Domitia

Plancus had advised the burning at the port, with shorn rites, and that the ashes should be placed in the family mausoleum at Gabii, and that the utmost dignity should be accorded to this latter ceremony sufficient to content the most punctilious widow.

But this did not please the lady. The notion of a funeral with maimed pomp was distasteful to her; moreover, as she argued, it was illegal to have two funerals for the same man.

“That,” said Plancus, “hardly applies to one who has died out of Italy.”

“It is against the law,” replied Duilia. “I will give no occasion to objection, offer no handle to informers. Besides, I won’t have it. The respect I owe to Corbulo forbids the entertainment of such an idea. Really, and on my word, Plancus, I am not a child to be amused with shadow pictures, and unless you are making a rabbit, a fish, or a pig eating out of a trough, I cannot conceive what you are about with your hands, fumbling one over the other.”

“Madam, I had no thought – ”

“I know you have none. Be pleased another time when addressing me to keep your hands quiet, it is irritating. One never knows where they are or will be, sometimes folding and unfolding them, then – they disappear up your sleeves and project none can guess where – like snails’ horns. Be pleased, – and now pawing your face like a cat washing itself. Please in future hold them in front of you like a dog when sitting up, begging. But as to the funeral – I will not have it cheap and nasty. Without ancestors a funeral is not worth having.”

“Then,” said the harassed freedman, “there is nothing for it but to engage an embalmer.”

“Of course – one can be obtained at Corinth. Everything can be had for money.”

As Plancus was retiring, the lady recalled him.

“Here,” said she, “do not act like a fool, and let the man charge a fancy price. Say that I have an idea of pickling Corbulo in brine, and have brought an amphora large enough for the purpose. Don’t close with his terms at once.”

When the steward was gone, then Longa Duilia turned her head languidly and summoned a slave-girl.

“Lucilla! The unfortunate feature of the situation is that I must not have my hair combed till we reach Gabii. It is customary, and for a bracelet of pearls I would not transgress custom. You can give my head a tousled look, without being dishevelled, I would wish to appear interesting, not untidy.”

“Lady! Nothing could make you other than fascinating. A widow in tears – some stray locks – it would melt marble.”

“And I think I shall outdo Agrippina,” said Duilia, “she carried her husband’s cinders in an urn at the head of her berth and on appropriate occasions howled in the most tragic and charming manner. But I shall convey the unconsumed body of my Corbulo in state exposed on his bier, in his military accoutrements all the way to Rhegium, then up the coast to Ostia and so to Gabii. There will be talk!”

“You will be cited in history as a widow the like of which the world has never seen. As for Agrippina, in your superior blaze she will be eclipsed forever.”

“I should prefer doing what Agrippina did – make a land journey from Brindisium, but – but – one must consider. It would be vastly expensive, and – ”

But the lady did not finish the sentence. She considered that Nero might resent such a demonstration, as exciting indignation against himself, in having obliged Corbulo to put an end to his life. But she did not dare to breathe her thought even into the ear of a slave.

“No,” she said; “it would come too expensive. I will do what I can to honor my husband, but not ruin myself.”

When Longa Duilia had resolved to have her own way, and that was always, then all the entire family of slaves and retainers, freedmen and clients knew it must be done.

The vessel after a brief stay at Cenchræa had left for Diolcus where it had been placed on rollers and conveyed across the isthmus, and was launched in the Corinthian Gulf.

Nero had been engaged for some days in excavating a canal between the two seas. He had himself turned the first sod, but after getting some little way, rock was encountered of so hard a quality that to cut through it would cost time, toil and money.

He speedily tired of the scheme, wanted the money it would have cost for some dramatic exhibition, and was urged by Helios, a freedman whom he had left in Rome, to return to Italy, to prevent an insurrection that was simmering. Nero did not much believe in danger, but he had laden his fleet with the plunder of Greece, he had strutted and twittered on every stage, carried off every prize in every contest, and was desirous of being applauded in Italy and at Rome for what he had achieved, and exhibit there the chaplets he had won.

Accordingly he started, and hardly had he done so before the Artemis with spread sail swept down the Corinthian Gulf.

The ship, a Liburnian, of two banks of oars, was constructed very differently from a modern vessel. The prow was armed above water-mark with three strong and sharp blades, called the rostra, the beaks, which when driven into the side of an enemy would tear her open and sink her.

The quarter-deck was midships, and served a double purpose, being raised as high as the bulwarks it served as an elevated place where the captain could stand and survey the horizon and watch the course of the vessel, and it also served to strengthen the mast.

On this quarter-deck, on a bed of state, lay the body of Cnæus Domitius Corbulo, with his sword at his side, and the wax mask over his face. At his feet was a tripod with glowing coals on which occasionally incense and Cilician crocus were sprinkled, and on each side of his head blazed torches of pinewood dipped in pitch.

