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

by F. W. Farrar

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  _AN EVIL EPOCH_

  ‘Inde metus maculat pœnarum præmia vitæ, Circumretit enim vis atque injuria quemque ... Nec facile est placidam ac pacatam degere vitam Qui violat facteis communia federa vitæ.’

  LUCRET. _De Rer. Nat._ v. 1151.

  The career and character of Nero grew darker every year, for everyyear more fully revealed to him the awful absoluteness of hisautocracy. No one dreamed of disputing his will. Every desire,however frivolous, however shameful, however immense, was instantlygratified. His Court was prolific of the vilest characters. There wasscarcely a man near his person who did not daily extol his power, hiswit, his accomplishments, his beauty, his divinity. ‘Do you not yetknow that you are Cæsar?’ they whispered to him if he hesitated for amoment to commit some deadly crime, or plunge into some unheard-ofprodigality.

  All things went on much as usual in the corrupt, trembling world ofRome. To-day some wealthy nobleman would commit suicide, amid thelaudations of his friends, out of utter weariness of life. To-morrowall Rome would be talking of the trial of some provincial governorwho had gorged himself with the rapine of a wealthy province.Or everybody would be whispering a series of witty pasquinades,attributed to Antistius Sosianus or Fabricius Veiento, full oflacerating innuendoes, aimed now at the Emperor and now at someprominent senator. Pætus Thrasea and the peril he incurred by hisopposition to the Court furnished a frequent subject of conversation,both to his Stoic admirers and to the rabble of venal senators, whocordially hated him. ‘To put Thrasea to death would be to slay virtueitself,’ said the graver citizens. ‘He is a pompous sham, who wantstaking down,’ said the gilded youth.

  It was a fearful comment on the wretchedness of the times that mostof the prominent thinkers and statesmen looked on self-destruction asthe sole path to freedom, and the best boon of heaven. They thoughtit a proof of philosophic heroism when a man died calmly by his ownhand, though the act involves no more courage than the vilest ofmankind can evince. Seneca tells with rapture the story of the deathof Julius Canus. The Emperor Gaius had said to him, after a quarrel,‘That you may not deceive yourself, I have ordered you to be ledto execution.’ ‘I thank you, excellent prince,’ said Canus. Tendays passed, and Canus spent them without the smallest sign oftrepidation, awaiting the tyrant’s mandate. When the centurionarrived at his house with the order that he was to die, he wasplaying at draughts. He first counted the pieces, and then saidwith a smile to his friend, ‘Mind you don’t claim the victory whenI am dead. You, centurion, will be the witness that I have one piecemore than he has.’ Observing the grief of his friends, he said, ‘Whyare you sad? You are perplexed about the question whether souls areimmortal or not. In a moment or two I shall know. If I can come backI will tell you.’[70]

  The letters, and all the latest writings, of Seneca vibrate withterror. They are full of the thought of death, and doubtless he livedwith the sense of such grim satisfaction as could be derived fromthe thought that if life became too unbearable he could end it. ‘Anddeath,’ he said to himself, ‘means only “not to be.”’[71]

  And all this was felt even in Nero’s ‘golden quinquennium’! Menboasted of the happiness of the days in which their lot was cast,but they knew that under their vineyards burnt the fires of avolcano. Common conversation, home life, dinner parties, literature,philosophy, virtue, wealth, were all dangerous. Neither retirementnor obscurity always availed to save a man. The only remedy was tolearn endurance; not to fill too prominent a place; not to displaytoo much ability; never to speak in public without a digression inflattery of the Emperor; to pretend cheerfulness though one feltanguish; and to thank the tyrant for the deadliest injuries, likethe rich knight who thanked Gaius when he had killed his son.

  Now and then some painful incident, like the bitumen which floats upfrom the Dead Sea depths, showed the foulness which lay beneath thefilm of civilisation. Such, for instance, was the fate of OctaviusSagitta, the tribune of the people, and one of Nero’s intimates, whowas banished for the brutal murder of a married lady who had playedfast and loose with his affections. Such, too, was the savage attackmade upon Seneca in the Senate by the aged informer Publius Suillius,whose sneers and denunciations caused bitter anguish to the unhappyphilosopher. But Nero recked little of such scenes; and as time wenton, he fell wholly under the influence which, even more than thatof Tigellinus, developed his worst impulses. He became more and moreenslaved by the fatal fascinations of the wife of Otho.

