Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero
“Bronzebeard hates Lucan, and in his soul has written down death for the
poet. He is merely seeking a pretext, for he seeks pretexts always.”
“By Castor!” said Petronius, “that may be. But I might have still
another way for a quick return to favor.”
“What?”
“To repeat to Bronzebeard what thou hast told me just now.”
“I have said nothing!” cried Scevinus, with alarm.
Petronius placed his hand upon the Senator’s shoulder. “Thou hast called
Cæsar a madman, thou hast foreseen the heirship of Piso, and hast said,
‘Lucan understands that there is need to hasten.’ What wouldst thou
hasten, carissime?”
Scevinus grew pale, and for a moment each looked into the eyes of the
other.
“Thou wilt not repeat!”
“By the hips of Kypris, I will not! How well thou knowest me! No; I will
not repeat. I have heard nothing, and, moreover, I wish to hear nothing.
Dost understand? Life is too short to make any undertaking worth the
while. I beg thee only to visit Tigellinus to-day, and talk with him as
long as thou hast with me of whatever may please thee.”
“Why?”
“So that should Tigellinus ever say to me, ‘Scevinus was with thee,’ I
might answer, ‘He was with thee, too, that very day.’”
Scevinus, when he heard this, broke the ivory cane which he had in
his hand, and said,--“May the evil fall on this stick! I shall be with
Tigellinus to-day, and later at Nerva’s feast. Thou, too, wilt be there?
In every case till we meet in the amphitheatre, where the last of the
Christians will appear the day after tomorrow. Till we meet!”
“After to-morrow!” repeated Petronius, when alone. “There is no time to
lose. Ahenobarbus will need me really in Achæa; hence he may count with
me.”
And he determined to try the last means.
In fact, at Nerva’s feast Cæsar himself asked that Petronius recline
opposite, for he wished to speak with the arbiter about Achæa and the
cities in which he might appear with hopes of the greatest success. He
cared most for the Athenians, whom he feared. Other Augustians listened
to this conversation with attention, so as to seize crumbs of the
arbiter’s opinions, and give them out later on as their own.
“It seems to me that I have not lived up to this time,” said Nero, “and
that my birth will come only in Greece.”
“Thou wilt be born to new glory and immortality,” answered Petronius.
“I trust that this is true, and that Apollo will not seem jealous. If I
return in triumph, I will offer him such a hecatomb as no god has had so
far.”
Scevinus fell to repeating the lines of Horace:--
“Sic te diva potens Cypri, Sic fratres Helenæ, lucida sidera,
Ventorumque regat Pater-”
“The vessel is ready at Naples,” said Cæsar. “I should like to go even
tomorrow.”
At this Petronius rose, and, looking straight into Nero’s eyes, said,
“Permit me, O divinity, to celebrate a wedding-feast, to which I shall
invite thee before others.”
“A wedding-feast! What wedding-feast?” inquired Nero.
“That of Vinicius with thy hostage the daughter of the Lygian king. She
is in prison at present, it is true; but as a hostage she is not subject
to imprisonment, and, secondly, thou thyself hast permitted Vinicius to
marry her; and as thy sentences, like those of Zeus, are unchangeable,
thou wilt give command to free her from prison, and I will give her to
thy favorite.”
The cool blood and calm self-possession with which Petronius spoke
disturbed Nero, who was disturbed whenever any one spoke in that fashion
to him.
“I know,” said he, dropping his eyes. “I have thought of her and of that
giant who killed Croton.”
“In that case both are saved,” answered Petronius, calmly.
But Tigellinus came to the aid of his master: “She is in prison by the
will of Cæsar; thou thyself hast said, O Petronius, that his sentences
are unchangeable.”
All present, knowing the history of Vinicius and Lygia, understood
perfectly what the question was; hence they were silent, curious as to
the end of the conversation.
“She is in prison against the will of Cæsar and through thy error,
through thy ignorance of the law of nations,” said Petronius, with
emphasis. “Thou art a naive man, Tigellinus; but even thou wilt not
assert that she burnt Rome, and if thou wert to do so, Cæsar would not
believe thee.”
But Nero had recovered and begun to half close his near-sighted eyes
with an expression of indescribable malice.
“Petronius is right,” said he, after a while.
Tigellinus looked at him with amazement.
“Petronius is right,” repeated Nero; “to-morrow the gates of the prison
will be open to her, and of the marriage feast we will speak the day
after at the amphitheatre.”
“I have lost again,” thought Petronius.
When he had returned home, he was so certain that the end of Lygia’s
life had come that he sent a trusty freedman to the amphitheatre to
bargain with the chief of the spoliarium for the delivery of her body,
since he wished to give it to Vinicius.
