CHAPTER XXXIII TITUS AND THE VESTAL

‘Laudabile est infelicis scire misereri.’—Val. Max. v. i. 8.

Cast once more on his own resources, Onesimus tried his chance of earning a living in the streets. He had a little money in hand, and, seeing that the street vendors drove a brisker trade in drink than in anything else, he bought two or three dozen bottles of posca, and sold them at a small profit to the poorer wayfarers. In this, as in all his adventures, his good looks were of use to him, for men and women alike were more inclined to buy of a lively and pleasant youth than of the wandering Jews and beggars who sometimes attempted the same trade. He began to think that, for the present, he could keep soul and body together in this way; but he had been rash in choosing a place so near Rome, and still more rash in discarding his disguise.

For one day, as he was calling out the merits of his wine in his clear, ringing voice, and making the people laugh with his jokes, Dama, the steward of the lovely villa which Nero owned at Baiæ, caught sight of him. The man had often been to the Palace on business connected with his accounts, and had noticed Onesimus, then dressed in gay attire and at the zenith of his prosperity, as a youth high in favour in the imperial household. He had heard from Callicles, Nero’s dispensator, of the drunken escapade which had put so sudden an end to his good fortune, and of his subsequent flight from the ergastulum. Now the flight of any slave, but above all of one of Cæsar’s slaves, was so capital an offence that Callicles had asked his friend to keep a good lookout for the recovery of the fugitive. A glance made him nearly sure of the identity of Onesimus, but to be quite certain he took out a copy of the reward which had been offered. It ran as follows:—

‘Wanted, a fugitive slave,

Aged about 17.

Handsome, with dark curly hair,

Named Onesimus.

Any one who will give him up, or indicate where he may be arrested, shall receive a reward of a thousand sesterces.’

To be quite sure of his prey, Dama stole away so as to approach Onesimus from behind, and coming up to him tapped him smartly on the shoulder and said ‘Onesimus.’

‘Yes?’ said Onesimus with a violent start, taken completely off his guard.

‘I thought so,’ said Dama, with an unpleasant smile. ‘Come with me, my gay fugitive. Cæsar can’t possibly spare such a lively and good-looking slave as you; and I shall be very glad of a thousand sesterces.’

Onesimus tried to dart away in flight, but the remorseless hand of Dama clutched his shoulder with too tight a grasp, and with a gesture of despair he remained silent.

‘Rescue! rescue!’ cried some of the crowd who pitied him, and with whom he was a favourite; and as no soldiers or police were in sight one or two stepped forward to give the youth a chance.

‘Rescue?’ said Dama, looking around him with cool contempt. ‘Don’t you know who I am? Do you dare to interfere with the arrest of a runaway from Cæsar’s Palace?’

The crowd fell back awe-struck before the awful name of Cæsar, and Dama despatched a slave to bring fetters from Nero’s villa hard by. Onesimus was once more a chained criminal with a destiny before him even more horrible than any of which he had yet been in danger. He thought of the poor wretch to whom he had given drink as he hung on his cross. Would that be his own fate of agony now in the flush and heyday of his youth?

Next morning he was sent off towards Rome. He thought of trying to communicate with Acte, who had been deeply grieved by losing sight of him. But this was impossible. There was no one to take any message for him. He was told that not only Callicles—on whom fell in part the disgrace of his escape—but Nero himself was bitterly incensed against him, first, for his unpardonable indiscretion, then for his flight, and lastly—though this was a secret motive—because it had come to his ears that Onesimus had been the slave who had defeated the midnight attempt on the life of Britannicus. Onesimus, when he had drunk too much Sabine wine, had sometimes forgotten all reticence, and Nero believed that it was through him that certain dark secrets of the Palace had come to be whispered among the lower orders of the Roman population. Acte herself would have been powerless to defend him. One day Octavia, finding that her purple robes had been looked after less skilfully than they had been when under his care, had asked some question about him in the presence of Nero. The Emperor was angry at the mention of his name. Some slaves had been in the room on the occasion, and the circumstance had become notorious in the gossip of the Palace. The unhappy young Phrygian was told that he would probably be crucified; but if not, he would be tied to the furca and scourged, perhaps to death, with the horrible thongs.

On his arrival at Rome the order was given. He was to be beaten—practically to death. In indescribable anguish of soul he spent what he believed to be his last night on earth.

Next morning the furca—two pieces of wood nailed together in the shape of the letter Λ—was placed on his neck, his hands were fast bound to the ends of the wood, and he was led out towards the Esquiline, where afterwards his corpse would be flung into the common pit.

He was too much stunned and stupefied even to pray. The iron had entered deep into his soul. He looked on himself as a lost apostate who would end a life of miserable failure by entering into the outer gloom beyond, where he feared that the face of the Saviour of whom he once had heard would be utterly turned away from him.

But his hour had not yet come.

Stooping under the furca, with his arms already cramped by their unnatural position, he was led by the slaves and lictors who were to preside at his execution into the Vicus Tuscus on the way to the Esquiline. But as they entered the long street a boy who was strolling towards the Gelotian house caught sight of them, and no sooner had his quick eye seen them than he took in the whole situation at a glance.

