CHAPTER XXX A PRIVATE TRIAL

‘Tanto vogl’io che vi sia manifesto,

Pur che mia coscïenza non mi garra,

Che alla fortuna, come vuol, son presto.’

Dante, Inf. XV. 91-93.

Pomponia had incidentally mentioned to Agrippina that she was threatened by a calamity, and it was indeed a serious one. It was strange that one so retired in her mode of life, and so entirely free from rancour and malice, should yet have been the butt of calumny. Yet such was the case. It was the tribute which vice paid to virtue. The base mob of Roman matrons avenged themselves on the chaste wife of the conqueror of Britain for the involuntary shame which they felt as they contrasted her life with theirs. Her constancy; her silence amid the universal buzz and roar of gossip and spite; her aloofness from the cliques and coteries of a scandalous society; her love of good works; her discountenance of their loose talk and complicated intrigues; her absence from the games and theatres; the simplicity of her dress, her home, her manners, her hospitality; the calmness of her temper, and even the sort of sacred beauty on which time seemed to make no impression, made her an object of hatred to the Calvia Crispinillas and the Ælia Catellas of the capital. Her presence among them was like a perpetual reproach, and they determined, if possible, to get rid of her. They would have said of her what the wicked say of the righteous in the Book of Wisdom, that they would lie in wait for her, because she was ‘clean contrary to their doings, and objected to their infamy.’

But how was it to be done? Would it not be easy to set an informer to work? Pomponia was wealthy, and since an informer got a grant of a fourth part of the property of any one who was condemned on his accusation, there were men who sat watching for their opportunity like a crowd of obscene and greedy vultures. Aulus Plautius was a person of distinction, and it might be dangerous to offend him; but if an informer of the front rank, like the eloquent Eprius Marcellus, could not be induced to undertake the risk, surely they might secure the services of a Veiento, a Messallinus, or a Regulus. And as for corroborative evidence of any charge, they thought that it could be obtained with the utmost ease among the herd of dehumanised slaves who thronged every considerable house. If they could not witness to facts, they were first-rate hands at inventing fictions. If the masters were a terror to their slaves, a slave might any day become a terror to an obnoxious master. It was personally disagreeable to tremble before beings who seemed so abject, but there was some convenience in having such agents at hand for the ruin of an enemy.

But what charge could be brought against a lady so blameless as Pomponia? To accuse her of conspiracy, or poisoning, or magic, would sound too preposterous; and it would be impossible to find against her the sort of evidence of evil manners which had amply sufficed in old and even in recent days to confound a lady who was disliked. The question was carefully discussed in a secret meeting of some of the worst beldames of social distinction, and as it was clear that Pomponia took no part in the public religious ceremonies, they agreed to get her charged with being guilty of ‘a foreign superstition.’

The wretches whose business it was to work up a case of this kind, and who were largely bribed to enable them to carry out their designs, began secretly to worm their way on various pretexts into the household of Plautius. Their success was smaller than their hopes. They found that there was some peculiar element in that familia. Many of the slaves and the few chief freedmen were Christians, but the secret was faithfully kept. Danger made them vigilant, and they had been carefully selected for worth and character. The female slaves, without exception, were devoted to a mistress who never addressed to them an unkind word, and who made their lives a paradise of happiness when compared with those who attended the toilettes of pagan ladies. The male slaves were no less faithful to the heads of a household in which they were treated with generosity and consideration. The spies of the informers could scarcely find a slave in the whole family whom they could tempt to drunkenness and indiscreet babbling. All that they could learn from the gossip of the least worthy was that Pomponia did not burn incense in the Lararium, or attend the temples. The informers had to content themselves with these meagre facts, trusting to perjury and invention to do the rest. Regulus undertook the case. The sound of his name was sufficient to strike a chill into an innocent and honest heart, and feeling certain of success, or, at the worst, of impunity, he laid before the Emperor a public information that Pomponia Græcina was the guilty votary of a foreign superstition.

