Nereus

“ And again, moved by strong passion, he spurned him with his foot.
‘Is there one house in Rome, father,’ she said, ‘in which there are not thieves? in which there are not men—aye, and women too—who steal, and would murder if they could? Is he worse than thousands whom yet we do not see chained in the prisons or rotting on the crosses? And have we not all sinned? and did not Jesus say, “Forgive one another your trespasses”?’
A half-suppressed groan from Onesimus stopped the conversation.
‘I know not what to do,’ said Nereus. ‘Go back, my child, to your cell and to your distaff. ”

“ Nereus went to the boy, who said that he knew of a little neglected window half hidden by thick bushes in the peristyle, and if he could only get there he could make his way to the cell of Hermas. The night would be dark and moonless, yet the risk would be terrific, the chance almost hopeless. But the Christians were taught not to hold their lives dear unto themselves, and they considered that martyrdom in the cause of duty was the most glorious of crowns. ”

“ Onesimus was too unstable to withstand the combined temptations by which he was surrounded. The image of Junia might have acted as an amulet, but he scarcely ever got an opportunity of seeing her, for Nereus looked upon him with anything but favour. He kept aloof from Christians, for he never heard them mentioned except with contempt and hatred, and he liked the atmosphere of compliment and pleasure. Slaves naturally imitate the vices of their masters, and the wicked world of the aristocracy was reflected in darker colours in the wicked world of servile myriads. ”

“ Nereus appears to have been the personification of the sea in its calm and placid moods, and was, after Poseidon, the most important of the sea-deities. He is represented as a kind and benevolent old man, possessing the gift of prophecy, and presiding more particularly over the Ægean Sea, of which he was considered to be the protecting spirit. There he dwelt with his wife Doris and their fifty blooming daughters, the Nereides, beneath the waves in a beautiful grotto-palace, and was ever ready to assist distressed mariners in the hour of danger. ”

“ Nereus, the freedman of Pudens, was not unwilling to get for nothing an active youth who might turn out to be a useful slave; and in that household he once more found kindness and happiness. It is true that Pudens was not yet an open Christian, but several of his slaves were, as Onesimus soon discovered; and he had learnt by experience that, among Christian men and women, he was safe from a thousand miseries and a thousand temptations. ”

“ Then Junia fled back through the deserted streets. Nereus had begun to be anxious at her long delay, and listened to her story with a grave face. He had never liked Onesimus, and the youth’s many sins and errors might well have shaken his confidence. But he and Junia had read not long before the letter which Paul of Tarsus had written to their brother-Christians in Corinth; and, if he wavered for a moment, he was decided in the cause of mercy by Junia’s whispered words, ‘Love suffereth long and is kind; love thinketh no evil; beareth all things; believeth all things; endureth all things ”

“ Yet it is not wholly deprived of the favours of Nereus, for it has a constant supply of fish, fresh and still gasping; and if you walk up on to a sort of hill away from the house, you will see the sea, the Propontis and the islands, and the city that bears the name of the noble Emperor; [3] nor will you have to stand meanwhile on seaweed and brambles, or be annoyed by the filth that is always thrown out on to seabeaches and sands, which is so very unpleasant and even unmentionable ”

“ NEREUS, in Greek mythology, the eldest son of Pontus and Gaea, and father of the fifty Nereids. He is a beneficent and venerable old man of the sea, full of wisdom and skilled in prophecy, but, like Proteus, he will only reveal what he knows under compulsion. ”

“ The Nereids, who are often distinctively named, are sometimes found in groups, [176] especially watching the seizure of Thetis or bearing the news to Nereus [177] ; or, again, carrying the armour of Achilles over the sea and presenting it to him. [178] On one vase they mourn over the dead Achilles. [179] They are also present at the reception of Theseus, [180] the contest of Herakles and Triton, [181] and with Europa on the bull. [182] Kymothea offers a parting cup to Achilles [183] ; the Naiads, who are similar beings, present to Perseus the cap, sword, shoes, and wallet. ”

