Part 23

Pliny gives an account of an incident showing similar conjugal devotion and self-sacrificing courage. "I was sailing lately," says he, "on our Lake Larius, when an elderly friend pointed out to me a house, one of whose rooms projected above the waves. 'From that spot,' he said, 'a townswoman of ours threw herself out with her husband. The latter had long been ill, suffering from an incurable ulcer. When she was convinced that he could not recover from his disease, she exhorted him to kill himself, and became his companion in death--nay, rather his example and leader, for she tied her husband to her and jumped into the lake.'" This was a woman of the common citizens; we do not even know her name. Modern times have no examples to show of a closer marital sympathy than this. Our ideas compel us to deprecate the act of self-destruction; but we cannot question, or more than rival, such devotion. The like degree of faithfulness between married couples was common among the Romans; and this was their manner of showing it.

We have, more than once, seen the statement advanced in all seriousness by well-informed writers and public speakers that marital affection, in the modern understanding of the expression, was almost unknown among the ancients. The object of the contention is to enhance the appreciation of the effects of Christianity; but the argument is as absurdly inconsistent with history as it is with common sense. True, Christianity discourages conjugal unions in which that affection does not exist, but it does not create it; nor was there anything whatever in pagan customs or institutions to prevent the existence of the warmest and purest affection between husband and wife. The sole conditions in the ancient world that militated against pure and constant married love were the customary unions of expediency and the inferior position of the wife. As to the first of these customs, it is by no means unknown in the modern world and to Christian times; in regard to the second, the Roman wife in the period with which we are now engaged was almost equally as well off as her modern descendant.

Principles of virtue, honor, and duty of a high order had been inculcated through many generations of ancient Romans; and it could not be otherwise than that these would reappear and manifest themselves with invincible insistence, even in the most corrupt days of the Empire. What higher or more dignified sense of duty could there be than that exhibited by the lady who had determined to send substantial relief to a friend of hers, banished by Domitian? It was represented to her that this money would be certain to fall into the tyrant's hands, and that hence she would be only wasting her means and gratifying the unworthy. "It is of little consequence to me," she said, "if Domitian steal it; but it is of great moment for me to send it." She possessed the sublime conviction that she was responsible to her consciousness of what friendship demanded, even though she might be certain of the miscarriage of her efforts.

There were also women whose spirits were stirred by the love of freedom, and who were willing to do and dare and suffer in the attempt to wrest the nation from a tyrant's grasp. Among those who have sacrificed their own lives at the altar of Liberty, the Roman woman can claim representatives.

We are told that into the conspiracy against Nero which was headed by Caius Piso, "senators, knights, soldiers, and even women entered with the ardor of competition." The plot was to attack Nero while he was singing upon the stage, though it was considered by some that it would be a better plan to set his house on fire and then despatch him while he was excitedly hurrying about unattended by his guards. "While the conspirators were hesitating, and protracting the issue of their hopes and fears, a woman named Epicharis--and how she became acquainted with the affair is involved in mystery, nor had she ever manifested a concern for worthy objects before--began to animate the conspirators, and goad them on by reproaches; but at length, disgusted by their dilatoriness, while sojourning in Campania, she tried every effort to shake the allegiance of the officers of the fleet at Misenum, and engage them in the plot."

But, though an enthusiastic conspirator, Epicharis proved herself an unwary recruiting agent. She especially applied herself to an old acquaintance named Proculus, who confided to her the fact that he had been one of the party concerned in the assassination of the emperor's mother, and that he was dissatisfied with the reward he had received for such eminent service, he being only a minor officer in the fleet. He added that it was his settled purpose to be revenged, should a fitting opportunity present itself. Epicharis did not wait to consider the unwisdom of incontinently intrusting the knowledge of the whole plot to a man of insufficient principle to prevent him from looking upon the murder of a defenceless woman as an exploit to be liberally rewarded. Moreover, it is likely that she inadvertently had dropped some hint of what was in her mind, and Proculus lured her on by suggesting the possibility of himself as a convert. Epicharis first gave him the whole plot, and then set about persuading him to join it. She recounted all the atrocities of the emperor; and concluded with the remark "that Nero had stripped the Senate of all its powers; but," she added, "measures had been taken to punish him for overturning the constitution; and Proculus had only to address himself manfully to the work and bring over to their side the most energetic of the troops, and he might depend upon receiving suitable rewards."

One indiscretion she did not commit: she did not divulge the names of the conspirators. So, when Proculus laid information before the emperor--thinking doubtless that this was a readier path to reward than any plot of assassination of which a woman would be cognizant--his evidence was of little avail; but Nero considered it best to detain Epicharis in prison, in anticipation of anything that might occur.

