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A Friend of Caesar by William Stearns Davis

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The council had convened early in the day; the herald went through the
squares of Pelusium announcing that Ptolemaeus, "Son of Ra," would
receive as his guest the Roman suppliant. The shore fronting the
anchorage was covered with the files of the royal army in full array.
Several Egyptian men-of-war had been drawn down into the water and
their crews were hastening on board. Out in the haven rode the little
fleet of the Pompeians. Agias had heard the proclamation, and hurried
down to the mole to bear the earliest definite information to his
mistress. Presently, out of the throng of officers and court magnates
on the quay, stepped Achillas in a splendid panoply of gilded armour,
with a purple chiton flowing down from beneath. Beside him, with the
firm swinging step of the Roman legionary, strode two other officers
in magnificent armour, whom Agias at once recognized as Lucius
Septimius, a Roman tribune now in Egyptian service, and a certain
Salvius, who had once been a centurion of the Republic. The three
advanced on to the quay and stood for a moment at a loss. Agias, who
was quite near, could hear their conversation.

"The yacht is not ready for us."

"We cannot delay a moment."

There was a large open boat moored to the quay, a fisher man's craft.
In a moment a few subalterns had taken possession of it and there was
a call for rowers. Agias, who, like all his race, never declined a
chance "to see or hear some new thing," took his seat on one of the
benches, and soon the craft shot away from the mole with the three
officers in its stern.

It was a short pull to the Pompeian ships; Agias, as he glanced over
his shoulder thought he could see a motion on board the vessels as if
to sheer away from the boat; but in a moment the little craft was
alongside, under the lee of the flagship.

"Where is Pompeius Magnus?" cried Achillas, rising from his seat; "we
are sent to carry him to the king."

A martial, commanding figure was seen peering over the side,--a figure
that every inhabitant of Rome knew right well.

"I am he; but why do you come thus meanly with only a fisher's boat?
Is this honourable, is this worthy of a great king's guest?"

"Assuredly, kyrios," began Achillas, "we are forced to come in this
small craft, because the water is too shallow for larger ships to
approach the shore."

Agias knew that this was a lie; he was very certain that he was about
to be witness to a deed of the darkest treachery. A vague feeling of
shrinking and horror froze his limbs, and made his tongue swell in his
mouth. Yet he was perfectly powerless to warn; a sign or a word would
have meant his instant death.

"_Salve_, Imperator!" shouted Septimius in Latin, rising in turn.
"Don't you remember the campaign I had with you against the pirates?"

The fugitive general's care-worn face lighted up at the recognition of
an old officer.

"_Eu!_" he answered, "I shall not want for good friends, I see! How
glad I shall be to grasp your hands! But is not this a very small
boat? I see men going on board the galleys by the shore."

"You shall be satisfied in a moment, kyrios," repeated Achillas, with
suave assurance, "that the quicksands by the mole are very dangerous
to large vessels. Will you do us the honour to come aboard?"

Agias felt as though he must howl, scream, spring into the sea--do
anything to break the horrible suspense that oppressed him.

A woman was taking leave of Pompeius on the deck, a tall, stately,
patrician lady, with a sweet, trouble-worn face; Agias knew that she
was Cornelia Scipionis. She was adjuring her husband not to go ashore,
and he was replying that it was impossible to refuse; that if the
Egyptians meant evil, they could easily master all the fugitives with
their armament. Several of the Magnus's servants came down into the
boat--couple of trusted centurions, a valued freedman called Philip, a
slave named Scythes. Finally Pompeius tore himself from his wife's
arms.

"Do not grieve, all will be well!" were his words, while the boat's
crew put out their hands to receive him; and he added, "We must make
the best choice of evils. I am no longer my own master. Remember
Sophocles's iambics,

"He that once enters at a tyrant's door
Becomes a slave, though he were free before.'"

The general seated himself on the stern seat between the Egyptian
officers. Agias bent to his oar in sheer relief at finding some way in
which to vent his feelings; and tugged at the heavy paddle until its
tough blade bent almost to cracking. The silence on the part of the
officers was ominous. Not a word, not a hint of recognition, came from
Achillas or his Italian associates, from the instant that Pompeius set
foot in the boat. The stillness became awkward. The Magnus, flushed
and embarrassed, turned to Septimius. "I was not mistaken in
understanding that you were my fellow-soldier in years past?" His
answer was a surly nod. Pompeius, however, reined his rising feelings,
and took up and began to re-read some tablets on which he had written
an address in Greek, to be delivered before the king. Agias rowed on
with the energy of helpless desperation. They were very close to the
quay. A company of the royal body-guard in gala armour stood as if
awaiting the distinguished visitor. For a moment the young Hellene
believed that Achillas was sincere in his errand.

