A Friend of Cæsar: A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. by - (great books of all time .TXT) 📕

"I will warn him at once," replied Agias. "Any premature attempt on his life will certainly fail. But it is not Ahenobarbus that I fear; it is Pratinas. Pratinas, if baffled once, will only be spurred on to use all his cunning in a second trial. We must enmesh the conspirators so completely that when their stab is parried, not merely will their power to repeat it be gone, but they themselves will be in danger of retribution. And for this, some one must be confederate to their final plan."

"Agias," said Cornelia, quietly, "Quintus said that you would be a faithful servant to him and to myself. I believe he was right. You have asked a great thing of me, Agias. I would not do it unless I believed that you were unlike other slaves. I might imagine that Lucius Ahenobarbus had bribed you to tell me this story, in order that I should put myself in his power. But I trust you. I will do anything you say. For you Hellenes have wits as keen as sharp steel, and I know that you will do all you may to repay your debt to Quintus."

Agias knelt down and kissed the robe of his mistress. "My lady," he said gently, "it is no grievous thing to be a slave of such as you. Believe me; I will not betray my trust. And now if you can let me leave you, I will hurry to Præneste, and for the present our minds may be at rest. For old Mamercus will, I am sure, be able to take good care of Master Drusus for yet awhile."

"Go, and the gods—if there be gods—go with you!" replied Cornelia. Agias kissed her robe a second time, and was gone. His mistress stood in the middle of the empty room. On the wall facing her was a painting of "Aphrodite rising from the Foam," which Drusus had given her. The sensuous smiles on the face of the goddess sickened Cornelia, as she looked upon it. To her, at the moment, laughter was more hideous than any sobbing. Outside the door she heard the gay, witless chatter of the maids and the valets. They were happy—they—slaves, "speaking tools,"—and she with the blood of the Claudii and Cornelii in her veins, a patrician among patricians, the niece of a consul-elect, a woman who was the heiress of statesmen and overturners of kingdoms,—she was miserable beyond endurance. Cornelia paced up and down the room, wishing she might order the giggling maids to be flogged and their laughter turned into howling. Then she summoned Cassandra.

Cornelia had never before tried to play the actress, but that night she flung herself into the game for life and death with all the earnestness of an energetic, intelligent, and spontaneous woman. She had been barely civil to Lucius Ahenobarbus before; to-night the young man began to persuade himself that the object of his affections was really a most adorable coquette, who used a certain brusqueness of speech to add to her witchery. He had heard that there had been some very disagreeable scenes at Præneste, when Lentulus had told his niece that Drusus, on account of his dangerous politics, was unfit to be her husband. But Ahenobarbus was sure that either these accounts were exaggerated, or more likely, Cornelia, like most women, was quick to fall in love and quick to leave an old sweetheart for a new one. Be that as it may, Lucius felt that night on good terms with himself and all the world. Phormio had consented to continue his loans—until his debtor could realize on "certain property." Pratinas had said that Dumnorix would shortly start with a band of gladiators for some local festival at Anagnia, a little beyond Præneste; and on the way back, if nothing went amiss, the prearranged programme could be carried out. Some pretext must be found for keeping Drusus on his estate at the time when Dumnorix would march past it, and that task could be confided to Phaon, Lucius's freedman, a sly fox entirely after his patron's own heart.

Cornelia, to whom the dinner-party at Favonius's house began as a dreary enough tragedy, before long discovered that it was by no means more easy to suck undiluted sorrow than unmixed gladness out of life. It gratified her to imagine the rage and dismay of the young exquisite whose couch was beside her chair,[93] when he should learn how completely he had been duped. Then, too, Lucius Ahenobarbus had a voluble flow of polite small talk, and he knew how to display his accomplishments to full advantage. He had a fair share of wit and humour; and when he fancied that Cornelia was not impervious to his advances, he became more agreeable and more ardent. Once or twice Cornelia frightened herself by laughing without conscious forcing. Yet it was an immense relief to her when the banquet was over, and the guests—for Favonius had ordered that none should be given enough wine to be absolutely drunken—called for their sandals and litters and went their ways.

"And you, O Adorable, Calypso, Circe, Nausicaä, Medēa,—what shall I call you?—you will not be angry if I call to see you to-morrow?" said Ahenobarbus, smiling as he parted from Cornelia.

"If you come," was her response, "I shall not perhaps order the slaves to pitch you out heels over head."

"Ah! That is a guarded assent, indeed," laughed Lucius, "but farewell, pulcherrima!"[94]

Cornelia that night lay down and sobbed herself to sleep. Her mother had congratulated her on her brilliant social success at the dinner-party, and had praised her for treating Lucius Ahenobarbus as she had.

"You know, my dear," the worthy woman had concluded, "that since it has seemed necessary to break off with Drusus, a marriage with Lucius would be at once recommended by your father's will, and in many ways highly desirable."

Only a very few days later Lucius Ahenobarbus received a message bidding him come to see his father at the family palace on the Palatine. Lucius had almost cut himself clear from his relations. He had his own bachelor apartments, and Domitius had been glad to have him out of the way. A sort of fiction existed that he was legally under the patria potestas,[95] and could only have debts and assets on his father's responsibility, but as a matter of fact his parent seldom paid him any attention; and only called on him to report at home when there was a public or family festival, or something very important. Consequently he knew that matters serious were on foot, when he read in his father's note a request to visit Domitius's palace as soon as convenient. Lucius was just starting, in his most spotless toga,—after a prolonged season with his hairdresser,—to pay a morning call on Cornelia, and so he was the more vexed and perturbed.

