CHAPTER XXII BRITANNICUS AND HIS SONG

‘Even then
The princely blood flows in his cheek, he sweats,
Strains his young nerves, and puts himself in posture.’

Shakespeare, Cymbeline, iii. 3.

Nero was chary of showing his bruised face. He daily smeared it with the juice of an herb called thapsia from the island of Thapsos where it was found, and with a mixture of wax and frankincense, but it retained for some days the marks of the buffet which he had received from the arm of Pudens. From Octavia he did not care to conceal either that or any other disgrace. He had reduced his unhappy girl-bride to such a condition that she dared ask him no question. From Agrippina he would gladly have concealed it, but he had been unable as yet to break the habit of paying her a daily visit. Intensely miserable was that visit to them both, and, except when Nero chose to bring his friends and attendants with him, the salutations often ended with the stormiest scenes.

They did on this occasion.

The Augusta at once noticed the bruise on Nero’s cheek, and she was perfectly aware of the cause of it; for she had not sunk so completely out of the old habits of power as not to have spies in her pay who kept her well informed of the Emperor’s proceedings.

Supremely wretched, but even in her wretchedness agitated by the furies of pride and passion, she had scarcely received his cold kiss when she began to taunt her son.

‘Cæsar looks gallantly to-day,’ she said; ‘for all the world like some clumsy gladiator who has been hit while practising with wooden foils.’

Nero maintained a sulky silence.

She added: ‘No doubt it is as worthy of a Roman Emperor to roam about at night and join in street brawls with slaves as it is for him to sing, and write verses, and dance on the stage.’

‘How do you know that I have roamed the streets?’

Unwittingly she had betrayed herself, but in an instant she recovered from her confusion.

‘What Otho and your other boon companions do—such as they are—is notorious; and when Cæsar has a black eye the event is hard to account for in any ordinary way.’

‘Say rather that your spies have told you about it,’ said Nero.

‘And if they have,’ she said defiantly—‘what then?’

‘Why this,’ he answered; ‘that, as I have told you before, I am Emperor, and mean to be Emperor; and if you do not choose to be taught it by fair means, by all the gods, you shall be taught it by foul.’

‘By all the gods?’ said Agrippina, repeating his oath. ‘Are you not afraid of their wrath?’

Nero smiled a peculiar smile. ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘Why should I fear gods when I can make them myself?’53

Agrippina was stung by the sense of her impotence, and maddened by the shipwreck of her ambition; but she was too proud and fierce to abandon the contest.

‘If you do not fear any gods,’ she said, ‘you shall fear me. Britannicus has nearly arrived at the age of manhood. He is the son of Claudius; you are not. But for me he would have been Emperor; by my aid he may yet sit upon his father’s throne. Then once more Rome shall see a man ruling her, and not a singer and a dandy.’

Nero, filled with fury, clenched his fist, and strode forward as though he would strike her.

She sprang up with flashing eyes. ‘Would you dare to strike me?’ she shrieked. ‘By heavens, if you did, I would that moment stab you to the heart.’

At the word she drew from her robe a dagger which she always carried there, and raised it in her right hand, while her bosom heaved with passion.

Nero sprang back, but Agrippina, as though in the revulsion of disdain, dropped the dagger at her feet.

‘You would make a fine tragedian, mother,’ said Nero, with a bitter sneer.

The excess of Agrippina’s rage seemed to stifle her. ‘One hope, at least, the gods have left me,’ she gasped forth, as soon as she could find voice to speak. ‘Britannicus yet lives; I will take him with me to the Prætorian camp. I will see whether the soldiers will listen to the daughter of Germanicus, or to Burrus with his mutilated hand and Seneca with his professorial tongue.’

‘I am tired of all this,’ answered Nero. ‘Only remember that some day you may provoke me too far. There are such persons as informers; there is such a law as that of læsa majestas.’

