Aurelian or Rome in the Third Century Part 22

'Moreover,' I continued, 'in every time of persecution, there are those--sincere believers, but timid--who dare not meet the threatened horrors. These deny not their faith, but they shrink from sight; they for a season disappear; their hearts wors.h.i.+p as ever, but their tongues are silent; and search as they may, your emissaries of blood cannot find them. But soon as the storm is over-past, then do they come forth again, as insects from the leaves that sheltered them from the storm, and fill again the forsaken churches.'

'Nevertheless I will try for them.'

'Then will you be, Aurelian, as one that sheds blood, because he will shed it--seeing that the end at which you aim cannot in such way be reached. Confiscation, imprisonment, scourging, fires, torture, and death, will all be in vain; and with no more prospect that by such oppression Christianity can be annihilated, than there would be of rooting out poppies from your fields when as you struck off the heads or tore up the old roots, the ripe seeds were scattered abroad over the soil, a thousand for every parent stalk that fell. You will drench yourself in the blood of the innocent, only that you may do it--while no effect shall follow.'

'Let it be so then; even so. Still I will not forbear. But this I know, Piso, that when a disaffection has broken out in a legion, and I have caused the half thereof, or its tenth, to be drawn forth and cut to pieces by the other part, the danger has disappeared. The physic has been bitter, but it has cured the patient! I am a good surgeon; and well used to letting blood. I know the wonders it works and shall try it now, not doubting to see some good effects. When poison is in the veins, let out the blood, and the new that comes in is wholesome. Rome is poisoned!'

'Great Emperor,' I replied, 'you know nothing, allow me to say, whereof you affirm. You know not the Christians, and how can you deem them poison to the state? A purer brotherhood never has the world seen. I am but of late one among them, and it is but a few months since I thought of them as you now do. But I knew nothing of them. Now I know them. And knowledge has placed them before me in another light. If, Aurelian--'

'I know nothing of them, Piso, it is true; and I wish to know nothing--nothing more, than that they are Christians! that they deny the good G.o.ds! that they aim at the overthrow of the religion of the state--that religion under whose fostering care Rome has grown up to her giant size--that they are fire-brands of discord and quarrel in Rome and throughout the world! Greater would my name be, could I extirpate this accursed tribe than it would be for triumphing over both the East and West, or though I gained the whole world.'

'Aurelian,' I replied, 'this is not the language I used to hear from your lips. Another spirit possesses you and it is not hard to tell whence it comes.'

'You would say--from Fronto.'

'I would. There is the rank poison, that has turned the blood in the veins of one, whom justice and wisdom once ruled, into its own accursed substance.'

'I and Rome, Piso,' said Aurelian, 'owe much to Fronto. I confess that his spirit now possesses me. He has roused the latent piety into action and life, which I received with my mother's milk, but which, the G.o.ds forgive me! carried away by ambition, had well nigh gone quite out in my soul. My mother--dost thou know it?--was a priestess of Apollo, and never did G.o.d or G.o.ddess so work by unseen influence to gain a mortal's heart, as did she to fill mine with reverence of the deities of heaven--specially of the great G.o.d of light. I was early a wayward child. When a soldier in the legions I now command, my life was what a soldier's is--a life of action, hards.h.i.+p, peril, and blood. The deities of Heaven soon became to me as if they were not. And so it has been for well nigh all the years of my life. But, the G.o.ds be thanked, Fronto has redeemed me! and since I have worn this diadem have I toiled, Rome can testify with what zeal, to restore to her G.o.ds their lost honors--to purge her wors.h.i.+p of the foul corruptions that were bringing it into contempt--and raise it higher than ever in the honor of the people, by the magnificence of the temples I have built; by the gifts I have lavished upon them; by the ample riches wherewith I have endowed the priesthood. And more than once, while this work has been achieving, has the form of my revered parent, beautiful in the dazzling robes of her office, stood by my bedside--whether in dream, or in vision, or in actual presence, I cannot tell--and blessed me for my pious enterprise--"The G.o.ds be thanked," the lips have said, or seemed to say, "that thy youth lasts not always but that age has come, and with it second childhood in thy reverence of the G.o.ds, whose wors.h.i.+p it was mine to put into thy infant heart. Go on thy way, my son! Build up the fallen altars, and lay low the aspiring fanes of the wicked. Finish what thou hast begun, and all time shall p.r.o.nounce thee greatest of the great."

