Читать книгу A Friend of Caesar - William Stearns Davis - Страница 14

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Drusus regained his litter, and ordered his bearers to take him to the house of the Vestals,—back of the Temple of Vesta,—where he wished to see his aunt Fabia and Livia, his little half-sister. The Temple itself—a small, round structure, with columns, a conical roof which was fringed about with dragons and surmounted by a statue—still showed signs of the fire, which, in 210 B.C., would have destroyed it but for thirteen slaves, who won their liberty by checking the blaze. Tradition had it that here the holy Numa had built the hut which contained the hearth-fire of Rome,—the divine spark which now shed its radiance over the nations. Back of the Temple was the House of the Vestals, a structure with a plain exterior, differing little from the ordinary private dwellings. Here Drusus had his litter set down for a second time, and notified the porter that he would be glad to see his aunt and sister. The young man was ushered into a spacious, handsomely furnished and decorated atrium, where were arranged lines of statues of the various maximae[48] of the little religious order. A shy young girl with a white dress and fillet, who was reading in the apartment, slipped noiselessly out, as the young man entered; for the novices were kept under strict control, with few liberties, until their elder sisters could trust them in male society. Then there was a rustle of robes and ribbons, and in came a tall, stately lady, also in pure white, and a little girl of about five, who shrank coyly back when Drusus called her his "Liviola"[49] and tried to catch her in his arms. But the lady embraced him, and kissed him, and asked a thousand things about him, as tenderly as if she had been his mother.

[48] Senior Vestals.

[49] A diminutive of endearment.

Fabia the Vestal was now about thirty-seven years of age. One and thirty years before had the Pontifex Maximus chosen her out—a little girl—to become the priestess of Vesta, the hearth-goddess, the home- goddess of Pagan Rome. Fabia had dwelt almost all her life in the house of the Vestals. Her very existence had become identified with the little sisterhood, which she and her five associates composed. It was a rather isolated yet singularly pure and peaceful life which she had led. Revolutions might rock the city and Empire; Marians and Sullians contend; Catilina plot ruin and destruction; Clodius and his ruffians terrorize the streets; but the fire of the great hearth-goddess was never scattered, nor were its gentle ministers molested. Fabia had thus grown to mature womanhood. Ten years she had spent in learning the Temple ritual, ten years in performing the actual duties of the sacred fire and its cultus, ten years in teaching the young novices. And now she was free, if she chose, to leave the Temple service, and even to marry. But Fabia had no intention of taking a step which would tear her from the circle in which she was dearly loved, and which, though permitted by law, would be publicly deplored as an evil omen.

The Vestal's pure simple life had left its impress on her features. Peace and innocent delight in innocent things shone through her dark eyes and soft, well-rounded face. Her light brown hair was covered and confined by a fillet of white wool.[50] She wore a stola and outer garment of stainless white linen— the perfectly plain badge of her chaste and holy office; while on her small feet were dainty sandals, bound on by thongs of whitened leather. Everything about her dress and features betokened the priestess of a gentle religion.

[50] Infula.

When questions and repeated salutations were over, and Livia had ceased to be too afraid of her quite strange brother, Fabia asked what she could do for her nephew. As one of the senior Vestals, her time was quite her own. "Would he like to have her go out with him to visit friends, or go shopping? Or could she do anything to aid him about ordering frescoers and carpenters for the old Praeneste villa?"

This last was precisely what Drusus had had in mind. And so forth aunt and nephew sallied. Some of the streets they visited were so narrow that they had to send back even their litters; but everywhere the crowds bowed such deference and respect to the Vestal's white robes that their progress was easy. Drusus soon had given his orders to cabinet-makers and selected the frescoer's designs. It remained to purchase Cornelia's slave- boy. He wanted not merely an attractive serving-lad, but one whose intelligence and probity could be relied upon; and in the dealers' stalls not one of the dark orientals, although all had around their necks tablets with long lists of encomiums, promised conscience or character. Drusus visited, several very choice boys that were exhibited in separate rooms, at fancy prices, but none of these pretty Greeks or Asiatics seemed promising.

Deeply disgusted, he led Fabia away from the slave-market.

