Aurelian or Rome in the Third Century Part 39

Piso has mentioned with brevity the death of Aurelian, and the manner of it as first received at Rome. I will here add to it the account which soon became current in the capital, and which to this time remains without contradiction.

Already has the name of Menestheus occurred in these memoirs. He was one of the secretaries of the Emperor, always near him and much in his confidence. This seemed strange to those who knew both, for Menestheus did not possess those qualities which Aurelian esteemed. He was selfish, covetous, and fawning; his spirit and manner those of a slave to such as were above him--those of a tyrant to such as were below him. His affection for the Emperor, of which he made great display, was only for what it would bring to him; and his fidelity to his duties which was exemplary, grew out of no principle of integrity, but was merely a part of that self-seeking policy that was the rule of his life. His office put him in the way to ama.s.s riches, and for that reason there was not one perhaps of all the servants of the Emperor who performed with more exactness the affairs entrusted to him. He had many times incurred the displeasure of Aurelian, and his just rebuke for acts of rapacity and extortion, by which, never the empire, but his own fortune was profited; but, so deep and raging was his thirst of gold, that it had no other effect than to restrain for a season a pa.s.sion which was destined, in its further indulgence, to destroy both master and servant.

Aurelian had scarcely arrived at the camp without the walls of Byzantium, and was engaged in the final arrangements of the army previous to the departure for Syria--oppressed and often irritated by the variety and weight of the duties which claimed his care--when, about the hour of noon, as he was sitting in his tent, he was informed, "that one from Rome with pressing business craved to be heard of the Emperor."

He was ordered to approach.

'And why,' said Aurelian, as the stranger entered, have you sped in such haste from Rome to seek me?'

'Great Caesar, I have come for justice!'

'Is not justice well administered in the courts of Rome, that thou must pursue me here, even to the gates of Byzantium?'

'None can complain,' replied the Roman, 'that justice hath been withheld from the humblest since the reign of Aurelian--'

'How then,' interrupted Aurelian, 'how is it that thou comest hither?

Quick! let us know thy matter?'

'To have held back,' the man replied, 'till the return of the army from its present expedition, and the law could be enforced, were to me more than ruin.'

'What, knave, has the army to do with thee, or thou with it? Thy matter, quick, I say.'

'Great Caesar,' rejoined the other, 'I am the builder of this tent. And from my workshops came all these various furnis.h.i.+ngs, of the true and full value of all of which I have been defrauded--'

'By whom?'

'By one near the Emperor, Menestheus the n.o.ble secretary.'

'Menestheus! Make out the case, and, by the great G.o.d of Light, he shall answer it. Be it but a farthing he hath wronged thee of, and he shall answer it. Menestheus?'

'Yes, great Emperor, Menestheus. It was thus. When the work he spoke for was done and fairly delivered to his hands, agreeing to the value of an obolus and the measure of a hair, with the strict commands he gave, what does he when he sees it, but fall into a rage and swear that 'tis not so--that the stuff is poor, the fas.h.i.+on mean and beggarly, the art slight and imperfect, and that the half of what I charged, which was five hundred aurelians, was all that I should have, with which, if I were not content and lisped but a syllable of blame, a dungeon for my home were the least I might expect; and if my knavery reached the ear of Aurelian, from which, if I hearkened to him, it should be his care to keep it, my life were of less value than a fly's. Knowing well the power of the man, I took the sum he proffered, hoping to make such composition with my creditors, that I might still pursue my trade, for, O Emperor, this was my first work, and being young and just venturing forth, I was dependent upon others. But, with the half price I was allowed to charge, and was paid, I cannot reimburse them. My name is gone and I am ruined.'

'The half of five hundred--say you--was that the sum, and all the sum he paid you?'

'It was. And there are here with me those that will attest it.'

'It needs not; for I myself know that from the treasury five hundred aurelians were drawn, and said, by him, for this work--which well suits me--to have been duly paid. Let but this be proved, and his life is the least that it shall cost him. But it must be well proved. Let us now have thy witnesses.'

Menestheus at this point, ignorant of the charge then making against him, entered the tent. Appalled by the apparition of the injured man, and grasping at a glance the truth, all power of concealment was gone, conscious guilt was written in the color and in every line and feature of the face.

'Menestheus!' said Aurelian, 'knowest thou this man?'

'He is Virro, an artisan of Rome;' replied the trembling slave.

'And what think you makes him here?'

The Secretary was silent.

'He has come, Menestheus, well stored with proofs, beside those which I can furnish, of thy guilt. Shall the witnesses be heard? Here they stand.'

Menestheus replied not. The very faculty of speech had left the miserable man.

'How is it,' then said Aurelian in his fiercest tones, 'how is it that again, for these paltry gains, already rolling in wealth--thou wilt defile thy own soul, and bring public shame upon me too, and Rome! Away to thy tent! and put in order thine own affairs and mine. Thou hast lived too long. Soldiers, let him be strongly guarded.--Let Virro now receive his just dues. Men call me cruel, and well I fear they may; but unjust, rapacious, never, as I believe. Whom have I wronged, whom oppressed? The poor of Rome, at least, cannot complain of Aurelian. Is it not so, sirrah?'

'Rome,' he replied, 'rejoices in the reign of Aurelian. His love of justice and of the G.o.ds, give him a place in every heart.'

Whether Aurelian would have carried into execution the threat, which in a moment of pa.s.sion he had pa.s.sionately uttered, none can tell. All that can be said is this, that he rarely threatened but he kept his word.

