A Friend of Caesar Part 35

The Tullianum! Drusus knew no other term to conjure up a like abode of horrors--the ancient prison of the city, a mere chamber sunk in the ground, and beneath that a dungeon, accessible only by an opening in the floor above--where the luckless Jugurtha had perished of cold and starvation, and where Lentulus Sura, Cethegus, and the other lieutenants of Catilina had been garroted, in defiance of all their legal rights, by the arbitrary decree of a rancorous Senate! So at last the danger had come! Drusus felt himself quiver at every fibre.

He endured a sensation the like of which he had never felt before--one of utter moral faintness. But he steadied himself quickly. Shame at his own recurring cowardice overmastered him. "I am an unworthy Livian, indeed," he muttered, not perhaps realizing that it is far more heroic consciously to confront and receive the full terrors of a peril, and put them by, than to have them harmlessly roll off on some self-acting mental armour.

"Escape! There is yet time!" urged Agias, pulling his toga. Drusus shook his head.

"Not until the Senate has set aside the veto of the tribunes," he replied quietly.

"But the danger will then be imminent!"

"A good soldier does not leave his post, my excellent Agias," said the Roman, "until duty orders him away. Our duty is in the Senate until we can by our presence and voice do no more. When that task is over, we go to Caesar as fast as horse may bear us; but not until then."

"Then I have warned you all in vain!" cried Agias.

"Not at all. You may still be of the greatest service. Arrange so that we can leave Rome the instant we quit the Curia."

"But if the lictors seize you before you get out of the building?"

"We can only take our chance. I think we shall be permitted to go out.

I had intended to ride out of the city this evening if nothing hindered and the final vote had been pa.s.sed. But now I see that cannot be done. You have wit and cunning, Agias. Scheme, provide. We must escape from Rome at the earliest moment consistent with our duty and honour."

"I have it," said Agias, his face lighting up. "Come at once after leaving the Curia, to the rear of the Temple of Mars.[144] I know one or two of the temple servants, and they will give me the use of their rooms. There I will have ready some slave dresses for a disguise, and just across the aemilian bridge I will have some fast horses waiting--that is, if you can give me an order on your stables."

[144] The aedes Martis of the Campus Martius.

Drusus took off his signet ring.

"Show that to Pausanias. He will honour every request you make, be it for a million sesterces."

Agias bowed and was off. For the last time Drusus was tempted to call him back and say that the flight would begin at once. But the nimble Greek was already out of sight, and heroism became a necessity. Drusus resolutely turned his steps toward the senate-house. Not having been able to forecast the immediate moves of the enemy, he had not arranged for hurried flight; it was to be regretted, although he had known that on that day the end of the crisis would come. He soon met Antonius, and imparted to him what he had just learned from Agias, and the precautions taken.

Antonius shook his head, and remarked:--

"You ought not to go with me. Little enough can we who are tribunes do; you have neither voice nor vote, and Lentulus is your personal foe. So back, before it is too late. Let us shift for ourselves."

Drusus replied never a word, but simply took the tribune's arm and walked the faster toward the Curia.

"I am a very young soldier," he said presently; "do not be angry if I wish to show that I am not afraid of the whizzing arrows."

"Then, my friend, whatever befalls, so long as life is in my body, remember you have a brother in Marcus Antonius."

The two friends pressed one another's hands, and entered the Curia Pompeii. There in one of the foremost seats sat the Magnus,[145] the centre of a great flock of adulators, who were basking in the sunshine of his favour. Yet Drusus, as he glanced over at the Imperator, thought that the great man looked hara.s.sed and worried--forced to be partner in a scheme when he would cheerfully be absent. Fluttering in their broad togas about the senate-house were Domitius, Cato, the Marcelli, and Scipio, busy whipping into line the few remaining waverers. As Cato pa.s.sed the tribune's bench, and saw the handful of Caesarians gathered there, he cast a glance of indescribable malignity upon them, a glance that made Drusus shudder, and think again of the horrors of the Tullianum.

[145] Pompeius was not allowed by law to attend sessions of the Senate (so long as he was proconsul of Spain) when held inside the old city limits; but the Curia which he himself built was outside the walls in the Campus Martius. This meeting seems to have been convened there especially that he might attend it.

