 |
| Nero and Agrippina aureus, struck AD 54 |
NERO
"Save a monster, what can you expect from Agrippina and myself?"
It was Domitius, Nero's father, who made this ingenious remark. He was
not a good man; he was not even good-looking, merely vicious and rich.
But his viciousness was benign beside that of Agrippina, who poisoned
him when Nero's birth ensured the heritage of his wealth.
In all its galleries history has no other portrait such as hers.
Caligula's sister, his mistress as well, exiled by him and threatened
with death, her eyes dazzled and her nerves unstrung by the
impossibilities of that fabulous reign, it was not until Claud, her
uncle, recalled her and Messalina disappeared, that the empress awoke.
She too, she determined, would rule, and the jus osculi aiding, she
married out of hand that imbecile uncle of hers, on whose knee she had
played as a child.
The day of the wedding a young patrician, expelled from the senate,
killed himself. Agrippina had accused him of something not nice, not
because he was guilty, nor yet because the possibility of the thing
shocked her, but because he was betrothed to Octavia, Claud's daughter,
who, Agrippina determined, should be Nero's wife. Presently Caligula's
widow, an old rival of her own, a lady who had thought she would like
to be empress twice, and whom Claud had eyed grotesquely, was
disencumbered of three million worth of emeralds, with which she
heightened her beauty, and told very civilly that it was time to die.
So, too, disappeared a Calpurina, a Lepida; women young, rich,
handsome, impure, and as such dangerous to Agrippina's peace of mind.
The legality of her crimes was so absolute that the mere ownership of
an enviable object was a cause for death. A senator had a villa which
pleased her; he was invited to die. Another had a pair of those odorous
murrhine vases, which Pompey had found in Armenia, and which on their
first appearance set Rome wild; he, too, was invited to die.
But, though Agrippina dealt in death, she dealt in seductions too.
Rome, that had adored Caligula, promptly fell under his sister's sway.
There was a splendor in her eyes, which so many crimes had lit; in her
carriage there was such majesty, the pomp with which she surrounded
herself was so magnificent, that Rome, enthralled, applauded. Beyond,
on the Rhine, a city which is today Cologne, rose in honor of her
sovereignty. To her wishes the senate was subservient, to her
indiscretions blind. Claud, who meanwhile had been wholly sightless,
suddenly showed signs of discernment. A woman, charged with illicit
commerce, was brought to his tribunal. He condemned her, of course. "In
my case," he explained, "matrimony has not been successful, but the
fate that destined me to marry impure women destined me also to punish
them." It was then that Agrippina ordered of Locusta that famous stew
of poison and mushrooms, which Nero, in allusion to Claud's apotheosis,
called the food of the gods. The fate that destined Claud to marry
Agrippina destined her to kill him.
It was under her care, between a barber and a ballerine, amid the
shamelessness of his stepfather's palace, where any day he could have
seen his mother beckon indolently to a centurion and pointing to some
lover who had ceased to please, make the gesture which signified Death,
that the young Enobarbus—Nero, as he subsequently called himself—was
trained for the throne.
He had entered the world like a tiger cub, feet first; a circumstance
which is said to have disturbed his mother, and well it might. During
his adolescence that lady made herself feared. He was but seventeen
when the pretorians called upon him to rule the world; and at the time
an ingenuous lad, one who blushed like Lalage, very readily,
particularly at the title of Father of the Country, which the senate
was anxious to give him; endowed with excellent instincts, which he had
got no one knew whence; a trifle petit maitre, perhaps, perfuming the
soles of his feet, and careful about the arrangement of his yellow
curls, but withal generous, modest, sympathetic—in short, a flower in
a cesspool, a youth not over well-fitted to reign. But his mother was
there; as he developed so did his fear of her, to such proportions even
that he gave certain orders, and his mother was killed. That duel
between mother and son, terrible in its intensity and unnameable
horror, even the Borgias could not surpass. Tacitus has told it,
dramatically, as was his wont, but he told it in Latin, in which tongue
it had best remain.
At that time the ingenuous lad had disappeared. The cub was full-grown.
Besides, he had tasted blood. Octavia, who with her brother,
Britannicus, and her sister, Antonia, had been his playmates; who was
almost his own sister; whose earliest memories interlinked with his,
and who had become his wife, had been put to death; not that she had
failed to please, but because a lady, Sabina Poppoea, who, Tacitus
says, lacked nothing except virtue, had declined to be his mistress. At
the time Sabina was married. But divorce was easy. Sabina got one at
the bar; Nero with the axe. The twain were then united. Nero seems to
have loved her greatly, a fact, as Suetonius puts it, which did not
prevent him from kicking her to death. Already he had poisoned
Britannicus, and with Octavia decapitated and Agrippina gone, of the
imperial house there remained but Antonia and himself. The latter he
invited to marry him; she declined. He invited her to die. He was then
alone, the last of his race. Monsters never engender. A thinker who
passed that way thought him right to have killed his mother; her crime
was in giving him birth.
Therewith he was popular; more so even than Caligula, who was a poet,
and as such apart from the crowd, while Nero was frankly
canaille—well-meaning at that—which Caligula never was. During the
early years of his reign he could not do good enough. The gladiators
were not permitted to die; he would have no shedding of blood; the
smell of it was distasteful. He would listen to no denunciations; when
a decree of death was brought to him to sign, he regretted that he knew
how to write. Rome had never seen a gentler prince, nor yet one more
splendidly lavish. The people had not only the necessities of life, but
the luxuries, the superfluities, too. For days and days in the Forum
there was an incessant shower of tickets that were exchangeable, not
for bread or trivial sums, but for gems, pictures, slaves, fortunes,
ships, villas and estates. The creator of that shower was bound to be
adored.
It was that, no doubt, which awoke him. A city like Rome, one that had
over a million inhabitants, could make a terrific noise, and when that
noise was applause, the recipient found it heady. Nero got drunk on
popularity, and heredity aiding where the prince had been emerged the
cad, a poseur that bored, a beast that disgusted, a caricature of the
impossible in a crimson frame.
"What an artist the world is to lose!" he exclaimed as he died; and
artist he was, but in the Roman sense; one that enveloped in the same
contempt the musician, acrobat and actor. It was the artist that played
the flute while gladiators died and lovers embraced; it was the artist
that entertained the vulgar.
As an artist Nero might have been a card. Fancy the attraction—an
emperor before the footlights; but fancy the boredom also. The joy at
the announcement of his first appearance was so great that thanks were
offered to the gods; and the verses he was to sing, graven in gold,
were dedicated to the Capitoline Jove. The joy was brief. The exits of
the theatre were closed. It was treason to attempt to leave. People
pretended to be dead in order to be carried out, and well they might.
The star was a fat man with a husky tenorino voice, who sang drunk and
half-naked to a protecting claque of ten thousand hands.
But it was in the circus that Nero was at his best; there, no matter
though he were last in the race, it was to him the palm was awarded, or
rather it was he that awarded the palm to himself, and then quite
magnificently shouted, "Nero, Caesar, victor in the race, gives his
crown to the People of Rome!"
On the stage he had no rivals, and by chance did one appear, he was
invited to die. In that respect he was artistically susceptible. When
he turned acrobat, the statues of former victors were tossed in the
latrinae. Yet, as competitors were needed, and moreover as he, singly,
could fill neither a stage nor a track, it was the nobility of Rome
that he ordered to appear with him. For that the nobility never forgave
him. On the other hand, the proletariat loved him the better. What
greater salve could it have than the sight of the conquerors of the
world entertaining the conquered, lords amusing their lackeys?
Greece meanwhile sent him crowns and prayers; crowns for anticipated
victories, prayers that he would come and win them. Homage so delicate
was not to be disdained. Nero set forth, an army at his heels; a legion
of claquers, a phalanx of musicians, cohorts of comedians, and with
these for retinue, through sacred groves that Homer knew, through
intervales which Hesiod sang, through a year of festivals he wandered,
always victorious. It was he who conquered at Olympia; it was he who
conquered at Corinth. No one could withstand him. Alone in history he
won in every game, and with eighteen hundred crowns as trophies of war
he repeated Caesar's triumph. In a robe immaterial as a moonbeam, the
Olympian wreath on his curls, the Isthmian laurel in his hand, his army
behind him, the clown that was emperor entered Rome. Victims were
immolated as he passed, the Via Sacra was strewn with saffron, the day
was rent with acclaiming shouts. Throughout the empire sacrifices were
ordered. Old people that lived in the country fancied him, Philostratus
says, the conqueror of new nations, and sacrificed with delight.
But if as artist he bored everybody, he was yet an admirable
impresario. The spectacles he gave were unique. At one which was held
in the Taurian amphitheatre it must have been delightful to assist.
Fancy eighty thousand people on ascending galleries, protected from the
sun by a canopy of spangled silk; an arena three acres large carpeted
with sand, cinnabar and borax, and in that arena death in every form,
on those galleries colossal delight.
The lowest gallery, immediately above the arena, was a wide terrace
where the senate sat. There were the dignitaries of the empire, and
with them priests in their sacerdotal robes; vestals in linen, their
hair arranged in the six braids that were symbolic of virginity; swarms
of Oriental princes, rainbows of foreign ambassadors; and in the
centre, the imperial pulvinar, an enclosed pavilion, in which Nero
lounged, a mignon at his feet.
In the gallery above were the necklaced knights, their tunics bordered
with the augusticlave, their deep-blue cloaks fastened to the shoulder;
and there, too, in their wide white togas, were the citizens of Rome.
Still higher the people sat. In the topmost gallery were the women, and
in a separate enclosure a thousand musicians answered the cries of the
multitude with the blare and the laugh of brass.
Beneath the terraces, behind the barred doors that punctuated the
marble wall which circled the arena, were Mauritian panthers that had
been entrapped with rotten meat; hippopotami from Sais, lured by the
smell of carrots into pits; the rhinoceros of Gaul, taken with the net;
lions, lassoed in the deserts; Lucanian bears, Spanish bulls; and, in
remoter dens, men, unarmed, that waited.
By way of foretaste for better things, a handful of criminals, local
desperadoes, an impertinent slave, a machinist, who in a theatre the
night before had missed an effect—these, together with a negligent
usher, were tossed one after the other naked into the ring, and bound
to a scaffold that surmounted a miniature hill. At a signal the
scaffold fell, the hill crumbled, and from it a few hyenas issued, who
indolently devoured their prey.
With this for prelude, the gods avenged and justice appeased, a
rhinoceros ambled that way, stimulated from behind by the point of a
spear; and in a moment the hyenas were disembowelled, their legs
quivering in the air. Throughout the arena other beasts, tied together
with long cords, quarrelled in couples; there was the bellow of bulls,
and the moan of leopards tearing at their flesh, a flight of stags, and
the long, clean spring of the panther.
Presently the arena was cleared, the sand reraked and the Bestiarii
advanced—Sarmatians, nourished on mares' milk; Sicambrians, their hair
done up in chignons; horsemen from Thessaly, Ethiopian warriors,
Parthian archers, huntsmen from the steppes, their different idioms
uniting in a single cry—"Caesar, we salute you." The sunlight,
filtering through the spangled canopy, chequered their tunics with
burning spots, danced on their spears and helmets, dazzled the
spectators' eyes. From above descended the caresses of flutes; the air
was sweet with perfumes, alive with multicolored motes; the terraces
were parterres of blending hues, and into that splendor a hundred
lions, their tasselled tails sweeping the sand, entered obliquely.
The mob of the Bestiarii had gone. In the middle of the arena, a band
of Ethiopians, armed with arrows, knives and spears, knelt, their oiled
black breasts uncovered.
Leisurely the lions turned their huge, intrepid heads; to their jowls
wide creases came. There was a glitter of fangs, a shiver that moved
the mane, a flight of arrows, mounting murmurs; the crouch of beasts
preparing to spring, a deafening roar, and, abruptly, a tumultuous
mass, the suddenness of knives, the snap of bones, the cry of the
agonized, the fury of beasts transfixed, the shrieks of the mangled, a
combat hand to fang, from which lions fell back, their jaws torn
asunder, while others retreated, a black body swaying between their
terrible teeth, and, insensibly, a descending quiet.
