Complete Works of Henryk Sienkiewicz

by Henryk Sienkiewicz

  “Scratch thyself. If thou scratch thy own pimple, thou wilt destroy what is best in thee.”

  And in this manner they attacked him. He defended himself venomously, amid universal laughter. Cæsar, clapping his hands, repeated, “Macte!” and urged them on. After a while Petronius approached, and, touching the Greek’s shoulder with his carved ivory cane, said coldly, —

  “This is well, philosopher; but in one thing thou hast blundered: the gods created thee a pickpocket, and thou hast become a demon. That is why thou canst not endure.”

  The old man looked at him with his red eyes, but this time somehow he did not find a ready insult. He was silent for a moment; then answered, as if with a certain effort, —

  “I shall endure.”

  Meanwhile the trumpets announced the end of the interval. People began to leave the passages where they had assembled to straighten their legs and converse. A general movement set in with the usual dispute about seats occupied previously. Senators and patricians hastened to their places. The uproar ceased after a time, and the amphitheatre returned to order. On the arena a crowd of people appeared whose work was to dig out here and there lumps of sand formed with stiffened blood.

  The turn of the Christians was at hand. But since that was a new spectacle for people, and no one knew how the Christians would bear themselves, all waited with a certain curiosity. The disposition of the audience was attentive but unfriendly; they were waiting for uncommon scenes. Those people who were to appear had burned Rome and its ancient treasures. They had drunk the blood of infants, and poisoned water; they had cursed the whole human race, and committed the vilest crimes. The harshest punishment did not suffice the roused hatred; and if any fear possessed people’s hearts, it was this: that the torture of the Christians would not equal the guilt of those ominous criminals.

  Meanwhile the sun had risen high; its rays, passing through the purple velarium, had filled the amphitheatre with blood-colored light. The sand assumed a fiery hue, and in those gleams, in the faces of people, as well as in the empty arena, which after a time was to be filled with the torture of people and the rage of savage beasts, there was something terrible. Death and terror seemed hovering in the air. The throng, usually gladsome, became moody under the influence of hate and silence. Faces had a sullen expression.

  Now the prefect gave a sign. The same old man appeared, dressed as Charon, who had called the gladiators to death, and, passing with slow step across the arena amid silence, he struck three times again on the door.

  Throughout the amphitheatre was heard the deep murmur, —

  “The Christians! the Christians!”

  The iron gratings creaked; through the dark openings were heard the usual cries of the scourgers, “To the sand!” and in one moment the arena was peopled with crowds as it were of satyrs covered with skins. All ran quickly, somewhat feverishly, and, reaching the middle of the circle, they knelt one by another with raised heads. The spectators, judging this to be a prayer for pity, and enraged by such cowardice, began to stamp, whistle, throw empty wine-vessels, bones from which the flesh had been eaten, and shout, “The beasts! the beasts!” But all at once something unexpected took place. From out the shaggy assembly singing voices were raised, and then sounded that hymn heard for the first time in a Roman amphitheatre, “Christus regnat!” [“Christ reigns!”]

  Astonishment seized the spectators. The condemned sang with eyes raised to the velarium. The audience saw faces pale, but as it were inspired. All understood that those people were not asking for mercy, and that they seemed not to see the Circus, the audience, the Senate, or Cæsar. “Christus regnat!” rose ever louder, and in the seats, far up to the highest, among the rows of spectators, more than one asked himself the question, “What is happening, and who is that Christus who reigns in the mouths of those people who are about to die?” But meanwhile a new grating was opened, and into the arena rushed, with mad speed and barking, whole packs of dogs, — gigantic, yellow Molossians from the Peloponnesus, pied dogs from the Pyrenees, and wolf-like hounds from Hibernia, purposely famished; their sides lank, and their eyes bloodshot. Their howls and whines filled the amphitheatre. When the Christians had finished their hymn, they remained kneeling, motionless, as if petrified, merely repeating in one groaning chorus, “Pro Christo! Pro Christo!” The dogs, catching the odor of people under the skins of beasts, and surprised by their silence, did not rush on them at once. Some stood against the walls of the boxes, as if wishing to go among the spectators; others ran around barking furiously, as though chasing some unseen beast. The people were angry. A thousand voices began to call; some howled like wild beasts; some barked like dogs; others urged them on in every language. The amphitheatre was trembling from uproar. The excited dogs began to run to the kneeling people, then to draw back, snapping their teeth, till at last one of the Molossians drove his teeth into the shoulder of a woman kneeling in front, and dragged her under him.

