Aurelian or Rome in the Third Century Part 11

'So,' said Marcus, 'may the wheat spilled into the Tiber, or sown among rocks, or eaten by the birds.'

'And that may be, though not to-day or to-morrow,' I replied. 'The seed of things essential to man's life, as of wheat, is not easily killed. It may be buried for years and years, yet, turned up at length, to the sun, and its life sprouts upward in leaf, and stem, and fruit. Borne down by the waters of the Tiber, and apparently lost, it may be cast up upon the sh.o.r.es of Egypt, or Britain, and fulfil its destiny. The seed of truth is longer-lived still--by reason that what it bears is more essential than wheat, or other grain, to man's best life.'

'Well, well,' said Marcus, 'let us charge our goblets with the bottom of this Falernian, and forgetting whether there be such an ent.i.ty as truth or not, drink to the health of the princess Julia.'

'That comes nearer our hearts,' said Lucilia, 'than anything that has been spoken for the last hour. When you return, Lucius, Laco must follow you with a mule-load of some of my homely products'---- She was about to add more, when we were all alike startled and alarmed by cries, seemingly of deep distress, and rapidly approaching. We sprang from our seats, when the door of the room was violently flung open, and a slave rushed in, crying out,

'Oh, sir! Gallus--Gallus'--

'What is it? What is it?'--cried Marcus and Lucilia. 'Speak quick--has he fallen--'

'Yes, alas! the pond--the fish-pond--run--fly--'

Distractedly we hurried to the spot already surrounded by a crowd of slaves. 'Who had been with him? Where had he fallen? How did it happen?'

were questions hastily asked, but which no one could answer. It was a miserable scene of agony, confusion, and despair--Marcus ordering his slaves to dive into the pond, then uttering curses upon them, and commanding those to whom Gallus was usually entrusted, to the rack. No one could swim, no one could dive. It was long since I had made use of an art which I once possessed, but instantly I cast off my upper garments, and, needing no other direction to the true spot than the barking of the little dog, and his jumping in and out of the water--first learning that the water was deep, and of an even bottom, I threw myself in, and, in a moment, guided by the white dress of the little fellow, I grasped him, and drew him to the surface.

Life was apparently, and probably, to my mind, extinct; but expressing a hope that means might yet be resorted to that should restore him, I bore him in my arms to the house. But it was all in vain. Gallus was dead.

I shall not inflict a new sadness upon you, Fausta, by describing the grief of my friends, or any of the incidents of the days and weeks I now pa.s.sed with them. They were heavy, and melancholy indeed; for the sorrows, of both Lucilia and Marcus, were excessive and inconsolable. I could do nothing for them, nor say anything to them in the hope to comfort them; yet, while they were thus incapacitated for all action, I could serve them essentially by placing myself at the head of their affairs, and relieving them of common cares and duties, that must otherwise have been neglected, or have proved irksome and oppressive.

The ashes of Gallus, committed to a small marble urn, have been deposited in a tomb in the centre of Lucilia's flower garden, which will soon be embowered by flowers and shrubs, which her hand will delight to train around it.

On the eve of the day when I was to leave them and return to Rome, we sat together in a portico which overlooks the Tiber. Marcus and Lucilia were sad, but, at length, in some sort, calm. The first violence of sorrow had spent itself, and reflection was beginning to succeed.

'I suppose,' said Marcus, 'your rigid faith greatly condemns all this show of suffering, which you have witnessed, Piso, in us, as, if not criminal, at least weak and childish?'

'Not so, by any means,' I rejoined. 'The religion of the Christians, is what one may term a natural religion; it does violence to not one of the good affections and propensities. Coming, as we maintain, from the Creator of our bodies and our minds, it does them no injury, it wars not with any of their natural elements, but most strictly harmonizes with them. It aims to direct, to modify, to heal, to moderate--but never to alter or annihilate. Love of our offspring, is not more according to our nature, than grief for the loss of them. Grief, therefore, is innocent--even as praiseworthy, as love. What trace of human wisdom--much less of divine--would there be in the arrangement, that should first bind us by chains of affection as strong as adamant to a child, or a parent, or a friend, and then treat the sorrow as criminal that wept, with whatever violence, as it saw the links broken and scattered, never again to be joined together?'

