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A Friend of Caesar by William Stearns Davis

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[186] Ceylon.

[187] Malay Peninsula.

"And the men that drove you to freebooting?" asked Caesar, when the
company had ceased applauding this recital, which the sailor set forth
with a spontaneous elegance that made it charming.

"I have said that they were Lucius Domitius, whom the gods have
rewarded, and a certain Greek."

"The Greek's name was--"

"Kyrios," said Demetrius, his fine features contracting with pain and
disgust, "I do not willingly mention his name. He has done me so great
a wrong, that I only breathe his name with a curse. Must you know who
it was that took my child, my Daphne,--though proof I have not against
him, but only the warnings of an angry heart?"

"But he was--" pressed Caesar.

"Menon." And as he spoke he hissed the words between his teeth. "He is
one knave among ten thousand. Why burden your excellency with
remembering him?"

So the conversation went on, and Caesar told how he had been taken
prisoner, when a young man, by pirates near Rhodes, and how he had
been kept captive by them on a little isle while his ransom was
coming.

"Ah!" interrupted Demetrius, "I have heard the whole tale from one of
my men who was there. You, kyrios, behaved like a prince. You bade
your captors take fifty talents instead of twenty, as they asked, and
wrote verses and declaimed to your guards all the time you were
awaiting the money, and joined in all their sports; howbeit, you kept
telling them that you would crucify them all for the matter."

"_Hem!_" laughed Caesar. "Didn't I make good the threat?"

"You did with all save this man, who got away," was his unflinching
answer. "Although in mercy you strangled all your captors before you
had them put on the crosses."

"_Hei!_" quoth the Imperator. "I should have spared them to give me
criticism of those verses now."

"Kyrios," rejoined Demetrius, "the man who survived assures me that
the verses at least were wretched, though your excellency was a very
good wrestler."

"_Euge!_ Bravo!" cried Caesar, and all the company joined in. "I must
take a few of your men back to Rome, for we need critics for our rough
Latin versifiers."

Drusus, as soon as the laugh passed away, arose, and addressed his
chief:--

"Imperator," he said, "Agias this morning dragged from off the mole
with him into the water one of the most dangerous men in the councils
of our enemies. I mean, as you know, Pratinas the Greek. He is now in
the palace prison, but every one is aware that, so long as he so much
as lives, we are hardly safe. What shall be done?"

Caesar frowned.

"This is hardly a basilica for a trial," he replied, "but '_inter arma
silent leges_.' Tell the centurions on guard to bring him here. I
imagine we must grant him the form of an examination."

Drusus went out to give the necessary orders.

"You did not see Agias's prisoner?" asked Cornelia of Demetrius, who
was now an old friend.

"I did not," answered the pirate prince, pouring down the contents of
a prodigious beaker at a single draught. "A very desperate man, I
imagine. But it is hard for me to blame any one so long as he fights
openly. Still," he added, with a laugh, "I mustn't express such
sentiments, now that his excellency has given me this." And he tossed
over to Cornelia a little roll, tiny but precious, for it was a
general pardon, in the name of the Republic, for all past offences, by
land or sea, against the peace. "_Babai!_" continued Demetrius,
lolling back his great length on the couch, "who would have imagined
that I, just returning from a mere voyage to Delos to get rid of some
slaves, should save the lives of my cousin, my benefactor's son, and
Caesar himself, and become once more an honest man. Gods! gods! avert
the misfortunes that come from too much good fortune!"

"Was Agias badly wounded?" asked Cornelia, with some concern.

"Oh," replied his cousin, "he will do well. If his precious captive
had thrust his dagger a bit deeper, we might have a sorry time
explaining it all to that pretty little girl--Artemisia he calls
her--whom he dotes upon. By the bye," continued Demetrius, as entirely
at his ease in the company as though he had been one of the world's
high-born and mighty, "can your ladyship tell me where Artemisia is
just now? She was a very attractive child."

"Assuredly," said Cornelia. "She is here in the palace, very anxious,
I doubt not, about Agias. Come, I will send for her. You shall tell
her all about his escape."

Demetrius appeared pleased, and Cornelia whispered to a serving-lad,
who immediately went out.