He left her, as he almost always left her now, in angry displeasure, but he did not seriously fear her threats. He had been trained to think himself incomparably superior to Britannicus. Agrippina herself had encouraged the widespread scandal that it was one thing to be a son of Messalina, and quite another to be a son of Claudius. Besides, he traced no steady ambition in the boy. So long as he was left to amuse himself with Titus, he gave hardly any trouble, nor had he, so far as Nero knew, a single partisan who could for a moment withstand the combined authority and popularity of such men as Seneca and the Prætorian Præfect. Still he disliked being threatened so constantly with the claims of the son of Claudius. Tigellinus was always hissing his name in his ears, and Agrippina blazoning him as a resource wherewith to secure her vengeance. If Britannicus were not so insignificant, it might be well to put him out of the way.

A few days afterwards, when his face had nearly resumed its ordinary hue, he determined to celebrate the Saturnalia with a party mainly composed of youthful nobles.

Otho of course was there, and the guests whom he had invited to the villa in the Apennines. Among the others were Nerva, now a young man of twenty-three, and Vespasian, with his two sons, Titus and Domitian, who, with a few other boys, were asked to meet Britannicus. Piso Licinianus, a youth of seventeen, of high lineage and blameless manners, was of a very different stamp from Nero’s favourite companions, but Nero chose to pay him the compliment of commanding his presence. Among the elder guests of the miscellaneous party were invited Galba, a man in the prime of life, who since his return from Africa had been living in retirement, and Vitellius, who, though only forty, had been already infamous under four emperors, and who rose to the highest position in spite of the fact that he was notorious for gluttony alone.

A curious incident occurred at the beginning of the banquet. Among the crowded slaves who waited on the guests was a Christian who, like Agabus and the daughters of Philip, possessed in a high degree that peculiar gift of prophecy which is known as second sight. His name was Herodion; and Apelles, one of his fellow-slaves in Cæsar’s household, in pointing out the guests, mentioned the rumour that Nerva’s horoscope had been cast by an astrologer, who had predicted that he should succeed to the Empire; and that Augustus had laid his hands on the head of Galba when he was a boy, and had said to him, ‘Thou too, my child, shalt have a taste of empire.’

‘I do not believe in horoscopes,’ said Herodion.

‘Not believe in the Chaldæans?’ replied the other. ‘Ah, I remember, thou art one of those Christians, who worship—well, never mind. But canst thou deny that the prognostications of our augurs, and the answers of our oracles, often come true?’

‘They do,’ said Herodion. ‘We believe that the demons have such power sometimes permitted them. There was, for instance, a maid with the spirit of Python at Philippi, whose fame has even reached to Rome. But—’ and here he paused long, and gazed with earnest and troubled countenance on the assembled guests.

‘What is it?’ asked Apelles.

‘Apelles,’ answered Herodion, ‘thou art honest, and lovest me. Dare I tell thee that as I gaze on these guests I seem to see them as through a mist of blood?’

‘Thou art safe with me,’ answered Apelles. ‘Should I be likely to betray the kind sharer of my cell, who nursed me last year through that long and terrible fever?’

But Herodion sank into silence, though his glance grew more and more troubled as he looked around him. Whatever it may have been granted him to see or to divine, he spoke no more. But among those guests there were no less than eight future emperors—Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, Nerva, and Trajan, then a little child, who was led in by a slave; and six of these, as well as Nero and Britannicus, and Piso Licinianus, were destined to violent deaths. Apelles recalled the scene years afterwards, when he too had become a convert to Christianity.

The joyous licence of the Saturnalia put an end to all stiffness of ceremonial. The banquet was gay and mirthful, and as so many youths and boys were present the amusements were purposely kept free from such scenes as disgraced the suppers at Subiaco and the palace of Otho. It was agreed that the younger guests should cast lots which should be the king of the feast. Nero threw the Venus-throw of four sixes, and was accordingly elected with acclamation to the mirthful office. The rex ruled with undisputed sway, and all were obliged to obey his bidding. Good taste and natural kindness usually prevented him from any flagrant abuse of his office.

While the staid elders looked on with smiles, Nero and the younger part of the company amused themselves with various games.

‘And now,’ said the Emperor, ‘you must all obey your symposiarch, and I am going to tell you each in turn what to do.’

Otho was bidden to take off his garland, and place it on the head of the person whom he loved best; and of course he placed it on the head of Nero.

Lucan, as he was fond of stories, was bidden to tell a complete story in one minute; and with surprising readiness he quoted the two Greek lines—

‘A, finding some gold, left a rope on the ground;

B, missing his gold, used the rope which he found.’54

‘Piso Licinianus, you are to pay me the highest compliment you can.’

