kind,
surrounded by friends of the noblest and best families in the city,--I
could not but enjoy life in some very important sense. While mere youth
lasted, and my thoughts never wandered beyond the glittering forms of
things, no one could be happier or more contented. All was fair and
beautiful around me--what could I ask for more? I was satisfied and
filled. But, by and by, my dream of life was disturbed--my sleep broken.
Natural questions began to propose themselves for my solution, such, I
suppose, as, sooner or later, spring up in every bosom. I began to
speculate about myself--about the very self that had been so long, so
busy, about everything else beside itself. I wished to know something of
myself--of my origin, my nature, my present condition, my ultimate fate.
It seemed to me I was too rare and curious a piece of work to go to
ruin, final and inevitable--perhaps to-morrow--at all events in a very
few years. Of futurity I had heard--and of Elysium--just as I had heard
of Jupiter, greatest and best, but, with my earliest youth, these things
had faded from my mind, or had already taken upon themselves the
character of fable. My Virgil, in which I early received my lessons of
language, at once divested them of all their air of reality, and left
them naked fiction. The other poets, Livy helping them, continued the
same work and completed it. But, bent with most serious and earnest
desires toward truth on what seemed to me the greatest theme, I could
not remain where I was, and turned with highest expectations to the
philosophers. I not only read, but I studied and pondered them with
diligence, and with as sincere a desire of arriving at truth as ever
scholar sat at the feet of his instructer. The result was anything but
satisfying, I ended a universal sceptic, so far as human systems of
philosophy were concerned, so far as they pretended to solve the enigma
of God and man, of life and death; but with a heart, nevertheless,
yearning after truth; and even full of faith, if that may be called
faith which would instinctively lay hold upon a God and a hope of
immortality; and, though beaten back once and again, by every form which
the syllogism could assume, still keep its hold.
This was my state, Fausta, when I was found by Christianity. Without
faith, and yet with it; doubting, and yet believing; rejecting
philosophy, but leaning upon nature; dissatisfied, but hoping. I cannot
easily find words to tell you the change which Christian faith has
wrought within me. All I can say is this, that I am now a new man; I am
made over again; I am born as it were into another world. Where darkness
once was, there is now light brighter than the sun. Where doubt was,
there is now certainty. I have knowledge and truth, for error and
perplexity. The inner world of my mind is resplendent with a day whose
luminary will never set. And even the outer world of appearances and
forms shines more gloriously, and has an air of reality which before it
never had. It used to seem to me like the gorgeous fabric of a dream,
and as if, at some unexpected moment, it might melt into air and
nothingness, and I, and all men and things, with it; for there appeared
to be no purpose in it; it came from nothing, it achieved nothing, and
certainly seemed to conduct to nothing. Men, like insects, came and
went; were born, and died, and that was all. Nothing was accomplished,
nothing perfected. But now, nature seems to me stable, and eternal as
God himself. The world being the great birth-place and nursery of these
myriads of creatures, made, as I ever conceived, in a divine likeness,
after some godlike model,--for what spirit of other spheres can be more
beautiful than a perfect man, or a perfect woman--each animated with the
principle of immortality--there is a reason for its existence, and its
perpetuity, from whose force the mind cannot escape. It is, and it ever
will be; and mankind upon it, a continually happier, and more virtuous
brotherhood.
Yes, Fausta, to me as a Christian, everything is new everything better;
the inward world, the outward world, the present, and the future. Life
is a worthier gift, and a richer possession. I am to myself an object of
a thousand-fold greater interest; and every other human being, from a
poor animal, that was scarce worthy its wretched existence, starts up
into a god, for whom the whole earth may, one day, become too narrow a
field either to till, or rule. I am, accordingly, ready to labor both
for myself and others. I once held myself too cheap to do much even for
myself; for others, I would do nothing, except to feed the hunger that
directly appealed to me, or relieve the wretchedness that made me
equally wretched. Not so now. I myself am a different being, and others
are different. I am ready to toil for such beings; to suffer for them.