  Tens of dogs rushed into the crowd now, as if to break through it. The audience ceased to howl, so as to look with greater attention. Amidst the howling and whining were heard yet plaintive voices of men and women: “Pro Christo! Pro Christo!” but on the arena were formed quivering masses of the bodies of dogs and people. Blood flowed in streams from the torn bodies. Dogs dragged from each other the bloody limbs of people. The odor of blood and torn entrails was stronger than Arabian perfumes, and filled the whole Circus.

  At last only here and there were visible single kneeling forms, which were soon covered by moving squirming masses.

  Vinicius, who at the moment when the Christians ran in, stood up and turned so as to indicate to the quarryman, as he had promised, the direction in which the Apostle was hidden among the people of Petronius, sat down again, and with the face of a dead man continued to look with glassy eyes on the ghastly spectacle. At first fear that the quarryman might have been mistaken, and that perchance Lygia was among the victims, benumbed him completely; but when he heard the voices, “Pro Christo!” when he saw the torture of so many victims who, in dying, confessed their faith and their God, another feeling possessed him, piercing him like the most dreadful pain, but irresistible. That feeling was this, — if Christ Himself died in torment, if thousands are perishing for Him now, if a sea of blood is poured forth, one drop more signifies nothing, and it is a sin even to ask for mercy. That thought came to him from the arena, penetrated him with the groans of the dying, with the odor of their blood. But still he prayed and repeated with parched lips, “O Christ! O Christ! and Thy Apostle prayed for her!” Then he forgot himself, lost consciousness of where he was. It seemed to him that blood on the arena was rising and rising, that it was coming up and flowing out of the Circus over all Rome. For the rest he heard nothing, neither the howling of dogs nor the uproar of the people nor the voices of the Augustians, who began all at once to cry, —

  “Chilo has fainted!”

  “Chilo has fainted!” said Petronius, turning toward the Greek.

  And he had fainted really; he sat there white as linen, his head fallen back, his mouth wide open, like that of a corpse.

  At that same moment they were urging into the arena new victims, sewed up in skins.

  These knelt immediately, like those who had gone before; but the weary dogs would not rend them. Barely a few threw themselves on to those kneeling nearest; but others lay down, and, raising their bloody jaws, began to scratch their sides and yawn heavily.

  Then the audience, disturbed in spirit, but drunk with blood and wild, began to cry with hoarse voices, —

  “The lions! the lions! Let out the lions!”

  The lions were to be kept for the next day; but in the amphitheatres the people imposed their will on every one, even on Cæsar. Caligula alone, insolent and changeable in his wishes, dared to oppose them, and there were cases when he gave command to beat the people with clubs; but even he yielded most frequently. Nero, to whom plaudits were dearer than all else in the world, never resisted. All the mor
e did he not resist now, when it was a question of mollifying the populace, excited after the conflagration, and a question of the Christians, on whom he wished to cast the blame of the catastrophe.

  He gave the sign therefore to open the cuniculum, seeing which, the people were calmed in a moment. They heard the creaking of the doors behind which were the lions. At sight of the lions the dogs gathered with low whines, on the opposite side of the arena. The lions walked into the arena one after another, immense, tawny, with great shaggy heads. Cæsar himself turned his wearied face toward them, and placed the emerald to his eye to see better. The Augustians greeted them with applause; the crowd counted them on their fingers, and followed eagerly the impression which the sight of them would make on the Christians kneeling in the centre, who again had begun to repeat the words, without meaning for many, though annoying to all, “Pro Christo! Pro Christo!”

