“Let me go instead of him,” said the wife. “I can at least tell what I know, and you can examine him when he is fit to answer.”
Accordingly, after giving directions to Manto as to what was to be done for the patient during her absence, she accompanied the official to the court.
It was not much that she had to say; but, so far as it went, it confirmed the shepherd’s story.
“I became the mother of two female children,” she said, “on the fourteenth of May, twenty-one years ago. They were born alive, and were healthy and strong. I nursed them for fourteen days, as far as I can remember. Then I fell ill of a fever, and they had to be taken from me. I remember seeing them several times in the day for two or three days afterwards; then I knew nothing [171] more. When I recovered my senses they were gone. It was then nearly the end of June. My husband told me that they were dead.”
“Had you any doubt whether he was telling you the truth?” asked the Governor.
“I had none. Why should I? And when we were reckoning up our expenses at the end of the year, I found a paper which seemed to show the sum paid for the funeral.”
“Do you remember the slave Geta?”
“Yes; I remember him. My husband said that he had been drowned. Some articles of his clothing were found by the river.”
“Have you had any suspicion at all up to this time?”
“Lately I have had. Since my son has been ill, my husband has been much troubled in mind. He has talked in his sleep; and he said the same things over and over again, till I could not choose but heed them. ‘Why did I kill them? Why did I kill them?’ ‘Geta, Geta, bring them back!’ and ‘Childless! Childless!’ These were the things that he repeated. I put them together till I began to suspect that there had been some foul play. And then I remembered some words the old woman, Geta’s sister, had said.”
“And have you anything else to say?”
“Nothing, my lord, except that within the [172] last hour my husband has confessed to me the whole.”
“Why is he not here?”
“He is paralysed.”
Here the poor woman, who had given her evidence with extraordinary firmness and self-possession, utterly broke down.
The Governor took but little time to consider his decision. It was to this effect:
“The legal proof in this case is not complete, for it needs the formally attested confession of the man Lucilius. Substantially, however, the truth has been established, and I have no hesitation in pronouncing the sisters Rhoda and Cleone to be of free condition.”
Clitus now rose to address the court.
“I have an application to make that the proceedings in this case be annulled.”
“On what ground?” said the Governor.
“On the ground that they were essentially illegal; that the evidence of the free-woman Rhoda was extorted from her by questioning that could not lawfully be applied.”
“And you contend, therefore, that she should be set free?”
“That is my contention.”
“And how about the woman Cleone?”
“The question was embarrassing. Cleone had [173] suffered no actual wrong, and Clitus felt that here his case was weak. He tried to make the best of it.
“She has been treated as if she were of servile condition. The indictment against her is made out in these terms‘Also the slave-girl Cleone,’ are the words. I contend that it is informal, and ought therefore to be quashed.”
The young advocate had the sympathies of the courtso far, at least, as the Governor was concernedin his favour. He adjourned the court in order to consult his assessors. He found them adverse to the claim. A long argument ensued. In the end the opinion of the Governor prevailed, and he returned to the tribunal and began to deliver judgment.
“Having carefully considered the circumstances of this case, and remembering especially that the law, if ever it has been unwittingly betrayed into error, is anxious to make such amends as may be possible, I direct that the free women, Rhoda and Cleone, wrongfully condemned as being of the servile condition”
At this point the delivery of judgment was interrupted by the arrival of a messenger bearing an imperial rescript.
The Governor rose to receive the messenger, took the despatch from his hand, and, after [174] making a gesture of respect to the document, proceeded to cut the sealed thread which fastened it. He read it, every one in court watching his face as he did so with intense interest.
It ran thus:“Trajan Augustus, to his dearly beloved C?cilius Plinius, Propr?tor of Bithynia, greeting.It is my pleasure that all persons, whether men or women, bond or free, who shall have been found guilty of cherishing the detestable superstition which has taken to itself the name of Christus, be forthwith sent to Ephesus, there to be held at the disposition of the Proconsul of Asia.”
Every one knew what this meant, for the great show of wild beasts and gladiators that was about to be exhibited at Ephesus was the talk of the whole province.
THE AMPHITHEATRE
[175] ALL Ephesus was on the tiptoe of expectation about the great spectacle that was soon to be exhibited in its amphitheatre. The preparations were on a scale of magnificence that exceeded anything that had within the memory of man been witnessed in the city. Several things had combined to bring about this result.
A wealthy merchant of Ephesus was going to expend two hundred thousand drachmas in gratitude to Diana, the great patroness of the city, for the preservation of his life. It was a vow that he had made when in imminent danger of shipwreck in the course of a voyage to Massilia, and he thought that he could not do better than fulfill it by giving a popular entertainment. The Roman Governor of Asia had added as much more. It was a handsome gift, but it may be doubted whether it represented a tenth part of what he [176] had put in his pocket by the plunder of the provincials. But the Governor knew what he was about. There would be a chorus of a hundred thousand voices to praise his generosity, and he might reckon on its drowning a score or two of complaints about the extortion which he had practised and the bribes which he had received. Then the city had more than doubled the amount thus raised, by a vote from the municipal funds.
The Emperor had sent a present of money from his private purse, besides putting at the disposal of the managers of the spectacle a select troop of forty gladiators from his own establishment. The Prince’s liberality found, as such liberality commonly does, many imitators. There were some especially notable gifts in the way of wild beasts; all parts of Lesser Asia of course contributed. There were panthers from Cappadocia, bears from Cilicia, and elks from Pontus. The Parthian king sent two magnificent lions and a tiger, and lent, for the purposes of the show, a troop of performing elephants, which he had himself hired at a vast expense from one of the princes on his Indian borders. Another Indian prince sent some curious apes which had cone from beyond the Ganges. There were even giraffes and ostriches from Africa.
[177] Altogether, the show promised to be one of the greatest splendour, and the city was thronged with visitors from far and near. Among these were some connoisseurs, who were familiar with the splendid spectacles of the capital. And now a whisper went round that an exhibition of a peculiarly exciting kind was to be added to the usual entertainments. A number of persons who had been found guilty of holding the “odious superstition” of the Christians were to fight with wild beasts.
Public opinion was, indeed, not a little divided on this matter. Ephesus had not forgotten the venerable figure of St. John, and there were many, not themselves Christians, who regarded these cruelties with horror. Some had an intense curiosity to know whether the disciples would be rescued from their danger in the same marvellous way that was recorded of their teacher. On the other hand, there were many who looked forward to the promised exhibition with delight. These were bigots, not many in number, but very fervent and energetic, who sincerely hated all that threatened to undermine the old faith. And there was a multitude of people who, like Demetrius and his fellow-craftsmen some fifty years before, felt their livelihood to be endangered by the new belief. The silversmiths, who made [178] models of the temple, or of the curious figure of the goddess herself; the less skilful artisans, who manufactured facsimiles of the meteoric stone, the “image which fell down from Jupiter,” which had been an object of worship from times going back far beyond history; the bakers, who made a peculiar kind of cake stamped with the sacred image; the tavern and lodging-house keepers, who entertained and fleeced the pilgrims who crowded to pay their devotions at the shrineall these looked upon the Christians as personal enemies. Lastly, the general population, though without any particular knowledge of or interest in the matter, regarded them with a vague suspicion as persons who threatened to diminish in some way the prestige of the great city of Ephesus.