title: Imperial purple,
text: •o. ►V *o. "TLA, ^V t« t, *-?'^ ^ * ^^^'''^^ \^J€^*' .^ %> "^^iliS*" ^^"'^4 yfiv « ^^ .40^ ,v^ '^^ •©lis* -^^ ^, ' « « o •^^ ,4^ » 1^ O"!"- ^■V'. •*b V* r r • o. \,<^ t ' « 3^ ?^^J«v^^fm;3F': '"^ ^ ^-^-^v '<^^ p/h;- ^^i. 4^ »'" Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/imperialpurple01salt IMPERIAL PURPLE By Mr. Saltus The Anatomy of Negation. The Philosophy of Disenchantment. Love and Lore. Mary Magdalen. The Pace that Kills. A Transaction in Hearts. The Truth about Trlstrem Varick. Mr. Incoul's Misadventure. A Transient Guest. Eden. IN PREPARATION — Immortal Greece. IMPERIAL PURPLE BY EDGAR SALTUS CHICAGO: NJorrillHiggins ^ Go. 1892. r T\^^^^ Ci^'^ Copyright, 1S92, By EDGAR SALTUS A M. EDWIN ALBERT SCHROEDER Socr?te avait I'aimable habitude de ne refuser jamais les dons de ses amis, quel que fut leur peu de valeur. Toi, qui resembles tant au vieux sage, tu ne refuseras pas, je I'espere, la petite flanerie a travers les ages et les dieux que ma paresse offre maintenant a ton amitie. Edgar Evertson-Saltus Paris: / novembre, iSqi. CONTENTS. I. That Woman. ' II. Conjectural Rome. III. Fabulous Fields. IV The Pursuit of the Impossible. V. Nero, VI. The House of Flavia. VII. The Poison in the Purple. VIII. Faustine. IX. The Agony, I. THAT WOMAN IMPERIAL PURPLE. I. THAT WOMAN. When the murder was done and the heralds shouted through the thick streets that Caesar had passed into oblivion, it was the passing of the republic they announced, the founda- tion of Imperial Rome. There was a hush, then a riot which frightened a senate that frightened the world. For Csesar was adored. A man who could give millions away and sup on dry bread was apt to con- quer, not provinces alone, but hearts. Besides, he had begun well and his people had done their best. The 11 12 IMPERIAL PURPLE. House of Julia, to which he belonged, descended, he declared, from Venus. The ancestry was less legendary than typical. Cinna drafted a law giving him the right to marry as often as he chose. His mistresses were queens. After the episodes in Gaul, when he entered Rome his legions warned the citizens to have an eye on their wives. At seventeen he fascinated pirates. A shipload of the latter had caught him and demanded twenty talents ransom. " Too little," said the lad; ''I will give you fifty, and empale you too," which he did, jesting with them meanwhile, reciting verses of his own composition, calling them barbarians when they did not applaud, ordering them to be quiet when he wished to sleep, captivating them by the effront- ery of his assurance, and, the ransom paid, slaughtering them as he had promised. IMPERIAL PURPLE. 13 Tall, slender, not handsome, but superb and therewith so perfectly sent out, so well groomed, that Cicero mistook him for a fop from whom the republic had nothing to fear; splen- didly lavish, exquisitely gracious, he was born to charm and his charm was such that it still subsists. Cato alone was unenthralled. But Cato was never pleased; he laughed but once, and all Rome turned out to see him; he belonged to an earlier day, to an austerer, perhaps to a better one, and it may be that in " that woman," as he called Csesar, his clearer vision discerned beneath the plumage of the peacock, the beak and talons of the bird of prey. For they were there, and needed only a vote of the senate to batten on nations of which the senate had never heard. Loan him an army, and "that woman" was to give geography such a twist 14 IMPERIAL PURPLE. that to-day whoso says Caesar says history. Was it this that Cato saw, or may it be that one of the oracles which had not ceased to speak had told him of that coming night when he was to take his own life, fearful lest ''that woman'' should overwhelm him with the magnificence of his forgiveness? Cato walks through history, as he walked through the Forum, bare of foot — too severe to be simple, too ob- stinate to be generous — the image of Ancient Rome. In Csesar there was nothing of this. He was wholly modern; dissolute enough for any epoch, but possessed of virtues that his contemporaries could not spelL A slave tried to poison him. Suetonius says he merely put the slave to death. The "merely" is to the point. Cato would have tortured him first. After Pharsalus he forgave IMPERIAL PURPLE. 15 everyone. When severe, it was to him- self. It is true he turned over two mil- lion people into so many dead flies, their legs in the air, creating, as Tacitus has it, a solitude which he described as Peace; but what antitheses may not be expected in a man who, before the first century was begun, divined the fifth, and who in the Suevians — that terrible people beside whom no nation' could live — foresaw Attila! Save in battle his health was poor. He was epileptic, his strength under- mined by incessant debauches; yet let a nation fancying him months away put on. insurgent airs, and on that na- tion he descended as the thunder does. In his campaigns time and again he overtook his own messengers. A phantom in a ballad was not swifter than he. Simultaneously his sword flashed in Germany, on the banks of the Adriatic, in that Ultima Thule 16 IMPERIAL PURPLE. where the Britons Hved. From the depths of Gaul he dominated Rome, and therewith he was penetrating impenetrable forests, trailing legions as a torch trails smoke, erecting walls that a nation could not cross, turning soldiers into marines, infantry into cavalr}^, building roads that are roads to-day, fighting with one hand and writing an epic with the other, dictat- ing love-letters, chronicles, dramas; finding time to make a collection of witticisms; overturning thrones while he decorated Greece; mingling initiate into orgies of the Druids, and, as the cymbals clashed, coquetting with those terrible virgins who awoke the tempest; not only conquering, but captivating, transforming barbarians into soldiers and those soldiers into senators, submitting three hundred nations and ransacking Britannia for pearls for his mistresses' ears. IMPERIAL PURPLE. 