CHAPTER XLVI THE DEATH OF OCTAVIA
‘O gioia! O ineffabile allegrezza!
O vita intera d’amore e di pace!
O senza brama sicura ricchezza!’
Dante, Paradiso, xxvii. 7-9.
In one sense all the people of Rome were the friends of Octavia; in another she was nearly friendless. For the multitudes of every rank were degraded by selfishness and cowed by terror. So long as they were personally untouched by the orgies and crimes of the Emperor, and so long as he was supported by the swords of the Prætorians, they neither wished nor dared to interfere. Rome lay helpless under the bonds of the tyranny which her own vices had riveted. Nero might indeed be murdered, but in what respect would the Empire be better off? There was no Cæsar left. If Nero died, there seemed to be no prospect for Rome except the horrors of civil war with all its attendant pillage, massacre, and crime. It seemed better to endure Nero’s infamies than to see the Empire torn to pieces. After all, were not many of the senators, of the generals, of the aristocracy, capable of becoming as licentious and as cruel as he was, and would not their elevation make their vices loom as monstrous as his?
They rejoiced, therefore, that the popular tumult had been so speedily repressed, and they steeped their consciences in immoral acquiescence. The bad plunged themselves yet more shamelessly into vice, and manœuvred to make their vices known as a passport to imperial favour. As for the better Romans, they tried to bury themselves in such obscurity as would shelter them from notice; or they sought solace in the refined egotism of the Epicureans; or inured themselves to the chances of death and ruin by assuming the haughty self-dependence of the later Stoics. Pætus Thrasea and his friends took refuge in the belief that it would be an absurdity to attempt the impossible. The heart of Seneca was torn with misgivings; but was not he himself in peril? What could he do? He had never spoken out against any one of Nero’s crimes, or lifted a finger to prevent them. Lucan longed to overwhelm the Emperor with invective; but he could only brood in silence over his wrongs, and gloomily await the day of vengeance.
From none of these did Octavia receive any help. If they compassionated her misery, no murmur of pity reached her ears. But from those who were now her fellow-Christians she received both help and consolation. Pomponia, whose gentle influence moved fearlessly with halcyon wings over the turbid abyss of crime, exerted herself to add comfort to the dreary retreat of the Empress in the volcanic isle. With her strong good sense she made arrangements for Octavia’s comfort. She obtained the leave of her husband, Aulus Plautius, to despatch some of her slaves to Pandataria the very day that the decree of Octavia’s banishment was published, with directions to secure for her as fitting a home as was possible, and to take with them such things as might conduce to her well-being. In this she was secretly aided by Acte. The beautiful and generous girl sought an interview with Octavia before she left Campania, fell at her knees, and begged the daughter of Claudius to pardon the wrong which in earlier days her beauty had inflicted. ‘I was but a slave once,’ she said; ‘nor did I know the truths which have since been taught me. I have forsaken the past. Empress, you will forgive me, and accept such little services as I can render?’
‘Rise, Acte!’ said Octavia, with tender dignity. ‘I know that thy heart was innocent, and that no wiles of thine were spread to catch Nero’s love. I forgive thee. Who am I, in my misery, that I should condemn thee?’
She raised the weeping girl from the ground, and gently kissed her. ‘Do not weep any more,’ she said. ‘Acte, it has been told me that thou art a Christian. Nay, start not, and see how much I trust thee. I am a Christian, too.’
Acte was almost speechless with surprise; but Octavia continued: ‘Yes; thou seest that I put my life in thy hands; but are we not sisters now? I used to talk with my brother Britannicus about this new faith, and often with Pomponia, and now I have seen Lucas of Antioch, and from him I have heard of Jesus. Lucas has lent me the letters of Paulus of Tarsus. He has written that “not many rich, not many noble, not many mighty are called;” but though I am noble, I am poor, and weak, and unhappy except for that consolation which He who died for us sends to the sorrowful.’
‘God be praised,’ said Acte, ‘that thou hast found that peace.’
‘Yes,’ answered the Empress; ‘peace I can truly say in the midst of shame, and slander, and tumult. My life will be short; but for us, Acte, the islands of the blest, of which the poets sang, are neither dreams nor fables. Farewell.’
