Aurelian; or, Rome in the Third Century
'How say you?' said Julia, quickly, turning pale; 'do I hear aright,
Milo, or are you mocking? God 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 gods, 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 god 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 superstition 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 worship of the gods. 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 superstitions
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 substituting Christianity quietly, without
alienating the affections, or shocking too violently the prejudices, of
the believers in the prevailing superstitions, 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 gods,' 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 god, 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 bloody 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.'
'Great God! how retribution like a dark pursuing shadow hangs upon the
steps of guilt! Even here it seeks us. Alas, my mother! Heaven grant
that these things fall not upon your ears!'
Julia was greatly moved, and sat a long time silent, her face buried in
her hands, and weeping. I motioned to Milo to withdraw and say no more.
Upon Julia, although so innocent of all wrong--guiltless as an infant of
the blame, whatever it may be, which the world fixes upon Zenobia--yet
upon her, as heavily as upon her great mother, fall the sorrows, which,
sooner or later, overtake those, who, for any purpose, in whatever
degree selfish, have involved their fellow-creatures in useless
suffering. Being part of the royal house, Julia feels that she must bear
her portion of its burdens. Time alone can cure this grief.
But you are waiting, with a woman's impatient curiosity, to hear of the
dedication.
At the appointed hour, we were at the palace of Aurelian on the
Palatine, where a procession pompous as art, and rank, and numbers could
make it, was formed, to move thence by a winding and distant way to the
temple near the foot of the Quirinal. Julia repaired with Portia to a
place of observation near the temple--I to the palace, to join the
company of the Emperor. Of the gorgeous magnificence of the procession I
shall tell you nothing. It was in extent, and variety of pomp and
costliness of decoration, a copy of that of the late triumph; and went
even beyond the captivating splendor of the example. Roman music--which
is not that of Palmyra--lent such charms as it could to our passage
through the streets to the temple, from a thousand performers.
As we drew near to the lofty fabric, I thought that no scene of such
various beauty and magnificence had ever met my eye. The temple itself
is a work of unrivalled art. In size it surpasses any other building of
the same kind in Rome, and for excellence of workmanship and purity of
design, although it may fall below the standard of Hadrian's age, yet,
for a certain air of grandeur, and luxuriance of invention in its
details, and lavish profusion of embellishment in gold and silver, no
temple, nor other edifice, of any preceding age, ever perhaps resembled
it. Its order is the Corinthian, of the Roman form, and the entire
building is surrounded by its graceful columns, each composed of a
single piece of marble. Upon the front, is wrought Apollo surrounded by
the Hours. The western extremity is approached by a flight of steps, of
the same breadth as the temple itself. At the eastern, there extends
beyond the walls, to a distance equal to the length of the building, a
marble platform, upon which stands the altar of sacrifice, which is
ascended by various flights of steps, some little more than a gently
rising plain, up which the beasts are led that are destined to the
altar.
When this vast extent of wall and column, of the most dazzling
brightness, came into view, everywhere covered, together with the
surrounding temples, palaces, and theatres, with a dense mass of human
beings, of all climes and regions, dressed out in their richest
attire--music from innumerable instruments filling the heavens with
harmony--shouts of the proud and excited populace, every few moments,
and from different points, as Aurelian advanced, shaking the air with
their thrilling din--added to, still further, by the neighing of horses,
and the frequent blasts of the trumpet--the whole made more solemnly
imposing by the vast masses of clouds which swept over the sky, now
suddenly unveiling, and again eclipsing, the sun, the great god of this
idolatry, and from which few could withdraw their gaze;--when, at once,
this all broke upon my eye and ear, I was like a child who, before, had
never seen aught but his own village, and his own rural temple, in the
effect wrought upon me, and the passiveness with which I abandoned
myself to the sway of the senses. Not one there, was more ravished than
I was, by the outward circumstance and show. I thought of Rome's
thousand years, of her power, her greatness, and universal empire, and,
for a moment, my step was not less proud than that of Aurelian.
But, after that moment, when the senses had had their fill, when the eye
had seen the glory, and the ear had fed upon the harmony and the praise,
then I thought and felt very differently. Sorrow and compassion for
these gay multitudes were at my heart; prophetic forebodings of
disaster, danger, and ruin to those, to whose sacred cause I had linked
myself, made my tongue to falter in its speech, and my limbs to tremble.
I thought that the superstition, that was upheld by the wealth and the
power, whose manifestations were before me, had its roots in the very
centre of the earth--far too deep down for a few like myself ever to
reach them. I was like one, whose last hope of life and escape is
suddenly struck away.
I was aroused from these meditations, by our arrival at the eastern
front of the temple. Between the two central columns, on a throne of
gold and ivory, sat the Emperor of the world, surrounded by the senate,
the colleges of augurs and haruspices, and by the priests of the various
temples of the capital, all in their peculiar costume. Then, Fronto, the
priest of the temple, standing at the altar, glittering in his white and
golden robes like a messenger of light--when the crier had proclaimed
that the hour of worship and sacrifice had come, and had commanded
silence to be observed--bared his head, and, lifting his face up toward
the sun, offered, in clear and sounding tones, the prayer of dedication.
As he came toward the close of his prayer, he, as is so usual, with loud
and almost frantic cries, and importunate repetition, called upon all
the gods to hear him, and then, with appropriate names and praises,
invoked the Father of gods and men to be present.
Just as he had thus solemnly invoked Jupiter by name, and was about to
call upon the other gods in the same manner, the clouds, which had been
deepening and darkening, suddenly obscured the sun; a distant peal of
thunder rolled along the heavens; and, at the same moment, from out the
dark recesses of the temple, a voice of preternatural power came forth,
proclaiming, so that the whole multitude heard the words,--'God is but
one; the King eternal, immortal, invisible.'