Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero
Petronius was too much a man of the world and too quick not to notice
this; hence, after the first greetings, he announced with all the
eloquence and ease at his command that he had come to give thanks
for the care which his sister’s son had found in that house, and that
gratitude alone was the cause of the visit, to which, moreover, he was
emboldened by his old acquaintance with Aulus.
Aulus assured him that he was a welcome guest; and as to gratitude, he
declared that he had that feeling himself, though surely Petronius did
not divine the cause of it.
In fact, Petronius did not divine it. In vain did he raise his hazel
eyes, endeavoring to remember the least service rendered to Aulus or to
any one. He recalled none, unless it might be that which he intended
to show Vinicius. Some such thing, it is true, might have happened
involuntarily, but only involuntarily.
“I have great love and esteem for Vespasian, whose life thou didst
save,” said Aulus, “when he had the misfortune to doze while listening
to Nero’s verses.”
“He was fortunate,” replied Petronius, “for he did not hear them; but
I will not deny that the matter might have ended with misfortune.
Bronzebeard wished absolutely to send a centurion to him with the
friendly advice to open his veins.”
“But thou, Petronius, laughed him out of it.”
“That is true, or rather it is not true. I told Nero that if Orpheus put
wild beasts to sleep with song, his triumph was equal, since he had put
Vespasian to sleep. Ahenobarbus may be blamed on condition that to a
small criticism a great flattery be added. Our gracious Augusta, Poppæa,
understands this to perfection.”
“Alas! such are the times,” answered Aulus. “I lack two front teeth,
knocked out by a stone from the hand of a Briton, I speak with a hiss;
still my happiest days were passed in Britain.”
“Because they were days of victory,” added Vinicius.
But Petronius, alarmed lest the old general might begin a narrative of
his former wars, changed the conversation.
“See,” said he, “in the neighborhood of Præneste country people found
a dead wolf whelp with two heads; and during a storm about that
time lightning struck off an angle of the temple of Luna,--a thing
unparalleled, because of the late autumn. A certain Cotta, too, who
had told this, added, while telling it, that the priests of that temple
prophesied the fall of the city or, at least, the ruin of a great
house,--ruin to be averted only by uncommon sacrifices.”
Aulus, when he had heard the narrative, expressed the opinion that such
signs should not be neglected; that the gods might be angered by an
over-measure of wickedness. In this there was nothing wonderful; and in
such an event expiatory sacrifices were perfectly in order.
“Thy house, Plautius, is not too large,” answered Petronius, “though
a great man lives in it. Mine is indeed too large for such a wretched
owner, though equally small. But if it is a question of the ruin of
something as great, for example, as the domus transitoria, would it be
worth while for us to bring offerings to avert that ruin?”
Plautius did not answer that question,--a carefulness which touched even
Petronius somewhat, for, with all his inability to feel the difference
between good and evil, he had never been an informer; and it was
possible to talk with him in perfect safety. He changed the conversation
again, therefore, and began to praise Plautius’s dwelling and the good
taste which reigned in the house.
“It is an ancient seat,” said Plautius, “in which nothing has been
changed since I inherited it.”
After the curtain was pushed aside which divided the atrium from the
tablinum, the house was open from end to end, so that through the
tablinum and the following peristyle and the hall lying beyond it which
was called the oecus, the glance extended to the garden, which seemed
from a distance like a bright image set in a dark frame. Joyous,
childlike laughter came from it to the atrium.
“Oh, general!” said Petronius, “permit us to listen from near by to that
glad laughter which is of a kind heard so rarely in these days.”
“Willingly,” answered Plautius, rising; “that is my little Aulus and
Lygia, playing ball. But as to laughter, I think, Petronius, that our
whole life is spent in it.”
“Life deserves laughter, hence people laugh at it,” answered Petronius,
“but laughter here has another sound.”
“Petronius does not laugh for days in succession,” said Vinicius; “but
then he laughs entire nights.”
Thus conversing, they passed through the length of the house and reached
the garden, where Lygia and little Aulus were playing with balls, which
slaves, appointed to that game exclusively and called spheristæ, picked
up and placed in their hands. Petronius cast a quick passing glance at
Lygia; little Aulus, seeing Vinicius, ran to greet him; but the young
tribune, going forward, bent his head before the beautiful maiden, who
stood with a ball in her hand, her hair blown apart a little. She was
somewhat out of breath, and flushed.
In the garden triclinium, shaded by ivy, grapes, and woodbine, sat
Pomponia Græcina; hence they went to salute her. She was known to
Petronius, though he did not visit Plautius, for he had seen her at the
house of Antistia, the daughter of Rubelius Plautus, and besides at the
house of Seneca and Polion. He could not resist a certain admiration
with which he was filled by her face, pensive but mild, by the dignity
of her bearing, by her movements, by her words. Pomponia disturbed his
understanding of women to such a degree that that man, corrupted to the
marrow of his bones, and self-confident as no one in Rome, not only felt
for her a kind of esteem, but even lost his previous self-confidence.
