DARKNESS AND DAWN OR SCENES IN THE DAYS OF NERO

NINTH ISSUE.

Transcriber’s Notes:

Punctuation has been standardized.

This book was written in a period when many words had not become standardized in their spelling. Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. These have been left unchanged unless indicated with a Transcriber’s Note.

Footnotes are identified in the text with a superscript number2 and have been accumulated in a single section at the end of the text.

Transcriber Notes are used when making corrections to the text or to provide additional information for the modern reader. These notes are identified in the text with a superscript ‘T’ and a numberT2 and grouped at the very end of the book.

Darkness and Dawn

OR

SCENES IN THE DAYS OF NERO

An Historic Tale

BY

FREDERIC W. FARRAR, D.D., F.R.S.

ARCHDEACON AND CANON OF WESTMINSTER, AUTHOR OF “THE LIFE OF CHRIST,” ETC., ETC.

NEW YORK

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

LONDON AND BOMBAY

1897

Copyright, 1891,

By F. W. Farrar

First Edition, September, 1891. Reprinted December, 1891; January and April, 1892; January and September, 1893; February, 1895; May, 1896.

University Press:

John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.

VXORI

DILECTISSIMAE

LIBERORVM PIENTISSIMAE MATRI

LABORUM OMNIUM ET CURARUM PARTICIPI FIDELISSIMAE

HVNC LIBRVM

D. D. D.

FREDERICVS GVILIELMVS FARRAR

Dolce color d’oriental zaffiro,

Che s’accoglieva nel sereno aspetto

Dell’aer puro infino al primo giro,

Agli occhi miei ricomincio diletto,

Tosto ch’io usci fuor dell’aura morta,

Che m’avea contristato gli occhi e’l petto.

Dante, Purgatorio, I. 13-18.

The orient sapphire’s hue of sweetest tone,

Which gathered in the aspect calm and bright

Of that pure air as far as heaven’s first zone,

Now to mine eyes brought back the old delight

Soon as I passed forth from the dead dank air

Which eyes and heart had veiled with saddest night.

Plumptre.

PREFACE

I have endeavoured to choose a title for this book which shall truly describe its contents. The ‘Darkness’ of which I speak is the darkness of a decadent Paganism; the ‘Dawn’ is the dawn of Christianity. Although the story is continuous, I have called it ‘Scenes in the Days of Nero,’ because the outline is determined by the actual events of Pagan and Christian history, more than by the fortunes of the characters who are here introduced. In other words, the fiction is throughout controlled and dominated by historic facts. The purport of this tale is no less high and serious than that which I have had in view in every other book which I have written. It has been the illustration of a supreme and deeply interesting problem—the causes, namely, why a religion so humble in its origin and so feeble in its earthly resources as Christianity, won so majestic a victory over the power, the glory, and the intellect of the civilised world.

The greater part of the following story has been for some years in manuscript, and, since it was designed, and nearly completed, several books have appeared which deal with the same epoch. Some of these I have not seen. From none of them have I consciously borrowed even the smallest hint.

Those who are familiar with the literature of the first century will recognise that even for the minutest allusions and particulars I have contemporary authority. Expressions and incidents which, to some, might seem to be startlingly modern, are in reality suggested by passages in the satirists, epigrammatists, and romancers of the Empire, or by anecdotes preserved in the grave pages of Seneca and the elder Pliny. I have, of course, so far assumed the liberty accorded to writers of historic fiction as occasionally to deviate, to a small extent, from exact chronology, but such deviations are very trivial in comparison with those which have been permitted to others, and especially to the great masters of historic fiction.

All who know most thoroughly the real features of that Pagan darkness which was deepest before the Christian dawn will see that scarcely even by the most distant allusion have I referred to some of the worst features in the life of that day. While I have not extenuated the realities of cruelty and bloodshed, I have repeatedly softened down their more terrible incidents and details. To have altered that aspect of monotonous misery which pained and wearied its ancient annalist would have been to falsify the real characteristics of the age with which I had to deal.

