Darkness and Dawn; Or, Scenes in the Days of Nero. An Historic Tale Read online

  CHAPTER VI

  _THE ACCESSION OF NERO_

  ‘Le Roi est mort. Vive le Roi!’

  ‘Agrippina terris alterum venenum, sibique ante omnes, Neronem suum dedit.’--PLINY, _N. H._ xxii. 46.

  Agrippina did not attend any longer to the children of Claudius; shethrew off the mask. For by this time the sundial on the wall markedthe hour of noon, and the Chaldæans were satisfied with the auspices.Her quickened sense of hearing caught the sounds for which she hadlong been listening. She heard the Palace doors thrown open. Sheheard the voice of Burrus commanding the soldiers to salute theirEmperor. She heard shout on shout, ‘Nero Emperor! Nero Emperor! Longlive Nero! Long live the grandson of Germanicus!’

  She sprang out into the balcony, and there caught one glimpse of herson. His fair face was flushed with pride and excitement; the sunshone upon his golden hair which flowed down his neck; his slight butwell-knit limbs were clothed in the purple of an Emperor. She saw himlean on the arm of the Prætorian Præfect as, surrounded by some ofthe chief military tribunes, he walked to the guard-house of thecohort which protected the imperial residence.

  ‘Prætorians,’ said Burrus, in a loud voice, ‘behold your Emperor,Nero Claudius Cæsar.’

  ‘Nero?’ asked one or two voices. ‘But where is Britannicus?’

  They looked round. No one was visible but Nero, and their questionwas drowned in the cheers of their comrades.

  ‘Bring out the richest lectica,’ they cried; and it was ready inan instant. Nero was placed in it, and Burrus, springing on hiswar-horse, and followed by the select cohort of imperial cavalry,rode by his side. The Præfect was in full armour, and his cuirasswas enriched with gems and gold. He held his drawn sword in his hand,lifting it again and again to excite the soldiers to louder cheers.

  Then followed the very delirium of Agrippina’s triumph. Messengerafter messenger entered to tell her that the air was ringing withendless acclamations in honour of her son. The beautiful and happyyouth promised to the soldiers the same donative of fifteen sestertiato each man which Claudius had given at his succession, and theguardsmen accepted him with rapture, and hastily swore to him theiroaths of allegiance.

  Then with gleaming ensigns, and joyous songs, and shouting, andclapping of hands, they bore him in long procession to the SenateHouse, to obtain the ratification which the Conscript Fathersdared not refuse. At first, indeed, there had been a few shouts,‘Britannicus! Where is Britannicus? Where is the true son ofClaudius?’ And she inwardly made a note of the fact that thecenturion Pudens and the knight Julius Densus had been among thenumber of those who raised the shout. Britannicus, too, had heard thecry, faint as it was by comparison; but when he attempted to escapeout of the room, Agrippina imperiously waved him back, and Pallasdetained him by the arm. He sat down in despair, and once morecovered his face with his hands, while now it was the turn of Octaviato caress and comfort him. But the plot was already accomplished.The few who would have favoured his cause seemed to be swept awayby the general stream. The boy had been kept so designedly in thebackground, that many of the people hardly knew whether he was aliveor dead. He felt that he was powerless, and he had heard among theshouts of the soldiers the cry, ‘All hail, Augusta! All hail, thedaughter of our Germanicus!’ He resigned himself to his fate, andAgrippina, intent on her own plans, and absorbed in the intensityof her emotions, no longer noticed his presence.

  Suddenly, however, he started from his seat, and stood before her.His face was pale as death, but his eyes shone with indignant light.

  ‘Why am not I, too, proclaimed Emperor?’ he exclaimed. ‘I do notbelieve that my father meant to rob me of my inheritance. I amhis son, not his _adopted_ son. This is a conspiracy. Where is myfather’s will? Why is it not taken to the senate, and there recited?’

  The Empress was amazed at the sudden outburst. Was this the boy whoseemed so meek and so helpless? This must be seen to!