The boat drew up to the landing; one or two of the rowers sprang to
the dock and made her fast. Agias was unshipping his oar. His thought
was that he must now contrive the escape of Cornelia. Pompeius half
rose from his seat; the boat was pitching in the choppy harbour swell;
the general steadied himself by grasping the hands of Philip the
freedman. Suddenly, like the swoop of a hawk on its prey, Agias saw
the right hand of Septimius tear his short sword from its sheath. A
scream broke from the Hellene's lips; before the Magnus could turn his
head, the blow was struck. Pompeius received the blade full in the
back, and staggered, while Salvius and Achillas likewise drew and
thrust at him. Agias gazed on, paralyzed with horror. The general
seized his red paludamentum, threw it over his face, groaned once, and
fell. Even as he did so Septimius struck him across the neck,
decapitating the corpse. The brutal boatmen tore the blood-soaked
clothes off of the body, and flung it overboard, to drift ashore with
the current. And so it ended with Pompeius Magnus, Imperator, the
Fortunate, the favourite general of Sulla, the chieftain of "godlike
and incredible virtue," the conquerer of the kingdoms of the East,
thrice consul, thrice triumphator, joint ruler with Caesar of the
civilized world!

Agias hastened back to Cornelia to tell her that the danger was past,
that there was no need of a flight to Cleopatra; but he was sick at
heart when he thought of the treachery in which he had shared, albeit
so unwillingly.




Chapter XXIII

Bitterness and Joy


I

Cornelia knew not whether to be merry or to weep when the report of
the fate of Pompeius reached her. That she would be delivered up to
her uncle was no longer to be dreaded; but into the hands of what
manner of men had she herself fallen? Her own life and that of Fabia,
she realized, would be snuffed out in a twinkling, by Pothinus and his
confederates, the instant they saw in such a deed the least advantage.
The splendid life of the court at the garrison city went on; there was
an unending round of fetes, contests in the gymnasium and stadium;
chariot races; contests of poets and actors for prizes in dramatic
art. To the outward eye nothing could be more decorous and magnificent
than the pleasures of the Egyptian king. And so some days passed while
Cornelia crushed her fears, and waited for the news that she was sure
would come--that Caesar was pressing on the tracks of his rival.

Late one afternoon, as the king and his suite were just returned from
a visit by boat up the river to inspect a temple under restoration at
Sethroe, Agias sought the private apartment of his patroness. His face
was extremely grave, and Cornelia at once realized that he brought
serious news.

"Domina," he said, speaking in Latin to evade the curiosity of the
maids present, "when you are at leisure, I have a curious story to
tell you."

Cornelia presently found pretexts to get rid of all her women. Agias
reconnoitred, made certain that there was no eavesdropper, and began
afresh.

"What I have to say is so different from that which we feared a few
days since, that I scarce know how you will receive it. I have just
learned that your uncle Lucius Lentulus and Lucius Ahenobarbus made a
landing on the coast the day after Pompeius was murdered; they have
been quietly arrested and the matter hushed up. I believe that
Pothinus intends to execute them without your knowledge. Only by a
friendship with some of the officers of the guard did I get at this."

Cornelia's lips twitched; her hands pressed on her cheeks till the
pale skin flushed red. In her heart a hundred conflicting emotions
held sway. She said nothing for a long time, and then it was only to
ask where the prisoners were confined.

"They are in the dungeon of the fortress," said Agias. "That is all
that I can discover."

"I must see them at once," declared the lady.

"I do not know how Pothinus will take this," replied the young
freedman; "the discovery of his secret will be rightly attributed to
me, and your ladyship would not care to imperil my life unless
something very great is to be gained thereby."

"I shall miss you very much," said Cornelia, soberly. "But though
Lucius Lentulus has done me grievous ill, he is my uncle. You must
leave Pelusium this very night, and keep out of danger until
Pothinus's vexation can abate. In the morning I shall demand to see
the prisoners and to learn the eunuch's intentions touching them."

Agias accordingly fared away, much to Cornelia's regret; but not quite
so much to his own, because his enforced journeying would take him to
the Nile villa, where was the pretty Artemisia. Early on the following
day Cornelia boldly went to Pothinus, and, without any explanations,
demanded to see her uncle. The regent, who had tried to keep the
matter profoundly secret, first was irate, then equivocated, and tried
to deny that he had any Roman prisoners; then, driven to bay by
Cornelia's persistency and quiet inflexibility before his denials and
protests, gave her permission to be taken to the prison and see the
captives.

