Books: Quo Vadis A Narrative of the Time of Nero

H >> Henryk Sienkiewicz >> Quo Vadis A Narrative of the Time of Nero

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He remembered how he had taught people love, -- how he had told
them that though they were to give their property to the poor,
though they knew all languages, all secrets, and all sciences, they
would be nothing without love, which is kind, enduring, which
does not return evil, which does not desire honor, suffers all
things, believes all things, hopes all things, is patient of all things.

And so his life had passed in teaching people this truth. And now
he said in spirit: What power can equal it, what can conquer it?
Could Caesar stop it, though he had twice as many legions and
twice as many cities, seas, lands, and nations?

And he went to his reward like a conqueror.

The detachment left the main road at last, and turned toward the
east on a narrow path leading to the Aquae Salviae. The red sun
was lying now on the heather. The centurion stopped the soldiers
at the fountain, for the moment had come.

Paul placed Plautifia's veil on his arm, intending to bind his eyes
with it; for the last time he raised those eyes, full of unspeakable
peace, toward the eternal light of the evening, and prayed. Yes, the
moment had come; but he saw before him a great road in the light,
leading to heaven; and in his soul he repeated the same words
which formerly he had written in the feeling of his own finished
service and his near end, --

"I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept
the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of
righteousness."

Chapter LXXI

ROME had gone mad for a long time, so that the world-conquering
city seemed ready at last to tear itself to pieces for want of
leadership. Even before the last hour of the Apostles had struck,
Pisoaes conspiracy appeared; and then such merciless reaping of
aeome's highest heads, that even to those who saw divinity in
Nero, he seemed at last a divinity of death. Mourning fell on the
city, terror took its lodgment in houses and in hearts, but porticos
were crowned with ivy and flowers, for it was not permitted to
show sorrow for the dead. People waking in the morning asked
themselves whose turn would come next. The retinue of ghosts
following Caesar increased every day.

Piso paid for the conspiracy with his head; after him followed
Seneca, and Lucan, Fenius Rufus, and Plautius Lateranus, and
Flavius Scevinus, and Afranius Quinetianus, and the dissolute
companion of Casar's madnesses, Tullius Serieeio, ataed Proculus,
and Araricus, and Tugurhuis, and Gratus, and Silanus, and
Proximus, -- once devoted with his whole soul to Nero, -- and
Sulpicius Asper. Some were destroyed by their own insignificance,
some by fear, some by wealth, others by bravery. Caesar,
astonished at the very number of the conspirators, covered the
walls with soldiery and held the city as if by siege, sending out
daily centurions with sentences of death to suspected houses. The
condemned humiliated themselves in letters filled with flattery,
thanking Caesar for his sentences, and leaving him a part of their
property, so as to save the rest for their children. It seemed, at last,
that Nero was exceeding every measure on purpose to convince
himself of the degree in which men had grown abject, and how
long they would endure bloody rule. After the conspirators, their
relatives were executed; then their friends, and even simple
acquaintances. Dwellers in lordly mansions built after the fire,
when they went out on the street, felt sure of seeing a

whole row of funerals. Pompeius, Cornelius, Martialis, Flavius
Nepos, and Statius Domitius died because accused of lack of love
for Caesar; Novius Priscus, as a friend of Seneca. Rufius Crispus
was deprived of the right of fire and water because on a time he
had been the husband of Poppaea. The great Thrasea was ruined
by his virtue; many paid with their lives for noble origin; even
Poppaea fell a victim to the momentary rage of Nero.

The Senate crouched before the dreadful ruler; it raised a temple in
his honor, made an offering in favor of his voice, crowned his
statues, appointed priests to him as to a divinity. Senators,
trembling in their souls, went to the Palatine to magnify the song
of the "Periodonices," and go wild with him amid orgies of naked
bodies, wine, and flowers.

But meanwhile from below, in the field soaked in blood and tears,
rose the sowing of Peter, stronger and stronger every moment.

