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 http://www.archive.org/details/imperialpurple01salt 
 

 IMPERIAL PURPLE 
 
By Mr. Saltus 
 
 The Anatomy of Negation. 
 
 The Philosophy of Disenchantment. 
 
 Love and Lore. 
 
 Mary Magdalen. 
 
 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 A Transaction in Hearts. 
 
 The Truth about Trlstrem Varick. 
 
 Mr. Incoul's Misadventure. 
 
 A Transient Guest. 
 
 Eden. 
 
 IN PREPARATION — 
 
 Immortal Greece. 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE 
 
 BY 
 
 EDGAR SALTUS 
 
 CHICAGO: 
 
 NJorrillHiggins ^ Go. 
 
 1892. 
 
 r 
 
T\^^^^ 
 
 Ci^'^ 
 
 Copyright, 1S92, 
 By EDGAR SALTUS 
 
A 
 
 M. EDWIN ALBERT SCHROEDER 
 
 Socr?te avait I'aimable habitude de ne refuser 
 
 jamais les dons de ses amis, quel que fut leur peu de 
 
 valeur. Toi, qui resembles tant au vieux sage, tu ne 
 
 refuseras pas, je I'espere, la petite flanerie a travers 
 
 les ages et les dieux que ma paresse offre maintenant 
 
 a ton amitie. 
 
 Edgar Evertson-Saltus 
 
 Paris: 
 
 / novembre, iSqi. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. 
 
 That Woman. ' 
 
 II. 
 
 Conjectural Rome. 
 
 III. 
 Fabulous Fields. 
 
 IV 
 
 The Pursuit of the Impossible. 
 
 V. 
 
 Nero, 
 
 VI. 
 
 The House of Flavia. 
 
 VII. 
 
 The Poison in the Purple. 
 
 VIII. 
 Faustine. 
 
 IX. 
 The Agony, 
 
I. 
 
 THAT WOMAN 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 I. 
 
 THAT WOMAN. 
 
 When the murder was done and the 
 heralds shouted through the thick 
 streets that Caesar had passed into 
 oblivion, it was the passing of the 
 republic they announced, the founda- 
 tion of Imperial Rome. 
 
 There was a hush, then a riot which 
 frightened a senate that frightened 
 the world. For Csesar was adored. 
 A man who could give millions away 
 and sup on dry bread was apt to con- 
 quer, not provinces alone, but hearts. 
 Besides, he had begun well and his 
 people had done their best. The 
 
 11 
 
12 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 House of Julia, to which he belonged, 
 descended, he declared, from Venus. 
 The ancestry was less legendary than 
 typical. Cinna drafted a law giving 
 him the right to marry as often as he 
 chose. His mistresses were queens. 
 After the episodes in Gaul, when he 
 entered Rome his legions warned the 
 citizens to have an eye on their wives. 
 At seventeen he fascinated pirates. 
 A shipload of the latter had caught 
 
 him and demanded twenty talents 
 ransom. " Too little," said the lad; 
 ''I will give you fifty, and empale you 
 too," which he did, jesting with them 
 meanwhile, reciting verses of his own 
 composition, calling them barbarians 
 when they did not applaud, ordering 
 them to be quiet when he wished to 
 sleep, captivating them by the effront- 
 ery of his assurance, and, the ransom 
 paid, slaughtering them as he had 
 promised. 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 13 
 
 Tall, slender, not handsome, but 
 superb and therewith so perfectly 
 sent out, so well groomed, that Cicero 
 mistook him for a fop from whom the 
 republic had nothing to fear; splen- 
 didly lavish, exquisitely gracious, he 
 was born to charm and his charm 
 was such that it still subsists. Cato 
 alone was unenthralled. But Cato 
 was never pleased; he laughed but 
 once, and all Rome turned out to see 
 him; he belonged to an earlier day, 
 to an austerer, perhaps to a better 
 one, and it may be that in " that 
 woman," as he called Csesar, his 
 clearer vision discerned beneath the 
 plumage of the peacock, the beak and 
 talons of the bird of prey. For they 
 were there, and needed only a vote of 
 the senate to batten on nations of 
 which the senate had never heard. 
 Loan him an army, and "that woman" 
 was to give geography such a twist 
 
14 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 that to-day whoso says Caesar says 
 history. 
 
 Was it this that Cato saw, or may 
 it be that one of the oracles which had 
 not ceased to speak had told him of 
 that coming night when he was to 
 take his own life, fearful lest ''that 
 woman'' should overwhelm him with 
 the magnificence of his forgiveness? 
 Cato walks through history, as he 
 walked through the Forum, bare of 
 foot — too severe to be simple, too ob- 
 stinate to be generous — the image of 
 Ancient Rome. 
 
 In Csesar there was nothing of this. 
 He was wholly modern; dissolute 
 enough for any epoch, but possessed 
 of virtues that his contemporaries 
 could not spelL A slave tried to poison 
 him. Suetonius says he merely put 
 the slave to death. The "merely" is 
 to the point. Cato would have tortured 
 him first. After Pharsalus he forgave 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 15 
 
 everyone. When severe, it was to him- 
 self. It is true he turned over two mil- 
 lion people into so many dead flies, their 
 legs in the air, creating, as Tacitus 
 has it, a solitude which he described 
 as Peace; but what antitheses may 
 not be expected in a man who, before 
 the first century was begun, divined 
 the fifth, and who in the Suevians — 
 that terrible people beside whom no 
 nation' could live — foresaw Attila! 
 
 Save in battle his health was poor. 
 He was epileptic, his strength under- 
 mined by incessant debauches; yet let 
 a nation fancying him months away 
 put on. insurgent airs, and on that na- 
 tion he descended as the thunder does. 
 In his campaigns time and again he 
 overtook his own messengers. A 
 phantom in a ballad was not swifter 
 than he. Simultaneously his sword 
 flashed in Germany, on the banks of 
 the Adriatic, in that Ultima Thule 
 
16 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 where the Britons Hved. From the 
 depths of Gaul he dominated Rome, 
 and therewith he was penetrating 
 impenetrable forests, trailing legions 
 as a torch trails smoke, erecting walls 
 that a nation could not cross, turning 
 soldiers into marines, infantry into 
 cavalr}^, building roads that are roads 
 to-day, fighting with one hand and 
 writing an epic with the other, dictat- 
 ing love-letters, chronicles, dramas; 
 finding time to make a collection of 
 witticisms; overturning thrones while 
 he decorated Greece; mingling initiate 
 into orgies of the Druids, and, as 
 the cymbals clashed, coquetting with 
 those terrible virgins who awoke the 
 tempest; not only conquering, but 
 captivating, transforming barbarians 
 into soldiers and those soldiers into 
 senators, submitting three hundred 
 nations and ransacking Britannia for 
 pearls for his mistresses' ears. 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 17 
 
 Each epoch has its secret, and each 
 epoch-maker his own. Caesar's secret 
 lay in the power he had of projecting 
 a soul into the ranks of an army, of 
 making legions and their leader one. 
 Disobedience only he punished; any- 
 thing else he forgave. After a victory 
 his soldiery did what they liked. He 
 gave them arms, slaves to burnish 
 them, women, feasts, sleep. They 
 were his comrades; he called them so; 
 he wept at the death of any of them, 
 and when they were frightened, as 
 they were in Gaul before they met 
 the Germans, and in Africa before 
 they encountered Juba, Caesar fright^ 
 ened them still more. He permitted 
 no questions, no making of wills. 
 The cowards could hide where they 
 liked; his old guard, the Tenth, would 
 do the work alone; or, threat still 
 more sinister, he would command a 
 retreat. Ah, that, never! Fanaticism 
 
 2 
 
18 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 returned, the legions begged to be 
 punished. 
 
 Michelet says he would like to have 
 seen him crossing Gaul, bare-headed 
 in the rain. It would have been as 
 interesting, perhaps, to have watched 
 him beneath the shade of the velar- 
 ium pleading the cause of Masintha 
 against the Numidian king. Before 
 him was a crowd that covered not 
 the Forum alone, but the steps of the 
 adjacent temples, the roofs of the 
 basilicas, the arches of Janus, one that 
 extended remotely to the black walls 
 of the Curia Hostilia beyond. And 
 there, on the rostrum, a musician be- 
 hind him supplying the la from a flute, 
 the air filled with gold motes, Csesar, 
 his toga becomingly adjusted, a jew- 
 elled hand extended, opened for the 
 defense. Presently, when through 
 the exercise of that art of his which 
 Cicero pronounced incomparable, he 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 19 
 
 felt that the sympathy of the audience 
 was won, it would have been interest- 
 ing, indeed, to have heard him argue 
 point after point — clearly, brilliantly, 
 wittily ; insulting the plaintiff in poetic 
 terms; consigning him gracefully to 
 the infernal regions; accentuating a 
 fictitious and harmonious anger; dry- 
 ing his forehead without disarranging 
 his hair; suffocating with the emo- 
 tions he evoked; displaying real tears, 
 and with them *a knowledge, not only 
 of law, rhetoric, philosophy, but of 
 geometry, astronomy, ethics and the 
 fine arts; blinding his hearers with the 
 coruscations of his erudition; stirring 
 them with his tongue, as with the point 
 of a sword, until, as though abruptly 
 possessed by an access of fury, he 
 seized the plaintiff by the beard and 
 sent him spinning like a leaf which 
 the wind has caught. 
 
 It would have bored no one either 
 
20 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 to have assisted at his triumph when 
 he returned from Gaul, when he re- 
 turned after Spain, after Pharsalus, 
 when he returned from Cleopatra's 
 arms. 
 
 On that day the Via Sacra was cur- 
 tained with silk. To the blare of 
 twisted bugles there descended to it 
 from the turning at the hill a troop of 
 musicians garmented in leather tunics, 
 bonneted with lions' heads. Behind 
 them a hundred bulls,* too fat to be 
 troublesome, and decked for death, 
 bellowed musingly at the sacrifants, 
 who, naked to the waist, a long-han- 
 dled hammer on the shoulder, main- 
 tained them with colored cords. To 
 the rumble of wide wheels and the 
 thunder of spectators the prodigious 
 booty passed, and with it triumphs of 
 war, vistas of conquered countries, 
 pictures of battles, lists of the van- 
 quished, symbols of cities that no 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 21 
 
 longer were; a stretch of ivory on 
 which shone three words, each begin- 
 ning with a V; images of gods dis- 
 turbed, the Rhine, the Rhone, the 
 captive Ocean in massive gold; the 
 ghtter of three thousand crowns 
 offered to the dictator by the army 
 and alHes of Rome. Then came the 
 standards of the repubhc, a swarm 
 of eagles, the size of pigeons, in pol- 
 ished silver upheld by lances which 
 ensigns bore, preceding the six 
 hundred senators who marched in a 
 body, their togas bordered with red, 
 while to the din of incessant insults, 
 interminable files of prisoners passed, 
 their wrists chained to iron collars, 
 which held their heads very straight, 
 and to the rear a litter, in which 
 crouched the Vincegetorix of Gaul, a 
 great moody giant, his menacing eyes 
 nearly hidden in the tangles of his 
 tawny hair. 
 
22 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 When they had gone the street was 
 alive with explosions of brass, aflame 
 with the burning red cloaks of laureled 
 lictors making way for the coming 
 of Csesar. Four horses, harnessed 
 abreast, their manes dyed, their fore- 
 locks puffed, drew a high and wonder- 
 fully jeweled car; and there, in the 
 attributes and attitude of Jupiter 
 Capitolinus, Csesar sat, blinking his 
 tired eyes. His face and arms were 
 painted vermilion; above the Tyrian 
 purple of his toga, above the gold 
 work and palms of his tunic, there 
 oscillated a little ball in which there 
 were charms against Envy. On his 
 head a wreath concealed his increas- 
 ing baldness; along his left arm the 
 sceptre lay ; behind him a boy admon- 
 ished him noisily to remember he was 
 man, while to the rear for miles and 
 miles there rang the laugh of trumpets, 
 the click of castanets, the shouts of 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE, 23 
 
 dancers, the roar of the multitude, the 
 tramp of legions, and the cry, caught 
 up and repeated, '*/(?/ Trzomphe f'' 
 
 Presentl}^, in the temple of the god 
 of gods, side by side with the statue of 
 Jupiter, Caesar found his own statue 
 with " Caesar, demi-god," at its base. 
 The captive chiefs disappeared in 
 the Tullianum, and a herald called, 
 ^'They have Hved!" Through the 
 squares jesters circulated, polyglot 
 and obscene; in the circus the flower 
 of the nobility held the reins ; across 
 the Tiber, in an artificial lake, the 
 flotilla of Egypt fought against that 
 of Tyr; in the amphitheatre there 
 was a combat of soldiers, infantry 
 against cavalry, one that indemnified 
 those that had not seen the massacres 
 in Thessaly and in Spain. There were 
 public feasts, gifts to every one. 
 Tables were set in the Forum, in the 
 circuses and theatres, Falernian cir- 
 
24 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 culated in amphorae, Chius in barrels, 
 When the populace was gorged there 
 were the red feathers to enable it to 
 gorge again. Intoxication knew no 
 frontiers. In the arenas the gladia- 
 tors died consoled. Of the Rome of 
 Romulus there was nothing left save 
 the gaunt she-wolf, her wide lips curled 
 at the descendants of her nursling. 
 
 Later, when in slippered feet Csesar 
 wandered through those lovely gar- 
 dens of his that lay beyond the Tiber, 
 it may be that he recalled a dream 
 which had com.e to him as a lad; one 
 which concerned the submission of 
 his mother; one which had disturbed 
 him until the soothsayers said: "The 
 mother you saw is the earth, and you 
 will be her master." And as the 
 memory of the dream returned, per- 
 haps with it came the memory of the 
 hour when as simple quaestor he had 
 wept at Gaddir before a statue that 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 25 
 
 was there. Demi-god, yes; he was 
 that. More, even ; he was dictator, but 
 the dream was unfulfilled. There were 
 the depths of Hither Asia, the mys- 
 teries that lay beyond; there were the 
 glimmering plains of the Caucasus; 
 there were the Vistula and the Baltic; 
 the diadems of Cyrus and of Alexan- 
 der defying his ambition yet, and 
 what were triumphs and divinity to 
 one who would own the world! 
 
 It was this that preoccupied him. 
 The immensity of his successes seemed 
 petty and Rome very small. Hereto- 
 fore he had forgiven those who had 
 opposed him. Presently his attitude 
 changed, and so subtly that it was the 
 more humiliating; it was not that he 
 no longer forgave, he disdained to 
 punish. His contempt was absolute. 
 The senate made his office of ponti- 
 fix maximus hereditary and accorded 
 the title of Imperator to his heirs. He 
 
26 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 snubbed the senate and the honors 
 that it brought. The senate was 
 shocked. Composed of men whose 
 fortunes he had made, the senate was 
 not only shocked, its education in in- 
 gratitude was complete. Already 
 there had been murmurs. Not con- 
 tent with disarranging the calendar, 
 outlining an empire, drafting a code 
 while planning fresh beauties, new the- 
 atres, bi-lingual libraries, larger tem- 
 ples, grander gods, Caesar was at work 
 in the markets, in the kitchens of the 
 gourmets, in the jewel-boxes of the 
 virgins. Liberty, visibly, was taking 
 flight. Besides, the power concen- 
 trated in him might be so pleasantly 
 distributed. It was decided that 
 Caesar was in the way. To put him 
 out of it a pretext was necessary. 
 
 One day the senate assembled at 
 his command. They were to sign a 
 decree creating him king. In order 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 27 
 
 not to, Suetonius says, they killed him, 
 wounding each other in the effort, for 
 Caesar fought like the demon that he 
 was, desisting only when he recog- 
 nized Brutus, to whom, in Greek, he 
 muttered a reproach, and, draping his 
 toga that he might fall with decency, 
 fell backward, his head covered, a 
 few feet from the bronze wolf that 
 stood, its ears pointed at the letters 
 S. P. Q. R. which decorated a frieze 
 of the Curia. 
 
 Brutus turned to harangue the sen- 
 ate; it had fled. He went to the 
 Forum to address the people ; there was 
 no one. Rome was strangely empty. 
 Doors were barricaded, windows 
 closed. Through the silent streets 
 gladiators prowled. Night came, 
 and with it whispering groups. The 
 groups thickened, voices mounted. 
 Caesar's will had been read. He had 
 left his gardens to the people, a gift 
 
28 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 to every citizen, his wealth and power 
 to his butchers. The body, which two 
 slaves had removed, an arm hanging 
 from the litter, had never been as 
 powerfully alive. Caesar reigned then 
 as never before. An actor mouthed: 
 
 "I brought them Hfe, they gave me death." 
 
 And willingly would the mob have 
 made Rome the funeral pyre of their 
 idol. In the sky a comet appeared. 
 It was his soul on its way to Olym- 
 pus. 
 
II. 
 
 CONJECTURAL ROME 
 
 29 
 
II. 
 
 CONJECTURAL ROME. 
 
 "I received Rome in brick; I shall 
 leave it in marble," said Augustus, 
 vrho was fond of fine phrases, a trick 
 he had caught from Vergil. And 
 when he looked from his home on the 
 Palatine over the glitter of the Forum 
 and the glare of the Capitol to the 
 new and wonderful precinct which 
 extended to the Field of Mars, there 
 was a stretch of splendor which sanc- 
 tioned the boast. The city then was 
 very vast. The tourist might walk in 
 it, as in the London of to-day,mile after 
 mile, and at whatever point he placed 
 himself, Rome still lay beyond; a 
 Rome quite like London — one that 
 was choked with mystery, with gold 
 and curious crime. 
 
 31 
 
Yi 
 
 32 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 But it was not all marble. There 
 were green terraces and porphyry 
 porticoes that leaned to a river 
 on which red galleys passed; there 
 were theatres in which a multitude 
 could jeer at an emperor, and arenas 
 in which an emperor could watch 
 a multitude die; there were bronze 
 doors and garden roofs, glancing villas 
 and temples that defied the sun; there 
 were spacious streets, a Forum cur» 
 tained with silk, the glint and evoca- 
 tions of trophies of war, the splendor 
 of a host of gods, but it was not all 
 marble; there were rents in the mag- 
 nificence and tatters in the laticlave 
 of state. 
 
 In the Subura, where at night 
 women sat in high chairs, ogling the 
 passer with painted eyes, there was 
 still plenty of brick; tall tenements, 
 soiled linen, the odor of Whitechapel 
 and St. Giles. The streets were noisy 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 33 
 
 with match-peddlers, with vendors of 
 cake and tripe and coke; there were 
 touts there too, altars to unimportant 
 divinities, lying Jews who dealt in old 
 clothes, in obscene pictures and un- 
 mentionable wares; at the crossings 
 there were thimbleriggers, clowns and 
 jugglers, who made glass balls appear 
 and disappear surprisingly; there were 
 doorways decorated with curious in- 
 vitations, gossippy barbershops, where 
 through the liberality of politicians, 
 the scum of a great city was shaved, 
 curled and painted free; and there 
 were public houses, where vagabond 
 slaves and sexless priests drank the 
 mulled wine of Crete, supped on the 
 flesh of beasts slaughtered in the 
 arena, or watched the Syrian women 
 twist to the click of castanets. 
 
 Beyond were grey quadrangular 
 buildings, the stomach of Rome, 
 through which, each noon, ediles 
 
34 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 passed, verifying the prices, the 
 weights and measures of the market 
 men, examining the fish and meats, 
 the enormous cauHflowers that came 
 from the suburbs, Veronese carrots, 
 Arician pears, stout thrushes, suckHng 
 pigs, eggs embedded in grass, oysters 
 from Baise, boxes of onions and garHc 
 mixed, mountains of poppies, beans 
 and fennel, destroying whatever had 
 ceased to be fresh and taxing that 
 which was. 
 
 On the Via Sacra were the fine 
 shops frequented by ladies; bazaars 
 where silks and xylons were to be 
 had, essences and unguents, travel- 
 ing boxes of scented wood, switches 
 of yellow hair, useful drugs such 
 as hemlock, aconite, mandragora 
 and cantharides; the last thing 
 of Ovid's and the Mdyjowt Xoyov those 
 improper little novels that came from 
 Greece. 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE, 35 
 
 On the Appian Way, through green 
 afternoons and pink arcades, fashion 
 strolled. There wealth passed in its 
 chariots, smart young men that smelt 
 of cinnamon instead of war, nobles, 
 matrons and cocottes. 
 
 At the other end of the city, be- 
 yond the menagerie of the Pantheon, 
 was the Field of Mars, an open-air 
 o-ymnasium, where every form of ex- 
 ercise was to be had, even to that sim- 
 ple promenade in which the Romans 
 delighted, and which in Caesar's camp 
 so astonished the Verronians that they 
 thought the promenaders crazy and 
 offered to lead them to their tents. 
 There was tennis for those who liked 
 it; racquets, polo, football, quoits, 
 wrestling, everything apt to induce 
 perspiration and prepare for the hour 
 when a gong of bronze announced the 
 opening of the baths — those wonder- 
 ful baths, where the Roman, his slaves 
 
36 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 about him, after passing through 
 steam and water and the hands of the 
 masseur, had every hair plucked from 
 his arms, legs and armpits; his flesh 
 rubbed down with nard, his limbs 
 polished with pumice; and then, 
 wrapped in a scarlet robe, lined with 
 fur, was sent home in a litter. "Strike 
 them in the face!" cried Caisar at 
 Pharsalus, when the young patricians 
 made their charge; and the young 
 patricians, who cared more for their 
 looks than they did for victory, turned 
 and fled. 
 
 It was to the Field of Mars that 
 Agrippa came, to whom Rome owed 
 the Pantheon and the demand for a 
 law which should inhibit the private 
 ownership of a masterpiece. There, 
 too, his eunuchs about him, Mecaenas 
 lounged, companioned by Varus, by 
 Horace and the mime Bathylle, all 
 of whom he was accustomed to invite 
 
IMPERIA L P UBPLE. 37 
 
 to that lovely villa of his which over- 
 looked the blue Sabinian hills, and 
 where suppers were given such as 
 those which Petronius has described 
 so alertly and so well. 
 
