“When I reached Rome, he was near the end of his year of office. I dined with him on the Ides of December, for he was an old friend, and he told mefor we were alonehow he looked forward to being rid of his honours. ‘Only eighteen days more,’ he said, ‘and I shall be free!” Ah! he spoke the truth, but he little thought how the freedom was to come. He told me, I remember, what an anxious time his Consulship had been. The Consul, you see, has to see many things, and even do many things, which a Christian would gladly avoid. To sit at the theatre, to look on at the horrid butchery of the games, to be present at the public sacrifices, these are the things which a man can hardly do without sin.
” ‘But’, he said, ‘my good cousin, the Emperor, has considered me. Happily he has been my colleague, and he has taken a hundred duties off my hands, which would have been a grievous burden on me.’ And then he went to tell me of some [18] troubles which had arisen in the Church. A certain Verus had the charge of the pensions paid to the widows, and of other funds devoted to the service of the poor, and he had embezzled a large part of them. ‘You see,’ he went on, ‘we are helpless. We cannot appeal to the courts, as we have no standing before them; in fact, our witnesses would not dare to come forward. For a man to own himself a Christian would be certain death; and though one is ready for death if it comes, we must not go to meet it. So, whether we will or no, we must deal gently with this Verus.’ And he did deal gently with him. Of course, he had to be dismissed; but he was not even asked to repay what he had takenFlavius positively paid the whole of the deficiency out of his own pocket. And he spoke in the kindest way, I know, to the wretch, hoped that it would be a lesson to him, begged him to be an honest man in the future, and even offered to lend him money to start in business with.
“And yet the fellow laid an information against him with the Emperor! It would not have been enough to charge him with being a Christian; he was accused of witchcraft, and of laying plots against the Emperor’s life. He used to mention Domitian’s name in his prayers, for he was his kinsman as well as his emperor, and they got some [19] wretched slave to swear that he heard him mutter incantations and curses. And Domitian, who was mad with fearas he well might be, considering all the innocent blood that he had shedbelieved it.
“I shall never forget what I saw in the senate-house that day. It was the last day of the year, and Flavius was to resign his office. There sat Domitian with that dreadful face, a face of the colour of blood, with such a savage scowl as I never saw before or since. Flavius took the oath that he had done the duties of his office with good faith, and then came down from his chair of office.
“In the common course of things the senate would have been adjourned at once. But that day the Emperor stood up. What a shudder ran through the assembly! Every one saw that the tale of victims for that year was not yet told. The question was, whose name was to be added? Domitian called on Regulus, a wretch who had grown gray in the trade of the informer. He rose in his place. ‘I accuse Flavius Clemens, ex-consul, of treason,’ he said. Why should I weary you, my brethren, with the wretched tale? To name a man in those days was to condemn him. I have [20] heard it said by men who have crossed the deserts of the South that if a beast drops sick or weary on the road, in a moment the vultures are seen flocking to it from every quarter of the sky. Before, not one could be seen; but scarce is the dying beast stretched on the sand, but the air is black with their wings. So it was then. One day a man might seem not to have an enemy; let him be accused, and on the morrow they might be numbered by scores.
“Flavius, as I have said, was the gentlest, kindest, most blameless of men. But had he been the worst criminal in Rome, witnesses could not have been found more easily to testify against him. They brought in that wretched slave with his story of muttered incantations.
“You will say, perhaps, ‘But he could not bear witness against his master!’ Ah! my friends, they had a device to meet that difficulty. They sold him first, and, mark you, without his master’s consent, to the State. Then he could give evidence, and the law not be broken. Then this villain Verus came forward. He told the same story, and with this addition, that he had been bribed to keep the secret, and he brought out the letter in which Flavius had offered him the money, as I have told you. Kind as ever, the Consul had written thus: ‘We will bury this matter in [21] silence. Meanwhile you shall not want means for your future support. Flaccus the banker shall pay you 100,000 sesterces [about ?1,000].’
“Then senator after senator rose and repeated something that they had heard him say, or had heard said of himfor no evidence was refused in that court. At last one Opimius stood up. ‘Lord C?sar,’ he said, ‘and Conscript Fathers, of the chief of the crimes of Flavius no mention has been made. I accuse him of the detestable superstition of the Christians.’
” ‘Answer for yourself,’ said the Emperor, turning to the accused.
“He stood up. Commonly, I was told, he was a faltering speaker, but that day his words came clear and without hindrance. We know, my brethren, Who was speaking by his lips. He spoke briefly and disdainfully of the other charges, utterly breaking down the evidence, as any other court on earth but that would have held. Then he went on, ‘But as to what Opimius has called “the detestable superstition of the Christians,” I confess it, affirming at the same time that this same superstition has made me more loyal to all duties, public or private, of a citizen of Rome. I appeal to C?sar, who hath known me from my boyhood, as one kinsman knows another, and who, being aware of my belief, conferred upon [22] me this dignity of the Consulship, which is next only to his own majesty. I appeal to C?sar whether this be not so.’
“He turned to Domitian as he spoke. That unchanging flush upon the tyrant’s face fortified him, as I have heard it said, against shame. But he kept his eyes fixed upon the ground, and for a while he was silent. Then he said, ‘I leave the case of Flavius Clemens to the judgment of the fathers.’
“You will ask, ‘Did no one rise to speak for him?’ I did see one half-rise from his seat. They told me afterwards that it was one Cornelius Tacitus, a famous writer, but his friends that were sitting by caught his gown and dragged him back, and he was silent. And indeed, speech would have served no purpose but to involve him in the ruin of the accused.
“Then the Emperor spoke again, ‘We postpone this matter till to-morrow.’ Then turning to the lictors
” ‘Lictors,’ he said, ‘conduct Flavius Clemens to his home. See that you have him ready to produce when he shall be required of you.’
“This, you will understand, was what was counted mercy in those days. A man not condemned was allowed the opportunity of putting an end to his own life. That saved his property for [23] his family. In the evening I went to Flavius’s house. He was surrounded by kinsfolk and friends. With one voice they were urging him to kill himself. Even his wifeshe was not a Christian, you should knowjoined her entreaties to theirs. Perhaps she thought of the money, and it was hard to choose beggary instead of wealth; certainly she thought of the disgrace. Were she and her children to be the widow and orphans of a criminal or an ex-consul?
“He never wavered for an instant. ‘When my Lord offers me the crown of martyrdom,’ he said, ‘shall I put it from me?’ That was his one answer; and though before he had been always yielding and weak of will, he did not flinch a hair’s-breadth from this purpose.
“That night, I was told, he slept as calmly as a child. The next day he was taken again to the Senate, and condemned. But I heard that at least half of the senators had the grace to absent themselves. One favour the Emperor granted to him, as a kinsman; he might choose the manner and place of his death. He chose death by beheading, and the third milestone on the road to Ostia. It was then and there that the holy Apostle Paul had suffered; and Paul, whom he had heard in his youth, was his father in the faith. I saw him die; and besides his memory, that [24] handkerchief, stained with his blood, is all that remains to me of him.”