CHAPTER X PRINCE BRITANNICUS.

‘We were, fair queen,
Two lads that thought there was no more behind,
But such a day to-morrow as to-day,
And to be boy eternal.’

Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, i. 2.

There were few youths in Rome more deserving of pity than the son of Claudius. Britannicus saw himself not only superseded, but deliberately neglected and thrust into the background. The intrigues of his stepmother had succeeded, and he, the true heir to the Empire, was a cipher in the Palace of the Cæsars. The suite of apartments assigned to his use and that of his immediate attendants was in one of the least frequented parts of the Palace. He often heard from the banquet hall and reception rooms, as he passed by them unnoticed, the sounds of revelry, in which he was only allowed on rare occasions to participate. Agrippina, in her varying moods, treated him sometimes with studied coolness and insulting patronage, sometimes with a sort of burning and maudlin affection, as though she were touched by the furies of remorse. The latter mood was more intolerable to him than the former. Sometimes, when she strained him to her steely heart, he felt as if he could have thrust her from him with loathing, and he made his relations with her more difficult because he was too little of an actor to conceal his dislike. Nero usually met him with sneering banter, but he, too, at times, seemed as though he would like to be treated by him with at least the semblance of brotherly cordiality. He found his chief comfort in the society of Octavia. She was, nominally, the Empress, and Nero, though he shunned her to the utmost of his power, had not yet dared to rob her of the dignities which surrounded her exalted rank. It was in the company of his sister that Britannicus spent his happiest hours. Octavia, as often as she dared, invited him to be present on festive occasions, and in her apartments he could find refuge for a time from the most detested of the spies with whom his stepmother had surrounded him from his early boyhood.

There was but one person about him whom he really trusted and loved. It was the centurion Pudens, who, being one of the imperial guard called excubitores, was often stationed at one point or other of the Palace. So vast was the interior of that pile of architecture, so intricate its structure, owing to the numerous additions which had been made to it by each succeeding Emperor, that for a boy bent, as Britannicus was, on occasionally eluding the intolerable watchfulness of his nominal slaves, it was not difficult to conceal his movements. Happily, too, he had one boyish friend whom he loved, and who loved him, with entire affection. It was Titus, the elder son of Vespasian. Even as a boy he gave promise of the fine moral qualities by which he was afterwards distinguished. His father was a soldier who had risen by merit to high command, and had even been Consul; but his grandfather was only a humble provincial, and, as his family was poor, he little dreamed that he too was destined to the purple of which his friend had been deprived. He was only a month or two older than Britannicus. They shared the same studies and the same games, and there was something contagious in his healthy vigour and imperturbable good humour. It was at least some alleviation to the sorrows of the younger boy that this manly and virtuous lad, with his short curly hair and athletic frame, was always ready to exert himself to brighten his loneliness and divert his thoughts. Painters might have called the features of Titus plebeian, but in his eyes and mouth there was an expression of honesty and sweetness which endeared him to the heart of the lonely prince, who admired him far more than any of the boys in the noblest families.

The political insignificance of the Flavian family had been one reason why Agrippina had chosen Titus as a companion for the son of Claudius, instead of some scion of the old aristocracy of Rome. It was well for Britannicus that his fellow-pupil came of a race purer and simpler than that of the youthful patricians.

The two boys had been educated together for some years; and Titus, when he became Emperor, still retained a fond affection for the companion of his youth, to whom he erected an equestrian statue. There was a story, known to very few, which might have endangered the life of Titus, had it been divulged. One day, when the two boys were learning their lessons together, Narcissus had brought in one of the foreign physiognomists who were known as metoposcopi, to look at them from behind a curtain. The man did not know who they were; he only knew that they were in some way connected with the Palace. After carefully studying their faces, he said that the elder of the two, Titus, should certainly become Emperor, but the younger as certainly should not. At that time Britannicus was heir to the throne. Narcissus was superstitious, and his heart misgave him; but he derived some comfort from the absurd improbability of a prophecy that a boy who had been born in so humble a house, and was only the descendant of a Cisalpine haymaker, should ever wear the purple of the Cæsars. He was too kind-hearted to let the anecdote be generally known, for even as a boy Titus was liked by every one, if he was not yet ‘the darling of the human race.’

One day, as Titus went across the viridarium, or chief green court of the Palace, he saw a little slave-boy struggling hard to repress his sobs. His kindly nature was touched by the sight. He had not been trained in the school of those haughty youths who thought it a degradation to speak to their slaves; his father, Vespasian, being himself of lowly origin, held, with Seneca, that slaves, after all, were men, and might become dear and faithful friends.

‘What is your name, and why do you weep, my little man?’ asked Titus.

