Отрывок из книги
Jane Margaret Strickland
Published by Good Press, 2019
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Nero, when he received intelligence of his lieutenant’s arrival, was dressed for the stage, in the habit proper to the comic part he was about to perform. The unsuitableness of his garb to that of a Roman emperor, about to give audience to the greatest commander of the time, and the impossibility of denying himself to a man like Domitius Corbulo, decided the fate of his general. Nero took the easiest way of settling a difficult point of etiquette, by sending a centurion with the imperial mandate, commanding his officer to end his days.
Corbulo without a guard or means of defence, received the ungrateful message with the stoical fortitude of an ancient Roman. “I have deserved this,” was his brief remark to his friends as he fell upon his sword. Nero went on the stage to play his part out, and in its comic excitement forgot the tragedy of which he had made his brave lieutenant the hero. The plaudits of his audience were at length over, and Nero, withdrawing to his dormitory, gave the watchword, and received the report from the centurion on duty of Corbulo’s death. The last speech of his lieutenant awakened a throng of conflicting passions in his bosom; he called for wine and drank deeply to drown remorse, but instead of the oblivion he sought, he became franticly delirious and rushed forth into the midnight air, none of his attendants daring to detain or follow their miserable prince, who, passing through the streets with mad precipitation, never halted till he found himself near the scene of his labours, the Isthmian trench. The beauty of the moonlight, the deep stillness of the night, undisturbed even by a wandering breeze, allayed the fever in the emperor’s throbbing veins. Thousands were sleeping around him, sleeping in their chains. He contemplated the toil-worn wretches with feelings of envy. He gazed intently upon them as they lay fettered in pairs upon the earth, and as his mind became more calm he examined their features with curiosity and interest. In sleep the mask, habitual cunning or reserve wears by day, is thrown off, and the true character may be distinctly traced. On the brows of the Roman criminals their crimes were legibly written. Pride, sensuality, rapacity, cunning, and cruelty, marked them as the outcasts of the corrupt and wicked city, the spiritual Babylon. The Jewish captives, who were all young and chosen men, bore the expression of sullen gloom, unsatisfied revenge, defiance, indignation, and despair; and even in slumber murmured, complained, or acted again the strife they had maintained so vainly against the Roman arms. One alone of all these thousands smiled, and he was the noblest and fairest of them all. From his parted lips a holy strain of melody broke forth, then died away in imperfect murmurs; but the listening tyrant recognised in the sleeper the slave whose scornful look had awakened his angry passions on the day when he opened the trench. Adonijah’s dreams are of his own land. He is going up to Jerusalem, to keep the feast of the Passover. His slaughtered brethren are with him, and Tamar, that fair and virgin sister, that Nazarite dedicated from childhood to the Lord, is dancing before them with the timbrel in her hand, singing, “I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord.” Suddenly, with the capriciousness of fancy, the scene changes. Again he hears the war-cry of his own people, again hangs upon the flying legions of Cestius Gailus, captures the idol standard, and calls upon the name of the Messiah, the promised deliverer of Israel. He comes, the mighty, the long-expected. The Romans are driven forth from the sacred soil, the valley of Hamoth Gog is full of slaughter, and Adonijah hails the king of Judah, the anointed one of the Lord, with holy joy. But swifter than lightning vanishes the glorious vision from his sight, he awakes, and finds himself a slave in a foreign land.
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