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

its progress not till it shall have subdued the world to its dominion.

Julia was deeply interested in all that I told her of the family of Macer, and will make them all her special charge. Ælia will I hope become in some capacity a member of our household.[Pg 287]

I ought to tell you that we have often of late been at the Gardens, where we have seen both Livia and Aurelian. Livia is the same, but the Emperor is changed. A gloomy horror seems to sit upon him, which both indisposes him to converse as formerly, and others to converse with him. Especially has he shown himself averse to discussion of any point that concerns the Christians, at least with me. When I would willingly have drawn him that way, he has shrunk from it with an expression of distaste, or with more expressive silence, or the dark language of his terrific frown. For me however he has no terrors, and I have resolved to break through all the barriers he chooses to set up around him, and learn if I can what his feelings and purposes precisely are. One conversation may reveal them in such a way, as may make it sufficiently plain what part he means to act, and what measure of truth there may be in the current rumors; in which, for my own part, I cannot bring myself to place much reliance. I doubt even concerning the death of Aurelia, whether, even if it has taken place, it is not to be traced to some cause other than her religion.

A day has passed. I have seen the Emperor, as I was resolved to do, and now I no longer doubt what his designs are, nor that they are dark as they have been represented; yea, and darker, even as night is darker than day.

Upon reaching the palace, I was told that the Emperor was exercising at the hippodrome, toward which I then bent my steps. It lies at some distance from the palace, concealed from it by intervening groves. Soon[Pg 288] as I came in sight of it, I beheld Aurelian upon his favorite horse running the course as if contending for a prize, plying, the while, the fierce animal he bestrode with the lash, as if he were some laggard who needed rousing to his work. Swifter than the wind he flew by me, how many times I know not, without noting apparently that any one was present beside the attendant slaves; nor did he cease till the horse, spent and exhausted, no longer obeyed the will of even the Emperor of the world. Many a noble charger has he in this manner rode till he has fallen dead. So long used has this man been to the terrific game of war, and the scenes and sights which that reveals, stirring to their depths all the direst passions of our nature, that now, at home and at peace, life grows stale and flat, and needs the artificial stimulants which violent and extreme modes of action can alone supply. The death of a horse on the course, answers now for a legion slain in battle; an unruly, or disobedient, or idle slave hewn in two, affords the relief which the execution of prisoners has been accustomed to yield. Weary of inaction, he pants for the day to arrive when, having completed the designs he has set on foot in the city, he shall again join the army, now accumulating in huge masses in Thrace, and once more find himself in the East, on the way to new conquests and fresh slaughter.

As he threw himself from his horse, now breathing hard and scarcely supporting himself, the foam rolling from him like snow, he saluted me in his usual manner.

'A fair and fortunate day to you, Piso! And what may be the news in the city? I have rode fast and far, but have heard nothing. I come back empty as I went out, save the heat which I have put into my veins. This[Pg 289] horse is he I was seen upon from the walls of Palmyra by your and other traitor eyes. But for first passing through the better part of my leg and then the saddle, the arrow that hit me then had been the death of him. But death is not for him, nor he for death; he and his rider are something alike, and will long be so, if auguries ever speak truth. And if there be not truth in auguries, Piso, where is it to be found among mortals? These three mornings have I rode him to see if in this manner he could be destroyed, but thou seest how it issues; I should destroy myself before him. But what, I say, is the news? How does the lady Julia? and the Queen?'

Replying first to these last inquiries, I then said that there was little news I believed in the city. The only thing, perhaps, that could be treated as news, was the general uneasiness of the Christians.

'Ah! They are uneasy? By the gods, not wholly without reason. Were it not for them I had now been, not here chafing my horse and myself on a hippodrome, but tearing up instead the hard sands of the Syrian deserts. They weigh upon me like a nightmare! They are a visible curse of the gods upon the state—but, being seen, it can be removed. I reckon not you among this tribe, Piso, when I speak of them. What purpose is imputed?'

'Rumor varies. No distinct purpose is named, but rather a general one of abridging some of their liberties—suppressing their worship, and silencing their priests.'

'Goes it no further?'

'Not with many; for the people are still willing to believe that Aurelian will inflict no needless suffering. They see you great in war, severe in the chastisement of the enemies of the state, and just in the punishment[Pg 290] inflicted upon domestic rebels; and they conceive that in regard to this simple people you will not go beyond the rigor I have just named.'

