FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[7]On the Palatine Hill may still be seen, in the palace of the Flavii, the frescoed private apartments and banquet-chambers of the emperors—in the walls are even the lead water-pipes, stamped with the maker's name; and the innumerable ancient relics in the museums of Rome and Naples give such an insight as nothing else can impart of the life and character of the palmy days of the empire.[8]On the banquet-room mentioned in the last note are some remarkable frescoes, among other objects being glass vases through whose transparent sides are seen exquisitely painted fruits—as fresh, apparently, after eighteen centuries as if executed within a few months.[9]Shortly after this time, that Church numbered 100,000 persons.

[7]On the Palatine Hill may still be seen, in the palace of the Flavii, the frescoed private apartments and banquet-chambers of the emperors—in the walls are even the lead water-pipes, stamped with the maker's name; and the innumerable ancient relics in the museums of Rome and Naples give such an insight as nothing else can impart of the life and character of the palmy days of the empire.

[8]On the banquet-room mentioned in the last note are some remarkable frescoes, among other objects being glass vases through whose transparent sides are seen exquisitely painted fruits—as fresh, apparently, after eighteen centuries as if executed within a few months.

[9]Shortly after this time, that Church numbered 100,000 persons.

THE IMPERIAL BANQUET.

At the summons of Callirhoë a Nubian female slave, Juba by name, an old family nurse, skilled in the use of herbs and potions, made her appearance. Her huge and snowy turban and her bright-coloured dress strikingly contrasted with her jet complexion and homely features. Yet, as the personal attendant of the young empress, it was her duty to accompany her mistress to the banquet-hall, to stand behind her chair, to adjust her robes, hold her fan, and obey her every word or gesture. As she drew aside the curtain of the apartment which shut out the light and heat, two lictors who guarded the door sprang to their feet and preceded the empress through the marble corridor to thetriclinium, or banquet chamber. It was a family party, rather than a state banquet, but neither Greeks nor Romans practised a profuse hospitality nor held large social or festive gatherings like those of modern times. Their feasts were rather for the intense epicurean pleasure of a favoured few than for the rational enjoyment of a larger company.[10]

Couches inlaid with ivory and decked with cushions surrounded three sides of a hollow square. On these the emperor and his male guests reclined, each resting on his left arm. On ivory chairs facing the open side of the square sat the Empress Prisca (a majestic-looking matron of somewhat grave aspect), Valeria, and a lady of the court, each accompanied by her female slave. The extreme ugliness of the Nubian Juba acted as a foil for the striking beauty of Valeria.

First of all, the guests were crowned with wreaths of fair and fragrant flowers. Then elegantly dressed slaves brought in, to the sound of music, the different courses: first eggs dressed with vinegar, olives and lettuce, like our salad; then roast pheasants, peacocks' tongues and thrushes, and the livers of capons steeped in milk; next oysters brought alive from the distant shores of Great Britain, and, reversing our order, fish in great variety—one of the most beautiful of these was the purple mullet—served with high-seasoned condiments and sauces. Of solid meats the favourite dish was a roast sucking pig, elegantly garnished. Of vegetables they had nothing corresponding to our potatoes, but, instead, a profusion of mallows, lentils, truffles, and mushrooms. The banquet wound up with figs, olives, almonds, grapes, tarts and confections, and apples—hence the phraseab ovo ad mala.

After the first course the emperor poured out a libation of Falernian wine, with the Greek formula, "to the supreme God," watching eagerly if his wife and daughter would do the same. Lacking the courage to make a bold confession of Christianity, and thinking, with a casuistry that we shall not attempt to defend, that the ambiguity of the expression excused the act, they also, apparently to the great relief of the emperor, poured out a libation and sipped a small quantity of the wine. The emperor then drank to the health of his wife and daughter, wishing the latter many returns of the auspicious day they had met to celebrate. Each of the guests also made, according to his ability, a complimentary speech, which the ladies acknowledged by a gracious salutation. After the repast slaves brought perfumed water and embroidered napkins for the guests to wash their fingers, which had been largely employed in the process of dining.

The most of the guests were sycophants and satellites of the emperor, and in the intervals between the courses employed their art in flattering his vanity or fomenting his prejudices. One of them, Semphronius by name, an old fellow with a very bald and shiny head and a very vivacious manner, made great pretensions to the character of a philosopher or professor of universal knowledge, and was ever ready, with a great flow of often unmeaning words, to give a theory or explanation of every conceivable subject. Others were coarse and sensual-lookingbon vivants, who gave their attention chiefly to the enjoyment of the good fare set before them. Another sinister-looking fellow, with a disagreeable cast in one eye and a nervous habit of clenching his hand as if grasping his sword, was Quintus Naso, the prefect of the city. He had been a successful soldier, or rather butcher, in the Pannonian wars, and was promoted to his bad eminence of office on account of his truculent severity. Of very different character, however, was a young man of noble family, Adauctus by name, who was present in his official character as Treasurer of the Imperial Exchequer.[11]He almost alone of the guests paid a courteous attention to the high-born ladies of the party, to whom he frequently addressed polite remarks while the others were intent only in fawning on the great source of power. He, also, alone of all present, conspicuously refrained from pouring out a libation—a circumstance which did not escape the keen eye of the emperor. After interrupted talk on general topics, in which the ladies took part, the conversation drifted to public matters, on which they were not expected to meddle.