'That certainly is a proof that some just ideas are to be found in your opinions,' replied my friend. 'By nothing was I ever more irreconcilably offended in the stoical philosophy, than by its harsh violence towards nature under suffering. To be treated by your philosophy with rudeness and contempt, because you yield to emotions which are as natural, and, therefore, in my judgment, as innocent as any, is, as if one were struck with violence by a friend or a parent, to whom you fled for protection or comfort. The doctrines of all the others failed in the same way. Even the Epicureans hold it a weakness, and even a wrong, to grieve, seeing the injury that is thereby done to happiness. Grief must be suppressed, and banished, because it is accompanied by pain. That too, seemed to me a false sentiment; because, although grief is indeed in some sort painful, yet it is not wholly so, but is attended by a kind of pleasure.

How plain it is, that I should suffer greatly more, were I forcibly restrained by a foreign power, or my own, from shedding these tears, and uttering these sighs for Gallus, than I do now while I am free to indulge my natural feelings. In truth, it is the only pleasure that grief brings with it--the freedom of indulging it.'

'He,' I said, as Marcus paused, giving way afresh to his sorrow, 'who embraces the Christian doctrine, is never blamed, condemned, or ridiculed by it for the indulgence of the emotions, to which, the loss of those whom we love, gives birth. But then, at the same time, he will probably grieve and suffer much less under such circ.u.mstances than you--not, however, because he is forcibly restrained, but because of the influence upon his mind and his heart, of truths and opinions, which, as a Christian, he entertains, and which, without any will or act of his own, work within him and strengthen and console him. The Christian believing, so firmly as he does, for example, in a G.o.d, not only on grounds of reason but of express revelation, and that this G.o.d is a parent, exercising a providence over his creatures, regardless of none, loving as a parent all, who has created mankind, not for his own amus.e.m.e.nt or honor, but that life and happiness might be diffused: they who believe thus, must feel very differently under adversity, from those who, like yourself, believe nothing of it at all, and from those who, like the disciples of the Porch and the Academy, believe but an inconsiderable part of it. Suppose, Marcus and Lucilia, your whole population of slaves were, instead of strangers and slaves, your children, toward whom you experienced the same sentiments of deep affection that you did toward Gallus, how would you not consult for their happiness; and how plain it is, that whatever laws you might set over them, they would be laws of love, the end of which, however they might not always recognize it, would be their happiness--happiness through their virtue. This may represent, with sufficient exactness, the light in which Christians regard the Divinity, and the laws of life under which they find themselves. Admitting, therefore, their faith to be well founded, and how manifest is it that they will necessarily suffer less under adversity than you; and not because any violence is done to their nature, but because of the benignant influences of such truths.'

'What you say,' observed Lucilia, 'affects the mind very agreeably; and gives a pleasing idea, both of the wisdom and mercy of the Christian faith. It seems at any rate to be suited to such creatures as we are.

What a pity that it is so difficult to discern truth.'

'It is difficult,' I replied; 'the best things are always so: but it is not impossible; what is necessary to our happiness, is never so. A mind of common powers, well disposed, seeking with a real desire to find, will rarely retire from the search wholly unsuccessful. The great essentials to our daily well-being, and the right conduct of life, the Creator has supplied through our instincts. Your natural religion, of which you have spoken, you find sufficient for most of the occurrences which arise, both of doing and bearing. But there are other emergencies for which it is as evidently insufficient. Now, as the Creator has supplied so perfectly in all b.r.e.a.s.t.s the natural religion, which is so essential, it is fair to say and believe, that He would not make additional truths, almost equally essential to our happiness, either of impossible attainment, or encompa.s.sed by difficulties which could not, with a little diligence and perseverance, be overcome.'

'It would seem so, certainly,' said Marcus; 'but it is so long since I have bestowed any thought upon philosophical inquiries, that to me the labor would be very great, and the difficulties extreme--for, at present, there is scarcely so much as a mere shred or particle of faith, to which as a nucleus other truths may attach themselves. In truth, I never look even to possess any clear faith in a G.o.d--it seems to be a subject wholly beyond the scope and grasp of my mind. I cannot entertain the idea of self-existence. I can conceive of G.o.d neither as one, nor as divided into parts. Is he infinite and everywhere, himself const.i.tuting his universe?--then he is scarcely a G.o.d; or, is he a being dwelling apart from his works, and watching their obedience to their imposed laws? In neither of these conceptions can I rest.'