‘Farewell, Empress,’ said Acte. ‘Day and night will our brethren lift up holy hands for thee, and many a purer prayer than mine will rise for thee like incense.’
As Acte left the villa she passed Onesimus. She had long been ignorant of his fate, and shame prevented him from speaking to her. He recognised her at a glance, but she did not penetrate the disguise which changed him into a fair-haired slave, and he shrank back from her presence. He regretted when it was too late that he had not revealed himself to her, for even now she might possibly have retarded the tragedies which were to ensue. Alas! when once men have shown themselves unfaithful, how often do their best impulses come too late!
But he devoted himself heart and soul to the service of the young Empress. She had been permitted to take with her into exile one or two only of her hundreds of slaves. She had chosen Tryphæna to be one of these, though the poor girl, after her cruel torments, was still barely able to stand. She had also chosen Onesimus, by the advice of Pomponia, though she did not yet know that he had been brought under Christian influence.
Nor was he the only disguised Christian in that small and saddened household. The position of Hermas since his rescue from the house of Pedanius had been very perilous. If he were recognised, the fact of his having escaped might be fatal to others besides himself. The Christians were mostly too poor to introduce a stranger into their households. They would have been willing to share with each other the last crust; but the crowded state of the insulæ,88 in which they mostly lived, rendered it difficult and dangerous to procure extra accommodation. The only thing possible, therefore, had been to conceal him in the house of Pudens; but as it was now necessary to find a new home for him he had been enrolled among the out-door slaves in the villa of the Empress, and was selected to accompany her to the lonely island, until his history and face should have been forgotten.
Anicetus, who had been made the vile instrument of Octavia’s destruction, received the guerdon of his infamy, and was dismissed into nominal exile in Sardinia. To such a man—a slave by birth and a villain by nature—the exile was nothing. He had never regarded life as anything but a feeding-trough, and as long as he had wealth to spend on his own indulgences Sardinia served him as well as Rome. It happened that the ship which was to carry him to Caralis, the Sardinian capital, sailed from Ostia on the day that Octavia was to be conveyed to Pandataria. Thousands of spectators, and among them many Christians, had flocked to Ostia to see her embark. If they dared not express their feelings, they longed at least silently to show their sympathy. They recognised Anicetus. He embarked amid a tempest of groans and hootings so full of execration that he trembled lest he should be torn to pieces by the mob, and abjectly entreated the protection of his guards. Thenceforth he vanishes from history. He died in Sardinia, rich and impenitent; but even there he did not escape the hatred which he felt more than the load of infamy with which he had crushed down his worthless soul.
Later in the afternoon the multitudes caught sight of the litter which was bearing Octavia to the shore. A trireme was waiting to take her away forever from the home of the rulers of the world. Prætorian guards marched on either side of her with drawn swords. Behind her, in a humble carruca, came her few household slaves, and the scanty possessions which alone she could take with her. A deep murmur of pity arose, and as she approached the quay it swelled into a cheer, in which the spectators gave vent to the indignation which they felt against her oppressors. At one time it seemed as if they might break out into violence; but the Prætorians menaced them with their swords, and the angry murmurs died away.
The Christians—who recognised Tryphæna and others of their brethren among Octavia’s slaves, and who, though they did not know the secret of Octavia’s conversion, knew her innocence—showed their sympathy in more quiet ways. They sighed forth prayers and blessings, and strewed with flowers her pathway to the vessel. Onesimus, as he passed, caught sight of Nereus and Junia. No one knew him, but he felt almost certain that he had seen a flash of recognition in Junia’s eyes. Beyond doubt she stood gazing intently on him as he leaned over the vessel’s side. Ah, well! the day might come, he thought, when, purified from shame by suffering, he might obliterate the memories of his dishonoured past, and be worthy once more to stand by her side.