‘They call me Epictetus,’ said the child; ‘and I am the slave of Epaphroditus, the Emperor’s secretary. I fell and hurt my leg very badly against the marble rim of the fountain. Don’t be angry with me. I will bear the pain.’15

‘A born Stoic!’ said Titus, smiling. ‘But what is the matter with your leg?’

‘I will tell you, sir,’ answered Epictetus. ‘Being deformed and useless, as you see, my master thought that he might turn me to some account by having me taught philosophy, and he made me capsarius 16 to his son, who attends the lectures of Musonius Rufus. Musonius, who is kind and good, let me sit in a corner and listen. I am not a Stoic yet, but I shall try to be one some day.’

‘But even now you have not told me how you came to be lame.’

The young slave blushed. ‘Eight weeks ago,’ he said, ‘I was walking past the door of the triclinium, when a slave came out with some crystal vases on a tray. He ran against me, and one of the vases fell and was broken. He charged me with having broken it, and Epaphroditus ordered my leg to be twisted. It hurt me terribly, but Musonius had taught me to endure, and I only cried out, “If you go on, you will break my leg.” He went on, and broke it. I did not give way then, and I am ashamed that you saw me crying now.’

‘Poor lad! Come with me to Prince Britannicus and tell him that story. He is kind, and will pity you, and perhaps get the Empress Octavia to do something for you.’

Epictetus limped after Titus, and Britannicus was pleased with the slave-boy’s quaint fortitude and the preternatural gravity of his face. He often sat on the floor while the two friends talked or played at draughts, and would sometimes retail to them what he had heard in the lectures of Musonius. They laughed at his naïveté, but something of the teaching stuck. The Stoicism of Titus had its germ in those boyish days.

One other friend, strange to say, Britannicus had near at hand, though she could not openly have much conversation with him. It was the fair freedwoman Acte. Her situation in the Palace did not argue in her a depraved mind. She had not been trained in an atmosphere which made her suppose that there was anything sinful in her relations with the Emperor. Brought from Asia in early youth, she was practically no more than a slave, though she had been emancipated by Claudius. The will of a master, even if that master was far below an Emperor, was regarded as a necessary law.17 But Acte had a good heart, and so far from being puffed up by the ardent affection of Nero, her one desire was to use her influence for the benefit of others. For Britannicus she felt the deepest pity. She had even aroused the anger of her lover by pleading in his behalf, and though it was impossible that she should do more than interchange with him an occasional salutation, the boy gratefully recognised that Acte did her best to gain for him every indulgence and relaxation in her power.

Britannicus had inherited some of his father’s fondness for history. He was never happier than when Titus told him some of the stories which he had heard from Vespasian about his campaigns in Britain. He had even persuaded Pudens to go with him to visit the old British chief, Caractacus—or, to give him his right name, Caradoc—who had kept the Romans at bay for nine years, until he was betrayed to them by the treacherous Queen Cartismandua. And much had come of this visit; for there Pudens saw for the first time the daughter of Caradoc, the yellow-haired British princess Claudia, and had fallen deeply in love with her. The grey King of the Silures, whose manly eloquence had moved the admiration of Claudius on the day when he had been led along in triumph, was eating away his heart in a strange land. He rejoiced to see the son of the Emperor who had spared his life, and he delighted the boy’s imagination with many a tale of the Druids, and Mona, and the wild Silurian hills and the vast rushing rivers, and the hunting of the wolf and the wild-boar in the marshes and forests of Caer Leon and Caer Went. While Caractacus was telling these stories there was ample opportunity for Pudens to improve his acquaintance with the fair Claudia, who talked to him with a yearning heart of her home on the silver Severn, which Pudens had once visited as a very young soldier.

These interviews made Britannicus eager to form the acquaintance of Aulus Plautius, the conqueror of the southern part of that far island. Plautius stood well at Court, and had been greatly honoured by Claudius, who had condescended to walk by his side in the ovation which rewarded the successful campaigns of four years. Britannicus gained easy permission to visit the old general, and at his house he met his wife, Pomponia Græcina.

This lady was regarded at Rome as a paragon of faithful friendship. She had been deeply attached in early youth to her royal kinswoman Julia, the granddaughter of Tiberius. Julia had been one of the victims of the cruelty of Messalina, and from the day of her execution, for forty years, Pomponia never appeared but in mourning garments, and it was said, though without truth, that she never wore a smile upon her face.

