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

by F. W. Farrar

  CHAPTER LVI

  ? ?????????? ?? ??? ??????? ?????????????.--Hebr. x. 33.

  ‘SEC. BR. O night and shades! How are ye joined with hell in triple knot.

  * * * * *

  Is this the confidence You gave me, brother?

  ELD. BR. Yes, and keep it still.

  * * * * *

  If this fail The pillared firmament is rottenness, And earth’s base built on stubble.’

  MILTON, _Comus_.

  The news of the Neronian persecution did not reach St. Paul atonce. When he left the hospitable home of Philemon he first rejoinedTimothy at Ephesus. He left him to arrange the affairs of the Churchof Ephesus, and Onesimus took the place which had been filled by theson of Eunice in former years. He became the Apostle’s travellingcompanion, to lend him the affectionate attendance now necessary tohis age and infirmities. It was not till they reached Corinth thatthey heard the heart-shaking intelligence that the Christian Churchat Rome had been smitten by Antichrist as with red-hot thunderbolts.Though no accurate details reached them, Paul’s first impulse was tofly to the succour of his Roman brethren; but Titus of Corinth, whowas with him, urged him to remember that two of his brother Apostleswere at Rome; that the persecution was now certain to break out innearly every Church of the Empire, and that his presence was moreneeded in Crete and in the Churches of Asia and Europe of which hehad been the immediate founder. Anxious to confront the growth ofsubtle heresies, more perilous in his eyes than persecution, hereluctantly abandoned his wish to return to Italy, and sailed toCrete. It was some time before he learnt that St. Peter had sealedhis testimony by martyrdom and that St. John was a prisoner at Patmos.

  But Onesimus was distressed at heart by the perils which wouldbefall the beloved daughter of Nereus, and he entreated the Apostleto let him be the bearer to Rome of his messages of consolation andencouragement. Receiving ready permission, he hurried to the capitalby the earliest ship, and arrived on the very day of the stormwhich had witnessed the crucifixion of St. Peter and the miraculousdeliverance of the Beloved Disciple.

  With amazement he saw Rome lying in ruins and the Christian causeapparently destroyed forever. ‘Christian’ was now the synonym ofincendiary and desperate malefactor. His heart sank within him as hewent from house to house only to find that the Christian inhabitantshad disappeared. So great a multitude had been arrested that for thetime being the prisons were the only churches. He went to the palaceof Aulus Plautius, thinking that there he was certain to receiveinformation; but there, too, he found that scarcely one of theChristian slaves was left, and that Pomponia herself had caught thevirulent typhoid which had broken out among the crowded sufferers,and lay unconscious and dangerously ill.

  Risking everything, he visited the prisons, and in one of them hefound Nereus, wasted and haggard, but still animated by a cheerfulcourage. From him he learnt, with a deep sense of relief, that atthe first outbreak of danger he had sent Junia to the safe refugeof Aricia. Pudens, when he sailed for Britain, felt a prescientintuition of the days which were to come, and told the Christianmembers of his household that they might always find a place ofshelter with Dromo in the little country farm. Thither Junia had gonewith a few others, obedient to the wish and command of her father,though reluctant to leave him. There Onesimus found her, and carriedto her the blessing and the messages of Nereus. Nereus sent her wordthat he was doomed to die, as they were all doomed to die, though bywhat form of death was as yet unknown to them. He bade her to stay atAricia. She could do nothing for him, and to come to Rome would onlybe to throw away her life. In the few lines he was able to writeto her he commended Onesimus. He confessed that in former daysthe youth had been altogether displeasing to him, but now he was achanged character. Paulus had won him back to the paths of holiness.He had been illuminated. He had tasted of the heavenly calling, andhad devoted himself to the personal tendance of the aged Apostle.In Rome he had given proof of his courage and consistency by showingpity for the prisoners and not being ashamed of their chains. It wasno time now to talk of marrying or giving in marriage, for surely theday of the Lord was very nigh at hand; yet, if Junia loved the youth,Nereus would not forbid their plighting troth to each other, andawaiting the day when the marriage might be possible. And this hegranted the more readily, for he feared that very soon Junia would beleft alone, a helpless and friendless Christian maiden in the midstof an evil world.

  So the lovers met, but the interchange of their common vows weresolemn and sacred, under the darkening skies of persecution, and asit were in the valley of the shadow of death. For Junia entreatedOnesimus to return to Rome and do his utmost to watch over her fatherand to save him if by any means it were possible or lawful. He badeher farewell, and found time to pay one brief visit to the templeat Aricia that he might express his gratitude to the priest ofVirbius for having spared his life. Alas, he was too late! A newRex Nemorensis--the ex-gladiator Rutilus--reigned in Croto’s room.He had surprised and murdered him the evening before, and Onesimussaw the gaunt corpse of Croto outstretched upon its wooden bierawaiting burial in the plot assigned to the succession of murderedpriests.

