by F. W. Farrar
CHAPTER XXXVI
_SELF-AVENGED_
‘Sua quemque fraus, suum facinus, suum scelus, sua audacia, de sanitate ac mente deturbat. Hæ sunt impiorum furiæ, hæ flammæ, hæ faces.’--CIC. _In Pisonem_, xx. 46.
Nero, in a mood of fearful restlessness, awaited news of the issue ofhis design. Long ere this he ought to have received the intelligencewhich would relieve his life of a great burden. Hardly for a momentdid the enormity of the crime he was committing press upon a soulgiven up to shameful self-indulgence. He only yearned to be rid of afigure which frightened him, and checked the rushing chariot-wheelsof his passions. Once free from his mother and her threats, he wouldmarry Poppæa and give himself up to whatever his heart desired. Toouneasy to sleep, too much occupied with anxiety to follow his usualpleasures, he talked to Tigellinus, who alone was with him, pacing upand down the hall of his villa, tossing down goblet after goblet ofwine, and trying to conjure before his imagination the scene whichwas being enacted. Surely it could not fail! And, if it succeeded,the dead tell no tales, and the sea-waves would keep the secret!Every one had seen the warmth of his attention to his mother, andthe affectionate tenderness with which he had bidden her farewell.What remained but publicly to deplore with tears the sad bereavementwhich had been inflicted on his youth by the treachery of winds andwaves, and then to decree to his mother’s memory the temples and thealtars which would be ostentatious proofs of his filial regard?
But how was it that no news had reached him? Three or four hourshad passed. By this time the deed must have been done. Something hadhappened--so much was certain; for though he dared not send out toinquire, as though he suspected that anything was wrong, yet fromthe balcony he saw the torches moving in hurried streams hither andthither, and he could hear the distant cries of excitement and alarm.
A messenger was announced.
‘Who is it?’ asked Nero anxiously.
‘The centurion Pudens,’ said the slave; ‘and he is accompanied byTitus Flavius.’
Nero started at the name, for it recalled the night of the murder ofBritannicus.
‘What do they want?’
‘They have important tidings, which they will tell to Cæsar’s earsalone.’
‘Admit them. See that the guard is on duty close at hand.’
Pudens and the youth were ushered into Nero’s presence, and, inanswer to his agitated inquiries, told him all that had occurred, andhow they had helped to rescue the Empress as she was saving herselfby swimming. They were dismissed, each with a handsome gift; andscarcely had they left the room when Nero, pale as death, and witha heart which throbbed with painful palpitations, flung himself ona couch and turned a terrified look on his accomplice.
‘The plan has been bungled,’ he said. ‘I am ruined. My mother hasbeen wounded. She knows all.’
Tigellinus feared that in his terror he would swoon away, andsprinkled his face with water.
‘What will she do?’ asked Nero in a faint voice. ‘Will she arm herslaves to attack and murder me? Will she rouse the soldiers? Willshe go to Rome and accuse me of matricide before the Senate and thepeople?’
The older and robuster villany of Tigellinus was not terrified bythese alarms; but he too saw that the situation was serious, and didnot know what to advise.
Nero, shaking with alarm, sent messengers in fiery haste for Burrusand Seneca, both of whom had come from Rome to Baiæ at his request toattend upon him during the Quinquatrus. They were roused from theirbeds at the dead of night, and hurried to Nero’s villa. He told themthat, after his mother had left him, her vessel had been wrecked, andthat she had swam to land with no worse hurt than a slight wound; buthe added, ‘She suspects that I have attempted her life: and how am Ito escape her vengeance?’
Burrus and Seneca stood silent and thunderstricken. They wereinnocent of the vile attempt. Dim rumours of some grave crime whichwas in contemplation had indeed reached them; and in Nero’s courteverything seemed credible. The murder had been the design of theexecrable Anicetus and the yet more execrable Tigellinus, and hadonly been revealed to kindred spirits such as Poppæa. But they atonce saw through the story which Nero told them, in which he hadindeed betrayed himself.
