ACTÉ, page 21
The little band had now arrived opposite Phaon’s villa, which was situated where Serpentara stands to-day. This tract of country, lying behind the Sacred Mount, might afford Nero a temporary hiding-place, sufficiently isolated at any rate to give him time in which to make up his mind to die, in case every chance of escape were cut off. Epaphroditus, who knew the road, took the leadership of the party, and, turning to the left, struck into a bye road; Nero followed him, while the two freedman and Sporus brought up the rear. When they had covered half the distance they heard a noise on the road, but could not see by whom it was caused. The darkness favoured them, and Nero and Epaphroditus struck off across country while Sporus and the two freedmen continued along past the Sacred Mount. The sounds presently proved to have been caused by a night patrol, in command of a centurion, which had been sent out to hunt for the Emperor. The patrol stopped the three travellers, but not recognising Nero among them, allowed them to proceed on their road after a few words had been exchanged with Sporus.
The Emperor and Epaphroditus, however, found the country so strewn with boulders and masses of earth which had fallen, owing to the earthquake felt at the moment when the little band had left Rome, that they were obliged to dismount. Then they made their way over rushes and thorns, which made Nero’s bare feet bleed and tore his cloak. At last they perceived a mass of building looming through the darkness. A watch-dog barked, following them up on the inside of the wall as they skirted it on the outside. Presently they arrived at the entrance to a quarry belonging to the estate, from which Phaon had drawn gravel. The opening was low and narrow, but Nero, impelled by his terror, dropped on his hands and knees and crept inside. Epaphroditus did not enter, but told the Emperor that he was going to look round the walls and make his way into the house, so as to find out whether his master might safely follow him there. Scarcely had he gone off when Nero, finding himself alone in this quarry, was seized with an extreme terror; he seemed to be imprisoned in a tomb the door of which had shut him in alive; so he rushed out hastily again to see the sky and breathe the open air. Having reached the further end of the quarry he saw a pool a few yards distant. Although the water was stagnant, he was so thirsty that he could not resist the desire to drink. Accordingly he placed his cloak under his feet to protect them to some extent from the stones and brambles, dragged himself to the water and drank a few mouthfuls in the hollow of his hand; then, looking up to heaven, he exclaimed in a tone of reproach: “So this is the last refreshment vouchsafed to Claudius Nero!”
He had been sitting for some little time sadly and pensively on the edge of the pool, occupied in removing the thorns and brambles from his cloak, when he heard himself called. The voice thus breaking the stillness of the night, although its expression was one of kindness, made him start; he turned and saw Epaphroditus at the entrance to the quarry with a torch in his hand. His secretary had kept his word, and after entering the villa by the principal gate and pointing out to the freedmen the spot where the Emperor was waiting for them, they had by their united efforts made a hole through an old wall and effected an opening by which he could pass from the quarry into the villa. Nero followed his guide with such haste that he forgot his cloak on the edge of the pool. Retracing his steps through the quarry, he made his way by the newly-made opening into a slave’s room, which had for its sole furniture a mattress and an old counterpane, and was lighted by a miserable earthenware lamp that gave out more smoke than light in the filthy little chamber that felt more like a tomb than anything else.
Nero sat down on the mattress with his back resting against the wall. Being hungry and thirsty, he asked for food and drink. They brought him a little brown bread and a glass of water. But after tasting the bread, he threw it away; then he handed back the water, asking them to warm it. Left to himself, he let his head sink upon his knees and remained for some minutes silent and motionless as a statue of grief. Presently the door opened; thinking that they were bringing him the water, Nero raised his head and saw Sporus before him, holding a letter in his hand.
There was on the eunuch’s pale face, accustomed to express dejection and sadness, such a strange look of savage joy that Nero stared at him for a moment, not recognising in the young man who now approached him the docile slave of all his caprices. When Sporus was close to the bed, he held out his arm and handed the Emperor a parchment. Nero, although he did not understand why Sporus was smiling, suspected that this parchment contained some fatal news.