Chapter LXV
Evening exhibitions, rare up to that period and given only
exceptionally, became common in Nero’s time, both in the Circus and
amphitheatre. The Augustians liked them, frequently because they were
followed by feasts and drinking-bouts which lasted till daylight. Though
the people were sated already with blood-spilling, still, when the news
went forth that the end of the games was approaching, and that the
last of the Christians were to die at an evening spectacle, a countless
audience assembled in the amphitheatre. The Augustians came to a man,
for they understood that it would not be a common spectacle; they knew
that Cæsar had determined to make for himself a tragedy out of the
suffering of Vinicius. Tigellinus had kept secret the kind of punishment
intended for the betrothed of the young tribune; but that merely roused
general curiosity. Those who had seen Lygia at the house of Plautius
told wonders of her beauty. Others were occupied above all with the
question, would they see her really on the arena that day; for many
of those who had heard the answer given Petronius and Nerva by Cæsar
explained it in two ways: some supposed simply that Nero would give or
perhaps had given the maiden to Vinicius; they remembered that she was
a hostage, hence free to worship whatever divinities she liked, and that
the law of nations did not permit her punishment.
Uncertainty, waiting, and curiosity had mastered all spectators.
Cæsar arrived earlier than usual; and immediately at his coming people
whispered that something uncommon would happen, for besides Tigellinus
and Vatinius, Cæsar had with him Cassius, a centurion of enormous size
and gigantic strength, whom he summoned only when he wished to have a
defender at his side,--for example, when he desired night expeditions
to the Subura, where he arranged the amusement called “sagatio,” which
consisted in tossing on a soldier’s mantle maidens met on the way.
It was noted also that certain precautions had been taken in the
amphitheatre itself. The pretorian guards were increased; command over
them was held, not by a centurion, but by the tribune Subrius Flavius,
known hitherto for blind attachment to Nero. It was understood, then,
that Cæsar wished in every case to guard himself against an outburst of
despair from Vinicius, and curiosity rose all the more.
Every eye was turned with strained gaze to the place where the
unfortunate lover was sitting. He was exceedingly pale, and his forehead
was covered with drops of sweat; he was in as much doubt as were other
spectators, but alarmed to the lowest depth of his soul. Petronius knew
not what would happen; he was silent, except that, while turning from
Nerva, he asked Vinicius whether he was ready for everything, and next,
whether he would remain at the spectacle. To both questions Vinicius
answered “Yes,” but a shudder passed through his whole body; he divined
that Petronius did not ask without reason. For some time he had lived
with only half his life,--he had sunk in death, and reconciled himself
to Lygia’s death, since for both it was to be liberation and marriage;
but he learned now that it was one thing to think of the last moment
when it was distant as of a quiet dropping asleep, and another to look
at the torment of a person dearer to one than life. All sufferings
endured formerly rose in him anew. Despair, which had been set at rest,
began again to cry in his soul; the former desire to save Lygia at any
price seized him anew. Beginning with the morning, he had tried to go to
the cunicula to be sure that she was there; but the pretorians watched
every entrance, and orders were so strict that the soldiers, even those
whom he knew, would not be softened by prayers or gold. It seemed to
the tribune that uncertainty would kill him before he should see the
spectacle. Somewhere at the bottom of his heart the hope was still
throbbing, that perhaps Lygia was not in the amphitheatre, that his
fears were groundless. At times he seized on this hope with all his
strength. He said in his soul that Christ might take her to Himself out
of the prison, but could not permit her torture in the Circus. Formerly
he was resigned to the divine will in everything; now, when repulsed
from the doors of the cunicula, he returned to his place in the
amphitheatre, and when he learned, from the curious glances turned on
him, that the most dreadful suppositions might be true, he began to
implore in his soul with passionateness almost approaching a threat.
“Thou canst!” repeated he, clenching his fists convulsively, “Thou
canst!” Hitherto he had not supposed that that moment when present would
be so terrible. Now, without clear consciousness of what was happening
in his mind, he had the feeling that if he should see Lygia tortured,
his love for God would be turned to hatred, and his faith to despair.
But he was amazed at the feeling, for he feared to offend Christ, whom
he was imploring for mercy and miracles. He implored no longer for her
life; he wished merely that she should die before they brought her to
the arena, and from the abyss of his pain he repeated in spirt: “Do not
refuse even this, and I will love Thee still more than hitherto.” And
then his thoughts raged as a sea torn by a whirlwind. A desire for blood
and vengeance was roused in him. He was seized by a mad wish to rush at
Nero and stifle him there in presence of all the spectators; but he
felt that desire to be a new offence against Christ, and a breach of
His command. To his head flew at times flashes of hope that everything
before which his soul was trembling would be turned aside by an almighty
and merciful hand; but they were quenched at once, as if in measureless
sorrow that He who could destroy that Circus with one word and save
Lygia had abandoned her, though she trusted in Him and loved Him with
all the strength of her pure heart. And he thought, moreover, that
she was lying there in that dark place, weak, defenceless, deserted,
abandoned to the whim or disfavor of brutal guards, drawing her last
breath, perhaps, while he had to wait, helpless, in that dreadful
amphitheatre, without knowing what torture was prepared for her, or what
he would witness in a moment. Finally, as a man falling over a precipice
grasps at everything which grows on the edge of it, so did he grasp with
both hands at the thought that faith of itself could save her. That one
method remained! Peter had said that faith could move the earth to its
foundations.
Hence he rallied; he crushed doubt in himself, he compressed his whole
being into the sentence, “I believe,” and he looked for a miracle.
But as an overdrawn cord may break, so exertion broke him. The pallor of
death covered his face, and his body relaxed. He thought then that his
prayer had been heard, for he was dying. It seemed to him that Lygia