Books: Imperial Purple
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Edgar Saltus >> Imperial Purple
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It was from such surroundings that Faustine stepped into the arms
of the severe and stately prince whom her father had chosen. That
Marcus Aurelius adored her is certain. His notebook shows it. A
more tender-hearted and perfect lover romance may show, but
history cannot. He must have been the quintessence of refinement,
a thoroughbred to his finger-tips; one for whom that purple mantle
was too gaudy, and yet who bore it, as he bore everything else, in
that self-abnegatory spirit which the higher reaches of philosophy
bring.
He was of that rare type that never complains and always consoles.
After Antonin's death, his hours ceased to be his own. On the
Euphrates there was the wildest disorder. To the north new races
were pushing nations over the Danube and the Rhine. From the
catacombs Christ was emerging; from the Nile, Serapis. The empire
was in disarray. Antonin had provided his son-in-law with a
coadjutor, Lucius Verus, the son of Hadrian's mignon, a
magnificent scoundrel; a tall, broad-shouldered athlete, with a
skin as fresh as a girl's and thick curly hair, which he covered
with a powder of gold; a viveur, whose suppers are famous still;
whose guests were given the slaves that served them, the plate off
which they had eaten, the cups from which they had drunk--cups of
gold, cups of silver, jewelled cups, cups from Alexandria,
murrhine vases filled with nard--cars and litters to go home with,
mules with silver trappings and negro muleteers. Capitolinus says
that, while the guests feasted, sometimes the magnificent Verus
got drunk, and was carried to bed in a coverlid, or else, the red
feather aiding, turned out and fought the watch.
It was this splendid individual to whom Marcus Aurelius entrusted
the Euphrates. They had been brought up together, sharing each
others tutors, writing themes for the same instructor, both
meanwhile adolescently enamored of the fair Faustine. It was to
Marcus she was given, the empire as a dower; and when that dower
passed into his hands, he could think of nothing more equitable
than to ask Verus to share it with him. Verus was not stupid
enough to refuse, and at the hour when the Parthians turned ugly,
he needed little urging to set out for the East, dreaming, as he
did so, of creating there an empire that should be wholly his.
At that time Faustine must have been at least twenty-eight,
possibly thirty. There were matrons who had not seen their
fifteenth year, and Faustine had been married young. Her daughter,
Lucille, was nubile. Presently Verus, or rather his lieutenants,
succeeded, and the girl was betrothed to him. There was a
festival, of course, games in abundance, and plenty of blood.
It would have been interesting to have seen her that day, the iron
ring of betrothal on her finger, her brother, Commodus, staring at
the arrangement of her hair, her mother prettily perplexed, her
father signing orders which messengers brought and despatched
while the sand took on a deeper red, and Rome shrieked its
delight. Yes, it would have been interesting and typical of the
hour. Her hair in the ten tresses which were symbolic of a
fiancee's innocence, must have amused that brute of a brother of
hers, and the iron ring on the fourth finger of her left hand must
have given Faustine food for thought; the vestals, in their
immaculate robes, must have gazed at her in curious, sisterly
ways, and because of her fresh beauty surely there were undertones
of applause. Should her father disappear she would make a gracious
imperatrix indeed.
But, meanwhile, there was Faustine, and at sight of her legends of
old imperial days returned. She was not Messalina yet, but in the
stables there were jockeys whose sudden wealth surprised no one;
in the arenas there were gladiators that fought, not for liberty,
nor for death, but for the caresses of her eyes; in the side-
scenes there were mimes who spoke of her; there were senators who
boasted in their cups, and in the theatre Rome laughed colossally
at the catchword of her amours.
Marcus Aurelius then was occupied with affairs of state. In
similar circumstances so was Claud--Messalina's husband--so, too,
was Antonin. But Claud was an imbecile, Antonin a man of the
world, while Marcus Aurelius was a philosopher. When fate links a
woman to any one of these varieties of the husband, she is blessed
indeed. Faustine was particularly favored.
The stately prince was not alone a philosopher--a calling, by the
way, which was common enough then, and has become commoner since--
he was a philosopher who believed in philosophy, a rarity then as
now. The exact trend of his thought is difficult to define. His
note-book is filled with hesitations; materialism had its
allurements, so also had pantheism; the advantages of the
Pyrrhonic suspension of judgment were clear to him too; according
to the frame of mind in which he wrote, you might fancy him an
agnostic, again an akosmist, sometimes both, but always the
ethical result is the same.
