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A Friend of Caesar by William Stearns Davis

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[121] Expounders of the Roman law.

Lentulus turned and glared with sullen amazement at his niece. That
Ahenobarbus should conspire against Drusus seemed the most natural
thing in the world. That the news that the conspiracy had failed
should come from such a quarter, and through the hands of his own
niece, at once terrified and angered him. Lucius was standing gaping,
in half horror, half fascination, at Cornelia. Had she not urged him
on? Had she not almost expressed her wish for Drusus's blood? The name
of Flaccus fell on his heart like a stone; for the great banker never
went back when he had taken a stand, and was rich enough to corrupt
the most lax and merciful jury. Ahenobarbus felt a trap snap upon him,
and yet he had no hope of revenge.

"Cornelia," cried Lentulus, regaining at last the powers of speech,
"why was this letter sent to you? What to you is that wretched youth,
Quintus Drusus, who escaped a fate he richly deserved? Why do you not
condole with your lover on his misfortune? What do you mean by your
stony stare, your--"

"I mean," retorted Cornelia, every word coming as a deep pant from her
heaving chest, while her fingers clasped and unclasped nervously, and
the blood surged to her pallid cheeks, "I mean that I need no longer
profess to love what I hate; to cherish what I despise; to fondle what
I loathe; to cast soft looks on that which I would pierce with
daggers!" And she in turn took a step, quick and menacing, toward her
wretched lover, who cowered and shrank back into the shadow of a
pillar.

"But you yourself said you hoped I would soon rid you of Drusus,"
howled Lucius.

"Fool!" hissed the woman, through her clenched teeth. "Didn't you know
that all that I said, all that I did, all that I thought, was for this
end--how might I save Quintus by learning the plans of the wretch who
thirsted for his blood? Do you feel paid, now, for all your labours to
secure the wealth of a man whose name should not be uttered beside
that of yours?"

"And you do not love me!" screamed Ahenobarbus, springing at her, as
if to force his arms around her neck.

"Dog!" and Cornelia smote him so fairly in the face that he shrank
back, and pressed his hand to a swelling cheek. "I said I hated and
despised you. What I despise, though, is beneath my hate. I would
tread on you as on a viper or a desert asp, as a noxious creature that
is not fit to live. I have played my game; and though it was not I who
won, but Agias who won for me, I am well content. Drusus lives! Lives
to see you miserably dead! Lives to grow to glory and honour, to
happiness and a noble old age, when the worms have long since finished
their work on you!"

"Girl," thundered Lentulus, fiercely, "you are raving! Ahenobarbus is
your affianced husband. Rome knows it. I will compel you to marry him.
Otherwise you may well blush to think of the stories that vulgar
report will fasten around your name."

But Cornelia faced him in turn, and threw her white arms aloft as
though calling down some mightier power than human to her aid; and her
words came fast:--

"What Rome says is not what my heart says! My heart tells me that I am
pure where others are vile; that I keep truth where others are false;
that I love honourably where others love dishonourably. I knew the
cost of what I would do for Drusus's sake; and, though the vilest
slave gibber and point at me, I would hold my head as proudly as did
ever a Cornelian or Claudian maiden; for I have done that which my own
heart tells me was right; and more than that or less than that, can no
true woman do!"

Ahenobarbus felt the room spinning round him. He saw himself ruined in
everything that he had held dear. He would be the laughing-stock of
Rome; he, the hero of a score of amorous escapades, the darling of as
many patrician maidens, jilted by the one woman to whom he had become
the abject slave. Courage came from despair.

"Be silent!" he gasped, his face black with fury. "If every word you
say were true, yet with all the more reason would I drag you in my
marriage procession, and force you to avow yourself my wife. Never
have I been balked of woman; and you, too, with all your tragic
bathos, shall learn that, if you won't have me for a slave, I'll bow
your neck to my yoke."

"I think the very noble Lucius Ahenobarbus," replied Cornelia, in that
high pitch of excitement which produces a calm more terrible than any
open fury, "will in person be the protagonist in a tragedy very sorry
for himself. For I can assure him that if he tries to make good his
threat, I shall show myself one of the Danaides, and he will need his
funeral feast full soon after the wedding banquet."

"Woman!" and Lentulus, thoroughly exasperated, broke in furiously.
"Say another word, and I with my own hands will flog you like a common
slave."

Cornelia laughed hysterically.

"Touch me!" she shouted; and in her grasp shone a small bright dagger.