17 Each epoch has its secret, and each epoch-maker his own. Caesar's secret lay in the power he had of projecting a soul into the ranks of an army, of making legions and their leader one. Disobedience only he punished; any- thing else he forgave. After a victory his soldiery did what they liked. He gave them arms, slaves to burnish them, women, feasts, sleep. They were his comrades; he called them so; he wept at the death of any of them, and when they were frightened, as they were in Gaul before they met the Germans, and in Africa before they encountered Juba, Caesar fright^ ened them still more. He permitted no questions, no making of wills. The cowards could hide where they liked; his old guard, the Tenth, would do the work alone; or, threat still more sinister, he would command a retreat. Ah, that, never! Fanaticism 2 18 IMPERIAL PURPLE. returned, the legions begged to be punished. Michelet says he would like to have seen him crossing Gaul, bare-headed in the rain. It would have been as interesting, perhaps, to have watched him beneath the shade of the velar- ium pleading the cause of Masintha against the Numidian king. Before him was a crowd that covered not the Forum alone, but the steps of the adjacent temples, the roofs of the basilicas, the arches of Janus, one that extended remotely to the black walls of the Curia Hostilia beyond. And there, on the rostrum, a musician be- hind him supplying the la from a flute, the air filled with gold motes, Csesar, his toga becomingly adjusted, a jew- elled hand extended, opened for the defense. Presently, when through the exercise of that art of his which Cicero pronounced incomparable, he IMPERIAL PURPLE. 19 felt that the sympathy of the audience was won, it would have been interest- ing, indeed, to have heard him argue point after point — clearly, brilliantly, wittily ; insulting the plaintiff in poetic terms; consigning him gracefully to the infernal regions; accentuating a fictitious and harmonious anger; dry- ing his forehead without disarranging his hair; suffocating with the emo- tions he evoked; displaying real tears, and with them *a knowledge, not only of law, rhetoric, philosophy, but of geometry, astronomy, ethics and the fine arts; blinding his hearers with the coruscations of his erudition; stirring them with his tongue, as with the point of a sword, until, as though abruptly possessed by an access of fury, he seized the plaintiff by the beard and sent him spinning like a leaf which the wind has caught. It would have bored no one either 20 IMPERIAL PURPLE. to have assisted at his triumph when he returned from Gaul, when he re- turned after Spain, after Pharsalus, when he returned from Cleopatra's arms. On that day the Via Sacra was cur- tained with silk. To the blare of twisted bugles there descended to it from the turning at the hill a troop of musicians garmented in leather tunics, bonneted with lions' heads. Behind them a hundred bulls,* too fat to be troublesome, and decked for death, bellowed musingly at the sacrifants, who, naked to the waist, a long-han- dled hammer on the shoulder, main- tained them with colored cords. To the rumble of wide wheels and the thunder of spectators the prodigious booty passed, and with it triumphs of war, vistas of conquered countries, pictures of battles, lists of the van- quished, symbols of cities that no IMPERIAL PURPLE. 21 longer were; a stretch of ivory on which shone three words, each begin- ning with a V; images of gods dis- turbed, the Rhine, the Rhone, the captive Ocean in massive gold; the ghtter of three thousand crowns offered to the dictator by the army and alHes of Rome. Then came the standards of the repubhc, a swarm of eagles, the size of pigeons, in pol- ished silver upheld by lances which ensigns bore, preceding the six hundred senators who marched in a body, their togas bordered with red, while to the din of incessant insults, interminable files of prisoners passed, their wrists chained to iron collars, which held their heads very straight, and to the rear a litter, in which crouched the Vincegetorix of Gaul, a great moody giant, his menacing eyes nearly hidden in the tangles of his tawny hair. 22 IMPERIAL PURPLE. When they had gone the street was alive with explosions of brass, aflame with the burning red cloaks of laureled lictors making way for the coming of Csesar. Four horses, harnessed abreast, their manes dyed, their fore- locks puffed, drew a high and wonder- fully jeweled car; and there, in the attributes and attitude of Jupiter Capitolinus, Csesar sat, blinking his tired eyes. His face and arms were painted vermilion; above the Tyrian purple of his toga, above the gold work and palms of his tunic, there oscillated a little ball in which there were charms against Envy. On his head a wreath concealed his increas- ing baldness; along his left arm the sceptre lay ; behind him a boy admon- ished him noisily to remember he was man, while to the rear for miles and miles there rang the laugh of trumpets, the click of castanets, the shouts of IMPERIAL PURPLE, 23 dancers, the roar of the multitude, the tramp of legions, and the cry, caught up and repeated, '*/(?