It was Titus, much sobered from the gay lad he once had been, and still pale from the illness caused by the sip he had taken of the poison which had carried off Britannicus. He recognised Onesimus, and a Palace rumour had that morning made him aware of the Phrygian’s peril. He looked on the slave-youth as a protégé of his own, for his admission into the family of Pudens had been mainly due to his intercession. He also felt grateful to him for his ready services towards the murdered friend of his youth, and his kindly heart was filled with pity.

A way of saving him had flashed across his mind, and, bidding his slaves follow him, he darted off at a pace too swift for Roman dignity. In an adjoining street he met—as he was well aware that he should meet—a beautiful and stately lady whom he knew, and who was very fond of him. It was Lælia, the senior vestal, the Virgo Maxima.

Greeting her with extreme reverence, he yet ventured to make her an unsuspecting agent in his little plot.

‘Noble Lælia,’ he said, with the charm of manner which few could resist, and with a ready fertility of invention, ‘I have just seen in the book-shop of Atrectus, in the Argiletum, just opposite the Forum of Julius, a charming little copy of Virgil’s Eclogues with such a good portrait! You promised me a present on my last birthday, and said I should choose it myself. May I have that book, and will you come and buy it for me? It is my birthday to-day.’

‘Certainly,’ said the vestal, with a smile. ‘For a boy like you, so good and steady, I would do much more than that.’ She little guessed that the birthday was a fib extemporised by Titus for his own purposes, for his birthday was on December 30.

‘Thanks, dear vestal,’ said Titus. ‘Will you not come by this short cut?’

He led her by the hand, her lictor following, into the Vicus Tuscus, which was close by the Argiletum, where he well knew that she would not fail to meet Onesimus and his escort. As they approached he said:

‘Oh, Lælia, how I should like to have your privilege of saving the lives of the wretched! See, there is some miserable slave whom they are taking to scourge or crucify. Will you not intercede for him?’

‘For a poor furcifer like that?’ asked Lælia. ‘Our high privilege is used for nobles—at the lowest, for freedmen.’

‘Are not slaves men like ourselves?’ he asked. ‘Musonius says so; and Seneca says so. Look, what a fine youth he is! He looks as if he had been free-born; and I dare say he has done nothing really wrong.’

Lælia glanced at the pallid, beautiful face of the sufferer. It would hardly have touched her heart, accustomed as she had been to the massacres of the arena, to which Nero of late years had invited the vestal virgins. But there was something in his youth, and something in the earnest pleading of her favourite Titus—something perhaps also in the sense of power—which decided her to interfere.

‘Stop!’ she said to the lictors and soldiers, as they bowed reverently before her majestic presence. ‘By virtue of my office, I bid you take off that furca, and spare the life of your prisoner.’

‘He is a runaway slave, whom for great misdemeanours the Emperor has ordered to be scourged,’ said Callicles, stepping forward.

‘Dare you disobey the Virgo Maxima?’ asked Lælia, with flashing eye. ‘Do you think that even the Emperor will insult the majesty of Vesta and her sacred fire, by questioning the immemorial prerogative of her eldest vestal? Take off the furca at once!’

The very lictors were overawed by her gesture of command. They hastily unbound the tired arms of Onesimus, and took the furca off his neck. What would happen to him he knew not, but he knew that for the time his life was saved.

‘Thanks, kindest of vestals,’ said Titus, gratefully kissing the purple hem of her suffibulum, and not betraying by look or sign that Onesimus was known to him. ‘I never saw a vestal exercise her prerogative before, and I am so glad to have seen it. May Vesta reward your sleep with her divinest dreams! May Opiconsiva bless you!’

‘Opiconsiva?’ said the vestal with difficulty suppressing a smile; ‘is the boy laughing at me? What do you know of Opiconsiva?’

‘Not much,’ said Titus, ‘except that she has something to do with vestals; and if so, Lælia must be very dear to her!’

Onesimus, with his usual quickness, took his cue from the conduct of Titus. The right of the vestals was well known in Rome, though it was rarely used, for they were not often seen in the streets. But it was understood that, in order to be valid, the meeting of vestal and criminal must be accidental. Lælia would have been seriously displeased had she known that she was in reality the victim of a little plot on the part of her boy-friend, and Titus was in some trepidation till he had hurried the vestal past the prisoner, and to the choice book-stall which was spread with the purple bindings of Atrectus. There she not only purchased for him the copy of Virgil, but, as he had quoted Seneca, she also gave him a radiant little volume of some of his treatises from the shop of his bookseller, Dorus, hard by. When she gave him this second gift the delighted youth felt a little compunction at his manœuvre.

No one knew what he had done; but, when he narrated the incident to Pudens, the tribune suspected the real state of the case, for the boy’s eye twinkled suspiciously as he told his little story with the most innocent candour.

BOOK II

‘LACHESIS ROTAT!’