Darkness and Dawn; Or, Scenes in the Days of Nero. An Historic Tale

by F. W. Farrar

  CHAPTER XIV

  _MOTHER AND SON_

  ‘Asper et immitis, breviter vis omnia dicam? Dispeream si te mater amare potest.’

  SUETON. _Tib._ 59.

  Nero was now firmly seated on the throne of the Empire. Its cares satlightly on him. The government went on admirably without him. He hadnothing to do but to glut himself with enjoyments, and to make whathe could of the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them.

  At first, like one dazed with a sudden outburst of light, he had beenunable to understand the immensity of his own power. For the firstmonth of his reign he could hardly realise that he was more thana boy. He had always been passionately fond of chariot races, whichas a boy he had not been permitted to frequent. One day, whileat his lessons, he had been deploring to his companions the fateof a charioteer of the green faction who had been thrown out ofhis chariot and dragged to death by his own horses. His master,overhearing the conversation, reproved him, and the boy, with aclever and ready lie, said, ‘I was only talking about Hector beingdragged round the walls of Troy by Achilles.’ And now he might watchthe races all day long and plunge into the hottest rivalry of thefactions, and neither in this pursuit nor in any other was there asingle human being to say him nay.

  The only thing which troubled him was the jealous interference ofhis mother. Agrippina still clutched with desperate tenacity at thevanishing fruits of the ambition for the sake of which all her crimeshad been committed. She had sold her soul, and was beating back theconviction that she had sold it for nought. How could that slight boyof seventeen, whom as a child she had so often chastised with her ownhand, dream of resisting her? Was not her nature, compared with his,as adamant to clay? She had been a princess of the blood from infancy,surrounded by near relatives who had been adored in life and deifiedafter death; she had enjoyed power during two reigns, and now at lastshe had fancied that she would control the Empire for the remainderof her life. Was not her skill in intrigue as great as that of Livia?Was not her indomitable purpose even more intense? She forgot thatLivia had been, what Caligula called her, _Ulysses stolatus_, ‘aUlysses in petticoats,’ a woman with absolute control over her ownemotions. Agrippina, on the other hand, was full of a wild passionwhich ruined her caution and precipitated her end.

  And she forgot, more fatally, the total collapse of all Livia’ssoaring ambitions. Livia had procured the death of prince afterprince who stood between her son Tiberius and the throne. Tiberiusdid indeed become Emperor, but ‘had Zimri peace who slew his master’?Pliny calls Tiberius ‘confessedly the gloomiest of men.’ He himselfwrote to the Senate that he felt himself daily destroyed by all thegods and goddesses. And, after all, his only son died, and he wassucceeded by Caligula, the bad and brutal son of the hated andmurdered Germanicus and the hated and murdered Agrippina the elder.He might have said with the bloodstained usurper of our greattragedy:--

  ‘Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown, And put a barren sceptre in my gripe; Thence to be wrench’d with an unlineal hand, No son of mine succeeding.’

  Was it likely to be otherwise with her son Nero?

  Nero--slight boy as she thought him--had hardly been seated on thethrone when he began to slip out of her control. Pallas, her secretlover, her chief supporter, was speedily ejected and disgraced.Seneca and Burrus were both opposed to her influence, and neitherof them dreaded her vengeance. Suitors for favours were more anxiousto secure the intercession of Acte than hers. Nero, surrounded bydissolute young aristocrats, and also by adventurers, buffoons andparasites, was daily showing himself more indifferent to her threats,her commands, even her reasonable wishes. He liked to parade hisnew-born freedom. She felt sure that among the circle of his familiarcompanions, she and her pretensions were turned into ridicule. Herproud cheek flushed even in solitude to think that she, who, forNero’s sake, had dared all, should have been superseded in herinfluence by such curled and jewelled weaklings as Otho, and oustedfrom her son’s affections by a meek freedwoman like Acte. Howterribly had she miscalculated! In the reign of Claudius she hadbeen the mightiest person in the Court and in the State. Had shebecome the murderess of her husband only to transfer from herselfinto the hands of men whom she despised too much to hate, the powerwhich was once her own? Had she flung away the substance and onlygrasped a flickering shadow?

  A thousand plans of revenge crossed her mind, only to be rejected.The die was cast. The deeds done were irrevocable. It only remainedfor her to dree the judgment for her crimes, and to take such fewsteps as still were possible to her along the precipice’s edge.She had plucked a tempting fruit, and she found that its taste waspoison; she had nursed a serpent in her bosom, and its sting wasdeath.

