CHAPTER V.
THE SHIP OF THE DEAD
“It is of no use in the world, Plancus, your attempting to reason me out of a fixed resolve,” said the lady Longa Duilia, peevishly. “My Corbulo shall not have a shabby funeral.”
“Madam, I do not suggest that,” said the steward humbly, rubbing his hands.
“Yes, you do. It is of no good your standing on one leg like a stork. Shabby it must be – no ancestors present. As the Gods love me, you would not have me borrow ancestors of Asclepiades, our client, who has lent us this villa! He may have them or not, that is no concern of mine. Will you have done preening yourself like an old cockroach. I say it would be an indignity to have a funeral for my Corbulo without ancestors. O Times! O Morals! What is the good of having ancestors if you do not use them?”
“But, Madam, they are in your palace at Rome in the Carinæ – or at the Gabian villa.”
“And for that reason they are not here. Without the attendance of his forbears, my Corbulo shall not be buried. Besides, who is there to impress here with the solemnity? Only a lot of wretched sailors, ship sutlers, Jew pedlers and petty officials, not worth considering. I have said it.”
“But, Lady, Lucius Lamia agrees with me – ”
“Lucius Ælius Lamia – it will not exhaust your lungs to give him his name more fully – is not as yet one of the family.”
“Madam, consider how Agrippina did with Germanicus – she had his pyre at Antioch, and conveyed his ashes to Rome.”
“Agrippina was able to have the funeral conducted with solemn pomp at Antioch. There were the soldiers, the lictors, great officers and all that sort of thing. Here – nothing at all. By the Immortals – consider the expenses, and none to look on gaping but tarry sailors and Jew rag-and-bone men.”
“Madam!”
“Silence. Without ancestors! – as impossible as without wood.”
To understand the point made so much of by the widow, the Roman funeral custom must be understood.
On the death of a noble or high official, his face was immediately moulded in wax, into a mask, or rather, into two masks, that were colored and supplied with glass eyes. One was placed over the dead face, when the corpse lay in state, and when he was conveyed to his funeral pyre, and the first effect of the rising flames was to dissolve the mask and disclose the dead features.
The ancient Greeks before they burned their dead laid gold-leaf masks on their faces, and in a still earlier time the face of the corpse was rouged with oxide of iron, to give it a false appearance of life.
But the second mask was preserved for the family portrait gallery.
When a Roman gentleman or lady was carried forth to his funeral pyre, he was preceded by a procession of actors dressed up in the togas and military or municipal insignia of departed ancestors, each wearing the wax mask of him he personified. For these masks were preserved with great care in the atrium of the house.
Now as Longa Duilia saw, to have her husband burned at Cenchræa, without a procession of imitation ancestors, would be to deprive the funeral of its most impressive feature.
Plancus had advised the burning at the port, with shorn rites, and that the ashes should be placed in the family mausoleum at Gabii, and that the utmost dignity should be accorded to this latter ceremony sufficient to content the most punctilious widow.
But this did not please the lady. The notion of a funeral with maimed pomp was distasteful to her; moreover, as she argued, it was illegal to have two funerals for the same man.
“That,” said Plancus, “hardly applies to one who has died out of Italy.”
“It is against the law,” replied Duilia. “I will give no occasion to objection, offer no handle to informers. Besides, I won’t have it. The respect I owe to Corbulo forbids the entertainment of such an idea. Really, and on my word, Plancus, I am not a child to be amused with shadow pictures, and unless you are making a rabbit, a fish, or a pig eating out of a trough, I cannot conceive what you are about with your hands, fumbling one over the other.”
“Madam, I had no thought – ”
“I know you have none. Be pleased another time when addressing me to keep your hands quiet, it is irritating. One never knows where they are or will be, sometimes folding and unfolding them, then – they disappear up your sleeves and project none can guess where – like snails’ horns. Be pleased, – and now pawing your face like a cat washing itself. Please in future hold them in front of you like a dog when sitting up, begging. But as to the funeral – I will not have it cheap and nasty. Without ancestors a funeral is not worth having.”
