XI Good Women of Nero’s Reign
The immoralities which characterized the reigns of some of the first emperors must be considered as abnormal outbreaks rather than as permanent conditions. The element of corruption is always present in the social body. As a rule, it reveals itself only to those who look for it in the slums and prisons and criminal haunts, but at times and under certain conditions it breaks out with excessive virulence, and, to adopt a Biblical figure, there seems to be no soundness in the whole body. Such conditions were present during the period we have been studying. Many circumstances combined to bring all the corruption and immorality which are usually veiled or disguised into prominent view and to make them fashionable. The accidents of birth placed upon the imperial throne men who were morally insane; consequently, the evil-disposed found themselves in a paradise of crime, while the ambitious, the covetous, and the cowardly were enabled to gain their ends and preserve their safety only by becoming caterers to and companions in their masters’ lusts.
It is very easy, however, for a student of history to encourage an exaggerated idea of Roman depravity, even as it was in the days of Messalina and Poppsea. Whence do we obtain our picture of the Rome of those times? Partly from historians; but very largely from such writers as Juvenal, Petronius, and Apuleius. The historians confined their accounts to the prominent people of their times, and it not unfrequently happened that the most prominent and successful were the least commendable from the moral standpoint. The moralists necessarily placed the worst in the boldest relief, in order to ensure a more telling effect. Seneca held such writers up to ridicule, when he said: “Morals are gone; evil triumphs; all virtue, all justice, is disappearing; the world is degenerating. This is what was said in our fathers’ days, it is what men say to-day, and it will be the cry of our children.” And yet, the world does not grow worse. As for the society portrayed by Petronius and Apuleius, these men sought their characters among the low pothouses and the brothels of Rome. The morals of the ordinary Roman home must not be judged by a scene either in a house of ill fame or in the palace of a crazy and dissolute tyrant, any more than the common life of Herculaneum or Pompeii is to be conjectured solely from the obscene pictures found on the walls of their ruined dwellings.
In this present chapter, the women we shall cite are chiefly those who were ennobled in their deaths rather than in their lives. That is to say, though they lived well, had it not been for their brave manner of dying their names would not have been preserved in history.
As has been said, Roman society was not wholly corrupt, even though an adulterous Messalina, an unprincipled Poppæa, or a cruel and ambitious Agrippina, shared the throne. Contemporary with these were women who still with pure hands and sincere hearts invoked the ancient goddess of chastity. There were those who had mother love for their children, but were free from deadly ambition. Among the more ordinary homes were many that were graced with the same family loyalty and tender affection as beautify our homes to-day.
The young women of the days of Claudius were not obliged to search in the musty annals of past times for examples of feminine honor and virtue. They had all known Antonia, the virtuous daughter of Octavia and Antony, who, like Agrippina, had honored her widowhood by a long and irreproachable chastity. Yet the maidens of Messalina’s age may have been the less attracted by the example of Antonia because, while she retained the old Roman purity of morals, she also exemplified the old Roman severity of manners. Claudius, her son, never ceased to stand in awe of her, and during his childhood her severity to him was such that it is supposed that it helped to induce his imbecility. When her daughter Livilla had been betrayed into crime by means of the arts of Sejanus, Antonia was even more inexorable than Tiberius, against whom the plot had been laid, and she caused the young woman to be starved to death. It was not an instance of cruelty, it was simply the old Roman justice, in which personal or even maternal feeling was allowed no place. Antonia’s goodness was not of the attractive kind. We must imagine her as a proud, puritanical old matron, who made herself a terror to wrong doers. She courageously rebuked her grandson Caligula for his enormities; but the young ruffian, who possessed neither the mind nor the conscience to respect age or kinship, in return caused Antonia to be put to death—though it is possible that the actual deed may have been her own.
It was asked of old: “Can a clean thing come out of an unclean?” The affirmative answer to this question is found in the person and character of Octavia, the daughter of Messalina the infamous. Indeed, the axiom that “like produces like” cannot be applied to moral character; so many instances are met with of bad offspring from noble parentage and virtuous children from immoral antecedents that they cannot be regarded as exceptions to the rule.
Octavia was fortunate in nothing but her character. She was the plaything of a relentlessly adverse fate. The whole of her short life is an illustration of the fact that goodness of disposition does not protect its possessor from the worst evils of existence. That this young girl remained virtuous amid the whirl of immorality in which she was reared, with no lovable example and no motherly advice, is a proof of the invincibility of a good disposition if nature has woven it into a human character.
