CHAPTER IX.
The day of the King's death was not only decisive for Cethegus, butalso for the conspiracy in the Catacombs, for Italy, and for the Gothickingdom.
Although the intrigues of the patriots--led by different men, who werenot agreed upon the means, nor even upon the aims of their plots--had,till now, made slow and doubtful progress, this state of things wascompletely altered from the moment when Cethegus took the conduct ofaffairs into his own strong hands. Only then did the conspiracy becomereally dangerous to the Goths.
Cethegus untiringly sought to undermine the security of their kingdom.With his great capacity for winning and governing men, and penetratingtheir motives, he was able daily to increase the number of importantmembers and the means of success. He understood how to avoid thesuspicion of the Goths on the one hand, and to prevent any untimelyrebellion on the other. For it would have been easy to attack thebarbarians in all the towns of the Peninsula on some special day, andto call upon the Byzantines--who had long since been on the watch forsuch a crisis--to complete the conquest. But in this way the Prefectwould not have been able to carry out his secret plans. He would merelyhave put Byzantine tyranny in the place of Gothic rule. And we knowthat he had very different intentions. In order to fulfil them, hewished first to create for himself a power in Italy, greater than anyother man possessed. Before the foot of a Byzantine was set uponItalian soil, he must become--although in secret--the mightiest man inthe country. All must be so prepared that the barbarians should bedriven away by Italy itself, that is, by Cethegus, with the leastpossible help from Byzantium; so that, after the victory, the Emperorcould not avoid giving the dominion over the country to its saviour,even if only as a governor. Then he would soon gain time andopportunity to excite the national pride of the Romans against the ruleof the "Greek-lings," as they contemptuously called the Byzantines.For, although for two hundred years--since the days of the greatConstantine--the glory of the Empire of the world had been removed fromwidowed Rome to the golden town on the Hellespont, and the sceptre ofthe sons of Romulus seemed to have passed over to the Greeks; thoughEast and West formed _one_ state of antique culture opposed to thebarbarian world; yet even now the Romans hated and despised the Greeksas much as in the days when Flaminius declared humbled Hellas to be afreedman of Rome. The old hate was now increased by envy.
Therefore Cethegus was sure of the enthusiasm and support of all Italy,which, after the removal of the barbarians, would also banish theByzantines from the country; and the crown of Rome, the crown of theWestern Empire, would be his certain reward.
And if he succeeded in exciting the newly-awakened national feeling toan offensive war on the other side of the Alps, when he had againerected the throne of the Roman Empire on the ruins of the FrankishKingdom at Orleans and Paris, then the attempt would not be too rashonce again to subdue the Eastern Empire and continue the Empire of theWorld in the Eternal City from the point at which Trajan and Hadrianhad left it.
In order to reach this distant and shining goal, every step on thedizzy path must be taken with the greatest prudence; any stumble mightprecipitate him into an abyss. In order to gain his end, Cethegus mustfirst of all make sure of Rome; on Rome alone could his plans be based.
Therefore the new Prefect bestowed the greatest care upon the city thathad been entrusted to him. He wished to make Rome, morally andphysically, his surety of dominion, belonging alone to him, and not tobe wrested from him.
His office gave him the best pretext for carrying out his plans. Was itnot the duty of the _Praefectus Urbi_ to care for the well-being of thepopulace, and for the preservation and security of the city? Heunderstood perfectly well how to use the rights of his office for thefurtherance of his own aims. He easily won the sympathies of all ranks;the nobles honoured in him the head of the conspiracy; he governed theclergy through Silverius, who was the right hand of the pope, and, bypublic opinion, appointed his successor, and who showed to the Prefecta devotion that was even surprising to its object. He gained the commonpeople, not only by occasional gifts of bread, and games in the Circus,but also by promoting great undertakings, which, at the cost of theGothic Government, provided work and sustenance for thousands.
He persuaded Amalaswintha to give orders that the fortifications ofRome, which had suffered much more since the reign of Honorius from theinroads of time and the selfishness of Roman architects, than from theVisigoths and Vandals, should be quickly and completely restored "tothe honour of the Eternal City, and," as she imagined, "for protectionagainst the Byzantines."
Cethegus himself, and, as was afterwards proved by the unsuccessfulsieges of the Goths and Byzantines, with great strategic genius, madethe plan of the magnificent works. With the greatest zeal he set aboutthe gigantic task of transforming the immense city, with itscircumference of many miles, into a stronghold of the first rank. Thethousands of workmen, who well knew to whom they owed their well-paidemployment, applauded the Prefect whenever he showed himself upon theramparts, to examine what progress had been made, or excite to newindustry, and, sometimes, to put his own hand to the work. And thedeceived Princess assigned one million _solidi_ after another for theexpenses of fortifications, against which the whole power of her peoplewas shortly to be wrecked and annihilated.
The most important point of these fortifications was the Tomb ofHadrian, known now under the name of Castle St. Angelo. Thismagnificent edifice, built of blocks of Parian marble, which were laidone upon the other without any uniting cement, lay, at that time, abouta stone's-throw from the Aurelian Grate, the flanking walls of which itby far overtopped.
Cethegus had seen at a glance that this incomparably strong building,which until now had been designed for offence _against_ the city,might, by very simple means, be converted into a powerful bulwark ofdefence _for_ the city; he caused two walls to be built from theAurelian Grate towards and around the Mausoleum.
And soon the towering marble castle formed an assault-proof rampart forthe Aurelian Grate, so much the more because the Tiber formed a naturalfosse close before it. On the top of the wall of the Mausoleum stoodabout three hundred of the most beautiful statues of bronze, marble,and iron, mostly placed there by Hadrian and his successors. Amongstthem were that of the Divus Hadrianus; his beautiful favouriteAntinous; a Jupiter of Soter; a Pallas "town-protectress;" and manyothers. Cethegus rejoiced at the fulfilment of his ideas, and becameexceedingly fond of this place, where he used to wander every eveningwith his beloved Rome spread out at his feet, examining the progress ofthe works. He had even caused a number of beautiful statues from hisown villas to be added to those already existing, in order to increasethe splendour of his creation.