Lentulus fell back. There was something about his niece that warned
him to be careful.

"Wretched girl!" he commanded, "put down that dagger."

"I will not," and Cornelia stood resolutely, confronting her two
persecutors; her head thrown back, and the light making her throat and
face shine white as driven snow.

There was very little chivalry among the ancients. Lentulus
deliberately clapped his hands, and two serving-men appeared.

"Take that dagger from the Lady Cornelia!" commanded the master. The
men exchanged sly glances, and advanced to accomplish the disarming.

But before they could catch Cornelia's slender wrists in their coarse,
rough hands, and tear the little weapon from her, there were cuts and
gashes on their own arms; for the struggle if brief was vicious.
Cornelia stood disarmed.

"You see what these mock heroics will lead to," commented Lentulus,
with sarcastic smile, as he observed his order had been obeyed.

"_You_ will see!" was her quick retort.

"_Hei! hei!_" screamed one of the slaves an instant later, sinking to
the floor. "Poison! It's running through my veins! I shall die!"

"You will die," repeated Cornelia, in ineffable scorn, spurning the
wretch with her foot. "Lie there and die! Cease breathing; sleep! And
that creature, Ahenobarbus, yonder, shall sleep his sleep too, ere he
work his will on me! Ha! ha! Look at my handiwork; the other slave is
down!"

"Girl! Murderess!" raged Lentulus. "What is this? You have slain these
men."

"I have slain your slaves," said Cornelia, resolutely folding her
arms; "the poison on the dagger was very swift. You did excellently
well, Lucius, not to come near me." And she picked up the dagger,
which the slave, writhing in agony, had dropped.

"Do you wish to attack me again? _Phy!_ I have more resources than
this. This venom works too quickly. See, Syrax is already out of his
misery; and his fellow will soon be beyond reach of woe. When I strike
_you_, Lucius Ahenobarbus, you shall die slowly, that I may enjoy your
pain. What need have I of this weapon?" And she flung the dagger
across the carpet so that it struck on the farther wall. "Pick it up,
and come and kill me if you wish! Drusus lives, and in him I live, for
him I live, and by him I live. And you--and you are but as evil dreams
in the first watch of a night which shall be forgotten either in sweet
unending slumbers, or the brightness of the morning. And now I have
spoken. Do with me as it lies in your power to do; but remember what
power is mine. _Vale!_"

And Cornelia vanished from the darkened hall. The two men heard the
click of the door, and turned and gazed blankly into one another's
faces.

"The gods defend me, but I shall be yoked to one of the Dirae!"
stammered Ahenobarbus.




Chapter XI

The Great Proconsul


I

The plot was foiled. Drusus was unquestionably safe. So long as
Flaccus had the affidavits of Phaon's confession and the depositions
of the captured gladiators stored away in his strong-box, neither
Lucius Ahenobarbus nor the ever versatile Pratinas would be likely to
risk a new conspiracy--especially as their intended victim had
carefully drawn up a will leaving the bulk of his property to Titus
Mamercus and AEmilia. Drusus had no near relatives, except Fabia and
Livia; unless the Ahenobarbi were to be counted such; and it pleased
him to think that if aught befell him the worthy children of his aged
defender would acquire opulence.

But after the excitement was over, after Phaon had been brought up
from the inn at Gabii to Praeneste, and there had the truth wormed out
of him by the merciless cross-examination of Curio and Flaccus; after
the freedman had been suffered to depart with a warning and threat to
his prompters, after the captured gladiators had been crucified along
the roadway leading toward Rome, and the wreck left in the atrium of
the villa caused by the attack had been cleared away,--after all this,
then the reaction came. Drusus, indeed, found that though the sun
shone bright, its brightness was not for him. He had friends in
plenty; but not such friends as he needed--as his heart craved. Truth
to tell, he was one of those more delicate natures to whom the average
pity and the ordinary demonstrations of sympathy come with an
offending jar, and open, not heal, long-festering wounds. Curio was
kind, but could only hold out the vaguest hopes that, for the present
at least, anything would compel the consul-elect to consent to his
niece's marriage with a mortal enemy. Flaccus took the same position.
The hard-headed man of money thought that Drusus was a visionary, to
be so distraught over the loss of a wife--as if the possession of a
fortune of thirty odd millions did not make up for every possible
calamity. Antonius was still less happy in his efforts at consolation.
This dashing young politician, who had been equally at home basking in
the eyes of the young Egyptian princess, Cleopatra, eight years
before, when he was in the East with Aulus Gabinius, or when fighting
the Gauls as he had until recently under his uncle, the great
proconsul,--had now been elected Tribune of the Plebs for the coming
year; and was looking forward to a prosperous and glorious career in
statecraft. He had had many a love intrigue, and made such matters a
sort of recreation to the real business of life. Why Drusus--who
certainly had very fair worldly prospects before him--should not
console himself for one unsuccessful passage of arms with Cupid, by
straightway engaging in another, he could not see. He plainly
intimated to his friend that there were a great many women, almost if
not quite as good looking as Cornelia, who would survey him with
friendly eyes if he made but a few advances. And Drusus, wounded and
stung, was thrown back on himself; and within himself he found very
little comfort.