They are too valuable to be neglected, abused, insulted, trodden into
the dust. They must be defended and rescued, whenever their
fellow-men--wholly ignorant of what they are, and what themselves are
about--would oppress them. More than all, do they need truth,
effectually to enlighten and redeem them, and truth they must have at
whatever cost. Let them only once know what they are, and the world is
safe. Christianity tells them this, and Christianity they must have. The
State must not stand between man and truth! or, if it do, it must be
rebuked by those who have the knowledge and the courage, and made to
assume its proper place and office. Knowing what has been done for me by
Christian truth, I can never be content until to others the same good is
at least offered; and I shall devote what power and means I possess to
this task. The prospect now is of opposition and conflict. But it
dismays not me, nor Julia, nor any of this faith who have truly adopted
its principles. For, if the mere love of fame, the excitement of a
contest, the prospect of pay or plunder, will carry innumerable legions
to the battle-field to leave there their bones, how much more shall the
belief of a Christian arm him for even worse encounters? It were pitiful
indeed, if a possession, as valuable as this of truth, could not inspire
a heroism, which the love of fame or of money can.
These things I have said, to put you fully in possession of our present
position, plans, and purposes. The fate of Christianity is to us now as
absorbing an interest, as once was the fate of Palmyra.
* * * * *
I had been in the city only long enough to give Julia a full account of
my melancholy visit in the country, and to write a part of it to you,
when I walked forth to observe for myself the signs which the city might
offer, either to confirm, or allay, the apprehensions which were begun
to be felt.
I took my way over the Palatine, desiring to see the excellent Tacitus,
whose house is there. He was absent, being suddenly called to Baiæ. I
turned toward the Forum, wishing to perform a commission for Julia at
the shop of Civilis--still alive, and still compounding his
sweets--which is now about midway between the slope of the hill and the
Forum, having been removed from its former place where you knew it,
under the eaves of the Temple of Peace. The little man of 'smells' was
at his post, more crooked than ever, but none the less exquisitely
arrayed; his wig befitting a young Bacchus, rather than a dried shred of
a man beyond his seventieth year. All the gems of the east glittered on
his thin fingers, and diamonds, that might move the envy of Livia, hung
from his ears. The gales of Arabia, burdened with the fragrance of every
flower of that sunny clime, seemed concentrated into an atmosphere
around him; and, in truth, I suppose a specimen of every pot and phial
of his vast shop, might be found upon his person concealed in gold
boxes, or hanging in the merest fragments of bottles upon chains of
silver or gold, or deposited in folds of his ample robes. He was odor in
substantial form. He saluted me with a grace, of which he only in Rome
is master, and with a deference that could not have been exceeded had I
been Aurelian. I told him that I wished to procure a perfume of Egyptian
origin and name, called Cleopatra's tears, which was reputed to convey
to the organs of smell, an odor more exquisite than that of the rarest
Persian rose, or choicest gums of Arabia. The eyes of Civilis kindled
with the fires of twenty--when love's anxious brow is suddenly cleared
up by that little, but all comprehensive word, yes--as he answered,
'Noble Piso, I honor you. I never doubted your taste. It is seen in your
palace, in your dress, nay, in the very costume of your incomparable
slave, who has done me the honor to call here in your service. But now
have you given of it the last and highest proof. Never has the wit of
man before compounded an essence like that which lies buried in this
porphyry vase.'
'You do not mean that I am to take away a vase of that size? I do not
purchase essences by the pound!'
Civilis seemed as if he would have fainted, so oppressed was he by this
display of ignorance. My character, I found, was annihilated in a
moment. When his presence of mind was recovered, he said,
'This vase? Great Jupiter! The price of your palace upon the Coelian
would scarce purchase it! Were its contents suddenly let loose, and
spilled upon the air, not Rome only, but Italy, would be bathed in the
transporting, life-giving fragrance! Now I shall remove the cover, first
giving you to know, that within this larger vase there is a number of
smallest bottles, some of glass, others of gold, in each of which are
contained a few of the tears, and which are warranted to retain their
potency, and lend their celestial peculiarity to your clothes or your
apartments, without loss or diminution in the least appreciable degree,
during the life of the purchaser. Now, if it please you, bend this way,
and receive the air which I shall presently set free. How think you,
noble Piso? Art not a new man?
'I am new in my knowledge such as it is Civilis. It is certainly
agreeable, most agreeable.'
'Agreeable! So is mount Etna a pretty hill! So is Aurelian a fair
soldier! so is the sun a good sized brazier! I beseech thee, find
another word. Let it not go forth to all Rome, that the most noble Piso
deems the tears of Cleopatra agreeable!'