The tramp of heavy feet sounded on the mosaics outside the banqueting
room; the tapestry over the doorway was thrust aside, and in the dim
lamplight--for it had long been dark--two rigid soldiers in armour
could be seen, standing at attention. Drusus stepped past them, and
saluted.

"The prisoner is here, Imperator," he said.

"Bring him in," replied Caesar, laying down his wine-cup.

The curtain swayed again, and the rest of a decuria of troops entered.
In their centre was a figure whose manacles were clinking ominously.
In the uncertain light it was only possible to see that the prisoner
was bent and shivering with fright. The general shrugged his shoulders
in disgust.

"This is the sort of creature, Drusus," quoth he, derisively, "that is
so dangerous that we must despatch him at once? _Phui!_ Let him stand
forth. I suppose he can still speak?"

Pratinas made a pitiable picture. The scuffle and wetting had done
little benefit to his clothes; his armour the pirates had long since
appropriated; his hair, rather long through affectation, hung in
disorder around his neck. He had shaved off his "philosopher's" beard,
and his smooth cheeks showed ugly scratches. He was as pale as white
linen, and quaking like a blade of grass in the wind, the very
antithesis of the splendid Ares of the fight on the mole.

"Your name is Pratinas?" began Caesar, with the snappish energy of a
man who discharges a disagreeable formality.

"Yes, despotes," began the other, meekly; but as he did so he raised
his head, and the rays of one of the great candelabra fell full on his
face. In a twinkling a shout, or rather a scream, had broken from
Demetrius. The pirate had leaped from his couch, and, with straining
frame and dilated eyes, sprang between the prisoner and his judge.

"Menon!" The word smote on the captive like the missile of a catapult.
He reeled back, almost to falling; his eyes closed involuntarily. His
face had been pale before, now it was swollen, as with the sight of a
horror.

"Demetrius!" and at this counter exclamation, the cornered man burst
into a howl of animal fear. And well he might, for Demetrius had
sprung upon him as a tiger upon an antelope. One of the guards
indiscreetly interposed, and a stroke of the pirate's fist sent the
soldier sprawling. Demetrius caught his victim around the body, and
crushed the wretched man in beneath his grasp. The pseudo-Pratinas did
not cry out twice. He had no breath. Demetrius tore him off of his
feet and shook him in mid-air.

"Daphne! Daphne!" thundered the awful pirate; "speak--or by the
infernal gods--"

"Put him down!" shouted Caesar and Drusus. They were almost appealing
to an unchained lion roaring over his prey, Drusus caught one of
Demetrius's arms, and with all his strength tore it from its grasp.

"The man cannot say a word! you are choking him," he cried in the
pirate's ear.

Demetrius relaxed his mighty grip. Pratinas, for so we still call him,
leaned back against one of the soldiers, panting and gasping. Drusus
took his assailant by the arm, and led him back to a seat. Caesar sat
waiting until the prisoner could speak.

"Pratinas," said the Imperator, sternly, "as you hope for an easy
death or a hard one, tell this man the truth about his daughter."

Pratinas drew himself together by a mighty effort. For an instant he
was the former easy, elegant, versatile Hellene. When he answered it
was with the ring of triumph and defiance.

"Imperator, it would be easy to tell a lie, for there is no means of
proof at hand. This man," with a derisive glance at his enemy, "says
that I know something about his daughter. Doubtless, though, since he
has pursued for recent years so noble an avocation, it were more
grateful if he thanked me for caring for the deserted girl. Well, I
kept her until she was sufficiently old, and then--for I was at the
time quite poor--disposed of her to a dealer at Antioch, who was
planning to take a slave caravan to Seleucia. My good friend probably
will find his daughter in some Parthian harem, unless--"

Cornelia had arisen and was whispering to Drusus; the latter turned
and held the raging pirate in his seat. Pratinas had made of every
word a venomed arrow, and each and all struck home. The workings of
Demetrius's face were frightful, the beads of agony stood on his
brows,--doubtless he had always feared nothing less,--the certainty
was awful. Cornelia looked upon him half-anxious, yet serene and
smiling. Drusus, too, seemed composed and expectant. The Imperator
gazed straight before him, his eyes searching the prisoner through and
through, and under the glance the Greek again showed signs of fear and
nervousness.

