The palace was not, it was found, in immediate danger. All the efforts of the Watch and of two cohorts of Pr?torians, which had been called in to help them, had been directed to saving it. How long it would escape was doubtful. If the wind, which had lulled a little, were to rise again, its destruction was certain.
The Emperor would have been disappointed if this destruction had been finally averted. We have seen that one of the great features of the new Rome that he had planned was an Imperial palace far larger and more splendid than anything that the world had ever seen before. Still he was glad of the respite, for it enabled him to put into execution a scheme, extravagantly strange, even for him, which he had conceived during his rapid journey from Antium to Rome.
“A spectacle,” he thought to himself, “and if so, why not a performance? What a splendid opportunity! We always feel that there is something of a sham in the scenery of a theatre, but here it will be real. An actual city on fire! What could be more magnificent? I have it,” he went on after a pause. “Of course it must be the Sack of Troy. What a pity it is that I did not think of it sooner, and I might have written something worthy of the occasion. The [111] Lesser Iliad is but poor stuff, but we must make the best of it.”
This grotesque intention was actually carried out.
The first care of the Emperor on reaching the palace was to have a rehearsal of his contemplated performance. If there were any cares of Empire pressing for attention,�and it may be supposed that the ruler of the civilized world returning to his capital had some business to attend to,�they were put aside. The rest of the day Nero spent in practising upon the harp some music of his own composition, while a Greek freedman recited from the Lesser Iliad a passage in which the sack and burning of Troy were related.
In the evening the performance took place. A large semicircular room in the upper story of the palace, commanding from its windows a wide prospect of the city, was hastily fitted up into the rude semblance of a theatre. An audience, which mainly consisted of the Emperor’s freedmen and of officers of the Pr?torian Guard, sat on chairs ranged round the curve of the chamber. In front of them was the extemporized stage, while the burning city, seen through the windows, formed, with huge masses of smoke and flame, such a background as the most skilful and audacious of scene-painters had never conceived. The performance had been purposely postponed till a late hour in the evening, and no lights were permitted in the room. On the stage were the [112] two figures, the reciter and the Imperial musician, now thrown strongly into relief as some great sheet of flame burst out in the background, and then, as it died away again, becoming almost invisible. An undertone of confused sound accompanied the music throughout. Every now and then the voice of the reciter and the notes of the harp were lost in some shrill cry of agony or the thunderous crash of a falling house. Seldom in the history of the world has there been a stranger mixture of the ludicrous and the terrible than when “Nero fiddled while Rome was burning.”
At one time it was not unlikely that this strange farce might have been turned into a genuine tragedy. Subrius was one of the Pr?torian officers invited to witness the performance, and chance had placed him close to the stage. Again and again as the Emperor moved across it, intent upon his music, and certainly unsuspicious of danger, he came within easy reach of the Tribune’s arm.
“Shall I strike?” he whispered into the ear of Lateranus, who sat by his side. “I can hardly hope for a better chance.”
Probably a prompt assent from his companion would have decided him; but Lateranus felt unequal to giving it. He was staggered by the suddenness of the idea. The decision was too momentous, the responsibility too great. Was it right to act without the knowledge of the other conspirators? Then [113] nothing had been prepared. Nero might be killed, but no arrangements had been made for presenting a successor to the soldiers and to the people. Finally, there was the immediate danger to themselves. It would indeed be a memorable deed to strike down this unworthy ruler in the very act of disgracing the people, to strike him down before the eyes of the creatures who flattered and fawned on him. But could they who did it hope to escape? “The desire of escape,” says the historian who relates the incident, “is always the foe of great enterprises,” and it checked that night a deed which might have changed the course of history. (Footnote: The words of Tacitus are: “It is said that Subrius Flavius had formed the sudden resolution of attacking Nero when singing on the stage, or when his house was in flames, and he was running hither and thither unattended in the darkness. In the one case was the opportunity of solitude; in the other, the very crowd which would witness so glorious a deed had roused a singularly noble soul; it was only the desire of escape, that foe to all great enterprises, that held him back.” I have preferred to attribute the hesitation to Subrius’ companion.)
“No!” whispered Lateranus in reply, “it is too soon; nothing, you know, is ready. We shall not fail to find another opportunity.”
Half reluctant, half relieved, Subrius abandoned his half-formed purpose. But he could not rid himself of the feeling that he had missed a great chance.
“Do you believe in inspirations?” he asked his friend, as they were making their way to the camp, where Lateranus was his guest.
[114] “I hardly know,” replied the other. “Perhaps there are such things. But, on the whole, men find it safer to act after deliberation.”
“Well,” said Subrius, “if ever I felt an inspiration, it was to-night when I whispered to you. I fear much that we shall never have so fair a chance again.”
“But nothing was ready,” urged his companion.
“True,” replied Subrius; “but then one does not prepare for such an enterprise as this as one prepares for a campaign.”
“And the risk?”
“True, the risk. It is not that one is afraid to venture one’s life; but one wants to see the fruit of one’s deed. Yet I much misdoubt me whether this is not a fatal weakness. One ought to do the right thing at the time, and think of nothing else. If Cassius Ch?rea had taken any thought for his own safety, he would never have slain the monster Caius. I feel that hereafter we shall be sorry for what we have done, or, rather, not done, to-day.”
(Footnote: Nero is said to have recited or accompanied the recitation of a poem (presumably Greek, as the title is given in that language) which was called the Capture of Troy . What this was we have no means of knowing, except that it was probably the work of one of the Cyclic poets, the poets, that is, who completed the Cycle of the story of the siege and capture of Troy, a story of which Homer tells a small portion only. None of these survive except in fragments. The poems on the subject that still exist are of a date later than Nero. The oldest of them is probably that of Dictys Cretensis. Curiously enough this is said to have been discovered in Nero’s reign, in an ancient tomb in Crete (Dictys himself was said to have been a follower of Idomeneus, King of Crete, to have gone with him to the seige of Troy, and to have written the story of the siege), to have been presented to the Emperor, and to have been translated by his order from the Ph?nician, in which it was written, into Greek. The late Professor Ramsay thought that, though of course a forgery, it was a forgery of this date. The date, however, is later in Nero’s reign than the time of my story.)
________________________________________
A GREAT BRIBE
[116] THE fire continued to devour its prey almost without let or hindrance. Even before the end of the performance described in my last chapter it had come so near that the heat could be distinctly felt by the spectators. Nero, whose ambition it was to imitate the imperturbable self-possession of a great actor, affected to be unconscious of what everybody else felt to be inconvenient, if not alarming. He gave the whole of the piece down to the very last flourish or roulade, and, when at last it was concluded, came forward again and again to receive the applause which a clique of duly practised flatterers did not fail time after time to renew.