Caesar Dies
by
Talbot Mundy
Part 2 out of 3
She plunged into the pool and swam like a mermaid, her companions
following, climbed out at the farther end, where the diving-boards
projected in tiers, one above the other, and passed through a bronze
door into the first of the sweating rooms, evidently conscious of the
murmur of comment that followed her, but taking no overt notice of it.
"Who is to be the next to try to reason with her--you?" asked Boltius
Livius.
"No, not I. I have shot my bolt," said Pertinax and closed his eyes, as
if to shut out something from his memory--or possibly to banish thoughts
he did not relish. There came a definite, hard glint into Livius's
eyes; he had a name for being sharper to detect intrigue and its
ramifications than even the sharp outline of his face would indicate.
"You have heard of her latest indiscretion?" he asked, narrowly watching
Pertinax. "There is a robber at large, named Maternus--you have heard
of him? The man appears and disappears. Some say he is the same
Maternus who was crucified near Antioch at about the time when you were
there; some say he isn't. He is reported to visit Rome in various
disguises, and to be able to conduct himself so well that he can pass
for a patrician. Some say he has a large band; some say, hardly any
followers. Some say it was he who robbed the emperor's own mail a month
ago. He is reported to be here, there, everywhere; but there came at
last reliable information that he lives in a cave in the woods on an
estate that fell to the fiscus (the government department into which all
payments were made, corresponding roughly to a modern treasury
department) at the time when Maximus and his son Sextus were
proscribed."
Pertinax looked bored. He yawned.
"I think I will go in and sweat a while," he remarked.
"Not yet. Let me finish," said Livius. "It was reported to Caesar that
the highwayman Maternus lives in a cave on this Aventine estate, and
that the slaves and tenants on the place, who, of course, all passed to
the new owner when the estate was sold, not only tolerate him but supply
him with victuals and news. Caesar went into one of his usual frenzies,
cursed half the senators by name, and ordered out a cohort from a legion
getting ready to embark at Ostia. He ordered them to lay waste the
estate, burn all the woods and if necessary torture the slaves and
tenants, until they had Maternus. Dead or alive, they were not to dare
to come without him, and meanwhile the rest of the legion was kept
waiting at Ostia, with all the usual nuisance of desertions and
drunkenness and what not else."
"Everybody knows about that," said Pertinax. "As governor of Rome it
was my duty to point out to the emperor the inconvenience of keeping
that legion waiting under arms so near the city. I was snubbed for my
pains, but I did my duty."
"Your duty? There were plenty of people more concerned than you," said
Livius, looking again as if he thought he had detected an intrigue.
"There were the Ostian authorities, for instance, but I did not hear of
their complaining."
"Naturally not," said Pertinax, suppressing irritation. "Every day the
legion lingered there meant money for the enterprising city fathers. I
am opposed to all the petty pouching of commissions that goes on."
"Doubtless. Being governor of Rome, you naturally--"
"I have heard of peculations at the palace," Pertinax interrupted.
"Be that as it may, Commodus ordered out the cohort, sent it marching
and amused himself inventing new ingenious torments for Maternus.
Alternatively, he proposed to himself to have the cohort slaughtered in
the arena, officers and all, if they should fail of their mission; so
it was safe to wager they were going to bring back some one said to be
Maternus, whether or not they caught the right man. Commodus was
indulging in one of his storms of imperial righteousness. He was going
to stamp out lawlessness. He was going to make it safe for any one to
come or go along the Roman roads. Oh, he was in a fine Augustan mood.
It wasn't safe for any one but Marcia to come within a mile of him.
Scowl--you know that scowl of his--it freezes the very sentries on the
wall if he looks at their backs through the window! I don't suppose
there was a woman in Rome just then who would have cared to change
places with Marcia! He sent for her, and half the palace betted she was
ripe for banishment to one of those island retreats where Crispina (the
wife of Commodus who was banished to the isle of Capreae and there
secretly put to death) lived less than a week! But Marcia is fertile of
surprises. She won't surprise me if she outlives Commodus--by Hercules,
she won't surprise me if--"
He stared at Pertinax with impudently keen eyes. Pertinax looked at the
bronze door leading to the sweating room, shrugging himself as if the
frigidarium had grown too cool for comfort.
"Marcia actually persuaded Commodus to countermand the order!" Livius
said, emphasizing each word. "Almighty Jove can only guess what
argument she used, but if Maternus had been one of her pet Christians
she couldn't have saved him more successfully. Commodus sent a messenger
post-haste that night to recall the cohort."
"And a good thing too," Pertinax remarked. "It isn't a legion's
business to supply cohorts to do the work of the district police. There
were five thousand raw men on the verge of mutiny in Ostia--"
"And--wait a minute--and," said Livius, "don't go yet--this is
interesting: Marcia, that same night, sent a messenger of her own to
find Maternus and to warn him."
"How do you know?" Pertinax let a sign of nervousness escape him.
"In the palace, those of us who value our lives and our fortunes make it
a business to know what goes on," Livius answered with a dry laugh,
"just as you take care to know what goes on in the city, Pertinax."
The older man looked worried.
"Do you mean it is common gossip in the palace?" he demanded.
"You are the first man I have spoken with. There are therefore only
three who know, if you count the slave whom Marcia employed; four if you
count Marcia. I had the great good luck not long ago to catch that
slave in flagrante delicto--never mind what he was doing; that is
another story altogether--and he gave me an insight into a number of
useful secrets. The point is, that particular slave takes care not to
run errands nowadays without informing me. There is not much that
Marcia does that I don't know about." Livius' eyes suggested gimlets
boring holes into Pertinax's face. Not a change of the other's
expression escaped him. Pertinax covered his mouth with his hand,
pretending to yawn. He slapped his thighs to suggest that his
involuntary shudder was due to having sat too long. But he did not
deceive Livius. "It is known to me," said Livius, "that you and Marcia
are in each other's confidence."
"That makes me doubt your other information," Pertinax retorted. "No man
can jump to such a ridiculous conclusion and call it knowledge without
making me doubt him on all points. You bore me, Livius. I have
important business waiting; I must make haste into the sweating room
and get that over with."
But Livius' sharp, nervous laugh arrested him.
"Not yet, friend Pertinax! Let Rome wait! Rome's affairs will outlive
both of us. I suspect you intend to tell Marcia to have my name
included in the next proscription list! But I am not quite such a
simpleton as that. Sit down and listen. I have proof that you plotted
with the governor of Antioch to have an unknown criminal executed in
place of a certain Norbanus, who escaped with your connivance and has
since become a follower of the highwayman Maternus. That involves you
rather seriously, doesn't it! You see, I made sure of my facts before
approaching you. And now--admit that I approached you tactfully! Come,
Pertinax, I made no threats until you let me see I was in danger. I
admire you. I regard you as a brave and an honorable Roman. I propose
that you and I shall understand each other. You must take me into
confidence, or I must take steps to protect myself."
There was a long pause while a group of men and women came and chattered
near by, laughing while one of the men tried to win a wager by climbing
a marble pillar. Pertinax frowned. Livius did his best to look
dependable and friendly, but his eyes were not those of a boon
companion.
"You are incapable of loyalty to any one except yourself," said Pertinax
at last. "What pledge do you propose to offer me?"
"A white bull to Jupiter Capitolinus! I am willing to go with you to
the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and to swear on the altar whatever
solemn oath you wish."
Pertinax smiled cynically.
"The men who slew Julius Caesar were under oath to him," he remarked.
"Most solemn oaths they swore, then turned on one another like a pack of
wolves! Octavian and Anthony were under oath; and how long did that
last? My first claim to renown was based on having rewon the allegiance
of our troops in Britain, who had broken the most solemn oath a man can
take--of loyalty to Rome. An oath binds nobody. It simply is an
emphasis of what a man intends that minute. It expresses an emotion. I
believe the gods smile when they hear men pledge themselves. I
personally, who am far less than a god and far less capable of reading
men's minds, never trust a man unless I like him, or unless he gives me
pledges that make doubt impossible."
"Then you don't like me?" asked Livius.
"I would like you better if I knew that I could trust you."
"You shall, Pertinax! Bring witnesses! I will commit myself before
your witnesses to do my part in--"
His restless eyes glanced right and left. Then he lowered his voice.
"--in bringing about the political change you contemplate."
"Let us go to the sweating room," Pertinax answered. "Keep near me. I
will think this matter over. If I see you holding speech not audible to
me, with any one--"
"I am already pledged. You may depend on me," said Livius. "I trust
you more because you use caution. Come."
VI. THE EMPEROR COMMODUS
The imperial palace was a maze of splendor such as Babylon had never
seen. It had its own great aqueducts to carry water for its fountains,
for the gardens and for the imperial baths that were as magnificent, if
not so large, as the Thermae of Titus. Palace after palace had been
wrecked, remodeled and included in the whole, under the succeeding
emperors, until the imperial quarters on the Palatine had grown into a
city within a city.
There were barracks for the praetorian guard that lacked not much of
being a fortress. Rooms and stairways for the countless slaves were
like honeycomb cells in the dark foundations. There were underground
passages, some of them secret, some notorious, connecting wing with
wing; and there was one, for the emperor's private use, that led to the
great arena where the games were held, so that he might come and go with
less risk of assassination.
Even temples had been taken over and included within the surrounding
wall to make room for the ever-multiplying suites of state apartments,
as each Caesar strove to outdo the magnificence of his predecessor.
Oriental marble, gold-leaf, exotic trees, silk awnings, fountains, the
majestic figures of the guards, the bronze doors and the huge height of
the buildings, awed even the Romans who were used to them.
The throne-room was a place of such magnificence that it was said that
even Caesar himself felt small in it. The foreign kings, ambassadors
and Roman citizens admitted there to audience were disciplined without
the slightest difficulty; there was no unseemliness, no haste, no
crowding; horribly uncomfortable in the heavy togas that court
etiquette prescribed, reminded of their dignity by colossal statues of
the noblest Romans of antiquity, and ushered by magnificently uniformed
past masters of the art of ceremony, all who entered felt that they were
insignificant intruders into a golden mystery. The palace prefect in
his cloak of cloth of gold, with his ivory wand of office, seemed a high
priest of eternity; subprefects, standing in the marble antechamber to
examine visitors' credentials and see that none passed in improperly
attired, were keepers of Olympus.
The gilded marble throne was on a dais approached by marble steps,
beneath a balcony to which a stair ascended from behind a carved screen.
Trumpets announced the approach of Caesar, who could enter unobserved
through a door at the side of the dais. From the moment that the trumpet
sounded, and the guards grew as rigid as the basalt statues in the
niches of the columned walls, it was a punishable crime to speak or even
to move until Caesar appeared and was seated.
