Andivius Hedulio: Adventures of a Roman Nobleman in the Days of the Empire Part 74

"Phorbas," he said, "as you are now a freeman by your late master's will, which will soon be read and its provisions put into effect, at which reading I shall be present as one of the legatees, you may now go where you like. I invite you to come with me."

I thanked Corbulo, who said:

"Don't thank me. I did just what any sane, clear-headed, fair-minded magistrate must do, affirmed the manifest truth."

Galen led me off to a modest apartment near the Carinae. I found everything prepared for my comfort, slaves to wait on me and nothing omitted. I thanked him.

"Tanno," he said, "deputed me to hire this lodging for you. He has kept in the background. These are my slaves, put at your disposal and enjoined to obey you as they would obey me in person. Keep quiet here till I can arrange for you to take possession of your legacies from Falco. I think he left you all your personal belongings and the slaves who waited on you. As soon as the necessary formalities are completed I'll send them to you.

"Do not attempt to communicate with Vedia or Tanno. Do nothing which might betray you as your actual self. Our new Emperor seems resolute to exterminate, to the last individual, all persons implicated in any conspiracy not only against Julia.n.u.s or Pertinax, but against Commodus, from the date of his accession. All such persons apprehended are promptly executed. Keep quiet. Efface yourself till I give you the word. I can communicate with you freely, can see you daily, if need be, since I am one of poor Falco's heirs and was your physician during his life here in Rome.

I'll do all I can for you."

He left and I bathed, ate, and slept the rest of that day and slept sound all night.

Next day pa.s.sed similarly. But, early on the following day, the third day before the Kalends of July, not long after sunrise, my new valet came to me his face ashen. He babbled some unintelligible syllables and before I could comprehend him, my bedroom was entered by a Pannonian sergeant, grim as the centurions from Britain who had liberated Agathemer and me from the _ergastulum_ at Placentia. Behind him were four legionary soldiers. I was rearrested!

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

TORTURE

I was promptly haled off to the same prison where Galen had visited me three days before. There I was again deprived of my garments and clad in others, new, but of cheap material, coa.r.s.e and uncomfortable. Also shackles, heavier shackles, were at once riveted on my ankles, and I was again consigned to the lower dungeon. I was, to be sure, given good and abundant food and wine not too unpalatable. Otherwise I had no indulgences and there I spent the night.

Next day, the last day of June, Galen again visited me.

"My lad," he said, "the first rule of medicine is to cheer up the patient, but I must say that your case looks grave and I have little cheer for you.

I shall do my best and so will Tanno, Vedia and Agathemer. But we are all dazed. We cannot understand what has happened, nor who has brought it to pa.s.s, nor what influences are working against us.

"But someone has gotten the ear of Juvenalis or of Severus himself. It has been represented plausibly to the Prefect of the Praetorium, or perhaps even to the Emperor in person, that the courts here in Rome have fallen into a shocking state of disrepute on account of decisions in scandalous contravention of the evidence, brought about by favoritism and bribery. It has also been plausibly represented that the slave-population has little respect for the lives or property of their masters, less loyalty towards them and very little dread of punishment. Your alleged murder of poor Falco is held up as a flagrant example of the latter condition, your acquittal as an even more flagrant instance of the degradation of the courts.

"Believing that a shocking miscarriage of justice has taken place concerning an atrocious crime, the Prefect or the Prince has ordered you rearrested and retried, tomorrow, this time before Ca.s.sius Ravilla.n.u.s."

I shuddered, not metaphorically, but actually. I felt cold all over, as if plunged into an icy mountain stream. Ravilla.n.u.s claimed as his ancestor Ca.s.sius Ravilla and aimed at emulating him. Certainly, as a magistrate, he quite frankly talked and acted as if acquittal were a disgrace to the court, and the object of each trial not impartial justice but the conviction of the accused. He was perfectly sincere, upright in every intention, incorruptible, fanatical, self-opinionated, austere, ascetic, stern and harsh. I shuddered again and again at the thought of him.

