by F. W. Farrar
CHAPTER LXVI
_L’ENVOI_
‘Many kings have sat down upon the ground, and one that was never thought of hath worn the crown.’--Ecclus. xi. 5.
‘All is best, though we oft doubt What the unsearchable dispose Of highest wisdom brings about, And ever best found in the close.’
_Samson Agonistes._
But little remains to be said; for, unless the writer has entirelyfailed of his purpose, the history of the preceding pages has told,and the fiction has illustrated, the truths which it was his objectto set forth. We have seen something of what Paganism had become inthe days of the Empire, and of what Christianity was in its life,and motives, and purposes. The contrast between the two gives us thesecret why Christianity was destined to grow from that tiny grain ofmustard-seed to a great tree, under whose shadow the nations of theworld should rest.
But the reader may perhaps care to learn what was the future of thosewho played their little hour on the stage of life and have appearedin these pages. It is characteristic of that age of trouble andrebuke and blasphemy, in which the sun and the moon were darkenedand the stars of heaven shaken, that many of the great and mighty andrich hardly looked for any other death than the steep declivities ofmurder and suicide. Heathendom had grown to a monster which, like thedecrepit Saturn, devoured its own offspring. Those whom we usheredinto the reader’s presence at the beginning of this book had nearlyall been swept away by violent deaths before the period at whichit closes. We have seen the murders of Claudius, of Agrippina, ofBritannicus, of Octavia, in that Palace thronged with the ghosts ofcrime. We have stood by the dreary deathbed of the honest and manlyBurrus, and by Corbulo when he fell on his own sword, and by Poppæawhen she passed away in agony, her husband’s victim. We have seen theshameful end of Lucan and of Mela; the terrible disillusionment andsuicides of Gallio and of Seneca. We know how Pætus Thrasea died, andhow the great nobles--the Silani, and Sulla, and Rubellius Plautus,and Antistius Vetus, and Ostorius Scapula, and Piso, and that hostof conspirators--met their doom. Vice, and the favour of the Emperor,proved no protection to such gay courtiers as Tullius Senecio andCæcina Tuscus; nor genius and refined Epicureanism to PetroniusArbiter; nor beauty and talent to poor handsome Paris. The viciousas well as the virtuous were often mingled in indiscriminate ruin.Of the guests whom we saw assembled at the Villa Castor, and towhose conversation we have listened as they gathered round the citrontables of Nero and Otho, the majority met with a miserable doom.With the exception of the family of Seneca, the literary men escapedfairly well. Persius died young, and by a natural death. The elderPliny, who was a successor of Anicetus in the office of Admiralat Misenum, perished of the scientific curiosity which led him towatch too closely from the Liburnian galleys of his fleet the greateruption of Vesuvius, which destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii inA.D. 79. Martial grew up to disgrace himself by shameful epigrams,to practise the arts of a fawning parasite to ‘his lord and his god,’the vile Domitian, and at last to marry a rich wife, and retire toSpain with the memories of talents wasted, for the most part, overthings vain and vile.
The philosophers were scattered and banished. Musonius Rufus, whomDemetrius the Cynic saw at work as a common labourer on the Isthmusof Corinth, was recalled by Galba, and honoured by Vespasian. He hadthe satisfaction of bringing to justice the infamous Publius EgnatiusCeler, who had caused the murder of Barea Soranus and his daughter.Cornutus, who carried to the grave his sorrow for his bright youngpupil, Persius, was banished in the last year of Nero’s reign, and wehear of him no more. Demetrius the Cynic was banished by Vespasian.The Emperor passed him after his condemnation, and Demetrius,deigning neither to rise nor salute him, broke into open abuse; butVespasian was not cruel, and took no further revenge than to utterthe one word ‘Dog!’
The freedmen, too, were swept away one after another, Narcissus waspoisoned by the order of Agrippina; Pallas and Doryphorus by theorder of Nero. Epaphroditus was put to death by Domitian for havinghelped Nero to drive into his own throat the fatal dagger-thrust.Sporus--miserable victim of an evil age--had urged Nero to show onetouch of manliness, and dare to die. Not long afterwards he, too,died by his own hands, rather than submit to that degradation ofappearing on the stage which Nero had so often done and so eagerlydesired to do. Helius, Polycletus, Patrobius, and others, werecondemned and put to death by Galba, after having been led throughthe streets in chains. Spicillus, the favourite gladiator of Nero,was tied to one of his statues and crushed to death by it; Locustadied a death of infamy amid intense and universal rejoicing.