Nor was Caesar himself an anticlimax. Even Nero, nerveless in his
latter days, when self-will and debauchery had pouched his eyes and
stomach, had possessed the Roman gift of standing like a god. Vespasian
and Titus, each in turn, was Mars personified. Aurelius had typified a
gentler phase of Rome, a subtler dignity, but even he, whose worst
severity was tempered by the philosophical regret that he could not kill
crime with kindliness, had worn the imperial purple like Olympus'
delegate.
Commodus, in the minutes that he spared from his amusements to accept
the glamor of the throne, was perfect. Handsomest of all the Caesars,
he could act his part with such consummate majesty that men who knew him
intimately half-believed he was a hero after all. Athletic, muscular
and systematically trained, his vigor, that was purely physical, passed
readily for spiritual quality within that golden hall, where the
resources of the world were all put under tribute to provide a royal
setting. He emerged. He smiled, as if the sun shone. He observed the
rolled petitions, greetings, testimonials of flattery from private
citizens and addresses of adulation from distant cities, being heaped
into a gilded basket as the silent throng filed by beneath him. He
nodded. Now and then he scowled, his irritation growing as the minutes
passed. At each gesture of impatience the subprefects quietly impelled
the crowd to quicker movement. But at the end of fifteen minutes
Commodus grew tired of dignity and his ferocious scowl clouded his face
like a thunderstorm.
"Am I to sit here while the whole world makes itself ridiculous by
staring at me?" he demanded, in a harsh voice. It was loud enough to
fill the throne-room, but none knew whether it was meant for an aside or
not and none dared answer him. The crowd continued flowing by, each
raising his right hand and bowing as he reached the square of carpet
that was placed exactly in front of Caesar's throne.
Commodus rose to his feet. All movement ceased then and there was utter
silence. For a moment he stood scowling at the crowd, one hand resting
on the golden lion's head that flanked the throne. Then he laughed.
"Too many petitions!" he sneered, pointing at the overflowing basket;
and in another moment he had vanished through the door behind the marble
screen. Met and escorted up the stairs by groups of cringing slaves, he
reached a columned corridor. Rich carpets lay on the mosaic floor;
sunlight, from under; the awnings of a balcony glorious with potted
flowers, shone on the colored statuary and the Grecian paintings.
"What are all these women doing?" he demanded. There were girls, half-
hidden behind the statues, each one trying, as he passed her, to divine
his mood and to pose attractively.
"Where is Marcia? What will she do to me next? Is this some new scheme
of hers to keep me from enjoying my manhood? Send them away! The next
girl I catch in the corridor shall be well whipped. Where is Marcia?"
Throwing away his toga for a slave to catch and fold he turned between
gilded columns, through a bronze door, into the antechamber of the royal
suite. There a dozen gladiators greeted him as if he were the sun
shining out of the clouds after a month of rainy weather.
"This is better!" he exclaimed. "Ho, there, Narcissus! Ho, there,
Horatius! Ha! So you recover, Albinus? What a skull the man has! Not
many could take what I gave him and be on their feet again within the
week! You may follow me, Narcissus. But where is Marcia?"
Marcia called to him through the curtained door that led to the next
room--
"I am waiting, Commodus."
"By Jupiter, when she calls me Commodus it means an argument! Are some
more of her Christians in the carceres, I wonder? Or has some new
highwayman--By Juno's breasts, I tremble when she calls me Commodus!"
The gladiators laughed. He made a pass at one of them, tripped him,
scuffled a moment and raised him struggling in the air, then flung him
into the nearest group, who broke his fall and set him on his feet
again.
"Am I strong enough to face my Marcia?" he asked and, laughing, passed
into the other room, where half a dozen women grouped themselves around
the imperial mistress.
"What now?" he demanded. "Why am I called Commodus?"
He stood magnificent, with folded arms, confronting her, play-acting the
part of a guiltless man arraigned before the magistrate.
"O Roman Hercules," she said, "I spoke in haste, you came so much sooner
than expected. What woman can remember you are anything but Caesar when
you smile at her? I am in love, and being loved, I am--"
"Contriving some new net for me, I'll wager! Come and watch the new men
training with the caestus; I will listen to your plan for ruling me and
Rome while the sight of a good set-to stirs my genius to resist your
blandishments!"
"Caesar," she said, "speak first with me alone." Instantly his manner
changed. He made a gesture of impatience. His sudden scowl frightened
the women standing behind Marcia, although she appeared not to notice
it, with the same peculiar trick of seeming not to see what she did not
wish to seem to see that she had used when she walked naked through the
Thermae.
"Send your scared women away then," he retorted. "I trust Narcissus.
You may speak before him."
Her women vanished, hurrying into another room, the last one drawing a
cord that closed a jingling curtain.
"Do you not trust me?" asked Marcia. "And is it seemly, Commodus, that
I should speak to you before a gladiator?"
"Speak or be silent!" he grumbled, giving her a black look, but she did
not seem to notice it. Her genius--the secret of her power--was to seem
forever imperturbable and loving.
"Let Narcissus bear witness then; since Caesar bids me, I obey! Again
and again I have warned you, Caesar. If I were less your slave and more
your sycophant I would have tired of warning you. But none shall say of
Marcia that her Caesar met Nero's fate, whose women ran away and left
him. Not while Marcia lives shall Commodus declare he has no friends."
"Who now?" he demanded angrily. "Get me my tablet! Come now, name me
your conspirators and they shall die before the sun sets!"
When he scowled his beauty vanished, his eyes seeming to grow closer
like an ape's. The mania for murder that obsessed him tautened his
sinews. Cheeks, neck, forearms swelled with knotted strength.
Ungovernable passion shook him.
"Name them!" he repeated, beckoning unconsciously for the tablet that
none dared thrust into his hand.
"Shall I name all Rome?" asked Marcia, stepping closer, pressing herself
against him. "O Hercules, my Roman Hercules--does love, that makes us
women see, put bandages on men's eyes? You have turned your back upon
the better part of Rome to--"
"Better part?" He shook her by the shoulders, snorting. "Liars,
cowards, ingrates, strutting peacocks, bladders of wind boring me and
one another with their empty phrases, cringing lick-spittles--they make
me sick to look at them! They fawn on me like hungry dogs. By Jupiter,
I make myself ridiculous too often, pandering to a lot of courtiers! If
they despise me then as I despise myself, I am in a bad way! I must
make haste and live again! I will get the stench of them out of my
nostrils and the sickening sight of them out of my eyes by watching true
men fight! When I slay lions with a javelin, or gladiators--"
"You but pander to the rabble," Marcia interrupted. "So did Nero. Did
they come to his aid when the senate and his friends deserted him?"
"Don't interrupt me, woman! Senate! Court!" he snorted. "I can rout
the senate with a gesture! I will fill my court with gladiators! I can
change my ministers as often as I please--aye, and my mistress too," he
added, glaring at her. "Out with the names of these new conspirators
who have set you trembling for my destiny!"
"I know none--not yet," she said. "I can feel, though. I hear the
whispers in the Thermae--"
"By Jupiter, then I will close the Thermae."
"When I pass through the streets I read men's faces--"
"Snarled, have they? My praetorian guard shall show them what it is to
be bitten! Mobs are no new things in Rome. The old way is the proper
way to deal with mobs! Blood, corn and circuses, but principally blood!
By the Dioscuri, I grow weary of your warnings, Marcia!"
He thrust her away from him and went growling like a bear into his own
apartment, where his voice could be heard cursing the attendants whose
dangerous duty it was to divine in an instant what clothes he would wear
and to help him into them. He came out naked through the door, saw
Marcia talking to Narcissus, laughed and disappeared again. Marcia
raised her voice:
"Telamonion! Oh, Telamonion!"
A curly-headed Greek boy hardly eight years old came running from the
outer corridor--all laughter--one of those spoiled favorites of fortune
whom it was the fashion to keep as pets. Their usefulness consisted
mainly in retention of their innocence.
"Telamonion, go in and play with him. Go in and make him laugh. He is
bad tempered."
Confident of everybody's good-will, the child vanished through the
curtains where Commodus roared him a greeting. Marcia continued talking
to Narcissus in a low voice.
"When did you see Sextus last?" she asked.
"But yesterday."
"And what has he done, do you say? Tell me that again."
"He has found out the chiefs of the party of Lucius Septimius Severus.
He has also discovered the leaders of Pescennius Niger's party. He
says, too, there is a smaller group that looks toward Clodius Albinus,
who commands the troops in Britain."
"Did he tell you names?"
"No. He said he knew I would tell you, and you might tell Commodus, who
would write all the names on his proscription list. Sextus, I tell you,
reckons his own life nothing, but he is extremely careful for his
friends."
"It would be easy to set a trap and catch him. He is insolent. He has
had too much rein," said Marcia. "But what would be the use?" Narcissus
answered. "There would be Norbanus, too, to reckon with. Each plays
into the other's hands. Each knows the other's secrets. Kill one, and
there remains the other--doubly dangerous because alarmed. They take
turns to visit Rome, the other remaining in hiding with their following
of freedmen and educated slaves. They only commit just enough robbery
to gain themselves an enviable reputation on the countryside. They
visit their friends in Rome in various disguises, and they travel all
over Italy to plot with the adherents of this faction or the other.
Sextus favors Pertinax--says he would make a respectable emperor--
another Marcus Aurelius. But Pertinax knows next to nothing of Sextus'
doings, although he protects Sextus as far as he can and sees him now
and then. Sextus' plan is to keep all three rival factions by the ears,
so that if anything should happen--" he nodded toward the curtain, from
behind which came the sounds of childish laughter and the crashing voice
of Commodus encouraging in some piece of mischief--"they would be all
at odds and Pertinax could seize the throne."
"I wonder whether I was mad that I protected Sextus!" exclaimed Marcia.
"He has served us well. If I had let them catch and crucify him as
Maternus, we would have had no one to keep us informed of all these
cross-conspiracies. But are you sure he favors Pertinax?"
"Quite sure. He even risked an interview with Flavia Titiana, to
implore her influence with her husband. Sextus would be all for
striking now, this instant; he has assured himself that the world is
tired of Commodus, and that no faction is strong enough to stand in the
way of Pertinax; but he knows how difficult it will be to persuade
Pertinax to assert himself. Pertinax will not hear of murdering Caesar;
he says: 'Let us see what happens--if the Fates intend me to be Caesar,
let the Fates show how!'"
"Aye, that is Pertinax!" said Marcia. "Why is it that the honest men
are all such delayers! As for me, I will save my Commodus if he will
let me. If not, the praetorian guard shall put Pertinax on the throne
before any other faction has a chance to move. Otherwise we all die--all
of us! Severus--Pescennius Niger--Clodius Albinus--any of the others
would include us in a general proscription. Pertinax is friendly. He
protects his friends. He is the safest man in all ways. Let Pertinax be
acclaimed by all the praetorian guard and the senate would accept him
eagerly enough. They would feel sure of his mildness. Pertinax would
do no wholesale murdering to wipe out opposition; he would try to
pacify opponents by the institution of reforms and decent government."
