Aurelian; or, Rome in the Third Century
you will expect me to say something of the Christians.'
'Yes yes.'
'But I shall not--not yet. Perhaps by and by. In the meantime my theme
shall be the prefect! the prefect Varus!'
'A subject full of matter,' cried one near Macer.
'Better send for him,' said another. 'Twere a pity he lost it.'
'Yes,' continued Macer, 'it is a subject full of matter, and I wish
myself he were here to see himself in the mirror I would hold before
him; he could not but grow pale with affright. You have just had a
sample of Roman justice! How do you like it, Romans? I had gone there to
seek justice; not for a Christian, but against a Christian. A Christian
master had abused his slave with cruelty, I standing by; and when to my
remonstrance--myself feeling the bitter stripes he laid on--he did but
ply his thongs the more, I seized the hardened monster by the neck, and
wrenching from his grasp the lash, I first plied it upon his own back,
and then dragged him to the judgment-seat of Varus,--'
'O fool!'
'You say well--fool that I was, crying for justice! How I was dealt
with, some of you have seen. There, I say, was a sample of Roman justice
for you! So in these times does power sport itself with poverty. It was
not so once in Rome. Were Cincinnatus or Regulus at the tribunal of
Varus, they would fare like the soldier Macer. And who, Romans, is this
Varus? and why is he here in the seat of authority? At the tribunal,
Varus did not know me. But what if I were to tell you there was but a
thin wall between the rooms where we were born, and that when we were
boys we were ever at the same school!--not such schools as you are
thinking of, where the young go for letters and for Greek, but the
school where many of you have been and are now at, I dare say, the
school of Roman vice, which you may find always open all along the
streets, but especially where I and Varus were, in one of the sinks near
the Flavian. Pollex, the gladiator, was father of Varus!--not worse, but
just as bad, as savage, as beastly in his vices, as are all of that
butcher tribe. My father--Macer too--I will not say more of him than
that he was keeper of the Vivaria of the amphitheatre, and passed his
days in caging and uncaging the wild beasts of Asia and Africa; in
feeding them when there were no games on foot, and starving them when
there were. Varus, the prefect, Romans, and I, were at this school till
I joined the legions under Valerian, and he, by a luckier fortune, as it
would be deemed, found favor in the eyes of Gallienus, to whom, with his
fair sister Fannia, he was sold by those demons Pollex and Caeicina. I
say nothing of how it fared with him in that keeping. Fannia has long
since found the grave. Is Varus one who should sit at the head of Rome?
He is a man of blood, of crime, of vice, such as you would not bear to
be told of! I say not this as if he were answerable for his birth and
early vice, but that, being such, this is not his place. He could not
help it, nor I, that we were born and nurtured where we were; that the
sight of blood and the smell of it, either of men or beasts, was never
out of our eyes and nostrils, during all our boyhood and youth; that to
him, and me, the sweetest pleasure of our young life was, when the games
came on, and the beasts were let loose upon one another, and,--O the
hardening of that life!--when, specially, there were prisoners or
captives, on which to glut their raging hunger! Those were the days and
hours marked whitest in our calendar. And, whitest of all, were the days
of the Decian persecution, when the blood of thrice cursed Christians,
as I was taught to name them, flowed like water. Every day then Varus
and I had our sport; working up the beasts, by our torments, to an
unnatural height of madness ere they were let loose, and then rushing to
the gratings, as the doors were thrown open, to see the fury with which
they would spring upon their defenceless victims too, and tear them
piecemeal. The Romans required such servants--and we were they. They
require them now, and you may find any number of such about the
theatres. But if there must be such there, why should they be taken
thence and put upon the judgment-seat? save, for the reason, that they
may have been thoroughly purged, as it were, by fire--which Varus has
not been. What with him was necessary and forced when young, is now
chosen and voluntary. Vice is now his by election. Now, I ask, why has
the life of Varus been such? and why, being such, is he here? Because
you are so! Yes, because you are all like him! It is you, Roman
citizens, who rear the theatres, the circuses, and the thousand temples
of vice, which crowd the streets of Rome,--'
'No, no! it is the emperors.'
'But who make the emperors? You Romans of these times, are a race of
cowards and slaves, and it is therefore that tyrants rule over you. Were
you freemen, with the souls of freemen in you, do you think you would
bear as you do--and love and glory in the yoke--this rule of such
creatures as Varus, and others whom it were not hard to name? I know
what you are--for I have been one of you. I have not been, nor am I now,
hermit, as you may think, being a Christian. A Christian is a man of the
world--a man of action and of suffering--not of rest and sleep. I have
ever been abroad among men, both before I was a Christian and since; and
I know what you are. You are of the same stamp as Varus! nay, start not,
nor threaten with your eyes,--I fear you not. If you are not so, why, I
say, is Varus there? You know that I speak the truth. The people of Rome
are corrupt as their rulers! How should it be much otherwise? You are
fed by the largesses of the Emperor, you have your two loaves a day and
your pork, and you need not and so do not work. You have no employment
but idleness, and idleness is not so much a vice itself as the prolific
mother of all vices. When I was one of you, it was so; and so it is now.
