CHAPTER XIX. THE BATHS OF CARACALLA
Imagine the consternation in Rome on the 15th of February, the dayfollowing the tragic death of the Cardinal Procopio and his twoabettors. Great, in truth, was the agitation of the city when the threebodies were seen dangling from the upper window of the palace. The panicspread rapidly, and the immense crowd under the facade increasedmore and more, until a battalion of foreign soldiers, sent for bythe terrified priests, appeared in the Lungara, and driving it back,surrounded and entered the palace. To tell the truth, the soldierslaughed sometimes at the jests, coarse but witty, which were flung bythe mob at the three corpses as they commenced hauling them up. Manywere the bitter things that passed below.
"Let them down head over heels," shouted one; "your work will befinished the sooner."
"Play the fish steadily, that they may not slip from the hook," hallooedanother.
By-and-by the cord to which the corpulent body of the prelate wasattached broke as the soldiers attempted to hoist it up, and hoarserthan ever were the shouts of laughter with which it was greeted as itfell with a heavy shock upon the pavement.
Muzio, who was surveying the avenging spectacle, turned to Silvio,saying, with a shudder, "Let us away; this laughter is not to my tastenow they have paid their debt.
"In truth, Pasquin is almost the only real memorial of ancient Rome.Would that my people possessed the gravity and force of those times,when our forefathers elected the great dictators, or bought and sold,at a high price, the lands upon which Hannibal was at the time attacked.But it must be long before their souls can be freed from the plague ofpriestly corruption, and before they can once more be worthy of theirancient fame and name."
"We must have patience with them," replied Silvio. "Slavery reduces manto the level of the beast These priests have themselves inculcated therude mockery which we hear. At least, it could have no fitter objectsthan those dead carcasses. Reproach not the people to-day--mud is goodenough for dead dogs."
Thus discoursing, the friends made their way through the crowd, andseparated, having first appointed to meet at the end of the week in thestudio of Attilio.
On the day in question they found the young artist at home, and gave hima detailed account of what they had witnessed under the palace windows.It was the time for the reassembling of the Three Hundred, but, beforesetting out to meet their associates at the Baths of Caracalla, they laydown to rest for a few hours; and while they slumber we will give someaccount of the place of assignation.
Masters of the world, and wealthy beyond compute from its manifoldspoils, the ancient Romans gave themselves up, in the later days of theRepublic, to fashion, luxuriousness, and excesses of all kinds. Thetoil of the field--whether of battle or of agriculture--although it hadconduced to make them hardy and healthy before their triumphs, had nowbecome distasteful and odious. Their limbs, rendered effeminate by anew and fatal voluptuousness, grew at last unequal even to the weight oftheir arms, and they chose out the stoutest from among their slavesto serve as soldiers. The foreign people by whom they were surroundedfailed not to note the advantage which time and change were preparingfor them over their dissolute masters. They rose with Goth and Ostrogothto free themselves from the heavy yoke. They fell upon the queenly cityon all sides, and discrowned her of her imperial diadem.
Such was the fate of that gigantic empire, which fell, as all powersought to fall which are based on violence and injustice.
One of the chief imported luxuries of the degenerate Romans were thethermae, or baths, edifices upon which immense sums were lavished to makethem beautiful and commodious in the extreme. Some were private, otherspublic. The emperors vied with each other to render them celebrated andattractive. Caracalla, the unworthy son of Severus, and one of the veryvilest of the line of Caesars, built the vast pile which is still calledby his evil name; the ruins of which forcibly illustrate the splendorof the past sovereignty, and the reasons of its swift decay. The greaternumber of these conspicuous and magnificent buildings in the city ofRome have subterranean passages attached to them, provided by theiroriginal possessors as a means of escape in times of danger, or toconceal the results of rapine or violence. In the subterranean passagesconnected with the Baths of Caracalla it was that the Three Hundred hadagreed to meet, and as the darkness of night crept on, the outposts ofthe conspirators, like gliding shadows, planted themselves silently atthe approaches to the wilderness of antique stones, from time to timechallenging, in a whisper, other and more numerous shadows, whichby-and-by converged to the spot.