A Thorny Path, Volume 12.

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A THORNY PATH

By Georg Ebers

Volume 12.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

Caracalla's evening meal was ended, and for years past his friends had
never seen the gloomy monarch in so mad a mood. The high-priest of
Serapis, with Dio Cassius the senator, and a few others of his suite, had
not indeed appeared at table; but the priest of Alexander, the prefect
Macrinus, his favorites Theocritus, Pandion, Antigonus, and others of
their kidney, had crowded round him, had drunk to his health, and wished
him joy of his glorious revenge.

Everything which legend or history had recorded of similar deeds was
compared with this day's work, and it was agreed that it transcended them
all. This delighted the half-drunken monarch. To-day, he declared with
flashing eyes, and not till to-day, he had dared to be entirely what Fate
had called him to be--at once the judge and the executioner of an
accursed and degenerate race. As Titus had been named "the Good," so he
would be called "the Terrible." And this day had secured him that grand
name, so pleasing to his inmost heart.

"Hail to the benevolent sovereign who would fain be terrible!" cried
Theocritus, raising his cup; and the rest of the guests echoed him.

Then the number of the slain was discussed. No one could estimate it
exactly. Zminis, the only man who could have seen everything, had not
appeared: Fifty, sixty, seventy thousand Alexandrians were supposed to
have suffered death; Macrinus, however, asserted that there must have
been more than a hundred thousand, and Caracalla rewarded him for his
statement by exclaiming loudly "Splendid! grand! Hardly comprehensible
by the vulgar mind! But, even so, it is not the end of what I mean to
give them. To-day I have racked their limbs; but I have yet to strike
them to the heart, as they have stricken me!"

He ceased, and after a short pause repeated unhesitatingly, and as though
by a sudden impulse, the lines with which Euripides ends several of his
tragedies:

"Jove in high heaven dispenses various fates;
And now the gods shower blessings which our hope
Dared not aspire to, now control the ills
We deemed inevitable. Thus the god
To these hath given an end we never thought."

--Potter's translation.

And this was the end of the revolting scene, for, as he spoke, Caesar
pushed away his cup and sat staring into vacancy, so pale that his
physician, foreseeing a fresh attack, brought out his medicine vial.

The praetorian prefect gave a signal to the rest that they should not
notice the change in their imperial host, and he did his best to keep the
conversation going, till Caracalla, after a long pause, wiped his brow
and exclaimed hoarsely: "What has become of the Egyptian? He was to
bring in the living prisoners--the living, I say! Let him bring me
them."

He struck the table by his couch violently with his fist; and then, as if
the clatter of the metal vessels on it had brought him to himself, he
added, meditatively: "A hundred thousand! If they burned their dead
here, it would take a forest to reduce them to ashes."

"This day will cost him dear enough as it is," the high-priest of
Alexander whispered; he, as idiologos, having to deposit the tribute from
the temples and their estates in the imperial treasury. He addressed his
neighbor, old Julius Paulinus, who replied:

"Charon is doing the best business to-day. A hundred thousand obolus in
a few hours. If Tarautas reigns over us much longer, I will farm his
ferry!"

During this whispered dialogue Theocritus the favorite was assuring
Caesar in a loud voice that the possessions of the victims would suffice
for any form of interment, and an ample number of thank-offerings into
the bargain.

"An offering!" echoed Caracalla, and he pointed to a short sword which
lay beside him on the couch. "That helped in the work. My father
wielded it in many a fight, and I have not let it rust. Still, I doubt
whether in my hands and his together it ever before yesterday slaughtered
a hundred thousand."

He looked round for the high-priest of Serapis, and after seeking him in
vain among the guests, he exclaimed:

"The revered Timotheus withdraws his countenance from us to-day. Yet it
was to his god that I dedicated the work of vengeance. He laments the
loss of worshipers to great Serapis, as you, Vertinus"--and he turned to
the idiologos--"regret the slain tax-payers. Well, you are thinking of
my loss or gain, and that I can not but praise. Your colleague in the
service of Serapis has nothing to care for but the honor of his god; but
he does not succeed in rising to the occasion. Poor wretch! I will
give him a lesson. Here Epagathos, and you, Claudius--go at once to
Timotheus; carry him this sword. I devote it to his god. It is to be
preserved in his holy of holies, in memory of the greatest act of
vengeance ever known. If Timotheus should refuse the gift--But no,
he has sense--he knows me!"