The curtain at the opposite end of the hall rustled, Cornelia rose and
walked to the doorway, and returned, leading Artemisia by the hand.
The girl was dressed in a pure white chiton; her thick hair was bound
back with a white fillet, but in the midst of its mass shone a single
golden crescent studded with little gems. She came with shy steps and
downcast eyes--abashed before so many strangers; and, as she came, all
gazed at her in admiration, not as upon the bright beauty of a rose,
but the perfect sweetness of a modest lily. Cornelia led her on, until
they stood before the prisoner.

"Artemisia," said Cornelia, in a low voice, "have you ever seen this
man before?"

Artemisia raised her eyes, and, as they lit on Pratinas, there was in
them a gleam of wonder, then of fear, and she shrank back in dread, so
that Cornelia threw her arm about her to comfort her.

"_A! A!_" and the girl began to cry. "Has he found me? Will he take
me? Pity! mercy! Pratinas!"

But no one had paid her any more attention. It was Caesar who had
sprung from his seat.

"Wretch!" and his terrible eyes burned into Pratinas's guilty breast,
so that he writhed, and held down his head, and began to mutter words
inaudible. "Can you tell the truth to save yourself the most horrible
tortures human wit can devise?"

But Pratinas had nothing to say.

Again Demetrius leaped upon him. The pirate was a frantic animal. His
fingers moved as though they were claws to pluck the truth from the
offender's heart. He hissed his question between teeth that ground
together in frenzy.

"How did you get her? Where from? When?"

Pratinas choked for utterance.

"Artemisia! Daphne! Yours! I lost her! Ran away at Rome!"

The words shook out of him like water from a well-filled flask.
Demetrius relaxed his hold. A whole flood of conflicting emotions was
displayed upon his manly face. He turned to Artemisia.

"_Makaira!_ dearest! don't you know me?" he cried, holding
outstretched his mighty arms.

"I am afraid!" sobbed poor Artemisia in dismay.

"Come!" It was Cornelia who spoke; and, with the daughter crying
softly on one arm, and the father dragged along in a confused state of
ecstasy on the other, she led them both out of the room.

Pratinas was on his knees before Caesar. The Hellene was again
eloquent--eloquent as never before. In the hour of extremity his
sophistry and his rhetoric did not leave him. His antitheses,
epigrams, well-rounded maxims, figures of speech, never were at a
better command. For a time, charmed by the flow of his own language,
he gathered strength and confidence, and launched out into bolder
flights of subtly wrought rhetoric. He excused, explained away each
fault, vivified and magnified a hundred non-existent virtues, reared a
splendid word-fabric in praise of clemency. To what end? Before him
sat Caesar, and Drusus, and a dozen Romans more, who, with cold,
unmoved Italian faces, listened to his artificial eloquence, and gave
no sign of pity. And as he went on, the sense of his hopeless position
overcame the wretched man, and his skill began to leave him. He became
thick and confused of speech; his periods tripped; his thought moved
backward. Then his supple tongue failed him utterly, and, in cries and
incoherent groans, he pleaded for the right to exist.

"Man," said the Imperator, when the storm of prayers and moans was
over, "you conspired against Quintus Drusus, my friend. You
failed--that is forgiven. You conspired, I have cause to believe,
against Pompeius, my enemy, but a Roman--that is unproved, and
therefore forgiven. You conspired with Pothinus against me--that was
an offence touching me alone, and so that, too, may be forgiven. But
to the prayers of a father you had wronged, you answered so that you
might gloat over his pain. Therefore you shall die and not live. Take
him away, guards, and strike off his head, for his body is too vile to
nail to any cross."

The face of the Greek was livid. He raised his manacled hands, and
strained at the irons in sheer despair. The soldiers caught him
roughly to hale him away.

"Mercy! kyrios! kyrios!" he shrieked. "Spare me the torments of Hades!
The Furies will pursue me forever! Pity! Mercy!"

Cornelia had reentered the room, and saw this last scene.

"When my uncle and Ahenobarbus were nigh their deaths," she said
stingingly, "this man observed that often, in times of mortal peril,
skeptics call on the gods."

"The rule is proved," said Caesar, casting a cynical smile after the
soldiers with their victim. "All men need gods, either to worship when
they live, or to dread when they die."