"You must beware you are not forestalled," Narcissus warned her. "Sextus
tells me there is more than one man ready to slay Commodus at the first
chance. Severus, Pescennius Niger and Clodius Albinus keep themselves
informed as to what is going on; their messengers are in constant
movement. If Commodus should lift a hand against either of those three,
that would be the signal for civil war. All three would march on Rome."
"Caesar is much more likely to learn of the plotting through his own
informers, and to try to terrify the generals by killing their
supporters here in Rome," said Marcia. "What does Sextus intend? To
kill Caesar himself?"
Narcissus nodded.
"Well, when Sextus thinks that time has come, you kill him! Let that be
your task. We must save the life of Commodus as long as possible. When
nothing further can be done, we must involve Pertinax so that he won't
dare to back out. It was he, you know, who persuaded me to save
Maternus the highwayman's life; it was he who told me Maternus is
really Sextus, son of Maximus. His knowledge of that secret gives me a
certain hold on Pertinax! Caesar would have his head off at a word from
me. But the best way with Pertinax is to stroke the honest side of him
--the charcoal-burner side of him--the peasant side, if that can be done
without making him too diffident. He is perfectly capable of offering
the throne to some one else at the last minute!"
A step sounded on the other side of the curtain. "Caesar!" Narcissus
whispered. As excuse for being seen in conversation with her he began
to show her a charm against all kinds of treachery that he had bought
from an Egyptian. She snatched it from him.
"Caesar!" she exclaimed, bounding toward Commodus and standing in his
way. Not even she dared lay a hand on him when he was in that volcanic
mood. "As you love me, will you wear this?"
"For love of you, what have I not done?" he retorted, smiling at her.
"What now?"
She advanced another half-step, but no nearer. There was laughter on
his lips, but in his eye cold cruelty.
"My Caesar, wear it! It protects against conspiracy."
He showed her a new sword that he had girded on along with the short
tunic of a gladiator.
"Against the bellyache, use Galen's pills; but this is the right
medicine against conspiracy!" he answered. Then he took the little
golden charm into his left hand, tossing it on his palm and looked at
her, still smiling.
"Where did you get this bauble?"
"Not I. One of those magicians who frequent that Forum sold it to
Narcissus."
"Bah!" He flung it through the window. "Who is the magician? Name him!
I will have him thrown into the carceres. We'll see whether the charms
he sells so cheap are any good! Or is he a Christian?" he asked,
sneering.
"The Christians, you know, don't approve of charms," Marcia answered.
"By Jupiter, there's not much that they do approve of!" he retorted. "I
begin to weary of your Christians. I begin to think Nero was right, and
my father, too! There was a wisdom in treating Christians as vermin!
It might not be a bad thing, Marcia, to warn your Christians to procure
themselves a charm or two against my weariness of their perpetual
efforts to govern me! The Christians, I suppose, have been telling you
to keep me out of the arena? Hence this living statuary in the
corridor, and all this talk about the dignity of Rome! Tscharr-rrh!
There's more dignity about one gladiator's death than in all Rome
outside the arena! Woman, you forget you are only a woman. I remember
that! I am a god! I have the blood of Caesar in my veins. And like
the unseen gods, I take my pleasure watching men and women die! I loose
my javelins like thunderbolts--like Jupiter himself! Like Hercules--"
He paused. He noticed Marcia was laughing. Only she, in all the Roman
empire, dared to mock him when he boasted. Not even she knew why he let
her do it. He began to smile again, the frightful frown that rode over
his eyes dispersing, leaving his forehead as smooth as marble.
"If I should marry you and make you empress," he said, "how long do you
think I should last after that? You are clever enough to rule the fools
who squawk and jabber in the senate and the Forum. You are beautiful
enough to start another siege of Troy! But remember: You are Caesar's
concubine, not empress! Just remember that, will you! When I find a
woman lovelier than you, and wiser, I will give you and your Christians
a taste of Nero's policy. Now--do you love me?"
"If I did not, could I stand before you and receive these insults?" she
retorted, trusting to the inspiration of the moment; for she had no
method with him.
"I would willingly die," she said, "if you would give the love you have
bestowed on me to Rome instead, and use your godlike energy in ruling
wisely, rather than in killing men and winning chariot races. One
Marcia does not matter much. One Commodus can--"
"Can love his Marcia!" he interrupted, with a high-pitched laugh. He
seized her, nearly crushing out her breath. "A Caius and a Caia we have
been! By Jupiter, if not for you and Paulus I would have left Rome long
ago to march in Alexander's wake! I would have carved me a new empire
that did not stink so of politicians!"
He strode into the anteroom where all the gladiators waited and
Narcissus had to follow him--well named enough, for he was lithe and
muscular and beautiful, but, nonetheless, though taller, not to be
compared with Commodus--even as the women, chosen for their good looks
and intelligence, who hastened to reappear the moment the emperor's back
was turned, were nothing like so beautiful as Marcia.
In all the known world there were no two finer specimens of human
shapeliness than the tyrant who ruled and the woman whose wits and
daring had so long preserved him from his enemies.
"Come to the arena," he called back to her. "Come and see how Hercules
throws javelins from a chariot at full pelt!"
But Marcia did not answer, and he forgot her almost before he reached
the entrance of the private tunnel through which he passed to the arena.
She had more accurately aimed and nicely balanced work to do than even
Commodus could do with javelins against a living target.
VII. MARCIA
In everything but title and security of tenure Marcia was empress of the
world, and she had what empresses most often lack--the common touch.
She had been born in slavery. She had ascended step by step to fortune,
by her own wits, learning by experience. Each layer of society was known
to her--its virtues, prejudices, limitations and peculiar tricks of
thought. Being almost incredibly beautiful, she had learned very early
in life that the desired (not always the desirable) is powerful to sway
men; the possessed begins to lose its sway; the habit of possession
easily succumbs to boredom, and then power ceases. Even Commodus,
accordingly, had never owned her in the sense that men own slaves; she
had reserved to herself self-mastery, which called for cunning, courage
and a certain ruthlessness, albeit tempered by a reckless generosity.
She saw life skeptically, undeceived by the fawning flattery that Rome
served up to her, enjoying it as a cat likes being stroked. They said of
her that she slept with one eye open.
Livius had complained in the Thermae to Pertinax that the wine of
influence was going to Marcia's head, but he merely expressed the
opinion of one man, who would have liked to feel himself superior to her
and to use her for his own ends. She was not deceived by Livius, or by
anybody else. She knew that Livius was keeping watch on her, and how he
did it, having shrewdly guessed that a present of eight matched litter-
bearers was too extravagant not to mask ulterior designs. She watched
him much more artfully than he watched her. Her secret knowledge that
he knew her secret was more dangerous to him than anything that he had
found out could be dangerous to her.
The eight matched litter-bearers waited with the gilded litter near a
flight of marble steps that descended from the door of Marcia's
apartments in the palace to a sunlit garden with a fountain in the
midst. There was a crowd of servants and four Syrian eunuchs, sleek
offensive menials in yellow robes; two lictors besides, with fasces and
the Roman civic uniform--a scandalous abuse of ancient ceremony--ready
to conduct a progress through the city. But they all yawned. Marcia
and her usual companion did not come; there was delay--and gossip,
naturally.
A yawning eunuch rearranged the bowknot of his girdle.
"What does she want with Livius? He usually gets sent for when somebody
needs punishing. Who do you suppose has fallen foul of her?"
"Himself! He sent her messenger back with word he was engaged on palace
business. I heard her tell the slave to go again and not return without
him! Bacchus! But it wouldn't worry me if Livius should lose his head!
For an aristocrat he has more than his share of undignified curiosity--
forever poking his sharp nose into other people's business. Marcia may
have found him out. Let's hope!"
At the foot of the marble stairway, in the hall below Marcia's
apartment, Livius stood remonstrating, growing nervous. Marcia, dressed
in the dignified robes of a Roman matron, that concealed even her ankles
and suggested the demure, self-conscious rectitude of olden times, kept
touching his breast with her ivory fan, he flinching from the touch,
subduing irritation.
"If the question is, what I want with you, Livius, the answer is, that I
invite you. Order your litter brought."
"But Marcia, I am subprefect. I am responsible to--"
"Did you hear?"
"But if you will tell where we are going, I might feel justified in
neglecting the palace business. I assure you I have important work to
do."
"There are plenty who can attend to it," said Marcia. "The most
important thing in your life, Livius, is my good-will. You are delaying
me."
Livius glared at Caia Poppeia, the lady-in-waiting, who was smiling,
standing a little behind Marcia. He hoped she would take the hint and
withdraw out of earshot, but she had had instructions, and came half a
step closer.
"Will you let me go back to my office and--"
"No!" answered Marcia.
He yielded with a nervous gesture, that implored her not to make an
indiscretion. A subprefect, in the nature of his calling, had too many
enemies to relish repetition in the palace precincts of a threat from
Marcia, however baseless it might be. And besides, it might be
something serious that almost had escaped her lips. Untrue or true, it
would be known all over the palace in an hour; within the day all Rome
would know of it. There were two slaves by the front door, two more on
the last step of the stairs.
"I will come, of course," he said. "I am delighted. I am honored. I
am fortunate!"
She nodded. She sent one of her own slaves to order his private litter
brought, while Livius attempted to look comfortable, cudgeling his
brains to know what mischief she had found out. It was nothing unusual
that his litter should follow hers through the streets of Rome; in
fact, it was an honor coveted by all officials of the palace, that fell
to his share rather frequently because of his distinguished air of a
latter-day man of the world and his intimate knowledge of everybody's
business and ancestry. He was often ordered to go with her at a moment's
notice. But this was the first time she had refused to say where they
were going, or why, and there was a hint of malice in her smile that
made his blood run cold. He was a connoisseur of malice.
Marcia leaned on his arm as she went down the steps to her litter. She
permitted him to help her in. But then, while her companion was
following through the silken curtains, she leaned out at the farther
side and whispered to the nearest eunuch. Livius, climbing into his own
gilt vehicle and lifted shoulder-high by eight Numidians, became aware
that Marcia's eunuchs had been told to keep an eye on him; two yellow-
robed, insufferably impudent inquisitors strode in among his own
attendants.
An escort of twenty praetorian guards and a decurion was waiting at the
gate to take its place between the lictors and Marcia's litter, but that
did not in any way increase Livius' sense of security. The praetorian
guard regarded Marcia as the source of its illegal privileges. It
looked to her far more than to the emperor for favors, buying them with
lawless loyalty to her. She ruined discipline by her support of every
plea for increased perquisites. No outraged citizen had any hope of
redress so long as Marcia's ear could be reached (although Commodus got
the blame for it). It was the key to Marcia's system of insurance
against unforeseen contingencies. The only regularly drilled and armed
troops in the city were as loyal to her, secretly and openly, as Livius
himself was to the principle of cynical self-help.
