Aurelian or Rome in the Third Century Part 6

Heaven preserve to us the smiles, and the love of Livia.'

'Doubt not that they will ever be yours. But I trust that sentiments, like those of Tacitus, will bear sway in the councils of Aurelian, and that the present calm will not be disturbed.'

Thus conversing, we wandered on, beguiled by such talk, and the attractive splendors of the garden, till we found ourselves separated, apparently by some distance, from our other friends; none pa.s.sed us, and none met us. We had reached a remote and solitary spot, where fewer lamps had been hung, and the light was faint and unequal. Not sorry to be thus alone, we seated ourselves on the low pedestal of a group of statuary--once the favorite resort of the fair and false Terentia--whose forms could scarcely be defined, and which was enveloped, at a few paces distant, with shrubs and flowers, forming a thin wall of part.i.tion between us and another walk, corresponding to the one we were in, but winding away in a different direction. We had sat not long, either silent or conversing, ere our attention was caught by the sound of approaching voices, apparently in earnest discourse. A moment, and we knew them to be those of Fronto, and Aurelian.

'By the G.o.ds, his life shall answer it,' said Aurelian with vehemence, but with suppressed tones; 'who but he was to observe the omens? Was I to know, that to-day is the Ides, and to-morrow the day after? The rites must be postponed.'

'It were better not, in my judgment,' said Fronto, 'all the other signs are favorable. Never, Papirius a.s.sured me, did the sacred chickens seize so eagerly the crumbs. Many times, as he closely watched, did he observe them--which is rare--drop them from their mouths overfilled. The times he has exactly recorded. A rite like this put off, when all Rome is in expectation, would, in the opinion of all the world, be of a more unfavorable interpretation, than if more than the day were against us.'

'You counsel well. Let it go on.'

'But to ensure a fortunate event, and propitiate the G.o.ds, I would early, and before the august ceremonies, offer the most costly and acceptable sacrifice.'

'That were well also. In the prisons there are captives of Germany, of Gaul, of Egypt, and Palmyra. Take what and as many as you will. If we ever make sure of the favor of the G.o.ds, it is when we offer freely that which we hold at the highest price.'

'I would rather they were Christians,' urged Fronto.

'That cannot be,' said Aurelian. 'I question if there be a Christian within the prison walls; and, were there hundreds, it is not a criminal I would bring to the altar, I would as soon offer a diseased or ill-shaped bull.'

'But it were an easy matter to seize such as we might want. Not, O Aurelian, till this accursed race is exterminated, will the heavens smile as formerly upon our country. Why are the altars thus forsaken?

Why are the temples no longer thronged as once? Why do the great, and the rich, and the learned, silently withhold their aid, or openly scoff and jeer? Why are our sanctuaries crowded only by the sc.u.m and refuse of the city?'

'I know not. Question me not thus.'

'Is not the reason palpable and gross to the dullest mind? Is it not because of the daily growth of this blaspheming and atheistical crew, who, by horrid arts seduce the young, the timid, and above all the women, who ever draw the world with them, to join them in their unhallowed orgies, thus stripping the temples of their wors.h.i.+ppers, and dragging the G.o.ds themselves from their seats? Think you the G.o.ds look on with pleasure while their altars and temples are profaned or abandoned, and a religion, that denies them, rears itself upon their ruins?'

'I know not. Say no more.'

'Is it possible, religion or the state should prosper, while he, who is not only Vicegerent of the G.o.ds, Universal Monarch, but what is more, their sworn Pontifex Maximus, connives at the existence and dissemination of the most dangerous opinions--'

'Thou liest.'

'Harboring even beneath the imperial roof, and feasting at the imperial table, the very heads and chief ministers of this black mischief--'

'Hold, I say. I swear by all the G.o.ds, known and unknown, that another word, and thy head shall answer it. Is my soul that of a lamb, that I need this stirring up to deeds of blood? Am I so lame and backward, when the G.o.ds are to be defended, that I am to be thus charged? Let the lion sleep when he will; chafed too much, and he may spring and slay at random. I love not the Christians, nor any who flout the G.o.ds and their wors.h.i.+p--that thou knowest well. But I love Piso, Aurelia, and the divine Julia--that thou knowest as well. Now no more.'