The informers met, for the most part, the fate that they deserved.Under previous emperors they had been--it is the comparison used bySeneca--like dogs whom their patrons fed with human flesh.[122] Theycut men’s throats with a whisper. A joke, a sarcasm, the babble ofa drunkard, the confidential remark of private intercourse, the mostcasual and unpremeditated reflection--nay, even a careless gesturebefore the dumb image of the Emperor--might become, in their hands,an engine of destruction. They could earn one-fourth of the spoilsby accusing a man either for something which he did, or for somethingwhich he did not do. Upon this evil gang of scoundrels, the worstcurse of that day, Titus laid his heavy hand. He ordered the vilestof them to be beaten with rods in the Forum, to be dragged round theAmphitheatre, to be sold as slaves, to be deported to the rockiestand most desolate islands.
EPICTETUS, who had been sold as an infant from his cradle inHierapolis, and whom we have heard talking to Titus and Britannicusin the days when he was the little slave of Epaphroditus, livedto bequeath to the world the legacy of thoughts purer and sweeterthan any which we have received from classical antiquity, withthe exception of those uttered by Marcus Aurelius, that ‘brightconsummate flower’ of pagan morality. Those thoughts seem to absorband to reflect the auroral glow of Christianity,[*19] and could neverhave been attained by a Pagan if Christianity had not been in theair. Epictetus was so poor that his sole possession was a smalllamp--and even that was stolen from him! His virtue and politicalinsignificance, his plain living and high thinking, did not save himfrom banishment. He retired to Nicopolis (where the Apostle Paul hadspent his last winter), and there
‘taught Arrian, when Vespasian’s brutal son Cleared Rome of what most shamed him.’
And when he ended his peaceful life of obscurity and self-denial inextreme old age, he deserved the epitaph, ‘I, Epictetus, was a slave,and lame, and a pauper, and dear to the Immortals.’
And did vengeance suffer such wretches as Nymphidius Sabinus andTIGELLINUS to escape? After crimes so many and so heinous, didthey come to a good end? The traitor Nymphidius, after a futileand impudent attempt to secure the Empire for himself, was murderedby his own Prætorians. He dragged down with him to destruction thefierce Cingonius Varro, who had written an oration which Nymphidiuswas to pronounce to the soldiers. Tigellinus, indeed, was strangelyprotected by Nero’s old and miserly successor when the clamour ofthe people demanded his life as an expiation for his crimes. Heescaped by giving enormous bribes to Titus Vinius, Galba’s legate,and priceless gems to his daughter Crispina. But to him also asto all, ‘punishment was but another name for guilt, taken a littlelower down the stream,’ and vengeance in due time fell upon him,and suffered him not to live. After a vain attempt to bribe hisexecutioners, he committed suicide at Sinuessa amid a coarseand brutal orgy, which reads like a parody upon the death ofPetronius Arbiter. It was a death exceptionally squalid, vile,and agonising--fit end for a traitor, a coward, a villain of thedeepest dye.
As for the succeeding Emperors, the spasm of their brief elevationwas marked by universal horrors--wars, and rumours of wars, andmassacres, and civil conflicts; nation rising against nation, kingdomagainst kingdom, plagues and famines and earthquakes in diversplaces. There was, as Christ had warned His disciples, greattribulation, such as had not been since the beginning of the earth,no nor shall be. These things were the beginning of troubles. Theepoch is so describe
d on the sacred page, and the best comment onthose Christian prophesies is furnished by the dreary summary of thegreatest of pagan historians.
And amid all these calamities and this unbelief, as the lightningcometh from the east and shineth even to the west, the sign wasseen in heaven of the Son of Man coming in power and great glory.Against the old dispensation and the old world the doom visibly wentforth. The abomination of desolation--the desolating wing of Rome’sabominable eagle--was seen in the Holy Place. The marble floors ofthe Temple of Jerusalem swam in blood. Zealots laid their gory andbrutal hands on the holiest things. Priests, gaunt with famine, wereseen leaping madly into the flames kindled upon the altars. The goldwhich overlaid the cedarwork ran molten through the hissing stream ofthe carnage of its defenders, and the Holiest Place sank into heapsof ghastly ruin to have its site defiled with swinish offerings andpagan shrines. The Temple was doomed to annihilation, because it wasthe centre and type of an inferior and abrogated worship. And thesame year which saw this visible abrogation of Judaism and all itspompous ineffectuality of ceremonies and sacrifices, saw also thegreat temple of the Capitoline Jupiter reduced to ashes in the fiercefaction-fight between Sabinus, the elder brother of Vespasian, andthe partisans of Vitellius. Thus, within a few months, the chiefshrines of the Jew and the Pagan were polluted with massacre, andflung high into the air their flaming signals of the new faith whichwas to dominate the world. Their destruction was a beacon-lightof the coming fulfilment of the old and awful prophecy, ‘I willoverturn, overturn, overturn, saith the Lord, till He come whoseright it is.’
