CHAPTER V.

"THE CHRISTIANS TO THE LIONS."

The progress of our story transports us, on the day after the banquet described in our last chapter, to the palace of the Prefect Naso, on the Aventine. It was a large and pompous-looking building, with a many-columned portico and spacious gardens, both crowded with statuary, the spoil of foreign cities, or the product of degenerate Greek art--as offensive in design as skilful in execution. The whole bore evidence of the ostentation of vulgar wealth rather than of judicious taste. A crowd of "clients" and satellites of the great man were hanging round the doors, eager to present some petition, proffer some service, or to swell his idle retinue, like jackals around a lion, hoping to pick up a living as hangers-on of such a powerful and unscrupulous dispenser of patronage. In the degenerate days of the Empire, the civic officials especially had always a swarm of needy dependents seeking to fatten on the spoils of office. They were supposed, in some way, to add to the dignity of the consuls and prætors, as in later times were the retainers of a mediæval baron. The system of slavery had made all honest labour opprobrious, and these idle, corrupt, and dangerous parasites had to be kept in good humour by lavish doles and constant amusements. "Bread and the Circus," was their imperious demand, and having these, they cared for nothing else.

On the morning in question there was considerable excitement among this turbulent throng, for the rumour was current that there was to be an examination of certain prisoners accused of the vile crime of Christianity; and there were hopes that the criminals would supply fresh victims for the games of the amphitheatre, which for some time had languished for lack of suitable material. The temper of the mob we may learn by the remarks that reach our ears as we elbow our way through.

"Ho, Davus! what's the news to-day?" asked a cobbler with his leathern apron tucked up about his waist, of a greasy-looking individual who strutted about with much affectation of dignity; "you have the run of his Excellency's kitchen, and ought to know."

"Are _you_ there, Samos?" (a nick-name meaning Flat Nose). "Back to your den, you slave, and don't meddle with gentlemen. _'Ne sutor,'_ you know the rest."

"Can't you see that the cook drove him out with the basting ladle?" said Muscus, the stout-armed blacksmith, himself a slave, and resenting the insult to his class; and so the laugh was turned against the hungry parasite.

"Here, good Max, you are on the guard, you can tell us," went on the burly smith.

"News enough, as you'll soon find. There's to be more hunting of the Christians for those who like it. For my part, I don't."

"Why not," asked Burdo, the butcher, a truculent looking fellow with a great knife in a sheath at his girdle. "I'd like no better fun. I'd as lief kill a Christian as kill a calf."

"It might suit your business," answered stout Max, with a sneer, "but hunting women and children is not a soldier's trade."

"O ho! that's the game that's a-foot!" chuckled a withered little wretch with a hungry face and cruel eyes, like a weasel. "Here's a chance for an honest man who worships the old gods to turn an honest penny."

"Honest man!" growled Max. "Diogenes would want a good lantern to find one in Rome to-day. He'd certainly never take thee for one. Thy very face would convict thee of violating all the laws in the Twelve Tables."

"Hunting the Christians, that's the game, is it?" said an ill-dressed idler, blear-eyed and besotted; "and pestilent vermin they are. I'd like to see them all drowned in the Tiber like so many rats."

"You are more likely to see them devoured in the amphitheatre," said Bruto, a Herculean gladiator. "The Prefect is going to give some grand games on the Feast of Neptune. Our new lions will have a chance to flesh their teeth in the bodies of the Christians. The wretches haven't the courage to fight, like the Dacian prisoners, with us gladiators, nor even with the beasts; but just let themselves be devoured like sheep."

At this juncture a commotion was observed about the door, and Naso, the Prefect, came forth and looked haughtily around. Several clients pressed forward with petitions, which he carelessly handed unopened to his secretary, who walked behind. He regarded with some interest the elegantly-dressed and graceful youth who glided through the throng and presented a scroll, saying, as he did so--

"It is of much importance, your Excellency. It is about the Christians."

"Follow me to the Forum," said the Prefect, and our old acquaintance Isidorus, for it was he, fell into the train of the great civic dignitary. Arrived at the Basilica Julia, or great Court of Justice, the Prefect beckoned to the young Greek secretary, and entered a private ante-room. Throwing himself into a bronze chair, and pointing the Greek to a marble seat, he asked abruptly--

"Now, what is this you know about these Christians?"

"Something of much importance to your Excellency, and I hope to learn something still more important."

"You shall be well paid if you do," said the Prefect. "It is difficult to convict them of any crime."

"I have secret sources of information, your Excellency. In fact, I hope to bring you the names of the ringleaders of the accursed sect."

"How so? Are you not the secretary of Flaccus Sertorius?"

"I am, your Excellency, but he has no heart in the work of this new edict. I would like to see more zeal in the Emperor's service."

"I like not this Sertorius," said the Prefect, half musing. "He affects too much what they call the severe old Roman virtues to suit these times. But how do you expect to learn the secrets of these Christians?"

"By becoming one myself, your Excellency, replied the Greek, with a sinister expression in his eyes."

"By becoming one yourself!" exclaimed the Prefect, in a tone of anger and surprise. Then noting the wily expression of the supple Greek, he added, "Oh! I see, by becoming a spy upon their practices and a betrayer of their secrets. Is that it?"

"We Greeks like not the words traitor and spy," said the youth, with a faint blush, "but to serve the Emperor and your Excellency we would bear even that opprobrium."

"Well, you look capable of it," said the Prefect, with an undisguised sneer, "and I will gladly use any instruments to crush this vile sect."

"But, your Excellency," said the cringing Greek, swallowing his chagrin and annoyance, "I shall require gold to gain the confidence of these Christians--not to bribe them, for that is impossible, but to spend in what they call charity--to give to their sick and poor."