“ Such strange security deepened the impression that he could wield supernatural powers. Afraid to detain him in Rome, Nero ordered him to banishment in the rocky Ægean island of Patmos.104
Thither the Apostle was conveyed, and there, gazing on the sea that burned like glass in the sunlight, he wrote his Apocalypse. In that strange book we can still read the echo of the horror kindled in the heart of an eyewitness by an Emperor who had degenerated into a portent of iniquity, fighting with empoisoned breath and dragon-like fury against the saints of God. ”

“ And thus, while Agrippina was growing daily more furious and discontented; while Seneca and Burrus were plunged into deeper and deeper anxieties; while Pætus Thrasea, and Musonius, and Cornutus found it more and more necessary to entrench themselves in the armour of a despairing fortitude; while Nero was sinking lower and lower into the slough of vice—Octavia and Britannicus began to draw nearer to the Unknown God, and found that when the sea of calamity does not mingle its bitter waters with the sea of guilt, calamity itself might be full of divine alleviations. ”

“ And men worshipped the beast, and said, ‘Who is like the wild beast?’ and ‘Who can fight against him?’ Those who had heard of Nero in his disguise at the infamous banquet on the Lake of Agrippa knew that by the wild beast he meant the Emperor, and by the sea the sea of nations, and by the name of blasphemy the divine title Augustus, and by his superhuman exaltation the adoring flattery of his votaries. He described the misery of the people as of men gnawing their tongues for pain ”

“ O Nero, I will confess to thee that I have talked to Acte; I have talked to Christian slaves—once my fellow-slaves—in thy Palace and the household of Narcissus, and I know that the gods—or that God, if (as they say) there be but one God—is with them. ”

“ No Christian pen can paint that revelry of Antichrist, or do more than distantly allude to the scenes which followed, when Nero, disguised in the skin of a bear, crawled on all fours among the vilest of those wretches, and gave to him ‘who saw the Apocalypse’ the image of the wild beast who sprang from the foul scum of the world’s most turbid sea. ”

“ Even Sporus entreated him again and again to show himself a man. It was in vain! In that coward and perverted nature every spark of manliness was quenched. ‘It is not time yet,’ he said. ‘The destined hour has not arrived. How cruel you are to me!’
‘Cruel?’ said Epaphroditus, indignantly; ‘do not we—alone of all your thousands of slaves—risk our lives for your sake? Since you must die, were it not better to die like an Emperor than like a whipped hound?’
‘Well, then,’ whimpered Nero, ‘can’t you at least dig me a grave, one of you? ”

“ A great shout of 'NERO!' 'CAESAR!' Meanwhile AGRIPPINA and SENECA are listening close together. Discordant cries are heard of 'BRITANNICUS!' A slave or attendant on NERO scatters gold in the direction of these discordant cries, which gradually subside, and are lost in one long shout of 'Nero, Imperator.' NERO motions for silence. ”

“ Thanksgivings on the most superb scale were given to the gods. A temple was reared to the goddess Fecundity. Golden statues of the Antian goddesses of Fortune were placed on the throne of the Capitoline Jupiter. Coins were struck on which the baby was glorified under the names of Claudia Augusta. The entire Senate set forth in long procession from Rome to congratulate the Emperor and Empress. Nero seized the opportunity to indulge his hatred against Pætus Thrasea. When the other senators were received into his presence, he sent an order that Thrasea was not to be admitted. ”

“ Nero felt a spasm of terror when the philosopher expressed a doubt whether sullen misery might not flash up into rage, and cause a formidable rebellion. For want of houses, the people were huddling into tombs and catacombs. Nero, therefore, took the hint that he should offer the Campus Martius and the monuments of Agrippa—his porticoes, baths, gardens, and the Temple of Neptune—as a refuge for the shivering throngs whom the flames had driven from their homes. ”

“ With these words he died, and the spectators were horror-stricken at the wild, staring look of his rigid eyes, which seemed to stand out of his head.
Fidelity! What fidelity had Nero himself shown to God, to human nature, to Rome, to his mother, his adoptive father, his wives, his brother, his tutors, his family, his friends, his slaves, his freedmen, his people, his own self? What more worthless life was ever disgraced by a more contemptible and abject death? ”

