William Stearns Davis

A Friend of Caesar

A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic

Warsaw 2022

Contents

PREFACE

I. PRAENESTE

I

II

III

II. THE UPPER WALKS OF SOCIETY

I

II

III

III. THE PRIVILEGE OF A VESTAL

I

II

III

IV. LUCIUS AHENOBARBUS AIRS HIS GRIEVANCE

I

II

III

V. A VERY OLD PROBLEM

I

II

III

VI. POMPEIUS MAGNUS

I

II

VII. AGIAS’S ADVENTURE

I

II

III

VIII. “WHEN GREEK MEETS GREEK”

I

II

IX. HOW GABINIUS MET WITH A REBUFF

I

II

X. MAMERCUS GUARDS THE DOOR

I

II

III

XI. THE GREAT PROCONSUL

I

II

XII. PRATINAS MEETS ILL-FORTUNE

I

II

III

XIII. WHAT BEFELL AT BAIAE

I

II

XIV. THE NEW CONSULS

I

II

XV. THE SEVENTH OF JANUARY

I

II

XVI. THE RUBICON

I

II

XVII. THE PROFITABLE CAREER OF GABINIUS

XVIII. HOW POMPEIUS STAMPED WITH HIS FEET

I

II

III

IV

XIX. THE HOSPITALITY OF DEMETRIUS

I

II

III

XX. CLEOPATRA

I

II

XXI. HOW ULAMHALA’S WORDS CAME TRUE

I

II

III

XXII. THE END OF THE MAGNUS

I

II

XXIII. BITTERNESS AND JOY

I

II

XXIV. BATTLING FOR LIFE

I

II

III

XXV. CALM AFTER STORM

I

II

PREFACE

If this book serves to show that Classical Life presented many phases akin to our own, it will not have been written in vain.

After the book was planned and in part written, it was discovered that Archdeacon Farrar had in his story of “Darkness And Dawn” a scene, “Onesimus and the Vestal,” which corresponds very closely to the scene, “Agias and the Vestal,” in this book; but the latter incident was too characteristically Roman not to risk repetition. If it is asked why such a book as this is desirable after those noble fictions, “Darkness And Dawn” and “Quo Vadis,” the reply must be that these books necessarily take and interpret the Christian point of view. And they do well; but the Pagan point of view still needs its interpretation, at least as a help to an easy apprehension of the life and literature of the great age of the Fall of the Roman Republic. This is the aim of “A Friend of Caesar.” The Age of Caesar prepared the way for the Age of Nero, when Christianity could find a world in a state of such culture, unity, and social stability that it could win an adequate and abiding triumph.

Great care has been taken to keep to strict historical probability; but in one scene, the “Expulsion of the Tribunes,” there is such a confusion of accounts in the authorities themselves that I have taken some slight liberties.

W.S.D.

Harvard University, January 16,1900.

I. PRAENESTE

I

It was the Roman month of September, seven hundred and four years after Romulus–so tradition ran–founded the little village by the Tiber which was to become “Mother of Nations,” “Centre of the World,” “Imperial Rome.” To state the time according to modern standards it was July, fifty years before the beginning of the Christian Era. The fierce Italian sun was pouring down over the tilled fields and stretches of woodland and grazing country that made up the landscape, and the atmosphere was almost aglow with the heat. The dust lay thick on the pavement of the highway, and rose in dense, stifling clouds, as a mule, laden with farm produce and driven by a burly countryman, trudged reluctantly along.

Yet, though the scene suggested the heat of midsummer, it was far from being unrefreshing, especially to the eyes of one newly come. For this spot was near “cool Praeneste,” one of the favourite resorts of Latium to the wealthy, invalid, or indolent of Rome, who shunned the excessive heat of the capital. And they were wise in their choice; for Praeneste, with its citadel, which rose twelve hundred feet over the adjoining country, commanded in its ample sweep both the views and the breezes of the whole wide-spreading Campagna. Here, clustering round the hill on which stood the far-famed “Temple of Fortune,” lay the old Latin town of the Praenestians; a little farther westward was the settlement founded some thirty odd years before by Sulla as a colony. Farther out, and stretching off into the open country, lay the farmhouses and villas, gardens and orchards, where splendid nuts and roses, and also wine, grew in abundant measure.

A little stream ran close to the highway, and here an irrigating machine was raising water for the fields. Two men stood on the treadmill beside the large-bucketed wheel, and as they continued their endless walk the water dashed up into the trough and went splashing down the ditches into the thirsty gardens. The workers were tall, bronze- skinned Libyans, who were stripped to the waist, showing their splendid chests and rippling muscles. Beside the trough had just come two women, by their coarse and unpretentious dress evidently slaves, bearing large earthen water-pots which they were about to fill. One of the women was old, and bore on her face all the marks which a life of hard manual toil usually leaves behind it; the other young, with a clear, smooth complexion and a rather delicate Greek profile. The Libyans stopped their monotonous trudge, evidently glad to have some excuse for a respite from their exertions.

“Ah, ha! Chloë,” cried one of them, “how would you like it, with your pretty little feet, to be plodding at this mill all the day? Thank the Gods, the sun will set before a great while. The day has been hot as the lap of an image of Moloch!”

“Well, Hasdrubal,” said Chloë, the younger woman, with a pert toss of her head, “if my feet were as large as yours, and my skin as black and thick, I should not care to complain if I had to work a little now and then.”

“Oh! of course,” retorted Hasdrubal, a little nettled. “Your ladyship is too refined, too handsome, to reflect that people with black skins as well as white may get heated and weary. Wait five and twenty years, till your cheeks are a bit withered, and see if Master Drusus doesn’t give you enough to make you tired from morning till night.”

“You rude fellow,” cried Chloë, pouting with vexation, “I will not speak to you again. If Master Drusus were here, I would complain of you to him. I have heard that he is not the kind of a master to let a poor maid of his be insulted.”

“Oh, be still, you hussy!” said the elder woman, who felt that a life of labour had spoiled what might have been quite the equal of Chloë"s good looks. “What do you know of Master Drusus? He has been in Athens ever since you were bought. I’ll make Mamercus, the steward, believe you ought to be whipped.”

What tart answer Chloë might have had on the end of her tongue will never be known; for at this moment Mago, the other Libyan, glanced up the road, and cried:–

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