Читать книгу A Struggle for Rome (Vol. 1-3) - Felix Dahn - Страница 13

Table of Contents

There was another man, besides Cassiodorus, who played a most important, and, as it seemed to the Regency, a very deserving part, in those days of transition. This was no other than Cethegus. He had undertaken the momentous office of Prefect of Rome. As soon as the King had closed his eyes for ever, Cethegus had instantly hurried to his place of trust, and had arrived there before the news of the event had reached that city.

Before daybreak, he had collected the senators together in the Senatus, that is, in the closed hall of Domitian, near the temple of Janus Geminus, on the right of the arch of Septimus Severus, and had surrounded the building with Gothic troops. He informed the surprised senators (many of whom he had only recently met in the Catacombs, and had incited to the expulsion of the barbarians) of the already accomplished succession to the throne. He had also, not without many mild hints as to the spears of the Gothic hundreds, which might easily be seen from the hall, taken their oaths of allegiance to Athalaric with a rapidity that brooked no contradiction.

Then he left the "Senatus," where he kept the conscript fathers locked up, until, with the support of the strong Gothic garrison, he had held a meeting of the assembled Romans which he had called in the Flavian amphitheatre, and had won the hearts of the easily-moved "Quirites" for the young King.

He enumerated the generous deeds of Theodoric, promised the same beneficence from his grandson, who was, besides, already acknowledged by all Italy and the provinces, and also by the fathers of the city; announced a general feast for the Roman population, with the gift of bread and wine, as the first act of the new government; and concluded with the proclamation of seven days of games in the Circus (races between twenty-four Spanish four-horsed chariots), with which he himself would celebrate the accession of Athalaric, and his own entrance into office.

At once a thousand voices shouted, with loud huzzas, the names of the Queen-Regent and her son; and still more loudly the name of Cethegus. Then the people joyously dispersed, the imprisoned senators were released, and the Eternal City was won for the Goths.

The Prefect hurried to his house at the foot of the Capitol, locked himself up, and eagerly wrote his report to the Queen-Regent.

But he was soon disturbed by a violent knocking upon the iron door of the house. It was Lucius Licinius, the young Roman whom we have already met in the Catacombs. He struck with the hilt of his sword against the door till the house echoed.

He was followed by Scævola, the jurist, with portentously frowning brow, who had been amongst the imprisoned senators; and by Silverius, the priest, with doubtful mien.

The ostiarius looked prudently through a secret aperture in the wall, and, on recognising Licinius, admitted them.

Licinius rushed impetuously before the others through the well-known vestibule and the colonnade of the atrium to the study of Cethegus.

When Cethegus heard the hastily-approaching footsteps, he rose from the lectus upon which he was lying writing, and put his letters into a casket with a silver lid.

"Ah, the saviours of the fatherland!" he said, smiling, and advanced towards the door.

"Vile traitor!" shouted Licinius, his hand on his sword--anger impeded further speech; he half drew his sword from the sheath.

"Stop! first let him defend himself, if he can," panted Scævola, holding the young man's arm, as he hastened into the room.

"It is impossible that he can have deserted the cause of the Holy Church," said Silverius, as he also entered.

"Impossible!" laughed Licinius. "What! are you mad, or am I? Has he not caused us to be confined in our houses? Has he not shut the gates, and taken the oaths of the mob for the barbarians?"

"Has he not," continued Cethegus, "caught the noble fathers of the city, three hundred in number, and kept them in the Curia, like so many mice in a trap; three hundred aristocratic mice?"

"He dares to mock us? Will you suffer that?" cried Licinius. And Scævola turned pale with anger.

"Well, and what would you have done had you been allowed to act?" asked the Prefect quietly, crossing his arms on his broad breast.

"What should we have done?" cried Licinius. "What we, and you with us, have a hundred times decided upon. As soon as the news of the tyrant's death had arrived, we should have killed all the Goths in the city, proclaimed a Republic, and chosen two consuls----"

"Of the names of Licinius and Scævola; that is the first thing. Well, and then? What then?"