Piso was no flatterer, and did not like the command, but after a moment’s hesitation he quoted Horace’s lines—

‘How great thy debt to Nero’s race,

O Rome, let red Metaurus say,

Slain Hasdrubal, and Victory’s grace,

First granted on that glorious day.’

‘That is a compliment to my ancestors, not to me,’ said Nero; ‘but I will let you off, for, though I am Rex, I am not Tyrannus.’

‘Now, Petronius, you are a poet, so I am going to give you a hard command. I will give you five minutes, and you are to produce a line which shall read the same backwards and forwards.’

‘Impossible, Cæsar,’ said Petronius.

‘Nevertheless, I require the impossibility, or you will have to drink by way of fine at least nine cyathi of neat Falernian.’

With humble apologies, Petronius seized his tablets, and before the five minutes had expired he read the line—

‘Roma tibi subito motibus ibit Amor.’

‘Your line is not Latin, and does not make sense,’ said Nero. ‘I should have told you to make me a compliment instead of our grave Licinianus. But now, Senecio, I order you to quote the epitaph which best expresses your view of life.’

Senecio obeyed, and his selection was very characteristic. It was—

‘Eat, drink, enjoy thyself: the rest is nothing.’55

‘What would our small Epictetus say to that?’ whispered Titus in the ear of Britannicus.

Other guests achieved the tasks appointed them with more or less success, and they awaited with some curiosity the injunction which Nero would lay on Britannicus. Britannicus did not feel much anxiety about it, for he supposed it would be of the same playful and frivolous character as the rest. He did not imagine that his brother would single him out at a genial gathering to put upon him a public insult by ordering him to do anything which would cause a blush. He was therefore struck with amazement when Nero said:

‘And now, Britannicus, get up, walk into the middle of the room, and there sing us a song.’

A low and scarcely audible murmur of disapproval ran round the room. As it was the Saturnalitian festival, the slaves were not only present as spectators of these social games, but were allowed by custom to indulge in an almost unlimited licence of satire even against their masters. But that a prince of the blood should be called upon to sing—to sing in public, before a number of noble Romans, and even in the presence of slaves, was regarded as an indignity of the deadliest description. It was a violation of immemorial custom. It was a demand entirely outrageous. The hot blood rushed to the cheeks of Britannicus, and suffused his brow and neck. An indignant refusal sprang to his lips. If Pudens had been near he would at least have glanced at him to see what he would advise; but, to his deep grief, Pudens had been removed to a post in the camp, and his place had been taken by a tribune named Julius Pollio, whom Britannicus distrusted at a glance. The pause was becoming seriously awkward, and many of the guests betrayed uneasiness, when Britannicus heard Titus, who sat next to him, whisper in a low voice, ‘It is a shame; but you had better try, for fear worse should happen.’

Then Britannicus summoned up all his courage and all his dignity. He rose and walked with a firm step into the middle of the triclinium, asked the harpist Terpnos, whom he saw standing near with his harp in his hand, to give him a note, and in a voice sweet and clear began to sing one of the finest choruses from the ‘Andromache’ of the old Roman poet, Ennius. It described the ruin of the House of Priam. ‘I have seen,’ says Andromache, the captive wife of Hector, ‘the palace with its roof embossed and fretted with gold and ivory, and all its lofty portals, wrapped in conflagration. I have seen Priam slain with violence, and the altar of Jove incarnadined with blood. What protection shall I seek? Whither shall I fly? What shall be my place of exile? Robbed of citadel and city, whither shall I fare? Shattered and scattered are the altars of my home and native land! The shrines are calcined by flame; scorched are their lofty walls, and warped their beams of fir by the strong heat.’56

Nero listened in astonishment and alarm. The strain which the boy had chosen for his song was conceived in the grandest and most heroic style of the old Roman poetry, and was incomparably nobler and manlier than the conceits and tintinnabulations which were in modern vogue. The taste, the knowledge, the readiness, shown in the selection of such a strain were remarkable. And was this Britannicus who sang? Nero was always displaying and boasting of his divine voice, but it was harsh as a crow’s in comparison with the ringing notes of his modest brother. And then the meaning of the song? Was it not aimed at Nero and his usurpation? Did it not show decisively the thoughts which were filling the soul of the dispossessed prince, and his clear consciousness that he had been robbed of his hereditary rights?