At once there was an eruption of bellowing elephants, painted and
trained for slaughter, that trampled on wounded and dead. At a call
from a keeper the elephants disappeared. There was a rush of mules and
slaves; the carcasses and corpses vanished, the toilet of the ring was
made; then came a plunge of bulls, mists of vapor about their long,
straight horns, their anxious eyes dilated. Beyond was a troop of
Thessalians. For a moment the bulls snorted, pawing the sand with their
fore-feet, as though trying to realize what they were doing there. Yet
instantly they seemed to know, and with lowered heads, they plunged on
the point of spears. But no matter, horses went down by the hundred;
and as the bulls tired of gorging the dead, they fought each other;
fought rancorously, fought until weariness overtook them, and the
surviving Thessalians leaped on their backs, twisted their horns, and
threw them down, a sword through their throbbing throats.
Successively the arena was occupied by bears, by panthers, by dogs
trained for the chase, by hunters and hunted. But the episode of the
morning was a dash of wild elephants, attacked on either side; a moment
of sheer delight, in which the hunters were tossed up on the terraces,
tossed back again by the spectators, and trampled to death.
With that for bouquet the first part of the performance was at an end.
By way of interlude, the ring was peopled with acrobats, who flew up in
the air like birds, formed pyramids together, on the top of which
little boys swung and smiled. There was a troop of trained lions, their
manes gilded, that walked on tight-ropes, wrote obscenities in Greek,
and danced to cymbals which one of them played. There were
geese-fights, wonderful combats between dwarfs and women; a chariot
race, in which bulls, painted white, held the reins, standing upright
while drawn at full speed; a chase of ostriches, and feats of haute
ecole on zebras from Madagascar.
The interlude at an end, the sand was reraked, and preceded by the pomp
of lictors, interminable files of gladiators entered, holding their
knives to Nero that he might see that they were sharp. It was then the
eyes of the vestals lighted; artistic death was their chiefest joy, and
in a moment, when the spectacle began and the first gladiator fell,
above the din you could hear their cry "Hic habet!" and watch their
delicate thumbs reverse.
There was no cowardice in that arena. If by chance any hesitation were
discernible, instantly there were hot irons, the sear of which
revivified courage at once. But that was rare. The gladiators fought
for applause, for liberty, for death; fought manfully, skilfully,
terribly, too, and received the point of the sword or the palm of the
victor, their expression unchanged, the face unmoved. Among them, some
provided with a net and prodigiously agile, pursued their adversaries
hither and thither, trying to entangle them first and kill them later.
Others, protected by oblong shields and armed with short, sharp swords,
fought hand-to-hand. There were still others, mailed horsemen, who
fought with the lance, and charioteers that dealt death from high
Briton cars.
As a spectacle it was unique; one that the Romans, or more exactly,
their predecessors, the Etruscans, had devised to train their children
for war and allay the fear of blood. It had been serviceable, indeed,
and though the need of it had gone, still the institution endured, and
in enduring constituted the chief delight of the vestals and of Rome.
By means of it a bankrupt became consul and an emperor beloved. It had
stayed revolutions, it was the tax of the proletariat on the rich.
Silver and bread were for the individual, but these things were for the
crowd.
During the pauses of the combats the dead were removed by men masked as
Mercury, god of hell; red irons, that others, masked as Charon, bore,
being first applied as safeguard against swoon or fraud. And when, to
the kisses of flutes, the last palm had been awarded, the last death
acclaimed, a ballet was given; that of Paris and Venus, which Apuleius
has described so well, and for afterpiece the romance of Pasipha? and
the bull. Then, as night descended, so did torches, too; the arena was
strewn with vermilion; tables were set, and to the incitement of
crotals, Lydians danced before the multitude, toasting the last act of
that wonderful day.
It was with such magnificence that Nero showed the impresario's skill,
the politician's adroitness. Where the artist, which he claimed to be,
really appeared, was in the refurbishing of Rome.
In spite of Augustus' boast, the city was not by any means of marble.
It was filled with crooked little streets, with the atrocities of the
Tarquins, with houses unsightly and perilous, with the moss and dust of
ages; it compared with Alexandria as London compares with Paris; it had
a splendor of its own, but a splendor that could be heightened.
Whether the conflagration which occurred at that time was the result of
accident or design is uncertain and in any event immaterial. Tacitus
says that when it began Nero was at Antium, in which case he must have
hastened to return, for admitting that he did not originate the fire,
it is a matter of agreement that he collaborated in it. In quarters
where it showed symptoms of weakness it was by his orders coaxed to new
strength; colossal stone buildings, on which it had little effect, were
battered down with catapults.