And one incident occurred which, not for him only, but for all that little company, was fraught with blessed consequences. Linus stood with Luke of Antioch in the undistinguished throng, but neither of them had been forgetful of the sorrowful sighing of those who were going into captivity. Linus had told to Paul the prisoner, in deep secrecy, the story of Octavia’s baptism, and the heart of the Apostle was sad at the thought of her sufferings. He had written her a brief letter of comfort, which Linus slid into the hand of Hermas amid the bustle of the embarkation. Nor was this all. Luke also had not been forgetful of the anguish of the last of the Claudian house. Filled with that deep sense of brotherhood which linked all ranks together in the Christian community, he had written out for the exiles some inestimably precious fragments of the materials which he had been collecting for his Gospel. He found means unobserved to give them to Tryphæna, when ceasing for a moment to lean on the arms of the two slaves who were supporting her feeble footsteps, she turned to bid farewell to her mother, Nympha.
The emotion of the spectators made it more easy for the watchful Christians to communicate with each other. For there were few dry eyes among them. Some of them were old enough to have seen Julia, the lovely daughter of Augustus, sail to the same sad bourne. They had seen her daughter, the younger Julia, banished by Claudius to the yet more distant island of Tremerus. They had wept tears almost as bitter when they saw the elder Agrippina driven to the same prison by the insatiable malice of Tiberius. But the case of Octavia was far sadder than that of her noble kinswomen. The elder Julia was steeped in shame, and had well-nigh broken the heart of her father. The younger Julia had also disgraced her high lineage. The wife of Germanicus had been a Roman matron of the purest stamp, yet her passionate haughtiness had diminished the sympathy which would otherwise have been felt with her in her calamities. And, further, these others had enjoyed their days of superb sunlight and prosperity. Ruin had not overtaken them till the happiness and beauty of their youth were past. Not so the pale and hapless girl who was now embarking. Octavia had known no joy. Her childhood had been darkened by the three murders of those whom she best loved. From the first her husband had hated her. His youthful love had been given, not to her, but to her freedwoman; and now, unprotected by her own white innocence, she had been smitten to the earth by a horribly false condemnation. She was still scarcely twenty years old!89 And she was being conducted amid centurions and soldiers to a barren rock, which was haunted by memories of death and anguish. She was as one dead, but without the peace of death:—so thought her pagan sympathisers, and were confirmed in their misgiving that either there are no gods or they care not for the affairs of men.
And Octavia did not deceive herself. She well knew that those islets of the Tyrrhene Sea were wet with the blood of noble exiles; and that Caligula, on being told by one who had been recalled from banishment that the exiles spent their time in praying for the death of the reigning Emperor, had sent soldiers round the islands to put all the prisoners to death. She knew her peril, but she clung to life with the tenacity of youth. Nero had no child. She thought that his excesses would precipitate his end, and that some virtuous man might be chosen by the Senate to succeed. After the death of Narcissus she had been told the anecdote of the physiognomist who had prophesied that Titus would one day be Emperor, and she thought that under her brother’s devoted friend there might be the dawn of brighter days. She therefore wrote a letter to Nero, before the trireme started, in which she said she would but live as his widow and his sister, with no thought of returning to the Palace. She even ventured to remind him that she had always experienced his mother’s protection, and that, as long as Agrippina lived, her marriage dignity had not been assailed.
All was now ready. The sailors drew up the anchor, and the assembled crowd watched the white sails of the trireme till they became rosy in the light of sunset, and the vessel dipped beneath the horizon.
Octavia awaited, in deep anxiety, the answer to her letter. There were points in it which might perhaps have touched the heart of Nero if Poppæa and Tigellinus had not been at his elbow as the evil genii of his degradation. But, when the tablets of Octavia came, Nero was sitting with the enchantress. Taking them out of his hands, she turned the letter into such ridicule, and laughed over it so sweetly and so immoderately, and mixed her silvery laughter with so many acts of fascination, that the fear of her ridicule—to which, like all vain persons, Nero was inordinately sensitive—quenched in his heart all thoughts of mercy. She also played upon his fears. ‘As long as Octavia lives,’ she said, ‘neither you nor I will be safe. You saw how the people rose in her behalf. You do not know what assassins she may have in her pay. All that the spirit of insurrection needs is a leader, and, while Octavia lives, conspirators have only to provide her with a husband, and she will bring him the Empire as her dower, as she did to you. The tomb is the only safe prison. The dead excite no tumult and tell no tales.’