"Revenge yourself on your enemy by not resembling him. Forgive;
forgive always; die forgiving. Be indulgent to the wrong-doer; be
compassionate to him; tell him how he should act; speak to him
without anger, without sarcasm; speak to him affectionately.
Besides, what do you know of his wrong-doing? Are all his thoughts
familiar to you? May there not be something that justifies him?
And you, are you entirely free from reproach? Have you never done
wrong? And if not, was it fear that restrained you? Was it pride,
or what?"
In the synoptic gospels similar recommendations appear. Charity is
the New Testament told in a word. Christians read and forget it.
But Christians are not philosophers. The latter are charitable
because they regard evil as a part of the universal order of
things, one which it is idle to blame, yet permissible to rectify.
From whatever source such a tenet springs, whether from
materialism, stoicism, pyrrhonism, epicureanism, atheism even, is
of small matter; it is a tenet which is honorable to the holder.
This sceptred misanthrope possessed it, and it was in that his
wife was blessed. Years later he died, forgiving her in silence,
praising her aloud. Claud, referring to Messalina, shouted through
the Forum that the fate which destined him to marry impure women
destined him to punish them. Marcus Aurelius said nothing. He did
not know what fate destined him to do, but he did know that
philosophy taught him to forgive.
It was this philosophy that first perplexed Faustine. She was
restless, frivolous, perhaps also a trifle depraved. Frivolous
because all women were, depraved because her mother was, and
restless because of the curiosity that inflammable imaginations
share--in brief, a Roman princess. Her husband differed from the
Roman prince. His youth had not been entirely circumspect; he,
too, had his curiosities, but they were satisfied, he had found
that they stained. When he married he was already the thinker;
doubtless, he was tiresome; he could have had little small-talk,
and his hours of love-making must have been rare. Presently the
affairs of state engrossed him. Faustine was left to herself; save
a friend of her own sex, a woman can have no worse companion. She,
too, discovered she had curiosities. A gladiator passed that way--
then Rome; then Lesbos; then the Lampsacene. "You are my husband's
mistress," her daughter cried at her. "And you," the mother
answered, "are your brother's." Even in the aridity of a chronicle
the accusation and rejoinder are dramatic. Fancy what they must
have been when mother and daughter hissed them in each other's
teeth. Whether the argument continued is immaterial. Both could
have claimed the sanction of religion. In those days a sin was a
prayer. Religion was then, as it always had been, purely
political. With the individual, with his happiness or aspirations,
it concerned itself not at all. It was the prosperity of the
empire, its peace and immortality, for which sacrifices were made,
and libations offered. The god of Rome was Rome, and religion was
patriotism. The antique virtues, courage in war, moderation in
peace, and honor at all times, were civic, not personal. It was
the state that had a soul, not the individual. Man was ephemeral;
it was the nation that endured. It was the permanence of its
grandeur that was important, nothing else.
To ensure that permanence each citizen labored. As for the
citizen, death was near, and he hastened to live; before the roses
could fade he wreathed himself with them. Immortality to him was
in his descendants, the continuation of his name, respect to his
ashes. Any other form of future life was a speculation, infrequent
at that. In anterior epochs Fright had peopled Tartarus, but
Fright had gone. The Elysian Fields were vague, wearisome to
contemplate; even metempsychosis had no adherents. "After death,"
said Caesar, "there is nothing," and all the world agreed with
him. The hour, too, in which three thousand gods had not a single
atheist, had gone, never to return. Old faiths had crumbled. None
the less was Rome the abridgment of every superstition. The gods
of the conquered had always been part of her spoils. The Pantheon
had become a lupanar of divinities that presided over birth, and
whose rites were obscene; an abattoir of gods that presided over
death, and whose worship was gore. To please them was easy. Blood
and debauchery was all that was required. That the upper classes
had no faith in them at all goes without the need of telling; the
atmosphere of their atriums dripped with metaphysics. But of the
atheism of the upper classes the people knew nothing; they clung
piously to a faith which held a theological justification of every
sin, and in the temples fervent prayers were murmured, not for
future happiness, for that was unobtainable, nor yet for wisdom or
virtue, for those things the gods neither granted nor possessed;
the prayers were that the gods would favor the suppliant in his
hatreds and in his lusts.