Although he believed himself safe at last from the wiles of
Ahenobarbus and his Greek coadjutors, there was still a great dread
which would steal over Drusus lest at any moment a stroke might fall.
Those were days when children murdered parents, wives husbands, for
whim or passion, and very little came to punish their guilt. The
scramble for money was universal. Drusus looked forth into the world,
and saw little in it that was good. He had tried to cherish an ideal,
and found fidelity to it more than difficult. His philosophy did not
assure him that a real deity existed. Death ended all. Was it not
better to be done with the sham of life; to drink the Lethe water, and
sink into eternal, dreamless slumber? He longed unspeakably to see
Cornelia face to face; to kiss her; to press her in his arms; and the
desire grew and grew.

She was no longer in the capital. Her uncle had sent her away--guarded
by trusty freedmen--to the villa of the Lentuli at Baiae. The
fashionable circles of the great city had made of her name a three
days' scandal, of which the echo all too often came to Drusus's
outraged ears. His only comfort was that Ahenobarbus had become the
butt and laughing-stock of every one who knew of his repulse by his
last inamorata. Then at last Drusus left Praeneste for Rome.
Ahenobarbus and Pratinas were as well checked as it was possible they
could be, and there was no real ground to dread assassination while in
the city, if moderate precautions were taken. Then too the time was
coming when the young man felt that he could accomplish something
definite for the party for which he had already sacrificed so much.

The events clustering around Dumnorix's unsuccessful attack had made
Drusus a sort of hero in the eyes of the Praenesteans. They had years
before elected his father as their patron, their legal representative
at Rome, and now they pitched upon the son, proud to have this highly
honourable function continued in the same family. This election gave
Drusus some little prestige at the capital, and some standing in the
courts and politics. When he went to Rome it was not as a mere
individual who had to carve out his own career, but as a man of honour
in his own country, a representative of a considerable local interest,
and the possessor of both a noble pedigree and an ample fortune.

Curio found him plenty to do; wire-pulling, speech-making, private
bargaining,--all these were rife, for everybody knew that with the
first of January, when Lentulus became consul, the fortunes of Caesar
were to be made or marred irretrievably. There were rumours, always
rumours, now of Caesar, now of Pompeius. The proconsul was going to
march on Rome at once, and put all his enemies to the sword. Pompeius
was to be proclaimed dictator and exterminate all who adhered to the
anti-senatorial party. And into this _melee_ of factions Drusus threw
himself, and found relief and inspiration in the conflict. His innate
common-sense, a very considerable talent for oratory which had
received a moderate training, his energy, his enthusiasm, his
incorruptibility, his straightforwardness, all made him valuable to
the Caesarians, and he soon found himself deep in the counsels of his
party, although he was too young to be advanced as a candidate for any
public office.

Agias continued with him. He had never formally deeded the boy to
Cornelia, and now it was not safe for the lad to be sent to dwell at
Baiae, possibly to fall into the revengeful clutches of Phaon, or
Pratinas, or Ahenobarbus. Drusus had rewarded Agias by giving him his
freedom; but the boy had nowhere to go, and did not desire to leave
Quintus's service; so he continued as a general assistant and
understrapper, to carry important letters and verbal messages, and to
aid his patron in every case where quick wits or nimble feet were
useful. He went once to Baiae, and came back with a letter from
Cornelia, in which she said that she was kept actually as a prisoner
in her uncle's villa, and that Lentulus still threatened to force
Ahenobarbus upon her; but that she had prepared herself for that final
emergency.