“From who does this letter come?” he asked, without making any movement to take it.
“From Phaon,” answered the young man.
“And what does it say?” continued Nero, turning pale.
“That the Senate has declared you the enemy of the State, and that they are searching for you to hand you over for punishment.”
“For punishment!” cried Nero, rising on one knee, “for punishment! me! Claudius Caesar!”
“You are no longer Claudius Caesar,” replied the eunuch coldly; “you are Domitius Ahenobarbus, that is all, declared a traitor to your country and condemned to death!”
“And what is the punishment for traitors to their country?” asked Nero.
“Their clothes are stripped off, their necks are fixed between the prongs of a fork, they are paraded through the forums, the markets, and the Campus Martius, and then they are scourged with rods until they are dead.”
“Oh!” cried Nero, springing to his feet, “I can still fly, there is still time to escape, to reach the forest of Laricia and the marshes of Minturnae; some vessel will take me aboard and I will hide in Sicily or Egypt.”
“Fly!” said Sporus, still pale and cold as a marble statue, “fly! and which way, pray?”
“By this way,” cried Nero, opening the door of the chamber and rushing towards the quarry; “if I came in, I can equally well go out.”
“Yes, but since you came in,” said Sporus, “the opening has been blocked up again, and, athlete though you be, I doubt whether you can push back the stone by your own strength.”
“By Jupiter! it is true!” cried Nero, vainly exhausting himself in efforts to remove the stone. “Who has blocked up the cavern? who rolled this rock here?”
“I and the freedmen,” answered Sporus. “And why did you do so? why have you shut me in, like Cacus in his cave?”
“In order that you may die like him,” said Sporus in a tone of hatred of which you would never have thought his gentle voice was capable.
“Die! die!” said Nero, striking the wall with his head like a trapped stag seeking an outlet. “Every one, then, wants me to die? every one forsakes me?”
“Yes,” answered Sporus, “every one desires your death, but every one has not forsaken you, since I am here and have come to die with you.”
“Yes, yes,” murmured Nero, letting himself fall back again upon the mattress; “yes, that is fidelity, indeed.”
“You are mistaken, Caesar,” said Sporus, crossing his arms and gazing at Nero, who was biting his pillow, “you are mistaken; it is not fidelity, but something sweeter than that; it is revenge.”
“Revenge!” cried Nero, turning round quickly, “revenge! what have I done to you then, Sporus?”
“Great Jupiter!” said the eunuch, lifting his arms to heaven, “he actually asks what he has done to me!”
“Ah! Yes,” murmured Nero, in terrified accents and retreating against the wall.
“What have you done to me?” answered Sporus, advancing towards him and then letting his hands drop as though they had suddenly lost all power; “you have transformed me, from a child who was born to become a man and have his share in the feelings and joys of earth and heaven, into a poor creature devoid of all hope, deprived of all natural rights. Fettered by my impotence, I have seen all joys and pleasures pass me by, as Tantalus saw meat and drink without being able to reach them. Nor was that all; I might perhaps have forgiven you, had I been allowed to suffer and to weep in silence and in solitude, clothed in the garb of mourning; but no, I have had to wear purple and fine linen, like the great ones of the earth, to smile like those who are happy, to mingle in society like those who really exist — I, who was nought but a poor shadow, a very phantom.”
“But what more did you want?” said Nero, trembling; “I shared with you my wealth, my pleasures, my power; you have been at all my fêtes, have had your courtiers and flatterers like myself; and, when I knew not what more to give you, I bestowed on you my name.”
“And that is exactly what has made me hate you, Caesar. If you had had me poisoned like Britannicus, assassinated like Agrippina, or had made me open my veins like Seneca, I might have forgiven you in the hour of death. But you have treated me neither as man nor as woman, but as a mere plaything which you could deal with as you pleased, as though I were a marble statue, without eyes or tongue or heart. These favours of which you speak were gilded humiliations, nothing more; and the more you loaded me with shameful honours and placed me on a pinnacle above others, the more could every one measure the extent of my infamy. Nor is that all; the day before yesterday, when I handed you my signet ring, and when you might have vented your anger on me with a dagger-thrust, which at least would have made all who were present think that I was worth the trouble of killing, you struck me with your fist, as if I had been a parasite, a slave, a dog!”