So the messenger was sent back without an answer, and Octavia knew that she had only to prepare for her fate. No day dawned that might not be her last; no sail shone on the horizon which might not be bringing her executioners from Rome—nay, the orders might even now be in possession of her military guard, and the tramp of the changing sentries each morning and evening might be to her the echoing foot-fall of death. No situation in the world is more harrowing or more terrific than this. We can confront death when we know that we stand face to face with him; but to have his sword dangling over our necks by a thread of gossamer, and not to know at what moment it will fall; to know that somewhere near us he lies in wait, but not to know where or how he will leap out upon us—this adds a nameless dread to the king of terrors, and it has been sufficient to break down the iron nerves even of trained soldiers who have ridden fearlessly to many a bloody fight.
There was not a person on the little island who was not aware that Octavia was thus standing on the edge of the awful precipice. Great, therefore, was the astonishment of all, and especially of the Roman soldiers, at the strange placidity, the sweet fortitude which she displayed. None else could laugh during those sad days; but she could laugh—laugh more gaily than she had ever done in the gorgeous chambers of the Palatine. As escape was impossible, she was left free, and she loved to sit on the rocks in the evening sunlight and enjoy the cooler breeze. Unfamiliar with the sea-shore, it was a pleasure to her to watch the black-headed sea-mews rising and falling on the gentle swell of the tideless waters, or waving over it their immaculate white wings, or suddenly dashing down on some fish, and breaking the surface into concentric rings of rippled gold. She found pleasure in the shells, and sea-weeds, and purple medusæ, and laughed again and again as she noticed for the first time the curious motion of the hippocampi as they gambolled in the shallow waves. It was strange, too, to the few islanders to see her gathering garlands of their wild flowers, and having them placed in her bare, half-furnished rooms. She had never cared for splendour. It wearied a soul which had never seen it dissociated from guilt. The simplicity of her new life had a charm for her, and if Nero would but relent she could gladly live here, reading and doing her little acts of kindness and musing on the high thoughts which had recently become so radiant to her—sustained by the hope that better days would come on earth, or that, if not, there was a heaven beyond.
There were three of her household who knew the secret of the calm and resignation which struck her Prætorian custodians with astonishment. One of the officers, a rough youth named Vulfenius, had been heard saying to his comrade that the Empress must have been getting private lessons from the Stoics or Cynics;—‘only,’ he said, ‘a hundred of those philosophers are not worth a cracked farthing—arrant humbugs nearly all of them. But this girl—she smiles death in the face!—Or is it that she does not know?’
Yes, she knew; but the source of her cheerful courage lay in those scrolls which had been handed to her attendants by Linus and by Luke. Ever since the lustral dews of baptism had touched her brow, she had felt a change in her whole being, but her deep peace was confirmed by what was now read to her daily by Onesimus, or Hermas, or Tryphæna.
It was with strange feelings that when she broke the silken thread of the small waxen tablets of Linus, she had read the salutation in which Paulus, the prisoner, wished grace, mercy, and peace to Octavia, Empress, and now beloved in Christ. But as she eagerly read the few lines which he had engraved with his trembling stylus—for he had written this message in large letters with his own hand—she felt his words thrill into her soul with strange power. He rejoiced and thanked God that He had called her out of darkness into His marvellous light, and told her that this was a boon more precious than all the kingdoms of the world. He comforted her under all the affliction with which she was afflicted, with the comfort wherewith he too was comforted of God. He told her that she was a partaker of the sufferings of Christ, and that the sufferings of this present time were not worthy to be compared with that glory which shall be revealed in us. He exhorted her to look, not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
Such words fall too often on our cold and careless ears with the triteness of long familiarity; but to Octavia, as to all who first learnt to feel their meaning in that despairing age, they seemed to be written in sunbeams. The new wine of the Kingdom of Heaven filled them as with divine intoxication; that which to the Pagans appeared like a half-insane enthusiasm or a blank obstinacy90 was, in truth, but the exhilaration of conviction, in comparison with whose preciousness the whole world and all the glory of it seemed but as the light dust of the balances. Octavia had not been unaccustomed to hear the paradoxes of the Stoics; and she regarded them as spurious ornaments of life’s misery—spangles sewed upon its funeral pall. But in the words of Paul the prisoner, and of the poor persecuted Christians, there rang tones of perfect sincerity. Their doctrines were not learnt, but lived. They came attested by the evidence of characters not only innocent but holy; such as had been hitherto unknown to the world, and had no antitype even in the fabled age of gold. They came, morever, as the revelation of a law, not only general, but individual. In those who had grace to accept them, the Spirit Himself bore witness to their spirit that they were children of God.