  But the lions, though hungry, did not hasten to their victims. The ruddy light in the arena dazzled them and they half closed their eyes as if dazed. Some stretched their yellowish bodies lazily; some, opening their jaws, yawned, — one might have said that they wanted to show their terrible teeth to the audience. But later the odor of blood and torn bodies, many of which were lying on the sand, began to act on them. Soon their movements became restless, their manes rose, their nostrils drew in the air with hoarse sound. One fell suddenly on the body of a woman with a torn face, and, lying with his fore paws on the body, licked with a rough tongue the stiffened blood: another approached a man who was holding in his arms a child sewed up in a fawn’s skin.

  The child, trembling from crying, and weeping, clung convulsively to the neck of its father; he, to prolong its life even for a moment, tried to pull it from his neck, so as to hand it to those kneeling farther on. But the cry and the movement irritated the lion. All at once he gave out a short, broken roar, killed the child with one blow of his paw, and seizing the head of the father in his jaws, crushed it in a twinkle.

  At sight of this all the other lions fell upon the crowd of Christians. Some women could not restrain cries of terror; but the audience drowned these with plaudits, which soon ceased, however, for the wish to see gained the mastery. They beheld terrible things then: heads disappearing entirely in open jaws, breasts torn apart with one blow, hearts and lungs swept away; the crushing of bones under the teeth of lions. Some lions, seizing victims by the ribs or loins, ran with mad springs through the arena, as if seeking hidden places in which to devour them; others fought, rose on their hind legs, grappled one another like wrestlers, and filled the amphitheatre with thunder. People rose from their places. Some left their seats, went down lower through the passages to see better, and crowded one another mortally. It seemed that the excited multitude would throw itself at last into the arena, and rend the Christians in company with the lions. At moments an unearthly noise was heard; at moments applause; at moments roaring, rumbling, the clashing of teeth, the howling of Molossian dogs; at times only groans.

  Cæsar, holding the emerald to his eye, looked now with attention. The face of Petronius assumed an expression of contempt and disgust. Chilo had been borne out of the Circus.

  But from the cuniculum new victims were driven forth continually.

  From the highest row in the amphitheatre the Apostle Peter looked at them. No one saw him, for all heads were turned to the arena; so he rose and as formerly in the vineyard of Cornelius he had blessed for death and eternity those who were intended for imprisonment, so now he blessed with the cross those who were perishing under the teeth of wild beasts. He blessed their blood, their torture, their dead bodies turned into shapeless masses, and their souls flying away from the bloody sand. Some raised their eyes to him, and their faces grew radiant; they smiled when they saw high above them the sign of the cross. But his heart was rent, and he said, “O Lord! let Thy will be done. These my sheep perish to Thy glory in testimony of the truth. Thou didst command me to feed them; hence I give them to Thee, and do Thou count them, Lord, take them, heal their wounds, soften their pain, give them happiness greater than the torments which they suffered here.”

  And he blessed them one after another, crowd after crowd, with as much love as if they had been his children whom he was giving directly into the hands of Christ. Then Cæsar, whether from madness, or the wish that the exhibition should surpass everything seen in Rome so far, whispered a few words to the prefect of the city. He left the podium and went at once to the cuniculum. Even the populace were astonished when, after a while, they saw the gratings open again. Beasts of all kinds were let out this time, — tigers from the Euphrates, Numidian panthers, bears, wolves, hyenas, and jackals. The whole arena was covered as with a moving sea of striped, yellow, flax-colored, dark-brown, and spotted skins. There rose a chaos in which the eye could distinguish nothing save a terrible turning and twisting of the backs of wild beasts. The spectacle lost the appearance of reality, and became as it were an orgy of blood, a dreadful dream, a gigantic kaleidoscope of mad fancy. The measure was surpassed. Amidst roars, howls, whines, here and there on the seats of the spectators were heard the terrified and spasmodic laughter of women, whose strength had given way at last. The people were terrified. Faces grew dark. Various voices began to cry, “Enough! enough!”

