by F. W. Farrar
CHAPTER XLIV
_A SUPPER AT VESPASIAN’S_
‘You’ll have no scandal while you dine, But honest talk and wholesome wine.’
TENNYSON.
‘Arma quidem ultra Littora Juvernæ promovimus, et modo captas Orcadas et minima contentos nocte Britannos. Sed quæ nunc populi fiunt victoris in urbe Non faciunt illi quos vicimus.’
JUV. _Sat._ ii. 159-163.
The centurion Julius was genuinely pleased with the invitation ofTitus, and duly presented himself at the modest house of Vespasian.The other guests were Aulus Plautius and Pomponia, King Caradoc,Pudens and Claudia, and Seneca, together with several members ofthe family, and among them Vespasian’s brother, Flavius Sabinus, whohad just been appointed Præfect of the City, in the place of PedaniusSecundus. The fortunes of the Flavian house were rising rapidly; butSabinus, an eminent soldier, with his blushing honours fresh uponhim, was regarded as the head of the family.
Vespasian was poor, and was also fond of money. That he had notamassed a fortune in his various commands was much to his credit.His house, afterwards occupied by Josephus, was so unpretending asto excite the wonder of those who saw it after he had become Emperor,and his entertainments were usually marked by a more than Sabinesimplicity.
On this occasion, however, since a king, a prime minister, and aconsular--his old commander--who had enjoyed the honour of sharing anEmperor’s triumphs, were among his guests, Vespasian had donned theunwonted splendour of his ‘triumphal ornaments,’ a flowered tunic,over which flowed a purple robe, embroidered with palm branches ingold and silver thread. He was not half at ease in this splendidapparel, and told his wife Cænis that he was an old fool for hispains. The entertainment was sufficient, though Otho would havethought it hardly good enough for his freedmen. The board was gracedwith old Sabine and Etruscan ware of great antiquity and curiousworkmanship, as well as with objects of interest which Vespasianhad bought when he was an officer in Thrace, Crete, and Cyrene.
But Vespasian himself, who was sturdily indifferent to fashion, andtook pleasure in showing how little he regarded the criticisms ofRoman dandyism, drank out of a little silver cup which had belongedto his grandmother, and which he would not have exchanged for theloveliest crystal on the table of Petronius. And Caradoc, as he satthere in his simple dress and golden torque, was far more happy atthat modest entertainment than he would have been at the house of anyother of the Roman nobles.
The party was, so to speak, a British party, for most of them werefamiliar with the storm-swept Northern island, which was regardedas the Ultima Thule of civilisation. That day Pudens had receivedan appointment to go to Britain and support as well as he could thewavering fortunes of Suetonius Paulinus. Caradoc was permitted toreturn with him and take up his abode at Noviomagus, the town of theRegni. They were to sail as early as possible from Ostia. More thanthis, Aulus Plautius, to whose powerful influence these appointmentshad been due, had secured for his young friend Titus the excellentposition of a tribune of the soldiers to the army in Britain. It wasa graceful recognition of the services which Vespasian had renderedto him twenty years before, when, as his legate of the legion, he hadfought thirty battles, captured more than twenty towns, and reducedthe Isle of Wight to subjection. It was in Britain, as Tacitus says,that Vespasian had first been ‘_shown to the Fates_.’ The whole partywere in the highest spirits. The old king rejoiced to think that heshould rest at last in the land of his fathers. Claudia longed toescape from the suffocating atmosphere of Roman luxury. Pudens knewthat in Rome his Christian convictions might speedily bring himinto peril, and that in far-off Britain he could breathe a freer andpurer air. Vespasian had much to tell of the glories of the country.Lastly, Titus felt all the ardour of a young soldier entering on highcommand in new and deeply interesting fields of adventure, and in thecompany of the officer whom he most respected and loved.