Should I disobey the warning? The G.o.ds forbid! and save me from such impiety. I am now, Piso, doubly armed for the work I have taken in hand--first by the zeal of the pious Fronto, and second, by the manifest finger of Heaven pointing the way I should go. And, please the Almighty Ruler! I will enter upon it, and it shall not be for want of a determined will and of eyes too used to the shedding of blood to be frightened now though an ocean full were spilled before them, if this race be not utterly swept from the face of the earth, from the suckling to the silver head, from the beggar to the prince--and from Rome all around to the four winds, as far as her almighty arms can reach.'

My heart sunk within me as he spoke, and my knees trembled under me. I knew the power and spirit of the man, and I now saw that superst.i.tion had claimed him for her own; that he would go about his work of death and ruin, armed with his own cruel and b.l.o.o.d.y mind, and urged behind by the fiercer spirit still of Pagan bigotry. It seemed to me, in spite of what I had just said myself, and thought I believed, as if the death-note of Christianity had now been rung in my ear. The voice of Aurelian as he spoke had lost its usual sharpness, and fallen into a lower tone full of meaning, and which said to me that his very inmost soul was pouring itself out, with the awful words he used. I felt utterly helpless and undone--like an ant in the pathway of a giant--incapable of resistance or escape. I suppose all this was visible in my countenance. I said nothing; and Aurelian, after pausing a moment, went on.

'Think me not, Piso, to be using the words of an idle braggart in what I have said. Who has known Aurelian, when once he has threatened death, to hold back his hand? But I will give thee earnest of my truth!'

'I require it not, Aurelian. I question not thy truth.'

'I will give it notwithstanding, Piso. What will you think--you will think as you ever have of me--if I should say that already, and upon one of my own house, infected with this h.e.l.l-begotten atheism, has the axe already fallen!'

Hearing the horrible truth from his own lips, it seemed as if I had never heard it before. I hardly had believed it.

'Tyrant!' I exclaimed, 'it cannot be! What, Aurelia?'

'Yes, Aurelia! Keep thy young blood cool, Piso. Yes, Aurelia! Ere I struck at others, it behoved me to reprove my own. It was no easy service, as you may guess, but it must be done. And not only was Aurelia herself pertinaciously wedded to this fatal mischief, but she was subduing the manly mind of Mucapor too, who, had he been successfully wrought upon, were as good as dead to me and to Rome--and he is one whom our legions cannot spare. We have Christians more than enough already in our ranks: a Christian general was not to be borne. This was additional matter of accusation against Aurelia, and made it right that she should die. But she had her free choice of life, honor, rank, riches, and, added to all, Mucapor, whose equal Rome does not hold, if she would but take them. One word spoken and they were all her own; with no small chance that she should one day be what Livia is. But that one word her obstinate superst.i.tion would not let her speak.'

'No, Aurelian; there is that in the Christian superst.i.tion that always forbids the uttering of that one word. Death to the Christian is but another word for life. Apostacy is the true death. You have destroyed the body of Aurelia, but her virtuous soul is already with G.o.d, and it is you who have girded upon her brow a garland that shall never fade. Of that much may you make your boast.'

'Piso, I bear with you, and shall; but there is no other in Rome who might say so much.'

'Nay, nay, Aurelian, there I believe you better than you make yourself.

To him who is already the victim of the axe or the beasts do you never deny the liberty of the tongue,--such as it then is.'

