CHAPTER LI AN INFERNAL SUGGESTION

‘I, under fair pretence of friendly ends,

And well-placed words of glozing courtesy,

Baited with reasons not unplausible,

Wind me into the easy-hearted man,

And hug him into snares.’

Milton, Comus.

Nero was harassed night and day by a new terror. The grand spectacle of Rome in flames, and the touches of local colouring, æsthetic and realistic, which it had enabled him to add to his poem on the Taking of Troy, would have been dearly purchased if they were to involve the forfeiture of his throne and life. Yet the sinister attitude of the people could not be mistaken, nor their menacing murmurs hushed. Tigellinus began to doubt whether the allegiance of the Prætorians, Germans and other foreign mercenaries as many of them were, would remain unshaken. They showed inclination to sympathise with the proletariat in their dangerous disaffection.

Except Tigellinus and Poppæa there was no one to whom the Emperor dared open his secrets. Both of them were closeted with him, but could suggest nothing to awaken him from the abject alarm into which he was sinking. It was evident that alike the people and the Senate held him responsible for the late conflagration, and it was impossible to detect the author of the rumours which had made his actions the common theme of Roman gossip. The only way to save himself from the hatred which threatened to destroy him, would be to divert the suspicion of the masses into some other channel. But whom could Nero accuse with any semblance of probability? Tigellinus was unscrupulous and Poppæa shrewd, but they knew not what to advise.

While they were thus consulting, a slave announced that Aliturus, the Jewish pantomimist, accompanied by the High Priest of Jerusalem and a distinguished Rabbi, desired an audience.

‘Aliturus is welcome,’ said Nero; ‘but I do not want to be troubled by his countrymen.’

‘Give them an audience, Cæsar,’ said Poppæa, who was secretly addicted to Judaism, and had even been admitted as a proselyte of the gate. ‘Aliturus presented them to me at Puteoli. They are worth conciliating. This High Priest is so rich that his mother (I am told) once presented him with a tunic worth a hundred minæ, and he only deigned to wear it once. You know the prophecy of the astrologer, that you are to have an Oriental Empire, and perhaps to reign at Jerusalem.’

Nero consented, and Aliturus, who was always among his favourites, was ushered into his presence. The actor wore the ordinary dress of a wealthy Roman youth, but the two friends who accompanied him were in the costume of the East, with rich robes and silken turbans. The elder of the two was an old man, whose white beard flowed in waves over his breast, and whose sumptuous dress and haughty bearing accorded with the dignity, if not with the humility, of the High-Priesthood. The younger was a man not yet thirty years old, splendidly handsome and full of the genius of his race.

‘Welcome, Aliturus,’ said the Empress. ‘Cæsar, this is the venerable Ishmael ben Phabi, High Priest of the Jews, on whose ephod has hung the twelve-gemmed oracle, and who has worn the golden robes; and this is Josephus of Jerusalem, son of the Priest Matthias, a Priest, a Rabbi, and a soldier.’

The High Priest and the Rabbi bowed almost to the ground, and kissed the hand which Nero extended to them as he asked them on what business they had come to consult him.

‘Half of our task in Rome has failed,’ said the High Priest. ‘We came, commissioned by our nation to impeach Paulus of Tarsus, a ringleader of the Galileans, for a sedition which he stirred up in Jerusalem; but while our shipwreck detained us your clemency has acquitted the criminal. We came also to entreat the liberation of some of our priests who are here in prison, sent hither on frivolous charges by the Procurator Festus.’

‘I will intercede for them,’ said Poppæa. ‘Those Procurators of Judæa constantly maltreat an innocent and venerable people.’

‘The last Procurator is of your appointment, Poppæa,’ said the Emperor. ‘I only nominated Gessius Florus, because you are a friend of his wife Cleopatra.’

‘And he is the worst of them all,’ whispered Josephus to Aliturus. ‘He takes bribes from the bandits. He impales Jews who are knights and Roman citizens, and he would not desist, though Berenice went before his tribunal barefooted and with dishevelled hair.’