"Curses on Cato,[96] my old uncle," he muttered, while he waited in the splendid atrium of the house of the Ahenobarbi. "He has been rating my father about my pranks with Gabinius and Læca, and something unpleasant is in store for me."

Domitius presently appeared, and his son soon noticed by the affable yet diplomatic manner of his father, and the gentle warmth of his greeting, that although there was something in the background, it was not necessarily very disagreeable.

"My dear Lucius," began Domitius, after the first civilities were over, and the father and son had strolled into a handsomely appointed library and taken seats on a deeply upholstered couch, "I have, I think, been an indulgent parent. But I must tell you, I have heard some very bad stories of late about your manner of life."

"Oh!" replied Lucius, smiling. "As your worthy friend Cicero remarked when defending young Cælius, 'those sorts of reproaches are regularly heaped on every one whose person or appearance in youth is at all gentlemanly.'"

"I will thank you if you will not quote Cicero to me," replied the elder man, a little tartly. "He will soon be back from Cilicia, and will be prodding and wearying us in the Senate quite enough, with his rhetoric and sophistries. But I must be more precise. I have found out how much you owe Phormio. I thought your dead uncle had left you a moderately large estate for a young man. Where has it gone to? Don't try to conceal it! It's been eaten up and drunk up—spent away for unguents, washed away in your baths, the fish-dealer and the caterer have made way with it, yes, and butchers and cooks, and greengrocers and perfume sellers, and poulterers—not to mention people more scandalous—have made off with it."

Lucius stretched himself out on the divan, caught at a thick, richly embroidered pillow, tossed it over his head on to the floor, yawned, raised himself again upright, and said drawlingly:—

"Y-e-s, it's as you say. I find I spend every sesterce I have, and all I can borrow. But so long as Phormio is accommodating, I don't trouble myself very much about the debts."

"Lucius," said Domitius, sternly, "you are a graceless spendthrift. Of course you must have the sport which all young blood needs. But your extravagance goes beyond all bounds. I call myself a rich man, but to leave you half my fortune, dividing with your older brother Cnæus, who is a far steadier and saner man than you, would be to assure myself that Greek parasites and low women would riot through that part of my estate in a twelvemonth. You must reform, Lucius; you must reform."

This was getting extremely disagreeable in spite of his expectations, and the young man yawned a second time, then answered:—

"Well, I presume Uncle Cato has told you all kinds of stories; but they aren't at all true. I really never had a great deal of money."

"Lucius," went on his father, "you are grown to manhood. It is time that you steadied in life. I have let you live by yourself too long. You are even too indolent to engage in politics, or to go into the army. I have come to a determination. You must marry the woman I have selected for you."

Ahenobarbus pricked up his ears. As a matter of fact, he had surmised what was coming, but he had no intention of admitting anything prematurely.

"Really, father," he said, "I hope you won't use your legal right and force a wife on me. I have no desire to tie myself up to a decent married life."

"I hardly think," said Domitius, smiling, "that you will resist my wishes long. I have seen Lentulus Crus the consul-elect, and he and I agree that since your mother's distant kinsman Quintus Drusus of Præneste is an unsuitable husband for Cornelia, Lentulus's niece, on account of his very dangerous political tendencies, no happier alliance could bind our families together than a marriage between Cornelia and yourself."

Lucius yawned a third time and fell back on the couch.

"It's true," he ventured, "I have cared a good deal for Cornelia; and I've thrown over that little Greek Clyte and all the others for her; but then, to make a girl your sweetheart and to make her your wife are two very different things. Vina Opimia is best; but because one drinks a cyathus[97] of that, why should he forego a good nil of Thasian or Cæcuban? If I could have but one choice, give me plenty of the good, and I'll give up my few drops of the best."

"Come, come," said Domitius, a little impatiently, "you must positively reform. Besides, while appearances must be kept up, there is no need for leading the life of a Stoic. You won't find Cornelia a hard companion. You have your pleasures and she hers, and you will live harmoniously enough and not the least scandal."

And with this remark Domitius closed the matter, and Lucius was actually delighted at the situation. What his father had said had been true enough; half, nay, nearly all, Rome lived in the manner Domitius had guardedly proposed for his son and intended daughter-in-law. Marriage was becoming more and more a mere formality, something that was kept up as the ancient state Pagan worship was kept up by the remnants of old-time superstition, and as a cloak to hide a multitude of sins. Fifty-nine years before, the consul Metellus Numidicus had declaimed, "Quirites, we would fain be free from all this annoyance (of marriage); but since nature has so brought it about that it is neither possible to live pleasantly with our wives nor by any means to live (as a race) without them, we ought to consider the welfare of the future rather than the mere passing pleasure of the present." And ever since that day Romans had been striving desperately to make the married state as endurable as possible; usually by reducing the importance of lawful wedlock to a minimum.

Of course the announcement of the informal betrothal was soon spread over Rome. The contracting parties were in the very highest life, and everybody declared