'Upon Piso, and he the husband of Julia, I can inflict no evil, nor permit it done.'

'I would take shelter, Aurelian, neither behind my own name, my father's, nor my wife's. I am a Christian--and such fate as may befall the rest, I would share. Yet not willingly, for life and happiness are dear to me as to you--and they are dear to all these innocent mult.i.tudes whom you do now, in the exercise of despotic power, doom to a sudden and abhorred death. Bethink yourself, Aurelian, before it be too late--'

'I have bethought myself of it all,' he replied--'and were the suffering ten times more, and the blood to be poured out a thousand times more, I would draw back not one step. The die has been cast; it has come up as it is, and so must be the game. I listen to no appeal.'

'Not from me,' I replied; 'but surely you will not deny a hearing to what these people may say in their own defence. That were neither just nor merciful; nor were it like Aurelian. There is much which by their proper organs they might say to place before you their faith in the light of truth. You have heard what you have received concerning it, chiefly from the lips of Fronto; and can he know what he has never learned? or tell it unperverted by prejudices black as night?'

'I have already said,' rejoined the Emperor, 'that I would hear them, and I will. But it can avail them no more than words uttered in the breath of the tempest that is raging up from the north. Hear them! This day have I already heard them--from one of those madmen of theirs who plague the streets of Rome. Pa.s.sing early by the temple of aesculapius--that one which stands not an arrow's flight from the column of Trajan--I came upon a dense crowd of all sorts of persons listening to a gaunt figure of a man who spoke to them. Soon as I came against him, and paused on my horse for the crowd to make way, the wild beast who was declaiming, shouted at me at the top of his voice, calling on me to 'hear the word of G.o.d which he would speak to me.' Knowing him by such jargon to be a Christian, I did as he desired, and there stood, while he, for my especial instruction, laid bare the iniquities and follies of the Roman wors.h.i.+p; sent the priesthood and all who entered their temples to the infernal regions; and prophesied against Rome--which he termed Babylon--that ere so many centuries were gone, her walls would lie even with the ground, her temples moulder in ruins, her language become extinct, and her people confounded with other nations and lost. And all this because, I, whom he now called, if I remember the names aright, Ahaz and now Nebuchadnezzar, oppressed the children of G.o.d and held them in captivity: while in the same breath he bid me come on with my chains, gibbets, beasts, crosses, and fires, for they were ready, and would rejoice to bear their testimony in the cause of Christ. As I turned to resume my way, his words were; 'Go on, thou man of pride and blood; go on thy way! The gates of h.e.l.l swing open for thee! Already the arm of the Lord is bared against thee! the winged lightning struggles in his hand to smite thee! I hear thy cry for mercy which no one answers--' and more, till I was beyond the reach of his owl's voice. There was an appeal, Piso, from this people! What think you of it?'

'He whom you heard,' I replied, 'I know, and know him to be honest and true; as loyal a subject too as Rome holds. He is led away by his hot and hasty temper both to do and say what injures not only him, but all who are joined with him, and the cause he defends. He offends the Christians hardly less than others. Judge not all by him. He stands alone. If you would hear one whom all alike confide in, and who may fitly represent the feelings and principles of the whole body of Christians, summon Probus. From him may you learn without exaggeration or concealment, without reproach of others or undue boasting of themselves, what the Christians are in their doctrines and their lives, as citizens of Rome and loyal subjects of Aurelian, and what, as citizens of heaven and loyal followers of Jesus Christ.'

The Emperor promised to consider it. He had no other reason to deny such favor, but the tedium of listening to what could profit neither him nor others.

We then turned toward the palace, where I saw Livia; now as silent and sad as, when in Palmyra, she was lively and gay. Not that Aurelian abates the least of his wors.h.i.+p, but that the gloom which overshadows him imparts itself to her, and that knowing what has befallen Aurelia, she cannot but feel it to be a possible thing for the blow to fall elsewhere and nearer. Yet is there the same outward show as ever. The palace is still thronged, with not Rome only, but by strangers from all quarters of the empire, anxious to pay their homage at once to the Empress of Rome, to the most beautiful woman in the world--such is the language--and to a daughter of the far-famed Zen.o.bia.