This the secretary knew, and knew therefore, that another day he might never see. His cunning and his wit now stood him in good stead. A doomed man--he was a desperate man, and no act then seemed to him a crime, by which his doom might be averted. Retiring to his tent to fulfil the commands of the Emperor, he was there left alone, the tent being guarded without; and then as his brain labored in the invention of some device, by which he might yet escape the impending death, and save a life which--his good name being utterly blasted and gone, could have been but a prolonged shame--he conceived and hatched a plan, in its ingenuity, its wickedness, and atrocious baseness, of a piece with his whole character and life. In the handwriting of the Emperor, which he could perfectly imitate, he drew up a list of some of the chief officers of the army--by him condemned to death on the following day. This paper, as he was at about the eleventh hour led guarded to his place of imprisonment, he dropt at the tent door of one whose name was on it.

It fell into the intended hands; and soon as the friendly night had come the b.l.o.o.d.y scroll was borne from tent to tent, stirring up to vengeance the designated victims. No suspicion of fraud ever crossed their minds; but amazed at a thirst of blood so insatiable, and which, without cause a.s.signed, could deliver over to the axe his best and most trusted friends, Carus, Probus, Mucapor--they doubted whether in truth his reason were not gone, and deemed it no crime, but their highest duty, to save themselves by the sacrifice of one who was no longer to be held a man.

After the noon of this day the army had made a short but quick march to Heraclea. Aurelian--the tents being pitched--the watch set--the soldiers, weary with their march, asleep--himself tired with the day's duty--sat with folded arms, having just ungirded and thrown from him his sword. His last attendant was then dismissed, who, pa.s.sing from the tent door, encountered the conspirators as they rushed in, and was by them hewn to the ground. Aurelian, at that sound, sprang to his feet. But alone, with the swords of twenty of his bravest generals at his breast--and what could he do? One fell at the first sweep of his arm; but, ere he could recover himself--the twenty seemed to have sheathed their weapons in his body. Still he fought, but not a word did he utter till the dagger of Mucapor, raised aloft, was plunged into his breast, with the words,

'This Aurelia sends!'

'Mucapor!' he then exclaimed as he sank to the ground, 'canst thou stab Aurelian?' Then turning toward the others, who stood looking upon their work, he said, 'Why, soldiers and friends, is this? Hold, Mucapor, leave in thy sword, lest life go too quick; I would speak a word--' and he seized the wrist of Mucapor and held it even then with an iron grasp. He then added, 'Romans! you have been deceived! You are all my friends, and have ever been. Never more than now--' His voice fell.

Probus then reaching forward, cried out, unfolding at the same moment the b.l.o.o.d.y list,

'See here, tyrant! are these thy friends?'

The eyes of Aurelian, waking up at those words with all the intentness of life, sought the fatal scroll and sharply scanned it--then closing again, he at the same moment drew out the sword of Mucapor, saying as he did so,

"Tis the hand of Menestheus--not mine. You have been deceived.' With that he fell backwards and expired.

Those miserable men then looking upon one another--the truth flashed upon them; and they knew that to save the life of that mean and abject spirit they there stood together murderers of the benefactor of many of them--the friend of all--of a General and Emperor whom, with all his faults, Rome would mourn as one who had crowned with a new glory her Seven Hills. How did they then accuse themselves for their unreasonable haste--their blind credulity! How did they bewail the cruel blows which had thus deprived them of one, whom they greatly feared indeed, but whom also they greatly loved! above all, one whom, as their master in that art which in every age has claimed the admiration of the world, they looked up to as a very G.o.d! Some reproached themselves; some, others; some threw themselves upon the body of Aurelian in the wildness of their remorse and grief; and all swore vengeance upon the miscreant who had betrayed them.

Thus perished the great Aurelian--for great he truly was, as the world has ever estimated greatness. When the news of his a.s.sa.s.sination reached Rome, the first sensation was that of escape, relief, deliverance; with the Christians, and all who favored them, though not of their faith, it was undissembled joy. The streets presented the appearances which accompany an occasion of general rejoicing. Life seemed all at once more secure. Another b.l.o.o.d.y tyrant was dead, by the violence which he had meted out to so many others, and they were glad. But with another part of the Roman people it was far otherwise. They lamented him as the greatest soldier Rome had known since Caesar; as the restorer of the empire; as the stern but needful reformer of a corrupt and degenerate age; as one who to the army had been more than another Vespasian; who, as a prince, if sometimes severe, was always just, generous, and magnanimous. These were they, who, caring more for the dead than for the living, will remember concerning them only that which is good. They recounted his virtues and his claims to admiration--which were unquestionable and great--and forgot, as if they had never been, his deeds of cruelty, and the wide and wanton slaughter of thousands and hundreds of thousands, which will ever stamp him as one dest.i.tute of humanity, and whose almost only t.i.tle to the name of man was, that he was in the shape of one. For how can the possession of a few of those captivating qualities, which so commonly accompany the possession of great power, atone for the rivers of blood which flowed wherever he wound his way?

I have now ended what I proposed to myself. I have arranged and connected some of the letters of Lucius Manlius Piso, having selected chiefly those which related to the affairs of the Christians and their sufferings during the last days of Aurelian's reign. Those days were happily few. And when they were pa.s.sed, I deemed that never again, so fast did the world appear to grow wiser and better could the same horrors be repeated. But it was not so; and under Diocletian I beheld that work in a manner perfected, which Aurelian did but begin. I have outlived the horrors of those times, and at length, under the powerful protection of the great Constantine, behold this much-persecuted faith secure. In this I sincerely rejoice, for it is Christianity alone, of all the religions of the world, to which may be safely intrusted the destinies of mankind.

END.