  ‘Foolish boy,’ she said; ‘you are but a child. You have not yetassumed the manly garb. How can a boy like you bear the burden of theworld’s empire? Fear not; your brother Nero will take care of you.’

  ‘Take care of me!’ repeated Britannicus, indignantly, restrainingwith difficulty the torrent of wild words which sprang to his lips.‘It is a conspiracy!’ he cried. ‘You have robbed me of my inheritanceto give it to your son Ahenobarbus.’

  Agrippina lifted up her arm as if she would have struck him, butPallas interposed. Firmly, but not ungently, he laid his hand onthe young prince’s mouth.

  ‘Hush,’ he said, ‘ere you do yourself fatal harm. Boy, thesequestions are not for you or me to settle. They are for the Senate,and the Prætorians, and the Roman people. If the soldiers haveelected Nero, and the senators have confirmed their choice, he isyour Emperor, and you must obey.’

  ‘It is useless to resist, my brother,’ said Octavia, sadly. ‘Ourfather is dead. Narcissus has been sent away. We have none to helpus.’

  ‘None to help you, ungrateful girl!’ said Agrippina. ‘Are not you nowthe Empress? Have you not the glory of being Nero’s bride?’

  Octavia answered not. ‘Our father is dead,’ she said again. ‘May wenot go, Augusta, and weep by his bedside?’

  ‘Go!’ answered Agrippina; ‘and I for my part will see that he isenrolled among the gods, and honoured with a funeral worthy of theHouse of Cæsar.’ Then, turning to her attendants, she issued herorders.

  ‘Put a cypress at the door of the Palace. Let the body be dressed inimperial robes, and incense burned in the chamber. See that everypreparation is made for a royal funeral, and that the flute-players,the wailing-women, the _designatores_, with their black lictors, beall in readiness.’

  But while Agrippina was giving directions to the _archimimus_ who wasto represent the dead Emperor at the funeral, and was examining thewaxen masks of his ancestral Claudii, which were to be worn in theprocession, the boy and girl were permitted to visit the chamberof the dead. They bent over the corpse of their father, and fondledhis cold hands, and let their tears fall on his pale face, and feltsomething of the bitterness of death in that sudden and shatteringbereavement, which changed for ever the complexion of their lives.

  Nero, meanwhile, was addressing the Senate amidst enraptured plauditsin the finely turned and epigrammatic phrases of Seneca, whichbreathed the quintessence of wise government and Stoic magnanimity.He would rule, he said, on the principles which guided Augustus; andthe senators seemed as if they would never end their plaudits when tothe offer of the title ‘Father of his Country’ he modestly replied,‘Not till I shall have deserved it.’

  Agrippina, after having ordered the details of the funeral procession,finally dismissed her murdered husband from her thoughts, and gavedirections that her son, on his return to the Palace, should bereceived with a fitting welcome. She summoned all the slaves andfreed men of that mass of dependants which made of the Palace nota household, but a city. They were marshalled in throngs by theiroffices and nationalities in the vast hall. They were arrayed intheir richest apparel, and were to scatter flowers and garlands underthe feet of the new Emperor as he advanced. The multitudes of thelowest and least distinguished slaves were to stand in the fartherparts of the hall; next to them the more educated and valuableslaves, and next to them the freedmen. In the inner ring were placedall the most beautiful and accomplished of the pages, their long andperfumed curls falling over their gay apparel, while some who hadthe sweetest voices were to break out into a chorus of triumphalsongs. Then Nero was to be conducted to the bath, and afterwards asumptuous banquet was to be served to a hundred guests. There was buta short time for these preparations; but the wealth of the Cæsars wasunbounded, and their resources inexhaustible, and since the slaveswere to be counted by hundreds, and each had his own minute taskassigned to him, everything was done as if by magic.