But there was something worse than this. For by the time that Britannicus had ended his song, the brief winter twilight had nearly ended, and the banqueting-room lay deep in shadow. It was too dark to distinguish individual faces, and this fact, together with the liberty of the jocund season, made those present less careful to conceal their thoughts. No sooner had the voice of Britannicus ceased than a murmur of spontaneous applause arose on every side, and not only of applause, but of pity and favour. Nero had meant to humiliate his brother: but, on the contrary, his brother had so behaved under trying circumstances as to win all hearts!

Jealousy, rage, hatred, swept in turbulent gusts across the Emperor’s soul. He would have liked to strike Britannicus, to scourge those insolent guests. But he did not dare to take any overt step, for there had been no overt offence. Britannicus had been bidden to obey the festive order of the King of the Feast, and he had accomplished the behest as the others had done, in a way which kindled admiration. To act as if the chorus from Ennius had been aimed at himself would have been to betray uneasiness and confess wrongdoing.

He could not, however, conceal, and took no pains to conceal, his petulant spleen. Praise of another was poison to Nero. That the merit of any one else should be admitted seemed like a reflection on himself. ‘They call Britannicus as good as me!’ was a thought which filled his little soul with spite and wrath.

‘This is poor stuff,’ he said, in high dudgeon, pretending to yawn in the most insulting way he could. ‘Who would have expected mock heroics at the Saturnalia?’ Then he rose, and said, with a slight wave of the hand, ‘I am tired of this. I bid farewell to the guests. You may go without ceremony.’

Every one felt that the Emperor’s ill-humour had thrown a deadly chill over the gladdest night of the year. With mutual glancings, and slight shrugs of the shoulder, and almost imperceptible liftings of the eyebrow, they departed. Only Tigellinus remained.

‘What does Cæsar think of Britannicus now?’ he asked in malignant triumph.

‘I think,’ said Nero, savagely, ‘that swans sing sweetest before they die.’

‘Ah-h!’ said the base plotter; and he knew that now the first step in the Sejanus-course of his ambition was accomplished.

But Britannicus went straight from the supper to the rooms of his sister. Octavia sat there in the old Roman fashion of matronly simplicity. She was spinning wool at her distaff, and with kind heart she often gave what she spun to the children of her slaves. And while she spun, a maiden was reading to her.

It was the Christian girl Tryphæna. Usually she read from the Roman poets, and Octavia was never tired of hearing the finer odes of Horace, or the Æneid and Bucolics of Virgil. Sometimes she listened to the history of Livy, and to the treatises of Seneca, which she liked better than their author. But this evening Tryphæna—between whom and her young mistress there was a confidence akin to affection—had timidly asked ‘whether she might read a Christian writing.’ She knew that the Empress had been interested in the Christians by the conversation of Pomponia, and she was anxious to show how shamefully her brethren and sisters in the faith were misrepresented and slandered.

She drew forth from her bosom a manuscript, which had been lent her as a precious favour by the Christian Presbyter Cletus. It was a copy of a general letter of the Apostle Peter, which had been written to encourage the struggling Christian communities. It was not the letter which we now know as the First Epistle of St. Peter, which was written perhaps ten years later, but one of those circular addresses which touched, as did so many of the Epistles, upon the same universal duties, and used in many passages the same form of words. She had read the beautiful passage about obeying the ordinances of man for the Lord’s sake, and putting to silence by well-doing the ignorance of foolish men. And pausing there, she asked ‘whether Octavia was interested in it, and whether she should continue.’

‘Yes, Tryphæna,’ she said, ‘continue this strange letter. How different it is from the treatise of Seneca which you were reading to me the other day! There rings through it I know not what accent of elevation and sincerity.’

The girl then read the noble advice to slaves, and Octavia no longer wondered that Christian slaves so invariably deserved the comprehensive epithet of frugi. How well would it be if the worthless multitude of the slave population—the cunning veteratores, the impudent vernæ, the abject copreæ, the pampered minions of luxury, the frivolous Greeklings—could act in the spirit of such exhortations!

