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

by F. W. Farrar

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  _VICTOR OVER THE PUBLIC SERVITUDE_

  ‘Palliduamque visa Matris lampade respicis Neronem.’

  STAT. _Sylv._ II. vii. 118.

  ‘Prima est hæc ultio, quod se Judice nemo nocens absolvitur.’

  JUV. _Sat._ xiii. 2.

  There is a marvellous force of illumination in a great crime, butit is the lurid illumination of the lightning-flash, revealing tothe lost Alpine wanderer the precipices which yawn on every side ofhim. While the murder was yet to do, Nero could talk of it lightlyand eagerly among the accomplices who were in the secret. To theirresponsible Emperor of the world it did not seem so great a matterto order the murder of a mother. But when the deed was done, whenhe had got back to his Baian villa, when the pale face flecked withcrimson bloodstains came hauntingly back upon his memory, a horrorof great darkness fell upon him. Then first he realised the atrociousmagnitude of his crime, and every moment there rang in his ears adamning accusation. The very birds of the air seemed to flit awayfrom him, twittering ‘Matricide! matricide!’ He drank more Falernianfrom the glittering table, on which yet lay the remains of thebanquet, but it seemed as if all his senses were too preternaturallyacute with horror to be dulled by wine. He lay down to sleep, butstrange sounds seemed to be creeping through the dead stillness ofthe night, which made him shudder with alarm. If he closed his eyes,there flashed at once upon them the pale face, the firm-set lips, thesplashes of blood. The dead eyes of his mother seemed to open uponhim with a gleam of vengeance. Till that night he had never knownwhat it was to dream. He started up with a shriek and summoned hisattendants round him, and paced up and down in a frenzy of delirium,declaring that when the dawn came he would certainly be slain. Theypersuaded him to lie down again, but scarcely had he dropped into anuneasy sleep when it seemed to him as though he saw the three Furiessweeping down upon him with the blue snakes gleaming in their hairand the torches shaken in their hands, while his mother, who pointedthem to him, shrieked aloud, ‘Ho! murderer of thy mother! no sleephenceforth for thee!’

  Leaping once more from that couch of agony, he sat mute, andtrembling in every limb, his clenched hands buried in his hair,waiting in anguish the break of day. When the first beam of dawnlit the east, it showed a youth whose pallid features were haggardwith agonies of fear.

  If there had been a spark of nobleness in the Roman world, theindignation of a people’s moral sense might have sprung to armsand smitten the tyrant while he was yet red-handed from his crime.Nothing was farther from the general intention. The universaldesire was to ‘skin and film the ulcerous place’ with adulation andhypocrisy. Men, not naturally evil or case-hardened, were carriedaway by the tide of complaisance to the imperial murderer. As thoughto leave no chance for any feelings of penitence to work, all classesbegan to flood him with congratulations. The fears which at themoment he half mistook for remorse vanished like the early dew, forsociety seized upon the convention that Agrippina, detected in a plotagainst the life of her son, had been justly executed. The tribunesand centurions of the Prætorians, Burrus at their head, came toNero that morning, poured their felicitations upon him, pressedhis hands, expressed their effusive joy that he had escaped from sosudden a peril created by his mother’s crime. His friends crowded tothe temples to thank the gods for his safety. There was scarcely atown of Campania which did not express its joy by sending deputationsand offering victims. Distant provinces caught the infection, andCisalpine and Transalpine Gaul surpassed all the rest by the fulsomeentreaty which they sent by their ambassador, Julius Africanus, ‘thatNero would endure his felicity with fortitude!’ Certainly it did notseem as if there were much cause for fear! In a few days Nero becamean adept at the counter-hypocrisy with which he feigned to weep overthe fate of his mother, and to be grieved by his own deliverance!

  But places cannot change their aspect as do the looks of men. Fromthe windows and gardens of Nero’s villa were always visible thesea which he had attempted to pollute, the long line of shore whichhe had stained with a mother’s blood. The aspect of nature in thatlovely spot had lost its fascination. It seemed to be eloquent withmute reproach. And what were those sounds which assailed his ears atthe dead of night? What meant that blast of a solitary trumpet, blownby no earthly breath, from the promontory of Misenum? What meantthose ghostly wailings which seemed to shriek around his mother’sgrave? He could not endure this haunted place. He fled to Naples.

