“In my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in hell:
Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.”
MILTON.
If the death-pangs of hope prevailed over the haughty spirit and manly
strength of the Hebrew, how did they rend the softer bosom of the newly
wedded bride united to the cruel, licentious Præfect. Unequally yoked
with an unbeliever, did Lucia Claudia betray by her manner to him in
their domestic intercourse the greater horror and disgust with which the
closer view of his character inspired her? No; the Christian wife of
Nymphidius strove to correct his errors, and, though foiled in her
attempt, concealed the crimes she could not soften. He loved her—if a
passion so selfish, so madly jealous, was worthy of the name of love;
but knowing that he never possessed her heart, he watched her closely
and secluded her from every eye. This seclusion was grateful to his
wife, who in the brightest bloom of beauty consented to remain a
prisoner in the house of her husband, who feared that the charms that
enamoured him might captivate some more favoured suitor. A sense of
degradation made Lucia shrink from the public gaze, but her retirement
was not passed in vain regrets and useless complaints. She endeavoured
to implant Christian principles throughout her heathen household;
gathered together such of her slaves as were willing to profit by her
instructions, and taught them the truth “as it is in Jesus.” Incapable
of virtue himself, the Præfect loved and venerated it in his wife, who
vainly tried to win him to the Lord. Ambition, a mightier passion than
that softer one he felt for her, ruled his soul. The belief that he drew
his birth from Caligula, which had haunted him while a slave, still like
an ignis fatuus urged him onwards. Freedom, fortune, rank, power, the
unbounded favour of Nero, were gifts too mean to content his insatiable
desires. The empire of the world, which he considered his
birthright—for even the worst of men assign some plausible motive under
which they seek to disguise their crimes from their own view—was the
only thing that could satisfy his ambition. To compass this end he
resolved during his consulship with Tigellinus to hurl his master from
the throne, and then to destroy his tools, together with the aged man he
pretended to call to rule over the Roman people. A sea of crime and
blood in perspective appeared between him and the sceptre he resolved to
seize; but what were crimes and blood to a man of his bold temper and
aspiring mind? He had grown up in guilt, and every step he had taken to
advance his fortune was a deeper step in iniquity. The wild scheme he
planned was deeply locked up in his own breast, but there were times
when he longed to impart it prematurely to some one. There was none but
Lucia in whose faith he dared confide; but he did not venture to
disclose a secret that he knew would excite her abhorrence and alienate
her affections, if indeed he possessed them. The virtuous partner of his
couch guessed but too well the guilty machinations of his heart from his
troubled sleep; for sleep, that seals up the thoughts of innocence,
unlocks the bosom ones of guilt. The conscience of the consul Nymphidius
slumbered in the day to wake again at night. How often did the gentle
voice of Lucia break upon his midnight dreams of agony, and soothe his
tortured spirit into peace! How often did she pray him to repent and
seek the Christian’s creed, the Christian’s hope! Her accents never
failed to charm away those horrors of remorse, but with morning he
recovered his natural energy of purpose, and planned again his dark
ambitious schemes. Did no recollections of the bigoted but dearly loved
Adonijah intrude upon the mind of Lucia? No; for from the hour she
became a wife she never suffered his name to pass her lips. It was only
in prayer she dared remember him, so deep was her sense of the
impassable barrier existing between them. Once, and only once, since her
marriage had she beheld him. The meeting was accidental, and both
hastily averted their eyes; for even the Christian proselyte did not
hold the nuptial vow more sacred than the Hebrew slave. To him she was
now the wife of Nymphidius Sabinus, a beautiful woman whose happiness
was destroyed by him, but on whose dear and beloved remembrance he must
dwell no more, unless he would break those laws of Moses he imagined he
had hitherto kept inviolate. Unrestrained in the exercise of her
peculiar tenets, religion poured its holy balm into the bleeding breast
of Lucia, who brought her daily sorrows to the foot of the cross. As she
advanced in Christianity she learned to imitate her dear Redeemer, and
prayed unceasingly for the conversion and pardon of her cruel brother
and unbelieving spouse; and, in imparting the glad tidings of salvation
to her heathen household, and in communion with her Christian
brethren,[14] she enjoyed that peace of God that passeth understanding,
and that even lightened the bonds that chained her to Nymphidius
Sabinus.
During the brief period when Lucia Claudia engrossed his affections, the
patriotism that formed so striking a feature in the character of
Adonijah slept; but when all hope perished, when to think of her became
a crime, when her very remembrance recalled the cruel fanaticism that
had degraded his moral dignity, and abased him beneath the vilest, the
fate of Judea again swallowed up in its absorbing vortex his whole
being. The revolt of Vindex—the voice whose deep unearthly tones were
heard calling Nero by name from the sepulchre of his ancestors, as if to
summon him to share their repose—filled the Romans with awe and
expectation, and the Hebrew with lively hope. The emperor, forsaken by
his flatterers, found his vast palace a gloomy and insupportable
solitude. Tigellinus, Helius, and Nymphidius, the guilty instruments of
his crimes, abandoned him at this critical juncture. Galba, called upon
by the army, the people, and by Julius Vindex, the virtuous Gaul,
opposed the caution of age to the call of patriotism and the voice of
ambition. A breathless pause intervened before the overflowing torrent
of popular feeling found a channel, till a battle, founded on a fatal
mistake, was fought between Virginius, the emperor’s general, and Julius
Vindex, in which the noble Gaul was defeated, who rashly threw himself
upon his own sword, gave a turn to Nero’s affairs, whose spirits rose
from deep dejection to a pitch of extravagance, as seizing his harp he
celebrated the triumph of his arms with more skill than good feeling.
