Chapter XVI
THE SORROW OF BOON COMPANIONS FOR OUR AFFLICTIONS. THE DUNGEON AND ITS
VICTIMS.
IT was now late on the third and last day of the trial of Glaucus and
Olinthus. A few hours after the court had broken up and judgment been
given, a small party of the fashionable youth at Pompeii were assembled
round the fastidious board of Lepidus.
'So Glaucus denies his crime to the last?' said Clodius.
'Yes; but the testimony of Arbaces was convincing; he saw the blow given,'
answered Lepidus.
'What could have been the cause?'
'Why, the priest was a gloomy and sullen fellow. He probably rated Glaucus
soundly about his gay life and gaming habits, and ultimately swore he would
not consent to his marriage with Ione. High words arose; Glaucus seems to
have been full of the passionate god, and struck in sudden exasperation.
The excitement of wine, the desperation of abrupt remorse, brought on the
delirium under which he suffered for some days; and I can readily imagine,
poor fellow! that, yet confused by that delirium, he is even now unconscious
of the crime he committed! Such, at least, is the shrewd conjecture of
Arbaces, who seems to have been most kind and forbearing in his testimony.'
'Yes; he has made himself generally popular by it. But, in consideration of
these extenuating circumstances, the senate should have relaxed the
sentence.'
'And they would have done so, but for the people; but they were outrageous.
The priest had spared no pains to excite them; and they imagined--the
ferocious brutes!--because Glaucus was a rich man and a gentleman, that he
was likely to escape; and therefore they were inveterate against him, and
doubly resolved upon his sentence. It seems, by some accident or other,
that he was never formally enrolled as a Roman citizen; and thus the senate
is deprived of the power to resist the people, though, after all, there was
but a majority of three against him. Ho! the Chian!'
'He looks sadly altered; but how composed and fearless!'
'Ay, we shall see if his firmness will last over to-morrow.' But what merit
in courage, when that atheistical hound, Olinthus, manifested the same?'
'The blasphemer! Yes,' said Lepidus, with pious wrath, 'no wonder that one
of the decurions was, but two days ago, struck dead by lightning in a serene
sky.' The gods feel vengeance against Pompeii while the vile desecrator is
alive within its walls.'
'Yet so lenient was the senate, that had he but expressed his penitence, and
scattered a few grains of incense on the altar of Cybele, he would have been
let off. I doubt whether these Nazarenes, had they the state religion,
would be as tolerant to us, supposing we had kicked down the image of their
Deity, blasphemed their rites, and denied their faith.'
'They give Glaucus one chance, in consideration of the circumstances; they
allow him, against the lion, the use of the same stilus wherewith he smote
the priest.'
'Hast thou seen the lion? hast thou looked at his teeth and fangs, and wilt
thou call that a chance? Why, sword and buckler would be mere reed and
papyrus against the rush of the mighty beast! No, I think the true mercy
has been, not to leave him long in suspense; and it was therefore fortunate
for him that our benign laws are slow to pronounce, but swift to execute;
and that the games of the amphitheatre had been, by a sort of providence, so
long since fixed for to-morrow. He who awaits death, dies twice.'
'As for the Atheist, said Clodius, 'he is to cope the grim tiger
naked-handed. Well, these combats are past betting on. Who will take the
odds?' A peal of laughter announced the ridicule of the question.
'Poor Clodius!' said the host; I to lose a friend is something; but to find
no one to bet on the chance of his escape is a worse misfortune to thee.'
'Why, it is provoking; it would have been some consolation to him and to me
to think he was useful to the last.'
'The people,' said the grave Pansa, 'are all delighted with the result.
They were so much afraid the sports at the amphitheatre would go off without
a criminal for the beasts; and now, to get two such criminals is indeed a
joy for the poor fellows! They work hard; they ought to have some
amusement.'
'There speaks the popular Pansa, who never moves without a string of clients
as long as an Indian triumph. He is always prating about the people. Gods!
he will end by being a Gracchus!'
'Certainly I am no insolent patrician,' said Pansa, with a generous air.
'Well,' observed Lepidus, it would have been assuredly dangerous to have
been merciful at the eve of a beast-fight. If ever I, though a Roman bred
and born, come to be tried, pray Jupiter there may be either no beasts in
the vivaria, or plenty of criminals in the gaol.'
'And pray,' said one of the party, 'what has become of the poor girl whom
Glaucus was to have married? A widow without being a bride--that is hard!'
'Oh,' returned Clodius, 'she is safe under the protection of her guardian,
Arbaces. It was natural she should go to him when she had lost both lover
and brother.'
