Domitia

“Lady, your mother has reached home in safety. I chanced to run across Amphibolus, sent out in quest of you, and the good-for-naught had turned sulky, because it is the Saturnalia, when, said he, the mistress should do the slave’s bidding. ‘That can be,’ said he, ‘but at one time in the year, and should not be forgotten.’ And the lanes are clear of rabble. If Paris here will walk on one side of you and I on the other, it will be well. That rascal Amphibolus I bade wait, but not he, said he, ‘Io Saturne!’ ”

“I will attend with joy,” announced the actor.

Domitia rose to leave, she tendered thanks to Glyceria and took two steps towards the entrance, halted, turned back, and taking the thin hand of the sick woman in hers, somewhat shyly said:

“I may come again and see you?”

Before Glyceria could reply, so great was her surprise, Domitia was gone.

The streets were nearly empty, they were mere lanes between huge blocks of windowless buildings, towering into the sky, but from the forum could be heard a hubbub of voices, cries, the clash of arms, and anon a cheer.

Presently – “Stand aside!” said Paris, and there swept down the lane a number of young fellows masked and tricked out in ribbons and scraps of tawdry finery.

“I am the king!” shouted one, “Præfect of the guard, arrest those people. Ha! a woman. She shall be my captive and grace my triumph.”

Eboracus administered a blow with his fist, planted between the eyes of the youth in pasteboard armor who came towards his young mistress. The blow sent him flying backwards against the king and upset him on the pavement.

A roar of laughter from his mates, and one shouted,

“Hey Tarquinius! thou must e’en fare like the rest, Nero, Galba, Otho – and hem! we know not who else – but down thou art with the others.”

“Let us go on,” said Paris, and without further attempt at molestation from the revellers they pursued their way.

On reaching the palace inhabited by Longa Duilia, a fresh difficulty arose. Eboracus knocked, but there was no porter at the door to answer. He knocked again and continued to rattle against the panels, till at length the bolt was withdrawn, and Euphrosyne with timid face, and holding a lamp appeared in the entrance.

“Why have you kept us so long waiting?” asked the Briton.

“Eboracus, I could not help myself. It is the Saturnalia, and the slaves will do no menial work. They are carousing in the triclinium and, though they heard the rap well enough, none would rise and respond. Then, for very shame I came, for I thought it might be my dear mistress.”

As Domitia crossed the atrium, she heard song and laughter and the click of goblets issue from the dining-room. She hurried by and entered her mother’s chamber.

Longa Duilia was in a condition of resentment and irritation.

“You have arrived at last!” said the lady. “I’ll have that British slave’s hide well basted when the Seven Days are over, for disregarding me and considering your safety alone. Body of Bacchus! This time of the Saturnalia is insufferable. Not a servant will do a stroke of work, nor execute a single order. They are all, forsooth, lords and ladies for seven days, and we must wait on them. Well! if it were not an old custom, I’d get up a procession of all the matrons of Rome to entreat the Senate to abolish the usage.”

“Oh, mother dear, how did you escape?”

“My child! it was as bad as that bit of storm we had getting out of the Gulf of Corinth, tossed about in my palanquin I hardly knew whether I were thinking with my head or with my toes. But after a while they got me through. Never, never again will I go gadding after the Gods to their Lectisternia. As the Gods love me! this is a topsy-turvy time indeed. At the Saturnalia no strife is permissible, not a lawsuit, all quarrels are supposed to cease, not even a malefactor may be executed, and there are those precious Immortals with their glass eyes, and extended hands snuffing up the fumes of their dinner, and they allow fighting to go on before them, under their immortal noses, and never interfere! But I don’t wonder. There was Summanus, God of the night thunders – and will you believe it, his own head was struck off by the heavenly bolt. Ye Gods! if ye cannot mind your own heads ye are not to be trusted with ours.”

The lady was in a condition of towering indignation. She was affronted – she, highborn, with a drop of Julian blood in her, somewhere, – she had been tossed about among the heads and over the shoulders of a dirty, garlic-smelling asafœtida chewing rabble – had been exposed to danger from the swords of the Vigiles on one side, of the Palatine guard on the other. And when finally, she reached home ruffled in garments, her hair in disorder, and her heart beating fast, she found the house in disorder, the slaves in possession keeping high holiday, and disregarding her shrilly uttered, imperiously expressed orders.

“I shall go to bed,” said the lady, “I’d lie in bed all these horrible seven days, but that I know no one will bring me my meals. Never mind – when the Saturnalia are over, I shall remember which were insolent and disobliging, and they shall get whippings.”

But in the house, on the morrow the condition of affairs was not quite so bad. The servants were alive to the fact that they had liberty for seven days only, and that their mistress had a faculty of remembering and punishing disobedience; not indeed during the holiday period, nor ostensibly because of faults then committed, but by administering double chastisement for light offences committed later.

