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Title: Quo Vadis A Narrative of the Time of Nero

 

Author: Henryk Sienkiewicz

 

Release Date: October, 2001 [EBook #2853]

[This file was updated on November 23, 2003]

 

Edition: 11

 

Language: English

 

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, QUO VADIS ***

 

This eBook was produced by David Reed

 

QUO VADIS

 

A Narrative of the Time of Nero

 

by Henryk Sienkiewicz

 

Translated from the Polish by Jeremiah Curtin

 

TO AUGUSTE COMTE,

 

Of San Francisco, Cal.,

 

MY DEAR FRIEND AND CLASSMATE, I BEG TO DEDICATE THIS VOLUME.

 

JEREMIAH CURTIN

 

INTRODUCTORY

 

IN the trilogy “With Fire and Sword,” “The Deluge,” and “Pan Michael,”

Sienkiewicz has given pictures of a great and decisive epoch in modern

history. The results of the struggle begun under Bogdan Hmelnitski have

been felt for more than two centuries, and they are growing daily in

importance. The Russia which rose out of that struggle has become a

power not only of European but of world-wide significance, and, to all

human seeming, she is yet in an early stage of her career.

 

In “Quo Vadis” the author gives us pictures of opening scenes in the

conflict of moral ideas with the Roman Empire,—a conflict from which

Christianity issued as the leading force in history.

 

The Slays are not so well known to Western Europe or to us as they are

sure to be in the near future; hence the trilogy, with all its

popularity and merit, is not appreciated yet as it will be.

 

The conflict described in “Quo Vadis” is of supreme interest to a vast

number of persons reading English; and this book will rouse, I think,

more attention at first than anything written by Sienkiewicz hitherto.

 

JEREMIAH CURTIN

 

ILOM, NORTHERN GUATEMALA,

 

June, 1896

 

QUO VADIS

 

Quo Vadis A Narrative of the Time of Nero

 

by Henryk Sienkiewicz

 

Translated from the Polish by Jeremiah Cuurtin

 

PETRONIUS woke only about midday, and as usual greatly wearied. The

evening before he had been at one of Nero’s feasts, which was prolonged

till late at night. For some time his health had been failing. He said

himself that he woke up benumbed, as it were, and without power of

collecting his thoughts. But the morning bath and careful kneading of

the body by trained slaves hastened gradually the course of his slothful

blood, roused him, quickened him, restored his strength, so that he

issued from the elæothesium, that is, the last division of the bath, as

if he had risen from the dead, with eyes gleaming from wit and gladness,

rejuvenated, filled with life, exquisite, so unapproachable that Otho

himself could not compare with him, and was really that which he had

been called,—arbiter elegantiarum.

 

He visited the public baths rarely, only when some rhetor happened there

who roused admiration and who was spoken of in the city, or when in the

ephebias there were combats of exceptional interest. Moreover, he had

in his own “insula” private baths which Celer, the famous contemporary

of Severus, had extended for him, reconstructed and arranged with such

uncommon taste that Nero himself acknowledged their excellence over

those of the Emperor, though the imperial baths were more extensive and

finished with incomparably greater luxury.

 

After that feast, at which he was bored by the jesting of Vatinius with

Nero, Lucan, and Seneca, he took part in a diatribe as to whether woman

has a soul. Rising late, he used, as was his custom, the baths. Two

enormous balneatores laid him on a cypress table covered with snow-white

Egyptian byssus, and with hands dipped in perfumed olive oil began to

rub his shapely body; and he waited with closed eyes till the heat of

the laconicum and the heat of their hands passed through him and

expelled weariness.

 

But after a certain time he spoke, and opened his eyes; he inquired

about the weather, and then about gems which the jeweller Idomeneus had

promised to send him for examination that day. It appeared that the

weather was beautiful, with a light breeze from the Alban hills, and

that the gems had not been brought. Petronius closed his eyes again,

and had given command to bear him to the tepidarium, when from behind

the curtain the nomenclator looked in, announcing that young Marcus

Vinicius, recently returned from Asia Minor, had come to visit him.

 

Petronius ordered to admit the guest to the tepidarium, to which he was

borne himself. Vinicius was the son of his oldest sister, who years

before had married Marcus Vinicius, a man of consular dignity from the

time of Tiberius. The young man was serving then under Corbulo against

the Parthians, and at the close of the war had returned to the city.

Petronius had for him a certain weakness bordering on attachment, for

Marcus was beautiful and athletic, a young man who knew how to preserve

a certain aesthetic measure in his profligacy; this, Petronius prized

above everything.

