Psyche

In the year 23 A. D. there lived in Rome a youth named Gannon. He was a comely lad, seventeen years old, with a bright and happy face covered with a light down. His profile was...

Aelius Sejanus, commander of the Praetorians, was a tall and robust man, with a fine commanding head, set upon a coarse thick neck. He had a bold, hard, and evil face, which cou...

While Gannon was anxiously considering how he could communicate with his family, they were safe and happy at home. The evening meal was finished, and they were seated in the atr...

When Hera left Pompey’s Theatre, she went directly home. On the way pleasant recollections of her children filled her mind. She recalled Psyche as a little child. Once more she...

A crowd of magistrates, proconsuls, priests, Senators, and ambassadors were in the polished-marble council chamber in a sumptuous palace on the Palatine Hill. Seated on a curule...

Like a flabby, living tumor, with slimy, infernal eyes and terrific sucking tentacles that draw like death, that most repulsive and revolting of all animals, the octopus, folds...

The speakers were free and careless young Romans. Under no restraint, they spent their lives in pleasure. They were seated at a table opposite each other, in a vine-covered bowe...

In the palace of Drusus the important dinner, whose outcome so many anxiously waited, had been prepared, but the emperor had not arrived. He was impatiently awaited in the atriu...

Having said farewell to Psyche, Gyges stood in deep depression, watching her retreating figure until she disappeared within the grim walls of the camp. Clenching his hands and s...

As the frightened deer flees at the sound of cracking twigs and crunching leaves, so fled Gyges, startled by his thoughts. He ran, he knew not why. The dark streets through whic...

On the border of a desert where vegetation struggles against the arid breath of sterility, appear smiling and restful oases. But these oases perish, one by one, with the drying...

Psyche had passed her second month in solitude in the prison of the Praetorian Camp. Her first days had been lived under the crushing effects of her grief. Gradually the hope th...

Before the emperor the anger of Sejanus melted into mild servility. With customary composure he greeted Tiberius as if nothing whatever had happened. He locked the cell door, an...

About a year after the death of the emperor’s son Drusus, the youth Sabinus and the dancing-maid Merope were reposing on the deck of a bireme bound for Piraeus. Other passengers...

When depressed with distrust, when oppressed with suspicion, and when burdened with discontent, the heart looks to the future, from which it hopes to drink the nectar of peace....

At last the emperor started for Capri. A gorgeous litter, supported by six stalwart Syrians, bore him to the Porta Capena, where carriages awaited him and his party. Besides the...

A few months after the retreat of Tiberius to Capri, Livia, his aged mother, died at Rome. The news was quickly conveyed to Tiberius, but he excused himself by letter for not im...

It was a beautiful cloudless day in July. The atmosphere quivered like the breath of a fire over the wide Pontine Marshes. The intense, stifling heat of midday seemed to come fr...

But what of the young charioteer? What had Gyges been doing while Psyche was enduring the weary months of her hopeless imprisonment? On the day after the rainy and despairing ni...

The wind was howling around the bleak cliffs of Capri. Huge waves dashed and broke against the rocks below. On the eastern heights of the island the newly completed Villa Jovis...

“The prisoner at Capri confers new honors on his jailer, O Livilla,” said Sejanus, with an evil smile, after he had received the letter from Tiberius offering him the consulship...

On the island of Pandataria Agrippina and Psyche still lingered in imprisonment. The mother, crushed under her latest affliction, lived a life of savage grief. Her soul trembled...

In the peristyle of a small house not far from the Porta Capena, a little woman sings a happy song as she tends and gathers her flowers. A fountain adds its liquid sound to her...