  The afternoon was drawing in when new bursts of shouting proclaimedthat, through the densely crowded streets, in which every latticeand balcony and roof was now thronged
with myriads of spectators,Nero was returning from the Curia to the Palace with his guard ofPrætorians.

  Walking between the two Consuls, with Burrus and Seneca attending himin white robes, followed by crowds of the greatest Roman nobles, andby the soldiers clashing their arms, singing their rude songs, andexulting in the thought of their promised donative, the young rulerof the world returned. The scene which greeted him when the greatgates of the Palace were thrown open was gay beyond description.The atrium glowed in zones of light and many-coloured shadow. Theautumnal sunbeams streamed over the gilded chapiters, glancing fromlustrous columns of yellow and green and violet-coloured marble, andlighting up the open spaces adorned with shrubs and flowers. Thefountains were plashing musically into marble and alabaster basins.Between rows of statues, the work of famed artificers, were crowdedthe glad and obsequious throngs of the rejoicing house.

  Agrippina was seated on a gilded chair of state at the farther end ofthe hall, her arms resting on the wings of the two sphinxes by whichit was supported. She was dressed in the chlamys, woven of clothof gold, in which Pliny saw her when she had dazzled the spectatorsas she sat by the side of Claudius in the great festival at theopening of the Emissarium of the Fucine Lake. Beneath this was herrich _stola_, woven of Tarentine wool and scarlet in colour, butembroidered with pearls. It left bare from the elbow her shapelyarms, which were clasped with golden bracelets enriched with largestones of opal and amethyst.

  The moment that she caught sight of her son she descended from herseat with proud step, and Nero advanced to meet her. He was bendingto kiss her hand, but the impulses of nature overcame the statelinessof Roman etiquette, and for one instant mother and son were lockedin each other’s arms in a warm embrace, amid the spontaneousacclamations of the many spectators.

  That evening Agrippina had ascended to the giddiest heights of hersoaring ambition. Her son was Emperor, and she fancied he would be asclay in her strong hands. Alone of all the great Roman world it wouldbe her unspeakable glory that she was not only the descendant ofemperors, but the sister, the wife, and the mother of an Emperor.She was already Augusta and Empress in title, and she meant withalmost unimpeded sway to rule the world. And while she thus let looseevery winged wish over the flowery fields of hope, and suffered herfancy to embark on a sea of glory, the thought of her husband lyingmurdered there in an adjoining room did not cast the faintest shadowover her thoughts. She was about to deify him, and to acquire a sortof sacredness herself by becoming his priestess--was not that enough?She sat revolving her immense plans of domination, when Nero joinedher, flushed from the banquet, and weary with the excitement of theday. While he was bidding her good night, and they were exchangingeager congratulations on the magnificent success of his commencingrule, the tribune of the Palace guard came to ask the watchword forthe night.

  Without a moment’s hesitation Nero gave as the watchword, THE BEST OFMOTHERS.

  * * * * *

  But late into the darkness, in the room of death, unnoticed, unaskedfor, Britannicus and Octavia mingled their sad tears and theirlow whispers of anguish, beside the rapidly blackening corpse ofthe father who had been the lord of the world. Yesterday--thoughhis impudent freedmen had for years been selling, plundering, andmurdering in his name--two hundred millions of mankind had lifted uptheir eyes to him as the arbiter of life and death, of happiness andmisery. By to-morrow nothing would be left but a handful of ashesin a narrow urn. Of all who had professed to love and to adorehim, not one was there to weep for him except these two; for theirhalf-sister, Antonia, had been content merely to see the corpse, andhad then retired. No one witnessed their agony of bereavement, theirhelplessness of sorrow, except the dark-dressed slave who tendedthe golden censer which filled the death chamber with the fumes ofArabian incense. And for them there was no consolation. The objectsof their nominal worship were shadowy and unreal. The gods of theheathen were but idols, of whom the popular legends were base andfoolish. Such gods as those had no heart to sympathise, no invisibleand tender hand to wipe away their orphan tears.