"Well, Naso, how was the edict received?" said the emperor to the prefect, as a splendid roast peacock, with sadly despoiled plumage, was removed.

"As every command of your divine Majesty should be received," replied Naso, "with respectful obedience. One rash fool, indeed, attempted to tear it down from the rostra of the Forum, like that mad wretch at Nicomedia; but he was taken in the act. He expiates to-night his crime, so soon as I shall have wrung from him the names of his fanatical accomplices,"—and he clenched his hands nervously, as though he were himself applying the instruments of torture.

"And you know well how to do that," said the emperor with a sneer, for, like all tyrants, he despised and hated the instruments of his tyranny.

"You may well call them fanatics, good Naso," chimed in the would-be philosopher, Semphronius; "a greater set of madmen the world never saw. They believe that this Chrestus whom they worship actually rose from the dead. Heard ever any man such utter folly as that! Whereas I have satisfied myself, from a study of the official records, that he was only a Jewish thaumaturge and conjuror, who used to work pretended miracles by means of dupes and accomplices. And when, for his sedition, he was put to death as the vilest of felons, these accomplices stole his body and gave out that he rose from the dead."[12]

"I have heard," said Adauctus gravely, "that the Romans took care to prevent such a trick as that by placing a maniple of soldiers on guard at His grave."

"Yes, I believe they say so," went on the unabashed Semphronius; "but if they did, the dastards were either overpowered, or they all fell asleep while his fellow-knaves stole his body away."

"Come now, Semphronius," said the emperor, "that is too improbable a story about a whole maniple of soldiers. You and I know too well, Naso, the Roman discipline to accept such an absurd story as that."

"Oh, if your divine Majesty thinks it improbable, I fully admit that it is so," the supple sophist eagerly replied. "I am inclined to identify this impostor and a kinsman of his who was beheaded by the divine Herod with the Janus and Jambres whose story is told in the sacred books of the Jews. But it is evident, from the identity of name of one of these with the god Janus, that they merely borrowed the story from the Roman mythology. This execrable superstition, they say, was brought to Rome by two brothers named Paulus and Simon Magus. They both expiated their crimes, one in the Mammertine Prison, the other without the Ostian Gate. They say also that when Simon the magician struck the prison wall, a well of water gushed forth for some of their mystic rites; and that when the head of Paulus was smitten off it bounded three times on the ground, and at each spot where it touched a well of water sprang up. But these are stories that no sane man can believe."[13]

"I quite agree with you in that," said Adauctus.

"Do you, indeed?" exclaimed the Emperor; "I am glad to know that so brave and trusted an officer can say so."

"I believe, your Majesty, that half the stories told about the Christians are calumnies that no candid man can receive," continued the young officer.

"You are a bold man to say so, for they have few friends and many enemies at court," replied Diocletian; "but we will soon extort their secrets by this edict. Will we not, good Naso?"

"It will not be my fault if we do not, your divine Majesty," replied that worthy, with a more hideous leer than usual in his cruel eye.

"Another thing these fools of Christians believe," interjected the garrulous philosopher, "is, that when they die their souls shall live in some blander clime, and breathe some more ethereal air. 'Tis this that makes them seem to covet martyrdom, as they call it, instead of, like all sane men, shunning death."

"But do not your own poets," chimed in the soft voice of Valeria, "speak of the Elysian fields and the asphodel meadows where the spirits of heroes walk, and of the bark of Charon, who ferries them across the fatal Styx?"

"True, your most august Highness," replied the pedant with grimace intended to be polite, "but those fables are intended for the vulgar, and not for the cultured classes, to which your Imperial Highness belongs. Even the priests themselves do not believe in the existence of the gods at whose altars they minister; so that Cicero, you will remember, said that 'he wondered how one augur could look in the face of another without laughing.'"

"I quite admit," remarked Adauctus, "that the priests are often impostors, deceiving the people; but our wisest philosophers—the thoughtful Pliny, the profound Tacitus, the sage Seneca, and even the eloquent Cicero whom you have quoted—teach the probability if not the certainty of a future state, where virtue shall be rewarded and wickedness punished."

"What do they know about it any more than any of us?" interrupted the truculent Naso, to whom ethical themes were by no means familiar or welcome. My creed is embodied in the words of that clever fellow, Juvenal, that I used to learn at school—

'Esse aliquid manes, et subterranea regna,Nec pueri credunt, nisi qui nondum ære lavantur.'"[14]

"What's the use of all this talk?" lisped a languid-looking epicurean fop, who, sated with dissipation, at twenty-five found life as empty as a sucked orange. "We cannot alter fate. Life is short; let us make the most of it. I'd like to press its nectar into a single draught and have done with it for ever. As the easy-going Horace says, 'The same thing happens to us all. When our name, sooner or later, has issued from the fatal urn, we leave our woods, our villa, our pleasant homes, and enter the bark which is to bear us into eternal exile!'"[15]

Here the Emperor made an impatient gesture, to indicate that he was weary of this philosophic discourse. At the signal the ladies rose and retired. Adauctus also made his official duties an excuse for leaving the table, where Diocletian and his other guests lingered for hours in a drunken symposium.