The letter came at a moment when Drusus was feeling the exhilaration
of a soldier in battle, and the missive was depressing and maddening.
What did it profit if the crowd roared its plaudits, when he piled
execration on the oligarchs from the Rostra, if all his eloquence
could not save Cornelia one pang? Close on top of this letter came
another disquieting piece of information, although it was only what he
had expected. He learned that Lentulus Crus had marked him out
personally for confiscation of property and death as a dangerous
agitator, as soon as the Senate could decree martial law. To have even
a conditional sentence of death hanging over one is hard to bear with
equanimity. But it was too late for Drusus to turn back. He had chosen
his path; he had determined on the sacrifice; he would follow it to
the end. And from one source great comfort came to him. His aunt,
Fabia, had always seen in him her hero. With no children of her own,
with very little knowledge of the world, she had centred all her hopes
and ambitions on her sister's son; and he was not disappointing her.
She dreamed of him as consul, triumphator, and dictator. She told him
her hopes. She applauded his sacrifice. She told him of the worthies
of old, of Camillus, of the Scipios, of Marcellus, the "Sword of
Rome," of Lucius AEmilius Paulus, and a host of others, good men and
true, whose names were graven on the fabric of the great Republic, and
bade him emulate them, and be her perfect Fabian and Livian. And from
his aunt Drusus gained infinite courage. If she was not Cornelia, yet
it was a boon ineffable to be able to hear a pure, loving woman tell
him face to face that her heart suffered when he suffered, and that
all his hopes and fears were hers.

Finally an interlude came to Quintus's political activity. Curio was
becoming uneasy, lest his distant superior should fail to realize the
full venom of the Senate party and the determination of his enemies to
work his ruin.

"I must go to Ravenna," said the politician to his young associate.
"My tribuneship is nearly run out. Antonius and Cassius will take my
place in the office. And you, who have done so much for Caesar, must go
also, for he loves to meet and to know all who are his friends."

"To Caesar I will go," answered Drusus; and of himself he asked, "What
manner of man will this prove, whom I am serving? A selfish grasper of
power? Or will he be what I seek--a man with an ideal?"


II

Night was falling on the dark masses of the huge Praetorium, the
government-house and army barracks of the provincial capital of
Ravenna. Outside, sentinels were changing guard; Roman civil officials
and provincials were strolling in the cool of the porticos. Laughter,
the shout of loungers at play, broke the evening silence. But far in
the interior, where there was a secluded suite of rooms, nothing but
the tinkle of a water-duct emptying into a cistern broke the
stillness, save as some soft-footed attendant stole in and out across
the rich, thick carpet.

The room was small; the ceiling low; the frescos not elaborate, but of
admirable simplicity and delicacy. The furniture comprised merely a
few divans, chairs, and tripods, but all of the choicest wood or
brass, and the most excellent upholstery. One or two carved wooden
cupboards for books completed the furnishings.

There were only two persons in the room. One of them,--a handsome
young Hellene, evidently a freedman, was sitting on a low chair with
an open roll before him. His companion half sat and half lay on a
divan near by. This second person was a man of height unusual to
Italians of his day; his cheeks were pale and a little sunken; his
dark eyes were warm, penetrating; his mouth and chin mobile and even
affable, but not a line suggested weakness. The forehead was high,
massive, and was exaggerated by a semi-baldness which was only
partially concealed by combing the dark, grey-streaked hair forward.
He was reclining; if he had arisen he would have displayed a frame at
once to be called soldierly, though spare and hardly powerful. To
complete the figure it should be added that on one finger he wore a
large ring set with a very beautiful seal of an armed Venus; and over
his loose but carefully arranged tunic was thrown a short, red mantle,
caught together on the left shoulder--the paludamentum, a garment only
worn by Roman military officers of the very highest rank.

The general--for so his dress proclaimed him--was playing with a
stylus and a waxen tablet, while the young Greek read. Now and then he
would bid the latter pause while he made a few notes. The book was
Euripides's "Troades."

"Read those lines again," interrupted the general. The voice was
marvellously flexile, powerful, and melodious.

And the freedman repeated:--

"Sow far and wide, plague, famine, and distress;
Make women widows, children fatherless;
Break down the altars of the gods, and tread
On quiet graves, the temples of the dead;
Play to life's end this wicked witless game
And you will win what knaves and fools call Fame!"[122]

[122] Translated in the collection "Sales Attici."

The freedman waited for his superior to ask him to continue, but the
request did not come. The general seemed lost in a reverie; his
expressive dark eyes were wandering off in a kind of quiet melancholy,
gazing at the glass water-clock at the end of the room, but evidently
not in the least seeing it.