As a little child, Octavia had been petted and fondled by her father, the poor old Emperor Claudius, who, dull and phlegmatic as he was, would have been a good-hearted man if he had not been thrust into a position for which he was totally unfitted. He loved to take Octavia and her little brother Britannicus to the theatre and hold them with a father’s pride before the admiring eyes of the people. This was all the love that Octavia ever knew. One of her earliest and saddest experiences was to be sent by Messalina out upon the road to Ostia, to meet Claudius and plead vainly for that unworthy mother’s life. Then Agrippina came to the palace; and with her in the double capacity of empress and stepmother, Octavia found no cause of thankfulness for the change. Hitherto she at least had not been used as a mere tool to effect some other’s political ambitions. Her father Claudius had betrothed her to Lucius Silanus, a celebrated and favorite Senator. Had this match been allowed to remain undisturbed, it is possible that Octavia’s lot might have been peaceful and happy; but a false charge against Silanus was trumped up by the perfidious Vitellius, so that the former was degraded from the Senate, and immediately afterward he committed suicide, Octavia lived on and encountered the terrible misfortune of being betrothed to Nero, whom Seneca was advising to “compensate himself with the pleasures of youth without compunction.” Agrippina threw Octavia to her son, just as a rope might be tossed to a mountain climber to enable him to ascend a difficult pass; when its use has been served, it is looked upon as a piece of mere cumbersome baggage. So Nero considered his wife, after he had obtained the Empire. When he expressed his dislike for her, the plain-spoken Burrhus said: “Very well, send her away; but of course you will give up her dower with her;” which was nothing less than the throne of Claudius.
Had Octavia been supported by some all-powerful and sympathetic relative like Augustus, she might have survived and have shown as great patience with the vices of Nero as her ancestral namesake showed with those of Antony; but she was left unprotected amidst numerous opposing forces which, when not aimed with deadly hatred against her, were indifferent to her welfare, with the consequence that she was speedily and mercilessly crushed.
The first woman who took the place which Octavia never held in Nero’s affections was the Greek freedwoman Acte. The wild young emperor would have divorced his wife and married the Greek forthwith, but he was still under the domination of the powerful Agrippina. This first thwarting of the imperial will was the beginning of Agrippina’s downfall. It was not long before she and the young wife saw a fearful presage of their own fate when the young Britannicus fell dead upon the banquet floor, poisoned by the diabolical art of Nero’s instrument, Locusta. Octavia, though so young, was not entirely ignorant as to what the perils of her situation demanded. She had received early lessons in a terrible school. Consequently, when Nero declared to the alarmed guests that her brother was habitually afflicted with the falling sickness, she disguised her sisterly grief and composedly retained her place at the banquet.
But the time came when Agrippina had also fallen a victim to her son’s inhumanity, and Nero, responsible to no human being, had become enamored by the more attractive fascinations of a more unprincipled woman than Acte. “Why does not Nero,” the tyrant asks of himself, “banishing all fear, set about expediting his marriage with Poppæa? Why not put away his wife Octavia, although her conduct is that of a modest woman, since the name of her father and the affection of the people have made her an eyesore to him?” With Poppæa urging him on and the villainous Tigellinus exercising his diabolical ingenuity to find a plausible excuse, it was not long before the courage of Nero was equal to the audacious act of driving from the imperial palace the woman through connection with whom he had his right of tenure there. Octavia was divorced by process of law, under the allegation that she was barren. At first she was awarded the house of Burrhus and the estate of Plautus, whom Nero had recently put to death. The divorce being sought by her husband for no fault of hers, he was obliged, if the strict letter of the law had been observed, to give up with her the whole of her dowry; but for men like Nero, who execute the laws, a mere pretence of legality suffices. Poppæa had brazenly endeavored to trump up a far more serious charge against the woman she injured; but it could not be made to hold. She bribed one of Octavia’s domestics to assert that her mistress had participated in an amour with Eucerus, an Alexandrian flute player; but this accusation was so preposterously inconsistent with Octavia’s well-known character that, even though they tortured her servants, they could gain no evidence which they dared to set before the people in substantiation of the charge. There could be no stronger testimony to the amiability and lovableness of Octavia, as well as to the purity of her character, than the fidelity with which her servants defended her reputation from all aspersions, even while they were undergoing the most intense torture. One brave maid, while being examined upon the rack, spat in the face of Tigellinus, who was urging a confession, and declared aloud that “the womb of Octavia was purer than his mouth.” It was among slaves like these that the first Christian martyrs were found; women who gave their bodies to the most excruciating torture, but could not be induced to deny their faith.
