CHAPTER XIX OTHO’S SUPPER AND WHAT CAME OF IT

‘Quoi cum sit viridissimo nupta flore puella
Et puella tenellulis delicatior hædis,
Asservanda nigellulis diligentius uvis,
Ludere hanc sinit, ut lubet.’

Catull. Carm. xvii. 14.

We left Onesimus bound hand and foot in his cell, and expecting the severest punishment. His crimes had been heinous, although the thought of escaping detection by slaying Junia had only been a momentary impulse, such as could never have flashed across his mind if it had not been inflamed by the furies of the amphitheatre. As he looked back in his deep misery, he saw how fatally all his misfortunes dated from the self-will with which he had resisted light and knowledge. He might by this time have been good and honoured in the house of Philemon, less a slave than a brother beloved. He might have been enfranchised, and in any case have enjoyed that happy freedom of soul which he had so often witnessed in those whom Christ had made free indeed. And now his place was among the lowest of the low. Nereus had of course reported to Pudens his attempt at theft. Pudens was sorry for the youth, for he had liked him, and saw in him the germs of better things. But such a crime could not be passed over with impunity. Onesimus was doomed to the scourge, as well as to a trinundine47 of solitude on bread and water, while he remained fettered in his cell.

The imprisonment, the shame, the solitariness which was a cruel trial to one of his quick disposition, were very salutary to him. They checked him in a career which might have ended in speedy shipwreck. And while his heart was sore every kind influence was brought to bear upon him. Pudens visited him and tried to rouse him to penitence and manliness. Nereus awoke in his mind once more the dying embers of his old faith. Above all, Junia came one day to the door of his prison, and spoke a few words of courage and hope, which more than all else made him determined to struggle back to better ways.

His punishment ended, and he was forgiven. He resumed his duties, and took a fresh start, in the hope of better things.

Nero had returned to Rome, and drew still closer his bond of intimacy with Otho. Otho was his evil genius. In vain did Agrippina attempt to keep her son in the paths of outward conformity with the requirements of his position. In vain did Seneca and Burrus remind him of the responsibilities of an Emperor of Rome. Otho became his model, and Otho represented to one half of the Roman population the ideal which they themselves most desired and admired. All the voluptuous æstheticism, all the diseased craving in Nero’s mind for the bizarre, the monstrous, and the impossible; all the ‘opéra bouffe’ elements of his character, with its perverted instincts as of a tenth-rate artist, were strengthened and stimulated by his intercourse with Otho.

As a matter of course, the command of unlimited treasures followed the possession of an unchallenged autocracy. Though there was a theoretical distinction between the public exchequer and the privy purse, there was no real limit between the two. This ‘deified gamin’ had complete command of the resources of Italy and the provinces. Cost was never allowed to stand in the way of his grotesque extravagance. A boy was the lord of the world—a bad boy—who delighted in such monkey-tricks as taking his stand secretly on the summit of the proscenium in the theatre, setting the actors and pantomimes by the ears, and flinging missiles at people’s heads.

Shortly after his return to Rome he gave a banquet, and the chief new feature of the entertainment was that the head of each guest had been sprinkled with precious perfumes. Otho determined that he would not be outdone. He was laden with debts; but what did that matter when he might look forward some day to exhausting some rich province with rapine? He asked Nero to sup with him, and determined that he would set the fashion to imperial magnificence.

The banqueters were nine in number: Otho and Nero; Petronius, as the ‘arbiter of elegance’; Tigellinus, as the most pliable of parasites; the actor Paris, because of his wit, grace, and beauty; Vatinius, as the most unspeakable of buffoons; Clodius Pollio, an ex-prætor, Pedanius Secundus, the Præfect of the city, and Octavius Sagitta, a tribune of the people, whom Nero liked for their dissolute manners.