  Sick at heart, Onesimus hurried from the dark precincts, and by themorning dawn he was in Rome.

  On that day the terrible massacres began which were to baptise theinfant Church in a river of blood, and to consecrate Rome in thememory of Christendom as the city of slaughtered saints. For therePaganism was to display herself, naked and not ashamed, a harlotholding in her hand the brimming goblet of her wickedness, drunkenwith the blood of the beloved of God. Mankind was to see exhibited aseries of startling contrasts: human nature at its best and sweetest;human nature at its vilest and worst:--unchecked power smitten withfatal impotence; unarmed weakness clothed with irresistible strength:--pleasure and self-indulgence drowned in wretchedness; misery andmartyrdom exulting with joy unspeakable, and full of glory. On theone side was the splendour and civilisation of the City of the Dragonrevelling in brutal ferocity and lascivious pride; on the other sidethe down-trodden and the despised of the City of God rose to a heightof nobleness which no philosophy had attained, and enriched withsovereign virtues the ideal of mankind. While the deified lord of theempire of darkness with his nobles and his myrmidons sank themselvesbelow the level of the beasts, paupers and nameless slaves, youngboys and feeble girls towered into tragic dignity, faced death withunflinching heroism, and showed that even amid satyrs and demonshumanity may still be measured with the measure of a man--that is,of the angel.

  Herein lay the secret of the victory of Christianity. In the Rome ofNero heathendom showed the worst that she could _be_, and the worstthat she could _do_; and Christianity showed, coinstantaneously,that manhood can preserve its inherent grandeur when it seems to betrampled into the very mire under the hoofs of swine. The sweetnessand the dignity with which the Christians suffered kindled not onlyamazement but admiration in many a pagan breast. It was seen thatwith the Church in its poverty and shame, not with the world inits gorgeous criminality, lay the secret of all man’s happiness andhope. Many a senator, as he looked on the saturnalia of lubricityand blood, felt that the Christian slave-girl, tied naked to a stakein the amphitheatre for the wild beasts to devour, was more blessedthan the jewelled lady by his side, whom he knew to be steeped inbaseness; and there were youths to whose taste the apples of the DeadSea had already crumbled into dust, who in their secret hearts feltthemselves nothing less than abject compared with those Christianboys who, with the light of heaven on their foreheads and the nameof Jesus on their lips, faced without flinching the grotesque horrorof their doom.

  But Nero and Tigellinus, and those who advised with them, neverwavered in their hideous policy of purchasing popularity by makingthe murder of thousands of the innocent subserve the brutal passionsof the multitude. They thought to abase the
Christians, and theykindled round their brows an aureole of light. They thought toflatter the people, but made them vile by a carnival which showedthat their natures had become a mixture of the tiger and the ape.

  The jubilee of massacre began with cruel flagellations, for theintention was to combine amusement with utility and to representthese unnumbered agonies as a festival of expiation. So low had theRomans sunk since the days when they had believed that the wrath ofthe gods had been kindled because before some public games a masterhad scourged his slave round the arena!

  As they wished to add derision to torture, it did not suffice themthat at these piacular displays men should merely fight with wildbeasts who would soon be glutted with the multitude of victims. Anovelty was devised for the delight of the spectators.

  The first batch of martyrs were clad in the skins of wolves andleopards and torn to death by hordes of fierce and hungry dogs.

  Others had to take part in mythologic operas. Among them was thesoldier Urbanus. Clad in the guise of Hercules on ?'ta, he was burnedalive upon a funeral pyre. Another martyr, Celsus, had to figureas Mucius Scævola, and to burn his hand to ashes in a flame uponan altar, with the promise that his life should be given him if,in carrying out his historic rôle, he would voluntarily consume hisright hand, and not once shrink. Vitalis had to take his part inthe favourite drama of Laureolus, in which character, after beingmade a laughing-stock, he was first crucified, and then, whileyet living, devoured upon the cross by a bear. It was thought afavourable opportunity to try experiments. Simon Magus, aftersecuring the arrest of Peter, had been admitted to an interviewwith Poppæa, whose superstitious turn of mind inclined her toconsult every charlatan who visited the capital, and through her hegained admittance to the Emperor. He awakened Nero’s interest in amachine by which he pretended that he could enable men to fly. Nerodetermined to test the capabilities of the machine _in corpore vili_.The story of Dædalus and Icarus should be enacted, and as a slim andgraceful youth was needed for the part of Icarus, poor Nazarius, theson of Miriam, was selected for this character. A lofty wooden towerwas erected in the mimic scene. The wild beasts were roaming loose inthe amphitheatre, and if either Dædalus or Icarus was not killed bya fall from the tower, he would be devoured in the arena. The martyrAmplias, who represented Dædalus, was precipitated at once, andkilled by a lion. The broad wings of the machine upbore for a momentthe light form of Nazarius as he sprang from the tower, but he fellon the very podium of the Emperor, and so close beside him that, tothe horror of all, and with an omen of the worst import, he spatteredthe white robe of Nero with his blood.[105]