The friends and relatives of Pomponia had heard rumours that some attack of the kind was in contemplation; but in the days of the Empire such rumours were rife, and they often came to nothing. When the charge was published they were filled with consternation. They knew that it mattered very little whether it was true or false. The result would turn on the influences which had been brought to bear on Nero. If Nero favoured the prosecution, Pomponia might be as innocent as a new-born child, yet it was certain that she would be condemned. One could commit no fault so slight but what Cæsar’s house might be mixed up with it. Had not Julius Græcinus been put to death under Gaius simply because he was too honest a man? Were not the wretched little islets of Gyara and Tremerus crowded with illustrious and innocent exiles? If beauty and wealth and imperial blood had not saved the two Julias, or the two Agrippinas, what should save a lady so alien from the common interests of Roman society as the wife of Plautius?

One thing saved her.

Nothing had been more remote from her mind than any thought of self-interest when she visited Agrippina. She had gone to see her chiefly because she knew that the threshold, once thronged with suitors and applicants, had now become so solitary, and because an habitual sense of pity drew her to the side of the unfortunate. Her sole object had been, if possible, to bring a little peace and consolation to a sister-woman, whose dejection and misery could only be measured by the height from which she had fallen. True that Agrippina was guilty. True that every law of the moral world must have been violated if impunity were granted her as the sequel of so many and such various crimes. But there was nothing Pharisaic in Pomponia’s heart. Familiar with sorrow, she was sensitive to the influence of compassion, and she had learnt from the lips of Christian teachers that there may be recovery and forgiveness even for the most fallen. She had gone to the Empress with no desire but to speak gentle and healing words.

Yet it was that little unnoticed impulse of natural kindness and Christian charity which saved her fortunes, perhaps even her life.

For Regulus was rich, eloquent, unscrupulous, formidable; and Nero was intensely timid and suspicious. The notion of a ‘foreign superstition’ was mixed up with that of magic; and magic was supposed to be chiefly practised for treasonable ends. If a panic were created in Nero’s mind, it was certain that the feeble Senate would interpose no barrier to his suggestions of punishment.

But at the moment of consternation in the heart of Pomponia’s friends, Agrippina did one of the few good deeds of her unhappy life. Availing herself of the momentary resuscitation of her influence, she no sooner heard of the information laid against Pomponia, than she wrote a letter to the Emperor strongly urging the innocence and goodness of the wife of Plautius, and entreating him not to stain with a deed of needless injustice the annals of his rule. Nero was struck with his mother’s letter, and with the fact that she should have taken the trouble to intercede for one who had never pretended to pay court to her, and whose character was the antithesis of her own. Octavia also ventured to say a few words of pleading earnestness for her friend. Nero had as yet no grudge, either against Pomponia, whose sombre robe was rarely visible in the Palace, or against her brave, loyal, and simple-minded husband. On the other hand, he did not like to check the activity of the informers. Domitian said in after years, ‘The prince who does not check informers, encourages them.’ Nero did not dream of checking them. Seneca, who was a friend of Plautius, and who had been grieved by the news of this attack upon one whom he and the ladies of his family highly esteemed, suggested to Nero a way out of the difficulty. ‘Follow,’ he said, ‘the ancient custom, and permit Pomponia to be tried at home by her husband, relatives, and friends.’

The Emperor accepted the suggestion, and the meeting of the domestic tribunal was fixed to take place on the next nundine. When Pomponia was told of the Emperor’s decision, she felt that her prayers had been heard, and that her pardon was secured, although it was not impossible that the trial might elicit painful secrets, which, for the sake of others, she thought it her duty to conceal.

She asked Seneca himself to undertake her defence, and he gladly assumed the task. Plautius sat in his own atrium, and had summoned only those of his family whom he could trust. The evidence on which the informers and their patrons relied was slight and negative, and Seneca had no difficulty in tearing it to pieces. To the intense relief and heartfelt gratitude of Pomponia, she was not definitely charged with being a Christian. Indeed, that specific charge could hardly be urged, because no proof was forthcoming. Regulus skilfully made the most of old precedents. He told how, nearly a hundred years ago, the Senate had decreed the destruction of the Temples of Isis and Serapis (B.C. 46), and how Æmilius Paulus had been the first to shatter the doors with an axe. He mentioned the stern dealings with the Bacchanalians (B.C. 186). He told how (B.C. 139) the priests of Sabazius had been driven from Rome. Referring to the days of the Empire, he mentioned the edict of Claudius against the Jews, and reminded Aulus that Tiberius had banished four thousand Jews to Sardinia. He appealed triumphantly to the old law of the Twelve Tables, ‘Let no one separately worship foreign gods.’ When the accusers had mentioned every unfavourable circumstance, and when, on the other hand, an abundance of testimony had been elicited to prove the habitual purity and blamelessness of Pomponia’s life, Seneca rose to argue for her honourable acquittal.