Pricelessness and refinement—as refinement was understood by the most effeminate of Roman exquisites—were to be the characteristics of the feast. The dining-room was a model of the latest and most fashionable art. It was not large, but its roof was upheld by alternate columns of the rare marbles of Synnada and Carystus—the former with crimson streaks, the latter green-veined—while the two columns at the entrance showed the golden yellow of the quarries of Numidia, and the fretted roof was richly gilded and varied with arabesques of blue and crimson. The walls were inlaid with mother-of-pearl, alternated with slabs of ivory delicately flushed with rose-colour. The chandeliers were of antique shapes, and further light was given by candelabra of gold. In front of Nero was one of exquisite workmanship, which represented Silenus lying on a rock, with his head leaning against a tree which overshadowed it. The table was of cedar wood, supported by pillars of ivory, and it sparkled with goblets of gold and silver embossed by Mys and Mentor, among which were scattered amber cups, and chrysendeta which were of silver rimmed with gold. The bowls in which the rare wines were mixed were of pure crystal or the rubied glass of Alexandria. Although it was winter, garlands of exotic roses were provided for every guest, and these garlands were fastened to lappets of perfumed silk. None but the most youthful and beautiful of Otho’s slaves—bright Greeks, and dark Egyptians, and fair-haired Germans, in sumptuous dresses, one or two of whom Otho had purchased for no less than eight hundred pounds—were permitted to wait upon the guests.

The supper was no supper of Trimalchio, with its coarse and heavy gluttonies. Everything was delicate and recherché. The oysters were from Richborough; the lampreys from the fishponds of a senator who was said to have flung into them more than one slave who had offended him; the mullet came from Tauromenos; the milk-cheeses from Sarsina; the fruits seemed to have been produced in defiance of the seasons, and the roses were as plentiful as though it were midsummer. There were two tiny dishes which represented the last and most extravagant devices of Roman gourmandise, for one was composed of the tongues of nightingales, the other of the brains of Samian peacocks and African flamingoes, of which the iridescent and crimson feathers adorned the silver plates on which they lay. Sea and land had been swept with mad prodigality to furnish every luxury which money could procure. The wines were of the rarest vintages; and whereas four kinds of wine were thought an extravagance in the days of Julius Cæsar, Otho set eighty different sorts of wine before his guests, besides other kinds of delicate drinks. To relieve the plethora of luxuries the guests sometimes alternated hot burning mushrooms with pieces of ice.

But the most admired invention of extravagance was the one in which Otho had specially designed to outdo the luxury of Cæsar. The Romans were devoted to delicious odours. Nero had ordered perfumes to be sprinkled on the hair of his guests; but after this had been done to those who reclined at Otho’s banquet, the boys who stood behind them took off their loose slippers and bathed their feet also in liquid essences—a device of which, up to this time, the luxury of an Apicius had never dreamed. And while the guests were still admiring this daring innovation, Otho made a sign with his jewelled hand to Polytimus, the chief favourite among his slaves, who immediately turned two taps of ivory and gold, and then, to the soft breathing of flutes, two fountains sprang into the air, from silver basins, and refreshed the banqueters with a fine dew of the most exquisite fragrance.

To those frivolous spirits all this unbridled materialism seemed to be the one thing which raised them nearest to the gods; and they felt a thrill of delight when it was whispered that for that single supper Otho had expended a sum of four million sesterces.48

The conversation during the meal was vapid and licentious. Beginning with the weather, it proceeded to discuss the gladiators, actors, dancers, and charioteers. Then it repeated all the most recent pasquinades and coarse jokes which had been attached to the statues in the Forum. Then it turned to scandal, and

‘Raged like a fire among the noblest names,

Imputing and polluting,’

until it might have seemed that in all Rome not one man was honest, nor one woman pure. To say such things of many of the leading senators and patricians would have been not far from the truth; but the gossip became far more piquant when it dwelt on the immense usury of Seneca, and gave vent to the worst innuendoes about his private life; or when it tried to blacken with its poisonous breath the fair fame of a Pætus Thrasea or a Helvidius Priscus. Yet another resource was boundless adulation of the Emperor and abuse of every other authority, particularly of the Senate, of which Nero, like Gaius, was intensely jealous. It was on this occasion that Vatinius surpassed himself by the celebrated remark, ‘I hate you, Cæsar, because you are a senator.’ After a time, however, scandal and adulation palled, as did the smart procacity of the young slaves, who were trained to say witty and impudent things. And as by that time the drinking bout had begun, after the healths were finished the guests were amused by the strains of the choraulæ and the dances of Andalusian girls.

