A Christian But a Roman Part 5

_Panem et circenses!_ was the watchword of the Roman populace when hungry or wearied.

The nation was really in a most admirable situation. It never knew the prosaic occupation of labour. The Caesars distributed gratis bread, wine, and oil, which were sent by the conquered provinces as tribute; and as for the games in the circus, the sovereigns strove to surpa.s.s one another in the magnificence of these entertainments.

Carinus excelled all the others by the great variety in these shows, and the reckless, extravagant splendour of their arrangement.

One day the whole arena was strewn with gold dust, so that the dust clouds whirled aloft by the hoofs of the trampling horses glittered in the sunlight; and the quirites, whose garments were covered with it, went home actually gilded.

The next day the circus, as if by magic, was transformed into a primeval forest. Giant oaks which had been brought with their roots from the mountains, leafy palms conveyed in huge casks from the coast of Africa, had been planted in the midst of the huge s.p.a.ce, and the staring populace, who had just seen a desert covered with gold dust, had now come to admire, in the same spot, a great forest, beneath whose shade appeared the rarest animals of the South and East, from the graceful giraffe to the shapeless hippopotamus--a perfect Paradise, with trees ripening golden fruit, in whose foliage birds carolled, amid whose branches serpents twined, and beneath which wild peac.o.c.ks and tame ostrichs preened their plumage.

When the people grew weary of gazing archers came and shot the beautiful creatures. Then the forest was removed, and the next day the populace beheld in its place a sea on which whole navies fought b.l.o.o.d.y battles.

Again, in midsummer, when everyone, languishing under the scorching sunbeams, sought shelter in the shade, the people summoned to the circus saw, with surprise bordering upon terror, a winter scene.

The circus was covered with snow, which had been brought in ships and carts from the icy peaks of Noric.u.m and Gallia, and over which hundreds of pretty sledges were gliding amid the clear ringing of little bells--a sight never before witnessed by the Romans. In the midst of the arena icebergs towered aloft, on which lay strangely formed seals, and over the surface of a round pond, where polished gla.s.s took the place of ice, skilful skaters displayed their arts. The shivering Romans wrapped their cloaks around them, wholly forgetting that drops of perspiration were trickling down their brows from the heat; and while the skaters pelted the spectators with s...o...b..a.l.l.s, the audience, shouting in delight, enthusiastically cheered the Imperator who so generously provided for the amus.e.m.e.nt of his subjects.

Let us now seek Carinus in his own palace. We will walk through the enormous building, which with its extensive gardens occupies the s.p.a.ce of a whole quarter of the city. Gilded doors lead into corridors like streets, which end in a peristyle supported by pillars. In the atrium the whole court moves to and fro, slaves playing master and grooms playing senator; and the entrance to the magnificent apartments of Carinus is guarded by a brown-skinned Thracian giant.

Happy are those who can enter there!

For here man no longer walks on earth. These magnificent oval halls allow admittance neither to the light of day nor to the season of the year. Here there is neither winter nor summer, day nor night. The apartment has no windows; lamps, perpetually burning behind transparent curtains, diffuse a light whose steady glow is midway between that of the sun and moonbeams. Here the best of every season of the year is represented: the warmth of summer, which is conducted hither by invisible pipes, the ice of winter, the flowers of spring, and the fruit of autumn. Carinus never knows whether it is dawn or twilight, whether it rains or snows--with him pleasure is eternal.

There he lies among the cushions of his couch; before him is a table laden with choice viands; around him a mob of sycophants, dancers, hetaerae, eunuchs, singing women, parrots, and poets.

His face is that of a youth satiated with every pleasure, pallid and disfigured by large red freckles; his features express the weariness of exhaustion. Only a few hairs are visible on his lips and his chin.

Two eunuchs are alternately lifting food to the Caesar's lips, food which has already caused a violent headache, amid which a single dish has perhaps cost hundreds of thousands, yet charms the palate solely by its rarity. Carinus does not lift a finger; the corners of his mouth droop sullenly, and a motion of his eyes commands the food-bearers to eat the expensive viands themselves.

Now ideally beautiful female slaves again lift golden goblets to his mouth; but he leaves them, too, untouched till at last a Phrygian takes a sip of the spicy Cyprian wine and offers the intoxicating liquor in her rosy lips. This stirs the torpid nerves of the Caesar, and drawing the slave toward him, he drinks from her coral mouth.

"I will marry this girl," he says, turning to one of the courtiers.

"You wedded the daughter of a proconsul yesterday, O my lord."

"I will divorce her to-day. Who is this slave's father?"

"A carpenter at the court."

"I will appoint him proconsul."

"This will be your ninth wife within four months."