To pass from the palace of Pelusium to the fortress-prison was to
pass, by a few steps, from the Oriental life, in all its sensuous
splendour, to Orientalism in its most degraded savagery. The prison
was a half-underground kennel of stone and brick, on which the
parching sun beat pitilessly, and made the galleries and cells like so
many furnaces in heat. The fetid odour of human beings confined in the
most limited space in which life can be maintained; the rattle of
fetters; the grating of ponderous doors on slow-turning pivots; the
coarse oaths and brutish aspect of both jailers and prisoners; the
indescribable squalor, filth, misery,--these may not be enlarged upon.
The attendants led Cornelia to the cell, hardly better than the rest,
wherein Lentulus and Ahenobarbus were confined.

But another had been before Cornelia to visit the unfortunates. As the
lady drew toward the open door she saw the graceful, easy form of
Pratinas on the threshold, one hand carelessly thrust in the folds of
his himation, the other gesturing animatedly, while he leaned against
the stone casing.

Lucius Lentulus, his purple-lined tunic dirty and torn, his hair
disordered, his face knitted into a bitter frown, crouched on a stool
in the little low-ceiled room, confronting the Hellene. Cowering on a
mass of filthy straw, his head bowed, his body quaking in a paroxysm
of fear, was another whose name Cornelia knew full well.

Pratinas was evidently just concluding a series of remarks.

"And so, my friends, amici, as we say at Rome," he was jauntily
vapouring, "I regret indeed that the atomic theory,--which my good
Ahenobarbus, I am sure, holds in common with myself,--can leave us no
hope of meeting in a future world, where I can expect to win any more
of his good sesterces with loaded dice. But let him console himself!
He will shortly cease from any pangs of consciousness that our good
friend Quintus Drusus will, in all probability, enjoy the fortune that
he has inherited from his father, and marry the lady for whose hand
the very noble Ahenobarbus for some time disputed. Therefore let me
wish you both a safe voyage to the kingdom of Hades; and if you need
money for the ferryman, accept now, as always, the use of my poor
credit."

"May all the infernal gods requite you!" broke forth Lentulus, half
rising, and uplifting his fettered hands to call down a solemn curse.

"It has been often observed by philosophers," said Pratinas, with a
smile, "that even among the most sceptical, in times of great
extremity, there exists a certain belief in the existence of gods.
Your excellency sees how the observation is confirmed."

"The gods blast you!" howled Lentulus, in impotent fury. Before
further words could pass, Cornelia put Pratinas aside, and entered the
cell.

"Your presence, sir," she said haughtily, to the Hellene, "is needed
no longer." And she pointed down the gallery.

Pratinas flushed, hesitated as if for once at a loss, and nimbly
vanished. Lentulus sat in speechless astonishment "Uncle," continued
Cornelia, "what may I do for you? I did not know till last evening
that you were here."

But ere the other could reply the figure in the corner had sprung up,
and flung itself at the lady's feet.

"Save me! save me! By all that you hold dear, save my life! I have
loved you. I thought once that you loved me. Plead for me! Pray for
me! Anything that I may but live!"

"_Vah_, wretch!" cried the consular; and he spurned Ahenobarbus with
his foot. "It is indeed well that you have not married into family of
mine! If you can do naught else, you can at least die with dignity as
becomes a Roman patrician--and not beg intercession from this woman
who has cut herself off from all her kin by disobedience."

"Uncle," cried Cornelia in distress, "must we be foes to the end? Must
our last words be of bitterness?"

"Girl," thundered the unbending Lentulus, "when a Roman maiden
disobeys, there is no expiation. You are no niece of mine. I care not
how you came here. I accept nothing at your hands. I will not hear
your story. If I must die, it is to die cursing your name. Go! I have
no more words for you!"

But Ahenobarbus caught the skirt of Cornelia's robe, and pleaded and
moaned. "Let them imprison him in the lowest dungeons, load him with
the heaviest fetters; place upon him the most toilsome labour--only
let him still see the light and breathe the air!"

"Uncle," said Cornelia, "I will plead for you despite your
wrath---though little may my effort avail. You are my father's
brother, and neither act of yours nor of mine can make you otherwise.
But as for you, Lucius Ahenobarbus,"--and her words came hot and
thick, as she hissed out her contempt,--"though I beg for your life,
know this, that if I despised you less I would not so do. I despise
you too much to hate; and if I ask to have you live, it is because I
know the pains of a base and ignoble life are a myriad fold more than
those of a swift and honourable death. Were I your judge--I would doom
you; doom you _to live_ and know the sting of your ignominy!"