Soon after Octavia’s divorce, she was banished into Campania, where she was kept in close confinement, and a guard of soldiers was placed over her. But though the Senate and the nobility had become absolutely enslaved to the imperial tyrant’s will, there was always the people to reckon with. The common women talked loudly but sympathetically of Octavia’s persecuted innocence. The men took up the cry; they made it heard in the theatre and they scribbled it upon the walls. The people could not be individualized. They had not but one neck, as Caligula had so maliciously wished. Their number and individual insignificance rendered it possible for them to express their mind with impunity. Nero hastened to recall Octavia to the city.
That was a day of proud but dangerous joy for the unfortunate young empress. At least she had the satisfaction of knowing that all the world believed in her innocence. In their happiness, the multitude went to the Capitol and thanked all the gods for her return. They threw down the statues of Poppæa, and wherever they could find one of Octavia they wreathed It with flowers and removed it to the Forum or to some temple. They even went to the palace to applaud Nero for bringing back his banished wife, but were driven thence by the soldiery.
AH this served only to incite Poppæa to take the most desperate measures. She approached Nero with such artful insinuations in regard to the possibility of the people’s revolting in favor of Octavia, and at the same time with a pretence of such meek submissiveness in regard to her own personal fortunes, that the emperor was induced both by fear and passion to take the course which she desired.
A method of getting rid of Octavia without incurring danger was not easy to devise; but Nero had at his court a man who was a genius in the art of removing formidable impediments. Anicetus had proved his ability upon Agrippina. He was not only resourceful, but absolutely without either honor or conscience. It was not alone necessary that Octavia should be destroyed, but her death must take on the semblance of a justified punishment. There was none who could or would testify aught against her. Nero summoned Anicetus and told him “that he alone had saved the life of his prince from the dark devices of his mother; now an opportunity for a service of no less magnitude presented itself, by relieving him from a wife who was his mortal enemy. There was no need of force or arms; he had only to admit of adultery with Octavia!” The dastardly freedman forthwith began to boast among his friends of the favors he received from the young empress. On being summoned to a council of the friends of Nero, he made a pretended confession. He was condemned to banishment to Sardinia, where he lived in great luxury until he died a natural death.
Nero published an edict in which he stated that Octavia had been discovered seeking, through the corruption of Anicetus, the admiral, to engage the fleet in a conspiracy, and that her infidelity was clearly proved. Octavia was sent to the island of Pandataria. Tacitus says: “Never was there any exile who touched the hearts of the beholders with deeper compassion. Some there were who still remembered to have seen Agrippina the Elder banished by Tiberius; the more recent sufferings of Julia were likewise recalled to mind—that Julia who had been confined there by Claudius. But they had experienced some happiness, and the recollection of their former splendor proved some alleviation of their present horrors.” Everything in Octavia’s life that promised pleasure had been turned to gall. Her home recalled the scenes of her father’s poisoning and her brother’s murder; her marriage rights had been first usurped by a handmaid and then by a woman known to be of infamous character; and now even her memory was to be stained with the imputation of a crime which was more intolerable to her than death itself. There is no sadder picture in all history than that of this girl,—she was only twenty,—after her short life of uninterrupted sorrow and unstained innocence, thrown among centurions and common soldiers, who dared not help her even if a feeling of pity entered their hearts. They commanded her to die; but she had not the strength or the courage of Antonia. She pleaded that she was now a widow, and that the emperor’s object having been gained he had no cause to fear anything from her. She invoked the name of Agrippina, and said “that had she lived, her marriage would have been made no less wretched, but she would not have been doomed to destruction.” When those in charge saw that it was hopeless to expect that she would take the unpleasant task off their hands, they bound her and opened her veins; but, the blood flowing too slowly, her death was accelerated by the vapor of a bath heated to the highest point. After life was extinct, they severed her head from her body and carried it to Poppaea, in order that she might see that the deed by which she was made Empress of Rome was surely accomplished.
The abject Senate, when they learned that the whole matter was thus concluded, decreed that offerings should be made at the temples, as a thanksgiving for the deliverance of the emperor from the dangers which had threatened him through the conspiracy of his wife. Tacitus declares that he records this circumstance “in order that all those who shall read the calamities of those times, as they are delivered by me or any other authors, may conclude, by anticipation, that as often as a banishment or a murder was perpetrated by the prince’s orders, so often thanks were offered to the gods; and those acts which in former times were resorted to in order that prosperous occurrences might be distinguished, were now made the tokens of public disasters.”