Carinus drew the Phrygian down beside him and laid his head in her lap. Singing and dancing were going on around him, and aevius, paying no heed to either, was declaiming before him. His iambics extolled with shameless flattery all the qualities which Carinus did not possess, his roseate complexion, his bold, fearless soul. He described the games with the utmost detail, and spared neither Jupiter nor Apollo, that he might laud Carinus above them.

"Alas, something oppresses and disturbs me. I don't know what it is,"

whined Carinus.

Instantly two or three slaves were at his side, straightening his cushions, arranging his hair, loosening his garments.

"Oh, it oppresses and disturbs me still."

"Perhaps aevius's iambics trouble you," said Marcius, the Imperator's barber.

"Perhaps so. Stop, aevius."

The poet bowed with an humble look, though secretly bursting with rage. The barber had interrupted his finest verses.

"What is it that disturbs me still?" groaned Carinus wrathfully.

"Guess! Must I think instead of you? Something irritates, something vexes me! I should like to be angry."

"I have guessed it," said the barber. "These few hairs of your beard which disfigure your glorious face and insolently tickle your majestic nose and lips are annoying you. O Carinus, have them removed! Your face is so feminine in its beauty, and would be fairer still were it not injured by these ugly signs of manhood!"

"You may be right, Marcius," replied the youth, and allowed the hairs to be plucked out, which operation was performed by the barber with such skill that, at its close, the Caesar appointed him prefect.

At the same moment a noise was heard outside the door. Several recognized the voice of old Mesembrius, who was trying to force his way into the imperial apartments.

Galga, the gigantic Thracian doorkeeper, held the old man back, and told him to come the next day. Carinus was asleep.

"This is the tenth time I have come here!" shouted the old man. "Once you said he was sleeping, again he was eating, the third time he was bathing, and the fourth he was not at leisure. But I _will_ speak to him."

It cost Galga a hard struggle before he could force the aged Senator out of the atrium, and then it needed two or three slaves to push him through the door. Carinus was much pleased with Galga.

"Since you know how to guard my door so well, you deserve to be made Chancellor of Rome."

"And I? Do I deserve nothing, my lord?" asked aevius in alarm.

"To you, aevius, I will have a temple erected, in which every poet shall lay his verses upon your altar."

"I thank you, O Augustus, for the temple and the verses of beginners; but my Tusculum?"

"Surely you know on what condition I promised it."

"If by the power of my eloquence, the honey of my tongue, and the magic of my poetry, I induced that earthly G.o.ddess, Glyceria, to render you happy by her favor. Did I not bring her to you?"

"You brought her, doubtless; but what did it avail? After this bewitching phantom had kindled my love to the utmost by the sight of her charms, and lured my secrets from me, she suddenly laughed at me, thrust me from her, and left me, while I have longed for her possession a hundred times more."

"Did you not have the power to detain by force the fair demon who had entered the snare?"

"Ask my slaves what she did to them? When I commanded them to stop the accursed enchantress she seized a goblet filled with wine, muttered a few strange words of incantation, and smoke and flames instantly rose from the cup. Then, with a face that inspired terror, she turned to the slaves, crying in a ringing voice: 'Whoever does not throw himself on the floor, and remain there motionless, will be instantly transformed into a hog.' The dolts flung themselves down, and the bold sorceress walked over their heads to the door, where she blinded Galga so that he did not recover his sight for three days. But, O aevius, why do you compel me to talk so much? Why do you weary my thoughts and rob my tongue of its rest?"

aevius probably thought that his own tongue was not so valuable, and began to babble: "Glorious Carinus! That woman is not worthy of your love, but of your contempt. I have discovered a far more precious treasure, beside whom Glyceria is a pebblestone beside the diamond, a shooting star beside the sun, common wine beside nectar."

"Who is it?"

"The former is a virgin, the latter already a widow. The former has not yet loved at all; the latter has learned to hate love, and the former's beauty is still more marvellous. She is a Christian maiden, who was captured a short time ago, thrown by your order, with her companions, to the lions, and lo! the starved beasts were tamed by her glance, crouched caressingly at her feet, and licked her hands. I witnessed this with my own eyes, O Augustus, and was amazed. The guards of the animal cages took the girl from the midst of the lions, and gave her to the fiercest Illyrian legionaries. And what happened?

An hour after these very soldiers were seen kneeling before her, listening with devout fervour to the words of magical power which fell from her lips; and when the tribunes attempted to take her away to deliver her to others, they defended her, and allowed themselves to be slain for her to the last man."

Carinus started from his pillows in great excitement; an unwonted fire glowed in his eyes. He pushed his last wife away from him and beckoned to aevius: