CHAPTER XV EMPEROR AND ÆSTHETE.

‘The skipping king, he ambled up and down
With shallow jesters and rash bavin wits,
Soon kindled and soon burned, carded his state,
Mingled his royalty with capering fools,
Had his great name profaned with their scorns.’

1. Henry IV. iii. 2.

Nero tried to persuade himself that he cared little for such scenes as that which we have witnessed; but in reality they troubled him. It required a strong effort to shake off their effects, and they left his small pleasure-loving nature in a state of tremor and disgust. He longed to escape from them to some complete retirement, where, away from all pomp, he could give himself up, heart and soul, to selfish æstheticism and voluptuous delight.

He had villas at Antium and at Baiæ, but even they were more public than he desired, and he determined to escape from the noise and heat and worry of Rome to an enchanting lodge which had been designed by the architects, Severus and Celer, in one of the wildest gorges of the Simbruine ridge of the Apennines, a little above the modern town of Subiaco. Through this gorge the icy stream of the Anio forces its way, leaping down into the valley beneath in tumultuous cataracts. By damming the river the architects had with consummate taste and skill, caused it to spread into three mountain lakes, three hundred feet above the valley. On either side of the gorge they had built a hunting-lodge half hidden amid the dense foliage, and the two villas—for such they practically were—had been united by a bridge which spanned the abyss with a graceful arch at a stupendous height above the valley. Nature and art combined to make the scene supremely beautiful. The grounds and gardens of the villas spread down to the smiling vale beneath, by walks under overhanging rocks, tapestried with the luxuriant growth of creepers and wild flowers. Underfoot the moss of softest emerald was now variegated with the red autumnal leaves. Where the pure runnels trickled down little gullies of the rocks they were brightened with maidenhair and arborescent ferns. The artificial sheets of water, in which many water-fowl swam undisturbed, were overshadowed by beeches and oaks and golden platanes which late autumn had touched with her fiery finger.

It was an enchanting spot. Gay shallops were always ready on the artificial lakes if any guest cared to row or to plunge in the cool bright water. On the smooth lawn the ‘gemmy peacocks,’ as the Latin poets called them, strutted and displayed their Indian glories, mingled with tame pheasants and partridges. Kids leaped and sported about the rocky slopes. The cushat-doves cooed from the groves, and white pigeons from the dove-cotes would come crowding round for maize-grain at the slightest call. The Rhodian hens clucked contentedly about the farmyard, which was crowded also with geese and guinea-fowls. The long-haired young town-slaves, full of frolic, worked in the garden in mock obedience to the orders of the country bailiff; but the gardener did not attach much importance to their labours, for they were far more intent on pilfering the best fruit they could find in the granaries than on cultivating the soil; and the rustics knew that to offend them was as much as their place was worth.

The lodges themselves made no pretence to the Cæsarean magnificence of the Palace at Rome. But their simplicity did not exclude the exercise of luxurious taste in their construction and adornment. All the rooms were brightened with lovely frescoes painted by the most famous rhyparographists. On the walls of the richer apartments there were orbs of porphyry and lapis lazuli. The impluvium, into which fell the ceaseless plash of a musical fountain, was a basin of Thasian stone, once a rarity even in temples, and the stop which regulated the play of the water was formed into the winged figure of a child moulded in silver. In the centre of the hall, which was tessellated with small pieces of blue and white marble, there was an exquisite copy of the doves of Scopas. Statues by such masters as Myron and Praxiteles stood between the pillars of the peristyle. The windows were filled with glass, and between them were abaci of peacock-marble, supported on the gilded wings of Cupids, and of griffins which looked in opposite directions. On these slabs of marble stood some of the gold and silver plate which Augustus had ordered to be made out of the statuettes of precious metals which had been erected to him by too-adulatory provincials. On other tables of ivory and fragrant woods lay engraved gems and cameos, or curiosities, brought from all lands. The walls of the small but precious library were covered, in imitation of the famous library of Apollo, with medallions of the most famous Greek and Roman authors in repoussé work of gold and silver, or moulded of Corinthian bronze. Poets, historians, jurists, orators were grouped together, and between the groups were framed specimens of the most exquisite palæography.

