CHAPTER XXVI A BANQUET AND A CONVERSATION

‘The citron board, the bowl embossed with gems,
And tender foliage wildly wreathed around
Of seeming ivy ... whate’er is known
Of rarest acquisition; Tyrian garbs,
Neptunian Albion’s high testaceous food,
And flavoured Chian wines with incense fumed,
To slake patrician thirst.’

Dyer, Ruins of Rome.

We are far more likely to underrate than to exaggerate the splendour of a great Cæsarean banquet. It differed wholly from the soft, luxurious, disreputable feast of voluptuous debauchees at which we have been present in the house of Otho. Nothing was allowed to disturb its magnificent decorum.

Nero’s feast was arranged in the highest style of imperial grandeur. Many a gilded and ivory lectica, borne by African slaves in rich liveries and surrounded by crowds of freedmen and clients, had been carried down the Sacred Way and the Street of Apollo; and if any distinguished nobles looked through the curtains the populace raised a cheer. The guests were set down under the great arch of the state entrance.

The noblest senators were there, and the representatives of the oldest families of Rome, and not a few who were destined to wear hereafter the purple shroud of imperial power. Most of them came dressed in togas of dazzling whiteness, and there were few who did not display the broad purple band of the senator, or at least the narrower band of the Roman knight. The knights were conspicuous by their large gold rings, the senators by the crescent of silver or of ivory which they wore in the front of their shoes. Those who, like Otho, were professional dandies were clothed in the most elaborate dresses, but nearly all the guests wore gay tunics under their white togas, which, during the banquet, they laid aside for the lighter and more elegant loose dress of green, violet, or other vernal colours. Nero himself received them in a paludament bordered with golden stars. Agrippina was dressed in robes of rich violet, and on her neck was a great opal from the spoils of Mithridates. Octavia had arrayed herself in one of the most costly dresses from the imperial wardrobe, and her stola was of that amethystine tint the use of which Nero afterwards reserved for himself alone.

But many of the other ladies were hardly less splendid in their attire. The necklaces which reached to their breasts had often as many as fifty fine rubies dependent from their links of gold. Some of them carried fans of peacocks’ feathers. Some were dressed in robes variegated with soft and brilliantly coloured plumage; the mantles of others had broad bands of gold sewed across the folds at the breast; others wore robes of interchanging sheen, or of the favourite mallow-colour, or Coan dresses of fine linen, woven with gold thread. The whole atrium looked like a bed of flowers, and even the pavement flashed with the light of jewelled feet.

When the guests entered the vast triclinium they were almost dazzled with the display of splendour which greeted them. Beautiful statues of youths stood round the room, holding in their hands lamps of gold, which filled the house with the fragrance of perfumed oil. Other cressets of fantastic workmanship hung by golden chains from the gilded fretwork of the roof, which was so constructed that its aspect and colouring could be altered between each course, and that scented essences and little presents of flowers and ornaments could be showered down upon the guests. The great triclinia and sigma-tables of Mauretanian citron and ivory blazed with gold and silver. The goblets from which the guests drank were enriched with gems. The oldest and richest wines of the Opimiam, Falernian, and Setine vintages stood cooling in vases full of snow, round which were twined wreaths of ivy and of roses. In front of Nero’s seat was a superb candelabrum of solid gold representing a tree with lamps hanging from its boughs like golden fruit. It belonged to the Palatine Temple of Apollo, and had been one of the spoils taken by Alexander the Great at the sack of Thebes.58 Among the other ornaments of the table were a handled vase of white and purple, for which Nero had paid a million sesterces, and the myrrhine goblet which alone Augustus had reserved for himself from the treasures of Cleopatra. There were also some of the vasa diatreta, curious triumphs of art in which a reticulated shell-work of pale blue was fastened by threads of glass to the opalescent vase within. Even the sawdust which was scattered over the polished floor was dyed with minium and breathed of saffron. Underneath the tables had been sprinkled a mixture of vervain and maidenhair, which was believed to promote hilarity in the guests.59 Vitellius, as he gloated on the veins of the thyine table at which he sat, and the glories with which it was laden, exclaimed, ‘If Jupiter and Nero were both to invite me to dinner, I should accept the invitation of Nero.’60

Even the ancients had a custom closely analogous to our ‘saying grace.’ Before the guests sat down, a number of boys, in white robes of byssus, placed upon the table figures of the lares, and carrying round a jar of wine, exclaimed, ‘May the gods be favourable!’