"Ravilla.n.u.s has the reputation of being unbribable," Galen went on, 'and it is a question whether an attempt at bribery might not prejudice your case more than letting matters be. Yet I have employed an agent far too clever to bungle any approach, and something may be done for you. Vedia is despondent, but resolute to keep her head and help you all she can, and she has cash to spare and much influence. Tanno has even more of both.

Agathemer is hopeful of running down the real murderers, as they are loaded with their booty. If they are caught we can clear you.

"Keep up a brave heart."

I tried to, but it was impossible. I ate little and slept hardly at all.

The next day, the Kalends of July, saw me haled again to the Basilica Semp.r.o.nia.

There I beheld a scene almost a duplicate of my first trial; a similar throng of spectators, very similar bevies of expectant witnesses, advocates and prosecutors; the same batch of my former fellow-slaves, surrounded by the same guards; the very same charcoal-brazier tended by the same slave squatting on the same folded blanket; similar knots of notables in the apse, about and behind the magistrate's tribunal; the same carved arm-chair; in it not Corbulo, but Ca.s.sius Ravilla.n.u.s, lean, dry, tanned, leathery, smooth-shaven, bald and stern.

He glared at me when my guards halted me four yards or so in front of him; then he beckoned to one of his apparitors and spoke to him in an undertone. The fellow went off as if on an errand.

Ravilla.n.u.s then gave, even more positively than Corbulo, a demonstration of the great lat.i.tude permitted such a magistrate in procedure, of how completely it lies within his discretion what to do and how to do it.

"Fellow!" he ranted, "you have plotted to rob and murder your master, you have done both and you have, by favor and influence and perhaps even by bribery, arranged for your easy acquittal. I am charged by the Prince of the Republic to see to it, that the majesty of the law, the sacredness of the lives of Roman n.o.blemen, and the security of their property be publicly vindicated: I am here to undo all that Lollius Corbulo supinely allowed to be done. You shall perceive that I am wholly unlike any such trifler. Of one feature only of his procedure do I approve. I highly acclaim his notions as to the right kind of torture. Slaves like you, however pampered, are property, like horses or cattle. Their value lies in their usefulness. Any slave, after torture, should be as useful to his owners as before. If a slave is placed upon the horse and weights hung to his feet, his legs are often made helpless, he cannot ever walk again, he is a cripple. Still oftener does the rack leave a slave utterly useless.

Our courts have always desired some form of torture by which the recalcitrant could be made to suffer acute pain, but not in any way injured. Lollius has introduced a torture which never injures anyone subjected to it, but which causes extreme agony while in use. Only stretch a hard-yarn Spanish blanket over a thigh, draw it tight and hold the thigh at just the right distance from just the right size of brazier with its coals properly tended, and the subject can be made to tell the truth; but not broiled alive, for the blanket will singe before the flesh under it cooks. You had best tell the truth, not such an ingenious string of lies as you told before Lollius."

Then he had all my fellow-slaves brought up and ranged before him.

"Your master," he said, "has been foully done to death. If the guilt of this hideous crime can be indubitably fastened upon one of you or two or any few, the rest of you shall be held innocent and shall suffer no penalties. If no facts can be ascertained limiting the guilt to some of you, all of you, according to the ancient law concerning such cases, shall be put to death by crucifixion or exposure to the beasts in the arena, as our Prince may prefer. I have no desire to send to death any guiltless man. I enjoin you all to tell the truth and to a.s.sist the law. The truth- tellers will suffer less of the torture."

He then, beginning with the scullions, had every boy and man tortured over the brazier, asking no question of any till he had felt the heat of the fire and had begun to yell for mercy. Then he would interrupt the torture, question the victim, bid the torturers again hold their subject close to the fire; and again suspend the torture and ask questions. Naturally the victims, frantic with pain and terror, said whatever they thought would get them off.

