A Friend of Cæsar: A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C., - [famous ebook reader .txt] 📗

Drusus started long before daybreak on his journey to Rome; with him went Cappadox, his ever faithful body-servant, and Pausanias, the amiable and cultivated freedman who had been at his elbow ever since he had visited Athens. For a while the young master dozed in his carriage; but, as they whirled over mile after mile of the Campagna, the sun arose; then, when sleep left him, the Roman was all alive to the patriotic reminiscences each scene suggested. Yonder to the far south lay Alba, the old home of the Latins, and a little southward too was the Lake of Regillus, where tradition had it the free Romans won their first victory, and founded the greatness of the Republic. Along the line of the Anio, a few miles north, had marched Hannibal on his mad dash against Rome to save the doomed Capua. And these pictures of brave days, and many another vision like them, welled up in Drusus's mind, and the remembrance of the marble temples of the Greek cities faded from his memory; for, as he told himself, Rome was built of nobler stuff than marble;—she was built of the deeds of men strong and brave, and masters of every hostile fate. And he rejoiced that he could be a Roman, and share in his country's deathless fame, perhaps could win for her new honour,—could be consul, triumphator, and lead his applauding legions up to the temple of Capitoline Jove—another national glory added to so many.

So the vision of the great city of tall ugly tenement houses, basking on her "Seven Hills," which only on their summits showed the nobler temples or the dwellings of the great patricians, broke upon him. And it was with eyes a-sparkle with enthusiasm, and a light heart, that he reached the Porta Esquilina, left the carriage for a litter borne by four stout Syrians sent out from the house of his late uncle, and was carried soon into the hubbub of the city streets.

Everywhere was the same crowd; shopping parties were pressing in and out the stores, outrunners and foot-boys were continually colliding. Drusus's escort could barely win a slow progress for their master. Once on the Sacred Way the advance was more rapid; although even this famous street was barely twenty-two feet wide from house wall to house wall. Here was the "Lombard" or "Wall Street" of antiquity. Here were the offices of the great banking houses and syndicates that held the world in fee. Here centred those busy equites, the capitalists, whose transactions ran out even beyond the lands covered by the eagles, so that while Gaul was yet unconquered, Cicero could boast, "not a sesterce in Gaul changes hands without being entered in a Roman ledger." And here were brokers whose clients were kings, and who by their "influence" almost made peace or war, like modern Rothschilds.

Thither Drusus's litter carried him, for he knew that his first act on coming to Rome to take possession of his uncle's property should be to consult without delay his agent and financial and legal adviser, lest any loophole be left for a disappointed fortune-hunter to contest the will. The bearers put him down before the important firm of Flaccus and Sophus. Out from the open, windowless office ran the senior partner, Sextus Fulvius Flaccus, a stout, comfortable, rosy-faced old eques, who had half Rome as his financial clients, the other half in his debt. Many were his congratulations upon Drusus's manly growth, and many more upon the windfall of Vibulanus's fortune, which, as he declared, was too securely conveyed to the young man to be open to any legal attack.

But when Drusus intimated that he expected soon to invite the good man to his marriage feast, Flaccus shook his head.

"You will never get a sesterce of Cornelia's dowry," he declared. "Her uncle Lentulus Crus is head over ears in debt. Nothing can save him, unless—"

"I don't understand you," said the other.

"Well," continued Flaccus, "to be frank; unless there is nothing short of a revolution."

"Will it come to that?" demanded Drusus.

"Can't say," replied Flaccus, as if himself perplexed. "Everybody declares Cæsar and Pompeius are dreadfully alienated. Pompeius is joining the Senate. Half the great men of Rome are in debt, as I have cause to know, and unless we have an overturn, with 'clean accounts' as a result, more than one noble lord is ruined. I am calling in all my loans, turning everything into cash. Credit is bad—bad. Cæsar paid Curio's debts—sixty millions of sesterces.[47] That's why Curio is a Cæsarian now. Oh! money is the cause of all these vile political changes! Trouble is coming! Sulla's old throat cuttings will be nothing to it! But don't marry Lentulus's niece!"

"Well," said Drusus, when the business was done, and he turned to go, "I want Cornelia, not her dowry."

"Strange fellow," muttered Flaccus, while Drusus started off in his litter. "I always consider the dowry the principal part of a marriage."

Drusus regained his litter, and ordered his bearers to take him to the house of the Vestals,—back of the Temple of Vesta,—where he wished to see his aunt Fabia and Livia, his little half-sister. The Temple itself—a small, round structure, with columns, a conical roof which was fringed about with dragons and surmounted by a statue—still showed signs of the fire, which, in 210 B.C., would have destroyed it but for thirteen slaves, who won their liberty by checking the blaze. Tradition had it that here the holy Numa had built the hut which contained the hearth-fire of Rome,—the divine spark which now shed its radiance over the nations. Back of the Temple was the House of the Vestals, a structure with a plain exterior, differing little from the ordinary private dwellings. Here Drusus had his litter set down for a second time, and notified the porter that he would be glad to see his aunt and sister. The young man was ushered into a spacious, handsomely furnished and decorated atrium, where were arranged lines of statues of the various maximæ[48] of the little religious order. A shy young girl with a white dress and fillet, who was reading in the apartment, slipped noiselessly out, as the young man entered; for the novices were kept under strict control, with few liberties, until their elder sisters could trust them in male society. Then there was a rustle of robes and ribbons, and in came a tall, stately lady, also in pure white, and a little girl of about five, who shrank coyly back when Drusus called her his "Liviola"[49] and tried to catch her in his arms. But the lady embraced him, and kissed him, and asked a thousand things about him, as tenderly as if she had been his mother.