“Then,” said the harassed freedman, “there is nothing for it but to engage an embalmer.”
“Of course – one can be obtained at Corinth. Everything can be had for money.”
As Plancus was retiring, the lady recalled him.
“Here,” said she, “do not act like a fool, and let the man charge a fancy price. Say that I have an idea of pickling Corbulo in brine, and have brought an amphora large enough for the purpose. Don’t close with his terms at once.”
When the steward was gone, then Longa Duilia turned her head languidly and summoned a slave-girl.
“Lucilla! The unfortunate feature of the situation is that I must not have my hair combed till we reach Gabii. It is customary, and for a bracelet of pearls I would not transgress custom. You can give my head a tousled look, without being dishevelled, I would wish to appear interesting, not untidy.”
“Lady! Nothing could make you other than fascinating. A widow in tears – some stray locks – it would melt marble.”
“And I think I shall outdo Agrippina,” said Duilia, “she carried her husband’s cinders in an urn at the head of her berth and on appropriate occasions howled in the most tragic and charming manner. But I shall convey the unconsumed body of my Corbulo in state exposed on his bier, in his military accoutrements all the way to Rhegium, then up the coast to Ostia and so to Gabii. There will be talk!”
“You will be cited in history as a widow the like of which the world has never seen. As for Agrippina, in your superior blaze she will be eclipsed forever.”
“I should prefer doing what Agrippina did – make a land journey from Brindisium, but – but – one must consider. It would be vastly expensive, and – ”
But the lady did not finish the sentence. She considered that Nero might resent such a demonstration, as exciting indignation against himself, in having obliged Corbulo to put an end to his life. But she did not dare to breathe her thought even into the ear of a slave.
“No,” she said; “it would come too expensive. I will do what I can to honor my husband, but not ruin myself.”
When Longa Duilia had resolved to have her own way, and that was always, then all the entire family of slaves and retainers, freedmen and clients knew it must be done.
The vessel after a brief stay at Cenchræa had left for Diolcus where it had been placed on rollers and conveyed across the isthmus, and was launched in the Corinthian Gulf.
Nero had been engaged for some days in excavating a canal between the two seas. He had himself turned the first sod, but after getting some little way, rock was encountered of so hard a quality that to cut through it would cost time, toil and money.
He speedily tired of the scheme, wanted the money it would have cost for some dramatic exhibition, and was urged by Helios, a freedman whom he had left in Rome, to return to Italy, to prevent an insurrection that was simmering. Nero did not much believe in danger, but he had laden his fleet with the plunder of Greece, he had strutted and twittered on every stage, carried off every prize in every contest, and was desirous of being applauded in Italy and at Rome for what he had achieved, and exhibit there the chaplets he had won.
Accordingly he started, and hardly had he done so before the Artemis with spread sail swept down the Corinthian Gulf.
The ship, a Liburnian, of two banks of oars, was constructed very differently from a modern vessel. The prow was armed above water-mark with three strong and sharp blades, called the rostra, the beaks, which when driven into the side of an enemy would tear her open and sink her.
The quarter-deck was midships, and served a double purpose, being raised as high as the bulwarks it served as an elevated place where the captain could stand and survey the horizon and watch the course of the vessel, and it also served to strengthen the mast.
On this quarter-deck, on a bed of state, lay the body of Cnæus Domitius Corbulo, with his sword at his side, and the wax mask over his face. At his feet was a tripod with glowing coals on which occasionally incense and Cilician crocus were sprinkled, and on each side of his head blazed torches of pinewood dipped in pitch.
The poop had a covered place, called the aplaustre, in which sat the steerer. The hinged rudder had not then been invented, it was a discovery of the Middle Ages, and the head of the vessel was given its direction by the helmsman, gubernator, who worked a pair of broad flat paddles, one on each side.
The rowers, under the deck, were slaves, but the sailors were freemen. The rowers were kept in stroke by a piper, who played continually when the vessel was being propelled; and the rowers were under the direction and command of a hortator, so called because his voice was incessantly heard, urging, reprimanding, praising, threatening.