 In a hall like that of Mecaenas', one 
 divided against itself, the upper half 
 containing the couches and .tables, the 
 other reserved for the service and the 
 entertainments that follow, the ceiling 
 was met by columns, the walls hid- 
 den by panels of gems. On a frieze 
 twelve pictures, surmounted by the 
 signs of the zodiac, represented the 
 dishes of the different months. Be- 
 neath the bronze beds and silver 
 tables mosaics were set in imitation 
 of food that had fallen and had not 
 been swept away. And there, in 
 white ungirdled tunics, the head and 
 neck circled with coils of amaranth — 
 the perfume of which in opening the 
 pores neutralizes the fumes of wine — 
 
38 IMPERIAD PURPLE. 
 
 the guests lay, fanned by boys, whose 
 curly hair they used for napkins. 
 Under the supervision of a butler the 
 courses were served on platters so 
 large that they covered the tables; 
 sows' breasts with Lybian truffles; 
 dormice baked in poppies and honey; 
 peacock-tongues flavored with cin- 
 namon; oysters stewed in garum — a 
 sauce made of the intestines of fish — 
 sea-wolves from the Baltic; sturgeons 
 from Rhodes; fig-peckers from Samos; 
 African snails; pale beans in pink 
 lard; and a yellow pig cooked after 
 the Trojan fashion, from which, when 
 carved, hot sausages fell and live 
 thrushes flew. Therewith was the 
 mulsum, a cup made of white wine, 
 nard, roses, absinthe and honey; the 
 delicate sweet wines of Greece; and 
 crusty Falernian of the year six hun- 
 dred and thirty-two. As the cups 
 circulated, choirs entered, chanting 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 39 
 
 sedately the last erotic song; lithe 
 virgins, their bodies rubbed with oil, 
 wrestled like athletes in the games; a 
 clown danced on the top of a ladder, 
 which he maintained upright as he 
 danced, telling meanwhile untellable 
 stories to the frieze; and host and 
 guests, unvociferously, as good breed- 
 ing dictates, chatted through the 
 pauses of the service; discussed the 
 disadvantages of death, the value of 
 Ncevian iambics, the disgrace of Ovid, 
 banished because of Livia's eyes. 
 
 Such was the Rome of Augustus. 
 "Caesar," cried a mime to him one 
 day, "do you know that it is import- 
 ant for you that the people should be 
 interested in Bathylle and in myself.^'' 
 
 The mime was right. The sover- 
 eign of Rome was not the Caesar, nor 
 yet the aristocracy. The latter was 
 dead. It had been banished by bar- 
 barian senators, by barbarian gods; 
 
40 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 it had died twice, at Pharsalus, at 
 Philippi; it was the people that was 
 sovereign, and it was important that 
 that sovereign should be amused — 
 flattered, too, and fed. For thirty 
 years not a Roman of note had died 
 in his bed; not one but had kept by 
 him a slave who should kill him when 
 his hour had come; anarchy had been 
 continuous; but now Rome was at 
 rest and its sovereign wished to laugh. 
 Made up of every nation and every 
 vice, the universe was ransacked for 
 its entertainment. The mountains 
 sent its lions, the desert giraffes; there 
 were boas from the jungles, bulls from 
 the plains, and hippopotami from the 
 waters of the Nile. Into the arenas 
 patricians descended; in the amphi- 
 theatre there were criminals from 
 Gaul; in the Forum philosophers from 
 Greece. On the stage there were 
 tragedies, pantomimes and farce; 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE, 41 
 
 there were races in the circus, and 
 in the sacred groves girls with the 
 Orient in their eyes and sHm waists 
 that swayed to the crotals. For the 
 thirst of the sovereign there were 
 aqueducts, and for its hunger Africa, 
 Egypt, Sicily contributed grain. 
 Syria unveiled her altars, Persia the 
 mystery and magnificence of her 
 gods. 
 
 Such was Rome. Augustus was 
 less noteworthy; so unnecessary even 
 that every student must regret Ac- 
 tium, Anthony's defeat, the passing 
 of Caesar's dream. For Anthony was 
 made for conquests; it was he who, 
 fortune favoring, might have given 
 the world to Rome. A splendid, an 
 impudent bandit, first and foremost a 
 soldier, vaunting himself a descendant 
 of Hercules whom he resembled; 
 hailed at Ephesus as Bacchus, in 
 Egypt as Osiris; Asiatic in lavishness, 
 
42 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 
 
 and Teuton in his capacity for drink; 
 vomiting in the open Forum, and 
 making and unmaking kings; weav- 
 ing with that viper of the Nile a 
 romance which is history; passing in- 
 itiate into the inimitable life, it would 
 have been curious to have watched 
 him that last night when the silence 
 was stirred by the hum of harps, the 
 cries of bacchantes bearing his tute- 
 lary god back to the Roman camp, 
 while he bade farewell to love, to 
 empire and to life. 
 
 Augustus resembled him not at all. 
 He was a colorless monarch; an 
 emperor in ever3^thing but dignity, a 
 prince in everything but grace; a tac- 
 tician, not a soldier; a superstitious 
 braggart, afraid of nothing but danger ; 
 seducing women to learn their hus- 
 bands' secrets; exiling his daughter, 
 not because she had lovers, but be- 
 cause she had other lovers than him- 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 43 
 
 self; exiling Ovid because of Livia, 
 who in the end poisoned her prince, 
 and adroitly, too; illiterate, blundering 
 of speech, and coarse of manner — a 
 hypocrite and a comedian in one — so 
 guileful and 3^et so stupid that while 
 a credulous moribund ordered the 
 gods to be thanked that Augustus 
 survived him, the people publicly 
 applied to him an epithet which des- 
 ignates an unnameable beast. 
 
 Such was the individual whom 
 school-girls are instructed to admire, 
 though for what reason it is difficult 
 to fancy, unless it be that he is 
 regarded as a patron of letters of 
 which he knew nothing, the host of 
 pedantic bores. After Philippi and 
 the suicide of Brutus; after Actium 
 and Anthony's death, admittedly, for 
 the first time in ages, the gates of the 
 Temple of Janus were closed. There 
 was peace in the world; but it was 
 
44 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 the sword of Caesar, not of Augustus, 
 that brought the insurgents to book. 
 At each of the victories he was either 
 asleep or ill. At the time of battle 
 there was always some god warning 
 him to be careful. The battle won, 
 he was brave, pitiless and ready of 
 jest. A father and son begged for 
 mercy. He promised forgiveness to 
 the son on condition that he killed 
 his father. The son accepted and did 
 the work; then he had the son des- 
 patched. A prisoner begged but for 
 a grave. ^'The vultures v/ill see to 
 it," he answered. When at the head 
 of Csesar^s legions, he entered Rome 
 to avenge the latter's death, he an- 
 nounced beforehand that he would 
 imitate neither Caesar's moderation 
 nor Sylla's cruelty. There would be 
 only a few proscriptions, and a price 
 — and what a price, liberty! — was 
 placed on the heads of hundreds of 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 45 
 
 senators and thousands of kniorhts. 
 And these notables, who had more 
 slaves than they knew by sight, slaves 
 whom they tossed alive to fatten fish, 
 slaves to whom they affected never 
 to speak, and who were crucified did 
 they so much as sneeze in their 
 presence— at the feet of these slaves 
 the aristocrats rolled, imploring them 
 not to deliver them up. Now and 
 then a slave was merciful; Augustus 
 never. 
 
 Successes such as these made him 
 ambitious. Having vanquished with 
 the sword, he tried the pen. ^'You 
 may grant the freedom of the city to 
 your barbarians," said a wit to him 
 one day, "but not to your solecisms." 
 Undeterred he began a tragedy 
 entitled Ajax, and discovering his 
 incompetence, gave it up. ''And 
 what has become of Ajax?" a para- 
 site asked, "Ajax threw himself on 
 
46 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 a sponge," replied Augustus, whose 
 father, it is to be regretted, did not do 
 Hkewise. Nevertheless, it were pleas- 
 ant to have assisted at his funeral. 
 
 A couch of ivory and gold, ten 
 feet high, draped with purple, stood 
 for a week in the atrium of the pal- 
 ace. Within the couch, hidden from 
 view, the body of the emperor lay, 
 ravaged by poison. Above was a 
 statue, recumbent, in wax, made after 
 his image and dressed in imperial 
 robes. Near by a little slave with a 
 big fan protected the statue from flies. 
 Each day physicians came, gazed at 
 the closed wax mouth, and murmured, 
 ^'He is worse." In the vestibule was a 
 pot of burning ilex, and stretching 
 out through the portals a branch of 
 cypress warned the pontiffs from the 
 contamination of the sight of death. 
 
 At high noon on the seventh day 
 the funeral crossed the city. First 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 47 
 
 were the flaming torche-s; the statues 
 of the House of Octavia; senators in 
 blue; knights in scarlet; magistrates; 
 lictors; the pick of the praetorian guard. 
 Then, to the alternating choruses of 
 boys and girls, the rotting body passed 
 down the Sacred Way. Behind it 
 Tiberius in a travelling-cloak, his 
 hands unringed, marched meditating 
 on the curiosities of life, while to the 
 rear there straggled a troop of danc- 
 ing satyrs, led by a mime dressed in 
 resemblance of Augustus, whose de- 
 fects he caricatured, whose vices he 
 parodied and on whom the surging 
 crowd closed in. 
 
 On the Field of Mars the pyre had 
 been erected, a great square structure 
 of resinous wood, the interior filled 
 with coke and sawdust, the exterior 
 covered with illuminated cloths, on 
 which, for base, a tower rose, three 
 stories high. Into the first story flow- 
 
48 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 ers and perfumes were thrown, into 
 the second the couch was raised, then 
 a torch was appHed. 
 
 As the smoke ascended an eagle 
 shot from the summit, circled a mo- 
 ment, and disappeared. For the sum 
 of a milHon sesterces a senator swore 
 that with the eagle he had seen the 
 emperor's soul. 
 
III. 
 
 FABULOUS FIELDS. 
 
 49 
 
III. 
 
 FABULOUS FIELDS. 
 
 Mention Tiberius, and the name 
 evokes a sceptered butcher, ill with 
 satyrisis; a taciturn tyrant, hideous 
 and debauched; an unclean old man 
 devising in the crypts of a palace infa- 
 mies so monstrous that to describe 
 them new words weie coined. 
 
 In the Borghese collection Tiberius 
 is rather good-looking than otherwise, 
 not an Antinous certainly, but mani- 
 festly a dreamer; one whose eyes must 
 have been almost feline in their ab- 
 straction, and in the corners of whose 
 mouth 3'ou detect pride, no doubt, but 
 melancholy as well. The pride was 
 congenital, the melancholy was not. 
 
 Under Tiberius there was quiet, a 
 romancer wrote, and the phrase in its 
 
 51 
 
52 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 significance passed into legend, form- 
 ing as it passed one of those miscon- 
 ceptions that shroud the unprotected 
 dead. During the dozen or more 
 years that Tiberius ruled in Rome, 
 his wisdom, moderation, modesty and 
 impartiality were recognized and at- 
 tested. The Tiber overflowed, the 
 senate looked for a remedy in the Siby- 
 line Books. Tiberius set some en- 
 gineers to work. A citizen swore by 
 Augustus and swore falsely. The sen- 
 ate sought to punish him, not for per- 
 jury but for sacrilege. It is for Au- 
 gustus to punish, said Tiberius. The 
 senate wanted to name a month after 
 him. Tiberius declined. "Suppos- 
 ing I were the thirteenth Caesar, what 
 would you do .^" For years he reigned, 
 popular and acclaimed, caring the 
 while nothing for popularity and less 
 for pomp. Sagacious, witty even, be- 
 lieving perhaps in little else than fate 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 53 
 
 and mathematics, yet maintaining the 
 institutions of the land, striving reso- 
 lutely for the best, outwardly impas- 
 sible and inwardly mobile, he was a 
 man and his patience had bounds. 
 There were conspirators in the atrium, 
 there was death in the courtier's 
 smile; and finding his favorites false, 
 his life threatened, danger at every 
 turn, his conception of rulership 
 changed. Where moderation had 
 been suddenly there gleamed the axe. 
 Tacitus, always dramatic, states 
 that at the time terror devasted the 
 city. It so happened that under the 
 republic there was a law against 
 whomso diminished the majesty of 
 the people. The republic was a god, 
 one that had its temple, its priests, its 
 altars. When the republic suc- 
 cumbed, its divinity passed to the 
 emperor; he became Jupiter's peer, 
 and, as such, possessed of a majesty 
 
54 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 which it was sacrilege to sHght. 
 Consulted on the subject, Tiberius 
 replied that the law must be observed. 
 Originally instituted in prevention of 
 offenses against the public good, it 
 was found to change into a crime, a 
 word, a gesture or a look. It was a 
 crime to undress before a statue of 
 Augustus, to mention his name in the 
 latrinse, to carry a coin with his image 
 into a lupanar. The punishment was 
 death. Of the property of the 
 accused, a third went to the informer, 
 the rest to the state. Then abruptly 
 terror stalked abroad. No one was 
 safe except the obscure, and it was the 
 obscure that accused. Once an 
 accused accused his accuser; the 
 latter went mad. There was but one 
 refuge — the tomb. If the accused had 
 time to kill himself before he was 
 tried, his property was safe from 
 seizure and his corpse from disgrace. 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 55 
 
 Suicide became endemic in Rome. 
 Never among the rich were orgies as 
 frenetic as then. Tliere was a breath- 
 less chase after dehghts, which the 
 summons, "It is time to die," might 
 at any moment interrupt. 
 
 Tiberius meanwhile had gone from 
 Rome. It was then his legend began. 
 He was represented living at Capri 
 in a collection of twelve villas, each 
 of w^iich was dedicated to a particu- 
 lar form of lust, and there with the 
 paintings of Parrhasius for stimulant 
 the satyr lounged. He was then an old 
 man; his life had been passed in pub- 
 lic, his morals unreproved. If no one 
 becomes suddenly base, it is rare for 
 a man of seventy to become abruptly 
 vile. "Whoso," Sakya Muni an- 
 nounced — "whoso discovers that grief 
 comes from affection,will retire into the 
 jungles and there remain." Tiberius 
 had made the discovery. The jungles 
 
56 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 he selected were the gardens by the 
 sea. And in those gardens, gossip 
 represented him devising new forms 
 of old vice. On the subject every 
 doubt is permissible, and even other- 
 wise, morality then existed in but one 
 form, one which the entire nation 
 observed, wholly, absolutely, and with 
 all its soul; that form was patriotism. 
 Chastity was expected of the vestal, 
 but of no one else. The matrons had 
 certain traditions to maintain, certain 
 appearances to preserve, but other- 
 wise everybody was free enough, and 
 that everybody made use of that 
 freedom, the law Pappea Poppcea 
 attests. 
 
 In those days matrimony was not 
 as frequent as it has since become. 
 When it occurred, divorce was its 
 natural consequence. Incompatibility 
 was sufficient cause. Cicero, who has 
 given it to history that the best 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 57 
 
 women counted the years not numeri- 
 cally, but by their different husbands, 
 obtained a divorce on the ground that 
 his wife did not idolize him. Many 
 a man on his return from a journey 
 discovered that the lady he had left at 
 the head of his house had obtained a 
 divorce in his absence. According 
 to Plutarch, a gentleman, Hortensius 
 by name, became enamored of 
 Cato's daughter, Portia, then the wife 
 of Bibulus, and begged Cato to hand 
 her over to him. Cato refused, alleg- 
 ing: that Portia was in love with her 
 husband. At this, Hortensius, casting 
 about for a seductive argument, sug- 
 gested that if Portia would consent 
 to be his wife, so soon as she became 
 a mother, she might return to Bibulus. 
 Cato, however, was firm; he persisted 
 in his refusal; yet, that it might not 
 create ill feeling, he gave his own wife 
 to Hortensius, and when, later, Hor- 
 
58 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 tensius was gathered to his fathers, 
 remarried the widow. 
 
 But that everyone was not as anx- 
 ious for matrimony the law Pappea 
 Poppoea shows. According to its 
 canons matrimony was an obligation 
 the citizen owed to the state, procrea- 
 tion a duty. Whoso at twenty-five 
 was not married, whoso, divorced or 
 widowed did not remarry, whoso, 
 though married, was without children, 
 was regarded as an enemy and de- 
 clared incapable of inheriting or of 
 serving the state. To this law, one of 
 Augustus' stupidities which presently 
 fell into disuse, only a technical ob- 
 servance was paid. Men married just 
 enough to gain a position or inherit a 
 legacy; the next day they got a di- 
 vorce. At the moment of need a 
 child was adopted; the moment passed, 
 the child was disowned. But if the 
 law had little value, at least it shows 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 59 
 
 that virtue was infrequent, and it is 
 precisely for this reason that the 
 gossip concerning Tiberius may be 
 treated as gossip should; he differed, 
 and singularly from other men. 
 
 ^^Ho sempreamafo la solitaria vita^'''^ 
 Petrarch, referring to himself, de- 
 clared and, Tiberius might have said 
 the same thing. He was in love with 
 solitude; ill with efforts for the un- 
 attained; sick with the ingratitude of 
 man. Presently it was decided that 
 he had lived long enough. He was 
 suffocated — beneath a mattress at that. 
 Caesar had dreamed of a universal 
 monarchy of which he should be 
 king; he was murdered. That dream 
 was also Anthony's; he killed himself. 
 Cato had sought the restoration of 
 the republic, and Brutus the attain- 
 ment of virtue; both committed 
 suicide. Under the empire dreamers 
 fared ill. Tiberius was a dreamer. 
 
60 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 
 
 In a palace where a curious concep- 
 tion of the love of Atalanta and 
 Meleager was said to figure on the 
 walls, there was a door on which was 
 a legend, imitated from one that over- 
 hung the Theban library of Osy- 
 mandias — ^y/^? UTpnov^ Pharmacy of 
 the Soul. It was there Tiberius 
 dreamed. 
 
 On the ivory shelves were the 
 philters of Parthenius, labeled De 
 Amatoriis A^ectionihus^ the Syharis 
 of Clitonymus, the Erotopcegnia of 
 Lsevius, the maxims and instructions 
 of Elephantis, the nine books of 
 Sappho. There also were the pathetic 
 adventures of Odatis and Zariadres, 
 which Chares of Mitylene had given 
 to the world; the astonishing tales of 
 that early Cinderella, Rhodopis; and 
 with them those romances of Ionian 
 nights by Aristides of Milet, which 
 Crassus took with him when he set 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 61 
 
 out to subdue the Parthians, and 
 which, found in the booty, were read 
 aloud to the people that they might 
 judge the morals of a nation that pre- 
 tended to rule the world. 
 
 Moral, certainly they were not ; but 
 like everything else which came from 
 Greece, they were the work of a mas- 
 ter in art. Concerning Aristides of 
 Milet histor}^ is silent, but it may be 
 safely conjectured that his life differed 
 from that of his heroes. As often as 
 not the man who sounds the cymbals 
 to the proprieties and plays the flute 
 to ethereal affection, conceals beneath 
 obsequious cant the stigmata of satis- 
 fied vice. It is he who in vichy-water 
 phrases pays to virtue the tribute of 
 sin. On the other hand a tendency 
 toward eroticism is the surest indica- 
 tion of chastity. It is continence that 
 makes the St. Anthony. In the blood 
 of the chaste cantharides abound. 
 
62 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 Whether such medicaments are ser- 
 viceable to the soul is a different mat- 
 ter. Tiberius had other druo^s on the 
 ivory shelves — magic preparations that 
 transported him to fabulous fields. 
 There was a work by Hecatseus, w4th 
 which he could visit Hyperborea, that 
 land where happiness was a birthright, 
 inalienable at that; yet a happiness so 
 sweet that it must have been cloying; 
 for the people who enjoyed it, and with 
 it the appanage of limitless life, killed 
 themselves from sheer ennui. Theo- 
 pompus disclosed to him a stranger 
 vista — a continent beyond the ocean — 
 one where there were immense citieSj 
 and where two rivers flowed — the 
 River of Pleasure and the River of 
 Pain. With lambulus he discovered 
 the Fortunate Isles, where there were 
 men with elastic bones, bifurcated 
 tongues ; men who never married, who 
 worshipped the sun, whose life was an 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 63 
 
 uninterrupted delight, and who, when 
 overtaken by age, lay on a perfumed 
 grass that produced a voluptuous 
 death. Evhemerus, a terrible atheist, 
 whose Sacred History the early bishops 
 wielded against polytheism until 
 they discovered it was double-edged, 
 took him to Panchaia, an island where 
 incense grew; where property was 
 held in common; where there was but 
 one law — Justice, yet a justice differ- 
 ent from our own, one which Husfo 
 must have intercepted when he made 
 an entrancing yet enigmatical appari- 
 tion exclaim: 
 
 "Tu me crois la Justice, je suis la Pitie." 
 
 And in this paradise, where nature 
 laughed the seasons through, there 
 was a temple, and before it a column, 
 about which, in Panchaian characters, 
 ran a history of ancient kings, who, to 
 the astonishment of the tourist, were 
 found to be none other than the gods 
 
6i IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 whom the universe adored, and who 
 in earher days had announced them- 
 selves divinities, the better to rule the 
 hearts and minds of man. 
 
