Aurelian; or, Rome in the Third Century
apprehensions for the fate of this much and long-suffering religion.
Julia herself partakes--I cannot say of the alarm--but of the anxiety.
She has less confidence than I have in the humanity of the Emperor. In
the honours heaped upon Zenobia, and the favors shown herself and
Vabalathus, she sees, not so much the outpouring of benevolent feeling,
as a rather ostentatious display of imperial generosity, and, what is
called, Roman magnanimity. For the true character of the man she looks
into the graves of Palmyra, upon her smoking ruins, and upon the blood,
yet hardly dry, that stains the pavements of the Coelian. Julia may be
right, though I am unwilling to believe it. Her judgment is entitled to
the more weight in this severe decision, that it is ever inclined to the
side of a too favorable opinion of character and motive. You know her
nature too well, to believe her capable of exaggerating the faults of
even the humblest. Yet, though such are her apprehensions, she
manifests the same calm and even carriage as on the approach of more
serious troubles in Palmyra. She is full of deepest interest in the
affairs of the Christians, and by many families of the poorer sort is
resorted to continually for aid, for counsel, or sympathy. Not one in
the whole community is a more frequent and devout attendant upon the
services of the church; and, I need not add, that I am her constant
companion. The performance of this duty gives a value to life in Rome
such as it never had before. Every seventh day, as with the Jews, only
upon a different day of the week, do the Christians assemble for the
purposes of religious worship. And, I can assure you, it is with no
trifling accession of strength for patient doing and patient bearing,
that we return to our every-day affairs, after having listened to the
prayers, the reasonings, or exhortations of Probus.
So great is the difference in my feelings and opinions from what they
were before I left Rome for Palmyra, that it is with difficulty I
persuade myself that I am the same person. Between Piso the Pyrronist
and Piso the Christian, the distance seems immeasurable--yet in how
short a time has it been past. I cannot say that I did not enjoy
existence and value it in my former state, but I can say that my
enjoyment of it is infinitely heightened as a Christian, and the rate at
which I value it infinitely raised. Born and nurtured as I was, with
Portia for my mother, a palace for my home, Rome for my country and
capital, offering all the luxuries of the earth, and affording all the
means I could desire for carrying on researches in study of every kind,
surrounded by friends of the noblest and best families in the city,--I
could not but enjoy life in some very important sense. While mere youth
lasted, and my thoughts never wandered beyond the glittering forms of
things, no one could be happier or more contented. All was fair and
beautiful around me--what could I ask for more? I was satisfied and
filled. But, by and by, my dream of life was disturbed--my sleep broken.
Natural questions began to propose themselves for my solution, such, I
suppose, as, sooner or later, spring up in every bosom. I began to
speculate about myself--about the very self that had been so long, so
busy, about everything else beside itself. I wished to know something of
myself--of my origin, my nature, my present condition, my ultimate fate.
It seemed to me I was too rare and curious a piece of work to go to
ruin, final and inevitable--perhaps to-morrow--at all events in a very
few years. Of futurity I had heard--and of Elysium--just as I had heard
of Jupiter, greatest and best, but, with my earliest youth, these things
had faded from my mind, or had already taken upon themselves the
character of fable. My Virgil, in which I early received my lessons of
language, at once divested them of all their air of reality, and left
them naked fiction. The other poets, Livy helping them, continued the
same work and completed it. But, bent with most serious and earnest
desires toward truth on what seemed to me the greatest theme, I could
not remain where I was, and turned with highest expectations to the
philosophers. I not only read, but I studied and pondered them with
diligence, and with as sincere a desire of arriving at truth as ever
scholar sat at the feet of his instructer. The result was anything but
satisfying, I ended a universal sceptic, so far as human systems of
philosophy were concerned, so far as they pretended to solve the enigma
of God and man, of life and death; but with a heart, nevertheless,
yearning after truth; and even full of faith, if that may be called
faith which would instinctively lay hold upon a God and a hope of
immortality; and, though beaten back once and again, by every form which
the syllogism could assume, still keep its hold.
This was my state, Fausta, when I was found by Christianity. Without
faith, and yet with it; doubting, and yet believing; rejecting
philosophy, but leaning upon nature; dissatisfied, but hoping. I cannot
easily find words to tell you the change which Christian faith has
wrought within me. All I can say is this, that I am now a new man; I am
made over again; I am born as it were into another world. Where darkness
once was, there is now light brighter than the sun. Where doubt was,
there is now certainty. I have knowledge and truth, for error and
perplexity. The inner world of my mind is resplendent with a day whose
luminary will never set. And even the outer world of appearances and
forms shines more gloriously, and has an air of reality which before it
never had. It used to seem to me like the gorgeous fabric of a dream,
and as if, at some unexpected moment, it might melt into air and
nothingness, and I, and all men and things, with it; for there appeared
to be no purpose in it; it came from nothing, it achieved nothing, and
certainly seemed to conduct to nothing. Men, like insects, came and
went; were born, and died, and that was all. Nothing was accomplished,
nothing perfected. But now, nature seems to me stable, and eternal as
God himself. The world being the great birth-place and nursery of these
myriads of creatures, made, as I ever conceived, in a divine likeness,
after some godlike model,--for what spirit of other spheres can be more
beautiful than a perfect man, or a perfect woman--each animated with the
principle of immortality--there is a reason for its existence, and its
perpetuity, from whose force the mind cannot escape. It is, and it ever
will be; and mankind upon it, a continually happier, and more virtuous
brotherhood.
