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

by F. W. Farrar

  CHAPTER LVII

  _A CONSPIRACY AND ITS COLLAPSE_

  ‘Ma cruauté se lasse, et ne peut s’arrêter, Je veux me faire craindre, et ne fais qu’irriter, Et le sang répandu de mille conjurés Rend mes jours plus maudits et non plus assurés.’

  CORNEILLE, _Cinna_, iv. 2.

  ‘Our emperor is a tyrant, fear’d and hated; I scarce remember in his reign one day Pass guiltless o’er his execrable head. He thinks the sun is lost that sees not blood, When none is shed, we count it holiday; We who are most in favour, cannot call This our own.’

  DRYDEN, _The Cruelty of Tyranny_, v. 15-16.

  The persecution of the Christians, once begun, did not cease, butbroke out again and again, in various parts of the Empire, like aconflagration which only pauses from the exhaustion of materialswhich it can devour. But a few more sporadic executions couldfurnish no further excitement to Nero, after he had supped so fullof horrors. The jaded ‘old man of thirty’ therefore turned his wholeattention to the building and embellishment of the Palace, whichwas not only to cover the vast area of the Domus Transitoria, butalso the additional room which he had snatched from the ruins.It extended over a space equal to that covered by the Louvre andTuileries together. It was called the Golden House, and exceeded insumptuosity everything which the world had hitherto seen. It showedthe degeneracy of taste which marked that age, by its tendencyto hugeness of size and strangeness of material. Nothing but thegrotesque and the enormous suited the diseased appetite of Nero. Atthe entrance stood a colossus of himself, of which the base is stillvisible, beside the Colosseum. It was a hundred and twenty feet high,and was the work of Zenodorus. Inside the hall was also a pictureof Nero, a hundred and twenty feet high, painted on linen, which wasafterwards burnt up by lightning.[109] The famous architects Severusand Celer were set to work, with all the power of the Empire toback them, and all the treasures of the world at command. Triplecolonnades of marble pillars led to the Palace from the vestibule,and the outer spaces of the columns were filled with statues andflowers. At the four corners of the hall, on tables of citron, ofwhich the veins looked like curled tresses, stood huge vases ofsilver, embossed by Acragas, with scenes of the chase derived fromthe ‘Cynegetica’ of Xenophon. The painter Fabullus, who stood at thehead of the artists of the age, was bidden to enrich the halls ofaudience with scenes of history and mythology. One of his paintingswas a Pallas, which to the astonishment of the spectators seemedalways to follow them with her eyes. The most distinguishedpupils of the schools of landscape, founded by Ludius, and of therhyparographer Pyroeicus, were set to adorn the private chambers. Athousand statues of bronze, alabaster, gold, silver, and delicatelytinted marble were ranged about the building, and in porticoes athousand feet long. Not only were the old temples of Rome plunderedof their treasures, but Acratus the freedman and Carinas the Greekphilosopher were sent to Greece to seize whatever was most preciousin her ancient cities. So shameless was the rapacity with which theyserved the Emperor’s greed, that at Delphi--from which he carriedoff five hundred statues of bronze--the population rose in arms toprotect the images and bas-reliefs of their temples.

  The baths of alabaster, inlaid with lapis lazuli, were suppliedfrom the Aqua Virgo, and from the sea, and from the palesulphur-impregnated waters of the river Albula. The vaulted roofof one banquet-room was made to represent the heavens, and to revolvein imitation of the movements of the sun, moon, and stars. The roofof another, fretted with gold and ivory, was so constructed as toshower roses on the guests, or to sprinkle them with the fine dewof fragrant essences.