The three shadowy Emperors who followed Nero passed away within afew months, like phantoms, in defeat and shame. GALBA--old, prosaic,unattractive, niggardly, with his feet so gouty that he couldnot wear a shoe, and his hands so gouty that he could not holdup a book--had disgusted Rome before six months were over, and wasbutchered in the streets. His body was left lying where it fell tilla common soldier, returning from harvesting, flung down his corn,cut off Galba’s head, and, since there was no hair to hold it by,first hid it in his bosom, and then brought it to Otho with horribleindignities. OTHO, hurried to imperial dignity by his freedman anda score of soldiers, was Emperor for ninety-five days, and then wastotally defeated by the German legions of Vitellius at the bloodybattle of Bedriacum. It happened that one of the legionaries hadbrought evil tidings, and, being treated partly as a liar and partlyas a coward who had fled from battle[*20] drew his sword, and,stabbing himself, fell dead at Otho’s feet. Otho shuddered andrecoiled at the sight. ‘Men so brave, men so well-deserving,’ heexclaimed, ‘shall not be further imperilled on my account.’ He mightstill have held out; he might still have been victorious; but at theage of thirty-seven he had seen enough of life. He had drained tothe dregs the cup of its unsatisfying pleasures; he had discountedits hopes and fears. He wrote some kindly letters; divided among hisservants what he had at hand; pardoned some deserters; saw any onewho wished to see him; and then, hiding a dagger under his pillow,closed the doors and fell fast asleep. He awoke at dawn, and with oneblow drove the dagger into his heart. He felt his own total unfitnessfor Empire. ?? ??? ??? ??? ??????? ??????? ‘_What have I to do withlong flutes?_’ he was often heard to murmur to himself. Voluptuous,unheroic, this ‘sweet and impudent creature’ had, at one time, beenmore at home in the rites of the Bona Dea than among the banners ofthe legions. He was half inclined to fancy that he was one of thosewho are raised to power by a jest of fortune;--but he had beensobered a little by responsibility, and there was a touch of gracein the courage of his end.
His successor, VITELLIUS, the yet more infamous son of an infamousfather, after a reign of seven months, chiefly noticeable for itsdrunkenness and voracity, was murdered in the streets with everyexpression of contumely. His body, pierced with multitudes of slightwounds, was first flung down the Gemonian steps, and then draggedthrough the streets by a hook, and flung into the Tiber.
The good plebeian, VESPASIAN, inaugurated a respite of simplermanners and better days, in which Rome and its society returnedto decency and good sense. A man of robust commonplace and kindlyinstincts, he won the Romans by his honesty and rough wit. When theConsular Menstrius Florus corrected his pronunciation (as Kemble didthat of George III.) and told him that he ought not to say _plostra_(wagons) but _plaustra_, he only resented the impertinence whenhe met him the next day by addressing him, not as _Florus_, but as_Flaurus_ (???????), or ‘not worth much.’ When a youth came, reekingwith perfume, to thank him for an appointment to the Prætorship,Vespasian, with a frown of disgust, said, ‘I would have preferredthat you smelt of garlic,’ and cancelled the dandy’s office. Tolerantand fearless, he resented no injuries, and ruled for ten yearswithout making an enemy. Too sensible, and with a conscience too muchat ease, for superstitious fears, when a comet was pointed out tohim as portentous, he said--alluding to the Roman expression ‘a hairystar’--that, ‘it could not refer to a bald person like himself, butto the King of the Parthians, who had long hair!’ When he felt thefirst touch of mortal illness, he observed, with a jest at the follyof senatorial _apotheosis_, ‘I think I am becoming a god.’ He wascharged, indeed, with avarice, and the story was told that, wheninformed of a colossal statue which was to be reared to him atthe public expense, he held out the hollow of his hand as thoughfor the money, and said, ‘The pedestal is ready.’ But, if he wasparsimonious, it was for the public good, and he returned fromthe proconsulate of Africa so poor that he had to mortgage all hispossessions to his brother Sabinus. A thorough man of business, hewas indifferent to parade and pomp. Napoleon I. was probably but halfsincere when, on his return from the magnificences of his coronation,he flung his gorgeous robes into the corner, and said that ‘he hadnever spent so tedious a day in his life;’ but Vespasian was quitein earnest when, on the day of his great Judæan triumph, he foundthe procession so tardy and tedious that he called himself ‘an oldfool who had been deservedly punished for his silly vanity.’