"I have heard enough Euripides to-day," at length he remarked. "I must
attend to more important matters. You may leave me."

The Greek rolled up the volume, placed it in the cupboard, and left
the room with noiseless step. The general had arisen, and was standing
beside the open window that looked out into a quiet little court. It
was dark. The lamps of the room threw the court-yard into a sombre
relief. Overhead, in the dimming, violet arch of the sky, one or two
faint stars were beginning to twinkle.

"Play to life's end this wicked witless game
And you will win what knaves and fools call Fame!"

repeated the general, leaning out from the stone work of the
window-casing in order to catch the cool air of the court. "Yes, fame,
the fame of a Xerxes; perhaps the fame of a Hannibal--no, I wrong the
Carthaginian, for he at least struck for his country. And what is it
all worth, after all? Does Agamemnon feel that his glory makes the
realm of Hades more tolerable? Does not Homer set forth Achilles as a
warrior with renown imperishable? And yet, 'Mock me not,' he makes the
shade of Achilles say; 'Better to be the hireling of a stranger and
serve a man of mean estate, whose living is but small, than be the
monarch over all those dead and gone.'"

The general leaned yet farther out, and looked upward. "These were the
stars that twinkled over the Troy of Priam; these were the stars that
shone on Carthage when she sent forth her armies and her fleets, and
nigh drove the Greeks from Sicily; and these are the stars which will
shine when Rome is as Troy and Carthage. And I--I am an atom, a
creature of chance, thrown out of the infinite to flash like a
shooting star for a moment across a blackened firmament and then in
the infinite to expire. _Cui bono?_ Why should I care how I live my
life, since in a twinkling it will all be as if it had never been? And
if Cato and Domitius and Lentulus Crus have their way with me, what
matter? What matter if a stab in the dark, or open violence, or the
sham forms of justice end this poor comedy? I and all others play. All
comedy is tragedy, and at its merriest is but dolorous stuff. While
the curtain stays down[123] we are sorry actors with the whole world
for our audience, and the hoots mingle full often with the applause.
And when the curtain rises, that which is good, the painstaking
effort, the labour, is quickly forgotten; the blunders, the false
quantities in our lives, are treasured up to be flung against our
names. We play, but we do not know our parts; we are Oedipus, who has
committed unwitting sin, and yet must reap his reward; we are
Prometheus who is to be chained to the rock forever, for offending the
gods; we are Orestes whom the Eumenides pursue, chasing him down for
his guilt. And all the time we vainly imagine that we are some
victorious hero, some Perseus, especially favoured by the gods to fare
scatheless over land and sea, and bear away the Medusa's head, and
live renowned and happy forever." The reverie was becoming deeper and
deeper; the Roman was beginning no longer to whisper merely to
himself, he was half declaiming; then of a sudden, by a quick
revolution of mind, he broke short the thread of his monologue.
"_Phui!_ Caius, you are ranting as if you were still a youth at
Rhodes, and Apollonius Molo were just teaching you rhetoric! Why has
no letter come from Curio to-day? I am anxious for him. There may have
been a riot. I hadn't expected that those excellent 'Optimates' would
begin to murder tribunes quite so soon. The carrier is late!" and the
general moved away from the window, and took from a cupboard a package
of tablets, which he ran over hastily. "Here are the despatches of
yesterday. None to-day. I fear the worst." The brow of the solitary
speaker grew darker. "Poor Curio, poor Antonius; if they've dared to
murder them, let them tremble. I could forgive a mortal enemy to
myself, but not one who had slaughtered a friend."

[123] The ancient curtain (_aulaeum_) had its roller at the bottom.

There were steps in the court below, and voices were raised. In an
instant the general's eyes were kindled, his frame on a poise. He
sprang to the window, and shouted down the dark court.

"Curio! Do I hear you speaking?"

"_Salve!_ Caesar. It is I!"

"Venus be praised!" and the proconsul, with almost undignified haste,
was running out upon the stairs to meet his friend. "Has the city
broken out? Has Antonius been murdered? Is the truce at an end? Are
you alone?"

And Curio, who did not quite possess his leader's ability to "do all
things at the same time," answered in a breath: "The city so far keeps
tolerable order. Antonius is safe. The consuls and Senate still keep
the peace; but so poorly that I thought it my duty to come to you and
say things that cannot go in a letter."

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