'By sweet Venus, Glaucus was fortunate among the women. They say the rich
Julia was in love with him.'
'A mere fable, my friend,' said Clodius, coxcombically; 'I was with her
to-day. If any feeling of the sort she ever conceived, I flatter myself
that I have consoled her.'
'Hush, gentlemen!' said Pansa; 'do you not know that Clodius is employed at
the house of Diomed in blowing hard at the torch? It begins to burn, and
will soon shine bright on the shrine of Hymen.'
'Is it so?' said Lepidus. 'What! Clodius become a married man?--Fie!'
'Never fear,' answered Clodius; 'old Diomed is delighted at the notion of
marrying his daughter to a nobleman, and will come down largely with the
sesterces. You will see that I shall not lock them up in the atrium. It
will be a white day for his jolly friends, when Clodius marries an heiress.'
'Say you so?' cried Lepidus; 'come, then, a full cup to the health of the
fair Julia!'
While such was the conversation--one not discordant to the tone of mind
common among the dissipated of that day, and which might perhaps, a century
ago, have found an echo in the looser circles of Paris--while such, I say,
was the conversation in the gaudy triclinium of Lepidus, far different the
scene which scowled before the young Athenian.
After his condemnation, Glaucus was admitted no more to the gentle
guardianship of Sallust, the only friend of his distress. He was led along
the forum till the guards stopped at a small door by the side of the temple
of Jupiter. You may see the place still. The door opened in the centre in
a somewhat singular fashion, revolving round on its hinges, as it were, like
a modern turnstile, so as only to leave half the threshold open at the same
time. Through this narrow aperture they thrust the prisoner, placed before
him a loaf and a pitcher of water, and left him to darkness, and, as he
thought, to solitude. So sudden had been that revolution of fortune which
had prostrated him from the palmy height of youthful pleasure and successful
love to the lowest abyss of ignominy, and the horror of a most bloody death,
that he could scarcely convince himself that he was not held in the meshes
of some fearful dream. His elastic and glorious frame had triumphed over a
potion, the greater part of which he had fortunately not drained. He had
recovered sense and consciousness, but still a dim and misty depression
clung to his nerves and darkened his mind. His natural courage, and the
Greek nobility of pride, enabled him to vanquish all unbecoming
apprehension, and, in the judgment-court, to face his awful lot with a
steady mien and unquailing eye. But the consciousness of innocence scarcely
sufficed to support him when the gaze of men no longer excited his haughty
valor, and he was left to loneliness and silence. He felt the damps of the
dungeon sink chillingly into his enfeebled frame. He--the fastidious, the
luxurious, the refined--he who had hitherto braved no hardship and known no
sorrow. Beautiful bird that he was! why had he left his far and sunny
clime--the olive-groves of his native hills--the music of immemorial
streams? Why had he wantoned on his glittering plumage amidst these harsh
and ungenial strangers, dazzling the eyes with his gorgeous hues, charming
the ear with his blithesome song--thus suddenly to be arrested--caged in
darkness--a victim and a prey--his gay flights for ever over--his hymns of
gladness for ever stilled! The poor Athenian! his very faults the
exuberance of a gentle and joyous nature, how little had his past career
fitted him for the trials he was destined to undergo! The hoots of the mob,
amidst whose plaudits he had so often guided his graceful car and bounding
steeds, still rang gratingly in his ear. The cold and stony faces of former
friends (the co-mates of merry revels) still rose before his eye. None now
were by to soothe, to sustain, the admired, the adulated stranger. These
walls opened but on the dread arena of a violent and shameful death. And
Ione! of her, too, he had heard naught; no encouraging word, no pitying
message; she, too, had forsaken him; she believed him guilty--and of what
crime?--the murder of a brother! He ground his teeth--he groaned aloud--and
ever and anon a sharp fear shot across him. In that fell and fierce
delirium which had so unaccountably seized his soul, which had so ravaged
the disordered brain, might he not, indeed, unknowing to himself, have
committed the crime of which he was accused? Yet, as the thought flashed
upon him, it was as suddenly checked; for, amidst all the darkness of the
past, he thought distinctly to recall the dim grove of Cybele, the upward
face of the pale dead, the pause that he had made beside the corpse, and the
sudden shock that felled him to the earth. He felt convinced of his
innocence; and yet who, to the latest time, long after his mangled remains
were mingled with the elements, would believe him guiltless, or uphold his
fame? As he recalled his interview with Arbaces, and the causes of revenge
which had been excited in the heart of that dark and fearful man, he could
not but believe that he was the victim of some deep-laid and mysterious
snare--the clue and train of which he was lost in attempting to discover:
and Ione--Arbaces loved her--might his rival's success be founded upon his
ruin? That thought cut him more deeply than all; and his noble heart was
more stung by jealousy than appalled by fear. Again he groaned aloud.