'For my life,' said Fronto, 'I hold it cheap, if I may but be faithful to my office and the G.o.ds.'

'I believe it, Fronto. The G.o.ds will reward thee. Let us on.'

In the earnestness of their talk they had paused, and stood just before us, being separated but by a thin screen of shrubs. We continued rooted to our seats while this conversation went on, held there both by the impossibility of withdrawing without observation, and by a desire to hear--I confess it--what was thus in a manner forced upon me, and concerned so nearly, not only myself, but thousands of my fellow-Christians.

When they were hidden from us by the winding of the path, we rose and turned toward the palace.

'That savage!' said Livia. 'How strange, that Aurelian, who knows so well how to subdue the world, should have so little power to shake off this reptile.'

'There is power enough,' I replied; 'but alas! I fear the will is wanting. Superst.i.tion is as deep a principle in the breast of Aurelian as ambition and of that, Fronto is the most fitting high-priest.

Aurelian places him at the head of religion in the state for those very qualities, whose fierce expression has now made us tremble. Let us hope that the Emperor will remain where he now is, in a position from which it seems Fronto is unable to dislodge him, and all will go well.'

We soon reached the palace, where, joining Julia and Portia, our chariot soon bore us to the Coelian Hill. Farewell.

LETTER IV.

FROM PISO TO FAUSTA.

I promised you, Fausta, before the news should reach you in any other way, to relate the occurrences and describe the ceremonies of the day appointed for the dedication of the new Temple of the Sun. The day has now pa.s.sed, not without incidents of even painful interest to ourselves and therefore to you, and I sit down to fulfil my engagements.

Vast preparations had been making for the occasion, for many days or even months preceding, and the day arose upon a city full of expectation of the shows, ceremonies, and games, that were to reward their long and patient waiting. For the season of the year the day was hot, unnaturally so; and the sky filled with those ma.s.sive clouds, piled like mountains of snow one upon another, which, while they both please the eye by their forms, and veil the fierce splendors of the sun, as they now and then sail across his face, at the same time portend wind and storm. All Rome was early astir. It was ushered in by the criers traversing the streets, and proclaiming the rites and spectacles of the day, what they were, and where to be witnessed, followed by troops of boys, imitating, in their grotesque way, the pompous declarations of the men of authority, not unfrequently drawing down upon their heads the curses and the batons of the insulted dignitaries. A troop of this sort pa.s.sed the windows of the room in which Julia and I were sitting at our morning meal. As the crier ended his proclamation, and the shouts of the applauding urchins died away, Milo, who is our attendant in preference to any and all others, observed,

'That the fellow of a crier deserved to have his head beat about with his own rod, for coming round with his news not till after the greatest show of the day was over.'

'What mean you?' I asked. 'Explain.'

'What should I mean,' he replied, 'but the morning sacrifice at the temple.'

'And what so wonderful,' said Julia, 'in a morning sacrifice? The temples are open every morning, are they not?'

'Yes, truly are they,' rejoined Milo; 'but not for so great a purpose, nor witnessed by so great crowds. Curio wished me to have been there, and says nothing could have been more propitious. They died as the G.o.ds love to have them.'

'Was there no bellowing nor struggling, then?' said Julia.

'Neither, Curio a.s.sures me; but they met the knife of the priest as they would the sword of an enemy on the field of battle.'

'How say you?' said Julia, quickly, turning pale; 'do I hear aright, Milo, or are you mocking? G.o.d forbid that you should speak of a human sacrifice.'

'It is even so, mistress. And why should it not be so? If the favor of the G.o.ds, upon whom we all depend, as the priests tell us, is to be purchased so well in no other way, what is the life of one man, or of many, in such a cause? The great Gallienus, when his life had been less ordered than usual after the rules of temperance and religion, used to make amends by a few captives slain to Jupiter; to which, doubtless, may be ascribed his prosperous reign. But, as I was saying, there was, so Curio informed me at the market not long afterwards, a sacrifice, on the private altar of the temple, of ten captives. Their blood flowed just as the great G.o.d of the temple showed himself in the horizon. It would have done you good, Curio said, to see with what a hearty and dexterous zeal Fronto struck the knife into their hearts--for to no inferior minister would he delegate the sacred office.'