‘What was meant,’ he asked, ‘by a “foreign superstition”? Was the worship of Isis a foreign superstition? Was the worship of the Pessinuntian Cybele a foreign superstition? Was the worship of Iaô—if that were the secret name of the deity—by the Jews a foreign superstition? The State was entirely unconcerned with any of these private beliefs. When, indeed, the votaries of any strange cult were guilty of riotous, licentious, and dishonest conduct, they were justly punished. Referring to the precedents quoted by Regulus, he said that the priests of Isis had deserved the vengeance which fell upon them for having betrayed the stupid credulity of a Roman lady. The Jews, who had been guilty of cheating and embezzlement in the matter of purple hangings for the Temple, were rightly punished. Claudius had been justified in driving all the Jews from Rome when they made tumults at the instigation of one Chrestus; but on the other hand, Julius Cæsar had always been favourable to the Jews, and Augustus had by public edict protected their Sabbath. The priests of the Syrian goddess were for the most part worthless vagabonds, and no one was sorry when they were detected and executed for their nefarious practices. The State took no cognisance of opinions, but only of evil practices. A Roman matron, by way of supposed purification, had gone down to the wintry Tiber, had broken the ice, had plunged into the freezing waters, and had crawled across the Campus Martius with bleeding knees. In such acts we might see the workings of a foreign superstitionT8 but of no such act—of no secret visit to the base temple of Serapis—of no dealings with the mutilated priests of Cybele—of no lightings of lamps at Jewish festivals, had Pomponia been guilty. And who, he asked, can allege one immoral deed, one malefic practice against the noble wife of the conqueror of Britain? Is it to her discredit that she differs from so many of the noble ladies in Rome? Do we blame her or rather admire her, that she has never betrayed a friend, or changed a husband, or exposed an infant, or plundered a province, or ruined a reputation? Is it to be her destruction that her life has ever been simple, and her words sincere? Or is she to be banished because, through long years, she has continued to mourn for a friend, when so many forget their dearest relatives in less than a month? Cicero mourned the death of a slave, though he was half ashamed of his sensibility; Crassus wept for the death of a favourite lamprey. Is it a crime to cherish a beloved memory? What evidence is there against Pomponia? Have not her slaves, though Regulus has tampered with them, shown themselves entirely faithful? And what wonder? Most of us treat our slaves as though they were enemies—as though they could not claim the rights of human beings. She has treated her slaves as men and women like ourselves; as sharers of her home; as heirs with her of the common slavery of life and death. She has asked their aid; she has admitted them to festive tables; she has sought their love, and not their fear. She has lived, as we should all live, like a member of one great brotherhood, of which all are bound to mutual assistance. She has done good in secret. In the midst of wealth she has been as one who is poor. She has stretched her hand to the shipwrecked; shown his path to the wanderer; divided her bread with the hungry; and has been, as so few are, a friend to the distressed.

‘But she does not go to the theatre! Is that to be accounted a crime? Rather let us erect a statue to a virtue which can still blush for infamies at which so many women dare to be spectators. Is the licence of the Fescennines, and the grossness of the Atellan plays, acted by slaves whom the ancient laws branded with shame, a fit amusement for pure matrons? If these be deemed tolerable, what shall be said of the softer luxury, the subtler indecency, the more fascinating corruption of the modern mimes? Instead of blaming Pomponia for not patronising such spectacles, let us commend her example!