"What then? Freedom would have conquered!"

"Folly would have conquered!" broke out Cethegus in a thundering voice, which startled his accusers. "Well for us that your hands were bound; you would have strangled Hope for ever. Look here, and thank me upon your knees!"

He took some records from another casket, and gave them to his astonished companions.

"There; read! The enemy had been warned, and had thrown the noose round the neck of Rome in a masterly manner. If I had not acted as I did, Earl Witichis would be standing at this moment before the Salarian Gate in the north with ten thousand Goths; to-morrow young Totila would have blockaded the mouth of the Tiber on the south with the fleet from Neapolis; and Duke Thulun would have been approaching the Tomb of Hadrian and the Aurelian Gate from the west, with twenty thousand men. If, this morning early, you had touched a hair of a Goth's head, what would have happened?"

Silverius breathed again. The others were ashamed and silent. But Licinius took heart.

"We should have defied the Goths behind our walls," he said, with a toss of his handsome head.

"Yes, when these walls are restored as I will restore them--for eternity, my Licinius: as they are now--not for a day."

"Then we had died as free citizens," said Scævola.

"You might have done that in the Curie three hours ago," laughed Cethegus, shrugging his shoulders.

Silverius stepped forward with open arms, as if to embrace him--Cethegus drew back.

"You have saved us all, you have saved Church and fatherland! I never doubted you!" exclaimed the priest.

But Licinius grasped the hand of the Prefect, who willingly abandoned it to him.

"I did doubt you," he said with charming frankness. "Forgive me, you great Roman! This sword, with which I would have penetrated into your very heart, is henceforward at your service. And when the day of freedom dawns, then no consul, then salve, Dictator Cethegus!"

He hurried out with flashing eyes. The Prefect cast a satisfied glance after him.

"Dictator, yes; but only until the Republic is in full security," said the jurist, and followed Licinius.

"To be sure," said Cethegus, with a smile; "then we will wake up Camillus and Brutus, and take up the Republic from the point at which they left it a thousand years ago. Is it not so, Silverius?"

"Prefect of Rome," said the priest, "you know that I was ambitious to conduct the affairs of the fatherland as well as of the Church. After this, I am so no more. You shall lead, I will follow. Swear to me only one thing: the freedom of the Roman Church--free choice of a Pope."

"Certainly," said Cethegus; "but first Silverius must have become Pope. So be it."

The priest departed with a smile upon his lips, but with a weight upon his mind.

"Go," said Cethegus, after a pause, looking in the direction taken by his three visitors. "You will never overthrow a tyrant--you need one!"

This day and hour were decisive for Cethegus. Almost against his will, he was driven by circumstances to entertain new views, feelings, and plans, which he had never, until now, put to himself so clearly, or confessed to be more than mere dreams. He acknowledged that at this moment he was sole master of the situation. He had the two great parties of the period--the Gothic Government and its enemies--completely in his power. And the principal motive-power in the heart of this powerful man, which he had for years thought paralysed, was suddenly aroused to the greatest activity. The unlimited desire--yes, the necessity--to govern, made itself all at once serviceable to all the powers of his rich nature, and excited them to violent emotion.

Cornelius Cethegus Cæsarius was the descendant of an old and immensely rich family, whose ancestor had founded the splendour of his house as a general and statesman under Cæsar during the civil wars; it was even rumoured that he was the son of the great Dictator.

Our hero had received from nature various talents and violent passions, and his immense riches gave him the means to develop the first and satisfy the last to the fullest extent. He had received the most careful education that was then possible for a young Roman noble. He practised the fine arts under the best teachers; he studied law, history, and philosophy in the famous schools of Berytus, Alexandria, and Athens with brilliant success. But all this did not satisfy him. He felt the breath of decay in all the art and science of his time. In particular, his study of philosophy had only the effect of destroying the last traces of belief in his soul, without affording him any results. When he returned home from his studies, his father, according to the custom of the time, introduced him to political life, and his brilliant talents raised him quickly from office to office.