Thus we find that the very questions which engage the agnostics and skeptics and pessimists of the present age—the Mallocks, and Cliffords, and Harrisons and their tribe—have agitated the world from the very dawn of philosophy. Did space permit, we might cite the theories of Lucretius as a strange anticipation of the development hypothesis. Indeed the writings of Pyrrho, Porphyry and Celsus show us that the universal tendency of human philosophy, unaided by divine inspiration, is to utter skepticism.

FOOTNOTES:[10]On a single supper for his friends, Lucullus, who is said to have fed his lampreys with the bodies of his slaves, is recorded to have expended 50,000 denarii—about $8,500.[11]His name and office are recorded even by so skeptical a critic as Gibbon, and his epitaph has been found in the Catacombs. See Withrow's Catacombs, p. 46.[12]Strauss and Renan and their rationalizing school rival this pagan sophist in eliminating the miraculous from the sacred record.[13]Yet these stories, too incredible for this old pagan, were gravely related to the present writer, on the scene of the alleged miracles, by the credulous Romans of to-day.[14]Sat.ii. 49. "That the manes are anything, or the nether world anything, not even boys believe, unless those still in the nursery."[15]See that saddest but most beautiful of the ode of Horace, To Delius, II. 3:... Et nos in æternumExilium impositura cymbæ.

[10]On a single supper for his friends, Lucullus, who is said to have fed his lampreys with the bodies of his slaves, is recorded to have expended 50,000 denarii—about $8,500.

[11]His name and office are recorded even by so skeptical a critic as Gibbon, and his epitaph has been found in the Catacombs. See Withrow's Catacombs, p. 46.

[12]Strauss and Renan and their rationalizing school rival this pagan sophist in eliminating the miraculous from the sacred record.

[13]Yet these stories, too incredible for this old pagan, were gravely related to the present writer, on the scene of the alleged miracles, by the credulous Romans of to-day.

[14]Sat.ii. 49. "That the manes are anything, or the nether world anything, not even boys believe, unless those still in the nursery."

[15]See that saddest but most beautiful of the ode of Horace, To Delius, II. 3:... Et nos in æternumExilium impositura cymbæ.

[15]See that saddest but most beautiful of the ode of Horace, To Delius, II. 3:

... Et nos in æternumExilium impositura cymbæ.

"THE CHRISTIANS TO THE LIONS."

The progress of our story transports us, on the day after the banquet described in our last chapter, to the palace of the Prefect Naso, on the Aventine. It was a large and pompous-looking building, with a many-columned portico and spacious gardens, both crowded with statuary, the spoil of foreign cities, or the product of degenerate Greek art—as offensive in design as skilful in execution. The whole bore evidence of the ostentation of vulgar wealth rather than of judicious taste. A crowd of "clients" and satellites of the great man were hanging round the doors, eager to present some petition, proffer some service, or to swell his idle retinue, like jackals around a lion, hoping to pick up a living as hangers-on of such a powerful and unscrupulous dispenser of patronage. In the degenerate days of the Empire, the civic officials especially had always a swarm of needy dependents seeking to fatten on the spoils of office. They were supposed, in some way, to add to the dignity of the consuls and prætors, as in later times were the retainers of a mediæval baron. The system of slavery had made all honest labour opprobrious, and these idle, corrupt, and dangerous parasites had to be kept in good humour by lavish doles and constant amusements. "Bread and the Circus," was their imperious demand, and having these, they cared for nothing else.

On the morning in question there was considerable excitement among this turbulent throng, for the rumour was current that there was to be an examination of certain prisoners accused of the vile crime of Christianity; and there were hopes that the criminals would supply fresh victims for the games of the amphitheatre, which for some time had languished for lack of suitable material. The temper of the mob we may learn by the remarks that reach our ears as we elbow our way through.

"Ho, Davus! what's the news to-day?" asked a cobbler with his leathern apron tucked up about his waist, of a greasy-looking individual who strutted about with much affectation of dignity; "you have the run of his Excellency's kitchen, and ought to know."

"Areyouthere, Samos?" (a nick-name meaning Flat Nose). "Back to your den, you slave, and don't meddle with gentlemen.'Ne sutor,'you know the rest."

"Can't you see that the cook drove him out with the basting ladle?" said Muscus, the stout-armed blacksmith, himself a slave, and resenting the insult to his class; and so the laugh was turned against the hungry parasite.

"Here, good Max, you are on the guard, you can tell us," went on the burly smith.

"News enough, as you'll soon find. There's to be more hunting of the Christians for those who like it. For my part, I don't."