Among the amusements which Otho had provided was a ventriloquist, who took off all the chief lawyers of the day in a fashion first set by Mutus, in the reign of Tiberius. But the jaded, rose-crowned guests found that the evening was beginning to drag, and then they took to gambling. Nero caught the epidemic of extravagance, and that night he bet four hundred sesterces, not on each cast only, but on each point of the dice.

It was understood that, though the supper and its concomitant orgies were prolonged for hours, there was to be no deliberate drunkenness. Claudius had habitually indulged in a voracity which, on one occasion, had made him turn aside from his own judgment-seat to intrude himself as a guest at one of the celebrated banquets of the Salian priests, of which the appetising smell had reached him from the Temple of Mars. But by Otho and Petronius such forms of animalism were condemned as betraying a want of æsthetic breeding, and they sought to stimulate the lassitude of satiety by other forms of indulgence. That night they proposed to initiate Nero into a new sensation, by persuading him to join the roysterers who, like the Mohawks in the reign of Queen Anne, went about the streets insulting sober citizens, breaking open shops, and doing all the damage and mischief in their power. It was this which made that evening memorable in Nero’s reign, because it was the first instance of a folly which filled genuine Romans with anger and disdain.

But before we touch on these adventures, another incident must be mentioned, which produced a far deeper effect upon the annals of the world. It was on the evening of that supper that Nero first saw Poppæa Sabina.

Poppæa Sabina, though before her marriage to Otho she had been married to Rufius Crispinus, the Prætorian Præfect of Claudius, and had been the mother of a boy, still retained the youthful and enchanting loveliness which became an Empire’s curse. She was a bride well suited in all respects to the effeminate and reckless Otho. If he paid priceless sums for the perruque which no one could distinguish from his natural hair, and used only the costliest silver mirrors, she equalled his absurdities by having her mules shod with gold, and by keeping five hundred she-asses to supply the milk in which she bathed her entire person, with the object of keeping her beautiful complexion in all its softness of hue and contour. And, when she travelled, the hot sunbeams were never allowed to embrown her cheeks, which she entirely covered with a fine and fragrant unguent.

Otho was sincerely attached to her. He was proud of possessing as his bride the haughtiest, the most sumptuous, and the most entrancingly fair of all the ladies in Rome. Before the death of Rufius Crispinus he had estranged her affections from her husband; and it was more than suspected that her object in accepting Otho had not only been her admiration for his luxurious prodigality, but also an ulterior design of casting her sorcery over the youthful Nero. Otho had often praised her beauty to the Emperor, for it was a boastfulness from which he could not refrain. But he did not wish that Nero should see her. He knew too well the inflammable disposition of the youthful Cæsar, and the soaring ambition of his own unscrupulous consort. In this purpose he had been abetted secretly by Agrippina, who felt an instinctive dread of Poppæa, and who, if the day of her lawless exercise of power had not been ended within two months of her son’s accession, would have made Poppæa undergo the fate which she had already inflicted on Lollia Paulina. By careful contrivance Otho had managed to keep Poppæa at a distance from Nero. The task was easier, because Nero was short-sighted, and Poppæa, either in affectation of modesty, or from thinking that it became her, adopted the fashion of Eastern women, in covering the lower part of her face with a veil when she went forth in public.

But that evening Nero, for the first time, saw her near at hand and face to face, and she had taken care that he should see her in the full lustre of her charms.