But though she smiled but rarely, the beauty of Pomponia was exquisite from her look of serenity and contentment. She was unlike the other ladies of Roman society. She never tinged her face with walnut juice, or painted it with rouge and cerussa, or reared her tresses into an elaborate edifice of curls, or sprinkled them with gold dust, or breathed of Assyrian odours. Her life and her dress were exquisitely simple. She wore no ornaments, or few. She rarely appeared at any banquet, and then only with her husband at the houses of the graver and more virtuous senators. Vice was involuntarily abashed at her presence. The talk which Roman matrons sometimes did not blush to hear was felt to be impossible where Pomponia was present, nor would any one have dreamed of introducing loose gymnasts or Gaditanian dancers as the amusement of any guests of whom she was one. Hence she was more and more neglected by the jewelled dandies and divorced ladies, who fluttered amid the follies of a heartless aristocracy, and gradually the gossiping pleasure-hunters of Rome came to hate her because her whole life was a rebuke of the degradation of a corrupt society.

Hatred soon took the form of whispered accusations. The suspicion was first broached by Calvia Crispinilla, a lady whose notoriously evil character elevated her high in the confidence of Nero, and who, in spite of her rank, was afterwards proud of the infamy of being appointed keeper of the wardrobe of his favourite Sporus.

Talking one day to Ælia Petina, a divorced wife of Claudius and mother of his daughter Antonia, she expressed her dislike of Pomponia, and said, ‘It is impossible that any worshipper of our gods should live a life so austere as Pomponia’s. Hark, in your ears, Petina. She must be’—and sinking her voice to a tragic whisper she said—‘she must be a secret Christian.’

‘Well,’ said Petina, ‘what does it matter? Nero himself worships the Syrian goddess, and they say that the lovely Poppæa Sabina, the wife of Otho, is a Jewess.’

‘A Jewess! oh, that is comparatively respectable,’ said Crispinilla. ‘Why, Berenice, the charming sister—ahem! the very deeply attached sister—of Agrippa, you know, is a Jewess; and what diamonds that woman has! But a Christian! Why, the very word has a taint of vulgarity about it, and leaves a bad flavour in the mouth! None but unspeakable slaves and cobblers and Phrygian runaways belong to those worshippers of the god Onokoites and the head of an ass.’18

What malice had invented as a calumny happened in this instance to be a truth. Pomponia was indeed a secret Christian. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and none can tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. She had accompanied her husband when he had been sent to subdue Britain, and had known the agonies of long and intensely anxious separation from him, and during those periods of trial she had been compelled to be much alone, and part of the time she had spent in Gaul. Persis, her confidential handmaid, had met one of the early missionaries of the faith, had heard his message, had been converted. Accident had revealed the fact to the noble Roman lady; and as she talked with Persis in many a long and lonely hour, her heart too had been touched by grace, and a life always pure had now become the life of a saint of God.

Plautius was glad to notice the manly interest taken by Britannicus in the country from which his name had been derived, and in martial achievements rather than in the debasing effeminacies of the Roman nobles. He always welcomed the boy’s presence, and introduced him to the kind hospitalities of his wife. Both parents were glad that a scion of the Cæsars who seemed to show the old Roman virtues of modesty and manliness should be a frequent companion of their own son, the young Aulus. To Pomponia the son of Claudius felt strongly drawn. She was wholly unlike any type of woman he had ever seen; she seemed to be separated by whole worlds of difference from such ladies as his own mother, Messalina, or his stepmother, Agrippina; and though she only dressed in simple and sombre garments, yet the peace and sweetness which breathed from her countenance made her more lovely in his eyes than the great wives of Consuls and senators whom he had so often seen sweeping through gilded chambers on the Palatine in their gleaming and gold-embroidered robes. He noticed, too, that his sister, the Empress Octavia, never visited her without coming home in a happier and more contented mood.

One day, being more than ever filled with admiration for her goodness, he had spoken to her freely of all his bitter trials, of all his terrible misgivings. She had impressed on him the duties of resignation and forgiveness; and had tried to show him that in a mind conscious of integrity he might have a possession better and more abiding than if he sat amid numberless temptations to baseness on an uneasy throne.

‘You speak,’ he said, ‘like Musonius Rufus; for the young Phrygian slave, Epictetus, whom Titus took compassion on and sometimes brings to our rooms, has told me much about his Stoic lectures. But there is something—I know not what—in your advice which is higher and more cheerful than in his.’

Pomponia smiled. ‘Much that Musonius teaches is true and beautiful,’ she said; ‘but there is a diviner truth in the world than his.’

Britannicus was silent for a moment, and then, hesitatingly and with reluctance, he said, ‘Will you forgive me, noble Pomponia, if I ask you a question?’

The pale countenance of the lady grew a shade paler, and she replied, ‘You might ask me what I should not think it right to answer.’

‘You know,’ said the boy, ‘that at banquets and other gatherings I cannot help hearing the gossip and scandal which they talk all the day long. And all the worst ladies—persons like Crispinilla and Petina and Silana—seem to hate you, I know not why; and they said that you would be accused some day of holding a foreign superstition.’

