CHAPTER XX BROTHER AND SISTER

‘Hopes have precarious life:
They are oft blighted, withered, snapped sheer off
In vigorous growth, and turned to rottenness;
But faithfulness can feed on suffering
And knows no disappointment.’

George Eliot.

Far different was the way in which Britannicus had spent the memorable evening of Otho’s supper.

He was thrown largely upon himself and his own resources. If Titus happened to be absent; if Epaphroditus did not chance to bring with him the quaint boy Epictetus; if the duties of Pudens summoned him elsewhere, he had few with whom he could converse in his own apartments. Sometimes Burrus visited him, and was kind; but he could hardly forgive Burrus for his share in Agrippina’s plot. Seneca occasionally came to see him, and Seneca felt a genuine wish to alleviate the boy’s unhappy lot. But Seneca had been Nero’s supporter, and Britannicus could not quite get over the misgiving that his fine sentences were insincere. And at last an incident occurred which made it impossible for him ever to speak to Seneca without dislike. One day Nero had sent for his brother, and Britannicus, entering the Emperor’s room before he came in, saw a copy ofT6 the Ludus de morte Claudii Cæsaris lying on the table. Naturally enough he had not heard of this ferocious satire upon his unhappy father. Attracted by the oddness of the title ‘Apokolokyntosis,’ which the librarian had written on the outer case, he took up the book, and had read the first few columns when Nero entered. As he read, his soul burned with inexpressible indignation. His father had received a sumptuous Cæsarean funeral; he had been deified by the decree of the Senate; a grand temple had been reared in his honour on the Cœlian hill; priests and priestesses had been appointed to worship his divinity. He knew very well that this might be regarded as a conventional officialism; but that the writer of this book should thus openly laugh in the face of Rome, her religion, and her Empire; that he should class Claudius with two miserable idiots like Augurinus and Baba; that he should brutally ridicule his absence of mind, his slavering lips, his ungainly aspect, and represent the Olympian deities in consultation as to whether he was a god, a human being, or a sea-monster—this seemed to him an act of shameless hypocrisy. He had seen how the Romans prostrated themselves in the dust before his father in his lifetime, as it were to lick his sandals; how Seneca himself had blazoned his earthly godship in paragraphs of sonorous eloquence. Yet here, on the table of his successor and adopted son, was a satire replete in every line with enormous slanders. And who could have written it? Britannicus could think of no one but Seneca; and all the more since the marks on the manuscript showed that Nero had read it, and read it with amused appreciation.

When Nero entered he found Britannicus standing by the table transfixed with anger. His cheeks were crimson with shame and indignation. Panting with wrath, he was unable even to return the greeting of Nero, who looked at him with astonishment till he saw the scroll from which he had been reading. Nero instantly snatched it out of his hand. He was vexed that the boy had seen it. It had not been intended for his eyes. But now that the mischief was done he thought it better to make light of it.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I see that you have been reading that foolish satire. Don’t be in such a state of mind about it. It is meant for a mere jest.’

‘A jest!’ exclaimed Britannicus, as soon as he found voice to speak. ‘It is high treason against the religion of Rome, against the majesty of the Empire.’

‘Nonsense!’ said Nero, with a shrug of his shoulders. ‘If I don’t mind it, why should you? You are but a boy. Leave such matters to those who understand them, and know more of the world.’

‘Why do you always treat me as a child?’ asked Britannicus indignantly. ‘I am nearly fifteen years old. I am older than you were when my father allowed you to assume the manly toga.’50

‘Yes,’ said the Emperor; ‘but there are differences. I am Nero, and you are—Britannicus. I shall not let you have the manly toga just yet; the golden bulla and the prætexta suit you a great deal better.’

Britannicus turned away to conceal the emotion which pride forbade him to show. He was about to leave the audience-room when Nero called him.

‘Listen, Britannicus,’ he said. ‘Do not provoke me too far. Do not forget that I am Emperor. When Tiberius came to the throne there was a young prince named Agrippa Posthumus. When Gaius came to the throne there was a young prince named Tiberius Gemellus.’

‘The Emperor Gaius adopted Tiberius Gemellus, and made him Prince of the Youth,’ said Britannicus; ‘you have never done that for me.’

‘You interrupt me,’ said Nero. ‘Do you happen to remember what became of those two boys?’

Britannicus remembered only too well. Through the arts of Livia, Agrippa Posthumus, accused of a ferocious temperament, had been first banished to the Island Pandataria, then violently murdered. Tiberius Gemellus had not been murdered, because the news of such a death would have sounded ill; but he had had the sword placed against his heart, and had been taught to kill himself, so that his death might wear the semblance of suicide.

Nero left time for such recollections to pass through his brother’s mind, and then he slowly added, ‘And now that Nero has come to the throne, there happens to be a young prince named Britannicus.’

Britannicus shuddered. ‘Do you menace me with murder?’ he asked.

Nero only laughed. ‘What need have I to menace?’ he asked. ‘Do you not know that I have but to lift a finger, if it so pleases me, and you die? But don’t be alarmed. It does not please me—at present.’

Britannicus turned very pale. He knew that Nero’s words conveyed no idle boast. He was but a down-trodden boy— the orphan son of a murdered mother; of a father foully dealt with, infamously calumniated. What cared the Roman world whether he perished or not, or how he perished? He choked down the sob which rose, and left his brother’s presence in silence; but, as he traversed the long corridor to the room of Octavia, he could not help asking himself, with dread forebodings, what would be his fate? Would he be starved, like the younger Drusus? or poisoned, like the elder? or bidden to end his own life, like poor young Tiberius Gemellus? or assassinated by violence, like Agrippa Posthumus? How was he better than they? And if he perished, who would care to avenge him? But, oh God! if there were such a God as He in whom the Christians believed, what a world was this into which he had been plunged! What sin had he or his ancestors committed, that these hell-dogs of wrong and murder banned his steps from birth? The old Romans had been strong and noble and simple. Even in the days of Augustus they could thrill to the lesson of Virgil:

‘Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento;

Hæ tibi erunt artes, pacisque imponere morem,

Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos.’