Also, to my horror, I realized for the first time, what I had only vaguely suspected before, how venomously they had envied me, how violently embittered most of them were against me, how they had hated their master's favorite. They were glad to slander me, they enjoyed a.s.sisting at my ruin, they relished the prospect of my being tortured and executed. Moreover it appeared that they had been carefully coached in what they were to say or had agreed among themselves, without any outside hints, or after such hints.

The whole household made it appear that they had always suspected me of desiring Falco's death in order that I might gain my freedom and enjoy his promised legacies; that I had enticed and wheedled him into leaving me in his will an absurdly large share of his property.

They were also unanimous in declaring that they had been unable to bring home to me the devising of the robbery of the _triclinium_, but they had all felt certain from the first that I had arranged to have confederates of mine steal the table silver. They were equally consistent in a.s.serting that they all believed that I had murdered Falco, after arranging for the looting of the gem-collection as a blind.

Hour after hour I had to stand and watch wretch after wretch held to the glowing coals, had to listen to the shrieks of the victims, could not but realize that Ravilla.n.u.s was bent on my conviction, that nothing would swerve him from his purpose.

Dromo, alone of all the household, alone of my obsequious, indulged personal servants, held out against the torture and though he writhed, yelled, sobbed and even endured the pain until he fainted more than once, refused to say anything against me.

After Dromo my turn came. When I was stripped Ravilla.n.u.s rubbed his hands and remarked:

"You have your character written on your back! How could Falco trust a fellow so branded and scarred! Easy-going masters like Falco not only bring on their own deaths, but sap the foundations of safety for all slave-owners. Your back, in advance, advertises you guilty. Better own up."

I pa.s.s over the details. But I must confess that I was far from heroic.

Perhaps it is true, and not an invention, that Marcus Scaevola voluntarily thrust his hand into the altar-fire and stood mute and smiling, and watched it burn and char. If any man ever did that he had more self- control than I ever had. I could repress every indication of my agonies. I fainted so many times that I lost count. The afternoon was drawing on towards evening before Ravilla.n.u.s began to lose patience.

Tanno and Galen had been from the first among those about the tribunal.

Now, in a pause, while I was being brought back to consciousness to be again tortured, Galen succeeded in gaining the attention of Ravilla.n.u.s enough to induce him, though grudgingly, to permit the celebrated advocate, Memmius Tudita.n.u.s, whom they had brought with them, to speak in my behalf. I had regained consciousness before he began to speak and heard most of what he said. He spoke well.

His chief point was that a gem-expert and art-amateur like me, knowing that he was to inherit one of the finest and most carefully chosen collections of gems and art objects in all the world, would be the last man on earth to allow it to be disturbed, let alone to plot its ransacking, the pillage of its cases and the dispersal of their precious contents. No man could better have exposed the absurdity of the whole flimsy and preposterous fabrication that I had had two confederates, who had, in my interest and at my suggestion, robbed first the _triclinium_ and then the gem-collection, after which last I had myself murdered Falco.

But his logic, his lucidity and his eloquence fell on deaf ears.

Ravilla.n.u.s was unmoved. He permitted l.u.s.tralis to make a rambling and incoherent harangue, setting forth his ridiculous contentions.

Then he pa.s.sed judgment:

"I hold you all innocent save Phorbas alone. Dromo is manifestly devoted to Phorbas and has lied in his behalf. But Dromo, apparently, was no accomplice in the plot or in the murder. I acquit him with the rest.

Phorbas, who vilely plotted against his master, who foully murdered him, I adjudge guilty of his death and I hereby condemn him to be kept chained in the slaves' prison until the next day of beast-fighting in the Colosseum, then, in the arena, to be exposed to the ferocity of the famished wild beasts of the desert, wilderness and forest, by them to be lacerated and torn to pieces, as he richly deserves."

Tanno and Galen could indicate their grief and sympathy only by looks and gestures, for they dared not attempt to approach me.

Then Ravilla.n.u.s called:

"Where is that barber?"

The apparitor who had gone off before the trial began produced a barber.