Pomponia clasped her hands, and uttered a few words which Britannicus could not hear. Then, turning to him, she said, ‘Perhaps Musonius has quoted those lines of Cleanthes, “Lead me, O Father of the world. I will follow thee, even though I weep.”19 We can never prevent the wicked from accusing us, but we can always give the lie to their accusations by innocent lives.’

‘What they said besides, must have been an absurd and wicked lie,’ continued Britannicus. ‘They said’—and here he made the sign of averting an evil omen which has been prevalent in Italy from the earliest days—‘that—you—were—dare I speak the vulgar word?—a Christian.’

‘And what do you know about the Christians, Britannicus?’

‘In truth I know very little, for I am not allowed to go about much; but Titus, who hears more than I do, tells me that they meet at night, and kill a babe, and drink its blood; and bind themselves by horrid oaths; and tie dogs to the lamp-stands, and hark them on to throw over the lamps, and are afterwards guilty of dreadful orgies. And they worship an ass’s head.’

‘What makes you believe that slanderous nonsense?’

‘Why, Titus is fond of scratching his name on the wall, and when we were going out of the pædagogium in the House of Gelotius, which, you know, is now used as a training school for the pages, he scrawled Titus Flavius Vespasianus leaves the pædagogium, and then drew a little sketch of a donkey, and underneath it Toil, little ass, as I have done, and it will do you good. I laughed at him for scribbling on the wall, and to make fun of him I wrote underneath—

‘“I wonder, oh wall, that your stones do not fall,

Bescribbled all o’er with the nonsense of all.”

And I told him that I should put up a notice like that at the Portus Portuensis, which begs boys and idlers not to scarify (scarificare) the walls. But while I was writing the lines, I caught sight of an odd picture which some one had scratched there. It was a figure with an ass’s head on a cross, and underneath it “Alexamenos adores God.” I asked Titus what it meant, and suggested that it was a satire on the worship of the Egyptian Anubis. But Titus said, “No! that is intended to annoy the Christians.”’20

‘Well, Britannicus,’ said Pomponia, ‘I know something more about these poor Christians than that. All these are lies. I dare say you have read, or Sosibius has read to you, some of the writings of Seneca?’

‘No,’ said Britannicus, reddening. ‘Seneca is my brother Nero’s tutor. It is he, and Agrippina, and Pallas, who have done away with the will of my father, Claudius. I don’t care to hear anything he says. He is not a true philosopher, like Musonius or Cornutus. He only writes fine things which he does not believe.’

‘A man may write very true things, Prince,’ said Pomponia, ‘yet not live up to them. I have here some of his letters, which his friend Lucilius has shown me. Let me read you a few passages.’

She took down the scroll of purple vellum, on which she had copied some of the letters, and, unrolling it, read a sentence here and there:—

‘“God is near you, is with you, is within you. A sacred spirit dwells within us, the observer and guardian of all our evil and our good; there is no good man without God.”

‘“What advantage is it that anything is hidden from man? Nothing is closed to God.”

‘“Even from a corner it is possible to spring up into heaven. Rise, therefore, and form thyself into a fashion worthy of God.”

‘“Do you wish to render the gods propitious? Be virtuous; to honour them it is enough to imitate them.”

‘“You must live for another, if you wish to live for yourself.”

‘“In every good man, God dwells.”21

‘I could read you many more thoughts like these from Seneca’s letters. Are they not true and beautiful?’

‘I wish his own acts were as true and beautiful,’ answered Britannicus. ‘But what has this to do with the Christians?’

‘This: every one of those thoughts, and many much deeper, are commonplaces among Christians; but the difference between them and the worshippers of the gods is that they possess other truths which make these real. They alone are innocent.’

‘And they do not worship an ass’s head? Well, at any rate, Christus or Chrestus, whom they do worship, was crucified in Palestine by Pontius Pilatus.’

‘And does suffering prevent a man from being divine? All Romans worship Hercules, yet they believe, or profess to believe, that he was burnt alive on Œta.’

Britannicus was silent, for he had always thought it a colossal insanity on the part of the Christians to worship one who had been crucified like a slave.

‘Tell me,’ said Pomponia, ‘when Epictetus reads you his notes of the lectures of Musonius, does not the name of Socrates sometimes occur in them?’

‘Yes,’ said the young prince; ‘it occurs constantly. Musonius talked of Socrates as a perfect pattern, and all but divine.’

‘And how did Socrates die?’

‘He was poisoned by the Athenians with hemlock in their common prison.’

‘As a malefactor?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does it, then, prove him to be worthless that he, too, died the death of a felon? And are all philosophers fools for extending so much reverence to a poisoned criminal?’

‘I never thought of that,’ said Britannicus.

‘And are all the other stories about these Christians lies?’ he asked after a pause.

‘They are,’ said Pomponia. ‘Some day, perhaps, you shall judge for your own self.’