"Why not," asked Burdo, the butcher, a truculent looking fellow with a great knife in a sheath at his girdle. "I'd like no better fun. I'd as lief kill a Christian as kill a calf."

"It might suit your business," answered stout Max, with a sneer, "but hunting women and children is not a soldier's trade."

"O ho! that's the game that's a-foot!" chuckled a withered little wretch with a hungry face and cruel eyes, like a weasel. "Here's a chance for an honest man who worships the old gods to turn an honest penny."

"Honest man!" growled Max. "Diogenes would want a good lantern to find one in Rome to-day. He'd certainly never take thee for one. Thy very face would convict thee of violating all the laws in the Twelve Tables."

"Hunting the Christians, that's the game, is it?" said an ill-dressed idler, blear-eyed and besotted; "and pestilent vermin they are. I'd like to see them all drowned in the Tiber like so many rats."

"You are more likely to see them devoured in the amphitheatre," said Bruto, a Herculean gladiator. "The Prefect is going to give some grand games on the Feast of Neptune. Our new lions will have a chance to flesh their teeth in the bodies of the Christians. The wretches haven't the courage to fight, like the Dacian prisoners, with us gladiators, nor even with the beasts; but just let themselves be devoured like sheep."

At this juncture a commotion was observed about the door, and Naso, the Prefect, came forth and looked haughtily around. Several clients pressed forward with petitions, which he carelessly handed unopened to his secretary, who walked behind. He regarded with some interest the elegantly-dressed and graceful youth who glided through the throng and presented a scroll, saying, as he did so—

"It is of much importance, your Excellency. It is about the Christians."

"Follow me to the Forum," said the Prefect, and our old acquaintance Isidorus, for it was he, fell into the train of the great civic dignitary. Arrived at the Basilica Julia, or great Court of Justice, the Prefect beckoned to the young Greek secretary, and entered a private ante-room. Throwing himself into a bronze chair, and pointing the Greek to a marble seat, he asked abruptly—

"Now, what is this you know about these Christians?"

"Something of much importance to your Excellency, and I hope to learn something still more important."

"You shall be well paid if you do," said the Prefect. "It is difficult to convict them of any crime."

"I have secret sources of information, your Excellency. In fact, I hope to bring you the names of the ringleaders of the accursed sect."

"How so? Are you not the secretary of Flaccus Sertorius?"

"I am, your Excellency, but he has no heart in the work of this new edict. I would like to see more zeal in the Emperor's service."

"I like not this Sertorius," said the Prefect, half musing. "He affects too much what they call the severe old Roman virtues to suit these times. But how do you expect to learn the secrets of these Christians?"

"By becoming one myself, your Excellency, replied the Greek, with a sinister expression in his eyes."

"By becoming one yourself!" exclaimed the Prefect, in a tone of anger and surprise. Then noting the wily expression of the supple Greek, he added, "Oh! I see, by becoming a spy upon their practices and a betrayer of their secrets. Is that it?"

"We Greeks like not the words traitor and spy," said the youth, with a faint blush, "but to serve the Emperor and your Excellency we would bear even that opprobrium."

"Well, you look capable of it," said the Prefect, with an undisguised sneer, "and I will gladly use any instruments to crush this vile sect."

"But, your Excellency," said the cringing Greek, swallowing his chagrin and annoyance, "I shall require gold to gain the confidence of these Christians—not to bribe them, for that is impossible, but to spend in what they call charity—to give to their sick and poor."

"Not forgetting yourself, I'll be bound," sneered the Prefect. "But what you say is no doubt true;" and turning to the table he wrote an order upon the Imperial Exchequer, and handed it to the Greek, with the words, "If you make good use of that, there is more where it comes from. The Emperor pays hisfaithfulservants well." Then dismissing the treacherous tool whom he himself despised, he passed into the Basilica, or court, where the bold Christian youth who had torn down the Emperor's edict was to receive his sentence.

Livid with the torture he had undergone to make him disclose the names of his accomplices —tortures which he had borne with heroic fortitude he boldly avowed his act, and defied the power of the Prefect to extort the name of a single Christian from his lips. We will not harrow the hearts of our readers by recounting the atrocious tortures by which the body of the brave youth had been wrung. He was at length borne away fainting to his cruel fate. Although the Prefect, who had sworn to have his secret if he tore the heart out of his body, gnashed his teeth in impotent rage at the defiance of the mangled martyr, yet he could not in his inmost soul help feeling the vast gulf between his sublime fidelity and the heinous guilt of the base traitor from whom he had just parted.