 With other guides Tiberius jour- 
 neyed through lands where dreams 
 come true. Aristeas of Proconnesus 
 led him among the Arimaspi,a curious 
 people who passed their lives fighting 
 for gold with griffons in the dark. 
 With Isogonus he descended the 
 valley of Ismaus, where wild men 
 were, whose feet turned inwards. In 
 Albania he found a race with pink 
 eyes and white hair; in Sarmatia 
 another that ate only on alternate 
 days. Agatharcides took him to 
 Libya, and there introduced him to 
 the Psyllians, in whose bodies was a 
 poison deadly to serpents, and who, to 
 test the fidelity of their wives, placed 
 their children in the presence of 
 snakes; if the snakes fled they knew 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 65 
 
 their wives were pure. Callias took 
 him further yet, to the home of 
 the hermaphrodites; Nymphodorus 
 showed him a race of fascinators who 
 used enchanted words. With Apol- 
 lonides he encountered women who 
 killed with their eyes those on whom 
 they looked too long. Megasthenes 
 guided him to the Astomians, whose 
 garments were the down of feathers, 
 and who lived on the scent of the 
 rose. 
 
 In his cups they all passed, confus- 
 edly, before him; the hermaphrodites 
 whispered to the rose — breathers 
 secrets of impossible love; the grif- 
 fons bore to him women with magical 
 eyes; the Albanians danced with 
 elastic feet; he heard the shrill call of 
 the Psyllians, luring the serpents to 
 death; the column of Panchaia un- 
 veiled its mysteries ; the Hyperboreans 
 the reason of their fear of life, and on 
 
66 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 the wings of the chimera he set out 
 again in search of that continent 
 which haunted antiquity and which 
 lay beyond the sea. 
 
IV. 
 
 THE PURSUIT OF THE IMPOSSIBLE. 
 
 67 
 
IV. 
 
 THE PURSUIT OF THE IMPOSSIBLE. 
 
 ''Another Phaethon for the uni- 
 verse," Tiberius is reported to have 
 muttered, as he gazed at his nephew 
 Caius, nicknamed Caligula, who was 
 to suffocate him with a mattress and 
 rule in his stead. 
 
 To rule is hardly the expression. 
 There is no term in English to con- 
 vey that dominion over sea and sky 
 which a Caesar possessed, and which 
 Caligula was the earliest to understand. 
 Augustus was the first magistrate of 
 Rome, Tiberius the first citizen./ 
 Caligula was the first emperor, but an 
 emperor hallucinated by the enigma 
 of his own grandeur, a prince for 
 whose sovereignty the world was too 
 small. 
 
 69 
 
70 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 Each epoch has its secret, some- 
 times puerile, often perplexing; but in 
 its maker there is another and a more 
 interesting one yet. Eliminate Cali- 
 gula, and Nero, Domitian, Commo- 
 dus, Caracalla and Heliogabalus 
 would never have been. It was he 
 who gave them both raison d'etre 
 and incentive. The lives of all of 
 them are horrible, yet analyze the hor- 
 rible and you find the sublime. 
 
 Fancy a peak piercing the heavens, 
 shadowing the earth. It was on a 
 peak such as that the young emperors 
 of old Rome balanced themselves, a 
 precipice on either side. Did they 
 look below, a vertigo rose to meet 
 them; from above delirium came, 
 while the horizon, though it hemmed 
 the limits of vision, could not mark the 
 frontiers of their dream. In addition 
 there was the exaltation that altitudes 
 produce. The valleys have their 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 71 
 
 imbeciles; it is from mountains the 
 poet and madman come. Caligula was 
 both, sceptered at that; and with what 
 a sceptre! One that stretched from 
 the Rhine to the Euphrates, domi- 
 nated a hundred and fifty million peo- 
 ple; one that a mattress had given and 
 a knife was to take away; a sceptre 
 that lashed the earth, threatened the 
 sky, beckoned planets and ravished 
 the divinity of the divine. 
 
 To wield such a sceptre securely 
 requires grace, no doubt, majesty too, 
 but certainly strength; the latter 
 Caligula possessed, but it was the 
 feverish strength of one who had 
 fathomed the unfathomable, and who 
 sought to make its depths his own. 
 Caligula was haunted by the intan 
 gible. His sleep was a communion 
 with Nature, with whom he believed 
 himself one. At times the Ocean 
 talked to him; at others the 
 
72 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 Earth had secrets which it wished to 
 tell. Again there was some matter of 
 moment which he must mention to 
 the day, and he would wander out in 
 the vast galleries of the palace and 
 invoke the Dawn, bidding it come and 
 listen to his speech. The day was 
 deaf, but there was the moon, and he 
 prayed her to descend and share his 
 couch. Luna declined to be the 
 mistres. of a mortal; to seduce her 
 Caligula determined to become a god. 
 Nothing was easier. An emperor 
 had but to open his veins, and in an 
 hour he was a divinity. But the 
 divinity which Caligula desired was 
 not of that kind. He wished to be a 
 god, not on Olympus alone, but on 
 earth as well. He wished to be a 
 palpable, tangible, living god; one that 
 mortals could see, which was more, 
 he knew, than could be said of the 
 others. The mere wish was sufficient 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 73 
 
 — Rome fell at his feet. The patent 
 of divinity was in the genuflections of 
 a nation. At once he had a temple, 
 priests and flamens. Inexhaustible 
 Greece was sacked again. The 
 statues of her gods, disembarked at 
 Rome, were decapitated, and on them 
 the head of Caius shone. 
 
 Heretofore his dress had not been 
 Roman, nor, for that matter, the garb 
 of a man. On his wrists were brace- 
 lets; about his shoulders was a mantle 
 made bright with gems; beneath it 
 was a tunic, and on his feet were the 
 high white slippers that women wore. 
 But when the god came the costume 
 changed. One day he was Apollo, 
 the nimbus on his curls, the Graces at 
 his side; the next he was Mercury, 
 wings at his heels, the caduceus in 
 his hand; again he was Venus. But 
 it was as Jupiter Latialis, armed with 
 the thunderbolt and decorated with a 
 
74 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 great gold beard, that he appeared at 
 his best. 
 
 The role was very real to him. 
 After the fashion of Olympians he 
 became frankly incestuous, seducing 
 vestals, his sisters too, and gaining 
 in boldness with each metamorpho- 
 sis, he menaced the Capitoline Jove. 
 "Prove your power," he cried to him, 
 "or fear my own!'' He thundered at 
 him with machine-made thunder, with 
 lightning that flashed from a pan. 
 "Kill me," he shouted, "or I will kill 
 you!" Jove, ummoved, must have 
 moved his assailant, for presently 
 Caligula lowered his voice, whispered 
 in the old god's ear, questioned him, 
 meditated on his answer, grew per- 
 plexed, violent again, and threatened 
 to send him home. 
 
 These interviews humanized him. 
 He forgot the moon and mingled with 
 men, inviting them to die. The invi- 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 75 
 
 tation being invariably accepted, he 
 became a connoisseur in death, an ar- 
 tist in blood, a ruler to whom cruelty 
 was not merely an aid to government 
 but an individual pleasure, and there- 
 with such a perfect lover, such a 
 charming host! 
 
 "Dear heart," he murmured to his 
 mistress Pryallis, as she lay one night 
 in his arms, "I think I will have you 
 tortured that you may tell me why I 
 love you so." But of that the girl 
 saw no need. She either knew the 
 reason or invented one, for presently 
 he sighed in her ear: "And to think 
 that I have but a sign to make and 
 that beautiful head of yours is off!" 
 Musings of this description were so 
 pleasurable that one evening he ex- 
 plained to guests whom he had star- 
 tled with his laughter, that it was 
 amusing to reflect how easily he could 
 have all of them killed. 
 
76 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 But even to a god life is not an un- 
 mixed delight. Caligula had his lit- 
 tle troubles. About him there had 
 settled a disturbing quiet. Rome was 
 hushed, the world was very still. 
 There was not so much as an earth- 
 quake. The reign of Augustus had 
 been marked by the defeat of Varus. 
 Under Tiberius a falling amphithea- 
 tre had killed a multitude. Caligula 
 felt that through sheer felicity his own 
 reign might be forgot. A famine, a 
 pest, an absolute defeat, a terrific con- 
 flagration — any prodigious calamity 
 that should sweep millions away and 
 stamp his own memory immutably on 
 the chronicles of time, how desirable 
 it were! But there was nothing. 
 The crops had never been more 
 abundant; apart from the arenas and 
 the prisons, the health of the empire 
 was excellent; on the frontiers not so 
 much as the rumor of an insurrection 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 77 
 
 could be heard, and Nero was yet to 
 come. 
 
 Perplexed, Caligula reflected, and 
 presently from Baise to Puzzoli, over 
 the waters of the bay, he galloped on 
 horseback, the cuirass of Alexander 
 glittering on his breast. The inter- 
 vening miles had been spanned by a 
 bridge of ships and on them a road 
 had been built, one of those roads for 
 which the Romans were famous, a 
 road like the Appian Way, in earth 
 and stone, bordered by inns, by pink 
 arcades, green retreats, forest reaches, 
 the murmur of trickling streams. So 
 many ships were anchored there that 
 through the unrepleted granaries the 
 fear of famine stalked. Caligula, 
 meanwhile, his guests behind him, 
 made cavalry charges across the sea, 
 or in a circus-chariot held the ribbons, 
 while four white horses, maddened by 
 swaying lights, bore him to the other 
 
78 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 
 
 shore. At night the entire coast was 
 illuminated; the bridge was one great 
 festival, brilliant but brief. Caligula 
 had wearied of it all. At a signal 
 the multitude of guests he had assem- 
 bled there were tossed into the sea. 
 By way of a souvenir, Tiberius, 
 whom he murdered, had left him the 
 immensity of his treasure. "I must be 
 economical or Caesar," Caligula re^ 
 fleeted, and tipped a coachman a mih 
 lion, rained on the people a hail of 
 coin, bathed in essences, drank pearls 
 dissolved in wine, set before his guests 
 loaves of silver, gold omelettes, sau- 
 sages of gems; sailed to the hum of 
 harps on a ship that had porticoes, 
 gardens, baths, bowers, spangled sails 
 and a jewelled prow; removed a moun- 
 tain, and put a palace where it had 
 been; filled in a valley and erected a 
 temple on the top; supplied a horse 
 with a marble home, with ivory stalls, 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 79 
 
 with furniture and slaves; contem- 
 plated making him consul; made him 
 a host instead, one that in his own 
 equine name invited the fashion of 
 Rome to sup with Incitatus. 
 
 In one year Tiberius' legacy, a 
 sum that amounted to four hundred 
 million of our money, was spent. 
 Caligula was radiant; he had achieved 
 the impossible; he was a bankrupt 
 god, an emperor without a copper. 
 But the very splendor of that triumph 
 demanded a climax. If Caligula hes- 
 itated, no one knew it. On the mor- 
 row the palace of the Caesars was 
 turned into a lupanar, a little larger, 
 a little handsomer than the others, 
 but still a brothel, one of which the 
 inmates were matrons of Rome and 
 the keeper Jupiter Latialis. 
 
 After that, seemingly, there was 
 nothing save apotheosis. But Cali- 
 gula, in the nick of time, remembered 
 
80 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 
 
 the ocean. At the head of an army 
 he crossed Gaul, attacked it, and re- 
 turned refreshed. Decidedly he had 
 not exhausted everything yet. He 
 recalled Tiberius' policy, and abruptly 
 the world was filled again with ac- 
 cusers and accused. Gold poured in 
 on him, the earth paid him tribute. 
 In a vast hall he danced naked on the 
 wealth of nations. Once more he 
 was rich, richer than ever; there 
 were still illusions to be looted, other, 
 dreams to be pierced; yet, even as he 
 mused, conspirators were abroad. 
 He loosed his pretorians. "Had 
 Rome but one head!" he muttered. 
 "Let them feel themselves die," he 
 cried to his officers. "Let me be 
 hated, but let me be feared." 
 
 One day, as he was returning from 
 the theatre, the dagger did its usual 
 work. Rome had lost a genius; in 
 his place there came an ass. 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 81 
 
 There is a verse in Greek to the 
 effect that the blessed have children 
 in three months. Livia and Augustus 
 were blessed in this pleasant fashicr-. 
 Three months after their marriage a 
 child was born — a miracle which sur- 
 prised no one aware of their previous 
 intimacy. The child became a man, 
 and the father of Claud, an imbecile 
 whom the pretorians, after Caligula's 
 death, found in a closet, shaking with 
 fright, and whom for their own pro- 
 tection they made emperor in his 
 stead. 
 
 Caligula had been frankly adored; 
 there was in him an originality, and 
 with it a grandeur and a mad magnifi- 
 cence that enthralled. Then, too, he 
 was young, and at his hours what the 
 French call charmetcr. If at times he 
 frightened, always he dazzled. Of 
 course he was adored; the prodigal 
 emperors always were; so were their 
 
82 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 successors, the wicked popes. The 
 virtue and moderation, which we of 
 a later day admire so much, were 
 not entirely appreciated then. Man 
 was still too near to nature to be 
 aware of shame, and infantile enough 
 to care to be surprised. In that was 
 Caligula's charm; he petted his peo- 
 ple and surprised them too. Claud 
 wearied. Between them they assimi- 
 late every contradiction, and in their 
 incoherences explain that incompre- 
 hensible chaos which was Rome. 
 Caligula jeered at everybody, every- 
 body jeered at Claud. 
 
 The latter was a fantastic, vacillat- 
 ing, abstracted, well-meaning and 
 cowardly tyrant, issuing edicts in 
 regard to the proper tarring of barrels, 
 and rendering decisions which would 
 insure the fortune of an opera-bouffe; 
 declaring himself to be of the opinion 
 of those who were right ; falling asleep 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 83 
 
 on the bench, and on awakening 
 announcing that he gave judgment 
 in favor of those whose reasons were 
 the best; slapped in the face by an 
 irritable plaintiff; held down by main 
 force when he wanted to leave; invit- 
 ing to supper those whom he had 
 killed before breakfast; answering the 
 mournful salute of the gladiators with 
 a grotesque ^x'^/^ vos — " Be it well too 
 with you,^' a response, parenthetically, 
 which the gladiators construed as a 
 pardon and refused to fight; dowering 
 the alphabet with three new letters 
 which lasted no longer than he did; 
 asserting that he would give centen- 
 nial games as often as he saw fit; an 
 emperor whom no one obeyed, whose 
 eunuchs ruled in his stead; whose 
 lackeys dispensed exiles, death, con- 
 sulates and crucifixions; whose valets 
 insulted the senate, insulted Rome, 
 insulted the sovereign that ruled the 
 
84 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 world; whose people shared his con- 
 sort's couch; a slipshod drunkard in a 
 tattered gown — such was the gentle- 
 man that succeeded Caligula and had 
 Messalina for wife. 
 
 It were curious to have seen that 
 woman as Juvenal did, a veil over her 
 yellow wig, hunting adventures 
 through the streets of Rome, prosti- 
 tuting herself in the ergastules, while 
 her husband in the Forum censured 
 the dissoluteness of citizens. And it 
 were curious, too, to understand 
 whether it was her audacity or his 
 stupidity which left him the only man 
 in Rome unacquainted with the pro- 
 digious multiplicity and variety of her 
 lovers. History has its secrets, yet, 
 in connection with Messalina, there is 
 one that historians have not taken the 
 trouble to probe; to them she has 
 been an imperial strumpet, a hetaira 
 on a throne. Messalina was not that. 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 85 
 
 At heart she was probably no better 
 and no worse than any other lady of 
 the land, but physically she was a 
 victim of nymphomania, one who to- 
 day would be put through a course of 
 treatment, instead of being put to 
 death. When Claud at last learned, 
 not the truth, but certain facts, 
 namely, that some of her lovers were 
 conspiring to get rid of him, he was 
 not indignant; he was frightened 
 to death. The conspirators were 
 promptly disposed of, Messalina with 
 them. Suetonius says that, a few 
 days later, as he went in to supper, he 
 asked why the empress did not ap- 
 pear. 
 
 Apart from the malady from which 
 she suffered, were it possible to find 
 an excuse for her conduct, the excuse 
 would be Claud. The purple which 
 made Caligula mad, made him an 
 idiot; and when in course of time he 
 
86 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 was served with a succulent poison, 
 there must have been many conjec- 
 tures in Rome as to what the empire 
 would next produce. 
 
 The empire was extremely fecund, 
 enormously vast. About Rome ex- 
 tended an immense circle of provinces 
 and cities that were wholly hers. 
 Without that circle was another, the 
 sovereignty exercised over vassals 
 and allies; beyond that, beyond the 
 Rhine on one side, were the silenced 
 Teutons; beyond the Euphrates on 
 the other, the hazardous Parthians, 
 while remotely to the north there 
 extended the enigmas of barbarism; 
 to the south, those semi-fabulous 
 regions where geography ceased to 
 be. 
 
 Little by little, through the pa- 
 tience of a people that felt i',self 
 eternal, this immensity had been 
 assimilated and fused. A few for- 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 81 
 
 tresses and legions on the frontiers, a 
 stretch of soldiery at any spot an in- 
 vasion might be feared; a little tact, 
 a maternal solicitude, and that was 
 all. Rome governed unarmed, or 
 perhaps it might be more exact to 
 say she did not govern at all; she 
 was the mistress of a federation of 
 realms and republics that governed 
 themselves, in whose government she 
 was content, and from whom she ex- 
 acted little, tribute merely, and obei- 
 sance to herself. Her strength was 
 not in the sword; the lioness roared 
 rarely, often slept; it was the fear 
 smaller beasts had of her awakening 
 that made them docile; once aroused, 
 those indolent paws could do terrible 
 work, and it was well not to excite 
 them. When the Jews threatened to 
 revolt, Agrippa warned them: "Look 
 at Rome ; look at her well ; her arms 
 are invisible, her troops are afar; she 
 
88 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 rules, not by them, but by the cer- 
 tainty of her power. If 3^ou rebel, the 
 invisible sword will flash, and what 
 can you do against Rome armed, 
 when Rome unarmed frightens the 
 world?" 
 
 The argument was pertinent and 
 suggestive, but the secret of Rome's 
 ascendency consisted in the fact that 
 where she conquered she dwelt. 
 Wherever the eagles pounced, Rome 
 multiplied herself in miniature. In 
 the army was the nation, in the legion 
 the city. Where it camped, presto! 
 a judgment seat and an altar. On 
 the morrow there was a forum; in a 
 week there were paved avenues; in a 
 fortnight, temples, porticoes; in a 
 month you felt yourself at home. 
 Rome built with a magic that startled 
 as surely as the glint of her sword. 
 Time and again the nations whom 
 Caesar encountered planned to elim- 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 89 
 
 inate his camp. When they reached 
 it the camp had vanished; in its place 
 was a walled, impregnable town. 
 
 As the standards lowered before 
 that town, the pomoerium was traced. 
 Within it the veteran found a home, 
 without it a wife; and, the family 
 established, the legion that had con- 
 quered the soil with the sword, sub- 
 sisted on it with the plow. Presently 
 there were priests there, aqueducts, 
 baths, theatres and games, all the 
 marvel of imperial elegance and vice. 
 When the aborigine wandered that 
 way, his seduction was swift. 
 
 The enemy that submitted became 
 a subject, not a slave. Rome com- 
 manded only the free. If his goods 
 were taxed, his goods remained his 
 own, his personal liberty untram- 
 meled. His land had become part of a 
 new province, it is true, but provided 
 he did not interest himself in such mat- 
 
90 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 ters as peace and war, not only was 
 he free to manage his own affairs, but 
 that land, were it at the uttermost 
 end of the earth, might, in recompense 
 of his fidelity, come to be regarded 
 as within the Italian territory; as such, 
 sacred, inviolate, free from taxes, and 
 he a citizen of Rome, senator even, 
 emperor ! 
 
 Conquest once solidified, the rest 
 was easy. Tattered furs were replaced 
 by the tunic and uncouth idioms by 
 the niceties of Latin speech. In some 
 cases, where the speech had been 
 beaten in with the hilt of the sword, 
 the accent was apt to be rough, but a 
 generation, two at most, and there 
 were sweethearts and swains quoting 
 Horace in the moonlight, naively un- 
 aware that only the verse of the 
 Greeks could pleasure the Roman ear. 
 
 Of the principalities and kingdoms 
 that of their own wish [a wish often 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE, 91 
 
 suggested, and not always amicably 
 either] had become allies of Rome 
 and mingled their freedom with hers, 
 nothing worth mentioning was re- 
 quired; they entered into an alliance 
 whereby in return for Rome's patron- 
 age and protection they agreed to 
 have a proper regard for the dignity 
 of the Roman people and to have no 
 other friends or enemies than those 
 that were Rome's — a formula ex- 
 quisite in the civility with which it 
 exacted the renunciation of every in- 
 herent right. *'I have obeyed," wrote 
 a king to the senate. *'I have obeyed 
 your deputy as I would have obeyed 
 a god." "And you have done wisely," 
 the senate answered, a reply, which, 
 in its terseness, tells all. 
 
 Diplomacy and the plow, such were 
 Rome's methods. As for herself she 
 fought, she did not till. Italy, devas- 
 tated by the civil wars, was unculti- 
 
92 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 vated, cut up into vast unproductive 
 estates. From one end to the other 
 there wsls barely a trace of agricul- 
 ture, not a sign of traffic. You met 
 soldiers, cooks, petty tradesmen, glad- 
 iators, philosophers, patricians, market 
 gardeners, lazzaroni and millionaires; 
 the merchant and the farmer, never. 
 Rome's resources were in distant com- 
 mercial centers, in taxes and tribute; 
 her wealth had come of pillage and 
 exaction. Save her strength, she had 
 nothing of her own. Her religion, liter- 
 ature, art, philosophy, luxury and cor- 
 ruption, everything had come from 
 abroad. In Greece were her artists; in 
 Africa, Gaul and Spain, her agricultur- 
 ists; in Asia her artisans. Her own 
 breasts were sterile. When she gave 
 birth it was to a litter of monsters, 
 sometimes to a genius, by accident to 
 a poet. She consumed, she did not pro- 
 duce. It was because of that she fell. 
 
V. 
 
 NERO. 
 
 93 
 
V. 
 
 NERO. 
 
 "Save a monster, what can you 
 expect from Agrippina and myself?'' 
 
