CHAPTER VII.THE FACE OF THE DEAD.The Imperial galley!Domitia leaped to her feet. Everything was forgotten in the one thought that before her, on the sea, floated the man who had caused the death of her father.“Lucius I must see——”He drew her forward, but at the same time checked her speech.“Every word dropped is fraught with danger,”he said.“What know you but that yon physician be a spy?”“He is not that,”she answered,“show him to me—him——”They walked together to the bows.With the declining of the sun, the light wind had died away, and, although the sea heaved after the recent storm, like the bosom of a sleeping girl, in the stillness of the air, the sail drooped and the ship made no way.Accordingly the sail was furled, and, by the advice of the mate, the rowers, who had rested during the day, were summoned to their benches and bidden work the oars during the night.The sky was clear, and the stars were beginning to twinkle. No part of the voyage in calm weather would be less dangerous than this, which might be performed at night, across open sea, unbroken by rocks and sand-banks.So long as the vessel had to thread her way between the headland of Araxus and the Echinades, and then betwixt the isles of Cephalonia and Zacynthus, an experienced navigator was necessary, and caution had to be exercised both in the management of the sail and in the manipulation of the helm. But now all was plain, and the mate had retired below to rest. During the time he reposed Lamia took charge of the vessel, assisted by the second mate.“You take your meridian by Polaris, Castor and Pollux, steer due west; if there be a slight deviation from the right course, that is a trifle. I will set it right when my watch comes.”Such was the mate’s injunction as he retired below.“The steersman is done up,”said Lamia;“he shall rest now, and no better man can be found to replace him than Eboracus, who has been accustomed to the stormy seas of Britain, and whose nerves are of iron.”Indeed, thegubernatoror helmsman had hard work for his arms. The two enormous paddles had short cross-pieces let into them, like the handles of a scythe, and the clumsy and heavy mechanism for giving direction to the head of the vessel was worked by leverage in this manner.The sailors managed everything on deck, the cordage, the anchors, the sail and the boats. In rough weather they undergirded the ship; that is to say,passed horizontal cords round her to brace the spars together so as to facilitate resistance to the strain when laboring against the waves. The sailors were under the direction of the captain or trierarch, so called whether he commanded a trireme or a Liburnian of two benches.On deck the steersman occupied a sort of sentry-box in the stern, and beside him sat the mate, the second mate, and often also the captain, forming a sort of council for the direction of the vessel.It was a favorite figure in the early Church to represent the Bishop as the helmsman of the sacred vessel, and the presbyters who sat about him as the mates occupying the stern bench. As already said, in a Roman vessel, there was a lack of that unity in direction under the captain to which we are accustomed. A military officer was always supreme everywhere on sea as on land.When the sailors were engaged in sailing, then the rowers rested or caroused, and when they in turn bowed over the oars, the sailors had leisure.The sun went down in the west, lighting up the sky above where he set with a rainbow or halo of copper light fading into green.The night fell rapidly, and the stars looked out above and around, and formed broken reflections in the sea.In winter the foam that broke and was swept to right and left had none of the flash and luminosity it displayed in summer, when the water was warm.Already in the wake the Greek isles and mountain ridges had faded into night.The oars dipped evenly, and the vessel sped forward at a speed equal to that of a modern Channel steamer.At a signal from Lamia the mourners on the quarter-deck ceased to intone their wail.He and Domitia stood in the bows and looked directly before them. They could see a large vessel ahead, of three banks of oars, but she floated immovable on the gently heaving, glassy sea. The oars were all shipped and she was making no way.The deck sparkled with lights. Torches threw up red flames, lamps gave out a fainter yellow gleam. To the cordage lights had been suspended, and braziers burning on the quarter-deck, fed with aromatic woods, turned the water around to molten fire, and sent wafts of fragrance over the sea.The twang of a lyre and the chirp of a feeble voice were faintly audible; and then, after a lull, ensued a musical shout of applause in rhythmic note.“It is the Augustus singing,”said Lamia in a tone of smothered rage and mortification.“And he has his band of adulators about him.”“But why do not the rowers urge on the vessel?”asked Domitia.“Because the piper giving the stroke would be committing high treason in drowning the song of the princely performer. By the Gods! the grinding of the oars in the rowlocks and the plash in the water would drown even his most supreme trills.”“Hast thou seen him on the stage, Lamia?”“The Gods forbid,”answered the young man passionately,“this fancy to be the first of singers and mimes had not come on him before I left Rome for Syria. To think of it, that he—the head of the magistracy, of the army, of the senate, of the priesthood, should figure as Apollo, half naked, in a gold-powdered wig, and with painted cheeks before sniggering Greeks! The Gods deliver me from such a sight!”“But you will behold it now. As we speed along we shall overtake this floating dramatic booth.”“I will give her a wide berth, and stop my ears with wax, though, by the Gods! this is no siren song.”Domitia leaned over the side of the vessel.“Are they sharp, Lucius?”“Are what sharp, Domitia?”“The beaks.”“Sharp as lancets.”“And strong?”“Strong as rams.”“Then, Lucius, we will not give her wide berth. You loved my father. You regard me. You will do what I desire, for his sake and for mine.”“What would you have of me?”“Ram her!”Lucius Lamia started, and looked at the girl.She laid her hand on his arm, and gripped it as with an iron vice.“Run her down, Lucius! Sink the accursed murderer and mountebank in the depths of the Ionian sea.”Lamia gasped for breath.She looked up into his face.“Can it be done?”“By Hercules! we could rip up her side.”“Then do so.”He stood undecided.“Hearken to me. None will suspect our intention as we swiftly shoot up—no, none in this vessel, onlyEboracus must be in it. Suddenly we will round and ram and welt her; and send the new Orion with his fiddle to the fishes. By the Furies! We shall hear him scream. We shall see him beat the waves. Lucius, let me have a marline-spike to dash at him as he swims and split his skull and let out his brains for the fishes to banquet on them.”“We risk all our lives.”“What care I? My father, your friend, will be avenged.”Still Lamia stood in unresolve.“Lucius! I will twine my white arms about your neck, and will kiss you with my red lips, the moment his last scream has rung in my ears.”“In the name of Vengeance—then,”said Lamia.“Eboracus I can count on,”said Domitia.“There is the under-mate. If any one on board suspect our purpose, we are undone.”“None need suspect,”said the girl.“Say that the prince is holding festival on board the trireme, and that it behoves us to salute. None will think other than that we are befooling ourselves like the rest. At the right moment, before any has a thought of thy purpose, call for the double-stroke, and trust Eboracus—he will put the helm about, and in a moment we run her down.”Lamia walked to the quarter-deck, bade the mourning women go below. He extinguished the funeral torches, and threw the ashes from the tripod into the sea. Then the Artemis was no longer distinguishable by any light she bore.Next Lamia walked aft, and in a restrained voice said:“The vessel of Cæsar is before us. We dare not pass without leave asked and granted.”“All right, sir,”said the second mate.“Any orders below?”“Keep on at present speed. When I call Slack, then let them slacken. When I call Double, then at once with full force double.”“Right, sir. I will carry down instructions.”The mate went to the ladder and descended into the hold.There were now left on deck only Lamia, Domitia, the steersman, Eboracus, one sailor and the physician, who was leaning over the bulwarks looking north at the glittering constellation of Cassiopea’s Chair.He was near the quarter-deck, in the fore part of the vessel, and had been unobserved in the darkness by Lamia and Domitia, till they returned aft.Then the young man started as he observed him.Was it possible that the man had overheard the words spoken? There was nothing in the attitude or manner of the physician to show that he entertained alarm. Lamia resolved on keeping an eye upon him that he did not communicate with the crew.Luke returned aft when the young people came in that direction, and seated himself quietly on a bench.Eboracus was rapidly communicated with and gained.The Artemis flew forward, noiselessly, save for the plunge of the oars and the hiss of the foam, as it rushed by like milk, and from the hold sounded the muffled note of thesymphoniciusor piper.Every moment the vessel neared the imperial galley, and sounds of revelry became audible. Nothingshowed that any on board were aware of the approach of a Liburnian.It was now seen that tables were spread on the deck of the Imperial vessel, and that the prince and his attendants, and indeed the entire crew were engaged in revelry.Between the courses which were served, Nero ascended the quarter-deck, and sang or else delivered a recitation from a Greek tragedian, or a piece of his own composition.If the approach of the bireme was observed, which did not seem to be the case, it caused no uneasiness. The Emperor’s vessel had been accompanied by a convoy, but the ships had been dispersed by the storm; and the bireme, if perceived, was doubtless held to be one of the fleet.And now Helios, the confidant of Nero, had ascended the quarter-deck to his master, and began to declaim the speech of the attendant in the Electra descriptive of the conquests of Orestes—applying the words, by significant indications to the prince returning a victor from the Grecian games.“He, having come to the glorious pageantry of the sports in Greece, entered the lists to win the Delphic prizes, he, the admired of every eye. And having started from his goal in wondrous whirls he sped along the course, and bore away the of all coveted prize of victory. But that I may tell thee in few words amidst superfluity I have never known such a man of might and deeds as he—”and he bowed and waved his hands towards Nero.A roar of applause broke out, interrupted by a cry from Nero who suddenly beheld a dark ship plungeout of the night and come within the radiance of the lights on board his vessel.Meanwhile, on the Artemis, with set face sat Eboracus, guiding the head of the Liburnian as directed. He could see the twinkling lights, and hear the sounds of rejoicing.“Slack speed,”called Lamia.“Slack your oars,”down into the hold.There was a pause—all oars held poised for a moment.“Double!”shouted Lamia.“Double your oars!”down the ladder.Instantly the water hissed about the bows, and the oars plunged.Eboracus by a violent movement threw himself and his entire weight on the handle of one paddle, so as to turn the bireme about, and ram her midships into the Imperial trireme, when suddenly, without a word, Luke had drawn a knife through the thong that restrained the paddle, and instantly thepedalionleaped out of place, and would have gone overboard, had not the physician caught and retained it.Immediately the direction of the Artemis was altered and in place of running into the trireme, she swerved and swung past the Imperial galley without touching her.Nero, white with alarm and rage shrieked from the quarter-deck,“Who commands?”Then to those by him,“Pour oil on the flames.”At once from the braziers, tongues of brilliant light leaped high into the air.“The name!”yelled the furious prince.Then came the reply:—“Cnæus Domitius Corbulo.”And by the glare he saw, standing by the mast, distinct against the darkness of the night behind, the form of a man—and the face was the face of the murdered general.Nero staggered back—and would have fallen unless caught by Helios.“The dead pursue me,”he gasped.“Wife, mother, brother, and now, Corbulo!”THE DEAD PURSUE ME.“THE DEAD PURSUE ME.”Page 61.CHAPTER VIII.THE SWORD OF THE DEAD.“It is well done,”said Eboracus in an undertone to the physician;“Otherwise there had been the cross for you and me. The thong broke.”“I severed it,”said Luke.“That I saw,”said the slave,“I shall report that it yielded. One must obey a master even to the risk of the cross. Did’st see the noble Lamia, how ready he was? He assumed the mask of my dead master and we have slipped by and sent a shiver through the whole company of the Trireme, and the August too, I trow,—for they have thought us the Ship of the Dead.”After a pause he said,—“In my home we hold that all souls go to sea in a phantom vessel; and sail away to the West, to the Isles of the Blessed. At night a dark ship with a sail as a thundercloud comes to the shore, and those near can hear the dead in trains go over the beach and enter the ghostly vessel, till she is laden, and then she departs.”The Artemis made her way without disaster to Rhegium, and thence coasted up Italy to the port of Rome. She had gained on the Imperial vessel, that was delayed at Brundusium to collect the scattered fleet. Nero would not land until he reached Neapolis, and then not till all his wreaths and golden apples, aswell as his entire wardrobe of costumes and properties had arrived.Then only did he come ashore, and he did so to commence a triumphal progress through the Peninsula, the like of which was never seen before nor will be seen again.This was on the 19th March, the anniversary of the murder of his mother. On the same day a letter was put into his hands announcing the revolt of the legions in Gaul and the proclamation of Galba, at that time Governor of Spain.So engrossed, however, was his mind with preparation for his theatrical procession, that he paid no heed to the news, nor was he roused till he read the address of Vindex, who led the revolt, denouncing him as a“miserable fiddler.”This touched him to the quick, and he addressed an indignant despatch to the Senate, demanding that Vindex should be chastised, and appealed to the prizes he had gained as testimony to his musical abilities.So he started for Rome.Eighteen hundred and eight heralds strutted before him, bearing in their hands the crowns that had been awarded him and announcing when and how he had succeeded in winning the award.He entered Rome in this leisurely manner, in a triumphal chariot, wearing a purple robe, embroidered with gold, an olive garland about his head. Beside him a harper struck his instrument and chanted his praises.The houses were decorated with festoons, the streets were strewn with saffron; singing birds, comfits, flowers were scattered by the people before him. If the Senate expected that now the prince was in Rome, he would attend to business, it was vastly mistaken. His first concern was to arrange for a splendid exhibition in which he might gratify the public with a finished study of his acting and singing.Solicitude about his triumph, his voice, his reception, had so completely filled the shallow mind of Nero, that he gave no further thought to the vessel that had shot out of the darkness, nearly fouled his galley, and which had been apparently commanded by one of his noblest victims.Longa Duilia arrived on the Gabian estate, with the corpse of her husband, her daughter, Lucius Lamia, and her entire“family,”as the company of household slaves was termed, without accident and without deter.Gabii lay eleven miles from Rome at the foot of one of the spurs of the Alban mountains. The town stood on a small knoll rising out of the Campagna. The stone of which it was built was dark, being a volcanic peperino; it was perhaps one of the least attractive sites for a country residence, which a Roman noble could have selected; but this was not without its advantage, when Emperors acted as did Ahab, and cut off those whose villas and vineyards attracted their covetous eyes.A lake occupied the crater of an extinct volcano; the water was dark as ink, but this was due rather to the character of the bottom, than to depth, which was inconsiderable.The villa and its gardens lay by the water’s edge. The old city not flourishing, but maintaining a languid existence, was famous for nothing but a peculiarity in girding the toga adopted by the men, by the dinginess of its building stone, and by its temple of Juno, an object of pilgrimage when the deities of other shrines had proved unwilling or unable to help, a sort of pis-aller of devotion.Longa Duilia hated the place; it was dull, and she would never have frequented it, had it not been the fashion at the period for all people of good family to affect a love of retirement into the country, and to pretend a taste for simplicity of rural life. Some fine fops had their“chambers of poverty”to which on occasions they retired, to lie on mats upon the ground, and eat pulse out of common earthenware. Such periods of self-denial added zest to luxury.Domitia, on the other hand, was attached to the place. It was associated with the innocent pleasures of earliest childhood. Its spring flowers were the loveliest she had ever culled, its June strawberries the most delicious she had ever eaten. And the lake teeming with char gave opportunities for boating and fishing.Here was the family burial-place; and here Corbulo was to be burnt, and then his ashes collected and consigned to the mausoleum.Messengers had been sent forth to invite the attendance of all relations, acquaintances and dependents.The invitation was couched, according to unalterable custom, in antiquated terms, hardly intelligible. When on the day appointed for the ceremony, vast numbers were collected, the funeral procession started.First went the musicians under the conduct of a Master of the Ceremonies. By law, the number offlautistswas limited to ten.Then followed the professional mourners, hired for the occasion from the temple of Libitina, the priestsof which were the licensed undertakers. Thesemournerschanted the nænia, a lament composed for the purpose of lauding the acts of the deceased and of reciting his honors. When they paused at the conclusion