/ Trzomphe f'' Presentl}^, in the temple of the god of gods, side by side with the statue of Jupiter, Caesar found his own statue with " Caesar, demi-god," at its base. The captive chiefs disappeared in the Tullianum, and a herald called, ^'They have Hved!" Through the squares jesters circulated, polyglot and obscene; in the circus the flower of the nobility held the reins ; across the Tiber, in an artificial lake, the flotilla of Egypt fought against that of Tyr; in the amphitheatre there was a combat of soldiers, infantry against cavalry, one that indemnified those that had not seen the massacres in Thessaly and in Spain. There were public feasts, gifts to every one. Tables were set in the Forum, in the circuses and theatres, Falernian cir- 24 IMPERIAL PURPLE. culated in amphorae, Chius in barrels, When the populace was gorged there were the red feathers to enable it to gorge again. Intoxication knew no frontiers. In the arenas the gladia- tors died consoled. Of the Rome of Romulus there was nothing left save the gaunt she-wolf, her wide lips curled at the descendants of her nursling. Later, when in slippered feet Csesar wandered through those lovely gar- dens of his that lay beyond the Tiber, it may be that he recalled a dream which had com.e to him as a lad; one which concerned the submission of his mother; one which had disturbed him until the soothsayers said: "The mother you saw is the earth, and you will be her master." And as the memory of the dream returned, per- haps with it came the memory of the hour when as simple quaestor he had wept at Gaddir before a statue that IMPERIAL PURPLE. 25 was there. Demi-god, yes; he was that. More, even ; he was dictator, but the dream was unfulfilled. There were the depths of Hither Asia, the mys- teries that lay beyond; there were the glimmering plains of the Caucasus; there were the Vistula and the Baltic; the diadems of Cyrus and of Alexan- der defying his ambition yet, and what were triumphs and divinity to one who would own the world! It was this that preoccupied him. The immensity of his successes seemed petty and Rome very small. Hereto- fore he had forgiven those who had opposed him. Presently his attitude changed, and so subtly that it was the more humiliating; it was not that he no longer forgave, he disdained to punish. His contempt was absolute. The senate made his office of ponti- fix maximus hereditary and accorded the title of Imperator to his heirs. He 26 IMPERIAL PURPLE. snubbed the senate and the honors that it brought. The senate was shocked. Composed of men whose fortunes he had made, the senate was not only shocked, its education in in- gratitude was complete. Already there had been murmurs. Not con- tent with disarranging the calendar, outlining an empire, drafting a code while planning fresh beauties, new the- atres, bi-lingual libraries, larger tem- ples, grander gods, Caesar was at work in the markets, in the kitchens of the gourmets, in the jewel-boxes of the virgins. Liberty, visibly, was taking flight. Besides, the power concen- trated in him might be so pleasantly distributed. It was decided that Caesar was in the way. To put him out of it a pretext was necessary. One day the senate assembled at his command. They were to sign a decree creating him king. In order IMPERIAL PURPLE. 27 not to, Suetonius says, they killed him, wounding each other in the effort, for Caesar fought like the demon that he was, desisting only when he recog- nized Brutus, to whom, in Greek, he muttered a reproach, and, draping his toga that he might fall with decency, fell backward, his head covered, a few feet from the bronze wolf that stood, its ears pointed at the letters S. P. Q. R. which decorated a frieze of the Curia. Brutus turned to harangue the sen- ate; it had fled. He went to the Forum to address the people ; there was no one. Rome was strangely empty. Doors were barricaded, windows closed. Through the silent streets gladiators prowled. Night came, and with it whispering groups. The groups thickened, voices mounted. Caesar's will had been read. He had left his gardens to the people, a gift 28 IMPERIAL PURPLE. to every citizen, his wealth and power to his butchers. The body, which two slaves had removed, an arm hanging from the litter, had never been as powerfully alive. Caesar reigned then as never before. An actor mouthed: "I brought them Hfe, they gave me death." And willingly would the mob have made Rome the funeral pyre of their idol. In the sky a comet appeared. It was his soul on its way to Olym- pus. II. CONJECTURAL ROME 29 II. CONJECTURAL ROME. "I received Rome in brick; I shall leave it in marble," said Augustus, vrho was fond of fine phrases, a trick he had caught from Vergil. And when he looked from his home on the Palatine over the glitter of the Forum and the glare of the Capitol to the new and wonderful precinct which extended to the Field of Mars, there was a stretch of splendor which sanc- tioned the boast. The city then was very vast. The tourist might walk in it, as in the London of to-day,mile after mile, and at whatever point he placed himself, Rome still lay beyond; a Rome quite like London — one that was choked with mystery, with gold and curious crime. 31 Yi 32 IMPERIAL PURPLE. But it was not all marble. There were green terraces and porphyry porticoes that leaned to a river on which red galleys passed; there were theatres in which a multitude could jeer at an emperor, and arenas in which an emperor could watch a multitude die; there were bronze doors and garden roofs, glancing villas and temples that defied the sun; there were spacious streets, a Forum cur» tained with silk, the glint and evoca- tions of trophies of war, the splendor of a host of gods, but it was not all marble; there were rents in the mag- nificence and tatters in the laticlave of state. In the Subura, where at night women sat in high chairs, ogling the passer with painted eyes, there was still plenty of brick; tall tenements, soiled linen, the odor of Whitechapel and St. Giles. The streets were noisy IMPERIAL PURPLE. 