He began to feel thoroughly frightened, as he told himself that the
escort and their decurion would swear to any statement Marcia might
make. If she had learned that he was in the habit of receiving secret
information from her slave, there were a thousand ways she might take to
avenge herself; a very simple way would be to charge him with improper
overtures and have him killed by the praetorians--a way that might
particularly interest her, since it would presumably increase her
reputation for constancy to Commodus.
The eunuchs watched him. The lictors and praetorians cleared the way,
so there were no convenient halts that could enable him to slip
unnoticed through the crowd. His own attendants seemed to have divined
that there was something ominous about the journey, and he was not the
kind of man whose servants are devotedly attached to him. He knew it.
He noticed sullenness already in the answers his servant gave him
through the litter curtains, when he asked whether the man knew their
destination.
"None knows. All I know is, we must follow Marcia."
The slave's voice was almost patronizing. Livius made up his mind, if
he should live the day out, to sell the rascal to some farmer who would
teach him with a whip what service meant. But he said nothing. He
preferred to spring surprises, only hoping he himself might not be
overwhelmed in one.
By the time they reached Cornificia's house he was in such a state of
nervousness, and so blanched, that he had to summon his servant into the
litter to rub cosmetic on his cheeks. He took one of Galen's famous
strychnine pills before he could prevent his limbs from trembling. Even
so, when he rolled out of the litter and advanced with his courtliest
bow to escort Marcia into the house, she recognized his fear and mocked
him:
"You are bilious? Or has some handsomer Adonis won your Venus from you?
Is it jealousy?"
He pretended that the litter-bearers needed whipping for having shaken
him. It made him more than ever ill at ease that she should mock him
before all the slaves who grouped themselves in Cornificia's forecourt.
Hers was one of those houses set back from the street, combining an air
of seclusion with such elegance as could not possibly escape the notice
of the passer-by. The forecourt was adorned with statuary and the gate
left wide, affording a glimpse of sunlit greenery and marble that
entirely changed the aspect of the narrow street. There were never less
than twenty tradesmen at the gate, imploring opportunity to show their
wares, which were in baskets and boxes, with slaves squatting beside
them. All Rome would know within the hour that Marcia had called on
Cornificia, and that Livius, the subprefect, had been mocked by Marcia
in public.
A small crowd gathered to watch the picturesque ceremony of reception--
Cornificia's house steward marshaling his staff, the brightly colored
costumes blending in the sunlight with the hues of flowers and the rich,
soft sheen of marble in the shadow of tall cypresses. The praetorians
had to form a cordon in front of the gate, and the street became choked
by the impeded traffic. Rome loved pageantry; it filled its eyes before
its belly, which was nine-tenths of the secret of the Caesar's power.
Within the house, however, there was almost a stoical calm--a sensation
of cloistered chastity produced by the restraint of ornament and the
subdued light on gloriously painted frescoes representing evening
benediction at a temple altar, a gathering of the Muses, sacrifice
before a shrine of Aesculapius and Jason's voyage to Colchis for the
Golden Fleece. The inner court, where Cornificia received her guests,
was like a sanctuary dedicated to the decencies, its one extravagance
the almost ostentatious restfulness, accentuated by the cooing of white
pigeons and the drip and splash of water in the fountain in the midst.
The dignity of drama was the essence of all Roman ceremony. The
formalities of greeting were observed as elegantly, and with far more
evident sincerity, in Cornificia's house than in Caesar's palace.
Cornificia, dressed in white and wearing very little jewelry, received
her guests more like an old-time patrician matron than a notorious
modern concubine. Her notoriety, in fact, was due to Flavia Titiana,
rather than to any indiscretions of her own. To justify her
infidelities, which were a byword, Pertinax' lawful wife went to
ingenious lengths to blacken Cornificia's reputation, regaling all
society with her invented tales about the lewd attractions Cornificia
staged to keep Pertinax held in her toils.
That Cornificia did exercise a sway over the governor of Rome was
undeniable. He worshiped her and made no secret of it. But she held
him by a method diametrically contrary to that which rumor, stirred by
Flavia Titiana, indicated; Cornificia's house was a place where he
could lay aside the feverish activities of public life and revel in the
intellectual and philosophical amusements that he genuinely loved.
But Livius loathed her. Among other things, he suspected her of being
in league with Marcia to protect the Christians. To him she represented
the idealism that his cynicism bitterly rejected. The mere fact of her
unshakable fidelity to Pertinax was an offense in his eyes; she
presented what he considered an impudent pose of morality, more impudent
because it was sustained. He might have liked her well enough if she
had been a hypocrite, complaisant to himself.
She understood him perfectly--better, in fact, than she understood
Marcia, whose visits usually led to intricate entanglements for
Pertinax. When she had sent the slaves away and they four lay at ease
on couches in the shade of three exotic potted palms, she turned her
back toward Livius, suspecting he would bring his motives to the surface
if she gave him time; whereas Marcia would hide hers and employ a dozen
artifices to make them undiscoverable.
"You have not brought Livius because you think he loves me!" she said,
laughing. "Nor have you come, my Marcia, for nothing, since you might
have sent for me and saved yourself trouble. I anticipate intrigue!
What plot have you discovered now? Is Pertinax its victim? You can
always interest me if you talk of Pertinax."
"We will talk of Livius," said Marcia.
Leaning on his elbows, Livius glared at Caia Poppeia, Marcia's
companion. He coughed, to draw attention to her, but Marcia refused to
take the hint. "Livius has information for us," she remarked.
Livius rose from the couch and came and stood before her, knitting his
fingers together behind his back, compelling himself to smile. His
pallor made the hastily applied cosmetics look ridiculous.
"Marcia," he said, "you make it obvious that you suspect me of some
indiscretion."
"Never!" she retorted, mocking. "You indiscreet? Who would believe it?
Give us an example of discretion; you are Paris in the presence of
three goddesses. Select your destiny!"
He smiled, attempted to regain his normal air of tolerant importance--
glanced about him--saw the sunlight making iridescent pools of fire
within a crystal ball set on the fountain's edge--took up the ball and
brought it to her, holding it in both hands.
"What choice is there than that which Paris made?" he asked, kneeling on
one knee, laughing. "Venus rules men's hearts. She must prevail. So
into your most lovely hands I give my destiny."
"You mean, you leave it there!" said Marcia. "Could you ever afford to
ignore me and intrigue behind my back?"
"I am the least intriguing person of your acquaintance, Marcia," he
answered, rising because the hard mosaic pavement hurt his knee, and the
position made him feel undignified. But more than dignity he loved
discretion; he wished there were eyes in the back of his head, to see
whether slaves were watching from the curtained windows opening on the
inner court. "It is my policy," he went on, "to know much and say
little; to observe much, and do nothing! I am much too lazy for
intrigue, which is hard work, judging by what I have seen of those who
indulge in it."
"Is that why you sacrificed a white bull recently?" asked Marcia.
Livius glanced at Cornificia, but her patrician face gave no hint. Caia
Poppeia's was less under control, for she was younger and had nothing to
conceal; she was inquisitively enjoying the entertainment and evidently
did not know what was coming.
"I sacrificed a white bull to Jupiter Capitolinus, as is customary, to
confirm a sacred oath," he answered.
"Very well, suppose you break the oath!" said Marcia.
He managed to look scandalized--then chuckled foolishly, remembering
what Pertinax had said about the value of an oath; but his own dignity
obliged him to protest.
"I am not one of your Christians," he answered, stiffening himself. "I
am old-fashioned enough to hold that an oath made at the altar of our
Roman Jupiter is sacred and inviolable."
"When you took your oath of office you swore to be in all things true to
Caesar," Marcia retorted. "Do you prefer to tell Caesar how true you
have been to that oath? Which oath holds the first one or the second?"
"I could ask to be released from the second one," said Livius. "If you
will give me time--"
Marcia's laugh interrupted him. It was soft, melodious, like wavelets
on a calm sea, hinting unseen reefs.
"Time," she said, "Is all that death needs! Death does not wait on
oaths; it comes to us. I wish to know just how far I can trust you,
Livius."
Nine Roman nobles out of ten in Livius' position would have recognized
at once the deadliness of the alternatives she offered and, preserving
something of the shreds of pride, would have accepted suicide as
preferable. Livius had no such stamina. He seized the other horn of
the dilemma.
"I perceive Pertinax has betrayed me," he sneered, looking sharply at
Cornificia; but she was watching Marcia and did not seem conscious of
his glance. "If Pertinax has broken his oath, mine no longer binds me.
This is the fact then: I discovered how he helped Sextus, son of
Maximus, to avoid execution by a ruse, making believe to be killed.
Pertinax was also privy to the execution of an unknown thief in place of
Norbanus, a friend of Sextus, also implicated in conspiracy. Pertinax
has been secretly negotiating with Sextus ever since. Sextus now calls
himself Maternus and is notorious as a highwayman."
"What else do you know about Maternus?" Marcia inquired. There was a
trace at last of sharpness in her voice. A hint conveyed itself that
she could summon the praetorians if he did not answer swiftly.
"He plots against Caesar."
"You know too little or too much!" said Marcia. "What else?"
He closed his lips tight. "I know nothing else."
"Have you had any dealings with Sextus?"
"Never."
He was shifting now from one foot to the other, hardly noticeably, but
enough to make Marcia smile. "Shall we hear what Sextus has to say to
that?" asked Cornificia, so confidently that there was no doubt Marcia
had given her the signal.
Marcia moved her melting, lazy, laughing eyes and Cornificia clapped her
hands. A slave came.
"Bring the astrologer."
Sextus must have been listening, he appeared so instantly. He stood
with folded arms confronting them, his weathered face in sunlight.
Pigment was not needed to produce the healthy bronze hue of his skin;
his curly hair, bound by a fillet, was unruly from the outdoor life he
had been leading; the strong sinews of his arms and legs belied the ease
of his pretended calling and the starry cloak he wore was laughable in
its failure to disguise the man of action. He saluted the three women
with a gesture of the raised right hand that no man unaccustomed to the
use of arms could imitate, then turning slightly toward Livius,
acknowledged his nod with a humorous grin.
"So we meet again, Bultius Livius."
"Again?" asked Marcia.
"Why yes, I met him in the house of Pertinax. It is three days since we
spoke together. Three, or is it four, Livius? I have been busy. I
forget."
"Can Livius have lied?" asked Marcia. She seemed to be enjoying the
entertainment.
Livius threw caution to the winds.
"Is this a tribunal?" he demanded. "If so, of what am I accused?" He
tried to speak indignantly, but something caught in his throat. The
cough became a sob and in a moment he was half-hysterical. "By
Hercules, what judges! What a witness! Is he a two-headed witness who
shall swear my life away? I understand you, Marcia!"
(At least two witnesses were necessary under Roman law.)
"You?" she laughed. "You understand me?"