Chapter LXXII

VINICIUS to PETRONIUS:

"We know, carissime, most of what is happening in Rome, and
what we do not lusow is told us in thy letters. When one casts a
stone in the water, the wave goes farther and farther in a circle; so
the wave of madness and malice has come from the Palatine to us.
On the road to Greece, Carinas was sent hither by Caesar, who
plundered cities and temples to fill the empty treasury. At the price
of the sweat and tears of people, he is building the 'golden house'
in Rome. It is possible that the world has not seen such a house,
but it has not seen such injustice. Thou knowest Carinas. Chilo
was like him till he redeemed his life with death. But to the towns
lying nearer us his men have not come yet, perhaps because there
are no temples or treasures in them. Thou askest if we are out of
danger. I answer that we are out of mind, and let that suffice for an
answer. At this moment, from the portico under which I write, I
see our calm bay, and on it Ursus in a boat, letting down a net in
the clear water. My wife is spinning red wool near me, and in the
gardens, under the shade of almond-trees, our slaves are singing.
Oh, what calm carissime, and what a forgetfulness of former fear
and suffering! But it is not the Parcae as thou writest, who spin out
our lives so agreeably; it is Christ who is blessing us, our beloved
God and Saviour. We know tears and sorrow, for our religion
teaches us to weep over the misfortunes of others; but in these
tears is a consolation unknown to thee; for whenever the time of
our life is ended, we shall find all those dear ones who perished
and who are perishing yet for God's truth. For us Peter and Paul are
not dead; they are merely born into glory. Our souls see them, and
when our eyes weep our hearts are glad with their joy. Oh, yes, my
dear friend, we are happy with a happiness which nothing can
destroy, since death, which for thee is the end of everything, is f or
us only a passage into superior rest.

"And so days and months pass here in calmness of heart. Our
servants and slaves believe, as we do, in Christ, and that He
enjoins love; hence we love one another. Frequently, when the sun
has gone down, or when the moon is shining in the water, Lygia
and I talk of past times, which seem a dream to us; but when I
think how that dear head was near torture and death, I magnify my
Lord with my whole soul, for out of those hands He alone could
wrest her, save her from the arena, and return her to sue forever. O
Petronius, thou hast seen what endurance and comfort that religion
gives in misfortune, how much patience and courage before death;
so come and see how much happiness it gives in ordinary,
common days of life. People thus far did not know a God whom
man could love, hence they did not Jove one another; and from
that came their misfortune, for as light comes from the sun, so
does happiness come from love. Neither lawgivers nor
philosophers taught this truth, and it did not exist in Greece or
Rome; and when I say, not in Rome, that means the whole world.
The dry and cold teaching of the Stoics, to which virtuous people
rally, tempers the heart as a sword is tempered, but it makes it
indifferent rather than better. Though why do I write this to thee,
who hast learned more, and hast more understanding than I have?
Thou wert acquainted with Paul of Tarsus, and more than once
didst converse long with him; hence thou knowest better if in
comparison with the truth which he taught all the teachings of
philosophers and rhetors are not a vain and empty jingle of words
without meaning. Thou rememberest the question which he put
thee: 'But if Caesar were a Christian, would ye not all feel safer,
surer of possessing that which ye possess, free of alarm, and sure
of to-morrow?' Thou didst say to me that our teaching was an
enemy of life; and I answer thee now, that, if from the beginning
of this letter I had been repeating only the three words, 'I am
happy!' I could not have expressed my happiness to thee. To this
thou wilt answer, that my happiness is Lygia. True, my friend.
Because I love her immortal soul, and because we both love each
other in Christ; for such love there is no separation, no deceit, no
change, no old age, no death. For, when youth and beauty pass,
when our bodies wither and death comes, love will remain, for the
spirit remains. Before my eyes were open to the light I was ready
to burn my own house even, for Lygia's sake; but now I tell thee
that I did not love her, for it was Christ who first taught me to love.
In Him is the source of peace and happiness. It is not I who say
this, but reality itself. Compare thy own luxury, my friend, lined
with alarm, thy delights, not sure of a morrow, thy orgies, with the
lives of Christians, and thou wilt find a ready answer. But, to
compare better, come to our mountains with the odor of thyme, to
our shady olive groves on our shores lined with ivy. A peace is
waiting for thee, such as thou hast not known for a long time, and
hearts that love thee sincerely. Thou, having a noble soul and a
good one, shouldst be happy. Thy quick mind can recognize the
truth, and knowing it thou wilt love it. To be its enemy, like Caesar
and Tigellinus, is possible, but indifferent to it no one can be. O
my Petronius, Lygia and I are comforting ourselves with the hope
of seeing thee soon. Be well, be happy, and come to us."

