night. In vain he practised the old expiatory rites to rid himself of the menacing phantom. On the night of May 13, two months after Agrippina's death, he determined to go through the mummery of the Lemuralia, which some of his credulous advisers had told him would be efficacious. At midnight, amid the dead silence, he stole with naked feet to the water of the fountain in the atrium, and there, trembling with excitement, washed his hands thrice. Then with his thumb and finger, he filled his mouth with nine black beans, and, full of superstitious horror, flung them one by one behind him over his shoulder, saying each time, 'With these beans redeem me and mine.' Arrived at his chamber he again dipped his hands in water, and beat a great brazen gong to terrify the pursuing ghost.1 Then he turned round, and peered with a frightened glance into the darkness; and as he peered was even this expiation all in vain ?- what were those glimmering lights? What was that white and wavy form? A shriek rang through the villa, and Nero sank fainting into the arms of the timid minions who had awaited the result of the expiation and rushed forward at his cry.

The following year, when he had returned to the city, he repeated this antiquated rite, and he commanded the vestals to bear him specially in mind when, on the Ides of May, they flung from the Sublician Bridge into the Tiber the thirty little figures called argei, made of bulrushes, which were supposed to be in lieu of human sacrifices.

Then he tried yet further forms of magic and yet darker rites of propitiation to the infernal powers, in which it was whispered that human blood - the blood of murdered infants

formed part of the instruments of sorcery. But he could learn no secrets of the future; he could evoke no powers who could ward away that white menacing spectre which gleamed upon him if at any moment he found himself alone in the hours of night.

Nero became a haunted man. The whole earth seemed to him to be made of glass' to reveal his turpitude. He knew in his miserable heart that the very street boys of Rome the ragged urchins of the slaves and gladiators — were aware of the crime which he had committed. Kind friends kept him informed, under pretence of officious indignation, that

1 Note 34.

one night an infant had been found exposed in the Forum with a scrap of parchment round its neck, on which was written, I expose you, lest you should murder your mother;' and that, another night, a sack had been hung round the neck of his statue as though to threaten him with the old weird punishment of parricides. Once, when he was looking on at one of the rude plays known as Atellane, the actor Datus had to pronounce the line,

'Good health to you, father; good health to you, mother;'

and, with the swift inimitable gestures of which the quick Italian people never missed the significance, he managed to indicate Claudius dying of poison and Agrippina swimming for her life. The populace roared out its applause at an illusion so managed that it could hardly be resented; and once again, when coming to the line,

'Death drags you by the foot.'

Datus indicated Nero's hatred to the Senate by pointing significantly to Nero at the word 'death' and to the senatorial seats as he emphasized the word you.'

But Nero was liable to insults still more direct. Could he not read with his own eyes the graffito scrawled upon every blank space of wall in Rome: Nero, Orestes, Alemæon, matricida'? He could not detect or punish these anonymous scrawlers, but he would have liked to punish men of rank, whom he well knew to have written stinging satires against him, branding him with every kind of infamy.

Two resources alone were adequate to dissipate the terrors of his conscience - the intoxication of promiscuous applause and the self-abandonment to a sensuality which grew ever more shameless as the restraints of Agrippina's authority and Seneca's influence were removed.

Nero had long delighted to sing to the harp at his own banquets in citharœedic array. To the old Roman dignity such conduct seemed unspeakably degrading in the Emperor of the legions. Yet Nero divulged his shame to the world by having himself represented in statues and on coins in the dress of a harpist, his lips open as though in the act of song, his lyre half supported on a baldric embossed with gems, his tunic falling in variegated folds to his feet, and his arms covered by the

chlamys, while with his delicate left hand he twanged the strings, and with his right struck them with the golden plectrum. The pains which he took to preserve his voice, which after all was dull and harsh, were almost incredible. Following the advice of every quack who chose to pass himself off as an expert, he used to walk about with his thick neck encircled in a puffy handkerchief, to sleep with a plate of lead on his chest, and to live for a month at a time on peas cooked in oil.