These were the days of the martyrs. During this reign, the burning bodies of Christians lighted the gardens of the malevolent tyrant, innocent women and tender girls were exposed to fierce beasts in the arena, and by their sufferings were made to contribute interest to a Roman holiday. These died for their faith. They died gladly, in the belief that their pains and faithfulness were to be rewarded with an unfading crown in a land beyond the skies. They cheered each other in the face of death, and they were comforted by those friends who were still at liberty with the promise of a meeting where no tyrant’s hand could harm them. Octavia was not of this faith. It is probable that she knew nothing of the strange doctrines which were making converts among the Roman slaves. Yet there was no martyr more innocent than herself, none more worthy of canonization. There was none whose purity and whose fidelity to the principles which were cherished by high souls could present a better claim for the victor’s palm and the martyr’s crown than her own. Octavia knew nothing of the Christian hope of immortality; her religious faith at the best could teach her no more than the vague surmise that possibly in some dreary under world the shades of mortals retained a melancholy consciousness. Yet a consistent justice at the present day cannot do other than place side by side the persecuted girl from the imperial palace and the Christian slave maiden whose blood dripped from the jaws of the beasts of the arena, and believe that whatever consolation eternal fate provided for the one was equally shared in by the other.
As we have said, the first woman to attract the affections of Nero, which were never turned toward Octavia, was Acte. She had probably been brought as a slave from Asia. How old she was when Nero first knew her it is impossible for us to conjecture, but it is likely that she was somewhat older than the youthful emperor; it frequently happens that a boy’s first love is aroused by a woman his superior in age. Then, too, Acte was at this time a freedwoman. Liberty was often gained by female slaves by means of the charms of their persons; but this result was not likely to be secured before those charms were fully matured. So profound was Nero’s passion for Acte that, had he not been with difficulty restrained, he would have divorced Octavia forthwith and married the Greek. He is said to have induced men of consular rank to swear that she was of royal descent. It is by no means impossible that such an assertion should be true; for the slave markets which supplied Rome were to a large extent recruited by kidnapped children, picked up wherever they might be found. It is remarkable that not a word that is detrimental to the character of Acte is recorded in history. Indeed, we know but very little about her, though she has always been regarded with a sort of poetical approbation. There is no evidence of her having used her power with the emperor for the injury of an enemy. She seems to have been modest and unassuming, and it is certain that her love for Nero was sincere; for it not only outlasted his, but remained true to the latest hour of his life. When all others had forsaken the fallen prince whom they had fawned upon, it was Acte who tenderly cared for his remains.
Tacitus represents her as warning Nero from his early evil extravagances. She remained queen of his affections for four years,—the best four years of his reign,—and it is said that when he turned from her to Poppaea she sank into a profound melancholy. Upon all this has been founded the surmise that Acte was a Christian; but it is nothing more than conjecture. Whatever may have been the facts in regard to this, in the little glimpses we obtain of her presence in the awful tragedies of her age we catch the outline of one whom we are assured must have been a good woman—a woman innately pure, but forced into contact with vice by circumstances over which she had no control.
There are numerous examples from history to prove that in the dissolute reign of Nero feminine goodness was not a rarity; but there are no pictures of pure light-heartedness and gladsome simplicity such as were known in the older days. Everything was sombre; death was in the air; the only gayety was that found in the scenes of reckless profligacy. It was an age of extremes; on the one side, unrestrained profligacy; on the other, fear and sorrow occasioned by a tyrant’s cruel caprice. It was an age in which all the experiences of life were intensified. Human life of the period can only be pictured in high lights and deep shadows; everything must be shown in strong relief. The fortune of nearly all the good women of this time whose names we know was to suffer patiently and die heroically.
Like Acte, the noble matron Pomponia Græcina has been credited by tradition with having found consolation for the sorrows of the times in that new faith which was undermining old Rome, both literally in the catacombs and figuratively in the rapidity with which it was making converts; but we know not with certainty. It would be unjust to paganism and untrue to history to claim every instance of moral superiority for the modern faith. Still, Græcina was accused of yielding to foreign superstitions. This may have been owing to the peculiarities of her manner. She had been the close friend of that Julia, daughter of Drusus, whom Messalina had forced to kill herself. From this time on, for the space of forty years, Græcina wore nothing but mourning, and was never seen to smile. Sienkiewicz founds the plot of his Neronian novel on the idea that Græcina was a Christian; but there are no facts by which this supposition can be verified. When the charge of entertaining foreign superstitions was laid against her, she was, in accordance with the ancient law, consigned to the adjudication of her husband. Plautius assembled her kindred, and, in compliance with the institutions of early times, having in their presence made solemn inquisition into the character and conduct of his wife, adjudged her innocent. She survived to a great age and was always held in high estimation by the people, but she never recovered from her melancholy.