33 with match-peddlers, with vendors of cake and tripe and coke; there were touts there too, altars to unimportant divinities, lying Jews who dealt in old clothes, in obscene pictures and un- mentionable wares; at the crossings there were thimbleriggers, clowns and jugglers, who made glass balls appear and disappear surprisingly; there were doorways decorated with curious in- vitations, gossippy barbershops, where through the liberality of politicians, the scum of a great city was shaved, curled and painted free; and there were public houses, where vagabond slaves and sexless priests drank the mulled wine of Crete, supped on the flesh of beasts slaughtered in the arena, or watched the Syrian women twist to the click of castanets. Beyond were grey quadrangular buildings, the stomach of Rome, through which, each noon, ediles 34 IMPERIAL PURPLE. passed, verifying the prices, the weights and measures of the market men, examining the fish and meats, the enormous cauHflowers that came from the suburbs, Veronese carrots, Arician pears, stout thrushes, suckHng pigs, eggs embedded in grass, oysters from Baise, boxes of onions and garHc mixed, mountains of poppies, beans and fennel, destroying whatever had ceased to be fresh and taxing that which was. On the Via Sacra were the fine shops frequented by ladies; bazaars where silks and xylons were to be had, essences and unguents, travel- ing boxes of scented wood, switches of yellow hair, useful drugs such as hemlock, aconite, mandragora and cantharides; the last thing of Ovid's and the Mdyjowt Xoyov those improper little novels that came from Greece. IMPERIAL PURPLE, 35 On the Appian Way, through green afternoons and pink arcades, fashion strolled. There wealth passed in its chariots, smart young men that smelt of cinnamon instead of war, nobles, matrons and cocottes. At the other end of the city, be- yond the menagerie of the Pantheon, was the Field of Mars, an open-air o-ymnasium, where every form of ex- ercise was to be had, even to that sim- ple promenade in which the Romans delighted, and which in Caesar's camp so astonished the Verronians that they thought the promenaders crazy and offered to lead them to their tents. There was tennis for those who liked it; racquets, polo, football, quoits, wrestling, everything apt to induce perspiration and prepare for the hour when a gong of bronze announced the opening of the baths — those wonder- ful baths, where the Roman, his slaves 36 IMPERIAL PURPLE. about him, after passing through steam and water and the hands of the masseur, had every hair plucked from his arms, legs and armpits; his flesh rubbed down with nard, his limbs polished with pumice; and then, wrapped in a scarlet robe, lined with fur, was sent home in a litter. "Strike them in the face!" cried Caisar at Pharsalus, when the young patricians made their charge; and the young patricians, who cared more for their looks than they did for victory, turned and fled. It was to the Field of Mars that Agrippa came, to whom Rome owed the Pantheon and the demand for a law which should inhibit the private ownership of a masterpiece. There, too, his eunuchs about him, Mecaenas lounged, companioned by Varus, by Horace and the mime Bathylle, all of whom he was accustomed to invite IMPERIA L P UBPLE. 37 to that lovely villa of his which over- looked the blue Sabinian hills, and where suppers were given such as those which Petronius has described so alertly and so well. In a hall like that of Mecaenas', one divided against itself, the upper half containing the couches and .tables, the other reserved for the service and the entertainments that follow, the ceiling was met by columns, the walls hid- den by panels of gems. On a frieze twelve pictures, surmounted by the signs of the zodiac, represented the dishes of the different months. Be- neath the bronze beds and silver tables mosaics were set in imitation of food that had fallen and had not been swept away. And there, in white ungirdled tunics, the head and neck circled with coils of amaranth — the perfume of which in opening the pores neutralizes the fumes of wine — 38 IMPERIAD PURPLE. the guests lay, fanned by boys, whose curly hair they used for napkins. Under the supervision of a butler the courses were served on platters so large that they covered the tables; sows' breasts with Lybian truffles; dormice baked in poppies and honey; peacock-tongues flavored with cin- namon; oysters stewed in garum — a sauce made of the intestines of fish — sea-wolves from the Baltic; sturgeons from Rhodes; fig-peckers from Samos; African snails; pale beans in pink lard; and a yellow pig cooked after the Trojan fashion, from which, when carved, hot sausages fell and live thrushes flew. Therewith was the mulsum, a cup made of white wine, nard, roses, absinthe and honey; the delicate sweet wines of Greece; and crusty Falernian of the year six hun- dred and thirty-two. As the cups circulated, choirs entered, chanting IMPERIAL PURPLE. 