Vergilius.

by Irving Bach.e.l.ler.

CHAPTER 1

Rome had pa.s.sed the summits and stood looking into the dark valley of fourteen hundred years. Behind her the graves of Caesar and Sall.u.s.t and Cicero and Catullus and Vergil and Horace; before her centuries of madness and treading down; round about her a mult.i.tude sickening of luxury, their houses filled with spoil, their mouths with folly, their souls with discontent; above her only mystery and silence; in her train, philosophers questioning if it were not better for a man had he never been born--deeming life a misfortune and extinction the only happiness; poets singing no more of "pleasantries and trifles," but seeking favor with poor obscenities. Soon they were even to celebrate the virtue of harlots, the integrity of thieves, the tenderness of murderers, the justice of oppression. Leading the caravan were types abhorrent and self-opposed--effeminate men, masculine women, cheerful cynics, infidel priests, wealthy people with no credit, patricians, honoring and yet despising the G.o.ds, hating and yet living on the populace. Here was the spectacle of a republican empire, and an emperor gathering power while he affected to disdain it.

The splendor of the capital had attracted from all nations the idle rich, gamblers, speculators, voluptuaries, profligates, intriguers, criminals. To such an extreme had luxury been carried that nothing was too sacred, nothing too costly to be enjoyed. Digestion had become a science, courtship an art, sleep a nightmare, comfort an accomplishment, and the very act of living an industry. Almost one may say that the G.o.ds lived only in the imagination of the ignorant and the jests of the learned. In a growing patriciate home had become a weariness, marriage a form, children a trouble, and the decline of motherhood an alarming fact. Augustus tried the remedy of legislation.

Henceforth marriage became a duty to the state. As between men and women, things were near a turning-point. Woman cannot long endure scorn nor the absence of veneration. A law older than the tablets of stone shall be her defence. Love is the price of motherhood. Soon or late, unless it be mingled in some degree with her pa.s.sion, the wonderful gift is withdrawn and men cease to be born of her. Slowly, both the bitterness and the understanding of its loss turn the world to virtue. A new and lofty sentiment was appearing. Woman, weary of her part in the human comedy, had begun to inspire a love sublime as the miracle in which she is born to act.

Happily, there were good people in Rome, even n.o.ble families, with whom sacrifice had still a sacred power, and who practised the four virtues of honor, bravery, wisdom, and temperance. In rural Latium, rich and poor clung to the old faith, and everywhere a plebeian feared alike the a.s.sessor and the G.o.ds, and sacrificed to both.

It is no wonder the G.o.ds were falling when even Jupiter had been outdone by a modest man who dwelt on the Palatine. One might have seen him there any day--a rather delicate figure with shiny blue eyes and hair now turning gray. He flung his lightning with unerring aim across the great purple sea into Arabia, Africa, and Spain, and northward to the German Ocean and eastward to the land of the Goths. The genius of this remarkable man had outdone the imagination of priest and poet. A genius for organization, like that of his ill.u.s.trious uncle, gave to Augustus a power greater than human hands had yet wielded.

A bit of gossip had travelled far and excited his curiosity. It spoke of a new king, with power above that of men, who was to conquer the world. Sayings of certain learned men came out of Judea into the land of lost hope. They told of the king of promise--that he would bring to men the gift of immortal life, that the heavens would declare his authority. Superst.i.tious to the blood and bone, not a few were thrilled by the message.

The minds of thinking men were sad, fearful, and beset with curiosity.

"If there be no G.o.ds," they were wont to ask, "have we any hope and responsibility?" They studied the philosophers Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, and were unsatisfied.

The nations were at peace, but not the souls of men. A universal and mighty war of the spirit was near at hand. The skirmishers were busy--patrician and plebeian, master and slave, oppressor and oppressed. Soon all were to see the line of battle, the immortal captains, the children of darkness, the children of light, the beginning of a great revolution.

Rome was like a weary child whose toys are G.o.ds and men, and who, being weary of them, has yet a curiosity in their destruction.

CHAPTER 2

Those days it was near twelve o'clock by the great dial of history.

One day, about mid-afternoon, the old capital lay glowing in the sunlight. Its hills were white with marble and green with gardens, and traced and spotted and flecked with gold; its thoroughfares were bright with color--white, purple, yellow, scarlet--like a field of roses and amarantus.

The fashionable day had begun; knight and lady were now making and receiving visits.

Five litters and some forty slaves, who bore and followed them, were waiting in the court of the palace of the Lady Lucia. Beyond the walls of white marble a n.o.ble company was gathered that summer day. There were the hostess and her daughter; three young n.o.blemen, the purple stripes on each angusticlave telling of knightly rank; a Jewish prince in purple and gold; an old philosopher, and a poet who had been reading love lines. It was the age of pagan chivalry, and one might imperil his future with poor wit or a faulty epigram. Those older men had long held the floor, and their hostess, seeking to rally the young knights, challenged their skill in courtly compliment.