The conspirators at last concluded to perpetrate their design at the Cirensian games. Lateranus, a man of determined spirit and gigantic strength, was to approach the emperor as a suppliant and, apparently by accident, throw him down. Scævinus was to perform the principal part with a dagger he had procured from the temple of Fortune for the purpose. Piso was to wait at the temple of Ceres until he was summoned to the camp, which he was to enter attended by Antonia, the daughter of Claudius Cæsar,--a woman of an entirely opposite character to that of her grandmother, after whom she was named,--and who, it was hoped, would conciliate the favor of the people. How deeply Antonia was involved in this plot it is impossible to say. It appears improbable, as Tacitus remarks, that she should have lent her name and hazarded her life in a project from which she had nothing to hope.

It was through the dagger mentioned above, and also the cupidity of a woman, that the whole conspiracy came to light. Scævinus impatiently ordered his freedman Milichus to put the weapon to the grindstone and bring it to a sharp point. Milichus, putting together this and other preparations he witnessed, guessed the project that was on foot. He told his suspicions to the emperor. Scævinus was arrested; but his bearing was so confident that the accuser would have broken down had not the wife of Milichus reminded him that "Natalis had taken part in many secret conversations with Scævinus, and that both were confidants of Piso." Then followed numerous arrests, confessions, and accusations, each conspirator endeavoring to lighten the burden of his own guilt by revealing how many there were who shared it. Lucan the poet even informed against his own mother, Atilla.

Amid all this disaster, there was one spirit that remained undaunted, one tongue that could not be persuaded by promises or compelled by torment to confess and thus implicate others. Epicharis had been held in custody from the time of her unguarded enthusiasm in Campania. Nero recollected her, and commanded that she should be put to the torture. "But," says the historian, "neither stripes, nor fire, nor the rage of the tormentors, who tore her with the more vehemence, lest they should be scorned by a woman, could vanquish her." Thus the first day of torture was passed without producing any effect upon her. "The day following, as she was being brought back to suffer the same torments, riding in a chair, for all her members being disjointed, she could not support herself, taking off the girdle that bound her breast, she tied it in a noose to the canopy of the chair, and, placing her neck in it, hung upon it with the weight of her whole body, and thus forced out the slender remains of life. A freedwoman, by thus screening strangers and persons almost unknown to her, though pressed to divulge their names by the most extreme torture, exhibited an example which derived augmented lustre from the fact that freeborn persons, men, Roman knights, and Senators, untouched by the instruments of inquisition, all betrayed their dearest pledges of affection."

Among the many who suffered from the discovery of this conspiracy was Seneca, the aged philosopher and the former tutor of Nero. It is probable that he was innocent; but he had incurred Nero's displeasure, and the tyrant was glad of the opportunity to destroy him with seeming justice. The parting of Seneca with his wife and her conduct at the time well merit the pains which the historian has taken with the recital. Embracing his wife, he implored her to "refrain from surrendering herself to endless grief; but to endeavor to mitigate her regret for her husband by means of those honorable consolations which she would experience in the contemplation of his virtuous life." Paullina, however, expressed her determination to die with her husband, and called for the assistance of the executioner to open her veins. Seneca, proud of her devotion and as willing to see her acquire the glory of such an act as he was to be assured that she was safe from the hard usages of the world, replied: "I had pointed out to you how to soften the ills of life; but you prefer the renown of dying. I will not envy you the honor of the example. Though both display the same unflinching fortitude in encountering death, still the glory of your exit will be superior to mine." Then they had the veins of their arms opened at the same moment; but being unable to bear up under the excessive torture, and afraid lest the sight of his sufferings should overpower her, Seneca persuaded his wife to retire into another room.

When Nero heard what was being done, having no dislike to Paullina, and not willing to incur the odium of a double death and one so affecting, he ordered her wounds to be dressed and the flow of blood stanched. She survived but a few years, and these were devoted to the memory of her husband. It is also said that an excessive paleness was the continuous witness to the sacrifice to conjugal devotion which she had done her best to make.