It was a moment of anguish and of degradation for them both. Theblunt, honest soldier was thinking of his happier youth, in whichvirtue was not compelled to breathe so contaminated an atmosphere. Hewas secretly cursing the day on which ambition had led him to espousethe cause of Nero, and so to be dragged into loathed complicity withso many crimes.
And through the heart of Seneca there shot a pang of yet keeneragony. He a philosopher; he a Stoic; he a writer of so manyhigh-soaring moral truths; he so superior to the vile and vulgarstandard of his age--to what had he now sunk! Was this corruptfratricide--this would-be murderer of his mother--the timid boywho, little more than five years before, had been entrusted to histutelage? And was he now called upon to advise the most feasible wayin which a matricide could be accomplished? Was he, of all men, tobe the Pylades to _this_ viler Orestes? Was it to the edge of sucha precipice that he had been led by the devious ways of a selfishambition?
A nobler path was open to him had he desired it. Why should he nothave urged Nero to visit his mother, to expostulate with her if needbe, to be reconciled with her in reality? Might he not have told himthat, if Agrippina were really conspiring, it would be better forhim to run that risk than to stain his hands in a mother’s blood?Titus was not a professed philosopher like Seneca, yet Titus rosespontaneously to that height of virtue in later years. He knew thathis brother Domitian was working in secret as his deadly enemy,yet he only took him gently aside, and entreated him to behave moreworthily of a brother. And when he saw that his entreaty had failed,he did indeed weep as he sat at the games, but he would not shed hisbrother’s blood.
Alas! the conscience of Seneca did not suggest to him this meansby which he could extricate himself. That Agrippina was, at such acrisis, preparing to rebel against her son he did not believe; butmight she not--so whispered to him once more the demon of concession--might she not become dangerous hereafter? In other words, must henot help the Emperor to accomplish his fell purpose? The silencebecame intolerable.
At last Seneca turned his troubled eyes on Burrus, as though toinquire whether it would be safe to command the execution ofAgrippina by the Prætorians.
Burrus understood his look and bluntly replied that such a thing wasnot to be thought of. The Prætorians would never lift a hand againstthe daughter of Germanicus. The same thought had been in his mind asin that of Seneca, though he had blushed to give it utterance. Butnow that he saw the drift of his colleague’s purpose, he gulped downhis scruples, and said with sullen brevity, ‘Let Anicetus completewhat he has begun.’
Anicetus had been on board the deceitful vessel, and, on the failureof the device, had made his way with all speed in a rowing boat tothe Emperor’s villa. He entered at the moment when Burrus spoke. Neroturned on him a look of rage, and, walking up to him, stammered intohis ear the threat that his life should pay the penalty of his clumsyfailure.
‘Be calm, Cæsar,’ he replied in a whisper; ‘your wish shall still beaccomplished. Only give me your authority to end the business.’
Anicetus hated Agrippina for private reasons, and he knew that,if she were not put to death, she would demand vengeance upon him,since the treachery on board the vessel could not have been effectedwithout his cognizance. ‘Leave it in my hands,’ he said. ‘If Senecaand Burrus are too timid to strike a blow for their Emperor, at leastAnicetus will not shrink.’
‘Thanks, Anicetus,’ said Nero, changing his mood. ‘To-day, for thefirst time, I feel secure. Now I begin to recognise that I am indeedEmperor. And a freedman is the author of the boon!’
He frowned at his two ministers to reprove their backwardness inmurder, and effusively grasped the hand of the admiral. Burrus, ashe looked at his scowling countenance, felt a fresh pang of remorsethat he had ever deserted the cause of Britannicus. Seneca
said tohis agonised conscience, ‘If one would be the friend of a tyrant,one must not only wink at crimes, but commit them without a moment’shesitation, however heinous they may be.’
While Anicetus was hastily suggesting the steps to be taken,the announcement came that one of Agrippina’s attendants--LuciusAgerinus--was waiting outside with a verbal message from the Augusta.Before he was admitted Nero whispered something to Anicetus. ‘Yes,yes,’ said the admiral, ‘the plan is excellent.’
