Unto Caesar Part 26

Its inclusion in the spectacle of to-day had come as an exciting surprise, for it was known that the Caesar thought a great deal of the beast, going out daily to watch it through its iron bars, and delighting in its ferocity and cruel rapaciousness. He had caused a special house to be built for it in a secluded portion of his garden, with a swimming-bath carved out of a solid block of African marble. Its feeding trough was made of gold, and capons and pea-hens were specially fattened for its delectation.

Many were the tales current about the Caesar's fondness for the creature and his pleasure in seeing it fed with live animals, which he would himself throw into the cage. It was even said he had fed the brute with human flesh, the flesh of slaves who had disobeyed or merely offended him: one of his chief amus.e.m.e.nts being to force one of these unfortunate wretches to thrust an arm into the cage, and then to watch the panther as it scrunched the human bones, and licked the human blood whilst cries of unspeakable horror and agony rent the air with their hideous sounds.

And now--in order to delight his people--the greatest and best of Caesars would grant them the spectacle of his most precious pet. Loud clapping of hands and thunderous shouts of applause greeted the entrance of the magnificent cage which was drawn out into the arena by sixteen negro slaves. The bars of the cage were gilded, and it was surmounted by the imperial standard and the insignia of imperial rank. Its pedestal was of carved wood and mounted on ma.s.sive wheels of steel. In the front were four heavy chains of steel, and to these the sixteen negroes were harnessed. They were naked save for a loin-cloth of scarlet cloth, and on their heads were fillets of shining metal, each adorned with five long ostrich feathers which had been dipped in brilliant scarlet dye.

The weight of the cage, with its solid pedestal and heavy iron bars, must have been terrific, for the sixteen powerful Africans strained on the chains as they walked, burying their feet in the sand of the arena, their backs bent, the muscles of their shoulders and arms standing out like living cords. In a corner of the cage cowered the powerful creature, its broad, snake-like head thrust forward, its tiny golden eyes fixed before it, a curious snarl--like a grin--now and then contorted the immobility of its powerful jaws. The sinewy tail beat a restless tattoo on the floor of the cage.

Now and then when a jerk on the uneven ground disturbed it from its ominous quietude, the brute would jump up suddenly--quick as the lightning flash--and bound right across the cage, striking out with its huge black paw to where one of the rearmost negro's back appeared temptingly near.

The cunning precision with which that paw hit out exactly between two iron bars highly pleased the public, and once when the mighty claws did reach a back and tore it open from the shoulder to the waist, a wild shout of delight, echoed and re-echoed by thousands upon thousands of throats, shook the very walls of the gigantic Amphitheatre. Children screamed with pleasure, the women applauded rapturously, the men shouted "Habet! habet!" He has it! The unfortunate slave, who, giddy with the loss of blood, rolled inanimate beneath the wheels of the cage.

It was at this moment, when the excited populace went nearly wild with delight, that a loud fanfare of bra.s.s trumpets announced the approach of the Caesar.

He entered his tribune preceded by an escort of his praetorian guard with flying standards. At sight of him the huge audience rose to its feet like one man and cheered him to the echoes, cheered him with just the same shouts as those with which, a few moments ago, it had acclaimed the ferocious prowess of the panther, cheered him with the same shouts with which it would have hailed his death, his a.s.sa.s.sination, the proclamation of his successor.

He was clad in a tunic of purple silk, wrought with the sun, moon and stars in threads of gold and silver, and on his chest was the breastplate of Augustus, which he had had dug up out of the vault where the great Emperor lay buried. On his head was a diadem of jewels in shape like the rays of the sun standing out all round his misshapen head, and in his hands he carried a gold thunderbolt, emblem of Jove, and a trident emblem of Neptune.

He was surrounded by his own guard, by a company of knights and a group of senators and patricians, and immediately behind him walked his wife, Caesonia, and his uncle, Claudius, the brother of Germanicus.

He came to the front of the tribune, allowing the populace a full view of his grotesque person, and listening with obvious satisfaction to the applause and the cheers that still rose in ceaseless echoes upwards to the sky.