Knowing the doom which trembled over Octavia’s head, and the impossibility of her escape, the soldiers who were in charge were ordered to allow her such liberty as the little islet permitted, and not to intrude upon the occupations of her household. Hence, during the early evening hours, it was possible for her to call one or two of her Christian handmaids around her, while Onesimus, as the Greek reader, read to them the scrolls which Luke had sent as his parting present. He had selected those which he thought would convey the deepest consolation. As Onesimus read them to that little circle, they were as the oracular gems on Aaron’s breast—Urim and Thummim ardent with the light of heaven. One of them was the Parable of the Prodigal Son. To Onesimus it was as the voice of God calling him back from the far country and the rags and the swine. As he read its concluding verses, again and again his voice was broken with sobs. Even when he had read it aloud on several evenings he could never come to the verse—
‘I will arise, and go unto my Father, and will say unto Him, Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before Thee—’
without stopping to recover from the emotion which stifled his utterance, and the tears which blinded his sight.
Another little fragment contained the Evangelist’s record of the Sermon on the Mount. As Octavia heard it she felt more and more that her miseries had been blessings in disguise, and that if her life had been spent in the blaze of luxury and prosperity she could never have become an inheritor of that kingdom of which the commands were not burdens but beatitudes.
But what came most deeply home to all of them was that scroll on which Luke had written the story of the Crucifixion. They could never hear it read without requiring Onesimus to read after it the record of the last scroll, which contained the story of the two disciples at Emmaus, of whom it was privately thought among the Christians that Luke himself had been one. As Octavia listened to those inspired records, if the dreadful act of dying had not lost its horror, yet the grave had lost its victory, and death his sting.
Entranced by the rapture of these wondrous narratives, they had been reading later than usual. It was the ninth of June. The dusk of evening had fallen; the lamps had been lit. They had been too much absorbed to notice the Liburnian galley whose red sail on the horizon had attracted all the inhabitants of their rocky prison to the shore. They had not seen the Prætorians from Rome, who landed at the little jetty.
Ah! but they could not be deaf to the unwonted murmur which began to swell about the villa, nor to the clank of legionaries, nor to the gruff unfamiliar voices of command. They knew too well the meaning of those sounds. With faces whitened by terror they heard the summons at the gate, and the tramp of armed feet, and the cry, ‘A message from the Emperor!’ Hardly knowing what they did, Onesimus and Hermas barred the entrance to the chamber where they were sitting, while Tryphæna and the two other maidens grouped themselves round their mistress. There came a thundering challenge, followed by fierce blows rained upon the door. A moment afterwards it gave way with a crash. Hermas and Onesimus, as if by an instinctive motion, thrust themselves in the path of the advancing soldiers. A legionary struck down Hermas with the flat of his sword; Onesimus was dashed aside by a blow of the centurion’s iron glaive. They tore away the slave-girls who clung to their fainting mistress. Her they fettered, and opened her veins in many places. But she had sunk into a swoon, and the blood would not flow. Then they dragged her to the bath, heated it to boiling heat, and suffocated her in the burning vapour.
Nor was this enough for Nero’s vengeance. The corpse of the daughter of Claudius, the chaste wife of the Emperor, was not suffered to rest in peace. Poppæa would not be satisfied with anything short of the visible proof that her rival had been swept forever out of her path. There lay the fair form, with its long dark hair and girlish beauty, and more beautiful than in life, for a look as of rapturous surprise had lit up her pale features. It availed not. The head was struck off by the centurion, and he carried to Rome the ghastly relic, at once to claim his reward, and to glut the eyes of Poppæa with the sight of ‘death made proud by pure and princely beauty.’
And for this crime the slavish and degraded Senate vowed gifts to the temples! In those days every unjust banishment, every judicial murder inflicted by the Emperor, was the signal for a fresh outburst of infamous adulation. The thanksgivings to the gods, which had once been the signs of public prosperity, became the certain memorials of private infamy and public disaster.