Then she read the duty of husbands towards their wives, and of wives towards their husbands. Octavia bowed her head. She thought of all the numberless divorces; of the ladies who reckoned their years by the number of their husbands; of the scandals caused by the women who stooped to court gladiators and charioteers; of the fires of hell which Nero’s unfaithfulness had kindled on her own hearth. She could think of the home of Pætus Thrasea as happy; but scarcely of another except that of Pomponia—and Pomponia was a Christian.

Tryphæna had just begun the following passage:—

‘Finally, be ye all like-minded—’

when Britannicus entered. He did not know what was being read, and Octavia put her finger on her lip, and made a sign to him to sit down and listen.

The slave-girl continued—

‘Finally, be ye all like-minded, compassionate, loving as brethren, tender-hearted, humble-minded; not rendering evil for evil, or reviling for reviling; but contrariwise blessing; for hereunto were ye called, that ye should inherit a blessing. For,

He that would love life,

And see good days,

Let him refrain his tongue from evil,

And his lips that they speak no guile:

And let him turn away from evil, and do good;

Let him seek peace, and pursue it.’

Britannicus listened in astonishment. ‘Who wrote those noble words?’ he asked. ‘It cannot be Chrysippus; the Greek is too modern, and too unpolished. Is this some new philosopher? Has something been recently published by Cornutus or Musonius?’

‘Perhaps you will see, if Tryphæna reads a little further,’ said the Empress.

The slave-girl continued—

‘And who is he that will harm you, if ye be zealous of that which is good? But if ye suffer for the sake of righteousness, blessed are ye: and fear not their fear, neither be troubled; but sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord—’

‘It is a Christian writing!’ exclaimed the boy, in a low voice; and when he again caught the thread of the exhortation, Tryphæna was reading—

‘For it is better, if the will of God be so, that ye suffer for well-doing rather than for evil-doing; because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God.’

‘Go, Tryphæna,’ said Octavia, deeply moved. ‘I would talk with my brother alone.’

‘A Christian writing!’ said Britannicus again, as the slave-girl quietly glided out of the room. ‘Who wrote it?’

‘Tryphæna says it is part of a letter written to Christians, who are scattered everywhere, by a fisherman, Peter of Galilee, who, she says, was one of the apostles of Christus.’

‘Octavia,’ said Britannicus, ‘I feel as if voices out of heaven were calling me. I feel as if this unknown Christus were drawing me irresistibly to Himself. It is a message to me—and a message before my death.’

‘Your death, Britannicus?’ said the Empress, starting, and turning pale. ‘Oh, withdraw those ill-omened words.’

‘Do not fear omens, Octavia. But you must hear what has happened to me.’

‘You have been at the Saturnalitian feast, and you are soon to lay aside the golden ball and the embroidered toga,’ said Octavia, proudly; ‘and very well you will look in your new manly toga and the purple tunic underneath it.’

‘Yes, but it reminds me of Homer. It is a “purple death,” as Alexander the Great called it.’

‘Why are your thoughts so full of gloom?’ asked his sister, pushing back the hair from his forehead, and looking into his face.

He told her all that had happened that night. She saw the fatal significance of what had occurred.

‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, sobbing, ‘the gods are too cruel. What have we done that they should thus afflict our innocence? I lift up my hands against them.’

‘Hush, Octavia! All these ridiculous and polluted deities—who believes in them any longer? But they represent the Divine, and what the Divine does must be for some good end, and we must breast the storm like Romans and like rulers, if we cannot reach the peace of which this poor Christian fisherman has written.’

‘Our mother disgraced and slain; our father murdered; ourselves surrounded with perils; Nero on the throne. Oh, Britannicus! wherein have we offended?’

‘We have not offended, my Octavia. The good suffer as well as the bad. The good are often made better by their sufferings.’

‘Oh, my brother! my brother!’ sobbed Octavia. ‘I will not spare you. I cannot part from you. I have no one left but you. You shall not, you must not, die.’

He gently disengaged the arms of his sister from his neck, and kissed her cheek.