 

“A greeting to Petronius,” said the young man, entering the tepidarium

with a springy step. “May all the gods grant thee success, but

especially Asklepios and Kypris, for under their double protection

nothing evil can meet one.”

 

“I greet thee in Rome, and may thy rest be sweet after war,” replied

Petronius, extending his hand from between the folds of soft karbas

stuff in which he was wrapped. “What’s to be heard in Armenia; or since

thou wert in Asia, didst thou not stumble into Bithynia?”

 

Petronius on a time had been proconsul in Bithynia, and, what is more,

he had governed with energy and justice. This was a marvellous contrast

in the character of a man noted for effeminacy and love of luxury; hence

he was fond of mentioning those times, as they were a proof of what he

had been, and of what he might have become had it pleased him.

 

“I happened to visit Heraklea,” answered Vinicius. “Corbulo sent me

there with an order to assemble reinforcements.”

 

“Ah, Heraklea! I knew at Heraklea a certain maiden from Colchis, for

whom I would have given all the divorced women of this city, not

excluding Poppæa. But these are old stories. Tell me now, rather, what

is to be heard from the Parthian boundary. It is true that they weary

me every Vologeses of them, and Tiridates and Tigranes,—those

barbarians who, as young Arulenus insists, walk on all fours at home,

and pretend to be human only when in our presence. But now people in

Rome speak much of them, if only for the reason that it is dangerous to

speak of aught else.”

 

“The war is going badly, and but for Corbulo might be turned to defeat.”

 

“Corbulo! by Bacchus! a real god of war, a genuine Mars, a great leader,

at the same time quick-tempered, honest, and dull. I love him, even for

this,—that Nero is afraid of him.”

 

“Corbulo is not a dull man.”

 

“Perhaps thou art right, but for that matter it is all one. Dulness, as

Pyrrho says, is in no way worse than wisdom, and differs from it in

nothing.”

 

Vinicius began to talk of the war; but when Petronius closed his eyes

again, the young man, seeing his uncle’s tired and somewhat emaciated

face, changed the conversation, and inquired with a certain interest

about his health.

 

Petronius opened his eyes again.

 

Health!—No. He did not feel well. He had not gone so far yet, it is

true, as young Sissena, who had lost sensation to such a degree that

when he was brought to the bath in the morning he inquired, “Am I

sitting?” But he was not well. Vinicius had just committed him to the

care of Asklepios and Kypris. But he, Petronius, did not believe in

Asklepios. It was not known even whose son that Asklepios was, the son

of Arsinoe or Koronis; and if the mother was doubtful, what was to be

said of the father? Who, in that time, could be sure who his own father

was?

 

Hereupon Petronius began to laugh; then he continued,—“Two years ago,

it is true, I sent to Epidaurus three dozen live blackbirds and a goblet

of gold; but dost thou know why? I said to myself, ‘Whether this helps

or not, it will do me no harm.’ Though people make offerings to the gods

yet, I believe that all think as I do,—all, with the exception,

perhaps, of mule-drivers hired at the Porta Capena by travellers.

Besides Asklepios, I have had dealings with sons of Asklepios. When I

was troubled a little last year in the bladder, they performed an

incubation for me. I saw that they were tricksters, but I said to

myself: ‘What harm! The world stands on deceit, and life is an

illusion. The soul is an illusion too. But one must have reason enough

to distinguish pleasant from painful illusions.’ I shall give command to

burn in my hypocaustum, cedar-wood sprinkled with ambergris, for during

life I prefer perfumes to stenches. As to Kypris, to whom thou hast

also confided me, I have known her guardianship to the extent that I

have twinges in my right foot. But as to the rest she is a good

goddess! I suppose that thou wilt bear sooner or later white doves to

her altar.”

 

“True,” answered Vinicius. “The arrows of the Parthians have not

reached my body, but a dart of Amor has struck me—unexpectedly, a few

stadia from a gate of this city.”

 

“By the white knees of the Graces! thou wilt tell me of this at a

leisure hour.”

 

“I have come purposely to get thy advice,” answered Marcus.

 

But at that moment the epilatores came, and occupied themselves with

Petronius. Marcus, throwing aside his tunic, entered a bath of tepid

water, for Petronius invited him to a plunge bath.

 

“Ah, I have not even asked whether thy feeling is reciprocated,” said

Petronius, looking at the youthful body of Marcus, which was as if cut

out of marble. “Had Lysippos seen thee, thou wouldst be ornamenting now

the gate leading to the Palatine, as a statue of Hercules in youth.”

 

The young man smiled with satisfaction, and began to sink in the bath,

splashing warm water abundantly on the mosaic which represented Hera at

the moment when she was imploring Sleep to lull Zeus to rest. Petronius