Not so fortunate was Servilia, a young woman of twenty who, at this time, was arraigned before the Senate, charged with having distributed sums of money among the magi. Servilia was the daughter of Soranus, who had been Proconsul of Asia. There was no accusation against Servilia's father more severe than that he was a friend of Plautus, whom Nero, for reasons utterly unjust, but entirely satisfactory to himself, had caused to be executed. Tacitus suggests the picture of her trial: the consuls on the judgment seat in the presence of the assembled Senate; on one side of that tribunal, an old, gray-haired man who for many years has served his country with honor and integrity; on the other side, the daughter, so young and yet widowed, for her husband has been sent into banishment, and hence is as dead to her. The thought that she, who had endeavored to aid and comfort her father, had only added to his dangers is so oppressive that she has not the heart to look at him. The accuser questions her: "Did you not sell your bridal ornaments, and even the chain off your neck, to raise money for the performance of magic rites?" Instead of answering, the unfortunate girl falls to the floor, embracing the altar, as though hoping that divine aid would be given, where human mercy was not to be expected. At last she gathers voice, and is able to falter: "I have used no spells; nor did I seek aught by my unhappy prayers than that you, Cæsar, and you, fathers, would preserve this best of fathers unharmed. It was with this object alone I gave up my jewels, my raiment, and the ornaments belonging to my station; as I would have given up my blood and life, had the magi required them. To those men, till then unknown to me, it belongs to declare whose ministers they are, and what mysteries they use; the prince's name was never uttered by me, save as one speaks of the gods. Yet to all this proceeding of mine, if guilty it be, my most unhappy father is a stranger; and if it is a crime, I alone am the criminal." Then Soranus pleads for his daughter. Her age is so tender that she could not have known Plautus, whose friend they accuse himself of being. Do they impeach him for mismanagement of his province? Let it be so; yet his daughter had not accompanied him to Asia. Her only crime was too much filial piety, too great solicitude for her father. He would gladly submit to whatever fate awaited him, if only they would separate her case from his. Overcome with emotion, the old man totters forward with outstretched hands to embrace his daughter, who springs to meet him; but the stern lictors interpose the fasces and deny them this sad comfort.

The Senate exercises a heartless clemency; Servilia and Soranus are allowed to choose their own deaths. This faithful daughter, for seeking by means of her religion to aid her father, is privileged to die with him. With them also perished Thrasea, who had added to his crime of disbelieving in the deification of Poppæa that of neglecting to sacrifice for the preservation of Nero's beautiful voice!

A strikingly magnificent feature of the old Roman character is the manner in which these people met death. This was the one virtue which the Romans, down to the latest period of the decadence, did not cease to retain. In the most dissolute times, the Roman might live badly, but at least he could die bravely. This was the one opportunity always left when atonement might be made for the errors of life. In this ability to meet death with calm fortitude the women shared no less than the men. The maids and matrons of Rome were habituated by training and by their best traditional examples to look upon the possibility of exit from the world as an ever ready refuge from unendurable ills. Lucretia was for Roman matrons an ideal in her death as well as in her life; and they seem to have found it less irksome to follow her in the former respect than in the latter.

In the endeavor to show how, even in the days of Nero, when wickedness reached its climax, virtue and honor and devotion were not utterly gone out of the world, it has been necessary to adopt as illustrations some of the saddest of the many tragedies of human history. Neither side of any true picture of this period can be a pleasing one. Human life in the city of Rome during the middle of the first century of our era was for the most part either insane or sad. To exult in unrighteousness or mourn in bereavement was the lot of every prominent personage; for there were few quiet, honorable folk whom the hand of tyranny did not touch through their friends. Therefore, in the endeavor to show the better side of the life of this time, the necessity has been forced upon us to illustrate how the prevailing remnant of the ancient virtue was manifested in the devotion of women to their stricken husbands and friends, and in the firm manner in which they met their own death.

That which belongs to the ordinary routine of woman's life did not undergo any change during this period. The status of woman remained unaltered; her manners, customs, and occupations were the same. There was no progress. It was like the conditions existing in a home during a terrific electrical storm; all other interests are in abeyance until it is over.

This statement, however, applies more particularly to the city of Rome and to Italy. In the outlying parts of that country and in the provinces, the storm was hardly felt. Women who lived out of the sight of Nero and whose male friends did not hold office were secure from imperial cruelty and caprice. Their lives ran on in the ordinary manner of civilization. They were betrothed and married according to the ancient ceremonies; for customs changed slowly away from the metropolis. They worshipped the old gods, though they heard now and again of a certain sect of fanatical people who courted their own destruction from the officials, if not from Olympus, by denouncing the ancient worship. They managed their homes and their slaves, read their books, as we have seen in the case of Calpurnia, the wife of Pliny, and visited the amphitheatre. The only anxieties of the women who belonged to the unofficial class were those incidental to the rule of the proconsuls who were sent to govern them in the name of the emperor. Sometimes these men were lustful; frequently they were tyrannical; they were always rapacious. The people were oppressed to meet the demands of the tax collectors; but these were ills that were always with them and represented a condition of affairs that was normal.

