CHAPTER XXIII.

THE MAMERTINE PRISON.

Let us now turn our attention to the fate of the characters in our tale of Christian trial and triumph, around whom its interest chiefly centres. They have been consigned to one of the most dismal of the many gloomy dungeons of Rome--the thrice terrible Mamertine prison--haunted with memories of long centuries of cruelty and crime. Manacled each to a Roman soldier, Adauctus, Aurelius, Demetrius, and Callirhoë, together with other Christians condemned to martyrdom, marched through the streets under the noontide glare of a torrid sun. A guard armed _cap à pié_, flung open an iron-studded door, and admitted them to a gloomy vault a few steps below the level of the street. Here a brawny Vulcan, with anvil and hammer, with many a brutal gibe smote off the fetters that linked the prisoners and soldiers together, and riveted them again so that these victims of oppression were bound together in pairs. Sometimes it happened that one of a pair thus bound together died, and the survivor endured the horror of being inseparably fettered to a festering corpse. To this the apostle refers when, groaning over the corruptions of his sinful nature, he exclaims: "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"

"My dainty lady," said the hideous Cyclops, as he rudely seized the arm of Callirhoë, "this is not the sort of bracelet you've been used to wear. I should not much mind, being bound to such as you myself, only I would prefer silken fetters to those iron gyves." Then, as she shrank from his touch and winced as he bruised her tender flesh in unriveting the fetters, he said, with an insolent jeer, "I wont hurt you more than I can help, my beauty. You are not used to having such a rough chamberlain;" and he uttered a coarse jest with which we shall not pollute our page.

A rosy flush stormed the brow of the maiden as she turned her blushing cheek to the mildewed and cold stone wall, in haughty silence disdaining a word of reply to the brutal ruffian.

"Nay, my fine gentlemen," went on this typical Roman jailer, as Adauctus and the aged Demetrius, weary with their march, sank upon a stone bench, "this is too luxurious an apartment for you. For you we have a deeper depth." And Be pointed to an opening in the floor, hitherto unnoticed in the gloom. "Nay, you need not shrink, old man," he went on, as Demetrius recoiled from the grave-like opening at his feet. "Your betters have been there before you."

"Father, your blessing e'er you go," exclaimed Callirhoë, and flinging herself on his breast, she received his kiss and benediction.

By means of a leathern strap beneath their arms, the prisoners were one by one let down into a hideous vault, like men to a living burial. Into this lower dungeon no beam of light struggled, save a precarious ray from the opening in the floor above. The loathsome cell was even then dank with the slime of well-nigh a thousand years, its construction being attributed to Ancus Martius, the fourth king of Rome. Here the African prince, Jugurtha, was starved to death. "What a cold bath is this!" he exclaimed, as he descended into its chilly gloom. Here the Gallic king, Vercingetorix, also died. Here the usurper Sejanus was executed, and here the fellow conspirators of Cataline lingered to death. If we would accept Roman tradition, we would also believe that St. Peter and St. Paul were immured in this dismal vault, and in the case of the latter illustrious martyr it is more than likely that the story is true. A stairway has now been constructed to this lower depth, and the present writer has stood upon the stone pavement worn by the feet of generations of victims of oppression, and has drunk of a spring at which the Apostle of the Gentiles may have quenched his thirst.

The prisoners enjoyed not long even this sad reprieve from death. They were destined soon to finish their course by a glorious martyrdom. The Emperors determined to gratify at once their own persecuting fury and the cruel thirst for blood of the Roman mob, by offering a holocaust of victims in the amphitheatre. The _Acta Diurna_, a sort of public gazette of the day, which circulated in the great houses, and baths, and other places of concourse, contained the announcement of a grand exhibition of the _ludi circenses_, or gladiatorial games, to be celebrated in honour of the god Neptune--_Neptunus Equestris_. In the public spaces of the Forum, and in the neighbourhood of the Flavian Amphitheatre and elsewhere, where the crowd around them would not obstruct the highway, were displayed large white bulletin boards, on which were written in coloured chalks a list of the games--like the playbills which placard the streets of great cities to-day--and heralds proclaimed through every street, even in the crowded Ghetto, the splendour of the approaching games. These were on a scale on which no modern manager ever dreamed. Trajan exhibited games which lasted a hundred and twenty-three days, in which 10,000 gladiators fought and 11,000 fierce animals were killed. Sometimes the vast arena was flooded with water, and _naumachia_ or sea-fights were exhibited. The vast flood-gates and cisterns by which this was accomplished may still be seen.

The chief attraction of the games provided by the Emperors Diocletian and Galerius, however, was not the conflict of what might almost be called armies of trained gladiators, nor the slaughter of hundreds of fierce Libyan leopards and Numidian lions, but the sacrifice of some scores of helpless and unarmed Christians--old men, weak women, and tender and innocent children.

There was much excitement in the schools of the gladiators--vast stone barracks, where they were drilled in their dreadful trade. They were originally captives taken in war, or condemned malefactors; but in the degenerate days of the Empire, knights, senators, and soldiers sought distinction in the arena, and even unsexed women fought half-naked in the ring, or lay dead and trampled in the sands. To captives of war was often offered, as a reward for special skill or courage, their freedom and fierce and fell were conflicts to which men wore spurred by the double incentives of life and liberty.

Special interest was given to the forthcoming games by the distinguished reputation of one of the volunteer gladiators, a brilliant young military officer, our friend Ligurius Rufus, who, sated and sickened with the most frenzied dissipations that Rome could offer, plunged into this mimic war to appease by its excitement the gnawing ennui of his life.

The bets ran high upon the reckless young noble who was the favourite of the sporting spend-thrifts and profligates of the city. The vilest condition of society that ever cursed the earth was filling up the measure of its iniquity, and invoking the wrath of Heaven. The wine shops in the Suburra and the gladiators' quarter were overflowing with a brawling, blaspheming, drunken mob, the vilest dregs of the vilest city the patient earth has ever borne upon its bosom.