Some of the slaves, moreover, made no attempt to use their liberty so as to cause inconvenience to their mistress.

But if some sort of order was established within the palace, none reigned without. There civil war raged, at the same time that the citizens observed the festival, and so long as they kept out of the way of the soldiery, it did not much concern them whether the city force or the palace garrison prevailed. Primus, at the head of the Illyrian legions was rapidly advancing on Rome. News had arrived that Spain and Gaul had declared for Vespasian. Britain had renounced allegiance to Vitellius, only Africa still remained faithful.

Next tidings arrived that the army of Vitellius that was at Narnia had surrendered. Thereupon the gross, aged Emperor dressed in black, surrounded by his servants, and carrying his son, still a child, came howling and sobbing from the Palatine through the Forum, to surrender the insignia of Empire into the hands of the Consul, in the Temple of Concord. But the Consul refused to receive them, and then the German guard, having wind of his intention, became clamorous, and cried out for the head of Flavius Sabinus. Vitellius, unable to resign, and incapable of reigning, wandered from one residence to another, asking advice of all his friends as to what he ought to do, but taking none.

Meanwhile the fighting in the streets of Rome had recommenced. Titus Flavius Sabinus, for security escaped into the Capitol, and took with him his sons and daughter, and his nephew Domitian. There he was formally besieged by the Imperial guard; and Sabinus, doubting his ability to hold out long, sent off a despatch to Primus to bid him hasten to his assistance.

“Madam!” exclaimed Eboracus rushing in, “I pray you come on the roof of the house.”

“What is the matter? Ye Gods! surely Rome is not on fire again!”

“Madam! The household guard are assaulting the Capitol and have indeed set fire to the houses below, I doubt if the Præfect can hold out till Primus arrives.”

Duilia ascended to the flat top of the house. The palace of the family was in the Carinæ, on the slope of the Esquiline hill, hard by the gardens of Nero’s Golden House. Being on high ground it commanded the Forum and the Capitol, and looked over the tops of the vulgar insulæ in the dip of the Suburra.

It was the evening of the second day. Heavy clouds had lowered throughout the hours of daylight and the evening had prematurely closed. There had been desultory fighting all day, but as the night approached a determined set was made by the German guard to capture the Capitol, and the citadel of Rome that adjoined it, connected by only a small neck of hill. They knew that Primus was close at hand, and they were determined not to be caught between a foe before and another behind.

The Capitol is a rocky height rising precipitately above the Forum, and enormous substructures had strengthened it and formed a platform on which rose the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus that stood to Rome almost in the relation that the Temple did to Jerusalem, as the centre of its religious and civil institutions.

It was almost the paladium of the city, the fate of Rome was held to be bound up with its preservation.

And now Domitia and her mother looked on in the gathering darkness at the temple looming out as of gold against the purple black clouds behind, lit with the glare of the flames of the houses below that had been fired by the soldiery.

The roar of conflict came up in waves of sound.

“Really,” said Duilia, “Revolutions are only tolerable when seen from a house-top; that is, to cultivated minds – the common rabble like them.”

Shrill above the roar came the scream of a whistle, that a boy was blowing as he went down the street.

Suddenly the clamor boiled up into a mighty spout or geyser of noise, and the reason became manifest in another moment. The whole sky was lit by a sheet of flame of golden yellow. The conflagration had caught an oil merchant’s stores that were planted against the substructures supporting the temple. Columns, shoots of dazzling light rushed up against the rocks and the walls, recoiled, swept against them again, overleaped them and curled like tongues around the temple.

Instantly every sound ceased. The soldiers sheathed their swords. The citizens held their breath. Nothing for a few minutes was audible, save the mutter of the fire.

“My lady,” said Euphrosyne, coming to the roof, and addressing Longa Duilia, “A priest of Jupiter is below, and desires to speak with you.”

CHAPTER XVIII.

A REFUGEE

“A priest of Jupiter here!” exclaimed Duilia. “When his temple is on fire! Bid him be off – but stay. Who let him in?”

“Lady, the Chaldæan introduced him.”

“He had no right to do so. Let him entertain him. I desire to see the end. Run. The roof is on fire – the eagles will be down – or melt away.”

“Lady! the Magian commissioned me to assure you that he bears an important communication.”

“Say I am engaged.”

A minute later, the Chaldæan himself arrived on the housetop and addressed the mistress.

“I cannot attend to your abracadabra,” said she, in reply to his request to be heard. “Look there. The Capitol is in flames, the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus blazes. I know what he wants – he has come begging. They all beg. I have no money. I am interested in the fire, the Revolution, and all that sort of thing.”