He paused, and turned to look at Macrinus, who had risen to speak to some
officials and soldiers who had entered the room. They brought the news
that the Parthian envoys had broken off all negotiations, and had left
the city in the afternoon. They would enter into no alliance, and were
prepared to meet the Roman army.

Macrinus repeated this to Caesar with a shrug of his shoulders, but he
withheld the remark added by the venerable elder of the ambassadors, that
they did not fear a foe who by so vile a deed had incurred the wrath of
the gods.

"Then it is war with the Parthians!" cried Caracalla, and his eyes
flashed. "My breast-plated favorites will rejoice."

But then he looked grave, and inquired: "They are leaving the town, you
say? But are they birds? The gates and harbor are closed."

"A small Phoenician vessel stole out just before sundown between our
guard-ships," was the reply. "Curse it!" broke from Caesar's lips in a
loud voice, and, after a brief dialogue in an undertone with the prefect,
he desired to have papyrus and writing materials brought to him. He
himself must inform the senate of what had occurred, and he did so in a
few words.

He did not know the number of the slain, and he did not think it worth
while to make a rough estimate. All the Alexandrians, he said, had in
fact merited death. A swift trireme was to carry the letter to Ostia at
daybreak.

He did not, indeed, ask the opinion of the senate, and yet he felt that
it would be better that news of the day's events should reach the curia
under his own hand than through the distorting medium of rumor.

Nor did Macrinus impress on him, as usual, that he should give his
dispatch a respectful form. This crime, if anything, might help him to
the fulfillment of the Magian's prophecy.

As Caesar was rolling up his missive, the long-expected Zminis came into
the room. He had attired himself splendidly, and bore the insignia of
his new office. He humbly begged to be pardoned for his long delay. He
had had to make his outer man fit to appear among Caesar's guests, for--
as he boastfully explained--he himself had waded in blood, and in the
court-yard of the Museum the red life-juice of the Alexandrians had
reached above his horse's knees. The number of the dead, he declared
with sickening pride, was above a hundred thousand, as estimated by the
prefect.

"Then we will call it eleven myriad," Caracalla broke in. "Now, we have
had enough of the dead. Bring in the living."

"Whom?" asked the Egyptian, in surprise. Hereupon Caesar's eyelids began
to quiver, and in a threatening tone he reminded his bloody-handed tool
of those whom he had ordered him to take alive. Still Zminis was silent,
and Caesar furiously shrieked his demand as to whether by his blundering
Heron's daughter had escaped; whether he could not produce the gem-cutter
and his son. The blood-stained butcher then perceived that Caesar's
murderous sword might be turned against him also. Still, he was prepared
to defend himself by every means in his power. His brain was inventive,
and, seeing that the fault for which he would least easily be forgiven
was the failure to capture Melissa, he tried to screen himself by a lie.
Relying on an incident which he himself had witnessed, he began: "I felt
certain of securing the gem-cutter's pretty daughter, for my men had
surrounded his house. But it had come to the ears of these Alexandrian
scoundrels that a son of Heron's, a painter, and his sister, had betrayed
their fellow-citizens and excited your wrath. It was to them that they
ascribed the punishment which I executed upon them in your name. This
rabble have no notion of reflection; before we could hinder them they had
rushed on the innocent dwelling. They flung fire-brands into it, burned
it, and tore it down. Any one who was within perished, and thus the
daughter of Heron died. That is, unfortunately, proved. I can take the
old man and his son tomorrow. To-day I have had so much to do that there
has not been time to bind the sheaves. It is said that they had escaped
before the mob rushed on the house."

"And the gem-cutter's daughter?" asked Caracalla, in a trembling voice.
"You are sure she was burned in the building?"

"As sure as that I have zealously endeavored to let the Alexandrians feel
your avenging hand," replied the Egyptian resolutely, and with a bold
face he confirmed his he. "I have here the jewel she wore on her arm.
It was found on the charred body in the cellar. Adventus, your
chamberlain, says that Melissa received it yesterday as a gift from you.
Here it is."

And he handed Caracalla the serpent-shaped bracelet which Caesar had sent
to his sweetheart before setting out for the Circus. The fire had
damaged it, but there was no mistaking it. It had been found beneath the
ruins on a human arm, and Zminis had only learned from the chamberlain,
to whom he had shown it, that it had belonged to the daughter of Heron.

"Even the features of the corpse," Zminis added, "were still
recognizable."