The pages of the contemporary historians, Eusebius and Lactantius, give too minute and circumstantial accounts of the persecutions, of which they were eye-witnesses, to allow us to adopt the complacent theory of Gibbon, that the sufferings of the Christians were comparatively few and insignificant. "We ourselves have seen," says the Bishop of Cæsarea, "crowds of persons, some beheaded, others burned alive in a single day, so that the murderous weapons were blunted and broken to pieces, and the executioners, weary with slaughter, were obliged to give over the work of blood.... They vied with each other," he continues, "in inventing new tortures, as if there were prizes offered to him who should contrive the greatest cruelties."[16]Men whose only crime was their religion, were scourged with chains laden with bronze balls, till the flesh hung in shreds, and even the bones were broken. They were bound in fetters of red hot iron, and roasted over fires so slow that they lingered for hours, or even days, in their mortal agony; their flesh was scraped from the very bone with ragged shells, or lacerated with burning pincers, iron hooks, and instruments with horrid teeth and claws, hence calledungulæ, examples of which have been found in the Catacombs; molten metal was applied to their bodies till they became one undistinguishable wound, and mingled salt and vinegar,[17]or unslacked lime, were rubbed upon the quivering flesh, torn and bleeding from the rack or scourge—tortures more inhuman than savage Indian ever wreaked upon his mortal foe. Chaste matrons and tender virgins were given over to a fate a thousand-fold worse than death, and were subjected to indignities too horrible for words to utter. And all these sufferings were endured, often with joy and exultation, for the love of a Divine Master, when a single word, a grain of incense cast upon the heathen altar, would have released the victims from their agonies. No lapse of time, and no recoil from the idolatrous homage paid in after ages to the martyr's relics, should impair in our hearts the profound and rational reverence with which we bend before his tomb.

While the examination of the Christian martyr was in progress, much interest was manifested in his fate by the throng of idlers who were wont to linger around the public courts, to gratify their curiosity or their morbid love of cruelty.

"The State is in danger," said Piso, the barber, gesticulating violently, "if such miscreants are suffered to live."

"Ay, is it," chimed in a garrulous pedagogue, "this is rank treason."

"Right, neighbour Probus," added a pettifogging lawyer. "This is the verycrimen majestatis. These men are the enemies of Cæsar and of the Roman people."

"Who would think he was so wicked?" said a poor freed-woman who sold sugar barley in the Forum. "Sure he looks innocent enough."

"Heisinnocent," replied her neighbour, who kept a stall for the sale of figs and olives. "'Tis that wretch who is wicked," looking fiercely at the Prefect as he moved from the court.

"You are right," said a grave-looking man, speaking low, but with a look of secret understanding; "but be careful. You can do the brave Lucius no good, and may betray the others into jeopardy," and he passed swiftly through the throng.

"'Tis time all these Atheists were exterminated," said Furbo, a sort of hanger-on at the neighbouring temple of Saturn. "The gods are angry, and the victims give sinister auspices. To-day when the priest slew the ram for the sacrifice, would you believe it? it had no heart; and the sacred chickens refused their food."

"And they certainly are to blame for the floods of the Tiber, which destroyed all the olives and lentils in my shop," said Fronto, the oil and vegetable seller.

"And the rain rusted all the wheat on our farm," said Macer, the villicus or land-steward.

"And the fever has broken out afresh in the Suburra," croaked a withered old Egyptian crone, like a living mummy, who told fortunes and sold spells in that crowded and pest-smitten quarter, where the poor swarmed like flies.

"And the drought has blighted all the vines," echoed Demetrius, the wine-merchant.

"I never knew trade so dull," whined Ephraim, the Jewish money-lender. "We'll never have good times again till these accursed Christians are all destroyed."

"So say I," "And I," "And I," shouted one after another of the mob, till the wild cry rang round the Forum,"Christiani adleones"—"The Christians to the lions."[18]

FOOTNOTES:[16]Euseb. Hist Eccles., viii. 7.[17]"Salt me the more, that I may be incorruptible," said Tarachus, the martyr, as he underwent this excruciating torture.[18]"If the Tiber overflows its banks," says Tertullian, "or if the Nile does not; if there be drought or earthquakes, famine or pestilence, the cry is raised, 'the Christians to the lions.' But I pray you," he adds, in refutation of these absurd charges, "were misfortunes unknown before Tiberius? The true God was not worshipped when Hannibal conquered at Cannæ, or the Gauls filled the city."—Tertul.Apol., x.

[16]Euseb. Hist Eccles., viii. 7.

[17]"Salt me the more, that I may be incorruptible," said Tarachus, the martyr, as he underwent this excruciating torture.

[18]"If the Tiber overflows its banks," says Tertullian, "or if the Nile does not; if there be drought or earthquakes, famine or pestilence, the cry is raised, 'the Christians to the lions.' But I pray you," he adds, in refutation of these absurd charges, "were misfortunes unknown before Tiberius? The true God was not worshipped when Hannibal conquered at Cannæ, or the Gauls filled the city."—Tertul.Apol., x.

THE MARTYR'S BURIAL.

The fawning Greek Isidorus had stealthily wormed his way into the confidence of Faustus, a servant of Adauctus, by professing to be, if not a Christian, at least a sincere inquirer after the truth, and an ardent hater of the edict of persecution. Faustus had therefore promised to conduct him to a private meeting of the Christians, where he might be more fully instructed by the good presbyter, Primitius. In the short summer twilight they therefore made their way to the villa of the Christian matron Marcella, on the Appian Way, about two miles from the city gates. A high wall surrounded the grounds. In this was a wicket or door, at which Faustus knocked. The white-haired porter partly opened the door, and recognizing the foremost figure, admitted him, but gave a look of inquiry before passing his companion.