‘Or is it a sign of moroseness and alienation from the customs of her country, that she is never to be seen among the multitudes of every rank and age who gaze with frenzied delight at the gladiatorial shows? Nay, she is to be applauded for shunning scenes so fatal to true morality! It is shocking enough to see noble beasts ruthlessly mangled, and once, at least, a cry of compassion has risen from the dense throngs when they saw that frightful combat between five hundred Gætulians and twenty elephants. But their compassion was for the elephants!66 How much deeper is the compassion due to the unhappy human beings whose carcases encrimson the white sands of the amphitheatre! Augustus tried to check and limit this savagery. To see men torn by wild beasts in the morning, and hacking each other to pieces in the afternoon—and that as a mere amusement, to kill the time—is simply degrading, however much custom may sanction it. It is true that Cicero invented an excuse for his brutality of pleasure, this delirium of homicide, by the absurd plea that it stimulated courage. The courage of the tiger, which leaps with bare breast on the hunter’s steel, exists in the lowest of the human race, without the need for this bloody stimulus. Man should be to man a sacred thing; the only result of gazing at such scenes is to destroy this generous sense of a common humanity. It may be said that the gladiators, or those who fight the wild beasts, are often criminals. Be it so; but are we criminals also? If not, why should we condemn ourselves to the shame of gloating over the supreme agony and mystery of death?

‘But Pomponia is charged with speaking as though there were but one God. Well, do we not read even in the sacred poems of Orpheus—

‘“One God, one Hades, one Sun, and one Dionysus?”

Does not Varro, one of the most honoured of Roman writers, distinguish carefully between the mythology of poets, the religion of the commonwealth, and the beliefs of philosophers? It is true that he deprecated the revelation of these truths to the multitude, because there is no way to keep them in order but by illusions. Yet scarcely an old woman or beardless boy in Rome really believes in these fables; and it is a good thing that they do not. If they attached genuine credence to the supposed deeds of this rabble of gods, they would have patrons and examples of every lust and of every crime. But they are dimly aware that Stator, Liber, Hercules, Mercury, are but names or manifestations of one Divine Existence. The mysteries are divulged; the oracles are dumb; and as the wailing spirits cried to Epitherses thirty years ago as he sailed past the promontory of Paludes, “Great Pan is dead.”67

‘A person, then, who can regard it as criminal to reject the popular belief must be ignorant of all philosophy and all literature. Is any one bound to suppose that there really is such a god as Panic; or such goddesses as Muta, Febris, and Strenia? Are the Greek poets to be condemned who have repeatedly spoken of one God? God is everywhere. He is that without which nothing is. He comes to men; He comes into men. No one is good without God. Pomponia’s character alone is sufficient to prove that there is nothing harmful in her belief. To the God who is near us, to the sacred Spirit who dwells with us, the observer and guardian of all our evil and our good, she has been supremely true. The image of the gods cannot be formed with gold and silver, or such materials, but with the beauty and dignity of human souls. God is best worshipped, not by sacrifices of bulls, but by innocence and rectitude.

‘And you, O Aulus, you know what a wife Pomponia has been to you, how chaste, how gentle, how faithful! How often have you found her quietly spinning wool among her modest maidens, when other matrons are sitting at riotous banquets, or gazing at dishonourable scenes! How wisely and quietly has she managed your fortunes, and governed your family! How true and tender she was as a mother to the little boy whose immature death you wept, whose ashes are inurned in the tomb of your house! How purely has she trained your youthful Aulus! To whom save to her does he owe that beautiful mixture of manly courage and virginal modesty which distinguishes him among the youth of Rome? And will you, at the word of a vile informer actuated by base greed, and set on by female rancour—will you desecrate the shrine of your own household gods? Will you dishonour the fame of your ancestors? Will you sever a union which has been to you so fruitful of blessings? Remember how she smiled on you on the day that you walked in proud ovation with Cæsar by your side! Remember how she shared the toils, the hardships, the anxieties of your campaigns in that far-off Thule, which was subdued by your valour! Remember how by her sympathy she has diminished all your troubles, and intensified all your joys! And will you hand over such a wife, and such a mother—so gentle, so pure, so noble—to the fury of the executioner? Will you see the sword flash down upon a head which has often rested on your breast? Or will you coldly and sternly dismiss your innocent and well-loved wife to end her days on some dreary island-rock, amid the storms of Adria or the Tyrrhene Sea? Yours, O Aulus, yours and not hers, will be the infamy; yours, not hers, will be the loss! Not hers the shame—for no informer, and no unjust condemnation can fix a stain upon the guiltless; not hers the misery—for wherever she goes she will carry the God within her, since in each one of us, as our great poet says,

‘“Some god is dwelling, though we know not who.”