of a strophe, horns and trumpets brayed. Immediately after the wailers walked a train of actors, one of whom was dressed in the insignia of the deceased and wore a mask representing him. He endeavored to mimic each peculiarity of the man he personated, and buffoons around by their antics and jests provoked the spectators to laughter. This farcical exhibition was calculated to moderate the excessive grief superinduced by the lament of the wailers.Then came the grand procession of the ancestors, especially dear to the heart of thewidow.Not only did the effigies of the direct forefathers appear, but all related families trotted out their ancestors, to attend the illustrious dead, so that there cannot have been less than a hundred present.As already mentioned, the wax masks of the dead of a family ornamented every nobleman’s hall, usually enclosed in boxes with the titles of the defunct inscribed on them in gold characters. These were now produced. The mimes were costumed appropriately, as senators, generals, magistrates, with their attendants, wearing the wax masks, and artificial heads of hair.The idea represented was that of the ancestors having returned from the land of Shadows to fetch their descendant and accompany him to the nether world. The corpse, that lay on a bier in the hall, was now taken up, and carried forth to a loud cry from all in the house of“Vale! Farewell! Fare thee well!”Between the lips of the dead man was a coin, placed there as paymentof the toll across the River of Death in the ferry-boat of Charon. On each side of the bier walked attendants carrying lighted torches. In ancient times all funerals had been conducted at night. Now the only reminiscence of this custom was in the bearing of lights; but the torches served as well a practical purpose, as they were employed to kindle the pyre.Before the dead were carried the insignia of his offices, pictures of the battles he had won and statues of the kings and chiefs he had conquered. The corpse was followed by a number of manumitted slaves, all wearing the cap of liberty, in token of their freedom. Finally came the members of the family, friends, retainers, and the sympathizing public.Longa Duilia and Domitia Longina walked in their proper place, with dishevelled hair, unveiled heads, and in thericiniumor black garment thrown over their tunics; the men all wore thepænula, or short travelling cloak.The procession advanced into the marketplace of Gabii, where Lucius Lamia ascended therostrumto pronounce the funeral oration.Immediately, ivory chairs and inlaid stools were ranged in a crescent before him, and on these the ancestors seated themselves, the bier being placed before them.The panegyric was addressed to the crowd outside the circle of mimes with wax faces. Lamia had a gift of natural eloquence, his feelings were engaged, but his freedom of speech was hampered by necessity of caution in allusion to the death of Corbulo, lest some word should be let slip which might be caught up and tortured into a treasonable reference to Nero.The Laudation ended, the entire assembly arose and re-formed in procession to the place of burning, which by law must be sixty feet from any building. There a pit had been excavated and a grating placed above it. On this grating the pyre was erected, consisting of precious woods, sprinkled with gums and spices.To this the corpse was conveyed. But, previous to its being placed on the fagots, a surgeon amputated one of the fingers, which was preserved for burial, and then a handful of earth was thrown over the face of the deceased.Anciently the Roman dead had been buried, and when the fashion for incineration came in, a trace of the earlier usage remained in the burial of a member and the covering of the face with soil.And now ensued a repulsive scene, one without which no great man’s funeral would have been considered as properly performed.Through the crowd pushed two small parties of gladiators, three in each, hired for the occasion of a company that let them out. Then ensued a fight—not mimic, but very real, in front and round the pyre. Now a hard-pressed gladiator ran and was pursued, turned sharply and hacked at his follower. This was continued till three men had fallen and had been stabbed in the breast. Whereupon, the survivors sheathed their swords, bowed and withdrew.The torches were now put into the hands of Duilia and Domitia, and with averted faces they applied the fire to the fagot, and a sheet of flame roared up and enveloped the dead man.And now the mourners raised their loudest cries, tore their hair, scarified their cheeks with their nails;pipes, flutes, horns were blown. In a paroxysm of distress, partly real, partly feigned, a rush was made to the pyre, and all who got near cast some offering into the flames—cakes, flowers, precious stuffs, rings, bracelets, and coins.Duilia, in tragic woe, disengaged a mass of artificial hair from her head, and cast it into the fire. Then rang out the sacramental cry:—“I, licet!You are permitted to retire,”and gladly, sick at heart and faint, Domitia was supported rather than walked home.Some hours later, when the ashes of the defunct had been collected and deposited in an urn, which was conveyed to the mausoleum, Lucius Lamia came to the house and inquired for the ladies.He was informed that the widow was too much overcome by her feelings to see any one, but that Domitia was in thetablinumand would receive him.He at once entered the hall and stepped up into the apartment where she was seated, looking pale and worn, with tear-reddened eyes.She rose, and with a sweet sad smile, extended her hand to Lamia.“No, Domitia,”said he gently,“as your dear father gave me permission on the wharf at Cenchræa, I will claim the same privilege now.”She held her cold, tear-stained cheek to him without a word, then returned to and sank on her stool.“I thank you, dear friend, and almost brother,”she said.“You spoke nobly of my father, though not more nobly than he deserved. Here, my Lucius, is a present for you, I intrust it to you—his sword, which he used so gallantly, on which he fell, and still marked with his blood.”CHAPTER IX.SHEATHED.According to an Oriental legend, the dominion of Solomon over the spirits resided in the power of his staff on which he stayed himself. So long as he wielded that, none might disobey.But the Jins sent a white ant up through the floor, that ate out the heart of the rod, so that when he leaned on it, it gave way and resolved itself into a cloud of fine powder. Solomon fell, and his authority was at an end forever.The termites that consumed the core of the sceptre of Nero were his own vices and follies. Its power was at an end and his fall as sudden as in the case of Solomon, and as unexpected.In March he was possessed of dominion over the world, and was at the head of incalculable forces. In June all was dissolved in the dust of decay; he was prostrate, helpless, bereft of the shadow of authority, unable to command a single slave. The first token of what was about to take place was this.In Rome the rabble was kept in good humor by the Cæsars distributing among them bread gratis, and entertaining them with shows free of charge.During the winter, contrary winds had delayed the corn-ships from Egypt, and the amount of bread distributed was accordingly curtailed. Games were, indeed, promised, but these would serve as condiments to the bread and not as substitutes. Then a vessel arrived in port, and the hungry people believed that she was laden with the wished-for corn. When, however, they learned that her cargo was white sand for strewing the arena at the sports, they broke into a storm of discontent and swept, howling insulting words, under Nero’s windows.Next day all Rome heard that Galba, at the head of the legions of Spain and Gaul, was marching into Italy, and that none of the troops of Nero sent to guard the frontier of the Alps would draw a sword in his defence.The prince, now only seriously alarmed, bade his household guard conduct him to Ostia, where he would mount the vessel that had discharged its load of sand, and escape to Egypt. They contemptuously refused, and disbanded. Then, in an agony of fear, Nero left the Palatine, and fled across the river to the Servilian mansion that adjoined the racecourse, to light which he had burned Christians swathed in tarred wraps.There he found none save his secretary Epaphroditus, whom he had sent there to be chained at the door, and to act as porter because he had offended him. Guards, freedmen, courtiers, actors, all had taken to their heels, but not before they had pillaged the palace.He wandered about the house, knocking at every door, and nowhere meeting with an answer.Night by this time had settled in, murk and close, but at intervals electric flashes shivered overhead.Then suddenly the earth reeled, and there passed a sound as of chariot wheels rolling heavily through the streets; yet the streets were deserted. Trembling, despairing, Nero crouched on his bed, bit his nails tillhe had gnawed them to the quick, then started up and hunted for his jewel case. He would fly on foot, carrying that, hide in some hovel, till danger was past. But a thievish slave had stolen it.Sick at heart, picking, then biting at his nails, shrinking with apprehension at the least noise, wrapping a kerchief about a finger where blood came, he looked with dazed eyes at the red flare of the heavenly fires pulsating through his open door.He heard a step and ran out, to encounter a freedman, Phaon by name, who was coming along the passage, holding aloft a torch, attended by two slaves.The wretched prince clung to him, and entreated that he might not be left alone; that Phaon would protect him, and contrive a means of escape.“Augustus!”answered the freedman,“I am not ungrateful for favors shown me, but my assistance at this hour is unavailing. I am but one man, a stranger, a Greek, and all Rome, all Italy, the entire world, have risen against you.”“I must fly. They will allow me to earn my livelihood on the stage. Of what value to any man is my life?”“My lord, in what value have you held the lives of the thousands that you have taken? Each life cut off has raised against you a hundred enemies. All will pursue, like a pack of hounds baying for the blood of him who murdered their kinsfolk. Even now I passed one—Lucius Ælius Lamia,—and he stayed me to inquire where you might be found. In his hand he held an unsheathed sword.”Nero shrieked out; then looked timidly about him, terrified at the sound of his own voice.“Let us hide. Disguise me. Get me a horse. I cannot run, I am too fat; besides, I have on my felt slippers only.”Phaon spoke to one of his slaves, and the man left.“Master,”said the freedman,“Do not deceive yourself. There is no escape. Prepare to die as a man. Slay yourself. It is not hard to die. Better so fall than get into the hands of implacable enemies.”“I cannot. I have not the courage. I will do it only when everything fails. I have many theatrical wigs. I can paint my face.”“Sire! the people are so wont to see your face besmeared with color, that they are less likely to recognize a face bleached to tallow.”“I have a broad-brimmed fisherman’s hat. I wear it against becoming freckled. That will shade my face. Find me an ample cloak. Here, at length, comes Sporus.”An eunuch appeared in the doorway.Breathless, in short, broken sentences, Nero entreated him to look out in his wardrobe for a sorry mantle, and to bring it him.“But whither will—can you go?”asked Phaon.“The Senate has been assembled—it has been convoked for midnight to vote your deposition and death.”“I will go before it. Nay! I will haste to the Forum, I will mount the Tribune. I will ask to be given the government of Egypt. That at least will not be refused me.”“My lord, the streets are filling with people. They will tear you to pieces ere you reach the Forum.”“Think you so! Why so? I have amused the people so well. Good Phaon, hire me a swift galley, and I willtake refuge with Tiridates. I restored to him the crown of Armenia. He will not be ungrateful.”“My lord, it will not be possible for you to leave Italy.”“Then I will retire to a farm. I will grow cabbages and turnips. The god Tiberius was fond of turnips. O Divine Powers that rule the fate of men! shall I ever eat turnips again? Phaon, hide me for a season. Men’s minds are changeable. They are heated now. They will cool to-morrow. They cannot kill such a superlative artist as myself.”“I have a villa between the Salarian and the Nomentane Roads. If it please you to go thither——”“At once. I think I hear horse-hoofs. O Phaon, save me!”Sporus came up, offering an old moth-eaten cloak. The wardrobe had been plundered, only the refuse had been abandoned.A voice was heard pealing through the empty corridors:“Horses! horses at the door!”“Who calls so loud? Silence him. He will betray us!”said Nero.“Hah! It is Epaphroditus.”At the entrance, chained to a cumbrous log, was the Greek, Epaphroditus, formerly a pampered favorite. But two days previously he had ventured to correct a false quantity in some verses by his master, and Nero, in a burst of resentment and mortified vanity, had ordered him to be fastened to a beam as doorkeeper to the Servilian Palace.“The horses are here,”shouted the freedman.“May it please my lord to mount. Sporus and the slaves can run afoot.”Nero unwound the kerchief from his hand andwrapped it about his throat, drew the broad-brimmed hat over his head, enveloped himself in the blanket cloak, and shuffled in his slippers to the door.The chained Greek at once cried out:“Master! my chain has become entangled and is so knotted that I cannot stir. I have been thus since noon, and none have regarded me. I pray thee, let me go.”“Thou fool! cease hallooing!”retorted Nero angrily.“Dost think I carry about with me the key of thy shackles?”Then to those who followed,“Smite him on the mouth and silence him, or he will call attention to me.”“The gods smite thee!”yelled the scribe, striving to reach an upright posture, but falling again, owing to the tangle in the links.“May they blight thee as they have stricken Livia’s laurel!”3Mounted on an old gray horse, Nero rode to the Ælian Bridge, where stands now that of St. Angelo, crossed it and began to traverse the Campus Martius.Electric flashes quivered across the sky. Then again an earthquake made the city rock as if drunk; the buildings were rent, and masses of cornice fell down.A glare of white lightning illumined the whole field and lighted up the mausoleum of Augustus, and the blank faces of such men as were abroad.The horse trembled and refused to move. It was some time before the alarm of the brute could be allayed, and it could be coaxed to go forward and begin the ascent of the Quirinal. The advance was slow; and Nero’s fears became greater as the roadapproached the Prætorian Camp, and he expected recognition by the sentinels. Yet in the midst of his fear wild flashes of hope shot, and he said to Phaon:“What think you, if I were to enter the camp? Surely the Prætorians would rally about me, and I might dissolve the Senate.”“Sire, they have destroyed your images, and have proclaimed Galba. They would take off your head and set it on a pike.”Nero uttered a groan, and kicked the flanks of his steed. At that moment a passer-by saluted him.“By the Immortals! I am recognized.”“We have but to go a little further.”“Phaon, what if the Senate declare me an enemy of the State?”“Then you will fare in the customary manner.”“How is that?”The prince put his trembling hand to his brow and in his agitation knocked off his hat.The freedman picked it up.“The customary manner, sire! your neck will be put in the cleft of a forked stick and you will be beaten, lashed, kicked to death. Better take the sword and fall on it.”“Oh, Phaon! not yet! I cannot endure pain. I have a spring nail now—and it hurts! it hurts!”“Ride on, my lord; at the cypress hedge we will turn our horses loose, and by a path through the fields reach my villa.”Half an hour after Nero had left the Servilian palace, where now stands the Lateran, Lamia arrived followed by two servants. He found the secretary in a heap at the door, vainly writhing in his knotted chains. Lamiaat once asked him about the prince, whether he was there.“I will both answer and show you whither he is fled,”said Epaphroditus,“if you will release me. Otherwise my tongue is tied like my limbs.”“Is he here?”“Nay, he has been here, but is gone. Whither I alone can say. The price of the information is release.”“Tell me where I can find tools.”Epaphroditus gave the required information and Lamia despatched a servant to bring hammer and chisel. They were speedily produced; but some time was taken up in cutting through the links.This, however, was finally effected, and the secretary gathered up a handful of the broken chain and clenched it in his fist.“Now I will lead the way,”said he, stretching himself.The wretched, fallen emperor had in the meanwhile scrambled through hedges and waded through a marsh, and had at last found a temporary shelter in a garden tool-house of the villa. Phaon feared to introduce him into his house.Wearied out, he cast himself on a sort of bier on which the gardeners carried citron trees to and from the conservatory. The cloak had fallen from him and lay on the soil.His feet were muddy and bleeding. He had tried to eat some oat-cake that had been offered him, but was unable to swallow.He continued to be teased with, and to pick or bite at his spring nails.“I hear steps!”he cried.“They will kill me!”“Sire, play the man.”Phaon offered him a couple of poniards.Nero put the point of one to his breast, shrunk and threw it away.“It is too blunt, it will not enter,”he said.He tried the other and dropped it.“It is over sharp. It cuts,”he said.At that moment the door opened and Lamia and Epaphroditus entered.Nero cried out and covered his face:“Sporus! Phaon! one or both! kill yourselves and show me how to do it.”“To do it!”said Lamia sternly.“That is not difficult. Do you need a sword? Here is one—the sword of Corbulo.”He extended the weapon to the prince, who accepted it with tremulous hand, looking at Lamia with glassy eyes.“Oh! a moment! I feel sick.”Then Phaon said:“Sire—at once!”Then Nero, with all power going out of his fingers, pointed the blade to his throat.“I cannot,”he gasped,“my hand is numb.”Immediately, Epaphroditus with his hand full of chain, brought the weighted fist against the haft, and drove the sword into the coward’s throat.He sank back on the bier.Then Lamia stooped, gathered up the moth-eaten cloak, and threw it over the face of the dying man.