"It is all right," said Faustus. "He is a good friend of mine," and so they passed on.

The grounds were large and elegant, fountains flashed in the soft moonlight, the night-blooming cereus breathed forth its rare perfume, and masses of cypress and ilex cast deep shadows on the pleached alleys. But there was a conspicuous absence of the garden statuary invariably found in pagan grounds. There was no figure of the god Terminus, nor of the beautiful Flora, or Pomona, nor of any of the fair goddesses which to-day people the galleries of Rome. In the spaciousatrium, or central apartment of the house, which was partially lighted by bronze candalabra, was gathered a company of nearly a hundred persons, seated on couches around the hall—the men on the right and the women on the left. A solemn stillness brooded over the entire assembly. Near a tall cadalabrum stood a venerable figure with a snowy beard—the presbyter Primitius. From a parchment scroll in his hand he read in impressive tones the holy words of hope and consolation, "Let not your hearts be troubled, ye believe in God, believe also in me," and the rest of that sweet, parting counsel of the world's Redeemer.

Stairway To Catacomb.Stairway To Catacomb.

Before he was through, a procession with torches was seen approaching through the garden. On a bier, borne by four young men, lay the body of Lucius the martyr, wrapped in white and strewn with flowers—at rest in the solemn majesty of death from the tortures of the rack and scourge. The little assembly within joined the procession without, and softly singing the holy words which still give such consolation to the stricken heart, "Beati sunt mortui qui in Domino morientur—Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord," through the shadowy cypress alleys wound the solemn procession. Soon it reached an archway, like that shown in ourfirst chapter, the entrance to the catacomb of St. Callixtus, which lay beneath the grounds of the Lady Marcella. Then, preceded by torches, with careful tread the bearers of the bier slowly descended a rock-hewn stairway, and traversed a long and gloomy corridor, lined on either side with the graves of the dead.[19]This stairway and corridor are shown in the engravings which accompany this chapter.

An almost supernatural fear fell upon the soul of Isidorus the Greek, who had followed in the train of the procession, as it penetrated further and further into the very heart of the earth. He seemed like Ulysses with his ghostly guide visiting the grim regions of the nether-world, and the words of the classic poet came to his mind, "Horror on all sides, the very silence fills the soul with dread." Already for more than two centuries these gloomy galleries had been the receptacles of the Christian dead, and in many places the slabs that sealed the tombs were broken, and the graves yawned weirdly as he passed, revealing the unfleshed skeletons lying on their stony bed. To his excited imagination they seemed to menace him with their outstretched bony arms. Deep, mysterious shadows crouched around, full of vague suggestions of affright. His gay, joyous and pleasure-loving nature recoiled from the evidences of mortality around him. His footsteps faltered, and he almost fell to the rocky pavement. The procession swept on, the glimmering lights growing dimmer and dimmer, and then turning an angle they suddenly disappeared. Fear lent wings to his feet, and he fled along the narrow path with outstretched hands, sometimes touching with a feeling of horrible recoil the bones or ashes of the dead. He hurried along, groping from side to side, and when he reached the passage down which the funeral procession had disappeared, no gleam of it was visible, nor could he tell, so suddenly the lights had disappeared, whether it had turned to the right or to the left. The darkness was intense—a darkness that might be felt, a brooding horror that oppressed every sense. He tried to call out, but his tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of his mouth, and his faint cry was swallowed up in the deep and oppressive silence. Had the vengeance of the gods overtaken him in punishment for his meditated crime? Was he, who so loved the light and air, and joyous sunshine, never to behold them again? Must he be buried in these gloomy vaults for ever? These thoughts surged through his brain, and almost drove him wild. But what sounds are those that steal faintly on his ear? They seem like the music of heaven heard in the heart of hell. Stronger, sweeter, clearer, come the holy voices. And now they shape themselves to words, "Nam et si ambulavero in medio umbræ mortis, non timebo mala—Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." Was it to taunt his terrors those strange words were sung? Then the holy chant went on, "Quonian tu mecum es Virga tua, et baculus tuus, ipsa me consolata sunt—For thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." What strange secret had these Christians that sustained their souls even surrounded by the horrors of the tomb?

Corridor Of Catacomb.Corridor Of Catacomb.

Isidorus groped his way amid the gloom toward these heavenly sounds. Soon he caught a faint glimmer of light reflected from an angle of the corridor, and then a ray through an open doorway pierced the gloom. Hurrying forward he found the whole company from which he had become separated gathered in a sort of chapel hewn out of the solid rock. The body of Lucius lay upon the bier before an open tomb, hewn out of the wall. The venerable presbyter, by the fitful torchlight which illumined the strange group, and lit up the pious paintings and epitaphs upon the wall, read from a scroll the strange words, "And I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the Word of God and for the testimony which they held, and they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" A great fear fell upon the soul of the susceptible Greek, for the slain man seemed, in the solemn majesty of death, to become an accusing judge.

