Darkness and Dawn; Or, Scenes in the Days of Nero. An Historic Tale

by F. W. Farrar

  CHAPTER XV

  _EMPEROR AND ÆSTHETE._

  ‘The skipping king, he ambled up and down With shallow jesters and rash bavin wits, Soon kindled and soon burned, carded his state, Mingled his royalty with capering fools, Had his great name profaned with their scorns.’

  1. _Henry IV._ iii. 2.

  Nero tried to persuade himself that he cared little for such scenesas that which we have witnessed; but in reality they troubled him.It required a strong effort to shake off their effects, and they lefthis small pleasure-loving nature in a state of tremor and disgust. Helonged to escape from them to some complete retirement, where, awayfrom all pomp, he could give himself up, heart and soul, to selfishæstheticism and voluptuous delight.

  He had villas at Antium and at Baiæ, but even they were more publicthan he desired, and he determined to escape from the noise and heatand worry of Rome to an enchanting lodge which had been designed bythe architects, Severus and Celer, in one of the wildest gorges ofthe Simbruine ridge of the Apennines, a little above the modern townof Subiaco. Through this gorge the icy stream of the Anio forces itsway, leaping down into the valley beneath in tumultuous cataracts.By damming the river the architects had with consummate taste andskill, caused it to spread into three mountain lakes, three hundredfeet above the valley. On either side of the gorge they had builta hunting-lodge half hidden amid the dense foliage, and the twovillas--for such they practically were--had been united by a bridgewhich spanned the abyss with a graceful arch at a stupendous heightabove the valley. Nature and art combined to make the scene supremelybeautiful. The grounds and gardens of the villas spread down to thesmiling vale beneath, by walks under overhanging rocks, tapestriedwith the luxuriant growth of creepers and wild flowers. Underfootthe moss of softest emerald was now variegated with the red autumnalleaves. Where the pure runnels trickled down little gullies of therocks they were brightened with maidenhair and arborescent ferns.The artificial sheets of water, in which many water-fowl swamundisturbed, were overshadowed by beeches and oaks and goldenplatanes which late autumn had touched with her fiery finger.

  It was an enchanting spot. Gay shallops were always ready on theartificial lakes if any guest cared to row or to plunge in the coolbright water. On the smooth lawn the ‘gemmy peacocks,’ as the Latinpoets called them, strutted and displayed their Indian glories,mingled with tame pheasants and partridges. Kids leaped and sportedabout the rocky slopes. The cushat-doves cooed from the groves,and white pigeons from the dove-cotes would come crowding roundfor maize-grain at the slightest call. The Rhodian hens cluckedcontentedly about the farmyard, which was crowded also with geeseand guinea-fowls. The long-haired young town-slaves, full of frolic,worked in the garden in mock obedience to the orders of the countrybailiff; but the gardener did not attach much importance to theirlabours, for they were far more intent on pilfering the best fruitthey could find in the granaries than on cultivating the soil; andthe rustics knew that to offend them was as much as their place wasworth.

  The lodges themselves made no pretence to the Cæsarean magnificenceof the Palace at Rome. But their simplicity did not exclude theexercise of luxurious taste in their construction and adornment. Allthe rooms were brightened with lovely frescoes painted by the mostfamous rhyparographists. On the walls of the richer apartments therewere orbs of porphyry and lapis lazuli. The impluvium, into whichfell the ceaseless plash of a musical fountain, was a basin ofThasian stone, once a rarity even in temples, and the stop whichregulated the play of the water was formed into the winged figureof a child moulded in silver. In the centre of the hall, which wastessellated with small pieces of blue and white marble, there wasan exquisite copy of the doves of Scopas. Statues by such mastersas Myron and Praxiteles stood between the pillars of the peristyle.The windows were filled with glass, and between them were abaciof peacock-marble, supported on the gilded wings of Cupids, andof griffins which looked in opposite directions. On these slabs ofmarble stood some of the gold and silver plate which Augustus hadordered to be made out of the statuettes of precious metals whichhad been erected to him by too-adulatory provincials. On othertables of ivory and fragrant woods lay engraved gems and cameos,or curiosities, brought from all lands. The walls of the small butprecious library were covered, in imitation of the famous library ofApollo, with medallions of the most famous Greek and Roman authorsin repoussé work of gold and silver, or moulded of Corinthian bronze.Poets, historians, jurists, orators were grouped together, andbetween the groups were framed specimens of the most exquisitepalæography.