39 sedately the last erotic song; lithe virgins, their bodies rubbed with oil, wrestled like athletes in the games; a clown danced on the top of a ladder, which he maintained upright as he danced, telling meanwhile untellable stories to the frieze; and host and guests, unvociferously, as good breed- ing dictates, chatted through the pauses of the service; discussed the disadvantages of death, the value of Ncevian iambics, the disgrace of Ovid, banished because of Livia's eyes. Such was the Rome of Augustus. "Caesar," cried a mime to him one day, "do you know that it is import- ant for you that the people should be interested in Bathylle and in myself.^'' The mime was right. The sover- eign of Rome was not the Caesar, nor yet the aristocracy. The latter was dead. It had been banished by bar- barian senators, by barbarian gods; 40 IMPERIAL PURPLE. it had died twice, at Pharsalus, at Philippi; it was the people that was sovereign, and it was important that that sovereign should be amused — flattered, too, and fed. For thirty years not a Roman of note had died in his bed; not one but had kept by him a slave who should kill him when his hour had come; anarchy had been continuous; but now Rome was at rest and its sovereign wished to laugh. Made up of every nation and every vice, the universe was ransacked for its entertainment. The mountains sent its lions, the desert giraffes; there were boas from the jungles, bulls from the plains, and hippopotami from the waters of the Nile. Into the arenas patricians descended; in the amphi- theatre there were criminals from Gaul; in the Forum philosophers from Greece. On the stage there were tragedies, pantomimes and farce; IMPERIAL PURPLE, 41 there were races in the circus, and in the sacred groves girls with the Orient in their eyes and sHm waists that swayed to the crotals. For the thirst of the sovereign there were aqueducts, and for its hunger Africa, Egypt, Sicily contributed grain. Syria unveiled her altars, Persia the mystery and magnificence of her gods. Such was Rome. Augustus was less noteworthy; so unnecessary even that every student must regret Ac- tium, Anthony's defeat, the passing of Caesar's dream. For Anthony was made for conquests; it was he who, fortune favoring, might have given the world to Rome. A splendid, an impudent bandit, first and foremost a soldier, vaunting himself a descendant of Hercules whom he resembled; hailed at Ephesus as Bacchus, in Egypt as Osiris; Asiatic in lavishness, 42 IMPERIAL PURPLE, and Teuton in his capacity for drink; vomiting in the open Forum, and making and unmaking kings; weav- ing with that viper of the Nile a romance which is history; passing in- itiate into the inimitable life, it would have been curious to have watched him that last night when the silence was stirred by the hum of harps, the cries of bacchantes bearing his tute- lary god back to the Roman camp, while he bade farewell to love, to empire and to life. Augustus resembled him not at all. He was a colorless monarch; an emperor in ever3^thing but dignity, a prince in everything but grace; a tac- tician, not a soldier; a superstitious braggart, afraid of nothing but danger ; seducing women to learn their hus- bands' secrets; exiling his daughter, not because she had lovers, but be- cause she had other lovers than him- IMPERIAL PURPLE. 43 self; exiling Ovid because of Livia, who in the end poisoned her prince, and adroitly, too; illiterate, blundering of speech, and coarse of manner — a hypocrite and a comedian in one — so guileful and 3^et so stupid that while a credulous moribund ordered the gods to be thanked that Augustus survived him, the people publicly applied to him an epithet which des- ignates an unnameable beast. Such was the individual whom school-girls are instructed to admire, though for what reason it is difficult to fancy, unless it be that he is regarded as a patron of letters of which he knew nothing, the host of pedantic bores. After Philippi and the suicide of Brutus; after Actium and Anthony's death, admittedly, for the first time in ages, the gates of the Temple of Janus were closed. There was peace in the world; but it was 44 IMPERIAL PURPLE. the sword of Caesar, not of Augustus, that brought the insurgents to book. At each of the victories he was either asleep or ill. At the time of battle there was always some god warning him to be careful. The battle won, he was brave, pitiless and ready of jest. A father and son begged for mercy. He promised forgiveness to the son on condition that he killed his father. The son accepted and did the work; then he had the son des- patched. A prisoner begged but for a grave. ^'The vultures v/ill see to it," he answered. When at the head of Csesar^s legions, he entered Rome to avenge the latter's death, he an- nounced beforehand that he would imitate neither Caesar's moderation nor Sylla's cruelty. There would be only a few proscriptions, and a price — and what a price, liberty! — was placed on the heads of hundreds of IMPERIAL PURPLE. 45 senators and thousands of kniorhts. And these notables, who had more slaves than they knew by sight, slaves whom they tossed alive to fatten fish, slaves to whom they affected never to speak, and who were crucified did they so much as sneeze in their presence— at the feet of these slaves the aristocrats rolled, imploring them not to deliver them up. Now and then a slave was merciful; Augustus never. Successes such as these made him ambitious. Having vanquished with the sword, he tried the pen. ^'You may grant the freedom of the city to your barbarians," said a wit to him one day, "but not to your solecisms." Undeterred he began a tragedy entitled Ajax, and discovering his incompetence, gave it up. ''And what has become of Ajax?" a para- site asked, "Ajax threw himself on 46 IMPERIAL PURPLE. a sponge," replied Augustus, whose father, it is to be regretted, did not do Hkewise. Nevertheless, it were pleas- ant to have assisted at his funeral. A couch of ivory and gold, ten feet high, draped with purple, stood for a week in the atrium of the pal- ace. Within the couch, hidden from view, the body of the emperor lay, ravaged by poison. Above was a statue, recumbent, in wax, made after his image and dressed in imperial robes. Near by a little slave with a big fan protected the statue from flies. Each day physicians came, gazed at the closed wax mouth, and murmured, ^'He is worse." In the vestibule was a pot of burning ilex, and stretching out through the portals a branch of cypress warned the pontiffs from the contamination of the sight of death. At high noon on the seventh day the funeral crossed the city. First IMPERIAL PURPLE. 