Then turning his scroll the presbyter read on, "What are these arrayed in white robes and whence came they? These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple.... They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more ... and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."

These holy words stirred strange emotions in the agitated breast of the young Greek. Sweeter were they than ought he had ever read in Pindar's page, and more sublime than even Homer's hymns. If these things were true, he thought, he would gladly change places with the martyr on his bier, if only he might exchange the torturing ambitions, strifes and sins of time for the holy joys which that marvellous scroll revealed.

Then by loving hands the martyr's body was placed in its narrow tomb. A marble slab, on which were simply written his name and the words, "DORMIT IN PACE—He sleeps in peace," was cemented against the opening. With a trowel, a palm branch, the symbol of martyrdom, was rudely traced in the yet unhardened cement, and the little company began to disperse.

"O sir," cried the young Greek, clasping the hand of the venerable Primitius, "teach me more fully this excellent way."

"Gladly, my son," replied the benignant old man. "Come hither to-morrow. For here," he added with a smile, "my friends insist that I must remain concealed till this outburst of persecution shall have passed.[20]Hilarus, the fossor, will be thy guide. He will now conduct thee back to thy friend Faustus, who is seeking thee."

By the dim light of a waxen taper which he carried, Hilarus led the Greek to the entrance to the Catacomb, where they found Faustus waiting in some alarm at the delay of his friend. In the bright moonlight they walked back to the city. Isidorus thought well to evade giving an account of his adventure in the Catacomb, and, to turn the conversation, asked how the Christians had obtained the body of Lucius from the public executioner.

"Oh, money will do anything in Rome," said Faustus, at which the Greek visibly winced. "The Lady Marcella, in whose grounds the Catacomb is, devotes much of her wealth to burying the poor of the Church, and her steward had no difficulty in purchasing from Hanno, the executioner, the mangled remains of the martyr. 'Tis like, before long, that he will have many such to sell."

FOOTNOTES:[19]For the details above given, see Bingham'sOrigines Ecclesiastica[20]Liberius, Bishop of Rome, lay concealed in the Catacombs for a whole year, during a time of persecution.

[19]For the details above given, see Bingham'sOrigines Ecclesiastica

[20]Liberius, Bishop of Rome, lay concealed in the Catacombs for a whole year, during a time of persecution.

WITH HILARUS THE FOSSOR.

"No one becomes vile all at once," said the Roman moralist, and we would be unjust to the fickle, fawning Greek Isidorus, if we concluded that deliberate treachery was his purpose, as, at the invitation of Primitius, he repaired next day to the catacomb of St. Calixtus. His was a susceptible, impressionable nature, easily influenced by its environment, like certain substances that acquire the odour, fragrant or foul, of the atmosphere by which they are surrounded. Amid the vileness of the Roman court, his better feelings died, and he was willing to become the minion of tyranny, or the tool of treachery. Amid the holy influences of the Christian assembly, some chord responded, like an Eolian harp, to the breathings of the airs from heaven. It was, therefore, with strangely conflicting feelings, that he passed beneath the Capuan Gate, and along the Appian Way, toward the Villa Marcella. His better nature recoiled from his purposed treachery of the previous day. His heart yearned to know more of that strange power which sustained the Christian martyr in the presence of torture and of death.

He was recognized by the porter at the gate of the villa as the companion of Faustus, and on his inquiry for the house of Hilarus, the fossor, was directed to a low-walled, tile-roofed building, such as may be seen in many parts of the Campagna to the present day. About the house were many stone chippings, and numerous slabs of marble. Under a sort of arbour, covered with vine branches in full leaf, stood a grisly-visaged man, with close-cropped, iron-gray hair, chipping with mallet and chisel at a large sarcophagus, or stone coffin, upon a mason's bench.

"Do I address Hilarus, the fossor?" asked the Greek, with a graceful salutation.

"I am Hilarus, at your service, noble sir," replied the old man, with a kindly expression of countenance.

The young Greek then told of the invitation given him by the good presbyter, Primitius, and requested to be conducted to him.

"You are, of course, known to the porter, or you would not have obtained admission to these grounds," said Hilarus. "But you will first honour my poor roof by partaking some refreshment after your hot walk from the city."

"Thanks, good friend," replied the Greek, "a draught of your native wine would not be amiss. Nay, I would prefer it here beneath the grateful shadow of this vine," he continued, as Hilarus courteously led the way to the open door of the cottage. This was quite small, and had almost no furniture save some earthen pots for cooking at an open fireplace. In a moment the old man re-appeared with an earthen flagon of wine and a bronze salver, with bread and goat's milk cheese, and a bronze cup.[21]

"For whom is this elegant sarcophagus?" asked Isidorus, as he sipped his wine.

Sarcophagus now in Lateran Museum.Sarcophagus now in Lateran Museum.