'It is not strange,' I replied; 'nor that, refusing to believe in the fact of a G.o.d until you should be able to comprehend him perfectly, you should to this hour be without faith. If I had waited before believing, until I understood, I should at this moment be as faithless as you, or as I was before I received Christianity. Do I comprehend the Deity? Can I describe the mode of his being? Can I tell you in what manner he sprang into existence? And whether he is necessarily everywhere in his works, and as it were const.i.tuting them? Or whether he has power to contract himself, and dwell apart from them, their omniscient observer, and omnipotent Lord? I know nothing of all this; the religion which I receive, teaches nothing of all this. Christianity does not demonstrate the being of a G.o.d, it simply proclaims it; hardly so much as that indeed. It supposes it, as what was already well known and generally believed. I cannot doubt that it is left thus standing by itself, untaught and unexplained, only because the subject is intrinsically incomprehensible by us. It is a great fact or truth, which all can receive, but which none can explain or prove. If it is not believed, either instinctively, or through the recognition of it, and declaration of it, in some revelation, it cannot be believed at all. It needs the mind of G.o.d to comprehend G.o.d. The mind of man is no more competent to reach and grasp the theme through reason, than his hands are to mould a sun. All the reasonings, imaginations, guesses, of self-styled philosophers, are here like the prattlings of children. They make you smile, but they do not instruct.'

'I fear,' said Marcus, 'I shall then never believe, for I can believe nothing of which I cannot form a conception.'

'Surely,' I answered, 'our faith is not bounded by our conceptions, or our knowledge, in other things. We build the loftiest palaces and temples upon foundations of stone, though we can form no conception whatever of the nature of a stone. So I think we may found a true and sufficient religion on our belief in the fact of a G.o.d, although we can form no conception whatever of his nature and the mode of his existence.'

But I should fatigue you, Fausta, were I to give you more of our conversation. It ran on equally pleasant, I believe, to all of us, to a quite late hour; in which time, almost all that is peculiar to the faith of the Christians came under our review. It was more than midnight when we rose from our seats to retire to our chambers. But before we did that, a common feeling directed our steps to the tomb of Gallus, which was but a few paces from where we had been sitting. There these childless parents again gave way to their grief and was I stone, that I should not weep with them?

When this act of duty and piety had been performed, we sought our pillows. As for me, I could not sleep for thinking of my friends and their now desolate house. For even to me, who was to that child almost a stranger, and had been so little used to his presence, this place is no longer the same: all its brightness, life, and spirit of gladness, are gone. Everything seems changed. From every place and scene something seems to have been subtracted to which they were indebted for whatever it was that made them attractive. If this is so to me, what must it be to Marcus and Lucilia? It is not difficult to see that a sorrow has settled upon their hearts, which no length of time can heal. I suppose if all their estates had been swept away from them in a night, and all their friends, they would not have been so overwhelmed as by this calamity--in such a wonderful manner were they each woven into the child, and all into each other, as one being. They seem no longer to me like the same persons. Not that they are not often calm, and in a manner possessed of themselves; but that even then, when they are most themselves, there has a dulness, a dreamy absence of mind, a fixed sadness, come over them that wholly changes them. Though they sit and converse with you, their true thoughts seem far away. They are kind and courteous as ever, to the common eye, but I can see that all the relish of life and of intercourse is now to them gone. All is flat and insipid.

The friend is coldly saluted; the meal left untasted, or partaken in silence and soon abandoned; the affairs of the household left to others, to any who will take charge of them. They tell me that this will always be so; that however they may seem to others, they must ever experience a sense of loss; not any less than they would if a limb had been shorn away. A part of themselves, and of the life of every day and hour, is taken from them.

How strange is all this, even in the light of Christian faith! How inexplicable, we are ready to say, by any reason of ours, the providence of G.o.d in taking away the human being in the first blossoming; before the fruit has even shown itself, much less ripened! Yet is not immortality, the hope, the a.s.surance of immortality, a sufficient solution? To me it is. This will not indeed cure our sorrows--they spring from somewhat wholly independent of futurity, of either the hope, or despair of it,--but it vindicates the ways of the Omnipotent, and justifies them to our reason and our affections. Will Marcus and Lucilia ever rejoice in the consolations which flow from this hope? Alas! I fear not. They seem in a manner to be incapable of belief.

