Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz (ebook reader macos TXT) 📕

DARKNESS had not come when the first waves of people began to flow into

Cæsar’s gardens. The crowds, in holiday costume, crowned with flowers,

joyous, singing, and some of them drunk, were going to look at the new,

magnificent spectacle. Shouts of “Semaxii! Sarmentitii!” were heard on

the Via Tecta, on the bridge of Æmilius, and from the other side of the

Tiber, on the Triumphal Way, around the Circus of Nero, and off towards

the Vatican Hill. In Rome people had been seen burnt on pillars before,

but never had any one seen such a number of victims.

Cæsar and Tigellinus, wishing to finish at once with the Christians and

also to avoid infection, which from the prisons was spreading more and

more through the city, had given command to empty all dungeons, so that

there remained in them barely a few tens of people intended for the

close of the spectacles. So, when the crowds had passed the gates, they

were dumb with amazement. All the main and side alleys, which lay

through dense groves and along lawns, thickets, ponds, fields, and

squares filled with flowers, were packed with pillars smeared with

pitch, to which Christians were fastened. In higher places, where the

view was not hindered by trees, one could see whole rows of pillars and

bodies decked with flowers, myrtle, and ivy, extending into the distance

on high and low places, so far that, though the nearest were like masts

of ships, the farthest seemed colored darts, or staffs thrust into the

earth. The number of them surpassed the expectation of the multitude.

One might suppose that a whole nation had been lashed to pillars for

Rome’s amusement and for Cæsar’s. The throng of spectators stopped

before single masts when their curiosity was roused by the form or the

sex of the victim; they looked at the faces, the crowns, the garlands of

ivy; then they went farther and farther, asking themselves with

amazement, “Could there have been so many criminals, or how could

children barely able to walk have set fire to Rome?” and astonishment

passed by degrees into fear.

Meanwhile darkness came, and the first stars twinkled in the sky. Near

each condemned person a slave took his place, torch in hand; when the

sound of trumpets was heard in various parts of the gardens, in sign

that the spectacle was to begin, each slave put his torch to the foot of

a pillar. The straw, hidden under the flowers and steeped in pitch,

burned at once with a bright flame which, increasing every instant,

withered the ivy, and rising embraced the feet of the victims. The

people were silent; the gardens resounded with one immense groan and

with cries of pain. Some victims, however, raising their faces toward

the starry sky, began to sing, praising Christ. The people listened.

But the hardest hearts were filled with terror when, on smaller pillars,

children cried with shrill voices, “Mamma! Mamma!” A shiver ran

through even spectators who were drunk when they saw little heads and

innocent faces distorted with pain, or children fainting in the smoke

which began to stifle them. But the flames rose, and seized new crowns

of roses and ivy every instant. The main and side alleys were

illuminated; the groups of trees, the lawns, and the flowery squares

were illuminated; the water in pools and ponds was gleaming, the

trembling leaves on the trees had grown rose-colored, and all was as

visible as in daylight. When the odor of burnt bodies filled the

gardens, slaves sprinkled between the pillars myrrh and aloes prepared

purposely. In the crowds were heard here and there shouts,—whether of

sympathy or delight and joy, it was unknown; and they increased every

moment with the fire, which embraced the pillars, climbed to the breasts

of the victims, shrivelled with burning breath the hair on their heads,

threw veils over their blackened faces, and then shot up higher, as if

showing the victory and triumph of that power which had given command to

rouse it.

At the very beginning of the spectacle Cæsar had appeared among the

people in a magnificent quadriga of the Circus, drawn by four white

steeds. He was dressed as a charioteer in the color of the Greens,—the

court party and his. After him followed other chariots filled with

courtiers in brilliant array, senators, priests, bacchantes, naked and

crowned, holding pitchers of wine, and partly drunk, uttering wild

shouts. At the side of these were musicians dressed as fauns and

satyrs, who played on citharas, formingas, flutes, and horns. In other

chariots advanced matrons and maidens of Rome, drunk also and half

naked. Around the quadriga ran men who shook thyrses ornamented with

ribbons; others beat drums; others scattered flowers.

All that brilliant throng moved forward, shouting, “Evoe!” on the widest

road of the garden, amidst smoke and processions of people. Cæsar,

keeping near him Tigellinus and also Chilo, in whose terror he sought to

find amusement, drove the steeds himself, and, advancing at a walk,

looked at the burning bodies, and heard the shouts of the multitude.