  From thence he despatched to the Senate a letter, of which theconceits betrayed, alas! the hand of Seneca. ‘As yet,’ he wrote, ‘Icannot believe, I do not rejoice, that I am safe.’ Men of lettersadmired the euphuistic phrases and despised their author. Theletter did not mention any details, but left it to be inferred thatAgrippina, detected in an attempt to murder her son, had committedsuicide. And then with unmanly malignity it dwelt on the longcatalogue of her crimes--her bitter enmities, her immense ambition,her unscrupulous intrigues. To her it attributed all the crueltiesof the reign of Claudius, and it ended by saying that her death wasa public blessing. The more cynical of the senators laughed at theabsurdities of this missive, for it narrated Agrippina’s shipwreckas though it had been accidental, and tried to gain credence for thegross absurdity that a woman barely saved from drowning had chosenthe moment of her rescue to send off to murder her only son in themidst of his fleets and cohorts!

  But though men shook their heads at Seneca, they plunged no lessemulously into the vortex of criminal adulation. Public thanksgivingswere decreed to all the gods; annual games at the Quinquatrus; agolden statue to Minerva in the senate-house, with a statue of theEmperor beside it. The birthday of Agrippina was pronounced accursed.Such abject servility was too much for the haughty spirit of PætusThrasea. He rose from his seat and left the senate-house in silence,and a blush rose to the cheek of not a few who did not dare to followhim.

  Yet, after all, Nero was so timid that six months elapsed before heventured once more to face the people of his capital. An eclipse ofthe sun had happened during the thanksgiving decreed by the Senate.Fourteen regions of the city had been struck by lightning. Wouldthese portents of heaven awaken the tardy indignation of men? Everypiece of news, however trivial, frightened him. He was told theridiculous story that a woman had given birth to a snake. Was thatmeant by the gods, if there were any, for a scornful symbol ofhimself? There were hours in which it seemed to him as if the Empireitself would be a poor price for the purchase of one day of theinnocence which he had so frightfully sacrificed.

  But the foul creatures who swarmed about him assured him with theeffrontery of experienced villany that he need not be in the leastanxious as to the obsequiousness of the Senate and the zeal of thepeople.

  ‘You will find yourself more popular than before,’ they said. ‘Everyone detested Agrippina. Go to Rome with confidence, and you will seethat you are as much adored as ever.’

  They were right in their conjectures. Even Nero was amazed at the_abandon_ of welcome, the delirium of ostentatious applause withwhich he was received, while his hands were still red-wet with hismother’s blood. The people thronged forth by their tribes to greethim. The senators were in festal array. They were surrounded bytheir wives and children. Stages had been built all along the road,in which the spectators had purchased their places to look on as ata triumph. Incense burned in the streets; the shouts of myriads ofvoices rent the air. Rome received him not as a murderer, but ratheras a great conqueror or a human god. And he, as he rode in his gildedchariot through those serried files of cheering flatterers, proudlyupheld his head, tossed back the curls from his forehead, smiled, andbent low, and, accepting these greetings as a tribute to his merits,drowned deep within his heart all sense of shame. With long retinueand dazzling pomp he visited the Capitol, gave thanks to Jupiter,best and greatest, and returned to the Palace ‘a victor over thepublic servitude.’

  Yet even so he could not escape. He dared not be left alo
ne. Themanes of his mother haunted him by day and by night. In vain hepractised the old expiatory rites to rid himself of the menacingphantom. On the night of May 13, two months after Agrippina’s death,he determined to go through the mummery of the Lemuralia, whichsome of his credulous advisers had told him would be efficacious.At midnight, amid the dead silence, he stole with naked feet tothe water of the fountain in the atrium, and there, trembling withexcitement, washed his hands thrice. Then with his thumb and finger,he filled his mouth with nine black beans, and, full of superstitioushorror, flung them one by one behind him over his shoulder, sayingeach time, ‘With these beans redeem me and mine.’ Arrived at hischamber he again dipped his hands in water, and beat a great brazengong to terrify the pursuing ghost.[73] Then he turned round,and peered with a frightened glance into the darkness; and ashe peered--was even this expiation all in vain?--what were thoseglimmering lights? What was that white and wavy form? A shriekrang through the villa, and Nero sank fainting into the arms of thetimid minions who had awaited the result of the expiation and rushedforward at his cry.