  But it was easier to let the beasts in than drive them back again. Cæsar, however, found a means of clearing the arena, and a new amusement for the people. In all the passages between the seats appeared detachments of Numidians, black and stately, in feathers and earrings, with bows in their hands. The people divined what was coming, and greeted the archers with a shout of delight. The Numidians approached the railing, and, putting their arrows to the strings, began to shoot from their bows into the crowd of beasts. That was a new spectacle truly. Their bodies, shapely as if cut from dark marble, bent backward, stretched the flexible bows, and sent bolt after bolt. The whizzing of the strings and the whistling of the feathered missiles were mingled with the howling of beasts and cries of wonder from the audience. Wolves, bears, panthers, and people yet alive fell side by side. Here and there a lion, feeling a shaft in his ribs, turned with sudden movement, his jaws wrinkled from rage, to seize and break the arrow. Others groaned from pain. The small beasts, falling into a panic, ran around the arena at random, or thrust their heads into the grating; meanwhile the arrows whizzed and whizzed on, till all that was living had lain down in the final quiver of death.

  Hundreds of slaves rushed into the arena armed with spades, shovels, brooms, wheelbarrows, baskets for carrying out entrails, and bags of sand. They came, crowd after crowd, and over the whole circle there seethed up a feverish activity. The space was soon cleared of bodies, blood, and mire, dug over, made smooth, and sprinkled with a thick layer of fresh sand. That done, Cupids ran in, scattering leaves of roses, lilies, and the greatest variety of flowers. The censers were ignited again, and the velarium was removed, for the sun had sunk now considerably. But people looked at one another with amazement, and inquired what kind of new spectacle was waiting for them on that day.

  Indeed, such a spectacle was waiting as no one had looked for. Cæsar, who had left the podium some time before, appeared all at once on the flowery arena, wearing a purple mantle, and a crown of gold. Twelve choristers holding citharæ followed him. He had a silver lute, and advanced with solemn tread to the middle, bowed a number of times to the spectators, raised his eyes, and stood as if waiting for inspiration.

  Then he struck the strings and began to sing, —

  “O radiant son of Leto, Ruler of Tenedos, Chilos, Chrysos, Art thou he who, having in his care The sacred city of Ilion, Could yield it to Argive anger, And suffer sacred altars, Which blazed unceasingly to his honor, To be stained with Trojan blood? Aged men raised trembling hands to thee, O thou of the far-shooting silver bow, Mothers from the depth of their breasts Raised tearful cries to thee, Imploring pity on their offspring. Those complaints might have moved a stone, But to the suffering of people Thou, O Smintheus, wert less
feeling than a stone!”

  The song passed gradually into an elegy, plaintive and full of pain. In the Circus there was silence. After a while Cæsar, himself affected, sang on, —

  “With the sound of thy heavenly lyre Thou couldst drown the wailing, The lament of hearts. At the sad sound of this song The eye to-day is filled with tears, As a flower is filled with dew, But who can raise from dust and ashes That day of fire, disaster, ruin? O Smintheus, where wert thou then?”

  Here his voice quivered and his eyes grew moist. Tears appeared on the lids of the vestals; the people listened in silence before they burst into a long unbroken storm of applause.

  Meanwhile from outside through the vomitoria came the sound of creaking vehicles on which were placed the bloody remnants of Christians, men, women, and children, to be taken to the pits called “puticuli.”

  But the Apostle Peter seized his trembling white head with his hands, and cried in spirit, —

  “O Lord, O Lord! to whom hast Thou given rule over the earth, and why wilt Thou found in this place Thy capital?”

  Chapter LVI

  THE sun had lowered toward its setting, and seemed to dissolve in the red of the evening. The spectacle was finished. Crowds were leaving the amphitheatre and pouring out to the city through the passages called vomitoria. Only Augustians delayed; they were waiting for the stream of people to pass. They had all left their seats and assembled at the podium, in which Cæsar appeared again to hear praises. Though the spectators had not spared plaudits at the end of the song, Nero was not satisfied; he had looked for enthusiasm touching on frenzy. In vain did hymns of praise sound in his ears; in vain did vestals kiss his “divine” hand, and while doing so Rubria bent till her reddish hair touched his breast. Nero was not satisfied, and could not hide the fact. He was astonished and also disturbed because Petronius was silent. Some flattering and pointed word from his mouth would have been a great consolation at that moment. Unable at last to restrain himself, Cæsar beckoned to the arbiter.