Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero
covering that part of the market placed opposite the Capitol were
filled.
One-half of the Forum, immediately under the rock of the Capitol, was
buried already in shade; but the columns of the temples, placed higher,
seemed golden in the sunshine and the blue. Those lying lower cast
lengthened shadows on marble slabs. The place was so filled with columns
everywhere that the eye was lost in them as in a forest.
Those buildings and columns seemed huddled together. They towered some
above others, they stretched toward the right and the left, they climbed
toward the height, and they clung to the wall of the Capitol, or some
of them clung to others, like greater and smaller, thicker and thinner,
white or gold colored tree-trunks, now blooming under architraves,
flowers of the acanthus, now surrounded with Ionic corners, now finished
with a simple Doric quadrangle. Above that forest gleamed colored
triglyphs; from tympans stood forth the sculptured forms of gods; from
the summits winged golden quadrigæ seemed ready to fly away through
space into the blue dome, fixed serenely above that crowded place of
temples. Through the middle of the market and along the edges of it
flowed a river of people; crowds passed under the arches of the basilica
of Julius Cæsar; crowds were sitting on the steps of Castor and Pollux,
or walking around the temple of Vesta, resembling on that great marble
background many-colored swarms of butterflies or beetles. Down immense
steps, from the side of the temple on the Capitol dedicated to Jupiter
Optimus Maximus, came new waves; at the rostra people listened to chance
orators; in one place and another rose the shouts of hawkers selling
fruit, wine, or water mixed with fig-juice; of tricksters; of venders
of marvellous medicines; of soothsayers; of discoverers of hidden
treasures; of interpreters of dreams. Here and there, in the tumult of
conversations and cries, were mingled sounds of the Egyptian sistra, of
the sambuké, or of Grecian flutes. Here and there the sick, the pious,
or the afflicted were bearing offerings to the temples. In the midst of
the people, on the stone flags, gathered flocks of doves, eager for
the grain given them, and like movable many-colored and dark spots, now
rising for a moment with a loud sound of wings, now dropping down again
to places left vacant by people. From time to time the crowds opened
before litters in which were visible the affected faces of women, or
the heads of senators and knights, with features, as it were, rigid and
exhausted from living. The many-tongued population repeated aloud their
names, with the addition of some term of praise or ridicule. Among
the unordered groups pushed from time to time, advancing with measured
tread, parties of soldiers, or watchers, preserving order on the
streets. Around about, the Greek language was heard as often as Latin.
Vinicius, who had not been in the city for a long time, looked with a
certain curiosity on that swarm of people and on that Forum Romanum,
which both dominated the sea of the world and was flooded by it, so that
Petronius, who divined the thoughts of his companion, called it “the
nest of the Quirites--without the Quirites.” In truth, the local element
was well-nigh lost in that crowd, composed of all races and nations.
There appeared Ethiopians, gigantic light-haired people from the distant
north, Britons, Gauls, Germans, sloping-eyed dwellers of Lericum; people
from the Euphrates and from the Indus, with beards dyed brick color;
Syrians from the banks of the Orontes, with black and mild eyes;
dwellers in the deserts of Arabia, dried up as a bone; Jews, with their
flat breasts; Egyptians, with the eternal, indifferent smile on their
faces; Numidians and Africans; Greeks from Hellas, who equally with the
Romans commanded the city, but commanded through science, art, wisdom,
and deceit; Greeks from the islands, from Asia Minor, from Egypt, from
Italy, from Narbonic Gaul. In the throng of slaves, with pierced ears,
were not lacking also freemen,--an idle population, which Cæsar amused,
supported, even clothed,--and free visitors, whom the ease of life and
the prospects of fortune enticed to the gigantic city; there was no lack
of venal persons. There were priests of Serapis, with palm branches in
their hands; priests of Isis, to whose altar more offerings were brought
than to the temple of the Capitoline Jove; priests of Cybele, bearing
in their hands golden ears of rice; and priests of nomad divinities; and
dancers of the East with bright head-dresses, and dealers in amulets,
and snake-tamers, and Chaldean seers; and, finally, people without any
occupation whatever, who applied for grain every week at the storehouses
on the Tiber, who fought for lottery-tickets to the Circus, who spent
their nights in rickety houses of districts beyond the Tiber, and sunny
and warm days under covered porticos, and in foul eating-houses of the
Subura, on the Milvian bridge, or before the “insulæ” of the great,
where from time to time remnants from the tables of slaves were thrown
out to them.