CHAPTER VII.THE FACE OF THE DEAD.The Imperial galley!Domitia leaped to her feet. Everything was forgotten in the one thought that before her, on the sea, floated the man who had caused the death of her father.“Lucius I must see——”He drew her forward, but at the same time checked her speech.“Every word dropped is fraught with danger,”he said.“What know you but that yon physician be a spy?”“He is not that,”she answered,“show him to me—him——”They walked together to the bows.With the declining of the sun, the light wind had died away, and, although the sea heaved after the recent storm, like the bosom of a sleeping girl, in the stillness of the air, the sail drooped and the ship made no way.Accordingly the sail was furled, and, by the advice of the mate, the rowers, who had rested during the day, were summoned to their benches and bidden work the oars during the night.The sky was clear, and the stars were beginning to twinkle. No part of the voyage in calm weather would be less dangerous than this, which might be performed at night, across open sea, unbroken by rocks and sand-banks.So long as the vessel had to thread her way between the headland of Araxus and the Echinades, and then betwixt the isles of Cephalonia and Zacynthus, an experienced navigator was necessary, and caution had to be exercised both in the management of the sail and in the manipulation of the helm. But now all was plain, and the mate had retired below to rest. During the time he reposed Lamia took charge of the vessel, assisted by the second mate.“You take your meridian by Polaris, Castor and Pollux, steer due west; if there be a slight deviation from the right course, that is a trifle. I will set it right when my watch comes.”Such was the mate’s injunction as he retired below.“The steersman is done up,”said Lamia;“he shall rest now, and no better man can be found to replace him than Eboracus, who has been accustomed to the stormy seas of Britain, and whose nerves are of iron.”Indeed, thegubernatoror helmsman had hard work for his arms. The two enormous paddles had short cross-pieces let into them, like the handles of a scythe, and the clumsy and heavy mechanism for giving direction to the head of the vessel was worked by leverage in this manner.The sailors managed everything on deck, the cordage, the anchors, the sail and the boats. In rough weather they undergirded the ship; that is to say,passed horizontal cords round her to brace the spars together so as to facilitate resistance to the strain when laboring against the waves. The sailors were under the direction of the captain or trierarch, so called whether he commanded a trireme or a Liburnian of two benches.On deck the steersman occupied a sort of sentry-box in the stern, and beside him sat the mate, the second mate, and often also the captain, forming a sort of council for the direction of the vessel.It was a favorite figure in the early Church to represent the Bishop as the helmsman of the sacred vessel, and the presbyters who sat about him as the mates occupying the stern bench. As already said, in a Roman vessel, there was a lack of that unity in direction under the captain to which we are accustomed. A military officer was always supreme everywhere on sea as on land.When the sailors were engaged in sailing, then the rowers rested or caroused, and when they in turn bowed over the oars, the sailors had leisure.The sun went down in the west, lighting up the sky above where he set with a rainbow or halo of copper light fading into green.The night fell rapidly, and the stars looked out above and around, and formed broken reflections in the sea.In winter the foam that broke and was swept to right and left had none of the flash and luminosity it displayed in summer, when the water was warm.Already in the wake the Greek isles and mountain ridges had faded into night.The oars dipped evenly, and the vessel sped forward at a speed equal to that of a modern Channel steamer.At a signal from Lamia the mourners on the quarter-deck ceased to intone their wail.He and Domitia stood in the bows and looked directly before them. They could see a large vessel ahead, of three banks of oars, but she floated immovable on the gently heaving, glassy sea. The oars were all shipped and she was making no way.The deck sparkled with lights. Torches threw up red flames, lamps gave out a fainter yellow gleam. To the cordage lights had been suspended, and braziers burning on the quarter-deck, fed with aromatic woods, turned the water around to molten fire, and sent wafts of fragrance over the sea.The twang of a lyre and the chirp of a feeble voice were faintly audible; and then, after a lull, ensued a musical shout of applause in rhythmic note.“It is the Augustus singing,”said Lamia in a tone of smothered rage and mortification.“And he has his band of adulators about him.”“But why do not the rowers urge on the vessel?”asked Domitia.“Because the piper giving the stroke would be committing high treason in drowning the song of the princely performer. By the Gods! the grinding of the oars in the rowlocks and the plash in the water would drown even his most supreme trills.”“Hast thou seen him on the stage, Lamia?”“The Gods forbid,”answered the young man passionately,“this fancy to be the first of singers and mimes had not come on him before I left Rome for Syria. To think of it, that he—the head of the magistracy, of the army, of the senate, of the priesthood, should figure as Apollo, half naked, in a gold-powdered wig, and with painted cheeks before sniggering Greeks! The Gods deliver me from such a sight!”“But you will behold it now. As we speed along we shall overtake this floating dramatic booth.”“I will give her a wide berth, and stop my ears with wax, though, by the Gods! this is no siren song.”Domitia leaned over the side of the vessel.“Are they sharp, Lucius?”“Are what sharp, Domitia?”“The beaks.”“Sharp as lancets.”“And strong?”“Strong as rams.”“Then, Lucius, we will not give her wide berth. You loved my father. You regard me. You will do what I desire, for his sake and for mine.”“What would you have of me?”“Ram her!”Lucius Lamia started, and looked at the girl.She laid her hand on his arm, and gripped it as with an iron vice.“Run her down, Lucius! Sink the accursed murderer and mountebank in the depths of the Ionian sea.”Lamia gasped for breath.She looked up into his face.“Can it be done?”“By Hercules! we could rip up her side.”“Then do so.”He stood undecided.“Hearken to me. None will suspect our intention as we swiftly shoot up—no, none in this vessel, onlyEboracus must be in it. Suddenly we will round and ram and welt her; and send the new Orion with his fiddle to the fishes. By the Furies! We shall hear him scream. We shall see him beat the waves. Lucius, let me have a marline-spike to dash at him as he swims and split his skull and let out his brains for the fishes to banquet on them.”“We risk all our lives.”“What care I? My father, your friend, will be avenged.”Still Lamia stood in unresolve.“Lucius! I will twine my white arms about your neck, and will kiss you with my red lips, the moment his last scream has rung in my ears.”“In the name of Vengeance—then,”said Lamia.“Eboracus I can count on,”said Domitia.“There is the under-mate. If any one on board suspect our purpose, we are undone.”“None need suspect,”said the girl.“Say that the prince is holding festival on board the trireme, and that it behoves us to salute. None will think other than that we are befooling ourselves like the rest. At the right moment, before any has a thought of thy purpose, call for the double-stroke, and trust Eboracus—he will put the helm about, and in a moment we run her down.”Lamia walked to the quarter-deck, bade the mourning women go below. He extinguished the funeral torches, and threw the ashes from the tripod into the sea. Then the Artemis was no longer distinguishable by any light she bore.Next Lamia walked aft, and in a restrained voice said:“The vessel of Cæsar is before us. We dare not pass without leave asked and granted.”“All right, sir,”said the second mate.“Any orders below?”“Keep on at present speed. When I call Slack, then let them slacken. When I call Double, then at once with full force double.”“Right, sir. I will carry down instructions.”The mate went to the ladder and descended into the hold.There were now left on deck only Lamia, Domitia, the steersman, Eboracus, one sailor and the physician, who was leaning over the bulwarks looking north at the glittering constellation of Cassiopea’s Chair.He was near the quarter-deck, in the fore part of the vessel, and had been unobserved in the darkness by Lamia and Domitia, till they returned aft.Then the young man started as he observed him.Was it possible that the man had overheard the words spoken? There was nothing in the attitude or manner of the physician to show that he entertained alarm. Lamia resolved on keeping an eye upon him that he did not communicate with the crew.Luke returned aft when the young people came in that direction, and seated himself quietly on a bench.Eboracus was rapidly communicated with and gained.The Artemis flew forward, noiselessly, save for the plunge of the oars and the hiss of the foam, as it rushed by like milk, and from the hold sounded the muffled note of thesymphoniciusor piper.Every moment the vessel neared the imperial galley, and sounds of revelry became audible. Nothingshowed that any on board were aware of the approach of a Liburnian.It was now seen that tables were spread on the deck of the Imperial vessel, and that the prince and his attendants, and indeed the entire crew were engaged in revelry.Between the courses which were served, Nero ascended the quarter-deck, and sang or else delivered a recitation from a Greek tragedian, or a piece of his own composition.If the approach of the bireme was observed, which did not seem to be the case, it caused no uneasiness. The Emperor’s vessel had been accompanied by a convoy, but the ships had been dispersed by the storm; and the bireme, if perceived, was doubtless held to be one of the fleet.And now Helios, the confidant of Nero, had ascended the quarter-deck to his master, and began to declaim the speech of the attendant in the Electra descriptive of the conquests of Orestes—applying the words, by significant indications to the prince returning a victor from the Grecian games.“He, having come to the glorious pageantry of the sports in Greece, entered the lists to win the Delphic prizes, he, the admired of every eye. And having started from his goal in wondrous whirls he sped along the course, and bore away the of all coveted prize of victory. But that I may tell thee in few words amidst superfluity I have never known such a man of might and deeds as he—”and he bowed and waved his hands towards Nero.A roar of applause broke out, interrupted by a cry from Nero who suddenly beheld a dark ship plungeout of the night and come within the radiance of the lights on board his vessel.Meanwhile, on the Artemis, with set face sat Eboracus, guiding the head of the Liburnian as directed. He could see the twinkling lights, and hear the sounds of rejoicing.“Slack speed,”called Lamia.“Slack your oars,”down into the hold.There was a pause—all oars held poised for a moment.“Double!”shouted Lamia.“Double your oars!”down the ladder.Instantly the water hissed about the bows, and the oars plunged.Eboracus by a violent movement threw himself and his entire weight on the handle of one paddle, so as to turn the bireme about, and ram her midships into the Imperial trireme, when suddenly, without a word, Luke had drawn a knife through the thong that restrained the paddle, and instantly thepedalionleaped out of place, and would have gone overboard, had not the physician caught and retained it.Immediately the direction of the Artemis was altered and in place of running into the trireme, she swerved and swung past the Imperial galley without touching her.Nero, white with alarm and rage shrieked from the quarter-deck,“Who commands?”Then to those by him,“Pour oil on the flames.”At once from the braziers, tongues of brilliant light leaped high into the air.“The name!”yelled the furious prince.Then came the reply:—“Cnæus Domitius Corbulo.”And by the glare he saw, standing by the mast, distinct against the darkness of the night behind, the form of a man—and the face was the face of the murdered general.Nero staggered back—and would have fallen unless caught by Helios.“The dead pursue me,”he gasped.“Wife, mother, brother, and now, Corbulo!”THE DEAD PURSUE ME.“THE DEAD PURSUE ME.”Page 61.CHAPTER VIII.THE SWORD OF THE DEAD.“It is well done,”said Eboracus in an undertone to the physician;“Otherwise there had been the cross for you and me. The thong broke.”“I severed it,”said Luke.“That I saw,”said the slave,“I shall report that it yielded. One must obey a master even to the risk of the cross. Did’st see the noble Lamia, how ready he was? He assumed the mask of my dead master and we have slipped by and sent a shiver through the whole company of the Trireme, and the August too, I trow,—for they have thought us the Ship of the Dead.”After a pause he said,—“In my home we hold that all souls go to sea in a phantom vessel; and sail away to the West, to the Isles of the Blessed. At night a dark ship with a sail as a thundercloud comes to the shore, and those near can hear the dead in trains go over the beach and enter the ghostly vessel, till she is laden, and then she departs.”The Artemis made her way without disaster to Rhegium, and thence coasted up Italy to the port of Rome. She had gained on the Imperial vessel, that was delayed at Brundusium to collect the scattered fleet. Nero would not land until he reached Neapolis, and then not till all his wreaths and golden apples, aswell as his entire wardrobe of costumes and properties had arrived.Then only did he come ashore, and he did so to commence a triumphal progress through the Peninsula, the like of which was never seen before nor will be seen again.This was on the 19th March, the anniversary of the murder of his mother. On the same day a letter was put into his hands announcing the revolt of the legions in Gaul and the proclamation of Galba, at that time Governor of Spain.So engrossed, however, was his mind with preparation for his theatrical procession, that he paid no heed to the news, nor was he roused till he read the address of Vindex, who led the revolt, denouncing him as a“miserable fiddler.”This touched him to the quick, and he addressed an indignant despatch to the Senate, demanding that Vindex should be chastised, and appealed to the prizes he had gained as testimony to his musical abilities.So he started for Rome.Eighteen hundred and eight heralds strutted before him, bearing in their hands the crowns that had been awarded him and announcing when and how he had succeeded in winning the award.He entered Rome in this leisurely manner, in a triumphal chariot, wearing a purple robe, embroidered with gold, an olive garland about his head. Beside him a harper struck his instrument and chanted his praises.The houses were decorated with festoons, the streets were strewn with saffron; singing birds, comfits, flowers were scattered by the people before him. If the Senate expected that now the prince was in Rome, he would attend to business, it was vastly mistaken. His first concern was to arrange for a splendid exhibition in which he might gratify the public with a finished study of his acting and singing.Solicitude about his triumph, his voice, his reception, had so completely filled the shallow mind of Nero, that he gave no further thought to the vessel that had shot out of the darkness, nearly fouled his galley, and which had been apparently commanded by one of his noblest victims.Longa Duilia arrived on the Gabian estate, with the corpse of her husband, her daughter, Lucius Lamia, and her entire“family,”as the company of household slaves was termed, without accident and without deter.Gabii lay eleven miles from Rome at the foot of one of the spurs of the Alban mountains. The town stood on a small knoll rising out of the Campagna. The stone of which it was built was dark, being a volcanic peperino; it was perhaps one of the least attractive sites for a country residence, which a Roman noble could have selected; but this was not without its advantage, when Emperors acted as did Ahab, and cut off those whose villas and vineyards attracted their covetous eyes.A lake occupied the crater of an extinct volcano; the water was dark as ink, but this was due rather to the character of the bottom, than to depth, which was inconsiderable.The villa and its gardens lay by the water’s edge. The old city not flourishing, but maintaining a languid existence, was famous for nothing but a peculiarity in girding the toga adopted by the men, by the dinginess of its building stone, and by its temple of Juno, an object of pilgrimage when the deities of other shrines had proved unwilling or unable to help, a sort of pis-aller of devotion.Longa Duilia hated the place; it was dull, and she would never have frequented it, had it not been the fashion at the period for all people of good family to affect a love of retirement into the country, and to pretend a taste for simplicity of rural life. Some fine fops had their“chambers of poverty”to which on occasions they retired, to lie on mats upon the ground, and eat pulse out of common earthenware. Such periods of self-denial added zest to luxury.Domitia, on the other hand, was attached to the place. It was associated with the innocent pleasures of earliest childhood. Its spring flowers were the loveliest she had ever culled, its June strawberries the most delicious she had ever eaten. And the lake teeming with char gave opportunities for boating and fishing.Here was the family burial-place; and here Corbulo was to be burnt, and then his ashes collected and consigned to the mausoleum.Messengers had been sent forth to invite the attendance of all relations, acquaintances and dependents.The invitation was couched, according to unalterable custom, in antiquated terms, hardly intelligible. When on the day appointed for the ceremony, vast numbers were collected, the funeral procession started.First went the musicians under the conduct of a Master of the Ceremonies. By law, the number offlautistswas limited to ten.Then followed the professional mourners, hired for the occasion from the temple of Libitina, the priestsof which were the licensed undertakers. Thesemournerschanted the nænia, a lament composed for the purpose of lauding the acts of the deceased and of reciting his honors. When they paused at the conclusion