"O men, who have forgotten the love of women these days, look at her!"

So spoke the Lady Lucia--she that was widow of the Praefect Publius, who fell with half his cohort in the desert wars.

She had risen from a chair of ebony enriched by cunning Etruscan art--four mounted knights charging across its heavy back in armor of wrought gold. She stopped, facing the company, between two columns of white marble beautifully sculptured. Upon each a vine rose, limberly and with soft leaves in the stone, from base to capital. Her daughter stood in the midst of a group of maids who were dressing her hair.

"Arria, will you come to me?" said the Lady Lucia.

The girl came quickly--a dainty creature of sixteen, her dark hair waving, under jewelled fillets, to a knot behind. From below the knot a row of curls fell upon the folds of her outer tunic. It was a filmy, transparent thing--this garment--through which one could see the white of arm and breast and the purple fillets on her legs.

"She is indeed beautiful in the yellow tunic. I should think that scarlet rug had caught fire and wrapped her in its flame," said the poet Ovid.

"Nay, her heart is afire, and its light hath the color of roses," said an old philosopher who sat by. "Can you not see it shining through her cheeks?"

"Young sirs," said the Lady Lucia, with a happy smile, as she raised her daughter's hand, "now for your offers."

It was a merry challenge, and shows how lightly they treated a sacred theme those days.

First rose the grave senator, Aulus Valerius Maro by name.

"Madame," said he, stepping forward and bowing low, "I offer my heart and my fortune, and the strength of my arms and the fleetness of my feet and the fair renown of my fathers."

The Lady Lucia turned to her daughter with a look of inquiry.

"Brave words are not enough," said the fair Roman maiden, smiling, as her eyes fell.

Then came the effeminate Gracus, in head-dress and neckerchief, frilled robe and lady's sandals. He was of great sires who had borne the Roman eagles into Gaul.

"Good lady," said he, "I would give my life."

"And had I more provocation," said Arria, raising a jewelled bodkin, "I would take it."

Now the splendid Antipater, son of Herod the Great, was up and speaking. "I offer," said he, "my heart and wealth and half my hopes, and the jewels of my mother, and a palace in the beautiful city of Jerusalem."

"And a pretty funeral," the girl remarked, thoughtfully. "Jerusalem is half-way to Hades."

The Roman matron turned, and put her arm around the waist of the girl and drew her close. A young man rose from his chair and approached them. He was Vergilius, son of Varro, and of equestrian knighthood.

His full name was Quintus Vergilius Varro, but all knew the youth by his nomen. Tall and erect, with curly blond locks and blue eyes and lips delicately curved, there was in that hall no ancestral mask or statue so n.o.bly favored. He had been taught by an old philosopher to value truth as the better part of honor--a view not common then, but therein was a new light, spreading mysteriously.

"Dear Lady Lucia," said he, "I cannot amuse you with idle words. I fear to speak, and yet silence would serve me ill. I offer not the strength of my arms nor the fleetness of my feet, for they may fail me tomorrow; nor my courage, for that has never been tried; nor the renown of my fathers, for that is not mine to give; nor my life, for that belongs to my country; nor my fortune, for I should blush to offer what may be used to buy cattle. I would give a thing greater and more lasting than all of these. It is my love."

The girl turned half away, blushing pink. All had flung off the mask of comedy and now wore a look of surprise.

"By my faith!" said the poet, "this young knight meant his words."

"A man of sincerity, upon my soul!" said the old philosopher. "I have put my hope in him, and so shall Rome. A lucky girl is she, for has he not riches, talent, honor, temperance, courage, and the beauty of a G.o.d? And was I not his teacher?"

"My brave Vergilius," the matron answered, "you are like the knights of old I have heard my father tell of. They had such a way with them--never a smile and a melancholy look in their faces when they spoke of love. I give you the crown of gallantry, and, if she be willing, you shall walk with her in the garden. That is your reward."

Vergilius, advancing, took the girl's hand and kissed it.

"Will you go with me?" said he.

"On one condition," she answered, looking down at the folds of her tunic.

"And it is?"

"That you will entertain me with philosophy and the poets," she answered, with a smile.

"And with no talk of love," the matron added, as Arria took his arm.

They walked through the long hall of the palace, over soft rugs and great mosaics, and between walls aglow with tints of sky and garden.

These two bore with them a tender feeling as they pa.s.sed the figures of embattled horse and host in carven wood, and mural painting and colored mosaic and wrought metal--symbols of the martial spirit of the empire now oddly in contrast with their own. They came out upon a peristyle overlooking an ample garden wherein were vines, flowers, and fruit trees.