And what shall we say of TITUS, who has played a considerable partin our earlier pages? A Marcus Aurelius he was not; nor did he knockat the door of truth so earnestly or sit at the feet of virtue sohumbly as did that saintly heathen. Yet there was an infinite charmabout him. He was a man of fine presence, of dignified yet winningdemeanour, endowed with great personal strength and tenacious memory,eloquent, poetic, accomplished, a splendid rider, a fine swordsman,a patient and skilful general, a soldier of unflinching personalbravery. Josephus is constantly telling us of his firmness, hispity, his stern discipline, his splendid bravery. Again and again heexposed his person as freely as the commonest soldier in his ranks.Again and again he extricated himself from personal peril, and hislegions from imminent defeat, with a strength which was unequalled,and a prowess which was contagious. At the siege of Jerusalem heconstantly rode near the walls, and on one occasion shot down twelveof its defenders with twelve consecutive arrows. Amid all his heroiclabours and anxious responsibilities he lost none of the fascinationof his youth. When he left the Province to visit his father,the soldiers, who had already saluted him Emperor, demanded withsupplications, and almost with threats, that he would either stayor take them with him. Unjustly suspected of a disloyal intentionto found for himself an Eastern kingdom, he hurried to Rhegium, andthence to Puteoli with the utmost possible speed; and when he reachedRome, bursting into his father’s presence, as though to confute thecalumny, he embraced him with the touching cry, ‘_I have come, myfather, I have come_!’ He did not escape the sins and temptationsof his youth, and his passionate love for Berenice, which she aspassionately returned, involved him in discredit. But while he wasstill the support of his father’s throne, he gave proofs of hisfaithfulness and self-control, and if he had been guilty of thefaults which scandal charges upon him, the change which came over himwhen he was summoned to the purple was greater than the traditionalchange of our own hero-king, Henry V. As an Emperor, no vice wasvisible in him, but many supreme virtues. Deeply as he was attachedto Berenice, he dismissed her from th
e city because Rome condemnedan amour which would have been held venial and almost innocent ina Nero or a Domitian. He became chaste and self-controlled, full ofmunificence, entirely free from avarice. Gracious and generous toall, he acted on the rule ‘_that no one should leave the Emperor’spresence with a gloomy brow_.’ His famous saying, ‘_Friends, I havelost a day_,’ was spoken when, at supper-time, he was unable torecall a favour conferred on any one since morning. He courted thegoodwill of the people, but without base concessions. Desirous asPontifex Maximus to keep his hands unstained by the blood of theinnocent, he declared ‘that he would rather perish than destroy.’Nothing was more touching than the forgiving lenity with which hetolerated the plots and hatred of his execrable brother, Domitian.Aware of his wicked designs, he only took him aside secretly, andbegged him with tears to act as a brother should. A deep misgivingoppressed his soul. At the end of the games which he had displayed tothe people, he wept abundantly, and, oppressed by evil omens, startedfor his Sabine farm, full of grief. Stricken down with fever beforehe reached his home, he drew back the curtains of his litter, andlooking heavenwards, he murmured, ‘I do not deserve that my lifeshould be thus cut short, nor have I done any deed to be repentedof, except one.’ What that one sin was he did not reveal, and no onecould conjecture. He died in the same homely villa as his father,and, though he had only reigned two years and three months, in thatbrief time he had earned an affection which expressed itself in agenuine outburst of eulogy and regret, and which won for him thetitle of ‘the darling of the human race.’ But how vain a thing isglory! On the Arch of Titus the hero is represented being borneheavenward by an eagle with outspread wings. Vain triumphs! Vainand profane apotheosis! Little did it avail him to have won thepassionate affection of his subjects! There is something infinitelysad in his shortened days and his brief tenure of power. It isonly too probable that he fell a victim to the machinations of hisbrother, and died by poison secretly administered. And Destiny--let us say rather the will of God, of which he was the instrument--forced him, against his own wish, to be the exterminator of thecity and--had extermination been possible--of the nationality ofthe chosen people. To them the darling of the human race is Titus_ha-Rashang_, ‘Titus the Wicked.’ They fable how, when he boastedthat he had escaped vengeance, after escaping from a storm at sea,God sent a tiny gnat, which crept up his nostril into his brain. Onhis brain it fed, and caused him, day and night excruciating agonies.Finding once that it ceased to gnaw for an instant on hearing thebanging of an anvil, he had an anvil constantly banged with a hugehammer at his side. But the creature soon became accustomed to thesound! When Titus died, it was taken out of his brain, and found tobe of the size of a bird, and to be furnished with a beak and clawsof iron. Such is the torment which hatred devised for the best ofthe Twelve Cæsars, and the best but one or two of all the Emperorsfor three hundred years. But the sad truth is that, apart from suchfrenetic imaginations, the last years of the life of Titus were fullof anxiety and disquietude, for which he did not find in a soundingphilosophy the alleviation which he would have found abundantly in ahumble faith.