When the ice had been broken by the usual commonplaces, there was no lack of animated and even brilliant conversation among the most polished representatives of a society in which conversation was an art. Much of the talk, indeed, was trivial, and much was scandalous. This was the inevitable result of a tyranny which had driven even literature into such safe ineptitudes as the imaginary conversations between a mushroom and a fig-pecker, which had earned an immense reward from the Emperor Tiberius. Seneca, Burrus, and Pætus Thrasea, who were present and sat at the same sigma, talked on the foreign affairs of the Empire, canvassed the doings of Felix in Palestine and the movements of Tiridates in Armenia. Lucan was eagerly discussing with Otho the sources of the Nile. Not a few of the ladies were listening to stories of magic and vampires and were-wolves told them by travelled youths from Athens or Ephesus, and gossip amply filled up the talk of others.

Britannicus, with some of the youngest scions of noble families, sat, instead of reclining, at a lower table than the elder guests. Augustus had introduced, and Claudius had kept up, the custom of young guests dining on these public occasions in less state, and being served with a less luxurious meal.

The boy had no suspicion of danger, for Acte, though surprised not to have heard from Onesimus, did not know that her purpose had failed in consequence of the levity and folly of her foster-brother. The face of the young prince was radiant, for his heart was full of peace. His whole soul seemed to be expanded by the larger horizons which had opened before him since he had learnt about the truths and promises of the new faith. The light of the dawn, which shone for him upon the distant hills, seemed to shed its rays even upon the evil and troubled world. He maintained a pleasant talk, broken by many a happy and innocent laugh. His peril had been mercifully hidden from him, and on the previous night he had had a dream so happy, and so unlike anything which he had imagined as possible, that he hardly knew how to tell it to Titus and Clemens, who sat on either side of him.

In his dream he had seemed to himself to be sinking to sleep amid strains of melody more tender than any which he had ever heard. And, while his soul was thus lapped in Elysium, a winged youth, whose face looked pure as the flowers of spring, and whose wings were coloured like the rainbow, had come to him and offered him his choice between purple with a diadem, and a white robe with a wreath of lilies. He had chosen the white robe, and with a radiant smile the Vision dropped on the ground the purple robe, and Britannicus saw that it was rent with dagger-thrusts and stained with blood. Then the youth had taken Britannicus by the hand and led him through a vale of fire unhurt into a pleasant land beyond. Bright hands had there clothed him in the robe of shining white, and had placed the wreath of lilies round his hair. After that he looked up, and on every side of him were clouds of light, full of glittering faces; and two other winged youths grasped him by the hands, and led him along a vista of light towards a throne, which looked like a sapphire; but, before he could see who sat thereon, he awoke in such an ecstasy that he lay quivering with joy till the music and the fragrance died away. Never in all his life had he experienced such unutterable blessedness, and it seemed to him as if he could never be unhappy again.

But while Britannicus was thus supremely happy the lord of the banquet was miserable. How could he be happy? On one side of him reclined his mother, once so passionately fond of him, now bitter, furious, and sarcastic—a woman whose life was poisoned by the disappointment of her ambition. On the other side of him reclined his wife, Octavia, young, beautiful, not unaccomplished, but to him cold as death. He could buy the venal love of as many as he chose, but he could command no love that was not either purchasable or shameful. The fires of Tartarus were burning on the altar of his Penates, and his own heart was smouldering with secret crimes, which could only be shared with the most villainous or the most despicable of mankind.