It was natural, therefore, that the conversation should turn onBritain, and the tremendous events of which it had recently been thescene. Aulus Plautius had heard from Suetonius Paulinus himself thestory how he had carried his soldiers on flat-bottomed boats acrossthe Straits of Mona, while the horses swam behind; how the Britishwomen, with dishevelled hair, stood thick upon the shore in darkrobes, and, with torches in their hands, ran to and fro amongthe soldiers like Furies; above all, how the Druids stood thereconspicuous, their long white beards streaming to the winds, and,with hands uplifted to heaven, cursed the Romans; and how at last,‘falling on the barbarous and lunatic rout, he had beaten themdown, scorched and rolling in their own fires.’ But darker news hadfollowed. Roman emissaries--‘and those bad young Romans are the curseof Rome,’ said the old commander, looking up from the tablets ofSuetonius--had behaved with infamous cruelty to Boadicea, the heroicQueen of the Iceni, and she was burning to revenge her wrongs.Paulinus described her as ‘a woman big and tall, of visage grim andstern, harsh of voice, her hair of bright colour flowing down toher hips, who wore a plighted garment of divers colours, and a greatgolden chain under a large flowing mantle.’
‘He has sent me some fierce British verses, King,’ said Aulus,turning to Caradoc, ‘which one of his literary officers--Laureatus,of the island of Vectis--has translated from British into Latingalliambics, the metre which, he says, most resembles theirtumultuous lilt. The translator must be a true poet, for not eventhe “Atys” of Catullus is more impassioned. I shall be half afraid toread them to you, for they will stir your blood like the sound of atrumpet, and you will fancy yourself charging us again at the head ofyour Silures.’
‘Ah!’ said the old warrior, sadly; ‘my fires have long sunk intowhite embers. A king who has been led in fetters through thecapital of his enemies can fight no more for a free nation, howeverintolerably it may have been wronged.’
Claudia pressed her father’s hand, and tears shone in her blue eyes.
‘Nay, Claudia,’ said the king; ‘I did not wish to sadden thee. Thouand I have other and brighter hopes than once we had, and it willbe like new life to us to tread once more by the broad rivers ofBritain, and on her heathy hills. I am an exile and poor. My jewelsand trappings were carried before me at the triumph of Claudius andAulus;--though Cartismandua, who betrayed me, still has her goldencorslet and her enamelled chariot. These things are, I know, as thegods decide, and sometimes they suffer wickedness to triumph. But letAulus Plautius read us the verses.’
Aulus read the galliambics into which the poet of Vectis hadtranslated the British war-song,[87]
‘They that scorn the tribes, and call us Britain’s barbarous populaces, Shall I heed them in their anguish? Shall I brook to be supplicated? Hear, Icenian, Catieuchlanian; hear, Coritanian, Trinobant! Must their ever-ravening eagle’s beak and talon annihilate us? Bark an answer, Britain’s raven! bark and blacken innumerable! Hear it, gods! The gods have heard it, O Icenian, O Coritanian! Doubt not ye the gods have answered, Catieuchlanian, Trinobant! Lo! their precious Roman bantling, lo! the colony Camulodune, Shall we teach it a Roman lesson? shall we care to be pitiful? Shout, Icenian, Catieuchlanian; shout, Coritanian, Trinobant! Bloodily, bloodily fall the battle-axe, unexhausted, inexorable! Take the hoary Roman head, and shatter it, hold it abominable, Cut the Roman boy in pieces in his lust and voluptuousness. Fall the colony, city, and citadel, London, Verulam, Camulodune!’
‘Ye gods! What cannot a poet do?’ exclaimed Seneca, with enthusiasm.‘Those lines would have made me die in battle, if I had been aBriton.’
‘They have caused eighty thousand to die in battle,’ said Aulus.‘A later letter of Paulinus tells us that, after a fearful massacreof the Romans at the three colonies of Londinium, Verulamium, andCamulodunum, the Britons assembled two hundred and thirty thousandwarriors, with whom he fought a tremendous battle near Verulamium.But how could those woad-painted fighters withstand the skill, thediscipline, the heavy ar
mour of our legionaries? We lost but fourhundred, Paulinus says; and Boadicea, who, in a chariot with her twodaughters, had raged through the battle like an angry lioness, hastaken poison in despair.’