of a strophe, horns and trumpets brayed. Immediately after the wailers walked a train of actors, one of whom was dressed in the insignia of the deceased and wore a mask representing him. He endeavored to mimic each peculiarity of the man he personated, and buffoons around by their antics and jests provoked the spectators to laughter. This farcical exhibition was calculated to moderate the excessive grief superinduced by the lament of the wailers.Then came the grand procession of the ancestors, especially dear to the heart of thewidow.Not only did the effigies of the direct forefathers appear, but all related families trotted out their ancestors, to attend the illustrious dead, so that there cannot have been less than a hundred present.As already mentioned, the wax masks of the dead of a family ornamented every nobleman’s hall, usually enclosed in boxes with the titles of the defunct inscribed on them in gold characters. These were now produced. The mimes were costumed appropriately, as senators, generals, magistrates, with their attendants, wearing the wax masks, and artificial heads of hair.The idea represented was that of the ancestors having returned from the land of Shadows to fetch their descendant and accompany him to the nether world. The corpse, that lay on a bier in the hall, was now taken up, and carried forth to a loud cry from all in the house of“Vale! Farewell! Fare thee well!”Between the lips of the dead man was a coin, placed there as paymentof the toll across the River of Death in the ferry-boat of Charon. On each side of the bier walked attendants carrying lighted torches. In ancient times all funerals had been conducted at night. Now the only reminiscence of this custom was in the bearing of lights; but the torches served as well a practical purpose, as they were employed to kindle the pyre.Before the dead were carried the insignia of his offices, pictures of the battles he had won and statues of the kings and chiefs he had conquered. The corpse was followed by a number of manumitted slaves, all wearing the cap of liberty, in token of their freedom. Finally came the members of the family, friends, retainers, and the sympathizing public.Longa Duilia and Domitia Longina walked in their proper place, with dishevelled hair, unveiled heads, and in thericiniumor black garment thrown over their tunics; the men all wore thepænula, or short travelling cloak.The procession advanced into the marketplace of Gabii, where Lucius Lamia ascended therostrumto pronounce the funeral oration.Immediately, ivory chairs and inlaid stools were ranged in a crescent before him, and on these the ancestors seated themselves, the bier being placed before them.The panegyric was addressed to the crowd outside the circle of mimes with wax faces. Lamia had a gift of natural eloquence, his feelings were engaged, but his freedom of speech was hampered by necessity of caution in allusion to the death of Corbulo, lest some word should be let slip which might be caught up and tortured into a treasonable reference to Nero.The Laudation ended, the entire assembly arose and re-formed in procession to the place of burning, which by law must be sixty feet from any building. There a pit had been excavated and a grating placed above it. On this grating the pyre was erected, consisting of precious woods, sprinkled with gums and spices.To this the corpse was conveyed. But, previous to its being placed on the fagots, a surgeon amputated one of the fingers, which was preserved for burial, and then a handful of earth was thrown over the face of the deceased.Anciently the Roman dead had been buried, and when the fashion for incineration came in, a trace of the earlier usage remained in the burial of a member and the covering of the face with soil.And now ensued a repulsive scene, one without which no great man’s funeral would have been considered as properly performed.Through the crowd pushed two small parties of gladiators, three in each, hired for the occasion of a company that let them out. Then ensued a fight—not mimic, but very real, in front and round the pyre. Now a hard-pressed gladiator ran and was pursued, turned sharply and hacked at his follower. This was continued till three men had fallen and had been stabbed in the breast. Whereupon, the survivors sheathed their swords, bowed and withdrew.The torches were now put into the hands of Duilia and Domitia, and with averted faces they applied the fire to the fagot, and a sheet of flame roared up and enveloped the dead man.And now the mourners raised their loudest cries, tore their hair, scarified their cheeks with their nails;pipes, flutes, horns were blown. In a paroxysm of distress, partly real, partly feigned, a rush was made to the pyre, and all who got near cast some offering into the flames—cakes, flowers, precious stuffs, rings, bracelets, and coins.Duilia, in tragic woe, disengaged a mass of artificial hair from her head, and cast it into the fire. Then rang out the sacramental cry:—“I, licet!You are permitted to retire,”and gladly, sick at heart and faint, Domitia was supported rather than walked home.Some hours later, when the ashes of the defunct had been collected and deposited in an urn, which was conveyed to the mausoleum, Lucius Lamia came to the house and inquired for the ladies.He was informed that the widow was too much overcome by her feelings to see any one, but that Domitia was in thetablinumand would receive him.He at once entered the hall and stepped up into the apartment where she was seated, looking pale and worn, with tear-reddened eyes.She rose, and with a sweet sad smile, extended her hand to Lamia.“No, Domitia,”said he gently,“as your dear father gave me permission on the wharf at Cenchræa, I will claim the same privilege now.”She held her cold, tear-stained cheek to him without a word, then returned to and sank on her stool.“I thank you, dear friend, and almost brother,”she said.“You spoke nobly of my father, though not more nobly than he deserved. Here, my Lucius, is a present for you, I intrust it to you—his sword, which he used so gallantly, on which he fell, and still marked with his blood.”CHAPTER IX.SHEATHED.According to an Oriental legend, the dominion of Solomon over the spirits resided in the power of his staff on which he stayed himself. So long as he wielded that, none might disobey.But the Jins sent a white ant up through the floor, that ate out the heart of the rod, so that when he leaned on it, it gave way and resolved itself into a cloud of fine powder. Solomon fell, and his authority was at an end forever.The termites that consumed the core of the sceptre of Nero were his own vices and follies. Its power was at an end and his fall as sudden as in the case of Solomon, and as unexpected.In March he was possessed of dominion over the world, and was at the head of incalculable forces. In June all was dissolved in the dust of decay; he was prostrate, helpless, bereft of the shadow of authority, unable to command a single slave. The first token of what was about to take place was this.In Rome the rabble was kept in good humor by the Cæsars distributing among them bread gratis, and entertaining them with shows free of charge.During the winter, contrary winds had delayed the corn-ships from Egypt, and the amount of bread distributed was accordingly curtailed. Games were, indeed, promised, but these would serve as condiments to the bread and not as substitutes. Then a vessel arrived in port, and the hungry people believed that she was laden with the wished-for corn. When, however, they learned that her cargo was white sand for strewing the arena at the sports, they broke into a storm of discontent and swept, howling insulting words, under Nero’s windows.Next day all Rome heard that Galba, at the head of the legions of Spain and Gaul, was marching into Italy, and that none of the troops of Nero sent to guard the frontier of the Alps would draw a sword in his defence.The prince, now only seriously alarmed, bade his household guard conduct him to Ostia, where he would mount the vessel that had discharged its load of sand, and escape to Egypt. They contemptuously refused, and disbanded. Then, in an agony of fear, Nero left the Palatine, and fled across the river to the Servilian mansion that adjoined the racecourse, to light which he had burned Christians swathed in tarred wraps.There he found none save his secretary Epaphroditus, whom he had sent there to be chained at the door, and to act as porter because he had offended him. Guards, freedmen, courtiers, actors, all had taken to their heels, but not before they had pillaged the palace.He wandered about the house, knocking at every door, and nowhere meeting with an answer.Night by this time had settled in, murk and close, but at intervals electric flashes shivered overhead.Then suddenly the earth reeled, and there passed a sound as of chariot wheels rolling heavily through the streets; yet the streets were deserted. Trembling, despairing, Nero crouched on his bed, bit his nails tillhe had gnawed them to the quick, then started up and hunted for his jewel case. He would fly on foot, carrying that, hide in some hovel, till danger was past. But a thievish slave had stolen it.Sick at heart, picking, then biting at his nails, shrinking with apprehension at the least noise, wrapping a kerchief about a finger where blood came, he looked with dazed eyes at the red flare of the heavenly fires pulsating through his open door.He heard a step and ran out, to encounter a freedman, Phaon by name, who was coming along the passage, holding aloft a torch, attended by two slaves.The wretched prince clung to him, and entreated that he might not be left alone; that Phaon would protect him, and contrive a means of escape.“Augustus!”answered the freedman,“I am not ungrateful for favors shown me, but my assistance at this hour is unavailing. I am but one man, a stranger, a Greek, and all Rome, all Italy, the entire world, have risen against you.”“I must fly. They will allow me to earn my livelihood on the stage. Of what value to any man is my life?”“My lord, in what value have you held the lives of the thousands that you have taken? Each life cut off has raised against you a hundred enemies. All will pursue, like a pack of hounds baying for the blood of him who murdered their kinsfolk. Even now I passed one—Lucius Ælius Lamia,—and he stayed me to inquire where you might be found. In his hand he held an unsheathed sword.”Nero shrieked out; then looked timidly about him, terrified at the sound of his own voice.“Let us hide. Disguise me. Get me a horse. I cannot run, I am too fat; besides, I have on my felt slippers only.”Phaon spoke to one of his slaves, and the man left.“Master,”said the freedman,“Do not deceive yourself. There is no escape. Prepare to die as a man. Slay yourself. It is not hard to die. Better so fall than get into the hands of implacable enemies.”“I cannot. I have not the courage. I will do it only when everything fails. I have many theatrical wigs. I can paint my face.”“Sire! the people are so wont to see your face besmeared with color, that they are less likely to recognize a face bleached to tallow.”“I have a broad-brimmed fisherman’s hat. I wear it against becoming freckled. That will shade my face. Find me an ample cloak. Here, at length, comes Sporus.”An eunuch appeared in the doorway.Breathless, in short, broken sentences, Nero entreated him to look out in his wardrobe for a sorry mantle, and to bring it him.“But whither will—can you go?”asked Phaon.“The Senate has been assembled—it has been convoked for midnight to vote your deposition and death.”“I will go before it. Nay! I will haste to the Forum, I will mount the Tribune. I will ask to be given the government of Egypt. That at least will not be refused me.”“My lord, the streets are filling with people. They will tear you to pieces ere you reach the Forum.”“Think you so! Why so? I have amused the people so well. Good Phaon, hire me a swift galley, and I willtake refuge with Tiridates. I restored to him the crown of Armenia. He will not be ungrateful.”“My lord, it will not be possible for you to leave Italy.”“Then I will retire to a farm. I will grow cabbages and turnips. The god Tiberius was fond of turnips. O Divine Powers that rule the fate of men! shall I ever eat turnips again? Phaon, hide me for a season. Men’s minds are changeable. They are heated now. They will cool to-morrow. They cannot kill such a superlative artist as myself.”“I have a villa between the Salarian and the Nomentane Roads. If it please you to go thither——”“At once. I think I hear horse-hoofs. O Phaon, save me!”Sporus came up, offering an old moth-eaten cloak. The wardrobe had been plundered, only the refuse had been abandoned.A voice was heard pealing through the empty corridors:“Horses! horses at the door!”“Who calls so loud? Silence him. He will betray us!”said Nero.“Hah! It is Epaphroditus.”At the entrance, chained to a cumbrous log, was the Greek, Epaphroditus, formerly a pampered favorite. But two days previously he had ventured to correct a false quantity in some verses by his master, and Nero, in a burst of resentment and mortified vanity, had ordered him to be fastened to a beam as doorkeeper to the Servilian Palace.“The horses are here,”shouted the freedman.“May it please my lord to mount. Sporus and the slaves can run afoot.”Nero unwound the kerchief from his hand andwrapped it about his throat, drew the broad-brimmed hat over his head, enveloped himself in the blanket cloak, and shuffled in his slippers to the door.The chained Greek at once cried out:“Master! my chain has become entangled and is so knotted that I cannot stir. I have been thus since noon, and none have regarded me. I pray thee, let me go.”“Thou fool! cease hallooing!”retorted Nero angrily.“Dost think I carry about with me the key of thy shackles?”Then to those who followed,“Smite him on the mouth and silence him, or he will call attention to me.”“The gods smite thee!”yelled the scribe, striving to reach an upright posture, but falling again, owing to the tangle in the links.“May they blight thee as they have stricken Livia’s laurel!”3Mounted on an old gray horse, Nero rode to the Ælian Bridge, where stands now that of St. Angelo, crossed it and began to traverse the Campus Martius.Electric flashes quivered across the sky. Then again an earthquake made the city rock as if drunk; the buildings were rent, and masses of cornice fell down.A glare of white lightning illumined the whole field and lighted up the mausoleum of Augustus, and the blank faces of such men as were abroad.The horse trembled and refused to move. It was some time before the alarm of the brute could be allayed, and it could be coaxed to go forward and begin the ascent of the Quirinal. The advance was slow; and Nero’s fears became greater as the roadapproached the Prætorian Camp, and he expected recognition by the sentinels. Yet in the midst of his fear wild flashes of hope shot, and he said to Phaon:“What think you, if I were to enter the camp? Surely the Prætorians would rally about me, and I might dissolve the Senate.”“Sire, they have destroyed your images, and have proclaimed Galba. They would take off your head and set it on a pike.”Nero uttered a groan, and kicked the flanks of his steed. At that moment a passer-by saluted him.“By the Immortals! I am recognized.”“We have but to go a little further.”“Phaon, what if the Senate declare me an enemy of the State?”“Then you will fare in the customary manner.”“How is that?”The prince put his trembling hand to his brow and in his agitation knocked off his hat.The freedman picked it up.“The customary manner, sire! your neck will be put in the cleft of a forked stick and you will be beaten, lashed, kicked to death. Better take the sword and fall on it.”“Oh, Phaon! not yet! I cannot endure pain. I have a spring nail now—and it hurts! it hurts!”“Ride on, my lord; at the cypress hedge we will turn our horses loose, and by a path through the fields reach my villa.”Half an hour after Nero had left the Servilian palace, where now stands the Lateran, Lamia arrived followed by two servants. He found the secretary in a heap at the door, vainly writhing in his knotted chains. Lamiaat once asked him about the prince, whether he was there.“I will both answer and show you whither he is fled,”said Epaphroditus,“if you will release me. Otherwise my tongue is tied like my limbs.”“Is he here?”“Nay, he has been here, but is gone. Whither I alone can say. The price of the information is release.”“Tell me where I can find tools.”Epaphroditus gave the required information and Lamia despatched a servant to bring hammer and chisel. They were speedily produced; but some time was taken up in cutting through the links.This, however, was finally effected, and the secretary gathered up a handful of the broken chain and clenched it in his fist.“Now I will lead the way,”said he, stretching himself.The wretched, fallen emperor had in the meanwhile scrambled through hedges and waded through a marsh, and had at last found a temporary shelter in a garden tool-house of the villa. Phaon feared to introduce him into his house.Wearied out, he cast himself on a sort of bier on which the gardeners carried citron trees to and from the conservatory. The cloak had fallen from him and lay on the soil.His feet were muddy and bleeding. He had tried to eat some oat-cake that had been offered him, but was unable to swallow.He continued to be teased with, and to pick or bite at his spring nails.“I hear steps!”he cried.“They will kill me!”“Sire, play the man.”Phaon offered him a couple of poniards.Nero put the point of one to his breast, shrunk and threw it away.“It is too blunt, it will not enter,”he said.He tried the other and dropped it.“It is over sharp. It cuts,”he said.At that moment the door opened and Lamia and Epaphroditus entered.Nero cried out and covered his face:“Sporus! Phaon! one or both! kill yourselves and show me how to do it.”“To do it!”said Lamia sternly.“That is not difficult. Do you need a sword? Here is one—the sword of Corbulo.”He extended the weapon to the prince, who accepted it with tremulous hand, looking at Lamia with glassy eyes.“Oh! a moment! I feel sick.”Then Phaon said:“Sire—at once!”Then Nero, with all power going out of his fingers, pointed the blade to his throat.“I cannot,”he gasped,“my hand is numb.”Immediately, Epaphroditus with his hand full of chain, brought the weighted fist against the haft, and drove the sword into the coward’s throat.He sank back on the bier.Then Lamia stooped, gathered up the moth-eaten cloak, and threw it over the face of the dying man.