  Nero’s own bedroom was a prodigy of gorgeousness. It contained thegolden statue of Victory, which spread her wings in sign of good omenover the slumbers of successive Cæsars. On a slab of agate stood thestatuette of Nero, five inches high, armed in a corslet which hadbeen carved with infinite labour out of hard jasper. A debasedart--which did not rely for its triumph on the genius of theartist or the beauty of the result, but stimulated the languors ofimagination by the conquest of apparent impossibilities--was furtherillustrated by other minute images cut out of emerald or topaz, likethose described by Pliny. On abaci of carved ivory stood myrrhinevases--the most precious known to antiquity--red, veined, lustrous,of a value which could hardly be expressed in terms of purchase.Besides such treasures there was a little gem of sculpture, theAmazon of Strongylion, known as Eucnemos, from its exquisiteproportions, which Nero took with him wherever he went. A place ofspecial honour was assigned to Nero’s harp of gold, adorned withprecious stones.

  Still more marvellous were the gardens. They covered a space so largethat a single lake on which imperial galleys were moored, sufficed,when filled up, for the site of the Colosseum. They were full ofgrottoes, and gardens for exotic plants, and waterfalls shaded withmasses of foliage, and pastures in which the sheep, with revoltingbad taste, were dyed blue or crimson. They also contained aviaries ofrare tropical birds, and dens for animals--among the rest a monsterwhich was said to be fed with human flesh. The palace-stables ofNero’s favourite horse Asturco, and of the other horses which drewhis chariot, were in distant parts of these enchanting grounds, andwere far more magnificent in their appointments than the houses ofthe poorer senators. The chief ornament of the garden was a templeof Seia, the goddess who was propitious to harvests. It was builtof a newly discovered marble, so warm and glowing that, accordingto Pliny, it seemed rather to enclose than to transmit the light.

  But the splendour with which he had surrounded himself soon becameinsupportably wearisome. It involved him further in pecuniaryanxieties. Buoyed up for a time by the chimera of a Roman knight,who, giving credence to a dream, promised, at small expense,to discover the legendary treasures which Dido had carried withher from Troy, and which were supposed to be hidden in the cavesof Carthage, he was compelled, when that bubble burst, to haverecourse to expedients both pitiful and violent. With great perilto himself he had to let the payments of his Prætorians fall intoarrears. Instead of half the patrimony left by his freedmen, henow impropriated nine-tenths. Confiscations raged on every side.Temples were plundered, and their statues--even those of the RomanPenates--were sent to the melting-pot. A law was made against wearingamethystine colours, and once when he saw a lady with the forbiddencolour at the games, he pointed her out to his Procurator, andnot only inflicted the fine, but forfeited her entire property. Nomeanness was too base for him to practise, no wrong too cruel forhim to inflict. Italy, the provinces, the allied peoples, the freestates, groaned under intolerable burdens.

  And while his bodily functions, disordered by riotous living, made ofhis life a physical burden, he was distracted by daily superstitions.In his theatric way he used to tell his intimates that he was hauntedby all the Furies. His effeminated intellect was constantly unnervedby rumours of storms, and earthquakes, and strange births, andcomets, which the astrologers interpreted to imply change andpolitical disaster. A revolt of gladiators at Præneste threatened arenewal of the devastations in the days of Spartacus. In consequenceof an ill-advised order of Nero, the whole fleet of triremes andsmaller vessels was hopelessly shipwrecked at Misenum, and he hadto bear the odium of the disaster.

  While he was thus wearied and agitated, there burst upon him theimmense weight of Piso’s conspiracy, which afforded him a proof howmany and how varied were the forces of hatred and contempt which hehad kindled in the hearts of all.