With DOMITIAN we have happily been less concerned. How such a mixtureof depravity and savageness, of falsity and ingratitude can havesprung from the virtuous union which also produced a Titus, is amystery of atavism. But at last the dagger of Stephanus struck himdown, and a better phase of the Empire was renewed. Rome gauged hischaracter right when she nicknamed him ‘the bald Nero.’
Of the Jews whom we have introduced, ISHMAEL BEN PHABI vanishes intoobscurity. He lives, however, in the energetic curse which the Talmudpronounces upon family after family of the priests of that epoch. Heoccurs in the line which denounces the violence of himself and hissons: ‘Woe to the family of Ishmael Ben Phabi! woe to their fists!...Their servants strike the people with their rods!’
JOSEPHUS became the devoted creature of the Flavian dynasty. Bytimely prophecies he managed to secure the favour of Vespasian andTitus, as he had won their admiration by his genius and courage. Heplayed his difficult part with consummate astuteness, and securedhis safety in spite of the execration of the Jews and the suspicionof the Romans. But what shall we say of a man who, in spite of hisboasted patriotism, could, after being an eyewitness of the long,slow agony of his country’s dissolution, be a guest of the Romansduring the games in which hundreds of his miserable fellow-countrymenperished in the amphitheatre?--of a man who could commemoratewithout a pang the unequalled splendour of the triumph at Rome,when Vespasian and Titus, robed in purple and silk and crownedwith laurel, sat in their chariots amid rivers of splendid spoils,and Domitian rode a gallant war-horse by their side, and SimonBar-Gioras, after cruel insults, was led aside at the foot of theCapitol to be strangled in the Tullian Vault? Judæa Captiva weptunder her palm-tree, desolate, broken-hearted, with her hair abouther ears, and the famous Arch of Triumph was built which stillshows the golden candlestick, and table of shewbread, and vessels ofincense--beneath which it is said that no Jew will walk, because evenin a strange land they remember thee, O Zion! But the sleek priestand warrior who had been selected as one of the defenders of hiscountry, accepted an assignment of land from devastated territoriesof his native country; inhabited a suite of rooms in Vespasian’sown house; and continued to live in the sunlight of court favour,not only under Titus, but also under Domitian. And then, not bymartyrdom, not as a patriot, but as the pensioned favourite of thosewho had massacred his countrymen and destroyed the tombs and city ofhis fathers, he died, and went to his own place, leaving behind him,even in the light of his own falsified records, an ignoble anddishonoured name.
KING AGRIPPA II., after a considerable portion of his domains hadbeen reduced to a desert, lived also in Rome, as a titular king, anddied, at the age of seventy, in the reign of Trajan--the last princeof the House of Herod. Happy had it been for him if St. Paul had, notalmost, but altogether persuaded him to be a Christian. He languishedon, wealthy and despised, with Josephus as his bosom friend. It mighthave been said of him, in the language of the Prophet: ‘All the kingsof the nations, all of them, sleep in glory, every one in his ownhouse. But thou art cast away from thy sepulchre, like an abominablebranch.... Thou shalt not be joined with them in burial, because thouhast destroyed thy land, thou hast slain thy people.’
BERENICE, the widow of two kings, was no longer young when she wonVespasian by her splendid presents, and Titus by her Eastern beautyand fascination. But he listened to the voice of duty when hedismissed her from Rome, and when she returned he avoided seeingher. She, too, vanished into the darkness, and died we know not when.
ALITURUS, no longer the apostate Jew, but the humble Christian,found it, of course, impossible to play any longer the part ofthe favourite pantomime of the Roman stage. He loathed the thoughtof ever again wearing his motley before the grinning and degradedpopulace. He would fain have aided the struggling Church of Rome,but there was nothing that he could do; and the presence of onewhose person was so well known would only imperil the gatherings ofthat handful of slaves and artisans in the catacombs. The Christiansthemselves advised him to leave the city, which he could notdissociate from his dead past. He sold his house in Rome, and hisvilla in the suburbs, and, leaving a large sum in the hands of Cletusto help his flock, he sailed for Palestine, receiving before hestarted the blessing of Paul the prisoner, and carrying with himletters of commendation from the Beloved Disciple to Simeon andothers of the Desposyni, or ‘relations of the Lord.’ These lettersneither revealed his real name, which he had changed to Amandus, norhis past history, which might have created an invincible prejudice;but certified that he had been converted to the faith, and was nowa brother, faithful and beloved. He freely gave of his wealth to thedestitute, and was of great service to a church pre-eminently poor.