47 were the flaming torche-s; the statues of the House of Octavia; senators in blue; knights in scarlet; magistrates; lictors; the pick of the praetorian guard. Then, to the alternating choruses of boys and girls, the rotting body passed down the Sacred Way. Behind it Tiberius in a travelling-cloak, his hands unringed, marched meditating on the curiosities of life, while to the rear there straggled a troop of danc- ing satyrs, led by a mime dressed in resemblance of Augustus, whose de- fects he caricatured, whose vices he parodied and on whom the surging crowd closed in. On the Field of Mars the pyre had been erected, a great square structure of resinous wood, the interior filled with coke and sawdust, the exterior covered with illuminated cloths, on which, for base, a tower rose, three stories high. Into the first story flow- 48 IMPERIAL PURPLE. ers and perfumes were thrown, into the second the couch was raised, then a torch was appHed. As the smoke ascended an eagle shot from the summit, circled a mo- ment, and disappeared. For the sum of a milHon sesterces a senator swore that with the eagle he had seen the emperor's soul. III. FABULOUS FIELDS. 49 III. FABULOUS FIELDS. Mention Tiberius, and the name evokes a sceptered butcher, ill with satyrisis; a taciturn tyrant, hideous and debauched; an unclean old man devising in the crypts of a palace infa- mies so monstrous that to describe them new words weie coined. In the Borghese collection Tiberius is rather good-looking than otherwise, not an Antinous certainly, but mani- festly a dreamer; one whose eyes must have been almost feline in their ab- straction, and in the corners of whose mouth 3'ou detect pride, no doubt, but melancholy as well. The pride was congenital, the melancholy was not. Under Tiberius there was quiet, a romancer wrote, and the phrase in its 51 52 IMPERIAL PURPLE. significance passed into legend, form- ing as it passed one of those miscon- ceptions that shroud the unprotected dead. During the dozen or more years that Tiberius ruled in Rome, his wisdom, moderation, modesty and impartiality were recognized and at- tested. The Tiber overflowed, the senate looked for a remedy in the Siby- line Books. Tiberius set some en- gineers to work. A citizen swore by Augustus and swore falsely. The sen- ate sought to punish him, not for per- jury but for sacrilege. It is for Au- gustus to punish, said Tiberius. The senate wanted to name a month after him. Tiberius declined. "Suppos- ing I were the thirteenth Caesar, what would you do .^" For years he reigned, popular and acclaimed, caring the while nothing for popularity and less for pomp. Sagacious, witty even, be- lieving perhaps in little else than fate IMPERIAL PURPLE. 53 and mathematics, yet maintaining the institutions of the land, striving reso- lutely for the best, outwardly impas- sible and inwardly mobile, he was a man and his patience had bounds. There were conspirators in the atrium, there was death in the courtier's smile; and finding his favorites false, his life threatened, danger at every turn, his conception of rulership changed. Where moderation had been suddenly there gleamed the axe. Tacitus, always dramatic, states that at the time terror devasted the city. It so happened that under the republic there was a law against whomso diminished the majesty of the people. The republic was a god, one that had its temple, its priests, its altars. When the republic suc- cumbed, its divinity passed to the emperor; he became Jupiter's peer, and, as such, possessed of a majesty 54 IMPERIAL PURPLE. which it was sacrilege to sHght. Consulted on the subject, Tiberius replied that the law must be observed. Originally instituted in prevention of offenses against the public good, it was found to change into a crime, a word, a gesture or a look. It was a crime to undress before a statue of Augustus, to mention his name in the latrinse, to carry a coin with his image into a lupanar. The punishment was death. Of the property of the accused, a third went to the informer, the rest to the state. Then abruptly terror stalked abroad. No one was safe except the obscure, and it was the obscure that accused. Once an accused accused his accuser; the latter went mad. There was but one refuge — the tomb. If the accused had time to kill himself before he was tried, his property was safe from seizure and his corpse from disgrace. IMPERIAL PURPLE. 