THE next year was the year of the great pestilence. Pestilence, indeed,
had ravaged Italy for five consecutive summers previous to that year.
But the great pestilence, for two centuries afterwards spoken of merely
as “the pestilence,” fell in the nine hundred and nineteenth year after
the founding of Rome, the year 166 of our era, when Marcus Aurelius and
Lucius Verus had been co-Emperors for a little more than five years and
Brinnaria had been almost five years a Vestal. It devastated the entire
Empire from Nisibis in upper Mesopotamia to Segontium, opposite the isle
of Anglesea. Every farm, hamlet and village suffered; in not one town
did it leave more than half the inhabitants alive; few cities escaped
with so much as a third of the population surviving. Famine accompanied
the pestilence in all the western portions of the Roman world, and from
famine perished many whom the plague had spared.
This disaster was, in fact, the real deathblow to Rome’s greatness and
from it dates the decline of the Roman power. It broke the tradition of
civilization and culture which had grown from the small beginnings of
the primitive Greeks and Etruscans more than two thousand years before.
During all those two thousand years there had been a more or less steady
and a scarcely interrupted development of the agriculture, manufactures,
arts, skill, knowledge and power of the mass of humanity about the
Mediterranean Sea; men who fought with shields and spears and swords,
also with arrows and slings, believed in approximately the same sort of
gods; wore clothing rather wrapped round them than upholstered on their
bodies as with us; reclined on sofas at meals; lived mostly out of doors
all the year round; built their houses about courtyards, and made rows
of columns the chief feature of their architecture, and sheltering
themselves in colonnades, sunny or shady according to the time of the
year, the chief feature of their personal comfort. Up to the year of the
great pestilence that civilization had prospered, had produced a
long series of generals, inventors, architects, sculptors, painters,
musicians, poets, authors, and orators. Everywhere men had shown
self-confidence, capacity, originality, power and competence and had
achieved success for two thousand years.
The great pestilence of 166 so depleted the population that Rome never
again pushed forward the boundaries of her Empire. Some lucky armies
won occasional victories, but Rome never again put on the field an
overwhelming army for foreign conquest, never again could fully man,
even defensively, the long line of her frontiers.
All classes of the people suffered, but most of all the rich, the
well-to-do, the educated and the cultured classes of the towns and
cities. And the main point of difference between the great pestilence
and the others which had preceded it was the universality of its
incidence. For two thousand years pestilence had occurred at intervals,
but previously not everywhere at once.
If one country suffered others did not; if half the Mediterranean world,
even, was devastated, the other half escaped. From the immune
regions competence and capacity had flowed into the ruined areas and
civilization had gone on. But the great pestilence left no district
unharmed. In six months it killed off all the brains and skill, all the
culture and ingenuity in the Empire. There were so few capable men left
in any line of activity that the next generation grew up practically
untaught. The tradition of two thousand years was broken. In all the
Mediterranean world, until centuries later, descendants of the savage
invaders developed their new civilization on the ruins of the old; no
man ever again made a great speech, wrote a great book or play or
poem, painted a good picture, carved a good statue, or contrived a good
campaign or battle. The brains of the Roman world died that year, the
originality of the whole nation was killed at once, the tradition broke
off.
Of course, the survivors did not realize the finality of the disaster,
but they did realize its magnitude. In Italy, fed almost wholly by
imported food, the famine was most severe. In Italy the pestilence
was most virulent. Men disputed as to whether the great army of Lucius
Verus, returned home from its splendid victories in Parthia, had brought
with it a form of pestilence worse than that of the five previous years,
or whether the returned soldiers had merely been a specially easy
prey to the pestilence already abroad in Rome. Whichever was true, the
veterans died like flies. So did the residents of Rome. Whole blocks of
tenements were emptied of their last occupier and stood wholly vacant;
many palaces of the wealthy were left without so much as a guardian,
the last inmate dead; the splendid furnishings, even the silver plate,
untouched in every room; for the plague had so ravaged Rome that there
were not even robbers and thieves left to steal To the survivors, since
genuine piety as they knew it was all but universal among the Romans, it
was some small comfort, a faint ray of hope, a sign that the gods were
not inexorably wrathful, that, after Rabulla’s death, there was no
case of pestilence in the Atrium, not even among the servitors, that
no Vestal so much as sickened. Through it all the six remained hale and
sound.