The captain of a Roman vessel was not supreme in authority on board ship as with us, but if the vessel contained military, he was subject to the control of the superior military officer.
The passage down the Corinthian Bay was effected without difficulty, before a favorable wind, but as the vessel was about to pass out of it, the wind suddenly changed and blew a squall from the west. And at this moment an accident occurred that was seriously embarrassing. Whilst the captain was standing near the steersman giving him directions relative to the passage of the straits, a wave rolling in caught the paddle, and caused it by the blow to snap the bronze bolt of the eye in which it worked, and the handle flying up and forward, struck the captain on the forehead, threw him down, and he fell against the bulwark so as to cut open his head. He had to be carried below insensible.
The Artemis lay under shelter till the gale abated, and then consultation arose as to what was to be done.
Lucius Lamia took the command, he was competent to manage the vessel, with the advice, if needed, of the mate. He and all were reluctant to put back to Lechæum, the port of Corinth, on the Gulf, and the broken eye in which the paddle worked was repaired with a stout thong, which, as the steersman said, would hold till Adria was crossed and Rhegium was reached.
The squall had passed, and the look of the sky was promising; moreover the wind was again favorable.
“Sir,” said the mate, “my opinion is that we should make all speed across Adria. This is a bad season of the year. It is a month in which sailing is overpassed. We must take advantage of our chances. While the wind blows, let us spread sail. The rowers can ship their oars; should the wind fail, or prove contrary, they will be required, and they may have a hard time of it. Therefore let them husband their strength.”
“So be it,” answered Lucius Lamia.
And now the Artemis, with sail spread, leaning on one side, drave through the rippling water, passed the Straits into the Adriatic, with the mountains of Ætolia to the north, and the island of Cephalonia in the blue west before her; and as she flew, she left behind her a trail of foam in the water, and a waft of smoke in the air from the torches that glowed about the dead general on the quarter-deck.
CHAPTER VI.
“I DO NOT KNOW.”
The day was in decline, and although the season was winter yet the air was not cold. The mountains of Greece lay in the wake like a bank of purple cloud tinged with gold.
On the quarter-deck reposed the corpse, with the feet turned in the direction of the prow; the torches spluttered, and cast off sparks that flew away with the smoke.
On each side were three slave women, detailed to wail, but Longa Duilia had issued instructions that they were not to be noisy in their demonstration so as to disturb or swamp conversation aft.
The undulating lament swerving through semi-tones and demi-semitones, formed a low and sad background to the play of voices on the lower deck, where, sheltered from the wind, the widow reclined on cushions, and her daughter Domitia sat at her side in conversation.
A change had come over the girl, so complete, so radical, that she seemed hardly to be the same person as before her father’s death. This was noticeable as being in appearance and manner, – noticeable even to the slaves, not the most observant in matters that did not particularly concern their comfort and interests. She had been transmuted from a playful child into a sad and serious woman.
The sparkle had left her eyes to make way for an eager, searching fire. The color had left her cheek; and her face had assumed a gloomy expression. The change, in fact, was much like that in a landscape when a sunny May day makes place for one that is overcast and threatening. The natural features are unaltered, but the aspect is wholly different in quality and character.
A mighty sorrow contracting, bruising, oppressing the heart sometimes melts it into a sweetness of patient endurance that inspires pity and love. But grief seemed to have frozen Domitia and not to have dissolved her into tears.
The philosopher approached with solemn stalk, walking on the flat of his soles.
Such men were retained in noble households as family chaplains, to advise, comfort, and exhort. And this man at intervals approached the widow, who on such occasions assumed a woe-begone expression, beat her brow and emitted at intervals long-drawn sighs.
At such times, the Magus, standing near, curled his lip contemptuously, and endeavored by shrugs and sniffs to let the bystanders perceive how little he valued the words of the stoic.
The philosopher Senecio now in formal style addressed the widow, and then turned to harangue the daughter, on the excellence of moderation in grief as in joy, on the beauty of self-control so as to suffer the storms of life to roll over the head with indifference. In this consisted the Highest Good, and to attain to such stolidity was the goal of all virtuous endeavor.
