Aurelian; or, Rome in the Third Century by William Ware (best color ebook reader .txt) 📖

believers in the prevailing superstitions, our gain would be double. To this mode of arguing I knew she was impelled, by her love and almost reverence for Portia; and how could I blame it, springing from such a cause? I had, almost criminally, allowed her to blind herself in a way she never would have done, had her strong mind acted, as on other subjects, untrammelled and free. I was not sorry that Milo had brought before her mind a fact which, however revolting in its horror to such a nature as hers, could not but heal while it wounded.

'Milo,' said Julia, as I ended, 'say now that you have been jesting; that this is a piece of wit with which you would begin in a suitable way an extraordinary day; this is one of your Gallienus fictions.'

'Before the gods,' replied Milo, 'I have told you the naked truth. But not the whole; for Curio left me not till he had shown how each had died. Of the ten, but three, he averred, resisted, or died unwillingly. The three were Germans from beyond the Danube—brothers,[Pg 97] he said, who had long lain in prison till their bones were ready to start through the skin. Yet were they not ready to die. It seemed as if there were something they longed—more even than for life or freedom—to say; but they might as well have been dumb and tongueless, for none understood their barbarous jargon. When they found that their words were in vain, they wrung their hands in their wo, and cried out aloud in their agony. Then, however, at the stern voice of Fronto, warning them of the hour, they ceased—embraced each other, and received the fatal blow; the others signified their pleasure at dying so, rather than to be thrown to wild beasts, or left to die by slow degrees within their dungeon's walls. Two rejoiced that it was their fate to pour out their blood upon the altar of a god, and knelt devoutly before the uplifted knife of Fronto. Never, said Curio, was there a more fortunate offering. Aurelian heard the report of it with lively joy, and said that 'now all would go well.' Curio is a good friend of mine; will it please you to hear these things from his own lips?'

'No,' said Julia; 'I would hear no more. I have heard more than enough. How needful, Lucius, if these things are so, that our Christian zeal abate not! I see that this stern and bloody faith requires that they who would deal with it must carry their lives in their hand, ready to part with nothing so easily, if by so doing they can hew away one of the branches, or tear up one of the roots of this ancient and pernicious error. I blame not Probus longer—no, nor the wild rage of Macer.'[Pg 98]

'Two, lady, of the captives were of Palmyra; the Queen's name and yours were last upon their lips.'

'Great God! how retribution like a dark pursuing shadow hangs upon the steps of guilt! Even here it seeks us. Alas, my mother! Heaven grant that these things fall not upon your ears!'

Julia was greatly moved, and sat a long time silent, her face buried in her hands, and weeping. I motioned to Milo to withdraw and say no more. Upon Julia, although so innocent of all wrong—guiltless as an infant of the blame, whatever it may be, which the world fixes upon Zenobia—yet upon her, as heavily as upon her great mother, fall the sorrows, which, sooner or later, overtake those, who, for any purpose, in whatever degree selfish, have involved their fellow-creatures in useless suffering. Being part of the royal house, Julia feels that she must bear her portion of its burdens. Time alone can cure this grief.

But you are waiting, with a woman's impatient curiosity, to hear of the dedication.

At the appointed hour, we were at the palace of Aurelian on the Palatine, where a procession pompous as art, and rank, and numbers could make it, was formed, to move thence by a winding and distant way to the temple near the foot of the Quirinal. Julia repaired with Portia to a place of observation near the temple—I to the palace, to join the company of the Emperor. Of the gorgeous magnificence of the procession I shall tell you nothing. It was in extent, and variety of pomp and costliness of decoration, a copy of that of the late triumph; and went even beyond the captivating splendor of the example. Roman music—which is not that[Pg 99] of Palmyra—lent such charms as it could to our passage through the streets to the temple, from a thousand performers.

As we drew near to the lofty fabric, I thought that no scene of such various beauty and magnificence had ever met my eye. The temple itself is a work of unrivalled art. In size it surpasses any other building of the same kind in Rome, and for excellence of workmanship and purity of design, although it may fall below the standard of Hadrian's age, yet, for a certain air of grandeur, and luxuriance of invention in its details, and lavish profusion of embellishment in gold and silver, no temple, nor other edifice, of any preceding age, ever perhaps resembled it. Its order is the Corinthian, of the Roman form, and the entire building is surrounded by its graceful columns, each composed of a single piece of marble. Upon the front, is wrought Apollo surrounded by the Hours. The western extremity is approached by a flight of steps, of the same breadth as the temple itself. At the eastern, there extends beyond the walls, to a distance equal to the length of the building, a marble platform, upon which stands the altar of sacrifice, which is ascended by various flights of steps, some little more than a gently rising plain, up which the beasts are led that are destined to the altar.