  Unsated by these scenes the spectators demanded the sacrifice ofthe women victims. Hundreds of them were crowded in cells under theamphitheatre, and were informed that they were to appear in a seriesof pageants representing the torments of the dead. The spectaclewas deemed impious by many, but it had been exhibited by Egyptiansand Ethiopians in the days of Caligula. Fifty of these poor femalemartyrs were to be clothed in scarlet mantles as the daughters ofDanaus, and, after undergoing nameless insults, were to be stabbedby an actor who personated Lynceus.[106] To many of them it was ananguish worse than death that they should have to bear part in dramaswhich represented the idolatries of heathendom; but Prisca, the wifeof Aquila, who had returned from Ephesus to Rome with her husband onmatters connected with their trade, visited the sufferers in prison,and effectually consoled them. This Jewish matron, to whom with herhusband had been granted the honour of no inconspicuous share inthe founding of the three great churches of Rome, of Corinth, andof Ephesus, had not been arrested by any informer, owing to longresidence in Achaia and Asia. She told the poor women that resistancewas in vain, and that no insult inflicted on them by the heathencould dim the lustre of their martyr-crown. Cheered by her calmwisdom, they paced across the stage carrying vases on theirshoulders, and bore their fate without a cry.

  More terrible was the destiny of others. They were to enact the partof Dirce. One after another, in imitation of the much-admired statuenow known as the Farnese Bull, which had recently been brought fromRhodes, they were tied by actors representing Amphion and Zethus,to the horns of furious oxen, and so were tossed or gored to death.They, too, were sustained by the presence of the Invisible, and themodesty of their bearing, even in such agonies, caused a pang in thehearts of all but the most hardened spectators.

  At all these spectacles of shame Nero looked on. There he satday after day in the podium, lolling on cushions of gold andpurple, staring through the concave emerald which helped hisshort-sightedness, and finding new sensations in the spectacle ofinsulted innocence. He was never tired of wondering whence thesewretches got their ‘blank callosity.’ And they, ere their eyes openedon that other land, where they knew they should gaze upon their Kingin His beauty, saw as their last glimpse of earth, this despicableAntichrist, with his face like that of a base overgrown boy, watchingwith greedily curious stare the agony of their immolation.

  But there were too many martyrs to render it easy to dispose of them.After they had exhausted the inventiveness of cruelty, after theyhad heaped up the _puticuli_ even to the danger of pestilence withcrucified, charred, and mangled corpses, at least a thousand of thegreat multitude still rotted in the feverous prisons. Then an ideatruly infernal presented itself to the mind of Nero. Were not thesemasses of human beings supposed to be expiating their crimes asincendiaries? But the proper and congruous punishment of incendiarieswas the _tunica molesta_, or robe of pitch. He wondered that he hadnever thought of it before! It would, indeed, be somewhat tame merelyto burn alive a certain number of people in succession. At firstthere might be an agreeable sense of curiosity in studying the facesof men and women in such circumstances, and in hearing their groansand cries. But after watching the first dozen or so, that pleasurewould grow monotonous. He determined to prevent the danger of anysatiety in the gratification by concentrating it all into one hourof multiplex and complicated agony.

  He possessed magnificent gardens, stretching from the Vatican Hill tothe Tiber. There was a circus, rich with gilding and marble, of whichthe _meta_ was the obelisk, brought from Heliopolis, now standing inthe piazza of St. Peter’s. He would throw open these gardens to thepublic, for one of the nightly spectacles of which he had copied thefashion from the mad Caligula. Every one should wander at will aboutthe green copses, and the umbrageous retreats, and he would furnishthem with an illumination unseen, unheard of, in the world’s historybefore or since. It should be the illumination of a thousand livingtorches, of which each should be a martyr in his shirt of flame!