 It was Domitius, Nero's father, 
 who made this ingenious remark. 
 He was not a good man; he was not 
 even a good-looking man — a brawHng 
 trickster who, in spite of his wealth, 
 which was great, appears to have 
 pleased no one as thoroughly as he 
 did his sister, whom he pleased too 
 well. But such capacity for wicked- 
 ness as he possessed paled beside that 
 of Agrippina, who poisoned him when 
 Nero's birth insured the heritage of 
 his wealth. 
 
 In all its galleries history has no 
 other portrait such as hers. Cali- 
 gula's sister, his mistress as well, 
 
 95 
 
96 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 prostituted by him, exiled and threat- 
 ened with death, her eyes dazzled and 
 nerves unstrung by the impossiibilities 
 of that fabulous reign, it was not 
 until Claud, her uncle, recalled her 
 and Messalina disappeared, that the 
 empress awoke. She too, she deter- 
 mined, would rule, and the J7is osculi 
 aiding, she married out of hand that 
 imbecile uncle of hers, on whose knee 
 she had played as a child. 
 
 The day of the wedding a young 
 patrician, expelled from the senate, 
 killed himself. Agrippina had accused 
 him of incest, not because he was guilty, 
 nor yet because the possibility of such 
 a sin shocked her, but because he 
 was betrothed to Octavia, a slender 
 maiden with blue, pathetic eyes, who 
 happened to be Claud's daughter, and 
 who, Agrippina determined, should 
 be Nero's wife. Presently^Caligula's 
 widow, an old rival of her own, a 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 97 
 
 lady who had thought she would like 
 to be empress twice, and whom 
 Claud had eyed grotesquely, was dis- 
 encumbered of three million worth of 
 emeralds, with which she heightened 
 her beauty, and told very civilly that 
 it was time to die. So too disap- 
 peared a Calpurina, a Lepida; women 
 young, rich, handsome, impure, and 
 as such dangerous to Agrippina's 
 peace of mind. The legality of her 
 crimes was so absolute that the mere 
 ownership of an enviable object was 
 a cause for death. A senator 
 had a villa which pleased her; he was 
 invited to die. A knight had a pair 
 of those odorous murrhine vases, 
 which Pompey had found in Armenia, 
 and 'which on their first appearance 
 set Rome wild; he, too, was invited 
 to die. 
 
 But, though Agrippina dealt in 
 death, she dealt in seductions too. 
 
98 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 Rome, that had adored CaHgula, 
 promptly fell under his sister's sway. 
 There was a splendor in her eyes, 
 which so many crimes had lit; in her 
 carriage there was such majest}^ the 
 pomp with which she surrounded her- 
 self was so magnificent, that Rome, 
 enthralled, applauded. Beyond, on 
 the Rhine, a city which is to-day 
 Cologne, rose in honor of her sover- 
 eignty. To her wishes the senate 
 was subservient, to her indiscretions 
 blind. Claud, who meanwhile had 
 been wholly sightless, suddenly showed 
 signs of discernment. A woman, 
 charged with illicit commerce, 
 was brought to his tribunal. He 
 condemed her, of course. "In my 
 case," he explained, "matrimony has 
 not been successful, but the fate that 
 destined me to marry impure women 
 destined me also to punish them." It 
 was then that Agrippina ordered of 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 99 
 
 Locusta that famous stew of poison 
 and mushrooms, which Nero, in allu- 
 sion to Claud's apotheosis, called the 
 food of the gods. The fate that des- 
 tined Claud to marry Agrippina des- 
 tined her to kill him. 
 
 It was under her care, between a 
 barber and a ballerine, amid the 
 shamelessness of his stepfather's place, 
 where any day he could have seen his 
 mother beckon indolently to a centu- 
 rion and pointing to some lover who 
 had ceased to please, make the gesture 
 which signified Death, that the young 
 Enobarbus — Nero, as he subsequently 
 called himself — was trained for the 
 throne. 
 
 He had entered the world like a 
 tiger cub, feet first; a circumstance 
 which is said to have disturbed his 
 mother, and well it might. During 
 his adolescence that lady made hei - 
 self feared. He was but seventeen. 
 
100 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 when the pretorians called upon him 
 to rule the world; and at the time an 
 ingenuous lad, one who blushed like 
 Lalage, very readily, particularly at 
 the title of Father of the Country, 
 which the senate was anxious to give 
 him; endowed with excellent instincts, 
 which he had got no one knew whence ; 
 a trifle petit maitre^ perhaps, perfum- 
 ing the soles of his feet, and careful 
 about the arrangement of his yellow 
 curls, but withal generous, modest, 
 sympathetic — in short, a flower in a 
 cesspool, a youth not over well-fitted 
 to reign. But his mother was there; 
 as he developed so did his fear of her, 
 to such proportions even that he gave 
 certain orders, and his mother was 
 killed. That duel between mother 
 and son, terrible in its intensity and 
 unnameable horror, even the Borgias 
 could not surpass. Tacitus has told 
 it, dramatically, as was his wont, but 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 101 
 
 he told it in Latin, in which tongue 
 it had best remain. 
 
 At that time the ingenuous lad had 
 disappeared. The cub was full-grown. 
 Besides, he had tasted blood. Octa- 
 via, the slender maiden, who with her 
 brother, Britannicus, and her sister, 
 Antonia, had been his playmates; who 
 was almost his own sister; whose ear- 
 liest memories interlinked with his, 
 and who had become his wife, had 
 been put to death; not that she had 
 failed to please, but because a lady, 
 Sabina Poppcea, who, Tacitus says, 
 lacked nothing except virtue, had de- 
 clined to be his mistress. At the 
 time Sabina was married. But 
 divorce was easy. Sabina got one at 
 the bar; Nero with the axe. The 
 twain were then united. Nero seems 
 to have loved her greatly, a fact, as 
 Suetonius puts it, which did not pre- 
 vent him from kicking her to death. 
 
102 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 Already he had poisoned Britannicus, 
 and with Octavia decapitated and 
 Agrippina gone, of the imperial house 
 there remained but Antonia and him- 
 self. The latter he invited to marry 
 him; she declined. He invited her to 
 die. He was then alone, the last of 
 his ra^e. Monsters never engender. 
 A thinker who passed that way 
 thought him right to have killed his 
 mother; her crime was in giving him 
 birth. 
 
 Therewith he was popular; more 
 so even than Caligula, who was a poet, 
 and as such apart from the crowd, 
 while Nero was frankly canaille — well- 
 meaning at that — which Caligula 
 never was. During the early 3^ears 
 of his reign he could not do good 
 enough. The gladiators were not 
 permitted to die; he would have no 
 shedding of blood; the smell of it was 
 distasteful. He would listen to no 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 103 
 
 denunciations; when a decree of death 
 was brought to him to sign, he re- 
 gretted that he knew how to write. 
 Rome had never seen a gentler prince, 
 nor yet one more splendidly lavish. 
 The people had not only the necessities 
 of life, but the luxuries, the superflui- 
 ties, too. For days and days in the 
 Forum there was an incessant shower 
 of tickets that were exchangeable, not 
 for bread or trivial sums, but for gems, 
 pictures, slaves, fortunes, ships, villas 
 and estates. The creator of that 
 shower was bound to be adored. 
 
 It was that, no doubt, which awoke 
 him. A city like Rome, one that had 
 over a million inhabitants, could make 
 a terrific noise, and when that noise 
 was applause, the recipient found it 
 heady. Nero got drunk on popularity, 
 and heredity aiding where the prince 
 had been emerged the cad, a poseur 
 that bored, a beast that disgusted, a 
 
104 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 caricature of the impossible in a crim- 
 son frame. 
 
 *'What an artist the world is to 
 lose!" he exclaimed as he died; 
 and artist he was, but in the Roman 
 sense; one that enveloped in the same 
 contempt the musician, acrobat and 
 actor; one that branded every public 
 performer with an appellation which 
 even yet has not been rehabilitated. 
 It was the artist that played the flute 
 while gladiators died and lovers em- 
 braced; it was the artist that enter- 
 tained the crowd. 
 
 As an artist Nero would have made 
 the fortune of a dozen concert-halls. 
 Fancy the attraction — an emperor 
 before the footlights; but fancy the 
 boredom also. The joy at the an- 
 nouncement of his first appearance was 
 so great that thanks were offered to 
 the gods; and the verses he was to 
 sing, graven in gold, were dedicated 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 105 
 
 to the Capitoline Jove. The joy was 
 brief. The exits of the theatre were 
 closed. It was treason to attempt to 
 leave. People pretended to be dead, 
 in order to be carried out, and well 
 they might. The star was a fat man 
 with a husky tenorino voice, who sang 
 drunk and half-naked to a protecting 
 claque of ten thousand hands. 
 
 But it was in the circus that Nero 
 was at his best; there, no matter 
 though he were last in the race, it 
 was to him the palm was awarded, or 
 rather it was he that awarded the 
 palm to himself, and then quite mag- 
 nificently shouted, "Nero, Caesar, vic- 
 tor in the race, gives his crown to 
 the People of Rome!" 
 
 On the stage he had no rivals, and 
 by chance did one appear, he was 
 invited to die. In that respect he 
 was artistically susceptible. When 
 he turned acrobat, the statues of 
 
106 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 former victors were tossed in the 
 latrinse. Yet, as competitors were 
 needed, and moreover, all emperor 
 that he was, as he, singly, could fill 
 neither a stage nor a track, it was the 
 nobility of Rome that he ordered to 
 appear with him. The nobility was 
 willing enough to appear, only there 
 were few that cared to be forced, and 
 for this command the unforgiving 
 nobility never forgave him. On the 
 other hand, the proletariat loved him 
 all the better. What greater salve 
 could it have than the sight of the 
 conquerors of the world entertaining 
 the conquered, lords amusing their 
 lackeys } 
 
 Greece meanwhile sent him crowns 
 and prayers; crowns for anticipated 
 victories, prayers that he would come 
 and win them. Homage so delicate 
 was not to be disdained. Nero set 
 forth, an army at his heels; a legion 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 107 
 
 of claqueurs, a phalanx of musicians, 
 cohorts of comedians, and with these 
 for retinue, through sacred groves that 
 Homer knew, through intervales 
 which Hesiod sang, through a year of 
 festivals he wandered, alwa3^s victori- 
 ous. It was he who conquered at 
 Olympia; it was he who conquered 
 at Corinth. No one could withstand 
 him. Alone in history he won in 
 every game, and with eighteen hun- 
 dred crowns as trophies of war he re- 
 peated Caesar's triumph. In a robe 
 immaterial as a moonbeam, the 
 Olympian wreath on his curls, the 
 Isthmian laurel in his hand, his army 
 behind him, the clown that was em- 
 peror entered Rome. Victims were 
 immolated as he passed, the Via Sacra 
 was strewn with saffron, the day 
 was rent with acclaiming shouts. 
 Throughout the empire sacrifices 
 were ordered. Old people that lived 
 
108 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 in the country fancied him, Philostra- 
 tus says, the conqueror of new na- 
 tions, and sacrificed with dehght. 
 
 But if as artist he bored everybody 
 to death, he was yet an admirable 
 impresario. The spectacles he gave 
 were unique. At one which was held 
 in the Taurian amphitheatre it must 
 have been delightful to assist. Fancy 
 eighty thousand people on ascending 
 galleries, protected from the sun by a 
 canopy of spangled silk; an arena 
 three acres large carpeted with sand, 
 cinnabar and borax, and in that arena 
 death in every form, on those galleries 
 colossal delight. 
 
 The lowest gallery, immediately 
 above the arena, was a wide terrace 
 where the senate sat. There were 
 the dignitaries of the em.pire, and 
 with them priests in their sacerdotal 
 robes; vestals in linen, their hair 
 arranged in the six braids that were 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 109 
 
 symbolic of virginity; swarms of 
 oriental princes, rainbows of foreign 
 ambassadors; and in the centre, the 
 imperial pulvinar, an enclosed pavil- 
 ion, in which Nero lounged, a 
 mignon at his feet. 
 
 In the gallery above were the 
 necklaced knights, their tunics bor- 
 dered with the augusticlave, their 
 deep-blue cloaks fastened to the 
 shoulder; and there, too, in their wide 
 white togas, were the citizens of 
 Rome. 
 
 Still higher the people sat. In the 
 topmost gallery were the women, and 
 in a separate enclosure a thousand 
 musicians answered the cries of the 
 multitude with the blare and the 
 lauo^h of brass. 
 
 Beneath the terraces, behind the 
 barred doors that punctuated the 
 marble wall which circled the arena, 
 were Mauritian panthers that had 
 
110 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 been entrapped with rotten meat; 
 hippopotami from Sa'is, lured by the 
 smell of carrots into pits; the rhinoc- 
 eros of Gaul, taken with the net; lions, 
 lassoed in the deserts; Lucanian 
 bears, Spanish bulls; and, in remoter 
 dens, men, unarmed, that waited. 
 
 By way of foretaste for better 
 things, a handful of criminals, local 
 desperadoes, an impertinent slave, a 
 machinist, who in a theatre the night 
 before had missed an effect — these, 
 together with a negligent usher, were 
 tossed one after the other naked into 
 the ring, and bound to a scaffold that 
 surmounted a miniature hill. At a 
 signal the scaffold fell, the hill crum- 
 bled, and from it a few hyenas issued, 
 who indolently devoured their prey. 
 
 With this for prelude, the gods 
 avenged and justice appeased, a 
 rhinoceros ambled that way, stimu- 
 lated from behind by the point of a 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. Ill 
 
 spear; and in a moment the hyenas 
 were disemboweled, their legs quiv- 
 ering in the air. Throughout the 
 arena other beasts, tied together with 
 long cords, quarreled in couples; 
 there was the bellow of bulls, and the 
 moan of leopards tearing at their 
 flesh, a flight of stags, and the long, 
 clean spring of the panther. 
 
 Presently the arena was cleared, 
 the sand re-raked and the Bestiarii 
 advanced — Sarmatians, nourished on 
 mares' milk; Sicambrians, their hair 
 done up in chignons; horsemen from 
 Thessaly, Ethiopian warriors, Par- 
 thian archers, huntsmen from the 
 steppes, their different idioms uniting 
 in a single cry — "Caesar, we salute 
 you." The sunlight, filtering through 
 the spangled canopy, chequered their 
 tunics with burning spots, danced on 
 their spears and helmets, dazzled the 
 spectators' eyes. From above de- 
 
112 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 scended the caresses of flutes; the air 
 was sweet with perfumes, aHve with 
 multicolored motes; the terraces were 
 parterres of blending hues, and into 
 that splendor a hundred lions, their 
 tasseled tails sweeping the sand, 
 entered obliquely. 
 
 The mob of the Bestiarii had gone. 
 In the middle of the arena, a band of 
 Ethiopians, armed with arrows, 
 knives and spears, knelt, their oiled 
 black breasts uncovered. 
 
 Leisurely the lions turned their 
 huge, intrepid heads; to their jowls 
 wide creases came. There was a 
 glitter of fangs, a shiver that moved 
 the mane, a flight of arrows, mount- 
 ing murmurs, the crouch of beasts 
 preparing to spring, a deafening roar, 
 and, abruptly, a tumultuous mass, the 
 suddenness of knives, the snap of 
 bones, the cry of the agonized, the 
 fury of beasts transfixed, the shrieks 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 113 
 
 of the mangled, a combat hand to 
 fang, from which Hons fell back, their 
 jaws torn asunder, while others re- 
 treated, a black body swaying be- 
 tween their terrible teeth, and, insen- 
 sibly, a descending quiet. 
 
 At once there was an eruption 
 of bellowing elephants, painted and 
 trained for slaughter, that trampled 
 on wounded and dead. At a call 
 from a keeper the elephants dis- 
 appeared. There was a rush of mules 
 and slaves; the carcasses and corpses 
 vanished, the toilet of the ring was 
 made; and then came a plunge of 
 bulls, mists of vapor about their long, 
 straight horns, their anxious eyes 
 dilated. Beyond was a troop of 
 ThessaHans. For a moment the bulls 
 snorted, pawing the sand with their 
 fore-feet, as though trying to remem- 
 ber what they were doing there. Yet 
 instantly they seemed to know, and 
 
114 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 with lowered heads, they plunged on 
 the point of spears. But no matter, 
 horses went down by the hundred; 
 and as the bulls tired of goring the 
 dead, they fought each other; fought 
 rancorously, fought until weariness 
 overtook them, and the surviving 
 Thessalians leaped on their backs, 
 twisted their horns, and threw them 
 down, a sword through their throb- 
 bing throats. 
 
 Successively the arena was occupied 
 by bears, by panthers, by dogs trained 
 for the chase, by hunters and hunted. 
 But the episode of the morning was 
 a dash of wild elephants, attacked on 
 either side; a moment of sheer delight, 
 in which the hunters were tossed up 
 on the terraces, tossed back again by 
 the spectators, and trampled to death. 
 
 With that for bouquet the first part 
 of the performance was at an end. 
 By way of interlude, the ring was 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 115 
 
 peopled with acrobats, who flew up 
 in the air Hke birds, formed pyramids 
 together, on the top of which Httle 
 boys swung and smiled. There was 
 a troop of trained lions, their manes 
 gilded, that walked on tight-ropes, 
 wrote obscenities in Greek, and danced 
 to cymbals which one of them played. 
 There were geese-fights, wonderful 
 combats between dwarfs and women; 
 a chariot race, in which bulls, painted 
 white, held the reins, standing upright 
 while drawn at full speed; a chase of 
 ostriches, and feats of haute ecole on 
 zebras from Madagascar. 
 
 The interlude at an end, the sand 
 was re-raked, and preceded by the 
 pomp of lictors, interminable files of 
 gladiators entered, holding their knives 
 to Nero that he might see that they 
 were sharp. It was then the eyes of 
 the vestals lighted; artistic death was 
 their chiefest joy, and in a moment, 
 
116 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 
 
 when the spectacle began and the first 
 gladiator fell, above the din you could 
 hear their cry ^''Hic habetf'' and 
 watch their delicate thumbs reverse. 
 
 There was no cowardice in that 
 arena. If by chance any hesitation 
 were discernible, instantly there were 
 hot irons, the sear of which revivi- 
 fied courage at once. But that was 
 rare. The gladiators fought for ap- 
 plause, for liberty, for death; fought 
 manfully, skillfully, terribly, too, and 
 received the point of the sword or the 
 palm of the victor, their expression 
 unchanged, the face unmoved. 
 Among them, some provided with a 
 net and prodigiously agile, pursued 
 their adversaries hither and thither, 
 trying to entangle them first and kill 
 them later. Others, protected by 
 oblong shields and armed with short, 
 sharp swords, fought hand-to-hand. 
 There were still others, mailed horse- 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 117 
 
 men, who fought with the lance, 
 and charioteers that dealt death from 
 high Briton cars. 
 
 As a spectacle it was unique; one 
 that the Romans, or more exactly, 
 their predecessors, the Etruscans, had 
 devised to train their children for 
 war and allay the fear of blood. It 
 had been serviceable, indeed, and 
 though the need of it had gone, still 
 the institution endured, and in endur- 
 ing constituted the chief delight of 
 the vestals and of Rome. By means 
 of it a bankrupt became consul and 
 an emperor beloved. It had stayed 
 revolutions, it was the tax of the pro- 
 letariat on the rich. Silver and bread 
 were for the individual, but spectacles 
 were for the crowd. 
 
 During the pauses of the combats 
 the dead were removed by men 
 masked as Mercury, god of hell; red 
 irons, that others, masked as Charon, 
 
118 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 bore, being first applied as safeguard 
 against swoon or fraud. And when, 
 to the kisses of flutes, the last palm 
 had been awarded, the last death 
 acclaimed, a ballet was given; that of 
 Paris and Venus, which Apuleius has 
 described so well, and for afterpiece 
 the romance of Pasiphae and the 
 bull. Then, as night descended, so 
 did torches, too; the arena was 
 strewn with vermilion; tables were 
 set, and to the incitement of crotals, 
 Lydians danced before the multitude, 
 toasting the last act of that wonderful 
 day. 
 
 It was with such magnificence that 
 Nero showed the impresario's skill, 
 the politician's adroitness. Where 
 the artist, which he claimed to be, 
 really appeared, was in the refurbish- 
 ing of Rome. 
 
 In spite of Augustus' boast, the 
 city was not by any means of marble. 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 119 
 
 It was filled with crooked little 
 streets, with the atrocities of the 
 Tarquins, with houses unsightly and 
 perilous, with the moss and dust of 
 ages; it compared with Alexandria 
 as London compares with Paris; it 
 had a splendor of its own, but a 
 splendor that could be heightened. 
 
 Whether the conflagration which 
 occurred at that time was the result 
 of accident or design is uncertain 
 and in any event immaterial. 
 Tacitus says that when it began Nero 
 was at Antium, in which case he 
 must have hastened to return, for ad- 
 mitting that he did not originate the 
 fire, it is a matter of agreement that 
 he collaborated in it. In quarters 
 where it showed symptoms of weak- 
 ness it was by his orders coaxed to 
 new strength; colossal stone build- 
 ings, on which it had little effect, 
 were battered down with catapults. 
 
120 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 Fire is a perfect poet. No de- 
 signer ever imagined the surprises it 
 creates, and when, at the end of the 
 week three-fourths of the city was in 
 ruins, the beauty that reigned there 
 must have been subHme. That it in- 
 spired Nero is presumable. The 
 palace on the Palatine, which 
 Tiberius embellished and Caligula 
 enlarged, had gone; in its place rose 
 another, aflame with gold. Before it 
 Neropolis extended, a city of tri- 
 umphal arches, enchanted temples, 
 royal dwellings, shimmering porti- 
 coes, glittering roofs, and wide, hos- 
 pitable streets. It was fair to the 
 eye, purely Greek; and on its heart, 
 from the Circus Maximus to the 
 Forum's edge, the new and gigantic 
 palace shone. Before it was a lake, a 
 part of which Vespasian drained and 
 replaced with an amphitheatre that 
 covered eight acres. About that 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 121 
 
 lake were separate edifices that 
 formed a city in themselves; between 
 them and the palace, a statue of Nero 
 in gold and silver mounted precipi- 
 tately a hundred and twenty feet — a 
 statue which it took twenty-four ele- 
 phants to move. About it were 
 green savannahs, forest reaches, the 
 call of bird and deer, while in the dis- 
 tance, fronted by a stretch of columns 
 a mile in length, the palace stood — a 
 palace so ineffably charming that on 
 the day of reckoning may it outbal- 
 ance a few of his sins. Even the cel- 
 lars were frescoed. The baths were 
 quite comfortable; you had waters 
 salt or sulphurous at will. The din- 
 ing halls had ivory ceilings from 
 which flowers fell, and wainscots that 
 changed at each service. The walls 
 were alive with the glisten of gems, 
 with marbles rarer than jewels. In 
 one hall was a dome of sapphire, a 
 
122 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 floor of malachite, crystal columns 
 and red-gold walls. 
 