Fire is a perfect poet. No designer ever imagined the surprises it
creates, and when, at the end of the week, three-fourths of the city
was in ruins, the beauty that reigned there must have been sublime.
That it inspired Nero is presumable. The palace on the Palatine, which
Tiberius embellished and Caligula enlarged, had gone; in its place rose
another, aflame with gold. Before it Neropolis extended, a city of
triumphal arches, enchanted temples, royal dwellings, shimmering
porticoes, glittering roofs, and wide, hospitable streets. It was fair
to the eye, purely Greek; and on its heart, from the Circus Maximus to
the Forum's edge, the new and gigantic palace shone. Before it was a
lake, a part of which Vespasian drained and replaced with an
amphitheatre that covered eight acres. About that lake were separate
edifices that formed a city in themselves; between them and the palace,
a statue of Nero in gold and silver mounted precipitately a hundred and
twenty feet—a statue which it took twenty-four elephants to move.
About it were green savannahs, forest reaches, the call of bird and
deer, while in the distance, fronted by a stretch of columns a mile in
length, the palace stood—a palace so ineffably charming that on the
day of reckoning may it outbalance a few of his sins. Even the cellars
were frescoed. The baths were quite comfortable; you had waters salt or
sulphurous at will. The dining halls had ivory ceilings from which
flowers fell, and wainscots that changed at each service. The walls
were alive with the glisten of gems, with marbles rarer than jewels. In
one hall was a dome of sapphire, a floor of malachite, crystal columns
and red-gold walls.
"At last," Nero murmured, "I am lodged like a man."
No doubt. Yet in a mirror he would have seen a bloated beast in a
flowered gown, the hair done up in a chignon, the skin covered with
eruptions, the eyes circled and yellow; a woman who had hours when she
imitated a virgin at bay, others when she was wife, still others when
she expected to be a mother, and that woman, a senatorial patent of
divinity aiding, was god—Apollo's peer, imperator, chief of the army,
pontifix maximus, master of the world, with the incontestable right of
life and death over every being in the dominions.
It had taken the fresh-faced lad who blushed so readily, just fourteen
years to effect that change. Did he regret it? And what should Nero
regret? Nothing, perhaps, save that at the moment when he declared
himself to be lodged like a man, he had not killed himself like one.
But of that he was incapable. Had he known what the future held,
possibly he might have imitated that apotheosis of vulgarity in which
Sardanapalus eclipsed himself, but never could he have died with the
good breeding and philosophy of Cato, for neither good breeding nor
philosophy was in him. Nero killed himself like a coward, yet that he
did kill himself, in no matter what fashion, is one of the few things
that can be said in his favor.
Those days differed from ours. There were circumstances in which
suicide was regarded as the simplest of duties. Nero did his duty, but
not until he was forced to it, and even then not until he had been
asked several times whether it was so hard to die. The empire had
wearied of him. In Neropolis his popularity had gone as popularity ever
does; the conflagration had killed it.
Even as he wandered, lyre in hand, a train of Lesbians and pederasts at
his heels, through those halls which had risen on the ruins, and which
inexhaustible Greece had furnished with a fresh crop of white
immortals, the world rebelled. Afar on the outskirts of civilization a
vassal, ashamed of his vassalage, declared war, not against Rome, but
against an emperor that played the flute. In Spain, in Gaul, the
legions were choosing other chiefs. The provinces, depleted by imperial
exactions, outwearied by the increasing number of accusers, whose
accusations impoverishing them served only to multiply the
prodigalities of their Caesar, revolted.
Suddenly Nero found himself alone. As the advancing rumor of rebellion
reached him, he thought of flight; there was no one that would
accompany him. He called to the pretorians; they would not hear.
Through the immensity of his palace he sought one friend. The doors
would not open. He returned to his apartment; the guards had gone. Then
terror seized him. He was afraid to die, afraid to live, afraid of his
solitude, afraid of Rome, afraid of himself; but what frightened him
most was that everyone had lost their fear of him. It was time to go,
and a slave aiding, he escaped in disguise from Rome, and killed
himself, reluctantly, in a hovel.