When the noble Thrasea had been condemned to death by Nero, the officer who brought the tidings found him walking in the portico of his house. He had already opened his veins, and as he stretched out his arms the blood began to flow. Calling the quæstor to him, and sprinkling the blood upon the floor, he said: “Let us make a libation to Jove the Deliverer. Behold, young man, and may the gods avert the omen, but you are fallen upon such times that it may be useful to fortify your mind by examples of unflinching firmness.” Arria, his wife, wished to share her husband’s fate, but he bade her live for their daughter’s sake.
There were many women who presented examples of the same unflinching firmness for the encouragement of their own sex. The mother of Thrasea’s wife, whose name was also Arria, exhibited a strength of mind and a magnanimity of spirit equal to that of the noblest Romans in the best days of the Republic. Duruy recounts two episodes in the career of this noble woman which illustrate all we have claimed for her as one of the best of her sex.
“Arria’s husband, Cæcina Pætus, and his son were affected with a serious malady; the son died. His mother took such measures respecting the funeral that the father knew nothing of it. Every time she entered his room she gave him news of the sufferer,—he had not slept badly, or perhaps he was recovering his appetite; and when she could no longer restrain her tears she went out for a moment, and then returned with dry eyes and a calm face, having left her grief behind her. At a later period, her husband, being concerned in the conspiracy of Scribonianus, was captured and taken to Rome. He was put on board a ship, and Arria begged the soldiers to allow her to go with him, ‘You cannot refuse,’ she said to them, ‘to a man of consular rank a few slaves to wait on him and dress him; I alone will do him these services.’ As they continued inexorable, she hired a fishing boat and followed across the Adriatic the vessel in which her husband was conveyed. At Rome, she met the wife of Scribonianus, who attempted to speak to her. ‘How can I listen to you,’ she said to her, ‘who have seen your husband killed in your arms, and who are still alive?’ Foreseeing the condemnation of Pætus, she determined not to survive him. Thrasea, her son-in-law, begged her to give up this determination. ‘Is it your wish, then,’ he said to her, ‘if I should be compelled to die, that your daughter should die with me?’ ‘If she shall have lived as long and as united a life with you as I with Pætus, it is my wish,’ was the reply. Her family watched her carefully, to prevent her fatal design. ‘You are wasting your time,’ she said; ‘you will make me die a more painful death, but it is not in your power to prevent me from dying.’ Thereupon she dashed her head against the wall with such violence that she fell down as if dead. When she recovered her senses, she said to them: ‘I have already warned you that I should find some means of death, however hard, if you denied me an easy one.’ We cannot wonder that, to decide her hesitating husband, she struck herself a fatal blow with a poniard; then handed him the weapon, saying: ‘Pætus, it gives no pain.’”
Pliny gives an account of an incident showing similar conjugal devotion and self-sacrificing courage. “I was sailing lately,” says he, “on our Lake Larius, when an elderly friend pointed out to me a house, one of whose rooms projected above the waves. ‘From that spot,’ he said, ‘a townswoman of ours threw herself out with her husband. The latter had long been ill, suffering from an incurable ulcer. When she was convinced that he could not recover from his disease, she exhorted him to kill himself, and became his companion in death—nay, rather his example and leader, for she tied her husband to her and jumped into the lake.’” This was a woman of the common citizens; we do not even know her name. Modern times have no examples to show of a closer marital sympathy than this. Our ideas compel us to deprecate the act of self-destruction; but we cannot question, or more than rival, such devotion. The like degree of faithfulness between married couples was common among the Romans; and this was their manner of showing it.
We have, more than once, seen the statement advanced in all seriousness by well-informed writers and public speakers that marital affection, in the modern understanding of the expression, was almost unknown among the ancients. The object of the contention is to enhance the appreciation of the effects of Christianity; but the argument is as absurdly inconsistent with history as it is with common sense. True, Christianity discourages conjugal unions in which that affection does not exist, but it does not create it; nor was there anything whatever in pagan customs or institutions to prevent the existence of the warmest and purest affection between husband and wife. The sole conditions in the ancient world that militated against pure and constant married love were the customary unions of expediency and the inferior position of the wife. As to the first of these customs, it is by no means unknown in the modern world and to Christian times; in regard to the second, the Roman wife in the period with which we are now engaged was almost equally as well off as her modern descendant.