'Truly they give me credit,' replied Aurelian, 'for what I scarcely deserve. But an Emperor can never hear the truth. Piso! they will find themselves deceived. One or the other must fall—Helenism or Christianity! I knew not, till my late return from the East, the ravages made by this modern superstition, not only throughout Rome, but the world. In this direction I have for many years been blind. I have had eyes only for the distant enemies of my country, and the glories of the battle-field. But now, upon resting here a space in the heart of the empire, I find that heart eaten out and gone; the religion of ancient Rome, which was its very life, decaying, and almost dead, through the rank growth of this overshadowing poison-tree that has shot up at its side. It must be cut up by the roots—the branches hewn away—the leaves stripped and scattered to the winds—nay, the very least fibre that lurks below the surface with life in it, must be wrenched out and consumed. We must do thus by the Christians and their faith, or they will do so by us.'

'I am hardly willing,' I replied, 'to believe what I have heard; nor will I believe it. It were an act, so mad and unwise, as well as so cruel, that I will not believe it though coming from the lips of Aurelian!'

'It is true, Piso, as the light of yonder sun! But if thou wilt not believe, wait a day or two and proof enough shall thou have—proof that shall cure thy infidelity in a river of Christian blood.'

'Still, Aurelian,' I answered. 'I believe not: nor[Pg 291] will, till that river shall run down before my eyes red and thick as the Orontes!'

'How, Piso, is this? I thought you knew me!'

'In part I am sure I do. I know you neither to be a madman nor a fool, both which in one would you be to attempt what you have now threatened.'

'Young Piso, you are bold!'

'I make no boast of courage,' I replied; 'I know that in familiar speech with Aurelian, I need not fear him. Surely you would not converse on such a subject with a slave or a flatterer. A Piso can be neither. I can speak, or I can be silent; but if I speak—'

'Say on, say on, in the name of the gods!'

'What I would say to Aurelian then is this, that slaughter as he may, the Christians cannot be exterminated; that though he decimated, first Rome and then the empire, there would still be left a seed that would spring up and bear its proper harvest. Nay, Aurelian, though you halved the empire, you could not win your game. The Christians are more than you deem them.'

'Be it so,' replied the Emperor; 'nevertheless I will try. But they are not so many as you rate them at, neither by a direct nor an indirect enumeration.'

'Let that pass, then,' I answered. 'Let them be a half, a quarter, a tenth part of what I believe them to be, it will be the same; they cannot be exterminated. Soon as the work of death is done, that of life will begin again, and the growth will be the more rank for the blood spilled around. Outside of the tenth part, Aurelian, that now openly professes this new religion, there lies another equal number of those who do not openly profess it, but do so either secretly, or else view it with favor and with the[Pg 292] desire to accept it. Your violence, inflicted upon the open believers, reaches not them, for they are an invisible multitude; but no sooner has it fallen and done its work of ruin, than this other multitude slowly reveals itself, and stands forth heirs and professors of the persecuted faith, and ready, like those who went before them, to live for it and die for it.'

'What you say may be so,' answered Aurelian; 'I had thought not of it. Nevertheless, I will try.'

'Moreover,' I continued, 'in every time of persecution, there are those—sincere believers, but timid—who dare not meet the threatened horrors. These deny not their faith, but they shrink from sight; they for a season disappear; their hearts worship as ever, but their tongues are silent; and search as they may, your emissaries of blood cannot find them. But soon as the storm is over-past, then do they come forth again, as insects from the leaves that sheltered them from the storm, and fill again the forsaken churches.'

'Nevertheless I will try for them.'

'Then will you be, Aurelian, as one that sheds blood, because he will shed it—seeing that the end at which you aim cannot in such way be reached. Confiscation, imprisonment, scourging, fires, torture, and death, will all be in vain; and with no more prospect that by such oppression Christianity can be annihilated, than there would be of rooting out poppies from your fields when as you struck off the heads or tore up the old roots, the ripe seeds were scattered abroad over the soil, a thousand for every parent stalk that fell. You will drench yourself in the blood of the innocent, only that you may do it—while no effect shall follow.'[Pg 293]

'Let it be so then; even so. Still I will not forbear. But this I know, Piso, that when a disaffection has broken out in a legion, and I have caused the half thereof, or its tenth, to be drawn forth and cut to pieces by the other part, the danger has disappeared. The physic has been bitter, but it has cured the patient! I am a good surgeon; and well used to letting blood. I know the wonders it works and shall try it now, not doubting to see some good effects. When poison is in the veins, let out the blood, and the new that comes in is wholesome. Rome is poisoned!'

'Great Emperor,' I replied, 'you know nothing, allow me to say, whereof you affirm. You know not the Christians, and how can you deem them poison to the state? A purer brotherhood never has the world seen. I am but of late one among them, and it is but a few months since I thought of them as you now do. But I knew nothing of them. Now I know them. And knowledge has placed them before me in another light. If, Aurelian—'

'I know nothing of them, Piso, it is true; and I wish to know nothing—nothing more, than that they are Christians! that they deny the good gods! that they aim at the overthrow of the religion of the state—that religion