"I will try to-morrow," he said, vexed at his defeat. "I need a new toga. Let us go to the shop on the Clivus Suburanus; there used to be a good woollen merchant, Lucius Marius, on the way to the Porta Esquilina."

Accordingly the two went on in the direction indicated; but at the spot where the Clivus Suburanus was cut by the Vicus Longus, there was so dense a crowd and so loud a hubbub, that their attendants could not clear a way. For a time it was impossible to see what was the matter. Street gamins were howling, and idle slaves and hucksters were pouring forth volleys of taunts and derision at some luckless wight.

"Away with them! the whip-scoundrel! Verbero!"[51] yelled a lusty produce-vender. "Lash him again! Tan his hide for him! Don't you enjoy it? Not accustomed to such rough handling, eh! my pretty sparrow?"

[51] A coarse epithet.

Fabia without the least hesitation thrust herself into the dirty- robed, foul-mouthed crowd. At sight of the Vestal's white dress and fillets the pack gave way before her, as a swarm of gnats at the wave of a hand. Drusus strode at her heels.

It was a sorry enough sight that met them—though not uncommon in the age and place. Some wretched slave-boy, a slight, delicate fellow, had been bound to the bars of a furca, and was being driven by two brutal executioners to the place of doom outside the gates. At the street- crossing he had sunk down, and all the blows of the driver's scourge could not compel him to arise. He lay in the dust, writhing and moaning, with the great welts showing on his bare back, where the brass knots of the lash had stripped away the cloth.

"Release this boy! Cease to beat him!" cried Fabia, with a commanding mien, that made the crowd shrink further back; while the two executioners looked stupid and sheepish, but did nothing.

"Release this boy!" commanded the Vestal. "Dare you hesitate? Do you wish to undo yourselves by defying me?"

"Mercy, august lady," cried Alfidius,—for the chief executioner was he,— with a supplicatory gesture. "If our mistress knows that her commands are unexecuted, it is we, who are but slaves, that must suffer!"

"Who is your mistress?" demanded Fabia.

"Valeria, wife of Lucius Calatinus."

"Livia's precious mother!" whispered Drusus. "I can imagine her doing a thing like this." Then aloud, "What has the boy done?"

"He dropped a murrhine vase," was the answer.

"And so he must be beaten to death!" exclaimed the young man, who, despite the general theory that most slaves were on a par with cattle, had much of the milk of human kindness in his nature. "Phui! What brutality! You must insist on your rights, aunt. Make them let him go."

Sulkily enough the executioners unbound the heavy furca. Agias staggered to his feet, too dazed really to know what deliverance had befallen him.

"Why don't you thank the Vestal?" said Alfidius. "She has made us release you—you ungrateful dog!"

"Released? Saved?" gasped Agias, and he reeled as though his head were in a whirl. Then, as if recollecting his faculties, he fell down at Fabia's feet, and kissed the hem of her robe.

"The gods save us all now," muttered Alfidius. "Valeria will swear that we schemed to have the boy released. We shall never dare to face her again!"

"Oh! do not send me back to that cruel woman!" moaned Agias. "Better die now, than go back to her and incur her anger again! Kill me, but do not send me back!"

And he broke down again in inward agony.

Drusus had been surveying the boy, and saw that though he was now in a pitiable enough state, he had been good-looking; and that though his back had been cruelly marred, his face had not been cut with the lashes. Perhaps the very fact that Agias had been the victim of Valeria, and the high contempt in which the young Drusian held his divorced stepmother, made him instinctively take the outraged boy's part.

"See here," began Drusus, "were you to be whipped by orders of Calatinus?"

"No," moaned Agias; "Valeria gave the orders. My master was out."

"Ha!" remarked Drusus to his aunt, "won't the good man be pleased to know how his wife has killed a valuable slave in one of her tantrums?" Then aloud. "If I can buy you of Calatinus, and give you to the Lady Cornelia, niece of Lentulus, the consul-elect, will you serve her faithfully, will you make her wish the law of your life?"

"I will die for her!" cried Agias, his despair mingled with a ray of hope.

"Where is your master?"

"At the Forum, I think, soliciting votes," replied the boy.

"Well then, follow me," said Drusus, "our road leads back to the Forum. We may meet him. If I can arrange with him, your executioners have nothing to fear from Valeria. Come along."

Agias followed, with his head again in a whirl.