‘I must not linger here any longer to-night,’ he said. ‘Farewell; not, I trust, forever, though I see that Nero has dismissed our friend Pudens, and put an ill-looking stranger in his place. But, Octavia, something—some voice like that of a god within me—tells me that it will be happier to die than to live.’

That evening, when Tigellinus left him, Nero first realised, with a start of horror, that he was on the eve of a fearful crime. By a rare accident he was alone. One of the reasons why he knew so little of himself was that he scarcely ever endured a moment’s solitude. From the time that he awoke in the morning till the latest hour of his nightly revels, he was surrounded by flatterers and favourites, by dissolute young nobles or adoring slaves. It was only for an occasional hour or two of state business that he saw any person of dignity or moral worth. This evening he would have been encircled by his usual throng of idlers if he had not broken up the banquet in anger long before the expected time.

He was alone, and his thoughts naturally reverted to the song of Britannicus, and to his own fierce mortification. The words ‘He shall die!’ broke from his lips. But at that moment, looking up, his glance was arrested by two busts of white marble, standing out from the wall on pedestals of porphyry. He remembered the day on which they had been placed there by the orders of Claudius, in whose private tablinum he chanced to be sitting. One was a beautiful likeness of Britannicus at the age of six years. The other was a bust of himself in the happy and radiant days of his early boyhood, before guilt had clouded his brow and stained his heart.

He rose and stood before the bust of Britannicus. For some years they had been inmates of the same palace. They had been playmates, and at first, before the development of Agrippina’s darker plots, there had been between them some shadow of affection. Nero had always felt that there was a winning charm about the character and bearing of his adoptive brother. Anger and jealousy whispered, ‘Kill him;’ conscience pleaded, ‘Dip not your young hands in blood. There has been enough of crime already. You know how Claudius died, and who was his murderess, and for whose gain. Let it suffice. Britannicus is no conspirator. It is not too late, even yet, to make him your friend.’

He turned to his own bust. It represented a face fairer, more joyous, more mobile than that of the son of Claudius. ‘I was a very pretty child,’ said Nero, and then gazed earnestly into the mirror which hung between the busts. It showed him a face, of which the features were the same, but of which the expression was changed, and on which many a bad passion, recklessly indulged, had already stamped its debasing seal.

‘Ye gods! how altered I am!’ he murmured; and he hid his face in his hands, as though to shut out the image in the mirror.

And then his dark hour came upon him. The paths of virtue which he had abandoned looked enchantingly beautiful to him. He saw them, and pined his loss. Was amendment hopeless? Might he not dismiss his evil friends, send Tigellinus to an island, banish Poppæa from his thoughts, return to the neglected Octavia, abandon his vicious courses, live like a true Roman? Was he about to develop into a Tiberius or a Caligula—he who had hated not long ago to sign the death-warrant of a criminal? Should history record of him hereafter that he had dyed the commencement of his power with the indelible crimson of a brother’s blood?

‘I am a tyrant and a murderer,’ he cried. ‘I am falling, falling headlong. Cannot I check myself in this career? Ye gods! ye gods!’

Whom had he to help him to choose the difficult course? Who would encourage him to turn his back on his past self? The philosophers, he felt, despised him. He could recall the cold, disapproving glances of Musonius, and Cornutus, and Demetrius the Cynic, on the rare occasions when he had seen them. And as for Seneca, of what use would it be to send for him? ‘I have learnt to distrust Seneca,’ he said to himself. ‘He might have advised me better than he did in the matter of Acte.’

But the powers of evil never lightly resign a soul in which they have once planted their throne, and they took care to bring back upon Nero’s heart a great flood of jealousy, suspicion, and dislike. And as he gave himself up to these ill-feelings, he began to feel how disagreeable it would be to grow up year by year with such a youth as Britannicus beside him. It would be impossible to keep him in leading-strings, or to thrust him wholly into the background. What if the virtues of Britannicus should only throw into relief the vices of Nero? ‘No,’ he said; ‘Britannicus must die.’

So Nero deliberately chose the evil and refused the good, and the narrow wicket-gate of repentance was closed behind him, and the enemies of his soul flung wide open before him the portals of crime, and the wild steeds of his passions, as they sprang forth on their down-hillward path, soon flung from his seat the charioteer who had seemed inclined for one brief instant to tighten the reins and check their headlong speed.