 "At last," Nero murmured, "I am 
 lodged like a man." 
 
 No doubt. Yet in a mirror he 
 would have seen a bloated beast in a 
 flowered gown, the hair done up in a 
 chignon, the skin covered with erup- 
 tions, the eyes circled and yellow; 
 a woman who had hours when she 
 imitated a virgin at bay, others when 
 she was wife, still others when she 
 expected to be a mother, and that 
 woman, a senatorial patent of divinity 
 aiding, was god — Apollo's peer, im- 
 perator, chief of the army, pontifix 
 maximus, master of the world, with 
 the incontestible right of life and death 
 over every being in the dominions. 
 
 It had taken the fresh-faced lad who 
 blushed so readily, just fourteen years 
 to effect that change. Did he regret 
 it.^ And what should Nero regret .^^ 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 123 
 
 Nothing, perhaps, save that at the 
 moment when he declared himself to 
 be lodged like a man, he had not 
 killed himself like one. But of that 
 he was incapable. Had he known 
 what the future held, possibly he 
 might have imitated that apotheosis 
 of vulgarity in which Sardanapalus 
 eclipsed himself, but never could he 
 have died with the good breeding 
 and philosophy of Cato, for neither 
 good breeding nor philosophy was in 
 him. Nero killed himself like a cow- 
 ard, yet that he did kill himself, in no 
 matter what fashion, is one of the few 
 things that can be said in his favor. 
 
 Those days differed from ours. 
 There were circumstances in which 
 suicide was regarded as the simplest 
 of duties. Nero did his duty, but not 
 until he was forced to it, and even then 
 not until he had been asked several 
 times whether it was so hard to die. 
 
124 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 The empire had wearied of him. In 
 NeropoHs his popularity had gone as 
 popularity ever does; the conflagration 
 had killed it. 
 
 Even as he wandered, lyre in 
 hand, a train of Lesbians and ped- 
 erasts at his heels, through those halls 
 which had risen on the ruins, and which 
 inexhaustible Greece had furnished 
 with a fresh crop of white immortals 
 the world rebelled. Afar on the out- 
 skirts of civilization a vassal, ashamed 
 of his vassalage, declared war, not 
 against Rome, but against an emperor 
 that played the flute. In Spain, in 
 Gaul, the legions were choosing other 
 chiefs. The provinces, depleted by 
 imperial exactions, outwearied by the 
 increasing number of accusers, whose 
 accusations impoverishing them 
 served only to multiply the prodigal- 
 ities of their Csesar, revolted. 
 
 Suddenly Nero found himself alone. 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 125 
 
 As the advancing rumor of rebellion 
 reached him, he thought of flight; 
 there was no one that would accom- 
 pany him. He called to the preto- 
 rians; they would not hear. Through 
 the immensity of his palace he sought 
 one friend. The doors would not 
 open. He returned to his apartment; 
 the guards had gone. Then terror 
 siezed him. He was afraid to die, 
 afraid to live, afraid of his solitude, 
 afraid of Rome, afraid of himself; but 
 what frightened him most was that 
 everyone had lost their fear of him. 
 It was time to go, and a slave aiding, 
 he escaped in disguise from Rome, 
 and killed himself, I'eluctantly, in a 
 hovel. 
 
 ^^^ualis artifex pereof'' he is 
 reported to have muttered. Say 
 rather, qualis moechus. 
 
VI. 
 
 THE HOUSE OF FLAVIA. 
 
 It was in those days that the nebu* 
 
 lous figure of Apollonius of Tyana 
 
 appeared and disappeared in Rome. 
 
 Hrs speech, a wayward comminghng 
 
 of puerihty and charm, Philostratus has 
 
 preserved. Rumor had preceded him. 
 
 It was said that he knew everything, 
 
 save the caresses of women ; that he was 
 
 famiHar with all languages; with the 
 
 speech of bird and beast; with that of 
 
 silence, for silence is a language too; 
 
 that he had prayed in the Temple of 
 
 Jupiter Lycceus, where men lost their 
 
 shadows, their lives as well; that he 
 
 had undergone the eighty initiations 
 of Mithra; that he had perplexed the 
 
 magi; confuted the gymnosophists; 
 
 that he foretold the future, healed the 
 
 sick, raised the dead; that beyond the 
 
 129 
 
130 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 Himalayas he had encountered every 
 species of ferocious beast, except the 
 tyrant, and that it was to see one he 
 had come to Rome. 
 
 Nero was singularly free from pre 
 judice. Apart from a doll which he 
 worshipped he had no superstitions. 
 He had the plain man's dislike of phi- 
 losophy; Seneca had sickened him of 
 it, perhaps; but he was sensitive, not 
 that he troubled himself particularly 
 about an}' lies that were told of him, 
 but he did object to people who went 
 about telling the truth. In that re- 
 spect he was not unique; we are all 
 like him, but he had ways of stilling 
 the truth which were imperial and his 
 own. 
 
 Promptly on Apollonius he loosed 
 his bull-dog Tigellin, prefect of police. 
 
 Tigellin caught him. ^'What have 
 you with you?" he asked. 
 
 "Continence, Justice, Temperance, 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 131 
 
 Strength and Patience," Apollonius 
 answered. 
 
 "Your slaves, I suppose. Make out 
 a list of them." 
 
 Apollonius shook his head. "They 
 are not my slaves; they are my mas- 
 ters." 
 
 "There is but one," Tigellin re- 
 torted — "Nero. Why do you not 
 fear him.^" 
 
 "Because the god that made him 
 terrible made me without fear." 
 
 "I will leave you your liberty," 
 muttered the startled Tigellin, "but 
 you must give bail." 
 
 "And who," asked Apollonius su- 
 perbly, "would bail a man whom no 
 one can enchain.^" Therewith he 
 turned and disappeared. 
 
 At that time Nero was in training 
 to suffocate a lion in the arena. A 
 few days later he killed himself. 
 Simultaneously there came news from 
 
132 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 Syracuse. A woman of rank had 
 given birth to a child with three 
 heads. Apollonius examined it. 
 
 ''There will be three emperors at 
 once," he announced. "But their 
 reign will be shorter than that of 
 kings on the stage." 
 
 Within that year Galba, who was 
 emperor for an instant, died at the 
 gates of Rome. Vitellius, after being 
 emperor in little else than dream, was 
 butchered in the Forum; and Otho, 
 in that fine antique fashion, killed 
 himself in Gaul. Apollonius mean- 
 while was in Alexandria, predicting 
 the purple to Vespasian, the rise of 
 the House of Flavia; invoking Jupiter 
 in his protege's behalf; and presently, 
 the prediction accomplished, he was 
 back in Rome, threatening Domitian, 
 warning him that the House of Flavia 
 would fall. 
 
 The atmosphere then was charged 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 133 
 
 with the marvelous; the world was 
 filled with prodigies, with strange 
 gods, beckoning chimeras and cred- 
 ulous crowds. Belief in the super- 
 natural was absolute; the occult 
 sciences, astrology, magic, divination, 
 all had their adepts. In Greece there 
 were oracles at every turn, and with 
 them prophets who taught the art of 
 adultery and how to construe the past. 
 On the banks of the Rhine there 
 were virgins who were regarded as 
 divinities, and in Gaul were men who 
 were held wholly divine. 
 
 Jerusalem too had her follies. 
 There was Simon the Magician, 
 founder of gnosticism, father of every 
 heresy, Messiah to the Jews, Jupiter 
 to the Gentiles — an impudent self- 
 made god, who pretended to float in 
 the air, and called his mistress 
 Minerva — a deification, parentheti- 
 cally, which was accepted by Nicho- 
 
134 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 las, his successor, a deacon of the 
 church, who raised her to the eighth 
 heaven as patron saint of lust. To 
 him, as to Simon, she was Ennoia, 
 Prunikos, Helen of Troy. She had 
 been Delilah, Lucretia. She had 
 prostituted herself to every nation 
 she had sung in the byways, and hid 
 den robbers in the vermin of her bed 
 But by Simon she was rehabilitated 
 It was she, no doubt, of whom Cali 
 gula thought when he beckoned to 
 the moon. In Rome she had her 
 statue, and near it was one to Simon, 
 the holy god. 
 
 But of all manifestations of divinity 
 the most patent was that which haloed 
 Vespasian. He expected it, Sueton- 
 ius says, but it is doubtful if anyone 
 else did. One night he dreamed that 
 an era of prosperity was to dawn for 
 him and his when Nero lost a tooth. 
 The next day he was shown one 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE, 135 
 
 which had just been drawn from the 
 emperor's mouth. But that was 
 nothing. Presently at Carmel the 
 Syrian oracle assured him that he 
 would be successful in whatever 
 enterprise he undertook. From 
 Rome word came that, while the 
 armies of Vitellius and Otho were 
 fighting, two eagles had fought above 
 them, and that the victor had been 
 despatched by a third eagle that had 
 come from the East. In Alexandria 
 Serapis whispered to him. The entire 
 menagerie of Egypt proclaimed him 
 king. Apis bellowed, Anubis barked. 
 Isis visited him unveiled. The lame 
 and the blind pressed about him; he 
 cured them with a touch. There 
 could be no reasonable doubt now; 
 surely he was a god. On his shoul- 
 ders Apollonius threw the purple, and 
 Vespasian set out for Rome. 
 
 His antecedents were less propi- 
 
136 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 tious. The descendent of an obscure 
 centurion, Titus Flavius Petronius by 
 name, who, by the way, was in no 
 wise connected with the author of the 
 Satyricon, Vespasian in early days 
 had been a veterinary surgeon; then, 
 having got Cahgula's ear, he flattered 
 it abominably. Caligula disposed of, 
 he flattered Claud, or what amounted 
 to the same thing, Narcissus, Claud's 
 chamberlain. Through the influence 
 of that eunuch he became a lieutenant, 
 fought on remote frontiers — fought 
 well, too — so well even that. Narcissus 
 gone, he felt Agrippina watching him, 
 and knowing the jealousy of her eyes, 
 prudently kept quiet until that lady 
 died. 
 
 With Nero he promenaded through 
 Greece — sat at the Olympian games 
 and fell asleep when his emperor 
 sang. Treason of that high nature — 
 sacrilege, rather, for Nero was then 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 137 
 
 a god — might have been overlooked, 
 had it occurred but once, for Nero 
 could be magnanimous when he chose. 
 But it always occurred. To Nero's 
 tremolo invariably came the accom- 
 paniment of Vespasian's snore. He 
 was dreaming of that tooth, no doubt. 
 "I am not a soporific, am I?" Nero 
 gnashed at him, and banished the 
 blasphemer forever from his sight. 
 
 For a while Vespasian lived in con- 
 stant expectation of some civil 
 message inviting him to die. Finally 
 it came, only he was invited to die at 
 the head of an arni}^ which Nero had 
 projected against seditious Jews. 
 When he returned, leaving his son 
 Titus to attend to Jerusalem, it was 
 as emperor. 
 
 Onl}' a moment before Vitellius 
 had been disposed of. That curious 
 glutton, whom the Rhenish legions 
 had chosen because of his off-hand 
 
138 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 familiarity, would willingly have fled 
 had the soldiery let him. But not at 
 all; they wanted a prince of their own 
 manufacture. They knew nothing of 
 Vespasian, cared less; and into the 
 Capitol they chased the latter's par- 
 tisans, his son Domitian as well. The 
 besieged defended themselves with 
 masterpieces, with sacred urns, the 
 statues of gods, the pedestals of divin- 
 ities. Suddenly the Capitol was 
 aflame. Simultaneously Vespasian's 
 advance guard beat at the gates. The 
 besiegers turned, the mob was with 
 them, and together they fought, first 
 at the gates, then in the streets, in the 
 Forum, retreating always, but like 
 lions, their face to the foe. The vol- 
 atile mob, noting the retreat, turned 
 from combatant into spectator. Let 
 the soldiers fight; it was their duty, 
 not theirs; and, as the struggle con- 
 tinued, from roof and window they 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. V2& 
 
 eyed it with that artistic delight wliich 
 the arena had developed, applauding 
 the clever thrusts, abusing the van- 
 quished, robbing the dead, and there- 
 with pillaging the wineshops, crowding 
 the lupanars. During the org}^, Vitel- 
 lius was stabbed. The Flavians had 
 won the day, the empire was Ves- 
 pasian's. 
 
 The use he made of it was very 
 modest. In spite of his manifest di- 
 vinity he had nothing in common with 
 the Caesars that had gone before; he 
 had no dreams of the impossible, no 
 desire to frighten Jupiter or seduce 
 the moon. He was a plain man, tall 
 and ruddy, very coarse in speech and 
 thought, open-armed and close-fisted, 
 slapping senators on the back and 
 keeping a sharp eye on the coppers; 
 taxing the latrinae, and declaring that 
 money had no smell; yet still, in com- 
 parison with Claud and Nero, almost 
 
UO IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 the ideal; absolutely uninteresting 
 also, yet doing what good he could; 
 effacing at once the traces of the civil 
 war, rebuilding the Capitol, calming 
 the people, protecting the provinces, 
 restoring to Rome the gardens of. 
 Nero, clipping the wings of the Palace 
 of Gold, throwing open again the 
 Via Sacra, over which the Palace had 
 spread; draining the lake that had 
 shimmered before it, and erecting in 
 its place that wonderful Colosseum 
 which enchants us still. 
 
 In spite of Serapis, Anubis and Isis, 
 he had not the faintest odor of myth 
 about him; he was frightfully bour- 
 geois, distressingly commonplace; he 
 lacked even that atmosphere of bur- 
 lesque that surrounded Claud; he had 
 not a vice he could call his own. 
 But he was a soldier, a brave one, 
 too; and if, with the acquired economy 
 of a subaltern who has been obliged 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE, Ul 
 
 to live on his pay, he kept his purse- 
 strings tight, they were loose enough 
 if a friend was in need, and he paid 
 no one the compliment of a lie. He 
 was projected sheer out of the repub- 
 lic. The better part of his life had 
 been passed under arms; the delicate 
 sensuality of Rome was foreign to 
 him. It was there that Domitian had 
 lived. 
 
 It were interesting to have watched 
 that young man killing flies by the 
 hour, while he meditated on the atro- 
 cities he was to commit— atrocities so 
 numberless and needless that in the 
 red halls of the Caesars he has left a 
 portrait which is unique. Slender, 
 graceful, handsome, as were all the 
 young emperors of old Rome, his 
 blue, troubled eyes took pleasure, if at 
 all, only in the sight of blood. 
 
 In accordance with the fashion 
 ^vhich those leaders, Caligula and 
 
142 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 Nero, had set, Domitian's earliest 
 manners were those of an urbane and 
 gentle prince. Later, when he made 
 it his turn to rule, informers begged 
 their bread in exile. Where they 
 are not punished, he announced, 
 they are encouraged. The sacrifices 
 were so distressing to him that he 
 forbade the immolation of oxen. He 
 was disinterested, too, refusing lega- 
 cies when the testator left nearer 
 heirs, and therewith royally generous, 
 covering his suite with presents, and 
 declaring that to him avarice of all 
 vices was the lowest and most vile. 
 In short, you would have said another 
 adolescent Nero come to Rome; there 
 was the same silken sweetness of de- 
 meanor, the same ready blush, in ad- 
 dition to a zeal for justice and equity 
 which other young emperors had 
 been too thoughtless to show. 
 
 His boyhood, too, had not been 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 143 
 
 above reproach. The same things 
 were whispered about him that had 
 been shouted at Augustus. Mani- 
 festly he lacked not one of the quali- 
 ties which go to the making of a 
 model prince. Vespasian alone had 
 his doubts. 
 
 "Mushrooms won't hurt you," he 
 cried one day, as Domitian started at 
 the sight of a ragout a la Sardan- 
 apale^ which he fancied, possibly, was 
 a la Locuste, "It is steel you should 
 fear." 
 
 At that time, with a father for 
 emperor and a brother who was sack- 
 ing Jerusalem, Domitian had but one 
 cause for anxiety, to wit — that the 
 empire might escape him. It was 
 then he began his meditations over 
 holocausts of flies. For hours he 
 secluded himself, occupied solely with 
 their slaughter. He treated them 
 precisely as Titus treated the Jews, 
 
144 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 enjoying the quiver of their legs, the 
 Httle agonies of their silent death. 
 
 Tiberius had been in love with soli- 
 tude, but never as he. Night after 
 night he wandered on the terraces of 
 the palace, watching the red moon 
 wane white, companioned only by his 
 dreams, those waking dreams that 
 poets and madmen share, that Pallas 
 had him in her charge, that Psyche 
 was amorous of his eyes. 
 
 Meanwhile he was nobody, a 3^oung 
 gentleman merely, who might have 
 moved in the best society, and 
 who preferred the worst — his own. 
 The sudden elevation of Vespasian 
 preoccupied him, and while he knew 
 that in the natural course of events his 
 father would move to Olympus, yet 
 there was his brother Titus, on whose 
 broad shoulders the mantle of purple 
 would fall. If the seditious Jews only 
 knew their business! But no. Forty 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 145 
 
 years before a white apparition on the 
 way to Golgotha had cried to a hand- 
 ful of women, ''The days are coming 
 in which they shall say to the mount- 
 ains, 'Fall on us'; to the hills, 'Cover 
 us.'" And the days had come. A 
 million of them had been butchered. 
 From the country the}' had fled to the 
 city; from Acra they had climbed to 
 Zion. When the city burst into 
 flames their blood put it out. Decid- 
 edly they did not know their business. 
 Titus, instead of being stabbed before 
 Jerusalem's walls, was marching in 
 triumph to Rome. 
 
 The procession that presently en- 
 tered the gates was a stream of splen- 
 dor; crowns of rubies and gold; gar- 
 ments that glistened with gems; gods 
 on their sacred pedestals; prisoners; 
 curious beasts ; Jerusalem in miniature ; 
 pictures of war; booty from the Tem- 
 ple, the veil, the candelabra, the cups of 
 
 10 
 
146 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 gold and the Book of the Law To 
 the rear rumbled the triumphal car, 
 in which laureled and mantled Titus 
 stood, Vespasian at his side; while, in 
 the distance, on horseback, came 
 Domitian — a supernumerary, ignored 
 by the crowd. 
 
 When the prisoners disappeared in 
 the Tullianum and a herald shouted, 
 "They have lived!" Domitian re- 
 turned to the palace and hunted 
 morosely for flies. The excesses of 
 the festival in which Rome was 
 swooning then had no delights for 
 him. Presently the moon would rise, 
 and then on the deserted terrace per- 
 haps he would bathe a little in her 
 light, and dream again of Pallas and 
 of the possibilities of an emperor's 
 sway, but meanwhile those blue 
 troubled eyes that Psyche was amor- 
 ous of were filled with envy and with 
 hate. It was not that he begrudged 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 147 
 
 Titus the triumph. The man who 
 had disposed of a miUion Jews de- 
 served not one triumph, but ten. It 
 was the purple that haunted him. 
 
 Domitian was then in the early 
 twenties. The Temple of Peace was 
 ascending; the Temple of Janus was 
 closed; the empire was at rest. Side 
 by side with Vespasian, Titus ruled. 
 From the Euphrates came the rumor 
 of some vague revolt. Domitian 
 thought he would like to quell it. 
 He was requested to keep quiet. It 
 occurred to him that his father ought 
 to be ashamed of himself to reign so 
 long. He was requested to vacate 
 his apartment. There were dumb 
 plots in dark cellars, of which only 
 the echo of a whisper has descended 
 to us, but which at the time were 
 quite loud enough to reach Vespa- 
 sian's ears. Titus interceded. Do- 
 mitian was requested to behave. 
 
148 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 For a while he prowled in the 
 moonlight. He had been too precip- 
 itate, he decided, and to allay sus- 
 picion presently he went about in soci- 
 ety, mingling his hours with those of 
 married women. Manifestly his ways 
 had mended. But Vespasian, was 
 uneasy. A comet had appeared. 
 The doors of the imperial mausoleum 
 had opened of themselves, besides, he 
 was not well. The robust and hardy 
 soldier, suddenly without tangible 
 cause, felt his strength give way. 
 "It is nothing," his physician said; "a 
 slight attack of fever." Vespasian 
 shook his head; he knew things of 
 which the physician was ignorant. 
 "It is death," he answered, "and an 
 emperor should meet it standing." 
 
 Titus' turn came next. A violent, 
 headstrong, handsome, rapacious 
 prince, terribly prodigal, thoroughly 
 Oriental, surrounded by dancers and 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 149 
 
 mignons, living in state with a queen 
 for mistress, startling even Rome w^ith 
 the uproar of his debauches — no 
 sooner was Vespasian gone than 
 presto! the queen went home, the 
 dancers disappeared, the debauches 
 ceased, and a ruler appeared who de- 
 clared he had lost a day that a good 
 action had not marked; a ruler who 
 could announce that no one should 
 leave his presence depressed. 
 
 Thottg'h Vespasian 'had gone, his 
 reign continued. Not long, it is true, 
 and punctuated by a spectacle of which 
 Caligula, for all his poetry, had not 
 dreamed — the burial of Pompeii. But 
 a reign which, while it lasted, was 
 fastidious and refined, and during 
 which, again and again, Titus, who 
 commanded death and whom death 
 obeyed, besought Domitian, the tears 
 in his eyes, to be to him a brother. 
 
