THE SOUL OF ROME
The library in Basil's house was a spacious, graceful room, offering at
this day very much the same aspect as in the time of that ancestral
Anician, who, when Aurelian ruled, first laid rolls and codices upon
its shelves. Against the walls stood closed presses of wood, with
bronze panelling, on which were seen in relief the portraits of poets
and historians; from the key of each hung a strip of parchment, with a
catalogue of the works within. Between the presses, on pedestals of
dark green serpentine, ranged busts of the Greek philosophers: Zeno
with his brows knitted, Epicurus bland, Aratus gazing upward,
Heraclitus in tears, Democritus laughing. These were attributed to
ancient artists, and by all who still cared for such things were much
admired. In the middle stood a dancing faun in blood red marble, also
esteemed a precious work of art. Light entered by an arched window,
once glazed, now only barred with ornamental iron, too high in the wall
to allow of any view; below this, serving as table, was an old marble
sarcophagus carved with the Calydonian hunt.
Here, one day of spring, Decius sat over his studies. Long ago he had
transferred hither all the books from the great house across the Tiber,
and had made his home on the Caelian. As he read or wrote a hard cough
frequently interrupted him. During the past half year his health had
grown worse, and he talked at times of returning to the Surrentine
villa, if perchance that sweeter air might soothe him, but in the
present state of things--Totila had just laid siege to Neapolis--the
removal did not seem feasible. Moreover, Decius loved Rome, and thought
painfully of dying elsewhere than within her walls.
There was a footfall at the door, and Basil entered. He was carelessly
clad, walked with head bent, and had the look of one who spends his
life in wearisome idleness. Without speaking, however, he threw himself
upon a couch and lay staring with vacant eye at the bronze panels of
the vaulted ceiling. For some minutes silence continued; then Decius, a
roll in his hand, stepped to his kinsman's side and indicated with his
finger a passage of the manuscript. What Basil read might be rendered
thus:
'I am hateful to myself. For though born to do something worthy of a
man, I am now not only incapable of action, but even of thought.'
'Who says that?' he asked, too indolent to glance at the beginning of
the roll.
'A certain Marcus Tullius, in one of his letters,' replied the other,
smiling, and returned to his own couch.
Basil moved uneasily, sighed, and at length spoke in a serious tone.
'I understand you, best Decius. You are right. Many a time I have used
to myself almost those very words. When I was young--how old I feel!--I
looked forward to a life full of achievements. I felt capable of great
things. But in our time, what can we do, we who are born Romans, yet
have never learnt to lead an army or to govern a state?'
He let his arm fall despondently, and sank again into brooding silence.
At root, Basil's was a healthy and vigorous nature. Sound of body, he
needed to put forth his physical energies, yet had never found more
scope for them than in the exercise of the gymnasium, or the fatigue of
travel; mentally well-balanced, he would have made an excellent
administrator, such as his line had furnished in profusion, but that
career was no longer open. Of Marcian's ascetic gloom he knew nothing:
not all the misery he had undergone in these last six months could so
warp his wholesome instincts. Owning himself, in the phrases he had
repeated from childhood, a miserable sinner, a vile clot of animated
dust, at heart he felt himself one with all the beautiful and joyous
things that the sun illumined. With pleasure and sympathy he looked
upon an ancient statue of god or hero; only a sense of duty turned his
eyes upon the images of Christian art.
And this natural tendency was encouraged by his education, which, like
that of all well-born Romans, even in the sixth century after Christ,
had savoured much more of paganism than of Christianity. Like his
ancestors, before the age of Constantine, he had been taught grammar
and rhetoric; grammar which was supposed to include all sciences,
meaning practically a comment on a few classical texts, and rhetoric
presumed a preparation for the life of the Forum, having become an art
of declamation which had no reference to realities. Attempts had been
made--the last, only a few years ago, by Cassiodorus--to establish
Christian schools in Rome, but without success, so profoundly were the
ancient intellectual habits rooted in this degenerate people. The long
resistance to the new religion was at an end, but Romans, even while
confessing that the gods were demons, could not cast off their
affection for the mythology and history of their glorious time. Thus
Basil had spent his schooldays mostly in the practice of sophistic
argument, and the delivery of harangues on traditional subjects. Other
youths had shown greater aptitude for this kind of eloquence; he did
not often carry off a prize; but among his proud recollections was a
success he had achieved in the form of a rebuke to an impious
voluptuary who set up a statue of Diana in the room which beheld his
debauches. Here was the nemesis of a system of education which had
aimed solely at the practical, the useful; having always laboured to
produce the man perfectly equipped for public affairs, and nothing else
whatever. Rome found herself tottering with senile steps in the same
path when the Empire and the ancient world lay in ruins about her.