He did not hear the ironical laughter, nor yet the mocking comments on his appearance, which was more that of a caricature than of a sentient man. He was satisfied that all eyes were turned on himself and on the majestic pomp which surrounded him. The standard-bearers were ordered to wave the flags so that a cloud of purple and gold seemed to be wafted all round his head, and he ordered the Augustas to group themselves around him.

The people watched this pageant as they had done the earlier spectacles.

It was all a part of the show stage-managed for their amus.e.m.e.nt. They were interested to see the Augustas, and those who knew mentioned the various names to their less fortunate neighbours.

"Caesonia standeth next her lord. She gave him a love potion once, so 'tis said, because his pa.s.sion for her was quickly on the wane. And 'tis that love potion which hath made him crazy."

"And there are the Caesar's sisters, Drusilla and Livilla. Drusilla is very beautiful."

"And there is Julia, the daughter of Drusus. She had been willing to step into Caesonia's shoes."

"But Dea Flavia, daughter of Claudius Octavius, is the most beautiful amongst them all!"

"Hail to Dea Flavia Augusta!" came from more than one enthusiastic throat.

She was clad all in white, with strings of pearls round her neck and a fillet of diamonds in her golden hair. Her face was very pale and her lips never smiled. In her hands she held three tall sprays of lilies scarce whiter than the smooth surface of her brow.

Everyone noticed that the Caesar specially commanded her to sit on his left, Caesonia being on his right, and that the Augustas all frowned with dissatisfaction at this signal honour paid to Dea Flavia.

Anon Caius Nepos, the praetorian praefect, came to the front of the tribune, and in stentorian voice commanded everyone to kneel. All those in the tribune did kneel immediately, the guard holding the standards, the senators and the knights. The Augustas all knelt too, and the patricians in the tribunes to right and left. Some of the people knelt, but not by any means all, and Caius Nepos had to repeat his command three or four times, and to threaten the immediate dispersal of the audience and the clearing of the Amphitheatre before everyone at last obeyed.

Caligula alone remained standing, and not far from him the praefect of Rome leaning against the part.i.tion wall.

The Caesar then blessed his people, and at the word of Caius Nepos--the praetorian praefect--cries of "Hail Caesar! Hail, O G.o.d! Hail the Father of the Armies! the greatest and best of Caesars!" broke out on every side.

CHAPTER XVI

"Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth."--ECCLESIASTES III. 21.

Caius Julius Caesar Caligula was in excellent spirits, smiling and nodding to those around him and to his people all the time. His face certainly looked sallow and his eyes were bloodshot, but this may have been due to ill-health, for without doubt his temper was of the best.

Only once had he frowned, when, looking behind him, he saw that the praefect of Rome had remained standing when everyone knelt to acclaim the Caesar.

But even then the frown was quickly dissipated and he spoke quite pleasantly to the praefect later on. The Augustas grouped around him were continually laughing as he turned to them from time to time with a witty sally, or probably with what was more in keeping with his character--a coa.r.s.e jest. And he watched the spectacle attentively from end to end. Firstly the play in verse on the subject of the judgment of Paris, a perversion of the legend favoured by the Greeks--a travesty wherein Paris--renamed Parisia--was a woman, and three G.o.ds were in rivalry for the golden apple, the emblem of her favours. Then the naval spectacle over the flooded arena, with ships and galleys executing complex manuvres on waters rendered turbulent by cleverly contrived artificial means; then the wrestling and scenes of hunting with wolves and boars specially brought from the Thracian forests for the occasion.

He watched the Numidian lions tearing one another to pieces, he exulted with the audience over the fight between a pack of hyenas and some crocodiles from the Nile. He encouraged the gladiators in their fights, and joined in the excitement that grew and grew with every item of a programme which had been skilfully arranged so that it began with simple and peaceful shows, and gradually became more bloodthirsty and more fierce.

It seemed as if a cunning mind, alert to the temper of the people, had contrived the entertainment so that with every stage of the proceedings something of the l.u.s.tful love of cruelty, inherent in every Roman citizen, would be gradually aroused. The hunting scenes were a prelude to the combat between the lions, and these again were the forerunners of a more b.l.o.o.d.y bout between the hyenas and the crocodiles.

At last blood had begun to flow. The audience sniffed its sickening odour with a thrill of nostril and brain, and tongues and lips became parched with the fever of desire for more.