His favourites, his flatterers, returned, and sumptuous shows and
splendid games obliterated the memory of his past danger. Pomps and
pageants, however prized by the vulgar in times of plenty, excite their
utmost indignation in times of dearth. Rome was threatened with famine,
and the ship expected to bring corn from Alexandria was laden with sand
from the banks of the Nile to smooth the arena. The popular feeling
blazed, and symptoms of a general revolt appeared in the gloomy
countenances of the people. To save himself from the certain fall of
Nero, and to ingratiate himself with a new emperor, induced Tigellinus,
then with Nymphidius joint Præfect of the Prætorian camp, to seduce the
soldiers he commanded to revolt from Nero. His colleague was actuated by
a different motive, though outwardly avowing the same intentions. To him
the name of the hoary Galba was but a phantom, a shadow to terrify and
destroy the man who then occupied the throne of the Cæsars. He, the son
of Caius Cæsar, would then assert his rights and assume the imperial
purple. The machinations of this iniquitous pair succeeded with regard
to Nero. The camp, the senate, the people, united in one act of justice,
and he fled from the palace to fall by his own unwilling hand.
During the space that intervened between the revolt of Vindex and the
death of the Emperor Nero, Julius had retreated to his villa at
Tusculum, following the suggestions of his own timidity and selfish love
of ease. Voluptuous, vain, ungrateful, and cruel, the luxurious
favourite, who used to flatter the follies and vices of his lord while
in prosperity, was the first to sneer, deride, and forsake him in the
hour of adversity. True, on his hearing the victory of Virginius Rufus
he made preparations for his return, till, warned by a message from
Nymphidius, he countermanded his orders and continued where he was. The
death of Antonia his wife, whom he buried in a sumptuous manner,
afforded a plausible pretext for keeping himself very private at this
critical juncture, and he amused himself with embellishing his house and
grounds, or in dictating verses to Adonijah, who filled the post of
amanuensis to his master as well as preceptor to his only son, a
beautiful boy of five years. This last employment was entirely
gratuitous, for in the noble child the slave traced the features of his
uncle Lucius, softened into the feminine beauty of his aunt. In the
culture of the rapidly developing powers of the infant Lucius, and in
the contemplation of those affairs that would most probably engross the
whole energies of the Roman people and permit his own countrymen to
shake off their yoke, Adonijah passed his time not unhappily in this
agreeable retreat.
Rome in the mean while was plunged into fresh commotions. Nymphidius, in
the name of Galba, seized the reins of government, and, excluding his
colleague Tigellinus from the præfecture and consulship, resolved to
reign either as the minister of Galba or in his own right. Finding
through his spies that the new emperor had other ambitious favourites,
he resolved to possess himself of the purple without a rival. He called
upon his friends and confederates, who applauded his resolution, and
agreed to accompany him that evening to the Prætorian camp. Claudius
Celsus alone warned him that the Roman people, arrogant as in the days
of their virtue, would never accept for Cæsar the son of the bondwoman
Nymphidia. The son of that bondwoman was resolute, bold, and ambitious;
his career had never been retarded by a fear, or deterred by a scruple,
and everything had hitherto succeeded to his wish.
An unusual movement in the Prætorian camp brought his fate to a crisis;
his intentions were already known there. The venal soldiers were
prepared to receive him as their future emperor, when a tribune named
Antonius Honoratus suddenly turned the tide flowing in the favour of
Nymphidius against him, by a speech whose truth was only equalled by its
eloquence.
The noise of the shouts those fickle soldiers gave reached the ears of
the deceived Nymphidius, who suddenly resolved to throw himself among
them without waiting for the presence of the other conspirators. At this
important crisis his thoughts suddenly reverted to his wife: an
undefined foreboding of coming evil entered his breast; he had never
experienced the sensation before. He must see her, must bid her
farewell; perhaps he might never return. He entered her apartment and
found her seated beside a small table perusing some vellum scrolls, a
silver lamp burning before her cast a sort of glory round her
exquisitely moulded head and waving ringlets, a white robe fell round a
form whose living beauty sculpture would vainly imitate. The holy peace,
the deep repose of innocence and purity rested on her lovely features as
she bent over the inspired writings with rapt attention, undisturbed
even by the step of the ambitious aspirant of empire. He looked
earnestly and intently upon his Christian wife, a momentary calm stole
over his senses, he uttered her name, but the tones died away unheard.
The distant shouts from the camp excited a fresh fever in his brain.
“Lucia Claudia!” cried he, and his voice, no longer indistinct, sounded
deep as from out of the earth. She started in surprise and terror as she
rose to meet him. The muscles of his throat were swollen, a fearful
energy sat on his brow, his eyes were fixed and glaring, but gradually
softened as they encountered hers. Some terrible determination was
struggling within his soul; she almost imagined he intended to do her
harm. Suddenly Nymphidius caught her in his arms and passionately and
repeatedly embraced her, then flung her from him, then caressed her
again. She endured this without returning his caresses or resenting his
violence. “You do not love me!” he exclaimed,—“you hate me, and yet I
am risking my life to make you the greatest lady in Rome; but, mark me,
Lucia Claudia, I will neither live nor die without you. The partner of
my throne or of my grave, no power shall divide your fate from mine. If
I fall, you shall never wed another man; for if I thought so, I
would——” he laid his hand on his sword with a terrible look that gave
full meaning to the unfinished sentence.
Lucia’s countenance expressed apprehension, she trembled, she
endeavoured to speak. He drew her to him, pressed a kiss on her brow,
and disappeared; she heard him speaking to his freedman, and then his
footsteps echoed on the marble pavement of the court beneath. He went
alone to the camp, and perished there.
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[14] See Appendix, Note VII.