To give him more opportunities for display he instituted the Juvenalia to celebrate his arrival at full manhood, as marked by the shaving of his beard. His first beard was deposited in a box of gold, adorned with costly pearls, and he dedicated it to the Capitoline Jupiter. But even this event in his life was accompanied by a crime. Shortly before he laid aside his beard he paid a visit to his aunt Domitia, who was ill.

Laying her hand on the soft down, she said to him in her blandishing way, 'As soon as I have received this, I am ready to die.'

Nero turned round to the loose comrades who usually attended him and whispered, with a coarse jest, 'Then I will shave it off at once.'

From that sick-bed Domitia, who was almost the last of Nero's living relatives, never rose again. The Roman world suspected foul play on the part of the physicians at Nero's order. Certain it is that he seized all her ample possessions, and suppressed her will.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE GLADIATORS' SCHOOL

'Commorabor inter homicidas, inclusus turpiore custodia et sordido cellarum situ.' ‘In ludo fui, qua pœna nullam graviorem scelera noverunt, cujus ad comparationem ergastulum leve est.' - QUINCTILIAN.

ALTHOUGH the intervention of the vestal and the kindly ruse of Pudens had saved the life of Onesimus, his condition was far from enviable. He was once more now for the third time in his life-in overwhelming disgrace. It is true that all the legal customs were observed, in a house controlled by that respect for archaeology of which the fashion had been set by Augustus. The chains were taken off his limbs and flung out of the court through the impluvium. None the less he felt that he was marked and shunned. One day, after his escape, Nero passed him in one of the corridors, and, struck by the appearance of a handsome youth, beckoned him to approach. He came forward trembling, and the Emperor, peering into his face, recognised the purple-keeper of Octavia. Inspired by sudden disgust at the memories thus called to his recollection, he summoned his dispensator Callicles into his presence, and ordered him to get rid of 'that worthless Phrygian.' 'Shall I put him in prison, or have him sent again to the ergastulum at Antium?' asked Callicles.

Neither,' said Nero. The City Prætor, Pedanius Secundus, is about to give some votive games of beasts and gladiators. Make a present to him of this youth.'

Onesimus heard the words, and his heart sank within him. But resistance was useless. On his way he passed the door of Acte's apartments, and not without peril ventured to sing a few notes of the old Thyatiran ballad which had first attracted her notice. She heard it, and came out.

That youth comes from my native land,' she said to the dispensator. Step back a few paces and let me have a word with him.'

Callicles would hardly have granted the favour to any one else, but every one loved Acte, and he only said, 'If Nero should come?'

'I will hold you clear,' said Acte.

Onesimus, overcome with shame, knelt on one knee, kissed the fringe of her robe, and whispered, 'Oh, Acte, I am condemned to be a gladiator.'

'In which school?'

'Under Rutulus, the trainer of Pedanius Secundus- the cruellest man in Rome.'

He told her something of his story, and she saw that to help him was beyond her power. All she could do was to slip into his hand her own purse, and to tell him that if ever the day came when she could befriend him she would do her utmost. More she dared not say, for the suspicious eyes of Callicles were upon her, and she had to repress the emotion which agitated her frame.

In the school of Rutulus, Onesimus experienced a phase of misery even deeper than in the slave-prison of Antium. Once more he was the companion of felons of every dye and fugitives of every nationality. Every day came the severe drill, the coarse food which was worse than hunger, the odious society of hardened ruffians, the recounting of the brutal tragedies with which they were familiar. Among them all he found but one whose society he could tolerate. He was a dark-haired, blue-eyed Briton, young like himself, but in all other respects unlike him. For Æquoreus, as they called him, was full of manly pride and hardihood, and had none of the subtle softness of the Asiatic in his temperament. He had been reduced to his hard lot for no other crime than the outburst of a passionate independence. He had been brought over with Caractacus, as one of the Britons pre-eminent in stature and beauty to grace the ovation of Claudius and Aulus Plautius. He had not been treated cruelly, for the admiration inspired by the dauntless bearing of the British king had secured protection to his countrymen; but Glanydon - to give him his Silurian name loathed the effeminate luxuries of Rome, and, forgetting that he was a captive, had once struck in the face a Prætorian officer who insulted him. For this offence he had been first scourged and then handed over to the master