Both Seneca and Burrus were amazed and shocked at the stupid andshameless comedy which was then enacted before their eyes. Agerinushad hardly begun to deliver his message when Nero, stepping up tohim, dropped a sword at his feet. It fell with a clang on the whiteand purple mosaic, and instantly Nero and Anicetus began to clamour,‘Murder! treason! murder! he has been sent by Agrippina to stab theEmperor!’
At this shout the body-guard came running in, and Agerinus was loadedwith chains. Anicetus now had the excuse he needed. He summoned aband of soldiers and marines, and, accompanied by Herculeius, oneof his naval captains, and Obaritus, an officer of the marines, hemade his way to the villa at Bauli, giving out that he was orderedto execute Agrippina, who had just been detected in an attempt toassassinate her son.
They found the precincts of the villa thronged by a curious crowd.These they drove away, and surrounded the grounds with guards. Theslaves dispersed in all directions. Agrippina was still in her dimlylighted room, growing momently more alarmed because Agerinus did notreturn and she received no message from Nero. Nearer and nearer camethe tread of feet till they heard the soldiers enter the atrium.There followed a brief altercation as the murderers scattered thefew faithful attendants who would still have guarded the door ofthe chamber. The slave-girl rose to fly.
‘Dost thou also desert me?’ said the Empress bitterly.
But the girl’s figure had scarcely disappeared when the door wasrudely burst open, and she saw the cruel face of her enemy Anicetus,who held his drawn sword in his hand.
For a moment they stopped before her imperious gesture.
‘If you have come from my son to inquire after my health,’ she said,‘tell him that I am better. If you have come to commit a crime, Iwill not believe that you have his authority.’
‘We have his authority,’ said Anicetus. ‘Behold his signet-ring!’
They advanced upon her. She sprang from her couch and stood erect.Then the brutal Herculeius struck her a blow on the head with hisbaton, and Anicetus aimed his sword at her breast. She avoided thestroke, and, rending her tunic, ‘Strike here,’ she said, pointing toher womb; ‘it bore a monster!’
She fell, stricken down, and thrust through with many deadly wounds.
Thus ended that career of wickedness and splendour. Almost from theday which consummated her many crimes she heard behind her the fatalfootstep of the avenger. Her murder of Claudius had placed the diademupon the brow of her own murderer. For that young murderer she hadfelt the frantic love of a tigress for the cub which she licks andfondles. And now the tiger-whelp had shown the nature which itinherited.
* * * * *
When Nero received the news that his mother was dead, he would nottrust to any testimony. With wild haste and utmost secrecy he wentto the villa at Bauli. With trembling hand he drew the winding-sheetfrom the face, and gazed on the corpse. The colour fled from hischeeks; but after a moment or two he grew bolder. The matricidewas still the æsthete. ‘I did not know,’ he said, ‘that I had sobeautiful a mother.’ Then he hurried back.
That same night they carried her corpse to the funeral pyre. It waslaid upon a couch from her banquet-hall, for lack of a regular bier.Hurried and scant and humble were her obsequies. Her ashes were laidin a mean grave near the road to Misenum, where the villa of thedictator Cæsar crowned an eminence which commanded a wide view ofthe gulf.
During the remaining ten years of her son’s reign, the site of hersepulchre was left unhonoured and no mound was raised above her ashes.But the spot was not forgotten, and to this day the peasant pointsto the Sepolcro d’ Agrippina. One instance of faithfulness gave ayet more pathetic interest to the spot where so many lofty hopes werequenched in blood. Before the pyre was kindled, Mnester, her loyalfreedman, stabbed himself over her corpse. He would not survive amistress who, whatever had been her crimes, had been kind to him,and whom he loved.
What pathos is there in the fact that even the worst and mostcriminal of human souls have rarely died entirely unloved! Even aMarat, even a Robespierre, even a Borgia, even an Agrippina, foundat least one to mourn when they were dead.