He recovered something of his self-possession, a wave of virility
returning. High living and the feverish excitement of the palace regime
had ruined his nerves but there were traces still of his original
astuteness. He resumed his air of dignity.
"Pardon me," he said. "I have been overworked of late. I must see
Galen about this jumpiness. When I said I understand you I meant, I
realize that you are joking. Naturally you would not receive a
highwayman in Cornificia's house, and at the same time accuse me of
treason! Pray excuse my outburst--set it to the score of ill-health. I
will see Galen."
"You shall see him now!" laughed Marcia, and Cornificia clapped her
hands.
Less suddenly than Sextus had appeared, because his age was beginning to
tell on him, Galen entered the court through a door behind the palm-
trees and stood smiling, making his old-world, slow salute to Marcia.
His bright eyes moved alertly amid wrinkles. He looked something like
the statues of the elder Cato, only with a kindlier humor and less
obstinacy at the corners of the mouth. Two slaves brought out a couch
for him and vanished when he had taken his ease on it after fussing a
little because the sun was in his eyes.
"My trade is to oppose death diplomatically," he remarked. "I am a poor
diplomatist. I only gain a little here and there. Death wins
inevitably. Nevertheless, they only summon me for consultation when
they hope to gain a year or two for somebody. Marcia, unless you let
Bultius Livius use that couch he will swoon. I warn you. The man's
heart is weak. He has more brain than heart," he added. "How is our
astrologer?"
He greeted Sextus with a wrinkled grin and beckoned him to share his
couch. Sextus sat down and began chafing the old doctor's legs. Marcia
took her time about letting Livius be seated.
"You heard Galen?" she asked. "We are here to cheat death
diplomatically."
"Whose death?" Livius demanded.
"Rome's!" said Marcia, her eyes intently on his face. "If Rome should
split in three parts it would fall asunder. None but Commodus can save
us from a civil war. We are here to learn what Bultius Livius can do to
preserve the life of Commodus."
Livius' face, grotesque already with its hastily smeared carmine,
assumed new bewilderment.
"I have seen men tortured who were less ready to betray themselves,"
said Galen. "Give him wine--strong wine, that is my advice."
But Marcia preferred her victim thoroughly subjected.
"Fill your eyes with sunlight, Livius. Breathe deep! You look and
breathe your last, unless you satisfy me! This astrologer, who is not
Sextus--mark that! I have said he is not Sextus. Galen certified to
Sextus' death and there were twenty other witnesses. Nor is he Maternus
the highwayman. Maternus was crucified. That other Maternus, who is
rumored to live in the Aventine Hills, is an imaginary person--a mere
name used by runaways who take to robbery. This astrologer, I say,
reports that you know all the secrets of the factions that are
separately plotting to destroy our Commodus."
Livius did not answer, although she paused to give him time.
"You said you understood me, Livius. But it is I who understand you--
utterly! To you any price is satisfactory if your own skin and
perquisites are safe. You are as crafty a spy as any rat in the palace
cellars. You have kept yourself informed in order to get the pickings
when you see at last which side to take. Careful, very clever of you,
Livius! But have you ever seen an eagle rob a fish-hawk of its catch?"
"Why waste time?" Cornificia asked impatiently. "He forced himself on
Pertinax, who should have had him murdered, only Pertinax is too
indifferent to his own--"
"Too philosophical!" corrected Galen.
Then Caia Poppeia spoke up, in a young, hard voice that had none of
Marcia's honeyed charm. No doubt of her was possible; she could be
cruel for the sake of cruelty and loyal for the sake of pride. Her
beauty was a mere means to an end--the end intrigue, for the
impassionate excitement of it. She was straight-lipped, with a smile
that flickered, and a hard light in her blue eyes.
"It was I who learned you spy on Marcia. I know, too, that you keep a
spy in Britain,--one in Gaul, another in Severus' camp. I read the last
nine letters they sent you. I showed them to Marcia."
"I kept one," Marcia added. "It came yesterday. It compromises you
beyond--"
"I yield!" said Livius, his knees beginning to look weak.
"To whom? To me?" asked Sextus, standing up abruptly and confronting
him with folded arms. "Who stole the list I sent to Pertinax, of names
of the important men who are intriguing for Severus, and for Pescennius
Niger, and for Clodius Albinus?"
"Who knows?" Livius shrugged his shoulders.
"None knew of that list but you!" said Sextus. "You heard me speak of
it to Pertinax. You heard me promise I would send it to him. None but
you and he and I knew who the messenger would be. Where is the
messenger?"
"In the sewers probably!" said Marcia. "The list is more important."
"If it isn't in the sewers, too," said Livius, snatching at a straw.
"By Hercules, I know nothing of a list."
"Then you shall drown with Sextus' slave in the Cloaca Maxima, the great
sewer of Rome," said Marcia. "Not that I need the list. I know what
names are written on it. But if it should have fallen into Caesar's
hands--"
She shuddered, acting horror perfectly, and Livius, like a drowning man
who thinks he sees the shore, struck out and sank!
"You threaten me, but I am no such fool as you imagine! I know all
about you! I perceive you have crossed your Rubicon. Well--"
"Summon the decurion and two men!" Marcia interrupted, glancing at
Cornificia. But she made a gesture with her hand that Cornificia
interpreted to mean "do nothing of the kind!"
Livius did not see the gesture. Rage, shame, terror overwhelmed him and
he blurted out the information Marcia was seeking--hurled it at her in
the form of silly, useless threats:
"You wanton! You can kill me but my journal is in safe hands! Harm me--
cause me to be missing from the palace for a few hours, and they may
light your funeral fires! My journal, with the names of the
conspirators, and all the details of your daily intriguing, goes
straight into Caesar's hands!"
The climax he expected failed. There was no excitement. Nobody seemed
astonished. Marcia settled herself more comfortably on the couch and
Galen began whispering to Sextus. The two other women looked amused.
Reaction sweeping over him, his senses reeled and Livius stepped
backward, staggering to the fountain, where he sat down.
"Bona dea! But the man took time to tell his secret!" Marcia exclaimed.
"Popeia, you had better take my litter to the palace and bring that minx
Cornelia. I suspected it was she but wasn't sure of it. Don't give her
an inkling of what you know. Go with her to her apartment and watch her
dress; then make an excuse to keep her waiting in your room while you
go back and search hers. Have help if you need it; take two of my
eunuchs, but watch that they don't read the journal. Look under her
mattress. Look everywhere. If you can't find the journal, bring
Cornelia without it. I will soon make her tell us where it is."
VIII. NARCISSUS
"A gladiator's life is not so bad if he behaves himself, and while it
lasts," Narcissus said.
He was sitting beside Sextus, son of Maximus, in the ergastulum beneath
the training school of Bruttius Marius, which was well known to be the
emperor's establishment, although maintained in the name of a citizen.
There was a stone seat at the end where sunlight poured through a barred
window high up in the wall. To right and left facing a central corridor
were cells with doors of latticed iron. Each cell had its own barred
window, hardly a foot square, set high out of reach and the light,
piercing the latticed doors, made criss-cross patterns on the white wall
of the corridor. Narcissus got up, glanced into each cell and sat down
again beside Sextus.
"The trouble is, they don't," he went on. "If you let them out, they
drink and get into poor condition; and if you keep them in, they kill
themselves unless they're watched. These men are reserved for Paulus,
and they know they haven't a chance against him."
"Paulus' luck won't last forever," Sextus remarked grimly.
"No, nor his skill, I suppose. But he doesn't debauch himself, so he's
always in perfect condition."
"Haven't you a man in here who might be made nervy enough to kill him?"
Sextus asked. "They would kill the man himself, of course, directly
afterward, but we might undertake to enrich his relatives."
Narcissus shook his head.
"One might have a chance with the sword or with the net and trident,
though I doubt it. But Paulus uses a javelin and his aim is like
lightning. Only yesterday at practise they loosed eleven lions at him
from eleven directions at the same moment. He slew them with eleven
javelins, and each one stone dead. Some of these men saw him do it,
which hasn't encouraged them, I can tell you. In the second place, they
know Paulus is Commodus. He might just as well go into the arena
frankly as the emperor, for all the secret it is. That substitute who
occupies the royal pavilion when Commodus himself is in the arena no
longer looks very much like him; he is getting too loose under the
chin, although a year ago you could hardly tell the two apart. Even the
mob knows Paulus is Commodus, although nobody dares to acclaim him
openly. Send a gladiator in against another gladiator and even though
he may know that the other man can split a stick at twenty yards, he
will do his best. But let him know he goes against the emperor and he
has no nerve to start with; he can't aim straight; he suspects his own
three javelins and his shield and helmet have been tampered with. I
myself would be afraid to face Paulus, being not much good with the
javelin in any case, besides being superstitious about killing emperors,
who are gods, not men, or the senate and priests wouldn't say so. It is
the same in the races: setting aside Caesar's skill, which is simply
phenomenal, the other charioteers are all afraid of him."
"If he isn't killed soon, Severus or one of the others will forestall us
all," said Sextus. "Pertinax has only one chance: to be on the throne
before the other candidates know what is happening."
Narcissus' bronze face lighted with a sudden smile that rippled all
around the corners of his mouth, so that he looked like a genial satyr.
"Speaking of killing," he said, "Marcia has ordered me to kill you the
moment you make up your mind the time has come to strike!"
"You promised her, of course?"
"No, as it happens we were interrupted. But she relies on me and if she
ever begins to suspect me I would rather die in the arena than be racked
and burned!"
"Why not then? How is this for a proposal?" Sextus touched him on the
shoulder. "Substitute yourself and me for two of these men! Send me in
against him first. If he kills me, you next. One of us might get him.
I am lucky. I believe the gods are interested in me, I have had so many
escapes from death."
"I haven't much faith in the gods," said Narcissus. "They may be all
like Commodus. I heard Galen say that men created gods in their own
image."
Sextus smiled at him.
"You have been listening, I suppose, to Marcia and her Christians."
"Listening, yes, but I don't lean either way. It doesn't seem to me
that Christianity can do much for a man when javelins are in the air.
And besides, to be frank with you, Sextus, I rather hope to make a
little something for myself. God though he is said to be, I would like
to see Commodus killed for I loathe him. But I hope to survive him and
obtain my freedom. Pertinax would manumit me. That is why I applied
for the post of trainer in this beastly ergastulum. It is bad enough to
have to endure the gloom of men virtually condemned to death and looking
for a chance to kill themselves, but it is better than treading the sand
to have one's liver split, one's throat cut, and be dragged out with the
hooks. I have fought many a fight, but I liked each one less than the
last."
He got up and strode again along the corridor, glancing into the cells,
where gladiators sat fettered to the wall.
"This whole business is getting too confused for me," he grumbled,
sitting down again. "You want to kill Commodus, as is reasonable.