  But she would not resign her power without at least one mad struggleto retain it. She still had access to the Emperor whenever shedesired, and many a wild scene had occurred between the motherand the son. In such interviews she let her tongue run riot. Sherefrained from nothing. She no longer attempted to conceal from himthat Claudius had died by her hand. She wrapped the youth round inthe whirlwind of her sulphurous passion; she raised her voice soloud in a storm of reproaches and recriminations that sometimeseven the freedmen and soldiers outside the imperial apartments heardthe fierce voices of altercation, and were in doubt whether theyshould not rush in and interfere. And often the feeble nature ofNero cowered before her menaces as she poured on him a flood ofundisguised contempt. Sometimes she wrapped him in a storm of satireand sarcasm. She upbraided him with his unmanliness; she contrastedhim unfavourably with Britannicus; she told him that he was morefit to be an actor of melodrama, or a tenth-rate charioteer, or afiftieth-rate singer, than to be the Emperor of Rome.

  ‘To think,’ she said, raising her voice almost to a scream, as he satbefore her in sullen silence--‘to think that the blood of the Domitiiand of the Neros and of the Cæsars is in your veins! You an emperor!Yes; an emperor of pantomime! You have nothing of the Roman, muchless of the ruler, nay, not even of the man, in you. Who made youEmperor? Who but I?’

  ‘I wish you had left me alone, then,’ he answered, desperately. ‘Itis no such pleasure to be Emperor with you to spy on me and domineerover me.’

  ‘Spy on you? Domineer over you? Ungrateful! Infamous! You, whohave made a slave-girl the rival of your mother! Let me tell you,Ahenobarbus, that I at least am the daughter of Germanicus, thoughyou are wholly unworthy to be his grandson. Whence did you get yourpale and feeble blood? Not from me, coward and weakling as you are;not from your father Domitius, who, if he was cruel, was at least aman! He would not have chosen such creatures as Otho and Senecio forhis friends. He had a man’s taste and a man’s ambition. He would haveblushed to be father of a singing and painting girl like you! Butbeware! You are an _agrippa_; you were born feet-foremost--a certainaugury of future misery.’[36]

  Stung to the quick by these reproaches, trembling with impotentanger to hear his effeminate vanity--to which his comrades burntdaily incense--thus ruthlessly insulted, and angry, above all, thathis mother dared to pour contempt on his cherished accomplishments,Nero’s timid nature at last turned in self-defence.

  ‘I am Emperor now, at any rate,’ he said; ‘and ere now the wives andsisters, if not the mothers, of the Cæsars have had to cool theirrage on the rocks of Gyara or Pontia!’

  ‘You dare to threaten me?’ she cried. ‘_You_ to threaten _me_; me,your mother; me, who have toiled and schemed, aye, and committedcrimes for you, from a child; me, whose womb bare you, whose handhas often beaten you; me, to whom you owe it that you are not at thismoment a disgraced and penniless boy!’

  ‘You call me an actor. Are not you more than half an actress?’ hesaid, in a sneering tone.

  Agrippina sprang from her seat in a burst of passion.

  ‘Oh, if there be gods!’ she exclaimed, uplifting her hands, ‘let themhear me! Infernal Furies at least there are, for I have felt them!Oh! may they avenge on you my wrongs!’

  Nero care
d but little for the curse. He was not superstitious. Hethought how Senecio and Petronius would laugh at the notion of therebeing real Furies or subterranean gods!

  ‘You know more of the Furies than I do, then,’ he said, in a mockingtone. ‘Besides, I have an amulet. Look at this!’

  He handed to her the _icuncula puellaris_--the wooden doll whichhad been given him in the streets, with the mysterious promise thatit would prove to be a charm against every malignant influence. Hehonoured it as Louis XI. did the little leaden saint which he worein his hat when he had ceased to honour anything else. She glanced atit with utter scorn; then, to his horror, flung it on the ground andspurned it away.

  ‘And you are Pontifex Maximus!’ she said, concentrating into thewords a world of unmitigated scorn.

  Nero was silent, but his look was so dark that, fearing lest sheshould have gone too far, she said in calmer tones, ‘You have abetter amulet than that paltry image, and one which your mother gaveyou. But your follies render it unavailing.’

  She pointed to a golden armlet, in which was set the skin of aserpent, which he wore on his right arm. The serpent had been foundgliding in his room near his cradle; or, perhaps, according toanother story, its cast-off skin had been found beside his pillow.Many legends had sprung up about it. The populace believed that itwas a sacred spirit which had protected him, and had driven from hisinfant cradle the murderers sent by Messalina to destroy him. But,while Nero was yet a child, Agrippina had had the skin of the serpentcuriously set in a jewelled armlet of great value, with rubies forits eyes, and emeralds marking the traces of its scales, and hadclasped it on Nero’s arm, and bidden him to wear it forever. And ashis life advanced in golden prosperity she had come to believe, orto half believe, that there was some mysterious charm about it--fora mind may be atheistical and yet profoundly superstitious.

  But as she gazed at it with a sort of fascination, she was seizedby one of the violent reactions of feeling which often sweeps overa mind untrained in the control of its passions. It brought beforeher the image of a little boy, whose sweet and sunny face lookedthe picture of engaging innocence; whose golden hair, when it caughtthe sunlight, shone like an aureole round his head; whose blue eyesdanced with childish glee at the sight of what was beautiful; to whomhis mother was all in all; who had often flung his arms round herneck, in joy and in sorrow, with the fondness of a loving child. Thatchild stood before her--through her crimes Emperor of Rome. He stoodthere, hateful and hating her--on his lips the flickering smile ofmockery; on his once bright forehead the scowl of anger. Yet whomhad she in all the world besides? Her father had been murdered; hermother murdered; three of her brothers murdered; her sisters weredead, and had died in shame; her first husband dead; two others ofher husbands poisoned--and by her; her lovers dead, or banished faraway. She knew that a chaos of hatred yawned wide and deep aroundher; she knew that in all the wide world no single person, exceptpossibly one or two of her freedmen, cared for her. In her agony,in her loneliness, she had tried of late to win something likeforgiveness, something like tolerance, if not affection, from thedeeply injured Britannicus and Octavia. She pitied the sorrows andwrongs which she had herself inflicted on them. She had even learntto admire some gracious quality in them both, for which she couldfind no name. But, alas! she soon found that, while they were perfectin courtesy, they could never love her. The life, the affection ofher son was the sole thing left her; and he was turning against herwith a feeling akin to loathing stamped upon his face.

  All these thoughts rushed over her mind like a tornado. Unable tobear them, she ended the interview by a passion of uncontrollableweeping. And, as she wept, she held out her appealing arms to herson, and wailed:

  ‘Oh, Nero, forgive my wild words. Whom have we but one another? Inthis drowning sea must we not sink or rise together? My son! my son!your mother pleads with you. Forgive me--kiss me; let Agrippina feelonce more that she has the love of the son for whose sole sake shehas lived--for whom she would gladly die!’

  A noble nature would have been moved by the tragic appeal of soproud a mother; but the nature of Nero, essentially mean, had becomeconstantly meaner. He trembled before those who confronted him withboldness; but he triumphed over all who showed that they fearedhim. He wanted to feel perfectly independent. The only person whosepower he feared was his mother. And here was this all-dreaded motherpleading with him, at whose lightest look he had been accustomed foryears to tremble! He was not in the least moved; he only intendedto secure the ascendency of which, in that struggle, he had won thefirst step.

  ‘You curse me,’ he said, ‘one moment, and the next you are all tearsand entreaties. Do you think that it is only _your_ amulet that keepsme from your Furies? You have dishonoured my image; see how much Icare for your amulet. I will never wear it again.’

  He unclasped the armlet from his wrist, and flung it to the other endof the room.

  ‘There!’ he said. ‘_You_ may have it; I have done with it!’ Andwith these words he turned his back upon her, and went out withouta farewell.

  It seemed a small matter, and what else could she expect from such abeing as her son--a youth soft without tenderness, caressing withoutaffection, cruel without courage?

  She stood and looked towards the curtain through which he haddisappeared. She stood with gleaming eyes and dilated nostrils, andfirm-set lips. Every tear was dried up in her burning glance, as sheoutstretched her clenched hand and vowed a terrible vengeance.

  ‘O wronged Britannicus!’ she murmured; ‘O wronged Octavia! cannot Ieven now redress your wrongs? Alas! it cannot be. Their first actwould be to avenge the injured manes of Claudius. But does notRubellius Plautus live, and Cornelius Sulla? Could I not even yetbrush this mean and thankless actor like an insect from my path--sonthough he be--and seat one of them upon the throne of the Cæsars?’

  She picked up the armlet with the serpent’s skin. ‘It shall be as hesaid,’ she murmured; ‘he shall never wear or see it more.’

  When his hour of doom had come, Nero searched for that amulet in vain!