In the morning I shall start for Rome. As soon as there, you shall hear from me again. Farewell.

While Piso was absent from Rome on this visit to his friend, it was my fortune to be several times in the city upon necessary affairs of the ill.u.s.trious Queen, when I was both at the palace of Aurelian and that of Piso. It was at one of these later visits, that it became apparent to me, that the Emperor seriously meditated the imposing of restrictions of some kind upon the Christians; yet no such purpose was generally apprehended by that sect itself, nor by the people at large. The dark and disastrous occurrences on the day of the dedication, were variously interpreted by the people; some believing them to point at the Christians, some at the meditated expedition of the Emperor, some at Aurelian himself. The popular mind was, however, greatly inflamed against the Christians, and every art was resorted to by the priests of the temples, and those who were as bigoted and savage as themselves among the people, to fan to a devouring flame the little fire that began to be kindled. The voice from the temple, however some might with Fronto himself doubt whether it were not from Heaven, was for the most part ascribed to the Christians, although they could give no explanation of the manner in which it had been produced. But, as in the case of Aurelian himself, this was forgotten in the horror occasioned by the more dreadful language of the omens, which, in such black and threatening array, no one remembered ever to have been witnessed before.

None thought or talked of anything else. It was the universal theme.

This may be seen in a conversation which I had with a rustic, whom I overtook as I rode toward Rome, seated on his mule, burdened on either side and behind with the multifarious produce of his farm. The fellow, as I drew near to him, seeming of a less churlish disposition than most of those whom one meets upon the road, who will scarcely return a friendly salute, I feared not to accost him. After giving him the customary good wishes, I remarked upon the excellence of the vegetables which he had in his panniers.

'Yes,' he said, 'these lettuces are good, but not what they would have been but for the winds we have had from the mountains. It has sadly nipped them. I hear the Queen pines away just as my plants do. I live at Norentum. I know you, sir, though you cannot know me. You pa.s.s by my door on your way to the city. My children often call me from my work to look up, for there goes the secretary of the good Queen on his great horse. There's no such horse as that on the road. Ha, ha, my baskets reach but to your knee! Well, there are differences in animals and in men too. So the G.o.ds will it. One rides upon a horse with golden bits, another upon a mule with none at all. Still I say, let the G.o.ds be praised.'

'The G.o.ds themselves could hardly help such differences,' I said, 'if they made one man of more natural strength, or more natural understanding than another. In that case one would get more than another. And surely you would not have men all run in one mould--all five feet high, all weighing so much, all with one face, and one form, one heart, and one head! The world were then dull enough.'

'You say true,' he replied; 'that is very good. If we were all alike, there would be no such thing as being rich or poor--no such thing as getting or losing. I fear it would be dull enough, as you say. But I did not mean to complain, sir. I believe I am contented with my lot. So long as I can have my little farm, with my garden and barns, my cattle and my poultry, a kind neighbor or so, and my priest and temple, I care for nothing more.'

'You have a temple then at Norentum?'

'Yes, to Jupiter Pluvius. And a better priest has not Rome itself. It is his brother, some officer of the Emperor's, I take these vegetables to.

I hope to hear more this morning of what I heard something when I was last at market. And I think I shall, for, as I learn, the city is a good deal stirred since the dedication the other day.' 'I believe it is,' I answered. 'But of what do you look to hear, if I may ask? Is there news from the East?'

'O no, I think not of the East or the South. It was of something to be done about these Christians. Our temple, you must know, is half forsaken and more, of late. I believe that half the people of Norentum, if the truth were known, have turned Christians or Jews. Unless we wake up a little, our wors.h.i.+p cannot be supported, and our religion will be gone.

And glad am I to hear, through our priest, that even the Emperor is alarmed, and believes something must be done. You know, than he, there is not a more devout man in Rome. So it is said. And one thing that makes me think so, is this. The brother of our priest, where I am going with these vegetables--here is poultry too, look! you never saw fatter, I warrant you--told him that he knew it for certain, that the Emperor meant to make short work with even his own niece--you know who I mean--Aurelia, who has long been suspected to be a Christian. And that's right. If he punishes any, he ought not to spare his own.'