But when the plague abated, only Manlia had any living relations left
her. The other five had lost every kinsman and kinswoman, to the ninth
and tenth degree.
Brinnaria’s parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts and cousins were
all among the victims. This left her grave and sobered with grief, with
no trace of her girlish wildness apparent.
It also left her enormously rich, one of the wealthiest women in Rome.
Not a tenth so wealthy, but still very rich, it left Almo, Vocco and
Flexinna, all of whom survived.
As the plague had been rife, worse each year, for some seasons before
the year of the great pestilence, so, ebbing yearly, it continued for
some years after its acme. As soon as the worst was manifestly over the
life of Rome began to revive to some degree, the city dwellers plucked
up heart, the refugees began to return to their town houses, hunger
and terror were forgotten, industry and commerce rallied, bustle and
activity increased from day to day, and, slowly indeed, but steadily,
Rome returned to its normal activity and appearance. The survivors
reconstructed their life on the old lines, the streets and squares
were again thronged, the public baths, those vast casinos of ancient
club-life, were daily crowded with idlers.
The repopulation of the city brought into it many rich families from
towns all over the Roman world.
Their influx sent up the price of large residences and caused much
activity in the renting and selling of properties suitable for the homes
of people of ample means.
Brinnaria, without a male relation of even the remotest degree, came to
lean more and more on Vocco, the husband of her chum Flexinna. He was a
young man of not unpleasing appearance and of courtly manners, but very
haughty, reserved and silent by nature; and exceedingly spare, lean
and wiry, with black hair and brows, a complexion as if tanned and
weatherbeaten and an habitual frown. He was fond of Brinnaria and unbent
to her more than to most of his acquaintances. She treated him as a sort
of honorary cousin and turned over to him many details of the care of
her large and scattered property. He took upon himself in her interest
the sale or management of her distant estates, found for them capable
overseers or purchasers at advantageous prices, bought slaves where they
were needed, arranged for the marketing of the more important products
and accounted to her for the proceeds.
About her town properties he had more trouble and some exasperation,
for he found the apparently practical and unsentimental Brinnaria oddly
unwilling to disturb the contents of the palaces in which her kinsmen
had lived and died. She was naturally a good business woman and all
her instincts urged her to increase her capital and her income by every
means within her power and at every opportunity. Yet, when Vocco came to
her with offers of high prices for the various buildings which she
had inherited he could induce her to arrange for the sale only of the
smaller and less valuable houses, or of those tenements which had been
owned merely to rent, but had never been inhabited by any members of
the Brinnarian clan. At the suggestion of preparing for sale any of the
palaces of her near kinsfolk she balked; from the barest hint towards
moving the furniture in her father’s home she recoiled in horror.
Vocco found himself faced by invincible femininity, with the possession
of which he would not have credited Brinnaria. At first he was
irritated. As he missed sale after sale he became more and more
aggravated. But he kept his temper, held his tongue and waited for
Brinnaria’s mood to alter. Her sentimentality gradually waned as the
prices offered steadily mounted. After long hesitation she gave orders
to sell at auction the furniture from the house of a distant cousin, and
to rent the house. That broke the spell. One by one the late abodes of
the Brinnarii were cleared and sold; sold furniture and all, cleared and
rented, or rented furnished.
The former dwellings of her aunts and uncles she was reluctant to
disturb. She felt a sort of sacredness about these splendid houses where
she had been merry as a child. When at last she made up her mind to part
with one she would not give the order to sell it until she had gone over
it herself and selected some pieces of furniture which she specially
valued. Vocco tried to dissuade her, but she would not listen to him.
Her visit to the vast, empty palace had a most depressing effect on her.
All her grief at her countless bereavements rushed back over her in a
flood and overwhelmed her. She would not allow a stick of furniture to
be moved and withdrew her consent to the sale.
Vocco was patient and silent.
After a time this mood, too, wore off.