'I can think no otherwise,' I replied. 'It is really agreeable, and
reminds me, more than anything else, of the oldest Falernian, just
rubbed between the palms of the hand, which you will allow is to
compliment it in no moderate measure. But confess now, Civilis, that you
have an hundred perfumes more delicious than this.'
'Piso, I may say this,--they have been so.'
'Ah, I understand you; you admit then, that it is the force of fashion
that lends this extraordinary odor to the porphyry vase.'
'Truly, noble Piso, it has somewhat to do with it, it must be
acknowledged.'
'It would be curious, Civilis, to know what name this bore, and in what
case it was bestowed, and at what price sold, before the Empress Livia
fancied it. I think it should have been named, 'Livia's smiles.' It
would, at any rate, be a good name for it at thy shop in Alexandria.'
'You are facetious, noble Piso. But that last hint is too good to be
thrown away. Truly, you are a man of the world, whose distinction I
suppose is, that he has eyes in the hind part of his head, as well as
before. But what blame can be mine for such dealing? I am driven; I am a
slave. It is fashion, that works these wonders, not I. And there is no
goddess, Piso, like her. She is the true creator. Upon that which is
worthless, can she bestow, in a moment, inestimable value. What is
despised to-day, she can exalt to-morrow to the very pinnacle of honor.
She is my maker. One day I was poor, the goddess took me by the hand,
and smiled upon me, and the next day I was rich. It was the favorite
mistress of Maximin, who, one day--her chariot, Piso, so chance would
have it, broke down at my door, when she took refuge in my little shop,
then at the corner of the street Castor as you turn towards the
Tiber--purchasing a particular perfume, of which I had large store, and
boasted much to her, gave me such currency among the rich and noble,
that, from that hour, my fortune was secure. No one bought a perfume
afterwards but of Civilis. Civilis was soon the next person to the
Emperor. And, to this hour, has this same goddess befriended me. And
many an old jar, packed away in the midst of rubbish in dark recesses
now valueless, do I look upon as nevertheless so much gold--its now
despised contents one day to disperse themselves upon kings and nobles,
in the senate and the theatres. I need not tell you what this diminutive
bottle might have been had for, before the Kalends. Yet, by Hercules,
should I have sold it even then for less? for should I not have divined
its fortune? The wheel is ever turning, turning. But, most excellent
Piso, men of the world are ever generous--'
'Fear nothing, Civilis, I will not betray you. I believe you have spoken
real truths. Besides, with Livia on your side, and what could all Rome
do to hurt you?'
'Most true, most true. But, may I ask--for one thing has made me
astonished--how is it that you, being now, as report goes, a Christian,
should come to me to purchase essences? When I heard you had so named
yourself, I looked to lose your custom forever after.'
'Why should not a Christian man smell of that which is agreeable, as
well as another?'
'Ah, that I cannot say. I have heard--I know nothing, Piso, beyond
essences and perfumes--but, I have heard, that the Christians forbear
such things, calling them vanities; just as they withdraw too, 'tis
said, from the theatres and the circuses.'
'They do, indeed, withdraw from the theatres and circuses, Civilis,
because the entertainments witnessed there do, as they judge, serve but
to make beasts of men; they minister to vice. But in a sweet smell they
see no harm, any more than in a silk dress, in well-proportioned
buildings, or magnificent porticoes. Why should it be very wrong or very
foolish to catch the odors which the divine Providence plants in the
rose, and in a thousand flowers and gums as they wander forth upon the
air for our delight, and fasten them up in these little bottles? by
which means we can breathe them at all times--in winter as well as in
summer, in one country, or clime, as in another. Thy shop, Civilis, is
but a flower-garden in another form, and under another name.'
'I shall think better of the Christians for this. I hardly believed the
report, indeed, for it were most unnatural and strange to find fault
with odors such as these. I shall lament the more, that they are to be
so dealt with by the Emperor. Hast thou heard what is reported this
morning?'
'No; I am but just from home. How does it go?'
'Why, 'tis nothing other nor less than this, that Aurelian, being
resolved to change the Christians all back again into what they were,
has begun with his niece the princess Aurelia, and, with violence,
insists that she shall sacrifice--which she steadfastly refuses to do.
Some say, that she has not been seen at the palace for several days, and
that she is fast locked up in the great prison on the Tiber.'
'I do not believe a word of it, Civilis. The Emperor has of late used
harsh language of the Christians, I know. But for one word he has
spoken, the city has coined ten. And, moreover, the words of the priest
Fronto are quoted for those of Aurelian. It is well known he is
especially fond of Aurelia; and Mucapor, to whom she is betrothed, is
his favorite among all his generals, not excepting Probus.'