The wild passionate verses had produced strangely different effectson the little audience. The old king started up from his couch, hisbreast panting, his eyes full of fire, and then sank back again andhid his face in his mantle. For the lines recalled to him his ownheroic struggles, and his great father, Cunobalin, and his noblebrothers. Claudia mused in silence, thinking of the day when thePrince of Peace should come again--a thought which Pomponia divinedas she laid her hand on the fair head of her friend. Vespasian lookedgrave, and thought it rather treasonous of a Roman poet to turn suchverses into Latin. Pudens and Titus felt a pang of regret that, incombat with a free people, the name of Rome should be stained withthe infamies of scamps and weaklings who had provoked that terriblerevolt.
Seneca little knew that Aulus, in reading extracts from the letterof Suetonius, had suppressed a passage in which the general hadindignantly stated as one cause of the insurrection, not only thewrongs of Boadicea, but the fact that Seneca himself had suddenlycalled in large sums of money which he had lent to the British atusurious interest, and that the demand for repayment had reduced thepoor Iceni to bankruptcy and despair.
‘We have been talking about Britain all this time,’ said Titus; ‘buthere is our friend Julius straight from Palestine, and he must haveplenty of news to tell us about those odd fanatics, the Jews.’
‘How goes the world in Jerusalem?’ asked Vespasian. ‘The questionis very interesting to an old soldier like me. We constantly hear ofrisings there. I am told that affairs are getting desperate, and whoknows but what the Emperor may some day despatch me thither at thehead of a legion?’
‘Nothing is more likely,’ said Julius.
‘Unless you snore while the Emperor is singing, father, as you did atSubiaco,’ said Titus, laughing, as did all the guests.
‘Impudent boy!’ said Vespasian, joining in the laugh. ‘Let Julius goon.’
Julius told them that ever since the days when Pontius Pilatus hadhalf maddened the Jews by bringing the Roman ensigns into Jerusalem,and Caligula had reduced them to stupefaction by proposing to set uphis own image in their Temple, they had been on the verge of sedition.
‘Felix,’ he added, ‘only got off their impeachment by the influenceof his brother, Pallas. Festus had hard work with their bandits. Atpresent they are raging in a first-rate quarrel with young KingAgrippa.’
He proceeded to tell them how Agrippa, for the delectation of hisfriends, had built a dining-room at the top of his Palace, so thathis guests as they lay at the banquet could enjoy the highly curiousspectacle of all that was going on in the Temple precincts. Indignantat this encroachment, the Jews built up a blank wall of such a heightas not only to exclude the view from the Asmonæan Palace of Agrippa,but also to shut out the surveillance of the Roman soldiers inthe tower Antonia. Agrippa was furious, and Festus ordered them todemolish the wall. But they said that they would die rather thanconsent to do this. They appealed to Nero, and Festus allowed them tosend their High Priest, Ishmael ben Phabi, with nine others, to pleadtheir cause with the Emperor.
‘I suspect that this deputation was on board the vessel whoseshipwreck I mentioned,’ said Julius.
‘Will this appeal be successful?’ asked Vespasian.
‘I believe it will,’ answered the centurion; ‘for Poppæa is veryfavourable to the Jews.’
‘Shall we really see a Jewish High Priest in Rome?’ asked Pomponia.
‘Yes, lady,’ answered Julius; ‘but a very unworthy one. He rules byterror. He robs and defrauds the inferior priests to such an extentthat they die of starvation, and his blows have become proverbial.To the disgust of the Jews he wears silk gloves when he is offeringsacrifice, in order to keep his hands clean. And yet, so scrupulousare these oddest of people, that they would not let his fatherperform the very greatest sacrifice in their whole year becauseof the most insignificant accident.’
‘What was it?’ asked Pomponia.
‘You will really hardly believe it. On the eve of the great festivalwhich they call the _Kippurim_--a sort of day of expiation--thefather of this High Priest was talking to Aretas, king of Arabia,and by an accident a speck of the Emir’s saliva fell on Ishmael’sbeard. This made him “unclean,” in their opinion; and a deputy, whomthey call the Sagan, had to perform its principal function!’
The guests laughed.
‘But tell us now,’ said Vespasian, ‘about these new Christians. Isuppose they, and their Christus, are more turbulent even than theJews?’