And now, thanking her for her care of Vinicius, he thrust in, as it were
involuntarily, “domina,” which never occurred to him when speaking, for
example, to Calvia Crispinilla, Scribonia, Veleria, Solina, and other
women of high society. After he had greeted her and returned thanks, he
began to complain that he saw her so rarely, that it was not possible to
meet her either in the Circus or the Amphitheatre; to which she answered
calmly, laying her hand on the hand of her husband:
“We are growing old, and love our domestic quiet more and more, both of
us.”
Petronius wished to oppose; but Aulus Plautius added in his hissing
voice,--“And we feel stranger and stranger among people who give Greek
names to our Roman divinities.”
“The gods have become for some time mere figures of rhetoric,” replied
Petronius, carelessly. “But since Greek rhetoricians taught us, it is
easier for me even to say Hera than Juno.”
He turned his eyes then to Pomponia, as if to signify that in presence
of her no other divinity could come to his mind: and then he began to
contradict what she had said touching old age.
“People grow old quickly, it is true; but there are some who live
another life entirely, and there are faces moreover which Saturn seems
to forget.”
Petronius said this with a certain sincerity even, for Pomponia Græcina,
though descending from the midday of life, had preserved an uncommon
freshness of face; and since she had a small head and delicate features,
she produced at times, despite her dark robes, despite her solemnity and
sadness, the impression of a woman quite young.
Meanwhile little Aulus, who had become uncommonly friendly with Vinicius
during his former stay in the house, approached the young man and
entreated him to play ball. Lygia herself entered the triclinium after
the little boy. Under the climbing ivy, with the light quivering on her
face, she seemed to Petronius more beautiful than at the first glance,
and really like some nymph. As he had not spoken to her thus far,
he rose, inclined his head, and, instead of the usual expressions of
greeting, quoted the words with which Ulysses greeted Nausikaa,--
“I supplicate thee, O queen, whether thou art some goddess or a mortal!
If thou art one of the daughters of men who dwell on earth, thrice
blessed are thy father and thy lady mother, and thrice blessed thy
brethren.”
The exquisite politeness of this man of the world pleased even Pomponia.
As to Lygia, she listened, confused and flushed, without boldness to
raise her eyes. But a wayward smile began to quiver at the corners of
her lips, and on her face a struggle was evident between the timidity
of a maiden and the wish to answer; but clearly the wish was victorious,
for, looking quickly at Petronius, she answered him all at once with the
words of that same Nausikaa, quoting them at one breath, and a little
like a lesson learned,--
“Stranger, thou seemest no evil man nor foolish.”
Then she turned and ran out as a frightened bird runs.
This time the turn for astonishment came to Petronius, for he had not
expected to hear verses of Homer from the lips of a maiden of whose
barbarian extraction he had heard previously from Vinicius. Hence he
looked with an inquiring glance at Pomponia; but she could not give
him an answer, for she was looking at that moment, with a smile, at the
pride reflected on the face of her husband.
He was not able to conceal that pride. First, he had become attached
to Lygia as to his own daughter; and second, in spite of his old Roman
prejudices, which commanded him to thunder against Greek and the spread
of the language, he considered it as the summit of social polish. He
himself had never been able to learn it well; over this he suffered in
secret. He was glad, therefore, that an answer was given in the language
and poetry of Homer to this exquisite man both of fashion and letters,
who was ready to consider Plautius’s house as barbarian.
“We have in the house a pedagogue, a Greek,” said he, turning to
Petronius, “who teaches our boy, and the maiden overhears the lessons.
She is a wagtail yet, but a dear one, to which we have both grown
attached.”
Petronius looked through the branches of woodbine into the garden, and
at the three persons who were playing there. Vinicius had thrown aside
his toga, and, wearing only his tunic, was striking the ball, which
Lygia, standing opposite, with raised arms was trying to catch. The
maiden did not make a great impression on Petronius at the first glance;
she seemed to him too slender. But from the moment when he saw her more
nearly in the triclinium he thought to himself that Aurora might look
like her; and as a judge he understood that in her there was something
uncommon. He considered everything and estimated everything; hence her
face, rosy and clear, her fresh lips, as if set for a kiss, her eyes
blue as the azure of the sea, the alabaster whiteness of her forehead,
the wealth of her dark hair, with the reflection of amber or Corinthian
bronze gleaming in its folds, her slender neck, the divine slope of her
shoulders, the whole posture, flexible, slender, young with the youth of
May and of freshly opened flowers. The artist was roused in him, and the
worshipper of beauty, who felt that beneath a statue of that maiden one
might write “Spring.” All at once he remembered Chrysothemis, and pure
laughter seized him. Chrysothemis seemed to him, with golden powder on
her hair and darkened brows, to be fabulously faded,--something in
the nature of a yellowed rose-tree shedding its leaves. But still Rome
envied him that Chrysothemis. Then he recalled Poppæa; and that most
famous Poppæa also seemed to him soulless, a waxen mask. In that maiden
with Tanagrian outlines there was not only spring, but a radiant soul,
which shone through her rosy body as a flame through a lamp.
“Vinicius is right,” thought he, “and my Chrysothemis is old, old!--as
Troy!”
Then he turned to Pomponia Græcina, and, pointing to the garden,