  Nero was going for the first time to take possession of thisenchanting retreat, the loveliness of which had kindled the surpriseand admiration of the few who had seen it. He started from Rome witha splendid retinue. He himself rode in a light car, inlaid with ivoryand silver, and was followed by an army of a thousand slaves andretainers. One of the earliest lessons which he learnt was that hisresources were practically boundless, so that from the first he brokeout into unheard-of extravagance. His mules were shod with silver.The muleteers were dressed in liveries of Canusian wool, dyedscarlet. The runners in front of his chariot, and the swarthy cohortof outriders from Mazaca in Numidia, selected for their skill inhorsemanship, were adorned with bracelets and trappings of gold.The more delicate slaves had their faces covered with masks, ortinged with cosmetics, lest their complexions should suffer from thesunlight. Many of the slaves had no other office than to carry, withdue care, the lyres and other musical instruments which were requiredfor the theatrical entertainments.

  Agrippina, devoured with chagrin and resentment, had indeed beenasked to accompany him, but in a way so insultingly ungracious, thatshe declined. She dreaded to share with him a place so retired, inwhich she knew that almost every hour would fill her with disgustand anger. She had chosen instead to go alone to her stately villaat Bauli, on the Campanian shore. There, if she had little else tooccupy her time, she could continue her own memoirs, or amuse herselfwith the lampreys and mullets, which were so tame that they wouldcome at her call, and feed out of her hand. Her husband’s mother,Antonia, had attached earrings to one pet lamprey, so that peopleused to visit the villa to see it. Agrippina followed her example.

  Octavia followed Nero. She had not been suffered to possess anyvilla which she could call her own, and much as Nero would haveliked to leave her behind, he was compelled by public opinion toobserve a certain conventional respect for his Empress, the daughterof Claudius. The sedan in which she travelled was carried by eightstalwart Bithynian porters, but she was not honoured with anysplendour or observance, and had only a modest retinue out of hersix hundred nominal attendants. Still humbler was the followingof Britannicus. He had been bidden to come partly because it wouldhave seemed shameful to leave him alone in Rome during an unhealthyseason, when even persons of low position were driven into thecountry by the month in which Libitina claimed her most numerousvictims; and also because Nero was glad to keep him in sight. Hewas happy enough, for Titus was with him, and Pudens was one of theescort; and as Epaphroditus necessarily attended his master, Nero,it was not difficult to get leave for Epictetus to come in histrain. The two kind-hearted boys thought that the pale face of theslave-child might gain a touch of rose from the fresh winds of theApennines.

  Very few ladies were invited. It was necessary, indeed, that one ortwo should accompany Octavia; and Nero, for his own reasons, wishedJunia Silana and Calvia Crispinilla to be of the party. These wereladies with whom a young matron like Octavia could scarcely exchangea word, but happily for her, Flavia Domitilla, the wife of Vespasian,was asked to accompany the Empress. Vespasian, who had just returnedfrom his proconsulate, had been summoned to have an interview withNero on the state of affairs in Africa, and to stay for some days.Acte was in the train of Nero, but, though she rarely saw Octavia,the unfortunate Empress little knew that the presence of Domitilla,the only lady to whom she could speak without a shudder, wasreally due to the private suggestion of the lovely and kind-
heartedfreedwoman. Flavia Domitilla was of the humblest origin, and herfather had occupied no higher office than that of a quæstor’s clerk.That no nobler companion had been sought for her would have beenregarded as an insult by any lady of haughty character; but Octaviapreferred the society of the honest matron to that of a thousandCrispinillas.

  Seneca and Burrus were invited for a brief visit only, and as Neroliked to give a flavour of intellectuality to the society which hegathered round him, Lucan was asked, as the rising poet of the day;and Silius Italicus, as a sort of established poet laureate; andPersius, the young Etrurian knight, who, though but twenty-one yearsold, was so warmly eulogised by his tutor, Cornutus, that greatthings were expected of him. None of his satires had yet seen thelight, but his head would hardly have been safe if Nero could haveread some of the lines locked up in his writing-desk. With these hadbeen also invited C. Plinius Secundus, a wealthy knight, thirty-fouryears of age, in whose encyclopædic range of knowledge it was hopedthat the guests might find an endless fund of amusement and anecdotein their more serious moments.

  But while Nero liked to keep up the credit of dabbling in literarypursuits, the choice spirits to whom he looked for his real delightwere very different from these graver personages. The fashionableelegance of Otho and the luxurious cynicism of Petronius wereindispensable for his amusement. Tigellinus was too intimate to beexcluded; and with these came Vatinius, the witty buffoon and cobblerof Beneventum, an informer of the lowest class. This cobbler’s chiefrecommendations were personal deformity, an outrageous tongue, andan abnormally prominent nose. He avenged himself on society for thewrongs inflicted on him by nature. He rejoiced in the immortality ofhaving given his name to a drinking-cup with a long nozzle, which haspreserved his memory in the verse of Juvenal and Martial.