  The following year, when he had returned to the city, he repeatedthis antiquated rite, and he commanded the vestals to bear himspecially in mind when, on the Ides of May, they flung from theSublician Bridge into the Tiber the thirty little figures called_argei_, made of bulrushes, which were supposed to be in lieu ofhuman sacrifices.

  Then he tried yet further forms of magic and yet darker rites ofpropitiation to the infernal powers, in which it was whisperedthat human blood--the blood of murdered infants--formed part of theinstruments of sorcery. But he could learn no secrets of the future;he could evoke no powers who could ward away that white menacingspectre which gleamed upon him if at any moment he found himselfalone in the hours of night.

  Nero became a haunted man. The whole earth seemed to him to be ‘madeof glass’ to reveal his turpitude. He knew in his miserable heartthat the very street boys of Rome--the ragged urchins of the slavesand gladiators--were aware of the crime which he had committed. Kindfriends kept him informed, under pretence of officious indignation,that one night an infant had been found exposed in the Forum witha scrap of parchment round its neck, on which was written, ‘_Iexpose you, lest you should murder your mother_;’ and that, anothernight, a sack had been hung round the neck of his statue as though tothreaten him with the old weird punishment of parricides. Once, whenhe was looking on at one of the rude plays known as Atellane, theactor Datus had to pronounce the line,

  ‘Good health to you, father; good health to you, mother;’

  and, with the swift inimitable gestures of which the quick Italianpeople never missed the significance, he managed to indicate Claudiusdying of poison and Agrippina swimming for her life. The populaceroared out its applause at an illusion so managed that it couldhardly be resented; and once again, when coming to the line,

  ‘Death drags you by the foot.’

  Datus indicated Nero’s hatred to the Senate by pointing significantlyto Nero at the word ‘_death_’ and to the senatorial seats as heemphasized the word ‘_you_.’

  But Nero was liable to insults still more direct. Could he not readwith his own eyes the _graffito_ scrawled upon every blank space ofwall in Rome: ‘_Nero, Orestes, Alcmæon, matricidæ_’? He could notdetect or punish these anonymous scrawlers, but he would have likedto punish men of rank, whom he well knew to have written stingingsatires against him, branding him with every kind of infamy.

  Two resources alone were adequate to dissipate the terrors ofhis conscience--the intoxication of promiscuous applause and theself-abandonment to a sensuality which grew ever more shameless asthe restraints of Agrippina’s authority and Seneca’s influence wereremoved.

  Nero had long delighted to sing to the harp at his own banquetsin citharœdic array. To the old Roman dignity such conduct seemedunspeakably degrading in the Emperor of the legions. Yet Nerodivulged his shame to the world by having himself represented instatues and on coins in the dress of a harpist, his lips open asthough in the act of song, his lyre half supported on a baldricembossed with gems, his tunic falling in variegated folds to hisfeet, and his arms covered by the chlamys, while with his delicateleft hand he twanged the strings, and with his right struck them withthe golden plectrum. The pains which he took to preserve his voice,which after all was dull and harsh, were almost incredible. Followingthe advice of every quack who chose to pass himself off as an expert,he used to walk about with his thick neck encircled in a puffyhandkerchief, to sleep with a plate of lead on his chest, and tolive for a month at a time on peas cooked in oil.

  To give him more opportunities for display he instituted theJuvenalia to celebrate his arrival at full manhood, as marked by theshaving of his beard. His first beard was deposited in a box of gold,adorned with costly pearls, and he dedicated it to the CapitolineJupiter. But even this event in his life was accompanied by a crime.Shortly before he laid aside his beard he paid a visit to his auntDomitia, who was ill.

  Laying her hand on the soft down, she said to him in her blandishingway, ‘As soon as I have received this, I am ready to die.’

  Nero turned round to the loose comrades who usually attended him andwhispered, with a coarse jest, ‘Then I will shave it off at once.’

  From that sick-bed Domitia, who was almost the last of Nero’s livingrelatives, never rose again. The Roman world suspected foul play onthe part of the physicians at Nero’s order. Certain it is that heseized all her ample possessions, and suppressed her will.