Principles of virtue, honor, and duty of a high order had been inculcated through many generations of ancient Romans; and it could not be otherwise than that these would reappear and manifest themselves with invincible insistence, even in the most corrupt days of the Empire. What higher or more dignified sense of duty could there be than that exhibited by the lady who had determined to send substantial relief to a friend of hers, banished by Domitian? It was represented to her that this money would be certain to fall into the tyrant’s hands, and that hence she would be only wasting her means and gratifying the unworthy. “It is of little consequence to me,” she said, “if Domitian steal it; but it is of great moment for me to send it.” She possessed the sublime conviction that she was responsible to her consciousness of what friendship demanded, even though she might be certain of the miscarriage of her efforts.
There were also women whose spirits were stirred by the love of freedom, and who were willing to do and dare and suffer in the attempt to wrest the nation from a tyrant’s grasp. Among those who have sacrificed their own lives at the altar of Liberty, the Roman woman can claim representatives.
We are told that into the conspiracy against Nero which was headed by Caius Piso, “senators, knights, soldiers, and even women entered with the ardor of competition.” The plot was to attack Nero while he was singing upon the stage, though it was considered by some that it would be a better plan to set his house on fire and then despatch him while he was excitedly hurrying about unattended by his guards. “While the conspirators were hesitating, and protracting the issue of their hopes and fears, a woman named Epicharis—and how she became acquainted with the affair is involved in mystery, nor had she ever manifested a concern for worthy objects before—began to animate the conspirators, and goad them on by reproaches; but at length, disgusted by their dilatoriness, while sojourning in Campania, she tried every effort to shake the allegiance of the officers of the fleet at Misenum, and engage them in the plot.”
But, though an enthusiastic conspirator, Epicharis proved herself an unwary recruiting agent. She especially applied herself to an old acquaintance named Proculus, who confided to her the fact that he had been one of the party concerned in the assassination of the emperor’s mother, and that he was dissatisfied with the reward he had received for such eminent service, he being only a minor officer in the fleet. He added that it was his settled purpose to be revenged, should a fitting opportunity present itself. Epicharis did not wait to consider the unwisdom of incontinently intrusting the knowledge of the whole plot to a man of insufficient principle to prevent him from looking upon the murder of a defenceless woman as an exploit to be liberally rewarded. Moreover, it is likely that she inadvertently had dropped some hint of what was in her mind, and Proculus lured her on by suggesting the possibility of himself as a convert. Epicharis first gave him the whole plot, and then set about persuading him to join it. She recounted all the atrocities of the emperor; and concluded with the remark “that Nero had stripped the Senate of all its powers; but,” she added, “measures had been taken to punish him for overturning the constitution; and Proculus had only to address himself manfully to the work and bring over to their side the most energetic of the troops, and he might depend upon receiving suitable rewards.”
One indiscretion she did not commit: she did not divulge the names of the conspirators. So, when Proculus laid information before the emperor—thinking doubtless that this was a readier path to reward than any plot of assassination of which a woman would be cognizant—his evidence was of little avail; but Nero considered it best to detain Epicharis in prison, in anticipation of anything that might occur.
The conspirators at last concluded to perpetrate their design at the Cirensian games. Lateranus, a man of determined spirit and gigantic strength, was to approach the emperor as a suppliant and, apparently by accident, throw him down. Scævinus was to perform the principal part with a dagger he had procured from the temple of Fortune for the purpose. Piso was to wait at the temple of Ceres until he was summoned to the camp, which he was to enter attended by Antonia, the daughter of Claudius Cæsar,—a woman of an entirely opposite character to that of her grandmother, after whom she was named,—and who, it was hoped, would conciliate the favor of the people. How deeply Antonia was involved in this plot it is impossible to say. It appears improbable, as Tacitus remarks, that she should have lent her name and hazarded her life in a project from which she had nothing to hope.
It was through the dagger mentioned above, and also the cupidity of a woman, that the whole conspiracy came to light. Scævinus impatiently ordered his freedman Milichus to put the weapon to the grindstone and bring it to a sharp point. Milichus, putting together this and other preparations he witnessed, guessed the project that was on foot. He told his suspicions to the emperor. Scævinus was arrested; but his bearing was so confident that the accuser would have broken down had not the wife of Milichus reminded him that “Natalis had taken part in many secret conversations with Scævinus, and that both were confidants of Piso.” Then followed numerous arrests, confessions, and accusations, each conspirator endeavoring to lighten the burden of his own guilt by revealing how many there were who shared it. Lucan the poet even informed against his own mother, Atilla.