“ In his hands was the sword of Nero, and the secret of his influence lay in the similarity of his vices to those of the Emperor. The career of the man from boyhood upwards had been a career of infamy. He had been a lover of Agrippina, and of her sister, and he had paraded his crime with cynical coolness. With him Nero could always throw off the mask, and display the depths of his own turpitude. He was a tenth-rate Sejanus, only more deeply dyed in infamies. ”

“ Nero consented, and Aliturus, who was always among his favourites, was ushered into his presence. The actor wore the ordinary dress of a wealthy Roman youth, but the two friends who accompanied him were in the costume of the East, with rich robes and silken turbans. The elder of the two was an old man, whose white beard flowed in waves over his breast, and whose sumptuous dress and haughty bearing accorded with the dignity, if not with the humility, of the High-Priesthood. The younger was a man not yet thirty years old, splendidly handsome and full of the genius of his race. ”

“ It was impossible not to observe the towering stature and herculean mould of the Briton, the lithe and sinewy frame of the dark-eyed Asiatic. Then the Prætor once more flung down the napkin, in sign that the fighting should begin. Grouped under the Emperor’s seat, they all uplifted to him their right hands and chanted in monotone their sublime greeting: ‘Hail, Cæsar! we who are about to die salute thee!’
Nero flung them a careless glance, and scarcely broke the animated conversation which he was holding with Petronius. ”

“ There were points in it which might perhaps have touched the heart of Nero if Poppæa and Tigellinus had not been at his elbow as the evil genii of his degradation. But, when the tablets of Octavia came, Nero was sitting with the enchantress. Taking them out of his hands, she turned the letter into such ridicule, and laughed over it so sweetly and so immoderately, and mixed her silvery laughter with so many acts of fascination, that the fear of her ridicule—to which, like all vain persons, Nero was inordinately sensitive—quenched in his heart all thoughts of mercy. ”

“ Then they know that, however long they call, they will never get an answer, for they have learnt that those whose eyes are closed have neither life nor voice, but are as the rocks and stones. But the Nereids know not sleep nor death, and when they look upon one lying dead they think he has always been so; and they do not grieve nor weep for him, for the gods did not make them for grief, but to be the bringers of beauty wherever they go, and to turn all foul things fair. ”

“ Nero rose in a passion. Fearful lest she should goad him too far, Poppæa called him to her side and changed her tone.
‘Your home is empty, Nero,’ she said. ‘No child will succeed you. I have a little son. Octavia must be dismissed, if you would have an heir to be Emperor of Rome.’
‘How can I dismiss her?’ said Nero gloomily. ‘Even my freedmen espouse her cause. Doryphorus is for her, and Pallas.’
‘Doryphorus! Pallas!’ she repeated, with a laugh of ringing scorn. ‘An effeminate slave-minion; a miserly dotard! Tush, Cæsar! be a man. Sweep aside these flies. Poison them both ”

“ He had walked along the lines of temporary huts in the Campus Martius, and heard the wail of men and women who refused to be comforted for the loss of all. He had stood behind the base of a half-calcined pillar on the Aventine when Nero had been carried past him in an open litter of silver, in which he lolled on purple cushions. He was discinctured and clad in a light Coan synthesis, looking the picture of cruel and dissolute effeminacy. A young Greek slave shared his litter, and some of his worst associates laughed and jested by his side. ”

“ AGRIPPINA. How long till Rome shall greet her Emperor?
ASTROLOGER. Behold the heavens! The moment!
[Exit ASTROLOGER.
AGRIPPINA. Give the sign!
[Sounds of acclamation and cries of 'Nero.' BURRUS draws his sword.
BURRUS. See the Praetorians!
SENECA. Nero returns.
Enter a HERALD gorgeously dressed, bearing
a silver wreath
MESSENGER. From Nero unto Agrippina greeting!
He comes a victor from the chariot race.
[Sounds of acclamation grow louder, the
crowd of NERO'S friends and satellites
pours in: last comes NERO dressed as a charioteer.
AGRIPPINA. [Touching CLAUDIUS' body.] ”