A voice from the recess of the darkness answered that burst of anguish.
'Who (it said) is my companion in this awful hour? Athenian Glaucus, it is
thou?'
'So, indeed, they called me in mine hour of fortune: they may have other
names for me now. And thy name, stranger?'
'Is Olinthus, thy co-mate in the prison as the trial.'
'What! he whom they call the Atheist? Is it the injustice of men that hath
taught thee to deny the providence of the gods?'
'Alas!' answered Olinthus: 'thou, not I, art the true Atheist, for thou
deniest the sole true God--the Unknown One--to whom thy Athenian fathers
erected an altar. It is in this hour that I know my God. He is with me in
the dungeon; His smile penetrates the darkness; on the eve of death my heart
whispers immortality, and earth recedes from me but to bring the weary soul
nearer unto heaven.'
'Tell me,' said Glaucus, abruptly, 'did I not hear thy name coupled with
that of Apaecides in my trial? Dost thou believe me guilty?'
'God alone reads the heart! but my suspicion rested not upon thee.'
'On whom then?'
'Thy accuser, Arbaces.'
'Ha! thou cheerest me: and wherefore?'
'Because I know the man's evil breast, and he had cause to fear him who is
now dead.'
With that, Olinthus proceeded to inform Glaucus of those details which the
reader already knows, the conversion of Apaecides, the plan they had
proposed for the detection of the impostures of the Egyptian upon the
youthful weakness of the proselyte. 'Therefore,' concluded Olinthus, 'had
the deceased encountered Arbaces, reviled his treasons, and threatened
detection, the place, the hour, might have favored the wrath of the
Egyptian, and passion and craft alike dictated the fatal blow.'
'It must have been so!' cried Glaucus, joyfully. 'I am happy.'
'Yet what, O unfortunate! avails to thee now the discovery? Thou art
condemned and fated; and in thine innocence thou wilt perish.'
'But I shall know myself guiltless; and in my mysterious madness I had
fearful, though momentary, doubts. Yet tell me, man of a strange creed,
thinkest thou that for small errors, or for ancestral faults, we are for
ever abandoned and accursed by the powers above, whatever name thou
allottest to them?'
'God is just, and abandons not His creatures for their mere human frailty.
God is merciful, and curses none but the wicked who repent not.'
'Yet it seemeth to me as if, in the divine anger, I had been smitten by a
sudden madness, a supernatural and solemn frenzy, wrought not by human
means.'
'There are demons on earth,' answered the Nazarene, fearfully, 'as well as
there are God and His Son in heaven; and since thou acknowledgest not the
last, the first may have had power over thee.'
Glaucus did not reply, and there was a silence for some minutes. At length
the Athenian said, in a changed, and soft, and half-hesitating voice.
'Christian, believest thou, among the doctrines of thy creed, that the dead
live again--that they who have loved here are united hereafter--that beyond
the grave our good name shines pure from the mortal mists that unjustly dim
it in the gross-eyed world--and that the streams which are divided by the
desert and the rock meet in the solemn Hades, and flow once more into one?'
'Believe I that, O Athenian No, I do not believe--I know! and it is that
beautiful and blessed assurance which supports me now. O Cyllene!'
continued Olinthus, passionately, 'bride of my heart! torn from me in the
first month of our nuptials,' shall I not see thee yet, and ere many days be
past? Welcome, welcome death, that will bring me to heaven and thee!'
There was something in this sudden burst of human affection which struck a
kindred chord in the soul of the Greek. He felt, for the first time, a
sympathy greater than mere affliction between him and his companion. He
crept nearer towards Olinthus; for the Italians, fierce in some points, were
not unnecessarily cruel in others; they spared the separate cell and the
superfluous chain, and allowed the victims of the arena the sad comfort of
such freedom and such companionship as the prison would afford.
'Yes,' continued the Christian, with holy fervor, 'the immortality of the
soul--the resurrection--the reunion of the dead--is the great principle of
our creed--the great truth a God suffered death itself to attest and
proclaim. No fabled Elysium--no poetic Orcus--but a pure and radiant
heritage of heaven itself, is the portion of the good.'
'Tell me, then, thy doctrines, and expound to me thy hopes,' said Glaucus,
earnestly.
Olinthus was not slow to obey that prayer; and there--as oftentimes in the
early ages of the Christian creed--it was in the darkness of the dungeon,
and over the approach of death, that the dawning Gospel shed its soft and
consecrating rays.