Chapter XXV

Calm after Storm


I

Like all human things, the war ended. The Alexandrians might rage and
dash their numbers against the palace walls. Ganymed and young
Ptolemaeus, who had gone out to him, pressed the siege, but all in
vain. And help came to the hard-pressed Romans at last. Mithridates, a
faithful vassal king, advanced his army over Syria, and came down into
the Delta, sweeping all before him. Then Caesar effected a junction
with the forces of his ally, and there was one pitched battle on the
banks of the Nile, where Ptolemaeus was defeated, and drowned in his
flight. Less than a month later Alexandria capitulated, and saw the
hated consular insignia again within her gates. There was work to do
in Egypt, and Caesar--just named dictator at Rome and consul for five
years--devoted himself to the task of reform and reorganization.
Cleopatra was to be set back upon her throne, and her younger brother,
another Ptolemaeus, was to be her colleague. So out of war came peace,
and the great Imperator gave laws to yet another kingdom.

But before Caesar sailed away to chastise Pharnaces of Pontus, and
close up his work in the East, ere returning to break down the stand
of the desperate Pompeians in Africa, there was joy and high festival
in the palace of Alexandria; and all the noble and great of the
capital were at the feast,--the wedding feast of Cornelia and the
favourite staff officer of the Imperator. The soft warm air of the
Egyptian springtime blew over the festoons of flowers and over the
carpets of blossoms; never before was the music more sweet and joyous.
And overhead hung the great light-laden dome of the glowing azure,
where the storks were drifting northward with the northward march of
the sun.

And they sang the bridal hymns, both Greek and Latin, and cried
"Hymen" and "Talasio"; and when evening came,

"The torches tossed their tresses of flame,"

as said the marriage song of Catullus; and underneath the yellow veil
of the bride gleamed forth the great diamond necklace, the gift of
Cleopatra, which once had been the joy of some Persian princess before
the Greeks took the hoard at Persepolis.

Agias was there; and Cleomenes and his daughters; and Demetrius, with
Artemisia, the most beautiful of girls,--as Cornelia was the fairest
of women,--clinging fondly to her father's side. So there was joy that
day and night at the Alexandrian palace. And on the next morning the
fleet trireme was ready which Demetrius had provided to bear Drusus
and Cornelia and Fabia back to Italy. Many were the partings at the
royal quay, and Agias wept when he said farewell to his late patron
and patroness; but he had some comfort, for his cousin (who had
arranged with Cleomenes that, since his freebooting days were happily
over, the two should join in a partnership for the India trade) had
made him a promise to be fulfilled in due course of time--for
Artemisia was still very young.

"You are no Ichomachus, Xenophon's perfect wife-educator," the
ex-pirate had said to his importunate cousin; "wait a few years."

And Agias was fain to be content, with this hope before him.

There were other partings than his; but at last the adieus were over,
and all save Caesar went back upon the quay. The Imperator alone
tarried on the poop of the vessel for an instant. His features were
half wistful as he held Drusus by the hand, but his eyes were kindly
as ever to the young man.

"Ah, amice!" he said, "we who play at philosophy may not know all the
time that there are gods, but at all times we know that there is the
most godlike of divine attributes--love undefiled. Therefore let us
hope, for we see little, and the cosmos is past finding out."

He sprang back on to the quay. The musicians on the bow struck up with
pipe and lyre; the friends on the pier flung aboard the last garlands
of rose and lily and scented thyme; the rowers bent to their task; the
one hundred and seventy blades--pumiced white--smote the yellow waves
of the harbour, and the ship sped away. Cornelia, Fabia, and Drusus
stood on the poop gazing toward the receding quay. Long after they had
ceased to recognize forms and faces they stared backward, until the
pier itself was a speck, and the great buildings of the city grew dim.
Then they passed the Pharos, and the land dwindled more and more into
a narrow, dark ribbon betwixt blue water and bluer sky. The long
swells of the open sea caught the trireme, and she rode gallantly over
them--while the music still played, and her hardy crew, pirates no
longer, but pardoned men,--seamen, employees of the honest merchant
Demetrius,--sent the good ship bounding faster and faster, as they
pressed their strength against the springing oars. Higher and higher
rose the column of foam around the cutwater; louder and louder sang
the foam under the stern, as they swept it past. The distant land
faded to a thread, to a line, was gone; and to north and south and
east and west were but the water and the cloudless ether. Fabia,
Cornelia, and Drusus said little for a long time. Their eyes wandered,
sometimes, over the track of the foam, and in their minds they saw
again the water-birds plashing among lotus plants, and heard the
ancient Egyptian litanies softly chanted behind the propylons of a
temple built by some king two thousand years departed. But oftener
their eyes ran ahead over the prow, and they walked again across the
Forum of the city of their fathers, and drove across the Latin
plain-land, and spoke their own dear, sonorous, yet half-polished
native tongue.