And of all the guests how few were even tolerably happy, except one or two of the boys at the table of Britannicus! Under that thin film of iridescence what abysses of misery filled the Stygian pool of the society which lay beneath!

Among the guests that night was the young king Herod Agrippa II. He sat in a conspicuous position at the highest table. As a boy he had been at Rome, but this was the first time that he had been present at any public gathering for many years. He had only just arrived on a mission from Palestine. He had inherited Chalcis, the little kingdom of his uncle Herod, but he was anxious to add to this domain the city of Tiberias and part of Galilee, where Herod Antipas had ruled, and this year the Emperor granted his wish. Nero had entrusted him to the care of Gallio, with whom he was eagerly conversing in Greek, and whom he overwhelmed with multitudes of questions. They spoke low, and, as they reclined at the banquet side by side, there was little chance of their being overheard, though their conversation was often of that kind which was the more interesting from its being somewhat dangerous.

‘How gay Cæsar’s guests must be,’ said Agrippa; ‘they are all smiles!’

‘It is with many of them the fixed smile of a mask,’ said Gallio. ‘They smile to hide their misery.’

It was necessary for the success of Agrippa’s mission that he should stand well at Rome, and know something about the chief members of Roman society. He therefore asked Gallio the names and history of some of the guests. We will follow his pointed fingers, and perhaps the answers of Gallio may enable us to realise something more of the condition of things in pagan Rome. For Gallio did not spare a single reputation. He did not require to invent. Malignity had no need to search with candles. She only had to tell the truth, and there were few guests there whose reputation did not wither at her breath.

Agrippa first wanted to know something about the ladies who were present, and Gallio drew caustic sketches of Poppæa, on whom Nero’s eyes were constantly fastened, and of Calvia Crispinilla. Agrippa’s attention was next attracted by Domitia Lepida, whose tutulus, or conical head-dress, it was the exclusive task of a slave-maiden to adorn.

‘That lady,’ said Gallio, ‘is the Emperor’s aunt. She used to neglect him, but now that he is Emperor she worships the very ground on which he treads.’

‘And who is that lady in the sea-green Coan dress whose hair seems to be powdered with gold dust?’

‘That is Junia Silana, nominally a bosom friend of Agrippina, really her deadliest enemy. Observe that lady near her, whose grey hairs are so elaborately dyed, and her cheeks so thickly rouged, and who is dressed with such juvenility. She is Ælia Catella. Would you believe that, though she is nearly eighty, she still dances?’

‘O tempora! O mores!’ said Agrippa. ‘That exclamation sufficed for Cicero a hundred years ago; but he would want stronger expletives now.’

‘I will give you Horace for your Cicero. Did he not sing—

‘“What has not cankering Time made worse?

Viler than grandsires, sires beget

Ourselves, yet baser, soon to curse

The world with offspring baser yet.”’

‘Is there no honest and virtuous woman here?’ asked the young king.

Gallio pointed a little mockingly to the king’s sister, the beautiful Berenice, who had come with him to Rome. She was now twenty-six, but had lost none of her voluptuous loveliness. In her ears were earrings, each formed of three orient pearls, and the famous diamond on her finger—a gem of priceless value, her brother’s gift—blazed conspicuously at every movement of her hand.

Agrippa blushed and bit his lips; and Gallio always courteous, added with seriousness, ‘There are some, but not many. My brother, Seneca, is not complimentary to the ladies. He speaks of them as “animal impudens, ferum, cupiditatum incontinens,”61 which is, to say the least, ungrateful of him, for our mother, Helvia, was perfect; and our aunt, Marcia, gained him his earliest honours; and his own wife, Paulina—she sits there—is one of the Roman matrons who almost deserve the obsolete epitaph, “She stayed at home; she spun wool.” I think, however, that Seneca exaggerates the number of the ladies, who, he says, count the years not by the consuls, but by the number of their divorced husbands.’62

‘Point me to another such lady as Paulina,’ said Agrippa.