The poop had a covered place, called the aplaustre, in which sat the steerer. The hinged rudder had not then been invented, it was a discovery of the Middle Ages, and the head of the vessel was given its direction by the helmsman, gubernator, who worked a pair of broad flat paddles, one on each side.

The rowers, under the deck, were slaves, but the sailors were freemen. The rowers were kept in stroke by a piper, who played continually when the vessel was being propelled; and the rowers were under the direction and command of a hortator, so called because his voice was incessantly heard, urging, reprimanding, praising, threatening.

The captain of a Roman vessel was not supreme in authority on board ship as with us, but if the vessel contained military, he was subject to the control of the superior military officer.

The passage down the Corinthian Bay was effected without difficulty, before a favorable wind, but as the vessel was about to pass out of it, the wind suddenly changed and blew a squall from the west. And at this moment an accident occurred that was seriously embarrassing. Whilst the captain was standing near the steersman giving him directions relative to the passage of the straits, a wave rolling in caught the paddle, and caused it by the blow to snap the bronze bolt of the eye in which it worked, and the handle flying up and forward, struck the captain on the forehead, threw him down, and he fell against the bulwark so as to cut open his head. He had to be carried below insensible.

The Artemis lay under shelter till the gale abated, and then consultation arose as to what was to be done.

Lucius Lamia took the command, he was competent to manage the vessel, with the advice, if needed, of the mate. He and all were reluctant to put back to Lechæum, the port of Corinth, on the Gulf, and the broken eye in which the paddle worked was repaired with a stout thong, which, as the steersman said, would hold till Adria was crossed and Rhegium was reached.

The squall had passed, and the look of the sky was promising; moreover the wind was again favorable.

“Sir,” said the mate, “my opinion is that we should make all speed across Adria. This is a bad season of the year. It is a month in which sailing is overpassed. We must take advantage of our chances. While the wind blows, let us spread sail. The rowers can ship their oars; should the wind fail, or prove contrary, they will be required, and they may have a hard time of it. Therefore let them husband their strength.”

“So be it,” answered Lucius Lamia.

And now the Artemis, with sail spread, leaning on one side, drave through the rippling water, passed the Straits into the Adriatic, with the mountains of Ætolia to the north, and the island of Cephalonia in the blue west before her; and as she flew, she left behind her a trail of foam in the water, and a waft of smoke in the air from the torches that glowed about the dead general on the quarter-deck.

CHAPTER VI.

“I DO NOT KNOW.”

The day was in decline, and although the season was winter yet the air was not cold. The mountains of Greece lay in the wake like a bank of purple cloud tinged with gold.

On the quarter-deck reposed the corpse, with the feet turned in the direction of the prow; the torches spluttered, and cast off sparks that flew away with the smoke.

On each side were three slave women, detailed to wail, but Longa Duilia had issued instructions that they were not to be noisy in their demonstration so as to disturb or swamp conversation aft.

The undulating lament swerving through semi-tones and demi-semitones, formed a low and sad background to the play of voices on the lower deck, where, sheltered from the wind, the widow reclined on cushions, and her daughter Domitia sat at her side in conversation.

A change had come over the girl, so complete, so radical, that she seemed hardly to be the same person as before her father’s death. This was noticeable as being in appearance and manner, – noticeable even to the slaves, not the most observant in matters that did not particularly concern their comfort and interests. She had been transmuted from a playful child into a sad and serious woman.

The sparkle had left her eyes to make way for an eager, searching fire. The color had left her cheek; and her face had assumed a gloomy expression. The change, in fact, was much like that in a landscape when a sunny May day makes place for one that is overcast and threatening. The natural features are unaltered, but the aspect is wholly different in quality and character.

A mighty sorrow contracting, bruising, oppressing the heart sometimes melts it into a sweetness of patient endurance that inspires pity and love. But grief seemed to have frozen Domitia and not to have dissolved her into tears.

The philosopher approached with solemn stalk, walking on the flat of his soles.

Such men were retained in noble households as family chaplains, to advise, comfort, and exhort. And this man at intervals approached the widow, who on such occasions assumed a woe-begone expression, beat her brow and emitted at intervals long-drawn sighs.

At such times, the Magus, standing near, curled his lip contemptuously, and endeavored by shrugs and sniffs to let the bystanders perceive how little he valued the words of the stoic.

The philosopher Senecio now in formal style addressed the widow, and then turned to harangue the daughter, on the excellence of moderation in grief as in joy, on the beauty of self-control so as to suffer the storms of life to roll over the head with indifference. In this consisted the Highest Good, and to attain to such stolidity was the goal of all virtuous endeavor.

Then he thrust his hand into the folds of his toga, and withdrew, to be at once attacked and wrangled with by the Chaldæan.