Yes, Fausta, to me as a Christian, everything is new everything better;
the inward world, the outward world, the present, and the future. Life
is a worthier gift, and a richer possession. I am to myself an object of
a thousand-fold greater interest; and every other human being, from a
poor animal, that was scarce worthy its wretched existence, starts up
into a god, for whom the whole earth may, one day, become too narrow a
field either to till, or rule. I am, accordingly, ready to labor both
for myself and others. I once held myself too cheap to do much even for
myself; for others, I would do nothing, except to feed the hunger that
directly appealed to me, or relieve the wretchedness that made me
equally wretched. Not so now. I myself am a different being, and others
are different. I am ready to toil for such beings; to suffer for them.
They are too valuable to be neglected, abused, insulted, trodden into
the dust. They must be defended and rescued, whenever their
fellow-men--wholly ignorant of what they are, and what themselves are
about--would oppress them. More than all, do they need truth,
effectually to enlighten and redeem them, and truth they must have at
whatever cost. Let them only once know what they are, and the world is
safe. Christianity tells them this, and Christianity they must have. The
State must not stand between man and truth! or, if it do, it must be
rebuked by those who have the knowledge and the courage, and made to
assume its proper place and office. Knowing what has been done for me by
Christian truth, I can never be content until to others the same good is
at least offered; and I shall devote what power and means I possess to
this task. The prospect now is of opposition and conflict. But it
dismays not me, nor Julia, nor any of this faith who have truly adopted
its principles. For, if the mere love of fame, the excitement of a
contest, the prospect of pay or plunder, will carry innumerable legions
to the battle-field to leave there their bones, how much more shall the
belief of a Christian arm him for even worse encounters? It were pitiful
indeed, if a possession, as valuable as this of truth, could not inspire
a heroism, which the love of fame or of money can.
These things I have said, to put you fully in possession of our present
position, plans, and purposes. The fate of Christianity is to us now as
absorbing an interest, as once was the fate of Palmyra.
* * * * *
I had been in the city only long enough to give Julia a full account of
my melancholy visit in the country, and to write a part of it to you,
when I walked forth to observe for myself the signs which the city might
offer, either to confirm, or allay, the apprehensions which were begun
to be felt.
I took my way over the Palatine, desiring to see the excellent Tacitus,
whose house is there. He was absent, being suddenly called to Baiae. I
turned toward the Forum, wishing to perform a commission for Julia at
the shop of Civilis--still alive, and still compounding his
sweets--which is now about midway between the slope of the hill and the
Forum, having been removed from its former place where you knew it,
under the eaves of the Temple of Peace. The little man of 'smells' was
at his post, more crooked than ever, but none the less exquisitely
arrayed; his wig befitting a young Bacchus, rather than a dried shred of
a man beyond his seventieth year. All the gems of the east glittered on
his thin fingers, and diamonds, that might move the envy of Livia, hung
from his ears. The gales of Arabia, burdened with the fragrance of every
flower of that sunny clime, seemed concentrated into an atmosphere
around him; and, in truth, I suppose a specimen of every pot and phial
of his vast shop, might be found upon his person concealed in gold
boxes, or hanging in the merest fragments of bottles upon chains of
silver or gold, or deposited in folds of his ample robes. He was odor in
substantial form. He saluted me with a grace, of which he only in Rome
is master, and with a deference that could not have been exceeded had I
been Aurelian. I told him that I wished to procure a perfume of Egyptian
origin and name, called Cleopatra's tears, which was reputed to convey
to the organs of smell, an odor more exquisite than that of the rarest
Persian rose, or choicest gums of Arabia. The eyes of Civilis kindled
with the fires of twenty--when love's anxious brow is suddenly cleared
up by that little, but all comprehensive word, yes--as he answered,
'Noble Piso, I honor you. I never doubted your taste. It is seen in your
palace, in your dress, nay, in the very costume of your incomparable
slave, who has done me the honor to call here in your service. But now
have you given of it the last and highest proof. Never has the wit of
man before compounded an essence like that which lies buried in this
porphyry vase.'
'You do not mean that I am to take away a vase of that size? I do not
purchase essences by the pound!'
Civilis seemed as if he would have fainted, so oppressed was he by this
display of ignorance. My character, I found, was annihilated in a
moment. When his presence of mind was recovered, he said,