The city is now crowded with travelers of all nations, so much so that the inns can scarce receive them; and hardly ever before was private hospitality so put to all its resources. With all, and everywhere, in the streets, at the public baths, in the porticos, at the private or public banquet, the Christians are the one absorbing topic. And, at least, this good comes with the evil, that thus the character of this religion, as compared with that of Rome and other faiths, is made known to thousands who might otherwise never have heard of it, or have felt interest enough in it to examine its claims. It leads to a large demand for, and sale of, our sacred books. The copyists can hardly supply them so fast as they are wanted. For in the case of any dispute or conversation, it is common to hear the books themselves referred to, and then to be called in as witnesses for or against a statement made.

And pleasant enough is it to see how clear the general voice is on our side--especially with the strangers--how indignant they are, for the most part, that violence, to the extreme of another Decian persecution, should be so much as dreamed of. Would that the same could be said of our citizens and countrymen! A large proportion of them indeed embrace the same liberal sentiments, but a greater part, if not for extreme violence, are yet for oppression and suppression; and I dare not say how many, for all that Aurelian himself designs. Among the lower orders, especially, a ferocious and blood-thirsty spirit breaks out in a thousand ways that fills the bosom both with grief and terror.

The clouds are gathering over us, Fausta, heavy and black with the tempest pent up within. The thunders are rolling in the distance, and each hour coming nearer and nearer. Whom the lightnings shall strike--how vain to conjecture! Would to G.o.d that Julia were anywhere but here! For, to you I may say it, I cannot trust Aurelian--yes--Aurelian himself I may; but not Aurelian the tool of Fronto. Farewell.

LETTER IX.

FROM PISO TO FAUSTA.

When I turned from the palace of Aurelian and again took my way towards the Coelian, I did it in the belief that before the day should end, edicts against the Christians would be published. I found, as I conversed with many whom I met in the way, that from other sources the same opinion had become common. In one manner or another it had come abroad that measures had been resolved upon by the Emperor, and would soon be put in force. Many indeed do not give the least credit to the rumors, and believe that they all spring from the violent language of Fronto, which has been reported as that of Aurelian. You may wonder that there should be such uncertainty respecting a great design like this.

But you must remember that Aurelian has of late shrouded himself in a studied obscurity. Not a despot, in the despotic lands of Asia, keeps more secret counsel than he, or leans less upon the opinion or advice of others. All that is done throughout the vast compa.s.s of the empire, springs from him alone--all the affairs of foreign and dependent kingdoms are arranged and determined by him. As for Italy and the capital, they are mere playthings in his hand. You ask if the senate does not still exist? I answer, it does; but, as a man exists whom a palsy has made but half alive; the body is there, but the soul is gone, and even the body is asleep. The senators, with all becoming gravity, a.s.semble themselves at the capitol, and what time they sleep not away the tedious hours in their ivory chairs, they debate such high matters as, 'whether the tax which this year falls heavy upon Capua, by reason of a blast upon the grapes, shall be lightened or remitted!' or 'whether the pet.i.tion of the Milanese for the construction at the public expense of a granary shall be answered favorably!' or 'whether V. P. Naso shall be granted a new trial after defeat at the highest court!' Not that there is not virtue in the senate, some dignity, some respect and love for the liberties of Rome--witness myself--but that the Emperor has engrossed the whole empire to himself, and nothing is left for that body but to keep alive the few remaining forms of ancient liberty, by a.s.sembling as formerly, and taking care of whatever insignificant affairs are intrusted to them. In a great movement like this against the Christians, Aurelian does not so much as recognize their existence. No advice is asked, no cooperation. And the less is he disposed to communicate with them in the present instance perhaps, from knowing so well that the measure would find no favor in their eyes; but would, on the contrary, be violently opposed. Everything, accordingly, originates in the sovereign will of Aurelian, and is carried into effect by his arm wielding the total power of this boundless empire--being now, what it has been his boast to make it, coextensive with its extremest borders as they were in the time of the Antonines. There is no power to resist him; nor are there many who dare to utter their real opinions, least of all, a senator, or a n.o.ble. A beggar in the street may do it with better chance of its being respected, if agreeable to him, and of escaping rebuke or worse, if it be unpalatable. To the people, he is still, as ever, courteous and indulgent.