  Poppæa had every charm and every gift except that of virtue. Fromthe moment that she had riveted the wandering fancy of Nero at thebanquet of her husband, she felt sure that her succession to thesplendour of an Augusta was only a matter of time. There wereobstacles in the way. Otho loved her to distraction. Nero stilladmired him, and did not think of putting him to death. Nor didhe venture to defy public opinion by taking her from her husband,as Augustus had taken Livia from the elder Tiberius. Octavia wasEmpress, and as the daughter of Claudius, she had a hold on theaffections of the people. As the niece of Germanicus, she was dearto the soldiers. Her life was blameless, and Agrippina was anxiousto protect her, though she knew that it was impossible to make Neroa faithful husband. Octavia retained the distinction of a consort,if she had none of the love which was a wife’s due.

  Poppæa determined to surmount these difficulties, and she it waswho gradually goaded her imperial lover to the worst crimes whichdisgrace his name. Through two murders and two divorces she wadedher way to a miserable throne.

  Her first husband was Rufius Crispinus, by whom she had a son. Shehad accepted the advances of Otho, who passed for the finest of theyoung Roman aristocrats; but she aimed from the first at becomingEmpress, and it was with this aim that she had flung her spells overNero. Her consummate beauty was enhanced by the utmost refinements ofa coquette. She pretended to love Nero passionately for his own sake,as though she had become enamoured of his personal beauty; yet whileshe thus allured his devotion, she carefully checked his advanceswith a bewitching semblance of modesty. She played the part of thehonourable Roman matron. She extolled the open-handed liberalityand artistic grace of Otho. She taunted Nero with his love fora freedwoman like Acte. Above all, she missed no opportunity ofdeepening his irritation against his mother. She saw the instinctivefear of Agrippina which Nero could never quite throw off, and feelingconvinced that so long as the Empress-mother lived she could notsupplant Octavia, she made it her aim to goad Nero to her murderor banishment. Whenever she saw him most enraptured with hercharms--when his hand wandered to the golden tresses, full ofburning gleams in the sunlight, which Nero had astonished the poetsby describing as ‘amber-hued,’ and which were the despair and envyof the Roman ladies--she would push his hand aside, and tell himthat she was much happier as the wife of Otho than she could be in apalace where her lover was still subject to the maternal sway of onewho detested her. Nero became haunted by the fixed impression that hecould never be free and never be happy while Agrippina lived. Poppæadid not even hesitate to taunt him. ‘You a Cæsar!’ she said. ‘Why,you are not even a free man! You are still a schoolboy tied to yourmother’s girdle!’

  Nero saw but little of Agrippina. She spent much of her time at oneor other of her numerous villas, and rarely occupied the palace ofAntonia at Rome. Yet he felt sure that during her sullen isolationshe had never abandoned her designs. She might seem to be livingin retirement, busy with the improvement of her gardens, or amusingherself with her talking starlings and nightingales; but he knew hertoo well to imagine that she acquiesced in a defeat which she mightyet retrieve. She was but forty-two years old, and in past daysshe had shown that she knew how to wait. It was known that she waswriting her own memoirs, and that their scandalous pages abounded inaccusations against others, so dark as to render men more credulousof the worst accusations which were launched against herself. Howcould Nero tell what might be passing between her and Octavia whenthey exchanged visits? His timid and conscience-stricken nat
ure oftenimagined that she might be intriguing with Faustus Sulla or RubelliusPlautus, both of whom, like himself, were scions of the imperialfamily of the Cæsars. He saw in her the one fatal obstacle to thefulfilment of his desires.