Marcia has ordered me to kill you, which is unreasonable! Yet for the
present she protects you. Why? She knows you are Commodus' enemy. She
seems anxious to save Commodus. Yet she encourages Pertinax, who
doesn't want to be emperor; he only dallies with the thought because
Marcia helps Cornificia to persuade him! Isn't that a confusion for
you? And now there's Bultius Livius. As I understand it, Marcia caught
him spying on her. No woman in her senses would trust Livius; the man
has snowbroth in his veins and slow fire in his head. Yet Marcia now
heaps favors on him!"
"That is my doing," said Sextus.
"Are you mad then, too?"
"Maybe! I have persuaded Marcia that, now she has possession of the
journal Livius was keeping, she can henceforth hold that over him and
use him to advantage. She can win his gratitude--"
"He has none!"
"--and at the same time hold over him the threat of exposure for
connection with the Severus faction, and the Pescennius faction, and the
Clodius Albinus faction. He had it all down in his journal. He can
easily be involved in those conspiracies if Marcia isn't satisfied with
his spying in her behalf."
"Gemini! The man will break down under the strain. He has no stamina.
He will denounce us all."
"Let us hope so," Sextus answered. "I am counting on it. Nothing but
sudden danger will ever bring Pertinax up to the mark! I gave a bond to
Marcia for Livius' life."
"Jupiter! What kind of bond? And what has come over Marcia that she
accepted it?"
"I guaranteed to her that I will not denounce herself to Commodus! She
saw the point. She could never clear herself."
"But how could you denounce her? She can have you seized and silenced
any time! Weren't you in Cornificia's house, with the guard at the
gate? Why didn't she summon the praetorians and hand you over to them?"
"Because Galen was there, too. She loves him, trusts him, and Galen is
my friend. Besides, Pertinax would turn on her if she should have me
killed. Pertinax was my father's friend, and is mine. Marcia's only
chance, if Commodus should lose his life, is for Pertinax to seize the
throne and continue to be her friend and protect her. Any other
possible successor to Commodus would have her head off in the same
hour."
"Well, Sextus, that argument won't keep her from having you murdered. I
am only hoping she won't order me to do it, because the cat will be out
of the bag then. I will not refuse, but I will certainly not kill you,
and that will mean--"
"You forget Norbanus and my freedmen," Sextus interrupted. "She knows
very well that they know all my secrets. They would avenge me instantly
by sending Commodus full information of the plot, involving Marcia head
over heels. She is ready to betray Commodus if that should seem the
safest course. If she is capable of treachery to him, she is equally
sure to betray all her friends if she thought her own life were in
danger!"
"Now listen, Sextus, and don't speak too loud or they'll hear you in the
cells; any of these poor devils would jump at a chance to save his own
skin by betraying you and me. Talk softly. I say, listen! There isn't
any safety anywhere with all these factions plotting each against the
other, none knowing which will strike first and Commodus likely to
pounce on all of them at any minute. I don't know why he hasn't heard of
it already."
"He is too busy training his body to have time to use his brain," said
Sextus. "However, go on."
"I think Commodus is quite likely to have the best of it!" Narcissus
said, screwing up his eyes as if he gazed at an antagonist across the
dazzling sand of the arena. "Somebody--some spy--is sure to inform him.
There will be wholesale proscriptions. Commodus will try to scare
Severus, Niger and Albinus by slaughtering their supporters here in
Rome. I can see what is coming."
"Are you, too, a god--like Commodus--that you can see so shrewdly?"
"Never mind. I can see. And I can see a better way for you, and for me
also. You have made yourself a great name as Maternus, less, possibly,
in Rome than on the countryside. You have more to begin with than ever
Spartacus had--"
"Aye, and less, too," Sextus interrupted. "For I lack his confidence
that Rome can be brought to her knees by an army of slaves. I lack his
willingness to try to do it. Rome must be saved by honorable Romans,
who have Rome at heart and not their own personal ambition. No army of
runaway slaves can ever do it. Nothing offends me more than that
Commodus makes slaves his ministers, and I mean by that no offense to
you, Narcissus, who are fit to rank with Spartacus himself. But I am a
republican. It is not vengeance that I seek. I will reckon I have lived
if I have ridded Rome of Commodus and helped to replace him with a man
who will restore our ancient liberties."
"Liberties?" Narcissus wore his satyr-smile again. "It makes small
difference to slaves and gladiators how much liberty the free men have!
The more for them, the less for us! Let us live while the living is
good, Sextus! Let us take to the mountains and help ourselves to what
we need while Pertinax and all these others fight for too much! Let
them have their too much and grow sick of it! What do you and I need
beyond clothing, a weapon, armor, a girl or two and a safe place for
retreat? I have heard Sardinia is wonderful. But if you still think
you would rather haunt your old estates, where you know the people and
they know you, so that you will be warned of any attempt to catch you,
that will be all right with me. We can swoop down on the inns along the
main roads now and then, rob whom it is convenient to rob, and live like
noblemen!"
"Three years I have lived an outlaw's life," Sextus answered, "sneaking
into Rome to borrow money from my father's friends to save me the
necessity of stealing. It is one thing to pretend to be a robber, and
another thing to rob. The robber's name makes nine men out of ten your
secret well-wishers; the deed makes you all men's enemy. How do you
suppose I have escaped capture? It was simple enough. Every robber in
Italy has called himself Maternus, so that I have seemed to be here,
there, everywhere, aye, and often in three or four places at once! I
have been caught and killed at least a dozen times! But all the while
my men and I were safe because we took care to harm nobody. We let
others do the murdering and robbing. We have lived like hermits,
showing ourselves only often enough to keep alive the Maternus legend."
"Well, isn't that better than risking your neck trying to make and
unmake emperors?" Narcissus asked.
"I risk my neck each hour I linger in Rome!"
"Well then, by Hercules, take payment for the risk, and cut the risk and
vanish!" exclaimed Narcissus. "Help yourself once and for all to a bag
full of gold in exchange for your father's estates that were confiscated
when they cut his head off. Then leave Italy, and let us be outlaws in
Sardinia."
Sextus laughed.
"That probably sounds glorious to one in your position. I, too, rather
enjoyed the prospect when I first made my escape from Antioch and
discovered how easy the life was. But though I owe it to my father's
memory to win back his estates, even that, and present outlawry is small
compared to the zeal I have for restoring Rome's ancient liberties. But
I don't deceive myself; I am not the man who can accomplish that; I can
only help the one who can, and will. That one is Pertinax. He will
reverse the process that has been going on since Julius Caesar overthrew
the old republic. He will use a Caesar's power to destroy the edifice
of Caesar and rebuild what Caesar wrecked!"
Narcissus pondered that, his head between his hands.
"I haven't Rome at heart," he said at last. "Why should I have? There
are girls, whom I have forgotten, whom I loved more than I love Rome. I
am a slave gladiator. I have been applauded by the crowds, but know
what that means, having seen other men go the same route. I am an
emperor's favorite, and I know what that means too; I saw Cleander die;
I have seen man after man, and woman after woman lose his favor
suddenly. Banishment, death, the ergastulum, torture--and, what is much
worse, the insults the brute heaps on any one he turns against--I am too
wise to give that--" he spat on the flag-stones--"for the friendship of
Commodus. And Commodus is Rome; you can't persuade me he isn't. Rome
turns on its favorites as he does--scorns them, insults them, throws
them on dung-heaps. That for Rome!" He spat again. "They even break
the noses off the statues of the men they used to idolize! They even
throw the statues on a dung-heap to insult the dead! Why should I set
Rome above my own convenience?"
"Well, for instance, you could almost certainly buy your freedom by
betraying me," said Sextus. "Why don't you?"
"Jupiter! How shall a man answer that? I suppose I don't betray you
because if I did I should loathe myself. And I prefer to like myself,
which I contrive to do at intervals. Also, I enjoy the company of
honest men, and I think you are honest, although I think you are also an
idealist--which, I take it, is the same thing as a born fool, or so I
have begun to think, since I attend on the emperor and have to hear so
much talk of philosophy. Look you what philosophy has made of Commodus!
Didn't Marcus Aurelius beget him from his own loins, and wasn't Marcus
Aurelius the greatest of all philosophers? Didn't he surround young
Commodus with all the learned idealists he could find? That is what I
am told he did. And look at Commodus! Our Roman Commodus! God
Commodus! I haven't murdered him because I am afraid, and because I
don't see how I could gain by it. I don't betray you because I would
despise myself if I did."
"I would despise myself if I should be untrue to Rome," Sextus answered
after a moment. "Commodus is not Rome. Neither is the mob Rome."
"What is then?" Narcissus asked. "The bricks and mortar? The marble
that the slaves must haul under the lash? The ponds where they feed
their lampreys on dead gladiators? The arena where a man salutes a
dummy emperor before a disguised one kills him? The senate, where they
buy and sell the consulates and praetorships and guaestorships? The
tribunals where justice goes by privilege? The temples where as many
gods as there are, Romans yell for sacrifices to enrich the priests?
The farms where the slave-gangs labor like poor old Sysyphus and are
sold off in their old age to the contractors who clear the latrines, or
to the galleys, or, if they're lucky, to the lime-kilns where they dry
up like sticks and die soon? There is a woman in a side-street near the
fish-market, who is very rich and looks like Rome to me. She has so
many gold rings on her fingers that you can't see the dirt underneath;
and she owns so many brothels and wine-shops that she can even buy off
the tax-collectors. Do I love her? Do I love Rome? No! I love you,
Sextus, son of Maximus, and I will go with you to the world's end if you
will lead the way."
"I love Rome," Sextus answered. "Possibly I want to see her liberties
restored because I love my own liberty and can't imagine myself
honorable unless Rome herself is honored first. When you and I are sick
we need a Galen. Rome needs Pertinax. You ask me what is Rome? She is
the cradle of my manhood."
"A befouled nest!" said Narcissus.
"An Augean stable with a Hercules who doesn't do his work, I grant you!
But we can substitute another Hercules."
"Pertinax is too old," Narcissus objected, weakening, a trifle sulkily.
"He is old enough to wish to die in honor rather than dishonor. You and
I, Narcissus, have no honor--you a slave and I an outlaw. Let us win,
then, honor for ourselves by helping to heal Rome of her dishonor!"
"Oh well, have it your own way," said Narcissus, unconvinced. "A brass
as for your honor! The alternative is death or liberty in either case,
and as for me, I prefer friendship to religion, so I will follow you,
whichever road you take. Now go. These fellows mustn't recognize you.
It is time to take them one by one into the exercising yard. I daren't
take more than one at a time or they'd kill me even with the blunted
practise-weapons. I wish they might face Commodus as boldly as they
tackle me! I am a weary man, and many times a bruised one, I can tell
you, when the night comes, after putting twenty of them through their
paces."
IX. STEWED EELS
The training arena where Commodus worked off energy and kept his
Herculean muscles in condition was within the palace grounds, but the
tunnel by which he reached it continued on and downward to the Circus
Maximus, so that he could attend the public spectacles without much
danger of assassination.