CHAPTER VII.THE FACE OF THE DEAD.The Imperial galley!Domitia leaped to her feet. Everything was forgotten in the one thought that before her, on the sea, floated the man who had caused the death of her father.“Lucius I must see——”He drew her forward, but at the same time checked her speech.“Every word dropped is fraught with danger,”he said.“What know you but that yon physician be a spy?”“He is not that,”she answered,“show him to me—him——”They walked together to the bows.With the declining of the sun, the light wind had died away, and, although the sea heaved after the recent storm, like the bosom of a sleeping girl, in the stillness of the air, the sail drooped and the ship made no way.Accordingly the sail was furled, and, by the advice of the mate, the rowers, who had rested during the day, were summoned to their benches and bidden work the oars during the night.The sky was clear, and the stars were beginning to twinkle. No part of the voyage in calm weather would be less dangerous than this, which might be performed at night, across open sea, unbroken by rocks and sand-banks.So long as the vessel had to thread her way between the headland of Araxus and the Echinades, and then betwixt the isles of Cephalonia and Zacynthus, an experienced navigator was necessary, and caution had to be exercised both in the management of the sail and in the manipulation of the helm. But now all was plain, and the mate had retired below to rest. During the time he reposed Lamia took charge of the vessel, assisted by the second mate.“You take your meridian by Polaris, Castor and Pollux, steer due west; if there be a slight deviation from the right course, that is a trifle. I will set it right when my watch comes.”Such was the mate’s injunction as he retired below.“The steersman is done up,”said Lamia;“he shall rest now, and no better man can be found to replace him than Eboracus, who has been accustomed to the stormy seas of Britain, and whose nerves are of iron.”Indeed, thegubernatoror helmsman had hard work for his arms. The two enormous paddles had short cross-pieces let into them, like the handles of a scythe, and the clumsy and heavy mechanism for giving direction to the head of the vessel was worked by leverage in this manner.The sailors managed everything on deck, the cordage, the anchors, the sail and the boats. In rough weather they undergirded the ship; that is to say,passed horizontal cords round her to brace the spars together so as to facilitate resistance to the strain when laboring against the waves. The sailors were under the direction of the captain or trierarch, so called whether he commanded a trireme or a Liburnian of two benches.On deck the steersman occupied a sort of sentry-box in the stern, and beside him sat the mate, the second mate, and often also the captain, forming a sort of council for the direction of the vessel.It was a favorite figure in the early Church to represent the Bishop as the helmsman of the sacred vessel, and the presbyters who sat about him as the mates occupying the stern bench. As already said, in a Roman vessel, there was a lack of that unity in direction under the captain to which we are accustomed. A military officer was always supreme everywhere on sea as on land.When the sailors were engaged in sailing, then the rowers rested or caroused, and when they in turn bowed over the oars, the sailors had leisure.The sun went down in the west, lighting up the sky above where he set with a rainbow or halo of copper light fading into green.The night fell rapidly, and the stars looked out above and around, and formed broken reflections in the sea.In winter the foam that broke and was swept to right and left had none of the flash and luminosity it displayed in summer, when the water was warm.Already in the wake the Greek isles and mountain ridges had faded into night.The oars dipped evenly, and the vessel sped forward at a speed equal to that of a modern Channel steamer.At a signal from Lamia the mourners on the quarter-deck ceased to intone their wail.He and Domitia stood in the bows and looked directly before them. They could see a large vessel ahead, of three banks of oars, but she floated immovable on the gently heaving, glassy sea. The oars were all shipped and she was making no way.The deck sparkled with lights. Torches threw up red flames, lamps gave out a fainter yellow gleam. To the cordage lights had been suspended, and braziers burning on the quarter-deck, fed with aromatic woods, turned the water around to molten fire, and sent wafts of fragrance over the sea.The twang of a lyre and the chirp of a feeble voice were faintly audible; and then, after a lull, ensued a musical shout of applause in rhythmic note.“It is the Augustus singing,”said Lamia in a tone of smothered rage and mortification.“And he has his band of adulators about him.”“But why do not the rowers urge on the vessel?”asked Domitia.“Because the piper giving the stroke would be committing high treason in drowning the song of the princely performer. By the Gods! the grinding of the oars in the rowlocks and the plash in the water would drown even his most supreme trills.”“Hast thou seen him on the stage, Lamia?”“The Gods forbid,”answered the young man passionately,“this fancy to be the first of singers and mimes had not come on him before I left Rome for Syria. To think of it, that he—the head of the magistracy, of the army, of the senate, of the priesthood, should figure as Apollo, half naked, in a gold-powdered wig, and with painted cheeks before sniggering Greeks! The Gods deliver me from such a sight!”“But you will behold it now. As we speed along we shall overtake this floating dramatic booth.”“I will give her a wide berth, and stop my ears with wax, though, by the Gods! this is no siren song.”Domitia leaned over the side of the vessel.“Are they sharp, Lucius?”“Are what sharp, Domitia?”“The beaks.”“Sharp as lancets.”“And strong?”“Strong as rams.”“Then, Lucius, we will not give her wide berth. You loved my father. You regard me. You will do what I desire, for his sake and for mine.”“What would you have of me?”“Ram her!”Lucius Lamia started, and looked at the girl.She laid her hand on his arm, and gripped it as with an iron vice.“Run her down, Lucius! Sink the accursed murderer and mountebank in the depths of the Ionian sea.”Lamia gasped for breath.She looked up into his face.“Can it be done?”“By Hercules! we could rip up her side.”“Then do so.”He stood undecided.“Hearken to me. None will suspect our intention as we swiftly shoot up—no, none in this vessel, onlyEboracus must be in it. Suddenly we will round and ram and welt her; and send the new Orion with his fiddle to the fishes. By the Furies! We shall hear him scream. We shall see him beat the waves. Lucius, let me have a marline-spike to dash at him as he swims and split his skull and let out his brains for the fishes to banquet on them.”“We risk all our lives.”“What care I? My father, your friend, will be avenged.”Still Lamia stood in unresolve.“Lucius! I will twine my white arms about your neck, and will kiss you with my red lips, the moment his last scream has rung in my ears.”“In the name of Vengeance—then,”said Lamia.“Eboracus I can count on,”said Domitia.“There is the under-mate. If any one on board suspect our purpose, we are undone.”“None need suspect,”said the girl.“Say that the prince is holding festival on board the trireme, and that it behoves us to salute. None will think other than that we are befooling ourselves like the rest. At the right moment, before any has a thought of thy purpose, call for the double-stroke, and trust Eboracus—he will put the helm about, and in a moment we run her down.”Lamia walked to the quarter-deck, bade the mourning women go below. He extinguished the funeral torches, and threw the ashes from the tripod into the sea. Then the Artemis was no longer distinguishable by any light she bore.Next Lamia walked aft, and in a restrained voice said:“The vessel of Cæsar is before us. We dare not pass without leave asked and granted.”“All right, sir,”said the second mate.“Any orders below?”“Keep on at present speed. When I call Slack, then let them slacken. When I call Double, then at once with full force double.”“Right, sir. I will carry down instructions.”The mate went to the ladder and descended into the hold.There were now left on deck only Lamia, Domitia, the steersman, Eboracus, one sailor and the physician, who was leaning over the bulwarks looking north at the glittering constellation of Cassiopea’s Chair.He was near the quarter-deck, in the fore part of the vessel, and had been unobserved in the darkness by Lamia and Domitia, till they returned aft.Then the young man started as he observed him.Was it possible that the man had overheard the words spoken? There was nothing in the attitude or manner of the physician to show that he entertained alarm. Lamia resolved on keeping an eye upon him that he did not communicate with the crew.Luke returned aft when the young people came in that direction, and seated himself quietly on a bench.Eboracus was rapidly communicated with and gained.The Artemis flew forward, noiselessly, save for the plunge of the oars and the hiss of the foam, as it rushed by like milk, and from the hold sounded the muffled note of thesymphoniciusor piper.Every moment the vessel neared the imperial galley, and sounds of revelry became audible. Nothingshowed that any on board were aware of the approach of a Liburnian.It was now seen that tables were spread on the deck of the Imperial vessel, and that the prince and his attendants, and indeed the entire crew were engaged in revelry.Between the courses which were served, Nero ascended the quarter-deck, and sang or else delivered a recitation from a Greek tragedian, or a piece of his own composition.If the approach of the bireme was observed, which did not seem to be the case, it caused no uneasiness. The Emperor’s vessel had been accompanied by a convoy, but the ships had been dispersed by the storm; and the bireme, if perceived, was doubtless held to be one of the fleet.And now Helios, the confidant of Nero, had ascended the quarter-deck to his master, and began to declaim the speech of the attendant in the Electra descriptive of the conquests of Orestes—applying the words, by significant indications to the prince returning a victor from the Grecian games.“He, having come to the glorious pageantry of the sports in Greece, entered the lists to win the Delphic prizes, he, the admired of every eye. And having started from his goal in wondrous whirls he sped along the course, and bore away the of all coveted prize of victory. But that I may tell thee in few words amidst superfluity I have never known such a man of might and deeds as he—”and he bowed and waved his hands towards Nero.A roar of applause broke out, interrupted by a cry from Nero who suddenly beheld a dark ship plungeout of the night and come within the radiance of the lights on board his vessel.Meanwhile, on the Artemis, with set face sat Eboracus, guiding the head of the Liburnian as directed. He could see the twinkling lights, and hear the sounds of rejoicing.“Slack speed,”called Lamia.“Slack your oars,”down into the hold.There was a pause—all oars held poised for a moment.“Double!”shouted Lamia.“Double your oars!”down the ladder.Instantly the water hissed about the bows, and the oars plunged.Eboracus by a violent movement threw himself and his entire weight on the handle of one paddle, so as to turn the bireme about, and ram her midships into the Imperial trireme, when suddenly, without a word, Luke had drawn a knife through the thong that restrained the paddle, and instantly thepedalionleaped out of place, and would have gone overboard, had not the physician caught and retained it.Immediately the direction of the Artemis was altered and in place of running into the trireme, she swerved and swung past the Imperial galley without touching her.Nero, white with alarm and rage shrieked from the quarter-deck,“Who commands?”Then to those by him,“Pour oil on the flames.”At once from the braziers, tongues of brilliant light leaped high into the air.“The name!”yelled the furious prince.Then came the reply:—“Cnæus Domitius Corbulo.”And by the glare he saw, standing by the mast, distinct against the darkness of the night behind, the form of a man—and the face was the face of the murdered general.Nero staggered back—and would have fallen unless caught by Helios.“The dead pursue me,”he gasped.“Wife, mother, brother, and now, Corbulo!”THE DEAD PURSUE ME.“THE DEAD PURSUE ME.”Page 61.
The Imperial galley!
Domitia leaped to her feet. Everything was forgotten in the one thought that before her, on the sea, floated the man who had caused the death of her father.
“Lucius I must see——”
He drew her forward, but at the same time checked her speech.
“Every word dropped is fraught with danger,”he said.“What know you but that yon physician be a spy?”
“He is not that,”she answered,“show him to me—him——”
They walked together to the bows.
With the declining of the sun, the light wind had died away, and, although the sea heaved after the recent storm, like the bosom of a sleeping girl, in the stillness of the air, the sail drooped and the ship made no way.
Accordingly the sail was furled, and, by the advice of the mate, the rowers, who had rested during the day, were summoned to their benches and bidden work the oars during the night.
The sky was clear, and the stars were beginning to twinkle. No part of the voyage in calm weather would be less dangerous than this, which might be performed at night, across open sea, unbroken by rocks and sand-banks.
So long as the vessel had to thread her way between the headland of Araxus and the Echinades, and then betwixt the isles of Cephalonia and Zacynthus, an experienced navigator was necessary, and caution had to be exercised both in the management of the sail and in the manipulation of the helm. But now all was plain, and the mate had retired below to rest. During the time he reposed Lamia took charge of the vessel, assisted by the second mate.
“You take your meridian by Polaris, Castor and Pollux, steer due west; if there be a slight deviation from the right course, that is a trifle. I will set it right when my watch comes.”
Such was the mate’s injunction as he retired below.
“The steersman is done up,”said Lamia;“he shall rest now, and no better man can be found to replace him than Eboracus, who has been accustomed to the stormy seas of Britain, and whose nerves are of iron.”
Indeed, thegubernatoror helmsman had hard work for his arms. The two enormous paddles had short cross-pieces let into them, like the handles of a scythe, and the clumsy and heavy mechanism for giving direction to the head of the vessel was worked by leverage in this manner.
The sailors managed everything on deck, the cordage, the anchors, the sail and the boats. In rough weather they undergirded the ship; that is to say,passed horizontal cords round her to brace the spars together so as to facilitate resistance to the strain when laboring against the waves. The sailors were under the direction of the captain or trierarch, so called whether he commanded a trireme or a Liburnian of two benches.
On deck the steersman occupied a sort of sentry-box in the stern, and beside him sat the mate, the second mate, and often also the captain, forming a sort of council for the direction of the vessel.
It was a favorite figure in the early Church to represent the Bishop as the helmsman of the sacred vessel, and the presbyters who sat about him as the mates occupying the stern bench. As already said, in a Roman vessel, there was a lack of that unity in direction under the captain to which we are accustomed. A military officer was always supreme everywhere on sea as on land.
When the sailors were engaged in sailing, then the rowers rested or caroused, and when they in turn bowed over the oars, the sailors had leisure.
The sun went down in the west, lighting up the sky above where he set with a rainbow or halo of copper light fading into green.
The night fell rapidly, and the stars looked out above and around, and formed broken reflections in the sea.
In winter the foam that broke and was swept to right and left had none of the flash and luminosity it displayed in summer, when the water was warm.
Already in the wake the Greek isles and mountain ridges had faded into night.
The oars dipped evenly, and the vessel sped forward at a speed equal to that of a modern Channel steamer.
At a signal from Lamia the mourners on the quarter-deck ceased to intone their wail.
He and Domitia stood in the bows and looked directly before them. They could see a large vessel ahead, of three banks of oars, but she floated immovable on the gently heaving, glassy sea. The oars were all shipped and she was making no way.
The deck sparkled with lights. Torches threw up red flames, lamps gave out a fainter yellow gleam. To the cordage lights had been suspended, and braziers burning on the quarter-deck, fed with aromatic woods, turned the water around to molten fire, and sent wafts of fragrance over the sea.
The twang of a lyre and the chirp of a feeble voice were faintly audible; and then, after a lull, ensued a musical shout of applause in rhythmic note.
“It is the Augustus singing,”said Lamia in a tone of smothered rage and mortification.“And he has his band of adulators about him.”
“But why do not the rowers urge on the vessel?”asked Domitia.
“Because the piper giving the stroke would be committing high treason in drowning the song of the princely performer. By the Gods! the grinding of the oars in the rowlocks and the plash in the water would drown even his most supreme trills.”
“Hast thou seen him on the stage, Lamia?”
“The Gods forbid,”answered the young man passionately,“this fancy to be the first of singers and mimes had not come on him before I left Rome for Syria. To think of it, that he—the head of the magistracy, of the army, of the senate, of the priesthood, should figure as Apollo, half naked, in a gold-powdered wig, and with painted cheeks before sniggering Greeks! The Gods deliver me from such a sight!”
“But you will behold it now. As we speed along we shall overtake this floating dramatic booth.”
“I will give her a wide berth, and stop my ears with wax, though, by the Gods! this is no siren song.”
Domitia leaned over the side of the vessel.
“Are they sharp, Lucius?”
“Are what sharp, Domitia?”
“The beaks.”
“Sharp as lancets.”
“And strong?”
“Strong as rams.”
“Then, Lucius, we will not give her wide berth. You loved my father. You regard me. You will do what I desire, for his sake and for mine.”
“What would you have of me?”
“Ram her!”
Lucius Lamia started, and looked at the girl.
She laid her hand on his arm, and gripped it as with an iron vice.
“Run her down, Lucius! Sink the accursed murderer and mountebank in the depths of the Ionian sea.”
Lamia gasped for breath.
She looked up into his face.