 Domitian had no such intention. 
 
150 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 He had a party behind him, one made 
 up of old Neronians, the army of the 
 discontented, who wanted a change, 
 and greatly admired this charming 
 young prince whose hours were passed 
 in killing flies and making love to 
 married women. The pretorians too 
 had been seduced. Domitian could 
 make captivating promises when he 
 chose. 
 
 As a consequence Titus, like Ves- 
 pasian, was urneasy, and with cause. 
 Dion Cassius, or rather that brute 
 Xiphilin, his abbreviator, mentions the 
 fever that overtook him, the same his 
 father had met. It was mortal, of 
 course, and the purple was Domitian 's. 
 
 For a year and a day thereafter you 
 would have thought Titus still at the 
 helm. There was the same clem- 
 ency, the same regard for justice, the 
 same refinement and fastidiousness. 
 The morose young poet had developed 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 151 
 
 into a model monarch. The old 
 Neronians were perplexed, irritated 
 too; they had expected other things. 
 Domitian was merely feeling the way ; 
 the hand that held the sceptre was not 
 quite sure of its strength, and, tenta- 
 tively almost, this Prince of Virtue 
 began to scrutinize the morals of 
 Rome. For the first time he noticed 
 that the cocottes took their airing in 
 litters. But litters were not for them ! 
 That abuse he put a stop to at once. 
 A senator manifested an interest in 
 ballet-girls; he was disgraced. The 
 vestals, to whose indiscretions no one 
 had paid much attention, learned the 
 statutes of an archaic law, and were 
 buried alive. The early distaste for 
 blood was diminishing. Domitian had 
 the purple, but it was not bright 
 enough; he wanted it red, and what 
 Domitian wanted he got. Your god 
 and master orders it, was the formula 
 
152 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 he began to use when addressing 
 the Senate and People of Rome. 
 
 To that the people were indifferent. 
 The spectacles he gave in the Flavian 
 amphitheatre were too magnificently 
 atrocious not to be a compensation in 
 full for any eccentricity in which he 
 might indulge. Besides, under Nero, 
 Claud, Caligula, on en avail vu hien 
 d^autres. And at those spectacles 
 where he presided, crowned with a 
 tiara, on which were the images of 
 Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, while 
 grouped about him the college of Fla- 
 vian flamens wore tiaras that differed 
 therefrom merely in this, that they 
 bore his image too, the people right 
 royally applauded their master and 
 their god. 
 
 And it was just as well they did; 
 Domitian was quite capable of order- 
 ing everybody into the arena. As yet, 
 however, he had appeared little differ- 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 153 
 
 ent fi'om any other prince. That 
 Rome might understand that there was 
 a difference, and also in what that dif- 
 ference consisted, he gave a supper. 
 The flower of fashion was invited, the 
 magnates of the senate, everyone 
 worth knowing was bidden, and, as is 
 usual in state functions, everyone that 
 was bidden came. 
 
 The guests assembled. There was 
 Domitian, gracious, suave, urbane. 
 Enchantment was visible on every 
 countenance. Presently enchantment 
 changed to nervousness, and down the 
 backs of the invited little shivers ran. 
 The supper hall was draped with black; 
 the ceiling, the walls, the floor, every- 
 thing was basaltic. The couches were 
 black, the linen was black, the slaves 
 were black. Behind each guest was a 
 broken column, his name inscribed 
 thereon. The food was such as is pre- 
 pared when death has come. The 
 
154 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 silence was that of the tomb. The only 
 audible voice was Domitian's. He 
 was talking very wittily and charm- 
 ingly about murder, about proscrip- 
 tions, the good informers do, the util- 
 ity of the headsman, the majesty of 
 the law. The guests, a trifle ill at ease, 
 wished their host sweet dreams. "The 
 same to you," he answered, and de- 
 plored that they must go. 
 
 On the morrow informers and 
 headsmen were at work. Any pre- 
 text was sufficient. Birth, wealth, 
 fame, or the lack of them — anything 
 whatever — and there the culprit stood, 
 charged not with treason to an em- 
 peror, but with impiety to a god. 
 On the judgment seat Domitian sat. 
 Before him the accused passed, 
 and under his eyes they were 
 questioned, tortured, condemned and 
 killed. At once their property 
 passed into the keeping of the prince. 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 155 
 
 Of that he seems to have had much 
 need. The arena was expensive, but 
 the drain was elsewhere. A Httle 
 before, a quarrelsome people, the 
 Dacians, whom it took a Trajan to 
 subdue, had overrun the Danube, and 
 were marching down to Rome. Domit- 
 ian set out to meet them. The 
 Dacians retreated, not at all because 
 they were repulsed, but because Domit- 
 ian thought it better warfare to pay 
 them to do so. On his return after 
 that victory he enjoyed a triumph as 
 fair as that of Caesar. And each year 
 since then the emperor of Rome had 
 paid tribute to a nation of mongrel 
 oafs. 
 
 Of course he needed money. The 
 informers were there and he got it, 
 and with it that spectacle of torture 
 and of blood which he needed too. 
 Curiously, his melancholy increased; 
 his good looks had gone; Psyche was 
 
156 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 
 
 no longer amorous of his e3^es. The 
 poet that had invoked the moon passed 
 hour after hour kilHng not flies, but 
 beasts that were driven before him, 
 and at which he shot arrows, seated 
 on a stool. 
 
 But his nights were terrible. It was 
 no longer the purple that haunted 
 him, it was something he could not 
 define; the past, perhaps, perhaps the 
 future. To his ears came strange 
 sounds, the murmur of his own name, 
 and suddenly silence. Then, too, 
 there always seemed to be something 
 behind him; something that when he 
 turned disappeared. The room in which 
 he slept he had covered with a polished 
 m.etal that reflected everything, yet 
 still the intangible was there. Once 
 Pallas came in her chariot, waved him 
 farewell, and disappeared, borne by 
 black horses across the black night. 
 
 The astrologers consulted had noth- 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 157 
 
 ing pleasant to say. They knew, as 
 Domitian knew, that the end was near. 
 So was theirs. To one of them, who 
 predicted his immediate death, he en- 
 quired, "What will your end be?" 
 "I," answered the astrologer. "I shall 
 be torn by dogs." "To the stake with 
 him!" cried Domitian; "let him be 
 burned alive!" Suetonius says that 
 a storm put out the flames, and dogs 
 devoured the flesh. Another astrolo- 
 ger predicted that Domitian would die 
 before noon on the morrow. In order 
 to convince him of his error, Domitian 
 ordered him to be executed the sub- 
 sequent night. Before noon on the 
 morrow Domitian was dead. 
 
 Philostratus and Dion Cassius both 
 unite in saying that at that hour 
 Apollonius was at Ephesus, preaching 
 to the multitude. In the middle of the 
 sermon he hesitated, as though the 
 thread of his discourse had escaped 
 
158 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 him, but in a moment he began anew. 
 Again he hesitated, his eyes on the 
 distant horizon; then suddenly he 
 shouted, "Strike him! Strike him once 
 more!" And immediately to his 
 startled audience he related a scene 
 that was occurring at Rome, the attack 
 on Domitian, his struggle with his as- 
 sailant, his effort to tear out his eyes, 
 the rush of conspirators, and finally 
 the fall of the emperor, pierced by 
 seven knives. 
 
 The story may not be true, and yet 
 if it were! 
 
VII 
 
 THE POISON IN THE PURPLE. 
 
 159 
 
VII. 
 
 THE POISON IN THE PURPLE. 
 
 Rome never was healthy. The 
 tramontana visited it then as now, 
 fever too, and sudden death. To em- 
 perors it was fatal. Since Caesar a 
 malaria had battened on them all. 
 Nerwx escaped, but only through 
 abdication. The mantle that fell from 
 Domitian's shoulders on to his was so 
 dangerous in its splendor, that, fearing 
 the infection, he passed it to Ulpius 
 Trajanus, the lustre undimmed. 
 
 Ulpius Trajanus, Trajan for brevity, 
 a Spaniard by birth, a soldier by 
 choice; one who had fought against 
 Parthian and Jew, who had tramped 
 through Pannonia and made it his own; 
 a general whose hair had whitened on 
 
162 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 the field; a consul who had frightened 
 nations, was afraid of the sheen of that 
 purple which dazzled, corroded and 
 killed. He bore it, indeed, but at 
 arms-length. lie kept himself free 
 from the subtlety of its poison, from 
 the microbes of Rome as well. 
 
 He was in Cologne when Domitian 
 died and Nerva accepted and renounced 
 the throne. It was a year before he 
 ventured among the seven hills. When 
 he arrived you would have said an- 
 other Augustus, not the real Augustus, 
 but the Augustus of legend, and the 
 late Mr. Gibbon. When he girt the new 
 prefect of the pretorium with the im- 
 memorial sword, he addressed him in 
 copy-book phrases — "If I rule wisely, 
 use it for me; unwisely, against me." 
 
 Rome listened open-mouthed. The 
 change from Domitian's formula, 
 "Your god and master orders it," was 
 too abrupt to be immediately under- 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 163 
 
 stood. Before it was grasped Trajan 
 was off again; this time to the Danube 
 and beyond it, to Dacia and her fens. 
 
 Many years later — a century or two, 
 to be exact — a Persian satrap loitered 
 in a forum of Rome. "It is here," he 
 declared, "I am tempted to forget that 
 man is mortal." 
 
 He had passed beneath a triumphal 
 arch; before him was a glittering 
 square, grandiose, yet severe; a stretch 
 of temples and basilicas, in which mas 
 terpieces felt at home — the Forum of 
 Trajan, the compliment of a nation to 
 a prince. Dominating it was a col- 
 umn, in whose thick spirals 3'ou read 
 to-day the one reliable chronicle of the 
 Dacian campaign. Was not Gautier 
 well advised when he said only art 
 endures ? 
 
 There were other chronicles in 
 plenty; there were the histories of 
 ^lius Maurus, of Marius Maximus, 
 
164 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 and that of Spartian, but they are lost. 
 There is a page or two in the abbre- 
 viation which Xiphihn made of Dion; 
 AureHus Victor has a Httle to add, so 
 also has Eutropus, but practically 
 speaking, there is, apart from that col- 
 umn, nothing save conjecture. 
 
 Campaigns are wearisome reading, 
 but not the one that is pictured there. 
 You ask a curve a question, and in the 
 next you find the reply. There is a 
 point, however, on which it is dumb — 
 the origin of the war. But if you wish 
 to know the result, not the momentary 
 and transient result, but the sequel 
 which futurity held, look at the ruins 
 at that column's base. 
 
 The origin of the war was Domitian's 
 diplomacy. The chieftain whom he 
 had made king, and who had been sur- 
 prised enough at receiving a diadem 
 instead of the point of a sword, fancied, 
 and not unreasonably, that the annuity 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 165 
 
 which Rome paid him was to continue 
 forever. But Domitian, though a god, 
 was not otherwise immortal. When 
 he died abruptly the annuity ceased. 
 The Dacian king sent word that he was 
 surprised at the delay, but he must 
 have been far more so at the prompt- 
 ness with which he got Trajan's re- 
 ply. It was a blare of bugles, which 
 he thought forever dumb; a flight of 
 eagles, which he thought were winged. 
 In the spirals of the column you see 
 the advancing army, the retreating 
 foe; then the Dacian dragon saluting 
 the standards of Rome; peace de- 
 clared, and an army, whose very re- 
 pose is menacing, standing there to 
 see that peace is kept. And was \t? 
 In the ascending spiral is the new re- 
 volt, the attempt to assassinate Tra- 
 jan, the capture of the conspirators, 
 the advance of the legions, the retreat 
 of the Dacians, burning their cities as 
 
166 IMPERIAL PtJRPLE. 
 
 they go, carrying their wounded and 
 their women with them, and at last 
 pressing about a huge cauldron that is 
 filled with poison, fighting among them- 
 selves for a cup of the brew, and roll- 
 ing on the ground in the convulsions 
 of death. Further on is the treasure 
 of the king. To hide it he had turned 
 a river from its source, sunk the gold 
 in a vault beneath, and killed the 
 workmen that had labored there. Be- 
 yond is the capture of the capital, the 
 suicide of the chief, a troop of soldiers 
 driving captives and cattle before 
 them, the death of a nation and the 
 end of war. 
 
 The subsequent triumph does not 
 appear on the column. It is said that 
 ten thousand beasts were slaughtered 
 in the arenas, slaughtering, as they 
 fell, a thousand of their slaughterers. 
 But the spectacle, however fair, was 
 not of a nature to detain Trajan long 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 167 
 
 in Rome. The air there had not im- 
 proved in the least, and presently he 
 was off again, this time on the banks 
 of the Euphrates, arguing with the 
 Parthians, avoiding danger in the 
 only way he knew, by facing it. 
 
 It was then that the sheen of the 
 purple glowed. If lusterless at home, 
 it was royally red abroad. In a cam- 
 paign that was little more than a 
 triumphant promenade he doubled the 
 empire. To the world of Caesar he 
 added that of Alexander. Allies he 
 turned into subjects, vassals into slaves. 
 Armenia, Mesopotamia, Assyria, were 
 added to the realm. Trajan's foot- 
 stools were diadems. He had moved 
 back one frontier, he moved an- 
 other. From Great Britain to the 
 Indus, Rome was mistress of the earth. 
 Had Trajan been younger, China, 
 whose very name was unknown, would 
 have yielded to him her corruption, her 
 
168 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 printing press, her powder and her tea. 
 That he would have enjoyed these 
 things is not at all conjectural. He 
 was then an old man, but he was not 
 a good one — at least not in the sense 
 we use the term to-day. He had 
 habits which are regarded now less 
 as vices than perversions, but which at 
 that time were taken as a matter of 
 course and accepted by every one, 
 even by the stoics, very calmly, with 
 a grain of Attic salt at that. Men 
 were regarded as virtuous when they 
 were brave, when they were honest; 
 the idea of using the expression in its 
 later sense occurred, if at all, in jest 
 merely, as a synonym for the eunuch. 
 It was the matron and the vestal who 
 were supposed to be virtuous, never 
 the man; and that feminine virtue was 
 wholly suppositious, no one who has 
 sauntered through the catacombs of 
 the classics preserves so much as a 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 169 
 
 lingering doubt. The ceremonies con- 
 nected with the phalhis, and those 
 observed in the worship of the Bona 
 Dea, were of a nature that no virtue 
 could withstand. Every altar, Juvenal 
 said, had its Clodius, and even in 
 Clodius' absence there were always 
 those breaths of Sapphic song that 
 blew through Mitylene. 
 
 It is just that absence of a quality 
 which we regard as an added grace; 
 one, parenthetically, which dowered 
 the world with nothing less than a 
 new conception of beauty that makes 
 it difficult to picture Rome. Modern 
 ink has acquired Nero's blush; it 
 comes very readily, yet, however sen- 
 sitive a writer may be, once Roman 
 history is before him, he may violate 
 it if he choose; he may even give it a 
 child, but never can he make it immac- 
 culate. He may skip, indeed, if he 
 wish; and it is because he has skipped 
 
170 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 
 
 SO often that hats are removed when 
 Augustus is mentioned. The rain of 
 fire which fell on the cities that mir- 
 rored their towers in the Bitter Sea, 
 might just as well have fallen on him 
 on Vergil, too, on Caligula, Claud 
 Nero, Otho, Vitellius, Titus, Domit- 
 tian, and particularly on Trajan. 
 
 As lieutenant in the latter's trium- 
 phant promenade, was a nephew, 
 ^lius Hadrianus, a young man for 
 whom Trajan's wife is rumored to have 
 had more than a platonic affection, 
 and who in younger days was num- 
 bered among Trajan's mignons. Dur- 
 ing the progress of that promenade 
 Trajan fell ill. The command of the 
 troops was left to Hadrian, and Trajan 
 started for Rome. On the way he 
 died. In what manner is not known; 
 his wife, however, was with him, and 
 it was in her hand that a letter went 
 to the senate statino: that Trajan had 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 171 
 
 adopted Hadrian as his heir. Trajan 
 had done nothing of the sort. The 
 idea had indeed occurred to him, but 
 long since it had been abandoned. 
 He had even formally selected some- 
 one else, but his wife was with him, 
 and her lover commanded the troops. 
 The lustre of the purple, always daz- 
 zling, had fascinated Hadrian's eyes. 
 Did he steal it? One may conjecture, 
 yet never know. In any event it was 
 his, and he folded it very magnifi- 
 cently about him. 
 
 Still young, a trifle over thirty, 
 handsome, unusually accomplished, 
 grand seigneur to his finger-tips, en- 
 dowed with a manner which is 
 rumored to have been one of great 
 charm, possessed of the amplest appre- 
 ciation of the elegancies of life, he 
 had precisely the figure which purple 
 adorns. But, though the lustre had 
 fascinated, he too knew its spell; 
 
172 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 
 
 and presently he started off on a jour- 
 ney about the world, which lasted 
 fifteen years, and which, when ended, 
 left the world the richer for his pass- 
 ing, decorated with the monuments 
 he had strewn. Before that journey 
 began, at the earliest rumor of Tra- 
 jan's death, the Euphrates and Tigris 
 awoke, the cinders of Nineveh flamed. 
 The rivers and land that lay between 
 knew that their conqueror had gone. 
 Hadrian knew it also, and knew too 
 that, though he might occupy the 
 warrior's throne, he never could fill 
 the warrior's place. To Armenia, 
 Mesopotamia, Assyria, freedom was 
 restored. Dacia could have had it for 
 the asking. But over Dacia the toga 
 had been thrown; it was as Roman as 
 Gaul. A corner of it is Roman still; 
 the Roumanians are there. But 
 though Dacia was quiet, in its neigh- 
 borhood the restless Sarmatians 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 173 
 
 prowled and threatened. Hadrian, 
 who had already written a book on 
 tactics, knew at once how to act. 
 Domitian's policy was before him; he 
 followed the precedent, and paid the 
 Sarmatians to be still. It requires 
 little acumen to see that when Rome 
 permitted herself to be blackmailed 
 the end was near. 
 
 For the time being, however, there 
 was peace, and in its interest Hadrian 
 set out on that unequalled journey 
 over a land that was his. Had fate 
 relented, Trajan could have made a 
 wider one still. But in Trajan was 
 the soldier merely; when he journeyed 
 it was with the sword. In Hadrian 
 was the dilettante, the erudite too; 
 he traveled not to conquer, but to 
 learn, to satisfy an insatiable curiosity, 
 for self-improvement, for glory too. 
 Behind him was an army, not of sol- 
 diers, but of masons, captained by 
 
174 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 architects, artists and engineers. Did 
 a site please him, there was a temple 
 at once, or if not that, then a bridge, 
 an aqueduct, a library, a new fashion, 
 sovereignty even, but everywhere the 
 spectacle of an emperor in flesh and 
 blood. For the first time the provin- 
 ces were able to understand that a 
 Csesar was not necessarily a brute, a 
 phantom and a god. 
 
 It would have been interesting to 
 have made one of that court of poets 
 and savants that surrounded him; to 
 have dined with him in Paris, eaten 
 oysters in London ; sat with him while 
 he watched that wall go up before the 
 Scots, and then to have passed down 
 again through a world still young — a 
 world beautiful, ornate, unutilitarian; 
 a world to which trams, advertise- 
 ments and telegraph poles had not yet 
 come; a world that still had illus- 
 ions, myths and mysteries; one in 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 175 
 
 which reHgion and poetry went hand 
 hand in hand — a world without news- 
 papers, hypocrisy and cant. 
 
 Hadrian, doubtless, enjoyed it. He 
 was young enough to have enthusi- 
 asms and to show them; he was one 
 of the best read men of the day; he was 
 poet, painter, sculptor, musician, eru- 
 dite and emperor in one. Of course 
 he enjoyed it. The world, over which 
 he traveled, was his, not by virtue of 
 the purple alone, but because of his 
 knowledge of it. The prince is not 
 necessarily cosmopolitan; the historian 
 and antiquarian are. Hadrian was an 
 early Quinet, an earlier Champollion; 
 always the thinker, sometimes the 
 cook. And to those in his suite it 
 must have been a sight very unique to 
 see a Caesar who had published his 
 volume of erotic verse, just as you or 
 I might do; who had hunted lions, not 
 in the arena, but in Africa, make re- 
 
176 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 
 
 searches on the plain where Troy had 
 been, and a supreme of sow's breast, 
 peacock, pheasant, ham and boar, 
 which he called Pentapharmarch, and 
 which he offered as he had his Cata- 
 criani — the erotic verse — as something 
 original and nice. 
 
 Insatiably inquisitive, verifying a 
 history that he was preparing in the 
 lands which gave that history birth, 
 he passed through Egypt and Asia, 
 questioning sphinxes, the cerements 
 of kings, the arcana of the temples; 
 deciphering the sacred books, arguing 
 with magi, interrogating the stars. 
 For the thinker, after the fashion of 
 the hour, was astrologer too, and one 
 of the few anecdotes current concern- 
 ing him is in regard to a habit he had 
 of drawing up on the 31st of Decem- 
 ber the events of the coming year. 
 After consulting the stars on that 31st 
 of December which occurred in the 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 177 
 
 twenty-second year of his reign, he 
 prepared a calendar which extended 
 only to the loth of July. On that day 
 he died. 
 
 The calendar does not seem to have 
 been otherwise serviceable. It was in 
 Bithynia he found a shepherd of such 
 beauty that no one who has looked at 
 his bust has looked unmoved. It is 
 unearthly, a perfection of feature which 
 suggests neither heaven nor hell, but 
 some planet where the atmosphere dif- 
 fers from ours; where it is pink, per- 
 haps, or faintly ochre; where birth and 
 death have forms higher than our own. 
 