She left them; and hatred and pity, triumph and anguish, mingled
within her. She went to the young King Ptolemaeus and besought him to
spare the prisoners; the lad professed his inability to take a step
without the initiative of Pothinus. She went to Pothinus; the eunuch
listened to her courteously, then as courteously told her that grave
reasons of state made it impossible to comply with the request--much,
as he blandly added, it would delight him personally to gratify her.
Cornelia could do no more. Pratinas she would not appeal to, though he
had great influence with Pothinus. She went back to her rooms to spend
the day with Fabia, very heavy of heart. The world, as a whole, she
beheld as a thing very evil; treachery, guile, wrath, hatred, were
everywhere. The sight of Ahenobarbus had filled her with loathsome
memories of past days. The sunlight fell in bright warm panels over
the rich rugs on the floor of her room. The sea-breeze sweeping in
from the north blew fresh and sweet; out against the azure light, into
which she could gaze, a swarm of swallows was in silhouette--black
dots crawling along across the dome of light. Out in one of the public
squares of the city great crowds of people were gathering. Cornelia
knew the reason of the concourse--the heads of two noble Romans, just
decapitated, were being exposed to the gibes and howls of the coarse
Greek and Egyptian mob. And Cornelia wished that she were herself a
swallow, and might fly up into the face of the sun, until the earth
beneath her had vanished.

But while she leaned from the parapet by the window of the room,
footsteps sounded on the mosaic pavement without; the drapery in the
doorway was flung aside; Agias entered, and after him--another.


II

Drusus ran to Cornelia and caught her in his arms; and she--neither
fainted nor turned pale, but gave a little laugh, and cried softly:--

"I always knew you were coming!"

What more followed Agias did not know; his little affair with
Artemisia had taught him that his Hellenic inquisitiveness sometimes
would do more harm than good.

Very different from the good-humoured, careless, half-boyish student
youth who had driven down the Praeneste road two years before, was the
soldierly figure that Cornelia pressed to her heart. The campaigning
life had left its mark upon Drusus. Half of a little finger the stroke
of a Spanish sword had cleft away at Ilerda; across his forehead was
the broad scar left by the fight at Pharsalus, from a blow that he had
never felt in the heat of the battle. During the forced marchings and
voyages no razor had touched his cheeks, and he was thickly bearded.
But what cared Cornelia? Had not her ideal, her idol, gone forth into
the great world and stood its storm and stress, and fought in its
battles, and won due glory? Was he not alive, and safe, and in health
of mind and body after ten thousand had fallen around him? Were not
the clouds sped away, the lightnings ceased? And she? She was happy.

So Drusus told her of all that had befallen him since the day he
escaped out of Lucius Ahenobarbus's hands at Baiae. And Cornelia told
of her imprisonment at the villa, and how Demetrius had saved her, and
how it came to pass that she was here at the Egyptian court. In turn
Drusus related how Caesar had pursued Pompeius into Asia, and then,
hearing that the Magnus had fled to Egypt, placed two legions on
shipboard and sailed straight for Alexandria.

"And when he landed," continued the young officer, "the magistrates of
the city came to Caesar, and gave him first Pompeius's seal-ring of a
lion holding a sword in his paw, and then another black-faced and
black-hearted Egyptian, without noticing the distress the Imperator
was in, came up and uncovered something he had wrapped in a mantle. I
was beside the general when the bundle was unwrapped. I am sickened
when I speak of it. It was the head of Pompeius Magnus. The fools
thought to give Caesar a great delight."

"And what did the Imperator do or say?" asked Cornelia.

"He shrank back from the horror as though the Egyptian had been a
murderer, as indeed all of his race are. Caesar said nothing. Yet all
saw how great was his grief and anger. Soon or late he will requite
the men who slew thus foully the husband of his daughter Julia."

"You must take me away from them," said Cornelia, shuddering; "I am
afraid every hour."

"And I, till you are safe among our troops at Alexandria," replied
Drusus. "I doubt if they would have let me see you, but for Agias. He
met us on the road from Alexandria and told me about you. I had
received a special despatch from Caesar to bear with all haste to the
king. So across the Delta I started, hardly waiting for the troops to
disembark, for there was need for speed. Agias I took back with me,
and my first demand when I came here was to see the king and deliver
my letter, which was easily done an hour ago; and my next to see you.
Whereat that nasty sheep Pothinus declared that you had been sent some
days before up the river on a trip to the Memphis palace to see the
pyramids. But Agias was close at hand, and I gave the eunuch the lie
without difficulty. The rascal blandly said, 'that he had not seen you
of late; had only spoken by hearsay about you, and he might have been
misinformed;' and so--What do I look like?"