'That I suppose would be right. But why should he punish any? You need not be alarmed or offended; I am no Christian.'

'The G.o.ds be praised therefor! I do not pretend to know the whole reason why. But that seems to be the only way of saving the old religion; and I don't know what way you can possibly have of showing that a religion of yesterday is true, if a religion of a thousand years old is to be made out false. If religion is good for anything--and I for one think it is--I think men ought to be compelled to have it and support it, just as they should be to eat wholesome food, rather than poisonous or hurtful.

The laws won't permit us to carry certain things to market, nor others in a certain state. If we do, we are fined or imprisoned. Treat a Christian in the same way, say I. Let them just go thoroughly to work, and our temples will soon be filled again.'

'But these Christians,' I observed, 'seem to be a harmless people.'

'But they have no religion, that anybody can call such. They have no G.o.ds, nor altars, nor sacrifices; such can never be harmless. To be sure, as to sacrifices, I think there is such a thing as doing too much.

I am not for human sacrifices. Nor do I see the need of burning up a dozen fat oxen or heifers, as was done the other day at the Temple of the Sun. We in Norentum burn nothing but the hoofs and some of the entrails, and the rest goes to the priest for his support. As I take it, a sacrifice is just a sign of readiness to do everything and lose everything for the G.o.ds. We are not expected to throw either ourselves, or our whole substance upon the altar; making the sign is sufficient.

But, as I said, these Christians have no altar and no sacrifice, nor image of G.o.d or G.o.ddess. They have, at Norentum, an old ruinous building--once a market--where they meet for wors.h.i.+p; but those who have been present say, that nothing is to be seen; and nothing heard but prayers--to what G.o.d no one knows--and exhortations of the priests. Some say, that elsewhere they have what they call an altar, and adorn their walls with pictures and statues. However all this may be, there seems to be some charm about them, or their wors.h.i.+p, for all the world is running after them. I long for the news I shall get from Varenus Hirtius. If these omens have not set the Emperor at work for us, nothing will. Here we are at the gates, and I turn toward the Claudian market. May the day go happily with you.'

So we parted; and I bent my way toward the gardens of Sall.u.s.t.

As I moved slowly along through the streets, my heart was filled with pity for this people, the Christians; threatened, as it seemed to me, with a renewal of the calamities that had so many times swept over them before. They had ever impressed me as a simple-minded, virtuous community, of notions too subtle for the world ever to receive, but which, upon themselves, appeared to exert a power altogether beneficial.

Many of this faith I had known well, and they were persons to excite my highest admiration for the characters which they bore. Need I name more than the princess Julia, and her husband, the excellent Piso? Others like them, what wonder if inferior! had also, both in Palmyra, and at Tibur and Rome--for they were to be found everywhere--drawn largely both on my respect and my affections. I beheld with sorrow the signs which now seemed to portend suffering and disaster. And my sympathies were the more moved seeing that never before had there been upon the throne a man who, if he were once entered into a war of opposition against them, had power to do them greater harm, or could have proved a more stern and cruel enemy. Not even Nero or Domitian were in their time to be so much dreaded. For if Aurelian should once league him with the state against them, it would not with him be matter of mere cruel sport, but of conscience. It would be for the honor of the G.o.ds, the protection of religion, the greatness and glory of the empire, that he would a.s.sail and punish them; and the same fierce and b.l.o.o.d.y spirit that made him of all modern conquerors the bloodiest and fiercest, it was plain would rule him in any encounter with this humble and defenceless tribe. I could only hope that I was deceived, as well as others, in my apprehensions, or, if that were not so, pray that the G.o.ds would be pleased to take their great subject to themselves.

Full of such reflections and emotions I arrived at the palace, and was ushered into the presence of Livia. There was with her the melancholy Aurelia--for such she always seems--who appeared to have been engaged in earnest talk with the Empress, if one might judge by tears fast falling from her eyes. The only words which I caught as I entered were these from Aurelia, 'but, dear lady, if Mucapor require it not, why should others think of it so much? Were he fixed, then should I indeed have to ask strength of G.o.d for the trial--' then, seeing me, and only receiving my salutations, she withdrew.

Livia, after first inquiring concerning Zen.o.bia and Faustula, returning to what had just engaged her, said,