“Yes, yes,” said Nero, “I was wrong; forgive me, my good Sporus.”
“And yet,” continued Sporus, as though he had not noticed Nero’s interruption, “this nameless, sexless being, without friends, without feelings; this ambiguous creature, if he could do no good, could at least do some harm; could enter your chamber by night and steal from you the tablets which condemned the Senate and people to death, could disperse them, as a storm of wind might have done, over the Forum and the Capitol, so that you have no longer any mercy to expect from Senate or people; he could carry off the box containing Locusta’s poison, so as to hand you over defenceless and unarmed to those who are searching for you to make you suffer an infamous death.”
“You are wrong!” cried Nero, drawing a dagger from beneath his pillow; “you are wrong: I have this weapon left.”
“Yes,” said Sporus, “but you have not the courage to use it either against others or against yourself. There will be given to the world, thanks to a eunuch, the spectacle of an Emperor dying beneath the rods and scourges, after having been paraded naked with the malefactors’ fork at his neck through the Forum and the markets of Rome.”
“But I have a good hiding-place, they will not find me here,” said Nero.
“Yes, you might possibly have escaped them yet, had I not met a centurion and told him where you were. At this moment he is knocking at the gate of the villa; they are coming, Caesar, they are here.”
“Oh! I will not wait for them,” cried Nero, placing the point of the dagger to his breast; “I will strike home and kill myself.”
“You dare not,” said Sporus.
“And yet,” murmured Nero in Greek, as though feeling with the point of the blade for a spot at which to strike, but still hesitating to bury the steel; “yet it ill befits Nero not to know how to die — yes, I have lived shamefully and I die in shame. But, oh! what an artist will be lost to the world in me.” He stopped suddenly, the blow arrested, his hair standing on end, his brow streaming with perspiration, listening to a fresh noise that he had just heard, and mumbled this line from Homer:
“‘Tis the sound of horses swiftly galloping.”
At this moment Epaphroditus rushed into the chamber. Nero was not mistaken; the noise was indeed that of the pursuing horsemen who, guided by the information given by Sporus, had made straight for the villa. There was therefore not a moment to be lost if the Emperor was not to fall into the hands of his executioners.
Nero now appeared to come to a fixed determination; drawing Epaphroditus aside he made him swear by the Styx not to allow his head to fall into the hands of any one, and to have his entire body burned as soon as possible. Then, drawing the dagger from his girdle where he had replaced it, he put the point to his throat. At this moment was heard the sound of approaching footsteps and the menacing tones of angry voices. Epaphroditus saw that the supreme moment had come; he seized Nero’s hand, and setting the dagger to his throat, drove it in to the hilt; then, followed by Sporus, he rushed into the quarry, closing the door of the room behind them.
Nero uttered a fearful cry, plucked out the weapon and threw it away from him, then staggered for a moment with eyes fixed and breast panting, fell upon one knee and then on both, tried to hold himself up with one arm, while the blood gushed from his throat over the fingers of his other hand with which he was endeavouring to close the wound. Finally he looked round him for the last time with an expression of despair, and seeing that he was alone, let himself sink to the ground with a groan. At this moment the door flew open and the centurion came in. Seeing the Emperor lying motionless, he sprang towards him and tried to stanch the blood with his cloak; but Nero, summoning his remaining strength, pushed him away, then added in a tone of reproach: “Is this the fidelity you swore to me?” With these words he uttered his last sigh and expired; his eyes, however, strange to say, remained open and staring.
Such was the end. The soldiers who had accompanied the centurion came in to assure themselves that the Emperor was really dead, and having no doubt on this point, returned to Rome to announce the fact while the corpse of the man who but the day before was master of the world was left lying in the blood-stained mire, without one slave to discharge the last offices.
