Aurelian; or, Rome in the Third Century
philosophers, are here like the prattlings of children. They make you
smile, but they do not instruct.'
'I fear,' said Marcus, 'I shall then never believe, for I can believe
nothing of which I cannot form a conception.'
'Surely,' I answered, 'our faith is not bounded by our conceptions, or
our knowledge, in other things. We build the loftiest palaces and
temples upon foundations of stone, though we can form no conception
whatever of the nature of a stone. So I think we may found a true and
sufficient religion on our belief in the fact of a God, although we can
form no conception whatever of his nature and the mode of his
existence.'
But I should fatigue you, Fausta, were I to give you more of our
conversation. It ran on equally pleasant, I believe, to all of us, to a
quite late hour; in which time, almost all that is peculiar to the faith
of the Christians came under our review. It was more than midnight when
we rose from our seats to retire to our chambers. But before we did
that, a common feeling directed our steps to the tomb of Gallus, which
was but a few paces from where we had been sitting. There these
childless parents again gave way to their grief and was I stone, that I
should not weep with them?
When this act of duty and piety had been performed, we sought our
pillows. As for me, I could not sleep for thinking of my friends and
their now desolate house. For even to me, who was to that child almost a
stranger, and had been so little used to his presence, this place is no
longer the same: all its brightness, life, and spirit of gladness, are
gone. Everything seems changed. From every place and scene something
seems to have been subtracted to which they were indebted for whatever
it was that made them attractive. If this is so to me, what must it be
to Marcus and Lucilia? It is not difficult to see that a sorrow has
settled upon their hearts, which no length of time can heal. I suppose
if all their estates had been swept away from them in a night, and all
their friends, they would not have been so overwhelmed as by this
calamity--in such a wonderful manner were they each woven into the
child, and all into each other, as one being. They seem no longer to me
like the same persons. Not that they are not often calm, and in a manner
possessed of themselves; but that even then, when they are most
themselves, there has a dulness, a dreamy absence of mind, a fixed
sadness, come over them that wholly changes them. Though they sit and
converse with you, their true thoughts seem far away. They are kind and
courteous as ever, to the common eye, but I can see that all the relish
of life and of intercourse is now to them gone. All is flat and insipid.
The friend is coldly saluted; the meal left untasted, or partaken in
silence and soon abandoned; the affairs of the household left to others,
to any who will take charge of them. They tell me that this will always
be so; that however they may seem to others, they must ever experience a
sense of loss; not any less than they would if a limb had been shorn
away. A part of themselves, and of the life of every day and hour, is
taken from them.
How strange is all this, even in the light of Christian faith! How
inexplicable, we are ready to say, by any reason of ours, the providence
of God in taking away the human being in the first blossoming; before
the fruit has even shown itself, much less ripened! Yet is not
immortality, the hope, the assurance of immortality, a sufficient
solution? To me it is. This will not indeed cure our sorrows--they
spring from somewhat wholly independent of futurity, of either the hope,
or despair of it,--but it vindicates the ways of the Omnipotent, and
justifies them to our reason and our affections. Will Marcus and Lucilia
ever rejoice in the consolations which flow from this hope? Alas! I fear
not. They seem in a manner to be incapable of belief.
In the morning I shall start for Rome. As soon as there, you shall hear
from me again. Farewell.
* * * * *
While Piso was absent from Rome on this visit to his friend, it was my
fortune to be several times in the city upon necessary affairs of the
illustrious Queen, when I was both at the palace of Aurelian and that of
Piso. It was at one of these later visits, that it became apparent to
me, that the Emperor seriously meditated the imposing of restrictions of
some kind upon the Christians; yet no such purpose was generally
apprehended by that sect itself, nor by the people at large. The dark
and disastrous occurrences on the day of the dedication, were variously
interpreted by the people; some believing them to point at the
Christians, some at the meditated expedition of the Emperor, some at
Aurelian himself. The popular mind was, however, greatly inflamed
against the Christians, and every art was resorted to by the priests of
the temples, and those who were as bigoted and savage as themselves
among the people, to fan to a devouring flame the little fire that
began to be kindled. The voice from the temple, however some might with
Fronto himself doubt whether it were not from Heaven, was for the most
part ascribed to the Christians, although they could give no explanation
of the manner in which it had been produced. But, as in the case of
Aurelian himself, this was forgotten in the horror occasioned by the
more dreadful language of the omens, which, in such black and
threatening array, no one remembered ever to have been witnessed before.
None thought or talked of anything else. It was the universal theme.
This may be seen in a conversation which I had with a rustic, whom I
overtook as I rode toward Rome, seated on his mule, burdened on either
side and behind with the multifarious produce of his farm. The fellow,
as I drew near to him, seeming of a less churlish disposition than most
of those whom one meets upon the road, who will scarcely return a
friendly salute, I feared not to accost him. After giving him the
customary good wishes, I remarked upon the excellence of the vegetables
which he had in his panniers.