  And she, in those grim years of terror, knew well that Poppæa wasno gentle girl like Acte, but would strive to trample on her rivalsas Agrippina herself had done in former years. The struggle againstPoppæa and her beauty and her ambition would be a struggle of lifeand death. And, indeed, the bitterness of death was almost past, forher son stooped to the most ignoble methods for rendering her lifemiserable, and humiliating her even to the dust. At Rome he set onhis emissaries to harass her with lawsuits; and, stooping to yetmore vulgar baseness, he paid the lowest of the populace to annoy herwith coarse jests and infamous reproaches, which they shouted at herfrom boat or roadside, when she was resting at her country houses.

  An attempt was made to poison her at a banquet given by Otho; butAgrippina was wary and abstemious. She had watchful slaves andfreedmen near her person, and the attempt failed. Nero persuadedhimself that his mother was watching him like a tiger-cat in act tospring. It was not only Poppæa who inflamed his hatred. Tigellinusalso had his own designs. He suggested that Otho should first be gotout of the way, and then that the death of Agrippina should leave thepath open for Nero’s union with the siren who had mastered his soul.Octavia, without Agrippina to help her, was hardly considered in thelight of an obstacle. She could be swept aside with ease.

  The first step was soon taken. Otho was sent as governor toLusitania. So long as he was there he could not stand in Nero’sway. The exile cherished his love for Poppæa to the last; and duringhis brief spell of empire he induced the Senate to honour her withstatues. But he never saw her more.

  One day, as Nero sat, with Tigellinus by his side, looking on at asham sea-fight, for the purpose of which the arena had been flooded,they were struck with one of the novelties which Arruntius Stella,the president of the games, had devised for the amusement of thepopulace. During the fight one of the vessels had been so constructedas to go to pieces, to pour a number of armed men out of its hold,and then to be reunited into a trireme as before.

  Tigellinus touched the arm of Nero, and Nero, filled with the samethought, turned to him a glance of intelligence.

  ‘The sea is a treacherous element,’ said Tigellinus. ‘All sorts ofstrange and unaccountable accidents happen at sea.’

  ‘I wonder who could make me a ship of that kind,’ said the Emperor.

  ‘Your old tutor, Anicetus. He is at this moment admiral of thefleet at Misenum. Stella would put at his disposal the artist whocontrived this vessel. One like it could be made in a few weeks,and magnificently adorned for the use of the Empress.’

  ‘How could she be induced to go on board?’

  ‘She is at Antium; you are going to Baiæ. The Feast of Minerva iscoming on. You must be reconciled to her publicly, must invite herto your villa, and must place the galley at her disposal.’

  The sea-fight went on, but it was observed that after the newcontrivance of the mechanical ship, Nero did not pay much attentionto it. He was apparently lost in thought. He was impatientlyrevolving in his mind the intolerable conditions by which he wassurrounded. On the one side was his mother, haughty, menacing,powerful in spite of her dethronement; and, on the other, Poppæaentangling him in her sorceries, worrying him with importunities,goading him to matricide with envenomed taunts. And behind themboth stood the spectre of his tormenting conscience, with thrillingwhisper and outstretched hand.

  And thus it was that the world went on. In that age morality hadwell-nigh vanished because faith was well-nigh dead. Man cannot livewithout a conscience or without God. Guilty pleasure is brief-lived,and afterwards it stingeth like a serpent. It is self-slain by theNemesis of satiety. The wickedest age the world has ever seen wasalso the most incurably sad.

  But for the poor Christians of Rome, though the days were so evil,life had neither tumult nor terror. They had found that which morethan compensated them for the trials of the world. Their life wasa spiritual life. To them, to live was Christ. They possessed thestrange secret of joy in sorrow, the boast of which upon the lipsof the Stoics was an idle vaunt. That secret lay in a spiritualconviction, an indomitable faith, above all, in an In-dwellingPresence which breathed into their souls a peace which the worldcould neither give nor take away. The life which was to most of theircontemporaries a tragedy without dignity, or a comedy without humour,was to them a gift sweet and sacred, a race to be bravely run underthat lucent cloud which shone with the faces of angel witnesses,--amystery indeed, yet a mystery luminous with a ray which streamed tothem out of God’s Eternity from the Glory of their Risen Lord.