Beyond all doubt she was not only dazzlingly beautiful, but also possessed that spell of brilliant and mobile expression, and the consummate skill in swaying the minds of men, which in earlier days had enabled Cleopatra to kindle the love of Julius Cæsar, and to hold empery over the heart of Marcus Antonius. Her features were almost infantile in their winning piquancy, and wore an expression of the most engaging innocence. Her long and gleaming tresses, which almost the first among the ladies of Rome she sprinkled with gold, were not tortured and twisted into strange shapes, but parted in soft, natural waves over her forehead, and flowed with perfect grace over her white neck, setting off the exquisite shape of her head. She was dressed that evening in robes which made up for their apparent simplicity by their priceless value. They were of the most delicate colours and the most exquisite textures. The tunic was of that pale shining gold which the ancients described by the word ‘hyaline’; the stola was of saffron colour. Her dress might have been described in terms like those which the poet applies to his sea-nymph—

‘Her vesture showed the yellow samphire-pod,

Her girdle the dove-coloured wave serene;’

and, indeed, the sea-nymph’s robe had already been described by Ovid, speaking of the dress known as undulata—

‘Hic, undas imitatus, habet quoque nomen ab undis,

Crediderim nymphas hac ego veste tegi.’

She had divined the reasons which led Otho to prevent her from meeting the Emperor; but she was ambitious of a throne, and, while using neither look nor word which awoke suspicion in her husband’s mind, she smiled to think how vain would be his attempt to set a man’s clumsy diplomacy against a woman’s ready wit.

‘My Otho,’ she had said to him, ‘you are about to entertain the Emperor this evening at a supper such as Rome has not yet seen. The feast which Sestius Gallus gave to Tiberius, the supper which Agrippa the Elder gave to Gaius, and which helped him to a kingdom, were very well in their way; but they were vulgar and incomplete in comparison with that of which your guests will partake to-night.’

‘I know it, Poppæa,’ he said; ‘and though my own taste sets the standard in Rome, I know how much the arrangements of my banquet will owe to the suggestions of my beautiful wife.’

‘And ought not the wife, whom you are pleased to call beautiful, at least to welcome into the house our imperial guest? Will it not be a marked rudeness if the matron of the house has no word wherewith to greet the Cæsar as he steps across her threshold? Will he be content with the croaking “Salve, Cæsar!” of the parrot whom you have hung in his gilded cage at the entrance of the atrium?’

‘Poppæa is lovely,’ said Otho, ‘and Nero is—what he is. Would you endanger the life of the last of the Salvii, merely for the pleasure of letting a short-sighted youth, perhaps a would-be lover, stare at you a little more closely?’

A pout settled on the delicate lips of Poppæa, as she turned away with the remark: ‘I thought, Otho, that I had been to you too faithful a bride to find in you an unreasonable husband. Is there any lady in Rome except myself who would be deemed unworthy to see the Emperor when he sups in her house? Have I deserved that you should cast this slur upon me as though I—I, whose piety is known to all the Romans—were a Julia or an Agr— I mean, a Messalina?’

Otho tried to bring back her lips to their usual smile, but he did not wish to give way unless he were absolutely obliged to do so. He said:

‘You must not adopt these tragic tones, my sweet Poppæa. This is but a bachelor’s party. You shall meet Nero some day in this house when all the noblest matrons of Rome are with you to sanction your presence, and you shall outshine them all. But there are guests coming to-night whom I should not care for Poppæa to greet, though I have asked them as companions of Nero. Surely you would not demean yourself by speaking to a Vatinius or a Paris, to say nothing of a Tigellinus or a Sagitta.’

‘I need not see or speak to any of the others, Otho,’ said Poppæa; ‘but surely I have a right to ask that when the slave sees the gilded letica with its purple awnings I may for one moment advance across the hall, and tell Nero that Poppæa Sabina greets the friend of her lord, and thanks him for honouring their poor house with his august presence.’

