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

by F. W. Farrar

  CHAPTER XLVII

  _A FETTERED AMBASSADOR_

  ???? ???? ??????? ??? ???????? ?? ?????? ???????? ?? ??? ?? ????????? ??? ???? ??????? ????.--Ep. S. Paul ad Phil. i. 13.

  There was one spot in Rome which was calm amid all tumults, happyamid all calamities, though it was the last place where any of theRoman world would have deemed it possible for happiness to dwell.It was the narrow room which served as a prison to Paul of Tarsus.

  As long as Burrus was Præfect of the Prætorians the prisoner’s lothad been made as easy as the strictness of Roman discipline allowed.He had been allowed to hire a lodging of his own, and no hindrancewas placed on the visits or kindly offices of his friends. He was,indeed, compelled to submit to the one intolerable condition of beingfastened night and day by a coupling-chain to the wrist of a Romansoldier; but Julius and others had spoken to Burrus about him in suchwarm terms that, as in the case of Agrippa I., care was taken that heshould be consigned to the charge of a kind centurion, and that thePrætorians to whom in turn he was chained should, as far as possible,be good-tempered and reasonable men.

  There was no service which the soldiers more hated than this ofguarding prisoners. Each soldier was for the time as much a prisoneras the prisoner to whom he was chained. To be chained to a Jew wasregarded by most of the Prætorians as an intolerable humiliation.If indeed the Jew happened to be a handsome and cosmopolitan youngprince like Agrippa, the duty had its alleviations; but at thepresent time the soldiers had in charge some Jewish priests sent toRome by Festus, who shuddered to be brought into contact with them.To be chained to these haughty hierarchs, who did not conceal theirdisdain for their gentile guards, was a cause of incessant annoyance,and there was not a Prætorian who did not groan when it was rumoredthat Julius had consigned to them another Jew, of weak bodilypresence, and with health enfeebled by toil and hardship.

  But the soldiers to whose lot it first fell to be coupled to thenew prisoner soon spread a favourable report of him. They told theircomrades that though he was not only a Jew, but a _Christian_, he wasyet so sweetly reasonable, so generously considerate, so anxious toalleviate the necessary tedium of their duty, that it was a pleasure,and not a misery, to take a turn in guarding him. Unlike the priests,he seemed to take a human interest in everything human. He would talkfreely with them on gentile subjects. He listened earnestly to allthey had to tell him of Rome, its daily incidents and accidents, itssenatorial debates, its foreign campaigns, the edicts of the Emperor,and the fortunes of the imperial family. It was whispered thateverything which he did and said was worthy and noble, and thecenturions observed a marked change for the better in some of themen who had been brought into contact with him. The Jews, it wasnoticed, looked on him with hatred as a renegade, and even of theJewish Christians there were few who visited him. But some Christianwas almost always with him, and these friends of his, particularlythe modest and engaging Timotheus, deepened the favourable impressionwhich the prisoner himself had made.

  In truth, this was not the least happy period of Paul’s career. Hewas freed from the fret of endless anxiety and embittered opposition;he was no longer harassed by the multiform and terrible perils bywhich for so many years his life had been assailed. To many theforced cessation of the great work of their careers would have seemedan intolerable trial, and faith would have been weakened by thesemblance of God’s desertion. It was not so with Paul. He knewthat he was where God meant him to be, and that he was still anambassador, though, as he playfully said to his friends, anambassador in a coupling-chain.

  He ought in justice to have been brought to speedy trial, seeing thathe had already been imprisoned for two years at Cæsarea on a chargewholly without foundation. But in his shipwreck the documents sent byFelix and Festus had been lost, and when fresh documents came Nero’scapricious idleness put off the trial from month to month. So Paulcontinued in prison, and became a missionary to the Prætorium, andto many Romans. His imprisonment was not lacking in elements ofinterest. Linus and many of the Roman Christians sought his lodging,and showed him every mark of affection. Luke was constantly with him,consulted with him about every detail of his Gospel, and took chargeof his health. He was in frequent correspondence with his friends andwith the converts of the churches which he had founded. Timotheus,who was the child of his heart, treated him with all the tendernessof a son. Tychicus and Epaphras came from Asia, and brought himnews of the Church of Ephesus and of the valleys of the Lycus. Mark,the cousin of his first companion, Barnabas, came to cheer him withnews of Peter and of Jerusalem, and of his travels in many lands.Epaphroditus ministered to his necessities by bringing him a giftfrom his beloved and generous Philippians. The soldiers heard theletters which he dictated to his converts, and heard what Luke readto him of his Gospel. Many of them were deeply influenced by the newworld of thought and holiness which was thus revealed to them. Somewere converted and baptised, and found that the lodging of the Jewishprisoner was to them the vestibule of the house of God.

  And when the soldier on guard was a brother, the intercoursewhich the prisoner could hold with any who came to visit him wasunconstrained. Most of all was this the case when the PrætorianCelsus was chained to him, and the veteran soldier was so happyin the charge that he was ready to relieve any Prætorian by takinghis turn in addition to his own. It was the armour of Celsus, as itlay beside him on the floor, dinted with the blows of many a battle,which suggested to Paul his beautiful description of the Christianpanoply.

  One day there came to the Apostle a lady deeply veiled attended by aChristian freedwoman. She was so agitated that, when she had sunk onone of the humble seats, she could scarcely find words in which topour forth her anguish. When she grew a little calmer, she lifted herveil, and Celsus rose and made her a respectful salutation, for herecognised the mourning robes and sad but beautiful face of the wifeof Aulus Plautius.

  ‘The Lady Pomponia,’ he said, ‘may speak freely, and fear not. I willunloose the coupling-chain, and go into the outer room,’

  Pomponia thanked him, and told the Apostle that she had long been abaptised sister, and had read his letters to Rome and other churches,and had now come to him for consolation in unutterable distress ofheart. She had but one son--the young and beautiful Aulus, the heirand the hope of their great house. But Nero had begun to hate herhusband and herself, and was jealous lest some day the army shouldprefer the Conqueror of Britain to the tenth-rate actor and singer.For Agrippina, in one of her fits of rage, had, before her death,unwisely and unkindly mentioned the youthful Aulus as a virtuousboy who might one day wear the purple more worthily than Nero, whodisgraced it; and Nero, wounded in his vanity, had determined onrevenge. With a wicked cruelty which would have been infamous evenin a Tiberius or a Caligula, he had invited the boy to the Palace,had subjected him to the deadliest insults, and had then ordered himto be slain, accompanying the order with a brutal jest against hismother Agrippina. And the people knew of the crime, and hardly didmore than laugh and shrug their shoulders; and the Senate knew of thecrime, and did not cease for a single day from its adulation to thetyrant; and the army knew of the crime, and not one sword flashedfrom its scabbard; and the philosophers and the poets knew of thecrime, and not one denunciation scathed that deed of hell.

  Pomponia’s heart was broken. Did God deal thus with His servants? Wasthe Christ far away in His blue heaven, and heeded not these things?And was it not lawful, was it not a duty, for Christians to help tosweep away from the earth such a monster of iniquity? Might she notrouse her husband, Aulus Plautius--not to avenge the individual wrongwhich was breaking his heart, and bringing him down to the gates ofthe grave--but to rid mankind from the incubus of an intolerablecurse?

  The Apostle saw that his task was difficult. For a moment he bowedhis head, and clasped his hands in prayer. He needed threefoldwisdom--to console the mother’s anguish; to avert the thought ofvengeance; to strengthen the faith which had been assailed by soreperplexity. And the grace came to him. He banished from Pomp
onia’sheart the dread that because her Aulus had died unbaptised, he wasdoomed to perish: he told her not to dream that the boy, who had thusgone home, had departed unloved by his Heavenly Father. Fearful timeswere coming on the earth, and her beloved son, in whom the signs ofvirtue had not been wanting, might have been taken only to save himfrom the furnace of moral temptation and the wrath to come. Thentaking from the hand of Luke the scroll in which he had been writingthe great discourse on the Mount of Olives, he read to her the wordsof Jesus: ‘Ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake. And yeta hair from your head shall not perish. In your endurance ye shallacquire your souls.’

  ‘Alas!’ she cried, ‘how may I interpret this promise that a hair ofour heads shall not fall, when my very heart is cleft in twain?’

  He answered that the Lord spake not of earthly things. He warned usthat in the world we should have tribulation; but He has overcomethe world. And he prayed her not to dream of hastening the tyrant’spunishment. ‘Leave him in God’s hands. “Vengeance is mine; I willrepay, saith the Lord.”’

  When his voice ceased, the passion of Pomponia’s grief had sunk torest. The tears which still coursed down her cheeks were but thenatural tears of a mother’s bereavement. Her beautiful soul wasprepared for consolation, and her faith had but bowed for a momentlike the upper foliage of a tree under the stress of some mightystorm. To calm her yet further, the Beloved Physician began to readaloud a passage here and there from the Evangel which occupied hisdaily thoughts. He read of the love of Jesus for children; he readthe beatitudes; he read the story of the Cross. The music of thewords and thoughts, borne on the music of his sweet and solemn voice,sank into Pomponia’s soul. She thanked the Evangelist, and, askingfor the blessing of the Apostle, dropped her veil and departed to herdesolate home.

  The Heavenly Father who had suffered anguish to fall upon her hadalso sent medicine and a physician of the soul to heal her sickness.When she reached her palace on the Aventine, she was able to devoteher whole strength to save her husband from succumbing to a sorrowwhich for him was beyond the reach of consolation. He had chosen forthe epitaph of his boy’s tomb the defiant words, ‘I Aulus, the son ofAulus Plautius, uplift my hands against the gods, who took me hencein my innocence, at the age of fifteen years.’[91] But she dissuadedhim. ‘Why complain,’ she said, ‘against the decree of Heaven? It maybe good, and even the best, did we but know it. Nay, my Aulus, carverather on his tomb a green leaf, and the two words, “In peace,” andadd, if thou wilt, the line of Euripides,

  ‘“Who knows if life be death, and death be life?”’