  Piso stood at the head of the great Calpurnian house, and wasconnected by ties of relationship with many of the noblest familiesin Rome. He was not himself the author of the conspiracy, for which,indeed, his character was altogether too unstable and corrupt. He wasdragged into it by Subrius Flavus, a tribune, and Sulpicius Asper,a centurion of the Prætorian guards. Fænius Rufus, the PrætorianPræfect, approved of the plot, out of disgust for the machinationsof his rival, Tigellinus, who was constantly incriminating him tothe Emperor. Seneca lent a dubious sanction, which many believedt
o be mixed up with personal designs. Lucan was goaded intocomplicity by the wrongs heaped upon him by Nero’s jealousy.Perhaps the most important, courageous, and disinterested adherentwas Plautius Lateranus, the consul-elect. He had no motive but anoble patriotism which felt the shame of a Roman at being governedby a histrionic debauchee. Joined to these were very unpromisingelements. No credit could accrue to any cause from the supportof such men as Flavius Scævinus, a man of dissolute character andslothful life; Quintianus, stained with the same vices which madeNero infamous; Senecio, a dandy long endeared to Nero by similarityof tastes; Natalis, a confidential friend of Piso, who had probablymeditated treachery from the first; and Epicharis, a freed womanof the lowest character, though for some unknown reason she provedherself the most impassioned and the most courageous of them all.

  The conspiracy was revealed through the fantastic and effeminatefolly of Scævinus, but not until it had left Nero almost wild withterror. Natalis, Scævinus, Quintianus, Senecio, shrinking from thethought of torture--which the poor freedwoman heroically braved, andunder which she expired--turned informers. The friends of Piso strovein vain to awaken him to manly counsels. He went home, and lay hiddenthere till the band of tiros arrived whom Nero--distrusting theolder soldiers--had sent to bid him kill himself. He opened hisveins, wrote a will full of the grossest flattery to the Emperorand ignobly died.

  More courageous was the death of Lateranus. When Epaphroditus came toquestion him, he answered: ‘If I should have anything to say, I willsay it to your master.’ Nero did not allow him to choose his modeof death, or to embrace his children. Hurried to a place of servileexecution, he maintained a disdainful silence, not even reproachingthe tribune Statius, an accomplice in the conspiracy, by whosehand he was to die. He stretched out his neck without a word, andstretched it out again when the first blow failed.

  Fænius Rufus did not escape. He overdid his part by trying to terrifythe conspirators as he sat by Nero and Tigellinus before his own namehad been denounced. It was too much to expect that among that crowdof cowards, dupes, and traitors no one would find it intolerable tohave the same man as both an accomplice and inquisitor. So, as hebrowbeat and threatened Scævinus, he answered with a smile that noone knew more than Rufus himself, and urged him to show his gratitudeto such an excellent Emperor. Rufus turned pale, stammered, and socompletely betrayed his guilt that Nero ordered a powerful soldierto seize and bind him then and there. His death was pusillanimous.He poured his lamentations even into his will.

  Subrius Flavus was the next to be betrayed. ‘As if I, a soldier,could ever have undertaken such work with such helpless women asthese!’ he exclaimed. But, pressed with questions, he confessed andgloried in the deed.

  ‘What made you forget your oath of allegiance to me?’ asked Nero.

  ‘Because I hated you,’ he answered. ‘While you were worthy to beloved, you had no more faithful soldier than myself. I began to hateyou when you displayed yourself as the murderer of your mother andyour wife, a jockey, a mummer, and an incendiary.’

  The words struck the ears of Nero like a terrific blow. Familiarwith crime, he was unaccustomed to be charged with it. Indifferentto the deeds, he shrank from the name of a criminal, and nothingin the conspiracy caused him worse pain than this. He ordered thetribune Veianus Niger to execute Flavus. To increase the terror ofthe condemned it was customary to dig a grave before their eyes. Thegrave was dug for Flavus in a field hard by. Looking at its shortnessand shallowness with contempt, as at a scamped piece of work, heexclaimed with disdain, ‘You cannot even do a thing like that as asoldier should.’

  ‘Stretch out your neck manfully,’ said Niger.

  ‘Would that you would strike as manfully!’ he replied.

  Unwarned by the answer which he had received from Flavus, Nero, whofelt himself specially injured by the defection of his soldiers,asked Sulpicius Asper also ‘why he had conspired to murder him.’