‘There is one,’ answered Gallio, bending his head towards the Empress Octavia; ‘and there is another.’ He pointed to a lady dressed simply in a white stola beneath a light-blue palla, who wore no jewels except the cameos which fastened the loops of her sleeve. It was Antistia, the wife of Antistius Verus, the daughter of Rubellius Plautus. ‘Antistia,’ said Gallio,T7 ‘is as pure and devoted a lady as you could find anywhere. There, too, sits Servilia, daughter of Barea Soranus; and yonder is Arria, wife of Pætus Thrasea. Pomponia Græcina, wife of Aulus Plautius, is the sweetest and noblest matron in Rome; but she avoids Court society, and she is not here. Nor is Claudia, the fairest of maidens, the daughter of King Caractacus.’

‘And who is that handsome and venerable old man at the second table?’

‘The handsome and venerable old man—his name is Domitius Afer—is, I am sorry to say, a handsome and venerable old scoundrel. He is, or rather was, the greatest orator of his day—as the Emperor Tiberius said, a born orator, suo jure disertus. But he has been neither more nor less than an informer, and one of bad character. He would have lost his head under Caligula, but he pretended to be so thunderstruck and overwhelmed by the mad Emperor’s eloquence that he not only saved his life but rose into high favour. But it is time for him to leave off making speeches. Whenever he attempts a great oration now, half his hearers laugh and the other half blush.’

‘And the young man near him?’

‘King,’ said Gallio, ‘I shall begin to think that you are a physiognomist, and are picking out some of the worst persons present. That is another informer; his name is M. Aquillius Regulus. He is a fortune-hunter as well as an informer. He has earned by infamy a fortune of sixty million sesterces. I had better tell you at once that there are several of them nearly as bad. That brazen-faced man is Suilius Nerulinus, who helped Messalina to ruin Valerius Asiaticus. He was convicted of taking bribes as a judge even in the reign of Tiberius. And, worst of the whole company, there is Eprius Marcellus, a splendid orator, but a man, as you see, of savage countenance, whose eyes flash their fiercest flame, and whose voice rolls its loudest thunder, when he is denouncing any person of special virtue.’

‘Well,’ said Agrippa, ‘unless I am tiring your courtesy I will turn to another table. Who is that extremely stout personage with a red face, bushy eyebrows, and apoplectic neck, who is devouring his dainties with such brutal voracity?’

‘He is a very distinguished person named Vitellius, chiefly distinguished, however, for eating and drinking. He is descended from a cobbler and a cook. He began his childhood with Tiberius at Capreæ. His father set up golden statues of the freedmen Narcissus and Pallas among his household gods, by which merit he won a statue on the rostra. Our friend then turned charioteer to please Gaius, gambler to please Claudius, and has now curried favour with Nero by urging him to sing. His domestic history is not amiable. He had by his first wife a son named Petronianus, to whom she left her wealth. Vitellius made him drink a cup of poison, which he says that the youth had prepared for him.’

‘I shall begin to believe,’ said Agrippa, ‘that the Greek sage was right when he said, “Most men are bad.” Why, Berytus would not show more dubious characters—nor even Jerusalem.’

‘But there are some honest men,’ said Gallio, ‘as well as virtuous women. Burrus is fairly honest; Fenius Rufus is indifferently honest; Pætus Thrasea is honest, though in these days even he has to dissemble; Helvidius Priscus, Barea Soranus, and Arulenus Rusticus, friends of Thrasea, are as honest as the day. So is that old man Lucius Saturninus, who, strange to say, in spite of his worth, has reached the age of ninety-three without being either killed or banished.’

‘I will only ask you one more name. Who is the man to whom Domitius Afer is talking?’

‘His name is Fabricius Veiento. At present he is only known as the editor of a book called “Codicilli,” which is immensely popular and is bringing him in a fortune. It is composed of the spiciest libels against every senator of note whom he ventures to attack. He has found that one secret of getting rich is to pander to the appetite for scandal, and half the people who are talking so fast around us are whispering stories which he has discovered or invented for them.’

At this moment their conversation was rudely interrupted.