"I know now how Cato looked," said he to Antonius, "when he denounced the Catilinarians and urged that they should be put to death without trial."

Antonius shrugged his shoulders, and replied:--

"Cato cannot forgive Caesar. When Caesar was consul, Cato interrupted his speech, and Caesar had him haled off to prison. Marcus Cato never forgives or forgets."

Curio, Caelius, and Quintus Ca.s.sius had entered the senate-house--the only Caesarians present besides Antonius and his viator. The first two went and took their seats in the body of the building, and Drusus noticed how their colleagues shrank away from them, refusing to sit near the supporters of the Gallic proconsul.

"_Eho!_" remarked Antonius, his spirits rising as the crisis drew on.

"This is much like Catilina's days, to be sure! No one would sit with him when he went into the Senate. However, I imagine that these excellent gentlemen will hardly find Caesar as easy to handle as Catilina."

Again Lentulus was in his curule chair, and again the solemn farce of taking the auspices, preparatory to commencing the session, was gone through.

Then for the last time in that memorable series of debates Lentulus arose and addressed the Senate, storming, browbeating, threatening, and finally ending with these words, that brought everything to a head:--

"Seeing then, Conscript Fathers, that Quintus Ca.s.sius and Marcus Antonius are using their tribunician office to aid Caius Caesar to perpetuate his tyranny, the consuls ask you to clothe the magistrates with dictatorial power in order that the liberties of the Republic may not be subverted!"

The liberties of the Republic! Liberty to plunder provinces! To bribe!

To rob the treasury! To defraud! To violate the law of man and G.o.d! To rule the whole world so that a corrupt oligarchy might be aggrandized!

Far, far had the nation of the older Claudii, Fabii, and Cornelii fallen from that proud eminence when, a hundred years before, Polybius, contrasting the Romans with the degenerate Greeks, had exclaimed, "A statesman of h.e.l.las, with ten checking clerks and ten seals, ... cannot keep faith with a single talent; Romans, in their magistracies and emba.s.sies, handle great sums of money, and yet from pure respect of oath keep their faith intact."

But the words of selfish virulence and cant had been uttered, and up from the body of the house swelled a shout of approval, growing louder and louder every instant.

Then up rose Domitius, on his face the leer of a brutal triumph.

"Conscript Fathers," he said, "I call for a vote on the question of martial law. Have the Senate divide on the motion. 'Let the consuls, praetors, tribunes of the plebs, and men of consular rank see to it that the Republic suffers no harm.'"

Another shout of applause rolled along the seats, fiercer and fiercer, and through it all a shower of curses and abusive epithets upon the Caesarians. All around Drusus seemed to be tossing and bellowing the breakers of some vast ocean, an ocean of human forms and faces, that was about to dash upon him and overwhelm him, in mad fury irresistible. The din was louder and louder. The bronze casings on the walls rattled, the pediments and pavements seemed to vibrate; outside, the vast mob swarming around the Curia reechoed the shout. "Down with Caesar!" "Down with the tribunes!" "_Io!_ Pompeius!"

It was all as some wild distorted dream pa.s.sing before Drusus's eyes.

He could not bring himself to conceive the scene as otherwise. In a sort of stupor he saw the senators swarming to the right of the building, hastening to cast their votes in favour of Domitius's motion. Only two men--under a storm of abuse and hootings, pa.s.sed to the left and went on record against the measure. These were Curio and Caelius; and they stood for some moments alone on the deserted side of the house, defiantly glaring at the raging Senate. Antonius and Ca.s.sius contemptuously remained in their seats--for no magistrate could vote in the Senate.

It was done; it could not be undone. Not Caesar, but the Senate, had decreed the end of the glorious Republic. Already, with hasty ostentation, some senators were stepping outside the Curia, and returning clad no longer in the toga of peace, but in a military cloak[146] which a slave had been keeping close at hand in readiness.