  ‘It was the only remedy left for so many infamies,’ answered thecenturion; and spoke no more.

  After this Nero still continued to bathe in blood. The consulVestinus was his enemy, and a man of courage, but he had not engagedin the plot. He had once been one of the Emperor’s intimate circle,and Nero, who had felt the weight of his rough wit and shrunk fromits truthfulness, had cause to dread his spirit. Before the consulhad been accused or even mentioned, the Emperor sent a tribune witha cohort to seize his best slaves, and take his house as it wereby storm. Vestinus was giving a banquet, and when summoned by thesoldiers, rose from the table without hesitation. He was immediatelyshut up in his chamber, his veins were opened, and, without utteringso much as a word of complaint, he was stifled in a bath. Histerrified guests were meanwhile kept in their places by the soldiers,expecting that their fate would follow. It was late at night beforeNero, who had secretly gloated over the imagination of their terrors,allowed them to be dismissed, with the remark that they had beensufficiently punished for their consular banquet.

  Nero seized the opportunity to get rid of all who were for any reasonobnoxious to him. Rufius Crispinus was banished because he had oncebeen Poppæa’s husband; Verginius, because he was an eloquent oratorand instructor of youth; Musonius Rufus, because he was a genuineStoic. There was no room for such eminence in such a Rome.

  There was no room even for a Petronius Arbiter, by the side of aTigellinus. To pagan conceptions Petronius, despite his dissolutelife, was still a gentleman, and Tigellinus, whatever might be hisposition, was the opposite. Petronius, however vicious, was thereverse of cruel; Tigellinus, far blacker and baser in his vices,superadded to them a savage ruthlessness. It was he who developedthis phase of Nero’s degradation, whereas Petronius entirelydisapproved of it. The Præfect felt, therefore, that Petronius mustbe crushed. He suborned one of the household to give false witnessagainst him, permitted him no defence, and threw most of his slavesinto chains. Petronius had left home for Campania to pay his respectsto Nero. At Cumæ he was ordered to stop, and, not choosing to awaitthe tedious delays of hope and fear, he set the example of a deathas satirical as any which history records. There was nothing tragicin it, nothing remotely serious. He treated death as a jest no lesscontemptible than life, and died with complete coolness, effeminatelybrave, and sincerely frivolous. If in the deaths of some of thephilosophic republicans of that day we see the theatric pomposityof Stoicism, in that of Petronius we see the callous levity of theinfidel voluptuary.

  Opening his veins, he discoursed with his friends, not on hightopics, but on trivial literature and _vers de société_. If hefelt interested, he had his veins bound up again, and banqueted,and slept, to make his death seem a matter of freewill, not ofcompulsion. He had his bad slaves scourged, his good slaves rewarded.Instead of mentioning Nero and Tigellinus in his will with lyingadulation, he penned a scathing satire, in which he drew a vividpicture of Nero’s infamies, and sent a sealed copy of the documentto the Emperor himself. Then he broke his signet ring, that it mightnot, after his death, be abused for purposes of forgery and delation;and dashed into shivers a myrrhine vase for which he had paid afabulous sum, that it might not fall into Nero’s hands. When Neroreceived his satire, he writhed under it. He could not tell howPetronius had become acquainted with some of those deeds which hehad concealed in the closet and the midnight, but which were hereblazoned in the noonday. Thinking that Petronius could only havelearnt them from an abandoned lady, named Silia, the wife of asenator, he drove her into exile on the suspicion that she hadbetrayed the secrets which she had shared and witnessed. At the sametime he banished the ex-Prætor Minucius Thermus, and tortured oneof his freedmen, because the latter had spread similar reports aboutTigellinus.

  And so, day after day, ‘the hard reality of death was brushed by therustling masquerade of life,’ and society presented the spectacle ofa lascivious dance on the edge of a precipice, over which some danceror some indignant spectator from hour to hour was violently hurled.