Basil was not studious. Long ago he had forgotten his 'grammatical'
learning--except, of course, a few important matters known to all
educated men, such as the fact that the alphabet was invented by
Mercury, who designed the letters from figures made in their flight by
the cranes of Strymon. Though so ardent a lover, he had composed no
lyric or elegy in Veranilda's honour; his last poetical effort was made
in his sixteenth year, when, to his own joy, and to the admiration of
his friends, he wrote a distich, the verses of which read the same
whether you began from the left hand or the right. Nowadays if he ever
opened a book it was some historian of antiquity. Livy, by choice, who
reminded him of his country's greatness, and reawakened in him the
desire to live a not inglorious life.
Of his latter boyhood part had been spent at Ravenna, where his father
Probus, a friend as well as kinsman of the wise minister Cassiodorus,
now and then made a long sojourn; and he had thus become accustomed to
the society of the more cultivated Goths, especially of those who were
the intimates of the learned Queen Amalasuntha. Here, too, he learned a
certain liberality in religious matters; for it was Cassiodorus who, in
one of the rescripts given from the Gothic court, wrote those memorable
words: 'Religious faith we have no power to impose, seeing that no man
can be made to believe against his will.' Upon the murder of
Amalasuntha, when the base Theodahad ruled alone, and ruin lay before
the Gothic monarchy, Probus, despairing of Italy, following the example
of numerous Roman nobles, migrated to Byzantium. His wife being dead,
and his daughter having entered a convent, he was accompanied only by
Basil, then eighteen years of age. A new world thus opened before
Basil's mind; its brilliancy at first dazzled and delighted him, but
very soon he perceived the difference between a noble's life at Rome or
Ravenna under the mild rule of the Goths, and that led by so-called
Romans in the fear of Justinian and of Theodora. His father,
disappointed in hopes of preferment which had been held out to him,
gladly accepted a mission which would take him back to Italy: he was
one of the envoys sent to Belisarius during the siege of Ravenna, to
urge the conclusion of the Gothic war and command the return of the
Patricius as soon as might be for service against the Persians; and
with him came Basil. On the journey Probus fell ill; he was able to
cross the Adriatic, but no sooner touched Italian Soil than he breathed
his last.
Then it was that Basil, representing his father in the Imperial
mission, came face to face with Belisarius, and conceived a boundless
enthusiasm for the great commander, whose personal qualities--the large
courtesy, the ready kindliness, the frequent laugh--made intimate
appeal to one of his disposition. He stayed in the camp before Ravenna
until the city surrendered, and no one listened with more ardent
approval to the suggestion which began as a whisper between Italians
and Goths that Belisarius should accept the purple of the Western
Empire. This, to be sure, would have been treachery, but treachery
against Justinian seemed a small thing to Basil, and a thing of no
moment at all when one thought of Rome as once more an Imperial city,
and Italy with such a ruler as the laurelled Patricius. Treachery the
general did commit, but not against Byzantium. Having made pretence of
accepting the crown which the Goths offered him, he entered into
Ravenna, took possession in Justinian's name, and presently sailed for
the East, carrying with him the King Vitiges and his wife Matasuntha,
grand-daughter of Theodoric. It was a bitter disappointment to Basil,
who had imagined for himself a brilliant career under the auspices of
the new Roman Emperor, and who now saw himself merely a conquered
Italian, set under the authority of Byzantine governors. He had no
temptation to remain in the North, for Cassiodorus was no longer here,
having withdrawn a twelvemonth ago to his own country by the Ionian
Sea, and there entered the monastery founded by himself; at Ravenna
ruled the logothete Alexandros, soon to win a surname from his
cleverness in coin-clipping. So Basil journeyed to Rome, where his
kinsfolk met him with news of deaths and miseries. The city was but
raising her head after the long agony of the Gothic siege. He entered
his silent home on the Caelian, and began a life of dispirited idleness.
Vast was the change produced in the Roman's daily existence by the
destruction of the aqueducts. The Thermae being henceforth unsupplied
with water, those magnificent resorts of every class of citizen lost
their attraction, and soon ceased to be frequented; for all the Roman's
exercises and amusements were associated with the practice of luxurious
bathing, and without that refreshment the gymnasium, the tennis-court,
the lounge, no longer charmed as before. Rome became dependent upon
wells and the Tiber, wretched resource compared with the never-failing
and abundant streams which once poured through every region of the city
and threw up fountains in all but every street. Belisarius, as soon as
the Goths retreated, ordered the repairing of an aqueduct, that which
served the transtiberine district, and was indispensable to the working
of the Janiculan mills, where corn was ground; but, after his
departure, there was neither enough energy nor sufficient sense of
security in Rome for the restoration of even one of the greater
conduits. Nobles and populace alike lived without the bath, grew
accustomed to more or less uncleanliness, and in a certain quarter
suffered worse than inconvenience from the lack of good water.
Formerly a young Roman of Basil's rank, occupied or not by any serious
pursuit, would have spent several hours of the day at one or other of
the Thermae still in use; if inclined to display, he would have gone
thither with a train of domestic attendants, and probably of parasites;
were the season hot, here he found coolness; were it cold, here he
warmed himself. Society never failed; opportunity for clandestine
meetings could always be found; all the business and the pleasure of a
day were regulated with reference to this immemorial habit. Now, to
enter the Thermae was to hear one's footsteps resound in a marble
wilderness; to have statues for companions and a sense of ruin for
one's solace. Basil, who thought more than the average Roman about
these changes, and who could not often amuse himself with such
spectacles as the theatres or the circus offered, grew something of a
solitary in his habits, and was supposed by those who did not know him
intimately, to pass most of his time in religious meditation, the
preface, perhaps, to retirement from the world. Indolence bringing its
wonted temptations, he fell into acquaintance with Heliodora, a
Neapolitan Greek of uncertain origin, whose husband that year held the
office of City Prefect. Acquaintance with Heliodora was, in his case,
sure to be a dangerous thing, and might well prove fatal, for many and
fierce were the jealousies excited by that brilliant lady, whose
husband alone regarded with equanimity her amorous adventures. Happily,
Basil did not take the matter very much to heart; he scarce pretended
to himself that he cared whether Heliodora was his for a day only or
for a month; and he had already turned his thoughts to the sweetness of
Aemiliana, that young sister of Gordian, whom, if he chose, he might
make his wife.
Now again had sluggishness taken possession of him, and with it came
those promptings of the flesh which, but a few months ago, he easily
subdued, but which the lapse of time had once more made perilous. To
any who should have ventured to taunt him with forgetfulness of
Veranilda, he would have fiercely given the lie; and with reason, for
Veranilda's image was as vivid to him as on the day when he lost her,
and she alone of women had the power to excite his deepest and
tenderest emotions. Nevertheless, he had more than once of late visited
Heliodora, and though these visits were in appearance only such as he
might have paid to any lady of his acquaintance, Basil knew very well
whither they tended. As yet Heliodora affected a total forgetfulness of
the past; she talked of Veranilda, and confessed that her efforts to
make any discovery regarding the captive were still fruitless, though
she by no means gave up hope; therewithal, she treated Basil only half
seriously, with good-naturedly mocking smiles, as a mere boy, a disdain
to her mature womanhood. Of this was he thinking as he tossed on the
couch in the library; he had thought of it too much since leaving
Heliodora yesterday afternoon. It began to nettle him that his grief
should be for her merely an amusement. Never having seen the Gothic
maiden, whose beauty outshone hers as sunrise outdoes the lighting of a
candle, this wanton Greek was capable of despising him in good earnest,
and Basil had never been of those who sit easy under scorn. He felt
something chafe and grow hot within him, and recalled the days when he,
and not Heliodora, had indulged contempt--to his mind a much more
natural posture of affairs, The animal that is in every man had begun
to stir; it urged him to master and crush and tame this woman, whom,
indeed, he held rather in hate than in any semblance of love. Her
beauty, her sensuality, had power over him still; he resented such
danger of subjection, and encouraged himself in a barbarism of mood,
which permitted him to think that even in yielding he might find the
way of his revenge.
There had been a long silence since his reply to the hint offered by
Decius. The student spoke again.
'Basil, leave Rome.'
'It is forbidden,' answered the other dully, his face averted.
'Many things are forbidden which none the less are done. Did you learn
that Veranilda awaited you at Asculum, how long would it be before you
set forth?'
'Not one hour, good Decius.'
'Even so. You would pass the gates disguised as a peasant or as a
woman--no matter how. Will you do less to save all that makes life dear
to an honourable man? Be gone, be gone, I entreat you.'
'Whither?'
'To Picenum, which is not yet subject to the Goths. There gather your
capable men and arm them, and send to the King Totila, offering to
serve him where he will, and how he will. You know,' pursued Decius
earnestly, 'that I speak this something against my conscience, but,
alas! we can only choose between evils, and I think Totila is less of a
tyrant than Justinian. You will not go to Constantinople, nor would I
bid you, for there, assuredly, is nothing to be done worthy of a man;
but you must act, or you perish. For me, a weakling and a dreamer,
there is solace in the _vita umbratilis_; to you, it is naught. Arise,
then, O Basil, ere it be too late.'
The listener rose from his recumbent attitude; he was stirred by this
unwonted vigour in Decius, but not yet did resolve appear on his
countenance.
'Did I but know,' he murmured, 'that Veranilda is not in Rome!'
Innumerable times had he said it; the thought alone held him inert.
Impossible to discover, spite of all his efforts, whether Veranilda had
been delivered to the Greeks, or still lay captive in some place known
to the deacon Leander. From the behaviour of Bessas nothing could be
certainly deduced: it was now a long time since he had sent for Basil,
and Marcian, though believing that the commander's search was still
futile, had no more certainty than his friend. Soon after Petronilla's
death, the Anician mansion had been thoroughly pillaged and everything
of value removed to the Palatine. Bessas condescended to justify this
proceeding: having learnt, he said, that the question of Aurelia's
orthodoxy lay in doubt, some declaring that she was a heretic, some
that she had returned to orthodoxy before her father's death, he took
charge of the property which might be hers until she appeared to claim
it, when, having the testament of Maximus in his hand, he would see
that justice was done. With Leander, Basil had succeeded in obtaining
an interview, which was altogether fruitless. The deacon would answer
no question, and contented himself with warning his visitor of the
dangers incurred by one who openly sought to defeat the will of the
Emperor.
'Is it farewell?' asked Decius, stepping towards his kinsman, who
seemed about to leave the room.
'I will think.'
'Go speak with Gordian. He says that he can obtain you permission to
leave the city.'
'I doubt it,' replied Basil. 'But I will see him--ere long.'
Decius went forth for his morning's exercise, which sometimes took the
form of a gentle game of ball, but was generally a ramble on foot and
unaccompanied, for he never felt at ease when an attendant followed
him. His habits were solitary; ever absorbed in thought, or lost in
dreams, he avoided the ways where he would be likely to encounter an
acquaintance, and strayed among ruins in deserted gardens, such as were
easily found in the remoter parts of the Caelian. To-day, tempted on by
the delicious air, and the bright but not ardent sunshine, he wandered
by such unfrequented paths till a sound of voices broke upon his
meditation, and he found himself in view of the Lateran. Numbers of
poor people were streaming away from the open space by the Pope's
palace, loud in angry talk, its purpose intelligible enough to any one
who caught a few words. Decius heard maledictions upon the Holy Father,
mingled with curses no less hearty upon the Greeks who held Rome.
'It was not thus,' cried an old man, 'in the time of King Theodoric,
heretic though he might be. We had our bread and our hog's flesh, prime
quality both, and plenty for all.'
'Ay,' cried a woman, 'and our oil too. Since these Greek dogs came, not
a drop of oil has there been in my cruse. Heretics, forsooth! What
better is the Holy Father who lets Christians die of hunger while he
eats and drinks his fill?'
'Evil go with thee, O Vigilius! The pest seize thee, O Vigilius! May'st
thou perish eternally, O Vigilius!' shrilled and shouted all manner of
voices, while fists were shaken towards the pontifical abode.
Decius hastened away. The sight of suffering was painful to him, and
the cries of the vulgar offended his ear; he felt indignant that these
people should not be fed, as Rome for so many ages had fed her
multitude, but above all, he dreaded uproar, confusion, violence. His
hurried pace did not relax until he was lost again amid a wilderness of
ruins, where browsing goats and darting lizards were the only life.