"The corpse!" Caesar echoed gloomily. "And it was the Alexandrians, you
say, who destroyed the house?"

"Yes, my lord; a raging mob, and mingled with them men of every race-
Jews, Greeks, Syrians, what not. Most of them had lost a father, a son,
or a brother, sent to Hades by your vengeance. Their wildest curses were
for Alexander, the painter, who in fact had played the spy for you. But
the Macedonian phalanx arrived at the right moment. They killed most of
them and took some prisoners. You can see them yourself in the morning.
As regards the wife of Seleukus--"

"Well," exclaimed Caesar, and his eye brightened again.

"She fell a victim to the clumsiness of the praetorians."

"Indeed!" interrupted the legate Quintus Flavius Nobilior, who had
granted Alexander's life to the prayer of the twins Aurelius; and
Macrinus also forbade any insulting observations as to the blameless
troops whom he had the honor to command.

But the Egyptian was not to be checked; he went on eagerly: "Pardon, my
lords. It is perfectly certain, nevertheless, that it was a praetorian--
his name is Rufus, and he belongs to the second cohort--who pierced the
lady Berenike with his spear."

Flavius here begged to be allowed to speak, and reported how Berenike had
sought and found her end. And he did so as though he were narrating the
death of a heroine, but he added, in a tone of disapproval: "Unhappily,
the misguided woman died with a curse on you, great Caesar, on her
treasonable lips."

"And this female hero finds her Homer in you!" cried Caesar. "We will
speak together again, my Quintus."

He raised a brimming cup to his lips and emptied it at a draught; then,
setting it on the table with such violence that it rang, he exclaimed
"Then you have brought me none of those whom I commanded you to capture?
Even the feeble girl who had not quitted her father's house you allowed
to be murdered by those coarse monsters! And you think I shall look on
you with favor? By this time to-morrow the gem-cutter and his son
Alexander are here before me, or by the head of my divine father you go
to the wild beasts in the Circus."

"They will not eat such as he," observed old Julius Paulinus, and Caesar
nodded approvingly. The Egyptian shuddered, for this imperial nod showed
him by how slender a thread his life hung.

In a flash he reflected whither he might fly if he should fail to find
this hated couple. If, after all, he should discover Melissa alive, so
much the better. Then, he might have been mistaken in identifying the
body; some slave girl might have stolen the bracelet and put it on before
the house was burned down. He knew for a fact that the charred corpse of
which he had spoken was that of a street wench who had rushed among the
foremost into the house of the much-envied imperial favorite--the
traitress--and had met her death in the spreading flames.

Zminis had but a moment to rack his inventive and prudent brain, but he
already had thought of something which might perhaps influence Caesar in
his favor. Of all the Alexandrians, the members of the Museum were those
whom Caracalla hated most. He had been particularly enjoined not to
spare one of them; and in the course of the ride which Caesar, attended
by the armed troopers of Arsinoe, had taken through the streets streaming
with blood, he had stayed longest gazing at the heap of corpses in the
court-yard of the Museum. In the portico, a colonnade copied from the
Stoa at Athens, whither a dozen or so of the philosophers had fled when
attacked, he had even stabbed several with his own hand. The blood on
the sword which Caracalla had dedicated to Serapis had been shed at the
Museum.

The Egyptian had himself led the massacre here, and had seen that it was
thoroughly effectual. The mention of those slaughtered hair-splitters
must, if anything, be likely to mitigate Caesar's wrath; so no sooner had
the applause died away with which the proconsul's jest at his expense had
been received, than Zminis began to give his report of the great massacre
in the Museum. He could boast of having spared scarcely one of the empty
word-pickers with whom the epigrams against Caesar and his mother had
originated. Teachers and pupils, even the domestic officials, had been
overtaken by the insulted sovereign's vengeance. Nothing was left but
the stones of that great institution, which had indeed long outlived its
fame. The Numidians who had helped in the work had been drunk with
blood, and had forced their way even into the physician's lecture-rooms
and the hospital adjoining. There, too, they had given no quarter; and
among the sufferers who had been carried thither to be healed they had
found Tarautas, the wounded gladiator. A Numidian, the youngest of the
legion, a beardless youth, had pinned the terrible conqueror of lions and
men to the bed with his spear, and then, with the same weapon, had
released at least a dozen of his fellow-sufferers from their pain.