There is throughout the city a strange silence and gloom, as if in expectancy of some great calamity; or of some event of dark and uncertain character. The Christians go about their affairs as usual, not ceasing from any labors, nor withdrawing from the scene of danger; but with firm step and serious air keep on their way as if conscious of the great part which it is theirs to act, and resolved that it shall not suffer at their hands. Many with whom I have spoken, put on even a cheerful air as they have greeted me, and after the usual morning's salutation, have pa.s.sed on as if things were in their usual train.

Others with pale face and quivering lip confessed the inward tumult, and that, if they feared naught for themselves, there were those at home, helpless and exposed, for whom the heart bled, and for whom it could not but show signs of fear.

I met the elder Demetrius. His manly and thoughtful countenance--though it betrayed nothing of weakness--was agitated with suppressed emotion.

He is a man full of courage, but full of sensibility too. His affections are warm and tender as those of a girl. He asked me 'what I could inform him of the truth of the rumors which were now afloat of the most terrific character.' I saw where his heart was as he spoke, and answered him, as you may believe, with pain and reluctance. I knew, indeed, that the whole truth would soon break upon him--it was a foolish weakness--but I could hardly bring myself to tell him what a few hours would probably reveal. I told him, however, all that I had just learned from Aurelian himself, and which, as he made no reserve with regard to me, nor enjoined concealment, I did not doubt was fully resolved upon, and would be speedily put in force. As I spoke, the countenance of the Greek grew pale beyond its usual hue of paleness. He bent his head, as in perplexed and anxious thought; the tears were ready to overflow as he raised it, after a moment, and said,

'Piso, I am but recently a Christian. I know nothing of this religion but its beauty and truth. It is what I have ever longed for, and now that I possess it I value it far more than life. But,'--he paused a moment--'I have mingled but little with this people; I know scarcely any; I am ignorant of what they require of those who belong to their number in such emergences. I am ready to die myself, rather than shrink from a bold acknowledgment of what in my heart I believe to be the divinest truth; but--my wife and my children!--must they too meet these dangers? My wife has become what I am; my children are but infants; a Greek vessel sails to-morrow for Scio, where dwells, in peaceful security, the father of my wife, from whom I received her, almost to his distraction; her death would be his immolation. Should I offend'--

'Surely not,' I replied. 'If, as I believe will happen, the edicts of the Emperor should be published to-day, put them on board to-night, and let to-morrow see them floating on the Mediterranean. We are not all to stand still and hold our throats to the knife of this imperial butcher.'

'G.o.d be thanked!' said Demetrius, and grasping my hand with fervor turned quickly and moved in the direction of his home.

Soon after, seated with Julia and Probus--he had joined me as I parted from Demetrius--I communicated to her all that I had heard at the palace. It neither surprised nor alarmed her. But she could not repress her grief at the prospect spread out before us of so much suffering to the innocent.

'How hard is this,' said she, 'to be called to bear such testimony as must now be borne to truth! These Christian mult.i.tudes, so many of whom have but just adopted their new faith and begun to taste of the pleasures it imparts, all enjoying in such harmony and quietness their rich blessings--with many their only blessings--how hard for them, all at once, to see the foundations of their peace broken up, and their very lives clamored for! rulers and people setting upon them as troops of wild beasts! It demands almost more faith than I can boast, to sit here without complaint a witness of such wrong. How strange, Probus, that life should be made so difficult! That not a single possession worth having can be secured without so much either of labor or endurance! I wonder if this is ever to cease on earth?'