Nevertheless, a certain danger still existed. One of his worst frenzies
of proscription had been started by a man who waited for him in the
tunnel, and lost his nerve and then, instead of killing him, pretended
to deliver an insulting message from the senate. Since that time the
tunnel had been lined with guards at regular intervals, and when
Commodus passed through his mysterious "double" was obliged to walk in
front of him surrounded by enough attendants to make any one not in the
secret believe the double was the emperor himself.
No man in the known world was less incapable than Commodus of self-
defense against an armed man. There was no deception about his feats of
strength and skill; he was undoubtedly the most terrific fighter and
consummate athlete Rome had ever seen, and he was as proud of it as Nero
once was of his "golden voice." But, as he explained to the fawning
courtiers who shouldered one another for a place beside him as he
hurried down the tunnel:
"How could Rome replace me? Yesterday I had to order a slave beaten to
death for breaking a vase of Greek glass. I can buy a hundred slaves
for half what that glass cost Hadrian. And I could have a thousand
better senators tomorrow than the fools who belch and stammer in the
curia, the senate house. But where would you find another Commodus if
some lurking miscreant should stab me from behind? It was the geese
that saved the capitol. You cacklers can preserve your Commodus."
They agreed in chorus, it would be Rome's irreparable loss if he should
die, and certain senators, more fertile than the others in expedients
for drawing his attention to themselves, paused ostentatiously to hold a
little conversation with the guards and promise them rewards if they
should catch a miscreant lurking in wait to attack "our beloved, our
glorious emperor."
Commodus overheard them, as they meant he should.
"And such fulsome idiots as those expect me to believe they can frame
laws!" He scowled over-shoulder. "Write down their names for me,
somebody. The senate needs pruning! I will purge it the way Galen used
to purge me when I had the colic! Cioscuri! But these leaky babblers
suffocate me!"
He was true to the Caesarian tradition. He believed himself a god. He
more than half-persuaded other men. His almost superhuman energy and
skill with weapons, his terrific storms of anger and his magnetism
overawed courtiers and politicians as they did the gladiators whom he
slew in the arena. The strain of madness in his blood provided cunning
that could mask itself beneath a princely bluster of indifference to
consequences. He could fear with an extravagance coequal to the fury of
his love of danger, and his fear struck terror into men's hearts, as it
stirred his mad brain into frenzies.
He made no false claim when he called Rome the City of Commodus and
himself the Roman Hercules. The vast majority of Romans were unfit to
challenge his contempt of them, and his contempt was never under cover
for a moment.
Debauchery, of wine and women, entered not at all into his private life
although, in public, he encouraged it in others for the simple reason
that it weakened men who otherwise might turn on him. He was never
guilty of excesses that might undermine his strength or shake his
nerves; there was an almost superhuman purity about his worship of
athletic powers. He outdid the Greeks in that respect. But he allowed
the legend of his monstrous orgies in the palace to gain currency,
partly because that encouraged the Romans to debauch themselves and
render themselves incapable of overthrowing him, and partly because it
helped to cover up his trick of employing a substitute to occupy the
royal pavilion at the games when he himself drove chariots in the races
or fought in the arena as the gladiator Paulus.
Men who had let wine and women ruin their own nerves knew it was
impossible that any one, who lived as Commodus was said to do, could
drive a chariot and wield a javelin as Paulus did. Whoever faced a
Roman gladiator under the critical gaze of a crowd that knew all the
points of fighting and could instantly detect, and did instantly resent
pretense, fraud, trickery, the poor condition of one combatant or the
unwillingness of one man to have at another in deadly earnest, had to be
not only in the pink of bodily condition but a fighter such as no
drunken sensualist could ever hope to be. So it was easy to suppress
the scandal that the gladiator Paulus was the emperor himself, although
half Rome half-believed it; and the substitute who occupied the seat of
honor at the games--ageing a little, growing a little pouchy under eyes
and chin--was pointed to as proof that Commodus was being ruined by the
life he led.
The trick of making use of the same substitute to save the emperor the
boredom of official ceremony, whenever there was no risk of the public
coming close enough to detect the fraud, materially helped to strengthen
the officially fostered argument that Commodus could not be Paulus.
So the mystery of the identity of Paulus was like all court secrets and
most secrets of intriguing governments, no mystery at all to hundreds,
but to thousands an insoluble conundrum. The official propagandists of
the court news, absolutely in control of all the channels through which
facts could reach the public, easily offset the constant leakage from
the lips of slaves and gladiators by disseminating artfully concocted
news. Those actually in the secret, flattered by the confidence and
fearful for their own skins, steadfastly denied the story when it
cropped up. Last, but not least, was the law, that made it sacrilege to
speak in terms derogatory to the emperor. A gladiator, though the crowd
might almost deify him, was a casteless individual, unprivileged before
the law, whom any franchised citizen would rate as socially far beneath
himself. To have identified the emperor with Paulus in a voice above a
whisper would have made the culprit liable to death and confiscation of
his goods.
The substitute himself, a man of mystery, was kept in virtual
imprisonment. He was known as "Pavonius Nasor," not because that was
his real name, which was known to very few people, but because of an old
legend that the ghost of a certain Pavonius Nasor, murdered centuries
ago and never buried, still walked in the neighborhood of that part of
the palace where the emperor's substitute now led his mysterious, secret
existence.
There were plenty of whispered stories current as to his true identity.
Some said he was an impoverished landholder whom Commodus had met by
accident when traveling in Northern Italy. But it was much more commonly
believed he was the emperor's twin brother, spirited away at birth by
midwives, and the stories told to account for that were as remarkably
unlikely as the tale itself; as for instance, that a soothsayer had
prophesied how Commodus should one day mount the throne and that he and
his twin brother would wreck Rome in civil war--a warning hardly likely
to have had much weight with the father, Marcus Aurelius, although the
mother was more likely to have given credence to it.
Whatever the truth of his origin, Pavonius Nasor never ran the risk of
telling it. He kept his sinecure by mastering his tongue, preserving
almost bovine speechlessness. When he and Commodus met face to face he
never seemed to see the joke of the resemblance, never laughed at
Commodus' obscenely vivid jibes at his expense, nor once complained of
his anomalous position. He appeared to be a man of no ambition other
than to get through life as easily as might be--of no personal dignity,
no ruling habits, but possessed of imitative talent that enabled him,
without the slightest trouble, to adopt the very gait and gesture of the
emperor whom he impersonated.
As he strode ahead along the tunnel he received the guards' salute with
merely enough nod of recognition to deceive an onlooker not in the
secret. (It was Pavonius Nasor's half-indulgent, rather lazy smile that
had persuaded Rome and even the praetorian guards that Commodus was an
easy-going, sensual, good humored man.)
There was a box at one end of the private arena, over the gate where the
horses entered, so placed as to avoid the sun's direct rays. It was
reached by a short stairway from an anteroom that opened on the tunnel.
There was no other means of access to the box. It's wooden sidewalls,
finished to resemble gilded eagle's wings, projected over the arena so
that it was well screened and in shadow. There was none, observing from
below, who could have sworn it had not been the emperor himself who sat
in the box and watched Paulus the gladiator showing off his skill.
The assembled gladiators, perfectly aware of Paulus' true identity, went
through the farce of solemnly saluting as the emperor the man who stared
down at them from beneath an awning's shadow between golden eagle's
wings, and who returned the salute with a wave of the arm that all Rome
could have recognized.
Commodus, nearly as naked as when he was born, came running from a
dressing room and pranced and leaped over the sand to bring the sweat-
beads to his skin; then, snatching at the nearest gladiator, wrestled
with him until the breathless victim cried for mercy; dropped him then,
as crushed as if a python had left a job half-finished, and shouted for
the ashen sword-sticks. In a minute, with a leather buckler on his left
arm, he was parrying the thrusts and blows of six men, driving and so
crowding them on one another's toes that only two could seriously answer
the terrific flailing of his own ash stick. He named them, named his
blow, and laid them one by one, half-stunned and bleeding on the sand,
until the last one by a quick feint landed on him, raising a great
crimson welt across his shoulders.
"Well done!" Commodus exclaimed and smote him on the skull so fiercely
that he broke the sword-stick. "You have killed him," said a senator as
two men promptly seized the victim's arms to drag him out.
"Possibly," said Commodus. "That blow I landed on him would have killed
a horse. But he is fortunate. He dies proud--prouder than you ever
will, Varronius! He got past Paulus' guard! Would you like to attempt
it? Woman! How I loathe you soft, effeminate, sleek senators! You
fear death and you fear life equally! Where is Narcissus? Where are
those men who are to try to kill me at my birthday games?"
There was no answer from Narcissus. Commodus forgot him in a moment,
called for javelins and hurled them at a target, then at half-a-dozen
targets, hitting all six marks exactly in the middle as he spun himself
on one heel.
"I am in fettle!" he exclaimed, clapping the back of the senator whom he
had scurrilously insulted a moment ago. If he was conscious of applause
from the group of courtiers and gladiators he gave no sign of it. What
pleased him was his own ability, not their praises.
"Lions!" he said. "Loose that big one!"
"Paulus," a scarred veteran answered (they were all forbidden to address
him by any other name in that arena), "you have ordered us to keep that
fellow for the birthday games. If you keep killing all the best ones
off at practise, what shall we do when the day comes? The last ship-
load has arrived from Africa and already you have used up nearly half of
them. There is no chance of another cargo arriving in time for the
games. And besides, we have lacked corpses recently; that big one
hasn't tasted man's flesh. He is hungry now. He will eat whatever we
throw in, so let him taste the right meat that will make him savage."
"Loose a leopard then."
The veteran went off without a word to give his orders to the men below-
ground, whose duty it was to drag the cages to the openings of tunnels
in the masonry through which the animals emerged into the sunlight.
There were ten such openings on either side of the arena, closed by
trapdoors, set in grooves, that could be raised by ropes from overhead.
Commodus picked up one javelin and poised it. Half-a-dozen gladiators
watched him, paying no attention to the doors, through any one of which
the animal might come. They knew their Paulus, and were trained,
besides, to look at death or danger with a curious, contemptuous calm.
But the courtiers were nervous, grouping themselves where the sunlight
threw a V-shaped shadow on the sand, as if they thought that semi-
twilight would protect them.
A wooden door rose squeaking in its grooves but Commodus kept his back
toward it.
"Women!" he exclaimed.
His sudden scowl transformed his handsome face into a thing of horror.
He began to mutter savagely obscene abuse. A leopard crept into the
sunlight, tried to turn again but was prevented by the closing trap, and
crouched against the arena wall.
"Beware! The beast comes!" said a gladiator.
"Hold your presumptuous tongue, you slave-born rascal!" Commodus
retorted. "Take that yapping dog away and have him whipped!"