‘I have no doubt that Florus will be kinder than his predecessors,’ said Poppæa. ‘The others have stirred up against Rome the anger of the Jewish God.’

‘Who is that?’ asked Nero. ‘Is it Moses?’

‘Moses,’ said Ishmael, ‘was a great law-giver, to whom was granted more than human wisdom; but we worship not a mortal man. Our God is He who made heaven and earth.’

‘Anchialus?’ asked Nero.94

‘Anchialus is some gentile scoff which I understand not,’ said the High Priest, with dignity.

Nero whispered to Poppæa a line of Lucan’s:—

‘Judæa, votaress of a dubious God.’

‘Suffer me to answer,’ said Josephus; ‘and as the Emperor is learned in Greek I will answer in the line of an oracle given by the Clarian Apollo himself:—

‘“Deem that the God Supreme, the Lord of Lords, is IAO”’95

‘And do you mean to say that this God of yours—Iaô, as you call him—can injure Rome?’

‘He punishes all who insult His majesty,’ answered the young Rabbi, ‘and He blesses those that honour Him. Cæsar, in his wisdom, knows how Pompeius burst into our Holy of Holies, and found that we did not worship, as men lyingly said, the image of an ass, but that the shrine was dark and empty. But from that time forth, Pompeius was overwhelmed in that sea of ruin which flung him, a headless corpse, on the shore of Alexandria. Heliodorus, the treasurer of Seleucus Philopator, was scourged out of our Holiest by a vision of angels. But Alexander the Great bowed before our High Priest Iaddua, and God gave him unexampled victories. And Julius, your mighty ancestor, was dear to our race, and he prospered through our prayers.’

‘Yea,’ said the High Priest, ‘and when the Cæsar Gaius would have profaned our Temple with a statue of himself, our God smote him with madness, and ere a year was over the dagger reached his heart.’

Nero had fits of superstition, and he listened with greedy ears. ‘I thought,’ he said, ‘that you Jews hated all mankind except yourselves.’

‘We hate them not,’ answered Ishmael. ‘On the contrary, we pray for all the seventy nations of mankind, and we offer daily sacrifices for their welfare. If those sacrifices ceased, the world would perish.’

‘Listen, Cæsar, to the High Priest’s words,’ said Poppæa, ‘and set these priests free.’

‘What Poppæa asks is done,’ said Nero. ‘But,’ he continued, turning to the Jews, ‘is not your nation seditious and turbulent?’

‘It is not,’ answered Ishmael. ‘We never stir unless we are wronged. We would fain sit in peace, each under his own vine and his own fig-tree. We offer sacrifices in our Temple for the Emperor’s safety.’

‘Nero must not confuse us with the Christians,’ said Josephus, quietly. ‘The Romans and Greeks have not yet learnt the difference between us; and all their crimes are set down to us.’

‘The Christians?’ said Nero. ‘Who are they? I have heard of them as malefactors, the scum of the earth, but always thought they were a sect of Jews.’

‘Forbid it Heaven!’ said the High Priest, vehemently. ‘They worship a crucified mesîth, who deceived the people. Some of them, I confess with anguish, are of our race, but far more are Gentiles.’

‘But did not Claudius drive the Jews from Rome, because they were always rioting at the instigation of one Chrestus? Indeed, I thought they were called Chrestians.’

‘They like to be called Chrestians,’ said Josephus, ‘as though they were chrestoi, or excellent. But Christos is the Greek for “anointed,” and they use it for our Hebrew Messiah. It was not the Jews who rioted in the days of Claudius, Emperor, but the sect of Christians. Their Christus was crucified, thirty years ago, by Pontius Pilatus. This Paulus of Tarsus is their chief man now.’

‘Paulus?’ said Nero. ‘I vaguely remember his being tried and acquitted a month ago. He seemed to me a harmless sort of man. He spoke, as I remember, very eloquently. Agrippa, and Berenice, and Festus, and even Felix, spoke well of him.’