"Not forgetting yourself, I'll be bound," sneered the Prefect. "But what you say is no doubt true;" and turning to the table he wrote an order upon the Imperial Exchequer, and handed it to the Greek, with the words, "If you make good use of that, there is more where it comes from. The Emperor pays his _faithful_ servants well." Then dismissing the treacherous tool whom he himself despised, he passed into the Basilica, or court, where the bold Christian youth who had torn down the Emperor's edict was to receive his sentence.

Livid with the torture he had undergone to make him disclose the names of his accomplices--tortures which he had borne with heroic fortitude he boldly avowed his act, and defied the power of the Prefect to extort the name of a single Christian from his lips. We will not harrow the hearts of our readers by recounting the atrocious tortures by which the body of the brave youth had been wrung. He was at length borne away fainting to his cruel fate. Although the Prefect, who had sworn to have his secret if he tore the heart out of his body, gnashed his teeth in impotent rage at the defiance of the mangled martyr, yet he could not in his inmost soul help feeling the vast gulf between his sublime fidelity and the heinous guilt of the base traitor from whom he had just parted.

The pages of the contemporary historians, Eusebius and Lactantius, give too minute and circumstantial accounts of the persecutions, of which they were eye-witnesses, to allow us to adopt the complacent theory of Gibbon, that the sufferings of the Christians were comparatively few and insignificant. "We ourselves have seen," says the Bishop of Cæsarea, "crowds of persons, some beheaded, others burned alive in a single day, so that the murderous weapons were blunted and broken to pieces, and the executioners, weary with slaughter, were obliged to give over the work of blood.... They vied with each other," he continues, "in inventing new tortures, as if there were prizes offered to him who should contrive the greatest cruelties."[16] Men whose only crime was their religion, were scourged with chains laden with bronze balls, till the flesh hung in shreds, and even the bones were broken. They were bound in fetters of red hot iron, and roasted over fires so slow that they lingered for hours, or even days, in their mortal agony; their flesh was scraped from the very bone with ragged shells, or lacerated with burning pincers, iron hooks, and instruments with horrid teeth and claws, hence called _ungulæ_, examples of which have been found in the Catacombs; molten metal was applied to their bodies till they became one undistinguishable wound, and mingled salt and vinegar,[17] or unslacked lime, were rubbed upon the quivering flesh, torn and bleeding from the rack or scourge--tortures more inhuman than savage Indian ever wreaked upon his mortal foe. Chaste matrons and tender virgins were given over to a fate a thousand-fold worse than death, and were subjected to indignities too horrible for words to utter. And all these sufferings were endured, often with joy and exultation, for the love of a Divine Master, when a single word, a grain of incense cast upon the heathen altar, would have released the victims from their agonies. No lapse of time, and no recoil from the idolatrous homage paid in after ages to the martyr's relics, should impair in our hearts the profound and rational reverence with which we bend before his tomb.

While the examination of the Christian martyr was in progress, much interest was manifested in his fate by the throng of idlers who were wont to linger around the public courts, to gratify their curiosity or their morbid love of cruelty.

"The State is in danger," said Piso, the barber, gesticulating violently, "if such miscreants are suffered to live."

"Ay, is it," chimed in a garrulous pedagogue, "this is rank treason."

"Right, neighbour Probus," added a pettifogging lawyer. "This is the very _crimen majestatis_. These men are the enemies of Cæsar and of the Roman people."

"Who would think he was so wicked?" said a poor freed-woman who sold sugar barley in the Forum. "Sure he looks innocent enough."

"He _is_ innocent," replied her neighbour, who kept a stall for the sale of figs and olives. "'Tis that wretch who is wicked," looking fiercely at the Prefect as he moved from the court.

"You are right," said a grave-looking man, speaking low, but with a look of secret understanding; "but be careful. You can do the brave Lucius no good, and may betray the others into jeopardy," and he passed swiftly through the throng.

"'Tis time all these Atheists were exterminated," said Furbo, a sort of hanger-on at the neighbouring temple of Saturn. "The gods are angry, and the victims give sinister auspices. To-day when the priest slew the ram for the sacrifice, would you believe it? it had no heart; and the sacred chickens refused their food."

"And they certainly are to blame for the floods of the Tiber, which destroyed all the olives and lentils in my shop," said Fronto, the oil and vegetable seller.

"And the rain rusted all the wheat on our farm," said Macer, the villicus or land-steward.

"And the fever has broken out afresh in the Suburra," croaked a withered old Egyptian crone, like a living mummy, who told fortunes and sold spells in that crowded and pest-smitten quarter, where the poor swarmed like flies.

"And the drought has blighted all the vines," echoed Demetrius, the wine-merchant.

"I never knew trade so dull," whined Ephraim, the Jewish money-lender. "We'll never have good times again till these accursed Christians are all destroyed."

"So say I," "And I," "And I," shouted one after another of the mob, till the wild cry rang round the Forum, _"Christiani adleones"_--"The Christians to the lions."[18]

FOOTNOTES:

[16] Euseb. Hist Eccles., viii. 7.

[17] "Salt me the more, that I may be incorruptible," said Tarachus, the martyr, as he underwent this excruciating torture.

[18] "If the Tiber overflows its banks," says Tertullian, "or if the Nile does not; if there be drought or earthquakes, famine or pestilence, the cry is raised, 'the Christians to the lions.' But I pray you," he adds, in refutation of these absurd charges, "were misfortunes unknown before Tiberius? The true God was not worshipped when Hannibal conquered at Cannæ, or the Gauls filled the city."--Tertul. _Apol._, x.