A man stepped from the entrance gate to beckon the offending gladiator,
who walked out with a look of hatred on his face. He paused once,
hesitating whether to ask mercy, and thought better of it, shrugging his
fine bronzed shoulders. The leopard left the wall and crept toward the
center of the sand, his black and yellow beauty rippling in the sunlight
and his shadow looking like death's trailing cloak. The courtiers
seemed doubtful which of the two beasts to watch, leopard or emperor.
"A spear!" said Commodus. A gladiator put it in his hand.
"Varronius! It irks me to have cowards in the senate! Let me see you
try to kill that leopard!"
Decadent and grown effeminate though Rome was, there was no patrician
who had not received some training in the use of arms. Varronius took
the spear at once, his white hands closing on the shaft with military
firmness. But his white face gave the lie to the alacrity with which he
strode out of the shadow.
"Kill him, and you shall have the consulate next year!" said Commodus.
"Be killed, and there will be one useless bastard less to clutter up the
curia!"
A flush of anger swept over the senator's pale face. For a moment he
looked almost capable of lunging with the spear at Commodus--but
Commodus was toying with the javelin. Varronius strode out to face the
leopard, and the lithe beast did not wait to feel the spear-point. It
began to stalk its adversary in irregular swift curves. Its body almost
pressed the sand. Its eyes were spots of sunlit topaz. Commodus' frown
vanished. He began to gloat over the leopard's subtlety and strength.
"He is a lovelier thing than you, Varronius! He is a better fighter!
He is manlier! He is worth more! He has kept his body stronger and his
wits more nimble! He will get you! By the Dioscuri, he will get you!
I will bet a talent that he gets you--and I hope he does! You hold your
spear the way a woman holds a distaff--but observe the way he gathers
all his strength in readiness to leap instantly in any direction! Ah!"
The leopard made a feint, perhaps to test the swiftness of the spear-
point. Leaping like a flash of light, he seemed to change direction in
mid-air, the point missing him by half a hand's breadth. One terrific
claw, outreaching as he turned, ripped open Varronius' tunic and brought
a little stream of crimson trickling down his left arm.
"Good!" Commodus remarked. "First blood to the braver! Who would like
to bet with me?"
"I!" Varronius retorted from between set teeth, his eyes fixed on the
leopard that had recommenced his swift strategic to-and-fro stalking
movement.
"I have betted you the consulship already. Who else wants to bet?"
asked Commodus.
Before any one could answer the leopard sprang in again at Varronius,
who stepped aside and drove his spear with very well timed accuracy.
Only force enough was lacking. The point slit the leopard's skin and
made a stinging wound along the beast's ribs, turning him the way a
spur-prick turns a horse. His snarl made Varronius step back another
pace or two, neglecting his chance to attack and drive the spear-point
home. The infuriated leopard watched him for a moment, ears back, tail
spasmodically twitching, then shot to one side and charged straight at
the group of courtiers.
They scattered. They were almost unarmed. There were three of them who
stumbled, interfering with each other. The nearest to the leopard drew
a dagger with a jeweled hilt, a mere toy with a light blade hardly
longer than his hand. He threw his toga over his left forearm and
stood firm to make a fight for it, his white face rigid and his eyes
ablaze. The leopard leaped--and fell dead, hardly writhing. Commodus'
long javelin had caught him in the middle of his spring, exactly at the
point behind the shoulder-bone that leaves a clear course to the heart.
"I would not have done that for a coward, Tullius! If you had run I
would have let him kill you!"
Commodus strode up and pulled out the javelin, setting one foot on the
leopard and exerting all his strength.
"Look here, Varronius. Do you see how deep my blade went? Pin-pricks
are no use against man or animal. Kill when you strike, like great Jove
with his thunderbolts! Life isn't a game between Maltese kittens; it's
a spectacle in which the strong devour the weak and all the gods look
on! Loose another leopard there! I'll show you!"
He took the spear from Varronius, balanced it a moment, discarded it and
chose another, feeling its point with his thumb. There was a squeak of
pulleys as they loosed a leopard near the end of the arena. He charged
the animal, leaping from foot to foot. He made prodigious leaps; there
was no guessing which way he would jump next. He was not like a human
being. The leopard, snarling, slunk away, attempting to avoid him, but
he crowded it against the wall. He forced it to turn at bay. No eye
was quick enough to see exactly how he killed it, save that he struck
when the leopard sprang. The next thing that anybody actually saw, he
had the writhing creature on the spear, in air, like a legion's
standard.
Then the madness surged into his brain.
"So I rule Rome!" he exclaimed, and threw the leopard at the gladiators'
feet. "Because I pity Rome that could not find another Paulus! I
strike first, before they strike me!"
They flattered him--fawned on him, but he was much too genuinely mad for
flattery to take effect. "If you were worth a barrelful of rats I'd
have a senate that might save me trouble! Then like Tiberius I might
remain away from Rome and live more like a god. I've more than half a
mind to let my dummy stay here to amuse you wastrels!" He glanced up at
the box, where his substitute lolled and yawned and smiled. "All you
degenerates need is some one you can rub yourselves against like fat
cats mewing for a bowl of milk! By Hercules, now I'll show you
something that will make your blood leap. Bring out the new Spanish
team."
With an imperious gesture he sent senators and gladiators to scatter
themselves all over the arena. Not yet satisfied, he ordered all the
guards fetched from the tunnel and arranged them in a similar disorder,
so that finally no stretch of fifty yards was left without a man
obstructing it. There was no spina down the midst, nor anything except
the surrounding wall to suggest to a team of horses which the course
might be.
"Let none move!" he commanded. "I will crush the foot of any man who
stirs!"
Attendants, clinging to the heads of four gray stallions that fought and
kicked, brought out his chariot and others shut the gate behind it.
Commodus admired the team a minute, then examined the new high wheels of
the gilded chariot, that was hardly wider than a coffin--a thing that a
man could upset with a shove and built to look as flimsy as an egg
shell. Suddenly he seized the reins and leaped in, throwing up his
right hand.
If he could have ruled his empire as he drove that chariot he would have
far outshone Augustus, for whose memory men sighed. He managed them with
one hand. There was magnetism sent along the reins to play with the
dynamic energy of four mad stallions as gods amuse themselves with men.
If empire had amused him as athleticism did there would have been no
equal in all history to Commodus.
In a chariot no other athlete could have balanced, on a course providing
not one unobstructed stretch of fifty yards, he drove like Phoebus
breaking in the horses of the Sun, careering this and that way, weaving
patterns in among the frightened men who stood like posts for him to
drive around. He missed them by a hand's breadth--less! He took
delight in driving at them, turning in the last half-second, smiling at
a blanched face as he wheeled and wove new figures down another zigzag
avenue of men. The frenzy of the team inspired him; the rebellion of
the stallions, made mad by the persistent, sudden turns, aroused his own
astonishing enthusiasm. He accomplished the impossible! He made new
laws of motion, breaking them, inventing others! He became a god in
action, mastering the team until it had no consciousness of any self-
will, or of any impulse but to loose its full strength under the
directing will of genius.
The team tired first. It was its waning speed that wearied him at last.
The mania that owned him could not tolerate the anticlimax of declining
effort, so his mood changed. He became morose--indifferent. He reined
in, tossed the reins to an attendant and began to walk toward the tunnel
entrance, clothed as he was in nothing but the practise loin-cloth of a
gladiator.
A dozen senators implored him to wait and clothe himself. He would not
wait. He ordered them to bring his cloak and overtake him. Then he
observed Narcissus, standing near the horse-gate, waiting to summon his
trained gladiators for an exhibition:
"Not this time, Narcissus. Next time. Follow me." He waited for a
moment for Narcissus. That gave the substitute time to come down from
the box and go hurrying ahead into the tunnel-mouth; he went so fast
(for he knew the emperor's moods) that the attendants found it hard to
keep up; most of them were half a dozen paces in the rear. A senator
gave Commodus his cloak. He took Narcissus by the arm and strode ahead
into the tunnel, muttering, ignoring noisy protests from the senators,
who warned him that the guards were not yet there.
Then there was sudden silence; possibly a consequence of Caesar's mood,
or the reaction caused by chill and tunnel-darkness after sunlit sand.
Or it might have been the shadow of impending tragedy. A long scream
broke the silence, thrice repeated, horrible, like something from an
unseen world. Instantly Narcissus leaped ahead into the darkness,
weaponless but armed by nature with the muscles of a panther. Commodus
leaped after him; his mood reversed again. Now emulation had him; he
would not be beaten to a scene of action by a gladiator. He let his
cloak fall and a senator tripped over it.
There were no lamps. Something less than twilight, deepened here and
there by shadow, filled the tunnel. By a niche intended for a sentry
the attendants were standing helplessly around the body of a man who lay
with head and shoulders propped against the wall. Narcissus and
another, like knotted snakes, were writhing near by. There was a sound
of choking. Pavonius Nasor was silent. He appeared already dead.
"Pluto! Is there no light?" Commodus demanded. "What has happened?"
"They have killed your shadow, sire!"
"Who killed him?"
"Men who sprang out of the darkness suddenly."
"One man. Only one. I have him here. He lives yet, but he dies!"
Narcissus said.
He dragged a writhing body on the flagstones, holding it by one wrist.
"He was armed. I had to throttle him to save my liver from his knife.
I think I broke his neck. He is certainly dying," said Narcissus.
Some one had gone for a lamp and came along the tunnel with it.
"Let me look," said Commodus. "Here, give me that lamp!"
He looked first at Pavonius Nasor, who gazed back, at him with stupid,
passionless, already dimming eyes. A stream of blood was gushing from
below his left arm.
"Now the gods of heaven and hell, and all the strange gods that have no
resting place, and all the spirits of the air and earth and sea, defile
your spirit!" Commodus exploded. "Careless, irresponsible, ungrateful
fool! You have deprived me of my liberty! You let yourself be killed
like any sow under the butcher's knife, and dare to leave me shadowless?
Then die like carrion and rot unburied!"
He began to kick him, but the stricken man's lips moved. Commodus bent
down and tried to listen--tried again, mastered impatience and at last
stood upright, shaking both fists at the tunnel roof.
"Omnipotent Progenitor of Lightnings!" he exploded. "He says he should
have had stewed eels tonight!"
The watching senators mistook that for a cue to laugh. Their laughter
touched off all the magazines of Caesar's rage. He turned into a mania.
He tore at his own hair. He tore off his loin-cloth and stood naked.
He tried to kill Narcissus, because Narcissus was the nearest to him.
His crashing centurion's parade voice filled the tunnel.
"Dogs! Dogs' ullage! Vipers!" he yelled. "Who slew my shadow? Who did
it? This is a conspiracy! Who hatched it? Bring my tablets! Warn the
executioners! What is Commodus without his dummy? Vultures! Better
have killed me than that poor obliging fool! You cursed, stupid idiots!
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