She had that particular dwelling emptied and sold and, once that first
step taken, under the pressure of hugely profitable offers, sold all the
other properties.
In each case she insisted on inspecting the houses room by room before
anything was moved. After the first she had no hysterical qualms,
did not show any outward emotion, selected what she meant to keep for
herself, ordered the sale of the rest, remained calm through it all.
Finally Vocco came to her with a most tempting offer for her childhood
home. Brinnaria took a night to think it over.
She had not entered the place since her father’s funeral. He had been
the last of the family to die, three months after his wife, and some
days after his last surviving son. During the lengthy interval the
palace had stood shut fast, cared for only by a few slaves, and those
not lifelong family servants, but recent purchases; for the pestilence
had carried off with their masters nearly all the home-bred house
slaves.
At the thought of going through the deserted halls and silent rooms
Brinnaria winced. But she nerved herself up to it. She named a day on
which she meant to face the ordeal, asked Vocco to order the palace
swept and dusted, and announced to Guntello, almost the sole survivor of
her father’s personal servitors, that he was to accompany her.
When the day came she set out, not in her carriage, but in her litter
with eight Cilician bearers, her lictor running ahead and Guntello and
Utta walking behind.
She began her survey accompanied by Guntello and Utta. But when she came
to the nursery and schoolroom she sent the two away, told them to wait
for her in the peristyle, shut herself in and had a long, hard cry;
precisely as if she had been, as of old, a little girl hurt or angry or
vexed. After she had wept till no more tears flowed she felt relieved
and comforted.
She called Utta, had her bring water, bathed her face and sent the maid
away again.
Then she resolutely examined room after room. The second floor took a
long while, for there were many doors to open and close for the last
time.
There was a third floor, a feature possessed by few dwellings in Rome
in ancient times. The Imperial Palace, which later towered to even
seven stories, was unique in Brinnaria’s time, in the possession of five
superposed floors. The great palace of Sallust, near the Salarian Gate,
had but three.
To the third floor she mounted. Before she had investigated half the
rooms she found a door fast. What was more, as she tried it, she thought
she heard a sound, as of human movement, inside that room.
Brinnaria was no weakling. Methodically she tried that door with her
full, young strength, tried it all along its edge opposite its hinges,
tried it at the middle, at the top, at the bottom. She made sure the
door was not stuck or jammed; she was convinced that it was bolted
within the room.
She leaned over the railing of the gallery and called Guntello.
The odd note in her voice brought that faithful giant up the stairs, two
steps at a time; the beams of the house, even the marble steps of the
stair, seemed to quiver under his tread.
She had him try the door. He agreed that it was bolted.
“Can you break it in?” she queried.
Guntello laughed. “Without half trying, little Mistress,” he replied.
Brinnaria’s voice came hard and sharp.
“You in that room!” she called, “unbolt that door and come out, or it
will be the worse for you. I’ll count ten and then order the door burst
open.” She began to count.
She heard the bolt shot back.
She nodded to Guntello.
He gave the door a push.
Before them stood Calvaster, his attitude and countenance expressing
cringing cowardice, cloaked by ill-assumed effrontery. He did not speak,
trying to appear unconcerned.
“What are you doing in my house?” Brinnaria demanded.
“I do not wonder that you are astonished to see me here and angry as
well,” Calvaster replied, “but the explanation is simple. I learned that
you were proposing to sell the property. I had a curiosity to see it as
it is. I found means to slip in and go over the building. I counted on
leaving before you arrived. I miscalculated, that is all. Awkward for
both of us, but unintentional on my part.”
“I don’t believe half of that rigmarole,” snapped Brinnaria.
“It is all true, nevertheless,” Calvaster asserted with an air of
injured innocence.
“One thing is plain, anyhow,” Brinnaria declared. “You bribed one of my
slaves. Which one did you bribe?”
Calvaster kept his lips pressed tight together.
“March him downstairs, Guntello,” Brinnaria commanded.
Calvaster winced and made as if to dodge. Big as he was Guntello was
wonderfully quick. In a flash he had the intruder by the neck. Utterly
helpless Calvaster was marched down the stairs.