My father's labor was nothing; he was kept by the state. The Emperor was
not more a man of pleasure than he, nor the princes, than I and Varus.
Was that a school of virtue? When I left the service of the amphitheatre
I joined the Legions. In the army I had work, and I had fighting, but my
passions, in the early days of that service, raged like the sea; and
during all the reign of Valerian's son there was no bridle upon
them;--for I served under the general Carinus, and what Carinus was and
is, most of you know. O the double horrors of those years! I was older,
and yet worse and worse. God! I marvel that thou didst not interpose and
strike me dead! But thy mercy spared me, and now the lowest, lowest hell
shall not be mine.' Tears, forced by these recollections, flowed down
his cheeks, and for a time he was speechless.
'Such, Romans, was I once. What am I now? I am a changed man--through
and through. There is not a thought of my mind, nor a fibre of my body,
what they were once. You may possibly think the change has been for the
worse, seeing me thus thrust forth from the tribunal of the prefect with
dishonor, when I was once a soldier and an officer under Aurelian. I
would rather a thousand times be what I am, a soldier of Jesus Christ.
And I would that, by anything I could do, you, any one of you, might be
made to think so too; I would that Varus might, for I bear him no ill
will.
'But what am I now? I am so different a man from what I once was, that I
can hardly believe myself to be the same. The life which I once led, I
would not lead again--no--not one day nor hour of it, though you would
depose Aurelian to day and crown me Caesar to-morrow. I would no more
return to that life, than I would consent to lose my nature and take a
swine's, and find elysium where as a man I once did, in sinks and sties.
I would not renounce for the wealth of all the world, and its empire
too, that belief in the faith of Christ, the head of the Christians,
which has wrought so within me.
'And what has made me so--would make you so--if you would but hearken to
it. And would it not be a good thing if the flood of vice, which pours
all through the streets of Rome, were stayed? Would it not be a happy
thing, if the misery which dwells beneath these vaulted roofs and these
humbler ones equally, the misery which drunkenness and lust, the lust of
money, and the love of place, and every evil passion generates, were all
wiped away, and we all lived together observant of the rights of one
another, helping one another; not oppressing; loving, not hating;
showing in our conduct as men, the virtues of little children? Would it
not be happier if all this vast population were bound together by some
common ties of kindred; if all held all as brethren; if the poor man
felt himself to be the same as Aurelian himself, because he is a man
like him and weighs just as much as he in the scales of God, and that it
is the vice in the one or the other, and that only that sinks him lower?
Would it not be better, if you all could see in the presiding power of
the universe, one great and good Being, who needs not to be propitiated
by costly sacrifices of oxen or bulls, nor by cruel ones of men,--but is
always kindly disposed towards you, and desires nothing so much as to
see you living virtuously, and is never grieved as he is to see you
ruining your own peace,--not harming him--by your vices? for you will
bear witness with me that your vices are never a cause of happiness.
Would it not be better if you could behold such a God over you, in the
place of those who are called gods, and whom you worship, as I did
once, because I feared to do otherwise, and yet sin on never the less:
who are your patterns not so much in virtue as in all imaginable vice?'
'Away with the wicked!'--'Away with the fellow!' cried several voices;
but others predominated, saying, 'Let him alone!'--'He speaks well! We
will hear him!'--'We will defend him! go on, go on!'
'I have little or nothing more to say,' continued Macer. 'I will only
ask you whether you must not judge that to be a very powerful principle
of some kind that drew me up out of that foul pit into which I was
fallen, and made me what I am now? Which of you now feels that he has
motive strong enough to work out such a deliverance for him? What help
in this way do you receive from your priests, if perchance you ever
apply to them? What book of instructions concerning the will of the gods
have you, to which you can go at any time and all times? Only believe as
I do, Romans, and you will hate sin as I do. You cannot help it. Believe
in the God that I do, and in the revealer of his will, the teacher whom
he sent into the world to save us from our heathen errors and vices, and
you will then be more than the Romans you once were. You are now, and
you know it, infinitely less. Then you will be what the old Romans were
and more. You will be as brave as they, and more just. You will be as
generous and more gentle. You will love your own country as well, but
you will love others too. You will be more ready to offer up your lives
for your country, for it will be better worth dying for; every citizen
will be a brother; every ruler a brother; it will be like dying for
your own little household. If you would see Rome flourish, she must
become more pure. She can stagger along not much longer under this
mountain weight of iniquity that presses her into the dust. She needs a
new Hercules to cleanse her foul chambers. Christ is he; and if you will
invite him, he will come and sweep away these abominations, so that
imperial Rome shall smell fragrantly as a garden of spices.'
Loud exclamations of approval here interrupted Macer. The great
proportion of those who were present were now evidently with him, and
interested in his communications.