‘They are the enemies of our race,’ said the High Priest, ‘and they deceive thee, O Emperor. It is this very Paulus who turns the world upside down, and not only preaches against our holy law, but forbids to pay tribute to Cæsar, and teaches men to worship Jesus as their king.’

‘Do they dare to set up another king than Cæsar?’ exclaimed Nero, hotly. ‘This must be seen to.’

‘I have heard of them,’ said Poppæa. ‘It is they, and not the Jews, who hate the whole human race.’

‘I am sorry I let that Paulus go,’ said Nero. ‘Tigellinus, have you any complaints against these imprisoned priests?’

‘None,’ said Tigellinus; ‘they cost nothing, for they live chiefly on olives and figs.’

‘Then set them free this evening.’

‘We thank Cæsar for his goodness,’ said the High Priest, once more making a low obeisance; ‘and we hope that he will deign to accept our present.’

The present was a golden box, in which were many vials of rose-tinted alabaster, full of the most precious balsam of Jericho, which filled the chamber with perfume as Josephus took it from an attendant slave and laid it at Nero’s feet.

‘This shall be for Poppæa,’ said the Emperor, ‘and on her behalf I will send you a purple hanging for your Temple. I hope you will ask Iaô to be propitious to me.’

They were ushered out, and no sooner had they left the room than Tigellinus rose, and impetuously exclaimed—‘I have it! Those Jews have taught me the secret. Strange that it never occurred to me before.’

‘What is the secret, Præfect?’ asked Poppæa.

‘The Christians! we must accuse them of being the incendiaries of Rome. Cæsar, dismiss your fears. The propitiated gods have found a victim, and the people will be satisfied.’

Nero’s spirits instantly rose. ‘Excellent!’ he exclaimed; ‘and thanks to that handsome Rabbi for the hint; but who will tell us something more about them?’

‘Aliturus will,’ said Poppæa. ‘As an actor he moves constantly among the people.’

Aliturus had hardly left the Palace when he was summoned back to the imperial conclave, and asked to tell what he knew about the Christians. He retailed all the vile calumnies which were current in antiquity about the ass-worship, the drinking of the blood of slain children, the promiscuous orgies of darkness, the deadly hatred to all mankind, the Thyestean banquets and Œdipodean unions. He told all these things because he had heard them from common report, and had never taken the trouble to ascertain the truth.

‘Have they any friends among the populace?’ asked the Præfect.

‘None,’ replied the actor. ‘The people hate them. They are foes to all pleasure: they will not enter a theatre. They spit when they pass a temple; they turn away with horror from sacrifices. They hate wine, and will never wear a garland. They are morose misanthropes, devoutly brutal, and capable of any crime.’

‘It would be a good thing to get rid of such enemies of gods and men,’ said Tigellinus. ‘Do you think they could have been the authors of the late conflagration?’

‘It is more than possible,’ answered Aliturus. ‘I hear that they often talk about the burning up of the world.’

‘Yes,’ said Poppæa; ‘and the part of the city which has most completely escaped being burned is the region across the Tiber where most of them live.’

Nero clapped his hands with delight. ‘Suspicion all points in that direction,’ he said; ‘but how could we get evidence against them?’

‘It would not be easy, Cæsar. They meet in the most secret places, and have their watchwords.’

‘That looks bad,’ said Nero. ‘I do not like secret meetings.’

‘Could you not get into one of their assemblies and bribe some of them?’ asked Tigellinus.

‘I will try,’ said Aliturus, ‘if Cæsar wishes it. I can at any time disguise myself and alter my face so that no one can recognise me; and I dare say some slave will find out their watchword for me.’

‘Manage this for us, Aliturus, and your reward shall be gold enough to make you a rich man for life. I gave a senator’s property to Menecrates, the harpist, and a Consul’s patrimony to Spicillus, the mirmillo, and a town-house and a villa to Paneros, the usurer. Cæsar knows how to reward with a princely hand those that serve him.’

‘Cæsar is a god,’ said the supple actor; ‘and Aliturus will not fail him.’