"I pray it be not for her who orders it," said the old man, devoutly; "at least not for many a long day to come. The good Lady Marcella bade me exercise my best skill in setting forth the great truths of the Gospel, that in death as in life, she said, she might teach the doctrines of Christ. She often comes to see how I get on with it, and to describe how she wishes it to be. See," said the old man, pointing to the side—(see above)—"the general idea is all her own, the details only are mine. These four groups exhibit four scenes in the life—or rather in the death—of our Lord. To the extreme right we see Pilate, warned by his wife, washing his hands and saying 'I am innocent of the blood of this just person,' and yet, like a coward, consenting to His death, he was as guilty as Judas, who betrayed Him."

At this the Greek visibly winced, then paled and flushed, and said, "Well, what is the next group?"

"That is part of the same," said the sculptor, with evident pride in his work. "It represents our Lord, guarded by a Roman soldier, witnessing a good confession before Pontius Pilate. In the central niche are two soldiers, types of the Christian warriors, whose only place of safety is beneath the cross; while above are the wreath of victory, the doves of peace, and the sacred monogram, made up, I need not tell you, who are a Greek, of the two first letters of the word Christos. To the left you observe a Roman soldier, putting on Jesus the crown of thorns, and in the last, Simon the Cyrenian, guarded by a soldier, bearing His cross."[22]

"And for whom are all these funeral tablets," said Isidorus, pointing to a number of slabs partly executed—some with the engraved outline of a dove, or fish, or anchor, or olive branch upon them—leaning against the wall.

"For whom God pleases," said the old man, devoutly. "I keep them ready to suit purchasers, and then I have only to fill the name and age, or date."

"But see here," said the Greek, touching with his foot one on which were effigies of Castor and Pollux, the "great twin brethren" of the Roman mythology, and the letters, "Dis Manibvs—To the Divine Spirits;" "this is a pagan inscription. How come you to use that?"

"Oh, we turn up such slabs by scores, in ploughing the fields hereabout. They may be hundreds of years old, for aught I know. We just turn that side to the wall, or deface it with a few strokes of the chisel."

"It was a prentice hand that madethat, I'll be bound," said the Greek, pointing to one on which was rudely painted in black pigment, the sprawling inscription that follows, no two letters being the same size—

LOcvSaVgvStIsvToRis."The Place of Augustus, the Shoemaker."

"Oh, that is the epitaph of a poor cobbler. I let my boys do that for nothing. They will soon be able to do better. Here now is one by my oldest son, of which I would not be ashamed myself;" and he pointed to a neatly-cut inscription, the letters coloured with a bright vermillion pigment, which ran thus,—

AVRELIAE THEVDOSIAEBENIGNISSIMAE ET INCOMPARABILI FEMINAEAVRELIVS OPTATVSCONIVGE INNOCENTISSIMAE

"Aurelius Optatus, to his most innocent wife, AureliaTheudosia, a most gracious and incomparable woman."

"We will now, if you are sufficiently cool," he went on, "enter the catacomb. It is not well to make too sudden a transition from this sultry heat to their chilly depths."

"Thanks," said the young man, "I shall find the change from this sultry air, I doubt not, very agreeable;" and they crossed a vineyard under a blazing sun, that made the cool crypts exceedingly grateful. Descending the stairway, the guide took from a niche a small terra-cotta lamp, which he carefully trimmed and lit at another, which was always kept burning there.[23]

"Is there not danger of losing one's way in this labyrinth?" asked the Greek, feeling no small degree of the terror of his late adventure returning.

"Very great danger, indeed," replied Hilarus, "unless you know the clue and marks by which we steer, almost like ships at sea. But knowing these, the way may become as familiar as the streets of Rome. You may, perhaps, have heard of Cæcilia, a blind girl, who acted as guide to these subterranean places of assembly, because to her accustomed feet the path was as easy as the Appian Way to those who see."

"How many Greek epitaphs there are," said Isidorus, deeply interested in scanning the inscriptions as he passed.

"Yes," said the fossor, "there are a-many of your countryfolk buried here; and even some who are not like to have their epitaphs written in the language in which holy Paulus wrote his epistle to the Church in Rome."

"But what wretched scrawls the most of them are," said the Greek, with something like a sneer; "and see, here is one even upside down."

"Yes, noble sir," continued the old man, "not many mighty, not many noble are called—most of those who sleep around us are God's great family of the poor. Indeed, most of them were slaves. That poor fellow was a martyr in the last persecution. I mind it well, though it is years agone. We buried him by stealth at dead of night, and did not notice that the hastily written inscription was reversed."

The dim rays of their lamp and taper made but a faint ring of light about their feet. Their steps, as they walked over the rocky floor, echoed strangely down the long-drawn corridors and hollow vaults, dying gradually away in the solemn stillness of this valley of the shadow of death. The sudden transition from the brilliant Italian sunlight to this sepulchral gloom, from the busy city of the living to this silent city of the dead, smote the heart of the susceptible youth with a feeling of awe. And all around in this vast necropolis, each in his narrow cell forever laid, were unnumbered thousands, who were once like himself, full of energy and life.

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