And, remaining in Jerusalem, he was an eye-witness of all that horridsiege, in which a nation overwhelmed with unutterable calamities,intensified by their own unutterable guilt, sighed in vain to see oneof the days of the Son of Man. Joining t
he moderate party, he did hislittle best to counteract the overweening tyranny of John of Giscala.He witnessed the slaughter committed by the Idumeans, when they hadbeen invited into the city. He saw the insults heaped on the corpseof the murdered High Priest Hanan; and the martyrdom of Zechariah,the son of Baruch, in the middle of the Temple; and the High PriestMatthias murdered by Simon Bar-Gioras, after his three sons had beenslain before his eyes. He heard the roar of internecine conflict,when three sections of fanatics fought furiously against each other.Day by day he was agonised by the inconceivable miseries of thestarving and maddened people. He saw the granaries madly burnt incivil discords; the marble floor of the sanctuary wet with footstepsdipped in blood; the gore of worshippers slain by the hurtlingengines of zealots, mingling with the blood of the sacrifices; thedeserters sent back with their hands cut off, or ripped open tosearch for the gold which they had swallowed, or crucified outsidethe city-walls, till wood failed for the crosses, and crosses forthe bodies; the streets and houses full only of the corpses ofthose whom famine had slain; the horrible disorders of rampantlicentiousness, which were the expression of blasphemous despair.He saw Martha, the daughter of the wealthy Gamaliel, trying to pickgrains for food from the ordure of the streets; he saw the miserablemother who, in the pangs of hunger, roasted and devoured her ownchild. He heard the incessant thunder of the battering-rams uponthe walls, and the whizz of the dazzling stones hurled from thecatapults, and the monotonous cry of the poor scourged maniacwandering about day and night with the wail: ‘_A voice from theEast, a voice from the West, a voice from the four winds! Woe, woeto Jerusalem, and to the people, and to the Holy House!_’ He heardJosephus and Titus pleading with the frantic people, and the falseprophets deluding them. He heard the crash of the falling cloisterwhich buried six thousand men, women, and children under its ruins,and the roaring of the flames, and the groans of the wounded, andthe shout of the victors, and the despairing yell of the defeated. Hesaw the priests tearing the gilded spikes from the Temple roof, andhurling them down upon the Romans. In spite of the strong effortsof Titus--under the urgent entreaties of Agrippa and Josephus--tospare the Temple, he saw a Roman soldier, as though inspired by somedivine fury, snatch up a burning brand, and spring upon the back ofa comrade, and hurl his torch through the golden window of one ofthe chambers which surrounded the Holiest Place; and then, when theflames burst out on every side, he saw the whole Temple hill assumethe aspect of a great bellowing volcano stored with fire, while amidthe upheaped corpses the blood, streaming in rivers from fresh wounds,hissed and bubbled as though it would almost have quenched the flames.He saw something of that awfully desperate struggle of madness andfury,
‘When through the cedarn courts, and gates of gold, The trampled ranks in miry carnage rolled. To save their Temple every hand essayed, And with cold fingers clutched the feeble blade; Through their torn veins reviving fury ran, And life’s last anger warmed the dying man.’
And how his life was preserved--famine-stricken, wounded, horrified,daily imperilled as he was in that circle of fire in which thescorpions of religious faction madly stung each other to death--henever knew. From April 10, A.D. 70, when Titus pitched his camp nearJerusalem, till July 17, when, for the first time, the perpetualsacrifice ceased, for lack of priests to offer it--and on till August10, when the Holiest sank in flames, and the Roman soldiers adoredtheir idolatrous ensigns in its blackened area--and onwards tillSeptember 8, when all resistance ended, Aliturus had scarcelyknown one day which was not full of terror and misery. In the finalindiscriminate slaughter of the captured city he was selected as oneof the seven hundred youths, conspicuous for size and beauty, whowere destined to grace the triumph of Vespasian and Titus. But hesought an interview with Josephus and the astonished Titus, and whenhe revealed to them his identity[*21] and convinced them that his onedesire had been to win the Jews to counsels of moderation, and to dogood works among the miserable, he was set free, and large presentswere given to him, and he was suffered to go whither he would.
He could not return to Jerusalem, for Jerusalem was no more, and onthe Jews had fallen their own awful imprecation--‘His blood be onus and on our children!’ He went to Pella, whither the Church ofJerusalem had, so to speak, fled into the wilderness. With theChristians there he abode for some time, and then he visitedSt. John at Ephesus, and Onesimus at Hierapolis. The memories of hisown country had been too striking and oppressive, and the brilliantfavourite of the Roman populace died at Hierapolis, a beloved butobscure presbyter of its happy church.