Fabia the Vestal was now about thirty-seven years of age. One and thirty years before had the Pontifex Maximus chosen her out—a little girl—to become the priestess of Vesta, the hearth-goddess, the home-goddess of Pagan Rome. Fabia had dwelt almost all her life in the house of the Vestals. Her very existence had become identified with the little sisterhood, which she and her five associates composed. It was a rather isolated yet singularly pure and peaceful life which she had led. Revolutions might rock the city and Empire; Marians and Sullians contend; Catilina plot ruin and destruction; Clodius and his ruffians terrorize the streets; but the fire of the great hearth-goddess was never scattered, nor were its gentle ministers molested. Fabia had thus grown to mature womanhood. Ten years she had spent in learning the Temple ritual, ten years in performing the actual duties of the sacred fire and its cultus, ten years in teaching the young novices. And now she was free, if she chose, to leave the Temple service, and even to marry. But Fabia had no intention of taking a step which would tear her from the circle in which she was dearly loved, and which, though permitted by law, would be publicly deplored as an evil omen.

The Vestal's pure simple life had left its impress on her features. Peace and innocent delight in innocent things shone through her dark eyes and soft, well-rounded face. Her light brown hair was covered and confined by a fillet of white wool.[50] She wore a stola and outer garment of stainless white linen—the perfectly plain badge of her chaste and holy office; while on her small feet were dainty sandals, bound on by thongs of whitened leather. Everything about her dress and features betokened the priestess of a gentle religion.

When questions and repeated salutations were over, and Livia had ceased to be too afraid of her quite strange brother, Fabia asked what she could do for her nephew. As one of the senior Vestals, her time was quite her own. "Would he like to have her go out with him to visit friends, or go shopping? Or could she do anything to aid him about ordering frescoers and carpenters for the old Præneste villa?"

This last was precisely what Drusus had had in mind. And so forth aunt and nephew sallied. Some of the streets they visited were so narrow that they had to send back even their litters; but everywhere the crowds bowed such deference and respect to the Vestal's white robes that their progress was easy. Drusus soon had given his orders to cabinet-makers and selected the frescoer's designs. It remained to purchase Cornelia's slave-boy. He wanted not merely an attractive serving-lad, but one whose intelligence and probity could be relied upon; and in the dealers' stalls not one of the dark orientals, although all had around their necks tablets with long lists of encomiums, promised conscience or character. Drusus visited, several very choice boys that were exhibited in separate rooms, at fancy prices, but none of these pretty Greeks or Asiatics seemed promising.

Deeply disgusted, he led Fabia away from the slave-market.

"I will try to-morrow," he said, vexed at his defeat. "I need a new toga. Let us go to the shop on the Clivus Suburanus; there used to be a good woollen merchant, Lucius Marius, on the way to the Porta Esquilina."

Accordingly the two went on in the direction indicated; but at the spot where the Clivus Suburanus was cut by the Vicus Longus, there was so dense a crowd and so loud a hubbub, that their attendants could not clear a way. For a time it was impossible to see what was the matter. Street gamins were howling, and idle slaves and hucksters were pouring forth volleys of taunts and derision at some luckless wight.

"Away with them! the whip-scoundrel! Verbero!"[51] yelled a lusty produce-vender. "Lash him again! Tan his hide for him! Don't you enjoy it? Not accustomed to such rough handling, eh! my pretty sparrow?"

Fabia without the least hesitation thrust herself into the dirty-robed, foul-mouthed crowd. At sight of the Vestal's white dress and fillets the pack gave way before her, as a swarm of gnats at the wave of a hand. Drusus strode at her heels.

It was a sorry enough sight that met them—though not uncommon in the age and place. Some wretched slave-boy, a slight, delicate fellow, had been bound to the bars of a furca, and was being driven by two brutal executioners to the place of doom outside the gates. At the street-crossing he had sunk down, and all the blows of the driver's scourge could not compel him to arise. He lay in the dust, writhing and moaning, with the great welts showing on his bare back, where the brass knots of the lash had stripped away the cloth.

"Release this boy! Cease to beat him!" cried Fabia, with a commanding mien, that made the crowd shrink further back; while the two executioners looked stupid and sheepish, but did nothing.

"Release this boy!" commanded the Vestal. "Dare you hesitate? Do you wish to undo yourselves by defying me?"

"Mercy, august lady," cried Alfidius,—for the chief executioner was he,—with a supplicatory gesture. "If our mistress knows that her commands are unexecuted, it is we, who are but slaves, that must suffer!"

"Who is your mistress?" demanded Fabia.

"Valeria, wife of Lucius Calatinus."

"Livia's precious mother!" whispered Drusus. "I can imagine her doing a thing like this." Then aloud, "What has the boy done?"

"He dropped a murrhine vase," was the answer.

"And so he must be beaten to death!" exclaimed the young man, who, despite the general theory that most slaves were on a par with cattle, had much of the milk of human kindness in his nature. "Phui! What brutality! You must insist on your rights, aunt. Make them let him go."

Sulkily enough the executioners unbound the heavy furca. Agias staggered to his feet, too dazed really to know what deliverance had befallen him.

"Why don't you thank the Vestal?" said Alfidius. "She has made us release you—you ungrateful dog!"

"Released? Saved?" gasped Agias, and he reeled as though his head were in a whirl. Then, as if recollecting his faculties, he fell down at Fabia's feet, and kissed the hem of her robe.

"The gods save us