In the courtyard Brinnaria had brought before her the half dozen slaves
who had charge of the empty house. They stood in a row fidgeting and
glancing at each other.
“Now,” she demanded of Calvaster, “point out which one you bribed.”
Calvaster remained motionless and mute.
“Hurt him, Guntello,” said Brinnaria.
Guntello applied a few simple twists and squeezes, such as schoolboys of
all climes employ on their victims.
Calvaster yielded at once and indicated one of the suspects.
“Throw him out, Guntello,” said Brinnaria.
When Guntello returned he cheerfully inquired, with the easy assurance
of an indulged favorite.
“Shall I kill Tranio, Mistress?”
“No!” said Brinnaria viciously. “I wouldn’t have a toad killed on the
word of that contemptible scoundrel. Give Tranio a moderate beating and
hand him over to Olynthides to be sold at auction without a character.”
Her survey of her former home and her selection of the ornaments,
pictures, statues, articles of furniture and other objects which
she desired reserved for herself she completed with an air less of
melancholy than of puzzled thought.
She was off duty for all of that day and night and was to dine with
Flexinna and Vocco. In the course of the pestilence they had inherited a
magnificent abode on the Esquiline. In particular it had a private bath
with a large swimming-pool. The Vestals were the only ladies in Rome who
might not enjoy the magnificent public baths, to which all Roman society
flocked every afternoon, somewhat as we moderns throng a beach at a
fashionable seaside resort. Brinnaria, who loved swimming, felt
the deprivation keenly. The Atrium had luxurious baths, but no
swimming-pool. Whenever Brinnaria dined with Flexinna she particularly
enjoyed the swim the two always took together before dinner. On that
afternoon, while they were revelling in the water, Brinnaria told
Flexinna of her adventure.
“I can’t conjecture,” she said, “what motive brought him there. I have
been racking my brains about it ever since it happened and it is an
enigma to me.”
“No riddle to me,” Flexinna declared. “It’s as c-c-clear as
d-d-daylight.”
“If you are so sure,” said Brinnaria, “explain. I have no guess even.”
“Why,” expounded Flexinna, “he was there to c-c-collect evidence
against you. He hates you because you wouldn’t marry him and he is
t-t-tenaciously resolved to be revenged. He is on the lookout for
anything that might d-d-discredit you. He hoped to spy on an interview
b-b-between you and Almo, for he surmised that you would arrange to have
Almo meet you in the empty house!”
“The nasty beast!” cried Brinnaria, shocked. “How dare he?”
“Oh, b-b-be sensible,” Flexinna admonished her. “You know the k-k-kind
he is. He’s b-b-bound to impute to everybody what he would d-d-do in
their p-p-place. Any man under the same circumstances would jump at the
same suspicions.”
“But why?” queried Brinnaria, bewildered and angry.
“Think a minute,” said Flexinna. “To suspect all women is a
c-c-convention, almost an axiom, with most men. All men like
C-C-Calvaster assume that every married woman is interested in some man
b-b-besides her husband, or in almost any man, and if married women are
under suspicion, on the assumption that one husband is not enough, of
c-c-course you Vestals, who haven’t even a husband, are doubly under
suspicion.”
“Bah!” snarled Brinnaria, “you make me cross!”
“Facts are facts,” Flexinna summed up.
Brinnaria did not retort. She had climbed out of the tank and was seated
on the edge, the drops streaming off her in rivulets, watching the
ripples her toes’ made in the water.
“Facts are facts,” she echoed, “and conjectures are merely conjectures;
what is more, conjectures ought to have some basis in fact. You assert,
as if you know it to be true, that Calvaster expected Almo to meet me
to-day. But Almo is at Falerii.”
“No, he’s not,” Flexinna retorted; “he’s b-b-been in t-t-town t-t-ten
d-d-days and has had the old house on the C-C-Carinae reopened. He’s
settling d-d-down to live in Rome.”
Brinnaria flushed.
“I think,” she said, scrambling to her feet, “that he might have had
enough consideration for me to stay in the country.”
“So d-d-do I,” said Flexinna.