But all at once he abandoned his career. As soon as he had made himself master of the affairs of state, he would no longer be a wheel in the great machine of a kingdom from which freedom was excluded, and which, besides, was subject to a barbarian King.

His father died, and Cethegus, being now his own master and possessor of an immense fortune, rushed into the vortex of life, enjoyment, and luxury with all the passion of his nature.

He soon exhausted Rome, and travelled to Byzantium, into Egypt, and even as far as India.

There was no luxury, no innocent or criminal pleasure, in which he did not revel; only a well-steeled frame could have borne the adventures, privations, and dissipations of these journeys.

After twelve years of absence, he returned to Rome.

It was said that he would build magnificent edifices. People expected that he would lead a luxurious life in his houses and villas. They were sadly deceived.

Cethegus only built for himself the convenient little house at the foot of the Capitol, which he decorated in the most tasteful manner; and there he lived in populous Rome like a hermit.

He unexpectedly published a description of his travels, characterising the people and countries which he had visited. The book had an unheard-of success. Cassiodorus and Boëthius sought his friendship, and the great King invited him to his court.

But on a sudden he disappeared from Rome.

What had happened remained a mystery, in spite of all malicious, curious, or sympathetic inquiries.

People told each other that one morning a poor fisherman had found Cethegus unconscious, almost dead, on the shores of the Tiber, outside the gates of the city.

A few weeks later he again was heard of on the north-east frontier of the kingdom, in the inhospitable regions of the Danube, where a bloody war with the Gepidae, Avari, and Sclavonians was raging. There he fought the savage barbarians with death-despising courage, and followed them with a few chosen troops, paid from his private means, into their rocky fortresses, sleeping every night upon the frozen ground. And once, when the Gothic general entrusted to him a larger detachment of troops in order to make an inroad, instead of doing this, he attacked and took Sirmium, the enemy's fortified capital, displaying no less good generalship than courage.

After the conclusion of peace, he travelled into Gaul, Spain, and again to Byzantium; returned thence to Rome, and lived for years in an embittered idleness and retirement, refusing all the military, civil, or scientific offices and honours which Cassiodorus pressed, upon him. He appeared to take no interest in anything but his studies.

A few years before the period at which our story commences, he had brought with him from Gaul a handsome youth, to whom he showed Rome and Italy, and whom he treated with fatherly love and care. It was said that he would adopt him. As long as his young guest was with him he ceased his lonely life, invited the aristocratic youth of Rome to brilliant feasts in his villas, and, accepting all invitations in return, proved himself the most amiable of guests.

But as soon as he had sent young Julius Montanus, with a stately suite of pedagogues, freedmen, and slaves, to the learned schools of Alexandria, he suddenly broke off all social ties, and retired into impenetrable solitude, seemingly at war with God and the whole world.

Silverius and Rusticiana had, with the greatest difficulty, persuaded him to sacrifice his repose, and join in the conspiracy of the Catacombs. He told them that he only became a patriot from tedium. And, in fact, until the death of the King, he had taken part in the conspiracy--the conduct of which, however, was wholly in his and the archdeacon's hands--almost with dislike.

It was now otherwise.

Until now, the inmost sentiment of his being--the desire to test himself in all possible fields of intellectual effort; to overcome all difficulties; to outdo all rivals; to govern, alone and without resistance, every circle that he entered; and, when he had won the crown of victory, carelessly to cast it aside and seek for new tasks--all this had never permitted him to find full satisfaction in any of his aims.

Art, science, luxury, office, fame. Each of these had charmed him. He had excelled in all to an unusual degree, and yet all had left a void in his soul.