‘Well, Poppæa,’ said Otho, ‘if it must be so it must. You know that I can never resist your lightest petition, and I would rather give up the banquet altogether than see tears in those soft eyes, and that expression of displeasure against Otho on your lips.’

So, when Nero arrived, Poppæa met him, and, brief as was the interview, she had thrown into it all the sorcery of a potent enchantress. A sweet and subtle odour seemed to wrap her round in its seductive atmosphere, and every word and look and gesture, while it was meant to seem exquisitely simple, had been profoundly studied with a view to its effect. Poppæa was well aware that Nero was accustomed to effrontery, and that Acte had won his heart by her maidenly reserve. Nothing, therefore, could have been more sweetly modest than Poppæa’s greeting. Only for one moment had she unveiled her whole face and let the light of her violet eyes flow through his soul. There was one observer who fully understood the pantomime. It was Paris, who read the real motives of Poppæa and was lost in admiration at so superb a specimen of acting. His knowledge of physiognomy, his insight into human nature, his mastery of his art, enabled him to see the truth which Nero did not even suspect, that this lovely lady with the infantile features was ‘a fury with a Grace’s mask.’

She saw that her glance had produced the whole effect which she had intended. Nero was amazed, and for the moment confused. He had never experienced such witchery as this. Acte was modest and beautiful, but to compare Acte with Poppæa was to set a cygnet beside a swan. Poppæa vanished the moment her greeting had been delivered, but Nero stood silent. Almost the first word he said to his host struck like a death-knell on Otho’s heart.

‘Otho,’ he said, ‘how much luckier you are than I am! You have the loveliest and most charming wife in Rome; I have the coldest and least attractive.’

‘Let not Cæsar disparage the sharer of his throne,’ said Otho, concealing under measured phrases his deep alarm. ‘The Empress Octavia is as beautiful as she is noble.’

But Nero could hardly arouse himself to admire and enjoy the best banquet of his reign, until he had called for his tablets, and written on them a message for Poppæa. ‘I am thanking your lovely lady for her entertainment,’ said the Emperor, as he handed his tablets to his freedman Doryphorus, and told him to take them to the lady of the house. But what he had really written was a request that Poppæa would deign to greet him for a moment during some pause in the long feast.

He made the requisite opportunity by saying that he would cool himself in the viridarium, and again he found Poppæa a miracle of reserve and sweetness. From that moment he determined, if it could in any way be compassed, to take her from her husband.

But this, as we have said, was not the only adventure of the evening. When the revel was over, the guests, instead of going home in pompous retinue attended by their slaves, determined to enjoy a frolic in the streets. ‘Flown with insolence and wine,’ they persuaded the Emperor to disguise himself in the dress of a simple burgher and to roam with them along the Velabrum and the Subura and every street in which they were likely to meet returning guests.

They all accompanied him except Vatinius, who was too weak and deformed to suit their purpose. The streets of Rome were dark at night. The expedient of public lamps, or even of lamps hung outside each house, had never occurred to a people that revelled in expensiveness. Hence it was dangerous for unprotected persons to go out at night, and the police had more than they could really do. Nero and his companions were able, with perfect impunity, to insult, annoy and injure group after group of sober or peaceful citizens, whom the exigencies of duty or society had compelled to return to their homes after dark without a slave to bear a lantern or a torch. They enjoyed the novel sensation of terrifying timid women and of throwing harmless passengers into the gutters, indulging in every form of rowdyism which could furnish a moment’s excitement.

The custom of ‘tossing in a blanket’ is not modern but ancient; only that among the ancients a large sagum or war-cloak was used, as our schoolboys use a blanket.49 That night the party of aristocratic Mohawks caught several poor burghers, and amused themselves with terrifying them almost out of their wits by this boisterous amusement. It needed, however, a spice of cruelty to make it still more piquant; and when they had tossed one of their victims as high as they could they suddenly let go of the sagum, and suffered him to fall, bruised, and often stunned, to the ground, while they made good their escape.