The persecutions of the Christians continued intermittently for threecenturies, and the rhythmic cry--the double _antispastus, Chr?st??n?s?d l??n?s_--rang through the amphitheatre of many a pagan city.But the church grew and flourished and shone in the world like thatVision of the Apocalypse--a woman clothed with the sun, the moonbeneath her feet, and a crown of twelve stars upon her head. TheChurch of Rome rose from her ashes, and in many a seven-times-heatedflame of affliction there stood beside her One like unto the Son ofMan.
When LINUS died, Cletus succeeded him as the third ‘Pope’ of Rome--although that title was not given to the humble presbyter-bishopsof the struggling community for more than two centuries, and notformally adopted by them till about A.D. 400. Cletus was succeeded byClement. Of the first thirty Popes it is said by Christian traditionthat all but two were martyrs. The blood of those martyrs was theseed of the Church. That Church had been consumed to ashes, and,rising from her ashes, soared heavenwards, first waveringly, thensteadily, at last with supreme dominion, ‘reflecting the sunlightfrom every glancing plume.’
HERMAS, having been made a freedman by Octavia, set up in trade, andmarried. But he was unfortunate. In one of the later persecutionsunder Domitian he was betrayed to the informers by his own sons.He escaped with his life; and in the reign of Nerva he, with othervictims of the cruel Flavian Emperor, received lands in lieu of thegoods of which he had been despoiled. He cultivated his little farmin peace, and lived to write the celebrated ‘Shepherd,’ which somehave described as ‘a fusionless screed of dry morality,’ and some asa dull novel, but which may be called ‘the “Pilgrim’s Progress” ofthe Early Church.’ Simple as it is, it was so well suited to the daysin which it was written that it was read in the churches, and almostattained the dignity of Scripture.
PUDENS and CLAUDIA made their permanent home in Britain. They foundit a more congenial residence for Christians than bloodstained Rome,and by the beauty of their lives, as well as by their teaching, theyescaped the hostility of the Druids, and founded a Church in theirhouse, and in the city of Noviomagus, where they chiefly lived. Theyacquired a deep affection for ‘the isle of blossoming woodlands, isleof silvery parapets,’ which they adopted as their own, in spite ofthe courteous invitation of Titus, who urged them to return to Rome.And sometimes Pudens thought that there must be a prescience inthe British prophecy which their friend Laureatus, the Latin poet ofVectis, had turned into galliambics from the wild songs which firedthe patriotism of the host of Boadicea, and which said--
‘Though the Roman eagle shadow thee, though the gathering enemy harrow thee, Thou shalt wax and he shall dwindle, thou shalt be the mighty one yet; Thine the liberty, thine the glory, thine the deeds to be celebrated; Thine the myriad-rolling ocean, light and shadow illimitable, Thine the lands of lasting summer, many-blossoming Paradises, Thine the North, and thine the South, and thine the battle-thunder of God.’
The old king CARADOC lived with them for a time in the charmingvilla which they had built. He had fancied at first that, afterthe disgrace of defeat and betrayal, he would never be able to showhis face among the warlike Silures whom he had led to victory. ButChristianity softened his soul. He received a warm welcome from manyof his friends and former subjects, and it was no little due to hisconversion and his teaching that Christianity secured a footing amongthe Cymry long before its truths had been accepted in other portionsof the British Isles.
The close of the life of ONESIMUS was as peaceful as its youthfulyears had been full of trouble and storm. After the martyrdom ofthe Apostle Paul, and the all-but-extinction of the Church in Rome,he proposed that Nereus, and Junia, who was now united to him inholy wedlock, should leave Aricia, and, with the means which theypossessed, should establish a new home in his native Thyatira,or in Hierapolis, or in Ephesus. Nereus gladly consented, for thegloom and loneliness of Aricia weighed upon his spirits, and he washaunted by the thoughts of the agonies which he had witnessed in theimprisonment and death of his brethren at Rome. Before they started,Onesimus sought a secret interview with his cousin and foster-sisterACTE. He found her still living in the Golden House, but profoundlyuncertain about the future. She had bathed the mangled corpse ofNero with her tears; she had adorned his grave with flowers; she hadventured even to pray for his soul. To her he was not the monsterinto which he developed, but still the youth who had loved her, andwhom she had loved. But now, amid the terrible scenes which Rome waswitnessing, and seemed likely long to witness in the fierce strugglesof rival generals for power, her life was anxious. Apart from theobvious perils which might befall her in the hands of such wretchesas Nymphidius and Tigellinus, she had long desired to escapefrom that city of Circean splendour. Eagerly she offered Onesimusto accompany him, and told him that now she, like himself, was abaptised Christian. She resumed her old name of Eunice, which shehad borne as a child before the evil days of Rome, and she had wealthsufficient to maintain them all.