Then he thrust his hand into the folds of his toga, and withdrew, to be at once attacked and wrangled with by the Chaldæan.
Domitia, who had listened with indifference, turned to her mother as soon as he was gone, and said —
“The Summum Bonum, the crown and glory of Philosophy is to become in mind what the slave becomes after many bastinadoes, as callous in soul as he is on the soles of his feet. The lesson of life is not worth the acquisition.”
“I think he put it all very well.”
“Why are the strokes applied? Why should we bear them without crying out? After all, what profit is there in this philosophy?”
“Really, my dear, I cannot tell. But it is the correct thing to listen to and to talk philosophy, and good families keep their tame stoics, – even quite new and vulgar people, wretched knights who have become rich in trade – in a word, they all do it.”
“But, mother, what is this Highest Good?”
“You must inquire of Claudius Senecio himself. It is, I am sure something very suitable to talk about, on such solemn occasions as this.”
“But what is it? A runner in the course knows what is the prize for which he contends, a singer at the games sees the crown he hopes to earn – but this Highest Good, is it nothing but not to squeal when kicked?”
“I really do not know.”
“Mother, would to the Gods I did know! My sorrow is eating out my heart. I am miserable. I am in darkness, like Theseus in the labyrinth, but without a clue. And the Highest Good preached by philosophy is to sit down in the darkness and despair of the light. I want to know. Has my father’s life gone out forever, like an extinguished torch cast into the sea? or is it a smouldering ember that may be blown again into flame?”
“Have you not heard, Domitia, how Senecio has assured you that your father will live.”
“Where?”
“On the page of history.”
“First assure me that the page will be written, and that impartially. What I know of historians is that they scribble all the scurrility they can against the great and noble, in the hope of thereby advancing the credit of their own mean selves. Has a man no other hope of life than one built on the complaisance of the most malignant of men?”
“My dear, – positively, I do not know. You turn my head with your questions. Call Plancus that I may scold him, to ease my overwrought nerves. The fellow has been stopping up his wrinkles with a composition of wax, lard and flour, and really, at his age, and in his social position – it is absurd.”
“But, mother, I want to know.”
“Bless me, you make me squeamish. Of course we want to know a vast number of things; and the Highest Good, I take it, is to learn to be satisfied to know nothing. Cats, dogs, donkeys, don’t worry themselves to know – and are happy. They have, then, the Summum Bonum. If you want to know more, ask the philosopher. He is paid for the purpose, and eats at our expense, and ye gods! how he eats. I believe he finds the Highest Good in the platter.”
The lady made signs, and a slave, ever on the watch, hastened to learn her desire, and at her command summoned the Stoic.
The philosopher paced the deck with his chin in the air, and came aft.
“My daughter,” said the widow, “is splitting my suffering head with questions. Pray answer her satisfactorily. Here Felicula, Procula, Lucilla, help me to the cabin.”
When the lady had withdrawn, the philosopher said:
“Lady, you will propound difficulties, and I shall be pleased to solve them.”
“I ask plain answers to plain questions,” said Domitia. “At death – what then?”
“Death, young lady, is the full stop at the end of the sentence, it is the closing of the diptychs of life, on which its story is inscribed.”
“I asked not what death is – but to what it leads?”
“Leads! – it – leads! ahem! Death encountered with stoic equanimity is the highest point to which – ”
“I do not ask how to meet death, but what it leads to. You seem unable or unwilling to answer a plain question. My dear father, does he live still – as a star that for a while sets below the horizon but returns again?”
“He lives, most assuredly. In all men’s mouths – on the snowy plains of Germany, on the arid wastes of Syria, the fame of Cnæus Domitius Corbulo – ”
“I asked naught about his fame, but about himself. Does he still exist, can he still think of, care for, love me – as I still think of, care for, love him – ”
Her voice quivered and broke.