Nero was going for the first time to take possession of this enchanting retreat, the loveliness of which had kindled the surprise and admiration of the few who had seen it. He started from Rome with a splendid retinue. He himself rode in a light car, inlaid with ivory and silver, and was followed by an army of a thousand slaves and retainers. One of the earliest lessons which he learnt was that his resources were practically boundless, so that from the first he broke out into unheard-of extravagance. His mules were shod with silver. The muleteers were dressed in liveries of Canusian wool, dyed scarlet. The runners in front of his chariot, and the swarthy cohort of outriders from Mazaca in Numidia, selected for their skill in horsemanship, were adorned with bracelets and trappings of gold. The more delicate slaves had their faces covered with masks, or tinged with cosmetics, lest their complexions should suffer from the sunlight. Many of the slaves had no other office than to carry, with due care, the lyres and other musical instruments which were required for the theatrical entertainments.

Agrippina, devoured with chagrin and resentment, had indeed been asked to accompany him, but in a way so insultingly ungracious, that she declined. She dreaded to share with him a place so retired, in which she knew that almost every hour would fill her with disgust and anger. She had chosen instead to go alone to her stately villa at Bauli, on the Campanian shore. There, if she had little else to occupy her time, she could continue her own memoirs, or amuse herself with the lampreys and mullets, which were so tame that they would come at her call, and feed out of her hand. Her husband’s mother, Antonia, had attached earrings to one pet lamprey, so that people used to visit the villa to see it. Agrippina followed her example.

Octavia followed Nero. She had not been suffered to possess any villa which she could call her own, and much as Nero would have liked to leave her behind, he was compelled by public opinion to observe a certain conventional respect for his Empress, the daughter of Claudius. The sedan in which she travelled was carried by eight stalwart Bithynian porters, but she was not honoured with any splendour or observance, and had only a modest retinue out of her six hundred nominal attendants. Still humbler was the following of Britannicus. He had been bidden to come partly because it would have seemed shameful to leave him alone in Rome during an unhealthy season, when even persons of low position were driven into the country by the month in which Libitina claimed her most numerous victims; and also because Nero was glad to keep him in sight. He was happy enough, for Titus was with him, and Pudens was one of the escort; and as Epaphroditus necessarily attended his master, Nero, it was not difficult to get leave for Epictetus to come in his train. The two kind-hearted boys thought that the pale face of the slave-child might gain a touch of rose from the fresh winds of the Apennines.

Very few ladies were invited. It was necessary, indeed, that one or two should accompany Octavia; and Nero, for his own reasons, wished Junia Silana and Calvia Crispinilla to be of the party. These were ladies with whom a young matron like Octavia could scarcely exchange a word, but happily for her, Flavia Domitilla, the wife of Vespasian, was asked to accompany the Empress. Vespasian, who had just returned from his proconsulate, had been summoned to have an interview with Nero on the state of affairs in Africa, and to stay for some days. Acte was in the train of Nero, but, though she rarely saw Octavia, the unfortunate Empress little knew that the presence of Domitilla, the only lady to whom she could speak without a shudder, was really due to the private suggestion of the lovely and kind-hearted freedwoman. Flavia Domitilla was of the humblest origin, and her father had occupied no higher office than that of a quæstor’s clerk. That no nobler companion had been sought for her would have been regarded as an insult by any lady of haughty character; but Octavia preferred the society of the honest matron to that of a thousand Crispinillas.

Seneca and Burrus were invited for a brief visit only, and as Nero liked to give a flavour of intellectuality to the society which he gathered round him, Lucan was asked, as the rising poet of the day; and Silius Italicus, as a sort of established poet laureate; and Persius, the young Etrurian knight, who, though but twenty-one years old, was so warmly eulogised by his tutor, Cornutus, that great things were expected of him. None of his satires had yet seen the light, but his head would hardly have been safe if Nero could have read some of the lines locked up in his writing-desk. With these had been also invited C. Plinius Secundus, a wealthy knight, thirty-four years of age, in whose encyclopædic range of knowledge it was hoped that the guests might find an endless fund of amusement and anecdote in their more serious moments.

But while Nero liked to keep up the credit of dabbling in literary pursuits, the choice spirits to whom he looked for his real delight were very different from these graver personages. The fashionable elegance of Otho and the luxurious cynicism of Petronius were indispensable for his amusement. Tigellinus was too intimate to be excluded; and with these came Vatinius, the witty buffoon and cobbler of Beneventum, an informer of the lowest class. This cobbler’s chief recommendations were personal deformity, an outrageous tongue, and an abnormally prominent nose. He avenged himself on society for the wrongs inflicted on him by nature. He rejoiced in the immortality of having given his name to a drinking-cup with a long nozzle, which has preserved his memory in the verse of Juvenal and Martial.