The body lay there for a whole day; in the evening there entered a woman, Acté, pale of face, with slow and solemn step. She had obtained from Icelus, Galba’s freedman, whom we saw stirring up the people, and who had become all powerful at Rome where the advent of his master was now expected, permission to perform the last offices for Nero. She undressed the body and washed away the blood with which it was fouled, wrapped it in a white cloak embroidered with gold which he had worn the last time she had seen him, and which he had given her as a present; then she carried it back to Rome in a covered chariot which she had brought with her. There she gave him a modest funeral, no grander than that of an ordinary citizen, depositing the corpse in the Mausoleum of Domitian, which is seen from the Campus Martius on the hill of the Gardens, and where Nero had had a tomb of porphyry erected for himself, surmounted by an altar of marble from Luna and enclosed with a balustrade of the same material from Thasos.
All this completed, she knelt there a whole day in prayer at the tomb, silent and motionless as a statue of grief.
At the approach of evening she descended the hill slowly and without looking behind her; took the road through the valley of Egeria and entered the Catacombs, never to leave them again.
As for Epaphroditus and Sporus, they were found in the quarry lying dead side by side. Between them was the golden box; they had shared the contents like brothers, and the poison prepared for Nero had proved sufficient for them both.
CHAPTER XIX
THUS died Nero in the thirty-second year of his age, and on the very day of the year on which he had put Octavia to death. However, the strange mystery which shrouded the manner of his death, and the performance of his funeral rites by a woman without his body having been publicly exposed according to the usual custom, left the Roman people, who are the most superstitious of nations, in great uncertainty as to whether he were actually dead or not. Many people asserted that the Emperor had reached the port of Ostia and that a vessel had transported him thence into Syria, so that he might be expected to re-appear any day; and while his tomb continued for fifteen years to be religiously decked with spring and summer flowers, there were those who from time to time carried to the rostrum images of Nero depicted in the purple robe; others there were who came and read proclamations there as though he were still alive and would return with armed power to take vengeance on his enemies. Twenty years, moreover, after his death, when Suetonius, who relates the fact, was a young man, there appeared among the Parthians an individual of humble birth who claimed to be Nero and was cherished for long years by this nation who had especially honoured the memory of the late Caesar. Nor was this all; these traditions spread from Pagans to Christians, and St. Jerome, relying on certain passages written by St. Paul himself, described Nero as Antichrist, or at least as his precursor. Sulpicius Serverus in his Dialogues instructs St. Martin that Nero and Antichrist were to appear before the end of the world, the one in the West, where he would re-establish the worship of idols; the other in the East, where he would rebuild the city and temple of Jerusalem, establishing it as the seat of his empire, until finally Antichrist would be recognised as the Messiah, would declare war against Nero and destroy him. Lastly, St. Augustine, in his Civitas Dei, declare that even in his own day, that is to say, at the beginning of the fifth century, many still refused to believe that Nero was dead, asserting that, on the contrary, he was concealed in some inaccessible spot, still retaining all his former vigour and cruelty, to re-appear some day and ascend once more the Imperial throne.
To this present day, among the whole long series of Emperors who have each in his turn added one more to the monuments of Rome, the most popular is Nero. There still exist Nero’s palace, Nero’s baths, Nero’s tower. At Bauli, a vine-dresser pointed out to me without the slightest hesitation the former site of Nero’s villa. In the middle of the bay of Baiae the sailors who rowed me stopped at the exact spot where the trireme prepared by Nero was wrecked, and on my way back to Rome a peasant conducted me straight to Serpentara along the same Nomentane Way which Nero had followed in his flight, and there, in some ruins standing solitary amid the far-stretching campagna of Rome, so rich in architectural remains, insisted on my recognising the site of the house where the Emperor stabbed himself to death. And lastly, there is not a single soul, down to the very Vetturino I hired to drive me to Florence, but told me, in his ignorant devotion to the memory of the last of the Caesars, as he pointed out a ruin to the right hand of the Stora at Rome:
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