Such was Rome when Verus returned to wed Lucille. Before his car
the phallus swung; behind it was the pest. A little before, the
Tiber overflowed. Presently, in addition to the pest, famine came.
It was patent to everyone that the gods were vexed. There was
blasphemy somewhere, and the Christians were tossed to the beasts.
Faustine watched them die. At first they were to her as other
criminals, but immediately a difference was discerned. They met
death, not with grace, perhaps, but with exaltation. They entered
the arena as though it were an enchanted garden, the color of the
emerald, where dreams came true. Faustine questioned. They were
enemies of state, she was told. The reply left her perplexed, and
she questioned again. It was then her eyes became inhabited by
regret. The past she tried to put from her, but remorse is
physical; it declines to be dismissed. She would have killed
herself, but she no longer dared. Besides, in the future there was
light. In some ray of it she must have walked, for when at the
foot of Mount Taurus, in a little Cappadocian village, years
later, she died, it was at the sign of the cross.
IX
THE AGONY
The high virtues are not complaisant, it is the cad the canaille
adore. In spite of everything, Nero had been beloved by the
masses. For years there were roses on his tomb. Under Vespasian
there was an impostor whom Greece and Asia acclaimed in his name.
The memory of his festivals was unforgetable; regret for him
refused to be stilled. He was more than a god; he was a tradition.
His second advent was confidently expected; the Jews believed in
his resurrection; to the Christian he had never died, and suddenly
he reappeared.
Rome had declined to accept the old world tenet that the soul has
its avatars, yet, when Commodus sauntered from that distant
sepulchre, into which, poison aiding, he had placed his putative
father, Rome felt that the Egyptians were wiser than they looked;
that the soul did migrate, and that in the blue eyes of the young
emperor Nero's spirit shone.
Herodian, who has written very agreeably on the subject, describes
him as another Prince Charming. His hair, which was very fair,
glistened like gold in the sun; he was slender, not at all
effeminate, exceedingly graceful, exceedingly gracious; endowed
with the promptest blush, with the best intentions; studious of
the interests of his people; glad of advice, seeking it even;
courteous and deferential to the senate and his father's friends--
in short, an adolescent Nero--a trifle more guileful, however;
already a parricide, a comedian as well; one who in a moment would
toss the mask aside and disclose the mongrel; the offspring, not
of an empress and an emperor, but the tiger-cub that Faustine had
got by a gladiator.
The tender-hearted philosopher, who in a campaign against some
fretful Teutons, had taken Commodus with him, knew that he was not
his son; knew, too, when the agony seized him, from whose hand the
agony came; but in earlier life he had jotted in his notebook,
"Forgive, forgive always; die forgiving"; and, as he forgave the
mother, so he forgave the child, recommending him with his last
breath to the army and to Rome.
As the people had loved Nero, so did the aristocracy love Marcus
Aurelius; his foster-father Antonin excepted, he was the only
gentleman that had sat on the throne. No wonder they loved him;
and seeing this early edition of the prince in the fairy tale
emerge from the bogs of Germany, his fair face haloed by the
glisten and gold of his hair, hearts went out to him; the wish of
his putative father was ratified, and the son of a gladiator was
emperor of Rome.
Lampridus--or Spartian was it? The title-page bears Lampridus'
name, but there is some doubt as to the authorship. However,
whoever made the abridgment of the life of Commodus which appears
among the chronicles of the Scriptores Historiae Augustae, says
that before his birth Faustine dreamed she had engendered a
serpent. It is not impossible that Faustine had been reading
Ctzias, and had stumbled over his account of the Martichoras, a
serpent with a woman's face and the talons of a bird of prey. For
it was that she conceived.
It would have been interesting to have seen that young man, the
mask removed, frightening the senate into calling Rome Commodia,
and then in a linen robe promenading in the attributes of a priest
of Anubis through a seraglio of six hundred girls and mignons
embracing as he passed. There was a spectacle, which Nero had not
imagined. But Nero was vieux jeu. Commodus outdid him, first in
debauchery, then in the arena. Nero had died while in training to
kill a lion; Commodus did not take the trouble to train. It was
the lions that were trained, not he. A skin on his shoulders, a
club in his hand, he descended naked into the ring, and there
felled beasts and men. Then, acclaimed as Hercules, he returned to
the pulvina, and a mignon on one side, a mistress on the other,
ordered the guard to massacre the spectators and set fire to Rome.