Here Nero enjoyed life to his heart’s content. The happy accident that the villa really consisted of two edifices, separated by the bridge across the glen, enabled him to keep his least welcome guests in the Villa Castor, and his chosen companions in the Villa Pollux.

In the grounds of the Villa Castor, Seneca and Burrus had rooms in which they could transact with their secretaries their ministerial and military business. Pliny could bury himself among the rarer treasures of the library, or amuse his leisure by seeing what further he could learn about the habits of the flamingoes and other foreign birds, which were carefully kept in cages and fed from the hands of the visitors. For Britannicus and Titus, who often asked Persius to be their companion, there was the resource of the tennis-court, the gymnastic room, and rowing, bathing, and fishing in the lakes; and Persius, who had heard all about Epictetus from his young patron, sometimes let the little slave sit at his feet while he read choice passages of old Roman poems in works which had been found for him by the clever librarian.

The meals were held separately in the two villas, though sometimes all the guests were invited to Nero’s table. He varied his amusements in every possible way. Sometimes he would take a long swim in the cold lake; sometimes he would fish with a purple line and a golden hook, though he caught fewer fish in a morning than Britannicus would catch in an hour. He delighted to spend hours at a time with the harpist Terpnos or the singer Diodorus, who trained him how to use what it had become the fashion to describe as his celestial voice.

He soon got tired of the small restraint upon his amusements which resulted from the presence of the graver guests across the bridge. But they helped to form an audience for him in the room which had been fitted up as a theatre. One evening he had been displaying his accomplishments to all the guests at both villas, and had been received by the listening slaves and courtiers with tumults of applause. The others were obliged, or felt themselves obliged, to join in the clapping; but Nero could read in their faces that they were unwilling listeners. Seneca blushed, and his smooth tongue stumbled, as he attempted to express his gratification. Burrus looked on with profound disapproval. A look of involuntary scorn stole over the grave features of Persius, whom Nero already hated, because the young man’s virginal modesty formed such a contrast to his own shamelessness. But, worst of all, the blunt soldier, Vespasian, to the intense amusement of Titus and Britannicus, had first of all begun to nod, and then had fallen asleep with his mouth wide open, and had snored—had actually and audibly snored, so that all the audience heard it, while Nero was chanting his own divine verses with the most bewitching trills of his own divine voice!

Nero, in his rage, half thought of having him arrested on the charge of high treason—an accusation of which the meshes were equally adapted to entangle the most daring criminals and the most trivial offenders. But when he poured out his wrath to Petronius, his elegant friend laughed immoderately, and pacified Nero’s offended vanity by dwelling on Vespasian’s somnolence as a proof of his vulgarity.

‘I suppose, then,’ said Nero, ‘I must say with Horace, “solvuntur risu tabulæ”?’

‘Yes,’ said Petronius, ‘and you may add “tu missus abibis.” Why not make a clean sweep of these dreadful old fogies in the Villa Castor? Pliny has told us all we care to know about flamingoes and lampreys. Seneca’s pomposities grow stale. We have been sufficiently amused for the present by the blushes of Persius, and the good Silius Italicus is as tedious as his own epic. Give them a respectful farewell. Send for Paris the actor, and Aliturus the pantomime, and some of your fairest slaves to wait on us at our choicest banquets. Let us dismiss this humbug of respectability and pluck the blossom of the days.’

The advice fell on congenial ears. It was intimated to the guests in the Villa Castor that they might present their respects to the Emperor, and disperse where they chose. They were not sorry to depart from such dubious neighbours as those in the Villa Pollux. Vespasian and Titus were rudely sent off the next morning, without being permitted to see Nero again. Flavia Domitilla accompanied them, and as the presence of Britannicus was always a trouble to Nero, he was allowed to spend the rest of the autumn in the humble Sabine villa of Vespasian’s family at Phalacrine, near Reate, where he would not only have Titus as a companion, but also his cousins—the two young sons of Vespasian’s brother, Flavius Sabinus.

‘Among those dull farmers,’ said Nero, ‘he is not likely to have any nonsense put into his head. Let him eat beans and bacon, and grow as sluggish as his friends.’

To Nero and the fashionable nobles of his time every man was sluggish and plebeian who did not care to season his recreation with a variety of vices.