 Hadrian, captivated, led the lad in 
 leash. The facts concerning that epi- 
 sode have been so frequently given 
 that the repetition is needless here. 
 Besides, the point is elsewhere. Pres- 
 ently the lad fell overboard. Hadrian 
 lost a valet, Rome an emperor, and 
 
 Olympus a god. But in attempting 
 12 
 
178 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 to deify the lost lackey, the grief of 
 Hadrian was so spontaneous, so sin- 
 cere, that it is permissible to fancy 
 that the lad's death was not one of 
 those events which the emperor-astrol- 
 oger noted beforehand on his calendar. 
 The lad was decently buried, the Nile 
 gave up her dead, and on the banks a 
 fair city rose, one that had its temples, 
 priests, altars and shrines; a city that 
 worshipped a star, and called that star 
 Antinous. Hadrian then could have 
 congratulated himself. Even Caligula 
 would have envied him. He had done 
 his worst; he had deified not a lad, but 
 a lust. And not for the moment alone. 
 A half century later Tertullian noted 
 that the worship still endured, and sub- 
 sequently the Alexandrine Clement 
 discovered consciences that Antinous 
 had reproached. 
 
 Antinous, deified, was presently for- 
 got. A young Roman, wonderfully 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 179 
 
 beautiful, Dion says, yet singularly 
 effeminate; a youth who could barely 
 carry a shield; who slept between rose- 
 leaves and lilies; who was an artist 
 withal; a poet who had written lines 
 that Martial might have mistaken for 
 his own, Cejonius Verus by name, suc- 
 ceeded the Bithynian shepherd. Had- 
 rian, who would have adopted Antin- 
 ous, adopted Verus in his stead. But 
 Hadrian was not happy in his choice. 
 Verus died, and singularly enough, 
 Hadrian selected as future emperor 
 the one ruler against whom history has 
 not a reproach, Pius Antonin. 
 
 Meanwhile the journey continued. 
 The Thousand and One Nights were re- 
 alized then if ever. The beauty of the 
 world was at its apogee, the glory of 
 Rome as well; and through secrets and 
 marvels Hadrian strolled, note-book in 
 hand, his eyes unwearied, his curiosity 
 unsatiated still. To pleasure him the 
 
180 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 intervales took on a fairer glow; cities 
 decked themselves anew, the temples 
 unveiled their mysteries ; and when he 
 passed to the intervales liberty came; 
 to the cities, sovereignty; to the tem- 
 ples, shrines. The world rose to him 
 as a woman greets her lover. His 
 travels were not fatigues; they were 
 delights, in which nations participated, 
 and of which the memories endure as 
 though enchanted still. 
 
 It would have been interesting, no 
 doubt, to have dined with him in 
 Paris; to have quarried lions in their 
 African fens; to have heard archaic 
 h3'mns ripple through the rushes of 
 the Nile; to have lounged in the 
 Academe, to have scaled Parnassus, 
 and sailed the ^gian sea ; but, a history 
 and an arm-chair aiding, the traveler 
 has but to close his eyes and the past 
 returns. Without disturbing so much 
 as a shirt-box, he may repeat that 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 181 
 
 promenade. Triremes have foundered ; 
 litters are out of date; painted ele- 
 phants are no more; the sky has 
 changed, climates with it; there are 
 colors, as there are arts, that have 
 gone from us forever; there are deso- 
 late plains, where green and yellow 
 was; the shriek of steam where gods 
 have strayed; advertisements in sacred 
 groves ; Baedekers in ruins that never 
 heard an atheist's voice; solitudes 
 where there were splendors; the snarl 
 of jackals where once were birds and 
 bees — yet, history and the arm-chair 
 aiding, it all returns. Any traveler 
 may follow in Hadrian's steps; he is 
 stayed but once — on the threshold of 
 the Temple of Eleusis. It is there 
 history gropes, impotent and blind, 
 and it is there the interest of that 
 journey culminated. 
 
 Beyond the episode connected with 
 Antinous, Hadrian's journey was 
 
182 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 marked by another, one which occurred 
 in Judsea. Both were infamous, no 
 doubt, but, what is more to the point, 
 both mark the working of the poison 
 in the purple that he bore. 
 
 Since Titus had gone, despairful 
 Judaea had taken heart again. Hope 
 in that land was inextinguishable. 
 The walls of Jerusalem were still 
 standing; in the Temple the offices 
 continued. Though Rome remained, 
 there was Israel too. Passing that 
 way one afternoon, Hadrian mused. 
 The city affected him; the site was 
 superb. And as he mused it occurred 
 to him that Jerusalem was less har- 
 monious to the ear than Hadrianopolis ; 
 that the Temple occupied a position 
 on which a Capitol would look far 
 better; in brief, that Jehovah might 
 be advantageously replaced by Jove. 
 The army of masons that were ever 
 at his heels were set to work at once. 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 183 
 
 They had received similar orders and 
 performed similar tasks so often 
 that they could not fancy anyone 
 would object. The Jews did. They 
 fought as they had never fought be- 
 fore; they fought for three years 
 against a Nebuchadnezzar who cre- 
 ated torrents of blood so abundant 
 that stones were carried for miles, 
 and who left corpses enough to fer- 
 tilize the land for a decade. The 
 survivors were sold. Those for whom 
 no purchasers could be found had 
 their heads amputated. Jerusalem 
 was razed to the ground. The site 
 of the Temple was furrowed by the 
 plow, sown with salt, and in place of 
 the City of David rose ^lia Capito- 
 lina, a miniature Rome, whose gates, 
 save on one day in the year, Jews 
 were forbidden under penalty of death 
 to pass, were forbidden to look at, 
 and over which were images of swine, 
 
184 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 
 
 pigs with scornful snouts, the feet 
 turned inward, the tail twisted like a 
 lie. 
 
 It was not honorable warfare, but 
 it was effective; then, too, it was 
 Hadrianesque, the mad insult of a 
 madman to a race as mad as he. The 
 purple had done its work. History 
 has left the rise of this emperor con- 
 jectural; his fall is written in blood. 
 As he began he ended, a poet and 
 a beast. 
 
 Presently he was in Rome. It was 
 not homesickness that took him there; 
 he was far too cosmopolitan to suffer 
 from any such malady as that. It 
 was the accumulations of a fifteen-year 
 excursion through the metropoli of 
 art which demanded a gallery of their 
 own. Another with similar tastes and 
 similar power might have ordered 
 everything which pleasured his eye 
 to be carted to Rome, but in his qual- 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 185 
 
 ity of artifex omnipotens Hadrian 
 embellished and never sacked. There 
 were painters and sculptors enough 
 in that army at his heels, and what- 
 ever appealed to him was copied on 
 the spot. So much was copied that 
 a park of ten square miles was just 
 large enough to form the open-air 
 museum which he had designed, one 
 which centuries of excavation have 
 not exhausted yet. 
 
 The museum became a mad-house. 
 Hadrian was ill; tired in mind and 
 body, smitten with imperalia. It was 
 then the young Verus died, leaving 
 for a wonder a child behind, and more 
 wonderful still, Antonin was adopted. 
 Through Rome, meanwhile, terror 
 stalked. Hadrian, in search of a 
 remedy against his increasing confus- 
 ion of mind, his visible weakness of 
 body, turned from physicians to ora- 
 cles; from them to magic, and then to 
 
186 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 blood. He decimated the senate. 
 Soldiers, freedmen, citizens, anybody 
 and everybody were ordered off to 
 death. He tried to kill himself and 
 failed; he tried again, wondering, no 
 doubt, why he who commanded death 
 for others could not command it for 
 himself. Presently he succeeded, and 
 Antonin — the pious Antonin, as the 
 senate called him — marshalled from 
 cellars and crypts the senators and 
 citizens whom Hadrian had ordered 
 to be destroyed. 
 
VIII. 
 
 FAUSTINE. 
 
 187 
 
VIII. 
 
 FAUSTINE. 
 
 Anyone who has loitered a mo- 
 ment among the statues in the Salle 
 des Antonins at the Louvre will recall 
 the bust of the Empress Faustine. It 
 stands near the entrance, coercing the 
 idler to remove his hat; to stop a mo- 
 ment, to gaze and dream. The face 
 differs from that which Mr. Swinburne 
 has described. In the poise of the 
 head, in the expression of the lips, 
 particularly in the features which, save 
 the low brow, are not of the Roman 
 type, there is a commingling of just 
 that loveliness and melancholy which 
 must have come to Psyche when she 
 lost her god. In the corners of the 
 mouth, in the droop of the eyelids, 
 
 189 
 
190 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 in the moulding of the chin, you may 
 see that rarity — beauty and intellect in 
 one — and with it the heightening 
 shadow of an eternal regret. Before 
 her Marcus Aurelius, her husband, 
 stands, decked with the purple, with 
 all the splendor of the imperator^ his 
 beard in overlapping curls, his ques- 
 tioning eyes dilated. Beyond is her 
 daughter, Lucille, less fair than the 
 mother, a healthy girl of the dairy- 
 maid type. Near by is the son, Com- 
 modus. Across the hall is Lucius 
 Verus, the husband of Lucille; in a 
 corner, Antonin, Faustine's father, and, 
 more remotely, his wife. Together 
 they form quite a family group, and 
 to the average tourist they must seem 
 a thoroughly respectable lot. Anto- 
 nin certainly was respectable. He was 
 the first emperor who declined to be a 
 brute. Referring to his wife he said 
 that he would rather be with her in a 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 191 
 
 desert than without her in a palace; 
 the speech, parenthetically, of a man 
 who, though he could have cited that 
 little Greek princess, Nausicaa, as a 
 precedent, was too well-bred to per- 
 mit so much as a fringe of his house- 
 hold linen to flutter in public. Be- 
 sides, at his hours, he was a poet, and 
 it is said that if a poet tell a lie twice 
 he will believe it. Antonin so often 
 declared his wife to be a charming 
 person that in the end no doubt he 
 thought so. She was not charming, 
 however, or if she were, her charm 
 was not that of virtue. 
 
 It was in full sight of this lady's in- 
 consequences that Faustine was edu- 
 cated. Wherever she looked, the 
 candors of her girlhood were violated. 
 The phallus then was omnipresent, 
 lamblicus, not the novelist, but the phi- 
 losopher, has much to say on the sub- 
 ject; so has Arnobius in the Adversus 
 
192 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 gentes^ and Lactance in the De falsa 
 religione. If Juvenal, Martial, Pe- 
 tronius, are more reticent, it is because 
 they were not Fathers of the Church, 
 nor yet antiquarians. No one among 
 us exacts a description of a spire. 
 The phallus was as common to them, 
 commoner even. It was on the coins, 
 on the doors, in the gardens. As a 
 preservative against Envy it hung from 
 children's necks. On sun-dials and 
 water-clocks it marked the flight of 
 time. The vestals worshipped it. At 
 weddings it was used in a manner 
 which need not be described. 
 
 It was from such surroundings that 
 Faustine stepped into the arms of the 
 severe and stately prince whom her 
 father had chosen. That Marcus 
 Aurelius adored her is certain. His 
 note-book shows it. A. more tender- 
 hearted and perfect lover romance may 
 show, but history cannot. He must 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 193 
 
 have been the quintessence of refine- 
 ment, a thoroughbred to his finger- 
 tips ; one for whom that purple mantle 
 was too gaudy, and yet who bore it, 
 as he bore everything else, in that 
 self-abnegatory spirit which the 
 higher reaches of philosophy bring. 
 He was of that rare type that never 
 complains and always consoles. 
 
 After Antonin's death, his hours 
 ceased to be his own. On the 
 Euphrates there was the wildest dis- 
 order. To the north new races were 
 pushing nations over the Danube and 
 the Rhine. From the catacombs Christ 
 was emerging; from the Nile, Serapis. 
 The empire was in disarray. Antonin 
 had provided his son-in-law with a 
 coadjutor, Lucius Verus, the son of 
 Hadrian's mignon, a magnificent scoun- 
 drel; a tall, broad-shouldered athlete, 
 with a skin as fresh as a girl's and 
 
 thick curly hair, which he covered 
 13 
 
194 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 with a powder of gold; a viveur., 
 whose suppers are famous still; whose 
 guests were given the slaves that 
 served them, the plate off which they 
 had eaten, the cups from which they 
 had drunk — cups of gold, cups of sil- 
 ver, jeweled cups, cups from Alexan- 
 dria, murrhine vases filled with nard — 
 cars and litters to go home with, 
 mules with silver trappings and negro 
 muleteers. Capitolinus says that, 
 while the guests feasted, sometimes 
 the magnificent Verus got drunk, and 
 was carried to bed in a coverlid, or 
 else, the red feather aiding, turned 
 out and fought the watch. 
 
 It was this splendid individual to 
 whom Marcus Aurelius intrusted the 
 Euphrates. The}^ had been brought 
 up together, sharing each others 
 tutors, writing themes for the same in- 
 structor, both meanwhile adolescently 
 enamored of the fair Faustine. It was 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 195 
 
 to Marcus she was given, the empire 
 as a dower; and when that dower 
 passed into his hands, he could think 
 of nothing more equitable than to ask 
 Verus to share it with him. Verus 
 was not stupid enough to refuse, and 
 at the hour when the Parthians turned 
 ugly, he needed little urging to set out 
 for the East, dreaming, as he did so, 
 of creating there an empire that should 
 be wholly his. 
 
 At that time Faustine must have 
 been at least twenty-eight, possibly 
 thirty. There were matrons who had 
 not seen their fifteenth year, and 
 Faustine had been married young. 
 Her daughter, Lucille, was nubile. 
 Presently Verus, or rather his lieu- 
 tenants, succeeded, and the girl 
 was betrothed to him. There was a 
 festival, of course, games in abun- 
 dance, and plenty of blood. 
 
 It would have been interestingf to 
 
196 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 have seen her that day, the iron ring 
 of betrothal on her finger, her brother, 
 Commodus, staring at the arrange- 
 ment of her hair, her mother prettily 
 perplexed, her father signing orders 
 which messengers brought and dis- 
 patched, while the sand took on a 
 deeper red, and Rome shrieked its 
 delight. Yes, it would have been 
 interesting and typical of the hour. 
 Her hair in the ten tresses which 
 were symbolic of 2i fiancee^ s innocence, 
 must have amused that brute of a 
 brother of hers, and the iron ring on 
 the fourth finger of her left hand 
 must have given Faustine food for 
 thought; the vestals, in their immac- 
 ulate robes, must have gazed at her 
 in curious, sisterly ways, and because 
 of her fresh beauty surely there 
 were undertones of applause. Should 
 her father disappear she would 
 make a gracious imperatrix indeed. 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 197 
 
 But, meanwhile, there was Faus- 
 tine, and at sight of her legends of 
 old imperial days returned. She was 
 not Messalina 3xt, but in the stables 
 there were jockeys whose sudden 
 wealth surprised no one; in the arenas 
 there were gladiators that fought, not 
 for liberty, nor for death, but for the 
 caresses of her eyes ; in the side-scenes 
 there were mimes who spoke of her; 
 there were senators who boasted in 
 their cups, and in the theatre Rome 
 laughed colossally at the catchword 
 of her amours. 
 
 Marcus Aurelius then was occu 
 pied with affairs of state. In simi- 
 lar circumstances so was Claud — 
 Messalina's husband — so, too, was An- 
 tonin. But Claud was an imbecile, 
 Antonin a man of the world, while 
 Marcus Aurelius was a philosopher. 
 When fate links a woman to any one 
 of these varieties of the husband, she 
 
198 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 is blessed indeed. Faustine was par- 
 ticularly favored. 
 
 The stately prince was not alone a 
 philosopher — a calling, by the way, 
 which was common enough then, and 
 has become commoner since — he was 
 a philosopher who believed in philos- 
 ophy, a rarity then as now. The ex- 
 act trend of his thought is difficult to 
 define. His note-book is filled with 
 hesitations; materialism had its allure- 
 ments, so also had pantheism; the ad- 
 vantages of the Pyrrhonic suspension 
 of judgment were clear to him too ; ac- 
 cording to the frame of mind in which 
 he wrote, you might fancy him an ag- 
 nostic, again an akosmist, sometimes 
 both, but always the ethical result is 
 the same. 
 
 "Revenge yourself on your enemy 
 in not resembling him. Forgive; for- 
 give always; die forgiving. Be in- 
 dulgent to the wrong-doer; be com- 
 
I 31 PE RIAL PURPLE. 199 
 
 passionate to him; tell him how he 
 should act ; speak to him without anger, 
 without sarcasm; speak to him affec- 
 tionately. Besides, what do you know 
 of his wrong -doing? Are all his 
 thoughts familiar to you? May there 
 not be something that justifies him? 
 And you, are you entirely free from 
 reproach? Have you never done 
 wrong? And if not, was it fear that 
 restrained you? Was it pride, or 
 what?" 
 
 In the synoptic gospels similar 
 recommendations appear. But where 
 are the Christians that observe them? 
 There may be much joy in heaven 
 over the sinner that repents ; in Christ- 
 endom the joy is at his downfall. We 
 adore the Master. His precepts are 
 grateful to us. But does it not seem 
 that we find the adoration sufficient? 
 Charity is the New Testament told in 
 a word. There is not a Christian com- 
 
200 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 munity that does not acknowledge its 
 beauty, and there is not one that prac- 
 tices it. But Christians are not phi- 
 losophers. The latter do what good 
 they may without hope of reward, be- 
 cause they regard evil as a part of the 
 universal order of things, one which 
 we have neither the right nor the abil- 
 ity to condemn; because vice is an 
 error of the understanding, one which it 
 is idle to blame, yet righteous to rectify. 
 From whatever source such a tenet 
 springs, whether from materialism, 
 stoicism, pyrrhonism, epicureanism, 
 atheism even, is of small matter; it is 
 a tenet which is honorable to the holder 
 and gracious too. This sceptered 
 misanthrope possessed it, and it was 
 in that his wife was blessed. Years 
 later he died, forgiving her in silence, 
 praising her aloud. ' Claud, referring 
 to Messalina, shouted through the 
 Forum that the fate which destined him 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 201 
 
 to marry impure women destined him 
 to punish them. Marcus AureHus said 
 nothing. He did not know what fate 
 destined him to do, but he did know 
 that philosophy taught him to forgive. 
 The abiHty to forgive, however, is one 
 which is an attribute only of the great. 
 Small minds hate on. 
 
 It was this greatness that first per- 
 plexed Faustine. She was restless, 
 frivolous, perhaps also a trifle de- 
 praved. Frivolous because all 
 women were, depraved because her 
 mother was, and restless because of 
 the curiosity that inflammable imagi- 
 nations share — in brief, a Roman 
 princess. Her husband differed from 
 the Roman prince. His youth had 
 not been entirely circumspect ; he, too, 
 had his curiosities, but they were 
 satisfied, he had found that they 
 stained. When he married he was 
 already the thinker; doubtless, he was 
 
202 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 tiresome; he could have had Httle 
 small-talk, and his hours of love-mak- 
 ing must have been rare. Presently 
 the affairs of state engrossed him. 
 Faustine was left to herself; save a 
 friend of her own sex, a woman can 
 have no worse companion. She, too, 
 discovered she had curiosities. A 
 gladiator passed that way — then 
 Rome ; then Lesbos ; then the Lampsa- 
 cene. "You are my husband's mis- 
 tress," her daughter cried to her one 
 day. "And you," the mother an- 
 swered, "are your brother's." Even 
 in the aridity of a chronicle the 
 accusation and rejoinder are re- 
 volting. Fancy what they must 
 have been when mother and daughter 
 hissed them in each others teeth. 
 Whether the argument continued is 
 immaterial. Both could have claimed 
 the sanction of religion. In those 
 days a sin was a prayer. Religion 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 203 
 
 was then, as it always had been, 
 purely political. With the individ- 
 ual, with his happiness or aspirations, it 
 concerned itself not at all. It was the 
 prosperity of the empire, its peace and 
 immortality, for which sacrifices were 
 made, and libations offered. The god 
 of Rome was Rome, and religion was 
 patriotism. The antique virtues, 
 courage in war, moderation in peace, 
 and honor at all times, were civic, not 
 personal. It was the state that had a 
 soul, not the individual. Man was 
 ephem.eral; it was the nation that en- 
 dured. It was the permanence of its 
 grandeur that was important, nothing 
 else. 
 
 To insure that permanence each 
 citizen labored. As for the citizen, 
 death was near, and he hastened to 
 live; before the roses could fade he 
 wreathed himself with them. Immor- 
 tality to him was in his descendants, 
 
204 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 the continuation of his name, respect 
 to his ashes. Any other form of future 
 hfe was a speculation, infrequent at 
 that. In anterior epochs Fright had 
 peopled Tartarus, but Fright had 
 gone. The Elysian Fields were 
 vague, wearisome to contemplate; 
 even metempsychosis had no adher- 
 ents. "After death," said Caesar, 
 "there is nothing," and all the world 
 agreed with him. The hour, too, in 
 which three thousand gods had not a 
 single atheist, had gone, never to re- 
 turn. Old faiths had crumbled. 
 None the less was Rome the abridge- 
 ment of every superstition. The gods 
 of the conquered had always been 
 part of her spoils. The Pantheon had 
 become a lupanar of divinities that 
 presided over birth, and whose rites 
 were obscene; an abattoir of gods 
 that presided over death, and whose 
 worship was gore. To please them 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE, 205 
 
 was easy. Blood and debauchery 
 was all that was required. That 
 the upper classes had no faith in 
 them at all goes without the need 
 of telling; the atmosphere of their 
 atriums dripped with metaphysics. 
 But in the Forum, in the circus, amphi- 
 theatres; in the temples, porticoes and 
 thick, wide streets — in short, wher- 
 ever the masses congregated — the 
 gods were not only officially revered, 
 they were believed in, and so thor- 
 oughly that, had a sceptic attempted 
 to air his scepticism in public, with 
 that sceptic it would not have fared 
 well. Of the atheism of the upper 
 classes the people knew nothing; they 
 clung piously to a faith which held a 
 theological justification of every sin, 
 and in the temples fervent prayers 
 were murmured, not for future happi- 
 ness, for that was unobtainable, nor 
 yet for wisdom or virtue, for those 
 
206 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 things the gods neither granted nor 
 possessed; the prayers were that the 
 gods would favor the suppHant in his 
 hatreds and in his lusts. 
 