55 Suicide became endemic in Rome. Never among the rich were orgies as frenetic as then. Tliere was a breath- less chase after dehghts, which the summons, "It is time to die," might at any moment interrupt. Tiberius meanwhile had gone from Rome. It was then his legend began. He was represented living at Capri in a collection of twelve villas, each of w^iich was dedicated to a particu- lar form of lust, and there with the paintings of Parrhasius for stimulant the satyr lounged. He was then an old man; his life had been passed in pub- lic, his morals unreproved. If no one becomes suddenly base, it is rare for a man of seventy to become abruptly vile. "Whoso," Sakya Muni an- nounced — "whoso discovers that grief comes from affection,will retire into the jungles and there remain." Tiberius had made the discovery. The jungles 56 IMPERIAL PURPLE. he selected were the gardens by the sea. And in those gardens, gossip represented him devising new forms of old vice. On the subject every doubt is permissible, and even other- wise, morality then existed in but one form, one which the entire nation observed, wholly, absolutely, and with all its soul; that form was patriotism. Chastity was expected of the vestal, but of no one else. The matrons had certain traditions to maintain, certain appearances to preserve, but other- wise everybody was free enough, and that everybody made use of that freedom, the law Pappea Poppcea attests. In those days matrimony was not as frequent as it has since become. When it occurred, divorce was its natural consequence. Incompatibility was sufficient cause. Cicero, who has given it to history that the best IMPERIAL PURPLE. 57 women counted the years not numeri- cally, but by their different husbands, obtained a divorce on the ground that his wife did not idolize him. Many a man on his return from a journey discovered that the lady he had left at the head of his house had obtained a divorce in his absence. According to Plutarch, a gentleman, Hortensius by name, became enamored of Cato's daughter, Portia, then the wife of Bibulus, and begged Cato to hand her over to him. Cato refused, alleg- ing: that Portia was in love with her husband. At this, Hortensius, casting about for a seductive argument, sug- gested that if Portia would consent to be his wife, so soon as she became a mother, she might return to Bibulus. Cato, however, was firm; he persisted in his refusal; yet, that it might not create ill feeling, he gave his own wife to Hortensius, and when, later, Hor- 58 IMPERIAL PURPLE. tensius was gathered to his fathers, remarried the widow. But that everyone was not as anx- ious for matrimony the law Pappea Poppoea shows. According to its canons matrimony was an obligation the citizen owed to the state, procrea- tion a duty. Whoso at twenty-five was not married, whoso, divorced or widowed did not remarry, whoso, though married, was without children, was regarded as an enemy and de- clared incapable of inheriting or of serving the state. To this law, one of Augustus' stupidities which presently fell into disuse, only a technical ob- servance was paid. Men married just enough to gain a position or inherit a legacy; the next day they got a di- vorce. At the moment of need a child was adopted; the moment passed, the child was disowned. But if the law had little value, at least it shows IMPERIAL PURPLE. 59 that virtue was infrequent, and it is precisely for this reason that the gossip concerning Tiberius may be treated as gossip should; he differed, and singularly from other men. ^^Ho sempreamafo la solitaria vita^'''^ Petrarch, referring to himself, de- clared and, Tiberius might have said the same thing. He was in love with solitude; ill with efforts for the un- attained; sick with the ingratitude of man. Presently it was decided that he had lived long enough. He was suffocated — beneath a mattress at that. Caesar had dreamed of a universal monarchy of which he should be king; he was murdered. That dream was also Anthony's; he killed himself. Cato had sought the restoration of the republic, and Brutus the attain- ment of virtue; both committed suicide. Under the empire dreamers fared ill. Tiberius was a dreamer. 60 IMPERIAL PURPLE, In a palace where a curious concep- tion of the love of Atalanta and Meleager was said to figure on the walls, there was a door on which was a legend, imitated from one that over- hung the Theban library of Osy- mandias — ^y/^? UTpnov^ Pharmacy of the Soul. It was there Tiberius dreamed. On the ivory shelves were the philters of Parthenius, labeled De Amatoriis A^ectionihus^ the Syharis of Clitonymus, the Erotopcegnia of Lsevius, the maxims and instructions of Elephantis, the nine books of Sappho. There also were the pathetic adventures of Odatis and Zariadres, which Chares of Mitylene had given to the world; the astonishing tales of that early Cinderella, Rhodopis; and with them those romances of Ionian nights by Aristides of Milet, which Crassus took with him when he set IMPERIAL PURPLE. 61 out to subdue the Parthians, and which, found in the booty, were read aloud to the people that they might judge the morals of a nation that pre- tended to rule the world. Moral, certainly they were not ; but like everything else which came from Greece, they were the work of a mas- ter in art. Concerning Aristides of Milet histor}^ is silent, but it may be safely conjectured that his life differed from that of his heroes. As often as not the man who sounds the cymbals to the proprieties and plays the flute to ethereal affection, conceals beneath obsequious cant the stigmata of satis- fied vice. It is he who in vichy-water phrases pays to virtue the tribute of sin. On the other hand a tendency toward eroticism is the surest indica- tion of chastity. It is continence that makes the St. Anthony. In the blood of the chaste cantharides abound. 