Petronius received this letter in Cumae, whither he had gone with
other Augustians who were following Caesar. His struggle of long
years with Tigellinus was nearing its end. Petronius knew already
that he must fall in that struggle, and he understood why. As
Caesar fell lower daily to the role of a comedian, a buffoon, and a
charioteer; as he sank deeper in a sickly, foul, and coarse
dissipation, -- the exquisite arbiter became a mere burden to him.
Even when Petronius was silent, Nero saw blame in his silence;
when the arbiter praised, he saw ridicule. The brilliant patrician
annoyed his self-love and roused his envy. His wealth and splendid
works of art had become an object of desire both to the ruler and
the all-powerful minister. Petronius was spared so far in view of
the journey to Achaea, in which his taste, his knowledge of
everything Greek, might be useful. But gradually Tigellinus
explained to Caesar that Carinas surpassed him in taste and
knowledge, and would be better able to arrange in Achaea games,
receptions, and triumphs. From that moment Petronius was lost.
There was not courage to send him his sentence in Rome. Caesar
and Tigellinus remembered that that apparently effeminate and
Rsthetic person, who made "day out of night," and was oaecupied
only in luxury, art, and feasts, had shown amazing industry and
energy, when proconsul in Bithynia and later when consul in the
capital. They considered him capable of anything, and it was
known that in Rome he possessed not only the love of the people,
but even of the pretorians. None of Caesar's confidants could
foresee how Petronius might act in a given case; it seemed wiser,
therefore, to entice him out of the city, and reach him in a
province.

With this object he received an invitation to go to Cumae with
other Augustians. He went, though suspecting the ambush, perhaps
so as not to appear in open opposition, perhaps to show once more
a joyful face devoid of every care to Caesar and the Augustians,
and to gain a last victory before death over Tigellinus.

Meanwhile the latter accused him of friendship with the Senator
Scevinus, who was the soul of Piso's conspiracy. The people of
Petronius, left in Rome, were imprisoned; his house was
surrounded by pretorian guards. When he learned this, he showed
neither alarm nor concern, and with a smile said to Augustians
whom he received in his own splendid villa in Cumae,

"Ahenobarbus does not like direct questions; hence ye will see his
confusion when I ask him if it was he who gave command to
imprison my 'familia' in the capital."

Then he invited them to a feast "before the longer journey," and he
had just made preparations for it when the letter from Vinicius
came.

When he received this letter, Petronius grew somewhat thoughtful,
but after a time his face regained its usual composure, and that
same evening he answered as follows: --

"I rejoice at your happiness and admire your hearts, for I had not
thought that two lovers could remember a third person who was far
away. Ye have not only not forgotten me, but ye wish to persuade
me to go to Sicily, so that ye may share with me your bread and
your Christ, who, as thou writtst, has given you happiness so
bountifully.

"If that be true, honor Him. To my thinking, however, Ursus had
something to do with saving Lygia, and the Roman people also had
a little to do with it. But since thy belief is that Christ did the work,
I will not contradict. Spare no offerings to Him. Prometheus also
sacrificed himself for man; but, alas! Prometheus is an invention
of the poets apparently, while people worthy of credit have told me
that they saw Christ with their own eyes. I agree with thee that He
is the most worthy of the gods.

"I remember the question by Paul of Tarsus, and I think that if
Ahenobarbus lived according to Christ's teaching I might have
time to visit you in Sicily. In that case we could converse, in the
shade of trees and near fountains, of all the gods and all the truths
discussed by Greek philosophers at any time. To-day I must give
thee a brief answer.

"I care for two philosophers only: Pyrrho and Anacreon. I am ready
to sell the rest to thee cheaply, with all the Greek and Roman
Stoics. Truth, Vinicius, dwells somewhere so high that the gods
themselves cannot see it from the top of Olympus. To thee,
carissime, thy Olympus seems higher still, and, standing there,
thou callest to me, 'Come, thou wilt see such sights as thou hast
not seen yet!' I might. But I answer, 'I have not feet for the journey.'
And if thou read this letter to the end, thou wilt acknowledge, I
think, that I am right.

"No, happy husband of the Aurora princess! thy religion is not for
me. Am I to love the Bithynians who carry my litter, the Egyptians
who heat my bath? Am I to love Ahenobarbus and Tigellinus? I
swear by the white knees of the Graces, that even if I wished to
love them I could not. In Rome there are a hundred thousand
persons at least who have either crooked shoulders, or big knees,
or thin thighs, or staring eyes, or heads that are too large. Dost thou
command me to love these too? Where am I to find the love, since
it is not in my heart? And if thy God desires me to love such
persons, why in His all might did He not give them the forms of
Niobe's children, for example, which thou hast seen on the
Palatine? Whoso loves beauty is unable for that very reason to love
deformity. One may not believe in our gods, but it is possible to
love them, as Phidias, Praxiteles, Miron, Skopas, and Lysias loved.