Amid all this disaster, there was one spirit that remained undaunted, one tongue that could not be persuaded by promises or compelled by torment to confess and thus implicate others. Epicharis had been held in custody from the time of her unguarded enthusiasm in Campania. Nero recollected her, and commanded that she should be put to the torture. “But,” says the historian, “neither stripes, nor fire, nor the rage of the tormentors, who tore her with the more vehemence, lest they should be scorned by a woman, could vanquish her.” Thus the first day of torture was passed without producing any effect upon her. “The day following, as she was being brought back to suffer the same torments, riding in a chair, for all her members being disjointed, she could not support herself, taking off the girdle that bound her breast, she tied it in a noose to the canopy of the chair, and, placing her neck in it, hung upon it with the weight of her whole body, and thus forced out the slender remains of life. A freedwoman, by thus screening strangers and persons almost unknown to her, though pressed to divulge their names by the most extreme torture, exhibited an example which derived augmented lustre from the fact that freeborn persons, men, Roman knights, and Senators, untouched by the instruments of inquisition, all betrayed their dearest pledges of affection.”
Among the many who suffered from the discovery of this conspiracy was Seneca, the aged philosopher and the former tutor of Nero. It is probable that he was innocent; but he had incurred Nero’s displeasure, and the tyrant was glad of the opportunity to destroy him with seeming justice. The parting of Seneca with his wife and her conduct at the time well merit the pains which the historian has taken with the recital. Embracing his wife, he implored her to “refrain from surrendering herself to endless grief; but to endeavor to mitigate her regret for her husband by means of those honorable consolations which she would experience in the contemplation of his virtuous life.” Paullina, however, expressed her determination to die with her husband, and called for the assistance of the executioner to open her veins. Seneca, proud of her devotion and as willing to see her acquire the glory of such an act as he was to be assured that she was safe from the hard usages of the world, replied: “I had pointed out to you how to soften the ills of life; but you prefer the renown of dying. I will not envy you the honor of the example. Though both display the same unflinching fortitude in encountering death, still the glory of your exit will be superior to mine.” Then they had the veins of their arms opened at the same moment; but being unable to bear up under the excessive torture, and afraid lest the sight of his sufferings should overpower her, Seneca persuaded his wife to retire into another room.
When Nero heard what was being done, having no dislike to Paullina, and not willing to incur the odium of a double death and one so affecting, he ordered her wounds to be dressed and the flow of blood stanched. She survived but a few years, and these were devoted to the memory of her husband. It is also said that an excessive paleness was the continuous witness to the sacrifice to conjugal devotion which she had done her best to make.
Not so fortunate was Servilia, a young woman of twenty who, at this time, was arraigned before the Senate, charged with having distributed sums of money among the magi. Servilia was the daughter of Soranus, who had been Proconsul of Asia. There was no accusation against Servilia’s father more severe than that he was a friend of Plautus, whom Nero, for reasons utterly unjust, but entirely satisfactory to himself, had caused to be executed. Tacitus suggests the picture of her trial: the consuls on the judgment seat in the presence of the assembled Senate; on one side of that tribunal, an old, gray-haired man who for many years has served his country with honor and integrity; on the other side, the daughter, so young and yet widowed, for her husband has been sent into banishment, and hence is as dead to her. The thought that she, who had endeavored to aid and comfort her father, had only added to his dangers is so oppressive that she has not the heart to look at him. The accuser questions her: “Did you not sell your bridal ornaments, and even the chain off your neck, to raise money for the performance of magic rites?” Instead of answering, the unfortunate girl falls to the floor, embracing the altar, as though hoping that divine aid would be given, where human mercy was not to be expected. At last she gathers voice, and is able to falter: “I have used no spells; nor did I seek aught by my unhappy prayers than that you, Cæsar, and you, fathers, would preserve this best of fathers unharmed. It was with this object alone I gave up my jewels, my raiment, and the ornaments belonging to my station; as I would have given up my blood and life, had the magi required them. To those men, till then unknown to me, it belongs to declare whose ministers they are, and what mysteries they use; the prince’s name was never uttered by me, save as one speaks of the gods. Yet to all this proceeding of mine, if guilty it be, my most unhappy father is a stranger; and if it is a crime, I alone am the criminal.” Then Soranus pleads for his daughter. Her age is so tender that she could not have known Plautus, whose friend they accuse himself of being. Do they impeach him for mismanagement of his province? Let it be so; yet his daughter had not accompanied him to Asia. Her only crime was too much filial piety, too great solicitude for her father. He would gladly submit to whatever fate awaited him, if only they would separate her case from his. Overcome with emotion, the old man totters forward with outstretched hands to embrace his daughter, who springs to meet him; but the stern lictors interpose the fasces and deny them this sad comfort.