  Here Nero enjoyed life to his heart’s content. The happy accidentthat the villa really consisted of two edifices, separated by thebridge across the glen, enabled him to keep his least welcome guestsin the Villa Castor, and his chosen companions in the Villa Pollux.

  In the grounds of the Villa Castor, Seneca and Burrus had rooms inwhich they could transact with their secretaries their ministerialand military business. Pliny could bury himself among the rarertreasures of the library, or amuse his leisure by seeing what furtherhe could learn about the habits of the flamingoes and other foreignbirds, which were carefully kept in cages and fed from the hands ofthe visitors. For Britannicus and Titus, who often asked Persius tobe their companion, there was the resource of the tennis-court, thegymnastic room, and rowing, bathing, and fishing in the lakes; andPersius, who had heard all about Epictetus from his young patron,sometimes let the little slave sit at his feet while he read choicepassages of old Roman poems in works which had been found for him bythe clever librarian.

  The meals were held separately in the two villas, though sometimesall the guests were invited to Nero’s table. He varied his amusementsin every possible way. Sometimes he would take a long swim in thecold lake; sometimes he would fish with a purple line and a goldenhook, though he caught fewer fish in a morning than Britannicus wouldcatch in an hour. He delighted to spend hours at a time with theharpist Terpnos or the singer Diodorus, who trained him how to usewhat it had become the fashion to describe as his celestial voice.

  He soon got tired of the small restraint upon his amusements whichresulted from the presence of the graver guests across the bridge.But they helped to form an audience for him in the room which hadbeen fitted up as a theatre. One evening he had been displayinghis accomplishments to all the guests at both villas, and had beenreceived by the listening slaves and courtiers with tumults ofapplause. The others were obliged, or felt themselves obliged, tojoin in the clapping; but Nero could read in their faces that theywere unwilling listeners. Seneca blushed, and his smooth tonguestumbled, as he attempted to express his gratification. Burrus lookedon with profound disapproval. A look of involuntary scorn stoleover the grave features of Persius, whom Nero already hated, becausethe young man’s virginal modesty formed such a contrast to his ownshamelessness. But, worst of all, the blunt soldier, Vespasian, tothe intense amusement of Titus and Britannicus, had first of allbegun to nod, and then had fallen asleep with his mouth wide open,and had snored--had actually and audibly snored, so that all theaudience heard it, while Nero was chanting his own divine verseswith the most bewitching trills of his own divine voice!

  Nero, in his rage, half thought of having him arrested on the chargeof high treason--an accusation of which the meshes were equallyadapted to entangle the most daring criminals and the most trivialoffenders. But when he poured out his wrath to Petronius, his elegantfriend laughed immoderately, and pacified Nero’s offended vanity bydwelling on Vespasian’s somnolence as a proof of his vulgarity.

  ‘I suppose, then,’ said Nero, ‘I must say with Horace, “_solvunturrisu tabulæ_”?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Petronius, ‘and you may add “_tu missus abibis_.” Why notmake a clean sweep of these dreadful old fogies in the Villa Castor?Pliny has told us all we care to know about flamingoes and lampreys.Seneca’s pomposities grow stale. We have been sufficiently amused forthe present by the blushes of Persius, and the good Silius Italicusis as tedious as his own epic. Give them a respectful farewell. Sendfor Paris the actor, and Aliturus the pantomime, and some of yourfairest slaves to wait on us at our choicest banquets. Let us dismissthis humbug of respectability and pluck the blossom of the days.’

  The advice fell on congenial ears. It was intimated to the guestsin the Villa Castor that they might present their respects to theEmperor, and disperse where they chose. They were not sorry to departfrom such dubious neighbours as those in the Villa Pollux. Vespasianand Titus were rudely sent off the next morning, without beingpermitted to see Nero again. Flavia Domitilla accompanied them, andas the presence of Britannicus was always a trouble to Nero, he wasallowed to spend the rest of the autumn in the humble Sabine villa ofVespasian’s family at Phalacrine, near Reate, where he would not onlyhave Titus as a companion, but also his cousins--the two young sonsof Vespasian’s brother, Flavius Sabinus.

  ‘Among those dull farmers,’ said Nero, ‘he is not likely to have anynonsense put into his head. Let him eat beans and bacon, and grow assluggish as his friends.’

  To Nero and the fashionable nobles of his time every man was sluggishand plebeian who did not care to season his recreation with a varietyof vices.