'I can hardly suppose that it will,' said Probus. 'Labor and suffering, in some of their forms, seem both essential. My arm would be weak as a rush were it never moved; but exercised, and you see it is nervous and strong; plied like a smith's, and it grows to be hard as iron and capable of miracles. So it is with any faculty you may select; the harder it is tasked the more worthy it becomes; and without tasking at all, it is worth nothing. So seems to me it is with the whole man. In a smooth and even lot our worth never would be known, and we could respect neither ourselves nor others. Greatness and worth come only of collision and conflict. Let our path be strewed with roses, and soft southern gales ever blow, and earth send up of her own accord our ready prepared nutriment, and mankind would be but one huge mult.i.tude of Sybarites, dissolved in sloth and effeminacy. If no difficulty opposed, no labor exacted, body and mind were dead. Hence it is, we may believe, that man must everywhere labor even for the food which is necessary to mere existence. Life is made dear to us by an instinct--we shrink from nothing as we do from the mere thought of non-existence--but still it is death or toil; that is the alternative. So that labor is thus insured wherever man is found, and it is this that makes him what he is. Then he is made, moreover, so as to crave not only food but knowledge as much, and also virtue; but between him and both these objects there are interposed, for the same reason doubtless, mountains of difficulty, which he must clamber up and over before he can bask in the pleasant fields that lie beyond, and then ascend the distant mountain-tops, from which but a single step removes him from the abode of G.o.d. Doubt it not, lady, that it is never in vain and for naught that man labors and suffers; but that the good which redounds is in proportion to what is undergone, and more than a compensation. If, in these times of darkness and fear, suffering is more, goodness and faith are more also. There are Christians, and men, made by such trials, that are never made elsewhere nor otherwise--nor can be; just as the arm of Hercules could not be but by the labors of Hercules. What says Macer? Why even this, that G.o.d is to be thanked for this danger, for that the church needs it! The brief prosperity it has enjoyed since the time of Valerian and Macria.n.u.s, has corrupted it, and it must be purged anew, and tried by fire! I think not that; but I think this; that if suffering ever so extreme is ordained, there will be a virtue begotten in the souls of the sufferers, and abroad through them, that shall prove it not to have been in vain.'

'I can believe what you say,' said Julia, 'at least I can believe in the virtue ascribed to labor, and the collision with difficulty. Suffering is pa.s.sive; may it not be that we may come to place too much merit in this?'

'It is not to be doubted that we may,' replied Probus. 'The temptation to do so is great. It is easy to suffer. In comparison with labor and duty--life-long labor and duty--it is a light service. Yet it carries with it an imposing air, and is too apt to take to itself all the glory of the Christian's course. Many who have lived as Christians but indifferently have, in the hour of persecution, and in the heat of that hour, rushed upon death and borne it well, and before it extremest torture, and gained the crown of martyrdom and the name of saint--a crown not always without spot--a name not always honorable. He who suffers for Christ must suffer with simplicity--even as he has lived with simplicity. And when he has lived so, and endured the martyr's death at last, that is to be accounted but the last of many acts of duty which are essentially alike--unless it may be that in many a previous conflict over temptation and the world and sin, there was a harder victory won, and a harder duty done, than when the flames consumed him, or the beasts tare him limb from limb.'

'Yet, Probus,' continued Julia, 'among the humble and the ignorant, where we cannot suppose that vanity could operate, where men have received Christianity only because it seemed to them just the faith they needed, and who then when it has been required that they renounce it, will not do so, but hold steadfastly to what they regard the truth of G.o.d, and for it take with meekness and patience all manner of torture, and death itself--there is surely here great virtue! Suffering here has great worth and sets upon the soul the seal of G.o.d. Is it not so?'