 Such was Rome when Verus re- 
 turned to wed Lucille. Before his 
 car the phallus swung; behind it was 
 the pest. A little before, the Tiber 
 overflowed. Presently, in addition to 
 the pest, famine came. It was patent 
 to everyone that the gods were vexed. 
 There was blasphem.y somewhere, 
 and the Christians were tossed to the 
 beasts. Faustine watched them die. 
 At first they were to her as other 
 criminals, but immediately a differ- 
 ence was discerned. They met death, 
 not with grace, perhaps, but with ex- 
 altation. They entered the arena as 
 though it were an enchanted garden^ 
 the color of emerald, where dreams 
 came true. Faustine questioned. 
 They were enemies of state, she was 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 207 
 
 told. The reply left her perplexed, 
 and she questioned again. It was 
 then her eyes became inhabited 
 by regret. The past was hideous; 
 she tried to put it from her, but re- 
 morse is physical; it declines to be 
 dismissed. She would have killed 
 herself, but she no longer dared. The 
 past was hideous, but in the future 
 there was light. In some ray of it 
 she must have walked, for when at the 
 foot of Mt. Taurus, in a little Cappa- 
 docian village, years later, she died, 
 her lips were glued to the cross. 
 
IX. 
 
 THE AGONY. 
 
 209 
 14 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE, 211 
 
 IX. 
 THE AGONY. 
 
 The high virtues are not complais- 
 ant, it is the cad the canaille adore. 
 In spite of everything, Nero had been 
 beloved by the masses. For years 
 there were roses on his tomb. Under 
 Vespasian there was an impostor whom 
 Greece and Asia ^^cclaimed in his 
 name. The memory of his festivals 
 was unf orgetable ; regret for him re- 
 fused to be stilled. He was more 
 than a god; he was a tradition. His 
 second advent was confidently ex- 
 pected; the Jews believed in his resur- 
 rection; to the Christian he had never 
 died, and suddenly he reappeared. 
 
 Rome had declined to accept the old 
 world tenet that the soul has its avat- 
 
212 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 
 
 ars, yet, when Commodus sauntered 
 from that distant sepulchre, into 
 which, poison aiding, he had placed 
 his putative father, Rome felt that 
 the Egyptians were wiser than they 
 looked; that the soul did migrate, and 
 that in the blue eyes of the young 
 emperor Nero's spirit shone. 
 
 Herodian, who has written very 
 agreeably on the subject, describes 
 him as another Prince Charming, 
 His hair, which was very fair, glis- 
 tened like gold in the sun; he was 
 slender, not at all effeminate, exceed- 
 ingly graceful, exceedingly gracious; 
 endowed with the promptest blush, 
 with the best intentions; studious of 
 the interests of his people; glad of 
 advice, seeking it even; courteous and 
 deferential to the senate and his 
 father's friends — in short, an adoles- 
 cent Nero — a trifle more guileful, 
 however; already a parricide, a comed- 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 213 
 
 ian as well; one who in a moment 
 would toss the mask aside and disclose 
 the mongrel; the offspring, not of an 
 empress and an emperor, but the tiger- 
 cub that Faustine had got by a 
 gladiator. 
 
 The tender-hearted philosopher, who 
 in a campaign against some fretful 
 Teutons, had taken Commodus with 
 him, knew that he was not his son; 
 knew, too, when the agon}^ seized him, 
 from whose hand the agony came; but 
 in earlier life he had jotted in his note- 
 book, "Forgive, forgive always; die 
 forgiving;" and, as he forgave the 
 mother, so he forgave the child, rec- 
 ommending him with his last breath 
 to the army and to Rome. 
 
 As the people had loved Nero, so 
 did the aristocracy love Marcus Aure- 
 lius; his foster-father Antonin ex- 
 cepted, he was the only gentleman 
 that had sat on the throne. No wonder 
 
214 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 they loved him ; and seeing this early 
 edition of the prince in the fairy tale 
 emerge from the bogs of Germany, 
 his fair face haloed by the glisten and 
 gold of his hair, hearts went out to 
 him; the wish of his putative father 
 was ratified, and the son of a gladia- 
 tor was emperor of Rome. 
 
 Lampridus — or Spartian was it? 
 The title-page bears Lampridus' 
 name, but there is some doubt as to 
 the authorship. However; whoever 
 made the abridgement of the life of 
 Commodus which appears among the 
 chronicles of the Scriptores Historice 
 Aug'ustcs^ says that before his birth 
 Faustine dreamed she had engendered 
 a serpent. It is not impossible that 
 ^ Faustine had been reading Ctzias, 
 and had stumbled over his account of 
 the Martichoras, a serpent with a 
 woman's face and the talons of a bird 
 of prey. For it was that she conceived. 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 215 
 
 It would have been interesting to 
 have seen that 3'oung man, the mask 
 removed, frightening the senate into 
 calHng Rome Commodia, and then 
 in a Hnen robe promenading in the at- 
 tributes of a priest of Anubis through 
 a seragHo of six hundred girls and 
 mignons who prostituted themselves 
 as he passed. There was a spectacle, 
 which in its monstrosity Nero had 
 not surpassed. But Nero was vieux 
 jeu. Commodus outdid him, first in 
 debauchery, then in the arena. Nero 
 had died while in training to kill a 
 lion; Commodus did not take the 
 trouble to train. It was the lions that 
 were trained, not he. A skin on his 
 shoulders, a club in his hand, he de- 
 scended naked into the ring, and there 
 felled beasts and men. Then, ac- 
 claimed as Hercules, he returned to 
 the pulvinar, and a mignon on one 
 side, a mistress on the other, ordered 
 
216 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 the guard to massacre the spectators 
 and set fire to Rome. After enter- 
 ing the arena six or seven hundred 
 times, and there vanquishing men 
 whose eyes had been put out and 
 whose legs were tied, the colossal 
 statue which Nero had made after his 
 own image was altered; to the top 
 came the bust of Commodus, to the 
 base this legend: T/ie victor of ten 
 thousand gladiators^ Commodus-Her- 
 cules^ Imperator. 
 
 Meanwhile conspirators were at 
 work. Like Nero, Commodus could 
 have sought in vain for a friend. His 
 life was attempted again and again; 
 he escaped, but never the plotters; 
 only when they had gone there were 
 more. He knew he was doomed. 
 There was the usual comet; the statue 
 of Hercules had perspired visibly; an 
 owl had been caught above his bed- 
 room, and once he had wiped in his 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 217 
 
 hair the hand which he had plunged 
 in the warm wound of a gladiator, 
 dead at his feet. These omens could 
 mean but one thing. None the less, if 
 he were doomed, so were others. 
 One day one of those miserable chil- 
 dren that the emperors kept about 
 them found a tablet. It was as good as 
 anything else to play with; and, as 
 the child tossed it through the hall, 
 the one woman that had loved Com- 
 modus caue^ht it and read on it that 
 she and all the household were to die. 
 Within an hour Commodus was killed. 
 There is a page in Lampridus, 
 which he quotes as coming from the 
 lost chronicles of Marius Maximus, 
 and which contains the joy of the 
 senate at the news. It is too long for 
 transcription, but as a bit of realism 
 it is unique. There is a shiver in 
 every line. You hear the voices of 
 hundreds, drunk with fury, frenzied 
 
218 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 
 
 with delight ; the fierce welcome that 
 greeted Pertinax — a slave's grandson, 
 who was emperor for a minute — the 
 joy of hate assuaged. 
 
 The delight of the senate was not 
 shared by the pretorians. Pertinax 
 was promptly massacred; the throne 
 was put up at auction ; there were two 
 or three emperors at once, and pres- 
 ently the purple was seized by Septi- 
 mus Severus, a rigid, white-haired 
 disciplinarian, who in his admiration 
 for Marcus Aurelius, founded that 
 second dynasty of the Antonins with 
 which antiquity may be said to end. 
 
 When he had gone, his elder son, 
 Bastian, renamed Aurelius Antonin, 
 and because of a cloak he had in- 
 vented nicknamed Caracalla, bounded 
 like a panther on the throne. In 
 a moment he was gnawing at his 
 brother's throat, and immediately 
 there occurred a massacre such as 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 219 
 
 Rome had never seen. Xiphilin says 
 the nights were not long enough to 
 kill ail of the condemned. Twenty 
 thousand people were slaughtered in 
 twenty hours. The streets were 
 emptied, the theatres closed. 
 
 The blood that ran then must have 
 been in rillets too thin to slake Cara- 
 calla's thirst, for simultaneously al- 
 most, he was in Gaul, in Dacia — 
 wherever there was prey. African by 
 his father, Syrian on his mother's 
 side, Caracalla was not a panther 
 merely; he was a herd of them. He 
 had the cruelty, the treachery and 
 guile of a wilderness of tiger-cats. 
 No man, said a thinker, is wholly 
 base. Caracalla was. He had not a 
 taste; not a vice, even, which was not 
 washed and rewashed in blood. In a 
 moment of excitement Commodus set 
 his guards on the spectators in the 
 amphitheatre ; the damage was slight, 
 
220 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 for the Colosseum was so constructed 
 that in two minutes the eighty or ninety 
 thousand people which it held could 
 escape. Caracalla had the exits closed. 
 Those who escaped were naked; to 
 bribe the guards they were forced to 
 strip themselves to the skin. In the cir- 
 cus a vestal caught his eye. He tried 
 to violate her, and failing impotently, 
 had her buried alive. "Caracalla 
 knows that I am a virgin, and knows 
 why," the girl cried as the earth 
 swallowed her, but there was no one 
 there to aid. 
 
 Such things show the trend of a 
 temperament, though not, perhaps, its 
 force. Presently the latter was dis- 
 played. For years those arch-enemies 
 of Rome, the unconquerable Parthians, 
 had been quiet; bound, too, by treaties 
 which held Rome's honor. Not Cara- 
 calla's, however; he had none. An 
 embassy went out to Artobane, the 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 221 
 
 king. Caracalla wished a bride, and 
 what fairer one could he have than the 
 child of the Parthian monarch? Then, 
 too, the embassy was charged to ex- 
 plain, the marriage of Rome and Par- 
 thia would be the union of the Orient 
 and the Occident, peace by land and 
 sea. Artobane hesitated, and with 
 cause; but Caracalla wooed so ardently 
 that finally the king said yes. 
 
 The news went abroad. The Par- 
 thians, delighted, prepared to receive 
 the emperor. When Caracalla crossed 
 the Tigris, the highroad that led to the 
 capital was strewn with sacrifices, 
 with altars covered with flowers, with 
 welcomings of every kind. Caracalla 
 was visibly pleased. Beyond the gates 
 of the capital, there was the king; he 
 had advanced to greet his son-m-law, 
 and that the greeting might be effec- 
 tive, he had assembled his nobles and 
 his troops. The latter were armed 
 
222 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 
 
 with cymbals, with hautbois, and with 
 flutes; and as Caracalla and his army 
 approached, there was music, dancing 
 and song; there were hbations too, and 
 as the day was practically the wedding 
 of East and West, there was not a 
 weapon to be seen — gala robes merely, 
 brilliant and long. Caracalla saluted 
 the king, gave an order to an adjutant, 
 and on the smiling defenceless Par- 
 thians the Roman eagles pounced. 
 Those who were not killed were made 
 prisoners of war. The next day Cara- 
 calla withdrew, charged with booty, 
 firing cities as he went. 
 
 A little before, rumor reached him 
 Ihat a group of the citizens of Alex- 
 andria had referred to him as a fratri- 
 cide. After the adventure in Parthia 
 he bethought him of the city which 
 Alexander had founded, and of the 
 temple of Serapis that was there. He 
 wished to honor both, he declared. 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE, 223 
 
 and presently he was at the gates. 
 The people were enchanted; the ave- 
 nues were strewn with flowers, lined 
 with musicians. There were illumina- 
 tions, festivals, sacrifices, torrents of 
 perfumes, and through it all Caracalla 
 passed, a legion at his heels. To see 
 him, to participate in the succession of 
 prodigalities, the surrounding country 
 flocked there too. In recognition of 
 the courtesy with which he was re- 
 ceived, Caracalla gave a banquet to 
 the. magnates and the clergy. Before 
 his guests could leave him they were 
 killed. Through the streets the legion 
 was at work. Alexandria was turned 
 into a cemetery. Herodian states that 
 the carnage was so great that the Nile 
 was red to its mouth. 
 
 In Rome at that time was a pre- 
 fect, Macrin by name, who had 
 dreamed the purple would be his. He 
 was a swarthy liar, and his promises 
 
224 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 were such that the pretorians were 
 wiUing that the dream should come 
 true. Emissaries were dispatched, and 
 Caracalla was stabbed. In his lug- 
 gage poison was found to the value-of 
 five million five hundred thousand 
 drachmae. What fresh turpitude he 
 was devising no one knew, and the 
 discovery might serve as an epitaph, 
 were it not that by his legions he was 
 adored. No one had abandoned to 
 the army such booty as he. 
 
 Meanwhile, in a chapel at Emissa, a 
 boy was dancing indolently to the kiss 
 of flutes. A handful of Caracalla's 
 soldiers passed that way, and thought 
 him Bacchus. In his face was the en- 
 igmatic beauty of gods and girls — the 
 charm of the dissolute and the way- 
 ward heightened by the divine. On 
 his head was a diadem; his frail tunic 
 was of purple and gold, but the 
 sleeves, after the Phoenician fashion, 
 
/ MP E RIAL P URPLE. 225 
 
 were wide, and he was shod with a 
 thin white leather that reached to the 
 thighs. He was fourteen, and priest 
 of the Sun. The chapel was roomy 
 and rich. There was no statue — a 
 black phallus merely, which had fallen 
 from above, and on which, if you 
 looked closely, you could see the image 
 of Elagabal, the Sun. 
 
 The rumor of his beauty brought 
 other soldiers that way, and the lad, 
 feeling that Rome was there, ceased 
 to dance, strolling through pauses of 
 the worship, a troop of galli at his 
 heels, surveying the intruders with 
 querulous, feminine eyes. 
 
 Presently a whisper filtered that the 
 
 lad was Caracalla's son. There were 
 
 centurions there that remembered 
 
 Semiamire, the lad's mother, very 
 
 well; they had often seen her, a superb 
 
 creature with scorching eyes, before 
 
 whom fire had been carried as though 
 15 
 
226 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 she were empress. It was she who 
 had put it beyond Caracalla's power to 
 violate that vestal when he tried. She 
 was his cousin; her life had been 
 passed at court; it was Macrin who 
 had exiled her. And with the whis- 
 per filtered another — that she was 
 rich; that she had lumps of gold, 
 which she would give gladly to 
 whomso aided in placing her Antonin 
 on the throne. There were gossips 
 who said ill-natured things of this 
 lady; who insinuated that she had had 
 so many lovers that she herself could 
 not tell who was the father of her 
 child; but the lumps of gold had a 
 language of their own. The disbanded 
 army espoused the young priest's 
 cause; there was a skirmish, Macrin 
 was killed, and Heliogabalus was em- 
 peror of Rome. 
 
 '' I would never have written the 
 life of this Antonin Impurissimus," 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 227 
 
 said Lampriclus, ^' were it not that he 
 had predecessors." Even in Latin the 
 task was difficult. In EngHsh it is im- 
 possible. There are subjects that per- 
 mit of a hint, particularly if it be 
 masked to the teeth, but there are 
 others that no art can drape. "The 
 inexpressible does not exist,'' Gautier 
 remarked, when he finished a notori- 
 ous romance, nor does it; but even 
 his pen would have balked had he 
 tried it on Helios^abalus. There is 
 another difficulty. The historian 
 should possess an unprejudiced indif- 
 ference; unless he happens to address 
 a particular school, any comment is 
 an impertinence. It is not for the 
 undertaker to judge the corpse; he 
 may bury it, or enbalm it, if by chance 
 he know how, but who has ever cared 
 to learn his opinion on the merits and 
 demerits of the defunct? It is for 
 this reason, no doubt, that volumes 
 
228 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 which treat of the past are handsomely 
 bound and never read. The com- 
 mentator is not only impertinent, he 
 is a bore. 
 
 In his work on the Csesars, Sueto- 
 nius drew breath but once — he called 
 Nero a monster. Subsequently he 
 must have regretted having done so 
 not because Nero was not a monster 
 but because it was sufficient to dis 
 play the beast without adding a de 
 scriptive placard. In that was Sueto 
 nius' advantage; he could describe. 
 In the present era a writer may not. 
 There are details, however historical, 
 into which he must decline to enter. 
 Even to blase initiates of old world 
 libraries he may not suggest. Helio- 
 gabalus presents that difficulty. It 
 is not merely that he was depraved, 
 for all of that lot were; it was that he 
 made depravity a pursuit; and, the 
 purple favoring, carried it not only 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 229 
 
 beyond the limits of the imaginable, 
 but beyond the Umits of the real. At 
 the feet of that painted boy, Elephantis 
 and Parrhasius could have sat and 
 learned a lesson. Apart from that 
 phase of his sovereignty, he was a 
 little Sardanapalus, an Asiatic mig- 
 non, who found himself great. 
 
 It would have been curious to have 
 
 seen him in that wonderful palace, 
 
 clothed like a Persian queen, insisting 
 
 that he should be addressed as Impera- 
 
 trix, and quite living up to the title. 
 
 It would not only be interesting, it 
 
 would give one an insight into just 
 
 how much the Romans could stand. 
 
 It would have been curious, also, to 
 
 have assisted at that superb and poetic 
 
 ceremonial, in which, having got 
 
 Tanit from Carthage as consort for 
 
 Elagabal, he presided, girt with the 
 
 pomp of church and state, over the 
 
 nuptials of the Sun and Moon. 
 
230 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 He had read Suetonius, and not an 
 eccentricity of the Caesars escaped 
 him. He would not hunt flies by the 
 hour, as Domitian had done, for that 
 would be mere imitation; but he could 
 collect cobwebs, and he did, by the 
 ton. Caligula and Vitellius had been 
 famous as hosts, but the feasts that 
 Heliogabalus gave outranked them 
 for sheer splendor. From panels in 
 the ceiling such masses of flowers fell 
 that guests were smothered before 
 they could escape. Those that sur- 
 vived had set before them glass game 
 and sweets of crystal. The menu was 
 embroidered on the table cloth — not 
 the mere list of dishes, but pictures 
 drawn with the needle of the dishes 
 themselves. And presently, after the 
 little jest in glass had been enjoyed, 
 you were served with camel's heels; 
 combs torn froin living cocks; plat- 
 ters of nightingale tongues; ostrich 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 231 
 
 brains, prepared with that garum 
 sauce which the Sybarites invented, 
 and of which the secret is lost; there- 
 with were peas and grains of gold; 
 beans and amber; quail, peppered with 
 pearl dust; lentils and rubies; spiders 
 in jelly; lion's dung, served in pastry. 
 The o-uests that wine overcame were 
 carried to bed-rooms. When they 
 awoke, there staring at them were 
 tigers and leopards — tame, of course; 
 but some of the guests were stupid 
 enough not to know it, and died of 
 
 fright. 
 
 All this was of a nature to amuse a 
 lad who had made the phallus the 
 chief object of worship; who had 
 banished Jupiter, dismissed Isis; who, 
 over paths that were strewn with 
 lilies, had himself, in the attributes of 
 Bacchus, drawn by tigers; by lions as 
 Mother of the Gods; again, by naked 
 women, as Heliogabalus on his way 
 
232 IMPERIAL PURPLE. 
 
 to wed a vestal, and procure for the 
 empire a child that should be wholly 
 divine. 
 
 It amused Rome, too, and his pro- 
 digalities in the circus were such 
 that Lampridus admits that the peo- 
 ple were glad he was emperor. 
 Neither Caligula nor Nero had 
 been as lavish, and neither Caligula 
 nor Nero as cruel. The atrocities he 
 committed, if less vast than those of 
 Caracalla's, were more acute. Domit- 
 ian even was surpassed in the tortures 
 invented by a boy, so dainty that he 
 never used the same garments, the 
 same shoes, the same jewels, the same 
 woman twice. 
 
 In spite of this, or perhaps pre- 
 cisely on that account, the usual con- 
 pirators were at work, and one day 
 this little painted girl, who had pre- 
 pared several devices for a unique 
 and splendid suicide, was taken 
 
IMPERIAL PURPLE. 233 
 
 unawares and tossed in the latrinae. 
 
 In him the glow of the purple reaehed 
 its apogee. Rome had been watching 
 a crescendo that had mounted with the 
 years. Its culmination was in that 
 hermaphrodite. But the tension had 
 been too great — something snapped; 
 there was nothing left — a procession 
 of colorless bandits merely, Thracians, 
 Gauls, Pannonians, Dalmatians, Goths, 
 women even, with Attila for a climax 
 and the refurbishing of the world. 
 
 Rome was still mistress, but she was 
 growing very old. She had conquered 
 step by step. When one nation had 
 fallen, she garotted another. To van- 
 quish her, the earth had to produce 
 not only new races, but new creeds. 
 The parturitions, as we know, were 
 successful. Already the blue, victo- 
 rious eyes of Vandal and of Goth were 
 peering down at Rome; already they 
 had whispered together, and over the 
 
234 IMPERIAL PURPLE, 
 
 hydromel had drunk to her fall. The 
 earth's new children fell upon her, not 
 one by one, but all at once, and pres- 
 ently the colossus tottered, startling 
 the universe with the uproar of her 
 agony; calling to gods that had va- 
 cated the skies; calling to Jupiter; call- 
 ing to Isis; calling in vain. Where 
 the thunderbolt had gleamed, a cruci- 
 fix stood. On the shoulders of a pre- 
 late was the purple that had dazzled 
 
 the world. 
 Asnelles, August; Paris, October, 1891. 
 
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