"You look like Quintus Livius Drusus, the Roman soldier," said
Cornelia, "and I would not have you otherwise than what you are."

"_Eho!_" replied Drusus, passing his hand over her hair. "Do you want
me to tell you something?"

"What is it?" said Cornelia, pressing closer.

"I can never write a cosmology. I shall never be able to evolve a new
system of ethics. I cannot improve on Plato's ideal state. I know I am
a very ignorant man, with only a few ideas worth uttering, with a hand
that is very heavy, with a mind that works to little purpose save when
it deals with politics and war. In short"--and Drusus's voice grew
really pathetic--"all my learning carries me no farther than did the
wisdom of Socrates, 'I know that I know nothing;' and I have no time
to spend in advancing beyond that stage."

"But Socrates," said Cornelia, laughing, "was the wisest man in
Greece, and for that very reason."

"Well," said Drusus, ignoring the compliment, as a certain type of men
will when the mood is on them, "what do you wish me to make of
myself?"

"I wish you to make nothing different," was her reply, "for you are
precisely what I have always wanted you to be. When you have read as
much as I have," this with an air of utter weariness, "you will
realize the futility of philosophic study."

"_Eho!_" remarked Drusus again. "So you would have me feel that I am
turning my back on nothing very great, after all?"

"And so I mean."

"Seriously?"

"I am serious, Quintus." And indeed Cornelia was. "I can read
Aristotle and Plato, and Zeno and Cleanthes, and Pyrrho, and a score
of others. I can spin out of my own brain a hundred theories of the
universe as good as theirs, but my heart will not be the happier, if
things outside make me sad. I am sick of the learning that is no
learning, that answers our questions by other questions that are more
riddling."

"Ah, scoffer at the wise," laughed Drusus, "what do you wish, then?"
He spoke in Greek.

"Speak in Latin, in Latin, Quintus," was her retort. "I am weary of
this fine, sweet language that tinkles so delicately, every word of
which hides a hundred meanings, every sentence attuned like the notes
for a harp. Let us have our own language, blunt and to the point; the
language, not of men who wonder what they ought to do, but who _do_.
We are Romans, not Greeks. We have to rule the world, not growl as to
how Jupiter made it. When you came back from Athens I said, 'I love
Quintus Drusus, but I would love him more if he were less a Hellene.'
And, now I see you wholly Roman, I love you wholly. And for myself, I
wish neither to be a Sappho, nor an Aspasia, nor a Semiramis, but
Cornelia the Roman matron, who obeys her husband, Quintus Drusus, who
cares for his house, and whom, in turn, her household fears and
obeys."

"_O tempora! O mores!_" cried the young soldier, in delight. "When had
ever a woman such ambition in these degenerate days? _Eu!_ Then I will
burn my books, if you can get no profit out of them."

"I do not think books are bad," said Cornelia, still soberly, "but I
know that they can never make me happy."

"What can?" demanded her tormenter.

"_You!_"

* * * * *

So the hours of the afternoon ran on, and the lovers gave them little
heed. But they were not too selfish to refuse to Fabia's sharing in
their joy; and Drusus knew that he was dear no less, though
differently, in the eyes of his aunt than of his betrothed. And there
were duties to perform that not even the long-deferred delights of the
afternoon could postpone. Chief of these were the arrangements for the
immediate departure of the Roman ladies for Alexandria. Agias, who was
called into the council, was invaluable in information and suggestion.
He said that Pothinus had acted at Pratinas's advice, when he took
Fabia and Cornelia to the palace. The eunuch had expected to use them
half as hostages, half as captives to be put to ransom. If Caesar had
delayed a few days, Pothinus would not have lied when he made excuse
that the ladies had been sent up the river. But now Agias believed
that the regent was afraid, having overreached himself, and it was
best to make a prompt demand for conveyance to Alexandria. This,
indeed, proved advantageous policy. The eunuch made difficulties and
suggested obstacles, but Drusus made his native Italian haughtiness
stand him in good stead. It would largely depend, he said
insinuatingly, on the way in which his demand was complied with, what
sort of a report he made to Caesar touching the execution of Lucius
Lentulus and Ahenobarbus. During his interview with Pothinus, the
Roman came face to face with Pratinas. No words were exchanged, but
Drusus noticed that the elegant Hellene flushed, and then turned pale,
when he fastened upon him a gaze steady and half menacing. Pothinus
ended by yielding everything--the use of the royal chariots and
horses, the use of the Nile boats needed for swift transit across the
Delta, and orders on the local garrisons and governors to provide
entertainment and assistance.

Copyright (c) 2007. bestextbooks.com. All rights reserved.

Various - "The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890"

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