“Can it be done?”
“By Hercules! we could rip up her side.”
“Then do so.”
He stood undecided.
“Hearken to me. None will suspect our intention as we swiftly shoot up—no, none in this vessel, onlyEboracus must be in it. Suddenly we will round and ram and welt her; and send the new Orion with his fiddle to the fishes. By the Furies! We shall hear him scream. We shall see him beat the waves. Lucius, let me have a marline-spike to dash at him as he swims and split his skull and let out his brains for the fishes to banquet on them.”
“We risk all our lives.”
“What care I? My father, your friend, will be avenged.”
Still Lamia stood in unresolve.
“Lucius! I will twine my white arms about your neck, and will kiss you with my red lips, the moment his last scream has rung in my ears.”
“In the name of Vengeance—then,”said Lamia.
“Eboracus I can count on,”said Domitia.
“There is the under-mate. If any one on board suspect our purpose, we are undone.”
“None need suspect,”said the girl.“Say that the prince is holding festival on board the trireme, and that it behoves us to salute. None will think other than that we are befooling ourselves like the rest. At the right moment, before any has a thought of thy purpose, call for the double-stroke, and trust Eboracus—he will put the helm about, and in a moment we run her down.”
Lamia walked to the quarter-deck, bade the mourning women go below. He extinguished the funeral torches, and threw the ashes from the tripod into the sea. Then the Artemis was no longer distinguishable by any light she bore.
Next Lamia walked aft, and in a restrained voice said:
“The vessel of Cæsar is before us. We dare not pass without leave asked and granted.”
“All right, sir,”said the second mate.“Any orders below?”
“Keep on at present speed. When I call Slack, then let them slacken. When I call Double, then at once with full force double.”
“Right, sir. I will carry down instructions.”
The mate went to the ladder and descended into the hold.
There were now left on deck only Lamia, Domitia, the steersman, Eboracus, one sailor and the physician, who was leaning over the bulwarks looking north at the glittering constellation of Cassiopea’s Chair.
He was near the quarter-deck, in the fore part of the vessel, and had been unobserved in the darkness by Lamia and Domitia, till they returned aft.
Then the young man started as he observed him.
Was it possible that the man had overheard the words spoken? There was nothing in the attitude or manner of the physician to show that he entertained alarm. Lamia resolved on keeping an eye upon him that he did not communicate with the crew.
Luke returned aft when the young people came in that direction, and seated himself quietly on a bench.
Eboracus was rapidly communicated with and gained.
The Artemis flew forward, noiselessly, save for the plunge of the oars and the hiss of the foam, as it rushed by like milk, and from the hold sounded the muffled note of thesymphoniciusor piper.
Every moment the vessel neared the imperial galley, and sounds of revelry became audible. Nothingshowed that any on board were aware of the approach of a Liburnian.
It was now seen that tables were spread on the deck of the Imperial vessel, and that the prince and his attendants, and indeed the entire crew were engaged in revelry.
Between the courses which were served, Nero ascended the quarter-deck, and sang or else delivered a recitation from a Greek tragedian, or a piece of his own composition.
If the approach of the bireme was observed, which did not seem to be the case, it caused no uneasiness. The Emperor’s vessel had been accompanied by a convoy, but the ships had been dispersed by the storm; and the bireme, if perceived, was doubtless held to be one of the fleet.
And now Helios, the confidant of Nero, had ascended the quarter-deck to his master, and began to declaim the speech of the attendant in the Electra descriptive of the conquests of Orestes—applying the words, by significant indications to the prince returning a victor from the Grecian games.
“He, having come to the glorious pageantry of the sports in Greece, entered the lists to win the Delphic prizes, he, the admired of every eye. And having started from his goal in wondrous whirls he sped along the course, and bore away the of all coveted prize of victory. But that I may tell thee in few words amidst superfluity I have never known such a man of might and deeds as he—”and he bowed and waved his hands towards Nero.
A roar of applause broke out, interrupted by a cry from Nero who suddenly beheld a dark ship plungeout of the night and come within the radiance of the lights on board his vessel.
Meanwhile, on the Artemis, with set face sat Eboracus, guiding the head of the Liburnian as directed. He could see the twinkling lights, and hear the sounds of rejoicing.
“Slack speed,”called Lamia.
“Slack your oars,”down into the hold.
There was a pause—all oars held poised for a moment.
“Double!”shouted Lamia.
“Double your oars!”down the ladder.
Instantly the water hissed about the bows, and the oars plunged.
Eboracus by a violent movement threw himself and his entire weight on the handle of one paddle, so as to turn the bireme about, and ram her midships into the Imperial trireme, when suddenly, without a word, Luke had drawn a knife through the thong that restrained the paddle, and instantly thepedalionleaped out of place, and would have gone overboard, had not the physician caught and retained it.
Immediately the direction of the Artemis was altered and in place of running into the trireme, she swerved and swung past the Imperial galley without touching her.
Nero, white with alarm and rage shrieked from the quarter-deck,
“Who commands?”
Then to those by him,“Pour oil on the flames.”
At once from the braziers, tongues of brilliant light leaped high into the air.
“The name!”yelled the furious prince.
Then came the reply:—
“Cnæus Domitius Corbulo.”
And by the glare he saw, standing by the mast, distinct against the darkness of the night behind, the form of a man—and the face was the face of the murdered general.
Nero staggered back—and would have fallen unless caught by Helios.
“The dead pursue me,”he gasped.“Wife, mother, brother, and now, Corbulo!”
THE DEAD PURSUE ME.“THE DEAD PURSUE ME.”Page 61.
“THE DEAD PURSUE ME.”Page 61.
CHAPTER VIII.THE SWORD OF THE DEAD.“It is well done,”said Eboracus in an undertone to the physician;“Otherwise there had been the cross for you and me. The thong broke.”“I severed it,”said Luke.“That I saw,”said the slave,“I shall report that it yielded. One must obey a master even to the risk of the cross. Did’st see the noble Lamia, how ready he was? He assumed the mask of my dead master and we have slipped by and sent a shiver through the whole company of the Trireme, and the August too, I trow,—for they have thought us the Ship of the Dead.”After a pause he said,—“In my home we hold that all souls go to sea in a phantom vessel; and sail away to the West, to the Isles of the Blessed. At night a dark ship with a sail as a thundercloud comes to the shore, and those near can hear the dead in trains go over the beach and enter the ghostly vessel, till she is laden, and then she departs.”The Artemis made her way without disaster to Rhegium, and thence coasted up Italy to the port of Rome. She had gained on the Imperial vessel, that was delayed at Brundusium to collect the scattered fleet. Nero would not land until he reached Neapolis, and then not till all his wreaths and golden apples, aswell as his entire wardrobe of costumes and properties had arrived.Then only did he come ashore, and he did so to commence a triumphal progress through the Peninsula, the like of which was never seen before nor will be seen again.This was on the 19th March, the anniversary of the murder of his mother. On the same day a letter was put into his hands announcing the revolt of the legions in Gaul and the proclamation of Galba, at that time Governor of Spain.So engrossed, however, was his mind with preparation for his theatrical procession, that he paid no heed to the news, nor was he roused till he read the address of Vindex, who led the revolt, denouncing him as a“miserable fiddler.”This touched him to the quick, and he addressed an indignant despatch to the Senate, demanding that Vindex should be chastised, and appealed to the prizes he had gained as testimony to his musical abilities.So he started for Rome.Eighteen hundred and eight heralds strutted before him, bearing in their hands the crowns that had been awarded him and announcing when and how he had succeeded in winning the award.He entered Rome in this leisurely manner, in a triumphal chariot, wearing a purple robe, embroidered with gold, an olive garland about his head. Beside him a harper struck his instrument and chanted his praises.The houses were decorated with festoons, the streets were strewn with saffron; singing birds, comfits, flowers were scattered by the people before him. If the Senate expected that now the prince was in Rome, he would attend to business, it was vastly mistaken. His first concern was to arrange for a splendid exhibition in which he might gratify the public with a finished study of his acting and singing.Solicitude about his triumph, his voice, his reception, had so completely filled the shallow mind of Nero, that he gave no further thought to the vessel that had shot out of the darkness, nearly fouled his galley, and which had been apparently commanded by one of his noblest victims.Longa Duilia arrived on the Gabian estate, with the corpse of her husband, her daughter, Lucius Lamia, and her entire“family,”as the company of household slaves was termed, without accident and without deter.Gabii lay eleven miles from Rome at the foot of one of the spurs of the Alban mountains. The town stood on a small knoll rising out of the Campagna. The stone of which it was built was dark, being a volcanic peperino; it was perhaps one of the least attractive sites for a country residence, which a Roman noble could have selected; but this was not without its advantage, when Emperors acted as did Ahab, and cut off those whose villas and vineyards attracted their covetous eyes.A lake occupied the crater of an extinct volcano; the water was dark as ink, but this was due rather to the character of the bottom, than to depth, which was inconsiderable.The villa and its gardens lay by the water’s edge. The old city not flourishing, but maintaining a languid existence, was famous for nothing but a peculiarity in girding the toga adopted by the men, by the dinginess of its building stone, and by its temple of Juno, an object of pilgrimage when the deities of other shrines had proved unwilling or unable to help, a sort of pis-aller of devotion.Longa Duilia hated the place; it was dull, and she would never have frequented it, had it not been the fashion at the period for all people of good family to affect a love of retirement into the country, and to pretend a taste for simplicity of rural life. Some fine fops had their“chambers of poverty”to which on occasions they retired, to lie on mats upon the ground, and eat pulse out of common earthenware. Such periods of self-denial added zest to luxury.Domitia, on the other hand, was attached to the place. It was associated with the innocent pleasures of earliest childhood. Its spring flowers were the loveliest she had ever culled, its June strawberries the most delicious she had ever eaten. And the lake teeming with char gave opportunities for boating and fishing.Here was the family burial-place; and here Corbulo was to be burnt, and then his ashes collected and consigned to the mausoleum.Messengers had been sent forth to invite the attendance of all relations, acquaintances and dependents.The invitation was couched, according to unalterable custom, in antiquated terms, hardly intelligible. When on the day appointed for the ceremony, vast numbers were collected, the funeral procession started.First went the musicians under the conduct of a Master of the Ceremonies. By law, the number offlautistswas limited to ten.Then followed the professional mourners, hired for the occasion from the temple of Libitina, the priestsof which were the licensed undertakers. Thesemournerschanted the nænia, a lament composed for the purpose of lauding the acts of the deceased and of reciting his honors. When they paused at the conclusion of a strophe, horns and trumpets brayed. Immediately after the wailers walked a train of actors, one of whom was dressed in the insignia of the deceased and wore a mask representing him. He endeavored to mimic each peculiarity of the man he personated, and buffoons around by their antics and jests provoked the spectators to laughter. This farcical exhibition was calculated to moderate the excessive grief superinduced by the lament of the wailers.Then came the grand procession of the ancestors, especially dear to the heart of thewidow.Not only did the effigies of the direct forefathers appear, but all related families trotted out their ancestors, to attend the illustrious dead, so that there cannot have been less than a hundred present.As already mentioned, the wax masks of the dead of a family ornamented every nobleman’s hall, usually enclosed in boxes with the titles of the defunct inscribed on them in gold characters. These were now produced. The mimes were costumed appropriately, as senators, generals, magistrates, with their attendants, wearing the wax masks, and artificial heads of hair.The idea represented was that of the ancestors having returned from the land of Shadows to fetch their descendant and accompany him to the nether world. The corpse, that lay on a bier in the hall, was now taken up, and carried forth to a loud cry from all in the house of“Vale! Farewell! Fare thee well!”Between the lips of the dead man was a coin, placed there as paymentof the toll across the River of Death in the ferry-boat of Charon. On each side of the bier walked attendants carrying lighted torches. In ancient times all funerals had been conducted at night. Now the only reminiscence of this custom was in the bearing of lights; but the torches served as well a practical purpose, as they were employed to kindle the pyre.Before the dead were carried the insignia of his offices, pictures of the battles he had won and statues of the kings and chiefs he had conquered. The corpse was followed by a number of manumitted slaves, all wearing the cap of liberty, in token of their freedom. Finally came the members of the family, friends, retainers, and the sympathizing public.Longa Duilia and Domitia Longina walked in their proper place, with dishevelled hair, unveiled heads, and in thericiniumor black garment thrown over their tunics; the men all wore thepænula, or short travelling cloak.The procession advanced into the marketplace of Gabii, where Lucius Lamia ascended therostrumto pronounce the funeral oration.Immediately, ivory chairs and inlaid stools were ranged in a crescent before him, and on these the ancestors seated themselves, the bier being placed before them.The panegyric was addressed to the crowd outside the circle of mimes with wax faces. Lamia had a gift of natural eloquence, his feelings were engaged, but his freedom of speech was hampered by necessity of caution in allusion to the death of Corbulo, lest some word should be let slip which might be caught up and tortured into a treasonable reference to Nero.The Laudation ended, the entire assembly arose and re-formed in procession to the place of burning, which by law must be sixty feet from any building. There a pit had been excavated and a grating placed above it. On this grating the pyre was erected, consisting of precious woods, sprinkled with gums and spices.To this the corpse was conveyed. But, previous to its being placed on the fagots, a surgeon amputated one of the fingers, which was preserved for burial, and then a handful of earth was thrown over the face of the deceased.Anciently the Roman dead had been buried, and when the fashion for incineration came in, a trace of the earlier usage remained in the burial of a member and the covering of the face with soil.And now ensued a repulsive scene, one without which no great man’s funeral would have been considered as properly performed.Through the crowd pushed two small parties of gladiators, three in each, hired for the occasion of a company that let them out. Then ensued a fight—not mimic, but very real, in front and round the pyre. Now a hard-pressed gladiator ran and was pursued, turned sharply and hacked at his follower. This was continued till three men had fallen and had been stabbed in the breast. Whereupon, the survivors sheathed their swords, bowed and withdrew.The torches were now put into the hands of Duilia and Domitia, and with averted faces they applied the fire to the fagot, and a sheet of flame roared up and enveloped the dead man.And now the mourners raised their loudest cries, tore their hair, scarified their cheeks with their nails;pipes, flutes, horns were blown. In a paroxysm of distress, partly real, partly feigned, a rush was made to the pyre, and all who got near cast some offering into the flames—cakes, flowers, precious stuffs, rings, bracelets, and coins.Duilia, in tragic woe, disengaged a mass of artificial hair from her head, and cast it into the fire. Then rang out the sacramental cry:—“I, licet!You are permitted to retire,”and gladly, sick at heart and faint, Domitia was supported rather than walked home.Some hours later, when the ashes of the defunct had been collected and deposited in an urn, which was conveyed to the mausoleum, Lucius Lamia came to the house and inquired for the ladies.He was informed that the widow was too much overcome by her feelings to see any one, but that Domitia was in thetablinumand would receive him.He at once entered the hall and stepped up into the apartment where she was seated, looking pale and worn, with tear-reddened eyes.She rose, and with a sweet sad smile, extended her hand to Lamia.“No, Domitia,”said he gently,“as your dear father gave me permission on the wharf at Cenchræa, I will claim the same privilege now.”She held her cold, tear-stained cheek to him without a word, then returned to and sank on her stool.“I thank you, dear friend, and almost brother,”she said.“You spoke nobly of my father, though not more nobly than he deserved. Here, my Lucius, is a present for you, I intrust it to you—his sword, which he used so gallantly, on which he fell, and still marked with his blood.”
“It is well done,”said Eboracus in an undertone to the physician;“Otherwise there had been the cross for you and me. The thong broke.”
“I severed it,”said Luke.
“That I saw,”said the slave,“I shall report that it yielded. One must obey a master even to the risk of the cross. Did’st see the noble Lamia, how ready he was? He assumed the mask of my dead master and we have slipped by and sent a shiver through the whole company of the Trireme, and the August too, I trow,—for they have thought us the Ship of the Dead.”