The Senate exercises a heartless clemency; Servilia and Soranus are allowed to choose their own deaths. This faithful daughter, for seeking by means of her religion to aid her father, is privileged to die with him. With them also perished Thrasea, who had added to his crime of disbelieving in the deification of Poppæa that of neglecting to sacrifice for the preservation of Nero’s beautiful voice!
A strikingly magnificent feature of the old Roman character is the manner in which these people met death. This was the one virtue which the Romans, down to the latest period of the decadence, did not cease to retain. In the most dissolute times, the Roman might live badly, but at least he could die bravely. This was the one opportunity always left when atonement might be made for the errors of life. In this ability to meet death with calm fortitude the women shared no less than the men. The maids and matrons of Rome were habituated by training and by their best traditional examples to look upon the possibility of exit from the world as an ever ready refuge from unendurable ills. Lucretia was for Roman matrons an ideal in her death as well as in her life; and they seem to have found it less irksome to follow her in the former respect than in the latter.
In the endeavor to show how, even in the days of Nero, when wickedness reached its climax, virtue and honor and devotion were not utterly gone out of the world, it has been necessary to adopt as illustrations some of the saddest of the many tragedies of human history. Neither side of any true picture of this period can be a pleasing one. Human life in the city of Rome during the middle of the first century of our era was for the most part either insane or sad. To exult in unrighteousness or mourn in bereavement was the lot of every prominent personage; for there were few quiet, honorable folk whom the hand of tyranny did not touch through their friends. Therefore, in the endeavor to show the better side of the life of this time, the necessity has been forced upon us to illustrate how the prevailing remnant of the ancient virtue was manifested in the devotion of women to their stricken husbands and friends, and in the firm manner in which they met their own death.
That which belongs to the ordinary routine of woman’s life did not undergo any change during this period. The status of woman remained unaltered; her manners, customs, and occupations were the same. There was no progress. It was like the conditions existing in a home during a terrific electrical storm; all other interests are in abeyance until it is over.
This statement, however, applies more particularly to the city of Rome and to Italy. In the outlying parts of that country and in the provinces, the storm was hardly felt. Women who lived out of the sight of Nero and whose male friends did not hold office were secure from imperial cruelty and caprice. Their lives ran on in the ordinary manner of civilization. They were betrothed and married according to the ancient ceremonies; for customs changed slowly away from the metropolis. They worshipped the old gods, though they heard now and again of a certain sect of fanatical people who courted their own destruction from the officials, if not from Olympus, by denouncing the ancient worship. They managed their homes and their slaves, read their books, as we have seen in the case of Calpurnia, the wife of Pliny, and visited the amphitheatre. The only anxieties of the women who belonged to the unofficial class were those incidental to the rule of the proconsuls who were sent to govern them in the name of the emperor. Sometimes these men were lustful; frequently they were tyrannical; they were always rapacious. The people were oppressed to meet the demands of the tax collectors; but these were ills that were always with them and represented a condition of affairs that was normal.
In his biography of his father-in-law, Agricola, who was himself a provincial, Tacitus says: “He married Domitia Decidiana, a lady of illustrious descent, from which connection he derived credit and support in his pursuit of greater things. They lived together in admirable harmony and mutual affection, each giving the preference to the other; a conduct equally laudable in both, except that a greater degree of praise is due to a good wife, in proportion as a bad one deserves the greater censure.” What more touching expression of family affection can there be found than the words Tacitus wrote in respect to Agricola’s death? Apostrophizing him, he says: “But to myself and your daughter, besides the affliction of losing a parent, the aggravating affliction remains that it was not our lot to watch over your sickbed. With what attention should we have received your last instructions, and graven them on our hearts! This is our sorrow. Everything, doubtless, O best of parents, was administered for your comfort and honor, while a most affectionate wife sat beside you; yet fewer tears were shed upon your bier, and in the last light which your eyes beheld, something was wanting.” There is nothing in modern times superior to this in chaste and cultivated sympathy.
Seneca also, who was born at Cordova, describes his mother as having been “brought up in a strict home”; and he assures us that his aunt, during the sixteen years that her husband governed Egypt, was “unknown in the province,” so devoted was she to her family and home duties. There was also Polla, the wife of Lucan, whose inconsolable grief at her husband’s death was so beautifully described by Statius. We read also of Minicius Macrinus, who lived thirty-nine years with his consort without a single cloud ever rising between them; while Martial tells us of Spurinna, a man of consular family loaded with years and honors, who lived in the country with his aged wife, each resting in the other’s affection, and finishing together “the evening of a fair life.”