You may banish her to Pontia or Pandataria, but everywhere she will see the sunlight and the stars, and will feel that she is not abandoned. When we enter a dense forest, we are struck with awe at its huge tree-trunks, its spreading boughs, its dark shade, and we feel that the Divine is there; when we enter some cavern in the hills, we feel the presence of a Deity: but we feel it much more when we see a brave and pure soul rising superior to the menaces of calamity. Look at her, Aulus, where she sits. In her calmness, in her fortitude, in the serene and tranquil beauty of a countenance on which no vice has set its mark, see the living proof of her freedom from all blame! Proclaim to Cæsar, to Regulus, to the society of Rome, to all the world, that Pomponia has done or thought nothing unworthy of the immortal gods, nothing unworthy of her ancestors, of her husband, and of her home!’

Many a cry of applause had greeted Seneca, as he thus ventured to pour forth, in the secrecy of a domestic tribunal, the thoughts which he had often uttered to his friends, and even published in his writings. He sat down amid a murmur of admiration, during which not a few of the noblest of his auditors pressed round him with expressions of warmest congratulation, and Amplias, the Christian freedman of Pomponia, in a burst of enthusiasm, bent down and kissed his hand. He was deeply gratified by the impression he had made, for when there was nothing to arouse his fear or imperil his ambition, he felt a genuine happiness in doing deeds of kindness. But he raised his hands for silence while the assembly awaited the decision of those whom Plautius had asked to be his assessors in the judgment.

They consulted together for a few moments, and then, amid the deepest silence, Plautius rose. He was almost too much moved to speak. It required all his Roman firmness and dignity to force back the tears which were brimming in his eyes, and to control into steadiness the voice which seemed ready to break; but he succeeded. Rising with dignity, he said:

‘Friends and kinsmen, I have consulted with those who have shared with me the responsibility of judgment. We are agreed. The evidence is altogether worthless. Pomponia is innocent of anything hostile to religion, or forbidden by the laws of Rome. Friends and kinsmen, I thank you for your presence and your counsel, and I thank you most of all, illustrious Seneca. I thank the Emperor, that he has spared us the pain and anxiety of a public trial, and I shall announce to him, and to all Rome, that Aulus Plautius will thank the gods, even till death, that they have given him a wife so innocent, so noble, and so chaste.’

Pomponia raised her eyes and her clasped hands to heaven in a transport of gratitude, and as she did so a sudden burst of sunshine streamed through the window, and glorified her face. The lambent flame played over her hair, and lit up her features, and gave to her calm beauty a heavenly radiance. This was regarded as a complete justification of the sentence of acquittal, and a visible proof of the divine favour. The hall resounded with acclamations, and Claudia, who had been among the witnesses of the scene, flung herself into the arms of Pomponia, who tenderly folded the fair British maiden to her heart, while Pudens looked on with a happy smile.

And when Pomponia retired to her own room, she knelt down, and with bowed head, and clasped hands, and outstretched arms, poured out her thanks to Him who had been her protector in this most painful trial of her life. She was a confessor and a martyr, in will if not in deed; for though she had not been called upon to declare herself a Christian, she had been prepared to do so if the question had been put to her. When Plautius entered he found her praying, and as she rose at his entrance he saw upon her features a beauty even brighter than that which she had caught from the sunbeam which had shone upon her in the hall.

‘My wife,’ he said to her very tenderly, as he kissed her. ‘I know not what to think of thy beliefs. Thou hast not concealed from me that thou art of this new sect. I know that men call it despicable and execrated; but if it makes its votaries such as thou art, it is more blessed and more potent than the worship of the gods of Rome.’

‘My Aulus,’ she answered, ‘I know well that as yet thou canst not think with me. Yet thou, too, art dear to God, for thou hast felt after Him if happily thou mightest find Him. Our teachers say that He is no respecter of persons, but that in every nation he that seeketh Him and doeth righteousness, as thou dost, is accepted of Him. Fear not, my husband; in the next world, as in this, we shall be united, for thou art not far from the kingdom of heaven.’