'Well, well, may it be as you say! I, for my part, should be sorry that
any mishap befel those with whom the most noble Piso is connected;
especially seeing they do not quarrel, as I was fain to believe, with my
calling. Yet, never before, as I think, have I seen a Christian in my
shop.'
'They may have been here without your knowing it.'
'Yes, that is true.'
'Besides, the Christians being in the greater proportion of the middle
or humbler classes, seek not their goods at places where emperors
resort. They go elsewhere.'
Civilis bowed to the floor, as he replied, 'You do me too much honor.'
'The two cases of perfume which I buy,' I then said, 'are to travel into
the far East. Please to secure them accordingly.'
'Are they not then for the princess Julia, as I supposed?'
'They are for a friend in Syria. We wish her to know what is going on
here in the capital of all the world.'
'By the gods! you have devised well. It is the talk all over Rome.
Cleopatra's tears have taken all hearts. Orders from the provinces will
soon pour in. They shall follow you well secured, as you say.'
I enjoy a call upon this whole Roman, and yet half Jew, as much as upon
the first citizens of the capital. The cup of Aurelian, is no fuller
than the cup of Civilis. The perfect bliss that emanates from his
countenance, and breathes from his form and gait, is pleasing to
behold--upon whatever founded--seeing it is a state that is reached by
so few. No addition could be made to the felicity of this fortunate man.
He conceives his occupation to be more honorable than the proconsulship
of a province, and his name, he pleases himself with believing, is
familiar to more ears than any man's, save the Emperor's, and has been
known in Rome for a longer period than any other person's living,
excepting only the head of the Senate, the venerable Tacitus. This is
all legible in the lines about his mouth and eyes.
Leaving the heaven of the happy man, I turned to the Forum of Augustus,
to look at a statue of brass, of Aurelian, just placed among the great
men of Rome in front of the Temple of Mars, the Avenger. This statue is
the work of Periander, who, with that universality of power which marks
the Greek, has made his genius as distinguished here for sculpture, as
it was in Palmyra for military defence and architecture. Who, for
perfection in this art of arts, is to be compared with the Greek? or
for any work, of either the head or the hands, that implies the
possession of what we mean by genius? The Greeks have not only
originated all that we know of great and beautiful in letters,
philosophy and the arts, but, what they have originated, they have also
perfected. Whatever they have touched, they have finished; at least, so
far as art, and the manner of working, is concerned. The depths of all
wisdom and philosophy they have not sounded indeed, though they have
gone deeper than any, only because they are in their own essence
unfathomable. Time, as it flows on, bears us to new regions to be
explored, whose riches constantly add new stores to our wisdom, and open
new views to science. But in all art they have reached a point beyond
which none have since advanced, and beyond which it hardly seems
possible to go. A doric column, a doric temple, a corinthian capital, a
corinthian temple--these perfectly satisfy and fill the mind; and, for
seven hundred years, no change or addition has been made or attempted
that has not been felt to be an injury. And I doubt not that seven
thousand years hence, if time could but spare it so long, pilgrims would
still go in search of the beautiful from the remotest parts of the
world, from parts now unknown, to worship before the Parthenon, and, may
I not add, the Temple of the Sun in Palmyra!
Periander has gained new honors by this admirable piece of work. I had
hardly commenced my examination of it, when a grating voice at my elbow,
never, once heard, to be mistaken for any other, croaked out what was
meant as a challenge.
'The greatest captain of this or of any age!'
It was Spurius, a man whom no slight can chill nor, even insult, cause
to abate the least of his intrusive familiarity--a familiarity which he
covets, too, only for the sake of disputation and satire. To me,
however, he is never other than a source of amusement. He is a variety
of the species I love occasionally to study.
I told him I was observing the workmanship, without thinking of the man
represented.
'If you will allow me to say it,' he rejoined, 'a very inferior subject
of contemplation. A statue--as I take it, the thing, that is, for which
it is made, is commemoration. If one wants to see fine work in marble,
there is the cornice for him just overhead: or in brass, let him look at
the doors of the new temple, or the last table or couch of Syphax. The
proper subject for man is man.'
'Well, Spurius, on your own ground then. In this brass I do not see
brass, nor yet Aurelian--'
'What then, in the name of Hecate?'