CHAPTER XXVIII THE LAST OF THE CLAUDII

‘Tu quoque extinctus jaces

Deflende nobis semper, infelix puer,

Modo sidus orbis, columen Augustæ domus,

Britannice.’

Seneca, Octavia.

The poor young prince was carried by the slaves to his cubiculum. The poison had been like a dagger-thrust; but he was not quite dead. He lay at first unconscious, his breast heaving with irregular spasmodic sighs. Acte stole into his chamber, wept over him, strove to revive him, and, if possible, to assuage his pangs. It was too late. He did not recognise her. The moment he could escape from the triclinium Titus came, and found the slave-boy Epictetus sitting at the foot of the couch, with his head covered. ‘He yet lives,’ said the boy, raising for one moment a cheek down which, in spite of every Stoic lesson, the tears chased each other fast. Titus sat down by his friend, called his name, clasped his hand, and wailed aloud without restraint. One almost imperceptible pressure of the hand proved that there was an instant recognition. A Christian slave had secretly brought Linus into the room, which was easy in so numerous a household; and bending over him Linus sprinkled his brow with pure water, raising up his eyes and his hands to heaven. None present knew what it meant; but Britannicus knew. A lambent smile lit his features for a moment, like the last gleam of a fading sunset, for he understood that he had been baptised.

It was the last conscious impression of his young life. The moment that the banquet ended, Octavia, still in her splendid apparel, hurried wildly to the chamber. It was a chamber of death. Already the incense was burning, already the cypress had been placed before the Propylæa of the Palatine. The boy lay there, silent, noble, beautiful, pale as a statue carved in alabaster; and Octavia disburdened the long-pent agony of repression in such a storm of weeping that her attendants tried to lead her away. But she tore off her jewels, and flung her arms round the corpse of her brother, and laid her head upon his breast, and sobbed aloud. Father, mother, brother, her first young and noble lover, Silanus—all who had ever loved and cared for her were gone. He was the last of all his race. The last male Claudius, whose line was derived through that long and splendid ancestry of well-nigh seven hundred years, was lying before her on that lowly bed!

He was to be buried that very night, as though he had been a pauper and not the noblest boy of an imperial aristocracy. There was something fatally suspicious in the rapidity with which every preparation was made.

The obolus for Charon was put under his tongue; the fair young body was arrayed in its finest robe, was laid on a bier, and was carried to the vestibule with its feet towards the door; and as it lay there Titus brought in his hand a wreath of lilies, which he had begged from the keeper of the exotic flowers, and placed it on the innocent forehead of his friend. He turned away with the words, which could scarcely make their way through sobs, ‘Farewell! forever farewell!’ But he never forgot that boyish affection; and long years after, when he was Emperor, he placed in the Palace a statue of Britannicus in gold, and at solemn processions he had an equestrian statuette of ivory carried before him which represented the young prince whose love to him had been far truer and closer than that of his own brother.

Only for one instant did Nero venture to look on his handiwork. He came into the vestibule in his festal robes, his eyes heavy, the garland still on his dishevelled hair, accompanied by Tigellinus and Senecio.

‘I suppose he died in the fit?’ he said to one of the slaves.

‘He breathed his last,’ answered the man, ‘within an hour of being carried from the feast.’

Something disquieted Nero. Furtively pointing his finger towards the dead boy, he said something to Tigellinus.

‘A little chalk will set that right,’ whispered Tigellinus in reply, and he gave an order into the ear of his confidential slave. Leave the corpse a moment,’ he said aloud to the attendants; ‘the Emperor wishes to take a last look at his brother.’

The slave of Tigellinus brought a piece of chalk; and Nero, with his own hand, chalked over some livid patches on the dead boy’s face, which already betrayed the horrible virulence of the poison.

‘Why linger in the charnel-house?’ said Senecio affectedly. ‘Cæsar, may we not have some more wine to refresh our sorrow?’

They turned away, and, before they were outside the hall, a light laugh woke a shuddering echo along the fretted roof.

The bearers were on the point of lifting the bier when Agrippina entered. The dullest of the spectators could see that there was nothing feigned in her anguish as she wept and tore her hair. She grieved for Britannicus, whom she had so irreparably wronged, but hers was a wild and selfish grief, the grief of rage and frustrated purposes. She had built upon this boy’s life to keep her son in terror of her influence. She saw now of what crimes Nero had already become capable. He who in so brief a space had developed into a fratricide, how long would it be ere he would spare the life of an obnoxious mother? She felt, even then, in a bitterness of soul which could not be expressed, that even-handed justice was commending the ingredients of the poisoned chalice to her own lips.

The obsequies were not only disgracefully hurried, but disgracefully mean. Every ceremony which marked a great public funeral was omitted. There were no lictors dressed in black; no siticines with mourning strains; nor præficæ, or wailing women; no lessus, or funeral dirge. Happily too, as some thought, there were not the customary buffoons, nor the archimimus to imitate the words and actions of the deceased. Though he was the noblest of the noble, no liberated slaves walked before his bier, nor men who wore the waxen images of his long line of ancestors. No relations followed him—men with veiled heads, women with unbound tresses. Many a freedman, even many a slave, had a longer funeral procession than the last of the Claudii.

They bore him to his funeral amid storms of rain, which seemed to betoken the wrath of Heaven. The spectators were few, but those few saw by the struggling light of their lanterns that where the rain had washed off the chalk the pale face was marked with patches of black. They saw this, and pointed it out to one another in silence.

The last offices were paid in haste by the drenched and half-frightened attendants. The body was laid on the small rough pyre. Julius Densus was there, and Pudens, and Titus, and Flavius Clemens. Nero had not the grace to be present. With averted face Pudens thrust in the torch. The rain had damped the wood, and at first it would not kindle, but they threw oil and resin into it. At last it blazed up; the body was consumed: the glowing embers were quenched with wine. A handful of white ashes in a silver urn, a sad memory in a few loving hearts, were all that remained on earth of the poisoned son of an emperor of Rome.

But, when all were gone, a few Christians stole from under the dense shadow of the trees in that lonely spot, and bowed their heads in prayer, and sang a low hymn. And among them was he whose hand of blessing had rested on the young prince’s head, and whose voice of prophecy had foretold his doom.

And to Pomponia Græcina and her husband, and to Pudens, Claudia, Titus, Epictetus, and one or two faithful slaves, the world was poorer than before; but in the heart of the hapless Octavia there was a void which on earth could never be filled up. And her heart would haply have broken altogether but for the consolations which she received from Pomponia, and from Tryphæna, her Christian slave. For Pomponia had received a letter from Ephesus, where, at that time, Paul of Tarsus was labouring; and the friend who wrote it told her something of Paul’s teaching respecting the resurrection of the dead. One passage in particular, which this friend quoted to her, rang in her memory: ‘It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.’ And so, as there remained for Octavia less and less hope of any joy on earth, glimpses were opened to her more and more of a hope beyond the grave. And one passage in particular from one of the old Jewish books, which Linus had pointed out to Pomponia, seemed to her more lovely than any fragment of lyric song, and constantly woke a sweet echo in her thoughts. It was—

‘Thy dead men shall live; together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall bring to life her shades.’