CHAPTER LXV
_IN THE CLUTCH OF NEMESIS_
‘I’ll find him out,
* * * * *
Or drag him by the curls to a foul death, Cursed as his life.’
MILTON, _Comus_.
‘And so I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of the holy...: this also is vanity.’--Eccles. viii. 10.
It was on the evening of June 8 that Nymphidius Sabinus betrayedNero, and, by the forged promise of an enormous donative, which wasnever paid, induced the Prætorians to embrace the cause of Galba.A worthless master makes worthless slaves. This man, whom Nero hadlifted out of the dust as a reward for his crimes, sold his badbenefactor without a blush.
Nero heard the grim news before he retired to rest in the evening,and he was well aware that the morrow must decide his fate. Atmidnight he leapt from his troubled couch, and from that momentthere began for him once more the long slow agony of an irremediablyshameful death. The first thing he discovered was that all thesoldiers who guarded the Palace, and whose barracks were in theExcubitorium, had deserted their posts. In utter despair, he sentfor advice to those whom he deemed to be his friends. As he receivedfrom them no word of answer, he went to their houses, one by one, inthe dead of night, with a few attendants. Inconceivably dreary wasthat walk through the dark streets, which, as he passed by the silentpalaces, seemed to be haunted by the ghosts of the many whom hehad slain. But he found every door closed against him. Not a singleresponse was made to his appeals. Almost mad with misery, he returnedto his splendid chamber in the Golden House, only to find thatduring his brief absence the attendants and slaves had fled, afterplundering it of all its magnificence, even to the embroideredpurple coverlets and the golden box which contained Locusta’s poison.Recalling the memory of his murdered mother, he sought everywhere forthe amulet--the bracelet containing the serpent’s skin found near hiscradle--which Agrippina had clasped upon his boyish arm. But he hadonce carelessly flung it away, in a fit of petulance, and now itcould nowhere be seen. Then he sought for Spicillus, the mirmillo,to stab him; but neither he nor any one else could be found to fulfilthe office. ‘So,’ he said, with one of the small smart epigrams whichshowed throughout these last scenes that the spirit of melodramahad not deserted him--’so, it seems, I have neither a friend nor anenemy!’
Upon this he set out to fling himself into the Tiber, and the backdoor by which he went led through a part of the circus which hadwitnessed his disgraceful triumphs. But when he was half way, hiscourage failed him, and he told his attendants that he wanted somequiet hiding-place in which to collect his thoughts. His freedmanPhaon, one of the very few who, to their credit, remained true to himin the hour of his utmost shame, offered him his suburban villa. Itwas at the fourth milestone from the city, between the Salarian andNomentan roads. It lay on a more remote path called the PatinarianWay, on the other side of the Anio. On that hot night of June Nerohad gone out only in sandals and a tunic; so he threw over hisshoulders an old washed-out cloak, covered his head with the hood,held up a handkerchief to conceal his face, and mounted the firstsorry horse which could be obtained. Thus, in beggar’s guise, he leftthe gorgeous scene of his manifold iniquities. None were found toaccompany him except his secretary Epaphroditus, his freedman Phaon,and Sporus his unhappy favourite. They started together before thefirst gleam of that most miserable day. The stories that, as he rode,he felt the shock of an earthquake, and saw a flash of lightningwhich gleamed on the ghostly faces of his victims rising to menacehim from the abyss, are doubtless coloured by the agitation of thewitnesses. But on his way he had to pass through the Colline gate,and there he heard the shouts of his Prætorians cheering for Galbaand cursing Nero. There were but few stirring on the roads at thatearly hour, but from one group which they passed they heard theremark, ‘These men are in pursuit of Nero.’ ‘Any news about Nero?’asked another traveller. This was disturbing; but it was a farmore serious incident when Nero’s horse swerved at the stench of anunburied corpse which lay by the roadside, and the handkerchief fellfrom his face. For at that moment a discharged Prætorian chanced topass, who not only recognised but saluted the Emperor, rendering ittoo certain that the pursuers would soon be on his track.
By this time it was light. It was the anniversary of the murder ofhis wife, Octavia!
When the fugitives reached the path that led to Phaon’s property,they let their horses run loose among the trees and brambles, andmade their way to the back of the villa by a track through a bed ofreeds where the oozy sludge was sometimes so deep that they had tofling a cloak over it to prevent their sinking in the mire. There wasobvious peril in taking refuge here. A great price was sure to be seton Nero’s head, and how could the freedman trust his rustic slaveswith so perilous a secret? He therefore urged Nero to hide himself inthe deep cave of a neighbouring sandpit till something fresh could bedevised. But Nero refused. ‘What!’ he exclaimed tragically, ‘go aliveinto the bowels of the earth?’ The only other course was to makean opening in the back of the villa, through which he could creepsecretly, unknown to the household. While this was being done, hecomplained of thirst. There was nothing for him but some stagnantwater in a pool. He drank a little from his hand, with the remark,‘This, then, is Nero’s choice drink!’ He sat down ruefully in histattered cloak, which had been torn to shreds by the briers throughwhich he had forced his way; and when the hole in the wall was largeenough, crawled through it on all fours into the empty cell of one ofPhaon’s slaves. There he flung himself down on the mean straw palletof the slave, with nothing to cover him except its old dirty coverlet.Hungry and thirsty as he was, it was difficult to procure him anyfood without arousing suspicion. They could only get him some blackbread, at which his stomach revolted, but he drank a mouthful or twoof tepid water.