62 IMPERIAL PURPLE. Whether such medicaments are ser- viceable to the soul is a different mat- ter. Tiberius had other druo^s on the ivory shelves — magic preparations that transported him to fabulous fields. There was a work by Hecatseus, w4th which he could visit Hyperborea, that land where happiness was a birthright, inalienable at that; yet a happiness so sweet that it must have been cloying; for the people who enjoyed it, and with it the appanage of limitless life, killed themselves from sheer ennui. Theo- pompus disclosed to him a stranger vista — a continent beyond the ocean — one where there were immense citieSj and where two rivers flowed — the River of Pleasure and the River of Pain. With lambulus he discovered the Fortunate Isles, where there were men with elastic bones, bifurcated tongues ; men who never married, who worshipped the sun, whose life was an IMPERIAL PURPLE. 63 uninterrupted delight, and who, when overtaken by age, lay on a perfumed grass that produced a voluptuous death. Evhemerus, a terrible atheist, whose Sacred History the early bishops wielded against polytheism until they discovered it was double-edged, took him to Panchaia, an island where incense grew; where property was held in common; where there was but one law — Justice, yet a justice differ- ent from our own, one which Husfo must have intercepted when he made an entrancing yet enigmatical appari- tion exclaim: "Tu me crois la Justice, je suis la Pitie." And in this paradise, where nature laughed the seasons through, there was a temple, and before it a column, about which, in Panchaian characters, ran a history of ancient kings, who, to the astonishment of the tourist, were found to be none other than the gods 6i IMPERIAL PURPLE. whom the universe adored, and who in earher days had announced them- selves divinities, the better to rule the hearts and minds of man. With other guides Tiberius jour- neyed through lands where dreams come true. Aristeas of Proconnesus led him among the Arimaspi,a curious people who passed their lives fighting for gold with griffons in the dark. With Isogonus he descended the valley of Ismaus, where wild men were, whose feet turned inwards. In Albania he found a race with pink eyes and white hair; in Sarmatia another that ate only on alternate days. Agatharcides took him to Libya, and there introduced him to the Psyllians, in whose bodies was a poison deadly to serpents, and who, to test the fidelity of their wives, placed their children in the presence of snakes; if the snakes fled they knew IMPERIAL PURPLE. 65 their wives were pure. Callias took him further yet, to the home of the hermaphrodites; Nymphodorus showed him a race of fascinators who used enchanted words. With Apol- lonides he encountered women who killed with their eyes those on whom they looked too long. Megasthenes guided him to the Astomians, whose garments were the down of feathers, and who lived on the scent of the rose. In his cups they all passed, confus- edly, before him; the hermaphrodites whispered to the rose — breathers secrets of impossible love; the grif- fons bore to him women with magical eyes; the Albanians danced with elastic feet; he heard the shrill call of the Psyllians, luring the serpents to death; the column of Panchaia un- veiled its mysteries ; the Hyperboreans the reason of their fear of life, and on 66 IMPERIAL PURPLE. the wings of the chimera he set out again in search of that continent which haunted antiquity and which lay beyond the sea. IV. THE PURSUIT OF THE IMPOSSIBLE. 67 IV. THE PURSUIT OF THE IMPOSSIBLE. ''Another Phaethon for the uni- verse," Tiberius is reported to have muttered, as he gazed at his nephew Caius, nicknamed Caligula, who was to suffocate him with a mattress and rule in his stead. To rule is hardly the expression. There is no term in English to con- vey that dominion over sea and sky which a Caesar possessed, and which Caligula was the earliest to understand. Augustus was the first magistrate of Rome, Tiberius the first citizen./ Caligula was the first emperor, but an emperor hallucinated by the enigma of his own grandeur, a prince for whose sovereignty the world was too small. 69 70 IMPERIAL PURPLE. Each epoch has its secret, some- times puerile, often perplexing; but in its maker there is another and a more interesting one yet. Eliminate Cali- gula, and Nero, Domitian, Commo- dus, Caracalla and Heliogabalus would never have been. It was he who gave them both raison d'etre and incentive. The lives of all of them are horrible, yet analyze the hor- rible and you find the sublime. Fancy a peak piercing the heavens, shadowing the earth. It was on a peak such as that the young emperors of old Rome balanced themselves, a precipice on either side. Did they look below, a vertigo rose to meet them; from above delirium came, while the horizon, though it hemmed the limits of vision, could not mark the frontiers of their dream. In addition there was the exaltation that altitudes produce. The valleys have their IMPERIAL PURPLE. 71 imbeciles; it is from mountains the poet and madman come. Caligula was both, sceptered at that; and with what a sceptre! One that stretched from the Rhine to the Euphrates, domi- nated a hundred and fifty million peo- ple; one that a mattress had given and a knife was to take away; a sceptre that lashed the earth, threatened the sky, beckoned planets and ravished the divinity of the divine. To wield such a sceptre securely requires grace, no doubt, majesty too, but certainly strength; the latter Caligula possessed, but it was the feverish strength of one who had fathomed the unfathomable, and who sought to make its depths his own. Caligula was haunted by the intan gible. His sleep was a communion with Nature, with whom he believed himself one. At times the Ocean talked to him; at others the 72 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 