To govern, to be the first, to conquer opposing circumstances with all his means of superior power and wisdom, and then to rule crouching men with a rod of iron; this, consciously and unconsciously, had always been his aim. In this alone could he find contentment.

Therefore he now breathed proudly and freely. His icy heart glowed at the thought that he ruled over the two great inimical powers of the time, over both Goths and Romans, with a mere glance of his eye; and from this exquisite feeling of mastery, the conviction arose with demonic force, that there remained but one goal for him and his ambition that was worth living for; but one goal, distant as the sun, and out of the reach of every other man. He believed in his descent from Julius Cæsar, and felt the blood rush through his veins at the thought--Cæsar, Emperor of the West, ruler of the Roman Empire!

A few months ago, when this thought first flashed across his mind--not even a thought, not a wish, only a shadow, a dream--he was startled, and could not help smiling at his own boundless assurance.

He, Emperor and regenerator of the Empire! And Italy trembled under the footsteps of three hundred thousand Goths! And the greatest of all barbarian kings, whose fame filled the earth, sat on his powerful throne in Ravenna!

Even if the power of the Goths were broken, the Franks and Byzantines would stretch their greedy hands over the Alps and across the sea to seize the Italian booty. Two great kingdoms against a single man! For, truly, he stood alone amid his people. How well he knew, how utterly he despised his countrymen, the unworthy descendants of great ancestors! How he laughed at the enthusiasm of a Licinius or a Scævola, who thought to renew the days of the Republic with these degenerate Romans!

He stood alone.

But the feeling only excited his ambition, and, at that moment, when the conspirators had left him, when his superiority had been more plainly proved than ever before, the thoughts which had been a flattering amusement of his moody hours, suddenly ripened and formed themselves into a clear resolve.

Folding his arms across his mighty chest, and measuring the apartment with heavy steps, like a lion in his cage, he spoke to himself in abrupt sentences:

"To drive out the Goths and prevent Franks and Greeks from entering, would not be difficult, with a brave host at one's back; any other man could do it. But alone, quite alone, more hindered than helped by these knaves without marrow in their bones; to accomplish the impossible; to make these cowards heroes; these slaves, Romans; these servants of the priests and barbarians, masters of the world; that, that is worth the trouble. To create a new people, a new time, a new world, with the power of his single will and the might of his intellect, is what no mortal has yet accomplished--that would be greater than Cæsar!--he led legions of heroes! and yet, it can be done, for it can be imagined. And I, who can imagine it, can do it. Yes, Cethegus, that is an aim for which it is easy to think, to live, to die! Up, and to work! and henceforward, no thought, no feeling, except for this one thing!"

He stood still at last before a colossal statue of Cæsar, sculptured in Parian marble, which--a masterpiece of Arkesilaus, and, according to family tradition, given by Julius Cæsar himself to his son--stood before the writing-divan, the most sacred treasure of the house.

"Hear me, divine Cæsar! great ancestor!" exclaimed Cethegus, "thy descendant dares to rival thee! There is still something higher than anything which thou hast reached; even to soar at a higher quarry than thou, is immortal; and to fall--to fall from such a height--is the most glorious death. Hail! Once again I know why I live!"

He passed the statue, and threw a glance at some military maps of the Roman Empire, which lay unrolled upon the table.

"First trample upon these barbarians: Rome! Then once more subdue the North: Paris! Then reduce the rebellious East to its old subjection to the Cæsar-city: Byzantium! and farther, even farther, to the Tigris, to the Indus; farther than Alexander; and back to the West, through Scythia and Germania, to the Tiber; the path, Cæsar, which Brutus' dagger cut off for thee. And so to be greater than thou, greater than Alexander----hold, my thought! Enough!"

And the heart of the icy Cethegus flamed and glowed; the veins of his temples throbbed violently; he pressed his burning forehead against the cold marble breast of Julius Cæsar, who majestically looked down upon him.