The book is not a novel, nor is it to be judged as a novel. The outline has been imperatively decided for me by the exigencies of fact, not by the rules of art. I have been compelled to deal with an epoch which I should never have touched if I had not seen, in the features which it presented, one main explanation of an historical event the most sacred and the most interesting on which the mind can dwell.

The same object has made it inevitable that, at least in passing glimpses, the figures of several whose names are surrounded with hallowed associations should appear in these pages. I could not otherwise bring out the truths which it was my aim to set forth. But in this matter I do not think that any serious reader will accuse me of irreverence. Onesimus, Pudens, Claudia, and a few others, must be regarded as imaginary persons, except in name, but scarcely in one incident have I touched the Preachers of early Christianity with the finger of fiction. They were, indeed, men of like passions with ourselves, and as St. Chrysostom says of St. Paul, ‘Even if he was Paul, he was yet a man;’ but recognising their sacred dignity, I have almost entirely confined their words to words of revelation. Even if I had done more than this, I might plead the grave sanction and example of Dante, and Milton, and Browning. But the small liberty which I have dared to use has only been in directions accorded by the cycle of such early legends as may be considered to be both innocent and hallowed.

F. W. FARRAR.

CHAPTER I THE SOLILOQUIES OF AGRIPPINA

‘Oramus, cave despuas, ocelle,

Ne pœnas Nemesis reposcat a te:

Est vehemens Dea; lædere hanc caveto.’

Catull. Carm. L. 18-20.

The Palace of the Cæsars was a building of extraordinary spaciousness and splendour, which had grown with the growing power of the emperors. The state entrance was in the Vicus Apollinis, which led into the Via Sacra. It was an Arch, twenty-nine feet high, surmounted by a statue of Apollo and Diana driving a chariot of four horses, the work of Lysias. Passing the Propylæa the visitor entered the sacred area, paved with white marble and surrounded by fifty-two fluted columns of Numidian giallo antico, with its soft tints of rose and gold. Between these stood statues of the Danaides, with their father Danaus brandishing a naked sword. In the open spaces before them were the statues of their miserable Egyptian husbands, each reining his haughty steed. Here, too, among other priceless works of art, stood the famous Hercules of Lysippus, clothed in his lion’s skin and leaning on his club. On one side was the Temple of Apollo, built of the marble of Luna, designed by Bupalos and Anthermos of Chios. On the top of its pediment was the chariot of Apollo in gilt bronze, and the great

bronze valves were encrustedT1 with ivory bas-reliefs of the triumph over Niobe, and the panic-stricken flight of the Gauls from Delphi. Behind this temple was the shrine of Vesta, and on the west side the famous Palatine Library, large enough to accommodate the whole Senate, and divided into two compartments, Greek and Latin. In its vestibule was a bronze statue, fifty feet high, which is said to have represented Augustus with the attributes of Apollo.1

To the Palace and Propylæa of Augustus, with their open spaces, and shrubs, and flowers, and fountains, Tiberius had added a separate palace, known as the Domus Tiberiana, which overlooked the Velabrum; and Gaius—more commonly known by his nickname of Caligula—had filled with buildings the entire space between the Palace and the Forum. He had also purchased the House of Gelotius, and in that humble annex had delighted to spend nights of riotous orgies with the grooms and charioteers of his favourite green faction. Since his time it had been utilised as a training-school for the imperial pages, whose scribblings, sometimes matter-of-fact, sometimes humorous and satirical, can still be traced on the fast-crumbling walls. Vast as was the whole composite structure, it received immense additions from the restless extravagance of Nero, Domitian, and later emperors.