But they were not allowed to have it all their own way. As they were near the Milvian Bridge it happened that Pudens met them. He was accompanied by Onesimus, who carried a lantern of bronze and horn, and by Nereus and Junia, who followed at a little distance. They had been, in considerable secrecy, to a Christian gathering, and were on their way homewards when they met these roving sons of Belial, two of whom also carried lanterns. The stalwart form of Pudens looked sufficiently formidable in the circle of dim light to prevent them from annoying him; but when they caught sight of the veiled figure of Junia they thought that her father Nereus, who was evidently only a slave, would be unable to protect her from their rude familiarities.

‘Ha, maiden!’ exclaimed Otho. ‘What, veiled though it is night? Do you need protection from Cotytto? Come, bring me the lantern here; let us look at a face which will be presumably pretty.’

Junia shrank back, and Otho seized, and was attempting by force to uplift her veil when a blow from the oaken cudgel of Nereus benumbed his arm. But the Emperor, secure in the numbers of his companions, came up to the trembling slave-girl, who little dreamed whose was the hand laid upon her robe.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘when slave-girls are so modest there is nothing so effective for their education as the sagatio. What say you, comrades? It will be a novel excitement to toss a girl.’

‘Brutes!’ said Pudens, ‘whoever you are—brutes and not Romans! Would you insult and injure a modest maiden, slave though she be? Stand back at your peril.’

But Nero, excited with wine, and closely followed by Pollio and Sagitta, was still endeavouring to drag away Junia, who clung convulsively to her father, when a blow from the strong hand of Pudens sent him staggering to the wall. He stumbled over a stone in the street, the mask slipped down from his face, and Pudens saw who it was. The sense of the peril in which he and his slaves were involved, at once flashed upon his mind. There was at least a chance that Nero had not recognised him in the darkness. He hastily whispered to Onesimus to put out his lantern and, if possible, those of their assailants also. The Phrygian rose to the occasion. Springing upon Petronius, he dashed the lantern out of his grasp by the suddenness of his assault, and, whirling his staff into the air, struck with all his force at the hand of Paris, who held the other lantern. The lights were extinguished by the fall of the lanterns, and covering his own under his tunic he called on Pudens and Nereus to follow him closely, and seized Junia by the hand. The by-ways of the streets had become familiar to him, and while the revellers were discomfited, and were absorbed in paying attention to Nero, whose face was bleeding, they all four made their escape, and got home by a more circuitous route.

‘The bucket-men are coming, Emperor,’ said Paris.

None of the party wanted the police to recognise them, or to have the trouble of an explanation which was sure to get talked of to their general discredit, and feeling a little crestfallen, they all hurried off, to a secret entrance of the Palatine.

This was a rough beginning for Nero in his career of a practical joker. But the delights of such adventures were too keen to be foregone. He had not recognised Pudens, who took care not to look too closely at the bruise on Nero’s cheek when he went next morning to the Palace. In general he was safe in attacking small, and feeble parties of citizens; but not long afterwards he received another rebuff from the senator Julius Montanus, whose wife he insulted as they were returning from supper at a friend’s house. Montanus, like Pudens, had recognised the Emperor, but he had not the prudence to conceal his knowledge. Alarmed that he should have struck and wounded the sacrosanct person of a Cæsar, he was unwise enough to apologise. The consequence was natural. Had he held his tongue he might have escaped. Nero did not care to be detected in his escapades, and he ordered Montanus to commit suicide.

Having, however, been hurt more than once in these nocturnal encounters by men who had some courage, he made assurance doubly sure by taking with him some gladiators who were always to be within call if required. He was thus able to continue his pranks with impunity until they, too, lost their novelty, and began to pall upon a mind in which every spark of virility was dead, and which was rapidly degenerating into a mass of sensuous egotism.