“Young lady – Socrates could say no more of the future than that it is a brilliant hope which one may run the risk of entertaining. And our own Immortal Cicero declared that the hope of the soul living after death is a dream, and not a doctrine. The Immortals have seen fit to cut the thread of his life – ”
“The Immortals had no scissors wherewith to do it. He fell on his own sword. Is there a soul? And after death where does it go? Is it a mere shadow?”
“My dear lady, philosophy teaches us to hope – ”
“Natural instinct does that without the cumbrous assistance of philosophy – but what is that hope built on?”
“I cannot tell.”
“Then of what avail is it to lead a good life?”
“On the page of history – ”
“That is where the great man lives – but the poor girl or the mechanic? Of what avail is a good life? What motive have we to induce us to lead it?”
“The approval of the conscience.”
“But why should it approve? What is good? Where is it written that this is good and that is evil?”
“I cannot tell.”
“So,” said the girl, and she signed to Elymas to approach. He came up with a sneer at the philosopher, who retired in discomfiture.
“You, Chaldæan, answer me that which confounds the Stoic. You have learning in the East which we have not in the West. Tell me – what is the human soul? and has it an existence after death?”
“Certainly, lady. The soul is a ray of Divine light, an æon out of infinite perfection. This ray is projected into space and enters into and is entangled in matter, and that is life, in the plant, in the fish, in the bird, in the beast, in man.”
“And what after death?”
“Death is the disengagement of this ray from its envelope. It returns to the source, to the pleroma or fulness of being and light whence it emanated, and loses itself in the one urn of splendor!”
“But when Pactolus and Styx run into the sea, the waters are mingled and lost, as to their individuality.”
“And so with the spirits of men.”
“What!” exclaimed Domitia. “When I die my little ray re-enters the sun and is lost in the general glory – and my father’s ray is also sucked in and disappears! There is no comfort in a thought where individuality is extinguished. But say. How know you that what you have propounded is the truth?”
The Magus hesitated and became confused.
“It is,” said he, “a solution at which the minds of the great thinkers of the East have arrived.”
“I see,” said Domitia, “it is no more than a guess. You and all alike are stagnant pools, whose muddy bottoms ferment and generate and throw up guesswork bubbles. One bubble looks more substantial than another, yet are all only the disguise of equal emptiness.”
The Chaldæan withdrew muttering in his beard. Domitia looked after him and noticed the physician Luke standing near, leaning over the bulwarks.
He was an elderly man, with kindly soft eyes, and a short beard in which some strands of gray appeared. A modest man, ready when called on to advise, but never self-assertive.
Domitia had noticed him already and had taken a liking to him, though she had not spoken to him. An unaccountable impulse induced her to address him.
“They are all quacks,” she said.
“They must needs be seekers, and the best they can produce, is out of themselves, and that conjecture. From the depths of the intellect what can be brought up than a more or less plausible guess?”
“And on these guesses we must live, like those who float across the Tigris and Euphrates – on rafts supported by inflated bladders. There is then no solid ground?”
“Man inflates the bladders – God lays the rocky basis.”
“What mean you?”
“No certainty can be attained, in all these things man desires to know, the basis of hope, the foundation of morality, that cannot be brought out of man. It can only be known by revelation of God.”
“And till he reveals we must drift on wind-bags. Good lack!”
“Do you think, Lady, that He who made man, and planted in man’s heart a desire for a future life, and made it necessary for his welfare that he should know to discern between good and evil, should leave him forever in the dark – like as you said Theseus in the labyrinth, without a clue?”
“But where is the clue?”
“Or think you that He who launched the vessel of man, having carefully laid the keel and framed the ribs, and set in her a pilot, should send her forth into unknown seas to certain wreckage – to be wafted up and down by every wind – to be carried along by every current – to fall on reefs, or be engulfed by quicksands, and not to reach a port, and He not to set lights whereby her course may be directed?”
“But where are the lights?”
At that moment, before Luke could answer, Lamia, who had been in the fore part of the vessel, came hastily aft, and disregarding the physician, heedless of the conversation on which he broke in, said hurriedly and in agitated tone: —
“The Imperial galley!”