After a pause he said,—“In my home we hold that all souls go to sea in a phantom vessel; and sail away to the West, to the Isles of the Blessed. At night a dark ship with a sail as a thundercloud comes to the shore, and those near can hear the dead in trains go over the beach and enter the ghostly vessel, till she is laden, and then she departs.”
The Artemis made her way without disaster to Rhegium, and thence coasted up Italy to the port of Rome. She had gained on the Imperial vessel, that was delayed at Brundusium to collect the scattered fleet. Nero would not land until he reached Neapolis, and then not till all his wreaths and golden apples, aswell as his entire wardrobe of costumes and properties had arrived.
Then only did he come ashore, and he did so to commence a triumphal progress through the Peninsula, the like of which was never seen before nor will be seen again.
This was on the 19th March, the anniversary of the murder of his mother. On the same day a letter was put into his hands announcing the revolt of the legions in Gaul and the proclamation of Galba, at that time Governor of Spain.
So engrossed, however, was his mind with preparation for his theatrical procession, that he paid no heed to the news, nor was he roused till he read the address of Vindex, who led the revolt, denouncing him as a“miserable fiddler.”
This touched him to the quick, and he addressed an indignant despatch to the Senate, demanding that Vindex should be chastised, and appealed to the prizes he had gained as testimony to his musical abilities.
So he started for Rome.
Eighteen hundred and eight heralds strutted before him, bearing in their hands the crowns that had been awarded him and announcing when and how he had succeeded in winning the award.
He entered Rome in this leisurely manner, in a triumphal chariot, wearing a purple robe, embroidered with gold, an olive garland about his head. Beside him a harper struck his instrument and chanted his praises.
The houses were decorated with festoons, the streets were strewn with saffron; singing birds, comfits, flowers were scattered by the people before him. If the Senate expected that now the prince was in Rome, he would attend to business, it was vastly mistaken. His first concern was to arrange for a splendid exhibition in which he might gratify the public with a finished study of his acting and singing.
Solicitude about his triumph, his voice, his reception, had so completely filled the shallow mind of Nero, that he gave no further thought to the vessel that had shot out of the darkness, nearly fouled his galley, and which had been apparently commanded by one of his noblest victims.
Longa Duilia arrived on the Gabian estate, with the corpse of her husband, her daughter, Lucius Lamia, and her entire“family,”as the company of household slaves was termed, without accident and without deter.
Gabii lay eleven miles from Rome at the foot of one of the spurs of the Alban mountains. The town stood on a small knoll rising out of the Campagna. The stone of which it was built was dark, being a volcanic peperino; it was perhaps one of the least attractive sites for a country residence, which a Roman noble could have selected; but this was not without its advantage, when Emperors acted as did Ahab, and cut off those whose villas and vineyards attracted their covetous eyes.
A lake occupied the crater of an extinct volcano; the water was dark as ink, but this was due rather to the character of the bottom, than to depth, which was inconsiderable.
The villa and its gardens lay by the water’s edge. The old city not flourishing, but maintaining a languid existence, was famous for nothing but a peculiarity in girding the toga adopted by the men, by the dinginess of its building stone, and by its temple of Juno, an object of pilgrimage when the deities of other shrines had proved unwilling or unable to help, a sort of pis-aller of devotion.
Longa Duilia hated the place; it was dull, and she would never have frequented it, had it not been the fashion at the period for all people of good family to affect a love of retirement into the country, and to pretend a taste for simplicity of rural life. Some fine fops had their“chambers of poverty”to which on occasions they retired, to lie on mats upon the ground, and eat pulse out of common earthenware. Such periods of self-denial added zest to luxury.
Domitia, on the other hand, was attached to the place. It was associated with the innocent pleasures of earliest childhood. Its spring flowers were the loveliest she had ever culled, its June strawberries the most delicious she had ever eaten. And the lake teeming with char gave opportunities for boating and fishing.
Here was the family burial-place; and here Corbulo was to be burnt, and then his ashes collected and consigned to the mausoleum.
Messengers had been sent forth to invite the attendance of all relations, acquaintances and dependents.
The invitation was couched, according to unalterable custom, in antiquated terms, hardly intelligible. When on the day appointed for the ceremony, vast numbers were collected, the funeral procession started.
First went the musicians under the conduct of a Master of the Ceremonies. By law, the number offlautistswas limited to ten.
Then followed the professional mourners, hired for the occasion from the temple of Libitina, the priestsof which were the licensed undertakers. Thesemournerschanted the nænia, a lament composed for the purpose of lauding the acts of the deceased and of reciting his honors. When they paused at the conclusion of a strophe, horns and trumpets brayed. Immediately after the wailers walked a train of actors, one of whom was dressed in the insignia of the deceased and wore a mask representing him. He endeavored to mimic each peculiarity of the man he personated, and buffoons around by their antics and jests provoked the spectators to laughter. This farcical exhibition was calculated to moderate the excessive grief superinduced by the lament of the wailers.
Then came the grand procession of the ancestors, especially dear to the heart of thewidow.Not only did the effigies of the direct forefathers appear, but all related families trotted out their ancestors, to attend the illustrious dead, so that there cannot have been less than a hundred present.
As already mentioned, the wax masks of the dead of a family ornamented every nobleman’s hall, usually enclosed in boxes with the titles of the defunct inscribed on them in gold characters. These were now produced. The mimes were costumed appropriately, as senators, generals, magistrates, with their attendants, wearing the wax masks, and artificial heads of hair.
The idea represented was that of the ancestors having returned from the land of Shadows to fetch their descendant and accompany him to the nether world. The corpse, that lay on a bier in the hall, was now taken up, and carried forth to a loud cry from all in the house of“Vale! Farewell! Fare thee well!”Between the lips of the dead man was a coin, placed there as paymentof the toll across the River of Death in the ferry-boat of Charon. On each side of the bier walked attendants carrying lighted torches. In ancient times all funerals had been conducted at night. Now the only reminiscence of this custom was in the bearing of lights; but the torches served as well a practical purpose, as they were employed to kindle the pyre.
Before the dead were carried the insignia of his offices, pictures of the battles he had won and statues of the kings and chiefs he had conquered. The corpse was followed by a number of manumitted slaves, all wearing the cap of liberty, in token of their freedom. Finally came the members of the family, friends, retainers, and the sympathizing public.
Longa Duilia and Domitia Longina walked in their proper place, with dishevelled hair, unveiled heads, and in thericiniumor black garment thrown over their tunics; the men all wore thepænula, or short travelling cloak.
The procession advanced into the marketplace of Gabii, where Lucius Lamia ascended therostrumto pronounce the funeral oration.
Immediately, ivory chairs and inlaid stools were ranged in a crescent before him, and on these the ancestors seated themselves, the bier being placed before them.
The panegyric was addressed to the crowd outside the circle of mimes with wax faces. Lamia had a gift of natural eloquence, his feelings were engaged, but his freedom of speech was hampered by necessity of caution in allusion to the death of Corbulo, lest some word should be let slip which might be caught up and tortured into a treasonable reference to Nero.
The Laudation ended, the entire assembly arose and re-formed in procession to the place of burning, which by law must be sixty feet from any building. There a pit had been excavated and a grating placed above it. On this grating the pyre was erected, consisting of precious woods, sprinkled with gums and spices.
To this the corpse was conveyed. But, previous to its being placed on the fagots, a surgeon amputated one of the fingers, which was preserved for burial, and then a handful of earth was thrown over the face of the deceased.
Anciently the Roman dead had been buried, and when the fashion for incineration came in, a trace of the earlier usage remained in the burial of a member and the covering of the face with soil.
And now ensued a repulsive scene, one without which no great man’s funeral would have been considered as properly performed.
Through the crowd pushed two small parties of gladiators, three in each, hired for the occasion of a company that let them out. Then ensued a fight—not mimic, but very real, in front and round the pyre. Now a hard-pressed gladiator ran and was pursued, turned sharply and hacked at his follower. This was continued till three men had fallen and had been stabbed in the breast. Whereupon, the survivors sheathed their swords, bowed and withdrew.
The torches were now put into the hands of Duilia and Domitia, and with averted faces they applied the fire to the fagot, and a sheet of flame roared up and enveloped the dead man.
And now the mourners raised their loudest cries, tore their hair, scarified their cheeks with their nails;pipes, flutes, horns were blown. In a paroxysm of distress, partly real, partly feigned, a rush was made to the pyre, and all who got near cast some offering into the flames—cakes, flowers, precious stuffs, rings, bracelets, and coins.
Duilia, in tragic woe, disengaged a mass of artificial hair from her head, and cast it into the fire. Then rang out the sacramental cry:—“I, licet!You are permitted to retire,”and gladly, sick at heart and faint, Domitia was supported rather than walked home.
Some hours later, when the ashes of the defunct had been collected and deposited in an urn, which was conveyed to the mausoleum, Lucius Lamia came to the house and inquired for the ladies.
He was informed that the widow was too much overcome by her feelings to see any one, but that Domitia was in thetablinumand would receive him.
He at once entered the hall and stepped up into the apartment where she was seated, looking pale and worn, with tear-reddened eyes.
She rose, and with a sweet sad smile, extended her hand to Lamia.
“No, Domitia,”said he gently,“as your dear father gave me permission on the wharf at Cenchræa, I will claim the same privilege now.”
She held her cold, tear-stained cheek to him without a word, then returned to and sank on her stool.
“I thank you, dear friend, and almost brother,”she said.“You spoke nobly of my father, though not more nobly than he deserved. Here, my Lucius, is a present for you, I intrust it to you—his sword, which he used so gallantly, on which he fell, and still marked with his blood.”
CHAPTER IX.SHEATHED.According to an Oriental legend, the dominion of Solomon over the spirits resided in the power of his staff on which he stayed himself. So long as he wielded that, none might disobey.But the Jins sent a white ant up through the floor, that ate out the heart of the rod, so that when he leaned on it, it gave way and resolved itself into a cloud of fine powder. Solomon fell, and his authority was at an end forever.The termites that consumed the core of the sceptre of Nero were his own vices and follies. Its power was at an end and his fall as sudden as in the case of Solomon, and as unexpected.In March he was possessed of dominion over the world, and was at the head of incalculable forces. In June all was dissolved in the dust of decay; he was prostrate, helpless, bereft of the shadow of authority, unable to command a single slave. The first token of what was about to take place was this.In Rome the rabble was kept in good humor by the Cæsars distributing among them bread gratis, and entertaining them with shows free of charge.During the winter, contrary winds had delayed the corn-ships from Egypt, and the amount of bread distributed was accordingly curtailed. Games were, indeed, promised, but these would serve as condiments to the bread and not as substitutes. Then a vessel arrived in port, and the hungry people believed that she was laden with the wished-for corn. When, however, they learned that her cargo was white sand for strewing the arena at the sports, they broke into a storm of discontent and swept, howling insulting words, under Nero’s windows.Next day all Rome heard that Galba, at the head of the legions of Spain and Gaul, was marching into Italy, and that none of the troops of Nero sent to guard the frontier of the Alps would draw a sword in his defence.The prince, now only seriously alarmed, bade his household guard conduct him to Ostia, where he would mount the vessel that had discharged its load of sand, and escape to Egypt. They contemptuously refused, and disbanded. Then, in an agony of fear, Nero left the Palatine, and fled across the river to the Servilian mansion that adjoined the racecourse, to light which he had burned Christians swathed in tarred wraps.There he found none save his secretary Epaphroditus, whom he had sent there to be chained at the door, and to act as porter because he had offended him. Guards, freedmen, courtiers, actors, all had taken to their heels, but not before they had pillaged the palace.He wandered about the house, knocking at every door, and nowhere meeting with an answer.Night by this time had settled in, murk and close, but at intervals electric flashes shivered overhead.Then suddenly the earth reeled, and there passed a sound as of chariot wheels rolling heavily through the streets; yet the streets were deserted. Trembling, despairing, Nero crouched on his bed, bit his nails tillhe had gnawed them to the quick, then started up and hunted for his jewel case. He would fly on foot, carrying that, hide in some hovel, till danger was past. But a thievish slave had stolen it.Sick at heart, picking, then biting at his nails, shrinking with apprehension at the least noise, wrapping a kerchief about a finger where blood came, he looked with dazed eyes at the red flare of the heavenly fires pulsating through his open door.He heard a step and ran out, to encounter a freedman, Phaon by name, who was coming along the passage, holding aloft a torch, attended by two slaves.The wretched prince clung to him, and entreated that he might not be left alone; that Phaon would protect him, and contrive a means of escape.“Augustus!”answered the freedman,“I am not ungrateful for favors shown me, but my assistance at this hour is unavailing. I am but one man, a stranger, a Greek, and all Rome, all Italy, the entire world, have risen against you.”“I must fly. They will allow me to earn my livelihood on the stage. Of what value to any man is my life?”“My lord, in what value have you held the lives of the thousands that you have taken? Each life cut off has raised against you a hundred enemies. All will pursue, like a pack of hounds baying for the blood of him who murdered their kinsfolk. Even now I passed one—Lucius Ælius Lamia,—and he stayed me to inquire where you might be found. In his hand he held an unsheathed sword.”Nero shrieked out; then looked timidly about him, terrified at the sound of his own voice.“Let us hide. Disguise me. Get me a horse. I cannot run, I am too fat; besides, I have on my felt slippers only.”Phaon spoke to one of his slaves, and the man left.“Master,”said the freedman,“Do not deceive yourself. There is no escape. Prepare to die as a man. Slay yourself. It is not hard to die. Better so fall than get into the hands of implacable enemies.”“I cannot. I have not the courage. I will do it only when everything fails. I have many theatrical wigs. I can paint my face.”“Sire! the people are so wont to see your face besmeared with color, that they are less likely to recognize a face bleached to tallow.”“I have a broad-brimmed fisherman’s hat. I wear it against becoming freckled. That will shade my face. Find me an ample cloak. Here, at length, comes Sporus.”An eunuch appeared in the doorway.Breathless, in short, broken sentences, Nero entreated him to look out in his wardrobe for a sorry mantle, and to bring it him.“But whither will—can you go?”asked Phaon.“The Senate has been assembled—it has been convoked for midnight to vote your deposition and death.”“I will go before it. Nay! I will haste to the Forum, I will mount the Tribune. I will ask to be given the government of Egypt. That at least will not be refused me.”“My lord, the streets are filling with people. They will tear you to pieces ere you reach the Forum.”“Think you so! Why so? I have amused the people so well. Good Phaon, hire me a swift galley, and I willtake refuge with Tiridates. I restored to him the crown of Armenia. He will not be ungrateful.”“My lord, it will not be possible for you to leave Italy.”“Then I will retire to a farm. I will grow cabbages and turnips. The god Tiberius was fond of turnips. O Divine Powers that rule the fate of men! shall I ever eat turnips again? Phaon, hide me for a season. Men’s minds are changeable. They are heated now. They will cool to-morrow. They cannot kill such a superlative artist as myself.”“I have a villa between the Salarian and the Nomentane Roads. If it please you to go thither——”“At once. I think I hear horse-hoofs. O Phaon, save me!”Sporus came up, offering an old moth-eaten cloak. The wardrobe had been plundered, only the refuse had been abandoned.A voice was heard pealing through the empty corridors:“Horses! horses at the door!”“Who calls so loud? Silence him. He will betray us!”said Nero.“Hah! It is Epaphroditus.”At the entrance, chained to a cumbrous log, was the Greek, Epaphroditus, formerly a pampered favorite. But two days previously he had ventured to correct a false quantity in some verses by his master, and Nero, in a burst of resentment and mortified vanity, had ordered him to be fastened to a beam as doorkeeper to the Servilian Palace.“The horses are here,”shouted the freedman.“May it please my lord to mount. Sporus and the slaves can run afoot.”Nero unwound the kerchief from his hand andwrapped it about his throat, drew the broad-brimmed hat over his head, enveloped himself in the blanket cloak, and shuffled in his slippers to the door.The chained Greek at once cried out:“Master! my chain has become entangled and is so knotted that I cannot stir. I have been thus since noon, and none have regarded me. I pray thee, let me go.”“Thou fool! cease hallooing!”retorted Nero angrily.“Dost think I carry about with me the key of thy shackles?”Then to those who followed,“Smite him on the mouth and silence him, or he will call attention to me.”“The gods smite thee!”yelled the scribe, striving to reach an upright posture, but falling again, owing to the tangle in the links.“May they blight thee as they have stricken Livia’s laurel!”3Mounted on an old gray horse, Nero rode to the Ælian Bridge, where stands now that of St. Angelo, crossed it and began to traverse the Campus Martius.Electric flashes quivered across the sky. Then again an earthquake made the city rock as if drunk; the buildings were rent, and masses of cornice fell down.A glare of white lightning illumined the whole field and lighted up the mausoleum of Augustus, and the blank faces of such men as were abroad.The horse trembled and refused to move. It was some time before the alarm of the brute could be allayed, and it could be coaxed to go forward and begin the ascent of the Quirinal. The advance was slow; and Nero’s fears became greater as the roadapproached the Prætorian Camp, and he expected recognition by the sentinels. Yet in the midst of his fear wild flashes of hope shot, and he said to Phaon:“What think you, if I were to enter the camp? Surely the Prætorians would rally about me, and I might dissolve the Senate.”“Sire, they have destroyed your images, and have proclaimed Galba. They would take off your head and set it on a pike.”Nero uttered a groan, and kicked the flanks of his steed. At that moment a passer-by saluted him.“By the Immortals! I am recognized.”“We have but to go a little further.”“Phaon, what if the Senate declare me an enemy of the State?”“Then you will fare in the customary manner.”“How is that?”The prince put his trembling hand to his brow and in his agitation knocked off his hat.The freedman picked it up.“The customary manner, sire! your neck will be put in the cleft of a forked stick and you will be beaten, lashed, kicked to death. Better take the sword and fall on it.”“Oh, Phaon! not yet! I cannot endure pain. I have a spring nail now—and it hurts! it hurts!”“Ride on, my lord; at the cypress hedge we will turn our horses loose, and by a path through the fields reach my villa.”Half an hour after Nero had left the Servilian palace, where now stands the Lateran, Lamia arrived followed by two servants. He found the secretary in a heap at the door, vainly writhing in his knotted chains. Lamiaat once asked him about the prince, whether he was there.“I will both answer and show you whither he is fled,”said Epaphroditus,“if you will release me. Otherwise my tongue is tied like my limbs.”“Is he here?”“Nay, he has been here, but is gone. Whither I alone can say. The price of the information is release.”“Tell me where I can find tools.”Epaphroditus gave the required information and Lamia despatched a servant to bring hammer and chisel. They were speedily produced; but some time was taken up in cutting through the links.This, however, was finally effected, and the secretary gathered up a handful of the broken chain and clenched it in his fist.“Now I will lead the way,”said he, stretching himself.The wretched, fallen emperor had in the meanwhile scrambled through hedges and waded through a marsh, and had at last found a temporary shelter in a garden tool-house of the villa. Phaon feared to introduce him into his house.Wearied out, he cast himself on a sort of bier on which the gardeners carried citron trees to and from the conservatory. The cloak had fallen from him and lay on the soil.His feet were muddy and bleeding. He had tried to eat some oat-cake that had been offered him, but was unable to swallow.He continued to be teased with, and to pick or bite at his spring nails.“I hear steps!”he cried.“They will kill me!”“Sire, play the man.”Phaon offered him a couple of poniards.Nero put the point of one to his breast, shrunk and threw it away.“It is too blunt, it will not enter,”he said.He tried the other and dropped it.“It is over sharp. It cuts,”he said.At that moment the door opened and Lamia and Epaphroditus entered.Nero cried out and covered his face:“Sporus! Phaon! one or both! kill yourselves and show me how to do it.”“To do it!”said Lamia sternly.“That is not difficult. Do you need a sword? Here is one—the sword of Corbulo.”He extended the weapon to the prince, who accepted it with tremulous hand, looking at Lamia with glassy eyes.“Oh! a moment! I feel sick.”Then Phaon said:“Sire—at once!”Then Nero, with all power going out of his fingers, pointed the blade to his throat.“I cannot,”he gasped,“my hand is numb.”Immediately, Epaphroditus with his hand full of chain, brought the weighted fist against the haft, and drove the sword into the coward’s throat.He sank back on the bier.Then Lamia stooped, gathered up the moth-eaten cloak, and threw it over the face of the dying man.