Standing on the lofty gilded chariot, surrounded by a sea of people who

bent to his feet, in the glitter of the fire, in the golden crown of a

circus-victor, he was a head above the courtiers and the crowd. He

seemed a giant. His immense arms, stretched forward to hold the reins,

seemed to bless the multitude. There was a smile on his face and in his

blinking eyes; he shone above the throng as a sun or a deity, terrible

but commanding and mighty.

At times he stopped to look with more care at some maiden whose bosom

had begun to shrink in the flames, or at the face of a child distorted

by convulsions; and again he drove on, leading behind him a wild,

excited retinue. At times he bowed to the people, then again he bent

backward, drew in the golden reins, and spoke to Tigellinus. At last,

when he had reached the great fountain in the middle of two crossing

streets, he stepped from the quadriga, and, nodding to his attendants,

mingled with the throng.

He was greeted with shouts and plaudits. The bacchantes, the nymphs,

the senators and Augustians, the priests, the fauns, satyrs, and

soldiers surrounded him at once in an excited circle; but he, with

Tigellinus on one side and Chilo on the other, walked around the

fountain, about which were burning some tens of torches; stopping before

each one, he made remarks on the victims, or jeered at the old Greek, on

whose face boundless despair was depicted.

At last he stood before a lofty mast decked with myrtle and ivy. The red

tongues of fire had risen only to the knees of the victim; but it was

impossible to see his face, for the green burning twigs had covered it

with smoke. After a while, however, the light breeze of night turned

away the smoke and uncovered the head of a man with gray beard falling

on his breast.

At sight of him Chilo was twisted into a lump like a wounded snake, and

from his mouth came a cry more like cawing than a human voice.

“Glaucus! Glaucus!”

In fact, Glaucus the physician looked down from the burning pillar at

him. Glaucus was alive yet. His face expressed pain, and was inclined

forward, as if to look closely for the last time at his executioner, at

the man who had betrayed him, robbed him of wife and children, set a

murderer on him, and who, when all this had been forgiven in the name of

Christ, had delivered him to executioners. Never had one person

inflicted more dreadful or bloody wrongs on another. Now the victim was

burning on the pitched pillar, and the executioner was standing at his

feet. The eyes of Glaucus did nor leave the face of the Greek. At

moments they were hidden by smoke; but when the breeze blew this away,

Chilo saw again those eyes fixed on him. He rose and tried to flee, but

had not strength. All at once his legs seemed of lead; an invisible

hand seemed to hold him at that pillar with superhuman force. He was

petrified. He felt that something was overflowing in him, something

giving way; he felt that he had had a surfeit of blood and torture, that

the end of his life was approaching, that everything was vanishing,

Cæsar, the court, the multitude, and around him was only a kind of

bottomless, dreadful black vacuum with no visible thing in it, save

those eyes of a martyr which were summoning him to judgment. But

Glaucus, bending his head lower down, looked at him fixedly. Those

present divined that something was taking place between those two men.

Laughter died on their lips, however, for in Chilo’s face there was

something terrible: such pain and fear had distorted it as if those

tongues of fire were burning his body. On a sudden he staggered, and,

stretching his arms upward, cried in a terrible and piercing voice,—

“Glaucus! in Christ’s name! forgive me!”

It grew silent round about, a quiver ran through the spectators, and all

eyes were raised involuntarily.

The head of the martyr moved slightly, and from the top of the mast was

heard a voice like a groan,—

“I forgive!”

Chilo threw himself on his face, and howled like a wild beast; grasping

earth in both hands, he sprinkled it on his head. Meanwhile the flames

shot up, seizing the breast and face of Glaucus; they unbound the myrtle

crown on his head, and seized the ribbons on the top of the pillar, the

whole of which shone with great blazing.

Chilo stood up after a while with face so changed that to the Augustians

he seemed another man. His eyes flashed with a light new to him,

ecstasy issued from his wrinkled forehead; the Greek, incompetent a

short time before, looked now like some priest visited by a divinity and

ready to reveal unknown truths.

“What is the matter? Has he gone mad?” asked a number of voices.

But he turned to the mulitiude, and, raising his right hand, cried, or

rather shouted, in a voice so piercing that not only the Augustians but

the multitude heard him,—

“Roman people! I swear by my death, that innocent persons are perishing

here. That is the incendiary!”

And he pointed his finger at Nero.

Then came a moment of silence. The courtiers were benumbed. Chilo

continued to stand with outstretched, trembling arm, and with finger

pointed at Nero. All at once a tumult arose. The people, like a wave,

urged by a sudden whirlwind, rushed toward the old man to look at him

more closely. Here and there were heard cries, “Hold!” In another

place, “Woe to us!” In the throng a hissing and uproar began.

“Ahenobarbus! Matricide! Incendiary!” Disorder increased