As he told his story the Egyptian stood staring into vacancy, as though
he saw it all, and the whites of his eyeballs gleamed more hideously than
ever out of his swarthy face. The lean, sallow wretch stood before
Caesar like a talking corpse, and did not observe the effect his
narrative of the gladiator's death was producing. But he soon found
out. While he was yet speaking, Caracalla, leaning on the table by his
couch with both hands, fixed his eyes on his face, without a word.

Then he suddenly sprang up, and, beside himself with rage, he interrupted
the terrified Egyptian and railed at him furiously:

"My Tarautas, who had so narrowly escaped death! The bravest hero of his
kind basely murdered on his sick-bed, by a barbarian, a beardless
boy! And you, you loathsome jackal, could allow it? This deed--and you
know it, villain--will be set down to my score. It will be brought up
against me to the end of my days in Rome, in the provinces, everywhere.
I shall be cursed for your crime wherever there is a human heart to throb
and feel, and a human tongue to speak. And I--when did I ever order you
to slake your thirst for blood in that of the sick and suffering? Never!
I could never have done such a thing! I even told you to spare the
women and helpless slaves. You are all witnesses, But you all hear me--
I will punish the murderer of the wretched sick! I will avenge you,
foully murdered, brave, noble Tarautas!--Here, lictors! Bind him--away
with him to the Circus with the criminals thrown to the wild beasts! He
allowed the girl whose life I bade him spare to be burned to death before
his eyes, and the hapless sick were slain at his command by a beardless
boy!--And Tarautas! I valued him as I do all who are superior to their
kind; I cared for him. He was wounded for our entertainment, my friends.
Poor fellow--poor, brave Tarautas!"

He here broke into loud sobs, and it was so unheard-of, so
incomprehensible a thing that this man should weep who, even at his
father's death had not shed a tear, that Julius Paulinus himself held
his mocking tongue.

The rest of the spectators also kept anxious and uneasy silence while the
lictors bound Zminis's hands, and, in spite of his attempts to raise his
voice once more in self-defense, dragged him away and thrust him out
across the threshold of the dining-hall. The door closed behind him,
and no applause followed, though every one approved of the Egyptian's
condemnation, for Caracalla was still weeping.

Was it possible that these tears could be shed for sick people whom he
did not know, and for the coarse gladiator, the butcher of men and
beasts, who had had nothing to give Caesar but a few hours of excitement
at the intoxicating performances in the arena? So it must be; for from
time to time Caracalla moaned softly, "Those unhappy sick!" or
"Poor Tarautas!"

And, indeed, at this moment Caracalla himself could not have said whom he
was lamenting. He had in the Circus staked his life on that of Tarautas,
and when he shed tears over his memory it was certainly less for the
gladiator's sake than over the approaching end of his own existence, to
which he looked forward in consequence of Tarautas's death. But he had
often been near the gates of Hades in the battle-field with calm
indifference; and now, while he thus bewailed the sick and Tarautas with
bitter lamentations, in his mind he saw no sick-bed, nor, indeed, the
stunted form of the braggart hero of the arena, but the slender, graceful
figure of a sweet girl, and a blackened, charred arm on which glittered a
golden armlet.

That woman! Treacherous, shameless, but how lovely and beloved! That
woman, under his eyes, as it were, was swept out of the land of the
living; and with her, with Melissa, the only girl for whom his heart had
ever throbbed faster, the miracle-worker who had possessed the unique
power of exorcising his torments, whose love--for so he still chose to
believe, though he had always refused her petitions that he would show
mercy--whose love would have given him strength to become a benefactor to
all mankind, a second Trajan or Titus. He had quite forgotten that he
had intended her to meet a disgraceful end in the arena under fearful
torments, if she had been brought to him a prisoner. He felt as though
the fate of Roxana, with whom his most cherished dream had perished, had
quite broken his heart; and it was Melissa whom he really bewailed, with
the gladiator's name on his lips and the jewel before his eyes which had
been his gift, and which she had worn on her arm even in death. But he
ere long controlled this display of feeling, ashamed to shed tears for
her who had cheated him and who had fled from his love. Only once more
did he sob aloud. Then he raised himself, and while holding his
handkerchief to his eyes he addressed the company with theatrical pathos:

"Yes, my friends, tell whom you will that you have seen Bassianus weep;
but add that his tears flowed from grief at the necessity for punishing
so many of his subjects with such rigor. Say, too, that Caesar wept with
pity and indignation. For what good man would not be moved to sorrow at
seeing the sick and wounded thus maltreated? What humane heart could
refrain from loud lamentations at the sight of barbarity which is not
withheld from laying a murderous hand even on the sacred anguish of the
sick and wounded? Defend me, then, against those Romans who may shrug
their shoulders over the weakness of a weeping Caesar--the Terrible. My
office demands severity; and yet, my friends, I am not ashamed of these
tears."