Her preparations were made secretly, with the aid of the Christianslaves in Cæsar’s household. She sold her jewels, and, taking much ofher property with her, sailed with Onesimus and his wife and Nereusto Ephesus. They fixed their home at Hierapolis, where they couldenjoy the teaching of the Deacon Philip, and where ACTE, gladlyserving as a deaconess of the little Church, gave all her goods tothe poor, and lived in happy friendship with the virgin daughtersof the Evangelist. The children of Onesimus and Junia owed much toher kindly nurture and teaching. In due time Onesimus himself wasordained to the ministry, and became in later years a bishop of theChurch of Ephesus. There, when he was quite an old man, in the yearA.D. 107, he met the martyr Ignatius of Antioch, when he was beingconducted to his martyrdom in the Colosseum by the decuria ofsoldiers whom he calls ‘his ten leopards.’ He showed the greatestkindness to the holy martyr, who, in his letter to the Ephesians,gratefully commemorates the ‘inexpressible love’ which Onesimus hadmanifested towards him. Some say that he, too, suffered martyrdom atEphesus, after a long life and many happy years.
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And now that Judaism had been utterly crushed, Paganism again andagain wrestled with Christianity, and put forth all its force. Itstrove to rival the new faith by ritual splendour and orgiasticrites, and ‘the extreme sensuality of superstition.’[*22] It stroveto put forth Pythagoras, or Socrates, or Apollonius of Tyana asparallels to Christ; and Stoicism and Neo-Platonism as substitutesfor the truths of the Gospel. It kindled its expiring lamps with‘sparks from the incorruptible fountain of wisdom,’ and turned itsback on the Sun of Righteousness, from which they were derived. Ittried all that sneers and banter could do in the writings of thePseudo-Lucian, and all the power and passion of argument in the booksof Porphyry, Hierocles, and Celsus. Waging deadly war against all whocalled themselves Christians, it tried to burn them at its stakes,to crucify them on its countless gibbets, to devour them by its herdsof wild beasts, at least to daunt them by its horrible tortures. Onevery field Christians met and conquered them with the two sacredand invincible weapons of martyrdom and innocence. The Churchescaped from and soared out of their reach on ‘the two great wings ofpureness and kindness,’ and so ‘by the unresistable might of weaknessshook the world.’ The Christians refuted the arguments urged againstthem; they turned the edge of the jeers; they exposed the feeblenessof the philosophers who wrote to denounce them. Meekly enduring thetortures devised against them ‘they stood safe’ (as said their martyrCyprian); ‘stronger than their conquerors, the beaten and laceratedmembers conquered the beating and lacerating hooks.’ These obscureSectaries--barbarians, Orientals, Jews, slaves, artisans--foughtagainst the indignant world, and won. And when they had won, andin proportion as they won, they ennobled and purified the world.Wrestling with the pagan curse of corruption they made pure thehomes, and the conversation, and the amusements, and the literature,and the inmost hearts of all who faithfully accepted the truthsthey preached. Wrestling with the curse of cruelty they suppressedinfanticide, they sanctified compassion, they put down the crueland ghastly scenes of human slaughter in the amphitheatre, they madethe wretched and the sick and the outcast their special care, ‘theyencircled the brow of sorrow with the aureole of sanctity.’ Wrestlingwith the curses of slavery and selfish exclusiveness they taughtthe inalienable rights of humanity, they confronted tyranny, theyinspired nations with the spirit of liberty, they flung over theoppressed a shield of adamant, they taught that all men are thechildren of God. Intellectually, socially, politically, in nationallife and in individual life, in art and in literature, Christianityhas inspired all that the world has seen of best and noblest, andstill offers to the soul of every man the purest hope, the divinestcomfort, the loftiest aspirations. To talk of ‘the crimes ofChristianity’ is a preposterous paradox. There is not one evilthought that can be thought, not one evil deed that can be done,which is not utterly alien from its true spirit. Crimes, indeed,without number have been committed in its name. Kings, andpriests, and peoples have misinterpreted its documents, forged itscommissions, falsified the image and superscription of its currentcoins, while ‘swarms of vile creatures have made it an inexhaustibleprey.’ But ‘it has lived through all, and has suffered that whichwould have been tenfold death to aught less than Divine.’ And evenyet, after nearly nineteen centuries have sped since its Dawn began,and its Sun of Righteousness arose with healing in His wings, thisfaith alone sets before mankind the Divine Example of a Perfect anda Sinless Man, and alone offers the sure promises of pardon and ofpeace. All the best wisdom of the world lies in the brief Book ofits New Covenant, and all the hopes of the world lie centred in thefaithful acceptance of its Law and of its Life.