Whence the present dearth of all nobleness? What creeping paralysis of immoral apathy had stricken this corrupt and servile aristocracy, this nerveless and obsequious Senate? From what black pit of Acheron had surged up the slime of universal corruption which polluted every class around him with ignoble debaucheries? He saw on every side of him a remorseless egotism, an unutterable sadness, the fatalism of infidelity and despair. A poisoning of the blood with physical and moral madness seemed to have become the heritage of the ruling Cæsars. Where could he look for relief? Men had ceased to believe in the gods. The Stoics had nothing better to offer than hard theories and the possibility of suicide—and what a thing must life be if it had no more precious privilege than the means of its own agonising and violent suppression!

Britannicus was intelligent beyond his years, and thoughts like these chased each other through his mind as he made his way with slow and painful steps to the rooms of his sister. For an instant the thought of a rebellion flashed across his mind, but it was at once rejected. What could he do? He was but a friendless boy. He felt as if he had heard the sentence of early death; as if his innocence were nothing to such gods as those whom his childhood had been taught to name; as if the burden of an intolerable world were altogether too heavy for him to understand or to bear. And yet he was not unsupported by some vague hope in the dim, half-explored regions of that new gospel of which he now had heard.

To Octavia the visits of her brother were almost the only happiness left. As he entered she dismissed the slaves, for she saw at a glance that some profound emotion had swept over his mind, and longed to give him consolation.

In their forlornness the brother and sister always tried to spare each other any needless pang. Octavia had never hinted to Britannicus that Nero’s base hand had often been lifted to strike her. She did not tell him that on that morning he had seized her by the hair, and in the frenzy of his rage had almost strangled her. Nor would he tell her about the infamous attack on their father’s memory which he had seen on Nero’s table. He little dreamt that she knew of it already, nay, even that, with coarse malice, Nero had shown it to her, and read passages aloud in her tortured hearing on purpose to humiliate and trouble her. Still less would he reveal the threat which seemed to give fresh significance to the feline gleam which he had caught a few days before in the eyes of the horrible Locusta.

Yet by secret intuition each of them divined something of what was in the heart of the other.

When Britannicus entered he found his sister gazing with a sad smile at a gold coin of the island of Teos, which lay on the palm of her hand.

‘What amuses you in that coin?’ he asked.

‘Look at it,’ she said, pointing to the inscription Θεὰν Ὀκταβίαν—‘the goddess Octavia.’51 ‘I was thinking, Britannicus, that if the other goddesses are as little happy as I am, I should prefer to be a mortal!’

Her brother smiled too, but remained silent. He dreaded to deepen her sorrow.

‘Have you nothing to tell me, Britannicus?’ she asked. ‘What is it which makes you so much sadder than your wont?’

‘Nothing that I can tell you,’ he answered. ‘But oh, Octavia, what thoughts strike you when you look round upon this Palace and society? Is there no such thing as virtue?’ he asked impetuously. ‘The Romans used to honour it. Who cares for virtue now, except one or two philosophers ? and—’

‘Speak on, Britannicus,’ she said. ‘Agrippina is less our enemy than she was. She has withdrawn her spies. We are not worth the hatred of any one else. Of the slaves who chiefly wait on me, most are faithful, and some are Christians.’

‘You have guessed my meaning, Octavia. Of the men and women around us, how very few there are, except the Christians, who are pure and good. How comes it?’

‘Their strange faith sustains them.’

‘But does it not seem inconceivable that the gods—or that God, if there be but one, should have revealed the truth to barbarian Jews?’

‘I don’t know, Britannicus. Who is the most virtuous person you know—I mean, excepting the Christians?’

‘Have we met any—except perhaps Persius and my Titus? and—well, perhaps the most virtuous of all is that little slave, Epictetus.’

‘Yet Epictetus is a Phrygian, and a slave, and deformed, and lame. And as for the Jews, you know that your friend Titus thinks them the most interesting people in the world; and it is whispered that some of the noblest ladies in Rome—Otho’s wife among them—have secretly embraced Judaism.’

‘Poppæa does little credit to their religion if all be true that is said of her. But Pomponia is a Christian, and Claudia, the fairest maiden in Rome. Whether they hold truth or falsehood I know not, but if religion has anything to do with goodness there seems to be no religion like theirs.’

‘Britannicus,’ she answered, ‘like you, I am deeply interested in all that Pomponia has told me; but I will tell you what has struck me most. Nero, and Seneca, and Agrippina, and all the rest of them, are full of misery and despair, though they are rich, and praised, and powerful; but these Christians, on the other hand, are paupers, hated, persecuted—and yet happy. It is that which amazes me most of all.’

Britannicus sighed. ‘Octavia,’ he said, ‘I would gladly know more of this foreign superstition, which makes men good amid wickedness, and joyful amid afflictions; which makes women like Pomponia, and girls like Claudia, and boys like Flavius Clemens.’

‘Let us, then, sup to-night with Pomponia,’ said Octavia. ‘She knows that I am lonely, and she has told me that her old general and herself will always delight to see us, if I will come without state and share their simplicity. Nero sups to-night with Otho. No one will prevent us from going together to the house of one whose loyalty is so little suspected as that of Aulus Plautius.’

And thus it was that while Nero revelled, and drank, and made the streets of his capital unsafe with riot and assault, Britannicus was present at the first Christian assembly which he had ever witnessed.