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- Author: Henryk Sienkiewicz
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“By the hips of Kypris, I will not! How well thou knowest me! No; I will not repeat. I have heard nothing, and, moreover, I wish to hear nothing. Dost understand? Life is too short to make any undertaking worth the while. I beg thee only to visit Tigellinus to-day, and talk with him as long as thou hast with me of whatever may please thee.”
“Why?”
“So that should Tigellinus ever say to me, ‘Scevinus was with thee,’ I might answer, ‘He was with thee, too, that very day.’”
Scevinus, when he heard this, broke the ivory cane which he had in his hand, and said,—“May the evil fall on this stick! I shall be with Tigellinus to-day, and later at Nerva’s feast. Thou, too, wilt be there? In every case till we meet in the amphitheatre, where the last of the Christians will appear the day after tomorrow. Till we meet!”
“After to-morrow!” repeated Petronius, when alone. “There is no time to lose. Ahenobarbus will need me really in Achæa; hence he may count with me.”
And he determined to try the last means.
In fact, at Nerva’s feast Cæsar himself asked that Petronius recline opposite, for he wished to speak with the arbiter about Achæa and the cities in which he might appear with hopes of the greatest success. He cared most for the Athenians, whom he feared. Other Augustians listened to this conversation with attention, so as to seize crumbs of the arbiter’s opinions, and give them out later on as their own.
“It seems to me that I have not lived up to this time,” said Nero, “and that my birth will come only in Greece.”
“Thou wilt be born to new glory and immortality,” answered Petronius.
“I trust that this is true, and that Apollo will not seem jealous. If I return in triumph, I will offer him such a hecatomb as no god has had so far.”
Scevinus fell to repeating the lines of Horace:—
“Sic te diva potens Cypri, Sic fratres Helenæ, lucida sidera, Ventorumque regat Pater-”
“The vessel is ready at Naples,” said Cæsar. “I should like to go even tomorrow.”
At this Petronius rose, and, looking straight into Nero’s eyes, said,
“Permit me, O divinity, to celebrate a wedding-feast, to which I shall invite thee before others.”
“A wedding-feast! What wedding-feast?” inquired Nero.
“That of Vinicius with thy hostage the daughter of the Lygian king. She is in prison at present, it is true; but as a hostage she is not subject to imprisonment, and, secondly, thou thyself hast permitted Vinicius to marry her; and as thy sentences, like those of Zeus, are unchangeable, thou wilt give command to free her from prison, and I will give her to thy favorite.”
The cool blood and calm self-possession with which Petronius spoke disturbed Nero, who was disturbed whenever any one spoke in that fashion to him.
“I know,” said he, dropping his eyes. “I have thought of her and of that giant who killed Croton.”
“In that case both are saved,” answered Petronius, calmly.
But Tigellinus came to the aid of his master: “She is in prison by the will of Cæsar; thou thyself hast said, O Petronius, that his sentences are unchangeable.”
All present, knowing the history of Vinicius and Lygia, understood perfectly what the question was; hence they were silent, curious as to the end of the conversation.
“She is in prison against the will of Cæsar and through thy error, through thy ignorance of the law of nations,” said Petronius, with emphasis. “Thou art a naive man, Tigellinus; but even thou wilt not assert that she burnt Rome, and if thou wert to do so, Cæsar would not believe thee.”
But Nero had recovered and begun to half close his near-sighted eyes with an expression of indescribable malice.
“Petronius is right,” said he, after a while.
Tigellinus looked at him with amazement.
“Petronius is right,” repeated Nero; “to-morrow the gates of the prison will be open to her, and of the marriage feast we will speak the day after at the amphitheatre.”
“I have lost again,” thought Petronius.
When he had returned home, he was so certain that the end of Lygia’s life had come that he sent a trusty freedman to the amphitheatre to bargain with the chief of the spoliarium for the delivery of her body, since he wished to give it to Vinicius.
Chapter LXV
Evening exhibitions, rare up to that period and given only exceptionally, became common in Nero’s time, both in the Circus and amphitheatre. The Augustians liked them, frequently because they were followed by feasts and drinking-bouts which lasted till daylight. Though the people were sated already with blood-spilling, still, when the news went forth that the end of the games was approaching, and that the last of the Christians were to die at an evening spectacle, a countless audience assembled in the amphitheatre. The Augustians came to a man, for they understood that it would not be a common spectacle; they knew that Cæsar had determined to make for himself a tragedy out of the suffering of Vinicius. Tigellinus had kept secret the kind of punishment intended for the betrothed of the young tribune; but that merely roused general curiosity. Those who had seen Lygia at the house of Plautius told wonders of her beauty. Others were occupied above all with the question, would they see her really on the arena that day; for many of those who had heard the answer given Petronius and Nerva by Cæsar explained it in two ways: some supposed simply that Nero would give or perhaps had given the maiden to Vinicius; they remembered that she was a hostage, hence free to worship whatever divinities she liked, and that the law of nations did not permit her punishment.
Uncertainty, waiting, and curiosity had mastered all spectators. Cæsar arrived earlier than usual; and immediately at his coming people whispered that something uncommon would happen, for besides Tigellinus and Vatinius, Cæsar had with him Cassius, a centurion of enormous size and gigantic strength, whom he summoned only when he wished to have a defender at his side,—for example, when he desired night expeditions to the Subura, where he arranged the amusement called “sagatio,” which consisted in tossing on a soldier’s mantle maidens met on the way. It was noted also that certain precautions had been taken in the amphitheatre itself. The pretorian guards were increased; command over them was held, not by a centurion, but by the tribune Subrius Flavius, known hitherto for blind attachment to Nero. It was understood, then, that Cæsar wished in every case to guard himself against an outburst of despair from Vinicius, and curiosity rose all the more.
Every eye was turned with strained
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