'Yes,' he said, 'these lettuces are good, but not what they would have
been but for the winds we have had from the mountains. It has sadly
nipped them. I hear the Queen pines away just as my plants do. I live at
Norentum. I know you, sir, though you cannot know me. You pass by my
door on your way to the city. My children often call me from my work to
look up, for there goes the secretary of the good Queen on his great
horse. There's no such horse as that on the road. Ha, ha, my baskets
reach but to your knee! Well, there are differences in animals and in
men too. So the gods will it. One rides upon a horse with golden bits,
another upon a mule with none at all. Still I say, let the gods be
praised.'
'The gods themselves could hardly help such differences,' I said, 'if
they made one man of more natural strength, or more natural
understanding than another. In that case one would get more than
another. And surely you would not have men all run in one mould--all
five feet high, all weighing so much, all with one face, and one form,
one heart, and one head! The world were then dull enough.'
'You say true,' he replied; 'that is very good. If we were all alike,
there would be no such thing as being rich or poor--no such thing as
getting or losing. I fear it would be dull enough, as you say. But I did
not mean to complain, sir. I believe I am contented with my lot. So long
as I can have my little farm, with my garden and barns, my cattle and my
poultry, a kind neighbor or so, and my priest and temple, I care for
nothing more.'
'You have a temple then at Norentum?'
'Yes, to Jupiter Pluvius. And a better priest has not Rome itself. It is
his brother, some officer of the Emperor's, I take these vegetables to.
I hope to hear more this morning of what I heard something when I was
last at market. And I think I shall, for, as I learn, the city is a good
deal stirred since the dedication the other day.' 'I believe it is,' I
answered. 'But of what do you look to hear, if I may ask? Is there news
from the East?'
'O no, I think not of the East or the South. It was of something to be
done about these Christians. Our temple, you must know, is half forsaken
and more, of late. I believe that half the people of Norentum, if the
truth were known, have turned Christians or Jews. Unless we wake up a
little, our worship cannot be supported, and our religion will be gone.
And glad am I to hear, through our priest, that even the Emperor is
alarmed, and believes something must be done. You know, than he, there
is not a more devout man in Rome. So it is said. And one thing that
makes me think so, is this. The brother of our priest, where I am going
with these vegetables--here is poultry too, look! you never saw fatter,
I warrant you--told him that he knew it for certain, that the Emperor
meant to make short work with even his own niece--you know who I
mean--Aurelia, who has long been suspected to be a Christian. And that's
right. If he punishes any, he ought not to spare his own.'
'That I suppose would be right. But why should he punish any? You need
not be alarmed or offended; I am no Christian.'
'The gods be praised therefor! I do not pretend to know the whole reason
why. But that seems to be the only way of saving the old religion; and I
don't know what way you can possibly have of showing that a religion of
yesterday is true, if a religion of a thousand years old is to be made
out false. If religion is good for anything--and I for one think it
is--I think men ought to be compelled to have it and support it, just as
they should be to eat wholesome food, rather than poisonous or hurtful.
The laws won't permit us to carry certain things to market, nor others
in a certain state. If we do, we are fined or imprisoned. Treat a
Christian in the same way, say I. Let them just go thoroughly to work,
and our temples will soon be filled again.'
'But these Christians,' I observed, 'seem to be a harmless people.'
'But they have no religion, that anybody can call such. They have no
gods, nor altars, nor sacrifices; such can never be harmless. To be
sure, as to sacrifices, I think there is such a thing as doing too much.
I am not for human sacrifices. Nor do I see the need of burning up a
dozen fat oxen or heifers, as was done the other day at the Temple of
the Sun. We in Norentum burn nothing but the hoofs and some of the
entrails, and the rest goes to the priest for his support. As I take it,
a sacrifice is just a sign of readiness to do everything and lose
everything for the gods. We are not expected to throw either ourselves,
or our whole substance upon the altar; making the sign is sufficient.
But, as I said, these Christians have no altar and no sacrifice, nor
image of god or goddess. They have, at Norentum, an old ruinous
building--once a market--where they meet for worship; but those who have
been present say, that nothing is to be seen; and nothing heard but
prayers--to what god no one knows--and exhortations of the priests. Some
say, that elsewhere they have what they call an altar, and adorn their
walls with pictures and statues. However all this may be, there seems to
be some charm about them, or their worship, for all the world is running
after them. I long for the news I shall get from Varenus Hirtius. If
these omens have not set the Emperor at work for us, nothing will. Here
we are at the gates, and I turn toward the Claudian market. May the day
go happily with you.'
So we parted; and I bent my way toward the gardens of Sallust.
As I moved slowly along through the streets, my heart was filled with
pity for this people, the Christians; threatened, as it seemed to me,
with a renewal of the calamities that had so many times swept over them