It became evident to them that all hope of escape or concealment wasimpossible. The fatal recognition of Nero by the Prætorian betrayedthe course he had taken. The numberless mounted pursuers would besure to find the four horses which they had let loose; nor would itbe possible for him to conceal the fact of his presence from Phaon’sslaves. His three companions therefore urged him, time after time, tosave himself by suicide from the nameless contumelies which awaitedhim. Even Sporus entreated him again and again to show himself a man.It was in vain! In that coward and perverted nature every spark ofmanliness was quenched. ‘It is not time yet,’ he said. ‘The destinedhour has not arrived. How cruel you are to me!’
‘Cruel?’ said Epaphroditus, indignantly; ‘do not we--alone of allyour thousands of slaves--risk our lives for your sake? Since youmust die, were it not better to die like an Emperor than like awhipped hound?’
‘Well, then,’ whimpered Nero, ‘can’t you at least dig me a grave, oneof you? See, I will lie down to show you the right length.’
They began to dig the grave, and he whined out, ‘Oh, what an artistto perish! What an artist to perish!’
‘The grave is ready,’ said Phaon.
‘But can’t you find some bits of marble to adorn it? Surely theremust be some lying about.’
They saw through his pusillanimous delays, but managed to pick up afew fragments of common marble, while he still kept whimpering, ‘Onlyto think that such an artist as I am must perish!’
‘That is all the marble we can find,’ said Phaon.
‘Well, but you will have to burn my body,’ he said. ‘You must getsome water to wash me, and some wood for the pyre.’
‘Nero, Nero,’ said Sporus to him again, ‘will you not die like a man?’
In the midst of these idle pretexts a runner came with a letter forPhaon. Nero snatched it out of his hand and read ‘that the Senate hadpronounced him a public enemy, and decreed that he should be punishedafter the fashion of our ancestors.’
‘What punishment is that?’ he asked.
Is it possible that he did not know? He, who had so often heard itpassed on o
thers? he who, as men believed, had secretly wished thatit should be inflicted on Antistius for libelling him? he who hadsuffered it to be pronounced against L. Vetus and the innocentPollutia? Nevertheless Epaphroditus told him that it meant strippinghim naked, thrusting his head into the opening of a forked gibbet,and then beating him to death with rods. Nero turned deadly pale. Thethought of such agony and such outrage overwhelmed him. He pluckedfrom their sheaths two daggers which he had brought with him, triedthe edge of them, and then once more thrust them back with thethreadbare tragic phrase, that ‘the destined hour had not yet come.’Again the unhappy Sporus entreated him to remember that he was a man,a Roman, an Emperor.
‘There is time, boy,’ he said. ‘Sing my funeral song; raise alamentation for me.’ And all the while he wept, and whimpered,‘Such an artist! Such an artist to perish!’
Phaon and Epaphroditus rebuked his abject timidity.
‘Oh!’ he cried, ‘I cannot die. “Wife, father, mother, join to bid medie,” but I dare not. Will not one of you kill himself and show mehow to die?’
They were amazed at such depths of abject selfishness, and, readinghis condemnation in their faces, he groaned out, ‘Nero, Nero, this isinfamy; come, rouse thyself; be a man!’
But how could the soul of this vicious, babyish, self-indulgent,overgrown, corrupted boy--this soul steeped through and through itsevery fibre with selfishness, vanity, and crime--how could it bethrilled with one virile impulse? The man within him was dead--onlythe cowardly animal survived.
The sound of horses’ hoofs was heard galloping along the rough roadleading to the villa. It denoted the approach of horsemen who hadbeen bidden at all hazards to seize him alive. Strange that even atsuch a moment he could not help being self-conscious and melodramatic.
‘“Thunder of swift-foot coursers smites my ears.”’[121]
he said, trembling--quoting a verse of Homer. But at last, when notone second was to be lost, he placed the dagger against his throat,and, seeing that he would be too much of a poltroon to inflictanything more than an ineffectual wound, Epaphroditus with onethrust drove it home.
Then in burst the centurion. Anxious to seize him alive, he cried,‘Stay, stay, Nero! I have come to help you!’ and tried with his cloakto stanch the bleeding wound.