Already Cato was on his feet glaring at the Caesarian tribunes, and demanding that first of all they be subjected to punishment for persisting in their veto. The Senate was getting more boisterous each minute. A tumult was like to break out, in which some deed of violence would be committed, which would give the key-note to the whole sanguinary struggle impending. Yet in the face of the raging tempest Marcus Antonius arose and confronted the a.s.sembly. It raged, hooted, howled, cursed. He still remained standing. Cato tried to continue his invective. The tempest that he had done so much to raise drowned his own voice, and he relapsed into his seat. But still Antonius stood his ground, quietly, with no attempt to shout down the raging Senate, as steadfastly as though a thousand threats were not buzzing around his ears. Drusus's heart went with his friend that instant. He had never been in a battle, yet he realized that it was vastly more heroic to stand undaunted before this audience, than to walk into the bloodiest melee without a tremor.

[146] _Sagum_.

Then of a sudden, like the interval between the recession of one wave and the advance of a second billow, came a moment of silence; and into that silence Antonius broke, with a voice so strong, so piercing, so resonant, that the most envenomed oligarch checked his clamour to give ear.

"Hearken, ye senators of the Republic, ye false _patres_, ye fathers of the people who are no fathers! So far have we waited; we wait no more! So much have we seen; we'll see no further! So much have we endured,--reproaches, repulses, deceits, insult, outrage, yes, for I see it in the consul's eye, next do we suffer violence itself; but that we will not tamely suffer. Ay! drive us from our seats, as Marcus Cato bids you! Ay! strike our names from the Senate list, as Domitius will propose! Ay! hound your lictors, sir consul, after us, to lay their rods across our backs! Ay! enforce your decree proclaiming martial law! So have you acted before to give legal fiction to your tyranny! But tell me this, senators, praetorii, consulars, and consuls, where will this mad violence of yours find end? Tiberius Gracchus you have murdered. Caius Gracchus you have murdered. Marcus Drusus you have murdered. Ten thousand good men has your creature Sulla murdered.

Without trial, without defence, were the friends of Catilina murdered.

And now will ye add one more deed of blood to those going before? Will ye strike down an inviolate tribune, in Rome,--in the shadow of the very Curia? Ah! days of the Decemvirs, when an evil Ten ruled over the state--would that those days might return! Not ten tyrants but a thousand oppress us now! Then despotism wore no cloak of patriotism or legal right, but walked unmasked in all its blackness!

"Hearken, ye senators, and in the evil days to come, remember all I say. Out of the seed which ye sow this hour come wars, civil wars; Roman against Roman, kinsman against kinsman, brother against brother!

There comes impiety, violence, cruelty, bloodshed, anarchy! There comes the destruction of the old; there comes the birth, amid pain and anguish, of the new! Ye who grasp at money, at power, at high office; who trample on truth and right to serve your selfish ends; false, degenerate Romans,--one thing can wipe away your crimes--"

"What?" shouted Cato, across the senate-house; while Pompeius, who was shifting uncomfortably in his seat, had turned very red.

"Blood!" cried back Antonius, carried away by the frenzy of his own invective; then, shooting a lightning glance over the awe-struck Senate, he spoke as though gifted with some terrible prophetic omniscience. "Pompeius Magnus, the day of your prosperity is past--prepare ingloriously to die! Lentulus Crus, you, too, shall pay the forfeit of your crimes! Metellus Scipio, Marcus Cato, Lucius Domitius, within five years shall you all be dead--dead and with infamy upon your names! Your blood, your blood shall wipe away your folly and your l.u.s.t for power. Ye stay, we go. Ye stay to pa.s.s once more unvetoed the decree declaring Caesar and his friends enemies of the Republic; we go--go to endure our outlaw state. But we go to appeal from the unjust scales of your false Justice to the juster sword of an impartial Mars, and may the Furies that haunt the lives of tyrants and shedders of innocent blood attend you--attend your persons so long as ye are doomed to live, and your memory so long as men shall have power to heap on your names reproach!"

Drusus hardly knew that Antonius had so much as stopped, when he found his friend leading him out of the Curia.

Behind, all was still as they walked away toward the Temple of Mars.

Then, as they proceeded a little distance, a great roar as of a distant storm-wind drifted out from the senate-house--so long had Antonius held his audience spellbound.