  And it was done. Martyrdoms inflicted by wild beasts, and dogs, andgibbets, had become tedious from repetition. Here should be a newand intense sensation for himself, and for all Rome, for he would bepresent in person and enjoy to the full his hateful popularity. Atintervals, all along the paths, masts, strong and large, were drivendeep into the ground. To each of these was tied a man or a woman, whowere taken in throngs from the pestilential and now emptied prisons.Each was tied to the stake, and in front of each was put a smallerstake with a sharpened point, fixed under the chin, lest their headsshould sink on their breasts and baulk the festal sightseers fromgloating on the expression of their dying agonies. Hundreds of Nero’sslaves were at work, for the preparations had all to be begun manyhours before the dusk fell. The last thing which had to be done wasto saturate the robes of the martyrs with pitch and oil, and thento heap around the feet of each, as high as their waists, a massof straw and brushwood and shavings. These balefires were not to bekindled till it was dark, in order that the world of Rome might havecomplete enjoyment of the pageant and look in each other’s rejoicingfaces by the mighty blaze.

  But Onesimus had determined to do his utmost to save Nereus, ifnothing else was possible. Hanging about the gardens in the dressof a slave, he managed to gain admission by the connivance of aPrætorian whom he knew to be a secret Christian. Once inside theprecincts, he could easily escape detection among the hundreds whowere so busi
ly employed. Carrying now a stake, and now a bucket ofpitch, and now a heap of fuel, he hurried from place to place, ateach convenient moment whispering some bright message of cheer suchas St. Paul had taught him, and rewarded by grateful smiles fromthose who were so soon to undergo their awful fate. At last he sawNereus, who, happily for the young man’s purpose, had been fastenedto a stake at the end of one of the remoter alleys. Nereus, deepin prayer, and dead to the things of earth, did not recognise him,but started when he heard a voice whispering to him that he shouldattempt to secure his escape.

  ‘It is impossible,’ said Nereus. ‘I am more than ready to share thefate of my comrades, and to win their crown.’

  ‘Nay, father,’ said Onesimus, ‘think of Junia, who, if thou diest,will be left a helpless orphan in the world. I dare speak no more,but be ready to fly in one instant behind yonder shrine, if I am ableto set thee free.’

  Reconnoitring the ground, Onesimus observed that the green alleywhere Nereus was tied was close beside a wall. At no great distancebeyond the wall he knew that there was one of the corpse-pits intowhich were thrown the bodies of the poor. Gliding about, he saw onthe ground a basket containing a hammer and large nails. He snatchedit up, and, hid from observation behind the tangled masses of rankfoliage at the back of a shrine of Priapus, he drove the nails oneover the other between the huge disjointed stones, so as to makeit easy to climb the wall. Then he awaited his opportunity, whichhe knew would be when the crowd of more than a hundred thousandspectators pushed and crowded into the gardens, and the fires ofdeath began.

  He was right in all his calculations. A scene of tumultuousexcitement, and the hoarse murmur of innumerable voices, greetedthe almost simultaneous kindling of many of the stakes. At that verymoment, before the executioners had reached the end of the alley,Onesimus, gliding behind Nereus, cut his thongs, slipped the chainover his head, tore off the pitchy outer robe, and hurrying the oldman to the back of the shrine of Priapus, half dragged him up thewall, and took refuge in the dense gloom of a subterranean passagein the dreadful burial-place.

  The executioners noticed, of course, that one of their victimshad, by some strange unknown means, escaped; but it did not greatlyconcern them. One simply whispered to the other, ‘It will not beobserved. Let the poor cacodæmon get off. What matters it to us?’

  Meanwhile on every side the flames shot up around the stakes, andglared with hideous brightness, and sent up huge tongues of wavinglight, and each stake became a torch of hell, and black smoke swirledaround them, and groans and cries of anguish arose which were drownedin bursts of music and laughter and ribald songs. And all the whilethe moon was silvering the rich foliage, and the stars shone downwith peaceful rays over that revelry of hell, and the smoke and flamewere to those poor sufferers as chariots of fire and horses of fireto bear their souls to heaven. And while the agony and madness andhilarity were at their height, and the statues of obscene gods andlascivious nymphs, which glimmered from beneath the trees, lookedlike demons over whose faces the red glow flickered in smiles ofseeming ecstasy as they watched this triumph of demoniac wickedness--at this moment shouts of adulation arose, and Nero was seen, hisface wreathed in smiles, in the dress of a charioteer. With some ofhis basest creatures round him, he mingled familiarly with the mob,exchanged jokes with them, and stood peering with them into theghastly faces in which flickered longest the gleam of life.

  ‘What think you of these _sarmenticii_, these _semaxii_?’ he askedrepeatedly of the plebeian throng.

  ‘Call us “faggot-birds,” and “stake-fellows,”’ said one of themartyrs, who calmly awaited the rekindling of his stake from which,by some chance, the flame had expired. ‘These faggots with whichwe are burned, these stakes to which we are bound, are our robesof victory, our triumphant chariot.’[107]

  ‘Child of the Devil,’ exclaimed another, before his robe had caughtthe flames, ‘I would not, even at this moment, change my lot withthine.’

  ‘Antichrist,’ murmured another, ‘thine hour is nigh.’

  Nero shrank before the prophecy, but afterwards sprang upon hischariot, and seeking the applause which rose like a storm whereverhe appeared, drove his four horses round every part of the circus,and the broad paths of the gardens, until the last human torch hadflared out, and the multitude began to stream away.

  It was an amazing thing that pagan fathers and mothers should havetaken even their children to see such sights as these. But, inuredas they were to blood and anguish by the harrowing homicides of theamphitheatre, their hearts in these matters were ‘brazed by damnedcustom.’ And so it happened that a Roman knight named CorneliusTacitus had led his little son, a grave child of eight years old,to walk through the gardens of Nero on that awful night. He lookedon the scene with an impulse of childish pity, and asked his father‘whether these Christians had really set fire to Rome.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ said his father.

  ‘Why, then, are they burnt alive?’ he asked.

  ‘They are criminals,’ said the knight; ‘and they hate the whole humanrace. They are akin to the Jews, and it would be no bad thing for theEmpire if both of those accursed superstitions were destroyed.’

  The young Tacitus remembered and recorded the remark more than thirtyyears later, when he had become a great historian. He was influenced,too, by the conversation which he then heard between his father andthe friends who accompanied him. ‘These men,’ said one of them, ‘dieevery whit as bravely as the Stoics whom we so greatly admire.’ Butthe elder Tacitus would not admit the analogy. ‘In these Christians,’he said, ‘the contempt of death is mere custom, or madness, or sheerobstinacy.’

  Seneca, too, was in those gardens of the Vatican for a few moments,perplexed, horrified, miserable. The Emperor had commanded hispresence, as though it would lend some sanction to the carnival ofhorror. The agonising deaths of such a multitude were indeed, to him,a repulsive sight, but it was not so wholly unfamiliar as to harrowhis feelings to their depths. What struck him most, and what he hasdwelt upon in his obvious allusions to this monstrous execution, wasthe inexplicable fortitude, the unflinching heroism, shown, not bynobles and philosophers, but by slaves, and women, and boys, and thevery dregs of the populace. He pondered in vain over that disturbingproblem.[108]

  * * * * *

  Before an hour had passed, the stakes stood charred and black, andunderneath them were horrible heaps of death, still keeping someawful semblance of humanity; and the smoke curled and writhed aboutthem, and streams of the melted and bubbling pitch quivered withsmall blue flames, or left black furrows on the burnt grass or thetrampled sand.

  And thus amid foul laughter the martyrs had died whose lives alonewere innocent, who alone loved one another and all mankind. And themoon still shed her soft lustre on the scene, and the stars lookeddown through the untroubled night, and lighted home the myriads whoseconsciences, seared as with hot iron, smote them in no wise for theirshare in that crime--the vilest in the long annals of the world’svilest days.

  The numerous and flourishing Church of Rome was all but destroyed;yet on that night the seed of her mighty power in the developmentof Christianity was sown afresh. Watered by the blood of the martyrs,that seed sprang into more vigorous[*18] life, and rushing sunwards,spread forth arms laden with fruit and foliage, and grew into agiant bole, strong with the rings of a thousand summers, under whoseshadows and ‘complicated glooms and cool impleachèd twilights,’the hopes and fears of generations found their refuge--yea! andshall find it for evermore, unless it be severed from the root, andblighted into barrenness, and the axe be uplifted and the doom goforth, ‘Never fruit grow upon thee more!’

  And the obelisk which witnessed that night of abomination, and whichis now dedicated ‘To the Unknown Martyrs,’ still towers into theclear air, and on it is inscribed--

  ‘CHRISTUS REGNAT: FUGITE PARTES ADVERSÆ.’

  And over the ground with its groves and gardens where they perished--those nameless heroes, those n
ameless demigods--rose the vastcathedral to the honour of the Christ for whom they died; and roundits dome is written in huge golden letters the name of the Apostlewho fell first before the wild beast’s wrath:--‘I say unto thee, Thouart PETER, and on this rock will I build My Church.’