After entering the arena six or seven hundred times, and there
vanquishing men whose eyes had been put out and whose legs were
tied, the colossal statue which Nero had made after his own image
was altered; to the top came the bust of Commodus, to the base
this legend: THE VICTOR OF TEN THOUSAND GLADIATORS, COMMODUS-
HERCULES, IMPERATOR.
Meanwhile conspirators were at work. Like Nero, Commodus could
have sought in vain for a friend. His life was attempted again and
again; he escaped, but never the plotters; only when they had gone
there were more. He knew he was doomed. There was the usual comet;
the statue of Hercules had perspired visibly; an owl had been
caught above his bedroom, and once he had wiped in his hair the
hand which he had plunged in the warm wound of a gladiator, dead
at his feet. These omens could mean but one thing. None the less,
if he were doomed, so were others. One day one of those miserable
children that the emperors kept about them found a tablet. It was
as good as anything else to play with; and, as the child tossed it
through the hall, the one woman that had loved Commodus caught it
and read on it that she and all the household were to die. Within
an hour Commodus was killed.
There is a page in Lampridus, which he quotes as coming from the
lost chronicles of Marius Maximus, and which contains the joy of
the senate at the news. It is too long for transcription, but as a
bit of realism it is unique. There is a shiver in every line. You
hear the voices of hundreds, drunk with fury, frenzied with
delight; the fierce welcome that greeted Pertinax--a slave's
grandson, who was emperor for a minute--the joy of hate assuaged.
The delight of the senate was not shared by the pretorians.
Pertinax was promptly massacred; the throne was put up at auction;
there were two or three emperors at once, and presently the purple
was seized by Septimus Severus, a rigid, white-haired
disciplinarian, who, in his admiration for Marcus Aurelius,
founded that second dynasty of the Antonins with which antiquity
may be said to end.
When he had gone, his elder son, Bastian, renamed Aurelius
Antonin, and because of a cloak he had invented nicknamed
Caracalla, bounded like a panther on the throne. In a moment he
was gnawing at his brother's throat, and immediately there
occurred a massacre such as Rome had never seen. Xiphilin says the
nights were not long enough to kill all of the condemned. Twenty
thousand people were slaughtered in twenty hours. The streets were
emptied, the theatres closed.
The blood that ran then must have been in rillets too thin to
slake Caracalla's thirst, for simultaneously almost, he was in
Gaul, in Dacia--wherever there was prey. African by his father,
Syrian on his mother's side, Caracalla was not a panther merely;
he was a herd of them. He had the cruelty, the treachery and guile
of a wilderness of tiger-cats. No man, said a thinker, is wholly
base. Caracalla was. He had not a taste, not a vice, even, which
was not washed and rewashed in blood. In a moment of excitement
Commodus set his guards on the spectators in the amphitheatre; the
damage was slight, for the Colosseum was so constructed that in
two minutes the eighty or ninety thousand people which it held
could escape. Caracalla had the exits closed. Those who escaped
were naked; to bribe the guards they were forced to strip
themselves to the skin. In the circus a vestal caught his eye. He
tried to violate her, and failing impotently, had her buried
alive. "Caracalla knows that I am a virgin, and knows why," the
girl cried as the earth swallowed her, but there was no one there
to aid.
Such things show the trend of a temperament, though not, perhaps,
its force. Presently the latter was displayed. For years those
arch-enemies of Rome, the unconquerable Parthians, had been quiet;
bound, too, by treaties which held Rome's honor. Not Caracalla's,
however; he had none. An embassy went out to Artobane, the king.
Caracalla wished a bride, and what fairer one could he have than
the child of the Parthian monarch? Then, too, the embassy was
charged to explain, the marriage of Rome and Parthia would be the
union of the Orient and the Occident, peace by land and sea.
Artobane hesitated, and with cause; but Caracalla wooed so
ardently that finally the king said yes. The news went abroad. The
Parthians, delighted, prepared to receive the emperor. When
Caracalla crossed the Tigris, the highroad that led to the capital
was strewn with sacrifices, with altars covered with flowers, with
welcomings of every kind. Caracalla was visibly pleased. Beyond
the gates of the capital, there was the king; he had advanced to
greet his son-in-law, and that the greeting might be effective, he
had assembled his nobles and his troops. The latter were armed
with cymbals, with hautbois, and with flutes; and as Caracalla and
his army approached, there was music, dancing and song; there were
libations too, and as the day was practically the wedding of East
and West, there was not a weapon to be seen--gala robes merely,
brilliant and long. Caracalla saluted the king, gave an order to
an adjutant, and on the smiling defenceless Parthians the Roman
eagles pounced. Those who were not killed were made prisoners of
war. The next day Caracalla withdrew, charged with booty, firing
cities as he went.