But if it surpassed all the other buildings of imperial Rome in magnificence, it surpassed them also in misery and guilt. Here, in the days of Augustus, the Empress Livia had plotted the murder and removal of all who stood in the way of her son’s succession. Here in the days of Tiberius the conscious walls had witnessed the deadly intrigues of Ælius Sejanus. In A.D. 23, that daring and cruel conspirator had secured the poisoning of Drusus, the only son of Tiberius, by insinuating himself into the affections of Livia, his faithless wife. Here in A.D. 33,

the younger Drusus, son of the hero Germanicus, was slowly starved to death by order of Tiberius. In one of the subterranean vaults he had poured out his mad reproaches against the tyrant, had writhed under the savage rebukes of the centurion, and had been beaten by the brutal slaves who guarded his dungeon. For nine days he had lingered on, chewing in his agony the tow with which his mattress was stuffed. Here the young Tiberius Gemellus, grandson of Tiberius, piteously ignorant how to kill himself, had been shown how to drive the poniard into his throat by the tribune sent for that purpose by his cousin and adoptive brother, Caligula. Chamber after chamber in that huge structure had witnessed the wild and brutal freaks of that madman-emperor and the tortures which he inflicted upon nobles and senators, whose mouths he ordered to be gagged with their own bloodstained garments. Here he had been visited with the dire vengeance of his crimes; for in the covered gallery which he had built as a passage between his palace and the theatre, he had been smitten by the fierce sword of the

tribune Cassius Chærea. Hard by—the stains of blood were still upon the wall—his empress, the blue-eyed Cæsonia, had been stabbed in the throat as she wailed and wept over the dead body of her lord; and her little infant, Julia Drusilla, had been dashed against the stones.

Such was the Palace of pagan Rome in the days of Christ and His Apostles.

It might well have seemed, even to the most callous worshipper of the old gods, that a dark spirit was walking in that house; that the phantoms of the unavenged dead haunted it; that ghostly footfalls glided through its midnight corridors; and that in hidden corners the lonely wanderer might come on some figure ‘weeping tears of blood,’ which vanished with ‘hollow shriek’ before the presence of the innocent.

No such feelings of dread disturbed the thoughts of the Empress Agrippina on a certain September evening, A.D. 54.

The world was at her feet. Her brave and good father, Germanicus, her chaste and virtuous mother, the elder Agrippina, had been the idols alike of the Roman soldiers and the Roman people. She was the great-granddaughter of the Emperor Augustus; the granddaughter of the victorious Agrippa; the great-niece of the Emperor Tiberius; the sister of the Emperor Gaius: and now at last her unwearied intrigues had made her the sixth wife of her uncle, the Emperor Claudius. Not content with such near bonds to so many of those who were honoured as gods on earth, did she not mean that her boy also—her darling Nero—should ere long mount the throne of the Cæsars, and that she herself should govern for many a long year in his name, as she now governed in the name of her husband Claudius? Her ancestress Livia, the stately wife of Augustus, had received the imperial title of Augusta, but not until her husband’s death; Agrippina had received it, and with it every honour which a servile Senate could devise, in her early prime. Had she not sat on a throne, in unwonted splendour, by the side of

her weak and prematurely aged husband at the reception of foreign ambassadors? Was she not privileged, alone of Roman princesses, to ride in a chariot to the Capitol? Was not her fine head and lovely face stamped on thousands of coins and medals? Had she not shown, in contrast to her predecessor, the beautiful and abandoned Messalina, how dignified could be a matron’s rule?

Yes, the world was at her feet; and by every glance and every gesture she showed her consciousness of a grandeur such as no woman had hitherto attained. Her agents and spies were numberless. The Court was with her, for in the days of Claudius the Court meant the all-powerful freedmen, who impudently ruled and pillaged their feeble master; and if she could not seduce the stolid fidelity of his secretary Narcissus, she had not disdained to stoop to the still more powerful Pallas. The people were with her, for she was the sole surviving child of the prince whom they had regarded with extravagant affection. The intellect of Rome was on her side, for Seneca, always among her favourites, had been recalled by her influence from his banishment in feverous Corsica, and, holding the high position of tutor to her son, was devoted to her cause. The Prætorian guards were on her side, for Burrus, their bold and honest commander, owed his office to her request. The power of gold was hers, for her coffers had been filled to bursting by an immeasurable rapacity. The power of fascination was hers, for few of those whom she wished to entangle were able to resist her spells. Above all she could rely absolutely upon herself. Undaunted as her mother, the elder Agrippina; popular as her father, the adored Germanicus; brilliant and audacious as her grandmother, Julia, the unhappy daughter of Augustus; full of masculine energy and aptitude for business as her grandfather Agrippa—who else could show such gifts or command such resources?—But she had not yet drunk to the dregs the cup of ambition which she had long ago lifted to her eager lips.