‘Too late,’ gasped the dying wretch.--‘Is this your fidelity?’
With these words he died, and the spectators were horror-stricken atthe wild, staring look of his rigid eyes, which seemed to stand outof his head.
Fidelity! What fidelity had Nero himself shown to God, to humannature, to Rome, to his mother, his adoptive father, his wives,his brother, his tutors, his family, his friends, his slaves, hisfreedmen, his people, his own self? What more worthless life wasever disgraced by a more contemptible and abject death?
Forty-one princes and princesses of his race had perished sincethe beginning of the century, by the sword, by famine, or bypoison; and the historian imagines the shades of those unhappyones gathered round the miserable pallet on which--more miserably,more pusillanimously, more guiltily, more abjectly than any one ofthem--perished the last of a race whom heaven had been supposed toreceive as gods, and whom earth rejected with disgust. And had theirrace ended in this manikin, in this cowardly and corrupted actor?‘The first of the Cæsars,’ says the historian, ‘had married fourtimes; the second thrice; the third twice; the fourth thrice again;the fifth six times; and lastly this sixth Cæsar thrice:--of theserepeated unions a large number had borne offspring.’ Where were theyall? Cut off for the most part by open murder, or secret suicide, ordiseases mysterious and premature! And now the prophecy of the sibylhad been fulfilled--
‘Last of the Æneadæ shall reign--a matricide!’
How many of his fancied enemies, how many of the innocent, had hecaused to be decapitated! How often had he allowed their heads to bethe mockery of their enemies! How had he himself insulted the ghastlyrelics of Sulla and of Rubellius Plautus; and suffered his mother andhis wife to insult the murdered remains of Lollia Paulina, and of thesad and innocent Octavia! His one dread was that his head should besimilarly insulted; his one main entreaty to the companions of hisflight had been that he should be burnt whole, and his head not begiven to his enemies.
Fairer and kinder measure was dealt to him than he had dealt toothers. Among those who hurried to the villa was Icelus, the powerfulfreedman of his rival Galba. Nero had thrown him into prison at thenews of Galba’s revolt, but at Nero’s flight he had been set free. Itwas not the usual way with the Romans to make war with the dead, andIcelus gave permission that the body should be burnt. It was consumedin the white robe broidered with gold which he had worn at hisill-omened sacrifice on the first of January.
No hindrance was put in the way of his funeral. Two women who hadnursed his infancy, and Acte, who had loved him in his youth, weptover his bier. No tear was shed besides. They laid his ashes in aporphyry sarcophagus, over which was raised an altar of the whitemarble of Luna, surrounded by a Thasian balustrade.
He was but thirty-one when he died; and he had crowded all thatcolossal criminality, all that mean rascality, all that insanedegradation, extravagance, and lust, into a reign of fourteen years!
So great was the exultation over his fall of the people whom he hadpampered, that the whole body of plebeians appeared in the streetswearing hats. A slave could only wear a hat after he had beenmanumitted, and the people wished to show that by his death they hadbeen emancipated from slavery. Yet he and they had mutually corruptedeach other, and the vicious populace had reacted on the viciousruler. Nor was it long before those to whom vice was dear beganto show their sympathy by adorning his tomb with spring and summerflowers. Every base and foul ruler who succeeded him--lasciviousOtho, gluttonous Vitellius, savage Domitian, womanish Elagabalus,brutal Commodus--all who disgraced the name of Roman and of man--madehim their ideal and their hero.
And since so very few had witnessed his death, the multitude in everyland persisted in the belief that another body and not his had beenburnt; that he had taken refuge among the Parthians; that he wouldreturn to take vengeance on his enemies. The fancy gilded the brieffortune and precipitated the miserable punishment of at least twoimpostors. Of these Perkin Warbecks and Lambert Simnels of antiquity,one was put to death in the reign of Otho, the other in the reign ofDomitian; and for nearly three centuries the legend lingered on inthe Christian Church that Nero was the wild beast, wounded to death,but whose deadly wound had been healed--the Antichrist who shouldreturn again.
And the people fancied that his restless, miserable ghost hauntedfor centuries the _Collis Hortulorum_, the Monte Pincio, where stoodthe monument of the Domitii; until in pity for their terrors it wasexorcised in 1099 by Pope Pascal II., the superb successor of thehumble Linus. The Church of Santa Maria del Popolo stands to thisday as a witness of the changed fortunes of that Church which Nerowell-nigh extinguished and exterminated when he made light moreghastly than the darkness by kindling those living torches in thegardens of the Mons Vaticanus. Over that desecrated spot, as Ihave said, now falls the shadow of the vast Christian basilica, andthe obelisk of Heliopolis, which towered over Nero as he drove hischariot through lines of burning men, testifies by its triumphantinscriptions to the victory of the faith of Christ.