The other items--the play, the naval pageant, the scenes of hunting and combat of beasts amongst themselves--these were only the prologue. The real spectacle was at last to commence. For this the Romans thirsted--patricians and plebs alike, rich and poor, man, woman and child. These shows were their very life; they const.i.tuted the essence of their entire being; for these they rose at midnight and stood waiting, hour upon hour, that they might be near enough to smell the blood when it reddened the sand of the arena, and to see the last throe of agony on the face of those who fell in combat.

"Habet! Habet! Habet!"

The cry became more insistent and more hoa.r.s.e. See the men and women leaning over the edge of the tribunes, their eyes wide open, their hands outstretched with thumb pointing relentlessly the way of death.

"Habet! Habet!" shrieked the women when a prostrate figure lay writhing on the ground, and the victor with head erect demanded the final verdict.

And up in the imperial tribune the Caesar jested and laughed, the standards waved above his head, the striped awning threw a cool blue shadow over his gorgeous robes and the jewel-crowned heads of the Augustas.

The rest of the gigantic arena was a blaze of riotous colour now, with the mid-morning's sun darting its rays almost perpendicularly on the south side of the huge oval place. A sea of heads gold and brown, ruddy and black oscillating in unison to right or left like waters driven by the tide, as the combatants down below shifted their ground across the floor of the arena--fans of coloured feathers swinging, mantles caught by a pa.s.sing breeze, every grain of sand on the floor of the arena a minute mirror radiating the light, everything glowed with an intensity of colour rendered all the more vivid by contrast with the dense shadows thrown against the marble walls.

On the south side every shade of russet and brown and green showed in the mantles and the tunics of the plebs, and seemed flecked with vivid gold under the light of the sun, whilst in the tribunes of the rich on the opposite side cool tones of amethyst and chrysoprase were veiled in tender azure by the shadow from the awning above. And at either end, to east and west the ma.s.sive copper portals, like gigantic ruddy mirrors threw back these tones of gold and blue as if through a veil of sunset-kissed clouds.

Above, the sky of a vivid blue, translucent and iridescent with a myriad flecks of turquoise and rose and emerald that found their reflections in the marble walls of the arena or the shining helmets of the legionaries guarding the imperial tribune; and over the whole scene an impalpable veil of gold, made of tiny, unseen atoms that danced in the heat, and merged into an exquisite glowing harmony the russets and the purples, the emeralds and rubies and the trenchant notes of sardonyx and indigo that cut across the orgy of colour like a deep, gaping wound.

And through it all that sense of thrilling expectancy, so keen that it almost seemed palpable.

It vibrated in the air making every cheek glow with a crimson fire and kindling a light in every eye. It seemed to set every golden atom dancing, it was felt through every breath drawn by two hundred thousand throats.

Over the Emperor's head the striped awning flapped weirdly in the breeze, with strange insistent sound like the knocking of a ghostly hand upon the doors of h.e.l.l.

Not a few miserable wretches whom the summary justice of the Caesar's own tribunal had condemned to death were exposed to a band of swordsmen--executioners really, since the fight was quite unequal. Huge African giants with short naked swords pursuing a few emaciated wretches who ran howling round the arena, jumping improvised hurdles, rounding obstacles or crawling under cover, running, running with that unreasoning instinct of self-preservation which drives even before the certainty of death.

A hunting scene this, of novel diversion.

No one cared whether the victims were really guilty of crime, no one cared if they had been equitably tried and been justly condemned, all that the public cared about was that the spectacle was new and amusing.

The African giants were well-trained for their part, playing with the miserable victims like a feline doth with its prey, allowing them to escape, now and then, to see safety close at hand, to make a wild dash for what looked like freedom, and then suddenly bounding on them with that short wide sword that cried death as it descended.

Rapturous applause greeted this show, and loud immoderate laughter hailed the fruitless efforts of the hunted, their falls over the obstacles, their look of horror, and the contortions of their meagre bodies when they were caught at last.

"Habet! Habet! Habet!" everyone shouted when one of the unfortunate wretches brought to bay tried to turn on his pursuer, and to pit two feeble arms against the relentless grip of well-trained giants, and against the death-dealing sword.

"Habet! Habet! Habet!"