‘So we Romans are led to believe,’ said Julius. ‘It is exactlythe reverse. The Christians are the most peaceful of men, and theyreverence the Roman power.’
‘Have you seen much of them?’ asked Aulus.
‘I witnessed a remarkable scene,’ said Julius, ‘just before I leftJerusalem. Festus, as you are aware, died the other day, worn outwith cares and worries. Pending the appointment of his successor,Agrippa appointed a new High Priest--Annas, son of the priest beforewhom Christus was tried. This Annas took upon himself unwontedauthority. He summoned the head of the Christians--James, a brotherof their Christus--before their Sanhedrin, and ordered him to bestoned to death. But this James was almost worshipped by the people,who called him “the Just.” To give him a chance of life, they askedhim what he thought of Christus, and he called him a God. On hearingthis answer they flung him down from the roof of the Temple. The falldid not kill him; he was able to rise to his knees and pray for them.It was a wonderful sight--that man of noble presence, with the longlocks streaming over his shoulders, and his white robe stained withblood, kneeling in the Temple court among his furious enemies! One ofthe bystanders pleaded for him; but a fuller came up and dashed outhis brains with a club.’
‘The cup of that nation’s iniquity is full,’ said Pomponia, who hadlistened with a shudder to this tale of martyrdom.
‘It is,’ said Julius. ‘Immediately after I had witnessed this sadscene, I was talking to a brilliant young priest in Jerusalem namedJosephus, of whose abilities they think highly, and who evidently hasa great future before him. He made the same remark.’
‘But tell us something about that wonderful prisoner whom you broughtto Rome,’ said Titus.
Julius detailed to them his voyage, the storm when they drifted solong up and down Adria in the starless nights and sunless days; thestrong influence of the Jewish prisoner over the whole crew; thespirit which he breathed into their despair; the practical wisdomof all his counsels; the intense gratitude which he had kindled inthe Protos of Malta and in the barbarous inhabitants, by what theybelieved to be a miraculous healing. ‘His teaching,’ he added, ‘isthe most wonderful thing I ever heard.’
‘What can a Jew really teach?’ asked Seneca, with some disdain.
‘He preaches that their Prophet whom Pilatus crucified, was GodHimself,’ said Julius; ‘and no sane man can believe that. But thereis a sort of supernatural spell about the goodness of this Paulus;and when I hear him speak to “the brethren,” as he calls theChristians, I am always reminded of Homer’s lines--
‘In thought profound His modest eyes he fixed upon the ground; But when he speaks, what elocution flows, Soft as the fleeces of descending snows! The copious accents fall with easy art, Melting they fall, and sink into the heart.’
‘He may have the gift of speech,’ said Seneca; ‘many Orientals have.But it is monstrous to suppose that a fanatical Jew, with a senselesscreed, should have anything to teach us.’
‘Has he written anything?’ asked Flavius Sabinus.
‘Yes; he has written some wonderful letters--a strange mixture (asfriends in Palestine told me) of fantastic doctrine and perfectethics.’
‘Has he taught a single moral truth which has not been taught forfour centuries, since Aristotle and Plato and Chrysippus?’ askedSeneca.
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br /> ‘I have not read his letters,’ said Julius. ‘They were difficult toget hold of, for the Christians are very shy about their writings.But he _lives_ the truth he teaches.’
‘Ah!’ said Seneca; ‘if he has the secret of that--! As for us, toomany of us are open to the reproach that we are only philosophers bywearing beards.’
‘Well,’ said Titus, ‘I have been to hear the lectures of MusoniusRufus, and I defy any mortal man to teach better truths than he andCornutus do; for I must not speak of the illustrious Seneca in hispresence. We have no need to consult barbarian Jews with insane newmythologies.’
Pomponia and Claudia and Pudens were of necessity silent in thatmixed company; but they thought that the good soil of the Christianfaith was the one thing lacking to Seneca, which might have madethe roses of his moral teaching produce something better than mereperfume.
And if Titus had but laid aside the ignorant disdain which markedhim in common with the mass of philosophic Pagans, his manly virtuesmight have shone forth with yet more beautiful lustre, and he mighthave been saved from the sins and errors wherewith he afterwardsdefiled a noble name.