"Should I wish to go whither thou wouldst lead me, I could not.
But since I do not wish, I am doubly unable. Thou believest, like
Paul of Tarsus, that on the other side of the Styx thou wilt see thy
Christ in certain Elysian fields. Let Him tell thee then Himself
whether He would receive me with my gems, my Myrrhene vase,
my books published by Sozius, and my golden-haired Eunice. I
laugh at this thought; for Paul of Tarsus told me that for Christ's
sake one must give up wreaths of roses, feasts, and luxury. It is
true that he promised me other happiness, but I answered that I
was too old for new happiness, that my eyes would be delighted
always with roses, and that the odor of violets is dearer to me than
stench from my foul neighbor of the Subura.

"These are reasons why thy happiness is not for me. But there is
one reason more, which I have reserved for the last: Thanatos
summons me. For thee the light of life is beginning; but my sun
has set, and twilight is embracing my head. In other words, I must
die, carissime.

"It is not worth while to talk long of this. It had to end thus. Thou,
who knowest Ahenobarbus, wilt understand the position easily.
Tigellinus has conquered, or rather my victories have touched their
end. I have lived as I wished, and I will die as pleases me.

"Do not take this to heart. No God has promised me immortality;
hence no surprise meets me. At the same time thou art mistaken,
Vinicius, in asserting that only thy God teaches man to die calmly.
No. Our world knew, before thou wert born, that when the last cup
was drained, it was time to go, -- time to rest, -- and it knows yet
how to do that with calmness. Plato declares that virtue is music,
that the life of a sage is harmony. If that be true, I shall die as I
have lived, -- virtuously.

"I should like to take farewell of thy godlike wife in the words
with which on a time I greeted her in the house of Aulus, 'Very
many persons have I seen, but thy equal I know not.'

"If the soul is more than what Pyrrho thinks, mine will fly to thee
and Lygia, on its way to the edge of the ocean, and will alight at
your house in the form of a butterfly or, as the Egyptians believe,
in the form of a sparrowhawk. Otherwise I cannot come.

"Meanwhile let Sicily replace for you the gardens of Hesperides;
may the goddesses of the fields, woods, and fountains scatter
flowers on your path, and may white doves build their nests on
every acanthus of the columns of your house."

Chapter LXXIII

PETRONIUS was not mistaken. Two days later young Nerva, who
had always been friendly and devoted, sent his freedman to Cumae
with news of what was happening at the court of Caesar.

The death of Petronius had been determined. On the morning of
the following day they intended to send him a centurion, with the
order to stop at Cumae, and wait there for further instructions; the
next messenger, to follow a few days later, was to bring the death
sentence.

Petronius heard the news with unruffled calmness.

"Thou wilt take to thy lord," said he, "one of my vases; say from
me that I thank him with my whole soul, for now I am able to
anticipate the sentence."

And all at once he began to laugh, like a man who has came upon
a perfect thought, and rejoices in advance at its fulfilment.

That same afternoon his slaves rushed about, inviting the
Augustians, who were staying in Cumae, and all the ladies, to a
magnificent banquet at the villa of the arbiter.

He wrote that afternoon in the library; next he took a bath, after
which he commanded the vestiplicae to arrange his dress. Brilliant
and stately as one of the gods, he went to the triclinium, to cast the
eye of a critic on the preparations, and then to the gardens, where
youths and Grecian maidens from the islands were weaving
wreaths of roses for the evening.

Not the least care was visible on his face. The servants only knew
that the feast would be something uncommon, for he had issued a
command to give unusual rewards to those with whom he was
satisfied, and some slight blows to all whose work should not
please him, or who had deserved blame or punishment earlier. To
the cithara players and the singers he had ordered beforehand
liberal pay. At last, sitting in the garden under a beech, through
whose leaves the sun-rays marked the earth with bright spots, he
called Eunice.

She came, dressed in white, with a sprig of myrtle in her hair,
beautiful as one of the Graces. He seated her at his side, and,
touching her temple gently with his fingers, he gazed at her with
that admiration with which a critic gazes at a statue from the chisel
of a master.

"Eunicc," asked he, "dost thou know that thou art not a slave this
long time?"