Petronius was well known to those crowds. Vinicius’s ears were
struck continually by “Hic est!” (Here he is). They loved him for his
munificence; and his peculiar popularity increased from the time when
they learned that he had spoken before Cæsar in opposition to the
sentence of death issued against the whole “familia,” that is, against
all the slaves of the prefect Pedanius Secundus, without distinction of
sex or age, because one of them had killed that monster in a moment of
despair. Petronius repeated in public, it is true, that it was all one
to him, and that he had spoken to Cæsar only privately, as the arbiter
elegantiarum whose æsthetic taste was offended by a barbarous slaughter
befitting Scythians and not Romans. Nevertheless, people who were
indignant because of the slaughter loved Petronius from that moment
forth. But he did not care for their love. He remembered that that crowd
of people had loved also Britannicus, poisoned by Nero; and Agrippina,
killed at his command; and Octavia, smothered in hot steam at the
Pandataria, after her veins had been opened previously; and Rubelius
Plautus, who had been banished; and Thrasea, to whom any morning might
bring a death sentence. The love of the mob might be considered rather
of ill omen; and the sceptical Petronius was superstitious also. He had
a twofold contempt for the multitude,--as an aristocrat and an æsthetic
person. Men with the odor of roast beans, which they carried in their
bosoms, and who besides were eternally hoarse and sweating from playing
mora on the street-corners and peristyles, did not in his eyes deserve
the term “human.” Hence he gave no answer whatever to the applause,
or the kisses sent from lips here and there to him. He was relating to
Marcus the case of Pedanius, reviling meanwhile the fickleness of that
rabble which, next morning after the terrible butchery, applauded Nero
on his way to the temple of Jupiter Stator. But he gave command to
halt before the book-shop of Avirnus, and, descending from the litter,
purchased an ornamented manuscript, which he gave to Vinicius.
“Here is a gift for thee,” said he.
“Thanks!” answered Vinicius. Then, looking at the title, he inquired,
“‘Satyricon’? Is this something new? Whose is it?”
“Mine. But I do not wish to go in the road of Rufinus, whose history I
was to tell thee, nor of Fabricius Veiento; hence no one knows of this,
and do thou mention it to no man.”
“Thou hast said that thou art no writer of verses,” said Vinicius,
looking at the middle of the manuscript; “but here I see prose thickly
interwoven with them.”
“When thou art reading, turn attention to Trimalchion’s feast. As to
verses, they have disgusted me, since Nero is writing an epic. Vitelius,
when he wishes to relieve himself, uses ivory fingers to thrust down his
throat; others serve themselves with flamingo feathers steeped in olive
oil or in a decoction of wild thyme. I read Nero’s poetry, and the
result is immediate. Straightway I am able to praise it, if not with a
clear conscience, at least with a clear stomach.”
When he had said this, he stopped the litter again before the shop of
Idomeneus the goldsmith, and, having settled the affair of the gems,
gave command to bear the litter directly to Aulus’s mansion.
“On the road I will tell thee the story of Rufinus,” said he, “as proof
of what vanity in an author may be.”
But before he had begun, they turned in to the Vicus Patricius, and
soon found themselves before the dwelling of Aulus. A young and sturdy
“janitor” opened the door leading to the ostium, over which a magpie
confined in a cage greeted them noisily with the word, “Salve!”
On the way from the second antechamber, called the ostium, to the atrium
itself, Vinicius said,--“Hast noticed that thee doorkeepers are
without chains?” “This is a wonderful house,” answered Petronius, in
an undertone. “Of course it is known to thee that Pomponia Græcina is
suspected of entertaining that Eastern superstition which consists in
honoring a certain Chrestos. It seems that Crispinilla rendered her
this service,--she who cannot forgive Pomponia because one husband has
sufficed her for a lifetime. A one-man Woman! To-day, in Rome, it is
easier to get a half-plate of fresh mushrooms from Noricum than to find
such. They tried her before a domestic court--”
“To thy judgment this is a wonderful house. Later on I will tell thee
what I heard and saw in it.”
Meanwhile they had entered the atrium. The slave appointed to it, called
atriensis, sent a nomenclator to announce the guests; and Petronius,
who, imagining that eternal sadness reigned in this severe house, had
never been in it, looked around with astonishment, and as it were with a
feeling of disappointment, for the atrium produced rather an impression
of cheerfulness. A sheaf of bright light falling from above through
a large opening broke into a thousand sparks on a fountain in a
quadrangular little basin, called the impluvium, which was in the middle
to receive rain falling through the opening during bad weather; this
was surrounded by anemones and lilies. In that house a special love for
lilies was evident, for there were whole clumps of them, both white and
red; and, finally, sapphire irises, whose delicate leaves were as if
silvered from the spray of the fountain. Among the moist mosses, in
which lily-pots were hidden, and among the bunches of lilies were little
bronze statues representing children and water-birds. In one corner a
bronze fawn, as if wishing to drink, was inclining its greenish head,
grizzled, too, by dampness. The floor of the atrium was of mosaic; the
walls, faced partly with red marble and partly with wood, on which were
painted fish, birds, and griffins, attracted the eye by the play of
colors. From the door to the side chamber they were ornamented with
tortoise-shell or even ivory; at the walls between the doors were
statues of Aulus’s ancestors. Everywhere calm plenty was evident, remote
from excess, but noble and self-trusting.
Petronius, who lived with incomparably greater show and elegance, could
find nothing which offended his taste; and had just turned to Vinicius
with that remark, when a slave, the velarius, pushed aside the curtain
separating the atrium from the tablinum, and in the depth of the
building appeared Aulus Plautius approaching hurriedly.
He was a man nearing the evening of life, with a head whitened by hoar
frost, but fresh, with an energetic face, a trifle too short, but still
somewhat eagle-like. This time there was expressed on it a certain
astonishment, and even alarm, because of the unexpected arrival of
Nero’s friend, companion, and suggester.