When this vast extent of wall and column, of the most dazzling brightness, came into view, everywhere covered, together with the surrounding temples, palaces, and theatres, with a dense mass of human beings, of all climes and regions, dressed out in their richest attire—music from innumerable instruments filling the heavens with harmony—shouts of the proud and excited popu[Pg 100]lace, every few moments, and from different points, as Aurelian advanced, shaking the air with their thrilling din—added to, still further, by the neighing of horses, and the frequent blasts of the trumpet—the whole made more solemnly imposing by the vast masses of clouds which swept over the sky, now suddenly unveiling, and again eclipsing, the sun, the great god of this idolatry, and from which few could withdraw their gaze;—when, at once, this all broke upon my eye and ear, I was like a child who, before, had never seen aught but his own village, and his own rural temple, in the effect wrought upon me, and the passiveness with which I abandoned myself to the sway of the senses. Not one there, was more ravished than I was, by the outward circumstance and show. I thought of Rome's thousand years, of her power, her greatness, and universal empire, and, for a moment, my step was not less proud than that of Aurelian.

But, after that moment, when the senses had had their fill, when the eye had seen the glory, and the ear had fed upon the harmony and the praise, then I thought and felt very differently. Sorrow and compassion for these gay multitudes were at my heart; prophetic forebodings of disaster, danger, and ruin to those, to whose sacred cause I had linked myself, made my tongue to falter in its speech, and my limbs to tremble. I thought that the superstition, that was upheld by the wealth and the power, whose manifestations were before me, had its roots in the very centre of the earth—far too deep down for a few like myself ever to reach them. I was like one, whose last hope of life and escape is suddenly struck away.[Pg 101]

I was aroused from these meditations, by our arrival at the eastern front of the temple. Between the two central columns, on a throne of gold and ivory, sat the Emperor of the world, surrounded by the senate, the colleges of augurs and haruspices, and by the priests of the various temples of the capital, all in their peculiar costume. Then, Fronto, the priest of the temple, standing at the altar, glittering in his white and golden robes like a messenger of light—when the crier had proclaimed that the hour of worship and sacrifice had come, and had commanded silence to be observed—bared his head, and, lifting his face up toward the sun, offered, in clear and sounding tones, the prayer of dedication. As he came toward the close of his prayer, he, as is so usual, with loud and almost frantic cries, and importunate repetition, called upon all the gods to hear him, and then, with appropriate names and praises, invoked the Father of gods and men to be present.

Just as he had thus solemnly invoked Jupiter by name, and was about to call upon the other gods in the same manner, the clouds, which had been deepening and darkening, suddenly obscured the sun; a distant peal of thunder rolled along the heavens; and, at the same moment, from out the dark recesses of the temple, a voice of preternatural power came forth, proclaiming, so that the whole multitude heard the words,—'God is but one; the King eternal, immortal, invisible.'

It is impossible to describe the horror that seized those multitudes. Many cried out with fear, and each seemed to shrink behind the other. Paleness sat upon every face. The priest paused as if struck by a power from[Pg 102] above. Even the brazen Fronto was appalled. Aurelian leaped from his seat, and by his countenance, white and awe-struck, showed that to him it came as a voice from the gods. He spoke not; but stood gazing at the dark entrance into the temple, from which the sound had come. Fronto hastily approached him, and whispering but one word as it were into his ear, the Emperor started; the spell that bound him was dissolved; and, recovering himself—making indeed as though a very different feeling had possessed him—cried out in fierce tones to his guards,

'Search the temple; some miscreant, hid away among the columns, profanes thus the worship and the place. Seize him, and drag him forth to instant death.'

The guards of the Emperor, and the servants of the temple, rushed in at that bidding, and searched in every part the interior of the building. They soon emerged, saying that the search was fruitless. The temple, in all its aisles and apartments, was empty.

The ceremonies, quiet being again restored, then went on. Twelve bulls, of purest white and of perfect forms, their horns bound about with fillets, were now led by the servants of the temple up the marble steps to the front of the altar, where stood the cultrarii and haruspices, ready to slay them and examine their entrails. The omens,—as gathered by the eyes of all from the fierce strugglings and bellowings of the animals, as they were led toward the place of sacrifice, some even escaping from the hands of those who had the management of them, and from the violent and convulsive throes of others as the blow fell upon their heads, or the knife severed their throats,—were of the darkest character, and[Pg 103] brought a deep gloom upon the brow of the Emperor. The report of the haruspices, upon examination of the entrails, was little calculated to remove that gloom. It was for the most part unfavorable. Especially appalling was the sight of a heart, so lean and withered, that it scarce seemed possible that it should ever have formed a part of a living animal. But more harrowing than all, was the voice of Fronto, who, prying with the haruspices into the smoking carcass of one of the slaughtered bulls, suddenly cried out with horror, that 'no heart was to be found.'

The Emperor, hardly to be restrained by those near him from some expression of anger, ordered a more diligent search to be made.

'It is not in nature that such a thing should be,' he said. 'Men are, in truth, sometimes without hearts; but brutes, as I think, never.'

The report was however confidently confirmed. Fronto himself approached, and said that his eye had from the first been upon the beast, and the exact truth had been stated.

The carcasses, such parts as were for the flames, were then laid upon the vast altar, and the flames of the sacrifice ascended.

The heavens were again obscured by thick clouds, which, accumulating into heavy volumes, began