She raised to him her calm eyes, as blue as the sky, and denied
with a motion of her head.

"I am thine always," said she.

"But perhaps thou knowest not," continued Petronius, "that the
villa, and those slaves twining wreaths here, and all which is in the
villa, with the fields and the herds, are thine henceforward."

Eunice, when she heard this, drew away from him quickly, and
asked in a voice filled with sudden fear, --

"Why dost thou tell me this?"

Then she approached again, and looked at him, blinking with
amazement. After a while her face became as pale as linen. He
smiled, and said only one word, --

"So!"

A moment of silence followed; merely a slight breeze moved the
leaves of the beech.

Petronius might have thought that before him was a statue cut
from white marble.

"Eunice," said he, "I wish to die calmly."

And the maiden, looking at him with a heart-rending smile,
whispered, --

"I hear thee."

In the evening the guests, who had been at feasts given by
Petronius previously, and knew that in comparison with them even
Caesar's banquets seemed tiresome and barbarous, began to arrive
in numbers. To no one did it occur, even, that that was to be the
last "symposium." Many knew, it is true, that the clouds of
Caesar's anger were hanging over the exquisite arbiter; but that had
happened so often, and Petronius had been able so often to scatter
them by some dexterous act or by a single bold word, that no one
thought really that serious danger threatened him. His glad face
and usual smile, free of care, confirmed all, to the last man, in that
opinion. The beautiful Eunice, to whom he had declared his wish
to die calmly, and for whom every word of his was like an
utterance of fate, had in her features a perfect calmness, and in her
eyes a kind of wonderful radiance, which might have been
considered delight. At the door of the triclinium, youths with hair
in golden nets put wreaths of roses on the heads of the guests,
warning them, as tha custom was, to pass the threshold right foot
foremost. In the hail there was a slight odor of violets; the lamps
burned in Alexandrian glass of various colors. At the couches
stood Grecian maidens, whose office it was to moisten the feet of
guests with perfumes. At the walls cithara players and Athenian
choristers were waiting for the signal of their leader.

The table service gleamed with splendor, but that splendor did not
offend or oppress; it seemed a natural development. Joyousness
and freedom spread through the hall with the odor of violets. The
guests as they entered felt that neither threat nor constraint was
hanging over them, as in Caesar's house, where a man might forfeit
his life for praises not sufficiently great or sufficiently apposite. At
sight of the lamps, the goblets entwined with ivy, the wine cooling
on banks of snow, and the exquisite dishes, the hearts of the guests
became joyous. Conversation of various kinds began to buzz, as
bees buzz on an apple-tree in blossom. At moments it was
interrupted by an outburst of glad laughter, at moments by
munnurs of applause, at moments by a kiss placed too loudly on
some white shoulder.

The guests, while drinking wine, spilled from their goblets a few
drops to the immortal gods, to gain their protection, and their favor
for the host. It mattered not that many of them had no belief in the
gods. Custom and superstition prescribed it. Petronius, inclining
near Eunice, talked of Rome, of the latest divorces, of love affairs,
of the races, of Spiculus, who had become famous recently in the
arena, and of the latest books in the shops of Atractus and the
Sozii. When he spilled wine, he said that he spilled it only in honor
of the Lady of Cyprus, the most ancient divinity and the greatest,
the only immortal, enduring, and ruling one.

His conversation was like sunlight which lights up some new
object every instant, or like the summer breeze which stirs tge
flowers in a garden. At last he gave a signal to the leader of the
music, and at that signal the citharaee began to sound lightly, and
youthful voices accompanied. Then maidens from Kos, the
birthplace of Eunice, danced, and showed their rosy forms through
robes of gauze. Finally, an Egyptian soothsayer told the guests
their future from the movement of rainbow colors in a vessel of
crystal.

When they had enough of these amusements, Petronius rose
somewhat on his Syrian cushion, and said with hesitation, --

"Pardon me, friends, for asking a favor at a feast. Will each man
accept as a gift that goblet from which he first shook wine in honor
of the gods and to my prosperity?"

The goblets of Petronius were gleaming in gold, precious stones,
anti the carving of artists; hence, though gift giving was common
in Rome, delight filled every heart. Some thanked him loudly:
others said that Jove had never honored gods with such gifts in
Olympus; finally, there were some who refused to accept, since the
gifts surpassed common estimate.

But he raised aloft the Myrrhene vase, which resembled a rainbow
in brilliancy, and was simply beyond price.