She was sitting on a low broad-backed seat, enriched with gilding and ivory, in the gorgeous room which was set aside for her special use. It was decorated with every resource of art, and the autumnal sunlight which was falling through its warm and perfumed air glinted on statuettes of gold and silver, on marble bas-reliefs of exquisite fancy, and on walls which glowed with painted peacocks, winged genii, and graceful arabesques.

Her face was the index of a soul which only used the meaner passions as aids to the gratification of the grander ambitions. No one who saw her, as she leant back in her easy half-recumbent attitude, could have doubted that he was in the presence of a lady born to rule, and in whose veins flowed the noblest blood of the most ancient families of Rome. She was thirty-seven years old, but was still in the zenith of her imperious charms, and her figure had lost none of the smooth and rounded contour of youth. Her features were small and delicate, the forehead well shaped, the eyes singularly bright, and of a light blue, under finely marked eyebrows. Her nose was slightly aquiline, the mouth small and red and beautiful, while the slight protrusion of the upper lip gave to it an expression of decided energy. Her hair was wavy, and fell in multitudes of small curls over her forehead and cheeks, but was confined at the back of the head in a golden net from which a lappet embroidered with pearls and sapphires fell upon her neck, half concealed by one soft and glowing tress.

She sat there deep in thought, and her mind was not occupied with the exquisite image of herself reflected from the silver mirror which hung bright and large upon the wall before her. Her expression was that which she wears in her bust in the Capitol—the expression of one who is anxious, and waits. One sandalled foot rested on the ankle of the other, and her fair hands were lightly folded on her robe. That robe was the long stola worn by noble matrons. It swept down to her feet and its sleeves reached to the elbows, where they were fastened by brooches of priceless onyx, leaving bare the rest of her shapely arms. Two large pearls were in her ears, but she had laid aside her other ornaments. On a little marble abacus beside her lay her many-jewelled rings, her superb armlets set with rubies, and the murenula—a necklace of linked and flexile gold glittering with gems—which had encircled her neck at the banquet from which she just had risen. Her attitude was one of rest; but there was no rest in the bosom which rose and fell unequally with her varying moods—no rest in the countenance with its look of proud and sleepless determination. She was alone, but a frequent and impatient glance showed that she expected some one to enter. She had dismissed her slaves, and was devoting her whole soul to the absorbing design for which at that moment she lived, and in the accomplishment of which she persuaded herself that she was ready to die. That design was the elevation of her Nero, at the first possible moment, to the throne whose dizzy steps were so slippery with blood.

In the achievement of her purpose no question of right and wrong for a moment troubled her. Guilt hid no horror for that fair woman. She had long determined that neither the stings of conscience nor the fear of peril should stop her haughty course. To her, as to most of the women of high rank in the Rome of the Empire, crime was nothing from which to shrink, and virtue was but an empty name. Philosophers she knew talked of virtue. It was interesting to hear Seneca descant upon it, as she had sometimes heard him do to her boy, while she sat in an adjoining room only separated from them by an embroidered curtain. But she had long ago convinced herself that this was fine talk, and nothing more. Priests pretended to worship the gods; but what were the gods? Had not the Senate made her ancestor Augustus a god, and Tiberius, and her mad brother Caligula, and his little murdered baby, the child of Cæsonia, which had delighted its father by its propensity to scratch? If such beings were gods, to whom incense was burned and altars smoked, assuredly she need not greatly trouble herself about the inhabitants of Olympus.