'Lucius,' cried Julia, 'I thought that such offerings were now no more.

Is it so, that superst.i.tion yet delights itself in the blood of murdered men?'

'It is just so,' I was obliged to reply. 'With a people naturally more gentle and humane than we of Rome this custom would long ago have fallen into disuse. They would have easily found a way, as all people do, to conform their religious doctrine and offerings to their feelings and instincts. But the Romans, by nature and long training, lovers of blood, their country built upon the ruins of others, and cemented with blood--the taste for it is not easily eradicated. There are temples where human sacrifices have never ceased. Laws have restrained their frequency--have forbidden them, under heaviest penalties, unless permitted by the state--but these laws ever have been, and are now evaded; and it is the settled purpose of Fronto, and others of his stamp, to restore to them their lost honors, and make them again, as they used to be, the chief rite in the wors.h.i.+p of the G.o.ds. I am not sorry, Julia, that your doubts, though so painfully, have yet been so effectually, removed.'

Julia had for some time blamed, as over-ardent, the zeal of the Christians. She had thought that the evil of the existing superst.i.tions was over-estimated, and that it were wiser to pursue a course of more moderation; that a system that nourished such virtues as she found in Portia, in Tacitus, and others like them, could not be so corrupting in its power as the Christians were in the habit of representing it; that if we could succeed in subst.i.tuting Christianity quietly, without alienating the affections, or shocking too violently the prejudices, of the believers in the prevailing superst.i.tions, our gain would be double.

To this mode of arguing I knew she was impelled, by her love and almost reverence for Portia; and how could I blame it, springing from such a cause? I had, almost criminally, allowed her to blind herself in a way she never would have done, had her strong mind acted, as on other subjects, untrammelled and free. I was not sorry that Milo had brought before her mind a fact which, however revolting in its horror to such a nature as hers, could not but heal while it wounded.

'Milo,' said Julia, as I ended, 'say now that you have been jesting; that this is a piece of wit with which you would begin in a suitable way an extraordinary day; this is one of your Gallienus fictions.'

'Before the G.o.ds,' replied Milo, 'I have told you the naked truth. But not the whole; for Curio left me not till he had shown how each had died. Of the ten, but three, he averred, resisted, or died unwillingly.

The three were Germans from beyond the Danube--brothers, he said, who had long lain in prison till their bones were ready to start through the skin. Yet were they not ready to die. It seemed as if there were something they longed--more even than for life or freedom--to say; but they might as well have been dumb and tongueless, for none understood their barbarous jargon. When they found that their words were in vain, they wrung their hands in their wo, and cried out aloud in their agony.

Then, however, at the stern voice of Fronto, warning them of the hour, they ceased--embraced each other, and received the fatal blow; the others signified their pleasure at dying so, rather than to be thrown to wild beasts, or left to die by slow degrees within their dungeon's walls. Two rejoiced that it was their fate to pour out their blood upon the altar of a G.o.d, and knelt devoutly before the uplifted knife of Fronto. Never, said Curio, was there a more fortunate offering. Aurelian heard the report of it with lively joy, and said that 'now all would go well.' Curio is a good friend of mine; will it please you to hear these things from his own lips?'

'No,' said Julia; 'I would hear no more. I have heard more than enough.

How needful, Lucius, if these things are so, that our Christian zeal abate not! I see that this stern and b.l.o.o.d.y faith requires that they who would deal with it must carry their lives in their hand, ready to part with nothing so easily, if by so doing they can hew away one of the branches, or tear up one of the roots of this ancient and pernicious error. I blame not Probus longer--no, nor the wild rage of Macer.'

'Two, lady, of the captives were of Palmyra; the Queen's name and yours were last upon their lips.'