At last came evening; the sun sank lower and lower; now his broad red
disk hung over the crest of the western waves; now it touched them;
now it was gone, and only the lines of dying fire streamed behind
him--the last runners in his chariot train. Up from the cabin below
came the voice of the ship's steward, "Would their excellencies take
any refreshment?" But they did not go at once. They watched the fire
grow dimmer and dimmer, the pure light change to red gold, the red
gold to crimson, and the crimson sink away.

"Ah, carissima!" cried Drusus, "would that when the orbs of our lives
go down to their setting, they might go down like the sunlight, more
beautiful in each act of the very dying, as they approach the final
goal!"

"Yes, surely," replied Cornelia, touching her hands upon his head;
"but who knows but that Catullus the poet is wrong when he says the
sun of life will never rise save once; who knows but that, if our sun
set in beauty, it will rise again in grandeur even more?"

"My children," said Fabia, gently, "the future lies in the knowledge
of the gods; but out of the present we must shape our own future."

"No, delectissima," replied her nephew, "to do that we are all too
weak; except it be true, as Aratus the poet has said, 'that we men are
also the offspring of gods,' in which case Heaven itself must stoop to
give us aid."

But Cornelia's eyes had wandered down into the foam, still gleaming as
snow in the failing light.

"Ah!" she said, "the ages are long; if there be gods, their days are
our lifetimes, and we but see a little and know not what to think. But
to live a noble life will always be the fairest thing, whether death
be an unending sleep or the threshold to Pindar's Elysium."

And what more of grave wisdom might have dropped from her lips none
may relate, for her husband had shaken off the spell, and laughed
aloud in the joy of his strong life and buoyant hopes. Then they all
three laughed, and thought no more of sober things. They went down
into the cabin just as the last bars of light flickered out in the
west, and only the starlight broke the darkness that spread out over
the face of the sea.


II

Drusus, as he himself had predicted, never wrote a great treatise on
philosophy, and never drew up a cosmology that set at rest all the
problems of the universe; nor did Cornelia become a Latin Sappho or
Corinna, and her wise lore never went further than to make her friends
afraid to affect a shammed learning in her presence. But they both did
the tasks that fell to them better because they had "tasted the well
of Parnassus" and "walked in the grove with the sages." And Drusus,
through an active life, played an honourable part as a soldier and a
statesman: with his beloved Imperator in the battles of Thapsus and
Munda, when the last of the oligarchs were beaten down; then, after
the great crime of murder, with his friend Marcus Antonius; and then,
when Cleopatra's evil star lured both her and Antonius to their ruin,
he turned to the only man whose wisdom and firmness promised safety to
the state--and he joined himself to the rising fortunes of Octavius,
the great Augustus, and fought with him to the end, until there was no
longer a foreign or civil enemy, and the "Pax Romana" gave quiet to a
subject world.

So Drusus had share with Maecenas and Agrippa and the other imperial
statesmen in shaping the fabric of the mighty Roman Empire. Not in his
day did he or Cornelia know that it was wrong to buy slaves like
cattle, or to harbour an implacable hate. They were but pagans. To
them the truth was but seen in a glass darkly; enough if they lived up
to such truth as was vouchsafed. But in their children's day the
brightness arose in the East, and spread westward, and ever westward,
until the Capitoline Jupiter was nigh forgotten, the glories of the
Roman eagles became a tradition, the splendour of the imperial city a
dream. For there came to the world a better Deity, a diviner glory, a
more heavenly city. The greater grew out of the less. Out of the
world-fabric prepared by Julius Caesar grew the fabric of the Christian
Church, and out of the Christian Church shall rise a yet nobler
spiritual edifice when the stars have all grown cold.

THE END

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