With this he took leave of his guests and retired to rest, and those who
remained were soon agreed that every word of this speech, as well as
Caesar's tears, were rank hypocrisy. The mime Theocritus admired his
sovereign in all sincerity, for how rarely could even the greatest actors
succeed in forcing from their eyes, by sheer determination, a flood of
real, warm tears--he had seen them flow. As Caesar quitted the room,
his hand on the lion's mane, the praetor Priscillianus whispered to Cilo:

"Your disciple has been taking lessons here of the weeping crocodile."

.........................

Out on the great square the soldiers were resting after the day's bloody
work. They had lighted large fires in front of the most sacred sanctuary
of a great city, as though they were in the open field. Round each of
these, foot and horse soldiers lay or squatted on the ground, according
to their companies; and over the wine allowed them by Caesar they told
each other the hideous experiences of the day, which even those who had
grown rich by it could not think of without disgust. Gold and silver
cups, the plunder of the city, circulated round those camp-fires and the
juice of the vine was poured into them out of jugs of precious metal.
Tongues were wagging fast, for, though there was indeed but one opinion
as to what had been done, there were mercenaries enough and ambitious
pretenders who could dare to defend it. Every word might reach the
sovereign's ears, and the day might bring promotion as well as gold and
booty. Even the calmest were still in some excitement over the massacre
they had helped in; the plunder was discussed, and barter and exchange
were eagerly carried on.

As Caracalla passed the balcony he stepped out for a moment, followed by
the lamp-bearers, to thank his faithful warriors for the valor and
obedience they had shown this day. The traitorous Alexandrians had now
met their deserts. The greater the plunder his dear brethren in arms
could win, the better he would be pleased. This speech was hailed with
a shout of glee drowning his words; but Caracalla had heard his dearly
bought troops cheer him with greater zeal and vigor. There were here
whole groups of men who did not join at all, or hardly opened their
mouths. And his ear was sharp.

What cause could they have for dissatisfaction after such splendid booty,
although they did not yet know that a war with the Parthians was in
prospect?

He must know; but not to-day. They were to be depended on, he felt sure,
for they were those to whom he was most liberal, and he had taken care
that there should be no one in the empire whose means equaled his own.
But that they should be so lukewarm annoyed him. To-day, of all days, an
enthusiastic roar of acclamations would have been peculiarly gratifying.
They ought to have known it; and he went to his bedroom in silent anger.
There his freedman Epagathos was waiting for him, with Adventus and his
learned Indian body slave Arjuna. The Indian never spoke unless he was
spoken to, and the two others took good care not to address their lord.
So silence reigned in the spacious room while the Indian undressed
Caracalla. Caesar was wont to say that this man's hands were matchless
for lightness and delicacy of touch, but to-day they trembled as he
lifted the laurel wreath from Caesar's head and unbuckled the padded
breast plate. The events of the day had shaken this man's soul to the
foundations. In his Eastern home he had been taught from his infancy to
respect life even in beasts, living exclusively on vegetables, and
holding all blood in abhorrence. He now felt the deepest loathing of all
about him; and a passionate longing for the peaceful and pure home among
sages, from which he had been snatched as a boy, came over him with
increasing vehemence. There was nothing here but what it defiled him to
handle, and his fingers shrank involuntarily from their task, as duty
compelled him to touch the limbs of a man who, to his fancy, was dripping
with human blood, and who was as much accursed by gods and men as though
he were a leper.

Arjuna made haste that he might escape from the presence of the horrible
man, and Caesar took no heed either of the pallor of his handsome brown
face or the trembling of his slender fingers, for a crowd of thoughts
made him blind and deaf to all that was going on around him. They
reverted first to the events of the day; but as the Indian removed the
warm surcoat, the night breeze blew coldly into the room, and he
shivered. Was it the spirit of the slain Tarautas which had floated in
at the open window? The cold breath which fanned his cheek was certainly
no mere draught. It was exactly like a human sigh, only it was cold
instead of warm. If it proceeded from the ghost of the dead gladiator he
must be quite close to him. And the fancy gained reality in his mind; he
saw a floating human form which beckoned him and softly laid a cold hand
on his shoulder.

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