Later in the day, when he sat alone in the peristyle, a visitor was
introduced, whom he rose to welcome cordially and respectfully. This
was a man of some threescore years, vigorous in frame, with dry,
wrinkled visage and a thin, grey beard that fell to his girdle. As he
approached, Decius saw that he was bleeding from a wound on the head
and that his cloak was torn.
'What means this, dear master?' he exclaimed. 'What has befallen you?'
'Nothing worth your notice, gentle Decius,' the philosopher replied,
calmly and gravely. 'Let us rather examine this rare treatise of
Plotinus, which by good fortune I yesterday discovered among rubbish
thrown aside.'
'Nay,' insisted Decius, 'but your wound must be washed and dressed; it
may else prove dangerous. I fear this was no accident?'
'If you must know,' answered the other with good-natured peevishness,
'I am accused of magic. The honest folk who are my neighbours,
prompted, I think it likely, by a certain senator who takes it ill that
his son is my disciple, have shown me of late more attention than I
care for, and to-day as I came forth, they pursued me with cries of
"Sorcerer!" and the like, whereupon followed sticks and stones, and
other such popular arguments. It is no matter. Plotinus begins--'
Simplicius was one of the last philosophers who taught in Athens, one
of the seven who were driven forth when Justinian, in his zeal for
Christianity, closed the schools. Guided by a rumour that supreme
wisdom was to be found in Persia, the sages journeyed to that kingdom,
where disappointment awaited them. After long wanderings and many
hardships, Simplicius came to Rome, and now had sojourned here for a
year or two, teaching such few as in these days gave any thought to
philosophy. Poor, and perhaps unduly proud, he preferred his own very
humble lodging to the hospitality which more than one friend had
offered him; and his open disregard for religious practices, together
with singularities of life and demeanour, sufficiently explained the
trouble that had come upon him. Charges of sorcery were not uncommon in
Rome at this time. Some few years ago a commission of senators had sat
in judgment upon two nobles accused of magic, a leading article of
proof against one of them being that he had a horse which, when
stroked, gave off sparks of fire. On this account Decius was much
troubled by the philosopher's story. When the wound had been attended
to, he besought Simplicius not to go forth again to-day, and with some
difficulty prevailed.
'Why should it perturb you, O most excellent Decius,' said the sage,
'that a lover of wisdom is an offence to the untaught and the foolish?
Was it not ever thus? If philosophy may no longer find peace at Athens,
is it likely that she will be suffered to dwell at ease in Rome?'
'Alas, no!' admitted Decius. 'But why, dear master, should you invite
the attacks of the ignorant?'
'I do no such thing. I live and act as seems good to me, that is all.
Should no one have the courage to do that, what hope would there be, O
Decius, for that most glorious liberty, the liberty of the mind?'
The listener bent his head abashed. Then Simplicius began to read from
the manuscript, and Decius, who knew Greek fairly well--he had lately
completed certain translations from Plato, left unfinished by
Boethius--gave reverent attention. At a certain point the philosopher
paused to comment, for the subject was difficult--nothing less than the
nature of God. In God, according to the system here expounded, there
are three principles or hypostases, united but unequal--the One, the
Intelligence, the Soul; which correspond, respectively, to the God of
Plato, the God of Aristotle, the God of Zeno. Usually curt and rather
dry in his utterances, Simplicius rose to a fervid eloquence as he
expounded this mysticism of Alexandria. Not that he accepted it as the
final truth, it was merely a step, though an important one, towards
that entire and absolute knowledge of which he believed that a glimpse
had been vouchsafed to him, even to him, in his more sublime hours. As
for Decius, the utmost effort never enabled him to attain familiarity
with these profound speculations: he was soon lost, and found his brain
whirling with words that had little or no significance. At home in
literature, in philosophy he did but strive and falter and lose
himself. When at length there came a silence, he sighed deeply, his
hand propping his forehead.
'Master, how few men can ever know God!'
'Few, few,' admitted the philosopher, his gaze upwards.
'I think I should be content,' said Decius, 'to love and praise Him.
Yet that meseems is no less hard.'
'No less,' was the reply. 'For, without knowledge, love and praise are
vain.'
But Decius' thought had another meaning.