A little before, rumor reached him that a group of the citizens of
Alexandria had referred to him as a fratricide. After the
adventure in Parthia he bethought him of the city which Alexander
had founded, and of the temple of Serapis that was there. He
wished to honor both, he declared, and presently he was at the
gates. The people were enchanted; the avenues were strewn with
flowers, lined with musicians. There were illuminations,
festivals, sacrifices, torrents of perfumes, and through it all
Caracalla passed, a legion at his heels. To see him, to
participate in the succession of prodigalities, the surrounding
country flocked there too. In recognition of the courtesy with
which he was received, Caracalla gave a banquet to the magnates
and the clergy. Before his guests could leave him they were
killed. Through the streets the legion was at work. Alexandria was
turned into a cemetery. Herodian states that the carnage was so
great that the Nile was red to its mouth.
In Rome at that time was a prefect, Macrin by name, who had
dreamed the purple would be his. He was a swarthy liar, and his
promises were such that the pretorians were willing that the dream
should come true. Emissaries were despatched, and Caracalla was
stabbed. In his luggage poison was found to the value of five
million five hundred thousand drachmae. What fresh turpitude he
was devising no one knew, and the discovery might serve as an
epitaph, were it not that by his legions he was adored. No one had
abandoned to the army such booty as he.
Meanwhile, in a chapel at Emissa, a boy was dancing indolently to
the kiss of flutes. A handful of Caracalla's soldiers passed that
way, and thought him Bacchus. In his face was the enigmatic beauty
of gods and girls--the charm of the dissolute and the wayward
heightened by the divine. On his head was a diadem; his frail
tunic was of purple and gold, but the sleeves, after the
Phoenician fashion, were wide, and he was shod with a thin white
leather that reached to the thighs. He was fourteen, and priest of
the Sun. The chapel was roomy and rich. There was no statue--a
black phallus merely, which had fallen from above, and on which,
if you looked closely, you could see the image of Elagabal, the
Sun.
The rumor of his beauty brought other soldiers that way, and the
lad, feeling that Rome was there, ceased to dance, strolling
through pauses of the worship, a troop of galli at his heels,
surveying the intruders with querulous, feminine eyes.
Presently a whisper filtered that the lad was Caracalla's son.
There were centurions there that remembered Semiamire, the lad's
mother, very well; they had often seen her, a superb creature with
scorching eyes, before whom fire had been carried as though she
were empress. It was she who had put it beyond Caracalla's power
to violate that vestal when he tried. She was his cousin; her life
had been passed at court; it was Macrin who had exiled her. And
with the whisper filtered another--that she was rich; that she had
lumps of gold, which she would give gladly to whomso aided in
placing her Antonin on the throne. There were gossips who said
ill-natured things of this lady; who insinuated that she had so
many lovers that she herself could not tell who was the father of
her child; but the lumps of gold had a language of their own. The
disbanded army espoused the young priest's cause; there was a
skirmish, Macrin was killed, and Heliogabalus was emperor of Rome.
"I would never have written the life of this Antonin
Impurissimus," said Lampridus, "were it not that he had
predecessors." Even in Latin the task was difficult. In English it
is impossible. There are subjects that permit of a hint,
particularly if it be masked to the teeth, but there are others
that no art can drape. "The inexpressible does not exist," Gautier
remarked, when he finished a notorious romance, nor does it; but
even his pen would have balked had he tried it on Heliogabalus.
In his work on the Caesars, Suetonius drew breath but once--he
called Nero a monster. Subsequently he must have regretted having
done so, not because Nero was not a monster, but because it was
sufficient to display the beast without adding a descriptive
placard. In that was Suetonius' advantage; he could describe.
Nowadays a writer may not, or at least not Heliogabalus. It is not
merely that he was depraved, for all of that lot were; it was that
he made depravity a pursuit; and, the purple favoring, carried it
not only beyond the limits of the imaginable, but beyond the
limits of the real. At the feet of that painted boy, Elephantis
and Parrhasius could have sat and learned a lesson. Apart from
that phase of his sovereignty, he was a little Sardanapalus, an
Asiatic mignon, who found himself great.
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