According to an Oriental legend, the dominion of Solomon over the spirits resided in the power of his staff on which he stayed himself. So long as he wielded that, none might disobey.
But the Jins sent a white ant up through the floor, that ate out the heart of the rod, so that when he leaned on it, it gave way and resolved itself into a cloud of fine powder. Solomon fell, and his authority was at an end forever.
The termites that consumed the core of the sceptre of Nero were his own vices and follies. Its power was at an end and his fall as sudden as in the case of Solomon, and as unexpected.
In March he was possessed of dominion over the world, and was at the head of incalculable forces. In June all was dissolved in the dust of decay; he was prostrate, helpless, bereft of the shadow of authority, unable to command a single slave. The first token of what was about to take place was this.
In Rome the rabble was kept in good humor by the Cæsars distributing among them bread gratis, and entertaining them with shows free of charge.
During the winter, contrary winds had delayed the corn-ships from Egypt, and the amount of bread distributed was accordingly curtailed. Games were, indeed, promised, but these would serve as condiments to the bread and not as substitutes. Then a vessel arrived in port, and the hungry people believed that she was laden with the wished-for corn. When, however, they learned that her cargo was white sand for strewing the arena at the sports, they broke into a storm of discontent and swept, howling insulting words, under Nero’s windows.
Next day all Rome heard that Galba, at the head of the legions of Spain and Gaul, was marching into Italy, and that none of the troops of Nero sent to guard the frontier of the Alps would draw a sword in his defence.
The prince, now only seriously alarmed, bade his household guard conduct him to Ostia, where he would mount the vessel that had discharged its load of sand, and escape to Egypt. They contemptuously refused, and disbanded. Then, in an agony of fear, Nero left the Palatine, and fled across the river to the Servilian mansion that adjoined the racecourse, to light which he had burned Christians swathed in tarred wraps.
There he found none save his secretary Epaphroditus, whom he had sent there to be chained at the door, and to act as porter because he had offended him. Guards, freedmen, courtiers, actors, all had taken to their heels, but not before they had pillaged the palace.
He wandered about the house, knocking at every door, and nowhere meeting with an answer.
Night by this time had settled in, murk and close, but at intervals electric flashes shivered overhead.
Then suddenly the earth reeled, and there passed a sound as of chariot wheels rolling heavily through the streets; yet the streets were deserted. Trembling, despairing, Nero crouched on his bed, bit his nails tillhe had gnawed them to the quick, then started up and hunted for his jewel case. He would fly on foot, carrying that, hide in some hovel, till danger was past. But a thievish slave had stolen it.
Sick at heart, picking, then biting at his nails, shrinking with apprehension at the least noise, wrapping a kerchief about a finger where blood came, he looked with dazed eyes at the red flare of the heavenly fires pulsating through his open door.
He heard a step and ran out, to encounter a freedman, Phaon by name, who was coming along the passage, holding aloft a torch, attended by two slaves.
The wretched prince clung to him, and entreated that he might not be left alone; that Phaon would protect him, and contrive a means of escape.
“Augustus!”answered the freedman,“I am not ungrateful for favors shown me, but my assistance at this hour is unavailing. I am but one man, a stranger, a Greek, and all Rome, all Italy, the entire world, have risen against you.”
“I must fly. They will allow me to earn my livelihood on the stage. Of what value to any man is my life?”
“My lord, in what value have you held the lives of the thousands that you have taken? Each life cut off has raised against you a hundred enemies. All will pursue, like a pack of hounds baying for the blood of him who murdered their kinsfolk. Even now I passed one—Lucius Ælius Lamia,—and he stayed me to inquire where you might be found. In his hand he held an unsheathed sword.”
Nero shrieked out; then looked timidly about him, terrified at the sound of his own voice.
“Let us hide. Disguise me. Get me a horse. I cannot run, I am too fat; besides, I have on my felt slippers only.”
Phaon spoke to one of his slaves, and the man left.
“Master,”said the freedman,“Do not deceive yourself. There is no escape. Prepare to die as a man. Slay yourself. It is not hard to die. Better so fall than get into the hands of implacable enemies.”
“I cannot. I have not the courage. I will do it only when everything fails. I have many theatrical wigs. I can paint my face.”
“Sire! the people are so wont to see your face besmeared with color, that they are less likely to recognize a face bleached to tallow.”
“I have a broad-brimmed fisherman’s hat. I wear it against becoming freckled. That will shade my face. Find me an ample cloak. Here, at length, comes Sporus.”
An eunuch appeared in the doorway.
Breathless, in short, broken sentences, Nero entreated him to look out in his wardrobe for a sorry mantle, and to bring it him.
“But whither will—can you go?”asked Phaon.“The Senate has been assembled—it has been convoked for midnight to vote your deposition and death.”
“I will go before it. Nay! I will haste to the Forum, I will mount the Tribune. I will ask to be given the government of Egypt. That at least will not be refused me.”
“My lord, the streets are filling with people. They will tear you to pieces ere you reach the Forum.”
“Think you so! Why so? I have amused the people so well. Good Phaon, hire me a swift galley, and I willtake refuge with Tiridates. I restored to him the crown of Armenia. He will not be ungrateful.”
“My lord, it will not be possible for you to leave Italy.”
“Then I will retire to a farm. I will grow cabbages and turnips. The god Tiberius was fond of turnips. O Divine Powers that rule the fate of men! shall I ever eat turnips again? Phaon, hide me for a season. Men’s minds are changeable. They are heated now. They will cool to-morrow. They cannot kill such a superlative artist as myself.”
“I have a villa between the Salarian and the Nomentane Roads. If it please you to go thither——”
“At once. I think I hear horse-hoofs. O Phaon, save me!”
Sporus came up, offering an old moth-eaten cloak. The wardrobe had been plundered, only the refuse had been abandoned.
A voice was heard pealing through the empty corridors:“Horses! horses at the door!”
“Who calls so loud? Silence him. He will betray us!”said Nero.“Hah! It is Epaphroditus.”
At the entrance, chained to a cumbrous log, was the Greek, Epaphroditus, formerly a pampered favorite. But two days previously he had ventured to correct a false quantity in some verses by his master, and Nero, in a burst of resentment and mortified vanity, had ordered him to be fastened to a beam as doorkeeper to the Servilian Palace.
“The horses are here,”shouted the freedman.“May it please my lord to mount. Sporus and the slaves can run afoot.”
Nero unwound the kerchief from his hand andwrapped it about his throat, drew the broad-brimmed hat over his head, enveloped himself in the blanket cloak, and shuffled in his slippers to the door.
The chained Greek at once cried out:“Master! my chain has become entangled and is so knotted that I cannot stir. I have been thus since noon, and none have regarded me. I pray thee, let me go.”
“Thou fool! cease hallooing!”retorted Nero angrily.“Dost think I carry about with me the key of thy shackles?”Then to those who followed,“Smite him on the mouth and silence him, or he will call attention to me.”
“The gods smite thee!”yelled the scribe, striving to reach an upright posture, but falling again, owing to the tangle in the links.“May they blight thee as they have stricken Livia’s laurel!”3
Mounted on an old gray horse, Nero rode to the Ælian Bridge, where stands now that of St. Angelo, crossed it and began to traverse the Campus Martius.
Electric flashes quivered across the sky. Then again an earthquake made the city rock as if drunk; the buildings were rent, and masses of cornice fell down.
A glare of white lightning illumined the whole field and lighted up the mausoleum of Augustus, and the blank faces of such men as were abroad.
The horse trembled and refused to move. It was some time before the alarm of the brute could be allayed, and it could be coaxed to go forward and begin the ascent of the Quirinal. The advance was slow; and Nero’s fears became greater as the roadapproached the Prætorian Camp, and he expected recognition by the sentinels. Yet in the midst of his fear wild flashes of hope shot, and he said to Phaon:
“What think you, if I were to enter the camp? Surely the Prætorians would rally about me, and I might dissolve the Senate.”
“Sire, they have destroyed your images, and have proclaimed Galba. They would take off your head and set it on a pike.”
Nero uttered a groan, and kicked the flanks of his steed. At that moment a passer-by saluted him.
“By the Immortals! I am recognized.”
“We have but to go a little further.”
“Phaon, what if the Senate declare me an enemy of the State?”
“Then you will fare in the customary manner.”
“How is that?”
The prince put his trembling hand to his brow and in his agitation knocked off his hat.
The freedman picked it up.
“The customary manner, sire! your neck will be put in the cleft of a forked stick and you will be beaten, lashed, kicked to death. Better take the sword and fall on it.”
“Oh, Phaon! not yet! I cannot endure pain. I have a spring nail now—and it hurts! it hurts!”
“Ride on, my lord; at the cypress hedge we will turn our horses loose, and by a path through the fields reach my villa.”
Half an hour after Nero had left the Servilian palace, where now stands the Lateran, Lamia arrived followed by two servants. He found the secretary in a heap at the door, vainly writhing in his knotted chains. Lamiaat once asked him about the prince, whether he was there.
“I will both answer and show you whither he is fled,”said Epaphroditus,“if you will release me. Otherwise my tongue is tied like my limbs.”
“Is he here?”
“Nay, he has been here, but is gone. Whither I alone can say. The price of the information is release.”
“Tell me where I can find tools.”
Epaphroditus gave the required information and Lamia despatched a servant to bring hammer and chisel. They were speedily produced; but some time was taken up in cutting through the links.
This, however, was finally effected, and the secretary gathered up a handful of the broken chain and clenched it in his fist.
“Now I will lead the way,”said he, stretching himself.
The wretched, fallen emperor had in the meanwhile scrambled through hedges and waded through a marsh, and had at last found a temporary shelter in a garden tool-house of the villa. Phaon feared to introduce him into his house.
Wearied out, he cast himself on a sort of bier on which the gardeners carried citron trees to and from the conservatory. The cloak had fallen from him and lay on the soil.
His feet were muddy and bleeding. He had tried to eat some oat-cake that had been offered him, but was unable to swallow.
He continued to be teased with, and to pick or bite at his spring nails.
“I hear steps!”he cried.“They will kill me!”
“Sire, play the man.”
Phaon offered him a couple of poniards.
Nero put the point of one to his breast, shrunk and threw it away.
“It is too blunt, it will not enter,”he said.
He tried the other and dropped it.
“It is over sharp. It cuts,”he said.
At that moment the door opened and Lamia and Epaphroditus entered.
Nero cried out and covered his face:
“Sporus! Phaon! one or both! kill yourselves and show me how to do it.”
“To do it!”said Lamia sternly.“That is not difficult. Do you need a sword? Here is one—the sword of Corbulo.”
He extended the weapon to the prince, who accepted it with tremulous hand, looking at Lamia with glassy eyes.
“Oh! a moment! I feel sick.”
Then Phaon said:“Sire—at once!”
Then Nero, with all power going out of his fingers, pointed the blade to his throat.
“I cannot,”he gasped,“my hand is numb.”
Immediately, Epaphroditus with his hand full of chain, brought the weighted fist against the haft, and drove the sword into the coward’s throat.
He sank back on the bier.
Then Lamia stooped, gathered up the moth-eaten cloak, and threw it over the face of the dying man.