In his biography of his father-in-law, Agricola, who was himself a provincial, Tacitus says: "He married Domitia Decidiana, a lady of illustrious descent, from which connection he derived credit and support in his pursuit of greater things. They lived together in admirable harmony and mutual affection, each giving the preference to the other; a conduct equally laudable in both, except that a greater degree of praise is due to a good wife, in proportion as a bad one deserves the greater censure." What more touching expression of family affection can there be found than the words Tacitus wrote in respect to Agricola's death? Apostrophizing him, he says: "But to myself and your daughter, besides the affliction of losing a parent, the aggravating affliction remains that it was not our lot to watch over your sickbed. With what attention should we have received your last instructions, and graven them on our hearts! This is our sorrow. Everything, doubtless, O best of parents, was administered for your comfort and honor, while a most affectionate wife sat beside you; yet fewer tears were shed upon your bier, and in the last light which your eyes beheld, something was wanting." There is nothing in modern times superior to this in chaste and cultivated sympathy.

Seneca also, who was born at Cordova, describes his mother as having been "brought up in a strict home"; and he assures us that his aunt, during the sixteen years that her husband governed Egypt, was "unknown in the province," so devoted was she to her family and home duties. There was also Polla, the wife of Lucan, whose inconsolable grief at her husband's death was so beautifully described by Statius. We read also of Minicius Macrinus, who lived thirty-nine years with his consort without a single cloud ever rising between them; while Martial tells us of Spurinna, a man of consular family loaded with years and honors, who lived in the country with his aged wife, each resting in the other's affection, and finishing together "the evening of a fair life."

XII

UNDER THE FLAVIANS

Such sober-minded people as had survived the reign of Nero hailed the tyrant's death as a deliverance, though they had no guaranty of the inauguration of a better state of things. No conceivable change could be otherwise than for the better. At first sight, it seems marvellous that the better class of Romans endured so long and with such supineness a shameful monstrosity like the government of Nero; but it must be remembered that no government is other than the majority of the people desire, or better than they deserve. The mass of the people in the capital were satisfied to have an imperial mountebank ruling over them. Politics had ceased to interest them, they having wholly forfeited their liberties. They cared naught for the fortunes of the Empire, so long as the wheat ships came regularly from Alexandria. The only vestige of independence they retained was the privilege of shouting with impatience when the games were delayed; there were no further rights they cared to demand when Nero, dining in his box at the amphitheatre, threw his napkin from behind the curtains as a signal that he had finished and that the sport might commence. With such a populace as this, the nobler spirits in the city could hope to accomplish nothing. Their only recourse was to glorify their passive sufferings and their death with stoical calmness and undismayed pride. How hopeless it was to expect the inauguration of a revolt among the common people of Rome is shown by the attitude of these people toward Nero's memory after his death. For a long time, his tomb was continually decked with flowers. Sometimes, his admirers placed his image upon the rostra, dressed in robes of state; again, they would publish proclamations in his name, as though he were yet alive and would shortly return and avenge himself upon his enemies. Occasionally, there were rumors of his reappearance, for the reality of his death was doubted in many quarters, and the undisguised satisfaction with which these reports were received is evidence that the Roman people generally were not yearning for reform.

But those who were absent in the provinces, being neither under the immediate power of Nero nor partners in his excesses, did not endure with such complacence the shame he put upon the Roman name. Men like Galba and Vespasian heard with great indignation from scoffing foreigners how, at Rome, they had seen the emperor acting Orestes or even Canace on the stage. These men could not endure the thought of serving under a ruler who competed with a slaveborn pantomimist. Revolt flamed up among the legions in various parts of the Empire; the guards at Rome joined in it; and when Galba came, who had been proclaimed emperor, they gladly welcomed him.

Rome was shaken in the very foundations of her constitutional ideals. The discovery of the possibility that an emperor could be created away from the city marked the entering of the wedge which was eventually to bring about the disintegration of the Empire. The legions had come clearly to realize that the gift of the Empire was in their hands. The Senate was henceforth supernumerary. The city was no longer to be viewed with that superstitious reverence which had made men deem nothing sacred or authoritative that had not issued therefrom; it was the centre, but no longer the source of Empire. It soon came to pass that "Roman" signified wide-spreading national inclusion rather than, as heretofore, racial exclusion; even a Jew might now claim to be a freeborn Roman citizen, though he had never seen the Capitol.

In consequence of opposing claims to the succession, Italy was once more torn with civil strife, an experience from which she had been free ever since the days of the last Triumvirate. Within eighteen months three emperors were created and destroyed.